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The Right Prescription
No, Professor Gruber, Obamacare Won’t Boost the Economy
The father of PPACA peddles piffle about the economic impact of his progeny.
George Orwell is often credited with writing, “Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them.” As it happens, Orwell didn’t pen those words. That much-used aphorism merely paraphrases a pithy but somewhat less glib observation he made in a 1945 essay titled, “Notes on Nationalism.” Still, it nicely captures a proclivity peculiar to the luminaries of academia, the “news” media and progressive think tanks: a willingness to believe things that no ordinary person would be foolish enough to credit. A textbook case of this phenomenon can be found in a recent column published in the New Republic by Jonathan Gruber.
Gruber is a Professor of Economics at MIT and has been dubbed, by Avik Roy and others, “the intellectual father of Obamacare.” Thus, it will come as no shock that he spends a good deal of his time defending the health care “reform” law. What does surprise is that Gruber, who is a first class economist and a genuine intellectual, continues to write astonishingly stupid things about the dangerous and destructive creature he sired. In his TNR piece, for example, he advises us, “[W]e know that the ACA will increase jobs in the medical sector in the short run, above and beyond any partial offsets from new excise taxes on that sector.”
Assuming that Gruber isn’t employing the majestic plural in that sentence, it begs the question: Who’s “we”? He can’t be including anyone actually working in health care. Those of us who labor in those vineyards know that his brainchild is actually killing medical sector jobs by the thousands. All across the nation, hospitals are slashing payrolls in preparation for the $155 billion in payment cuts to which industry lobbyists agreed in a 2009 Faustian bargain on Obamacare. The largest expense in any hospital’s budget is labor, so they are reluctantly resorting to reductions in force (RIF) to balance the books.
In February, for example, officials at Jackson Memorial in Miami said the hospital would RIF more than 1,000 workers. Such layoffs have a profoundly negative effect on local economies, where hospitals often rank among the largest employers. Nonetheless, the list of casualties grows. RIFs have recently been announced at Pennsylvania’s Crozer-Keystone Health System, New York’s Sheehan Health Network, Tennessee’s Erlanger Health System, Oregon’s Silverton Health, Maryland’s Adventist HealthCare, Arizona’s Yuma Regional Medical Center, California’s Queen of the Valley Medical Center, ad infinitum.
Somehow, one doubts that the victims of these RIFs would agree with Gruber’s claim that “ACA will increase jobs in the medical sector.” Moreover, despite his attempt to pass lightly over “new excise taxes,” these will contribute greatly to the economic carnage. Obamacare levies a 2.3 percent tax on medical device manufacturers beginning in 2013. How do businesses react when a government raises the cost of doing business in this way? They go elsewhere. Last year Boston Scientific, which manufactures defibrillators, pacemakers, and stents, announced a RIF of 1,200 to 1,400 jobs and “disclosed it was… hiring 1,000 people in China.”
So, Obamacare’s medical device tax has forced Boston Scientific to outsource American jobs to a far away country whose Communist leaders are more business-friendly than the President of the United States. And this trend will continue. The Massachusetts Medical Device Industry Council estimates that about 90 percent of its members will cut back on “operational costs and jobs” after the tax takes effect. This is what Gruber calls “partial offsets from new excise taxes.” The people who lose their jobs at Boston Scientific and other medical device manufacturers will likely employ less euphemistic terms like “layoff” and “bankruptcy.”
How can Gruber be blind to all of this? The first part of the answer lies in his apparent failure to grasp the significance of the recent Supreme Court ruling. He writes, “the law will result in more than 30 million additional Americans getting health insurance,” having apparently forgotten that nearly 20 million of those newly insured patients were going to be covered by a vastly expanded Medicaid program. But the Court struck down the section of Obamacare that would have forced the states to implement the coercive Medicaid mandate, and many governors have already announced that they have no intention of expanding the program.
Combined with a similar reluctance to implement the law’s insurance exchanges, this refusal by the states to expand Medicaid could keep the number of newly insured patients well under 10 million. This means that Gruber’s predictions about a spike in demand for medical workers are delusional. And his notions about “uninsured consumers” who “set aside money in low interest liquid accounts to make sure they have enough to cover unexpected medical costs” caused me to laugh aloud when I read it. To quote Orwell’s actual words, “One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool.”
Now that we’re back to Orwell, it’s worth pointing out that he long ago explained the second reason a smart guy like Gruber can produce such a purblind analysis of Obamacare’s economic effects: “At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was ‘not done’ to mention trousers in the presence of a lady.” Among the intelligentsia of our time, it is “not done” to question the virtues of Obamacare, particularly if you helped beget the beast.
