{"id":191906,"date":"2009-06-08T17:28:00","date_gmt":"2009-06-08T22:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/06\/08\/people-who-do-not-understand-that-they-are-really-stupid\/"},"modified":"2009-06-08T17:28:00","modified_gmt":"2009-06-08T22:28:00","slug":"people-who-do-not-understand-that-they-are-really-stupid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/06\/08\/people-who-do-not-understand-that-they-are-really-stupid\/","title":{"rendered":"People Who Do Not Understand that They Are Really Stupid"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/img248.imageshack.us\/img248\/6268\/polarbearohno8292171.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/img248.imageshack.us\/img248\/6268\/polarbearohno8292171.jpg\" style=\"margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;\"; width=\"300\" \/><\/a>Yeah, the <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">New York Times<\/span> is on a real roll.<\/p>\n<p>In an article on plans going through congress about fixing the US healthcare system, reporter Kevin Sack <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/06\/07\/health\/policy\/07plan.html?_r=1\">delivers this bon mot<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\"><p>But critics argue that with low administrative costs and no need to produce profits, a public plan will start with an unfair pricing advantage. They say that if a public plan is allowed to pay doctors and hospitals at levels comparable to Medicare\u2019s, which are substantially below commercial insurance rates, it could <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">set premiums so low it would quickly consume the market.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(<span style=\"font-style: italic;\">emphasis mine<\/span>)<\/p>\n<p>Ummm&#8230;.Let me get this straight, the knock on a public option is that it will be <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">too<\/span> efficient?<\/p>\n<p>The <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">costs will be too low<\/span>!!!!  And the <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">service will be too good<\/span>!!!!<\/p>\n<p>Horrors.<\/p>\n<p>Dude, that&#8217;s the point.  <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Private insurance has utterly failed<\/span>!!!!  Unless you have them compete against something <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">better<\/span>, they will stay crappy.<\/p>\n<p>I have an idea, how about we start <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">requiring<\/span> PCB&#8217;s in tap water, because it unfairly competes with bottled water.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yeah, the New York Times is on a real roll. In an article on plans going through congress about fixing the US healthcare system, reporter Kevin Sack delivers this bon mot: But critics argue that with low administrative costs and no need to produce profits, a public plan will start with an unfair pricing advantage. &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[974,1064,982,979],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-191906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hack-journalism","category-media","category-stupid","category-wanker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191906"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191906\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}