New York may want a waiver from Obama care even though it was one of the biggest supporters of the bill. They were willing to jam it down other people's throats, but not for them.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0311/51840.html
The Dem congressperson explained that Obama said, ‘If you have better ideas that can accomplish the same thing, go for it,’ If he had a better idea, why didn't he promote it last year.
The number of unions and jurisdictions that supported Obama Care and want waivers makes me puke. Common decency and fairness says that if you were in favor of legisltation for others, it should apply to you. If you have a better idea for health care, you should have suggested it then.
Indeed, the lack of set standards for granting waivers makes this a government not of laws but of men where the administrator can reward allies with no standards.
-- Modified on 3/24/2011 4:14:28 PM
Don't say you weren't warned.
"--the aristocracy of pull," said a voice beyond the group.
They whirled around. The man who stood facing them was Francisco d'Anconia.
is used, i.e. market based, single payer, hybrid, whatever. Until you have the consumer involved, the costs will continue to rise.
A market based system WILL have the consumer involved, if it is a free market. Single payer of whatever hybrid you want, almost by definition, will NOT have the consumer involved in determining prices.
Unfortunately, anything anyone actually in office proposes these days that is "market based" will usually be a mix of markets and government controls, and its the markets that will get the blame for the rising costs.
Well we have a free market now and can't keep cost down!
Time to try something else. Something that does work because other countries have proven that is works!
The things in Obama Care are guaranteed to raise costs. Two things:
1. No limits on coverage. If your car is insured for 100,000 max and it is then raised to be covered for $400,000, the costs have to go up. Obama care will make it more expensive
2. Coverage for minor matters. You do not insure your house to cover a clogged drain or a broken window. You do not insure your car to cover new windshield wipers or the light on the rear of the car.
You could buy coverage, but it would be more expensive. The cheapest way to handle routine, non-expensive matters is to have as many customers as possible pay for them directly. To add a massive level of government agencies to pay for a flu shot will raise the cost three-fold.
Since there is a limited amount of money any government will spend on health care, if you pay for the unnecessary stuff like routine immunizations, there is less money for heart transplants.
Finally, even if what you say is true, you ignored the issue. If it is such a good system that he is proposing, why are so many of his supporters saying, "Wow, Pres. Good idea, but not for us."
You ignore the fairness of the issue - should the Dem congressman jam it down my throat and then get his constituents out of it?
Its not time to try something else, as an alternative to a free market, because we don't have anything that resembles a free market.
A second feature of socialist economies is that there is little incentive to make careful economic decisions, because government has put everyone in the position of spending other people's money.
Canada may have the most heavily socialized health care system in the advanced world. Yet America's system is as much a tragedy of the commons as the Canadian system, where health care is ostensibly "free." In each country, only about 14 cents out of every dollar of medical spending comes directly from the patient.
How can America's health care system be "socialized" when we rely on the private sector more than any advanced nation? Because it doesn't matter whether the dollars and the hospitals are owned publicly or privately. What matters is who controls how they are used.
In 2007, the average family of four will pay $25,000 for health insurance — nearly 30 percent of their income. About $14,000 represents taxes that fund health programs for the elderly and the poor. In other words, the government controls the lion's share.
The remaining $11,000 purchases the family's own coverage, usually through an employer. Though we count that as "private" spending, the government largely controls that $11,000 as well.
Congress provides a substantial tax break for employer-controlled health insurance. That sounds nice, but it means that workers who want to control their coverage themselves face a tax penalty. That penalty often forces such workers to pay twice as much for less coverage. That benign-sounding "tax break" effectively requires Americans to let someone else control a large chunk of their incomes and their health care decisions.
We may call that "private" spending. But notice the hallmarks: government denies individuals control over their economic decisions, and encourages them to act as if they were spending someone else's money — in this case, their employer's.
How can our system be "socialized" if we don't force patients to wait for care, as other nations do? America does ration by waiting — just ask any Medicaid patient — though we do so less often than nations where governments arbitrarily limit medical spending.
But that's because we commit the opposite sin: our government encourages unlimited health care spending, which causes enormous waste.
For example, the federal Medicare program essentially makes an open-ended commitment to pay for whatever medical care seniors and their doctors demand. That may be why researchers at Dartmouth Medical School have estimated that Medicare purchases $60 billion in useless services every year. That's nearly one-fifth of all Medicare spending. It also may explain why we spend 50 percent more on medical care than other advanced nations without making ourselves noticeably healthier.
Surely, America doesn't have socialized medicine of the Canadian or British variety, or socialized medicine borne of some deliberate plan. But American politicians should stop pretending that socialized medicine is some far-off dystopia.
A lot of times people say something has to be done. however, that "something" can always be worse.
If you look at some of the problems with the Brit system, where you can't get medicine for macular degernartion (SP???) until you are blind in one eye or you can't get certain medicines until the deterioraton is irreversible, you may decide that that is a worse system.
