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Cuts that Kill
This morning employees of community health centers across the country got this email:
“Today’s
decision by House appropriators to cut $1.3 billion in funding to
Community Health Centers levels a devastating blow to Americans who are
already struggling in the economic recession. If this cut were to be
approved, it will mean that America’s Health Centers will lose the capacity to serve 11 million patients over the next year, with well over 3.3 million current patients losing their care within the next few months.”
I happen to know a Doctor who runs one of the larger health centers on
the east coast. She's been at it for a long time. I cut to the chase and
asked if this means people would die:
Will people die unnecessarily? You better believe it.
All programs are at risk. You think folks are pissed off now, if these cuts go as written, it’ll be a disaster. It’s going to be a very ugly couple of years.
Well there you have it. A credible voice says people will die as a result of belt tightening. The rubber just met the road.
I’m not smart enough to know what should be cut and what should stay. I
do know that cutting a billion here or there on the 15% of the
discretionary budget is not going to do a thing. These are rounding
errors that are being played with.
The President’s budget is a joke. If we follow that path of trillion
dollar deficits we won’t make it another five years without an
explosion. A big one.
There is no way we can avoid that fate unless Medicare, Medicaid, Social
Security and the military come on the table. The President didn’t even
address this 85% of the budget. Like the Doctor said: It’s going to be a very ugly couple of years.
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Jesus Fucking Christ! Are you really advocating MORE spending on health care and wet backs?
In my lifetime health care spending has gone from 5% of GDP to approaching 20%. Cut ALL salaries in health care by 50% and maybe the last few remaining workers in this country can afford it. There are more crooked millionaires in medicine than in all of banking.
They are leading you around by the short hairs, Bruce, with the usual panic crap. It all has to be cut to shreds. The sooner the better.
And in the meantime DS Robert Gates asks for a 3% increase in the military budget.
Priorities I guess.
One of the contractors here has no health insurance, but he has a big house and a new Toyota Tundra. He shows up at 9:30 am usually - its almost 10 am and he is not here tyet, goes to lunch for an hour and knocks off at 3:30 pm. He is trying to get a loan mod too. While here, he makes non-stop love to a straw in a like 1/2 gallon cup of coka cola (NOT diet either). He eats lunch out most days(Subway is a fav), although his homme is appx 1 mile away.
Like I should pay for this fuckstick and his family's healthcare? His FAT wife also is a cola junky and has been diagnosed with diabetes.
Good points. How long do we subsidize fat lazy mooches?
I work in healthcare and see it all the time.
Shame on the 2 that flagged your post as junk.
I'd love to work at a place like that. The day goes by a lot easier than for many other jobs.
Dupe - apologies
A lot more people are going to die then you think. No amount of cutting can right the ship, the looters are still at the helm.
Wait till things get real hairy in a few years. will be less worried about medical car and more worried about the elderly freezing in their homes and children not getting enough to eat. so long as the looters are at the tiller it will only get worse till there is nothing left to steal. Welcome to the new America and the new freedom.
good story........but, can some one please explain to me why we still have upwards of 50 military installations in germany? thats just in germany. the budget cuts should start right there.
this is the end, my only friend, the end
http://nakedempire.wordpress.com/
Wikipedia on Community Health Centers:
Activities that a community health service may be involved in include:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_health_center
Let's not make it sound like ER's are throwing patients out the front door to die because of funding cuts.
Emergency rooms are prohibited by law from "throwing patients out the front door." But closing community health centers can be expected to increase costs, since indigent patients will go to the ER. This is the most expensive way to deliver medical services.
Politically, the goal here isn't to close health centers; it's to privatize, defund, or otherwise eviscerate Social Security. This is the first step to prepare the great unwashed for that outcome.
Not gonna take 5 years that is for sure.
You guys really don't get it. Only peasants will die.
No one cares.
Steve Jobs moved straight to the head of the line for a new liver. Some dying peasant probably needed it also.
Most blue chips have life insurance on the most unhealthy and highest risk employees anyhow with "peasant clauses." After downsizing their work force to bare bones, the only way to increase profits now is to kill off their employees. Also, the dead do not appear in the labor statistics, so the gov is on board with this as well: even solves their social security problem to a small extent...
ever read a book called "the grapes of wrath" by john steinbeck? history is repeating it's self.
http://covert2.wordpress.com
that novel is still considered social propaganda you know, and those photographers FDR paid to provide pictures of poverty were all staged to help him sell the new deal. just saying you know. in the current situation the media ignores the suffering because confidence in the economy is the most important component, the economy is an article of faith.
