Political Roundtable Pulsar of Annihilation part IV

[Zonkerbl]

Well, the problem is healthy people (mostly kids in their twenties) who can afford health care but don't, because they're invincible. When only unhealthy people buy insurance, the costs of the insurance go up. Poor people not buying insurance isn't really the problem, so you can just go ahead and subsidize their insurance and you won't break the system.

[hands11]

I'm not sure about all the details. It was just a plan I heard but I will take a stab at those questions.

what if they don't have money for insurance? or for the fine? when would they be fined? how would their lack of insurance be revealed?

I think that would be determined by your tax fillings. The really poor have medicare/medicaid.
The semi poor would get a credit or something. Hell, people get credits for having kids as it is. Why not direct that toward money to actually insure them instead of that money getting spend on Legos. As for how would it be revealed. I think if you have it, you would show it, otherwise you would be getting sent a bigger bill. Who would want that ? Have you ever visited a doctor and not shown your insurance ?

-----

Here is the issue with that Christianity test.

For one, is there really such a thing ?
For two, saying you are isn't saying you are Born Again Christian. That is a denomination.
For three, how many born against Christians" would pass that test and who is the judge of that ?
Who knows a mans hard and what path they are on and at what stage they are at.

The two families that I know that are most Born again Christan. They home schooled and everything, the fathers of those family both smoke pot. Both where wild childs growing up. Same with the wives. Not so different then Obama really. Neither is racist ( they I know of ) but both do live in predominately white areas and there churches are the same.

And lastly, what does any of that really have to do with why they vote republican. They take one issue, abortion, and vote based on that over all the other things Jesus thought. Secondly they that an issue they call family values ( which is really we want everyone to thing like we do about religion ) How about taking care of the environment. I think Jesus would have liked that. You wanta save lives, take care of the fish tank we all live in.

[Severn Hoos]

Well, the problem is healthy people (mostly kids in their twenties) who can afford health care but don't, because they're invincible. When only unhealthy people buy insurance, the costs of the insurance go up. Poor people not buying insurance isn't really the problem, so you can just go ahead and subsidize their insurance and you won't break the system.

This was one of the major arguments in 2010. To be sure, there was indeed some number of people who were uninsured. A significant portion of them were truly by choice - they clearly had enough income to pay for insurance, but for reasons such as you describe above, they simply chose not to. (Another subset included non-citizens, which is a whole different issue.)

So the number of people who legitimately wanted insurance but truly could not afford it was much smaller than the reported numbers. Although conservatives were not excited about funding this smaller subset, it would have been preferable (far less expensive, and without the thorny issues of privacy and individual agency) to simply subsidize that subset than to overhaul the entire system.

[dobrojim]

on the birther (non?)issue

http://www.pointoflaw.com/archives/2009 ... s-birt.php

California Lawyer (and dentist!) Orly Taitz has been sanctioned $20,000 for misconduct in filing frivolous litigation claiming that president Obama is not a native-born citizen of the United States.

U.S. District Judge Clay D. Land of the middle district of Georgia levied the sanction for misconduct in a Columbus, Ga., case wherein Taitz claims her client, a soldier, is not obliged to obey the Commander in Chief's order to deploy because the latter is alleged to be "an illegal usurper, unlawful pretender and unqualified imposter."

Land, appointed by president Bush in 2001, noted that he had never imposed monetary sanctions on an attorney without a motion from an adverse party, but that the legal vacuousness of Taitz's diatribes, and his repeated admonitions, justified the penalty. "[C]ounsel's wild accusations may be protected by the First Amendment when she makes them on her blog or in her press conferences, but the federal courts are reserved for hearing genuine legal disputes, not as a platform for political rhetoric and insults."

[DallasShalDune]

What, that black guy with the "farn" name? Why would any racist think he's not an American citizen?

[DallasShalDune]

Seriously: the birther "issue" is ridiculous. It's so unabashedly partisan. Less-than-intelligent conservatives want to go after Obama for this because they just want a reason to get him out of office and cripple the Democrats. If Bush was named Shabaaz Ali Bush and was black with a father born in another country, less-than-intelligent liberals would have gone after him. Because politics are poison and some people refuse to just debate the issues. They make it personal.

Look at Newt. The guy practically led the witch hunt to get Bill "blow job" Clinton impeached, yet not he's playing victim when people bring up his affairs. The excuse of Clinton's problem merely being that he "lied under oath" is a partisan one. Liberals, and Conservatives who hate Newt, are going after him with the same fervency, and I see a problem with that to a certain extent, but Newt brought it upon himself and he should realize that his type of person--deceptive politicians--created the media blitz that he's now facing.

The birther issue is idiotic. If Obama was proven to be foreign-born, I agree that the law is the law, but he is only attacked because he's black, his name, and he's a liberal. Otherwise, if he was a Republican, the conservatives would be ignoring the entire issue.

