US Government Shutdown Ends

An anonymous reader writes "After more than two weeks of bickering that made the schoolyard appear civilized, Congress has finally passed a bill to reopen the U.S. Federal Government. 'The Senate passed the measure by a vote of 81 - 18, followed by approval in the House by a vote of 285 - 144. The bill now goes to the President, who will make remarks on Thursday regarding the reopening of the federal government. ... Earlier in the day, Speaker Boehner conceded that the House would not vote to stop the Senate-negotiated agreement. In a statement, the Speaker said that, after a fight with President Obama over his signature health care law, " . . . blocking the bipartisan agreement reached today by the members of the Senate will not be a tactic for us." The agreement will raise the debt limit until February 2014, fund the government through January 2014 and establish a joint House-Senate committee to make spending cut decisions.' CNN adds, 'Obama, for one, didn't seem in the mood Wednesday night for more of the same -- saying politicians in Washington have to "get out of the habit of governing by crisis." "Hopefully, next time, it will not be in the 11th hour," Obama told reporters, calling for both parties to work together on a budget, immigration reform and other issues. When asked as he left the podium whether he believed America would be going through all this political turmoil again in a few months, the President didn't waste words. "No."'"

Comments

Wow.

[Black Parrot]

I didn't think the Democrats were capable of not caving in.

Re:Wow.

[MightyMartian]

Why did you think that? They knew the moderate Republicans in the House would eventually force Boehner's hand. Even Boehner knew it, but this little dance had to go all the way because the moderate Republicans are as terrified of the Tea Party as they are of voters.

Obama and Congressional Democrats have seen this growing weakness in the GOP since 2008, and have been waiting for a chance to humiliate Boehner. Now they'll sit back and watch the civil war in the Republican ranks make the Republicans' dominance of the house become an empty accomplishment.

Re:Wow.

[paiute]

Welcom to the welfare state. You voted for it.

The rest of the civilized world makes this shit work. You don't think America can do it better? Why do you hate America?

Re:Wow.

[dbc]

Bah. Weak sauce. Both Reps and Dems want to use the coercive power of the state to control my life. They just have different priorities. It's not that the Dems want a nanny state and the Reps want to set me free. The Reps just want to fire the current nanny and install a different nanny with different rules. Unless the libertarian-leaning wing of the Republican party manages to give Boehner and his ilk a full spinal transplant we are doomed. Oh... and all the Republican bible-thumpers need to back-off, too. Don't use the coercive power of the state to enforce your morality on your neighbor. You see we have this thing called the constitution, and you have to live by the parts that you like as well as the parts that you don't so much agree with.

Re:Wow.

[Jeremi]

Would it make sense to trim your spending to borrow less?

It would, but if given the choice I'd also like to get a raise, and use the additional income to help pay down the debt and reduce the necessary size (and therefore pain) of the spending cuts. The one thing I definitely wouldn't do is go to my boss and demand that my salary be reduced -- that would be counterproductive.

Can we afford ACA?

Are you asking, can we afford to provide health care to our citizens? As a first world nation, the answer is definitely yes. Every other first world nation manages to do that without going bankrupt, so there's no reason the "greatest nation on Earth" can't do it too. It's not rocket science. The only question is whether we have the will and self-confidence to make it work, or whether the conservatives have demoralized people to the point that they don't think our nation is capable of it.

If you have a choice between housing and insurance, which will you drop? Between food and insurance?

Conservatives, for some reason, have come to the conclusion that health care is a luxury. It is not, it is a necessity, that's why it is illegal for emergency rooms to turn people away. So the only remaining question is, who pays for it? Under the old system, health care for the uninsured is paid for either by the insured (in the form of inflated premiums) or by the taxpayer. Under the ACA, people are for the first time required to take personal responsibility to plan for their own (inevitable) health care costs, rather than foisting them on to the rest of us, and somehow conservatives think that is a bad thing. Which is odd, because it was their idea in the first place.

Welcom to the welfare state. You voted for it.

Yes, and I'll continue to vote for it. I prefer civilization to social darwinism.

Re:Wow.

[complete loony]

The fight to limit spending is a fight for the economy

No, no, no, no, no! Government spending reduces when then the economy is booming. But attempting to reduce spending does not trigger a boom!. Correlation does not imply causation.

That's not to say that the level of debt in the economy isn't important. Understanding the role of debt is critical to understanding the dynamics of the economy. But you can't just focus on government debt, you have to look at *all* of the debt in the economy to understand what is really going on. Once the crisis hit in 2008, the private sector started reducing their debts. Spending from credit essentially stopped. Government spending since 2008 has helped to cushion the impact of that reduction in credit. See this graph to get a feel for the scale of the problem.

If anything the role of government is to save for the future during a boom, and pay from those savings during a slump. Or borrow during a slump and pay it back in the next boom, which amounts to the same thing. Of course before this crisis started the government wasn't saving at all, but forcing the government to save now will have a drastic impact on the welfare of the country. Look how well austerity programs have been working in the rest of the world.

Re:Wow.

[artor3]

The government isn't like a family. It's more like a bank.

