I can’t decide whether GM’s “reinvention” will fail through government action or inaction. On one hand, I share the commonly held belief that GM’s product portfolio will be skewed towards small cars, to satisfy the Obama administration’s love of all things green and beautiful. Even without express orders to do so, GM’s craven executives will seek to please their elected overlords’ politically-driven desires. On the other hand, paralysis. The last thing GM’s cumbersome, dysfunctional management needs is another layer of command and control—especially one where accountability is measured in votes and patronage, rather than dollars and cents. The tendency to do nothing slowly, as is the way of all government, is great. If I had to guess which way this is going to go, I’d say both.
There’s a superabundance of evidence that the Obama administration will actively intervene in GM’s affairs. First and most incontrovertibly, the feds are on the brink of nationalizing the company, assuming a sixty percent share of “New GM.” In fact, the administration’s promises to be a “hands-off” owner reminds me nothing so much as Rasputin’s philosophy: sin is the key to redemption. We have to be hands-on to be hands-off. You have to wallow in sin to know the value of repentance. We had to fire the CEO to find a CEO who could operate effectively without government influence. Same deal.
More metaphorically, the feds have broken their interventionist cherry. Why not continue to fuck with GM? The government’s already bobsledding down that slippery slope; from appointing the entire GM Board of Directors to killing brands to killing dealers. The Presidential Task Force on Automobiles (PTFOA) says the changes are necessary, but that it will back off when post C-11 GM finds it sea legs. In this case, momentum speaks louder than words. Once a pattern of behavior is established, continuing it is easier than changing it.
Ah, yes, change. In announcing its one trillion dollar health care reform package, the Obama administration is once again showing us its willingness to enter a realm formerly reserved for free enterprise. Just as Obama wants a federal health care program to go toe-to-toe with private insurers, a federally owned GM will be soon be competing with privately held automakers.
The rationale underlying Obama’s intermingling of private and public organizations: Something must be done! As Obama said today, “the status quo is untenable.” GM can’t fail. Health care can’t fail. Same deal. Here’s another quote:
The German and American New Deal may have been merely whatever Hitler and FDR felt they could get away with. But therein lies a common principle: the state should be allowed to get away with anything, so long as it is for “good reasons” . . . It represents the triumph of Pragmatism in politics in that it recognizes no dogmatic boundaries to the scope of government power.
Author Jonah Goldberg is dismissed as a right wing crank by his many detractors, but there’s no getting around the fact that president Obama is shunning free market principles to boldly go where Chrysler’s previous elected saviors didn’t dare go before (federal loan guarantees are a far cry from public ownership). The conflict of interest in is inherent. The same government that regulates the entire automobile industry will now have an enormous stake in one of its biggest players.
This will undoubtedly lead to unwelcome distortions, and, ultimately, disaster. Because even as the feds attempt to literally reform GM, they will be unable to institute the dramatic changes GM needs to survive. It’s not just a matter of political meddling, of which there will be plenty. It’s also a question of corruption.
If you think GM’s previous Board of Bystanders was incapable of policing GM’s arrogance, stupidity and sloth, wait to you see what won’t happen when Uncle Sam is paying the bills. Actually, there’s no need to wait. In today’s New York Times, we learn that the United States trustee overseeing GM’s bankruptcy case (another layer of management) called the fees collected by GM’s bankruptcy consultants “staggering” and “excessive.”
In one year, Alix Partners and Evercore soaked the taxpayer to the tune of $130 million, including a $17.9 million “success fee.” Oh and an as-yet-unknown “discretionary fee” with “no boundaries in amount and scope . . . calculated in an unknown manner.”
As anyone familiar with government procurement knows, that’s small beer. Suffice it to say, in this regard, New GM will not be a microbrewery. Anyone who thinks that the feds will cancel these fees—or institute the kind of product planning, brand building and financial controls that New GM needs to earn a profit—is as delusional as a government that thinks there will be a graceful exit strategy for this unbridled adventurism. There’s but one way out of this mess, and the Obama administration isn’t even looking for the door.
Good editorial except for the comparison with health care. Government health care exists in many countries and mostly is cheaper and better than the US system. (those countries’ governments don’t run car companies, so you can do one without the other).
It is in all people’s interest that people are healthy.. like everyone has access to police and fire fighters and schools.
I think medicare has 3% overhead. The private insurances have 20+% profit (+ overhead, + advertisement which the government wouldn’t need).
Government has no business in the car industry… But letting people be sick based on their wealth, job prospects etc. is not good. Especially not for children who can’t be forced to just get a better job with benefits :-)
The tendency do nothing slowly, as is the way of all government, is great.
So, have you ever actually worked for the government? I mean, I’m sure you probably feel the DMV is slow, and sometimes it is. Sometimes, though, it’s actually pretty quick and relatively efficient. When I need my license renewed, I mail in the form, and a few weeks later my brand new license comes in. Should this be a faster process?
What about the stuff that really matters? Have you worked for child support? My friend is an agent there and he works his ass off — does a pretty good job too. What about the IRS? NASA? Any of the government defense groups?
For all the claims that you make about how inefficient government is, I have yet to see any evidence.
Of course, I’m not arguing for government intervention in GM — that’s a trainwreck. They will not run it any better than it was run before, but that has nothing to do with baseless generalizations of “lazy government workers.”
Also what kaleun said. The healthcare connection is tenuous at best, and, speaking in your preferred free market terms, there is no incentive for healthcare companies to make a better product (quite the opposite — the more claims they can deny, the more money they make). If you have health insurance, get cancer, and your claim gets denied, you can’t shop around and find a better alternative. You just end up filing for bankruptcy. And it’s not like people read stories about other e.g. Blue Cross members’ satisfaction when researching what insurance to get. Hell, a lot of the times it’s just what their employers provide.
GM, however, does is supposed to have a reason for making better cars.
