I did not force you to do anything, AR. Neither did I imply you were a liar or that you made numbers up. And in fact, you can do as you please with regard to citing sources, or with regard to political argumentation, or with regard to any other aspect of intellectual approach, philosophy, or standards.

Thank you for discussing these issues with me, AR. It's been interesting.

Here is the link again, and here is a quote from it:

OK. my turn to call you out. The Huffington Post as a 'reliable and unbiased source'? Get real.

So I suppose I became a bit too defensive at the way AR framed his argument — this is too expensive and here are the numbers to prove it

Wow. I had missed that reply.

What am I supposed to say? Sorry for using facts to support my contentions?

Facts that YOU forced me to cite, as you kept harping that I wasn't providing the source for the one-line figures I talked about?

If you are willing to accept the fact that I do not make up numbers out of thin air, I will stop throwing long, complex source documents at you, and we can debate the underlying assumptions.

But as long as you keep implying I am a liar and making numbers up, or using 'unreliable sources', hell yes I am going to keep showing your lack of knowledge.

Assuming you agree the health care delivery system is in crisis

No, I do not share that view.

Do you think Obama should stop all spending until the economy gets better

Of course not. That cannot be done. I do however think he, and to be fair, Congress, should stop creating so many new $T+ spending programs. I opposed TARP, the Porkulus bill, the car bailouts, etc. I WOULD have supported a stimulus bill that wasn't just the Democrats funding all their pet projects, i.e., a TRUE infrastructure and jobs creation bill (not one that 'saved' 935 jobs in a department that only has 508 total employees).

Unemployment has gotten significantly worse than either the 'no stimulus' or 'with stimulus' projections. Why? Simple. Actions have consequences. When business owners, especially small business owners, are fearful of what is going to happen with inflation, taxes, energy costs (and the government has flat out stated their goal is to make energy costs go up to 'force' people to conserve, and make alt energy more cost viable by comparison), and the government forcing a HUGE increase on their health care costs, they stop hiring, put off expansion, and even let people go.

The business community, large and small, are showing they feel no confidence the government is currently concerned abut their problems, and is instead focused on passing these wide-ranging, expensive programs that will hurt their businesses, and crush the economy for years to come.

So, yes, unless they want to focus on actually helping the economy instead of pushing the 'progressive agenda', I certainly do think we would be better off if they did nothing.

It's really not that interesting, Kathy. My point is that we could all say this about the things we do. Very few professions (education, medicine, etc.) can actually point to specific one-on-one interaction that directly benefits the lives of individuals. The rest of us are inclined to look at what we do and think, “Am I really making a difference in the world?” We are taught to idolize famous people who do great things. We tell our children that if they put their mind to it they can become President, even though the vast majority of them will not even if they DO put their mind to it. Certainly we should strive to be the best we can, but I believe an over-emphasis on this type of thinking can be destructive. More collective good has been done in our society by ordinary people doing their work well (in or out of their job, I mean) than by the occasional exception that goes above and beyond.

I produce software. Or, to put it more accurately, I produce lines of code that, when mingled with millions of other lines of code, results in a piece of software that makes other professionals more efficient, thus allowing them more time to give their services to individuals that need them. So, my work has value within society, but by myself (without customers who can use the software to do things that i can't, and without suppliers like computer manufacturers) my talent for programming would be useless.

#2: We probably don't want to get into a debate on the stimulus right now. My rough definition of “unfunded long-term spending” was spending that was set to happen 2 years or more after the stimulus took effect. The CBO broke down those numbers so it was quite easy to distinguish between the two.

#3: Like I said, we've debated conservative vs. liberal ideas on how to cut costs many times before. All I can say is that the CBO estimated that the Republican alternative (which is pretty impotent as well, I have to admit. We could have done much better on the conservative side just as you think single payer would have been better on the liberal side) would reduce costs 5-10% or so while the CBO made no such claim about the Democrats bill. I'm not sure that the Democrats even asked the CBO that question, which is telling.

