Yuval Levin has a very good piece on this, here is one bit:
They’re [the Democrats] no longer offering themselves up as a sacrifice to protect every last bit of the law[Obamacare], as they have done at enormous political cost for the last five years. Now, they’re spending their capital to protect key constituencies (and therefore themselves), even at the cost of allowing the structure of Obamacare to become even more incoherent and unsustainable.
There is a less polemic but still true version of that sentence, if you are so inclined. Here is another bit:
…They’re thinking past Obamacare, like the Republicans are. Of course, Democrats have a different vision of what comes after Obamacare. Hillary Clinton has started articulating that vision here and there: It’s a move in the direction of the original Hillarycare from 1993, which would add on to elements of Obamacare stricter price controls and more federal micromanagement of the provision of care. (Scott Gottlieb considered what this might look like in National Affairs this summer.)
And this:
The omnibus bill contains a provision, identical to one in last year’s bill, which requires that risk-corridor payments in the Obamacare exchanges be budget neutral.
That will make Obamacare much more difficult to manage.
Furthermore, in the bill Congress restricts federal funding for CRISPR.
Here is a more general piece on the Omnibus. Overall I would say a lot of gridlock is gone, the Republicans have returned to being bigger spenders, and no one in town — once again — worries about the deficit. The sequester was a very temporary victory.
Look at how interest rates soared in response to the lack of caring about the deficit. Efficient markets once again show the dangers of unpaid spending and tax cuts.
More proof that investors aren’t rational.
It’s a move in the direction of the original Hillarycare from 1993, which would add on to elements of Obamacare stricter price controls and more federal micromanagement of the provision of care.
I am not on the Left but I wonder why anyone would think something as complex as health care would be improved by having a grandmother who is unable to manage her e-mail, or use a TV remote and has problems remembering basic facts micromanage every aspect of the industry?
Meh. Those who would drive the Gods of the Copybook Headings out will soon find them back.
Classifying emails as classified AFTER THE FACT and then claiming scandal just reeks of desperation. They search through 30,000 emails of the Secretary of State (at the time) and manage to find 1 or 2 that they can classify as classified AFTER THE FACT. But it is scandalous even though previous Republican Secretaries of State used similar email setups.
Do you know that more Congress time has been spent grilling Clinton over Benghazi than was spent on 9-11?
But these investigations are not politically motivated. Not at all.
I would evaluate her ideas on health care based on her ideas on health care, not based on BS politically motivated investigations. It’s not like she will be personally responsible for every detail. After all, in reality it is possible to hire people to take care of those details which are deemed as important.
Or … we could trust big pharma and big insurers, who have no motive whatsoever to fleece anyone or engage in questionable practices, to set all prices and practices in their respective monopolies.
Fact: The USA spends more on health care than any other nation in the world by any possible means of evaluation, yet achieves worse average results than almost every other wealthy country. Something isn’t working. But I’m not just complaining. There is an easy solution. Learn from those who get better results for less money. Adopt public health care.
You don’t know anything about US secrecy classification law. If a person sends in an email containing “Top Secret” info, like when Amb. Stevens is going to Benghazi, to an unauthorized party (no need to know and no security level) one has committed a Federal crime. FYI in WWI, Mata Hari did similar and was shot as a spy. I’m not saying Hillary should be shot, she’s suffered enough staying with her rapist husband so she can be elevated to president.
In short, everything you wrote is bullshit.
But, don’t let reality get in the way of 2016 campaign lies.
t doesn’t
He doesn’t care about secrecy law; he wants the concussed, withering remains of Hillary Clinton elected into office. Because she is a Democrat. And who can criticize such noble goals?
Hillary’s crimes go way, way beyond national security law. As an experiment, go to the IT department of you standard, non-classified job, and say: “I’d like all work emails destined for dave@officedepot.com to be redirected to a private server in my house, where I will control all access to them, and can delete them forever with impunity.”
Let me know how far you get.
This is exactly what she did — as freaking Secretary of State of the USA.
On the other hand, how many of Hillary’s emails did Snowden get?
It’s funny, right? He’s all over the web criticizing her security, but her’s were not in the genuinely mismanaged servers he raided.
We have a little bit of a catch-22 here, as officials must choose servers they know are being raided by the NSA or the Chinese, or something else.
Huh? He didn’t break into a bunch of services all over the web. He used insider access at the NSA to capture NSA information. Why would he suppose his lack of access to her emails proves anything?
I’m saying that it might be a “cleanest dirty shirt” situation. See also China has been reading White House officials’ private emails.
I’d very much like government to have very secure email with high privacy and some kind of subpoena system. (I’d like us all to have that.) But we aren’t there. We’re pretty messed up on both the security side and the privacy side.
BTW, when you say Snowden accessed “NSA information” we both understand that to be “any information” because functionally that’s what ends up on NSA servers. The great security flaw at the NSA was that they had a global information dragnet, and then they give mid-level IT global root access to it.
