Funny, every single Republican I know feels this way about Reagan ( not Bush, though) and none of them are freepers. That would be a few dozen conservatives, mostly relatives.
None of the Obama supporters I know, including campaign staffers and myself ever felt that way about Obama.
What if, starting tomorrow, suddenly everybody decided to purchase a private insurance plan? Would that not cause the same problem?
Of course it would. This is the reality of the cost of health care. Unless you seriously increase the supply of doctors and nurses, if you increase the supply of patients only one of two things can happen - rationing through waiting lists, or increases in fees. There are no other options. Doctors are already working insane hours.
Here are some ways to address this problem. Unfortunately, they aren’t even being considered by the administration:
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Immigration reform:** Illegal aliens are putting more and more stress on the system, because if they go to the ER they have to be treated. And yet, they contribute not one dollar to the health care system. There should be reform that either stops illegal immigration, or which legalizes it so these people are brought into the system and forced to pay for what they use.
The other side of immigration reform would be to loosen standards for immigration of health care professionals, or even to actively recruit for them.
Education Reform: The AMA has been accused of actively working to restrict supply of doctors to maintain high pay levels. They can do this through advocating overly strict residency requirements, helping to set extremely high standards for grades, and in general by making the process of becoming a doctor be as hard as possible. They also fight against allowing lesser-trained people do more routine medicine, such as general checkups, certain diagnostic procedures, and other routine medicine. Nurses and their unions and governing boards do the same thing - preventing lesser-trained staff from doing things that really don’t require nursing training to do.
For one example, nurses today in Canada generally need to have four-year BScN degrees, whereas twenty years ago the standard was a two-year Registered Nurse diploma.
Tort Reform: Eliminate much ‘defensive medicine’ and lower the cost of malpractice insurance.
Regulatory Reform: The FDA is one of the key causes of the high price of prescription drugs. It can take over a billion dollars and a decade of trials to bring a new drug to market. Much of that time and money is spent not proving safety, but proving efficacy. And yet, once the drug is on the market doctors are free to prescribe the drug for treatments that were never tested for efficacy. Drop that useless requirement, and you’ll drop the cost of new drugs.
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Means-Test Medicare:** There is no reason Warren Buffet should get free medicine. By means-testing healthcare and making rich elderly people pay their own way, you’ll bring more money into the system and also reduce the load on doctors.
All of these things are more likely to improve the state of healthcare in the U.S., yet not a single one is being considered by the Democrats. Why? Because they don’t want to anger their real constituents - The AMA, the NEA, and the unions. Also, these reforms actually reduce the role of government in health care, and we can’t have that. Politicians always bias towards plans that increase their power.
The subsidy is to support insurance for those who cannot afford it now. Do you know of any others?
That’s only true if you for some reason are offered health insurance from your employer but refuse to take it. The tax is to level the playing field, to stop the situation we have today where employers who offer insurance are uncompetitive compared to those who do not. If you have data showing those who don’t get insurance have higher average salaries feel free to share - I rather doubt this is true.
Insurance companies do this all the time. So does the FDA, in preventing you from getting drugs not proven to work. From your words, it sounds like you are in favor of the government - and insurance companies - paying for treatments that don’t work.
And this is unlike every other law how? We just barely kept Congress from buying some new expensive planes that neither the Pentagon, Obama, or McCain wanted. Are you saying that we under the impression that Congress is composed of unbiased scholars?
Actually, the government is now putting the screws to Fed Ex to force them to unionize their workforce to ‘level the playing field’ with the USPS and UPS. And also, the government refuses to allow Fed Ex to carry first-class mail (or at least it did - I haven’t been keeping up with the news in that industry). And FedEx and UPS have survived because they are simply capable of doing a much better job than the USPS, and the value of what they bring is greater than the cost of the shipping, so even if the USPS were free, many people would still choose Fed Ex.
I’ve already pointed out one big glaring disadvantage non-employer private plans will face: The government wants to charge an 8% tax on any company that has a payroll over $400,000 and which doesn’t provide health care to employees. That means anyone with a non-employer health plan will pay for their health care AND pay an 8% payroll tax. If their company joins the government plan, the 8% goes into the employee’s cost of the health plan.
So the analogy is closer to the public school/private school system. No, the government is not stopping you from sending your kid to private school. It’s just that if you do, you’re STILL going to pay for the public school. This puts private education at a huge disadvantage, and that’s what vouchers are intended to fix.
My point is simply that this biases the playing field towards the government plan.
Right. So, if you like your health care plan today, and it doesn’t happen to be issued through your employer, you are facing an 8% payroll tax. Do you disagree with that?
But my understanding is that there will be a public health care exchange, and all employers are expected to take part in it. If they don’t, and they have a payroll over $400,000, a tax will be levied against them equal to 8% of their payroll.
This is going to have the effect of forcing employers to join the government plan. It’s futher going to be a huge burden on small businesses - which is why Wal-Mart lobbied heavily for this provision. They already provide health care, so they’re exempt. But once this passes, all those small businesses that compete against Wal-Mart are going to get hammered.
