AMERICAN CONSERVATISM IN 2008 AND BEYOND

“If ever a time should come, when vain and aspiring men should possess the highest seats in government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin.” -- Samuel Adams

“The powers of the federal government are enumerated; it can only operate in certain cases; it has legislative powers on defined and limited objects, beyond which it cannot extend its jurisdiction.” – James Madison

“When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.” -- Benjamin Franklin

They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty or safety.” -- Benjamin Franklin

“Remember democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” -- John Adams

“To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.” -- George Washington

Great post, with great quotes, ican. Thanks!

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=20020&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=DPD
When the Doctor Has a Boss

The traditional model of doctors hanging up their own shingles is fading fast, as more go to work directly for hospitals that are building themselves into consolidated health care providers, says the Wall Street Journal.
• The latest sign of the continued shift comes from a large Medical Group Management Association survey, which found that the share of responding practices that were hospital-owned last year hit 55 percent, up from 50 percent in 2008 and around 30 percent five years earlier.
• The biggest U.S. physician-recruiting firm, Merritt Hawkins, said the share of its doctor searches that were for positions with hospitals hit 51 percent for the 12 months ended in March, up from 45 percent a year earlier and 19 percent five years ago.

The trend is tied to the needs of both doctors and hospitals, as well as to emerging changes in how insurers and government programs pay for care.
• Many doctors have become frustrated with the duties involved in practice ownership, including wrangling with insurers, dunning patients for their out-of-pocket fees and acquiring new technology.
• Some young physicians are choosing to avoid such issues altogether and seeking the sometimes more regular hours of salaried positions.
• Hospitals are also seeking to position themselves for new methods of payment, including an emerging model known as accountable care organizations that is encouraged by the new federal health care law.

The consolidation wave is raising red flags among some regulators, researchers and health insurers, who warn that bigger health systems can use their leverage to push for higher rates.

Source: Anna Wilde Mathews, "When the Doctor Has a Boss," Wall Street Journal, November 8, 2010.

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=20021&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=DPD
Taxpayers' Bill on Freddie, Fannie Foreclosures: $2B

Taxpayer-funded Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have spent more than $2 billion this year on foreclosed property expenses after acquiring tens of thousands of homes through foreclosures, says USA Today.
• The mortgage giants owned more than 240,000 foreclosed homes on September 30, they reported last week.
• That's about 25 percent of all lender-owned homes in the United States, according to RealtyTrac.

Fannie and Freddie, which buy mortgages from lenders and package them into securities to sell to investors, own or guarantee half of all U.S. mortgages. Together, they have more than twice as many foreclosed homes now as they did this time last year, with a combined value of $24 billion.
• The U.S. Treasury has invested $148 billion in preferred stock in Fannie and Freddie -- and received almost $17 billion in dividends -- since taking them over two years ago.
• Their losses have narrowed, but further Treasury investments are expected.
• Excluding dividends, the government's cumulative cost could range from $142 billion to $259 billion by December 2013, estimates their regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency.
The longer foreclosed homes stay on their books, the larger taxpayers' expenses will be, says USA Today.
• As of September 30, Freddie Mac owned 74,897 foreclosed single-family homes, up 82 percent from a year ago, according to its third-quarter financial report.
• From January through September, Freddie spent $842 million -- vs. $480 million in the same time last year -- on properties acquired in foreclosures.
• Fannie owned 166,787 foreclosed single-family homes on September 30.
• Its foreclosed property expenses approached $1.3 billion from January through September.

Source: Julie Schmit and Stephanie Armour, "Taxpayers' Bill on Freddie, Fannie Foreclosures: $2B," USA Today, November 8, 2010.

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=20023&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=DPD
Review of Prostate Cancer Drug Provenge Renews Medical Cost-Benefit Debate

Federal officials are conducting an unusual review to determine whether the government should pay for an expensive new vaccine for treating prostate cancer, rekindling debate over whether some therapies are too costly, says the Washington Post.
• The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is running a "national coverage analysis" of Provenge, the first vaccine approved for treating any cancer.
• The treatment costs $93,000 a patient and has been shown to extend patients' lives by about four months.

Although Medicare is not supposed to take cost into consideration when making such rulings, the decision to launch a formal examination has raised concerns among cancer experts, drug companies, lawmakers, prostate cancer patients and advocacy groups.

"If the cost wasn't a consideration, this wouldn't even be under discussion," says Skip Lockwood, who heads Zero - the Project to End Prostate Cancer, a Washington-based lobbying group.
• Prostate cancer strikes 192,000 men in the United States each year and kills about 27,000.
• The only therapies are surgery, radiation, hormones and the chemotherapy drug Taxotere.

"To charge $90,000 for four months, which comes out to $270,000 for a year of life, I think that's too expensive," said Tito Fojo of the National Cancer Institute. "A lot of people will say, 'It's my $100,000, and it's my four months.' Absolutely: A day is worth $1 million to some people. Unfortunately, we can't afford it as a society."

Company officials say the cost is not out of line with that of other cancer drugs. Each treatment with Provenge, which the company estimates cost nearly $1 billion to develop, is tailored to each patient, says the Post.

Source: Rob Stein, "Review of Prostate Cancer Drug Provenge Renews Medical Cost-Benefit Debate," Washington Post, November 8, 2010.

Ehem, okie, can't you get access to wikipedia?
Here's another link from that side, same article:

They compute GDP by the value of all goods and services produce for the year. For as long as I can remember, the economy in the US was produced by consumption that made up 70% of our GDP.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_domestic_product
...
The gross domestic product (GDP) or gross domestic income (GDI) is the amount of goods and services produced in a year, in a country. It is the market value of all final goods and services made within the borders of a country in a year. It is often positively correlated with the standard of living.
...
GDP can be determined in three ways, all of which should in principle give the same result. They are the product (or output) approach, the income approach, and the expenditure approach.

The most direct of the three is the product approach, which sums the outputs of every class of enterprise to arrive at the total. The expenditure approach works on the principle that all of the product must be bought by somebody, therefore the value of the total product must be equal to people's total expenditures in buying things. The income approach works on the principle that the incomes of the productive factors ("producers," colloquially) must be equal to the value of their product, and determines GDP by finding the sum of all producers' incomes.[3]
...

Both TOTAL US CIVILIAN EMPLOYMENT and PERCENT OF CIVILIAN POPULATION EMPLOYED are far better measures of both how well the economy of the USA is doing, and how well the American population is doing.

Okie, I hope this helps you more than it helps me. I don't understand why employment can decrease while GDP increases.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_domestic_product