If Gruber so far forgot himself as to challenge progressive orthodoxy on Obamacare, he would soon find himself ostracized. He would be publicly vilified as Senator Joe Lieberman was when he refused to parrot liberal pieties about Iraq. He might even be denounced by his MIT colleagues as Larry Summers was by the faculty of Harvard for committing a far less conspicuous act of heresy. Thus, even if Gruber were introspective enough to see that he has been wrong all along, he would probably never admit it. He would just continue to write stupid things like “The Affordable Care Act will boost the economy.”
About the Author
David Catron is a health care revenue cycle expert who has spent more than twenty years working for and consulting with hospitals and medical practices. He has an MBA from the University of Georgia and blogs at Health Care BS.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (76) | Leave a comment
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Appleby| 7.16.12 @ 6:46AM
Maybe he forgot to add "of China".
c. j. acworth| 7.16.12 @ 7:39AM
I wonder how many doctors are going to leave the profession. There have been quite a few articles written in various media recently by doctors who say they will take early retirement rather than put up with Obamacare.
Purp| 7.16.12 @ 8:44AM
Be very scared ... lame, tired ploy of the right to stop progress.
The guy who architected both Romneycare and Obamacare knows what he's talking about. Article writer has an agenda - I'm shocked, just shocked at his misinformation.
AhiaBoy| 7.16.12 @ 10:12AM
Purp, name us just ONE massive government program that
1. didn't cost exponentially more than it was supposed to;
2. functioned efficiently;
3. fixed the problem that it was created to fix.
And let me help you out. Before you go off on Medicare and/or Social Security, both are going horribly broke and both political parties even agree to that (except Democrats during election time when they say they're fine unless Republicans get control of them.) Both are impossible to navigate the massive bureaucracies if you have a problem, and both are riddled with fraud and abuse.
Now, answer my question.
canuckistani| 7.16.12 @ 3:13PM
How about the outsourcing gift Daddy Bush gave to defense contractors and made a CEO out of Cheney at Halliburton?
Not all entitlement programs include crack whores and illegals.
AhiaBoy| 7.16.12 @ 4:11PM
You get my vote for today's most irrelevant response to a post, canuck.
John Navratil| 7.16.12 @ 6:23PM
canuckistani,
You may recall that Cheney was CEO of Halliburton when Bush tasked him with the VP search. That was before the Bush election. I worked for Halliburton on a project in 1998 and he most certainly was CEO then. In fact, in order to take the office of VP is was demanded that he sell his Halliburton stock to eliminate the appearance of a conflict of interest. It sure torqued the liberals when he sold at a high point in the stock price.
On to the defence contract. Those "no bid" contracts were bid. All the engineering firms did then and, as far as I know do now, bid for unspecified work to the military by providing quoted rates for certain kinds of work. Halliburton won that bid long before Bush was President and Cheney was VP.
No one knows when or if a barracks for a few thousand soldiers will need to be built, and when it must be built there is no time for a competitive bid cycle. That's handled in advance.
Do you have a better plan?
JD| 7.16.12 @ 10:53AM
Purp thinks that we cause liberal programs to go badly when we predict that they will go badly, and blames us for it. This is actually quite the common liberal tactic. They care more about putting blame in the "right place" than actually solving problems.
Albertus Magnus| 7.16.12 @ 12:37PM
Purp is a tiresome, dim-witted fool. What he thinks is "economics" is talking points from pedantic socialists. Nothing he says need be taken seriously and no response will ever shut him up. He "debates" like a divorced woman on PMS. Purp is a waste of time.
Jack of Spades| 7.16.12 @ 8:33AM
There's a third possibility that the author overlooks: to admit that Obamacare is a disaster is to admit that the whole thing was nothing more than power grab. If it isn't working, logically then it must be scrapped. But this would be catastrophic not just for the Democratic party but for the whole progressive movement that rammed Obamacare down our throats. People like Professor Gruber will never admit that they were wrong; their only option is to try to bluster it out.
ElGordo| 7.17.12 @ 6:33AM
If you're on Medicare or approaching 65, remember Obama has removed $ 500 Billion Dollars from Medicare to put into ObamaCare. To stop this you must vote for Romney who will repeal ObamaCare.
.
If you're under 30 and in reasonably good health, you'll only need low cost catastrophic health insurance but you'll be forced to pay into ObamaCare more than any private insurance company would charge, to subsidize those not in good health. To stop this you must vote Obama out of office.
