Comments on: The Obamacare cost-savings mirage https://thenewneo.com/2009/12/14/the-obamacare-cost-savings-mirage/ A blog about political change, among other things Tue, 15 Dec 2009 20:04:54 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.0 By: Assistant Village Idiot https://thenewneo.com/2009/12/14/the-obamacare-cost-savings-mirage/#comment-137367 Tue, 15 Dec 2009 20:04:54 +0000 http://neoneocon.com/2009/12/14/the-obamacare-cost-savings-mirage/#comment-137367 Mark, I don’t entirely disagree, but a large category of medications and techniques is left off of that analysis. Psychiatric medications are enormously expensive, but psychiatric patients are among the least-employed of our population. Transcranial stimulation is marginally better than ECT’s, but is much more expensive – and ECT’s aren’t that cheap either. Newer medications can cost a thousand a month or more.

People pay for lasik surgery because they can. Ditto for voluntary cosmetic surgery. This of course drives down prices. That’s not going to happen with psychiatric medications.

]]> By: Daniel in Brookline https://thenewneo.com/2009/12/14/the-obamacare-cost-savings-mirage/#comment-137361 Tue, 15 Dec 2009 17:41:45 +0000 http://neoneocon.com/2009/12/14/the-obamacare-cost-savings-mirage/#comment-137361 Off-topic:

I’m no fan of President Obama. Nonetheless, I think it’s important to point out when his administration does something right. For example, Obama promised on the campaign trail to post pending bills on the Internet — and it seems that we’re finally seeing progress on that. (Look at some of the pending bills here.

Sorry for the digression… back to our muttons.

respectfully,
Daniel in Brookline

]]> By: NeoConScum https://thenewneo.com/2009/12/14/the-obamacare-cost-savings-mirage/#comment-137356 Tue, 15 Dec 2009 15:49:42 +0000 http://neoneocon.com/2009/12/14/the-obamacare-cost-savings-mirage/#comment-137356 artfldgr: Yep, Heaven Forbid that he tell those young Russians(or, young Americans!)some muscular Truth about the end of the Soviet Regime and the end of the Cold War. Heaven further forbid that they are told the TRUTH of the Vast Human Costs of the mass murdering Left Regime. Ya know, 30-40 million dead and endless 10s of millions in the Slave Labor Camps. Not only is Obama a tried & true Revisionist, but a Moral Coward as well.

]]> By: Baklava https://thenewneo.com/2009/12/14/the-obamacare-cost-savings-mirage/#comment-137355 Tue, 15 Dec 2009 15:33:53 +0000 http://neoneocon.com/2009/12/14/the-obamacare-cost-savings-mirage/#comment-137355 This piece on mammograms makes me smile

http://feministlawprofessors.com/?p=14096

Apparently NYT will cut itself a hole in the ice and jump in. That’s how fast they want to sink.

]]> By: Oblio https://thenewneo.com/2009/12/14/the-obamacare-cost-savings-mirage/#comment-137348 Tue, 15 Dec 2009 13:12:42 +0000 http://neoneocon.com/2009/12/14/the-obamacare-cost-savings-mirage/#comment-137348 Let’s add another Iron Law of economics:

“If there is government money to pay for a good, the unit price of that good will increase faster than the level of general prices.”

Examples:

1) Healthcare

2) Higher education

3) Residential housing

4) Military hardware

We could add more examples.

]]> By: Jamie Irons https://thenewneo.com/2009/12/14/the-obamacare-cost-savings-mirage/#comment-137336 Tue, 15 Dec 2009 05:40:24 +0000 http://neoneocon.com/2009/12/14/the-obamacare-cost-savings-mirage/#comment-137336 Here are Jamie Irons’ Three Ironclad Laws of the Medical Marketplace:

(1) Everyone wants everything, from cosmetic surgery to chemotherapy.

(2) Nobody want to pay for anything or, what amounts to the same thing, everybody wants somebody else to pay for everything.

(3) If one is younger than thirty, and not yet married with children, one assumes one is immortal, and will never need health care.

The failure to understand these simple, self-evident principles, dooms ever effort to “reform” “health care.”