To just say we have to do something or something must be done and charge in may make it worse.
In fact, this is proof of that principle. New York and 500 unions shouted in support of Obama care that SOMETHING had to be done. But when they saw what was done they said, "not for me."
A second feature of socialist economies is that there is little incentive to make careful economic decisions, because government has put everyone in the position of spending other people's money.
Canada may have the most heavily socialized health care system in the advanced world. Yet America's system is as much a tragedy of the commons as the Canadian system, where health care is ostensibly "free." In each country, only about 14 cents out of every dollar of medical spending comes directly from the patient.
How can America's health care system be "socialized" when we rely on the private sector more than any advanced nation? Because it doesn't matter whether the dollars and the hospitals are owned publicly or privately. What matters is who controls how they are used.
In 2007, the average family of four will pay $25,000 for health insurance — nearly 30 percent of their income. About $14,000 represents taxes that fund health programs for the elderly and the poor. In other words, the government controls the lion's share.
The remaining $11,000 purchases the family's own coverage, usually through an employer. Though we count that as "private" spending, the government largely controls that $11,000 as well.
Congress provides a substantial tax break for employer-controlled health insurance. That sounds nice, but it means that workers who want to control their coverage themselves face a tax penalty. That penalty often forces such workers to pay twice as much for less coverage. That benign-sounding "tax break" effectively requires Americans to let someone else control a large chunk of their incomes and their health care decisions.
We may call that "private" spending. But notice the hallmarks: government denies individuals control over their economic decisions, and encourages them to act as if they were spending someone else's money — in this case, their employer's.
How can our system be "socialized" if we don't force patients to wait for care, as other nations do? America does ration by waiting — just ask any Medicaid patient — though we do so less often than nations where governments arbitrarily limit medical spending.
But that's because we commit the opposite sin: our government encourages unlimited health care spending, which causes enormous waste.
For example, the federal Medicare program essentially makes an open-ended commitment to pay for whatever medical care seniors and their doctors demand. That may be why researchers at Dartmouth Medical School have estimated that Medicare purchases $60 billion in useless services every year. That's nearly one-fifth of all Medicare spending. It also may explain why we spend 50 percent more on medical care than other advanced nations without making ourselves noticeably healthier.
Surely, America doesn't have socialized medicine of the Canadian or British variety, or socialized medicine borne of some deliberate plan. But American politicians should stop pretending that socialized medicine is some far-off dystopia.
We have the most market driven health care system in the industrialized world, and it's still not good enough for the capitalist fundies. That's quite amusing.
Somehow the "magic" of this marketplace doesn't seem to be working, even with loads of corporate welfare thrown in. Somehow it perplexes them that inelastic goods are not prone to price determination by consumers. I guess they forgot to grumble about gas prices too.
Poor capitalists groaning about the rope they gleefully sold the public has resulted in hanging the public and hanging themselves to boot.
Suck it up, boys. Go buy some stock in Aetna, or Humana, or some other cretious organization and stop yer bitchin'. You can tell yourself that you're a winner, and hope your $2,000 a month health care costs might be less than your dividend check. Don't forget to step OVER the 18,000 corpses this scam produces. It'll show that you're a real humanitarian.
I am not complaining about the capitalist aspect. I am complaining about the fact that the State has mandates aspects, and the people who set up that part of it want it t apply to others but not their group.
As for this system producing corpses, google "cancer survival rates" look up prostate and breast cancer and see who has a better system.
Just one example, Lancet, a very liberal source, give the US higher survival rates than Europe by a huge margain.
Somehow the "magic" of this marketplace doesn't seem to be working, even with loads of corporate welfare thrown in. Somehow it perplexes them that inelastic goods are not prone to price determination by consumers. I guess they forgot to grumble about gas prices too.
Poor capitalists groaning about the rope they gleefully sold the public has resulted in hanging the public and hanging themselves to boot.
Suck it up, boys. Go buy some stock in Aetna, or Humana, or some other cretious organization and stop yer bitchin'. You can tell yourself that you're a winner, and hope your $2,000 a month health care costs might be less than your dividend check. Don't forget to step OVER the 18,000 corpses this scam produces. It'll show that you're a real humanitarian.
You're being rather selective about survival rates, aren't you Phil? Try looking up infant mortality rates between countries. Or hell, look up life expectancy rates. Our health care system is twice as expensive as Canada's and leads to shitter outcomes.
Yes, I may be selective. But more people survive prostate and breast cancer here than other places.
It may be more expensive than Canada (arguendo, not conceeding), but if more people survive prostate cancer, why is it so much "shittier?"
Life expectancy rates reflect more than health care, so you can't say they are a result of a better health care system. Bait and switch.
