Where is the US economy headed?

In all, more than one out of every six workers " 17.5 percent " were unemployed or underemployed in October. The previous recorded high was 17.1 percent, in December 1982.

This includes the officially unemployed, who have looked for work in the last four weeks. It also includes discouraged workers, who have looked in the past year, as well as millions of part-time workers who want to be working full time.

The official jobless rate " 10.2 percent in October, up from 9.8 percent in September " remains lower than the early 1980s peak of 10.8 percent.

The rate is highest today, sometimes 20 percent, in states that had big housing bubbles, like California and Arizona, or that have large manufacturing sectors, like Michigan, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island and South Carolina.

The new benchmark is a sign of just how much damage financial crises tend to inflict. A recent book by Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth S. Rogoff, two economists, found that over the last century the typical crisis had caused the jobless rate in the country where it occurred to rise for almost five years. By that standard, the jobless rate here would continue rising for two more years, through the end of 2011

if this legislative push was not about government control of health care, there would be no need for any legislation, at least no sweeping legislation. Examples of minor reform might be in regard to insurance portability from job to job or across state line, or tort reform, or how income tax incentives are structured. Reform could also address the fact that illegal immigrants are sucking alot of resources from the health industry, especially in some areas, and this needs addressing. We also have a situation where some people that can afford insurance are not buying it, and some that can use Medicaid are not doing it, those issues could be addresssed without throwing the baby out with the bathwater. So I agree, it is totally obvious that this reform is all about the end game of the United States government gaining more control and growing the government bureaucracies already existing or creating new ones, all of which will take away more personal liberty, increase government power over our lives, and increase taxes and likely deficits and the national debt.

It's up to the people who claim that jobs were saved to prove it; not me.

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=18642&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=DPD
REPUBLICAN HEALTH PLAN WOULD REDUCE PREMIUMS, CUT DEFICIT

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Wednesday night released its cost analysis of the Republican health care plan and found that it would reduce health care premiums and cut the deficit by $68 billion over ten years.

The Republican plan does not call for a government insurance plan but rather attempts to reform the system by creating high-risk insurance pools, allowing people to purchase health insurance policies across state lines and instituting medical malpractice reforms.


According to CBO, the GOP bill would:

• Lower costs, particularly for small businesses that have trouble finding affordable health care policies for their employees.

• Decrease rates by 7 percent to 10 percent for this group, and by 5 percent to 8 percent for the individual market, where it can also be difficult to find affordable policies.

• Have the smallest economic impact on the large group market that serves people working for large businesses that have access to the cheapest coverage; those premiums would decline by up to 3 percent.


The analysis, however, shows the Republican plan would do little to expand coverage:

• The CBO found that under the Republican plan, insurance coverage would increase by about 3 million and that the percentage of insured non-elderly adults would remain at about 83 percent after ten years.

• The House bill would increase coverage to an additional 36 million people, raising the number of insured to 96 percent.
How much will the Republican bill cost?

• The CBO put the price tag for the GOP plan at $61 billion, a fraction of the $1.05 trillion cost estimate it gave to the House bill that lawmakers are set to vote on this weekend.

• And the CBO found that the Republican provision to reform medical malpractice liability would result in $41 billion in savings and increase revenues by $13 billion by reducing the cost of private health insurance plans.

CBO Trashes GOP Health Plan " Less Coverage Expansion, Less Deficit Reduction

The Congressional Budget Office has released its initial estimate of the House GOP’s health care alternative, centered on the near-total deregulation of the health insurance industry.

The good news is that the House GOP bill does reduce the deficit. CBO says adopting their plan would reduce the deficit by $68 billion over ten years relative to current law. The number for the Democratic bill, however, is $104 billion. So in exchange for that lesser deficit reduction, the Republicans must cover more people right? Well, of course not. Instead, under the Boehner Plan the number of people without health insurance will stay steady at 17 percent. The Democratic plan will see that sliced to just four percent.