People (and countries) buy government securities because they want a safe place to store their money while earning a token interest rate. So they "deposit" their money with the US government. They give the US $1 billion, at which point the government now has $1 billion cash and $1 billion of debt. After some predetermined amount of time, the government repays the debt, but at the same time someone else will deposit as much or more money.

As long as the government invests the $1 billion cash in a way that earns a greater rate of return than the interest rate that they pay out, it's a profit center.

Eliminating the debt would be monumentally stupid. It would be like a bank giving back all its deposits and refusing to take new ones.

The goal should be to make sure we take only as much as we can invest well, and the way to do that is to improve the efficiency of our investments. Cutting to the bone makes our spending less efficient.

Re:Wow.

[Tom]

The fight to limit spending is a fight for the economy.

In logic 101, you learn to look for assumptions first, because if an assumption is wrong, then the entire rest of the logic chain doesn't need to be examined anymore, as it is meaningless.

Your wrong assumption is that the problem is with the spending. But a deficit is not a problem of high spending, it is a problem of spending more than you have. You can fix it by reducing your spending, or by increasing your income.

Would it make sence to trim your spending to borrow less?

Most western countries have been cutting all kinds of expenditure for two decades now. The cuts have not been equally distributed - military spending has not been affected as much as social spending, for example.

At the same time, taxes have been abolished or reduced for the top income brackets. No, wait, for the very, very top only. I consistently earned quite well for most of that time, I've seen personally what the press has only picked up recently: The destruction of the middle class. The gap between me and the guy working at the supermarket hasn't changed all that much. But the gap between me and the guy who owns supermarket chain, that has become insane.

If you raise taxes on property and wealth by 1%, then half of the additional income from that tax will come from the famous 1% that Occupy has been going on about.

So if you think that the poor can't survive a 1% tax increase, then increase the tax 2% for the top 1% income bracket, and you will get the same net tax increase. I don't know many billionaires who'd have to starve if they were taxed 2% more.

Re:Wow.

[Megaport]

The rest of the civilized world makes this shit work. You don't think America can do it better? Why do you hate America?

America has brainwashed itself. I lived in Texas for a few years and have seen it first-hand. Its called cognitive dissonance I think. A 'patriot' seems to be someone who can simultaneously believe that the consitution is perfect, America is the greatest nation, and that they need to be armed in case they need to shoot it out with their own government.

Wow.

--D

Re:Wow.

[madro]

A common fallacy is that governments should run their finances like a family. A family does not (1) live forever, (2) print its own currency, (3) collect revenue as a matter of law, or (4) have a duty to provide public goods like a national defense. Maintaining debt in perpetuity makes sense as long as the economy grows over the long term and as long as that debt doesn't get "too big" (with pretty fierce debate over what that means -- 100% of GDP is not necessarily too big by historical standards, but reputable minds can disagree).

But in terms of the maturity level of *this* particular Congress, this is pretty spot on.

Re:Wow.

[dunkelfalke]

Mediocre lifestyle?

Re:Wow.

[SecurityTheatre]

It's worth pointing out (as was said below), that most Democrats would support a single-payer government healthcare system, either on a federal level (like the NHS in Britain), or through federal mandates for states to create their own single player (as in Canada).

For a bit of context, lets look at the history

The RomneyCare-lite package that was passed was a huge compromise of ideals for most left-leaning politicians. This plan as it was passed was about 90% Republican/Conservative and was drafted originally by the conservative partisan think-tank The Heritage Foundation. It enjoyed prominent and vocal support throughout the 1990s from folks like Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole. In fact, Republicans in the senate proposed a nearly identical version of this law in 1993 as an alternative to Bill Clinton's proposed health care reforms (including an "individual mandate" and "health exchanges" and Medicaid Expansion).

In fact, the most controversial portion, the "individual mandate" was the brainchild of Republican senators Orin Hatch, Chuck Grassley, Bob Bennett, and Kit Bond in 1993 and was agreed to by Republican president George HW Bush, as well as by 43 Republican senators in preliminary voting.

In 2006, Republican Mitt Romney implemented a nearly identical plan, with broad Republican support in his home state. It was accepted as an alternative to the single-payer system proposed by Democrats in the state senate and passed with broad bipartisan support, though there was more support from Republicans than Democrats (some of whom saw it as to corporate-focused).

In 2007, Republican US Senator Bob Bennett introduced the bill to a senate subcommitte for adoption as US Federal law and the bill enjoyed broad bipartisan support.

In 2008, when it had been revised down to most of what was in the current bill, Democrats pushed strongly for a "public option", which was basically a government-run insurance company to compete with the private insurance companies, which Republicans at the time claimed to be their primary disagreement with the bill. In a show of compromise, Democrats agreed to remove the "public option" from the bill.

But by then, Republicans had made it a rallying cry of their party and were going to stick with opposition to the bill, often in defiance of their previous position, as a matter of principle.

The rest is history.

Yes, there are legit reasons to be annoyed or disappointed with it, but the rhetoric "the communist, authoritarian" claims and frequent citations of the bill as "the worst law in American history" are completely absurd. I mean... beyond absurd to such an extreme level that it defies reality that people believe it.

Re:Thank goodness

[Black Parrot]

I suspect it will be massaged over the years to work out little wrinkles, with the end result being a single payer system.

