The Worst Bill Ever
Epic new spending and taxes, pricier insurance, rationed care, dishonest accounting: The Pelosi health bill has it all.
NOVEMBER 1, 2009, 11:23 P.M. ET
Speaker Nancy Pelosi has reportedly told fellow Democrats that she’s prepared to lose seats in 2010 if that’s what it takes to pass ObamaCare, and little wonder. The health bill she unwrapped last Thursday, which President Obama hailed as a “critical milestone,” may well be the worst piece of post-New Deal legislation ever introduced.
In a rational political world, this 1,990-page runaway train would have been derailed months ago. With spending and debt already at record peacetime levels, the bill creates a new and probably unrepealable middle-class entitlement that is designed to expand over time. Taxes will need to rise precipitously, even as ObamaCare so dramatically expands government control of health care that eventually all medicine will be rationed via politics.
Yet at this point, Democrats have dumped any pretense of genuine bipartisan “reform” and moved into the realm of pure power politics as they race against the unpopularity of their own agenda. The goal is to ram through whatever income-redistribution scheme they can claim to be “universal coverage.” The result will be destructive on every level—for the health-care system, for the country’s fiscal condition, and ultimately for American freedom and prosperity.
•The spending surge. The Congressional Budget Office figures the House program will cost $1.055 trillion over a decade, which while far above the $829 billion net cost that Mrs. Pelosi fed to credulous reporters is still a low-ball estimate. Most of the money goes into government-run “exchanges” where people earning between 150% and 400% of the poverty level—that is, up to about $96,000 for a family of four in 2016—could buy coverage at heavily subsidized rates, tied to income. The government would pay for 93% of insurance costs for a family making $42,000, 72% for another making $78,000, and so forth.
At least at first, these benefits would be offered only to those whose employers don’t provide insurance or work for small businesses with 100 or fewer workers. The taxpayer costs would be far higher if not for this “firewall”—which is sure to cave in when people see the deal their neighbors are getting on “free” health care. Mrs. Pelosi knows this, like everyone else in Washington.
Even so, the House disguises hundreds of billions of dollars in additional costs with budget gimmicks. It “pays for” about six years of program with a decade of revenue, with the heaviest costs concentrated in the second five years. The House also pretends Medicare payments to doctors will be cut by 21.5% next year and deeper after that, “saving” about $250 billion. ObamaCare will be lucky to cost under $2 trillion over 10 years; it will grow more after that.
• Expanding Medicaid, gutting private Medicare. All this is particularly reckless given the unfunded liabilities of Medicare—now north of $37 trillion over 75 years. Mrs. Pelosi wants to steal $426 billion from future Medicare spending to “pay for” universal coverage. While Medicare’s price controls on doctors and hospitals are certain to be tightened, the only cut that is a sure thing in practice is gutting Medicare Advantage to the tune of $170 billion. Democrats loathe this program because it gives one of out five seniors private insurance options.
As for Medicaid, the House will expand eligibility to everyone below 150% of the poverty level, meaning that some 15 million new people will be added to the rolls as private insurance gets crowded out at a cost of $425 billion. A decade from now more than a quarter of the population will be on a program originally intended for poor women, children and the disabled.
Even though the House will assume 91% of the “matching rate” for this joint state-federal program—up from today’s 57%—governors would still be forced to take on $34 billion in new burdens when budgets from Albany to Sacramento are in fiscal collapse. Washington’s budget will collapse too, if anything like the House bill passes.
• European levels of taxation. All told, the House favors $572 billion in new taxes, mostly by imposing a 5.4-percentage-point “surcharge” on joint filers earning over $1 million, $500,000 for singles. This tax will raise the top marginal rate to 45% in 2011 from 39.6% when the Bush tax cuts expire—not counting state income taxes and the phase-out of certain deductions and exemptions. The burden will mostly fall on the small businesses that have organized as Subchapter S or limited liability corporations, since the truly wealthy won’t have any difficulty sheltering their incomes.
This surtax could hit ever more earners because, like the alternative minimum tax, it isn’t indexed for inflation. Yet it still won’t be nearly enough. Even if Congress had confiscated 100% of the taxable income of people earning over $500,000 in the boom year of 2006, it would have only raised $1.3 trillion. When Democrats end up soaking the middle class, perhaps via the European-style value-added tax that Mrs. Pelosi has endorsed, they’ll claim the deficits that they created made them do it.
Under another new tax, businesses would have to surrender 8% of their payroll to government if they don’t offer insurance or pay at least 72.5% of their workers’ premiums, which eat into wages. Such “play or pay” taxes always become “pay or pay” and will rise over time, with severe consequences for hiring, job creation and ultimately growth. While the U.S. already has one of the highest corporate income tax rates in the world, Democrats are on the way to creating a high structural unemployment rate, much as Europe has done by expanding its welfare states.
