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Jack is a graduate of Rutgers University where he majored in history. His career in the life and health insurance industry involved medical risk selection and brokerage management. Retired in Florida for over two decades after many years in NJ and NY, he occasionally writes, paints, plays poker, participates in play readings and is catching up on Shakespeare, Melville and Joyce, etc.

Sunday, July 8, 2012

Paying for Health Care, Solving the Unemployment Problem, George III in Arizona and "Sid's Corner."

                                                     
If any of our dear readers feel up to writing an article on the possible discovery of the Higgs-Boson particle, perhaps one of the most significant scientific advances since Einstein’s Theory of Relativity or even Newton’s Law of Gravity, please do so and it will be included in the blog.  It has, on occasion, been referred to as the "God" particle, which might be an interesting point of departure for a writer. Send it as an attachment to riart1@aol.com.  Material on other less esoteric subjects will also be thankfully welcomed.  And this week, incidentally, our alligator is on vacation, being replaced by a visiting butterfly.
JL

                                                      

Paying the Bill for Health Care … and Paying for a Few Other Things as Well.
Why is No One Smiling?

Let’s address the most important part of the health care “debate.”  Actually, it pertains to many other aspects of government too, but because the cost of health care is so significant, dealing with that topic is the key to solving other problems as well.

The United States of America is the richest country in the world.  We spend a greater portion of our wealth on health care than any other nation does.  Yet, there are many in this country who are not getting adequate health care.  I believe tht health care is a “right” and not a “privilege” available just for those who can afford it.  That’s what the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is all about.  It doesn’t solve all of our problems, but it is a giant step in the right direction.

Most advanced industrialized nations have a single payer government run health care plan, similar to what our country provides only to seniors in the form of Medicare.  Obamacare, which is how its opponents derisively refer to the Act, doesn’t go that route but instead tries to get everyone insured via the private marketplace and at the same time, tries to control some of the excessive costs of health care.  Mandating that everyone be included in the plan, or pay a tax penalty, is a step toward making it possible for insurance companies to operate in the Act’s environment because healthy people as well as people with medical problems will pay the same for their insurance.  

  This “tax” will only be paid by those people who do not have personally-purchased nor employer-provided nor government-provided health insurance, and lacking any of these, have not availed themselves of the coverages that will be available from insurance companies for them, regardless of health.  This “tax” is on those who Mitt Romney back in 2006 in Massachusetts called “free-riders.”  I call them “freeloaders.”  The G.O.P. claim that this is an additional tax on all Americans is pure malarkey.  It is a tax on those who increase your hospital bills and your insurance bills (or those of your employer) when the cost of their care is passed on to you.  I have no problem with a tax being imposed on such individuals who often erroneously believe that their present youthful good health will last forever, and would rather spend their money in more personally gratifying ways.

Critics also claim that Obamacare will cut five hundred billion dollars annually from Medicare.  What they don’t tell you is that this amount supposedly will not come from reducing benefits for seniors, but rather, from getting rid of Medicare fraud and effecting economies in how health care is delivered by its providers. But these are very ambitious goals, and will be difficult to accomplish.  

If a program which enables dependent children to remain on their parents’ health insurance policies to age 26, which eliminates lifetimes caps on benefits, which eliminates Medicare's Part D "doughnut hole" on prescriptions, which allows individuals to get health insurance regardless of pre-existing medical histories and which sets up the exchanges to enable insurance to be available for all to purchase deserves to be mocked as “Obamacare,” its supporters should start to accept that name for the program and start calling it “Obamacare” themselves, turning a word of derision to a word in which to take great pride.  

                                                  

The “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,” or just the “Affordable Care Act” may be the law’s tongue-twisting correct name, but as Americans come to recognize its enormous benefits, they may end up just sticking with that catchy name, “Obamacare,”  once its undeserved pejorative associations fade away.   

But let’s get down to the nitty gritty!  And this will be very uncomfortable!  Balloons are about to be punctured.  The Affordable Care Act will cost an enormous amount of money.  Bad news: I believe that the anticipated savings will not occur to the degree anticipated.  Also, medical science will advance, developing new ways to fight disease, which will be extremely costly to develop and ultimately administer.  Not far down the road, the true cost of Obamacare will be recognized and the actuarial assumptions upon which it is based revised significantly upward, cost-wise.  This is something that Republicans talk about but to which most Democrats close their eyes.  

