Private lending is an “entitlement” now? :dubious:
Waste more money (and lives) as the previous irrational system is the Republican end result.
Sure.
If if it turns out that the SCOTUS wants to once again be turned into the laughing stock of civilized court systems, then by all means, I’ll admit I was wrong in a couple years if/when it decides to hear this ludicrously asinine lawsuit.
I get it, conservatives are institutionally opposed to the idea of universal health care, even though, y’know, it works DAMN WELL in every other advanced country on Earth. But never mind that because in Rethugs’ minds the US exists in its own special ignorant little vacuum.
Literally, all this lawsuit is is a thinly veiled attempt to curtail the extent of the ACA; at least in the prior SCOTUS case, there was some philosophical argument to be made about the kinds of things in which the government can & can’t involve itself. Here, it’s nothing more than a bunch of vile rightwing lunatics seizing on a gotcha! part of the law in order to stick it to Obama and millions of Americans across the country.
The entire thing infuriates me because no other countries have to deal with this kind of lunacy. In any other Western country, people would look at this situation & ask themselves why us Americans can be so stupid. I agree with that perspective wholeheartedly; the problem, however, is that I live here & so I have to deal with the ramifications of this nonsense.
Not sure that it has happened in the United States.
But states operate with very different budgetary restrictions. 49 of the 50 states are required to have a balanced budget - 4 by statute and 45 by a balanced budget amendment in the state constitution. So a state may be wary of expanding an entitlement program on a long term basis for budgetary reasons even if the federal government promises to pay initially.
The Medicaid expansion under the PPACA starts with the federal government paying 100% of the costs for the newly eligible. That drops to a 90% federal contribution by the year 2020.
Some back of the digital napkin calculations about Texas, to pick on one state that has a balanced budget requirement and did not expand Medicaid…
About 1.1 million people would have been newly eligible for Medicaid if Texas had expanded the program. Cite
Assuming no increase in those numbers (unlikely, IMHO) then as of the year 2020 Texas would be responsible for 10% of 1.1 million at $5,278 per person (in 2010 dollars per kaiser Family Foundation) so and extra $580 million per year.
It is reasonable to expect some upward trending of medical costs. At a 4.5% annual rate of increase (the long term average of medical spending growth) that $5,278 grows to $8,196 by the year 2020.
Texas has been one of the faster growing states. The eligible population is likely to expand. A mere 0.75% rate of eligible population growth over that time (a rate that is half the current rate of growth of the state population) would grow to an eligible population of 1.18 million by 2020.
Adjust those estimates as you see fit… Texas’ share of the Medicaid Expansion annual cost could easily be somewhere between $950 million and $1 billion by 2020.
The overall state budget for Texas for healthcare spending comes in at 49.1 billion now. Grow that by the same 4.5% rate of average medical spending growth and it might be around $63.9 billion by the year 2020. A $1 billion cost of expansion is only a 1.6% increase above that. Assuming the federal government really will meet their 90% payment.
In actuality the federal share of spending for the Medicaid program pre-PPACA was more like 57% on average for the country as a whole (FY 2012 numbers) and 58% for Texas.
If the federal share of the Medicaid expansion dropped to 58% due to budgetary considerations then the numbers start looking worse for the state budget… an annual increase of $4.06 billion corresponding to a 6.4% increase in medical spending over baseline. And no ability to run a deficit to finance it.
For comparison the entire state spending on the 2014 budget for Public Safety and Corrections is $4.3 billion. So they are worried an expanded Medicaid could leave them with a bill about equivalent to running their entire state police and prisons system.
The government regulates the banking/lending industries. There were warnings that the no-money-down sub-primes would collapse and take the economy down with it, if Congress didn’t act. Barney Franks, and others in a position to curtail the bubble, preferred to “roll the dice a little longer” and let the bubble grow.
Many in Congress were under the impression that people who could not ordinarily afford a mortgage should still be entitled to own a home. Even if they couldn’t repay the mortgage.
No but neither has a zombie apocalypse and we all agree its prudent to prepare for THAT!
Wait. WHAT!?!?! How were subprimes an entitlement? Why not just say that Benghazi was an entitlement?
Well, its not politically feasible to screw anyone else, so what choice do they have?
Its either that or pay for their emergency room visits.
I already answered the entitlement question at - Today 02:10 PM - but here it is, again.
If you want to say Benghazi was an entitlement, I won’t stop you.
I don’t agree. The court (generally speaking) does not seek out controversy where it can be avoided. If the circuits all seem to be in alignment then someone like Alito, Thomas of maybe even Scalia might be eager to correct all their lesser brethren but I don’t see Roberts or Kennedy jumping on that bandwagon. If a split develops then all bets are off but I think they will wait for a split to develop and we do not have that yet.
