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But Reagan didn't cut anything did he. He simply refused to agree to sign appropriations bills that increased social spending as much as the Democrats wanted to increase it and then capitulated by signing bills somewhere between his proposed budget and theirs. Social spending in EVERY category went up under Reagan every single year just as it did with President Bush 41 and President Clinton and President Bush 43.
And then you go on to say in a subsequent post:
You see, this is the OLD way of thinking about government. The only solution is not either borrowing what we don't cover in medicare costs or raising taxes to cover those costs. The better way is to look at how unreasonable those costs are or why they are unreasonable.
A different way of looking at government is that government has been most of the problem in those rising costs. Once government starts dickering around with the supply and demand of any product, you get artificially produced results, usually not in a good way. Good intentions invaribly produce unintended negative consequences. When Medicare went into effect in the 1960's, Congress and President Johnson promised a certain cost level for the program. But within a few short decades, that cost had been exceeded by hundreds of percent.
You can see that in prior decades, U.S. medical costs rocked along pretty steadily with the rate of inflation. From day one that Medicare and Medicaid went into effect, the costs started rising and have accelerated.
When Social Security went into effect, the people were guaranteed that we would never be taxed more than 1% of our income to support the program. We now pay 13.3% tax for social security and medicare thanks to an Obama tax reduction for 2011. Last year we paid more than 15% with additional federal and state taxes calculated to cover some of the Medicaid costs. And both programs are running on empty and will cost the people hundreds of billions more if something isn't done soon.
So it is with ALL entitlement programs.
A different way of looking a government these days is to realize that the private sector is the ONLY way to go if we want top quality at an affordable cost. The private sector always delivers what the people want and are willing or able to pay for. Government has proved that it can't.
The private sector is interested in profit not service. Not paying claims is job number one for the entire insurance industry. Stating the "private sector is the ONLY way to go if we want top quality at an affordable cost" is a joke, isn't it?
If the private sector's profit depends on delivering a service people want and are able and willing to pay for, the private sector becomes very interested in delivering that service. What other incentive is there for people to deliver products and services if not for profits? We should celebrate profit that encourages commerce and industry to deliver to us the most excellent and attractive and affordable products and services as that has produced one of the highest standards of living in the world.
As Adam Smith wrote in The Wealth of Nations , ""It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest." Were it not for their skill and ability to deliver a product and services people want and are willing and able to pay for, they would not provide the product and services. And they must manage supply and demand and costs efficiently or they are unable to provide products and services. And they won't do it for long without adequate compensation for their labor.
Government, however, for many decades now hasn't had to show a profit or even a balanced ledger; therefore it hasn't cared about cost or efficiency or effectiveness. It blames the other guy for its failures, and just borrows or prints more money to cover costs it can't cover and it doesn't have to BE effective but simply convince enough people to "vote for me" and you'll get yours. Government has had no incentive to be cost conscious, effective, or efficient as it has the power to borrow as much as it wants, print as much money as it wants, tax as much as it wants, or promise whatever it thinks the people will believe.
So we need a whole new way of thinking about government in order to get the products and services that we want and need.
And if we think long and hard enough, most people should realize that the private sector does a better job of deivering products and services, including healthcare, at a price we can afford, than the government will ever do.
The private sector is interested in profit not service. Not paying claims is job number one for the entire insurance industry. Stating the "private sector is the ONLY way to go if we want top quality at an affordable cost" is a joke, isn't it?
If the private sector's profit depends on delivering a service people want and are able and willing to pay for, the private sector becomes very interested in delivering that service. What other incentive is there for people to deliver products and services if not for profits? We should celebrate profit that encourages commerce and industry to deliver to us the most excellent and attractive and affordable products and services as that has produced one of the highest standards of living in the world.
As Adam Smith wrote in The Wealth of Nations , ""It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest." Were it not for their skill and ability to deliver a product and services people want and are willing and able to pay for, they would not provide the product and services. And they must manage supply and demand and costs efficiently or they are unable to provide products and services. And they won't do it for long without adequate compensation for their labor.
Government, however, for many decades now hasn't had to show a profit or even a balanced ledger; therefore it hasn't cared about cost or efficiency or effectiveness. It blames the other guy for its failures, and just borrows or prints more money to cover costs it can't cover and it doesn't have to BE effective but simply convince enough people to "vote for me" and you'll get yours. Government has had no incentive to be cost conscious, effective, or efficient as it has the power to borrow as much as it wants, print as much money as it wants, tax as much as it wants, or promise whatever it thinks the people will believe.
