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Landmark Health Insurance Bill Passes House
theodp writes "A hastily-crafted amendment imposing tough new restrictions on abortion coverage in insurance policies helped pave the way for the House to approve the Democrats' bill to overhaul the nation's health insurance system. 'It provides coverage for 96 percent of Americans,' said Rep. John Dingell. Rep. Candice Miller disagreed, calling the legislation 'a jobs-killing, tax-hiking, deficit-exploding' bill. The 1,990-page, $1.2 trillion legislation passed by a vote of 220-215 and moves on for Senate debate, which is expected to begin in several days."
Update — 11/08 at 13:45 GMT by SS: Changed vote totals above to reflect the actual bill vote. The 240-194 number was for the abortion restrictions amendment.
I read the link to the Ways and Means Committee where this idea that you will "buy or go to jail" has come from, which cites IRS tax codes for the reasoning you might go to jail.
The Republicans on the Ways and Means Committee, and various media outlets, like the Drudge report, have spread this idea that you will go to jail if you do not want this health bill passed. It's not true. You will face civil and/or criminal penalties for failing to pay taxes. That should be obvious.
Let's be clear: 1.2 Billion is the cost for 10 years, not 1 single upfront cost (like bailouts or emergency war funding supplementals)
I forgot to mention the ultimate hypocrisy in this bill. Every member of the legislature is exempt from the bill. They have their own luxury system that is fully paid for by the taxpayers for life.
Normally I ascribe all life to intelligent design, but in your case I'll make an exception.
Money is your set of votes in the societal decision of how to allocate resources. Your money tells you how much society values what you provide it, and it allows you to tell society that you value some things more than others. The aggregate effect of these choices ("the invisible hand") guides entrepreneurs to serve other members of society as well as they can by efficiently (ie profitably) allocating resources.
Ability to pay gauges what a person provides to society. This gives everyone a weighted vote.
The alternative to allocating resources based on ability to pay is direction by government fiat, and we've seen over and over that that does not work. See Soviet Union gov't attempting to direct all production, United States gov't allocating resources to housing, allocating resources to banks, so on. In fact it cannot work, because no individual is 1) smart enough to know all the variables involved in allocating *any* resource, and 2) no individual is able to make an apples to apples comparison between the preferences of other individuals. Each of us can only determine the relative value *we* place on goods or services, relative to what we think the others we forego would provide. If i buy a loaf of bread, it is because i prefer the loaf of bread to what i think the $2.50 would provide me either presently or down the road. I can't make that decision for someone else, and i can't quantify another's preferences. I can only know my own, and then only in ordinal terms. Money, through bidding, allows me to make an apples to apples preference comparison with other individuals. Eg, i can want the item for sale more than $100, while the next in line only prefers it to $99.
We need to choose between the former (market) and latter (socialism) because we need division of labor. Otherwise we would all have to learn how to hunt, farm, cook, make brooms, so on, and each of us would have to own the capital goods necessary for each of these endeavors. With DOL, we learn to do one job more effectively than others, we only have to have one set of capital goods, and we trade what we provide (what society needs) for what we need.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/09/understanding_the_cause_of_hea.html
They're the ones that started cost inflation in the 1970's that has gotten us to this point. They don't even know they screwed it up...and we expect them to fix it?
It makes me think of the classic demotivator: http://www.despair.com/government.html
Sigh.
Oh well, at least we don't have any money to pay for it....(not that it matters, apparently)
Pre-existing conditions is a wonderful way of saying that none of your previous doctors noticed it so we're not paying either.
Come again?
Preexisting conditions mean exactly the opposite of that - It means you did have the condition diagnosed before getting your current run of uninterrupted insurance coverage. The original idea behind such clauses actually had some merit - You couldn't skip out on having insurance, find out you have cancer, then get insurance solely to pay for your treatment.
Of course, the insurance companies, interested solely in profit rather than patient outcomes (hey, I hate them as much as anyone, but won't fault them (just) for doing exactly what they exist to do - Make money), discovered they could use this not just for acute conditions, but to deny treatment for things like diabetes or the standard cardiac cocktails most older males take, based on nothing more than the fact that you went one day too long without coverage between jobs.
