Stanching the Stench of Stale Stent Stunts
February 13th, 2010 Leave a comment Go to comments
STOP THE STINK!
“[T]he wildest hippie and the sternest member of the Politburo shared the same daydream, the daydream that underlies all Marxism: that a thing might be somehow worth other than what people will give for it. This is just not true. And any system that bases itself on such a will-o’-the-wisp is bound to fail. Communes don’t work. Cuba doesn’t either.”–P.J. O’Rourke
“Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery. The Left prefers an “equal distribution of poverty” over an “unequal distribution of wealth.” Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look on it as a cow they can milk. Not enough people see it as a healthy horse, pulling a sturdy wagon.”–Winston Churchill, explaining why Doc Barack returned his bust to England
“The truth is, in order to get things like universal health care and revamped education system then someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so someone else can have more.”–Michelle Obama
Stink-stopper Steyn to Glenn Beck:
Yeah, I think she’s a conventional university socialist. And you’re right, I give enough of my pie to the federal government, and they waste most of that pie. So, when she’s talking about universal health care and revamping and reforming education, by any reasonable measure, American education is overfunded.
Put simply, the Obamas believe that some people have too much health care (and too much education) and government must take it from them and give it to the politically-favored. Same with the “Caddy”-tax; some people just have too much insurance, so government must take it from them and give it to the politically-favored–with an exemption for another politically-favored group, the unions, of course.
Michelle Malkin:
Former President Bill Clinton was rushed to the hospital for a heart condition and has reportedly received a stent. Best wishes for the former president’s recovery.
Now, a timely reminder: Stents don’t grow on trees. They were not created, developed, marketed, or sold by government bureaucrats and lawmakers. One of the nation’s top stent manufacturers, Boston Scientific, has weighed in on the Democrats’ proposed massive taxes on medical device makers:
Boston Scientific Corp (BSX.N) warned on Tuesday that a proposed tax in the U.S. health care reform bill that cleared the Senate Finance Committee last week could have serious consequences for the company, including job losses.
“The bill that came out of the committee last week makes absolutely no sense and would be very damaging to Boston Scientific, and the medical device industry as a whole,” Boston Scientific Chief Executive Ray Elliott said during a post-earnings conference call.
“In a nutshell, it would raise costs and lead to significant job losses. It does not address the quality of care but the political scorecard of savings.”
Elliott said that the company’s tax liability would be doubled, adding $150 million to $200 million a year, and it would be forced to make substantial cuts in research and development spending, which could result in 1,000 to 2,000 jobs being lost at Boston Scientific.
…“1,000 to 2,000 jobs”. Do we have ‘too many’ jobs, too?
Glenn Reynolds explained all the ways medical devices–and the freedom that produces them–helped his family:
The normal critique of socialized medicine is to point out that people have to wait a long time for these kinds of treatments in places like Britain. And that’s certainly a valid critique. I’m sure my mom and daughter would still be waiting for their treatments, while my father and wife would probably be dead.
The key point, though, is that these treatments didn’t just come out out of the blue. They were developed by drug companies and device makers who thought they had a good market for things that would make people feel better.
But under a national healthcare plan, the “market” will consist of whatever the bureaucrats are willing to buy. That means treatment for politically stylish diseases will get some money, but otherwise the main concern will be cost-control. More treatments, to bureaucrats, mean more costs.
It doesn’t always work that way, of course. The rise of proton-pump inhibitors like Nexium or Prilosec has made ulcer surgery a thing of the past. But to the bureaucratic mindset, those pills are a cost, and ulcer-surgery expenses can be dealt with by rationing. Let ‘em eat Maalox while they wait.
As someone in the business, Tigerhawk has been all over this issue:
We admit, we’re looking forward to the “I have breast implants, and I vote” bumper stickers.
In the end, the Democratic elite are using the excuse of health care reform to impose their own sense of aesthetics on American life.
Any way you look at it, the proposed tax is a calculated effort to divert capital from the medical technology industry to other uses in the economy, because new medical technology drives costs that are now going to be assumed by the government (or at least will be if the Senate leadership gets its way). Of course, innovative medtech also extends and saves lives, and makes them more comfortable and more productive. Which is, after all, the point of medicine.
* The tax will raise health care costs. It would be assessed against thousands of products ranging from eyeglasses to stethoscopes to a hospital beds to artificial heart valves to advanced diagnostic equipment. Such a tax would in turn increase costs for consumers, physician practices, hospitals, and patients.. While on paper it may help balance a Congressional Budget Office scorecard, the real effect will be to raise health care costs-exactly the opposite of a key goal of health reform.
* This tax is counterproductive and burdensome for patients. Much of this $40 billion tax will end up being passed on to patients, especially patients who are the sickest and need complex, high cost technology. It does not make sense to finance health reform by taxing the countless products necessary to treat every patient who walks through the doors of a physician’s office, hospital, or nursing home. Bearing the burden of illness is tough enough on patients and their families; but to financially penalize patients for their efforts to get better seems particularly wrong.
Not to mention his hilarious and cutting parody of the Jack Nicholson rant from “A Few Good Men”:
Senator, we live in a world that has patients, and those patients have to be treated with technology. Who’s gonna invent, develop it, and build it? You, Senator Sanders? You, Senator Reid? I have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You weep for high health care costs, and you curse new medical technology. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know. That new medical technology, while expensive, saves lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives. You don’t want the truth because deep down in places you don’t talk about in front of cameras or in committee hearings, you want me on that production line, you need me on that production line. We use words like innovation, quality, and safety. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent helping injured people. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and walks by virtue of the very medical technology that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a biomedical engineering degree, and get to work inventing better medical devices. Either way, I don’t give a damn what you think you are entitled to.
Imposing a huge new tax on medical devices in order to provide medical devices is crazy. Imposing a huge new tax on insurance in order to provide insurance is nuts. It would be like trying to feed people by imposing a grocery tax. Or employ people by a new tax on jobs–which this is also! This is “destroy the village to save the village”-territory.
It would be like trying to house people by passing a huge new tax on mortgages, which is essentially what the government did by forcing lenders to make NINJA loans: no income, no job, no assets– just Other Peoples’ Money. The result: the Socialized Mortgage Meltdown.
Shall we have a Socialized Medicine Meltdown, too?
Hey, taxers; leave those stents alone!
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