For the ‘government sector’, the same perverse incentives exist, except that instead of profits on a ledger sheet, the incentive is power and votes.

Then claims that she is in fact simply saying that they are human and subject to human foibles no greater than the private sector. She claims that this is no different than the profit motive in the business world. Of course there are good people in the business world, but especially in the corporate world it’s much much easier to lose sight of anything but the profit motive. Do I really have to list every one of the business executives doing time in the pen for varying types of fraud and malfeasance? What about the rigging of the energy market in California done by Enron and other energy trading companies a few years back? What about the accounting and law firms that helped these corporations ruin their investors and employees? These people did what they did to gain millions of dollars for their own pocketbooks. The typical government employee does not have any incentive as strong as that no matter what is claimed by the modern conservative movement.

When it comes to health care what about the fact that those insurance companies you want to keep in their current roles have employees whose sole goal is to find any reason possible to deny claims? How about the fact that they don’t pay health care providers in anything approaching the timely manner they expect to receive their premiums in, often taking almost a year to pay off and in that time the providers often go after the patients in order to try and recover their money? Where are those checks and balances provided by the desire for a good product?

At one point you claimed that you recognized the weakness of the market in health care and asked what the difference between your acknowledgment and my criticism of market forces in health care was. Your acknowledgment was this:

Jim, time and again I’ve pointed out to you that I have an understanding of the failures of the market system, particularly with healthcare (in that case, it’s because we don’t actually HAVE a market system, so the checks and balances that are inherent in capitalism simply aren’t there).

This seems to imply (As I believe I’ve heard you say before.) that the failure in the market as applied to health care is primarily due to the existence of insurance and the use of it as an employee benefit. This is not the primary reason that market forces don’t work in health care. It is the psychological and emotional aspects of health care that apply more to this than to any other part of our society that involves the exchange of money and services that breaks down the rational choice theory that neoclassical economics is based on.

Poor Bush… he’s always compromising with everyone else

How many vetoes has he chosen to make?

Intelligent criticism of Bush includes criticism of how willing he has been to spend the public’s money (”compassionate conservatism”) — like a Democrat rather than what is supposed (or merely claimed) to be like a Republican. The intelligent criticism of this veto is that it is not merely ironic, but hypocritical of Bush to name excessive spending as one reason why he vetoed the bill, when he has routinely permitted such excessive spending in the past. (In this case, the excess is obvious and the original $50 billion increase sought was outrageous or ridiculous. Bush will accept more spending but Democrats who are realistic, and who aren’t immature, will have to expect to substantially lower the increase in the next bill.)

When it comes to spending, Bush has been all too happy to compromise, and to spend money (a true “compassionate conservative,” indeed). That compromise (deference is more like it!) is indisputable fact despite his antagonistic and defiant behavior toward Congress on other matters (requests for information about various scandals and non-scandals).

Less growth than what Democrats want in spending (and in S-CHIP’s case, expansion of the scope and the very nature of the program) has traditionally been described by Democrats as “cuts,” and in this case (as in others), “heartless,” et cetera.

I guess compromise is only attractive when the other side is meant to be doing it then.

Poor Bush… he’s always compromising with everyone else, and now look at how those mean Democrats treat him when they are in power.

The quality control in government programs, whether or not operated through the private sector,
liews in its oversight agencies and Congress, as well as in citizen watch groups.

When it’s a direct governemtn program, the books are open, by law, and those responsible and accountable are easy to locate. When the road ot accountability goes through the private sector, it’s a road with more twists and turns, The books are not as readily available and those reponsible harder to identfy.

As I said, and to expand on your observatiion about not being perfect, neither system of managing a program is perfect. Both systems are corrupted by politics and greed.
The government is policing itself in either case, so that’s neither here nor there.
I’m speaking now about the relative ease/difficulty of rectifying imperfections.

That’s not to say, that a direct government program is ALWAYS the best solution. There are other considerations, like efficiency and overhead. I am saying that the choice should depend on the particular program in question.

Here is where the change in the nature of capitalism
comes into play. When capitalism scuttles it’s serving the customer model in favor of serving the investor model, it changes its role in society. It no longer has a commitment to the customer who is not an investor. This is the whole in the economy as it is today, in particular when it comes to health care.

That being the case, making NEED a part of the considerations is not only legitimate, but necessary.
Capitalism has no room for need that can’t be answered by a cash transaction.

The NEED does not vanish just because a government ignores it. It has to deal with it in some form, sooner or later. The federal government has to deal with the need created by Katrina, regardless of economic considerations, because any government would collapse if it chose to just leave the bodies to rot.

