OT Cheney - Cutting Gas Tax Stupid

Average annual cost for employer-provided family insurance in 2007:

Employer $12,106
Employee 3,281
Total $15,387

I have known a few conservative gubmint-out-of-my-healthcare types who
had to modify their position when they found out how vulnerable they
actually were.

 

Fox News and the Republican party tried to pin the recession on
Clinton, but the Conference Board, considered the referee of US
economic activity, said the recession started during the GW Bush
presidency.

 

Right. That's the good part. Even if Insurance companies were to pay
out every penny they brought in (through premiums), they would still
be profitable.

Right. That's what the government does. They take money from MOST
everyone (Not from the poor), and spend the money on everyone. The
risk spreading is the same. Whether it is at an insurance company
with 10,000 customers, or the federal government with 200 Million
paying the "premium". Of course, with the government, there is no
competition, no choice, and no investment...

How would they stop using your money if the provider was the
government? Rather than stop using your money to pay the claims of
only the uninsured, they would use your money to pay the claims of
everyone.

Not at all. I pay my entire premium, roughly $500/month these days.
It is too much. The "insurance" industry needs some reform. But the
high costs do not originate with the insurance companies. For the
most part, the rates that doctors and hospitals charge are dictated by
medicaire, and the insurance companies glom on to those rates.

Even worse, though, is malpractice lawsuits. They have driven the
cost of medical care out of control. So long as doctors and hospitals
are able to be sued for every bit of human error, the costs will not
come down, no matter who is paying the bill.

"Gouged" isn't necessarily a fair term. You cannot get gouged for any
service that is optional. There are alternatives. The fact that most
people do not explore them is of little consequence. Health care in
the US is expensive. There are several reasons for it, but the
insurance companies really aren't one of them. They make a healthy
profit, and as well they should. They also sometimes make very
questionable calls when refusing payment for certain conditions. They
are motivated by profit, which also makes them competitive.

One thing that is very common in countries with socialized medicine is
protection from lawsuits for the medical community. Rather than
dragging every claim of negligence to court, spending millions on
lawyers and investigations, they use review boards that are government
run, but consist of private doctors. They review the case, with no
testimony, and determine if it was negligence, or simple human error.
They make all awards, and the courts are not involved. This greatly
reduces the cost.

Beyond that, medical care in the US is the best in the world, so long
as you can afford it. I have no problem with a system being
established like what has been started in NY. We have Child Care
Plus, Family Care Plus, and one for small businesses. These allow
people that cannot afford traditional insurance to have very good
coverage, but it is not available to those in higher economic classes,
and charges a premium to those that can pay. Still not ideal, IMO, as
it uses taxpayer money to fund much of the program, but it is a far
cry better than trying to have the most inefficient entity known to
man control the health care of everyone.

 

Not to mention that PT isn't all that expensive. Around here it is
about $100/hour. My wife just had 6 weeks of PT for her knee, twice a
week. 1 Hour sessions. $1200 total, though I only paid $30/visit out
of pocket. The rest came from my PPO provider, who got it discounted
to $50/hour, and paid the remaining $20.

 

Well, it is above the median family income so it doesn't seem to
qualify on that account. And if you have insurance through your
employer, no problem. Let's see how those finances might work out for
a family of five living in the Chicago suburbs and buying insurance on
the open market.

Income 50,000

Expenses:
Fed Income tax 3,000
Social security 3,000
Medicare 700
State tax 1,400
Housing/utilities 14,000
Food 6,000
Clothing 3,000
Transportation 5,000
Misc. expenses 1,900
Retirement 3,000
Childcare 3,000
------
Total Expenses 44,000


That leaves $6,000 to buy health insurance and pay for out of pocket
medical expenses. Do you really think you can get a policy for a
family of five for that? What if one of the kids has asthma? What if
one of the parents is diabetic? You could easily be looking at a
premium of $20,000 a year or more. I don't think there is a lot of
fat in the above budget, but maybe you can find some. Selling one of
the kids would help.

 

Another factless, one line, insult. Very convincing.

 

And another one-line post from a guy who has no facts, so he posts
insults.

 

<Top post corrected>

The President shares much of the blame. He sets the direction. He
carves out the major policies. He controls the agencies that submit
the budgets. When his party is in full control of the Congress (as the
Rep's have been for most of Bush's term) he shares an even larger part
of the blame.

 

You are missing the point. You (or your employer) pay the insurance
company huge premiums ($8K-$10K per year) just so you can pay $12 for
an office visit. Someone has to pay for the fact that people have come
to expect that they should get to go to the doctor for $12-$15.

You're lucky.

