Whenever someone like me says, “You know, Government is too big, too expensive, and costs too much and we should take a hard look at the things Government does badly and remove Government from doing those things,” the inevitable response from the Progressive Left is, “So, you want to destroy the Government and live under Somalian warlords.” Because, obviously, there is no middle ground between gigantic Government with armies of bureaucrats invading every aspect of life and living in burned out cities under the control of warlords. (Which is also kind of what you get when you have unrestrained progressive left governance, but I digress.)

But anyway, one thing the progressive left insists on is that the Food and Drug Administration is absolutely essential because without it, corporations would poison our food and drugs because killing and sickening your customer base means only one thing… massive profits. (Progressives… really don’t get how business or economics works.)

But consider this: The FDA is a gigantic Government bureaucracy with monopolistic control over the USA’s supply of medicinal drugs. Here’s the death-count of people who died while waiting for FDA bureaucrats to approve drugs that had already been proven safe and effective.

• 40,000 people died of colo-rectal cancer while the FDA stalled approval of the drug Eloxatin.
• 179,000 people dead from cancer while FDA stalled approval of the drug Erbitux.
• 74,000 patients with terminal cancers died while FDA stalled approval of the drug Revlimid.
• 20,000 patients with kidney cancer while FDA stalled approval of the drugs Nexavar and Sutent
• 360,000 lung and colo-rectal cancer patients died while FDA stalled approval of the drug Avastin.
• 102,000 lung cancer patients died while FDA stalled approval of the drug Tarceva .
• 26,000 patients with non-Hodgkins lymphoma while FDA stalled approval of the drug Bexxar
• 249,000 lung cancer patients died while FDA stalled approval of the drug Alimta

It seems axiomatic that if a person is faced with a terminal illness, they and their physician should have access to any reasonably available treatment. Even if the drug doesn’t work, how would a terminal patient be any worse off for trying it. But the primary mission of any bureaucracy is to grow and perpetuate itself. The FDA doesn’t give a damn about cancer patients; it gives a damn about growing its workforce and its budget. Promptly approving cancer drugs does not achieve that objective.

The British National Health Service (which progressive leftists adore) and the European Human Rights Court (a lesser object of Progressive Left adoration) have sentenced a baby to death rather than allow his parents to take him to the USA for a potentially life saving treatment. Mainly in order to maintain the Supremacy of the State over all medical decisions.

The Good of the State > The Needs of the Individual.

I missed this last week, but here it is now. Study: Physically Weak Men More Likely To Be Socialists.

An academic study from researchers at Brunel University London assessed 171 men, looking at their height, weight, overall physical strength and bicep circumference, along with their views on redistribution of wealth and income inequality. The study, published in the Evolution and Human Behavior journal, ​found that weaker men were more likely to favor socialist policies than stronger men.

Brunel University’s Michael Price believes this may be a product of evolutionary psychology. “This is about our Stone Age brains, in a modern society,” said Dr. Price. “Our minds evolved in environments where strength was a big determinant of success. If you find yourself in a body not threatened by other males, if you feel you can win competitions for status, then maybe you start thinking inequality is pretty good.”

So, physical “haves” feel less threatened and enjoy inequality. In other words, they’re dumb jock bullies. That’s one interpretation. But it’s undermined by Brunel’s own evidence:

“When Dr Price factored in time spent in the gym some, but not all, of the link disappeared,” notes The Times, suggesting there may be something to men with capitalistic views hitting the gym.

[ILC stares at his shoelaces, wonders if he should cough] That strikes me as more truthful.

• Those who go to the gym, tend to be stronger.
• And they tend to understand the importance of health and strength in daily life: not only in appearing impressive to people, but in actually having more energy, being able to move more easily, having a reliable daily feeling of accomplishment and positive discipline, etc.
• And they tend to understand accountability for your own results. (Physical training teaches nothing, if not that.)
• From there, and at the risk of over-generalizing, they often drift into common-sense libertarian-conservative views, emphasizing personal responsibility.
• The process can also work in reverse: if you believe in personal responsibility, you may find yourself going “Hey, why don’t I hit the gym / get strong?”

