I would like to see the new balancing the budget committee do it all by cutting spending in phase one, during which raising taxes would off the table. In phase two, we would decide how much we want to reduce the national debt and for this phase a limited broad based tax hike could be on the table. However, I would hope would be something like a 1 percent annual surcharge.
We are likely to get reamed on interest expense if our cost of debt increases. At 12.4 billion and with 1.6 percent cost of debt annual interest costs are around $200 billion. At 5 percent this rises to $620 billion. So that’s an additional $420 billion to pay from moving to almost free money to paying a mediocre rate of return to investors.
Exhibit A….Anthem in California raises rates on 700,000 enrollees by an average of 25%, for roughly 25% of them, they will see a rise in premiums of between 33 and 39%. Even at 25%, this represents roughly 4 times medical inflation (average of 6.2% per annum over the past ten years). If you don’t think that this is coming to your state soon, well, I want some of whatever you are smoking. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/16/health/policy/16anthem.html?hp
I just got a price quote from Kaiser Permanente for $397/month ($500 deductable) for a middle age guy living in Beverly Hills, 90210. I pay more in Massachusetts, What’s going on here Michael?
The largest targets are Medicare and defense spending. That’s where the money is and those are the two elements of the budget that are driving outyear deficits. Since the GOP refuses to cut defense spending and they just beat up the Democrats for even a small cut in Medicare, just what programs should be cut that would make a damn bit of difference? Farm subsidies. Oops. Can’t exactly see Sen. Grasseley going along with that and he’s the minority lead on Finance. Cutting back NASA? Better not. Sen. Shelby from Alabama might put the whole govt on hold after he gets done holding his breath and throwing a temper tantrum.
Kaiser. Which is a completely different type of plan then Anthem. Kaiser has a much higher MLR, 91%. Typically, their rate increases have been lower than their competitors for many years, but have still averaged around 8% annually. Additionally, Kaiser in other states is beginning to raise rates.
According to the WSJ it looks like Kaiser has the most net income per patient of the nonprofit healthplans in California and Wellpoint is the least profitable.
Anthem’s profit margins are in line with its two largest nonprofit competitors in the state; its net income on a per-member-per-month basis in 2008 was $12.62, compared to Blue Shield’s $13.22 and Kaiser’s $18.45.
I’m pretty sure the republicans would support the plan as I laid it out. Everything on the table from defense to agriculture to medicare and social security.
All that is necessary to cut the warfare state (the “defense spending” euphemism is Orwell minitruth speak) is to kill a piece of garbage, like F-22 or F-35 during its development when it fails a test.
My direct observation is “flunk” the first test and the system only goes on for the wasteful welfare on technological zombies who could not build a weapon if it were needed.
Why should an aged medicaid dependent not be in a decent nursing home because Lockheed Martin is useless?
Argue those points not “out of context” comparisons of Kaiser’s and Blue Cross’ rates. What makes this line of debate important?
The issue is: the young and healthy get out of individual plans.
The death spiral in private insurance is motivated by need for leveling the risk.
If I were young, strong and healthy as I was when I was working, and looking back, I wasted every cent I paid in premia, even up til I got old enough where I should bet I would need to be “helped” by an inusrance company.
Talk about irresponsibility to the social order by the young opting out of the betting parlor called health insurance.
Check out the rate increases in Medicare supplements. Not necessary if the risk pool were not limited people over 65.
Good thing the insurance cabal needs to show its pillaging self with rate increases.
What evidence do you have for this belief? I haven’t heard a single GOP congress critter call for reduced defense spending. The GOP just got done beating up Harry Reid over the mere proposal to cut $50B a year in waste out of Medicare. So again, where’s the evidence that the GOP will support Medicare cuts? Oh wait…you’ve got that clueless Paul Ryan talking about “privatizing” Medicare. And Grassley still thinks a rain forest in Iowa is a good way to spend a $100 million, so I don’t expect him to bite the hand of ADM that feeds him. At this point you’re just making stuff up. Living in some fantasy world of imagined Republican statesmen.
I did a google search for a health insurance quote in Beverly Hills 90210 and found a quote that was less than what I pay in Massachusetts. Krugman is a total doofus, the answer to high healthcare costs get consumers to shop around.
I never claimed that Kaiser wasn’t making money, but they are an HMO, not a regualr insurance. Therefore comparisons are somewhat difficult. Kaiser is a vertically integrated system that prefers all of their patients to get care ONLY at a Kaiser facility. Additionally, many Kaiser patients are younger. This changes their enrollee mix. You have to see a Kaiser provider to avoid a big copay, and all of Kaiser’s physicians are salaried employees. It is, a small, self contained socialized medicine system.
Patient satisfaction varies considerably with Kaiser, as you do lose some freedoms.
As far as comparisons, Kaiser is hardly a valid comparison to Anthem. It’s like comparing a company that makes cars, and one that makes Semi’s. They both make vehicles you can drive on the road, but the product is VERY different.
We are likely to get reamed on interest expense if our cost of debt increases
It’s more then likely. It’s for sure. This is what happens when bankers use politicians, to drive events. All along you’ve danced to the sound of there pipes. You want to keep taxes low while at the same time use our military to kick ass everywhere. Are you just now understanding that proflgates get reamed?
The key to Kaiser as I see it is that they are less expensive. I believe that you should keep feeding the ball to the hot hand. If I were in California I would not be trapped, I could get a policy with Kaiser. Krugman left out this detail.
I was pleased that “Leninism in the USA” got 71 comments. As a joke I made an open thread called “Stalinism in the USA.” Then I read the 71 comments. The thread seemed to me to be mostly a flame war waste of time.
The reason is that most of the 71 comments were by Cantab or replies to Cantab.
I think it might be a good idea to ignore many of his comments.
This proposal does not apply to this thread. The looking up Kaiser rates on the web was an interesting contribution to an important discussion and the replies were interesting too.
My current view is that, if when reading a Cantab comment, you have a strong reaction (reliably negative in both threads) then think about whether a reply and the inevitable reply to the reply will be worth reading before typing. Cantab sometimes writes things which aren’t worthy of a response (not this time — this time he made an interesting contribution).
Robert, why is it too often a response from a liberal/progressive/Dem when they are confronted with an alternative opinion to stifle that conversation? Cantie, obviously and often disagrees with the liberal/progressive/Dem viewpoints/policies. Some of his evidence is strong some not so, but he does often provide support for this evidence.
