Paul Krugman surprised by CBO report on health care: a kind of destructive comment by Doug Elmendorf of the CBO
By John Amato Sunday Jul 26, 2009 4:00pm
Paul Krugman joined the round table discussion on ABC's THIS WEEK and highlighted the misleading CBO report on the costs of health care and he singled out Doug Elmendorf as the culprit..
Krugman: I think I should say something about that CBO thing which really surprised a lot fo people because...
George: it was important and interesting timing...
Krugman: And also because most of the health care economists I talked to think that MedPac reform, that having these judges would actually be quite important especially in the long run so they were really kind of surprised. There's a kind of sense that the CBO faced with a, no one can put a hard number on this, but CBO sort of said that if we can't put a hard number on it we're going to say it's zero and that seems to be wrong. There's every reason to think that what Medicare is willing to pay for can save a lot of money and this was a kind of destructive comment by Doug Elmendorf of the CBO.
Ywa, think? How can the CBO give an effective cost analysis without the entire bill being presented to them? And suddenly the CBO is the judge and jury on whether we get health care reform passed and gives detractors a vehicle to complain. The media sure seems to be rooting for an Obama failure on health care reform, but what's their stake in it outside of loving the prospect of running with that story? I actually saw a segment on CNN which discussed the ramification of having no health care and how it affects Americans. There's too little of that and too much of imaginary numbers.
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What's the media's stake?
They all have insurance. And they don't want their wives bitching because their kid had to wait to get his pre grade school physical.
They are jammed packed with ads for this medicine or that new wonder drug or this hospital. What is in it for the media you ask? The $$ $$ $$ $$. Do you know how much cash the media would lose if we had single payer? Do you know how much $$ the media risks losing from the new car programs where they spend $ on developing good cars instead of good ads? Lots - and that is why they need to take Obama down.
I wonder if Rep. Conyers or Sen. Sanders or any committee has requested that the CBO do an investigation as to how Single Payer "Medicare for All" with the corporate health insurance corporations phased out ("HOW ABOUT BOUGHT OUT BY THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT" as another poster suggested) would fair?
I'd like to see a cost comparison by the Congressional Budget Office of:
1.) What we have now.
2.) What the Democratic leadership is proposing, including "The Public Option"
3.) A Not for Profit Medicare to All Americans system with the hundreds of various "for-profit" insurance corporations being phased out over, say, five years.
Now THERE are some statistics I'd like to see!
4.) A cap on all executive compensation with pay increases tied to cost of living.
Obama will fail. He didn't shoot high enough. I want single payer, we need single payer, anything else is going to fail. We need real climate change. Anything else is going to fail.
The time for the real leaders of this country to step forward is now.
Too bad Obama isn't one of them.
People like Rep. Alan Grayson, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, Rep. Marcy Kaptur.
We don't see these individuals on the morning gab fests, do we?
David Walker in late 2003, U.S. Comptroller General and Head of the Government Accountability Office warned us we we're heading to bankruptcy. Not many listened of course . . . "get out a here buddy we're gettin' rich on real estate!!!! and financial "instruments". . so, here we are.
You are right. I saw a speech he gave a few years ago and it gave me goose bumps. He was being totally ignored.
Krugman is becoming an awesome attack dog for the Dems.....this week
the position to where they are now ho$tage to In$urance Companie$ and Corporation$. Not a good setup.
make pretty damn good wages in the US. Canadian doctors quit here and move there all the time for the $$$$. So do our nurses. And our docs and nurses are some of the highest paid professionals in this country, regardless what line of bull they spout......besides...if it's all about the huge money, then they aren't exactly the kind of doctor you want to go see, is it? Don't they still have an oath, or has that been changed too?
. . . for some it's now known as the Hypocrite's Oath.
Unfortunately they come here to make their fortunes from our need and misery.
Health
CareInsurance Reform SwindleRobert Reich from Salon
here
Ralph Nader from CommonDreams
here
But it's unbelievable to think that any of these corrupt bastards have any intention of passing anything remotely helpful for those that have no health insurance coverage.
A bailout named reform, is still a bailout.
when we need him?
Oh, yeah...dead.
we're taught the goal in life is to become a Millionaire?
That's true Evet. We have a portion of our population who are absolutely brainwashed into believing that the wealth of the upper 1%'ers must be protected because, that could be them one day.
I am so glad that clip ended just as David Brooks was opening his yap. I'm so sick of these people: Brooks, George Will, etc. They don't have a fucking clue what it's like to be a working or middle class American.
