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Current Events => Politics => Topic started by: Wretched Excess on March 05, 2009, 05:14:52 PM

Title: Obama Says Rising Health Costs Are Threat to Economy
Post by: Wretched Excess on March 05, 2009, 05:14:52 PM

stark.raving.lunacy.   the stock market cratered the second these words came out of his mouth.

Quote
Obama Says Rising Health Costs Are Threat to Economy

March 5 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama said the burden of paying for health care in the U.S. threatens the foundation of the economy, and revamping the system is essential even in the midst of the recession.

“The same soaring costs that are straining our families’ budgets are sinking our businesses and eating up our government’s budget too,” the president told about 150 lawmakers, advocates and representatives from the health care, insurance and pharmaceutical industries at the White House. “That is why we cannot delay this discussion any longer.”

Obama promised during his presidential campaign to make a health-care-system overhaul a top priority and the summit he convened today was being billed by the administration as a first step toward that goal.

The issue has been divisive, and finding an answer that will keep costs down while also extending coverage to the estimated 46 million Americans without health insurance has eluded past presidents. Obama acknowledged the difficult road ahead, noting that former Theodore Roosevelt called for a national health insurance system almost a century ago.

“It’s a nice touch to get everyone together for discussions, but health care reform will quickly return to trench warfare for much of this year,” Pete Davis, president of Davis Capital Investment Ideas in Washington, said in a note to clients today.

More (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=anLSoHsaacL0&refer=home)
Title: Re: Obama Says Rising Health Costs Are Threat to Economy
Post by: RightCoast on March 05, 2009, 05:16:37 PM
Hey idiot: the Stock Market is the foundation of the economy.

G.D. Moron.
Title: Re: Obama Says Rising Health Costs Are Threat to Economy
Post by: Rebel on March 05, 2009, 05:39:10 PM
We didn't have national healthcare when unemployment was only 4.5% so what the hell is that moron talking about?
Title: Re: Obama Says Rising Health Costs Are Threat to Economy
Post by: DumbAss Tanker on March 05, 2009, 05:53:16 PM
If Obama believes that is a significant factor in the economy tanking, he's battier than Carlsbad Caverns.
Title: Re: Obama Says Rising Health Costs Are Threat to Economy
Post by: Wretched Excess on March 05, 2009, 05:53:33 PM
We didn't have national healthcare when unemployment was only 4.5% so what the hell is that moron talking about?

they keep using this "one bankruptcy every 30 seconds due to health care costs" lie to justify this massive government takeover of the health care system.  it looks like the MSM finally called them on it this afternoon.

Title: Re: Obama Says Rising Health Costs Are Threat to Economy
Post by: Rebel on March 05, 2009, 06:37:58 PM
they keep using this "one bankruptcy every 30 seconds due to health care costs" lie to justify this massive government takeover of the health care system.  it looks like the MSM finally called them on it this afternoon.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenumbers/2009/03/medical-bankrup.html
Title: Re: Obama Says Rising Health Costs Are Threat to Economy
Post by: Wretched Excess on March 05, 2009, 06:41:15 PM
http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenumbers/2009/03/medical-bankrup.html

bingo.  good find.
Quote
President Obama’s kicking off his health care reform today in the worst possible way: with a mischaracterization of data.

“The cost of health care now causes a bankruptcy in America every thirty seconds," Obama said at the opening of his White House forum on health care reform. The problem: That claim, based on a 2001 survey, is simply unsupportable.

The figure comes from a 2005 Harvard University study saying that 54 percent of bankruptcies in 2001 were caused by health expenses. We reviewed it internally and knocked it down at the time; an academic reviewer did the same in 2006. Recalculating Harvard’s own data, he came up with a far lower figure – 17 percent.

A more recent study by another group, approaching it another way, indicates that in 2007 about eight-tenths of one percent of Americans lived in families that filed for bankruptcy as a result of medical costs. That rings a little less loudly than “one every 30 seconds.”

The extrapolation of Harvard’s data to “a bankruptcy every 30 seconds,” which Obama also mentioned in his address to a joint session of Congress last month, comes, per the White House, from a 2005 Washington Post op-ed by Prof. Elizabeth Warren, a co-author of the Harvard paper. Fact-check.org has noted that even using Harvard’s numbers, it’s more like a bankruptcy every minute; indeed if you add up all bankrputcies in a year you barely get one every 30 seconds. (I've e-mailed Warren for comment.) But more to the point is that the Harvard data are clearly inflated, or at best, mischaracterized.
Title: Re: Obama Says Rising Health Costs Are Threat to Economy
Post by: rich_t on March 05, 2009, 06:53:04 PM
So Obama lied again.

Par for the course for that asshat.
Title: Re: Obama Says Rising Health Costs Are Threat to Economy
Post by: Wretched Excess on March 05, 2009, 06:54:06 PM
interesting.

(http://i41.tinypic.com/23izclk.jpg)
Title: Re: Obama Says Rising Health Costs Are Threat to Economy
Post by: Rebel on March 05, 2009, 07:04:41 PM
So Obama lied again.

Par for the course for that asshat.

No, I don't think he lied. I think someone told him that and since he's too Damn stupid to do any research on his own, he went with it. ....which I think is even scarier.
Title: Re: Obama Says Rising Health Costs Are Threat to Economy
Post by: Wretched Excess on March 05, 2009, 07:07:04 PM
No, I don't think he lied. I think someone told him that and since he's too Damn stupid to do any research on his own, he went with it. ....which I think is even scarier.

