The 50-Cent Microscope

EXPENSIVE HEALTH CARE

Don’t miss this Daily Show clip — as Aasif Mandvi explores third-world health care.  Just past the middle, there’s a stretch of “speechlessness” that gives new meaning to the word “pricelessness.”

Listen:

If you’re affluent, the U.S. health care system is #1.  (On average, it’s #37.)

And if you’re really affluent, you should be thrilled that House Republicans just voted for the 50th time to repeal Obamacare.  It takes resources from those like you — now taxed $380,000 more on each $10 million you earn from dividends and capital gains — and gives health care to the poor, who obviously have done nothing to deserve it.  (Other than cleaning your toilets and trimming your hedges.)  (Or raising children.)  (Or being children.)

If you’re lucky, one day — perhaps on the 55th or 60th vote — the Republicans will get you that $380,000 back, and we can restore the cost-saving lifetime caps on people’s insurance policies (cost-saving, because if someone gets one of those nightmare medical issues, the insurer can drop them after the cap is reached) and stop insuring anyone with a preexisting condition (because, really, what kind of insanity is it to insure all comers? the whole point of underwriting is to be able to reject the bad risks).

But until then, keep high-dividend stocks in your $100 million IRA and minimize turn-over of the others — “buy and hold” — so your portfolio grows with ZERO capital gains tax until we get Republican control of the government and zero out taxes on wealth and inheritance.*  Thus, for now, I see no reason to take profits in CISG, up 35% since suggested here in December.  My hope is that it might double over the next few years.

*Those tax rates are currently lower than they were when Reagan left office.  But I don’t care: until they’re zero, theyre too high.

CHEAP HEALTH CARE

Have you seen this TED talk?  Manu Prakash shows off his 50-cent microscopes, made out of paper, that will allow users around the world to test for various diseases — just as if they had the heavy, expensive kind.  (The expensive kind must be handled with care.  Watch Manu stomp on his.  “My students hate when I do this,” he says — but his microscopes just shrug off the pain.)

Tomorrow: More Expensive Health Care