(To be sung to the opening theme of Mr. Ed)
A dead horse is a horse, of course, of course,
unless it’s a bill against public will.
Those riding it
Will land in it
Come later on in Fall
“The people of Georgia are divided right down the middle on this issue. The people feel one way and I the other.”- Georgia Representative at the Constitutional Congress
To his credit the above quoted Representative voted the will of the people and put his own beliefs aside. Oh how far we’ve fallen from the Founding Fathers to the Floundering Bothers.
One last time for posterity—Federal Government programs always under perform, always cost more than estimated, always are fraught with fraud, always grow, and always offer substandard service. No Federal government program has stayed within budget. This is why Social Security and Medicaid are going broke. This is why so many defense programs go over budget.
What the Democrats in Congress are attempting to do is impose their will and morality on an American public that disagrees with them, strongly. Their latest idea is to dodge responsibility by “deeming” the Senate bill—passed before “Kennedy’s seat” was lost due to the passing of this same bill—as law. Hey if you can’t win fair and square, just cheat, and accuse your opponents of having done the same thing. Didn’t their momma tell them that two wrongs don’t make a right? What bothers me most is that the whole game (referred to as a “process”) has managed to eliminate the opinion of the people (ignorant masses that require government assistance) from the discussion and it has become all about Democrats versus Republicans and conservative Democrats. Come November Democrats will be reminded that it is the people that they are fighting against and not the stuffed shirts across the aisle. It is the people they are planning and plotting against and it is our future they are diminishing.
Perhaps the biggest shame is that real, meaningful, and beneficial changes to health care that could lower costs have been left out to satisfy the greed of the Democrats and their lesions (misspelling intended) of supporters. The lawyers will keep suing and keep getting their 40%. Restrictive state policies will continue to restrain Americans from getting better prices through competition in the marketplace. Etc…etc…
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{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
Our nation ranks 24th in life expectancy among developed countries. More than one-third of Americans are obese.
How would public opinion change if people were fully informed about the content of the bills? It’s hard to say for sure, but on average, the individual components of the bill are favored by a net of +22 points.
57% of the american public is in favor of repealing the healthcare bill… how do you account for that with your claim of favorability by +22 points????
Excel Help,
I have no idea how your comment slipped through the spam filter. Talk about a heap of nonsense.
I am writing down the name of your blog “Macro Application” to make sure that I never check it out.
Sheesh
Mmmm…sweet, deserved hatred. This blog is becoming the perfect complement to reading xkcd – when I like the comic, you tend to pick at its details, and when I hate it, you validate my elitist (or in this case, common-sense) disapproval.
Artsy, though? You already said Munroe’s “not fooling anyone,” so it can’t be artsy. Judging by the havoc of laughs in the forums, I’d call this one bottom-feeding. Panel 5: “My schedule’s been tossed up by a 72-hour orgy, please accept this non-punchline cocnerning hats.”
There’s a category you could create! “One Panel From Funny”
.-= Excel Help´s last blog ..Macro Application =-.
Blue,
Profs are very well educated people whose opinion I value in the subject they are knowledgeable about. But being smart in one area does not make one smart in other areas and vice-versa. I know bodybuilders who may seem rather uninformed when confronted with current events, politics, or business but their knowledge of anatomy, diet, and generally how the body works is equal to many doctors (in that narrow subject). I know doctors that can’t master a stick shift. My point was and is that opinion is just opinion. People’s opinion tends to be swayed by their position and the opinion’s relevance to their betterment. The poor/needy believe in equally distributing resources. Those who have more tend to feel the opposite– whether they “earned” it or received it the old fashioned way (inheritance, marriage, etc…). I’m not rich but I work toward fairness rather than equality. We are not equal. We are all different and have unique qualities and drawbacks. I don’t believe that the government should even attempt to create equality through helping some at the expense of others. I have never seen any group aside from the libertarians truly attempt equality. As a rule when “equality” is the mission of a group it is like when “Democratic” is in the title of a country. You can be assured that country is not democratic. Life is not fair. I don’t mean that in a mean way. I’m sorry you have heart problems but when you say “Luckily I was able to get a job that afforded me with coverage” remember that all of your coworkers who paid into the same plan were paying more and your employer paid well enough to afford it. If people who cost so much more than average were left out of health care, costs would come down. Not wishing death or pain on you, but a lot of strangers have spent a lot of money on you. Will you pay back their charity? How can you, you don’t even know them. You also don’t know what they gave up, because they were paying for you.
