Is obama a socilist, or a fascist?

[bigrebnc1775]

How to increase the value of USMB in under 120 seconds.

1. Go to "User CP"
2. Click on "Edit Ignore List"
3. In the text box, enter "JakeStarkey". The program will doublecheck that you meant that name.
4. Click the "Okay" button.
5. Enjoy the new and improved USMB.

He's not worth the attention.

Done

 

[JakeStarkey]

Sigh. I am disappointed in my fellow conservatives here who have allowed Jake to derail another good thread. I am more and more convinced he is paid to do that. I really REALLY wish more people wouldn't take the bait.

I am not paid to make sure that we stay with standard political, historical, and narrative interpretations of terms and definitions.

I do it because it is the right thing to do.

A small band of extremist right wingers and libertarians far outside of the mainstream will not be allowed to create their own definitions and terms and narratives without being corrected.

 

[buckeye45_73]

bigrebnc and LogikandReazon are the banner carriers this day for the far right wacks.

Good for grins and chuckles.

no I am bitch!

 

[JakeStarkey]

Nah, you are small time.

 

[buckeye45_73]

When are you going to use a source and your opinion is not a reputable source

Because (1) wikipedia is not reputable, and (2) he has define what is the Left and its components.

When he gets a reputable source to work with and fulfills his obligation to define and classifly the Left, I can respond. I will not do his work for him.

Starkey is left wing hack. ive had more sources and he has none. He has nothing. Plus the jacobians and paris commune are pretty well know to people, except starkey once you own him with a post, it takes him hours to think of a reply and comes up with I disagree. He doesnt say his position because he has no clue

 

[Bfgrn]

but the ideology has also motivated ideas of eugenics, scientific racism, imperialism,[4] fascism, Nazism and struggle between national or racial groups.[5][6]

Opponents of evolution theory have often maintained that social Darwinism is a logical entailment of a belief in evolutionary theory, while biologists and historians maintain that it is rather a perversion of Charles Darwin's ideas.

Eugenics:
Today it is widely regarded as a brutal movement which inflicted massive human rights violations on millions of people.[15] The "interventions" advocated and practiced by eugenicists involved prominently the identification and classification of individuals and their families, including the poor, mentally ill, blind, deaf, developmentally disabled, promiscuous women, homosexuals and entire racial groups — such as the Roma and Jews — as "degenerate" or "unfit"; the segregation or institutionalisation of such individuals and groups, their sterilization, euthanasia, and in the extreme case of Nazi Germany, their mass extermination.[16]
The modern field and term were first formulated by Sir Francis Galton in 1883,[18] drawing on the recent work of his half-cousin Charles Darwin.[19][20] At its peak of popularity eugenics was supported by a wide variety of prominent people, including Winston Churchill,[21] Margaret Sanger,[22][23] Marie Stopes, H. G. Wells, Theodore Roosevelt, George Bernard Shaw, John Maynard Keynes, John Harvey Kellogg, Linus Pauling[24] and Sidney Webb.[25][26][27] Many members of the American Progressive Movement supported eugenics, seduced by its scientific trappings and its promise of a quick end to social ills. Its most infamous proponent and practitioner was, however, Adolf Hitler who praised and incorporated eugenic ideas in Mein Kampf and emulated Eugenic legislation for the sterilization of "defectives" that had been pioneered in the United States.[28

Yeah it does, the left was huge and still is in eugenics. and so were Nazis, hey how about that. Margaret Sanger and hitler...OMG....who would have known?
And not many right wing christians in the social darwinsim movement but lots and lots of progressives, sorry man. Nice try though.

The "interventions" advocated and practiced by eugenicists involved prominently the identification and classification of individuals and their families, including the poor, mentally ill, blind, deaf, developmentally disabled, promiscuous women, homosexuals and entire racial groups.

Name ONE current 'leftist' who professes eugenics? Just ONE will do. Ironic, those are all groups the left defends against right wing social Darwinist policy interventions, like drug testing people on unemployment and welfare, cutting vital social programs, gay bashing and anti- same sex marriage. Control of a woman's uterus.

