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The Sandbox - NationalThe Sandbox is a collection of off-topic discussions. Humorous threads, Sports talk, and a wide variety of other topics can be found here.
The Constitution was written by politicians, numb nuts. Politicians who shat in outhouses and believed that all diseases were "consumption."
You think God Almighty handed the original articles down to historical George Jefferson on Mount Vernon?
You're a bright guy. In fact, I bet your mother called you Sun!
Thats right you eclipse of the sun. Politicians wrote the Constitution but they were smart guys back in the day, not like the fucking idiots today trying to tweak the Constitution to fit their needs. If politicians today knew vwhat the hell they were doing we wouldn't have all these issues we face today. They are all criminals, and you're just a dumb little dupe that doesn't know any better.
The fact is, 25% of all Medicare spending goes to the 5% of recipients who die each year --with 80% of that in the last two months of life. This is aggressive spending on things like stays in intensive care and critical care units, which research has shown do not meet the needs and preferences of terminal patients despite its increasing use.
Especially when combined with the growing evidence supporting the benefits of less-expensive, palliative hospice care that allows people to enjoy their last days on this earth in peace at home, not poked, prodded and intubated, floating in and out of consciousness under the fluorescent lights of a $30,000-a-night hospital room.
The popular backlash against death panels gave politicians in Washington reason to fear the topic in general.
Mirhaydari generally writes some pretty good stuff. This very short article is no exception, and he briefly hits on a number of key points. I wish more of our political "leaders" would begin to responsibly address these issues.
One of his essential points is that this needs to become a wide-ranging discussion that goes well beyond just "death panels." (A very unfortunate phrase. If there were a giant company called "National health Care," its marketing department would obviously choose to go with something else.)
We need to have a re-think about how we do almost everything. As the author notes, one reason the economy is struggling to find its footing is that government-led areas have become inefficient and too costly, and are underperforming relative to the rest of the economy, and to our global peers.
It's clear that we cannot offer everything to everybody, although for quite some time politicians have promised voters that they can keep all the tax cuts they've been given over the years, and receive all the benefits they've been promised, either explicitly or implicitly. But something has to give. There's no way to massage the math enough to make this come remotely close to working if left on autopilot.
Medicare, as it is financed now and the projected curves we can best estimate is able to fully finance 100% of all care through 2024.
That assumption rests on accounting gimmickry. The Social Security and Medicare "trust funds" are meaningless. (The "trust fund" has already been spent.) Medicare is and will be running current deficits from here on. They will have to be covered by Treasury, and will grow larger year by year as about 10,000 baby boomers become newly eligible every day.
If a private equity manager tried to get away with such accounting chicanery while preparing numbers for a prospectus, he would risk being indicted and arrested.
Quote:
Originally Posted by austxjr
What do you think, households or businesses who owe 75% of their annual income (GDP) have a debt problem? The sovereign government is not a household or a business and the economic and accounting mechanics of how it operates are nothing similar so that analogy is just plain wrong.
Furthermore, almost no one has actually made a case with numbers and well accepted macro-economic principles that there is either a short or a long term debt problem because if they DO understand both macro-economics and the mechanics of a fiat monetary system, they cannot make the case. What it boils down to is basically, "we have a lot of debt and if this were a household or small business that would be bad" which ignores the structural differences between a sovereign currency issuer and a currency user not to mention the core reasons that there are two different economic disciplines called Macro Economics and Micro Economics with core mechanical and accounting differences between how they operate. I'm certainly not saying that we have no fiscal problems at all, but I will say that our fiscal problems are not what is mostly discussed in the media or by the right wing. Our fiscal problems can and will be solved when we solve our employment problems and not before (in fact they are already beginning to be resolved despite the best efforts of the Republicans by the resurgence of the housing market as Warren Buffet predicted a couple years ago).
