Market Currents
The Affordable Care Act actually discourages small businesses from growing, says TheStreet.com's...
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Friday, July 6, 2012, 7:50 PM ETThe Affordable Care Act actually discourages small businesses from growing, says TheStreet.com's Robert Weinstein. Buried within 2,700 pages of the Act is a requirement that businesses provide all employees with "acceptable" health insurance coverage, but exempts businesses with 49 or fewer full time employees. For small business owners, this is a glaring disincentive not to grow beyond 49 employees as a result of the costs and additional regulations companies face with 50 or more.
This news story has 261 comments:
A company experiencing strong demand and strong profitability may try to hold the line at 49 as long as possible by outsourcing, productivity improvements, or maybe even splitting into two or more companies.
I can see a lot of fighting with the govt over whether a person is a contract agent or an employee.
Stupid law and why is 50 a magic number?
For those who suggest simply outsourcing everything, you're right. But the part you're missing is that if all your production is foreign, there's no reason for you or your company to reside in the US. Might as well pick the whole thing up and move it somewhere with more favourable tax laws, too. And with your own hide now beyond the borders, you needn't worry about paying US taxes on the money you pay yourself, either. Incentives work. In fact, they work very well. Barring dramatic reversals, in another 20 or 30 years the US economy will be every bit as hopeless as France's is today.
Well, if you don't want to pay U.S. taxes, you're going to have to do more than take your corpus elsewhere. You're going to have to renounce your citizenship and find another desirable one to substitute, provided that the desirable place of your choice will have you. And, don't forget that the U.S. imposes rather sticky punitive taxes for leaving the fold. too.
Nothing's simple.
But, was not simple ! You got that right ! And, like the thousands so far in 2012 you must pay to surrender your Passort ! :>)
Worth every penny !
Really, so a company that still experienced strong demand for their product would stop hiring just because of this health insurance requirement? I can totally see that.
======================...
company experiencing strong demand for their product eventually will hire, but not before they try every other method to meet that demand
(see Poor Texan and TomasViewPoint )
company whose demand moving in opposite direction obviously would fire before anything else
In summary this law creates upstream and downstream movements
arithmetically presented
number of job lost as result of this law is direct function of stream's speed multiplied by two
WTF are you trying to say?
yeah stick it to the 1%, screw em yeahhhh....come on, grab your pitch forks...wait I have to put down my iPad first...hold on let me log off my Macbook pro...can we use broom stick handles instead?
No please...not deodorant! Noooo! I''m melting, I'm melting...
oh my
2900 waivers so far and growing :>)
Is such nonsense really what we want?
he can lie with impunity and the adoring media yawns
Where in this act does healthcare become more affordable?
Is it businesses being able to file for waivers, or the tax penalty via the IRS for not sending tribute to an insurance company?
This is the Social Security bait-and-switch, take-the-money-and-run scheme all over again; in 20 years most of us will be denied care or made to wait 8-12 months or be foreced to file for bankruptcy to get treatment.
The tentacles of the Kleptoligarchy grow longer and stronger and no, voting left or right won't change things.
http://bit.ly/LDzAvr
All this 49s won't go to 50 nonsense and what companies will do ! Not ! Most political companies have gotten a waiver..Smart companies should just pay fine and that's what they want !!!!!!!!!!
I've been on the Costa Rica health care system 45 years even having lived in the US and never setting foot in a Costa Rican facility. That is Obama's goal. He said it when he campaigned and he said it won't happen overnight ! He told the truth and there is no way to stop him... Romney will get crushed and all of you are ***ked.
I packed up April 9th and moved to LA........ Good luck..DL
However there are many small businesses with low-skill workforces and/or are low margin businesses that can't afford to pay for the "everything and the kitchen sink" insurance mandated by Obamacare, nor can they afford this fine. They're now effectively blocked from growing.
I'm down here now and I use Panamanian doctors as the wait for specialty doctors can be 6 months to 5 years. Oncologists have a 5 year waiting list. Would you say your F*** ed if you have it !
Forget Glaxo look at JNJ.. There is purely a LAW firm hawking dangerous product after product...
Go tell your politician, Right ...
By the time Obama leaves office in 2017 he will use Executive Orders to all he can't ram through Congress and 40% of good hard working Americans will pay for the useless 60%...
Doctors will drop medicade patients and many will use there law degrees an close there offices or cherry pick patients...
Seems the Dem elite think doctors make too much money. Like we all know there socialists as pointed out mucho above.......Kickbacks ? Or capitalism ? Take it or leave it ! DL
Since you hold weapons I can only assume that you are working for the State. Will you be the man gunning me down because I refuse to pay for the useless 60%?
Are you proud of our great TSA?
How much do you think my base pay is per year? How much do you think my health benefits cost per year? Take a guess.
Figures, a lot of hot gas and BS coming from you folks. I belong to a Union and a Republican, put that in your pipe and smoke it.
But most unions just want to steal as much as they can. They want to steal time, steal money, and steal effectiveness. In effect they are no more than thugs stealing from the poor.
If the unions focused on effectiveness and got rid of bad workers then I don't think anyone would have a problem with unions. Sadly, those two activities are anathema to most union leaders.
For my responsibilities, I get paid in the high 60's base and get a 401k with match contributions up to 4%, and they pay 75% of my insurance premiums. I have a basic plan BCBS, total cost is about $7000/yr. I get differential pay for nights and overtime. If I break my back I can make in the 90's, those single younger people can break 100 if they have no life and cap out at 35k.
You tell me if this is excessive pay or not. I have never had a corporate job where they actually gave me a fair wage, corporations have become skimpy on the pay and eager to cut benefits. The government only pays us what was industry standards only 10 years ago. Since then, corporations just aren't willing to invest in their own workers because Apple can make it cheaper for free in China.
Its precisely because I am not overpaid. Go complain about some auto workers who make twice as much as me for screwing in a dash board on an assembly line with a GED and gets workman's comp for scratching his pinky finger.
The problem is people getting paid to do nothing or about them paying others with government funds for nothing. I am not aware of any government function that does not waste more money on fraud than the real value they provide.
I would love to stand his ass on the border in front of a smuggler and hand that smuggler his driver's license, and then leave his ass up on the top of the hill to find his own way home when its 110F and 20oz bottle of water. Maybe a fresh pair of under wear and shorts, just to be humane.
Let me ask one question, If you did not have to worry about political decisions, could you or could you not stop the illegal smuggling and immigration?
That is exactly why government won't work for healthcare. Government does not work at anything (except possibly the military, but even the military has huge amounts of waste).
The only option we have now is to just say 'No' to more government. Period.
The point I was making is that someone was referring to federal employees as being drags on society and we are over compensated, and nothing is further from the truth.
The point is that if we are going to let illegal drugs and immigrants into our country, why do we pretend otherwise. Thats all we are doing letting them in. Why spend the government money to pretend to stop it. Now I respect what you are trying to do, and I get that it should be done. But in the end it is wasting taxpayer money. Money we don't have.
If it was up to me, I would say get politics out of the border and let you all do what you want to do, as long as it is legal, to stop people and drugs from coming into this country. It would be good for us and good for Mexico.
But the way its being done now is just wasting our money and we can no longer afford the waste. Its not you being a drag on society, its your government management being a drag on society. It's the politician's being a drag on society. Its the stupid rules that are being a drag on society. None of which you have control over.
As to the 100% effective that is exactly what happens in private industry. If your not closer to 100% than your competitors then your out of business. In government, there are no competitors so effectiveness can languish at 10 or 20% forever and never get corrected. This is why we need to get everything out of government except the constitutionally mandated programs (of which national defense is one).
