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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (47461)	12/9/2010 9:59:58 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	1 Recommendation Respond to of 71588

New Poll Confirms IBD's '09 Finding Of Doctor Exodus Under ObamaCare Posted 07:05 PM ET Reform: When we said nearly half of U.S. doctors might close their practices or retire early rather than live under the Democrats' health overhaul, we were heavily criticized. The critics, though, were wrong. Four in nine doctors responding to an IBD/TIPP poll sent out in August 2009 said they "would consider leaving their practice or taking an early retirement" if Congress passed what has become known as ObamaCare. That means as many as 360,000 physicians have plans to be doing something other than treating the growing number of patients in this country. The doctors also told us — 67% to 22%, with 11% not responding — that they expected fewer students to apply for medical school in the future if the plan became law. Given these views, it's no surprise that 71% were doubtful that the government would be able to cover the 47 million uninsured Americans with better care at lower costs, which ObamaCare supporters have promised. Other findings from our poll of 1,376 doctors included: six in 10 agreeing that the Democrats' plan would strip drug companies of the incentives they need to make lifesaving pharmaceuticals, and 65% believing that a government overhaul would lead to lower-quality care for seniors. The critics said our poll was not credible, was "shabby" and "garbage." They accused IBD of being partisan, pursuing an agenda, trying to sway gullible readers with shameless journalism. Useful rhetoric for keeping the left stirred up, but it was nothing more than an attempt to poison findings the critics didn't like. Now a Merritt Hawkins survey of 2,379 doctors for the Physicians Foundation completed in August has vindicated our poll. It found that 40% of doctors said they would "retire, seek a nonclinical job in health care, or seek a job or business unrelated to health care" over the next three years as the overhaul is phased in. Of those who said they planned to retire, 28% are 55 or younger and nearly half (49%) are 60 or younger. A larger portion (74%) said they plan to make "one or more significant changes in their practices in the next one to three years, a time when many provisions of health reform will be phased in." In addition to retirement, and finding nonclinical jobs elsewhere, those changes include working part time, closing practices to new patients, employment at a hospital, cutting back on the number of patients and switching to a cash or concierge practice. A deeper look at the results reveals eight in 10 believe ObamaCare "will erode the viability of the private practice model" while six in 10 are convinced they will be compelled to "close or significantly restrict" their practices to at least one category of patient. Over half (56%) said they believe the government takeover will affect the quality of care they are able to provide their patients and 86% said doctors weren't "adequately represented to policymakers and the public during the run-up to passage of health reform." It's significant that the Physicians Foundation survey was taken from the membership of the American Medical Association. After initially indicating opposition to ObamaCare, that group supported the legislation. For that reason, Dr. Marc Siegel said Tuesday on Fox News that he would be "more worried about non-AMA members and what they have to say." We think that we already covered that concern with our 2009 poll. Doctors simply don't like what the Democrats have force-fed them. A large segment of the healing profession says it's willing to close its doors rather than endure the problems that will be created by the overhaul. Unfortunately, this is exactly the sort of outcome that's expected when lawmakers leave common sense behind and work far outside their moral and constitutional authority

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (47461)	3/13/2012 1:31:30 AM
From: greatplains_guy	1 Recommendation Respond to of 71588

Price-clubbed in U.S. America’s real inflation rate has moved above 8% Last Updated: 10:00 AM, March 11, 2012 Posted: 1:04 AM, March 11, 2012 Terry Keenan It was three years ago this week that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke became the first US central banker to sit down for a vanity interview with “60 Minutes,” an interview in which he heralded the “green shoots” that he was seeing in the economy. Hence, it is no surprise that in the spring of this election year the “green shoots” brigade is out in force again, aided by an enthusiastic mainstream media that tells us day after day that the economy is getting better. Indeed, the employment picture in America has brightened a bit, with an average of 245,000 new jobs added over the past three months as the unemployment rate fell to 8.3 percent. “Great news for the president” is the conventional wisdom. Yes, 8.3 percent unemployment is far better than the 10.2 percent we saw back in October 2009. Still, when voters “vote their pocketbook” come November, unemployment is just one — although the main — component of their economic well-being. The other is inflation, and on that front Team Obama has a lot to be worried about. Remember the Misery Index? Veteran Democrats do, and so do the president’s re-election operatives in Chicago. The Misery Index is the sum of the unemployment and inflation rates, and it’s what did in Jimmy Carter in 1980 as runaway inflation compounded an already bleak economic picture. On the face of it, the government measure of consumer prices, the CPI, is just mildly alarming — with the government estimating prices to be rising at a 3.1 percent annual rate. But as anyone who pays the bills or does the household grocery shopping knows, a government-reported 3.1 percent inflation rate is laughably low. Bought cereal or mac and cheese for the kids lately? If so, you’re aware of the near double-digit increase in prices in the supermarket aisles. So what is the true inflation rate? Fortunately, the folks at the American Institute of Economic Research have resurrected the idea. Their Everyday Price Index (EPI) strips away the cost of big-ticket items, like homes and cars, and looks at the cost of things that consumers encounter on a daily or monthly basis, such as groceries, prescription medicine, and telephone and cable bills. By that measure, the Everyday Price Index shows inflation galloping ahead at an 8.1 percent annual rate, a reading that would put the current Misery Index at a Carter-like 16.4 percent — not a good recipe for re-election. Averaging the CPI and the EPI gives us a rate of 5.6 percent, a number most New Yorkers, and probably most Americans, would consider on the mark. By that estimate, the Obama Misery Index comes in at 13.9 percent, higher than that of any president up for re-election since Carter in 1980, but not too far above the 12.4 percent misery reading when Ronald Reagan ran in 1984. nypost.com

