What happened to all of the doom and gloom economic threads?

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

Only a few more days until the next LEI comes out.

Any wagers on the report's contents?
Will it be another increase (the eleventh straight) or will we "double dip" as Lit's "right" has been continually warning us?

Let me see, it will reflect the mad stimulus spending that kept sate government offices open and the new government hiring...

Which spending they have earmarked to dole out over the rest of the election cycles for walkin' around money in close districts.

Any wagers from you on what happens when that spending runs out and local governments begin closing half their schools?

Like in Kansas City?

Even as we post, the headlines scream, states to dally on mailing refund checks...

Not even their money!

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

I'm glad you got a laugh. You seem to need something to lighten your day in these troubling times of economic doom and gloom.

Tell us all again how preventative care only raises health care costs.

That's another thread, but the studies have already been posted...

When people "think" they're getting something for nothing, they abuse it and when the doctors are SURE they're going to get sued and the see another poor person in hoping to somehow win one of life's lotteries, they tend to CYA testing, and then there's the problems arising from false positives that raise the cost, especially to the insured who don't really have to make economic choices, just selfish choices...

Isn't that what we hate about Rand? Her "selfishness?"

You ain't seen selfish until you've seen a Greek riot when they try to put the brakes on the gravy train. Hell, they're rioting out in Berkeley, giving you a glimpse into our future.

I KNOW!

Let's give the middle class some relief and raise taxes ON THE RICH!!!



lol

That's one for you and your new buddy firespin...

 

[firespin]

Fix away Firespin, but that "fix" doesn't represent the reality of the report.

No?

"The estimate includes a projected net cost of $518 billion over 10 years for the proposed expansions in insurance coverage."

So that's an expense. That sounds bad. In fact,

'On a preliminary basis, CBO and JCT estimate that the proposal’s specifications affecting health insurance coverage would result in a net
increase in federal deficits of $518 billion over fiscal years 2010 through 2019."

We better offset that with taxes and cuts. To get the money to pay it, the bill would:

"those costs are partly offset by $201 billion in revenues from the excise tax on high-premium insurance plans"

So that's a tax increase.

In terms of Medicare, let's try this:

"Other components of the proposal would alter spending under Medicare Medicaid, CHIP, and other federal health programs. The proposal would make numerous changes to payment rates and payment rules in those programs (the budgetary effects of which are shown in Table 1 and detailed in the enclosed table). In total, CBO estimates that enacting those provisions would reduce direct spending by $404 billion over the 2010–2019 period.5 The provisions that would result in the largest budget savings include these:
 Permanent reductions in the annual updates to Medicare’s payment rates for most services in the fee-for-service sector (other than physicians’ services), yielding budgetary savings of $162 billion over 10 years."

and

'Reducing Medicare and Medicaid payments to hospitals that serve a large number of low-income patients, known as disproportionate
share (DSH) hospitals, by almost $45 billion—composed of roughly $22 billion each from Medicaid and Medicare DSH payments."

 

[Ulaven_Demorte]

Let me see, it will reflect the mad stimulus spending that kept sate government offices open and the new government hiring...

Which spending they have earmarked to dole out over the rest of the election cycles for walkin' around money in close districts.

Any wagers from you on what happens when that spending runs out and local governments begin closing half their schools?

Like in Kansas City?

Even as we post, the headlines scream, states to dally on mailing refund checks...

Not even their money!

Mad stimulus spending? What planet are you living on? Only a fraction of the stimulus money has been spent to date. I'll wager you haven't even looked at the reports since they contradict your world view.

Keep on hoping against hope and cheering for failure Cap'n.

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

That's what I said. The rest was being held to influence the election in tight races...




And you keep showing your lack of understanding of percentages along with your selective reading comprehension...

In this case, even a slight percentage of that Ark amounts to all the dollars bigger than the wolves...

23 cents on the dollar, inclusive, or exclusive, is still $0.23.

