American Politics during the Obama Presidency

because you are intelligent enough to look beyond the propaganda and see the human stories that get lost. WE do not have great health care in the usa, we have expensive healthcare and more expensive equipment--that's it. The abuse of the power grabbed by the industry is shocking--In the USA we let this happen. WE don't regulate. WE don't have an equitable system. Walley can pay us$1800 per month for insurance, 90% can't.

Seperate the propanda and Michael More's personal style or lack of style to watch some of the human stoies that he tells: they are shocking. Based upon my personal and professional experience--there is quite a bit of truth in these stories. I could spell out hundreds of these stories from my old files. I have virtually stopped representing individuals experiencing medical misadventures--but I still do some. Because it is the right thing to do. Because of the abuse of basic human dignity based upon dollars. I enjoy suing health insurance companies--they are abusive bullies who have paid off congress: both the rebublicans and the democrats.

I've seen Walley give money to the little professional beggars on junin based upon his sense of passion and compassion. Walley what we are doing now is just plain wrong. WE are number 37--it's not fantacy. WE reward profit and not quality. WE fail to regulate and there is only a fantacy of any type of free market.

[QUOTE=Rock Harders]Wild Willyeye-

What you are forgetting to mention, and where you are totally and completely factually inaccurate is the concept of US hospitals as market driven businesses. The FACT is that US hospitals operate as NOT FOR PROFIT (the same as a religious entity or charity) organizations which means they DO NOT have to pay taxes on any services they provide or revenues they generate. US hospitals are classified as such because they must provide treatment to all who come seeking it regardless of one's ability to pay. SOME hospitals do generate a profit and this money goes as bonuses to the top level directors and executives of the hospital or corporate entity. I worked in the accounting / billing department of a major US hospital owner / operator for a year back in 2000.

For all your claims about the US having the best medical care in the world, the FACT is that US citizens do not rank among the top 10 in the world in life expectancy, happiness, or commonality of disease, despite the US spending more than any other country by far on health care (17% of GDP I believe) The fact that you think paying $10,000 per year ($800/ month) should tell you something. What is you were only making $30k per year (pre-tax) How could you possibly afford that number?

Suerte,

Rock Harders[/QUOTE]Rock Harders --

Some American hospitals are non profit and others are for profit. The non profit operate in almost the exact same profit driven fashion, except they are required to give some form of charity.

In addition US hospitals are required to provide emergency treatment and that's it. Follow up care is not required.

The AMA has recently announced it's support of the Public Health Insurance option. Why? Well, doctors do not exactly have the power they think themselves to have.

The real sticklers are Pharmaceuticals the Insurance industries. But even those with terrific coverage face a disappointment when faced with submitting large claims for serious issues.

He was a true believer in the power of the invisible hand of the free market. Let companies fail if they aren't competetive. Up-tick rule---let short sellers have the freedom in an unregulated market to destroy capital without messy government interference. Now that's true freedom.

I asked him when my last Miami root canal costs us$1300. He has a degree from NYU and owns an implant clinic in LA. His response was greed. I asked why in Miami it took three visits and lot's of pain and a big production. His assisatant did it in 10 minutes and I did not realize that they had actually done the root canal. DR Lee said that he could not imagine that the North American dentist would intentionally put on a big show to justify the price, but that more than 90% of the root canal are simple basic and quick.

DR Lee's clinic in LA charges 50% of the going price for implants in LA. HE is making a lot of money based on volume and is very happy. I am not saying that North American dentists are evil or thieves, just what DR Lee tells me. He could adopt the us model and move to LA to maximize his profit, but prefers the quality of life in BA and takes lot's of vacations. During the last farmer's crisis he was buying quality farm land and leasing it back to the farmers.

It says they count on grassroots supporters "just like you." Me, them, who? Took me a few minutes to, "get it."

Unless they are dealing with cash-only patients. If there is any kind of health plan, dental plan or insurance the price for most all procedures is "pre-negotiated" (I. E. Set) by the large, monolithic insurance company and the service provider can take it or leave it.

In most service businesses, you develop a service that people want. You figure out how much that service costs you to provide and you add a margin on top of that cost that will provide you with a positive cash flow after taxes.

If you are a private practice dentist, for example, you have cover all of the start-up costs and overhead in order to deliver service.

Let's look at a basic practice in a suburban area (nice urban area would be more expensive) with a 2,000 sqft office, 3 admin staff (receptionist, billing / accounting, office manager) four hygienists / assistants (5 chairs, doc + 4) The first day the dentist opens his door for business, he is potentially $250K in debt ($100k school debt, $150K start-up costs if he rents the space) Monthly operating costs would be about $62K (rent, salaries, benefits, insurance, interest and principal on loans) before the dentist makes a dime. Therefore, he needs to make $62K plus a reasonable margin upon which he can live, feed his family and put some money away for a rainy day. How much should a dentist make? All that school, time, talent? Lets be cheap and say he only deserves to make $240k per year (pre-tax) or $83/ hr (assuming he does 20 hrs of work related to running the business per week in addition to the dental work) Therefore, he needs to make $82K per month or $4,100 per day or $512.50 per hour to make ends meet (based on 2 weeks vacation and 10 holidays per year) That is $102.50/ chair / hour. Now we all know that he isn't going to have all five chairs occupied 8hrs / day so let's say he is very popular and has a 65% occupancy, so his cost is $788 per hour for the office ($157/ hour / chair) before he takes any x-rays, uses any technology or runs any tests on you.

