From a sports illustrated story from March of this year: Ah WillyB: Divorce. The world's quickest way to turn $100 into $50. (less attorney's fee)
Yeah, I went to high school with Mel Grey - old timers might remember him as the Cardinals wide receiver. Last I knew he was back in his home town selling real estate for a living. Rags to riches to rags...
Of course they drove you out of the meetings. The lenders only get commissions when they loan money. You would have prevented them from loaning money. And they don't have to give the money back if the loan defaulted. I saw the same things in semiconductors. Salespeople make commissions on sales. They make no commission if there is no sale. So, they would try to bomb the price and to hell with the profit. But while Sales was paid on the sale price, Marketing (that's me!) was incentivized based upon profit margin. It was that self-regulating balance that provided sanity and kept us in business. The business model you described, there was no internal self-regulation because the companies giving the loans were able to turn around and sell off the loans. The bank's ability to sell off the loans removed any trace of internal self-regulation. Yes, of course you were morally correct in wanting to deny the loans. But because the business model was so screwed up and open-ended, morality would cause the company to lose money (is that f****d up or what???) Yeah, that's the common thread of Conservatives. Unless there is fast money to be made, in which case both the left and the right will keep the government out. That's made more emphatic by the fact that during the 1980's the Democrats completely controlled Congress, right? So the Republicans were powerless to do anything anyway. Not that either party would want to change things because... there was just too much money to be made. And to bring that into more focus... the best way to bring down health care costs is by tort reform. Intelligent tort reform would bring health costs down by at least HALF, and remove any incentive for HMOs to remove people from coverage (for patients where the chance of survival is not great, 80% of the cost of medicine can actually be to pay insurance costs). The right should be in favor of tort reform because it reduces government/court intervention, and the left should be in favor of tort reform because it would make health care dramatically more affordable. (this is why health care is so affordable in Australia). This makes complete and total sense. But greed knows no political party, and lawyers - which run Congress - from both parties that stand to make 30% from the lawsuit settlements won't allow any tort reform.
LOL. How true. Look, I was a broker. I made money the same way, via transactions. It was a long time ago. I only saw a couple of loans in 2 institutions before being kicked out in both cases. I think I was aware my comments were going to hamper lending, but at the same time not one of the loans "penciled out" and was going to make money. In essence the institutions made the loans because they could record profits initially on all the loans. Short term thinking. I don't recall seeing an internal "self regulating" element in the 2 S&L's with which I was most closely related. Of course it was early in the process. I think if one looks at the graphs on pages 2 and 10 in this link it is obvious that neither the S&L institutions, nor an overriding body pressured or controlled the S&L's from lending. Actually the situation was very different than current financial status. There weren't easy voluminous securitized loans than as there are now. Institutions could sell off loans, but not at a level that they did this decade. For the most part as the crisis escalated S&L's had these loans on their books. That is why so many of the S&L's went under in the late 1980's and early to mid 1990's. Moral/shmoral. They were f*cked up loans. I wouldn't have made them. They didn't pencil out. They weren't going to be repaid. Frankly, I had pretty good experience by that time. My experience with leasing space, selling land for development, selling property, etc. told me that the office development deals at the time were more or less all ponzi schemes. The only way a developer was going to make money was to sell off a building to the next "idiot buyer". In that sense the market had the same characteristics as the residential market in the mid 2000's with home prices soaring on the coasts, financings and refinancings occuring like crazy. The whole thing in the 2000's was dependant on never ending increases in value. Things just don't work that way. Again the graphs from pages 2 and 10 on this link spell it all out. The top graph on page 2 and the graph on page 10 show how much space was delivered in the 1980's. The bottom graph on page 2 shows how the vacancy rate was increasing at a rapid rate. As the vacancy rate went up, rents remained basically flat. Meanwhile the costs of development increased. The whole office space supply/demand curve was totally out of whack. Demand couldn't keep up with supply. (that set of data is symptomatic of what occurred in the entire nation. Multiply the growth of space many many many fold. It occurred everywhere. Frankly that county had significantly lower vacancy rates than most of the country. The graphs "understate" the way in which deman/supply was out of whack across the nation. It was dramatically worse.) Simple economics suggests that the "market" would correct itself. That is the libertarian credo. The whole thing was showing cracks in the early 1980's. Nevertheless the cash flow into the S&L's didn't stop. The office space market didn't correct itself though. Frankly there were other things at play. There was a supply of money. It kept working itself into the S&L's. Stupid accounting tricks allowed the S&L's to present attractive returns and hide the losses from buildings going under. Basically investment money was going into crappy investments with short term rosy pictures but long term flaws. The real picture wasn't being told. Look take the dems and repubs out of it. Just regulate the financial and real estate worlds. To hell with what the big shots of the industry and their paid flacks say. Don't turn it into some political credo connected with Dems or Repubs. The finance world is too subject to wild fluctuations and is ultimately responsible to the entire world for being maintained in a responsible way. When it crashes it takes down everyone. It is not subject to simplistic descriptions of demand and supply and "the market corrects itself". How many times do we have to see this occur to realize that it needs regulation? It needs enough oversight to keep financially induced bubbles from occurring. Look, if some folks in the administration were tasked with measuring something as simple as demand and supply for office space in the 1980's they would have seen the system going out of whack. If they had turned off the spigot of that cash sometime in the 1980's...the investment funds going into commercial office space would have gone elsewhere. Who knows where it would have gone...but it couldn't have been worse. Frankly, it would have kept a lot of the S&L's alive rather than going bankrupt. It would have kept a recession from occurring. What the hell is wrong with that? Look I don't have a problem with putting controls on tort reform that would limit the negative aspects of lawsuits and required liability insurance on the med field. My take is not to limit it in total. Put controls on it. There are plenty of cases where MD's, docs, and hospitals are at fault. They should be liable. Improve it. But do not take away the ability to sue docs and hospitals that f*ck up. Work through the details to both limit the total liability with regard to lawsuits, but allow them to exist.
