Saturday, April 20, 2013
Even one of FHer-care's architects anticipates a "train wreck" as it's imposed on us
Senator Max Baucus FHer - Montana says it's unlikely that it can be implemented in any way that's not chaotic and counter to its ostensible intent. He's right in his prediction, but his premise could still use some work: There was no coherence to the way it was cobbled together, And we all know why that is. Its crafters really wanted full single-payer health care, but knew they still had to deal with the fig leaf of the continued existence of private insurance companies in order to get even a modicum of public acceptance.
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They had better fix the bumbling implementation for sure. And fast! What, me worry? We'll see if it remains true to its title as "Affordable" because it is certainly not affordable at $800.00/mo for spotty coverage with high deductibles and co-pay for this American male born 1/20/50. As for your ilk, well, what can we expect from you but continual carping?
ReplyDeleteYou can expect a simple and elegant alternative: Just put health care on a free-market footing, like any and all economic activity should be on.
ReplyDeleteLooking back at this mess derisively called Obamacare (must have gotten to your ilk when Obama himself referred to the act as such as well during the 2012 debates) which is a virtual copy cat of a 1993 Republican proposal (which left the insurance carriers in the game).
ReplyDeleteA 2010 CBS poll (which you only agree with if they agree with you) concluded that 9 out of 10 said the system needs at least fundamental changes, including 36 percent who favored a complete overhaul. Although most Americans said they were generally satisfied with the quality of their own health care, including 41 percent who said they were very satisfied, it's a different story when it comes to the cost of care. Just one in five were very satisfied with what they pay for health care, while a majority (52 percent) were dissatisfied, including a third who are very dissatisfied.
Read more at http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-500160_162-2528357.html
Sorry about your "free market footing" which is exactly what, by the way? Do you propose the elimination of insurance altogether? What country our countries would you have me investigate as models of this glorious plan of yours and that black plastic surgeon whose simplistic claims got your ilk so aroused a couple of months back when he insulted our Commander in Chief at the National Prayer Breakfast by even bringing the matter up in that forum?
ReplyDeleteNo. I propose that when you feel sick, you go to the doctor and the pharmacy and pay them for their services, and that people - of their own volition, no making them do it - carry insurance plans to cover the really catastrophic stuff - car wrecks, cancer and such.
ReplyDeleteThe costs of those services would accurately reflect their value. Remember, the first principle of free-market economics is that a good or service is worth what a buyer and seller agree that ti's worth. Nobody else has any business offering any input in the transaction.
Just how did Dr. Carson insult the Most Equal Comrade? Furthermore, why is the MEC worthy of any respect, given what he's done to the office he holds?
You see, the MEC is the enemy. That's right, enemy. So whether we come across as insulting him is not one of our top concerns.
ReplyDeleteI know. And your survival as a viable political party in this country depends not so much on what you have to offer as cures or at least palliatives for what ails us as it does on your pitiful (and extremely bilious) attempts to trash everything about our now twice freely elected Commander in Chief. With so many enemies, both domestic and foreign it must be hard for your ilk to even maintain friends and even begin to influence voters which I know you are quite concerned about because you want that executive power back such as what we saw with Cheney/Bush, esp. during their first disastrous term with their shocking and awful unfounded preemptivity. Voters have not forgotten yet so we know you will continually rip Obama's foreign policy as well.
ReplyDeleteSo Iraq was a better place and less of a threat under the Baathists than it is now?
ReplyDeleteAsk the Iraqis. You continually ignore the effect the Cheneyy Bush hwars had and will continue to have on our supposed unsustainable budget deficits.
ReplyDeleteOh, don't try that crap on me. We've all seen the charts about the deficit trajectory with or without Iraq war spending. It didn't drive the soaring increase. The big three entitlements did.
ReplyDeleteMitch Daniels, you know his excellent financial management credentials (going way back to when he managed a pretty decent student income by supplying weed to the privileged at Hahvahd) says "I try to avoid looking backwards or casting blame at anybody for the bubble, for instance, that's really the biggest cause of our current situation."
ReplyDeleteI see only one true entitlement out of your Big Three--Medicaid. We (Congress & the Executive Branch) spent our social security savings, you know the social insurance benefit we are entitled to, it was already in the bank, huge surplus. So is that a reason to get rid of social security? And why do we get rid of Medicare? Oh, that's right, not because it is unworkable but because your ilk who have never been in favor of social insurance in any form wants it to fail.
For as long as I likely live you are not going to get very far by slamming social security and medicare, my brother of the Boom and I think you are bright enough to figure out why.
Oh, you can read more at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/21/mitch-daniels-iraq-afghanistan-deficit_n_974182.html
ReplyDelete...if you can bear to hear it (and believe it) from this forum.
Did you get that, my boomer brother, none other than Mitch Daniels was quoted a year and a half ago in a radio interview at:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.wnyc.org/shows/bl/2011/sep/21/governor-daniels-keeping-republic/
as saying the 2008 bubble that burst at the tail end of the Bush administration is "REALLY THE BIGGEST CAUSE OF OUR CURRENT SITUATION."
Now I presume you will blame the Democrats for this with their affirmative housing, not the lying banker bastards with their toxic mortgages and fallacious credit default swaps that created the situation where the failed loans were uninsured. And the banker bastards got off largely unscathed. They don't have to get elected, it is claimed they have to receive huge bonuses in order to continue to do the work that they do.
