. Fractals âR Us: I know people that grew up in Russia. The Marxist story was the capitalist world was in collapse all the time and needed the tender mercies of Communism to rescue them. ******* September 29, 2008 SouthAmerica: I got my education from the years that I worked for John M. Templeton and from the people who had been around John M. Templeton for many decades. John M. Templeton believed in the capitalist system and on free market solutions. US government intervention is going to distort the market even further â the financial institutions donât trust each other because they know that the entire financial system is full of toxic waste not only from the sub-prime mess but also from the derivatives market that is spinning completely out of control to the tune of trillions of US dollars in losses. The financial gods of Wall Street want to dump these trillions of losses in the derivatives market into the taxpayer lap. According to an article published on the front page of The New York Times today âTreasury Would Emerge with Vast New Powerâ â the article said: âThe draft legislation, which will be put to a House vote on Monday, gives Treasury Secretary Paulson and successor extraordinary power to decide how the $ 700 billion bailout fund is spent. For example, if he thinks it wise, he may buy not only mortgages, and mortgage-backed securities, but any other financial instruments.â **** I knew all along that this $ 700 billion dollar Wall Street bailout was a massive fraud inflicted on the American taxpayer and nothing else. These scam artists are selling this bailout to rescue the real estate market when in fact it is a case of bait and switch these scoundrels are going to use the bailout money in an effort to stop the derivatives market from a nuclear explosion â now that this financial weapon of financial destruction has blown into pieces people want to clean up the mushroom financial cloud with a $ 700 billion dollar bailout. The only problem is that just God knows how many trillions of US dollars are going to be necessary to clean up the mess from this derivatives nuclear explosion. The $ 3 trillion dollars Hedge Funds market is in the middle of this derivatives nuclear explosion. The right question that people should be asking right now is the following: The explosion on the derivatives market is going to be contained as the explosions in Hiroshima and Nagasaki or this derivatives nuclear explosion was the new version of the nuclear bomb that is 1,000 times more powerful. I believe that they are going to find out that the explosion of the derivatives market is the latest version of the nuclear device. By the way, whoever send me today a threatening message regarding the members of my family I just have one thing to say to you; go and fuck yourself you fucking bastard. .
. September 29, 2008 SouthAmerica: I want to apologize to the ladies who read the postings on this forum for the language that I used on the above posting. I usually donât use that type of language, only on extreme circumstances, and I was very angry when I wrote that posting. I hope I have not offended anyone on this forum with that posting. Please accept my sincere apologies. Ricardo .
. January 21, 2010 SouthAmerica: The title of this thread should read: 1930's FDR "New Deal" - 2008 Democrats approved the "Raw Deal" The Obama administration deserve a grade = F in relation to their strategy and performance to establish a new national/universal healthcare system in the United States. All they had to do was to extend Medicare coverage to the rest of the population. Instead of that they decided to reinvent the wheel. Instead of a simple solution and a solution that the entire population knows that it is working well â the Medicare system â the Obama administration created a gigantic health care fiasco that will end up in complete defeat. ***** The future of the United States includes⦠http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=2499012&highlight=Medicare#post2499012 â¦July 12, 2009 SouthAmerica: The major problems started with deregulation of various industries and massive deficit spending during the Reagan administration. I donât know how old you are, but you be paying for a long time interest on the moneys that the Reagan administration pissed away in defense spending a long time ago. George Bush Senior also pissed away a lot of money during his administration that was added to the tab that your generation is going to get stuck with. George Bush Jr. was the most reckless of the bunch, and during his administration he added another $ 5 trillion dollars to the tab that future generations will have to pay. I would recommend that you read the following thread if you want to have a better understanding of the bill that your generation will be stuck with: U.S. Economy â Budget Deficits â GDP and Defense Spending http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showt...its#post2422515 Things will be even worse than the information that you will read on that thread since the Obama administration inherited a collapsing country from the prior administration and to keep things afloat they will have to run $ 2 trillion dollar annual deficits for many years to come in their effort of turning things around. The current generation is the most incompetent and corrupt generation that this country ever had and they are leaving behind a bankrupt country to your generation. **** July 12, 2009 SouthAmerica: Reply to Specterx You said: âI mean, everybody knows that SS and Medicare are huge problems, nobody has any faith in Congressâ¦â I was 100 percent against the US government bailout of last October to the tune of $ 800 billion dollars â the scare, bait and switch business that the scam artists pulled out last year. I was also against the massive amount of US government guarantees to the tune of trillions of US dollars that the government gave away to these swindlers. Since they first started talking about US government bailouts, and all kinds of US government guarantees I have been writing about that this is the strategy that the Neo-Cons had all along to raid the coffers of the US government, and place massive amounts of all kinds of debt on the books of the US government â and the end result would be the dismantlement of all the safety nets regarding the US economy such as S.S., Medicare, and so on⦠The American people are not aware of the implications and the magnitude of the damage that these scam artists have inflicted into the population of the United States. In future years, because the US government has assumed so much debt from the Swindlers from Wall Street and also from the big US banks this will be the excuse that they need to destroy the remaining social safety nets in the US â resulting in massive poverty in this country, because the scam artists in Wall Street, mismanaged and destroy all safety nets from the pension system, to Social Security, to Medicare, and so onâ¦and at a time when wages have been declining for decades, and the baby boom generation has started retiring by the millions every year. The destruction of the US economic system will be more apparent to everyone in the coming years after the dust settles from all the cumulative mismanagement and the economic implosion that has been going on for many years. ***** Paul Krugman - National Health Insurance http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showt...hlight=national health insurance&pagenumber=1 .