It’s not just many countries, pretty much every industrialized “western style” country except the US has some form of universal healthcare.
Some are public/private partnerships (Switzerland), and some are completely government controlled (GB’s NHS). The one thing they all have in common is that their citizens don’t go bankrupt when they get sick, they can’t be denied care because they accidentally ticked the wrong box on a form 20 years earlier, and they are generally much healthier than we are, while spending FAR less per person. “Free market” healthcare sucks. Just ask someone spending $800/mo on Cobra that’s about to run out how great our free market system is.
In China, if you can’t pay your hospital bill, they toss you out on the street. Pretty much the same thing happens in US hospitals.
Government has been involved in health care for decades. This is not some new intervention. As someone who does not have health insurance and not for lack of trying (I’ve been repeatedly denied affordable insurance due to a health issue I had in my early adulthood) I welcome a national health plan.
It’s tenuous to associate what the feds are doing with GM with what they’re trying to do for health care. Can you honestly say that a person is better off with his health in the hands of a profit-driven corporation? I’ve got a dead cousin who would say otherwise.
If I ever need major medical care I will sneak across the border into Mexico, enter the nearest hospital emergency room, and demand the care the USA offers to those invading our country.
Free!!!
Akin to the illegal in Texas costing the USA taxpayer $250,000 yearly to keep him alive… and Mexico will not take him back.
Should work both ways, right/?
As far as I know, there’s not a single example of large scale industrial nationalization undertaken in the name of laissez-faire.
Here’s a few examples:
Sweden- Banking industry
Germany- Car industry / manufacturing sector
France- Car industry / Airline Industry
Japan- Car industry / Manufacturing sector
At one point or another most of the world’s major car producers have experienced some degree of government-sponsored intervention. Be it at the national level (France, Japan) or the state level (VW), the aims were the same- to maintain jobs, and keep the car company in business.
The Economist did a study a couple of years back that found that the four most consistently profitable car companies were Toyota, Honda, PSA, and Renault. Of these, only Honda has not been on a government dole of one form or another during its life. One can even argue (as the Detroit Three has) that socialized medicine is a form of government sponsorship of industry as it significantly lowers the cost of labor in these countries.
Expect the torpedo with GM’s name on it to hit home in thirty months. ‘Healthcare’ will get the message.
If taxpayers subsidize roads, then they subsidize the auto industry. If they subsidize oil exploration, they subsidize the auto industry. If they subsidize military incursions into oil-producing countries, they subsidize the auto industry. The result is cheap gasoline and shitty SUV gas hogs.
The problem with Goldberg’s argument is that it is too broad. United States law also lays out what the state can do in terms with justifications for the public good. The FDIC has been “nationalizing” banks since the last great depression. There is no evidence that Obama wants persistent ownership in the auto industry. It is not politically beneficial to him.
“Free enterprise” in health care? How stupid do you think we are? Where is there a market where I can buy an eye exam, a blood test, an MRI or even know the cost of one of these commodities? Where is the free market where I can buy prescription drugs? The prices are set, not by supply and demand, but by monopolistic protectionism. Health care is a perfect example of a lack of competition and free enterprise. We are forced into non-transparent financial exchanges with businesses and providers protected by pure cronyism and political payoffs.
It is a thousand times easier to be an entrepreneur in Canada, where I can start up a business without concern over health coverage for my family. America discourages entrepreneurial behavior by forcing people to work for companies that provide health care. Is it possible this is the real reason why Republicans don’t want guaranteed insurance coverage? Having this coverage would reduce our dependency on working for businesses that provide our health insurance and make us more free.
really diggin the new site, ttahc.com, the truth about health care, .com.
So…. yeah. aaanywhoooo…
I agree with the part about GM, they have no plan and now have no way to make a plan. There are over 100 people in charge of the thing, with hundreds more trying to put their hand on the wheel.
What is their mission statement? 6month goal? 1 year target? 2 year target? What is their guiding principle? Indeed, who is in charge?
What is the plan for July?
How about August? Really.
The big doozie – What happens if their sales continue to track down, steadily, every month for the next 2 years. What is the plan then, you know, to generate a profit? I’d love to hear it.
Ah yes, government run health care is sooo efficient – which is why people in Canada have to come to the States if they want to have their needs attended to in less than six months —
And, we now have all of Wisconsin’s congressional delegation boasting that they have actually SPOKEN DIRECTLY WITH THE PRESIDENT HISSELF in an effort to keep GM from closing the Janesville plant and Chrysler from closing the one in Kenosha. Both were announced for closing before the government took over GM and Fiatsler.
Betcha one of them stays open, too – maybe both.
But you’re all being overly pessimistic. Neither GM nor Fiatsler will go under as long as the government is running the show, and the government, once it starts running a show, doesn’t stop – even when there’s no purpose served anymore.
Consider how long it took to close military bases that were no longer needed – or, even, how many of them remain open today.
And, wasn’t it the bipartisan efforts of Congress that forced the military to buy airplanes the military said they neither needed nor wanted?
And, of course, it’s perfectly legit in all this to talk of health care, because keeping the UAW’s benefits intact at taxpayer expense is what this is all about – and will remain all about.
The government’s already bobsledding down that slippery slope; from appointing the entire GM Board of Directors to killing brands to killing dealers.
The search button would allow the reader to find advocacy for pretty much all their actions in the months prior to the new admin. They seem to be picking up quite well after the mess the private business of d2 left behind.
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Author Jonah Goldberg is dismissed as a right wing crank by his many detractors, but there’s no getting around the fact that president Obama is shunning free market principles to boldly go where Chrysler’s previous elected saviors didn’t dare go before
Let me try to illustrate the glorious benefits the “free market” has provide us in this ordeal. A few days ago, RF asked me about the price of liquidation and I alluded to the social costs. There are also examples of capital costs.
