User21284's Comments

ETF Update: Health Care Enters the Home Stretch

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 11:34:13 -0500

To User445384:

So you want to know why the Democrats are trying to cull half a billion from Medicare? No you don't - because the truth of the matter leads right to the doorstep of the Republican graft and abuse that you - inadvertantly or otherwise - embrace. It's the same old story: a government program (however imperfect it may be) is put into place, with some intent of benefitting the general public. The Conservative effort then becomes one of co-opting (FDA), driving the program into the ground (EPA under Reagan and Bush II), poisoning with politics (HUD under Reagan; DOJ under Reagan and Bush II), or distorting the original intent so that profits can be wrung from it, at the expense of all of us (Medicare). Not that you'll read it or that you will care, but nevertheless from the Washington Post:

REPUBLICANS FOR WASTE AND ABUSE IN MEDICARE
The emerging Republican attack on health-care reform is that Democrats are going to cut your Medicare. If imitation is the highest form of flattery, Democrats must be feeling pretty flattered right now.

But is it true? Sort of. At issue are payments to the Medicare Advantage program. Medicare Advantage is a Medicare carve-out that allows private insurers to offer plans for seniors. The original vision for the program was simple enough: Private competition will drive costs down. The private market, as you may have heard, is more efficient and effective and adaptable. No reason seniors shouldn't benefit from that ingenuity. So Medicare would give private insurers the money it would spend on a beneficiary, and the private insurers could try to do a better job with it.

Medicare Advantage, however, failed in its mission: prices shot up. Private insurers complained that they couldn't compete with Medicare for the same amount of money Medicare spends. So Republicans systematically increased reimbursement rates, and now Medicare has to pay the average private plan 114 percent what it would've spent to cover that beneficiary itself. That's helped the private plans provide better service (as you would expect), and now 23 percent of seniors are in an Advantage plan.

Democrats don't want to eliminate the Medicare Advantage program. But they want it to live within the same budget that Medicare uses. Republicans argue that pulling back these payments will force some Medicare Advantage plans to trim their benefits. That may well be true. But it is an argument against ever eliminating government overpayments to any program. It is an argument, in other words, for waste and abuse.

It is also an interesting moment of insight into the conservative philosophy on these matters. The problem with government programs, we're often told, is that they are expensive and wasteful, and the private market could do better. But faced with an instance where the government program proved relatively lean and efficient, and the private market expensive and wasteful, Republicans have mounted a ferocious defense of the market's right to continue burning through taxpayer dollars.

ETF Update: Health Care Enters the Home Stretch

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 14:59:32 -0500

cyclingscholar, if you don't think there aren't already $2500 toilet seats arising from our healthcare industry, then I suggest you check into a for-profit hospital of your choice and carefully review the fees for services and procedures, once your stay is completed.

As to any connection between poorly-educated physicians and government involvement in healthcare, you might test your theory by checking out a place like the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm (my sister has lived in Sweden for a number of years) and see if that world-famous facility (and others like it in various European locales) could possibly meet your needs and standards.

If you don't think that we aren't already dealing with the spectre of death panels, then come up with a really expensive chronic ailment, and see how many New York minutes it takes for your healthcare insurer to drop you because of a pre-existing condition or because you lost your job or because you moved from state to state. And if that doesn't work, and your condition is really, really, expensive - then your insurer will simply cease coverage for an entire class of insureds. All the more for the bottom line, and for the enormous SG&A from which the industry feeds its top execs.

Yes, medical costs have soared since the '60s. But instead of looking to the government as the culprit, consider whether the privatizing of hospitals, the enormous growth of healthcare insurers, and the turning of not-for-profit organizations like Blue Cross into profit-making entities just might be a factor.

In Congress we have the best politicians that money can buy. Unfortunately for all of us who, at one time or another, will require medical attention, much of the slush that ends up in the pockets of our legislators is provided by the healthcare industry.

Small Caps for Sale

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:40:57 -0500

Caveat: Insiders have been dumping the stock like crazy.

I like the fundamentals, but ... ???

CIT's Failure Could Threaten Financial Sector's Overall Recovery

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 11:01:19 -0400

The brilliance of some of the contributors here can be measured by such references - presumably to the current legislation working its way through the Senate Finance Committee - as "govt run healthcare".

Ben Stein, Predatory Bait-and-Switch Merchant

Sun, 19 Jul 2009 11:44:56 -0400

from Kount ...

<>

How about the pollution of science with religion, i.e., the promotion of creationism as an "equal partner" as part of the science curriculum in our schools?

