GOVEROTRAGEOUS: Taxing Hospitals? Stupid is as stupid does!

Saturday, January 6, 2018

FROM BEHIND THE WSJ PAYWALL

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Why Tax Hospitals?

It’s a Medicaid Shell GameProviders pay the state. The state pays providers, then collects matching funds from Uncle Sam.

By Red JahnckeDec. 29, 2017 5:22 p.m. ET

When Connecticut faced a budget shortfall of $2.2 billion, or 11%, this year, it helped close the gap by almost doubling its tax on hospitals, to $900 million. Taxing hospitals sounds strange, especially since most are nonprofits. It also would seem to increase their costs and, thus, the cost of care—much of which, thanks to Medicaid, is borne by the state that levies the tax.

Yet 42 states tax hospitals. Why? One answer is the perverse incentives built into the Medicaid law. When a state returns tax money to hospitals through Medicaid “supplemental payments,” it qualifies for matching funds from Washington.

Connecticut hospitals will pay $900 million in taxes, but the state will offset that with $600 million in supplemental Medicaid payments—matched with $450 million of federal funds. The state keeps those matching funds, plus the $300 million from the hospital tax, meaning Hartford comes out ahead in the whole scheme by $750 million. Nice work if you can get it.

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Oh come on. Hope DJT45 shuts this stupidity down immediately. 

When you consider all the costs of “handling” this money from one Gooferment pocket to another, the Taxpayers are really getting screwed.

By “handling” I mean, the “loss” at each level of Gooferment that passes Taxpayer money to another level of Gooferment. I’ve seen calculations that estimate it at 50%. So a CT Taxpayer sends the “Federal” Gooferment a dollar, from which then the “Federal” Gooferment send the “Connecticut” Gooferment fifty cents. The CT Taxpayer would be better off just allowing the “Connecticut” Gooferment to steal the fifty cents directly. Argh! 

Why can’t “We, The Sheeple” see that?

Argh!

So if the “Connecticut” Gooferment steals 450M$ from the “Federal” Gooferment, then the “Federal” Gooferment has to steal 900M$ from everyone paying taxes. Mutliply that by 50 States and who knows what else and that’s a lot of <synonym for the act of procreation in real time> money.

Argh!

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RANT: I love all Heinlein’s work!!!!

Friday, January 5, 2018

http://ncc-1776.org/tle2017/tle952-20171210-02.html

It’s Time For a City On the Moon by L. Neil Smith lneil@netzero.com

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In his wonderful, life-changing novel that he called The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, the late, great science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein (he also wrote Stranger in a Strange Land and The Puppet Masters) demonstrated the vital importance to national security (or just good old-fashioned peace, freedom, and prosperity) of an established American presence on the Moon. In that book, he had a culture of lovable convicts and exiles declare their independence by electrically launching boxcar-sized boulders at Earth, creating purely kinetic impacts that rivaled nuclear explosions in power. I’m not usually one to go looking for international trouble, but for the sake of our health and safety, if nothing else, consider: if those who conceive themselves to be America’s enemies have a monopoly on Lunar colonies, it could be a disaster. Just sing Randy Newman’s “Let’s Drop The Big One Now” to yourself under your breath and substitute Los Angeles and Chicago for London and Paris.

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Let’s call it Heinlein City, okay?

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What tremendous idea!

Let’s start a social media Indigo to make it happen.

I’m in.

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HEALTH: A salad a day keeps dementia away?

Thursday, January 4, 2018

http://www.newsweek.com/eating-salad-every-day-keeps-brains-11-years-younger-and-prevents-dementia-754256

EATING SALAD EVERY DAY KEEPS BRAINS 11 YEARS YOUNGER AND PREVENTS DEMENTIA, STUDY SHOWS
BY MELISSA MATTHEWS ON 12/20/17 AT 4:33 PM

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The study included 960 people, all between 58 and 99 years old and all without dementia. Everyone enrolled in the study was part of the Memory and Aging Project, which has been ongoing since 1979 at the Knight Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at Washington University. As part of their involvement in that project, participants completed questionnaires about their dietary habits over the course of nearly five years. Questions included assessments of how often people consumed spinach, salad, and kale, collards, or other greens. Participants also took yearly thinking and memory skill tests to gauge cognitive ability.

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That’s a prescription that’s easy to follow. Cheap insurance. And if their wrong, no side effects! My kind of medicine.

