Where is the US economy headed?

@cicerone imposter,

I thought Obama already knew what worked. He told us that during the campaign. I'm with Spendius on this one. Now he doesn't know?

He could start with tort reform, capping lawsuits for all of his friends suing doctors, that would be nice, to reduce out of this world insurance costs.

1 Reply

@okie,

okie wrote:

I thought Obama already knew what worked. He told us that during the campaign. I'm with Spendius on this one. Now he doesn't know?

He could start with tort reform, capping lawsuits for all of his friends suing doctors, that would be nice, to reduce out of this world insurance costs.

Lawsuit costs are not responsible for high insurance costs, Okie. We've actually been over this before.

Cycloptichorn

1 Reply

@Cycloptichorn,

Common sense tells me otherwise, cyclops. I would challenge you to tell me how it would affect you if you had to pay over a hundred grand every year for medical malpractice insurance, before you even saw one patient. How would that affect your rates? I never said it was the cure all, but it would be a start. Why are you so sensitive to protect your lawyer buddy ambulance chasers?

1 Reply

@okie,

okie wrote:

Common sense tells me otherwise, cyclops. I would challenge you to tell me how it would affect you if you had to pay over a hundred grand every year for medical malpractice insurance, before you even saw one patient. How would that affect your rates? I never said it was the cure all, but it would be a start. Why are you so sensitive to protect your lawyer buddy ambulance chasers?

What do you mean, 'lawyer buddies?' I don't know any trial lawyers.

The reason insurance costs are so high has a lot more to do with poor investments on the part of the insurance agencies.

http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2005/06/01/rising_doctors_premiums_not_due_to_lawsuit_awards/

Quote:

Rising doctors' premiums not due to lawsuit awards

Study suggests insurers raise rates to make up for investment declines

By Liz Kowalczyk, Globe Staff | June 1, 2005

Re-igniting the medical malpractice overhaul debate, a new study by Dartmouth College researchers suggests that huge jury awards and financial settlements for injured patients have not caused the explosive increase in doctors' insurance premiums.

The researchers said a more likely explanation for the escalation is that malpractice insurance companies have raised doctors' premiums to compensate for falling investment returns.

The Dartmouth economists studied actual payments made to patients between 1991 and 2003, the results of which were published yesterday in the journal Health Affairs. Some previous studies have examined jury awards, which often are reduced after trial to comply with doctors' insurance coverage maximums or because the plaintiff settles for less money to avoid an appeal. Researchers found that payments grew an average of 4 percent annually during the years covered by the study, or 52 percent overall since 1991, but only 1.6 percent a year since 2000. The increases are roughly equivalent to the overall rise in healthcare costs, said Amitabh Chandra, lead author and an assistant professor of economics at the New Hampshire college…

Meanwhile, malpractice insurance premiums for internists, general surgeons, and obstetricians have skyrocketed since 2000, jumping 20 to 25 percent in 2002 alone.

Payments going up just a few percentage points, premiums jumping up 20 percent.

I would point out that insurance companies based in states which have very restrictive tort laws.... still have seen huge rises in their premiums.

Cycloptichorn

2 Replies

@Cycloptichorn,

So an insurance premium of tens of thousands or a hundred thousand or two does not affect medical costs? Seems like fuzzy math to me, cyclops. My brother was a doctor, and so was a cousin, that cousin quit in his 40's because of high insurance costs. And my brother finally retired, sick of the government bureaucratic crap worsening every year.

1 Reply

@okie,

okie wrote:

So an insurance premium of tens of thousands or a hundred thousand or two does not affect medical costs? Seems like fuzzy math to me, cyclops. My brother was a doctor, and so was a cousin, that cousin quit in his 40's because of high insurance costs. And my brother finally retired, sick of the government bureaucratic crap worsening every year.

Uh, what?

Insurance premiums are part of what make medical costs high.

But insurance premiums don't go up b/c of lawsuits. That's the part where you were wrong.

Cycloptichorn

1 Reply

@Cycloptichorn,

As usual, okie doesn't know what he's talking about; he uses his personal impressions to arrive at conclusions that are usually based only on his imagination based on anecdotal experience. He doesn't bother to do a simple Google search to find evidence before he spouts misinformation on these boards.

I have a brother, two nieces and three nephews in the medical profession. They're doing just fine.

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@Cycloptichorn,

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Insurance premiums are part of what make medical costs high.

But insurance premiums don't go up b/c of lawsuits. That's the part where you were wrong.

Cycloptichorn

Well, I don't think you even need insurance if there were no lawsuits, and I don't think lawsuits make premiums go down. Thats silly, cyclops. Thats like claiming auto accidents and lawsuits do not drive up auto insurance costs.

Next, you will be claiming fires, floods, hail, and tornados do not drive up the cost of home insurance.

1 Reply

@okie,

okie wrote:

Cycloptichorn wrote:
Insurance premiums are part of what make medical costs high.

But insurance premiums don't go up b/c of lawsuits. That's the part where you were wrong.

Cycloptichorn

Well, I don't think you even need insurance if there were no lawsuits, and I don't think lawsuits make premiums go down. Thats silly, cyclops. Thats like claiming auto accidents and lawsuits do not drive up auto insurance costs.

Next, you will be claiming fires, floods, hail, and tornados do not drive up the cost of home insurance.

Okie, if we were seeing a rise in malpractice payouts that was being passed along to the customers, we would expect it to have raised insurance rates roughly comparable to the amount of rise in payouts; after all, that's how capitalism works, competition keeps these companies fighting to provide the lower rates.

