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Lol, strong economic growth
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Jan 4, 2017 04:02
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Rated PG-34 posted:Lol, strong economic growth BBUT BUT BBBBBB UTUTUTUT BUT BUT BBBB B B B BB BUUUUUUUUT ALMOST 20,000 POINTS!!!!
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Jan 4, 2017 04:03
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Rated PG-34 posted:Lol, strong economic growth Income for the top 1% increased 8% last year that's strong growth!
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Jan 4, 2017 04:14
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Helsing posted:Wow, the industry that benefits the most from an extremely inefficient system is full of people who don't think the system should be abandoned. I'm shocked. Feel free to address the point that Medicare reimburses at or below cost and shifting the entire population to it would put providers out of business instead of attempting to deflect. Medicare's costs are rising almost as fast as Private Insurers costs. If you bother to inform yourself you will find that Medicare is driving a portion of the Private Sector costs because over time their payment schedule has been forced from slightly above cost to slightly below cost. This forces the private sector to subsidize Medicare. Medicaid is even worse and is very far below cost, the additional costs are again pushed to the private sector. The second factor driving private premiums up faster is that they aren't crippled with a retarded congress. They're trying to prepare for future cost increases. Congress is intentionally letting those build up for Medicare to cause the system to fail. You'll notice that they idea of increasing the revenue from the payroll tax that funds Medicare is never discussed, only how benefits should be cut. Medicare's cost savings would mainly be administrative, and those are debatable, and would do nothing to prevent the long term cost of care increases. Even if you waved a magic wand and removed 100% of Payer cost and Profit you only drop 2-3 years worth of Medical inflation. Since healthcare wasn't affordable back in '14-15 you don't end up fixing anything. The price providers are charging is constantly increasing and the quantity of services demanded is constantly increasing. People always focus on the payer side because they love to beat up on insurance companies. Yet they aren't driving the cost. The providers are. Xae fucked around with this message at 04:53 on Jan 4, 2017 |
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Jan 4, 2017 04:49
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Xae posted:Feel free to address the point that Medicare reimburses at or below cost and shifting the entire population to it would put providers out of business instead of attempting to deflect. Yes you idiot. Healthcare is a right and should not be for-profit. I literally want health insurance companies to go out of business. Hospitals will be fine. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Jan 4, 2017 04:51
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Helsing posted:Wow, the industry that benefits the most from an extremely inefficient system is full of people who don't think the system should be abandoned. I'm shocked. "freeing up economic resources" means un-employing tons of people. I support reform because healthcare is an economic cancer and have no problems with a single payer system but under no circumstances can a large cost reduction be made to a system this large and it's worth it for everyone to remember this. Also with respect to employer plans I tend to think it's worth reminding people of the arbitrary nature of the current system and employer healthcare is one place to point. Companies don't select people's housing or cars or anything else - they pay salaries. But when it comes to healthcare they make the choice. Recently at a company meeting my CEO explained how he had spent a ton of time personally researching healthcare because it was a top expense. It's weird and extremely inefficient for managers in random industries to be making healthcare choices for employees and companies don't actually want to be doing it.
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Jan 4, 2017 04:51
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Aliquid posted:Yes you idiot. Healthcare is a right and should not be for-profit. I literally want health insurance companies to go out of business. Hospitals will be fine. Provider = Hospital Payer = Insurer If you're going to flame someone you should at least get a loving clue. When you say to a Hospital "I'm going to pay you at or below cost for everything" they go out of business. No organization can sustain a deficit forever. This isn't a hard concept.
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Jan 4, 2017 04:54
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Frequently the plans are utterly misleading as well. At work we had an HR guy come around and show us the math on the plans. Turns out the most expensive one loving sucked and the cheapest one with the highest out of pocket maximum was actually the best deal, especially if something catastrophic happened to you. Is this a general rule? Should I always go with the lower-cost one?
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Jan 4, 2017 04:56
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Xae posted:When you say to a Hospital "I'm going to pay you at or below cost for everything" they go out of business. No organization can sustain a deficit forever. This isn't a hard concept. Not-for-profit entities operate at margin all the time. State-run entities may even run a deficit if it's a public good!!
