Saturday, January 12, 2013

A Pimp for Obamacare Feels the Pain



When I began writing about the menace of increased federal involvement in our medical delivery system, I was surprised to discover that some doctors actually supported it. These misguided medicos represented only a small minority of practicing physicians, and most were profoundly ignorant about health care economics, but the “M.D.” following their names provided them with a façade of credibility. A number of these people took advantage of their illusory expertise in health care policy to launch blogs which they used to promote their notions of “health reform” and extol the virtues of government-run health care in general.

Among them was an ER physician who writes under the nom de plume “Shadowfax.” This particular “docblogger” stands out in my memory because he was peculiarly uninformed about the nuances of the issue and yet utterly dismissive of anyone, including other physicians, who attempted to make him understand that he would one day regret advocating an increased government role in medicine. I occasionally crossed swords with him myself, but it was an exercise in futility. Like most soi disant progressives, this self-satisfied sawbones couldn’t imagine that he might be on the wrong side of this or any other issue.

This unshakable belief in his own infallibility regarding government-administered health care was partly due to his hopelessly naïve view of Medicare, which he called “the most successful government program ever.” Never mind that this “success” had produced a $38 trillion unfunded liability, it was somehow “more efficient than private insurance.” Imagine my surprise, then, when I looked at the byline for this scathing piece bemoaning the depredations of that very program. The outraged author of “Medicare made the rules and now punishes doctors for following them” is none other than the redoubtable Shadowfax. Read more....

1 comment:

  1. The source is uncertain but this nineteenth-century statement is surely true: “A Democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largesse out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result that the Democracy collapses due to the loose fiscal policy, always to be followed by a dictatorship.” The statement is often wrongly attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville, but he actually did say, “A democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it.” If that sounds familiar, it is—and that is ominous. It is doubly ominous because high Chinese officials have remarked that democratic capitalism is failing while autocratic capitalism is succeeding. Beginning in 2012 the Chinese will overtake the United States in new scientific advances in some fields. One year later, their gross domestic product (GDP) will exceed ours.
    Credit policies long pursued by central bankers based on the Keynesian Model of progressive inflation have brought the United States to the brink of economic collapse. In the final analysis, even wealthy nations cannot afford to live beyond their means to support Progressives’ “social justice” welfare programs. Nearly all the developed world is at the “Keynesian End Game” and the end of the dollar UNLESS we find a wholly new source of national wealth. Globalization and “free trade” agreements have led to the outsourcing of well-paying jobs from the advanced nations and a boost to the growth of developing nations. Unless reversed, this trend will continue to the detriment and ultimate collapse of western economies. We must become net exporters and keep balanced budgets.

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