Today’s Tribune has an nice easy-to-read sales job for Bush’s forthcoming plan to fix our health care crisis by offering Americans even less health insurance than we currently have.
Tonight, if leaks are correct, President Bush will use his annual State of the Union speech to seek support for changing the health care system into one that gives Americans what they need at a price they can afford.
He’s likely to call for more choices in insurance, more information about the quality of medical services and more reason to care about price. The tools: health savings accounts, known as HSAs, and a medical Internet.
He’s likely to say he favors expanded tax deductions and credits to help the uninsured buy health coverage and pay for services.
He’s likely to say he wants to take the burden of benefits off employers so they can compete in a global marketplace.
And he’s likely to say he wants fewer state regulations on health insurance so that new kinds of coverage can pop up.
Bush calls his vision “consumer-driven health care.” He wants to take the medical industrial complex, turn it around and march it in the direction of the marketplace.
……
The number of employers offering health coverage to their workers has steadily fallen from 69 percent five years ago to 60 percent last year. As Bush put it in a recent speech, health care has become “an unmanageable cost” for businesses.
Beset by rising premiums and co-payments, Americans don’t have to be Bush supporters to hope he succeeds in reining in health costs. “Anything would be better than what we have now,” said Cora Brown, an Apopka resident who attended a labor forum in Tampa on Monday.
Health-care inflation has been rising at three times the pace of wages and 2 1/2 times the rate of the overall economy since Bush took office. Neither employers nor the workforce can keep up.
Premiums rose 9.2 percent last year, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. The average cost of coverage for a family of four has reached $10,880 per year, an increase of 73 percent since 2000, the foundation reports. Health-care spending stands at $1.9 trillion, or more than 16 percent of the U.S. economy.
And it’s not as though Americans are getting their money’s worth, health analysts say.
Per-person spending on health care is $5,267, more than double the median spending among industrialized countries of $2,193. Yet the U.S. health system rates below its peers on most public-health measures such as immunization rates, birth outcomes and life expectancy.
Uh, those other industrialized countries have systems known as socialized medicine. Their systems cover every citizen and do it cheaper and better than our system.
But Bush is not talking about implementing a system with a proven track record that will provide coverage to everyone – the sick, the old, the chronically ill. He’s proposing HSAs – savings accounts, which are great deals for people who are young, healthy, and gainfully employed. For the rest of us, HSAs are simply a means by which we can personally relieve employers of even more of the health cost burden while taking on greater personal financial risks.
HSAs are less insurance – the idea is to save money for a rainy day and cover medical expenses out of pocket for all but the most costly incidents. See, insurance will be cheaper if you buy it with a $3,500 deductible.
The problem arises when one reaches a point in one’s life in which personal medical expenses will, predictably, start rising exponentially. Or when one experiences an income loss. Or when cancer or some other wasting disease strikes and one finds oneself suddenly uninsurable.
Despite the double handjob treatment from The Tribune’s Fechter and Gentry, HSAs are anything but a system ‘’that gives Americans what they need at a price they can afford.'’
Tonight, look for vague promises of more people being ‘’insured'’, of tax cuts, of rebates, and of a healthfulier America.
And remember: if you’re young, fit, and rich, HSAs are the best idea since Social Security reform!
Posted as National, Politics
Other posts by Norwood.
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RL here.
Krugman really pisses me off.
The name of the leftist rag? Business Week, which published an article titled “Waking Up From the American Dream.” The article summarizes recent research showing that social mobility in the United States (which was never as high as legend had it) has declined considerably over the past few decades. If you put that research together with other research that shows a drastic increase in income and wealth inequality, you reach an uncomfortable conclusion: America looks more and more like a class-ridden society.
……
Let’s talk first about the facts on income distribution. Thirty years ago we were a relatively middle-class nation. It had not always been thus: Gilded Age America was a highly unequal society, and it stayed that way through the 1920s. During the 1930s and ’40s, however, America experienced what the economic historians Claudia Goldin and Robert Margo have dubbed the Great Compression: a drastic narrowing of income gaps, probably as a result of New Deal policies. And the new economic order persisted for more than a generation: Strong unions; taxes on inherited wealth, corporate profits and high incomes; close public scrutiny of corporate management–all helped to keep income gaps relatively small. The economy was hardly egalitarian, but a generation ago the gross inequalities of the 1920s seemed very distant.
