@critter1982 As swuesquire points out, you are quibbling over a relatively trivial actuarial funding imbalance that is more of a question our political will to face up to the true costs of our programs than a problem with the design, efficiency or effectiveness of the program itself. The OMB study you are alluding to suggests several technical fixes that could be applied across the whole health care sector to make the whole thing more effective—if and when you get the whole system under one administrative umbrella.
Here’s the real deal: Our present for-profit system is far more unsustainable. In fact,our whole economy is unsustainable! That is why we want health care reform. One sixth of our GDP goes to health care; of which 22% goes to the for-profit sector’s “administrative overhead,” all of which is waste, insofar as it does does not go into paying for actual health care. Instead, it pays for socially unproductive things like fancy corporate jets, $200 million CEO salaries, megabuck political campaign contributions that distort our whole political system, and a complex, opaque labyrinthian billing system that is extremely prone to waste, fraud and abuse. Bringing the health care system under a single billing system would, by itself, generate enough savings to cover the currently uninsured who are a drag on the economy in terms of lost productivity. The fact is, you pay for them directly or indirectly anyway.
And so what if you might have to pay more taxes to get universal health care if it covers you when you get sick? This is a deal that every other first world country care finds acceptable. Currently, we all pay $6,096 per capita for a level of health care that ranks 37th in the world, and that only some of the people get. Britain pays $2,560 per capita and ranks 18th. France pays $3,040 and ranks 1st in the world—and it is a government-organized, government-administered system (although it has a mix of public and private funding).
The point is that there is noting inherently incompetent about government, but there is something inherently incompetent about Republicans in their approach to governing. They don’t believe in it, they don’t want it, and they try to sabotage it anyway they can. They hire people who are hostile to the mission of government to look the other way while the unregulated industry rapes the American public—like we had with the lending industry and the sub-prime mortgage meltdown. Or, it privatizes government so that it can give out lucrative no-bid contracts to its cronies (Enron, Halliburton, Blackwater, Choice Point, Abramoff, etc.); it was a virtual hallmark of the entire Bush II Administration. (Seriously, if you don’t believe me, click on this one.)
Okay, now you agree that cash for clunkers was successful, but now object that it is wrong-headed because it stimulates other economies besides our own. The reason for that is because Wall Street demands a very high rate of return for it’s shareholders, and the only way to achieve those returns is to relentlessly cut costs, which they do by throwing the American worker into direct competition with workers in Mexico and China in a hope to bid down wages. Wall Street and industry found they could do one better by simply exporting the whole factory to a third world country where there are no costly environmental regulations, no health and safety codes, and where the government assists the company in busting unions.
As a consequence, the US has lost almost it’s entire manufacturing base. We are no longer a country that makes anything, and so we don’t really have the earnings to pay for things we no longer make; so, we have to borrow the money. Basically, we have been getting by for decades now by riding speculative bubbles. Last fall, the mother of all bubbles, the real estate market, popped due to Republican mismanagement, and it nearly brought down the entire world economy. It is therefore only proper and fair that when we stimulate our economy, we also stimulate the economies of those who are linked with ours, especially since they are also our creditors.
All of your objections sound like whining quibbles. (Politicians lie; we might have to pay more taxes; you don’t have faith in government, things might not turn out well, nothing ever works, so why try anything, etc.) You don’t seem to acknowledge, much less offer any solutions to the country’s problems. You seem wedded to the same ideology that got us into this mess: less government, less regulation, lower taxes, and the rest of it.
You blame unions, but unionization is now only around 12% of the workforce. Back in the 1950s when upward of 40% of the workforce was unionized, the middle class was much more prosperous than it is now. In fact, the whole country was prosperous because non-union companies had to pay wages that were competitive with the unionized sector. Everyone had money in their pockets; could easily afford American-made products; and nobody sweated paying taxes. American cars were the best in the world, and we bought them with enthusiasm, paying for them in solid cash which we earned by making real things.
All of that has turned to shit because we let Wall Street call the shots with things like NAFTA, the mergers and acquisitions movement of the 80s and 90s, deindustrialization and globalization, and union busting under Reagan and subsequent Republican administrations.
Composing members:
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Composing members:
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