1: Child mortality figures in America are inflated because we count them differently. In other countries, some premature babies that die are counted as stillbirths, while in America they are counted as infant mortalities. This is partly because America has SUPERIOR neonatal care. We try harder, and so are more motivated to think of them as babies, not fetuses. Cuba, especially, creates very strong incentives to underreport infant mortalities, for political purposes.
2: That come capitalists are asking to be exempt from the new law does not mean this is a consequence of capitalism, but of the GOVERNMENT CONTROLLED SYSTEM. Obamacare is, among other things, a violation of the rule of law. It is a BAD LAW, giving politicians arbitrary power.
Giving TAX money to capitalists is exactly what free market advocates ALWAYS argue against. If you don't know this, you aren't paying attention.
Corporate welfare programs are often purported to be pro-business. They are not. Such programs do nothing to promote a freer economy. They make it less free. Here are seven reasons why such policies are misguided and dangerous:
1. The federal government has a disappointing record of picking industrial winners and losers. The average delinquency rate for government loan programs (8 percent) is almost three times higher than that for commercial lenders (3 percent). The Small Business Administration delinquency rate reached over 20 percent in the 1980s, and the Farmers Home Administration delinquency rate has approached 50 percent.
2. Corporate welfare is a huge drain on the federal treasury. Every year $75 billion of taxpayer money is spent on programs that subsidize businesses. Meanwhile, politicians proclaim that we can't afford a tax cut.
3. Corporate welfare creates an uneven playing field. By giving selected businesses and industries special advantages, corporate subsidies put businesses and industries that are less politically well connected at a disadvantage.
4. Corporate welfare fosters an incestuous relationship between business and government. All too often, the firms and industries that contribute the most to political campaign coffers are the largest recipients of government handouts.
5. Corporate welfare programs are anti-consumer. For instance, the Commerce Department has estimated that the sugar subsidy program costs consumers several billion dollars a year in higher prices.
6. Corporate welfare is anti-capitalist. As Wall Street financier Theodore J. Forstmann has put it, corporate welfare has led to the creation in America of the ``statist businessman,'' who has been converted from a capitalist into a lobbyist.
7. Corporate welfare is unconstitutional. Corporate subsidy programs lie outside Congress's limited spending authority under the Constitution. Nowhere in the Constitution is Congress granted the authority to spend taxpayer dollars to subsidize the computer industry, or to enter into joint ventures with automobile companies, or to guarantee loans to favored business owners.
"The most market driven health care system in the industrialized world" isn't saying much. When WAY more than half the healthcare dollars are spent by the government, tax incentives and other policies herd people into employer-provided health care plans, when state level regulation has turned "insurance" into something other than insurance, when hardly anyone spends their own money on their own health care as a result of that, when this third party payer system motivates patients to demand care as if, well, someone else is paying for it, when all that government healthcare spending inflates prices, you call this "market driven"???
You would call it magic, since that is a word for something you do not understand. If you understood how markets are supposed to work, you would understand how all the government measures I named, and more, prevent actual market processes from working.
And Obamacare MANDATES that people buy health coverage. How is that "market driven"?
The OP was complaining about Obamacare, which tries to bring us closer to what the rest of the world has. The consequence is businesses looking for special favors or exemptions. This can not happen in a market driven system, but only in a government controlled system.
For anyone to be complaining about what the capitalist health care system has given us, WE WOULD HAVE TO HAVE A CAPITALIST HEALTH CARE SYSTEM!
I agree its a scam, but not one perpetrated by the market.
Even years before Obamacare was a glimmer in a politician's eye, it was already pointed out that:
What do the corruption in the wake of Obamacare and the absence of life on Mars have in common?
Neither has anything whatsoever to do with, but both are being blamed on free market capitalism!
Slow day?
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0311/51840.html
The Dem congressperson explained that Obama said, ‘If you have better ideas that can accomplish the same thing, go for it,’ If he had a better idea, why didn't he promote it last year.
The number of unions and jurisdictions that supported Obama Care and want waivers makes me puke. Common decency and fairness says that if you were in favor of legisltation for others, it should apply to you. If you have a better idea for health care, you should have suggested it then.
Indeed, the lack of set standards for granting waivers makes this a government not of laws but of men where the administrator can reward allies with no standards.
-- Modified on 3/24/2011 4:14:28 PM
Other than a snide comment, do you think it is right for the NY congressman to jam it down the throats of people that don't want it, and then say, "Not for my constituents."
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0311/51840.html
The Dem congressperson explained that Obama said, ‘If you have better ideas that can accomplish the same thing, go for it,’ If he had a better idea, why didn't he promote it last year.
The number of unions and jurisdictions that supported Obama Care and want waivers makes me puke. Common decency and fairness says that if you were in favor of legisltation for others, it should apply to you. If you have a better idea for health care, you should have suggested it then.
Indeed, the lack of set standards for granting waivers makes this a government not of laws but of men where the administrator can reward allies with no standards.
-- Modified on 3/24/2011 4:14:28 PM
Some are more equal than others