Tag: healthcare

international affairs media and media people

The Man the Media Missed

Searching for the world’s most compromised scientist? Look past über-bureaucrat Anthony Fauci. Get a load of Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance. He’s in the thick of it.

The “it” being the lies peddled by China’s totalitarian state, the World Health Organization (WHO), important parts of the government-funded American science establishment and — last but not least! — the vast majority of U.S. media.

The Lancet printed and the media reported the infamous open letter from scientists declaring a lab-leak origin of the virus to be unlikely, either without saying or without knowing that the scientist leading the effort to gather the 27 scientists’ signatures was the bag-man taking U.S. taxpayer money and re-gifting it to the actual Wuhan lab in question.

Yes, Dr. Peter Daszak.

The good doctor also managed to secure a spot on the WHO’s much-ballyhooed on-site China probe — as the sole American investigator — to look (fecklessly) for COVID’s origin. Still, Daszak and company enthusiastically declared a lab-leak “unlikely,” which the media mindlessly echoed … until even the WHO’s director-general backed away from it.

The problem is not confined merely to one or two rogue papers or cable channels: it’s also endemic to social media. Facebook, which blocked coverage and silenced those of us trying to speak and learn about the origin of COVID-19, turns out to have actually used — you guessed it! — Daszak as its go-to expert to advise them on what info to block.

How did our news hounds miss this trifecta?

Even now — after Dr. Fauci and others agree we need an investigation into the origins of the CCP virus, and as several major articles present additional evidence that the virus may have come from Wuhan gain-of-function “research” — the news-media response to its own obvious failures is to continue to blame … Trump.

The idea seems to be that the Sheer Awfulness of Trump somehow provides valid excuse to ignore China’s horrible behavior around the origin of COVID — silencing doctors, destroying important evidence and lying to the world — enabling its subsequent spread to pandemic level.

Is this really all the result of mere incompetence?

If you believe that, I’ve a wet market to sell you.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Tags Covid 19, healthcare, Wuhan Flu

national politics & policies too much government

NowhereCare

Even people who get their information only from major network news know that, in their mad rush to promise free health care, Democratic presidential hopefuls would raise taxes for nearly everybody including the “hard-working middle class.”

How do they know?

Because at least one of the eager promisers won’t give a straight answer.

Her name is Senator Elizabeth Warren.

Like Bernie Sanders (but not Amy Klobuchar and Joe Biden) she is offering “Medicare for All,” which Fox’s Tucker Carlson calls straight-up socialism.*

George Stephanopoulos, Chris Matthews, and “other strident Democratic partisans” have been pressing her on the tax hike issue, and at the recent, fourth national primary debate, Warren continued to evade. Even Sleepy Joe knows that universal single-payer health care spending would require more taxes than can be squeezed out of the very rich and the big corporations (which Warren, Sanders, and other Democrats incessantly push). But Warren just will not say the words: yes, your taxes will go up. She continually feints to her follow-up argument, that since overall health care costs would [according to plan] go down, we would all come out ahead.

Tucker Carlson, citing an Urban Institute study, gives the answer the democratic socialists won’t: their promise would require spending 3.4 trillion tax dollars per year — $10 grand per person per year, including every child, retiree, and prison inmate.** Warren expects us to repress our common sense and believe that cramming all health care spending through the federal government will increase efficiency.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar has the right word for Medicare for All: utopian.

Noting that Obamacare failed to live up to its promises, Azar predicts the ultimate result, “Medicare for None.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* And not altogether implausibly, since medicine is a fifth of the American economy and (presumably) since socialism is an economy run by government.

** Tucker’s list.

PDF for printing

Illustration from a photo by Gage Skidmore

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Tags Elizabeth Warren, healthcare, Medicare, tax policy

national politics & policies Popular

Dr. Biden, B.S.

“I promise you, if I’m elected president,” Democratic Party frontrunner Joe Biden told an Iowa audience, “you’re going to see the single most important thing that changes America, we’re gonna cure cancer.”

It’s the sort of claim that makes snake-oil salesmen blush.

“That is a very, very bold campaign promise to be making,” offered CNN’s Kate Bolduan incredulously.

“Bold” wasn’t the term that came to my mind, but another word beginning with the letter‑B.

“We have to remember he is a subject matter expert in that area,” responded Rep. Cedric Richmond (D‑La.), a co-chairman of Biden’s presidential campaign.

This is the expertise for which Washington is so famous. Surprising that more hospitals don’t have a career politician on call, eh?

Nobody questions the former Vice-President’s support for the cause of eradicating cancer, of course; Biden lost his son to the disease in 2015. We must, however, question the veracity of what comes out of his mouth.

Biden’s fib or fantasy — or whatever you call it — reminds me of former Congressman George Nethercutt (R‑Wash.). In 1994, he defeated then-Speaker of the House Tom Foley by pledging to serve no more than the three terms that Evergreen State voters enacted via a term limits ballot initiative.

“Thousands of people have urged me to run again,” explained Nethercutt, seeking a fourth term years later. “They believe in the work I’m doing to cut taxes, to open foreign markets for our farmers, and to help find cures for diseases like diabetes and cancer.”