Once again, then, we are looking at how best to address the need in a cost effective way. What is cost effective today may lead to much higher costs down the road, so unless we take a long and broad view of how one thing affects another, we will fail.

A stitch in time saves nine.

It is absolutely true that government programs have failed or had unforgeseen consequences, and that they need to be under constant scutiney and consequent adjsutment.
Capitalist systems have also failed.
Neither fact is suffiicient grounds for abolishment.
It all depends on the context.

The competition in capitalism does not provide any inherent checks to guard against monopolies by conglomomeration, insider trading, price fixing, or any number of other practices that need to be checked if the product is, indeed, to provide best value.

Which is why I said that my statement about checks and balances was not a blanket statement, but you choose to keep interpreting it as one.

Government programs, by their nature, are more transparent. If they’re set up by the government, the rules are there, and the practices available for audiitng. Not so for the private sector, unless regulations require it, and the private sector, with its philosophical allies, oppose most regulation on principle. As long as the practices are off the premises, there is always the tempaaion to obscure those as well.
So, your claim is that since the government programs are set up for the govt. to police itself, that’s a better example of checks and balances than a market based system which has those in the form of competition providing incentive for efficiency and quality?

Look, my simple analysis of the comparison goes like this: in the private sector (absent any irresponsible tinkering by govt acting on the side of corporations-which is not what true conservatives endorse even if the US conservative party too often engages in it), generally businesses that provide crappy service or product, or are wasteful of their resources, will not last because a competitor will outdo them. In the public sector, a bureaucracy has no competition, and accountability for providing good quality service is weak (if you disagree, show me where the quality controls are). And on top of that, if they are failing to solve the problem that they were designed to create, then they use the ‘need’ as a means of getting more revenue, and if they are having some success, they are often inclined to still ask for more funding or to expand their mandate.

You’ve yet to say why you disagree with that analysis, and instead you say that you choose to focus on the people. It’s like someone advertising a product, and they keep telling me how much I need the product but when I say that I don’t think their product fits the need that I have they again keep focusing on how bad the need is instead of telling me how their product would really function to help. Forgive me for skepticism, but when that happens I tend to think that they probably have a pretty lousy product and since they can’t demonstrate otherwise, they’re instead appealing to my emotions to try to get me to buy it without thinking about it too much.

“You don’t have money to fund the war or children. But you’re going to spend it to blow up innocent people if we can get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the president’s amusement.”

I don’t respond to your comments, because you have a narrow focus on this particular bill

Well, staying on the proper subject is better than being falsely accused of this,

They start with premises that are nothing but the creed of a basic political philosophy. Then they nitpick this and that factoid as if one factor could negate the whole. Then they make blanket assertions about capitalism and ‘let the states do it’.

but it would help us all if you could make up your mind, and it’s not an excuse for ignoring what I post.

* * *

I am enrolled in Mecidare Par D.
I have all the information I need, in practice, not theory.

I will defer to your experience here, at least until I’m on Medicare myself sometime soon. (*wink* There’s no telling when. This doesn’t involve retirement, at least not voluntary retirement.)

Forms of “cheating” are anti-capitalistic. As to monopoly or other intentional deviation from the ideal or theoretical model (even such things as protected territories for sales), not only Rex Tugwell’s Progressive-Era-influenced views come to mind*, but Adam Smith: “a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.” More here.

* Tugwell was one of the Brain(s) Trusters with FDR who engineered the New Deal’s early fascistic plans, such as for labor and industrial “codes” that harnessed and even formed cartels under the management, or control of the federal government.

I am enrolled in Mecidare Par D.
I have all the information I need, in practice, not theory.

I don’t respond to your comments, because you have a narrow focus on this particular bill

It’s my postions that one can not evaluate the bill outside its context of the health care situation in general and even broader, the economic situation in general.

We are not even looking at the same picture.

Well, in the case of Medicare Part D, I already posted such information. Did you ignore that [, too]? Here it is again.

The competition in capitalism does not provide any inherent checks to guard against monopolies by conglomomeration, insider trading, price fixing, or any number of other practices that need to be checked if the product is, indeed, to provide best value.

Government programs, by their nature, are more transparent. If they’re set up by the government, the rules are there, and the practices available for audiitng. Not so for the private sector, unless regulations require it, and the private sector, with its philosophical allies, oppose most regulation on principle. As long as the practices are off the premises, there is always the tempaaion to obscure those as well.