Yes, I'm back to McCarran-Ferguson again. As long as people are given complete information, I would far rather be given the chance to determine if a policy has a “gap” or just something I don't want or need. Single men, for instance don't need maternity coverage, but it's mandated in some states anyway. To me, it's elitism to think that the state is going to be able to make better purchasing decisions than I can. It also allows for lobbyists to force favoritism to their industry, which is the driver behind these kinds of mandates.

“With regard to employers, I might need to research this to know for sure, but if memory serves the reason employers started offering health insurance coverage as an employee benefit was precisely because the cost of purchasing insurance privately was so high even then. In other words, it was a response to rising costs, not the cause of them.”
No. No. No. Medicals costs were far lower back then, in both real and inflation adjusted dollars. Medical insurance was uncommon and medical care was much cheaper, and less regulated. As I've stated several times before, it was tied to employment because wages were fixed, but employers wanted a way to attract better employees. Rather than lift the wage limits, congress allowed employers to offer additional benefits, and made health insurance non-taxable when offered through the employer. Unfortunately, when WW II ended, and the wage limits were lifted, the tax benefit wasn't lifted.

And of course now I am insanely curious to know what that something is that you help produce that is worthless in itself but adds value when used with everyone else's work. How intriguing! Is it a secret? Or can you tell?

#2 I don't share your definition of what is “stimulus spending” and what is “unfunded long-term spending.” There were millions of dollars cut from the stimulus bill that were in fact, stimulative and should have been kept in. Almost all public spending stimulates the economy in a no-spending recession. The bill should have been double the size it was, and the fact it is not is one reason it's not working as well as it should be.

#3 There is no way to “prioritize” cost-cutting without (a) increasing the number of Americans who have coverage; and (b) creating *real* competition to the private insurance industry. If you want more cost-cutting, then you should be hoping the Senate retains the strong public option that's in the House bill. Even better yet, you should be calling for single-payer. But obviously that's not on the menu right now. But the conservadems and Republicans who refuse to vote for health care reform if the public option is in it, are either hypocritical or uninformed, because the moment you take the public option out, the cost goes up. So we could actually end up with a bill that covers fewer people, does not provide real competition for the private insurance industry, and costs *more* than the just-passed House bill would. There is no way to have serious cost-cutting without a public option, and the more people it covers, the more it will cut costs.

No, but I did now. The author reaches that conclusion only be completely dismissing the supplemental abortion coverage aspect which is the heart of my argument. This is how the article dismisses it:

“Stupak and his allies claim his Amendment doesn't ban abortion from the Exchange because it allows plans to offer and women to purchase extra, stand-alone insurance known as a rider to cover abortion services. Hopefully the irony of this is immediately apparent: Stupak wants women to plan for a completely unexpected event.”

Yes, that's part of what health insurance is: planning for unexpected events. And an insurance company has an incentive to make it as easy as possible to opt for the supplemental insurance. I imagine it would be as simple as checking a box on an application form.

This is actually something I've thought quite a bit about. This is going to sound a little crazy and off topic, but I can't resist the chance to actually agree with Kathy on something: I picture the human race as living on a huge 3-dimensional spider-web suspended high in the trees (OK, I know you think I'm crazy). Our society has built this web and we live our entire lives on it and we have become so accustomed to it that if we were to fall off of it and land on the ground we would shrivel up and die in seconds, unable to even walk on the foreign material known as “dirt”. I have thought about the “you wake up and everyone is gone” scenario. I am fortunate enough to have sufficient money to live in a comfortable home, drive a reliable car, etc. But if I had to build my own home, raise my own food, etc, my standard of living would be a small fraction of what it is today. I do my small part to keep up the web, which in part is my job where I help produce something that is worthless by itself but adds value to our lives when used in conjunction with everyone else's work (now you see where I get the “web” metaphor, as every individual strand is worthless by itself).