At least that’s been my experience. I know some leftie gym buffs – again, you can’t over-generalize – but I live in a super-lefty area. (And the few who like MSNBC for real are always either women or weak, older men.) The percentage rate of being libertarian-conservative seems, to me, a bit higher among gym buffs than the general population. And the link is: philosophy of personal responsibility.

If you’d like to learn about strength training, a good place to start is www.startingstrength.com. (No affiliation.) They emphasize perfecting your “form” or technique to prevent injury. And that strength training is something for all people, of all ages. The leader, Mark Rippetoe, is sort of a gruff, dogmatic, ex-power-lifter – and I *think* he’s libertarian-minded, or at least anti-Hillary.

Talk to a leftie and you will often hear how wonderful Canadian health care is. “Why can’t we be like them?” Crowder did an expose of Canadian health care in 2009 that is still relevant:

Here’s the summary. Canadians pay huge taxes for “free”, “universal” health care. It makes people wait, and wait, and wait. Many people either give up altogether (and their condition gets worse), or go to a private clinic.

That’s how they reduce patients to a manageable number. Economics 101 teaches us that all goods must be rationed by one means or another, and “waiting” for people to quit the queue is how they ration Canada’s public health care.

From Crowder’s anecdotes it seems that Canadians, if they don’t quit, will wait usually about four times as long as Americans. For example, last year I went to an emergency room on a Sunday afternoon. It took 20 minutes to get the triage nurse’s attention, then another hour to see a doctor. In Crowder’s video, they visit a Canadian emergency room on a Sunday. It takes them about an hour and a half to see the triage nurse, and then 5+ hours to see a doctor (except they quit at the 4-hour mark).

Likewise, an acquaintance of mine recently needed a cancer surgery. He got it in weeks; in Canada it would have taken months. This is what Bernie and Hillary want to bring us to.

The House of Representatives narrowly passed the American Health Care Act last night which… actually doesn’t do whole lot, much less repeal Obamacare. Even if some version gets through the Democrat-Run/Republican Majority senate, it’s not going to fundamentally change the idea that the Government should run health care (into the ground).

Nevertheless; the Democrat Left is reacting as though their trust funds had just been taken over by Bernie Madoff:

DailyKos:House Republicans vote to sentence millions of Americans to death

Slate: The GOP’s passage of Trumpcare is one of the cruelest things the party has ever done.

Professional Hillary fanboy Peter Daou says that the AHCA “Literally saves money by having people die sooner. Diabolical.” Um… that’s exactly how your revered single payer systems in Britain and Canada work.

Democrat Media Operative Tavis Smiley seems to think the bill eliminates Medicare and Medicaid. “When health insurance is a commodity that only the rich can buy, poor people suffer and the elderly just die.”

Another member of Democrat leadership said passing the AHCA was an “act of terrorism.” I am not making this up.

All these histrionics (and more at the link) over a bill that barely touches the basic premise of Obamacare: the Government should run health care and force healthy people to pay for sick people who didn’t plan for getting sick.

The headline is Zero Hedge’s and it made me laugh, so I had to share it. 🙂

Not all that much to it.

• According to the Washington Times a couple years back, millions of kids stopped eating lunch after Michelle Obama, pursuing her signature issue, over-regulated school lunches and made them tasteless and unappealing.
• Recently, the Trump administration has begun to postpone or partly reverse her rules.

Paul Ryan’s American Health Care Act (AHCA) which was supposed to “repeal and replace” Obamacare did this earlier today. It’s hard to find an objective, non-political analysis of the bill, so, we will make do with what Wikipedia said.

