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2013-04-28 Home Front: Politix

Obamacare supporters can no longer deny economic reality

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Posted by GolfBravoUSMC 2013-04-28 09:43|| || Front Page|| [6 views ] Top

#1 Democrats may finally have created a situation for themselves in which they will learn once and for all that they cannot repeal the laws of cause and effect or supply and demand.

Don't count on it too hard. Economic literacy may have something to do with governing, assuming a politician ever gets around to it, but it doesn't have anything to do with campaigning. Otherwise we'd be toasting President Romney, or even President Perry.

Even with an economy cratered, in splinters, with monetary gore dripping from the walls, the really important issues in life remain gay marriage, racism, a woman's right to choose, and whether the opponent's father-in-law's Uncle Gaylord was stopped for drunk driving in 1958.

Posted by Fred 2013-04-28 10:47|| 2013-04-28 10:47|| Front Page Top

#2 We should have nationalized health care in 1916 when Teddy Roosevelt wanted to do it.

The only reason our health care system is such a wreck is the AMA. We could spend 100% of our nation's economy on health care and the AMA would still be bribing congress to let them get rich.

When the social scientists talk about wealth transfer to pay for health care for the poor, they don't understand the poor are not receiving the wealth transfer, it goes to the upper 0.1% of our economy, the doctors who earn on average 10 times the national average income or 20 times the poverty line.

The fiasco that is ObamaCare is the conundrum the Dems found themselves in with health care, they had to feed their two revenue streams, the AMA and the trial lawyers, who loathe each other, so they opened the spigot for the doctors with Medicare and opened the spigot for the lawyers by leaving tort reform out of the legislation. So the doctors get rich, the lawyers get rich and everyone else pays through the nose for health care. We would be far better off if we had either nationalized the beast in 1916 or not passed Medicare.

Medicare is the problem and federal regulations and half backed cost containment schemes have only made it worse. ObamaCare is the evolutionary dead end of the mess Congress and the AMA created.

Posted by Bill Clinton 2013-04-28 12:21|| 2013-04-28 12:21|| Front Page Top

#3 The whole of Marxism is denying economic reality such as the time value of money and messing with price = demand/ supply can only lead to a shortage.

Posted by Bright Pebbles 2013-04-28 12:37|| 2013-04-28 12:37|| Front Page Top

#4 > We should have nationalized health care

Er. No you shouldn't. You should have undone the income tax and FDR's work bundling health insurance idiocies. Also tort reform.

Posted by Bright Pebbles 2013-04-28 12:38|| 2013-04-28 12:38|| Front Page Top

#5 Ah yes the tax rate and regulations. One of the drivers of our medical payment misery (health care is doing just fine) was the income tax rules that made paying higher salaries a lose lose proposition for the middle/upper classes.

How could employers raise their employees pay and NOT have it all end up in Washington? They found some benefits that wouldn't be taxed. Enter employee paid health insurance, BUT it also meant the exit of direct connection between patient and payment.

Put it in the smoker to cook low and slow and what you get is our current mess.

Posted by AlanC 2013-04-28 13:11|| 2013-04-28 13:11|| Front Page Top

#6 Gee, Mr. Clinton, some doctor steal your girlfriend once? She's certainly better off with him than with you.

You do know, boy, that the AMA represents less than half of all physicians and surgeons, that it is a tiny ant of a lobbying force relative to those arrayed against it, that they have literally nothing to with how many seats are created in medical schools, and have fought most of the real reasons that medical care has gone up so much (the insurance industry, government, and the hospital corporation industry, to name three) on behalf of themselves and your sorry a$$ for decades?

Doctor's fees account for something like 18% of the total cost of health care. The insurance industry makes more than that.

And why, precisely, does it bother you so much that doctors make the salary they do? Ten of the best years of your life working for nothing or going into debt and a hard, stressful, risky career afterwards don't warrant their pay grade? I'm not a physician and I have no relatives who are but I have a lot of respect for 99% of them. I couldn't do it and based on your comment I'm 100% sure you couldn't either. Pathetic people like you have no idea of the commitment, work, and intellect needed to get there.

You do know that the envy you feel towards docs means you're going to hell when you die, right?

Using the government to make health care cheap by price fixing so that you can have more money to spend on stuff and status is thuggery. I'm sure you would object to someone doing that to your industry. Why is it OK to do it to someone else?

But the worst thing about nationalizing health care and paying doctros a pittance above the national salary average will be that plenty of the smartest college kids will simply opt for other fields than medicine.

Based on your unhinged rant I can imagine you with your daughter dying and keening in pain on her deathbed and saying to her, "Oh, honey, sorry, your mom and I voted for national health care so the guy who would have gone into medicine and found the cure for your disease did something else with his life. But look on the bright side.....your mom and I saved ten grand in premiums over the past five years!"