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Jan 4, 2017 04:58
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oh no hospitals will have to stop gold plating the doctors lounges and some specialist wont be able to afford a fourth house before turning 50 we're all dooomed
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Jan 4, 2017 04:59
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Pollyanna posted:Is this a general rule? Should I always go with the lower-cost one? No. Sit down and do the math. It can vary a ton, which is why health care in the U.S. is a tremendous pain. Also consider your own needs. Do you need to see a doctor a lot or do you only really need catastrophic coverage in case something terrible happens to you? Does it come with dental? What does the dental cover? How about short or long term disability? It just happened that at my job the better option was the cheapo one. Sometimes there actually end up not being any differences.
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Jan 4, 2017 05:03
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Aliquid posted:Not-for-profit entities operate at margin all the time. State-run entities may even run a deficit if it's a public good!! And that deficit is paid with: taxes. Which will slow economic growth (all other things being equal.) Money does not come from thin air. Or rather, fiat value doesn't.
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Jan 4, 2017 05:03
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Hmm should have used ceteris paribus so you could at least sound fancy with your :econ101: All things being equal is normally a terrible assumption, it's really wrong here.
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Jan 4, 2017 05:07
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Money is an illusion. All of it. It only has value because we, as a society, agree that it does.
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Jan 4, 2017 05:10
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I like how humanity collectively looked at the natural state of the very world we were born onto and said "nah gently caress that lets change all this poo poo to suit us" but somehow this economic system we created wholesale is just the way it is and we can't change that.
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Jan 4, 2017 05:17
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Ynglaur posted:And that deficit is paid with: taxes. Which will slow economic growth (all other things being equal.) Money does not come from thin air. Or rather, fiat value doesn't. Money is a social construct
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Jan 4, 2017 05:39
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Proud Christian Mom posted:oh no hospitals will have to stop gold plating the doctors lounges and some specialist wont be able to afford a fourth house before turning 50 we're all dooomed except that isn't the issue at all. doctors have insane levels of debt and so the only way for it to be worth it for them to practice is to charge very high rates. this also makes things worse because being a regular family doctor doesn't pay well enough to cover this, so that's why you see lots of high priced specialists with the average internal medicine specialist pretty much from the bottom of the barrel. when the worst doctors are the ones you see every day while the best ones are in very niche areas, you're going to see issues. additionally, doctor's salaries aren't even really the issue, it's all the fancy medical equipment we need to use. if you want to go back to not having x-rays and MRIs at podunk regional hospitals then that's fine, but you don't get to sit there raging at the heavens and acting like the solution is super simple. everything is linked, nothing is simple and any solutions will not be perfect for everyone. anyone trying to make it so is refusing to see the whole picture and just wants to play politics. you're talking about not just fixing the mistakes that were made before any of us were alive, but also fixing the mistakes and correcting the inefficiencies in dozens of other systems. in just my short little post alone i've pointed out that to really fix things you need to fix: high educational indebtedness, bad incentive alignment causing an over-allocation of resources to niche areas, high medical device costs, over-treatment, etc. there are many, many more things you need to think about. flippantly blaming it on hospitals trying to be nice and doctors wanting to earn money isn't going to solve anything, it just gets to make you feel smug and superior. so congrats. job well done. Ynglaur posted:And that deficit is paid with: taxes. Which will slow economic growth (all other things being equal.) Money does not come from thin air. Or rather, fiat value doesn't. actually it does. money only has value because we have collectively decided we want it to. i'll prove it. suppose you learned that the world was going to end tomorrow and i was offering you $10,000,000 for say, all the beer in your house. would you take it? no of course not, because that money is going to be worthless very soon. now pretend the end of the world is in 2 months, or 6 or however long you want. the only reason money works is because we know there will be a way to exchange it for other goods later. whether its numbers, pieces of paper, coins, giant hunks of metal or huge rear end stone wheels it doesn't really matter. it only matters that we decided it's good