Dan, in his discussions with the conservative fringe who visit here is often cautioned to allow an open dialog. It strengthens the discussions and provides a platform to review our own personal viewpoints. An echo chamber, which it appears you prefer, does neither.
I think we have to face it that federal taxes have to return to the long term average of 20% of GDP from the 18% today, giving us about $300 billion on that area. My wilder proposal, is to replace the corporate income tax with a vat, and provide that if you renounce your citizenship in addition to the tax penalties you become an inadmissible alien to the US except by the approval of the Sec of State. We can do it for individuals but not corporate bodies, so lets replace the evadable tax with one that is not evadable.
Cantab, you DO understand that the Kaiser Foundation is not for profit, and their health plan is about as close as you can get in the US to a British style National Health Service? Medicare is bigger by a factor of 5, but it is closer to Canadian single payer insurance than to an NHS-Kaiser model.
Am I to take it that you are finally beginning to understand that when it comes to health care, virtually any alternative has lower costs than the current US “system”?
I have a simple question for you. Over there in Italy have you had friendly discussions about the merits of communism at a pub, cafe, or other location with people who look like they just got off the set of a Fellini movie?
On other items I don’t accept the simple truisms put out by lefties. That why I looked up what it would cost me to buy health insurance in Beverly Hills and found the cost very reasonaly. On Richard Reid I just decided to look up and see when he was captured and found that it was before prinsoners were being sent to Gitmo and before the policy given the attorney general the discretion on treating these types of cases in the civilian or criminal courts.
I think sometime they copy me. I’ve seen my phrases in 1 or 2 David Brooks columns. Could be a concidence. However, in the talk shows if someone refers to the Richard Reid Lie I want a proper citation
Your argument just keeps getting sillier…as if that were even possible. Krugman points to a link to the WSJ Online in which the WSJ editorial board comes out against the deficit reduction commission. And one of the main reasons…because the commission is likely to recommend reductions to entitlement programs that hurt the middle and upper-middle class:
“…Democrats would agree to means-test entitlements, which means that middle and upper-middle class (i.e., GOP) voters would get less than they were promised in return for a lifetime of payroll taxes.”
So now we’ve got the GOP opposed to defense cuts, opposed to agriculture cuts, opposed to NASA cuts, opposed to entitlement cuts, and opposed to tax increases. But yet they still want to be taken seriously as the party of fiscal responsibility. The sad thing is that there are no doubt plenty of dumb teabaggers out there who are actually taken in by the GOP’s rhetoric.
Jack is the one that’s got us focusing on ourselves rather than discussing the issues. For that I recommend that he be suspended for 1 week. His actions show he feels he’s invincible. A one week suspension would fix this. I don’t want to stifle his voice but his personal attacks are like an infection that needs to be cleaned up.
The problem with HMOs is that they were tried in the early 90s and most rejected them because it meant that the primary care doctor controlled when you could see a specialist. It did work to control costs as the posts demonstrates, but people felt hemmed in by the rules, limited prescriptions formularies etc. The issue is the vaunted keep your doctor issue that keeps coming up. (I don’t get it if you see your physician 30 mins a year how valuable is the relationship? Assume good electronic medical records in this discussion, then you could move to the college healthcare model where there are a group of physicians and you see the next one avalable. )
I think you should be crediting Charles Krauthammer; he’s the one who first trotted out that stupid and fact-challenged argument about Reid. And oh by the way, the fact that Reid was arrested prior to Gitmo prisoners arriving at Gitmo is irrelevant. The relevant timeframe is when Reid was indicted in a civilian court, which was 5 days after the detainees arrived at Gitmo. Up until the time of his indictment in a civilian court there was nothing to prevent the Bush Administration from shipping him off to Gitmo. That little fact, which you keep trying to ignore, is fatal to the rest of your argument. Maybe that’s why Krauthammer has stopped peddling that silly line.
But replying to your Reid argument is exactly why Robert is wrong. The kind of arguments that you and Krauthammer make appeal to a certain kind of inherently bright but intellectually lazy mind. The GOP has made a lot of inroads with those kinds of folks. A lot of teabaggers are politically involved and oftentimes very bright; but they also tend to be intellectually lazy and are more interested in finding half-truths and anecdotes that confirm what they want to believe and then pretend that this counts as analysis. The point of replying to you isn’t that any of us on the other side of the aisle are likely to change your mind; the reason your silliness has to be confronted is that it might spread to others who are also intellectually lazy and vulnerable to teabagger style arguments.
Most “consumers” of healthcare don’t have the option of shopping around. The US has, by and large, an employer based healthcare system. You get the health insurance that best fits your employer’s needs, not your needs. And I haven’t heard a lot of GOP politicians calling for the abolition of employer based healthcare.
Y’all–I lived in CA for many years and had many friends with Kaiser. The thing about it is that you must use their facilities where they are and there are only a few outside of Southern CA. So, if you live in Redding, those low, low rates don’t help you. You end up paying out of pocket for small stuff or not seeking care at all.
For generally healthy people, it’s fine. For people with more complicated chronic illnesses, it’s not very good. You don’t have a single personal primary physician, and you get whoever is on rotation on the day you have your heart attack. That might not be a cardiologist and one may not be available for a while–result can be very, very bad for you. It’s a good way to go undiagnosed for a long time and that can be very, very bad for you.
Cantab got a quote for a single man in good health in 90210. Wonder what it would be down on Century Blvd or EsLA. Probably not as favorable. And, of course, no quotes except in KaiserLand, which sure as hell ain’t Fresno, Bakersfield, and Chino. Where the sick people live.
Your facts are all wrong on the Richard Reid case. Reid was arrested on Saturday December 22, 2001 and his arraignment was Monday morning December 24, 2001. At this time he was charged with interferring with the performance of the duties of a flight crew by assult and intimidation. As part of the process he was appointed an attorney and advised of his miranda rights.
Processing Reid in a civilian court was a complete waste of time. He never gave up his accomplices and ended up pleading guilty to all the charges that were finally brought against him. Reid was an example of how not to process an enemy combatant since he had intelligence information that he never provided in a timely manner.
