Invite XI to the Whitehouse for a beer, but good God, a commie dictator at a Presidential inauguration?
You're not wrong there, but it's also not accurate to say it's THE driver for increased health care costs.
Price signals which work so well in the rest of the marketplace are skewed by healthcare regulation and regulatory compliance carries a huge cost. Take the role of "billing specialist" for one example. The one and only reason for the proliferation of that craft is to deal with Medicare and Medicaid requirements, which the health insurance companies all too happily require as well. With the blessings of the US congress as well as the state legislatures, they exist in a market closed to competition. Then there's regulatory capture and the revolving door between places like NIH/FDA and Phizer, GSK, Bayer, and all the rest.
Ever heard of a concierge medical practice? Average cost of annual membership is somewhere between $2000 and $5000. Not cheap. But you also generally get unlimited visits with your doc, and they actually take the time to sit down and discuss your concerns with you. In standard internal medicine practices, many of those docs need to see 40 or 50 patients per day to make their nut.
I've come to believe that most of the chronic issues people have are diet-related - food being another heavily regulated industry suffering from massive regulatory capture. Eat meat and greens to your heart's content; complex carbs sparingly; simple sugar and processed food not at all - to include ultra-processed seed and vegetable oils like canola, corn, saffron, and the like. Poly-unsaturated fats are just poison. Stick with animal fats like hog lard, beef tallow, butter, duck fat, bear lard, and mono-unsaturated fats like olive oil, coconut oil, and avocado oil. IOW, shop the outer edge of the grocery and skip the rest.
Since I went near total carnivore about 3 years ago, my HDL has gone up from about 45 to 74, my triglycerides are down from over 200 to 75, and LDL down from over 200 to 120, and I no longer need to take blood pressure meds; and I'm down from 265 to 225. My doc did a full body ultrasound on me last year, my pipes are as clean as a healthy 30 year old, and I was 55 at the time. My heart's ejection fraction is 72% - normal for men is 52 -72%. Since I gave up all the processed shit, my knees, hips, and shoulders rarely hurt anymore. I used to take a lot of daily ibuprofen for all of that. I don't remember the last time I had to take any for joint pain. I've had a torn labrum in one of my hips since HS. Even all the walking and crawling and what-not on my safari back in August didn't cause me any discomfort. The acacia thorns tearing at my flesh are another matter.
Ever heard of the Warburg Effect (discovered nearly a century ago)? Most cancers require a steady stream of sugar for the purpose of fermentation, even when O2 is already abundant . When they grow cancer cells in vitro, many of them have to be bathed in insulin so they can absorb enough sugar, otherwise the cancer cells die.
People don't get Type II diabetes from a lifetime of abusing animal fat and protein, they get it from a lifetime of punishing their pancreas with a steady diet of sugar, causing all cells to become insulin resistant over time. Type II diabetes comes along with a number of other comorbidities - obesity, cardiovascular disease, generalized inflammation, metabolic syndrome, etc. Obesity is a non-trivial risk factor for quite a lot of cancers as well.
And of course, the answer for all of this from Big Medicine and Big Pharma is pills. And of course, they and Big Ag have a vested interest in NOT looking at the dietary angle on any of this.
Apologies, I didn't intend to turn this into a rant. Malpractice insurance is certainly a contributing factor to increased health care delivery costs, but it isn't a big one.
insiderpaper.com
...what a dick. No, that would make him part of a man! Ever dream about karate chopping him right in the pencil neck? Well, one can dream.....
I agree that we need the best technology in the air, and on the ground, however, hasn't the F-35 program been under fire for some time due to the cost?A few days ago the well known military expert Elon Musk opined that the F-35 was "obsolete" due to drones. Yesterday and today several papers are running with a story that Trump will cancel the program. Lockheed stock is down nearly 2% this morning and the rest of defense will also take a hit. The F-35 is in full rate production and is being purchased by several partner nations including Israel and most of NATO. There is not another fighter that can survive in the air against it unless perhaps a F-22. To date there are no operational fighter or fighter bomber drones. To cancel the program at this stage would be folly of an unimaginable scale on the belief that we can someday field a drone that can act as a fighter aircraft or fighter bomber. Meanwhile both China and Russia are fielding their first Gen 5 fighters which will outclass both the F-15 and F-16. Madness if true.