[montestewart]

Well, the problem is healthy people (mostly kids in their twenties) who can afford health care but don't, because they're invincible. When only unhealthy people buy insurance, the costs of the insurance go up. Poor people not buying insurance isn't really the problem, so you can just go ahead and subsidize their insurance and you won't break the system.

what are the numbers of healthy young Americans who can afford health care and choose not to? I see a number of sites referring to that phenomenon, but it's hard to find concrete figures.

[Zonkerbl]

Well, the problem is healthy people (mostly kids in their twenties) who can afford health care but don't, because they're invincible. When only unhealthy people buy insurance, the costs of the insurance go up. Poor people not buying insurance isn't really the problem, so you can just go ahead and subsidize their insurance and you won't break the system.

This was one of the major arguments in 2010. To be sure, there was indeed some number of people who were uninsured. A significant portion of them were truly by choice - they clearly had enough income to pay for insurance, but for reasons such as you describe above, they simply chose not to. (Another subset included non-citizens, which is a whole different issue.)

So the number of people who legitimately wanted insurance but truly could not afford it was much smaller than the reported numbers. Although conservatives were not excited about funding this smaller subset, it would have been preferable (far less expensive, and without the thorny issues of privacy and individual agency) to simply subsidize that subset than to overhaul the entire system.

So they would rather fund the subset that truly can't afford it and leave alone the people that can afford it but choose not to buy it?

[Zonkerbl]

Well, the problem is healthy people (mostly kids in their twenties) who can afford health care but don't, because they're invincible. When only unhealthy people buy insurance, the costs of the insurance go up. Poor people not buying insurance isn't really the problem, so you can just go ahead and subsidize their insurance and you won't break the system.

what are the numbers of healthy young Americans who can afford health care and choose not to? I see a number of sites referring to that phenomenon, but it's hard to find concrete figures.

Pssht, no idea. I don't know that there's any easy way to calculate it. I suppose you could find a cut off income where if you're above that income you should be able to afford insurance, and then count the number of uninsured people who earn more than that. You'd have to do a survey I guess.

Does it matter how many there are?

Thing is, solving this problem doesn't keep health care costs from rising. Health care costs are rising because we're discovering more and more ways to keep you alive each year. Sometimes it provides a cheaper alternative treatment but most of the time it's treatments for things we couldn't treat before. So before you would just die -- now there's the option of spending money on the new treatment. So costs go up. It's a good thing.

Forcing the invincible to buy insurance will result in a one time reduction in costs. That's it. It won't stop researchers from discovering new, expensive cures for cancer.

[fugop]

had a FB encounter with a honest to god birther yesterday

It's hard to be polite when you're dealing with people
that willfully naive.

PS - Santorum is a true coward. He knows Obama
was born in Hawaii and is a Christian but is unwilling
to clue in his supporters probably feeling that if
he were to do that, his support would drop from
its already pitiful level.

jim, I won't start on the Birther stuff - although I do think Obama's team was glad that it kept going b/c it allowed him/them to paint all opponents as crazy, dangerous whack-jobs. Until an honest-to-goodness whack-job said he was thinking of running for President and making a huge deal of the issue and it just became too much.

But on the "is a Christian" idea - this is really misleading in the way it's polled and portrayed in the press. If I was asked the following questions, here is how I would answer:

Is President Obama a Christian? No
What religion does President Obama claim (maybe offer a multiple choice)? Christian

How can this be? Well, the second is a factual question around what religion the President says he adheres to. The first is a value judgement, based on a person's words and actions. For me, when I hear him talk about important issues - and especially when I talk about anything of a religious nature - my evaluation is that he is not "born again". (Please note, it was Jesus Himself who said "I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again." in John 3:3.)

Now, before anyone says this is about race or politics, please understand that I would make the same assessment about a co-worker or neighbor, regardless of race, and also about many, many people here in the Bible Belt who call themselves Christians (and vote Republican! ), but who do not pass the test Jesus laid out in the Sermon on the Mount ("by their fruit you will recognize them" - Matthew 7).

Now, frankly, if a pollster asked me if President Obama was a Christian, I'd say yes - because I know that the question he's asking is really "does President Obama claim to be a Christian?" Most pollsters would have no idea about how their questions are received by Evangelicals, so would not be precise in the wording of the questions.

I'm not asking you to agree with my assessment, just pointing out that the results that get so much publicity are not necessarily based on "well, he cain't be a Christian 'cause he don't look like us."

By this standard, Catholics aren't Christian -- in the Catholic tradition, "born again" merely refers to the sacrament of baptism. You're free to adopt an exclusive concept of Christianity, but you should understand that your definition is the exception, not the norm.

