Eh who needs FEMA right now anyway

2001400ex

http://twitter.com/SenJeffMerkley/status/1039706106161979397

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I have scoured the interwebs so go ahead and flag - but there’s a hottie in the end of BeachFront Bargain Hunt promos that is totally brb, yo. Little black bikini, fedora, tight ass.

Maybe Uncle Race can find a pic.

The guy on the right? #IStandWithThrobber

SFGbob

Wow, who would have ever guessed that Federal government would create perverse incentives that cost the tax payers billions. If you can't get private insurance there is no fucking way that the Federal Government should be offering it. Thanks liberals.
I dunno, I think a lot of federal insurance programs have worked out okay, considering all the pros and the cons:

FDIC
Medicare
Medicaid
Terrorism Risk Insurance Program
Federal Crop Insurance Corporation

There are a lot of fair criticisms to be made of many federal insurance programs and the perverse incentives or moral hazards they might create. Of course, that's true for private insurance programs too. Economic theory has long recognized these problems in the private-insurance context. But it doesn't follow that federal (or private) insurance programs should be eliminated.

We'll just have to disagree on how great Medicare and Medicaid have worked out. Both programs are financial disasters. The cost of Medicare alone in 1965 was estimated by the government to be $500 million a year. In 1965 dollars that would be a little less than $4 billion a year today. Last year we spent over $700 billion on Medicare up from $425 Billion just ten years early. Yeah, that's worked out just fucking great.

Our biggest Federal expenditure right now is for Medicare and Medicaid.

pawz

Enjoy watching HGTV's Beachfront Bargain Hunt when people buy some bungalow five feet above sea level anywhere along the Gulf or Atlantic. Oh, it's on stilts, that'll save you

Wife has engineered several beachfront properties in the area over the years. They have to be designed to take seismic loads, obviously, but also dynamic loads of hillside coming down on them from above and wave loads from hundred-year storms. They end up being million-dollar reinforced concrete bunker complexes. But they never have to be rebuilt

NYT has a pretty good array of articles on the dysfunctional federal flood insurance program

But does it take victory-coitus loads?

Axing for a fren.

pawz

Jesus hondo it's not the off-season anymore.

No one wants to read your horseshit articles

Trying to make sense of the 'off-season' qualifier.

2001400ex

Wow, who would have ever guessed that Federal government would create perverse incentives that cost the tax payers billions. If you can't get private insurance there is no fucking way that the Federal Government should be offering it. Thanks liberals.
I dunno, I think a lot of federal insurance programs have worked out okay, considering all the pros and the cons:

FDIC
Medicare
Medicaid
Terrorism Risk Insurance Program
Federal Crop Insurance Corporation

There are a lot of fair criticisms to be made of many federal insurance programs and the perverse incentives or moral hazards they might create. Of course, that's true for private insurance programs too. Economic theory has long recognized these problems in the private-insurance context. But it doesn't follow that federal (or private) insurance programs should be eliminated.
We'll just have to disagree on how great Medicare and Medicaid have worked out. Both programs are financial disasters. The cost of Medicare alone in 1965 was estimated by the government to be $500 million a year. In 1965 dollars that would be a little less than $4 billion a year today. Last year we spent over $700 billion on Medicare up from $425 Billion just ten years early. Yeah, that's worked out just fucking great.

Our biggest Federal expenditure right now is for Medicare and Medicaid.

Wut? Why am I not surprised you didn't fact check your own claim.

As for DeMint’s other figure, he uses the slippery word “likewise” to suggest that his next figure is a similar comparison. But what he is actually doing is plucking a 1965 figure — $500 million a year — and suggesting that was also a prediction for 1990. The quote — that Medicare Part B would require “federal appropriations of about $500 million a year from general tax revenues” — is not from a budget document but appears to come from an obscure and relatively minor New York Times article that appeared on March 11, 1965. But it was not a 50-year estimate, like the previous statistic.

Califano also mentions the $500 million number in his article. He says that this was the price of getting the Medicare bill out of the Senate Finance Committee — to “agree to pay hospitals on a cost-plus basis, and doctors’ fees that were ‘reasonable,’ ‘customary’ and ‘prevailing’ in their communities, thereby giving physicians the power to raise their own fees.”

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/fact-checker/wp/2013/10/21/jim-demints-claims-about-medicare-cost-estimates-from-1965/

Squirt

No problem disagreeing on Medicare and Medicaid.

My main point is that some federal insurance programs are good to have, warts and all, and your argument attacking them in general is overstated.

