10:29 – It was 28F (-2C) when I took Colin out this morning. The snow never arrived, and today is sunny, breezy, and cool. Things are to warm up tomorrow and stay warmer for several days, until they start to cool down again on Thursday. Even our recent “cool” days are well above normal temperatures. I blame it on global warming. More work on taxes today. I hope to finish.
I keep reading all these news stories about how the Republicans are going to have to come up with medical insurance that covers pre-existing conditions. That’s the most popular aspect of Obamacare, and it’s popular because it’s a welfare giveaway. The simple fact is that health insurance cannot cover pre-existing conditions. If it does, by definition, it’s not insurance. It’s welfare. Even assigned risk pools are welfare, because the premia they charge are insufficient to cover expenses, which must be made up for either by having the taxpayers foot the bill or having normal customers pay more than they should.
I see all these stories about how we must continue to cover pre-existing conditions. I just read one in the paper this morning about a woman in Englewood, CO who has breast cancer and is paying $345/month for health insurance under Obamacare. She should be paying much, much more. Probably at least ten times as much, if not 20 or 50 times as much. She can’t afford that? Sorry, but that doesn’t mean the rest of us should have to pay for her care. They don’t mention if she has any assets, but if she does, those should be liquidated and go to pay for her care before any taxpayer monies or other subsidies are provided to her. Not that I think she should receive any subsidies. We’d all be better off as a group if subsidies were entirely eliminated and people had to pay their own way. I’m sorry for her trouble, but not sorry enough to pay for it myself.
Worst case, she’d simply have to do without medical care. Not that that would matter much to the outcome. With or without medical care, she’ll live about the same amount of time. Like most “modern medicine” the care she’ll be receiving with the subsidy won’t actually help her much. My attitude is that we should supply as much oxycodone (or levomethorphan) as she wants to take and let her die as nature intended.
More than 90% of medical spending in this country is similarly wasted on things that can’t be fixed, surgery that ultimately has no benefit, and drugs that have little or no benefit. If people want to waste their own money on useless medical treatments, that’s their business. But subsidizing that care is an outrageous waste of taxpayer money.
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