.
If you're middle aged with your employer's health insurance , 85% of you are satisfied with your coverage, but you'll soon be forced into ObamaCare to pay a higher cost with inferior coverage for the dissatisfied 15%. To stop this you must vote for Romney and the Republican Senators who will repeal ObamaCare.
jothepro| 7.16.12 @ 8:39AM
So many of my friends and facebook friends and twitter friends talk about greedy rich people who don't care about "regular" folks. They actually believe that corporations are killing this country because "they send all the good paying jobs to China or wherever else". They can not believe or understand how businesses work. It is so hard to talk to these people because they have already made up their minds that have been propagandized against a free market society.
Purp| 7.16.12 @ 8:48AM
So, when you can't buy food for your family - you want them to be supportive of the Romney-like dealmakers that make money off of other's misery? Seriously - it's not the propaganda- it's the reality that businesses have done exactly that. Lazy management saw a way to reap huge profits by simply shipping jobs overseas. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand that they pay people to make it over there, but ship it and sell it here. And, the corporations make a killing.
Worried about their employees in the U.S. ? Not so much. And, you're surprised that people are upset? Really?
Good Luck with Businessman Richie Romney, Romneycare, Bain and all.
Mimi | 7.16.12 @ 8:57AM
NICE TRY ! The 73% of Patriots, Tea party folks know what they have to do....The force of 2010 is still getting stronger and smarter...The OUTRAGE is still going on worse than ever.....RIGHT....73% of those that will trudge through ICE & SNOW to get to the POLLS....You can just take so many LIES...We are getting to the PUKE stage bud....count on it!!!
jothepro| 7.16.12 @ 9:09AM
Hey Perp, you are one of these people.
jothepro| 7.16.12 @ 9:10AM
I meant Purp..
loulou| 7.16.12 @ 10:00AM
Mimi and jothepro: Don't forget--just ignore types like Perp.
mike 3/505| 7.16.12 @ 2:20PM
Nahh...You had it right the first time.
PhilTheCapitalistPig| 7.16.12 @ 9:37AM
Does anyone else ever wonder why trolls like "Purp" come to read on the American Spectator? Much less comment on the columns?
Seriously, they don't show ANY intellectual capacity at all to understand what the writer is trying to convey. I doubt they read the articles.
So why do they come here? They think anyone actually reading these articles is going to be swayed by such intelligent comments as "Purp" posted above?
Get on back to the Huffington Post where people will think you're bright and intelligent, "Purp".
JD| 7.16.12 @ 1:30PM
I actually prefer to read things written by people I disagree with, so I'm glad a few liberals show up. I just wish they'd use their ears as much as they use their lips.
I'd have little use for this site if all I read was stuff I already know, or worse, bad points made in the name of conservatism, which make me ashamed to be associated with the speakers.
Drunken Sailor| 7.16.12 @ 10:08AM
Please explain how raising the Dem's plans of raising the cost of business and increasing the capital gains taxes on said business is incentive for them to stay in this country?
TrueBlue | 7.16.12 @ 1:17PM
They move jobs overseas because it costs too much to do business here. Who is responsible for all those laws and regulations? Anti-capitalist idiots like you, and Clinton with his favored trading status to China, and NAFTA. Companies are in it to make money, NOBODY works for the benefit of others. It's a matter of making the selfish nature of man work to the best advantage of society.
People follow laws because they protect them. Companies have jobs here because it's profitable. But when government gets in the way and makes it more profitable for them to go elsewhere, they will go elsewhere!
Anyone that complains about a company trying to make money (or someone being a financial success in private industry) should go out and start their own not-for-profit business or sthu. Bain is such a horrible evil company that they invested money to get Staples started (a company that employs a LOT of people), and the Obama campaign purchases nearly all of their office supplies from them.
ElGordo| 7.17.12 @ 6:35AM
If you're on Medicare or approaching 65, remember Obama has removed $ 500 Billion Dollars from Medicare to put into ObamaCare. To stop this you must vote for Romney who will repeal ObamaCare.
.
If you're under 30 and in reasonably good health, you'll only need low cost catastrophic health insurance but you'll be forced to pay into ObamaCare more than any private insurance company would charge, to subsidize those not in good health. To stop this you must vote Obama out of office.
.
If you're middle aged with your employer's health insurance , 85% of you are satisfied with your coverage, but you'll soon be forced into ObamaCare to pay a higher cost with inferior coverage for the dissatisfied 15%. To stop this you must vote for Romney and the Republican Senators who will repeal ObamaCare.