The act would allow states to continue to enroll persons in the ACA Medicaid expansion through January 1, 2020, and would disallow further enrollment after that date. The AHCA will include age-based tax credits for those who earn less than $75,000, or $150,000 for joint filers. The bill would require insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions. The AHCA uses a standard of ‘continuous coverage’, defined by a 63-day coverage gap, where an individual who currently has insurance and is changing insurers will not pay a higher rate with their new insurer. Individuals who wish to buy insurance but are outside of the coverage gap will pay a 30 percent premium surcharge for one year and then return to standard rates. Both healthy and the sick are required to pay the surcharge.

IMHO, none of that sounds like an appeal of Obamacare.

The Republicans were proud that the bill would have replaced Centrally-Planned Medicaid with bloc grants to the states; which is a good idea on its own, but does nothing to address the cost drivers in Obamacare that have led to soaring premiums, outrageous deductibles, and rising expenses that have been called the Obamacare “Death Spiral.”

Moderate Republicans — who, contrary to left-wing propaganda make up the majority of the Republican caucus (only 30 of 237 congressional Republicans belong to the conservative Freedom Caucus) — balked at repealing the parts of Obamacare that were “popular,” i.e. the subsidies, the requirement for insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions, and the expansion of Medicaid in 31 states. (Supposedly, Medicaid subsidies for the expansion were to be phased out after a few years, but everyone knew this was a lie/budget gimmick to hide the cost.)

The requirement that insurance companies cover pre-existing conditions is a huge cost driver. It’s essentially saying that you can wreck your car, buy car insurance the next day, and have the insurance company buy you a new car.

The bill also did not address another significant cost-driver, the Essential Health Benefits part of Obamacare. This is the part wherein a bureaucrat at the Department of Health and Human Services forces me to buy a policy covering mastectomies, mammograms, maternity care, drug rehab, and sex reassignments even though I will never have any need of those things.

All right, then. So… according to the moderates and the Idiocracy we *have* to have expanded MedicAid coverage and we *have* to cover the pre-existing conditions of people who were too f–king irresponsible to buy health insurance.

OK, let me offer a Deplorable Proposal to solve that problem. 1. Everybody with a pre-existing conditions gets to go into Medicaid. #2. The Medicaid tax is tripled to cover all of those people and the people covered under the original expansion because, according to John Kasich, that’s what Jesus wanted us to do.

Yeah, I’m calling for a tax increase. No kidding. No fooling around. I’m serious.

If you’re going to virtue signal about how damn much you care about the poor, put some of your own damn skin in the game for once.

If we’re going to continue with this stupid idea that people have no personal responsibility for their own health care, then let’s go balls-to-the-wall, baby.

With Ryan’s Republicans introducing an Obamacare Repeal and Replace Retool and Rename bill, it’s useful to remember what Republicans have forgotten: The free market works when you let it work.

Art Villa found out, after one too many boating accidents, that he needed a total knee replacement, he began asking around to see how much it would cost. The hospital near his home in Helena, Mont., would charge $40,000 for the procedure, he says. But that didn’t include the anesthesiologist’s fee, physical therapy or a stay at a rehabilitation center afterward. A 2015 Blue Cross Blue Shield study found that one hospital in Dallas billed $16,772 for a knee replacement while another in the same area charged $61,585.

It was in the midst of this confounding research that Villa, who’s 68, heard about the Surgery Center of Oklahoma, whose business model is different from that of most hospitals. There, the all-inclusive price for every operation is listed on the website.

The Surgery Center would charge $19,000 for his whole-knee replacement, a discount of nearly 50% on what Villa expected to be charged at his local hospital [Actually, that’s more than 50%. 19K is less than half of 40K – V]. And that price would include everything from airfare to the organization’s only facility, in Oklahoma City, to medications and physical therapy.

Isn’t it amazing. When you cut out the layers and layers of bureaucracy (either at private insurance companies or in the Government), the cost of medical procedures drops by over fifty percent.

Now, if only someone could convince Donald Trump and the GOP Establishment of this.

I could never get my head around the idea of why so many people think it’s morally wrong to expect people to be responsible for their own health care.

A dude in the Netherlands has contracted HIV despite being on PReP.

