Open Thread

I see the local assclown is still at it, proclaiming the end of the world. His only claim to fame (from his momma's basement) is his self-proclaimed ability to call the market months in advance. Amazing.

Like a retard on the beach yelling about how the tide will soon come in, and low and behold, it does, to the amazement of the obsequious toadies around him.

So the market is down? is it any wonder with our neo-marxist president spending 4 trillion (700billion TARP + 3/4 trillion 2010 budget)dollars we don't have.
What's more, he spends it by giving it over to groups like ACORN or Rahm Emmanuel's brother instead of giving us all a tax break and stimulating re-investment by small businesses that provide 80% of new jobs.

The market will begin to recover in the short term, as will housing because of the sheer volume of money being spent by Washington. Like getting a 100K loan from Vinny Breakleg and going to Vegas only to realize that the money will be due after the party is over.

Next, he wants to tackle healthcare? 1/3 of the US economy, and model it after a failed Canadian and UK system. Nice.

Hey, at least assclowns like the twhat will have all the free prozac he can eat to treat his cyber-turrets.

Happy 4th of July.
God Bless America

someday this bore is gonna end.

Posted by: Legion at July 2, 2009 1:56 PM

slopefarm,
re; obama healthcare

what the president says is one thing, what will happen is another.

He wants to avoid a single payer system to stimulate competition. What happens though is this, medicare sets the standard payments to doctors and all the other health plans follow suit. why would they pay more if most doctors are enrolled in medicare and medicare pays less?

this new plan that would cover the "47 million" would presumably be some sort of medicaid-like entity (federally funded, state administered). medicaid pays even less than medicare. Doctors don't even want to deal with medicaid.

End result is this, the national plan (be it medi-america, or medicare-lite, will be setting the standard for reimbursements for all insurance companies. If the plan is cheaper, private companies will dis-enroll from their private plans and sign up with the new low cost, cheapy plan, thereby ensuring a lower standard of care.

Furthermore, he is proposing an increase in the patient pool by about 15-20%, without any discernable means of increasing the doctor pool by a similar amount. We can't out-source doctoring to India unfortunately. Again, quality healthcare goes down the drain.

Beyond that, he refuses to address TORT reform , that is, he refuses to acknowledge the fact that much medical expendature is entirely due to CYO medicine, where the doctor orders an MRI to avoid the 1 in a million possibility that you have a gonad tumor.

The dirty little secret is that the government does a HORRIBLE job of administering healthcare as it stands, Medicaid in NY state is full of fraud, waste and abuse and medicare is due to go bankrupt in 15 years.

Rationing of medical care will be a necessity at first then a sad reality, as it is in Canada and the UK.

Happy 4th of July.
God Bless America.

Posted by: Legion at July 2, 2009 2:52 PM

NOP,

you've got it all wrong.

First, the "47" million uninsured is a canard.
breaking down the figures you get the following;

approx. 15% of these folks are children who would qualify under the state's SHIP program if the parents took the 10 minutes to apply on line.

approx. 15-20% of these folks are not citizens of this nation, they are citizens of another sovereign nation and are therefore the responsibility of that sovereign nation, cross-reference this fact with California's current bankrupt medical system for a better understanding of how citizens from other nation's can become a burden on the medical system.

approx. 15-20% of these folks are working adults who CHOOSE not to purchase health insurance because they simply don't think they need it. Like all those uninsured motorists on the road for which us insured people have to pay into a pool with our auto insurance premiums to cover. You can purchase major medical insurance for a reasonable amount, comparable to auto insurance.

To summarize, you really only have about 15-20 million truly uninsured people in America. These folks can easily be absorbed under the current medicare/medicaid/SHIP programs, why would we need to re-invent the wheel and restructure the entire medical system to insure them? what's more, there is a little known alternative which actually works, which rewards people for remaining healthy and not overutilizing the medical system and can be instituted quite easily; it is called the Health Savings Account. Basically a combination of major medical with a pre-tax health savings account. What you don't use, you keep and continues to grow like an IRA. You are covered by a major insurer like GHI or Oxford and don't have to worry about breaking a leg. If you remain healthy like most Americans age 15-55, you get to keep the compounding pre-tax monies into retirement. That makes sense.

next point; comparing Sweden to the USA makes no sense at all. Sweden is a nation of 9 million with a negative birth rate and very little immigration. The USA is a nation of 300 million with the largest amount of immigration, legal and not of any nation on the planet. This includes many people who are sick. This means our life span decreases on average, because we take on the poor and infirm from other nations. Any gains made on the national scale by our healthcare standards are diminished by the influx of poorly nourished and poorly treated immigrants. Not to say we don't have our own problems, but nothing like the endemic conditions of the third world. This means our average height decreases because we accept millions of individuals from Mexico for instance who have a much shorter average height than northern Europeans, just a fact.

We need informed debate to hash out this issue, and don't even try the race card over this issue folks, it's not about race or culture or nationality. it's about applying facts and logic to better serve our children's future.

