Health Care

[loserbob 11]

There was a show, 60 min, or 20-20, im not sure. It was on last year, it said health insurers spend $50,000,000,000.oo a year trying to find ways of not covering people. Ya, i trust them with my life!!!

[BJean 16]

If someone doesn't understand the difference between the government looking out for its people and big business looking out for its bottom line, it makes you wonder what else they don't understand.

Or maybe it's what else they've swallowed, hook, line and sinker?

[loserbob 11]

Cleos mom, These people say things hoping nobody calls them on it(Tort reform in senate bill,purchasing across state lines in senate bill)

when you present them with proven facts they tuck their tails and run. You showed her proven facts, im curious to see her response, Probably wont have one.Also what the hell is shopping across state lines going to do? This is what will put insurers out of business. People will all want cheaper high quality insurance. If one offers it(just like gov. plan) people will buy it. Theyll do what they do now, monopolise and control prices even more because they can because there will be fewer(ones who cant compete)companies. Its a proven fact, the richest companies dictate cost. Mcdonalds controls cost of potatoes because they buy more potatoes than any other co (just an example).I listened to Hannity on Friday. He had a Brittish American on his show and a dem. senator on the phone(the brit. was rep.). They ganged up on the senator every chance they got.

When he was making a response, he was proving their points wrong they cut him off for commercial. The Brit. was talking about socialism, he left Brit. because the government took over everything. That may be but what does a brit. know about American economics the European union is about to collapse? You cant help your own countries economy with your expertise we sure dont want your help!

[loserbob 11]

Going back to insurers raising coverage costs. What justifies an increase in costs when a company makes 4.7bill. profit? I keep hearing excuses as to why they are able to raise costs, its getting more expensive to treat people BlaBLaBLa, usually you raise costs to compete or save your business. In this case they just want more profit. theyre not losing money, thery making record profits. If you dont see a problem with this your not human!

[loserbob 11]

To show you how much insurers care about us,They know we are having to struggle to get by(not you patty because you worked your tail off saving, training etc.)and they still raise costs after making billions off us. Its not the doings of everyone else raising costs. We dont have to cut testing etc. to make healthcare affordable. Its the greed of insurers, which should be regulated(call it socialism call it what you want just get it under control).

[pattygreen 5]

The government runs medicare and medicaid, two hugely popular programs. If they were denying coverage like the private insurance industry does, why would it be so popular? It's because they don't and the recipients support these programs.

The gov. run medical care we have right now (medicaid and medicare)is run without denial of care because only a small portion of the people in this country are on it. Put EVERYONE on it and see how it will do! BTW, Bankruptsy looms for these 2 programs as well as Social security in the near future. So how could they possibly be running well and popular?

[Cleo's Mom 257]

The government runs medicare and medicaid, two hugely popular programs. If they were denying coverage like the private insurance industry does, why would it be so popular? It's because they don't and the recipients support these programs.

The gov. run medical care we have right now (medicaid and medicare)is run without denial of care because only a small portion of the people in this country are on it. Put EVERYONE on it and see how it will do! BTW, Bankruptsy looms for these 2 programs as well as Social security in the near future. So how could they possibly be running well and popular?

This is hardly a small number:

43 million people were enrolled in Medicare in 2006, 36 million of whom were 65 and older.

Medicare 101

53 million people were enrolled in Medicaid. (date unknown)

Payroll taxes for these programs are only paid on the first $106,000 in wages. Why should someone like Bill Gates only pay these taxes on his first $106,000? Extend it to at least one million. That would go a long way to helping to fund these very popular programs.

[pattygreen 5]

By MICHAEL J. BOSKIN

President Barack Obama's 2011 budget lays out a stunningly expensive big-government spending agenda, mostly to be paid for years down the road. He proposes to increase capital gains, dividend, payroll, income and energy taxes. But the enormous deficits and endless accumulation of debt will eventually force growth-inhibiting income tax hikes, a national value-added tax similar to those in Europe, or severe inflation.

On average, in the first three years of the 10-year budget plan, federal spending rises by 4.4% of GDP. That's more than during President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society and Vietnam War buildup and President Ronald Reagan's defense buildup combined. In those same three years, spending on average hits the highest level in American history (25.1% of GDP), save the peak of World War II. The average deficit of $1.4 trillion (9.6% of GDP) is over three times the previous 2008 record.

Remarkably, President Obama will add more red ink in his first two years than President George W. Bush—berated by conservatives for his failure to control domestic spending and by liberals for the explosion of military spending in Iraq and Afghanistan—did in eight. In his first 15 months, Mr. Obama will raise the debt burden—the ratio of the national debt to GDP—by more than Reagan did in eight years.

