Advanced Mediterranean Diet

U.S.A in 2030?

If Karl’s right, you’ll find good deals in real estate in a few years. If you have any money left.

You must expect that no medical care will be available for anything currently paid for by “insurance” or the government.  This is likely too pessimistic but if you count on it and are wrong you die, so being pessimistic by a bit over what’s likely is good rather than bad.  If you can change a chronic disease outcome with lifestyle you better do it now.  If you can’t then get your affairs in order, make peace with God if you believe in him, and then figure out whether you want to settle some scores when the bad stuff starts, because it’s going to and you’re going to have a very bad time of it.D

You must also expect that state, local and federal governments will all get very aggressive in trying to increase tax revenue.  If you live in a large metro area where embedded costs are high you need to get out now.  There is a very high probability that either through internal rot and collapse (e.g. they can’t pay for infrastructure repairs and they fail) or due to either an external actor or an uncoordinated and thus impossible to interdict group of Americans who decide they’ve had enough of the Blue “steal it all” crap infrastructure collapse is initiated and the large Blue Enclaves go feral within days.

If you lose this bet you will die fast and nasty.  If you stay and “win” you still lose; you’ve already seen property tax ramps in most of these places of 100% or more.  If you look at the discounted inflation-adjusted value of your house you’ve lost half of its value over the last 20 years not including the taxes already paid and thus forever gone!  That is, even if you “win” and there is no mass collapse due to either disgruntled Americans or some external actor you will still lose in that the value of your holdings will be destroyed over the next ten years.  It will be gone.  For most people not in the 1% who “own” houses their real estate holdings are more than half of their net worth and for many people it’s essentially all of it.  Get the **** out now or you will lose all of that value.  That much is assured and that’s if you win the bet; lose it and it’s not just money you lose, it’s your life as well.

RTWT.

Steve Parker, M.D.

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All Karl below:

Time to stop being nice.

America, you’re being raped.  Flat-out raped.

15 USC Chapter 1 makes clear that price-fixing is illegal.  When it comes to drugs, which are physical commodities, Robinson-Patman (15 USC Chapter 1, Section 13) also makes discriminatory pricing illegal for buyers of like kind and quantity.

(a) Price; selection of customers It shall be unlawful for any person engaged in commerce, in the course of such commerce, either directly or indirectly, to discriminate in price between different purchasers of commodities of like grade and quality, where either or any of the purchases involved in such discrimination are in commerce, where such commodities are sold for use, consumption, or resale within the United States or any Territory thereof or the District of Columbia or any insular possession or other place under the jurisdiction of the United States, and where the effect of such discrimination may be substantially to lessen competition or tend to create a monopoly in any line of commerce, or to injure, destroy, or prevent competition with any person who either grants or knowingly receives the benefit of such discrimination, or with customers of either of them

It is illegal for a pharmacy to charge you $10 for a drug and someone else $100.  Or, for that matter, to charge one person $2.15 million and another a $100 copay.

It is illegal for a hospital to do the same thing.

Things like “GoodRX” and similar are flat out facial violations of the law.

So are “varying” co-pays for the same drug in the same quantity.

So, for that matter, are bribes on a differential basis for the same thing (Section 13 c, d and e)

So, for that matter, are inducing such practices or benefiting from same (Section 13 f)

An insurance company is never a consumer of the drug.  A person is.  Such practices as conspiring with pharmacies and hospitals to vary the price you pay is illegal and has been since the 1930s.

Never mind the first few Sections of 15 USC Chapter 1 which make any scheme to fix prices or lessen competition irrespective of upon whom the price injury falls, or even whether it occurs (proof of same is not required in the statute) a criminal, 10 year in prison, felony.

Drug prices in particular, since drugs are commodities, fall under Robinson-Patman.  There is no exception found in the statutes for drugs.

Source: Prison Or Gallows: Pick One – The Market Ticker

Well worth your time to read the whole thing.

Steve Parker, M.D.

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