<p>will that money do more good in the hands of a government contractor paying employees to work, or in the bank account of a top-earning individual or corporation, where it has been sitting during this entire economic crisis?</p>
<p>I appreciate the impact which corporate and special interest financing have on many aspects of our government’s actions, including spending. I think that public election financing (or a requirement that TV broadcasters allot a certain amount of advertising time for political officeseekers to use for free, seeing as the government provides them with the rights to publicly-owned airwaves for free). I also think that spending needs to be greatly reigned in. The measures I had in mind were raising the retirement age, trimming back on spending aimed at greatly enhancing American conventional and nuclear warfighting dominance (which is already far, far beyond anything our potential adversaries can match), beginning to shift the burden of European military security back towards Europe, and perhaps things in Medicare which I am not informed enough to speculate on. However, I think it’s absolutely absurd to savage the social safety net and important, productive government investment programmes to spare top individual and corporate income earners from having their all-time-low tax rates increased.</p>
<p>^^
I agree there needs to be A LOT of places where they can cut. And nobody should be spared from these cuts: military, foreign aid, welfare, Social Security, legislature pay, expense accounts, Medicare, etc. </p>
<p>Many of these programs not only need to see budgets cut, but also they need to be reformed in how they operate. Medicare, for example, is a complete mess. And is set up NOT to pay the provider in any way possible. There are too many loopholes and that has led to healthcare prices to soar.</p>
<p>^indeed. agree especially with the medicare part.</p>
<p>What people failed to absorb during the healthcare debate is that the President’s programme is directed at letting hospitals get money from the insurance of low-income people instead of having to foot the bill for their care themselves. Combined with price control regulations, this is intended to keep the costs of healthcare down, along with the amount of money the government has to spend on Medicare, Medicaid, and the social safety net.</p>
<p>These are all pretty big ‘ifs,’ but is disingenuous to suggest that the healthcare reform effort is simply throwing away money with no expectation that it will come back.</p>
<p>I agree that Medicare is a complete mess, and I also agree it’s set up to pay the providers less than they would get on the private market. But I don’t see how not paying providers has led to healthcare prices soaring. That is, there are a lot of reasons why Medicare costs are soaring, but I don’t see how “Medicare costs less than the private market” is one of them.</p>
<p>Thank you, IB Footballer. Medicare actually is more cost-efficient than most provate healthcare costs, and those who receive it are actually happier with the services. Remember the Tea Party sign, “Keep your Government Hands off my Medicare”? Fixing healthcare is a very coplicated issue and it can’t be fixed by simply cutting Medicare during a debate about the debt ceiling, and I hate that the health care reform hasn’t been allowed to work beefore people try to dismantle it.</p>
<p>CF: I was listening to someone from AEI on NPR this afternoon, and he was explaining things thusly:
Medicare has been constantly getting cut since its inception. However, those cuts are targeted not at beneficiaries, but at the providers of service. The government has been consistently paying doctors less and less money in reimbursement for Medicare patients. In order to cover these losses, along with losses sustained by providing healthcare to indigent, non-insured patients, providers are forced to jack up rates for paying customers. More and more people are coming of Medicare age, meaning that doctors are receiving below-market payment for more and more patients.</p>
<p>As I understand, one of the hopes of the healthcare reform is to turn indigent patients into paying customers by allowing them to get cheap insurance. This will help contain healthcare costs, and hopefully lead to a curbing in reduced reimbursement for Medicare patients</p>
<p>If Medicare will only pay 79% of its bill for a given procedure, then that provider has to recoup those costs somehow. Oftentimes, it’s through increasing the cost of the others who pay the entire bill. Therefore healthcare prices increase.</p>
<p>This explanation doesn’t explain, because what we care about is the total cost of healthcare, not the allocation of costs. American health care providers charge a lot more than providers in other countries for the same procedures; that is, the average cost of a hip replacement is a lot higher in the US than in other countries. (And the average wouldn’t be affected if insurance-funded hip replacements subsidize Medicare hip replacements as you say they do.) Why are the charges so high here?</p>
