Democrats: We Will Not Tolerate a Single Change to Entitlements
As the car hurtles towards the cliff, Democrats continue to pretend not to see any need to brake, or even turn the wheel slightly:
One hundred and seven of the 200 House Democrats signed a letter to Obama threatening to vote “against any and every cut to Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security benefits — including raising the retirement age or cutting the cost of living adjustments that our constituents earned and need.”
Instead, they want the White House to “rely on economic growth and more fair revenue-raising policies to solve our fiscal problems,” like getting rid of subsidies for big businesses and raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans.
“I only know one thing: I’m against cutting Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid,” said Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), co-chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus in the House. “I don’t really care who is pushing it. It doesn’t matter who says it’s a good idea. It’s a bad idea.”
It’s not enough for Obama to say in theory he might agree to this small reform or that one. He has to take on his party. Everyone who thinks Barack Obama will take on his party in any serious way on these issues, line up for your dunce caps. (The line forms at the Jimmy Kimmel thread below.)
We’ve been through the numbers — for a quick review, revisit this post. As I said then:
To make up the gap by taxing people, in 2012 you would have needed another $1.3T on top of the $2.47T we already took in. That means taxes would have to be raised 50%, across the board. Payroll tax, income tax, everything. If you paid $20,000 in 2012, you’d have to pay $30,000 to sustain Social Security and Medicare.
That’s not to pay off the debt — that’s just to meet the deficit in one year. And that’s assuming that raising taxes 50% would actually bring in 50% more revenue — which it clearly wouldn’t. Historically, raising the top marginal rate as high as 90% still doesn’t bring in more than 20% of GDP. No matter what the top rate is, whether it’s 35% or 90%, we take in roughly 18% of GDP regardless, as I explained in this post.
Not one lefty commenter has bothered to try to challenge me on these numbers, because they’re facts, and lefty commenters here seem to run from facts like poison. Prove me wrong, lefties. Take me on. I keep linking these posts. Show me how we can fix this problem without addressing entitlements. Go ahead. I’m here.
Relying on growth? You tell me: what kind of growth are we going to need to erase trillion dollar deficits and pay off a $17 trillion dollar debt — and if we achieve the former, how are you going to keep the politicians’ mitts off the cash to achieve the latter?
And how are we going to achieve growth with stifling regulation and taxation?
No, these “ideas” are fundamentally unserious.
Now. Keith Ellison might honestly be stupid enough not to understand the numbers.
Barack Obama understands them. He just doesn’t care. Party for Michelle’s 50th!!! Woooooooooooo!!!!
Prove me wrong, lefties. Address the numbers.
Patterico (9c670f) — 3/12/2013 @ 6:38 amDemocrats like Perry don’t understand tax policy.
SPQR (d58854) — 3/12/2013 @ 6:51 amthe best most certain fix for entitlements are those death panels the AARP lobbied for I think
faster please
happyfeet (8ce051) — 3/12/2013 @ 7:14 am‘these were not the droids we were looking for’
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2013/03/11/Boston-Globe-On-ObamaCare-Never-Mind
narciso (3fec35) — 3/12/2013 @ 7:16 amPeople like me have “paid into” Social Security for upwards of forty years to support those who already retired. We did earn our pensions and cost-of-living raises by keeping our end of “the deal”. But it has never been “a deal”. SS has always been a tax with one hand and an appropriation with the other; otherwise its fiscal foolishness would have been more obvious sooner.
MT Geoff (a67ef4) — 3/12/2013 @ 8:27 amSo yes, we earned it — but we can’t have it. Literally can’t — things that can’t go on, don’t, and SS can’t let us retire when we were told we would, to the pension we were told we would get. Too few young workers to carry the load, too much stifling of the economy to allow adequate growth — and both results are largely because of “progressives” telling us we had too many babies and too much wealth.
Now the same people, or their ideological kids, are telling us we have to continue on the path of destruction. We need to vote smarter, a lot of us.
They are reality and math DENIERS !
JD (b63a52) — 3/12/2013 @ 8:31 amThe Patterico challenge:
Not one lefty commenter has bothered to try to challenge me on these numbers, because they’re facts, and lefty commenters here seem to run from facts like poison. Prove me wrong, lefties. Take me on. I keep linking these posts. Show me how we can fix this problem without addressing entitlements. Go ahead. I’m here.
I accept your facts, but they are incomplete.
First of all, let’s agree on vocabulary: Social Security and Medicare are not entitlements, they are earned benefits. Medicaid is, however, an entitlement, and a necessary one at that.
What you have left out, Patterico, are the root causes of our health care delivery problem: Our per capita costs are 2.5 times the OECD average, and our outcome gets us a grade of D.
One aim of the Affordable Care Act is to lower these costs over time by offering preventable health care and elimination of unneeded and duplicate tests.
A cost comparison of Medicare versus Private Insurance indicates that Medicare is consistently lower. Moreover, cost projections (same cite) into the future indicate the same outcome.
Clearly, Medicare, since there is no adder which private insurance would have, is superior, to be aided and assisted by the ACA. And clearly, single payer for all, would have been even better, because again, the profit margins of private insurers would not be present in the overall costs of insurance.
Finally, there are ways in which Social Security and Medicare can be extended farther out in time. For SS, raise the income cap above the current $113.7k, to say $150k. For Medicare, reduce the benefits with increasing income over say $400k. Also, for Medicare, increase the premium from 1.45% to say 1.9%.
These proposals increase the burden of both Medicare and SS onto our wealthier citizens, which considering the increasing skew of income to higher earners while middle incomes have been stagnant for decades, is the proper thing to do.
Combined with the ACA, better outcomes at lower costs should accrue over an extended time period.
Perry (dc1eab) — 3/12/2013 @ 8:48 amThe answer is simple: entitlement reform will take years to show any positive results, but the next election for the Democrats is only 1½ years away. If you are asking whether they are more concerned about the good of the country — I almost wrote “welfare of the country” — or being re-elected, I would respond, “Surely you don’t really not know the answer.”
The Republican Dana (3e4784) — 3/12/2013 @ 9:07 amOur esteemed host quoted:
FTFY
The Editor Dana (3e4784) — 3/12/2013 @ 9:09 amDidn’t we have an election in ’08 that was determined to a large degree by turning away from the group that had driven the “national car” into a ditch?
To our friends on the Left:
This is not a ditch, this is the proverbial cliff from “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade”.
“Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, but that they know so much that isn’t so.”
askeptic (b8ab92) — 3/12/2013 @ 9:31 amPerry got so much wrong, it’s hard to know where to begin.
Too bad that ObaminableCare is, as Perry used to like to say, bending the cost curve on medical care, but is bending it upward, not down.
Well, there might be some truth to that, but, to quote Perry, his facts “are incomplete.” Medicare (9.4%) and Medicaid (14.7%) significantly underpay for the actual costs of treating patients, and hospitals are forced to overcharge private pay patients (23.1%) to make up the difference, or they’ll go broke. It’s easy to cost less when you don’t pay all of your bills, isn’t it?
Yeah, and this is why health insurance premiums are skyrocketing. It takes a math-illiterate — or a Democrat — to think that you can add 40 million people who couldn’t afford health insurance before, eliminate cost-savings measures such as lifetime caps and restrictions concerning pre-existing conditions, and add required coverage — mandatory, no co-payment coverage for contraceptives, as just one example — and think that this will reduce costs.
The fact-checking Dana (3e4784) — 3/12/2013 @ 9:32 amaskeptic wrote:
Trouble is, after the car was slightly dinged up in the ditch, Barack Hussein Obama got behind the wheel, and said, “This ain’t nothing but a thing,” and rather than putting the car in reverse and trying to ease back out, he stomped on the gas to try to blast his way through, and tore up the fenders, stove in the grill and buried the car up to the axles.
The realistic Dana (3e4784) — 3/12/2013 @ 9:36 amDana – you left out increasing taxes. A lot.
JD (b63a52) — 3/12/2013 @ 9:42 amPerry, the fantasy that PPACA would lower costs overall was well debunked long before it was even passed. Your repetition of that fantasy would be hilarious were it not for the fact that we are already seeing that PPACA is raising costs.
Medicare appears to be lower cost than private insurance for many reasons, some of which have been mentioned above, but the other reason is that Medicare pushes the cost of fraud outside of its budget and onto others.
SPQR (768505) — 3/12/2013 @ 9:44 amIn other words ‘we’ve blown the transaxle, and we’re grinding metal, now’
narciso (3fec35) — 3/12/2013 @ 9:46 amYup, but instead of shutting off the engine and calling for a wrecker, our driver is determined to gun that thing ’til he blows it up! He can trash a car faster than Danica Patrick.
The auto mechanic Dana (3e4784) — 3/12/2013 @ 10:05 amThis NYT piece about Detroit is hilarious because of course the reporters don’t notice how the exact same behavior is going on in DC by Democrats.
SPQR (768505) — 3/12/2013 @ 10:23 amIn your link Perry, you say, “A recent study by Austin Frakt and Aaron Carroll shows that folks approaching the age of 65 put off needed medical services because medical costs are so high as are the insurance premiums that would provide coverage.”
However, the link you provide to bolster that claim only talks about how uninsured people later spend more money once they qualify for Medicare. The sources are here:
[1] McWilliams JM, Meara E, Zaslavsky AM, Ayanian JZ. Health of previously uninsured adults after acquiring Medicare coverage. JAMA. 2007;298:2886-94.
[2] McWilliams JM, Meara E, Zaslavsky AM, Ayanian JZ. Use of health services by previously uninsured Medicare beneficiaries. N Engl J Med. 2007;357:143-53.
You don’t give a source to your graph showing private insurance costing more than Medicare. You also don’t go into the quality of care available to people who choose private insurance over Medicare.
bonhomme (f0255f) — 3/12/2013 @ 10:26 amSee bold in #10 – Rinse & Repeat!
askeptic (b8ab92) — 3/12/2013 @ 10:32 am11. The Fact Checking Dana cited the following, to support his claim that the ACA is “bending the cost curve upward:
5.8% vs 5.7%: LOL, Dana! Besides, I am addressing our health care costs over time. The ACA has not even fully kicked in yet.
And I note that in your rejoinder you did not even address the most significant fact that our health care costs per capita are 2.5 times the OECD average, and the rating the outcomes give us a grade of “D”. Add to this the fact that almost 50 million Americans have no health insurance, a fact which the ACA is destined to address.
Moreover, when these uninsured folks show up at the emergency rooms of our hospitals for services without insurance, these unpaid charges get shifted to those who do have insurance, thus further raising our health care costs.
Dana, you are all criticism and no solutions, typical of your party as well. Worthless!
Perry (dc1eab) — 3/12/2013 @ 11:42 amPerry – your willingness to parrot nonsense is noted. And tiresome.
JD (b63a52) — 3/12/2013 @ 11:46 amBending costs up, even slowly, is the opposite of what you claim, that ObamaCare will bend costs downward. It was never going to, you are just too stupid to understand it.
America got a “D”. I call BS. There is not one other country in the works that I would want my daughters to get their healthcare. Nobody else’s compares to ours. People come here for treatment, not flee here.
JD (b63a52) — 3/12/2013 @ 11:49 am‘One hundred and seven of the 200 House Democrats signed a letter to Obama threatening to vote “against any and every cut to Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security benefits — including raising the retirement age or cutting the cost of living adjustments that our constituents earned and need.”’
Who are the 107, and did any of them complain about Republicans taking an Anti-tax Pledges?
Amazed_476 (830926) — 3/12/2013 @ 12:13 pmPerry – Pure progressive pablum for pinheads.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 3/12/2013 @ 12:46 pmA grade of “D”? Perry does not even mention who much less what that is. Because Perry is again repeating long debunked crap that was refitted four years ago.
SPQR (d58854) — 3/12/2013 @ 12:48 pmTo date, all predictions of PPACA increasing number of insured have not merely been false but spectacularly so. Utter failure is Obamacare legacy.
SPQR (d58854) — 3/12/2013 @ 12:52 pmPerry, what’s it like to go through life constantly getting surprised by reality and never, ever learning?
Aetna CEO Warns of Approaching Health Insurance ‘Premium Rate Shock’ in 2014 for Consumers and Others Under Affordable Care Act Read more: Aetna CEO Warns of Approaching Health Insurance ‘Premium Rate Shock’ in 2014 for Consumers and Others Under Affordable Care Act
Steve57 (60a887) — 3/12/2013 @ 12:59 pm#27 No serious minds in health care think Wellness Programs reduce costs. All they do is increase costs short run while sometimes adding years of life to some while consuming even more health care to boot.
Rodney King's Spirit (951136) — 3/12/2013 @ 1:07 pmRodney, there is actually a lot of research on “preventative” care. All of it fails to reduce costs on net with the sole exception being smoking cessation programs.
SPQR (768505) — 3/12/2013 @ 1:18 pmSeriously, who could possibly have been stupid enough to buy the ridiculous assertion that it was ever an “aim” of ObamaCare to lower the costs of Health Care?
You have to start by being idiotic enough to accept the premise that the same pirates acting on the same fascist impulses that produced skyrocketing health care costs in the first place could even if they wanted to also lower the costs.
Then you must have chemically lobotomized yourself to the point where you can imagine against all sense and reason that a massive new government entitlement is the way to lower costs.
And then you have to get even stupider to the point where anyone who can say “(o)ne aim of the Affordable Care Act is to lower these costs” already meets the requirements to have all medical care withdrawn by the death panel due to being clinically brain dead.
I suppose the first cluebat that should have pounded in the point that health care costs weren’t going to go down was when AT&T, Caterpillar, Verizon, etc., announced billion dollar losses due to increased costs immediately after the stupid thing passed in 2010. And the Democrats immediately announced hearings into the matter until some of their aids shook some sense into them. The CEOs were 100% correct on the facts and indeed SEC regulations required them to announce the losses to shareholders in the quarter in which they learned of the impending losses.
Unlike politicians and their ability to lie to their constituents, corporate officers aren’t allowed to lie to their shareholders.
Anyone who can still state that it’s an aim of ObamaCare to lower costs is by any objective measure too stupid to live.
Steve57 (60a887) — 3/12/2013 @ 1:19 pmObama wasn’t trying to sell this scam to serious minds.
He was pitching it to Perry.
And those like him.
Steve57 (60a887) — 3/12/2013 @ 1:20 pmSteve57, the most amusing part is that all of Obamacare’s fans have figured out in the intervening four years that they got taken.
Except for Perry.
