• Menu
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Before Header

  • About Us
  • Lexicon
  • Contact Us
  • Our Store
  • ↑
  • ↓
  • ←
  • →

Balloon Juice

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Since we are repeating ourselves, let me just say fuck that.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

There are more Russians standing up to Putin than Republicans.

There are a lot more evil idiots than evil geniuses.

The only way through is to slog through the muck one step at at time.

Giving in to doom is how authoritarians win.

America is going up in flames. The NYTimes fawns over MAGA celebrities. No longer a real newspaper.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.

The republican ‘Pastor’ of the House is an odious authoritarian little creep.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

We’re watching the self-immolation of the leading world power on a level unprecedented in human history.

’Where will you hide, Roberts, the laws all being flat?’

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

We can’t confuse what’s necessary to win elections with the policies that we want to implement when we do.

This fight is for everything.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

Mobile Menu

  • Seattle Meet-up Post
  • 2025 Activism
  • Targeted Political Fundraising
  • Donate with Venmo, Zelle & PayPal
  • Site Feedback
  • War in Ukraine
  • Submit Photos to On the Road
  • Politics
  • On The Road
  • Open Threads
  • Topics
  • COVID-19
  • Authors
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Lexicon
  • Our Store
  • Politics
  • Open Threads
  • 2025 Activism
  • Garden Chats
  • On The Road
  • Targeted Fundraising!
You are here: Home / Politics / Republican Stupidity / The Sick Mindset of the Welfare State

The Sick Mindset of the Welfare State

by John Cole|  November 30, 20037:08 pm| 27 Comments

This post is in: Republican Stupidity

FacebookTweetEmail

Maybe Republicans, after passing this obscene Prescription Drug Vote Buying Scheme, will begin to understand that they were right all along about the Welfare state. Buying votes through permanent entitlements is a really shitty idea, and it is not helpful for anyone. Check out the sick state of mind as presented in the NY Times:

But Ernest D. DeBlasis, 73, echoed the view of many when he said the new coverage “amounts to peanuts.”

“It’s not going to help me,” said Mr. DeBlasis, who spends half the year here and half in Marlboro, N.J., where he was an architect. “Let’s hope Congress revises this thing before it takes effect in 2006…”

Joseph S. Shapiro, 89, out for his morning stroll on the boardwalk, said: “People have to pray that they get very ill. If you are in semi-bad shape, you get very little or nothing from the new Medicare bill..”

Of the new drug benefit, Mr. Forzese said: “I don’t expect to get much out of it. I don’t think it will help unless I really get sick and need a lot of medicines.”

The Greatest Generation speaks- they want a free ride.

FacebookTweetEmail
Previous Post: « 4,946 to Go
Next Post: Miserable Failure Update »

Reader Interactions

27Comments

  1. 1.

    Emperor Misha I

    November 30, 2003 at 8:08 pm

    Euthanasia, anyone?

    I’m slowly beginning to be for it.

  2. 2.

    Terry

    November 30, 2003 at 9:06 pm

    Didn’t a former governor of Colorado say something to the effect that “it was the duty of the sick and infirm to die.” I think he was even a Democrat.

  3. 3.

    Kimmitt

    December 1, 2003 at 12:47 am

    Social Security and Medicare make it possible for my grandfather to live independently and with dignity at the age of 73. I pay my payroll taxes happily, secure in the knowledge that they are going to millions of good causes just like grandpa.

  4. 4.

    JC

    December 1, 2003 at 1:37 am

    Ah, I just love it when the right takes off the compassion mask.

  5. 5.

    Emperor Misha I

    December 1, 2003 at 3:16 am

    Bull shit, JC.

    You hand somebody a $400 billion free ride (which we all know is going to turn into a trillion at least before we’re done), and they turn around and call it “peanuts”?

    Pardon me for being cold, but that kind of ingrate is no more deserving of my compassion than a garden slug.

  6. 6.

    JKC

    December 1, 2003 at 11:15 am

    Misha-

    I agree that the bill stinks, but what do you suggest as an alternative? Euthanasia isn’t going to sell well…

  7. 7.

    Slartibartfast

    December 1, 2003 at 12:04 pm

    I’m pretty sure we weren’t euthanizing people BEFORE prescription drug welfare. Just a hunch.

  8. 8.

    JKC

    December 1, 2003 at 12:45 pm

    The problem is that Medicare was set up in an era where there weren’t any of the “wonder drugs” now available, and the reimbursement scheme paid for surgery and other specific treatments, because that’s what doctors did. There was no such thing as effective medical management of high cholesterol, hypertension or coronary artery disease, just to give a few examples. (Screenings are not covered under Medicare, with a few exceptions.)

    Add to that an extremely greedy pharmaceutical industry*, and an easily-bought Congress et voila: the current mess.

    *Please spare me the whining about R&D costs. That used to be true, but now Big Pharma spends more on marketing than anything else.

  9. 9.

    Slartibartfast

    December 1, 2003 at 12:53 pm

    Well, bad on the pharmaceuticals industry for coming up with wonderdrugs. Bastards. They should just stick to making aspirin.

  10. 10.