Meanwhile, a tax equal to 2.5% of adjusted gross income will also be imposed on some 18 million people who CBO expects still won’t buy insurance in 2019. Democrats could make this penalty even higher, but that is politically unacceptable, or they could make the subsidies even higher, but that would expose the (already ludicrous) illusion that ObamaCare will reduce the deficit.
• The insurance takeover. A new “health choices commissioner” will decide what counts as “essential benefits,” which all insurers will have to offer as first-dollar coverage. Private insurers will also be told how much they are allowed to charge even as they will have to offer coverage at virtually the same price to anyone who applies, regardless of health status or medical history.
The cost of insurance, naturally, will skyrocket. The insurer WellPoint estimates based on its own market data that some premiums in the individual market will triple under these new burdens. The same is likely to prove true for the employer-sponsored plans that provide private coverage to about 177 million people today. Over time, the new mandates will apply to all contracts, including for the large businesses currently given a safe harbor from bureaucratic tampering under a 1974 law called Erisa.
The political incentive will always be for government to expand benefits and reduce cost-sharing, trampling any chance of giving individuals financial incentives to economize on care. Essentially, all insurers will become government contractors, in the business of fulfilling political demands: There will be no such thing as “private” health insurance.
***
All of this is intentional, even if it isn’t explicitly acknowledged. The overriding liberal ambition is to finish the work began decades ago as the Great Society of converting health care into a government responsibility. Mr. Obama’s own Medicare actuaries estimate that the federal share of U.S. health dollars will quickly climb beyond 60% from 46% today. One reason Mrs. Pelosi has fought so ferociously against her own Blue Dog colleagues to include at least a scaled-back “public option” entitlement program is so that the architecture is in place for future Congresses to expand this share even further.
As Congress’s balance sheet drowns in trillions of dollars in new obligations, the political system will have no choice but to start making cost-minded decisions about which treatments patients are allowed to receive. Democrats can’t regulate their way out of the reality that we live in a world of finite resources and infinite wants. Once health care is nationalized, or mostly nationalized, medical rationing is inevitable—especially for the innovative high-cost technologies and drugs that are the future of medicine.
Mr. Obama rode into office on a wave of “change,” but we doubt most voters realized that the change Democrats had in mind was making health care even more expensive and rigid than the status quo. Critics will say we are exaggerating, but we believe it is no stretch to say that Mrs. Pelosi’s handiwork ranks with the Smoot-Hawley tariff and FDR’s National Industrial Recovery Act as among the worst bills Congress has ever seriously contemplated.
From the WSJ Online.
While the U.S. already has one of the highest corporate income tax rates in the world
OK – riddle me this, where’s the gap between the tax rates and what the corporations ACTUALLY pay? And why is it that so many incorporate in the Caribbean?
Just saying…
Good question Cuervos, re: the gap between the rate and the actual payments.
As for incorporating in the Caribbean, we know why they do that. I have often wondered if this would change were US corporate tax rates lower.
1. Any chance at reforming corporate taxes died with Charlie Rangel’s ethics problems. You cannot have lower corporate rates (a good thing) without closing the loopholes at the same time.
2. Public outrage can help with the offshore incorporation. Stanley Works recently tried to move to Bermuda and was effectively slapped down.
Naturally, supplying health services to everybody means that this will cost money. And those paying (more) for it should be grateful that they can guarantee a better quality of life to their fellow citizens who are less capitalized. This is solidarity.
I live in Europe and life is mostly good here, although we pay higher taxes. Even if the national social systems might be somewhat inefficient, at least everybody here has the right to equal and high quality medical treatment and we dont have ghettoes all over the place.
Finally, if the averagae american would lead a healthier lifestyle, this would significantly reduce insurance costs.
Europe sucks dick and has been irrelevant for the better part of the last century. If our people want “free” health care, they can freeload on you idiots, for all I care.
oh, yeah, “irrelevant’–which is why there were two world wars fought on its territory, not to mention the cold war–oh, duh, ahistorical morons forget how many trillions of dollars were pumped into tank divisions, nukes, and the like. That’s why we have so many soldiers in Germany. And that’s why Russia fought a war in Georgia.
And that’s why the US missile programs were largely based on German designs. And that’s why the rich and famous drive BMWs and Mercedes and Rovers, rather than Caddys.
Yeah, irrelevant. I am relishing the irony of your comments.
I believe I said “better part of the last century”, meaning sometime around 1950 onward.
We didn’t “fight” the cold war anywhere, and besides, Russia is more Asia than Europe and was also more Totalitarian than the Socialist countries that exist in Europe. More importantly, I wouldn’t want to live there throughout any of its “relevancy”.
The US missile defense program, as well as our nuclear program, and our crytology program, and….were based off German designs because they were made by German mathematicians and scientiests who made it here after fighting to get the hell out.
Most importantly, however, I’m getting tired of a string of people from countries with large entitlement health programs coming over and telling us we need to implement these, as if it actually matters to them. There are far more places in this world with this shit than countries like the US (used to be, maybe), so if our people want it, they have a sleugh of options.