Readers may have heard of Collateralized Debt Obligations. They are formed by grouping loans and re-traunching, sometimes more than once. This was done to create fake bond ratings by using maths to hide systematic risk, either by underestimating correlation in the underlying debt or introducing high sensitivity to even minor fluctuation in assumptions about default risk.
It seems that ~10 trillion net worth of these were sold to unsuspecting investors, and quite a bunch still remain within the banking system (which is why another bank bailout is inevitable). Well, it just so happens that the “systematic risk” involved with these is exactly that of widespread economic woe we’re facing. 30 cents on the dollar for many is considered a generous offer.
Hopefully by this point, I won’t have to continue spelling out what exactly is at stake if large numbers of mortgages and consumer debt is allowed to default.
If people still think the “free market” will save us from the calamity that it wrought, humans seem doomed to fail through intractably gullible nature, and god help us all.
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(federal loan guarantees are a far cry from public ownership).
The main difference is that in one scheme we give away the equity for the similar amounts we pay. “Free marketeers” love having the public pay and private parties receive.
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As I’ve said before, the toxic waste is already spilled, and the only folks willing to clean it up is us, acting collectively through government. The cleanup in the auto industry thus far is going fairly well, better than anyone thought it would, certainly at lower overhead than with banks.
If distributing blame is the goal, please direct it to those who created the spill in the first place.
For those with poor memories, willful or not, that would be the people who made the poor decisions over decades of incompetent leadership, and the financial fraudsters who made the cost of not cleaning up incredibly high.
which is why people in Canada have to come to the States if they want to have their needs attended to in less than six months —
If you compare this with the number who would love to cross the other way, you would get a very lopsided ratio.
Using facts is not a game traditionalists want to play. Better to appeal to base reactionary emotions.
maniceightball :
I work for the Department of Public Health and have for the past 9 years. Over that time, the Department has gone from passable to completely frozen by cya attitude and a paralyzing fear that we might do something wrong. I still see errors, they are just covered up more. The real problem is that we are supposed to be ensuring the health of the public, and we are not. Rather than accept that errors are going to happen, and punish those responsible if the errors are eggregious enough, the government adds more oversight and red tape for all involved. I can vouch that government agencies are neither nimble nor efficient. Sometimes this is a good thing as it prevents them from interfering where they shouldn’t. Mostly it just causes progress to grind to a halt.
+1 kaleun
Sorry RF but I have to agree with kaleun here. I do live in one of those countries where health care is pretty much free. The BIG thing to point out here is that I am by no means poor. I could be paying for my own health care in an American made private structure.
I still beleave that it is for the greater good to have your population healthy over most all things. I love cars but I can do with out an auto.
Other than this rant, great artical!
I recently saw a bit of analysis on the WHO’s health care ratings.
The items that really hammered the US were not having health care Gov’t run, not having a “progressive enough” tax system, even items like allowing HMA’s counted against it. Reassesed on just outcome based criteria the US was…number one.
We are worse because we do not share their “philosophy” of health care?
The analysis also looked at child death rate (widely varying reporting styles involved) and life expectancy (when you remove traffic accidents and homicides, hardly “health care” issues, the US again jumps to number one).
Perhaps we need to look closer at what the WHO was measuring before we accept their assesment?
Maybe before we go to greater Gov’t control we should reconsider the evidence, since our system does, by WHO’s outcome based criteria, work better?
Just a thought.
Bunter
When talking about GM, the whole government/free enterprise talk is moot. Point is, once a corporation becomes huge and complacent (as GM did at one point) it becomes no different than a government department, really. A sprawling, headless, unaccountable bureaucracy is a sprawling, headless, unaccountable bureaucracy whether it’s private or public.
hazard:
The big difference here is that both are now taxpayer supported. Oh wait; that’s not a difference, is it?
And, we now have all of Wisconsin’s congressional delegation boasting that they have actually SPOKEN DIRECTLY WITH THE PRESIDENT HISSELF in an effort to keep GM from closing the Janesville plant and Chrysler from closing the one in Kenosha. Both were announced for closing before the government took over GM and Fiatsler.
Betcha one of them stays open, too – maybe both.
Heh. When I pointed this out in the Kenosha Thread, the Obama-Bots got all offended about ‘innuendo’.
Apparently, the decision-making process in the Obama Administration is above political considerations.
Don’t forget, it was Obama’s win in the WI Primary that really set him on his way to the nomination. It would violate Cook County political etiquette not to somehow return the favor.
“Ah yes, government run health care is sooo efficient – which is why people in Canada have to come to the States if they want to have their needs attended to in less than six months”
Over 700,000 Americans went abroad to attend to their health care needs last year. See Medical Tourism.
@RF:
hazard:
The big difference here is that both are now taxpayer supported. Oh wait; that’s not a difference, is it?
I thought the topic at hand was the inefficiency of government. My point was that a big corporation that comes to dominate a market segment becomes very similar to an inefficient government department. What causes inefficiency in both cases is lack of accountability; and this is very similar in both large government agencies distant from the voter and large corporations who have stopped caring about the consumer.
Sorry that should have been “HSA” not “HMA”.
Regardless, the widely held assumption that the assesment of the WHO on health care is correct remains debatable.
When the criteria used to evauluate the different systems contains assumptions that charateristics of certain systems are a “negative” there is a problem.
When the system that has the “bad” system components has the best outcome perhaps the criteria, not the “flawed” system, need to be reevaluated.
Just some more thoughts.
Bunter
Very different situations. Same opinion as to government’s involvement in the private sector…
GM. This company should be allowed to fail and the vacuum filled by more efficient, better managed companies. Too-Big-Too-Fail should never have entered our vocabulary as a nation. While mass migrations due to economic conditions have created this melting pot we call home, we seem unwilling to allow the natural order of things to take it’s course. Were this 1850, the O’Bama administration would be borrowing money to ship in potatoes from all over the world and JFK may never have asked what you can do for your country. This lack of allowing disasters that build character and resolve may just prove the downfall of our great democratic experiment.