So we need a whole new way of thinking about government in order to get the products and services that we want and need.
And if we think long and hard enough, most people should realize that the private sector does a better job of deivering products and services, including healthcare, at a price we can afford, than the government will ever do.
The private sector is interested in profit not service. Not paying claims is job number one for the entire insurance industry. Stating the "private sector is the ONLY way to go if we want top quality at an affordable cost" is a joke, isn't it?
If true, why is the private sector so scared of a public option? Isn't competition good (Adam Smith thought so).
If the private sector's profit depends on delivering a service people want and are able and willing to pay for, the private sector becomes very interested in delivering that service. What other incentive is there for people to deliver products and services if not for profits? We should celebrate profit that encourages commerce and industry to deliver to us the most excellent and attractive and affordable products and services as that has produced one of the highest standards of living in the world.
As Adam Smith wrote in The Wealth of Nations , ""It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest." Were it not for their skill and ability to deliver a product and services people want and are willing and able to pay for, they would not provide the product and services. And they must manage supply and demand and costs efficiently or they are unable to provide products and services. And they won't do it for long without adequate compensation for their labor.
Government, however, for many decades now hasn't had to show a profit or even a balanced ledger; therefore it hasn't cared about cost or efficiency or effectiveness. It blames the other guy for its failures, and just borrows or prints more money to cover costs it can't cover and it doesn't have to BE effective but simply convince enough people to "vote for me" and you'll get yours. Government has had no incentive to be cost conscious, effective, or efficient as it has the power to borrow as much as it wants, print as much money as it wants, tax as much as it wants, or promise whatever it thinks the people will believe.
So we need a whole new way of thinking about government in order to get the products and services that we want and need.
And if we think long and hard enough, most people should realize that the private sector does a better job of deivering products and services, including healthcare, at a price we can afford, than the government will ever do.
The private sector is interested in profit not service. Not paying claims is job number one for the entire insurance industry. Stating the "private sector is the ONLY way to go if we want top quality at an affordable cost" is a joke, isn't it?
If true, why is the private sector so scared of a public option? Isn't competition good (Adam Smith thought so).
We don't want a public option because of the federal government's atrocious track record trying to run ANYTHING like that. Just look at the mess they have made with Medicare, Medicaid, and the VA. And you want them managing or calling the shots on possibly all of it? A public option is absolutely 100% certain to become another expensive entitlement that we can't afford and will eventually kill private insurance that won't be able to compete. Once the goverrnment has it all, it can take anything it wants from us to pay for it.
And as for the insurance companies, competition is exactly what the industry needs in health care. Break up the little monopolies in various states and let the industry compete across state ines like all other businesses do. Then leave it alone.
As a licensed insurance adjuster in my second to most recent 'career', I worked everything: property, casualty, work comp, E & O, business interruption, lost cargo, auto--everything. I can assure you that insurance companies do not want to pay one more penny than they owe, but they do pay what they owe. I never ever worked a claim that I thought was a valid claim that the company did not pay. Nor has my husband who has been a 30-year career adjuster. And as a general rule, the adjuster makes more commission if the insurance does owe the claim than if it is denied because it takes longer to work out the settlement and see it through to the end than it does to deny the claim because there is no coverage or it is a fraudulent claim.
And in a more distant 'career' I handled some medical claims and the same was true there. The insurance companies paid every valid claim submitted. They only balked at stuff that was clearly not covered per the policy or that was questionable re coverage and those sometimes had to be worked out.
Everybody should know what their policies do and do not cover as that is one of the biggest problems when it comes to insurance. If you don't understand your policy, ask a competently knowledgeable person to explain it to you. It would save everybody a lot of grief.
And Wry, what part of "profit is good thing" did you not undersstand?
I agree that children should not significantly suffer due to irresponsible parents. We can't do anything about the idiots who teach idiocy to their children. That is one of the ugly costs of freedom.
But we can sure take the kids away from parents who abuse or neglect them or subject them to dangerous living environments or deprive them of essentials. That would seem really extreme at first to many folks now. But it wouldn't be long before it would be a rare event that it happened the way it used to be before the government decided to subsidize irresponsible parents.
No, i don't feel the children should be taken away from the parents. That rather gives them a free ride in life and takes them off the hook for their irresponsible behavior and makes the government responsible for their children.
That's a good point, but there are thousands of good, responsible folks of sufficient means to provide a good life for a child who will adopt an infant in a New York minutes given opportunity to do so.
