Why medical costs are so high

Of all the proposals circulating in Congress on health care, Rand Paul’s make the most sense for CONSUMERS of health care and insurance.

Tort claims do relate, but tort awards in court, paid from malpractice insurance, are so high because of all the other medical costs.

Insurance claims CANNOT be discounted as also a major factor. John Stossel made this point on a program he did after he himself had to work with the health care system and go through all that for some major issue. A large part of the blame for such high medical costs for services delivered to patients is that the customer for the procedures is the insurance company, not the patient.

The insurance companies make their profit on a markup over costs and overhead, as a percentage added on to what is paid to medical services companies. Meaning, they have incentive to charge the patient as high as possible. It’s like the stock broker who makes a commission on every sale and every buy.

Another thing driving up insurance cost is the federal tax code deduction allowed corporations’ cost for subsidizing insurance as a benefit for their employees. The individual taxpayer gets almost no break at all, like the changes to HSA considerations Rand Paul is calling for.

The insurance benefit came about during the Roosevelt war-time freeze on wages and prices. Inssurance benefits became the only way companies could give raises in compensation and lure productive employees.

Government interventions in any economic transaction always puts a crimp on the general economy.

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Drugs

Part of drug legalization should include of course legalization of its distribution and sale. Whether or not it actually reduces drug usage is irrelevant to the most important relevant related points.

(1) It increases government control over individual decisions on consumption.

(2) It increases a very false and dangerous reliance on government mandates on any substances so classified.

(3) It creates moral hazard for little “deciders” in government control bureaucracies to eternally expand on #1 and #2 points.

(4) It gives central governments an excuse to expand its police state infrastructure, and makes incentives to expand this control worldwide. (Witness the arrogance of United States federal prosecutors going after FIFA executives. Did they work with any other relevant governments?)

I found a report on the Web once on 19th century (and into the 20th) cocaine use in the United States from the days before it was criminalized. If memory serves, it acknowledged that apparently cocaine use was indeed more widespread among the general population (percentage wise) than after.

But the above points hold.

Again, I tell everybody around me that I am against mind-altering recreational drug use, even with marijuana. I was a user in college but it make me stupid and hungry, in my opinion. It’s for the same reason I also never get drunk. A clear mind thinks more clearly and intelligently.

AP fake news?

AP carries a story about the death of someone who used social media to propagate some of the questions surrounding the mysteries of Barack Obama’s past history and inclinations while candidate and president, and events of the 2016 election campaign. In it they describe the deceased as a “purveyor of fake news” who claimed that he may have made the difference in the election. (I doubt that, he got those stories from the same places everyone else did).

So well, well. They gave examples of “fake news” spread by the deceased, as below. What did they leave out from this list, though, is my question. Did this man share links? Did he mention the Clinton Foundation scandal, certainly a true story? Did he share stories about the specific complaints out of Haiti about that Foundation, and did they leave that out? How about Obama’s stint with the Saul Alinsky Institute?

How about let’s go back to the main issues that endanger the United States? How about the Federal Reserve? The Wars Against Some Drugs, the several foreign wars, the Blowback Principle, and other issues raised by Ron Paul in the 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns?

 

===> Barack Obama gay?

The guy who claimed to be his lover in Chicago and fellow member of his church is another dead body. Shot to death. So will we ever know? Instead of offering counter evidence, the ones that might know something just laughed it off.

When Jesus accused the Pharisees of plotting his murder, they laughed it off. “Thou hast a devil. Who goeth about to kill thee?”

 

===> Barack Obama a “radical Muslim”?

I don’t believe that, but “fake news”? I think rather he’s part of those Luciferians that use a name that means “enlightened” (very real, not a theory anymore, I’ve met some of them defectors, invited to see their recruitment web site).

Also, his “Uncle Frank” mentioned in Obama’s book as his mentor, is known to be Frank Marshall Davis, a very strong Communist.

But as to a credible case for it with public information? He was raised in formative years

 

===> Protestors paid thousands of dollars to demonstrate at Donald Trump’s campaign rallies?

This is a very publicly known fact, exposed by James O’Keefe’s famous video, in which an executive of a company paid by the Hillary campaigned bragged about the practice, and even specifically claimed credit for the violence that disrupted a Trump rally in Chicago that caused its cancellation.

