Some thoughts on Bush's state of the union.
It's the economy stupid.
And under my plan, as soon as I have signed the bill, this extra money will start showing up in workers' pay cheques.
Instead of gradually reducing the marriage penalty, we should do it now.
Instead of slowly raising the child credit to a thousand dollars, we should send the cheques to American families now.
Payroll taxes contribute to the bulk of federal revenue. Bush wants a costly war in Iraq. Why do I not see the payroll taxes not being cut but increased?
To boost investor confidence, and to help the nearly 10 million seniors who receive dividend income, I ask you to end the unfair double taxation of dividends.
Oh right, it's the seniors who need capital gains cut. Riiight.
And that is a good benchmark for us: Federal spending should not rise any faster than the pay cheques of American families.
Ah compassionate conservativism! Exactly how many congressman were downsized last year to make a fitter, leaner government for the shareholders?
I feel your pain.
It only hurts when I laugh.
To improve our health care system, we must address one of the prime causes of higher costs - the constant threat that physicians and hospitals will be unfairly sued.
Because of excessive litigation, everybody pays more for health care - and many parts of America are losing fine doctors.
So out-of-control health care costs are directly the result of malpractice suits? PriceWaterhouseCoopers doesn't think so (although they do cite it one of the factors).
Smog doesn't kill people -- I do.
I have sent you Clear Skies legislation that mandates a 70% cut in air pollution from power plants over the next 15 years.
The Kyoto plan was deemed harmful to business so instead Bush wants to give a tax break for compliance. The Sierra Club is unconvinced of the efficacy of Bush's plan. (Of course, the Sierra Club is nothing but a pack of dirty hippies.) I hope you bought stock in bottled air.
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belg4mit on 2003-01-30T05:22:33
"We" didn't do more because he gave
us $300. Not that I can remember what
I spent that on.
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pudge on 2003-01-30T14:02:09
The tax rebate was only a part of it, and hindsight is always 20-20. The federal government increased spending at the same time it gave the tax rebate (for clarity, I don't consider a tax rebate "spending", I consider it what it is: a decrease in revenue; I am talking about increasing the actual budget, not decreasing the amount of money they have to spend on it). Perhaps the tax rebate shouldn't have been given, but surely spending should not have been increased.
FWIW, we bought a chair with ours.Re:thoughts
hfb on 2003-01-30T06:17:17
It's not the malpractice insurance, it's the entire industry rotting from the core from extortion/soprano-esque pricing schemes for drugs and pharmaceuticals, severe shortages of qualified nurses and doctors, and an antiquated billing system and records system that creaks under the weight of the load. My mother is a retired MD and even she's shocked that it costs $15 PER PILL for her osteoperosis drugs that she can purchase herself as the medicade $300 per year benefit is pathetic. Bush's talk did nothing to explain where the magic is going to come from to address the very serious condition the american medical system is in. If my mother's 40 years of experience in the profession and vision of the future is correct you're all screwed. Find a shaman and learn all they know.
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pudge on 2003-01-30T13:59:21
I am not saying those things are not problems. But yes, malpractice insurance is a huge problem, too. You can say it isn't, but a bunch of doctors, who walked out of the last Las Vegas trauma center to move to California where the malpractice awards for pain and suffering are capped at a quarter of a million dollars, say you're wrong. Over 40 percent of ob/gyns in Nevada plan to leave the state.
In Florida, some doctors are not delivering babies, because $250,000 of coverage costs $200,000.
Ob/gyns in W. Virginia pay an average of $75,000 for liability insurance, while bordering states of Tennessee, Ohop, and Virginia pay $26K, $48K, and $30K. Doctors are leaving W. Virginia in droves.
Pennsylvania is fighting desperately to avoid the same fate: in Montgomery County, rates for malpractice insurance jumped from $269K to almost $1M, in one year. An 11th hour state measure kept doctors from simply walking out, but it is only a very short-term band-aid.
I am not saying there are not other problems. But to say this is not a problem is to ignore the facts.
