User21284

ETF Update: Health Care Enters the Home Stretch

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

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.

Obama Is Bad for the Economy - Barron's

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!