UPDATE: As another example of cluelessness, I offer The Nation, December 21 edition, which makes no mention of the CRU scandal which even the legacy media is starting to cover. Why do they suppose Gore cancelled his appearance ? Worried about his carbon footprint ? Hardly.
I read the Washington Monthly blog every day to see what the left is thinking about. Recently, it is almost exclusively the health care bills. They don’t let me comment anymore so I just skim the posts mostly. Today is such a good illustration of their mindset, that I have to take some time with it. The post concerns a free clinic in Arkansas that was funded by Keith Olbermann, hero of the left. A thousand people showed up to get free care. Some said they hadn’t had any care in years even though one was diabetic. One would think that this proves we need to demolish everyone’s health insurance in the country to provide care to the uninsured. At least it would if you were a leftist.
However, there are hundreds, if not thousands of community clinics. I used to be on the board of that group. They provide free or low cost care to people without insurance. They make statements about how many people don’t have insurance. What is unique about Santa Ana ? Well, 76% of the residents are Hispanic. How many do you think are here illegally ?
Just in a thought experiment, instead of destroying our present health care system and creating massive deficits and cutting a half billion dollars from Medicare, what if we gave $100 billion to community clinics in poverty areas ? If Keith Olbermann could get that much response to $1.7 million, what would $100 billion do ? What if it was $200 billion ?
We are about to spend trillions of dollars to cover 15 million people who have no insurance. It makes no sense but don’t tell Washington Monthly that. Well, you can’t tell them that anyway. They block comments that don’t agree with them.
We have the structures in place to provide health care to almost every legal resident. One quarter of the uninsured are Medicaid eligible but don’t apply. One quarter are here illegally. That leaves 15 million according to Obama’s numbers.
Many of those, perhaps half, are free riders who could afford insurance. We will destroy the present system to solve a minor problem. Health insurance is too expensive but this legislation will raise premiums, not reduce them.
Well, they mean well.
Tags: health care, politics
“They don’t let me comment anymore…”
And that tells me everything I need to know.
Basically, Leftism is “anti-freedom” in the sense of “anti-individualism.”
BILL
We will destroy the present system to solve a minor problem.
Sounds like standard operating procedure from the Left. It reminds me of the recent revelation that the British Labour party enabled mass migration for petty political reasons. It seems we have to endure these Stalinists waving their arms, calling for purges, making grandiose 5 year plans. Sigh.
Yup. School funding is another example.
Kudos to you, Mr. Kennedy. I was run off that site over a year ago, and gave up trying to patiently explain to those nattering idiots how things really work. It was like pounding sand. Norman Rogers does not pound sand. He (pardon me for going third person) melts that sand and gives you a way to see how ridiculous you look when you won’t hear what reason has to say.
If you do a comparison of the “comment counts” at the WM going back to 2006, you’ll see threads in their archives that feature 300 or 400 comments. Today, you might see less than 10. It’s an amazing development in the history of blog commenting. Dissent has been frozen out, purification of information complete, shark adequately jumped.
Good stuff on climate change. Raw data never lies–it just refutes the amateurs.
I got into a debate with some of them on health reform. I tried to show them that the Democrat’s approach is wrong and there is a better way, the French model. It requires patients to pay first and allows the doctor to charge more for his/her service if they can get people to pay the difference. It is an excellent system, costs about 60% of what ours does and France is a large country more like us than the other models usually cited. They could not understand and it was after that exchange that I was banned. It really is groupthink.
I have a series of posts from almost two years ago on it under “health reform.”