dayman

Well as for the 3-4% I mean to say in relation to GDP (but realize I didn't actually write that)...fairly significant I'm sure you would agree. That would the be starting point for Romney according to the Zakaria interview w/ his chief economics adviser. As for the fixing the issue with cost...you just can't. No legislation can do that (at least not in this country). All you can do is facilitate the natural progression which is only now beginning, which we will and should do. But that doesn't mean that insurance reform should be put off for 10-20 years for the cost problem to be significantly reformed IMO. As for the small amount of people accounting for the large amount of healthcare costs...I was just referring to what you later talked about referring to the old people/chronically ill (not the uninsured) but supposedly the uninsured cost-shifting dynamic is significant according to almost any talk I see (from people of both parties) but I agree it would be nice to grasp some hard numbers. Those hard number would be tough to generate though. Either way bringing in everyone and widening a base of healthy young people seems to be the only way to maintain affordable insurance costs if we are going to allow pre-existing conditions and high-risk people into the market on an individual basis (and on a group basis to a lesser extent) and also if we are going to continue to provide the services the 5% using 50% of the care demand (and supposedly need) since the cost issue is a slow-burn. And as for the loan idea similar to student loans that is an interesting idea but as expensive as school is it really isn't close to the end of life/chronically ill/cancer/other extreme medical costs. It could allow some flow of cash for those people but the loans themselves would never be paid off....if we have a student loan bubble now the bubble that would create would be enormous. Especially considering a lot of those people will die lol...also many too sick to work and have productive income...etc...many of these people are the exact people that can't pay off the loans (the similar problem w/ current student loan bubble b/c of recession and growing education costs but at least w/ the student they theoretically will pay it off over the course of a lifetime...the old/sick not so much even in theory). We would just end up subsidizing massive default IMO. You think?

How gradually and where to cut spending is a debate the country needs to have, agreed. Slash-and-burn isn't an option, agreed. In either way, we are going to have to tolerate significant deficits in the short term. So to hit the American public over the head with "deficit, deficit, deficit" is a distraction and mucks up the discussion. Long-term deficit yes...but not this coming years budget. Entitlement reform re: SS/Medicare is really the mack daddy and that is what will determine the long term deficit issues. Thing is those are long term in a very loose usage of the word "long term" but neither Obama or Romney are serious about expending the significant political capital it would take to start that reform now...and perhaps that is wise since we still have short term issues that require immediate attention. As for taxes...the marginal rate is one thing but overall taxes are going to rise in a way Grover would not approve of. And that would be the agenda of either man running for president. Really the more Romney gets specific the less difference there is between him and Obama. Sure, there are some differences (enough to make it an actual choice) but to have had some sects of the right vilify the President to the extent he has been only to support Romney now makes little sense.

Well that may be true in some instances. Talk about lowering federal spending 3ish% over the next 4 years and then presumably getting push back about the slope of that ramp is a route to effective compromise. Slash-and-burn isn't. Well what it gets to is the overwhelming percentage of overall costs such a small percentage of people account for. To make sure the chronically ill are taken care of in a way that doesn't over-burden the overall insurance market...it seems you need to suck in the healthy people no? And that is a separate (but certainly related) issue from market oriented cost reform which we also need to occur and facilitate as best we can.

Well the free market not applying to health care well IMO is not b/c of the uncertainty, or the cost necessarily...but both combined and definitely when considering the potential incredible costs. I agree that it isn't impossible, but in practicality it's best to acknowledge that it's very difficult. I'm with Fareed in that to truly bring down the cost of insurance (especially individual insurance) everyone needs to have it... But really where we will agree is that the market for services needs to behave more like a free market...and that's the only way to control costs. Move toward the outcome oriented system (there are is some medicare experimentation in Obamacare to help nudge this forward for what it is worth but ultimately it will be a 10-20 year process that happens organically...no statute will change this), reduce waste in services (obviously no genius point there), and then put more skin in the game for specialist services so people shop (so the high dollar services function in a free market and hopefully follow the pattern we saw w/ lasik as much as possible). Either way insuring everyone and reforming the market are the two things that needs to happen. There are 2 possible ways to insure everyone and they need law. And the market reform is obvious and can be helped with policies of large government customers like medicare leading the charge for private insurers to adopt later but the service side needs time to adjust and ultimately this is just something that will take time and occur organically. To put it simply, compromise.