I didn’t argue the rationale behind it. I’m simply pointing out the fact that Obama is being disingenous in claiming that the plan will have no impact on you if you like the health care plan you have now. I understand that that’s not exactly what he’s saying, but that’s the impression he’s trying to give people. And it’s not true in all cases - it’s only true for those who already have good company-provided health care, and especially for those in companies large enough to be market-setters in a new health care exchange.
The FDA does NOT prevent you from getting drugs not proven to work. Doctors prescribe off-label drugs all the time, and the FDA says nothing about their efficacy. Some drugs went through all the expense of efficacy testing for their on-label use - and are rarely used for that use.
Not at all. What Obama said was that the government will not get in between you and your doctor. That is not true. The government will. You think that’s a good thing - fine. It’s still not what he said.
No, I’m baffled by the fact that you seem to be totally aware of how incompetent they are, and yet you’re STILL willing to hand over to them major decisions about YOUR life, and you’re still willing to let them draft expansive bills to tax the citizenry and control the economy. Why in hell would you do that if you know how corrupt and ineffectual they are? You just mentioned that you just barely kept them from spending a whole bunch of money on planes no one wants - why in hell would you think that letting them run 1/6 of the economy (health care) will possibly result in cost savings and good decision-making?
Operative words being “kept from”, the modifier “barely” notwithstanding. If we can barely stop things from happening that shouldn’t, perhaps we can up our game to making things happen that should. Working on that, taking a long time, could sure use your help if you’ve nothing better to do.
Because that’s how it’s worked the world over. And as far as being “willing to hand over to them major decisions about YOUR life”, I fail to see why I should think it better to do the same thing with a corporation. Especially since the corporation has more of a motive to deny me services, or see me die.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/330/story/65010.html I hope the government gets in between health companies and the consumer. People are getting shafted in ways they do not even know. health comopanies data mine to find out any drugs you have prescriptions for. They will make a determination of what it is for nd declare you have a preexisting condition. They leave no stones unturned looking for ways to deny coverage that you are paying for. they save the info ,and allow you to make payments until you have a problem. then they deny coverage. That is some system people are defending.
The answer is efficiency.
If it costs the taxpayer $2000 to treat a poor person’s diabetes in the emergency room and $100 to treat it with primary care, we can treat many more people and save money while doing it by shifting incentives in the system. Note, this is true even if the increased demand for primary care significantly increases the cost of primary care treatment so long as the overall cost is less than the current alternative.
I assume you dispute that the plan will achieve this. Fine. But the obvious answer to your theoretical question of how it is possible is simple: efficiency.
When you make so many claims in one post, I don’t know how you fact check them all. For what it’s worth, this one is false. Illegal immigrants pay billions in payroll taxes (which includes Medicare/Medicaid).
FedEx has been carrying letters for years, if not decades. They just charge several dollars more per piece than the USPS (and that’s for “ground” - if it positively has to there overnight, it will cost much, much more). FedEx succeeds because it doesn’t even try to do what the USPS does best - daily pickup and delivery of mail at homes and business all over the US at prices most people can afford. Even businesses that have daily scheduled FedEx pickups find it more economical and efficient to use USPS for daily correspondence.
Sigh. A review of the Private Express Statutes took most of the wind out of my sails. Competition from private carriers is still more restricted than I had thought. Consider my previous post null and void.
Back to the OP.
I highly doubt that Obama’s popularity levels would ever drop to the point that he would be one “the least popular Presidents of the modern era,” but I suppose anything’s possible. A month is an eternity in politics, after all. What I think is far more likely is that the economy is materially better by 2012, he delivers on many if not all of his campaign promises (as the best Presidents do), the drawdown in forces in Iraq is largely complete and the buildup in Afghanistan is showing some good results, even if we haven’t achieved “victory” there, define it as you will. Barring a total economic collapse, personal scandal or a major terrorist attack that in retrospect could’ve been easily prevented, though, I just can’t see how Obama’s approval rating could ever rival Nixon’s or Dubya’s.
With all the caveats that I had earlier, thispoll is of interest:
Another poll from today. Different figures. Rasmussen has always been biased. Of course, all polls are biased in some way. Always good to look at a number of them before using the data.
This is true, and it’s also true that this is very, very early and means almost nothing. And events have a way of changing the course of Presidencies anyway. Bush had all sorts of plans for his presidency - all of which went out the window on 9-11. Reagan was shot, and the resulting surge of popularity gave him political capital to enact his programs that he didn’t have before then. Clinton’s big reform was going to be health care, and his popularity crashed when it tanked - only to be built up again after Republicans took power in the House and Senate and Clinton had to move to the center.
But one thing is clear in the polls so far - Americans do not like Obama’s turn to the left. There’s a warning in there for him - continue governing from the left, and he’s in trouble.
Which renowned economists?
I tink reasonable people can disagree about abortion but it is pretty clear to me that Regan’s pro-life position plays pretty heavily into a lot of people’s thinking. People who were not particularly into tax cuts or other Republican platforms were really into the pro-life thing and when everything looked better after 8 years of Reagan, well they bought into all of his other ideas as well.
Not every Republican is a religious nut but the Republicans wouldn’t win any elections without the religious right. They are an important constituency of the Republican base and just in time too because they couldn’t pander to the racist element of their base anymore (because of political correctness and all).
Aren’t they more like chocolate and peanut butter. Both good on its own but together…