Well...what do you think of Obamacare now?

So who has allowed healthcare costs to spin out of control? Is it the government, the consumers, the doctors, the hospitals, the drug companies?

If you follow this link it will give you some useful background on healthcare spending over time.

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/include/usgs_chart2p41.png

 

You are wrong about the housing bubble. That is just smoke & illusion to distract from the REAL PROBLEM of too much govt interference. They spoil everything they meddle with, as they have done with welfare, govt housing, healthcare, & student loans. You can believe they are wise & benevolent, but all of experience, observation, history, & common sense says otherwise. You merely espouse propaganda, & are just a water carrier for wasteful, inefficient, big govt statism. You have been promoting this for decades, but many Americans are waking up to the deception. We are sick of it, & if there are enough of us, we will vote it out. America is not about huge, wasteful, stupid govt, but minimal govt & individual freedom. Your statist policies of tax & spend have nearly ruined us as a nation, have exploded dependency to unsustainable levels, grown crime & corruption, & have undermined the constitution & are threatening the very foundations of self rule.

You may succeed in destroying America, but it will not go quietly.

The ACA is merely a symptom. But it has not been successful. How could it be? It is based on lies & phony numbers. It is fraught with corruption & inefficiency. It is doomed to fail. It is an encroachment on our liberties. It is un-American. Lies, spin, & propaganda drive it, along with the promise of free stuff for a delusional electorate. This was not voted for by the people, but rammed though by desperate transformers of the American Dream. You may think it is wonderful, but there are millions more that do not. Why should we be forced to pay for your healthcare, food, housing, cell phone, car, sex change operation, or any choice you make in life?

 

Not anymore, they're planning is moving to an Obamacare plan too and yes the plans are his fault. The cost rising are his fault. The failures of the exchanges are his fault. Its HIS plan.

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Explain your statwment the article was posted to refute and did.

 

They want single payer. But the data shows it is worse than ObamaCare. Colorado is considering going to single payer but they might want to talk to Vermont before doing so.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/dont-let-obamacares-failures-snowball-into-single-payer-1449876348

Paywall ^ try googling colorado single payer

 

Correct on the housing bubble - financial crisis. And the ACA - gov bureaucracy is only good at one thing - growing larger and less accountable.

From a post done years ago (sorry for the drift but it's illustrative of big gov making big mistakes).

The housing bubble and financial crisis are actually two different things although the collapse of the housing bubble resulted in the financial crisis. The housing bubble was caused by the lowering of lending standards due to the HUD requirement that Fannie and Freddie make a set percentage of loans to low income borrowers. This policy was initiated by Bill Clinton and was based on an interpretation of the Community Reinvestment Act. At the end of Clinton's term that percentage was 50%. This was increased to 55% by the Bush administration. The lowering of the lending standards was used by unscrupulous mortgage lending firms like Countrywide and New Century to make many other high risk loans. Adding to the housing bubble was the easy money policy of the Fed which made loans easier to afford due to low interest rates. The housing bubble suddenly burst in 2008. This was similar to the dot.com bubble which burst in 2001 and recovered from by 2003 but why was the financial industry so terribly affected this time.

The financial crisis triggered by the housing bubble collapse was the result of a combination of financial and banking regulations going back to 1936 (See the list below). Mortgage backed securities have been around for years before the 00's. They are securities formed by conglomerating home mortgages and are a way for investors to earn a return through the housing market. They have historically been very safe investments. The HUD housing policies however resulted in a portion of the MBS's created in the 90's and 00's to consist of the subprime and other low standard loans. The Basel rules were based on the assumption that securities consisting of home mortgages were of very low risk. Therefore the reserve requirements for MBS's were set at a very low rate of 5%. This meant that for every $50K of MBS's that a commercial or investment bank had it could make loans totaling $1M. Since banks make money from loans they would use the investment vehicles with the lowest reserve requirement. And very many of them did. They bought AAA rated MBS's (the ratings were determined by the National Ratings Agencies - Fitch, Moodys, and Standard and Poors). This was required by gov regulation. But the ratings agencies were not doing due diligence on the make up of the MBS' which was unknown to the banks involved who trusted the ratings and Basel guidelines. Collapse of the housing bubble caused foreclosures in the subprime mortgages especially. This created fear and uncertainty in the value of the MBS's even though they were still paying ~ 90% of their returns. The market price dropped (in some cases a price could not be determined because no one was interested in buying). This is where the mark to market rule came in resulting large paper and consequently the banks reserves falling below the already low 5%. The bailout from the gov started out as TARP which was passed to buy up all these MBS's which had now large paper losses due to mark to market. It was quickly changed however to give money directly to the banks so that they could bring their reserves up to the 5% level. Bear Stearns was bailed out but Lehman was allowed to fail. This resulted in uncertainty and the credit markets froze (none of the banks wanted to lend to other banks who might not be bailed out). Some commercial banks like WaMu also had MBS's in reserve and ended up being taken over.


