Subsidize demand. Restrict supply.

If you want something for “free,” make sure the government isn’t the payor. It’s a classic moral hazard.

In the case of any shortfall of the “free” good or service, the government will appeal to the people they saddled with the costs. AKA taxpayers. It’s the taxpayers fault for not paying enough. Or, it’s the taxpayers who are being hurt (by our policies) and must have relief!

Raising taxes is one solution. Reducing services is another. Doing both is optimal for your government. And when the drain on the Treasury can be reduced by eliminating customers… well health care isn’t where you want that to happen.

Those of you who think corporations are dispassionate have never considered the heights of dispassion available to the organization that controls the currency and monopolizes the ‘legal’ use of deadly force. Which may come from a gun or a syringe.

Canada’s Euthanasia Policies Under Scrutiny As Reports Surface Of Euthanizing A Man For “Hearing Loss”

Scotty! Impulse engines – FULL REVERSE!!

Have monkeypox? CDC advises no sex, but says masturbation 6 feet apart or virtual sex reduce risk

This would be humorous, if it were not our government health gurus at work protecting us.

It is problrmatic for the Progressive anointed to acknowledge that Monkeypox is, for the time being, overwhelmingly spread among homosexual males who have never heard the phrase ‘impulse control.’ They represent 98% of the infections.

They identify as Monkeypox immune. And f*ck the rest of society… Which is their objective, I guess.

The same people who ranted about mask mandates, “You’re a murderer if you don’t wear one!“, can’t bring themselves to impede large homosexual sexfests in any way.

Any serious measures to discourage male-on-male orgies is at least bordering on the “speech is violence” theories of white female progs on Twitter. It’s stigmatizing gays to say, “Have sex with fewer strangers, especially groups of strangers. If you have symptoms, don’t have sex at all.” As the WaPo puts it, “As monkeypox strikes gay men, officials debate warnings to limit partners.” Debate… warnings? I guess it’s not like a mask mandate because it’s only a warning, and Monkeypox is not airborne. Although these impulse control deniers are working on helping it mutate.

And what would be analogous to mask mandates, anyway? Chastity belt mandates? Butt plug mandates? Dental dam mandates? Hazmat suit mandates? All of the above seem reasonable for people who don’t understand abstinence is for their own good. Right? Right?…

What happened to “follow the science”?

And, we obviously need Monkeypox vaccinations for kids, of course. You can no more expect toddlers and infants to masturbate 6 feet apart than you can the 98%. It can’t be that infants understand virtual sex, can it? And who knows what sex they really are?

In May the WHO said there was no urgent need for Monkeypox vaccination. We’ve heard this before. Only this time we already had effective vaccines.

The problem is there’s a vaccine shortage because HHS took WHO’s advice. HHS didn’t order bottling of doses the US already owned until June, and the FDA was slow to conduct an inspection allowing it to ship. The FDA finished in late July.

Meanwhile, to help build your confidence in our public health Czars, a headline from the 50’s:
New York Health Department says hundreds of people may be infected with polio virus

Just in case…

…conversation around the Christmas dinner table peters out, here’s something to get it going again.

-Mark J. Perry, Venn Master. Carpe Diem

If that isn’t enough to generate polite dialog (for example, if any of your fellow diners don’t immediately grasp why situational enforcement of mutually exclusive authoritarian diktat is intellectually bankrupt and morally deplorable), just propose a debate with the proposition: Venn diagrams show math is racist.

Still no chit-chat? Point out that while they need not be binary, a majority of Venn diagrams are. So aren’t they also transphobic?

As I think about it there are problems with a Venn diagram displaying however many genders may be momentarily asserted. I’ve never seen a Venn diagram with nearly a hundred circles.

I have no idea what the label in the intersection should be. I can think of nothing charitable.
————-
I notice I used the word “fellow”. Haven’t seen that attacked yet, but it’s obvious why it will be. Or has been, outside my notice.

Substitute “comrade”.

I also apologize in advance for “peters”, “diktat”, “Master”, “debate” (two sides), And I’m abjectly sorry for using the word “think”.

Canadian model?

At Neo-neocon: The cost of Canadian health care

It’s not just the financial cost, it’s also the suffering cost while waiting for an appointment.

There is no free lunch. There is no free health care. And anyone comparing outcomes in different countries by comparing statistics on infant mortality and life expectancy is comparing apples and oranges. These matters are influenced by much more than a healthcare insurance system.

Among other things, it’s whether you count preemies who die as stillbirths. In the US, it is far more likely they’ll be counted as live births.

Health Insurance and Health Care are not the same thing

Most recent data from Canada, where there is universal health insurance: Waiting Your Turn – Wait Times for Health Care in Canada, 2017 Report

Waiting for treatment has become a defining characteristic of Canadian health care. In order to document the lengthy queues for visits to specialists and for diagnostic and surgical procedures in the country, the Fraser Institute has — for over two decades — surveyed specialist physicians across 12 specialties and 10 provinces.

This edition of Waiting Your Turn indicates that, overall, waiting times for medically necessary treatment have increased since last year. Specialist physicians surveyed report a median waiting time of 21.2 weeks between referral from a general practitioner and receipt of treatment—longer than the wait of 20.0 weeks reported in 2016. This year’s wait time—the longest ever recorded in this survey’s history — is 128% longer than in 1993, when it was just 9.3 weeks.

Unsurprisingly, when supply of a good is bureaucratically rationed, shortages result. When the good is “free,” it’s worse.

Somebody should tell Nancy and Bernie.

Trump: I don’t know, and I don’t care

Donald Trump’s Health Care Plan Shows His Complete Disdain for Expertise
He’s not just clueless—he’s willfully ignorant.

[I]t is not really news that Trump is clueless when it comes to health policy. Trump has never demonstrated even the smallest iota of interest in in the underlying details of policy on this or any other issue. To the extent that he has provided any, they have been incoherent or contradictory: In interviews and speeches, he has praised single-payer health care and promised universal coverage paid for by the government, but also said that his Obamacare replacement will rely on competition and private plans. It is nonsense policy…

Trump, then, is not just ignorant on policy details. He is willfully ignorant. It’s not just that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. It’s that he’s avoided finding out.

RTWT it’s well worth it.

Health Care and oh, say, the Nuclear Triad are not the only things that don’t arouse his curiosity.

Maybe you should have read it first

And maybe Americans should have been told what was in it rather than being told we had to pass it to find out.

From Whitehouse.gov

“We got [Obamacare] done. Now, let’s face it, a lot of us didn’t realize that passing the law was the easy part.”
-Barack Obama

Yep, they supposed deconstructing 1/6 of the American economy would be as easy as convincing Nancy Pelosi to say something stupid. Hell, they assumed she needed convincing to say something stupid. I’m pretty sure she volunteered.

Of course passing the law was the easy part. Unfortunately, just waving your hands and saying, “Make it so.” doesn’t work when your minions have zero experience in actually building anything and are economically ignorant.

So, Barack, You did build that.