StrangeSox

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Jun 24, 2011 -> 11:53 AM) I didn't say it was. I simply said they're covered one way or another. You'll need to explain how non-emergency care is covered "one way or another"

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Jun 24, 2011 -> 11:50 AM) In the end, nobody is left without insurance, even in our current system. Those 30M americans are still covered, one way or another. Emergency care isn't health care

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Jun 24, 2011 -> 10:58 AM) Your right, Chicago would never lie about it's statistical crime rates. After all, we are known as the bastion of clean politics. I'd have colored that green, but there isn't a green bright enough. How, specifically, are the murder rate statistics being manipulated?

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jun 24, 2011 -> 10:52 AM) Very different though. In the case of the racial data, hispanic people were being noted as white during traffic stops. That's a long ways from classifying a homicide as something different, which I highly, highly doubt is happening with any frequency. Think about the dynamics of that - a guy gets shot, what are they going to do, call it natural causes? Suicide? If this were true, suicide rates would be skyrocketing. Its just not believable. Regardless, it still has nothing to do with the topic that was being discussed. I said drug rates between welfare and non-welfare are statistically equivalent. Jenks said BS, provide source. I did, he rejected in favor of stories from his police friends who work on the drug unit in some of the worst parts of Chicago and refuses to see why that could be a really, really terrible sample set for judging drug use rates, even qualitatively. Talking about massaging murder rates or traffic stop data is irrelevant.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Jun 24, 2011 -> 10:49 AM) Of course it rations care. If a single doctor has 500 patients in front of you, there isn't much he can do. However, under the current system, you could always go elsewhere and not wait. Unless you don't have insurance, like 30M Americans. Which is the counter-point to Republican rationing claims: we already do, it's based on wealth and it leaves millions without health care at all. I don't have a problem with supplemental private insurance under a UHC system. But those awesome socialist systems get more people coverage for less cost and don't leave significant portions of their population SOL in a "f*** you, I got mine" system.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Jun 24, 2011 -> 10:41 AM) The point is, and the point I tried to make from the start of this...is that regardless of study after study, or through the use of macroeconomic templates, if companies find a way to save money by dumping insurance...they will. That's my only point. 1) That applies today. Starting to fine employers for dropping coverage won't exactly incentivize dropping coverage. 2) We can compare these predictive studies to past studies of similar situations. But you are correct to caution that the map is not the territory i.e. our models and abstractions of reality are not reality itself. It was never claimed that this study was definitively prophetic. In fact, the link I provided clearly stated caution on any of these studies. It was simply another study, one actually meant to be predictive, that fell in line with many other analytic studies done already and provides a clear contrast to the McKinsey study that's getting way too much hype and is now likely cemented as truth among many Republicans.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jun 24, 2011 -> 10:40 AM) The insurance industry isn't what I am afraid of destroying. It will close a chunk of facilities, and overburden the system is the biggest problem I had with it. Well, I guess this means that the current system rations care too, right? edit: I know kap's gone on about how it's just a plan to destroy private insurance to end up with UHC, and it's a pretty common Republican claim. But I apologize for wrongly attributing that view to you.

Vague objections to murder rate statistics don't apply to the survey I provided in response to Jenks' request for a survey that supported what I said. You need to actually address the methodology of that study and how sample-collecting would be biased towards underreporting welfare drug use or overreporting non-welfare drug use. eta also there's still zero legitimacy for rejecting data based on anecdotes from police buddies who work in the drug unit. Hopefully jenks saw what I was driving at with sampling bias there. His cop buddies work with the druggies, of course it's going to seem like a much higher rate if that's your only perspective.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Jun 24, 2011 -> 10:24 AM) More foolishness right there...and a massive wad of assumptions that they can't save money elsewhere. Stop leaning on a single tax deduction when they will find 50 others to replace it. Oh, and stop pretending corporations are trying to "screw the government", because that's completely dumb, they'd do it to SAVE f***ING MONEY, not to screw the government. QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jun 24, 2011 -> 10:31 AM) Bottom line. Balta's argument is that they'll continue to make "business decisions" and this won't dump insurance coverage en masse. He's mocking the idea that they will in some sort of Randian "going Galt/Atlas Shrugging" action to protest the law.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jun 24, 2011 -> 10:31 AM) All it did for them was guarantee more paying customers. It never addressed any of the real problems. And yet somehow it's a form of socialism/communism that'll destroy the private insurance industry. It's almost as if Republican rhetoric RE: Obama and the ACA is a bunch of incoherent nonsense!

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Jun 24, 2011 -> 10:30 AM) I can tell you this... Since the reform, health insurance companies are making more money than ever before. I know Thanks a lot, arch-Socialist Obama. Your grand plan to destroy the health insurance industry by drowning them in profits is working!