Re:Remember this in the 2014 elections

[Black Parrot]

They all need to go.

Fortunately the Capital bathrooms are open again.

Americans doing the right thing

[mhotchin]

Proving once again that, once all other options are eliminated, the Americans will do the right thing

Re:Americans doing the right thing

[axlash]

This is not really "the right thing", any more than a hacky bug fix is the right thing. The right thing is to deal with the deficit/debt, as many Republicans want to - but the way they want to go about it is terrible (a combination of threats and spending cuts only). The reality is that until both parties sit down and agree to deal with the deficit/debt with a mix of tax hikes *and* spending cuts, it's going to be hard to make any significant progress on this.

Re:Americans doing the right thing

[countach74]

Tax hikes don't necessarily mean increased revenue (they have actually decreased revenue at times). Frankly, the only sure-fire way to pay off this debt is via massive spending cuts. But these are cuts that Republicans aren't generally in favor of.

Re:Americans doing the right thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Depends. A good deal of additional revenue could be appropriated simply by revisiting the corporate tax code. Preventing eg, Apple, from doing a "double Irish with a Dutch sandwich", and hiding $11bn from the us's 30-ish% tax alone is 3bn. (Extend that to microsoft, oracle, and pals as well, and you get the picture.) Playing footsie with investors only works when the market isn't at death's door. In the long run, making those companies pay their goddamn taxes is way better than having debt limit crisis 2014, return of the deficit bomb, both for them, and the world at large, and for the same said investors.

There's plenty of revenue that isn't being properly appropriated. The major problem is the byzantine tax system the US uses, which has more holes in it than a whiffle ball.

We don't really need new taxes, we need to revisit and refine the taxes we already have, and sanitize the tax code. Of course, that would almost certainly never see the light of day, since like term limits, it stands to cost all of the corrupt people on the hill a good deal of money. (Eg, it demonstrates a genuine conflict of interest for them.)

Re:Americans doing the right thing

[sjames]

Carter and Clinton managed it just fine. They got the deficit to nothing and Clinton actually managed to pay the debt down a bit.

Or we could raise the taxes in the upper brackets to the levels maintained by that notorious lefty Eisenhower. :-)

Re:Americans doing the right thing

[ClickOnThis]

Proving once again that, once all other options are eliminated, the Americans will do the right thing

If you're going to quote Sir Winston, then give him credit.

Re:Americans doing the right thing

[sjames]

It increased overall, but the deficit (rate of change) went below zero under Clinton meaning that for that brief period before Bush took office and went nuts we were paying the debt down. The deficit started a steady decline the moment Clinton took office, it just took a while to cross zero. Had bush held the course and avoided the great crash, the debt would have been paid off by now (yes, really!).

Re:Americans doing the right thing

[complete loony]

Austerity programs in other countries have not helped to reduce their level of government debt, the level of government debt has still grown during this period.

Why? Because the population is spending less from borrowed money. The scale of that change in consumer spending easily dwarfs the change in government spending.

If you want to boost the economy, the government needs to drastically *increase* their spending, with the majority of that money spent in ways that will flow through to the majority of citizens. Don't just throw cash at bank managers, that doesn't help anyone.

Re:Americans doing the right thing

[Anonymous Coward]

You give credit to Clinton for the debt going down.

This was the Internet bubble time. The economy was white hot and tax revenues were phat. You could have put a Teddy Ruxpin in as President and the effect would have been the same.

Re:Americans doing the right thing

[nharmon]

Carter and Clinton managed it just fine. They got the deficit to nothing and Clinton actually managed to pay the debt down a bit.

That isn't true. Under Carter and Clinton the public debt went up every single year. In fact, the last time we managed to actually pay down the debt was in 1957.

Or we could raise the taxes in the upper brackets to the levels maintained by that notorious lefty Eisenhower. :-)

Go ahead. Just be sure to add every loophole and tax deduction that was available during Eisenhower's times. Otherwise you're just advocating confiscation of wealth, which is not such a lovely road for us to go down. But hey, high tax rates with generous deductions would encourage spending, and that would be fine by me.

Re:Thank goodness

[Black Parrot]

it's interesting to hear that it falls short of your ideal. i haven't heard many people state that opinion.

Its backers accepted a lot of compromises in order to get it out of committee and onto the floor for a vote. A lot of people think the original was somewhere between "substantially better" and "much better".

Re:Thank goodness

[MightyMartian]

That would be my assumption. So it isn't a done deal in the long term, but in the short and medium term, the Republicans won't get many, if any more chances to kill it. I'd say Obamacare, and whatever it ultimately morphs into, is now pretty much cemented into the landscape. Within a few election cycles, no one will be talking about repealing it.

US Government logic

[Cryacin]

Given pro is the opposite of con,

What is the opposite of progress?

Re:US Government logic

[noh8rz10]

Given pro is the opposite of con,

What is the opposite of progress?

republicans! [raises mod shield]

Re:US Government logic

[paiute]

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hackneyed

Ends?

[kevinatilusa]

Maybe a more accurate headline is "US Government Shutdown on temporary hiatus"? It's only a few months funding, and there's no guarantee we won't go through the entire thing again come January 15th...

