Is higher government spending always the solution?
Every morning, the public wakes up to articles from the Associated Press, the Washington Post, and the New York Times that can best be described as Democratic Party talking points. Today, in my local paper, one article was headlined "Opioid Recovery on the Line." It was probably the same as this AP piece here, and it was about GOP Medicaid cuts supposedly hitting hard. But it was nothing but scare tactics. Somehow, the reporters did not point out that Medicaid spending is actually going to continue to go up and there are no cuts on the line. They just would not rise as much as Obama's previous pretend projections.
Shouldn't the reporters even be curious as to why, if increased Medicaid spending is the solution, the massive increases that have already occurred have only seen the problem continue to get worse, not better?
Could the problem be that the government spends too much covering drugs that get people hooked in the first place?
A few excerpts from the article itself:
Questioned by Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., about the consequences of reducing Medicaid's commitment, Price responded that more government spending is not the answer.
"Let me respectfully suggest ... that the programs that are out there by and large are not working," Price said. "We are losing more Americans today than we did last year ... clearly we're moving in the wrong direction."
Price suggested that states would be more effective with the greater flexibility promised by the GOP plan for Medicaid.
Said Leahy: "As a child I believed in the tooth fairy, but I'm a little bit older now."
I believe that it is Leahy and the Democrats (including the media) who believe in the tooth fairy. They believe that the tooth fairy (taxpayers and future generations) has unlimited amounts of money to give to the government, no matter how unsuccessful programs are, because the solution always is to throw more money at the problem.
Bernie Sanders and other Democrats are saying that the Republicans' proposal to replace Obamacare, which supposedly no one has seen, will kill thousands of people. Maybe the reporters should point out to Bernie that life expectancy unexpectedly went down in the U.S. after Obamacare went into effect. Maybe taking away choice and massively increasing out-of-pocket costs and regulations wasn't such a good policy.
But for Democrats, it's always a matter of how much money can be thrown at the problem. They haven't changed a bit.