1000s Will Die If Obamacare Repealed: Duuuhh

I got tired of being in Roswell and came back to Tucson for a few days.
Lots of people, say 100 or 1000 in every state this year, will die if they take down Obamacare.    What I'm bothered by is treating this as news.  We all knew this already.  No, I hadn't actually thought of it myself, but I knew it.  You knew it, too.  So did Pres. Trump and Paul Ryan.  I don't know how much commonsense either of them has, but they have this much.

Here's how it works:  If you throw really large chunks of money at any one problem, lots of people will benefit, in big ways, no matter if it's an inefficient government deal that's only half effective.   And if you don't have the program and leave it to private industry and nonprofits and good-hearted people at churches, they'll nibble around the edges, but, in 92 cases in 100, it won't get done.  Now: does knowing 1000s will die automatically tell us whether to keep or kill the program?   No, it does not.  This is a value judgment.

Suppose John McCain finagles an extra billion, spread over the next five years, for more police hiring and training and new equipment in Arizona.  What will happen?  We all know the answer.  Whether it's a super program or half-baked, that kind of money will mean a bunch of people won't be killed that would have been, a bunch of citizens won't be mugged that would have been, cops will have more help and feel better about how they're able to do their jobs.  What is it worth to a community to have its cops feel like they've got a handle on things?  A lot, but another value judgment.

Hungry children.    Push it the other way.  State of Arizona takes gizillons off of the food stamp and other free food programs, which they did.  Guess what happens?  Helps the state budget and a boatload, and I do mean a boatload, of kids go to bed hungry at night that would have had more food if the program hadn't been cut.  Do any of those little kids become drug runners or terrorists because of it?  That's like asking if more surprise pregnancies will happen in poor families, and the welfare need will rise, if you cut birth control services.

This is what it means to have a bleeding heart.  Nobody has to remind you that if you yank away a lot of people's health insurance because the country can't afford it, my dad or your dad or Joe Schmoe down the street's dad will die next month because of it.

Here's one close to home:  my son Eric, absolutely brilliant mind, quit college at age 25 because his loans ran out and he couldn't see how to work full time and go to school.  A year or two after he started full time work, he asked his boss if he could go to part time so he could go back to school.  The company, Comcast, a model of business expansion, told him to take his hope for self-betterment and stick it where the sun didn't shine.  Five years later Eric told Comcast the same thing back and changed jobs.  He quit school 8 or 9 years ago.  Had the durned wicked government been handing out better grants and loans, he could have been doing particle physics by now., improving the world and paying a lot of taxes.  Instead he's in his early 30s with a $15-20/hr job helping a big computer company plan its installations of new sales.  He's got the brain to cure cancer, but he needed some help getting there, and our system nudged him into scheduling.  His clock is ticking and he may have missed his chance for particle physics.

Why did you say India with its millions of high-tekkies, who speak passable English and are hungry, are stealing jobs from us?  Just because we signed a bad trade deal, huh?

Repeat Eric's story a million times and you have a country with less competitive innovation, less competitive medical and technical research, and less competitive education.  And people scratching their heads why the good jobs are slipping away.  In places like Rustbelt, Ohio, those people voted for our new president in droves even though it was the other candidate talking about making sure kids could afford to go to college and not owe $100,000 when they got through.  But that was socialism, so we flushed it down the toilet.  I guess they're very farsighted in the Rust Belt, because they can see better jobs with less support for education, research, and innovation, and I can't.  Did you notice who Silicon Valley voted for?

Of course 1000s are going to die.  Commonsense.  Please, Mr Newsman, tell us something we didn't know.  Where was that headline when we could use it, in the campaign?