The analysis of what happened is contained in the book by Friedman and Kraus – “Engineering the Financial Crisis” – 2011. As can be seen these rules were issued over the years with no analysis on how they might conspire together to set up a catastrophic house of cards situation due to the homogenization of asset mix held by many of these investment houses. Collapse of the housing bubble which affected these assets including MBS’s (whose contained loans were still paying at ~ 80%) then lost value due to the market price dropping way below value triggering large paper losses due to mark to market accounting rules. This reduced the capital and lending capacity of the banks due to Basel I and the Recourse Rule (an adoption in the U.S. of part of what later became Basel II), which specify those capital requirements. The conflation of all of this resulted in the financial (really the banking) crisis. The authors also show that the repeal of Glass Steagal had nothing to do with the financial crisis. Glass Steagal prevented the mixing of private deposits with investments and that was not a factor. Here are the set of regulations:



1. SEC Regulations from 1936 requiring mandated minimum ratings for a growing number of institutional investments.

2. SEC decision in 1975 to confer NRSRO on the big three ratings agencies.

3. Basel 1 from 1978 which established favorable risk weighting for mortgages and GSE issued MBS’s.

4. Mark to market accounting established by FAS 115 in 1993 and refined by FAS 157 in 2006.

5. HUD targets for mortgages to low-income families in the late 1990’s resulting in reduction of down payment requirements for the GSE’s.

6. Recourse Rule issued by the FED, FDIC, and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and the Office of Thrift Supervision.




Here are some excerpts from an editorial from the WSJ:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204468004577166723093578272.html

Google – The Meltdown Remains a Whodunit

 

You are wrong and ignorant about the cause of the housing bubble. I understand your obvious prejudices but in this case the actual culprit was free enterprise not the government. Try reading " And then the roof caved in" or " when markets collide" or " capatalism hits the fan" or any actual account of what occured.

It really is only the ignorant anti government demagogues that blame Fanny or Freddy. Yes the government tried to encourage home ownership and probably backed some bad loans but it was only when the banks realized the could write loans with no collateral and then bundle the loans and make a profit selling them with no risk to the bank that the system collapsed. You can also review Moody's culpability in misstating the risks involves in the securities that collateralized the bad loans.

 

The source isn't the website. The source is CMS. Have you even bothered to look at the CMS data?

 

If you can't afford healthcare blame it on Obama not on your own failures. Wonder what ever happened to the self reliance and personal responsibility that Conservatives used to preach about.

 

Any piece of omnibus reform legislation tackling as huge an issue as health care and insurance reform is bound to have unintended consequences, crazy ass ramifications and huge malfunctions of purpose, alongside huge successes and astonishing achievements. Its was an extraordinarily complex bill working on an even broader social and economic scale. That is why subsequent legislatures revisit, tweak and reform those grandiose 1000 page bills, no matter how well intentioned and crafted the original was.

The problem is that there is no way to bring this back and retool and fix what aint working. The GOP does not want to improve it, they either want it to fail miserably or they want the credit of killing it. Dems cannot even think of an Obama-care part II, because it will become a vehicle to gut the original or a vote to repeal and we lose any benefits and the only successful effort at reform since Harry Truman first discussed universal health insurance in 1948! Its not like those private premiums and costs were sailing on a downward trajectory before Obamacare!

 

Please read my post above. The housing bubble was the result of the unintended consequences of HUD housing policies meant to allow low income people to buy houses and flawed monetary policy. The ensuing financial crisis was caused by banking regulations including the establishment of government mandated ratings agencies (NRSRO) - Moody's, Standard & Poors, and Fitch.

Can you please summarize the mechanism for the housing crisis and what caused the bursting of the housing to result in a financial crisis?

 

If you really want to learn about the details read " And Then The Roof Caved In" by David Faber . To summarize it was Wall Street that figured out you could collateralize home Loans and the sell them to investors both in the US and overseas. Once the risk of bad loans was removed from the loan originators the floodgates were opened since there was no risk to the originator in writing loans that were bad or had no collateral.Contributing to the problem was the failure to separate banking functions from securities functions at financial institutions so both writing bad loans and then selling the resulting bad securities contributed to high profits for the institutions and individuals involved. The originators actually made a lot of money from the bad loans because there was a premium for the collateralzed securities.

The inevitable collapse actually occured because once the default rate on the bad loans started the securities value dropped and the rest of the collapse is history.