    JKC

    December 1, 2003 at 4:10 pm

    Slarti-

    Nobody (reasonable) faults the drug companies for helping to keep people alive & healthy. I’m also happy to see drug companies recoup their R&D costs and reward their shareholders.

    I’m not happy about Americans paying higher drug costs than anyone else in the West so that we can be subjected to a barrage of “ask your doctor about…” ads on TV.

    The problem with the Medicare bill isn’t a prescription drug benefit per se. It’s the lack of cost controls (as pointed out by John) and the fact that the bill contains more pork than an Oscar Meyer processing plant.

  11. 11.

    Slartibartfast

    December 1, 2003 at 4:36 pm

    Wait…so, you think the government ought to be involved in cost controls within industry? As in regulation of pharmaceuticals industry?

    Oops, I used the R-word. Penalty box?

  12. 12.

    JKC

    December 1, 2003 at 4:41 pm

    Slarti-

    If the government is going to pay for prescription drugs, it seems to me they have a right to negotiate favorable prices, just as private insurers do. The current bill forbids that.

  13. 13.

    Slartibartfast

    December 1, 2003 at 4:49 pm

    Ah, it’s a problem with the premise; the part that goes “If the government is going to pay for prescription drugs…”. I don’t particularly think the government OUGHT to be helping people buy their drugs. I definitely don’t think people who’re retired and don’t need it should be the recipients of the largesse of you and I via the government.

    See, I think the government paying for prescription drugs is nearly a guarantee that the prices will be higher than they’d otherwise be. For one thing, we’re going to see a rather extended brouhaha over whether people covered under some government prescription drug program gets to decide whether or not to buy generic. For another, I think you’re going to inevitably see kickbacks to doctors who’re willing to write bogus prescriptions in exchange for cash.

    In short, the program itself will have to be regulated.

  14. 14.

    Emperor Misha I

    December 1, 2003 at 7:39 pm

    I agree that the bill stinks, but what do you suggest as an alternative? Euthanasia isn’t going to sell well…

    I agree on both counts, JKC. The “euthanasia” comment was, obviously, aimed at the bleeding ingrate quoted in the post, not a general policy suggestion on my part.

    Now, as to other suggestions – yes, I DO, actually have one. How about keeping the government’s slimy, incompetent, overpaid, bureaucratic, hopelessly inefficient tentacles out of my wallet altogether?

  15. 15.

    JKC

    December 1, 2003 at 8:21 pm

    Misha, I know I won’t change your mind, but consider this article in the New England Journal of Medicine.

    “In 1999, health administration costs totaled at least $294.3 billion in the United States, or $1,059 per capita, as compared with $307 per capita in Canada. After exclusions, administration accounted for 31.0 percent of health care expenditures in the United States and 16.7 percent of health care expenditures in Canada. Canada’s national health insurance program had overhead of 1.3 percent; the overhead among Canada’s private insurers was higher than that in the United States (13.2 percent vs. 11.7 percent). Providers’ administrative costs were far lower in Canada.”

    BTW: the complete text of the same article (not available on-line) states this:

    Overhead cost of American private health insurance: 11.7%

    Overhead cost of Medicare: 3.6%

    I respect your belief that government shouldn’t help with health care, even if I disagree with you. But the old nostrum that somehow government is always “inefficient” needs to be put to rest.

  16. 16.

    TM Lutas

    December 1, 2003 at 9:29 pm

    jkc – The dirty secret is that the canadian system is incompetent and dangerous to those trapped in it. It delays care and there is a steady stream of people going south of the border for treatment in the US. Often, it’s US medicine that’s saving canadian lives.

    If we go the route of Canada, where will we go when the US starts having dangerously long treatment delays, Mexico? Not quite the same thing.

  17. 17.

    JKC

    December 1, 2003 at 9:34 pm

    Yawn, TM. The problem with the CAnadian system is that it’s underfunded. (Hint: ask yourself who has the bigger economy- the US or Canada.)

    Your argument also fails to refute that the fact that while Canada may spend less, more of the money goes to patient care, as opposed to useless private-sector bureaucrats.

  18. 18.

    Random Numbers

    December 2, 2003 at 2:55 am

    I’m afraid the overhaed costs of Medicare are higher than the report indicates, JKC. The article in question fails to account for filing and compliance costs not engaged by fedral employees. The private insurance overhead estimate includes costs of compliance but the medicare overhead estimate doesn’t.

    Try again with honest figures next time.

  19. 19.

    Random Numbers

    December 2, 2003 at 3:46 am

    Drat! I hhate typos!

  20. 20.

    JKC

    December 2, 2003 at 9:04 am

    Random-

    I’m not good enough with statistics to clarify that. I assumed that the NEJM was fairly even-handed: it’s not like I sourced Buzzflash here.

    Do you have a better link?

  21. 21.

    TM Lutas

    December 2, 2003 at 2:20 pm

    If the Canadian system is underfunded to provide good coverage whose fault is that? You can often get good results from a bad system if you throw enough money at it. The last I heard, Canadians weren’t similarly disadvantaged in their housing, transportation, and food budgets as they are in quality of medical care. Maybe it’s because these other features of canadian life are dominated by the private, and not the public, sector.

