Actually, it does mean you're willing to stand with them, that's the point of any such label.
You do realize there's only two parties that are politically relevant -- and those parties encompass a wide range of ideologies? We can't exactly pick and choose -- if you want fiscal responsibility, you have to lean Republican and sadly accept some religious zealotry that comes with it. I'd love to break into a multi-party, multi-topic system. But in the reality we live in, that's not feasible. To write off an entire party of individuals because of a few kooks is downright stupid.
Only if you promise to check out some right-wing forums, and honestly tell me that there isn't a group of people who call themselves part of the Republican ideology who engage in the behavior I described.
And the foaming-at-the-mouth liberals over at Huffpo/DailyKos/pick-your-blog-of-choice don't count as a counter-example? It's also rather funny that Republicans in general give way more percent of their income on average than Democrats (who are supposed to be champions of the downtrodden).
The reason we can't have a rational debate is you want to be treated as a victim without looking around you and seeing who's taken up your banner.
Umm, hello kettle? Do you remember the 99% movement? The cries of "rich people are fucking us over"? Victim complex is hardly isolated to Republicans.
Why don't you just admit that hate and victim complexes on both sides of the equation are part of the problem? Persisting this "us vs them" complex only makes it worse.
Doing the math, 1 Billion dollars is roughly the value of 13,000 life careers. We're literally saying this man did more -- and I'll be unbelievably generous and use your yardstick of 15 years -- that he did more in 15 years than 13,000 other men did in their entire lives
The man created 69.5 billion in annual revenues. So if I divide that by 13,000...yup, I don't know many people that have generated 5.35 million in wealth over their lifetimes, certainly not in 15 years. Even without the options backdating (which is not illegal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Options_backdating), he's probably still worth a billion.
You seem to measure people by what they should have, based on terms of what you believe are "more than enough for any one person".. You don't use fair measurements -- in your world, a man could claw out of the gutter and build a trillion dollar empire singlehandedly, but personally he should only get maybe 300 or 400 thousand dollars out of it, because that's more than enough for any one man. Right?
The discount rate when this started, i.e. when the economy started to slow, was in the process of decreasing from 6.25% towards its eventual level of 0%. No it was not barely above 0%.
The rate was 6.25% back in June 2006. GDP didn't slow until 2008 at the earliest (http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/gdp-growth) when the discount rate was 4% in the beginning of the year and.5% at the end. So they did exactly what you said and lowered interest rates, yet a correction was still necessary. The drop in interest rates in 2008 did not account for the massive run-up in prices in the 5 years preceeding.
Of course you can. Think about it. With home interest rates (risk adjusted) low enough you could have almost any level of housing prices.
No, in fact you can't. Because there's a bottom (at 0%). And even if interest rates were AT 0%, housing would still have been overvalued. And no bank would ever loan at that rate, because there's no profit to be made. This is especially true when taking into account downpayments (which don't go down with interest rates). 20% of a huge number is still a relatively huge number. And you aren't getting a loan of any kind without a downpayment these days.
That's exactly what was happening. New buyers were entering the market. You had all sorts of flippers taking on multiple homes and people with lousy risk profiles taking on homes.
I said post-bubble. As in 2008-2009 when house values were over the tipping point. People were not flocking to buy at that time, because the market had finally recognize that houses were overvalued, and no one is going to pay for more than something is worth. (same reason Facebook stock has been dropping like a rock)
We do it all the time for the rich. I can live with that.
I can't. Rich or poor, people should be responsible for their mistakes. In fact, to some extent, they must be, else society will simply devolve into no one being responsible, because you'd be a sucker to do so.
we use it to project power to protect "US interests" (which are really the interests of the rich and powerful).
That's a strange assumption. Could you tell me how South Korea in any way benefits big business? There's not exactly any oil there.
So who has a carrier fleet that would be attacking?
Our carrier fleet, at danger from an unexpected threat that didn't exist when the carrier was invented.
