Fuck its silent in here.......

[Gilgamesh]

The paragraph right above the one you quoted throws an awful lot of uncertainty on it.  Then, on top of that, you're telling me that three data points constitute a trend?  Awesome, then we're clearly headed toward a global ice age.  This is what happens when a doctor tries his hand at economics.

Discussions are cool, disagreement great, I even think that just hearing opinions and
the thoughts of people with vastly different views is a fantastic thing.  We live in a
society that has so much personalized news (there is are so many options of "news"
sources that cater to specific opinions) that we can all manage to stay involved and
"informed" without actually learning about the different sides of our issues.  However,
in this case morph I feel like you're doing a lot of nuh-uh'ing instead of debating.  The
last few pages seem to consist of you positing your opinion and asking for someone to
provide studies/statistics to the contrary, and then bagging on the studies and statistics
that people are providing w/o providing anything actually contrary.

OK.  That's kind of what debate is... someone posts something purporting to show why some change is a good thing... and then I say, wait a a minute, that doesn't really prove anything at all... and I'm the one that's somehow doing it wrong?  Is that really what you're saying?  Remember... change for change's sake is not necessarily a good thing.  It might be, it might not... but you're suggesting that the burden of proof is on those of us who think the proposed changes are worse than doing nothing.  I say it's on those who are working to re-order a large chunk of the economy.

It's all moot anyway given this weekend's events.  I'll just have to try to stack enough cheddar so I can fully "get mine" before the crushing national debt starts to really kick in. pay for Nebraska's Medicaid, pay for everyone else's, and then retire only to see that because you saved, you're taxed at a rate of oh, 75 percent, even if it was the stuff that was supposed to be protected from taxation like Roth IRAs. You belong to the government, sir. But don't worry. Twenty-seven-year-old kids can continue living on the couch at their parents' employers' expense.

And Chuck, it's a little warm in this office. I hope someone else resets the thermostat to a HIGHER temp. Awesome.

Not that you were right to begin with, but actual legislation'd.

Those lazy bum kids.

[Chuck to Chuck]

The paragraph right above the one you quoted throws an awful lot of uncertainty on it.  Then, on top of that, you're telling me that three data points constitute a trend?  Awesome, then we're clearly headed toward a global ice age.  This is what happens when a doctor tries his hand at economics.

Discussions are cool, disagreement great, I even think that just hearing opinions and
the thoughts of people with vastly different views is a fantastic thing.  We live in a
society that has so much personalized news (there is are so many options of "news"
sources that cater to specific opinions) that we can all manage to stay involved and
"informed" without actually learning about the different sides of our issues.  However,
in this case morph I feel like you're doing a lot of nuh-uh'ing instead of debating.  The
last few pages seem to consist of you positing your opinion and asking for someone to
provide studies/statistics to the contrary, and then bagging on the studies and statistics
that people are providing w/o providing anything actually contrary.

OK.  That's kind of what debate is... someone posts something purporting to show why some change is a good thing... and then I say, wait a a minute, that doesn't really prove anything at all... and I'm the one that's somehow doing it wrong?  Is that really what you're saying?  Remember... change for change's sake is not necessarily a good thing.  It might be, it might not... but you're suggesting that the burden of proof is on those of us who think the proposed changes are worse than doing nothing.  I say it's on those who are working to re-order a large chunk of the economy.

It's all moot anyway given this weekend's events.  I'll just have to try to stack enough cheddar so I can fully "get mine" before the crushing national debt starts to really kick in. pay for Nebraska's Medicaid, pay for everyone else's, and then retire only to see that because you saved, you're taxed at a rate of oh, 75 percent, even if it was the stuff that was supposed to be protected from taxation like Roth IRAs. You belong to the government, sir. But don't worry. Twenty-five-year-old kids can continue living on the couch at their parents' employers' expense.

And Chuck, it's a little warm in this office. I hope someone else resets the thermostat to a HIGHER temp. Awesome.

Maybe if we'd kept going on the Clinton-Gingrich balance surpluses (the ones Reagan said would pay back the debt we borrowed in the 80's) and kept the 30 year bond retired and didn't do Medicare D, just maybe some of this wouldn't be so nerve wracking.

The fiscal irresponsibility of Congress and the lack of the use of a veto pen the last 9 years -- 9 years, not 14 months -- is nauseating.

The kids in my house have such a burden ahead of them, they have no idea.

