Gov Health Care Will Only Hurt A Little Bit…
By The Arch City Madman
When it comes to the health care debate, I’m just a simple layman. I see additional government intrusion as a bad thing and detrimental to our country. Right now, I personally pay what I consider an exorbitant amount of money in taxes as do most in the middle class and above. Not only do we pay income and ss taxes, but also all the other taxes that most others pay on gas, food, products, etc., not to mention local and state taxes. Now we are asked to pony up money to cover government run health care? You can only squeeze a turnip so hard.
Harry Reid and his allies have had to give even more handouts to gin up votes for the Senate version of the Health Care bill:
No problem, I’ll just start sending the rest of my paycheck to Nebraska, Louisiana, Connecticut…..
I ran across an interesting article from Michael Tanner entitled “Five Health Reform Whoppers” and thought it was worthy of reposting.
Health care reform will reduce your insurance premiums. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the Senate bill does little or nothing to reduce insurance premiums. Even if the bill passes, premiums will roughly double by 2016, and keep rising after that. But for millions of Americans, the Senate bill will actually make things worse. According to the CBO, the bill would actually increase insurance premiums by 10 to 13 percent for Americans who don’t receive insurance from their employers and buy their own insurance. These increases are over and above any increases that would occur if we did nothing.
Middle-class taxes won’t be raised. The Senate bill raises at least 15 new or increased taxes totaling more than $493 billion. While some, like the increase in the payroll tax, would primarily hit the wealthy, many would fall solidly on the middle class. For example, the bill includes a 40 percent excise tax on so-called “Cadillac” insurance plans, that is, insurance that is more generous than the government thinks it should be. According to the CBO, roughly 19 percent of workers would initially find their plans subject to the tax. However, because the tax threshold is set to increase at a rate slower than medical inflation, as time goes by more and more middle-class workers will be hit by it.
Middle-class taxpayers would be taxed in other ways as well. The Senate bill would require everyone to buy a government-designed insurance plan, even if it were more expensive than their current policy. Failure to comply brings a penalty of up to $6,750 for a family of four. If the government took money directly from you, then turned around and gave it to an insurance company, everyone would agree that you’ve been taxed. How is that any different from the government mandating that you pay the insurer directly?
You can keep your current insurance. The Senate bill contains an individual mandate, that is, a requirement that every American must purchase health insurance. But not just any health insurance will satisfy that mandate. To qualify, a plan would have to meet certain government-defined standards. Those standards may be more expensive than your current plan, may include benefits you don’t want and may even have benefits you are morally opposed to. As noted above, failure to comply brings a penalty of up to $6,750 for a family of four.
It will only cost $848 billion. It is true that the CBO officially scored the bill as costing $848 billion. But much of the spending is back-loaded. The bill doesn’t start spending until 2014, and only costs $9 billion that year. By 2019, the annual cost hits $196 billion. The minority staff of the Senate Budget Committee reports the cost is closer to $2.5 trillion over 10 years once all budget gimmicks are factored out. If you include costs shifted to individuals, businesses and state governments, the price tag could top $6 trillion.
It will reduce the budget deficit. The CBO does say that the bill would reduce the deficit by $130 billion over the next 10 years (which is less than the deficit the government ran last month alone). However, even that tiny savings depends on budget gimmicks and the willingness of future Congresses to make huge cuts in Medicare spending. In fact, the CBO makes it clear that it will be “difficult” to achieve the predicted savings.
It seems that some type of reform is a forgone conclusion. I believe that any type of expansion of the health care system in this manner will lead to fewer choices, higher taxes and eventually a totally government run system. Pretending that a single payer system for all is not the end game is disingenuous.
Over and Out.
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Yep, they’ll get it in, a little at a time.
Between all the taxes you mentioned, I’m probably dropping 40 – 50% of my pay in taxes. It will only get worse…
There are real benefits for you and your family from this legislation. It is the kind of program that Republicans could have easily promoted and passed if they cared for real Americans.
The bill is deficit neutral, ends abuses by insurance companies, removes pre-existing conditions, ends rescission abuses, and does not contain a public option. By our own post, the bill It also reduces projected Medicare cost increases to near $0, a major win for anyone concerned with the deficit. Of course, you gents aren’t going to give anyone praise for anything that reduces the deficit.
The post you quote is an attempt to manipulate you into believing that taxes will be going up for you. They will be for people making over $250k/yr, or for people who have Cadillac plans, such as union members and some professionals like doctors and lawyers.
I doubt seriously that the middle class will have any backlash against this plan. They will love portability and every having insurance. This quite a boom for small business in terms of hiring.
I doubt very much that this bill will cost you, or the average American anything. It may save you tons of money.
One last point on Health care reform will (not) reduce your insurance premiums.
The law does not set price caps in insurance. The government cannot mandate a price. Insurance premiums have been climbing at a rate of 200% in 8 years.
What is not stated: today insurance carriers are protected from competition because none of them provide insurance portability. Today there are significant risks for a company or an individual to change carriers. It creates existing condition barriers. This is particularly true in the Midwest and South insurance markets (poor consumer protection), and for companies with under 75 employees almost everywhere.
This new bill will now provide insurance portability, which means you can now safely shop around. A win for every business and every American.
I do like the portability portion of the bill and the removal of the pre-existing condition exclusions.
But, creating a new government bureaucracy and adding medical insurance coverage for 30 million Americans will not be deficit neutral. The numbers don’t add up.
The CBO numbers is what everyone has been quoting, and those numbers add up as far as the projections go through 2029. They stated that the bill will reduce the deficit the first 10 years by $132 billion and by $650 billion to $1.3 trillion in the second decade.
Given those numbers, the bill raises taxes by some $750B in the next ten years and by $1.3T in the decade that follows.
