Sunday, March 08, 2009

Obama's single-payer health care beats socialized medicine.

Why all the fuss about single payer? Because nearly 1/3 of the health care dollar goes to overhead, currently, while Medicare keeps costs in the 2-3% range. Administering health care is something the U.S. government can do VERY efficiently compared to private insurers, partly because ad campaigns, salaries & bonuses aren't allowed to be outrageous.

The only ones who stand to lose are insurance companies and their overpaid execs - even doctors are on-board with this concept.

Do you know what the estimate is for the money that could be saved on paperwork alone? $350 BILLION per YEAR. On paperwork to keep the plethora of insurance forms filled out. All so non-medically trained bureaucrats can make decisions about how much to pay for medical procedures versus how much to pay the insurance executives.

Duke Medical has a ratio of one billing clerk PER hospital bed in their system just to cope with all the insurance forms and rules. That's plain got to stop.

David Frum Says Obama Has Advantage Through 2010

David Frum says that President Obama has an advantage in that he can blame the Bush Administration through 2010. Frum, a conservative, also says that Rush Limbaugh is the figurative head of the Republican Party.

Who's killing the DJIA? Boskin needs a mirror before blaming Obama's budget.

Investors are skittish. Any news about GM, or AIG, or retail sales being weak, or below forecasts, etc., causes them to react. Michael Boskin wants you to hear that Obama's killing the DOW.

Knowledgeable traders with years of experience are killing the DJIA as they react to the aftershocks of the policies Michael Boskin wants to retain. The DOW is a symptom, it's a measure. He's gone so far as to submit his fear-mongering to the Wall Street Journal, the very same place all the practitioners of derivative voodoo look to when they want to read the tea leaves.

Investors react to fear-mongering by losing confidence - and selling off their stock, which fuels the fears that Boskin has already stoked. When Obama warned people that the other side would use fear to attain their goals, I wonder if he anticipated somebody willing to extend the economic crisis that is causing such suffering in the middle class?

Obama isn't killing the DOW by trying to reverse the momentum of the U.S. economy; we can't survive Boskin's idea, which is to sit by and hope it gets better. That's not how hope gets used, but it's apparently how Boskin uses the WSJ.

Martha Stewart and Lucaris Have Lunch - Seriously


One interesting aspect of taste maven Martha Stewart's life is that she keeps company with some hip members of American Culture, one of them is rapper Ludacris, who had lunch with Martha on March 4th. Here's what Martha wrote on "The Martha Blog ":
Here I am having Lunch yesterday with Ludacris (Chris Bridges). We had a nice salad, paella, and chocolate cake for dessert. He is a nice young man and very, very busy. He is extremely excited about his new flick and new album. Ludacris also really liked the chocolate cake!
But why is this not part of her overall image?  A good question that begs for an answer!