So in general (not you in particular) federal employees are drags on society and are overcompensated compared to the total value we receive as a society.
Personally, I thank you for your service on the border and am very happy that you are willing to put up with an impossible situation, knowing that given a free, but legal reign, you could have an impact, but are restricted by stupid government red tape and rules that are more concerned about law breakers than law abiding Americans.
I could not do it.
We are very efficient at what we do. Its a misconception and falsehood perpetrated by the right wing that any government is bad government, that is not true. While the border is highly politicized, don't buy into every word you hear on talk radio, they are mostly election talking points to fire up the base, immigration is one of those issues.
A better analogy is the "war on terror", we will never eliminate extremists who want to kill is just like the immigration and drug problem, its a systemic problem if culture not a tangible thing you can eliminate entirely.
Then why are there billions of dollars of illegal drugs getting through our borders every year? Thats not talk radio.
Why are there millions of illegal aliens come through our borders and some killing American citizens and others soaking up money meant to help American citizens. That is not talk radio.
As such, why you might be doing a good job, but in general, Customs and Border Control are not fulfilling their mandate to protect America.
And I am not right wing, and never indicated in any post that we could go without government. But right now, ours is too large and too powerful, and not responsive to it's mandate. Right now our government has been molded into a vote buying machine. Its no longer, "In God We Trust", but rather, "Its Money We Thrust".
If you are in government and don't want to be seen as part of the problem, then change it. Get the political rhetoric out of mainstream government. Its not right wing talk radio that decided they were not going to enforce the laws of the country. That was our politician in chief.
Most of the actual border is unpopulated, and takes hours to reach and costs a ton of money to patrol because of overtime or forward deployment.
You want to blame government but it's not something government can solve. Its as simple as supply and demand, we have too many drug addicts in our country, and businesses are willing to hire illegal, it not so hard to comprehend.
I think that what bothers people is that the rhetoric from government is not honest because they want votes from Hispanics so rather than call out the problems with the border like you just did they prefer to exploit it for votes by talking about discrimination. Furthermore any state that wants to do something is persecuted by our Fed Government which is offensive because they are thousands of miles away in WDC. And the states should have the right to do something about crime and have jurisdiction up to their borders.
It is the full time politicians that are killing us and being as divisive as possible to get votes. That is the problem.
At some point we will get a mass killing or terrorist event that will change the debate and then politicians will wring their dirty hands and talk about how unfortunate it all is and someone needs to do something.
The biggest reason why government seems so inefficient is that they're objective is to protect the public health and safety while enabling business and doing their best to stay out of the way.
Government has a dual mandate.
Business has a singular mandate: produce profit. It's neither good nor evil but the best that public-private entities have ever accomplished is creating government rules while the businesses try to figure out ways around them.
Keep corporations out of government affairs and keep government rules simple, fair, and effective.
Oddly enough, I think it was easier to push through on a federal level than it would have been to push through on a state level.
Get it over with and create a back-lash against all this socialist nanny-state dogma.
It takes a crisis to create change - that's what the politicians always work towards. But eventually the crisis backfires - the faster we move to that point the less we have to endure.
The "99 %" who work will not like Obamacare. For you 1 % who like good medical care, or the concept of having the best healthcare system in the world if you or your loved one do happen to need good healthcare, you will ultimately not like it. Since there will be less incentive to go 400 + K into debt and devote one's youth (10 + years of the 20's and early 30's) to the study Medicine, we will obviously cease to have the best healthcare system at some point in the not too distant future. Doctors may work no more than 35 hrs/ week and even then I predict the richest, most influential (politicians) and possibly doctors (if they are smart) will reserve the best healthcare for themselves and live the longest- EMS
I'll destroy it from there.
They do the same thing to Romney, 47th in job creation, but his unemployment rate was 5.4% and it went down to 4.7% oh my how horrid. So he placed low because the unemployment rate couldn't get any lower.
Our R&D feeds the entire world.
That is so true. We are subsidizing the rest of the world and there are millions of lives saved because of the US. That is the true cost of our health care as we shoulder the burden for billions of others.
Well if you can retire at fifty with a guaranteed income for life, your stress level will be much lower and allow you the opportunity for a long life. Isn't this the model in Europe?
And yes you have to pay for R&D, and we subsidize other countries because they cap prices on pharmaceuticals (which is one way they reduce cost, shift it to us). The economic fallacy you want to believe is that if we cap prices along with everybody else, that the pharma companies will just keep on producing at a loss and investors will finance the high-risk business of biotech when you promise them no return. You're living in socialist la-la land. There's a reason that the biotech world is centered in the US and non-existent in Europe (all they have is old pharma).
It's simple to sum it up !
Affordable Health Care Act = oxymoron
PS UN said it's the happiest country total b/s I stay in Panama & Colombia most of the time now and use there doctors.Dirt cheap !
We don't know how but just that our system is not good enough. Nobody has ever said that doctors make too much or have to pay too much in insurance or that lawyers make too much but somehow we are getting screwed but we don't want to point the finger at anyone other than insurance companies I suppose. We use stats from other parts of the world that compares us to countries that don't even measure to our biggest states and they also import pharma from us at subsidized rates and retire at young ages. Never mind our citizens don't always take care of themselves and lead healthy life styles. Cause and effect is never shown but hey let's blow up the biggest and likely best health care system in the world and start following rather than leading the world so now we will all suffer globally. Never mind that people fly here for procedures and the reverse is rare. Although India will likely take over a lot of our medical care eventually.
One could argue access is the problem but rather than budget an amount for uncovered and unemployed households and just give them vouchers we decided to blow up the entire system. And thereby give employers the perfect opening and excuse to dump health insurance as a reasonable expectation for any employee and push them all on the government and the taxpayer. Corporations at least paid for health care with global revenues which is one of the few times when other countries subsidized US Citizens.
Our leaders are incompetent fools who look at the foam on the waves and think they understand the ocean. Our costs will go up, quality and innovation will go down. And the hype of how great it is will go on until it collapses. Only government can destroy so much so quickly.
And as I said your life expectancy claim is bogus. It's due to demographic skew which has nothing to do with the quality of healthcare. Notice how small countries like Monaco not only lead the list, but lead by a wide margin. Healthcare can't explain the nearly 90 year life expectancy for Monaco. The pack is in the 78 to 80 range, and the most ethnically diverse country is the US, and it's in that pack, which is actually quite an accomplishment.
If you really want a proxy for life expectancy try obesity or diabetes rates. Factor those in and I suspect you'll find it a miracle that the US is even in the pack given our obesity and diabetes rates. The best healthcare for most would simply be to take personal responsibility and change one's lifestyle rather than blaming a few tenths of a doctor's head per 1000.
Healthy diet.
Guess which OECD countries have the best, least expensive healthcare by your definition? Turkey, Mexico, and Chile. You're trying to generate confusion around cost and value. Value is a measure that is a factor of not only cost, but also of quality and quantity of goods or services supplied for that cost. You're trying to sell the fiction that cost is all that matters, and you can ignore quantity and quality.
The other thing the data shows (using the available data going back to 1960) is that per capita spending in the US has grown at a rate in line or lower than most other large OECD countries. For example in the last decade the US is up 67%, Canada is up 71%, and the UK is up 84%. Going back to the '60s and '70s you find the same trend. And then (last decade again) there is Sweden up 62%, the Netherlands up 108%, and Norway up 76%. So if you take the data as it is, and don't try to misrepresent it, you find the US healthcare system is fairing better than most comparable countries in the OECD. (And if you're going to continue to argue the US needs to compare itself to Turkey, Mexico, and Chile you'll find that they're up 111%, 82%, and 96% in the last decade. So you're still misrepresenting the situation.)