Mimi | 7.16.12 @ 8:48AM
Hopefully, the NEW President, the NEW Senate and House will promptly repeel the dreadful bill and replace it with something that doesn't rob us of our liberties!
The Democrat's attempt to present this monstrosity to a Freedom loving country, to meanly go against the will of the PEOPLE will go down in their history as the GREATEST MISTAKE ever made by any PARTY....
we still wait for the APOLOGY....and it better come sooner rather than later or.....they are COOKED!!
TLP| 7.16.12 @ 8:53AM
He's correct. Thousands of Pencil Pushing Jobs will be added to the Government Rolls, as well as all of the new IRS hires, with all of the New Shotguns that go along with them.
The Author seems to mock Mr. Gruber's Bag of Liberal Sh*t Assertions that - The Medical Field will become Robust, once his plan has driven all of the GOOD DOCTORS out of the field. He implies that - just because he's not in that Field, but an Ivory Tower Economist, he somehow doesn't know everything about The Medical Profession.
What's your point, Mr. Catron?
We have a CHINESE PHYSICIST running the Energy Department, and we all know how that's working out. We're Drilling all over the place.
Right?
If I was Mr. Catron, I'd be focussing on this Idiot's Ignorance in his own, supposed, field of expertise.
He actually believes that TAXING STUFF = MORE STUFF BEING SOLD, which = MORE MONEY for Playing God.
Economics 101 states, very simply that - If you want LESS of something - You Tax it. And, if you want NONE of that thing - You Tax the Fck out of it.
It's not even Debatable.
And, how much are people Paying, to send their kids off to these Liberal Hellholes Full of Ignorance' to "Learn" Pigs Fly 101?
Obviously, all of these Ivory Towers are lacking in Windows, as well as Life Experience.
loulou| 7.16.12 @ 10:04AM
Good doctors will be pushed out of the profession and there will be fewer good doctors coming down the pike. Obamacare mandates that medical schools MUST admit a certain percentage of Hispanics and Blacks (as if they don't already use Affirmative Action.)
It's going to be Affirmative Action on steroids.
Goodbye quality medicine.
Kwan| 7.16.12 @ 9:46AM
It's ironic that something like healthcare that should be something positive is turned into something negative by the forces of darkness (the Obamacrats). Healthcare under ObamaCare will be about conditioning the population to acquiesce to greater and greater control by the central government. It's all about eradicating freedom and implementing tyranny. But we won't need a Catholic priest performing the Rite of Exorcism to rid ourselves of these progressive demons, we can exorcise them ourselves on November 6th by performing the Rite of Voting.
Jack London| 7.16.12 @ 10:14AM
This article is just a big lie from beginning to end. If anyone here thinks there is a single accurate fact about Obamacare here let's have it and I'll tell you why it's a lie.
Jack of Spades| 7.16.12 @ 10:26AM
I have a counterproposal: cite some facts of your own to back up your accusation. The burden of proof is yours.
Pecos Pete| 7.16.12 @ 10:26AM
http://www.beckershospitalrevi.....-2012.html
Jack London| 7.16.12 @ 10:56AM
Hospitals are making layoffs - but not because of Obamacare. In case you've missed it, people have less to spend after GW Bush and his friends trashed the economy. Even so, there are a lot of vacancies for certain healthcare jobs.
Next 'fact'?
Jack of Spades| 7.16.12 @ 11:08AM
That's your "proof?" To the extent that people spend less, they cut back on luxuries, which medical care isn't. Give us something besides Obama campaign talking points.
Jack London| 7.16.12 @ 11:50AM
You are badly informed about the economy. Healthcare spend has slowed markedly in the last 3-4 years – as a government report said in 2010:
"Persistently high unemployment, continued loss of private health insurance coverage and increased cost sharing led some people to forgo care or seek less costly alternatives than they would have otherwise used." (see Health Affairs, January 2011 vol. 30 no. 1 11-22).
And see these comments by a Swedish Medical Center spokesperson in Seattle:
Brown said Swedish is not the only health-care system having financial difficulties.
"Utilization of health-care services is down across the country," he said.
"Individuals are not accessing health care the way they once did."
Major factors, Brown said, include higher health-insurance deductibles and uncertainty in the job market, which has led more people to delay health care because of out-of-pocket expenses or because they don't want to take time away from work.
Patient volumes across the Swedish system so far this year are 8 percent lower than projected, and below what they were a year ago, he said.
