Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
“The ongoing federal shutdown could cost the U.S. economy between $7 billion and $14 billion, according to a new report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.”
https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2025/10/29/congress/shutdown-talks-thune-democrats-snap-deadline-00626811
Arguments that we shouldn’t have Medicare for All because medically and scientifically incompetent people like Trump and RFK will gain power and make bad decisions…ignore that people in power like them can also influence private corporations to do healthcare the way they want, so that is a threat either way.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTSUMD-VCqg
Why Voters Will Feel the Impact of GOP Health Cuts Before the Midterms
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/09/18/trump-gop-healthcare-cuts-00569743
“The sum of statistical lives saved vastly exceeds the number of actual lives.
Think of all the things that have saved your life. Every breath you take, every heartbeat, every car and lightning bolt that didn’t hit you. Yet, you’re only alive once. Even if we restrict ourselves to the effects of government programs, the total statistical lives saved by all programs is far greater than the population.
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Wyse and Meyer only show one side of the ledger—the reduction in mortality among people who gain Medicare eligibility. On the other side are the statistical lives lost from the people the money is taken from, or the programs cut.
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Counting statistical lives saved or lost is a debased currency, because it counts each actual life multiple times. And citing only the good side of the ledger makes it impossible to evaluate.
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after the Medicaid expansion, total expenditures increased by more than $1 trillion. That spending also costs statistical lives
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the money could have remained in taxpayers’ bank accounts, which also could promote good health. Mortality declines with income. Even if the Medicaid expansion were a cost-effective way to improve mortality, you have to consider the other side of the ledger.
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The lifesaving medical measures with the biggest impact, such as vaccinations and antibiotics, are relatively cheap. The Medicaid expansion may have relieved financial stress and made the program’s beneficiaries more physically comfortable, which are better criteria for evaluating its impact.
Now consider the 2013 NEJM study trumpeted by conservatives, which examined various health measures. It found that Medicaid enrollment resulted in large and statistically significant improvements in patients’ subjective estimates of their health and quality of life, as well as significant reductions in their financial stress. But it did not find a statistically significant impact on mortality.
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The two studies are more valuable in combination than individually. The NEJM study had the advantage of random assignment and detailed individual data. The NBER paper had a much larger sample size and time interval. Both found significant benefits to Medicaid recipients, although they did not establish that these benefits were any greater than could have been obtained by simply giving each recipient several thousand dollars per year. Neither study convincingly answered whether Medicaid improved health or saved statistical lives.”
https://reason.com/2025/07/17/debunking-the-100000-medicaid-deaths-myth/
Work requirements on Medicaid will rob many people of health insurance because many will fail to do the burdensome paperwork to prove they are working.
Doctor has seen people die from preventable ailments because the people couldn’t afford to get care.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYGTbKOWu88
“Tillis — who voted against the bill in a key procedural vote Saturday night and announced Sunday he would not run for reelection — delivered a scathing rebuke of the president’s agenda-setting bill in a Senate floor speech, explaining his position and pledging to withhold his vote unless his concerns about drastic cuts to Medicaid are addressed.
“What do I tell 663,000 people in two years or three years, when President Trump breaks his promise by pushing them off of Medicaid because the funding’s not there anymore, guys? I think the people in the White House … advising the president are not telling him that the effect of this bill is to break a promise,” Tillis said in his floor speech.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/tillis-senate-bill-breaks-trump-024237867.html
Big beautiful bill set to lose Americans their health insurance and increase the deficit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7Mol1267c0
““No senator wants to be the reason their local hospital shutters its doors, and now is their opportunity to stop that from happening,” said a source familiar with hospital industry thinking, granted anonymity to speak freely on strategy.
More than 250 hospital leaders flew into Washington on Tuesday to urge senators to preserve Medicaid as part of an American Hospital Association lobbying campaign. The association spent almost $8.5 million on lobbying in the first quarter of the year, a high water mark dating back almost two decades.
“There are aggressive conversations ongoing … to make sure that all senators recognize the vulnerability that it is going to potentially put all of our hospitals in,” said one stakeholder granted anonymity to speak on strategy”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/17/hospitals-senate-medicaid-megabill-taxes-00410769
The Republican claim that their bill’s Medicaid cuts won’t take away people’s health insurance because people will get employer health insurance is either spoken out of dishonesty or ignorance. Many people on Medicaid will not be able to get a full time job that supplies benefits like health insurance. They will be paid little and not receive health insurance. Medicaid expansion has not shown to increase unemployment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x99Dk844qZY
Medicare Advantage private health insurance companies have a strong say in whether someone gets elevated medical care. They have the incentive to see you as healthier than you are so they don’t have to pay for Medical care. Whistleblowers say that United Healthcare has said something like ‘they are old anyways, so maybe no one will notice’.
United Healthcare apparently illegally incentivized nursing homes to give United Healthcare leads so the insurance company can sell old people products. Families have complained that their loved ones were sold products when the elderly family member was not capable of making such a decision.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ikJ9t2OVis