Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Colleges are telling students not to return from Spring Break. Schools are closing.  Employers are letting people work from home.  Everybody is taking the virus seriously.

Except local government.  The courts are open.  They’re going to stay open, all of them, until the State Court Administrator tells them to shut down.

Look, for people who get arrested and need an arraignment to get out on bail, fine, I get it.  You need a judge on duty.  Same for Orders for Protection, emergency guardianship, etc.  But the hearing doesn’t have to take place in person in the courthouse, it could be Skype.

For nearly everybody else – conciliation court, family court, probate, real estate, contract disputes – the hearing is postponed indefinitely.

Why not get out ahead of it now?  Why wait?

I blame Trump.  I suspect Democrats are afraid that if they close down the court system, Trump will pounce on it as an excuse to impose martial law and there will never be another election again.  No, seriously, I really do think they’re that paranoid. After all, that’s what they would do, if the shoe were on the other foot.

Joe Doakes

Berg’s 7th Law.

Nobody’s laughing now.

…to be fair, this isn’t much different than AOC’s point of view on many topics. 

There’s a reason Facebook and Amazon use algorithms to determine people’s reactions. Because people’s reactions are predictable.
There has been a constant drumbeat of Coronavirus fear mongering in the media, so today CVS and Walgreens are reporting a shortage of hand sanitizer and toilet paper. Panic buying.
Next up: allegations of price gouging,  attorney general investigations, legislators posturing, and media articles claiming the hardest hit are women, children, minorities, illegal immigrants, and LGBTQ+.
And it will be your fault, you wicked  evil, privileged white man.
Can’t wait.
Joe Doakes 

He’s not wrong.

Last session, the Minnesota State Legislature passed a law purporting to “fight the opioid epidemic”. They had three primary effects:

1. Bringing down a suffocating wave of government scrutiny and legal peril for prescribing “too much” opioid pain relief – in the opinion of a committee that included nobody who suffered from chronic, incurable, intractable pain. Doctors, physician assistants, dentists, pharmacists and even veterinarians could expect warning letters from the state for writing “too many” scrips for opioids – and much worse, if they didn’t comply, including having the Feds investigating their practices, being perp-walked out of their practices, and having their patient records seized.
2. Making it impossible for pain patients to get the prescriptions they need for their long-term, intractable, incurable pain – and impossible to find a doctor that’d see them, given the legal risks to taking on someone whose condition required treatment that’d put the professionals at risk.
3. Most importantly – made legislators feel good. They’d “dooooone something” about opioid addiction. Moooove on.

This past weekend I had Cara Schultz – a Burnsville city councilwoman and cancer survivor – and Rep Jeremy Munson on the show, talking about the problem and a couple of bills that’ve been introduced to try to fix the problem, taking some of the peril out of pain relief for the professionals involved, and changing the composition of the committee that works on the policy to include some people who suffer from actual pain.

It was really good hour of radio – but it got a little harrowing at times. People who couldn’t get relief for years of pain are killing themselves. Callers who’d been suffering for horrible chronic pain told stories that should have “Mengele” in the cast of characters. Give it a listen. If you get angry at the arrogance of the legislature and the bureaucracy, then that’s a good start.

Now, we need you to do something.

Be A Pain

House File 3746 has been introduced into the Health and Human Services committee. It’ll help people with chronic pain that isn’t alleviated any other way to receive pain medication.

It would make sure cancer patients and cancer survivors are able to receive pain medication. The law would require doctors act within FDA guidelines – this is not opening the door to unrestricted Vicodin for every junkie that wants it.

Here’s what is needed.

The House Health and Human Services Committee is holding this Bill hostage. If this Bill doesnt get passed out of committee by March 20th, it’s dead.

And there are lots of people in both parties who are fine with that. It’s an election year, and nobody wants their opponent to call them “soft on opioids”, even though this bill is not that. Anyway – it’s an election year if they can just ignore this, that’s what they’ll do. . So please call them. Dont leave a message with an aid. Ask for a phone appointment with the rep. Speak to them directly. Want to go the extra mile, ask for an appointment. If you are a voter in their area, they WILL meet with you if you request it. Either at the Capitol or in your town. 1. Ask them to hold a hearing on the bill ASAP. If they refuse, ask them why. 2. Ask them to support this Bill. If they don’t ask them why. 3. If they have any concerns about the Bill, let them know Rep. Munson would like to speak with them and should you let him know they want to talk with him to get clarification/answers/work on it?

