@hawkeye10,
We've known for a very long time that US patients pay much more than Canadians for the same drugs - made in the USA. That kind of mistreatment by the drug companies towards Americans must be stopped.
@sangiusto,
Obama still hasn't signed off the Kennedy's health plan. Until then, it's just talking points.
Foxfyre wrote: The government would force employers to offer healthcare plans because that is the only way they can appear to be good guys while taking full control of 16% of the nation's economy. They can't just declare private insurance null and void. They have to convince the gullible that the people will still be in charge while they take your choices away from you.
Oh I know that isn't being advertised as an intention, but you just see what happens to any company trying to reduce healthcare benefits to its union employees. And even if they don't FORCE companies to provide healthcare plans to employees, they'll tax them as if they do. And if we are REQUIRED to have health insurance will you pay much more for a private plan than the government one?
Sticker shock
Chicago Tribune
The following editorial appeared in the Chicago Tribune on Monday, June 22:
___
Talk about bad timing for President Barack Obama.
There he was on Monday, exhorting doctors at an American Medical Association confab to join his once-in-a-generation overhaul of health care in America. He drew several standing ovations, even as he told them things that would probably cut their pay.
But then, on the same day, came an astonishing Congressional Budget Office analysis of what all this could cost.
The CBO analyzed the first major health-care proposal introduced, by Sen. Edward Kennedy, and concluded that it would cost more than $1 trillion over 10 years. That sent a jolt of sticker shock through Congress.
But hold on. Here's the kicker to that breathtaking figure: Even after spending all that money, 37 million Americans still wouldn't have health insurance.
Yes, that's a tentative analysis, as the CBO warned. It will change as the bill is fleshed out. And the Kennedy bill is only one of several health-care reform proposals now percolating in Congress.
But the analysis sure seemed to rattle advocacy groups and the White House. "This is not the administration's bill and it's not even the final Senate committee bill," a White House spokesman said.
Ooh, chilly.
So, OK, this is a work in progress, things will change, blah blah blah. But the point here is that the CBO analysis tells us three things that probably won't change, no matter how a major health-care reform law is crafted.
It will be:
_Complicated.
_Extremely expensive.
_Full of unforeseen consequences.
Congress doesn't have to take our word for it. Lawmakers can learn from the experience of Massachusetts, the first state to mandate health insurance coverage.
How are things going there? We'd say it's mixed.
At last count, the Bay State had the lowest rate of uninsured people in the nation, 2.6 percent. That's compared to the national average of 15 percent. Those holdouts are either unwilling to pay for insurance (and willing to incur the penalties assessed by the state) or they can't afford the insurance (even with state subsidies) and aren't required to buy it. Conclusion: Even if coverage is mandated, Congress will have to settle for something less than universal coverage.
Then there's the budget. The state expected to spend $472 million in fiscal 2008 for its health-care plan. The actual cost: $628 million. Budget projections for fiscal 2010 range from $750 million to $880 million. The state is struggling because it underestimated the number of adults who would sign up for subsidized insurance, which under some circumstances covers a family of four that earns up to about $66,000.
Conclusion: Congress has considered subsidizing American families earning up to $110,000 to buy insurance. That would be too broad and too expensive. It appears that lawmakers are moving away from such a commitment.
Beyond the numbers, what about suddenly insured patients who need care? A recent report by the Urban Institute wasn't too reassuring. It found that even those who got health-care coverage in Massachusetts found they couldn't afford needed treatments. It's not clear why.
The sudden influx of the insured has strained the health-care system in the Bay State. Patients report long waits to see doctors. One in five patients has reported being told that a doctor was not accepting new patients, or not accepting patients with their type of insurance, according to the report.
The upshot: People still wound up in emergency rooms for routine care. That undercuts a major premise for covering all Americans, which is to stop them from going to the emergency room for routine care that could be less expensively dispensed in the doctor's office.
Obama wants to push a bill through Congress before the August recess. That deadline may be slipping, thanks in part to this bolt of fiscal reality from the CBO.
