Financial topics

[aedens]

Example:
First of all, I'm not fond of the current state of heath insurance. It's complicated and expensive. It seems designed to extract the maximum dollars from workers. Our health insurance premiums extract over 12% of our paycheck and with high deductibles, $50 copays, and barely discounted prescriptions, we don't see doctors when we get sick or hurt because we probably couldn't make the rent if we had to pay even light medical bills, because light bills run in the several hundreds now. We have no way to ballpark costs in advance or comparison shop.
It's the third week now I've had this awful hacking cough. Coughing till I gag. Whistling lungs. Out of breath. Horrid green mucus. All I can do is swallow triple doses of cheapest over-the-counter stuff. I should see a doctor, but I've only got a $5 per week budget for diagnosis and treatments. No copay money. Just cough pills is all I can do. It's 4 weeks now. No, 5 weeks? The county health clinic tuned me away because I have insurance. The city clinic has shut down.
For us, it's like buying really expensive car insurance. It's required by law, the kind that 3 time DUI convicts buy, hundreds $ per month car insurance, $10,000 deductible. And fuck, we don't even have a car. We don't drive dude. We can only afford old bikes! Ok, it's the law. It's the law, I understand it's required. It will be deducted from my paycheck, I know, the law.

[Higgenbotham]

Wall Street is stupid beyond belief. I remember the day the Health Care legislation passed the stock market soared. As for the near term impact on the restaurant industry, it can be noted that the RPI is heading toward recession territory - comparing the chart at the bottom of the press release to late 2007. The exact dates and numbers are in the archives.
http://www.restaurant.org/pressroom/pre ... e/?ID=2338

[aedens]

I was having the same thought for many years for inflation to retire the debt for politicians. Evil people. Greece is here as they chastise the non believers and they voted this evil. When these kids wake up they will be educated for sure. The easy button parasites need chopped off at the knees now. Cut Washington to 30 hours pay and no exceptions until they get IT point blank. I forgot, the Gods of the New Age rule. We watched it happen before our very local eyes and the Sheep deserve the Shepard they see. Pointless since a expert will have study as needed. We had a discussion on that investment note also about whats coming and here. Let me be clear since it is here as i see it now. Our fork in the road and some cannot follow and will not. We got family all the hell over just as you and yes the commentary is very clear since the first question they are not listening to anyone since the experts have concluded. Just as you H we know some sharp cookies.

[Higgenbotham]

http://articles.cnn.com/2010-03-21/poli ... M:POLITICS
http://bigcharts.marketwatch.com/advcha ... &x=50&y=10

I checked to make sure. House passed the Health Care legislation Sunday, March 21, 2010. Stock market soared right from the open Monday and didn't look back.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GU53qv5aA1M
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolae_Ce ... #Overthrow

The mass meeting of 21 December, held in what is now Revolution Square, began like many of Ceaușescu's speeches over the years. With the usual "wooden language", Ceaușescu delivered a litany of the achievements of the "socialist revolution" and Romanian "multi-laterally developed socialist society".

He had seriously misjudged the crowd's mood, and several people began jeering, booing and whistling at him; as the speech wore on, more and more people did the same. Others began chanting "Ti-mi-șoa-ra! Ti-mi-șoa-ra!" Ceaușescu's uncomprehending facial expression as the crowd began to boo and heckle him remains one of the defining moments of the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe. He tried to silence them by raising his right hand, and when that did not work, he announced that they would receive a raise of 100 lei per month. Failing to control the crowds, the Ceaușescus finally took cover inside the building, where they remained until the next day.

Ceaușescu made a last desperate attempt to address the crowd gathered in front of the Central Committee building, but the people in the square began throwing stones and other projectiles at him, forcing him to take refuge in the building once more. One group of protesters forced open the doors of the building, by now left unprotected. They managed to overpower Ceaușescu's bodyguards and rushed through his office and onto the balcony. Although they did not know it, they were only a few meters from Ceaușescu, who was trapped in an elevator. He, Elena and four others managed to get to the roof and escaped by helicopter, only seconds ahead of a group of demonstrators who had followed them there.

