Actually I think a solar panel/battery unit is the simplest. It can be delivered as a package sized for a household and after setup requires little maintenance other than keeping the solar panel clean. Those other things you mention require maintenance of the mechanical parts and some sort of distribution grid for the power.
Good point. However, wind or hydro can be maintained by locals with proper training. A solar setup, when it dies, would be harder to fix. If it was cheap enough, that would not be a problem, I guess.
So far Krugman has been wrong in his predictions about bitcoin. I know the guy joked about staging an alien invasion to improve the economy, but if his economic model was accurate then that actually would be a good way to improve the economy. His model isn't accurate though, and therefore it's not. He doesn't pay attention to the broken window fallacy, just assuming that so long as somebody is paid to do something -- even if the results of their labor aren't actually useful -- it builds the economy, nevermind that no capital was gained or wealth was created. This is part of why every decade, something happens in the economy that Keynesians say shouldn't happen, the biggest blunder being stagflation in the 80's which Keynesian theory ruled out entirely saying it was impossible, yet it happened anyways.
So, you think that austerity is a good thing, because it conserves the resources of the society, right? Savings is good. Debt is bad. How is that working out for Europe now, or Japan for the last 15 years?
Krugman is more or less just a propagandist writer - he's more or less just there to reassure people that they'll be fine so long as vote for politicians who also adopt the Keynesian model (democrat or republican alike.) I think there are other Keynesians who make more sound arguments than he does. Pretty much the only major things he and I agree on is the idea that tariffs are bad and so is minimum wage (Maynard Keynes would disagree though.)
Actually, there are more and more economists who are publicly 'coming around' to his point of view. Many have been on his side from the beginning, but have been constrained by screaming austrians to be somewhat more contrite (/cough bernanke). However, see the recent speech given by Sommers at IMF, which appears quite similar to a blog post of Krugman from September. Also, Krugman has a Nobel memorial prize in Economics. Fama also has one, so the distinction is dubious at best. However, Krugman was a sole recipient, unlike Fama.
Personally I thought the idea of bitcoins wasn't a sound one (the idea of a community of people you don't even know or trust keeping records of what you own seemed like an odd one,) but I started mining them just as an experiment, and when I found out I could actually buy stuff I wanted with them I've started using them. I've mined about $1,000 worth of bitcoins over the last 8 months at an electricity cost of $5 a month using just GPU's I've obtained for the sole purpose of gaming, so it's not bad. I've actually heavily padded my steam games library with humble bundle using bitcoins - imagine that, my GPU's aren't just playing the games, they're working for them too.
The volatility concerns me a bit (the value going up to $400 I don't have faith in, so I won't sell anything for bitcoins myself at the moment, but I'll buy - such is the nature of the beast of deflation) but with the way our government's current fiscal and monetary policy is setup, I actually have less faith in the dollar (a government can't borrow in perpetuity forever, and there's no sign of a balanced budget coming any time soon.)
Ah, bitcoins. Love em. Gotta have em. Better than tulips! I started a thread at reddit, asking whether I should sell my house and buy bitcoins. Everybody says I should do it. The winklevoss twins like em, so they must be OK, right?
Or perhaps the world's poor, many of whom don't have access to grid electricity as it stands can bypass that step and go directly to solar power. How much would a 1 kW solar panel with a battery improve the lives of many rural people in Africa who have to go into town every week to charge up their cell phones and have no electric light at night?
Wind power is simpler and cheaper. So is small scale hydroelectic, which can be done with a small electric motor. Steam power heated by solar energy is also a good way to go. Bill Gates should start making drop-in hydro, wind or solar power stations, complete with liquid metal batteries. Nuclear isn't going anywhere with the current terrorist situation. He needs to drop that approach.
Gold is a physical good that they can confiscate though. Bitcoins are more or less just an idea, and ideas are bulletproof.
Actually, they can confiscate your bitcoins when they get your hard drive. They are physical, and exist on physical media. The idea behind gold (and bitcoins) is the same. You dig something up, and for whatever reason, somebody wants to buy it for real services/money. You are right that it isn't the THING, it is the IDEA that they will do that which has value. However, you need the THING to get the money, and the thing is a real bit pattern on some device.
The fact that so many people are spending so much money to dig up these stupid things, which have no inherent value in and of themselves (even gold can be used in jewelry or electronics components), is a huge waste of resources. Currency is a debt, a promise, that we all make to each other. There is no reason to spend resources on something we can do with a simple note.
Here is what Adam Smith thought of bitcons (well, of gold and silver)
The gold and silver money which circulates in any country, and by means of which, the produce of its land and labour is annually circulated and distributed to the proper consumers, is, in the same manner as the ready money of the dealer, all dead stock. It is a very valuable part of the capital of the country, which produces nothing to the country. The judicious operations of banking, by substituting paper in the room of a great part of this gold and silver, enable the country to convert a great part of this dead stock into active and productive stock; into stock which produces something to the country. The gold and silver money which circulates in any country may very properly be compared to a highway, which, while it circulates and carries to market all the grass and corn of the country, produces itself not a single pile of either. The judicious operations of banking, by providing, if I may be allowed so violent a metaphor, a sort of waggon-way through the air, enable the country to convert, as it were, a great part of its highways into good pastures, and corn fields, and thereby to increase, very considerably, the annual produce of its land and labour.