The CBO is reporting that tort reform would result in a overall cost reduction of 1/2 of 1% (.005) in the health care system. That hardly sounds like a panacea to me. Of course, when someone says it would save $5 billion over the next decade, it sounds like a lot of money - which points out one of the problems inherent in the discussion. The average American is incapable of understanding the vast amounts of money we are talking about. For most people a million is a lot. They can't get their head around the idea of a million million. It becomes meaningless numbers. Put into understandable terms, tort reform might reduce a $1200/yr insurance policy by a whopping $60 - about enough for a Starbucks coffee and bagle one time a month. But hey, I'm up for regulating the percentage attorney's take on contingency cases too. 30% of an OC settlement is too high (40% if within a week of trial). 50% of a court settlement is way to high, and 60% of an appeal is highway robbery - even more so when we are talking class action cases. The fees should, in my opinion, never exceed billable hours, nor should the attorney receive more than the client in any settlement.
WillyB: I think the CBO number was $54 billion. I think it should be compared to the $900 billion (almost a trillion) that comes out of the Senate committee. Still that is 5-6%, not the .005 you referenced. On the other hand you referenced it right at about $60/on a $1200/year insurance bill. Not exactly the end all and be all is it? That doesn't make it the panacea of cost savings that might be implied by Right Wing commentary. Hey its 5%...all of 5%. It doesn't solve the deal. OTOH. When you are actually working and crafting and actually trying to compromise to make something work...one does it in the details. One doesn't accomplish anything in the big mouth talk. The actual crafting, as I'm sure you are aware, Willy, usually comes from compromise and work. Things get 1% better here, 3% better here, etc etc. They add up to something that is workable. If you are going to craft legislation that A) insures lots more people if not all Americans B) Ensures that preexisting conditions don't cause financial ruin. C) Rein in costs Then everyone must compromise at the table. If the attorneys and tort reform compromise than A) the docs have to compromise B) the insurance companies have to compromise C) the drug companies have to compromise D) the hospitals have to compromise etc. Anyways, this thread is about employment, its not about tort reform in health care. Take the politics out of it. Take a look at how these crises develop. This crisis and the one from 1990 both evolved out of the financial industry being unregulated and flooding money into a submarket that was out of whack with reality and economic reality. Put watchdogs over the financial/real estate markets. Regulate the flow of funds. Don't allow them to go financially out of whack and then put the entire economy of the nation and the world at risk. On that basis does anyone realize that the total value of credit/default swaps and derivatives are greater than the entire output of world GDP. That is nuts. That means that should these financial instruments fail, every dollar made everywhere in the world would go to support these financial instruments. In fact a lot of these derivatives did fail. So much for money for food, clothing, entertainment, or even warfare by everyone everywhere. Every dollar would have to go to satisfy some c*ck s*cking financial instruments issued by some financial companies so they could make some easy money for fees. Its pretty stupid IMHO.
Heh. What is the total projected cost of the health care program. I thought it was projected at somewhere around $1 trillion over ten years give or take something. The $54 billion from the CBO is a number spread over 10 years. According to normal math that makes somewhere around 5%. Oh well, the Wash Times is a helluva Conservative paper. I live in the area. I pick it up. Guess they aren't good at math, which isn't surprising ....but normally those sources incredibly overstate something. Lets see: $400/month insurance bill. Save 5%. That is $20/month. Save 0.5% that saves $2/month. Now at that rate....that sure isn't an answer to anything important, is it? Still this is a thread about unemployment. It seems to me, the Washington Times should spring to hire someone or 2 people who are reasonably good in math.