During his first seven months in the study he averaged 56 anal sex partners per month and about 30 episodes of condomless sex a month. He averaged 16 days per month when he did have condomless sex and on those days averaged 3.7 partners.

“This PrEP user came to the study saying he had no doubt he would acquire HIV unless he went on PrEP,” said Dr Hoornenborg. “He was highly educated and knew exactly what the risks were but did not feel he was able to change his sexual risk pattern, so took action by applying for the study.”

He did have ‘chemsex’ and took mephedrone, GHB/GBL, ketamine, cocaine and amphetamine, and admitted to injecting ketamine twice but insisted he used sterile needles. He had two episodes of rectal gonorrhoea and one of rectal chlamydia in his first seven months on PreP.

OK, I’ll admit to being a little naive, but 56 partners a month? Is that a typical score in some segments of ‘The Community?’ Not to be a prude, but it seems like a lot to me. It also seems like it wouldn’t leave a lot of time for much else in your life if you’re doing so much… that.

Maybe I have to cross “Visit Antarctica” off my bucket list.

Antarctic adventurer Alex Brazier knew he was going to feel the cold – but it’s unlikely that he expected his nether regions would bear the brunt of it.

But two weeks into a three-month 1,100 mile trek, the explorer is suffering from a condition known as ‘ Polar Penis’ – making it very cold, painful and swollen.

I understand that you can also get this condition after hooking up with Ann Coulter.

Do you still think the Progressive Left isn’t feminizing the Culture?

As part of a study of 2,412 people (50pc men and 50pc women), male participants were asked if they frequently suffered the same common side effects of premenstrual syndrome (PMS) that women experience during their menstrual cycle, including tiredness, cramps and increased sensitivity.

And whilst 26 per cent of men revealed that they did experience these feelings on a regular basis, perhaps a more shocking statistic is that 58pc of their female partners believed them.

I believe the politically correct thing to do is to indulge their delusions and provide them with tampons, pints of ice cream, and reruns of HBO’s ‘Girls.’

Since 1983, FDA policy has prohibited taking blood from sexually active gay men in order to protect the blood supply from HIV contamination. The Obama Administration is recommending lifting this ban.

Is this wise? I’m not sure I have all the evidence at hand to support a conclusion, although it seems an odd change to be making at a time when infection rates for HIV and other STD’s are rising in homosexual populations. If you had to, would you guess that this change in policy is because A.) Rigorous scientific examination of the subject has determined that this policy change will result in a safer and more adequate blood supply or B.) Political Correctness?

The FDA recommends keeping restrictions in place for gay sex workers, people who have tested positive for the HIV, people who’ve been treated for syphilis and gonorrhea, and needle-drug users. The Human Rights Campaign, natch, objects to keeping these restrictions in place, saying they “stigmatize gay and bisexual men.”

Barack H. Obama, putting down the Bush administration for allegedly being unprepared for the avian flu:

Via Patterico.

UPDATE: Powerline points out Obama’s political desperation. He recently said this:

I actually believe that capitalism is the greatest force for prosperity and opportunity the world has ever known. And I believe in private enterprise — not government, but innovators and risk-takers and makers and doers — driving job creation.

It’s not that Obama is lying – there’s nothing new, in Obama lying about his own beliefs. It’s that he’s now lying to pretend some sort of admiration for capitalism. How are the mighty fallen! Remember him saying in better times how we’ve got to “spread the wealth around”? And wanting to tell business owners, “You didn’t build that!”

Apple, Facebook will pay for female employees to freeze their eggs:

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Apple Inc and Facebook Inc will help pay for female employees to freeze their eggs…

From January, Apple will pay both full- and part-time employees up to $20,000 for procedure and storage costs for female employees to freeze their eggs.

“We continue to expand our benefits for women, with a new extended maternity leave policy, along with cryopreservation and egg storage as part of our extensive support for infertility treatments,” Apple said in a statement.