Of course, more needs to be done. But what Bush mentioned is only a starting point, and we have 535 members of Congress whose primary repsonsibility it is to deal with it. Of course, since you want socialized medicine, whatever they come up with different from that, you will think is going to bring about the end of the world... but if your visions of the future were accurate, we would have been struck back to the Middle Ages years ago. :)
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hfb on 2003-01-30T19:52:42
My mother was a doctor with over 40 years experience and she wants socialized medicine and with that much experience in the field I trust she knows more about the problems than most docs pandering to the politicians or you do. It won't be the end of the world but with an aging population there are going to be a lot of people who die for want of basic care as will a lot of children whose parents have no healthcare coverage. Malpractise insurance is just the tip of the iceburg. Spend a few years running triage in an emergency room in an urban trauma center and then see if you think Dubya isn't blowing smoke out his ass....or ask any medical professional for their opinion. A hospital doesn't run without nurses and some hospitals are running nurses on double shifts due to shortages. He said nothing about the critical issues, only the ones that would win him important republican votes.
Time will tell but it may be too late by the time anyone realises that the band-aid approach will be nothing for the influx of aging baby boomers.
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pudge on 2003-01-30T20:09:43
My mother was a doctor with over 40 years experience and she wants socialized medicine and with that much experience in the field I trust she knows more about the problems than most docs pandering to the politicians or you do.
So, you are saying the doctors who are saying their malpractice insurance is rising 100%, 200% a year, that they cannot afford the rising cost of it, are... ignorant? Lying? Which is it?
I trust these doctors know more about the problems they themselves face than you or your mother do.
Spend a few years running triage in an emergency room in an urban trauma center and then see if you think Dubya isn't blowing smoke out his ass....or ask any medical professional for their opinion.
See, that's just the thing: many, many medical professionals are saying this. I am just repeating what they are saying. You think they are pandering; sorry, but I don't believe a doctor in West Virginia would live away from his family, in Ohio, just so that he could pander to a politician. I think that when he says he did it because he couldn't afford to practice with the high malpractice costs in West Virginia, that he is telling the truth.
He said nothing about the critical issues
Until you show me how the actual evidence I pointed to is incorrect, or means something other than what it appears to mean, I'll have to believe what it says: that doctors are leaving states, or not practicing certain procedures, because the malpractice insurance is too high. And I cannot see how that is not a critical issue, when it means that there is no trauma center in Las Vegas, and that some people need to drive hundreds (yes, hundreds) of miles to get to a doctor that will deliver babies. I call that critical.
Is it the most critical issue? Perhaps not, but so what? Congress already has a lot of work in progress on many of the other issues, some that you've mentioned, and some that you haven't. That he didn't mention something doesn't mean it is important, or that it isn't going to be worked on. That's a fallacy.
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hfb on 2003-01-30T20:23:29
Then they should regulate the insurance industry for doctors just as they regulate it for automobile insurance in New England. It's still not a critical issue for the state of medical care in the US. You should also do some research into what doctors are paying such high premiums, in what areas and in what specialties as most of the doctors and surgeons I grew up with say that the cases in the media are not the norm.
You had your kid delivered by a midwife so how does reading the news make you an expert on the plight of doctors and hospitals across the US?
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pudge on 2003-01-30T20:32:35
Because I disagree with you that this is a critical issue, I need to do research? Think on.
Because I can read and have an opinion, I think I am expert? Think on.Re:thoughts
jjohn on 2003-01-30T21:00:48
Before I begin, I would like to state for the record the futility of my entering this argument. However, I do occasionally tilt windmills.
Until you show me how the actual evidence I pointed to is incorrect, or means something other than what it appears to mean, I'll have to believe what it says: that doctors are leaving states, or not practicing certain procedures, because the malpractice insurance is too high.Malpractice insurance is too high. You and Dubya are correct. High malpractice insurance is demonstrably harming the quality of health care available in many areas of the US. That conclusion was also reached by the PriceWaterhouseCoopers report that I linked to in the original journal entry. Something must be done to stop these ruinous lawsuits, possibly involving bullets and lawyers.
