Discussion:
How Obamacare is hurting the patient-physician relationship - Statement by Jane Orient, MD
(too old to reply)
and/or www.mantra.com/jai (Dr. Jai Maharaj)
2011-06-01 20:26:27 UTC
Permalink
How Obamacare is hurting the patient-physician relationship -
Statement by Jane Orient, MD

http://www.aapsonline.org/index.php/site/article/how_obamacare_is_hurting_the_patient-physician_relationship_-_statement_by_/

Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi
Om Shanti
and/or www.mantra.com/jai (Dr. Jai Maharaj)
2011-06-01 20:27:10 UTC
Permalink
Post by and/or www.mantra.com/jai (Dr. Jai Maharaj)
How Obamacare is hurting the patient-physician relationship -
Statement by Jane Orient, MD
http://www.aapsonline.org/index.php/site/article/how_obamacare_is_hurting_the_patient-physician_relationship_-_statement_by_/
An ongoing discussion here:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2728317/posts

Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi
Om Shanti
P. Rajah
2011-06-01 21:20:50 UTC
Permalink
Visits to the Emergency Room: Bush-care, Canada-care, and UK-care compared

| ByMike Alberti,Lori Bikson | Health care

January 25, 2011 — As Congressional Republicans do their best to repeal
"Obama-care," Remapping Debate revisits how "Bush-care" stacked up
against England and Canada in terms of Emergency Room visits per 1,000
people in the period from 2003 to 2008.

The chart shows how that rate of E.R. visits in the U.S. exceeded the
rate in England from 2003 to 2008, and greatly exceeded the rate in
Canada. Though Emergency Room visits account for a relatively small
piece of the health care system, many have long argued that high rates
of E.R. admissions are directly related to a lack of access to primary
care and to the high cost of prescription drugs.
http://www.remappingdebate.org/map-data-tool/visits-emergency-room-bush-care-canada-care-and-uk-care-compared
--
Astrology: Fraud or Superstition?
http://www.seesharppress.com/astro.html
Jerry Okamura
2011-06-03 18:00:57 UTC
Permalink
Is the question which system is better or worse, or should the question be,
are any of these systems sustainable?

"P. Rajah" wrote in message news:4de6ad32$0$9074$***@cv.net...

Visits to the Emergency Room: Bush-care, Canada-care, and UK-care compared

| ByMike Alberti,Lori Bikson | Health care

January 25, 2011 — As Congressional Republicans do their best to repeal
"Obama-care," Remapping Debate revisits how "Bush-care" stacked up
against England and Canada in terms of Emergency Room visits per 1,000
people in the period from 2003 to 2008.

The chart shows how that rate of E.R. visits in the U.S. exceeded the
rate in England from 2003 to 2008, and greatly exceeded the rate in
Canada. Though Emergency Room visits account for a relatively small
piece of the health care system, many have long argued that high rates
of E.R. admissions are directly related to a lack of access to primary
care and to the high cost of prescription drugs.
http://www.remappingdebate.org/map-data-tool/visits-emergency-room-bush-care-canada-care-and-uk-care-compared
--
Astrology: Fraud or Superstition?
http://www.seesharppress.com/astro.html
P. Rajah
2011-06-03 20:57:51 UTC
Permalink
Post by Jerry Okamura
Is the question which system is better or worse, or should the question
be, are any of these systems sustainable?
The state, any state, has a few fundamental obligations:
security(internal and external), equality under the law(meaning you
shouldn't be punished for simply not being able to afford legal
defense), basic education of its people, and basic healthcare. Is basic
universal healthcare sustainable? It sure is. When you factor in all the
overheads of the insurance companies, their agents, their profits, the
cost of treating the uninsured, the economic cost of untreated sick
people and so on, it becomes a no-brainer. It is actually cheaper,
overall, to provide universal basic healthcare, and people would overall
be healthier because they would be diagnosed and treated earlier.
Except, of course, if you subscribe to the theory that it is criminal
not to allow corporations to make profits on anything and everything.

Btw, the article that Jay the jyotishit linked to, the "Obamacare"
article, seems to say let's do away with insurers altogether, and go
directly with a patient-doctor relationship. Disregarding the fact that
most doctors do not want to get tied down chasing payments from each
patient or judging the patient's creditworthiness prior to treatment,
the article itself is not anti "Obamacare", but anti insurance company,
and thus also anti "Bushcare" or whatever else one would like to call
it. Quite a pointless article, imo.
Post by Jerry Okamura
Visits to the Emergency Room: Bush-care, Canada-care, and UK-care compared
| ByMike Alberti,Lori Bikson | Health care
January 25, 2011 — As Congressional Republicans do their best to repeal
"Obama-care," Remapping Debate revisits how "Bush-care" stacked up
against England and Canada in terms of Emergency Room visits per 1,000
people in the period from 2003 to 2008.
The chart shows how that rate of E.R. visits in the U.S. exceeded the
rate in England from 2003 to 2008, and greatly exceeded the rate in
Canada. Though Emergency Room visits account for a relatively small
piece of the health care system, many have long argued that high rates
of E.R. admissions are directly related to a lack of access to primary
care and to the high cost of prescription drugs.
http://www.remappingdebate.org/map-data-tool/visits-emergency-room-bush-care-canada-care-and-uk-care-compared
--
Astrology: Fraud or Superstition?
http://www.seesharppress.com/astro.html

Ass-troll-ogers/jyotishitheads are the bane of humanity, and must be
cleansed or otherwise purified for the benefit of society.
Jerry Okamura
2011-06-04 22:29:51 UTC
Permalink
Post by Jerry Okamura
Is the question which system is better or worse, or should the question
be, are any of these systems sustainable?
The state, any state, has a few fundamental obligations:
security(internal and external), equality under the law(meaning you
shouldn't be punished for simply not being able to afford legal
defense), basic education of its people, and basic healthcare. Is basic
universal healthcare sustainable? It sure is. When you factor in all the
overheads of the insurance companies, their agents, their profits, the
cost of treating the uninsured, the economic cost of untreated sick
people and so on, it becomes a no-brainer. It is actually cheaper,
overall, to provide universal basic healthcare, and people would overall
be healthier because they would be diagnosed and treated earlier.
Except, of course, if you subscribe to the theory that it is criminal
not to allow corporations to make profits on anything and everything.

Okay, let us address this issues one point at a time, shall we? Legal
defense...you need an attorney, when the government charges you with a crime
which a court of law has to adjudicate. But let us look at what happens to
someone who the government "suspects" is in this country illegally. Do,
they all get a chance to prove their innocence in a court of law, or does
the government simply assume they are guilty and deports them out of the
country? Why is basic education the responsibility of the government and
not the responsibility of the parent? What good is having free healthcare,
if the payer cannot afford to continue paying for that healthcare? Why
would you want to depend on someone else to pay for your healthcare, when by
doing so, you also gave them the right not to pay for your healthcare? How
can a healthcare system be sustainable with a medical inflation rate running
at around 8% per year? Why is the solution having health insurance? Why
isn't the solution figuring out a way for people to pay for the own
healthcare needs? And as far as being cheaper is concerned, it is true that
a single payer system can minimize the fixed cost element of the system, but
even if you had zero fixed cost, you still have a cost problem, because the
cost problem is not in the fixed cost area of the system, it is in a
variable cost part of the system. And unless you address the variable cost
part of the problem, you have not solved the cost problem.

Btw, the article that Jay the jyotishit linked to, the "Obamacare"
article, seems to say let's do away with insurers altogether, and go
directly with a patient-doctor relationship. Disregarding the fact that
most doctors do not want to get tied down chasing payments from each
patient or judging the patient's creditworthiness prior to treatment,
the article itself is not anti "Obamacare", but anti insurance company,
and thus also anti "Bushcare" or whatever else one would like to call
it. Quite a pointless article, imo.

Yes, ultimately if you want the best healthcare system in the world, then
you want the user of the system to be the one making the rationing decision,
and not someone other than the person who uses the system to make that
rationing decision for them. It is the most effective way man has devised
to get the most bang for the buck. That is why in this country, food is
affordable, because each person decides what they can afford to eat. I
might add, the other reason we do have inexpensive food, is exactly because
the government allows businesses to be "greedy" as some would call it.
Their selfish needs to make money, means that they make more money "if" they
can sell what they want to sell, at the lowest price possible.
DMJoshi
2011-06-05 09:38:53 UTC
Permalink
Post by Jerry Okamura
Is the question which system is better or worse, or should the question
be, are any of these systems sustainable?
security(internal and external),  equality under the law(meaning you
shouldn't be punished for simply not being able to afford legal
defense), basic education of its people, and basic healthcare. Is basic
universal healthcare sustainable? It sure is. When you factor in all the
overheads of the insurance companies, their agents, their profits, the
cost of treating the uninsured, the economic cost of untreated sick
people and so on, it becomes a no-brainer. It is actually cheaper,
overall, to provide universal basic healthcare, and people would overall
be healthier because they would be diagnosed and treated earlier.
Except, of course, if you subscribe to the theory that it is criminal
not to allow corporations to make profits on anything and everything.
Okay, let us address this issues one point at a time, shall we?  Legal
defense...you need an attorney, when the government charges you with a crime
which a court of law has to adjudicate.  But let us look at what happens to
someone who the government "suspects" is in this country illegally.  Do,
they all get a chance to prove their innocence in a court of law, or does
the government simply assume they are guilty and deports them out of the
country?  Why is basic education the responsibility of the government and
not the responsibility of the parent?  What good is having free healthcare,
if the payer cannot afford to continue paying for that healthcare?  Why
would you want to depend on someone else to pay for your healthcare, when by
doing so, you also gave them the right not to pay for your healthcare?  How
can a healthcare system be sustainable with a medical inflation rate running
at around 8% per year?  Why is the solution having health insurance?  Why
isn't the solution figuring out a way for people to pay for the own
healthcare needs?  And as far as being cheaper is concerned, it is true that
a single payer system can minimize the fixed cost element of the system, but
even if you had zero fixed cost, you still have a cost problem, because the
cost problem is not in the fixed cost area of the system, it is in a
variable cost part of the system.   And unless you address the variable cost
part of the problem, you have not solved the cost problem.
Btw, the article that Jay the jyotishit linked to, the "Obamacare"
article, seems to say let's do away with insurers altogether, and go
directly with a patient-doctor relationship. Disregarding the fact that
most doctors do not want to get tied down chasing payments from each
patient or judging the patient's creditworthiness prior to treatment,
the article itself is not anti "Obamacare", but anti insurance company,
and thus also anti "Bushcare" or whatever else one would like to call
it. Quite a pointless article, imo.
Yes, ultimately if you want the best healthcare system in the world, then
you want the user of the system to be the one making the rationing decision,
and not someone other than the person who uses the system to make that
rationing decision for them.   It is the most effective way man has devised
to get the most bang for the buck.  That is why in this country, food is
affordable, because each person decides what they can afford to eat.  I
might add, the other reason we do have inexpensive food, is exactly because
the government allows businesses to be "greedy" as some would call it.
Their selfish needs to make money, means that they make more money "if" they
can sell what they want to sell, at the lowest price possible.
Looks in Obamacare intermediation of Medical Insurance is not done
away with.
If a US Citizen is totally on doles, can he afford to pay insurance?
I believe it is not possible in US either to increase Income Tax on
the rich or increase tax on petrol to pay for healthcare for the poor.
Sid9
2011-06-05 16:27:11 UTC
Permalink
Post by DMJoshi
Post by P. Rajah
Post by Jerry Okamura
Is the question which system is better or worse, or should the question
be, are any of these systems sustainable?
security(internal and external), equality under the law(meaning you
shouldn't be punished for simply not being able to afford legal
defense), basic education of its people, and basic healthcare. Is basic
universal healthcare sustainable? It sure is. When you factor in all the
overheads of the insurance companies, their agents, their profits, the
cost of treating the uninsured, the economic cost of untreated sick
people and so on, it becomes a no-brainer. It is actually cheaper,
overall, to provide universal basic healthcare, and people would overall
be healthier because they would be diagnosed and treated earlier.
Except, of course, if you subscribe to the theory that it is criminal
not to allow corporations to make profits on anything and everything.
Okay, let us address this issues one point at a time, shall we? Legal
defense...you need an attorney, when the government charges you with a crime
which a court of law has to adjudicate. But let us look at what happens to
someone who the government "suspects" is in this country illegally. Do,
they all get a chance to prove their innocence in a court of law, or does
the government simply assume they are guilty and deports them out of the
country? Why is basic education the responsibility of the government and
not the responsibility of the parent? What good is having free healthcare,
if the payer cannot afford to continue paying for that healthcare? Why
would you want to depend on someone else to pay for your healthcare, when by
doing so, you also gave them the right not to pay for your healthcare?
How
can a healthcare system be sustainable with a medical inflation rate running
at around 8% per year? Why is the solution having health insurance? Why
isn't the solution figuring out a way for people to pay for the own
healthcare needs? And as far as being cheaper is concerned, it is true that
a single payer system can minimize the fixed cost element of the system, but
even if you had zero fixed cost, you still have a cost problem, because the
cost problem is not in the fixed cost area of the system, it is in a
variable cost part of the system. And unless you address the variable cost
part of the problem, you have not solved the cost problem.
Btw, the article that Jay the jyotishit linked to, the "Obamacare"
article, seems to say let's do away with insurers altogether, and go
directly with a patient-doctor relationship. Disregarding the fact that
most doctors do not want to get tied down chasing payments from each
patient or judging the patient's creditworthiness prior to treatment,
the article itself is not anti "Obamacare", but anti insurance company,
and thus also anti "Bushcare" or whatever else one would like to call
it. Quite a pointless article, imo.
Yes, ultimately if you want the best healthcare system in the world, then
you want the user of the system to be the one making the rationing decision,
and not someone other than the person who uses the system to make that
rationing decision for them. It is the most effective way man has devised
to get the most bang for the buck. That is why in this country, food is
affordable, because each person decides what they can afford to eat. I
might add, the other reason we do have inexpensive food, is exactly because
the government allows businesses to be "greedy" as some would call it.
Their selfish needs to make money, means that they make more money "if" they
can sell what they want to sell, at the lowest price possible.
Looks in Obamacare intermediation of Medical Insurance is not done
away with.
If a US Citizen is totally on doles, can he afford to pay insurance?
I believe it is not possible in US either to increase Income Tax on
the rich or increase tax on petrol to pay for healthcare for the poor.
Our taxes are very low when compared to other industrialized nations.
That we are overtaxed is a lie put forward by Republicans.

http://wweek.com/portland/article-17350-9_things_the_rich_dont_want_you_to_know_about_taxes.html

1. Poor Americans do pay taxes.

Gretchen Carlson, the Fox News host, said last year "47 percent of Americans
don't pay any taxes." John McCain and Sarah Palin both said similar things
during the 2008 campaign about the bottom half of Americans.

Ari Fleischer, the former Bush White House spokesman, once said "50 percent
of the country gets benefits without paying for them."

Actually, they pay lots of taxes-just not lots of federal income taxes.

Data from the Tax Foundation show that in 2008, the average income for the
bottom half of taxpayers was $15,300.

This year the first $9,350 of income is exempt from taxes for singles and
$18,700 for married couples, just slightly more than in 2008. That means
millions of the poor do not make enough to owe income taxes.

But they still pay plenty of other taxes, including federal payroll taxes.
Between gas taxes, sales taxes, utility taxes and other taxes, no one lives
tax-free in America.

When it comes to state and local taxes, the poor bear a heavier burden than
the rich in every state except Vermont, the Institute on Taxation and
Economic Policy calculated from official data. In Alabama, for example, the
burden on the poor is more than twice that of the top 1 percent. The
one-fifth of Alabama families making less than $13,000 pay almost 11 percent
of their income in state and local taxes, compared with less than 4 percent
for those who make $229,000 or more.

2. The wealthiest Americans don't carry the burden.

This is one of those oft-used canards. Sen. Rand Paul, the tea party
favorite from Kentucky, told David Letterman recently that "the wealthy do
pay most of the taxes in this country."

The Internet is awash with statements that the top 1 percent pays, depending
on the year, 38 percent or more than 40 percent of taxes.

It's true that the top 1 percent of wage earners paid 38 percent of the
federal income taxes in 2008 (the most recent year for which data is
available). But people forget that the income tax is less than half of
federal taxes and only one-fifth of taxes at all levels of government.

Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance taxes (known as payroll
taxes) are paid mostly by the bottom 90 percent of wage earners. That's
because, once you reach $106,800 of income, you pay no more for Social
Security, though the much smaller Medicare tax applies to all wages. Warren
Buffett pays the exact same amount of Social Security taxes as someone who
earns $106,800.

3. In fact, the wealthy are paying less taxes.

The Internal Revenue Service issues an annual report on the 400 highest
income-tax payers. In 1961, there were 398 taxpayers who made $1 million or
more, so I compared their income tax burdens from that year to 2007.

Despite skyrocketing incomes, the federal tax burden on the richest 400 has
been slashed, thanks to a variety of loopholes, allowable deductions and
other tools. The actual share of their income paid in taxes, according to
the IRS, is 16.6 percent. Adding payroll taxes barely nudges that number.

Compare that to the vast majority of Americans, whose share of their income
going to federal taxes increased from 13.1 percent in 1961 to 22.5 percent
in 2007.

(By the way, during seven of the eight George W. Bush years, the IRS report
on the top 400 taxpayers was labeled a state secret, a policy that the Obama
administration overturned almost instantly after his inauguration.)

4. Many of the very richest pay no current income taxes at all.

John Paulson, the most successful hedge-fund manager of all, bet against the
mortgage market one year and then bet with Glenn Beck in the gold market the
next. Paulson made himself $9 billion in fees in just two years. His current
tax bill on that $9 billion? Zero.

Congress lets hedge-fund managers earn all they can now and pay their taxes
years from now.

In 2007, Congress debated whether hedge-fund managers should pay the top tax
rate that applies to wages, bonuses and other compensation for their labors,
which is 35 percent. That tax rate starts at about $300,000 of taxable
income-not even pocket change to Paulson, but almost 12 years of gross pay
to the median-wage worker.

The Republicans and a key Democrat, Sen.Charles Schumer of New York, fought
to keep the tax rate on hedge-fund managers at 15 percent, arguing that the
profits from hedge funds should be considered capital gains, not ordinary
income, which got a lot of attention in the news.

What the news media missed is that hedge-fund managers don't even pay 15
percent. At least, not currently. So long as they leave their money, known
as "carried interest," in the hedge fund, their taxes are deferred. They
only pay taxes when they cash out, which could be decades from now for
younger managers. How do these hedge-fund managers get money in the
meantime? By borrowing against the carried interest, often at absurdly low
rates-currently about 2 percent.

Lots of other people live tax-free, too. I have Donald Trump's tax records
for four years early in his career. He paid no taxes for two of those years.
Big real-estate investors enjoy tax-free living under a 1993 law President
Clinton signed. It lets "professional" real-estate investors use paper
losses like depreciation on their buildings against any cash income, even if
they end up with negative incomes like Trump.

Frank and Jamie McCourt, who own the Los Angeles Dodgers, have not paid any
income taxes since at least 2004, their divorce case revealed. Yet they
spent $45 million one year alone. How? They just borrowed against Dodger
ticket revenue and other assets. To the IRS, they look like paupers.

In Wisconsin, Terrence Wall, who unsuccessfully sought the Republican
nomination for U.S. Senate in 2010, paid no income taxes on as much as $14
million of recent income, his disclosure forms showed. Asked about his
living tax-free while working people pay taxes, he had a simple response:
Everyone should pay less.

5. And (surprise!) since Reagan, only the wealthy have gained significant
income.

The Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute and similar conservative
marketing organizations tell us relentlessly that lower tax rates will make
us all better off.

"When tax rates are reduced, the economy's growth rate improves and living
standards increase," according to Daniel J. Mitchell, an economist at
Heritage until he joined Cato. He says that supply-side economics is "the
simple notion that lower tax rates will boost work, saving, investment and
entrepreneurship."