But let's talk about Medicare. There's reason to doubt the figure you give of $500 million for Medicare costs in 1965. But even if we assume that figure is correct, you're still making an apples-to-oranges comparison. The number of Medicare beneficiaries has grown as the population has aged, and the per-beneficiary costs have increased as life expectancy has grown (older people are more expensive). These points are discussed here (PDF). Of course, an aging population only partly explains the growth of Medicare costs. Health-care costs have increased for everyone, even when adjusting for inflation. So it doesn't seem correct to compare the costs of Medicare in 1965 with the costs of the program as it exists today.

A better way to evaluate Medicare's costs would be to compare them to those of private health-insurance plans. Here there are data reflecting favorably on Medicare. I found numbers here (PDF) showing between 1970 and 2009 that the average annual increase in spending was 8.3% for Medicare but 9.3% for private health insurance. Over the period 1985-2009, the figure was 8.5% for Medicare overall and 6.7% per individual beneficiary. Those figures decreased in 2010-17 after passage of the Affordable Care Act.

Do private health-insurance plans outperform Medicare? Medicare is expensive--no one disputes that--but I haven't seen any evidence that private health insurers do better.

SFGbob

I don't care how much people spend on their private health insurance plans. Private health insurance plans aren't going bankrupt and blowing a hole through the Federal budget.

As far as the $500 million figure, take it up with LBJ, it was the number he was using to pass that piece of shit.

https://washingtontimes.com/news/2011/jun/8/obamacare-wrecks-medicare-by-design-but-why/

2001400ex

No problem disagreeing on Medicare and Medicaid.

My main point is that some federal insurance programs are good to have, warts and all, and your argument attacking them in general is overstated.

But let's talk about Medicare. There's reason to doubt the figure you give of $500 million for Medicare costs in 1965. But even if we assume that figure is correct, you're still making an apples-to-oranges comparison. The number of Medicare beneficiaries has grown as the population has aged, and the per-beneficiary costs have increased as life expectancy has grown (older people are more expensive). These points are discussed here (PDF). Of course, an aging population only partly explains the growth of Medicare costs. Health-care costs have increased for everyone, even when adjusting for inflation. So it doesn't seem correct to compare the costs of Medicare in 1965 with the costs of the program as it exists today.

A better way to evaluate Medicare's costs would be to compare them to those of private health-insurance plans. Here there are data reflecting favorably on Medicare. I found numbers here (PDF) showing between 1970 and 2009 that the average annual increase in spending was 8.3% for Medicare but 9.3% for private health insurance. Over the period 1985-2009, the figure was 8.5% for Medicare overall and 6.7% per individual beneficiary. Those figures decreased in 2010-17 after passage of the Affordable Care Act.

Do private health-insurance plans outperform Medicare? Medicare is expensive--no one disputes that--but I haven't seen any evidence that private health insurers do better.

See the article I posted. A better way to measure is percent of payroll. It's up some from when it was passed but not a lot.

Yes Medicare and Medicaid are out of control. But it's not like politicians on both sides of the aisle haven't sent that for 30 years and politicians on both sides of the aisle have done little to nothing to fix it.

Squirt

I look at the problem differently, @SFGbob. I prefer a healthcare system that provides the best health outcomes for the greatest number of people at the lowest cost, and I don't care whether private industry or a government plan gets us there.

TL; DR: This is me:

2001400ex

I don't care how much people spend on their private health insurance plans. Private health insurance plans aren't going bankrupt and blowing a hole through the Federal budget.

As far as the $500 million figure, take it up with LBJ, it was the number he was using to pass that piece of shit.

https://washingtontimes.com/news/2011/jun/8/obamacare-wrecks-medicare-by-design-but-why/

Shocking that your article doesn't include a link. Mine does, read it. Oh yeah, and your article has this nugget. For reals. Like life expectancy goes up linear forever.

Not quite. The average U.S. life expectancy in 1965, the first year of Medicare, was 70.2 years. Forty years later, in 2005, it rose to 77.4 years, an improvement of 10 percent. Compare that to the 40 years before Medicare, from 1925 to 1965, when life expectancy improved by nearly twice that - 19 percent.

PurpleThrobber

I have scoured the interwebs so go ahead and flag - but there’s a hottie in the end of BeachFront Bargain Hunt promos that is totally brb, yo. Little black bikini, fedora, tight ass.

Maybe Uncle Race can find a pic.

The guy on the right? #IStandWithThrobber

We must never judge.

#teamwifebeater

SFGbob

I look at the problem differently, @SFGbob. I prefer a healthcare system that provides the best health outcomes for the greatest number of people at the lowest cost, and I don't care whether private industry or a government plan gets us there.

TL; DR: This is me:

As do I. We'll just have to disagree on whether Medicaid and Medicare are the best systems to do that. Personally, I don't believe that the Federal government should have any involvement in healthcare.