SPQR (768505) — 3/12/2013 @ 1:26 pmComment by Steve57 (60a887) — 3/12/2013 @ 1:19 pm
The numbers qualified for “assisted suicide” (or in our current PC environment: Post Partum Abortion), or at the minimum a total lobotomy, are legion.
askeptic (b8ab92) — 3/12/2013 @ 1:43 pmOn the bright side, it would at least take some degree of congestion off the roads.
The “Perry’s” of this world would do us all a favor by “busting the que”.
Via NRO:
Obamacare Application a Bureaucratic Mess
I love that last line. It isn’t just Perry; there are a lot of people who are gobsmackingly thick.
Is anyone reading that AP story surprised? I mean, besides Perry the baby ducks in the MFM who are apparently constantly being ambushed by the real world.
Oh, yeah. One “aim” of ObamaCare was to lower costs. All you needed to know is that it was designed by Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi and you could have complete confidence that cost curve was going to bend down, baby!
Then you just have to know it was a 2,700 page bill. Nothing screams “streamlining the process” like a 2,700 page bill. Which we had to pass to find out what was in it. And we still don’t know what’s in it as it was basically 2,700 pages full of instructions to HHS to micromanage all aspects of our lives “as the secretary shall direct.”
Now, tens of thousands of pages of HHS regulations we still don’t know what’s in it.
But clearly it was always the aim of ObamaCare to lower health care costs.
Obama could tell Perry that by sodomizing him he aims to cure his near-sightedness and Perry would believe it. Even if he’s not near-sighted.
Steve57 (60a887) — 3/12/2013 @ 2:17 pmYou know, people like Pelosi and Reid aren’t stupid. They just know people like Perry are.
Also via NRO:
ObamaCare’s “Extremely Thorny” Calorie Count Rules
These labeling regulations are just a small fraction of the rules that ObamaCare will be screwing up our lives with. As the author of the NRO piece points out, they will result in higher food prices.
As I said, Pelosi and Reid (and their disciples) aren’t stupid. Now they can go back to voters like Perry and tell those voters they have to keep voting for them so they can go back and fix this.
And Perry will believe them!
I can hardly wait for the socialists to present the obvious solution to Perry. Food insurance. Clearly, food security is a right. People should have access to food even if they can’t afford it.
And (you know the Democrats love this part) they’ll tell Perry that the “aim” of ObamaFood is to lower food costs.
And Perry will believe that part too. And he’ll comment here and lecture us on the magical cost reduction qualities of ObamaFood.
And the Democrats will be lucky if they make it back to their lavishly-furnished-at-taxpayer-expense offices before they break down and split their sides laughing.
Steve57 (60a887) — 3/12/2013 @ 2:44 pmPerry,
Since you want to start with getting the terminology right, will you acknowledge that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme? Is it right that Bernie Madoff is spending life in prison for taking the Social Security business model and using it in the private sector. Do you really think it is OK for the government to do the same thing?
I laugh at your statement about American health care getting a “D” grade. How many stories have there been of foreign leaders who come to America for some surgery or treatment instead of having treatment in their own country with supposedly better health care?
I hope some day you open your eyes and join the real world, and get out of the alternate-reality-community you live in.
Kenny
Kenny (095f8c) — 3/12/2013 @ 4:06 pmPerry wrote:
No, it hasn’t, and health insurance costs are already skyrocketing; imagine what they’ll be after 2014.
Are you really naïve enough to think that we can add tens of millions of people who camnot now afford health insurance to the insurance rolls without a huge increase in costs? Someone will have to pay for them, because most of them can’t, and that means the actually productive people will have more of the rewards for their labor seized to give to the poor. Well, fornicate that!
You assume that I must present a solution to the problem of people not having health insurance; I don’t accept that at all.
The Dana who met Perry (af9ec3) — 3/12/2013 @ 4:09 pm#29. Tell me what is cheaper …..
62 year old dies from lung cancer.
95 year old dies of prostate cancer.
…. I would be willing to bet a good sum of money the 92 year old not only consumes more health care over the course of his/her lifetime but they also consume lots of other stuff in the process, like Social Security.
Point is all people have a “final 18 months of life” with all the requisite spending and intensity of service. What difference is it a lung cancer versus prostate (or whatever) victim?
I understand the emotional and moral aspects of the Wellness / Preventative argument but many medical professionals have brazenly lied (or ignored) the economics of living longer.
Rodney King's Spirit (951136) — 3/12/2013 @ 4:11 pmSteve, ObaminableCare is nothing but another welfare scheme; if some of the people who would be eligible for welfare don’t get it because they get frustrated by the application process, that’s agood thing!
The serious Dana (af9ec3) — 3/12/2013 @ 4:11 pm#38 And to boot the older, the more likely death is in a “Home” which is typically carried by Medicaid though never classified “medical.”
Again, I am not making a moral argument or judgement.
Rodney King's Spirit (951136) — 3/12/2013 @ 4:12 pm#39. To your point, all Gov. Programs should be hard to qualify for.
Rodney King's Spirit (951136) — 3/12/2013 @ 4:13 pmKenny wrote:
Oh, it probably does, based on how it’s graded. If the grading system includes those who have insurance and can actually pay for their health care, our system is an easy A. But, if you are a lefty, and you include all of the people who have problems getting health care because they can’t or won’t bu insurance and can’t pay for it, then yeah, I’m sure our grade is much lower.
The question is: are you willing to pay higher premiums and higher taxes to pay for the health care coverage of people who can’t or won’t buy it themselves? I can’t answer for you, but for me, the answer isn’t just no, but Hell no!
The very serious Dana (af9ec3) — 3/12/2013 @ 4:15 pmSo we’re going to get a CR to finish the last 6 months to Oct 2013.
Like last time, Senate will take whatever the House passed, strip the header and slap it on the last CR.
And then the GOP leadership and the Dems in the House will pass the Senate bill and avoid reconciliation.
Then the Senate will worry about their budget, with hefty tax increases on top of Obamacare.
Why did I think the House GOP would do anything but surrender?
I am an idiot, that’s why.
gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 3/12/2013 @ 4:24 pmOne hundred and seven of the 200 House Democrats signed a letter to Obama threatening to vote “against any and every cut to Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security benefits
If it’s good enough for Greece, it sure as hell is good enough for us.
Is it right that Bernie Madoff is spending life in prison
BTW, as is true of a high percentage of trial lawyers, Madoff was reportedly a devotee of the Democrat Party, a true-blue liberal.
Mark (fa08b6) — 3/12/2013 @ 4:31 pmKenny, if that ever were going to happen it would have. We should just all enjoy the glimpses into the bizarre alternate universe that Perry inhabits:
Perry wrote:
This is a profoundly ignorant statement.
Following the release of the 2011 Medicare and Social Security Trustees reports, one of the two public trustees wrote this article.
http://www.economics21.org/commentary/primer-social-security-and-medicare-trustees-reports-part-i-concepts
Medicare and Social Security are entitlement programs plain and simple. The current recipients are simply being bankrolled by the taxpayers. Just like every other beneficiary of an entitlement program.
But you can’t even call it a decent Ponzi scheme because the older participants in the scam aren’t being paid by the newer participants getting scammed out of their payroll taxes. The deficits SS has been running since 2010 are permanent. As are the cash-flow deficits or Medicare.
The shortfalls are being made up out of the general fund. In other words, regular taxes and borrowing. Borrowing for which the taxpayer will be responsible for repaying the principle and interest.
The idea that these people receiving these public benefits actually earned them is ludicrous. But you can’t really call it a Ponzi scheme because only the government could come up with a scam this crooked. Neither Bernie Madoff nor Charles Ponzi himself could have conceived of it let alone kept the house of cards going this long.
Steve57 (60a887) — 3/12/2013 @ 4:45 pmNormally I’d agree except this is one welfare scheme people will be forced to participate in or pay a fine.
I’m sure a lot of people who will be forced into these exchanges because businesses will seek to cut their costs (as per the design of ObamaCare) by either not providing health insurance at all or by only insuring the employee and not the family would rather not be in that situation. But they have been legislated into it in our new centrally directed economy. There will be no other options as the government has eliminated them.
Steve57 (60a887) — 3/12/2013 @ 4:55 pmWell that’s much like the definitive statement on no cannibalism in the British Navy,
http://pjmedia.com/jchristianadams/2013/03/12/breaking-inspector-general-report-on-racialist-disfunction-inside-doj/?singlepage=true
narciso (3fec35) — 3/12/2013 @ 5:01 pmkick can down the road
Colonel Haiku (0ee692) — 3/12/2013 @ 5:50 pmgranddad would not recognize
these schlep democrats
From last September:
Eighteen pages: A taste of Obamacare
It won’t be possible. Which is as intended.
The Administrative State in One Photo
This is how fascism works. When the law is beyond individual comprehension then you no longer have either self-government or the rule of law. You have the arbitrary and capricious rule of an out-of-control bureaucracy. When the law is unknowable there is no law that can be said to constrain them.
The idea that Obamacare was ever aimed at making anything less expensive is insane. And given that government subsidized health care has been the main driver behind unsustainable health care cost increases the idea this massive new entitlement could be sold as a cost control measure beggars the imagination. There truly is a sucker born every minute.
Steve57 (60a887) — 3/12/2013 @ 6:22 pmNot a one of you has addressed the fact that our healthcare costs per capita are 2.5 times the average paid by citizens of the OECD countries, nor has anyone addressed the fact that the outcome, as measured by life expectancy, is not up to par.
Other countries are doing something right on health care quality and costs. Unfortunately we, still the wealthiest nation on the globe, are lagging.
We pay 16% of our GDP, the next country is France, which pays about 9%.
I don’t know how many charts I need to put up to convince you folks that we have a major national problem here.
The ACA is a noteworthy attempt to address this problem. Perhaps it will need some refinement once it begins to play out in earnest, but for a multiple of reasons, both health quality and cost, we must do something to insure more Americans and make an attempt to lower our costs.
Who can possibly disagree with this?
Perry (dc1eab) — 3/12/2013 @ 6:36 pmThe ACA is a noteworthy attempt to address this problem. Perhaps it will need some refinement once it begins to play out in earnest, but for a multiple of reasons, both health quality and cost, we must do something to insure more Americans and make an attempt to lower our costs.
Who can possibly disagree with this?
Me!
Your solutions reduce everyone’s liberty, and make things worse than had we done nothing.
JD (b63a52) — 3/12/2013 @ 6:47 pmThey told us from 2007-2009, Obama, Hacker, Schakowsky, Frank, what their ultimate objective was, single payer,
narciso (3fec35) — 3/12/2013 @ 6:52 pm“Not a one of you has addressed the fact that our healthcare costs per capita are 2.5 times the average paid by citizens of the OECD countries, nor has anyone addressed the fact that the outcome, as measured by life expectancy, is not up to par.”
Perry – Those talking points are sooooo 2009. Maybe if you could prove they were apples to apples comparisons instead of apples to oranges people might give a crap.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 3/12/2013 @ 7:18 pmPerry – Plus your talking points say nothing about whether Obamacare is an effective way to address the issue of healthcare costs, especially with the ever increasing estimates of its impact on our deficits.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 3/12/2013 @ 7:23 pm53, 54. We consume, even our ‘poor and uninsured’ an incredible amount of healthcare. Only Japan stands with us in that regard.
The English pull their own teeth.
gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 3/12/2013 @ 7:39 pmgary – Yes, but the studies are still not measured on the same basis.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 3/12/2013 @ 7:41 pmWell one problem, that occurs to be are the sizes of the comparative nations, Germany has 1/5 our population, the UK, 1/6th, and so on,
narciso (3fec35) — 3/12/2013 @ 7:49 pmPerry is extremely mistaken about American healthcare.
We have a great system. They do not evaluate life expectancy the same across countries (and health insurance does not correlate well with this statistic regardless). We do have exceptional health care.
One reason is that our health care has been profitable. Socializing it, obviously, damages that.
There is no magic cure to make health care cheap and more effective. It’s a very difficult field, after all. The solutions that help are less sexy… stuff like tort reform, perhaps reforming the FDA, and of course fixing our patent system.
I also think education reform would help greatly. We have a pretty screwed up education system because of the ease of obtaining student loans, which has perverted the product universities sell. This isn’t exactly on target, but I feel education is at the root of our country’s problem with producing successful people and a stable, ethical society.
And prosperity… that does correlate extremely well with surviving illness. The current depression we’re in, due to the government’s spending and strangling of the economy, plus its interference with things like mortgages (CRA, etc) have badly damaged our prosperity, and it only appears to be getting worse, long term. That’s why I’m so hell bent on a balanced budget. It’s a matter of survival in many respects.
Dustin (73fead) — 3/12/2013 @ 7:57 pmPerry
(1) One reason our health care is higher is because we like to consume it.
(2) Japanese American lives 2 years longer on average than Japanese in Japan. The statistics frequently cited always seem to forget Blacks and Hispanics die quicker from bad lifestyles that let us say the Swedes don’t follow.
(3) ACA is full of good intentions but I am not sure how making insurers cover more stuff makes for cheaper health care. DUH!
(4) US Consumer does pay a premium for medicine and that funds world wide R&D. US Government should do something to force World Wide Payers to cough up the cash. As with out military, we fund other people’s health care by paying for their protection. We also fund their health care by paying for their R&D miracles
(5) ACA is nothing more than a job creation vehicle for the government while jamming lower rates and more paperwork down the medical industry. A disaster that will shrink supply and squeeze industry profits. Not a smart way to create more MD or other Health Care Professionals.
Sorry, but only idiots think ACA was anything more than a gigantic expansion of Medicaid to help Democrats buy more votes with the Taxpayers money.
Rodney King's Spirit (951136) — 3/12/2013 @ 7:59 pmPeriod end of story.
People’s welfare, not health care. Sorry.
Rodney King's Spirit (951136) — 3/12/2013 @ 8:01 pmAll you need to know about the effects of socialized medicine in the USA is look at what the rapid expansion of Medicaid for Children has done to the practice of medicine for kids ….. Pediatricians are the lowest paid specialty, we are not producing enough Pediatricians, no R&D goes into child hood pathologies. God damn mess they are making of it.
But hey, Medicaid “saves money” by paying MD $0.60 on the $1.00 and then MD respond by providing poorer levels of care, over use specialists and refuse to take certain patient profiles simply because the the shitty insurance they have.
Anyway …. the evils of Capitalism — cake for some and shit for others. The joys of socialism — shit for all except the Government bureaucrat.