For those who just love their private insurance, your policy today, which likely costs you $1,200 to $1,500/mo will cost you between $2,600 – $3,200/mo by 2019, assuming 8% growth.
Much more reform is needed in health care to preserve the middle class. America needs to find a way to begin to solve these issues.
On the political expenditure side, this bill is a huge win for the President. The horrendous debate of the right against the bill will have its political fallout.
It may already have had. I cannot tell you how many of my Republican friends have told me the utter disgust with the National Republican party and right wing talking heads over what went on this past summer.
Maybe it’s just my friends.
I am not an expert in this area, nor do I claim to be. I hear a whole lot of disagreement from both sides as to the assumptions going into the CBO numbers, and potential impact. Sourcing would take time that I currently do not have, and what I am citing is what I have heard or read in the last few weeks, so I can not recall each and every source.
First, since the majoirty of the benefits of the bill will not kick in for several years, I have heard more than one credible source state that the reason this bill is “budget neutral” is because there are several more years of revenue in the 10 year projection than there are costs. A little trick to balance the books.
Second, I understand that the CBO does not research to provide its evaluation, but rather depends on those providing the data to give them the numbers and the assumptions. Therefore, if the CBO is told to expect a certain level of revenue or cut, they have to put it in regardless of whether or not it is legit. This is one of the reasons I heard that the Senate assumptions double counted some costs or allowed certain levels of disputed revenues. Another reason that if the inputs are in dispute the output of the CBO is also in dispute (GIGO), but not because of the CBO.
I am with Mike and Buzz on the portablity. In a previous discussion way back in the summer (I can not find it), I recommended portability, along with a separation from employer-based healthcare and tort-reform as the best three things for the government to go after… and to do it one at a time. We have potential portability, but tort-reform was never considered because Big Trial having the Dems in their pocket, and employee-based healthcare (no matter how lousy it is by taking the consumer out of the decision making process) is apparently a sacred cow.
On the other hand, I don’t see many Republicans rank and file disgusted with the national party. When you can not get a single GOP Congressman or Senator (including the Maine sisters and other liberal GOP members) to sign on at all, and yet you lose some of your own Democrats, it is not the GOP rank-and-file that are sickened. The election of 2010 is likely to see huge shifts back toward the GOP, although probably not control of either chamber. Health care reform as currently proposed is very unpopular, although the idea of “reform” is still very high.
This is going to get very ugly for Dems if it passes in 2010.
I could write volumes about how they get you to vote against your own best interests. I feel that once people understand what they are getting, then they will make a more rational choice. Right now the rhetoric is high. Not passing this bill in 2010 is death to Democrats; therefore passing it is much better.
On the rhetoric side, how you gents can do you guys hear “death panels” (where none existed) all summer long, then really see what is in the bill (always was there) and still support R’s I’ll never know. But, they do get you to vote against your own best interests (and I can make my case in detail).
A perfect example is tort reform. It is one thing to pass a law that balances costs to physicians. It is quite another to suggest that tort reform will provide health care to all. Tort reform would reduce costs to physicians by $30,000/yr, so probably less than 5% of their costs. Yet they have you believing that it is (a) huge issue and (b) trail lawyers don’t want it.
I happen to know that if R’s had offered a few votes they could have had that included in the bill.
R’s never had any intention of participating in the bill. So the legitimate question is, why are R’s not working in your favor? In the last 8 years R’s could have provided a bill with portability, cut abuses, and included tort reform. They didn’t even try.
So why are you still interested in R’s in government? Why do you want another 8 disastrous years of Republicans in government? Those years were marked with a lack of bills that helped you personally, years where they racked up $5T in debt.
If you want good government you need to vote for a Democrat. They provided everyone with health care without adding dime to the budget. Now that is something!
Btw- you could not be more wrong about your description of the CBO. The CBO is the watchdog of the deficit. All bills must pass their research and approval before they can be declared deficit free. They DO their research.
I disagree in what you consider to be people’s “best interests”. Ever decision has a consequence. For example, if I choose to sell off a family heirloom, it can be considered in my financial “best interest” to do so because I would get cash at that moment, but at what future cost? So called “health care reform” has both positive and negative consequences, which have been noted several times on this blog and others. Weighing the net effect, I don’t agree that overall this bill is in the best interest of most, although some may experience a positive gain.
Regarding the politics, you can claim that you think rhetoric is high now, but this is not unpopular because the GOP is out to fool anyone. People read the bill, see how the Dems are jamming it through, and they are getting annoyed and upset. They see the Dems playing games with the budget, and increasing government involvement into an addition 1/6 of our economy. You think that passing nothing is worse than passing something. On this, we disagree. If this passes, supporters will have to account… such as Sens. Nelson, Landreu, Lincoln, Prior, Baucus, Dorgan, Conrad, Johnson, Dodd, Tester… etc., let alone all the House members in tough races . If it does not pass, Pelosi, Frank, and other liberals will face no scruitiny at all. They will be safe, and the moderates who did not vote for it will be able to say in their election campaign that they did not vote for the bill. It will be a winner for them.
Death Panels have been discussed in detail on this blog and others, but the term described an accurate (albeit controversial label) proposed system of rationing universal healthcare. Proposals make their ways into bills and out of bills. Quite frankly, I have been following the details a lot less closely this time around (Senate version) as I have a lot less time available in my day as of late.
No one claims that tort reform will provide health care to all. It is a reform to the system. There is already health care to all (many hospitals provide services for anyone in need, and then spread the costs around to everyone else). On the other hand, if we were to reduce the cost of any product or service by 5%, then that would be a good thing. Ignoring it is ignoring real reform. It is a arrow in the quiver, and at 5% a pretty big one at that.