for trade. economics, like everything in life is not a bunch of perfectly smooth spheres moving through a frictionless plane. poo poo is not simple. just because you took babby's first econ doesn't mean you know poo poo. Higsian posted:I like how humanity collectively looked at the natural state of the very world we were born onto and said "nah gently caress that lets change all this poo poo to suit us" but somehow this economic system we created wholesale is just the way it is and we can't change that. oh we absolutely can, but it wouldn't be simple or easy. the best solution is probably one that pisses everyone off and cuts across political and ideological lines. but, given the american political climate, good loving luck with that without it being the sole thing you are dedicated to. i mean poo poo, look at obamacare. it's putting in some rudimentary stitches around the worst bullet holes in the system and he got crucified for it. imagine a full scale reform. it'd be a second civil war. axeil fucked around with this message at 05:55 on Jan 4, 2017 |
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Jan 4, 2017 05:44
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Ynglaur posted:And that deficit is paid with: taxes. Which will slow economic growth (all other things being equal.) Money does not come from thin air. Or rather, fiat value doesn't. Taxes don't automatically slow economic growth given that government spending is itself a component of GDP. Money doesn't magically stop moving through the economy just because it's the government doing the spending.
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Jan 4, 2017 05:58
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Ynglaur posted:And that deficit is paid with: taxes. Which will slow economic growth (all other things being equal.) Money does not come from thin air. Or rather, fiat value doesn't. So if taxes drop to zero, would economic growth be maximized?
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Jan 4, 2017 06:12
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axeil posted:i mean poo poo, look at obamacare. it's putting in some rudimentary stitches around the worst bullet holes in the system and he got crucified for it. imagine a full scale reform. it'd be a second civil war. I think your larger point about the difficulty of health care reform is correct, but a number of nations instituted universal health care in the 20th century without a civil war. Given that the large majority of Americans would likely welcome a public option (given the widespread popularity of medicare) I'd suggest the threat of civil war is low. Also blaming medical equipment for out of control medical costs isn't convincing, there is in fact a lot of fancy medical equipment in Canada and Japan and Sweden. Why is there so much resistance to the notion that the relatively high cost of US healthcare is due to profit-taking and administrative costs due to the insane bureaucracy inherent with private health insurance? Rated PG-34 posted:Lol, strong economic growth Is it controversial to suggest that the last ~6 years in the US are likely as good as it can get under the current global economic framework? America is already starting to embrace reactionary populism during the "good times", and I'm excited to see what we'll see when the next recession hits and things get bad/worse/worser.
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Jan 4, 2017 06:18
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Nocturtle posted:Also blaming medical equipment for out of control medical costs isn't convincing, there is in fact a lot of fancy medical equipment in Canada and Japan and Sweden. Why is there so much resistance to the notion that the relatively high cost of US healthcare is due to profit-taking and administrative costs due to the insane bureaucracy inherent with private health insurance? fair point. profit-seeking in the medical industry is a problem too, especially with the number of groups that need a bite at the apple. the front line practitioners, the hospitals/clinics that employee them, the drug companies, the medical device companies, the insurance companies, etc. problem is, its rather hard to put that genie back in the bottle.
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Jan 4, 2017 06:23
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Hmm what's a country that supposedly has good coverage for all people and actually exports tons of doctors to the rest of the world? I think they may be close by even.
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Jan 4, 2017 06:39
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SSJ_naruto_2003 posted:Hmm what's a country that supposedly has good coverage for all people and actually exports tons of doctors to the rest of the world? I think they may be close by even. According to WHO, that country only ranks 39th among the world’s health systems. That won´t do. We are americans. And as ameicans, we only desrve the best! Thats why we put in the effort, and now are completely satisified with our healthcare. Sure, we spend 20 times more money than they, but thanks to that, we americans can enjoy our 37th best healthcare system on the planet. No, it is literally impossible to change any bits of the system. America is a special and unique country.
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Jan 4, 2017 08:47
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You can't put the genie back in the bottle. Everything is too complicated.
