The nation is so strapped for cash right now...

maybe oil subsidies really aren't numero uno on the priority list...what say you? Think they can somehow squeeze by on their multibillion dollars of profit alone?

I give up--I'm joining the single payer camp

I'd hoped for the possibility of a compromise with the health ins cos and pharm cos etc. since that would be more palatable to the dittohead population than a single-payer system...but after confronting what I'm facing with Medicare Part D and the doughnut hole of death, having to live in dread of what a cost-of-living increase meant to HELP me might do to me in 2010, I realize that Medicare Part D is the perfect example of what happens when we try to "compromise" with an industry that has no heart and not even an economic interest in doing what is best for the nation as a whole. The short-term-thinking greedheads are the ones who gave us Wall Street 2008 and a Medicare prescription plan that can kill people...what would they give us next?

I also had a horrible thought: what if they have made a lot of bad investments, with all the premiums they have collected which could have bolstered Medicare for ALL...and ask for a bailout one of these days? It could happen!

So I posted the below, here . Which begs the question...which do I trust more, economic theory or my personal experience?

Guess which.

Anyway:

The private health insurance companies have already had decades to show us what they can and will do for...and TO us. They've had their chance in spades. As someone who is facing potential death from next year's annual cost-of-living increase for Social Security Disability (SSDI), which could kick me into Medicare Part D's dreaded "doughnut hole" (no exemptions for people with fatal diseases or anything compassionate like that), and who also can't even try out a home-based business thanks to that same "doughnut hole", I've finally had to accept, despite an economics degree, that in this particular case market failure is so rampant that "competition" isn't really there, and so it cannot work. The health insurance cos siphon off the healthier population and collect premiums from them while the taxpayer picks up the tab for the sick/disabled and the elderly. Nice work if you can get it. They probably have some bridges to sell to us, too. Of course a lot of what they make is frittered away in outrageous administrative costs, executive salaries and perqs, what they remit to their stockholders, and I'll bet you anything some bad investments they are going to be begging to be bailed out of one of these days! A significant portion of the U.S. population has been trained to fear their government more than greedy corporations who don't face all that much competition since they are divided by region and are permitted to exclude people like me who got diagnosed with systemic lupus right when I got off of my parents' health insurance at age 23...resulting in the permanent destruction on December 24, 1985 of any chance I might have had at the American Dream. It is up to our elected representatives to remind our citizens that in a democracy we ARE the government. We've abdicated our power to lobbyists and corporate campaign contributors but we CAN take it back. As for single payer, two arguments: covers ALL of us, at the LEAST COST. We don't even have to pioneer it. We just have to help people not be so afraid of it. We shouldn't have to be concerned about inheriting the flaws of underfunded systems...not with what WE spend on health care per capita...could I please have equal time with Rush on the airwaves? give me that microphone, now! I want to know why the penalty for me trying to work is death, and has been death for some time now, but it's ok for policymakers to consider more of the same old same old when spending $$$ on health care "reform." When I get a good answer, I'll shut up.

Under "socialist" President Obama's plan...

the wealthiest Americans would still pay less taxes than under Reagan, Nixon, or Eisenhower.

Why don't they want to pay even that much? Don't they want to give anything back to the country which provided them with the opportunity to work for or to inherit their wealth? When did naked greed become allied with religious people on the right? Something has gone crazy somewhere, IMHO.

Why doesn't anyone tell them to stop whining, like McCain's economic advisor told those of us who were affected by the recession early?

If you don't want desperately ill citizens like me dropping dead on your sidewalks...actually, in most cases, if you even want to have sidewalks...pay a reasonable amount of taxes proudly and assume the responsibilities of citizenhood. Creating every public good you use from scratch all by yourself would be prohibitively expensive even if there were no intangible benefits as well to being part of a community. It is stunning, IMHO, that this even needs to be said or explained. If one doesn't believe in what Jesus says in the New Testament, which is of course your right, what about what you should have learned in a basic civics class?

A little health economics

The real-life kind.

Stewart vs Cramer

This has been an interesting media event and has put Wall Street behavior back into the spotlight. I found this article useful since it links to the videos of Jon Stewart's interview with Jim Cramer, and also has quite a few different points of view represented in the comments.

It was also interesting to see video of Jon Stewart in 2004 , when he appeared on the tv show Crossfire.

Is it time...

for QE ?

Shout Out to Employers: Don't Shed All of Your Trained Employees!

It has been sad for me to see how over the years employees have come to be viewed as liabilities instead of assets. Employers are not thinking of the costs of training and of later replacing experience and expertise gathered with time on the job. Of course benefits are expensive, which is why it is employers (except for those in the health insurance industry of course) who whould really be getting behind the single-payer health care movement, if common sense ruled the day.

The other thing is that employees in the aggregate are your customers, folks...if they don't have jobs, they don't purchase your products.

Try cutting dividends, top exec salaries and perqs, etc.--cite the economic emergency. If you have to, go to pay cuts. But don't lay off as a knee-jerk response to slow sales. We are all interconnected in our economic system and layoffs contribute to the movement towards the deflationary spiral we don't want to be in. Wake up!

Wish our news media were still interested in informing instead of entertaining...and were truly "fair and balanced" enough to present very important but little-known views on what the hell is going on!

"We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately" -- Benjamin Franklin