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A True Kaniggit

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He's so fucking insane.  JFC

Also, about that aviation safety, what's going to happen when we start feeling the effects of all those murdered regulations that worked to keep commercial flight safe for passengers?  Is a Trump voter's brain capable of connecting the dots?

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All Trump voters know is “regulations bad!” When we have more Flint-like water problems and no way to retaliate against predatory business practices, they still won’t get that Trump’s massive cutting of “red tape” is only going to hurt people while corporations profit.

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The usually smart Mike Kimel, gets needlessly confused here, I do think.

https://angrybearblog.com/2018/01/healthcare-costs-i-got-confused-by-some-graphs.html

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 don’t follow healthcare as much as others at this blog. I started playing around with some graphs at FRED and got a bit confused. I don’t mind being confused, but I like to clear up that confusion eventually. So perhaps someone can tell me what’s going on.

First, this graph of healthcare expenditures / GDP which seems to indicate that Obamacare bent the cost curve:

 

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Additionally, it kind of looks like healthcare costs per capita stopped declining after the passage of PPACA.  Worse, the rate of increase of healthcare costs per capita may have begun picking up since then.  That would imply that if there was any bending of the curve, it was the wrong way.

What am I missing?

So lets go through what's going on here.

Okay, let’s say those socialist losers the Democratic Party gets elected. And not having enough appreciation for the “makers” it decides those loser “takers” ie “the 47%” deserve a bit o’ health care, and shouldn’t just die in the streets. Man, talk about class warfare. I really feel like my “freedom” is being destroyed here. Next thing you know, this “Road To Serfdom” might cause somebody to elect an orange fascist buffoon, but oh wait!, the party that was against the ACA was the one that ran and elected and the orange fascist buffoon, just kind of like national healthcare probably didn’t lead to the rise of the Nazi party, my little libertarian darlings.

Anyway, as a first approximation, start with a partial equilibrium model of health care. The demand curve for healthcare slopes down and the supply curve slopes up.

The “takers” ie “the 47%” get the health care. You’d expect the demand curve to shift to the right and up, leaving you with a higher price of healthcare.

Write something like P(H)*Q(H)/P*y, where P(H) is the price of healthcare Q(H) is the quantity and P is the general price level and y is real GDP. If the demand curve shifts, but the supply curve doesn’t, you’d expect the ratio P(H)/P to become larger. But supposing the supply curve does shift, then P(H)/P may decline, and so even if you get a an increase in Q(H), you don’t see an uptick in healthcare expenditures as a percentage of GDP.

Now supposing the question is you want to know year over year changes in healthcare expenditures.

Start with something like P(H)(t+1)*Q(H)(t+1)/P(t+1)y(t+1)

And then do something like:

ln [ P(H)(t+1)*Q(H)(t+1)/P(t+1)y(t+1)] – ln[P(H)(t)*Q(H)(t)/P(t)y(t)]

where ln is the natural log function and you get something like

p(h)(t+1) + q(h)(t+1) – p(t+1) – y(t+1) – p(h)(t) – q(h)(t) + p(t)  + y(t)

where the small letters are log levels of the variables.

And then grouping terms you get:

-inf(P) + inf(H) + growthq(H) - realGDPgrowth = Nominal Growth Of Healthcare – Nominal GDP Growth.

Canceling shit out ie inf(p) + realGDPgrowth - Nominal GDP Growth = 0

Leaves you with:

Nominal Growth Of Healthcare = inf(H) + growthq(h)

So that leaves you with healthcare inflation is either rising or real healthcare expenditures are rising or combination of both. But if level of nominal healthcare expenditures doesn’t seem to be rising with respect to the overall nominal expenditures you can rule out an increase in inf(H). The culprit is real health care expenditure growth q(h) increased. And that would seem to mean that the ACA did push the supply curve down and to the right.

Look the ACA is not perfect (but certainly better than what he sorry ass Republican Party would have to offer). And maybe at some point there needs to be talk about controlling the demand side of the market. But, some of the hysterical crap surrounding it, just dear lord.

All three of these graphs are consistent with the story that the ACA increased the real consumption of healthcare, while holding down it’s relative price compared to other goods.

Anyway, the fact that the government was seemingly able to shift the supply curve, while not perhaps, shifting the demand curve does counter that usual sorry ass libertarian story that whenever the government does something that market will just counter it, making the policy ineffective. Not, when it comes to healthcare, we should buy into that libertarian horseshit, as many countries do seemingly deliver universal healthcare at lower cost. And conservative sorts of people, anyone saying but ‘Murica has the “best” healthcare system in the world, probably needs to be horse laughed right out of the room.