I was a fairly devout Catholic through college, an exclusive product of Catholic schooling until I got to the University of Louisville. I had also been somewhat sheltered from other denominations, particularly the somewhat fervent southerners who believed Catholics were Mary-worshiping polytheists, and had regular Sunday school lessons on saving Catholic souls. The notion that Catholicism might not be considered Christian by anyone, much less entire denominations, confused the hell out of me.

My Irish grandmother always had a picture of JFK on the wall, and JFK's West Virginia speech on faith and politics was the foundation of my family's understanding of the relationship between faith and public life. My father kept a scrapbook of news clippings from JFK's assassination on a shelf in his office.

[fugop]

Well, the problem is healthy people (mostly kids in their twenties) who can afford health care but don't, because they're invincible. When only unhealthy people buy insurance, the costs of the insurance go up. Poor people not buying insurance isn't really the problem, so you can just go ahead and subsidize their insurance and you won't break the system.

what are the numbers of healthy young Americans who can afford health care and choose not to? I see a number of sites referring to that phenomenon, but it's hard to find concrete figures.

Pssht, no idea. I don't know that there's any easy way to calculate it. I suppose you could find a cut off income where if you're above that income you should be able to afford insurance, and then count the number of uninsured people who earn more than that. You'd have to do a survey I guess.

Does it matter how many there are?

Thing is, solving this problem doesn't keep health care costs from rising. Health care costs are rising because we're discovering more and more ways to keep you alive each year. Sometimes it provides a cheaper alternative treatment but most of the time it's treatments for things we couldn't treat before. So before you would just die -- now there's the option of spending money on the new treatment. So costs go up. It's a good thing.

Forcing the invincible to buy insurance will result in a one time reduction in costs. That's it. It won't stop researchers from discovering new, expensive cures for cancer.

This logic doesn't work in any other economic sector -- when time passes and technology improves, costs fall for old products and results improve for new. You get more bang for the buck. The problem with health care economics is that the falling costs associated with technological gains don't often materialize, for a number of reasons, including:

[list=][*]patent and intellectual property issues related to pharmaceuticals and medical device manufacturers;

[*]corruption and pressure from the pharmaceutical and medical device industries, everything from drug-related advertising to kickback programs;

[*]litigation and malpractice concerns; liability attendant to not using the "best" (read:most expensive) practices[/list]

[dobrojim]

maybe more a random thought than a political thread type
but I don't think it should be legal to advertise script drugs
on TV unless it's only on a restricted view only by doctors
who can write scripts cable channel (which AFAIK don't exist).

They're basically asking people to imagine they're sick with
whatever it is that their latest expensive blockbuster drug
for something you never heard of and didn't know you had is.

[Zonkerbl]

Well, you could argue that costs in the health card industry are going down but expenditures go up. That's perfectly reasonable economic behavior.

Suppose there's a certain type of cancer that has no cure. The costs of curing it are infinite -- if you get it, you die, no matter how much you try to spend on health care. So you don't bother spending money on it -- you get your affairs in order and you die.

Then someone finds a cure. Now the cost of curing the cancer falls from infinite to a million dollars per treatment. If you're wealthy enough or lucky enough to have insurance that will cover experimental treatments, you spend the million dollars and live. The cost of the health care goes down, but your expenditures on health care go up. And you are extremely happy to increase your expenditures! It's a very good thing!

Any time you have technological advance in a sector with highly elastic demand, you will get this phenomenon -- as the costs go down, total expenditures goes up. It's a fairly standard and not at all unusual result.

[fugop]

Well, you could argue that costs in the health card industry are going down but expenditures go up. That's perfectly reasonable economic behavior.

Suppose there's a certain type of cancer that has no cure. The costs of curing it are infinite -- if you get it, you die, no matter how much you try to spend on health care. So you don't bother spending money on it -- you get your affairs in order and you die.

Then someone finds a cure. Now the cost of curing the cancer falls from infinite to a million dollars per treatment. If you're wealthy enough or lucky enough to have insurance that will cover experimental treatments, you spend the million dollars and live. The cost of the health care goes down, but your expenditures on health care go up. And you are extremely happy to increase your expenditures! It's a very good thing!

Any time you have technological advance in a sector with highly elastic demand, you will get this phenomenon -- as the costs go down, total expenditures goes up. It's a fairly standard and not at all unusual result.

I think this is an important part of the problem, but the argument runs into two problems:

1. Health outcomes aren't improving at the rate one would expect given increasing costs. There have been significant advances in some areas, AIDS/HIV and cancer in particular, but associated costs account for a relatively small proportion of overall increases. There are confounding factors -- better medical care compensates for unhealthy behavioral increases (ie, obesity etc) -- but in general, increases in health care costs aren't producing a healthier population.