Because we started a war without defining what a "win" was. We should have learned our lesson with Vietnam
The reason we had trouble in Iraq, Afghanistan, AND Vietnam is because fighting an entrenched opponent on their own territory is difficult, especially when trying to protect noncombatants at the same time. This is not a "solved" problem. Hell, IEDs alone were something the military was in no way prepared to deal with (and we spent alot of money researching and developing defenses against).
The theory with Obama Care is more people will now have to pay for a plan so more people paying in, should slow the increase in rates. However we will see if that happens in practice.
So, what you're saying is: "The plan is to tax the poor and lower middle class to lower rates"? Somehow I imagine that's not gonna pan out the way you think it will.
It is what happens to them right now.
I know of cases of it, they died rather than lose the money and their spouse would need after they died.
Why is it that this never used to happen in our healthcare system -- then, we greatly ramp up government/insurance company/employer involvement in healthcare -- then healthcare ends up being a disaster -- and then the next logical step is more of the same, or more government? How does that follow? What's wrong with recognizing a problem we created and undoing it?
BTW why does everyone always assume government is the only answer? Here's what I propose: - People too poor to afford health insurance, say below $25,000, can get Medicare benefits regardless of their age. Just as they are eligible for food stamps or housing assistance.
Aside from the irony of saying that there are answers outside of government and then providing a government solution...we already have that, it's called Medicaid.
here the resources don't meet the responsibilities, I INCREASE THE RESOURCES.
Yup, run over to the wall-safe. Got it. Your money tree is a fantastic invention. You should patent that.
I'm not buying the nonsense that there's not enough to go around when we pay the CEO of United Healthcare 1.1 Billion just to QUIT THE COMPANY. At one point, one out of every 700 dollars spent on healthcare in this country was going directly into his pocket. One pocket of one CEO of one company. You want to recapture resources? How about we begin there?
And this is the problem with you people. McGuire was with that company for 15 years (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_W._McGuire). "When McGuire joined United, it was an unprofitable regional health maintenance organization with annual revenues around $400 million.[3] When he left, United was one of the largest, most profitable, and most diversified healthcare companies in the world, with more than $70 billion in annual revenues".
In that time the stock value increased about 8500% (which is particularly relevant since the "1 billion" came from stock options):
Yet, you seem to think "1 billion" is inappropriate compensation for such a feat? Why do you hate success so much?
We can provide compassion and care at both birth AND death."
Your ideal utopia there is quite the vision, except that it has about as much of a tie to reality as unicorns and leprechauns. Sorry, I'm a realist facing real problems, not a bleeding heart looking to "stick it" to rich people.
The tax rebates were wage taxes and thus a better use of the funds.
No, they were idiotic for the same reason all arbitrary cash handouts are idiotic: because the person can no whatever the hell they want to do with the money. And all those people did was stash the money away or use it to pay down debt, in essence doing nothing for the economy and bleeding away the cash into the inflationary void. "Smart" would have been using the money to directly generate jobs or help people find jobs. Hell, Cash for Clunkers was way more useful to the economy (and consequently to the people) than any other stimulus attempt.
They wouldn't have had to correct if the interest rate were low.
Except that interest rates were already low when this whole mess started. The Fed rate was barely above 0%. And regardless the prices still had to correct because wages are stagnant. You can't have house prices double and wages go up by 5% and just expect everything to work out from the difference of a few points of interest rate. People currently in houses are only a part, a very small part in fact, of the equation. The housing market relies on new buyers, who would never enter the market at the inflated prices post-bubble. You might help out a few underwater homeowners through those efforts, but you would royally screw the economy and the "next generation" of homebuyers. And that entirely ignores the whole "rewarding failure" aspect of the equation.
Yet there are threats to US allies that rely on our support. Japan, for instance, _has no_ military. South Korea, too, would have quite a few problems if the US just disappeared its military presence.
I've never seen anyone articulate any credible threat the US couldn't defeat with no army at all.
