The New York Sun reports "a state-regulated insurance pool for high-risk physicians, the Medical Malpractice Insurance Plan, is currently $500 million in debt…The deficit has to go somewhere eventually, unless we turn lead into gold or print money." The article is here http://www.nysun.com/article/68523?page_no=1. The likely result is soaring malpractice insurance fees, therefore higher health care costs, higher deductables, higher copayments and out of pocket expenses, and more uninsured. This is yet another $500 million that someone else (depending on one's ideology) either should have paid or should not have received in the past. Regardless of ideology, those demanding good deals for themselves in the past have caused $500 million in additional harm to us going forward. The only question is who was to blame. I see a bipartisan arrangement that passes 212 to 0 every year.
Everywhere one looks, one finds the same thing. How many more $500 millions are there? And how is it that I and my children and their children are responsible for them? How is that those in the legislature who made the decisions are considered heroes for handing out benefits in the past, and will have guaranteed health care and tax-free pensions even after they stop "working" in the future? Is evil too strong a word for the unspoken values behind what has gone on? The more I think about it, the more it seems reneging on debt and pension obligations is the only way out. Because we don't have real elections for legislative office, and because the constitutional provision that debts passed on to the future must pass by referendum is a joke, it is the only defense we have. Eventually they'll be nothing left to lose. Any reasonable estimate of the future has to assume an ongoing degredation of public services and benefits with high and rising taxes.