Re:Ends?

[rmstar]

Government shutdown
Democrats in Senate and Democrat President refuse to negotiate
So...It's all the Tea Party Republicans' fault.

See any logical flaws here?

No, actually. Where should it be? It's all the fault of the reckless hostage takers, and these are all teabaggers.

Re: Ends?

[toppavak]

Right, this has nothing to do with the fact that a no strings attached version of the bill had enough Republican votes in the house to pass from the get go but the republican caucus in the house changed the parliamentary rules so only the majority leader could bring the bill to vote, ie boehner, who proceeded to refuse to do so to begin this whole charade of brinkmanship to begin with. Citation: http://touch.baltimoresun.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-77802818/

yet 33% in the House opposed it

[binarstu]

The bill passed the House, but 144 votes were cast against it -- more than 1/3 of those voting! One can only guess at the careful thought that went into casting those votes. Do these people actually believe that funding "Obamacare" for a few months is worse than letting the federal government default on its loans? There is no acceptable answer to this question. If the answer is "yes," well -- yikes. If the answer is "no," and this is just shameless pandering to the extreme right faction of the GOP/"Tea Party", then -- yikes.

Re:yet 33% in the House opposed it

[Anonymous Coward]

The bill passed the House, but 144 votes were cast against it -- more than 1/3 of those voting! One can only guess at the careful thought that went into casting those votes. Do these people actually believe that funding "Obamacare" for a few months is worse than letting the federal government default on its loans? There is no acceptable answer to this question. If the answer is "yes," well -- yikes. If the answer is "no," and this is just shameless pandering to the extreme right faction of the GOP/"Tea Party", then -- yikes.

Don't fall for that nonsense. People talk, the party whips do what they do. Everyone is reasonably certain of how everyone is going to vote long before the actual event. It can sometimes be beneficial to vote no on something that will assuredly pass, and you may even want passed, merely because voters and donors that care to keep track in such detail want you to vote no.

Re:yet 33% in the House opposed it

[sjames]

Actually, if you'll read to the bottom of your link, Obama freely admits that he was voting for political reasons and he has now come to understand that it was the wrong way to go. Yes, a politician admitted he was wrong once. AMAZING!

At the same time, he has at least reduced the deficit indicating willingness and ability to work in that direction for the good of the country.

Now it gets worse.

[ulatekh]

The federal government is still spending far more than it's taking in, and seems to have little to show for it.

We're not even borrowing the money any more; the Federal Reserve just changes a number in a computer to create more money, then lends it to the U.S. government at near-zero interest.

This is a shell game of the highest magnitude, and all historical precedents point to this ending badly.

Federal spending has to be brought under control. It appears there's no will in our so-called leaders to do so. A shutdown and default, despite the chaos it would lead to, would have stopped the out-of-control spending. I would like to think there's another way to get federal spending under control, but I'm not that gullible.

This was a chance to stop the hemorrhaging. This chance is gone. The problem will only get worse.

And if you think there's something special about the United States that'll keep it from collapsing like so many other empires in history...I hope you're right. But I'm still constructing my compound on raw land in the middle of nowhere.

Re:Now it gets worse.

[NoKaOi]

This was a chance to stop the hemorrhaging.

No, it wasn't. This was a manipulation tactic by a minority group of legislators to change the law even though they knew they couldn't really change the law legally (they tried and failed) and knew their tactic had no chance of success anyway. That they were able to do this points to a systematic problem that will only get worse. That they hemorrhaging resources into the military (see: Roman Empire) is only a symptom of that systematic corruption.

Re:Now it gets worse.

[dbc]

I agree with you on all points but one -- this wasn't really a chance to stop the crazy. The budget is too out of control to come up with a fix in a few days. It is going to take a very difficult debate among the entire electorate to decide which sacred cows are going to be slaughtered. It has gotten to the point where no politician is willing to bring the subject up because everyone is going to feel some very real pain in order to solve all of this.

It is going to get ugly, without a doubt. The sooner it is tackled, the less ugly it will be. I think it is a 70/30 chance to be bloody, as well.

Everyone who remembers the great depression is at least in their eighties, and they were just children then. Ask them what it was like in order to prepare yourself. Those days were ugly, and we may see a repeat. Only this time, instead of 50% of the population being rural/farm and having the ability to at least grow a garden for their own food, today only 1% of the population lives on farms and 99% is at the end of a food supply chain with a 5 day buffer. Just a few days ago EBT went out in a few states for a couple of days and we came close to food riots. The only reason we didn't have actual riots is that WalMart let people simply shoplift any food they wanted.

Re:Now it gets worse.

[LandDolphin]

What he means is that they've tried to change the law (The ACA) through legislative means 41 times and failed each time. So they attached their failed legislation to a budget bill hoping to force it down. They failed.

Re:Now it gets worse.

[Tablizer]

Federal spending has to be brought under control.

Austerity did not work for Hoover, nor Europe recently. It just makes the problem worse. You cannot pay off debt if the economy remains in a slump. Keynesian policy may be counter-intuitive to some, but some things in life are like that. At least pick the middle ground if you hate stimuluses.

the Federal Reserve just changes a number in a computer to create more money,

If it were the case that it was being overdone, then our inflation rate would be higher than it is. Our inflation rate should be higher to encourage the rich to spend their cash instead of sitting on it waiting for better times. About 2.2% would be nice, but we are at about 1.7% right now (annually adjusted, smoothed over several months).

