MO-Sen Fundraising
Congressman Roy blunt raised raised $1.44 million in the second quarter of this year. His (presumed) Democrat opponent Jean Carnahan raised just over $1 million.
Blunt now also leads the important cash on hand race $1.7 million to $1.3 million.
All of this of course assumes that Congressman Blunt doesn’t have a primary. Should there be a competitive primary, the cash on hand lead could turn into a defecit in a heartbeat.
Originally posted as a 
on RedState.
Health Care Reform Explained
The folks over at the Washington Post have done a very good job of putting together a chart on what health care reform means to the people that matter: the consumer. They have it broken out into the different groups of how you get your health care coverage (or lack thereof).
(Click to enlarge)
Read through that chart. Depending on which side of the equation you fixated on is going to determine which side you fall on. Me? Given the course of the current legislation, I’m seeing the loss of liberty and the giant questions that still remain as a big enough reason to be part of the party of No.
Beating on Krugman
So, Krugman got his panties in a wad over a blog post written by Greg Mankiw (that I linked to in yesterday’s must reads). Well, let’s just say that the term dog pile comes to mind in the response.
- Robert Book (the author of the study that Mankiw linked), jumped out first with a post on Heritage’s Foundry Blog. In Medicare Administrative Costs and Paul Krugman’s “Propoganda Shop”, Book points out that Krugman’s point was merely an ad hominem attack supported with a misleading number comparing costs between private insurance companies and Medicare.
- John Stossel gets in on the act with his piece entitled Healthcare from Krugman. While not directly related to the tift, Stossel does an excellent fisking of Krugman’s op-ed in favor of a government run plan.
- Alex Tabarrok of Marginal Revolution finds the debate “peculiar” (Administrative Costs). He makes five points, but the one not mentioned often is that people forget that there is a cost involved in using taxation as a funding mechanism. As he says, these costs far outweigh any savings. Tyler Cowen (also of Marginal Revolution) puts that deadweight loss of taxation at 20% or more.
- Heritage’s Conn Carrol comes out swinging today with the Morning Bell: The Truth About Medicare’s Administrative Costs.
- Megan McArdle also chimes in over at the Atlantic (Medicare’s Mythical Administrative Cost Savings). She reminds us that there are many costs that private companies include in their bottom line that Medicare shifts onto other government agencies.
- Karl at Patterico’s Pontifications delivers one very well rounded smack down of the whole lower cost idea (Obamacare’s “public plan” is built on a Medicare myth). He’s got a great roundup of quotes and studies to really point out just how useless this argument is. He also gets a nice shot in on Krugman, reminding everyone that he used to advise Enron (How’d that work out Mr Nobel Prize?).
You’d think for a Nobel Prize winner, Paul Krugman would learn to make arguments that can stand up to scrutiny. Oh, wait…Enron.
Pass This Bill Now
The Congresscritter who sponsors this legislation would assure themselves of my vote (I would say for life, but they could pull a Sanford).
[E]very product whose ingredients benefit from a subsidy should include the following language on the label:
“This product has been subsidized by the U.S. government at taxpayer expense. For more information, please visit usda.gov.”
And every product that benefits from tariff protection should have the following language on the label:
“This product is protected from foreign competition by U.S. import tariffs. Its price is higher as a result. For more information, please visit usitc.gov.”
You don’t think this would make people mad? Just wait until people realize how much of what they buy every day is partly paid for by other people.
Bailing Out the Profitable?
There has been much talk that there needs to be a bail out for the nation’s news papers. Why?
It’s clear that although their profits and revenues are falling dramatically that they are still profitable. They must not be in that much trouble.
h/t Matt Welch
Today’s Must Reads: Health Care Edition
Social Cost – John Goodman
Social cost is the sum of all the individual costs. That is, it’s the cost to me plus the cost to you plus….. etc., summing over 300 million people. In doing the summation, we can’t omit whole groups of folks. Although this may come as a surprise to some, doctors really are people! So are nurses. So are hospital personnel. Squeezing the incomes of providers shifts costs, but it doesn’t lower them. It makes patients better off (in the short run) and providers worse off. But that does not lower cost for society as a whole.
