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U.S. Politics: It’s beginning to look a lot like Rescission


lokisnow

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Yeah, time to put up or shut up. Republicans who say they support pre-existing conditions now get the opportunity to vote and show where they stand.

GOP feels heat in wake of Obamacare ruling: 'It's all the downsides'
The decision spells bad news for Republicans by allowing Democrats to replay a potent health care message that helped them flip 40 House seats.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/12/15/republicans-obamacare-ruling-1066659

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But that doesn't appear likely if Friday's ruling is working its way through the courts during the 2020 election cycle. House Democrats had long planned to intervene in the lawsuit on behalf of the ACA and will likely introduce a resolution directing the House counsel to defend the law during the first days of the new Congress. People familiar with the conversations say the Democrats will quickly put it to a floor vote that will force GOP lawmakers to either signal support for Obamacare or endorse its elimination — along with the law’s most popular patient protections.

Trump and other key Republicans' hailing of the ruling as vindication of their belief that the law is unworkable and needs to be jettisoned also doesn't set a constructive tone, said Rodney Whitlock, a former top Republican Senate health care staffer.

“He’s got to lead,” Whitlock said of the president. “I don’t think you’ll see congressional Republicans wanting to go that route when it’s far from clear that they’d have support from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.”

The result is likely to be a split GOP caucus that draws flak from both the right and the left. Republicans who survived the midterm election by vowing to protect people with pre-existing conditions will find themselves in a particularly tough spot, feeling intense pressure to make good on that pledge.

“It’s all the downsides,” a House GOP aide said. “Politically, I don’t think that it helps us at all.”

 

 

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12 hours ago, Altherion said:

It's practically impossible to predict one-off events and even without them the warning signs are not unambiguous. The people arguing that a recession will come in 2019 claim that some of these signs are already here (or almost here). For example, the yield difference between long term and short term US Treasury bonds is fairly small and even briefly went below zero for some maturities earlier this month. People refer to this as an "inverted yield curve" and it is a pretty good forecaster of recessions... but of course hasn't actually inverted yet.

The people who have access to nearly all information on the matter (including the one-off possibilities) and are the closest to being neutral experts work for the Federal Reserve and they're still raising the federal funds rate (or at least that's what everyone expects -- see what happens this Tuesday). As long as this is the case, I'd be wary of people crying recession -- although of course it is certainly possible.

I agree that predicting when the next recession will occur with any degree of precision lies somewhere between difficult to impossible.
Though, I'd say we'll probably have one within the next 5 five years so.
While, I'm not really comfortable predicting when the next recession will come, I'm a lot more comfortable in stating that we won't be prepared to effectively fight it, mainly because of the continued idiocy of the Republican Party and conservatives.
The current FED rate of about 2% should give us all some worry (and I'm not saying the FED should just jack up rate, as I doesn't just pick the neutral rate out of a box, though some people think it does. Remember "Poor Savers!").
Your boy Trump has complaining about the FED raising rates to fast. And now of course the WSJ seems to agree, along with other random clowns like Stephen Moore (who now seems to believe that aggregate demand is a thing). They are not wrong of course, but all changed their tune once Obama left office, the fuckin' hacks. Right now being pinned up against the Zero Lower Bound is a much bigger problem than "rampant inflation just around the corner".
Of course Trumps policies didn't help much either. Rather advocating for tax cuts for the rich through his corporate tax cut, he could have pushed for a better fiscal package to help raise the neutral rate.

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On 12/16/2018 at 12:27 AM, Martell Spy said:

Yeah, time to put up or shut up. Republicans who say they support pre-existing conditions now get the opportunity to vote and show where they stand.

GOP feels heat in wake of Obamacare ruling: 'It's all the downsides'
The decision spells bad news for Republicans by allowing Democrats to replay a potent health care message that helped them flip 40 House seats.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/12/15/republicans-obamacare-ruling-1066659

 

 

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We have a rare opportunity for truly bipartisan health care reform that protects those with pre-existing conditions, increases transparency and choice, and lowers costs,” said Rep. Greg Walden, the current chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, in a statement.

