Back off, you bugaboos! Take a break. Take in a great big breath. Not only is this a proven method of relaxation but it also provides a good dose of oxygen for a healthier brain, thus a positive prognosis for the all too contentious debate on healthcare reform.
All of the knee-jerk reactions on the debate of providing medical coverage to the uninsured have gotten everybody’s panties in a bunch. The hate factor among all the interested groups won’t resolve the issue to anyone’s satisfaction, except possibly President Obama and a number of die-hard Democrats. Currently, there is no dialogue that will provide a cure-all for what ails uninsured Americans.
For years, the high cost of providing health insurance through employer-based coverage has made American business at a frightful disadvantage for competitive product pricing in the broadening realm of globalization.
Corporate medical contributions to employee benefits come to an annual expense of about $15,000 – for government employees the un-taxed benefits are even more obtuse at $19,000. These costs continue to be a prominent reason for the outsourcing of jobs to foreign lands. We’ve painted the survival of American enterprise into a corner, but there are steps that can be taken to correct this poor state of affairs.
Before providing “universal” coverage, the cost factors of health care must be addressed.
Three years ago Massachusetts enacted the most comprehensive subsidized insurance fee-for-service public offering and cut the rate of uninsured residents from 8% to 2.6%, the lowest in the country. Although an addition 428,000 people were given affordable coverage, it has resulted in an insurmountable budget crisis. The state is on the hook for an additional $595,000 than it was in 2006, a 42% increase.
Enacting universal coverage in Maine in 2005 resulted in a 74% increase in premiums, pricing many of the uninsured out of the market and dropping coverage. The uninsured rate is 10%, the same level as before legislation was passed.
Neither Maine nor Massachusetts bothered to address a means to implement cost-cutting measures of medical pricing. For decades, private insurance companies have maintained what could easily be considered price fixing since in-state health options are generally restricted to two or three major providers.
This lack of competition defies the intent of the free market system. The self-interest of insurance companies, service providers and drug companies is too impressionable on elected officials. The inherent power of lobbyist groups set up by former legislators are too influential on the course of action of Congress. They know the ropes. They have the contacts. The have access to funds for campaign contributions. And they have too tight a grip on the health of Americans.
Rather than accuse Obama of promoting a death forum for the elderly, the feeble and the less-than-productive members of society, put the blame on insurance companies for limiting and denying medical procedures that would otherwise enhance the lives of the unfortunate.
Pharmaceutical companies are major culprits in themselves. When the Medicare Drug Plan was enacted in January 2006, they raked in an additional $8B in profits in the first six months alone. The industry has promised an $80B sacrifice over a ten-year period as a buy-in to healthcare reform, a minor contribution toward the health of the country considering their huge profit margins.
The U.S. has the most profitable pharmaceutical business in the world with revenues of $315B in 2007. As a comparison, the illegal drug industry has profits of approximately $300B in revenue per year, globally speaking.
What could be considered an unethical tactic of pharmaceutical companies is the “pay-for-delay” scheme that keeps generic drugs off the market by providing attractive monetary incentives to maintain an extended monopoly over less expensive drug manufacturers. The FTC estimates Americans are cheated out of about $3.5B per year. Then there’s the practice of putting “name brand” generic versions on the market for drugs whose patents have expired, affectively making it unprofitable for true generic companies to offer competitive pricing for an additional six months
Pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies are keeping Red Bull Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats at bay, caged in dollar signs of influence.
It’s understandable that Americans are leery of healthcare reform. Obama claims his efforts will be deficit neutral. Even if an attainable goal, through higher premiums, increased deductibles and restricted coverage, a redistribution of health wealth will help some but will come at a great cost to the currently insured. Town Hall Brawls are not the answer.
Containing costs in all aspects of providing ‘universal medical coverage’ must be addressed before continued debate gets out of hand and people’s health conditions deteriorate. Is this an orchestrated script by insurers and providers to further increase profits? Depending on whether or not you have health insurance, you can bet your life or death on it.
Showing posts with label Democrats. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Democrats. Show all posts
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Buy American?!?!
“Buy American” must be the choice of the consumer, not the federal government. Otherwise, it’s acid rain on the free market system, the very premise of capitalism. Worse yet, it’s protectionist and has an alarming affect on free trade between nations.
Economic growth would tumble head over heals like a snowball growing in size, picking up debris and becoming larger than life in a downward cycle reflective of what’s happening on Wall Street and other investment vehicles – crash and boom.
It makes little sense to divert infrastructure funds from rebuilding deteriorating roads, bridges and dams to construct what states may deem new and improved transportation routes. Both have merit but when money is limited it makes more sense to put unemployed workers on jobs that have been too long ignored and will eventually have catastrophic results on people’s lives.
