We are forgoing some gifts to donate to food banks, Salvation Army, local children’s home etc. My superstition is to never pass a Salvation Army kettle without dropping in something. I try to make 50 drops per season (weird habit, yes).
Our recent conversation:
Mrs. R: What can I buy you. Me: Nothing, i have lots of stuff. Mrs. R: I want to buy you something. Me: We can get a couple of books. Mrs. R: Every room in the house is full of books. Me: Ya, but they keep writing new ones. (whining) Mrs. R: How about one of those reader thingees? Me: Well, I suppose.
I am getting organized to bake and cook over the hoidays to feed the occupiers here in Austin. It has been colder lately and I want to make sure these people have something good to eat. I’m off work for the year starting around the 15th and want to get something downtown at least every other day.
James Kwak explains why the free market really can’t provide long term care insurance here: http://baselinescenario.com/2011/12/09/the-private-insurance-market/#more-9506
“it’s because the premiums it charges (payroll taxes) haven’t gone up along with health care inflation, so it’s systematically undercharging for the risk it’s taking on.”
While this statement by Kwak is true, it is a reaction to a symtom of the problem. Raising the amount of Medicare tax one pays into the system does nothing, zip, nada, etc. in controlling the rising cost of healthcare in a service for fees environment which provides services, pharma, procedures without regard for the benefit achieved. 99% (a guess) of the writers and economists (Cowen comes to mind) on this topic miss this point when they tackle the issue of rising healthcare costs. Instead we hear about killing Medicare and Medicaid as a means to controlling the rising cost of healthcare WHEN BOTH REFLECT THE RISING COST OF HEALTHCARE as determined by industry. Do we need anymore monumental medical centers in major cities when bed space is abundant? These soon to be dinosaurs are fixed costs to the healthcare industry.
The ACA is the first to attack the service for fees cost model of the healthcare industry.
On a different track, I asked this question in response to an article at Nieman Watchdog. I repeat it here in hopes of starting a conversation and getting a better understanding of how and why the public airwaves have been overtaken by Deceit & Deception, Inc.
12/09/2011, 05:02 PM What are the rights and obligations of an air waves licensee? The broadcast corporations do not own the bandwidth that each is assigned for the purpose of sending out their radio or video signals. So why does a licensee have the right to propagandize and to broadcast in a deceitful manner? Harm is done to the public as a result of so much falsification of the news. What is presented as news analysis is often an effort to intentionally misrepresent an issue or an event or to purposely misconstrue the words and intentions of people in the news.
Is there no requirement that TV and radio journalists present the news in a truthful manner?
I don’t disagree, but really just found Kwak’s larger point interesting: Long-term care “insurance” isn’t really insurance in the traditional “protect against catastrophic tail-event” sense. It’s more like a specialized savings plan that narrows the distribution of retirement income. He correctly asserts that the only entity that can cover that catastrophic tail event is the government, then goes on to examine whether or not that’s done efficiently or competently.
I hope the ACA improves the situation but believe there is still a lot of uncertainty there, unfortunately.
Longer answer, full disclosure: I’m okay with that, mostly because I’m not too keen on the possible regulation/enforcment of “Truth” wrt journalists. Ministry of Truth anyone?
It’s an unfortunate reality that we’re probably better off at the tender mercies of “The Free Market” even with warts like Faux news etc. Its in this area that I think my marginal conservatism is revealed: The old days of “yellow journalism” were probably better in that there was no expectation of “fairness”. It was well understood what point of view a particular paper or magazine would present. The relatively modern manufactured conceit of “balance” has yielded far more noise than signal inasmuch as it puts the practitioners in the pitiable postiion of having to explain both sides. Even if one is completely wrong and/or insane.
i’d agree with run75441 but he’d find something wrong with the way i agreed with him.
don’t get hung up on words. if you pay a premium every month that reflects your iifetime expected costs (risk of needing long term care), that’s insurance. probably only the government can manage this… on a pay as you go basis, which provides the coverage “forever” with an automatic cost of medical care adjustment in that future generation has more money to spend, so “as you go” means they will help with the inflated costs of the generation ahead of it’s health care… and be helped in turn.
that is the ONLY way I can see it working. but the politicians seem to have it stuck in their minds that the only way we can afford the rising cost of health care is to cut our insurance. and the liberals seem to have it stuck in their mind that the only way we can pay for it is to tax the rich.
and of course if “we” the future beneficiaries pay for our own future health care costs, we might take a stronger interest in controlling those costs.
it’s worse than that. the “news” has always been a whore. but we have “high end news sources”like NPR that claim to be objective and even “intellectual,” and they telll high end lies that fool even the elect… er educated, not that that is so hard since education has always been a whore…
the only trouble with this is that half the people tune in Fox News so they can get the views that make them feel smarter in their limited ways, and the kids turn to MTV because they don’t give a damn about anything except ersatz sex.
oh, and you and i turn to the blogs to see if anyone else out there, anyone, is crazy enough to agree with us.
