A tip of the hat to “Sechel”, one of my readers for the title of this post.
Please consider the Trump Administration Blocks States From Using Medicaid to Respond to the Coronavirus Crisis.
Despite mounting pleas from California and other states, the Trump administration isn’t allowing states to use Medicaid more freely to respond to the coronavirus crisis by expanding medical services.
In previous emergencies, including the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Hurricane Katrina and the H1N1 flu outbreak, both Republican and Democratic administrations loosened Medicaid rules to empower states to meet surging needs.
But months into the current global disease outbreak, the White House and senior federal health officials haven’t taken the necessary steps to give states simple pathways to fully leverage the mammoth safety net program to prevent a wider epidemic.
And it threatens to slow efforts by states to bring on new medical providers, set up emergency clinics or begin quarantining and caring for homeless Americans at high risk from the virus.
One reason federal health officials have not acted appears to be President Trump’s reluctance to declare a national emergency. That’s a key step that would clear the way for states to get Medicaid waivers to more nimbly tackle coronavirus, but it would conflict with Trump’s repeated efforts to downplay the seriousness of the epidemic.
Another element may be ideological: The administration official who oversees Medicaid, Seema Verma, head of the government’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, has been a champion of efforts by conservative states to trim the number of people enrolled in Medicaid.
Regardless of what you think about Medicaid, this president is making massive numbers of enemies of moderate Democrats who helped elect him in 2016.
Trump was already on a path to lose the 2020 election and he appears to be doing everything possible to seal that fate.
Appealing to the base, when the base is going nowhere, is precisely the wrong thing to do.
Reader Sechel came up with the perfect title to this article.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
Saw tonight video, how China gave to street sweepers a package on soaps, masks & hygiene stuff. Very kind & caring. If only, people in USA were that thoughtful. Lots of people in USA, are appalled @ how we treat our elderly, throwing them out into homelessness. We should change our ways, & I see that, with the chart on Mish talk, with who won or not, in Washington state, Biden or Sanders. We are a capitalist country, but, I think most people have had the rudeness far to long. Reason for voting Sanders. But, will Sanders put American jobs in medical supplies back on the map & be comparable to China!
Is the reason Trump in Florida in Mar-lago because of the test kits being manufactured? Per above
Crowding people into the airports, like a cattle drive; isn’t helping. At least you muzzle some animals. Masks are the same. They all should be wearing them. The internet keeps saying, don’t buy any masks, due to the hospital)Dr)& the like, don’t have enough. They buy them from the supplier, not walking into the stores like most of us are going to
,Walmart, Walgreens, or your local hardware store!
When you think about it, masks are cheap, low volume. You could store millions and millions in a warehouse.
I don’t think it says much about preparedness when health services face supply shortages almost on day one.
I heard yesterday, (reading article,) that, why can’t we make masks fast; like we do candy in this country?
I work with Biochemists.
Unless your mask has a filter or you have a respirator, then wearing a mask is good…for about 10 mins until the mask gets damp with warm moist breath…no good for any protection after that, although if you do have it and you’re wearing a mask you might not pass it on to anyone for those first 10 minutes.
Save your money or buy a respirator and a box of filters…
the CDC is projecting that up to 214 million Americans could eventually become infected…
Between 160 million and 214 million people in the United States could be infected over the course of the epidemic, according to one projection. That could last months or even over a year, with infections concentrated in shorter periods, staggered across time in different communities, experts said. As many as 200,000 to 1.7 million people could die.
I think that is more than the flu.
Trump supporters: u can always blame the chinese when u have totally failed, as Pompeo has been doing
When Trump declared a travel ban on China, the Democrats response was, “Xenophobia.”
The only way the foreign born virus got into the country was due to travel from outside the U.S.
Political correctness response by Democrats was a total failure.
The trade war followed by this virus has made China great again.
Other countries like Italy now look at the Chinese for leadership.
The US now looks like a bumbling idiot. In East Asian terms, the US has lost face.
A looot of people are not convinced by what they are presented with from China, whether rightly or wrongly. The US hasn’t been on a roll for quite a while either though.
Considering how even once they all get back to work, there will still be no market for their exports for the near future, it would be nice if the Chinese would redirect their massive industrial machine towards a “Corona Marshal Plan” of sorts to help the rest of the world.