Today, defending candidate Biden, Rep. Richmond defines credulity. “If he believes we can do it, I believe him.”

There may be a sucker born every minute … but it ain’t me.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Tags cancer, healthcare, Joe Biden

free trade & free markets national politics & policies too much government

Just Like That!

socialism, magic wand, economics, healthcare, prescription drugs, drugs,

“We will do that,” he said.

Do what?

“We will look at the average costs of prescription drugs in Canada, the UK, Germany, Japan and France,” says Sen. Bernie Sanders (I/D‑Vt.), “which are 50 percent lower than they are in the United States,” he told Margaret Brennan on Face the Nation.

And Sanders promises: “if I am elected president I’m going to cut prescription drug costs in this country by 50 percent so that we are not paying any more than other major countries are paying. Maybe we can do better than that.”

When Ms. Brennan asked how, he replied as above — looking at “average costs” as directly priced to consumers (patients) — and then … “we will do that.”

Socialism is so easy!

Why have we waited so long for utopia?

Well, saying is not the same as doing. We must think “beyond Stage One,” as Thomas Sowell advises. For if “Medicare for All” tells a company it will pay only so much for a drug, that company cannot just sell that drug and all others below cost. No wonder that in socialized medicine schemes around the world, not all drugs are even available.

The world prescription drug market is set up … peculiarly. Americans in effect pay more (because of patents and trade agreements) thereby covering development costs. If we pay less, others may have to pay more (which would be an odd thing for a “socialist” to want) and we would all come to get even less.

Bernie is no wizard, and socialism has no magic wand with which to wave away scarcity.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Tags Bernie Sanders, drugs, economics, healthcare, magic wand, prescription drugs, socialism

Accountability crime and punishment general freedom ideological culture moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies privacy too much government U.S. Constitution

Hooray for Congress!

right to try, treatment, healthcare, Rights, FDA, democrats, Congress, medicine, experimental,

When Congress behaves badly, I criticize. When it works well, I applaud.

I’ve waited a long, long, long time to put my hands together in polite applause.

It happened yesterday.

The U.S. House of Representatives passed a Senate bill, largely along party lines, to give those facing a terminal illness the “right to try.” That is, the right to try experimental drugs and treatments that haven’t yet been approved by the federal Food & Drug Administration (FDA).

Of course, Congress doesn’t actually give us rights. We have always had the common law right — indeed, the human right — to freely seek a path to wellness when we are ill.

From time immemorial. Even before the FDA.

So, this legislation was, more correctly put, a way to announce that the congressionally-created FDA would stop blocking our freedom … provided we are dying and the government-approved medical establishment has no more licensed hope to offer.

The bill now goes to President Trump. “People who are terminally ill should not have to go from country to country to seek a cure,” he declared in his last State of the Union, “I want to give them a chance right here at home.”

Democrats overwhelmingly disagreed.

“This will provide fly-by-night physicians and clinics the opportunity to peddle false hope and ineffective drugs to desperate patients,” argued Rep. Frank Pallone (D‑N.J.).

Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D‑Ill.) likewise charged that the legislation “puts patients at risk by allowing the sale of snake oil.”

But of course these patients are dying. That’s already as “at risk” as it gets. Our right to live includes a right to try to live.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Tags Congress, Democrats, experimental, FDA, healthcare, medicine, right to try, rights, treatment

Accountability folly free trade & free markets general freedom ideological culture moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies too much government

ObamaCare’s Casualties

healthcare, Obamacare, TrumpCare, ACA, Affordable Care Act, Healthcare reform, government, socialism

We all know the truth: Partisan “warfare” yields the usual war casualty, truth itself. Now, because of the increasing weight of federal government presence in healthcare markets, partisan untruth incurs medical costs.

Take the goofy Republican plan(s) to “repeal and replace” ObamaCare — pushed with so many half-truths and downright lies that one wonders where to begin. But before die-hard Republicans get too incensed about this judgment, let’s note that the supporters of the mis-named “Affordable Care Act” are no better.

Probably worse.

“Fact-checking,” writes David Harsanyi on the media mishandling of ObamaCare, “has evolved from an occasionally useful medium to an exercise in revisionism and diversion.” Journalists now seem more like spin doctors.

And their patient? The reputation of ObamaCare’s namesake.

One journalist, for example, insists that “Obama didn’t lie or ‘mangle facts’ or mislead anyone,” Harsanyi writes.

What does this journalist claim Obama did in repeatedly promising “if you like your doctor you can keep your doctor”?

Well, “he gave a ‘misguided … pledge.’ The word ‘misguided’ intimates that Obama wasn’t misleading anyone on purpose.”

It helps the former president save face if he accidentally got us in this fix. He had the best intentions, you know.

Worse yet, as both sides snipe about these little untruths, they lose sight of the biggest truth, which I wrote about this weekend: that “government-run” means “government-decided,” and that, in turn, means

government deciding matters of your life and your death.

It would be helpful if our leaders took this all a bit more seriously, daring to speak truth … to us … as well as to themselves and each other.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Printable PDF