I doubt that seriously. This was not a bi-partasan effort. There are plenty of Republicans that are willing to buck their party in the spirit of compromise, as they have done in the past. Most are ready to deal for the sake of dealing. Off the top of my head, McCain, Grahamn, Snowe, Collins, Gregg, Grassley, and even Hatch. They are not the only ones. You also claim that this is a budget neutral bill. Then where are the R’s deficit hawks? Mccain, Colburn? What about the GOP doctors? Colburn, Barrasso? If this is good for them and their patience, they would surely support. No, the reason there has not been any GOP support is because the Dems wrote a bill, and tried to by one or two votes with provisions like the Louisiana Purchase or Nebraska Compromise. If they wanted real reform, they would have gotten at least one sell out… but they did not.
It appears the GOP is working in my favor, and that of the American people… not the opposite. They only reason opposition was not bi-partisan was because the Dems were bought off in ugly little deals that allowed them to compromise their principles (e.g., Nelson and abortion).
Another thing we have beat up countless times. I see the years and years of growth during the Bush years as far from disastrous. It would be like calling the Reagan/Bush years a failure because of the recession in 1991, or the Clinton years a failure because of the 2000 recession and 9/11. Unemployment and growth were all good during the Bush 43 years. They were far from disastrous. The debt that he racked up were bad (as we have said here countless times), but the professional spenders are back in town and making the GOP look like the bush league spenders they were.
Again, there are serious and credible reasons to doubt that the Senate version, the House version or any future version of this bill will be deficit neutral. There are assumptions on which this is based that are in dispute.
When the CBO analyses a bill, they rely on the assumptions of what is provided to them. If they feel something is off, they can comment on it, but the calcuations stay in place as requested. They might write something like this, as they wrote back to Sens. Sessions and Gregg in a request to clarify double-counting of Medicare tax hikes and spending cuts as both extending the solvency of the program and paying for expanded healthcare coverage:
When I said “once people understand what they are getting, then they will make a more rational choice” I was referring to portability and an end to insurance abuses. You know that you and your family benefit materially from these changes in the law.
Your post is all about sacrificing your own needs for the greater Republican good. My post was about how the Republican party doesn’t care about anything that you care about:
– they don’t care about the deficit. They ran it up to $5T and they don’t have a plan to fix it.
– they don’t care about whether you have health care. If you lose it or are denied care, then too bad for you. It would be a Darwinian world out there if Republicans believed in Darwin.
– I’ve already posted what a total disaster the Bush years and 12 years of R’s in congress have been.
I can go on, and I will in some other post.
The health bill provides everyone with a benefit, even you and your family. Your comment that it may benefit some just doesn’t square with the facts. Also what doesn’t square with the facts are notions presented that it hurts the deficit, or that the CBO number are cooked.
The CBO is a research group run the the executive branch and headed by an economist. They make all types of analysis, but a call on whether a bill is deficit neutral is made based on long term deficit costs.
If your version of the CBO was remotely true, why would any economist ever become head of a sham operation? It is in fact a very useful data gathering and analysis tool that everyone trusts.
Your belief that the CBO uses cooked data is how they, and I’ll define they, want you to vote against your own best interests. They will tell you that what you see and can figure out is wrong. They, R talking heads in the media and other bloggers perpetuate a basic conservative line that what’s good for insurance companies is all you need to worry about. (until you get sick).
I still say you are being duped into being against your own best interests.
Now they have you believing that it is better to support insurance companies than taking care of what is good for your own family.
And I am being very serious about what I post here.
We all agree on portaility. It is a good thing. It should have been coupled with a separation from employee-based plans, if possible, in order to get consumers back into the selection process. Employers offer limited choice, and portability becomes no issue if you policy is not tied to your employer.
Portability is a perfect example on something we can all agree on. If the bill would have been taken piecemeal, this would have received 90% or more of the votes. Tort reform is another one that would have likely received majority support. There are a lot of provisions that would have. Unfortunately, since the D’s are not acting in a bi-partisan manner, they attempt to jam down the bad with the good, making the net value of the bill a negative. I wished the Dems would have been serious about reform instead of pushing through such a reckless and partisan bill.
Madman’s post appears to be that the assumptions behind the plan are not accurate or true. My response was supportive of his thesis. Neither of us believe in sacrificing our own needs for the greater partisan good. That is exactly what Reid and Pelosi are demanding of their respective moderates, though.
You may not agree with Republicans, but you also sure get their motives wrong. In short, (1) Deficits were bad, but they were reduced almost every year of the Bush years, except the last one… and that was because of the crisis. (2) GOP does not believe the government has a place in solving every problem. (3) We disagree about the GOP years. I see them as being successful, with low unemployment and slow steady growth. You see them as complete disasters, comparable to cities burning. I feel pretty confident that history will see beyond the partisan rhetoric of the Bush years.
Let’s talk net benefits, not gross. There is likely goodies in almost all bills for everyone, but the net effect of the bill will negative for most people. Whether it is taxing your existing plan, encouraging your employer to drop you and pay a penalty because it is cheaper, increasing taxes on people (directly or indirectly) to pay for others… we will all be touched. I have it pretty good now. So do most Americans. In the end, most of us will see costs increased and nothing will go to fix the real issues at hand. Tort reform was a way to tackle ever increasing prices… the “reforms” in the various bills are not.
I am sure you mistyped here. The CBO is a federal agency within the legislative branch, not the executive. The fact that it is headed by an economist means really nothing. Paul Krugman is an economist… so is Thomas Sowell. They likely agree on nothing. I don’t disagree with you on their function. They also are bound by the data and assumptions provided by the Congress.
I never said it was a sham, but they do have their parameters of the job. If Congress tells them to examine the bills and come up with an evaluation, providing the CBO with data and assumptions, it is not the job of the CBO to go out and research all sorts of new data, discount assumptions, and make their own decisions. They work with the information provided and supply an analysis. They also provide comments, as I have shared in my last response.