In both government and private sector run progams, politicians obscure transparency rather than avail themselves of whatever there is.
To choose one over the other, then boils down to assessing potentials, not actualities.
In pracice, both systems are failing miserably, thanks to our politicians, but the potential is greater in governemtn run povernment run programs.

Ideally, the two could work together. Then, as I have repeatedly said, the choice should be made by how, in a particular case (no blanket endorsements one way or the other) it affects the people, and various classes of people.

I repeat: a government has to manage its ecomony, but a nation is more than its economics.

The private sector is imperfect and government programs are imperfect. A knee-jerk choice of one over the other is just: a knee-jerk choice based on philosophical premises.

Past mistakes don’t excuse current and future ones.

Much less justify them.

The Dems should remove the new options that were in the bill and lower the income limit to 250 per cent. Or if they want to be combative and risk another veto, remove the new options but keep the income limit at the 300 per cent originally sought. They continue to be underhanded incrementalists if they keep the new options in the next bill.

They start with premises that are nothing but the creed of a basic political philosophy. Then they nitpick this and that factoid

On the contrary (once more), I have posted specific examples of what is wrong with the bill along with fully legitimate reasons why it is wrong, as well as provided examples how a compromise could be crafted, while you frequently have diverged from the subject into the speculative as well as outright fictitious realms.

They start with premises that are nothing but the creed of a basic political philosophy. Then they nitpick this and that factoid as if one factor could negate the whole. Then they make blanket assertions about capitalism and ‘let the states do it’.

And surprise, surprise, their conclusions lead right back to the premises they started with.

I prefer to look at how this affects real people.
When the private sector took over the President’s Drug coverage plan, it was a clear boon to the wealthy.
For the not so wealthy, however, the doughnut hole in coverage can be a nightmare. States like NY had their own programs for lower income groupts, providing coverage for all medicine for a reasonable annual fee and co-payment.s
Recipients eligible for Medicare are now forced to enroll into one of a maxe of private insurer plans, each with its own dizzying rules, included and excluded medicines, etc. The elderly have to navigate this maze, instead of applying in a one-step easy to understnd manner.

This is an example of how the private sector fails to serve while it completes for profit.
This gets to the heart of why the privates sector does not provide adequate checks and balances.
It used to be the case that all businesses were expected to incorporate a policy of serving the customers. That has changed iinto serving the investors. Thtose unable to be both customers and investors, are left out in the cold.

This is, in large part, about the haves and the have-nots, and the inablity of some haves to accetp that the have-nots are citizens, too, and their interests should be condiered in framing a course for a nation. Ignoring those interests, does not make them disappear. They atay right here to haunt us all in myriad ways. In extreme cases, revolutions are the result, or nation-wide chaos.

These short-sighted navel gazing arguments fail the reality test, if they remain circular: assumed premise to predestined conclusion.

“The capitalist sstem provides checks and balances”
Not so.
This is a blanket assertion based on faith, not reality.
.
What capitalism provides is competition.
Competition, by itself, is only a race for profits and power. There are no inherent checks and balances that guarantee that the outcome will provide value.

That was a blanket assertion only when you twisted it into one. Note that my statement did not say, “Capitalism provides perfect checks and balances” or “capitalism provides all the checks and balances on human behavior that are needed to create perfect fairness of distribution of resources.”

But yes, I stand by my statement that capitalism does provide checks and balances. Competition itself is a check- because businesses which have to compete are forced to provide better products and services. That doesn’t mean that I think it always works out that way and of course transparency (and education of the consumers) is essential.

As to transparency in govt programs- I call foul on that claim. Every time a budget is questioned by conservatives, the standard ‘heartless’ attacks are made. Programs are defended on the basis of need, not on the basis of whether or not they’re efficiently fufilling the need.

CS- You have not addressed Bush’s own history of expanding government- you do know that he expanded it twice as much as his predecessor. To claim that he is taking a principled stand now is ludicrous.

Which is maybe why I’ve said in several other comment threads here that I suspect Bush’s stance is not a principled one? Doesn’t mean that I (and many others who oppose the bill) can’t take a principled stand though, now, does it? If we’re going to take the approach that people have neglected fiscal responsibility in the past so we can’t possibly reclaim the principled ground, well, then we’re in trouble. Past mistakes don’t excuse current and future ones.

Both sides have done a lot of political maneuvering, but that is true on any issue. The Republicans have threatened the dems with reprisals on national security and war funding- so it certainly is not unheard of for the Democrats to use this vote at election time.

Never said it was, but I want you to be honest about what they’re doing.