About those backwoods folks Mike, check out the 2nd article: REH
Today the Republican candidate praised the same healthcare in Israel that
Democrats have been pushing in the US and that the Republicans boycotted and
still are. What is going on? IS it just simple envy and the desire to be on
top no matter what it does to the rest of us? Or is it that half of the
American population is afraid to admit that they may need for the nation to
provide for their sorry butt's lack of success, if faced with a major illness.
Music is one of those businesses that only 2% are going to ever earn enough
money at performing to pay for healthcare. If you are more worried about
insurance showing your economic impotence then you will never have a shot at
becoming a virtuoso and a mature artist. It's simple, if you have doubts,
don't do it. You will fail. Some cowboy building houses and patching roofs
has a far better chance at making a living and having a mansion in East Hampton
than a concert pianist without a PHD to give them a college job.
I have no patience for people who piss on their parents because their therapist
told them they were poorly raised and caused all of the problems. I also have
no patience for people who use public infrastructure, have been protected from
the monsters of the world by the U.S. Military, are protected daily by fire and
police and yet elect to be collectively unsophisticated and ignorant.
Wake up. You can't smear your dung on the wall because it's interesting and
you like the smell. People should get over their toilet training trauma. We
all went through it. Romney's comments in Israel are simply strange. Not
what he said but that he seems to believe that anyone back here will never know
he said it. Or he believes we aren't smart enough to put two and two together
and ask what he was thinking of when he put a two-faced image before the
Israeli people.
Following Romney's article is an article about Oklahoma. I don't understand
that either. Could somebody please explain it to me. I've been trying to
talk to our family for years and I've got to admit, sometime in my life before
I die, that I don't know what in hell is going on out there. This is the kind
of thinking that breeds children and then refuses to wear a helmet on a
motorcycle or wear a life jacket in a Kayak in the rapids. That's not
freedom that's roulette. The simple fact seems to be that there is nothing
to be said. No one is or will listen. They equate gambling with freedom.
If someone says they hate government and live in town, they are stupid,
ignorant or a cheat. They are the kind of people who grieve for the poor
Indians because of what government did to them. Truth be told, Indians are
not fooled. That grieving scumbag IS the government. His elected
officials even gave him a gun in a national park with children, and bears that
he could wound, in order to kill someone else's kids. Our sacred grounds in
the Catskills are now surrounded not by wolves singing but by idiots with
automatic weapons playing army.
The abstract principle for what this hick espouses is this: "I hate rules and
if I plan for my health, I must be afraid." Truth be told, he was afraid to
admit it. And note that the article tried to blame it on the illegal
immigrants that they drove out of Oklahoma in 2008 by law. Of course if you
didn't know that you might believe these lazy swills.
These two articles below make no sense what so ever.
The end of the second article just seems nuts.
Unless it is as simple as:
If it's not done by Republicans then it's a piece of huckapuck no matter what
it is. That's what they call freedom. That's not what I call freedom.
REH
Romney praises health care in Israel, where research says ‘strong government
influence’ has driven down costs
Posted by Sarah Kliff on July 30, 2012 at 11:10 am
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney had some very kind things to say
about the Israeli health care system at a fundraiser there Monday. He praised
Israel for spending just 8 percent of its GDP on health care and still
remaining a “pretty healthy nation:”
When our health care costs are completely out of control. Do you realize what
health care spending is as a percentage of the GDP in Israel? 8 percent. You
spend 8 percent of GDP on health care. And you’re a pretty healthy nation. We
spend 18 percent of our GDP on health care. 10 percentage points more. That
gap, that 10 percent cost, let me compare that with the size of our military.
Our military budget is 4 percent. Our gap with Israel is 10 points of GDP. We
have to find ways, not just to provide health care to more people, but to find
ways to finally manage our health care costs.
Romney’s point about Israel’s success in controlling health care costs is spot
on: Its health care system has seen health care costs grow much slower than
other industrialized nations.
How it has gotten there, however, may not be to the Republican candidate’s
liking: Israel regulates its health care system aggressively, requiring all
residents to carry insurance and capping revenue for various parts of the
country’s health care system.
Israel created a national health care system in 1995, largely funded through
payroll and general tax revenue. The government provides all citizens with
health insurance: They get to pick from one of four competing, nonprofit plans.
Those insurance plans have to accept all customers—including people with
pre-existing conditions—and provide residents with a broad set of
government-mandated benefits.
Health insurance does not, however, cover every medical service. Dental and
vision care, for example, fall outside of the standard government set of
benefits. The majority of Israelis—81 percent —purchase a supplemental health
insurance plan to “use the private health care system for services that may not
be available in through the public system,” according to a paper by Health
Affairs.