They’ll be in a similar situation to the US post WW2: No point trying to “compete” with the rest of the world, when the rest for the world is a ruin. Instead, the best thing they can do, is try to get the rest of the world back to the point where they can again produce something of value, to trade in exchange for Chinese imports.
Virus rapid testing equipment, ventilators, ECMOs, other ICU kit and perhaps personnel…. Even complete container, or flatpack, emergency rooms with clean air ventilation, ready to ship and rapidly deploy anywhere etc., etc.
Trust me. You don’t want that to happen. In order to do that, the world will need to accept the Yuan as the new reserve currency, and that simply means war with the US. I applaud the Chinese this time, but that does not mean I want them to run the world financial system. In fact I do NOT want any country to play world leader etc. Each country should just take care of their own business. I do want a new financial system based on Gold though. Not the old system, but something like FreeGold.
The Chinese HAVE offered assistance but as yet the US has refused as far as I understand.
I didn’t know they had offered assistance to the US.
As things are slowing down over there just as it is off to the races in the rest of the world, they must be sitting on huge spare capacity in many relevant areas by now.
I’m sure they want to retain large buffers in case of another flareup, but the longer their outbreak remains subdued, the more help they should be able to offer those still struggling.
Is it the trade war or the fact that we’ve sent all of our industry there over the past few decades?
China will flare up again as soon as the drastic quarantines are lifted. Drag it out and get severe economic damage, let it run its course and you get more bodies. There is no good solution. Thus, the pols spin in ever wider circles, trying to do something.
There is a big, big difference between sitting at the steering wheel and pedals of a truck, being able to control the speed, compared to hanging on to the trailer hitch hoping to be able to deal with the fallout.
Ultimately, since the rest of the world messed up so badly, the East Asians will have to deal with immunity for their citizenry. If a vaccine can be found, they hit the jackpot. If not, they will eventually have to get to Merkel’s 70% of the population being infected, one way or the other.
Sitting safe, smug, high and mighty in Fortress Taiwan, does get a bit self limiting, if everyone visiting from anywhere outside East Asia needs to be quarantined indefinitely. So one way or the other, since the virus has now taken solid hold everywhere, getting the population immune, becomes a necessity. But being able to do so at their own pace, under full control, is still preferable to holding on and Livin’ on a Prayer.
The Chinese will be exporting test kits to Japan that can test people in 15 mins. Will be available in many stores starting next week. No doubt these will have a ton of false negatives. But so what. Better than nothing. Apparently Florida will also be sourcing its own test kits.
“Dr. Nicole Saphier told Breitbart News Daily on Friday morning that the reason the U.S. had rejected coronavirus test kits from abroad is that they had a 48% false negative rate, meaning sick people would believe, falsely, they were fine.”
Good reason, but until you have something better in hand…
Those tested could have been told that outcome was not definitive, that the testing was just to sample for possible outbreak, those found infected being notified, but mainly so policy could be changed if an outbreak was detected.
I think people could understand that.
“ Breitbart News Daily”: great news source based on which to make to your analysis!
Discuss that with Dr. Nicole Saphier.
And no test gives you %100 false negative. See you use a faulty test until you get a good one and then retest
The quoted story notes how wonderful bureaucracy is. Towards the end, as usual, the real story shows up.
These waivers can only be granted if a State of Emergency is declared.
It was a similar situation with testing, as the rules stated that under the circumstances ‘approved’ tests were the purvey of the Federal government alone.
That’s bureaucracy for you.
I agree, bureaucracy. No one is really in charge with bureaucracy, and no one takes responsibility. Sometimes people hide behind it, sometimes it just gets in the way, its nature is that it hides both of those sides of its reality.
For example, how is a president going to cut through that, if he wanted to, without first having a state of emergency exist ?
People who design these systems are not always practical, or thinking with a proper goal in mind.
East Asia demonstrated how bureaucracy can work very effectively in special cases such as a pandemic. (Although I suspect complete lack of bureaucracy (Taliban controlled areas of Afghanistan) will work OK as well, as genuine freedom and the arrangements which result from them (social distancing enforced by the effective range of an AK; population overweight of sub 25 year olds due to fertility; and old warriors dying in battle before they get frail), always tend to.)
Thing is, this stenght of bureaucracy only holds as long, as there is a virtually universal buy-inn.