You right wingers LOVE government intervention when it can crush the poor, promiscuous women, homosexuals and entire racial groups.

Hey dumbass, progressive used to kill homos, in the name of eugnics, and black people, ect. Notice Roosevelt ("progressive republican") is on there but Taft ("convservative republican") is not. Christians dont believe in eugenics.
And stopping abortion has zero to do with eugenics, even Margaret Sanger said it was horrible, THINK About that, she supported eugenics but NOT abortion. OWNED!!!!!!!!

Todays believers:

After-Birth Abortion: The pro-choice case for infanticide. - Slate Magazine
Again going back to government policies, welfare is not even in this dicussion, I mean people who get government handouts because they're poor shouldnt be buying drugs, do you disagree with that? really?
but when you got nothing come up with something I guess.

I love it when a post comes together! Hanibal Smith!

“If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands.”
Douglas Adams

I have been around since Truman was in the White House. In all my years as a citizen I have NEVER heard one single liberal promote anything that even resembles eugenics or the concepts behind eugenics. 'The "interventions" advocated and practiced by eugenicists involved prominently the identification and classification of individuals and their families, including the poor, mentally ill, blind, deaf, developmentally disabled, promiscuous women, homosexuals and entire racial groups'

Yet, this board is infested with right wingers professing their social Darwinism on a daily basis and the concepts and mindset REQUIRED to consider something as radical as eugenics. 'The "interventions" advocated and practiced by eugenicists involved prominently the identification and classification of individuals and their families, including the poor, mentally ill, blind, deaf, developmentally disabled, promiscuous women, homosexuals and entire racial groups'.

Those are all groups liberals defend as having equal rights and liberals defend their protection, while conservatives would willingly identify and classify those people as 'others' dismissing them as being deserving of some form of exclusion, sanction or punishment.

 

[Two Thumbs]

I will link the rest of the article in a while, but I'd like to see discussion on this much of it, before I attribute it.

Politically, it is heads-I-win when things go right, and tails-you-lose when things go wrong. This is far preferable, from Obama's point of view, since it gives him a variety of scapegoats for all his failed policies, without having to use President Bush as a scapegoat all the time.

Government ownership of the means of production means that politicians also own the consequences of their policies, and have to face responsibility when those consequences are disastrous -- something that Barack Obama avoids like the plague.

Thus the Obama administration can arbitrarily force insurance companies to cover the children of their customers until the children are 26 years old. Obviously, this creates favorable publicity for President Obama. But if this and other government edicts cause insurance premiums to rise, then that is something that can be blamed on the "greed" of the insurance companies.

The same principle, or lack of principle, applies to many other privately owned businesses. It is a very successful political ploy that can be adapted to all sorts of situations.

One of the reasons why both pro-Obama and anti-Obama observers may be reluctant to see him as fascist is that both tend to accept the prevailing notion that fascism is on the political right, while it is obvious that Obama is on the political left.

Back in the 1920s, however, when fascism was a new political development, it was widely -- and correctly -- regarded as being on the political left. Jonah Goldberg's great book "Liberal Fascism" cites overwhelming evidence of the fascists' consistent pursuit of the goals of the left, and of the left's embrace of the fascists as one of their own during the 1920s.

Mussolini, the originator of fascism, was lionized by the left, both in Europe and in America, during the 1920s. Even Hitler, who adopted fascist ideas in the 1920s, was seen by some, including W.E.B. Du Bois, as a man of the left.

)late to the thread(

Obama is a progressive. progs use democracy to bring on their ideals and the law to prevent others from doing so themselves.
Unified Progressive Platform | New Progressive Alliance

These ideals, while nice as all get out, are not sustainable. But that has no meaning to them. they can't grasp cause and effect or see past tomorrow.

Take "medicare for all" about 48 million use it now at a cost of 560 billion. Imagine if all 311 million of us were on it? ball park that cost at 3 to 4 Trillion

The country would be broke in a year.


and this is the kind of mindless shit obama supports.

 

[Bfgrn]

I will link the rest of the article in a while, but I'd like to see discussion on this much of it, before I attribute it.