NPR (Nice Polite Republicans) is a “high end news source” only in their ability to market themselves as such. Same with the often useless NYT.
I’ll refine my point: News is a product like any other. Just as prone to defects and customer satisfaction issues as any other. If people are forced to wake up and shop carefully for a higher quality product because of the defects I doubt that is a bad thing.
Noam Chomsky made the point decades ago that if you really want to get the facts on a particularly complicated situation, don’t look at general interest papers like the NYT, NPR, or WaPo. He recommends the business press like FT and WSJ (Avoiding the abysmally bad editorial pages, especially in the latter). Business consumers need accurate information; they are often the ones making bets based on it. This insight startled me about 25 years ago, but now I rely on it because it usually works.
I am under the impression, possibly mistaken, that broadcast speech is not entirely free to be what ever the speaker chooses it to be. Of course there is always the issue of validation of the truth, but to say that a Ministry of Truth administered by some authority is worse than the current circumstance of a Ministry of Propaganda & Lies adminstered by corporate interests is short sighted. A private broadcast licensee doesn’t have free reign on the public air waves. There are regulations regarding content and restrictions regarding advertising time. In addition all broadcasters, like all publishers, are very sensitive to the legal and financial consequences of what can be shown to be slander and/or libelous defamation.
Speaking of the media, the mixing of news and opinion/analysis and entertainment appears to have totally confused people. Hullabaloo led me to an abstract of an academic study that reports: ” . . . we found that . . . there was no significant difference between the groups in thinking Colbert was funny, but conservatives were more likely to report that Colbert only pretends to be joking and genuinely meant what he said while liberals were more likely to report that Colbert used satire and was not serious when offering political statements. Conservatism also significantly predicted perceptions that Colbert disliked liberalism.” (bold added) http://hij.sagepub.com/content/14/2/212.short
As Colbert might say, “That’s right! Just like O’Reilly pretends to be serious.” My little joke (yes, it is a joke, not an accurate depiction of reality) wouldn’t work as well with Beck or Limbaugh because both have admitted publicly that they are entertainers, so they indeed may be pretending to be serious. Hard to tell. How appropriate.
“if you pay a premium every month that reflects your iifetime expected costs (risk of needing long term care), that’s insurance. probably only the government can manage this… on a pay as you go basis, which provides the coverage “forever” with an automatic cost of medical care adjustment in that future generation has more money to spend, so “as you go” means they will help with the inflated costs of the generation ahead of it’s health care… and be helped in turn.”
The latter portion of your post is sound, this portion still misses the point. You, the younger crowd, myself, the low and middle income brackets, etc. will not have enough money or make enough money to keep up with the rising cost of the healthcareindustry which appreciates at >7% while Medicare is < 3%. Even the SGR does not control the number of services and procedures provided regardless of inflation or cost. Pay As You Go will not work as long as there is a service for fees healthcare cost model which allows anything from the "casting of the bones" to resolve an illness or disorder to the most proven drug or procedure in achieving the greatest benefit and anything in between. The need is to focus on better outcomes from the procedures, pharma, and services offered which is why a big push on primary care over specialists.
Think about it coberly . . .
i do think about it a little. for example i know the 7% increase in medical costs is on a smaller base than the 3 to 5% increase in wages (nominal), so I also know that with not much cost control at all, that is, if we want to keep our sacred way of doing medicine, we can afford to pay for it for a long long time. maybe long enough to get smart and enact the reforms you are advocating.
i also suspect ordinary economic forces will restrict the growth in medical care costs, so the current “inflation” is not what we will see for the next fifty years. but again, some of that depends on people getting some sense… or just getting too poor to pay for it.
article in current New Yorker suggests “casting of the bones” may be more effective than “most proven drug or procedures.” me, i am agnostic on the subject.
http://www.nationofchange.org/walmart-heirs-have-same-net-worth-bottom-30-percent-americans-1323450491
Something to think about his season. Don’t forget to consider adopting an animal in a shelter and never, ever pass up a Salvation Army bucket. You can afford it. NancyO
We are forgoing some gifts to donate to food banks, Salvation Army, local children’s home etc. My superstition is to never pass a Salvation Army kettle without dropping in something. I try to make 50 drops per season (weird habit, yes).
Our recent conversation:
Mrs. R: What can I buy you.
Me: Nothing, i have lots of stuff.