But if no doctor ever diagnosed your condition, consider yourself good to go. Now, we do have some grey area here... If you had an X-Ray for a broken arm ten years ago, and it has a fuzzy patch near your current tumor, well, the insurance companies have whole teams of people looking for just such meaningless data as an excuse to deny benefits.
I thought it was interesting that Associated Press published an article recently on the profits of the health insurance industry, something railed against persistently by various politicians. They found that the usual average profit margin for health insurance companies was 6%, and last year it was only 2%. From 2003 to 2008, the growth in their costs exceeded the growth in their profits.
But then, as the article itself notes, no one seems interested in the actual facts of the debate.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Just because this is "a bill" doesn't mean it is a good bill or it will work. I was in this industry before so I will offer a grossly simplified explanation.
People are forgetting the dire state of the economy now, and most people have no idea how health insurance really works. Right up front, most people still think the premiums they pay go into a pool and claims are then paid out of that pool. Well, that's nonsense, that only covers administration costs and commissions and so forth for the most part. It is laughable to think your premiums in some pool cover health claim payouts, it isn't even close now.
Claims are primarily paid out of the profits the other aspects of the insurance companies engage in, the "market", they take premium monies and reinvest them in the same sort of speculation any other financial concern does, buying stocks bonds and then onto complex and mostly retarded financial products.
Now, anyone who has been paying attention the last two years can see that this system is seriously flawed, and that a lot of these "profits" were no more than theoretical profits and were mostly complete BS, and unfortunately still way too many people sill remain in complete denial of this, hanging on to some fairy tale illusion you can just magically print up wealth.
This economic reality impacts the insurance companies and everyone else, ie, most current claims that are being paid *now* are already way over the top into unreality land, and this level of paying is completely unsustainable. Adding additional levels of payments out will therefore be even more unsustainable. The system is already bankrupt
Easy to see with basic math why the whole system-europe included-is headed for epic fail in the near future. (and in the socialized systems the people there never really *see* an itemized bill so they have no idea what medical care costs except at some vague gross national levels, but they fail to take into account their national debt load to sustain that, it is borrowed money, even at a maximum 100% tax rate they would still run in the red).
It's only been sustained to this point, both private and socialized, with massive future load indebtedness. Look at what medical care really costs, now look at premium levels, or tax levels, now add in that everyone is going to want to have a claim at least once, more likely numerous times. Money paid in to money needed to come out is no where near the same level. It has been teetering for years now, along with a lot of other factors in this massive voodoo econmics bubble economy that national leaders and business people push, sustained by inflation and book keeping tricks. You haven't been paying for what exists, just issuing IOUs.
There is only ONE way for true national coverage to be affordable on a pay as you go notion, and that is if the entire medical industry, all of it, top to bottom from pharmcos to doctors to hospital employees to insurance company workers and owners, medical device makers, all the stockholders, all of that, a huge list, to governmental administrators,etc, take a HUGE drop in income, and there are created 5 times (some large number like that) as many people working in that industry, all at global lower payscales.
There's NO free anything on this planet. It just doesn't exist.
This is a basic fact of reality that is just lost to millions of people. If your nation is not constantly operating in the black, if they are running in the red every year, BOTH your internal debt load and international debt load (and very few nations are in the black with both those figures now) all your services including your "free" healthcare are being borrowed, you aren't "paying for it" no matter your tax rate or what private premiums you cirrently pay. You can only do that for so long before you are bankrupt and the whole thing collapses.
This new bill, not really law yet but what just passed in the US House, is trying to create a fur
P.S.
I should also add that the "public option" is, according to Congressman Barney Frank, just step one. He was caught on camera saying that healthcare will be completely taken-over by government circa 2020. Mr. Frank probably won't be there on that date, but that's the roadmap the Democrats have laid-out. They want the US to have a UK-style government monopoly.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
The reason they want to tie it in with the irs is because congress may tax and spend for the general welfare. It won't pass under the commerce clause.
The "federals" also allowed slavery when the constitution was written.