I sure will blame the Community Reinvestment Act and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, because that's where the brunt of the responsibility lies.
ReplyDeleteAny big banks that got involved with that were acting stupidly and doing reckless things with depositors' money. I certainly know that. What made you expect me to justify something that was dumb and reckless?
And to your question of a couple comments back: By definition, if a government program is saddled with impossibly unfunded liabilities, of course it's time to bail on it.
ReplyDeleteWhen you think about what a tiny percentage of what we are advised by financial counselors to save for our sunset years that SS is, it's a part of the mix that could easily be folded back into one's own planning - and at a much higher rate of return.
And what's up with the way Medicare spending quickly way outpaced the original 1965 projections for the next several decades?
It might be easy to fold it back into one's own financial planning if one is under 30. I don't know about you but I have been paying into it since I was 16. I hope you are not implying that my spouse and I failed to plan for retirement with other investments because we did not fail to plan with other investments, some of which took a rather huge hits both from the crash following 9/11 after which significant and substantial amounts of corporate fraud was uncovered and following the meltdown in '08 which was also the result of massive corporate fraud. They were supposedly insuring mortgages which failed. But their shenanigans were revealed when, oopsie, uh, we can't cover the losses. You have a huge demographic of boomers who are not going to take the trashing of social security and medicare. I think you are joyful that these social insurance programs are in trouble, because your ilk has always opposed them, but, although you should have learned from your past experience with your ill-founded efforts thus far.
ReplyDeleteJust to refresh your memory, here is what Shah Gilani wrote about the credit default swaps back in Sept., 2008 about what had recently gone down in the market which he blamed on credit default swaps and no less a personage than Mitch Daniels blamed for the deficit which you seem to want to blame on our Big Bad Entitlements:
ReplyDeleteThe Fed could not let Bear Stearns enter bankruptcy because – and only because – the trillions of dollars of credit default swaps on its books would be wiped out. All the banks and institutions that had insurance written by Bear would not be able to say that they were insured or hedged anymore and they would have to write-down billions and billions of dollars in losses that they've been carrying at higher values because they could say that they were insured for those losses.
The counterparty risk that all Bear's trading partners were exposed to was so far and wide, and so deep, that if Bear was to enter bankruptcy it would take years to sort out the risk and losses. That was an untenable option.
The Fed had to bail out Bear Stearns.
The same thing has just happened to AIG. Make no mistake about it, there's nothing wrong with AIG's insurance subsidiaries – absolutely nothing. In fact, the Fed just made the best trade in its history by bailing AIG out and getting equity, warrants and charging the insurance giant seven points over the benchmark London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) on that $85 billion loan!
What happened to AIG is simple: AIG got greedy. AIG, as of June 30, had written $441 billion worth of swaps on corporate bonds, and worse, mortgage-backed securities. As the value of these insured-referenced entities fell, AIG had massive write-downs and additionally had to post more collateral. And when its ratings were downgraded on Monday evening, the company had to post even more collateral, which it didn't have.
In short, what happened in one small AIG corporate subsidiary blew apart the largest insurance company in the world.
But there's more – a lot more. These instruments are causing many of the massive write-downs at banks, investment banks and insurance companies.
Read more at http://moneymorning.com/2008/09/18/credit-default-swaps/
Shah is considered one of the world's foremost experts on the credit crisis.
He not only called for the implosion of the U.S. financial markets, he also predicted the historic rebound that began in March 2009. Shah's open letters to the White House, Congress, and U.S. Treasury secretaries outlined detailed policy options that have been lauded by academics and legislators alike.
His experience and knowledge uniquely distinguish Shah as a "trader's trader." Shah ran his first hedge fund in 1982 from his seat on the floor of the Chicago Board of Options Exchange. When the OEX (options on the Standard & Poor's 100) began trading on March 11, 1983, Shah was working in the pit as a market maker. And along with other traders, he popularized what later became known as the VIX (volatility index). He left Chicago to run the futures and options division of the British banking giant Lloyd's TSB.
Shah went on to originate and run a packaged fixed-income trading desk for Roosevelt & Cross Inc., an old-line New York boutique bond firm, and established that company's listed and OTC trading desks. Shah started another hedge fund in 1999, which he ran until 2003, when he retired to develop land holdings with partners.
Today Shah is the editor of Capital Wave Forecast and Shah Gilani's Dealbook. He also writes our most talked-about publication, an e-letter called Wall Street Insights & Indictments, where he reveals how Wall Street's high-stakes game is really played, and how to win it.
Shah studied economics and psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles. He now lives in Miami, Fl.
FYI, my spouse and I will be receiving back around 24K annually from what we paid into the Old Age & Survivor Insurance fund, which, while not much to live on, is not chump change either. Part of that will have to go towards Medicare supplemental insurance since, as you know, employers have generally stopped offering to carry the health insurance premiums for retirees. Oh, perhaps the big banks and the oil companies still do it for their employees. And who pays for that? Corporate America is as culpable as government, if not more so, regarding our current economic conundrums.
ReplyDeleteUnless I am a stockholder I have no representation in corporate America. I feel I do with the USA, my beloved country as it is yours.
ReplyDelete