[aedens]

Look back clause of the bill upcoming. Do you have over 50 employees? Not anymore Sold half the business since cost dictate who signs the front of the check not the back. Of the full time employees you must pay X. Sorry I contract all non essential staff now as the Capital went off shore to fund projects.
Those sand castles no longer ... I will wait and as we prepare since a Civilization cannot be put back into order by seizing political power or by attacking it, but by moving away from it, by diverting our focus from marbled temples and legislative halls to the conduct of our daily lives. And so, we are not to live as those who have no hope.

[OLD1953]

The issue with Obamacare isn't even the idea of the law per se, it's with how complex it is. That's why the effects can't be predicted. To predict effects you have to produce a box or flowchart showing each possible decision point, or each leaf in the tree as some would have it. They've allowed the fifty states to have fifty different variations, with cross state insurance pools, plus states swearing they won't do it (Ok, NG vs George Wallace, who won?), plus a couple of dozen modifications to current law, plus offerings from large numbers of insurance companies. And a limit on administrative expenses of 85% (so some companies just raised rates so they could keep the CEO's pay up in the stratosphere)(even high end estimates of admin costs of Medicare are less than 15%). Plus an attempt to modernize medical records, and a bunch of caveats on how and where this will be applied. And too many variables are still unknown and won't be known until after full implementation. I'd just love to see Zwickey figure that one out. http://www.swemorph.com/ma.html

It is difficult to point to any single part of the law and say "that's an overall negative" because all the parts lock together. The actual bad thing is the uncertainty in the whole matter, coupled with the determination to turn it into a huge political issue which meant generating a total feeling of doom in the population at large for a period now approaching four years. By so doing, the normal process of modification and amendment has been short circuited, and this thing is going to be the untouchable law for quite a while into the future. America needed a health care act in the worst way, and that's how we got this one.

And there's another problem here as well, and I don't see any solution on the horizon. Yes, we can indeed force companies to become more efficient. In the past, this has resulted in an economic upswing as they were forced to spend money to modernize plant and equipment, etc. Will this happen now? Modern plant and equipment is robotic. Modern offices run on software, not clerks. Forcing the old clerks offices to use modern software means they don't need as many people. Just MHO, but I think this is part of the reason for so much goofy paperwork now, it takes up the time and causes a need for the bodies they already have. (Did an experiment here recently, a horribly complex report of about twelve slides that gets produced by yrs truly each week, because its so bad nobody else will touch it - this isn't even my data - was being sent by my boss to about 25 different people across the world. He simply stopped sending it unless someone requested it. That has cut the distribution list down to three now - counting him, its four people actually want this monster.) If paperwork reduction was actually put into effect, along with real efficiency in plant and real scheduled upkeep done on time, we'd see unemployment explode.

And that is the great social problem of modern times. What do we do with all the extra people? We've tried building houses, and blew the market up, we tried the service route, and found out the wealthy would rather have their maids from outside the USA. We tried setting up a service industry for the middle class, and found out you can't get rich by every person taking in the next person's laundry and charging for it. Money has to flow up and down, not just sideways, I suppose we could say that it has to gain "energy" by being pulled uphill and then running back down. The anti tax movement killed any chance of simply putting people to work for government, so we got the expansion of disability.

http://www.socialwelfarehistory.com/rec ... ities-act/

http://www.bakerbotts.com/file_upload/P ... ricanD.htm

That was one of the "presents" for the next administration in both cases. This was exceptionally egregious:
*****
The ADAAA rejects prior Supreme Court interpretations of the ADA concerning the impact of mitigating measures, such as hearing aids, medications, prosthetics, etc., that could lessen the adverse effects of an impairment. As amended by the ADAAA, the ameliorative effects of such mitigating measures may not be considered in determining whether a person is disabled.
*****
The habit of putting out poison pills for the next President has just got to stop. It's horribly expensive and as they know, Democrats don't like to position themselves as killing an entitlement program, while Republicans don't like to position themselves as killing military or corporate gifts. So this stuff just continues on. By the strict application of the act, I've been disabled since I was 17 and damaged my knees badly. (Living in the South I've had a fairly large number of people tell me "that's just for minorities, white people can't get on". (yeah, I cleaned that up) Which always makes me wonder, how do you know unless you tried to get it?)