They also offered to let the south keep slavery in perpetuity, if they'd rejoin the union and pay the tariffs. This offer was made several times during the war. The northern claim to moral ascendancy on the slavery issue is a load of crap.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Tried that a century and a half ago. Unfortunately we coupled "state sovereignty" with "states' rights to allow slavery." So we lost that one. We all lost. Even the freed slaves lost.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
The fact that you are missing is that government interference in the free market back in the 70s caused the high prices. Hospitals, doctors and drug companies charge such high prices because they know that due to HMO-style insurance people can spend more than they otherwise would. Without that subsidy, prices could never have risen faster than inflation.
Health care in this country is about the best in the world.
That is a lie.
"The United States ranks 31st in life expectancy (tied with Kuwait and Chile), according to the latest World Health Organization figures. We rank 37th in infant mortality (partly because of many premature births) and 34th in maternal mortality. A child in the United States is two-and-a-half times as likely to die by age 5 as in Singapore or Sweden, and an American woman is 11 times as likely to die in childbirth as a woman in Ireland."
"Yet another study, cited in a recent report by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Urban Institute, looked at how well 19 developed countries succeeded in avoiding “preventable deaths,” such as those where a disease could be cured or forestalled. What Senator Shelby called “the best health care system” ranked in last place."
It's early, I'm lazy, but the facts match up. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/05/opinion/05kristof.html?em
"Most of the "new deal" was continuation of Hoover's interference in the economy."
No. There was a crucial difference - abandonment of the gold standard. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Depression#Gold_standard It was pretty much required by the Banking Act, which was drafted by the Hoover's administration, true. But it had been enacted by Roosevelt.
"No, the Japanese government refused to let failed banks go out of business. They poured money into them, just as the congress did in the TARP program."
Later. After the economy hit the wall and entered the vicious cycle of deflation.
"Keynes didn't understand economics, either. He understood how to curry favor with politicians by lending an air of "scientific" justification to their power-grabbing. He was the Lysenko [wikipedia.org] of economics."
Nope. He knew economy quite well to understand that simple 'fiscal conservatism' is meaningless in the growing economy.
I see you don't want to take my bet?
Ahhh. I've been marked a "troll" because I simply repeated what Mr. Frank said on camera. Brilliant.
Oh well. When 2020 comes and the Democrats are saying, "Healthcare is broke. The public option did not work. We need a complete takeover of healthcare by the government, as they have in Canada, Europe, and other nations around the world," remember that Mr. Frank told you it would happen.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
I do wonder what part of the constitution is going to be used to force people to buy health insurance. This question was asked to Peloski but brushed aside. Further emails from her office say it's part of Interstate Commerce and the general welfare clause. How long before it's challenged in court?
Few people will actually be covered under the reduced "public option". This bill was another payout to corporate America, on the taxpayers' dime.
Not in a million years.
The courts have consistently ruled that the commerce clause gives congress very broad authority to poke and prod at the economy, regardless if what they're poking and prodding is interstate or intrastate or even a commercial transaction.
Read Gonzalez v. Raich sometime. Raich grew marijuana legally under California law. The marijuana was for personal use, never crossed a state line, and was never sold. However, the SCOTUS ruled 6-3 that this was a permissible exercise of the commerce clause.
Pardon the pun, but believing that this will be knocked down is nothing more than a pipe dream. It won't even get an appeals court hearing, much less to the SCOTUS.
On what basis are you concluding that? A quick look suggests that a good estimate of the poor (by official poverty line) in the US is 39 million, while the illegal immigrant population may be something around 11 million. That says that at the most about a quarter of the poor are illegal immigrants, and that's assuming that all illegal immigrants are poor (which isn't strictly true, though I don't know how far off it is). In any case, the bill bars illegal immigrants from getting aid in buying health insurance, although it remains to be seen how that would be enforced.
While the situation with malpractice suits may be unreasonable, it's probably not a major contributor to health care costs. It sounds plausible on the surface that it would be, but apparently the total expenditure on malpractice insurance is less than $7 billion per year, which is totally dwarfed by total healthcare spending (something like $2.5 trillion). The cost of doctors practicing defensive medicine is, of course, harder to pin down, but it sounds like most studies still peg it as small. In any case, the CBO is estimating the savings on healthcare spending from malpractice award caps at 0.5%. I think this gets talked about a lot by politicians because it sounds plausible, there are some legitimate problems with malpractice suits, and, most importantly, people making malpractice claims are a convenient scapegoat since most of us won't ever be one or probably even know one.