<p>Agreed. A study from a couple of years ago compared procedures such as C-sections in France, England, Germany, Finland, Canada and Japan. US was the highest. The quality of the care was the same, and net physician compensation wasn’t drastically different. Administrative costs, malpractice insurance, etc were the contributing factors.</p>
<p>I was able to get through to both my House and Senate members of Pennsylvania. I expressed my displeasure and the failure to get this done in a timely manner. Will I get the standard email reply tomorrow? Probably, but I still feel better that I got it off my chest.</p>
<p>Well sure administrative costs are higher. When a provider has to continue to submit a claim so they get paid, that administrative individual has to take more time per patient.</p>
<p>In fact net physician compensation is higher in the US than in any other country, even allowing for the fact that the US is a rich country. A US general practitioner is paid on average 4.1 times per capita GDP (OECD average is 2.8 times per capita GDP) and a US specialist is paid a whopping 6.5 times per capita GDP.</p>
It won’t happen. It is just an excuse to give free stuff to poor people who are already getting lots of free stuff. </p>
<p>The reality is that healthcare reform raised the cost to employers of hiring people. Instead of paying salary, now most employers have to pay salary plus health insurance. An employers who used to pay $20,000 for a new employee now has to pay an additional approximately $5,000 (or whatever the cost is in various states) to cover that employee. When the cost of labor goes up to an employers, you get less of it. Healthcare reform has guaranteed structural employment higher than ever before.</p>
<p>I received 2 responses so far. One was a one line sentence thanking me for my letter and if they can be of further service to send a letter online (Isn’t that what I just did??)</p>
<p>The following came from Senator Toomey:
Thank you for contacting me about the debt limit. I appreciate hearing from you as I begin my Senate service on behalf of Pennsylvania.
As you know, the debt limit is an important issue before Congress right now. The current limit, which was last raised in February 2010, is $14.3 trillion. Although $14.3 trillion sounds like an awfully big figure to most Americans, we are unfortunately approaching the limit quickly due to the record high deficits that this Administration has been running.<br>
While Congress debates an increase in the debt limit, I believe it is important to look at what got us here. As you may know, total federal spending has doubled since 2000. In addition, recent deficits have grossly exceeded those that we were running only a few years ago. In 2007, for instance, our deficit was only 1.2 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This year, it will be over 9 percent of GDP. The debt already has doubled in only four years, and it is expected to triple in 11 years. The consequences of such fiscal mismanagement will be devastating to our economy, not to mention to future generations who will be saddled with debt and a government they can no longer afford.
It is clear that Washington has a serious spending problem, and the American people want Congress to make the tough choices necessary to address it. The debt limit presents a reasonable opportunity for such choices to be made. After all, one of the reasons we have a debt limit in the first place is that it forces Congress to re-examine the policies that put our country so far in the red. I therefore value your input as I continue working with my Senate colleagues on the debt limit and restoring fiscal responsibility.
Thank you again for your correspondence. Please do not hesitate to contact me in the future if I can be of assistance.</p>
<p>“The debt limit presents a reasonable opportunity for such choices to be made.”</p>
<p>Senator Toomey, I cannot disagree more strongly.</p>
<p>Washington has a debt problem, but it does not have a debt crisis. If this debt ceiling was passed just like it has been for decades, our country would not have a problem making the payments it owes on the debt this year, or for a good number of years to come.</p>
<p>I think that every politician in Washington recognises that this can’t go on forever. However, I am positively outraged that elements within the Congress are willing to hold this nation’s credit rating, which is its single most valuable asset, hostage to rapidly resolving a problem that is not of immediate vital importance, especially given that this nation is already mired in an economic slump not seen since the Great Depression.</p>
<p>OK, well let’s step back from naming political parties, and ask:</p>
<p>Is raising the debt ceiling an acute problem? Is it a grave problem? I say yes to both sides. We need to raise it right now, and if we don’t, the result will be catastrophe.</p>
<p>Is dealing with the deficit an acute problem? Is it a grave problem? I say, not acute, but grave. We need to deal with it, but we don’t need to deal with it this very week.</p>
<p>CF - spot on, as usual. Debt ceiling is an acute problem! An obese person is having a heart attack. Obesity lead to the heart condition, but the heart needs to be restarted first so the person can deal with the weight issues to avoid future heart attacks.</p>