Opinions Based on Facts: October 2013

WELCOME TO OPINIONS BASED ON FACTS (OBOF)

THINGS YOU MAY HAVE MISSED (TYMHM)

YEAR THREE

	Published
OVERVIEW
OBOF & TYMHM PART 14	Dec 18, 2012
OBOF & TYMHM PART 15	Jan. 02, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 16	Jan. 08, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 16 EXTRA	Jan. 11, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 17	Jan. 15, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 18	Jan. 22, 2013
Gbtre OBOF & TYMHM PART 19	Jan. 29, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 20	Feb. 05, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 21	Feb. 14, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 22	Feb. 20, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 23	Feb. 27, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 23 SPECIAL	Mar. 06, 2013
saOBOF & TYMHM PART 24	`
OBOF & TYMHM PART 25	Mar. 12, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 25-EXTRA	Mar. 14, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 26	Mar. 19, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 27	Mar. 26, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 28	Apr. 02, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 29	Apr. 08, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 30	Apr. 17, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 31	Apr. 23, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 32	Apr. 30, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 33	May 07, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 34	May 18, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 35	May 21, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 36	May 30, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 37	June 05, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 38	June 11, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 39	June 18, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 40	June 25, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 41	July 02, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 42	July 09, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 43	July 16, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 44	July 23, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 45	July 30, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 46	Aug. 06, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 47	Aug. 14, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 48	Aug. 20, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 49	Aug. 27, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 50	Sept. 05, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 51	Sept. 11, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 52	Sept. 18, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 53	Sept. 26, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 54	Oct. 02, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 55	Oct. 09. 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 56	Oct. 16, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM pART 57	Oct. 23, 2013

IN THIS ISSUE

1. HATE HATE HATE HATE.

2. What to expect after the cease fire.

3. Sick in America? What they don't want you to know.

I have done better this week. Two days earlier than last week.

HATE HATE HATE HATE

By Floyd Bowman

Publisher "Opinions Based On Facts."

Monday, October 22, 2013.

Who do you think is the greatest OBAMA HATE MONGER? The number one OBAMA HATER in our country has been all over the news networks, newspapers, magazines, and internet this week. That is exactly what he wants. They are all playing right into his hands. He is a U. S. Senator, but he doesn't know who he is representing or what the duties of a U. S. Senator are.

I don't think there is much doubt that he wants to become President in 2016 and yet he continually talks against the U. S. Government and thinks it should be replaced or greatly changed, which is saying the same thing. He has said that he is in Washington "to take care of all the people in his State."

That, of course, is not what a U. S. Senator is in Washington for. He/she is there as a "UNITED STATES SENATOR." He/she is NOT a State Senator. He/she, is there to serve the NATION and what is good and right for ALL THE PEOPLE of the entire UNTIED STATES OF AMERICA, not just the State which sent he/she to Washington. All States are represented equally in the Senate of the United State, two from each State.

Now, I'll grant you, most, if not all, U. S. Senators do a lot of things for their State, but none of them come right out and make that a part of their Homecoming speech. He, of course, is a Republican. You can probably guess as to what part of the many parts of the Republican Party he represents. In fact, he is probably the Republican that is doing more damage to the Republican Party than any other. He puts Boehner, Ryan, and Cantor in the shadows.

