A Malaise Speech for the Current Time

[David Horn]

This thread has more stripes than a zebra, so this is my last pass.

(04-01-2017, 09:32 PM)Kinser79 Wrote: The current system isn't working--but there isn't a solution at least not one that can be implemented this cycle (the whole order still has yet to be discredited--you know Mega-Unraveling), and it certainly isn't Bernie Sanders.  The Europeans all have much larger welfare states than the US and they're failing too.

Even if we agreed Sanders had the solutions to our problems where would we get the funds to pay for all these programs and such like?  Massive raising of taxes?  Massive printing of money?  You know because raising taxes and inflation never causes problems.

First, the European welfare sates are not falling. They are suffering from excessive immigration, and the various nationalists are running on that. None of them wants to kill their welfare state

Kinser Wrote:No the least bad option is to have people buy their own damn insurance.  We trust the free market to provide us with bread and vegetables and junk food all of which are in such abundance even the poor are obese but we can't trust it to provide a plethera of insurance options?  Seriously if there is a profit to be made someone will try and make it.

Healthcare is not a commercial product. It's more like police, fire and military protection. I assume you aren't interested in having each of us buy our own security ... not at that level, at least.

Kinser Wrote:So what you're saying is people cannot be trusted to buy their own insurance.  Yet they certainly can be trusted with buying home owners insurance, renters insurance, car insurance and so forth.  Are you sure you want to go that route?

Granted some people will be priced out, some will opt out.  In any freedom based system you're going to have that.  So unless you're proposing forcing everyone buys a certain product approved by the state or they are jailed, the ACA or any other force based insurance system is not going to work.  And that doesn't even get into the whole one-size does not fit all situation (which is a whole other kettle of fish).

What I do find interesting though is someone on Medicare, who isn't effected by the ACA is attempting to dictate why this terrible piece of garbage is good for me and good for business.

You are talking apples and jackhammers here. They aren't even in the same family. Take homeowners insurance. It's fully predicated on the idea that the fire department will respond to fires and the police to criminal acts ... all paid with tax dollars.

Kinser Wrote:Two issues:  1.  Employers only started offering health insurance during WW2 due to war time wage caps.
2.  Employers only continue to do so to retain employees because health insurance is non-taxable compensation.

Ideally employers should not be paying for health care insurance.  Maybe if the tax system was structured in a different way they could offer their employees enough money to buy their own damn insurance.  Finally, for those who have employer provided health insurance what happens to their insurance when they get laid off or their job is sent to Chi-nah?  Oh they lose it....with the "Buy your own damn insurance" system they have their insurance whether they work or not as long as they can pay the premium.  And this doesn't even get into the whole not wanting to hire older workers or workers with pre-existing conditions in situations where companies (many of who can't really afford to provide insurance to their full time workers--or they would without being forced to) because doing so would raise their rates.

Here we agree. We need the employer-based heath insurance system to end.

Kinser Wrote:No that's the sound of a bubble popping.  If people have to buy their own insurance then they are most likely going to go for what they need and not for what some third party is going to pay for.  This means single men aren't going to have coverage for mammograms--cause guess what men don't need that.  I imagine single women will not want their prostate exams covered (you know not having a prostate and all).  I figure if an adult human is competent enough to dress themselves then they are compotent enough to buy what kind of health care coverage they need.

Healthcare is not a product. Period. Providing healthcare to hoi polloi requires a huge infrastructure of hospitals, specialty clinics, laboratories and providers of all types. Setting up competing services merely guarantees huge and unnecessary costs. Take NICUs, for example. Even the air handlers are special. A one day stay by a preemie in a NICU is $10,000, assuming the NICU is large enough to share the specialty resources needed to make it work. If it's boutique care, like the mega rich get, then multiply by 10. In other words, it's barely affordable in its most communal form ... and NICUs are only one of many services with similar cost structures.

Kinser Wrote:Yeah like a sick, corrupt, career politician--the very essence of everything wrong in Washington was any better.  As for being a 70 year old adolescent...I can't tell if that is a statement from ignorance as to how New Yorkers behave, or if you're simply delusional. Were he some unchecked over grown teenager he wouldn't have been able to make 1 Million into Billions.

Or is it that you're secretly jealous of Daddy in that the presidency is the cherry on top and all you have to look forward to is hopefully dying before dementia sets in?

Trump has talents, of a type, but they are ill suited to the job he has now. He is an adolescent with money and power. But if success impresses you, you may wish to consider Michael Bloomberg who started with less and made much more. He knows the Donald personally, and his opinion of him is not flattering. On the healthcare bill, Bloomberg said, 'The TrumpCare bill failed because of two traits that have plagued the Trump presidency since he took office: incompetence and broken promises. In my life, I have never seen an administration as incompetent as the one occupying the White House today.'

Kinser Wrote:AHCA was never going to pass because it isn't a repeal, and it also wasn't a replace either--unless the goal was to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic.

It's worse. It tried to displace a viable but poor system with one that was worse and incapable of doing what it claimed to do.

Kinser Wrote:I have The Art of the Deal, I actually bought a copy but that is hardly his only book.  It was written 30 years ago and is all about business and business management.  [Incidentally that is why I bought the book.]  It is not about politics at all except where he exposes how inept many politicians he dealt with over the years were.  Most of those politicans retired 20-10 years ago, so...I'm not following your logic (assuming you even have one).

Let's be clear. Trump is not a writer. He hires writers, and often forgets to pay them -- a habit he also has in his own business. Screwing people can be profitable, but it's not something to point to with pride.

Kinser Wrote:You know who else operated with bravado and was a very successful president?  Andrew Jackson.  It is not for no reason I have named Trump the "Jacksonian GC" in my own words.  Do not be surprised should, you live to see it--and I'm likely too, if people in the future do not brag about being born in or coming up in the Age of Trump.

History may not repeat but it certainly rhymes.

I see no viable path to a second term and a narrowing path to completing this one. The blood's in the water and the other players have a stronger game. Trump is way out of his element, and there is simply too much sleaze for this to run the full course.