Rodney King's Spirit (951136) — 3/12/2013 @ 8:06 pm“Well one problem, that occurs to be are the sizes of the comparative nations, Germany has 1/5 our population, the UK, 1/6th, and so on,”
narciso – Another is what you classify as a healthcare expenditure, which is by no means uniform by country.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 3/12/2013 @ 8:06 pmPerry, your BS was debunked four years ago.
SPQR (768505) — 3/12/2013 @ 8:19 pmwell daley, that’s at the micro level, I’m talking just basic methodology.
narciso (3fec35) — 3/12/2013 @ 8:24 pmI think at this point we can all agree that Perry is certifiably insane. Who cares about the OECD numbers; the issue is skyrocketing costs. And the main driver behind those costs can be summed up in one word: government.
Government subsidies, mandates, and regulations are the primary factors behind the fact our health care system is the most expensive in the world. The distort the market and inject moral hazard into the system.
Health care consumers aren’t paying customers. Sure they demand the latest and greatest technology, pharmaceuticals, and consume more medical services than they would if they were actually going to pay for it themselves.
And doctors have an incentive to provide it. Defensive medicine. Obama complained about physician pay. It’s expensive to see a doctor in the US, and personnel costs are a big part of the overall cost of health care.
But then the doctor’s malpractice insurance is also expensive. Our health care system is more expensive than the UK or Canada. But then, we have 50% more malpractice lawsuits than the UK and 350% more malpractice lawsuits than Canada.
If you want to know why personnel costs are so high, why pharmaceuticals and new technology is so expensive then just take a look at John “Two Americas” Edwards 30,000 square foot home in Chapel Hill.
http://i153.photobucket.com/albums/s213/RedCarlisle/edwardshome.jpg
What’s the epithet for a cheap, grasping attorney? Ambulance chaser. The term exists for a reason. Of course ambulance chasers aren’t the only reason.
So the notion that a massive new government entitlement could lower health care costs when it’s government that produces high health care costs is what resolves the issue of whether Perry is sane or not. The evidence is clear; no sane human being could harbor that illusion.
Ted Kennedy could brag about legislating us into this mess and Perry will vote for Ted Kennedy to fix it. We’re here now because Ted Kennedy and people like him have been “fixing” health care since WWII.
Then there’s the question of his intelligence. It’s possible to be insane and incredibly intelligent but then that doesn’t describe Perry. The aim of Obamacare was to lower health care costs?
SPARKS: Obamacare tax on medical devices hurts jobs and health
The proponents of this bill never even made the pretense that they were trying to lower costs. They quite obviously intended to drive costs up. How anyone can be idiotic enough to buy their lie that they were aiming to lower costs, as I said earlier, beggars the imagination. Not only couldn’t Obamacare lower costs even if the liberals wanted to, they didn’t want to.
Obamacare is insanely stupid. Or stupidly insane. Take your pick.
Steve57 (60a887) — 3/12/2013 @ 8:35 pmDefenders of Obamacare – four years ago – would often cite life expectancy stats for how terrible US health care is. But life expectancy stats are dominated by accident rates and life style choices that are utterly independent of healthcare. If you compare outcome of actual treatment by diagnosis, such as cancer survival rates, the US is very high.
Infant mortality were another common choice of stats – ignoring the fact that many of the supposedly “better” countries were known to fabricate their stats – but those vary a great deal even in the US by ethnicity regardless of economic status. I have often cited CDC papers on the huge difference between African-American and Hispanic infant mortality rates controlled for economics.
Another oft cited and oft debunked “stat” was the notorious WHO comparison of nations’ healthcare. But that study was so bogus, that among its many flaws it would rate a nation with poor healthcare evenly distributed among the population higher than a nation with higher average healthcare unevenly distributed among the population as it gave great weight to “equality”. Equally bad was preferable to unequally good.
What’s so disappointing about the troll Perry is just how very stale his arguments are.
SPQR (768505) — 3/12/2013 @ 8:41 pmWhy should anyone care if someone is getting care from a low cost clinic or my doctor? My doctor isn’t as good as Bill Gates’ doctor. If it’s unfair for someone to go to a clinic it’s unfair that I can’t claim Gates’ doctor as my own.
How much of that ‘D’ grade is due to not having government health care? You can’t say the grade is based on results when the delivery model itself is part of the grade.
Health care costs will ultimately be controlled by rationing. Whether it’s Obama’s
East Bay Jay (a5dac7) — 3/12/2013 @ 8:50 pmDeathCost Containment Panel or the market (if Ryan’s market based approach is ever implemented). Obamacare simply makes the problem more difficult by bringing more into the system (taking them from the low/no cost clinics).what he said…
Colonel Haiku (d51a46) — 3/12/2013 @ 8:52 pmThe joys of socialized medicine.
Japan Today: Saitama man dies after hospitals reject him 36 times
In Japan you had better have family to bring you food and take your clothes home to wash them because unless you’re willing to pay extra to upgrade from the “free” level of care the hospital staff will ignore you just as well as the staff in a British NHS hospital.
NHS chief talks about how he’s not responsible for 40,000 people dying unnecessarily on his watch while discussing accountability.
40,000 die every year after hospital blunders, MPs are told
This doesn’t include the at least 10,000 people a year deliberately killed by hospitals on the “Liverpool care pathway.” Just the ones killed by malpractice or sheer neglect. If you’re on the Liverpool death pathway they deny you food or water. If you’re not on it, they’ll put out a tray for patients unable to feed themselves and then take it away after the patient fails to eat it.
NHS targets ‘may have led to 1,200 deaths’ in Mid-Staffordshire
The NHS needs to save money on patient care because it’s too busy shutting up whistle blowers who threaten to expose just how badly the NHS treats patients.
NHS spends £15million (the same as 750 nurses’ salaries) on gagging 600 whistleblowers
Also, the NHS was busy awarding valuable prizes to hospitals for killing the most patients:
NHS millions for controversial care pathway
Another insane idea; putting the government in charge of health care because a private insurer might deny you coverage.
Obama lied about having to fight an insurance company to get them to pay for his mother’s in order to get a system in place that won’t just deny you coverage but will actively seek to kill you (and not all the patients the NHS kills are terminally ill).
Obama Repeats Whopper About Mom’s Health Insurance
The last question is easy; death panels. Just like in Britain.
‘Death Panels’ Were an Overblown Claim — Until Now
As Michelle says, Barack would hate to see any family go through what they lie about going through. That’s why Tiger Beat can’t wait…
to give you the pill instead of the surgery and send you home to die with a pat on your head. So he doesn’t have to see it.
Steve57 (60a887) — 3/12/2013 @ 9:16 pmI wouldn’t even bother addressing the life expectancy stats because it’s absurd for the reasons you mention to think that life expectancy is the measure of effectiveness of our health care system.
But as you point out these are the same arguments proponents of Obamacare were making 4 years ago. They were obviously preposterous even then. That someone would still trot them out now does, I think call not just their intelligence or honesty into question but their grip on reality.
Steve57 (60a887) — 3/12/2013 @ 9:41 pmI’m sure due to the miracle of OECD statistics the Japanese system is highly rated. Here was a post that appeared on Hot Air a few years back.
“VIP” Treatment Under Nationalized Health Care
When I was living in Japan my landlord was a Japanese doctor who ran his own clinic. His son who went to UCLA medical school and edited an English magazine in Tokyo before becoming a doctor used to have parties where I’d meet Japanese as well as Americans, Canadians, and Europeans living and doing business in Japan. I’d also meet Japanese economists who occasionally contributed to the magazine.
First, it’s facially absurd to use life expectancy as a measure of health care system effectiveness. Only slightly less obviously its crazy to take statistics comparing one country against another as it’s the government that primarily wants to make itself look good collecting the statistics. And establishing the criteria to produce them.
Who collects statistics on the UK’s NHS? The NHS. The self described “Pride of Great Britain” who could kill at least 10,000 people deliberately every year usually without informing the patient or their families who they had marked for death, kill tens of thousands more people through neglect, and if he patient survived to complain about their horrible treatment the NHS would deny the incident ever occurred.
Japan isn’t the only country where covering up failure in order to save face, both personally and that of the organization they’re loyal to, is the top priority.
Steve57 (60a887) — 3/12/2013 @ 10:19 pmNo matter what the top rate is, whether it’s 35% or 90%, we take in roughly 18% of GDP regardless, as I explained in this post.
That doesn’t stop leftists from agitating for more and higher taxes on “the rich”. They seem to think the U.S. has an unlimited supply of them, to be tapped whenever the government seeks more money.
Blacque Jacques Shellacque (f514b1) — 3/13/2013 @ 12:24 am59.2 Swedes’ intake of lead is rather low compared to non-Caucasians.
gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 3/13/2013 @ 5:34 am54. Dustin
No wonder you gave no reference for this cite. It ignores some of the data of the Concord Study, namely that the data for Cuba is ignored. No wonder, Cuba’s statistics show better or equal results to our own. Why is this, Dustin?
Perry (e84894) — 3/13/2013 @ 10:01 am59. Rodney King’s Spirit
You make some good points worthy of debate, but lose it all with your concluding statement:
Perry (e84894) — 3/13/2013 @ 10:04 amIt ignores some of the data of the Concord Study, namely that the data for Cuba is ignored. No wonder, Cuba’s statistics show better or equal results to our own. Why is this, Dustin?
Are you really this dense?
JD (b63a52) — 3/13/2013 @ 10:07 am66. SPQR
Statements of opinion without credible quantitative data are only statements of opinion, without facts!
It is hardly stale to make the critical points that I made in comment #50.
In my view, the ACA is meant to lower healthcare costs while increasing the quality of care to many Americans currently without insurance, and to promote prevention measures for the healthy. It’s like SS and Medicare, both of which were roundly criticized at the time by opponents, but have worked to the benefit of our senior citizens over time. The challenge is to maintain these programs by assuring that there is enough funding over time in order to maintain them for the foreseeable future, otherwise we will have impoverished senior citizens suffering as well from the normal ailments of the aged being untreated.
Is this what you folks want for yourselves and your wife when you two are old and suffering? Think ahead!
Perry (e84894) — 3/13/2013 @ 10:23 am74. We should include data from a closed society for which verification is impossible?
I think you misunderstand the role of data in discussions concerning fact.
gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 3/13/2013 @ 10:23 amIn my view, the ACA is meant to lower healthcare costs
Then you would agree that it is an epic failure, and only going to get worse. AETNA estimating 15-20 percent additional increases after full implementation.
and to promote prevention measures for the healthy.
That seems silly and not likely to make much of a difference. If they are already healthy, they appear to be doing well with prevention. Plus, many links above and previously show that preventative care increases costs on the front end.
Why do you want old people to starve and die poor?
JD (b63a52) — 3/13/2013 @ 10:30 amGary, my criticism was based on data which was deliberately withheld from the Concord Study. See for yourself that Cuba was left out. Why is this?
When this happens, there is an agenda being served, instead of a search and regard for the truth.
Perry (e84894) — 3/13/2013 @ 10:33 am79. Glad I refreshed rather than duplicating your work.
Also the ACA will end in excluding from any insurance approximately the number intended to be included.
People without jobs and access to employer provided care now get insurance for which the pool of providers is decreasing while those who had access have that access interrupted yet earn too much to be on the single-payer system.
Oh bother, everyone’s costs go up and only the indentured slaves benefit, and in status only.
gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 3/13/2013 @ 10:40 am65. 71. Steve57
Your approach, Steve, is to provide anecdotal information from which you induce broad generalizations. Not impressive.
Moreover, in #65, several of your cites produce unrelated results.
And in #71, you focus on the UK’s NHS, thus your picking one of the worst examples of a healthcare system. How about choosing Cuba, or France, or Australia, or Sweden, all of which have cancer outcomes (Concord Study) similar to our own, and all of whom achieve these results at much lower per capita costs than ours.
Cherry picking results is definitely not convincing!
Perry (e84894) — 3/13/2013 @ 10:48 amNext time you get sick, do you wish to get treatment in the US or Cuba?
Repeating Michael Moore memes from Sicko demonstrates, quite clearly, how silly you are?
When you try to build bridges or bridge the gap, do you find it to be helpful, or not helpful, to be dishonest and mendoucheous?
JD (b63a52) — 3/13/2013 @ 10:58 am79. JD
That will surely be the result if anything near the Ryan Plan 3.0 becomes law.
Preventative care promotion is a very small investment with a large outcome. Do you exercise regularly? Such does not cost much, does it?
We’ll have to see if the Aetna projections are true. Premiums have been skyrocketing years before the ACA was even a serious thought. The question is whether premiums will increase according to the Aetna projections in the absence of the ACA. They undoubtedly would!
Perry (e84894) — 3/13/2013 @ 11:00 amHow is that exactly, JD? Are you now into red herrings? And to what Michael Moore meme are you referring? I’ve referenced nothing from Michael Moore, though I would do so if I think he has made a valid point.
Perry (e84894) — 3/13/2013 @ 11:07 amWe’ll have to see if the Aetna projections are true. Premiums have been skyrocketing years before the ACA was even a serious thought. The question is whether premiums will increase according to the Aetna projections in the absence of the ACA. They undoubtedly would!
Good Allah. It is not a projection. They are telling people what is going to happen. Because of ObamaCare. It was spelled out quite clearly for you, above. You just flit right over that which conflicts with your narrative.
JD (b63a52) — 3/13/2013 @ 11:13 am“How about choosing Cuba, or France, or Australia, or Sweden, all of which have cancer outcomes (Concord Study) similar to our own, and all of whom achieve these results at much lower per capita costs than ours.”
Perry – The Concord study has no information on the cost of cancer treatment in the various countries. Don’t you even bother to look at the crap you link? They also include Cuba in a number of their charts but question the reliability of the data.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 3/13/2013 @ 11:22 am“Your approach, Steve, is to provide anecdotal information from which you induce broad generalizations. Not impressive.”
Perry – Isn’t that exactly what you are doing except without anecdotes by saying it is view that the ACA was intended to lower medical costs when in fact medical spending is going in the exact other direction. Nice try, Peppermint Perry.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 3/13/2013 @ 11:26 amI wonder what the number of people is that travel from the US to other countries to receive medical care because they think there is superior quality of care elsewhere. How many US citizens, given the choice and the means, would travel to Cuba for treatment? It is ridiculous to even contemplate.
JD (b63a52) — 3/13/2013 @ 11:28 amPerry writes: “That will surely be the result if anything near the Ryan Plan 3.0 becomes law.”
Flaming lies from a flaming liar.
“Preventative care promotion is a very small investment with a large outcome. Do you exercise regularly? Such does not cost much, does it?”