Your link clearly says that the reason for bankruptcy in Canada is being off work due to medical issues, not medical expenses. They even jab the United States, pointing out that it isn't like the US.
The last on our list of leading causes of bankruptcy in Canada, are medical problems; they often can and do lead to a lot of financial problems. Fortunately, in Canada most of our medical expenses, such as hospital care, are covered by the government, unlike in the United States where medical bills for uninsured Americans are a leading cause of bankruptcy in America.
No it's like saying that you can't even buy a car because the website is broken, that the car you have is being taken away and if you don't work this out by a deadline you will have to pay a fine. But thanks for the asshat point of view and the asshats that modded you up
You can buy the policies directly from the insurance companies if you don't care about subsidies.
I am paying for COBRA, and the new unsubsidised costs were substantially less than the COBRA plan I am paying for. Since I have a preexisting condition, I could not purchase insurance from the private market before ACA, and was in danger of losing coverage in July 2014, which would probably have meant bankruptcy or death (or both) for me. The requirement to sell me insurance, and the end of lifetime/yearly caps were enough to save my life, or at least keep my wife out of poverty after I die.
Let us suppose that General Motors is incapable of either putting up a website, or of contracting that job out to someone who is competent. Just suppose that General Motors has zero presence on today's internet. None. They are so clueless, that they don't see the need to invest the resources into an online presence. Just pretend that to be true.
Do you really think that such clueless fools could possibly build a safe, reliable automobile? Do you really?
That is what we are seeing with ACA. It's perfectly alright that none of the people in politics understand how to put up a website. What is unforgivable, is that they have no idea how to go about hiring competent people to put up their site.
If they are incapable of attracting and hiring competent people to perform one job, what in the HELL makes anyone think that they can find competent people to perform another job?
The government is NOT selling insurance that they provide on the website. They are selling insurance that is provided by a company that has years of experience providing insurance. So, your analogy is misguided.
But everybody is covered in Canada. There is just some confusion about who is doing the covering.
However, does anybody die of breast cancer in Canada because they can't afford insurance? How many bankruptcies occur in Canada due to medical bills? These things both happen with alarming frequency in the US, even to people who think they are currently insured. A lifetime or yearly cap can kill you after a cancer diagnosis, after costs take your house and your savings, so your survivors are left in poverty. ACA does away with lifetime caps to prevent this. No wonder Republicans are against it. More democrats will live to vote against their mean-spirited policies.
The Republicans were excluded from writing the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). The law was not written in committee, it was created in partisan meetings. This was possible because Democrats controlled the house, senate, and the presidency. They also had a super majority in the Senate so they did not need a single Republican vote. They did it this way so they did not have to make any compromises to Republicans, they only needed to make compromises with Democrats to pass the law.
That is false. You are rewriting history. I don't know if you can remember back to when the law was being written, but there was a huge push by Obama to get bipartisan support. Most democrats (including me) were faulting Obama for caving in on so much to get this bipartisan support. However, the Republican tactic was to bait them with an apparent desire to cooperate, and then to pull support at the last minute. They did this again and again, forcing more and more complexity into the law, and obstructing a public option.
Sadly, when it came time to vote for the law they had helped create, the Republicans balked, fearing the conservatives, who were still busy mounting primaries against anybody who cooperated with Democrats. So, even Olympia Snowe failed to vote for it. She had been the Democrat's last hope of getting something they could call bipartisan.
Politics as usual in the new millenia. So, if Republicans want to fix the problems they see, they will now need to get both a president and congress, or 2/3 of congress, enough to overcome any veto. I don't think this will happen for many years, if ever. So, detractors would be advised to get used to the idea that the ACA will be around. They had lots of leverage in the senate, they just misused it, thinking they could sway public opinion. They got a short term gain out of it in the midterms, but will now need to live with the law for a long time.
"a badly conceived law could be a reason for the poor performance of the site if it puts overly burdensome constraints on the system."
the law is a set of rules to apply. Nothing more. That is no reason for broken code. If you are talking about adding a second or three to a responce, you would be right.
The law is not necessarily a logical or consistent system.
If you had to write a billing system for the Canadian health care system, it would be easy. You just pay everything that's covered.
If you have to write a billing system for the American health care system, it's complicated. Different people have different levels of subsidy, deductibles, co-payments, eligibility, etc. Is psychotherapy covered? Is chiropractic covered? For how long? It depends on the state. When somebody goes to the hospital, it can take a month for them to figure out their bills and reconcile the mistakes. If you can't figure out the actual charges by hand, how can you write a program to do it automatically?