I've seen simulations where a large enough pack of gunboats could take down an entire carrier fleet. Regardless, it's surprisingly easy to fall behind the curve militarily if you slow down. Most importantly, if we truly were as strong as you make us out to be, why are we having such difficulties in countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan?
so why should I care that one agrees it's broken and the other doesn't? That's an illogical and irrational stance.
Because it's the first step towards a dialogue that results in change. If you don't take that step, you're guaranteed to lose since the program will stay broken. At least acknowledging it needs change gives us a chance that improvement will occur (by putting both sides at the drawing board, in a bipartisan effort)
Isn't this pretty much how housing has traditionally been priced for a century or so? Your mortgage payment will be 1/4 your income, the only thing that varies is how much money you rent from the bank = what price the house sells for, depends on the current interest rate and level of financial "innovation" at the time of sale?
It's funny, I was making a similar argument to my wife awhile ago that women entering en masse into the workforce resulted in one of the biggest downgrades in societal comfort. My exact argument was that the housing market just absorbed the added second income as "the new norm". Whereas a family used to be able to own a house with someone full time at home, they now both have to work to afford the same house, and all the single people have been priced out of the market.
"The US" isn't spending a bent penny to keep anyone alive. The patient - or if they're lucky, their insurance company - is paying to keep them alive, and they're only doing it because the doctors are required to so the hospital can squeeze a few more dollars out.
That's not true. The elderly, of whom I was referring to, are all on Medicare -- and Medicare fully funds any and all end-of-life care. Hell, even if they weren't on Medicare, EMTALA would still cover the care and someone in the system is getting stuck with the bill. (assuming the patient is tapped out)
Hi, welcome to the US where we have massive unemployment and employer-based health insurance. Most people have zero choice in their healthcare provider.
You identify another problem, caused by government. Perhaps tying healthcare to employment wasn't the brightest idea. So we do we continue it?
I looked at your cite, which says nothing about wasting money to keep people alive.
Except the line I quoted that specifically stated "about 27% of Medicare's annual $327 billion budget goes to care for patients in their final year of life."? Would you like more cites?
http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-18560_162-6747002.html
"Last year, Medicare paid $55 billion just for doctor and hospital bills during the last two months of patients' lives. That's more than the budget for the Department of Homeland Security, or the Department of Education. And it has been estimated that 20 to 30 percent of these medical expenses may have had no meaningful impact. Most of the bills are paid for by the federal government with few or no questions asked. "
http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_19905093
The federal government estimates that 70 percent of health-care expenditures are spent on the elderly, 80 percent of that in the last month of life -- and often for aggressive, life-sustaining care that is futile. Think what America could do if it invested that $140 billion a year in other arenas. By comparison, the 2012 budget request for the National Institutes of Health, the largest supporter of biomedical research in the world, is $31 billion.
The United States spends nearly twice as much per capita on health care costs compared with most Western nations, yet it leaves millions of people with no health insurance at all. The bubble of end-of-life care is one reason.
How much are a few extra months worth? A few extra months with my family? A few extra months with my wife? A few extra months to say good-bye? Sometimes even just a few extra minutes are everything...
Of course, that argument just bounced right off of you.
No, in fact it did not -- because I measured it against all the good that money could have done (say, for all the people without healthcare, or all the diseases we can't cure because we have no room in the healthcare budget to spend on research). YOU apparently live in a bubble where whenever you need more money you just stroll over to the wall safe and pull it out. I, on the other hand, live in reality where we're forced to prioritize. And yes it sucks, and is a hard and painful decision, but spending millions and millions of dollars giving terminal patients an extra month is not worth the sacrifices our society must endure to provide it. Ever wonder why the European systems have healthcare costs that are far cheaper than ours? And why everyone throughout the system is healthier as a result. It's because they let terminal patients die rather than spending every last penny to give them just a few hours more. I would gladly give up 2 months at the end of my life to provide healthcare for so many: babies, children, poor working single mothers, etc, etc -- if my death 2 months early saved even one young life, it would be worth it.
Wow. Just wow. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. The kind of mental pain and anguish necessary to build such solitary callousness...
I'm sorry.