2001400ex

I look at the problem differently, @SFGbob. I prefer a healthcare system that provides the best health outcomes for the greatest number of people at the lowest cost, and I don't care whether private industry or a government plan gets us there.

TL; DR: This is me:

As do I. We'll just have to disagree on whether Medicaid and Medicare are the best systems to do that. Personally, I don't believe that the Federal government should have any involvement in healthcare.

Perfect. So when you get cancer. Your insurance company can drop you and the hospital can bankrupt you. I don't root for injuries.... But in this case I might make an exception.

SFGbob

I look at the problem differently, @SFGbob. I prefer a healthcare system that provides the best health outcomes for the greatest number of people at the lowest cost, and I don't care whether private industry or a government plan gets us there.

TL; DR: This is me:

As do I. We'll just have to disagree on whether Medicaid and Medicare are the best systems to do that. Personally, I don't believe that the Federal government should have any involvement in healthcare.
Perfect. So when you get cancer. Your insurance company can drop you and the hospital can bankrupt you. I don't root for injuries.... But in this case I might make an exception.

If my insurance company were to drop me because I contracted cancer I would sue the shit out of my insurance company. You can't even imagine a world where the Federal Government isn't wiping your ass can you Hondo.

Squirt

As do I. We'll just have to disagree on whether Medicaid and Medicare are the best systems to do that. Personally, I don't believe that the Federal government should have any involvement in healthcare.

Why not? Is it skepticism about costs and results? Or are there additional reasons (freedom of individual choice, concerns about government dictating care and behavior)? Some combination?

2001400ex

I look at the problem differently, @SFGbob. I prefer a healthcare system that provides the best health outcomes for the greatest number of people at the lowest cost, and I don't care whether private industry or a government plan gets us there.

TL; DR: This is me:

As do I. We'll just have to disagree on whether Medicaid and Medicare are the best systems to do that. Personally, I don't believe that the Federal government should have any involvement in healthcare.
Perfect. So when you get cancer. Your insurance company can drop you and the hospital can bankrupt you. I don't root for injuries.... But in this case I might make an exception.
If my insurance company were to drop me because I contracted cancer I would sue the shit out of my insurance company. You can't even imagine a world where the Federal Government isn't wiping your ass can you Hondo.

Good luck with that. Happened all the time. And most people with cancer don't have the time or money to sue an insurance company.

Squirt

Perfect. So when you get cancer. Your insurance company can drop you and the hospital can bankrupt you. I don't root for injuries.... But in this case I might make an exception.

STFU, we're having an actually civil discussion in the Tug and you're fucking it up.

SFGbob

As do I. We'll just have to disagree on whether Medicaid and Medicare are the best systems to do that. Personally, I don't believe that the Federal government should have any involvement in healthcare.
Why not? Is it skepticism about costs and results? Or are there additional reasons (freedom of individual choice, concerns about government dictating care and behavior)? Some combination?

I do not believe that we constituted a Federal Government to pay for the certainties in life. You will get old, you will get sick and you will die. The Founders faced all of these same realities when they created our Constitution and there were no provisions for the Federal government to pay for grandma's hip replacement today and or leeches and mercury enemas then.

SFGbob

I look at the problem differently, @SFGbob. I prefer a healthcare system that provides the best health outcomes for the greatest number of people at the lowest cost, and I don't care whether private industry or a government plan gets us there.

TL; DR: This is me:

As do I. We'll just have to disagree on whether Medicaid and Medicare are the best systems to do that. Personally, I don't believe that the Federal government should have any involvement in healthcare.
Perfect. So when you get cancer. Your insurance company can drop you and the hospital can bankrupt you. I don't root for injuries.... But in this case I might make an exception.
If my insurance company were to drop me because I contracted cancer I would sue the shit out of my insurance company. You can't even imagine a world where the Federal Government isn't wiping your ass can you Hondo.
Good luck with that. Happened all the time. And most people with cancer don't have the time or money to sue an insurance company.

Actaully it doesn't happen all the time and you're talking out your ass as usual.

2001400ex

As do I. We'll just have to disagree on whether Medicaid and Medicare are the best systems to do that. Personally, I don't believe that the Federal government should have any involvement in healthcare.
Why not? Is it skepticism about costs and results? Or are there additional reasons (freedom of individual choice, concerns about government dictating care and behavior)? Some combination?
I do not believe that we constituted a Federal Government to pay for the certainties in life. You will get old, you will get sick and you will die. The Founders faced all of these same realities when they created our Constitution and there were no provisions for the Federal government to pay for grandma's hip replacement today and or leeches and mercury enemas then.

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;