Some specific proposals are laudable: permanently indexing the Alternative Minimum Tax for inflation, part of the increased R&D funding, reform of agriculture subsidies, a future freeze on one-sixth of the budget (only after it balloons for two years). But these are swamped by the huge expansion and centralization of government.

True, as he often reminds us, President Obama inherited a recession and fiscal mess. Much of the deficit is the natural and desirable result of the deep recession.

As tax revenues fall much more rapidly than income, these so-called automatic stabilizers cushioned the decline in after-tax income and helped natural business-cycle dynamics and monetary policy stabilize the economy. But Mr. Obama and Congress added hundreds of billions of dollars a year of ineffective "stimulus" spending—more accurately characterized as social engineering and pork—when far more effective, less expensive options were available.

The Obama 10-year budget—unprecedented in its spending, taxes, deficits and accumulation of debt—is by a large margin the most risky fiscal strategy in American history. In his Feb. 1 budget message, Mr. Obama said, "We cannot continue to borrow against our children's future." But that is exactly what he proposes to do.

He projects a cumulative deficit of $11.5 trillion by 2020. That brings the publicly held debt (excluding debt held inside the government, e.g., Social Security) to 77% of GDP, and the gross debt to over 100%. Presidents Reagan and George W. Bush each ended their terms at about 40%.

The deficits are so large relative to GDP that the debt/GDP ratio keeps growing and then explodes as entitlement costs accelerate in subsequent decades. So worrisome is this debt outlook that Moody's warns of a downgrade on U.S. Treasury bonds, and major global finance powers talk of ending the dollar's reign as the global reserve currency.

Ken Rogoff of Harvard and Carmen Reinhart of Maryland have studied the impact of high levels of national debt on economic growth in the U.S. and around the world in the last two centuries. In a study presented last month at the annual meeting of the American Economic Association in Atlanta, they conclude that, so long as the gross debt-GDP ratio is relatively modest, 30%-90% of GDP, the negative growth impact of higher debt is likely to be modest as well.

But as it gets to 90% of GDP, there is a dramatic slowing of economic growth by at least one percentage point a year. The likely causes are expectations of much higher taxes, uncertainty over resolution of the unsustainable deficits, and higher interest rates curtailing capital investment.

The Obama budget takes the publicly held debt to 73% and the gross debt to 103% of GDP by 2015, over this precipice. The president's economists peg long-run growth potential at 2.5% per year, implying per capita growth of 1.7%. A decline of one percentage point would cut this annual growth rate by over half. That's eventually the difference between a strong economy that can project global power and a stagnant, ossified society.

Such vast debt implies immense future tax increases. Balancing the 2015 budget would require a 43% increase in everyone's income taxes that year. It's hard to imagine a worse detriment to economic growth.

Presidents and political parties used to propose paths to a balanced budget. After almost doubling it, Mr. Obama proposes to substitute stabilizing the debt/GDP ratio, a much weaker goal.

That goal requires balancing the budget excluding interest payments, the so-called primary budget. But he never achieves this, even after five and a half years of economic growth, withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, and repaid financial bailouts. The 2015 budget still calls for a primary deficit of $181 billion.

For perspective, returning 2015 spending to population growth plus inflation produces a primary surplus of $645 billion (3.3% of GDP). Mr. Obama's spending turns a short-run crisis into a medium-term debacle.

Two factors greatly compound the risk from Mr. Obama's budget plan. He is running up this debt and current and future taxes just as the baby boomers are retiring and the entitlement cost problems are growing, which will necessitate major reform. (Mr. Obama didn't get any help from his predecessors: George W. Bush's growing Medicare prescription drug benefit was not funded, and Mr. Clinton's Social Security reform was a casualty of the Monica Lewinsky scandal.) And Mr. Obama's programs increase the fraction of people getting more money back from the government than the taxes they pay almost to 50%, just as the demographics on an aging population will drive it up further. That's an unhealthy political dynamic.

Former Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker famously called Reaganomics—with its defense buildup, tax cuts and budget deficits—a "riverboat gamble." (Which, by the way, worked out well.) Mr. Obama's fiscal strategy is more akin to the voyage of the Titanic. Let's hope he changes course soon enough to prevent disaster.

Mr. Boskin is a professor of economics at Stanford University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.

Edited February 13, 2010 by pattygreen

[pattygreen 5]

This is hardly a small number:

43 million people were enrolled in Medicare in 2006, 36 million of whom were 65 and older.

Medicare 101

53 million people were enrolled in Medicaid. (date unknown)

Payroll taxes for these programs are only paid on the first $106,000 in wages. Why should someone like Bill Gates only pay these taxes on his first $106,000? Extend it to at least one million. That would go a long way to helping to fund these very popular programs.