About Social Security: it started off right as being a pay in program that made sense as long as the population didn’t age and that the average age of death remained the same. Unfortunately neither of those things held true. Just remember the people who receive Social Security paid into the system for the most part. They paid with the guarantee that they would be rewarded if they lived long enough. Health care has nothing to do with paying in and receiving your fair share.
I understand your rage with the companies that make large profits, but I prefer them to the government that I believe will offer less service at greater cost and I am particularly against anyone being forced to pay into a specific government program, knowing that the program is geared to help the few. As one of the few, you see the value in helping you and as one of the many I see the damage that has been done by extraordinary resources being funneled through our government to help people. Please understand that the government neither pays for, subsidizes, nor covers anything and that taxpayers– both individual and business– pay for everything, including the overhead of the government. Each time you say the “government” will pay for it, remember that taxpayers will pay for it. And not the rich as is so often stated. The high income earners will get the tab. So Senator Kerry will see some difference in his take home pay but his wife’s 2 billion dollar fortune won’t be taxed. The same is true for Nancy Pelosi, whose wealth won’t be effected. And the same is true for the Kennedy’s, Rockerfellers, etc… These programs (or rather the taxes they survive on) are killing the golden geese-taxpayers.
OK, so let me get this straight, you’ll listen to and respect opinions espoused by political groups and individuals with a vested interest in their opinions, but you won’t listen to or respect the opinions of our nations respected educators and experts on the topic of law and politics?
OK, let’s review. These guys are uninformed?
Darrell M. West, Vice President, Governance Studies, Brookings
Timothy Stoltzfus Jost, Law Professor at the Washington and Lee University
Julian E. Zelizer, Professor of History and Public Affairs, Princeton
Timothy Stoltzfus Jost, Law Professor at the Washington and Lee University
Thomas J. Whalen, Professor of Social Science, Boston University
But I’m supposed to take political cues from a guy named “Blowhard,” with no credentials, who publishes on a predominantly right-leaning blog website?
“How many kids won’t go to college because the money won’t be there, either at home or in the government. How will these profs feel when they or their coworkers are laid off because these 18-22 year olds will have to pay thousands for health covrage and can not afford college.”
Well, I can’t spend my time doing all your research for you, but here, let me just address the above assertion.
~
From http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/health/july-dec09/healthprofiles_12-04.html#long
Samantha Long, 25, spent two and a half years working part-time jobs as a waitress and nanny in Los Angeles. But none of her jobs provided health insurance, so Long went without coverage. When she developed a bladder infection and ended up in the emergency room, she came out more than $7,000 in debt. “That turned out to be a very, very expensive day,” she says.
Long tried to buy health insurance after that experience, but she was turned down due to her emergency room visit and told that she should try again in a year.
Long now works part-time as a legal assistant at a small law firm in Denver. Last year, she estimates, she made about $24,000 between that job and other part-time work. But she still does not qualify for the firm’s health insurance coverage, which is offered only to full-time employees, and she remains uninsured.
“It kind of changes your mind frame in terms of what you think about health care,” she says. “You just learn to live without it. And I don’t necessarily think that that’s a good idea.”
How would reform affect her?
She’d likely pay an annual premium of $1,579 for a plan that cost $3,169. Government subsidies would pick up the rest of the tab. Under the Senate bill, she’d pay $1,693 for a plan that cost $2,637.
The House bill would also subsidize her cost-sharing expenses, like co-pays and deductibles, in effect giving her a better plan for her money.
If Long chose not to buy health insurance, she’d pay a penalty. Under the Senate bill the penalty would be 2.5% of her income above the tax filing threshold ($9,350 for singles), which for Samantha would equal about $366.
But one change that could affect Long would go into effect right away — she might be able to join her parents’ insurance plan.