I realize there is risk either way, but history tends to favor stimuluses over austerity during prolonged slumps. I'll go with the horse with the better record.

Re:Now it gets worse.

[evilviper]

It is going to get ugly, without a doubt. The sooner it is tackled, the less ugly it will be.

Slashing the budget during a recession with already-high unemployment is a GREAT way to drive us into a real depression. So yes, doing this soon is a TERRIBLE idea. It needs to wait until the economy is growing.

Everyone who remembers the great depression is at least in their eighties, and they were just children then. Ask them what it was like in order to prepare yourself. Those days were ugly, and we may see a repeat.

I agree... If we follow your idiotic advice, that's exactly what we'll get.

Only this time, instead of 50% of the population being rural/farm and having the ability to at least grow a garden for their own food, today only 1% of the population lives on farms

So, I take it you've never read or watched "The Grapes of Wrath", and have never heard of The Dust Bowl? Farms didn't save the US from the depression AT ALL. Roosevelt's government programs did...

Re:Thank goodness

[Technician]

Early reports of those trying to renew insurance or get into exchanges are finding rates near double or more of the previous rates. Guess that is the cost of adding pre-existing conditions to the covered. I expect this to be the new norm with a whole batch of subsidies that anyone earning a living will be unelegible for.

To keep health coverage.. lose the job and apply for assistance. The only casualty is the economy.

Re:Thank goodness

[sjames]

I second his motion. I wanted a single payer system, not a crazy clone of Romneycare.

The fundamental problem is that the actual cost of healthcare is way too high, mostly because a healthy market cannot be established when the option is pay or die and many of the 'customers' come in unconscious. If insurance could fix it, it would have done so in the last several decades.

While Obamacare has addressed some of the issues like 'pre-existing conditions' and rescission, it falls far short of what we really need.

Re:Thank goodness

[Qzukk]

If insurance could fix it

Nobody ever scared anyone with tales of $50 ER visits. Who'd buy insurance to cover cheap healthcare?

Re:Stupid question from a European

[phantomfive]

Why exactly is providing healthcare to all people so bad?

Different Republicans oppose Obamacare for various reasons, some more entertaining than others:

1) It's the road through socialism to full Soviet communism where Obama wants to take us (really, that's what some think).
2) Giving poor people everything they need creates a culture of dependency, and traps those people who receive welfare into poverty (this is IMO more a problem of aligning incentives properly: you need to make sure the system is set up in a way that people are motivated to get off welfare).
3) Some Republicans think we SHOULD provide healthcare to poor people, but shouldn't force people to take buy insurance (people should have the right to make bad decisions, let them die).
4) Some Republicans think healthcare reform is a good idea, but that the details of Obamacare are what make it a bad system (both Romney and McCain fall into this category, at least on the surface).
5) Some think we should provide subsidies for people who can't pay for healthcare themselves, but that we should use a market based system (which generally involves getting rid of regulations, for better or worse).

I'm not sure how many people think we should not actually help poor people out with healthcare (especially once "welfare queens" are gotten rid of). It would be interesting if someone did a survey on that topic.

Re:Thank goodness

[Anonymous Coward]

As an Australian, I've been protected by a national health scheme since 1975. I do not have to pay for ambulances because I live in Queensland. If I present at a hospital all I have to do is show my medicare card and I'll either be seen straight away or an appointment will be made. I've had my share of misfortune, and have had several surgeries for life threatening conditions. I've paid for them all when I was younger, and was paying tax.

Now I'm a pensioner. I pay $5.80 (I think) for most prescriptions. I saw my GP for about an hour today. I didn't have to pay a thing.

I'm going to hospital in a few weeks to investigate some growths. I won't have to pay a thing.

If I wanted to, I could pay and get faster, higher priority treatment. I have that choice.

What is the problem that so many Americans have with socialised medicine? A healthy community is a productive community and pays more taxes to get the job done. I just don't understand why you have a debate about it.

Re:As the saying goes...

[CaptQuark]

And nothing of value was lost. Or gained.

Nothing was lost? All the work that the government workers could have been doing during the shutdown was lost. All the revenue from the National Parks were lost. Two weeks food inspections, drug inspections, VA claims processing were lost . Worldwide confidence in the US and the US dollar was lost. US credit rating was compromised with the possibility of higher interest rates on new deficit. Scientific tests will have to be thrown out and restarted.

You might not be personally affected, but plenty of money and confidence has been lost during the past three weeks.

~~

Re:Thank goodness

[Vaphell]

Lol, insurance used to be very affordable before the govt included health care in tax deductions for employers but not for employees. That alone killed the transparency because there is no market for individuals. That means nobody in the whole system gives a fuck how much things cost. Healthcare user, as long as he has one, doesn't care because he doesn't see the bills, employer doesn't care because it's not his health, hospitals don't care either as it's in their best interest to inflate the costs, so who is supposed to put a downward pressure on prices?
Any 3rd party payment system based on spending someone else's money is prone to suffer from overuse and cost inflation. Yes, in theory it's employee's money because it's his compensation but the difference stems from the fact that the employee doesn't have to kiss the dollars in his possession goodbye. Out of sight, out of mind. If it all happens beyond the curtain, he doesn't feel the money was ever his.