And I'm sorry you're so far offbase that you apparently like in a world of naivety, where nothing has a cost and we can give everyone everything with a snap of our fingers. You must be young.
I think if it had been Democrats the form of TARP would have been direct mortgage assistance to home owners.
Except that they had that opportunity, and it wasn't. Tim Geithner, the Obama nominee, had full control of the program as of February 2009 and actually directed where all the remaining funds would go. On top of that, the massive stimulus expenses could have done the same thing if the money was repurposed smartly instead of just handing out useless tax rebates. But that didn't happen either. Frankly, I'm glad the "mortgage assistance" didn't happen regardless, because we'd be far worse off now if it did. You can't prop up a bubble -- attempting to do so would have only made it worse in the end -- prices had to correct.
The standing army was disbanded after the need has passed. If we didn't invent "need", we wouldn't need a standing army now.
Different times. Back then, we had no threats that could reach us without sailing for about 2 months. Back then we also didn't have a presence all over the world, AND we had a populace that was heavily armed and was training to mobilize/assemble quickly. It really is black and white. In modern times, a standing army is a necessity.
Nobody wants to target the causes, so we throw money at the problem without intelligence. That results in expensive education that is ineffective. It results in expensive health care that covers only a minority of people.
Well at least we agree on something...
"budget hawks" seem to like starving he beast. They add costs and complexity to the problems, without any solutions.
Except that they're the only people even willing to attempt to reform the programs you just admitted are failing in their solutions. And that's my issue -- if the Dems were willing to propose a serious reform plan for Medicare/Social Security, perhaps I could get behind them. But they seem perfectly content to do what you just said: throw money at the problem without intelligence. Instead of reforming a broken Medicare system, they simply ignore it and then tack another massive expensive 1000-page program on top of it. I have huge problems with this method of governing.
20% of the budget is historically quite low, particularly for a primary constitutional function of the federal government.
The fallacy in thinking it's too high is by comparing it to other countries. All of our budgetary items are "higher than multiple countries combined" because we just have an assload of money/GDP. Whereas I also believe there's some fat to be trimmed from defense still, there really is not that much more slack left (at least not enough to significantly alter the debt). If you're okay with reducing our "global police" presence (Ron Paul style), we could trim a bit more -- but as long as we want to maintain a worldwide military presence in all major sectors of the world, it's going to be an expensive undertaking.
I'll have to think on the state issue-- because people are very mobile over their lifetime and already they move to the most "retiree" friendly state. I.e., high income tax but low sales and property taxes unless they have a really high income- in which case it's a low income tax state.
I believe that's an artifact of the current centralized way of doing things. Basically you have a bunch of productive states and a bunch of freeloader states. They get away with this because the productive states effectively subsidize the freeloaders via the federal benefits system. It certainly does not seem like the most efficient way to run a country, to me at least.
Plus states can fall on hard times just as their retirees reach retirement age. Several are talking about not paying promised retirement benefits.
Hence- federal solutions.
They came to rely on that expected federal income. Then, once it was taken away, they were left with an expensive program and no funding. Reducing that reliance from the start would have given the states far more budgetary control over their situations.
The point of "defense" is to move money from the government to contractors in a manner that doesn't cause a revolt from the people taxed for corporate profit. For that goal, it's about as efficient as possible.
lol, that's a terrible goal. For me, the "goal" of defense is to provide security for our nation in the best manner possible, bang for buck. That means that things like poor planning/vision that leads to expensive planes we don't need (Raptor) or money given to the lowest incompetent bidder (just to have them fuck up and require somebody else to re-attempt the job) is NOT a glowing model of efficiency.
There's a difference between inefficient and stupid.
How do you figure? It's stupidity that breeds inefficiency.