Under the House bill, dependent children up to age 27 could be covered by their parents’ plan beginning Jan. 1, 2010. And under the Senate bill, dependent children up to age 26 could be covered by their parents’ plan beginning six months after the bill’s enactment.
~
So to conclude, the tax penalty of under $400 a year is not likely to make or break her prospects for affording college, while the benefits to students who will be eligible for coverage through their parents plans saves families thousands of dollars a year, multiplied per child.
Now while many young people are healthy, I have personally had heart trouble from a young age and it’s never been optional for me, the alternative would have been many tens of thousands of dollars in dept before the age of 21. Luckily I was able to get a job that afforded me with coverage. My boss has a child also that has a disability which requires frequent medical care and his family also has always been in dire need of insurance.
A logical argument can still be made that this largely amounts to taking money from the youth who largely don’t consume medical insurance benefits and giving it to the old who generally do. But you haven’t made that argument, and even if you did, I’d argue that as a young person who does not consume unemployment, Medicare, retirement, or disability benefits, the elderly generations have been stealing my money in the form of social security for many years.
But that would be a weak argument. Social Security provides a safety net for the elderly that our nation obviously cannot do without. And this is the reason all those elderly tea-party activists wave signs saying “Don’t affect my Medicare with your socialism,” which of course we all recognize as ridiculous irony.
Drew,
Quoting professors does not represent fact, either. Professors don’t make budgets and don’t understand government accounting methods from the inside- as in the politics versus hard data. The CBO takes the data it is given (does not generate its own) and gives a report. The information given to the CBO is massaged and sooner or later the desired response is acquired. The truth is not known but the perception most certainly is. Remember the prescription drug program that went 40% over budget the week after it was passed? The CBO wasn’t wrong, just under informed. This will be much worse this time. I know the profs at university are for this bill but they know very little about how government really works. This is a trillion dollar spending behemoth that will slowly crush our economy and therefore our country. We are running enormous deficits–over 200 billion last month and growing–and no government programs lower costs. The price to a subsidized individual may go down, but the overall expense goes up. Remember that Americans are for health care but against this bill. Everyone would like everybody to be covered. But at what cost? How many kids won’t go to college because the money won’t be there, either at home or in the government. How will these profs feel when they or their coworkers are laid off because these 18-22 year olds will have to pay thousands for health covrage and can not afford college. Money that is spent in one area cannot be spent in another area– this is the “opportunity cost”. This bill is a stinker. A better bill could be made in 2 weeks using ideas from both sides and kicking special interests to the curb. Instead a one-sided bill with zero bipartisan support and unable to even satisfy its own party is being maneuvered to pass.
Thanks for the info, Erik, I appreciate your measured response. I know we still seem to be on opposite sides of this health care issue, and probably several others as well, nevertheless I’ve seen you cover several sides of the political spectrum in your articles and I can respect that. It gives your assertions more non-partisan credibility even if I do lean toward a different conclusion in the long run on certain issues.
“Drew who blew”? Seriously, is that all you have?And with a name like Blowhard, did you really want to go there?
You seem to believe an entire article of unsubstantiated talking points and platitudes constitutes an argument.
“one-sided political sites ”
Wrong. The numbers I quoted were from the CBO, I don’t know what else to say.
Here, allow me to quote some other people who will address the issues without as much emotional theatrics as you seem to be accustomed to. Their quotes are civil and educated, and their credentials are noteworthy. Although these folks are sometimes espousing opinion, I’d wager theirs are far more qualified than yours. And although you’ll find other qualified folks with opposing views, I’d have to say I don’t buy it. The opposition party has offered nothing to even come close, their action, in my opinion, is inaction.
Anyway here’s some qualified opinions you can ignore for your next article.
David Biespiel
Poet and writer, Attic Writers Workshop :
“The CBO giveth and the CBO taketh away… Those undecideds who’ve said they “need to see the CBO report” should move to Yes promptly. Republicans will howl, of course, as they should, being the loyal opposition. They’re gearing up for their own brand of arcane procedural challenges in the Senate (I don’t oppose that – the arcane is to civilization as the shim is to construction). But no Republican plan offered by a single congressional Republican came even close to this sort of deficit reduction. That’s a fact. Besides, CBO tends to project conservatively. So the deficit reduction may prove even greater…”
Darrell M. West
Vice President, Governance Studies, Brookings :
“This CBO report should clear the way for congressional passage of health care reform. Its deficit reduction numbers makes it easier for fiscal hawks to support the bill …”
Timothy Stoltzfus Jost
Law Professor at the Washington and Lee University :
“It reduces the budget deficit twice as much as the Republican plan, and covers 10 times as many uninsured.”