There should be no delay with these upgrades. Over time, when structures crumble, costs increase and other traffic routes become overcrowded, adding travel time, wasting precious dollars on unnecessary fuel costs, spewing more green house gases into the atmosphere and having a negative affect on employee productivity as they put angry discussion with coworkers of more importance for mental stability than performing their job functions.
These changes need not be done strictly with American steel and other domestic materials.
Buy American was a patriotic theme of Barack Obama as he edged closer to his eventual election victory. No sooner had he given his acceptance speech than I heard people talking about “eight years”. I was appalled at their expectation that he will actually take such miraculous actions to bring America back to its historical place as the land of good and plenty.
Obama will have to prove his worth during the next forty some months before I decide which box I’ll mark in the 2012 presidential election. I want he and the Democratic Party to show their professed bipartisanship theme just as much as Republicans.
More important, consumers should to decide which products and services they purchase rather than be herded in the direction that would be most damaging to world peace and harmony. Competition is good.
Economic growth would tumble head over heals like a snowball growing in size, picking up debris and becoming larger than life in a downward cycle reflective of what’s happening on Wall Street and other investment vehicles – crash and boom.
It makes little sense to divert infrastructure funds from rebuilding deteriorating roads, bridges and dams to construct what states may deem new and improved transportation routes. Both have merit but when money is limited it makes more sense to put unemployed workers on jobs that have been too long ignored and will eventually have catastrophic results on people’s lives.
There should be no delay with these upgrades. Over time, when structures crumble, costs increase and other traffic routes become overcrowded, adding travel time, wasting precious dollars on unnecessary fuel costs, spewing more green house gases into the atmosphere and having a negative affect on employee productivity as they put angry discussion with coworkers of more importance for mental stability than performing their job functions.
These changes need not be done strictly with American steel and other domestic materials.
Buy American was a patriotic theme of Barack Obama as he edged closer to his eventual election victory. No sooner had he given his acceptance speech than I heard people talking about “eight years”. I was appalled at their expectation that he will actually take such miraculous actions to bring America back to its historical place as the land of good and plenty.
Obama will have to prove his worth during the next forty some months before I decide which box I’ll mark in the 2012 presidential election. I want he and the Democratic Party to show their professed bipartisanship theme just as much as Republicans.
More important, consumers should to decide which products and services they purchase rather than be herded in the direction that would be most damaging to world peace and harmony. Competition is good.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
TARP, ARRP and HARP
We Floridians are all too familiar with “tarp”, especially during summer months when hurricane force winds rip off shingles from rooftops and large sheets of the bright blue canvas are tacked over leaks to protect the inside of the home from additional damages. It takes weeks, even months, for an insurance company to assess the extent and dollar value of a loss.
Tarp is a makeshift remedy with no guarantee that there won’t still be scars on a structure, such as mold or mud-flooding, that aren’t covered by that hefty insurance premium. To make matters worse, if you’re like most people, your savings are pretty much nonexistent and your credit cards are maxed out and you don’t qualify for additional short-term loans. Tarp isn’t the answer to your troubles.
TARP (Troubled Assets Relief Program) has proven to be pretty much the same. The initial disbursement of the $700B government investment of taxpayer dollars was virtually wasted with the cash infusion to banks. The banking industry was given a blanket policy whereby their misdealing was covered by shoddy government workmanship.
The remaining $350B from TARP is being held in escrow with the Obama Administration in a quandary as to how to safely disburse the money without being snookered again by financial institutions. Instead of sparking up loans, banks want to be left alone to fan a smoke screen that will leave the economy smoldering for years and no assurance that in the end there won’t eventually be a raging firestorm of depressing proportions. This isn’t meant to discredit President Obama; it’s just a plain and simple belief that no one really knows what to do. It’s all guesswork.
Now we’re looking head-on at another program, ARRP (American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan), which is too much of a sound-alike to TARP. It’s not a bad omen though, with over $800B of funds to assist in resolving the somersaults of the worsening recession. Its effect on the economic meltdown isn’t likely to be enough to make an immediate difference to corporate or individual financial shortfalls.
For eight years, Democrats too easily played patsy to Bush politics. They had no backbone from the very start of the war in Iraq, doing their part to make billions of dollars available to keep the military ball rolling on foreign oil. Eventually, they tried to backtrack and admit it was a mistake but the alternative at the time was to confront a Republican-controlled Congress and be accused of being unpatriotic, even traitors.
To the very end, Democrats pledged taxpayer money by failing to properly earmark the initial $350B of TARP.
By the end of the Bush reign of errors, most Americans conceded Iraq was poorly planned and much too expensive. Heck, last year the Iraqi government had a surplus of $79B of what can be called as an American taxpayer relief fund. Iraq got a pretty darn good return on American monetary “investments” that cost us anywhere from $600B (Pentagon), $1T to $2T (Congressional Budget Office) or $3T (Joseph Stiglitz, Columbia University Professor, 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics, and 2007 Nobel Peace Prize). It’s kinda like what happened on the home front - trillions of dollars were lost to Wall Street.