I’m pretty sure that Apple already covered its employees’ *medical fertility problems*. (If that’s mistaken, please correct me in the comments.) Something else must be new here. What is it?

Could it be, a benefit for egg-freezing as a pure career move? Let’s see:

“We want to empower women at Apple to do the best work of their lives as they care for loved ones and raise their families.”

NBC News reported on Tuesday that Facebook recently began covering egg-freezing for non-medical reasons…

Egg freezing is a pricey but increasingly popular option for women. It enables women to delay child bearing…

A sign of the times. Now that Facebook/Apple woman can freeze her eggs at 30, work years of 80 hour weeks, and then at 50 when she’s pulling 300K a year (and naturally infertile), pay a surrogate to do that other part of her life for her – you know, having kids from her eggs.

Honestly, I see nothing wrong with it – if she’s doing it all with her own money. The issue I see here is, Apple and Facebook are choosing to engage in a form of discrimination against their employees who don’t make (or shall we say, don’t need to make) that particular, optional choice.

Remember, the money comes from somewhere: the overall “employee comp” budget. Rather than pay tens of thousands of dollars for a hugely *optional* procedure for a special category of employee, why would Facebook/Apple not raise all employees’ bonuses by (say) a thousand dollars? That would empower far more women (and men, and transgenders) and be much more fair.

The free market will (or should) ultimately decide if Apple and Facebook have done the right thing here. In the meantime, some people appear not to grasp that freezing your eggs – purely as a career move – is optional:

“Egg freezing gives women more control,” said Jennifer Tye, marketing lead for Glow, a mobile application aimed at helping women avoid pregnancy or conceive.

“When I turned 30, I had this notion that my biological clock was ticking, but I didn’t know what my options were,” said Tye.

Really? At 30, she didn’t know what her options were? I hope she was misquoted; if not, it’s mind-boggling stupidity.

Just like everything else…

Cue the Ebola Outbreak Theme Music… (I hear this in my head during every Ebola news story).

The CDC is now tracking at least 100 people who came into contact with the Ebola patient now being treated in Dallas. (BTW: Some influential African-American thought-leaders are claiming Ebola was genetically engineered to kill black people.)

Also, the Enterovirus that was almost certainly brought into this country by the illegal “Dreamers” Obama welcomed over the border has been traced to as many as 10 deaths. While another strain with polio-like complications has paralyzed dozens of American children.

The Obama Administration’s response has been to retain open borders with countries in which there are Ebola outbreaks with no travel restrictions.

BTW: Back in 2005, President Bush recommended tough measures to prevent pandemics in the event of outbreaks of serious diseases like Ebola and Enterovirus68. In 2010, Obama discarded all of those recommendations.

Political Correctness uber alles.

Update: The “Smahtest Preezident Evah!” can’t even pronounce the word “Ebola” properly.

Update (from Jeff): A Missouri doctor raises the alarm, saying the CDC is “sugar-coating” the true risk from Ebola, thus “lying”.

The Veteran’s Administration — cited by leftists as an ideal paradigm of Socialized Health Care — is in the midst of a scandal that is largely being ignored by the MFM because it would make President Obama, and indeed the entire enterprise of Government run health care look bad.

The broad outline of the scandal is like this. Bureaucrats at the VA medical center in Phoenix, Arizona allowed 40 patients to die while awaiting treatment. The bureaucrats kept a secret waiting list to cover up delays while a fake list was maintained for official purposes. Over 1,600 patients were kept waiting, some for over a year to get an appointment with a doctor. Hospitals in New Mexico, Texas, and Colorado apparently were doing the same thing. And apparently, the VA was also denying treatment and tests to patients to save money.

Meanwhile VA Bureaucrats spent $5oo Million on office makeovers and redecorating. Priorities, don’tcha know.

The Obama Administration has no interest in investigating the scandal. What a surprise.

So, the leftists were right; the VA is a paradigm for Government-run health care. Bureaucrats provide shoddy treatment while feathering their own nests, then they lie about it, and there is no accountability.