96,000,000 out of 308,672,753 is less than 1/3. Try putting every American on the plan and see what it's going to cost and see if they don't ration your care.

[Cleo's Mom 257]

96,000,000 out of 308,672,753 is less than 1/3. Try putting every American on the plan and see what it's going to cost and see if they don't ration your care.

You are including the 70 million who are under age 18 and most likely be covered under s-chip programs.

But even if a government run health plan would be extended to all americans, I believe they could handle it better than the private insurance companies are handling it now. And without rationing care

Oh, that's right, they don't have to worry about handling it, they just have to deny claims that result in people dying. :thumbdown:

If you had a government plan and they denied you care the first thing you would do would be call your congressman. As scared as they are about getting re-elected all the time, the last thing they would want is angry constituents going public with denied care. They would make sure that didn't happen. They want to get re-elected.

Under private insurance, your only recourse is to sue. Lengthy and expensive.

[Cleo's Mom 257]

By MICHAEL J. BOSKIN

President Barack Obama's 2011 budget lays out a stunningly expensive big-government spending agenda, mostly to be paid for years down the road. He proposes to increase capital gains, dividend, payroll, income and energy taxes. But the enormous deficits and endless accumulation of debt will eventually force growth-inhibiting income tax hikes, a national value-added tax similar to those in Europe, or severe inflation.

On average, in the first three years of the 10-year budget plan, federal spending rises by 4.4% of GDP. That's more than during President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society and Vietnam War buildup and President Ronald Reagan's defense buildup combined. In those same three years, spending on average hits the highest level in American history (25.1% of GDP), save the peak of World War II. The average deficit of $1.4 trillion (9.6% of GDP) is over three times the previous 2008 record.

Remarkably, President Obama will add more red ink in his first two years than President George W. Bush—berated by conservatives for his failure to control domestic spending and by liberals for the explosion of military spending in Iraq and Afghanistan—did in eight. In his first 15 months, Mr. Obama will raise the debt burden—the ratio of the national debt to GDP—by more than Reagan did in eight years.

Some specific proposals are laudable: permanently indexing the Alternative Minimum Tax for inflation, part of the increased R&D funding, reform of agriculture subsidies, a future freeze on one-sixth of the budget (only after it balloons for two years). But these are swamped by the huge expansion and centralization of government.

True, as he often reminds us, President Obama inherited a recession and fiscal mess. Much of the deficit is the natural and desirable result of the deep recession.

As tax revenues fall much more rapidly than income, these so-called automatic stabilizers cushioned the decline in after-tax income and helped natural business-cycle dynamics and monetary policy stabilize the economy. But Mr. Obama and Congress added hundreds of billions of dollars a year of ineffective "stimulus" spending—more accurately characterized as social engineering and pork—when far more effective, less expensive options were available.

The Obama 10-year budget—unprecedented in its spending, taxes, deficits and accumulation of debt—is by a large margin the most risky fiscal strategy in American history. In his Feb. 1 budget message, Mr. Obama said, "We cannot continue to borrow against our children's future." But that is exactly what he proposes to do.

He projects a cumulative deficit of $11.5 trillion by 2020. That brings the publicly held debt (excluding debt held inside the government, e.g., Social Security) to 77% of GDP, and the gross debt to over 100%. Presidents Reagan and George W. Bush each ended their terms at about 40%.

The deficits are so large relative to GDP that the debt/GDP ratio keeps growing and then explodes as entitlement costs accelerate in subsequent decades. So worrisome is this debt outlook that Moody's warns of a downgrade on U.S. Treasury bonds, and major global finance powers talk of ending the dollar's reign as the global reserve currency.

Ken Rogoff of Harvard and Carmen Reinhart of Maryland have studied the impact of high levels of national debt on economic growth in the U.S. and around the world in the last two centuries. In a study presented last month at the annual meeting of the American Economic Association in Atlanta, they conclude that, so long as the gross debt-GDP ratio is relatively modest, 30%-90% of GDP, the negative growth impact of higher debt is likely to be modest as well.

But as it gets to 90% of GDP, there is a dramatic slowing of economic growth by at least one percentage point a year. The likely causes are expectations of much higher taxes, uncertainty over resolution of the unsustainable deficits, and higher interest rates curtailing capital investment.

The Obama budget takes the publicly held debt to 73% and the gross debt to 103% of GDP by 2015, over this precipice. The president's economists peg long-run growth potential at 2.5% per year, implying per capita growth of 1.7%. A decline of one percentage point would cut this annual growth rate by over half. That's eventually the difference between a strong economy that can project global power and a stagnant, ossified society.