Thankfully, they aren't writing a billing system for american healthcare. They are portaling through to web data put up by insurers, and saving declarations for use in providing rebates to those insurers. It is just the sales and rebates they need to handle. I'm fairly sure that the insurance companies and doctors still handle everything else you mention.
Remember, ACA is NOT government sponsored healthcare. It is mandates to insurers to only charge a certain amount and cover certain things (these are good for consumers), and rebates to those insured who do not have the means to pay for insurance (these are also good for consumers, particularly low income consumers). The website also needs to determine whether people are eligible for medicaid, but it then forwards them to the already existing medicaid system.
khallow explained, rather convincingly, how unreliable the CBO's projections are (and your argument along with them).
His job was much easier, of course — he did not need to prove anything himself, merely destroy your proof. Well, he did it — the CBO not only failed to predict the 2008 crash, but, according to the figures khallow quoted, the subsequent "recovery" as well. The CBO's numbers are so far off, year after year, it is laughable.
I simply pointed out that the CBO did not agree with him, which is true, they don't. Whether you agree with them or not, their charter is to provide unbiased economic guidance to congress. If they missed the 2008 meltdown, well, so did everybody else. If they expected the recovery to be more robust, well, so did everybody else. Nobody expected the republicans to block any attempt to stimulate the economy, and in fact to push for austerity (in the form of the Ryan budget) once they took the House. That would have been too mean spirited even for them, given the unemployment numbers.
khallow's claims that the world is going to end because of the ACA are nonsense. His claims that rebates will cause funding problems for 'roads, defense, entitlements' is nonsense. His claims that medicare patients will face death panels are nonsense. Look at debt/GDP and learn to add for fuck sake. We have plenty of money, and bonds that are the most secure in the world, that people are still buying despite real negative returns wrt inflation. The pressures that ACA puts into effect are the same as in Germany, who has had a public health system since the time of Otto Von Bismark. Their economy seems to be doing OK. Also, they have much better health outcomes, and pay far less per person than we do.
BTW, here is a fun blog entry on the republican war against the CBO. Apparently, some Republicans (cough Newt, Ryan) don't like to be told that they are too stupid to claim 'wonk' status.
Ironically to your thesis, Marx considered capitalism unstable. In fact, Marx's dialectical economics considers ALL economic systems unstable, and subject to destruction from forces arising within. His predicted 'revolution' actually happened in the 20th century in the west, and was either co-opted by the Nazis in Germany, or folded back into western society in the form of labor unions. The Nazis and Fascists were socialists, but they were national socialists, in contrast to Russia. The fact that they were taken over by monsters who also believed in racial cleansing was unfortunate; they were actually playing out forces that Marx predicted. The west took them on and smashed them to a pulp, and then moved on the soviets in the form of the cold war. This was the real war of capitalism vs socialism. As a result, Russia and China now have a sort of synthesis of capitalism and socialism. The west also has socialist institutions everywhere, mostly a left over of the great depression, which one could say was a pivotal time for capitalism. Marx was predicting this sort of merger would happen.
Because of the changes that have happened since Marx, the capitalists of 1900 would reject the idea that western society is a capitalist society. They would probably consider it a socialist state. Marx, seeing our society, might have said that western society is being maintained in an unstable equilibrium where communistic impulses in the society are suppressed by a combination of propaganda, bribery, and force. He would have been right.
So, you think your projections are better, or more informed? I'm sorry, but I just don't believe that.
The fact that the CBO could not predict the great recession of 2008 isn't grounds to dismiss their projections altogether. Almost nobody predicted that, although some folks were predicting a problem (typically the usual suspects who always predict a problem. Sometimes they are right. Surprise!). Nobody could predict that Lehman would fail. That just wan't in anybody's crystal ball.
BTW, the CBO projects the deficit out 25 years, and they don't see the problem you see [cbo.gov] with obamacare.
So what? It isn't their job to see the problems unless someone instructs them to actually look for them. The primary mechanism is via prior assumptions. They have to assume whatever they're instructed to assume. As a result, the CBO is a propaganda organ of Congress.
That isn't true. They are independent. Who would pay attention to them if they were not independent?
They aren't going to be estimating the growing cost of Obamacare subsidies, for example. They can't estimate the political incentive to increase Medicare/Medicaid spending when the price caps on those programs become too inadequate for the programs to function.
Of course they will estimate the probabilities of different possible policy decisions, and potential issues. That is what they do.
But even in their case, there's only so much lipstick they can put on this pig:
However, budget deficits would gradually rise again under current law, CBO projects, mainly because of increasing interest costs and growing spending for Social Security and the governmentâ(TM)s major health care programs (Medicare, Medicaid, the Childrenâ(TM)s Health Insurance Program, and subsidies to be provided through health insurance exchanges).
Even they admit there is a problem.
Of course there is a budget problem. In 2040. Right now, look at debt/GDP. We are 35th among a list of western nations. The argument that we don't have enough money to support healthcare subsidies and to expand medicare is just wrong. We could pay off the debt in 10 years using trivial policy changes, but nobody really wants to do it. It is just a convenient political target for the out of power party.