Politically, it is heads-I-win when things go right, and tails-you-lose when things go wrong. This is far preferable, from Obama's point of view, since it gives him a variety of scapegoats for all his failed policies, without having to use President Bush as a scapegoat all the time.

Government ownership of the means of production means that politicians also own the consequences of their policies, and have to face responsibility when those consequences are disastrous -- something that Barack Obama avoids like the plague.

Thus the Obama administration can arbitrarily force insurance companies to cover the children of their customers until the children are 26 years old. Obviously, this creates favorable publicity for President Obama. But if this and other government edicts cause insurance premiums to rise, then that is something that can be blamed on the "greed" of the insurance companies.

The same principle, or lack of principle, applies to many other privately owned businesses. It is a very successful political ploy that can be adapted to all sorts of situations.

One of the reasons why both pro-Obama and anti-Obama observers may be reluctant to see him as fascist is that both tend to accept the prevailing notion that fascism is on the political right, while it is obvious that Obama is on the political left.

Back in the 1920s, however, when fascism was a new political development, it was widely -- and correctly -- regarded as being on the political left. Jonah Goldberg's great book "Liberal Fascism" cites overwhelming evidence of the fascists' consistent pursuit of the goals of the left, and of the left's embrace of the fascists as one of their own during the 1920s.

Mussolini, the originator of fascism, was lionized by the left, both in Europe and in America, during the 1920s. Even Hitler, who adopted fascist ideas in the 1920s, was seen by some, including W.E.B. Du Bois, as a man of the left.

)late to the thread(

Obama is a progressive. progs use democracy to bring on their ideals and the law to prevent others from doing so themselves.
Unified Progressive Platform | New Progressive Alliance

These ideals, while nice as all get out, are not sustainable. But that has no meaning to them. they can't grasp cause and effect or see past tomorrow.

Take "medicare for all" about 48 million use it now at a cost of 560 billion. Imagine if all 311 million of us were on it? ball park that cost at 3 to 4 Trillion

The country would be broke in a year.


and this is the kind of mindless shit obama supports.

OK, let's take 'Medicare for all'. Anyone under the age of 65 would PAY for Medicare. So you have failed to understand the basics.

 

[Two Thumbs]

I will link the rest of the article in a while, but I'd like to see discussion on this much of it, before I attribute it.

)late to the thread(

Obama is a progressive. progs use democracy to bring on their ideals and the law to prevent others from doing so themselves.
Unified Progressive Platform | New Progressive Alliance

These ideals, while nice as all get out, are not sustainable. But that has no meaning to them. they can't grasp cause and effect or see past tomorrow.

Take "medicare for all" about 48 million use it now at a cost of 560 billion. Imagine if all 311 million of us were on it? ball park that cost at 3 to 4 Trillion

The country would be broke in a year.


and this is the kind of mindless shit obama supports.

OK, let's take 'Medicare for all'. Anyone under the age of 65 would PAY for Medicare. So you have failed to understand the basics.

Sorry, but I've been employed since 1980. I've been paying into medicare, along with everyone else under 65 all that time.

YOU fail to understand math, basic, simple math.

We have to borrow now to pay for medicare, jumping it up by that much would devastate the economy.

but that all right, I've come to the understanding that liberals should never get near numbers. math, money, counting are all too much for the liberal mind to grasp.

 

[Bfgrn]

)late to the thread(

Obama is a progressive. progs use democracy to bring on their ideals and the law to prevent others from doing so themselves.
Unified Progressive Platform | New Progressive Alliance

These ideals, while nice as all get out, are not sustainable. But that has no meaning to them. they can't grasp cause and effect or see past tomorrow.

Take "medicare for all" about 48 million use it now at a cost of 560 billion. Imagine if all 311 million of us were on it? ball park that cost at 3 to 4 Trillion

The country would be broke in a year.


and this is the kind of mindless shit obama supports.

OK, let's take 'Medicare for all'. Anyone under the age of 65 would PAY for Medicare. So you have failed to understand the basics.

Sorry, but I've been employed since 1980. I've been paying into medicare, along with everyone else under 65 all that time.