I don’t actually support Hillary Clinton at all, although I think much of the world would respect an America that could elect a black man and then a women to the presidency.
But given that it seems that every Republican candidate except for Jed Bush seems intent on trying to stir up WW III, and is entirely TOO effective at promoting hate and bad relations with other countries, I would vote for an amoeba if it won the Democratic primary.
I’m not American, but I support Sanders. Why? Because public health care is cheaper and offers better results, and Sanders is the best chance for that. Because American prisons are overpopulated and Sanders is committed to taking on the crazy incentive system of for-profit prisons which routinely spend millions lobbying for longer sentences. Hey, I’m not American, so “socialist” isn’t synonymous with evil in my lexicon, for practical terms it mostly just means the state taking action where markets underprovide.
Whatever it takes to keep a racist, ignorant, hate-filled radical fundamentalist (Christian) warmonger from becoming commander in chief. An amoeba if need be. Preferably Sanders. But Clinton will do a far better job at averting major international conflict than any of the dimwits on offer in the Republican lineup.
Since I’m not American, the foreign policy stuff is what really matters to me, and the Republicans lineup scares the begeeses out of me.
Gochujang – I personally believe that Hillary’s emails were probably more secure than the official ones.
“although I think much of the world would respect an America that could elect a black man and then a women to the presidency.”
Well part A of this plan hasn’t worked out so well, so another AA hire may not be the smart thing just yet.
I have no issue with either a black man nor a woman being elected. I do find the idea of considering that in your criteria quiet ignorant.
@TMC are you saying the world respects us less under Obama than under George W?
TMC – what would be ignorant about respecting the possibility that Americans are post-racism (not at all, but hey, a black man got elected) and also willing to give real power to a woman?
How does that qualify as ignorant to you?
Symoblism matters. So do role models.
I think the only people with complaints about Obama are die-hard Republicans who just hate anything Democrats do, others who will just hate any black man who achieves anything, and far left wingers who feel betrayed because Obama is actually pretty friendly to business interests.
Open question: what’s your beef with the guy? What would you have done differently?
Remember how no nations wanted to help us with Gitmo because Bush, and when Obama was elected they all helped us take prisoners there to close it?
Yeah. Fun times.
Nathan W doesn’t know that Sidney Blumenthal’s email was hacked by someone in Romania which is how we learned about clintonemail in the first place.
Nathan W also believes Russia and Chinese intelligence agent wouldn’t find out that she was telling people to use “clintonemail” all the time or that her foundation was, too, when they were deep into Russian finance stuff…remember Bill was getting paid off with speaking engagements so State would approve the uranium deal.
I think the only people with complaints about Obama are die-hard Republicans who just hate anything Democrats do, others who will just hate any black man who achieves anything, and far left wingers who feel betrayed because Obama is actually pretty friendly to business interests.
Congratulations on writing the stupidest thing any of us will read all week. Even if we look in the Youtube comment sections.
Careless – instead of just insulting me, which you always do, why don’t you defend your perspective.
You preference for ad hominem attack makes you look very weak and incapable of reasoned argumentation.
I asked what you would have done differently, to try to get the conversation into specific issues, and you fell back to your routine of insulting anything you don’t like.
WOW. Her “rapist husband”.
But I’m the one suffering from a lack of reality.
So … who did Bill Clinton rape and when (be specific)?
Do you know that Congress has spent more time investigating Clinton about Benghazi than the entire amount of time they spent on 9-11?
But these investigations aren’t politically motivated.
Questions: Which crime is she accused of (be specific)? Which alleged action did she commit to be accused of that (please be specific)? What evidence is there (please be specific)?
More questions: On Benghazi … Why didn’t Congress investigate Republicans when more embassies were attacked, with more dead people, when it happened under Bush? On emails … Why isn’t a big deal that Republican Secretaries of State also used personal email addresses, and why weren’t THEY investigated?
But these investigations aren’t politically motivated.
There was a woman, in the 70s, who came out after the Lewinsky scandal was over, who said the he raped her in a hotel room on the campaign trail.
Huh. Any idea if that was ever substantiated, or even followed up with a court case? Or is this just some random claim?
Nathan aren’t you in the listen and believe crowd?
Hillary’s email server was illegal, arrogant, and I would have supposed under-managed.
That said, 2 Top Secret emails is a pretty low number. I’d expect there are many more than that mistakenly routed to AOL.
If she only sent two top secret emails of the course of her years in office, then she wasn’t doing a very good job.
AFAIK, Clinton must have been spending all her time promoting her charitable foundation and none of it actually dealing with important national security issues. This according to Clinton’s own defense.
I think doing a really good job would involve not using email for top secret documents and communication at all.
The more likely story is that stuff that was classified as top secret went through other channels.
