realthog: (corrupted science)
realthog ([personal profile] realthog) wrote2008-08-28 04:33 pm
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Thog's Science Masterclass #6


Jason Roberson writes in yesterday's Dallas Morning News:  

Texas once again led the nation with the highest percentage of residents without health insurance, a U.S. Census Bureau report showed Tuesday . . . 

But the numbers are misleading, said John Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis, a right-leaning Dallas-based think tank. Mr. Goodman, who helped craft Sen. John McCain's health care policy, said anyone with access to an emergency room effectively has insurance, albeit the government acts as the payer of last resort. (Hospital emergency rooms by law cannot turn away a patient in need of immediate care.)

"So I have a solution. And it will cost not one thin dime," Mr. Goodman said. "The next president of the United States should sign an executive order requiring the Census Bureau to cease and desist from describing any American – even illegal aliens – as uninsured. Instead, the bureau should categorize people according to the likely source of payment should they need care.

"So, there you have it. Voila! Problem solved."

Seems logical. ER won't check your breast for tumours, which means you get cancer. Neither will ER offer you chemotherapy or a lumpectomy when those become necessary, so you die. And this way you're no longer counted as one of the uninsured.

So that nice Mr Goodman's absolutely right! Whoopee! Let's all party!

(By the way, anyone got a bridge to sell? The one I bought on eBay a few weeks ago has never arrived and they won't answer my e-mails . . .)

[identity profile] fledgist.livejournal.com 2008-08-29 01:07 pm (UTC)(link)
It's very easy to fool people if you know what they want to be fooled with. The best lies are the lies people want to hear. Reagan presented himself as just folks, and told people that the problems of the world were really simple, black and white.

We're seeing this now in the narrative of plucky Georgia being bullied by the evil Russian bear (which is a tissue of falsehoods through and through). And people fall for it.

[identity profile] realthog.livejournal.com 2008-08-29 01:35 pm (UTC)(link)

"The best lies are the lies people want to hear."

How very, very perceptive of you, as usual . . . :-)

"We're seeing this now in the narrative of plucky Georgia being bullied by the evil Russian bear . . . And people fall for it."

I'm not sure people are entirely falling for it. However much the White House blustered, Putin's accusation that the whole affair had been hatched there to benefit McCain seems not to have been rejected elsewhere with the usual vehemence. Whether his accusation is true or not (I wouldn't know) is beside the point; it seems to be being accepted as of status "within the bounds of plausibility".

[identity profile] fledgist.livejournal.com 2008-09-01 11:34 pm (UTC)(link)
I don't know that I'm that perceptive, but fifty-two years of living on this mudball has taught me a thing or two.

[identity profile] fledgist.livejournal.com 2008-09-01 11:57 pm (UTC)(link)
Ancient!