Julian E. Zelizer
Professor of History and Public Affairs, Princeton :
“Given that millions of Americans would receive coverage from the program and that this will give Americans more options when purchasing their insurance, it is not difficult to imagine how this could benefit Democrats in November. Moreover, a victory could create momentum for more victories and give Democrats a strong platform upon which to run.”
Timothy Stoltzfus Jost
Law Professor at the Washington and Lee University :
“As to Tim Murphy’s take on Massachusetts, it is important to remember that the Senate bill is modeled on the Massachusetts plan in part, but not in the whole. Murphy admits that Massachusetts has done a great job of expanding access using the same approach found in the Senate bill – an individual mandate and subsidies. But the Massachusetts legislation intentionally did not address cost control in its first iteration (it is working on it now). The Senate bill, by contrast, contains a number of cost control provisions not found in the Massachusetts bill, such as the Independent Payment Advisory Commission and a host of pilot programs for Medicare payment. Congress in fact learned from the Massachusetts experiment and has improved on it. The limitations of the Massachusetts plan are no reason not to vote for health reform.”
Thomas J. Whalen
Professor of Social Science, Boston University :
“The Democrats couldn’t ask for better news. Unlike the intelligence community’s “weapons of mass destruction” case during the Iraq War, the CBO is using real and unbiased data to reach this conclusion. This is just the political cover wavering (read cowardly) Democratic moderates need to vote for health care reform. They can actually sell it to voters as a deficit reduction act. It looks like the GOP’s long running and obstructionist tea party is officially over.”
Drew who blew,
Rather than post links or quotes from one-sided political sites I ask you to answer one simple question: How does increasing spending by roughly a trillion dollars lower the deficit?
Spending cuts and tax increases lower the deficit or the rate of increase of deficit. New spending does not.
The Democrats have had a year to put together a concise well thought out and understandable plan to get support. Instead they are still putting together a 2700 page, unreadable, and inexplicable bill that requires bribes of their own party members and non-voting measures to pass.
You wrote “Today, we have by far the most expensive health system in the world. We spend 50 percent more per person on health care than the average developed country, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. We spend more on health care than housing or food, the McKinsey Global Institute reported.” If you substitute the word education for health care, it still is true. We have a spending problem in this country. Spending more, faster, will not improve our situation. Two paragraphs later you talk about how though we spend more than any other country (again, substitute education for health care), our results are quite poor. Do you really believe spending more will solve the problems?
Lastly, personal attacks on the internet are rather fruitless and accomplish nothing. Rather than wasting your time insulting me or my opinions why not read over your responses and see how you completely wasted an opportunity to give specifics about the bill. This is where those on the left and right differ dramatically. Stating real facts and not findings by left wing periodicals, web sites, or government funded institutions rather than think that wishful results somehow are factual would be a nice change. Reporting “findings” without any statistical information is misleading and both sides can and do state extremely different results from the same procedure(s). In the end I still believe that spending more does not save money. I also believe that representatives should represent their constituents.
Let’s take a look at the actual CBO analysis:
http://www.unitedliberty.org/articles/5310-cbo-estimates-new-health-care-bill-will-cost-940-billion-over-ten-years
Is it possible that, though having the reputation of being unbiased, those among the CBO are quite human and are prone to miscalculations? They must since their analysis has changed in 8 months. This is not a criticism as much as a word of caution:
http://www.mrc.org/biasalert/2009/20090717023109.aspx
Though this is an older report, it demonstrates the President’s dilemma of not being able to embrace the CBOs findings too tightly because sometimes the data supports his agenda and sometimes it doesn’t:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0609/23853.html
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/03/18/source-cbo-estimates-health-care-bill-at-940-billion/?fbid=Rj1lHW7r5QA
The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that the Democrats’ revised health care bill will cost $940 billion over the next 10 years…
The bill cuts the deficit by $130 billion during that period of time, … and would reduce the deficit by another $1.2 trillion in the following decade.