When Reagan was elected president, the top marginal tax rate (the tax rate
paid on the last dollar of income earned) was 70 percent. He cut it to 50
percent and then 28 percent starting in 1987. It was raised by George H.W.
Bush and Clinton, and then cut by George W. Bush. The top rate is now 35
percent.

Since 1980, when Reagan won the presidency promising prosperity through tax
cuts, the average income of the vast majority-the bottom 90 percent of
Americans-has increased a meager $303, or 1 percent. Put another way, for
each dollar people in the vast majority made in 1980, in 2008 their income
was up to $1.01.

Those at the top did better. The top 1 percent's average income more than
doubled to $1.1 million, according to an analysis of tax data by economists
Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez. The really rich, the top one-tenth of 1
percent, each enjoyed almost $4 in 2008 for each dollar in 1980.

The top 300,000 Americans now enjoy almost as much income as the bottom 150
million, the data show.

6. When it comes to corporations, the story is much the same-less taxes.

Corporate profits in 2008, the latest year for which data are available,
were $1,830 billion, up almost 12 percent from $1,638.7 billion in 2000.
Yet, even though corporate tax rates have not been cut, corporate income-tax
revenues fell to $230 billion from $249 billion-an 8 percent decline, thanks
to a number of loopholes. The official 2010 profit numbers are not added up
and released by the government, but the amount paid in corporate taxes is:
In 2010 they fell further, to $191 billion-a decline of more than 23 percent
compared with 2000.

7. Some corporate tax breaks destroy jobs.

Despite all the noise that America has the world's second-highest corporate
tax rate, the actual taxes paid by corporations are falling because of the
growing number of loopholes and companies shifting profits to tax havens
like the Cayman Islands.

And right now America's corporations are sitting on close to $2 trillion in
cash that is not being used to build factories, create jobs or anything
else, but acts as an insurance policy for managers unwilling to take the
risk of actually building the businesses they are paid so well to run. That
cash hoard, by the way, works out to nearly $13,000 per taxpaying household.

A corporate tax rate that is too low actually destroys jobs. That's because
a higher tax rate encourages businesses (who don't want to pay taxes) to
keep the profits in the business and reinvest, rather than pull them out as
profits and have to pay high taxes.

The 2004 American Jobs Creation Act, which passed with bipartisan support,
allowed more than 800 companies to bring profits that were untaxed but
overseas back to the United States. Instead of paying the usual 35 percent
tax, the companies paid just 5.25 percent.

The companies said bringing the money home-"repatriating" it, they called
it-would mean lots of jobs. Sen. John Ensign, the Nevada Republican, put the
figure at 660,000 new jobs.

Pfizer, the drug company, was the biggest beneficiary. It brought home $37
billion, saving $11 billion in taxes. Almost immediately it started firing
people. Since the law took effect, Pfizer has let 40,000 workers go. In all,
it appears that at least 100,000 jobs were destroyed.

Now Congressional Republicans and some Democrats are gearing up again to
pass another tax holiday, promoting a new Jobs Creation Act. It would affect
10 times as much money as the 2004 law.

8. Republicans like taxes too.

President Reagan signed into law 11 tax increases, targeted at people down
the income ladder. His administration and the Washington press corps called
the increases "revenue enhancers." Reagan raised Social Security taxes so
high that by the end of 2008, the government had collected more than $2
trillion in surplus tax.

George W. Bush signed a tax increase, too, in 2006, despite his written
ironclad pledge never to raise taxes on anyone. It raised taxes on teenagers
by requiring kids up to age 17, who earned money, to pay taxes at their
parents' tax rate, which would almost always be higher than the rate they
would otherwise pay. It was a story that ran buried inside The New York
Times one Sunday, but nowhere else.

In fact, thanks to Republicans, one in three Americans will pay higher taxes
this year than they did last year.

First, some history. In 2009, President Obama pushed his own tax cut-for the
working class. He persuaded Congress to enact the Making Work Pay Tax
Credit. Over the two years 2009 and 2010, it saved single workers up to $800
and married heterosexual couples up to $1,600, even if only one spouse
worked. The top 5 percent or so of taxpayers were denied this tax break.

The Obama administration called it "the biggest middle-class tax cut" ever.
Yet last December the Republicans, poised to regain control of the House of
Representatives, killed Obama's Making Work Pay Credit while extending the
Bush tax cuts for two more years-a policy Obama agreed to.

By doing so, Congressional Republican leaders increased taxes on a third of
Americans, virtually all of them the working poor, this year.

As a result, of the 155 million households in the tax system, 51 million
will pay an average of $129 more this year. That is $6.6 billion in higher
taxes for the working poor, the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center estimated.

In addition, the Republicans changed the rate of workers' FICA
contributions, which finances half of Social Security. The result:

If you are single and make less than $20,000, or married and less than
$40,000, you lose under this plan. But the top 5 percent, people who make
more than $106,800, will save $2,136 ($4,272 for two-career couples).


9. Other countries do it better.

We measure our economic progress, and our elected leaders debate tax policy,
in terms of a crude measure known as gross domestic product. The way the
official statistics are put together, each dollar spent buying solar energy
equipment counts the same as each dollar spent investigating murders.

We do not give any measure of value to time spent rearing children or
growing our own vegetables or to time off for leisure and community service.

And we do not measure the economic damage done by shocks, such as losing a
job, which means not only loss of income and depletion of savings, but loss
of health insurance, which a Harvard Medical School study found results in
45,000 unnecessary deaths each year.

Compare this to Germany, one of many countries with a smarter tax system and
smarter spending policies.

Germans work less, make more per hour and get much better parental leave
than Americans, many of whom get no fringe benefits such as health care,
pensions or even a retirement savings plan. By many measures the vast
majority live better in Germany than in America.

To achieve this, unmarried Germans on average pay 52 percent of their income
in taxes. Americans average 30 percent, according to the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development.

At first blush the German tax burden seems horrendous. But in Germany (as
well as in Britain, France, Scandinavia, Canada, Australia and Japan),
tax-supported institutions provide many of the things Americans pay for with
after-tax dollars. Buying wholesale rather than retail saves money.

A proper comparison would take the 30 percent average tax on American
workers and add their out-of-pocket spending on health care, college tuition
and fees for services, and compare that with taxes that the average German
pays. Add it all up and the combination of tax and personal spending is
roughly equal in both countries, but with a large risk of catastrophic loss
in America, and a tiny risk in Germany.

Americans take on $85 billion of debt each year for higher education, while
college is financed by taxes in Germany and tuition is cheap to free in
other modern countries. While soaring medical costs are a key reason that
since 1980 bankruptcy in America has increased 15 times faster than
population growth, no one in Germany or the rest of the modern world goes
broke because of accident or illness. And child poverty in America is the
highest among modern countries-almost twice the rate in Germany, which is
close to the average of modern countries.

On the corporate tax side, the Germans encourage reinvestment at home and
the outsourcing of low-value work, like auto assembly, and German rules
tightly control accounting so that profits earned at home cannot be made to
appear as profits earned in tax havens.

Adopting the German system is not the answer for America. But crafting a tax
system that benefits the vast majority, reduces risks, provides universal
health care and focuses on diplomacy rather than militarism abroad (and at
home) would be a lot smarter than what we have now.

Here is a question to ask yourself: We started down this road with Reagan's
election in 1980 and upped the ante in this century with George W. Bush.

How long does it take to conclude that a policy has failed to fulfill its
promises? And as you think of that, keep in mind George Washington. When he
fell ill his doctors followed the common wisdom of the era. They cut him and
bled him to remove bad blood. As Washington's condition grew worse, they
bled him more. And like the mantra of tax cuts for the rich, they kept
applying the same treatment until they killed him.

Luckily we don't bleed the sick anymore, but we are bleeding our government
to death.
Jerry Okamura
2011-06-05 17:29:34 UTC
Permalink
Okay, as a percentage of income, what are the taxes paid by each income
group? By the way, maybe those who make the argument about the poor paying
little in taxes, are making that argument based on what the Federal
government takes in, perhaps?
Post by DMJoshi
Post by P. Rajah
Post by Jerry Okamura
Is the question which system is better or worse, or should the question
be, are any of these systems sustainable?
security(internal and external), equality under the law(meaning you
shouldn't be punished for simply not being able to afford legal
defense), basic education of its people, and basic healthcare. Is basic
universal healthcare sustainable? It sure is. When you factor in all the
overheads of the insurance companies, their agents, their profits, the
cost of treating the uninsured, the economic cost of untreated sick
people and so on, it becomes a no-brainer. It is actually cheaper,
overall, to provide universal basic healthcare, and people would overall
be healthier because they would be diagnosed and treated earlier.
Except, of course, if you subscribe to the theory that it is criminal
not to allow corporations to make profits on anything and everything.
Okay, let us address this issues one point at a time, shall we? Legal
defense...you need an attorney, when the government charges you with a crime
which a court of law has to adjudicate. But let us look at what happens to
someone who the government "suspects" is in this country illegally. Do,
they all get a chance to prove their innocence in a court of law, or does
the government simply assume they are guilty and deports them out of the
country? Why is basic education the responsibility of the government and
not the responsibility of the parent? What good is having free healthcare,
if the payer cannot afford to continue paying for that healthcare? Why
would you want to depend on someone else to pay for your healthcare, when by
doing so, you also gave them the right not to pay for your healthcare?
How
can a healthcare system be sustainable with a medical inflation rate running
at around 8% per year? Why is the solution having health insurance? Why
isn't the solution figuring out a way for people to pay for the own
healthcare needs? And as far as being cheaper is concerned, it is true that
a single payer system can minimize the fixed cost element of the system, but
even if you had zero fixed cost, you still have a cost problem, because the
cost problem is not in the fixed cost area of the system, it is in a
variable cost part of the system. And unless you address the variable cost
part of the problem, you have not solved the cost problem.
Btw, the article that Jay the jyotishit linked to, the "Obamacare"
article, seems to say let's do away with insurers altogether, and go
directly with a patient-doctor relationship. Disregarding the fact that
most doctors do not want to get tied down chasing payments from each
patient or judging the patient's creditworthiness prior to treatment,
the article itself is not anti "Obamacare", but anti insurance company,
and thus also anti "Bushcare" or whatever else one would like to call
it. Quite a pointless article, imo.
Yes, ultimately if you want the best healthcare system in the world, then
you want the user of the system to be the one making the rationing decision,
and not someone other than the person who uses the system to make that
rationing decision for them. It is the most effective way man has devised
to get the most bang for the buck. That is why in this country, food is
affordable, because each person decides what they can afford to eat. I
might add, the other reason we do have inexpensive food, is exactly because
the government allows businesses to be "greedy" as some would call it.
Their selfish needs to make money, means that they make more money "if" they
can sell what they want to sell, at the lowest price possible.
Looks in Obamacare intermediation of Medical Insurance is not done
away with.
If a US Citizen is totally on doles, can he afford to pay insurance?
I believe it is not possible in US either to increase Income Tax on
the rich or increase tax on petrol to pay for healthcare for the poor.
Our taxes are very low when compared to other industrialized nations.
That we are overtaxed is a lie put forward by Republicans.

http://wweek.com/portland/article-17350-9_things_the_rich_dont_want_you_to_know_about_taxes.html

1. Poor Americans do pay taxes.

Gretchen Carlson, the Fox News host, said last year "47 percent of Americans
don't pay any taxes." John McCain and Sarah Palin both said similar things
during the 2008 campaign about the bottom half of Americans.

Ari Fleischer, the former Bush White House spokesman, once said "50 percent
of the country gets benefits without paying for them."

Actually, they pay lots of taxes-just not lots of federal income taxes.

Data from the Tax Foundation show that in 2008, the average income for the
bottom half of taxpayers was $15,300.

This year the first $9,350 of income is exempt from taxes for singles and
$18,700 for married couples, just slightly more than in 2008. That means
millions of the poor do not make enough to owe income taxes.

But they still pay plenty of other taxes, including federal payroll taxes.
Between gas taxes, sales taxes, utility taxes and other taxes, no one lives
tax-free in America.

When it comes to state and local taxes, the poor bear a heavier burden than
the rich in every state except Vermont, the Institute on Taxation and
Economic Policy calculated from official data. In Alabama, for example, the
burden on the poor is more than twice that of the top 1 percent. The
one-fifth of Alabama families making less than $13,000 pay almost 11 percent
of their income in state and local taxes, compared with less than 4 percent
for those who make $229,000 or more.

2. The wealthiest Americans don't carry the burden.

This is one of those oft-used canards. Sen. Rand Paul, the tea party
favorite from Kentucky, told David Letterman recently that "the wealthy do
pay most of the taxes in this country."

The Internet is awash with statements that the top 1 percent pays, depending
on the year, 38 percent or more than 40 percent of taxes.

It's true that the top 1 percent of wage earners paid 38 percent of the
federal income taxes in 2008 (the most recent year for which data is
available). But people forget that the income tax is less than half of
federal taxes and only one-fifth of taxes at all levels of government.

Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance taxes (known as payroll
taxes) are paid mostly by the bottom 90 percent of wage earners. That's
because, once you reach $106,800 of income, you pay no more for Social
Security, though the much smaller Medicare tax applies to all wages. Warren
Buffett pays the exact same amount of Social Security taxes as someone who
earns $106,800.

3. In fact, the wealthy are paying less taxes.

The Internal Revenue Service issues an annual report on the 400 highest
income-tax payers. In 1961, there were 398 taxpayers who made $1 million or
more, so I compared their income tax burdens from that year to 2007.

Despite skyrocketing incomes, the federal tax burden on the richest 400 has
been slashed, thanks to a variety of loopholes, allowable deductions and
other tools. The actual share of their income paid in taxes, according to
the IRS, is 16.6 percent. Adding payroll taxes barely nudges that number.

Compare that to the vast majority of Americans, whose share of their income
going to federal taxes increased from 13.1 percent in 1961 to 22.5 percent
in 2007.

(By the way, during seven of the eight George W. Bush years, the IRS report
on the top 400 taxpayers was labeled a state secret, a policy that the Obama
administration overturned almost instantly after his inauguration.)

4. Many of the very richest pay no current income taxes at all.

John Paulson, the most successful hedge-fund manager of all, bet against the
mortgage market one year and then bet with Glenn Beck in the gold market the
next. Paulson made himself $9 billion in fees in just two years. His current
tax bill on that $9 billion? Zero.

Congress lets hedge-fund managers earn all they can now and pay their taxes
years from now.

In 2007, Congress debated whether hedge-fund managers should pay the top tax
rate that applies to wages, bonuses and other compensation for their labors,
which is 35 percent. That tax rate starts at about $300,000 of taxable
income-not even pocket change to Paulson, but almost 12 years of gross pay
to the median-wage worker.

The Republicans and a key Democrat, Sen.Charles Schumer of New York, fought
to keep the tax rate on hedge-fund managers at 15 percent, arguing that the
profits from hedge funds should be considered capital gains, not ordinary
income, which got a lot of attention in the news.

What the news media missed is that hedge-fund managers don't even pay 15
percent. At least, not currently. So long as they leave their money, known
as "carried interest," in the hedge fund, their taxes are deferred. They
only pay taxes when they cash out, which could be decades from now for
younger managers. How do these hedge-fund managers get money in the
meantime? By borrowing against the carried interest, often at absurdly low
rates-currently about 2 percent.

Lots of other people live tax-free, too. I have Donald Trump's tax records
for four years early in his career. He paid no taxes for two of those years.
Big real-estate investors enjoy tax-free living under a 1993 law President
Clinton signed. It lets "professional" real-estate investors use paper
losses like depreciation on their buildings against any cash income, even if
they end up with negative incomes like Trump.

Frank and Jamie McCourt, who own the Los Angeles Dodgers, have not paid any
income taxes since at least 2004, their divorce case revealed. Yet they
spent $45 million one year alone. How? They just borrowed against Dodger
ticket revenue and other assets. To the IRS, they look like paupers.

In Wisconsin, Terrence Wall, who unsuccessfully sought the Republican
nomination for U.S. Senate in 2010, paid no income taxes on as much as $14
million of recent income, his disclosure forms showed. Asked about his
living tax-free while working people pay taxes, he had a simple response:
Everyone should pay less.

5. And (surprise!) since Reagan, only the wealthy have gained significant
income.

The Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute and similar conservative
marketing organizations tell us relentlessly that lower tax rates will make
us all better off.

"When tax rates are reduced, the economy's growth rate improves and living
standards increase," according to Daniel J. Mitchell, an economist at
Heritage until he joined Cato. He says that supply-side economics is "the
simple notion that lower tax rates will boost work, saving, investment and
entrepreneurship."

When Reagan was elected president, the top marginal tax rate (the tax rate
paid on the last dollar of income earned) was 70 percent. He cut it to 50
percent and then 28 percent starting in 1987. It was raised by George H.W.
Bush and Clinton, and then cut by George W. Bush. The top rate is now 35
percent.

Since 1980, when Reagan won the presidency promising prosperity through tax
cuts, the average income of the vast majority-the bottom 90 percent of
Americans-has increased a meager $303, or 1 percent. Put another way, for
each dollar people in the vast majority made in 1980, in 2008 their income
was up to $1.01.

Those at the top did better. The top 1 percent's average income more than
doubled to $1.1 million, according to an analysis of tax data by economists
Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez. The really rich, the top one-tenth of 1
percent, each enjoyed almost $4 in 2008 for each dollar in 1980.

The top 300,000 Americans now enjoy almost as much income as the bottom 150
million, the data show.

6. When it comes to corporations, the story is much the same-less taxes.

Corporate profits in 2008, the latest year for which data are available,
were $1,830 billion, up almost 12 percent from $1,638.7 billion in 2000.
Yet, even though corporate tax rates have not been cut, corporate income-tax
revenues fell to $230 billion from $249 billion-an 8 percent decline, thanks
to a number of loopholes. The official 2010 profit numbers are not added up
and released by the government, but the amount paid in corporate taxes is:
In 2010 they fell further, to $191 billion-a decline of more than 23 percent
compared with 2000.

7. Some corporate tax breaks destroy jobs.

Despite all the noise that America has the world's second-highest corporate
tax rate, the actual taxes paid by corporations are falling because of the
growing number of loopholes and companies shifting profits to tax havens
like the Cayman Islands.

And right now America's corporations are sitting on close to $2 trillion in
cash that is not being used to build factories, create jobs or anything
else, but acts as an insurance policy for managers unwilling to take the
risk of actually building the businesses they are paid so well to run. That
cash hoard, by the way, works out to nearly $13,000 per taxpaying household.

A corporate tax rate that is too low actually destroys jobs. That's because
a higher tax rate encourages businesses (who don't want to pay taxes) to
keep the profits in the business and reinvest, rather than pull them out as
profits and have to pay high taxes.

The 2004 American Jobs Creation Act, which passed with bipartisan support,
allowed more than 800 companies to bring profits that were untaxed but
overseas back to the United States. Instead of paying the usual 35 percent
tax, the companies paid just 5.25 percent.

The companies said bringing the money home-"repatriating" it, they called
it-would mean lots of jobs. Sen. John Ensign, the Nevada Republican, put the
figure at 660,000 new jobs.

Pfizer, the drug company, was the biggest beneficiary. It brought home $37
billion, saving $11 billion in taxes. Almost immediately it started firing
people. Since the law took effect, Pfizer has let 40,000 workers go. In all,
it appears that at least 100,000 jobs were destroyed.

Now Congressional Republicans and some Democrats are gearing up again to
pass another tax holiday, promoting a new Jobs Creation Act. It would affect
10 times as much money as the 2004 law.

8. Republicans like taxes too.

President Reagan signed into law 11 tax increases, targeted at people down
the income ladder. His administration and the Washington press corps called
the increases "revenue enhancers." Reagan raised Social Security taxes so
high that by the end of 2008, the government had collected more than $2
trillion in surplus tax.

George W. Bush signed a tax increase, too, in 2006, despite his written
ironclad pledge never to raise taxes on anyone. It raised taxes on teenagers
by requiring kids up to age 17, who earned money, to pay taxes at their
parents' tax rate, which would almost always be higher than the rate they
would otherwise pay. It was a story that ran buried inside The New York
Times one Sunday, but nowhere else.

