The unbreakable...................

 ........Law of Unintended Consequences strikes again?   Likely too early to tell, but check this story on the Inflation Innovation Reduction Act.

via

It's a conundrum...................

 ..................Arnold Kling gives some thought to our health care system:

The most important policy problem is that people want unlimited access to medical services without having to pay for them. When the political system tries to accomplish this, the result is excessive spending on medical care.

On questions and answers........

 To the dumb question "Why me?" the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply: Why not?

-Christopher Hitchens, from this Vanity Fair essay

This book has been on the shelf....................

 ............for probably ten years.  This weekend seemed like a good time to dust it off and begin reading it:

Lewis was correct.  In 1918 an influenza virus emerged—probably in the United States—that would spread around the world, and one of its earliest appearances in lethal form came in Philadelphia.  Before that world-wide pandemic faded away in 1920, it would kill more people that any other outbreak of disease in human history.  Plague in the 1300s killed a far larger percentage of the population—more than one-quarter of Europe—but in raw numbers influenza killed more than plague then, more than AIDS today.

      The lowest estimate of the pandemic's worldwide death toll is twenty-one million, in a world with a population less than one-third today's.  That estimate comes from a contemporary study of the disease and newspapers have often cited it since, but it is almost certainly wrong.  Epidemiologists today estimate that influenza likely caused at least fifty million deaths world-wide, and possibly as many as one hundred million.

-John M. Barry, The Great Influenza:  The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History

Can I get an Amen..................................?

 "If lockdown were a treatment undergoing a clinical trial, the trial would be halted because of the side effects. "

-as excerpted from this letter

I would vote........................

...........................................for some sustained incremental tinkering, before embarking on some grand plan:

Such problems are easier to diagnose than to cure. Reforming American healthcare will require an almighty effort. With politics gridlocked and soaking in lobbyist money, it’s not obvious that the US government is capable of running the kind of healthcare system that works elsewhere — even if Congress decides to try. But try it must, because the status quo is a tragedy.

Some fancy real estate alright..............

if health insurance cartoons are your thing, visit here today.

for a brief discussion of alright versus all right, go here

A conundrum...........................

Put together these cultural traits and you end up ... with an economy that spends 1/6th of GDP on health care with nobody wanting to spend 1/6th of their income on it.

-Arnold Kling, full post is here

Oh, great.................................

................................................just when I get there.

Evolution rules.....................

................................................or, beware of the experts:

The economic engineers will say, as they have concerning the Fed's performance during and after the 2008 crisis, that without the Fed our economic performance would have been much worse. But this is an untestable assertion. Moreover, it is sobering to observe that the U.S. economy has suffered from recessions with at least as much frequency and severity since the Fed was created in 1914 as it did before.

Those same engineers believe that health-care policy also ought to be managed by experts. Former senator Tom Daschle explicitly called for the equivalent of a Federal Reserve to take charge of our health-care system. The Affordable Care Act called for the creation of an Independent Payment Advisory Board, composed of 15 experts who would set payment policies for Medicare. Some economists of the engineering persuasion, such as leading health-policy expert David Cutler, believe that, when independent experts are given such authority, they can create incentives that will lead to better health care at lower cost.

To an ecologist, the idea that a centralized bureaucracy could successfully manage the performance of skilled health-care professionals seems implausible. The doctor who is with the patient is in the best position to judge the most appropriate treatment. Moreover, much of medical knowledge comes from doctors experimenting with slightly different protocols and reporting the results to one another. Replacing this evolutionary process with a set of fixed national standards would thwart medical progress. Substituting top-down control for the cultural intelligence of the medical profession would likely be a step backwards.

Evolution, not intelligent design, is how societies advance.

-Arnold Kling, as excerpted from this "Cultural Intelligence" essay

Just wondering.........................

.............if this chart has any bearing on the cost of health care?   Could it be a cause, or an effect, or a coincidence, or is it one of those "feedback loop" things?

source here

Life its ownself.............................................

My family is the most important collection of people on this planet, but if I am not willing to help and support others as I do them, I am missing the full point of being humans sharing this planet.


-John E. Smith, who knows whereof he speaks

Ah.....................................the fine print

...................or, the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.

Fun with Federal Omnibus bills: Part One.  Story here.

thanks craig

"Could John Roberts be the sneakiest GOP partisan ever?"............................

So asks The American Interest blog, as they note some significant Obamacare insurance price increases are moving through the pipeline.

I wonder what made me.............................

..........................think, "Oh, bullshit" when I read this quote?

"None of us who protested was motivated by our own bottom line so much as by the principle,” Ms. Lewis said, expressing concern about the impact of the changes on lower-paid employees.

Back story:  The Execupundit pointed to this fun New York Times article about health care cost chickens coming home to roost at Harvard.

On taking your eye off the ball......................

Megan McArdle weighs in on the public health infrastructure and the Center for Disease Control:  

"Public health experts were, in a way, too successful; they beat back our infectious disease load to the point where most of us have never had anything more serious than Human papillomavirus or a bad case of the flu. This left them without that much to do. So they reinvented themselves as the overseers of everything that might make us unhealthy, from French Fries to work stress."

"Don't get me wrong: Fighting infection is still one of the things that the public health infrastructure does, and though I hope it doesn’t come to that, I expect that our system will do a much better job next time. But the CDC did not botch the job because there’s something wrong with Barack Obama, or government, or the state of Texas, or private hospitals. They dropped the ball because the public health system no longer needs to work so many miracles, and consequently hasn’t had much practice."

Full essay here.

A few of my favorite things.................

From John Kay:   This has to be one of the greatest opening paragraphs to any blog post anywhere.

From Ka-Ching!:   A brief quote about tyranny.

From Marginal Revolution:  Tyler Cowen talks with Ralph Nader and suggests that we buy Ralph's new book:  Unstoppable: The Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State. 

Kevin Kelly says we will be amazed at what that next twenty years brings:  Asking the right questions will become more valuable than finding answers.   On the future of technology - here.

From the Execupundit:  When someone you admire greatly says a nice thing about your work it makes you feel all warm and fuzzy.  Thank you Michael!

About that "single payer" pivot.................

"Apparently, reports of the VA’s success were extremely premature."

Via Meadia says, "It seems that the entire system may be rotten."  Full post is here.  Aren't we about due for some good news on the health care front?

Life its Ownself...............................

Jeff is searching for the poetry............................................

"I believe that cancer, and its treatment, is as much philosophy, language, performance and visual art as well as medicine."

The race is on...............................

"So let’s get started. Obamacare can’t be fixed by its namesake. It’s up to us to make it happen."
-Michael Moore, as excerpted from here
thanks mungo