Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

Not sure, I'm trying to figure that out. Only thing I can think of is that if the benefit isn't given, it can't be taxed (at the employee level), but I can't remember if or under what circumstances Obamacare changed the taxes on benefits.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

hahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

Wait a minute. That was an intelligent, reasoned response to a question, that acknowledged doubt on an issue.

Am I in the wrong place?

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

That's more like it (though I tend to agree).

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

I think I figured out what the argument is, by Googling the text you quoted, and clicking through to get to the National Review blog post (hi Hank!) that seems to be the ur-source.

This whole line of attack on Obamacare if you think that Democrats like to spend a ton of money and were just trying to blow holes in the federal budget. (Googling this has left me impressed with the number of conservatives who are suddenly willing to accept Howard Dean's pronouncements on healthcare policy at face value.) OTOH, if you think that the public exchanges were not designed to be expensive, and you accept that future Congresses would likely respond to overenrollment in the exchanges by cutting back on the subsidies so that they are less attractive relative to small businesses' insurance offerings, then this doesn't seem so sinister, but rather a fairly mundane detail of health-care problem that can be fixed should it become a problem.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

Please. His response called for nothing short of that. I was being kind.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

Huh? Are you assuming (a) Congress is a rational actor and (b) actually would make that choice politically?

Also, I thought the subsidies go to the individual, not the employer? The McKinsey report, if correct, suggests that employers will save money by dumping their plans, even if they have to increase salaries to retain employees, so I don't know how you get around that incentive.

Finally, my suspicious side thinks this is a result some proponents on HCR wanted all along.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

Club and I make health care choices for our respective small businesses. I promised this would happen and knew I was right because I make health care choices. I'll explain it this way: it's true because I say so.
"you can keep your health care" was obama's first complete big lie.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

future congresses won't get to vote on it, unless obama loses and the thing is repealed before it's killed by the surpremes.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

I thought "I will close Gitmo" was the first?

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

that wasn't a lie. Before he learned what scum was held there he meant he intended to release them, then he learned they couldn't be.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

There have been any number of people who have debunked conclusions in the McKinsey report, which appears to have been particularly speculative.

Some HCR proponents would have liked single-payer, and to the extent that you are suggesting that this can be understood as a step in that direction, then perhaps they would like this. But the White House and most Democrats did not go there, and they designed a bill that was supposed to work differently. No doubt some of it won't work as designed.

It would be interesting to see someone who knows a little about the subject respond to the fervid speculations in the NRO post.

Conspiracy theorists may think that HRC was designed to waste money, but if the Democrats had really wanted to do that, they wouldn't have tried to offset spending. Maybe they didn't get the mix right, but the notion that there was a grand plan to cloak hidden spending increases doesn't make sense, since the people whose votes were being sought on the margin were in the conservative half of the Senate, like Ben Nelson and Olympia Snowe. Or were they in on the conspiracy?

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

Added the rest of that sentence for you.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

Because Obama is going to dissolve Congress in his second term and rule through the UN?

Ah, maybe so. A Court that was reached out to decide the 2000 election might be happy to decide this too.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

funny you abuse your powers to make a point about governments abusing their powers. sad sad sad.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

you trusted the fat weird four eyed guy looking for chads over the Supreme Court?

you do hate America.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

smh

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

That would have been ironic, but I didn't abuse any powers. I just quoted your post, added language to the quoted, and then pointed it out.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

Whether or not I trust him, that's the government the framers designed in the Constitution. But your point that the Court is free to substitute it's own judgment about what's best is well taken.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

I was waiting for you to come along and make a point about club getting all excited about a blog post, but you weren't showing so I finally just said it myself. Sorry to steal your thunder.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

Funny how quick you are to latch on to them, but anyone debunking a position favorable to HCR is viewed suspiciously. Sorry, I trust McKinsey over the OMB and other less reputable studies. The only one that I have seen favorable to HCR that I give any credence to is Rand.

I don't think they have bad intentions. I think it is foolish to think government or any man made body can engineer well something as large and complicated as an industry making up 1/7 of our economy. That is one of the main reasons those like me are so strongly against it.

Haven't seen the NRO post.