The whole mess actually was caused by unregulated free enterprise as opposed to government encouraging home ownership. The myth that the whole problem was the government encouraging home ownership is just that, a myth that fits into the ideological position that everything that goes wrong in our society is caused by big government. That is not to say that government doesn't do a lot of stupid things but in this case the problem was financial innovation by Wall Street and the Banking institutions. If the securitization of bad loans had not occured the few bad loans caused by HUD loan policies might have caused a few banks to lose money and possibly collapse but the result would not have imperiled the entire financial system.

As I said this is a way simple explanation. Read the book mentioned above for all the gory details.

 

This sounds like a governemnt take-over of a private business, creating a defacto government controlled sector of the financial world.

 

Sorry, but your explanation (and that of Mr. Faber) doesn't make sense. What is a collaterized home loan ?? Mortgage backed securities have been around for years. Prior to the HUD mandates that Fannie and Freddie ultimately grant 55% of their approved loans to low income purchasers of homes and the resulting relaxation of lending standards. Companies such as Countrywide and New Century took advantage of these relaxed standards but their subprime loans were bought by Fannie and Freddie to meet their HUD guidelines (and ensure bonuses for their executives). MBS's were considered extremely low risk and per the Basel rules the reserve requirements on banks making home loans were very low - less than 10%.

All the banks had MBS's. Foreclosures of the sub prime loans began to occur but these investments were still returning ~ 80% of their dividend income. There was uncertainty and fear at the value of these securities. When a stock is purchased for dividend income and the dividend drops by 20% the stock price typically drops by 20% as well. However the mark to market regulation set the value at close to zero resulting in huge paper losses for the banks resulting in their inability to meet reserve requirements. The bailouts were used to increase the banks reserves so the minimum could again be met. The decision to bail out Bear Sterns but not Lehman resulted in a credit freeze between financial institutions which exacerbated the situation.

The housing bubble resulted from well intentioned but flawed housing and monetary policy. The financial crisis resulted again from well intentioned but flawed policy with regard to the unintended consequence of the interations and the failure to realize the danger of "all" banks holding a high percentage of securities defined as low risk and the consequences of the "failure" of those securities. This had nothing to do with free market capitalism - the markets were actually constrained and controlled by flawed regulations. And the repeal of Glass Steagal had nothing to do with this. Lehman was an investment bank.

Reading one book with an obviously flawed analysis and forming an opinion is dangerous.

Here is a Reading list for you - The top 8 are in my unofficial order of importance:


Engineering the Financial Crisis - Friedman & Kraus - 2011

Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac - McDonald - 2012

Senseless Panic - William Isaac - 2010

Bad History, Worse Policy - Peter Wallison - 2013

“Government Housing Policies in the Lead-up to the Financial Crisis: A Forensic Study” - Pinto
http://www.aei.org/docLib/Pinto-Government-Housing-Policies-Crisis.pdf

What Caused the Financial Crisis - Edited by Friedman - 2011

Reckless Endangerment - Morgenson - 2011

Bull by the Horns - Sheila Bair - 2012

All the Devils are Here - McLean - 2010

The Housing Boom and Bust - Dr. Thomas Sowell - 2009

Getting Off Track - Taylor - 2009

Bail Out Nation - Ritholtz - 2009

The Great American Bank Robbery - Sperry - 2011

Shakedown - Malanga - 2010

A Capitalism for the People - Zingales - 2012

Debacle - Norquist - 2012

America's Ticking Bankruptcy Bomb - Ferrara - 2011

 

If you can't defend Obamacare don't blame the people forced onto it, lack of rebuttal noted again.

 

And now this

CBO: Obamacare Will Cost US Economy Equivalent of Two Million Jobs

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/guyben...l&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

What happened to Pelosi's claim

"Four million jobs will be created by the legislation when it is fully in effect."

 

How is anyone forced onto Obamacare. You can always buy insurance off the exchanges. Or is your arguement that you shouldn't have to have insurance which will save you money because you will get your healthcare funded by the rest of us with insurance.

 

If you lose the insurance that 'you liked and could keep it' you are forced onto ObamaCare which is sold via the exchanges and co-ops (hurry there aren't many of them left). Many people choose to self insure (~ 10 million pre ObamaCare). Some still do after paying the fine. Statistically the uninsured pay ~ 50% of their retail medical bills which are much higher than the negotiated insurance payments. The average health insurance premium is only a couple of a percent higher due to paying for the uninsured who abscond on their medical bill obligations. A much larger percentage covers the cost gap in Medicaid and Medicare bills.

 

Nope. If you lose the insurance you like because the insurance company thinks you are too expensive to insure you are still free to buy insurance from other companies off the exchanges.

 

At a much higher premium and deductible/(out of pocket maximum). We've all heard the examples. This guy was hit especially hard:

I had a great PPO with a $3,000.00 deductible and an HSA. This plan cost me ~$600/month for my spouse and I. With contributions to my HSA, I could write the check for any medical expenses and accumulate a nice nest egg for future expenses.