Tom, thanks for your comments.
1. Those paying more have no guarantee that they are buying a better quality of life for their fellow citizens.
2. I do not want a European style of anything, save for maybe the art museums.
3. Are you saying that Europe has no ghettos?
4. You make a good point. Why should taxpayers have to pay for the health care of Americans who lead un-healthy lifestyles? Are you suggesting there should be some kind of obesity test?
Wood,
Yeah, Europe has ghettos, but I’ve been to those ghettos in the French suburbs. Have you ever been to Oakland?
The simple reason the US should socialize healthcare is that it can’t afford the payout that goes to the insurance companies that do nothing productive with their work. There are different kinds of capital. Health insurance is largely parasitic, not creative in classical sense. And why should there be dozens of different bureaucracies designed to squeeze your health dollars into their pockets?
Capitalism is great. But that doesn’t mean that it should dominate all aspects of society or life. If it wants to make money, it should actually go into inventing new means of production.
Spooky, where do you think the insurance company revenues go? Do you think they just disappear into the ether? Do you think insurance companies just burn up their dollars in a huge incinerator?
No, these companies employ people. These employees take their money and spend it whenever and however they like. I suppose you’ll tell me that is not “productive” enough. The implication is that you somehow are morally and intellectually their betters, so that you can decide how their money should be spent.
Hey thanks for your reply..
1. yeah, but was is 100% guruanteed today, try and see what happens, at least it seems to be well intended
2. art museums are cool, indead, but I can also reccomend european cars, food-culture, beer… 🙂
3. far less I would say, you can go almost everywhere in town you like day and night and nothing will ever happen to you… of course there are some exeptions but I think you get my point.
4. this are two seperate issues, the main point is that every human being should be entitled to adequate healthcare, regardless of income in such a rich country,
btw. also in private insurance, people leading a healthy lifestyle pay relatively more than they get “back” than people who do not, that is no particular aspect of public insurance, just an aspect of insurance, exept for that you imply that poor people do lead unhealthier lifestyles
of course there should be tarrifs depending of the individual risk factors, and there are ways to measure them (you should exclude risk factos based on genetics for ethical reasons, though)
Tom,
I will not be as cordial as Wood.
1. ” And those paying (more) for it should be grateful that they can guarantee a better quality of life to their fellow citizens who are less capitalized.”
– At it’s simplest, your argument is unconstitutional. There is no provision in the U.S. Constitution for this boondoggle/powergrab. From a moral standpoint, you sir, are on shaky ground. You advocate “Robin Hoodism”. Taking from the “rich” (read: productive who have earned their wealth) to give to the “poor” (read: unproductive who have not earned what they are receiving). This is detestable. You advocate taking private property from one individual and giving it another. This is immorality of the highest sort. People like you are always eager to give away other people’s resources. The problem with this, aside from the immorailtiy of it, is that, as Margaret Thatcher pointed out, eventually you run out of other people’s money. I give to charity. Probably more than you do. I do not need, nor will I accept, a political force determining my level of “charity”. I can do a better job of it anyway.
2. “I live in Europe and life is mostly good here, although we pay higher taxes. Even if the national social systems might be somewhat inefficient, at least everybody here has the right to equal and high quality medical treatment and we dont have ghettoes all over the place.”
-you, in Europe, are not bound by the U.S. Constitution. You have been infected by the virulent strain of European socialism. You have now come to accept high tax rates as “normal” since you know no other reality. In the U.S., healthcare (high quality or otherwise) is not a “right”. We have a “right” to the pursuit of healthcare. If healthcare is a necessary “right”, than so is food and shelter. Do you advocate state run “food distribution”? How about “universal nutrition”? How about “universal roof-over-your-head”? You tolerate your situation because the state takes from you less than they take from others (I’d wager). Would you accept confiscation of 80% of your resources to redistribute to those who have not earned it? How about 90%? As is typical of your type, you veil your immorality with the shroud of “charity” and “common good”.
3. “Finally, if the averagae american would lead a healthier lifestyle, this would significantly reduce insurance costs.”
-perhaps, but there is a small rent in your argument, known as liberty. Your plan for “universal healthcare” would do away with it. If the government, through the citizens, redistributes the wealth of the productive to give you “free” healthcare, the recipients SHOULD indeed be beholden to restriction on their liberty from the bureacrats. I, for one, refuse to abide by your premise. You, Sir, are a tool of the highest order.
Indeud…
Here, Here.
Indeud.
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Woodshedder,
My man, you need to seriously update your operating system on this question. Your rhetoric is 1985. European rates are not that much higher than US rates and they provide much, much better return on the money. The old saw that the gov is the problem won’t cut it here. And your discussion is contentious and philosophically as well as economically way out of date. The fact is, capital cannot continue to grow its profits in health-care and not take down the entire economy. At some point, a productive economy needs a much more efficient system than the US one.. and there’s only one way to get there. Time to shoot the insurance companies. Every great nation has to choose at certain moments in its history who it will take out to the woodshed. I thought you understood that.