Compare that to other countries and solve for that.
If you control for all contributing factors then drawing conclusions is great. For example are the demographics the same including ethnicity?
For example extracting out the Black and Indian population would help US statistics.
There is a lot more going on here then 30K foot stats that may have their own issue.
I took a lot of stats in college also as I suspect a fair number of people have on this board so that should not influence any of our perspectives.
What you say proves my point. We have theories but really don't know why numbers are different. We make assumptions that the data is apples to apples but we really don't know. And we are supposed to run a $2 Trillion industry on that?
My theory is that we spend more money on end of life care than other countries. Only 5% of our health care users drive over 50% of health care costs. If that is all preventative care issues like you state then why is everyone talking about bending the cost curve? I think it is end of life predominantly and that is an emotional issue and a lot of voters in the group. So we don't have an honest conversation about health care and the government looks to take it over while holding people in the dark.
We deserve better.
Thats correct, no one is tracking it because it would make the government look like idiots. Also correct in that it could be 40% or 80%. I just know that the private costs to us as an employer were the same magnitude as in the U.S, plus we have to pay the public costs.
Generally, when Rush Limbaugh is speaking, it's a good policy to flip a coin. Heads, he's telling the truth, tails, he's making up facts or immersing himself in hyperbole.
When ones ideas are the result of propaganda instead of logic the only way to defend those ideas is with name calling. That worked in High School and most people today never mature past that point. Why do you think you are so easily manipulated with false ideas and lies.
I love how RL is seeing liberal ghosts in everything these days from Clint Eastwood speaking at the Super Bowl to the Batman Movies. He is wholly wrong but will stand his ground against all who would try to assault him with truth.
See that's the problem. A lot of people have been indoctrinated to ignore reality and just blabber what they are told to (like your doing about Rush). Anyone that actually listens to Rush will know that he does not call anyone 'commies'. He does call a lot of behavior communist, socialist, and fascist. But he does it because its true. You may want to ignore the truth, the media may want to ignore the truth, politicians may want to ignore the truth, but that does not change the truth.
A lot of what is being done today under the banner of fairness is the same as what Hitler did in the 1930's. Read up on it. Hitler mandated certain diets, outlawed smoking, and set a lot of other standards for the protection of people. Will at least people that were not Jewish.
The current government is not much different than Hitler's when he first came to power. Will we turn out the same way. Depends on whether you keep spouting your indoctrination points or start looking at what is really going on, comparing it to what has gone on in history, and seeing that there is nothing new here.
The outcome is readily predictable and its not what you expect because you are being lied to. And for those that want to know the truth it's easy to see.
Hitler issued mandates
Obama issued mandates
Obama is Hitler.
Look up "Affirming the consequent" on wikipedia.
Obama goes to the bathroom
Neil goes to the bathroom
Neil is Obama
It's his ability to frame faulty logic in a reasonable sounding way that is where I believe that Rush Limbaugh is either brilliant or a sociopath (if he actually believes his own logic).
"Commie"..."Fascist"...I still fail to see why you can't see any similarity between McCarthy and Limbaugh...both are unobstructed by fallacy. And both used fear and hate-mongering to bring themselves profit.
We have not had as racist of a president since Johnson or FDR.
McCarthy, I don't know about, I think if you actually look at the facts he was more right than wrong although he may have made a couple of big mistakes. The difference is that McCarthy used secret panels and his political power to destroy people and Rush relies on actual demonstrated behavior and has no power to destroy people. Rush only points out the truth and its usually using people's own words or actions.
If you ask me, Obama is more like McCarty in the way he tries to get things done.
I mean come on, its pretty easy to see if you don't bury your head in the sand.
Your comparison of Obama to Hitler is not even close. Conservatives like you like to talk about personal responsibility when it suits your agenda, but when it comes to healthcare, conservatives never talk about personal responsibility of those who think that they can save money by choosing not to insure themselves knowing that if they have healthcare needs greater than they can afford that they will get those needs met and "society" will absorb the costs. The mandate and penalty will make that choice a little more difficult, conservative should like a system which encourages personal responsibility.
Incorrect because if a single guy only pays $1000 per year in a penalty, and gets sick and goes to the hospital we will still have to foot the bill and pay his care for free, and his health insurance would have been thousands, so even with a penalty in place he makes out with less cost than us sheep.
I hospital cannot turn you away for any reason.
$1000/yr no insurance $5,000/yr for insurance. Gee...which one is cheaper?
If that's your opinion then you need to study a bit more history. Hitler also promised to take care of everyone and as a result was elected almost unanimously.
And your wrong about the conservatives I know. The problem is not that your ideas about healthcare are necessarily wrong. Its that you think government can fix it when government has never fixed anything.
All you have to do to know I am right, is to apply your current experience with government organizations to the future healthcare. How will healthcare work when it operates like the local license bureau (stand in line get nowhere). Or how about how the IRS where it takes a court of law to get handled fairly. Oh and the IRS can just seize your property.
So your giving the one government organization that has the power to seize your property without due process command over healthcare. Seems real smart. How about this future. You get sick and the disease is classified as one coming from, lets just say smoking for example (and I have never smoked), the IRS decides that the people should not have to pay for your politically incorrect disease so they just seize all of your assets and put you on the wait list until the asset are sold and money collected. Ahh it's too bad the cancer killed you before your assets were converted to money.
The problem with liberals is not that they have bad ideas, its that they don't consider solving them in the real world. The results is unlimited government power that does not solve the problems. What about all the money for the war on drugs, not solved. What about the poverty problem, not solved. Etc. etc.
Solving anything except war using the government is just wrong, period. Government should regulate not control. There is a reason for the 'balance of power' and we need to make sure it stays balanced. Today it's almost completely off the scale.
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You can rail against SS because it is under-funded, but that underfunding was largely created by lack of political will over the last 40 years to adjust the successful program to extending life expectancy. SS has been unquestionably successful in lifting what was once a majority of senior citizens out of permanent poverty.
Medicaid is frought with fraud, but that fraud is not fraud by civil servants, it is fraud by private sector doctors and medical providers. As a program to providing affordable high quality access to healthcare for our seniors has been very successful.
Your answer is that because their are problems with some aspects of government programs, then we should abandon them, instead of fixing them and we certainly should not ever attempt to allow the government to solve any big problem.
So you pick one institution that seems to be work (NIH) against what 40 or 50 that are failed to the ultimate and seem to think that the next one will work ok. That's just dreaming.
The US food and drug administration is a failed bureaucracy. They only respond when the public sees a problem and are in bed with certain food and drug producers. The have established a nightmare of approvals that results in the US being way behind in new drug approvals.
Same with oversight of wallstreet. Same with EPA, in bed with the greenies and hurting our economy, but no one cares. Thats the problem is that none of these agencies work to the good of the people. They only work for the good of one political side or the other. I DONT want my medical advice based on my politics. Its dangerous and you won't see the problem until it's too late.
Governments are only the collective will and wealth of the people. They don't fix anything for long without the support of the people who constitute that government. The government can organize efforts and provide thought leadership and do other things to facilitate but when they believe they exist in spite of the people that is when the disconnect starts and the nation becomes weak.
SSA is underfunded because politicians stole from it to fund other things they wanted to do and seniors lived longer and pulled out much more than they ever put in. And they are not allowed to not take it either which is crazy. And while seniors are living much better, to the extent they live separate from their families which is more expensive, we have a lot of children living in poverty. As seniors dominate health care spending children have less and we dump bigger tax burdens on the middle class. The movement of wealth to senior citizens has been at the expense of other groups. Is that success? And who put that on the ballot?