Jamie Irons

]]> By: Baklava https://thenewneo.com/2009/12/14/the-obamacare-cost-savings-mirage/#comment-137311 Tue, 15 Dec 2009 00:24:18 +0000 http://neoneocon.com/2009/12/14/the-obamacare-cost-savings-mirage/#comment-137311 http://www.pollster.com/polls/us/healthplan.php?xml=http://www.pollster.com/flashcharts/content/xml/HealthCare.xml&choices=Oppose,Favor&phone=&ivr=&internet=&mail=&smoothing=&from_date=&to_date=&min_pct=&max_pct=&grid=&points=1&lines=1&colors=Favor-000000,Oppose-BF0014,Undecided-A69A37,No%20Opinion-68228B

]]> By: Tom https://thenewneo.com/2009/12/14/the-obamacare-cost-savings-mirage/#comment-137309 Tue, 15 Dec 2009 00:15:27 +0000 http://neoneocon.com/2009/12/14/the-obamacare-cost-savings-mirage/#comment-137309 Employer-provided health insurance is a direct legacy of FDR. Employers got around his wage-price controls during WWII by offering health insurance as a new fringe. Didn’t cost much then in constant dollars either.

]]> By: Artfldgr https://thenewneo.com/2009/12/14/the-obamacare-cost-savings-mirage/#comment-137304 Mon, 14 Dec 2009 23:53:47 +0000 http://neoneocon.com/2009/12/14/the-obamacare-cost-savings-mirage/#comment-137304 just so its clear and we know where this is going…

Obama Rewrites the Cold War
The President has a duty to stand up to the lies of our enemies.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124744075427029805.html

There are two different versions of the story of the end of the Cold War: the Russian version, and the truth. President Barack Obama endorsed the Russian version in Moscow last week.
Speaking to a group of students, our president explained it this way: “The American and Soviet armies were still massed in Europe, trained and ready to fight. The ideological trenches of the last century were roughly in place. Competition in everything from astrophysics to athletics was treated as a zero-sum game. If one person won, then the other person had to lose. And then within a few short years, the world as it was ceased to be. Make no mistake: This change did not come from any one nation. The Cold War reached a conclusion because of the actions of many nations over many years, and because the people of Russia and Eastern Europe stood up and decided that its end would be peaceful.”

The truth, of course, is that the Soviets ran a brutal, authoritarian regime. The KGB killed their opponents or dragged them off to the Gulag. There was no free press, no freedom of speech, no freedom of worship, no freedom of any kind. The basis of the Cold War was not “competition in astrophysics and athletics.” It was a global battle between tyranny and freedom. The Soviet “sphere of influence” was delineated by walls and barbed wire and tanks and secret police to prevent people from escaping. America was an unmatched force for good in the world during the Cold War. The Soviets were not. The Cold War ended not because the Soviets decided it should but because they were no match for the forces of freedom and the commitment of free nations to defend liberty and defeat Communism.

It is irresponsible for an American president to go to Moscow and tell a room full of young Russians less than the truth about how the Cold War ended. One wonders whether this was just an attempt to push “reset” — or maybe to curry favor. Perhaps, most concerning of all, Mr. Obama believes what he said

Guess what his historical ideas of other things is? including healthcare.

one should realize that he is using a false history to inform him of what actions to take and what are the right actions. like FDR saving the day by spending. and about printing money. and the assumptions that capitalism is inefficient. that bankers are servants of the states, negative vs positive rights.

swing! if ya never heard it before you might think it was new…

]]> By: LisaM https://thenewneo.com/2009/12/14/the-obamacare-cost-savings-mirage/#comment-137296 Mon, 14 Dec 2009 22:07:31 +0000 http://neoneocon.com/2009/12/14/the-obamacare-cost-savings-mirage/#comment-137296 I’m a systems analyst for a company that provides software to long-term care pharmacies. Our pharmacies service almost 100% nursing homes and assisted living facilities. I was around for the Prospective Pay debacle in the 90’s, where the federal government used years-old data to determine payment based strictly on diagnosis. If you had diabetes, they paid the flat diabetes rate, regardless of how much it actually cost to treat you.

The nursing homes couldn’t survive and stopped paying the pharmacies. The pharmacies couldn’t survive and started closing sites and laying people off. Just what we don’t need in this economy.

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