I like to know where this Republican clown thinks there is a chance at "bipartisan" healthcare reform. Republicans had their chance and they blew it. They have had almost a decade to come up with something and have failed to do so. They have no credible plan for the issue of adverse selection. There is no reason to trust them. Without trust, there can be no "bipartisanship".

The Republican Party came looking for a brawl on this issue and to paraphrase Billy Sherman, I say lets give them all they want.

To the extent their is a Republican/conservative plan it's pretty much a combination of high deductibles* and health care savings accounts, which I guess is a good deal if your wealthy and/or healthy. For everyone else it's not a good deal. The conservative idea is basically is that consumers, with high deductibles, will become more discriminating consumers of health care, driving down it's price. But the idea that the people will become wise shoppers of health care goods or services is an extremely suspect idea, given the complexity of medical treatment. 

The point here is that there are lots of reasons to believe that the market for healthcare doesn't work like the standard competitive market because of informational problems, adverse selection problems, and of course the current patent system distorts it too.

* Just as a side note: I think it's pretty hilarious that Republicans were more than willing to attack the ACA for high deductibles, even though to the extent there is a conservative health care plan, they all pretty much advocate for higher deductibles. Just goes to show the level of cynical behavior the Republican Party was willing to engage in.

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20 hours ago, Simon Steele said:

I absolutely think they are pure evil too. There is no moral goodness left in that party aside from a few outliers (I think John Kasich has some good morals, though he is also an enemy of teachers--or perhaps teacher unions, and I chalk this up to him being misinformed more than being in the pocket of some wealthy donor). Either way, the Republicans are represented by Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump and both of these men have shown a willingness to put themselves (and their positions of power) over the good of the country. 

Mulvaney as the new Chief of Staff is another problem. While it's almost funny that Trump can't get anyone but a low level ass kissing goon to do this important job, Mulvaney is a monster. He hates America's lower classes. And he'll do anything Trump says.

These guys hurt our fellow countrymen by cutting entitlements (entitlements meaning, to me, that every American has a right to a good supply of food and affordable housing). They have ignored climate change so long, obstructed progress so long, that my son and someday his children will likely live in a terrible environment. These people are monsters, and they have to go. Sometimes I hear people say, "These old men will die out then things will get better." There isn't time to wait for them to die out. But how can we convince Americans that these people are hurting them? To vote them out? We can't. And it's scary.

Completely agree. But the "vote them out" really sticks in the craw sometimes. We have to wait YEARS to do that. 

Don't kid yourself about Kacich and don't let his grown up in the room persona fool you. He's a Tea Partier in sheep's clothing. Compared to Trump he's a saint, but that doesn't negate his policy stances. He is currently presiding over a horrific abortion debate which, if Kacich signs the legislation, will render Ohio a virtual prison for women. 

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7 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

 

I like to know where this Republican clown thinks there is a chance at "bipartisan" healthcare reform. Republicans had their chance and they blew it. They have had almost a decade to come up with something and have failed to do so. They have no credible plan for the issue of adverse selection. There is no reason to trust them. Without trust, there can be no "bipartisanship".

The Republican Party came looking for a brawl on this issue and to paraphrase Billy Sherman, I say lets give them all they want.

To the extent their is a Republican/conservative plan it's pretty much a combination of high deductibles* and health care savings accounts, which I guess is a good deal if your wealthy and/or healthy. For everyone else it's not a good deal. The conservative idea is basically is that consumers, with high deductibles, will become more discriminating consumers of health care, driving down it's price. But the idea that the people will become wise shoppers of health care goods or services is an extremely suspect idea, given the complexity medical treatment. 

The point here is that there are lots of reasons to believe that the market for healthcare doesn't work like the standard competitive market because of informational problems, adverse selection problems, and of course the current patent system distorts it too.

* Just as a side note: I think it's pretty hilarious that Republicans were more than willing to attack the ACA for high deductibles, even though to the extent there is a conservative health care plan, they all pretty much advocate for higher deductibles. Just goes to show the level of cynical behavior the Republican Party was willing to engage in.