The obamacare/romneycare system is used, essentially unchanged, in Germany. The Germans have had a national system of healthcare since Otto Von Bismark. So, I'm confused when folks say that the same system just can't work in the US, and that it spells the end of healthcare in the free world. The Germans have far better health than we do, and pay far less for it.
Restricting what business can charge for a service (which is most of what Obamacare does), and eliminating discrimination in who they can sell it to won't create global havoc. Europe gets along just fine with these restrictions, and, again, they are healthier (and richer) than we are.
When these subsidies grow big enough to threaten funding for basic services like road systems, national defense, and the other entitlements that the US has, then something will be done. Inflation isn't going to work because the costs will outpace inflation no matter how much you inflate. But dumping people on Medicare/Medicaid (which I think will turn into another fine disaster as it caps prices of health care given under the Medi* system, but not the cost of health care) or restricting their access to medical care (say via the "death panels") would.
When did we start caring about road systems and national defense? I thought the fact that the sequester happened meant we'd already given up on those goals?
Also, the real fear of conservatives is the medicaid system, that gives healthcare to the poor. That is why many states have opted out of the medicaid expansion, despite the fact that a) they are paying for it now in the form of emergency room costs, and b) that it would help their economies. The problem for governors of these states is that their population would freak out and elect sombody else if it was known that they helped 'those people' in any way. And, they would be right. They know their states, and do polling on these issues.
When I compare Romney's plans and Obama's plans, I'd say most of the theory is the same.
One rather big difference that tends to get overlooked is that the former is legal since individual states have powers granted to them by the US Constitution to do things like the individual mandate while the federal government doesn't have that power.
So when you're doing things that are inherently illegal, what obstacle is there to more breaking of the law (such as an arbitrary delay of the employer mandate or granting waivers for various parts of Obamacare to political allies, for example)?
When you say obamacare is illegal, you know that the Supreme Court (which is controlled by conservatives) actually upheld its legality, don't you? And that what the Supreme Court says about legality and constitutionality is actually what is legal and constitutional, since they are the final say on these things?
Correct. It was a no-bid contract. Interestingly, Toni Townes-Whitley, a senior vice president at CGI Federal, is a Princeton classmate of Michelle Obama. In addition to being college classmates, both Obama and Townes-Whitley are members of the Association of Black Princeton Alumni.
I find this repeated on lots of conservative blogs, the fox news site, and the washingtontimes site, but nowhere else. Here is what reuters has to say:
The work on Healthcare.gov grew out of a contract for open-ended technology services first issued in 2007 with a place-holder value of $1,000. There were 31 bidders. An extension, awarded in September 2011 specifically to build Healthcare.gov, drew four bidders, the documents show, including CGI Federal.
Doesn't it strike anyone as odd that the Govt can design and implement a billion+ dollar data storage center for the NSA but can't deploy a website to allow people to sign up for insurance?
Yes, but you are pointing at the wrong guys. Turns out that the website needs to talk to the insurance folk's computers. When I heard this, I realized they were doomed.
I remember the airline protocols from wayback. They simply couldn't rewrite these transactions to be as fast as the asm coded shit that was there until the line speed and computer speed came up significantly. I'm talking 90s, against code that was written in the 70s to run on mainframes.
I suspect that there is a hideous mass of scar tissue under the pretty face of the website that interfaces with horrible old code, running on ancient IBM mainframe, AS400s, or perhaps SUN servers. Making it all play would require a masterwork of legacy code interfacing with code from webbies that know practically nothing about this sort of horrible timing interaction.
I've fought this battle before. People think that transactions should be live, end to end, directly to the databases. No, the generic data should be pushed as far towards the interface as possible, using caches that are updated on a daily basis. The individual results should be handled locally, then forwarded to the appropriate systems. The interface should just collect the data and respond to the queries, and deliver it later, maybe hours later. Send an email to the user when you are done.
The real fix right now is a bank of thousands of telephone operators, who collect the data and forward it. Website be damned, the solution is NOT to write facebook in a month. In fact, it would be faster and cleaner to just automatically enter users into chat with somebody who was trained to handle the questions and enter the data offline. There is NO requirement for realtime responses here. The responses need to audited later anyway.
This isn't a "government" problem. It is a uniquely American problem, and the solution does not lie in any general ideological fix, but in the detailed structure of the specifically American, particularly broken, Federal government.
It is because the US is big. Really big. And, it has a history of its parts hating one another. So, one side will pick a position, and the other will reflexively take the other side. This doesn't seem to happen in most other countries (Well, maybe the EU is going in this direction, but Germany effectively runs it, so nobody else gets to talk?)
I agree with the folks who want to secede from the US. I say leave, make a new country, just let us alone so we can have healthcare and science that makes sense. You are a net drain on our economy anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually I think a solar panel/battery unit is the simplest. It can be delivered as a package sized for a household and after setup requires little maintenance other than keeping the solar panel clean. Those other things you mention require maintenance of the mechanical parts and some sort of distribution grid for the power.