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Jun 24, 2011 -> 10:27 AM) Won't happen now, so there is no point in discussing it. I know

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jun 24, 2011 -> 10:22 AM) The problem was there was no alternative to dump them on. Sure there was. I can decline coverage and get my own otherwise. The costs and procedures may be different but it isn't materially different from the exchanges. Huh? edit: did you mean IRA's and 401(k)'s? It's not exactly like pensions and employee compensation in general was booming prior to the 1930's and then pensions disappeared by the 40's or 50's. More reasons for UHC.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jun 24, 2011 -> 10:19 AM) I think the most bizarre part of this argument is the people who are usually claiming how evil and greedy corporations are, are now banking on the fact that the same corporations won't be making business based decisions, when history shows they did exactly that with the pension plans over the 20th century. No one is claiming that at all. I've explicitly said that employers currently and will continue to offer insurance plans to employees because, in the long term, it benefits the owners/shareholders. Retaining top talent and all that jazz.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jun 24, 2011 -> 10:14 AM) It won't do that...opening up Medicare to everyone would have but that's Socialism. What it will do is at least make individual plans somewhat closer to competitive by effectively taking all the individuals and turning them into a group themselves. Oh I know it probably won't. But we've got this bizarre claim by Republicans that employers are going to drop insurance!!!! because Obamacare is going to work so well for providing cheap insurance options, therefore we need to repeal Obamacare?!! Zuh?

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Jun 24, 2011 -> 10:13 AM) Those same types of studies "predicted" our housing market was sustainable in 2007...and that Fannie and Freddie were completely solvant companies. This is a specific type of fallacy but the name escapes me. Basically all studies are invalid because some are wrong. Policy decisions must be made blindly.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Jun 24, 2011 -> 10:12 AM) Many employers already do this...it's called consulting. Unfortunately, as someone that's been a consultant, and knowing many that currently work with me, they'd prefer to have the coverage rather than having to get their own. Sure, because our existing system is a gigantic, expensive mess that f***s over individuals. Supposedly the exchanges will offer cheap, affordable insurance.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Jun 24, 2011 -> 10:07 AM) More backhanded stupidity and outright ignorance. You're dismissing the entire concept of predictive macroeconomic policy studies here.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Jun 24, 2011 -> 10:06 AM) This is a short term outlook. If companies, over time, begin giving much bigger salaries to employees and tell them they have to get their own insurance benefits, people may not care about this being part of their overall compensation package. This doesn't consider that if they cut insurance, that they'd increase benefits elsewhere (they would). They wouldn't have a hard time recruiting new employees or keeping old ones with such a deal. I'm pretty sure we're both saying the same thing: Republican scare-mongering claims here are bulls*** and it'd be good to shift from our current employer-provided health insurance model anyway. If employers drop insurance but raise compensation to the point that I get the same thing in some manner that's economically beneficial to them, awesome. But that relies on the exchanges working extremely well to keep insurance costs down. Either way, the scenario of 30% of companies dropping insurance and not making up for it to employees in any way is pretty much fantasy for a variety of reasons, most of which fit right into Republican orthodoxy.

The idea that you have to study every individual company in the country in order to determine net economic impacts is....bizarre, to say the least.

Y2HH apparently rejects the entire field of macroeconomics.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Jun 24, 2011 -> 09:57 AM) No, I reject lack of common sense with this study and all studies. We agree, 30% IS crap. It's a number made up and pulled out of no where. As I said, and I repeat, it will come down to money. If 90% of companies find they can save tons of money by killing off their health benefits, the number will be closer to 90% over time, maybe not instantly (again, as the "study" implies), but over time it would move close and closer to the number in question. The opposite also holds true. What planet are you guys on, anyway? Well, whatever it is, on Earth, companies, especially American companies go for profits...profits, and more profits...and if you honestly believe a company would forfeit massive savings (profits) for the good of their employees, you may be right in 1% of ALL cases...but in the majority, you're delusional at best. Yeah but health benefits are part of the overall compensation package and employers get tax credits for them. It's not nearly as simple as Republicans are trying to paint it and abusing the McKinsey study to do so. It's cheaper for companies to simply cut insurance right now since there's no penalty. But they don't, because employees would leave and they'd have a hard time recruiting new ones. I dunno, on one hand I hope they're right and that these new exchanges really will result in affordable individual coverage such that employers can drop insurance and bump pay a little. Having health insurance tied to employment is a terrible system anyway. eta who's said companies will insure employees for any reason other than the owners/shareholders' long-term profits?

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jun 24, 2011 -> 09:54 AM) Every time we do that, someone decides that there aren't enough threads to state how bad player x is. You're tempting me to post some new threads...

John Yoo is attacking Obama for abusing executive power and waging war without Congressional approval. John Yoo. WTF.

I still don't trust this team, but at least they're keeping me interested.