Flap’s Links and Comments for April 6th on 06:52

These are my links for April 6th from 06:52 to 08:53:

• Entitlement mentality explains California funding commitments – There's no single reason why California, once a model of fiscal probity, finds itself with an intractable budget crisis.
  Rather, it's been budgetary death by a thousand cuts – countless single-purpose decisions over several decades by voters and politicians to either increase spending or reduce revenues, eventually resulting in what Capitol bean counters call a "structural deficit."

  Even when the economy is doing well, California struggles to cover all of its paper spending commitments. When it's doing poorly, as it is now, the deficit soars to unmanageable proportions.

  No one set out to create the fiscal crisis, of course. It's just what happens when commitments are made with no thought to their long-term financial consequences.

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  Read it all.

  Agreed and pervasive at the federal level +1

• Socialized Medicine: UK Surgeons raise alarm over waiting – In several areas routine surgery was put on hold for months, while in many others new thresholds for hip and knee replacements have been introduced.

  The moves are part of the NHS drive to find £20bn efficiency savings by 2015.

  The government said performance should be measured by outcomes not numbers.

  Surgeons have described the delays faced by patients as "devastating and cruel". Peter Kay, the president of the British Orthopaedic Association (BOA), says they've become increasingly frustrated that hip and knee replacements are being targeted as a way of finding savings.

  "We've started to get reports over the last nine months that access to these services are being restricted.
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  We've started to get reports over the last nine months that access to these services are being restricted”

  Peter Kay, president of BOA

  "GPs were told not so send as many patients to hospital, maybe to delay referrals until the end of the financial year while perhaps introducing thresholds for surgery."

  He says that simply delaying surgery by one means or another does not improve the outcome for patients as their condition can deteriorate.

  "The double jeopardy is that patients wait longer in pain, and when they have the operation, the result might not have been as good as it otherwise would have been had they had it early. "

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  A glimpse into the future with ObamaCare