All studies of “preventative care” show no such outcome. “Preventative care” programs don’t even return as much as they cost with the sole exceptions being smoking cessation programs. More utter fabrications from Perry.
SPQR (768505) — 3/13/2013 @ 11:34 amPerry, why is it that your links – few as they are – don’t say what you claim? Maybe you should think about what that says …err… confirms about your reputation for honesty and reliability.
SPQR (768505) — 3/13/2013 @ 11:35 am“Preventative care promotion is a very small investment with a large outcome.”
Perry – Is this another of your broad generalizations or “asspulls” or do you actually have some support for your assertion?
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 3/13/2013 @ 12:07 pmPerry – Liberal fact checker PolitiFact rates your preventive care claim as false:
Barack Obama says preventive care ‘saves money’
False
“It’s been a staple of health care politics for years — the claim that preventive care saves money. A little money up front, lots of money saved on the back end. Patients living longer and healthier lives. That makes sense, right?
But while there’s little doubt that preventive care saves lives, the money is a different story. In general, academic studies do not support the idea that paying for preventive care ultimately saves money……”
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/feb/10/barack-obama/barack-obama-says-preventive-care-saves-money/
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 3/13/2013 @ 1:56 pmPerry – The same source in #93 cite the CBO and the New England Journal of Medecine as disagreeing with your assertion. Do you have anything in support of your broad generalization other than received community-based reality?
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 3/13/2013 @ 2:00 pmdaleyrocks, the refutations of Perry’s talking points were common arguments made four years ago. That’s how stale Perry’s arguments are.
SPQR (768505) — 3/13/2013 @ 2:16 pmPerry, like most trolls, posts links to make himself look learned and erudite. That those links do not prove his assertions, or in fact disprove them, is immaterial and not relevant. Only his need to appear knowledgeable is relevant.
askeptic (b8ab92) — 3/13/2013 @ 2:34 pm“daleyrocks, the refutations of Perry’s talking points were common arguments made four years ago.”
SPQR – Absolutely
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 3/13/2013 @ 3:31 pmNot only that, he’s misrepresenting my approach. I have presented far more than just anecdotal evidence. Unless linking to the Medicare and Social Security trustees reports can be considered anecdotal. And only a dishonest troll would even attempt it.
If Perry could read then he’d know the anecdotal evidence needs to be factored in because it reveals official truths that demonstrate there’s a difference between the statistically promulgated myths and reality.
For instance, in the article about the Japanese man who died after being turned away 36 times by hospitals reveals an important truth. Hospitals do not have to accept patients merely because they have government health insurance.
That’s as far as it will go. There will be no investigation. Public officials will merely ask hospitals to do better. That’s all they can do, because as this “anecdote” reveals there is a basic fact about the system. Hospitals don’t have to anything so that what happened to this man doesn’t have to someone else.
Because hospitals aren’t required to take these patients then like Medicaid, and soon Medicaid if Obama’s “cost cutting” measures actually do go into effect (although no one will believes they will as they’re just dishonest accounting tricks so Obama can claim falsely to have cut spending), Japan’s “Society Health Insurance” is mostly insurance in name only. That man had been to 25 hospitals and couldn’t get into one.
Private hospitals certainly, and I believe all hospitals in Japan, aren’t required to take patients regardless of their ability to pay or not. 80% of hospitals in Japan are private. Hospitals in the states are required by law to admit the uninsured and those who are on Medicaid. And the fact is hospitals in most states lose more money on Medicaid patients then on the uninsured do to the ridiculously low reimbursement rate.
But hospitals in Japan aren’t required to lose money on the Japanese equivalent of Medicaid/Medicare patients. Those who only have Shykai Hoken, or Society Health Insurance.
Japan does have a two-tiered health care system. By design. They have a public insurance scheme and a private insurance scheme and to get high quality care you must purchase private insurance.
The fact of the matter is that the actual health care system in Japan is not the system they tell the world they have. And they can get away with it because almost no one reads or speaks sufficient Japanese to discover the gulf between their official statistics and the reality the Japanese people live with.
It is sufficient to fool rubes like Perry.
Speaking of which:
This what makes me think Perry may not be sane.
Steve57 (60a887) — 3/13/2013 @ 3:51 pmhttp://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2013/03/man-who-taped-romneys-47-speech-will-finally-reveal-himself/63037/
So it was one of the staff – or rather that was the pewrson who actually set up the tape.
I kind of doubt that his story is actually the truth. Or the whole truth.
Sammy Finkelman (d22d64) — 3/13/2013 @ 4:37 pmNo, in part, because significant parts of the speech, including the intro were left out,
narciso (3fec35) — 3/13/2013 @ 4:59 pmJust for Perry:
More at the link.
The President and his minions all told us it would be a great and economical thing to pass ObumbleCare, but now the people who are actually going to have to make it work are teling us something entirely different.
The economist Dana (af9ec3) — 3/13/2013 @ 7:11 pmObamacare will have to be repealed right around late 2014, just in time to sweep the Democrats completely out of Congress.
Given that they control very few state houses, that will turn them into a tiny minority party quickly, if its as disasterous as I believe.
SPQR (768505) — 3/13/2013 @ 7:16 pm101. The economist Dana:
As usual, Dana latches on to a flaming headline instigated by the position of CEO of Aetna, who of course hates the idea of more competition. Then Dana picks a portion of the article to highlight his flame. Instead, more cautious and less partisan observers focus in on the details of the article, which reveal:
* Robert Laszewski, an industry consultant and former insurance executive, said that there is an assumption that there is “no competition in the marketplace now”. Certainly this is false!
* Under the ACA, tax credits “will bring down what many consumers will pay for insurance”.
* “The health care law will bring down costs and save money for young people and families,” said Erin Shields Britt, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services. “It’s misleading to look at one provision of the law alone. Taken together, the law will reduce costs.”
* Increased premiums for younger workers will be offset under the ACA by tax credits for all incomes withing 400 percent of the poverty livel, $94,200.
* Under the ACA, the premium ratio of say a 60 year old to a 24 year old will be reduced from 5:1 to 3:1 by both increasing the 24 year old and decreasing the 60 year old premiums. Tax subsidies and some Medicaid coverage will also help the younger folks.
* For those whose premiums exceed 8% of income, an option under the ACA provides for their coverage to move toward major medical coverage.
* Ages 26 and below can be covered under their parents’ plan, thus lowering insurance costs for them.
* There’s no reliable national data yet on how many people could see increases.
No doubt, the highly complex ACA will very likely need modification as the law rolls out. Hopefully by that time, next year, our legislators will have matured from dysfunction into thoughtful action, so the necessary improvements can be enacted into law. Then perhaps Dana will discontinue his flaming and focus on the details and ways to improve our system of laws.
PS: I would have preferred the public option approach, or better, single payer, both of which would take more advantage of the lower operating costs and more streamlined Medicare-like administration which would have resulted. Americans were no so fortunate, unfortunately!
Perry (e84894) — 3/14/2013 @ 11:35 amPerry is a moron.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 3/14/2013 @ 11:44 amPerry is a moron, certainly. If HHS says so, it must be true.
Collectivists suck.
JD (31065f) — 3/14/2013 @ 11:50 am87. daleyrocks
The Concord study on page 11 compares the 5-year cancer rates by nation. I’ve already given information on costs, the bottom-line being that our costs are 2.5 times greater than the average of the OECD countries, most of whom, except the UK, have decent outcomes.
Perry (e84894) — 3/14/2013 @ 12:08 pmWould you rather be treated for cancer in Cuba, or the US?
JD (b63a52) — 3/14/2013 @ 12:16 pmStill can’t read your own cites, can you Perry?
SPQR (8c32df) — 3/14/2013 @ 12:19 pm“The Concord study on page 11 compares the 5-year cancer rates by nation.”
Perry – Cancer survival rates. Your comment was about the cost of treating cancer. The bogus PBS quote is about the overall cost of healthcare. Are they comparable? No.
Also, what difference does it make if tax credits are going to reduce the cost of Obamacare to individuals? Do you believe tax credits are free?
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 3/14/2013 @ 12:33 pm“Would you rather be treated for cancer in Cuba, or the US?”
JD – How did that work out for Hugo Chavez?
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 3/14/2013 @ 12:37 pm110. Evidently poorly. Now they’re saying his corpse is too badly decayed for permanent display.
Evidently rats are still a problem in ICU.
gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 3/14/2013 @ 12:45 pmIn an ICU that caters to Hugo, and Fidel, the patients are the rats.
askeptic (b8ab92) — 3/14/2013 @ 12:49 pmThe noneconomist Perry wrote:
Really? When the market for any given thing includes the option not to buy, corporations have to compete not only with other corporations, but with the choice not to buy at all. Many people will say, “I would love to have X, but I am not willing to pay that much for it.”
ObaminableCare changes that equation: now everyone will be forced to buy, and those who cannot afford it will have their premiums subsidized by the government, which means that health insurance companies no longer need to compete with the choice not to purchase; they simply compete with each other.
Well, that won’t be much of a competition! When total market share is 100%, why won’t the insurance companies simply not-quite-collude and keep prices higher? Any MBA grad will tell you that, in almost everything, price is a much larger component of profit than volume.
Further, since the feds will be subsidizing, the low end of the market is really gone. And the feds have also mandated much more comprehensive coverage, eliminating the lower priced policies.
This isn’t grad school economics, Perry: this is, at best, Business 201. But, of course, the Democrats don’t really understand economics or business — if they did, they’d be Republicans! — so it is unsurprising that Democratic analyses of business and economics almost always falls flat.
The economist Dana (3e4784) — 3/14/2013 @ 1:09 pmThe Democrat union members in Philadelphia aren’t too kean on it either.
(Once) popular democrat and African-American Mayor Nutter (off “pull your pants up if you want to get hired for a job” fame) was unable to speak for more than a few moments about his proposed budget before the meeting was stopped because of all of the harassment. He later gave his presentation, I guess, to a video camera in the quieter environs of his office.
The employees of Phila demand the same opportunity for prosperity as Detroit and (“no we can’t afford police patrols”) Oakland.
Something about biting hands that feed you.
MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 3/14/2013 @ 1:10 pmPerry links to an AP story about something else when he claims to be refering to the Concord study. Then he claims by link to PBS that the OECD countries he claims spend less (on total health care, not just cancer) “have decent outcomes” on cancer. But the story he links does not agree, saying that the US “The five-year survival rate for breast cancer is higher in the U.S. than in other OECD countries and survival from colorectal cancer is also among the best, according to the group” and “U.S. patients also benefit from better cancer outcomes. OECD Health Data shows that the five-year survival rate for breast cancer is higher in the U.S. than in other OECD countries (89.3 percent compared to an OECD average of 83.5 between 2004 and 2009); survival from colorectal cancer is also among the best (64.5 percent compared to an OECD average of 59.9 percent, 2004-09)”.
So we see that Perry misrepresents his own links and is full of crap.
SPQR (768505) — 3/14/2013 @ 1:10 pmAnother larger quote from Perry’s own PBS link:
SPQR (768505) — 3/14/2013 @ 1:11 pm(
offof “pull your pants…This just happened today.
MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 3/14/2013 @ 1:11 pmHell, would you rather be treated for a heart condition in Canada, or the US?
The choice is clear:
Keon then goes on to note the four places in Canada he thinks Williams surgery could have been done. Just get on the list.
Canada. The only place outside of SE Asia that had a fatality from SARS.
It’s more than amusing that Perry keeps citing OECD statistics about the “outcomes” produced by the Cuban “health care system.” We all know there are three types of lies; lies, damned lies, and statistics.
The only reason that Hugo Chavez, or anyone else, would travel to Cuba is because secrecy was paramount. Even at the VIP hospitals for the party elite (and even the VIP hospitals are pretty bad) do not have the best equipment. The medical staff wouldn’t know how to use them. Nor would the doctors be aware of the most advanced techniques. The Cuban government does not dare send doctors to medical conferences or symposia to the US or Europe. They’re only allowed to go to places like Burkina Faso or Ecuador. And no, that isn’t a joke.
Perry would have believed Soviet economic statistics in the 1930s and demanded to know how we could support our economic system considering it didn’t produce the “best outcomes.”
Steve57 (60a887) — 3/14/2013 @ 1:15 pmPerry – How do you feel about Frankenfood?
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 3/14/2013 @ 1:20 pmSPQR @115, Perry misrepresents everything.
Since I don’t want to be lumped in with him, I have to point out I meant to say the Cuban stats from the Concord study. Not OECD. Cuba isn’t an OECD member state, accession state, or partner.
Steve57 (60a887) — 3/14/2013 @ 1:21 pmThe Perry who isn’t in business quoted something or other:
. . . and raising them for their parents.
Insurance costs money because insurance pays out money; if you increase the amount of money that insurance companies have to pay out, whether for no-co-pay contraception, or no catastrophic-only insurance, or keeping children covered for longer periods of time, the insurance companies will have to charge more; the only other option is for them to go broke. If 18-26 year olds are allowed to linger on their parents’ insurance, then their parents’ insurance premiums have to increase, period.
The businessman Dana (3e4784) — 3/14/2013 @ 1:25 pmHas Perry tried to explain why Fidel had to fly a doctor in from Spain?
askeptic (b8ab92) — 3/14/2013 @ 1:26 pm“Hell, would you rather be treated for a heart condition in Canada, or the US?”
Steve57 – Canadians traveling abroad aren’t covered by their national health insurance and many buy short-term health insurance for their trips. One of the biggest obstacles to insurers making money on those policies when Canadians get seriously ill in the U.S. is delayed repatriation to Canada. The Canucks just don’t want to go home for treatment because they know it sucks.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 3/14/2013 @ 1:27 pmDana, you’ll have to explain that to Perry in much shorter words. As Perry is convinced of the truth of the main Democratic platform – There Is A Free Lunch!
SPQR (768505) — 3/14/2013 @ 1:32 pmPeppermint Perry,
Aren’t you the guy who asserted several weeks ago that Greece’s debt is not the cause of their problems ?
Seriously, some of you aging Cold War era commies just won’t surrender to facts and evidence, will you ?
Then again, usually the guy who is being subsidized is not as concerned about paying the bill as the guy who will actually be paying the bill.
Elephant Stone (b7e94d) — 3/14/2013 @ 1:33 pmPerry wrote:
Most people make their health insurance payments weekly or biweekly or monthly, as payroll deductions, and most people are able to take advantage of tax credits once a year. If you now have to shell out, say, $250 more a month for health insurance, and get a $3,000 tax credit for it on April 15th, it might be nice to have that extra three grand in your pocket to help stimulate the economy by buying a fancy stainless steel refrigerator — manufactured in Mexico — but what are you going to do the other 11 months of the year?