B-Man I'm sorry if you are tea party guy. But I don't like the tea party ideology that holds congress hostage and I'm glad to see even the mainstream GOP figure head now has policies that will basically force them to either come back to the middle or leave the party.

lmfao on the first part of the interview... congratulations on your slightly more conservative white-Obama candidate. I hope all tea party people are watching this. There are some differences which are not insignificant but as it turns out Romney won't do anything the crazies want to do. Boehner go **** yourself. I have more respect for Romney now although still difficult questions on tax exemptions. He needed to just come out and provide these details in the primary to jar the retarded republican rhetoric which controls the house away from insanity though. But of course his name isn't Obama so insane GOP house members won't block him on every little issue? Is that what we're supposed to think now?

Interview w/ Romney's senior economic adviser coming up

knock it off

Well you can take it as you will. But journalists ask questions. Having watched Fareed for a while...I can assure you that it is foolish to assume he believes the answer is "yes" (or "no") just because he asks the questions. Or to assume he even has made up his mind or thinks there is an actual definitive answer. In fact most questions Fareed asks are to facilitate good discussion and given that you think Manny's response was a good one I would say that is a good question. Just my opinion. And to assume he's anti-capitalism, anti-free market, anti-wealth...I wouldn't do that. B/c he's not. EDIT: And not honestly IMO there may be some legitimate aspects to the whole "exposing liberal media bias" movement but for the most part it seems to be to just be a way to discredit non-conservative media bias (at least in how/what it used for)....otherwise it would be "exposing balanced good media work" and would just highlight that (as short as the list may be)...the mission of exposing media liberal biased is pro-conservative otherwise it would expose all media bias and/or highlight fairly balanced reporting.

Knock it off

Blah blah for real it really gets old making everything personal. Personal attacks against each other. Personal attacks against sources. Just drop it, be it Zakaria or Stossel or someone else just post interesting articles that you hopefully acknowledge are intelligent and then attack or support or discuss the IDEAS. IDEAS NOT PEOPLE. Separate the ideas from the people in this thread. If that means the thread is boring and infrequently posted in...then so be it. There a million threads to troll and rail against each other on this board. Take this **** over to those threads.

...let us move away from this and just have the topic discuss his work for the work it is or otherwise just have nobody post at all...

Also two articles about what is clearly the most dicey international situation at the moment: http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2012/05/30/syria-the-risks-of-intervention/ http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2012/05/31/zakaria-obama-vs-romney-on-syria-next-steps/ As far as troops on the ground go...ugh...reading about what seems to be the MOST divided and uncertain opposition movement of the that region's current events (and THAT IS SAYING SOMETHING) ... I wouldn't commit a single US life to this...and that goes w/ a heavy heart given the massacre recently and potential future blood bath....compared to Egypt it's a mess and Egypt is having a run-off now between the Muslim Brotherhood and a Mubarak holdover...the payoff politically seems about 0. I would have to say I lean towards continued economic pressure only and just appealing to Russia regardless of how long that takes. Most agree China will come around...maybe the sooner they do the more leverage we have w/ Russia as they become increasingly isolated.

Ok well look the bottom line is you can leave the topic. If you discount opinions that you don't think in advance will reinforce whatever your natural inclination is and think that Fareed is a "lib" (used pejoratively) and thus full of **** then I guess that's fine. Go watch nothing but Fox News. I watch some Fox News....and some stuff on there I watch I really disagree with (not all). But that's besides the point, the point is...if you don't want to talk about articles Fareed writes or segments on his show then you probably shouldn't be in the topic. Those "conservatives" on the board that would like to do so can join or else I'll just sit here and talk to myself and perhaps MCD lol...I do like discussing things with people of different view points but it has to be a discussion. The guy is a smart and knowledgeable journalist and if you watch him/read him you know he's not rooting for a team and his analysis is not designed to further a domestic party's success regardless of the fact that he is an AMerican who does vote...IMO he's among the best...whether you agree with him or not. If you can't read/listen to him without prejudging everything then you can't discuss things that he talks about and you can't really participate in this topic...and once again that is OK. I would ordinarily hesitate to discuss this one first but it's basically the only full interview I can find for free on youtube. Interesting interview whether you agree with the commission or not. Personally I'm inclined to... A lot of what is said in this interview are views that I have more or less adopted for right or for wrong (and have echoed in other threads). Thoughts? I can only hope that some form of compromise is possible in the lame duck session as Bowles seems to think.