What you obviously don't understand (and the Fed has made perfectly clear in its various papers over years under Greenspan as well as Bernanke) is that we don't really borrow to finance government. We create (not even really print anymore) money which allows us to set interest rates and fund government without borrowing. Since we print it and two thirds of the debt is in dollars and to ourselves it could be paid off instantly if desirable. Thus no debt problem. Interest rates are hovering around 1% right now so until they rise significantly, no short term debt problem. Also, the U.S. government cannot go "bankrupt" and we don't need credit rating agencies. Bankruptcy is a legal proceeding that does not apply to sovereigns. We aren't broke either. Do you call a billionaire who has no income and is losing $1 Million a year broke? Of course not. Think about it and maybe the lightbulb will come on someday.
Before insinuating that the person you addressed that reply to (nevergaveitathought) doesn't understand anything about debt, I suggest that you would have done well to have taken a more considered look at the issue.
We most assuredly do have a debt problem -- although as you note, household finance and sovereign finance are two completely different animals, and comparisons of the two are inapt in many ways.
You seem to hold the belief that we can simply have the Federal Reserve create almost limitless quantities of fresh money with few adverse consequences. You may recall that we had a discussion of this very issue not long ago:
Then why hasn't the Constitution done its job? Hmmmm???
This has got to be one of the stupidest things that Whatzup has ever written. WE are the Constitution and many of us (that means you Whatzup) are doing their jobs.
Then I looked at some of the other things written by Whatzup and I guess I have to put it in the top ten. Oh, Jefferson (George or Thomas) didn't live at Mount Vernon. George Washington lived at Mount Vernon.
The "problem" in the discourse is that of "labeling" ....
.... using "death panel" is too inciteful and "in the face" of liberals and doctors.
"End of Life Decisions Roundtable Discussion Group" has a softer tone....
... How about "Future Healthcare Caucus"?
Does anyone else have any suggestions on a label that "feels better"?
How about discussing the problem and not labels. It does not matter wtf it is called, though CM made a good point.
How do you propose to make the math work? That is the problem. If we had an unlimited supply of money...meaning if you were willing to pay much higher taxes for this end of life care or if you do not want to pay higher taxes , how are we going to pay for this end of life care?
1. The Timekeepers 2. The Terminators 3. The Department of You Can't Live Forever 4. The Recyclers 5. Soylent Green, Inc. 6. Grandma Tastes Like Chicken! Inc.
But I thought "death panels" didn't exist under Obamacare; at least that is what the Democrats always claimed..............you saying they are liars, didn't the left mock Sara Palin for bringing up Death Panels?
Seems all the liberal Fact Checkers were wrong and Sara Palin was right !!!!!!!!!
This is not about money and never really has been. It is about scarcity. Very few people can become doctors. Some may have the intelligence but lack the humanity. Some may have the humanity but lack the drive, Some may have the drive but lack the ability to connect the dots. Some may have all of that but just don't care about medicine. In a typical business model you increase the supply, maintain demand, and price goes down. That was one thing that Hillary almost got right. She wanted to increase the number of medical professionals but her mistake was to try to dictate to people what they would become. Obama would have been better off if he had freed up some money to send another 100,000 people a year to medical school for about eight years. For payback, they could have worked in the underserved areas of the country, this country (slums, reservations, the boonies, etc.) for four years. The CBO has proclaimed that there is a quarter of a trillion dollars a year frittered away in fraud, waste, and abuse. $250 billion would train a lot of doctors, nurses, and technicians.
(disclaimer: I don't believe that government should be in the job of enriching the medical schools, which would be the result, but if Obama really wanted to make a difference with a light touch then this was the answer)
But I thought "death panels" didn't exist under Obamacare; at least that is what the Democrats always claimed..............you saying they are liars, didn't the left mock Sara Palin for bringing up Death Panels?
Seems all the liberal Fact Checkers were wrong and Sara Palin was right !!!!!!!!!
Nobody was going to club grandma over the head like a baby seal. So no their were not "Death Panels". What this thread is about is how do you Sara Oalin defenders propose to pay for grandma?
can you answer that Whirly? Are you willing to pay higher taxes? It does not seem so, maybe I'm wrong, maybe you Tea Cheapfucs will pony up.
