1. Geithner meets with bloggers, and here: "We were offered a tray of cookies at the meeting, from which I
abstained on principle. Those of you who think that's silly have no
idea how much I like cookies."
2. Assuming a can opener, more on health care costs.
3. More on the multiplier (shout it from the rooftops).
4. Mandates don't stay modest.
5. Lane Kenworthy reviews Create Your Own Economy.
Tyler, are you going to write up your thoughts on the Treasury meeting?
Tyler, you should link to this post, too:
http://alephblog.com/2009/11/05/my-visit-to-the-us-treasury-part-3/
It’s a list of invitees who did not come.
(I was just about to post, “I’ve never heard of alephblog or Kid Dynamite, why were they invited along with Cowen and Yves and Waldman?” No offense to alephblog or Kid Dynamite.)
Why does Tyler keep posting pointers to health care comments that are essentially “America can’t do health care as well as dozens of other nations.”
But then, lots of opponents to Obama have a single unifying theme in their criticism: America Can’t.
We can’t cut health care costs to the levels of the Swiss.
We can’t improve health deliverable to match Japan, France, Germany,….
We can’t be as efficient as either Asians or Europeans.
We can’t afford to systematically provide health care to everyone.
Of course we have managed to inefficiently and expensively deliver low quality health care to everyone with a public option that is pointed to when compassionate conservatives are called heartless and uncaring, the unfunded mandate to provide uncompensated care which is paid for by the public in many ways, fair and unfair.
This public option has a bankruptcy deductible and a premature death copay before the public pays. To ignore this public option doesn’t make its costs go away which show up in taxes to keep free clinics and ERs open and to pay for other uncompensated care, untreated disease, e.g., drug resistant TB spreading around a community, higher costs of care once people with chronic untreated diseases finally qualify for Medicare or Medicaid, higher insurance premiums as insurers are taxed to pay for uninsured, high bill prices from providers to pay for uncompensated care. What costs $30 in the rest of the world ends up being billed at $250, reduced by insurer contracts to $120, reduced to $80 by Medicare or Medicaid, nothing for the dead person or homeless, and is paid at $250 for the uninsured middle income person denied insurance for a pre-X.
Mulp, you are arguing with us as if we were all undereducated idiots…
Re. multipliers: Shout it from the rooftops?
Tyler, I thought you favored a gov’t stimulus and you specifically favored increased spending instead of tax cuts. Is this a reversal of your position?
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