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TECHNOLOGY: iPhones slow down after a year

Wednesday, January 3, 2018

https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/12/20/16803190/iphone-slowdown-is-needed-but-also-a-problem

iPhones start slowing down after a year of use, and that’s way too soon
By Jacob Kastrenakes  Dec 20, 2017, 5:15pm EST

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But the big conspiracy has been that Apple intentionally slows down your phone every time a new one comes out, a subtle way of encouraging you to buy it. And now we know that it’s true on some level, even if you take Apple’s word and see this as about preservation and not a sales tactic, since the software update that comes out alongside every phone seems to be what introduces the throttling. Here’s how Apple puts it in its statement describing what’s going on: “Our goal is to deliver the best experience for customers, which includes overall performance and prolonging the life of their devices.”

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And, this — planned obsolesence — why I am leaving the Apple family for Android and Chromebook.

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GOVERNACIDE: Politicians ribbon-cutting opportunities cost people’s lives and Taxpayers’ wealth

Tuesday, January 2, 2018

https://www.cato.org/blog/questions-ask-about-amtrak-501

DECEMBER 20, 2017 9:21AM
Questions to Ask About Amtrak 501
By RANDAL O’TOOLE

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The wreck of the 501–the Amtrak train that crashed near Seattle on Monday–is raising lots of questions about Amtrak operations, but they aren’t always the right ones. Here are some questions that should be asked and some of my preliminary answers. Answers from Amtrak (the operator), FRA (the funder), Sound Transit (the track owner), or WSDOT (the train owner) may differ.

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2. Around 800 people die in railroad accidents a year. PTC would prevent only about 1 percent of these fatalities; far more would be saved by spending the same amount of money on better grade crossings and fencing of rail rights of way. Why do we put so much emphasis on an expensive technology that will do so little?

Answer: Accidents that PTC could have prevented tend to be more spectacular than people getting killed when a train hits their car at a grade crossing. This suggests that, when politicians decide where private businesses spend their money, it’ll get spent on grandiose programs rather than things that could really make a difference.

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5. Why do so many reporters call this a high-speed train? The top speed between Portland and Seattle is 79 mph, the same as it has always been and the same as most other Amtrak routes. In technical terms, this was a conventional, low-speed train.

Answer: Though this was a low-speed train, it was funded by Obama’s high-speed rail fund. By repeatedly using the term “high-speed trains,” reporters are keeping that idea in the public consciousness, perhaps in the hopes that Trump’s infrastructure plan will include money for more such trains. (This could backfire, however, by making people think that high-speed trains are more dangerous. They aren’t–but they are a lot more expensive.)

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Question: So are all trains obsolete?

Answer: No, only passenger trains are obsolete. Freight trains are extremely productive, and America has the finest, most advanced rail system in the world. That’s because it is mostly private and operates to produce profits, not to give politicians ribbon-cutting opportunities.

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So the answer is that politicians and bureaucrats, their egos, cause the waste of Taxpayers’ wealth on their egos.

Argh!

Happy New Year; new year same as the old year.

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INOVATION: Happy “Underwear Day”?

Monday, January 1, 2018

http://www.commanderzero.com/?p=4648

Underwear Day
Posted on December 16, 2017

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It’s not exactly a holiday, but today was Underwear

Day. Every two years or so I throw out all my socks, all my underwear, and most of my t-shirts, and start over.

Three dozen socks (all matching), three dozen boxer briefs, and three dozen black t-shirts. One pass through Costco and I’m pretty much done for the next two years.

Are some socks still good after two years? Some, not many. My rather oversize feet tend to wear socks and shoes out pretty quickly.

{Extraneous Deleted}

So…every two years I scrap the whole thing and start over. One benefit to this policy is that I don’t have to match socks. In fact, if I get a hole in one sock I can toss it, keep the good one, and just mix it in with the others….they’re all identical.

It’s a very guy way to buy clothes.

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What a great idea!

If I wasn’t so “thrifty”, I could throw out stuff that was not EOL! (That “end of life” for my one Luddite reader.)

I do like the no matching. I have a pile of “orphans”.

Maybe if I was  thin, young, and handsome (again), then I could do it.

Wonder how he handles it when you need brown socks for your “brown” outfits?

Hmmmm, maybe that’s the draw back.

Comments?

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P.S.: Seasonal Greetings from a grinch!

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