The Infernal Revenue Service Dana (3e4784) — 3/14/2013 @ 1:34 pmDana – but tax credits are magic money that costs nothing … until rich people use them, then they are evil and the cause of Armageddon according to Democrats.
SPQR (768505) — 3/14/2013 @ 1:35 pmWhy are we even treating the canard that ACA was ever an attempt to lower health care costs as if it’s a remotely serious assertion? Or that “(u)nder the ACA, tax credits “will bring down what many consumers will pay for insurance” has any basis in fact?
There is a reason Obama and the Democrats delayed implementation of Obamacare until after the 2012 election. To hide the truth from the electorate, because the entire sales pitch for Obamacare was all a lie. It was an obvious lie. Perry is just repeating the focus-group tested lies.
Steve57 (60a887) — 3/14/2013 @ 1:43 pmI feel it teh fierce
Colonel Haiku (52a84d) — 3/14/2013 @ 1:51 pmMoral urgency of change
Obamarama
Just so you know the Obama administration overpromises and underdelivers. I know, big shock. But for instance when King Putt arrogantly asserted that “he” was going to “give subsidies” (the god king doesn’t even use the royal we like the modest-in-comparison Windsors) to small businesses so they could provide health care to their employees I don’t know any business owner who used their interactive site who qualified for a subsidy.
Again, that’s just propaganda. His base doesn’t include many small business people. He wants his base to think that Obama is “giving” all this help to small businesses and they’re just not taking advantage of it out of spite or racism. When in fact like so many of his promises or assertions he never intends to deliver.
It’s the same for the for the people purchasing health care insurance.
HuffPo: Obamacare ‘Glitch’ Allows Some Families To Be Priced Out Of Health Insurance
This is not a “glitch.” No more than it is a “glitch” that the business subsidy won’t appear for many if not most small businesses.
It is by design. Obamacare is just an excuse to demand more tax hikes and expand the bureaucracy. On the road to single payer.
It is working exactly as designed.
Steve57 (60a887) — 3/14/2013 @ 1:54 pmAs for perry? You can’t teach old dog new tricks.
Colonel Haiku (29d866) — 3/14/2013 @ 2:00 pmWhen it fails, and it will, they will blame the conservatives for not letting them screw us harder and deeper on the front end.
JD (31065f) — 3/14/2013 @ 2:02 pmObama did not order Obamacare to increase the cost of healthcare. Other people did that.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 3/14/2013 @ 2:21 pmJD, Obamacare has already failed in every goal that it was to have accomplished to date. Already a complete failure. Less people covered by insurance, insurance rates rising faster than before, costs higher, … everything a failure.
In less than 24 months, its going to go from failure to catastrophe. The US economy is going to go back into recession directly as a result of the law and the health insurance business is going to collapse as businesses pull out of employer coverage and people drop their own insurance from an inability to pay.
SPQR (768505) — 3/14/2013 @ 2:22 pmPerry is still a moron.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 3/14/2013 @ 2:24 pmYes, it’s hard to say he ordered Obamacare to increase health care costs. Considering his involvement in drafting the bill was limited to sending a post-it note to Congress to “get to work” as he headed off to golf courses, fund raisers, and campaign-style events where he could demagogue the issue.
But there is zero, zip, nada, no evidence he was remotely interested in reducing costs and driving down premiums as promised. The fact that he was completely hands-off is all the evidence you need to know he didn’t care whether or not the Democrats drafting the bill drove up costs.
ABC – Rising Health Costs Undermine Obama Pledge to Curb Trend
He never had a plan to reduce health care costs. He knew he would never be held accountable. If he had a plan, then he wouldn’t have let those other people substitute their own that is driving up health care costs. And I see no evidence he’s displeased with the result.
Steve57 (60a887) — 3/14/2013 @ 2:50 pmComment by Steve57 (60a887) — 3/14/2013 @ 2:50 pm
He never had a plan to reduce health care costs. He knew he would never be held accountable. If he had a plan, then he wouldn’t have let those other people substitute their own that is driving up health care costs. And I see no evidence he’s displeased with the result.
I don’t think Obama understands yet that it has to inevitably make costs go up. He’s got people telling him otherwise.
Sammy Finkelman (d22d64) — 3/14/2013 @ 2:58 pmI can tell you how health care is provided in some foreign countries. In France a friend of mine fell off his bike and broke his collarbone. There was no one available to treat him so they kept sending him home visit after visit until the bone had mended incorrectly and he had a permanent knot. That kept their costs down and certainly didn’t hurt their outcome rating. But still he received a standard of care that would be scandalous here. There it is the norm.
In Japan you have to bring all of your sheets, toiletries etc… from home and wash them yourself. It is well known that the hospitals are not paid enough to cover the costs of services so you have to both buy private insurance in addition to the public type you are forced to purchase and typically you still have to bribe the doctors for better service.
Again their costs will look cheaper than ours, though the real cost is much, much higher. What I am about to say might come as a shock to some people but here it is. Leftists lie. When your ideology has an unbroken record of complete and abject failure at every juncture you either have to give it up or lie about it. There really aren’t any other options.
Currently we have told ourselves $17 trillion worth of lies and the results speak for themselves. Only a fool would look at what has been wrought and say, “if only we could spend more…”
Thatch (0b86d9) — 3/14/2013 @ 3:01 pm“It’s been a staple of health care politics for years — the claim that preventive care saves money. A little money up front, lots of money saved on the back end. Patients living longer and healthier lives. That makes sense, right?
But while there’s little doubt that preventive care saves lives, the money is a different story. In general, academic studies do not support the idea that paying for preventive care ultimately saves money……”
Actually some kinds of preventative care – at least as practiced in the United States – does not even save lives. That’s why you get these recommendations to stop mammograms and the like, although Democratic Party politicians are making themselves completely oblivious to the reasoning here, like it doesn’t exist.
Other kinds of preventative care might save a net number of lives (net because it also costs lives, plus worry and disabilities perhaps)
And then, there’s the occasional types of preventative care that actually do save money and lives. Vaccines, for instance, as long as the disease is still around. Once the disease gets really rare, the calculus changes, if you want to be honest about things. If too many people are not vaccinated, maybe it changes again. If the pathogen mutates, and the vaccine loses effectiveness, maybe it changes yet again.
Antibiotics before surgery. Measurements, in some cases.
Sammy Finkelman (d22d64) — 3/14/2013 @ 3:05 pmIf the disease doesn’t exist at all anymore in the field, like swine flu in 1976, which appeareed and then probably quickly became extinct, then the vaccine only can hurt people.
Sammy Finkelman (d22d64) — 3/14/2013 @ 3:07 pmPerry quoted:
According to Kiplinger, an Adjusted Gross Income of $94,200 would have put you in the top 25% of taxpayers (above $69,126), and more than half way to the top 10% threshold of $116,623. Unfortunately, I was unable to find the data breaking down the income groups more precisely, but the statement you made would have roughly four out of every five taxpayers being subsidized by the federal government to pay their health insurance. It’s just another trick to take money from the most productive people to give to those who earn less.
Oh, wait, you see that as a good thing, don’t you? Well, I certainly don’t!
But the final point is the simplest: just how often have we ever seen, in the past, a private business taken over by the government result in lower costs?
The Top 10% Dana (af9ec3) — 3/14/2013 @ 3:23 pmComment by SPQR (768505) — 3/14/2013 @ 1:32 pm
As Perry is convinced of the truth of the main Democratic platform – There Is A Free Lunch!
According to Paul Krugman, the free lunch is worth a little bit over $400 billion a year. .
Sammy Finkelman (d22d64) — 3/14/2013 @ 3:26 pm“Actually some kinds of preventative care – at least as practiced in the United States – does not even save lives.”
Sammy – Actually some kinds of preventative care – as practiced in the United States – does even save lives. True fact. Even in the United States. That’s one reason doctors take family histories isn’t it Sammy? If there is a family history of a disease or condition isn’t a good preventive care step to see if a current patient is exhibiting potential signs of the same disease or condition?
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 3/14/2013 @ 3:27 pmHow is it that leftist claim Medicare is more efficient than private insurance? Is that a result of one of their BS studies and govt accounting? I seem to recall a study where they just didnt count the fraud dollars against their outlays, and didnt have to claim buildings and utilities in their ledger, since the govt “owned” the buildings. Is that what moron Perry is referring to? Certainly, it is!
JD (4bb5d1) — 3/14/2013 @ 3:35 pmObama did not order Obamacare to increase the cost of healthcare. Other people did that.
It was that super-double-secret committee that meets in a broom-closet in the Old EOB, the same one that cancelled the White House Tours.
The only thing this President is responsible for are the divots he takes.
askeptic (b8ab92) — 3/14/2013 @ 3:39 pmOne of the commenters on my old site, a liberal from New Zealand, told us this story about his options under socialized medicine:
I found that extremely humorous: because he had the money to go private, he was able to get a painful problem taken care of, by the same two podiatrists he would have seen under whatever Kiwicare is called down there, promptly.
Now, he called his problem “minor.” But toenails grow at around half an inch a month; if he had waited the four months waiting time he told us himself he would have had, his already painful problem would have kept him in increasing pain for a third of a year. And, assuming the average growth rate, his toenails would have grown another two inches, which would quite probably have been right out the end of his toes.
Perry, of course, told us that he would prefer a single-payer system, just like the one which would have let a Kiwi suffer through four months of agony with ingrown toenails. And Perry is very familiar with the story just cited.
The blogger Dana (af9ec3) — 3/14/2013 @ 3:45 pmdaleyrocks wrote:
Actually, he did, or at least his Administration did. As they have imposed regulations through ObaminableCare – the no-co-pay contraception requirement and the ban on rejections for pre-existing conditions being the best known examples – which increased the amount insurers would have to pay out for medical care, they effectively mandated that the insurance companies charge more for coverage.
The Dana who notices these things (af9ec3) — 3/14/2013 @ 3:53 pmThatch is quite correct about the health care system in Japan. The Medicaid/Medicare equivalent, the Society Health Insurance, doesn’t reimburse hospitals enough to pay for services. So the hospitals don’t provide them. The only thing I can add from my seven years in Japan is that it’s the norm to bring food from home on the daily visits to family members because hospitals frequently neglect to provide that as well.
It was quite eye opening to be educated by the Japanese business people, academics, economists in private industry, etc., how Japan fudges the statistics to burnish its image abroad.
For instance, Japan has a very low murder rate, correct?
One reason is they don’t have the category of murder/suicide. When the head of the household kills his wife and children, or when the parents agree to commit suicide but first kill their children that’s a “family suicide:”
Five people found dead in Japan family suicide
Yes, of course. The five, seven, and ten year old wanted to take their own lives. It was their choice. And it doesn’t matter if the children were three months, two, and four. The police would count their deaths as suicides, not murders.
Does wonders for the murder rate.
As I said, I can also provide details on how they manipulate the unemployment numbers to make them look better than they are. Are you over 50 and lose your job? Congratulations, you are no longer in the labor force. Since age discrimination is quite legal everyone knows your chances of getting hired are slim to none, no matter how desperately you need and are actively looking for a job. Some over 50 do beat the odds and actually find a job. It does happen. Just not often enough for the Japanese gub’mint to risk its image over by including you in their precious stats.
We never discussed the health care statistics. But given the fact the Japanese government manipulates their crime and employment statistics to make those problems appear better than they are I’m supposed to trust them?
SPQR has already mentioned how other governments artificially lower their infant mortality rates. If an infant is born premature beyond their health care system’s ability to deal with, it doesn’t count as a live birth. In many countries if an infant doesn’t survive for a certain period of time regardless of its stage of development, say 24 hours, it doesn’t count as a live birth. Etc.
I forget the name of the phenomenon for reading an article in a paper on a subject you know well and knowing that the reporter doesn’t have a grasp of the facts and gets everything horribly wrong, then turning the page and reading an article on a subject you’re unfamiliar with and believing every word.
I do not suffer from it.
Steve57 (60a887) — 3/14/2013 @ 4:03 pmJust as Joe Biden famously declared that we have to spend more money in order to get out of debt, global warming means more blizzards.
And the same crystal ball predicts that ObamaCare means we can get more medical care for less money—you know, just like in Cuba. Or something.
C’mon, you evil conservatives, we can’t balance the budget just for the sake of balancing the budget !
Elephant Stone (7f77b4) — 3/14/2013 @ 4:08 pmHe also had people telling him that that health care costs under Obamacare would inevitably increase. CEOs report telling him that if the bill was signed into law as written they’d have to declare billion dollar losses. He accused them of lying.
As we all know now, they weren’t.
The fact of the matter is that at the very least Obama is completely disinterested in finding out what the truth is. But given how he was perfectly willing to lie to sell Obamacare, the fact that he lied about having to battle insurance his mother’s insurance company to get them to pay for her cancer treatment and even claim his mother died unnecessarily because of it when it never happened and he knew it, then it’s not possible to believe he’s merely disinterested in finding out the truth.
He’s interested in suppressing the truth and using even those closest to him in his campaign to lie and sell a complete fraud to the American people.
Steve57 (60a887) — 3/14/2013 @ 4:13 pm“Actually, he did, or at least his Administration did.”
I thought I only needed a sarc tag for the lib trolls.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 3/14/2013 @ 4:30 pmObama is only interested in one thing – shoveling enough BS to get out of office before things completely collapse.
His goal is to avoid collapse only so long as it takes to get out of office. He does not care about what happens to anyone else in the meantime or after.
SPQR (768505) — 3/14/2013 @ 4:30 pm“I forget the name of the phenomenon for reading an article in a paper on a subject you know well and knowing that the reporter doesn’t have a grasp of the facts and gets everything horribly wrong, then turning the page and reading an article on a subject you’re unfamiliar with and believing every word.”
Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect
SPQR (768505) — 3/14/2013 @ 4:32 pmMurray Gell-Mann is a Nobel prize winning physicist.
SPQR (768505) — 3/14/2013 @ 4:34 pmIt also has to do with the fact that Medicare as well as Medicaid only reimburse doctors, hospitals, and other health care providers such as medical laboratories a fraction of what the patient’s care actually costs. Which results in cost shifting to those with private insurance as hospitals pad those bills to recoup their losses.
Hence Medicare is more “efficient.” Just as it would be more “efficient” to force your mechanic to take $100 for parts and labor when the parts alone cost $250.