A Closer Look At European Health Care – McQ
So you can expect innovation to begin to slow. Why invest billions when a bureaucracy will decide whether or not it’s a medicine or treatment worth the cost. The same bureaucracy will also decide what it will pay for your innovation. Of course, if the innovator can’t recover the cost of development and make a profit as incentive toward more innovation, the probability exits the developer will simply stop such research.
“Government control of health care is not a panacea,” said Philip Stevens, of International Policy Network, a London think-tank. “The U.S. health system is a bit of a mess, but based on what’s happened in some countries in Europe, I’d be nervous about recommending more government involvement.”
Words of wisdom most likely to be ignored by our legislators here. And the unfortunate thing is it will not only destroy an excellent health care system here, but, given the level of government spending forecast, tank the rest of the economy as well.
Uwe Reinhardt on Health Care Rationing – Doug Bandow
Is rationing inevitable? Yes. Is government rationing inevitable or desirable? Neither. The bottom line is: who should control people’s and families’ medical futures? Not Uncle Sam.
Myths About Obamacare – Matt Lewis
Matt shares some interesting points being emailed around by the RNC:
- “You can keep your plan. “You can keep your doctor.” Busted by the AP.- “Costs won’t rise.” But will be paid for by plenty of taxes according to the AP.- “The plan will not add to the deficit.” But CBO says plans would worsen budget outlook.- “The ‘public option’ will provide competition.” Even the Chicago Tribune editorial board knows better.
Unions are shifting their feet, uncertain about Obama’s health care plan, and seniors are already at: don’t finance the uninsured by cutting Medicare.
So while the media-worship continues of Obamacare, seniors are at no. And Stanley Greenberg, a gray beard with battle scars, is trying to warn the Democratic Party.
Statist Healthcare, By the Numbers – Directorblue
1,500,000: The number of Canadians who do not have — and cannot find — a general practitioner/primary care physician due to shortages in medical staff: “In Norwood, Ontario, 20/20 videotaped a town clerk pulling the names of the lucky winners out of a lottery box. The losers must wait to see a doctor… Shirley Healy, like many sick Canadians, came to America for surgery. Her doctor in British Columbia told her she had only a few weeks to live because a blocked artery kept her from digesting food. Yet Canadian officials called her surgery ‘elective.’ …’The only thing elective about this surgery was I elected to live,’ she said.”
Go read the rest. He’s got a lot of good ones in there.
The Robot Will See You Now – Boston Globe – Kathleen Burge
Doctors and researchers at Lahey and elsewhere see robots as potential money savers that could lower healthcare costs for critically ill patients. Now those patients are sometimes transferred unnecessarily from community hospitals to academic medical centers, where the cost of care is much higher and the distance is inconvenient for families, said Sanford Kurtz, Lahey’s chief operating officer.
This is a huge advance in how medicine can be performed. The pharmacy industry also tried to go this way, but with little success (state boards of pharmacy required an on site pharmacist when dispensing medicaiton). Let’s just hope that medical boards don’t screw this one up.
Obama Doesn’t Have the Only Prescription for Healthcare Reform – Michael D. Tanner
The choice facing us now is not between Obama’s plan for healthcare micromanaged by the government or doing nothing. Rather, it is a choice between government control, regulation and rationing on one hand, and free markets, choice and competition on the other.
Costs versus Efficiency – Greg Mankiw
Low administrative costs are not to be confused with high administrative efficiency. In other words, administrators are not necessarily a deadweight loss to the system.
Be sure to click through and read the information on how increasing Medicare’s overhead costs could more than make up those increases in reduced fraud.
Is Six Months of Your Life Worth $22,000? – John Goodman
The British health care agency NICE (cute acronym, right?) has decided that it is not.
House Dems Consider New “Surtax” – Philip Klein
The surtax would be on top of the tax hike that is already anticipated at this income level in 2011 when the Bush tax cuts are allowed to expire, and would hit small business owners who declare business income on their personal tax returns.
At what point do the people who make more than $250,000 get to decide that they have done more than their “patriotic duty’?
Smackdown of the Day
But when I look at the graph, it looks to me as if the stimulus was supposed to affect the unemployment rate immediately. Specifically, it was supposed to dramatically lower the rate of increase in unemployment immediately. By now, at the beginning of Q3, unemployment was supposed to start falling. But unemployment has continued to rise apace. It definitely isn’t falling.