That's not the point that I or hfb is making. Malpractice rates are the tip of heath care iceberg that looms directly off our bow [he said nautically]. What I found offensive of the state of the union was that Bush seemed to validate his agenda with slightly spurious points, or at least points that didn't seem entirely on point. In particular, suggesting that cutting the capital gains tax to "help seniors" is particularly disingenuous. Bush might have well said "we need to bomb Iraq for the children." At some level I agree with Bush's statements, but I not dumb enough to neglect the rhetorical impact of his obvious pandering to "Stupid People" (Al Franken's phrase). I don't like talking to salesmen because I don't like being manipulate in general and certainly not by someone so disrespectful of his own native tongue.
Reforming malpractice law will not solve the general (and arguably more important) problem of universal health coverage (however you define that). My concern, and perhaps that of hfb, is that Bush equates fixing malpractice law alone with fixing the health care system. Treat the disease, not the symptoms.
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pudge on 2003-01-30T21:41:48
That's not the point that I or hfb is making. Malpractice rates are the tip of heath care iceberg that looms directly off our bow [he said nautically].
And I conceded, several times, including my original post, that there are other issues to be dealt with. So... ?
Reforming malpractice law will not solve the general (and arguably more important) problem of universal health coverage (however you define that). My concern, and perhaps that of hfb, is that Bush equates fixing malpractice law alone with fixing the health care system.
I get no indication at all that Bush thinks solving malpractice insurance will solve our health care problems. Just the opposite, in fact: Bush mentioned reforming insurance (health, not malpractice), physician choice, help for seniors and the poor, control of medical decisions being returned to doctors and patients, strengthening Medicare with an additional $400B over 10 years. He further recognized that fixing malpractice costs alone would not solve the problems when he said it was "one of the prime causes of higher costs."
All told, Bush used 323 words to discuss health care, with 67 going to malpractice, and 132 to Medicare. Your concern is apparently unjustified.
What I found offensive of the state of the union was that Bush seemed to validate his agenda with slightly spurious points, or at least points that didn't seem entirely on point. In particular, suggesting that cutting the capital gains tax to "help seniors" is particularly disingenuous.
You seem to think that this is unique to Bush. Almost every politician does this, including every President in my lifetime. That doesn't excuse it, and I wish it were different, but... I guess I am more concerned with what I think are more substantive problems.
Anyway, the State of the Union is not the time and place for Bush to make a detailed case for every plan. He has about one paragraph, or less, of text to introduce the plan and say what is good about it. The details come later (or in the case of the dividend tax cut, sooner, as it has been all over the news recently). Yes, he could have chosen a more honest way to introduce it, but this particular tax has several purposes to it (tax relief, encouraging investment, creating jobs, helping the stock market), each one interrelated to the other, and no matter how he explains it, it will be insufficient.
The whole State of the Union, if taken in isolation, is for "stupid people." A lot of people were surprised to learn about the things Bush revealed in regard to Iraq; I had heard every bit of it before, in more detail, except for the part about the mobile weapons labs. The State of the Union is not the place for detail; if you are a "stupid person," then you couldn't handle the detail anyway, and if you are not, you will set forth to learn more on your own. For better or worse, the purpose of the State of the Union is for the President to outline -- emphasis on "outline" -- his agenda for the coming year.
I agree with you that what he said about seniors was somewhat disingenuous, not because it wasn't true, but because it gave a skewed view of the reality. But this is not the place for complete reality. It can't be. It would last 5 or 6 hours if it were, and we would still be unsatisfied with its completeness.
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jhi on 2003-01-31T13:00:59
: The State of the Union is not the place for detail; if you are a "stupid person," then you couldn't handle the detail anyway
Ahhh. That must be why the entire Congress and Senate are present?:-)
(I assume they are, I am not 100% sure of this.)
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pudge on 2003-01-31T13:15:16
Heh! But no, I don't think they are all present. Consider two things: there are 535 members, and the place is designed for the House, of which there are 435 members. Second, what if a bomb explodes in the chamber? Gotta have continuity!Re:thoughts
jjohn on 2003-01-31T16:11:28
Second, what if a bomb explodes in the chamber? Gotta have continuity!
Quip #1: Silly! That's what the shadow government is for.
Quip #2: If a bomb exploded, I'm certain we can dredge up another 500 or so warm bodies to fill the seats.
Whatever happened to the great American tradition of distrusting the government?
