Obama will "possibly be the least popular [President] of the modern era."

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@Simplicio

Judging by the '08 election (when the Congressional approval rating was at 9%!), they apparently increase their number of seats in both houses.

You know, we can get polling numbers for individual parties. The overall congressional approval rating might be 30% but the rating for democrats seem to be a lot higher than the approval rating for republicans.

http://pollingreport.com/cong_rep.htm
http://pollingreport.com/cong_dem.htm

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@Quartz

Obama has been President for a scant 6 months. It’s vastly premature to make any predictions or conclusions. We won’t see the economic results for another 18 months or more, for instance.

LOL, that didn’t stop people from saying he would be one of the best presidents of all time before he was inaugurated.

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@Sam_Stone

He also ran on fiscal conservatism. He promised a net spending decrease. He said that the era of government racking up big deficits was over, and from now on would be pay as you go.

I’m pretty sure he was up front about stimulus spending. He didn’t say spending cuts, he said smarter spending (or at least thats the way I heard him).

Yes, he said health care had to be reformed, but he also said that any reforms he implemented would save money, not cost money, would not change anyone’s relationship with their doctor, or affect any current insurance plans. In other words, he promised pie-in-the-sky.

I don’t think that was exactly his campaigning position. He made it clear that it was going to be costly and difficult but ultimately cheaper than staying on the road we are travelling right now.

Do you think we even need health care reform?

The same is true with his ‘green’ proposals. He promised that the environment could be saved while actually creating new jobs and lowering the deficit.

I think Hillary was the first candidate to use the term “green collar jobs” but I agree Obama picked it up as soon as he got in office.

Most candidates wouldn’t get away with this charade. But Obama had the media at his back, and they refused to ask the hard questions.

Which hard questions?

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@IdahoMauleMan

Here’s the chart from RCP. The spread (Positive - Negative) which was in the 30’s back in April, is down to a new low of 13.

RealClearPolitics - Election Other - President Obama Job Approval

So there are 13% more people who like him than dislike him? So he’s gone from like 65-35 to like 56-43? It might be a while bfore you can plausibly say that he will possibly be the least popular president ever.

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@Richard_Parker

I agree that at some point excessive subsidy becomes the equivalent of abolishing private insurance.

Giving it away free is about as subsidized as you can get. Do you think that the public school system has abolished private schools?

I’m not saying that is where I want to go but it takes a LOT to abolish private activity. The government subsidy is (out of necessity) likely to be limited to poor people and counteracting the effect of government’s inability to cherrypick the way private insurnace companies can.

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@Der_Trihs

And frankly, why should we care? If a public program works better ( and it almost certainly will ), then let it outcompete the private ones. If the government can keep people alive and healthy more effectively than private industry, that’s more important than indulging a fetish for having the private sector do the job at any cost.

It would be cheaper if we just let all the poor people die. social security problem gone, medicare problem virtually gone. I’m kidding but there are people who take this position who aren’t kidding.

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@Sam_Stone

Tort Reform: Eliminate much ‘defensive medicine’ and lower the cost of malpractice insurance.

Over the last 10 years the per doctor cost of malpractice lawsuits has stayed level. During the same period the cost of malpractice insurance has more than doubled. How do you propose we lower premiums in an environment where premiums do not seem to be driven by cost of claims?

Regulatory Reform: The FDA is one of the key causes of the high price of prescription drugs. …Drop that useless requirement, and you’ll drop the cost of new drugs.

Are you saying drop the FDA requirement or only the safety requirement? Because without the efficacy requirement, you are putting these drugs in the same category as homeopathic medicines and relying on claims that the newest brand of snake oil will cure the particular ill you suffer.

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.

First of all what percentage of retirees do you think can afford their own health insurance? Second of all, rich people already reject their medicare because they don’t want to pay the extra premium out of their social security.

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.

Or it could be because you are trying to put out a wildfire with a bucket brigade.

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@Sam_Stone

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.

I believe that Fed Ex is treating its drivers as independent contractors instead of employees and skirting the payroll taxes employment laws. I THINK that is what you are referring to. Do you honestly believe taht the Fed Ex driver is in fact an independent contractor?

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).

The USPS has a monopoly on first class mail, there are all sorts of excuses for this but ultimately it was the deal struck to get the USPS off the government’s books.

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.

And yet USPS is the most popular form of domestic shipping.

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.

OR the employer buys a plan from Aetna and the 8% disappears as well. The 8% surcharge provides no bias in favor of the government plan, it provides a bias in favor of SOME plan versus NO 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.

Doesn’t the fact that the 8% surcharge disappears if the employer buys a plan from Aetna make your analogy stupid? Isn’t the 8% almost exactly like a voucher except that you have to get it through your employer instead of individually (and I think most people would pay less buying insurance through their employer instead of individually)?

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@Sam_Stone

A public plan can’t compete with a private plan unless it is subsidized by taxpayers. With enough taxpayer subsidy, a public plan could be free.

And perhaps it should be.

[quote]
And if your plan is outside your employer right now, then imposing an 8% tax on your employer is essentially charging you double for your health insurance. That is a severe bias against non-employer health care plans, and as John Mace says, we should be trying to decouple health insurance from employment - not tie it to employment even stronger.

