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2017-12-31 09:46 by Karl Denninger
in Editorial , 507 references Ignore this thread
2018 Forecast: Winter *
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I've been harping on this more-or-less continually since 2011 -- it relates to your personal health and reliance on the health care system in the United States.

Specifically, if you look like you're pregnant and you're not (or can't be) -- let's just make it simple folks; if you stand in the shower, look straight down, and you see gut instead of genitals.....

You can ignore this (again), if you want.  But time's pretty-much up.

Trump's "tax cuts" are going to accelerate the deficit spending trend that Obama (and Bush before him) initiated.  The Fed's machinations over the last 100+ years are utterly irrelevant because all of them are in fact driven by Congress.  The Fed is a creature that operates at the behest of Congress, as a creation of Congress, and every single dollar it has "printed" it has "printed" because Congress spent money it did not have.

In other words, Congress ran a deficit.

The Fed has its share of detractors and I'm among them.  But those who refuse to place responsibility where it belongs are fraud-running jackasses, and while I'm happy to try to educate folks those who refuse to learn and cling to that which is trivially disproved mathematically wind up on my "ignore" list.

The bottom line: It is Congress, which is elected by you, that has destroyed the purchasing power of the currency and enabled all of the fraud and force in our economy today.

Every.
Single.
Bit.

Health care costs have exploded because of fraud, extortion and just plain intentional bloat.  Hiring ratios of 10-30:1 for administrators to doctors and nurses are just a start.  You pay for every one of those people but they never provide a single second of care to a single person.  This crap standing alone is strangling the economy and it's strangling the Federal Government.

Then you add onto it monopolist protections system-wide.  You can't get a price before a procedure and you can't hold someone to a price.  How much you pay has nothing to do with the complexity and everything to do with how you pay (or whether you can.)  The health system is the only form of "business" in which a hospital or physician bills you for fixing their screw-ups -- and if those screw-ups kill or permanently maim you they're "entitled" to bill you for that too.

The entire health system in this country, top to bottom, is a racketeering enterprise on grand scale, it currently consumes one fifth of all money spent in the United States, stealing at least 80% of that, and in many cases produces negative or zero net value while doing so.

The Federal Government knows this.  It also knows that if the Attorney General, Congress or the President puts a stop to it there's a monstrous recession -- in fact, from an economic definition perspective an immediate Depression will result.  It wouldn't last long and we'd be far better off when it was over but the next 12 to 18 months would be nasty and whoever is in office at the time will get blamed -- and lose their jobs.

As a result none of the people in office -- not federal, state or local -- will do it unless the public rises and demands it, making clear that there are three -- and only three -- alternatives: Do it, leave peacefully and be replaced by someone who will, or rest in pieces.

Ultimately the people of any nation have the right to issue such a demand -- but only in concert, as a body politic.  1776 was such a demand and when the answer "nuts!" came back from the British monarchy the colonists reply was "ok, since you insist in pieces it shall be."

No lone person has the right to do it (we call that terrorism) but the people as a body politic always do, provided the alternatives are laid on the table.  That's the very premise on which a representative republic is based.

Well, you won't do it.  Not collectively, or in sufficient numbers.

You'd rather get screwed on-balance.

As a result your only alternative is to not need the medical scam.

Sadly if you do need it and the tipping point comes -- which may be as early as this year, you're going to be severely hosed -- or worse, dead.

There's much more, of course -- autos, "higher" education and other areas of grift and scam (FANG-cough-cough!) but this one you can actually take some level of personal control over and thus to a meaningful degree evade.

I've written many pages on this topic, and unfortunately there are some who have enough bad luck, or have just let things go too long, for whom there is no way out at this point.  There's nothing that can be done if you're in that position.  But if you're not, and most people who are today dependent on the medical scam can make a differencethen you're running out of time -- fast.

Start reading, and start doing.

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