Healthcare. We are skipping a step I like to call “legislative streamlining” (never happens, but I like the sound of it). Before creating a public health insurance system filled with the most bureaucratic-bureaucrats ever to push a pencil, our esteemed congress should *try* to regulate a system in which consumers actually have choice in the market and can tell the difference between insurers.
Currently, we have two viable options…neither of which constitute anything resembling market competition:
(1) Employer-chosen, cost-benefit-analyzed junk.
(2) High-cost, low-benefit COBRA
Instead, we need a system where I can choose my insurer for primary care office visits, another for hospital stays, another for pregnancy and delivery, another for serious issues like Cancer, MS, or HIV.
Having each element broken into a niche service rather than one-size-fits-all allows for comparison between brands and the creation of an actual personal insurance plan, not a pre-determined plan by insurers.
But our Government assumes we’re too daft to figure out such a system and jumps into public coverage for all based on the premise of increased competition. If I still can’t evaluate product A from product B from Product G…how has competition improved?
I’m not too impressed with what I see as this administration’s insinuation that they are smarter than The People and therefore need to make their decisions for them.
Let’s give intelligent reform a chance to succeed before jumping to the govt-run solution, shall we?
carlos.negros: Over 700,000 Americans went abroad to attend to their health care needs last year. See Medical Tourism.
And a lot of them went for plastic surgery, which is cheaper in other countries. And, unfortunately, many of them found out WHY it is cheaper.
And lots of people come here for treatment, too. And not for plastic surgery.
Interestingly, when one actually looks at health care in virtually all European countries, one quickly discovers that these countries allow citizens to supplement their government care with private health insurance. Anyone who can afford to do so takes this route. In Canada, a groups of citizens sued for the right to purchase private health insurance (it was banned) and won.
Any program adopted by the Obama Administration is likely to mirror the European plans – a government plan that provides just enough health care, with citizens having the option to supplement that coverage with private insurance. Even then, the plans of many European countries run big deficits ($14 billion in France, last time I checked).
The idea, however, that the federal government is going to provide everyone with a plan that has UAW-level benefits and copays is pure fantasy. But this is what the average advocate of nationalized health care seems to expect, at least in my experience.
The big difference here is that both are now taxpayer supported. Oh wait; that’s not a difference, is it?
Ask who is ultimately responsible. Someone else spilled the toxic waste, but it’s the government’s fault for cleaning it up?
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Heh. When I pointed this out in the Kenosha Thread, the Obama-Bots got all offended about ‘innuendo’.
Because that’s exactly what it is. No one would look at this twice if done by private owners, because of the mistaken assumption that they are inviolable or something. If you’re going to make such accusations, at least perform some due diligence in investigative journalism. BTW, when did the people who easily fall for innuendo stop beating their wives?
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And a lot of them went for plastic surgery, which is cheaper in other countries. And, unfortunately, many of them found out WHY it is cheaper.
The kind of people who can’t afford health care in the US probably can’t afford to go abroad anyway. Buck the trend and figure out that ratio I mentioned above. Numbers matter.
agenthex: Buck the trend and figure out that ratio I mentioned above.
If you are referring to this earlier post:
Numbers matter.If you compare this with the number who would love to cross the other way, you would get a very lopsided ratio.
That really doesn’t prove anything, except that perhaps large numbers of Americans somehow expect to get something for nothing.
Questions in surveys can be phrased to skew the results.
For example, I read a news story yesterday that said 89 percent of Americans are satisfied with their health care. But, until I see how the questions in the actual survey are phrased, that is largely meaningless.
Doesn’t any of the national health care advocates here have parents on Medicare? Or friends or relatives in a VA hospital? The news has been full of reports of horrendous conditions at VA hospitals. This is government health care. It is awful. What you are trying to force down my throat is no better than this, and much worse than what I have now. And you want men with guns to force me to pay for it. I will never willingly allow the government to have a say in my health care. I have medical conditions, so do my wife and children. We NEED high quality health care, not government crap. People need to always remember that the only thing the government does well is kill people. And you want THEM in charge of your health care?
Spuds got expensive, not scarce.
which is why people in Canada have to come to the States if they want to have their needs attended to in less than six months —
If u need hip replacement, major surg, u will have to vait. Sometimes is very much timely fashion. Historically Canadian Politicians do run to US for Drs if it has big enuf trouble, i guess they dont trust the locals after screwing us around so frequently.
The US medical system would work much cheaper if they do away the punitive damage in case of any malpractice. In Canada they will sue within what the ins covers, that leaves the Drs assets intact, when the award is above what the ins coverage the drs has to personally pony up the difference.
Which also lead to high ins premium, and defensive type of Doctoring. When a person comes in they will have to do every test under the sun so the bill will look longer too.
Is very much a bad vicious cycle.
In US if one dr got into trouble the whole clinic staff down to the Janitor get sued, called Joint & Several.
If the system is allowed to go on, is digging more graves for Americans thats all.
Obama himself is a lawyer , so he’s not going to undo this yet, he may one day needs to join the bar too.
The news has been full of reports of horrendous conditions at VA hospitals. This is government health care.
These are exceptional cases, which is why it’s considered criminal. That’s like saying some dude got mugged once in this fairly safe town, and therefore it’s not longer safe.
The numerous examples of successful health care systems around the world (in every successful nation except us) is only a secret to people who can’t be bothered to find out.
@ ravenchris
Thanks for the lesson. The analogy stands however, since the logic then would be that imported public spuds will drive down the price of domestic spuds…even though the end result would be less domestic spud farmers employed.
Time for some fries!