In terms of the other costs I agree, though. We pay an absurd amount for drugs and a lot more for medical procedures than most other developed democracies. I'm not certain of all of the reasons for that, but the most likely major reason is that in most of those places the government collectively bargins with providers on behalf of all citizens, setting prices for drugs and medical procedures (even in many countries where insurance is still provided by private companies, like Japan and Germany). You can certainly debate the merits of such a system, but its one indisputable advantage is cheap prices.
I don't know what the will was among the Democrats to change the rules on drug purchasing by the government, but I'm sure that even those who supported it would not have lobbied for inclusion in this bill only because this bill had uncertain prospects in the first place, so adding something else potentially controversial probably would have killed it. It's bad strategy. If they want to make that change, it should come in a different bill.
"You call it a new way of thinking; I call it regression to ignorance!" -- Operation Ivy
You're probably looking at the print-friendly version from the THOMAS site, which is about 584 pages for me. Pasting the text into Word and stripping out the double paragraph breaks puts it at 859 pages and more than 315,000 words.
But I also have the PDF file from the Government Printing Office loaded right now, and Adobe Reader's paging function says that I'm on page 1 of 1990. Given that the GPO's printing guidelines are very consistent, referring to the 1990 pages of this bill provides a useful comparison to other bills, including past health care reform bills.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
You aren't standing next to me, but if you google the US Constitution, look for the phrase "general welfare". Get the annotated version so you can see how it's been used over the past few centuries. Next look for the "commerce clause".
On what basis are you concluding that? A quick look suggests that a good estimate of the poor (by official poverty line) in the US is 39 million, while the illegal immigrant population may be something around 11 million. That says that at the most about a quarter of the poor are illegal immigrants, and that's assuming that all illegal immigrants are poor (which isn't strictly true, though I don't know how far off it is). In any case, the bill bars illegal immigrants [factcheck.org] from getting aid in buying health insurance, although it remains to be seen how that would be enforced.
First, that poverty line INCLUDES ALL PPL LIVING HERE. That means citizens, legal immigrants and illegal aliens. Second, most of the #s for illegals in the states show 15-30 million, not the low 11 million that you claim.
Second, we have a law that says that no alcohol will be served to 21 and under. BUT, what happens if all the bars are told to NOT check IDs. That is the same situation that is happening. When you can not check the legal status of a person, then the law is worthless (and the dems know that). All that is required is to simply require hospitals to call in ICE for every person that does not have insurance or public options, and require a legality check on ppl signing up for public options, but the dems fought that (i did notice that pubs have not pushed it either; IMHO, they are worse then dems since they claim to be against illegals, while dems claim to love them).
ANY reform on medical costs is worth it. several OB-GYN and and an anesthesiologist that I know (none with any previous issues) are paying over 100K/year for malpractice. That is outrageous.
I can see you point on the last one, except that all who are fighting against this bill are the same idiots that will fight against the lowering of the drugs costs. IOW, it should not change the situation.
Keep in mind that the Senate is not likely to pass this monster. Personally, I do not think that it should be passed, unless we really lower medical costs. And nothing in this does.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
yeah! or car insurance! wait what?
I rely on me to provide for me. Government isn't about compassion either. It's about control. We've pretty much abandoned the intent of the constitution. The federals were never supposed to have this much power. I think it's time for the States to step up and take some of this power away from them.
That effort has already begun.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Right after you repeat after me: "Every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a law, be presented to the President of the United States: If he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it"
Oh come on. The idea of narrowly construed and restricted enumerated powers lasted less than 5 years from the adoption of the Constitution. It died with the establishment of a national bank in 1791.
If this was interpreted narrowly we would have no programs like the EPA, Federal aid to education, the interstate highway system, etc etc etc. Bringing that objection up at this point is like trying to roll the US back to the time there were just 13 states.
Give us a break with this sort of nonsense, please.
You forgot to read the part where it says the SCOTUS is the supreme arbiter of constitutionality. If congress does it, and the Supreme Court says it's okay, then it's defacto constitutional, so says the constitution.