In fact, thanks to Republicans, one in three Americans will pay higher taxes
this year than they did last year.

First, some history. In 2009, President Obama pushed his own tax cut-for the
working class. He persuaded Congress to enact the Making Work Pay Tax
Credit. Over the two years 2009 and 2010, it saved single workers up to $800
and married heterosexual couples up to $1,600, even if only one spouse
worked. The top 5 percent or so of taxpayers were denied this tax break.

The Obama administration called it "the biggest middle-class tax cut" ever.
Yet last December the Republicans, poised to regain control of the House of
Representatives, killed Obama's Making Work Pay Credit while extending the
Bush tax cuts for two more years-a policy Obama agreed to.

By doing so, Congressional Republican leaders increased taxes on a third of
Americans, virtually all of them the working poor, this year.

As a result, of the 155 million households in the tax system, 51 million
will pay an average of $129 more this year. That is $6.6 billion in higher
taxes for the working poor, the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center estimated.

In addition, the Republicans changed the rate of workers' FICA
contributions, which finances half of Social Security. The result:

If you are single and make less than $20,000, or married and less than
$40,000, you lose under this plan. But the top 5 percent, people who make
more than $106,800, will save $2,136 ($4,272 for two-career couples).


9. Other countries do it better.

We measure our economic progress, and our elected leaders debate tax policy,
in terms of a crude measure known as gross domestic product. The way the
official statistics are put together, each dollar spent buying solar energy
equipment counts the same as each dollar spent investigating murders.

We do not give any measure of value to time spent rearing children or
growing our own vegetables or to time off for leisure and community service.

And we do not measure the economic damage done by shocks, such as losing a
job, which means not only loss of income and depletion of savings, but loss
of health insurance, which a Harvard Medical School study found results in
45,000 unnecessary deaths each year.

Compare this to Germany, one of many countries with a smarter tax system and
smarter spending policies.

Germans work less, make more per hour and get much better parental leave
than Americans, many of whom get no fringe benefits such as health care,
pensions or even a retirement savings plan. By many measures the vast
majority live better in Germany than in America.

To achieve this, unmarried Germans on average pay 52 percent of their income
in taxes. Americans average 30 percent, according to the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development.

At first blush the German tax burden seems horrendous. But in Germany (as
well as in Britain, France, Scandinavia, Canada, Australia and Japan),
tax-supported institutions provide many of the things Americans pay for with
after-tax dollars. Buying wholesale rather than retail saves money.

A proper comparison would take the 30 percent average tax on American
workers and add their out-of-pocket spending on health care, college tuition
and fees for services, and compare that with taxes that the average German
pays. Add it all up and the combination of tax and personal spending is
roughly equal in both countries, but with a large risk of catastrophic loss
in America, and a tiny risk in Germany.

Americans take on $85 billion of debt each year for higher education, while
college is financed by taxes in Germany and tuition is cheap to free in
other modern countries. While soaring medical costs are a key reason that
since 1980 bankruptcy in America has increased 15 times faster than
population growth, no one in Germany or the rest of the modern world goes
broke because of accident or illness. And child poverty in America is the
highest among modern countries-almost twice the rate in Germany, which is
close to the average of modern countries.

On the corporate tax side, the Germans encourage reinvestment at home and
the outsourcing of low-value work, like auto assembly, and German rules
tightly control accounting so that profits earned at home cannot be made to
appear as profits earned in tax havens.

Adopting the German system is not the answer for America. But crafting a tax
system that benefits the vast majority, reduces risks, provides universal
health care and focuses on diplomacy rather than militarism abroad (and at
home) would be a lot smarter than what we have now.

Here is a question to ask yourself: We started down this road with Reagan's
election in 1980 and upped the ante in this century with George W. Bush.

How long does it take to conclude that a policy has failed to fulfill its
promises? And as you think of that, keep in mind George Washington. When he
fell ill his doctors followed the common wisdom of the era. They cut him and
bled him to remove bad blood. As Washington's condition grew worse, they
bled him more. And like the mantra of tax cuts for the rich, they kept
applying the same treatment until they killed him.

Luckily we don't bleed the sick anymore, but we are bleeding our government
to death.
P. Rajah
2011-06-05 18:40:50 UTC
Permalink
Excellent job putting together all the relevant facts!
Post by Sid9
Our taxes are very low when compared to other industrialized nations.
That we are overtaxed is a lie put forward by Republicans.
http://wweek.com/portland/article-17350-9_things_the_rich_dont_want_you_to_know_about_taxes.html
1. Poor Americans do pay taxes.
Gretchen Carlson, the Fox News host, said last year "47 percent of Americans
don't pay any taxes." John McCain and Sarah Palin both said similar things
during the 2008 campaign about the bottom half of Americans.
Ari Fleischer, the former Bush White House spokesman, once said "50 percent
of the country gets benefits without paying for them."
Actually, they pay lots of taxes-just not lots of federal income taxes.
Data from the Tax Foundation show that in 2008, the average income for the
bottom half of taxpayers was $15,300.
This year the first $9,350 of income is exempt from taxes for singles and
$18,700 for married couples, just slightly more than in 2008. That means
millions of the poor do not make enough to owe income taxes.
But they still pay plenty of other taxes, including federal payroll taxes.
Between gas taxes, sales taxes, utility taxes and other taxes, no one lives
tax-free in America.
When it comes to state and local taxes, the poor bear a heavier burden than
the rich in every state except Vermont, the Institute on Taxation and
Economic Policy calculated from official data. In Alabama, for example, the
burden on the poor is more than twice that of the top 1 percent. The
one-fifth of Alabama families making less than $13,000 pay almost 11 percent
of their income in state and local taxes, compared with less than 4 percent
for those who make $229,000 or more.
2. The wealthiest Americans don't carry the burden.
This is one of those oft-used canards. Sen. Rand Paul, the tea party
favorite from Kentucky, told David Letterman recently that "the wealthy do
pay most of the taxes in this country."
The Internet is awash with statements that the top 1 percent pays, depending
on the year, 38 percent or more than 40 percent of taxes.
It's true that the top 1 percent of wage earners paid 38 percent of the
federal income taxes in 2008 (the most recent year for which data is
available). But people forget that the income tax is less than half of
federal taxes and only one-fifth of taxes at all levels of government.
Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance taxes (known as payroll
taxes) are paid mostly by the bottom 90 percent of wage earners. That's
because, once you reach $106,800 of income, you pay no more for Social
Security, though the much smaller Medicare tax applies to all wages. Warren
Buffett pays the exact same amount of Social Security taxes as someone who
earns $106,800.
3. In fact, the wealthy are paying less taxes.
The Internal Revenue Service issues an annual report on the 400 highest
income-tax payers. In 1961, there were 398 taxpayers who made $1 million or
more, so I compared their income tax burdens from that year to 2007.
Despite skyrocketing incomes, the federal tax burden on the richest 400 has
been slashed, thanks to a variety of loopholes, allowable deductions and
other tools. The actual share of their income paid in taxes, according to
the IRS, is 16.6 percent. Adding payroll taxes barely nudges that number.
Compare that to the vast majority of Americans, whose share of their income
going to federal taxes increased from 13.1 percent in 1961 to 22.5 percent
in 2007.
(By the way, during seven of the eight George W. Bush years, the IRS report
on the top 400 taxpayers was labeled a state secret, a policy that the Obama
administration overturned almost instantly after his inauguration.)
4. Many of the very richest pay no current income taxes at all.
John Paulson, the most successful hedge-fund manager of all, bet against the
mortgage market one year and then bet with Glenn Beck in the gold market the
next. Paulson made himself $9 billion in fees in just two years. His current
tax bill on that $9 billion? Zero.
Congress lets hedge-fund managers earn all they can now and pay their taxes
years from now.
In 2007, Congress debated whether hedge-fund managers should pay the top tax
rate that applies to wages, bonuses and other compensation for their labors,
which is 35 percent. That tax rate starts at about $300,000 of taxable
income-not even pocket change to Paulson, but almost 12 years of gross pay
to the median-wage worker.
The Republicans and a key Democrat, Sen.Charles Schumer of New York, fought
to keep the tax rate on hedge-fund managers at 15 percent, arguing that the
profits from hedge funds should be considered capital gains, not ordinary
income, which got a lot of attention in the news.
What the news media missed is that hedge-fund managers don't even pay 15
percent. At least, not currently. So long as they leave their money, known
as "carried interest," in the hedge fund, their taxes are deferred. They
only pay taxes when they cash out, which could be decades from now for
younger managers. How do these hedge-fund managers get money in the
meantime? By borrowing against the carried interest, often at absurdly low
rates-currently about 2 percent.
Lots of other people live tax-free, too. I have Donald Trump's tax records
for four years early in his career. He paid no taxes for two of those years.
Big real-estate investors enjoy tax-free living under a 1993 law President
Clinton signed. It lets "professional" real-estate investors use paper
losses like depreciation on their buildings against any cash income, even if
they end up with negative incomes like Trump.
Frank and Jamie McCourt, who own the Los Angeles Dodgers, have not paid any
income taxes since at least 2004, their divorce case revealed. Yet they
spent $45 million one year alone. How? They just borrowed against Dodger
ticket revenue and other assets. To the IRS, they look like paupers.
In Wisconsin, Terrence Wall, who unsuccessfully sought the Republican
nomination for U.S. Senate in 2010, paid no income taxes on as much as $14
million of recent income, his disclosure forms showed. Asked about his
Everyone should pay less.
5. And (surprise!) since Reagan, only the wealthy have gained significant
income.
The Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute and similar conservative
marketing organizations tell us relentlessly that lower tax rates will make
us all better off.
"When tax rates are reduced, the economy's growth rate improves and living
standards increase," according to Daniel J. Mitchell, an economist at
Heritage until he joined Cato. He says that supply-side economics is "the
simple notion that lower tax rates will boost work, saving, investment and
entrepreneurship."
When Reagan was elected president, the top marginal tax rate (the tax rate
paid on the last dollar of income earned) was 70 percent. He cut it to 50
percent and then 28 percent starting in 1987. It was raised by George H.W.
Bush and Clinton, and then cut by George W. Bush. The top rate is now 35
percent.
Since 1980, when Reagan won the presidency promising prosperity through tax
cuts, the average income of the vast majority-the bottom 90 percent of
Americans-has increased a meager $303, or 1 percent. Put another way, for
each dollar people in the vast majority made in 1980, in 2008 their income
was up to $1.01.
Those at the top did better. The top 1 percent's average income more than
doubled to $1.1 million, according to an analysis of tax data by economists
Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez. The really rich, the top one-tenth of 1
percent, each enjoyed almost $4 in 2008 for each dollar in 1980.
The top 300,000 Americans now enjoy almost as much income as the bottom 150
million, the data show.
6. When it comes to corporations, the story is much the same-less taxes.
Corporate profits in 2008, the latest year for which data are available,
were $1,830 billion, up almost 12 percent from $1,638.7 billion in 2000.
Yet, even though corporate tax rates have not been cut, corporate income-tax
revenues fell to $230 billion from $249 billion-an 8 percent decline, thanks
to a number of loopholes. The official 2010 profit numbers are not added up
In 2010 they fell further, to $191 billion-a decline of more than 23 percent
compared with 2000.
7. Some corporate tax breaks destroy jobs.
Despite all the noise that America has the world's second-highest corporate
tax rate, the actual taxes paid by corporations are falling because of the
growing number of loopholes and companies shifting profits to tax havens
like the Cayman Islands.
And right now America's corporations are sitting on close to $2 trillion in
cash that is not being used to build factories, create jobs or anything
else, but acts as an insurance policy for managers unwilling to take the
risk of actually building the businesses they are paid so well to run. That
cash hoard, by the way, works out to nearly $13,000 per taxpaying household.
A corporate tax rate that is too low actually destroys jobs. That's because
a higher tax rate encourages businesses (who don't want to pay taxes) to
keep the profits in the business and reinvest, rather than pull them out as
profits and have to pay high taxes.
The 2004 American Jobs Creation Act, which passed with bipartisan support,
allowed more than 800 companies to bring profits that were untaxed but
overseas back to the United States. Instead of paying the usual 35 percent
tax, the companies paid just 5.25 percent.
The companies said bringing the money home-"repatriating" it, they called
it-would mean lots of jobs. Sen. John Ensign, the Nevada Republican, put the
figure at 660,000 new jobs.
Pfizer, the drug company, was the biggest beneficiary. It brought home $37
billion, saving $11 billion in taxes. Almost immediately it started firing
people. Since the law took effect, Pfizer has let 40,000 workers go. In all,
it appears that at least 100,000 jobs were destroyed.
Now Congressional Republicans and some Democrats are gearing up again to
pass another tax holiday, promoting a new Jobs Creation Act. It would affect
10 times as much money as the 2004 law.
8. Republicans like taxes too.
President Reagan signed into law 11 tax increases, targeted at people down
the income ladder. His administration and the Washington press corps called
the increases "revenue enhancers." Reagan raised Social Security taxes so
high that by the end of 2008, the government had collected more than $2
trillion in surplus tax.
George W. Bush signed a tax increase, too, in 2006, despite his written
ironclad pledge never to raise taxes on anyone. It raised taxes on teenagers
by requiring kids up to age 17, who earned money, to pay taxes at their
parents' tax rate, which would almost always be higher than the rate they
would otherwise pay. It was a story that ran buried inside The New York
Times one Sunday, but nowhere else.
In fact, thanks to Republicans, one in three Americans will pay higher taxes
this year than they did last year.
First, some history. In 2009, President Obama pushed his own tax cut-for the
working class. He persuaded Congress to enact the Making Work Pay Tax
Credit. Over the two years 2009 and 2010, it saved single workers up to $800
and married heterosexual couples up to $1,600, even if only one spouse
worked. The top 5 percent or so of taxpayers were denied this tax break.
The Obama administration called it "the biggest middle-class tax cut" ever.
Yet last December the Republicans, poised to regain control of the House of
Representatives, killed Obama's Making Work Pay Credit while extending the
Bush tax cuts for two more years-a policy Obama agreed to.
By doing so, Congressional Republican leaders increased taxes on a third of
Americans, virtually all of them the working poor, this year.
As a result, of the 155 million households in the tax system, 51 million
will pay an average of $129 more this year. That is $6.6 billion in higher
taxes for the working poor, the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center estimated.
In addition, the Republicans changed the rate of workers' FICA
If you are single and make less than $20,000, or married and less than
$40,000, you lose under this plan. But the top 5 percent, people who make
more than $106,800, will save $2,136 ($4,272 for two-career couples).
9. Other countries do it better.
We measure our economic progress, and our elected leaders debate tax policy,
in terms of a crude measure known as gross domestic product. The way the
official statistics are put together, each dollar spent buying solar energy
equipment counts the same as each dollar spent investigating murders.
We do not give any measure of value to time spent rearing children or
growing our own vegetables or to time off for leisure and community service.
And we do not measure the economic damage done by shocks, such as losing a
job, which means not only loss of income and depletion of savings, but loss
of health insurance, which a Harvard Medical School study found results in
45,000 unnecessary deaths each year.
Compare this to Germany, one of many countries with a smarter tax system and
smarter spending policies.
Germans work less, make more per hour and get much better parental leave
than Americans, many of whom get no fringe benefits such as health care,
pensions or even a retirement savings plan. By many measures the vast
majority live better in Germany than in America.
To achieve this, unmarried Germans on average pay 52 percent of their income
in taxes. Americans average 30 percent, according to the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development.
At first blush the German tax burden seems horrendous. But in Germany (as
well as in Britain, France, Scandinavia, Canada, Australia and Japan),
tax-supported institutions provide many of the things Americans pay for with
after-tax dollars. Buying wholesale rather than retail saves money.
A proper comparison would take the 30 percent average tax on American
workers and add their out-of-pocket spending on health care, college tuition
and fees for services, and compare that with taxes that the average German
pays. Add it all up and the combination of tax and personal spending is
roughly equal in both countries, but with a large risk of catastrophic loss
in America, and a tiny risk in Germany.
Americans take on $85 billion of debt each year for higher education, while
college is financed by taxes in Germany and tuition is cheap to free in
other modern countries. While soaring medical costs are a key reason that
since 1980 bankruptcy in America has increased 15 times faster than
population growth, no one in Germany or the rest of the modern world goes
broke because of accident or illness. And child poverty in America is the
highest among modern countries-almost twice the rate in Germany, which is
close to the average of modern countries.
On the corporate tax side, the Germans encourage reinvestment at home and
the outsourcing of low-value work, like auto assembly, and German rules
tightly control accounting so that profits earned at home cannot be made to
appear as profits earned in tax havens.
Adopting the German system is not the answer for America. But crafting a tax
system that benefits the vast majority, reduces risks, provides universal
health care and focuses on diplomacy rather than militarism abroad (and at
home) would be a lot smarter than what we have now.
Here is a question to ask yourself: We started down this road with Reagan's
election in 1980 and upped the ante in this century with George W. Bush.
How long does it take to conclude that a policy has failed to fulfill its
promises? And as you think of that, keep in mind George Washington. When he
fell ill his doctors followed the common wisdom of the era. They cut him and
bled him to remove bad blood. As Washington's condition grew worse, they
bled him more. And like the mantra of tax cuts for the rich, they kept
applying the same treatment until they killed him.
Luckily we don't bleed the sick anymore, but we are bleeding our government
to death.
--
Astrology: Fraud or Superstition?
http://www.seesharppress.com/astro.html