I think that you are on to something, rebel.  he is so inexperienced, that it appears that he tends to delegate.  the problem with that is that he has surrounded himself with lunatics, so there isn't a sane person around to delegate to.
Title: Re: Obama Says Rising Health Costs Are Threat to Economy
Post by: SSG Snuggle Bunny on March 05, 2009, 07:09:50 PM
If Obama believes that is a significant factor in the economy tanking, he's battier than Carlsbad Caverns.
Crazy as a fox maybe.

He's exploiting a national crisis for political power.
Title: Re: Obama Says Rising Health Costs Are Threat to Economy
Post by: rich_t on March 05, 2009, 07:11:04 PM
Crazy as a fox maybe.

He's exploiting a national crisis for political power.

Didn't Rahm say something about never wasting a crisis?
Title: Re: Obama Says Rising Health Costs Are Threat to Economy
Post by: Wretched Excess on March 05, 2009, 07:11:58 PM
Crazy as a fox maybe.

He's exploiting a national crisis for political power.

you suspect that he is tanking the national economy, knowing that he has four years to install a government run economy?

I must say, even if that isn't his intention, he couldn't be off to a better start.
Title: Re: Obama Says Rising Health Costs Are Threat to Economy
Post by: Wretched Excess on March 05, 2009, 07:12:46 PM
Didn't Rahm say something about never wasting a crisis?

yep, "never let a national crisis go to waste", or something along those lines.
Title: Re: Obama Says Rising Health Costs Are Threat to Economy
Post by: ReardenSteel on March 05, 2009, 07:28:59 PM
Is He Doing It On Purpose?
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/03/022984.php

Short blurb on the "Mad Genius v Just Plain Mad" argument.


I'm in the following camp...
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v604/woncothesane/nocattle.jpg)

Title: Re: Obama Says Rising Health Costs Are Threat to Economy
Post by: SSG Snuggle Bunny on March 05, 2009, 07:37:28 PM
you suspect that he is tanking the national economy, knowing that he has four years to install a government run economy?

I must say, even if that isn't his intention, he couldn't be off to a better start.
I don't think that pea-brain has the first clue as to whether his economic policies will help or hurt nor do I think he actually gives a rat****.

His every economic indicator could tell him the economy will rebound in 4 months ahead of even the wildest expectations but he'll still exploit the crisis while it still is a crisis to turn the Constitution into a fishwrapper.
Title: Re: Obama Says Rising Health Costs Are Threat to Economy
Post by: rich_t on March 05, 2009, 07:41:03 PM
The economy would have largely bounced back in about a 6-12 months on it's own, if the Fed would have stayed the **** out of it.
Title: Re: Obama Says Rising Health Costs Are Threat to Economy
Post by: Carl on March 05, 2009, 07:44:44 PM
Quote
“The same soaring costs that are straining our families’ budgets are sinking our businesses and eating up our government’s budget too,” the president told about 150 lawmakers, advocates and representatives from the health care, insurance and pharmaceutical industries at the White House. “That is why we cannot delay this discussion any longer.”

Yet once again left out is the 800 lb gorrilla that dems are beholden to and are an integral part of the cost of health care,insurance and pharma.....trial lawyers.
Title: Re: Obama Says Rising Health Costs Are Threat to Economy
Post by: Wretched Excess on March 05, 2009, 07:53:58 PM
I don't think that pea-brain has the first clue as to whether his economic policies will help or hurt nor do I think he actually gives a rat****.

His every economic indicator could tell him the economy will rebound in 4 months ahead of even the wildest expectations but he'll still exploit the crisis while it still is a crisis to turn the Constitution into a fishwrapper.

indeed.  he is a true believer in the socialistic cause.  government should level the playing field between the haves (those that work their asses off)  and the have-nots (those that don't).

barack obama is going to be an historic figure. 
Title: Re: Obama Says Rising Health Costs Are Threat to Economy
Post by: ReardenSteel on March 05, 2009, 07:55:28 PM
Yet once again left out is the 800 lb gorrilla that dems are beholden to and are an integral part of the cost of health care,insurance and pharma.....trial lawyers.


Will trial lawyers be able to sue The People's Health Care for the same millions they rob from free doctors every year.


On edit:
By "free doctors" I meant "non-slave" doctors not "free heathcare for all" doctors.  :p
Title: Re: Obama Says Rising Health Costs Are Threat to Economy
Post by: NHSparky on March 05, 2009, 08:01:40 PM
barack obama is going to be an historic figure. 

And not in a good sense.  I tried to talk to my mother as to why this is turning into such a disaster.  It's no use.  She's gone completely to the dark side.
Title: Re: Obama Says Rising Health Costs Are Threat to Economy
Post by: Wretched Excess on March 05, 2009, 08:01:45 PM
Will trial lawyers be able to sue The People's Health Care for the same millions they rob from free doctors every year.


On edit:
By "free doctors" I meant "non-slave" doctors not "free heathcare for all" doctors.  :p

tort reform should be a must.  health care reform would be an afterthought if we could pass tort reform.
Title: Re: Obama Says Rising Health Costs Are Threat to Economy
Post by: NHSparky on March 05, 2009, 08:04:37 PM
tort reform should be a must.  health care reform would be an afterthought if we could pass tort reform.

Or as part of the law of unintended consequences, one could also show that trying to sue the government would be pretty much a waste of time and money if healthcare became nationalized.

Damn, talk about your Hobson's Choice--ambulance chasers gone, or socialized medicine.