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The Cost of Children's Health Care
The NYT could have made its article on the Senate bill to extend the State Children's Health Insurance Program more informative if it put the projected cost in context. The article reports that the cost will be $35 billion over five years. This cost is equal to approximately 0.2 percent of projected spending over this period or about $23 per person per year.
[The Post commits the same sin here. Someone has to tell reporters that their job is to inform readers, not just write down numbers as a meaningless ritual.]
--Dean Baker
COMMENTS (7)
We don't want to know costs, Dean. That would reduce the attractiveness of our nannyist socialist medical program and thereby defeat its emerging purpose, which will be to employ bureaucracy.
Naturally, as the paper dollar finally plummets -- can we call it "unhinged" or is that a term best reserved for its architects -- this feature of socialized American left-leaning medicine will be more important, not less.
In fact, it's better that what's good for us subjects is just carried out without our knowledge. Subjects and masters have always operated best under that tacit understanding.
The press knows this. Now we should too.
Posted by: JHoward | September 21, 2007 9:57 AM
JHoward wrote, That would reduce the attractiveness of our nannyist socialist medical program and thereby defeat its emerging purpose, which will be to employ bureaucracy.
Perhaps, but at least it will likely employ fewer bureaucrats than private health insurance systems.
Posted by: liberal | September 21, 2007 2:17 PM
Well, liberal, the solution then is quite obvious.
We work to obsolete the private sector. I mean since we're dealing with conjecture and assertion about capitalism's shoddy record of advancing standards of living. Well, and since the former constitutional underpinnings of separating American public and private sectors exist no more.
I welcome my new Socialist masters. May I welcome you as well? I mean, because we have nothing but a history chock-full with successful collectivist schemes...and because there is no Constitution. What there is, is variable subjective arguments that depend on emotion.
Those lousy private sector bureaucrats. Just wait until we toss em out of tire sales, grocery bagging, and truck driving...
Posted by: JHoward | September 21, 2007 3:05 PM
getting silly in here
Posted by: anon | September 21, 2007 8:04 PM
Reporters remember what a hard time they had with arithmetic in grade school.
We will be thankful for JH when we have universal health care. JH will be leading the charge against high salaries for the public officials running the program.
He certainly will not tolerate the kind of salaries that private managers give themselves.
Posted by: RJ | September 21, 2007 10:05 PM
That's right, RJ. And when we reform high salaries for kind, benevolent public servants, we'll set about reforming the entire US capitalist system until, well, it's gone! 230 years is enough, I say!
Starting with...well, starting with anybody we darn please! Those evil profiteers. Wait till government's values and principles fix things! As things should be, finally!
Because the only good wage is a reformed wage. Long live the New People's Paradise!
As they say about software and operating systems, the nice thing about standards is there's so many to choose from. I say we vote onto others what's good for them. On any given Thursday. Stat.
Posted by: JHoward | September 22, 2007 10:47 AM
The fall of the dollar was inevitable. It is the only way to get the trade deficit down to size. The real problem was allowing the dollar to rise to the point that it made such a painful adjutsment necessary. This was the Clinton-Rubin high dollar policy. It felt good in the short-term (except for manufacturing workers), but just like tax cuts that lead to big budget deficits, it could not be sustained.
Posted by: san | April 8, 2008 1:39 AM