YOU fail to understand math, basic, simple math.

We have to borrow now to pay for medicare, jumping it up by that much would devastate the economy.

but that all right, I've come to the understanding that liberals should never get near numbers. math, money, counting are all too much for the liberal mind to grasp.

You have been working since 1980 without health insurance, and you are waiting until you are 65 to have it?

 

[Two Thumbs]

OK, let's take 'Medicare for all'. Anyone under the age of 65 would PAY for Medicare. So you have failed to understand the basics.

Sorry, but I've been employed since 1980. I've been paying into medicare, along with everyone else under 65 all that time.

YOU fail to understand math, basic, simple math.

We have to borrow now to pay for medicare, jumping it up by that much would devastate the economy.

but that all right, I've come to the understanding that liberals should never get near numbers. math, money, counting are all too much for the liberal mind to grasp.

You have been working since 1980 without health insurance, and you are waiting until you are 65 to have it?

fail

Move along retard

 

[Bfgrn]

Sorry, but I've been employed since 1980. I've been paying into medicare, along with everyone else under 65 all that time.

YOU fail to understand math, basic, simple math.

We have to borrow now to pay for medicare, jumping it up by that much would devastate the economy.

but that all right, I've come to the understanding that liberals should never get near numbers. math, money, counting are all too much for the liberal mind to grasp.

You have been working since 1980 without health insurance, and you are waiting until you are 65 to have it?

fail

Move along retard

Listen up...

You fail to understand even the basics of math, math, money, counting, much less the 'concept' of Medicare for all. It is NOT under the same terms as Medicare for people over 65.

People under the age of 65 PAY a premium for Medicare, then that MONEY PAID is generating revenue to PAY for their treatment. It is no different than private insurance charging a premium, except Medicare is much more efficient and cost effective than private insurance.

Do I have to slow it down any more for you to comprehend?

 

[grunt11b]

I cant label him each of the two, but one thing I know is, he is a piece of shit who aims to do this country wrong by circumventing the constitution and undermining our laws. He is definitely a fucking turd.

 

[Two Thumbs]

You have been working since 1980 without health insurance, and you are waiting until you are 65 to have it?

fail

Move along retard

Listen up...

You fail to understand even the basics of math, math, money, counting, much less the 'concept' of Medicare for all. It is NOT under the same terms as Medicare for people over 65.

People under the age of 65 PAY a premium for Medicare, then that MONEY PAID is generating revenue to PAY for their treatment. It is no different than private insurance charging a premium, except Medicare is much more efficient and cost effective than private insurance.

Do I have to slow it down any more for you to comprehend?

medicare is more effective?



then why do so few doctors accept it?


I'll answer that for you

B/c medi is fucking worked the wrong fucking way. the government fucks everything up and you want us all on it.

progs

the special needs kids of the political landscape

 

[Bfgrn]

fail

Move along retard

Listen up...

You fail to understand even the basics of math, math, money, counting, much less the 'concept' of Medicare for all. It is NOT under the same terms as Medicare for people over 65.

People under the age of 65 PAY a premium for Medicare, then that MONEY PAID is generating revenue to PAY for their treatment. It is no different than private insurance charging a premium, except Medicare is much more efficient and cost effective than private insurance.

Do I have to slow it down any more for you to comprehend?

medicare is more effective?



then why do so few doctors accept it?


I'll answer that for you

B/c medi is fucking worked the wrong fucking way. the government fucks everything up and you want us all on it.

progs

the special needs kids of the political landscape

So NOW you have changed your attack, because I destroyed your false premise that Medicare for all would be the same as Medicare for people over 65.

Maybe a market-driven entrepreneur can set you straight, but I doubt it...

Bill Brody, M.D. President, Salk Institute for Biomedical Research

Dr. William R. Brody, an acclaimed physician-scientist, entrepreneur and university leader, joined the Salk Institute for Biological Studies on March 2, 2009 after 12 years as president of The Johns Hopkins University.

June 13, 2003

Is Medicare Cost Effective?