JD| 7.16.12 @ 12:01PM
As I wrote below, liberals like Jack believe that spending, not production, drives economies. They do not grasp the simple fact that wealth must exist before it can be spent. They believe wealth is a fixed global constant, and that any producer is simply stealing from another producer who would have existed in the absence of the first. Thus production is of no concern to them; wealth can always be obtained by redistribution.
Jack will proceed to claim that all negatives in the health care industry come from factors other than ObamaCare, because his ideology requires him to exempt ObamaCare from possible blame. Nevermind that ObamaCare mandates that money be forced into the system regardless of whether people can afford it. Nevermind that the economic problems he blames instead of ObamaCare were caused by liberal policies!
Jack London| 7.16.12 @ 12:23PM
Most of Obamacare is some way off . Are you saying the recession has had no impact on spending? And ff we had your policies, wouldn't we drive spending down more and lose even more jobs?
JD| 7.16.12 @ 1:07PM
No and a big no.
Of course the recession matters, but your side caused that, too. But ObamaCare is also influencing the system TODAY. Obama is quick to try to tell us that ObamaCare is already helping people, yet you claim it can't be doing harm because it's not in effect yet. Both can't be true.
My policies would drive down GOVERNMENT spending, not necessarily individual spending, and regardless, in other contexts your the first to admit that health care is too expensive today. The trouble cited in this article is not that health care spending is being driven down; it's that it's being driven down by reducing care, not reducing the price of care.
JD| 7.16.12 @ 1:46PM
Among those impacts which are not "some way off" are the premium increases enacted by insurers anticipating ObamaCare's impacts.
JD| 7.16.12 @ 10:55AM
Remember, people, liberals think that spending, not production, drives economies. ObamaCare spends a lot; therefore, they think it boosts the economy. It really is that simple.
Of course, in alternate conversations, they'll claim it saves money, and they won't notice the contradiction.
JD| 7.16.12 @ 10:58AM
Liberals have long functioned by focusing not on solving problems, but on making sure that the Right is blamed for problems. This is how they gain power - by convincing the electorate that electing conservatives is bad for them.
We cannot stop the march of liberalism so long as we do not change this. Our most important focus now must not be on implementing smart policy, but rather, on making sure the public understands how liberal policy is causing their pain. Only by educating the public can we hope to acquire the electoral backing necessary to effect real change.
Jack London| 7.16.12 @ 11:11AM
It was under that well known liberal, GW Bush, that the economy crashed. You do understand what happened and when, don't you? Obviously not.
JD| 7.16.12 @ 11:54AM
Bush was indeed liberal in a number of ways (NCLB, Medicare Part D, amnesty efforts for illegals, TARP).
And I do understand what happened and when. I even understand why. You, however understand none of those things. You entertain the ludicrous notion that had Gore been elected, 9/11 would have been prevented, even though the terrorists entered the country in 1998. And had Gore been elected, there would have been no subprime debt explosion, even though that, too, started before Bush took office. You think that Gore would have clamped down on mortgage excesses sponsored by his own party when Bush did not. You think that keeping Clinton's record tax rates would have made the economy better. Most of all, you buy the "Bush deregulated everything" nonsense, despite the fact that your party hasn't even bothered to invent a nonexistent piece of legislation that supposedly did this deregulating.
Jack London| 7.16.12 @ 12:24PM
If you had been president, not GW, what would you have done?
JD| 7.16.12 @ 1:19PM
Sure, you'd love for me to put out a bunch of stuff so you can stretch to find one imperfection, then use it to "debunk" everything I've ever said. The liberal standard for conservatives is always perfection, in stark contrast to the liberal standard for the poor, which is to do nothing at all.
I'll bite anyway.
No president can do too much against a filibuster, which GWB fought throughout his presidency, so expectations must be tempered. Still...
In education, I'd follow the model most successful in Europe. Instead of shoveling money at schools, I'd take that money, assign it to the student, and let it be spent on his behalf at any state-accredited school. We in America call that "vouchers".
I'd get behind the efforts of Republicans in congress in 2003-2004 to change what HUD considers a "conforming mortgage", exposing subprime for the risk it is, and get government, particularly Fannie, to stop sponsoring a subprime derivative market with government endorsements and mandates to buy. I'd get the government completely out of the business of evaluating risk, so that its massive failures in this area (as with subprime debt) don't take down the whole economy.
JD| 7.16.12 @ 1:19PM
For a fraction of the cost of most liberal programs, I'd ensure that the requirement to be a citizen to vote or be here is enforced through the establishment of a secure national ID, available for free to people who can prove they should have one, and a border fence. I'd clean up the mess of my predecessors my making an amnesty scheme that is substantially more burdensome than legal immigration, with deportation as the alternative.
