patrick.net

tatupu70 says

Idea 1: Universal Health Care ala Europe. Saves $$$$
Idea 2: Return tax rates to 1950s. Raises $$$
Idea 3: Campaign finance reform. Takes $$ out of politics
Idea 4: Abandon free trade agreements. Return jobs to US

Idea 1: - Obama did it, so far my insurance costs me a lot more.

Idea 4: - Obama just signed another free trade agreement. I guess you can't call this an idea from the left, when your left is abandoning you.

Idea 3: - you can't claim either side to this. No one other then lobbyists like how this works right now. They have not found a good way to tackle this issue or take money/bribing out of politics.

FortWayne says

Idea 1: - Obama did it, so far my insurance costs me a lot more.
Idea 4: - Obama just signed another free trade agreement. I guess you can't call this an idea from the left, when your left is abandoning you.
Idea 3: - you can't claim either side to this. No one other then lobbyists like how this works right now. They have not found a good way to tackle this issue or take money/bribing out of politics.

1. You've got to be kidding me. The health care bill that passed is not universal health care ala Europe or Canada. And your insurance costs you more because of capitalism, not Obamacare.

2. The left isn't abandoning me, Obama is abandoning the left.

3. Really? Which party kills all campaign finance reform? I'll give you a hint--it's the same party that thinks corporations are people.

tatupu70 says

The health care bill that passed is not universal health care ala Europe or Canada. And your insurance costs you more because of capitalism, not Obamacare.

Per capita health expense (2007)

US: $7500
Norway: $5000
Canada: $4000
Sweden: $3500

http://www.kff.org/insurance/snapshot/OECD042111.cfm

If you ask our Reaganite friend if we should have Swedish-style health insurance, he'll say no of course.

Because he is an ideologic idiot.

PD Quig,

Excellent post.

The USA has the most expensive health care for several reasons:

1. We pay for all the non-recurring development costs of drugs and new technologies on which the rest of the world then piggybacks. They sell our drugs at a cost less than what will cover the non-recurring engineering and threaten to ignore our patents if companies try to raise prices.

2. We have befouled our system with regulations and government-imposed mandated requirements. Why should I have to pay for a policy that must include sex change operations, etc.?

3. We do not allow insurance companies to sell insurance across state lines. Why not? What harm could possibly result from creating a national market for a smorgasbord of options?

4. We have the most predatory legal system in the world that drives doctors to prescribe unnecessary treatment in order to defend themselves against malpractice lawsuits. Cap "pain and suffering" awards, and pricks like John Edwards will have to get a productive job.

5. Enhance fraud detection algorithms to find those scamming the system. Tens of billions of Medicare payments are to illegitimate scams.

Even as you tout them as a solution for us, these systems in Europe and elsewhere are already coming apart at the seams. Interminable waiting periods for treatments that result in higher death rates for most diseases. And that's all BEFORE the USA stops subsidizing their drug and technology development--and for that matter, their national defense. When the time comes that the US no longer carries the full costs of new treatments, Europe's systems will collapse. When the time comes that the US no longer pays for most of their national defense, they will have less money to spend on their welfare state social programs.

It's going to get very ugly for Europe before it gets better. Unfortunately, due to short-term and small ball thinking in the US, it's going to get a lot worse for us too.

Phaedra says

The USA has the most expensive health care for several reasons:

First off, the first bullet you outlined should be why our medical cost should be lowest in the world. It's our tax dollars doing most of the R&D then big Pharm gets to patent it and take it to market as well as set the cost. They can invent any reason they want.
Even if the excuse defies all logic.

I'd like to see their profit sheets, I bet they make out better than Oil companies do, that in face of high Oil prices, and wavering demand, are posting record profits. They bitch about the costs of production to. Even though the outcome defies their claims.

Was the premise legitimate taxation?

I think "legitimate taxation" has been covered througly. The IRS can do nothing but send nasty letters. Of course there are the rouge IRS players. The former agents that have to pay company dues. They can really seize nothing. I have seen a couple of "thug cops" trying to get in on it. Not to mention those mysterous flyers that show up when you don't pay advertising IRS atty help. Oh the blaspheme of it. The really hysterical thing is the IRS hires attys offices to help collect. If they ever show up just laugh and close the door.