Such vast debt implies immense future tax increases. Balancing the 2015 budget would require a 43% increase in everyone's income taxes that year. It's hard to imagine a worse detriment to economic growth.

Presidents and political parties used to propose paths to a balanced budget. After almost doubling it, Mr. Obama proposes to substitute stabilizing the debt/GDP ratio, a much weaker goal.

That goal requires balancing the budget excluding interest payments, the so-called primary budget. But he never achieves this, even after five and a half years of economic growth, withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, and repaid financial bailouts. The 2015 budget still calls for a primary deficit of $181 billion.

For perspective, returning 2015 spending to population growth plus inflation produces a primary surplus of $645 billion (3.3% of GDP). Mr. Obama's spending turns a short-run crisis into a medium-term debacle.

Two factors greatly compound the risk from Mr. Obama's budget plan. He is running up this debt and current and future taxes just as the baby boomers are retiring and the entitlement cost problems are growing, which will necessitate major reform. (Mr. Obama didn't get any help from his predecessors: George W. Bush's growing Medicare prescription drug benefit was not funded, and Mr. Clinton's Social Security reform was a casualty of the Monica Lewinsky scandal.) And Mr. Obama's programs increase the fraction of people getting more money back from the government than the taxes they pay almost to 50%, just as the demographics on an aging population will drive it up further. That's an unhealthy political dynamic.

Former Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker famously called Reaganomics—with its defense buildup, tax cuts and budget deficits—a "riverboat gamble." (Which, by the way, worked out well.) Mr. Obama's fiscal strategy is more akin to the voyage of the Titanic. Let's hope he changes course soon enough to prevent disaster.

Mr. Boskin is a professor of economics at Stanford University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.

No one cares about the conservative spin on the Obama administration's agenda. The republicans had their chance. They had almost 8 years and we are living with the results of their failed policies. So they are the LAST people to be giving advice on how to run an economy.

Obama had to clean up bush's mess. That costs money. Plus he is investing in jobs and the economy and our country's future. Getting the economy healthy and back on track is the best way to reduce the deficit as well as getting healthcare reform.

[pattygreen 5]

No one cares about the conservative spin on the Obama administration's agenda. The republicans had their chance. They had almost 8 years and we are living with the results of their failed policies. So they are the LAST people to be giving advice on how to run an economy.

Obama had to clean up bush's mess. That costs money. Plus he is investing in jobs and the economy and our country's future. Getting the economy healthy and back on track is the best way to reduce the deficit as well as getting healthcare reform.

Yes, we do care. Everyone, except you of course.The writer of that article is a professor of economics at Stamford. He certainly knows what he is talking about. I wouldn't consider it his 'spin'. The stimulus spending was ineffective, and Obama's plan for the economy is going to ruin us!!!!!!!!!!!

[pattygreen 5]

NANCY PELOSI'S "SWEATING TO THE SOCIALISTS" WORKOUT VIDEO! - Video - YouTube

This is the funniest workout video I ever saw!

[Cleo's Mom 257]

Yes, we do care. Everyone, except you of course.The writer of that article is a professor of economics at Stamford. He certainly knows what he is talking about. I wouldn't consider it his 'spin'. The stimulus spending was ineffective, and Obama's plan for the economy is going to ruin us!!!!!!!!!!!

The stimulus was very effective and most economists now say so. Even the hypocritical republicans who voted against it and then accepted the money in their districts say so. Then they praised the stimulus.

[pattygreen 5]

The stimulus was very effective and most economists now say so. Even the hypocritical republicans who voted against it and then accepted the money in their districts say so. Then they praised the stimulus.

You always talk to me about ignoring what the economist's say, and you are doing the same thing.

Originally Posted by pattygreen

By MICHAEL J. BOSKIN

President Barack Obama's 2011 budget lays out a stunningly expensive big-government spending agenda, mostly to be paid for years down the road. He proposes to increase capital gains, dividend, payroll, income and energy taxes. But the enormous deficits and endless accumulation of debt will eventually force growth-inhibiting income tax hikes, a national value-added tax similar to those in Europe, or severe inflation.

On average, in the first three years of the 10-year budget plan, federal spending rises by 4.4% of GDP. That's more than during President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society and Vietnam War buildup and President Ronald Reagan's defense buildup combined. In those same three years, spending on average hits the highest level in American history (25.1% of GDP), save the peak of World War II. The average deficit of $1.4 trillion (9.6% of GDP) is over three times the previous 2008 record.