More:

<>

We "lefties" who find ourselves in accord with the vast majority of science on the subject of global warming are afflicted with the same "gullibility" that causes us to view the Earth is a sphere, from which one will not fall off the edge if one sails too far into the ocean. As to the notion that Salmon covets Stein's NYT gig or somehow might receive "swag" from Reuters via the global warming issue: another characteristic of "lefties" and other common-sense folk is the view that the primary motivating factors in this world of ours are not necessarily power and money. I think many of these people might also be referred to as "Christians."

Ben Stein, Predatory Bait-and-Switch Merchant

Sun, 19 Jul 2009 11:18:10 -0400

<
I'll be sure to check with Mr Salmon before I embark on anything that smacks of commercialism in the future.

So let me see all the spiteful posters: would you do the ad for $100 - probably not, but if I upped the ante a bit - say $10 million - would you then reconsider? Or better still $100 million do I hear some of the sanctimonious wavering....... perhaps even the upright poster who is -finally- losing respect for the NY Times because Ben is still associated with them. Are you serious? [Mafeking]>>

What you're contending is that at a certain price, everyone is a whore. Perhaps so, but speak for yourself only. At what price would you sleep with Michael Jackson, were he still around?
Is it possible that someone else would not sully his/her reputation, regardless of the financial enticement?

What we have established for sure is that Ben Stein is a whore. The unanswered question is the price at which he got down on his knees.

6 More Stock Briefs

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 14:28:24 -0400

You're somewhat correct, while statistically off. Current Rassmussen banner headline: "53% (not 59%) Say More Government Spending Hurts the Economy". To parlay this slim stat into a representation of what "the American people" say or think is rather presuming.

We need deficit spending to prop up the economy. This is in the face of a yawning federal debt that is as large as it is because of Reagan and Dubya, who each reduced taxes while increasing spending, thereby running up huge and largely unnecessary deficits. Of course, Conservatives, all of a sudden, have awoken Rip van Winkle-like to discover "fiscal responsibility" - their definition being the same as ever: cut taxes, reduce spending [just not military spending, or in my district, where a "Bridge to Nowhere" would be just fine]. I'll grant you Ron Paul is an exception.

This is not to say that all the stimulus measures taken to date are things of beauty. (AIG should not have been saved, but drowned in a convenient bath tub. Why are TARP-funded execs still benefiting from tons of bonuses and perks?) But to dismiss all federal spending as you have as "pork" is to deny the reality that properly-directed federal stimuli could do the Nation a great deal of good. Given our rickety infrastructure that's in great need of an overhaul, and unemployment figures that are downright scary, how many of the members of Congress now howling for "fiscal responsibility" do you think would oppose a bill that included needed infrastructure improvements in their own district? And how many of the 53% cited in the Rassmussen poll do you think would oppose such stimulus, if a spending bill were to put to work people in their own district? And if Congressmen/women and voters in general were to support such infrastructure expenditures, wouldn't they be right in doing so?

The Rassmussen Poll question (perhaps like most poll questions) was simplistic. We shouldn't rush to place too much credence on the results of black-or-white questions such as "government spending - good or bad?"

6 More Stock Briefs

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 10:25:19 -0400

Re your "pork barrel" comment. You should have said that revenues gained from taxing gambling would be used to fund projects that YOU don't want.

Perhaps you haven't heard ... we're in a severe recession.

Leaving Green to the Free Market - Barron's

Sun, 26 Apr 2009 11:23:24 -0400

It's great to read the perspective of those who would compare democratically-elected government to the Mafia, and who opine that (unlike our government) the Mafia feels a moral obligation ... to do anything. Speaking of poison - this is a pretty good measure of the degree to which the conservative Right, led by their talk radio arm, has succeeded in poisoning the minds of many Americans to the degree that they feel our government is worse and less moral than the Mafia. These folks aren't joking - they really believe it.

Sure, let's leave it all to free enterprise. The government couldn't possibly have developed the A-bomb or put a man on the moon or run a decent military or a local police force or fire department or built a national road system. And there couldn't possibly be thousands of people working at local, national and state levels such as Americorps volunteers and community organizers (Obama, for example) and teachers, who come back from their educational experience to give back ... and thousands who work at federal agencies like the EPA, where the end product is not to market another brand of "new and improved" detergent, but to make our lives a bit better and safer. Any of the aforementioned must be incompetent losers - because they're not motivated first and foremost by money! ... and therefore, whattheheck good can they be.

Let's get the dirty hands of the government off of the effort to save the planet, and leave it all to free enterprise. Without Greed, there can't be Green!