Most of all, I'd work to simplify the tax code, trading deduction eliminations for rate reductions. No deduction is off the table. But overall, federal revenue should be capped at its post-WWII average of 18% of GDP. I'd immediately eliminate all "refundable" credits; no one should make money through the tax code. And I'd heavily publicize the federal data that started being collected under Reagan, which you can find by googling "historical effective tax rates", so that Americans know who's really paying what, and how it's changed over time.
Jack of Spades| 7.16.12 @ 11:14AM
This only works if Republican politicians, particularly pols running for office, make the case.
JD| 7.16.12 @ 12:01PM
The burden is not solely theirs. Own your share of it.
JeMeRappelle| 7.16.12 @ 11:09AM
Has this multiple-degree carrying ignoramus ever started a business? Run it successfully? No, I didn't think so. Does anyone really believe he or his oh-so-educated but monumentally inexperienced kind can run a bake sale or make change at a Walmart?
We need to keep an eye on dangerous clowns like Gruber, but we should not give their babblings too much credit. It's like arguing with a mentally ill street person wearing a tin foil hat.
Pecos Pete| 7.16.12 @ 11:51AM
" It's like arguing with a mentally ill street person wearing a tin foil hat." You must be describing our very own Jack London ... and/or Violet.
Bert| 7.16.12 @ 11:35AM
As a recently RIF'd healthcare worker after devoting 28 years to the healthcare industry I can attest that Obamacare is doing exactly what this article mentions, it is taking away jobs not creating them, as hospitals plan for the financial impact of Obamacare.
So here I am, without a job adding to the unemployed population and at 56 years old one of many professionals that companies do not want to hire because they do not want to pay for our experience when they can hire a younger professional for less! Thank you Mr. President!!!
JD| 7.16.12 @ 11:56AM
Bert,
I am sorry to here about your situation. Take comfort, however, in the fact that you do not exist. At least, that's what liberals will now start telling you. I know this well, as I too have shared experiences only to have liberals tell me that my experiences did not happen, despite my having experienced them first-hand.
Jack London| 7.16.12 @ 12:21PM
Bert, how about you say what hospital you worked for so we can check why they made layoffs. Are you saying it is nothing to do with the downturn? Most of Obamacare is some way off - and it is designed to help hospitals plug gaps in uncompensated care, for example.
JD| 7.16.12 @ 12:27PM
Wait, now, is this the ObamaCare that's years away or the ObamaCare that we're already benefiting from? I can never tell which is which - liberals seem to use them interchangeably!
Jack London| 7.16.12 @ 12:49PM
You can see the timeline for the act here JD:
http://www.healthcare.gov/law/timeline
JD| 7.16.12 @ 1:03PM
You're the one who needs to read it, not me. Your side wants us all to believe that we're already benefiting from it in so many ways, yet no negative consequence can yet be assigned to it because it "hasn't taken effect yet". Both can't be true.
Who Knows?| 7.16.12 @ 12:10PM
It is only seemingly amazing that pointy headed intellectuals like Gruber, and the ultimate example, Krugman, with piled higher and deeper PhD’s in economics, use their bully pulpits to promulgate so much conventional wisdom, ‘er, garbage.
The real law is supply and demand. Given billions of separate humans, they MUST interact, using and present supply and demand in any dimension, and health care and health insurance are not exempt.
However, what piqued my “loser” interest was the idea of the “not done”. At any space-time, there exist myriad hidden taboos.
Why not go all the way? Explode all “trousers”!
Indeed, trousers is actually a great word to exemplify the Absolute taboo that could be most usefully exposed. To do so, though, is guaranfuckingteed to offend people who take seriously their separation as egos, but here goes—
“The Book---On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are”, by Alan W. Watts, 1966.
“Dr. Watts modernizes and restates the ancient Hindu philosophy of Vedanta, demonstrating its power as a means for breaking through our world of cool relationships, canned lives, and outsider anxieties. In such chapters as ‘How To Be a Genuine Fake’, ‘The World Is Your Body’, and ‘It’, he persuades the reader to a self-examination that shatters ‘the big lie and hallucination’ of alienation.” From the blurb on back page.
JD| 7.16.12 @ 12:25PM
Now here's some good old-fashioned Obama BS:
http://www.foxnews.com/politic.....ess-alone/
Liberals justify the entirety of their redistributive mess on the idea of vague, immeasurable debts that everyone owes everyone else. They work to increase people's reliance so that they can better sell the idea of these obligations. Then, because the debts cannot be measured, liberals forever claim that they can extract wealth from us, because we "owe" it. We can never say "no, we're done now; we've paid it off" because they've deliberately not quantified the debts. They can justify ANYTHING with this reasoning. And they do.