Also, it is a prestigious job, and although there is low pay, most government jobs at that level springboard into six or seven figure offers afterwards. So there are a lot of reasons someone might take a job.
This is a sword that cuts both ways. The fact that the Congressional bills are based upon partisan and sham data which the CBO is forced to use, Dems in Congress are manipulating you to vote against your best interest. They are creating a bill that will NOT be deficit neutral and are using the bogus data laundered through a non-partisan CBO to fool you.
I appreciate your concern. I know I am not being duped, and feel my country’s and my own best interests are not served by this bill. You can disagree with me, but that does not mean I am being fooled. One of us is wrong. If a reconciled bill is passed, we will both know soon enough who is.
I personally don’t feel that insurers need to be demonized here. They are completely independent to the issue of health care reform. They do the best with what they have. There are bad claim reps, claim managers, insurance agents, and insurance executives, just like there are bad government workers, union workers, professors, garbage men, and postal workers. The vast majority of insurance professionals are ethical and do a good job. The profit margin for insurers is lower than most industries. The pay of insurance executives is lower than most industries, and I could not even find a health insurance executive on the Forbes top 10.
Of course.
Let’s correct a gross negligent error in your post. GW Bush increased the deficit each and every year, and created a built in mechanism to keep increasing the deficit each and every year that follows even after he has left office. The rate of increase may have been less each year, but his deficits were going up.
Your post is not accidental. It is either revisionist thinking, or you just want to make stuff up.
If you think that the Bush years were great, then name a single accomplishment. You and I happen to agree that job creation is the role of private enterprise, so none of the presidents: Clinton, Bush, or Obama get much credit.
The net of Bush’s numbers on employment are bleak. He created no net new jobs in the economy. Less people were employed on Jan 1, 2009 than they were on Jan 1, 2000. Worse for Bush, he then went on to lose another 500,000 jobs in Jan/09.
Bush was unable to accomplish the minimum tasks for a president: keep America safe. He failed. After 8 years as President, we still have a very broken Homeland Security, as witnessed by Hasan and the NW flight incidents.
Sen DeMint (R-SC) needs to stop blocking the TSA head appt and we need to move on with keeping Americans safe. And Obama needs to fire and fix those responsible for keeping Bush-era Homeland Security nonsense that has failed us and adopt strategies and policies that work.
If Obama was smart, he should nail every Republican for their do-nothing accomplishments in national security and demand that they pay back their salaries for the last 8 years.
I have listed real, tangible benefits for health care – benefits that will save your family. You want to talk net benefits, so lets.
The net-negatives that you listed are straw man arguments that are total nonsense. For example, a company will now be encouraged to drop you because the penalty is cheaper is just uttermost nonsense. If a company wanted to drop your health insurance, they would do so now when there is no penalty. Why wait for the penalty to kick in. If you got this idea from a blogger or media talking head, now would be a good idea to evaluate whom you listen to or read.
There is a tax for Cadillac benefits, those over $23,000 a year. It will not affect you as I am quite sure your plan is about 1/2 of that or less.
The “tax” is going to collect very little revenue. Almost every Cadillac plan is now being rewritten to cost below this amount. Some of the benefits will be ala cart to avoid the tax.
So we have several errors in your post. You said
– error 1: it would “tax your existing plan” No such thing will happen. No one is getting a tax, except for Cadillac plans. Almost no one has these except CEOs, Doctors, Lawyers, several Unions.
– error 2: “encouraging your employer to drop you and pay a penalty because it is cheaper” We already covered that above.
– error 3: Tort reform will fix the real issue. You contradict yourself significantly here. Early in your post you said that you didn’t think Tort reform would help anyone get insurance; now you are saying tort reform us the real issue. The real issue has always been getting 35+ Americans insured.
– error 4: There are taxes to pay for the plan. It affects Americans who make over $250,000, not everyone. You’ll need to prove otherwise. Your statement is a flat out lie.
The CBO Director is already a 6 digit figure, as are all director level jobs in the government. Moreover, the Director of the CBO is usually a well respected person in their field.
I have asserted that R’s keep you voting against your best interests. They do it by using key words and distracting you from the real issue. I’ll provide you a few examples:
- clearly the health bills that passed in both the House and Senate benefits you personally. All of the points you tried to make about net benefits have been dismissed as in error, or inaccurate.
- clearly then there would be no reason for you to have been against the bills in their final form as you and America, in gross or in net benefit.
- to get you to vote against the bill they raised nonsense issues like everyone loses, or there isn’t tort reform, or illegals get free health insurance.
- you were made to turn against the bill that would benefit you by making you believe there was some nonsensical rhetoric.
I don’t believe R’s negotiated in good faith, and I think they are working against your best interests. And you can’t show me where they are.
As I have said in the past Mike, you either do not understand the difference between “debt” and “deficit”, or you choose to ignore this fact and distort it. The national debt (that is “debt”) went up every year under W. That is a fact. It is also a fact that the deficit (that is “deficit”). The Bush economy, effected by 9/11, had increased deficits due to increased military and defense spending. There was an increase in the deficit in 02, 03, and 04. Starting in 05, 06, and 07, the Bush economy halfed the deficit (again “deficit”). This is a good thing. It is not a bad thing. It is not a great thing, as there is still a deficit (and a debt), but at least there is a reduction in the amount of the deficit. You can not acknowledge this at all for some strange reason.