But instead, the insurance costs have risen at a rate FAR above the rate of malpractice payout increases. This suggests that there are other factors in play here besides increases in malpractice payouts.

Lawsuits do not make premiums go down, but they do not contribute to the meteoric rise we've seen in costs over the last decade. As for the necessity of insurance, I'm sure it would be necessary without lawsuits; doctors make mistakes, and should insure themselves against them much like all professions carry insurance against accidents and mistakes.

Cycloptichorn

1 Reply

@Cycloptichorn,

According to an article about medical malpractice, 96% are settled out of court.
That tells me that medical malpractice suits are settled much cheaper - overall.

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While the Republicans retro-cons (as oppose to neo-cons under Bush) are screaming about the effect on small business of the tax hike (I've never had nor heard of a small business individual making $250,000.00). This is their actual record regarding small business:

The SBA was established on July 30, 1953, by the United States Congress with the passage of the Small Business Act. Its function was to "aid, counsel, assist and protect, insofar as is possible, the interests of small business concerns." Also stipulated was that the SBA should ensure a "fair proportion" of government contracts and sales of surplus property to small business. This was accomplished primarily through the Small Business Innovative Research program and government "set-asides."[3][4]

The SBA has survived a number of threats to its existence. In 1996 the then newly Republican-controlled House of Representatives planned to eliminate the agency.[5] It survived and went on to receive a record high budget in 2000.[6] Renewed efforts by the Bush Administration to end the SBA loan program have met congressional resistance, although the SBA's budget has been repeatedly cut, and in 2004 certain expenditures were frozen.

-Wikipedia (which I don't normally use, but it was a good condensation for hits all over Google).

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@realjohnboy,

realjohnboy wrote:

The "official" number of job losses in February along with some seriously upward adjustments for Jan and Dec:
November, 2008: 533,000
December, 2008: 681,000
January, 2009: 655,000
February, 2009: 651,000

3 Replies

@realjohnboy,

rjb, It will be helpful if you can show both the old and revised numbers each time you post those numbers. thx.

1 Reply

@cicerone imposter,

Duly noted, CI. The December # was listed as 524,000; revised to 681,000.
January went from 598,000 to 655,000.
I can only come up with one explanation as to why the original numbers were so far off the mark. The job losses are now spreading to much smaller businesses that are off the radar screen. 10 employees to 7, for example.
I also saw somewhere today a number showing how many folks had their hours cut back in February. They still have jobs, but are making less money. I think it was around 750,000 but don't quote me.

1 Reply

@realjohnboy,

realjohnboy wrote:

Duly noted, CI. The December # was listed as 524,000; revised to 681,000.
January went from 598,000 to 655,000.
I can only come up with one explanation as to why the original numbers were so far off the mark. The job losses are now spreading to much smaller businesses that are off the radar screen. 10 employees to 7, for example.
I also saw somewhere today a number showing how many folks had their hours cut back in February. They still have jobs, but are making less money. I think it was around 750,000 but don't quote me.

Yup, the old 'under-employment.' It's a mostly unrecognized problem.

I wonder how much the 'seasonal adjustment' is fiddled with after the fact, when more complete numbers (such as the ones you describe) don't jive with the projected ones.

Cycloptichorn

ps, did you see my piece a few pages back about the proposal to Privatize the banks to save them?

1 Reply

@realjohnboy,

rjb, Thank you. The conservative think tank, the Hoover Institution (at Stanford), is blaming the DOWs drop on Obama. People like Foxie eats it up hook, line and sinker. They can't see the obvious; the reason the DOW is dropping is because people are losing their jobs by the thousands every day, and there's no sign of any improvement any time soon.

This trend started (*job loss) long before Obama came into office. Some people have no common sense or logic to determine the simplest of issues whether it's economics or politics.

1 Reply

@Cycloptichorn,

November, Cyclops, was a brutal month for retailers. For me, my neighbors and for folks I know in the retail business elsewhere. The wheels came off the wagon in November. We can't really figure out why.
The days after T'giving were bad (for most of us, the holiday season starts then, not in July). I suspect that the job losses occurred early in the month as retailers realized how bad the season was going to be.
I did see your article on the privatization of banks and meant to comment on it. But it got away. Do you recall what page it was on?

1 Reply

@realjohnboy,

realjohnboy wrote:

November, Cyclops, was a brutal month for retailers. For me, my neighbors and for folks I know in the retail business elsewhere. The wheels came off the wagon in November. We can't really figure out why.
The days after T'giving were bad (for most of us, the holiday season starts then, not in July). I suspect that the job losses occurred early in the month as retailers realized how bad the season was going to be.
I did see your article on the privatization of banks and meant to comment on it. But it got away. Do you recall what page it was on?

Right here, sir -

http://able2know.org/topic/47327-287#post-3590662

November was a really bad month here in SF for jobs; credit had REALLY dried up by that point and a lot of small businesses couldn't lie to themselves any longer about not being able to make payroll in a few weeks.

Cycloptichorn

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I posted this chart a month ago, with a warning that this recession is not like past ones. Maporsche and others argued that the larger workforce we have now makes the chart inaccurate for purposes of comparison.

Well, it's clearly still getting worse:

http://blog.prospect.org/blog/ezraklein/3333412448_6f0e53b363.jpg

Cycloptichorn

1 Reply

@Cycloptichorn,

According to numbers posted by rjb on lost jobs for the past four months, that chart is outdated. It's well over two million jobs lost, and climbing.

0 Replies

Where is the US economy headed?

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