Monday, July 20, 2009

40th Lunar Walk Anniversary Inspired Quotes for Health Care Reform

Who can forget the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Mission that put a man on the moon? Certainly not the President, and neither can the Disease Management Care Blog. And what a great quote when Neil Armstrong jumped off the ladder onto that magnificent desolation:

“That's one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind”

Sure, years later, Jack Kennedy and Walter Cronkite have been replaced by the likes of Harry Reid and Glenn Beck, while lunar walks have been supplanted by searches for errant Shuttle tiles, but no matter. The heroism of those intrepid spacemen still inspires the DMCB.

To wit: some health reform quotes fashioned over those legendary first interplanetary words:

The President: That’s one health reform plan in trouble: one giant all Obama all the time

Congressional Democrats: That’s one large budget hole; one giant chunk of Americans’ incomes and that's just for starters.

Congressional Republicans: That’s one large market for Americans; one giant doubt that many are insurable at any price.

The Blue Dogs: That’s one large cost of government; one giant ‘no-way!’ for Nancy Pelosi.

The Congressional Budget Office: That’s one nice try from Congress; one giant ‘no’ to budget neutrality.

Health Care Costs: That’s one huge trend line for inflation; one giant failure to contain the beast.

The AMA: That’s one we’ll support anything if it means the SGR formula goes away, make it go away, dammit.

The For-Profit Disease Management Organizations: That’s one attractive budget; one giant push to get disease management more explicitly covered in the amendments and the reconciliation anyway.

The Patient Centered Medical Home: That’s one big pilot; one great hope it actually saves money as advertised.

The DMAA, the Care Continuum Alliance: That’s one not-small annual meeting; one giant please help us meet budget and go to it

The DMCB: That’s one large meeting of bloggers, one great missing DMCB blog

The DMCB Spouse: That’s one more added RSS blog subscriber; one giant ‘so what?’ for the hubby

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just for the sake of comparison:

Nimiz Class aircraft carrier costs more than $4 billion, each, with each has an operational cost of roughly $1 billion per year. We have 10 of them in operation and there are real effort on Capital Hill to authorize building more.

We ask where our money [necessary to facilitate healthcare reform] has gone. Do the calculation, and you'd know.

Keep up with the whining and sarcasm.

Jaan Sidorov said...

Anonymous believes the DMCB is whining and sarcastic. It has also been accused of being narcisisstic, anti-reform, superficial, foolish, disdainful, hokey, elitist and a putz. For the record, it categorically denies being a putz.

Anon raises a good point though: while health care is turning out to be eye-poppingly expensive, it pales compared to a military budget paired with a foreign policy run amok. That's wayyy off topic, but the DMCB recommends a read of George Friedman's 'The Next 100 Years.' Suffice it to say a mistake-filled total domination of the sea lanes by the US still beats the alternative.

The DMCB isn't sure, in addition, about the notion that savings in one part of the Federal budget means more money for the other parts.

Last but not least, the DMCB isn't hearing that the military budget is threatening to bankrupt the U.S. Rahter, the threat is thanks to our voracious appetite for technology, increasing levels of chronic illness and an entitlement culture.

HMS said...

Amazingly, DMCB does have a point....