I recently spent a half-day in a meeting discussing a number of issues regarding Medicare. Most of us on the provider side of the street view Medicare as this multiheaded bureaucracy with more pages of regulations than the Internal Revenue Service's tax code. However, I came away from the meeting with some (to me at least) shocking revelations:

Medicare beneficiaries are overwhelmingly satisfied with their Medicare coverage, except for the absence of prescription drug benefits;

The administrative costs of Medicare are lower than any other large health plan.

In fact, Medicare is very efficient by any objective means:

According to the Urban Institute's Marilyn Moon, who testified before the Senate Committee on Aging, Medicare expenditures between 1970 and 2000 grew more slowly than those of the private sector. Initially, from 1965 through the 1980s, Medicare and private insurance costs doubled in tandem. Then Medicare tightened up, and per capita expenditures grew more slowly than private insurance, creating a significant gap. In the 1990s, private insurers got more serious about controlling their costs, and the gap narrowed. But by 2000, Medicare per capita expenditures remained significantly lower than the private sector.

Moon argues somewhat convincingly that Medicare has been a success. While not necessarily denying that certain reforms might be needed, she stresses the importance of preserving three essential tenets of the program:

1. Its universal coverage nature creates the ability to redistribute benefits to those who are neediest.

2. It pools risk in order to share the burdens of health care among the healthy and the sick.

3. Through Medicare, the government protects the rights of all beneficiaries to essential health care.

It has been argued that, in part, Medicare's cost effectiveness arises from the fact that it does not need to expend funds on marketing and sales-functions that are obligatory for the success of competitive, private-sector health plans. Moreover, some argue that the competitive model for health insurance has not been successful. In a market-driven economy, the healthy can and will change health plans for savings of only a few dollars a month, while the sick must remain in their existing plan in order to retain their physicians. Such behaviors lead to asymmetric risk pools and cost inequities.

This was all sobering news to a market-driven entrepreneur such as yours truly. However, given the perverse incentives that frequently drive behavior in health care, my take-home lesson is that there are examples in the success of Medicare we can apply to other sectors of our population.

 

[Two Thumbs]

Listen up...

You fail to understand even the basics of math, math, money, counting, much less the 'concept' of Medicare for all. It is NOT under the same terms as Medicare for people over 65.

People under the age of 65 PAY a premium for Medicare, then that MONEY PAID is generating revenue to PAY for their treatment. It is no different than private insurance charging a premium, except Medicare is much more efficient and cost effective than private insurance.

Do I have to slow it down any more for you to comprehend?

medicare is more effective?



then why do so few doctors accept it?


I'll answer that for you

B/c medi is fucking worked the wrong fucking way. the government fucks everything up and you want us all on it.

progs

the special needs kids of the political landscape

So NOW you have changed your attack, because I destroyed your false premise that Medicare for all would be the same as Medicare for people over 65.

Maybe a market-driven entrepreneur can set you straight, but I doubt it...

Bill Brody, M.D. President, Salk Institute for Biomedical Research

Dr. William R. Brody, an acclaimed physician-scientist, entrepreneur and university leader, joined the Salk Institute for Biological Studies on March 2, 2009 after 12 years as president of The Johns Hopkins University.

June 13, 2003

Is Medicare Cost Effective?

I recently spent a half-day in a meeting discussing a number of issues regarding Medicare. Most of us on the provider side of the street view Medicare as this multiheaded bureaucracy with more pages of regulations than the Internal Revenue Service's tax code. However, I came away from the meeting with some (to me at least) shocking revelations:

Medicare beneficiaries are overwhelmingly satisfied with their Medicare coverage, except for the absence of prescription drug benefits;

The administrative costs of Medicare are lower than any other large health plan.

In fact, Medicare is very efficient by any objective means:

According to the Urban Institute's Marilyn Moon, who testified before the Senate Committee on Aging, Medicare expenditures between 1970 and 2000 grew more slowly than those of the private sector. Initially, from 1965 through the 1980s, Medicare and private insurance costs doubled in tandem. Then Medicare tightened up, and per capita expenditures grew more slowly than private insurance, creating a significant gap. In the 1990s, private insurers got more serious about controlling their costs, and the gap narrowed. But by 2000, Medicare per capita expenditures remained significantly lower than the private sector.

