- Guests:
- Dr. John Lott, economist, columnist, author, latest book "Freedomnomics: Why the Free Market Works and Other Half-Baked Theories Don't".
- John Berlau of the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
- Dr. Lawrence Yun of the National Association of Realtors.
- Doug Cunningham of Workers Independent News.
- Former Goldman Sachs managing director Nomi Prins.
- Topics:
- Just like Vietnam and the draft – shouldn’t we be requiring healthcare mandates so everyone cares?
- Is the housing market really bouncing back or is it a false positive?
- Labor update. Could Red Cross working conditions possibly compromise blood safety?
- "It Takes A Pillage: Behind The Bailouts, Bonuses, And Backroom Deals From Washington To Wall Street"
- Bumper Music:
- Shake It Up, The Cars.
- The Ballad Of Gilligan's Isle, The Remotes.
- Ghost Chickens in the Sky, Sean Morey.
- I Fought The Law, The Bobby Fuller Four.
- Crazy, Gnarls Barkley.
- Pink Houses, John Mellencamp.
- Who Says You Can't Go Home, Bon Jovi.
- Boulevard Of Broken Dreams, Green Day.
- Rollout (My Business), Ludacris.
- You're the Voice, Heart (video).
- Democracy, Leonard Cohen.
- Quote: "Neither conscience nor sanity itself suggests that the United States is, should or could be the global gendarme." -- Robert McNamara.
- Today's newsletter has details of today's guests and links to the major stories and alerts that Thom covered in the show, plus lots more. If you haven't signed up for the free newsletter yet, please do. If you missed today's newsletter, it is in the archive.
- Article: The AHIP Freak-Out: PricewaterhouseCoopers Distancing Themselves from Their Own Report by David Dayen.
PricewaterhouseCoopers issued a puzzling statement today about the report they were commissioned to write by AHIP, the health insurance lobby, which showed through some questionable assumptions that insurance premiums would rise faster in the event of health care reform than from doing nothing. The statement could be essentially boiled down to, “don’t look at us!”
"America’s Health Insurance Plans engaged PricewaterhouseCoopers to prepare a report that focused on four components of the Senate Finance Committee proposal:
- Insurance market reforms and consumer protections that would raise health insurance premiums for individuals and families if the reforms are not coupled with an effective coverage requirement.
- An excise tax on employer-sponsored high value health plans.
- Cuts in payment rates in public programs that could increase cost shifting to private sector businesses and consumers.
- New taxes on health sector entities.
The analysis concluded that collectively the four provisions would raise premiums for private health insurance coverage. As the report itself acknowledges, other provisions that are part of health reform proposals were not included in the PwC analysis. The report stated on page 1:
“The reform packages under consideration have other provisions that we have not included in this analysis. We have not estimated the impact of the new subsidies on the net insurance cost to households. Also, if other provisions in health care reform are successful in lowering costs over the long term, those improvements would offset some of the impacts we have estimated.” "
- Clip:
"I understand that there is going to be a program this week against this bill, in which an English physician is going to come and talk about how bad their plans are. It may be, but he ought to talk about it in England, because his plans--because his plans and what they do in England are entirely different. In England the entire cost of medicine for people of all ages, all of it, doctors, choice of doctors, hospitals, from the time you're born till the time you die, is included in a Government program. But what we're talking about is entirely different. And I hope that while he's here, he and Doctor Spock and others who have joined us, will come to see what we are trying to do.The fact of the matter is that what we are now talking about doing, most of the countries of Europe did years ago. The British did it 30 years ago. We are behind every country, pretty nearly, in Europe, in this matter of medical care for our citizens.
And then those who say that this should be left to private efforts. In those hospitals in New Jersey where the doctors said they wouldn't treat anyone who paid their hospital bills through social security, those hospitals and every other new hospital, the American people--all of us--contribute one-half, one or two thirds for every new hospital, the National Government. We pay 55 percent of all the research done. We help young men become doctors.
We are concerned with the progress of this country, and those who say that what we are now talking about spoils our great pioneer heritage should remember that the West was settled with two great actions by the National Government; one, in President Lincoln's administration, when he gave a homestead to everyone who went West, and in 1862 he set aside Government property to build our land grant colleges.
This cooperation between an alert and Progressive citizen and a progressive Government is what has made this country great--and we shall continue as long as we have the opportunity to do so.
This matter should not be left to a mail campaign where Senators are inundated, and Congressmen--twenty-five and thirty thousand letters--the instructions go out, "Write it in your own hand. Don't use the same words." The letters pour in 2 or 3 weeks, half of them misinformed. This meeting today, on a hot, good day when everyone could be doing something else, and the 32 other meetings, this indicates that the American people are determined to put an end to meeting a challenge which hits them at a time when they're least able to meet it.
"
President John F. Kennedy, Address at a New York Rally in Support of the President's Program of Medical Care for the Aged, May 20, 1962.
