U.S. Politics: Russian Around

[Kalbear]

3 minutes ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

 Sounds to me like a shit market. If you're priced out of anything substantial or effective why would you buy a useless policy? I don't see how the insurance companies can make any money this way. Say hello to Black Market Medicine.

Again, most insurance companies make almost all their actual money on employer coverage - largely because the vast majority of the employer covered aren't sick, and therefore are cost effective for them. The individual markets aren't bad necessarily and make some money, but it's maybe like 5% of their overall plan. 

This is why, for instance, Aetna can just say that they're going to drop out of all the individual markets so that they can punish Obama for not allowing their merger. Because it just isn't that big of a deal. 

Insurance companies are a bit hopeful that they'll be able to offer really healthy patients cheap, catastrophic insurance and make money that way, but ultimately they're pretty well cool with anything that doesn't mess with their 260bn tax-rebate cash cow in  employer healthcare. 

[Kalbear]

Also

 

[Fragile Bird]

From what I understand watching interviews, one of the big disasters of the ACA, according to Republicans, was the fact that you could get away with not buying insurance and then when you were diagnosed with something bad, like cancer, you were then allowed to run out and buy insurance. I'm not exactly sure how you found out that you had cancer without having insurance coverage, presumably you paid for medical costs just as you went along?

Also, according to them, there were zillions of people who would buy insurance and stop paying for it after 9 months, but would still be covered for a year (a cancellation notice period???? That wasn't explained). Then these zillions would just turn around and buy and pay for insurance for 9 months again. Thus, the 30% penalty for not having continuous insurance. You pay 30% higher premiums to the insurance company.

[The Anti-Targ]

There has to be something fundamentally wrong with this DOJ looking for evidence of Obama "wire tapping". Surely DoJ should have given trump a week to furnish evidence to back up his tweet. And if he didn't then DoJ would drop the matter, with prejudice. But instead DoJ is asking for more time to do some more digging. Surely, after a week of finding nothing they should just say they found nothing and leave it at that.

Is the DoJ now thinking that it needs to actually come up with some evidence in order to avoid making Trump look bad? 

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

Again, most insurance companies make almost all their actual money on employer coverage - largely because the vast majority of the employer covered aren't sick, and therefore are cost effective for them. The individual markets aren't bad necessarily and make some money, but it's maybe like 5% of their overall plan. 

This is why, for instance, Aetna can just say that they're going to drop out of all the individual markets so that they can punish Obama for not allowing their merger. Because it just isn't that big of a deal. 

Insurance companies are a bit hopeful that they'll be able to offer really healthy patients cheap, catastrophic insurance and make money that way, but ultimately they're pretty well cool with anything that doesn't mess with their 260bn tax-rebate cash cow in  employer healthcare. 

That makes sense. I guess the HMO I work for is a bit of an exception. They managed to turn a pretty penny of off mandatory coverage. I suppose Covered California was kind of the exception to the rule.

[Commodore]

3 hours ago, Kalbear said:

So what's your prediction?

government interference in markets begetting perverse incentives begetting negative consequences

 

[OldGimletEye]

Just now, Commodore said:

government interference in markets begetting perverse incentives begetting negative consequences

 

Standard libertarian horseshit.

How many fuckin times does it have to be explained that the healthcare market isn't going to be like your perfectely competitive market you find in an econ 101 textbook.

This is exactly why libertarianism is fuckin brain dead. It doesn't think real hard about where markets work and where they may not always work. So it's completely lazy and has no ability to solve problems, whether we are talking about healthcare or financial markets.

Now tells us about the wonders of the Gold Standard or Bitcoin or whatever.

[MerenthaClone]

1 minute ago, Commodore said:

government interference in markets begetting perverse incentives begetting negative consequences

 

Well, lets just sprinkle some Free Market on the problem!  That'll work.  

 

The cost savings that come from this plan, by the way, come to roughly $7700 per person removed from insurance (according to the CBO estimate).  So that's how much Ryan thinks you're worth.  

[OldGimletEye]

The problem with libertarian people's, like @commadore, is they try to explain their free market fundamentalist bullshit because of "economics! man".

But, it's just pop libertarian bullshit econ. It has little basis in the sorts of work a lot of people do. Because the truth of the matter is a lot of good economist do recognize the need for government intervention, at times.

[OldGimletEye]

You know, when we think about the rise of modern capitalism, as we understand it, the place where we tend to think it did arise first was England. And English capitalism grew right up with the centralization of that state and wasn't the fuckin libertarian wank fest that people like @Commodore think it was.

There is good argument that British government debt, which were safe stores of value, facilitated the rise of the rest of the British financial system, which helped to begat capitalism there. And that debt was backed by a strong taxing state. Louis XIV might have styled himself as the "Sun King" but he could only wish that he could tax like England could and did in the 18th Century.