So AP continues reporting fake news.

<<<<****>>>>

So we have yet another “suicide” among Bill and Hillary Clinton whistleblowers.

State owns cougars?

To Becky Akers, thank you for pointing to this bit of news, where the state claims it owns wild cougars in a case in Minnesota:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/state-believes-owns-even-cougars/

Yes, the state claims to own everything. But it is much much worse. Consider Michael Crichton’s essay about gene patents:
http://www.michaelcrichton.com/patenting-life/

He was wisely very much against any gene patents at all. My view is that there should be no copyright or patent office at all, but gene patents are especially onerous, and that does not just mean GMO’s.

Crichton’s first paragraph sums up possibly the worst thing:

You, or someone you love, may die because of a gene patent that should never have been granted in the first place. Sound far-fetched? Unfortunately, it’s only too real.

Of course that applies to all pharmaceuticals. But the second paragraph shows that the first paragraph is happening:

Gene patents are now used to halt research, prevent medical testing, and keep vital information from you and your doctor. Gene patents slow the pace of medical advance on deadly diseases. And they raise costs exorbitantly: a test for breast cancer that could be done for $1,000 now costs $3,000.

It does get worse:

This bizarre situation has come to pass because of a mistake by an underfinanced and understaffed government agency. The United States Patent Office misinterpreted previous Supreme Court rulings and some years ago began—to the surprise of everyone, including scientists decoding the genome—to issue patents on genes.

It gets outrageous. The families of children affected by a really bad genetic defect got together and financed the successful search for a test to determine whether a child had the gene, intending it to be free:

When the gene was identified in 1993, the families got the commitment of a New York hospital to offer a free test to anyone who wanted it. But the researcher’s employer, Miami Children’s Hospital Research Institute, patented the gene and refused to allow any health care provider to offer the test without paying a royalty. The parents did not believe genes should be patented and so did not put their names on the patent. Consequently, they had no control over the outcome.

That is why Stephen Kinsella, an Intellectual Property lawyer who is an enemy of copyright and patent law, always copyrights his writing.

The main point on this is: Nobody invented any of these genes.

LewRockwell.com: Death of NFL Inevitable

NFL best players are “taking the knee” with the National Anthem: https://www.lewrockwell.com/political-theatre/death-nfl-inevitable/

Me, I do not like the Star Spangled Banner. A much better option would be “America the Beautiful”, for example.

That said, I would say, stop singing it at sports events. It has become a symbolic pledge of loyalty to the D. C. government and its bellicose military adventurism. Make peace, not war.

That won’t happen. But I tend to agree with John Kass, the Chicago Tribune reporter, whose article is linked to above, that the NFL is slowly dying. It has to do with hits and concussions and long-term damage.

But he may well be aware that the decline in NFL attendance in 2017 and in network viewership, is owed in big part to the importation of political statements to the football games.

Middle America, NASCAR types, far outnumbers leftist types in football fandom.Now the kids will go to baseball and soccer. Maybe in a few years we’ll do a vocabulary switch to the Brit custom of saying “football” for their version, and “American football” for the slam bang concussion sport.

Soccer is dangerous enough already, but the main sport tactic does not consist of slamming into the other guy. Leave that kind of stuff to boxing, other contact sports like wrestling, and well, inevitably, hockey. Although I’d like to see rules in that one. I think players should be liable at least partially for permanent disabling injuries, and maybe temporary ones too.

Make peace not war.

Granny is more trustworthy to count votes than e-voting machines

Neither will “that” stop it from happening if the “that” is e-voting.

But “that” being paper ballots will mitigate the much more damage that can happen if “that” becomes ubiquitous e-voting.

We have a long history of outrageous hacks, and some of the biggest have been hits on government servers, because government officials are much more immune to getting fired. The kind of people who are in government set up servers for their personal and State Department emails, and save their emails to personal computers belonging to famous political pedophiles. And fall for phishing attacks.

The CIA and NSA today create hacks to get into your devices without warrants, and does not warn private companies or anti-virus companies about them of course. But now they want to work with the private sector to “protect” them? And Holder “offered” the resources of DOJ (and presumably Homeland) to review and “help protect” state and local election systems.