Good point. However, wind or hydro can be maintained by locals with proper training. A solar setup, when it dies, would be harder to fix. If it was cheap enough, that would not be a problem, I guess.
So far Krugman has been wrong in his predictions about bitcoin. I know the guy joked about staging an alien invasion to improve the economy, but if his economic model was accurate then that actually would be a good way to improve the economy. His model isn't accurate though, and therefore it's not. He doesn't pay attention to the broken window fallacy, just assuming that so long as somebody is paid to do something -- even if the results of their labor aren't actually useful -- it builds the economy, nevermind that no capital was gained or wealth was created. This is part of why every decade, something happens in the economy that Keynesians say shouldn't happen, the biggest blunder being stagflation in the 80's which Keynesian theory ruled out entirely saying it was impossible, yet it happened anyways.
So, you think that austerity is a good thing, because it conserves the resources of the society, right? Savings is good. Debt is bad. How is that working out for Europe now, or Japan for the last 15 years?
Krugman is more or less just a propagandist writer - he's more or less just there to reassure people that they'll be fine so long as vote for politicians who also adopt the Keynesian model (democrat or republican alike.) I think there are other Keynesians who make more sound arguments than he does. Pretty much the only major things he and I agree on is the idea that tariffs are bad and so is minimum wage (Maynard Keynes would disagree though.)
Actually, there are more and more economists who are publicly 'coming around' to his point of view. Many have been on his side from the beginning, but have been constrained by screaming austrians to be somewhat more contrite (/cough bernanke). However, see the recent speech given by Sommers at IMF, which appears quite similar to a blog post of Krugman from September. Also, Krugman has a Nobel memorial prize in Economics. Fama also has one, so the distinction is dubious at best. However, Krugman was a sole recipient, unlike Fama.
Personally I thought the idea of bitcoins wasn't a sound one (the idea of a community of people you don't even know or trust keeping records of what you own seemed like an odd one,) but I started mining them just as an experiment, and when I found out I could actually buy stuff I wanted with them I've started using them. I've mined about $1,000 worth of bitcoins over the last 8 months at an electricity cost of $5 a month using just GPU's I've obtained for the sole purpose of gaming, so it's not bad. I've actually heavily padded my steam games library with humble bundle using bitcoins - imagine that, my GPU's aren't just playing the games, they're working for them too.
The volatility concerns me a bit (the value going up to $400 I don't have faith in, so I won't sell anything for bitcoins myself at the moment, but I'll buy - such is the nature of the beast of deflation) but with the way our government's current fiscal and monetary policy is setup, I actually have less faith in the dollar (a government can't borrow in perpetuity forever, and there's no sign of a balanced budget coming any time soon.)
Ah, bitcoins. Love em. Gotta have em. Better than tulips! I started a thread at reddit, asking whether I should sell my house and buy bitcoins. Everybody says I should do it. The winklevoss twins like em, so they must be OK, right?
Or perhaps the world's poor, many of whom don't have access to grid electricity as it stands can bypass that step and go directly to solar power. How much would a 1 kW solar panel with a battery improve the lives of many rural people in Africa who have to go into town every week to charge up their cell phones and have no electric light at night?
Wind power is simpler and cheaper. So is small scale hydroelectic, which can be done with a small electric motor. Steam power heated by solar energy is also a good way to go. Bill Gates should start making drop-in hydro, wind or solar power stations, complete with liquid metal batteries. Nuclear isn't going anywhere with the current terrorist situation. He needs to drop that approach.
Gold is a physical good that they can confiscate though. Bitcoins are more or less just an idea, and ideas are bulletproof.
Actually, they can confiscate your bitcoins when they get your hard drive. They are physical, and exist on physical media. The idea behind gold (and bitcoins) is the same. You dig something up, and for whatever reason, somebody wants to buy it for real services/money. You are right that it isn't the THING, it is the IDEA that they will do that which has value. However, you need the THING to get the money, and the thing is a real bit pattern on some device.
The fact that so many people are spending so much money to dig up these stupid things, which have no inherent value in and of themselves (even gold can be used in jewelry or electronics components), is a huge waste of resources. Currency is a debt, a promise, that we all make to each other. There is no reason to spend resources on something we can do with a simple note.
Here is what Adam Smith thought of bitcons (well, of gold and silver)
The gold and silver money which circulates in any country, and by means of which, the produce of its land and labour is annually circulated and distributed to the proper consumers, is, in the same manner as the ready money of the dealer, all dead stock. It is a very valuable part of the capital of the country, which produces nothing to the country. The judicious operations of banking, by substituting paper in the room of a great part of this gold and silver, enable the country to convert a great part of this dead stock into active and productive stock; into stock which produces something to the country. The gold and silver money which circulates in any country may very properly be compared to a highway, which, while it circulates and carries to market all the grass and corn of the country, produces itself not a single pile of either. The judicious operations of banking, by providing, if I may be allowed so violent a metaphor, a sort of waggon-way through the air, enable the country to convert, as it were, a great part of its highways into good pastures, and corn fields, and thereby to increase, very considerably, the annual produce of its land and labour.