The Public Option would be even more “efficient:”
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505103_162-57522437/issue-brief-health-care/?pageNum=2
Here’s what such “efficiencies” are already doing to Medicare recipients as well as health care providers:
PBS Newshour: Access to Doctors Shrinks for Some Medicare Patients
Not that Hospitals are doing well despite getting higher but still inadequate reimbursement rates:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/aroy/2011/09/21/medpac-64-of-hospitals-lose-money-on-medicare-patients/
These “efficiencies” are driven by leftists who revile capitalism precisely because it’s the only mechanism ever devised that gains economic cooperation between purchasers and sellers without coercion. Hence they try to make “profit” a dirty word when that is merely the evidence that the two sides have come to a voluntary agreement as to the value of the good or service.
Leftists far prefer coercion hence their love of of centrally directed wage and price controls. Which they equate with “efficiency.”
Steve57 (60a887) — 3/14/2013 @ 5:00 pmYou may have been sarcastic but you hit on an important truth. President Prom Queen is too busy being Celebrity-in-Chief to actually bother with details. Not that he gives a rip about health care costs. But you can’t drag President You Deal With It I’m Just The Frontman off a golf course long enough for him to order a particular outcome for any piece of legislation.
He doesn’t want to be on Mt. Rushmore. He needs his own mountain. He’s too busy picking that out to worry about the small stuff. Like whether or not he’s bankrupting the country fast enough to suit him. He can always come back later and order up some more bankruptcy then head back to the links after lying that he’s cutting costs.
Steve57 (60a887) — 3/14/2013 @ 5:07 pm155. Steve57
Right, and in the healthcare field as we Americans have implemented it, we leave almost 50 million uninsured, who then go to the most expensive location when they are sick: the emergency room.
This is one of our cost drivers, resulting in our per capita costs being 2.5 times the OECD average, and without even the best outcomes, as documented earlier in this thread.
Apparently this situation is just fine with Steve!
At least the ACA is an attempt at a solution.
What is your solution Steve?
Now don’t feel badly, Steve, because not one of your cohort Righties on here has come up with a proposal either.
You people are critics without solutions. What good is this, I ask?
Perry (e84894) — 3/14/2013 @ 5:28 pmAt least the ACA is an attempt at a solution.
No it is not. It objectively makes the problems it claims to solve worse.
You are a deep throating sycophant for Teh One, that cannot be bothered with facts. I ask you, what good is that?
JD (b63a52) — 3/14/2013 @ 5:37 pmPerry, you are a joke. Yes I have a solution.
Get the biggest predator out of the system. Instead of rewarding the predator for mucking up the system by giving it more and more control over it.
Every single driver of skyrocketing health care costs can be traced back to government distorting the health care market. Every single one.
The ACA isn’t an attempt to fix anything. You either have to be insane to believe that or malevolent enough to knowingly advance the lie.
Why should I pretend your advocacy for making the problem worse instead of better is in any way serious?
Steve57 (60a887) — 3/14/2013 @ 5:40 pmI’ve described the distortions and moral hazard the government has deliberately built into the system, JD.
How Perry can fail to see I am advocating a solution, free markets in health care, or pretend to fail to see that is a question for a shrink or a polygraph.
But then Perry also fails to see this comment thread isn’t about advocating for a solution for the problems government has legislated into being in one particular market by making sure there is no vestige of it any longer being a market.
It’s about the fact that Democrats refuse to acknowledge the need for entitlement reform. All entitlements.
Perry, I’m not going to help you any further in your attempt to divert attention from the Democrats’ intent to spend this country into poverty.
Steve57 (60a887) — 3/14/2013 @ 5:46 pmSteve – even with 1,500,000,000,000 in new taxes n their budget, they still run ginormous deficits from now until the end of time. They are fundamentally unserious people, perfect for Perry to follow.
JD (b63a52) — 3/14/2013 @ 5:49 pmJD, here’s the truly bizarre thing. Which would be amusing if our country’s situation wasn’t so dire.
Perry writes:
First of all, don’t include me in “we.”
Second, I do see it as a problem. It’s people like Perry who don’t otherwise he wouldn’t demand we stick to the same formula that created the problem as (sarcasm on) “we Americans have implemented it” (sarcasm off).
Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity. Doing the same thing over and over only bigger and harder combines insanity with stupidity.
But it’s the people who won’t join Perry in this insane stupidity that he claims don’t care.
Is there a word to describe that, JD.
Steve57 (60a887) — 3/14/2013 @ 6:02 pmInsane?
JD (b63a52) — 3/14/2013 @ 6:05 pmDishonest?
Mendoucheous?
Delusional?
Gob smacking dumb?
Aggressively ignorant?
http://blog.heritage.org/2012/07/25/morning-bell-obamacare-falls-short-of-promises-to-uninsured/
Without leaving millions of people uninsured Obama wouldn’t be able to keep coming back to the trough to demand larger and larger government and more and more in taxes.
The most transparent administration indeed. I can hardly wait for our most transparent troll to come back and call this a serious attempt to control health care costs.
Steve57 (60a887) — 3/14/2013 @ 6:08 pmActually, that was too low an estimate;
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obamacare-now-estimated-cost-26-trillion-first-decade_648413.html
narciso (3fec35) — 3/14/2013 @ 6:13 pmPerry, we on the right wing are “critics without solutions ?”
Perry, have you met the kettle ?!
How’s that glass house workin’ for you ?
You’re kidding, right ? Didn’t you support (twice !) the Obamessiah who is too chicken to come up with a budget with his stooges in the Senate and House ? At least when Liz Taylor made the mistake of going to the altar with that nasty blowhard drunk Richard Burton a second time, she had the excuse that she was under 40. (Or maybe it was that she was under the influence of a forty ouncer—who knows.)
But you voted for the nastiest, blowhard President of all time twice—and Obama’s actually a nasty blowhard when he’s sober, unlike Richard Burton.
Seriously, you don’t even know your own strengths—criticizing without solutions is a left wing trademark that was first registered by Marx and Engels, and has been handed down throughout the left wing generations. In fact, it is the very strategy of Saul Alinsky in his “Rules for Radicals.”
And possibly the greatest tenet of leftism as conceived by Marx and Engels goes something like this, “There are some rich guys over there who are rich. They got more money. Or something. Uh, let’s take away their money so evvvveryone is equally miserable and poor !”
Elephant Stone (bd9b59) — 3/14/2013 @ 6:13 pmIf the communist countries had great solutions to show off to the world, they’d want to do it. Hence, there’s a reason North Korea, Cuba, Soviet Union, China, et al, have long had rigid registrictions about who is allowed to enter their countries, not to mention who is allowed to exit. Talk about Potemkin Villages—those are all Potemkin Countries.
It is because they don’t want the rest of the world to “see” that their “solutions” starts and ends with pointing fingers (and guns !) at rich people, but doesn’t actually have any proposals for how to help make poor people attain a higher standard of living.
Perry, there are so many false “facts” in your BS that your claim that we have no “solutions” is just more of the same.
SPQR (c52f85) — 3/14/2013 @ 6:45 pmAffordable care act that jacks up costs
JD (b63a52) — 3/14/2013 @ 6:50 pmFix the problem of uninsureds by creating even more
– “I forget the name of the phenomenon for reading an article in a paper on a subject you know well and knowing that the reporter doesn’t have a grasp of the facts and gets everything horribly wrong, then turning the page and reading an article on a subject you’re unfamiliar with and believing every word.”
– Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect
Comment by SPQR (768505) — 3/14/2013 @ 4:32 pm
– Murray Gell-Mann is a Nobel prize winning physicist.
Comment by SPQR (768505) — 3/14/2013 @ 4:34 pm
Actually named by Michael Crichton, who said he named it such because he once talked about it with Gell-Mann and thought Gell-mann was the more famous and important name.
Crichton also referred to it as the “wet sidewalks cause rain” phenomenon, or some such, because often journalists would get so confused in writing about science matters they would get cause and effect mixed up.
In one discourse on this Crichton also discusses the viability of the “aliens cause global warming” theory.
MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 3/14/2013 @ 7:18 pm157. “At least the ACA is an attempt at a solution.”
I propose that we circumvent the problems of extreme heat and gaseous surface in a first manned expedition to the Sun by landing in a lighter-than-hydrogen gas balloon at night.
gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 3/14/2013 @ 7:19 pmIf Obamacare does not get repealed soon, it will actually double the number of uninsured.
SPQR (768505) — 3/14/2013 @ 7:20 pm“At least the ACA is an attempt at a solution.”
Democrats are all of my students who think that if they scribble a couple of incoherent words on a piece of paper and turn it in, that they deserve an “A”.
Because, hey, they “tried”. And that’s all that counts to those goofballs.
SPQR (768505) — 3/14/2013 @ 7:21 pmSome years ago, back in the days of Hillary care, the director of the Hudson Institute at the time said that if you want to decrease health care costs, stop giving childhood vaccinations. Then people will die when they are young of relatively rapid cause.
Of course, that ignores the whole productivity side of human life.
Of course, if one wanted to consider that, you have the “fetus-fetish” that feets talks about to contend with.
MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 3/14/2013 @ 7:22 pmThis needs a Dr. Suess poem.
Entitlement change we don’t like,
on a bus or on a bike;
not a lot and not a little,
not for sweat and not for spittle.
Ok. someone else contribute the next phrases.
MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 3/14/2013 @ 7:25 pm165. Let’s see, healthcare is something like 16% of a $14.5 Trillion economy. Over 10 years, thats $23 Trillion.
Yeah seems about right. There’s the HHS swat teams to pay for and office parties on Kauai and ..
gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 3/14/2013 @ 7:35 pmlike a whore what’s entitled to sex
happyfeet (4bf7c2) — 3/14/2013 @ 7:39 pmhere’s your social security checks
have fun grandma!
dance to your grave!
while your grandkid is naught but a slave
feets-
MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 3/14/2013 @ 8:11 pmthat does not qualify as Suess-esque
Perry wrote:
2+2=5 is also an attempt at a solution, but it’s still the wrong answer, still always gets you an “F,” unless, of course, you are a Democrat working on the federal budget.
Coming up with the wrong solution does not solve whatever problems you believe existed; in this case, it is making things worse.
For most of us, there was no problem: we got good, quality, prompt health care, when we needed it. Your “solution” to the problem of those who did not have health insurance was to f(ornicate) up the good system that most of us enjoyed.
The mathemetician Dana (3e4784) — 3/15/2013 @ 5:13 amFrom The Wall Street Journal:
More at the link.
The obvious solution is simple: increase employee health insurance premiums by $5.25 per month to cover the fees. Just another way President Obama has helped the working people of America!
The Dana who subscribes (3e4784) — 3/15/2013 @ 5:26 amKathryn Nix of the conservative think tank Heritage, like Dana here, concludes the following:
Repealing the ACA takes us back to square one, leaving almost 50 million Americans uninsured, who will then go to our emergency rooms for free treatment, so then who pays? Answer: People like Dana, who prefer to regress rather than to progress.
Thus, repealing the ACA will cost us more than the ACA would have cost, else we leave our uninsured sick poor and middle class citizens lying in the gutter to suffer and die. I reiterate, without the ACA, we are paying for our healthcare 2.5 times the average of the OECD nations, whose healthcare outcomes nonetheless are comparable to our own.
Instead of repealing the ACA, would it not be better to improve it, Dana?
Perry (e84894) — 3/15/2013 @ 8:07 amPerry, why do you think that the exact same formula that got us into this mess, only bigger and faster and harder, is the solution?
Because I honestly find that crazy.
And I know you’re going to pretend I’m not offering a solution when I suggest you quit being the friggin’ problem, but that’s just you.
Sane people can see that’s the first step toward a solution. Stopping you.
Steve57 (60a887) — 3/15/2013 @ 8:12 amPerry, PPACA isn’t going to add to the insured you moron. You’ve shown yourself to be an idiot on this topic to date. Your every assertion debuted your every claim debunked.
SPQR (768505) — 3/15/2013 @ 8:18 amSteve, that’s ridiculous! Almost 50 million uninsured is not going to go away, even if you choose to close your own eyes.
Perry (e84894) — 3/15/2013 @ 8:19 amPerry wrote:
I have absolutely no problem at all with charging our uninsured sick every last farthing that they have, seizing all of their assets and garnishing their future wages to satisfy their medical bills. I don’t have a problem with denying treatment to patients who cannot pay for it. I have no problem with taking every illegal alien who shows up at the emergency room, unable to pay for treatment, straight back to Tijuana and dumping him at the doorstep of Mexican hospitals.
The discipline of capitalism is that those who are unable to pay for something don’t get it. If we wish to be rich and prosperous, we must return to that discipline, and tell people the simple truth: if you cannot pay for food or clothing or shelter or medical care, you don’t get them! If that means that people go hungry or naked or homeless, then people will do something really radical like go to work.
The ACA you champion is just another fornicating welfare system, telling people that they can have that for which they do not work, that they can live off of the labor of others. The result has been a huge population on food stamps — and when Newt Gingrich called Barack Obama the “food stamp president, he was telling the absolute truth! — and millions of Americans living on welfare while we are, in effect, importing Mexicans to do our work.
We need to get back to the command from the Bible, from 2 Thessalonians 3:10:
Liberal policies, compassionate policies, have given us the problems we have today.
The cold-hearted Dana (3e4784) — 3/15/2013 @ 8:21 amSteve, that’s ridiculous! Almost 50 million uninsured is not going to go away, even if you choose to close your own eyes.
Yet your solutions only exacerbate the problem.
JD (b63a52) — 3/15/2013 @ 8:23 amSPQR: 30 million remaining uninsured under the PPACA, according to the CBO, is better than 50 million uninsured we have at this moment. But I agree, this is not good enough, which is why we need to improve the PPACA, not repeal it.
Perry (e84894) — 3/15/2013 @ 8:23 amThus, repealing the ACA will cost us more than the ACA would have cost,
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL
JD (4bb5d1) — 3/15/2013 @ 8:26 amPerry is, again, just making stuff up.
JD (4bb5d1) — 3/15/2013 @ 8:27 amI’m not closing my eyes to the fact that you’re either a sick or malicious individual hell bent on using the exact same formula that has legislated us into a bad situation even worse.
Your choices are now limited. Pick one. You are either stupider than a bag of hammers or scum of the Earth.
Steve57 (60a887) — 3/15/2013 @ 8:30 am*into a bad situation to make it even worse.*
Steve57 (60a887) — 3/15/2013 @ 8:33 am184. Dana
Why do choose to ignore the “liberal and compassionate” teachings of your own church, Dana?