Mrs. R: I want to buy you something.
Me: We can get a couple of books.
Mrs. R: Every room in the house is full of books.
Me: Ya, but they keep writing new ones. (whining)
Mrs. R: How about one of those reader thingees?
Me: Well, I suppose.
I am getting organized to bake and cook over the hoidays to feed the occupiers here in Austin. It has been colder lately and I want to make sure these people have something good to eat. I’m off work for the year starting around the 15th and want to get something downtown at least every other day.
James Kwak explains why the free market really can’t provide long term care insurance here: http://baselinescenario.com/2011/12/09/the-private-insurance-market/#more-9506
amateur:
“it’s because the premiums it charges (payroll taxes) haven’t gone up along with health care inflation, so it’s systematically undercharging for the risk it’s taking on.”
While this statement by Kwak is true, it is a reaction to a symtom of the problem. Raising the amount of Medicare tax one pays into the system does nothing, zip, nada, etc. in controlling the rising cost of healthcare in a service for fees environment which provides services, pharma, procedures without regard for the benefit achieved. 99% (a guess) of the writers and economists (Cowen comes to mind) on this topic miss this point when they tackle the issue of rising healthcare costs. Instead we hear about killing Medicare and Medicaid as a means to controlling the rising cost of healthcare WHEN BOTH REFLECT THE RISING COST OF HEALTHCARE as determined by industry. Do we need anymore monumental medical centers in major cities when bed space is abundant? These soon to be dinosaurs are fixed costs to the healthcare industry.
The ACA is the first to attack the service for fees cost model of the healthcare industry.
On a different track, I asked this question in response to an article at Nieman Watchdog. I repeat it here in hopes of starting a conversation and getting a better understanding of how and why the public airwaves have been overtaken by Deceit & Deception, Inc.
12/09/2011, 05:02 PM
What are the rights and obligations of an air waves licensee? The broadcast corporations do not own the bandwidth that each is assigned for the purpose of sending out their radio or video signals. So why does a licensee have the right to propagandize and to broadcast in a deceitful manner? Harm is done to the public as a result of so much falsification of the news. What is presented as news analysis is often an effort to intentionally misrepresent an issue or an event or to purposely misconstrue the words and intentions of people in the news.
Is there no requirement that TV and radio journalists present the news in a truthful manner?
I don’t disagree, but really just found Kwak’s larger point interesting: Long-term care “insurance” isn’t really insurance in the traditional “protect against catastrophic tail-event” sense. It’s more like a specialized savings plan that narrows the distribution of retirement income. He correctly asserts that the only entity that can cover that catastrophic tail event is the government, then goes on to examine whether or not that’s done efficiently or competently.
I hope the ACA improves the situation but believe there is still a lot of uncertainty there, unfortunately.
No.
Longer answer, full disclosure: I’m okay with that, mostly because I’m not too keen on the possible regulation/enforcment of “Truth” wrt journalists. Ministry of Truth anyone?
It’s an unfortunate reality that we’re probably better off at the tender mercies of “The Free Market” even with warts like Faux news etc. Its in this area that I think my marginal conservatism is revealed: The old days of “yellow journalism” were probably better in that there was no expectation of “fairness”. It was well understood what point of view a particular paper or magazine would present. The relatively modern manufactured conceit of “balance” has yielded far more noise than signal inasmuch as it puts the practitioners in the pitiable postiion of having to explain both sides. Even if one is completely wrong and/or insane.
amateur
i’d agree with run75441 but he’d find something wrong with the way i agreed with him.
don’t get hung up on words. if you pay a premium every month that reflects your iifetime expected costs (risk of needing long term care), that’s insurance. probably only the government can manage this… on a pay as you go basis, which provides the coverage “forever” with an automatic cost of medical care adjustment in that future generation has more money to spend, so “as you go” means they will help with the inflated costs of the generation ahead of it’s health care… and be helped in turn.
that is the ONLY way I can see it working. but the politicians seem to have it stuck in their minds that the only way we can afford the rising cost of health care is to cut our insurance. and the liberals seem to have it stuck in their mind that the only way we can pay for it is to tax the rich.
and of course if “we” the future beneficiaries pay for our own future health care costs, we might take a stronger interest in controlling those costs.
am
it’s worse than that. the “news” has always been a whore. but we have “high end news sources”like NPR that claim to be objective and even “intellectual,” and they telll high end lies that fool even the elect… er educated, not that that is so hard since education has always been a whore…
the only trouble with this is that half the people tune in Fox News so they can get the views that make them feel smarter in their limited ways, and the kids turn to MTV because they don’t give a damn about anything except ersatz sex.
oh, and you and i turn to the blogs to see if anyone else out there, anyone, is crazy enough to agree with us.