Agenthex,
Can’t agree with you there. I worked with many coworkers from Canada. At least 8 of them came to the US for medical treatments that they would have had to wait too long for in Canada, so they came to the US to get them faster and then just stayed here, because they did not like the medical care they got at home. As was pointed out in a previous post, until recently you were not allowed to buy supplemental insurance in Canada, their only option was to come here. You can get that now, but that does change the fact of a shortage of CAT scanners and MRI machines, waiting lists for many treatments, strict limits on how many visits you can have to a physical therapist, etc. In my experience, the Canadians are not so happy with their health care. The only way the government is going to lower costs with nationalized health care is to limit treatments. There is no other way that works. Anyone who actually believes that computerizing medical records is going to save billions of dollars a year is smoking something strong. Under the present system, when one insurance company tried to limit the number of visits my son could have with a physical therapist after a surgery, I switched to another company that did not. I have that free choice today. Once the government IS the health insurer, what can I do if I am not happy with my coverage? Nothing, that’s what. Today, when a carrier attempted to limit the amount of Albuteral that could be claimed by my household with four asthmatic people in it, I threatened to dump them and go with another company. They gave in and approved the medicine. Do you actually believe I could get the government to agree to change anything they decided about my care? Ever try to argue with the IRS?
@njdave: What you said.
People that say there is no “free market” in health care completely miss this point. If you don’t like your doctor/insurance company/hospital, you can fire him/them/it. When the government is the only provider, you can’t fire them. Period. That’s not to say that it would be cheaper for me to buy my own health insurance rather than take my employer’s plan, but if I was that unhappy with my employer-provided coverage I could do so. That’s what freedom of choice is all about, and only a free market (or at least fairly free) provides that freedom.
Government is good for handling one-size-fits-all problems. Health care is about as individual as problems come.
As was pointed out in a previous post, until recently you were not allowed to buy supplemental insurance in Canada, their only option was to come here.
This was a specific problem with their system, one which the proposal for the US would not have.
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Under the present system, when one insurance company tried to limit the number of visits my son could have with a physical therapist after a surgery, I switched to another company that did not. I have that free choice today.
This is not an option for the vast majority of americans anyway, as their insurance is tied to their work. Also what you just described would likely be denied for anything substantial (like the surgery) under the re-existing condition clause if you went shopping yourself.
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Once the government IS the health insurer, what can I do if I am not happy with my coverage?
The majority of systems, including what is proposed in the US, would allow supplementary benefits provided by the employer, so the claim that anyone would lose benefits is a lie perpetrated to deceive people who aren’t informed.
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The only way the government is going to lower costs with nationalized health care is to limit treatments.
No. Something like a third of insurance company costs are marketing/non-health related. Also, cheap preventative care generally reduces the subsequent problems (like emergency care which we pay anyway).
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Ever try to argue with the IRS?
We can only hope all gov agencies are as stringent.
Consider how long it took to close military bases that were no longer needed – or, even, how many of them remain open today.
And everyone gave Clinton SO much shit for that. I have been in the Army since 92 and its all I’ve heard for 17 years.
People that say there is no “free market” in health care completely miss this point. If you don’t like your doctor/insurance company/hospital, you can fire him/them/it. When the government is the only provider, you can’t fire them.
Again, being military I have and use Socialized, Government provided, one size fits all, health car coverage. Its been around for a LONG time and works about as well as anything else in this world. Sometimes you get spectacular, bend over backwards service. Othertimes, under a Prez who cared enough to send you to war but not care enough about you when you get hurt, you get the worst of the worst. It all depends on Money and Voter support.
Heh. When I pointed this out in the Kenosha Thread, the Obama-Bots got all offended about ‘innuendo’.
Apparently, the decision-making process in the Obama Administration is above political considerations.
I could say the same for the Repubs. Lemar Alexander himself bellyed up to the bar for a drink of the gov’t tit to keep GM in business in his state. They are numerous other examples of BOTH sides helping themselves to a piece of the pie. As bad as you think Leftist Commies are, I much prefer them to the Reactionary Neocons on the right.
Remember, we tried letting a huge company fail to prove a point, Lehman Brothers. W thought it be cool to show everyone just how free market he was and found out to his dismay that in letting this financial giant topple, AIG who was much larger was suddenly deemed untenable due to the credit default swaps they used to insure Lehman’s bad loans.
And you want to let GM, one of the biggest companies in the US, just fail? With no repercussions either, I bet. If youre right, GM fails, the 10% or so that supports them finds viable employment doing something almost immediately and the world is a shiny happy capitalist place. Imagine for a minute if you’re wrong.
When the government is the only provider, you can’t fire them. Period. That’s not to say that it would be cheaper for me to buy my own health insurance rather than take my employer’s plan, but if I was that unhappy with my employer-provided coverage I could do so.
Buying supplemental insurance would be much much cheaper than trying to acquire your own insurance, so this point is dumb. It’s like boasting about a hobo’s “freedom” to obtain a ferrari.
The only people who would disagree are those who haven’t tried to obtain unsubsidized/non-collective insurance lately.
which is why people in Canada have to come to the States if they want to have their needs attended to in less than six months —
If you compare this with the number who would love to cross the other way, you would get a very lopsided ratio.
I live 20 minutes from the Canadian border. None of my neighbors envy the Canadian health care system. Just last week the Windsor Star published a story about a man with stage four inoperable melanoma that has metastasized to his heart and colon. Interleukin 2 might help but it’s not really available in Canada. After hassling with the Canadian health system for two months, he finally got approval to get the treatment in the USA. There are two good cancer treatment centers in Detroit. There’s Harper Hospital and the Karamanos cancer center which is a world-class facility, one of the country’s leading cancer treatment facilities. Karamanos was originally endowed by the family of Meyer Prentis, GM’s treasurer and comptroller.