Now they’re back. According to estimates by the economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez–confirmed by data from the Congressional Budget Office–between 1973 and 2000 the average real income of the bottom 90 percent of American taxpayers actually fell by 7 percent. Meanwhile, the income of the top 1 percent rose by 148 percent, the income of the top 0.1 percent rose by 343 percent and the income of the top 0.01 percent rose 599 percent. (Those numbers exclude capital gains, so they’re not an artifact of the stock-market bubble.) The distribution of income in the United States has gone right back to Gilded Age levels of inequality.
……
It is true, however, that America was once a place of substantial intergenerational mobility: Sons often did much better than their fathers. A classic 1978 survey found that among adult men whose fathers were in the bottom 25 percent of the population as ranked by social and economic status, 23 percent had made it into the top 25 percent. In other words, during the first thirty years or so after World War II, the American dream of upward mobility was a real experience for many people.
……
Put it this way: Suppose that you actually liked a caste society, and you were seeking ways to use your control of the government to further entrench the advantages of the haves against the have-nots. What would you do?
One thing you would definitely do is get rid of the estate tax, so that large fortunes can be passed on to the next generation. More broadly, you would seek to reduce tax rates both on corporate profits and on unearned income such as dividends and capital gains, so that those with large accumulated or inherited wealth could more easily accumulate even more. You’d also try to create tax shelters mainly useful for the rich. And more broadly still, you’d try to reduce tax rates on people with high incomes, shifting the burden to the payroll tax and other revenue sources that bear most heavily on people with lower incomes.
Meanwhile, on the spending side, you’d cut back on healthcare for the poor, on the quality of public education and on state aid for higher education. This would make it more difficult for people with low incomes to climb out of their difficulties and acquire the education essential to upward mobility in the modern economy.
And just to close off as many routes to upward mobility as possible, you’d do everything possible to break the power of unions, and you’d privatize government functions so that well-paid civil servants could be replaced with poorly paid private employees.
It all sounds sort of familiar, doesn’t it?
Where is this taking us? Thomas Piketty, whose work with Saez has transformed our understanding of income distribution, warns that current policies will eventually create “a class of rentiers in the U.S., whereby a small group of wealthy but untalented children controls vast segments of the US economy and penniless, talented children simply can’t compete.” If he’s right–and I fear that he is–we will end up suffering not only from injustice, but from a vast waste of human potential.
Goodbye, Horatio Alger. And goodbye, American Dream.
Goodbye Horatio Alger? I think not. Today’s news has an item which proves that the Horatio Alger spirit is alive and well in America and that hard work combined with the proper deference to authority will always result in success.
Like a modern day Ragged Dick, a homeless person risked his own life and welfare in order to assist a stranger who is obviously a far better person. And, like the famed Alger characters, this homeless man was handsomely rewarded for his hard work and personal risks.
William Dominick had stopped at a Waffle House in Bradenton, where armed robbers smashed out the windows of his silver Mercedes sedan while he sat in the driver’s seat, according to the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office.
Popping open the trunk, the robbers grabbed two steel cases plus a briefcase and ran toward a black luxury car with tinted windows. An intervening homeless man hit one of the robbers, who dropped and left behind the largest case, reports show.
“It had $700,000 to $800,000 inside,” Dominick said Thursday of the recovered case. The contents included an 1879 U.S. gold coin worth $150,000 and a $10,000 bill valued at $75,000, he said.
“The blessing is that that homeless guy was there,” said Dominick, who gave the man a $100 bill.
The missing briefcase and the second steel case, which weighed about 30 pounds, held $250,000 in merchandise, Dominick said.
“I’ve offered a $100,000 reward,” said the dealer, who runs Westwood Rare Coin Gallery in Naples and a New York suburb. “I’ll do whatever’s needed to get these guys in jail.”
Now, naysayers like Krugman will hear about this generous coin dealer, the courageous victim of a horrendously violent crime, and loudly exclaim that a $100 reward for thwarting the robbery of $800,000 worth of goods is hardly magnanimous, especially when the same dealer is offering $100,000 for the return of merchandise worth far less, but that’s just old-fashioned class warfare.
See, Krugman and his crowd just wont admit the fact that this homeless person, if truly deserving, will take that $100, make some shrewd investments, say in rare coins, and become another Horatio Alger success story. Why, the homeless person might even be able to buy a name. Fred. Or Joe. Or some other nice name.
Anyway, the point I’m making is that $100 is all the homeless man needs. Giving the homeless man anything more would simply be coddling, ultimately weakening the character and determination of the homeless man and dooming the the homeless man to a life of handouts.
Kudos to William Dominick, and I’m sure that his homeless hero will soon have a moniker of his own!
Posted as Florida, War on the poor
Other posts by Reformed Liberal.