I think if these gals realize that a baby won't get them any extra benefits and, in fact, if they are not able to support a child they won't even have a baby, and they'll have to pay for their own abortion, they'll take better care not to get pregnant in the first place. No welfare and no baby for nine months of pregnancy is a pretty strong incentive to take necessary precautions I think. There are plenty of charities who will take in an indigent mother and see that she has shelter, proper nutrition, and medical care but she will be required to give up the baby for adoption.
Out of wedlock pregnancy was a rare thing before the government started subsidizing people just because they had kids they can't or won't support.
Medicare is in trouble for one reason and one reason only. Congress has not seen fit to match the increasing medical costs with increasing revenue. Medicare Part B premiums have been frozen for two years while costs rises and they will probably be frozen another year. Medicare payroll tax has fallen well behind the increasing cost of medical care.Here's the problem folks. As much as some likes to think that government MUST provide for the 'needy', entitlement programs simply cannot be sustained. Every single one that has ever been started is starved for funds, is adding to the deficit, is growing the debt, and we simply cannot continue down that road and believe that the USA will remain a great, powerful, affluent nation.
For instance in yesterday's Albuquerque Journal--sorry I don't have a link but it was on Page A8-- the editorial was headed "Can We Talk Before Medicare Goes Boom?" According to the Urban Institute, a Baby Boomer couple earning $89,000/year will have paid $114,000 in Medicare payroll taxes when they retire this year. Then over the course of their retirement, they will receive on average $355,000 worth of Medicare benefits.
In 1940 couples reaching age 65 lived on average another 19 years. Today that has increased to 25 more years. And for Americans born today, it is closing in on 30 years.
So we're looking at folks receiving benefits three times more than what they pay in while the number of working Americans paying into the system is shrinking. In the next 20 years Meicare will cover more than 80 million of people while the ratio of workers paying taxes to support the program will plummet from the current 3.5 for each beneficiary to 2.3. That means trillions more added to the public debt - OR - huge tax increases for working Americans.
Then if you add Medicaid, Social Security, and other growing entitlements to that, it isn't difficult to see that pretty soon working Americans could pay all their earnings into the programs and it sitll won't cover it all.
And, in my opinion, it all could have been avoided by letting the private sector work it out. The private sector has never yet failed to provide a product that people could afford when there has been a need.
We need a whole new way of looking at that and a solution to fix it that begins very soon.
The Medical Service Industry is a free market. It does not work because the customers do not evaluate the cost versus the need for the service because most of the cost is being paid by insurance, either private or government.
If the doctor diagnosis's a cancer and recommends a number of diagnostic tests, operations, rehab, radiation, chemotherapy, and a dozen drugs followed by even more tests and procedures, are you going evaluate each one to determine if the service is worth the cost? Are you going to go shopping to get the best price for each service. Of course not. You are going to do exactly what your doctor and others recommend. They are in the business of selling services. The more they sell the more they make.
We have to get away from fee for service system. The system should be a fee for results not services. There must be an effective gatekeeper. Insurance companies have proven that they cannot do it. They simply approve all procedures from qualified providers and pass all the costs on to the customer in form of higher premiums. If the current system continues, with or without Obama healthcare the system will go bust in 8 to 12 years.
What other incentive is there for people to deliver products and services if not for profits? We should celebrate profit that encourages commerce and industry to deliver to us the most excellent and attractive and affordable products and services as that has produced one of the highest standards of living in the world.
Just look at the mess they have made with Medicare, Medicaid, and the VA. And you want them managing or calling the shots on possibly all of it? A public option is absolutely 100% certain to become another expensive entitlement that we can't afford and will eventually kill private insurance that won't be able to compete.
It may come as a surprise to you, but there are many people that are not driven by greed but rather by a love of their work. Most companies owe there success to such people. Do they reap financial benefits? Yes, but that is not the driving force.
Medicare get's a bad rap, not because it is inefficient but because it is not adequately funded and thus goes into the red. Medicare is very cost effective compared to private insurers. Medicare doesn't have to spend millions on marketing, advertising, and Washington lobbyists. Private insurers must generate profits for their shareholders. In 2003, the HMO industry as a whole reported total earnings of $5.5 billionup 83 percent from $3 billion in 2002. Before the recession earnings were increasing at 15% a year.
But its not just the cost of marketing, advertising, lobbying and providing profits for investors that makes a private insurers overhead so much higher. Insurers also have higher administrative costs because they are constantly enrolling and disenrolling customers as people change plans. (The average turnover in an employer-sponsored insurance plan is 20% to 25% a year. By contrast, Medicare patients stay put. Even if they could switch, most prefer Medicares coverage to the coverage they had under a private insurer.)