The rise of market capitalism, I think, is of a different kind of story, than of libertarian fairy tales.

[The Anti-Targ]

33 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

Standard libertarian horseshit.

How many fuckin times does it have to be explained that the healthcare market isn't going to be like your perfectely competitive market you find in an econ 101 textbook.

This is exactly why libertarianism is fuckin bread dead. It doesn't think real hard about where markets work and where they may not always work. So it's completely lazy and has no ability to solve problems, whether we are talking about healthcare or financial markets.

Now tells us about the wonders of the Gold Standard or Bitcoin or whatever.

I've heard of bird brained, and brain dead, and I can even see the possibility of coining the phrase "bread brain". But "bread dead"?

For libertarianism to actually work and create a just and fair society it requires everyone to be honest, trustworthy and not at all greedy or selfish, indeed they need to be exactly the opposite, they need to be selfless and generous. So for the world we know libertarianism is DoA. Perhaps for the world we'd like to live in libertarianism would work. But I think it's arse about face to implement libertarianism when so many people are total shits and hope that it will get people to become virtuous. I think we need to virtue first and then we can let a virtuous market find its own way.

Circling back to Calvinism, that's essentially Calvin's ideal of the charitable wealthy. Corporations and wealthy people would be using their philanthropy to run hospitals that provide free healthcare to the poor, and run schools that provide free education to those who can't afford it. No need for govt redistribution because the wealthy do the redistribution themselves, probably a lot more generously than any tax system would be able to extract from people. Lovely ideal. Totally doomed to failure in present conditions.

[Fragile Bird]

Just like Sean Spicer doesn't always say things correctly, we all knew what he meant.

[OldGimletEye]

Just now, The Anti-Targ said:

I've heard of bird brained, and brain dead, and I can even see the possibility of coining the phrase "bread brain". But "bread dead".

Sorry. All I can do here is a Rick Perry "Oops!"

Just now, The Anti-Targ said:

Circling back to Calvinism, that's essentially Calvin's ideal of the charitable wealthy. Corporations and wealthy people would be using their philanthropy to run hospitals that provide free healthcare to the poor, and run schools that provide free education to those who can't afford it. No need for govt redistribution because the wealthy do the redistribution themselves, probably a lot more generously than any tax system would be able to extract from people. Lovely ideal. Totally doomed to failure in present conditions.

If Calvin had known something about game theory, he'd might have had a sneaking suspicion this wouldn't work. I mean I'd feel better if something was done about poverty. But, I might feel like a sucker if I alone did something about it, and the other guy didn't. And maybe the other guy feels the same way. So you know you end up with an equilibrium where neither of us does nothing.

[The Anti-Targ]

1 minute ago, OldGimletEye said:

Sorry. All I can do here is a Rick Perry "Oops!"

If Calvin had known something about game theory, he'd might have had sneaking suspicion this wouldn't work. I mean I'd feel better if something was done about poverty. But, I might feel like a sucker if I alone did something about it, and the other guy didn't. And maybe the other guy feels the same way. So you know you end up with an equilibrium where neither of us does nothing.

Interesting thing is, I was listening to snippets of some Ted talk stuff and apparently at least one study has shown that people feel happier when they spend money on others and don't derive any increase in happiness when they spend money on themselves. So really charitability and generosity seems baked into us (bread reference) but it seems like we've created systems which tell us happiness comes from consuming, and we mostly believe it.

[OldGimletEye]

Just now, The Anti-Targ said:

Interesting thing is, I was listening to snippets of some Ted talk stuff and apparently at least one study has shown that people feel happier when they spend money on others and don't derive any increase in happiness when they spend money on themselves. So really charitability and generosity seems baked into us (bread reference) but it seems like we've created systems which tell us happiness comes from consuming, and we mostly believe it.

Oh, I don't doubt that people are often made happy by helping others. But, I'd say the problem with the "charity will solve all" model is that it is likely to suffer from various coordination failures.

[Fez]

Latest from Breitbart; the leaked audio of that conference call back in October when Paul Ryan said he would no longer defend Trump. The call was widely covered at the time, but I think most people forgot about it in the wake of the election; including possibly Trump himself. But now its back and with audio, which wasn't available before.

The fact this came out today, along with fairly straightforward coverage of the CBO report and the previous stuff they've put out, makes me think maybe all this really is a Bannon plot to destroy Ryan.

 

[LongRider]

9 minutes ago, Fez said:

~~snip~,

The fact this came out today, along with fairly straightforward coverage of the CBO report and the previous stuff they've put out, makes me think maybe all this really is a Bannon plot to destroy Ryan.

 

I would like to see Ryan destroyed to truthfull. Bannon too, for that matter.  Interesting tho how Briebert is putting out such negatives towards the GOP's health plan. Does make it easy to seem that something is afoot.