                                         

Thus, additional revenues (a polite word for more taxes) will be needed.   This is the real reason for Republican opposition to Obamacare; it is their mantra that increased taxation, which would fall heavily upon the wealthy, creates economic stagnation making investment funds unavailable, creating unemployment and economic hardship.  This is why Republicans oppose Obamacare.   

Get one thing straight:  The G.O.P., so long as it is dependent for votes upon its troglodyte, Grover Norquist-pledge-signer right wing, would oppose motherhood, apple pie and Santa Claus if being for these things meant an increase in taxes!!! 

                                           

Mitt Romney was happy with the same plan in Massachusetts.  The entire Republican leadership was happy with it when the alarming alternative was a single payer plan such as “Medicare for Everybody” which some Democrats were advocating. Recognizing the effect Obamacare will ultimately have on taxes is the sole reason for their opposition.  

The first sentence of the second paragraph of this article reads: “The United States of America is the richest country in the world” and goes on to point out that we spend more on health care than any other nation, but still don’t make it available to everyone.  How can this be?  The answer is the distribution of wealth.  

Unless someone is old enough to be on Medicare or poor enough to be on Medicaid, the source of their health care is health insurance purchased by their employer or by themselves.  Often, an employer cannot afford to provide this and more often, an employee cannot either.  So to change this, some sort of wealth redistribution will be needed. Now, that sounds like a Marxist dirty word to many but really, all it means is that tax increases will be necessary, but only on the income of those who can well afford to pay them.  A number frequently bandied around defines this group as those with incomes in excess of $250,000.  It also may mean a reduction in taxes on businesses below a certain size, but an increase for those above a certain level.  Actually, some say that increasing the rate at which capital gains are taxed (the wealthy will not like that), bringing it up to the marginal rate for ordinary income, and at the same time eliminating corporate taxes entirely, might work.  No matter how it is sliced however, additional revenue will be needed and the country must recognize that with the understanding that it will come from those who can most afford to pay it.

But the wealthy are not the only ones who will have to pay the bill.  Those receiving health care will have to expect higher co-payments and deductibles, most likely keyed to income.  This will certainly creep into the Medicare program initially but eventually spread to “Obamacare” as well.  Certain discretionary procedures very well might not even be covered.  The burden will have to be shared by all since right now, it is clear that we do not have the financial resources properly lined up to pay for Obamacare down the road, despite what the Administration says.  The nation certainly has the wealth to pay for making health care a right for all Americans, and not just a privilege for those who can afford it, but the money is just not in the right place.  Taxation is the way to get it there.

Extend this reasoning to Social Security, unemployment benefits, food stamps and all other programs comprising our economy’s safety net.  Include the military budget.  Include farm subsidies.  Include running our schools.  Include updating our infra-structure.  Include government employees’ pensions. It goes on and on, at all levels of government and although our nation has the wealth to pay for these things, and more, the money is not in the right place to do so.  

Up to now, we have been borrowing to pay our way, but those days seem to be over with the National Debt reaching astronomical heights.  The wealthiest nation on the planet should not have to go down that path, “maxing out” credit card after credit card.  We shouldn’t have to borrow, when we can tax those who can well afford to pay a little more and will not be any the worse off for it, and at the same time, to keep tax increases reasonable, all of us can learn to expect a little less from our government.

Bottom Line:  The answer is increased taxes on those who can afford to pay, and an acceptance on the part of the recipients of government benefits and services that they will have to plan on receiving less over the years. Everyone will suffer a little, but in the end, we all will benefit.  How Obamacare is ultimately funded will establish a benchmark for establishing a pattern for paying for much of what government does in the future.   Why is no one smiling?

 Jack Lippman

                                                                 

                                                                 

Solving the Chronic Unemployment Problem:

Unemployment is going to be with us for a long, long, long time.  Labor is cheaper overseas and it takes less labor domestically to make things, grow things and do things in our ever-expanding technological world!   Many posts ago I referred to this as “strategic” unemployment and advocated it being used as a tool.  Let me go back to that idea.