Also insurance is about risk management, but in the current form it's far from that. Huge chunk of the cost is about trivial 'maintenance', yearly checkups, flu, etc. These things should be paid out of pocket and you insurance in the meaning of the word should cover only disasters. Recurring costs 100% certain to happen have nothing to do with risk management. Yes, for that reason insurance is a lousy model in case of preexisting conditions but trying to fit a square peg into a round hole as the ACA tries to do won't work and expect to see increases in prices across the board.

Re:Thank goodness

[james.mcarthur]

Nobody ever scared anyone with tales of $50 ER visits. Who'd buy insurance to cover cheap healthcare?

Australians; we buy insurance to cover the free healthcare.

Re:Thank goodness

[sjames]

Medicare/Medicaid consistently push prices down (for medicare/medicaid, not for anyone else). Make that the single payer and prices get pushed down across the board. If you try to bill Medicare $8 for a Tylenol you will get a big fat nothing (as it should be).

Doctors complain about getting squeezed but then fail to pass the squeeze on to their suppliers for some reason. Probably because the suppliers know someone is getting away with the $8 tylenol and they can pay the inflated prices.

Re:Thank goodness

[Vaphell]

the problem with centrally planned price ceilings is that they tend to ignore economic reality and if they happen to be too low in at least some areas, you can expect shortages of things affected by them. The Hippocratic oath takes you only so far when the doctor has $200k to repay.

Re:Thank goodness

[R3d M3rcury]

Actually, from what I've read, it's true. More people dislike "Obamacare" than like it. On the other hand, the "Affordable Care Act" seems to have quite a bit of support--and this government shutdown has actually improved it's support especially among those who didn't know anything about it.

Re:Thank goodness

[ATMAvatar]

It's true. Here is the latest MSNBC poll. Check page 18 for the results on ACA.

Ironically, ACA got a boost in popularity, in spite of (or perhaps because of) the shutdown fiasco.

Re:As the saying goes...

[drawfour]

Apparently, Standard & Poors has estimate it cost the economy $24B.

Re:Thank goodness

[meglon]

More people do oppose Obamacare than support it.... however, those people support the ACA more than they do Obamacare. In additional, ALL of the major parts of the ACA (AKA: Obamacare for anyone without their head shoved up their ideological ass) show a large majority support (some over 90%), other than the individual mandate.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/09/17/1239587/-Obamacare-or-Affordable-Care-Act-Don-t-ask-GOP-to-choose

So...saying more people oppose it than support it is a Microsoft answer...technically correct, but bullshit. As soon as you change the question to do they support the ACA (instead of Obamacare), almost 60% of conservatives change their tune. The real answer is: more people don't know enough about it, or are ideologically incapable of agreeing with ANYTHING that has Obama's name on it.

Re:As the saying goes...

[Jeremi]

And nothing of value was lost. Or gained.

Approximately $24 billion was lost.

Re:Thank goodness

[rs79]

Balloon over time to something like the Canadian system, about 6X cheaper about 4X as good.

Look at infant mortality rates and cost. The USA gets the least value for it's medical care dollar than nearly anyone.

Maybe if there weren't so many middlemen? Do the math.

Re:153 GOP voted to default

[Anonymous Coward]

It was Rand Paul and not Ron Paul. I'm not sure if you just made a mistake or didn't know. Ron Paul is retired and never held a Senate seat. Rand Paul is his son.

Re:Stupid question from a European

[Jeremi]

Don't forget

6) Republicans have spent the last 20 years telling people that "government is the problem, not the solution" -- that is, that the government can't do anything to help them. If some dude now comes along and sets up a government health insurance program that actually does help people, the Republican Party gets badly discredited. Better to keep everything broken than to risk that!

(the fact that what the dude got passed is almost exactly what Republicans themselves were proposing in the 1990's only makes it worse -- those proposals were never meant to be taken seriously, they were only put out there as a way to stop HillaryCare, and were supposed to be forgotten immediately after that was accomplished)

Re:153 GOP voted to default

[LandDolphin]

How are you surprised that he voted no?

He didn't vote to defund the government, he voted to end all government spending except for essential operations, including paying debt. HE voted true to his mindset and word. IF you canceled Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and reduced the military to a few special ops. teams, there would be more then enough money to stary paying off the debt and no need to default.

Re:153 GOP voted to default

[bfandreas]

Wrong Paul. Please pardon the pun.

What amazes me is that those people seriously considered a situation that could have had a devastating economical effect on the US. Things like this cause nations to implode. A bankrupt, non-functional state has time and again led to violent overthrow and civil war. This is what their game of chicken was risking. And when you listen to some of their backers they would welcome this in the hopes to build a different state from the ashes. Only their vision is really frightening.

And yet come next election they will present themselves on TV spots with flowing stars&stripes banner and parade their patriotism in front of everybody who is stupid enough to believe in it.

I feel our definitions of patriotism differ substantially.