Instead of approving treatment 30 minutes away in Detroit, OHIP will now only cover treatment in Buffalo, NY, where the Roswell Park Cancer Institute is the ministry’s only “preferred provider” of IL-2 treatment for metastatic malignant melanoma and renal cell carcinoma. They are making a sick man travel 4 hours instead of 30 minutes so they can save some money. Roswell Park saves the Canadian government $12,000 over Harper and $35,000 over Karamanos. Roswell Park costs $113,000. Okay, so I can see not paying 30% more for Karamanos but to make a sick man travel 6 or 8 times farther to save 10% hardly sounds like compassionate care.
The government will be making your health decisions based on how much it costs them, regardless of what you want or need. Bureaucracy and compassion are generally mutually exclusive. An insurance company, because it is a for profit business that hopefully wants to keep its customers happy, has some interest in caring about those it is insuring. Government bureaucrats have no interest in your care, just their own paycheck.
Speaking of which, I wonder how many of those AFSCME, SEIU and GS government workers want to give up their current insurance plans in favor of a single payer government run program.
Again, being military I have and use Socialized, Government provided, one size fits all, health car coverage. Its been around for a LONG time and works about as well as anything else in this world.
You mean like all the botched prostate surgeries in VA hospitals? Doctors in a government health plan, like the VA, don’t have to worry about malpractice suits, nor do their hospitals.
We can only hope all gov agencies are as stringent.
Spoken like the true statist that you are.
How dare those mere citizens get away with something without the watchful eye of agenthex and his bigger brothers?
How’d you feel about the Bush administration wiretapping overseas conversations that could impact national security?
Be careful what you wish for because some day you won’t be in power anymore and you may find yourself hoisted on your own petard.
None of my neighbors envy the Canadian health care system.
A substantive section of the US population won’t be affected that much by the proposed system anyway. This is generally ignored by the “OMG COMMIES” argument.
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An insurance company, because it is a for profit business that hopefully wants to keep its customers happy, has some interest in caring about those it is insuring. Government bureaucrats have no interest in your care, just their own paycheck.
Lulz. They must get those profits by approving claims. And unhappy customers can just go buy insurance on their own, right? Does the market give them a pony, too?
How dare those mere citizens get away with something without the watchful eye of agenthex and his bigger brothers?
My watchful eyes tells me you’re dodging prior arguments.
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Be careful what you wish for because some day you won’t be in power anymore and you may find yourself hoisted on your own petard.
I wish for a more competent government to counter the natural abuses of human nature, and the more voters who do the same, the better.
The improvement in quality of life in societies that have conscientiously overcome their base instincts and ignorance is self-evident.
Uhhmn, this is a car forum, not a health care forum. Back to the immediate topic.
Sooo, we have a layer of government bureaucracy being spawned to help GM and Chrysler with their difficulties. Bureaucracies grow however possible. Can some of the best and brightest cite an example of a bureaucracy that worked itself out of a job?
Pile that on top of car companies too hide bound and short sighted to develop a plan for high fuel prices and an ecomomic down turn.
Combine that with erosion of the customer base due to a generation of craptacular products and service. That the product no longer sucks as bad as it did means little.
In chess when there is no out come other than eventual check mate, the loser concedes so as not waste time…
Can some of the best and brightest cite an example of a bureaucracy that worked itself out of a job?
The counterpart to nationalization is privatization. If you compare and contrast the two histories as solutions to existing problems its track record is hardly anything to boast about.
In any case here’s how the process is working in the case of econ with capitalist tendencies: the “free market” pollutes the river -> since we don’t usually believe in prosecuting crimes of wealth, the river has to be nationalized for cleanup -> once it’s reasonably clean, we give it back to the free market.
Bureaucracy has nothing on sheer criminal greed. We could only wish right now wall street was only a bureaucracy, and that the d3 had as effective of a bureaucracy as the japanese.
Maybe your questions would be better if they didn’t depend on cliches.
OK Robert, I’ll bite. What does this have to do with the intersection of Hillcrest Ave. and Bartlett St. in Macon, GA?
My health care likely won’t change much with the reform, nor will most of the people posting here.
What’s really hilarious about this debate is that one side has no clue what the proposal is even about (sounds familiar). The US proposal is more like a subtle move towards the swiss model of “universal [private] insurance” with gov regulation.
Also noteworthy is that the standard of care across the board is not altogether dissimilar between developed western nations, but we pay on average about double that of fully nationalized systems, and the swiss are somewhere in between.
I guess I was just entertaining the idea of a single-payer system in this thread, but it should be duly noted that those who were railing against a nationalized system were ill-informed by their sources of information. Since I can’t “flame” other commentators, I’ll just instead observe that the news mediums they use seem to solely employ tards and crooks, and they should stop using these poor sources.
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Why aren’t there droves of people in Michigan who have moved across the river to benefit from the vaunted Canadian health system?
Because immigration is non-trivial.
I think medicare has 3% overhead. The private insurances have 20+% profit (+ overhead, + advertisement which the government wouldn’t need).
I am tired of hearing this figure…its so loaded and wrong. First off, about eight cents of every dollar spent on Medicare is unaccounted for…as in the Trustees have no idea what happened to it. Slang for this is known as “fraud” or “corruption.” Pretending that’s not part of overhead is laughable.
Secondly, a huge chunk of the overhead a private insurer racks up is, wait for it…taxes. Paying for Medicare is basically one of the overhead costs for the private insurer.
Third, no one sues Medicare. Everyone talks about how cool other countries and their socialized health-care schemes are. But no one talks about the lawsuits, malpractice insurance, medical protocols, tests, and procedures thousands of pages long, expressly written and adhered to in this country to reduce tort liability and NOTHING ELSE. Wonder why there’s so much paperwork in the US healthcare system? Vast majority of it is called Cover Your Ass for court later…just in case. You’ll never hear Obama (hmmm, a Harvard lawyer) or the Democrats themselves (biggest single campaign contributors? The American Trial Lawyers Association) talk about tort reform.