Now, let’s get to the costs. As you can see in the chart below, Israel’s health
care costs have hovered around 8 percent of its gross domestic product for over
two decades, while other countries’ have seen theirs rise:
Israel’s lower health care spending does not look to sacrifice the quality of
care. It has made more improvements than the United States on numerous
quality metrics, and the country continues to have a higher life expectancy:
If you want the charts go here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/07/30/romney-praises-health-care-in-israel-where-strong-government-influence-has-driven-down-costs/
Source: New England Journal of Medicine
How’d they do it? Jack Zwanziger and Shuli Brammli-Greenberg took a crack at
that question in a 2011 Health Affairs paper. The answer, they say, has a lot
to do with “strong government influence:
The national government exerts direct operational control over a large
proportion of total health care expenditures, through a range of mechanisms,
including caps on hospital revenue and national contracts with salaried
physicians. The Ministry of Finance has been able to persuade the national
government to agree to relatively small increases in the health care budget
because the system has performed well, with a very high level of public
satisfaction.
The Israeli Ministry of Finance controls about 40 percent of Israel’s health
care expenditures through those payments to the four insurance plans. The
ministry decides how much it will pay the health plans for each Israeli citizen
they enroll, making adjustments for how old a person is and how high their
health care costs are expected to be.
It’s then up to the health insurance plan to figure out how to provide coverage
within that set budget. If they spend too much—have a patient who is constantly
in the hospital, for example—they will find themselves in the red. It’s that
set budget—a capitated budget, in health policy terms—that seems to be crucial
to the Israeli health care system’s success in cost control.
Health insurance mandate faces huge resistance in Oklahoma
By Sandhya Somashekhar, Published: July 29
OKLAHOMA CITY — The Supreme Court may have declared that the government can
order Americans to get health insurance, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to
sign up.
Nowhere is that more evident than Oklahoma, a conservative state with an
independent streak and a disdain for the strong arm of government. The state
cannot even get residents to comply with car insurance laws; roughly a quarter
of the drivers here lack it, one of the highest rates in the country.
When it comes to health insurance, the effort to sign people up isn’t likely to
get much help from the state. Antipathy toward President Obama’s signature
health-care overhaul runs so deep that when the federal government awarded
Oklahoma a large grant to plan for the new law, the governor turned away the
money — all $54 million of it.
The idea that the federal government will persuade reluctant people here to get
insurance elicited head-shaking chuckles at Cattlemen’s Steakhouse, an iconic
old restaurant in the Stockyards City neighborhood, which is lined with street
banners reading “Where the Wild West still lives.”
“That kind of frontier mentality maintains in Oklahoma, and it’s not a bad
thing. It’s a good thing,” said Mark Cunningham, 64, an Army veteran having
breakfast with a couple of friends in a dimly lighted booth recently.
Considering the car insurance statistic, he said, “I suspect they’re going to
run into the same kind of trouble on health insurance.”
Although Obama’s health-care overhaul cleared a major hurdle last month when it
was upheld by the Supreme Court, the government continues to face challenges as
it implements the largest social program in decades. Among the biggest is the
resistance, both personal and political, that officials face as they try to
achieve the law’s most ambitious goal — -extending health coverage to 30
million uninsured Americans.
That includes people who will become newly eligible for Medicaid coverage and
others who can buy insurance through new state exchanges. Beginning in 2014,
most Americans will be required to get health coverage or face a fine come tax
time. But it will not be a simple task to get so many people to purchase
coverage, and the Congressional Budget Office estimates that, for a variety of
reasons, fewer than half of the 30 million will actually gain coverage in that
first year.
Hopeful advocates
Advocates believe that, when the word gets out, people will sign up because it
will prove to be a good deal.
“People may have heard about ‘Obamacare’ this and ‘Obamacare’ that, and they
may have even succumbed to some of the myths . . . but once people see the
impact it can have on their lives, all of that is going to change
tremendously,” said Ron Pollack, a health-care advocate.
Pollack sits on the board of directors of Enroll America, a nonprofit group
that plans a major public relations campaign, including television and radio
ads, to promote the insurance mandate and the health law in general. The group
says it will focus special attention on states with large uninsured populations
and those where lawmakers have actively opposed the law.
Obama officials, cognizant of the challenges, have already begun reaching out
to human services organizations and government agencies that work with the poor
to begin telling the un¬insured about the benefits they may be able to get
under the health law, such as Medicaid eligibility or subsidies to help them
afford coverage.
But some in Oklahoma aren’t so sure the population here will be easy to
persuade, especially if the state government continues to condemn “Obamacare.”
