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Is This Woman The Smoking Gun Of The Mortgage Meltdown?
@pastabatman: You'd be hard pressed to find a purely free market economy that works because you'd be hard pressed to find a purely free market economy that even exists. This "bare teeth capitalism" you speak of is hardly unregulated.
Whether or not pure capitalism works is something best left to the economic theorists, because pure capitalism (and pure anything, really) is pretty much solely relegated to the realm of theory. It barely exists in real life.
Is This Woman The Smoking Gun Of The Mortgage Meltdown?
An 1600 SF house in the neighborhood next to mine runs you about $450k. It doesn't really seem like the only problem is the size of houses. Granted, I don't live in a high-expansion area like California, but even still, the problem doesn't seem like it's with house size, it seems like it's with over-valuation.
Is This Woman The Smoking Gun Of The Mortgage Meltdown?
@Hambriq: Did I really just call that a metaphor? Whoops.
Is This Woman The Smoking Gun Of The Mortgage Meltdown?
@lightaugust: I agree with your post wholeheartedly. This news would have done us some good two years ago. But right now it just seems to me like someone wants to ease their conscience a little bit for standing by while things like this went on.
Kudos for the Iraq metaphor, too.
BCBS Of Florida Only Sends Reader 12% Of What They Owe Him
So we fix a broken system by throwing more money at it? When was the last time that worked?
BCBS Of Florida Only Sends Reader 12% Of What They Owe Him
Also maybe I should clarify, because BEC's post does highlight the massive disconnect between the patient and the provider. Medicare's reimbursement rate doesn't refer to how it pays the patients. It refers to how it pays the provider. Medicare and Medicaid are notorious for providing abysmally low (and late) reimbursement rates.
BCBS Of Florida Only Sends Reader 12% Of What They Owe Him
@BigElectricCat:
Let's see. I work at a pharmacy. I have worked at several pharmacies in the past, independent
and retail. I have seen first-hand the financial impact of Medicare and Medicaid's low rate of reimbursement. I have seen small town pharmacies shut down and replaced by chain pharmacies that service the entire town because that is the only way to achieve the economies of scale necessary to keep their business afloat after Medicare's low rate of reimbursement.
Of course things look good to you. You are on the patient end of things. When you are on the other side of the counter, the situation is not as rosy. We are already feeling the effects of Medicare's dire financial straits. And when the baby boomers start to retire and more people are taking out of the system than are putting into the system, you will start feeling the effects on the patient's side.
BCBS Of Florida Only Sends Reader 12% Of What They Owe Him
@Trai_Dep:
And Medicare is a bankrupt system. And it's forcing independent doctors, pharmacies and other health care providers to stop accepting it because its reimbursement rates are so low and intermittent. And, this bears repeating: it is a bankrupt system.
This isn't a political issue, this isn't a "right vs. left" thing. It's a "How can we offer the highest level of health care to all Americans?" thing. Obviously our current system is not working, but only the naive think that a single-payer system is a magic bullet.
Does That Chain Restaurant Or Fast Food Match The Nutritional Information? Apparently Not.
Remember folks that a tablespoon of oil contains 13+ grams of fat and 120 calories. When you're pouring oil into a pan, it's very easy to overshoot by a tablespoon or two, which I imagine accounts a huge portion of the differences in fat and calories in these dishes.
Comments from Hambriq
BCBS Of Florida Only Sends Reader 12% Of What They Owe Him
I'm not saying our current system is working. I'm saying right now, Medicare is set to be bankrupt by 2019. According to the Medicare Trustees.
"Quite frankly, I think you're full of bulldada on this point. How, exactly, can you plausibly claim that Medicare/Medicaid ran small-town pharmacies out of business when M/M's been in operation since the 1960s."
Because we're spending roughly 74 times the amount of money on health care in 2008 (2 trillion) than we were in 1960 (27.1 billion). The problem we are facing is that health care spending is rising exponentially higher than any amount of payment being made into the system. Until we find a way to drive down costs, we are just going to see more problems on both ends. Public systems like Medicare will be woefully underfunded and will eventually have to shut down or delay the inevitable by raising taxes. And private systems will be forced to continue increasing their efficiency... or in laymen's terms, screwing the consumer.