A properly designed system wouldn't be bankrupt. And neither official
thrills me, but I'd prefer someone using a checklist hashed out with
public input as opposed to someone using an income statement.

 

Sorry, only someone who is a complete idiot will hold the President
blameless when he has to sign each budget bill and submits a budget
proposal every winter for the following fiscal year.

 

The system in place is really stupid. In one case, a pediatrician was
denied payment for a twin (they covered the other twin); payment for the
other twin was made. Of course, both twins were supposed to be covered.
The pediatrician fought the denial with the insurance company.
Eventually, the insurance company admitted that both kids were covered
and told the pediatrican to resubmit the bill. The insurance company
then told the pediatrician that the office visit won't be covered
because the bill was submitted too late.

Soon, the amount of money that internists and others who take care of
Medicare patients will go down about 10%. Between this and similar
insurance company bull, medical school loans, low rates of reimbursement
for vaccines and other preventive care, and phone calls from patients
who ask about constipation from patients in the middle of the night, it
is a wonder that that more doctors don't leave medicine.

Dr. Jeff

 

If one tales the time to do a proper search they will discover that actually
the economy is not currently, and has never been in "recession" by
definition since 2000.

Even with the much greater slow down of the economy after 9/11 the economy
did not go into "recession," no matter how often the media and the Dims have
tried to give the impression we were in a "recession."

The 2001 slow down was reversed, in less than a year, by the tax RATE cuts
passed by the Congress as requested by the President.

Look at the current GNP and unemployment rates, they are both as good as, or
better than, ANY time during the nineties.

 

Except for the recession of March-November 2001.

Correct. The economy was already in a recession.

Hold on. By your criteria, the President is not responsible for taxes
and the budget. Now you're giving him credit. Pick one. He either is or
is not responsible.

Really? In 1999, the unemployment rate was about 4%. Now it is about
5.5%. How is that better?

Jeff

 

What part of "If one tales the time to do a proper search they will discover
that actually the economy is not currently, and has never been in
"RECESSION" by DEFINATION since 2000," and "The 2001 slow down was
reversed, in less than a year, by the tax RATE cuts passed by the CONGRESS
as requested by the President," Do you not understand? LOL

 

Most definitions of recession include 2 quarters of economic downturn.
The economic downturn in 2001 lasted from March 2001 to November 2001,
which included two quarters.

You also said that the unemployment rate now is better than any time in
the 1990s. You have failed to explain how today's unemployment rate of
about 5.5% is better than that in 1999 when it was about 4%.

Jeff

 

There's more to unemployment data and meaning than one simple number...

http://tinyurl.com/3lhmkp

 

You live in a lower cost area than me. But that, aside, people without
insurance don't get the discount, they don't get a reimbursement, they
have to pay the entire $1200 (or more, geographic dependent) cost out
of pocket. Most don't have that kind of disposable cash so they sip
the treatment.

 

And your example is very low on costs - check the COL in (many)
industrialized states.

But trying to reason with the ideologues is a waste of time. They
don't want to consider facts or logic, they just spout what they've
been brainwashed so spout.

 

That runs counter to facts and what economists consider a recession.

Interesting interpretation.

You mean the rate cuts that have driven the deficits to record levels
and triggered the current backlash as the bill is coming due?

You need to learn more about how to read unemployment rates.

 

Dear alcoholic fool with the pretentious third-person manner of
writing: economists said we had a recession starting in early 2001,
and the National Board of Economic Research (not the Conference
Boards, as I had written earlier) is the official referee that
designates recessions and expansions, and they no longer use the
classical definition of a recession being at least two consecutive
quarters of GDP contraction.

The St. Louis Federal Reserve's monthly unemployment figures say
you're wrong:

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/data/UNRATE.txt

Notice that unemployment was as high as about 7.5% in the early 1990s
but dipped to about 4.0% during the latter years of the Clinton
administration, or slightly less than the lowest rate for the GW Bush
administration. OTOH GW Bush will end his presidency with no
improvement in unemployement than when he started. Why will that
be? Give an honest answer, Mike, not your usual partisan political
BS.

GDP growth rates have been about the same since the 1990s but not for
the same reasons. In the 1990s, GDP growth improved because the US
got its economic house in order, thanks to the Real President Bush and
his son, Bill Clinton, and the end of the Cold War. But in this
century, GDP growth has been fueled mostly by foolish demand-side
economics, i.e., government spending and deficits, with cheap Chinese
labor helping a lot to let us get away with it, by keeping inflation
down.

You're the only person still using GNP instead of GDP, and I doubt you
know why economists switched to GDP in the 1970s and 1980s.

Just where do you get all your wrong information? You're outright
sloppy, again and again.