By them, by readers/watchers, by reasonable people in both parties and by leaders all over the world (just look at the guests he brings on). He's pretty rational on domestic issues which is refreshing and he's incredibly knowledgeable about world issues which lends perspective to domestic issues other journalists do not have. And watching his how/reading his columns you'll get significant world stories you won't find elsewhere and on a much "deeper" level. He doesn't stand on his head though...it's not an entertainment show.

And since I am critical of Romney often I'll post the article that I just recently read where I actually saw him talking common sense. It's strange I see the man talk common sense and applaud him for it but that's the modern GOP for ya... http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/25/romney-spending-cuts-depression-tea-party_n_1545933.html

Even Romney would "kick the can down the road" (to quote John Boehner) according to those house crazies .... in fact the only reason I still have a slim chance of watching the debates with an open mind is him thumbing his nose at the house tea party in a recent interview regarding cutting spending drastically now and how it's retarded. That one little interview gave me actual hope than America might be ok no matter who wins even if we aren't great with either guy. As for defending Obama on that particular issue...I don't know the particular details although I do remember Boehner was livid since he exerted a lot of political capital to get his crazies to compromise in slightest. The idea that he thought that deal would be good for the country and walked away to preserve a class warfare narrative is not something I believe and I think people who ACTUALLY believe that are asinine. You can believe what you want though. I do remember the story though and there is no doubt

LOL comparing Zakaria to Stossel. Say what you want...and you don't have to agree w/ everything he says btw (I noticed people on here call everyone idiots if they say one thing they don't agree w/)...but Zakaria is almost universally respected. I don't know what you are talking about I don't recall a section on Healthcare on his show last week. Anyway if you fundamentally oppose healthcare reform he's probably not for you given he's smart and realizes it's a huge problem. He also tends to look at issues from a global perspective so I can only imagine he look around and sees places doing better than our joke of a system where we approach 20% of GDP in healthcare costs (by far the highest) while being no where near the top in terms of quality...and then he supports reform (which is probably a rational thing to support but that's just me). Anyway...like I said I didn't see what he said last week on the show if he did and if he wrote an article I haven't found a recent one. Either way I don't want to get into a healthcare debate in here there are several topics for that. Point being..."I don't agree w/ one thing he said so he's a liberal idiot" makes you an ass. EDIT: Just found the article lol I'll read it when I get a chance. http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2012/03/26/zakaria-how-to-save-american-health-care/ Different strokes for different folks. I have no doubt you can cherry pick some small section of that article and find a way to disagree Doc...but as a whole that's what is called a "good" article in my book. Not surprising coming from Fareed. To call that a worthless article is purely contrarian and you sir are "an idiot."

http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/04/24/more-bad-news-for-social-security-and-medicare/ Actually for SSDI even insane people can't classify it as long term. It's defunct as of right now. And all previous predictions were off the mark. The government released the latest versions of the annual Social Security and Medicare Trustees Reports on Monday, and the results were troubling: The combined trust fund that holds funding reserves for the overall Social Security program is now expected to run out of money in 2033 -- three years earlier than trustees expected last year. The news for Medicare is even more dire. Its trust fund will run out of money in 2024 under current projections. That's the same as it was last year, but fully five years earlier than estimates from two years ago. Breaking down Social Security into its component parts, the retirement part of the program will use up its trust fund in 2035. But for its disability program, the news is worse still -- its trust fund will go dry in 2016, two years earlier than last year's prediction.

Well...I hear everyone saying the projection (for what it's worth) have the trust fund GONE 2024 for Medicare and Social Security like approx. 10 years after that. We all know we can't float that w/ tax revenue alone so ... "reality" is basically now I mean I agree democracies have trouble dealing with long term problems but 2024...IDK that isn't long term to me.

It's going to have to lol...IDK how but it has to...

We're going to need all 3. And just to clarify what I mean there btw we need to at the very least eliminate a large portion of tax expenditures (we don't have to raise income tax necessarily), we need to spend on wise investments in the short term and we have to cut waste and what we can now (military for starters) and certainly reform the SS and Medicare long term.

LOL thanks for that Magox. Put as simply as it possibly can be....Cut or invest. 2 options we can choose for 2012 depending on what we think will be more effective to keep us from moving backwards and help us increase the rate of recovery. And it's disappointing b/c everyone knows we can't cut, tax, or spend our way out of this. But a reasonable discussion on a balanced approach is something we cannot actually have in this election...thank you far right (far left too but let's be real the far left is actually on a leash).

Enlighten me please. If I haven't heard it and it's there I need to hear it.

So at what point would you all prefer Romney actually talk about what to do? Never?