Former Medicare chief Bruce Vladeck points out that:
. . . even very efficient insurers must spend roughly 5 percent of their premiums just to enroll and disenroll customers . . . . This is why, when I was in Washington, some of us talked about giving people age 55 to 65 the opportunity to voluntarily enroll in Medicare letting them pay premiums to the government in exchange for full Medicare coverage . . Donna Shalala, who was Secretary of Health and Human Services at the time, said to me, You really want to compete with the insurance companies, dont you?
And I said, You bet, Simply because our costs were so much lower, I knew I could beat them.
The original Healthcare plan included the public option. The cost of the public option would have been paid entirely by customer premiums. There would be no tax payers support. The insurance companies went crazy. They poured buckets of money into advertising, lobbying, and political contributions in order to block passage of the bill. If Medicare were such a wasteful inefficient operation, why were the insurance companies so afraid of the competition? We will never know, because pressure from the industry forced Obama to drop the public option and with it when the major cost reduction part of bill.
So today we are left with a healthcare law with only minor cost reductions or the repeal of the law with no cost reductions.
Most people with private insurance have little or no choice in the selections of their insurance provider. The selection is made for them by their employer. Individual insurance is well beyond the means of most people. So there is really no choice and their is no completion. The free market in health insurance is an illusion. The only difference we would see with Medicare is better coverage and lower costs.
The founders wanted to place legislative, judicial, and regulatory actions as close to the local level as possible recognizing that area was best informed as to the constitutional governmental requirement of protecting individuals' liberties and their subsequent 'pursuitof happiness'. Thus, it is from the state level on down where the founders placed the most governmental responsibility (and the power to fulfill those charges). The governing body that has the least purview, numerically stated, is the federal government. Compared to those federal powers, the state and local government have infinitely more power over individuals than does their federal counterpart. Unless we talk of national security, interstate commerce, legal issues between states, or relations with other nations, any given program to promote, provide for this or pay for that for a subset of Americans should constitutionally be addressed by those state or local governments.
It is perfectly clear in the Constitution that any argument that certain citizens receive 'something' (other than those services above so enumerated) from their government must begin at the local level and end at the state level, at best. The federal government clearly has no such constitutional mandate regarding the overwhelming majority of issues affecting Americans as individuals.
Realistically, if we have been paying attention to the Nov 2 elections, its results, and Chairman Ryan, we will have noticed that entitlements will simply have to be curtailed. The only thing in question is by how much and when. Further, there is a significant and growing movement in the U.S. to curtail federal spending. Given political reality in the Senate and RE the Executive some things will have to wait for after the 2012 elections. However, Ryan et al will be making significant changes in the next two years to slow spending and, even, return it to 2008 levels. Big changes are coming.
Therefore any debate about federal spending should involve two questions: How much to cut and where, and how much, we might rightly shift to the states. This might realistically be a good time to place an argument for government largess for, well, any group, at the state level where it rightfully belongs. But those who have noted the financial conditions of the states will readily see that the word describing more state spending is simply: “Impossible”. For those who hold out hope for a federal government bailout of such states that will hit the financial wall in the next few years the operative word is: “Don’t”. In an appearance sponsored by E21 and the Manhattan Institute Paul Gigot specifically asked Chairman Ryan if any state came to the Congress requesting bailout aid could they expect Congress to be forthcoming, Ryan emphatically replied "No!" ( A Conversation with ... Rep. Paul Ryan | e21 - Economic Policies for the 21st Century )
My argument for a different way of governing, at least on the federal level, is simply to follow the U.S. Constitution as currently written and amended and to eschew efforts to find hidden” rights” that hopeful judges might find in order to ‘support’ their legal arguments that seek their favored outcomes. Likewise, legislators should recognize the elegant solution of the Constitution by using it to limit legislation to that permitted by that robust document. Otherwise, those that wish fairness, equality of income or outcome, or whatever, from our government need only to legally amend the U.S. Constitution. However, we have seen the results of governments presently in the EU (and CA) that would provide all and sundry for their citizens. Those entities’ present reality is a compelling argument for us to adhere to the founder’s Constitution.
JM
The Constitution is a document aimed at preserving INDIVIDUAL rights. How you Borg interpret that as selfish is laughable.
Texas trajectory, however, looks quite the opposite. California was recently ranked by Chief Executive magazine as having the worst business climate in the nation, while Texas was considered the best. Both Democrats and Republicans in the Lone State State generally embrace the gospel of economic growth and limited public sector expenditure. . . . .
The Constitution is a document aimed at preserving INDIVIDUAL rights. How you Borg interpret that as selfish is laughable.
