#1
Can anyone explain exactly what this "occupational tax" is?
Is it a tax based on your occupation? Based on your occupation of a store or place of business? What?
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
08/05/2009 18:49 Comments ||
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#2
Barbara, I don't know what an occupational tax is in Alabama. However, the Feds nail you if you are self-employed with an occupational tax. The government taxes your right to work. It can be significant--maxes out at something like about 13%. Ah the joy of being patriotic and paying taxes. A lot of Democrats did not pay taxes. I guess the conclusion is that they are not patriotic by Biden's standards.
I keep reading about health-care "reform," but I have yet to see anyone explain how the government can make it easier for more people to obtain medical services, control the already exploding cost of those services and not interfere with people's most intimate decisions.
You don't need to be a Ph.D. in economics to understand that government cannot do all three things. (Judging by what Paul Krugman writes, a Ph.D. may be an obstacle.)
The New York Times describes a key part of the House bill: "Lawmakers of both parties agree on the need to rein in private insurance companies by banning underwriting practices that have prevented millions of Americans from obtaining affordable insurance. Insurers would, for example, have to accept all applicants and could not charge higher premiums because of a person's medical history or current illness".
No more evil "cherry-picking." No more "discrimination against the sick. But that's not insurance. Insurance is the pooling of resources to cover the cost of a possible but by no means certain misfortune befalling a given individual. Government-subsidized coverage for people already sick is welfare. We can debate whether this is good, but let's discuss it honestly. Calling welfare "insurance" muddies thinking.
Such "reform" must increase the demand for medical services. That will lead to higher prices. Obama tells us that reform will lower costs. But how do you control costs while boosting demand?
The reformers make vague promises about covering the increased demand by cutting other costs. We should know by now that such promises aren't worth a wooden nickel. The savings never materialize.
Some of the savings are supposed to come from Medicare. The Times reports "Lawmakers also agree on proposals to squeeze hundreds of billions of dollars out of Medicare by reducing the growth of payments to hospitals and many other health care providers."
With the collapse of the socialist countries, we ought to understand that bureaucrats cannot competently set prices. When they pay too little, costs are covertly shifted to others, or services dry up. When they pay too much, scarce resources are diverted from other important uses and people must go without needed goods. Only markets can assure that people have reasonable access to resources according to each individual's priorities.
Assume Medicare reimbursements are cut. When retirees begin to feel the effects, AARP will scream bloody murder. The elderly vote in large numbers, and their powerful lobbyists will be listened to.
The government will then give up that strategy and turn to what the Reagan administration called "revenue enhancement": higher taxes on the "rich." When that fails, because there aren't enough rich to soak, the politicians will soak the middle class. When that fails, they will turn to more borrowing. The Fed will print more money, and we'll have more inflation. Everyone will be poorer.
The Times story adds: "They are committed to rewarding high-quality care, by paying for the value, rather than the volume, of [Medicare] services."
Value to whom? When someone buys a service in the market, that indicates he values it more than what he gives up for it. But when the taxpayers subsidize the buyer, the link between benefit and cost is broken. Market discipline disappears.
Listening to the health-care debate, I hear Republicans and Democrats saying it's wrong to deny anyone anything. That head-in-the-sand attitude is why Medicare has a $36-trillion unfunded liability. It's not sustainable -- and they know it.
They've given us a system that now can be saved only if bureaucrats limit coverage by second-guessing retirees' decisions. Government will decide which Medicare services have value and which do not. Retirees may have a different opinion.
One may be willing to give up the last year of life if he's in pain and has little hope for recovery. Another may want to fight to the end. But when taxpayers pay, the state will make one choice for all retirees.
Now, to reduce the financial burden of the medical system, Obama proposes a plan that inevitably will extend the second-guessing to the rest of us. So much for his promise not to interfere with our medical decisions.
#1
"Government will decide which Medicare services have value and which do not. "
OMG! Folks please keep govt from taking away our medicare. Look at the Post Office. Imagine what it would be like if the Govt was running medicare!!!
Posted by: liberal hawk ||
08/05/2009 15:21 Comments ||
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#2
Anyone familiar with Medicare should find that program by itself to be dispositive regarding the question of government competence to run any domestic social service program. This is reinforcing failure, but with numbers too large for any human to truly comprehend.
A concept that worked so well in extending home ownership to people who banks would normally refuse to lend money to because they didn't have the real capacity to pay it back. Home ownership for everyone! Now - maximum medical care regardless of cost. Doing to our health system what they did to the housing market! Watch government funded speculation distort and then destroy the regular health insurance market. All in the name of the poor [who still don't have home ownership].
#4
The major absurdity is the huge unfunded Medicare liability being neglected at the same time the pols want to launch an even larger unfunded liability to cover more of the population. And they say they're going to pay off one by cutting expenditures on the other. This situation doesn't pass the "laugh out loud" test.
#5
I work in Healthcare IT and the "Government" decided about three years ago to set up new universal IDs for Providers (NPI numbers). This was to simplify the large number of IDs Needed in the past e.g. Medicare, Blue Cross, Blue Shield, Medicaid etc.
It took two years to change over and much disruption. Some of my Doctor clients had their Medicare payments stopped for up to 6 months because of "Clerical Errors".
Then they decide that one ID was not enough so the insissted on olaso linking the SSN or EIN to the NPI. Now they are adding a TPPN id to be linked to the NPI and the SSN or EIN. What's next. It's now been three years and there is no end in sight.
#6
If I recall correctly, SteveS, some 70% of Americans living in Israel voted against the current president last November -- their returns were announced before the American returns came through. The Israelis were very clear on the differences between the two candidates.
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I keep reading about health-care "reform," but I have yet to see anyone explain how the government can make it easier for more people to obtain medical services, control the already exploding cost of those services and not interfere with people's most intimate decisions.