Here’s The Mission

Here are the members of the House Health and Human Services Committee.

If you are a constituent of any of them, please – this week or next:

1. Make an appointment to either see them face to face, or at the very least a phone appointment. Legislators have a harder time ignoring constituents who are on the phone.
2. Ask them to hold a hearing on the bill ASAP. If they refuse, ask them why. If they explain it, let me know – email me if you need to (ask me in the comments). .
3. Ask them to support this Bill. If they don’t, please ask them why.
4. If they have any concerns about the Bill, let them know Rep. Munson – the author of HF3756 – would like to speak with them and should you let him know they want to talk with him to get clarification/answers/work on it?

I’ll be talking with Rena Moran in coming days. Please try to do the same, if you’re a constituent of any of the HHS committee members.

A friend of the blog writes :

I often look at the responses of the liberals when they talk about the homeless and the addicted. They say, “if we can just get them a house, their life will change.” Or “if we just pay them more for menial work, they’ll turn themselves around.” Or, “we just need to make everything free, people will take what we’re selling.”

I always counter with the statistics of mental illness and how many on the streets are mentally ill and while they may not choose to live without shelter, they choose to not take care of themselves, which leads them to homelessness, addictions, and joblessness. They choose to not allow professionals to give them medicine that will normalize their thoughts, allowing them to function in society.

I was surprised when the new Sam Francisco mayor had taken the stance that getting homeless people off the street involved the idea of getting those who are mentally ill a court appointed conservator that would be responsible for enforcing treatment. That actually is a reasonable idea. As is President Trump’s suggestion that bringing back institutions would help those who have burned out their family and are a danger to themselves or others.

Of course, no one is allowed to agree with Trump, so NAMI wrote a response, saying early intervention and better access to care is what is needed, not institutions. 

But, then there are cases like last night in St Paul.

This man was civilly committed. He was deemed to have an illness that would likely make him a danger to himself or others. But, not deemed appropriate for hospitalization. Instead, he was “connected with various services provided by county management.” 

Oh, and he also had 2 pending criminal cases against him.

I can’t help but also think of the 5 year old thrown from the 3rd floor of Mall of America last year. He was thrown by a homeless mentally ill man whose family was burned out and who refused treatment time and again.

The 5 year old survived by the grace of God, but is scarred for life. Last night, a woman in St Paul lost her life. A two year old may or may not have witnessed whatever happened.

Mental illness is common, and there is actually plenty of access and support for people who want help. In fact, in both of these cases, they were supposed to be getting help, but refusing. And it is certainly a right to refuse, but at some point, if a person is a danger to society, they need to lose that right.

At least two victims and their families would be living completely different lives right now if we stopped worrying about the feelings of those who don’t care enough about themselves to get treatment.

It’s truly an area where the people who are supposed to be taking care of the mentally ill have, themselves, gone insane.

Democrats sold Obamacare is a revenue-neutral measure. The way they justified that lie was to have the federal government take over student loans so the government would get the interest money and not those greedy corporations.
Elizabeth Warren wants to forgive student loan debt. But that means no interest payments. Which means no money to pay for ObamaCare, which means thousands of poor children will go without vaccinations, or else we’ll have to steal money from Social Security to pay for healthcare and Grandma will be stuck eating dog food.
Trump should be hammering it right now. Democrats set this in motion. It was part of the deal. Now they’re pulling the legs out from under it, so who’s going to suffer? Students? Infants? Grandma?
Pit one group against the other. Divided they fall.
Joe Doakes 

It’d be fun to see .it done to the other side for a while.

SCENE:   Mitch BERG is riding a Lime scooter through downtown Minneapolis when he sees Avery LIBRELLE haggling with a PANHANDLER.  BERG pulls over – before getting that look on his face that says “I already regret this”

LIBRELLE:  Merg!

BERG:  Hey, Avery.

LIBRELLE:  It’s time to give Medicare to everyone!

BERG:   Medicare even as it is is going to be insolvent right about the time I might, hypothetically, maybe, retire.

LIBRELLE:   The best way to save a program is to make sure everyone depends on it.  Give it to everyone!  (To PANHANDLER).  Right?