The common sense standard for highly sensitive information is that there should be guarantees that it is stored and transmitted in encrypted form, that the devices on which it is accessed restrict the person’s ability to print, make copies or take screenshots, that it is accessed in physical places where there are no cameras or recording devices, and that there are audit features that allow someone to know when a piece of information is accessed, by whom and for how long. Email provides none of this. I don’t know what the standard in government is for handling classified information these days but email is so broken from a security perspective I would be surprised if it is allowed. Even in corporations, employees are often told to just make a phone call if they have something sensitive to discuss instead of putting it in an email.
As a practical matter, it would be rather difficult for a Secretary of State to completely avoid using email to discuss top secret matters, given that the SoS is frequently travelling.
The correct thing to do is to have SECURE email systems with encrypted messaging so that you CAN use email. Which is EXACTLY WHY it so horrifying that she wasn’t using a department server. Either she was insecurely discussing classified information, or she was actively hindering herself from performing central features of her job. Both bad.
Even in corporations, employees are often told to just make a phone call if they have something sensitive to discuss instead of putting it in an email. –
B.S. I work for a defense contractor. Email is still the primary means of communication even on top secret programs. The difference is that the corporate email servers are firewalled off so that you cannot mix personal and business email. That’s exactly why it’s so shocking that she was using a personal email for business. Anyone who has worked in a sensitive area would be fired in a split second if they did that. You use your company desktop for work, and your company email. You might even have a company phone for making business calls. You do NOT conduct business via a personal laptop or a personal email account. You would be thrown out the door by security if you showed up for work with you personal laptop in your bag. Where I work, I cannot even access any webmail accounts from my desktop so it is physically impossible for me to check personal email, except on my phone.
What a bizarre collection of incoherent thoughts put together.
He discussed Clinton “scandals” and healthcare. I discussed Clinton “scandals” (added Benghazi – small deal in the big picture and compared to 9-11 which is a big deal in the big picture – and healthcare. Where’s the incoherence?
What does “grandmother who is unable to manage her e-mail, or use a TV remote” have to do with how many classified e-mails there were?
Any reference to e-mail and Clinton apparently triggers a Pavlov’s Dog reaction with Nathan.
Relieve me of my ignorance. What else could emails and Clinton refer to? Faux News has been pumping this non-story on a daily basis for well over six months now.
Stop watching Fox News then.
Sometimes it seems only liberals watch it.
“unable to manage her e-mail”
Refers to the existence of a private server which nearly every person, even Democrats, has a problem with.
“use a TV remote”
Something revealed in an e-mail of hers.
Neither has anything to do with the classified nature of any e-mail.
I like reading the comments at Faux News to see what kinds of insane conspiracy theories are being pushed around by right wingers. The reporting itself isn’t actually all that terrible, but WOW, that readership is full of more hate, paranoia and conspiracy theories than anything I’ve remotely found on any left wing sites I sometimes read (e.g., alternet).
Why don’t you check some comments on articles relating to the Middle East, the environment, or some racially related murders, and try to tell me it’s mostly liberals on there.
Obama is either a monkey, the Muslim in the Whitehouse or a dictator. Oil industry science is reliable but peer-reviewed science on climate change is all due to corruption and it’s a hoax. Democrats are intentionally trying to destroy America because they hate Americans. And probably we should kill ALL Muslims (and maybe black people too) but THEY are the violent ones.
OK, I know it’s not representative by any means of all Americans, but these people vote and I think it’s important to understand what kinds of insane thinking drives some of the people who vote for the president who holds the keys of the largest nuclear arsenal on the planet.
Don’t like Clinton’s email setup? Make a better policy. Learn. Next story. This shouldn’t even have made the news.
“Refers to the existence of a private server which nearly every person, even Democrats, has a problem with.”
I’m not sure I have a problem with it. People like Hillary Clinton are going to be sending a lot of emails and many of them will be political. How should they do this? Should they use the government emails they are provided for their jobs? Then you have taxpayers essentially footing the bill for personal emails. You also have an ownership problem, if someone like Hillary owns her ‘papers’ then how does she go about retrieving all her emails after she has left the job and maybe another administration is in charge?
Sarah Palin confronted that problem. Her solution was to use Yahoo Mail and her emails were promptly hacked. Other politicians might address the question by using government email but keeping backup copies of everything they send/receive….so you’re back to the ‘private server’ problem since email copied onto thumb drives, personal ‘clouds’ and whatnot are not so secure.
I suspect the ultimate solution isn’t that far from what Hillary did. You can bring your own private server to top level jobs like Sec. of State but policies should concentrate on the gov’t being able to keep copies of your emails and access it for future investigations etc.
Unlike most of us, I suspect a job like Sec. of State does not actually use email for a lot of things, esp. important things. As was mentioned before, email is essentially useless for any type of information you want to treat as ‘top secret’. Jobs like that will probably continue to revolve around spoken conversations and actual memos typed on paper and signed with wet ink rather than email (except for more mundane tasks).