You should reread your statement, especially the words unanimous and all.
This is the part I find most annoying as well.
Oh really? Other countries don’t have stupid/crazy people?:dubious:
I seem tor ecall some sort of push to limit things like universal health care to citizens in some countries (mostly seemed like racism but its the same sort of sentiment that forced Obama to repeat over and over again that we would not be covering illegal aliens with Obamacare)
In many (most?) states, Medicaid covers only select categories of poor people: pregnant/nursing women, children, people with disabilities, and the elderly poor are the usual targets.
Being poor, in and of itself, doesn’t qualify you for Medicaid. In particular, working-age adults who are not disabled, not pregnant, and not the parents of small children are only eligible in a handful of states.
Oh, I see the problem, you don’t really know the meaning of the words you use:
I don’t want to derail this thread but do you havea cite that “Franks, and others in a position to curtail the bubble, preferred to “roll the dice a little longer” and let the bubble grow.” I suspect you may be rewriting history now that 2008 is long enough in the past that we (and you) might have become fuzzy on the details. The 2008 crisis was clearly the result of market failure with an associated regulatory failure (and inability to act) created at the insistence of Republicans.
We can get into the details again (and perhaps an annual recap of the events surrounding the crisis would be useful) if you want in another thread but suffice it to say that the 2008 collapse was mostly the result of Republican deregulation and free market failures.
(post shortened)
As per your request -
*For most of his career, Barney Frank was the principal advocate in Congress for using the government’s authority to force lower underwriting standards in the business of housing finance. Although he claims to have tried to reverse course as early as 2003, that was the year he made the oft-quoted remark, “I want to roll the dice a little bit more in this situation toward subsidized housing.” Rather than reversing course, he was pressing on when others were beginning to have doubts.
His most successful effort was to impose what were called “affordable housing” requirements on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in 1992. Before that time, these two government sponsored enterprises (GSEs) had been required to buy only mortgages that institutional investors would buy–in other words, prime mortgages–but Frank and others thought these standards made it too difficult for low income borrowers to buy homes. The affordable housing law required Fannie and Freddie to meet government quotas when they bought loans from banks and other mortgage originators.*
Story after story after story (this is one example) is coming out that illustrates there is no evidence Congress intended this law to be interpreted the way the majority interpreted it and a great deal of evidence it was intended to be taken the other way. To get to their version, you have to take one sentence out of context and twist the living crap out of it. That’s not the best way to create jurisprudence.
If anyone is interested, there’s a much better discussion going on in the Pit thread.
That seems like pretty desperate rationalizing that overlooks all the facts. People below certain income levels being unable to afford health care is a fact, and you propose to weigh that fact against some ridiculous hypothetical that has never happened, ever. Moreover, if cost is really a concern, do you know what it costs to treat the indigent in ER, and how incredibly inefficient and ineffective it is? Are you aware that it’s been projected that opting out of expanded Medicare will increase insurance costs across the board? Or that the Commonwealth Fund has projected that no state will experience a positive cash flow as a result of rejecting expanded Medicaid?
Your argument – and that of the (invariably Republican) states that are doing this – seem to reject both facts and clear necessity in favor of ideology.
You’ve made a whole series of assumptions to conclude that Texas can’t afford to take on expanded Medicaid, even though your own numbers show it’s a tiny percentage of the budget, so then you throw in a zinger about the feds reneging on their funding commitment. Why stop there? Why not assume that in 2020 Texas will be completely broke, and the feds will be reneging on everything? :rolleyes:
The fact is that the Commonwealth Fund has concluded the following:
I think it’s worth pointing out (again) that health care is a necessity, and governments have a moral obligation to ensure that no one is deprived and a fiscal obligation to deliver it in the most cost-effective way. It’s also worth pointing out that nations very much poorer than the US or the state of Texas have been providing universal health care for all for generations, and have yet to experience the financial apocalypse being conjured up here.
I think it’s time to give up on this silliness. What is being discussed here is whether a government program has ever imploded for lack of funds, the way that it’s being projected – in the face of all the facts – that the expanded Medicaid program supposedly will do.
These calculations appear to present a decent argument if you consider Medicaid spending in a vacuum. But pretending Texas’ Medicaid budget operates in a vacuum is silly.
You aren’t just stretching the definition of entitlement beyond its limits. You are pulling its lips over its head and making it eat itself.
Which “one sentence” do you have to take out of context?
Because I find SIX sentences in different places in the bill.
I predict that suddenly, “one sentence” doesn’t matter to your argument anymore.