The measure extends health insurance coverage to 32 million Americans, helping to guarantee that 95 percent of Americans will be covered…
It also reduces Medicare expenditures by 1.4 percent annually while extending Medicare’s solvency by at least 9 years…
Great opinion piece, uncluttered by any sort of factual information. I could argue about the content if there was any. I think your article is a steaming pile of horse-crap.
I could speculate on your motives and label you with all sorts of names and presume all sorts of insulting things about you and perpetuate outright lies by putting them into print, but that’s not my style. That’s your style.
Substance is superior to style.
~
Anthem Blue Cross recently informed nearly 800,000 Californians that their premiums would be increasing up to 39% in the coming year. This comes after Anthem posted $2.7 billion in profits in the previous quarter.
~
“National healthcare legislation in Congress could slow the growth of medical costs, allowing employers to create 250,000 to 400,000 new jobs a year over the next decade, economists from Harvard University and USC are predicting. Wading into the hotly debated issue of whether the legislation is a job creator or a job killer, researchers from the two universities say that the reforms under consideration would slow the rate of cost increases and free up money for companies to raise wages and hire more workers.
~
Today, we have by far the most expensive health system in the world. We spend 50 percent more per person on health care than the average developed country, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. We spend more on health care than housing or food, the McKinsey Global Institute reported.
Nationwide, health care costs consume 18 percent of our gross domestic product. If we continue on our current path, health care costs will consume 34 percent of our GDP by 2040, and the number of uninsured Americans will rise to 72 million, according to the Council of Economic Advisers.
Even though we spend more than any other nation on health care, we aren’t healthier. Only three developed countries have higher infant mortality rates. Our nation ranks 24th in life expectancy among developed countries. More than one-third of Americans are obese.
~
Pennsylvania’s numbers, compiled from several different sources, paint a picture reflective of what Ms. Sebelius said is happening nationwide: One in 10 state residents are without health insurance and, for those fortunate to have coverage, insurance premiums have doubled since 2000.
~
What we see is that most individual components of the bill are popular — in some cases, quite popular. But awareness lags behind. Only 61 percent are aware that the bill bans denials of coverage for pre-existing conditions. Only 42 percent know that it bans lifetime coverage limits. Only 58 percent are aware that it set up insurance exchanges. Just 44 percent know that it closes the Medicare donut hole — and so on and so forth.
“Awareness”, by the way, might be a forgiving term in this context. For the most part in Kaiser’s survey, when the respondent doesn’t affirm that the bill contains a particular provision, he actually believes that the bills don’t include that provision. 29 percent, for instance, say the bill does not contain a provision requiring insurers to cover those with pre-existing conditions; 20 percent think it does not expand subsidies.
How would public opinion change if people were fully informed about the content of the bills? It’s hard to say for sure, but on average, the individual components of the bill are favored by a net of +22 points. An NBC poll in August also found that support went from a -6 net to a +10 when people were actually provided with a description of the bill.
Lastly, it’s much harder to read the opinion polls as a “mandate” against the health care bill when much of that opinion is based on demonstrably false beliefs, some of which have been perpetuated deliberately by opponents. And it’s much harder to know how the Democrats ever expect to pass a health care bill or similarly complicated policies like cap-and-trade if they wither in the face of polls that reflect less a disparity of opinion and more a poverty of accurate information.
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/01/health-care-polls-opinion-gap-or.html
Paragraph 4
Defense spending is also over budget because we spread ourselves out so thin around the world. We could spend more on defending our own borders and still have money to spare – not to mention less domestic vulnerability.
Paragraph 5
I certainly hope you’re right about the stuffed shirt thing, but I am not holding my breath. Particularly if Massachussets is any indicator where Tea Partiers (for example) had a chance to step up to the plate and vote 3rd Party but, instead, abandoned their principles to stick with the Grand Ol Party candidate who promptly paid them back within 24 hours by basically dissing them.
You write with an edge. Very nice indeed.