I suspect that as the administration’s credibility continues to unravel from all of the scandals, its signature achievement will be viewed even more skeptically, and be more amenable to simply being repealed, along with the rest of its misbegotten “achievements.”
Category Archives: Health
The ObamaCare Tax
…is scaring the daylights out of some small business owners.
I’m sure worried about it, as someone who is self employed. All I want is a simple catastrophic policy, but I may not be able to afford it, if it’s even available at all.
More Nutritional Ignorance
So here’s a study that says that Subway is just as bad for teenagers as McDonalds, based on nothing but counting calories. As though nothing matters except calories.
Hospital Costs
Why the huge variation? It’s because of the huge disconnect between the consumer and provider. When a third party pays, all transparency, and need for it, is lost. As Glenn writes:
You could do more for real cost control by requiring hospitals to publish fixed prices for most procedures than from any amount of bureaucratic fiddling — though such an approach would provide disappointingly few opportunities for graft.
When I got my hernia fixed last year, I didn’t just shop doctors, I shopped surgery facilities and even anesthesiologists. Because I was paying for it.
The Oregon Medicaid Study
Why it should change our thinking about health insurance and health care:
A bunch of people sarcastically asked whether I was planning to drop my health insurance. The answer is no, because my employer pays for it. But if the question is “Has this caused you to revise downward your estimate of the value of health insurance?” the answer has to obviously be yes. Anyone who answers differently is looking deep into their intestinal loops, not the Oregon study. You don’t have to revise the estimate to zero, or even a low number. But if you’d asked folks before the results dropped what we’d expect to see if insurance made people a lot healthier, they’d have said “statistically significant improvement on basic markers for the most common chronic diseases. The fact that we didn’t see that means that we should now say that health insurance, or at least Medicaid, probably doesn’t make as big a difference in health as we thought.
Certainly, this bolsters my belief that health insurance should provide financial protection from catastrophic events, not wrap-around first-dollar coverage. Those who used to read me on The Atlantic may recall that the McArdle Plan for Healthcare involved the government picking up the tab for any medical expenses above 15-20% of income: simple, progressive, and aimed at the actual problem we know health insurance can fix. Unfortunaely, Obamacare made that sort of coverage functionally illegal.
And that was the kind of coverage I’ve always purchased for myself. That is, true health insurance, not what the moron Sibelius thinks is health insurance. And they want to make it impossible for me to get it.
Gun control isn’t about guns — it’s about control. And health care isn’t about health — it’s about control. The thing is never about the thing.
Organs And Tissues
From a 3-D printer. Also, printed meat, though that’s actually harder, surprisingly. Could be handy on a space ship, though.
Faster, please.
Health Foods
That are killing you.
ObamaCare
Just how ignorant is its namesake about it?
Well, to be fair, he could be just lying.
[Update a while later]
Unravel it, and you get a train wreck.
Actually, you get a train wreck just in trying to implement it:
Baucus isn’t the only Capitol Hill Democrat worried about a “train wreck,” according to The Hill. Even those not yet on Capitol Hill have distanced themselves from the unpopular program. Elizabeth Colbert Busch, a Democrat running for a House seat in a South Carolina special election, called the ACA “extremely problematic.”
As 2014 draws ever closer, and the true scale of the problems of ObamaCare become apparent, expect more Democratic incumbents to commiserate with their constituents about the “extremely problematic” “train wreck” they imposed on them. They had better not expect the voters to let them off the hook, however, no matter how many times Obama tells them they have nothing to worry about.
Everyone running next year against an opponent who voted for this monstrosity should make it a focus of their campaign. Even if the opponent renounces their own vote to attempt to save their seat (that’s the polite word…), their judgment should be called into question.
The Bee Mystery
I hadn’t known about this:
Researchers are making headway in mapping the genes that help bees overcome these obstacles, including which genes help them safely break down pesticides. Now researchers have identified several compounds that help turn on those genes. They’re present in honey, something commercial bees don’t get to keep–their food supply is taken for human use, and bees are feed sweet substitutes like corn syrup.
Wenfu Mao and colleagues found three compounds in honey that increase the expression of a gene that helps bees metabolize pesticides. The most important chemical is something called p-coumaric acid, which is found in pollen cells. By eating honey, which contains pollen, the bees are exposed to a compound that basically boosts their ability to break down dangerous chemicals. So honey substitutes like high-fructose corn syrup may compromise their health.
You don’t say. Corn syrup isn’t good for anyone. No reason to think it would keep a bee healthy, but apparently the industry fooled themselves into thinking so.
Now that they understand this, maybe there’s something they can do about it, and still harvest honey.
Carbohydrates
The lower limit of them compatible with human life is apparently zero.
It’s not a new result, but worth pointing out. #Paleo