[morpheus]

Maybe if we'd kept going on the Clinton-Gingrich balance surpluses (the ones Reagan said would pay back the debt we borrowed in the 80's) and kept the 30 year bond retired and didn't do Medicare D, just maybe some of this wouldn't be so nerve wracking.

The fiscal irresponsibility of Congress and the lack of the use of a veto pen the last 9 years -- 9 years, not 14 months -- is nauseating.

The kids in my house have such a burden ahead of them, they have no idea.

I agree 100% with the bolded part.  The first part is right too although I think the "surpluses" were built on assuming the tech bubble would last forever and were thus really "smaller deficits."  However, the thought is definitely right, that the last 9 years have seen an explosion of fiscal irresponsibility.  We've just taken it to another order of magnitude in the last 14 months.

[Brownie]

Maybe if we'd kept going on the Clinton-Gingrich balance surpluses (the ones Reagan said would pay back the debt we borrowed in the 80's) and kept the 30 year bond retired and didn't do Medicare D, just maybe some of this wouldn't be so nerve wracking.

The fiscal irresponsibility of Congress and the lack of the use of a veto pen the last 9 years -- 9 years, not 14 months -- is nauseating.

The kids in my house have such a burden ahead of them, they have no idea.

I agree 100% with the bolded part.  The first part is right too although I think the "surpluses" were built on assuming the tech bubble would last forever and were thus really "smaller deficits."  However, the thought is definitely right, that the last 9 years have seen an explosion of fiscal irresponsibility.  We've just taken it to another order of magnitude in the last 14 months.

This. This. This.

I just fail to see how this bill "controls costs," or "improves the quality of care." I do see how this bill will force my company to keep under 50 employees, drop health care benefits altogether and see larger companies offer shittier health insurance than before if they had been offering very good health insurance.

I also fail to see how this "reduces the deficit."

I hope to God I'm wrong. If I'm right, we're all fucked. Some of you worse than others.

[Chuck to Chuck]

Maybe if we'd kept going on the Clinton-Gingrich balance surpluses (the ones Reagan said would pay back the debt we borrowed in the 80's) and kept the 30 year bond retired and didn't do Medicare D, just maybe some of this wouldn't be so nerve wracking.

The fiscal irresponsibility of Congress and the lack of the use of a veto pen the last 9 years -- 9 years, not 14 months -- is nauseating.

The kids in my house have such a burden ahead of them, they have no idea.

I agree 100% with the bolded part.  The first part is right too although I think the "surpluses" were built on assuming the tech bubble would last forever and were thus really "smaller deficits."  However, the thought is definitely right, that the last 9 years have seen an explosion of fiscal irresponsibility.  We've just taken it to another order of magnitude in the last 14 months.

That's not entirely fair.  A good portion of the money spent since 1/20/2009 were from programs started the previous year.

And the stimulus money, while not as spent as efficiently as I'd like, needed to be spent.  Moreover, politicians keep their jobs by spending more money, not less.

[Brownie]

Maybe if we'd kept going on the Clinton-Gingrich balance surpluses (the ones Reagan said would pay back the debt we borrowed in the 80's) and kept the 30 year bond retired and didn't do Medicare D, just maybe some of this wouldn't be so nerve wracking.

The fiscal irresponsibility of Congress and the lack of the use of a veto pen the last 9 years -- 9 years, not 14 months -- is nauseating.

The kids in my house have such a burden ahead of them, they have no idea.

I agree 100% with the bolded part.  The first part is right too although I think the "surpluses" were built on assuming the tech bubble would last forever and were thus really "smaller deficits."  However, the thought is definitely right, that the last 9 years have seen an explosion of fiscal irresponsibility.  We've just taken it to another order of magnitude in the last 14 months.

That's not entirely fair.  A good portion of the money spent since 1/20/2009 were from programs started the previous year.

And the stimulus money, while not as spent as efficiently as I'd like, needed to be spent.  Moreover, politicians keep their jobs by spending more money, not less.

And therein lies the rub. Once voters realized that they can vote themselves the treasury, we're cooked. We've been cooked for quite some time.

[Pre]

That's kind of what debate is... someone posts something purporting to show why some change is a good thing... and then I say, wait a a minute, that doesn't really prove anything at all... and I'm the one that's somehow doing it wrong?  Is that really what you're saying?

I'm not saying that a couple comments on here proved the health care
bill is awesome and will work and save money QED.  It's some of the
specifics like how increased access to birth control can decrease
unwanted pregnancies.

[SKO]

Maybe if we'd kept going on the Clinton-Gingrich balance surpluses (the ones Reagan said would pay back the debt we borrowed in the 80's) and kept the 30 year bond retired and didn't do Medicare D, just maybe some of this wouldn't be so nerve wracking.