The democrats caved and allowed the republicans to rewrite the bill
The GOP realized that if their bill passed with Obama in the white house, he would get credit for fixing the health care system - even if the passed bill fixed nothing
Realizing what they did, the GOP turned the noise machine up to 11
Realizing they were stuck, the democrats voted for the bill and Obama signed it -
You believe the Republicans wrote PPACA??? My god are you deluded. Obama couldn't even get his own party in line behind what he proposed. 34 Dems in the House voted against it! And no serious Republican idea was incorporated into it. It was nearly a thousand partisan pages written behind closed doors followed by an attempt to buy Republican votes with some bullshit riders/amendments. They never had any intention of working with the Republicans -- don't you remember the "sit in the back" commentary? Remember these concessions? (hint, they aren't republican concessions) http://articles.cnn.com/2009-07-10/politics/house.health.care_1_blue-dogs-public-option-medicare-rates?_s=PM:POLITICS
Stop trying to rewrite history you troll.
I just said they at least managed to do something, which is more than we can say.
Seeing as how the Mexican "universal healthcare" bill wasn't even enacted until 2002-2003, it's tough to chalk up the reduced medical bills to government intervention.
People need what they need and it has little to do with market conditions. Often is is "use or die." Government needs to ensure that needs of the people are met before suppliers are allowed to exploit the need to gain unlimited profits.
By what strange view of the world do you believe healthcare providers or insurance companies are raking in massive profits?
It's the same in any country with socialised healthcare though - if there are private facilities available, there's nothing to stop you paying to use them.
Except that you still have to absorb the costs associated with the socialised healthcare...and if that program is run poorly, ineffectively, or inefficiently, the sizable bill racked up by said socialized healthcare could very easily cut into the funds you have available for private healthcare. This is especially true in a country that never lets people die -- the US would spend millions just to give a person a few extra days to live. Noble? Sure. Financially sound? Not even remotely.
But for some reason a lot of people think you are and universal healthcare goes against their god given right to visit a doctor and part with copious amounts of money in the process.
Very much on the other hand, we don't want to be parted with copious amounts of our money. A good chunk of US healthcare costs come from end-of-life care. I should have the option of choosing to die 3-6 months earlier (instead of clinging to agonizing life) and use that money now when I'm young and healthy to better enjoy the time I have. It's carpe diem, and I doubt you could possibly understand what that means. Because you think people live forever, medical care is infinite, and money grows on trees.
Slashdot Mirror
You do realize there's only two parties that are politically relevant -- and those parties encompass a wide range of ideologies? We can't exactly pick and choose -- if you want fiscal responsibility, you have to lean Republican and sadly accept some religious zealotry that comes with it. I'd love to break into a multi-party, multi-topic system. But in the reality we live in, that's not feasible. To write off an entire party of individuals because of a few kooks is downright stupid.
And the foaming-at-the-mouth liberals over at Huffpo/DailyKos/pick-your-blog-of-choice don't count as a counter-example? It's also rather funny that Republicans in general give way more percent of their income on average than Democrats (who are supposed to be champions of the downtrodden).
Umm, hello kettle? Do you remember the 99% movement? The cries of "rich people are fucking us over"? Victim complex is hardly isolated to Republicans. Why don't you just admit that hate and victim complexes on both sides of the equation are part of the problem? Persisting this "us vs them" complex only makes it worse.
lol, the socialist calling for work and sacrifice -- that's funny.
The man created 69.5 billion in annual revenues. So if I divide that by 13,000...yup, I don't know many people that have generated 5.35 million in wealth over their lifetimes, certainly not in 15 years. Even without the options backdating (which is not illegal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Options_backdating), he's probably still worth a billion.
You seem to measure people by what they should have, based on terms of what you believe are "more than enough for any one person".. You don't use fair measurements -- in your world, a man could claw out of the gutter and build a trillion dollar empire singlehandedly, but personally he should only get maybe 300 or 400 thousand dollars out of it, because that's more than enough for any one man. Right?
Cite a source on this?
The rate was 6.25% back in June 2006. GDP didn't slow until 2008 at the earliest (http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/gdp-growth) when the discount rate was 4% in the beginning of the year and .5% at the end. So they did exactly what you said and lowered interest rates, yet a correction was still necessary. The drop in interest rates in 2008 did not account for the massive run-up in prices in the 5 years preceeding.
