health care overharul
09-10-2009, 03:41 PM
#31
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Originally Posted by 05TurboS2k,Sep 10 2009, 10:04 AM
He IS putting this country in danger, economically and physically.
Bring the separation on.
Here is a model separation agreement:
Our two groups can equitably divide up the country by landmass each taking a portion. That will be the difficult part, but I am sure our two sides can come to a friendly agreement. After that, it should be relatively easy! Our respective representatives can effortlessly divide other assets since both sides have such distinct and disparate tastes.
We don't like redistributive taxes so you can keep them.
You are welcome to the liberal judges and the ACLU. Since you hate guns and war, we'll take our firearms, the cops, the NRA and the military.
You can keep Oprah, Michael Moore and Rosie O'Donnell (You are, however, responsible for finding a bio-diesel vehicle big enough to move all three of them).
We'll keep the capitalism, greedy corporations, pharmaceutical companies, Wal-Mart and Wall Street.
You can have your beloved homeless, homeboys, hippies and illegal aliens.
We'll keep the hot Alaskan hockey moms, greedy CEO's and rednecks. We'll keep the Bibles and give you NBC and Hollywood .
You can make nice with Iran and Palestine and we'll retain the right to invade and hammer places that threaten us.
You can have the peaceniks and war protesters.
When our allies or our way of life are under assault, we'll help provide them security.
We'll keep our Judeo-Christian values.
You are welcome to Islam, Scientology, Humanism and Shirley McClain.
You can also have the U.N. But we will no longer be paying the bill.
We'll keep the SUVs, pickup trucks and oversized luxury cars. You can take every Subaru station wagon you can find.
You can give everyone healthcare if you can find any practicing doctors.
We'll continue to believe healthcare is a luxury and not a right.
We'll keep The Battle Hymn of the Republic and the National Anthem.
I'm sure you'll be happy to substitute Imagine, I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing, Kum Ba Ya or We Are the World.
We'll practice trickle down economics and you can give trickle up poverty your best shot.
Since it often so offends you, we'll keep our history, our name and our flag.
Bring the separation on.
Here is a model separation agreement:
Our two groups can equitably divide up the country by landmass each taking a portion. That will be the difficult part, but I am sure our two sides can come to a friendly agreement. After that, it should be relatively easy! Our respective representatives can effortlessly divide other assets since both sides have such distinct and disparate tastes.
We don't like redistributive taxes so you can keep them.
You are welcome to the liberal judges and the ACLU. Since you hate guns and war, we'll take our firearms, the cops, the NRA and the military.
You can keep Oprah, Michael Moore and Rosie O'Donnell (You are, however, responsible for finding a bio-diesel vehicle big enough to move all three of them).
We'll keep the capitalism, greedy corporations, pharmaceutical companies, Wal-Mart and Wall Street.
You can have your beloved homeless, homeboys, hippies and illegal aliens.
We'll keep the hot Alaskan hockey moms, greedy CEO's and rednecks. We'll keep the Bibles and give you NBC and Hollywood .
You can make nice with Iran and Palestine and we'll retain the right to invade and hammer places that threaten us.
You can have the peaceniks and war protesters.
When our allies or our way of life are under assault, we'll help provide them security.
We'll keep our Judeo-Christian values.
You are welcome to Islam, Scientology, Humanism and Shirley McClain.
You can also have the U.N. But we will no longer be paying the bill.
We'll keep the SUVs, pickup trucks and oversized luxury cars. You can take every Subaru station wagon you can find.
You can give everyone healthcare if you can find any practicing doctors.
We'll continue to believe healthcare is a luxury and not a right.
We'll keep The Battle Hymn of the Republic and the National Anthem.
I'm sure you'll be happy to substitute Imagine, I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing, Kum Ba Ya or We Are the World.
We'll practice trickle down economics and you can give trickle up poverty your best shot.
Since it often so offends you, we'll keep our history, our name and our flag.
here's some MSM viewpoints regaring the VALID issues with Obamacare and his agenda:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405..._share_facebook
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economi...n-mistakes.html
09-10-2009, 04:07 PM
#33
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Originally Posted by 05TurboS2k,Sep 10 2009, 04:51 PM
MSM also = very liberal.
I should know I grew up just yards away from headquarters.
I should know I grew up just yards away from headquarters.