Remarkably, President Obama will add more red ink in his first two years than President George W. Bush—berated by conservatives for his failure to control domestic spending and by liberals for the explosion of military spending in Iraq and Afghanistan—did in eight. In his first 15 months, Mr. Obama will raise the debt burden—the ratio of the national debt to GDP—by more than Reagan did in eight years.

Some specific proposals are laudable: permanently indexing the Alternative Minimum Tax for inflation, part of the increased R&D funding, reform of agriculture subsidies, a future freeze on one-sixth of the budget (only after it balloons for two years). But these are swamped by the huge expansion and centralization of government.

True, as he often reminds us, President Obama inherited a recession and fiscal mess. Much of the deficit is the natural and desirable result of the deep recession.

As tax revenues fall much more rapidly than income, these so-called automatic stabilizers cushioned the decline in after-tax income and helped natural business-cycle dynamics and monetary policy stabilize the economy. But Mr. Obama and Congress added hundreds of billions of dollars a year of ineffective "stimulus" spending—more accurately characterized as social engineering and pork—when far more effective, less expensive options were available.

The Obama 10-year budget—unprecedented in its spending, taxes, deficits and accumulation of debt—is by a large margin the most risky fiscal strategy in American history. In his Feb. 1 budget message, Mr. Obama said, "We cannot continue to borrow against our children's future." But that is exactly what he proposes to do.

He projects a cumulative deficit of $11.5 trillion by 2020. That brings the publicly held debt (excluding debt held inside the government, e.g., Social Security) to 77% of GDP, and the gross debt to over 100%. Presidents Reagan and George W. Bush each ended their terms at about 40%.

The deficits are so large relative to GDP that the debt/GDP ratio keeps growing and then explodes as entitlement costs accelerate in subsequent decades. So worrisome is this debt outlook that Moody's warns of a downgrade on U.S. Treasury bonds, and major global finance powers talk of ending the dollar's reign as the global reserve currency.

Ken Rogoff of Harvard and Carmen Reinhart of Maryland have studied the impact of high levels of national debt on economic growth in the U.S. and around the world in the last two centuries. In a study presented last month at the annual meeting of the American Economic Association in Atlanta, they conclude that, so long as the gross debt-GDP ratio is relatively modest, 30%-90% of GDP, the negative growth impact of higher debt is likely to be modest as well.

But as it gets to 90% of GDP, there is a dramatic slowing of economic growth by at least one percentage point a year. The likely causes are expectations of much higher taxes, uncertainty over resolution of the unsustainable deficits, and higher interest rates curtailing capital investment.

The Obama budget takes the publicly held debt to 73% and the gross debt to 103% of GDP by 2015, over this precipice. The president's economists peg long-run growth potential at 2.5% per year, implying per capita growth of 1.7%. A decline of one percentage point would cut this annual growth rate by over half. That's eventually the difference between a strong economy that can project global power and a stagnant, ossified society.

Such vast debt implies immense future tax increases. Balancing the 2015 budget would require a 43% increase in everyone's income taxes that year. It's hard to imagine a worse detriment to economic growth.

Presidents and political parties used to propose paths to a balanced budget. After almost doubling it, Mr. Obama proposes to substitute stabilizing the debt/GDP ratio, a much weaker goal.

That goal requires balancing the budget excluding interest payments, the so-called primary budget. But he never achieves this, even after five and a half years of economic growth, withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, and repaid financial bailouts. The 2015 budget still calls for a primary deficit of $181 billion.

For perspective, returning 2015 spending to population growth plus inflation produces a primary surplus of $645 billion (3.3% of GDP). Mr. Obama's spending turns a short-run crisis into a medium-term debacle.

Two factors greatly compound the risk from Mr. Obama's budget plan. He is running up this debt and current and future taxes just as the baby boomers are retiring and the entitlement cost problems are growing, which will necessitate major reform. (Mr. Obama didn't get any help from his predecessors: George W. Bush's growing Medicare prescription drug benefit was not funded, and Mr. Clinton's Social Security reform was a casualty of the Monica Lewinsky scandal.) And Mr. Obama's programs increase the fraction of people getting more money back from the government than the taxes they pay almost to 50%, just as the demographics on an aging population will drive it up further. That's an unhealthy political dynamic.

Former Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker famously called Reaganomics—with its defense buildup, tax cuts and budget deficits—a "riverboat gamble." (Which, by the way, worked out well.) Mr. Obama's fiscal strategy is more akin to the voyage of the Titanic. Let's hope he changes course soon enough to prevent disaster.

Mr. Boskin is a professor of economics at Stanford University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.

When you post an economist's writing it's fact, when I do, it's a 'conservative's spin'.:thumbdown: