On Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 11:19 AM, Jim Devine <[email protected]> wrote: >> "businesses will just pass on the >> costs to consumers or simply close the shop" if you raise their cost >> of doing business. Not necessarily. That depends on their profit >> margins among other things. For e.g., do you know how much of this >> uncollectable debt is incurred by hospitals just gaming the system >> because they know they will get it from the government?... > > Since you asked the question, and I'm very busy, I'll let you find the > data. I bet you'll find that the lion's share of the debt was incurred > because of rising medical costs (the dysfunctional US medical-care > system)
Well that's no fair. You can't go around proclaiming that Obama is destroying the welfare state and then say you are too busy to find the data to actually back up your claim. I may have asked the question, but you are the one who crafted the subject line that strikes me as profoundly misleading given the actual contents of the article you were citing in your email. > In any event, I was responding to a comment that was made using _even > fewer_ details than I provided. If you're going to present > abstraction arguments, raghu, you can't slam others for being > similarly abstract. My point was only that it seemed to me that your > abstractions were ignoring some major dimensions of the real world. I was 'slamming' you not for making abstract arguments, which are fine as long as they are not disguised as something else. I was 'slamming' you for making unsubstantiated claims about the welfare state being destroyed. >>> 3) in a period when state governments' finances are almost all >>> severely in deficit, cutting the federal share puts more weight on >>> them, so they'll cut services, raise fees, or even go into bankruptcy; > >> I'll grant you this one. > > thank you. It's nice to have a break from the bitter tone of your missive. I was going for 'provocative' not 'bitter' (:-). >> Now think about all the 'cuts' that progressives should really be >> fearing that are *not* in this plan. Increasing Medicare eligibility >> ages. Means-testing. Medicaid block-grants. Etc. > > any cuts of the sort listed in the NYT story are more on the level of > the camel getting its nose under the tent instead of having the tent > knocked down by the camel. To mix metaphors, it's opening the door to > block grants, means-testing, etc.) You mean the glass is half-empty? But there is a larger and more important point in here. Are you really saying that any attempt to control Medicare costs is tantamount to an attack on the welfare state - even if it does not affect eligibility and benefits? I thought even progressives grant that health-care costs in general including Medicare were out of control and it was necessary and desirable to contain this cost growth: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/03/yes-medicare-is-sustainable-in-its-current-form/ Maybe Krugman is wrong here, but if so, at least he is worth rebutting in detail? -raghu. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