Who says these undertreated/untreated folks do not work? Citation please!
“The cold-hearted Dana”: An aptly chosen moniker indeed!
Perry (e84894) — 3/15/2013 @ 8:34 amHave I mentioned lately you’re a joke, Perry?
Steve57 (60a887) — 3/15/2013 @ 8:34 amThe 50 million uninsured is also a BS number as has been shown over and over.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 3/15/2013 @ 8:36 amPerry you are a moron.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 3/15/2013 @ 8:39 amAah yes. A 2700 page bill commanding the HHS Secretary to come up with thousands of pages of regulations per sentence was a serious attempt to bring down the cost of health care.
So serious President Tiger Beat and his minions in Congress required the real effects of the legislation be held off until after the November 2012 election.
The only question is now Perry just how big a fool are you?
We know you’re a fool.
And we know you’re a big one.
Huge in fact.
But apparently you’re hell bent to demonstrate there’s no limit as to how big a fool you’re determined to be.
I personally think there’s a limit, but I’ve never set out to explore the extreme reaches of fooldom like you.
Steve57 (60a887) — 3/15/2013 @ 8:42 am193. daleyrocks
Really?
According to Kaiser Health News:
But you know better, right daleyrocks?
Perry (e84894) — 3/15/2013 @ 8:46 amPerry, you are ignorant of the criticisms of the Census Bureau number, so you refute that by …. repeating the number.
What a dipshit.
SPQR (b12eb9) — 3/15/2013 @ 8:48 amExamples of how the number of “uninsured” is inflated yet another example of Perry’s ignorance of the actual debate on the topic.
Nothing but ignorance – that’s Perry.
SPQR (b12eb9) — 3/15/2013 @ 8:52 am“But you know better, right daleyrocks?”
Perry – Yes. See #197. You remain a moron.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 3/15/2013 @ 8:56 amPerry wrote:
For one simple reason: they don’t work! If the liberal and compassionate policies worked and actually reduced poverty and dependence, I’d be a liberal. If welfare was really just a quick bridge to help people who were temporarily down on their luck to get by until they found another job, I’d support it wholeheartedly.
But that’s not what we have. What we have are multi-generational welfare families, what we have is a system which allows people to take the Faustian bargain that we will pay them not to work if they will agree to live, but in poverty, we have a system in which Americans’ charitable impulse and sympathy for the less fortunate has become just another blood-sucking vampire, sucking the life out of our society. What we have is a society loaded up with people who think that others owe them a living.
When Jesus walked the earth, and he encountered handicapped beggars, he healed them so that they could go to work; if he were a liberal Democrat, our Lord would just have given them a magic, ever-filling begging bowl.
The very cold-hearted Dana (3e4784) — 3/15/2013 @ 8:57 amdaleyrocks, Perry won’t bother to read the link because he does not want to know that even the Census Bureau admits the number is inflated.
SPQR (b12eb9) — 3/15/2013 @ 8:58 amSo the US Census Bureau is wrong. Is this your position, daleyrocks and SPQR?
Perry (e84894) — 3/15/2013 @ 8:58 amPerry, you moron, its the Census Bureau’s position that they are wrong.
You really are a clueless little git.
SPQR (b12eb9) — 3/15/2013 @ 9:00 amSo far, Perry, without exception, your every comment on this issue has shown that you are without the slightest clue about the issue. You repeat talking points that were discredited years ago. You are ignorant of controversies about the most basic “facts” you toss around.
You really are the most ignorant man in the world. And you’ve no beer to redeem yourself.
SPQR (b12eb9) — 3/15/2013 @ 9:01 am199. The very cold-hearted Dana
No, Dana. What we have here is a self-declared devout Roman Catholic who refuses to accept the teachings of his Church, even though he knows that said teachings are derived directly from the teachings of Jesus Christ himself.
There is a noun which characterizes people like yourself: [purposely left blank]
Perry (e84894) — 3/15/2013 @ 9:06 amYour responses are actually quite humerous because they are so obviously weak-kneed to normal, moderate observers! Bye.
Perry (e84894) — 3/15/2013 @ 9:10 amWeak kneed? That’s hilarious coming someone whose every comment claim gets abandoned by you on the first rebuttal.
Your Black Knight routine from Monty Python got old a long time ago, Perry.
SPQR (b12eb9) — 3/15/2013 @ 9:16 amDemocrats have noticed what Perry has not. That Obamacare is a failure. That “normal moderate observers” hate it. That’s why they didn’t run on it by and large during November 2012.
SPQR (b12eb9) — 3/15/2013 @ 9:17 am“So the US Census Bureau is wrong. Is this your position, daleyrocks and SPQR?”
Perry – My position is that it is an inflated number. At the point in time the census was taken it includes illegal immigrants, large numbers of people who could be covered by insurance but had not applied and a variety of other distortions. This has been well documented in the press.
The number of chronically uninsured people in the U.S. is less than 15 million and for them Obama chose to wreck our existing insurance system and replace it with a monstrously expensive one that is unpopular with a majority of the country.
Heckuva job Barky.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 3/15/2013 @ 9:19 amPerry is committing what would be a white collar crime if he were in private business.
http://www.lexisnexis.com/lawschool/study/understanding/pdf/WhiteCollarCh1.pdf
At this point I can no longer believe Perry is clueless or insane. He’s criminal.
Steve57 (60a887) — 3/15/2013 @ 9:48 amCriminally insane perhaps.
Steve57 (60a887) — 3/15/2013 @ 9:49 amSteve57, ah but Perry’s wit struck home. After all, how dare I question the Census Bureau by actually referencing their own conclusion that their own number was inflated? How dare I?
SPQR (b12eb9) — 3/15/2013 @ 9:50 amPerry wrote:
You are, as always, incorrect. I already cited the Biblical teaching, 2 Thessalonians 3:10. Our noble Church fathers are, as you would expect, very sympathetic to the plight of the poor, as am I, but in this case, following sympathy leads to bad outcomes; continually creating dependency is a bad outcome, unless, of course, you are a Democratic politician seeking votes.
Even you cannot ignore the society we have created, a culture in which millions and millions of people live for generations on the public dole, never working and never intending to work, as long as the government is sympathetic and willing to pay them not to work.
The Catholic Dana (3e4784) — 3/15/2013 @ 9:55 amI hope you’re suitably ashamed.
Steve57 (60a887) — 3/15/2013 @ 9:58 amDo I look ashamed, Steve57?
SPQR (b12eb9) — 3/15/2013 @ 10:02 amOne wonders: if the oh-so-generous liberal policies toward the poor actually alleviated poverty, why, 49 years after the War on Poverty, do we still have so many poor people?
The curious Dana (3e4784) — 3/15/2013 @ 10:04 amSuitably so, SPQR.
Steve57 (60a887) — 3/15/2013 @ 10:07 amSuitably
Steve57 (60a887) — 3/15/2013 @ 10:07 am“why, 49 years after the War on Poverty, do we still have so many poor people?”
The curious Dana – I’m sure Perpetual Progressive Pinhead Perry has the Proper answer for that query.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 3/15/2013 @ 10:08 amDana, only 49 years?
On the Price of Corn, and Management of the Poor by Benjamin Franklin Posted on November 29, 1766
Steve57 (60a887) — 3/15/2013 @ 10:12 amWouldn’t it be nice if we could convince Barack Obama of that? That’d be better to reinstate the welfare work requirement than spread the wealth.
That’s only been something that’s been obvious for a few hundred years.
Steve57 (60a887) — 3/15/2013 @ 10:18 amWell, I was dating it from President Johnson’s War on Poverty, but the esteemed Dr Franklin’s quote is spot on.
Regardless of how one dates it, one thing has become clear: the easing of the ravages of poverty, by making poverty tolerable and survivable, is not a program which reduces poverty.
The historian Dana (3e4784) — 3/15/2013 @ 10:19 amPerry wrote:
Of course, your “argument” is not to challenge the veracity of what I wrote, but simply to try to change the subject, and attack the writer. That you might think me an awful person is always possible, but just what do you find untrue about the comment you quoted?
Was I somehow incorrect when I stated that we now had multi-generation welfare families?
The Dana who noticed (3e4784) — 3/15/2013 @ 10:23 amPerry, our resident JPL-scientist, has thrown out the figure of “50-million uninsured”, a number that has been debunked in more learned discussions,
askeptic (b8ab92) — 3/15/2013 @ 10:45 ambut can simply be “spiked” by noting that around 40% of that number are Illegal Aliens who shouldn’t be here in the first place,
and are currently clogging our hospital emergency rooms, claiming indigent status,
and driving up the costs of medical care for the rest of us who do have insurance, or pay cash.
askeptic, the number was from a survey and the Census Bureau itself found more than 8 million responses actually were outright wrong, as they were enrolled in and covered by Medicare.
SPQR (768505) — 3/15/2013 @ 10:50 am222. The Dana who noticed
Dana, stating one fact does not generate solutions in the minds of people like you.
I absolutely do challenge you on your assumptions about those in poverty, that they are all lazy and on welfare. In a study by Brady, Fullerton, and Ross in 2010, 65% of American households in poverty are working poor!
* The average household poverty level of all of the OECD nations plus Canada, is 64% of ours, or said another way, our household poverty level is 55% higher than the OECD (plus Canada) average. *
* We have 2.35 times more of our households in poverty working than the OECD (plus Canada) have. All these data I have calculated from the figure in the cited reference.
So Dana, your statements have never been demonstrated by citations; instead they are assumptions which fit with your admittedly hard-hearted attitude toward our households in poverty.
The statistics also demonstrate that the wages of our working poor are not enough to lift them out of poverty, even in cases where there are two wage earners. This pressure would be alleviated for one by increasing the minimum wage, and for another by improving childhood education and housing assistance especially in our inner cities.
Certainly spending trillions on unjustified foreign wars are resources which could have been more productively used in welfare to work programs, education, and job creation, a need which you, Dana, have continuously failed to recognize.
So what’s new?
Perry (e84894) — 3/15/2013 @ 3:56 pmMore dubious statistics misused by Perry. Same old, same old.
SPQR (768505) — 3/15/2013 @ 4:00 pmYou really are as incompetent as you look, Perry.
SPQR (768505) — 3/15/2013 @ 4:02 pmThe very persistent Perry wrote:
We’ve already been spending trillions on just the types of programs you have suggested, to no avail.
You know all of those jobs we’ve been importing Mexicans to do, because too many Americans look at such work as beneath them, and would rather sit at home, on the dole? They don’t require “welfare to work programs (or) education.” You can be trained to work on a roofing crew in a day, and yeah, you’ll start out humping bundles of shingles, but if you’ll do something really radical like keep coming to work, you’l wind up getting trained for more. You can be trained to work pouring concrete in a day, if you are willing to work, and yeah, you’ll start out raking concrete ahead of the screed board, but if you stick with it, you’ll wind up as a finisher.
The same is true in virtually all of the construction trades: most of it is on-the-job training.
The indefatigable Dana (af9ec3) — 3/15/2013 @ 4:20 pmI absolutely do challenge you on your assumptions about those in poverty, that they are all lazy and on welfare.
Dana never claimed that. Liar. You lie, Perry.
JD (4bb5d1) — 3/15/2013 @ 4:34 pmThis pressure would be alleviated for one by increasing the minimum wage,
It would do nothing of the sort. In fact, it would cost jobs available at that wage level, and increase prices.
JD (4bb5d1) — 3/15/2013 @ 4:36 pmPerry is aggressively ignorant.
JD (4bb5d1) — 3/15/2013 @ 4:38 pmJD, Perry claims to link to a study but he doesn’t. His link goes to a Wikipedia page on “Working Poor”. Which he evidently did not read – as usual.
Because the Wikipedia page reveals the fraud at the core of Perry’s claim. “Working poor” are defined as people who are making less than 50% of the median income and are employed. And then Perry claims to have compared OECD countries. But when poverty is defined not in terms of living standards, but in terms of a percentage of median income, it ought to be obvious that countries with higher median incomes would have more “working poor” by definition.
From the Wikipedia page Perry links fraudulently:
Its a circular definition. And a great example of Perry’s usual mendacity.
SPQR (768505) — 3/15/2013 @ 4:40 pmSPQR – basic math is beyond Perry. Just like honesty is.
JD (b63a52) — 3/15/2013 @ 4:44 pmJD, its really rather typical of all progressive sociologists. They really can’t understand the statistics they are pretending to cite.
SPQR (768505) — 3/15/2013 @ 4:47 pmThanks to Obumbles and Perry, we have more people in poverty, more uninsured, and more on food stamps. Their solution? More!
JD (b63a52) — 3/15/2013 @ 4:56 pmYou forgot sanity. That’s beyond him, too.
But then, let’s not start listing all the things that are beyond Perry’s grasp.
Steve57 (60a887) — 3/15/2013 @ 4:57 pm228. The indefagable Dana
To no avail. I showed you data @225 comparing how we are doing to the OECD nations, and Canada, and we are doing decidedly better, but certainly not enough.
But facts don’t matter to you, Dana, you are all about denial and ideology, as evidenced in numerous debates we’ve had over the years on this topic.
I suggest you study these facts about Americans in poverty, Dana. Perhaps once internalized, you will become less “hard-hearted”.
Perry (e84894) — 3/15/2013 @ 5:08 pmPerry’s goal to to impoverish everyone equally. And to prove how effin dumb he is.
JD (b63a52) — 3/15/2013 @ 5:12 pmKeep bridging those gaps, liar.
JD (b63a52) — 3/15/2013 @ 5:13 pmPerry, why do you want to screw these people over with health care “as we Americans have implemented it” to the tenth power?
Steve57 (60a887) — 3/15/2013 @ 5:13 pmindefatigable
Perry (e84894) — 3/15/2013 @ 5:15 pmIncurable
Steve57 (60a887) — 3/15/2013 @ 5:18 pmYou can’t fix stupid. And by stupid, I mean Perry. He complains about health care “as we Americans have implemented it,” and he wants to triple down on the exact same formula but instead of setting the health care phaser to “stun” during the Lyndon Johnson years now he wants to set it to “kill” during the Obama years.
And he thinks that’ll fix things.
Perry, why do you want to kill people via Obamacare?
Steve57 (60a887) — 3/15/2013 @ 5:21 pmYes, Perry, your mendoucheity is indefatigable.
JD (b63a52) — 3/15/2013 @ 5:22 pmPerry, at what stage of your life did you go morally bankrupt?