Krugman dug this quote up.
Yet another way to launder botcoins.
The last on our list of leading causes of bankruptcy in Canada, are medical problems; they often can and do lead to a lot of financial problems. Fortunately, in Canada most of our medical expenses, such as hospital care, are covered by the government, unlike in the United States where medical bills for uninsured Americans are a leading cause of bankruptcy in America.
Where does the subsidy money come from?
Unicorns, Leprechauns, and Cthulhu...
Actually, the tea party is NOT paying for these subsidies!
Where does the subsidy money come from?
Here is a link that talks about it.
No it's like saying that you can't even buy a car because the website is broken, that the car you have is being taken away and if you don't work this out by a deadline you will have to pay a fine. But thanks for the asshat point of view and the asshats that modded you up
You can buy the policies directly from the insurance companies if you don't care about subsidies.
I am paying for COBRA, and the new unsubsidised costs were substantially less than the COBRA plan I am paying for. Since I have a preexisting condition, I could not purchase insurance from the private market before ACA, and was in danger of losing coverage in July 2014, which would probably have meant bankruptcy or death (or both) for me. The requirement to sell me insurance, and the end of lifetime/yearly caps were enough to save my life, or at least keep my wife out of poverty after I die.
Well - let's examine this idea.
Let us suppose that General Motors is incapable of either putting up a website, or of contracting that job out to someone who is competent. Just suppose that General Motors has zero presence on today's internet. None. They are so clueless, that they don't see the need to invest the resources into an online presence. Just pretend that to be true.
Do you really think that such clueless fools could possibly build a safe, reliable automobile? Do you really?
That is what we are seeing with ACA. It's perfectly alright that none of the people in politics understand how to put up a website. What is unforgivable, is that they have no idea how to go about hiring competent people to put up their site.
If they are incapable of attracting and hiring competent people to perform one job, what in the HELL makes anyone think that they can find competent people to perform another job?
The government is NOT selling insurance that they provide on the website. They are selling insurance that is provided by a company that has years of experience providing insurance. So, your analogy is misguided.
But everybody is covered in Canada. There is just some confusion about who is doing the covering.
However, does anybody die of breast cancer in Canada because they can't afford insurance? How many bankruptcies occur in Canada due to medical bills? These things both happen with alarming frequency in the US, even to people who think they are currently insured. A lifetime or yearly cap can kill you after a cancer diagnosis, after costs take your house and your savings, so your survivors are left in poverty. ACA does away with lifetime caps to prevent this. No wonder Republicans are against it. More democrats will live to vote against their mean-spirited policies.
The Republicans were excluded from writing the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). The law was not written in committee, it was created in partisan meetings. This was possible because Democrats controlled the house, senate, and the presidency. They also had a super majority in the Senate so they did not need a single Republican vote. They did it this way so they did not have to make any compromises to Republicans, they only needed to make compromises with Democrats to pass the law.
That is false. You are rewriting history. I don't know if you can remember back to when the law was being written, but there was a huge push by Obama to get bipartisan support. Most democrats (including me) were faulting Obama for caving in on so much to get this bipartisan support. However, the Republican tactic was to bait them with an apparent desire to cooperate, and then to pull support at the last minute. They did this again and again, forcing more and more complexity into the law, and obstructing a public option.
Sadly, when it came time to vote for the law they had helped create, the Republicans balked, fearing the conservatives, who were still busy mounting primaries against anybody who cooperated with Democrats. So, even Olympia Snowe failed to vote for it. She had been the Democrat's last hope of getting something they could call bipartisan.
Politics as usual in the new millenia. So, if Republicans want to fix the problems they see, they will now need to get both a president and congress, or 2/3 of congress, enough to overcome any veto. I don't think this will happen for many years, if ever. So, detractors would be advised to get used to the idea that the ACA will be around. They had lots of leverage in the senate, they just misused it, thinking they could sway public opinion. They got a short term gain out of it in the midterms, but will now need to live with the law for a long time.
"a badly conceived law could be a reason for the poor performance of the site if it puts overly burdensome constraints on the system." the law is a set of rules to apply. Nothing more. That is no reason for broken code. If you are talking about adding a second or three to a responce, you would be right.
The law is not necessarily a logical or consistent system.
If you had to write a billing system for the Canadian health care system, it would be easy. You just pay everything that's covered.
If you have to write a billing system for the American health care system, it's complicated. Different people have different levels of subsidy, deductibles, co-payments, eligibility, etc. Is psychotherapy covered? Is chiropractic covered? For how long? It depends on the state. When somebody goes to the hospital, it can take a month for them to figure out their bills and reconcile the mistakes. If you can't figure out the actual charges by hand, how can you write a program to do it automatically?
Thankfully, they aren't writing a billing system for american healthcare. They are portaling through to web data put up by insurers, and saving declarations for use in providing rebates to those insurers. It is just the sales and rebates they need to handle. I'm fairly sure that the insurance companies and doctors still handle everything else you mention.
