Tag Archives: Medicare

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Bush spent $622B on Iraq, Obama spends $888B on welfare in 2010 alone

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Story from CNS News. (H/T Weasel Zippers via ECM)

Excerpt:

During the entire administration of George W. Bush, the Iraq war cost a total of $622 billion, according to the Congressional Research Service.

President Obama’s welfare spending will reach $888 billion in a single fiscal year–2010–more than the Bush administration spent on war in Iraq from the first “shock and awe” attack in 2003 until Bush left office in January.

Obama’s spending proposals call for the largest increases in welfare benefits in U.S. history, according to a report by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. This will lead to a spending total of $10.3 trillion over the next decade on various welfare programs. These include cash payments, food, housing, Medicaid and various social services for low-income Americans and those at 200 percent of the poverty level, or $44,000 for a family of four. Among that total, $7.5 trillion will be federal money and $2.8 trillion will be federally mandated state expenditures.

I personally know a lot of people who voted for Obama because we were spending too much on the war. The government’s job is to fight against the enemies of the United States. The government’s job is not to equalize life outcomes regardless of lifestyle choices. But I guess Obama has to buy votes somehow! How else will he be able to get re-elected unless he takes from the productive minority to pay for the votes of the irresponsible majority?

Don’t forget my previous post on the CBO’s projections about Social Security running cash deficits in starting in 2010.

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CBO predicts Social Security cash deficits in 2010

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Ed Morrissey has the story at Hot Air.

Excerpt:

Four years ago, George W. Bush attempted to reform the entitlement program Social Security, warning that the system was accelerating into collapse and would soon run deficits.  Democrats scoffed and claimed the Social Security system was solid and wouldn’t have problems for at least 50 years, as Harry Reid told PBS’ Jim Lehrer in June 2005.  Just last year, the CBO — under the direction of Peter Orszag, now budget director in the Obama administration — claimed that the first cash deficits in Social Security would not come until 2019.

Now, however, the CBO has determined that Social Security will run cash deficits next year and in 2011, and by 2016 will be more or less in permanent deficit mode.  Hot Air has exclusively obtained the summer 2009 CBO report sent to legislators on Capitol Hill but not yet made public, which shows that outgo will exceed income for the first time since the 1983 fix on an annual basis in 2010…

And it’s actually worse than that.

Check out their update:

Steve at No Runny Eggs, who has been keeping a very close eye on SSA, says that the CBO numbers project some eye-popping payroll-revenue growth numbers to get back to surpluses (briefly) by 2012.  According to the numbers, CBO projects a 6.19% growth rate in 2012, and 5.69% in 2013, then dropping to 4.59% in 2014 and declining afterwards.  Assuming that they only peak at the 4.59% number for all three years — still a rather optimistic projection — Social Security never actually comes out of its deficits at all…

Click here to see a summary the CBO report.

The numbers are explained in the Hot Air post.

To understand the challenge that entitlement programs pose to a balanced budget, watch this 2-minute video.

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How is government-run health care working out in Canada?

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Political Map of Canada
Political Map of Canada

This Vancouver Sun story was linked at Unambigously Ambidextrous and the Heritage Foundation. (H/T DJ)

Excerpt:

Dr. Brian Brodie, president of the BC Medical Association, called the proposed surgical cuts “a nightmare.”

“Why would you begin your cost-cutting measures on medically necessary surgery? I just can’t think of a worse place,” Brodie said.

According to the leaked document, Vancouver Coastal — which oversees the budget for Vancouver General and St. Paul’s hospitals, among other health-care facilities — is looking to close nearly a quarter of its operating rooms starting in September and to cut 6,250 surgeries, including 24 per cent of cases scheduled from September to March and 10 per cent of all medically necessary elective procedures this fiscal year.

Now consider this story about elderly patients and euthaaisia, from the Washington Examiner. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

“I recommend that you seriously consider a “do not resuscitate” order, said the seemingly nice man in the white coat. “He has diminishing quality of life. And, if he has an infection or illness, we can provide comfort care for him.”

[…]An emergency room doctor made similar comments. She suggested that I did not need to feed him now that he was unable to feed himself–in essence suggesting euthanasia for a man who simply had an infection treatable with antibiotics.

[…]Despite the persistent infection, Dad was discharged because his temperature fell one-tenth of one point below the Medicare guideline for hospitalization. I begged the doctor to let him stay, citing his Blue Cross Blue Shield coverage. The doctor insisted that Medicare ruled and that my father was safer outside of the hospital where he would be less likely to contract a secondary infection.

I did what most people do; I trusted the authoritative person in the white coat. It was a fatal mistake. The lingering infection led to complications that killed him a few weeks later.

Rationing of care to the elderly is already taking place in government-run programs like Medicare. I don’t think we should expand government control any further.

This is the problem with making health care “free”. Everybody wants to use it. So demand is HIGH. But the government doesn’t have unlimited money, so supply is LOW. That’s why there is a SHORTAGE. And that’s why waiting lists, rationing, euthanasia and service cuts are needed.