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| ▲ | bonsai_spool 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | > if you mean short term impacts that may be true, but I wonder if the medicaid, aca and likely medicare cuts will have material impacts on mortality. It will not be as easy to attribute, and therefore it’ll be hard to quantify (you might say that’s “convenient”), but the number of people impacted will be well into the tens of millions. I think these can't possible be commensurate - just consider how many more HIV cases there will be without US funding for overseas HIV prevention. | | |
| ▲ | harmmonica 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | I’m not so sure. 630,000 total HIV deaths annually. What percent are impacted by USAID and then how much growth in HIV deaths without USAID? My tens of millions comment is the people whose health care will potentially be impacted short term (medicaid and aca changes; Medicaid is currently 70 million people. ACA is 24 million) plus potential aggressive efforts to move medicare people to medicare advantage and you have another 68 million potentially exposed (that number isn’t actually that large today because a majority of those people will likely pass before the medicare changes have a negative impact, but over time, as people enter the system with worse coverage, the deaths will climb). Please understand I’m not saying I’m right about this but just that the vast number of people impacted by the admin’s policies re domestic health care makes me think it could be greater than USAID. edit: grammar and spelling | | |
| ▲ | bonsai_spool 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | I am very genuinely interpreting all of this and I recognize you are just reviewing the data. HIV deaths are a lagging indicator, so any effect of today's policy will be delayed - as a general matter. But HIV in newborns will lead to death within a year if untreated, and adults with untreated HIV/AIDS will die from other communicable disease sooner than if they were treated. Since US hospitals public obligation in the US to treat people who are gravely ill, we're 'only' going to see a marked increase in deaths attributable to chronic disease, and I don't think the Medicaid cuts will survive in their current state. But it's true I don't have numbers on this and won't have a chance to get them this morning. Please share if you have a sense of comparative DALY/QALYs lost through USAID funding cuts vs Medicaid changes. | | |
| ▲ | harmmonica 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | I really don't have a concrete sense. My comment was very much predicated on the sheer number of folks who would be negatively impacted by the changes to existing domestic healthcare programs. And to put a fine point on my own comment in case you think I'm attempting to downplay USAID impacts, both of these things are materially negative from a healthcare perspective. It will be impossible to effectively quantify the impacts on mortality of the medicaid/medicare/aca changes, but they are (if implemented) going to impact great numbers of people and their health. USAID absolutely the same as you're pointing out and those impacts will be much more measurable. You're going to have about as good a linear test as you can get given how abruptly that funding will disappear (abrupt in contrast to the long, drawn out medicaid/medicare/aca changes (though the initial aca changes, assuming they do happen, will likely be the most abrupt of the three domestic programs because they will happen cleanly on January 1, 2026)). |
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| ▲ | lanstin 8 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | No but keeping Ebola from becoming a world wide problem is in the US interests and USAID was a very cheap way to advance that goal. We funded USAID out of decency (and to gain a reputation for decency, which is worth a lot of money) sure, but also to protect ourselves. | | |
| ▲ | gottorf 8 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > (and to gain a reputation for decency, which is worth a lot of money) And how is America's reputation for decency doing these days, a mere year into cutting some of this funding? | |
| ▲ | cyberjerkXX 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Sounds like a job for the WHO - maybe the UN can do it's job. | | |
| ▲ | bonsai_spool 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | > Sounds like a job for the WHO - maybe the UN can do it's job. Ah, the WHO that has recently lost money from its largest contributor, a contributor that unexpectedly stopped its contributions without explanation. | | |
| ▲ | BJones12 8 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Good thing it's called the World Health Organization and not the American Health Organization, that way the 95.9% of the world that is not America can contribute to it. | | |
| ▲ | bonsai_spool 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | > Good thing it's called the World Health Organization and not the American Health Organization, that way the 95.9% of the world that is not America can contribute to it. First, imagine that your boss/largest customer decided, on a whim, to reduce your remuneration by half on the first of January. Where are you making up that money if there's nowhere else in the world that you can immediately turn to? Anyway, other nations are spending more. The World Health Organization and UN are just politically convenient names. These organizations were created by a victorious America to project power, like the takeover of UK military bases and exportation of US culture in the Marshall Plan. How reprehensible that we throw away such power without receiving anything in exchange. [1] Helpful example - we initially blocked penicillin production in other countries, despite having joined WHO, in furtherance of American interests https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-cold-wars-lasting-effec... |
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| ▲ | cyberjerkXX 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | There you go again -you want the US government to solve the world's problems.
