Ongoing Reports on the Republican Massacre of Parody and Common Decency
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Today’s installment of “if Aaron Sorkin had made this a plot line in a West Wing script, I would have written a post making fun of him for his didacticism:”
Eliminating nearly all the money for poison control centers would save $27 million — not even a rounding error when it comes to the deficit. Yet it is so foolish that it perfectly illustrates the thoughtlessness of the House Republican bill to cut $61 billion from the budget over the next seven months.
The nation’s network of 57 poison control centers takes four million calls a year about people who may have been exposed to a toxic substance. In three-quarters of all cases, the centers are able to provide treatment advice that does not require a visit to a hospital or a doctor, saving tens of millions of dollars in medical costs.
But…efficiency! Decentralization! Does preventing people from dying from being poisoned pay for itself? If not, don’t upper-class tax cuts that this wouldn’t pay for anyway have to take precedence? Indeed, isn’t letting some kids die so others can enjoy some more magnums of Gallo Hearty Burgundy what morality demands?
While a single visit to an emergency room can cost hundreds or thousands of dollars (often paid for by the government), a call to a poison center costs the government only $30 or $40. A study in the Journal of Medical Toxicology estimated that the poison centers saved the State of Arizona alone $33 million a year. Louisiana eliminated its centers in the 1980s but restored them when it realized how much money they saved.
The centers, which collect poison reports, can also act as an early warning system for pandemics or large toxic exposures, allowing a quick response.
The federal government pays about 20 percent of the cost of the centers, with states, cities and philanthropy picking up the rest. Many strapped state and local governments have cut back their financing, and experts say that the virtual elimination of federal money would force many centers to close and sharply damage the effectiveness of the national network.
Oh. Yep, I think we’ve stumbled on a definitive example of what happens when people make the dire mistake of electing Republicans.