Anything the Government runs is going to be run primarily for the benefit of the bureaucracy; be it health care, welfare, or public education. Conservatives understand this.

Leftists just find a way to blame the Koch Brothers. (Not kidding, they actually did this.)

“Obamacare is working,” says the Preezy, and perhaps he is right.

If Obamacare was intended to cause millions of people to lose their health plans, it is working.

If Obamacare was intended to cause millions of people to have their work hours cut, it is working.

If Obamacare was intended to deny people access to top cancer treatment centers, it is working.

If Obamacare was intended to make health insurance much more expensive, it is working.

If Obamacare was intended to force people to spend more money for inferior coverage, it is working.

If Obamacare was intended to give convicted criminals access to people’s personal and financial information, it is working.

If Obamacare was intended to limit people’s choices of doctors and hospitals, it is working.

If Obamacare was intended to drive doctors out of business, it is working.

In Alabama, two dozen widow women have lost their health insurance due to Obamacare regulations. Which obviously must have been the intended result if, as the President says, “This thing is working.”

Commenter Throbert, who speaks Latin and Russian (I know this), suggested we ought to discuss this Truvada/PrEP thing. So… let’s discuss, won’t you?

Truvada was developed by evil capitalist pharmaceutical companies as a treatment for HIV; but if taken daily, it can reduce the risk of HIV infection among people having unprotected sex by 90%. The treatment costs over a thousand dollars a month. And, of course, a number of people think … much like Sandy Fluke’s party favors … the Government should pay for it, or force insurance companies to force those who don’t engage in unprotected secks to pay for it?

If you’re a Democrat/Progressive the answer is simple: “[Expletive] Yeah! The Government should pay for that/Force other people to pay for that!” Because Democrat/Progressives believe the Government should fund almost everything… the exceptions being the military and the Border Patrol. And if you disagree… you hate gay people and want to outlaw gay sex. Not only should PrEP be funded, but Christians should be forced by law to provide catering services to bathhouse orgies.

People thoughtful enough not to be Progressive Democrats may see more somewhat more complexity to the issue. One issue being the fact that everybody in the civilized world has known how to not get infected with HIV since 1984. If folks had universally adhered to the HIV-prevention guidance we’ve known about for thirty years, AIDS would be as rare (in the first world anyway) as an honest politician or an accurately predictive Global Warming model.

Even proponents of the drug admit that it’s not exactly… medically necessary.

“For folks who are having a significant amount of unprotected sex, it’s a slam dunk — not only giving them protective medicine, but engaging them in testing, a whole package of regular health care,” he said.

i.e. We’re not curing cancer here, we are talking about subsidizing a promiscuous lifestyle choice. It’s one thing to make that choice, quite a different thing to demand that others subsidize it.

“Personal responsibility for one’s actions has simply been thrown out the window in a community in which we are too often concerned about stigma and moral judgment,” he wrote. “We dare not speak against the reckless behavior of others because we wring our hands over the omnipresent worry that we will shame one another.”

Yup.

Some quick links.

• More LGBTQ harassment stories had to be recanted? Sadly, yes. One hoax by a teen in CA, another hoax by a teen in the UK.
• In more UK news, the BBC censors a LGBTQ question about free speech(!), lest homophobic Muslims be offended. America’s future?
• In more Islamic news, it appears that CODEPINK founder Medea Benjamin was harassed…by the police of a Muslim country’s airport jail. She was traveling to help the Palestinians, against liberal and highly-tolerant Israel. Ironic?
• Depressing: CDC warns that gonorrhea is on the verge of being untreatable.
• Something lighter: chicks have officially discovered the pastime of “groin gazing”. (cough)

Thanks to reader Peter H, for about half the items!

I do NOT recommend this guy‘s diet, but he claims to have lost 56 lbs and counting, eating all McDonald’s – all the time.

Get regular exercise and honestly limit your calorie intake, and you will moderate your weight…it’s math. (Or science; take your pick.)