She was the effing Secretary of State. Everything she emails in the course of her job should be presumed classified by default until someone clears it.
A democratic, free society can’t co-exist with pervasive secrecy. If the electorate isn’t aware of what’s going on and is forbidden from finding it out how can they possibly make informed decisions when it comes to evaluating and electing officials? There should be no classified documents, or even conversations, in government at any level. All information related to government, even the most sensitive, should not only be easily available but loudly broadcast. Or forget about “freedom”.
Under the new government in Canada, every citizen can get full access to emails of all ministers of state for $0 (brand new price) through Freedom of Information.
Personally I don’t think it will help with disclosure that much, since this means they will never discuss anything sensitive by email. But probably that’s good for security … as someone else pointed out above, it’s pretty stupid to use email for truly sensitive material.
I do like the ideals of fully open government, but … paranoia … the Russians or Chinese or ISIS will learn too much and use it against us. (But meanwhile probably the secrecy mostly serves to cover up the screwups, corruption, etc).
A democratic, free society can’t co-exist with pervasive secrecy.
Which is why we have laws requiring public officials to use department emails. So, either way, she’s wrong. She was wrong to use a non-department email address and server because it wouldn’t be archived and thus accessible to the public, and she was wrong arrogantly presume that she could decide for herself what would count as classified.
Hazel – do you have similar problems with the Republican Secretaries of State who did exactly the same thing?
Answers to questions from reporters and members of Congress and the public should run through a delayed audio system so a faceless security agent can bleep out or cut off statements if the nameless secret agent decides to censor the official’s words? The same for all telephone calls?
Email has simply replaced significant amounts of such communication, and made the exchanges more frequent.
That someone would largely be the Sec of State.
No, the SoS doesn’t get to decide for herself what is classified and what isn’t.
The interesting subplot is why I’m the midst of so much anger with the establishment that Ryan and the GOP House are firehosing cash all over the government.
Do they actually want Trump nominated?
Pension plan? They may need new jobs before long.
It looks like nothing will stop Trump in the normal electoral process. I am looking forward to seeing what the Establishment will do to keep him out.
He still needs something like 17% to cross the majority threshold. That’s more than the undecideds, it’s also more than Cruz’s total support.
My current guess is that he’ll be the plurality, but not majority, winner after the primaries and they’ll be a brokered convention that nominates someone else. I don’t think he’ll consider that legitimate, but I’m not sure whether or not his supporters will agree.
What a strange world. Trump is “unstoppable” but only supported by the maddest among us.
(An optimist, I think people will get sane as they actually start pressing voting buttons.)
I think it’s more like the rise of Trump has had a tremendously clarifying effect on the minds of incumbents vis a vis the anti-establishment mood in the electorate and they figure a bad economy will certainly not be any help to them come next November.
“Republicans have returned to being bigger spenders, and no one in town — once again — worries about the deficit.”
It is depressing but really what’s the political benefit of worrying about the deficit? You get painted as the party of “NO”, or worse the handmaidens of the greedy 1% because if you’re for less spending it’s only because you want to cut taxes for the rich. Warren Buffet is endorsing Hillary Clinton’s because she wants to “tax the rich” so they can pay their fair share. (Even though the top 1%, pay 45.7% of the Federal Tax Burden (as of 2104) (http://www.cnbc.com/2015/04/13/top-1-pay-nearly-half-of-federal-income-taxes.html)
Sometimes I wonder if this is the fatal flaw in our democracy? It’s hard to imagine voters ever wanting less government spending until it’s too late. (See Detroit and soon Chicago)
“What me worry?” Alfred E. Newman
From Instapundit: “. . . this kind of behavior from the Bipartisan Governing Party is why we get Trump. And, if things go on, will get someone much worse than Trump.”
You don’t have a democracy, you have a dictatorship disguised as a democracy.
By my eyeball this bill cancels about $60B of Obamacare related taxes (funding for Obamacare) and cancels about $600B of other taxes.
That is, 10% of the action is Obamacare related. I think Tyler’s focus is misplaced.
In terms of Hillary and “tax the rich,” of course that’s what she’ll run on, but I don’t see any clues here that it is what a similar Congress will entertain.
Stop conflating income taxes with all taxes.
You win the house and then the senate?
The Republicans were never actually serious about cutting the deficit I’m afraid. That was what they told the suckers, but in almost all cases they were using that as an excuse to attack something they don’t like anyway, or to avoid working with Obama in any way.
1. Recall that Obama was open to a bipartisan deficit deal in 2012 (if memory serves) but the Republicans pretty much blew it up deliberately with unreasonable demands like 100% of the deficit reduction coming from spending cuts. This was of course before Obama got wise to the fact that the Repubs weren’t actually willing to work with him no matter what.
2. Pretty much all of the Republican candidates for President, both this election and the last one, as well as some other “smart, sensible” Repubs like Paul Ryan, have put forth totally unrealistic budget proposals that would balloon the deficit and rely on wildly optimistic assumptions about growth spurred by the tax increases.