Ass-troll-ogers/jyotishitheads are the bane of humanity, and must be
cleansed or otherwise purified for the benefit of society.
DMJoshi
2011-06-06 12:32:03 UTC
Permalink
Post by Sid9
Post by DMJoshi
Looks in Obamacare intermediation of Medical Insurance is not done
away with.
If a US Citizen is totally on doles, can he afford to pay insurance?
I believe it is not possible in US either to increase Income Tax on
the rich or increase tax on petrol to pay for healthcare for the poor.
Our taxes are very low when compared to other industrialized nations.
That we are overtaxed is a lie put forward by Republicans.
http://wweek.com/portland/article-17350-9_things_the_rich_dont_want_y...
1. Poor Americans do pay taxes.
Gretchen Carlson, the Fox News host, said last year "47 percent of Americans
don't pay any taxes." John McCain and Sarah Palin both said similar things
during the 2008 campaign about the bottom half of Americans.
Ari Fleischer, the former Bush White House spokesman, once said "50 percent
of the country gets benefits without paying for them."
Actually, they pay lots of taxes-just not lots of federal income taxes.
Data from the Tax Foundation show that in 2008, the average income for the
bottom half of taxpayers was $15,300.
This year the first $9,350 of income is exempt from taxes for singles and
$18,700 for married couples, just slightly more than in 2008. That means
millions of the poor do not make enough to owe income taxes.
But they still pay plenty of other taxes, including federal payroll taxes.
Between gas taxes, sales taxes, utility taxes and other taxes, no one lives
tax-free in America.
When it comes to state and local taxes, the poor bear a heavier burden than
the rich in every state except Vermont, the Institute on Taxation and
Economic Policy calculated from official data. In Alabama, for example, the
burden on the poor is more than twice that of the top 1 percent. The
one-fifth of Alabama families making less than $13,000 pay almost 11 percent
of their income in state and local taxes, compared with less than 4 percent
for those who make $229,000 or more.
2. The wealthiest Americans don't carry the burden.
This is one of those oft-used canards. Sen. Rand Paul, the tea party
favorite from Kentucky, told David Letterman recently that "the wealthy do
pay most of the taxes in this country."
The Internet is awash with statements that the top 1 percent pays, depending
on the year, 38 percent or more than 40 percent of taxes.
It's true that the top 1 percent of wage earners paid 38 percent of the
federal income taxes in 2008 (the most recent year for which data is
available). But people forget that the income tax is less than half of
federal taxes and only one-fifth of taxes at all levels of government.
Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance taxes (known as payroll
taxes) are paid mostly by the bottom 90 percent of wage earners.  That's
because, once you reach $106,800 of income, you pay no more for Social
Security, though the much smaller Medicare tax applies to all wages. Warren
Buffett pays the exact same amount of Social Security taxes as someone who
earns $106,800.
3. In fact, the wealthy are paying less taxes.
The Internal Revenue Service issues an annual report on the 400 highest
income-tax payers. In 1961, there were 398 taxpayers who made $1 million or
more, so I compared their income tax burdens from that year to 2007.
Despite skyrocketing incomes, the federal tax burden on the richest 400 has
been slashed, thanks to a variety of loopholes, allowable deductions and
other tools. The actual share of their income paid in taxes, according to
the IRS, is 16.6 percent. Adding payroll taxes barely nudges that number.
Compare that to the vast majority of Americans, whose share of their income
going to federal taxes increased from 13.1 percent in 1961 to 22.5 percent
in 2007.
(By the way, during seven of the eight George W. Bush years, the IRS report
on the top 400 taxpayers was labeled a state secret, a policy that the Obama
administration overturned almost instantly after his inauguration.)
4. Many of the very richest pay no current income taxes at all.
John Paulson, the most successful hedge-fund manager of all, bet against the
mortgage market one year and then bet with Glenn Beck in the gold market the
next. Paulson made himself $9 billion in fees in just two years. His current
tax bill on that $9 billion? Zero.
Congress lets hedge-fund managers earn all they can now and pay their taxes
years from now.
In 2007, Congress debated whether hedge-fund managers should pay the top tax
rate that applies to wages, bonuses and other compensation for their labors,
which is 35 percent. That tax rate starts at about $300,000 of taxable
income-not even pocket change to Paulson, but almost 12 years of gross pay
to the median-wage worker.
The Republicans and a key Democrat, Sen.Charles Schumer of New York, fought
to keep the tax rate on hedge-fund managers at 15 percent, arguing that the
profits from hedge funds should be considered capital gains, not ordinary
income, which got a lot of attention in the news.
What the news media missed is that hedge-fund managers don't even pay 15
percent. At least, not currently. So long as they leave their money, known
as "carried interest," in the hedge fund, their taxes are deferred. They
only pay taxes when they cash out, which could be decades from now for
younger managers. How do these hedge-fund managers get money in the
meantime? By borrowing against the carried interest, often at absurdly low
rates-currently about 2 percent.
Lots of other people live tax-free, too. I have Donald Trump's tax records
for four years early in his career. He paid no taxes for two of those years.
Big real-estate investors enjoy tax-free living under a 1993 law President
Clinton signed. It lets "professional" real-estate investors use paper
losses like depreciation on their buildings against any cash income, even if
they end up with negative incomes like Trump.
Frank and Jamie McCourt, who own the Los Angeles Dodgers, have not paid any
income taxes since at least 2004, their divorce case revealed. Yet they
spent $45 million one year alone. How? They just borrowed against Dodger
ticket revenue and other assets. To the IRS, they look like paupers.
In Wisconsin, Terrence Wall, who unsuccessfully sought the Republican
nomination for U.S. Senate in 2010, paid no income taxes on as much as $14
million of recent income, his disclosure forms showed. Asked about his
Everyone should pay less.
5. And (surprise!) since Reagan, only the wealthy have gained significant
income.
The Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute and similar conservative
marketing organizations tell us relentlessly that lower tax rates will make
us all better off.
"When tax rates are reduced, the economy's growth rate improves and living
standards increase," according to Daniel J. Mitchell, an economist at
Heritage until he joined Cato. He says that supply-side economics is "the
simple notion that lower tax rates will boost work, saving, investment and
entrepreneurship."
When Reagan was elected president, the top marginal tax rate (the tax rate
paid on the last dollar of income earned) was 70 percent. He cut it to 50
percent and then 28 percent starting in 1987. It was raised by George H.W.
Bush and Clinton, and then cut by George W. Bush. The top rate is now 35
percent.
Since 1980, when Reagan won the presidency promising prosperity through tax
cuts, the average income of the vast majority-the bottom 90 percent of
Americans-has increased a meager $303, or 1 percent. Put another way, for
each dollar people in the vast majority made in 1980, in 2008 their income
was up to $1.01.
Those at the top did better. The top 1 percent's average income more than
doubled to $1.1 million, according to an analysis of tax data by economists
Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez. The really rich, the top one-tenth of 1
percent, each enjoyed almost $4 in 2008 for each dollar in 1980.
The top 300,000 Americans now enjoy almost as much income as the bottom 150
million, the data show.
6. When it comes to corporations, the story is much the same-less taxes.
Corporate profits in 2008, the latest year for which data are available,
were $1,830 billion, up almost 12 percent from $1,638.7 billion in 2000.
Yet, even though corporate tax rates have not been cut, corporate income-tax
revenues fell to $230 billion from $249 billion-an 8 percent decline, thanks
to a number of loopholes. The official 2010 profit numbers are not added up
In 2010 they fell further, to $191 billion-a decline of more than 23 percent
compared with 2000.
7. Some corporate tax breaks destroy jobs.
Despite all the noise that America has the world's second-highest corporate
tax rate, the actual taxes paid by corporations are falling because of the
growing number of loopholes and companies shifting profits to tax havens
like the Cayman Islands.
And right now America's corporations are sitting on close to $2 trillion in
cash that is not being used to build factories, create jobs or anything
else, but acts as an insurance policy for managers unwilling to take the
risk of actually building the businesses they are paid so well to run. That
cash hoard, by the way, works out to nearly $13,000 per taxpaying household.
A corporate tax rate that is too low actually destroys jobs. That's because
a higher tax rate encourages businesses (who don't want to pay taxes) to
keep the profits in the business and reinvest, rather than pull them out as
profits and have to pay high taxes.
The 2004 American Jobs Creation Act, which passed with bipartisan support,
allowed more than 800 companies to bring profits that were untaxed but
overseas back to the United States. Instead of paying the usual 35 percent
tax, the companies paid just 5.25 percent.
The companies said bringing the money home-"repatriating" it, they called
it-would mean lots of jobs. Sen. John Ensign, the Nevada Republican, put the
figure at 660,000 new jobs.
Pfizer, the drug company, was the biggest beneficiary. It brought home $37
billion, saving $11 billion in taxes. Almost immediately it started firing
people. Since the law took effect, Pfizer has let 40,000 workers go. In all,
it appears that at least 100,000 jobs were destroyed.
Now Congressional Republicans and some Democrats are gearing up again to
pass another tax holiday, promoting a new Jobs Creation Act. It would affect
10 times as much money as the 2004 law.
8. Republicans like taxes too.
President Reagan signed into law 11 tax increases, targeted at people down
the income ladder. His administration and the Washington press corps called
the increases "revenue enhancers."  Reagan raised Social Security taxes so
high that by the end of 2008, the government had collected more than $2
trillion in surplus tax.
George W. Bush signed a tax increase, too, in 2006, despite his written
ironclad pledge never to raise taxes on anyone. It raised taxes on teenagers
by requiring kids up to age 17, who earned money, to pay taxes at their
parents' tax rate, which would almost always be higher than the rate they
would otherwise pay. It was a story that ran buried inside The New York
Times one Sunday, but nowhere else.
In fact, thanks to Republicans, one in three Americans will pay higher taxes
this year than they did last year.
First, some history. In 2009, President Obama pushed his own tax cut-for the
working class. He persuaded Congress to enact the Making Work Pay Tax
Credit. Over the two years 2009 and 2010, it saved single workers up to $800
and married heterosexual couples up to $1,600, even if only one spouse
worked. The top 5 percent or so of taxpayers were denied this tax break.
The Obama administration called it "the biggest middle-class tax cut" ever.
Yet last December the Republicans, poised to regain control of the House of
Representatives, killed Obama's Making Work Pay Credit while extending the
Bush tax cuts for two more years-a policy Obama agreed to.
By doing so, Congressional Republican leaders increased taxes on a third of
Americans, virtually all of them the working poor, this year.
As a result, of the 155 million households in the tax system, 51 million
will pay an average of $129 more this year. That is $6.6 billion in higher
taxes for the working poor, the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center estimated.
In addition, the Republicans changed the rate of workers' FICA
If you are single and make less than $20,000, or married and less than
$40,000, you lose under this plan. But the top 5 percent, people who make
more than $106,800, will save $2,136 ($4,272 for two-career couples).
9. Other countries do it better.
We measure our economic progress, and our elected leaders debate tax policy,
in terms of a crude measure known as gross domestic product. The way the
official statistics are put together, each dollar spent buying solar energy
equipment counts the same as each dollar spent investigating murders.
We do not give any measure of value to time spent rearing children or
growing our own vegetables or to time off for leisure and community service.
And we do not measure the economic damage done by shocks, such as losing a
job, which means not only loss of income and depletion of savings, but loss
of health insurance, which a Harvard Medical School study found results in
45,000 unnecessary deaths each year.
Compare this to Germany, one of many countries with a smarter tax system and
smarter spending policies.
Germans work less, make more per hour and get much better parental leave
than Americans, many of whom get no fringe benefits such as health care,
pensions or even a retirement savings plan. By many measures the vast
majority live better in Germany than in America.
To achieve this, unmarried Germans on average pay 52 percent of their income
in taxes. Americans average 30 percent, according to the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development.
At first blush the German tax burden seems horrendous. But in Germany (as
well as in Britain, France, Scandinavia, Canada, Australia and Japan),
tax-supported institutions provide many of the things Americans pay for with
after-tax dollars. Buying wholesale rather than retail saves money.
A proper comparison would take the 30 percent average tax on American
workers and add their out-of-pocket spending on health care, college tuition
and fees for services, and compare that with taxes that the average German
pays. Add it all up and the combination of tax and personal spending is
roughly equal in both countries, but with a large risk of catastrophic loss
in America, and a tiny risk in Germany.
Americans take on $85 billion of debt each year for higher education, while
college is financed by taxes in Germany and tuition is cheap to free in
other modern countries. While soaring medical costs are a key reason that
since 1980 bankruptcy in America has increased 15 times faster than
population growth, no one in Germany or the rest of the modern world goes
broke because of accident or illness. And child poverty in America is the
highest among modern countries-almost twice the rate in Germany, which is
close to the average of modern countries.
On the corporate tax side, the Germans encourage reinvestment at home and
the outsourcing of low-value work, like auto assembly, and German rules
tightly control accounting so that profits earned at home cannot be made to
appear as profits earned in tax havens.
Adopting the German system is not the answer for America. But crafting a tax
system that benefits the vast majority, reduces risks, provides universal
health care and focuses on diplomacy rather than militarism abroad (and at
home) would be a lot smarter than what we have now.
Here is a question to ask yourself: We started down this road with Reagan's
election in 1980 and upped the ante in this century with George W. Bush.
How long does it take to conclude that a policy has failed to fulfill its
promises? And as you think of that, keep in mind George Washington. When he
fell ill his doctors followed the common wisdom of the era. They cut him and
bled him to remove bad blood. As Washington's condition grew worse, they
bled him more. And like the mantra of tax cuts for the rich, they kept
applying the same treatment until they killed him.
Luckily we don't bleed the sick anymore, but we are bleeding our government
to death.
Thank you.
Jerry Okamura
2011-06-05 17:31:18 UTC
Permalink
Post by P. Rajah
Post by Jerry Okamura
Is the question which system is better or worse, or should the question
be, are any of these systems sustainable?
security(internal and external), equality under the law(meaning you
shouldn't be punished for simply not being able to afford legal
defense), basic education of its people, and basic healthcare. Is basic
universal healthcare sustainable? It sure is. When you factor in all the
overheads of the insurance companies, their agents, their profits, the
cost of treating the uninsured, the economic cost of untreated sick
people and so on, it becomes a no-brainer. It is actually cheaper,
overall, to provide universal basic healthcare, and people would overall
be healthier because they would be diagnosed and treated earlier.
Except, of course, if you subscribe to the theory that it is criminal
not to allow corporations to make profits on anything and everything.
Okay, let us address this issues one point at a time, shall we? Legal
defense...you need an attorney, when the government charges you with a crime
which a court of law has to adjudicate. But let us look at what happens to
someone who the government "suspects" is in this country illegally. Do,
they all get a chance to prove their innocence in a court of law, or does
the government simply assume they are guilty and deports them out of the
country? Why is basic education the responsibility of the government and
not the responsibility of the parent? What good is having free healthcare,
if the payer cannot afford to continue paying for that healthcare? Why
would you want to depend on someone else to pay for your healthcare, when by
doing so, you also gave them the right not to pay for your healthcare?
How
can a healthcare system be sustainable with a medical inflation rate running
at around 8% per year? Why is the solution having health insurance? Why
isn't the solution figuring out a way for people to pay for the own
healthcare needs? And as far as being cheaper is concerned, it is true that
a single payer system can minimize the fixed cost element of the system, but
even if you had zero fixed cost, you still have a cost problem, because the
cost problem is not in the fixed cost area of the system, it is in a
variable cost part of the system. And unless you address the variable cost
part of the problem, you have not solved the cost problem.
Btw, the article that Jay the jyotishit linked to, the "Obamacare"
article, seems to say let's do away with insurers altogether, and go
directly with a patient-doctor relationship. Disregarding the fact that
most doctors do not want to get tied down chasing payments from each
patient or judging the patient's creditworthiness prior to treatment,
the article itself is not anti "Obamacare", but anti insurance company,
and thus also anti "Bushcare" or whatever else one would like to call
it. Quite a pointless article, imo.
Yes, ultimately if you want the best healthcare system in the world, then
you want the user of the system to be the one making the rationing decision,
and not someone other than the person who uses the system to make that
rationing decision for them. It is the most effective way man has devised
to get the most bang for the buck. That is why in this country, food is
affordable, because each person decides what they can afford to eat. I
might add, the other reason we do have inexpensive food, is exactly because
the government allows businesses to be "greedy" as some would call it.
Their selfish needs to make money, means that they make more money "if" they
can sell what they want to sell, at the lowest price possible.
Looks in Obamacare intermediation of Medical Insurance is not done
away with.
If a US Citizen is totally on doles, can he afford to pay insurance?
I believe it is not possible in US either to increase Income Tax on
the rich or increase tax on petrol to pay for healthcare for the poor.

There has always been poor people in this country. Perhaps you should ask
yourself, how did the poor get their healthcare needs taken care of before
the advent of the third party payment system for healthcare?
DMJoshi
2011-06-06 12:37:26 UTC
Permalink
"DMJoshi"  wrote in message
Looks in Obamacare intermediation of Medical Insurance is not done
away with.
If a US Citizen is totally on doles, can he afford to pay insurance?
I believe it is not possible in US either to increase Income Tax on
the rich or increase tax on petrol to pay for healthcare for the poor.
There has always been poor people in this country.  Perhaps you should ask
yourself, how did the poor get their healthcare needs taken care of before
the advent of the third party payment system for healthcare?
I am curious to know if Obama's healthcare bill has made it any easy
for poor of America to access healthcare.
Sid9
2011-06-06 14:00:40 UTC
Permalink
Post by DMJoshi
"DMJoshi" wrote in message
Looks in Obamacare intermediation of Medical Insurance is not done
away with.
If a US Citizen is totally on doles, can he afford to pay insurance?
I believe it is not possible in US either to increase Income Tax on
the rich or increase tax on petrol to pay for healthcare for the poor.
There has always been poor people in this country. Perhaps you should ask
yourself, how did the poor get their healthcare needs taken care of before
the advent of the third party payment system for healthcare?
I am curious to know if Obama's healthcare bill has made it any easy
for poor of America to access healthcare.
Yes...try this and other articles:

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2011/01/03/new-healthcare-reform-provisions-go-into-effect
Jerry Okamura
2011-06-06 16:43:28 UTC
Permalink
Can you prove that the program is sustainable? Can anyone prove the program
is sustainable? Can anyone prove the republican alternative is a whole lot
better solution? How can any solution that does not reduce the influence of
medical inflation on rising costs, be sustainable or a solution that will
work in the long run?
Post by DMJoshi
"DMJoshi" wrote in message
Looks in Obamacare intermediation of Medical Insurance is not done
away with.
If a US Citizen is totally on doles, can he afford to pay insurance?
I believe it is not possible in US either to increase Income Tax on
the rich or increase tax on petrol to pay for healthcare for the poor.
There has always been poor people in this country. Perhaps you should ask
yourself, how did the poor get their healthcare needs taken care of before
the advent of the third party payment system for healthcare?
I am curious to know if Obama's healthcare bill has made it any easy
for poor of America to access healthcare.
Yes...try this and other articles:

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2011/01/03/new-healthcare-reform-provisions-go-into-effect
DMJoshi
2011-06-07 07:03:06 UTC
Permalink
Post by DMJoshi
I am curious to know if Obama's healthcare bill has made it any easy
for poor of America to access healthcare.
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2011/01/03/new-healthcare-reform-...
Thank you.
Are those active in electing Obama working for making the plan success
before 2012 election?
In India often a good government plan can get made impotent by vested
interests in bureaucracy whose responsibility it is to implement it.
Jerry Okamura
2011-06-06 16:47:32 UTC
Permalink
"DMJoshi" wrote in message
Looks in Obamacare intermediation of Medical Insurance is not done
away with.
If a US Citizen is totally on doles, can he afford to pay insurance?
I believe it is not possible in US either to increase Income Tax on
the rich or increase tax on petrol to pay for healthcare for the poor.
There has always been poor people in this country. Perhaps you should ask
yourself, how did the poor get their healthcare needs taken care of before
the advent of the third party payment system for healthcare?
I am curious to know if Obama's healthcare bill has made it any easy
for poor of America to access healthcare.

I would think that ANY program that pays for our healthcare, helps those who
don't have a whole lot of money. But that is not the issue. The issue is,
is it sustainable, and is it affordable, in the long run? Do the advantages
far outweigh the disadvantages? How can any solution be sustainable, or
affordable, if you do not reduce the influence of medical inflation on
rising costs?
DMJoshi
2011-06-07 06:10:10 UTC
Permalink
Post by DMJoshi
"DMJoshi"  wrote in message
Looks in Obamacare intermediation of Medical Insurance is not done
away with.
If a US Citizen is totally on doles, can he afford to pay insurance?
I believe it is not possible in US either to increase Income Tax on
the rich or increase tax on petrol to pay for healthcare for the poor.
There has always been poor people in this country.  Perhaps you should ask
yourself, how did the poor get their healthcare needs taken care of before
the advent of the third party payment system for healthcare?
I am curious to know if Obama's healthcare bill has made it any easy
for poor of America to access healthcare.
I would think that ANY program that pays for our healthcare, helps those who
don't have a whole lot of money.  
Does it mean that before Obama's healthcare came into effect USA had a
program that took care of health of those Americans who did not have
whole lot of money?
Post by DMJoshi
But that is not the issue.  The issue is,
is it sustainable, and is it affordable, in the long run?  Do the advantages
far outweigh the disadvantages?  How can any solution be sustainable, or
affordable, if you do not reduce the influence of medical inflation on
rising costs?
P. Rajah
2011-06-05 18:40:56 UTC
Permalink
Post by Jerry Okamura
Is the question which system is better or worse, or should the question
be, are any of these systems sustainable?
security(internal and external), equality under the law(meaning you
shouldn't be punished for simply not being able to afford legal
defense), basic education of its people, and basic healthcare. Is basic
universal healthcare sustainable? It sure is. When you factor in all the
overheads of the insurance companies, their agents, their profits, the
cost of treating the uninsured, the economic cost of untreated sick
people and so on, it becomes a no-brainer. It is actually cheaper,
overall, to provide universal basic healthcare, and people would overall
be healthier because they would be diagnosed and treated earlier.
Except, of course, if you subscribe to the theory that it is criminal
not to allow corporations to make profits on anything and everything.
Okay, let us address this issues one point at a time, shall we? Legal
defense...you need an attorney, when the government charges you with a
crime which a court of law has to adjudicate. But let us look at what
happens to someone who the government "suspects" is in this country
illegally. Do, they all get a chance to prove their innocence in a court
of law, or does the government simply assume they are guilty and deports
them out of the country?
Anyone who is here legally has documentation to prove it. If the
government "suspects" that you are here illegally, you would be able to
provide documentation to show that you are not. And yes, there is a
deportation procedure for those not caught in the actual act of
illegally crossing the border, so they do get their day in court.