What they would have us conveniently forget is that we PAY other people for their contributions to our work. If I've hired someone for my business, I do not owe him an immeasurable debt for growing my business to its current level. I owe him a very MEASURABLE debt - the salary we agreed to when I hired him! And once I've paid that salary, I owe him nothing further!
As for owing government - while some businesses (usually run by liberals) do owe their existence to government handouts, many others thrive IN SPITE OF, not because of, government. Furthermore, that Obama would so bluntly call out this supposed debt is a scary thing. We know he buys votes with our tax dollars, but now he seems to be trying to buy more than that.
Jack London| 7.16.12 @ 12:54PM
So all that government investment in research that's given is the internet, cancer drugs, nanontech etc is all a waste is it? Have you any idea – even just a tiny tiny inkling in some part of what massive brain – just how much of our economy is founded on public-private partnership?
Jack London| 7.16.12 @ 12:54PM
So all that government investment in research that's given is the internet, cancer drugs, nanotech etc is all a waste is it? Have you any idea – even just a tiny tiny inkling in some part of what massive brain – just how much of our economy is founded on public-private partnership?
JD| 7.16.12 @ 1:02PM
That's how you want it. You want government to do these things in order to create a vague debt to government, so that you can justify unlimited taxation to pay this never-fulfilled debt.
There was never any need for government to own these areas, yet what they've done has been more than paid for by its biggest beneficiaries, through taxes already paid!
That's your problem. You forget that the employer's obligation to the employee is already paid through the salary, and you forget that the individual's obligation to the government is already paid through taxes.
Except, of course, for the half of the population that pays no taxes. You have them right where you want them - owing Democrats their eternal loyalty in the form of votes and more!
And you have the audacity to brag about your scheme!
Jack London| 7.16.12 @ 1:15PM
You really are stupid aren't you... you simply do not understand that without organizations like the National Cancer Institute we wouldn't have basic biological research that leads to new drugs.
JD| 7.16.12 @ 1:21PM
You're claiming that no research exists without government sponsorship, and you're calling me stupid?
And again, my claim is not only that government doesn't need to do these things. It is also that government doing such things does not create a permanent, open-ended debt from citizens to government. The cost of implementing the "service" is finite; so too is the paying for it.
Jack London| 7.16.12 @ 1:40PM
"It is also that government doing such things does not create a permanent, open-ended debt from citizens to government. "
I don't know what you mean. The government is us - not them. And if we stop paying taxes, which is what I think you mean, we have no government and vastly less basic research, not to mention no care for old age and no defense.
JD| 7.16.12 @ 1:45PM
If we stop paying taxes, we have a lot more money to do these things for ourselves. And we do them better than government.
Nice try, sneaking "defense" in there, as if I'm an anarchist who wants no government at all. Ditch the straw men - you're smart enough to know I'm not saying that.
As for whether government is "us" or "them", I suggest you sync up with your Dear Leader. The Obama quotes article I linked to in my original post sure didn't make it sound like the government is "us". Obama was making a claim that "us" owes money to someone who is not "us". Sounds like "them" to me!
canuckistani| 7.16.12 @ 3:23PM
You would have the means to defend your property from invasion, depletion and resource rationing by privateers alone?
Too funny.
Albertus Magnus| 7.16.12 @ 10:28PM
Mr. London, like Obama and most Bozo-Socialists, "thinks" (if you could call it that) that wealth and prosperity are made possible by government roads and the internet. But the truth is, government roads and the internet are made possible by wealth and prosperity. Without wealth and prosperity to TAX, government has no source of revenue to build the roads and internet. London and his hero have it exactly backwards.
ElGordo| 7.17.12 @ 6:39AM
If you're on Medicare or approaching 65, remember Obama has removed $ 500 Billion Dollars from Medicare to put into ObamaCare. To stop this you must vote for Romney who will repeal ObamaCare.
.
If you're under 30 and in reasonably good health, you'll only need low cost catastrophic health insurance but you'll be forced to pay into ObamaCare more than any private insurance company would charge, to subsidize those not in good health. To stop this you must vote Obama out of office.
.
If you're middle aged with your employer's health insurance , 85% of you are satisfied with your coverage, but you'll soon be forced into ObamaCare to pay a higher cost with inferior coverage for the dissatisfied 15%. To stop this you must vote for Romney and the Republican Senators who will repeal ObamaCare.