@cicerone imposter,
Quote:We've known for a very long time that US patients pay much more than Canadians for the same drugs - made in the USA. That kind of mistreatment by the drug companies towards Americans must be stopped
you are getting only 1/3 of the picture. We also take a lot more drugs per person, and we often use the most expensive drug treatment because that is what is pushed in marketing by the drug companies. Ignorant individual users always want what they think the best product is when they don't pay the bill directly.
Canada? Only decerebrated people put Canada up as a model.
It is clear that Canada, at one time, was one of the three nations that did not allow private insurance. The other two( good company) were North Korea and Cuba.
The Canadian Supreme Court ruled that it was UNCONSTITUTIONAL NOT TO ALLOW PRIVATE INSURANCE. The finding was based on a suit brought by an individual who desperately needed an elective procedure--a NEW HIP.
He claimed that his pain was unsupportable and that the waiting list was much too long.
The Canadian Supreme Court, at one stroke, gave Private Insurers a chance to operate in Canada.
@hawkeye10,
Quote:we often use the most expensive drug treatment because that is what is pushed in marketing by the drug companies.
I think it is because expensive drugs are posher and more "up there" as Andy Warhol used to say. Don't you know your Veblen hawk. Warfarin is much more U than rat poison.
@Cycloptichorn,
the same point as usual
over and over and over
the name changes, but the style remains the same
@ehBeth,
ehBeth wrote:now there's something for the sig line thread
"Oppose medical care!!!"
I think we have a Republican slogan for 2010. Quick, ehBeth -- start a think tank and make $$$ Big Bucks$$$ !!!
ehBeth wrote:the same point as usual
over and over and over
the name changes, but the style remains the same
Or, as Shakespeare might have put it:
What's in a name?
A skunk by any other name
would smell as foul.
Fractures in the capitalist system continue to develop. God help us all.
Quote:Pragmatic lenders who hedged their economic exposure through credit-default swaps (CDSs), a type of insurance against default, can often make higher returns from CDS payouts than from out-of-court restructuring plans. In the case of Six Flags, fingers are pointing at a Fidelity mutual fund for turning down an offer that would have granted unsecured creditors an 85% equity stake. Mike Simonton, an analyst at Fitch, a ratings agency, calculates that uninsured bondholders will receive less than 10% of the equity now that Six Flags has filed for protection.
Some investors take an even more predatory approach. By purchasing a material amount of a firm’s debt in conjunction with a disproportionately large number of CDS contracts, rapacious lenders (mostly hedge funds) can render bankruptcy more attractive than solvency.
http://www.economist.com/businessfinance/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13871164&source=hptextfeature
We are seeing more and more of these financial manipulators who have rigged a system were they profit no matter what happens to companies, individuals, and the economy. They have no vested interest in keeping companies, individual and the economy strong. They take their money either way.
@spendius,
spendius wrote:
It's a nightmare. I have no suggestions.
Conclusion, we will all die of somethin.
@sangiusto,
sangiusto wrote:
It is clear that, according to the Congressional Budget Office's analysis of Senator Kennedy's health care proposal that not only would the proposal cost more than one trillion over ten years, thirty seven million Americans still would not have health insurance.
So ten trillion for insuring another 5 or 10 million people that don't have it now? Isn't that very roughly a million bucks per person over 10 years, that doesn't sound very cheap, and considering the cost will alway exceed what is estimated, katy bar the door. I think Spendius is right, Obama is a dollar short and a day late with this idea.
@hawkeye10,
This is what happens when our top business schools teach our kids how to manipulate the system without any regards to ethics.
@okie,
okie wrote:
sangiusto wrote:
It is clear that, according to the Congressional Budget Office's analysis of Senator Kennedy's health care proposal that not only would the proposal cost more than one trillion over ten years, thirty seven million Americans still would not have health insurance.
So ten trillion for insuring another 5 or 10 million people that don't have it now? Isn't that very roughly a million bucks per person over 10 years, that doesn't sound very cheap, and considering the cost will alway exceed what is estimated, katy bar the door. I think Spendius is right, Obama is a dollar short and a day late with this idea.
