Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Joe NYC who wrote (11227)	11/10/2009 5:05:07 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 42652

The problem with a phase out is it leaves you with both forms of taxation active, and politicians might vote for the phase out to get the sales tax started, but then change things later to never actually phase out the income tax.

To: Joe NYC who wrote (11227)	11/10/2009 6:51:35 PM
From: Peter Dierks	Respond to of 42652

If we were to change to a national sales tax we would have to rescind the Sixteenth Amendment. Politicians would leave us with both if we didn't.

To: Joe NYC who wrote (11227)	11/11/2009 7:07:58 AM
From: Lane3	Respond to of 42652

a gradual phase out of bad and phase in of better system may be the right solution... I would agree. It's just that those proposing the switch aren't proposing any kind of phasing. They don't even grasp the problem. When I sent them comments about it, they blew me off with just a repeat of their propaganda. Didn't sit well. I can accept being contradicted and I can accept losing an argument but I don't take well to being cavalierly ignored. So now the issue is a hobby horse of mine.

To: Joe NYC who wrote (11227)	11/18/2009 5:38:40 PM
From: TimF	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

That Darn Mandate Shikha Dalmia, 11.18.09, 12:01 AM ET ObamaCare has nothing going for it anymore. With unemployment touching double digits, its economic timing is bad; with polls showing tanking support in every group outside of the narrow sliver of die-hard liberal reformers, its political timing is bad; and with the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services last week saying that it'll add billions to the already out-of-control deficit, its fiscal timing has gone from bad to awful. So how are Comrades Pelosi, Reid and Obama able to march ahead with their grand designs undeterred? One reason is that Republicans have done precious little to seize the moral high ground from them. By insisting on the removal of the public option--instead of the individual mandate--as the price of doing business, Republicans have missed a major opportunity to put Democrats on the defensive and change the terms of the debate. Republicans threw down the gauntlet on the public option--a government-funded, Medicare-style insurance plan that will compete with private insurance--in a June letter to Obama. "Washington-run programs undermine market-based competition through their ability to impose price controls and shift costs to other purchasers," they said. "The end result would be a federal government takeover of our health care system, taking decisions out of the hands of doctors and patients and placing them in the hands of a Washington bureaucracy." True. But the problem is that Democrats don't need the public option to engineer a "federal takeover of our health care system." All they need is the power to force Americans to purchase insurance. A mandate will fundamentally alter the relationship between Americans and their government. Instead of the government being accountable to them, they will become accountable to their government. No less than the Congressional Budget Office--a non-partisan government agency--once admitted as much. "A mandate requiring all individuals to purchase health insurance would be an unprecedented form of federal action," it noted. "The government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States." If the government can force Americans to buy coverage on the threat of fines or even imprisonment--an option that Nancy Pelosi has pointedly refused to rule out--every other government diktat becomes small potatoes by contrast. In fact, it becomes necessary. If uninsured Americans must buy coverage, why shouldn't other Americans be taxed to subsidize them? Why shouldn't the insurance industry be required to sell them coverage? Why shouldn't government set insurance prices to ensure affordability? Why shouldn't doctors and hospitals be asked to charge only "reasonable" rates--or offer only government-sanctioned treatments? Nothing about ObamaCare fundamentally changes so long as the individual mandate remains intact. Therefore, instead of wonkishly droning about the public option, Republicans should counter Democrats' grand appeals for "universal coverage for all" with equally grand appeals for "medical freedom for all." They should stand together on the Capitol steps and issue the health care equivalent of Reagan's Berlin Wall ultimatum: "Mr. President: Tear up this mandate." During the campaign, Obama himself successfully stopped poor Hillary dead in her tracks by reminding voters at every turn of her tyrannical plans to force them to purchase coverage. So why aren't Republicans doing the same to Obama? The main reason is that they themselves are deeply conflicted about the mandate. On the one hand, every Republican on the Senate Finance Committee voted against it--except, of course, for Maine's Sen. Olympia Wavering-Heart Snowe. On the other hand, many Republicans, led by their intellectual lights at the conservative Heritage Foundation, among others, have long accepted--no, championed--the notion that unless people are forced to carry insurance, freeloaders who land in emergency rooms will cripple the health care system. Legislate personal responsibility, in other words. It was a Heritage plan for forced coverage that formed the blueprint for the Massachusetts universal care debacle that the then Republican Gov. Mitt Romney enacted. Thus Republicans have no leg to stand on now that Obama, pulling one of his many switcheroos, has embraced the individual mandate. Heritage folks are trying to pull their own switcheroo by opposing Obama's mandate, saying what they had originally proposed for Massachusetts was not really a mandate but actually a self-insurance scheme under which an uninsured person would have to post a personal bond before being treated in an emergency room. But countering mandates with bonds doesn't exactly make for a rousing rallying cry. Indeed, both ideas are based on the mistaken diagnosis that the central cause of our health care woes is the cost of uncompensated care that the uninsured get. The fact of the matter is that this care accounts for no more than $40 billion of the country's $2.26 trillion health care bill--or less than 3% of total health care spending. This is less than what department stores lose to shoplifting every year. Several private hospitals that I visited in India last month make a fraction of the profits that American hospitals do but still reported treating up to 10% of their patients for free. The mandate barring American hospitals from denying treatment to anyone who lands in emergency--the root of the supposed freeloader problem--certainly imposes a heavy burden on some hospitals, especially in inner cities. But it is far from clear that it forces American hospitals as a whole to provide more charitable care to the uninsured than what they would have without it. It would certainly be worthwhile at some point to consider policy options to replace this mandate with mechanisms to strengthen voluntary charity by hospitals and others. In the meantime, however, there is zero evidence to suggest that this mandate is imposing a crippling enough burden on hospitals to warrant mandates on everyone else as well. The Republican strategy for defeating ObamaCare consists of notifying: seniors that they will face rationing and loss of private Medicare options; the uninsured that they will face fines and possibly jail; the young and healthy that they will have to subsidize the old and sick, etc. Alerting Americans to the personal dangers they will confront under ObamaCare is certainly a legitimate part of the political process. However, the downside of a strategy based entirely on fear is that even if it succeeds now, it won't help to define the proper terms for a genuine solution in the future. For that, Republicans have to offer a principled critique of ObamaCare that delineates the sharp moral choices that Americans face. The current health care battle is the domestic policy equivalent of the Cold War. Democrats are on the side of command-and-control mandates that deprive individuals of choice. Republicans should position themselves on the side of market-based solutions that empower--not enchain--patients. Shikha Dalmia is a senior analyst at Reason Foundation and a bi-weekly Forbes columnist. forbes.com reason.com

