Chris Link, MD., The American Thinker: Anesthesiologists bill for most surgical cases with a combination of base units depending on the particular surgery (e.g. cardiac bypass has a higher base value than a hernia repair), plus one time unit for every 15 minutes. The average anesthesiologist bills 10,198 units in a year. Medicare pays, on average, $20.925 per unit. Now $213,393 a year sounds like a pretty decent living for
April 6, 2010
“What ObamaCare Will Cost Doctors”
Chris Link, MD., The American Thinker: Anesthesiologists bill for most surgical cases with a combination of base units depending on the particular surgery (e.g. cardiac bypass has a higher base value than a hernia repair), plus one time unit for every 15 minutes. The average anesthesiologist bills 10,198 units in a year. Medicare pays, on average, $20.925 per unit. Now $213,393 a year sounds like a pretty decent living for
April 6, 2010
In an ever-growing bureaucratic state…
…just who will oversee the overseers? Still, TARP’s avowed purpose was to help healthy banks resume lending following the economic meltdown of 2008; it was never meant to become a congressional slush fund. Or was it? It’s time for Treasury to disclose all records about all contacts it has received from congressmen concerning the distribution of TARP funds. Anything less than full disclosure will fuel more public worries about possible
April 6, 2010
Some interesting follow-up notes on JD Salinger
New letters surface from Salinger to a war buddy. Most interestingly, a confirmation that Salinger had a room full of unpublished manuscripts. Then there’s this, about the book that almost was. (h/t TSI)
April 5, 2010
Losing More Slowly, redux [bh]
Readers here will easily recognize the issues covered in this short piece by Theodore Dalyrymple: In his essay on the liberty of the press, the great philosopher David Hume wrote what has been many times quoted, but has never achieved the status of a cliché: It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once. Slavery has so frightful an aspect to men accustomed to freedom that
April 5, 2010
Humbly, 2
To: God From: Protein Wisdom Re: Edible panties (raspberry) You fucking rock, dude. Respectfully, protein wisdom
April 5, 2010
Fifty-ninth in a series of real-time empirical observations
In the time it takes you to read this post, Henry Waxman, fresh back from having his cornhole bleached, will sit on a cold stool at La Loma and — nearly simultaneously — devise a regulatory plan that would require all Capitol Hill restaurants to line their bar seats with those spongy foam-plastic rings the lumpenprole like to keep strapped to their crappers.
April 5, 2010
The time has come…
…for the crazed right1 to end the violence!2, 3 1 The 40% of Tea Party demonstrators who identify as Independent or Democrat, while certainly not violent, are nevertheless under the thrall of reactionary and racist far-right rhetoric, and so should be collected for reeducation. Because killing them with sticks takes away potential votes. Chicago excluded. 2 Sure, there hasn’t been any actual violence to speak of — at least, not
April 5, 2010
The United States of Westernist Western Europe
The Hudson Institute’s Irwin Stelzer, writing in the WSJ: So we are to have a European-style value-added tax (VAT). That’s the emerging consensus in Washington as people come to recognize the reality of the deep financial hole into which the Obama administration has dug us. […] The tax sounds simple, but don’t be fooled. Because both upper- and lower-income families pay the tax at an equal rate, the VAT is