So contrary to both your statement and Tyler’s, the Dems under Obama have actually been down like a clown Charlie Brown to “fixing” the deficit, even with mostly spending cuts. It’s ignorant to lay the blame at their feet and to presume that the Repubs have “given up” on a previously sincere desire for deficit cuts.
Rock, #1 is the complete opposite of what you say, there was a big WAPO piece about it. The two sides actually agreed to a deal but then Obama backed out because he felt like public opinion would back him and he could get a better one. There was all kinds of acrimony and then Obama tried to get the original deal back but politically it was too late.
Link? I’ll read it.
I think this is the article; it’s kind of famous:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obamas-evolution-behind-the-failed-grand-bargain-on-the-debt/2012/03/15/gIQAHyyfJS_story.html
Nutshelling, they had an agreement and Obama torpedoed it at the last minute. I don’t think that’s considered particularly controversial even in Democrat circles.
That’s… one way to read that piece.
mavery I was going to say the exact same thing.
Putting aside for the moment that I hold the WaPo, including Lori Montgomery in a low opinion on these matters, I really don’t think this article says what you seem to think it says.
It sounds more like: the Republicans threatened to destroy the world economy unless their own agenda is enacted; Obama (naively it turns out) thinks maybe we can use this opportunity to hammer out a big comprehensive agreement; Repubs offer Obama a crap deal; Obama astutely says hey guys maybe we can make a deal that isn’t complete dogsht for my party?; Repubs say no, so the negotiations fail.
I really don’t see how the Repubs come out of that looking like the good guys.
It sounds more like: the Republicans threatened to destroy the world economy unless their own agenda is enacted;
Yes that’s the ticket .. the Republicans said they would destroy the world economy ..
I do recall there being a time when it seemed very real that Obama was willing to work with Republicans, before it became clear that Republicans were intent on blocking just about anything based on whatever best pretext they could come up with.
But they will deny it to the end of days. Obama is the obstructionist, not them.
I recall Obama promising a “net spending cut”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOZpJ4rSITo
You are getting what it means to worry about the debt quite wrong. For example, worrying about the debt means supporting the taxes needed to pay for expenditures (& hence opposing tax cuts) every bit as much as supporting spending restraint.
You are also making the mistakes of a) limiting talking about taxes to the federal income tax & b) confusing what percentage of federal income tax a percentile pays with what percentage of their income goes toward taxes.
I don’t think many serious analysts doubt whether the US is technically able to pay off the debt, or have a structural deficit of zero (allowing for the business cycle). But they routinely bring up the political infeasibility of revenue raising measures or spending cuts that would be required to achieve such outcomes.
Mike, Your statement does not tie to the share the top 1% have of the total income distribution. Studies show that the top 1% pay 32.9% See, Kleinbard, We Are Better Than This at 227 and CBO reports. This actually is overstated a bit, since the base in these reports include income transfers, and EITC, which is treated as a negative tax. This is a little technical, pre-tax income includes only taxable income, and excludes income from muni bonds, etc., and includes the lower rate on capital gains to reduce the effective rate. More meaningful would be a discussion of the percentage of disposable income taxed on the lower middle class including SS and sales taxes.
“Sometimes I wonder if this is the fatal flaw in democracy?”
FIFY
“Public investment spending as a share of overall economic activity has fallen to lows not seen since the 1940s, according to an analysis by James W. Paulsen of Wells Capital Management. Political impasses have, of course, restricted the flow of money into government projects aimed at improving aging roads, bridges and mass transit. But even in the private sector, many of the hoped-for benefits of low-cost borrowing have not occurred. Corporations have tapped the markets for trillions of dollars in recent years, yet they plowed relatively little of the money into new operations. Such investments might have bolstered hiring and made American business more efficient and globally competitive.Some economists are dismayed that the Fed’s zero-interest policy didn’t do much for infrastructure or even corporate capital investment. . . . Corporations may not have made the most of the Fed’s largess. In theory, low interest rates should spur companies to borrow money that they then invest in new machines and technology that will make their operations more efficient. These investments can improve profitability and make firms more competitive in global markets. But business investment as a percentage of gross domestic product has remained below historical levels since the Great Recession. A surprising lack of investment also shows up in the recent borrowing habits of companies that issue junk bonds, a market that ballooned after the Fed cut interest rates.” http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/18/business/dealbook/a-missed-opportunity-of-ultra-cheap-money.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=H Short-sighted investment policies aren’t restricted to government. Cowen can promote austerity if he likes, but there’s an enormous cost in reduced productivity and slower economic growth.
The Cadillac Tax is the new Sustainable Growth Rate. Hailed as a restraint on spending, to be endlessly delayed before it actually takes effect but too expensive over the ten year period to easily repeal rather than delay (and solicit the campaign contributions to support the delay.)
