Let’s play Highlights Magazine. How many things can you find wrong with this article that appeared in the Asheville Tribune? Right off the bat, I see two. One is that 91 percent of North Carolinians on Obamacare are mooching off the 9 percent in the state and rich people elsewhere – or some other part of the national debt. Another is that we are told the navigators are unbiased. That is a crocodile, as none of them are advocating for the abolition of Obamacare. At least that’s the way I see it.
I had a fun conversation with somebody formerly from the pharmaceutical industry last night that was rather informative. He said Big Pharma was in the business of staying in business. Funding is not available for drugs to cure problems – only those that manage them. The subject came up when I when I was whining about the way government agencies grow capacity by recruiting the least among us with inducements of free meds, free beds, free counseling, etc. (I’d rather be grouchy than medicated and talking to Freudian shrinks for life; especially if my sliding scale means you, dear reader, are getting taxed more to cover the nonsense.) Then, I’ve said before that hospitals aren’t in the business of curing people, but in the business of not getting sued. One can stump against waste, fraud, and abuse, but things only get worse as those who would practice the healer’s art get stuck doing paperwork. Besides, advocating for austerity gets no one elected. End of abbreviated rant.