No, in fact you can't. Because there's a bottom (at 0%). And even if interest rates were AT 0%, housing would still have been overvalued. And no bank would ever loan at that rate, because there's no profit to be made. This is especially true when taking into account downpayments (which don't go down with interest rates). 20% of a huge number is still a relatively huge number. And you aren't getting a loan of any kind without a downpayment these days.
I said post-bubble . As in 2008-2009 when house values were over the tipping point. People were not flocking to buy at that time, because the market had finally recognize that houses were overvalued, and no one is going to pay for more than something is worth. (same reason Facebook stock has been dropping like a rock)
I can't. Rich or poor, people should be responsible for their mistakes. In fact, to some extent, they must be, else society will simply devolve into no one being responsible, because you'd be a sucker to do so.
That's a strange assumption. Could you tell me how South Korea in any way benefits big business? There's not exactly any oil there.
Our carrier fleet, at danger from an unexpected threat that didn't exist when the carrier was invented.
The reason we had trouble in Iraq, Afghanistan, AND Vietnam is because fighting an entrenched opponent on their own territory is difficult, especially when trying to protect noncombatants at the same time. This is not a "solved" problem. Hell, IEDs alone were something the military was in no way prepared to deal with (and we spent alot of money researching and developing defenses against).
So, what you're saying is: "The plan is to tax the poor and lower middle class to lower rates"? Somehow I imagine that's not gonna pan out the way you think it will.
Why is it that this never used to happen in our healthcare system -- then, we greatly ramp up government/insurance company/employer involvement in healthcare -- then healthcare ends up being a disaster -- and then the next logical step is more of the same, or more government? How does that follow? What's wrong with recognizing a problem we created and undoing it?
Aside from the irony of saying that there are answers outside of government and then providing a government solution...we already have that, it's called Medicaid.
Yup, run over to the wall-safe. Got it. Your money tree is a fantastic invention. You should patent that.
And this is the problem with you people. McGuire was with that company for 15 years (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_W._McGuire). "When McGuire joined United, it was an unprofitable regional health maintenance organization with annual revenues around $400 million.[3] When he left, United was one of the largest, most profitable, and most diversified healthcare companies in the world, with more than $70 billion in annual revenues".
In that time the stock value increased about 8500% (which is particularly relevant since the "1 billion" came from stock options): Yet, you seem to think "1 billion" is inappropriate compensation for such a feat? Why do you hate success so much?
Your ideal utopia there is quite the vision, except that it has about as much of a tie to reality as unicorns and leprechauns. Sorry, I'm a realist facing real problems, not a bleeding heart looking to "stick it" to rich people.
No, they were idiotic for the same reason all arbitrary cash handouts are idiotic: because the person can no whatever the hell they want to do with the money. And all those people did was stash the money away or use it to pay down debt, in essence doing nothing for the economy and bleeding away the cash into the inflationary void. "Smart" would have been using the money to directly generate jobs or help people find jobs. Hell, Cash for Clunkers was way more useful to the economy (and consequently to the people) than any other stimulus attempt.
Except that interest rates were already low when this whole mess started. The Fed rate was barely above 0%. And regardless the prices still had to correct because wages are stagnant. You can't have house prices double and wages go up by 5% and just expect everything to work out from the difference of a few points of interest rate. People currently in houses are only a part, a very small part in fact, of the equation. The housing market relies on new buyers, who would never enter the market at the inflated prices post-bubble. You might help out a few underwater homeowners through those efforts, but you would royally screw the economy and the "next generation" of homebuyers. And that entirely ignores the whole "rewarding failure" aspect of the equation.
Yet there are threats to US allies that rely on our support. Japan, for instance, _has no_ military. South Korea, too, would have quite a few problems if the US just disappeared its military presence.
I've seen simulations where a large enough pack of gunboats could take down an entire carrier fleet. Regardless, it's surprisingly easy to fall behind the curve militarily if you slow down. Most importantly, if we truly were as strong as you make us out to be, why are we having such difficulties in countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan?
