Trump and Socialized Medicine
In economics we have the concept of “revealed preference” that simply states that you do not pay attention to what an individual claims to prefer. Rather, you pay attention to what they actually do.
President Trump just elected to go to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for treatment of his COVID-19 symptoms. He could have elected to go to any hospital in the country, but he choose to go to the most purely socialist medical center in the country, one owned by the government and all it’s employees are government employees. Just as the military is the purest example of socialism in the US, Walter Reed is the purest example of socialized medicine in the US.
So Trump’s revealed preference is that he prefers socialized medicine to private medical care.
Who knew that deep down he really is a socialist.
He demonstrated that he’ll use a facility that somebody else is paying for. I doubt that Trump is even capable of assessing the distinction. He’s nothing but a grifter so any opportunity to make a buck at someone else’s expense is what he does. His entire presidency has been one grifting opportunity after another. Seems like this is just another act in that sorry play.
Agree, Kwark. He also wants to go somewhere where he can play the little dictator, order Naval personnel around, and be his own doctor. He is the best doctor ever, you know. He learned a lot about covid over the last couple of days.
COVID-19, not CORON-19.
Rich people like socialism, just not for anyone except rich people.
For revealed preferences then ask why did Donnie take remdesivir instead of hydroxychloroquine???
Ron:
One of the fallacies of taking HCQ (if you believe it works) is you take HCQ alone and in monstrous dosage throughout the treatment of Covid. You don’t as large dosage of HCQ will kill you and by itself it does not prevent the replication of COVID efficiently (there are better words for this). The treatment if one were to use HCQ is to use it in combination with other drugs such as AZT with a large initial dosage of each. HCQ acts as an ionophore allowing entry into the cell of the AZT, Zinc, etc. The last requirement is Covid must be treated early on within two weeks of contracting it before it goes into cytokine storm occurs damaging the lungs by the bodies immune response to Covid.
If you believe HCQ works this is the treatment regime (large dose initially and smaller dosages daily of HCQ) which is to occur over an initial short period of days. As I understand it AZT is not a trip to the park either. The medical community has been slow to put an extremely low cost and ease to process HCQ in combination with other drugs into clinical trial. To my knowledge, the Henry Ford hospitals in southeast Michigan did do an observational study utilizing ~2900 patients in multiple Ford hospital. You can read the results yourself here; Treatment with hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, and combination in patients hospitalized with COVID-19.
On the other hand we have Gilead Science’s Remdesivir, a new drug which has efficacy early on in the treatment of Covid also. Beyond two weeks, it too loses the ability to fight Covid effectively. The ICER-COVID model suggests a price of approximately $4,500 per treatment course, whether the course of treatment is 10 or 5 days early on as it has its greatest impact. I do not find this treatment to be overly expensive as other touted drugs although it is far more expensive than HCQ. The cumulative profit to be had is not in the dosage, it is in the number of patients which will be in the millions.
Doctors will not prescribe HCQ or HCQ + AZT or Zinc. It is not in the preferred list of drugs to be used. Fauci said so outside of clinical trial. A nice gift to drug companies.
Useful insights here. Made me wonder what VP Biden’s preference for expanded police budgets, refusal to limit fossil fuel extraction, and well documented multi decade attacks on social security reveal.
Who knew deep down he was really a republican.
Actually, Biden is the right age to have been a liberal republican in his youth.
First time I seen someone that high on a steroid since 2001.