LOL. This from a guy whose system is demographically doomed within this decade.
“None are so blind…”
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Spooky, It would really help if you would put forth some concrete ideas, rather than the abstractions you presented. With all due respect, you’ve written a whole paragraph without really saying anything. Could you be more specific?
Indeud…
Spooky,
The problem isn’t the insurance companies. Capitalism only works if competition is allowed. We have health insurance sans competition in the U.S. If Burger King were not allowed to operate in but a handful of states you’d have poor service at Burger King and higher prices than there are now at Burger King.
O, come now, let’s not get into tit for tat with “concrete” points. There are plenty of those to go around for every point of view on this matter.
If you want concrete ideas, look to Canada, France, or a host of other countries. There is simply no question that they have better systems than we do. For one thing, the stress alone of our system must cost Americans billions of dollars a year. And what, you like filling out endless paperwork just to get reimbursed on routine things. You’ve probably never had to live through a major illness situation, and had to devote your life to insurance company phone calls, bills, and paperwork. What a nightmare–and you don’t get paid for it.
The scandinavian countries have managed to maintain relatively high levels of growth not in spite of their socialized medicine but largely due to it. It keeps the best and the brightest at home. European markets have outpaced the US in the past decade, and with a lot less inequality, obesity, and violence.
You have to think of the US/Europe divide not in some absolute sense, but as two sides of a single administrative paradigm. At some point, market efficiency swings to the socialized side of the equation. This is the case in a number of industries, such as mass transit, where the Europeans kick our ass and sleep with our daughters. They spend far less money on roads repair, cars, and travel, with a lot less destruction of their countryside via suburbanization. And, they are market leaders in a host of hi-tech industries like cars (yes, joke!), airplanes (no joke, Boeing is getting is ass kicked), phones, nuclear reactors, etc.
I don’t know know how good or bad this bill is, but it will accomplish one thing, which is snip the weenies off the big insurers, and those bloodsuckers can drop dead for all i care. Anyone who invests in them deserves to lose it all. Worse than Altria if you ask me.
Quick, Spooky. You’ve just been diagnosed with lymphoma. You need treatment, and fast as this disease will kill you in short order if you don’t. Your choices (assuming you can get to any one of them):
1. U.S. healthcare
2. Canadian healthcare
3. British healthcare
4. “a host of other countries” healthcare
Yea, I thought so…
I’m not as polite as Tom. Piss off asswipe.
That’s a nice retort to my illustrative query, good sir. You have made my point masterfully. And by masterfully, I mean with mind-numbing stupidity…
Your not as smart as Tom, either, apparently.
________
The man makes a point. Health care or coverage is irrelevant next to quality and availability of service.
And this man makes a good point by pointing out my good point.
I’m a trader, and I come to this site to see what Wood is up to… but this has me intrigued. I’ll also say up front that I’m a republican and very conservative. That being said, something is wrong. In answer to your question about where I would go, according to the World Health Organization, the US ranks 37th in quality of health care. I’m not sure we have the market cornered. I’ve received healthcare in many countries and my experience is that we clearly DO have the market cornered on beauracracy and red tape.
I don’t like it any more than the next red blooded american, and I REALLY don’t like the idea of the government taking it over; but things are distorted and VERY broken. By the way, I don’t have a solution (and I don’t like this one at all)… just ranting.
my $.02
Snap, I agree that something is wrong. Here is a decent report which details many of the problems. It was completed by the congressional research service.
http://assets.opencrs.com/rpts/RL34175_20070917.pdf
There are many problems.
This bill does nothing to address any of them.
By the way, every once in a while, I use my blog as a bully pulpit. I don’t want to offend anyone. Its just that some issues I find of utmost importance and I want to get the message out.
Snap, the figure you cited (U.S. ranks 37th in healthcare) is misleading. This is common with raw numbers. The interpretation is entirely contingent upon how they figure the factors involved. For example, infant mortality. Depending on how you define your terms and what you count as “infant” or “mortality”, you’ll come up with different “rankings”. Some countries don’t even count a birth as “live” until several hours, or even days after delivery. So if the infant dies for the predetermined time, it isn’t even counted as a birth and then subsequent death. I’d be interested to see which 36 are ranked ahead of the U.S.
Junk, good points. I did not read that congressional research report with my bullshit detectors on. It is full of raw numbers, so beware.
JunkSpread
I wont reply to your personal allegations or whatever guesswork or populist 60ies rhetoric about me or the european system, cause its retarded and would only provoke more of this from your side. getting offensive will not make your argument any more coherent.
Unfortunately when ignoring the beforementioned there is not much left to discuss, but I wanna make some points.