Holder’s actions shows he wanted to make an example by rushing Abdulmutallab into a civilian court and reading him his rights. Abdulmutallab was arrested on Friday Christmas day and rather than waiting until Monday morning Holder arranged an ad hoc arraignment that took place at the bed in the hospital where Abdulmutallab was being held for injuries suffered during his attempted murder. Holder looks like a real goofball on this one.
2slugs, I’ve noticed that your logic is getting more circular and less precise over time. Did you really mean to sy this: “And oh by the way, the fact that Reid was arrested prior to Gitmo prisoners arriving at Gitmo is irrelevant. The relevant timeframe is when Reid was indicted in a civilian court, which was 5 days after the detainees arrived at Gitmo. Up until the time of his indictment in a civilian court there was nothing to prevent the Bush Administration from shipping him off to Gitmo. ” Lessee, arrested before Gitmo was being populated means he should have been the first Gitmo prisoner before the faciility and the staffing was ready? Makes sense to me (not!)
And, having been indicted in a civilian court kinda takes that Gitmo option off the table. The Bush administration made the first mistake, and changed it. Obama has perpetuated that poor, mistaken policy, and they are incapable of altering.
You keep believing it’s all Bushes fault. November is getting closer every day.
Rdan, I fear that soon you will have AB to yourself and cantab and his other fingers. The quality of the conversation has, in my opinion, been going steadily down hill. I’ll be hanging out over at EconoSpeak a bit more. The conversations here are becoming too repetitious. Let me know if and when you resolve the troll issues that have grown out of proportion.
As I’ve said several times now, I don’t regard the likes of cantab and sammy as fools. They have a purpose, and that purpose is to interfer with any reasoned debate. The same tired talking points are repeated ad nauseum. Cantab now even wants credit for being first to the distortion party and puts himself in with the likes of David Brooks and Charles Krautheimmer. I wouldn’t question the association. They could all make a good living in public relations.
Most of the large healthcare providers in Massachusetts are not for profit, and we have the highest healthcare costs in the nation. Kaiser is not at all like the British system because individuals can walk from Kaiser but not in the U.K. On costs we need to find a way that is consistent with private ownership to bring healthcare spending lower. All the games the democrats are playing with public ownership and control is not helping.
Bush announced the policy to detain foreigners accused of terrorism on November 10th. Gitmo was prepared to accept prisoners by December and the first batch arrived on 11 January. Reid was not indicted until 16 January, five days after other detainees were already in Gitmo. If Bush had wanted to he could have dropped the civilian arraignment and sent him to Gitmo before the indictment came down. The fact is that Bush made a conscious policy to process Reid through civilian courts. I do not disagree with the Bush decision to do so, my point is that Cantab is simply wrong when he says that Bush had no choice but to process Reid in a civilian court. And notice how Cantab has shifted his ground. His original claim was that Bush should get a pass because the military tribunals were not in place until March 2002, which was well after Reid had already been indicted. That argument collapsed in the face of the fact that it not having tribunal procedures in place did not stop Bush from sending detainees to Gitmo starting in early January. So now Cantab has retreated to the argument that Reid was arrested and arraigned prior to the first batch of detainees arriving in Gitmo. Note that he still had not yet been indicted, so the government had every opportunity to drop the arraignment and send him to Gitmo. Cantab is going through all kinds of absurd mental gymnastics to try and get around having to admit that the Obama folks were right in saying that they were following the same policy as Bush did in the Reid case.
You keep believing it’s all Bushes fault. November is getting closer every day. This tells me that you’re not following me. I am not blaming Bush. I’m supporting Bush’s handling of the Reid case. Bush did the right thing. It’s Cantab that disagrees with Bush’s policy and he’s just trying to find a way to get around having to admit that Bush had the option of sending Reid to Gitmo. Given the timelines it’s pretty obvious that Cantab’s argument is a deadend.
I come to Angry Bear to learn things and try out my ideas in DEBATE. You seem to come here to complain and sling ad homs.
Before you go, you should try the debate thing. Next time you disagree with a comment I make, just say “I disagree with sammy because _______” and fill in the blank with your reasoning. Then we can have a discussion. I think that would be much more fun, as you seem like a good guy with a lot to offer.
2slugs, what part of calling the kettle black do you not understand. All you are doing is throwing up smoke screen issues and ignoring the reality. Indictment has nothing to do with Reid. Having established policies, supporting procedures and staffed facilities in place are the issue.
“I disagree with sammy because Jack has demonstrated a pattern of disrupting this blog with what I consider over the top personal attacks. I also think that he is an evil person with a rotten heart and not a good guy at all”.
In it he does a pretty good job of explaining The Richard Reid Lie. However, since you and others on the left are still telling the Richard Reid Lie I don’t think his columns was effective. My contribution then is to make it a phrase and put it a bold font.
Try to get your timeline right. Reid entered the court system on Monday Morning December 24, 2001 where he was charged with his crime and advised of his Miranda rights. Reid was an Al Quida operative and we got nothing from him. The Reid cased highlighted the folly of treating an enemy combatant as a civilian criminal. Reid was handled routinely by the Boston FBI. It was not Bush’s fault since we had not gone through this process before and it was unclear what to do with terrorists that were arrested and arraigned by civilian authorities. In the subsequent years this was all sorted out. Holder had the tools he needed but did not use them. Thus he’s blameworthy.
Jack there is an interesting disconnect between Angry Bear readers and AB commenters. We have abundant evidence that people track the front page posts and never click through to the comments.
A very, very big liberal economist forwarded my post linking to New Deal Democrat’s dKos post on Social Security to a private discussion group. I am pretty sure that he neither cared nor paid attention to the bleating of Cantab or Sammy in comments. That veddy, veddy big names think our comment section to be a cesspool doesn’t bother me at all, most of the Bears are just not into you.
Bruce, I read AB for both the posts primarily, but in the recent past there was a great deal to be gained from the comments which read like a conversation between reasonably knowledgeable people. That part is slipping away. The posts are still of exceptional quality, but the conversations have dissipated into repetitious ideological rants. The content of the original posts ae often lost track of in a mass of distortion. I’ve simply lost the inclination to read through that mass searching out the better critical comments that add to the main posts well reasoned additional information. There really is just too much cantab and sammy type absurdities occuring repeatedly.
