<p>How do those other countries do it?</p>
<p>I talked my husband who earns most of our income to increase dramatically his deferred income for 2013. He is able to because of an excess deferred income plan he has available at work. The rate change won’t get us. But reading the fine print this morning it looks as if they passed the peas amendment which significantly reduces deductions - including mortgage - at 200k and above. Also in addition to the social security rates going back up we will know have the extra obamacare payroll tax at over 200k. </p>
<p>See where Hollywood and wind power got some nice goodies tho.</p>
<p>Singapore has healthcare costs of around 3% of GDP.</p>
<p>They focus on getting kids to a healthy weight, public marketing and making sure that there’s a strong supply of services.</p>
<p>They have school programs for overweight kids. These are being tried in the US with somewhat positive results but I think that it’s culturally harder to do here.</p>
<p>They do a lot of public service ads. We used to do those here but they seemed to die in the late 1990s.</p>
<p>They spend public money on ensuring a healthy supply of services which is an interesting quasi-market approach. It does seem to be working quite well.</p>
<p>They are a small island so they don’t have the logistics issues that the US has.</p>
<p>They are a wealthy country though they had very inexpensive healthcare before they became the country with the highest concentration of millionaires.</p>
<p>Their high educational attainment may have something to do with how healthy they are overall.</p>
<p>Also see where they saved the docs again on the Medicare reimbursement. </p>
<p>I guess I wouldn’t mind the taxes so much if they actually meant something beyond punishment of the striver class. It is mostly just theater.</p>
<p>My understanding is that the two biggest cost problems in the United States health care system are administrative costs and excess care in end of life situations. The way to fix those things would be institute a single payer system that incorporates the concept that has been described as death panels.</p>
<p>Single payer and panels will reduce administrative costs? What portion of existing administrative costs are incurred in complying to government regulations or disbursing health care entitlements?</p>
<p>Less administrative costs would come with less government involvement, not more.</p>
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<p>I would like to see a single payer system funded by a sales tax. That way everyone pays for it and people’s health insurance is no longer paid for by their employers. The labor market would become more fluid. People would not make job decisions based on whether a new employer pays health insurance. Unfortunately, this will never happen because it is too much of a change from the current system. </p>
<p>We don’t need death panels. I would like to see a national living will requirement. Each time anyone enters a hospital that person must complete a living will. The living will would be stored in a national database with a default preference of cutting off life support under certain circumstances. Individuals or their families would be free to change that preference, but the living will would be readily accessible to health care providers who can avoid unnecessary cost keeping someone alive on a machine forever.</p>
<p>“I guess I wouldn’t mind the taxes so much if they actually meant something beyond punishment of the striver class.”</p>
<p>I guess only the rich are part of the striver class.</p>
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<p>As my grandfather used to say, “If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?” I expected “relief” not euphoria! :D</p>
<p>*I guess only the rich are part of the striver class. *</p>
<p>Certainly not! “The rich” don’t need to strive.</p>
<p>Let’s get back to investments, speculation and gambling:</p>
<p>Buy or sell today and what?</p>
<p>I would hold. The bill that has passed wont lower deficit but does give a tiny bit more clarity of what to expect in terms of taxes at least for a while. Media will call it a big hit to the rich but in fact it’s a lot less of a hit than was promised. Overall net wash on the market short term. Main thing is they will keep rates low because they know how sick the economy is.</p>
<p>For a very short term trade, I would sell in to the rally at the open, planning to buy back later in the day. We have had a pattern of euphoric overreaction to news which is perhaps best described as not as bad as it could have been, followed by some retrenchment. But this is not the kind of thing that I do.</p>
<p>NJres, you didn’t answer my question on the bonds. Did you hedge interest rate risk? If so, how?</p>
<p>This rally is going to make investors feel really good about themselves. That is a good thing.</p>
<p>Razorsharp, I liked your post on single payer.</p>
<p>When trading US Treasuries I was basically trading interest rates, so every position was interest rate risk. I would manage the risk by hedging, which I would do by selling (or buying) something else. Depending on what that something else was I would end up with yield curve risk, or basis risk, or just relative value risk. A big part of my success (or lack thereof) was figuring out what was relatively cheap on the curve. But I usually remained net long or short depending on my view. If the Fed was in an easing cycle you would trade with a positive bias and tend to be long the curve (position for a steepening). If the Fed was tightening you would have a short/flattening bias. I am glad I am not doing the job now with zero short term rates as far as the eye can see.</p>
<p>All of the above discussion applies to customer trades, where I was buying something from or selling something to a customer and was not necessarily a position I was looking for. I would almost always hedge a position like that and then unwind at my convenience. If I was expressing my view by actively entering a position, then it would either be an outright long/short (unhedged) or possibly a spread trade, either a yield curve trade which is weighted so that profit/loss is a function purely of the yield spread and not market direction, or a cash vs futures trade (basis), or buying an off the run issue that I think looks cheap. There were far more market inefficiencies a few years ago and more opportunities to make money by buying cheap and selling expensive.</p>
<p>NJres, I love your post. Thanks. </p>
<p>So, a bond investor today can’t really hedge his risk at a small cost? If an investor wanted to hedge his portfolio by selling tlt for example, the capital costs involved would crush returns.</p>
<p>Do you own any bonds?</p>
<p>The option market is also more efficient than it used to be in the old days. There is less edge now. Because there is less of an edge, you have to gamble more to get the returns.</p>
<p>The stock market also trades differently than it used to trade. Intra day volatility is much lower now. The market early in the day tends to go where it is going to go for the day ( not always) and sits. Public partication is also lower. Algorithmic trading has cut volatility. Makes day trading more difficult. If you don’t have the right position coming into the day, it is harder to have a great day.</p>
<p>I think that changes in market type (trending vs sideways) are a little more frequent. This might be due to the political environment (US and Europe). I generally prefer swing-trading as it’s probably less vulnerable to the HFT guys. Maybe I’m a LFT guy.</p>
<p>That’s the nice thing about the market. If there are sharks in the HFT timeframe, pick a different timeframe.</p>
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<p>Ecohing this. If you have mutual funds that you were planning to liquidate, would today be a good day?</p>
<p>It’s always good to take profits. Just make sure that you don’t have sellers’ regret. Once you close the position, you close it emotionally as well as transactionally.</p>