This is the classic clash of ideologies. But see, in europe we just have capitalism with some social aspects to make the economy more efficient, the life more harmonious and pleasent for everyone living in this society. I agree that the states role is too prominent in many aspects and I dont say that this system is perfect but I strongly agree with its essence – that property brings with it a commitment to society.
I most warmly welcome your ideas of “universal nutrition” or “universal roof over the head”.
No seriously, the spreading of wealth, to some extent, makes perfect sense and i think 35-50% taxation for wealthy individuals is reasonable.
Accept that there is nor right or wrong dude, just standpoints, though your model does not seem to have been working so well over the last decade. You see, every system tends to move to an equilibrium, and your equilibrium will (and already has) lead to a situation where most of the countries wealth is controlled by some plutocrats/oligarchs if you do not introduce some balancing, the middle class will thin out more and more. In the end, you will see in the coming years how the US healthcare experiment will turn out, be grateful to give!!!
Make the economy “more efficient” with socialism?
(Did he say that?)
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Thanks for the comments folks. I’m at work, and what I want to say is going to take me a half hour or so, and so it will have to wait for a couple of hours. But those who can comment, feel free…no need to wait for me.
Tom,
You and I have a fundamental difference on what constitutes morality. I will hazard a guess that you fall more to the side of subjectivism; that is, there is really no “right” or “wrong”. Therefore, to take from one that you deem to have “too much” and give it to those how have “less” is not a tax on your conscience. I, however, am more of an objectivist. I believe there are fundamental norms of morality. One of which is that of property rights determined by sacred and binding contract law. If one “owns” something, it belongs to them. I believe it morally reprehensible that one would advocate confiscation of that property “for the good of society”. You’re dialogue reminds me of that of Mr. Mouch and Dr. Ferris in “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand. At this point, you and I are like 2 ships passing in the night. You would feel more at home in a communistic environment (assuming they didn’t take TOO much of your property or rights) whereas I feel more comfortable in a capitalistic society. One can argue about the definitions of what “communism” and “capitalism” really contain, but to state otherwise is either disingenuous, intellectually dishonest, or outright deception. I do not argue for absolute, unfettered capitalism. I agree that there need to be laws to restrain those who would seek to take from others what is rightfully theirs. You, sir, seem to find this morally acceptable, so long as it conforms to your idea of what constitutes the public good (which is subjective in and of itself). This is the impasse as I see it.
Are you really serious, man? This is the most retarded post I’ve ever read. My undergraduates can do better than this! Contract law doesn’t guarantee health insurance companies fat premiums. My healthcare is not their “property” douchebag.
Seriously, Ayn Rand idiots make me tired. Go back to school, moron. Or just look up “subjectivism” so that you can at least pretend to have a clue. Or just stop contradicting yourself within a single post in sentence fragments.
Sheesh!
Health insurer profit margins are 5-6%.
http://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/health_insurance_margins/2009/10/26/276974.html
Your assertion about fat premiums doesn’t hold water.
Furthermore, can you imagine a gov’t running a business, and running it successfully when to start it only has 5-6% profit margins?
So who pays for it when the gov’t insurance program loses money? The taxpayers!!!
There was a massive funding crisis in as early as 2005. The whole insurance industry countrywide, on average, was in the red. That’s not “obscene profits” so much as “staggering losses.”
So your answer to who pays for it when there’s a shortfall–which, by the way, in a for-profit model is endemic to the system, as there is always a shortfall, since companies must always grow or die, margins, profits, and everything else–is that we should get shafted over and over again, not only with our own healthcosts but those of the uninsured…??
Explain the circularity inherent in the system as it stands, and you will see why your argument doesn’t hold up.
The people who pay for it in a shortfall are the same people who pay for it the rest of the time, whether it be a private or government run system.
The purpose of insurance is not to provide healthcare, it is to mitigate risk. If we were not dependent on short term wages and profits, no one would get insurance because it would be wasteful.
However, with the government model, getting insurance becomes profitable for masses of individuals, which encourages overloading the system and renders it anemic. Also, it will likely not be funded properly, which will cause financial pandemonium as per Woodshedder’s observations.
Also, companies are not constantly endemic. They do not have to perpetually grow; they choose to perpetually grow. Really, that was just fucking stupid.
What does that 5-6% margin add up to? Why is that insufficient? And how do you account the fact that the maintenance of that margin requires total revenues to grow? What are the y-over-y growth numbers? They are obscene.
Sorry, there are a lot of nominal figures that completely obfuscate the real problem.
And the 2005 funding crisis–if I remember correctly, that was a bogus crisis.
Spooky, slow down. You’ve got more red herrings than fish market.
Your argument was that the insurers had fat premiums.
That has proven to be false. The companies are barely turning a profit.
Every other assertion was added by you, such as whether those margins are sufficient or insufficient. If you wish to argue for one of those premises, then you need to provide some data to make your case.
That would be a question for the courts, since the majority of “profits” go to liability funding for indemnity and defense. The real question is, after a period of ten to twenty years, how much money do they have left?