If for some reason the office is closed for a day, the cost goes up to $165/ chair / hour, and so on.

If the insurance company sets the price for a cleaning at $100, then he has to make up the other $57 somewhere else. If 75% of his normal monthly business is cleanings, the other 25% have to include larger margins to cover his overhead.

[QUOTE=Miami Bob]Herbert Hoover--was a true free market kind of guy

He was a true believer in the power of the invisible hand of the free market. Let companies fail if they aren't competetive. Up-tick rule---let short sellers have the freedom in an unregulated market to destroy capital without messy government interference. Now that's true freedom. [/QUOTE] So we should assume you are calling for an end to the free market and a move to socialism?

IMHO Hoover's economics were statist.

Did you know Roosevelt's running mate, John Nance Garner, accused the Republicans of "leading the country down the path of socialism’?

New Dealer Rexford Tugwell later remarked that although no one would say so at the time, [b] "practically the whole New Deal was extrapolated from programs that Hoover started."[/b] Who was Rexford Tugwell?

[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rexford_Tugwell[/url]

We may have had Hoovervilles in the thirties but I suspect Obamas [b][i]"trickle up poverty"[/b][/i] is going to give us years of high unemployment, deflation and/or stagnation, we could see the S&P with big swings for several years, going possibly as low as 500, if not outright total collapse of our economic system.

We need to stop spending money we don’t have and stimulate job creation, if we don’t the question becomes:

Will Obamavilles be any better that Hoovervilles?

Great job, again, Walleye. It's good to put these things in context, and the best way to do that is with numbers. Thanks

Mongers,

This thread has become so pathetic (even worse than Fox News, the National Enquirer, Sean Hannity and Jackson Limbaugh combined) and bankrupt on new ideas (much like the Republican party) that I have decided to stop posting here.

Reasonably intelligent dialogue clearly is not possible when the participants keep posting this rubbish.

Suerte,

Rock Harders

I was very resistant to accept this concept. I want to thank you for the effort that you made to explain the hows and why non-socialized medicine will never provide any type of human result. I owe both Stan and yourself a thank you for forcing me to clarify my thinking on this set of issues. I want the public option now and I am going to make the contacts to do volunteer work and make financial contributions to back-up my newly found convictions. If the private sector can compete, let them survive, else let them go the way of buggy whip factories. I consciously chose to have quasi-competent public employees in the drivers' seat, rather than B-school grads making the tough decisions on rationing health care motivated 100% by profit. I never thought that I could accept the concept of a governmet run system, now I see that there is no other moral option.

90% of the USA will benefit from socialized medicine and Stan and your and I can readily afford to share the cost. I don't really care what any of you think of the policy decision, because you all have a religious zeal for a fantasy of a free market universe which only exists in a set of assumptions that are accepted the same way the one makes a religious leap of faith.

Healthcare should not be approached as a first year B-school case study. I love you on a personal level Walley, but I now will just agree to disagree--morally you are on the wrong side of this issue.

Sid--keep-up the long cut and paste jobs. It makes it more difficult to follow the thoughtful commentary that Walley and Stan spend time composing. Whether I aggree or disaggree with him, but Walley devotes real time and thought to his postings and tries to make them both educational and fun. I appreciate your right to post, but a summary and link would do the job quite effectively so that the thoughtful original anaysis of some of the others posting would be more readily available.

AS an intelligent man who I respect--I would like to see more of Sid's thoughts and analysis--not ranting or mere re-prints of long articles.

ROCK--don't stop participating. The only people who can afford to spend significant mongering time in BA are either wealthy people motivated to protect that wealth for the seed of their seed; people doing business in Argentina like Walley and myself; retired people or ex-expatriates who have decided not to live in the usa any longer. I am not including argentines who read this site nor other nationalities, because they really don't participate here. Most are right wing Wall Street types who can pay cash for medical care if needed; don't need Medicare or Social Security and do belive in class war fare---I don't give a shit about poorer people and their lives--I've got mine and I want to protect it. In life you will deal with many different types of people. You should have in your skill-set the ability to converse with people with whom you disaggree. This is important in life.

Obama is not an effective political leader at this point and will not likely pass the public option at this point in time. Becuase of the financial mess today--it might really not be the right time to spend the money. The back and forth with Walley has convinced me and changed my mind on the subject. I will get involved and worked towards a future time when we will have a public option. If I did not have diolog with people with different points of view, I would not not been able to comfortably make such a decsion.