PANHANDLER:  My car broke down, and my wife and daughter are in it, out on the freeway.

LIBRELLE:  Have you tried holding a press conference and demonstration at City Hall?

PANHANDLER: No, ma’a…er, si…er… (Looks wanly at BERG, who shrugs).   Er, not yet.

(BERG quietly presses the accelerator)

And SCENE

It’s rapidly becoming a Berg’s Law – liberals are usually good for one round of “debate”, until the one round of chanting points they “know” about the subject (they don’t actually know them; they’re regurgitating) get struck down.  Then they switch to ad hominem, ad hominem, ofay mockery, and worse.  .

It’s true on most subject – guns, sexual harassment, gay  marriage, whatever – but healthcare is far from an exception.

And in the chanting points that make up their world, “Single Payer Healthcare” is an immaculate, unimpeachable concept.    None have ever been shown the drastic falloff in outcomes (as opposed to coverage – which is the easy part.

Enter Forbes:

Consider one nurse’s letter explaining why she quit the profession. She described horrific working conditions. Medical professionals worked 12-hour shifts with little time for necessities like bathroom breaks or food. Managers felt they couldn’t do anything to change unsafe conditions created by overcrowded hospitals. “You cannot safely practice under such conditions,” she wrote. “Mistakes will be made and people will be harmed, some fatally.”

The shortage of providers has resulted in longer wait times for patients. In May, 4.3 million people in the United Kingdom were on waiting lists for surgery, a 10-year high. Adjusting for population, that would be like having everyone in the state of Florida on waiting lists. Roughly 3,500 British patients have been on hospital waiting lists for more than a year.

More than one in five British cancer patients waits longer than two months to begin treatment after receiving a referral from a general practitioner. In Scotland, fewer than 80 percent of patients receive needed diagnostic tests — endoscopies, MRIs, CT, scans and the like — within three months.

These delays are deadly. An analysis that covered just half of England’s hospitals found that almost 30,000 patients died in the past year while waiting for treatment — an increase of 57 percent compared to 2013.

Looking at how patients actually do  on NHS should be enough to cure any reasonable, informed, logical person of their infatuation…

…but I guess I just summed up the problem, didnt I?

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

is an imaginary conversation that could never happen in a Minnesota bureaucracy:

Colleague: Trump is an idiot.  “Who knew health care could be so hard?”  Moron.  Single-payer is the answer and easily affordable.  For example, if 3M didn’t have to pay employees’ health insurance premiums, 3M could afford to pay more taxes to buy everybody health insurance.  Apply that principle across the board and Problem Solved.  But Trump’s so stupid, he can’t understand simple math.

Me: Well, yes, 3M would save money on premiums.  But instead of buying health insurance for its present workforce of 90,000 people, 3M would be footing the bill for all of them PLUS a bunch of presently-uninsured people.  If each person’s health insurance cost the same under single-payer as it does under the present system, 3M would pay MORE in taxes than it now pays in premiums.  That’s bad for profits which means bad for shareholders who buy stock in big, safe, blue-chip companies, shareholders such as pension funds.  Why hammer retirees?  What have you got against them?

Colleague:  Unless the individual cost of health insurance under single-payer is cheaper, then it would work.

Me:  Seriously? Do you also believe we’ll save $2,500 per year and be able to keep our own doctors?  You’re an adult.  You have a college degree.  Do you really believe health care is unlike any other commodity and therefore is exempt from the laws of supply and demand?  Obamacare is collapsing because it was unsustainable from the day it was enacted and everybody knew it, which is why they bragged about lying to get it passed.  The costs have skyrocketed exactly as predicted.  Nothing about single-payer will change that.

Colleague:  It’s the Republicans’ fault that Obamacare isn’t working better, they should have fixed it when they had the chance.

Me:  [Interior monologue: The guy seriously lives in fantasy land.  If I push him too hard to confront the disconnect between his fantasy and the real world, he might snap.  I’d better back off, give him his safe space.]  Okay, dude, whatever, see you around.

Of course, this is an imaginary conversation.  Could never happen in real life.

Right?

Joe Doakes

In Ramsey County?

Maybe a time or 200,000…

Drug companies are freezing prices.