It’s a difficult question to answer, since courts keep awarding greater and greater settlements for such abstract concepts of “suffering”. If there was a cap or litigation that mandated only reimbursement for costs of procedures, then potential liabilities on healthcare would level off along with subsequent funding levels of insurers.
Oh I just saw the last snip; first, I’m not sure if it was 2005. The report I saw extended through several years, however, so 2005 was likely in them (New York is the only state currently averaging as unsustainable). And it wasn’t bogus, you jackass, it’s why everyone’s premiums have gone up.
This strikes me as odd. As you referred to “my undergraduates”, I must presume you are a professor, a TA, or some other such “academic” (not necessarily an intellectual; the two are not synonymous). And yet you use the adjective “retarded” in reference to my post.
I wasn’t referring to your healthcare as their (the insurance company) property; or anyone’s property for that matter. I was referring to my earned tax dollars as my property as well as everything my tax dollars are capable of buying. My property, be it my gold bars, my fiat money, or my convertible automobile are mine. They are not yours, free for the taking, contrary to what you might believe.
Michael Moore idiots, as you seem to be a prime example of, make me more than tired. They make me angry. Because they sometimes manage to obtain positions of influence; like politician. Or teachers…
I don’t need to go back to school, especially with your type fomenting your stupidity under the guise of fact. The only contradiction I see is that mouth-breathers like yourself manage to form complete sentences to spew their jibberish. You see, it’s a contradiction, because you appear to possess a cerebrum as evidenced by your ability to use a keyboard, yet your sub-human brand of stupidity would seem to argue otherwise. They say that there really are no contradictions. If you believe a contradiction exists, check your premises. One must be wrong. In your case, perhaps I should consider that only a brainstem is necessary for breathing…
Go to a tea-party and move to Alaska where you can commune with your fellow “angry” idiots. Really, but down here in reality, people are trying to save this country from those who endlessly claim to know what capitalism is and how it ought to be just like some 3rd rate hollywood screenwriter named Ayn Rand fantasized it ought to be. But then again, this country has always had its love for snakeoil.
Your “earned” tax dollars are not a god-given right. They are already “earned” by you in the context of a social contract–and that contract, pal, is always under negotiation. That negotiation is called “politics.” There is no absolute divide between property and politics. Only on the basis of the contract can you have property, and a contract, being political, always presumes the existence of society before your individual “rights.” Hobbes already understood this. So did the great natural law theorists of the 17th century like Grotius.
Really, you should educate yourself a little.
Actually, I can have property by saying I have property, and holding it from others. I don’t need a contract, I just really want one to keep things civil. More importantly, society cannot exist without a group of individuals, thus society is beholden to individuals and whatever they deem their rights to be. Neglecting this relationship of dependency is why natural law theory and other axiomatic institutions are impractical, if not useless.
How’s this for negotiation? Fuck that, we’re not going to pay for this.
Is the Constitution based on the work of Hobbes or Locke Professer Dufus?
Seriously, I’m starting to think this grouper is a Wood plant set in the threa in order to better illustrate Shed’s argument.
Spooky is right, the concept of property implies that there is a contract.
Holding material things just means you literally “hold” them. Realize that nothing you hold ultimateley belongs to you in any fashion and will eventually be taken away from you.
Spooky, were I you I would retreat first, rather than fall apart into nasty ranting. You’ve been p’awned, called out, shown the fool. Come back with logical argument, not argument ad authoritum from the professorial chair. There’s not much respect for Marxist professors in these parts.
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Some more concrete information for you:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/05/opinion/05kristof.html
Ironically, the sources in this opine piece do not seem very concrete.
For instance, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation article had to adjust American institution numbers to an amenable mortality rate (read, weighted and heavilty biased to whatever level the issuers desire) before they could criticize them. Reviewing an amenable rate, in this instance, is essentially a critique of the uninsured only, since care with coverage is reduced in relevancy and “easily correctible” issues are weighted much higher.
The only criteria for this type of adjustment is whether or not the analyst believes someone could have been treated better if they had health care. It’s cherry picking arguments and essentially grants any country that completely insures it’s people an instant win against one that doesn’t, regardless of overall quality of care. And even after all of that raw manipulation of reason, it could only conclude that you couldn’t conclude the U.S. offered a superior service. Weak.
Beware magic constants in math problems; one quarter of this Kristof asshole’s sources are already garbage and I haven’t checked the others yet (I see a U.N. piece over there just begging to be torn a new one).
ROFL!
“Concrete information” from liberal dimwit Nicholas Kristoff?
(definitely a plant)
______
I’m going to have to hit this in parts. I’m leaving for home, but wanted to drop off a couple of issues. I’m going to start with my primary concern, that is the cost of gov’t insurance.
1. The country can’t afford this. Health insurance costs are going to go higher due to more demand and restrictions on how the insurers can handle pricing with increased demand. What this will mean is that health insurers will go out of business, which will leave us with 1 insurer, the U.S. Taxpayer.