Well, your either attempting to be sarcastic, or you're another of the millions who didn't have parents who lived through the 1930's, are totally removed from its reality, and form your conclusions from a lifetime of greed, privilege and comparative luxury. I gre up in a household that remembered those years, from living them. Nothing in today's headlines, other than the degree of self-centered foolishness that masquerades as analysis, is a surprise to me, since the old man, a PhD economist from Heidelberg who grew up in WW1, the Weimar and then moved to the US in time for the depression, discussed today's headlines over dinner with us in the 60's, since he'd seen it all before and was smart enough to understand that it would all return as soon as his generation, the people who'd lived it, were no longer around.
actually neither, i have parents living, and i am not trying to be sarcastic. i would like to write a book about the Depression, Hollywood, How the Road to Fantasy Riches Delayed the American Revolution, or words to that effect. The movies did a great deal to redirect the angst over political (and labor) reform. Republicans argue about the redistribution of wealth, but there is no plan to distribute it in the first place. There is of course the mandate of the Federal Reserve, which assumes the role to a certain extent, being continuous, while the politicians come and go. and the Fed seems to want to destroy savings and private property (the housing bubble as a raid on equity), and so perhaps the Marxist solution we fear, or crave, is really under our very feet.
The suffering is real enough, I think Sullivans Travels will be a chapter. The moment when the poor gave up their chains to mickey mouse, and the prisoners all shared a laugh. Something both hopeful and terribly wrong there.
anyway.
Which actually makes his point about the book that much more interesting. If FDR did pay those photogs to help sell the new deal, its the same as NOT showing it to sell the health of the economy.
yeah, and Steinbeck saw the economy as a force of nature to be reckoned with, beyond human control or understanding. but then someone said that Marxism is really a religious hierarchy, god to man, applied to politics. hmmm
Had this discussion with my 13-year old son. If the available supply cannot meet demand; the solution to the health care debate lies in the pricing. It all comes down to this question which I posed to my son: "How much is a human life worth?"
He said. "No Dad. The question is: How much is a human life worth, to ME."
How about ending ALL regulations re. Health Care? Prices will plummet as artificial price supports and faux supply restrictions are eliminated.
My gosh, a VET can handle about 75% of your average day to day health care issues.
Nobody has to unnecesarily die, and nobody has to foot the bill for other people and for insurance companys. PROBLEM SOLVED NEXT
>>>Nobody has to unnecesarily die, and nobody has to foot the bill for other people and for insurance companys. PROBLEM SOLVED NEXT<<<
You are either stupid or live in some unique fantasy world.
People are dying now because of cuts to Medicaid and many of the people in this story will be dead soon.
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Health_Care/medicaid-cuts-make-organ-transp...
People are dying because that is normal, their health is crummy, they are too old, too fat, smoke, drink, etc. No one can die from cuts to Medicaid. Learn to argue your point precisely. All the social justice BS is just that. Life is given to you unwillingly, take care of it and stay out of my wallet.
Is MGP REALLY such a mean, misanthropic libertarian crank, or does he just play one on ZH?
From the article (which I can only assume you didn't read):
>>>Randy Shepherd is a 36-year-old father of three who needs a transplant to replace a failing heart weakened by childhood bouts of rheumatic fever.<<<
People (including young people and children) often contract illnesses accidentally that lead to organ failure. It has nothing to do with being too old, too fat, too many bad habits etc..
Perhaps if you contract one of those illnesses yourself, you'll learn something...the hard way.
Then we'll see exactly how judgemental you are when you become disabled and lose your health insurance and have to rely on Medicaid.
(Hepatitis often doesn't discriminate A trip to the wrong eatery can lead to organ failure.)
And we'll see just how much sympathy you get from me.
Good luck with that.
Or perhaps your child or grandchild through no fault of their own finds themselves a victim of this--
http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/03/05/us-diabetes-viruses-idUSTRE524...
and after your or their parents' health insurance is run through or lost (due to layoff or unemployment) we'll see how big a hard ass your are then.
I suspect you'll be squealing for Medicaid or CHIPS to fund a kidney transplant (if the kid is lucky enough to benefit from such a treatment.)