This was always the most likely outcome as soon as the PPACA was passed, since the Cadillac Tax did not have a sustainable coalition behind it. That the Cadillac Tax only began to hit in the far future was a key warning sign, ignored by those who wished to pretend (whether out of hope or knowing deception) that the bill would actually restrain costs and be deficit neutral.
The risk corridor payments are somewhat overblown. They were always intended to be a temporary measure, as the premiums would always eventually find a stable level once the actuaries understood the market. There’s a lot of experience in regulating insurance rates. Obvious government subsidies on the premium end make as much sense and serve the same purpose as backdoor subsidies through the risk corridors.
Most PPACA supporters are among those who falsely think that insurance companies have high profit margins (not the wonks, of course) and thus will hardly miss the risk corridors. Surely a law built on being sold via deception would always have a fragile coalition (we accept that the same dynamic plays in foreign policy sold with confusion as to the true purposes.)
I was confused by the last paragraph. Were people incorrect to believe that insurance companies had high profit margins, or just that they would therefore be willing to forgo one source of profit (the risk corridors) given their largess?
I do not think the law was sold on “margin.” I think it was sold on universal coverage for the most part, and preexisting conditions as a follow-up.
Look at the Republican attack on the caddy tax and now explain how they will sell capping the deductibility of health benefits at a much lower value with everything over the cap taxed as either corporate income or individual income, depending on how it’s written.
Given the caddy tax only impacts high income workers because 80% of workers have plans that are well under those limits. The union plans are only expensive for those covering early retirees not qualified for Medicare, yet! Everyone who works is included in Medicare, only a decreasing number are exempt from Social Security.
Think police and airline pilots who are required by law to stop working in their professional job before age 65.
It’s sad to watch the United States government angle for more top-down controls on health care when so many other countries are moving in the opposite direction, toward more individualized health care. The U.S. is usually somewhere near the head of the curve on innovation, but not in this case.
To what degree is “payer negotiates” being represented as “top-down controls?”
BTW, evidence that medical progress is slow: Saline better than soap and water to clean wounds
Obviously, it depends on what the payer is negotiating. No sense muddying the waters here. There are ways to achieve more individualized health care without putting any payer or system on the chopping block.
I don’t think the point of comparison is quite correct.
The US is at one end of the extreme, and will perhaps make some very small steps to the centre. Many other countries are at the other extreme and are making some very small moves towards the centre.
It’s not all that different (ignoring medicare) from saying that a pure free market system which adopts a handful of regulations is failing to learn from a pure communist system which makes a move to open up business for small trade.
If the US wanted to learn from other countries at a similar level of development, it would decide to get better results for less money by instituting nation-wide universal health care for everything other than a handful of elective surgeries.
What a lot of us discover about the US health care system when we move out of the country and use single-payer health care for a decade is that the US system is not as different from single payer systems as anyone seems to believe. Moving away from top-down bureaucratic health care is something that can be done from the perspective of anyone’s health care system.
I see. We’re talking about different things more so than disagreeing. What you say makes more sense to me now that I better understand what you’re talking about.
Which nation that formerly had universal coverage has gone to a system where you can be denied access if you don’t have money to pay for basic health care, which is the Republican plan. Unless you believe that the free market allows the unemployed person to have a customer centered car dealer relationship where the customer gets to buy the big truck for the $20 he got begging so he has a comfortable place to live….
And which nation has expressed in policy “trust corporations to seek no rents or economic profits” when dealing with people with no negotiation power. Like hit by a car or having a heart attack or a gun shot. In which EU country do you shop for medical care provider by looking at their price list.
I get that you’re ideologically motivated to promote socialized medicine, but leave that argument aside for the fifteen seconds it requires to think about it and understand that individualized care can be delivered via public or private health care schemes.
No, no, no!
There are two kinds of health care systems: the US kind, and the everyone-else kind!
The US kind is run by corporations, millionaires, billionaires, and corporate jet owners and has horrible results.
The everyone-else system is run by the government and beautiful!
Germany and France and Singapore don’t all have significantly varying programs, with Germany’s closer to the US’s than it is to France’s. No. Unpossible. No. Cannot be.
Heh. Thanks for the laugh.
Why should successful people subsidise the cost of providing health care to the unsuccessful? Let Darwin improve the gene pool.
Because it’s good for the economy. Healthy workers are better workers. People who are secure in access to health services can participate better in the economy as consumers (consider a common complaint about the China model).
Also, it wouldn’t improve the gene pool, since most people have all their children before major health costs are incurred.
Also, it’s fair (but I assume we disagree on what “fair” is).
Also, because we’re humans, not robots or monsters, and value things other than pure efficiency. Because non-pyschopaths care about the well-being of others.