When ACA mandates took effect my premium jumped to almost $1000.00/month and the deductible increased to $10,000.00! This hit my budget hard and we have had to change lifestyle to pay the premiums. This in addition to paying my fair share in taxes.

I don't mind paying taxes to subsidize national health care but paying almost a grand a month for a $10,000 deductible insurance plan in addition to my taxes is hurting me big time. The secondary effect is we are not eating out or spending discretionary cash to stimulate the economy just like the 30-40 million middle class people that are getting hammered for premiums. This is one effect on the economy that is difficult to measure.

We see the economic effects in the pathetic ~ 1% per capita GDP growth rate. That is less than half what is typical of a robust economy. Reagan averaged ~ 3% per capita including the recession years of the early 80's when he took office.

 

I'm opposed to a single-payer system but the claim that a person can't have a choice related to their doctor or that it would result in fewer doctors and sergeons entering the field is false. Nothing would prevent a person from selecting a primary care physician under a single-payer system not would it prevent people from becoming a medical doctor and/or surgeon. I don't know where these beliefs originate but they're not based upon facts because the US could organize a single-payer system differently from other nations and we could also increase the number of doctors and surgeons by simply eliminating the tuition related to this field and building more medical colleges.

A single-payer system only refers to how the medical services are paid for and doesn't represent socialized medicine where the government owns all of the hospitals, clinics, and directly employs anyone in the medical industry.

The reason for opposing a single-payer system are financial more so than any other reason. We know from Medicare and Medicaid that the actual payments to medical providers would have to increase substantially if the government was the only entity paying for those services. We also know that because the private insurance industry is so embedded in the United States that converting to a single-payer system would result in an economic recession that would dwarf the 2008 recession resulting in a far greater loss of jobs and trillions of dollars in lost investments. Perhaps we could have gone single-payer system at the end of WW II but not today.

In point of fact the insurance companies are highly regulated and there's also considerable competition at the state level. While it is true that there are only about five health insurance companies that provide health insurance in all 50 states there are roughly 1,400 health insurance companies in the United States from what I've read. Many of these are limited to a single state because the regulations for health insurance companies vary widely in different states making it difficult for the insurance company to operate in more than one state.

In the end though the problem isn't with the insurance company at all because they don't control the costs or directly control the access to the medical services. The insurance companies merely pay for the medical services and where the funding comes from to pay for the medical services has nothing to do with the access to the medical services or the costs of those services.

 

And their policies must meet the Obamacare mandates. I just bought a policy directly with BCBS after shopping they are all Obamacare metal plans.

 

Higher premiums and deductables are an issue with the entire insurance industry both insurance bought on the exchanges and insurance bought off the exchanges. Costs have been going up for decades and will continue even if the ACA is repealed.

And anyone who buys healthcare subsidizes healthcare for the uninsured or underinsured. The real problem with American healthcare is not the ACA or the insurance companies but the total cost for providing healthcare to all Americans. A great many developed countries seem to be able to provide overall better results for a lot less money than does the US.

If you go back in time to before the ACA you will find both political parties admitting the American system was too expensive and was essentially broken. Time for both parties to admit the system s still a mess and go back to trying to actually fix it.

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Yes all the policies now have to meet minimum standards.

 

ObamaCare: Dead Americans Are a Bargain! Just like dead veterans.

What a deal!

 

That does sound like a great Republican Party slogan.

 

The adder to a health insurance premium due to paying for the uninsured is ~ 2%. The actual people who are subsidized by those with private insurance are those on Medicaid and Medicare (both singe payer gov programs). Those are the factors which result in the increasing health care premiums at rates in excess of the health care spending rates which had been decreasing and stabilized at ~ 4% per year in the mid 00's. The real key to reducing the increase in health insurance is reform of Medicare and Medicaid to a premium support system similar to the plan that federal employees get.

Countries with gov do not get better results than the US when gun violence (80% gang related) and traffic deaths are factored out. Citizens from other countries (notably a high level Candian official) come the the US if they can afford it to seek medical care due to excessive wait times in those countries. Approximately 80% liked the old system. Reforms to provide insurance to those with preexisting conditions, tort reform, buying across state lines, block granting medicaid grants to the states. reformiing Medicare to apremium support system, published price lists for medical procedures, and providing premium support for those who purchase health insurance on the open market would have been straight forward and relatively easy fixes which could have been tested in states (and many have) and introduced sequentially in legislation with tens of pages, not thousands.

The net effect of ObamaCare per a recent Heritage Foundation study shows that the net benefit has been the addition of ~ 10 million insured - but all on Medicaid. Of the 46 million uninsured identified to justify ObamaCare ~ 14 million were individuals who were eligible for gov health care programs. We didn't need ObamaCare to sign them up.