If you believe "The Constitution is a document aimed at preserving INDIVIDUAL rights" you maybe the most ignorant man in America.
Where in the Constitution is your individual right to privacy expressed?
Have you ever read the Constitution?
The Constitution is a document aimed at preserving INDIVIDUAL rights. How you Borg interpret that as selfish is laughable.
The Constitution is a document aimed at preserving INDIVIDUAL rights. How you Borg interpret that as selfish is laughable.
If you believe "The Constitution is a document aimed at preserving INDIVIDUAL rights" you maybe the most ignorant man in America.
Where in the Constitution is your individual right to privacy expressed?
Have you ever read the Constitution?
Well, you igorant fool, all rights not expressly given to government are retained by the people. You see the right to invade privacy given to government? I didn't think so.
The Constitution is a document aimed at preserving INDIVIDUAL rights. How you Borg interpret that as selfish is laughable.
If you believe "The Constitution is a document aimed at preserving INDIVIDUAL rights" you maybe the most ignorant man in America.
Where in the Constitution is your individual right to privacy expressed?
Have you ever read the Constitution?
Well, you igorant fool, all rights not expressly given to government are retained by the people. You see the right to invade privacy given to government? I didn't think so.
Wow this thread has really been rolling. . . .
So, addressing those points I can remember in the last few pages:
Wry and Flopper refuse to acknowedge that profits are not something evil but are rather essential and necessary for a free people that govern themselves rather than be governed (controlled) by some king, dictator, or totalitarian authority.
The government can spend no money nor create any job without taking resources from the people in order to do it. In the process, government will consume part or most of those resources thus returning far less than it takes. And as the government itself is not productive, this will invariably shrink the economy.
That alone, for many, would be a whole new way of thinking about government.
The people, on the other hand, by voluntarily exchanging products and services with each other, keep the resources in the private sector and add to them which will strengthen and grow an economy. Read any of the theories of John Locke, Adam Smith, David Hume, David Ricardo, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, all who recognized the more positive and productive effects of private enterprise as opposed to that ordered by government and most who identified the problems inherent in Keynesian economics.
To understand that, for many, would be a whole new way of thinking about government.
Wry cites corruption in business and industry as sufficient reason to take profits away from business and industry and give it to the government to do. I say that corruption and graft are equally distributed among government and industry when the the two can collaborate to increase the fortunes of those within both. I say that those in government should secure our rights with such laws and regulation as are necessary and enforce them, and be prohibited from personally benefitting, more than any other citizen is benefitted, from any law or regulation passed or contract let. Problem solved.
That would be a whole new way of thinking about government.
Flopper points out that many people work because they love what they do. Ah yes that is true and those who are able to do that are the truly blessed. But even those who are blessed have rent or a mortgage, utilities, food, clothing, education, medical, transportation etc. costs to pay and, without profits, most would not be willing to perform even work they love for long without being paid to do it.
No doubt many people seeking profits are greedy, but government is not the proper means to confront greed. Who is to say that all who prosper do so out of greed rather than out of love for what they do? Are you qualified to judge that? Is President Obama or anybody in Congress? I think not. Yet the profit incentivehas led to most advancements in technology and knowledge, has produced most of our great art, books, plays, movies, and increase in knowledge and been the means by which wonderful goods and services have increased our quality and standard of life. Few people are willing to work without adequate compensation nor should they. Profit is not evil. Denying people the right and incentive to make a profit is.
To take in the whole big picture rather than focus on a few anomalies would be for some a whole new way of thinking about government.
I find myself in close agreement with my friend Syrenn on most things, but on the issue of free birth control or free abortions I must gently disagree. We do not make irresponsible people responsible by removing responsibilities from them. However, imposing consequences for irresposibilty has caused many to change their ways. Government can certainly be involved in educating people, but once informed of the consequences, people should buy their own birth control and pay for their own abortions, And they should be required to be responsible to pay the cost of the choices they make. Nobody should be rewarded for making poor choices or for irresponsibility. To subsidze such only encourages much more of it.
And that for many is a whole new way of thinking about government.
And finally James brings us back to the 10th Amendment which is the ultimate foundation of limitations on the federal government and the most certain means to keep it from spiralling out of control or becoming drunk and irresponsible on its own power:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
And this is the center foundation for my own view of the best way to think about government. The federal government should secure our rights, provide the common defense, and promote the general welfare (meaning laws, regulation, policy, and information that protects or serves all equally rather than any special interest group) and then leave us alone within the various states to form whatever sort of society we choose to have.