Moon argues somewhat convincingly that Medicare has been a success. While not necessarily denying that certain reforms might be needed, she stresses the importance of preserving three essential tenets of the program:

1. Its universal coverage nature creates the ability to redistribute benefits to those who are neediest.

2. It pools risk in order to share the burdens of health care among the healthy and the sick.

3. Through Medicare, the government protects the rights of all beneficiaries to essential health care.

It has been argued that, in part, Medicare's cost effectiveness arises from the fact that it does not need to expend funds on marketing and sales-functions that are obligatory for the success of competitive, private-sector health plans. Moreover, some argue that the competitive model for health insurance has not been successful. In a market-driven economy, the healthy can and will change health plans for savings of only a few dollars a month, while the sick must remain in their existing plan in order to retain their physicians. Such behaviors lead to asymmetric risk pools and cost inequities.

This was all sobering news to a market-driven entrepreneur such as yours truly. However, given the perverse incentives that frequently drive behavior in health care, my take-home lesson is that there are examples in the success of Medicare we can apply to other sectors of our population.

I didn't change squat and you didn't destroy squat.

Medicare for all is unaffordable.

we all pay to care for 65+ and the handicapped.

If we were all on it,

krist, I already explained that the cost would go over $3 Trillion a year.

Good luck in la la land.


oh and

go find your HS math teachers and beat the fuck out of them for letting you pass.

 

[JakeStarkey]

When are you going to use a source and your opinion is not a reputable source

Because (1) wikipedia is not reputable, and (2) he has define what is the Left and its components.

When he gets a reputable source to work with and fulfills his obligation to define and classifly the Left, I can respond. I will not do his work for him.

Starkey is left wing hack. ive had more sources and he has none. He has nothing. Plus the jacobians and paris commune are pretty well know to people, except starkey once you own him with a post, it takes him hours to think of a reply and comes up with I disagree. He doesnt say his position because he has no clue

You have to define what you mean by the Left. You can't dump it all together for seventy years, and think that you have said anything sensible.

My position is very clear, right of center, a supporter of Romney, and opponent of the far right and libertarian factions in the GOP.

 

[bigrebnc1775]

I will link the rest of the article in a while, but I'd like to see discussion on this much of it, before I attribute it.

Politically, it is heads-I-win when things go right, and tails-you-lose when things go wrong. This is far preferable, from Obama's point of view, since it gives him a variety of scapegoats for all his failed policies, without having to use President Bush as a scapegoat all the time.

Government ownership of the means of production means that politicians also own the consequences of their policies, and have to face responsibility when those consequences are disastrous -- something that Barack Obama avoids like the plague.

Thus the Obama administration can arbitrarily force insurance companies to cover the children of their customers until the children are 26 years old. Obviously, this creates favorable publicity for President Obama. But if this and other government edicts cause insurance premiums to rise, then that is something that can be blamed on the "greed" of the insurance companies.

The same principle, or lack of principle, applies to many other privately owned businesses. It is a very successful political ploy that can be adapted to all sorts of situations.

One of the reasons why both pro-Obama and anti-Obama observers may be reluctant to see him as fascist is that both tend to accept the prevailing notion that fascism is on the political right, while it is obvious that Obama is on the political left.

Back in the 1920s, however, when fascism was a new political development, it was widely -- and correctly -- regarded as being on the political left. Jonah Goldberg's great book "Liberal Fascism" cites overwhelming evidence of the fascists' consistent pursuit of the goals of the left, and of the left's embrace of the fascists as one of their own during the 1920s.

Mussolini, the originator of fascism, was lionized by the left, both in Europe and in America, during the 1920s. Even Hitler, who adopted fascist ideas in the 1920s, was seen by some, including W.E.B. Du Bois, as a man of the left.

)late to the thread(

Obama is a progressive. progs use democracy to bring on their ideals and the law to prevent others from doing so themselves.
Unified Progressive Platform | New Progressive Alliance

These ideals, while nice as all get out, are not sustainable. But that has no meaning to them. they can't grasp cause and effect or see past tomorrow.