 

[Ulaven_Demorte]

No?

"The estimate includes a projected net cost of $518 billion over 10 years for the proposed expansions in insurance coverage."

So that's an expense. That sounds bad. In fact,

'On a preliminary basis, CBO and JCT estimate that the proposal’s specifications affecting health insurance coverage would result in a net
increase in federal deficits of $518 billion over fiscal years 2010 through 2019."

We better offset that with taxes and cuts. To get the money to pay it, the bill would:

"those costs are partly offset by $201 billion in revenues from the excise tax on high-premium insurance plans"

So that's a tax increase.

In terms of Medicare, let's try this:

"Other components of the proposal would alter spending under Medicare Medicaid, CHIP, and other federal health programs. The proposal would make numerous changes to payment rates and payment rules in those programs (the budgetary effects of which are shown in Table 1 and detailed in the enclosed table). In total, CBO estimates that enacting those provisions would reduce direct spending by $404 billion over the 2010–2019 period.5 The provisions that would result in the largest budget savings include these:
 Permanent reductions in the annual updates to Medicare’s payment rates for most services in the fee-for-service sector (other than physicians’ services), yielding budgetary savings of $162 billion over 10 years."

and

'Reducing Medicare and Medicaid payments to hospitals that serve a large number of low-income patients, known as disproportionate
share (DSH) hospitals, by almost $45 billion—composed of roughly $22 billion each from Medicaid and Medicare DSH payments."

Oh no! Not an excise tax on "cadillac" insurance plans..

The reductions in Medicare and Medicaid will come as a result of an overall decrease in health care costs.

Nice try though Firespun.

 

[firespin]

Mad stimulus spending? What planet are you living on? Only a fraction of the stimulus money has been spent to date. I'll wager you haven't even looked at the reports since they contradict your world view.

Keep on hoping against hope and cheering for failure Cap'n.

Since the economy is all better now, why do we need the rest of the deficit increase erm "stimulus" spending?

And, in general, why did they pass a stimulus program where only a fraction of the money would be spent in the first year? That doesn't sound very stimulating. It sounds more like a bunch of special interest handouts were bundled in.

 

[Ulaven_Demorte]

That's what I said. The rest was being held to influence the election in tight races...

And you keep showing your lack of understanding of percentages along with your selective reading comprehension...

In this case, even a slight percentage of that Ark amounts to all the dollars bigger than the wolves...

23 cents on the dollar, inclusive, or exclusive, is still $0.23.

*laugh*
Now it's a vast liberal conspiracy to buy elections.

No shit.. 23 cents =$.23 What a revelation.
You still don't know how to calculate sales tax I see.

 

[firespin]

Oh no! Not an excise tax on "cadillac" insurance plans..

The reductions in Medicare and Medicaid will come as a result of an overall decrease in health care costs.

Nice try though Firespun.

LOL...so you agree I was right about what they said, about tax increases and Medicare cuts.

Though if you read it again...the Medicare savings is not because the procedures cost less, it's just they are paying out less.

The way you phrased it "an overall decrease in health care costs" is meaningless. Costs don't "decrease overall"...either the price of them goes down, or fewer of them are done...you need one or the other.

 

[Ulaven_Demorte]

Since the economy is all better now, why do we need the rest of the deficit increase erm "stimulus" spending?

And, in general, why did they pass a stimulus program where only a fraction of the money would be spent in the first year? That doesn't sound very stimulating. It sounds more like a bunch of special interest handouts were bundled in.

Getting better, never said it was all better.

The Stimulus plan has always been a multi-year approach to recovery. Didn't you get the memo? I'm sure it was posted somewhere.

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

If it's such a good deal, preventative care and all U_D, why do they tax us for four years before the plan kicks in?





Are you the SS Titanic conductor striking up a new ballad?

Play some hope and change boys...

"'Here and now boys, Here and now!' screamed the maya."