But that's one solution I suppose, put everyone on the dole as in England. The other idea is to force production back to the US with tariffs,, and let the rest of the world be unemployed.

Lot of negatives with both of those. If there is another in the public arena, it's been pretty quiet. The notion of "we pay the companies to produce here and tax out the difference" has been tried and was a fiasco.

[Reality Check]

The issue with Obamacare isn't even the idea of the law per se, it's with how complex it is. That's why the effects can't be predicted.

Talk about spin.

Many, many, parts of the Obamacare law were known from day one.

That is why so many Liberals in the House and Senate opposed it when it was being drafted.

Obamacare redefines, health care insurance plans that provide very, very poor insurance coverage, and very, very expensive ( to the employee ) health insurance premiums ( employee contributions to the cost of their health insurance ) as "quality health insurance at an affordable price".

How?

Insurance with annual deductibles in the thousands of dollars, co-insurance that has the insurance paying only 65% of those charges above the huge deductibles, leaving the employees to pay the first couple 1,000 dollars of covered medical costs and a whopping 35% of everything after that.

Obama care did NOT, repeat NOT, eliminate annual limits to the total amount of medical costs an insurance plan will pay each year. Obama promised to eliminate both annual and lifetime limits. People die and go bankrupt from annual limits, not lifetime limits. Eliminating life time limits is just a talking point with no positive benefit as long as much lower annual limits remained in place.

In addition, as part of "quality health insurance at an affordable price" employer based plans that require the employee to pay 50% of the health insurance premiums will be, under Obamacare "quality health insurance at an affordable price". Employers can simply point to the Obamacare law as setting the standards they are changing their insurance premiums to comply with. Employers can also point to the fact that Obamacare levies draconian taxes on "so called" Cadillac plans that have much better benefits for employees and union members. When you add 50% of 65% to 35%, employees are now paying 67.5% of costs covered by insurance ( percentage type )co-pays plus 100% of the deductible amount of thousands of dollars.

Employers now have Obamacare authorization to lower their employer sponsored health insurance plans to those levels that Obamacare, as the law of the land, defines as being "quality health insurance at an affordable price".

The annual sign up period for employer "sponsored" health insurance is in progress, and the impact of Obamacare will be felt by employees all over the United States this month, next month, and all of 2013, as everyone adjusts to the new reality of Obamacare.

Why ?

Obamacare does this in an attempt to make the long term costs of implementing government controlled health care appear much lower than it would been if the law actually mandated the same level of health care insurance as the average employer provided before Obamacare. The magic number was less than One Trillion dollars in government costs over 10 years, as a talking point politicians who supported Obamacare could use. So very, very poor, vastly lowered, acceptable health insurance standards were the result.

Not to mention the massive transfer of tens of millions of employees from full time work, to part time work, encouraged by Obamacare as part of the Obamacare employer health care cost reduction scheme.

To suggest the impacts this law will have are completely unknown is nothing but spin. The impacts are happening everyday at an alarming rate and on a massive scale that effects how 10s of Millions receive, and pay for, their health care. Companies are not waiting until 2014 to implement Obamacare changes, they are starting immediately as people sign up for 2013 insurance coverage through employer sponsored plans.