[quote]

I am not sure I see the problem with employer based health plans if those same health plans are available to unemployed individuals.

Obama also says that he’s not going to interfere with the decisions you and your doctor make, while at the same time he plans to set up a board to examine the efficacy of various treatments and decide what’s most cost-effective. You can bet that the output of that will be used to decide what the government will and won’t pay for, so yes, the government will in fact be sitting between you and your doctor and making decisions about your care.

Insurance companies do this day in and day out.

When some of you think about government-run health care, I’m sure you have a vision of a qualified panel of very smart people working to draft reasonable, responsible rules that optimize efficiency and all that. But the reality is that the plan is drafted by a bunch of non-qualified Senators and Congressmen, each looking out for his or her own agenda. The result is guaranteed to be a mess. For example, they’ve already stripped Obama’s vision of all cost-containing measures - something Obama himself has complained about.

The board isn’t supposed to be politicans, they are supposed ot be bureaucrats.

The administration made a big deal about the AMA getting on board - why do you think that is? Because they truly believe this is a great plan? No. They got on board before before they even knew what the plan was. No, the AMA got on board just like Wal-Mart and other special interests did - because if there’s going to be a plan, they want to work as hard as they can to bend it to their own benefit.

They are on board because after decades of resisting reform and denying the excistence of a problem they ran the risk of being ignored entirely if they continued with their denial.

I have another quick question: If this plan is going to increase access to health care for 47 million people who currently don’t have it, * where are the doctors and nurses coming from?* The basic law of supply and demand says that if you increase demand and the supply is fixed, the price will go up. But Obama’s promising that the price will come down. How exactly is that supposed to work? How is everyone supposed to get the same or better care than they get today, while 47 million more people are also brought into the system?

I’ve yet to hear a good answer to that question.

THIS is a good point. America’s health care dollars are largely being spent in the last few months of a person’s life. The average person spends more than half of their lifetime health care dollars in the last few months of their life. We have got to stop doing that. If you want to pay for your comatose mom to stay in the ICU for 6 months before she dies then fine but the government shouldn’t pay for it. It is not a smart use of societal resources.

Also, one of the biggest problems regarding the cost of medicine in the US today is the cost of defensive medicine that doctors have to practice to protect themselves from lawsuits. Yet this bill does absolutely nothing about this. Some tort reform is seriously needed to bring the cost of medicine down, and it’s totally ignored. Gee, I wonder if that could be because lawyers are one of the biggest constituencies of the Democratic party?

The average settlement/award per doctor has gone up less than 10% over the last 10 years and yet the average insurance permium per doctor has more than doubled in the same time period. How do you reduce premiums with tort reform when the premium level seems to be disconneted from the claim level?
That’s not to say we don’t need some tort reform but tort reform may not have the effect on premiums that you think it will.

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@Sam_Stone

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.

He has lost the most support from independents. The conservatives still hate him and the liberals still love him. Say what you will about conservatives and liberals, they are generally more principled than independents. Independents are most concerned with results and it has been 6 months and the economy still stinks. If the economy is healthy in 3 years then Obama is fine, if it is better than it was 6 months ago then it will depend on spin, if it is worse then he is toast. Next year’s congressional election is an entirely different story and I expect that if the eocnomy doesn’t improve by next march, Democrats from conservative states will make a big show about their political independence from the party and the President.

[athelas]

That’s a good point. I think we can have a good idea of how the political winds are blowing by seeing how much the Blue Dogs stand up to the rest of the party.

[psikeyhackr]

I thinking that anyone that wanted to be prez behind GWB had to be really DUMB.

That is why I wanted Hillary to get the nomination.

psik

[Bryan_Ekers]

@psikeyhackr

I thinking that anyone that wanted to be prez behind GWB had to be really DUMB.

Why would you think that, dare I ask? Sure, it’s a hassle to inherit all those problems, but solving even half of them would make you almost Godlike in the eyes of any reputable historian.

[Revtim]

@Quartz

Obama has been President for a scant 6 months. It’s vastly premature to make any predictions or conclusions. We won’t see the economic results for another 18 months or more, for instance.

Funny how the 8 years of the G. W. Bush administration can only be properly judged by history after some yawning expanse of time, but somehow Obama’s months can be accurately evaluated right now.

[psikeyhackr]

@Bryan_Ekers

Why would you think that, dare I ask? Sure, it’s a hassle to inherit all those problems, but solving even half of them would make you almost Godlike in the eyes of any reputable historian.

True, but only if you think some are solvable. We just had the 40th anniversary of the Moon landing in Obama’s administration. Galbraith was talking about the planned obsolescence of automobiles 10 years before the Moon landing.

I haven’t been to an auto show in more than 30 years. I don’t give a damn what any of that junk looks like. George W Bush didn’t cause that and Milton Friedman never said anything about it. But it is part of the economic problem now.

http://discussions.pbs.org/viewtopic.pbs?t=28529

psik

[Bryan_Ekers]

That doesn’t answer my question and I’m not a bit surprised.