Yeah...I don't remember much at all from my High School US History / US Government classes, but I do remember some of the major stuff. This would be one of them: the Constitution has no clauses that specify the right to judicial review, and this right was established only years after in the Marbury v. Madison case.
Not that I'm saying I'm against judicial review. Somebody has to do it, and the judicial branch doesn't really have a strong role in the "Checks and Balances" philosophy without it. However, it's not a function specifically outlined in the constitution.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
when FED buys treasury bills and bonds, it does exactly that. There was no dollar, puff, there is a dollar. They don't pay with existing money, they simply announce: ok, we take these papers and you add 100 billion to your account. Pool of money is increased (printing money) thus watering down value of money already in circulation (inflation)
By the way if you are earning $8 how are you going to afford health care without government help under any system?
I am old. I remember the days before the federal government became involved in health care. It wasn't that long ago. You kids today who think that the last Bush was a terrible president should have seen things under Johnson, who made Bush (who really was a terrible president) look Utopian. Back then, some people made claims that the Medicare & Medicaid might cost tens of billions, just like people today are claiming that this current bill will cost over a trillion. What you kids don't realize is that even the pessimists are underestimating the costs by a great margin. The economic costs of this legislation is going to be at least tens of trillions.
Anyway, your question was how to afford health care without government help? That's easy. You just pay for it. The biggest reason for the out of control costs of health care is government interference in the first place. Back before there was interference, we could get medicine just by paying for it, and it was always affordable. Expensive, certainly, but not so much that even a poor worker couldn't afford it. Back then, we even had something that most of you would find hard to believe. It was called a "house call". Instead of going to a doctor's office, he would come to your house to take care of you there. It costs $.50 (that's fifty cents, not fifty dollars) extra. Granted, we only made $7000 or so a year, but even considering how much value the dollar has lost it was still inexpensive compared to today, where I don't know any doctor who offers service like that.
And that's why you kids today are all stupid. You don't understand that things cost money. The government can't simply wave a magic wand and conjure up some health care. Every dollar it spends is a dollar that has to be extracted by force from somewhere, and that extraction carries a price too. Government thugs have to be paid, and that bureaucracy of drones gets paychecks too. Adding government control or even oversight to health care makes it more expensive, probably by at least an order of magnitude over its natural price. If you want to know why people can't afford health care, look in the mirror. All of you people wanting the government to "do something" are the cause.
We didn't get out of the first great depression until 1946, when a million men were released from military service, the federal budget was cut by 2/3, and most of Hoover and Roosevelt's insane economic policies were lifted.
Redefining history much? For everyone else the recession ended in 1933. It does not matter when the wealth levels came back to normal, it matters when they started to increase. The fact that the economy was back in shape at the end of the war means that it cannot be an effect of the end of the war.
Art. I Sec. 9: "The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person." This refers to the importation of slaves. Also Art. I Sec. 2: "the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons." Ie. "free people... and others."
Revive the Constitution.
And other states are working on similar proposals as 2010 referenda. Also, Montana and Tennessee are already in open defiance of the feds through their "Firearms Freedom Act"s, with Montana having just filed a lawsuit petitioning for a completely in-state gun not to be considered subject to "interstate commerce" control. We need to stand ready to defend our citizens peacefully against federal aggression, knowing that this might mean more than filing lawsuits.
Revive the Constitution.
I want to know on what planet Keynes is considered a "Lysenko". Not the same planet that noted Chicago school economist and judge, Richard Posner, lives on: http://www.tnr.com/article/how-i-became-keynesian . Nor the planet that Milton Friedman lives on, the man who said that, in a certain sense, "we are all Keynesians now." Certain elements of Keynes's theory are the standard ways of approaching economics, used by everyone. That you think otherwise suggests you are profoundly profoundly profoundly ignorant of economics.
Though, I suppose, if you want to be an anti-Keynesian, I suppose you would accept Friedman's opinion that monetary contraction was the main cause of the recession, a point upon which most economists currently agree. What's that? You think HOOVER caused the recession? Oh, that's right, you know nothing about economics, but you insist on talking about anyway. For a second I forgot about that...