[aedens]

The habit of putting out poison pills for the next President has just got to stop. That is a difficult topic to unfold and yes we have seen the recourse and touched on it here as we noted the current rhetoric of 10 percent rise over 10 years which was 2x as much as the red togas posited. I think they they are clever people who treat us as Subjects so they need a beltway reduction policy. Cut half there wages of the 535 to start then we will see the tune change with them. We have also noted now the machine will speak on why the Republicans have x problems and y observation and Z solution to diffuse expert incompetance. Old the conveyance is poinant and thus compelling to the thought maps and complexity's are known to some and they just do not care. We had that financial discussion and the analogy started in waste stream management systems developed even before we dug out the ponies. It made sense until it could not feedback in a literal sense. It turned out to short term streams already known in chemistry. I will give a case study, Feedstock was utilized on x size. They had the body weight but the foetus death rate and prions cause metabolic failures. Now to the public seen the cows got fat since the feedstock waste was the wrong metabolic proteins and loaded with glucose so the heifers developed incorrectly in body mass and the calfs died and you got mad cow desease. Now a friend of mine of six, so 5/6 I knew went bankrupt since todays regulations include what you expect the government to do. Also note I did not tell you which stock had the largest problem with birthing with larger heads and a good farmer can tell you what one. Point is we need both, eyes and ears to save life but that is the issue since liability stops reality as people die. Over regulate what my freind never used in his feedstock. Now for berevity you can see a small note on health care cost because the root was never pulled on a expert who had a paper that said you can substitute this, and make more money and the ones who are regulated got regulated to extintion since they never understood but killed a market provider. That is most basic one from GRAS technology with a person who can tell you climate change is man made and mindset since man is less than x amount responsible but they will not tell you this. Years ago I read a book when lake erie flooded so bad the ohio valley was literally washed away and thousands died and no remembers that but the person who survived and wrote the book to say so, and no it was not a dam so stop that thought. These people are educated beyond the common man to survive them since reductionary technological thinking serves one purpose and that is not you. Confusion is a state of profit for some of these evil creatures and people need, as we are warned to be as innocent as a lamb but wise as a serpant in the garden. Gatekeepers as Moses noted is the first step to seeing and watchtowers who are on the same side. We are warned in certain terms on may issues but few see the actual danger. Voltaire distrusted democracy, which he saw as propagating the idiocy of the masses and was the King's chief ass kisser of the realm. Some will never see it coming. Divine comedy on the seal in the forehead but the rule is they should read before they need shoes.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2 ... _hospitals

We buried the frozen dead there with donations and now our own are not treated unless you are X class.
Get used to VA type care. Since we are them as we warned as others also. The Senate was relagated to domestic duties and
they cannot even do that now. The only hope we have is tea party and who understand what it truly is.

yet they fail to explain fully how it happened when it happened ----- absolutely untrue in actual history -----
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2 ... g?page=0,1

[OLD1953]

Here's some planning for you.

http://news.yahoo.com/exclusive-jersey- ... 44706.html

Not sure which stock you are talking about, but my father had problems with the calves from Simmental and Kinemy bulls. I'm sure I spelled those names wrong.

[Higgenbotham]

Many industry sectors are nearing or have reached a tipping point in which efficiency of unit size is being replaced by efficiency of numbers, according to a recent study by Garrett van Ryzin, the Paul M. Montrone Professor of Private Enterprise at Columbia Business School, Caner Göçmen, Ph.D. candidate at Columbia Business School, and Eric Dahlgren and Klaus S. Lackner of Columbia University's School of Engineering and Applied Science. Rather than relying on custom-built, large-scale units of production – e.g. massive thermal power plants - industries can benefit from a shift to small, modular, mass-produced units that can be deployed in a single location or distributed across many locations.

The authors identify three driving forces underlying this shift. First, new computing, sensor, and communication technologies make high degrees of automation possible at a very low cost, largely eliminating the labor savings from large units. Second, mass production of many small, standardized units can achieve capital cost savings comparable to or even greater than those achievable through large unit scale. And third, small-unit scale technology provides significant flexibility—a benefit that has been largely ignored in the race toward ever-increasing scale and one which can significantly reduce both investment and operating costs.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/ ... 110212.php