McAfee and many other cybersecurity experts said a 14-year old script kiddie could have hacked into the DNC server or Hillary’s.

Trusting your security to these losers is insanity. Grandma counting paper for votes is better.

Socialism is heresy, Democratic or not, and what does that make “Pope Francis”?

“Pope Francis” is most definitely NOT “actually applying the teachings of Jesus to his church”.

One heretical doctrine: “Capitalism is the dung of the devil”. Because capitalism means “an economic system in which investment in and ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange of wealth is made and maintained chiefly by private individuals or corporations, especially as contrasted to cooperatively or state-owned means of wealth.”, according to an easy dictionary lookup.

The only alternative to letting people engage in free market practice, as each individual sees fit for his own ends, is to have a group of people to “lord it over” the rest of us and take what they want for distribution according to their own whims. That’s socialism.

Socialism is heresy because:

“THOU SHALT NOT STEAL.” –Exodus 20:15

If you vote for anybody who you know will vote in favor of extorting taxes from its victims, under threat of the law and guys with guns taking what’s somebody else’s, this is supporting THEFT by definition.

I made no “social contract” with anybody. Remember that old justification they taught us in government indoctrination centers (aka “public schools”)?

When Jesus returns he will do to the socialists and money changing thieves of the Federal Reserves and their Wall Street lackeys what he did to their distant spiritual ancestors in the Temple.

Don’t turn away from the truth:
For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; –2 Timothy 4:3

Syrian nun honored by USG Women-of-Courage Award: Assad Not a Dictator

She doesn’t believe Assad is the one who ordered any chemical attacks, and criticized Trump’s decision to throw bombs in retaliation:
https://cruxnow.com/global-church/2017/04/12/syrian-nun-honored-us-says-assad-not-dictator/

Remember the unknown Syrian Christian woman who rebuked John McCain in a town hall for supporting the savages who were killing Christians?

God promised Woe for those who call good evil, and evil good.

A picture of what war is

War picture (safe for work and home):
http://www.rebe.rau.ro/REBE%207%201.pdf

War, What is it good for (Edwin Starr)?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpWmlRNfLck

From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members? –James 4:1
Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not.-4:2
Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.-4:3

–Or maybe you ask amiss to the wrong god. Maybe you’re asking “governments” that can only supply your requests by stealing from your neighbors.

1 John 2:16 For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world
2:17 And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.

Cold wars and trade wars are no good either. Neither are threats of war.

Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none.–Thomas Jefferson

Russian propaganda or American blowback?

Media Matters now says Matt Drudge pushed Russian propaganda, by its linking to RT and Sputnik. But they don’t share comparative counts.

The people voted for the peace candidate. Was that Russian propaganda? Nyet! Make peace not war!

People voted against sexual confusion! That’s Russian propaganda?

Sanders fans voted against the Wall Street candidate, preferring the Gramschi socialist Green Party.

The electorate voted against DNC-Clinton campaign collusion. Russian propaganda, or truth?

The electorate voted against the enabler of a serial rapist.
The electorate voted against Obamacare. Was the entire Republican membership of Congress in collusion with Russian propagandists?

The electorate voted for sane immigration policy. Is it the Russians that want sane immigration policy, or would they want to bankrupt California even more than it already is?

The electorate voted against socialist government. Of course the Russians wanted to stop the weakening of the economy and stop the welfare state.

The electorate voted against the regulations choking production and small business.

The electorate voted against ATF running guns to Mexican cartels

If The Russians are so good at mind control, then MK Ultra was an abysmal failure and so is Mockingbird Media at its impossible task of keeping us ignorant and stupid and even the neocons should demand the CIA shut itself down, close doors and apologize to us, and discovered their modern iteration of Operation Mockingbird, whatever they call it now, exposed by the brave German journalist who blew the whistle and is now blacklisted.

And why should we have to read Russian media anyway to find out what our government, our rulers, are doing to us anyway?

Jesus Christ promised in Matthew 24, the end times prophecy chapter, that secrets whispered in even bedchambers shall be shouted from the rooftops. They are starting to use their crony social media partners to suppress inconvenient truths and disappear un-persons.

God is not mocked. Sow and reap. Live by the sword, die by the sword.