Other features of Republican/Conservative plans are high-risk pools (quarantining sick people into their own insurance pool, so that they pay higher rates and everyone else benefits by kicking these people out of normal pools), jacking up rates enormously on people 45 to 60 years old or so, raising rates for the working class. And of course destroying Medicaid, so that even more poor and sick people are forced to buy insurance under these terms, or go without.

Whatever happened to across state lines fixing everything?

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2 hours ago, Crazy Cat Lady in Training said:

Completely agree. But the "vote them out" really sticks in the craw sometimes. We have to wait YEARS to do that. 

Don't kid yourself about Kacich and don't let his grown up in the room persona fool you. He's a Tea Partier in sheep's clothing. Compared to Trump he's a saint, but that doesn't negate his policy stances. He is currently presiding over a horrific abortion debate which, if Kacich signs the legislation, will render Ohio a virtual prison for women. 

I didn't know that. That's really f'd up. And I hate his union busting attitude too. I always liked that he seemed compassionate toward the poor, but it sounds like I've had the wool pulled over my eyes. He was a Fox News host, after all. Damn. Is there a good Republican?

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5 hours ago, Simon Steele said:

I didn't know that. That's really f'd up. And I hate his union busting attitude too. I always liked that he seemed compassionate toward the poor, but it sounds like I've had the wool pulled over my eyes. He was a Fox News host, after all. Damn. Is there a good Republican?

Well, you can make up your own mind, of course. I don't think there's a single good Republican left, but that's my opinion!

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1 hour ago, larrytheimp said:

I think TR and Ike could both be described as 'good', especially in the spectrum of 'Familiar US Republicans of the last 120 years'.  Realize this isn't saying much 

The only thing better than being a 'cattleman' in the wild west in terms of being the master of all one surveyed and with the greatest of satisfactions, TR, wrote, in his books about his own experiences, was to be a 'plantation owner in the days before the Civil War.'

He's also the one who highjacked the Cuban war of independence from Spain to make a rep for himself -- and then turn both Cuba and the Philippines into US colonies.

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 I bet a lot of Republicans would say there are no good Democrats.

I don't give even a dayem what those assholes say.  They can't even think, much less reason, much less be honest, much less them giving a damn.  Eff 'em.  They brought it.  They broke it.  They own it.  Willie Horton's biting their collective asses, among much else. THEY BROUGHT TRUMP.

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1 hour ago, Zorral said:

The only thing better than being a 'cattleman' in the wild west in terms of being the master of all one surveyed and with the greatest of satisfactions, TR, wrote, in his books about his own experiences, was to be a 'plantation owner in the days before the Civil War.'

He's also the one who highjacked the Cuban war of independence from Spain to make a rep for himself -- and then turn both Cuba and the Philippines into US colonies.

Whereas Franklin Roosevelt let anti-lynching legislation die in Congress for political advantage, and presided over the Japanese internment camps. Every President, no matter how good, has his flaws.

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2 hours ago, Zorral said:

I don't give even a dayem what those assholes say.  They can't even think, much less reason, much less be honest, much less them giving a damn.  Eff 'em.  They brought it.  They broke it.  They own it.  Willie Horton's biting their collective asses, among much else. THEY BROUGHT TRUMP.

Don't worry, they're also long past caring about what you have to say. And I'd give them about a 50/50 chance of bringing something a whole lot worse than Trump within a decade.

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Congress is allowed to amend its own law, and the Constitution does not permit any court to undermine that power. Still, Judge O’Connor wrote that we cannot divine the intent of the 2017 Congress because Congress didn’t have the votes to repeal the entire law but wished it could. That’s ridiculous. Congressional intent is all about the votes. One would not say Congress wished it could repeal the Civil Rights Act if only a minority of Congress supported such a move. It is conservative judicial doctrine 101, as repeatedly emphasized by Justice Antonin Scalia, that the best way to understand congressional intent is to look at the text Congress was able to get through the legislative process.

Instead, Judge O’Connor goes down a rabbit hole, hypothesizing whether the 2010 Congress would have enacted the entire law without the mandate and whether the law can function without it. What findings Congress made in 2010 are irrelevant to the interpretation of this later legislative act. Regardless, Congress’s own act of 2017 makes clear Congress thinks the law works without an operational mandate. To believe otherwise is to assume Congress enacts unworkable laws and that is not what courts are allowed to presume. Judge O’Connor’s claim to the contrary is the equivalent of saying that your 2017 tax cut isn’t valid because the 2010 Congress also enacted a tax bill, and wouldn’t have included your tax cut there.

