Wall Street, often ahead of the rest of us, seems to disagree with your evaluation of the first weeks of President Obama's administration.
And your evaluation of the man who brought us to the point of national bankruptcy on financial as well as on political ground is very interesting, though skewed somewhat to the right.
I am always amazed at the blindness of conservatives. Tell me how many recruits to terror has the war on terror garnered since Bush has been in office. Tell me how much Blood and Treasure has been wasted on an unnecessary war.
Under President Bush financial regulations were ignored or tossed, and we find ourselves broke. Our country has the 27th best record for medical care in the industrialized world. There aren't many industrialized countries behind us. We have over 47 million folks without any insurance and our auto industry is collapsing. We exported millions of jobs overseas and now we are losing millions more jobs even without exporting the jobs. People are hanging out on corners.
I live on the beach in Ft. Lauderdale. Recently people have started sleeping on the beach.
I find it notable and just plain stupid that the auto industry never called for Single Payer Universal Health Care even though they knew that employer based insurance was costing them more than steel, and was costing them market share, and finally, was driving them out of business. Why not? They were stifled, blinded by rusty ideological beliefs that were imposed on them by the libertarian-conservative brain-washing in the medea.You know who I mean, Ayn Rand was only a writer. Milton Friedman is dead but this debacle is burying his coffin even deeper. This is the second or maybe third death for poor Milton.
In February of 2003 you wrote,
'Almost all of them have a strong ideological bias against making individuals primarily responsible for their own retirement income and a sharp distaste for programs that benefit “the rich." ' Imagine if you had gotten your way and everyone had their retirement money invested in the market. Now, social security seems a lot more secure for the average man. Can you imagine the average citizen choosing his own investments? Crazy?
I see that you are an expert on pension and benefit plans. I am an amateur and only know about the one in which my employees participated. Employers contributed around 6% of payroll, the fund (multi-employer Taft Hartley) grew to almost $10 Billion. During the last 28 months the fund shrunk to $8.75 Billion.From what I hear the employees are okay and the fund will continue to pay pensions.
But what about the Benefit plan? Well, that costs a lot more. Close to 21% of payroll. the workers, on average, are at the low end of hourly workers. The fund takes in about a billion dollars a year and pays it all out. It's a generous plan that up now had no co-pays and paid for almost everything, excepting dental, and covers prescriptions in full when Medicare pays for other expenses.
Pretty good for the employees, right? Tough on us employers. But what is the per-capita cost? 2006 cost per covered life was $3800.
There are about 400,000 beneficiaries and 150,000 active workers.
The plan covers from pre-natal, through age 65 and continues to pay for rxs until death. No co-pays. (I think that is going to change)
The cost per active employee is around $7800. The one factor which I cannot calculate is the effect of COBs(Coordination of Benefits) which occurs when each spouse has benefits from two different benefit plans. I think that this is a significant number which, if known, would increase the true cost per covered life.
I understand that Medicare's administrative cost is less than 3%, our administrative cost is less than 7% -- and insurance companies administrative costs plus profits range as high as 22%.
If the USA had a Single Payer Universal Health Care plan in place it would cost less than the $3800 that our plan costs. But let's say it costs $3800 per capita. 300,000,000 citizens times $3800 is 1.14 Trillion dollars.
But wait! Subtract from that 1.14 trillion dollars the 1.4 Trillion dollars that we are currently spending on health care for a 353,000,000, people, leaving out 47 million people, and you can see that we would save money and cover more lives with a well run Single Payer (yes, that means the government) Universal Health Care program.
Most docs and hospital administrators agree with me.
Worried about government bureaucrats? What about Insurance company administrators who decide what meds you may take and what docs you may see?
It's very important to think for the other side and to converse with knowledgeable people on the other side too. I am sure that you know some professionals with brains equal to yours. Call them.