Of course, you could just take them to the Vet.
So how is the vet care working out for ya? That's a little like saying let them eat cake. Talk like that will get you a shiv-in-da-ribs.
Feh. The last time I went to a veterinarian for an annual physical, he felt my nose to see if it was cold enough.
and no stickers for the kids, just bisquits
I used to eat those buiscuits and do a shot of scotch before rugby matches. Good times!
my neighor has alzheimers, and the family is having a hard time finding a caregiver, 7/24. The state is paying, Medicare/Medical so I was running that thought through my head and it didn't make sense, if the government is paying. hmmm
Ya, the amount of covered in home care by MEDICARE/MEDICADE, probably $200 a month, will hardly cover 15 hours of that needed care. With a diagnosis of Alzheimer's this patient will be excluded from most long term care facilities as well. Welcome to it.
Strovink said the woman may have also been suffering from dementia, he told the Associated Press.
http://www.kgw.com/news/80-year-old-suspect-Tased-later-dies-at-hospital...
Another stupid post from bleeding hearts. Everything about health care is a joke. First is 40,000 with pre existing conditions. 800 signed up. Now it's 46 million with pre-existing conditions. These numbers are simply manipulative tear jerkers to make people feel bad about their country.
I don't believe one word of government propaganda. 43 Million on foodstamps and 13 million hungry every weekend.
When will you guys get lives and start living?
no shit! bunch of whiners. Freedom isn't free.
You slackers should be willing to get sick and die in support of the people who deserve to be healthy. You'll know them when you see them striding through the hospital door with their heads held high. The winners in this beautiful game we call life.
bleed out with some self respect will ya?
@ more gold: Bull Shit,I have seen people die from lack of a cheap antibiotic.
On a similar note a 10 yr. old boy nearly died of a tooth infection when his mother couldn't find a dentist that would take the state CHIPs reimbursement for weeks and weeks.
His 12 yr. old brother did die from an abcessed tooth than infected his brain.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/02/AR200703...
Well Yaby, you are either lying or misrepresenting the case. Pnuemonia is usually fatal as a complication of something worse. I you have generally good health pneumonia will not kill you. Certainly you will feel like you want to die. I have had pnuemonia twice; once single lobe and another time double.
You and your ilk are trolls of the worst sort. Sarcasm does not make an argument.
Flu. Elderly or young. Many other feeders that would make that true. Besides, it is widely accepted many of the poor, working or not are far from being in "good" health.
Unavailable or fiscally unobtainable?
Did not have the cash to get the drug. Pneumonia was the culprit.
Where in Africa was this?? It was not in America at least the Northern section..
Clueless or sarcastic. Which is it?
Thanks Bruce.
You're odds changed on raising the debt ceiling? If I'm not mistaken, I believe you think that's a slam dunk. At the time, I agreed with your outlook. I'm not certain anymore. I'm invested across various commodities via mutual funds. I think these will be hammered along with equities. So the question is the following, is their more earning potential going short equities versus long commodities?
I am still saying that it will pass without a crisis. Maybe a bunch of yelling and screaming but no crisis.
Why do I conclude that? In 1995 we had the exact same set up. The Republicans made a big stink and threatened to close the government. That lost them votes in the next election for their efforts. Boehner knows this lesson.
But I have been wrong a bunch lately........
That was the genesis for Boehner's tobacco lobby checkbook incident on the floor during a vote if memory serves.
House Speaker Newt's "Contract On America", as it was mocked, was effective in getting Clinton reelected. When the government shut down, they closed the Smithsonian Museums in DC. I don't remember any other closings but the tactic scared retirees right into the Dems voting column. We'll see if the new Speaker does nuance with any finesse.
"I've really enjoyed getting older. You don't have ambition. You know who you are."
Why not certain anymore?
@Bruce and @taraxias
Bruce brings up a solid point about 1995 as a precedent. However; we did not have Trillian dollar debts into the foreseeable future. I think members of congress could be rewarded for standing upto the fascists in Washington and New York.
I think there is a chance the debt ceiling is not raised despite the consequences. I think the consequence could be commodities/equities being hammered. Treasuries and the dollar catch a bid. I'm not a sophisticated invester if you use Bruce's metrics so I'll be moving to "cash" and let things shake out.