You still are not following the argument between Cantab and me. So let me recap for you. I support what Bush did. I think he handled the Reid case appropriately. Cantab diasagrees with what Bush did, but tries to get Bush “off the hook” by claiming that Bush had no choice but to do the wrong thing…and by “wrong thing” I mean the wrong thing in Cantab’s eyes, not mine. So the argument hinges on whether or not Bush was in fact compelled to indict Reid in a civilian court. Krauthammer first advanced the argument that Bush didn’t have a choice because the military commissions were not in place until March 2002, which was after Reid was indicted. But this argument misfired because not having a military tribunals process in place did not prevent Bush from sending detainees to Gitmo before the tribunals were in place, so why should that matter in the case of Reid? Krauthammer understood that his trial balloon didin’t fly, so he has dropped the argument; but Cantab has simply shifted the claim. His latest version is that Bush couldn’t send Reid to Gitmo because Reid was arrested before the initial batch of detainees arrived at Gitmo. First, it’s not clear why Reid couldn’t have been the first rather than Afghanistan detainees…afterall, Bush’s Nov 10 2001 announcement clearly could have applied to Reid as well as those captured on the battlefield. But the real choker is that Reid was not indicted until 16 Jan 2002, which was five days after the detainees arrived at Gitmo. And up until the time of indictment there was nothing to prevent Bush from sending Reid to Gitmo as an unlawful combatant. The whole problem is that Cantab can’t bring himself to admit that Bush made the wrong choice…and again, when I say “wrong choice” I mean wrong choice in Cantab’s eyes, not mine. So Cantab has to invent some convoluted story that pretends there was a difference in Bush’s handing versus Obama’s handling. I think your position is at least consistent. You think both Bush and Obama were wrong. Fine. I disagree but at least it’s a consistent argument and doesn’t rely upon tortured intellectual gymnastics to deny the obvious.
2slugs, I get so tired of your misdirection! Saying this: “…not having a military tribunals process in place did not prevent Bush from sending detainees to Gitmo before the tribunals were in place, so why should that matter in the case of Reid?” When I said that not only were the tribunals not in place, gitmo was not completed. But your view of what history should have been instead of what it was, matters? Not!
Morover the overall argument is a comparison of what “O” did versus what he could have done. In your world “O” should have done what Bush didn’t do. Many conservatives believe so. You are arguing for that?
Finally, either you are completely ignorant of justice, military and civil, or you are just doing your normal misdirecting argumentation. Where the individual enters the system matters. Reid and Mutallab both entered the system via civil portals. Reid entered before military justice policies, procedures and facilities were operational, and their use was highly problematical, and that option was possible.
As to your argument re: indictment, that is probably the biggest misdirection of all. Indictment is a step pretty far down the road to establishing charges for a future court case. Once Reid was arraigned, he was on a civil justice jurisditional path. That is also true for Mutallab. Changing jurisdiction would guarantee a civil appeals path to the Supreme Court. Remember who and what history “O” has. Think he understood this?
Now want to talk about the KSM and others jurisdictional reassignments? How many more problems can be perceived?
So, if you want to flatter your arrogance and continue thinking we do not understand your argument(s), go ahead. Hey!!! Look over there at that terrorist. Oh never mind, it was just a snow man in my neighbor’s yard. Misdirection.
There is no misdirection. I have tried to be as clear as possible. Reid was arrested on 22 Dec and arraigned on Xmas Eve. He was not indicted until 16 Jan. The prosecutor could have killed the arraignment at any time. Prosecutors do it all the time. In fact, he could have killed the indictment if the Administration had wanted to put Reid through the military tribunal process. There was nothing to prevent the Bush Administration from reversing course at any time.
As to your claim that the Gitmo facilities were not ready to accept prisoners by Xmas Eve, just because the first batch did not arrive at Gitmo until 11 Jan does not mean the facility wasn’t ready before that date. If you have a subscription to Military.com you might want to go check their reports from early December in which they reported that Gitmo was ready to accept prisoners and that’s where the fist batch would be sent.
The Reid cased highlighted the folly of treating an enemy combatant as a civilian criminal. Reid was handled routinely by the Boston FBI. It was not Bush’s fault since we had not gone through this process before
All of which was equally true with the detainees from Afghanistan, but it didn’t stop the Bush Administration from sending those folks to Gitmo pending military tribunals which had not yet been formed.
To date three satates have filed administrative cases and court appeals against the EPA CO2 ruling. It was only a matter of time before industry followed. Peabody Energy has filed a petition for reconsideration.
I also understand that ~ 10 states have also filed to support the EPA ruling. I’m not sure what weight that will bear on the issues, but it does put them on record.
The committe needs to take on the issue of foreign adventures. We are were the UK was in 1960 when it realized that it could no longer afford to be a major defense player and pulled out east of Suez. 9/11 was utterly preventable if we had put the new doors on cockpits earlier, and instructed cockpit crews to never come out if there is a problem in the passenger section, rather land asap. Tell Korea that it has to pay for our troops and if any are left in Europe tell them they get to pay for them fully. Tell Israel no more aid, your economy is big enough to support itself. Ron Paul is right about our war policy that is bankrupting us. And one party seems to think we need to be stuck up bullies that won’t talk to people unless they behave our way. Bullies always loose in the end.
What happens if this Dem Prez has the HC Bill attached to one of the budget bills?
I would like to see the new balancing the budget committee do it all by cutting spending in phase one, during which raising taxes would off the table. In phase two, we would decide how much we want to reduce the national debt and for this phase a limited broad based tax hike could be on the table. However, I would hope would be something like a 1 percent annual surcharge.
We are likely to get reamed on interest expense if our cost of debt increases. At 12.4 billion and with 1.6 percent cost of debt annual interest costs are around $200 billion. At 5 percent this rises to $620 billion. So that’s an additional $420 billion to pay from moving to almost free money to paying a mediocre rate of return to investors.
Anthem in California.
Exhibit A….Anthem in California raises rates on 700,000 enrollees by an average of 25%, for roughly 25% of them, they will see a rise in premiums of between 33 and 39%. Even at 25%, this represents roughly 4 times medical inflation (average of 6.2% per annum over the past ten years). If you don’t think that this is coming to your state soon, well, I want some of whatever you are smoking.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/16/health/policy/16anthem.html?hp
Michael,
I just got a price quote from Kaiser Permanente for $397/month ($500 deductable) for a middle age guy living in Beverly Hills, 90210. I pay more in Massachusetts, What’s going on here Michael?
