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Why We Should All Fear Government
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coboardhead



Joined: 26 Oct 2009
Posts: 4303

PostPosted: Tue Oct 15, 2013 7:53 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Summertime...according to the CBO, the ACA will actually save the government money... at least according to their website. Welfare, as you say, is not a budget buster. Take a look some time at projected deficits and debt if you want to really scare yourself. ALL of the projected growth in debt is due to increased health care costs vs historical levels. In other words, the government will spend an increasingly higher percentage of the GDP on healthcare. This is not Obamacare...this is a result of only 3 workers to support one retiree now...soon to be only 2.

Without the ACA, the numbers look even worse. The ACA attempts to reduce unit costs. But, cost savings may be more a result of shifting costs to younger insured.

Preventative care and promotion of healthy lifestyles is important. But, the bottom line is our technology in medicine is outpacing our ability to pay for it. We spend some 50 % of health care on 5 % of the population and 1 % of the population accounted for almost a quarter of all costs.
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MalibuGuru



Joined: 11 Nov 1993
Posts: 9293

PostPosted: Tue Oct 15, 2013 11:11 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I agree that technology is outpacing our ability to pay for it. So why does someone who can't pay for it deserve it?

I was in Hawaii and needed a Cat Scan. The technician knew where I was from and told me that their system was only a 6 slice system, but in California they had systems 10 times as powerful. I asked why. He said that their systems in Hawaii were less expensive as their revenues were lower. (ie more socialized) They have a far more socialized healthcare system than we do, and....you get what you pay for in the long run.

This is more likely the care we'll get with Obama care. And CB, one quarter of HC costs ARE GOING TO THE DYING. This is the best area to cut costs....Let them die. No one is willing to admit this, but it's true.
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coboardhead



Joined: 26 Oct 2009
Posts: 4303

PostPosted: Tue Oct 15, 2013 11:27 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well SB, who should we cut out of the technology? Medicare provides more in benefits than beneficiaries contribute over their lives. And, guess what? The wealthier one is, the more one spends on healthcare while on Medicare beyond those contributions. ie we are contributing more tax dollars to healthcare expenses of the well to do than the poor in the Medicare system. I repeat...this is above and beyond the extra they contributed for having a higher income.

The ACA SHOULD cut down on available technology. Good grief, I live in a town of 15,000 people and the hospital helicopter flies over my house a half dozen times a day. They have had the chopper about 3 years. The MRI used to come once a week on a bus and now we have two of the machines. There is a regional hospital an hour away and ANOTHER po-dunk town between here and there with all the same stuff.

Every health care facility has to have the best because those machines and services are where the big dollars are in the reimbursement process.
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rigitrite



Joined: 19 Sep 2007
Posts: 520
Location: Kansas City

PostPosted: Tue Oct 15, 2013 2:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
one quarter of HC costs ARE GOING TO THE DYING. This is the best area to cut costs....Let them die.


Wow, you really are a conservative!

_________________
Kansas City
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coboardhead



Joined: 26 Oct 2009
Posts: 4303

PostPosted: Tue Oct 15, 2013 2:30 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Stevenbard wrote

Quote:
And CB, one quarter of HC costs ARE GOING TO THE DYING. This is the best area to cut costs....Let them die. No one is willing to admit this, but it's true.


I suggested reading Dick Lamm's book in another thread. He is the Gov of Colorado who was famously quoted for saying "the elderly had a duty to die". A quote taken out of context although he admitted it was good for book sales!

We often do spend too much at end of life care. Ironically, it is the conservatives that fight physician assisted suicides and "death panels". Neither are in the ACA, BTW.
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pueno



Joined: 03 Mar 2007
Posts: 2807

PostPosted: Tue Oct 15, 2013 3:54 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

coboardhead wrote:
... physician assisted suicides and "death panels". Neither are in the ACA, BTW.

Be careful............. Caribou Barbie will be pissed at you. Next thing you know, she'll be shooting at you from a helicopter.
.
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17742
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Tue Oct 15, 2013 3:58 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Despite all of the awfulizing about the ACA being a job killer, there are still some people who think. This from James Surowiecki in the October 14 New Yorker. I don't expect either isobars or NW to read it.

Quote:
Of the countless reasons that congressional Republicans hate the Affordable Care Act enough to shut down the government, the most politically potent is the claim that it will do untold damage to the economy and cripple small companies. Orrin Hatch has said that Obamacare will be “devastating to small business.” Ted Cruz argues that it is already “the No. 1 job killer.” And the vice-president of the National Federation of Independent Businesses called it simply “terrible.” So it comes as some surprise to learn that Obamacare may well be the best thing Washington has done for American small business in decades.

The G.O.P.’s case hinges on the employer mandate, which requires companies with fifty or more full-time employees to provide health insurance. It also regulates the kind of insurance that companies can offer: insurance has to cover at least sixty per cent of costs, and premiums can’t be more than 9.5 per cent of employees’ income. Companies that don’t offer insurance will pay a penalty. Republicans argue that this will hurt companies’ profits, forcing them to stop hiring and to cut workers’ hours, in order to stay below the fifty-employee threshold.

