Jump to content
Objectivism Online Forum

MIT report backs Obama

Rate this topic


Recommended Posts

Well, the person I care about in this debate is... me.

I will not being paying less since I do not buy coverage and if I refuse will be fined, taxed or jailed.

I will not be paying less since I am an employer and will be taxed to pay for this mess more than an individual.

I will not pay less because as someone who has always supported myself, taken care of myself and never had children my premiums would reflect paying for those people.

I will not pay less because of the likelihood that to avoid having to purchase insurance for employees and families employers will do their best to hire less... meaning more on the dole and less working people with desposable income to buy my goods and services.

I will not pay less because freedom is priceless and this is the grossest govt intrusion on the individual to be proposed in this nation in recent memory.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As a practical matter, does experience tell us that the government can offer something of the same quality and at a lower price than the private sector? No, such a claim in this context is absurd.

Also, the MIT professor relies on information from the Congressional Budget Office. I have a problem with much of what is put out by the CBO because when they score a bill (for example) they are bound by law to accept the premises provided by the author(s) of that bill. If the authors of the bill say that they will cut Medicare expenditures by $500 billion and there won't be any repurcussions in terms of the care delivered, then that's what the CBO analysis reflects. Then the politicians grab the CBO report and say "See, the non-partisan CBO thinks our plan is going to work...."

I also noticed that the MIT Professor cited the Massachusetts experience to demonstrate how government control of healthcare can reduce premiums. Anyone who is familiar with Mitt Romney's healthcare fiasco knows that it has been a mess from the beginning and has resulted in doctor shortages, cost over-runs and is breaking the state's budget.

http://johnrlott.blogspot.com/2009/07/some...tts-health.html

So, one is left to wonder whether the MIT professor is ignorant or is he just plain dishonest?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Interesting article.

This area of the forum seems to be stagnating. Let's simulate it, shall we?

What is your take on the article?

Comments? Criticisms? Criticisms? Criticisms?

Yeah, governments don't operate based on static numbers. When you get in the way of freedom, the motivation and innovativeness of producers is harmed, and the industry will become more stagnate. Everything the gov't touches is destroyed or made worse, this has been proven a million times over. I don't need some hack from MIT selling more left wing propaganda to me. What any economist selling poison needs to do is prove that socialized medicine works. That would be his job, otherwise this is nothing more than a scam sold by someone who is supposed to know more than anyone else.

This is the modern left wing approach. Get "experts" and present them as if they are above everyone else.

No, Obama's "care" would not work, is the truth, because enslaving producers does not work. What would work is freeing the system up.

What I just stated is a long established tried and true free market principle. If that economist wants to argue with Ludwig von Mises, Jean-Baptiste Say, et.al., then he has a lot of work ahead of him.

Furthermore, the most important issue is the rights issue -- the moral issue -- and men have inalienable rights, whether leftists like that or not.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Also, the MIT professor relies on information from the Congressional Budget Office. I have a problem with much of what is put out by the CBO because when they score a bill (for example) they are bound by law to accept the premises provided by the author(s) of that bill. If the authors of the bill say that they will cut Medicare expenditures by $500 billion and there won't be any repurcussions in terms of the care delivered, then that's what the CBO analysis reflects. Then the politicians grab the CBO report and say "See, the non-partisan CBO thinks our plan is going to work...."

Can you cite that?

I doN'T NOT trust you, but I would like to refer to that elsewhere.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Can you cite that?

That's something I read in a recent editorial and I've heard it repeated several times on various talk shows. Here's an excerpt from the editorial:

Even the forecasters don’t trust the forecasts. If Medicare and Medicaid have taught us anything, it is that entitlement benefits expand over time and cost projections nearly always fall short. Much attention has been focused on the cost estimate “scoring” of the Congressional Budget Office. The CBO itself notes that these estimates are rough and based on assumptions that are somewhat unrealistic, assumptions it is bound to honor according to the rules governing its work.

Consider that the CBO’s net cost estimate for the House plan assumes cuts in provider payments in Medicare of $229 billion and cuts to Medicare Advantage of an additional $170 billion. Congress has a habit of announcing but then withdrawing Medicare cuts. In fact, a 21 percent reduction in Medicare fees (worth a quarter of a trillion dollars annually) is still scheduled for 2010 but seems likely to be rescinded yet again. Moreover, payment provisions in the House bill require the CBO to assume that Medicare costs per beneficiary will grow at 4 percent a year, well below the 7 percent we’ve experienced in the past two decades (excluding Part D, coverage for prescription drugs).

http://www.rbj.net/article.asp?aID=181861

The other thing that is being done with some legislation is to go through an iterative process with the CBO until you come up with what appears to be an acceptable cost for a bill.