Cantab,
The largest targets are Medicare and defense spending. That’s where the money is and those are the two elements of the budget that are driving outyear deficits. Since the GOP refuses to cut defense spending and they just beat up the Democrats for even a small cut in Medicare, just what programs should be cut that would make a damn bit of difference? Farm subsidies. Oops. Can’t exactly see Sen. Grasseley going along with that and he’s the minority lead on Finance. Cutting back NASA? Better not. Sen. Shelby from Alabama might put the whole govt on hold after he gets done holding his breath and throwing a temper tantrum.
Kaiser. Which is a completely different type of plan then Anthem. Kaiser has a much higher MLR, 91%. Typically, their rate increases have been lower than their competitors for many years, but have still averaged around 8% annually. Additionally, Kaiser in other states is beginning to raise rates.
http://www.starbulletin.com/news/breaking/69315282.html
It’s not just Anthem either. Health Net and Aetna are starting to be investigated as well in California.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2010/02/11/MNRS1BVIVR.DTL
Coming soon to a theater near you.
Additionally, it sounds like Kaiser is not doing well financially.
Please see attached:
http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/patients/articles/?storyId=25069
Michael,
According to the WSJ it looks like Kaiser has the most net income per patient of the nonprofit healthplans in California and Wellpoint is the least profitable.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704804204575069833643345608.html?KEYWORDS=Wellpoint
Anthem’s profit margins are in line with its two largest nonprofit competitors in the state; its net income on a per-member-per-month basis in 2008 was $12.62, compared to Blue Shield’s $13.22 and Kaiser’s $18.45.
slugs,
I’m pretty sure the republicans would support the plan as I laid it out. Everything on the table from defense to agriculture to medicare and social security.
All that is necessary to cut the warfare state (the “defense spending” euphemism is Orwell minitruth speak) is to kill a piece of garbage, like F-22 or F-35 during its development when it fails a test.
My direct observation is “flunk” the first test and the system only goes on for the wasteful welfare on technological zombies who could not build a weapon if it were needed.
Why should an aged medicaid dependent not be in a decent nursing home because Lockheed Martin is useless?
Contab,
Refer to Krugman in today’s NY Times.
Argue those points not “out of context” comparisons of Kaiser’s and Blue Cross’ rates. What makes this line of debate important?
The issue is: the young and healthy get out of individual plans.
The death spiral in private insurance is motivated by need for leveling the risk.
If I were young, strong and healthy as I was when I was working, and looking back, I wasted every cent I paid in premia, even up til I got old enough where I should bet I would need to be “helped” by an inusrance company.
Talk about irresponsibility to the social order by the young opting out of the betting parlor called health insurance.
Check out the rate increases in Medicare supplements. Not necessary if the risk pool were not limited people over 65.
Good thing the insurance cabal needs to show its pillaging self with rate increases.
Makes the librul arguments stronger.
Cantab,
What evidence do you have for this belief? I haven’t heard a single GOP congress critter call for reduced defense spending. The GOP just got done beating up Harry Reid over the mere proposal to cut $50B a year in waste out of Medicare. So again, where’s the evidence that the GOP will support Medicare cuts? Oh wait…you’ve got that clueless Paul Ryan talking about “privatizing” Medicare. And Grassley still thinks a rain forest in Iowa is a good way to spend a $100 million, so I don’t expect him to bite the hand of ADM that feeds him. At this point you’re just making stuff up. Living in some fantasy world of imagined Republican statesmen.
Interesting, why not ask the militarists to starve with Grandma?
I did a google search for a health insurance quote in Beverly Hills 90210 and found a quote that was less than what I pay in Massachusetts. Krugman is a total doofus, the answer to high healthcare costs get consumers to shop around.
Cantab,
I never claimed that Kaiser wasn’t making money, but they are an HMO, not a regualr insurance. Therefore comparisons are somewhat difficult. Kaiser is a vertically integrated system that prefers all of their patients to get care ONLY at a Kaiser facility. Additionally, many Kaiser patients are younger. This changes their enrollee mix. You have to see a Kaiser provider to avoid a big copay, and all of Kaiser’s physicians are salaried employees. It is, a small, self contained socialized medicine system.
Patient satisfaction varies considerably with Kaiser, as you do lose some freedoms.
As far as comparisons, Kaiser is hardly a valid comparison to Anthem. It’s like comparing a company that makes cars, and one that makes Semi’s. They both make vehicles you can drive on the road, but the product is VERY different.
We are likely to get reamed on interest expense if our cost of debt increases
It’s more then likely. It’s for sure. This is what happens when bankers use politicians, to drive events. All along you’ve danced to the sound of there pipes. You want to keep taxes low while at the same time use our military to kick ass everywhere. Are you just now understanding that proflgates get reamed?
Michael.
The key to Kaiser as I see it is that they are less expensive. I believe that you should keep feeding the ball to the hot hand. If I were in California I would not be trapped, I could get a policy with Kaiser. Krugman left out this detail.
chrismealy![]()
Post Keynesians: cranks or not cranks?
I was pleased that “Leninism in the USA” got 71 comments. As a joke I made an open thread called “Stalinism in the USA.” Then I read the 71 comments. The thread seemed to me to be mostly a flame war waste of time.
The reason is that most of the 71 comments were by Cantab or replies to Cantab.
I think it might be a good idea to ignore many of his comments.
This proposal does not apply to this thread. The looking up Kaiser rates on the web was an interesting contribution to an important discussion and the replies were interesting too.
My current view is that, if when reading a Cantab comment, you have a strong reaction (reliably negative in both threads) then think about whether a reply and the inevitable reply to the reply will be worth reading before typing. Cantab sometimes writes things which aren’t worthy of a response (not this time — this time he made an interesting contribution).
Oh yeah. I am commenting here because Crismealy commented on the open thread which I deleted so I brought his comment down to this open thread.
I think I may have made a mess of things and other angrybears might actually be angry with me.
Robert, why is it too often a response from a liberal/progressive/Dem when they are confronted with an alternative opinion to stifle that conversation? Cantie, obviously and often disagrees with the liberal/progressive/Dem viewpoints/policies. Some of his evidence is strong some not so, but he does often provide support for this evidence.
