DOGE: Rookie Numbers Take 2

and how to pump them up

The DOGE kids are asking for suggestions again:

I’ll give them the same answer as before:

Type 2 Diabetes is the single largest item on the federal budget, probably around 400-500B a year (and increasing steadily) in non-discretionary spending, across Medicare, Medicaid, the VA and others. Associated metabolic illnesses might cover hundreds of billions more.

It is possible to reverse/cure/mitigate T2D without expensive drugs or surgeries, if you follow the methods used by companies like Virtahealth.

Right now, the things being cut just aren't enough, and even worse, DOGE can't demonstrate the value to people by giving it back in tax refunds - even then it might only be a few dollars a year - because then it wouldn't help the debt.

But, if you could cure even half of the T2 diabetes in the country, you would actually be doing something that would directly help people and also save trillions by accident - without taking it away from anyone, because they just wouldn't need it any more.

These are the actual things that actually hurt, cripple and impoverish millions of Americans every year. Ask Vance. He wrote a whole book about it.

You can even do it with a single CMS rule change. No executive branch, no congress, no courts. No laborious fraud investigations.

Right now CMS has all these "quality metrics" where they demand that doctors do certain things - like “put anyone with diabetes on a statin” - in order to get reimbursement money for their Medicare patients.

All you have to do is tell the CMS board that determines those rules to enact a single new rule: follow the above methods/guidelines to treat T2 diabetes in their Medicare/Medicaid patients - if they want to get paid for treating them. Get rid of any other diabetes-related CMS quality metrics, especially that goddamn one about putting everyone on a statin. You can even code in rewards for on average population A1c reductions, or offsetting rewards for getting patients off meds.

We may also want to provide a federal contract to people like Virtahealth or other companies just to provide the manpower for the focused, 1:1 interactions needed to help people. Hell, nationalize the damn company. They may be Canadian, I’m not sure - does that make it easier? Send out all those fresh-faced DOGE kids to Middletown, OH to be the frontline of Abolishing Diabetes, it's a higher ROI than what they're doing now.

You can't save America from a debt crisis by cutting thousands, or millions, or even billions today.

You have to save many trillions over the next 25 years.

This is the best way to do that. Stop wasting your time on the little stuff.