let me get this straight

cross-posted at dKos
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From Michelle Malkin’s blog

The most buzzworthy story on the right side of the blogosphere this weekend concerned young Graeme Frost… propped up by Democrats desperate to avert the president’s veto of S-CHIP legislation, which would have massively expanded the government health care entitlement.

It appears that Ms. Malkin is concerned about massively expanding the government’s health care entitlement. So I’m pretty sure that Ms. Malkin simply wants to make sure that our taxes dollars are not diverted to something so mundane and middle class as health care. I’m pretty sure she just wants to protect the worthy entitlement programs described below the fold…

Pharmaceutical companies have been systematically overcharging federal health care programs, costing taxpayers billions of dollars, according to federal officials, members of Congress and an advocacy group, the Newhouse News/Richmond Times-Dispatch reports.

… Sun Microsystems had overbilled the government millions of dollars by failing to offer the same discounts it provided to commercial customers. GSA officials disagreed, and moved to renew the contract.

In 2001, auditors found that GSA contracting officials failed in 10 of 11 price negotiations to secure the best deals for photocopiers largely because they “too readily accepted vendors’ unsubstantiated or inaccurate information.” Auditors put the cost to taxpayers at $195 million.

The Social Security and Medicare Trustees, a majority of whom are members of the President’s cabinet, project that the Social Security shortfall will amount to 0.65 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (the basic measure of the size of the U.S. economy) over the next 75 years.

In dollar terms, the Trustees project the shortfall over the 75 year period at $3.7 trillion.[1] The Trustees also project the cost of the Medicare drug benefit at 1.4 percent of GDP, or $8.1 trillion, over the same period.  This is at least double the size of the Social Security shortfall.

Furthermore, the cost of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, if made permanent, is 1.95 percent of GDP, or $11.1 trillion, over the same period, or triple the size of the Social Security shortfall.  (This projection of 1.95 percent of GDP is based on cost estimates by the Congressional Budget Office and the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation.  It is similar to, but slightly smaller than, the projections of the long-term cost of the tax cuts made by economists Alan Auerbach, William Gale, and Peter Orszag.[2])

  Because with Iraq at 1/2 a trillion and counting,
  I just wanted to make sure I got it straight.
  Ms. Malkin’s priorities, that is.

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Cost of the War in Iraq
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23 comments

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    • pfiore8 on October 11, 2007 at 15:08
      Author

    for our money…

  1. Yesterday – grumpy. Today – …

    After being wakened last night around midnight, decided to check out more on this story.

    Big mistake.

    Here’s the Baltimore Sun story on the Frosts.

    This morning, I find myself as discouraged as I’ve been in years. Our political opponents – well I find it difficult to explain how overwhelmed I feel over the task at hand when I read how far away they have strayed from what I would consider common decency.

    And there are so many of them.

    I’m so fucking over it. All of it.

  2. Interesting tidbit floating around in the blogosphere this morning thanks to Ezra Klein:

    Guess the Author

    A typical experience with the individual health care market:

    I have commented before on the problems with central planning in health care. I certainly am not convinced that a government-run system is the answer, but I do agree with Krugman that there are serious problems with our health insurance system, particularly in the market for individually-purchased (non-group) coverage.

    After my husband quit his job earlier this year (to become a full-time stay-at-home dad), we had a choice. We could either buy health insurance from his former employer through a program called COBRA at a cost of more than $1,000 per month(!) or we could go it alone in Maryland’s individual market. Given our financial circumstances, that “choice” wasn’t much of a choice at all. We had to go on our own.

    We discovered that the most generous plans in Maryland’s individual market cost $700 per month yet provide no more than $1,500 per year of prescription drug coverage-a drop in the bucket if someone in our family were to be diagnosed with a serious illness.

    With health insurance choices like that, no wonder so many people opt to go uninsured.

    The mystery writer? Michelle Malkin. As I’ve said before, if a neoconservative is a liberal who got mugged, and progressive is a Republican who got sick. Well, a Republican who got sick, but whose livelihood isn’t dependent on generating an unending stream of outrage for a hardcore conservative audience. But can you really believe that the Michelle Malkin who wrote those paragraphs is the same one inveighing against subsidized health care for children of low-income, self-employed parents?

  3. of the Republican debate the other night and one of them (can’t recall who) was talking about needing to control spending.  He said people are always coming up to me and asking for bridges and hospitals, but I say we need to shut more of those down, like they do with military bases. 

    And off went the TV.

    Are you allowed to not pay your taxes because it’s being stolen by idiots?

  4. The most buzzworthy story on the right side of the blogosphere this weekend concerned young Graeme Frost… propped up by Democrats desperate to avert the president’s veto of S-CHIP legislation, which would have massively expanded the government health care entitlement.

    From mishima’s “Saturday Morining News For Oct. 13 (4th story):

    Children’s Health Coverage ShowdownDemocrats ratcheted up the pressure against Republicans this past week in a bid to override President Bush’s veto of a $35 billion increase in government-subsidized children’s health coverage.

    Conservatives oppose the broad expansion of a program that subsidizes health insurance for millions of people because they claim it could lead to government-run health care. But many Republicans are worried about the political fallout from voting against a popular health-insurance program that covers mostly low-income children. Some 20 House Republicans who have opposed the expansion now face a $1.5 million advertising blitz from liberal activists and labor unions in their home districts.

    My reply (I stole your title :)):

    Let me get this straight

    Democrats ratcheted up the pressure against Republicans this past week in a bid to override President Bush’s veto of a $35 billion increase in government-subsidized children’s health coverage.

    Everyone knows the dems can’t do anything without a super-majority.

    Oh, this is about health insurance for children, not our soldiers being killed everyday.  Now I get it.

    Thanks for the great posting.

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