I am not going to mention his name here. I, am not going to give him the satisfaction of being able to say that I helped to promote his name and what he stands for. What I will do is give you the letters that make up his name - one. You can probably determine his name and where he is from, which can be expected. U D R T Z E . I'll give you a clue for the missing letter. It is the third letter from the left on the bottom row of the key board. There, now I have not dirted up my presentation to you by placing his despicable name in writing. I guess I am just next door to using the word "hate" myself, regarding this Senator.

~~~

What to Expect During the Cease-Fire

Robert Reich

NationofChange / Op-Ed

Published: Friday 18 October 2013

The war isn’t over. It’s only a cease-fire.

Republicans have agreed to fund the federal government through January 15 and extend the government’s ability to borrow (raise the debt ceiling) through Feb. 7. The two sides have committed themselves to negotiate a long-term budget plan by mid-December.

Regardless of what happens in the upcoming budget negotiations, it seems doubtful House Republicans will try to prevent the debt ceiling from being raised next February. Saner heads in the GOP will be able to point to the debacle Tea Partiers created this time around – the public’s anger, directed mostly at Republicans; upset among business leaders and Wall Street executives, who bankroll much of the GOP; and the sharply negative reaction of stock and bond markets, where the American middle class parks whatever savings it has.

The saner Republicans will also be able to point out that President Obama means it when he says he won’t ever negotiate over the debt ceiling. The fact that he negotiated over it in 2011 is now irrelevant.

On the other hand, there’s a significant chance of another government shutdown in January. By then we’ll be well into the gravitational pull of the 2014 midterm elections. Every House member is up for reelection – mostly from safe (often gerrymandered) districts in which their major competitors are likely to be primary opponents from the Tea Party right.

These opponents will be challenging them to show what they’ve done to sandbag Obamacare and shrink the size of government. The President and the Democrats have made it clear they’ll protect Obamacare at all costs. Which means the real action between now and January 15 will be over the federal budget. The threat of another government shutdown is the only major bargaining leverage House Republicans possess in order to get what they consider “meaningful” concessions.

We know the parameters of the upcoming budget debate because we’ve been there before. The House already has its version — the budget Paul Ryan bequeathed to them. This includes major cuts in Medicare (turning it into a voucher) and Social Security (privatizing much of it), and substantial cuts in domestic programs ranging from education and infrastructure to help for poorer Americans. Republicans also have some bargaining leverage in the sequester, which continues to indiscriminately choke government spending.

The Senate has its own version of a budget, which, by contrast, cuts corporate welfare, reduces defense spending, and raises revenues by closing tax loopholes for the wealthy.

Here, I fear, is where the President is likely to cave.

He’s already put on the table a way to reduce future Social Security payments by altering the way cost-of-living adjustments are made – using the so-called “chained” consumer price index, which assumes that when prices rise people economize by switching to cheaper alternatives. This makes no sense for seniors, who already spend a disproportionate share of their income on prescription drugs, home healthcare, and medical devices – the prices of which have been rising faster than inflation. Besides, Social Security isn’t responsible for our budget deficits. Quite the opposite: For years its surpluses have been used to fund everything else the government does.

The President has also suggested “means-testing” Medicare – that is, providing less of it to higher-income seniors. This might be sensible. The danger is it becomes the start of a slippery slope that eventually turns Medicare into another type of Medicaid, a program perceived to be for the poor and therefore vulnerable to budget cuts.

But why even suggest cutting Medicare at all, when the program isn’t responsible for the large budget deficits projected a decade or more from now? Medicare itself is enormously efficient; its administrative costs are far lower than commercial health insurance.

The real problem is the rising costs of healthcare, coupled with the aging of the post-war boomers. The best way to deal with the former – short of a single-payer system — is to use Medicare’s bargaining power over providers to move them from “fee-for-services,” in which providers have every incentive to do more tests and procedures, to “payments-for-healthy-outcomes,” where providers would have every incentive to keep people healthy. (The best way to deal with the latter – the aging of the American population – is to allow more young immigrants into America.)

More generally, the President has been too eager to accept the argument that the major economic problem facing the nation is large budget deficits – when, in point of fact, the deficit has been shrinking as a share of the national economy. The only reason it’s expected to increase in future years is, again, rising healthcare costs.

Our real economic problem continues to be a dearth of good jobs along with widening inequality. Cutting the budget deficit may make both worse, by reducing total demand for goods and services and eliminating programs that lower-income Americans depend on.

The President has now scored a significant victory over extremist Republicans. But the fight will continue. He mustn’t relinquish ground during the upcoming cease-fire.

~~~

Sick in America: What Today's

Reactionaries Don’t Want You to Know.

Thomas Magstadt

NationofChange / Op-Ed

Published: Monday 21 October 2013

ABOUT Thomas Magstadt

Tom Magstadt earned his Ph.D. at The Johns Hopkins University School of International Studies. He is the author of "An Empire If You Can Keep It: Power and Principle in American Foreign Policy," "Understanding Politics: Ideas, Institutions and Issues," and "Nations and Governments: Comparative Politics in Regional Perspective." He was a regular contributor to the Prague Post in 1998-99 and has published widely in newspapers, magazines and journals in the United States. He was a Fulbright Scholar in the Czech Republic in the mid-1990s and a visiting professor at the Air War College in 1990-92. He has taught at several universities, chaired two political science departments, and also did a stint as an intelligence analyst at the CIA. He is a member of the board of the International Relations Council of Kansas City. Now working mainly as a free-lance writer, he lives in Westwood Hills, Kansas.

Much of what we hear about health care is pure propaganda with no basis whatsoever in fact. The purpose of propaganda is to manipulate, not to enlighten or inform, so it's no surprise that the partisan fight over health care in Congress has generated more heat than light. The baleful effect is to deceive and thereby perpetuate the status quo—and an ever-greater inequality that threatens to destroy the fabric of our society.

Among the false impressions created by libertarians, FOX news, and reactionaries of all stripes is that Americans far more freedom to choose physicians, hospitals and treatments than people in Europe and other advanced societies with single payer systems. Most anyone who has lived abroad and experienced a single-payer system in operation knows that's simply not true. Nor is it true that people in these countries get less personalized attention from doctors than we do. (Ask anybody who's spent a few days in a hospital lately how much time the doctor spent with them.) It's what the Corporatocracy tells us, and many of us are only too eager to believe, but it's not true.

The U.S. is NOT the leader in health care in the modern world.