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Jan 4, 2017 08:50
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the heat goes wrong posted:According to WHO, that country only ranks 39th among the world’s health systems. That won´t do. We are americans. And as ameicans, we only desrve the best! What's the emote for the crying eagle
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Jan 4, 2017 09:07
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SSJ_naruto_2003 posted:What's the emote for the crying eagle without even previewing,  guess not!
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Jan 4, 2017 09:19
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Xae posted:No organization can sustain a deficit forever. States can.
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Jan 4, 2017 09:53
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It's crazy that it's politically acceptable to spend trillions on a war halfway across the world but spending a fraction of that guaranteeing Healthcare for our people is unthinkable.
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Jan 4, 2017 10:00
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War is productive, economy-growing spending, whereas any kind of nationalization, especially of healthcare, would threaten dozens if not hundreds of our precious corporate citizens.
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Jan 4, 2017 11:06
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Nationalized healthcare is actually a pretty great corporate subsidy as every country to ever try it has found out. Also, unlike weapon production and 3rd world bombing which is for the most part glorified plate-spinning healthcare actually does produce some efficiency in the economy.
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Jan 4, 2017 11:25
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A big flaming stink posted:without even previewing,  you can hover over the smiley to see what you forgot
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Jan 4, 2017 11:50
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Why don't we have UHC here in the USA? I blame the Confederacy and President Lincoln.
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Jan 4, 2017 12:22
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Because that's communism, Reagan said so on records in the 50's so you know it's true. Thanks Ronnie! Nixon vetoed a bipartisan bill for universal childcare for more practical reasons. His trip to China cost a lot of political capital. Pat Buchanan wrote the statement about why this proved Nixon was conservative. Thanks Pat!
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Jan 4, 2017 12:46
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Xae posted:Feel free to address the point that Medicare reimburses at or below cost and shifting the entire population to it would put providers out of business instead of attempting to deflect. I'm sure that you also oppose the implementation of any kind of labour saving technology or international trade that potentially displaces workers as well. This is certainly not special pleading on behalf of your specific industry. After all, it's not as though the rest of the first world has managed to provide comparable or superior healthcare outcomes with lower spending through single payer systems. quote:Medicare's costs are rising almost as fast as Private Insurers costs. If you bother to inform yourself you will find that Medicare is driving a portion of the Private Sector costs because over time their payment schedule has been forced from slightly above cost to slightly below cost. This forces the private sector to subsidize Medicare. Medicaid is even worse and is very far below cost, the additional costs are again pushed to the private sector. What I really find interesting about this post is that from the beginning I've been very obviously focused on how prohibitively costly health care is for actual people, and yet you literally cannot conceive of anyone being concerned about anything except cost inflation. Here's a headline: the lack of adequate care and the financial burden the current system is placing on people is a far bigger issue than cost. The United States is at the epicenter of the wealthiest and most powerful global civilization that has ever existed. It is completely capable of providing decent and affordable healthcare to its population. Switching to a public system modeled on the Canadian single-payer insurance model or even the British system would save a lot of money that is wasted on administrative overhead in the current highly inefficient system. As far as reducing costs there are many options and all they require is the political will to implement them. Hey, I'm just spitballing here but perhaps it's time to let medical professionals enjoy the same stimulating blast of free trade that manufacturing workers have been enjoying since the 1980s. Crack down on unnecessary medical procedures, take a harder line in negotiations, purge the lobbyist parasites, and perhaps if the doctors kicks up a fuss bring in Chinese and Indian doctors to undercut their wages. asdf32 posted:"freeing up economic resources" means un-employing tons of people. I support reform because healthcare is an economic cancer and have no problems with a single payer system but under no circumstances can a large cost reduction be made to a system this large and it's worth it for everyone to remember this. Like any disruptive economic or regulatory change some people would stand to benefit and others would stand to lose, but in this case it would clearly be a net gain. I personally would like to see a much stronger safety net and an economic policy geared around ensuring people get and keep high wage jobs, even if they have to transition from industry to industry. But insofar as some economic disruption is necessary and inevitable I think it's loving hilarious when some neoliberal shithead singing the praises of the American healthcare system suddenly starts crying over job losses. quote:Also with respect to employer plans I tend to think it's worth reminding people of the arbitrary nature of the current system and employer healthcare is one place to point. Companies don't select people's housing or cars or anything else - they pay salaries. But when it comes to healthcare they make the choice. Recently at a company meeting my CEO explained how he had spent a ton of time personally researching healthcare because it was a top expense. It's weird and extremely inefficient for managers in random industries to be making healthcare choices for employees and companies don't actually want to be doing it. It's one of those examples of a historically arbitrary and path-dependent outcome that sort of made sense in the past (though even then it left a lot to be desired) and which now can literally only be justified by appealing to how disruptive it would be to change it. Even this thread's resident apologist cannot quite bring themselves to argue that the system is working fine -- all they seem capable of doing is insinuating that somehow any change would make it worse.