Also, because successful people can afford to. Sorry (not) if that means you have to downgrade from seven star to five star for your next holiday, or drive your expensive car for six months longer before getting your next brand new car, or have to settle for 3500 sq feet instead of 4000, or if your wife has to get $100 manicures instead of $150 manicures, or if you can only afford a $2000 monthly allowance for the kids while they’re at uni instead of a $2500 monthly allowance, or can only pass on 1.5 million after you’re dead instead of 2.0.
Seems like, with the economy in a rebound and unemployment in the sub 6% level, this is a good time to start gradually phasing in some Keynesian counter cyclical spending cuts and tax increases. Run some budget surpluses a few years down the road as the economy gradually moves to full employment. We just need (as I predicted years ago) Democratic control of the White House and Republican control of Congress.
The real question is from whence spending cuts and tax increases. I’ve long favored gradually phasing in a broad based tax increase to where they were in the Clinton years, as well as a reduction in spending. I favor cuts on the military (exempting VA costs) and Medicare.
Also, budget deficit narrows to 8 year low? http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-budget-idUSKCN0S92K920151015
I wish I could favor more spending on infrastructure but US construction costs are astronomical even for a developed nation. This is something few are addressing. Tyler needs to post an ungated paper about about. Come on Tyler, we need you.
Paying workers middle class wages is too big a burden?
Or do you think the costs of infrastructure are too high due to high Wall Street profits and rents?
The labor costs of the old infrastructure that needs major investment was very high in real terms compared to today’s labor costs for similar projects.
The biggest factors adding to labor cost is protecting property rights. If you agree to your property being damaged or destroyed to make the road, bridge, water project cheaper, with you getting no compensation, you are the rare citizen willing to donate your property wealth to We the People. The Big Dig would have been much cheaper if a billion in Boston historic heritage real estate could have been razed.
Now the Atlanta sewer project was expensive because of billions in Wall Street rents sold as a way to make finance cheap.
“The labor costs of the old infrastructure that needs major investment was very high in real terms compared to today’s labor costs for similar projects.”
Nope, the opposite is true. Compare NYC’s second ave subway line. The cost per track mile is ten times the cost of the original 1900s construction cost per track mile. New York built over 20 miles of subway for, in inflation adjusted terms, just under a billion dollars. Today with better technology it is costing untold billions to dig a line a fraction of the length.
Face it, infrastructure costs too much. I don’t know why. Maybe it is excessive planning commissions. Maybe environmental regulations. Maybe something in the way contracts are bid out. Maybe a combo. But it costs way too much. Yglesias has written about it without much conclusive thought:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/08/27/america_s_sky_high_infrastructure_costs.html
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/02/07/why_is_subway_building_so_slow_and_expensive_in_the_united_states_.html
http://www.citylab.com/commute/2011/11/1-billion-doesnt-buy-much-transit-infrastructure-anymore/456/
Yeah, America would be great with intern camps, and with a president where KKK could openly parade their hate without a word of complaint from the commander in chief. It would “make America great again” and earn America respect for all of history to come.
But there’s this little problem. Trump’s obviously Muslim, given how good of a job he’s doing at providing propaganda for ISIS recruiters.
FDR actually sent people to camps, and the left generally considers him the best 20th Century president.
Carter banned Iranians from entry to the country and he won a Nobel Peace Prize.
Obama has drone bombed a thousand or so civilians and he also got a shiny Peace Prize. And no criticism from the majority of the left.
Trump says some admittedly dumb things, and the left tries to see who can wet their pants the most over some words.
FYI, the Nobel Prize committee is not ‘the left’. It’s not even based in America.
Did you know that, or do you just like to see your words show up on the internet?
Where are you getting your news about what the majority of the left thinks, by the way? Mind sharing that source? I’d also like to know what the majority of centrists and rightists think.
This could be invaluable to political scientists.
When an Islamic country carries out a major military attack on American soil (Pearl Harbour analogy and Japanese intern camps) and destroys significant American military assets, it may become sane to discuss intern camps, although I think I would still oppose them.
When a specific country takes hundreds of American embassy workers hostage in the midst of a revolution (Carter analogy), it becomes sane to discuss temporarily barring entry to people from that country (with the exception of refugees). I see this from both a tit-for-tat and security perspective.
Legitimate about Obama and drones, but if you check out sites like alternet.org, you will find plenty of people complaining about drones and how Obama is still a warmonger and corporate lapdog. I think main reason you don’t hear much complaint is that a thousand civilian drone deaths over eight years, while still a very large number, just seems like peanuts compared to the million or so civilian deaths attributed to Bush’s invasion of Iraq.
Trump? He’s got supporters at every single rally that would fit in perfectly in the KKK, and moreover who openly espouse their views. Not once, ever, has he made even the tiniest effort to say something like “hey guys, that’s going just a little bit too far, let’s try to be nice”. I’m not concerned about how smart Trump is, I’m concerned about his ability to bring out the very worst in people without the least concern for reining them in. He’s not dumb, he’s scary.
“Nobel Prize committee is not ‘the left’.”