Novartis’s chief executive, Vas Narasimhan, said during an earnings call with investors that the company had made the decision in June, amid escalating outrage over high drug prices. “We thought that was prudent, given the dynamic environment we’re currently in,” he said.

A spokesman for Novartis said the company notified the state of California, which has a new drug-price transparency law, of its decision in June, but the news was not widely known.

Who’d have thunk it?

Maryland “progressives” – but I repeat myself – are shocked, shocked I tell you, that their proposed single payer healthcare system is going to be ruinously expensive…

…well, no.  That’s too charitable.  If they (or any “progressive” with integrity) would admit to shock, or even concern, I’d be subtly impressed.

No.  Maryland progs just want taxpayers to not think about it too hard:

This morning, the largest newspaper in the state, the Baltimore Sun, reports that Maryland’s Department of Legislative Services calculated that the state would have to levy a 10 percent payroll tax against every business and charge a $2,800 fee for every man, woman, and child in the state to raise the needed $24 billion a year.Kevin Harris, a spokesman for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Ben Jealous says that it’s “premature” to talk about what kind of taxes or fees would be raised to pay for the plan. (When would be a good time, then?)

Don’t read the bill ’til you’ve passed it!

Of course, progressivism is, as always, the triumph of ideology (and vestigial idealism) over experience:

This is pretty much what happened in Vermont. Democrats made the bold promises to voters that they would never have to worry about paying for health care ever again, promised to provide details later, won office, formed their commissions and study groups . . . and then when they actually had to translate their idea into a detailed plan, found themselves stunned by the costs and the tax increases that would be necessary to pay for it all. Maryland’s state government currently spends about $44 billion per year, so they would have to increase the state’s spending by 54 percent to enact Jealous’s plan. Of course, some experts, such as those at the Maryland State Medical Society, think enacting the plan could cost even more.

Of course, single-payer is a key part of the endorsed DFL gubernatorial candidates plans in this election cycle.  Vermont and Maryland’s experiences will be carefully excised in any discussions here in Minnesota.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

We changed the formula for Oxycontin to prevent addicts using it.  So they switched to heroin.  Now they’re dying in droves, which means the problem is solving itself.  I’m having trouble seeing the problem.

Joe Doakes

Enh, not if it’s one of my relatives.

But it never fails amaze me that government never, ever figures out the whole “unintended consequenes” thing.

First, the Trump administration slashed the Obamacare advertising budget by nearly 90 percent.

Obamacare advocates predicted disaster.

Then, the Trump administration cut the open enrolllment from three months down to six weeks – right around half.

Obamacare advocates predicted disaster.

The result? With less time, less money and less churn, Obamacare signed up…

… the same number of people as last year.

Why, it’s almost as if people will seek out freebies without the aid of bureaucrats, or pictures of Pajama Boy urging them to talk healthcare with their relatives over the holidays.

Crazy as that may sound.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Canada has national health care, guaranteed free to all citizens.  Free that is, if you can get any.

Canada has so few MRI machines that patients go on a waiting list.  90% of patients get their scans within 9 months, the rest take longer.  If you only had six months to live, you wouldn’t find out in time to worry about it – you’d die waiting for a diagnosis.

But if you could get treatment, it would be free.  So that’s way better than our system in the US, right?  We should change to their system at once, right?

Joe Doakes

I’ve noticed – and I’ll put this in the form of a progressive blog comments – that “proponents of single payer healthcare conveniently omit the terrible outcomes that people get in the UK and Canada”.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Venezuela has national health care, guaranteed free to all citizens.  Free that is, if you can get any.  The hospitals have no medicine, no money, no beds available.

But if you could get treatment, it would be free.  So that’s way better than our system in the US, right?  We should change to their system at once, right?

Joe Doakes

Give ’em time.

A friend of this blog, who works in the healthcare industry, emails:

Per this study, stroke death rate began to increase from 2013. Mostly Hispanics and Black Americans. Article concludes that these people are just adopting an unhealthy lifestyle, though I think it is possible that unhealthy lifestyle was around for a longer period of time. Could implementation of Affordable Healthcare Act have played a role? Of course no mention of that in this CDC study.

The odds that suddenly black and Latino stroke rates coincindentally started spiking right after the ACA passed seems…self-indulgent.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Obamacare repeal failed so now Republicans will have to bail it out.  McCain is on board.  So is Lindsey Graham.