Sorry, just had to get that off my chest. Whether you’re for or against Fedcare, you still need to have a clear picture of what’s financially going on, and no one in the debate seems to.
And since this is TTAC, I just need to make a prediction here:
GM will survive on the government teat until mid-term elections in 2010. After that it is going to become an increasing liability for votes, at least as a national issue. Not good for a Democratic President. I’ve also mentioned this before, but the coming battle for the Employee Free Choice Act is going to have an negative impact on the government playing with GM. By 2013-2014 timeframe, GM will be no more as we understand it. The last fiscal year for that company was 2008. GM’s dead.
I am tired of hearing this figure…its so loaded and wrong. First off, about eight cents of every dollar spent on Medicare is unaccounted for…as in the Trustees have no idea what happened to it. Slang for this is known as “fraud” or “corruption.” Pretending that’s not part of overhead is laughable.
Any sources for these claims? Medicare fraud exists in the same way insurance fraud exists, except perhaps somewhat more rampant because medicare actually pays out on its claims.
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Secondly, a huge chunk of the overhead a private insurer racks up is, wait for it…taxes. Paying for Medicare is basically one of the overhead costs for the private insurer.
What are you talking about? FICA? Corp tax on profits?
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Whether you’re for or against Fedcare, you still need to have a clear picture of what’s financially going on, and no one in the debate seems to.
That’s true, like for instance they should first understand no one except right wing nuts are talking about Fedcare.
Any sources for these claims? Medicare fraud exists in the same way insurance fraud exists, except perhaps somewhat more rampant because medicare actually pays out on its claims.
Check the annual Trustee Report for the fraud claims. And yes, yes private insurance fraud exists in the same way Medicare fraud exists. But the private insurer has to count that as overhead, whereas “3%” overhead figures for Medicare don’t.
What are you talking about? FICA? Corp tax on profits?
Yes, corp tax on profits is what I am talking about. You highlight the word “profit” as if it is something evil. Insurance companies have to maintain assets to cover potential losses. Most their profits are not made on premiums, but on the “float” before the premiums are paid out. Check out some of Warren Buffet’s annual letters to his shareholders, no one makes the insurance business as easy to understand or as fascinating as he does. But Medicare doesn’t have to obey the law…
For the past several decades – until 2008 or so – Medicare took in more money than it paid out. In the private world, this is called “profit.”
What happened to all the spare money? The Feds have used that excess money as a slush fund for everything under the sun. No one has a clue how Medicare is going to cover it’s future obligations. If I ran a private insurer with the same scheme, I would go to jail. Just for the record, Congress has also done this not just with Medicare, not just with Social Security, but even the Federal employee’s pension is empty barring off-book debt obligations.
That’s true, like for instance they should first understand no one except right wing nuts are talking about Fedcare.
You’re quick to rhetorical slams, but how isn’t a giant medical insurance plan run by the Federal government not aptly called Fedcare in a whimsical fashion? What should the government name its giant insurance “company” as proposed by President Obama? Maybe we could combine the words “medical” and “care” and call it…oh wait, Medicare. Maybe we could combine “medical” and “aid” and call it…oh wait, Medicaid.
I got it, combine “medical” and “federal,” Voila! “MedFed.”
Happy now? Seriously what would you call it?
Check the annual Trustee Report for the fraud claims.
That’s not your original claim.
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You highlight the word “profit” as if it is something evil.
It’s another part of overhead, which is somewhat reduced by taxation. I’m trying to guess if you’re neglecting actual numbers because you don’t know or it doesn’t support your case.
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The Feds have used that excess money as a slush fund for everything under the sun.
You must be thinking of the SS fund starting under reagan to finance tax cuts for the wealthy. It’s ironic the folks complaining about bad government are the shining example of it.
Funny enough, the fed just started cracking down on medicare “advantage” waste (profiteering), and lo and behold the deceptions start flowing.
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You’re quick to rhetorical slams, but how isn’t a giant medical insurance plan run by the Federal government not aptly called Fedcare in a whimsical fashion?
That’s because it’s not the single payer nationalized system used elsewhere in the world, which uninformed people keep confusing it for. Hell it doesn’t even replace much of existing private insurance and is more of a large crutch to assist the smaller state and local crutches.
I’m all for ironic names, but those much more amusing subsequent to at least a basic understanding of what’s going on.
The real irony is that obama/democrat’s plan is wasteful because it’s not a nationalized plan. Wingers fear mongering the demonstrably better solution, which isn’t even a proposal on the table right now, is really quite point-and-laugh worthy in numerous ways.
That’s not your original claim.
Huh? Check the Trustees Report regarding losses in Medicare unaccounted for, which always means fraud…that was in my first post and second post.
It’s another part of overhead, which is somewhat reduced by taxation. I’m trying to guess if you’re neglecting actual numbers because you don’t know or it doesn’t support your case.
How is taxation a reduction of overhead? Do you mean raising taxes reduces costs? I don’t get it.
You must be thinking of the SS fund starting under reagan to finance tax cuts for the wealthy. It’s ironic the folks complaining about bad government are the shining example of it.
Reagan increased the payroll tax rate and payroll ceiling for Social Security and Medicare. As part of that deal (with his Democratic buddies in Congress) the excess funds were to be put in a, ahem, “lockbox” of sorts to prevent a future lack of liquidity in the fund.
Funny enough, the fed just started cracking down on medicare “advantage” waste (profiteering), and lo and behold the deceptions start flowing.
Expect the Federal Government to get tighter and tighter with Medicare spending of any kind. They have no choice at this point given the logarithmic increase in obligations over the next twenty years with the boomers retiring, and also the fact that on the books Medicare is now a cost for the Federal Government, and no longer a source of revenue on a year-to-year basis.