Really? Look at the Peace Prize winners in the last 15 years.
3 US Democratic presidents.
ElBaradei as a “FU” to George W. Bush.
Going back further, Gorbachev but not Reagan.
Bob,
From the Nobel Committee:
re Gorby: “In 1989 the Berlin Wall fell, and the Cold War between East and West was brought to a halt. In 1990, the Nobel Committee gave President Gorbachev the main credit for this by awarding him the Peace Prize.
Gorbachev grew up under Stalin’s regime, and experienced German occupation in World War II. After the war, he studied law in Moscow and pursued a career in the Communist Party. Journeys abroad gradually made him critical of the inefficient Soviet system, which came under further strain when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979.
In 1985 Gorbachev was elected the new leader of the Soviet Union. He sought to reform communism, and introduced the concepts “glasnost” (openness) and “perestroika” (change).
Society was liberalized, and Gorbachev sought détente with the USA so as to be able to transfer funding from defense to civil society. He declared that he would not support Communist regimes in other countries if their peoples were opposed to them. He thus started a chain reaction which led to the fall of communism in Europe.”
Re: ElBaradei from the Nobel Committee:
“Mohamed ElBaradei took up the post of Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in December 1997, and had managed the Agency’s affairs outstandingly for two four-year periods when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2005. Just before the award was announced, ElBaradei was re-elected for a third period.
In the reasons it gave for the award, the Nobel Committee pointed to the important work ElBaradei and the IAEA had done to prevent nuclear energy from being used for military purposes and to ensure that civil use of nuclear power takes place under reliable international control. The Committee also noted how much ElBaradei had done to strengthen the IAEA as an organization and to increase accession to the nuclear non-proliferation regime.
Mohamed ElBaradei was born in Cairo in 1942. He read law in Egypt, and took a doctorate in international law at the New York University School of Law in 1974. Before becoming head of the IAEA he had worked for a number of years as an Egyptian diplomat and in the United Nations.”
Ronald Reagan:
“My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you I just signed legislation which outlaws Russia forever. The bombing begins in five minutes.”
If he were around today Reagan would be a leftist RINO to you folks anyway.
Bob,
You do understand that people that support the same things as you are not ‘you’, right? For example, I am in favor of increasing food yields. That doesn’t make me a Stalinist.
I support American troops and veterans. Yet, to me, GWBush is still a moron.
Do you see how that works? Do I need to explain it more slowly?
Bob – Maybe the issue is that the American right wing is quite extreme, not that the Nobel folks are leftist.
Why should Reagan have gotten a peace prize? His strategy was “being it on until we wear them out”. Gorbachev could have spilled lots of blood trying to keep the USSR together for 10 more years, but made a historical break with previous policy and enabled the peaceful dissolution of the USSR.
Again, what is the argument in favour of Regan getting the Peace Prize?
This was meant as a reply to Bob from Ohio above.
“legislation which outlaws Russia forever. ”
An imaginary thing like ElBaradei and Gorbachev’s accomplishments.
In the End of Apartheid, Camp David Accords, Oslo amd even the Paris Peace Accords, both sides got credit.
In the fall of communism, only the Communist gets credit.
No leftist bias. Nope.
Trump as a propaganda machine for ISIS? Pure BS. I got the idea from a right wing outlet in Canada.
Which Trump foreign policy is sane? The one that makes enemies with every potential Islamic ally the US might hope to have (banning all Muslims)? The one that destroys relations with Mexico (try to make Mexico pay for the wall)? The one where the US invades foreign countries as takes their resources (as he said in an interview with The Economist)? The one where he tries to tell China how to run their monetary policy (not exactly a new idea, and they will do what they do in their own due time and for their own reasons, just like the USA does).
Capitalism+democracy (in that context) was growing too much faster and could sustain much higher military spending in absolute terms while it remained a much smaller share of GDP.
In his own time Regan’s moves probably seemed very smart and i don’t second guess them, but in retrospect we (the West) were very poorly informed as to just how far ahead we were, and the USSR would have collapsed anyways. But Gorbachev deserves a lot of credit for making sure that it happened in a reasonably orderly manner, in the sense of not trying to hold on for another ten years with violent suppression, etc. Gorbachev, not Reagan, deserves quite a lot of credit for glassnost and much of the rest. But definitely NOT because he was communist.
Reagan merely deserves credit for what seemed like smart choices given a very low quality of information about what was going on in the economy and society of the various republics of the USSR.
Isis claims to be a state and it controls areas in Syria. Trump says something about banning them and you start talking KKK. You’re a joke, man.
Thomas – Trump didn’t call to ban ISIS. He wants to ban ALL Muslims.
The KKK reference is with regard to the types of people that he’s inspiring to start speaking out more and louder. What does it mean to say “light him up” when roughing up a black man at a rally. Is that not a reference to burn him to death? What other interpretation could there be at a Trump rally?