I've ignored the IRS for 25 years. They have figured I guess why not save on the cost of a stamp and paper. I'm still in the same location for the most part. Just like once again a bill collector will never take you to court because that would test usury. Same deal with the 25 or so percent the IRS charges. If you want to pay that organization in Maryland be my guest. It's mostly put together out of there and like any federal law. They have to have a cop with them. Just don't go to federal court cause well it's another state with no jurisdiction ignore it.

Phaedra says

We pay for all the non-recurring development costs of drugs and new technologies

This is just right-wing apologist bullshit. R&D is a minor cost vs. SG&A and shareholder profits.

Pfizer, MRQ:

Gross revenue: $17B
COGS: $4B
SG&A: $5B
R&D: $2B
Income Tax: $1B
Shareholder income: $2.6B

Why should I have to pay for a policy that must include sex change operations, etc.?

SRS is around 500 operations per year. Going with 1000 @ $100,000 per, that's $0.32 out of the $7500+ per capita we pay for health care.

Please try harder, your bullshit here is really weak.
SRS is not mandated, btw.

We do not allow insurance companies to sell insurance across state lines. Why not?

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/02/selling_insurance_across_state.html

Cap "pain and suffering" awards

“If you were to list the top five or ten things that you could do to bring down health care costs that would not be on the list,” said Michelle Mello, a professor of Law and Public Health at Harvard.

http://washingtonindependent.com/55535/tort-reform-unlikely-to-cut-health-care-costs

and for that matter, their national defense.

LOL. The $800B/yr+ the DOD's spending every year isn't for defense, sunshine.

What national defense investments do eg. Norway or Denmark need to make? Some commerce cutters maybe. This isn't the 19th century when nations went to war at the drop of a hat.

tatupu70 says

1. You've got to be kidding me. The health care bill that passed is not universal health care ala Europe or Canada. And your insurance costs you more because of capitalism, not Obamacare.

2. The left isn't abandoning me, Obama is abandoning the left.

3. Really? Which party kills all campaign finance reform? I'll give you a hint--it's the same party that thinks corporations are people.

1) What should it have been than?

2) He is your left, he is exactly what left voted for and got. Not much of a change he promised though, just mainly changed where hand outs are going. Quite a bit of tax dollars are paying to build up factories and companies for those who lobby with POTUS. The rest of us are paying that bill.

3) CFR was a joke and a gimmick before, it had plenty of loopholes. I don't see either side suggesting a good way to fix it either.

I think informative blogs like this one (and several others) attract a more informed, rational and reasoned readership than you would find in the public at large. Similarly, the JAMA or the "Journal of Theoretical Physics" probably attract an even more knowledgeable readership than this blog.

So, from that standpoint, no, I do not think the readership of this blog represents the "average" American.

I think all the "left" vs. "right" stuff is just a smoke screen for special interests buying politicians of both parties.

Jesse "The Body" Ventura said that politics is a lot like Pro-Wrestling (WWF, etc). It's all an act where the two parties pretend to fight each other and then laugh all the way to the bank after the "fight." We the sheeple think it's real and vote for them to protect us from the evil "other" party...when the whole time they're skrewing everyone over (except the special interests).

I think Jesse was right.

Jesse was full of shit too, actually.

The two sides are really pro-government and anti-government, left and right.

conservatives, most "Independents" like Ventura, and libertarians are in the latter category.

(I consider myself a left-libertarian, so in fact I personally am above all this BS, LOL)

To quote Richard Jeni:If you are on the far left or the far right,you've too far"

apropos to my 1:42 above:

http://trollblog.wordpress.com/2011/08/12/why-does-anyone-read-the-wall-street-journal-editorial-page/

The problem with the posters on Patrick, and Americans in general, is that all seem to suffer from the same delusional aberration in the evolution of civilization. Namely, that individuals can be elevated above their station.

Thankfully, gentlemen of stature and merit direct these underclass impulses for the betterment of ourselves. The Pharoh didn't build the great pyramids by himself. He had thousands of underclass minions toiling day and night to build these "wonders of the world" that the underclass still marvels and worships. The difference between the Pharoh and myself? I have millions toiling for me.

PD Quig says

Your disparagement of the Tea Party is particularly revealing. To reach the conclusion you reach requires an active denial of the obvious: there are simply many, many Americans who recognize that we have pushed beyond the limits of government to manage itself reasonably.