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (47461)	3/13/2012 1:33:19 AM
From: greatplains_guy	2 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

What took so long? Why O’s policies slowed recovery Last Updated: 12:14 AM, March 12, 2012 Charles Gasparino The US economy finally seems on course toward a sustained recovery — but why did it take so long? Consider this analysis: Job creation is strong, while economic growth as measured by the gross domestic product will finally creep back to pre-2008 levels, something close to 3.5 percent. That was not the takeaway from last week’s strong jobs report, but a prediction more than a year ago from Goldman Sachs analysts, possibly the best economics team on Wall Street. The Goldman geniuses weren’t making it up, nor were they the only Wall Street types to predict incorrectly that 2011 would be a great year in which a rising stock market, higher corporate profits and increased consumer spending, would all translate into decent job growth and the final nail into the coffin of the Great Recession. I bring this up not to show how some smart people got it wrong in 2011 (GDP growth was actually lower in 2011 than in 2010) and dampen last week’s good news about job creation. This recovery looks real; it was the third month in a row in which the economy produced more than 200,000 jobs. Overall unemployment held at 8.3 percent. That’s a great sign because the jobless rate doesn’t count people who’ve given up looking for work — but does count them when they start looking again. Apparently, people are finding jobs as fast as they’re jumping back into the work force. No, the bigger issue is what took the economy so long to recover. President Obama and his supporters blame the mess left by the 2008 financial collapse, as businesses shed jobs at rates not seen since the Great Depression — and they have a point; it takes time to dig out of a hole that deep. But Obama’s critics have a point, too. The administration’s policies helped delay the rebound and make it more tepid than it might have been otherwise. You can begin with Obama’s signature first-term economic “achievement,” the $800 billion stimulus plan that was supposed to create all those shovel-ready jobs and stop unemployment from rising above 8 percent. We all know how that turned out, with unemployment hovering between 9 percent and 10 percent until recently and GDP floundering such that even some Obama supporters have attacked the stimulus’ futility. Much of the money went to states to plug their budget deficits and reduce government layoffs; another bunch went for cockamamie green schemes floated by such politically connected companies as Solyndra. As for all the shovel-ready jobs, the president himself has joked about how they weren’t as shovel-ready as he expected. But Obama’s biggest economic mistake wasn’t just the wasted stimulus but a war on US businesses that continues today. Even as evidence mounted that his stimulus plan wasn’t working, the president basically ignored the nation’s economic woes and spent most of 2009 and 2010 pushing for the least business-friendly mandate to come out of Washington in years — his universal health-insurance plan. Timing matters. Obama wasn’t pushing a new mandate during an economic boom, when employers might shrug off the costs and ignore the uncertainty, but when, as he puts it, the economy was in the ditch. Instead of giving the private sector reason for hope, he gave it more to fear — so businesses retrenched, and the “recovery summer” the administration predicted for 2010 never came. Nor did it come last year. Again, some problems were clearly out of the president’s control. The tsunami in Japan and the euro crisis both were drags on the global economy. But so were Obama’s policies. Businesses react rationally when it comes to hiring more workers, and here’s what they’ve had to consider since 2009: * A president who doesn’t miss a chance to bash “millionaires and billionaires” and who always talks up the “justice” of raising their taxes. * A financial-reform law that raises costs so much that banks can’t afford to take normal business risks and lend to entrepreneurs. * An administration that’s so hellbent on serving its union allies that it sues Boeing for opening up a nonunion plant in South Carolina, where unemployment is almost 10 percent. Now that Obama’s in full re-election mode, he’s dropped the Boeing suit. But he’s still stalled the Keystone Pipeline, which would have produced some real shovel-ready jobs — and also more oil as gasoline prices rise above $4 a gallon. And while he’s put some anti-energy regulations on hold, nobody thinks he’s that likely to delay them any longer if he wins in November. Bottom line: Anyone looking to give the president credit for the recovery needs to explain why it took so long — and to tell us what, exactly, Obama did to make it better. Charles Gasparino is a Fox Business Network senior correspondent. nypost.com