Bush’s #1 accomplishment was his number one responsibility. Once the new tactic of 9/11 occured, Bush kept the people of the US safe. Second, he passed tax cuts that provided for growth and job creation. I agree with you, Presidents do not create jobs, but they (along with the Congress) oversee an economy that allows job growth. They provide the environment for this to happen. As a result, the average unemployment rate under Bush and the GOP Congress was 5.27% (under Clinton and the GOP Congress was 5.20%). Real GDP growth rate was positive every year… even 2001 and 2002, albeit a very small amount. I don’t consider pieces of legislation necessarily an accomplishment. Congress passed and Bush signed two huge government programs (NCLB and Medicare r/x) which I did not like too much, but many would consider an accomplishment. Make more government is not an accomplishment. Making less is.
You are so focused on the beginning and the end. That is not as important as what happened when he was there. As I said, when Bush was in office, the environment he oversaw had an unemployment rate of 5.27%, which includes 2008. Bush did not create any jobs and he did not lose any jobs. Blaming him exclusively for the financial meltdown ignores everything that happened to contribute to it. The Housing mess was almost exclusively a D problem, although there were many GOP enablers. Of course, you don’t see any fault in D’s being in bed with Freddie and Fannie, creating regs that led to the meltdown. No… to you it is all Bush’s fault.
Really? So Hasan and the NW flight are Bush’s fault? Really? That’s a good one. Always about Bush… even when he has been gone for a whole year.
You seemed to have neglected to mention that it took over 8 months for Obama to even select a TSA head, and now Reid wants to push his nomination through without any debate. Of course, you can say that it is Bush’s fault or Demint’s fault for the attacks, but that is just silly silliness.
That’s laughable. What is an Obama accomplishment? Allowing Captain Underpants to get through even though his father was interviewed by the CIA in Nigeria telling them that his son was a nutter hanging out in Yeman? Why was this guy not on a no fly list? He was in the US, allowed to fly, with a visa issued by the government? This was a successful terrorist attack which we were lucky not to get killed on. Of course, Janet Incompitano seems to feel that everything went off well. This is the idea of an Obama success.
On the other hand, if there are no successful terrorist attacks on US soil since 9/11, then that is an epic failure. Perhaps we should prosecute or arrest more CIA agents or soliders. That is the Obama way.
I’m not getting into this again. I have stated my peace on this and feel that I have made strong argument in my favor. I will not go down this circular argument over and over again. There are net-negatives. You can dismiss them as strawmen, and that is your choice. Where you have presented something new, I will comment.
Then why have it? What kind of credit did the CBO give this one? If it is counted as revenue, and you are saying that they are being rewritten, I sure hope that is accounted for in this “deficit neutral” bill.
I believe I said with a qualifier, “whether it is taxing your existing plan or…” and later I said “increasing taxes on people (directly or indirectly)” which is not what you quoted above. If you are going to pull something out of context to make a false point, make sure you don’t put it in quotes.
Call it a straw man if you wish, but when businesses have greater costs, they look to places where they can cut. In a higher tax, anti-business environment, unemployment tends to stay higher, which is more of a buyers market. If an employer can have its pick of the litter, it will also reduce the goodies it needs to pay employees since employees will be less likely to leave. Econ 101… supply and demand.
Since you used the word on me, I will feel free to use it on you. Again, you have lied. I never said that Tort Reform would give anyone insurance. I said that it saves money. Tort reform is a real issue. We are told over and over that healthcare costs are sky rocketing, but the government (as Howard Dean has said) refuses to take on the trial bar because they are scared of losing their donations. Costs are the real issue, not healthcare, which anyone can obtain right now.
See… you said I lied. That is a over the top thing to say. First, I believe in the law of economics… and I learned that there are direct and indirect costs. The first thing is that you can tax a business, but that tax will passed on to the consumer. You can also tax a small business owner filing as an individual. He will then need to raise his prices which gets passed on to the consumer. You have to be a first class dope (and I know you are not this, because you read the Great Illuminator) to beileve that a business or individual who gets a tax increase and a loss of net income will not try to boost profits or income by increasing gross revenue. They will try to cut costs, but the easiest thing to do is to raise prices. There is your INDIRECT tax increase. What about rich executives who take money baths while smoking Cuban cigars lit by Benjamins? You think that CEO or CIO who is making $250K and now makes less is going to say, “well, time to take one for the team”? No, they will probably find a way to increase their pay, and when they do, they will let a few workers go, or raise prices, or cut salaries. Oops… another indirect tax.
STRAWMAN! STRAWMAN!!! You can certainly say that if you like, but the law of economics is never on vacation.
The CBO Director position is temporary at best. Goverment appointees (as opposed to career positions) are normally high-stress, long-hour, and low paid (compared to their private sector equivalent). They also serve at the pleasure of the appointer (in this case the Speaker and Senate Majority Leader), so they could be out soon. People in these positions normally leave and increase their salary signficantly in the private sector. For example, we all know that Rahm Emanuel left his job in the private sector to run for Congress. Both paid significant salaries, but the private sector job made Rahm Emanuel a multi-millionnaire. Now with his millions, he can now go back to the center of power. The CBO Director is in a position of prestige and will move way up in the food chain once he leaves.
Again, I will not spend time rehashing this. I still say that this is a net negative for the country. It will make healthcare worse without reducing costs. One of us will be right if this passes, and I feel that I will be that person. I feel confident that I have explained myself, although some of what you said as being my reasoning I never said (e.g., Illegals getting healthcare). You mix us all up here because you think all legos look alike.
And I think the Dems presented a comprehensive partisan bill, made to try and buy off Snowe or Collins, but failed miserably. They are bound to their radical supporters and their radicals in the House who will not accept compromise. If the Dems want real bi-partisan reform, they should have passed things one at a time, and started with the items that everyone agreed with. They chose to go the divisive route and now are upset that no one wants to eat their crap sandwich except those who crapped it out.
Your “negatives” are pretty lame and inaccurate, making me think that you just don’t want to accept the fact that this is a great bill.