Steve57 (60a887) — 3/15/2013 @ 5:23 pmBirth
JD (b63a52) — 3/15/2013 @ 5:26 pmConception
Steve57 (60a887) — 3/15/2013 @ 5:34 pmPerry ate the other zygotes then blamed it on the GOP because they refused to raise taxes to fund all of them.
Steve57 (60a887) — 3/15/2013 @ 5:36 pm232. SPQR
The median annual income level for the US in 2012 was $50.1k, 50% of which is close to the poverty level for a family of four, 23.0k. At the same time, the inequality of income became greater in favor of the wealthy, again.
Since all the statistics in the referenced report were relative, this then validates the comparison among different OECD countries.
Thus, you have no cogent objection here, nor was there a fraudulent link given, SPQR.
Perry (e84894) — 3/15/2013 @ 5:36 pmRacist
JD (b63a52) — 3/15/2013 @ 5:36 pmAgain, I think Perry is a few fries short of a happy meal. How can one persist in such incompetence? And advertise it!
Steve57 (60a887) — 3/15/2013 @ 5:41 pmGive us the universal definition of “employed,” slugger.
Steve57 (60a887) — 3/15/2013 @ 5:43 pm241. indefatigable
Comment by Perry
Incontinent is more like it…
Colonel Haiku (b65cfb) — 3/15/2013 @ 6:01 pmPerry, you didn’t even understand my point and nonetheless had to prove it to all. Thanks for reinforcing my point for me.
SPQR (14e0e5) — 3/15/2013 @ 6:12 pmI think we’re missing an opportunity here.
Perry, I’m told by the Historian/Realist/Economist Dana is well into his 70s.
Does this not prove the superiority of the American health care system? Or our safety net in general?
The fact that an idjit like Perry hasn’t clubbed himself to death by wandering into lamp posts or that he hasn’t managed to drown himself in a five gallon bucket is proof of our compassion.
Perry is too stupid to live. Yet he lives. Every comment he makes is a tribute to us who allow that to happen.
Steve57 (60a887) — 3/16/2013 @ 9:59 amSteve, you are indeed a kind and thoughtful person: NOT!
Perry (e84894) — 3/16/2013 @ 10:09 amPerry, being full of statistics you don’t understand, repeating arguments you cut and pasted from Wikipedia but don’t understand, and hanging on to false “facts” that were debunked four years ago … well, all that certainly does not make you a thoughtful person.
SPQR (768505) — 3/16/2013 @ 10:15 amhis head up his ass
Colonel Haiku (e1c092) — 3/16/2013 @ 10:40 amhis thoughts as fresh as old dirt
Perry in nutshell
de-evolution
they say strongest will survive
yet unfit may live
more perry-in-nutshell
Colonel Haiku (e1c092) — 3/16/2013 @ 10:42 amPerry, some advice.
I realize if you trip and land head first in a five gallon bucket your first reaction will be to panic and wonder where the hell is the Coast Guard.
1. Stop sucking.
2. Push with your arms.
I plan a series of these on-line training courses. To help you, Perry, deal with Y2Kastration.
Next, how not to die by not wrapping your head in the bag your dry cleaning gets returned in.
Steve57 (60a887) — 3/16/2013 @ 10:54 amPeriwinkle @ 250 stated that “The median annual income level for the US in 2012 was $50.1k,…”;
askeptic (2bb434) — 3/16/2013 @ 10:54 ambut that was a link to a study that was using Household Income not individual income.
Does it know the difference?
Probably not….Math is Tough!
I’m a giving person.
Steve57 (60a887) — 3/16/2013 @ 10:56 amThe problem is the unfunded liabilities, easily total more the 60 trillion, that’s the annual global GDP
narciso (3fec35) — 3/16/2013 @ 11:06 amThat is a nonsensical definition. This term would apply to people who can afford own mansions, drive expensive cars, take vacations overseas once a year, if the median income was high enough to support such a lifestyle.
Michael Ejercito (2e0217) — 3/16/2013 @ 11:12 amMichael, “employed” could also apply to some lady who watches other ladies’ kids a few hours a week for the cash advance they can get on their EBT cards.
And maybe a few shots of tequila from the liquor stores that take EBT cards.
Steve57 (60a887) — 3/16/2013 @ 11:26 amBack on topic, here are examples of the costs for health care which we Americans face.
Two reasons our prices are so much higher is that our doctors and hospitals charge much more than our developed country counterparts.
But it is not all bad:
<blockquoteThe O.E.C.D. report rates America at or near the top for survival rates in breast and colorectal cancer but slightly below average in cervical cancer. We rank in the middle of the pack in the percentage of heart attack patients who die in the hospital within 30 days of admission. And we have alarmingly high rates of hospital admissions for asthma and uncontrolled diabetes — an indicator that many patients don’t have good primary care, which can prevent costly hospital stays.
Most other advanced countries hold down prices through government regulations. We set prices in Medicare and Medicaid programs. But in private markets, reform has to rely on other means, such as financial incentives for providers to curb costs by coordinating care and improving efficiency. One demonstration program significantly reduced spending by bundling payments to hospitals and doctors to cover all in-patient services connected with heart bypass surgeries.>
But it is bad enough, the the point where we are spending roughly 16% of our GDP on healthcare, much more than our counterparts, yet our outcomes typically are not all that great, although some are, like regarding outcomes from the treatment of cancer. However, in treatments of heart problems, not so great.
We, the wealthiest nation on earth, ought to be doing better than this.
Perry (e84894) — 3/16/2013 @ 12:05 pmWe should weed out old
Colonel Haiku (c9ce14) — 3/16/2013 @ 12:14 pmLate Seventies put ’em down
Only lefties though
Comment by Michael Ejercito (2e0217) — 3/16/2013 @ 11:12 am
If Warren Buffet reduced his compensation from B-H to Minimum Wage, he too could be classified as “working poor”.
askeptic (2bb434) — 3/16/2013 @ 1:02 pmPeriwinkle, if we’re the world’s wealthiest nation, why are we bankrupt (by accepted accounting principles)?
askeptic (2bb434) — 3/16/2013 @ 1:04 pmPerhaps we need to sell some assets to pay down our debt?
Perry cannot be stopped. When called out on his nonsense, he jauntily and civilly moves on to his next topic. Hilarity ensues.
JD (b63a52) — 3/16/2013 @ 1:23 pmPerry, you still have no clue what you are reading, or pretending to read, and citing. You flat out don’t understand a f’ing word of it.
And you link to propaganda OpEd as if it were objective facts: because you either think we are that stupid, or you actually are.
SPQR (768505) — 3/16/2013 @ 1:52 pmPerry writes:
Yeah, it’s freakin’ expensive keeping the John “Two Americas” Edwardses off your ***.
Because that’s what the regulators of this country regulated us into.
Speaking of which.
What’s the deal with this lunatic? It’s like he wants to destroy his own argument with his own links and prove my point, or JD’s point, or daley’s point, or SPQR’s point, or whomever’s, and then after proving we were right all along still demands we insist we were wrong.
I’m really starting to think Obama may be onto something with these death panels because if Perry is as old as I’m told he may just qualify for the blue pill and the pat on the head instead of the life saving surgery that can’t be wasted on such a useless mouth.
Steve57 (60a887) — 3/16/2013 @ 2:25 pmIt’s just Otto with his unfathomable assertions about the Belgian Aristotle, and the selfishness of Buddhism
narciso (3fec35) — 3/16/2013 @ 2:29 pmFood for thought:
I’ve laid out some facts to strongly suggest that our healthcare system is in need of reform. But you folks don’t want to deal with facts, rather only unproven right-wing ideology.
As demonstrated above by facts, other developed nations are doing better than we are in some ways, both cost and some outcomes, so to improve, President Obama and the Dems have attempted to make some improvements with the PPACA.
Granted, as this rolls out, we may discover that some adjustments are required, but repeal, being tendered by Republicans, is no solution. In fact, no solutions are being offered by Republicans. Getting the government out of the healthcare business is no solution, in my view, as many other developed nations have discovered, years ago.
Were it not for gerrymandering, voter suppression, the filibuster, and a political majority on SCOTUS, you folks would have even less Federal power. You are losing Presidential elections, in fact, in 2012, you lost the majority in the Presidential and both Congressional elections. Is there some kind of a message here which you folks need to absorb?
Pure and simple, your ideology is not taking hold. Moreover, judging from this week’s CPAC, your party is not about making any changes, except to continue ahead with your dysfunction and negativity.
How can we thrive when the opposition party behaves in such a negative manner, as you people do on this blog, unwilling to address the important issues of the day in a spirit of compromising to generate solutions and ways forward? Such a spirit, such an attitude and process do not involve sacrificing your principles, but do involve governing with an approach other than a plutocracy.
Your party is not well represented by women, by youth, by minorities, instead your make-up is mostly older men. How will you prevail in the future with this composition and with the uncompromising dysfunction which has become your mantra?
This inability to tackle this healthcare issue, which currently is burning up our GDP with less than exemplary outcomes to boot, and with too many Americans uninsured, is a severe issue. At least President Obama and the Dems, with the present and future in mind, have made a good stab at this issue. When will you folks do the same?
Perry (e84894) — 3/16/2013 @ 4:27 pmUtter BS, Perry. You have only shown that you have no command of the topic, you have little interest in facts and you have no interest in market oriented reforms. Making you the ideologue.
SPQR (384395) — 3/16/2013 @ 4:32 pmAnd this: “How can we thrive when the opposition party behaves in such a negative manner, as you people do on this blog, unwilling to address the important issues of the day in a spirit of compromising to generate solutions and ways forward?”
Sheer comedy, clown Perry. When the Democrats refuse to discuss any reform of the Federal budget, this is the best exhibit of your fundamental hypocrisy.
SPQR (768505) — 3/16/2013 @ 4:43 pmThe PPACA is exactly that, a market oriented reform, SPQR.
Private insurers are involved, and the table is set to provide more competition for placing health insurance, involving at least state-wide exchanges.
Your party had the power during most of the Bush years, yet no market oriented reforms were proposed. Instead, the decision seems to have been to ignore the problem.
Perry (e84894) — 3/16/2013 @ 4:46 pmThe PPACA is a market oriented reform? Yeah, that’s why it needs 7 feet of regulations. You have once again confirmed my point about your cluelessness, your incompetence and your utter ignorance of the topic.
You are a clown, Perry. PPACA is not a market oriented reform. A market oriented reform would reduce regulation of health insurance, not increase it.
SPQR (768505) — 3/16/2013 @ 4:55 pmC’mon, SPQR. You know why “Perry” posts. And it sure isn’t to debate or discuss.
Simon Jester (1d006e) — 3/16/2013 @ 5:05 pmSimon Jester, I know why he posts. I just wish he used a tissue instead.
SPQR (768505) — 3/16/2013 @ 5:07 pmYour brand of health care during Bush was not working too well for millions of Americans, while simultaneously chewing up GDP and sending unfortunate Americans into the poor house!
Perry (e84894) — 3/16/2013 @ 5:20 pmPerry, PPACA has failed in all of its goals. The amount of GDP spent by Americans for health care isn’t dropping (and that is a stupid measure of the efficiency of a health care system anyway), health insurance is getting more expensive at a greater rate than before PPACA.
And Elizabeth Warren’s numbers on the number of people who declared bankruptcy because of medical bills were a fraud.
You, Perry, are a discredited clown show.
SPQR (768505) — 3/16/2013 @ 5:25 pmBut to top it all off, because of PPACA, young people can’t get jobs. And the jobs that exist are increasingly parttime with no benefits.
Thanks to the destruction of the US economy by Democrats. Something the US’ enemies could never do, Democrats found a way.
SPQR (768505) — 3/16/2013 @ 5:26 pmYea right, SPQR. The TEA Party tantrum and rancor continues:
<blockquoteOn the ground, a very different reality is unfolding: In the Republican-led Congress, GOP-dominated statehouses and even before the nation’s highest court, the reactionary impulses of the Republican Party appear unbowed. Across the nation, the GOP’s severely conservative agenda – which seeks to impose job-killing austerity, to roll back voting and reproductive rights, to deprive the working poor of health care, and to destroy agencies that protect the environment from industry and consumers from predatory banks – is moving forward under full steam.
The hardcore rump of the party is even working to punish moderate outliers like New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie – the party’s most popular leader – who was denied a speaking role at the conservative movement’s annual convention, CPAC. Today’s GOP may desperately need to remake itself as “culturally modern, environmentally responsible and economically inclusive,” argues David Frum, a veteran of the George W. Bush White House, but it remains, he says, in the throes of a “Tea Party tantrum.”
As it works to lock in as many retrograde policies as possible before it finally chooses to either modernize or die, the Republican Party is like a wounded beast: Rarely has it been more dangerous.
Perry (e84894) — 3/16/2013 @ 5:35 pm>(h/t Tim Dickenson)
This Obamanation of an administration is so freakin’ “market based” it’s scary:
Barack Obama. Acting alone to protect our children and their children from the danger of ever knowing what a functioning economy looks like.
Well, not alone. He’s got Perry, who is demonstrating that the death panels can’t get here fast enough to relieve us of elderly moronic psychotics.
Steve57 (60a887) — 3/16/2013 @ 5:42 pmPerry, what’s it like to go through life as a contemptible laughing stock?
The rest of us have no first hand experience so we turn to you. Try to avoid the suffocation danger of plastic bags long enough to provide the answer.
Steve57 (60a887) — 3/16/2013 @ 5:49 pmPerry, plagiarizing propaganda proves nothing other than your own vacuousness.
SPQR (768505) — 3/16/2013 @ 5:50 pmComment by SPQR (768505) — 3/16/2013 @ 4:55 pm
In the Periwinkle World, only governments can set markets.
askeptic (2bb434) — 3/16/2013 @ 5:56 pmPerry’s belief that massive regulation and govt mandates, with “waivers” for the politically connected, is “market oriented” is laughable. For his next joke, Perry will explain how Josef Stalin was a Milton Friedman free market fan.
SPQR (768505) — 3/16/2013 @ 5:56 pmRarely has it been more dangerous.
Run, Periwinkle, run for your life before that wild beast devours you.
askeptic (2bb434) — 3/16/2013 @ 5:57 pmI think it’s awesome Perry can even post considering the authorities at the home he’s institutionalized in must have him in a straight jacket. Either they have some pretty advanced voice recognition software on the ‘puter in the day room or Perry is pecking these things out with a crayon clenched firmly in his denture-unencumbered gums. (Staff safety concerns.)
Either way, huzzah!
Steve57 (60a887) — 3/16/2013 @ 6:00 pm