The fiscal irresponsibility of Congress and the lack of the use of a veto pen the last 9 years -- 9 years, not 14 months -- is nauseating.

The kids in my house have such a burden ahead of them, they have no idea.

I agree 100% with the bolded part.  The first part is right too although I think the "surpluses" were built on assuming the tech bubble would last forever and were thus really "smaller deficits."  However, the thought is definitely right, that the last 9 years have seen an explosion of fiscal irresponsibility.  We've just taken it to another order of magnitude in the last 14 months.

That's not entirely fair.  A good portion of the money spent since 1/20/2009 were from programs started the previous year.

And the stimulus money, while not as spent as efficiently as I'd like, needed to be spent.  Moreover, politicians keep their jobs by spending more money, not less.

And therein lies the rub. Once voters realized that they can vote themselves the treasury, we're cooked. We've been cooked for quite some time.

And its 1, 2, 3, what are we fightin for? Don't ask me I don't give a damn..

[R-V]

Maybe if we'd kept going on the Clinton-Gingrich balance surpluses (the ones Reagan said would pay back the debt we borrowed in the 80's) and kept the 30 year bond retired and didn't do Medicare D, just maybe some of this wouldn't be so nerve wracking.

The fiscal irresponsibility of Congress and the lack of the use of a veto pen the last 9 years -- 9 years, not 14 months -- is nauseating.

The kids in my house have such a burden ahead of them, they have no idea.

I agree 100% with the bolded part.  The first part is right too although I think the "surpluses" were built on assuming the tech bubble would last forever and were thus really "smaller deficits."  However, the thought is definitely right, that the last 9 years have seen an explosion of fiscal irresponsibility.  We've just taken it to another order of magnitude in the last 14 months.

That's not entirely fair.  A good portion of the money spent since 1/20/2009 were from programs started the previous year.

And the stimulus money, while not as spent as efficiently as I'd like, needed to be spent.  Moreover, politicians keep their jobs by spending more money, not less.

And therein lies the rub. Once voters realized that they can vote themselves the treasury, we're cooked. We've been cooked for quite some time.

And its 1, 2, 3, what are we fightin for? Don't ask me I don't give a damn..

To answer your earlier question more specifically:

I'm not going to list every quick-acting provision here, because it would be redundant. The most genuinely useful of them will be the ability to keep kids on their parents' insurance until they're 26 (that begins six months after the bill passes), the $250 rebate for Medicare enrollees who fall into the prescription drug benefit's "doughnut hole" (the bill eventually closes the hole altogether), and an end to rescission of coverage or annual limits. At the beginning of 2011, employers in the individual and small-group markets have to spend 80 percent of each premium dollar on actual medical care, or they have to rebate the difference.

[Dr. Nguyen Van Falk]

Maybe if we'd kept going on the Clinton-Gingrich balance surpluses (the ones Reagan said would pay back the debt we borrowed in the 80's) and kept the 30 year bond retired and didn't do Medicare D, just maybe some of this wouldn't be so nerve wracking.

The fiscal irresponsibility of Congress and the lack of the use of a veto pen the last 9 years -- 9 years, not 14 months -- is nauseating.

The kids in my house have such a burden ahead of them, they have no idea.

I agree 100% with the bolded part.  The first part is right too although I think the "surpluses" were built on assuming the tech bubble would last forever and were thus really "smaller deficits."  However, the thought is definitely right, that the last 9 years have seen an explosion of fiscal irresponsibility.  We've just taken it to another order of magnitude in the last 14 months.

That's not entirely fair.  A good portion of the money spent since 1/20/2009 were from programs started the previous year.

And the stimulus money, while not as spent as efficiently as I'd like, needed to be spent.  Moreover, politicians keep their jobs by spending more money, not less.

And therein lies the rub. Once voters realized that they can vote themselves the treasury, we're cooked. We've been cooked for quite some time.

And its 1, 2, 3, what are we fightin for? Don't ask me I don't give a damn..

http://www.redstate.com/erick/2010/03/21/come-what-may/

... we pledge our lives, fortunes, and honor to crushing any member of Republican leadership who refuses to get on the full repeal bandwagon.

It ain't no time to wonder why. Yippee, we're all going to die.

[Eli]

Maybe if we'd kept going on the Clinton-Gingrich balance surpluses (the ones Reagan said would pay back the debt we borrowed in the 80's) and kept the 30 year bond retired and didn't do Medicare D, just maybe some of this wouldn't be so nerve wracking.