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Relax everyone - tonight you can rest easy. A pasty faced loser with an Internet connection is protecting us all from the crusading hordes of brown skinned people who wish to run rampant over our superior society. He’s young enough to enlist, but he knows that people like him – white people with diplomas and no common sense – can better serve their country by fomenting anger and racist violence.
Oh, and that better be flavored tobacco in your hookah, ’cause Joe Kaufman is watching your terrsymp ass.
Kaufman’s site is only one of a constellation of blogs … that are dedicated to the surveillance of American Muslims. The blogs link to one another, with more-traveled sites amplifying stories from more obscure ones, like Kaufman’s.
He claims he has not found a single mosque in Florida that is not linked to terrorists.
A lot of people are listening.
Last month, after Kaufman called a Tampa Muslim religious retreat a “jihad camp for children” and wrote that the speakers were “linked to al-Qaida,” death threats poured in to the Presbyterian camp hosting the event.
Muslims say the blogs breed hate.
“He’s spreading lies, slandering individuals,” said Ahmed Bedier, spokesman for the Tampa Bay chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. “These are vigilantes.”
Kaufman and other bloggers say their work is vital to the country’s safety.
“I don’t hate Muslims,” Kaufman said. “But I’m going to fight to have the public understand that there are enemies of America … that are living in America as we speak.”
……
Kaufman said he got his roommate kicked out of school for smoking marijuana.
“It made me feel … that I finally punished the people who were punishing me all of my life.”
On Sept. 11, 2001, watching the World Trade Center’s twin towers fall, he said it felt again as if time had stopped.
“I decided, like I’d decided in college, to fight against hatred.”
……
The bloggers say they’re safeguarding the country.
……
Jennifer Valko opened her e-mail and saw a message of hate.
I will undress you paint your body with pig fat & light you. America is on to you! Watch your back!
It was the Thursday after Christmas. In two days, the Muslim spiritual retreat she had helped plan was scheduled to take place at Cedarkirk, a Presbyterian camp and conference center in eastern Hillsborough County.
That morning, Kaufman had appeared on Fox News to talk about the retreat.
On his Web site, he had posted articles about it. He posted computer-altered images of masked terrorists standing in front of the Lithia campsite.
He said these images were meant to be “tongue in cheek.” But some readers took them seriously. Hate mail and death threats poured in to the Tampa Muslim American Society.
……
But he added, “I can’t let it stop me from what I’m doing. … I’m assisting in the safety and security of the American people.”
Other bloggers agree.
Robert Spencer of JihadWatch.com said his blog sometimes attracts racists. He bans them, he said.
But he won’t stop blogging.
“If I give it up and go away and take up the saxophone, then what the heck is going to happen to society and to the rest of the world?” he asked.
Now, I was all ready to go off on this guy. I was warmed up, feeling the love, ready for action, and I remembered that someone had already done all the heavy lifting for me. And since it’s easier to steal than to write,…
…I started to wonder who these people are and what bothered me about their approach to politics.
Then I thought back to high school and realized that all of the proto-Republicans were guys, nerds, who were physically slight, not fat, and had even less hope of getting laid than I and my friends did.
They weren’t popular or funny or even pleasant to be around. They were, for lack of a better word, schmucks.
Now, years later, these guys like the NRO staff, talk tougher than a room of SEALs trying to impress Vegas showgirls. They want to hang and kill traitors, confront liberals. Now, I laugh, because I’d bet that these people haven’t ever been in a fist fight in their lives. I mean, Jonah Goldberg went to a girl’s college for God’s sake, and couldn’t get laid there. In fact, if you asked, they’d probably find him repellent. He probably didn’t even make female friends.
LGF is a collection of losers, the creepy guys at work, the people in the Star Trek club, the guys who can’t get a date, even on Match.com. The ones that call themselves nice guys and talk about women as if the Handmaid’s Tale was a liberal treatise, who worship at the alter of Kim Du Toit. They vent their anger online.
As a black guy, you learn to size these folks up quickly. They may whisper nigger under their breath, but when confronted, they run like little girls. You know they’re punks.
……
These guys are conflicted. They don’t have any personal courage. They know they’re suppsoed to, but they cringe at the idea of confrontation. But they create this image of machismo which makes people laugh.
Ever seen a Freeper rally? You could wet one with a few water balloons. No, Freeperland is for the frustrated Wal-Mart manager with the cheating wife and fat kids. He rails against the world. LGF is the junior loser version.
Instead of sucking up to the jocks, they want to suck up to people in power. So they worship Bush, not because they agree with him, but because they need that power in their powerless life. They feel stomped on by everyone, but they feel like big men online or in their little chickenhawk rallies.