Now, while you said "let us look at what happens to someone who the
government 'suspects' is in this country illegally", all you've done is
asked a question, and not "looked" at it at all. What's up with that?
Why is basic education the responsibility of
the government and not the responsibility of the parent?
Because we live in a society, and as a society we want to improve. If a
parent is making $10 an hour, there is no way for them to afford to send
a child to school for $18000 a year, which is what the average is in my
area. If your parents/grandparents/great-grandparents had to pay
completely out of pocket for the basic education of their children, the
odds are that you would not be very literate today.

I had a debate with someone a while back over the issue of school taxes.
This man claimed that since his son had graduated from high school, he
shouldn't have to pay school taxes anymore. It took a while to make him
understand that *while* his son was in school, it was other people with
no children in school paying school taxes who subsidized his
costs(rather like insurance). If he had to pay in full, he would very
likely not have been able to afford it for the one son, let alone two or
more. Now it is his turn to subsidize the cost for others.
What good is
having free healthcare, if the payer cannot afford to continue paying
for that healthcare? Why would you want to depend on someone else to pay
for your healthcare, when by doing so, you also gave them the right not
to pay for your healthcare? How can a healthcare system be sustainable
with a medical inflation rate running at around 8% per year? Why is the
solution having health insurance? Why isn't the solution figuring out a
way for people to pay for the own healthcare needs? And as far as being
cheaper is concerned, it is true that a single payer system can minimize
the fixed cost element of the system, but even if you had zero fixed
cost, you still have a cost problem, because the cost problem is not in
the fixed cost area of the system, it is in a variable cost part of the
system. And unless you address the variable cost part of the problem,
you have not solved the cost problem.
There is no such thing as "free" healthcare, which is a canard bandied
about by people opposed to universal healthcare. Universal healthcare
would be paid for by taxes, same as defense, same as the public parks,
public libraries, the National Guard, police, fire departments, schools,
etc.

Now, having raised objections to "free" healthcare _and_ health
insurance, what solution do you have? That people pay for healthcare
according to their means? If someone making $35k a year gets cancer,
that they should just lay down and die? That if the child of a poor
working-class family develops Type-1 diabetes, that the family should
just watch the child die? That families should deliver their babies at
home regardless of risk and complications, just like in a third-world
country?

I refer you to a statement you made a couple of years ago: "What counts
is not the quality of healthcare, but how long you live." I submit that
you are clueless to the fact that the quality of healthcare *affects*
life expectancy. This is why the US is ranked 37th in healthcare
quality(and #1 in healthcare expenditure), and 36th in life expectancy.
Post by Jerry Okamura
Btw, the article that Jay the jyotishit linked to, the "Obamacare"
article, seems to say let's do away with insurers altogether, and go
directly with a patient-doctor relationship. Disregarding the fact that
most doctors do not want to get tied down chasing payments from each
patient or judging the patient's creditworthiness prior to treatment,
the article itself is not anti "Obamacare", but anti insurance company,
and thus also anti "Bushcare" or whatever else one would like to call
it. Quite a pointless article, imo.
Yes, ultimately if you want the best healthcare system in the world,
then you want the user of the system to be the one making the rationing
decision, and not someone other than the person who uses the system to
make that rationing decision for them. It is the most effective way man
has devised to get the most bang for the buck.
Such a simplistic answer that ignores reality. If you can afford to pay
for all your healthcare if and when you need it, fine, go ahead and do
that, and control the "rationing". Nobody says you aren't allowed your
own bills, do so by all means. But the reality is that most people are
not able to meet sudden large expenses, and substantial numbers cannot
meet any major medical expense at all without going into crippling debt.
It's the same reasoning behind auto insurance, which is mandated in most
states, or homeowner's insurance, also mandated nationwide. So, if you
were a family man making under $35k a year(at approximately $16/hr,
which is somehow considered a reasonable wage in these times), would
*you* rather do without health insurance?

Oh yeah, one more thing about health insurance: if you don't have it,
you pay a hell of a lot more than the insurance companies would pay for
the exact same services. As much as 300-400% more. So go ahead, open up
your wallet.
That is why in this
country, food is affordable, because each person decides what they can
afford to eat. I might add, the other reason we do have inexpensive
food, is exactly because the government allows businesses to be "greedy"
as some would call it. Their selfish needs to make money, means that
they make more money "if" they can sell what they want to sell, at the
lowest price possible.
I don't know what you mean by "food is affordable". Either you are
arguing for the sake of arguing, or you are out of touch with reality.
One in six Americans(almost 50 million) is on food stamps, and more who
might qualify are not utilizing them. That's a huge number. People are
buying more and more unhealthy foods, because they are cheaper.

Food, contrary to your simplistic assumptions, is not like healthcare.
One can choose chicken over beef, or eggs over pork, or toast over
cereal. One can choose to forgo meats altogether and go on a vegetarian
diet, or buy chemically preserved crap that is cheaper than fresh food.
To some degree, that has kept food prices down, but business still finds
ways of picking the consumer's wallet without his/her knowledge(see next
paragraph). With healthcare, you don't get to choose a cold over
diabetes, or shingles over cancer. You can't pick and choose the kind of
treatment you should undergo. That is, if the doctor says you need
angioplasty immediately, you can't really say "No, thanks, I'll have a
tooth extracted instead, much cheaper for me."

Oh yeah, about businesses selling food at the lowest price possible,
were you asleep while a 10.5 Oz. bag of chips shrank to 5 Oz. in the
same size bag, while the price(per bag) tripled? Were you asleep when a
16 Oz can of coffee went down to 10.5 Oz while the price(per can)
doubled or more? While candy bars became skinny even as their prices
rose? The price of a half-pint of milk in our office vending machine
went up from 35 cents to $1.25 while milk prices increased less than 50%
during that time. If it weren't for labeling requirements for the dairy
industry, they'd find ways of making you *think* you were getting a
half-pint!

Business has a history of ripping off the consumer even with government
oversight, and outright robbing them without. Check out credit card
rates in Brazil, which are not regulated by the government. Banks get
funds at 16%, and charge their credit card customers- get this!- an
_average_ of 230%! I kid you not! That is a rate that the Mafia
loan-sharks would have been embarrassed to charge.

"The average interest rate on credit cards is 238 percent annually,
while loans from retailers cost 85 percent, and personal loans from
banks 47 percent."
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_21/b4229010792956.htm

Moving on, the USPS was set up as a "revenue neutral" government-run
service. That is, it was not permitted to run for profit. Over the years
and decades, businesses have profited tremendously from this virtually
"free" service, and America as a whole also benefited hugely. Think
about the ability to drop off your check in the mail, getting your
magazine subscription, writing a letter to your cousin across the world,
businesses sending out loads of shopping circulars, for mere pennies,
things your children will likely never see. Until private package
delivery services were allowed to compete for package shipping business
without also having the same mandate as the USPS to service _all_ areas
and to include letters, and until e-mail largely replaced snail-mail.
Suddenly, there is a demand for the USPS to be shut down, disregarding
the obvious issues that would arise for people who are less than
well-off, and/or live in areas which no commercial enterprise would
service*. UPS and Fedex tack on a "Delivery Area Surcharge", which the
USPS does not. If the USPS was allowed to be "greedy", and make and
retain profits over the years, or raise rates without Congressional
debate, it might still be solvent. But businesses and conservatives
weren't complaining about it while they were benefiting from the super
convenience and low cost(and no "Delivery Area Surcharge"), thanks to
ordinary people paying enough with first-class stamps to keep the USPS
in the black(think about all the letters, cards and postcards that
people used to send, billions every month).

*http://tinyurl.com/3e7ezou

I see this pattern repeating everywhere. When conservatives(and
businesses) no longer want/need something, even if they have benefited
from it themselves, they want it eliminated regardless of benefit to
society or to the less fortunate, in the name of profit.

I have no idea where you are coming from, but obviously you haven't
thought anything through before saying it, although I had hoped for a
reasoned debate from you.
--
Astrology: Fraud or Superstition?
http://www.seesharppress.com/astro.html

Ass-troll-ogers/jyotishitheads are the bane of humanity, and must be
cleansed or otherwise purified for the benefit of society.
Jerry Okamura
2011-06-05 19:13:36 UTC
Permalink
Post by Jerry Okamura
Is the question which system is better or worse, or should the question
be, are any of these systems sustainable?
security(internal and external), equality under the law(meaning you
shouldn't be punished for simply not being able to afford legal
defense), basic education of its people, and basic healthcare. Is basic
universal healthcare sustainable? It sure is. When you factor in all the
overheads of the insurance companies, their agents, their profits, the
cost of treating the uninsured, the economic cost of untreated sick
people and so on, it becomes a no-brainer. It is actually cheaper,
overall, to provide universal basic healthcare, and people would overall
be healthier because they would be diagnosed and treated earlier.
Except, of course, if you subscribe to the theory that it is criminal
not to allow corporations to make profits on anything and everything.
Okay, let us address this issues one point at a time, shall we? Legal
defense...you need an attorney, when the government charges you with a
crime which a court of law has to adjudicate. But let us look at what
happens to someone who the government "suspects" is in this country
illegally. Do, they all get a chance to prove their innocence in a court
of law, or does the government simply assume they are guilty and deports
them out of the country?
Anyone who is here legally has documentation to prove it. If the
government "suspects" that you are here illegally, you would be able to
provide documentation to show that you are not. And yes, there is a
deportation procedure for those not caught in the actual act of
illegally crossing the border, so they do get their day in court.

Do you really believe what you just said? Are they charged with a crime,
brought before a judge, allowed to have legal representation, found guilty
by the court, and only then deported?

Now, while you said "let us look at what happens to someone who the
government 'suspects' is in this country illegally", all you've done is
asked a question, and not "looked" at it at all. What's up with that?

I asked a question to get an answer, is the answer to your question.
Why is basic education the responsibility of
the government and not the responsibility of the parent?
Because we live in a society, and as a society we want to improve. If a
parent is making $10 an hour, there is no way for them to afford to send
a child to school for $18000 a year, which is what the average is in my
area. If your parents/grandparents/great-grandparents had to pay
completely out of pocket for the basic education of their children, the
odds are that you would not be very literate today.

Ah, the chicken and egg question. Would the cost of education be as high as
it is today, "if" our government had not decided to provide a "free
education"? Would the cost of public education be higher or lower, if the
teachers did not belong to a union? And when you do what the parents should
do, why should the parent assume any responsibility at all?

I had a debate with someone a while back over the issue of school taxes.
This man claimed that since his son had graduated from high school, he
shouldn't have to pay school taxes anymore. It took a while to make him
understand that *while* his son was in school, it was other people with
no children in school paying school taxes who subsidized his
costs(rather like insurance). If he had to pay in full, he would very
likely not have been able to afford it for the one son, let alone two or
more. Now it is his turn to subsidize the cost for others.

Well, that person was a hypocrite then wasn't he?
What good is
having free healthcare, if the payer cannot afford to continue paying
for that healthcare? Why would you want to depend on someone else to pay
for your healthcare, when by doing so, you also gave them the right not
to pay for your healthcare? How can a healthcare system be sustainable
with a medical inflation rate running at around 8% per year? Why is the
solution having health insurance? Why isn't the solution figuring out a
way for people to pay for the own healthcare needs? And as far as being
cheaper is concerned, it is true that a single payer system can minimize
the fixed cost element of the system, but even if you had zero fixed
cost, you still have a cost problem, because the cost problem is not in
the fixed cost area of the system, it is in a variable cost part of the
system. And unless you address the variable cost part of the problem,
you have not solved the cost problem.
There is no such thing as "free" healthcare, which is a canard bandied
about by people opposed to universal healthcare. Universal healthcare
would be paid for by taxes, same as defense, same as the public parks,
public libraries, the National Guard, police, fire departments, schools,
etc.

But the question is, why should someone else pay for our healthcare? If we
believe that someone else should pay for our healthcare, why shouldn't
someone else pay for our food as well? Food is a whole lot more important
than healthcare, isn't it? And when you depend on someone else to pay for
our healthcare, haven't you also given them the right, not to pay for our
healthcare?

Now, having raised objections to "free" healthcare _and_ health
insurance, what solution do you have? That people pay for healthcare
according to their means? If someone making $35k a year gets cancer,
that they should just lay down and die? That if the child of a poor
working-class family develops Type-1 diabetes, that the family should
just watch the child die? That families should deliver their babies at
home regardless of risk and complications, just like in a third-world
country?

Yes If we want to solve the cost problem, then we have to return the
rationing decision back to where it belongs....to the person who uses that
service. And I have no trouble with the government helping people to do
that. As long as it indeed results in returning the rationing decision back
to where it belongs, to the person who wants or needs the service.

I refer you to a statement you made a couple of years ago: "What counts
is not the quality of healthcare, but how long you live." I submit that
you are clueless to the fact that the quality of healthcare *affects*
life expectancy. This is why the US is ranked 37th in healthcare
quality(and #1 in healthcare expenditure), and 36th in life expectancy.

NO!!! Life expectancy is not dependent solely on the healthcare system you
have. And it does very little good to have the best quality healthcare
system in the world, if you cannot afford the best healthcare system in the
world.
Post by Jerry Okamura
Btw, the article that Jay the jyotishit linked to, the "Obamacare"
article, seems to say let's do away with insurers altogether, and go
directly with a patient-doctor relationship. Disregarding the fact that
most doctors do not want to get tied down chasing payments from each
patient or judging the patient's creditworthiness prior to treatment,
the article itself is not anti "Obamacare", but anti insurance company,
and thus also anti "Bushcare" or whatever else one would like to call
it. Quite a pointless article, imo.
I am all for a system, where the user of the service pays for the service
they use, with obvious exceptions.
Yes, ultimately if you want the best healthcare system in the world,
then you want the user of the system to be the one making the rationing
decision, and not someone other than the person who uses the system to
make that rationing decision for them. It is the most effective way man
has devised to get the most bang for the buck.
Such a simplistic answer that ignores reality. If you can afford to pay
for all your healthcare if and when you need it, fine, go ahead and do
that, and control the "rationing". Nobody says you aren't allowed your
own bills, do so by all means. But the reality is that most people are
not able to meet sudden large expenses, and substantial numbers cannot
meet any major medical expense at all without going into crippling debt.
It's the same reasoning behind auto insurance, which is mandated in most
states, or homeowner's insurance, also mandated nationwide. So, if you
were a family man making under $35k a year(at approximately $16/hr,
which is somehow considered a reasonable wage in these times), would
*you* rather do without health insurance?

Another one of those damn if you do and damned if you don't questions. It
does very little good to have a system, that you cannot afford either. And
you cannot afford a system where total costs are rising too fast. On that
point, Obama was right. We cannot afford to go down the path we are on.
His only problem was, his solution did not solve the cost problem, it make
the cost problem worse.

Oh yeah, one more thing about health insurance: if you don't have it,
you pay a hell of a lot more than the insurance companies would pay for
the exact same services. As much as 300-400% more. So go ahead, open up
your wallet.

Only because the hospitals and doctors, cannot get the money they think they
should get from those who have "free healthcare", so they will charge those
who do not have "free healthcare" more to make the money they need to make.
That is why in this
country, food is affordable, because each person decides what they can
afford to eat. I might add, the other reason we do have inexpensive
food, is exactly because the government allows businesses to be "greedy"
as some would call it. Their selfish needs to make money, means that
they make more money "if" they can sell what they want to sell, at the
lowest price possible.
I don't know what you mean by "food is affordable". Either you are
arguing for the sake of arguing, or you are out of touch with reality.
One in six Americans(almost 50 million) is on food stamps, and more who
might qualify are not utilizing them. That's a huge number. People are
buying more and more unhealthy foods, because they are cheaper.

Food is a whole lot cheaper in America, then it is in other parts of the
world. If you want to make a comparison, then find out how much the same
food we eat today and its costs in countries like Switzerland, then ask
yourself in which country does the poor suffer most?

Food, contrary to your simplistic assumptions, is not like healthcare.
One can choose chicken over beef, or eggs over pork, or toast over
cereal. One can choose to forgo meats altogether and go on a vegetarian
diet, or buy chemically preserved crap that is cheaper than fresh food.
To some degree, that has kept food prices down, but business still finds
ways of picking the consumer's wallet without his/her knowledge(see next
paragraph). With healthcare, you don't get to choose a cold over
diabetes, or shingles over cancer. You can't pick and choose the kind of
treatment you should undergo. That is, if the doctor says you need
angioplasty immediately, you can't really say "No, thanks, I'll have a
tooth extracted instead, much cheaper for me."

Ah, but you can live your whole life without healthcare, EVERYONE will die
without food.

Oh yeah, about businesses selling food at the lowest price possible,
were you asleep while a 10.5 Oz. bag of chips shrank to 5 Oz. in the
same size bag, while the price(per bag) tripled? Were you asleep when a
16 Oz can of coffee went down to 10.5 Oz while the price(per can)
doubled or more? While candy bars became skinny even as their prices
rose? The price of a half-pint of milk in our office vending machine
went up from 35 cents to $1.25 while milk prices increased less than 50%
during that time. If it weren't for labeling requirements for the dairy
industry, they'd find ways of making you *think* you were getting a
half-pint!

Wrong question. Is the food more or less expensive in the US, then it is in
other parts of the world? And when compared to the disposable income in
each country, which country has the least expensive food?

Business has a history of ripping off the consumer even with government
oversight, and outright robbing them without. Check out credit card
rates in Brazil, which are not regulated by the government. Banks get
funds at 16%, and charge their credit card customers- get this!- an
_average_ of 230%! I kid you not! That is a rate that the Mafia
loan-sharks would have been embarrassed to charge.

Business cannot exist, without customers. If the customers believe they are
being ripped off, and continue to buy the products that the business sells,
they are fools.

"The average interest rate on credit cards is 238 percent annually,
while loans from retailers cost 85 percent, and personal loans from
banks 47 percent."
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_21/b4229010792956.htm

Solution: Don't use credit cards? Are we "forced" to use them? Or do we
use them because we want to use them?

Moving on, the USPS was set up as a "revenue neutral" government-run
service. That is, it was not permitted to run for profit. Over the years
and decades, businesses have profited tremendously from this virtually
"free" service, and America as a whole also benefited hugely. Think
about the ability to drop off your check in the mail, getting your
magazine subscription, writing a letter to your cousin across the world,
businesses sending out loads of shopping circulars, for mere pennies,
things your children will likely never see. Until private package
delivery services were allowed to compete for package shipping business
without also having the same mandate as the USPS to service _all_ areas
and to include letters, and until e-mail largely replaced snail-mail.
Suddenly, there is a demand for the USPS to be shut down, disregarding
the obvious issues that would arise for people who are less than
well-off, and/or live in areas which no commercial enterprise would
service*. UPS and Fedex tack on a "Delivery Area Surcharge", which the
USPS does not. If the USPS was allowed to be "greedy", and make and
retain profits over the years, or raise rates without Congressional
debate, it might still be solvent. But businesses and conservatives
weren't complaining about it while they were benefiting from the super
convenience and low cost(and no "Delivery Area Surcharge"), thanks to
ordinary people paying enough with first-class stamps to keep the USPS
in the black(think about all the letters, cards and postcards that
people used to send, billions every month).

Does the government subsidize the US Postal Service or does it not subsidize
the US Postal Service? Would the Postal Service even exist, if the
government did not subsidize it?

*http://tinyurl.com/3e7ezou

I see this pattern repeating everywhere. When conservatives(and
businesses) no longer want/need something, even if they have benefited
from it themselves, they want it eliminated regardless of benefit to
society or to the less fortunate, in the name of profit.

Oh my goodness!!! Here is a simple question for you....will you answer it?
If there were no successful businesses, where would the big government types
get the money to fund their pet projects?