The fiscal irresponsibility of Congress and the lack of the use of a veto pen the last 9 years -- 9 years, not 14 months -- is nauseating.

The kids in my house have such a burden ahead of them, they have no idea.

I agree 100% with the bolded part.  The first part is right too although I think the "surpluses" were built on assuming the tech bubble would last forever and were thus really "smaller deficits."  However, the thought is definitely right, that the last 9 years have seen an explosion of fiscal irresponsibility.  We've just taken it to another order of magnitude in the last 14 months.

That's not entirely fair.  A good portion of the money spent since 1/20/2009 were from programs started the previous year.

And the stimulus money, while not as spent as efficiently as I'd like, needed to be spent.  Moreover, politicians keep their jobs by spending more money, not less.

And therein lies the rub. Once voters realized that they can vote themselves the treasury, we're cooked. We've been cooked for quite some time.

And its 1, 2, 3, what are we fightin for? Don't ask me I don't give a damn..

http://www.redstate.com/erick/2010/03/21/come-what-may/

... we pledge our lives, fortunes, and honor to crushing any member of Republican leadership who refuses to get on the full repeal bandwagon.

It ain't no time to wonder why. Yippee, we're all going to die.

Yip Yip Yip Yip Yip Yip Yip

[Gilgamesh]

Maybe if we'd kept going on the Clinton-Gingrich balance surpluses (the ones Reagan said would pay back the debt we borrowed in the 80's) and kept the 30 year bond retired and didn't do Medicare D, just maybe some of this wouldn't be so nerve wracking.

The fiscal irresponsibility of Congress and the lack of the use of a veto pen the last 9 years -- 9 years, not 14 months -- is nauseating.

The kids in my house have such a burden ahead of them, they have no idea.

I agree 100% with the bolded part.  The first part is right too although I think the "surpluses" were built on assuming the tech bubble would last forever and were thus really "smaller deficits."  However, the thought is definitely right, that the last 9 years have seen an explosion of fiscal irresponsibility.  We've just taken it to another order of magnitude in the last 14 months.

That's not entirely fair.  A good portion of the money spent since 1/20/2009 were from programs started the previous year.

And the stimulus money, while not as spent as efficiently as I'd like, needed to be spent.  Moreover, politicians keep their jobs by spending more money, not less.

And therein lies the rub. Once voters realized that they can vote themselves the treasury, we're cooked. We've been cooked for quite some time.

And its 1, 2, 3, what are we fightin for? Don't ask me I don't give a damn..

http://www.redstate.com/erick/2010/03/21/come-what-may/

... we pledge our lives, fortunes, and honor to crushing any member of Republican leadership who refuses to get on the full repeal bandwagon.

It ain't no time to wonder why. Yippee, we're all going to die.

They do realize the President is a Democrat, right?

[R-V]

Non-sarcastic question for the board: which of these cost controls are you skeptical of? Regardless of the validity of the middle 3, I think the combination of the mandate and the exchanges alone is encouraging:

Republicans and Democrats both agree that we need more cost control in the health-care system. But politicians don't like to actually cut costs, because those votes reduce benefits and make people angry. So we've played a shameful game: We passively control costs by letting people become and stay uninsured, or by letting their insurance deteriorate and cover less, because those things don't require a vote in Congress.

But because the individual mandate in the bill brings everyone into the insurance market and the subsidies for those who can't afford insurance on their own put Washington on the hook for costs, Congress will have to get serious about holding costs down in the system. The alternatives, for lawmakers, are high costs infuriating constituents who're being forced to buy something they can't afford, or yawning deficits forcing them to vote to take subsidies -- and thus health-care coverage -- away from people who currently have it. The days of letting inertia win the day and watching the system fall apart on its own are over.

I see a lot of dismissive "the bill doesn't do anything to control costs" but the only conservative suggestions I've seen that aren't in the bill to some extent are malpractice reform (which I'm fine with, but which accounts for less than 2 percent of medical costs) and selling insurance across state lines (which may reduce cost, but would probably lead to a race to the bottom in terms of quality of insurance).

Which cost controls would you have liked to see included, that weren't?

[morpheus]

That's kind of what debate is... someone posts something purporting to show why some change is a good thing... and then I say, wait a a minute, that doesn't really prove anything at all... and I'm the one that's somehow doing it wrong?  Is that really what you're saying?

I'm not saying that a couple comments on here proved the health care
bill is awesome and will work and save money QED.  It's some of the
specifics like how increased access to birth control can decrease
unwanted pregnancies.

