Sarah Palin: bat****, or howling-at-the-moon bat****?

[Blaupanzer]

Except he's wrong. Yes, insurance companies decide what gets covered based on the coverage the customer pays for.

When a new, expensive treatment comes new policies are inderwritten to account for higher costs, or you can stick with an existing policy and exclude the fancy new stuff. Over time, as the new technology comes down in cost and proves its cost effectiveness in terms of patient survival, quality of life, etc, these treatments become standard in lower cost policies.

What planet do you live on? When my employer provided health plan excludes a specific condition for me, I don't get to pick some other option, at any price. Likewise with "New, expesive treatments." I don't see them until my employer is willing to pay. Do you personally negotiate your own insurance? If you don't, then you are blowing smoke. If you do, do you think your situation applies to many other heath care nusers?

[Kidlicious]

Let's not forget the $600B the Dems want to "transfer" from Medicare to Obamacare, except it isn't there and would have to be covered by more bonds that creditor nations are increasingly unwilling to buy.

Not yet.

http://online.barrons.com/article/SB...lenews_barrons

Foreigners Eat Up U.S. Bonds

INVESTORS WORRIED ABOUT WANING OVERSEAS DEMAND FOR U.S. treasury securities can breathe a little easier: Foreign investors showed up in full force last week buy the government's two-, five- and seven-year notes.

Foreign demand has been solid all year, even with issuance hitting record levels as the government borrows more money to fund economic stimulus programs and make up for declining revenues.

Still, the threat remains that foreigners could pull back as borrowing needs increase. Just last week, the government raised its estimate of the total deficit for the next decade to $7.1 trillion, up $2.7 trillion from an update in March.

"At least for now, appetite for our debt is healthy," says Dan Greenhaus, chief economic strategist at New York-based Miller Tabak & Co. "While we can expect a hiccup here and there, the overall ability of our government to bring its debt to market remains unimpeded." However, he warns, "the longer-term outlook is cloudier."

Overseas investors' appetite for U.S. paper is crucial because they own about half of the $6.7 trillion Treasuries market. Less buying on their part -- or worse yet, selling of Treasuries they already own -- could drive up the government's funding costs, as well as consumer-borrowing rates, threatening to undo the progress policymakers have made toward repairing the U.S. economy.

That these investors could step away from the Treasury market has been a recurring and escalating concern as issuance has soared. Year-to-date, the government has sold a hefty $1.3 trillion in Treasury notes and bonds, versus $922 billion for all of 2008 and just $587 billion in 2007. The worry is that still-heftier spending by Uncle Sam -- and, in turn, more issuance -- could spark inflation, as a greater supply of dollars drives down the buck and erodes the value of dollar-denominated debt.

...

[Drake Tungsten]

Palin sure has damaged her brand...

Sarah Palin gets 1,070+ invitations

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin this week will begin accepting and rejecting the more than 1,070 invitations she has received for paid speeches and political appearances since she resigned from office, aides said.

Twenty speakers’ bureaus made offers to represent her. She has signed with Washington Speakers Bureau, which represents everyone from George and Laura Bush to Bob Woodward and Katie Couric to Alan Greenspan, Colin Powell and Rudy Giuliani.

More than 950 requests for speeches have poured in for Palin, and over 120 candidates for office have asked her to appear, including folks running for Senate, House and state Legislature, aides said.

Palin will be doing both paid speeches, which are expected to go for six figures apiece, and unpaid speeches for political and charitable causes, including Christian organizations, groups that support families with special-needs children and military families.

Palin has made no commitments so far, and Washington Speakers Bureau will start responding to the invitations this week.

She’s about 85 percent finished with her book, due out this spring from HarperCollins. Then she’ll begin looking through the inch-and-a-half thick file her lawyer, Robert Barnett, has built of offers for network and cable pundit gigs, documentaries and business opportunities.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0809/26604.html

[Blaupanzer]

Lots of folks who like to listen to bat-**** crazy speakers wouldn't necessarily vote for the same folks. Be interesting to see how many days of speaking she ties up, since she believes in hands-on mothering and has a six-month-old at home.

[Drake Tungsten]

I'm sure she can afford to bring Trig along with the six-figure paychecks she'll be getting.

[Arrian]

There is definitely a healthy market for bat****tery.

-Arrian

[Drake Tungsten]

Agreed. There's no other way to explain MSNBC's ratings...

[KrazyHorse]

So what? I was talking about the demand for labor you nitwit.

Nobody cares what you thought you were talking about. You have a Palin-esque level of understanding of basic economics.

[Ben Kenobi]

Palin, great candidate or greatest candidate?

I would love to have Palin speak up here.

[Dinner]

That's from the British show The Week.

[Straybow]

What planet do you live on? When my employer provided health plan excludes a specific condition for me, I don't get to pick some other option, at any price. Likewise with "New, expesive treatments." I don't see them until my employer is willing to pay. Do you personally negotiate your own insurance? If you don't, then you are blowing smoke. If you do, do you think your situation applies to many other heath care nusers?

"When my employer provided health care plan..." There you go. If you shop around you can find other health care plans. They will generally be more expensive than employer provided plans because of the risk management pool factor.

Hence I said, "You get the coverage you pay for." If you don't think coverage for anything under the sun is worth X amount, then don't buy it, and don't complain when your plan doesn't pay for experimental heart surgery in Brazil.

I had the option of getting insurance through my employer or buying coverage from my wife's employer. I could get almost any kind of plan imaginable through my employer, but they get expensive. If I weren't married etc I'd go for a simple catastrophic coverage plan. It is more convenient to have the same service as my wife, so that's the way to go.

[Straybow]

The worry is that still-heftier spending by Uncle Sam -- and, in turn, more issuance -- could spark inflation, as a greater supply of dollars drives down the buck and erodes the value of dollar-denominated debt.

It will hurt the exchange rate even if the Fed keeps a lid on inflation, which makes USD treasuries less attractive overseas.

[Dinner]

In the US most insurance comes through your employer and most people won't quit a job because of the health plan so there is very little actual competition in most states. 2-3 big insurance companies make up around an 80% share of the market in most states and this lack of competition is a big part of why health care costs keep going up. A lack of competition never helps the consumer and structural problems help to limit people's ability to seek out better options (the employer says this is it and that's it). To make matters worse insurance companies already have death panels which deny expensive care because their accounts ran the numbers and figured out its cheaper to let the man die (and pay possible legal expenses) then to actually provide the health insurance he paid for so he dies. Then there is how they drop coverage when people get sick even though they've paid their dues on time for years, how they deny coverage to people with preexisting conditions (this is illegal in literally EVERY other first world country), or how they use internal regulations to stretch out the approval process for months banking on the fact that the patient will die before the procedure is approved). The list just goes on and on...

Our current system is fundamentally broken. It costs far more then anyone else, it gets the worst results in most cases, it leaves tens of thousands to die each year when they could have been saved, but a few companies/people profit so much from this human misery that they don't want it to change so they fool the gullible into siding with them out of fear of change. It's wrong and immoral.

[Krill]

That's from the British show The Week.

It's "Mock the Week", Doofus.

[DinoDoc]

Be kind Krill. The name of the show was in the title of the vid. How could you expect him to know that?