Which there generally is, wrt those rare issues which threatens to kill 1-10% of the population in short order, and lock down the rest.
But once you attempt to force a single, bureaucratic solution onto people in areas where agreement is less than 98%, you end up rapidly devoting more resources simply to maintain, and bicker and fight over who shall “lead” it, how bureaucracy should be ran, and which “safeguards” must be in place to protect those who don’t lead it etc…. So the whole bureaucracy starts revolving more around covering it’s rear and justifying its existence and privileges, than about effectively taking action.
IOW, have a strong government. But a limited one. Severely limited. One which is only involved in extremely limited areas of life, and only in areas where there is darned near universal agreement: Ban murder, keep a nuclear deterrent and a pandemic response preparedness. And do nothing else, whatsoever.
“Thing is, this stenght of bureaucracy only holds as long, as there is a virtually universal buy-inn.
Which there generally is, wrt those rare issues which threatens to kill 1-10% of the population in short order, and lock down the rest.”
You mean that is when bureaucracy gets shoved aside and direct order installed :/
In Madrid most public workers are on paid leave now and direct orders are in fashion for:
Police, care workers, and requisition of property for hospital places.
Bureaucracy stifles flexibility.
Trump should just declare this pandemic The Hunger Games.
“May the odds be forever in your favor!!”
Cooperation = Socialism! If you ain’t ratf**king, you ain’t trying!
The lesson in all of this, which will not be learned, is that governments are some of the worst problem solvers. Good problem creators, though.
Today’s agenda:
Think of how bad our gov’t would be if they couldn’t run trillion dollar annual deficits.
No. The market is up, and Trump delays speech to take credit.
Probably short covering. We’ve seen a rising market in the final hour in the last 3 weeks. Some people don’t want to be short through the weekend, I’m guessing.
Dow ends up near 2000 higher. brad you must be a professional market advisor!
My advice is worth every penny!
“President Trump’s reluctance to declare a national emergency.”
Although just posted, this is already out of date. Trump will declare a national emergency today. Some people will say “why the panic?” others will say “too late!”. Everybody is getting stressed out and unhappy.
In Greece they are making good use of vacations :/
And in Spain mass migration from Madrid to holiday destinations because of vacations has previously unaffected regions on edge :/
Not to say anything bad about your country, as I had serious plans to tour it for a few months looking fro a nice place come spring (Balearics, Girona pehaps down to Valencia, perhaps Andorra (Still Spain to me..) Love Madrid, but it’s too hot part of the year to not have an ocean for me) ; but I’m holding off on that move now…..
Well it’s not my country at the moment though somewhere it is , it got invaded.
It has a neighbouring country that is more sensible and less exaggerated, and which has a more contemplative attitude 🙂
For a change of station…
Your ocean is too cold…… 🙂 And your language sounds weird, to someone used to California….
It is refreshing in the peak of summer heat (once visited Sintra and Lisboa), compared to big, dense, boilerlike Med cities, though….
Is the border closed now? Or is it too late already?
Haven’t closed the border with Spain yet, but government has said it has not rejected the idea. Morocco closed borders to Spain and France, then partly reopened to Spain. That is going to be a big problem if still in place towards summer because there is a large migration for visits then each year between Morrocco and France.
Spain cases are going through the roof now, I know I keep writing that but they near doubled again today. Mostly big cities, Madrid especially.
The med climate I miss, changes the moment you pass Gibraltar, even Estepona is cooler. In Algarve temps are ok in winter, but much more humid and generally different weather. You get green countryside in exchange, cooler summers, I like desert though. The Atlantic is different from Alboran. On the other hand I like history and archaeology etc. , and Portugal is a very different chapter to Spain in many ways. The language is difficult for someone who speaks castillian, or even andaluz , would probably be easier to learn to speak not knowing those, but Portunol sort of works. Anyway, I just enjoy trying to get the feel of a dialect as a sound because it talks of its origin.
You can’t miss the border between the countries, it’s where the road surface changes…it is like going back in time in Spain also, which suits me fine. Still a certain amount of animosity or distrust between the Portuguese and Spanish.
If you are taking a poll@stillCJ , I give President Trump’s press conference today a big thumbs up. The conference gave me the impression they have turned the corner in doing what they need to succeed in getting a handle on the US outbreak.