I don’t know anything about the plan and already, I hate it.

Joe Doakes

With ya there.

It’s almost a year until the convention, but Saint Paul DFL gubernatorial candidate Erin Murphy’s campaign is already doomed.

Rep. Erin Murphy, doomed gubernatorial candidate

Perhaps with that in mind, she’s swinging for the (Metrocrat) fences, calling for single payer helathcare:

Murphy criticizes capitalist models of health care, saying that a for-profit model of any part of the health care system is bad for Americans. She tells a story of her dying mother’s struggle to get her insurance company to cover the care she needed for cancer treatments near the end of her life.

“We must guarantee health care for people who are sick, focus on the health of Minnesotans, and control health care costs,” Murphy wrote. “We must make strategic and difficult choices with valuable resources, putting the health of Minnesotans ahead of health insurance profit making.”

Asked how this plan would be paid for, Murphy responded “with golden coins borne down from heaven by unicorns [1]”

[1] Fake but conceptually accurate.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Which is the most efficient way to bring down prices: government dictate, or free market?

Warren Buffet seems to be saying government is a more efficient way to bring down prices, therefore America should embrace the single-payer model of health care used in Britain, Canada, Cuba, the Veteran’s Administration, etc.  He is mistaken.  He’s great at reading balance sheets, lousy at political economic theory.

I agree that government-run health care could theoretically control prices.  They’d simply pass a law: nobody can charge more than $1.00 for any medical procedure, device or drug.  There, see?  Prices contained.  Aspirin.  Heart transplant.  Everything’s a dollar.  In theory.

In practice, it won’t work.  People who provide medical services can’t afford to provide them at that price.  Either they stop providing medical services, or they go off-book somehow. Maybe all the doctors move to Mexico where they can charge fair prices.  Maybe all the medical device companies move to Poland where the government welcomes investment and doesn’t try to kill it.  Capital – including human capital – is mobile.

Hillary recognized this problem when she invented Hillarycare in 1992.  Her solution: draft all the doctors and treat them as members of the military.  You want to practice medicine in America?  Then you go where you’re told and do as you’re told.  In the past, you may have been a plastic surgeon making millions in Hollywood; today, you’re a gynecologist on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation making the same pay as any other Captain in the Army.  Don’t like it?  Turn in your medical license. This is not an incentive for people to study 10 years to become a doctor.

It doesn’t work on the other end, either.  People who desire medical services have no incentive to forego care under a single-payer system.  Got a sniffle?  Run to the doctor, it’s free.  So the lines get longer and longer until patients die waiting for an appointment, which already has happened at the VA.  Or health care committees decide which patients are deserving of medical treatment and which should be denied treatment, which already has happened in Britain.  Or doctors decide which patients should be helped to die and thereby reduce caseloads, which some Dutch doctors already are doing.  The rich can afford to fly to wherever the doctors are, and to pay out of pocket for medical care.  The poor and middle class will be promised free medical care but won’t get it, facing endless waiting lists and rationed care.

“Single-payer” is simply another way of saying “wage-and-price controls.”  They didn’t work when Diocletian tried them and never have worked since.  I confidently predict they won’t work now.

Joe Doakes

They did wonders for the US economy in the seventies.

You remember what a greaet time the seventies were, rigtht?

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Republicans in Congress are doing their usual job of chickening out from taking effective action, preferring half-assed deck-chair-arranging and cost-can-kicking instead of risking the chance someone might call them names.  Fixing this mess requires understanding how we got into it. 

Before the Great Depression, doctors charged what the patient could afford, overcharging some to give free care to others.  Hospitals charged the patient directly.  In the Roaring 20’s, people could afford good medical care.

 During the Great Depression, people couldn’t afford doctors so they substituted nurses and midwives or went without care.  Private hospitals ran short of money.  FDR spent federal money on medical care as a stop-gap measure.  Hospitals associated with charities or religions provided reduced-fee medical care.

 When World War II loomed, FDR worried that federal contractors would gouge the government so the Office of Price Administration set wage and price controls.  When men rushed to enlist after Pearl Harbor, employers scrambled to fill positions on the now-booming assembly line but were unable to offer higher wages to entice employees.  Employers offered free health insurance to pad the offer and deducted the cost as a business expense.