Finally, to be fair to Kimel, he’s not some right wing ideologue. But, I think he should have thought this data a bit through a bit harder. It doesn’t seem that the story they are telling is that complicated using a bit o standard price theory. 

It’s probably just a case of liberal hand wringing.

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1 hour ago, Dr. Pepper said:

Well, this means we get to blame Trump for every natural disaster that occurs while he's squating in office.  Fires in Cali, Trump's fault.  Hurricanes, Trump's fault.  Miami flooding, Trump's fault.  This cold fucking miserable winter, totally Trump.  He did it all.  Fuck him.  

Trump is the new Pod.

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Speaking of the exorbitant cost of health care in this nation, check out this report:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/02/upshot/us-health-care-expensive-country-comparison.html?

 

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Though the JAMA study could not separate care intensity and price, other research blames prices more. For example, one study found that the spending growth for treating patients between 2003 and 2007 is almost entirely because of a growth in prices, with little contribution from growth in the quantity of treatment services provided. Another study found that U.S. hospital prices are 60 percent higher than those in Europe. Other studiesalso point to prices as a major factor in American health care spending growth.

 

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Orrin Hatch announces his retirement. This probably means we're looking at Senator Romney in 2018.  Which is, sadly, a step in the right direction for the country.  At least we'll have a reliable anti-Trump Republican in the Senate after Flake is gone.  Not that it makes too big a difference, since, like Flake, Romney will probably support the party line most of the time.  But it's still an improvement over Hatch. 

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6 minutes ago, Nasty LongRider said:

Orrin Hatch and Sen. Bill Schuster both announced they will not be running for reelection.   Hatch will retire and Schuster won't seek reelection. 

Bill Shuster is a representative (PA-09).  Although you're correct, he is retiring.

EDIT:  His district is rated R+19, so his retirement isn't much of an opportunity for a Democratic pickup. 

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5 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

Orrin Hatch announces his retirement. This probably means we're looking at Senator Romney in 2018.  Which is, sadly, a step in the right direction for the country.  At least we'll have a reliable anti-Trump Republican in the Senate after Flake is gone.  Not that it makes too big a difference, since, like Flake, Romney will probably support the party line most of the time.  But it's still an improvement over Hatch. 

Is he living in Utah?

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3 hours ago, Dr. Pepper said:

Well, this means we get to blame Trump for every natural disaster that occurs while he's squating in office.  Fires in Cali, Trump's fault.  Hurricanes, Trump's fault.  Miami flooding, Trump's fault.  This cold fucking miserable winter, totally Trump.  He did it all.  Fuck him.  

No need to go that far. Coal mining deaths have doubled in 2017 (from 8 in 2016 to 15 in 2017). Although to be fair, the 8 number was the lowest in many years.

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Is Trump going to yet again take credit for something he didn't do?

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/01/nato-defense-spending-started-increasing-three-years-ago/

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Glasser’s piece is worth a read even if it’s mostly old news, but I was a little surprised that a couple of times she passed along without comment praise of Trump for “forcing European allies to pay more for NATO after years of ineffectual American complaints.” Really? In 2014 Russia seized Crimea and President Obama told NATO it was time to stop shirking their responsibilities:

We have seen a decline steadily in European defense spending generally….That has to change. The United States is proud to bear its share of the defense of the Transatlantic Alliance. It is the cornerstone of our security. But we can’t do it alone.

And here’s what happened:

Trump. He's like that asshole you played football with and is always the last one to jump on the pile, and then runs around the field like he's..............

He's perfect for the Republican Party.

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1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

Didn’t he live there back in the early 2000s? I thought I read that he was debating whether to run for governor in Utah or MA.

Yes, he sold his previous house in the Salt Lake area in 2009.  Anyway, Romney is not going to be subject to any "outsider" or carpetbagging accusations in Utah.  He's, like, the epitome of Utah's in-group.

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22 minutes ago, dmc515 said:

Yes, he sold his previous house in the Salt Lake area in 2009.  Anyway, Romney is not going to be subject to any "outsider" or carpetbagging accusations in Utah.  He's, like, the epitome of Utah's in-group.

Thanks, and I totally agree.

On an unrelated note, someone, for the love of god, get Trump's phone out of his hands. He's tweeting again and in one set of tweets he manged to inflame our relations with both Pakistan and Palestine.  

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