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

Getting better, never said it was all better.

The Stimulus plan has always been a multi-year approach to recovery. Didn't you get the memo? I'm sure it was posted somewhere.

It's called "The Great Depression."
__________________
"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results."
Winston Churchill

 

[Ulaven_Demorte]

LOL...so you agree I was right about what they said, about tax increases and Medicare cuts.

Though if you read it again...the Medicare savings is not because the procedures cost less, it's just they are paying out less.

The way you phrased it "an overall decrease in health care costs" is meaningless. Costs don't "decrease overall"...either the price of them goes down, or fewer of them are done...you need one or the other.

You're playing semantics, as usual.

Taxes will increase, on those who have "Cadillac" insurance plans.. Health care costs will go down, according to the CBO report, which explains why medicare and medicaid payouts will decrease.

 

[firespin]

The Stimulus plan has always been a multi-year approach to recovery. Didn't you get the memo? I'm sure it was posted somewhere.

I'm sure you can find where that's how the bill was presented to the public. They wouldn't have used scare tactics to imply that without this bill, most of which had no effect in the first year, we would face unemployment of more than 9%.

Oh, hey...about that unemployment number...

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

Not if your "Cadillac" plan bears the union label...





They have "friends" in high places buying themselves indulgences...


(Keeping with U_D's Sunday "religious" meme)

 

[firespin]

You're playing semantics, as usual.

Taxes will increase, on those who have "Cadillac" insurance plans.. Health care costs will go down, according to the CBO report, which explains why medicare and medicaid payouts will decrease.

Well, laws are about words, after all.

What is a "cadillac" insurance plan? One that provides extensive coverage? Is that what you think should be taxed? Why do you think employers won't scale back coverage to avoid this tax? (Which would reduce revenue to the government, and be a burden on the employees.)

Please show me where you think that report says that health care costs will go down. That's a serious statement. I read it over twice, and it doesn't say anything about that.

A couple of other things to note:

All of the deficit reduction in the ten-year window actually occurs in the first four years, when taxes are collected but expenses don't kick in yet. That seems like a shell game, no?

There outgo part of this is more or less a given, whereas the "income" is subject to going away, e.g. the cadillac plans could go away, or the Medicare plan reductions could be voted down, as they routinely are for doctors. Then we get a bigger deficit, despite this report.

 

[cebalrai]

Since the economy is all better now, why do we need the rest of the deficit increase erm "stimulus" spending?

And, in general, why did they pass a stimulus program where only a fraction of the money would be spent in the first year? That doesn't sound very stimulating. It sounds more like a bunch of special interest handouts were bundled in.

You know full well that recovery takes a couple years, and that a credit-crunch recession takes even longer. Yet you make this garbage post?

 

[unregistered]

 

[unregistered]

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

You know full well that recovery takes a couple years, and that a credit-crunch recession takes even longer. Yet you make this garbage post?

Then why did Europe recover so quickly?


They didn't have a "Great Depression" either...

Just a depression.

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

And continuing Vette's topic...

Via my Year One blogging buddy, Pejman Yousefzadeh, comes this happy fun story about America’s good credit:

Moody’s Investor Service, the credit rating agency, will fire a warning shot at the US on Monday, saying that unless the country gets public finances into better shape than the Obama administration projects there would be “downward pressure” on its triple A credit rating.

Examining the administration’s outlook for the federal budget deficit, the agency said: “If such a trajectory were to materialise, there would at some point be downward pressure on the triple A rating of the federal government.”

If you had a time machine and it was good for only one trip, would you go back and give contraceptives to Hitler’s parents — or to the parents of John Maynard Keynes?

Obviously, I’m being facetious, but only by half.

Hitler discredited fascism, by launching wars of aggression and sending millions of Jews, Gypsies, gays, and the handicapped to the gas chambers. And, minus the extent that he started all those wars and killed all those people — well, good for Hitler.

Again, obviously, I’m being facetious.

