Travel Ban, Syria, and Health Care: Today's News for June 27th

Associated Press:

Trump travel ban partly reinstated; fall court arguments set

The Supreme Court is allowing the Trump administration to go forward with a limited version of its ban on travel from six mostly Muslim countries, a victory for President Donald Trump in the biggest legal controversy of his young presidency.

The justices will hear full arguments in October in the case that has stirred heated emotions across the nation. In the meantime, the court said Monday that Trump's ban on visitors from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen can be enforced if those visitors lack a "credible claim of a bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States."

In the case of a country like Syria, where we are effectively at war, a travel ban not only seems logical but necessary. In fact, this travel ban seems too limited in scope for that situation. Imagine allowing travel from Germany or Japan during world War II?

Speaking of Syria...

Fox News:

Syria could be planning chemical attack, White House says

The Trump administration said late Monday that it had discovered evidence that the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad could be planning another chemical weapons attack.

Sadly, Fox buried the real story here:

The White House did not detail what prompted the warning.  Several State Department officials typically involved in coordinating such announcements told the Associated Press they were caught completely off guard by the warning, which didn't appear to be discussed in advance with other national security agencies.

Typically, the State Department, the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies would all be consulted before the White House issued such a declaration.

There are two possibilities here. First, President Trump could be trying to be open with the American people about what we know is happening in Syria.

The second and far more likely possibility is the White House is trying to cover up some other piece of news. What news could that be?

CNN:

Senate health care bill in jeopardy after devastating CBO report

The Senate Republican health care bill teetered on the edge of collapse Monday evening after the Congressional Budget Office released a devastating report on its impact and multiple Republicans announced they would not vote to advance the legislation.

The mood was tense and chaotic on Capitol Hill moments after the non-partisan agency predicted that the Republican proposal would result in 22 million more people becoming uninsured by 2026...than under Obamacare.

Naturally, the CNN story completely ignores a very important aspect of the CBO report:

Fox News:

Senate health bill would lower deficit, increase number of uninsured, estimate says

Senate Republicans’ health care bill would reduce the federal deficit and eventually lead to lower premiums, but would result in millions more Americans being uninsured a decade from now, according to a fresh analysis from Capitol Hill’s nonpartisan budget scorekeepers.

...But the budget impact could be appealing to fiscal conservatives. In large part due to Medicaid changes, the report said the legislation would cut deficits over the next decade by $321 billion.

In summary, insuring the health care of those 22 million people will cost us $14,590 each for the next decade. That is dirt cheap. That is TOO cheap. If we are providing health care to 22 million people at that price, then we need to take a serious look at the quality of the health care provided. It cannot be good.

On the other hand, if that health care is of reasonable quality, we need to expand it to all Americans. For just over $400 billion per year, we could provide health care for all Americans. Unfortunately, health care spending in the U.S. was $3.2 trillion in 2015. Providing health care for less than current cost is unlikely, unless you get rid of all the private sector (i.e. insurance companies) and government middle men, Eliminate all the buck-passing in health care, and we might be able to afford it again. But that means we would have to actually write the checks ourselves. No Rube Goldberg health care bill will fix the fact we are all trying to get somebody else to pay our bills for us.

This is how Obamacare works.

Here is the TRUTH which none of us wants to hear: There is no health care "fix" possible, other than pulling government out of health care entirely. Contrary to what your politicians of all stripes want you to believe, they don't have a magic solution. Europe doesn't have it, Canada doesn't have it, and Cuba doesn't have it. 

At best, a health savings account combined with some form of catastrophic health insurance might be able to provide health care for everyone at a reasonable price. Note that reasonable isn't necessarily cheap. This is just the least expensive of the options, since it allows market forces to keep prices down for routine procedures.