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Monday, November 4, 2013

Want To Keep People Out Of The Hospital? Make Sure They Have A Place To Live

"In Illinois' Medicaid program last year, 3.2 percent of patients accounted for half of all spending. The top 0.15 percent - 4,500 people in a program covering 3.2 million people - required annual expenditures upward of $285,000 each. In the health-policy world, these heavy spenders are known as "frequent fliers:" patients with severe conditions, disabilities and life problems whose complex care accounts for such a disproportionate share of the medical economy...A striking proportion of the patients with the most costly and complex conditions are either homeless or one step away from that in precarious or temporary housing. It stands to reason that providing secure housing to people with chronic illnesses might help." Harold Pollack in The Washington Post

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Lest we forget the hard, central postulate of contemporary "conservatism..."
There is a clearly-delineated racial and socio-economic threshold above which people deserve a measure of government assistance, and below which people deserve to die.  
And the sooner the better. 

Contemporary "conservatives" do not want solutions, not even cost-effective solutions.

What do they want?


"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy: that is, the search for superior moral justification for selfishness."
John Kenneth Galbraith



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