Dan, in his discussions with the conservative fringe who visit here is often cautioned to allow an open dialog. It strengthens the discussions and provides a platform to review our own personal viewpoints. An echo chamber, which it appears you prefer, does neither.
I think we have to face it that federal taxes have to return to the long term average of 20% of GDP from the 18% today, giving us about $300 billion on that area. My wilder proposal, is to replace the corporate income tax with a vat, and provide that if you renounce your citizenship in addition to the tax penalties you become an inadmissible alien to the US except by the approval of the Sec of State. We can do it for individuals but not corporate bodies, so lets replace the evadable tax with one that is not evadable.
Ad hominem. Contab……………
I could find you an Edsel on the web.
CON tee uses too much ad hominem and too little argument.
Contab does me a service, I can’t stand Fox News so he does keep me up on the sound bites.
Cantab, you DO understand that the Kaiser Foundation is not for profit, and their health plan is about as close as you can get in the US to a British style National Health Service? Medicare is bigger by a factor of 5, but it is closer to Canadian single payer insurance than to an NHS-Kaiser model.
Am I to take it that you are finally beginning to understand that when it comes to health care, virtually any alternative has lower costs than the current US “system”?
Robert,
I have a simple question for you. Over there in Italy have you had friendly discussions about the merits of communism at a pub, cafe, or other location with people who look like they just got off the set of a Fellini movie?
On other items I don’t accept the simple truisms put out by lefties. That why I looked up what it would cost me to buy health insurance in Beverly Hills and found the cost very reasonaly. On Richard Reid I just decided to look up and see when he was captured and found that it was before prinsoners were being sent to Gitmo and before the policy given the attorney general the discretion on treating these types of cases in the civilian or criminal courts.
ilsm,
I think sometime they copy me. I’ve seen my phrases in 1 or 2 David Brooks columns. Could be a concidence. However, in the talk shows if someone refers to the Richard Reid Lie I want a proper citation
Cantab,
Your argument just keeps getting sillier…as if that were even possible. Krugman points to a link to the WSJ Online in which the WSJ editorial board comes out against the deficit reduction commission. And one of the main reasons…because the commission is likely to recommend reductions to entitlement programs that hurt the middle and upper-middle class:
“…Democrats would agree to means-test entitlements, which means that middle and upper-middle class (i.e., GOP) voters would get less than they were promised in return for a lifetime of payroll taxes.”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703939404574566034074899214.html
So now we’ve got the GOP opposed to defense cuts, opposed to agriculture cuts, opposed to NASA cuts, opposed to entitlement cuts, and opposed to tax increases. But yet they still want to be taken seriously as the party of fiscal responsibility. The sad thing is that there are no doubt plenty of dumb teabaggers out there who are actually taken in by the GOP’s rhetoric.
CoRev,
Jack is the one that’s got us focusing on ourselves rather than discussing the issues. For that I recommend that he be suspended for 1 week. His actions show he feels he’s invincible. A one week suspension would fix this. I don’t want to stifle his voice but his personal attacks are like an infection that needs to be cleaned up.
The problem with HMOs is that they were tried in the early 90s and most rejected them because it meant that the primary care doctor controlled when you could see a specialist. It did work to control costs as the posts demonstrates, but people felt hemmed in by the rules, limited prescriptions formularies etc. The issue is the vaunted keep your doctor issue that keeps coming up. (I don’t get it if you see your physician 30 mins a year how valuable is the relationship? Assume good electronic medical records in this discussion, then you could move to the college healthcare model where there are a group of physicians and you see the next one avalable. )
Cantab,
I think you should be crediting Charles Krauthammer; he’s the one who first trotted out that stupid and fact-challenged argument about Reid. And oh by the way, the fact that Reid was arrested prior to Gitmo prisoners arriving at Gitmo is irrelevant. The relevant timeframe is when Reid was indicted in a civilian court, which was 5 days after the detainees arrived at Gitmo. Up until the time of his indictment in a civilian court there was nothing to prevent the Bush Administration from shipping him off to Gitmo. That little fact, which you keep trying to ignore, is fatal to the rest of your argument. Maybe that’s why Krauthammer has stopped peddling that silly line.
But replying to your Reid argument is exactly why Robert is wrong. The kind of arguments that you and Krauthammer make appeal to a certain kind of inherently bright but intellectually lazy mind. The GOP has made a lot of inroads with those kinds of folks. A lot of teabaggers are politically involved and oftentimes very bright; but they also tend to be intellectually lazy and are more interested in finding half-truths and anecdotes that confirm what they want to believe and then pretend that this counts as analysis. The point of replying to you isn’t that any of us on the other side of the aisle are likely to change your mind; the reason your silliness has to be confronted is that it might spread to others who are also intellectually lazy and vulnerable to teabagger style arguments.
Cantab,
Most “consumers” of healthcare don’t have the option of shopping around. The US has, by and large, an employer based healthcare system. You get the health insurance that best fits your employer’s needs, not your needs. And I haven’t heard a lot of GOP politicians calling for the abolition of employer based healthcare.
Y’all–I lived in CA for many years and had many friends with Kaiser. The thing about it is that you must use their facilities where they are and there are only a few outside of Southern CA. So, if you live in Redding, those low, low rates don’t help you. You end up paying out of pocket for small stuff or not seeking care at all.
For generally healthy people, it’s fine. For people with more complicated chronic illnesses, it’s not very good. You don’t have a single personal primary physician, and you get whoever is on rotation on the day you have your heart attack. That might not be a cardiologist and one may not be available for a while–result can be very, very bad for you. It’s a good way to go undiagnosed for a long time and that can be very, very bad for you.
Cantab got a quote for a single man in good health in 90210. Wonder what it would be down on Century Blvd or EsLA. Probably not as favorable. And, of course, no quotes except in KaiserLand, which sure as hell ain’t Fresno, Bakersfield, and Chino. Where the sick people live.
Slugs,
Your facts are all wrong on the Richard Reid case. Reid was arrested on Saturday December 22, 2001 and his arraignment was Monday morning December 24, 2001. At this time he was charged with interferring with the performance of the duties of a flight crew by assult and intimidation. As part of the process he was appointed an attorney and advised of his miranda rights.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0112/24/lt.01.html
Processing Reid in a civilian court was a complete waste of time. He never gave up his accomplices and ended up pleading guilty to all the charges that were finally brought against him. Reid was an example of how not to process an enemy combatant since he had intelligence information that he never provided in a timely manner.