I see your loyalty to republican doctrine. Admirable I guess, or at least not surprising. Are you familiar with the concept of starve the beast?

The typical republican line is now fiscal conservatism,but for decades when borrowing and adding to the deficit was about lining the pockets of the military industrial complex, or the medical/pharmaceutical complex, or big oil, or Halliburton, and all the other companies that support military operations, or when increasing the deficit was about under taxation, relative to our wars and corporate subsidies, that was tolerable.

Quite a bit of our deficits of the past decade can be traced to a lack of regulation of banks and other financial institutions.

But now that it's gone too far, it's suddenly clear that the real problem can be traced back to social safety nets, and so called entitlements. AFAICT this was an actual plan of republicans who conveniently said that deficits don't matter while their friends were getting rich off of that deficit spending.

Starve the beast while enriching themselves, and then force a roll back of social programs. Maybe it wasn't a conspiracy, but it is what seems to be happening.

Phaedra says

Far left: Would love to nationalize industries,

I have never heard or read of any "liberal" advocating that. I know that I don't. I'm for capitalism and a market based economy. I am glad that the government saved GM, but I don't want the governemts to stay involved.

But I believe there is a lot that government can contribute to society. I'm not sure that getting private enterprise into areas such as running prisons, or supporting our troops (or actually being our troops in the case of blackwater) makes a lot of sense. Because then they become a special interest that is far different than what would exist with those functions when performed by the government.

PD Quig says

The Tea Party. Typical Americans that only want rationality to return to government. Want government to spend only what it takes in in revenues. Want to rebalance SS and Medicare so that they will not continue on their current path to bankruptcy. Want to return to policies that were 'mainstream throughout most of American history' but which began to be broken down in the 1930's when the SCOTUS began the end run of the constitution via an absurd re-interpretation of the Interstate Commerce Clause to empower the federal government to do anything it wanted to do.

IT is true that most of American history occurred before the 1930s, but our becoming a global super power with the biggest economy on the planet happened after that.

We get it. They want to undo the New Deal, and to go back to an era when 75% of senior citizens lived in abject poverty. But understand what it is that got us to this moment. It wasn't tax and spend liberals. It was borrow and spend policies, especially the unfunded wars and tax cuts of the last decade, and the criminal negligence on the part of the financial industry.

As for war spending, it seems to me that if we are at war, and there isn't shared sacrifice involved, then that calls in to question whether all of the death destruction and deficit spending involved is really worth it.

As for "balancing SS and medicare" I'm fine with the incredibly minuscule tweaks that it would take to have SS solvent many decades past the death of all the boomers. My favorite solutions are means testing and slowly increasing the payroll tax 1 or 2% over the next couple decades.

See this excellent article that Patrick posted a couple days back:
http://prospect.org/cs/articles?source=patrick.net&article=better_than_bernie

As for medicare, that's more tricky, especially if we don't do some more significant health care reform.

I nsignificant
W hile
O bfuscating
G arbage

marcus says

Quite a bit of our deficits of the past decade can be traced to a lack of regulation of banks and other financial institutions.

Actually they used the growth of debt to HIDE the money they were spending on big government during the Bush years:

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=2rS

blue line is non-government debt, red line is government debt, both scaled to GDP

clever, no?

All this got rolling during Clinton's 2nd term, really. Financial sector started leveraging up then and didn't stop until everything blew apart in 2008.

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/DODFS

I sold my last real estate four years ago and decided to never again invest in anything that I couldn't transact in less than one second.

Therefore, putting up with the nasty far lefties on this site really doesn't make any sense anymore. These aren't discussions. They are hate-filled screeds dripping with ad hominem attacks, arrogance, ignorance, and boundless self-regard.

Too bad you are a tiny minority who will finally be crushed when TSHTF. Gawd, what tiresome crap. Why did I ever bother engaging you all????

Goodbye to all that.

marcus says

have never heard or read of any "liberal" advocating that. I know that I don't. I'm for capitalism and a market based economy.

well, he did say the "Far left" would want to nationalize industries. He's correct, but not many people on this country are "far left", LOL

He also put the Tea Party in the center, which is why I was assuming that puts me fairly far to the left - or at least far enough to the left that I would have heard of a liberal American who advocated this.