RBC Picks 20 Companies That Might Benefit From Obama's Infrastructure Plan

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 09:09:40 -0500

<
He [Obama] is, however, trying to repay those who voted for him. The CBO has shown that only 1 in 4 dollars allocated to infrastructure construction is spent on it. >>

How was the "1 in 4" figure determined? Over what period of time? Through whose administration(s)? Who knows. Of course, this figure couldn't have been helped by the $223 million appropriated for Alaska's "Bridge to Nowhere" - the funds provided by the Fed. govt. having been kept by Gov. Sarah Palin after the project was killed.

Also ... (wink, wink) how do we know what Obama's intentions are, since he's been President for such a short period of time. Oh, I forgot: he won't take office until late January.

Let's not condemn Pres.-elect Obama until it's reasonable to do so - for Republicans, this means Day 1 after his inauguration.

Obama Is Bad for the Economy - Barron's

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 10:53:36 -0400

I commend Barron’s for pointing out the folly of increasing taxes on our super-rich, as would occur under a President Obama. One needs only to perceive the bonanza our country has reaped since going from the tough economic years of the Clinton presidency, to the years of across-the-board prosperity we’ve enjoyed during the presidency of George W. Bush, to see how foolish such an action would be.

And why increase the tax burden on the very ones among us who have brought us this economic cornucopia? Take John McCain, for example. He’s wealthy, but why increase taxes on him? After all, he must have arrived at this wealth by way of growing a business and hiring people as he went along, and we wouldn’t want to stultify his entrepreneurial acumen that has brought economic benefits to all. The McCains could have sat on their wealth and clipped bond coupons or something – but, instead, they had the courage to venture into real estate and now own 7 (or is it 10?) homes. Think of how this has stimulated the real estate economy! So we as a country don’t want to hobble such “family operations” or cause our super-rich to curtail their “shopping trips and travel” – it would just be counter-productive.
We shouldn’t tax the wealthy at all – think of the added jobs we’d create if the super-rich had all that additional money to plow into their businesses, buy blue-chip stocks, go on shopping trips and travel – and prime our economic pump as they went along!
In fact, a properly-incentivized tax code would SUBSIDIZE the super-rich: not only should they pay no taxes, but we should grant tax REBATES in direct proportion to their wealth.

Think of all the jobs we’d create … wake up, America!

Atlas Energy: More 'Criminally Undervalued' Than Cramer Realizes

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 10:58:08 -0400

"the domestic enemies of the usa did not die with the soviet union . bankrupting our country is their goal; annoy them by supporting - drill now drill here. "

No amount of dreaming, wishful thinking, name calling and carrying the ball for the oil and gas lobby - promoted by the "drill here/drill now" guy Knut Gingrich or anyone else - will lead us to some fancied promised land where we can be the masters of our fate based on fossil fuels. And the notion that we can magically make use of oil locked up in Colorado shale conveniently ignores the environmental devastation (that's right, DEVASTATION) that would result from an undertaking similar in scope to that under way in Canada. This is the Colorado Rockies, not northern Alberta, where the moose and mosquitos play. As for drilling along the Santa Barbara coast, here's a thought ... let's first drill along Jeb Bush's Florida coast, and see how far that idea goes. The operative term here is NIMBY and, even if we could meaningfully close the gap between consumption and demand - which we can't - it wouldn't begin to solve the long-term problem that we, as a nation, have to get off the dime and get serious about energy alternatives to fossil fuels.

As to the "domestic enemies of the usa" - here's one whose comments are worth noting. This domestic enemy said:

" America has fallen well behind European nations such as Germany, Spain and the Netherlands that already reap huge percentages of their power from wind.

'We're very ignorant in this country about other forms of energy (than fossil fuels),' he said."

This domestic eneny of the USA went on to say that "the United States has 4 percent of the world's population and 3 percent of known oil reserves, but is responsible for 25 percent of world oil consumption.

That means the country spends $700 billion on imported oil each year, which will be unsustainable as prices keep rising.

And, he said, oil prices are unlikely to drop long-term because world demand of 86 million barrels a day exceeds the world's production of 85 million, which is about as high as the industry can go."

In other words, cut out the propaganda, bring a halt to the dead-end policies and wishful thinking that have brought us to this point and the American auto industry to the brink of financial disaster: get serious about a long-term national energy plan that will REDUCE our dependence on oil and natural gas - while using the far more domestically-oriented and cleaner natural gas as a bridge fuel, for some years to come.

And the "domestic energy of the USA" I've quoted is T. Boone Pickens.