2. When the U.S. gov’t is the ONLY insurer, the US gov’t will not charge for care appropriately (as it will be too expensive) and thus will subsidize care and insurance. The subsidies will cost the U.S. Taxpayer trillions, adding more debt to a country that is already drowning in debt.
Thus, we come to taxes. The only way for the US gov’t to provide the same level of insurance and health care will be to raise taxes, OR they will have to ration care or decrease the quality of service.
i. The tax burden of the top 1% already exceeds that of the bottom 95%, and “Some in Washington say the tax system is still not progressive enough. However, the recent IRS data bolsters the findings of an OECD study released last year showing that the U.S.—not France or Sweden—has the most progressive income tax system among OECD nations. We rely more heavily on the top 10 percent of taxpayers than does any nation and our poor people have the lowest tax burden of those in any nation.”
http://www.taxfoundation.org/blog/show/24944.html
ii. From Obama’s Chair of his Council of Economic Advisors, Christina Romer’s 2007 research: “The resulting estimates indicate that tax increases are highly contractionary. The effects are strongly significant, highly robust, and much larger than those obtained using broader measures of tax changes. The large effect stems in considerable part from a powerful negative effect of tax increases on investment.”
She goes on to estimate a legislated tax increase equal to 1% of GDP has a negative multiplier of 3. To be clear, a tax raise equal to 1% of GDP is actually estimated to REDUCE GDP by 3%.
http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~cromer/RomerDraft307.pdf
The point is that the country cannot afford this “model” of reform. Those of you who think it is just hitting the “rich” (I’ll have more data for you later about who actually constitutes the rich) are going to be shocked to learn that most of who is considered “rich” by the IRS are actually normal working class people. Besides, once the rich are fully taxed to European levels of 60% of income, who will be next? It will be the middle class.
Let me save you some sanity, Wood. The Marxists on Capitol Hill who advocate this leviathan of a bill aren’t advocates because they believe it financially sound; although they will tout it as such. They are attempting to push it through via brute force because it is integral to their socialist utopian agenda. They are banking on the believe that most of the uninformed masses are too brain-dead from playing XBox in their parent’s basement (read: Spooky) to understand the staggering differences between the terms “billion” and “trillion”. They are attempting to create an expanded voter bloc of entitlement recipients who will keep them in a position of power. All the number crunching on your abacus is wasted time, my friend. They will deny it not because they believe your figures wrong. They will deny it because it is irrelevant to their purpose. These people are not to be reasoned with. They have no use for reason; it doesn’t support their agenda. These types need to be crushed. And by crushed, I mean be kicked to the curb by informed, concerned pro-growth capitalists at the voting booth.
Nothing is more annoying than being called a “marxist” by know-nothings. I am making capitalistic arguments for why health-care is undermining our competitive advantage you moron!
But you can’t seem to engage my argument, which is about the need to develop an efficient and robust health-care system that won’t drain resources from the economy. In case you haven’t understood, that means that capital needs to be freed up for productive purposes–and yes, Wood, precisely because there is a single payer. How? Well, for one thing, doctors wouldn’t make obscene salaries. The same argument is now being made for shrinking the size of the financial sector, which is sucking up a far larger part of the surplus produced in the economy than is healthy for economic expansion.
Think of it this way if it helps: health care and finance have “taxed” the economy into recession and a potential deflationary spiral that has demanded the government step in with its own taxes to fill a vacuum and achieve equilibrium. As any trader knows, one person’s gain is another’s loss. That is true for the economy as a whole. A single payer will rebalance the claims on production across the economy.
Spooky, I provide you data from non-partisan sources that shows why this health care bill actually decrease our output and thus our GDP. This is the essence of a drain to the economy. Yet, you provide no data to show any other model that “frees up capital for productive purposes.”
Their is nothing in this bill that will reduce the cost of health care for Americans. Nothing. And there is nothing in there that will improve health care.
What’s the point?
If gov’t is so good at redistributing capital, as you believe, then why do we not just tax all Americans at 100% and let the gov’t redistribute it?
Do we need to look at the efficiency of the latest stimulus package, cash for clunkers, etc., to see that gov’t does a piss poor job of allocating resources? Really?
Wood,
You’re right in a limited way. You have to think a little more globally (figuratively speaking) about rebalancing. Politics is a rebalancing of the sharp inequalities produced by a “pure” capital model. Another way to say this is that you need a healthy middle class to sustain growth. That’s why everyone is counting on China now to save the world’s economy. They seem to be the only ones capable of creating a consuming class that can drive growth.
As for your arguments above re the 5-6%, again, I don’t buy it. The health insurers… maybe, but the health-care behemoth that is sinking the productive economy sucks far more out of the total GDP pie than it ought to. You gotta look at these things from a macro perspective.
Gotta go home and see my kid!
Catch you later.