                             

The two ways to remedy unacceptably high permanent unemployment rates were (1) mandatory retirement at 55 of all workers and (2) a maximum workweek of 30 hours. That would create more jobs.  While the retirement age is not a flexible tool, the workweek hourly maximum is.  Imagine if the government could, on a quarterly basis, fix a maximum number of hours than anyone could work.  Dropping the maximum work week from 40 to 37 hours, nationwide, with no overtime being permitted, would require hiring employees.  That three hour drop might drop the unemployment rate a full percentage point.  Every three months, depending on the unemployment rate, that maximum could be adjusted.  If we had a 35 hour maximum workweek with no overtime allowed, would the unemployment rate be below 6%?  I wonder.  

Of course, employers would have to pay more employees as they hired them, but they would be paying for fewer hours worked per employee so it would balance out, hopefully.  Of course, take home pay would initially drop, but as the economy recovered from the reduced unemployment with greater consumer spending, more jobs would be created, raises would ultimately follow, and of course, government outlays such as unemployment benefits could be reduced.  Is this idea worth a try?   (Perhaps some university or government economists might construct a “model” to test it out!  They do sillier things.)
JL

                                                                     

George The Third in Arizona

        

                                      George III and the Arizona State Capiol

Yes, I did re-read the Declaration of Independence which was included in the prior posting.  Go back and check it out and see that one of the complaints specifically raised against George the Third in our Declaration of Independence back in 1776 concerned immigration, a topic still in the news today.  The Declaration included these words:

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

This has meaning for us today, as my annotations below indicate:
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners (Despite much open land, it appears that the British wanted to keep inhabitants out, even if they were to become “legal.”); refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither (Looks like the British were against any laws which might make it easier for immigrants, even if they remained “aliens,” to get here), and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands (This translates, in today’s socio-economic world, into raising the conditions by which immigrants might qualify for “benefits,” one of which in those days was free land). 
  
Looks like George the Third would fit well into the Republican Party, particularly in Arizona.   

If immigration were not to be encouraged, how would all of the labor which thirteen basically agricultural colonies required be accomplished, one might ask?

Of course, the British wanted their Colonies to be economically successful, but they did not want the colonists to increase in number and power along with that success. Immigration would have strengthened the Colonies politically as well as economically so the British were against it.  They didn’t need it because back in those days, slavery still existed.  So long as slaves could be imported to do the work, the British were against “the (further) population of these States,” which would strengthen the political position of the Colonists.  It took another 89 years for slavery to be abolished here, finally resolving the problem from a Constitutional standpoint.  But all that is water under the bridge, or over the dam, if you prefer.  The Declaration also includes a reference to our British brethren, from whom we were separating, stating that we were ”Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.”  And so it remains.

                                         
JL

                                                                 

Sid's Corner

My Muse

Sid Bolotin
                                                                       
I have a personal muse
Not any of the nine in Greek mythology

Mine is flesh and blood, ever on call
Email, telephone, in person

To prod, comfort, dissect, and brainstorm
Encompassing virtues of all nine ethereal ones

For consultation regarding
My poetry, stories, essays

Intelligent, articulate, caring, motivating
Whatever needs be caressed

Responses to my oft times sharing of “The Writer’s Almanac”
Are like mutually savoring fine wine

And most importantly, blanketing me
With encouragement


                                                  

 
Most readers of this blog are alerted by Email every time a new posting appears.  If you wish to be added to that Email list, just let me know by contacting me at Riart1@aol.com.  

Also, be aware that www.Jackspotpourri.com is now available on your mobile devices in a modified, easy-to-read, format.

Our family of web sites includes:   www.computerdrek.com  - www.politicaldrek.com  -  www.sportsdrek.com  -  www.healthdrek.com.   
Check all of them out, find out what “drek” really means and feel free to submit your thoughts and articles for publication on these sites, which, while still “under construction,” already contain some interesting content.

Additional new material will continue to be posted on www.politicaldrek.com until the Presidential election.  New material will resume being added to the other three “drek” sites after November of 2012.

Jack Lippman
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