 After the war, employers couldn’t drop insurance because it would be seen as a pay cut.  But as Baby Boomers aged and needed more expensive care and the economy slumped reducing profits, employers were forced to drop coverage.  The clamor for free health insurance turned to government, resulting in Obamacare. 

 The health insurance problem is just like rent control in New York – it was a temporary war-time something-for-nothing measure that was continued too long and now the addicts are screaming because they won’t get their special war-time subsidies.  They shouldn’t.  The war is over.

 The first step is to end the deduction for employer-paid health care so that more employers drop coverage, and prohibit units of government and unions from paying for health insurance, which will level the playing field as everybody becomes a health insurance consumer, same way everybody is a car insurance consumer.

 The second step is to let states decide what insurance policies are allowed to be sold.  Minnesota coverage will cost a bundle because the legislature will require every policy to cover everything.  That decision will cost us jobs as employees leave to get lower premiums elsewhere.  The laboratory of democracy eventually will find its balance.

 The third step is to means-test Social Security and Medicare.  Seniors who can afford to pay, must pay, or the system goes broke.

 The fourth step is to limit the use of welfare medical care.  People who buy health insurance have deductibles and caps so they don’t run to the doctor for every sniffle.  People who don’t buy insurance should have similar incentives to conserve resources.  Yes, this means some children will suffer and die.  If the entire system collapses, all the children will suffer and die.  We’re trying prevent that.

 The fifth step is to deregulate medicine.  Allow more drugs to be sold without prescription.  Allow non-doctors to prescribe medicine.  Allow medical providers flexibility in meeting standards.  The country doctor who had his office in the front room of his house could handle most of what came in the door, he didn’t need admitting privileges at a Level 1 trauma hospital.  That policy might also mean recruiting more health care professionals from other countries – we’d rather have them than have unskilled laborers climbing The Wall.

 The sixth step is to limit medical malpractice lawsuits to reduce malpractice insurance premiums so doctors can afford to charge patients less.  Doctors make diagnoses by using statistics to play the odds, there always will be mistakes, not every mistake is a lottery ticket.

 I know: Democrats will howl.  The media will howl.  College kids will howl.  Seniors will howl.  Everybody who wants Free Stuff will howl that they’re not getting enough Free Stuff, fast enough.  Doesn’t matter, clean up the mess anyway because (a) it’s the right thing to do and (b) if we don’t, the system will collapse and the howling will be even worse.  Time for Republicans to man up and do the right thing, for a change.

 No, I’m not holding my breath.

 Joe Doakes

Nor should you.  The cult of the government savior is ascendant.

SCENE:  Mitch BERG is cutting brush with a sawzall.   Avery LIBRELLE walks through the alley and catches BERG unawares.

LIBRELLE:  Hey, Merg!

BERG:  Er, hey, Avery.  I’m kinda busy…

LIBRELLE:  The GOP’s Obamacare repeal will throw people off their insurance policies.

BERG:  Nah, that’s what the subsidy and tax cuts and medicaid are for

LIBRELLE:   You won’t lower bills!

BERG:  Well, that’s what the free market is for.

LIBRELLE:   But you’ll throw people off their insurance.

BERG:  Nah, that’s what the subsidy and tax cuts and medicaid are for

LIBRELLE:   You won’t lower bills!

BERG:  Well, that’s what the free market is for.

LIBRELLE:   But you’ll throw people off their insurance.

BERG:  Nah, that’s what the subsidy and tax cuts and medicaid are for

LIBRELLE:   You won’t lower bills!

BERG:  Well, that’s what the free market is for.

LIBRELLE:   But you’ll throw people off their insurance.

BERG:  Nah, that’s what the subsidy and tax cuts and medicaid are for

LIBRELLE:   You won’t lower bills!

BERG:  Well, that’s what the free market is for.

LIBRELLE:   But you’ll throw people off their insurance.

BERG:   You realize you’ve  just repeated the same recursive series of denials three times?

LIBRELLE:  Misogynist!

BERG:   Er, are you a…er…

And SCENE

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Every year for the last 40 years, the United States has run short of money in the budget.  To fill the shortfall, the General Fund borrowed from the Social Security fund, but that still wasn’t enough.  To make ends meet, we borrowed even more.  The total accumulated debt is now $20,000,000,000,000.  That’s twenty trillion, with a T.