“If we’re not being cooperative and all the rhetoric is hostile, then that’s
going to be a real barrier to providing information to people,” said David
Blatt, director of the Oklahoma Policy Institute, a state policy think tank.
“There’s a lot of important outreach that needs to happen before January 1,
2014, and it’s going to be extremely difficult to do that when you have state
leaders standing there saying, ‘Over our dead bodies.’ ”
Resistance remains strong in other states as well, with some governors
promising to opt out of parts of the law. Obama’s Republican challenger, Mitt
Romney, has said he will act to repeal the law as his first priority if elected
president. But it is unclear how far opponents can turn back the clock.
Many experts say the tax penalty for not having insurance — which starts at $95
and gradually increases to $695 or 2.5 percent of a person’s income — is too
low to be sufficient motivation on its own.
In Massachusetts, a similar health insurance mandate enacted during Romney’s
term as governor succeeded partly because it was uncontroversial, and because
government agencies, nonprofit groups and health-care providers promoted it
widely, even at Boston Red Sox games. Less than 5 percent of the state’s
population is now uninsured.
But that was Massachusetts, a liberal-leaning state where residents are
accustomed to more government regulation. No one is quite sure how it will work
elsewhere.
Stubborn mind-sets
“There’s a sense in Oklahoma, and I’m not sure if this is peculiar to this
state, but we don’t like people telling us what to do,” said Chuck Mai, a
spokesman for AAA Oklahoma. “We know what we should do. We should buckle our
safety belt every time we drive. We should drive sober. And we should have
insurance on our vehicle. But having our law telling you to do those things
sometimes has an adverse effect.”
Although auto insurance is required for all drivers under state law, an
estimated 20 to 30 percent in Oklahoma go without it, Mai said. (In
Massachusetts, about 5 percent of drivers are uninsured, the lowest rate in the
country, according to the Insurance Research Institute, which last calculated
the numbers in 2009.)
Lawyers and industry groups believe the low car insurance rates in Oklahoma are
partly because of the sizable population of illegal immigrants. But a number of
people sign up for insurance long enough to register their cars, and then,
driven by poverty or a devil-may-care attitude, immediately stop paying their
insurance bills.
Offenders face a $230 fine and suspension of their driver’s licenses. Police
recently gained access to a database of uninsured drivers’ license plates, but
the state legislature rejected a bill that would have allowed police to pull
over drivers solely for insurance violations. Even the state’s insurance
commissioner opposed it.
“I think that gives [the police] too much power,” said the commissioner, John
D. Doak, who nevertheless considers uninsured motorists a top challenge. “I’m
not a fan of the camera systems. They’ve got that in China. I want to protect
people’s individual rights and liberties.”
Doak believes it will be similarly difficult to get people to sign up for
health insurance.
About one in five Oklahomans lacks health insurance, also one of the highest
rates in the country, despite strides made in recent years to get eligible
children signed up for Medicaid. Gov. Mary Fallin (R) has been sharply critical
of the new health-care law and is contemplating opting out of its expansion of
Medicaid. Conservative lawmakers in the legislature are already devising ways
to skirt its provisions.
Resentment and fear
Even some providers who treat the poor are skeptical. Betty Denwalt, a
registered nurse at the Baptist Mission Center’s free medical clinic for the
uninsured in Oklahoma City, believes people will choose not to buy insurance
because they can’t afford it, or because they dislike being directed to do so
by a federal government that seems disconnected from their problems.
On a recent morning at the center, patients waited in avo¬cado-green chairs to
pick up medicine or see a doctor. John, 37, who would not give his last name,
said he could not afford health insurance for himself, his wife and his five
children on his $38,000 salary as an apartment manager. He said he resents the
idea that the government could compel him to do something he may not be able to
afford.
“I don’t think the government should have the right to force people to do
anything unless it’s following a criminal law or something,” he said.
At the Mid-Del Community Clinic across town, Mark Nelson, 46, expressed a
similar sentiment. Once a successful roofing contractor, Nelson eschewed health
insurance for much of his life despite suffering from a genetic kidney disease.
He figured he would “sell a couple houses” if he ever needed a transplant.
His fortunes, however, took a turn just as his kidneys began to fail. He is now
earning $7.50 an hour as a dishwasher at IHOP and gets most of his care at the
clinic, though he eventually will need more intensive care. Yet he is still of
two minds about health insurance, which he said he wishes he had, but also
considers a racket.
“I’m anti-government,” he said. “Insurance is a concept based on fear.”
[email protected]
MORE: REH
TPM2012
Romney: Socialized Health Care Good For Israel, Not For U.S.