That’s in response to this whopper from Krugman:
The problem, in other words, is not that the stimulus is working more slowly than expected; it was never expected to do very much this soon. The problem, instead, is that the hole the stimulus needs to fill is much bigger than predicted. That — coupled with the fact that yes, stimulus takes time to work — is the reason for a second round, ASAP.
Another case of when facts don’t support your original argument for the Porkulus, make up new arguments while pushing for a second Porkulus!
Cross-posted to RedState’s RedHot.
You Could Have Heard a Pin Drop
I saw this chain email shared on Jules Crittenden’s site and had to share it too.
When in England, at a fairly large conference, Colin Powell was asked by the Archbishop of Canterbury if our plans for invading Iraq were just an example of empire building by George Bush.
He answered by saying, ‘Over the years, the United States has sent many of its fine young men and women into great peril to fight for freedom beyond our borders. The only amount of land we have ever asked for in return is enough to bury those that did not return.’
You could have heard a pin drop…
***
There was a conference in France where a number of international engineers were taking part, including French and American. During a break, one of the French engineers came back into the room saying ‘Have you heard the latest dumb stunt Bush has done? He has sent an aircraft carrier to Indonesia to help the tsunami victims. What does he intended to do, bomb them?’
A Boeing engineer stood up and replied quietly: ‘Our carriers have three hospitals on board that can treat several hundred people; they are nuclear powered and can supply emergency electrical power to shore facilities; they have three cafeterias with the capacity to feed 3,000 people three meals a day, they can produce several thousand gallons of fresh water from sea water each day, and they carry half a dozen helicopters for use in transporting victims and injured to and from their flight deck. We have eleven such ships; how many does France have?’
You could have heard a pin drop.
***
A U.S. Navy Admiral was attending a naval conference that included Admirals from the English, Canadian, Australian and French Navies. At a cocktail reception, he found himself standing with a large group of Officers that included personnel from most of those countries.
Everyone was chatting away in English as they sipped their drinks but a French admiral suddenly complained that, whereas Europeans learn many languages, Americans learn only English. He then asked, ‘Why is it that we always have to speak English in these conferences rather than speaking
French?’Without hesitating, the American Admiral replied ’Maybe it’s because the Brits, Canadians, Aussies and Americans arranged it so you wouldn’t have to speak German.’
You could have heard a pin drop.
***
Robert Whiting, an elderly gentleman of 83, arrived in Paris by plane. At French Customs, he took a few minutes to locate his passport in his carry on. ‘You have been to France before, monsieur?’ the customs officer asked sarcastically.
Mr. Whiting admitted that he had been to France previously.
‘Then you should know enough to have your passport ready.’
The American said, ‘The last time I was here, I didn’t have to show it.’
‘Impossible. Americans always have to show your passports on arrival in France!’
The American senior gave the Frenchman a long hard look. Then he quietly explained, ‘Well, when I came ashore at Omaha Beach on D-Day in 1944 to help liberate this country, I couldn’t find a single Frenchmen to show a passport to.’
You could have heard a pin drop.
A tip of the hat goes to Dan Collins
Phil Spector
That’s the search term that has brought 83 (at last check) to this blog today.
Funny. I don’t remember blogging about Phil Spector…until now. I have smacked Arlen Specter around a few times though.
Update: I take that back.
This Just…Works
Not that I actually believe that the Democrats are this stupid, but the comparison of Specter’s works. And who doesn’t like that picture?
Confused Democrats Appear to Welcome Phil Spector to Their Party
You can imagine how thrilled freshman Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) was by the news that her party was adding a national celebrity to its ranks. After all, the Senator is a huge Ronettes fan and loved the re-orchestration of “The Long and Winding Road”!
At least that’s what we assume motivated Sen. Gillibrand when she issued a public statement reading: “GILLIBRAND WELCOMES SENATOR SPECTOR TO DEMOCRATIC PARTY.”
See the only American Spector who’s famous enough to be referenced by his last name alone is legendary record producer Phil Spector, architect of hits ranging from “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” to “He Hit Me (And It Felt Like a Kiss).”