Holder’s actions shows he wanted to make an example by rushing Abdulmutallab into a civilian court and reading him his rights. Abdulmutallab was arrested on Friday Christmas day and rather than waiting until Monday morning Holder arranged an ad hoc arraignment that took place at the bed in the hospital where Abdulmutallab was being held for injuries suffered during his attempted murder. Holder looks like a real goofball on this one.
2slugs, I’ve noticed that your logic is getting more circular and less precise over time. Did you really mean to sy this: “And oh by the way, the fact that Reid was arrested prior to Gitmo prisoners arriving at Gitmo is irrelevant. The relevant timeframe is when Reid was indicted in a civilian court, which was 5 days after the detainees arrived at Gitmo. Up until the time of his indictment in a civilian court there was nothing to prevent the Bush Administration from shipping him off to Gitmo. ” Lessee, arrested before Gitmo was being populated means he should have been the first Gitmo prisoner before the faciility and the staffing was ready? Makes sense to me (not!)
And, having been indicted in a civilian court kinda takes that Gitmo option off the table. The Bush administration made the first mistake, and changed it. Obama has perpetuated that poor, mistaken policy, and they are incapable of altering.
You keep believing it’s all Bushes fault. November is getting closer every day.
Rdan,
I fear that soon you will have AB to yourself and cantab and his other fingers. The quality of the conversation has, in my opinion, been going steadily down hill. I’ll be hanging out over at EconoSpeak a bit more. The conversations here are becoming too repetitious. Let me know if and when you resolve the troll issues that have grown out of proportion.
As I’ve said several times now, I don’t regard the likes of cantab and sammy as fools. They have a purpose, and that purpose is to interfer with any reasoned debate. The same tired talking points are repeated ad nauseum. Cantab now even wants credit for being first to the distortion party and puts himself in with the likes of David Brooks and Charles Krautheimmer. I wouldn’t question the association. They could all make a good living in public relations.
VtCodger,
Most of the large healthcare providers in Massachusetts are not for profit, and we have the highest healthcare costs in the nation. Kaiser is not at all like the British system because individuals can walk from Kaiser but not in the U.K. On costs we need to find a way that is consistent with private ownership to bring healthcare spending lower. All the games the democrats are playing with public ownership and control is not helping.
CoRev and Cantab,
Bush announced the policy to detain foreigners accused of terrorism on November 10th. Gitmo was prepared to accept prisoners by December and the first batch arrived on 11 January. Reid was not indicted until 16 January, five days after other detainees were already in Gitmo. If Bush had wanted to he could have dropped the civilian arraignment and sent him to Gitmo before the indictment came down. The fact is that Bush made a conscious policy to process Reid through civilian courts. I do not disagree with the Bush decision to do so, my point is that Cantab is simply wrong when he says that Bush had no choice but to process Reid in a civilian court. And notice how Cantab has shifted his ground. His original claim was that Bush should get a pass because the military tribunals were not in place until March 2002, which was well after Reid had already been indicted. That argument collapsed in the face of the fact that it not having tribunal procedures in place did not stop Bush from sending detainees to Gitmo starting in early January. So now Cantab has retreated to the argument that Reid was arrested and arraigned prior to the first batch of detainees arriving in Gitmo. Note that he still had not yet been indicted, so the government had every opportunity to drop the arraignment and send him to Gitmo. Cantab is going through all kinds of absurd mental gymnastics to try and get around having to admit that the Obama folks were right in saying that they were following the same policy as Bush did in the Reid case.
You keep believing it’s all Bushes fault. November is getting closer every day.
This tells me that you’re not following me. I am not blaming Bush. I’m supporting Bush’s handling of the Reid case. Bush did the right thing. It’s Cantab that disagrees with Bush’s policy and he’s just trying to find a way to get around having to admit that Bush had the option of sending Reid to Gitmo. Given the timelines it’s pretty obvious that Cantab’s argument is a deadend.
Jack,
I come to Angry Bear to learn things and try out my ideas in DEBATE. You seem to come here to complain and sling ad homs.
Before you go, you should try the debate thing. Next time you disagree with a comment I make, just say “I disagree with sammy because _______” and fill in the blank with your reasoning. Then we can have a discussion. I think that would be much more fun, as you seem like a good guy with a lot to offer.
2slugs, what part of calling the kettle black do you not understand. All you are doing is throwing up smoke screen issues and ignoring the reality. Indictment has nothing to do with Reid. Having established policies, supporting procedures and staffed facilities in place are the issue.
Sammy,
“I disagree with sammy because Jack has demonstrated a pattern of disrupting this blog with what I consider over the top personal attacks. I also think that he is an evil person with a rotten heart and not a good guy at all”.
Jack,
We’ll consider this your timeout. You needed one.
Slugs,
Following your advise I did a search on Charles Krauthammer and found the following column.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/07/AR2010010703245.html
In it he does a pretty good job of explaining The Richard Reid Lie. However, since you and others on the left are still telling the Richard Reid Lie I don’t think his columns was effective. My contribution then is to make it a phrase and put it a bold font.
Slugs,
Try to get your timeline right. Reid entered the court system on Monday Morning December 24, 2001 where he was charged with his crime and advised of his Miranda rights. Reid was an Al Quida operative and we got nothing from him. The Reid cased highlighted the folly of treating an enemy combatant as a civilian criminal. Reid was handled routinely by the Boston FBI. It was not Bush’s fault since we had not gone through this process before and it was unclear what to do with terrorists that were arrested and arraigned by civilian authorities. In the subsequent years this was all sorted out. Holder had the tools he needed but did not use them. Thus he’s blameworthy.
Go here and look at this video! 😎
http://www.heliogenic.net/2010/02/20/send-the-mental-patients-home/
Jack there is an interesting disconnect between Angry Bear readers and AB commenters. We have abundant evidence that people track the front page posts and never click through to the comments.
A very, very big liberal economist forwarded my post linking to New Deal Democrat’s dKos post on Social Security to a private discussion group. I am pretty sure that he neither cared nor paid attention to the bleating of Cantab or Sammy in comments. That veddy, veddy big names think our comment section to be a cesspool doesn’t bother me at all, most of the Bears are just not into you.
