The Worst of Times, The Best Of Times

Some say, "Why lie?"

Others say, "Why the hell not lie?"

You can keep telling lies over and over and over and you will never ever be punished.

You will be rewarded, as long as you tell the right lies.

Your editors don't care.

Your owners don't care.

Your readers don't care.

Your peers don't care.

Your opponents might care but so what? They don't pay you or praise you anyway.

So what is causing cost growth to slow down? I find this answer given by researchers to be pretty plausible: a combination of changes in private insurance and Medicaid programs as well as a general slowdown of technological innovation in the health-care sector. 

That last part means that a slowdown in health-care costs isn't necessarily great news -- it might mean fewer health-improving, life-extending innovations, which is great for the bean counters but not so great for us fragile humans who would like to live longer, healthier lives. Even for the bean counters, it also presents a risk: that technological innovation will start to speed up again.

...

But my biggest fear about Obamacare is that the government has a hard time making that sort of deal. It is easier to sit on drug approvals or restrict the use of expensive treatments than explain to folks why their taxes are going up. The more deeply we involve government in the health-care system, the greater the incentives government will have to squash innovation -- not exactly deliberately, but through price controls and onerous review processes that make it harder and harder to get new technologies to market. 

So maybe the bean counters shouldn’t be worried. But the rest of us probably should be.

After telling us for years that Obamacare will explode costs, and then maybe it looks like Obamacare won't explode costs but it really will some time long, long from now and far, far away, Megan McArdle now walks back juuuuust as much as necessary to tell us that maybe it won't explode costs but it won't solve all the problems of the world either. 

McArdle also walks back her claim that Obamacare will end all medical innovation and now we are told that maybe it will accidentally end innovation, not deliberately, mind you, but maybe accidentally.

But she still makes that claim.

I figured out once that McArdle might be making about $400 per post. She's written many, many, many posts trying to eradicate Obamacare. She's made a lot of money trying to ensure people die from lack of health care.

Death is her business.

Suffering is her currency.

And what does she do with her ill-gotten gains, to make a pun? She buys little bits of junk. Grossly expensive machines that nobody really wants. Cigarettes. Overpriced dinners. Booze. Clothes. Airline upgrades. First class all the way!

Praise. Ego-gratification.

This is how the world ends. Not with a bang or whimper, but drowning in an ocean of lies.

Meanwhile, I will be waiting, knitting tumbrels with my Madame Defarge (TM) needles.

All things come to she who waits.