WHY CONSERVATIVES HAVE LOST

One of the leading and realistic spokesmen for the conservative movement isn’t the blowhard Rush Limbaugh or his idiot cousin Sean Hannity but the “distinguished” moron Charles Krauthammer. Chuck is a columnist for the Washington Post Writers Group and has the onerous responsibility of representing the conservative point-of-view. Apparently he makes a decent living spouting any nonsense that appeals to the ignorant masses. So, in order to collect his check, he defends the conservative point-of-view at any cost and will lie like a rug to convince anybody near brain death that there’s some validity in the conservative philosophy.

A recent column of his (read it yourself) makes the idiotic “point” that prevention is even more costly then simply letting people suffer or die. In his opinion column he sites like thinking idiots that preventive medicine will in no way save any money and will actually cost more. I’m going to rip him a “new one” and I certainly hope you have enough functioning brain cells to realize how stupid he actually is. I’m using the word “stupid” because if he actually believes what he says he clearly is an idiot. It’s crap like this that is making health care reform totally impossible. So, here are the indisputable facts:

1) Quote from the column: “The idea that prevention is somehow intrinsically economically different from treatment — that treatment increases costs and prevention lowers them — is simply nonsense.” This statement of his is clearly nonsense. That, or the moron has never heard of (or understands) the concept of vaccinations. Polio has been completely wiped out (he’s obviously too stupid to understand what the Salk vaccine accomplished). Nor does he have the common sense to understand what your annual flu vaccination does. Currently the CDC is feverishly working on a vaccination for the Swine flu. Regardless of how you feel about the coming “threat” getting a shot that will preventive you from becoming infected and spending money on over-the-counter medications to relieve your symptoms and the lost time at work don’t factor in to the obvious costs of being ill. No, (and this is sarcasm for all you die-hard Conservatives) preventing hundreds of thousands of people from contracting the flu and developing further complications is clearly a waste of money.
2) Not vaccinating the general population from something as “simple” as the flu would result in billions (if not trillions) of dollars being spent on treatment and the dreaded “lost time” that conservatives love. What could this idiot possibly be thinking?
3) Again, he quotes an equally moronic “authority”, CBO Director Doug Elmendorf who says.” "Researchers who have examined the effects of preventive care generally find that the added costs of widespread use of preventive services tend to exceed the savings from averted illness." The idiot (and I mean the idiot Elmendorf) adds “we don't know in advance which patients are going to develop costly illnesses.” Really? No kidding? Gee if only we did know in advance which patients would develop costly illnesses! I got an idea…why don’t we test them!
4) I was just in for a physical and the doctor tested my blood pressure, my lung capacity, and gave me an EKG. So far so good. Everything’s fine. I could relate the story of a friend of mine who went in for the exact same tests and much to his surprise he found that he had suffered two major heart attacks in the recent past (no, he didn’t realize that. It happens.) His doctor immediately admitted him to the hospital and he had a triple by-pass that saved his life. And, it also eliminated all the potential expenses related to his having a third attack. True, it would have been more cost effective if the first one would have killed him. Sorry about Conservatives.

The whole point of Krauthammer’s ranting is that he’s attacking one of the proposed features of health care reform. Preventive health measures would reduce medical costs in the long run. That seems pretty odd considering insurance companies that provide health care for a profit routinely approve any number of tests recommended by a physician. Whether you or Chuck realizes it or not, if you’ve been to a doctor you’ve been checked for high blood pressure, diabetes, heart and lung damage, and probably a lot of stuff I’m not aware of. And I’ll just through vaccinations in here just to rub Chuck and Doug’s faces in it one more time.

I’m supposed to schedule myself for a colonoscopy. Yeah, I’m putting that off but I’ve decided to schedule one. It’s a standard test guys my age are supposed to get. And my doctor who doesn’t have any overt political affiliation that I know of and actually understands medicine informed me that it’s one of the few ways a cancer can not only be detected early but totally prevented. Obviously my insurance company agrees with him but for a different reason. I have no idea what a colonoscopy costs but my insurer sure does. And they know that the aggregate cost of early detection is more cost effective then shelling out even more money for treatment. Chuck probably hasn’t had one since his head seems to be up there most of the time.

I’m pretty sure, without “researching” the cost of every conceivable test to be administered to every citizen, that the cost of such tests would exceed the cost of treatment. But, I have a solution for that little “sticking” point: as the other idiot (Elmendorf) said, we just don’t know who would benefit from what test if we blindly administered them to everyone. That being the case, why don’t we get a bunch of highly trained, highly skilled people to examine individuals and recommend the appropriate tests. You know, people like doctors!

The entire point of the foolish column was to argue against the case that improved health care would save money by preventing major illnesses. So-called “researchers” have done the work and declared it to be so. Well, those guys can skew (i.e. “lie”) the numbers anyway they want. The guys that depend on accurate, profit making research (i.e. “the insurance companies”) have already done the work and have determined that it’s better to give the tests and vaccinations rather treat the illness, even if they don’t know in advance who’ll get sick.

Billions (oh hell, let’s say “trillions” since that seems to have more impact) have already been saved on preventive health care measures. Even the insurance companies agree with that and that’s their business. You can be sure if a columnist from say “The Washington Post” develops any kind of symptom he’ll be expecting a full battery of tests to determine the cause. After all, diagnostic medicine isn’t part of his job description. Pandering to mindless followers with any kind of drivel that can get him noticed is.