I have no idea where you are coming from, but obviously you haven't
thought anything through before saying it, although I had hoped for a
reasoned debate from you.

If you want a debate, then lets have a debate, and not insult the other
person who you disagree with....can you do that?
P. Rajah
2011-06-05 22:37:55 UTC
Permalink
Post by P. Rajah
Post by Jerry Okamura
Is the question which system is better or worse, or should the question
be, are any of these systems sustainable?
security(internal and external), equality under the law(meaning you
shouldn't be punished for simply not being able to afford legal
defense), basic education of its people, and basic healthcare. Is basic
universal healthcare sustainable? It sure is. When you factor in all the
overheads of the insurance companies, their agents, their profits, the
cost of treating the uninsured, the economic cost of untreated sick
people and so on, it becomes a no-brainer. It is actually cheaper,
overall, to provide universal basic healthcare, and people would overall
be healthier because they would be diagnosed and treated earlier.
Except, of course, if you subscribe to the theory that it is criminal
not to allow corporations to make profits on anything and everything.
Okay, let us address this issues one point at a time, shall we? Legal
defense...you need an attorney, when the government charges you with a
crime which a court of law has to adjudicate. But let us look at what
happens to someone who the government "suspects" is in this country
illegally. Do, they all get a chance to prove their innocence in a court
of law, or does the government simply assume they are guilty and deports
them out of the country?
Anyone who is here legally has documentation to prove it. If the
government "suspects" that you are here illegally, you would be able to
provide documentation to show that you are not. And yes, there is a
deportation procedure for those not caught in the actual act of
illegally crossing the border, so they do get their day in court.
Do you really believe what you just said? Are they charged with a crime,
brought before a judge, allowed to have legal representation, found
guilty by the court, and only then deported?
Yes. If you don't know something, look it up. It's easy enough to do
these days. For this particular purpose, look up "deportation and
removal proceedings".
Post by P. Rajah
Now, while you said "let us look at what happens to someone who the
government 'suspects' is in this country illegally", all you've done is
asked a question, and not "looked" at it at all. What's up with that?
I asked a question to get an answer, is the answer to your question.
The usual method is to say, "Let me ask you a question about...". When,
instead, you say, "let us look at what happens to someone who the
government 'suspects' is in this country illegally", the implication is
that you have something to share about it.
Post by P. Rajah
Why is basic education the responsibility of
the government and not the responsibility of the parent?
Because we live in a society, and as a society we want to improve. If a
parent is making $10 an hour, there is no way for them to afford to send
a child to school for $18000 a year, which is what the average is in my
area. If your parents/grandparents/great-grandparents had to pay
completely out of pocket for the basic education of their children, the
odds are that you would not be very literate today.
Ah, the chicken and egg question. Would the cost of education be as high
as it is today, "if" our government had not decided to provide a "free
education"?
It would be much higher, and affordable only to the privileged few, as
it used to be hundreds of years ago. But, once again, you are misleading
by claiming that education is "free". It is not. It is paid via tax
money, a large part of it from local school taxes. In many school
districts, the quality of education you receive is directly related to
the taxes raised in that district. So much for "free".
Would the cost of public education be higher or lower, if
the teachers did not belong to a union? And when you do what the parents
should do, why should the parent assume any responsibility at all?
They *are* assuming responsibility. They pay taxes, don't they? And like
all taxpayers, they want to make sure that their tax money is spent
well, and that tax increases are kept to a minimum. You didn't, by any
chance, think that parents are exempt from paying school taxes, did you?

I have a sneaky suspicion, though, that what you mean to say, without
actually having come out and said it, is that parents should take on the
responsibility of educating their children at *home*, rather than
sending them to a school and letting teachers take the "responsibility".
Is this the case?
Post by P. Rajah
I had a debate with someone a while back over the issue of school taxes.
This man claimed that since his son had graduated from high school, he
shouldn't have to pay school taxes anymore. It took a while to make him
understand that *while* his son was in school, it was other people with
no children in school paying school taxes who subsidized his
costs(rather like insurance). If he had to pay in full, he would very
likely not have been able to afford it for the one son, let alone two or
more. Now it is his turn to subsidize the cost for others.
Well, that person was a hypocrite then wasn't he?
Yes, he was.
Post by P. Rajah
What good is
having free healthcare, if the payer cannot afford to continue paying
for that healthcare? Why would you want to depend on someone else to pay
for your healthcare, when by doing so, you also gave them the right not
to pay for your healthcare? How can a healthcare system be sustainable
with a medical inflation rate running at around 8% per year? Why is the
solution having health insurance? Why isn't the solution figuring out a
way for people to pay for the own healthcare needs? And as far as being
cheaper is concerned, it is true that a single payer system can minimize
the fixed cost element of the system, but even if you had zero fixed
cost, you still have a cost problem, because the cost problem is not in
the fixed cost area of the system, it is in a variable cost part of the
system. And unless you address the variable cost part of the problem,
you have not solved the cost problem.
There is no such thing as "free" healthcare, which is a canard bandied
about by people opposed to universal healthcare. Universal healthcare
would be paid for by taxes, same as defense, same as the public parks,
public libraries, the National Guard, police, fire departments, schools,
etc.
But the question is, why should someone else pay for our healthcare? If
we believe that someone else should pay for our healthcare, why
shouldn't someone else pay for our food as well? Food is a whole lot
more important than healthcare, isn't it? And when you depend on someone
else to pay for our healthcare, haven't you also given them the right,
not to pay for our healthcare?
The need for food is not a catastrophic occurrence. You don't wake up on
one particular morning and say, "Oh my god, why do I feel like I'm
starving? I might have to find food today!". In addition, it is not
"someone else" paying for your healthcare. When you pay into an
insurance program, you are paying for your own healthcare, until you
draw from it more than you pay into it. Stop equating healthcare with
food, it is not the same thing, it is not similar, and you are only
further destroying any credibility you think you may have had.
Post by P. Rajah
Now, having raised objections to "free" healthcare _and_ health
insurance, what solution do you have? That people pay for healthcare
according to their means? If someone making $35k a year gets cancer,
that they should just lay down and die? That if the child of a poor
working-class family develops Type-1 diabetes, that the family should
just watch the child die? That families should deliver their babies at
home regardless of risk and complications, just like in a third-world
country?
Yes If we want to solve the cost problem, then we have to return the
rationing decision back to where it belongs....to the person who uses
that service.
I can't believe you actually think that people should die if they cannot
afford healthcare!
And I have no trouble with the government helping people
to do that. As long as it indeed results in returning the rationing
decision back to where it belongs, to the person who wants or needs the
service.
So what exactly are you proposing, other than the vague "return the
rationing decision back to where it belongs"? Are you proposing ending
health insurance? Are you proposing that all medical costs be paid out
of the individual's pocket? If so, how do you propose that someone who
makes $35k a year and has 2 kids pay for his/her family medical needs
completely out of pocket?
Post by P. Rajah
I refer you to a statement you made a couple of years ago: "What counts
is not the quality of healthcare, but how long you live." I submit that
you are clueless to the fact that the quality of healthcare *affects*
life expectancy. This is why the US is ranked 37th in healthcare
quality(and #1 in healthcare expenditure), and 36th in life expectancy.
NO!!! Life expectancy is not dependent solely on the healthcare system
you have.
I didn't use the word "solely", did I? I said it *affects* life
expectancy, which means good or bad healthcare can affect whether you
live a longer or shorter life, all other things being equal.
And it does very little good to have the best quality
healthcare system in the world, if you cannot afford the best healthcare
system in the world.
Very true, and you are proposing to reduce affordability by requiring
people to pay 100% out of pocket, on a pay as you go basis.
Post by P. Rajah
Btw, the article that Jay the jyotishit linked to, the "Obamacare"
article, seems to say let's do away with insurers altogether, and go
directly with a patient-doctor relationship. Disregarding the fact that
most doctors do not want to get tied down chasing payments from each
patient or judging the patient's creditworthiness prior to treatment,
the article itself is not anti "Obamacare", but anti insurance company,
and thus also anti "Bushcare" or whatever else one would like to call
it. Quite a pointless article, imo.
I am all for a system, where the user of the service pays for the
service they use, with obvious exceptions.
The problem is that you are being coy with what you mean by that. Spit
it out, nobody's going to bite you!
Post by P. Rajah
Yes, ultimately if you want the best healthcare system in the world,
then you want the user of the system to be the one making the rationing
decision, and not someone other than the person who uses the system to
make that rationing decision for them. It is the most effective way man
has devised to get the most bang for the buck.
Such a simplistic answer that ignores reality. If you can afford to pay
for all your healthcare if and when you need it, fine, go ahead and do
that, and control the "rationing". Nobody says you aren't allowed your
own bills, do so by all means. But the reality is that most people are
not able to meet sudden large expenses, and substantial numbers cannot
meet any major medical expense at all without going into crippling debt.
It's the same reasoning behind auto insurance, which is mandated in most
states, or homeowner's insurance, also mandated nationwide. So, if you
were a family man making under $35k a year(at approximately $16/hr,
which is somehow considered a reasonable wage in these times), would
*you* rather do without health insurance?
Another one of those damn if you do and damned if you don't questions.
It does very little good to have a system, that you cannot afford
either. And you cannot afford a system where total costs are rising too
fast. On that point, Obama was right. We cannot afford to go down the
path we are on. His only problem was, his solution did not solve the
cost problem, it make the cost problem worse.
One obvious fact you are overlooking, intentionally or otherwise, is
that part of the reason for healthcare costs rising so much is the
constantly evolving technology. There are other factors too, such as
lack of pricing controls(opposed by the Republicans) which would force
the service providers to curb unnecessary charges and options, as part
of the payment system.

Quick anecdote: I went to the ER once with what I suspected was a foot
fracture. After 2 hours there, a talk with the triage nurse, 2 x-rays, a
cold pack, an aspirin, and a nylon brace, I was told it was a crush
injury. Go home, apply cold packs, and take aspirin for the pain, they
said. I was billed a total of $1200 with separate bills from the ER(for
use of space), the triage nurse, the radiologist, the ER doctor, and the
equipment rental company. If I didn't have insurance, I have no doubt I
would have been on the hook for the entire amount. As it turned out, I
had to pay a $75 deductible, and the insurance company settled the
balance for a total of $312. Still, $400 for a couple of x-rays, an
ice-pack, an aspirin and a $10 nylon brace!
Post by P. Rajah
Oh yeah, one more thing about health insurance: if you don't have it,
you pay a hell of a lot more than the insurance companies would pay for
the exact same services. As much as 300-400% more. So go ahead, open up
your wallet.
Only because the hospitals and doctors, cannot get the money they think
they should get from those who have "free healthcare", so they will
charge those who do not have "free healthcare" more to make the money
they need to make.
That is a fallacious argument. The percentage of people who pay cash is
so small that it makes little impact in the larger picture. Moreover,
part of the reason for health care costs rising is that providers keep
raising their charges to recover more from insured patients in order to
treat the increasing numbers of uninsured patients who are also indigent.
Read this:
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1887489,00.html
Post by P. Rajah
That is why in this
country, food is affordable, because each person decides what they can
afford to eat. I might add, the other reason we do have inexpensive
food, is exactly because the government allows businesses to be "greedy"
as some would call it. Their selfish needs to make money, means that
they make more money "if" they can sell what they want to sell, at the
lowest price possible.
I don't know what you mean by "food is affordable". Either you are
arguing for the sake of arguing, or you are out of touch with reality.
One in six Americans(almost 50 million) is on food stamps, and more who
might qualify are not utilizing them. That's a huge number. People are
buying more and more unhealthy foods, because they are cheaper.
Food is a whole lot cheaper in America, then it is in other parts of the
world. If you want to make a comparison, then find out how much the same
food we eat today and its costs in countries like Switzerland, then ask
yourself in which country does the poor suffer most?
You are being disingenuous. Your claim was that food in the US is
affordable, not its cost relative to other countries. That claim is
knocked on its behind by the fact that fully one-sixth of all Americans
require food assistance. What percentage of the Swiss are on food
assistance?

Food in India is cheap, really cheap, compared to the US or Switzerland.
Yet, most Indians subsist on less than the WHO minimum caloric intake,
because they can't afford it.
Post by P. Rajah
Food, contrary to your simplistic assumptions, is not like healthcare.
One can choose chicken over beef, or eggs over pork, or toast over
cereal. One can choose to forgo meats altogether and go on a vegetarian
diet, or buy chemically preserved crap that is cheaper than fresh food.
To some degree, that has kept food prices down, but business still finds
ways of picking the consumer's wallet without his/her knowledge(see next
paragraph). With healthcare, you don't get to choose a cold over
diabetes, or shingles over cancer. You can't pick and choose the kind of
treatment you should undergo. That is, if the doctor says you need
angioplasty immediately, you can't really say "No, thanks, I'll have a
tooth extracted instead, much cheaper for me."
Ah, but you can live your whole life without healthcare,
Are you serious? So, people seek out healthcare for entertainment, then?
Because they are bored with television, perhaps? Or are you saying, with
dark humor, that people who die from a lack of healthcare therefore have
lived their whole lives without healthcare?
EVERYONE will die without food.
Apparently, not a single word of what I wrote above has sunk into your head.
Post by P. Rajah
Oh yeah, about businesses selling food at the lowest price possible,
were you asleep while a 10.5 Oz. bag of chips shrank to 5 Oz. in the
same size bag, while the price(per bag) tripled? Were you asleep when a
16 Oz can of coffee went down to 10.5 Oz while the price(per can)
doubled or more? While candy bars became skinny even as their prices
rose? The price of a half-pint of milk in our office vending machine
went up from 35 cents to $1.25 while milk prices increased less than 50%
during that time. If it weren't for labeling requirements for the dairy
industry, they'd find ways of making you *think* you were getting a
half-pint!
Wrong question. Is the food more or less expensive in the US, then it is
in other parts of the world? And when compared to the disposable income
in each country, which country has the least expensive food?
Why don't you compare food prices in Portland, Oregon, and Los Angeles?
Then check out food prices in Australia, which has universal health
coverage. You are cementing my opinion that you know little, and are
unwilling to add to your meager knowledge.
Post by P. Rajah
Business has a history of ripping off the consumer even with government
oversight, and outright robbing them without. Check out credit card
rates in Brazil, which are not regulated by the government. Banks get
funds at 16%, and charge their credit card customers- get this!- an
_average_ of 230%! I kid you not! That is a rate that the Mafia
loan-sharks would have been embarrassed to charge.
Business cannot exist, without customers. If the customers believe they
are being ripped off, and continue to buy the products that the business
sells, they are fools.
Not everyone is blessed with your outstanding intellect. Sometimes,
somebody needs to look out for them.
Post by P. Rajah
"The average interest rate on credit cards is 238 percent annually,
while loans from retailers cost 85 percent, and personal loans from
banks 47 percent."
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_21/b4229010792956.htm
Solution: Don't use credit cards? Are we "forced" to use them? Or do we
use them because we want to use them?
Not everyone is blessed with your outstanding intellect. Sometimes,
somebody needs to look out for them.
Post by P. Rajah
Moving on, the USPS was set up as a "revenue neutral" government-run
service. That is, it was not permitted to run for profit. Over the years
and decades, businesses have profited tremendously from this virtually
"free" service, and America as a whole also benefited hugely. Think
about the ability to drop off your check in the mail, getting your
magazine subscription, writing a letter to your cousin across the world,
businesses sending out loads of shopping circulars, for mere pennies,
things your children will likely never see. Until private package
delivery services were allowed to compete for package shipping business
without also having the same mandate as the USPS to service _all_ areas
and to include letters, and until e-mail largely replaced snail-mail.
Suddenly, there is a demand for the USPS to be shut down, disregarding
the obvious issues that would arise for people who are less than
well-off, and/or live in areas which no commercial enterprise would
service*. UPS and Fedex tack on a "Delivery Area Surcharge", which the
USPS does not. If the USPS was allowed to be "greedy", and make and
retain profits over the years, or raise rates without Congressional
debate, it might still be solvent. But businesses and conservatives
weren't complaining about it while they were benefiting from the super
convenience and low cost(and no "Delivery Area Surcharge"), thanks to
ordinary people paying enough with first-class stamps to keep the USPS
in the black(think about all the letters, cards and postcards that
people used to send, billions every month).
Does the government subsidize the US Postal Service or does it not
subsidize the US Postal Service? Would the Postal Service even exist, if
the government did not subsidize it?
Once again, you let your opinions run ahead of the facts. The USPS was
not subsidized until recently, after UPS/Fedex were allowed to do their
package delivery(didn't I mention this above?), and after the advent of
e-mail. Would it have existed prior to this? Without a doubt! Would
businesses have done as well if the USPS had charged them actual costs
plus profit? No. So thank you, John Q. Public, for helping business
control their communications costs.
Post by P. Rajah
*http://tinyurl.com/3e7ezou
I see this pattern repeating everywhere. When conservatives(and
businesses) no longer want/need something, even if they have benefited
from it themselves, they want it eliminated regardless of benefit to
society or to the less fortunate, in the name of profit.
Oh my goodness!!! Here is a simple question for you....will you answer
it? If there were no successful businesses, where would the big
government types get the money to fund their pet projects?
Where did I say that there should be no successful businesses? My view
is that business success should not come at the expense of society's
interests. We don't live in the jungle, we don't eat each other, and we
claim to be civilized.
Post by P. Rajah
I have no idea where you are coming from, but obviously you haven't
thought anything through before saying it, although I had hoped for a
reasoned debate from you.
If you want a debate, then lets have a debate, and not insult the other
person who you disagree with....can you do that?
I thought this was supposed to be a debate, but apparently you had
something else in mind. And what was my "insult" to you? Saying that you
were clueless about how healthcare affects life expectancy? Jeeze,
Louise, you are thin-skinned!
--
Astrology: Fraud or Superstition?
http://www.seesharppress.com/astro.html

Ass-troll-ogers/jyotishitheads are the bane of humanity, and must be
cleansed or otherwise purified for the benefit of society.
Jerry Okamura
2011-06-06 02:20:31 UTC
Permalink
Post by P. Rajah
Post by Jerry Okamura
Is the question which system is better or worse, or should the question
be, are any of these systems sustainable?
security(internal and external), equality under the law(meaning you
shouldn't be punished for simply not being able to afford legal
defense), basic education of its people, and basic healthcare. Is basic
universal healthcare sustainable? It sure is. When you factor in all the
overheads of the insurance companies, their agents, their profits, the
cost of treating the uninsured, the economic cost of untreated sick
people and so on, it becomes a no-brainer. It is actually cheaper,
overall, to provide universal basic healthcare, and people would overall
be healthier because they would be diagnosed and treated earlier.
Except, of course, if you subscribe to the theory that it is criminal
not to allow corporations to make profits on anything and everything.
Okay, let us address this issues one point at a time, shall we? Legal
defense...you need an attorney, when the government charges you with a
crime which a court of law has to adjudicate. But let us look at what
happens to someone who the government "suspects" is in this country
illegally. Do, they all get a chance to prove their innocence in a court
of law, or does the government simply assume they are guilty and deports
them out of the country?
Anyone who is here legally has documentation to prove it. If the
government "suspects" that you are here illegally, you would be able to
provide documentation to show that you are not. And yes, there is a
deportation procedure for those not caught in the actual act of
illegally crossing the border, so they do get their day in court.
Do you really believe what you just said? Are they charged with a crime,
brought before a judge, allowed to have legal representation, found
guilty by the court, and only then deported?
Yes. If you don't know something, look it up. It's easy enough to do
these days. For this particular purpose, look up "deportation and
removal proceedings".