09-10-2009, 04:46 PM
#35
The only reason this bill is running into trouble is that old people are afraid, rightfully so, that Medicare spending will go down in order to help finance this. Seniors are already concerned because Medicare spending isn't great enough in many cases to provide for what many seniors consider an adequate level of care. That is not to say seniors are not happy to have Medicare, because it's still a great benefit.
The point perhaps is that when the government starts handing out money, everyone is willing to line up.
Another point is that as the government starts guaranteeing more services, that guarantee becomes less secure and more in-fighting occurs within government for scarce resources.
The diatribes against health insurance are really misplaced. There is plenty of competition in the health insurance. Sure there are only about 4 large public health insurers, but there are also numerous not for profit providers such as Kaiser, small insurance companies, and most large companies self-insure and only pay an "insurance" company an administrative fee which is very small.
Also this notion that the profit motive makes insurance cost more is silly. Every for profit business tries to drive cost out of it's business, then it reduces its rates slightly to gain market share until another company finds a new way to do the same. At a minimum you have to concede that a for profit insurance company is efficient for that reason. So at best, if you took all the profit out of the businesses, then healthcare would cost about 10% less, since that is the rough profit margin of those companies. Ten percent is not going to make much difference and with that assumption you have to throw out the notion of the profit motive driving efficiency.
In terms of insurance companies rejecting certain procedures, I don't think a government plan would be likely to cover more. In fact, isn't the whole point of this government plan to save cost? I also don't think the insurance companies are very incentivized to reject procedures because they basically work on a cost + margin model, they want more procedures so they can raise their rates year after year. Ultimately it's the companies paying the premiums for their workers that have to make the decision on coverage -- except it's illegal to make any decisions there except have a plan or not due to government regulations. If you have a plan it must cover certain things.
In my opinion, this is really just a stimulus bill.
The point perhaps is that when the government starts handing out money, everyone is willing to line up.
Another point is that as the government starts guaranteeing more services, that guarantee becomes less secure and more in-fighting occurs within government for scarce resources.
The diatribes against health insurance are really misplaced. There is plenty of competition in the health insurance. Sure there are only about 4 large public health insurers, but there are also numerous not for profit providers such as Kaiser, small insurance companies, and most large companies self-insure and only pay an "insurance" company an administrative fee which is very small.
Also this notion that the profit motive makes insurance cost more is silly. Every for profit business tries to drive cost out of it's business, then it reduces its rates slightly to gain market share until another company finds a new way to do the same. At a minimum you have to concede that a for profit insurance company is efficient for that reason. So at best, if you took all the profit out of the businesses, then healthcare would cost about 10% less, since that is the rough profit margin of those companies. Ten percent is not going to make much difference and with that assumption you have to throw out the notion of the profit motive driving efficiency.
In terms of insurance companies rejecting certain procedures, I don't think a government plan would be likely to cover more. In fact, isn't the whole point of this government plan to save cost? I also don't think the insurance companies are very incentivized to reject procedures because they basically work on a cost + margin model, they want more procedures so they can raise their rates year after year. Ultimately it's the companies paying the premiums for their workers that have to make the decision on coverage -- except it's illegal to make any decisions there except have a plan or not due to government regulations. If you have a plan it must cover certain things.
In my opinion, this is really just a stimulus bill.
09-10-2009, 05:06 PM
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Originally Posted by LostMotion,Sep 10 2009, 05:46 PM
In my opinion, this is really just a "let's bankrupt America" bill.
What I don't understand is how people that are just past college age and maybe a decade or so older, aren't up in arms about the impending bankruptcy of SS and Medicare. Maybe not enough people in this age range have contributed enough to care, but after seeing tens of THOUSANDS of dollars forcefully taken from me over the last couple years, with nothing to look forward to except the FACT that my hard-earned money has gone to some others to keep this Ponzi scheme moving along. What a damn joke! Let's create another entitlement program while we're at it! It'll reach a point when Atlas is beyond shrugging; he'll collapse.
09-10-2009, 06:45 PM
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Originally Posted by herrjr,Sep 10 2009, 05:06 PM
Fixed.
