Re: Obama 9 -- Its Been a Whole Year Now
Plante! I missed your little rant full of falsehoods and GOP talking points. Too busy celebrating one more weekend of hockey on home ice I guess. Anyway, lets hit the highlights:
Falsehoods? Funny, I didn't see you point out any falsehoods. Saying something doesn't make it true, Rover.
1) "everybody knows it" isn't good enough. Give me an independent study showing how much waste unions are causing in the health care system. Given that unions make up their smallest % of the workforce in eons, and can't even stop jobs from going overseas, let alone health care reductions, this ought to be good.
I know it's in high demand amongst liberals, but try REALLY hard to use some common sense, Rover. Of course unionized health care workers make more than non-unionized staff. And there's a difference between "waste" and "driving up costs"--the former which I never mentioned. On their website, SEIU claims to have averaged a 4.3% increase for the first year of new contracts negotiated in 2009 (during a recession) for their hospital workers. SEIU also states that unionized workers make on average 30% more than their non-unionized counterparts--granted, this comes at the expense of the employer's economic viability, but who cares about the employer, right? Small wonder that heavily-unionized states are the ones facing the most severe budget crises. Given that payroll is the single largest expenditure for most any business operation, and I can only hope that you're intelligent enough to come to the logical conclusion that wage increases are contributing to rising health care costs.
2) Screwing up the # of uninsured (15M your count to 45M+ the actual #) makes me wonder a wee bit about your math.
When you take out the number of people who self-insure, just don't want to buy health insurance or aren't eligible for health insurance (illegal aliens), you eliminate millions of people that the Obama Administration says are "uninsured"......painting them as not able to buy insurance due to the evil profiteering insurance industry. In calculating the numbers based on your inflated figure of 45MM I was merely humouring your misguided statistics.
3) Once again, we're back to "where is your info coming from" on the notion that ER visits aren't really that costly for the uninsured. Show me how people without insurance showing up at the ER is cost neutral to people having insurance and going through their own doctor.
I know you're probably a slow learner, and reading isn't a strong suit for you, so let me reiterate my source: healthaffairs.org, which is an organization that is actually in favor of the diseased Obama health care legislation. I never said there wasn't a cost. I said that the cost is far below what could be saved in Medicare fraud/waste/abuse, which makes your entire argument about ER visits completely irrelevant and makes health insurance reform the most overengineered piece of legislation in our lifetime. Let me sum this up for you:
$500 billion >>>>> total cost of ER visits for the uninsured
I also stated that instead of buying cell phones, cable TV and vehicles, maybe people should start practicing their own fiscal responsibility by looking into purchasing health insurance so that taxpayers don't end of footing the bill.
4) I have a job in finance, and I'm curious what you do for a living. Most people in the field will tell you Econ classes are all theory and BS with no practical application in the real world.
I worked in commericial lending for five years prior to the business consulting work I am currently doing (I got sick of telling people "No."). People like you are the reason for this mess: Financiers that don't have a fiscally-prudent bone in their body going against all logic and touting the spending of money as the solution instead of addressing the problem--which is cost. If I were you I'd look at a career change, because if you're working in finance and you can't see the fiscal debacle that is Obama's health insurance reform, there's a very high likelihood that you're not very good at what you do.
5) The day you out argue me is the day Rush Limbaugh is elected President. While that thought may make you salivate, it ain't happening in our lifetimes.
Don't think I don't realize that you keep whittling down my arguments to iotas of contention. You dropped the debate on the destruction of insurance pools, and you fail to explain why this whole reform in necessary in light of the massive savings in Medicare being able to address the relatively few that are uninsured.
In short, I own you Rover. Bow down. You can't win this debate. The "reform" proposed by the Obama administration is nothing more than an attempt to destroy what is percieved as an evil insurance industry. Admit that Obama's health insurance reform is completely diseased, and that it does nothing to address health care costs. Admit it, and I'll show mercy in merely pointing and laughing......rather than doing the Super Bowl Shuffle on your ideological grave.
This is nice....
http://news.yahoo.com/s/huffpost/20100307/cm_huffpost/489050
So Republicans think people are unemployed because they want to be. Great. Anybody who got laid off, remember that when elections roll around later this year.
Funny, you call for "independent sources", and then post something from the Huffington Post.
Irony at its finest, Rover. You're a walking contradiction.
Especially when your other point, that people should spend less on cable and shoes and buy insurance instead, is rectified by this law (mandatory insurance for all).
