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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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As a healthcare professional who also knows a bit about these programs it is true death rates of certain groups may trend upward but the effect is so small it will take large sample sizes and advanced statistics to determine if some people are dying sooner than expected. Public health programs like these have been in tatters for years. It is hard to see how survival rates of poor sick people without insurance could get much worse. We are already there.
By George Bruce you got it!
Now we ALL know how Obama and Bernanke figured out how to drop the unemployment rate...by simply killing off the unemployed...Amerika!
get rid of the 11 Million Illegals and there will be more than enought Healthcare for everybody
Or fix immigration, legitimize the cheap labor we need, and make them contribute to the system like everyone else via taxes...
and the Walmarts of the world woud have to start ponying up taxes for their poorly paid workers instead of the state coming in to fill the services gap. Something's gonna break
naw, that would solve too many problems in one shot...
/sarc/
Yup. I hate to be cynical here, but , $1.3 billion/11 million = $118. So, patients are gonna die because of $118 funding gap?
These patients don't have $118 for life saving treatment? Sounds like a small group of folks were counting on that $1.3 Billion for other reasons...
Sounds like Mubarak. Except Mubarak has an estimated fortune of 40-70 billion US while he "depended" on US aid of 1.3 billion a year. Just so ya know, most PHS money goes to rural & innercity poor citizens, unless you chose to count Native Americans as "foreigners". I've seen the grants & their operations first hand.
That's what I understand these community health clinics basically are. Health care for foreigners who don't qualify for medicaid.
I was in the hospital last week for a pre-op physical and right at the entrance was a sign in English and Spanish announcing that if you are pregnant and don't have health insurance or any money to come on in anyway and have your anchor baby. Pew org. says there are now 4.5 million anchor babies now in the US consuming WIC, SNAP and the rest of the alphabet soup of programs we can no longer afford!
And the national expenditure for all that equates to about one POMO session from the fed.
Agreed, but two wrongs don't make a right.
Not saying they do. What I am saying is that folks think that the public health numbers are destroying our finances. That's patently false. The banks have received 2X+ GDP in welfare in the past two years. It takes the defense department (including all black funding) twenty years to get there and public health more than a century. Facts of national fiscal life. With the three legs of WMD being nuclear, biological & chemical I would add finance it that as it has sucked the future out of all our pockets through it, and its supporters avarice.
+2B
Looks like it was an either / or decision for the $1.3 billion:
(1) Aid to community health centers
(2) Military aid to Egypt
The military aid to Egypt is to secure the Suez Canal - one the world's most vital trade routes...
No doubt there are countless ridiculous appropriations in the latest interation our f*ed-up excuse for a budget from where the necessary $1.3bn could've been pulled - rather than take if from a strategic necessity like protecting the Suez.
And anyway, just as Bruce says, arguments such as these are just straw-men - they're rounding errors. They serve simply to destract the masses from the real issues. Until entitlement spending is addressed, nothing matters...
and we may never cut our military because our military IS our economy. It is the way we secure assets, fiat currencies and cheap access. As history demonstrates, the strategy will fail without a real economy, but like so many others that fall from grace, this is the path we have chosen
And there are no such things as biological threats to human society, natural or man made. Such patently willful stupidity cannot be pawned off as simple minded pol ignorance. The potential from biological threats is so severe the policy of the United States has been to look upon biological warfare the same way it looks at the other two classes of WMD. Those being nuclear & chemical, or at least that's the story line. Looks like those intrepid pols riding the "I support a strong national defense" gravy train are just continuing their thieving of quality O2. In this I am sure the retort will be along the lines of; There are strong safeguards in place protecting the budgets of USAMRIID, NIH, CDC and more. Gotts to fund the big pharma pipeline at taxpayer expense at all costs. Classic!
Primary care is a national security imperative, forget the rest of it. Failure to maintain stable biological health throughout the state is not capital astute, let alone socially astute.
I'm sure these cuts were based on a similar calculus as the recent activity in Ireland, underscored by Sinn Fein's Gerry Adams as he kicked off his parties election campaign.
Mr Doherty said last December’s budget contained €873 million in social welfare cuts yet last week alone, Ireland repaid €750 million to a single bondholder who wasn’t even guaranteed by the State.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2011/0207/1224289183595.html...
It is plainly obvious who the real welfare queens are.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRTkCHE1sS4
Veruca Salt - never thought of that analogy. Nice one.
It is all about getting your priorities right...
Of course the real issue is entitlement spending which means it will never be addressed. I didn't think I needed to use the /sarcasm on/ button, but I guess I was wrong.
The word "entitlement" gets thrown around a lot, whoever came up with that word to describe programs that help the elderly, etc was a genius.
The people who act as if they are "entitled" to things are the top few percentage of billionaires and mega-millionaires who own this country, especially the bail-out recipients.
It's going to get really bad here, it's hard to believe it would be any worse if we had let all those banks fail.
Bill Gates must receive every $$ he contributed to the SSA. Otherwise, it would Communist!
How dare they try and run a communist program in a communist fashion!
Great post Astute Investor! +100
Doctor is an optimist.
5 years? bruce, you optimist, you.
hey b quick, happy V.
tks. my only one...
Seems strange this would be one of the first cuts... Almost like they cut essential services first but leave the genital washing studies group monies all alone.. Keep watching the birdie, forget what my other hand is doing.. Ha, that is about the most transparent of the bureaucrats tricks..
or humorist or comedian ...
great to see my brother in the above picture.
We have long ago left the sinking ship.