Re:Thank goodness

[riverat1]

I think when you say "it's opposed by more people than favor it" you need to distinguish between people who oppose it because they think "it's a government take over of health care" and people like me who oppose it because "it's not single payer". The latter group probably prefers having it over having nothing at all.

Re:Thank goodness

[Adult film producer]

Here are the words of Markos Moulitsas, the owner of Daily Kos.. before the ACA was passed

My take is that itâ(TM)s unconscionable to force people to buy a product from a private insurer that enjoys sanctioned monopoly statusâ¦.

Without any mechanisms to control costs, this is yet another bailout for yet another reviled industry. Subsidies? Insurance companies are free to raise their rates to absorb that cash. More money for subsidies? More rate increases, as well as more national debt. Donâ(TM)t expect Lieberman and his ilk to care. Theyâ(TM)re in it for their industry pals.

If you want a similar model, watch how universities increase tuition to absorb increased financial aid opportunities.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/12/15/814776/-Remove-mandate-or-kill-this-bill

Of course now he's the biggest champion of the ACA.

Re:Thank goodness

[drsmithy]

Australians; we buy insurance to cover the free healthcare.
Actually, we buy insurance to buy better healthcare than the free stuff.

Re:Thank goodness

[philip.paradis]

Would you care to speak about comparative annual deaths rates from cancer, diabetes, general malnutrition, violent crime with deaths directly attributable to lack of ready access to competent medical care, etc? I'll do your homework for you if you're not competent enough.

Re:Thank goodness

[DrXym]

Many countries offer broad, sometimes universal healthcare. It doesn't stop someone taking out a private health insurance policy on top. Often that means you get a private room, faster consultations, treatments etc. But everyone else still gets a good standard of service, but one obviously subject to budgetary and resource stresses.

It's still vastly preferable to the US system.

Re:Remember this in the 2014 elections

[Sockatume]

Given the research demonstrating that people make better decisions when they need to go to the bathroom, maybe we should reconsider that.

Re:Thank goodness

[bheading]

First, it is opposed by more people than favor it

That's a curious notion.

The GOP (and the Dems) turned the 2012 Presidential election into a referendum on Obamacare - and they lost.

If most people oppose the legislation why did they vote for the guy who made it his singular legislative achievement; and why did the guy who vowed to repeal it lose ?

Re:Thank goodness

[iserlohn]

Actually, no. It's well known Markos has always wanted a single payer system. Which wasn't obtainable as congress did not have enough votes to pass one.

The left compromised to get the ACA signed into law. For them, it's not perfect, far from it. But they recognised that to govern, compromise is necessary. A useful lesson that would have saved taxpayers millions if only the Tea Party caucus took heed.

Re:Thank goodness

[Joining Yet Again]

The consensus in London once was that the doctors who couldn't hack it in the NHS went to Harley Street.

You might get quicker non-urgent and more hotel-style care privately in the UK, but you'll rarely if ever get better medical treatment. And why would you?

In almost all cases, your problem has been seen ten thousand times before, and a doctor is either competent to fix it or they are not; researchers and advanced specialists are treated well by the NHS and academia, and if they're going to go private, they're more likely to work for pharmaceutical companies, where private industry actually does something that the NHS is not equipped to do already.

The NHS shows that "to each according to his need", where each person is human and "need" can be well defined medically, is entirely workable.

Re:Thank goodness

[TheRaven64]

For society as a whole, we single payer countries tend to see better results. But per person, the healthcare in the US is the best. Assuming you have a good health insurance plan.

The last sentence here is the important one. And it means that, if you are either wealthy, or have a good job and no preexisting conditions (especially the kind that would stop you working for a bit) then you're better off in the USA. Or, to put it more cynically, US health insurance is a great deal, right up until the point where you need to make a claim.

Re:Thank goodness

[PeeAitchPee]

That's funny . . . while all of the 800K furloughed gov't workers were getting paid vacations because the idiots in Congress couldn't (and still can't) agree on anything, my (privately owned) small business hired two new folks and signed a multi-year lease to triple our square footage. We *worked* while they sat around and did squat. A huge chunk of our productivity is being siphoned off to pay for the decisions of these entitled, rich, elitist, sociopathic jerks -- not only the less innocuous ones like shutting down the gov't, but big ones like wars and domestic spying. So spare me with the "inept private business" bullshit -- we're not the ones that have had all consequences removed from our lives. If I don't work, I don't eat.

Re:Thank goodness

[Killjoy_NL]

The Netherlands is at 17th place, pretty darn good I think and our healthcare is more like the ACA, it's been like that for many years.

Watch some of these, it isn't perfect but we are doing a darn good job
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=dutch+healthcare&oq=dutch+healthcare&gs_l=youtube.3..0.533.2156.0.2326.16.9.0.5.5.2.158.1050.3j6.9.0...0.0...1ac.1.11.youtube.68W4le48Zw0

I recommend this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHeZJS4K6J0

Re:153 GOP voted to default

[danaris]

What amazes me is that those people seriously considered a situation that could have had a devastating economical effect on the US.

You could say the very same thing about any big legislation. Many people myself included think this healthcare reform might have devastating long term economic effects on our nation yet it was considered and passed

No, that's really not true.