As a practicing physician for more years than I care to admit, I agree with portions of your statement. However, the cost of insuring all Americans or even all uninsured Americans with Medicare would have been prohibitive. Realize that Medicare is paid for primarily through payroll taxes. Seniors and disabled Americans pay a small amount for Medicare, however, their premiums would be quite expensive if not for the payroll tax subsidy. If a lot more or all Americans were given Medicare benefits, then taxed to pay for it, there would be rebellion. The point is that our current healthcare system is simply too expensive and the continued escalation of healthcare costs are unsustainable. However, I doubt that Obama will be any more successful controlling healthcare costs than he has been at controlling our national debt.
. January 21, 2010 SouthAmerica: Reply to DrPepper There are two important pieces of the strategy that would have to be taken care at the same time that Medicare becomes the official national health insurance for the entire US population as follows: 1) Medicaid would be merged with the Medicare system into just one system. 2) Corporations would not be allowed anymore to deduct on their P&L statements the deduction related to health insurance. Note: When the deduction for healthcare is eliminated from the US taxation system that would have the effect of increasing the taxable income for the business world and when they pay the new income tax piece related to the elimination of the tax deductibility of health care expenses then that amount of money would help pay for the new costs of the newly consolidated Medicare system. Keep in mind after Medicare is covering the entire US population â a big piece of that coverage is already going on under the Medicaid program. The remaining group of people who would be covered by the new Medicare system is people under 65 years old and that group donât generate as much health care expenses as the group over 65 years old. The newly created consolidated Medicare system would have eliminated half of the expenses of the current health care system â the expenses related to the gatekeepers, management and massive amounts of paper work. .
Again, although I agree with your ideas in principle, the expense would be exorbitant. First of all, Medicaid pays very little to physcians for medical care. As a result, most physicians will not even treat patients on Medicaid alone. Since Medicaid does not pay well, I assume (but do not know for sure) that it costs less for the government to fund per person than Medicare. Medicaid is also funded jointly by the federal and state governments. Many states can barely afford their portion as is. Therefore, if you rolled Medicaid into Medicare, the cost of treating Medicaid patients would be much higher in general and for the to the federal government specifically. Second, when corporations get a tax deduction for health insurance premiums, it reduces their taxes but does not come close to compensating them for the majority of the cost of the insurance premium itself. Therefore, higher corporate taxes would account for less than half of the cost of the insurance program to the government. Third, although younger people cost less to insure, the cost of their healthcare is still very significant. Fourth, I do not think that the cost savings of going to a universal Medicare health system would generate a cost savings approaching 50% compared to traditional insurance companies. In general, I agree with your point that, if our government is going to start universal health insurance, it makes more sense to copy Medicare rather than devise an entire new healthcare system from scratch. But the cost to taxpayers would be enormous and too much to swallow. I guess if there was an easy solution, someone would have thought of it already.
. January 22, 2010 SouthAmerica: Reply to DrPepper I am aware of all the points that you made on your comments. As you said: âif our government is going to start universal health insurance, it makes more sense to copy Medicareâ â start here and go from there. It makes sense to merge the Medicare and Medicaid system into one. After the new Medicare/Medicaid system is in place covering about 310 million Americans the doctors will be paid based on the basis of this massive amount of patients and we will not have anymore the different fees related to Medicare and Medicaid patients â there will be just one schedule of fees for services provided. The states would pay a monthly fee to the new Medicare/Medicaid system based on the population of each state â that fee probably would be in the ball park of the amount that Medicaid is costing today for each state â the state portion of Medicaid expenses. After the dust settles and all the pieces are in place the new system would not be as astronomic as the mainstream media want people to believe â there is a lot of scary tactics going on because of the self-interest of a lot of groups involved to keep the current ball game going on without much change of the rules. This new Medicare/Medicaid system would have a major positive impact in the labor force of the United States when millions of people would be free from their current dependence on the health insurance provided by their employers â the new Medicare/Medicaid system would free millions of American workers from their current health insurance servitude â people would not have to stay in jobs that they hate just because they need the health insurance coverage provided by their current employers. By the way, I know a lot of people (family and friends) who use the current Medicare system and everybody is happy with the services they are getting from Medicare. In June 2005 I posted the following on the thread: âPaul Krugman â National Health Insuranceâ When I posted that thread on ET almost 5 years ago the United States had over 40 million Americans without health insurance. The latest official US government figures estimates that in December 2009 there were over 60 million Americans without health insurance. *** 06-02-05 SouthAmerica: in a nutshell: There are two major reasons for US national health insurance today. 1) American corporations will be 100 percent in favor of such a plan because would reduce their costs of production, and they can become more competitive in world markets. American corporations already started repudiating their obligations related to pension costs here in the US. 2) Please give a little time, since they just finished mapping the genetic code of the DNA molecule. Believe me the insurance companies right now must be figuring out ways of coming up with tests based on this knowledge of DNA to start screening people before they give them insurance. Mainly now that we have a very fast ageing population in the USA, and older people get sick more often. Insurance companies will try to develop new technologies based on DNA screening to be able to avoid future costs as soon as they can. As a for profit type of business if these insurance companies are not doing that right now, then they are not doing their job. Their number one goal is the bottom line. After they develop these new screening tests, (and I bet they are doing that right now) they will price their policies accordingly to the results of these tests â if someone has the potential of getting a bunch of diseases they will charge a lot of money from that person to give him health insurance coverage. If you think the US has a health care crisis right now with over 40 million Americans with no coverage, and the costs of health care going completely out of control. Wait until you see what is in the store for the near future when the health care crisis in the US is magnified by corporate repudiation of health care costs, and by the development of these new diseases screening technologies. You donât need to be a rocket scientist to figure out that all of this is around the corner - all you need is a little common sense and voila. .