Spooky, this is what I do not understand. You admit that this bill does nothing to solve any of the problems of the American health care and insurance system. Yet you are still for it?
The only reason that could be true is that it is not real improvement you want, but instead you want an ideological shift in our country.
As for a healthy middle class…We have a very healthy middle class. In fact, our middle class is doing so well, the IRS and politicians wants to call them “rich” so that they can trick Americans into taxing them more. See, if you take the middle class, and then label them “rich” their taxes can be raised with much fewer complaints… See below. You have been duped by semantics, courtesy of your class-warfare politicians…
Today, the composition of taxpayers in the statistical “middle class” is completely reversed from what it was in 1960. More than two-thirds of modern middle-income taxpayers are single, or single-headed households, while just 36 percent are married. More dramatically, while half of the middle-income taxpayers in 1960 were couples with children, today only 18 percent of these taxpayers are couples with children. The majority of couples with children are now clustered in the top two quintiles.
These demographic shifts have no doubt contributed to the perception of rising income inequality. When the so-called rich are increasingly couples with two incomes, they will naturally look wealthier than the vast number of single taxpayers who now populate the statistical middle.
As has been outlined in previous Tax Foundation studies, taxes are stressing these dual-earner families from all sides. Many of these families live in high-cost urban and suburban areas and have incomes commensurate with the cost of living. Because of the progressivity of the federal tax code, these couples end up facing the highest federal income tax rates even though they live distinctly “middle-class” lifestyles.
These couples also tend to live in communities with high state and local taxes–especially property taxes. As a result, they are increasingly subjected to the Alternative Minimum Tax, which increases their federal tax bills.
As lawmakers look for solutions to the economic challenges facing today’s “middle-class” but upper-income families, they would do well to consider the way in which taxes–federal and local–are contributing to the problem.
http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/2182.html
Another “must read” — this time about the massive doctor shortage this bill will produce.
Happy happy joy, joy!
Yeah, it would produce a massive doctor shortage: Like a childhood friend of mine, who went to dental school, then became a plastic surgeon because the profits were far higher. 12 years of education, and all the guy works on are lips, tits, and asses. Now, nothing inherently wrong with that, but if these are the kinds of doctors that will no longer be around, I don’t care.
Let me make a global point: I’m sure there are a lot of problems in this bill. I’m also sure that this will cost the country a lot. But if the country can’t afford this bill, it can’t afford not to have a bill. Sorry, but the CBO numbers on exploding costs are outrageous. And no one on your side of the argument has ever explained why our health statistics are so much shittier than countries that spend fractions of what we spend. We spend more and we get less. That includes the middle-class bagholders of our lovely nation. Indeud!
Really, you should educate yourself a little.
If there is one thing in this world that consistantly infuriates me, it’s a self-agrandizing “intellectual” who unendingly informs others to go “educate” themselves. And what is it, pray tell, that you so absolutely “know”.
That some biased prick in the New York Times, of all the untrustworthy sources, thinks universal coverage is good.
That there was a Cold War, and some World Wars, which makes you a history major (see what I did there?).
Congratulations, you know exactly what everyone else knows.
You were the one who insisted on the “irrelevance” of Europe. You should lie in the bed that you made.
I’m done with this thread.
haha, yeah, I perhaps should have been kinder to mother Europe, save that I am on my final threads with this healthcare debate.
Nice try Wood — er “Spooky!”
No way you’re not making this caricature up.
Seriously, the “educate yourself” gave you away, bud.
😉
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http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/That-1990-page-Democratic-health-care-bill–Its-longer-now-includes-new-government-controls–69278647.html
A few points..
1. That WHO study where we rank 37th has been debunked as a fraud..
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125608054324397621.html
25% of the ranking was based on this ridiculous standard..””Financial fairness, which measures how progressive or regressive the financing of a country’s health care system is — that is, whether or not the financial burdens are borne by those who are economically better off. This factor receives a 25 percent weight.””
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2009/sep/14/paul-hipp/rocker-viral-video-mocks-us-37th-best-health-care-/
2. Unemployment in Europe, due to socialism, is always much higher than in the US. Take a look at countries such as France, Germany, Spain and Poland for the past 5 years. (scroll down half the web page)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_European_Union
3. There will always be rich and poor. If you take away everyone’s wealth and give each person $100,000 instead, it is a certainty that in 10 years you will have people with millions and other people flat broke. Kind of like financial traders, huh? 😉 Therefore, socialism will never work in the long run. The government can’t be all things to all people.
Very nice. Another addenda on your point about the WHO survey is “mortality rates” — especially among infants. Some socialist states don’t even consider premature births to be “births” at all. We have the best neo-natal rates gauged by levels of development.
Another great test is “effectiveness of care,” which gauges outcomes of various therapies — cancer care for example. We blow the world away in these statistics, which makes sense as we are the seat of innovation.
That will go away, of course, if our superior system becomes another government run program.