But I’m not being facetious at all when I tell you that Keynes legitimized fascism, by giving decent, liberal democracies license to tax and spend and borrow in the name of political expedience.

Look, whatever Keynes may have gotten right — I suppose he could wipe his own bottom unassisted — what he got wrong is precisely what bedevils us today. And Keynes, the fascistic bastard, I think got it wrong on purpose.

Let me explain.

Quite famously, Keynes wrote, “In the long run we are all dead.” Which politicians of the Great Depression, and long thereafter, took to mean, “Right now I can buy votes with money borrowed from people who aren’t even born.” And Keynes enabled them. Keynesian theory held that governments should save money in the good times, so that they could spend it during lean times to “stimulate” the economy.

Gee, where have we heard that word before?

But let’s be frank here. That bit Keynes said about saving money must have been with a wink and a nod and a nudge, nudge — because popular democracies almost never save any money. And Keynes was too smart not to know it, and too conniving not to say it.

Of course, Keynesian theory also held that inflation and recession couldn’t coexist — but then Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter and the 1970s came along and disproved all that. And yet, somehow, liberal governments still hold by Keynes.

But why?

Simple. What Keynes did was to give license to government today, to borrow from tomorrow — and the consequences be damned. And there’s nothing a politician likes to hear better than that he can buy votes from Paul, using Peter’s money, without Peter ever being the wiser. Because if you follow the Keynesian example, Peter hasn’t been born yet. Convenient, that. In olden times, politicians had to rob from people who could shout to high heaven that they’d been fleeced. But then the unborn don’t exactly turn out in huge numbers on election day.

And that’s where we are today — borrowing trillions from China and Japan in the expectation that our grandkids will someday, somehow, foot the bill.

France, Germany, China — these countries ignored Keynes during the recent Great Recession, and now they are all well on their merry ways to recovery.

The United States and Britain are still, tragically, under JMK’s sway — and it’s no coincidence that our two nations our about to go for a double dip in the pool of total suckiness.

Keynes got one thing right in his inglorious career. In the days after World War One, he argued that Weimar Germany would never be able to repay the debts it owed under the terms of the ruinous Versailles Treaty. And he was right. The German economy burned to the ground, and Hitler arose from its ashes.

And yet, by the theories of that same inglourious basterd, we have saddled ourselves — in the space of just one year! — with debts perhaps as great as those faced by the fragile Weimar Republic of 1920. What will come from our ashes? No one can say.

Had anyone listened 90 years ago, Keynes could have saved the world from Adolf Hitler. Had anyone listened just last year, we’d be spared the risk of becoming Weimar America.

So. You’ve got that time machine. Who gets the condom?




http://pajamasmedia.com/vodkapundit/2010/03/15/keynesian-economics-exposed/

 

[JohnnySavage]

Moody's rated the bonds backed by mortgages AAA

Not sure we should take anything they say as the gospel.

 

[unregistered]

 

[Ulaven_Demorte]

I'll never be able to support the morality of obligating future Americans to a crushing debt burden that leaves them with less opportunity, less freedom, than was left to us. Having never received a check for my share of the interest on the national debt, I've never been fooled by Keynes Idea that we can add to the national debt because we only owe it to ourselves.

You forgot to add the caveat of "Unless it's in support of a war".

 

[Sean Renaud]

snip. . .
when the doctors are SURE they're going to get sued and the see another poor person in hoping to somehow win one of life's lotteries,
snip..

Can you show evidence of this occuring? Cus Harvard did a study albiet a limited one and came to the conclusion that 90% of cases brought up to doctors involved provable injury. 60% of those could be blamed cleanly on the doctor.

What's better is that since a lawsuit has to make it through a panel of doctor before going to court most frivoulus lawsuits never make it before a judge.

Also the CBO claims that Tort Reform would save 11billion dollars anually. Big money until you realize that is .5% of what we spend on Health Care.