The arguments you cite are R party arguments to keep you, you personally, from looking at the benefits to you. It is part of the process to keep you voting against your own best interests.
That single reality, you voting for your interests, is the single point which keeps the Republican Party afloat. Once people like you begin to understand just how their policies hurt your pocket book the party’s support vanishes.
They are making you think that a 4/100s of 1% increase in “costs” for insurance is economic catastrophe, because with some simple math you could figure out that this is the cost to most companies of having to provide insurance.
Your “Laws of Economics” post is a smoke screen. Yes, extra costs do get pushed to the consumer when possible. But that extra cost is 4/100 or 1% (or .0004 for those interested). Do you really think if you sell a product for $1,000 that companies will raise their prices by 40 cents?
I do understand the difference between debt and deficit. No matter how you slice the deficit issue for Geo Bush, he was spending way over what they collected. You are just trying to spin a huge negative into a mild positive through word tricks. How about calling overspending for what it really is?
GWBush wasted a lot of money and got an anemic economy out of it. It finally collapsed on him.
The debt under GWBush was $5T. Either the war, that was supposed to cost $200B, actually cost $5T, or the war cost way less (about 1/2) and the rest of the money Bush wasted.
My argument on the American Recovery Act (Stimulus) was that he was actually buying something: bridge and road repairs. Imagine the infrastructure we would have today in Bush hadn’t wasted the money and had actually put it to some good.
I was reading a study recently and I came across a very interesting point. It is interesting because you like military spending. What costs more than the combined expenditures of all cities, towns, county, and state governments combined each and every year? The military budget of the US.
Your term for “deficit” can be described this way: If Bush were an arsonist, then each year he burned down fewer and fewer homes. Yeah, that is so right.
Bush was a disaster.
So say you. The negatives I site are real and predictable, making me you think that you over look them only because you would rather see anything pass in order to give the Great Leader a win. The bill sucks.
Again, so say you. I think the arguments are real, and that short term goodies that produce long term negatives is not in my best interest.
R’s policies have helped this country since 1980. The socialist trend from FDR to Carter with “me too” Republicans is now over. Without Reagan, Bush, Bush, and the GOP Congresses, we would not have had any of the prosperity we now enjoy.
Sounds like Hugo Chavez to me. The laws of economics are not a smoke screen.
The only one with word tricks is you. You claim the deficit increased every year under Bush, substituting deficit for debt. You misuse the English language and then say that I am playing word games. Debt going up is bad enough… you don’t have to pretend that it is the deficit going up too.
I don’t see everything Bush did as a waste. He is a mixture of success and failure. You only see negative because you are a hard-core partisan. The authors of this blog see many shades of gray, while your responses tend to see everything in black and white: Bush bad, Obama and Dem Congress perfect. Sorry, it is not that way at all.
Again, black and white. I don’t like military spending just because the money is spent on the military. I like military spending because it is used to defend and protect the American people. I think that costs should be cut in the right places, but not across the board. That is simplistic.
That is a pretty lousy analogy. If that were the case, Obama is the worst arsonist this nation has ever seen. Is that what you meant to say? Reducing the deficit is good, even if it isn’t perfect. We don’t say to someone, hey you can not do it perfect, so instead make it a complete mess. If a QB throws and interception, the offensive lineman that tackles the linebacker did a good job. That is a much better anology. It is a good thing he made the tackle, but not good that there was an interception.
Hard-core partisan drivel.
Year after year, Bush kept adding to the debt, to the tune of $5T. You can’t seem to bring yourself you state that fact. Instead, you need to resort to the distinction that he overspent less each year later in his presidency.
The need to distort actual facts through clever language with Bush’s record explains the inability to accept the value that the Health Bill represents (to you), and the fact that R’s arguments work against your pocketbook.
You only offered two arguments against the Health Care reform bill. This is a bill that provides insurance portability, an end to rescission abuses, regional exchanges to help you buy competitive insurance (breaks up single dominant players in places like Hawaii, Alabama and several others), tax breaks to allow everyone to buy insurance (based on income), some business requirements to provide insurance, and taxes to make sure the bill does not add to the deficit.
Your opposition to the bill were two arguments, that it did not force a company to give you insurance, and that the cost would be passed on to the customer. On the former, you said “companies may choose to pay the penalty instead of providing insurance.” On the latter, it was shown that the costs were negligible.
You call Bush’s debt good, the health care bill bad. I call Bush’s debt bad, and the health care bill good. Moreover, I call Bush’s debt bad for your pocketbook, and I call the health care bill good for your pocket book.
You can use whatever language you want to go on and on about Bush’s terrific record. It will not change the facts as everyone else knows them.
When I look at your arguments, and how they match up with R talking heads, it to me is part of the pattern to get you to focus on non-issues so you are never able to evaluate the bill in terms of how it helps your family in the long term.
It remains amazing to me that you will defend R’s political positions against your and your family’s best interest.
So far what I have heard as opposition to this bill was that it would raise costs on everyone and that some businesses would rather pay a penalty instead of providing insurance. Those are the only two complaints anyone ever posted here against the bill.
In this debate you have already said you liked some aspects of the bill. On the cost aspects, I have already shown how the cost of insurance is negligible.
I said that your argument invoking the Laws Of Economics is a smoke screen, and it still is. We both agree that companies will pass on costs if they can. I’ve stated as such. But these costs are so low that its impact will hardly be felt. Invoking HC is off-the-wall and plain ridiculous, especially in the context of our discussion. I wish I could say I expected better from you.
You continue to try to defend GW Bush for spending more than he collected. Your consolation prize is that each year his excesses were less and less, pretty much like my analogy of burning down less homes each year. I stand by my statement.