Remember, ACA is NOT government sponsored healthcare. It is mandates to insurers to only charge a certain amount and cover certain things (these are good for consumers), and rebates to those insured who do not have the means to pay for insurance (these are also good for consumers, particularly low income consumers). The website also needs to determine whether people are eligible for medicaid, but it then forwards them to the already existing medicaid system.
Good points. Thanks for your input. Regards
khallow did not, actually, make any projections. You quoted the CBO's — to support your argument:
khallow explained, rather convincingly, how unreliable the CBO's projections are (and your argument along with them).
His job was much easier, of course — he did not need to prove anything himself, merely destroy your proof. Well, he did it — the CBO not only failed to predict the 2008 crash, but, according to the figures khallow quoted, the subsequent "recovery" as well. The CBO's numbers are so far off, year after year, it is laughable.
I simply pointed out that the CBO did not agree with him, which is true, they don't. Whether you agree with them or not, their charter is to provide unbiased economic guidance to congress. If they missed the 2008 meltdown, well, so did everybody else. If they expected the recovery to be more robust, well, so did everybody else. Nobody expected the republicans to block any attempt to stimulate the economy, and in fact to push for austerity (in the form of the Ryan budget) once they took the House. That would have been too mean spirited even for them, given the unemployment numbers.
khallow's claims that the world is going to end because of the ACA are nonsense. His claims that rebates will cause funding problems for 'roads, defense, entitlements' is nonsense. His claims that medicare patients will face death panels are nonsense. Look at debt/GDP and learn to add for fuck sake. We have plenty of money, and bonds that are the most secure in the world, that people are still buying despite real negative returns wrt inflation. The pressures that ACA puts into effect are the same as in Germany, who has had a public health system since the time of Otto Von Bismark. Their economy seems to be doing OK. Also, they have much better health outcomes, and pay far less per person than we do.
BTW, here is a fun blog entry on the republican war against the CBO. Apparently, some Republicans (cough Newt, Ryan) don't like to be told that they are too stupid to claim 'wonk' status.
Ironically to your thesis, Marx considered capitalism unstable. In fact, Marx's dialectical economics considers ALL economic systems unstable, and subject to destruction from forces arising within. His predicted 'revolution' actually happened in the 20th century in the west, and was either co-opted by the Nazis in Germany, or folded back into western society in the form of labor unions. The Nazis and Fascists were socialists, but they were national socialists, in contrast to Russia. The fact that they were taken over by monsters who also believed in racial cleansing was unfortunate; they were actually playing out forces that Marx predicted. The west took them on and smashed them to a pulp, and then moved on the soviets in the form of the cold war. This was the real war of capitalism vs socialism. As a result, Russia and China now have a sort of synthesis of capitalism and socialism. The west also has socialist institutions everywhere, mostly a left over of the great depression, which one could say was a pivotal time for capitalism. Marx was predicting this sort of merger would happen.
Because of the changes that have happened since Marx, the capitalists of 1900 would reject the idea that western society is a capitalist society. They would probably consider it a socialist state. Marx, seeing our society, might have said that western society is being maintained in an unstable equilibrium where communistic impulses in the society are suppressed by a combination of propaganda, bribery, and force. He would have been right.
So, you think your projections are better, or more informed? I'm sorry, but I just don't believe that.
The fact that the CBO could not predict the great recession of 2008 isn't grounds to dismiss their projections altogether. Almost nobody predicted that, although some folks were predicting a problem (typically the usual suspects who always predict a problem. Sometimes they are right. Surprise!). Nobody could predict that Lehman would fail. That just wan't in anybody's crystal ball.
BTW, the CBO projects the deficit out 25 years, and they don't see the problem you see [cbo.gov] with obamacare.
So what? It isn't their job to see the problems unless someone instructs them to actually look for them. The primary mechanism is via prior assumptions. They have to assume whatever they're instructed to assume. As a result, the CBO is a propaganda organ of Congress.
That isn't true. They are independent. Who would pay attention to them if they were not independent?
They aren't going to be estimating the growing cost of Obamacare subsidies, for example. They can't estimate the political incentive to increase Medicare/Medicaid spending when the price caps on those programs become too inadequate for the programs to function.
Of course they will estimate the probabilities of different possible policy decisions, and potential issues. That is what they do.
But even in their case, there's only so much lipstick they can put on this pig:
However, budget deficits would gradually rise again under current law, CBO projects, mainly because of increasing interest costs and growing spending for Social Security and the governmentâ(TM)s major health care programs (Medicare, Medicaid, the Childrenâ(TM)s Health Insurance Program, and subsidies to be provided through health insurance exchanges).
Even they admit there is a problem.
Of course there is a budget problem. In 2040. Right now, look at debt/GDP. We are 35th among a list of western nations. The argument that we don't have enough money to support healthcare subsidies and to expand medicare is just wrong. We could pay off the debt in 10 years using trivial policy changes, but nobody really wants to do it. It is just a convenient political target for the out of power party.