I did as your requested. Nothing in that site said that EVERYONE who is
suspected of being in this country is subject to the deportation and removal
proceedings. So, my question remains, is EVERYONE who is suspected of
being an illegal alien, allowed their day in court, before being deported?
Post by P. Rajah
Now, while you said "let us look at what happens to someone who the
government 'suspects' is in this country illegally", all you've done is
asked a question, and not "looked" at it at all. What's up with that?
I asked a question to get an answer, is the answer to your question.
The usual method is to say, "Let me ask you a question about...". When,
instead, you say, "let us look at what happens to someone who the
government 'suspects' is in this country illegally", the implication is
that you have something to share about it.
Post by P. Rajah
Why is basic education the responsibility of
the government and not the responsibility of the parent?
Because we live in a society, and as a society we want to improve. If a
parent is making $10 an hour, there is no way for them to afford to send
a child to school for $18000 a year, which is what the average is in my
area. If your parents/grandparents/great-grandparents had to pay
completely out of pocket for the basic education of their children, the
odds are that you would not be very literate today.
Ah, the chicken and egg question. Would the cost of education be as high
as it is today, "if" our government had not decided to provide a "free
education"?
It would be much higher, and affordable only to the privileged few, as
it used to be hundreds of years ago. But, once again, you are misleading
by claiming that education is "free". It is not. It is paid via tax
money, a large part of it from local school taxes. In many school
districts, the quality of education you receive is directly related to
the taxes raised in that district. So much for "free".

How do you know that to be true? The only way to know that is "if" there
was no public education system in existence. And when I said it was free,
it is free to to those who send their children to the public educations
system. They do not pay the full cost of that education, so it is for all
practical purposes free.
Would the cost of public education be higher or lower, if
the teachers did not belong to a union? And when you do what the parents
should do, why should the parent assume any responsibility at all?
They *are* assuming responsibility. They pay taxes, don't they? And like
all taxpayers, they want to make sure that their tax money is spent
well, and that tax increases are kept to a minimum. You didn't, by any
chance, think that parents are exempt from paying school taxes, did you?

I asked, would the cost of public education be higher or lower, if the
teachers did not belong to a union?

I have a sneaky suspicion, though, that what you mean to say, without
actually having come out and said it, is that parents should take on the
responsibility of educating their children at *home*, rather than
sending them to a school and letting teachers take the "responsibility".
Is this the case?

No, I am saying that they should have a "choice".
Post by P. Rajah
What good is
having free healthcare, if the payer cannot afford to continue paying
for that healthcare? Why would you want to depend on someone else to pay
for your healthcare, when by doing so, you also gave them the right not
to pay for your healthcare? How can a healthcare system be sustainable
with a medical inflation rate running at around 8% per year? Why is the
solution having health insurance? Why isn't the solution figuring out a
way for people to pay for the own healthcare needs? And as far as being
cheaper is concerned, it is true that a single payer system can minimize
the fixed cost element of the system, but even if you had zero fixed
cost, you still have a cost problem, because the cost problem is not in
the fixed cost area of the system, it is in a variable cost part of the
system. And unless you address the variable cost part of the problem,
you have not solved the cost problem.
There is no such thing as "free" healthcare, which is a canard bandied
about by people opposed to universal healthcare. Universal healthcare
would be paid for by taxes, same as defense, same as the public parks,
public libraries, the National Guard, police, fire departments, schools,
etc.
But the question is, why should someone else pay for our healthcare? If
we believe that someone else should pay for our healthcare, why
shouldn't someone else pay for our food as well? Food is a whole lot
more important than healthcare, isn't it? And when you depend on someone
else to pay for our healthcare, haven't you also given them the right,
not to pay for our healthcare?
The need for food is not a catastrophic occurrence. You don't wake up on
one particular morning and say, "Oh my god, why do I feel like I'm
starving? I might have to find food today!". In addition, it is not
"someone else" paying for your healthcare. When you pay into an
insurance program, you are paying for your own healthcare, until you
draw from it more than you pay into it. Stop equating healthcare with
food, it is not the same thing, it is not similar, and you are only
further destroying any credibility you think you may have had.

Ah, but without food you die. And someone else is paying, unless you pay
for the full cost of your healthcare. So, how you can say, that is not
true, is not being truthful. I asked which is more important, food or
healthcare?
Post by P. Rajah
Now, having raised objections to "free" healthcare _and_ health
insurance, what solution do you have? That people pay for healthcare
according to their means? If someone making $35k a year gets cancer,
that they should just lay down and die? That if the child of a poor
working-class family develops Type-1 diabetes, that the family should
just watch the child die? That families should deliver their babies at
home regardless of risk and complications, just like in a third-world
country?
Yes If we want to solve the cost problem, then we have to return the
rationing decision back to where it belongs....to the person who uses
that service.
I can't believe you actually think that people should die if they cannot
afford healthcare!

People die in any event. The only difference is, when you have to pay and
you don't have the money to pay, you will die, if someone else is not
charitable enough to pay for your healthcare. But if you depend on someone
else to pay and they do not pay, you will also die.
And I have no trouble with the government helping people
to do that. As long as it indeed results in returning the rationing
decision back to where it belongs, to the person who wants or needs the
service.
So what exactly are you proposing, other than the vague "return the
rationing decision back to where it belongs"? Are you proposing ending
health insurance? Are you proposing that all medical costs be paid out
of the individual's pocket? If so, how do you propose that someone who
makes $35k a year and has 2 kids pay for his/her family medical needs
completely out of pocket?

It is not a "vague" idea. It is based on sound economics. The best way to
control costs is when the user of the service, or the purchaser of the
product, pays for the product or service they want or need. Is it called
having "skin in the game". Which by the way, has another advantage. If you
have to pay for any possible medical cost, you are more likely to take
better care of yourself, and you don't have to have someone "forcing you" to
take better care of yourself. You will do it because it is in your own self
interest to take better care of yourself. And yes, I think that health
insurance is the wrong solution. It is no different than the government
paying for our healthcare. In either case, the user of the service does not
have to make the rationing decision, but someone else will make that
rationing decision for them. And you cannot reduce the medical inflation
rate, as long as the user of the service does not make the rationing
decision. And it is the medical inflation rate that is the basic problem.
Our medical inflation rate is running at around 8% per year. That means
that the insurance idea, whether it is insurance provided by the government,
or insurance provided by private industry, has the same basic problem. The
total cost of the plan will rise in line with the medical inflation rate.
That means that as a minimum, the cost of insurance will double every ten
years and most likely will double in a much shorter period of time. If you
can explain how that is sustainable, I would be interested in knowing how,
because I cannot see how that is sustainable. As for your last question, I
think the solution is medical savings accounts. But not the kind that some
republicans are proposing, where they want those who have the account buy
health insurance, that defeats the whole idea of having a Medical Savings
Account. But it is not free of its own problem. That is because, those who
do not earn a whole lot of money, cannot possibly set aside enough to
fulfill every possible future need. My proposed solution to that part of
the problem, is one where the government should provide generous incentives
for businesses to contribute to their workers medical savings account.
Ideally with no limitation, but that will not happen, so it is just an idea
that will never be implemented...one of my chasing windmill thoughts. And
each person who does not use up their savings, should be able to give what
remains in their account to whoever is still living, or give the money to
some charitable hospital or other organizations who help the less fortunate
with their medical bills. And over time, with that additional incentive,
future generations will be more able to pay for a greater percentage of
their total healthcare needs. And the final idea, is to help charitable
organizations help those who fall through the cracks, like we had before the
advent of the third party payment system. That means making them tax
exempt organizations, and allowing people to write off, all the money they
contribute to those organizations. That would encourage rich people to give
more money to these organization, and would also encourage anyone who can
afford to contribute to contribute.
Post by P. Rajah
I refer you to a statement you made a couple of years ago: "What counts
is not the quality of healthcare, but how long you live." I submit that
you are clueless to the fact that the quality of healthcare *affects*
life expectancy. This is why the US is ranked 37th in healthcare
quality(and #1 in healthcare expenditure), and 36th in life expectancy.
NO!!! Life expectancy is not dependent solely on the healthcare system
you have.
I didn't use the word "solely", did I? I said it *affects* life
expectancy, which means good or bad healthcare can affect whether you
live a longer or shorter life, all other things being equal.

You cannot prove that it makes a whole lot of difference. The life
expectancy of countries with an extensive third party payment system, is not
a whole lot better or worse than the life expectancy of a country without an
extensive third party payment system, as long as you are comparing apples to
apples, and not apples to oranges. But that I mean, countries with equally
successful economies. the reason is simple, healthcare is only one factor
in a countries life expectancy.
And it does very little good to have the best quality
healthcare system in the world, if you cannot afford the best healthcare
system in the world.
Very true, and you are proposing to reduce affordability by requiring
people to pay 100% out of pocket, on a pay as you go basis.

It is the only way I know how to reduce the medical inflation rate. And if
we do not solve that problem, no solution is going to work in the long run.
So, it is a question of pay me now or pay me later, but you will pay me,
eventually......
P. Rajah
2011-06-06 03:25:18 UTC
Permalink
Post by P. Rajah
Post by P. Rajah
Post by Jerry Okamura
Is the question which system is better or worse, or should the question
be, are any of these systems sustainable?
security(internal and external), equality under the law(meaning you
shouldn't be punished for simply not being able to afford legal
defense), basic education of its people, and basic healthcare. Is basic
universal healthcare sustainable? It sure is. When you factor in all the
overheads of the insurance companies, their agents, their profits, the
cost of treating the uninsured, the economic cost of untreated sick
people and so on, it becomes a no-brainer. It is actually cheaper,
overall, to provide universal basic healthcare, and people would overall
be healthier because they would be diagnosed and treated earlier.
Except, of course, if you subscribe to the theory that it is criminal
not to allow corporations to make profits on anything and everything.
Okay, let us address this issues one point at a time, shall we? Legal
defense...you need an attorney, when the government charges you with a
crime which a court of law has to adjudicate. But let us look at what
happens to someone who the government "suspects" is in this country
illegally. Do, they all get a chance to prove their innocence in a court
of law, or does the government simply assume they are guilty and deports
them out of the country?
Anyone who is here legally has documentation to prove it. If the
government "suspects" that you are here illegally, you would be able to
provide documentation to show that you are not. And yes, there is a
deportation procedure for those not caught in the actual act of
illegally crossing the border, so they do get their day in court.
Do you really believe what you just said? Are they charged with a crime,
brought before a judge, allowed to have legal representation, found
guilty by the court, and only then deported?
Yes. If you don't know something, look it up. It's easy enough to do
these days. For this particular purpose, look up "deportation and
removal proceedings".
I did as your requested. Nothing in that site said that EVERYONE who is
suspected of being in this country is subject to the deportation and
removal proceedings. So, my question remains, is EVERYONE who is
suspected of being an illegal alien, allowed their day in court, before
being deported?
Strange that after so many years on the internet, that you have problems
doing simple searches. As I told you before, those caught actually
crossing the border illegally are immediately returned, therefore not
"deported", so don't use them as justification that not "EVERYONE" is
given their day in court. Also, those who voluntarily return do not go
to court, obviously.
Post by P. Rajah
Post by P. Rajah
Now, while you said "let us look at what happens to someone who the
government 'suspects' is in this country illegally", all you've done is
asked a question, and not "looked" at it at all. What's up with that?
I asked a question to get an answer, is the answer to your question.
The usual method is to say, "Let me ask you a question about...". When,
instead, you say, "let us look at what happens to someone who the
government 'suspects' is in this country illegally", the implication is
that you have something to share about it.
Post by P. Rajah
Why is basic education the responsibility of
the government and not the responsibility of the parent?
Because we live in a society, and as a society we want to improve. If a
parent is making $10 an hour, there is no way for them to afford to send
a child to school for $18000 a year, which is what the average is in my
area. If your parents/grandparents/great-grandparents had to pay
completely out of pocket for the basic education of their children, the
odds are that you would not be very literate today.
Ah, the chicken and egg question. Would the cost of education be as high
as it is today, "if" our government had not decided to provide a "free
education"?
It would be much higher, and affordable only to the privileged few, as
it used to be hundreds of years ago. But, once again, you are misleading
by claiming that education is "free". It is not. It is paid via tax
money, a large part of it from local school taxes. In many school
districts, the quality of education you receive is directly related to
the taxes raised in that district. So much for "free".
How do you know that to be true? The only way to know that is "if" there
was no public education system in existence.
How do I know what to be true? That public schools are paid through
taxes? That the quality of education in many districts is directly
related to the taxes raised in that district? Why don't you do a little
research before asking silly questions? Why do you think people check
out the reputation of schools when they purchase homes? Why are good
public schools located in more upscale areas? Why do public schools in
affluent areas offer so much more than those in poorer areas? If there
is some fairy godmother sprinkling "free" money equally on all of them,
wouldn't they all have approximately the same facilities, if not the
same quality?
And when I said it was
free, it is free to to those who send their children to the public
educations system. They do not pay the full cost of that education, so
it is for all practical purposes free.
So if I ask you to pay 50% of the cost of something now, and 50% later,
that is "for all practical purposes" free to you?
Post by P. Rajah
Would the cost of public education be higher or lower, if
the teachers did not belong to a union? And when you do what the parents
should do, why should the parent assume any responsibility at all?
They *are* assuming responsibility. They pay taxes, don't they? And like
all taxpayers, they want to make sure that their tax money is spent
well, and that tax increases are kept to a minimum. You didn't, by any
chance, think that parents are exempt from paying school taxes, did you?
I asked, would the cost of public education be higher or lower, if the
teachers did not belong to a union?
Is your response to my answer going to be as inane as before? Well,
let's see what you have. If teachers did not belong to a union, the cost
of public education would vary depending on the district, because poorer
districts would not be able to pay the salaries that attract the better
teachers, and more affluent districts would be competing with each other
to get the best. It would be the equivalent of ball players becoming
free agents. So costs would definitely be higher for affluent districts,
and may be lower or higher for poorer districts based on their
willingness and ability to pay more for good teachers.

Now, instead of responding with more questions, let's hear your opinion
and rationale.
Post by P. Rajah
I have a sneaky suspicion, though, that what you mean to say, without
actually having come out and said it, is that parents should take on the
responsibility of educating their children at *home*, rather than
sending them to a school and letting teachers take the "responsibility".
Is this the case?
No, I am saying that they should have a "choice".
So why is it you never mentioned home schooling until I came right out
and asked you? Parents still have the choice of home schooling, but they
also have the social responsibility to pay their school taxes.
Post by P. Rajah
Post by P. Rajah
What good is
having free healthcare, if the payer cannot afford to continue paying
for that healthcare? Why would you want to depend on someone else to pay
for your healthcare, when by doing so, you also gave them the right not
to pay for your healthcare? How can a healthcare system be sustainable
with a medical inflation rate running at around 8% per year? Why is the
solution having health insurance? Why isn't the solution figuring out a
way for people to pay for the own healthcare needs? And as far as being
cheaper is concerned, it is true that a single payer system can minimize
the fixed cost element of the system, but even if you had zero fixed
cost, you still have a cost problem, because the cost problem is not in
the fixed cost area of the system, it is in a variable cost part of the
system. And unless you address the variable cost part of the problem,
you have not solved the cost problem.
There is no such thing as "free" healthcare, which is a canard bandied
about by people opposed to universal healthcare. Universal healthcare
would be paid for by taxes, same as defense, same as the public parks,
public libraries, the National Guard, police, fire departments, schools,
etc.
But the question is, why should someone else pay for our healthcare? If
we believe that someone else should pay for our healthcare, why
shouldn't someone else pay for our food as well? Food is a whole lot
more important than healthcare, isn't it? And when you depend on someone
else to pay for our healthcare, haven't you also given them the right,
not to pay for our healthcare?
The need for food is not a catastrophic occurrence. You don't wake up on
one particular morning and say, "Oh my god, why do I feel like I'm
starving? I might have to find food today!". In addition, it is not
"someone else" paying for your healthcare. When you pay into an
insurance program, you are paying for your own healthcare, until you
draw from it more than you pay into it. Stop equating healthcare with
food, it is not the same thing, it is not similar, and you are only
further destroying any credibility you think you may have had.
Ah, but without food you die. And someone else is paying, unless you pay
for the full cost of your healthcare. So, how you can say, that is not
true, is not being truthful. I asked which is more important, food or
healthcare?
Let me answer that by asking you a couple of pertinent questions: if you
are suffering from a terminal form of cancer, will food keep you from
dying? If your wife or child is lost in the wild somewhere, will you
stop rescue teams from searching for them because you cannot afford to
pay for the search?
Post by P. Rajah
Post by P. Rajah
Now, having raised objections to "free" healthcare _and_ health
insurance, what solution do you have? That people pay for healthcare
according to their means? If someone making $35k a year gets cancer,
that they should just lay down and die? That if the child of a poor
working-class family develops Type-1 diabetes, that the family should
just watch the child die? That families should deliver their babies at
home regardless of risk and complications, just like in a third-world
country?
Yes If we want to solve the cost problem, then we have to return the
rationing decision back to where it belongs....to the person who uses
that service.
I can't believe you actually think that people should die if they cannot
afford healthcare!
People die in any event.
Great! I pick the fruitcakes to have debates with!
The only difference is, when you have to pay
and you don't have the money to pay, you will die, if someone else is
not charitable enough to pay for your healthcare. But if you depend on
someone else to pay and they do not pay, you will also die.
When you have an insurance plan, you a)are not all at once paying the
full cost of treating life-threatening conditions and b)should still
have the money to pay for the full cost of treatment if you wish to,
since your insurance premium is likely only a small part of the cost of
treatment. Insurance companies are not charities collecting your money
and then deciding they will not pay for any medical treatment. They sign
contracts with you. You have legal recourse for disputes.
Post by P. Rajah
And I have no trouble with the government helping people
to do that. As long as it indeed results in returning the rationing
decision back to where it belongs, to the person who wants or needs the
service.
So what exactly are you proposing, other than the vague "return the
rationing decision back to where it belongs"? Are you proposing ending
health insurance? Are you proposing that all medical costs be paid out
of the individual's pocket? If so, how do you propose that someone who
makes $35k a year and has 2 kids pay for his/her family medical needs
completely out of pocket?
It is not a "vague" idea. It is based on sound economics. The best way
to control costs is when the user of the service, or the purchaser of
the product, pays for the product or service they want or need. Is it
called having "skin in the game". Which by the way, has another
advantage. If you have to pay for any possible medical cost, you are
more likely to take better care of yourself, and you don't have to have
someone "forcing you" to take better care of yourself. You will do it
because it is in your own self interest to take better care of yourself.
And yes, I think that health insurance is the wrong solution. It is no
different than the government paying for our healthcare.
Okay, I'm done "debating" with you. I suppose you think that paying for
a house with a mortgage is the same as getting it for free too. I'm
going to try to find someone who still has his wits about him to have a
debate with, preferably someone who isn't "home schooled".
In either case,
the user of the service does not have to make the rationing decision,
but someone else will make that rationing decision for them. And you
cannot reduce the medical inflation rate, as long as the user of the
service does not make the rationing decision. And it is the medical
inflation rate that is the basic problem. Our medical inflation rate is
running at around 8% per year. That means that the insurance idea,
whether it is insurance provided by the government, or insurance
provided by private industry, has the same basic problem. The total cost
of the plan will rise in line with the medical inflation rate. That
means that as a minimum, the cost of insurance will double every ten
years and most likely will double in a much shorter period of time. If
you can explain how that is sustainable, I would be interested in
knowing how, because I cannot see how that is sustainable. As for your
last question, I think the solution is medical savings accounts. But not
the kind that some republicans are proposing, where they want those who
have the account buy health insurance, that defeats the whole idea of
having a Medical Savings Account. But it is not free of its own problem.
That is because, those who do not earn a whole lot of money, cannot
possibly set aside enough to fulfill every possible future need. My
proposed solution to that part of the problem, is one where the
government should provide generous incentives for businesses to
contribute to their workers medical savings account. Ideally with no
limitation, but that will not happen, so it is just an idea that will
never be implemented...one of my chasing windmill thoughts. And each
person who does not use up their savings, should be able to give what
remains in their account to whoever is still living, or give the money
to some charitable hospital or other organizations who help the less
fortunate with their medical bills. And over time, with that additional
incentive, future generations will be more able to pay for a greater
percentage of their total healthcare needs. And the final idea, is to
help charitable organizations help those who fall through the cracks,
like we had before the advent of the third party payment system. That
means making them tax exempt organizations, and allowing people to write
off, all the money they contribute to those organizations. That would
encourage rich people to give more money to these organization, and
would also encourage anyone who can afford to contribute to contribute.
Post by P. Rajah
Post by P. Rajah
I refer you to a statement you made a couple of years ago: "What counts
is not the quality of healthcare, but how long you live." I submit that
you are clueless to the fact that the quality of healthcare *affects*
life expectancy. This is why the US is ranked 37th in healthcare
quality(and #1 in healthcare expenditure), and 36th in life expectancy.
NO!!! Life expectancy is not dependent solely on the healthcare system
you have.
I didn't use the word "solely", did I? I said it *affects* life
expectancy, which means good or bad healthcare can affect whether you
live a longer or shorter life, all other things being equal.
You cannot prove that it makes a whole lot of difference. The life
expectancy of countries with an extensive third party payment system, is
not a whole lot better or worse than the life expectancy of a country
without an extensive third party payment system, as long as you are
comparing apples to apples, and not apples to oranges. But that I mean,
countries with equally successful economies. the reason is simple,
healthcare is only one factor in a countries life expectancy.
Post by P. Rajah
And it does very little good to have the best quality
healthcare system in the world, if you cannot afford the best healthcare
system in the world.
Very true, and you are proposing to reduce affordability by requiring
people to pay 100% out of pocket, on a pay as you go basis.
It is the only way I know how to reduce the medical inflation rate. And
if we do not solve that problem, no solution is going to work in the
long run. So, it is a question of pay me now or pay me later, but you
will pay me, eventually......
--
Astrology: Fraud or Superstition?
http://www.seesharppress.com/astro.html

Ass-troll-ogers/jyotishitheads are the bane of humanity, and must be
cleansed or otherwise purified for the benefit of society.
h***@anony.net
2011-06-06 08:51:35 UTC
Permalink
went unread as he forgot to trim quotes , smarten up Rajah
and/or www.mantra.com/jai (Dr. Jai Maharaj)
2011-06-07 22:21:24 UTC
Permalink
Post by and/or www.mantra.com/jai (Dr. Jai Maharaj)
How Obamacare is hurting the patient-physician relationship -
Statement by Jane Orient, MD
http://www.aapsonline.org/index.php/site/article/how_obamacare_is_hurting_the_patient-physician_relationship_-_statement_by_/
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2728317/posts
Real reform means getting the government and other third parties out
of medicine.
Libtards want to control both doctors and you. They can do that by
controlling medicine and your health care. Why would they want to get
out of medicine and give up all that control? When they say they care
about all those who have no health insurance, it is just a pretext to
gain more control.
Posted on Wednesday, June 1, 2011 by mjp
((pro-{God, reality, reason, egoism, individualism, natural rights,
limited government, capitalism}))
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2728317/posts
Forwarded post:

Personally, I think some private individuals need to launch a lawsuit
to strike down Obamacare on the basis that it interposes the Federal
government into the patient-physician relationship, thereby violating
the general right to privacy as set forth in Roe v. Wade.