More, worse, he kept adding to the debt, year after year. You cannot
(Sorry, the above post contained some odd text that was from an original post. Here is the correct post. It should have ended with the “It remains amazing to me” paragraph ).
Year after year, Bush kept adding to the debt, to the tune of $5T. You can’t seem to bring yourself you state that fact. Instead, you need to resort to the distinction that he overspent less each year later in his presidency.
The need to distort actual facts through clever language with Bush’s record explains the inability to accept the value that the Health Bill represents (to you), and the fact that R’s arguments work against your pocketbook.
You only offered two arguments against the Health Care reform bill. This is a bill that provides insurance portability, an end to rescission abuses, regional exchanges to help you buy competitive insurance (breaks up single dominant players in places like Hawaii, Alabama and several others), tax breaks to allow everyone to buy insurance (based on income), some business requirements to provide insurance, and taxes to make sure the bill does not add to the deficit.
Your opposition to the bill were two arguments, that it did not force a company to give you insurance, and that the cost would be passed on to the customer. On the former, you said “companies may choose to pay the penalty instead of providing insurance.” On the latter, it was shown that the costs were negligible.
You call Bush’s debt good, the health care bill bad. I call Bush’s debt bad, and the health care bill good. Moreover, I call Bush’s debt bad for your pocketbook, and I call the health care bill good for your pocket book.
You can use whatever language you want to go on and on about Bush’s terrific record. It will not change the facts as everyone else knows them.
When I look at your arguments, and how they match up with R talking heads, it to me is part of the pattern to get you to focus on non-issues so you are never able to evaluate the bill in terms of how it helps your family in the long term.
It remains amazing to me that you will defend R’s political positions against your and your family’s best interest.
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I don’t understand why you think that I am not stating the fact that the debt went up. I have stated that multiple times. I have stated that there was a deficit and a debt increase. You need only read up a few responses and you will see me saying just that. The fact that there was an attack on 9/11 and two wars, and still there was a reduction in the deficit was a good thing. Reducing deficit spending is good. Increasing deficit spending is bad. That is what Obama and the Dem Congress is doing.
“Deficit” is hardly clever language. It seems to me that you are trying to make it worse off than it is. You compared deficit spending to arson. Your friend Paul Krugman certainly disagrees with that.
Since we first blogged on this issue months ago, I have (as well as my fellow Illuminators) have brought up several reasons and arguments against this bill. I can bring up many more, including the funding of abortions with public money, increased taxes, deficit spending, future rationing, de-incentives to practice medicine, and many many more reasons. Each conversation we have is not starting anew. You can reread if you wish what we have discussed.
Two of the many reasons. By the way, I do not believe that the costs will be negligible. That is your guess, not mine.
I never called Bush’s debt good. I said his reduction of deficit spending was good. We both agree the bill is bad.
Lunatic radical and partisan Democrats that you may hang out with may think that Bush was all bad, but no one else thinks that he was all bad. As I said before, he was a mixed bag. His number one responsibility was to keep us safe after 9/11, and he did that. You may disagree, but everyone else knows that you are wrong.
You may think that poorer health care, long lines, lack of technology innovation and rationing are good long term solutions, but I disagree. I am amazed that you would vote against your family’s best interest by supporting this reckless, partisan sham of “reform”.
My best interests are not to be subjected to non-reform in the name of hope and change.
I think the health care bill is great; you happen to think it is bad. Your arguments are absolutely baseless (I’ll address some of them below).
I do expect rational thinking in your responses, and rational thinking is dealing with the details of the bill that has passed. It is not stating some long list of unsubstantiated conservative propaganda. I expect that because your blog is supposed to be illuminating, which to most people it means to analyze and explain. If I want propaganda, I can just listen to Fox.
The health care bill requires every American to purchase health care insurance. It does not make the 31 million Americans who will now pay for insurance get any sicker, or get sicker sooner. If anything, it will prevent certain manageable conditions from getting worse: a diabetic will receive information and care hopefully much earlier than when the only option is amputation of an infected limb.
Yet you claim that the bill will, just by itself, create long lines. Quite contrary to the Laws of Economics, you claim that more people in the system will mean a decline in diagnostic equipment and innovation.
More people with money to spend means the exact opposite. They will create growth in the medical market: more tests means more equipment, and more equipment means a vibrant and competitive market for equipment innovation.
Common sense should also tell you another thing: sick individuals are already going to the hospital when they call 911 or wind up there in some kind of emergency. Whether they pay their insurance or not does not ease or tax the system.
To me, your comments are pure conservative propaganda devoid of logic, reason, or critical thinking. You return back to preset, prepackaged, illogical and inaccurate talk-radio points.
It is your option to believe in their points despite the fact that logic says otherwise. In the end you are doing their service by voting against your own best interests.
We can discuss this further only if we are discussing logic, not propaganda points.
It is obvious that you think the health care bill is great. You think everything and anything that comes from the Dems and President Obama is great. In the 10 months or so you have been commenting on this site, you have never once said anything about the Dems that was not a talking point put forth by their propaganda machine. You have never said that Obama or Congress was doing anything wrong, unless it was they were not pushing through their radical agenda fast or deep enough. You claiming that my arguments are baseless are ridiculous, and does not really warrant a response. This is really going nowhere, I will be happy to let readers decide on their own who has made the stronger argument.
I know you have lost an argument when you start bashing Bush and Fox. The former came up days ago. The latter just now. Congratulations.
The unconstitutionality of a mandate to buy something will be challenged. The only questions is how squishy is Justice Kennedy when this gets to him.
There you go again, making stuff up. I never said the bill will create long lines just by itself. It is the consequence of new processes and regs plus supply and demand that will do so. There will not be long lines the day after Obama signs this, if it gets there. It is foreseeable for reasons already clearly proven.
