Open Thread

The expansion of unemployment insurance has kept an awful lot of people from the real possibility of living in homeless shelters or eating at food kitchens.

I agree with that BUT, you cannot create NEW JOBS without additional DEMAND. And you can only do that through a boost to spending which typically will come with a reduction of taxes.

These are very basic economic theorems.

Health Savings Accounts explained:

A New Model For Healthcare;

1. most persons are healthy in their peak earnings years. This is a fact.

2. instead of paying 10K or more per year into a company healthcare plan (aetna, blue cross, ghi), the individual deposits this money into a self directed health savings account. This account pays for out of pocket (negotiated) healthcare expenditures and for a Major Medical policy in case a catastrophic accident or illness occurrs, these Major Medical policies are quite cheap.

3. if the individual is healthy, as expected and maintains their health with regular checkups, diet, exercise ,etc, they will see their HSA flourish with the diminished amounts being taken out of their account for visits to doctors. In five years an individual could easily save those 40-50k instead of throwing them away into insurance industry pockets. By 30, still healthy, an individual could conceivably have 100k in their HSA, and so on.

4. the money remains theirs and can be used as needed to see doctors of thier choice.

5. the burden of healthcare is no longer on the companies or the government, but on the individual who sees a benefit in a healthy lifesytle and a detriment to asking for 5 MRI’s for a sprained ankle.

No, Dave, it’s not. It sounds good because you have a job, but what about those who don’t through no fault of their own? The expansion of unemployment insurance has kept an awful lot of people from the real possibility of living in homeless shelters or eating at food kitchens. It was probably the best thing the federal gov’t did in the last year, and it has literally saved lives. Yeah, perhaps 85% of people are working but 15%, and it’s probably more like 25%, because those stats only count people eligible for unemployment, not those who never got it, or have been timed out, or gave up looking. 25% of the population is MILLIONS of people, far too many to be helped by simply hoping you will run out and spend like crazy. That’s a variation on trickle down economics, a policy even George HW Bush called “voodoo economics”. The American people, and the economy need more than that. A lot more.

Basic economics does not seem to be working. Especially when we are bleeding jobs overseas. A consumer economy is not a healthy economy unless it is also a producing economy. But for too many years the emphasis has been on buy buy buy.

Basic economic facts: You don’t cut taxes and fight 2 wars at the same time. That was simple common sense.