Anthony| 7.16.12 @ 2:54PM
Forget it Mr. Catron, you're talking to leftist morons and intellectual degenerates.
Perhaps you can write a blog to explain to Obozo and Ms. Warren, that without roads and bridges, lefties would not be occupying these Ivy Tower Universities, filled with lefty professors making 6 figures.
Of course, without bridges and roads, America would not be America, we'd be Chad, which is where Obozo and Warren want to take America.
To say that those who built the roads and bridges are the ones who helped create success in business is to say without civilization, one wouldn't need an I Pod, DUH!!!!!
canuckistani| 7.16.12 @ 3:21PM
Go to Mexico, India or Dubai - where corporations have free reign and examine the infrastructures more than 500 yards from their doors. You cannot, they don't exist.
Try finding water and electricity for production in any of these countries without paying through the nose to privateers. You cannot.
Be careful what you wish for, you might get it.
American was great because it recognized progress required a push by government. Government has always accepted risks that no businessman would ever accept.
JD| 7.16.12 @ 3:32PM
You are a straw man, making only straw man arguments. You seem foolish as to misread my claim above that government should preserve defense as a claim of the exact opposite.
Government only accepts risks when it does so with other people's money, but none of the things it provides were created by it. Even the utilities you mention were created by private market forces long before government took over them. Someday government will nationalize internet service and you'll claim it didn't exist before nationalization, like in the year 2012!
John Navratil| 7.16.12 @ 6:33PM
Canuckastani,
You mean like in Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand, Switzerland, Australia, Canada, Chile, United Kingdom and Mauritius to name the nine countries listed as more economically free than the U.S. by the Fraser Institute. The countries you mention aren't in the top 30 of either that list or the Heritage Foundation's list.
John Navratil| 7.16.12 @ 6:35PM
Canuckistani,
PS: The government accepts NO risks at it always spends someone else's money. Usually at the behest of people like you.
Anthony| 7.16.12 @ 6:36PM
Some government funding did produce something productive!!! Hell with billions of dollars spent each year, something positive should come from all that money spent!!
The internet, contrary to Algore's fevered mind, was an invention of the hated MILITARY.
Also NASA, before Obozo and Hanson gutted our program,produced innovative concepts.
That's about it, the rest of government is one big cessepool of government waste.
But listen to these lefty morons who post here. They worship government, as opposed to acknowledging that it can do some good, about 5%.
Mark Levin just mentioned that the drug company run by Don Rumsfeld for years, just announced a drug to stop the spread of AIDS. Wow, maybe a kind word about Rumsfeld and the private sector, from you lefties, who'll be lining up for the drug starting tomorrrow!!!
John Navratil| 7.16.12 @ 7:33PM
Anthony,
To pick a nit and to expand on your thesis... the government, as a major customer for computer hardware, demanded a level of inter-communication which the standards committees used to define the interconnection protocols which begat TCP/IP. DARPA came later and had military funding and was, by no means, the only communication protocols which existed. Tim Berners-Lee, working as a contractor for CERN, proposed a higher-level abstraction which could be implemented on disparate machines and architectures (hence the name "hypertext") and is credited as inventing the Internet.
It is complete nonsense to suggest that the public funding for his efforts would have come to anything without intense private development of the competing computer manufacturers. A more credible argument could be made that Window and Macintosh could not exist without Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) - a private company.
Skippy| 7.16.12 @ 6:28PM
The NYC subways were built by railroad companies, not The Big Govt.
It is not always Big Govt that has a good idea or that pays to bring it to reality.
JD| 7.16.12 @ 9:29PM
Quite the contrary. The private sector must always build such things first. Then the government decides to take over, so it can make them worse.
ElGordo| 7.17.12 @ 6:31AM
If you're on Medicare or approaching 65, remember Obama has removed $ 500 Billion Dollars from Medicare to put into ObamaCare. To stop this you must vote for Romney who will repeal ObamaCare.
.
If you're under 30 and in reasonably good health, you'll only need low cost catastrophic health insurance but you'll be forced to pay into ObamaCare more than any private insurance company would charge, to subsidize those not in good health. To stop this you must vote Obama out of office.
.
If you're middle aged with your employer's health insurance , 85% of you are satisfied with your coverage, but you'll soon be forced into ObamaCare to pay a higher cost with inferior coverage for the dissatisfied 15%. To stop this you must vote for Romney and the Republican Senators who will repeal ObamaCare.