Medicaid has fraud because large amounts of money attract fraud and governments in general are not good at running anything efficiently. They are a bunch of lawyers not operational people. They would not know Six Sigma if it jumped up and bit them in the butt.
If you look at the progress that we have made as a country in terms of air quality and water quality since the time the EPA was formed I think you might think differently. Of course the EPA would be more aligned with the "greenies". Do you think that the agency would be more alligned with the interest of the coal industry? Who goes to work for the EPA? People who pursue degrees in environmental studies and those people tend to "greenies". The agency was formed to protect our country and its people against environmental damage. Where in the EPA's mission statement is protecting the economy? Isn't that what the Department of Commerce does?
That is a very weak cause and effect statement to say the least.
There are a number of things going on:
1. The baby boom generation is taking more of the nation's wealth with them into retirement and into SSA, SSI and government paid healthcare. We don't have infinite dollars to go around and the shift of wealth to the older generation has been phenomenal. This is a massive transfer of wealth just in case you miss the point.
2. Babies born without a father is much higher than the 1970's across all nationalities.
3. Divorce rates are high across all nationalities.
4. The economy has been shifting from industrial to services for decades but especially from the 70's onwards. This takes education after High School.
5. Males are undereducated relative to females causing more problems with unemployment, marriage and out of wedlock children. Females are also cheaper to hire as they don't bargain for higher salaries as hard tilting the field further against males.
6. Our Hispanic population has exploded since the 70's and they do not value education as highly although they have a very strong family culture.
7. Our black population suffers from out of wedlock births which is close to all time highs, very high UE, and higher rates of diseases like diabetes, heart disease and also higher rates of STD's. This is a bad combination of issues.
Put all of the above in a blender and you will find children living in poverty.
Most of what is being done now is just shutting down America, not looking out for America and most of these greenies are not Americans any more, they are liberal socialists that want to shut down America. Get a clue. There is no longer a need for most of the EPA. It should just be shut down. We could go 50 years without any new EPA regulations and it would be just fine.
Change 'many' to 'all' and we agree about that.
Obamacare isn't the end, it's the means to an end - a single-payer end.
but even if business owners push off insurance to have individuals buy insurance from govenment mandated programs, what difference will that make? all the government is doing is laying new rules for the insurance companies. the insurance companies will do better because they have a lot more business. rates will still go up except as i said before, at least the voters can punish politicians who let rates go up to much.
the real problem is that there are so few insurance companies and no real choice that the insurance companies get to rip us off. unwarranted double digit increases in health care wont end until there is more competition in the health insurance area. the only good thing about the law is that if your employer does not offer insurance you can now get it.plus they cannot exclude you for prexisting conditions. it also eliminates the free loaders who dont buy insurance but get free care when they have a serious illness. however, the "system" (or non-system) is still the same and it is still broken.
Everything else is packaging.
Now that the law has been ruled upon by the Supreme Court, we will find that the law will be used as a political stick to garner campaign dollars and votes in each future election cycle. The Democrat tactics will focus on ever-expanding coverage and increases in spending, and the Republicans will resist a little, propose spending a dime less in the next year's budget and still be portrayed in election ads as pushing Granny in a wheelchair over a cliff. Such fun! I'm sure that they are already crafting the ads.
The politicians probably did not ask any real doctors how to get costs down because they don't want to hear any of the answers - cut fraud, minimal co-pays for Medicaid patients to prevent overuse, turn away patients who do not belong in the emergency rooms, and make Americans take responsibility for eating right and exercising would have gone a long way.
Now the IRS will be bigger, doctors will spend more time filling out quality control reports instead of treating patients, and the country will be spending its way to oblivion even faster.
Who's to decide what's right?
I have this problem today with my employer healthcare. They want to enforce my eating and exercising. But to do that I have to join a gym. I have a gym in my basement, but it's not eligible for insurance credit.
I have to sign up with a certified personal trainer. I'm not working with a certified personal trainer - I am a certified personal trainer. But it's not eligible for credit.
I have to take preventative doctors visits on a regular basis but they all cost $100's and have the same results every time. Last time I went the doctor told me I should be exercising until I finish a $5,000 stress test.
They tell me I'm overweight (BMI index) even though I have 10% body fat (well within limits).
I ride 100 miles a week and run a mile under 8 minutes and bench my weight. I think that's taking responsibility for eating right and exercising but "They" don't seem to agree.
So who's to say if I'm taking responsibility?
Get out of my way. Let me live my life. And if I do it right/wrong then let me bear the consequences.
The left is the mob.
They are the new mafia.
Fascist, faceless, bureaucrats.
If you are still a believer in 'the individual' then you are passe to them and their agenda.
Fall in line.
Also, Mary Landrieu aka the 'Louisiana Purchase'.
And Ben Nelson of Nebraska, bribed with kickbacks.
This is the corruption of the United Fakes of America and her 535 gangsters.
Dont you all get it!. Obama the uber brilliant constitutional law professor is not thinking what so ever about anything except what he believes is "fair", he is not able to see beyond his NOSE, he is "educated beyond his intelligence" your arguments/reasoning fall on his deft ears because Obama seeks "fairness" which is based on emotions not logic and so his belief system has nothing to do with how the real world works, its not what makes an economy grow and function efficiently. All this was made once again perfectly clear when he recently said (paraphrase) " I do not believe we build an economy from the top down but rather from the bottom up" what else do you need to know so stop whining about Obama he is what he is and if you dont like his policies vote him out in November, its the only option we have. We can only hope our next President can and will do better for America, and that he can mitigate some of the damage that Obama has done.
And, vote him out ! 60 % of ppl on assistence of some sort will not give up there $s. Not possible to vote him out.Double digit lead in Ohio ends Romney's shot at 270 votes. Case closed !
The rest of your comment a/o/k
" it's not over till the fat lady sings". Remember the 1980 Miracle on Ice, Americas Olympic hockey team beat #1 Soviet team in the biggest upset ever. It may take a Miracle for Romney to win but as in 1980 Miracles do happen, Romney just needs to go all out and stop worrying about what someone else might think. He needs to win and then he can apologize.
So you support a guy who is also a multi millionaire and has never worked a day in his life? I guess he is just like you huh? It strikes me that Obama being half black and getting the black vote has done nothing remarkable for blacks. I never see him in a photo down in the hood looking at blight and poverty. Bush did more for Africa then Obama. My only conclusion is that Obama is self absorbed.
At Romney's stage in life he only needs to run to take on a monstrous challenge and see if he can get the economy back on track and UE down. He is a problem solver and he sees a BIG problem. And why not give back? Because being President from where he is at is certainly a give back.
Currently all our corporations leave money offshore and more and more Americans are renouncing their citizenship and leaving. We are pretty nasty to our own and that is not a good trend.
I am not saying vote or not vote for him but all the murky innuendos are garbage. Don't judge a book by its cover.
Keep yanking donkey chad for the DNC. We'll be Liberia in no time.
He needs to convince independent voters that:
1) the new law takes nothing they have now away; while providing a safety net for others; and themselves, should they need it;
AND
2) That the PUPPET PARTY* is trying to take away those benefits, and that safety net-- on orders from their paymasters--- the greedy selfish, elitist one per-centers who don't want to share resources to provide basic health care for YOU and your FAMILY..
*(We need a new name for contemporary Republicans. The Republican Party today is like Vichy France. It is a Party that has been captured by Nazis and fraudster corporate criminals).
*( I suggest the PUPPET PARTY so that we can distinguish it from the party of Lincoln, TR, Eisenhower, Reagan and Bush the Elder).
Two points !
1. The election is over ! Romney will not reach McCain's #s
2. The single payer national system is on the way.Your all going to get screwed as the years go by.Private companies CAN'T stay in business and as they fail all will migrate to the national plan.
