“Massachusetts offers a snapshot of how giving more people insurance naturally drives demand. The Massachusetts Medical Society last fall reported just over half of internists and 40 percent of family and general practitioners weren’t accepting new patients, an increase in recent years as the state implemented nearly universal coverage.” — Associated […]
Archive for March, 2010
Mar29th2010
“Ever since the early eighties, when the Greenspan commission kicked the can down the road with a combination of tax increases and later retirement ages, analysts have been awaiting the day when the system would finally go into deficit. That date has been sliding around between 2016 and 2020 for some […]
Mar25th2010
The Path To Single-Payer
Published by in (modern day) Liberalism, Economics and HealthCare. 0 CommentsHow does ObamaCare lead to Single-Payer? The steps are explained in a conversation overheard between Dennis Kucinich and Obama:
Obama: Dennis, I know you want single-payer and so do I. I’ve made that clear on numerous occasions. We both see the public option as a step to single-payer, but that’s a step too far. I can’t […]
Mar23rd2010
The part Democrats don’t want you to know about…see here.
Mar22nd2010
Quote Of The Day
Published by in (modern day) Liberalism, Economics, HealthCare and ModernPolitics. 2 Comments“But there is one thing of which I am nearly perfectly certain: If we pass this thing, no American politician, left or right, is going to cut any of these programs, or raise the broad-based taxes necessary to pay for them, without any compensating goodies to offer the public . . . […]
Mar22nd2010
Quote Of The Day
Published by in (modern day) Liberalism, Economics, HealthCare and ModernPolitics. 1 Comment“We’ve been arguing about the health care bill, in all its many iterations, for more than a year. Along the way, liberals have made a lot of predictions about what its passage will mean for America — for our health care system and our health, our economy and our long-term solvency. […]
Mar19th2010
“The proposed changes increase spending dramatically, most heavily concentrated in the out-years. The gross cost of the bill has risen from $875 billion to $940 billion over ten years–but almost $40 billion of that comes in 2019. The net cost has increased even more dramatically, from $624 billion to $794 billion. […]
Mar18th2010
Democrats of 2010 Are The Republicans of 2006
Published by in (modern day) Liberalism and ModernPolitics. 0 CommentsNational Journal writes:
Embattled incumbents with ethics problems. Allegations of sexual harassment leading to a competitive open seat. Dems have seen this movie before — only last time, it happened to the other guys.
Now, a beleaguered Dem majority has to hope their party can withstand a building wave that favors the GOP, and […]
Mar17th2010
Jay P. Greene, professor of education reform at the University of Arkansas, writes on the recent vote to end DC Vouchers:
It was perfectly predictable but still sad to watch. The U.S. Senate voted 55-42 yesterday against continuing the DC voucher program. Among Republicans only Olympia Snowe voted against the program. Among Democrats […]
Mar11th2010
The Effects Of Unemployment Insurance
Published by in Economics, ModernPolitics and Poverty. 2 CommentsEach unemployed person has a “reservation wage”–the minimum wage he or she insists on getting before accepting a job. Unemployment insurance and other social assistance programs increase that reservation wage, causing an unemployed person to remain unemployed longer.
Consider, for example, an unemployed person who is accustomed to making $15.00 an hour. On unemployment insurance this […]
Mar10th2010
One of the strongest argument against single payer is that government rationing is the worst kind. The British healthcare system is an example:
DAMNING reports on the state of the National Health Service, suppressed by the government, reveal how patients’ needs have been neglected.
They diagnose a blind pursuit of political and managerial targets as […]
Mar9th2010
“Last week, I briefly discussed the geographic distribution of Recovery Act funds. The figure shows the relationship between per capita Recovery Act grants awarded and unemployment across states, which shows that stimulus aid was not particularly well matched with need…On average, for every extra percentage point of the labor force that is unemployed, a […]
Mar8th2010
Universal Kindergarten
Published by in Education, Hispanics (Minority Issues) and ModernPolitics. 1 CommentBefore we embark on universal preschool, we should look at the results from universal kindergarten. According to Elizabeth U. Cascio, assistant professor of economics at Dartmouth College, the gains were far short of expectations:
My results indicate that state funding of universal kindergarten had no discernible impact on many of the long-term outcomes desired by policymakers, […]
Mar5th2010
“The news is now out that Government Motors is recalling 1.3 million compact cars in the US, Canada and Mexico to fix power steering motors that can fail. Does this sound familiar? Well the big difference with Toyota is that GM has not made the media headlines anywhere, and certainly is not attracting the attention […]
Mar4th2010
“I spent the morning writing about the Bush administration’s failure to anticipate the long-term costs of the Iraq occupation, which have reached $1 trillion and counting over the last eight years. With health care reform, there are no such illusions: We have good-faith estimates, sometimes downplayed but never hidden or dismissed, of how much this […]