Romney speaks in Jerusalem
SAHIL KAPUR JULY 30, 2012, 12:45 PM 23255
During a trip to Israel, Mitt Romney hailed the nation’s health care system for
holding down costs and broadening coverage more effectively than the U.S.
The irony: Israel contains costs by adopting a very centralized, government-run
health care system — anathema to Romney’s Republican Party.
“Do you realize what health care spending is as a percentage of the GDP in
Israel? Eight percent. You spend eight percent of GDP on health care. You’re a
pretty healthy nation,” he said Monday at a breakfast fundraiser, according to
the New York Times. “We spend 18 percent of our GDP on health care, 10
percentage points more. That gap, that 10 percent cost, compare that with the
size of our military — our military which is 4 percent, 4 percent. Our gap with
Israel is 10 points of GDP. We have to find ways — not just to provide health
care to more people, but to find ways to fund and manage our health care costs.”
Israel’s health care system is an instructive exercise in all that rankles
American conservatives — replete with government mandates, price controls and
centralized payments funded mostly by high taxes.
Reformed in 1995 on the basis of a European model, Israelis are forced to buy
insurance from one of several competing not-for-profit plans, which are heavily
regulated by the government, according to the journal Health Affairs. The state
requires them to cover everyone regardless of health status, and establishes a
broad benefits package insurance policies must provide, updated annually by a
committee of appointed experts. The government pays the full cost of these
policies, mostly through higher taxes. The state also caps the level of annual
revenue hospitals can earn from an insurance plan. Care is largely delivered
through government-owned facilities; there are private providers, but they tend
to charge more.
So how’s the socialized approach working out?
Quite well. Israel covers all residents and spends 8 percent of its national
product on health care; the U.S. currently spends 17.5 percent and has many
uninsured. Nor are Israelis resigned to low quality care or long waits that
some associate with government-run systems: according to the Jewish Daily
Forward, “going by many indexes of health outcomes, the result in terms of
quality of care [in Israel] is often better — and definitely cheaper than in
the U.S.”
A 2010 study in Health Affairs describes “strong government influence” over its
system has been the catalyst for Israel’s low health spending growth since the
1995 reforms.
The Affordable Care Act moves the U.S. a bit closer to an Israel-type system
with the use of regulations and mandates to extend coverage, but permits far
less government power over health care delivery than Israel. Romney has vowed
to repeal the law if elected president.
REH
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of michael gurstein
Sent: Monday, July 30, 2012 4:52 PM
To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION'; [email protected]
Subject: Re: [Futurework] A pronto return of the Greek Colonels
Sorry, very late getting around to this...
I think what Ray is pointing to is the comments I made based on some research I
did in South West Nova about 20 years ago where I found that the "informal"
(non-cash) income of many rural dwellers was roughly the equivalent of (or even
greater than) the cash income (bartering of services, self-servicing, use of
field foods including gardens and hunting etc.etc.)... The significance of this
non-cash income was to free up the cash income for other things (and providing
a lifestyle way beyond the "poverty level" incomes that folks were officially
reporting) and of course, no one was paying tax on any of this non-cash
income... (think about the value of shooting and eating a 2000 lb. moose for
example).
MG
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ray Harrell
Sent: Thursday, June 28, 2012 4:04 PM
To: [email protected]; 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION,EDUCATION'
Subject: Re: [Futurework] A pronto return of the Greek Colonels
I don't know Mike. I only know what I was told about unreported income
being a problem in the backwoods. However I do have a lot of Texas
relatives who don't it hard to believe, about someone else. (smile)
REH
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Mike Spencer
Sent: Wednesday, June 27, 2012 9:05 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [Futurework] Re: A pronto return of the Greek Colonels
REH wrote:
> I loved Nova Scotia, especially my Futurework dear friends. But the
> conference spoke about the problem of people who dealt only in cash
> and reported no income. Seems I remember they were a large number,
> had big houses in the woods, big dogs and big guns and loved to play
> the fiddle. Am I remembering wrong?
Well, I dunno. There's always a few sleazebags at the upper end of the scale,
doing cash deals, reporting enough income to keep the auditors off and cooking
the books. You have them everywhere. And country people, do a little farming
or woodcutting, get seasonal jobs, odd jobs at the sawmill or fish plant, do
some trucking, whatever.
People like that sell some firewood to a neighbor or a couple of shoats to the
guy down the road or replace an engine in an old truck for somebody in the back
yard, it never gets into the books.
I don't personally know any of the former (although I knew such a guy in rural
Massachusetts 40 years ago). Maybe I just don't get out and around enough.
Big wad of cash, big house, big dogs, lotsa guns -- sounds like Texas to me.
:-)
- Mike
--
Michael Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada .~.
/V\
[email protected] /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/ ^^-^^
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