Who thinks that Ds designed this to waste money? That is foolish. I do think some Ds were in favor to give the government a bigger role/increase its power, but I don't think anyone had the goal of wasting money.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

Maybe so, but what I am trying to say is that I have seen much discussion of the merits of the McKinsey report which makes it look pretty sloppy. YMMV.

[eta: Here's one example that I found in ten seconds by searching (Bing, Adder) for "mckinsey health care report." IIRC, there was more in the following days.]

Healthcare already is comprehensively regulated by the government, and will be in this country, because people do not want to be exposed to a free market in health care. Most people really do not like the information assymetries and they are risk averse. So that ship has sailed. The question is how to make it work well.

What you posted is based on it. If you follow the links, that's where the analysis is.

And it's from last January, so it's not new.

OK.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

The Austrian School 1, reality 0.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

Dude, i'm at a bar. Can i get a summary of that?

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

I refuse to accept this "presidents get a secret book when they take office that convinces them to change their lifelong beliefs in right, wrong, criminal justice, constitutional law, etc. If i am wrong, every premise of our country, society, and culture is a fraud. Jeremy Bentham won.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

Have you noticed how we never hear about some terrorist leader being caught since Obama took over? They always seem to get killed. Curious, isn't it?

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

There is an organization less rotatable than McKinsey? Really? I take it you've never worked with them? Or is there some reason to think this isn't their usual short-sighted, back of the envelope, musings by a group of 23 year olds?

There are limits on the OMB process, and in particular where they have to accept outside inputs, but there really shouldn't be any question about whether they are reputable.

This is a truly strange thing to say about 1/7 of the economy that was already highly engineered (half or whatever already directly paid for by the government and the rest subject to significant distortion through tax incentives).

It's one of the stranger phenomena that "conservatives" think liberals are their mirror image. While a conservative may well reason from silly abstract notions like "the government should be smaller" to rationalize a given policy, it's pretty silly to suggest that any democrat's true motivation is a government power grab. I'm amazed that you think otherwise.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

2. And if that's what really happened, Obama's people would be telling us that these people are too dangerous and that Gitmo is a necessary evil.

Instead, just yesterday the (intentionally) leaked (and politically motivated) story was the Obama is again insisting on finding a way to close it before the election.

It's still there because getting rid of it is hard and Congress has made it even harder, not because Obama now has secrets that make him think it's peachy.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

Really? Because the government's attempts to regulate healthcare were working so well pre-HCR? If that is the case, why was HCR needed?

You are really, really naive. It's cute.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

Right. That was the point. It's already regulated, and in an inefficient way.

You are really, really delusional. But it's not cute.

ETA: Seriously, who among the Dems do you think secretly says to himself, "I don't give a fuck about covering more people or bending the cost curve, as long as we get more government!" The difference is that Dems think the government can help, and a certain brand of conservative thinks government is always the problem.

You decide
 

Is this treason?

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

Yes, many think they can help. But some see it as a way to gain and maintain power by making the electorate more dependent on government. Hey, electorate, vote for me and I'll give you some free shit. No, that never happens.

Re: You decide
 

No, but I don't agree with it.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

Economists predict that money arises out of barter.
Anthropologists point out there is no support for this in reality.
Economist doubles down.
Anthropologist has some fun at economist's expense.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

Of course that happens, but that's not favoring a policy "to give the government a bigger role/increase its power."

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

Of course it is.

Hank, troll ruling please.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

Adder is very dim, and naive, but not a troll. Never a troll.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

These are not mutually exclusive.


See previous replies.

Yes.

It's only profitable to do so when you have Wal Mart's buying power in the wholesale market. 10X the sales of your few and far in between competitors = You can live make up on volume what you lose in unit sale profit.

There you have a big flaw in my argument. We might have to break up a lot more than Wal Mart to create the job bump I'm seeking. That's unworkable.

See my previous reply asking where stagflation or deflation has ever brought an economy out of a tailspin. We need broader inflation that creeps into housing and wages.

Transfer payment from current consumers to new workers, who become new consumers.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

Trying to get reelected by giving away free shit is not the same as favoring big government for its own sake. Most obviously, the latter might help get the other guy elected.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

It necessarily is exactly that. You're talking motive, Club's talking result. You're right, the Dems' motive is not a mere power grab by the govt. Club's right, however, in noting motive is immaterial - that even if done for the most altruistic intentions, the Dems' HCR vision cannot be effected without conceding more control to the govt.