A simple reason why Bush's SS plan is stupid

[pchang]

THen, let's talk about Medicare. It is a much larger problem than SS.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by pchang
THen, let's talk about Medicare. It is a much larger problem than SS.

Agreed. Social Security is fixable but Medicare will be much worse.

[Ted Striker]

Let's talk about the evolution of Britney Spears boobs.

First they got big. Now they are smaller again.

What gives???

[Dinner]

Originally posted by DanS
In fact it would be damn near impossible to lose your money under the Bush plan. You would be able to invest only in a combination of 5 index funds. If you lose your money, the economy has just collapsed, and we're all going to be eating grubs in any event.

Intially there will only be five but already people are talking about increasing the number of choices. How soon before the options are more then just index funds and higher cost or higher risk investment options are allowed? People are already talking about it and the special interest lobby is licking its lips over the thought of all those fees.

If Index Funds are so safe then why not just allow the Social Security Administration to invest some of the Trust Fund into Index funds? They'd get a higher return then T-Bills and that would go a long way to solving the problem without phasing out the whole program. Also as Chang noted the SSA is big enough to muscle great terms with a broker or fund manager while 200 million seporate small accounts likely wouldn't be able to do so.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Ted Striker
Let's talk about the evolution of Britney Spears boobs.

First they got big. Now they are smaller again.

What gives???

They were so obviously fake she got smaller ones implanted to make them look more real.

[Ted Striker]

yeah

[Dinner]

She went from flat chested to huge bizongas to medium sized. The one thing which didn't change is she was a no talent idiot the whole time.

[Ted Striker]

[DanS]

Oldie but goodie.

http://www.liquidgeneration.com/poptoons/britneys_breasts.swf

[Ted Striker]

Man, things were so much better in 2000.

Britney represents everything that has gone wrong with the USA!

[Ted Striker]

Originally posted by DanS
Oldie but goodie.

http://www.liquidgeneration.com/popt...ys_breasts.swf

An excellent analysis

[Mr. Harley]

Medicare/medicaid - excellent topic about something that is seriously broken. How to fix.

Pass a simple tiered system. Children and preventative care get first priority. All other care is prorated on cost/benefit and responsibility criteria. Seperate it into a "health care tax", similiar to what we have now as part of our payroll tax system.

If you don't take in enough to cover it, start pulling benefits. For example, if you were alchoholic and you need a liver transplant, tough. The angioplasty for a forty year old gets priority over one for an eighty year old. Major b*tch fest over how to prioritize, what gets cut, etc.

However, not enough money, things are automatically cut. Period. American taxpayers learn there ain't no such thing as a free lunch. Let the tax rate for health care be set via referendum. Of course nobody is going to want this - but I can dream, can't I?

[Ted Striker]

What do you think about Britney though shawn?

[Dinner]

One of the big problems with medicare is that only the sickest people get dumped on to it. If you're healthy then the private insurers pick you up but once you get sick with a cronic illness they find every excuse to dump people on to medicare to improve their profit margin. We need to spread the costs and risks out more in order to lower per unit prices. Universal health insurance is the way to do that while allowing privately owned hospitals to continue to provide the actual care.

Next drug companies have rigged to system to insure sky high drug prices. Every other 1st world country buys in bulk and demands bulk discounts on drugs. We don't plus it is currently illegal for medicare to comparision shop for cheaper drug prices on the open market. That's just obsurd and it is no wonder drug prices are soaring. If Walmart can comparision shop for lower prices and demand bulk discounts then the government should too.

Lastly we need patent reform. Currently drug companies can make a series of extremely minor changes (like changing dosage or binding agents) and thus continually claim to have created a new innovation deserving of yet another patent. This tact keeps drugs free of compeition for 20-40 years instead of the 10-20 year intended by the law. The law needs to be changed so that any "innovations" must be substantial and ground breaking in nature or else the original patient experation date applies. Also we should allow third parties to apply for patients on different delivery methods (binding agents, buffers, etc) as this will force companies to rush out and register minor patients right away in order to keep the compeitors away instead of dragging it out for decades in hopes of prolonging the competition free period.

These changes will still protect patient holders but it will also give consumers a fairer shake. It will result in everyone being covered but with per unit costs actualy going down and drug prices being halved almost over night. This has been adopted in Europe and the industrialized parts of Asia and drug companies are still very profitable but they aren't obscenely, ungodly profitable like they are in the US where the system has been rigged against consumers.

[Dinner]

The one problem I see with investing so much money into stocks is I wonder if there is enough quality stocks on offer for all that money. We could just create a huge bubble due to a lack of quality stocks to buy as trillions of new dollars flood into the market.