 

What the Lawless Obamacare Ruling Means
It’s not based on a solid legal argument. It’s an exercise in raw judicial power.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/15/opinion/obamacare-ruling-unconstitutional-affordable-care-act.html?rref=collection/sectioncollection/opinion&action=click&contentCollection=opinion%C2%AEion=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront

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On 12/15/2018 at 4:47 PM, lokisnow said:

I was remembering an article I read yesterday and both my memory and mental math were wrong, it's actually 3.33% accurate at predicting recessions:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-14/recession-signal-hard-to-miss-if-stocks-are-taken-at-their-word?srnd=premium

 

 

it was even worse for 2009, as zero of 49 recessions around the globe in that year were predicted ahead of time.

***

TLDR, the Smart money is getting out and shouting really really really loudly to the dumb money (not suspicious how loudly they're shouting) that everything is fine.

Lol, thanks for the laugh!

Recessions predicted a year ahead of time? That’s a joke! People who predict recessions look at history and try to be guided by factors that caused recessions in the past. Often they will say things like ‘given x and y factors, we may see a recession in 18 months’. The problem is x and y are not in their control and can easily change. Early in the fall many prognosticators were talking about the strong economy in the US and that there was no reason to expect a recession until at least the end of next year. Now many have changed their minds.

Recessions are 100% confirmed three months later because there are technical definitions of what a recession is, and the numbers have to come out to confirm the recession. There have been times when economists have thought we were in a recession but it turned out that while the economy was weak, we hadn’t technically slipped into a recession, and there have been times when everyone said the economy is weak but we're not in a recession and three months later the numbers show we had slipped into a mild recession.

It doesn’t help that we have had an extremely unusual interest rate pattern for more than a decade. No one has seen the rate environment we’ve been in in their lifetimes and we are literally in uncharted territory. Add to that the fact that the markets went up for almost a decade when historically there are corrections every couple of years. Toss in the fact that there is a staggering amount of hidden debt owed by countries around the world and that stuff has got to hit the fan sooner or later. There is a real possibility we could have another financial crisis triggered by debt and see a depression, even though the financial crisis of 2008 was considered a depression and they historically only happen every 80 years.

And this doesn’t even take into account the fact there are absolute morons out there spouting off all the time, as OGE keeps reminding us!

 

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17 hours ago, Martell Spy said:

Whatever happened to across state lines fixing everything?

Oh how could I forget the across state lines thing? That old conservative canard will likely be around forever, unfortunately. It's like a zombie in a horror movie that just keeps coming back, no matter how many times you shoot it, burn it, or stab it.

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13 hours ago, Triskele said:

It is scary though the extent to which it seems like that goes both ways.  I bet a lot of Republicans would say there are no good Democrats.  We're getting to the point that it's just assumed that the other side are bad people.  I feel like growing up in the Bush years there was some of that but that it's markedly worse now.  Hard to see how it turns around too.  

Trump was about the worst thing that could have ever happened because he tries to amp this up rather than tone it down, and since Trump is such a loathsome human being those that were leaning towards "Republicans are just bad people" feel vindicated like never before.  

I'm sure some Republicans are very fine people. 

People can be grudgingly forgiven for voting for him--they wouldn't be the first people to fall for his con. But to have watched this train wreck for the last two years and still support him OR any Republican?

Not so fine after all.

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I pretty much loathe employer sponsored healthcare insurance. And in fact even conservatives that do health care policy really don't like it either, though they'd of course do something different than what liberals or left leaning people have in mind.
Its too bad we didn't ditch it, right after WW2 and started over.
That said, cancelling everyone's employer sponsored insurance overnight does present a political problem for Democrats, even among people that have employer sponsored insurance and are for covering those that don't have insurance through an employer and support the ban on pre-existing conditions. Democrats will have to think carefully how they want to proceed on this.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/12/14/18117917/medicare-for-all-single-payer-pros-cons-work-health-insurance

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Jessica Salfia knew the pay wasn’t going to be great when she became a teacher in Martinsburg, West Virginia, but she did have really good health coverage. She felt like she could go to see any doctor she wanted. The copay for an emergency room visit was just $15. She had three kids over the years, and health care was one thing Salfia didn’t feel like she had to worry about.