The story is guaranteed to feed the fears of small-business owners. But the overwhelming majority of American businesses—ninety-six per cent—have fewer than fifty employees. The employer mandate doesn’t touch them. And more than ninety per cent of the companies above that threshold already offer health insurance. Only three per cent are in the zone (between forty and seventy-five employees) where the threshold will be an issue. Even if these firms get more cautious about hiring—and there’s little evidence that they will—the impact on the economy would be small.

Meanwhile, the likely benefits of Obamacare for small businesses are enormous. To begin with, it’ll make it easier for people to start their own companies—which has always been a risky proposition in the U.S., because you couldn’t be sure of finding affordable health insurance. As John Arensmeyer, who heads the advocacy group Small Business Majority, and is himself a former small-business owner, told me, “In the U.S., we pride ourselves on our entrepreneurial spirit, but we’ve had this bizarre disincentive in the system that’s kept people from starting new businesses.” Purely for the sake of health insurance, people stay in jobs they aren’t suited to—a phenomenon that economists call “job lock.” “With the new law, job lock goes away,” Arensmeyer said. “Anyone who wants to start a business can do so independent of the health-care costs.” Studies show that people who are freed from job lock (for instance, when they start qualifying for Medicare) are more likely to undertake something entrepreneurial, and one recent study projects that Obamacare could enable 1.5 million people to become self-employed.

Even more important, Obamacare will help small businesses with health-care costs, which have long been a source of anxiety. The fact that most Americans get their insurance through work is a historical accident: during the Second World War, wages were frozen, so companies began offering health insurance instead. After the war, attempts to create universal heath care were stymied by conservatives and doctors, and Congress gave corporations tax incentives to keep providing insurance. The system has worked well enough for big employers, since large workforces make possible the pooling of risk that any healthy insurance market requires. But small businesses often face so-called “experience rating”: a business with a lot of women or older workers faces high premiums, and even a single employee who runs up medical costs can be a disaster. A business that Arensmeyer represents recently saw premiums skyrocket because one employee has a child with diabetes. Insurance costs small companies as much as eighteen per cent more than it does large companies; worse, it’s also a crapshoot. Arensmeyer said, “Companies live in fear that if one or two employees get sick their whole cost structure will radically change.” No wonder that fewer than half the companies with under fifty employees insure their employees, and that half of uninsured workers work for small businesses or are self-employed. In fact, a full quarter of small-business owners are uninsured, too.

Obamacare changes all this. It provides tax credits to smaller businesses that want to insure their employees. And it requires “community rating” for small businesses, just as it does for individuals, sharply restricting insurers’ ability to charge a company more because it has employees with higher health costs. And small-business exchanges will in effect allow companies to pool their risks to get better rates. “You’re really taking the benefits that big companies enjoy, and letting small businesses tap into that,” Arensmeyer said. This may lower costs, and it will insure that small businesses can hire the best person for a job rather than worry about health issues.

The U.S. likes to think of itself as friendly to small businesses. But, as a 2009 study by the economists John Schmitt and Nathan Lane documented, our small-business sector is among the smallest in the developed world, and has one of the lowest rates of self-employment. One reason is that we’ve never had anything like national health insurance. In a saner world, changing this would be a reform that the “party of small business” would celebrate. ♦
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nw30



Joined: 21 Dec 2008
Posts: 6485
Location: The eye of the universe, Cen. Cal. coast

PostPosted: Tue Oct 15, 2013 6:28 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

mac wrote:
Despite all of the awfulizing about the ACA being a job killer, there are still some people who think. This from James Surowiecki in the October 14 New Yorker. I don't expect either isobars or NW to read it.

Thanks for the recognition that we, and others here that you forgot to mention, know the difference between shit and the Shine-o-la.
Read it, that article doesn't even mention that fact that business are cutting hours and number of employees so that they don't have to abide.
O'care defines fulltime as 30hr./week now. We will become a part-time society, kinda like a European failure, take your pick on which country.
We are better than that, and I'd like to think that mac thinks so also, but I guess not.
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17742
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Tue Oct 15, 2013 7:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I knew you wouldn't read it NW. Here's the part you missed in repeating the drudge report type memes:

Quote:
Only three per cent are in the zone (between forty and seventy-five employees) where the threshold will be an issue. Even if these firms get more cautious about hiring—and there’s little evidence that they will—the impact on the economy would be small.


I think you once had a credible source, but it has been diluted by all the bs.
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nw30



Joined: 21 Dec 2008
Posts: 6485
Location: The eye of the universe, Cen. Cal. coast

PostPosted: Tue Oct 15, 2013 11:39 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

mac wrote:
I knew you wouldn't read it NW. Here's the part you missed in repeating the drudge report type memes:

Quote:
Only three per cent are in the zone (between forty and seventy-five employees) where the threshold will be an issue. Even if these firms get more cautious about hiring—and there’s little evidence that they will—the impact on the economy would be small.


I think you once had a credible source, but it has been diluted by all the bs.

That's BS, but eat it up if you need to, because after all your sources are always better than mine. Rolling Stone, the Chron, all the bay area sources, nothing bias there, naaaa.
Your source war is just idiotic, try a new game for once, this doesn't work.
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