1. publicaly paid, privately delivered, is that so hard to state ?? we have 400,000 (give or take) more people on our side this week (and last week) (and next week)
2. Evet, i would love to pay a million dollars in taxes, any way you slice it my, net then would be more than my gross now
3. rush was right for once
http://www.newshoggers.com/blog/2009/07/more-...
So, "kind of destructive" equals "complete fabrication"?
...why the media wants Obama to fail, they love a public free-for-all...it means more people watching, higher ratings and media indexes that glean the most from advertisers media buys. Further, it means that the big budgets from the pharmaceutical companies will continue unabated. You see folks, it's all very simple, it's a profit deal and anytime there's a move to reduce the profits companies can make from what is essentially a necessary service (like regulated utilities), panic abounds...and that includes the 'profits' that politicians make from all the largess of the healthcare lobby.
The CBO is starting to attract my attention in a very negative way. When Clinton took a shot at reform, guess who broke the momentum? You got it...the CBO!
Now, without even a complete bill, Mr. Elmendorf can't bring himself to STFU before having all the facts, and arbitrarily decide that "if X is unknown, let's assume the worst."
Moreover, I would love to know since when the costs for health care have become paramount, while the war in Iraq and Afghanistan always get a free pass.
Are we so much better at killing than healing?
Not only did the CBO on healthcare reform in 1994. It was Elmondorf who was instumental in doing so. Obviously he has an agenda and philosophy regarding healthcare that is not good for America.
"In 1993, Elmendorf moved to public life, working for the CBO office for the first time. He spent a year as an associate analyst before joining full-time in 1994 as a principal analyst where Elmendorf focused on health-care issues and the economic effects of budget deficits. Working under CBO Director Robert D. Reischauer, Elmendorf worked on a team that concluded President Bill Clinton's health reform package would cost much more than originally thought. This analysis helped cripple Clinton's attempt to reform health care.[
"The media sure seems to be rooting for an Obama failure on health care reform, but what's their stake in it outside of loving the prospect of running with that story?"
One thing I noticed that ever since the Hillary Clinton effort, the pharmaceutical corporations have dominated advertising on the nightly news shows.
There is legislation in the works to curb pharmaceuticals from advertising on TV. Hope is passes.
"The bottom line is that it is very rare for CBO to conclude that a specific legislative proposal would generate significant long-term savings so it is noteworthy that, with some modifications, CBO reached such a conclusion with regard to the IMAC concept.
A final note is worth underscoring. As a former CBO director, I can attest that CBO is sometimes accused of a bias toward exaggerating costs and underestimating savings. Unfortunately, parts of today’s analysis from CBO could feed that perception. For example, and without specifying precisely how the various modifications would work, CBO somehow concluded that the council could "eventually achieve annual savings equal to several percent of Medicare spending...[which] would amount to tens of billions of dollars per year after 2019." Such savings are welcome (and rare!), but it is also the case that (for good reason) CBO has restricted itself to qualitative, not quantitative, analyses of long-term effects from legislative proposals. In providing a quantitative estimate of long-term effects without any analytical basis for doing so, CBO seems to have overstepped."
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/blog/09/07/25/C...
"...but what's their stake in it outside of loving the prospect of running with that story?"
What's at stake is the agenda of corporate Amerika. It is an error to consider these organizations to be instruments of journalism. Their job is to be the manipulative mouthpieces of the corporations that view the nation as their personal property and the government as their personal tool. It's probably more accurate to think of the entire MSM as a centrally controlled bureau of mis- and disinformation that exists for the single purpose of manipulating the American people. To think of this vast enterprise as if it were a mish-mash of independent instruments of legitimate journalism is to set yourself up for continuing disappointments that are born of unrealistic expectations. We end up expecting these propagandists to behave like journalism, to behave with integrity when there is no chance that they ever will. They have no integrity and their intentions are malign. They do not exist to meet the public's expectations. Their job is to manipulate the public into meeting and conforming to their own.
The members of the media are employees of interests that are wholly committed in a war against the American People and against the idea of a free and liberal democracy. They wouldn't be doing what they are doing if they were not as wholly committed and corrupt as their masters. The only purpose of these organizations is manipulation and control. Such a purpose is inherently incompatible with the intent and broader purposes of legitimate journalism.
The only way to beat them in the deadly serious game they are playing, is not to play at all. Unless it is to keep tabs on what they are doing, the best course is to ignore them. Throw the TV in the trash..or at least don't tune in. They have nothing at all to say that is worth listening to.
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