The best of the best will not choose medicine as there careers and the rich will eventually find a new country to head to for care. I pay almost nothing for care on the 2 national systems I'm on ,but, when I needed serious surgery recently I had the funds to go anywhere I wanted ! I chose Israel over the US because there the best there is. My second choice was Thailand...
Glad you may be one of the few Dem's with a job,but, if your 40 years old and still a Democrat that is sad. As Churchill & Reagan said if you 40 and not conservative there is something really wrong with you ! DL
AND; Private companies can insure benefits which are not "vital'--like private rooms, cosmetic, weight loss, additional cash for household expenses (e.g. AFLAC). Certainly it is more important than an oil depletion allowance.
Don't we recognize a need to subsidize, water, gas, electric and phone service; so that all have access. Why is healthcare excluded?
In fact, I have 'a condition'. Probably an ADA disease. If I don't eat. Food doesn't travel down into my tummy. My tummy hurts! Ouch! Its a medical condition. I have a right to fix that.
I could do this all day with every damn thing, cradle to grave.
Just import your argument to everything you want. Nice lefty?
We just did this little experiment with housing. Everybody gets a home. Look what it got us.
49 million Americans on food stamps. Almost a trillion blown every year.
50% of every state's budget gets shot right into medicaid, free healthcare for 'the poor' *ahem*(now defined as the middle class at $88,000/yr). We already HAVE 'free' healthcare. Its bankrupting the states.
Disability payments now at 9 million zombies strong. Good government!
UI now out and out welfare at 2 years! Good government boy! Good doggie!
Baby momma checks rotting the blue urban puppy mills(ghettos) but the DNC doesn't care. That's more votes for them. Thanks government! Thanks LBJ.
Welfare in the trillions upon trillions upon trillions of dollars and its just not good enough.
Government, public education. We're in the lowest global test score. Throw more money at public employee pensions. That'll do it! Good government doggie! Good boo boo. Sit.
We can do this all day.
I'm hungry!
I have A RIGHT for my healthcare(food). You like that Veruca Salt? I want it NOW! I don't care HOW, I WANT IT NOW!!!
And if I don't eat or choose not to, I eventually become one less mouth to feed which should drive down the price of corn or wheat since I create less demand. The fact that food stamps are paid out against my will as a taxpayer means that the price of food remains either static or higher than what it should be just like healthcare.
Try again.
I too could take your approach and say that we could solve the problem that we have in this country with the uninsured by simply denying them healthcare services under any circumstances unless they provide proof of insurance or the ability to self-insure. On paper, this would incent people who can afford health insurance, but simply have chosen not to purchase it to make that purchase and it would eliminate the rest of society from bearing the cost of providing healthcare to those who cannot afford it. This thing is that this would be immoral and not representative of the compassionate nature of the people of our great country.
Compassion with no logic is doomed to fail. And if we are truly compassionate then don't we owe the greater world a very large amount of our largesse as they are living well under US standards? Why stop at our borders? Claiming morality but then setting a limit on it really calls out the depth of the moral claim.
Karl Marx made similar statements that society needed something greater that would share the wealth and provide fairness for the common man. So a few billion people went down the enlightened path and millions of dead later came back again. Where is the morality in 10's if not 100's of million dead? Nothing in life is free. Somebody has to pay and when the number of people wanting it to be free is too large the system collapses.
The availability of the free stuff creates demand as it then becomes a choice. Witness free pizza at the grocery store. People overweight and needing to skip a week's worth of meals line up for the free stuff. Human nature is not too be underestimated.
If we are all in this together then I will send you my bills every month. And I thank you in advance.
So you don't mind forking over the millions you made yourself over to pay for dead beats?
Zorrow has yet to provide a bio...hm.
Just some midwest common sense that is considered Neanderthal in New York, Washington, and Los Angeles, the cesspits of America.
You like force.
I don't like force.
I'm not a fascist.
And yes I realize many of the articles here are infomercials by asset managers seeking a free advertising venue. However there is useful content on SA. There is a lot of good info that comes through the market currents and that's reason enough to access SA. One can ignore the plague of locusts hawking their "services".
When I had a small business (40-120 employees) the health insurance cost constantly went higher. This was primarily a combination of a healthcare system that was inefficient and insurance companies that had to keep raising rates. Meanwhile, everyone was smoking, getting fatter, and enjoying any lifestyle desired. The result was that companies (like mine) had to reduce benefits, make employees pay more, the company pays more, and the insurance costs escalate.
A lot of the increase in costs is due to the inefficient healthcare system. Whether it's a doctor's office, emergency clinic, or hospital the process has similar characteristics -- delays for service, collection of information and payment, numerous tests, etc etc. Litigation by lawyers caused a lot of the steps in the process. By the time you are released with only a simple problem it would be easy for a patient to have contact with four or more people and waste 2-4 hours. That's for a cold. This business model for healthcare has been around for 100 years and doesn't appear to be changeable.
Another part that interferes with a solution is that most of the population has it's greatest medical cost in the first 8 years and last 5 years. At those two ends of life, the costs can be astronomical. But to make an actuarial process work, the younger and middle age citizens have to pay more than they need to help cover the young and elderly costs.
Add in the unemployed, indigent, poor, illegals, etc and you have additional expense (plus need for language translation).
Something had to be done, Obama did it. It won't work. But what will? The problem is still there.
One thing I predict -- the costs will increase and we will suffer more and die sooner.
A more rational person might describe it as giving a break to small companies to encourage them. They are, after all, supposed to be the main source of new jobs (though that notion is under attack), and giving them this break makes sense.
Would it be more fair to make even the smaller companies provide the same health benefits as larger ones? Is THAT what we want?
That is how a businessman would describe it. Raising the cost per employee arbitrarily or distorting the market by having some magic cut off number like 50 FTE's is pure central planning and manipulation.
If you want to give small businesses a break then let's get aggressive and say no taxes for the first 5 years. Messing around with health care is just a social agenda initiative that has nothing to do with the interests of small business. Besides they will need the money just to build up the in house staff to deal with regulations.
Every headwind a small business deals with is just more lost revenue and margin. If they are into manufacturing they then face competition from overseas that only has a fraction of the compliance costs. And we wonder why a lot of our light industry is in other parts of the world.
If the president had any interest in the economy he could simply issue a change to all federal laws raising compliance levels to 500 employees, the SBA's definition of a small business. I understand he doesn't have the legal authority however he could simply declare he can't wait on Congress and do it similarly to the way he does new regulations.
In the end, two things made America a great country; the rule of law and gun ownership.
The rule of law because it made as level of playing field as anyplace on this planet.
Guns because its the one assurance that we will never be ruled against our will.
Yet most are willing to give up both of these in order to get their concern some lip service. Not even solved, just lip service. It's pathetic.
He said we need to ALL work until 80 and that is when bennies kick in !
Just like FDR when he started this nightmere. The bennies were not supposed to be paid. Only a hanfull of old ladies who outlived the slaves ( husbands).. All fixed ! ( clap hands and pat yourselve on back )
I would say that we have a hopelessly inefficient healthcare system because we cover the uninsured by default because we are a moral society. We will not let the poor and irresponsible suffer and die, but at the same time we cannot for some reason come out and say the quality healthcare is a right and we have to find a way to efficiently provide universal care. We cannot do this because somehow this sounds "socialist". So we will continue to give everyone access to healthcare in an ineffective and inefficeint manner.
Secondly, if part of the answer is to relieve the burden on the private sector in relation to healthcare insurance, than why did the number of uninsured rise dramatically during the 1980's, 90's and 00's when these burdens were more relaxed, while corporations grew fantastically more profitable, and the wealth and income gap expanded to levels not seen since 1929?