Take "medicare for all" about 48 million use it now at a cost of 560 billion. Imagine if all 311 million of us were on it? ball park that cost at 3 to 4 Trillion

The country would be broke in a year.


and this is the kind of mindless shit obama supports.

I'm coming to the realization that obama is a user. What do I mean by that? He will use any platform that is appealing at the time to gain support. Then shit can it for something else or his own agenda. Just like a good little dictator.
Hitler was the same way using the socialist then killed off his political rivals after he gain full control of power.

 

[JakeStarkey]

You finally got Hitler using the socialists in the SA right, bigrebnc. He used them until he could destroy them. Good for you!

 

[Bfgrn]

medicare is more effective?



then why do so few doctors accept it?


I'll answer that for you

B/c medi is fucking worked the wrong fucking way. the government fucks everything up and you want us all on it.

progs

the special needs kids of the political landscape

So NOW you have changed your attack, because I destroyed your false premise that Medicare for all would be the same as Medicare for people over 65.

Maybe a market-driven entrepreneur can set you straight, but I doubt it...

Bill Brody, M.D. President, Salk Institute for Biomedical Research

Dr. William R. Brody, an acclaimed physician-scientist, entrepreneur and university leader, joined the Salk Institute for Biological Studies on March 2, 2009 after 12 years as president of The Johns Hopkins University.

June 13, 2003

Is Medicare Cost Effective?

I recently spent a half-day in a meeting discussing a number of issues regarding Medicare. Most of us on the provider side of the street view Medicare as this multiheaded bureaucracy with more pages of regulations than the Internal Revenue Service's tax code. However, I came away from the meeting with some (to me at least) shocking revelations:

Medicare beneficiaries are overwhelmingly satisfied with their Medicare coverage, except for the absence of prescription drug benefits;

The administrative costs of Medicare are lower than any other large health plan.

In fact, Medicare is very efficient by any objective means:

According to the Urban Institute's Marilyn Moon, who testified before the Senate Committee on Aging, Medicare expenditures between 1970 and 2000 grew more slowly than those of the private sector. Initially, from 1965 through the 1980s, Medicare and private insurance costs doubled in tandem. Then Medicare tightened up, and per capita expenditures grew more slowly than private insurance, creating a significant gap. In the 1990s, private insurers got more serious about controlling their costs, and the gap narrowed. But by 2000, Medicare per capita expenditures remained significantly lower than the private sector.

Moon argues somewhat convincingly that Medicare has been a success. While not necessarily denying that certain reforms might be needed, she stresses the importance of preserving three essential tenets of the program:

1. Its universal coverage nature creates the ability to redistribute benefits to those who are neediest.

2. It pools risk in order to share the burdens of health care among the healthy and the sick.

3. Through Medicare, the government protects the rights of all beneficiaries to essential health care.

It has been argued that, in part, Medicare's cost effectiveness arises from the fact that it does not need to expend funds on marketing and sales-functions that are obligatory for the success of competitive, private-sector health plans. Moreover, some argue that the competitive model for health insurance has not been successful. In a market-driven economy, the healthy can and will change health plans for savings of only a few dollars a month, while the sick must remain in their existing plan in order to retain their physicians. Such behaviors lead to asymmetric risk pools and cost inequities.

This was all sobering news to a market-driven entrepreneur such as yours truly. However, given the perverse incentives that frequently drive behavior in health care, my take-home lesson is that there are examples in the success of Medicare we can apply to other sectors of our population.

I didn't change squat and you didn't destroy squat.

Medicare for all is unaffordable.

we all pay to care for 65+ and the handicapped.

If we were all on it,

krist, I already explained that the cost would go over $3 Trillion a year.

Good luck in la la land.


oh and

go find your HS math teachers and beat the fuck out of them for letting you pass.

WOW, WHY is it impossible for you to understand that 'Medicare for all' mean that we all pay ONLY to care for 65+. And for people UNDER 65, the INDIVIDUALS pay a fucking premium, just like private insurance charges?

Now, please double down and prove you should not be allowed to cross a street without an adult holding your hand.