Letting old people die would undoubtedly be cheaper than keeping them alive — but that does not mean that the costs have gone down. It just means that we refuse to pay the costs. Instead, we pay the consequences. There is no free lunch.
Providing free lunches to people who go to hospital emergency rooms is one of the reasons for the current high costs of medical care for others. Politicians mandating what insurance companies must cover is another free lunch that leads to higher premiums for medical insurance — and fewer people who can afford it.
ADDED: Mona Charon gives a personal story about the costs of the coming health care fiasco.
UPDATE: Thomas Sowell's "The 'Costs' of Medical Care, Part II" is here.
What is the difference between Bird Flu and Swine Flu?
For bird flu you need tweetment and for swine flu you need oinkment.
Apparently a hesitant Obama hopes that the crisis over illegal immigration will just go away on its own -- despite his now forgotten April vow to enact "comprehensive immigration reform."
The economic slowdown, together with beefed-up security and the border wall, have cut down the number of illegal entries to the lowest number in recent years. Privately, Obama must be happy that the pool of illegal aliens is shrinking, allowing the formable forces of American assimilation to work on smaller, more integrated populations, without politically charged talk about amnesty and deportation. Publicly, he can lament to his Hispanic base that Bush, not he, was responsible for the wall and increased security.
If you look up "political expediency" in the dictionary, do you see BarryO's picture?
The recession has driven prices down across the board, and the cost of living has actually declined by almost 5 percent. Because of that, and because Medicare premiums won’t increase next year, spending analyst Andrew Biggs of the American Enterprise Institute estimates that the average Social Security recipient will have about $725 more in purchasing power next year. So, reasonably, Social Security plans to skip the COLA.
But not if the Obama administration can help it.Did you think that another "czar" would be talking about restricting talk radio? That there would be plans afloat to subsidize newspapers — that is, to create a situation where some newspapers' survival would depend on the government liking what they publish?
Did you imagine that anyone would even be talking about having a panel of so-called "experts" deciding who could and could not get life-saving medical treatments?
Scary as that is from a medical standpoint, it is also chilling from the standpoint of freedom. If you have a mother who needs a heart operation or a child with some dire medical condition, how free would you feel to speak out against an administration that has the power to make life and death decisions about your loved ones?
...
In short [. . .] the Obama administration falsely claimed that the Bush administration had done no planning or analysis regarding the worsening situation in Afghanistan, even though it (1) knew this was false, (2) had asked the Bush administration not to disclose its work, and (3) relied in part on the same work it claimed the Bush administration had not performed. Paul [Mirengoff] judged that what Cheney described went beyond lack of class to demonstrate bad character on the part of the Obama administration.
Now comes the Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes to examine the issues of fact raised by Cheney’s account. In “Obama’s minions are ingrates,” Hayes documents the formal review conducted by the Bush administration that was turned over to the Obama team and inquires whether (as Obama press secretary Robert Gibbs has charged) the Bush team sat on a request for increased troops. Hayes confirms Cheney’s assertions as a matter of fact.
This bunch of crap comes from an administration so many Americans had so much 'hope' for. Transparency. Tolerance. Democracy. Efficiency. Fairness. Equality. Pride.
My shattered ass.
BarryO babbles that Communism, Socialism, Buddhism and Islam are blessings to the world, religions and political dogma to be imitated and implemented here, while doing his level best to leave Israel defenseless against those sworn to destroy her, and ensure that Christians and Jews worldwide are silenced as troublemakers.
George W and Cheney did their best to keep this country from being attacked AGAIN. BarryO has no such wish, in my opinion. He and his mentors and followers have the best of all possible worlds and will never experience the heartache and loss that Working America is going to see. He and his family will celebrate our hunger and poverty with kobe beef for supper. BarryO and his weasels lied before, and they will lie again. To get what they want, to accomplish their mission.
David Harsani at Townhall.com:
If TARP recipients are under the thumb of a pay czar, what about other corporations consenting to Washington aid or accepting contracts -- a group that grows with each misguided stab at stimulating the economy? And why stop there? Why not make all compensation fair?
"I don't think that's healthy, and I don't like it," Camden Fine, president of the Independent Community Bankers of America, said of the pay czar's cuts. "These are decisions for boards of directors to make, not the government. I think this is a very slippery slope."