  22. 22.

    Kimmitt

    December 2, 2003 at 2:37 pm

    Nobody’s happy with their health care system, and no health care system really does what we think it ought to. This is a call for further experimentation and close examination of the Dr. Dynasaur program in Vermont, which was an interesting public/private hybrid.

  23. 23.

    Emperor Misha I

    December 2, 2003 at 3:18 pm

    JKC: All very nice but, without even touching upon how famously good government-run institutions are at cooking their numbers, it’s still beside the point.

    I’m sure you’ll agree that Somalian healtcare would be a step down for us, yet I’m sure that their overhead is absolutely awe-inspiring compared to ours.

    Yes, I know, it’s an extreme example, but the essence is the same: Canadian CommieCare doesn’t work, so it doesn’t really matter how cheaply they can make it not work.

    Which would you rather do? Spend $40,000 on an Infiniti that runs or spend $15,000 on a Trabant that never leaves the lot?

    If somebody could find a government-run system that delivers a product as well as ours and STILL does it cheaper, I might sit up and listen, but that’s not likely to ever happen.

    And Kimmitt: I’ve heard the “OK, so maybe sawdust doesn’t make for good bread, but why don’t we try it with just a LITTLE bit of sawdust this time?”

    I’ve seen all I want to ever see of socialism and the abject failure that it always is, thank you very much, so don’t expect me to ever cheer on yet another “let’s try it, just ONCE more! It’ll work THIS time, we PROMISE!”

  24. 24.

    JKC

    December 2, 2003 at 4:35 pm

    Misha-

    The problem in the US (and the rest of the West) is that we want that Lexus, but we’re only willing to pay Hyundai prices for it. And we’d better not have to wait for it, either.

    Of course, if “CommieCAre” as you describe it, were so inferior, Canada and the EU would have shorter life expectancies and higher infant mortality rates than the US. Too bad that’s not the case…

  25. 25.

    Emperor Misha I

    December 2, 2003 at 6:01 pm

    If you think you can measure every aspect of Quality of Care by looking at infant mortality and life expectancies, then you have a simpler world view than I.

    But what do I know?

    I only worked for years in a socialist healthcare system.

  26. 26.

    Emperor Misha I

    December 2, 2003 at 6:03 pm

    Oh, and as to the first point: We already HAVE that Lexus, and I’d like to keep it, thankyouverymuchly.

    Everybody else who wants one as well had better line up and work for it, because I’m not paying for their free ride.

Comments are closed.

Trackbacks

  1. Matthew J. Stinson | weblog says:
    November 30, 2003 at 9:19 pm

    Fighting the deficit monster

    In a Washington Post editorial (cited by Matthew Yglesias and Julian Sanchez), Cato’s David Boaz castigates the President for betraying the principles of fiscal conservatism. I’m with him in lamenting the rise of nondefense/nonsecurity discretionary sp…

Primary Sidebar

On The Road - Albatrossity - Serengeti Day 2, Round 3 9
Image by Albatrossity (6/12/25)

PA Supreme Court At Risk

We did it!

We raised the 25,000 for The Civics Center, and with the external matches, that gives them $60,000 for this Spring effort!

You guys rock!

Recent Comments

  • prostratedragon on Well, This is Fucking Horrifying (Jun 13, 2025 @ 2:24am)
  • No One of Consequence on Well, This is Fucking Horrifying (Jun 13, 2025 @ 2:20am)
  • columbusqueen on Thursday Night Open Thread (Jun 13, 2025 @ 2:00am)
  • Bruce K in ATH-GR on Well, This is Fucking Horrifying (Jun 13, 2025 @ 1:59am)
  • prostratedragon on Well, This is Fucking Horrifying (Jun 13, 2025 @ 1:58am)

Balloon Juice Posts

View by Topic
View by Author
View by Month & Year
View by Past Author

Featuring

Medium Cool
Artists in Our Midst
Authors in Our Midst
War in Ukraine
Donate to Razom for Ukraine

🎈Keep Balloon Juice Ad Free

Become a Balloon Juice Patreon
Donate with Venmo, Zelle or PayPal

Calling All Jackals

Site Feedback
Nominate a Rotating Tag
Submit Photos to On the Road
Balloon Juice Anniversary (All Links)
Balloon Juice Anniversary (All Posts)
Fix Nyms with Apostrophes

Social Media

Balloon Juice
WaterGirl
TaMara
John Cole
DougJ (aka NYT Pitchbot)
Betty Cracker
Tom Levenson
David Anderson
Major Major Major Major
DougJ NYT Pitchbot
mistermix

Keeping Track

Legal Challenges (Lawfare)
Republicans Fleeing Town Halls (TPM)
21 Letters (to Borrow or Steal)
Search Donations from a Brand

Site Footer

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

  • Facebook
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • Comment Policy
  • Our Authors
  • Blogroll
  • Our Artists
  • Privacy Policy

Copyright © 2025 Dev Balloon Juice · All Rights Reserved · Powered by BizBudding Inc

Share this ArticleLike this article? Email it to a friend!

Email sent!