First of all, according to nonpartisan estimates, the ACA will reduce the deficit. But let's ignore that for the moment and assume that you're correct that it will raise the cost of government by a significant amount.

If that happens, how could we possibly solve such a problem? Could it be that we could...pass a law raising taxes? From their current historically low levels, particularly as a fraction of GDP? And particularly on the super-wealthy?

If I'm reading you right, what you're actually saying is that the ACA will cost money to implement, and cost money into the future as well. But you know what? Doing stuff for people costs money. Helping poor people costs money. Fixing the worst economic downturn and the worst economic inequalities in decades costs money. And I don't mean "costs money that we have to give to the super-wealthy, so they'll be even more super-wealthy." Trickle-down economics is a pretty solidly discredited theory by this point. Empirical evidence just doesn't bear it out.

And if you're one of the "all taxation is theft types," well, then, just screw you. You want to go live in a tax-free wilderness off the fruit of your own labour and no one else's, I suggest you up stakes and find some place in northern Canada without another soul for 50 miles in any direction, because anywhere in this country, you're already benefiting from the results of taxation. It was well over 100 years ago that Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr famously said, "I like taxes. With them, I buy civilization." And that's pretty much the way it works: If you want civilization, if you want to live as part of a society, particularly a modern society, you have no choice but to pay taxes to a central governing body of one sort or another. Because anything else is at least as much a theft from everyone else around you.

Dan Aris

Re:Thank goodness

[PeeAitchPee]

As a gov't employee, you have the most ironic Slashdot username ever. :-)

Re:Thank goodness

[misexistentialist]

You realize the name "Affordable Care Act" comes right out of Propaganda Naming Department and has less connection to reality than "Obamacare" does?

Re:153 GOP voted to default

[MachineShedFred]

So how much tax on the super wealthy is right? 70%? 100%? What prevents them from using that super wealth to offer the country both middle fingers and move somewhere that doesn't want to reach into their wallet and take everything?

The 2009 Federal Budget had a bottom line of $3.518T actual spending. The so-called 1% had a total adjusted gross income of $1.3T in 2009. If you tax them at 100%, that gets you about 4.5 months into the fiscal year, or around March 12th.

The "super wealthy" might be a politically expedient punching bag, but they aren't the solution. The solution is to stop spending money we don't fucking have, and we're doing way too much of that. It's not on 1% to fix it. It's on ALL OF US to fix it.

Re:Thank goodness

[Joining Yet Again]

Your comments:

"like a sausage machine"
"frequently"
"pumping out dead bodies"

My observations:

1) One scandal in one hospital managed by one Trust;

2) Based on applying private sector style compartmentalisation and management to public service;

3) Fully identified and admitted to by the service;

4) Resulting in widespread recommendations and a degree of return to pre-Thatcher management of the service as a whole, IOW with the ability to easily study mortality rates across the country rather than delegating essentially cooperative work to competing Trusts.

Having experienced Western continental European healthcare, the NHS is one of several fine models to recommend to the US - but then so is almost every first world model when contrasted with the US one. And if a US healthcare provider fails in its duty, it's just a failed business dealt with by "the market" - if any NHS subsystem fails, it's (rightly) regarded as a big deal by the whole country, and the whole country will learn lessons from it.

Re:Thank goodness

[cold fjord]

I suspect it will be massaged over the years to work out little wrinkles, with the end result being a single payer system.

Sen. Harry Reid: Obamacare 'Absolutely' A Step Toward A Single-Payer System

Why do you think the penalties are so weak for individuals that don't buy the required coverage while the act made policies so much more expensive? The same thing for businesses. The penalties for not providing coverage are less than the cost of insurance, which has also grown more expensive for them. That is why so many companies have been dumping health plans and cutting workers hours to avoid being responsible for workers health care. Massive incompetence or planned failure? How about some of both?

Re:Thank goodness

[Magius_AR]

I'd say Obamacare, and whatever it ultimately morphs into, is now pretty much cemented into the landscape.

Which is exactly why the Republicans were trying so hard to kill it. Now we're stuck with yet another cash cow entitlement that is a pisspoor attempt to solve a real problem that we'll never be able to reform or get rid of since it will be politically toxic to do so.

Re:Thank goodness

[phantomfive]

You think Obama won in 2012 because of Obamacare? You don't think it was because Romney is a racist, homophobic, rich old white dude who is out of touch with normal folks?

Re:153 GOP voted to default

[crimson tsunami]

how could they ?

By spending that money in the economy. Creating demand, supporting businesses.
Causing those businesses to invest and grow their business, make more profits hire more workers and pay more taxes.
This business, its extra workers, its suppliers ,their extra workers also create more demand and incentive for yet more growth and investment.All of which pay more taxes
etc.

Or American style, they could use their proof of a regular income to take out loans buy houses get credit cards and do all those previous things turbo charged and on steroids. (When the house prices go up they can then refinance and spend yet more still.)

Or they could take their paycheque leverage it and invest in anything profitable, stocks/bonds/derivatives/etc. and pay extra taxes on the profits

Or they could get lucky and gamble their way to fortune, daytrading, online poker.

I'm sure there are more ways.