Bruce,
I read AB for both the posts primarily, but in the recent past there was a great deal to be gained from the comments which read like a conversation between reasonably knowledgeable people. That part is slipping away. The posts are still of exceptional quality, but the conversations have dissipated into repetitious ideological rants. The content of the original posts ae often lost track of in a mass of distortion. I’ve simply lost the inclination to read through that mass searching out the better critical comments that add to the main posts well reasoned additional information. There really is just too much cantab and sammy type absurdities occuring repeatedly.
Jack,
You’re pretty high maintenance. So how about making good on your promise and disappear.
CoRev,
You still are not following the argument between Cantab and me. So let me recap for you. I support what Bush did. I think he handled the Reid case appropriately. Cantab diasagrees with what Bush did, but tries to get Bush “off the hook” by claiming that Bush had no choice but to do the wrong thing…and by “wrong thing” I mean the wrong thing in Cantab’s eyes, not mine. So the argument hinges on whether or not Bush was in fact compelled to indict Reid in a civilian court. Krauthammer first advanced the argument that Bush didn’t have a choice because the military commissions were not in place until March 2002, which was after Reid was indicted. But this argument misfired because not having a military tribunals process in place did not prevent Bush from sending detainees to Gitmo before the tribunals were in place, so why should that matter in the case of Reid? Krauthammer understood that his trial balloon didin’t fly, so he has dropped the argument; but Cantab has simply shifted the claim. His latest version is that Bush couldn’t send Reid to Gitmo because Reid was arrested before the initial batch of detainees arrived at Gitmo. First, it’s not clear why Reid couldn’t have been the first rather than Afghanistan detainees…afterall, Bush’s Nov 10 2001 announcement clearly could have applied to Reid as well as those captured on the battlefield. But the real choker is that Reid was not indicted until 16 Jan 2002, which was five days after the detainees arrived at Gitmo. And up until the time of indictment there was nothing to prevent Bush from sending Reid to Gitmo as an unlawful combatant. The whole problem is that Cantab can’t bring himself to admit that Bush made the wrong choice…and again, when I say “wrong choice” I mean wrong choice in Cantab’s eyes, not mine. So Cantab has to invent some convoluted story that pretends there was a difference in Bush’s handing versus Obama’s handling. I think your position is at least consistent. You think both Bush and Obama were wrong. Fine. I disagree but at least it’s a consistent argument and doesn’t rely upon tortured intellectual gymnastics to deny the obvious.
2slugs, I get so tired of your misdirection! Saying this: “…not having a military tribunals process in place did not prevent Bush from sending detainees to Gitmo before the tribunals were in place, so why should that matter in the case of Reid?” When I said that not only were the tribunals not in place, gitmo was not completed. But your view of what history should have been instead of what it was, matters? Not!
Morover the overall argument is a comparison of what “O” did versus what he could have done. In your world “O” should have done what Bush didn’t do. Many conservatives believe so. You are arguing for that?
Finally, either you are completely ignorant of justice, military and civil, or you are just doing your normal misdirecting argumentation. Where the individual enters the system matters. Reid and Mutallab both entered the system via civil portals. Reid entered before military justice policies, procedures and facilities were operational, and their use was highly problematical, and that option was possible.
As to your argument re: indictment, that is probably the biggest misdirection of all. Indictment is a step pretty far down the road to establishing charges for a future court case. Once Reid was arraigned, he was on a civil justice jurisditional path. That is also true for Mutallab. Changing jurisdiction would guarantee a civil appeals path to the Supreme Court. Remember who and what history “O” has. Think he understood this?
Now want to talk about the KSM and others jurisdictional reassignments? How many more problems can be perceived?
So, if you want to flatter your arrogance and continue thinking we do not understand your argument(s), go ahead. Hey!!! Look over there at that terrorist. Oh never mind, it was just a snow man in my neighbor’s yard. Misdirection.
November is getting closer every day.
Nancy,
I thought everything cost more in Beverly Hills, that’s why I chose it.
CoRev,
There is no misdirection. I have tried to be as clear as possible. Reid was arrested on 22 Dec and arraigned on Xmas Eve. He was not indicted until 16 Jan. The prosecutor could have killed the arraignment at any time. Prosecutors do it all the time. In fact, he could have killed the indictment if the Administration had wanted to put Reid through the military tribunal process. There was nothing to prevent the Bush Administration from reversing course at any time.
As to your claim that the Gitmo facilities were not ready to accept prisoners by Xmas Eve, just because the first batch did not arrive at Gitmo until 11 Jan does not mean the facility wasn’t ready before that date. If you have a subscription to Military.com you might want to go check their reports from early December in which they reported that Gitmo was ready to accept prisoners and that’s where the fist batch would be sent.
Cantab,
The Reid cased highlighted the folly of treating an enemy combatant as a civilian criminal. Reid was handled routinely by the Boston FBI. It was not Bush’s fault since we had not gone through this process before
All of which was equally true with the detainees from Afghanistan, but it didn’t stop the Bush Administration from sending those folks to Gitmo pending military tribunals which had not yet been formed.
2slugs, not gonna bite.
I just found this over on Jennifer Marohasy’s blog.
———-
1. Business Week, Feb. 16, 2010, http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-02-16/peabody-seeks-reversal-of-u-s-s-carbon-finding-update2-.html
2. Petition to EPA: Your Agencey Has No Legal Option But To Reexamine its Endangerment Finding, Feb. 11, 2010, http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/reprint/no_legal_option.pdf
To date three satates have filed administrative cases and court appeals against the EPA CO2 ruling. It was only a matter of time before industry followed. Peabody Energy has filed a petition for reconsideration.
I also understand that ~ 10 states have also filed to support the EPA ruling. I’m not sure what weight that will bear on the issues, but it does put them on record.
The committe needs to take on the issue of foreign adventures. We are were the UK was in 1960 when it realized that it could no longer afford to be a major defense player and pulled out east of Suez. 9/11 was utterly preventable if we had put the new doors on cockpits earlier, and instructed cockpit crews to never come out if there is a problem in the passenger section, rather land asap. Tell Korea that it has to pay for our troops and if any are left in Europe tell them they get to pay for them fully. Tell Israel no more aid, your economy is big enough to support itself. Ron Paul is right about our war policy that is bankrupting us. And one party seems to think we need to be stuck up bullies that won’t talk to people unless they behave our way. Bullies always loose in the end.