2. Comparisons to other countries. Other countries are enjoying similar or larger improvements in health outcomes without similar cost increases. Some of this is certainly offloading R&D costs to US consumers, etc., but the numbers don't add up.

Overall I think your argument comes too close to implying that the health care markets are functioning well, when in fact they have us on an unsustainable course and are generally anomalous.

[Zonkerbl]

Yeah, I'm not trying to say the U.S. health care system is functioning well, just responding to the assertion that increased expenditures is inconsistent with lowering costs.

I agree that a large proportion of the increase in medical costs is because we are becoming less healthy. My 13 year old son is overweight. When I was 13 I looked downright undernourished. I had a paperroute where I had to bike for an hour and a half every day carrying twenty pounds of newspapers. My son goes to PE once or twice a week and that's it. Lots of sitting around not moving in the young folks of today, it's not good. Combine that with an increasing proportion of our population being old and consequently more expensive to take care of.

I will say that forcing the invincibles to buy insurance is not going to solve either of these problems.

[hands11]

Seriously: the birther "issue" is ridiculous. It's so unabashedly partisan. Less-than-intelligent conservatives want to go after Obama for this because they just want a reason to get him out of office and cripple the Democrats. If Bush was named Shabaaz Ali Bush and was black with a father born in another country, less-than-intelligent liberals would have gone after him. Because politics are poison and some people refuse to just debate the issues. They make it personal.

Look at Newt. The guy practically led the witch hunt to get Bill "blow job" Clinton impeached, yet not he's playing victim when people bring up his affairs. The excuse of Clinton's problem merely being that he "lied under oath" is a partisan one. Liberals, and Conservatives who hate Newt, are going after him with the same fervency, and I see a problem with that to a certain extent, but Newt brought it upon himself and he should realize that his type of person--deceptive politicians--created the media blitz that he's now facing.

The birther issue is idiotic. If Obama was proven to be foreign-born, I agree that the law is the law, but he is only attacked because he's black, his name, and he's a liberal. Otherwise, if he was a Republican, the conservatives would be ignoring the entire issue.

But even that is part of the lie that even you have bought into. Obama is not a liberal. Hell, they said the same things about Bill when he was in office. They are moderates. Hell, if Ron Paul was a Dem, what would they lable him. A liberal. All Dems are liberals and hate success and America. Dont you know that.

[DallasShalDune]

Seriously: the birther "issue" is ridiculous. It's so unabashedly partisan. Less-than-intelligent conservatives want to go after Obama for this because they just want a reason to get him out of office and cripple the Democrats. If Bush was named Shabaaz Ali Bush and was black with a father born in another country, less-than-intelligent liberals would have gone after him. Because politics are poison and some people refuse to just debate the issues. They make it personal.

Look at Newt. The guy practically led the witch hunt to get Bill "blow job" Clinton impeached, yet not he's playing victim when people bring up his affairs. The excuse of Clinton's problem merely being that he "lied under oath" is a partisan one. Liberals, and Conservatives who hate Newt, are going after him with the same fervency, and I see a problem with that to a certain extent, but Newt brought it upon himself and he should realize that his type of person--deceptive politicians--created the media blitz that he's now facing.

The birther issue is idiotic. If Obama was proven to be foreign-born, I agree that the law is the law, but he is only attacked because he's black, his name, and he's a liberal. Otherwise, if he was a Republican, the conservatives would be ignoring the entire issue.

But even that is part of the lie that even you have bought into. Obama is not a liberal. Hell, they said the same things about Bill when he was in office. They are moderates. Hell, if Ron Paul was a Dem, what would they lable him. A liberal. All Dems are liberals and hate success and America. Dont you know that.

Good point. Obama is moderate, and even conservative when its comes to defense spending. A lot of my friends try to tell me he is a far-leftist, and I don't see the evidence.

But it is easy to label Dems as socialists and uber-liberals, though, for those who lean far-right.

[hands11]

So if we already have a moderate who is strong on defense. Strong on terrorism. Cold Ninja take you out. Took another one out by supporting other countries doing it. very smart. He passed the Republican healthcare plan. He is experienced as President. He is respected around the world. He lead the country from falling all the way off the cliff where it was headed when the Bush left office 750,000 jobs lost a mouth. Private sector job recovery for 22 months and still going while the government jobs have been lowered because of budget cuts. Stock market rebounding nicely.

Sounds like a Republicans wet dream. Strong on defense and pro job growth. If only he had an R next to his name, they would love him.

[hands11]

So Rick is making a surge.

Could he be the last man standing. ? They just don't like Willard.

[Zonkerbl]

Heard on NPR last night that the only reason any of the nut-job right wing candidates are still around is because they are being bankrolled by various nutjob billionaires who are allowed to contribute as much as they want with the new (lack of) campaign finance rules.