We all depend on each other to keep up the integrity of the web. Occasionally something happens (natural disasters, planes flying into buildings, wars, etc.) to blow holes in our web that causes devastation and a hurry to fix the hole and reinforce it so that such holes are more difficult to happen in the future.

So, I know what you mean Kathy. However, I think it has more to do with our society than our government. We have social interaction when that social interaction benefits both parties (ie. I'll build you a home if you will feed my family). The metaphor starts to break down, in my opinion, when we are talking about government imposing policies to force us to have those social interactions (ie. you'll pay for my health care whether you like it or not). The line is not necessarily always clear, however, so I take your point.

(I'm resume my normal relatively sane commenting now)

It effectively bans coverage for most abortions from all public and private health plans in the Exchange: In addition to prohibiting direct government funding for abortion, it also prohibits public money from being spent on any plan that covers abortion even if paid for entirely with private premiums. Therefore, no plan that covers abortion services can operate in the Exchange unless its subscribers can afford to pay 100% of their premiums with no assistance from government “affordability credits.” As the vast majority of Americans in the Exchange will need to use some of these credits, it is highly unlikely any plan will want to offer abortion coverage (unless they decide to use it as a convenient proxy to discriminate against low- and moderate-income Americans who tend to have more health care needs and incur higher costs).

I know your asking AR, but if you don't mind this is what I'd have him do:

#1) Don't promise that you're going to cut the annual deficit (and I'm not talking about 1 year, I'm talking about the average annual deficit) in half when you are actually going to multiply it by at least 2.

#2) Pass a stimulus bill that is cut down to stimulus only, not unfunded long-term spending. As an exercise, I found $112 billion dollars that could have been taken out of the stimulus while only decreasing short-term spending by 20 billion, and I explain in my post how that is only the tip of the iceburg: http://sovereignmind.wordpress.com/2009/02/02/w…

#3) Produce health care reform that prioritizes lowering the cost of health care, instead of just shuffling it around. I've said before that I support efforts to improve the fairness of our health care system, but if cost is not also controlled then it will be for naught as far as our economy and debt are concerned. There have been numerous previous threads where conservatives vs. liberal ideas on how to decrease costs have been debated, so I won't get into that for now.

However, I will agree with you (and disagree with AR) in terms of the short-term spending. I'm not as upset about the 2009 deficit as I am about the 2014 one and beyond.

So which is more important — “This bill will increase the deficit by $1 trillion!” or “This bill will decrease the national debt over 10 years”?

Republicans (at least the non-crazy ones) aren't saying that the bill be increase the deficit by 1 trillion. They are saying that it will increase the debt over the next few decades. So yes, the question of over-all debt is more important than any single year's deficit, but we are talking about the former. Maybe it's confusing because in order to talk about the effect of the policy on the overall debt, you have to look at the individual years' deficits over that period of time. (ie. The sum of the deficits for all tens years = the increase in the debt over those tens years).

OK. I know not everyone is a numbers person, and since you are AR are in a somewhat heated debate I won't hold your tone against you.

I tried to lay out the numbers in prose form in my response to AR. As I said, I don’t think it’s useful to talk about numbers from 2008-2010/2011ish, since those are recession numbers. Of course the deficit will be higher during those years both because of decreased tax receipts and some degree of stimulus. We could debate whether short-term stimulus and bail-outs are justified during a recession, but that’s a different discussion. If we want to talk about long-term deficit spending, we have to look at Bush’s numbers pre-2008, and Obama’s estimates post-2011ish. If you look at those numbers, it is simple math to see that Obama’s deficits are about twice as large as Bush’s numbers (and yes, I checked and those numbers do include spending for the Bush wars).

Of course, if you don't agree with my premises, then you will probably say “do nothing,” which would make sense if none of these issues are actually serious problems. But assuming you agree that they are, how would you solve them w/o spending money?