Posted by: Legion at July 2, 2009 7:20 PM

bxgrl,

WRONG.

The SHIP programs include Child Health Plus and Family Health Plus.
If you have children, your children will be covered as long as you are making less than 28,000 per year as a couple in NYState. Mind you , you will also be qualified for food stamps, housing subsidies and free education.

If you are a single individual, you will qualify for Family Health Plus as long as you are making less than 11,000 per year. It's not much but also consider that you will qualify for all the other social programs at that level.

Now if you are making say, 20K a year and you are single. You have to make some decisions. This is the hard part because this is where people start with the emotional outbursts about how they should be entitled to do whatever they want. There are consequences however, to our actions. Should you rent a 1500/month apartment? no. should you have a kid with no support structure around you? no. Should you go out nightly to have dinner and drinks at PerSe? no. Sould you live beyond your means? no.
You should pay the 400 per month for Major Medical coverage. A plan that will cover you should a catastrophe happen, as in breaking your leg. If not, you have a high deductable and the knowledge that most people in their twenties and thirties do not have major medical problems.

You should be living with a roomate and sharing expenses. you should be living frugally and enjoying the many free things this city has to offer. You should be saving and working towards a better future. you should be training for a job that has many job openings ; such as home health aid or nurse.

As far as the HSA account, you can certainly roll over the amount into the next year, I know, because I had an HSA account with Oxford. I am self employed and the HSA is considered a medical IRA of sorts, it's my money.

BXGRL; here's another solution, if you were to break your leg. You go to any city emergency room, where the law requires them to treat you. You will be treated and billed. If you cannot pay, you will be put on a payment plan according to what you can pay. I know because I have tenants who have done just that. They even have payment plans at HHC city hospitals where you basically pay $15 dollars a month for medical care including visits to the many clinics. Go to Metropolitan or Lincoln Hospitals if you don't believe me. You say you need medications? the major Pharmaceutical companies are tripping over themselves to give you free medications, if you qualify.

bottom line, you have to pay for some services in life. Some people, simply don't want to have to pay for medical services.

HSA accounts work on the idea that most insurance companies and persons who have taken a statistics course understand; that most people do not have major medical problems between a certain age. 15-55. Some do, but not the vast majority. As such, taking pre-tax dollars out of your paycheck to build up your health savings account will quickly add up over the course of a few years, say 25-31. Does anyone here recall even seeing a doctor in College? I went once, for a banged up knee. Once in 4 years, and not a single time in the 4 years of post-graduate studies. and again, if there were a major catastrophe, the HSA has the Major medical component which will cover you if you did break your leg and an orthopedist had to set it for 10,000 dollars. The benefits usually kick in after the first 2,000 dollars is spent. Bxgrl, are you telling me, you cannot accumulate 2000 in your health account within 2 years?

Here's yet another solution; sign up for one of the many low cost health care cooperative plans, through which you will have access, at a low monthly fee of about 60 dollars, to thousands of healthcare practitioners at a lower, negotiated fee schedule. AmeriPlan Health. look it up.

Final solution, if you are that sickly, simply do like many patients do in the hospital systems of new york; apply for medical disibility and get medicare early. I am not joking. I know of people who are on SSI/medicare disability for anything from lower back pain (which 45% of the population has after age 50) to "psych" problems.

Good luck and understand that there is always a way in this great nation. At least until we get to the point where we think the government will solve all our problems.

Posted by: Legion at July 2, 2009 9:29 PM

NOP

Regarding the New Yorker article on average US height. I will give you the point that the study was adjusted for shorter immigrant populations.
But here is the counter-point. Is this height indicative of a true lack of prosperity and healthcare or is it more a function of too much prosperity and freedom?
We have the freedom in the US to eat however badly we want to, however much we want to and whatever we want to. In fact we have a term for this; FastFood nation. We also have an obesity problem and a problem with diabetes. I suspect all are linked, but not by an underlying poverty, more by an underlying abundance of junk food and poor nutritional habits.
Once again, I will also point out that you must compare the United States to other nations which have populations in excess of 200 million and take on the immigration health issues that we do, to make a truly comparative analysis of whether or not our health care system is working to meet the demands of the people.
Also realize that all those Northern European nations cited in the study have benefitted greatly from the largesse of the American people in that funds that we could have been using to beef up our own healthcare system were instead used to protect the entire European continent for about 50 years. We still have bases in Germany, Poland and Eastern Europe. In other words, it is quite easy for the five million or so people in the Netherlands to grow a couple of inches over the past two generations and concentrate on prenatal care, when they don't have to apply 1/3 of their nation's GDP to protect against endless stream of despots always lurking about.

Finally, more recent studies show, that Americans are once again starting to increase in height. And don't discount the looming spectre of technology which has been America's ace in the hole for about a century now. It will not be long before genetic height selection will be available, we are already cloning dogs for goodness sakes. Not saying it's a good thing, just an inevitable phenomenon.

Posted by: Legion at July 2, 2009 10:15 PM