One of my worries about DOGE is its inability to actually affect structural change in any meaningful way or to touch the 3/4's of the budget dedicated to entitlement. Everyone inevitably is forced to turn to defense. Killing programs is always the one easy budget cut that can be made.
The B2 bomber is a good example. Billions go into research and development to create the aircraft over a decade, and just as it is going into production, the program is truncated to just 21 aircraft instead of the planned 132. Guess what that did to the cost per aircraft. Yet, those 21 have played a key role in every major airstrike carried in contested airspace for twenty years. None has ever been intercepted - likely never even acquired. But because we have so few, F-16's and F-17's have been used on deep penetration strikes for which they were not designed.
Another example is the Crusader artillery system. The first low rate production assemblies were being fabricated and the actual production plant was breaking ground in Oklahoma, when a brand new SECDEF, Donald Rumsfeld, decided to make a point that the country did not need to waste money on artillery when air power could provide all needed fire support. Within two years, that ignorant decision was costing lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. The US army is still operating a system that was first fielded in the fifties.
Elon Musk takes aim at Lockheed Martin’s F-35 as part of Trump’s efficiency efforts
Tesla and Space X’s Elon Musk is tasked with slashing federal spending as a co-leader of the new Department of Government Efficiency in Trump’s incoming...www.dallasnews.com
https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/worl...with-lockheed-martin-what-we-know/ar-AA1vHBV5
Elon Musk wants to ‘stop’ federal spending for Lockheed Martin’s F-35. Could that happen?
‘“I think that the biggest threat we’ve ever had to the plant exists now,’ said one North Texas federal lawmaker.news.yahoo.com
Lockheed has responded that it is fake news.
Lockheed Martin: NYP correspondent report on Trump's canceling F-35 contract ‘fake news’
New York Post correspondent Lydia Moynihan reported on X (formerly Twitter) that former President Donald Trump allegedly informed Lockheed Martin CEO Jim
Hopefully this is just another typical Trump conversation starter to get people thinking about unmanned fighters, bombers and or drones. I hope.A few days ago the well known military expert Elon Musk opined that the F-35 was "obsolete" due to drones. Yesterday and today several papers are running with a story that Trump will cancel the program. Lockheed stock is down nearly 2% this morning and the rest of defense will also take a hit. The F-35 is in full rate production and is being purchased by several partner nations including Israel and most of NATO. There is not another fighter that can survive in the air against it unless perhaps a F-22. To date there are no operational fighter or fighter bomber drones. To cancel the program at this stage would be folly of an unimaginable scale on the belief that we can someday field a drone that can act as a fighter aircraft or fighter bomber. Meanwhile both China and Russia are fielding their first Gen 5 fighters which will outclass both the F-15 and F-16. Madness if true.
One of my worries about DOGE is its inability to actually affect structural change in any meaningful way or to touch the 3/4's of the budget dedicated to entitlement. Everyone inevitably is forced to turn to defense. Killing programs is always the one easy budget cut that can be made.
The B2 bomber is a good example. Billions go into research and development to create the aircraft over a decade, and just as it is going into production, the program is truncated to just 21 aircraft instead of the planned 132. Guess what that did to the cost per aircraft. Yet, those 21 have played a key role in every major airstrike carried in contested airspace for twenty years. None has ever been intercepted - likely never even acquired.
Another example is the Crusader artillery system. The first low rate production assemblies were being fabricated and the actual production plant was breaking ground in Oklahoma, when a brand new SECDEF, Donald Rumsfeld, decided to make a point that the country did not need to waste money on artillery when air power could provide all needed fire support. Within two years, that ignorant decision was costing lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. The US army is still operating a system that was first fielded in the fifties.
Elon Musk takes aim at Lockheed Martin’s F-35 as part of Trump’s efficiency efforts
Tesla and Space X’s Elon Musk is tasked with slashing federal spending as a co-leader of the new Department of Government Efficiency in Trump’s incoming...www.dallasnews.com
https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/worl...with-lockheed-martin-what-we-know/ar-AA1vHBV5
Elon Musk wants to ‘stop’ federal spending for Lockheed Martin’s F-35. Could that happen?