That’s because it’s not the single payer nationalized system used elsewhere in the world, which uninformed people keep confusing it for. Hell it doesn’t even replace much of existing private insurance and is more of a large crutch to assist the smaller state and local crutches.
I’m all for ironic names, but those much more amusing subsequent to at least a basic understanding of what’s going on.
The real irony is that obama/democrat’s plan is wasteful because it’s not a nationalized plan. Wingers fear mongering the demonstrably better solution, which isn’t even a proposal on the table right now, is really quite point-and-laugh worthy in numerous ways.
OK, you basically insinuate I’m a “right-wing nutjob” for calling Obama’s plan “FedCare” as a joke. I then ask you what you would name it, and you respond by saying Obama’s (nameless, I guess) scheme sucks. So what, we agree on something. Does this make you a right-wing nutjob as well? WTF?
And like I said in my original post, one of the biggest reasons health care in other developed countries is cheaper (no matter how its paid for) is because they aren’t encumbered with paying for damn near as many lawyers as doctors billing hours in their health-care systems. Do you disagree with this? Who pays for all the goddamn lawyers in a single-payer health scheme in the United States without addressing the disaster of our tort system?
That’s the question and the cost that no one seems to be addressing in this debate, including you, fool.
Now back to cars…
What happened to debating the issues of the car industry?
Reagan is to blame for the insolvency of the SS system? Yeeeah right.
Check the Trustees Report regarding losses in Medicare unaccounted for, which always means fraud…that was in my first post and second post.
I download the 2008 report for 2007. I searched for your words since I’m not going to read 242 pages and found nothing. What page?
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OK, you basically insinuate I’m a “right-wing nutjob” for calling Obama’s plan “FedCare” as a joke. I then ask you what you would name it, and you respond by saying Obama’s (nameless, I guess) scheme sucks.
No, actually I called people who confuse health insurance to cover the gaps with singer-payer care wingnuts, which I’m sure you would agree is accurate given the usual sources of this willful deception.
Plus it seems you just want a catchy name instead of understanding the hows and why’s? Why not just call it descriptively? National Basic Health Insurance? Or you were looking for CommieCare? Remember we’re comparing the gov’s health insurance to no insurance for the most part to its recipients.
I also remarked the actual proposal sucks because it’s not nationalized care. I marked this as ironic so people would try to understand the irony and be amused.
BTW, legislation is drafted by the legislative branch in this country.
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Reagan increased the payroll tax rate and payroll ceiling for Social Security and Medicare. As part of that deal (with his Democratic buddies in Congress) the excess funds were to be put in a, ahem, “lockbox” of sorts to prevent a future lack of liquidity in the fund.
Enlighten us on what happened subsequently during the 80’s.
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Expect the Federal Government to get tighter and tighter with Medicare spending of any kind.
They’ve been cracking down Medicare Advantage, which is a known source of easy profits. So the profiteers go on the air with PR to to play the victim card. Predictable.
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And like I said in my original post, one of the biggest reasons health care in other developed countries is cheaper (no matter how its paid for) is because they aren’t encumbered with paying for damn near as many lawyers as doctors billing hours in their health-care systems. Do you disagree with this? Who pays for all the goddamn lawyers in a single-payer health scheme in the United States without addressing the disaster of our tort system?
Sure, that’s part of the reason. We also create plenty of other moral hazards for doctors and patients to overexamine and generally allocate resources poorly. But the point is the currently plans (which is just additional insurance) don’t address any of this in large part because they are not nationalization which would automatically present solutions and benefits. Thus the great irony.
Reagan is to blame for the insolvency of the SS system? Yeeeah right.
What happened is that the SS tax was correctly raised in anticipation of the boomers. The resulting fund was used to borrow for the massive 80’s deficits. Al Gore actually tried to propose a working “locked box” in his 2000 bid.
Insolvency is somewhat another issue.
The people with the real gall here are the ones who raised taxes on everyone, cut them enormously for the top bracket of wealth, create avoidable deficits to buddy up with the rich, and still scold others about responsible budgeting and avoiding “politics”.
Their strategy seems to be that if we can make governance crappy enough, people would be more open to having no rules at all, and guess what that executed perfectly.
“So, have you ever actually worked for the government? I mean, I’m sure you probably feel the DMV is slow, and sometimes it is. Sometimes, though, it’s actually pretty quick and relatively efficient. When I need my license renewed, I mail in the form, and a few weeks later my brand new license comes in. Should this be a faster process?
What about the stuff that really matters? Have you worked for child support? My friend is an agent there and he works his ass off — does a pretty good job too. What about the IRS? NASA? Any of the government defense groups?
For all the claims that you make about how inefficient government is, I have yet to see any evidence.”
If you seriously think that the way the US government operates is “efficient”, then you need to look more closely. For every supposedly “hardworking” government employee like your friend, there are at least ten that are lazy as hell and act perturbed whenever they’re called upon to actually do their jobs (think postal workers).
The IRS? Efficient?!? Where the hell have you been?
If you seriously think that the way the US government operates is “efficient”, then you need to look more closely. For every supposedly “hardworking” government employee like your friend, there are at least ten that are lazy as hell and act perturbed whenever they’re called upon to actually do their jobs (think postal workers).
And this is different from the hundreds of executives that worked at GM or Goldman-Sachs? Or the thousands of drones who sit like Dilbert clones effortlessly tweeting or blogging away instead of actually working?
My mistake. The government is obviously the hydra of communist corruption and big business is the shining example of American values. Again I’ll state that my happy ass has been a gov’t employee for years now and just like any other job, you have your good ones and you got your douchebags.
You mean like all the botched prostate surgeries in VA hospitals? Doctors in a government health plan, like the VA, don’t have to worry about malpractice suits, nor do their hospitals.
Yeah we got our bad ones, just like HMOs. You would be surprised at how many good doctors the VA does have for the simple fact that they no longer have to pay out the ass for malpractice insurance.