Finally, you claim that Hoover, of all people, was the source of depression-causing progressivism. This claim is too ridiculous to be believed. It's like blaming Democrats for the expansionary federal budget during 2000-2006. They didn't do anything! They were never given the chance!
It sickens me the ass-talking ignorance that passes for economic knowledge on Slashdot. It's not that people like you don't bother to do the research, but rather there is this pervasive sense of anti-government pseudo-Austiran countercultural conspiratorism that makes enema-bags like you think you are too good for economic knowledge. "Keynes is just another Lysenko!" If you had taken any intro to econ course, or read any intro to econ books, ever, you would not think this. Shut up.
Because that's the best way we have come up with. It's impossible to measure all the ways people generate value in society, but if you do something that someone is willing to pay you for, then you're probably producing something worthwhile. It's _highly_ imperfect, since money can be stolen, inherited, and otherwise obtained without an in-kind contribution to society, but on average, it sort of works.
Before you dump money as a measure of value, consider carefully what you will replace it with. The easy answer is "nothing, all people are equal", but beware that peoples' value is not fixed at birth - it changes in complex ways in response to incentives. There's a substantial fraction of the population who, given the opportunity to live out their lives in relative squalor, but with all their real _needs_ being met for life, and with lots of free time to make folk art, or smoke drugs, or watch television, or stay in perpetual graduate school studying french poetry, or whatever, would take it. The fraction may exceed 0.9. The only reason the garbage gets collected and the buses get driven is that most people need to work to acquire enough in-game value tokens to exchange for stuff they need to keep their characters alive. In other words, fear makes the world go around. We have a recent example of a society that tried a fear-free approach - they had bread lines, and a popular saying - "they pretend to pay me and I pretend to work". Then their economy literally collapsed.
That doesn't mean we can't value people in different ways depending on context - we don't consider income or wealth when judging someone in criminal court (officially, anyway), and perhaps health is another one of those areas where we decide to remove economic considerations, but we need to be careful. Especially considering that, unlike equal criminal justice, equal health care is potentially infinitely costly. When the user is not directly involved in paying for it, s/he has zero incentive to say "no" to any intervention. We can bankrupt our society on this if we're not careful. European countries have a good deal more political consensus on what to pay for and what not, and the ability to implement that consensus; in America I fear that over time, our courts will eventually mandate a "never say no" approach to health care, and in a decade or two we'll see health insurance (or medicare) required to pay for pets' operations to protect their owners mental "health". Beware of unintended consequences.
Nonsense, capitalism is awful at things that don't make a profit and where value is not easily expressed in terms of money. This includes things like education, environmental protection, and health care. Quit spewing dumb soundbites.
Actually, it seems that education is much better when it's paid for with private funds. Even publicly funded education was better before the Federal government got involved and created the Department of Education. Outcomes for public education have deteriorated significantly since.
Whether health care can be any good when no profit motive is involved remains to be seen. The vast majority of medical advances in the last century have been made by people hoping to profit from their discoveries. These include pharmaceutical companies, teaching hospitals, medical equipment manufacturers, etc.
When all medical care is control and rationed by government, it may just stagnate. Then again, there will probably plenty of billionaires walking around wanting to spend money on medical advances for themselves and their families. We may even still call them Senators, Congressmen, CEOs, board members, cabinet members, and bankers.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
"Banks have over-issued their notes for as long as they've existed. This is not solved by gathering all of the counterfeiting and fraud into one central authority which is able to compel us to accept their notes. It's better for banks to fail individually."
And before banks existed, there was virtually no economic growth. And it can be easily explained if you look in any good textbook of macroeconomics. Should I explain it for you?
"Nope. More debt is not a solution to the problems of existing debt. It only postpones and increases the scale of the mess."
You're just parroting republican idiocy.
"More debt" can very well be the solution for the problems of debt, if extra debt is offset by later economic growth. I.e. if an extra debt becomes an extra investment.
Case in point, USA during late 40-s: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:USDebt.png
Notice the sharp drop of debt-to-GDP ratio while the absolute amount of debt has changed very little. That's because economy growth had offset the debt growth.
Also, late 40-s - 50s was a period with high income and corporate taxes and strong unions. Which should be very bad for business according to you.