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Politics : Liberalism: Do You Agree We've Had Enough of It? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (80874)	3/12/2010 4:47:30 PM
From: chartseer	3 Recommendations Respond to of 224748

oh bummer!Krugman gets schooled on bamahcare newsbusters.org Don't worry! Be happy! the hopeless comrade chartseer in the new era of hope

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (80874)	3/18/2010 12:05:32 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 224748

The first of these myths, which has been all over the airwaves lately, is the claim that President Obama is proposing a government takeover of one-sixth of the economy, the share of G.D.P. currently spent on health. Well really its only a take over of the smaller percentage of the economy represented by health care insurance. OTOH that portion has a big effect on the rest of the one-sixth. if having the government regulate and subsidize health insurance is a “takeover,” that takeover happened long ago. Its not a binary issue of regulate or not regulate. The point is this is a vast increase in regulation, that basically controls what insurance companies can do, who they must cover, what they can charge, what conditions they must cover, who must buy coverage, etc. Technically its more corporatism (the economic side of fascism) than socialism, but socialism works well enough to convey the point because most people don't understand what corporatism is. The second myth is that the proposed reform does nothing to control costs. In a certain sense that is a myth, it does have steps to try to control costs. But its broadly accurate, so "myth" is a stretch. A better formulation of the point would be it does nothing that is likely to significantly control costs, and that at the same time it adds to costs with more regulation, and extended coverage. the Congressional Budget Office has just concluded, in a new report, that the arithmetic of reform will look better in its second decade than it did in its first. Congress tells the CBO, it will cut spending here, and cut spending there, and the CBO plugs in the savings whether or not the cuts will never happen. When congress is gaming CBO scoring to the extent it is with this bill, even estimates of the short term costs are dubious, much less CBO projections out in to the 2nd decade.