Because it's the first step towards a dialogue that results in change. If you don't take that step, you're guaranteed to lose since the program will stay broken. At least acknowledging it needs change gives us a chance that improvement will occur (by putting both sides at the drawing board, in a bipartisan effort)
Yeah, until they change the terms on you:
http://i.imgur.com/YM7Hq.png
It's funny, I was making a similar argument to my wife awhile ago that women entering en masse into the workforce resulted in one of the biggest downgrades in societal comfort. My exact argument was that the housing market just absorbed the added second income as "the new norm". Whereas a family used to be able to own a house with someone full time at home, they now both have to work to afford the same house, and all the single people have been priced out of the market.
That's not true. The elderly, of whom I was referring to, are all on Medicare -- and Medicare fully funds any and all end-of-life care. Hell, even if they weren't on Medicare, EMTALA would still cover the care and someone in the system is getting stuck with the bill. (assuming the patient is tapped out)
https://www.mja.com.au/journal/2011/194/11/time-rethink-end-life-care
You identify another problem, caused by government. Perhaps tying healthcare to employment wasn't the brightest idea. So we do we continue it?
Except the line I quoted that specifically stated "about 27% of Medicare's annual $327 billion budget goes to care for patients in their final year of life."? Would you like more cites?
http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-18560_162-6747002.html
"Last year, Medicare paid $55 billion just for doctor and hospital bills during the last two months of patients' lives. That's more than the budget for the Department of Homeland Security, or the Department of Education. And it has been estimated that 20 to 30 percent of these medical expenses may have had no meaningful impact. Most of the bills are paid for by the federal government with few or no questions asked. "
http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_19905093
The federal government estimates that 70 percent of health-care expenditures are spent on the elderly, 80 percent of that in the last month of life -- and often for aggressive, life-sustaining care that is futile. Think what America could do if it invested that $140 billion a year in other arenas. By comparison, the 2012 budget request for the National Institutes of Health, the largest supporter of biomedical research in the world, is $31 billion.
The United States spends nearly twice as much per capita on health care costs compared with most Western nations, yet it leaves millions of people with no health insurance at all. The bubble of end-of-life care is one reason.
No, in fact it did not -- because I measured it against all the good that money could have done (say, for all the people without healthcare, or all the diseases we can't cure because we have no room in the healthcare budget to spend on research). YOU apparently live in a bubble where whenever you need more money you just stroll over to the wall safe and pull it out. I, on the other hand, live in reality where we're forced to prioritize . And yes it sucks, and is a hard and painful decision, but spending millions and millions of dollars giving terminal patients an extra month is not worth the sacrifices our society must endure to provide it. Ever wonder why the European systems have healthcare costs that are far cheaper than ours? And why everyone throughout the system is healthier as a result. It's because they let terminal patients die rather than spending every last penny to give them just a few hours more. I would gladly give up 2 months at the end of my life to provide healthcare for so many: babies, children, poor working single mothers, etc, etc -- if my death 2 months early saved even one young life, it would be worth it.
And I'm sorry you're so far offbase that you apparently like in a world of naivety, where nothing has a cost and we can give everyone everything with a snap of our fingers. You must be young.
Except that they had that opportunity, and it wasn't. Tim Geithner, the Obama nominee, had full control of the program as of February 2009 and actually directed where all the remaining funds would go. On top of that, the massive stimulus expenses could have done the same thing if the money was repurposed smartly instead of just handing out useless tax rebates. But that didn't happen either. Frankly, I'm glad the "mortgage assistance" didn't happen regardless, because we'd be far worse off now if it did. You can't prop up a bubble -- attempting to do so would have only made it worse in the end -- prices had to correct.
Different times. Back then, we had no threats that could reach us without sailing for about 2 months. Back then we also didn't have a presence all over the world, AND we had a populace that was heavily armed and was training to mobilize/assemble quickly. It really is black and white. In modern times, a standing army is a necessity.