You seem to think that we get our talking points from someone, or gladly regurgitate someone elses thoughts. This is a common charge you present from time to time, and by now tiresome. You enjoy presenting the Democratic talking points and have no bones about it. We like having the conversation with you or anyone else if it is presented fairly, for no other reason that we believe in an open exchange of ideas. From time to time, we agree on a point, and more often than not we do not. There is absolutely no need to continuously distort our positions, or claim they are what they are not, as you have done to me several times in this thread.
You seem to believe that my best interests are best served by your ideals. My best interests have nothing to do with your wants and needs. You have no idea what I see as my own best interests, let alone those of this country. Taking a large step into socialized medicine is not in anyone’s interest unless they want to turn into Britain or Canada’s medical system.
You need to leave yours at home. We never use it here.
I wasn’t bashing Fox. I was merely indicating that so long as your posts are propaganda without reason then you are no different than Fox. It is interesting that you found this bashing. Perhaps you were trying to say that your blog is diminished by comparison to Fox.
You make a lot of statements that are totally unsubstantiated, such as long lines. You fail to show how, or why. This is the same fear mongering line used by other conservative bloggers. They, and you, make a statement without substantiating the how or why. That isn’t logic, or fact, or reason, or even illumination.
The lack of specifics, the use of fear, is exactly an example of how the focus is on some nebulous fear out there to keep some individuals from looking at the specifics in this bill and how it will help all Americans.
I have demonstrated for you the fallacy of the long lines argument. If my description of it wasn’t what you had intended to say then explain what you mean in detail. Don’t just whine about being misrepresented.
My role here is to comment on your posts. I have often cited strategies to make the bill better, or my preferences. You may have missed those in your right wing haze.
If conservatives looked at the specifics of the health care bill, instead of the propaganda spouted by blogger sites, and virtually copied and pasted here, they may come to the conclusion that it benefits.
At the moment there are no well reasoned points that show net or gross negatives for the bill. At least none that you can present and defend.
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Mike, don’t be disingenuous… own what you said. You feel that Fox is propaganda, or else you would not have said “If I want propaganda, I can just listen to Fox.” That is Fox bashing. I think any comparison of this blog to Fox is overstated. Fox is a very credible news organization, and I think any one of the authors would welcome the comparison… except that we do not attempt to be balanced here. We think we are fair, but not balanced. Your anti-Fox rhetoric says more about your biases than it does about us.
Again, I feel that I have provided significant information, logic, facts and reason. I will let the readers decide.
See my previous answer.
You have demonstrated nothing. You have presented your argument, which I can also easily call unsubstantiated. We are sharing ideas here, and as a casual blogger, I have neither the time nor the interest in spending countless hours researching specific examples for every rathole argument presented. Again, I will let readers decide and move on to the next news story.
Your unpopular ideas (as polled by all credible outlets) make a bad bill worse, in my opinion. Trying to insult me does not make it any different. The “right-wing haze” of which you speak is just another way for you to disparage me and my fellow bloggers. No one who disagrees with you could possibly believe in any of the ideas they state. They must have been corrupted by some talk radio zealot or corrupted by the political propaganda of Fox. Not lending any credibility to your intellectual opponents is a typical debate tactic that loses fence sitters, which is one of the reason the Dems are losing the debate on this in the court of public opinion, although they still have the votes and the people’s cash to pass and buy off those in their own caucus who would normally oppose crap sandwiches like these bills.
Yes, of course. We are all too stupid and willfully misled. There could not be possibly any credible argument or person that would oppose these bills except a racist, an idiot, a person blinded by a right-wing haze, etc. How does it feel to walk around in life feeling that everyone that disagrees with you is such a moron?
You are so right. You have caught us all. Who would have known that the conservative Achilles Heel would be found by you? I think you have taken down not only the opposition to this bill, but the who conservative movement. We are obviously a vapid, un-intellectual, and disingenuous group of folks who are only out to see our own self-interest destroyed for some ends we would not understand… probably because we are being misled by some charismatic demigod who only has the destruction of this republic in mind.
Thank you Luke for bringing me back from the Dark Side. Please remove my mask so I can see you with my own eyes.
This is a discussion on the merits of the bill, and how it affects your pocketbook. I presented points which supports the bill as net positive – preventing rescission, insurance portability, deficit neutral.
In those discussions you presented the bill’s hidden costs, which we discussed in terms of actual numbers. You also presented some unsubstantiated ideas such as long lines, loss of innovation in diagnosis, and rationing. This list of ideas may be completely your own, but they also happen to be identical to right/conservative radio talk show talking points.
My point in comparing your position to right/conservative radio talk show talking points is to try to separate your personal beliefs from the standard template of radio talking points. Your took it that I am trying to “disparage me and my fellow bloggers.” It wasn’t my intent.
My intent was to dig into the reasoning behind the arguments. In my view, you must have thought these ideas out and have well defined reasons that you can describe. Just listing them without debate, discussion, or supporting argument leads me to think that they are just arguments from some right/conservative talking points.
The purpose of the discussion is to examine your ideas, to understand why you would be against a bill that in the net is a positive for your family. I have stated many times that this has been my question all along.
So this is where I see the discussion: you have made some arguments against the bill: long lines, rationing, other issues. I say bunk: unproven, unsubstantiated, fear mongering.
It is exceptionally interesting that after so many posts your replies are everything but an answer to substantiate your arguments. Instead its about Dems and Fox and Republican would-be strategy. Or it’s about polls supporting Fox’s position. That one is interesting: it goes to the idea that there may be some truth to media manipulation keeping you from seeing the benefits of the bill.
We can take this debate and move forward, looking at your dislike for the bill. Is it going to be facts or just unsubstantiated things you may have heard on the radio?
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