OK.  There is a wealth of information out there that shows that if you subsidize a particular behavior you will get more of it, and if you tax a particular behavior, you will get less of it, ceteris paribus.  You can see this all over the place, in various products and services that the government is involved in.  A great example: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/09/why-a-big-mac-costs-less-than-a-salad/

This economic rule of thumb is a rule of thumb for a reason.  If you want to say it doesn't apply to a particular situation, fine, but the burden of proof is on you to show that it doesn't apply.  The doctor in that medical journal took 3 years of annual numbers and said, good enough!  I said there's an awful lot of uncertainty around that, because it's a short time period and because there are lots of other things going on there (such as a much longer-term downward trend in the abortion rate that was already there before MassCare).  If I tried to use three data points as a thesis for a contrarian investment I'd get laughed out of the room.

So, tell me again what I did wrong?  I pointed out that such a study, based on its lack of data, is pretty meaningless.  Also... I never said that more access to (i.e. more subsidization of) birth control would not decrease unwanted pregnancies.  The burden of proof would then be on me, clearly.  I said that subsidizing abortions would lead to more of them, which is the intuitive conclusion.

[Gilgamesh]

David Frum, who I am sure at one point was considered to be a Republican, makes a lot of sense in his column today.

Some Republicans talk of repealing the whole bill. That's not very realistic. Even supposing that Republicans miraculously capture both houses of Congress in November, repeal will require a presidential signature.

More relevantly: Do Republicans write a one-sentence bill declaring that the whole thing is repealed? Will they vote to reopen the "doughnut" hole for prescription drugs for seniors? To allow health insurers to deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions? To kick millions of people off Medicaid?

It's unimaginable, impossible.

He, unlike many (though not all) of his colleagues, proposes a solution:

1) One of the worst things about the Democrats' plan is the method of financing: an increase in income taxes. The top rate of tax was already scheduled to jump to 39.6 percent at the end of this year. Now a surtax of 5.4 percent will be stacked atop that higher rate. At first, the surtax bites only very high incomes: $500,000 for individuals. But that tax will surely be applied to larger and larger portions of the American population over time.

Republicans champion lower taxes and faster economic growth. We need to start thinking now about how to get rid of this surtax -- if necessary by finding other sources of revenue, including carbon taxes.

2) We should quit defending employment-based health care. The leading Republican spokesman in the House on these issues, Rep. Paul Ryan, repeatedly complained during floor debate that the Obama plan would "dump" people out of employer-provided care into the exchanges. He said that as if it were a bad thing.

Yet free-market economists from Milton Friedman onward have identified employer-provided care as the original sin of American health care. Employers choose different policies for employees than those employees would choose for themselves. The cost is concealed.

Wages are depressed without employees understanding why. The day when every employee in America gets his or her insurance through an exchange will be a good day for market economics. It's true that the exchanges are subsidized. So is employer-provided care, to the tune of almost $200 billion a year.

3) We should call for reducing regulation of the policies sold inside the health care exchanges. The Democrats' plans require every policy sold within the exchanges to meet certain strict conditions.

American workers will lose the option of buying more basic but cheaper plans. It will be as if the only cable packages available were those that include all the premium channels. No bargains in that case. Republicans should press for more scope for insurers to cut prices if they think they can offer an attractive product that way.

4) The Democratic plan requires businesses with payrolls more than $500,000 to buy health insurance for their workers or face fines of $2,000 per worker. Could there be a worse time to heap this new mandate on smaller employers? Health insurance comes out of employee wages, plain and simple. Employers who do not offer health insurance must compete for labor against those who do -- and presumably pay equivalent wages for equivalent work.

Uninsured employees have now through the exchanges been provided an easy and even subsidized way to buy their own coverage. There is no justification for the small-business fine: Republicans should press for repeal.

The conclusion:

Now the overheated talk is about to get worse. Over the past 48 hours, I've heard conservatives compare the House bill to the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 -- a decisive step on the path to the Civil War. Conservatives have whipped themselves into spasms of outrage and despair that block all strategic thinking.

So today's defeat for free-market economics and Republican values is a huge win for the conservative entertainment industry. Their listeners and viewers will be even more enraged, even more frustrated, even more disappointed in everybody except the responsibility-free talkers on television and radio. For them, it's mission accomplished.

For the cause they purport to represent, however, the "Waterloo" threatened by GOP Sen. Jim DeMint last year regarding Obama and health care has finally arrived all right: Only it turns out to be our own.