 That number does not include the cost of promises the government will be obligated to pay in the future such as Social Security and Medicare, the 20 trillion number is only the total of the promissory notes signed to fund government operations in the past.  Covering the cost of all government promises is closer to 100 trillion, give or take, depending on who you talk to.

 We’re not paying down the debt.  We’re making the minimum monthly payments on existing debt while running up ever more debt, month after month, with no end in sight.

 I don’t care whose fault it is.

 No, I really don’t care whose fault it is.  Finger-pointing and blaming is useless blather, at this point.

 I want to know what we’re going to do about it.

 The reason it comes up is because Republicans in Congress are talking about reforming Obama-care to make it affordable enough that the government can continue to offer the program, but Democrats are screaming the reforms will make the program unaffordable for individual citizens.  Both have fair points.  Both fail to address my point.

 Can government programs run in the red forever?  Can public debt be accumulated forever?  Is there literally no limit to how much debt we can run up?

If so, why?  That’s not true for private individuals or corporations.  If it’s true for government, there must be a reason why it’s true.  What’s the reason?

 Joe Doakes

Let’s ask Paul Krugman.

Wednesday night on national public radio, I listened to Illinois senator Dick “Turban” Durbin respond to President Trump State of the Union address.

Asked about the Democrat response to republican healthcare initiatives – in this case, the proposal to allow people to buy insurance across state lines – his response was:

“Come on. You think people are going to go to a hospital or a doctor in another state?”

And sure enough, you can see Democrats repeating this on social media today.

Do they not see the difference between “health insurance” and “healthcare”?

The progressive chattering classes are all in a tizzy because many of Donald Trump’s cabinet nominees are long-time opponents of the departments they’ve been chosen to lead:

• Rick Perry at Energy – who has advocated disbanding the entire department and reducing a cabinet seat
• Ben Carson at HUD, who has criticized federal housing
• Betsy DeVos at Education – a major proponent of school choice and degrading the government monopoly on education
• Scott Pruitt at the EPA, an agency against whom he’s spent years litigating
• Andy Puzder at Labor, who would oppose most “progressive” labor regulations
• Tom Price at HHS, who advocates rolling back Obamacare.

The chattering classes are all aflutter.  Perhaps because most of these departments are nothing but make-work programs for worthless Ivy Leaguer poli sci grads like, well, themselves.

Or perhaps because the American people might just support it:

And that leads us to the really burning question: Will anyone miss those departments if they go away?

We could try to answer that question by diving into the bitterly partisan political and economic debate over the size of government that’s been dividing people in this country since the days of Jefferson and Hamilton. Or we could wisely dump that academic argument and realize that the answer lies in how well the Trump team manages to make sure the changes get noticed by normal voters in a positive way. In politics, perception truly is reality.

And Trump, for all his faults, gets that better than most other Republicans.  For worse or, when it comes to slashing the size and power of the Federal Government ,much much better.

The Strib “reported”, after a fashion, about attitudes about Obamacare after an election where it was primarily responsible for ejecting the DFL from power in the Minnesota Senate.

And it’s either a masterpiece of selective fact, or some fairly incurious reporting:

Anxiety is greatest among Minnesotans with preexisting medical conditions. Before the ACA, insurance companies could simply deny them coverage.

Which is technically true.

After which, in Minnesota at least, they would get insurance from one of the state-subsizied high risk plans.

Before MNSure, 92% of Minnesotans were insured, via the private market, a public plan, or some combination.   It was the highest share in the nation.   Of the 8% who didn’t have insurance, the vast majority were people who didn’t want insurance – mostly young, mostly healthy.  There were exceptions – but they were few, rare, and mostly the product of poor information and a pre-Obama media who were actively pitching the “47 million uninsured Americans…” narrative.

Today, the state says half as many Minnesotans are uninsured – but networks have shrunk (in vast swathes of Minnesota, only one plan is available), premiums have skyrocketed for individual members (like me!),  people could not keep their doctor (The Lightworker’s promises notwithstanding…)

So why is the Strib story – a “Team Report” by Jeremy Olson, Christopher Snowbeck and Glenn Howatt, no less – either so slanted or uninformed?

To borrow a Glenn Reynolds phrase – if you treat them as DFL operatives with bylines, it all makes sense.