Remember the ‘reasoning' in that case? The purported right to
abortion on demand was established on the basis of a generalized
right to privacy found in "penubrae emanating" from various parts of
the Constitution. This "right to privacy" supposedly prevents the
government from intervening in a patient's right to take counsel with
a physician.

Let the left sweat it: will Obamacare go down, or will Roe v. Wade be
overturned? It seems to me if the SCOTUS took such a suit on appeal,
they'd have to do one or the other.

Posted on Wednesday, June 1, 2011 by The_Reader_David

(And when they behead your own people in the wars which are to come,
then you will know. . .)

End of forwarded message from:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2728317/posts

Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi
Om Shanti

and/or www.mantra.com/jai (Dr. Jai Maharaj)
2011-06-01 21:44:39 UTC
Permalink
Post by and/or www.mantra.com/jai (Dr. Jai Maharaj)
How Obamacare is hurting the patient-physician relationship -
Statement by Jane Orient, MD
http://www.aapsonline.org/index.php/site/article/how_obamacare_is_hurting_the_patient-physician_relationship_-_statement_by_/
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2728317/posts
Real reform means getting the government and other third parties out
of medicine.
Libtards want to control both doctors and you. They can do that by
controlling medicine and your health care. Why would they want to get
out of medicine and give up all that control? When they say they care
about all those who have no health insurance, it is just a pretext to
gain more control.

Posted on Wednesday, June 1, 2011 by mjp
((pro-{God, reality, reason, egoism, individualism, natural rights,
limited government, capitalism}))

End of forwarded post from:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2728317/posts

Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi
Om Shanti
and/or www.mantra.com/jai (Dr. Jai Maharaj)
2011-06-06 02:42:31 UTC
Permalink
Post by and/or www.mantra.com/jai (Dr. Jai Maharaj)
How Obamacare is hurting the patient-physician relationship -
Statement by Jane Orient, MD
http://www.aapsonline.org/index.php/site/article/how_obamacare_is_hurting_the_patient-physician_relationship_-_statement_by_/
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2728317/posts
Real reform means getting the government and other third parties out
of medicine.
Libtards want to control both doctors and you. They can do that by
controlling medicine and your health care. Why would they want to get
out of medicine and give up all that control? When they say they care
about all those who have no health insurance, it is just a pretext to
gain more control.
Posted on Wednesday, June 1, 2011 by mjp
((pro-{God, reality, reason, egoism, individualism, natural rights,
limited government, capitalism}))
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2728317/posts
Forwarded post:

Personally, I think some private individuals need to launch a lawsuit
to strike down Obamacare on the basis that it interposes the Federal
government into the patient-physician relationship, thereby violating
the general right to privacy as set forth in Roe v. Wade.

Remember the ‘reasoning' in that case? The purported right to
abortion on demand was established on the basis of a generalized
right to privacy found in "penubrae emanating" from various parts of
the Constitution. This "right to privacy" supposedly prevents the
government from intervening in a patient's right to take counsel with
a physician.

Let the left sweat it: will Obamacare go down, or will Roe v. Wade be
overturned? It seems to me if the SCOTUS took such a suit on appeal,
they'd have to do one or the other.

Posted on Wednesday, June 1, 2011 by The_Reader_David

(And when they behead your own people in the wars which are to come,
then you will know. . .)

End of forwarded message from:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2728317/posts

Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi
Om Shanti
P. Rajah
2011-06-01 21:20:45 UTC
Permalink
State of the Union "Bush-Care" Is Junk Health Care Plan, Widow &
Consumer Groups Say
1/30/2006

Santa Monica, CA -- The health plan that President Bush is expected to
announce in Tuesday's State of the Union address, "isn't worth a dime
because it allows insurance companies to sell junk policies that don't
protect patients when they are sick," according to a widow whose husband
was insured under the type of limited benefits policy being promoted by
Bush, but owed a half million dollars in medical bills when he died from
cancer.

The tragic story of Dana and Doug Christensen is part of a new online
resource published by the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights
(FTCR) pointing out the skeletal benefits and new burdens under the
"Bush Care" health proposals to be unveiled in tomorrow's State of the
Union address. Visit FTCR's "Bush-Care" resource page at:
http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/healthcare/BushCare/

"What's the point of paying for health insurance and then when you need
it, discovering the benefits you thought were promised and paid for just
aren't there?" said Dana Christensen, a volunteer with FTCR who lives in
Playa Del Rey, California. "Mega Life had told us that they would pay
80% of hospital costs and we would pay 20%. They didn't tell us that
chemotherapy was capped at $1,000 a day. Doug's chemotherapy charges
were as high as $18,000 a day!"

According to information already released from the white house,
Bush-Care would "require patients to pay more for less health care,"
said Jerry Flanagan of FTCR by:

Expanding junk-benefit "association health plans," insurance
policies that promise cheap, comprehensive coverage but don't cap the
amount of money consumers pay out of pocket. The president's plan would
remove association health plans from accountability to state consumer
protection rules and courts.
Relying on health savings accounts, which promise lower monthly
premiums but require patients to pay a lot more out of pocket before
coverage kicks in. When patients bear a greater cost, they delay needed
treatment and increase health costs in the long run.
Extending individual tax deductions for health care costs, a scheme
to "let insurance companies and big pharma steal our money then give us
a tax deduction to soften the blow," said FTCR.

Though the Christensens were insured with an association health plan,
Dana was left with $450,000 in unpaid medical bills when her husband
died of bone cancer. Their insurance had no limit on out of pocket costs
for patients, unlike traditional health insurance or HMOs. It covered
only a small portion of chemotherapy costs even though Dana was told
they'd had full coverage. On his deathbed, Dana's husband Doug asked her
to divorce him so she would not be responsible for the bills. She
refused. Read the Christensens' story at:
http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/healthcare/st/?postId=5795

"I think President Bush is more concerned about the welfare of the
insurance business than in quality health care for people like you and
me," said Dana Christensen. "I wish he would sit down with me and let me
tell him what happened to Doug before he promotes these plans."


The Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights (FTCR) is the nation's
leading consumer watchdog group. For more information visit us online
at: http://www.ConsumerWatchdog.org

http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/newsrelease/state-union-bush-care-junk-health-care-plan-widow-consumer-groups-say
--
Astrology: Fraud or Superstition?
http://www.seesharppress.com/astro.html
Jerry Okamura
2011-06-03 18:02:18 UTC
Permalink
Is the solution to make people more dependent on someone else, or is the
solution to make people less dependent on someone else?

"P. Rajah" wrote in message news:4de6ad2e$0$9074$***@cv.net...

State of the Union "Bush-Care" Is Junk Health Care Plan, Widow &
Consumer Groups Say
1/30/2006

Santa Monica, CA -- The health plan that President Bush is expected to
announce in Tuesday's State of the Union address, "isn't worth a dime
because it allows insurance companies to sell junk policies that don't
protect patients when they are sick," according to a widow whose husband
was insured under the type of limited benefits policy being promoted by
Bush, but owed a half million dollars in medical bills when he died from
cancer.

The tragic story of Dana and Doug Christensen is part of a new online
resource published by the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights
(FTCR) pointing out the skeletal benefits and new burdens under the
"Bush Care" health proposals to be unveiled in tomorrow's State of the
Union address. Visit FTCR's "Bush-Care" resource page at:
http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/healthcare/BushCare/

"What's the point of paying for health insurance and then when you need
it, discovering the benefits you thought were promised and paid for just
aren't there?" said Dana Christensen, a volunteer with FTCR who lives in
Playa Del Rey, California. "Mega Life had told us that they would pay
80% of hospital costs and we would pay 20%. They didn't tell us that
chemotherapy was capped at $1,000 a day. Doug's chemotherapy charges
were as high as $18,000 a day!"

According to information already released from the white house,
Bush-Care would "require patients to pay more for less health care,"
said Jerry Flanagan of FTCR by:

Expanding junk-benefit "association health plans," insurance
policies that promise cheap, comprehensive coverage but don't cap the
amount of money consumers pay out of pocket. The president's plan would
remove association health plans from accountability to state consumer
protection rules and courts.
Relying on health savings accounts, which promise lower monthly
premiums but require patients to pay a lot more out of pocket before
coverage kicks in. When patients bear a greater cost, they delay needed
treatment and increase health costs in the long run.
Extending individual tax deductions for health care costs, a scheme
to "let insurance companies and big pharma steal our money then give us
a tax deduction to soften the blow," said FTCR.

Though the Christensens were insured with an association health plan,
Dana was left with $450,000 in unpaid medical bills when her husband
died of bone cancer. Their insurance had no limit on out of pocket costs
for patients, unlike traditional health insurance or HMOs. It covered
only a small portion of chemotherapy costs even though Dana was told
they'd had full coverage. On his deathbed, Dana's husband Doug asked her
to divorce him so she would not be responsible for the bills. She
refused. Read the Christensens' story at:
http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/healthcare/st/?postId=5795

"I think President Bush is more concerned about the welfare of the
insurance business than in quality health care for people like you and
me," said Dana Christensen. "I wish he would sit down with me and let me
tell him what happened to Doug before he promotes these plans."


The Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights (FTCR) is the nation's
leading consumer watchdog group. For more information visit us online
at: http://www.ConsumerWatchdog.org

http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/newsrelease/state-union-bush-care-junk-health-care-plan-widow-consumer-groups-say
--
Astrology: Fraud or Superstition?
http://www.seesharppress.com/astro.html
P. Rajah
2011-06-03 20:30:06 UTC
Permalink
Post by Jerry Okamura
Is the solution to make people more dependent on someone else, or is the
solution to make people less dependent on someone else?
I don't think you'd find very many people able to administer medical
care to themselves. People don't get sick on purpose. So I'd say that,
yes, they are "dependent on someone else" when it comes to medical care.

Btw, New Jersey's Republican Governor Christie has proposed cutting
eligibility for Medicaid to a maximum income of $5317 a year for a
family of three. Not quite sure what Gov. Christie thinks a family of
three can do with $5317 a year, particularly in horrendously expensive
New Jersey. Perhaps send their kids to charter schools? In the
meanwhile, he takes a State Police helicopter to his son's baseball
games, which costs the state $2500 an hour to operate.

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2011/05/proposed_christie_income_limit.html
Post by Jerry Okamura
State of the Union "Bush-Care" Is Junk Health Care Plan, Widow &
Consumer Groups Say
1/30/2006
Santa Monica, CA -- The health plan that President Bush is expected to
announce in Tuesday's State of the Union address, "isn't worth a dime
because it allows insurance companies to sell junk policies that don't
protect patients when they are sick," according to a widow whose husband
was insured under the type of limited benefits policy being promoted by
Bush, but owed a half million dollars in medical bills when he died from
cancer.
The tragic story of Dana and Doug Christensen is part of a new online
resource published by the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights
(FTCR) pointing out the skeletal benefits and new burdens under the
"Bush Care" health proposals to be unveiled in tomorrow's State of the
http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/healthcare/BushCare/
"What's the point of paying for health insurance and then when you need
it, discovering the benefits you thought were promised and paid for just
aren't there?" said Dana Christensen, a volunteer with FTCR who lives in
Playa Del Rey, California. "Mega Life had told us that they would pay
80% of hospital costs and we would pay 20%. They didn't tell us that
chemotherapy was capped at $1,000 a day. Doug's chemotherapy charges
were as high as $18,000 a day!"
According to information already released from the white house,
Bush-Care would "require patients to pay more for less health care,"
Expanding junk-benefit "association health plans," insurance
policies that promise cheap, comprehensive coverage but don't cap the
amount of money consumers pay out of pocket. The president's plan would
remove association health plans from accountability to state consumer
protection rules and courts.
Relying on health savings accounts, which promise lower monthly
premiums but require patients to pay a lot more out of pocket before
coverage kicks in. When patients bear a greater cost, they delay needed
treatment and increase health costs in the long run.
Extending individual tax deductions for health care costs, a scheme
to "let insurance companies and big pharma steal our money then give us
a tax deduction to soften the blow," said FTCR.
Though the Christensens were insured with an association health plan,
Dana was left with $450,000 in unpaid medical bills when her husband
died of bone cancer. Their insurance had no limit on out of pocket costs
for patients, unlike traditional health insurance or HMOs. It covered
only a small portion of chemotherapy costs even though Dana was told
they'd had full coverage. On his deathbed, Dana's husband Doug asked her
to divorce him so she would not be responsible for the bills. She
http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/healthcare/st/?postId=5795
"I think President Bush is more concerned about the welfare of the
insurance business than in quality health care for people like you and
me," said Dana Christensen. "I wish he would sit down with me and let me
tell him what happened to Doug before he promotes these plans."
The Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights (FTCR) is the nation's
leading consumer watchdog group. For more information visit us online
at: http://www.ConsumerWatchdog.org
http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/newsrelease/state-union-bush-care-junk-health-care-plan-widow-consumer-groups-say
--
Astrology: Fraud or Superstition?
http://www.seesharppress.com/astro.html

Ass-troll-ogers/jyotishitheads are the bane of humanity, and must be
cleansed or otherwise purified for the benefit of society.
Jerry Okamura
2011-06-03 20:45:38 UTC
Permalink
Post by Jerry Okamura
Is the solution to make people more dependent on someone else, or is the
solution to make people less dependent on someone else?
I don't think you'd find very many people able to administer medical
care to themselves. People don't get sick on purpose. So I'd say that,
yes, they are "dependent on someone else" when it comes to medical care.

It is not a question of depending on doctors to take care of us, it is a
question of do we want to be more dependent on someone else to pay for our
healthcare, or is the solution to make people less dependent on someone else
to pay for our healthcare needs.

Btw, New Jersey's Republican Governor Christie has proposed cutting
eligibility for Medicaid to a maximum income of $5317 a year for a
family of three. Not quite sure what Gov. Christie thinks a family of
three can do with $5317 a year, particularly in horrendously expensive
New Jersey. Perhaps send their kids to charter schools? In the
meanwhile, he takes a State Police helicopter to his son's baseball
games, which costs the state $2500 an hour to operate.

Can Medicare keep the promises it made or can't it? What is the size of the
unfunded liability for the program?
P. Rajah
2011-06-04 02:54:21 UTC
Permalink
Post by P. Rajah
Post by Jerry Okamura
Is the solution to make people more dependent on someone else, or is the
solution to make people less dependent on someone else?
I don't think you'd find very many people able to administer medical
care to themselves. People don't get sick on purpose. So I'd say that,
yes, they are "dependent on someone else" when it comes to medical care.
It is not a question of depending on doctors to take care of us, it is a
question of do we want to be more dependent on someone else to pay for
our healthcare, or is the solution to make people less dependent on
someone else to pay for our healthcare needs.
Do you know how insurance actually works? Insurance is profitable for
insurance companies because more people pay into it who don't make
claims than those who do. In other words, for health insurance as for
any other kind of insurance, healthy(and healthful) people pay for the
others. If you pay for your own health-care needs, who needs insurance?
You simply would pay for it out of your own pocket, or do without.
Post by P. Rajah
Btw, New Jersey's Republican Governor Christie has proposed cutting
eligibility for Medicaid to a maximum income of $5317 a year for a
family of three. Not quite sure what Gov. Christie thinks a family of
three can do with $5317 a year, particularly in horrendously expensive
New Jersey. Perhaps send their kids to charter schools? In the
meanwhile, he takes a State Police helicopter to his son's baseball
games, which costs the state $2500 an hour to operate.
Can Medicare keep the promises it made or can't it? What is the size of
the unfunded liability for the program?
Whose fault is it if the politicians raid Medicare for other budgetary
requirements, instead of keeping Medicare payroll deductions untouched?

http://woodgatesview.wordpress.com/2011/04/10/the-truth-about-republicans-on-medicare/

The Republicans and the Democrats accuse each other of raiding Medicare,
but the truth is that both of them do it. But the ultimate difference is
that while the Dems just raid it during budget crises, the Republicans
want to get rid of it too.

http://tinyurl.com/3ty3g7j
http://articles.latimes.com/1995-06-23/local/me-16282_1_tax-cuts
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2011/04/deep_breath_keep_it_simple.php#more?ref=fpblg
--
Astrology: Fraud or Superstition?
http://www.seesharppress.com/astro.html

Ass-troll-ogers/jyotishitheads are the bane of humanity, and must be
cleansed or otherwise purified for the benefit of society.
Jerry Okamura
2011-06-03 18:06:37 UTC
Permalink
Which is a better solution? Where the purchaser of the product or the user
of the service is paying for the product or service they use, or where the
purchaser of the product or the user of the service is not the one paying
for the product or service they use? Will the seller of that product or
service, be more or less concerned about keeping the people who buy their
product or service, it the person wanting the product or service the one
paying for the service, or are they more or less concerned about keeping the
people, if they are not the ones paying?

"***@mantra.com and/or www.mantra.com/jai (Dr. Jai Maharaj)" wrote in
message news:***@SvaUf...

How Obamacare is hurting the patient-physician relationship -
Statement by Jane Orient, MD

http://www.aapsonline.org/index.php/site/article/how_obamacare_is_hurting_the_patient-physician_relationship_-_statement_by_/

Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi
Om Shanti
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