"CBO analysts are required by law to provide a cost estimate for every bill reported by a congressional committee, but the agency's work -- and influence -- sometimes extends beyond that, Schick says."

"In many pieces of legislation, particularly when they're important, there's a more interactive process between the CBO and members of Congress," he explains. "Members of Congress will bounce off CBO staff what will happen if the language is this or that, if we expand or contract the numbers who are eligible, [...] if we tweak the legislation one way or the other."

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/health.../cbo_11-12.html

Sen. Ron Widen was interviewed by Ezra Klein of the Washington Post in June of 2009 and they discussed how he was able to obtain a favorable CBO score on his healthcare bill:

"The last week has been one bad Congressional Budget Office score after another. Your bill, the Healthy Americans Act, is a universal coverage bill that managed to get a good score from the CBO. It was revenue neutral in two years and actually improved the deficit after four years. Tell me about the process behind that score.

I was shot in the tailbone with good luck from the standpoint of the timetable. Peter Orszag, who was then the director of the CBO, and I spent 18 months together. It was every week on the sofas in our office going back and forth with various iterations and alternatives for the legislation....

But I found that if you can get the time of the CBO and go through the process of trying different iterations out, you can find your way to the promised land: a score that doesn't blow you out of the water. Our whole objective was to try to get to budget neutrality. We were thrilled when it said in the third year that we started bending the cost curve downward. But to get there, we had to go at it week after week."

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klei...o_score_an.html

If you've ever done any financial forecasting, you'll know that you can get the numbers to say just about anything you want by tweaking your assumptions. It looks to me like the politicians are gaming the CBO.

Edited by gags
Link to comment
Share on other sites

My real point above is principles are our friends. Anyone who claims suddenly that statism will work is making a huge claim that would require he show that free market principles are false. Iows, that's what would have to be established, and that is what an honest economist would do. It would likely take a great deal to establish the point. A mind that operated by accepting any claim in contradiction of established principles would be a wholly concrete bound and helter skelter.

This academic might as well be selling cold fusion.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't doubt the economist's claim that a socialized health care system will lower the cost of healthcare for the average person. If the government taxes Bill Gates an extra $100 per month and uses those funds to pay for my insurance, it would be cheaper for me. However, the total cost of healthcare didn't change. The government just changed who did the paying by using coercion against those who had forced no one. The only way the goverment can make healthcare cheaper is by dictating how much health care providers can charge for services. Obviously, the government would set prices below current market rates otherwise it would have no effect. In the short run, the average person would feel much better about their healthcare coverage in much the same way a cancer patient feels better when ceasing chemotherapy permaturely. In the long run, less capital would be devoted to developing new drugs and treatments. Salaries for healthcare workers would invariably fall. Fewer bright young minds would choose to pursue a career in medicine. The combined departure of capital and talent would lead to stagnation in the industry. Patients would begin to complain about waiting lines and rationed care. At which point the next generation of politicians will begin looking for fresh victims to subsidize an industry now made legally incapable of solving its own problems and start talking about how additional regulations will be needed to solve problems caused by *blank out*

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

There isn't even a bill in the senate yet, this MIT study is already null and void.

What they did was study (supposedly) the bill that was created to get a good CBO score. It wasn't voted on or anything it was created with the purpose of getting a "deficit neutral" scoring from CBO.

This is purely a political "analysis". The MIT economist was a Treasury Department official under Clinton. He was also a co-signer on a previous letter to Obama ENDORSING his approach to health care reform. Forgive me for being skeptical of his impartiality.

So, in the end, we have a neutral partisan economist that released an analysis endorsement of a plan that was never getting anywhere near the floor of the senate in the first place.

... not to mention the logical skepticism anyone must hold to trust whether or not someone could accurately analyze a 1500+ page bill like this accurately. Have any of you actually read some of the legislative language? It is all going to have to be interpreted by lawyers, later legislative changes will occur, etc, etc.

Edited by freestyle
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

The system of government has been corrupted beyond repair. It's in need of a complete overhaul; "tweaks" won't work.

It's at the point where I will be more inclined to consider the truth to be the opposite of what any politician or person-funded-by-government is saying or claiming. If the claim is that health care costs will go down, they will certainly go up. If the claim is that this won't cost "the average citizen more" then the reality will be that in fact it will cost everyone more, and the "average citizens" most of all.

One cannot change one element and contain the effects of that change to just that portion of the economy. An increase in cost of health care, especially to businesses, will result in increased costs for all products and services to cover those higher costs.

As usual, the Obamutts put on their blinkers and make their claims with straight faces. Perhaps some of them even believe what they're saying.

Anyone out there who thinks they're going to have "free health care" or even "cheaper health care" will soon discover that you get what you pay for.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...