Dennis York just isn't funny anymore

by folkbum

There was little doubt, back in the olden days, when we had to chisel out our blog posts on slabs of granite, that the psuedonymous "Dennis York" was fantastic, a highlight of the Wisconsin blog community. He was conservative, sure, but independent-minded and, more importantly, funny. You can read his stuff here still.

Eventually, he came out as Christian Schneider and got a Real Job working at the decidedly unfunny Wisconsin Policy Research Group. There, he often blogs about health care policy, and seems to be the WPRI's point-man for stupid arguments against Healthy Wisconsin, the Democrats' plan for universal health coverage in the state. For example, he pioneered the argument that Healthy Wisconsin would suck uninsured ne'er-do-wells into the state to bleed us dry. That argument was just demolished by He-Man Seth Zlotocha. Yet it keeps rearing its ugly head, most recently in an op-ed by noted Republican Woman Charlotte Rasmussen, and perhaps most embarassingly by Leah Vukmir. Seth knocked down a bunch of Schneider's other bad arguments against Healthy Wisconsin, in fact titling that post "Healthy Wisconsin Deserves Better." It does--and it could have had it from Dennis York.

Too bad we're dealing with Christian Schneider instead.

His most recent abominable post is a dreadfully painful attempt to make everyone who's ever been screwed by their insurance company feel better about themselves, because of how much worse it could get:

However, free markets aren’t always pretty. Once people are shopping around for cost-effective medical care, the people selling those services will do everything they can to lure people in to their shop. Suddenly, you might see knee replacements being sold on TV by some bald, sweaty salesman with a limp. [. . .]

And what’s next? Are we going to see ads for “Crazy Larry’s Prosthetic Hut?” (Where a new limb won’t cost you an arm and a leg?) Will women be getting their gynecological exams at ”The Love Doctor?” (Cervix with a Smile?) Is Burger King going to offer up a coupon for a free arterial stent with the purchase of five Whoppers? (Of course, it will be the Whoppers that cause you to need the surgery.)

I'm not sure how long he spent on "cervix with a smile," but it doesn't make up for the rest of the post. Believe me, what I elided was no funnier. The best bits are here.

But worse than being unfunny, it's deceptive and painfully wrong. It is an unconscionably poor argument for market-based health care. The worst a market-driven approach can get is not bad commercials; it's killing patients by denying care. I don't think any of us who have ever had to spend hours on the phone, days in a row, months at a time to get legitimate claims covered are even remotely comforted by the thought of bad commercials. ("At least the Muzak was nice--no ads for Crazy Larry while I was on hold!")

In the market, the patients may be the customers, but they are not the ones insurance companies will have to please. (Face it--I don't care how much "competition" there is for any given slice of the medical pie--it's still the insurance companies that will rule the day.) The companies have to please investors, and to do that, they have to turn a profit. Every dollar they pay your doctor (or Crazy Larry) is a dollar they can't count as profit. Their incentive is to spend as little as possible on you. Period.

One of the single biggest expenses for insurance companies is the bureaucracy, between 20% and 25% of total health care dollars, by most estimates. Insurance companies could save a lot of profit there if they could cut that cost. But a significant amount of that spending on bureacracy is designed simply to deny claims or delay them so long that patients give up fighting. The industry must be making a whole lot of return on their investment in that bureaucracy--that's why they won't cut it.

In the end, it's not Crazy Larry we need to worry about when relying on "the market" for health care. It's Christian Schneider, and his lame excuses for what is an inhuman system. When the insurance company's profits are up, you know it's because somewhere, a patient is getting screwed. And that's just not funny.

This Blog is Not Affiliated with DPW or Any Campaign

I felt the need for the disclaimer. (I am even a little afraid I've let my party dues lapse, though I'm not entirely sure.)

This is because Jessica McBride thinks I write the Dems' press releases, or something, which, of course, drives the media narrative. She's even put it in handy diagram form, for her listeners who can't read between the lines:

Blogs ----> Democratic Party/Doyle campaign press releases ----> MSM stories

There you go, boys and girls. All those nice Republicans who took campaign money from the Republican leadership that protected and promoted a sexual predator (for years, people, not just a few months) wouldn't have to face any awkward questions in the press about it if it weren't for me. Absolutely nothing that they would have to say or comment on at all if I hadn't gone mucking around in publicly accessible websites looking for dirt.

And now, for my next feat of massive influence: Jessica McBride should retire from public life. (Just give that a week to sink in.)

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Less serious response: What? Bloggers driving the media narrative? Why, conservatives would never do that. (*cough* danrather *cough*)

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More serious response: I'm going to believe that, after I posted twice on Sunday about Wisconsin Republicans' ties to the Mark Foley scandal, the press releases that showed up in my inbox Monday (like this one) mirroring my posts were more a case of Great Minds Thinking Alike than anything else. It was low-hanging fruit, after all.

But there is a legitimate question for Republican Congressional candidate John Gard, despite what Dennis York thinks (scroll down to Hasselhoff), about whether the ten large from John Boehner, who knew about Foley but didn't call for the kind of investigation we've seen in page scandals of the past, would affect a hypothetical-Congressman Gard's vote for the leadership in January. Does Gard think that Boehner--or Hastert, who dropped $5k to him--is the kind of man who should be leading the Congress he wants to belong to? That is not an unreasonable question at all; and the follow-up--if not, why keep the money?--is also reasonable to ask. Jessica McBride is, in theory, someone who knows journalism and, as such, should know that those questions would have come regardless of my writing on this blog about it.

Gard is welcome to make the case to the press that Dennis York does for him, but it's not wrong to ask, and certainly not unexpected that the Democratic Party of Wisconsin would press the issue.

Murder Most Swine

I know I'm going to catch a lot of heat for this, but I can't sit by any longer without saying something.

I believe Dennis Pork was murdered.

The evidence is all there, but the M-S-M is too busy with basketball and the latest Brett Favre rumors to put the pieces togther. Consider:

• Dennis Pork is one of only a few people who know Dennis York's true identity.
  
• I have seen Dennis Pork handing out cigarettes to WisPolitics.com staff in exchange for votes in the Blogger of the Year competition.
  
• The cloven-hoofprints in the mud next to the vans with slashed tires that I'd rented for my campaign vounteers to drive to Madison and bribe the WisPolitics.com staff with cigarettes are probably Dennis Pork's, though I'm sure now that he's dead, we'll never know the truth.
  
• The photograph of his death scene seems staged. Consider: Dennis Pork does not have opposable thumbs, so how could he have used that razor?
  
• WisPolitics.com severely edited the video of his acceptance speech (ostensibly to hide Dennis York's true identity), and now has pulled the video from its site. I believe that, had we been allowed to watch the rest of the video, Dennis Pork would have said he was being held hostage, and would be killed unless conservatives finally found a voice in the "mainstream media." He did, after all, begin the video by holding up a copy of that day's Wisconsin State Journal, about Mark Pocan's Pontiac, as if to prove he was still alive on that day.
  
• Jeff Mayers is a ninja, and could have made it look like an accident.

Now, I know that some of this is circumstantial, but, as a blogger, I feel duty-bound to sieze on the smallest piece of evidence that supports what I believe while ignoring everything else, even if those facts might be contradictory to my opinion.

As I said, I believe Dennis Pork was murdered, and I will not stop until the Cheddarsphere can claim a conviction for the man who did it as a victory, like ethanol, the gas tax, and Nicole Devlin. In fact, I promise you that I will not rest--I will not leave my basement!--until Dennis Pork's killer is brought to justice.