Also, you're passively calling the WHO an infective organization because it can't handle this outbreak on its own without US funding. That implies it's a useless organization and therefore the US was justified removing funding. Maybe you should be advocating for the 194 member states of the WHO to contribute more so the world doesn't need to rely on the political winds of the US election cycle. | | |
| ▲ | bonsai_spool 8 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I replied to one of your sibling posts. You can re-interpret these facts as you wish, but the WHO was working in December and radically transformed in February. I think that indicates inefficacy and poor insight, but not in the WHO. | |
| ▲ | mindslight 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > the US government to solve the world's problems It's called leading. You've voluntarily thrown in the towel on US leadership. Good job. |
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| ▲ | 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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| ▲ | atomicnumber3 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | That which you did not do for the least of these, you also did not do for me. | | |
| ▲ | gottorf 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I'm not a highly religious person so I may well be wrong about this, but my understanding of Christian principles (as you referenced in your Bible quote) is that you, the individual, should do these kind things to other individuals personally; and in that act of doing so personally, you become closer to God. What we have instead is that taxes are collected by an entity with the monopoly on violence (and of course, it's understood that the people making more than you are not paying their "fair share") whether you like it or not, spent by people who generally have boundless disdain for the very people who pay those taxes, on people and causes on the other side of the planet. There's no connection between people, or between people and God, in this scenario. | | |
| ▲ | bonsai_spool 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | > I'm not a highly religious person so I may well be wrong about this, but my understanding of Christian principles (as you referenced in your Bible quote) is that you, the individual, should do these kind things to other individuals personally; and in that act of doing so personally, you become closer to God. Why not read the verse and see that this refers to collections of people? The source material is readily available, no reason to speculate. https://biblehub.com/nkjv/matthew/25.htm | | |
| ▲ | gottorf 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | I have read the source material. It says nothing about the morality of an intermediary forcibly redistributing wealth. Again, the onus is on the individual to act kindly. If anything, handing that duty off to a third party is a reduction of morals. You are also speculating if you claim that there is a moral equivalence between the two. | | |
| ▲ | bonsai_spool 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | I think we're going to disagree, which is fine, but I'll post the text and let others assess what the meanings of 'nations' is in the context of the quotation. -- https://biblehub.com/nkjv/matthew/25.htm 31“When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the [c]holy angels with Him, then He will sit on the throne of His glory. 32All the nations will be gathered before Him, and He will separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats. 33And He will set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left. [...] 41“Then He will also say to those on the left hand, ‘Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels: 42for I was hungry and you gave Me no food; I was thirsty and you gave Me no drink; 43I was a stranger and you did not take Me in, naked and you did not clothe Me, sick and in prison and you did not visit Me.’ 44“Then they also will answer [d]Him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to You?’ 45Then He will answer them, saying, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.’ 46And these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” |
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| ▲ | blargthorwars 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | It's easy to demand that other people be generous with their resources. | | |
| ▲ | bonsai_spool 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | >> That which you did not do for the least of these, you also did not do for me. > It's easy to demand that other people be generous with their resources. This is a reference to the Bible, a sentence that Jesus delivered. |
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| ▲ | bonsai_spool 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | >> It receives relatively little attention now, but in terms of sheer numbers the cuts to the USAID program have had and will continue to have the largest death toll of anything this administration does. > The US is not responsible for fixing every world issue. Just because they've helped in the past doesn't make them morally responsible for every current and future crisis. Your answer doesn't quite respond to the GP but instead feels like an expression of political opinion. From a moral stance, the action of stopping something seems quite distinct from a position in which the thing had never occurred. | |
| ▲ | pwarner 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I think helping control ebola pays a few dividends for the US. It was not completely selfless. | |
| ▲ | JoeAltmaier 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It's simple self-interest. Sure, sit on your money and smile while your neighbors die of Ebola. It won't happen here? Sure it could. When the chumps in DC tear down the infrastructure that managed things like this, then we become massively vulnerable. | |
| ▲ | kerningije 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | No dollar was ever spent by the US government outside of the US if not in self interest. Failing to see these cuts as sabotaging US interests is very, very naïve. |
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