Saying a government takeover is an answer is just brute force power mongering. By that logic we should invade every country that has a problem because a takeover solves everything.
Obamacare is government care and nobody has confidence in the government running anything well over time. We have no case studies to show it can do it and in a country this large and complex the weight of the system will likely collapse. People have hope but not confidence.
Arguing access is not accurate as hospitals do take on people who have no ability to pay. Is that inefficient access? It depends. Compared to a centralized government program it will probably outshine it over time. Is it pristine where everyone has a health care card and we can pat ourselves on the back and say we are moral society? No but then what will a piece of plastic get a person once the government takes over health care? If health care is reduced in quality and innovation is that moral?
I never understood why we could not fix the uninsured problem by just dealing with uninsured. I never heard an argument that was more than bird bath deep. We already pay for the uninsured the only question is how we do it. A wholesale takeover of health care shows no intellect when it comes to system impact of major changes and knock on affects.
And as you likely know a huge amount of money is spent on end of life care but we are moral so apparently we want granny to hang on another day. Do you want to make a moral statement on the inefficiency of these decisions? That apparently is not going away or is it?
It would have been nice if Obama had just fixed unemployment and we would have trillions less in debt and much more in tax revenues. But of course you don't get your name on a major bill and cannot claim to have changed the country. Welcome to the pantheon of egotistical politicians of every party including Lenin, Stalin, Hitler and you name it.
Don't forget it is not about you it is about them. A chance to be a historical figure.
I don't hear too many people in our country complaining about a government take over of electricity or water. We have had decades of highly regulated utilities providing critical services to the American people. "Obamacare" is not a government take over of healthcare any more than utility regulation is a government take over of utilities. The private sector utility companies have been very successful in this country raising capital when necessary, producing profits and providing a reliable service to there customers.
By the way fixing unemployment would not fix the structural problem of the uninsured and healthcare cost inflation that has been running at double and triple the rate of CPI during period of both high and low unemployment.
How can you even suggest that using the emergency room for primary care for the uninsured is efficient? Emergency rooms in many high population areas are overwhelmed and cannot adequately serve those people who are in the emergency rooms for the right reasons. Emergency rooms provide triage, not comprehensive care or preventative care. If you want to get the cost of health down over the long-term you must improve access to preventative care.
You were not around to hear anyone talk about the takeover of electricity or water so your statement has no foundation. And those were done at the local or county, region level not a monstrous federal government intercession. And people still have wells so local municipalities did not take over everything.
If Obamacare is not a takeover then why the reams of paper to document the bill? I can claim not to take over your finances but if I tell you how to spend your money and where to go then I have de facto taken over your finances. That is the reality. You cannot say government is not involved but then ignore the size of the bill.
I am not arguing that emergency rooms are very efficient but on a spectrum where government control is another option they might start looking pretty good. And by the way doctors have so much demand during business hours many patients are pushed to after hour care and emergency rooms anyways so that will not be fixed.
Driving down quality and innovation to ostensibly create more access is a big mistake but that is where we are going. Capital will flow away from health care and it will be unsatisfying to everyone. Preventative care calls out a need for more general doctors but the trend here is to have more specialized doctors. So I suppose you want the government to mandate less specialized and more generalists? If we are going to give up freedom let's just say it and admit we are trading freedom for stuff.
Fixing UE would have boosted our GDP, put more people back to work on employer health care programs, reduced our debt and given us capital to deal with uninsured. A strong economy is the first priority so we can do other things. This only demonstrates how inexperienced and self absorbed our politicians really are. The uninsured would have benefited from a stronger economy and then we could deal with the remainder.
It is remarkable that people talk about healthcare costs going up but cannot articulate why it keeps going up. That is fundamental analysis that has to be understood before any remedy is suggested. Those drivers that move the price up can then be addressed and people can make conscious choice like free Americans and not get bamboozled by hucksters at the county fair.
For example oil has went from $20 per barrel to $100 plus in the last 12 years and nobody is calling for federal legislation because they have some sense why and understand it.
1. I am not forced to pay for water or electricity.
2. Obamacare is not regulation its take over. Telling companies how they have to act is a lot different than telling me what I have to pay a private company.
Furthermore, the government, both Federal and State, tell companies how to act in regard to pollution, safety and in terms of employee benefits. People like you seem to be calling for a return to the industrial revolution times in this country when companies could pollute all they want, can be as lax as they want from a safety standpoint and can have work environment and hiring policies which are very detrimental to the worker. As a business man who is very concerned about my country, I don't understand how business people such as yourself typically aggressively oppose a single payer healthcare system, but at the same time don't want the government telling you that you have to provide health insurance there employees.
What you don't seem to understand is that the Federal Government under the constitution must act in ways to promote the general welfare of "we the people" not we the business owners. If the government is not going to enact policies to ensure that tens of millions of people do not go uninsured for healthcare services, who is going to fill that void. Obviously you have said that it won't be you as a business person.
Example, see England, see Canada, see any other country with a single payer system. The public health care systems don't work anywhere near as good as our old system.
I managed an English company a few years ago, and guess what? We had to provide private health care in order to get any employees. Why? Because the public system was so bad.
I could go on and on. Ideas like yours, while I'm sure make you feel good, are just bad for America. There are other better solutions. But they take a little bit of intelligence to understand. Something, sadly most voters don't take the time to understand.
To you comment regarding the not doing anything well. That just simply is not the case. Given the scale and reach of our military, we management our armed forces very well. Given the number of people on social security, they receive their checks on time and people are generally very happy with SS. Medicare, given the number of payments and the number of recipients in the system, is very efficient compared to private insurers. The National Institute of Health is very efficient and successful in conducting and promoting medical research. Given the size of our country, the EPA does a terrific job ensuring that we all have clean drinking water and clean air to breath.
Seriously?
So we have the best military in the world and it is due to government organization? Look at the size of the budget. Nobody comes close to us. We bury everyone with scale. Love our military but size matters.
SSA and Medicare which are essentially bankrupt are run well?
Carrying your logic out then maybe we should have the government run everything if they are so efficient. They could run every business we have in the red and we could all claim we are a success. We could make up for the losses on volume.
By the way there is likely well water in every state of the union. You just are not getting out much.
But your just wrong on the facts. Our health system is the best period, for everyone. At least it was until the government got involved and started making the healthcare system a political hand ball. Don't suppose you remember when the less fortunate could walk into any hospital in the US and get treated for free. It used to be considered an obligation. Now the government will use death panels to make sure they don't run the costs up. And there won't be anyone to blame except for some unnamed panel that issues edicts from afar.
We're stupidly destroying a healthcare system that works well for 80% rather than address the various reasons that the remaining 20% don't have health insurance. (Note they still receive healthcare, they just don't pay for it.)
SS check recipients being happy has nothing to do with success. Write me checks and I'd be happy too. SS has a vast unfunded liability and using any reasonable pension accounting standards would be declared insolvent. That's not success. Medicare fraud is rampant and doctors are dropping Medicare patients. That's not success. The feds just reported that 11% of unemployment benefits paid out in 2011 were bogus and should never have been paid. That's not success.