In fact, the U.S. is not even in the top ten. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the health care system in the U.S. ranked thirty-eighth in the world in 2000. If you're thinking that was over a decade ago, maybe we're doing better now, think again.

Americans DO NOT LIVE LONGER than people in many other advanced countries.

Don't trust UN figures? How about Bloomberg? According to a Bloomberg study of the most efficient health systems in the world, the U.S. ranks forty-sixth, just below Iran (oops!) and just above Serbia. Among the top ten (Hong Kong, Singapore Japan, Israel, Spain, Italy, Australia, South Korea, Switzerland, and Sweden), life expectancy is significantly higher (and infant mortality is lower), as it is in the UK, Austria, Canada, France, Finland, the Netherlands, Portugal, Greece and Germany, among others. Amazingly, getting better results costs a lot less in these countries than we have to shell out.

Medical treatment in the U.S. is BY FAR THE MOST EXPENSIVE in the world.

Health care costs in US account for over 17 percent of total GDP every year—roughly $2.7 trillion in 2012. By itself, that's a very big number, as big as the entire GDP of France and bigger than Brazil's, but it takes on a whole new meaning when compared to what people in other advanced societies spend on health care and what they get in return. Among the top ten most efficient health care systems in the world, health care costs as a percentage of GDP ranges from a low of 3.8 percent in Singapore to a high of 11.5 percent in Switzerland. The average for the top 25 countries, all of which rank above the U.S. in health care efficiency, is 6.54 percent. That's 6.54 percent of GDP for a better result than we get in the U.S. spending 17.2 percent of GDP.

On a per capita basis, we don't fare any better. Canada, for example, devotes 10.8 percent of GDP to health care, or $5,630 on average. The per capita cost of health-care in the UK, with its "socialist" National Health Service, is $3,609. In South Korea with a higher life expectancy than we have, it's only $1,616. In the U.S. the figure is a budget-busting $8,608.

The American health care system IS NOT A FREE MARKET.

There's no such thing as a free market and the exorbitant price of health care in the U.S. is a glaring example. "In reality, per-capita state-sponsored health expenditures in the United States are the third-highest in the world, only below Norway and Luxembourg. And this is before our new health law kicks in." The quote is from an article in The Atlantic (March 8, 2012). The title speaks volumes: "The Myth of the Free-Market American Health Care System." As the author a libertarian journalist named, Megan McArdle, points out:

The thing to remember in America is that we have single-payer health care for the elderly and for the poor: the two costliest groups. In addition, the relatively healthy middle class has heavily-subsidized private health insurance, in which few individuals have the freedom to choose the insurance plan they receive. Neither of these facts commend the American health-care system to devotees of the free market.

McArdle is manifestly NOT a proponent of state-financed health insurance. She points out that two of the world's best health-care systems are found in Switzerland and Singapore. Both are essentially market-based systems, but the Swiss get subsidies (on a sliding scale tied to income) to purchase health insurance and Singapore has a system of mandatory health savings accounts. But note that in both countries, coverage costs far less than in American, health care efficiency and life expectancy are higher, and coverage is UNIVERSAL.

Prescription drug prices in the U.S. are the HIGHEST IN THE WORLD.

Pharmaceuticals cost far less in most countries than they do in the US; most prescription drugs patented, manufactured, and sold here in the U.S. are sold abroad at much, much lower prices. Here are a few facts for 200 of the world's best selling drugs across 13 therapeutic areas:

· European prescription drug prices average just 50 percent of U.S. prices.

· Japanese drug prices average 66 percent of U.S. prices.

· In price-comparison studies weighted for volume, brand-name prescription drug prices are often higher in the U.S. than other OECD countries; a US government study found that patented drug prices cost 18-67 percent less in OECD countries than in the U.S.

One eye-watering example: The exact same medicated eye drops that cost $125 in the U.S. cost $4 in Greece.

Drug prices rose 3.6 percent in 2012, twice the 1.7 percent inflation rate. Individual drug prices roses even faster. In the first 9 months of 2012, a heartburn drug called Nexium jumped 7.8 percent (a $262 average prescription); Abilify, for bipolar disorder, increased 10.4 percent ($642 per prescription); Crestor, a cholesterol-lowering drug, went up 9.7 percent ($193 per prescription). At this rate, if the insurance companies don't bankrupt government and the middle class, the drug companies will.

Conclusion #1: There's no perfect health care system anywhere in the world, and whether the best system possible is one that is state-funded or market-based is debatable.

Conclusion #2: "Among advanced economies, the U.S. spends the most on health care on a relative cost basis with the worst outcome." Bloomberg

Conclusion #3: The U.S. health-care system combines the worst features of both state-funded and market-based systems with none of the advantages of either.

~~~

If the good Lord is willing and the creek don't rise, I'll talk with you again next week, hopefully, on Tuesday, October 29, 2013.

God Bless You All

God Bless the United States of America.

Floyd

Opinions Based on Facts

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

OBOF TYMHM & MORE PART 57