US Fiscal Reality

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/0 ... 58295.html

Wars are expensive. Dubya made the same mistake as LBJ. He ran his wars on a Guns AND Butter economy. It just won't work.

ruveyn

Would Americans tolerate a "Guns and margarine" fiscal policy?

"Give me back my butter!! !"

Dubya and the GOP lowered taxes on the Corporate Cronies at the same time they were waging war. That means that the poor overtaxed Middle Class was left with paying the bills. A very shortsighted policy if you ask me.

ruveyn

There aren't many discernible differences between Obama and Bush.

Couple of those things on that list are pretty disingenuous or untrue. Does anyone actually believe that Obamacare is going to lower healthcare costs? Not even the CBO says that anymore, healthcare costs are going to skyrocket and large % of people are going to be forced off their private insurance. Obamacare implementation is going to be a disaster and will likely result in GOP taking back the senate and strengthening it's majority in the house.

Using 10 year budgets and their shortfalls is pretty common BS tactic. Usually when you hear someone say they want to cut a billion or a trillion or whatever off the budget they're talking about curbing future spending increases over the course of 10 years. They're not actually cutting any money.

Healthcare costs go up and up because people want to leach more and more profit off the sick without really helping them. Of course, blame Obama for this and the fact that the health insurance industry blocked any reform that would actually lower costs. What a sick game.

Exactly. The US health insurance industry profits from both healthy and sick people (while draining the life savings and taking the homes of both sick and unemployed). 60% profits in 2003/04 while people with cancer who worked their whole lives and paid their taxes and can't afford their premiums nor the copays. The US health insurance industry also drives up costs to astronomic levels . They are profiting while the rest of us pray we never need even a doctors visit; let alone end up really ill.

Blocked what? The 'public option'? Obama's healthcare reform was always a payoff to the insurance companies, the 'public option' was never really on the table. The dems couldn't even pass that thru their own caucus despite having supermajorities in the house and senate. Cost control was never really a topic of discussion but rather universal coverage. How humanitarian, now people who neither want, need, or can afford health insurance are going to be legally mandated into pay for it. A lot of people who were happy with their insurance are now going to forced off, a straight up lie from what Obama said during his permanent campaign for it in 09/10. Maybe they aren't lying, nobody had any clue what was in that monstrous bill and these aren't people known for competence. The whole thing is a disaster and I wouldn't be surprised to see parts of the law repealed by the end of the decade.

You mean the conservative DINO's who were in the pockets of the insurance industry. They might as well have been Republicans. The notion that true progressives had a super-majority and just couldn't get their act together is a joke.


Nobody truly knows that they don't need health insurance. You may think you're healthy but you could just be lucky. In any case, if you have a major catastrophe you will probably get some kind of treatment (likely expensive) whether you can afford to pay for it or not. If you didn't buy insurance and can't afford to pay you just file for bankruptcy. The hospital doesn't get their money so they raise the price for everyone who does pay. That's why the whole not buying insurance is a drain on the system. Unless you just let uninsured people who need expensive emergency treatment beg for non-existent charity or die like Ron Paul would probably suggest.

Last edited by marshall on 09 May 2013, 2:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.

The whole system needs to be completely done over. The politicians (who don't kno what its like to find it far beyond their reach to pay $3,000 a month for a family policy and the tons of copays that go with it) have money and can not relate to 88% of the US. They are all completely out of touch on this topic. They really need to make it illegal for health insurance companies to make a profit. No publicly traded stocks for health insurance companies. This would greatly reduce our costs and the doctors costs as well.

Rather than banning health insurance companies from making a profit, you should raise taxes and provide a national health service. Health insurance companies will then have to show that they can out-compete the nationalised system and provide value for money. The worst off would have access to the same health care as most other people, and the middle classes will quite possibly save money.

Health insurance services provided by positions based on tax dollars can not compete with private companies. We are talking union protected jobs compared to corporate america. Two completely different animals.

While facing the worst economic crisis in the country's history, taxes have already been raised considerably in an attempt to manage the current financial disaster and balance an atrocious budget. The middle class is already taxed to no end and raising taxes means those who have no power (aka: not excessively rich) will be the ones to pay. Not the rich who can afford the tax hike but who will typically get around with tax cuts that benefit them.

National Healthcare:
The efficiency of the post office, the compassion of the IRS, all at Pentagon prices.
Can't we just die instead?

Although this is a noble theory, in practice it would be a disaster and be reminiscent of communist Russia. Everyone had awful socialized medicine, waiting on a list to obtain treatment, while the rich paid for private doctors and got first-class service. A nationalized system would make the disparity in healthcare worse. It is not sustainable the way the system is structured. Physicians would have to have free medical education and not need to spend several hundred thousand dollars on malpractice insurance in order to be able to maintain a living, staff, and overhead costs. Obamacare is a political band-aid that is made out of tissue paper.

There was never any appetite amongst the vast majority of the Democratic caucus to pursue actual socialized medicine, it simply wasn't a winning issue. Conservatives, DLC, most progressives all knew it. Only the far left of the party was calling for it. Obamacare wiped out a democratic supermajority that was suppose to last a generation, what would of going for socializd medicine have done if they had the votes to do it? The facts are the majority of Americans were perfectly happy with their health insurance and have no interest in changing it.(not that they don't want everyone covered but as long as it doesn't effect them) Giving lip service to socialized medicine may energize the activists during a campaign but once it actually came down to governing reality set in. I imagine Obama kinda wishes he didn't come in with such huge majorities in both houses so his attempt as grand compromiser might of been better received. Saying that, Obama has taken a stark partisan turn now that he doesn't have to run for reelection but unfortunately for him those majorities are gone and he's essentially a lameduck president unless he can somehow pull out a miracle in 2014(unlikely)

Not having health insurance is a risk but it's worth it versus paying the inordinate price of health insurance for some people. Once I'm off my parent's insurance which will be relatively soon, I'd probably wouldn't purchase it for awhile if given the choice. I have no real physical ailments past or present, take no medication, most of my family is healthy, I don't have a hazardous job, no dangerous hobbies, rarely get sick, I haven't even been to an actual doctor in years. Accidents happen and you never know what freak ailment can come along but I'm just playing the odds. I don't know how they're going to make people that can't afford health insurance pay for it, I know there is suppose to exchanges and all types of other stuff but in the end it's still money out of my pocket however much it is. What the government considers poor and what poor actually is are two different things.

The point is that the issue with healthcare in this country isn't coverage, it's the cost. There is no reason for routine procedures and check ups to cost as much as they do, catastrophic and chronic care is an issue and should be addressed on its own instead of a one size fits all solution. Universal coverage is just a massive boon for the insurance industry, corporatism 101. What we got out of Obama's reform was the worst possible scenario, even socialized medicine makes more sense.

That's the timeframe set out under the varous budget-related laws (I think the 1974 one, but I can't find it on Wikipedia at the moment).

They had to pick some time period, since you really don't want to push through changes at the scale of the US Government's spending or revenue policies on a dime. For instance, with the exception of some "anti-abuse" provisions, almost all revenue laws are put into effect a year or so out, to give people time to adjust and impliment.