To: Joe NYC who wrote (11227)	4/1/2010 4:58:44 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

The health care bill introduces large taxes on firm growth The health care bill passes by the Democrats includes a lot of provisions that depend on firm size, and which do not apply to firms smaller than some (arbitrary) limit. Most people like small firms and entreprenuereship. However both the left and the right often misunderstand sensible small buissnes policy: 1. First of all, just because something is good, it does not mean the government should subsidize it. There are benefits (closer management controll, fewer transactions costs, more flexibility) to small buissness, but there are also costs (less economies of scale, lower productivity). In a functioning economy some firms will be small and some firms large, depending on their relative advantages. You need strong arguments, some form of important externality for example, for the government to tip the balance in favour of small firms. Small firms cannot are more expensive to insure, because of administrative costs, economies of scale and because large firms have the advantage of offering a large and diverse workforce that the insurance companies can pool. Sure, this is “unfair” for small companies, but it also reflects real costs of the economy. In terms of efficiencies there should be fewer small firms because small firms have higher costs. It is “unfair” for Saab me that Toyota has economies of scale and can offer the same quality cars cheaper. But that reflects real costs of the economy, there should be fewer and larger car companies because of the economeis of scale. 2. More important here: The main advantage of entreprenureship is not that these firms are small, it is that they are growing. There is empirical evidence for this. Fast growing firms (“gazelles”) introduce new innovations into the economy, create new and better jobs and increase competition. We want small firms to growh if possible, not to stay small. Here are some examples: * The bill offer tax credits to small businesses who have fewer than 25 employees. The bill imposes a $2000 per employee tax penalty on employers with over 50 employees who do not offer health insurance to their full-time workers. The bill states that for firms with more than 50 employees, a year after giving birth, nursing mothers must be allowed breaks on the job to express breast milk as often as necessary, and a private place to do so that’s not a bathroom. * The bill states that Chain restaurants and food vendors with 20 or more locations are required to display the caloric content of their foods on menus, drive-through menus, and vending machines. As bad as regulations are, they may have even worse effects if some firms are exemted, because in order to receive the exemptions firms behaviour is distorted even more. What the Democrat bill does is create an incentive for small firms to stay exactly below the limit (25 employess, 50 employyes, 20 locations etc). This is unproductive Italian system, with lots and lots of small firms who escape regulations, but few Googles and Wall-Marts. Italy, Greece, Turkey and Mexico have a much higher share of self-employed and more small firms than the U.S. But these if a reflection of low productivity, regulatory burdens, high taxes and large transaction costs, not entreprenureship. The U.S has much more innovative entreprenureship than these countries. Helping small buissness stay small is not entreprenureship policy, it is the exact opposite. super-economy.blogspot.com