RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/jama-pushes-health-care-rationing/

I believe our would-be technocratic overlords had a two-step plan: First, pass Obamacare to centralize federal control over the health-care system. After that, use the cost-cutting mechanisms embedded into the law to institute health-care rationing, or as Sarah Palin famously called it, to establish “death panels.”

Step one succeeded, but has been blunted by subsequent events, such as removing the individual mandate penalty and the destruction of the Independent Payment Advisory Board.

But that has not impeded the overarching plan. Despite Obamacare’s troubles and in anticipation of “Medicare [really, Medicaid] for All,” rationing is now being brought to the fore in an editorial just published by the highly influential Journal of the American Medical Association. Claiming that rationing is “an inevitable consequence of increasing health care costs,” the JAMA editorial concludes:

Greater rationing of care is inevitable if health care costs continue to increase. Controlling health care costs is the only way to ensure appropriate investment in other areas, such as education, the environment, and infrastructure, and to provide a more equitable, just, and fair distribution of the remarkable health care advances that have been achieved with even more on the horizon.

It has been said many times that in the richest country in the world, in which many of the greatest scientific and medical advances are developed, it is a blight on the US soul that each of its residents does not fully benefit from available health care.

That sounds like forced redistribution of medical resources to me.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/02/health_care_for_all__affordability_for_none.html

First, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio “issued a bold guarantee of affordable health care for every resident,” including the “undocumented,” according to excited news reports. From the Birkenstock Left (Sen. Bernard Sanders, I-Vt.) to the Latte Left, (Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez D-Neverland) et. al. came applause. Then, most early Democratic presidential candidates began clamoring for “Medicare for All!”

Why stop there? What about food stamps for all, redeemable not just at Shop-Rite, but Whole Foods, too? Affordable transportation — by bus, subway, Uber or Southwest Airlines (new slogan: “It’s now free to roam around the country”). And housing, rent-controlled from the Bronx to Beverly Hills. All covered by the unalienable right to equality with those who have more.

De Blasio epitomizes today’s reactionary progressives. A Democrat who supported Nicaragua’s repressive Sandinistas and honeymooned in Castro’s repressive Cuba, he more recently has proposed repressing Asians’ access to his city’s best public schools.

De Blasio’s a statist social engineer, like virtually every big-name Democrat. Senators Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand and the rest run for president by worshipping at the altar of invasive government. They can because the Left confiscated the vocabulary of humanitarianism as early as the French Revolution’s “liberte, eqalite, fraternite.” Which, of course, delivered anything but.

https://www.realclearpolicy.com/articles/2019/02/15/despite_contrary_claims

Is the American Dream attainable for everyone? Conclusions in recent debates in academic and policy circles have been rather pessimistic, and a recent high profile newspaper piece went as far as saying that the American Dream is not for black millennials because so much of it is dependent on owning a house and reaching career milestones. An achievement not really possible for younger blacks in this country according to the author, who based her findings on discussions with a selection of her peers. Her conclusion that the American Dream is unattainable for black millennials Is a most disturbing finding if true.

However, data from a new survey on the American Dream (the American Enterprise Institute’s Social Capital survey) reveal that claims of its demise, especially among black millennials, are overblown.

In the survey, I asked thousands of Americans around the country what factors were essential to the American Dream. While homeownership was important, Americans replied that other factors such as freedom to live as one chooses, and meaningful family relationships were far more important — despite being elements that are not regularly discussed when people think about the American Dream.

The most significant factor in pursuing the Dream according to the survey results is to have the freedom to choose how to live one’s life. This is the case for the population as a whole, of which 86% believes that freedom of choice is essential for the realization of the American Dream. It is also the case for 83% of millennials — those born between 1981 and 1996. Breaking the findings down along racial lines, 86% of whites favor freedom of choice, while other groups are in the high-seventieth percentile range. Additionally, 83% of millennials (79% of black and 80% of white millennials) believe that a good family life is essential to the Dream. These minor percentage differences call into serious question the popular racial disparity stories.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/ilhan-omars-history-of-america-11550259885

Not that it will make Israelis feel any better, but Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) doesn’t seem to like America all that much, either.

Shortly after apologizing for anti-Semitic comments, the House freshman Democrat set about trashing America’s conduct during its successful Cold War against the Soviet empire.

Rep. Omar’s views may not have been entirely clear to Minnesota voters last November. A public broadcasting report shortly before her November election to the U.S. House described her this way:

Omar fled her native Somalia when she was 8 years old and spent four years in a refugee camp in Kenya. She came to the US as a 12-year-old and eventually settled in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood of Minneapolis, which has long been a first stop for new arrivals in the US. There, she “fell in love with democracy” and started spending time as a community organizer until she ran for office.

… For Omar, the inspiration to get involved in politics came from her family, who were always talking about politics, world news and democracy over meals.

But in a New York Times report almost two months after last year’s election, her experience in America didn’t exactly sound like a love affair:

Her arrival in this country was the first time, Ms. Omar has said, that she had confronted “my otherness” as both a black person and a Muslim. She became a citizen in 2000, when she was 17. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, she decided to wear the hijab, as an open declaration of her identity. But from “the first day we arrived in America,” she said, she concluded that it was not the golden land that she had heard about.