As far as the EPA, my water supplier (which is not government, just as my electric utility is not government) ensures I have clean drinking water, not the EPA. The EPA is too busy trying to justifying taxing CO2 to worry about such mundane matters. However the fault with your EPA reference is it isn't an analogy to Obamacare. The EPA is a regulator. We already have regulators for doctors, hospitals, insurers, etc.. We don't need Obamacare to regulate healthcare, nor is that what Obamacare is about.
http://bit.ly/N59wgy
Let me make this simple because there are far too many bogus stories floating around the internet on this subject. I routinely use Snopes to debunk this cyber garbage which leads to much of the dis-information which stokes the anger of people such as a few of those on this thread. See the following link: http://bit.ly/NjtwZf
Hopefully, you can use a tiny segment of your knowledge and figure out over time that all insurance companies will have to follow the rules. Then they will start to lose money. Then one by one they will close ! Then the medical schools will see drop offs in enrollments and the national plan will emerge. Rationing ! And, the poll of US doctors was posted several places on SA. These are the folks who will be the pawns in this monstrosity ! 80% said they were thinking of leaving medicine !
You can decide that you don't like the Affordable Care Act, as I can decide that their are parts of it that I would have like to have done differently, but it is not constructive to make the predictions that you made above or to twist the contents of the act into something that it is not.
That is a fact too...
Year after year the US spends more money than she takes in and it all somes up is vote buying ! Plain and simple. Spin all you want !
He is a simple way to stop it all.. ( if I were king ) If your a US citizen man or women and you pay US Federal Income Tax you and your immediate family can vote in the national election ! If you don't pay you can't vote ! Then all this freeloading would stop. Church Temple an Mosques would do there things and the charities too.
The Government isn't a caretaker for all. Infrastructure + military and no mass !
So profit motive is the enemy? And the Fed Gov is the answer? When they have managed to screw up most everything they touch?
The Fed Gov is not a good operator of anything. End of story. Read the news for the evidence. It is run by politicians who are looking out for their own self interest not running the best and greatest.
Healthcare inflation is a phenomena but is it a problem? Are we demanding more every year? Are we paying for innovation? Lawsuits? End of life care which is hugely expensive? Is it the inevitable result of the baby boomers hitting retirement? If you don't understand or want to understand the drivers then you are treating symptoms not the problem.
40 million uninsured is a problem but that is different than health care costs going up and should be treated differently. Driving down UE would help and tunding their insurance could be very simple as we could slice defense spending in half and cut a number of agencies. Trashing our entire health care system though is very foolish.
If 40 million cost $1200 each that is $48 Billion. So we trash a $2 Trillion industry over $48 Billion? That does not make sense.
You cannot say that the uninsured are a major contributor to healthcare cost inflation. They have always been with us so they are carried year over year and they make no NEW impact to the cost numbers.
By the way the most expensive and least healthiest of the population is already on the government health care so now we are taking the most healthiest on and letting employers walk away from this obligation which they felt for many years and now feel compelled to walk away from. So now employees are getting socked with even higher health care costs because employers are backing away.
All of this will eventually be dropped on the US taxpayer in its entirety and it will be worse not better.
Again the USG is not an operator of anything that can be held up to scrutiny as best of breed and every year they spend more so that should tell you something.
We are trading a set of problems for potential chaos.
The general welfare is important,but, with your money not mine !
I give 100% of what I take in now away ! And, I do a great job hands on doing it..And, i know my nephew will do the same when I am gone and probably add his funds to it.
And, I moved from the US ,so, the money goes to people who deserve it. I don't go to shelters here and see kids on Istuff and wearing NKE sneakers.
I posted the Argentine President's comments first on SA when she recently said " Equality is more important then freedom !" and that seems to be what your saying........
This last stunt by the Supreme Court saw Judge Roberts write 3/4s of the dissent and then flip during the last few weeks ! This ruling ranks as tied for the two worst rulings in my 87 years where this court gave the GM & Chrysler 1st in line Bond holder's garbage an turned the companies over to the Unions an workers.
The US Republic has been destroyed ! Freedom is now at the whim of selfish me first Congressmen/women !
Now, the US is just simply a mob-rule counrty ! And, this was done during the 40 years the Democrats ruled the whole ball of wax ! The Founders developed the Republic brilliantly and when the State's lost the ability to select the Senators they we all lost the Republic.We see the House pass Bill's left and right as there elected to do by a simple majority and the Senators act like children and put party over country ! On both sides and fear not the Goveners of the State's they represent !
The 40 million you speak of were used as pawns by Obama and go to youtube and watch his comments before he became the President. He said he wants a single payersystem and it is his plan,but, it will take time. Well, he just got help and put the plan in motion from the Court allowing anything an everything to be taxed. I won't be around to see this system most likely,but, as sure as the sun rises it will be !
All the costs will still rocket higher.The US carequality of care will drop and the wait times will be long ! And at the age of 70 will see doctors just making you comfortable.. Or pay them privately ! Yes sir ,sir ! DL
You cannot say that the uninsured are driving health care cost any more than insured are driving health care cost. In fact I might argue that since the people with the worst health have government insurance they are in fact driving costs more than people without.
And to give you some scale right now each US household owes about $160,000 each for direct federal debt and if we include unfunded liabilities it is about double that.
So how big does $1200 a year look now?
Your comment about debt per capita is really not relevant in that we will never truly pay off our government debt, nor do we ever need to. We just have to control the levels to make sure that interest carry costs do not crowd out everything else.
Debt per capita is the same things as taxation per capita so is absolutely relevant. Both have to be paid. When we burden our tax payers we need to measure how much they can carry so we don't lower their consumption and thereby economic growth. I would swap $1200 per year per family in a nano second with the current level of debt that is resting on the taxpayers over the next 20 to 30 years.
We will pay this back either through real taxes or inflation. Thus far it looks like inflation through easy money is the answer because nobody wants to deal with really paying it back. And you really don't control the level when interest costs take off. Every central planner thinks that until events take over.
This story is coming to an end however as our debt to GDP ratio is at all time highs and likely cannot go much further.
To wrap up the health care issue the approach should have been to address the gaps and not make the federal government the ultimate underwriter. I blame WDC in general with this mess as both parties like big entities even though they don't admit it. Where else can one get big campaign contributions?
By the way did you know that about 5% of the population drives around 50% of the expenditures on health care? That should be where we focus.
Quickly and quietly the world trade has gone 70% dollarless. BRICs and others have stopped using it. China has signed 17 separate swap agreements and she is setting up Yuan exchanges outside China, Also the IMF is being pressured hard to increase the new SDR 8 receipt as OPEC an others don't want the SDR 4 with US & JAPAN =ing 80%... The clock is ticking and it is becoming clear the Fed an Treasury want this. Sec Geitner has spoke on the subject publicly and said 20 years is the plan ! I don't think the world will accept that and the US is lucky the world financial market has caused fear to support the US paper.
Diversify out of the US if you have the ability ! DL
PS No China doesn't want the reserve as the Yuan. That would destroy them. She and the BRICs want the IMF to go to the SDR 8 with all currencies at 12%
"Sentenced to death on the NHS"
http://bit.ly/Mpw7zd
Its called "Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB)". Look it up yourself because you won't believe anything that is posted by anyone you disagree with.
Also check out the NHS Liverpool Care Pathway.
Also look in the NY Times. http://bit.ly/PVsDfE
So you would rule out cars, pizza, nascar racing, flying, etc. all with your definition. That's why your statement makes absolutely no common sense.
Why do you keep saying "healthcare inflation?" Do you know what inflation is and has anyone proved there is inflation in healtcare? And if so what is driving inflation in health care?
Your mechanism for commen sense is really moving from free choice to a government controlled menu. Welcome to the PRC and USSR redux. All we have to give up is freedom. No problem where can we all sign up for more of that treatment?
This short Rand report discusses health cost inflation and its impact on the U.S. population.
Good report and thanks.
But the report is talking about a dramatic increase in health care spending not inflation. Those are two different concepts and I expect you know the difference. And the policy response is also much different.
Anyways you are misusing the word inflation.
Thats not the federal government executing unconstitutional laws. In fact you or I would attempt to do the same thing even if we were not police. This just goes to show your logic is totally flawed.