Well at least we agree on something...
Except that they're the only people even willing to attempt to reform the programs you just admitted are failing in their solutions. And that's my issue -- if the Dems were willing to propose a serious reform plan for Medicare/Social Security, perhaps I could get behind them. But they seem perfectly content to do what you just said: throw money at the problem without intelligence. Instead of reforming a broken Medicare system, they simply ignore it and then tack another massive expensive 1000-page program on top of it. I have huge problems with this method of governing.
As I posted in another thread, we've actually been reducing defense spending for the past 60 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._Defense_Spending_-_percent_to_Outlays.png
20% of the budget is historically quite low, particularly for a primary constitutional function of the federal government.
The fallacy in thinking it's too high is by comparing it to other countries. All of our budgetary items are "higher than multiple countries combined" because we just have an assload of money/GDP. Whereas I also believe there's some fat to be trimmed from defense still, there really is not that much more slack left (at least not enough to significantly alter the debt). If you're okay with reducing our "global police" presence (Ron Paul style), we could trim a bit more -- but as long as we want to maintain a worldwide military presence in all major sectors of the world, it's going to be an expensive undertaking.
I believe that's an artifact of the current centralized way of doing things. Basically you have a bunch of productive states and a bunch of freeloader states. They get away with this because the productive states effectively subsidize the freeloaders via the federal benefits system. It certainly does not seem like the most efficient way to run a country, to me at least.
Actually, one of the large reason many states are falling on hard times is because the federal government is giving them less money: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/02/us/02states.html?_r=1
They came to rely on that expected federal income. Then, once it was taken away, they were left with an expensive program and no funding. Reducing that reliance from the start would have given the states far more budgetary control over their situations.
lol, that's a terrible goal. For me, the "goal" of defense is to provide security for our nation in the best manner possible, bang for buck. That means that things like poor planning/vision that leads to expensive planes we don't need (Raptor) or money given to the lowest incompetent bidder (just to have them fuck up and require somebody else to re-attempt the job) is NOT a glowing model of efficiency.
How do you figure? It's stupidity that breeds inefficiency.
You believe the Republicans wrote PPACA??? My god are you deluded. Obama couldn't even get his own party in line behind what he proposed. 34 Dems in the House voted against it! And no serious Republican idea was incorporated into it. It was nearly a thousand partisan pages written behind closed doors followed by an attempt to buy Republican votes with some bullshit riders/amendments. They never had any intention of working with the Republicans -- don't you remember the "sit in the back" commentary? Remember these concessions? (hint, they aren't republican concessions) http://articles.cnn.com/2009-07-10/politics/house.health.care_1_blue-dogs-public-option-medicare-rates?_s=PM:POLITICS
Stop trying to rewrite history you troll.
What they "did" was become healthier without their government's involvement. That should be obvious by the chart included in the same damn article that clearly shows a declining use of healthcare from 1998 through 2004: http://www.nature.com/news/mexioc-health-policy-graph-jpg-7.5922?article=1.11222
Seeing as how the Mexican "universal healthcare" bill wasn't even enacted until 2002-2003, it's tough to chalk up the reduced medical bills to government intervention.
By what strange view of the world do you believe healthcare providers or insurance companies are raking in massive profits?
Except that you still have to absorb the costs associated with the socialised healthcare...and if that program is run poorly, ineffectively, or inefficiently, the sizable bill racked up by said socialized healthcare could very easily cut into the funds you have available for private healthcare. This is especially true in a country that never lets people die -- the US would spend millions just to give a person a few extra days to live. Noble? Sure. Financially sound? Not even remotely.
Very much on the other hand, we don't want to be parted with copious amounts of our money. A good chunk of US healthcare costs come from end-of-life care. I should have the option of choosing to die 3-6 months earlier (instead of clinging to agonizing life) and use that money now when I'm young and healthy to better enjoy the time I have. It's carpe diem, and I doubt you could possibly understand what that means. Because you think people live forever, medical care is infinite, and money grows on trees.