What I don't understand is how people that are just past college age and maybe a decade or so older, aren't up in arms about the impending bankruptcy of SS and Medicare. Maybe not enough people in this age range have contributed enough to care, but after seeing tens of THOUSANDS of dollars forcefully taken from me over the last couple years, with nothing to look forward to except the FACT that my hard-earned money has gone to some others to keep this Ponzi scheme moving along. What a damn joke! Let's create another entitlement program while we're at it! It'll reach a point when Atlas is beyond shrugging; he'll collapse.
What I don't understand is how people that are just past college age and maybe a decade or so older, aren't up in arms about the impending bankruptcy of SS and Medicare. Maybe not enough people in this age range have contributed enough to care, but after seeing tens of THOUSANDS of dollars forcefully taken from me over the last couple years, with nothing to look forward to except the FACT that my hard-earned money has gone to some others to keep this Ponzi scheme moving along. What a damn joke! Let's create another entitlement program while we're at it! It'll reach a point when Atlas is beyond shrugging; he'll collapse.
1. System implodes
2. Raise taxes, reduce the benefit and extend the eligibility age.
Your need for a retirement paycheck from the government can not be supported by your children. There are too many retirees living too long and not enough workers paying in to the system.
09-10-2009, 07:44 PM
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Originally Posted by GO FAST,Sep 10 2009, 07:45 PM
Two options:
1. System implodes
2. Raise taxes, reduce the benefit and extend the eligibility age.
Your need for a retirement paycheck from the government can not be supported by your children. There are too many retirees living too long and not enough workers paying in to the system.
1. System implodes
2. Raise taxes, reduce the benefit and extend the eligibility age.
Your need for a retirement paycheck from the government can not be supported by your children. There are too many retirees living too long and not enough workers paying in to the system.
Tangentially, FDR and his Keynesian policies did not get this country out of the Great Depression - WWII did. So any policies that burden this already heavily debt-saddled country threatens to bring us to the point of becoming a banana republic, which exists at the mercy of countries that actually fund our existence (i.e., such as China).
09-11-2009, 10:17 AM
#39
Social Security is very simple to fix. The problem is that over a very short period of time -- 30 to 40 years -- people have started living 10+ years longer. While it's easy for some people to see these changes, in the span of human history making a change based around people living so much longer over the span of 2 generations is a good performance. Said another way, as long as this problem gets fixed in the next decade, we'll be fine. People should also remember that if you are 70 today, you did indeed work your ass off physically and a lot of these people are much more worn out physically then people will be 15-25 years ago. It may be hard to believe, but sitting in an office all day does extend your life versus hard work. The upshot is that it's hard to tell a 70 year old today to continue working, but that will slowly change in the future.
Nevertheless, however you feel about these 'humanitarian' arguments, the problem is easy to fix. Raise retirement age by a few years, cut benefits and marginally raise the tax base. And all of this is no different then how old people have survived since time began: they relied on their children to take care of them. Pure and simple. Rich people should also recall that the payroll tax increase in the 1980's was a huge boon to them because it regressivized the tax system.
Medicare is a separate issue. It's possible to spend millions of dollars in order to extend one's life by one or two years. This problem in my opinion is completely intractable and I see no real easy solution to it. It would very difficult to single out the very old in this manner. I'm not sure how other countries do it. Care of the very old isn't the only problem though, even a relatively healthy 70 year old is going to have high medical expenses, but without rationing care, I don't see a way to reduce this number. It can be reduced somewhat by eliminating the majority of R&D on new therapies through price controls on drugs and medical devices, and I suspect that will be one of the first steps taken.
Nevertheless, however you feel about these 'humanitarian' arguments, the problem is easy to fix. Raise retirement age by a few years, cut benefits and marginally raise the tax base. And all of this is no different then how old people have survived since time began: they relied on their children to take care of them. Pure and simple. Rich people should also recall that the payroll tax increase in the 1980's was a huge boon to them because it regressivized the tax system.
Medicare is a separate issue. It's possible to spend millions of dollars in order to extend one's life by one or two years. This problem in my opinion is completely intractable and I see no real easy solution to it. It would very difficult to single out the very old in this manner. I'm not sure how other countries do it. Care of the very old isn't the only problem though, even a relatively healthy 70 year old is going to have high medical expenses, but without rationing care, I don't see a way to reduce this number. It can be reduced somewhat by eliminating the majority of R&D on new therapies through price controls on drugs and medical devices, and I suspect that will be one of the first steps taken.
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