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Jan 4, 2017 19:11
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Introduce some sort of GMI or UBI and who cares if a lot of people lose their jobs that likely have unemployment benefits and good credit for retraining anyways?
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Jan 4, 2017 19:23
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It's weird to see this thread contrasted with that automated trucker one since it's basically the attitude of people that have the ability to affect policy. Technology making jobs redundant with no real replacement is just a fact of life and people can either adapt or starve but suddenly when it's affecting the medical field (or other jobs that result in similar levels of wealth) we just can't do it because it would lead to too many unemployed people.
Eggplant Squire fucked around with this message at 19:35 on Jan 4, 2017 |
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Jan 4, 2017 19:32
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Radish posted:It's weird to see this thread contrasted with that automated trucker one. Technology making jobs redundant with no real replacement is just a fact of life and people can either adapt or starve but suddenly when it's affecting the medical field (or other jobs that result in similar levels of wealth) we just can't do it because it would lead to too many unemployed people. This is the result of a mixture of American indoctrination to expect to pay 20x what everyone else pays for their healthcare and the fact that, if healthcare can be phased out, how safe is my [insert job with similar or less training] job so I can't let it happen.
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Jan 4, 2017 19:35
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Radish posted:It's weird to see this thread contrasted with that automated trucker one. Technology making jobs redundant with no real replacement is just a fact of life and people can either adapt or starve but suddenly when it's affecting the medical field (or other jobs that result in similar levels of wealth) we just can't do it because it would lead to too many unemployed people. It's especially frustrating since jobs that aren't in some way beneficial to society really shouldn't exist anyway. I'm not knowledgeable enough about the US healthcare industry to say that this describes any significant fraction of its workforce, but if it's possible to have good outcomes and lower costs at the expense of job loss then those jobs should be lost.
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Jan 4, 2017 19:36
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Paradoxish posted:It's especially frustrating since jobs that aren't in some way beneficial to society really shouldn't exist anyway. I'm not knowledgeable enough about the US healthcare industry to say that this describes any significant fraction of its workforce, but if it's possible to have good outcomes and lower costs at the expense of job loss then those jobs should be lost. The only moral job loss is lower class job loss. 
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Jan 4, 2017 19:43
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Doctors are actually a pretty good example of how "free" trade works in America. Right in the mid 1990s at the height of free trade mania and when other, especially blue collar, industries had been hit hard by economic changes, doctors and their organizations started freaking out about how the government was training too many physicians:quote:Doctors Assert There Are Too Many of Them So, of course, the government tightened licensing restrictions to reduce the supply of doctors and thus protect the wages of the existing physicians. By the exact same logic that justifies free trade in manufactured goods, this is a huge cost to the rest of the economy. If American doctors were compensated at the same rates as European doctors the result would be -- again, using the exact same logic that justifies gains from trade in other areas -- tens of billions of dollars saved every year. Indeed the cost savings would be much greater than many of the trade deals that are relentlessly advocated for by "free trade" advocates.
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Jan 4, 2017 19:45
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