NPR (Nice Polite Republicans) is a “high end news source” only in their ability to market themselves as such. Same with the often useless NYT.
I’ll refine my point: News is a product like any other. Just as prone to defects and customer satisfaction issues as any other. If people are forced to wake up and shop carefully for a higher quality product because of the defects I doubt that is a bad thing.
Noam Chomsky made the point decades ago that if you really want to get the facts on a particularly complicated situation, don’t look at general interest papers like the NYT, NPR, or WaPo. He recommends the business press like FT and WSJ (Avoiding the abysmally bad editorial pages, especially in the latter). Business consumers need accurate information; they are often the ones making bets based on it. This insight startled me about 25 years ago, but now I rely on it because it usually works.
I am under the impression, possibly mistaken, that broadcast speech is not entirely free to be what ever the speaker chooses it to be. Of course there is always the issue of validation of the truth, but to say that a Ministry of Truth administered by some authority is worse than the current circumstance of a Ministry of Propaganda & Lies adminstered by corporate interests is short sighted. A private broadcast licensee doesn’t have free reign on the public air waves. There are regulations regarding content and restrictions regarding advertising time. In addition all broadcasters, like all publishers, are very sensitive to the legal and financial consequences of what can be shown to be slander and/or libelous defamation.
Speaking of the media, the mixing of news and opinion/analysis and entertainment appears to have totally confused people. Hullabaloo led me to an abstract of an academic study that reports: ” . . . we found that . . . there was no significant difference between the groups in thinking Colbert was funny, but conservatives were more likely to report that Colbert only pretends to be joking and genuinely meant what he said while liberals were more likely to report that Colbert used satire and was not serious when offering political statements. Conservatism also significantly predicted perceptions that Colbert disliked liberalism.” (bold added) http://hij.sagepub.com/content/14/2/212.short
As Colbert might say, “That’s right! Just like O’Reilly pretends to be serious.” My little joke (yes, it is a joke, not an accurate depiction of reality) wouldn’t work as well with Beck or Limbaugh because both have admitted publicly that they are entertainers, so they indeed may be pretending to be serious. Hard to tell. How appropriate.
“if you pay a premium every month that reflects your iifetime expected costs (risk of needing long term care), that’s insurance. probably only the government can manage this… on a pay as you go basis, which provides the coverage “forever” with an automatic cost of medical care adjustment in that future generation has more money to spend, so “as you go” means they will help with the inflated costs of the generation ahead of it’s health care… and be helped in turn.”
The latter portion of your post is sound, this portion still misses the point. You, the younger crowd, myself, the low and middle income brackets, etc. will not have enough money or make enough money to keep up with the rising cost of the healthcare industry which appreciates at >7% while Medicare is < 3%. Even the SGR does not control the number of services and procedures provided regardless of inflation or cost. Pay As You Go will not work as long as there is a service for fees healthcare cost model which allows anything from the "casting of the bones" to resolve an illness or disorder to the most proven drug or procedure in achieving the greatest benefit and anything in between. The need is to focus on better outcomes from the procedures, pharma, and services offered which is why a big push on primary care over specialists. Think about it coberly . . .
http://gothamist.com/2011/12/10/nypd_brass_in_fowl_mood_after_wtc_c.php
Gilbert and Sullivan remind us that, “A policeman’s lot is not a happy one.” 😎 NancyO
run
i do think about it a little. for example i know the 7% increase in medical costs is on a smaller base than the 3 to 5% increase in wages (nominal), so I also know that with not much cost control at all, that is, if we want to keep our sacred way of doing medicine, we can afford to pay for it for a long long time. maybe long enough to get smart and enact the reforms you are advocating.
i also suspect ordinary economic forces will restrict the growth in medical care costs, so the current “inflation” is not what we will see for the next fifty years. but again, some of that depends on people getting some sense… or just getting too poor to pay for it.
article in current New Yorker suggests “casting of the bones” may be more effective than “most proven drug or procedures.” me, i am agnostic on the subject.
I see that the Political Economy Research Unit at U. Mass. has done another update on their paper on why military Keynesianism is a bad idea:
http://www.peri.umass.edu/236/hash/0b0ce6af7ff999b11745825d80aca0b8/publication/489/
I hope Prof. Krugman reads it. He has a bad blind spot on this issue.
I see that the Political Economy Research Unit at U. Mass. has done another update on their paper on why military Keynesianism is a bad idea:
http://www.peri.umass.edu/236/hash/0b0ce6af7ff999b11745825d80aca0b8/publication/489/
I hope Prof. Krugman reads it. He has a bad blind spot on this issue.