“The one thing about being a public schoolteacher was you knew that was taken care of,” Salfia, a teacher of 16 years, tells me. “But in the last four to six years, it’s been death by a thousand cuts.”

 

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49 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

I pretty much loathe employer sponsored healthcare insurance. And in fact even conservatives that do health care policy really don't like it either, though they'd of course do something different than what liberals or left leaning people have in mind.
Its too bad we didn't ditch it, right after WW2 and started over.
That said, cancelling everyone's employer sponsored insurance overnight does present a political problem for Democrats, even among people that have employer sponsored insurance and are for covering those that don't have insurance through an employer and support the ban on pre-existing conditions. Democrats will have to think carefully how they want to proceed on this.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/12/14/18117917/medicare-for-all-single-payer-pros-cons-work-health-insurance

 

I don’t think it’s very hard:

1) expand Medicare gradually down to 55 over 5 years so newly eligible people but still in the workforce can voluntarily enroll. To encourage quick turnover, write a statute that forces employers to pay (the people that switch) the amount said employer was paying for that employee’s healthcare (or the employer pays a penalty of 1 million per employee per month if they don’t give the “raise”).

2) basically the same, but expand Medicaid salary caps up.

3) to encourage rapid uptake for the newly eligible, pay a one time bounty of $2000 to every person that switches into Medicare and Medicaid plan.

(Stairstep up the withholding rates  annually to cover the stair step expansions, but max out at doubling both, additionally make the withholding more progressive, doubles after 1 million, add extra progressive  taxes for all non primary dwelling capital gains over 1 million)

Alternatively, allow employers to buy into the Medicare and Medicaid markets, which means the private plans have to compete with them, but probably results in a slower switch and a switch with less upside to the insurance markets (the above takes the oldest and poorest off their plans leaving them with middle class young ish healthy people=higher profits per remaining user).

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19 minutes ago, lokisnow said:

I don’t think it’s very hard:

1) expand Medicare gradually down to 55 over 5 years so newly eligible people but still in the workforce can voluntarily enroll. To encourage quick turnover, write a statute that forces employers to pay (the people that switch) the amount said employer was paying for that employee’s healthcare (or the employer pays a penalty of 1 million per employee per month if they don’t give the “raise”).

2) basically the same, but expand Medicaid salary caps up.

3) to encourage rapid uptake for the newly eligible, pay a one time bounty of $2000 to every person that switches into Medicare and Medicaid plan.

(Stairstep up the withholding rates  annually to cover the stair step expansions, but max out at doubling both, additionally make the withholding more progressive, doubles after 1 million, add extra progressive  taxes for all non primary dwelling capital gains over 1 million)

Alternatively, allow employers to buy into the Medicare and Medicaid markets, which means the private plans have to compete with them, but probably results in a slower switch and a switch with less upside to the insurance markets (the above takes the oldest and poorest off their plans leaving them with middle class young ish healthy people=higher profits per remaining user).

Something like this is the way to go, I think.

I won't shed many tears, if employer sponsored healthcare goes the way of the dinosaur. But, the phase out, needs to be gradual, to allow people to adjust to the new system.

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52 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

Something like this is the way to go, I think.

I won't shed many tears, if employer sponsored healthcare goes the way of the dinosaur. But, the phase out, needs to be gradual, to allow people to adjust to the new system.

Right, politically, obviously it’s not “easy” but any changes to the employer sponsored system need two elements:

1) pro switching incentives that are straightforward and focused on individuals. The above gives two big pros, everyone that switches gets an immediate raise and they also get cash on the table from the bounty. 

2) stairstep into the changes so overall people don’t experience a personal shock. This also creates a constituency of people advocating to continue the expansion along these same lines so that they’re not left out.

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