[QUOTE=Miami Bob] I never thought that I could accept the concept of a governmet run system, now I see that there is no other moral option.[/QUOTE]Please show me one historical example of moral socialism.

[QUOTE=Miami Bob]90% of the usa will benefit from socialized medicine and stan and your and I can readily afford to share the cost. [/QUOTE]Under the current house plan, 84.3 million Americans will lose their private health care. I didn't realize that there are 843 million Americans. You, Stan and I can only subsidize others up and to the point that we run out of money.

[QUOTE=Miami Bob]you all have a religious zeal for a fantasy of a free market universe which only exists in a set of assumptions that are accepted the same way the one makes a religious leap of faith.[/QUOTE]There may be zeal but not for fantasy (except when pondering nights out in Bs As) There are facts such as 1+1=2 and if you don't bring in more money than you spend, you lose money. There is a relatively finite supply of money (despite BHO's US Government is printing mass amounts of currency) once you take it all, there is no more to take.

[QUOTE=Miami Bob]Healthcare should not be approached as a first year be-school case study.[/QUOTE]Not sure about that. One of the first things they tried to teach me (my parents beat them to the punch by about 20 years) was that a company (with any prayer of sustainability) needed to bring in more money than it spent.

The sources of cash for a company can take different forms (on the cash flow statement they are classified as income from operations, investing activities and financing activities) but at the end of the day, in the real world, sources of cash must be greater than uses of cash.

[QUOTE=Miami Bob]I love you on a personal level walley, but I now will just agree to disagree--morally you are on the wrong side of this issue.[/QUOTE]Bob, I have great respect for you, your opinions and your right to express those opinions, even when the are wrong. If I limited my circle of friends to just middle-of-the-road independents like myself, life would be pretty boring. This is one issue where I am on the morally superior side. Don't let emotions and hope for a Utopian solution cloud your vision of what will produce the best result.

[QUOTE=Miami Bob]Most are right wing wall street types who can pay cash for medical care if needed; don't need medicare or social security and do belive in class war fare---I don't give a shit about poorer people and their lives--I've got mine and I want to protect it. In life you will deal with many different types of people. [/QUOTE]I thought you said you loved me? In 1990, before becoming a heartless denizen of Wall Street, I was for all intent and purpose homeless as well as unemployed and destitute. Were it not for the kindness of friends and family, I would have been on the street. I knew that I needed to improve my chances for getting ahead so I borrowed $50K (I was fortunate that I could do this) to go to a top 10 US be-school, graduated with a 3.5GPA (despite my learning disability) and ventured forth into the worst hiring market in years. There were no jobs, so I made one. In my first year I made about $50K (less than half of what the first year investment bankers made) Year 2 about $75K and in year three I made enough to retire on at age 32. I didn't retire, I kept pouring the funds back into building business and creating jobs and opportunities for others as well as myself. In '98 the Asian Flu did some real damage, the contested election of '99 and the dotcom bust nearly killed me. I started over again. There were no bailouts no assistance and I didn't want any. I am responsible for making my own way. I have no expectations that social security or medicare will be solvent when I reach that age, therefore, any payments into them are just taxes to be pissed away by the government. If some day I retire, it will be based upon being able to afford retirement and private health insurance (if such a thing still exists) If not in that position, I'll keep packing my lunch pail and heading to the salt mines.

[QUOTE=Miami Bob]You should have in your skill-set the ability to converse with people with whom you disaggree. This is important in life.[/QUOTE]Agreed. Although, I still respectfully disagree with you on almost all the other points.

[QUOTE=Miami Bob]Obama is not an effective political leader at this point and will not likely pass the public option at this point in time. Becuase of the financial mess today--it might really not be the right time to spend the money.[/QUOTE]Here's my editorial contribution: Obama has jumped the shark. The reality of it is that he is an excellent performer / actor (so was Reagan) however, he has never done anything other than school, community organizing (whatever that is) run for office and spend 160ish days in the Senate. He benefited from a blindly devoted press that has never once asked him a hard question or sought the truth on any number of important issues. He has never made a payroll, never studied economics, never read a bill (either as a senator or president) The press conference last night (if the press did its job) was an unmitigated disaster for BHO. In fact, as I was hearing it, I was thinking that it could possibly be the nail in the coffin for Obama care. In the Q & A, while he only got softball questions, he couldn't even answer them. He sounded like a rambling drunk. He could not articulate what the plan is, how it is going to make things better, how it won't make things worse or how it is going to be paid for.

Do you really want the government running healthcare in the US?

Consider this; Medicare is a government run healthcare system. The government makes the rules, determines the benefits, determines payment for services and administers the entire system. Just in case you didn't notice Medicare will be BANKRUPT in a few years. When first funded it cost $3 Billion a year with a projected cost $12 Billion in the mid 1990's, but the cost by then had ballooned to over $200 Billion. (Funny how when government gets involved in anything the cost seems to go through the ceiling) So the government has been in defined segment of healthcare for years. Based upon governments past 40 year track record in management of this segment of healthcare I ask you again;

Do you really want the government running healthcare in the US?