The obamacare/romneycare system is used, essentially unchanged, in Germany. The Germans have had a national system of healthcare since Otto Von Bismark. So, I'm confused when folks say that the same system just can't work in the US, and that it spells the end of healthcare in the free world. The Germans have far better health than we do, and pay far less for it.
Restricting what business can charge for a service (which is most of what Obamacare does), and eliminating discrimination in who they can sell it to won't create global havoc. Europe gets along just fine with these restrictions, and, again, they are healthier (and richer) than we are.
When these subsidies grow big enough to threaten funding for basic services like road systems, national defense, and the other entitlements that the US has, then something will be done. Inflation isn't going to work because the costs will outpace inflation no matter how much you inflate. But dumping people on Medicare/Medicaid (which I think will turn into another fine disaster as it caps prices of health care given under the Medi* system, but not the cost of health care) or restricting their access to medical care (say via the "death panels") would.
When did we start caring about road systems and national defense? I thought the fact that the sequester happened meant we'd already given up on those goals?
Also, the real fear of conservatives is the medicaid system, that gives healthcare to the poor. That is why many states have opted out of the medicaid expansion, despite the fact that a) they are paying for it now in the form of emergency room costs, and b) that it would help their economies. The problem for governors of these states is that their population would freak out and elect sombody else if it was known that they helped 'those people' in any way. And, they would be right. They know their states, and do polling on these issues.
BTW, the CBO projects the deficit out 25 years, and they don't see the problem you see with obamacare.
When I compare Romney's plans and Obama's plans, I'd say most of the theory is the same.
One rather big difference that tends to get overlooked is that the former is legal since individual states have powers granted to them by the US Constitution to do things like the individual mandate while the federal government doesn't have that power. So when you're doing things that are inherently illegal, what obstacle is there to more breaking of the law (such as an arbitrary delay of the employer mandate or granting waivers for various parts of Obamacare to political allies, for example)?
When you say obamacare is illegal, you know that the Supreme Court (which is controlled by conservatives) actually upheld its legality, don't you? And that what the Supreme Court says about legality and constitutionality is actually what is legal and constitutional, since they are the final say on these things?
Correct. It was a no-bid contract. Interestingly, Toni Townes-Whitley, a senior vice president at CGI Federal, is a Princeton classmate of Michelle Obama. In addition to being college classmates, both Obama and Townes-Whitley are members of the Association of Black Princeton Alumni.
I find this repeated on lots of conservative blogs, the fox news site, and the washingtontimes site, but nowhere else. Here is what reuters has to say:
The work on Healthcare.gov grew out of a contract for open-ended technology services first issued in 2007 with a place-holder value of $1,000. There were 31 bidders. An extension, awarded in September 2011 specifically to build Healthcare.gov, drew four bidders, the documents show, including CGI Federal.
So, yet another right wing lie. What a surprise.
Doesn't it strike anyone as odd that the Govt can design and implement a billion+ dollar data storage center for the NSA but can't deploy a website to allow people to sign up for insurance?
It took them 40 years to do it.
Yes, but you are pointing at the wrong guys. Turns out that the website needs to talk to the insurance folk's computers. When I heard this, I realized they were doomed.
I remember the airline protocols from wayback. They simply couldn't rewrite these transactions to be as fast as the asm coded shit that was there until the line speed and computer speed came up significantly. I'm talking 90s, against code that was written in the 70s to run on mainframes.
I suspect that there is a hideous mass of scar tissue under the pretty face of the website that interfaces with horrible old code, running on ancient IBM mainframe, AS400s, or perhaps SUN servers. Making it all play would require a masterwork of legacy code interfacing with code from webbies that know practically nothing about this sort of horrible timing interaction.
I've fought this battle before. People think that transactions should be live, end to end, directly to the databases. No, the generic data should be pushed as far towards the interface as possible, using caches that are updated on a daily basis. The individual results should be handled locally, then forwarded to the appropriate systems. The interface should just collect the data and respond to the queries, and deliver it later, maybe hours later. Send an email to the user when you are done.
The real fix right now is a bank of thousands of telephone operators, who collect the data and forward it. Website be damned, the solution is NOT to write facebook in a month. In fact, it would be faster and cleaner to just automatically enter users into chat with somebody who was trained to handle the questions and enter the data offline. There is NO requirement for realtime responses here. The responses need to audited later anyway.
This isn't a "government" problem. It is a uniquely American problem, and the solution does not lie in any general ideological fix, but in the detailed structure of the specifically American, particularly broken, Federal government.
It is because the US is big. Really big. And, it has a history of its parts hating one another. So, one side will pick a position, and the other will reflexively take the other side. This doesn't seem to happen in most other countries (Well, maybe the EU is going in this direction, but Germany effectively runs it, so nobody else gets to talk?)
I agree with the folks who want to secede from the US. I say leave, make a new country, just let us alone so we can have healthcare and science that makes sense. You are a net drain on our economy anyway.