Looks like he ticked off his hooker the night before this photo was taken. 
Posted on 04/09/2009 2:51:38 AM PDT by Zakeet
America's dysfunctional health care financing system needs to be reformed. But the goal should not be universal coverage. Reform should simply aim to make health insurance more affordable and portable.
Universal coverage has so dominated the health care discussion that even some Republicans have tried to devise market-friendly ways to achieve it. The case for doing so is presented in practical, moral and political terms.
[Snip]
The moral case for universal coverage is that we have an obligation to see to it that the poor and the near-poor have access to good health care. But universal coverage is only one way of realizing that goal, and not necessarily the best one. For people with pre-existing health problems, for example, direct subsidies would probably be more efficient than rigging insurance markets to make sure they are covered. As Michael Cannon, a health policy analyst at the Cato Institute, has written, “There is no evidence that a dollar spent on universal coverage will save more lives than a dollar spent on clinics, or reducing medical errors, or nutrition, or fighting poverty, or even improving education.” And if universal coverage generally reduces the quality of care or retards medical innovation, it could end up being bad for everyone, including the poor.
[Snip]
An alternative approach would be to make it easier for people to buy insurance that isn’t tied to their employment. The existing tax break for employer-provided insurance could be replaced with a tax credit that applies to insurance purchased either inside or outside the workplace. At the same time, state mandates that require insurers to cover certain conditions, which make it expensive to offer individual policies, could be removed.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
An exceptionally rare hat tip to the New York Times for publishing it.
Legalize the illegals put free health care to a vote its a done deal
Just like when the Soviet Union was collapsing, you hear new voices.
Build brand new administration palace? Check.
Rise of opposition. Check.
They’re done.
Mr. Ponnuru is a very solid writer and an extremely clear thinker.
It is fallacious.
A tax credit to help uninsured is bogus because the uninsured don’t pay tax any way. If it were possible to make insurance less expensive, it would be less expensive. The costs of medical care prevent lowering the insurance rates. Making insurance portable is good but doesn’t pay the premiums between jobs. Making insurance mandatory doesn’t mean young people will actually make the effort to get on board.
Correct.
The only and best way to help those who truly cannot afford it is not through insurance. Insurance (unless it is only catastrophic) is expensive because the cost of the medical care is brokered. So medical expenses HAVE to go up. So the only and best way (if we are to continue doing this) is for an account (with real money) to be set up. Let’s say we put a billion dollars into it each year. If people need money, they apply. When the money is gone, it’s gone. End of story.
The poor have "access" to health care now: Dollars in hand, they are free to seek care anywhere.
Their real problem is hacking the high bills. Just sitting down in an emergency room and taking a number cost $100, ten years ago. Now it's $1200 or so.
The escalator of medical costs, not dealt with as far as I can see, is the third-party payor arrangement. It doesn't matter if it's private insurance or British-style socialism. Third-party payor drives high costs. The British retard their escalating costs through rationing and denial of services that they don't like to talk about.
The Dutch have added euthanasia.
Do we really want to go there?
Fooey on the hat tip. The Times is desperate and perhaps hoping to lure back fellows like me so as to get circulation back up. But no way.
I made a resolution 15 years ago that I would never -- NEVER -- pay a single nickel for the NYT anymore, after years of buying it at the airport or newsstand if I was on a trip, and a period of time having the Sunday Times delivered to our home.
They are still treasonous b-stards. The pissant Publisher Pinch Sulzberger -- such a weenie that he not only doesn't fill his father's shoes, he doesn't fill his father's secretary's shoes -- needs to learn a final lesson through bankruptcy, loss of the company, and wholesale restructuring. Wouldn't it be wonderful if Rupert Murdoch is the one who resurrects the Times?
The Bush Administration should have prosecuted them after they released the information about TWO classified intel-gathering programs run by NSA. I think the nation would've supported Bush and the legal fees would have bled the NYT dry. Little Pinch would never have tried to betray his country again.
Rant over. But no plaudits to those dickheads for printing a National Review editor. After the Times goes under I will still be able to read Ramesh Ponnuru online.
Looks like he ticked off his hooker the night before this photo was taken.
Perhaps the Slimes’ publishing of a well-reasoned piece by thoughtful conservative like Ponnuru is indicative of what one might describe metaphorically as a “deathbed conversion” on their part. I’d be interested in how much of an uproar the Slimes will get from the Obamaton left.
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