The CBO also says that for most people the GOP plan won’t lower premiums: “In the large group market, which represents nearly 80 percent of total private premiums, the amendment would lower average insurance premiums in 2016 by zero to 3 percent compared with amounts under current law.” And insofar as their plan does reduce premiums, it’s by making your coverage worse:

The second source of change in average insurance premiums is changes in the average extent of coverage purchased. Those changes can reflect both changes in the scope of insurance coverage"the benefits or services that are included"and changes in the share of costs for covered services paid by the insurer"known as the “actuarial value.” With other factors held equal, insurance policies that cover more benefits or services or have smaller copayments or deductibles have higher premiums, while policies that cover fewer benefits or services or have larger copayments or deductibles have lower premiums. Provisions in the amendment that would reduce insurance premiums by affecting the amount of coverage purchased include the State Innovations program, which would encourage states to reduce the number and extent of benefit mandates that they impose, and provisions that would allow individuals or affiliated groups to purchase insurance policies in other states that have less stringent mandates.

To repeat myself from yesterday, this is basically a plan that works well for you if you never get sick. Instead of wasting money on taxes and or premiums to cover your own illness or that of your fellow Americans, you’ll have more money in your pocket to spend on NBA League Pass or what have you. If you’re uninsured or at risk of losing your insurance, this plan does nothing for you. If you’re insured and putting your insurance to use by getting sick, this plan is a disaster, offering you less coverage.

You're on Ignore.

OBAMACARE ENDORSEMENTS: WHAT THE BRIBE WAS

By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN


As the suicidal Democratic congressmen proceed to rubber-stamp the Obama healthcare reform despite the drubbing their party took in the '09 elections, the president trotted out the endorsements of the AMA and the AARP to stimulate support. But these -- and the other endorsements -- his package has received are all bought and paid for.
Here are the deals:

* The American Medical Association (AMA) was facing a 21 percent cut in physicians' reimbursements under the current law. Obama promised to kill the cut if they backed his bill. The cuts are the fruit of a law requiring annual 5-6 percent reductions in doctor reimbursements for treating Medicare patients. Bravely, each year Congress has rolled the cuts over, suspending them but not repealing them. So each year, the accumulated cuts threaten doctors. By now, they have risen to 21 percent. With this blackmail leverage, Obama compelled the AMA to support his bill...or else!

* The AARP got a financial windfall in return for its support of the healthcare bill. Over the past decade, the AARP has morphed from an advocacy group to an insurance company (through its subsidiary company). It is one of the main suppliers of Medi-gap insurance, a high-cost, privately purchased coverage that picks up where Medicare leaves off. But President Bush-43 passed the Medicare Advantage program, which offered a subsidized, lower-cost alternative to Medi-gap. Under Medicare Advantage, the elderly get all the extra coverage they need plus coordinated, well-managed care, usually by the same physician. So more than 10 million seniors went with Medicare Advantage, cutting into AARP Medi-gap revenues.

Presto! Obama solved their problem. He eliminates subsidies for Medicare Advantage. The elderly will have to pay more for coverage under Medigap, but the AARP -- which supposedly represents them -- will make more money. (If this galls you, join the American Seniors Association, the alternative group; contact [email protected] . This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .)

* The drug industry backed ObamaCare and, in return, got a 10-year limit of $80 billion on cuts in prescription drug costs. (A drop in the bucket of their almost $3 trillion projected cost over the next decade.) They also got administration assurances that it will continue to bar lower-cost Canadian drugs from coming into the U.S. All it had to do was put its formidable advertising budget at the disposal of the administration.

* Insurance companies got access to 40 million potential new customers. But when the Senate Finance Committee lowered the fine that would be imposed on those who don't buy insurance from $3,500 to $1,500, the insurance companies jumped ship and now oppose the bill, albeit for the worst of motives.

The only industry that refused to knuckle under was the medical device makers. They stood for principle and wouldn't go along with Obama's blackmail. So -the Senate Finance Committee retaliated by imposing a tax on medical devices such as automated wheelchairs, pacemakers, arterial stents, prosthetic limbs, artificial knees and hips and other necessary accoutrements of healthcare.

So these endorsements are not freely given, but bought and paid for by an Administration that is intent on passing its program at any cost.