Phaedra says

Why did I ever bother engaging you all????

Your entire 5 posts worth of engagement under that account name.

And gee, I was waiting for an honest response to my 11:57.

Going to be a long wait I guess.

Nothing new there though.

marcus says

that get spent by the government almost as if it wasn't borrowing the money from our SS trust fund.

$4,625,536,857,585.03 and counting in intragovernmental savings spent by Congress, LOL.

Well, I guess it's actually going down now.

Phaedra says

Therefore, putting up with the nasty far lefties on this site really doesn't make any sense anymore.

Too bad...

Goodbye to all that.

Oh I'm going to cry a river in deep sadness at the loss...

Has anyone else noticed that all of a sudden there is a rash of right wingnuts who have only posted 1-5 times and only in this thread?

Cortaid anyone?

simchaland says

Oh I'm going to cry a river in deep sadness at the loss...

Is it more than you can "bear?"

simchaland says

Has anyone else noticed that all of a sudden there is a rash of right wingnuts who have only posted 1-5 times and only in this thread?

I find it interesting that many people on this forum just post their opinion, but then a few are so angry that all they'll believe is that we're liberal idiots.

Any conversation that doesn't complain about liberals seems to label everyone a lib.

Does the Patrick.net readership represent "Americans"?

Of course not! The only real Americans are Bible thumbing, illiterate, anti-science, gun-toting, rednecks who screw their first cousins. If you don't meet all of these criteria, you're not a real American. So says all Republicans, and they wouldn't lie to you.

If you live on either coast, you're not a real American. You're a filthy, commie pinko, and probably a gay-married terrorist, too!

And if you live in the big city either you are an arugula eating egg-headed elitist who sips lattes and recycles and believes in global warming or a good for nothing hippie or "inner city person" who lives off of the teat of the gummint avoiding any labor or any personal responsibility expecting handouts so you can buy your 40 and dro/grapes/weed/420.

Real Americansâ„¢ wear American Flag T-Shirts, eat red meat with every meal, have lots of guns, use religion instead of science, hate gays, hate liberals, hate the French, collect Social Security and use Medicare, believe that unemployment insurance is a hand out, want social security ended or privatized, want gummint hands off their Medicare, think that global warming is fake, drive hummers and pickups and giant SUVs and giant old boats while complaining about the price of gas, want capital punishment, hate abortion, drink watered down tasteless coffee by the gallon, watches nascar etc...

It sounds like some of these noobs don't actually know the difference between left and right and don't really understand the political spectrum. No different from someone like Shrek really, although I think too much discussion of ideology is probably misguided. Better to discuss ideas on their own merit, rather than try to put people into boxes and calling it intelligent debate.

Even something like this is completely unsupportable by data:

Phaedra says

4. We have the most predatory legal system in the world that drives doctors to prescribe unnecessary treatment in order to defend themselves against malpractice lawsuits. Cap "pain and suffering" awards, and pricks like John Edwards will have to get a productive job.

Except that there is no evidence that malpractice payouts have gone up. If anything, they have gone down when adjusted for inflation. This is a talking point, and there's little evidence that lawsuits are what causes health premiums to go up. Lawsuits comprise something like 2% of the premium. Even if payouts magically doubled, the new percentage would be 4/102 or 3.9%. If your premium goes up 20%, it has nothing to do with lawsuits. More likely, it was the economy, since insurance companies invest premiums. I mentioned this issue on another thread and provided this link -- there are numerous studies on this:

http://makethemaccountable.com/myth/RisingCostOfMedicalMalpracticeInsurance.htm

Reality has a liberal bias:

I'm not a liberal despite the facts, I'm a liberal because of the facts. And many of the postings here make me almost reflexively say, "Pesky facts!!"

That said, I don't think this site represent the majority of Americans. The regular posters here are intelligent, and extremely so. I think if all of you stop and take a breather you'd be impressed at the vocabulary, lucidity, and generally comprehensive understanding on display here daily.

Demographically, don't most post-graduates vote liberally? Isn't that why the Right concocted the "egghead liberal", "pointy headed liberal" and Universities as liberal incubators? If you can't find a way to unite your base, and peel off another (in this case, smart folks) the apparatchiks demonize.

So, it may be the site leans left. It may be because it's objectively honest, and intellectually true.