The blame game is fairly pointless, although George “The Scourge” Bush is the primary culprit with his commandant-in-chief attitude, convincing every American that they too can become a homeowner. The resultant excesses of lackey lending institutions helped create the 10-digit budget deficit, a dollar figure that makes no sense.
And yet, Republicans in general are proving themselves to be afflicted with same-minded ideas with a rehash of the monetary policies of the past eight years. When the House passed the $819B stimulus package, Republicans in unison barked up the wrong money tree with their insistence that tax cuts and reduced spending would be an appropriate action to stimulate the economy. It was probably a token stance of solidarity – Senate Republicans will likely give passage to ARRP.
The National Republican Party is way out there in right field, no pitcher, no catcher, just a shortstop with Democrats hitting one left field hit after another. And yet, red and blue states alike are already making plans to spend their share of relief funds. Just how many friends (voters) do Republicans think they’ll make with such game plans?
Which leads me to suggest that any recovery package that Republicans might drum up would be labeled HARP (Hapless Anemic Republican Program). Let’s lay that idea to rest and canvas such a leaky premise with an oversized blanket of tarp.
Tarp is a makeshift remedy with no guarantee that there won’t still be scars on a structure, such as mold or mud-flooding, that aren’t covered by that hefty insurance premium. To make matters worse, if you’re like most people, your savings are pretty much nonexistent and your credit cards are maxed out and you don’t qualify for additional short-term loans. Tarp isn’t the answer to your troubles.
TARP (Troubled Assets Relief Program) has proven to be pretty much the same. The initial disbursement of the $700B government investment of taxpayer dollars was virtually wasted with the cash infusion to banks. The banking industry was given a blanket policy whereby their misdealing was covered by shoddy government workmanship.
The remaining $350B from TARP is being held in escrow with the Obama Administration in a quandary as to how to safely disburse the money without being snookered again by financial institutions. Instead of sparking up loans, banks want to be left alone to fan a smoke screen that will leave the economy smoldering for years and no assurance that in the end there won’t eventually be a raging firestorm of depressing proportions. This isn’t meant to discredit President Obama; it’s just a plain and simple belief that no one really knows what to do. It’s all guesswork.
Now we’re looking head-on at another program, ARRP (American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan), which is too much of a sound-alike to TARP. It’s not a bad omen though, with over $800B of funds to assist in resolving the somersaults of the worsening recession. Its effect on the economic meltdown isn’t likely to be enough to make an immediate difference to corporate or individual financial shortfalls.
For eight years, Democrats too easily played patsy to Bush politics. They had no backbone from the very start of the war in Iraq, doing their part to make billions of dollars available to keep the military ball rolling on foreign oil. Eventually, they tried to backtrack and admit it was a mistake but the alternative at the time was to confront a Republican-controlled Congress and be accused of being unpatriotic, even traitors.
To the very end, Democrats pledged taxpayer money by failing to properly earmark the initial $350B of TARP.
By the end of the Bush reign of errors, most Americans conceded Iraq was poorly planned and much too expensive. Heck, last year the Iraqi government had a surplus of $79B of what can be called as an American taxpayer relief fund. Iraq got a pretty darn good return on American monetary “investments” that cost us anywhere from $600B (Pentagon), $1T to $2T (Congressional Budget Office) or $3T (Joseph Stiglitz, Columbia University Professor, 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics, and 2007 Nobel Peace Prize). It’s kinda like what happened on the home front - trillions of dollars were lost to Wall Street.
The blame game is fairly pointless, although George “The Scourge” Bush is the primary culprit with his commandant-in-chief attitude, convincing every American that they too can become a homeowner. The resultant excesses of lackey lending institutions helped create the 10-digit budget deficit, a dollar figure that makes no sense.
And yet, Republicans in general are proving themselves to be afflicted with same-minded ideas with a rehash of the monetary policies of the past eight years. When the House passed the $819B stimulus package, Republicans in unison barked up the wrong money tree with their insistence that tax cuts and reduced spending would be an appropriate action to stimulate the economy. It was probably a token stance of solidarity – Senate Republicans will likely give passage to ARRP.
The National Republican Party is way out there in right field, no pitcher, no catcher, just a shortstop with Democrats hitting one left field hit after another. And yet, red and blue states alike are already making plans to spend their share of relief funds. Just how many friends (voters) do Republicans think they’ll make with such game plans?
Which leads me to suggest that any recovery package that Republicans might drum up would be labeled HARP (Hapless Anemic Republican Program). Let’s lay that idea to rest and canvas such a leaky premise with an oversized blanket of tarp.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)