The constitution was meant to limit government power to specific areas and healthcare is not one of them. I sincerely hope that you live long enough to see the crap system you advocate creating.
Again the government cannot get anything right, yet you what them to control your health using an appointed bureaucrat that probably was not able to graduate high school. While I can see why you think something should be done, might even agree with some of it, what I cannot see is your total lack of foresight about how it will work out in the real world with massive government incompetence as opposed to your theoretical world where everything works like you think it should.
For god sake, the Attorney General of the United States approved breaking fundamental laws for, that we know of, protecting polling places from political pressure and selling guns to criminals.
How can you not understand that rich government political donors will get everything they want from this new health care system and poor or middle class regular citizens will get nothing because it will be too expensive. It will be no better than what we now and even worse because instead of being based on money (which is lot limited to one political party, yet) benefits will only be based on ideology or party affiliation. Obama is doing this throughout the government right now and to an extent that has never been seen before. Sure there have been political favors, but he is waging political war punishing people like a Chicago thug would.
Anyway, what you are advocating will never come to pass in the way you envision it. Instead we will be worse off just like the people in every other country with public healthcare are. And you are fostering this abortion on your kids. Please think ahead to the practical implications instead of your need to think your doing something nobel.
Inflation is general rising costs AND a loss of purchasing power. If I buy twice the services from year 1 to year 2 I can say services cost me 100% more year over year but I did not just have 100% inflation. I actually consumed 100% more.
In our health care debate we definitely have more services being consumed and expensive services at that. Isolating the cost of each service over time then measures the inflation rate.
The Rand report talks about dramatic increases in health care spending because they know they are not talking about inflation but rather more and more of the country's wealth being committed to health care. Throw in that 5% of the population are driving over 50% of the cost of health care and inflation is not the focus but rather it is the consumption of health care services whether needed or not.
Consuming less has to be part of the equation or outsource to lower cost countries the procedures and thereby drive down or deflate the price points of services. India is already providing health care services for Europeans. I would not be surprised to see Mexico become a big destination for procedures.
By the look of the debt to GDP ratio it appears that people do believe government is the solution to all problems and especially if it comes in the form of free money. Government support has never been higher so it seems confidence in the government is at all time highs. In reality people know this cannot go on and that is why their confidence is low in government.
I understand all that but I believe you are avoiding the key issue. The 5% that consume over 50% of the health care costs are likely not employed. You know and I know that this is not being addressed because it involves old people and they all vote. But everything else is demagoguery and nibbling at the edges. In addition the Rand report comments on new procedures being very expensive even though they are advanced.
You are looking at numbers from 30K feet and lamenting how big they are but those numbers are driven by choices. Look at the choices and tell someone they cannot have it. Tell an old person sorry but you need to die. That is ultimately what it comes down to.
Your point can also be directed at the cost of energy. Is government going to take over the energy industry?
Medicare talks directly to most of the money going to the older generation. Military spending should be cut in half IMO but they are not the only issue.
You are really going to ration healthcare through the backdoor. Your words are talking to centralized control and decision making. I am all for taking fraud out and being more effecient but that will not be enough. Capital will flow away from low margin procedures which is already happening by the way and the monster expenditures will go unchecked and get worse as they are the only place to make money.
If you ran your household budget this way you would go broke eventually and you know it. You would cut the extra trip to the restaurant and have your kids eat at home but ignore the monthly mortgage is double what it needs to be. This is all wishful thinking.
Maybe you should try reading the founding fathers. They predicted what we have today and it was their biggest worry. That includes problems caused by "FDR, Truman, Eisenhaurer and Kennedy" which I have come to believe started our decline in the world.
We no longer stand for the values of our founding fathers. Most people, probably you included, can not even list them. None of our political efforts support them, but just the opposite. Our current political efforts are largely geared to tear apart America. And people like you just want more of it.
We also don't want to give companies an excuse to dump everyone from their insurance group plans in order for employees to get on exchanges, this is just a stepping stone for socialized health care, its engineered to fail in order for the government to swoop in a gallant effort to save everyone from the evil capitalist pigs that we are. You sir, are one of those capitalist pigs, which is ironic how you reconcile your liberal whacko ideals with being filthy rich, how do you sleep at night knowing you are mentally gone with the wind, but some how able to hold your nose and press the trade button raking in obscene amounts of money and getting rich off the backs of those poor peons at the factory?
Good grief give it a rest.
By the way, I am not a "raging liberal", however I am a capitalist, much the same as our nation's most successful capitalist, Warren Buffett, a capitalist who knows that our country is only great when we have a vibrant and secure middle class. By the way, we did not really have a middle class prior to FDR/Eisenhower. It was the security of those dreaded socialist programs of SS and then Medicare, and government assistance such as the GI Bill and SBA loan guarantee program, which were implemented in the early 1950's, and significant infrastructure investment, which built the middle class in this country.
I find it interesting that you say that I am yelling and screaming, when you are the one who has resorted to personal attacks and insults. I have attempted to stay on subject as much as possible.
The emergence of the middle class is not tied to a President here or anyplace else for that matter. In the US it is related to becoming an industrial power. FDR resided over a dust bowl until we ramped up production for WWII. This continued after WWII and well into the 70's and hit hard times in the 80's. We have been struggling since.
Meanwhile other countries middle classes have emerged as they took industry from us or in the case of India focused on exporting IT services.
You are not an Adam Smith capitalist but a centralized capitalist a lot like the China model. It's OK but gotta call a spade a spade. You cannot be partially pregnant.
Here is the problem as I see it. Insurance has too much say, and too much pay. We have become socialized in that cost increases are automatic and not based on market principles. The HSA model is an ideal remedy but no one really uses them widespread because full coverage is a better deal when you can afford it. People just want to pay a monthly subscription fee and be told what to do and be denied there after.
If we were responsible for our health money based in cash, real money instead of rationing by health insurance companies, and make service worth a damn, and force doctors to compete for our business, we would have better health care. Insurance should only be needed in cases where it is warranted. It should also be more expensive for those who never took care of themselves. Free health care for the poor will always be around, and no one is advocating for that to end. Romney is right that they do have a safety net, I see it all the time, I see illegal aliens get life-flighted in, I baby sit them in the emergency room and when they are well enough to be deported they sign a waiver and the $50,000 bill is passed on to us. Ca-Ching...life flights are a minimum cost of $10,000 according to the pilots.
Don't lecture me about your sophomoric ideals about what health care should or shouldn't be. What is should be, is up to us, ourselves and based on a diet that keeps us disease free instead of inventing pills that make us live longer but crazy at the same time. I eat a healthy diet, exercise moderately and brush and floss my teeth. I have not seen a doctor but for a check up and my dentist keeps asking why I bother coming in.
I would love to take a poll, how often does your doctor ask you what you are eating when you visit his office? I never had a doctor ask me that. Why isn't this routine?
I wish healthcare could be made cost efficient through competition and cost comparison, however when someone is seeking out a healthcare provider, many times they do not have that luxury of time and they certainly do not want to "choose" a healthcare provider for their child based upon cost over expertise and experience. A parent should not have to cost justify getting their child the best care possible.
Watch forks over knives, its eye opening.
(b) they don't spend much less on healthcare.
(c) they use smaller plates and only fill the plate once.
And when the US government panels are fully entrenched they'll just make a law, enforced by the IRS, that everyone can only have 1 small plate of food for each meal. They'll outlaw all kinds of food that is politically incorrect, even without proof that it is harmful. Just to be safe you know. That is what they try do now. How can any sane person not see where this is going?
The people in our government are not and will never be sane common sense people that can be trusted with this kind of power.