They think liberals are these weed smoking 1960’s rejects and who cringe at any possible physical confrontation. Come on, Ann Coulter cries when people toss shit at her, Goldberg? Stupid fat coward. If you slapped him in the face, he’d run like the punk bitch that he is. He’s too goddamn stupid to avoid confronting Wolcott and Juan Cole and being humiliated in the process.
……
You know, I don’t like Muslim terrorists either, but I certainly don’t want to kill a bunch of kids to make me feel better.
……
They shake and bluster and run their mouths, but that’s it.
Peter Daou has a long piece on how blogs should work better with the Dems, but many liberals miss the point. On our side of the fence, we mobilize support, raise money and get the attention of the media and deal with the Dems on our terms. The right sees bloggers as junior partners, to do what they are told without question. We want to be seen as equals. Personally, I can live without central direction from the party.
But the point is that we fit in to the political world in different ways.
The difference is simple, while the right wails and whines about Daily Kos, they can’t reproduce it, they can’t tolerate disagreements while working for a common cause. They get angry when people don’t go along with them. Notice the lack of comments and frequent bannings. Because their egos can’t handle it. They suffer from a case of fragile ego disease.
……
So all they can do is imagine the Turner Diaries coming to life , killing liberals instead of blacks, hanging them from the street lamps. Of course, that just feeds into their fantasies of omnipotence, imagining swatting their boss with a +9 power sword, as they do in an MMO or conquering imaginary Muslim foes like they do in Rainbow Six, when in reality, they’re Melvin, the guy who eats tuna at his desk at lunch.
Posted as Florida, Fascism, Religion
Other posts by Norwood.
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Lori Allain, victim of sinful persecution!
RL here.
Well, the fascist army of the godless government is at it again. First, we had Waco and Ruby Ridge. Now Tom’s River will forever be invoked with the same prayerful short intake of breath.
On Wednesday, God’s soldiers Arthur and Lori Allain were unlawfully apprehended in a Tom’s River, N.J., motel room along with several of their offspring.
Their supposed crime: child abuse!
That’s right – the ‘authorities’ have once again ignored the will of God and have manufactured evidence in order to take these righteous folks into custody and kidnap their natural children.
A fugitive wanted along with her husband in Hernando County, Allain is accused of starving a 10-year-old girl to 29 pounds and locking her in a back room in the couple’s Royal Highlands mobile home.
……
After two and a half months of searching, authorities captured the elusive Allains in Room 150 of a Quality Inn motel on Route 37.
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Lori Allain, 49, and Tommy Allain, 47, are scheduled to appear before an Ocean County judge at 1:30 p.m. today to determine when they will return to Florida to stand trial. If they waive their right to a hearing, the couple could be extradited to Hernando County within a week, said Robert Gasser, of the Ocean County prosecutor’s office. Otherwise, it could take about a month.
No Bail On Return
The couple face charges of aggravated child abuse in Florida. The Allains have testified the girl in their care had an eating disorder and that she and her older brother were severely abused by their mother, prompting them to lie and steal food.
An independent state investigation found Department of Children & Families caseworkers repeatedly missed warning signs and should have removed the children from the Allain home.
……
Hurricane Wilma hit South Florida Oct. 24, delaying the trial until the next day. The couple have said in previous interviews they weren’t notified of the change. They ran from the law, Lori Allain has said, to protect their sons from going into state custody.
Lori, whose tribute to the lord on her chest reads ‘Only God Can Judge Me’ in reverential script, vigorously refutes the charges.
“I’m going to tell you what. . . . Get up off my family. Got it? And you can quote me on that.”
“I have no fear in this case.”
“I would like the truth to be out there. To me, the truth comes out, and then me and my husband have no fears.”
“You’ve got to understand. The biker world is a very, very big organization, and they’re all over the U.S. and the world. When they know you’re right . . . you’re not going to find us.”
“People tend to judge us because we have tattoos and wear leather. Everyone keeps referring to this tattoo (across her chest that says “Only God Can Judge Me”). That’s been on my chest since 2000. It doesn’t come from this case. That’s my belief. They stereotype you. All these people can judge me. Guess what? I don’t care. On the final day God’s going to judge me. And he knows my heart. He knows I’m a good person.”
“I didn’t agree her weight was 29 pounds. I think her weight was 34 pounds.”
“I’m a people person like you wouldn’t believe.”
Obviously, this God fearing couple have been set up by the secular leftist homosexual agendists, but those forces may well have miscalculated, and when the Christian bikers get through with Hernando County… well, let’s just say that the Sheriff up there better find Jesus pretty soon.