‘“I think that the biggest threat we’ve ever had to the plant exists now,’ said one North Texas federal lawmaker.
Lockheed has responded that it is fake news.
Lockheed Martin: NYP correspondent report on Trump's canceling F-35 contract ‘fake news’
New York Post correspondent Lydia Moynihan reported on X (formerly Twitter) that former President Donald Trump allegedly informed Lockheed Martin CEO Jim
It was during development because congress kept extending the acquisition time-line. In fact they just did it again in the new appropriation yesterday. Drawing out production increases per unit costs for all the obvious reasons. It also means that the customer (USAF) has additional time in which to make changes and upgrades to requirements - which also adds cost.
A few days ago the well known military expert Elon Musk opined that the F-35 was "obsolete" due to drones. Yesterday and today several papers are running with a story that Trump will cancel the program. Lockheed stock is down nearly 2% this morning and the rest of defense will also take a hit. The F-35 is in full rate production and is being purchased by several partner nations including Israel and most of NATO. There is not another fighter that can survive in the air against it unless perhaps a F-22. To date there are no operational fighter or fighter bomber drones. To cancel the program at this stage would be folly of an unimaginable scale on the belief that we can someday field a drone that can act as a fighter aircraft or fighter bomber. Meanwhile both China and Russia are fielding their first Gen 5 fighters which will outclass both the F-15 and F-16. Madness if true.
One of my worries about DOGE is its inability to actually affect structural change in any meaningful way or to touch the 3/4's of the budget dedicated to entitlement. Everyone inevitably is forced to turn to defense. Killing programs is always the one easy budget cut that can be made.
The B2 bomber is a good example. Billions go into research and development to create the aircraft over a decade, and just as it is going into production, the program is truncated to just 21 aircraft instead of the planned 132. Guess what that did to the cost per aircraft. Yet, those 21 have played a key role in every major airstrike carried in contested airspace for twenty years. None has ever been intercepted - likely never even acquired. But because we have so few, F-16's and F-17's have been used on deep penetration strikes for which they were not designed.
Another example is the Crusader artillery system. The first low rate production assemblies were being fabricated and the actual production plant was breaking ground in Oklahoma, when a brand new SECDEF, Donald Rumsfeld, decided to make a point that the country did not need to waste money on artillery when air power could provide all needed fire support. Within two years, that ignorant decision was costing lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. The US army is still operating a system that was first fielded in the fifties.
Elon Musk takes aim at Lockheed Martin’s F-35 as part of Trump’s efficiency efforts
Tesla and Space X’s Elon Musk is tasked with slashing federal spending as a co-leader of the new Department of Government Efficiency in Trump’s incoming...www.dallasnews.com
https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/worl...with-lockheed-martin-what-we-know/ar-AA1vHBV5
Elon Musk wants to ‘stop’ federal spending for Lockheed Martin’s F-35. Could that happen?
‘“I think that the biggest threat we’ve ever had to the plant exists now,’ said one North Texas federal lawmaker.
Lockheed has responded that it is fake news.
Lockheed Martin: NYP correspondent report on Trump's canceling F-35 contract ‘fake news’
New York Post correspondent Lydia Moynihan reported on X (formerly Twitter) that former President Donald Trump allegedly informed Lockheed Martin CEO Jim
Years ago there were billboards in Corpus Christie, Tx asking everyone to consider who was paying for huge lawsuit awards--everyone! And that when the city was sued, services often had to be cut. So yeah, TORT reform is due.
And the next commercial is the newest miracle drug to lose weight, lower A1C and various other ailments.The problem - Ambulance chaser lawyers. Every commercial has at least one law firm stating how they can represent you and get you the most compensation. It's sickening.
The problem - Ambulance chaser lawyers. Every commercial has at least one law firm stating how they can represent you and get you the most compensation. It's sickening.
The problem - Ambulance chaser lawyers. Every commercial has at least one law firm stating how they can represent you and get you the most compensation. It's sickening.