Um. 1 Trillion over 10 years isn't the same thing as 10 trillion, Okie.
The CBO did not score a proposal which included the Public Option; the proposal they marked up did not include that. Naturally, you will get an incomplete picture when the entire plan isn't in place.
Cycloptichorn
@Cycloptichorn,
I stand corrected, but the costs never come under the projections. It still is not very economical.
@okie,
okie wrote:
I stand corrected, but the costs never come under the projections. It still is not very economical.
On the contrary, the Public Option will come in significantly under the cost of the old CBO projection. It is a cost-saving device.
Cycloptichorn
@Cycloptichorn,
Never, cyclops, never. You have the mindset of a bureaucrat, thats all I can conclude. The government never does anything economically, never. The only thing we should have the government do for us is something mandated by the constitution that we can't do for ourselves, and this is not one of them, except for the very poor, and we already do that.
@Cycloptichorn,
Those simple concepts like trying to put a price tag on anything that isn't yet even planned is a republican/conservative game they play to instill fear into the populace, because many are so ignorant they buy into the conservative fear-mongering.
The government can sure screw up an economy through mismanagement however.
I just ran across this book review/promo in a publication to which I subscribe: I am almost certain I have a copy of it someplace, but we have moved stuff around so much for painters etc. I can't lay my hands on it and don't have a clue what box it might be in. Or it might not even be here.
But the review reminded me what Friedman wrote:
Quote:(Newsmax)--The late, great Milton Friedman in his classic book (Money Mischief) prophetically revealed how Obama's reckless monetary policies will cause hyperinflation and destroy our nation
Everything Barack Obama, the Federal Reserve, and Congress are doing was predicted in startling detail almost two decades ago by a famous Nobel Prize-winning economist.
His name was Milton Friedman.
Though he passed away in 2006, in his prophetic book, Friedman showed how, facing massive deficits, the U.S. government would dramatically increase the money supply; why foreign countries would stop buying our debt; how the Fed would start buying our Treasury bills; and why this would cause massive inflation.
He even predicted that our officials would claim inflation was no problem at all.
Amazingly all of this is coming to pass!
Make no mistake about it " the Obama administration is embracing massive inflationary deficit spending.
In just 100 days, Barrack Obama has more than doubled the U.S. money supply . . . committed the government to at least $7 trillion in new spending . . . and warned the American people to expect trillion-dollar deficits for the foreseeable future.
While the media has been falling over itself to praise Obama's "bold initiatives," the question no one has been asking is, "Where is all of this money coming from?"
Decades ago, Milton Friedman answered these questions clearly and precisely in his insightful " and very topical " book, Money Mischief: Episodes in Monetary History.
In Money Mischief, Friedman even warned that the coming inflation could "destroy" our country.
Here's what he wrote: "Inflation is a disease, a dangerous and sometimes fatal disease that, if not checked in time, can destroy a society." (Money Mischief, Page 191)
You see the end result of that process in countries like Zimbabwe today, where prices double every day, and it now takes a $10 billion Zimbabwe note to buy a single loaf of bread - assuming you can find one.
Could America suffer the same fate? Friedman wrote ominously, "The fate of a country is inseparable from the fate of its currency."
Even Warren Buffett recently admitted on CNBC that the only way for the U.S. to solve its woes was to inflate the currency.
There is little doubt that Obama's massive deficit spending will doom the dollar and our economy.
Exactly--And, as a companion book I suggest Milton Friedman's classic--"Free to Choose" Friedman, who won the Nobel Prize, asserts the necessity for stae constitutional amendments to limit government spending--a great way to begin--enshrine the amendment--the law--inside the constitution of the state so that excess spending would be impossible to put into effect until a constitutional convention is called. Since that is done only every decade or so, it would be a fine beginning to place limits on spending inside the constitution of the states.
With profligates like Obama at the helm, it is useless to approach such a rational and prudent move.