Posted as Florida, Tampa, Religion
Other posts by Reformed Liberal.
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This report is making the rounds.
Tax refunds sought by 1.6 million poor Americans over the last five years were frozen and their returns labeled fraudulent, although the vast majority appear to have done nothing wrong, the Internal Revenue Service’s taxpayer advocate told Congress yesterday.
A computer program identified the refund requests as suspect and automatically flagged the taxpayers for extra scrutiny for years to come, the advocate said in her annual report to Congress. These taxpayers were not told that the I.R.S. criminal investigation division suspected fraud.
The advocate, Nina Olson, said the I.R.S. devoted vastly more resources to pursuing questionable refunds sought by the poor - which under the highest estimate is $9 billion - than to the $100 billion in taxes not paid each year by people who work for cash and either fail to file tax returns or understate their income.
As for the suspected fraud in refund requests, Ms. Olson said her staff sampled the suspect returns and found that 66 percent were entitled to the amount sought or more. Another 14 percent were due a partial refund. She expressed doubt that many among the remaining 20 percent had committed fraud.
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“At a minimum, this procedure constitutes an extraordinary violation of fundamental taxpayer rights and fairness,” Ms. Olson wrote, adding that it “may also constitute a violation of due process of law.”
Her staff’s sample of frozen returns found that the average reported income was about $13,000 and the refund due was about $3,500.
About three-quarters of those affected were employed parents who applied for the earned-income tax credit, under which all income and Social Security taxes can be returned and, in some cases, a payment made.
Which makes the timing of this corporate welfare education scheme* rather unfortunate.
This week a consortium of public and private nonprofit groups began trying to get employers in the Tampa area to encourage low- and middle-income workers to take advantage of the earned income credit this tax season. The credit can reduce the amount of taxes owed. Taxpayers can qualify for between $399 and $4,400 in tax credits.
On Tuesday, the consortium, called the Prosperity Campaign, approached employers in the West Shore business district, where an estimated 4,000 businesses are situated.
“There are lots of entry-level workers we need to reach,” said Ron Rotella, executive director of the Westshore Alliance, a business group that plans to help educate workers about the overlooked credit.
Daley says she hopes the campaign is a success. Bosses benefit if workers are educated about the tax credit.
“It gives you a much better employee,” Daley said. “I may work harder because my boss appreciates me.”
Uh, yeah… my boss appreciates me to the point of underpaying me so severely that the government feels obligated to supplement my meager pay.
*Government subsidized payroll in the form of a tax credit that employers are touting as extra income.
Posted as National, Tampa, War on the poor
Other posts by Norwood.
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Well, the activist judges on Florida’s Supreme Court are at it again. This time, they’ve decreed that Jeb!, our beloved leader, can’t help kids get a decent education. Why do these judges hate children?
Some people might say that it’s better to fully fund public schools and to provide basics like textbooks and working bathrooms, but that kind of thinking simply empowers the atheists and homos who dominate our public school systems.
Jeb! saw a better way. A way in which children could learn about Jesus and abstinence while pledging allegiance to God and country.
Several people agree with Jeb!, and some parents are aghast that their kids might have to once again mingle with the unwashed, yet the brainless ‘judges’ on Florida’s Supreme Court have taken it upon themselves to ruin everything.
It’s high time to abandon this system of checks and balances. Jeb! needs to follow the lead of his (figuratively) Big Brother and bypass the courts entirely. Well, criminal courts should still be used to lock up scary brown people, but this whole antiquated notion that unelected activist judges can somehow overturn the decrees of a sitting Republican governor is absolutely ridiculous!
-RL
Posted as Florida
Other posts by Reformed Liberal.
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BlogWood is many things, but ever since the Weekly Planet declared this site to be Tampa Bay’s Best Left Winger, some people have said that BlogWood is not as fair and balanced as it could be.
So, in an effort to increase said fairness and balance, BlogWood is proudly announcing the addition of a new author.
Reformed Liberal is an ex-gay Christ loving hard line GOP conservative. The offspring of dirty, sexually liberated hippies, RL naturally tended toward progressive thought and a bacchanalian lifestyle but after years of unfettered drug use, sexual experimentation, and several head injuries, RL saw the light, went straight, and decided to start telling other people how they should lead their lives.
So, check the bylines – RL will be posting often and BlogWood will soon be every bit as fair and balanced as that other well known fair and balanced outfit. Really.
Oh, and I’m really really gonna try to make fresh posts to the SideBlogs on a regular basis. Or I’m just gonna get rid of the damn things. Whatever.
Posted as Misc
Other posts by Norwood.
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