Winners and Losers from the Republican vote to replace Obamacare

'Newsweek' Writer: I Hope GOP Sees Family Members Die After ObamaCare Repeal---foxnews.com

compassion of the left on full display
 
and leftists who hate freedom... think for some reasons you can't eliminate individual incomes even though some of our states do here in Amercia and our country was founded without an income tax.

We had tariffs. So our manufacturing base grew and the govt was funded.



"Jem" thinks income taxes can be eliminated entirely. That's how delusional he is.
 
And they both went into great big gov't stimulus mode.

What
a
coincidence.


Whereas in the depression of '20-21, gov't did nothing and the economy bounced right back.

Can we learn from history?

And they both went into great big gov't stimulus mode.

What
a
coincidence.


Whereas in the depression of '20-21, gov't did nothing and the economy bounced right back.

Can we learn from history?
This was an anomalous recession. It has been studied extensively.
 
by experts with expert economic opinions I am sure.

why don't you link to the studies so we can evaluate the studies and the expertise. I think the topic would be very interesting.
I would think that back then govt spending on infrastructure would have provided more benefit than tax dollar cost. But... I like to read how well an economist could quantify that. Or... how much of the spending might have been ineffective and wasteful.


This was an anomalous recession. It has been studied extensively.
 
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And they don't do anything to bring down the cost of health care treatment.
This goes to the crux of the matter. Everything done so far: Medicare, and even medicaid to an extent, The ACA, and now The AHCA, has been constructed, in their passable versions anyway, as though medical profits are the third rail that must not be touched. Touching that rail would mean certain political death, i.e., political campaigns could no longer be easily financed. Consequently, politicians have been driven to attempt the impossible: affordable, broadly accessible healthcare without undue affect on profits. Both political parties are doomed to failure, because they are both attempting the impossible.

Medical care pricing is inelastic, i.e., the buyer can't walk (in some cases that is literally true :D). Text book, supply-demand equilibria do not hold. That's why of course all other developed countries have gone to either a uniform, very highly regulated, healthcare, insurance market, or to single payer. The lowest cost systems are all single payer. That does not mean necessarily that providers are government employees. It means that there is one, third party payer with power to negotiate prices and keep them down. On behalf of society, this party gains its control over inelastic prices through monopoly.

The naive will think that cost control in an essential, inelastic market is unneeded because the difference between free market price and the inelastic price can be made up by government subsidy. But it will be discovered soon enough that the required subsidy will grow faster than the overall economy, and will began to crowd out other essential components of the economy.

With the benefit of hindsight, we have all learned that when Greenspan, our chief banking regulator, learned of the abuses in the mortgage industry many months before the 2008 crash he did absolutely nothing. He was convinced that market forces would self-correct the excesses, more or less harmlessly, and markets would spontaneously return to equilibrium. He was wrong; they didn't.

Nor will the excesses in the American Healthcare market spontaneously, and harmlessly correct to market equilibrium. If there is any role at all that good government must play, this is it. Government must step in and force the necessary correction.

Is it going to happen? No, of course not. Will even a market with inelastic prices self-correct? Yes, eventually, of course. But it won't be harmless. We already see the first signs of self-correction, e.g., prescriptions filled in Canada and Mexico, medical tourism, drugstore immunizations, etc. These are all types of market correction that are being allowed to occur, and even encouraged to some extent. But these measures are too inconsequential to solve the fundamental problem. Eventually, unacceptable correctives can occur: civil disobedience, riot, mass unemployment, etc. This is avoidable. We, however, are a nation of crises. We won't touch that third rail until we are forced to.
 
if you take what piezoe just wrote and you removed govt from the equation....
there would be competition across state lines
larger and larger groups would form
we would be important drugs with safeguards from all over the world.
But the drug and insurance industry buy democrat and republican politicans....
and they thereby prevent the free market from working properly.

There are only 3 answers
1. much less gov't or none.
2. single payer... but considering the way industry owns politicians it will suck for the public
3. a hybrid system which involves basic care vouchers and competition across state lines and letting insurance companies compete for premium packages.

Since medicare and since we import some many imigrants we don't have a realistic shot at 1.
So the only logical answer is a hybrid systems that takes as much crony and govt corruption out of the system as possible.

A full competition with vouchers with basic care is the only chance we have of having a great system.
 
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There is little competition in medical care because of regulatory capture combined with inelastic prices. Considerable inroads could be made by trading increased risk for deregulation, allowing prescribing pharmacists, and repealing McCarran Ferguson so that insurance companies fell under the sherman act.

But no matter what is done, the problem of inelastic pricing in much of medical services, bolstered by the 'safety argument' --an argument politically impossible to combat-- and market participants bending regulations to raise barriers to new market participants (regulatory capture) remain as an inherent features. This makes it virtually impossible for market forces to work their "magic".

Single payer, because it's monopoly, can effectively combat these inherent hurdles to lower pricing, but at the expense of profits. There is always a trade-off. Ultimately it is what the people want versus what the corporations and industry advocate groups want. Government is, according to fairy tales, supposed to advocate for the people against corporations, but in the U.S. government advocates for corporations against the people. That's whats makes U.S. Corporations Great!, the people, not so great. (Isn't that fascism?, I think it might be.)

We love to say, "What's good for General Motors is good for the Country!", but of course it's a lie as often as it's true. How good was getting rid of mass transport for people. Not all that good, but it sure was good for general Motors!
 
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A full competition with vouchers with basic care is the only chance we have of having a great system.

"The naive will think that cost control in an essential, inelastic market is unneeded because the difference between free market price and the inelastic price can be made up by government subsidy. But it will be discovered soon enough that the required subsidy will grow faster than the overall economy, and will began to crowd out other essential components of the economy."

Vouchers are a dreadful idea. Yet another layer of government -- take the money here, give it back over there minus "administrative expense"-- Vouchers won't do a damn thing to control cost. They will restrict access to care, or alternatively, if they don't, their cost will be hidden in government deficits.
 
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vouchers and competition across state lines get the govt out of the process.
people get to vote with the voucher where they are getting the best care for the cost.
it allows the market to allocate resources to the best uses.
it takes govt workers out of the decision making process and expense.

you let people make the decisions.
Govt has been involved and look at what obama care did to deductibles, prices and competition.



"The naive will think that cost control in an essential, inelastic market is unneeded because the difference between free market price and the inelastic price can be made up by government subsidy. But it will be discovered soon enough that the required subsidy will grow faster than the overall economy, and will began to crowd out other essential components of the economy."

Vouchers are a dreadful idea. Yet another layer of government -- take the money here, give it back over there minus "administrative expense"-- Vouchers won't do a damn thing to control cost. They will restrict access to care, or alternatively, if they don't, their cost will be hidden in government deficits.
 
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