Apples and oranges? They refer to health care spending, not the health care proposals. I suspect health care spending is far, far more than a trillion over 10 years. Wikipedia says, "In 2007, the U.S. spent $2.26 trillion on health care..." 0.5% of that would be $11.3 billion - pretty close to the referenced article. BTW, insurance for our family is closer to $1000/mo (probably more come Janurary 1 when the plan is updated). If the savings of tort reform were directly reflected in our premiums (doubtful) we would see the premiums reduced $5/mo. Corwin, are you reading this? And note, I didn't say a thing about the fact that the Aussie health care system costs roughly twice as much per capita than the trillion dollar proposal made in the House. And yes, we are drifting far of topic...
Well, Willy: If revising tort reform saves $54 billion over 10 years and we are comparing it to the plus $2 trillion in annual health costs....yep....it is a veritable drop in the bucket. It amounts to nothing more than a trivial item and certainly not worth the volume of noise made about it by the Right Wing. Still trying to get this thread moved back to the unemployment issue: Maybe the Right Wing should hire some fact checkers to provide facts with substance. (nah...I don't think that idea is gonna fly) (btw: from some political readings it appears that Karl Rove essentially "invented" tort reform as a political issue starting back in the 1980's.; starting with it in Texas and then spreading it into the national agenda when Bush became President
I don't believe those numbers. They don't sound right. It doesn't sound right that 1/2 of 1% of health costs go towards insurance and related costs. I know from experience that, in some cases, 60% of the cost of a drug or 50% of the cost of a medical procedure goes towards the cost of insurance. Ask your doctor what he/she thinks is the cost of insurance for certain life-saving drugs and procedures. According to the AMA, on any given day 125,000 medical lawsuits are in the system. From the AMA (1-Page PDF): This is the cement wall of Washington. They'll always stonewall on any meaningful tort reform because our laws are made by lawyers, and the quickest way for a lawyer to propel themselves into the stratus of the Uber-Filthy-Rich is by commissions off of medical lawsuits.
And this is THE ongoing problem. Opinions based on FACTS carry some weight. Opinions based on disbelief of facts are really quite worthless. The facts offered by this conservative newspaper suggest that tort reform is a red herring. Sorry to confuse you with the facts...
Um, I gave you FACTS from the AMA. Did you bother to read them? No. I referenced a short easy-to-read 1-page PDF from the AMA website. Did you look at it? Of course not, because the AMA's facts conflict with your opinion, yes? Sorry to confuse you with solid facts. Your opinions based upon ignorance are quite worthless. (BTW, just WHAT "conservative newspaper" are you referring to, anyway???)
Here is some current and very temporal information on employment in Michigan. Michigan is clearly one of the hurtingest states: http://www.mlive.com/michigan-job-s...manufacturing_jobs_grew_in_michigan_in_s.html Manufacturing jobs up for the month; government jobs down. other things went up and down, and the overall trend was down. that is a hurting state.
The AMA is an industry lobbying group representing only about 20% of practicing physicians. I would suggest that uncorraborated "facts" offered up by the AMA are questionable at best, and self serving at worst. Even if the "facts" are accurate, they do nothing to refute the figures reported by the CBO - specifically that tort reform would reduce health care spending by a whopping 1/2 of 1% (or in my specific case, about $5/mo). The CBO speaks in terms of actual dollar costs, while your referenced article speaks in terms of a "liability crisis". Given the numbers, your response is, "I don't believe those numbers. They don't sound right." That response, Corwin, is a classic example of preconceived notions interfering with the acceptance of new data.
Made up facts from the "Pacific Northwest" are so much more believable. Sorry Corwin, I'm gonna just drink the kool-aid too... Its so much easier. Seems willyb is so out of touch with reality there's no convincing him the earth is round, much less his views are skewed.
This seems to be your final refuge in any discussion, Mia. If the facts contradict your position, then you go after the person. Keep following the lemmings. I am sure you all know exactly where you are headed.
The AMA - the American Medical Association - is a highly respected, bi-partisan organization that is regularly quoted. While sometimes controversial, the AMA supports a philanthropic history of supporting frfee clinics for the underprivileged. The AMA is the largest association of doctors in the United States. One of it's central principles is to make health care affordable to everyone by bringing costs down.And because the AMA is trying to bring down the costs of health care, less physicians have been joining. Obama doesn't like the AMA because Obama is taking the side of lawyers, while the AMA is incessantly pushing for meaningful tort reform. The AMA is under fire right now because the AMA supports tort reform, and everyone in Washington (lawyers) are against it because tort reform cuts into their profits. "willybfriendly", just what do you have against tort reform, anyway? Are you in favor of frivolous lawsuits?