Pffft.

Posted by no mo uro 2013-04-28 17:26|| 2013-04-28 17:26|| Front Page Top

#7 Doctor's fees account for something like 18% of the total cost of health care. The insurance industry makes more than that.

From what nether regions of your colon did you pull that stat?

While I agreed with most of your rant and none of BC's that is way off. Before you answer I do have a Risk Management major, background in actuary and spent many years negotiating contracts between providers and payors.

Posted by Beavis 2013-04-28 18:08|| 2013-04-28 18:08|| Front Page Top

#8 Beavis, no nether regions involved thank God.

If you are talking about direct and acute patient care, your critique might be a fair one.

Once you figure in things like long-term care, elder care, counseling, psych care, all imaging and testing, malpractice, costs for things like ambulance/transport/law enforcement training, government mandated training for any of a numner of things, the money people spend on alternative care, gym memberships, etc., etc,. etc. - not to mention pharmaceuticals - in short if you calculate the cost of everything, every penny that is spent on health related goods and services - that 18% number holds up pretty well.

Posted by no mo uro 2013-04-28 19:13|| 2013-04-28 19:13|| Front Page Top

#9 Beavis, 18% is pretty consistent with the fraction of the nominal charge for medical or lab tests that actually gets paid to the original providers, after the negotiated discounts to insurance companies and write-offs to the indigent are factored in. Actual doctor visits and hospital charges are not as low - more like 50%. Of course, like jewelry store prices, the nominal costs are jacked up so as to accommodate the discounts or sale prices, and only the uninsured who have assets have to pay list price. Additionally, I have it on good authority that remunerations to radiologists are down 30% (per study) over the last few years.

Posted by Glenmore 2013-04-28 19:16|| 2013-04-28 19:16|| Front Page Top

#10 The US per se is facing a "perfect storm" on not one but several nationwide catastrophes in various sectors, all of which are mainly self-induced although not to argue that external factors have no role or influence.

I like the Political Toon > OBITUARY = "HERE LIES THE GLOBAL SUPERPOWER USA. CAUSE OF DEATH -SUICIDE/SELF-SUICIDE".

* AL BUNDY = "I'M AN AMERICAN - I'M SORRY".
* 1990's CLINTONISM = "THE US MUST BE CONSTRAINED [restrained + detained] + CONTROLLED".

IIRC, also from 1990'S CLINTONISM = D *** NG IT, MY COUNTRY DEMANDS ITS GOD-GIVEN SECULAR ATHEIST RIGHT TO BE INVADED BY THE "ARROGANT FASCIST = LIMITED COMMUNIST MALE BRUTE USA"!

POST-2015 OWG-NWO = the US won't be able to go to war or produce anything widout other Nations' + Global Politiburo's consent.

The good news is the US won't be hurting peoples' feelings anymore after its forcibly stopped from saving them from their collective enemies.

Posted by JosephMendiola 2013-04-28 19:53|| 2013-04-28 19:53|| Front Page Top

#11 No mo and Glenmore i wasn't clear my issue was insurance carriers making more than 18%, G-d bless physicians but carriers don't come close to that figure. I've been the trenches for over 25 years and it ain't a pittance compared that.

Posted by Beavis 2013-04-28 20:08|| 2013-04-28 20:08|| Front Page Top

#12 You do know, boy, that the AMA represents less than half of all physicians and surgeons, that it is a tiny ant of a lobbying force relative to those arrayed against it..

Where you around in the late 60s, early 70s? The Vietnam war was rolling. The military needed more doctors so they put together a medical school to generate more. Even as it was being completed the AMA intervened to shut it down, declaring it would never get certified. It was an economic threat to them to have the government churning out a significant number of physicians that would several years later be competing in the marketplace. It's called supply and demand, and they like other guilds intervened to protect their market share.

Posted by Procopius2k 2013-04-28 20:23|| 2013-04-28 20:23|| Front Page Top

23:03 Thing From Snowy Mountain
22:59 Thing From Snowy Mountain
22:25 Pappy
22:06 European Conservative
21:32 Redneck Jim
21:29 Redneck Jim
20:29 Bill Clinton
20:25 Bill Clinton
20:23 Procopius2k
20:15 JosephMendiola
20:09 JosephMendiola
20:08 Beavis
19:53 JosephMendiola
19:38 Rjschwarz
19:22 Raj
19:16 Glenmore
19:13 no mo uro
19:01 Raj
18:58 Barbara
18:58 AlanC
18:54 Barbara
18:22 Bill Clinton
18:18 Bill Clinton
18:08 Beavis