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New Health Rankings: Of 17 Nations, U.S. Is Dead Last

Re: We're Number......LAST

Dittohead not! said:
It does seem that the number of people in the "not doing well" category is increasing, and yet, there are those crowded stores and nice cars on the highways.

Is all that really paid for by credit card? That can't be sustainable. The interest on credit cares approaches usury.
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When America hit it's first Trillion dollar debt, some Americans "including yours truly" said this can not be good , this can not be sustainable, the interest on credit will surely bring a change in the current economic system.
Alas it did not, and since that first Trillion dollar debt , where is America today?

I don't mind America or Americans having some credit due, but must living on CREDIT become a way of life in America.

These crowded stores and nice cars on the highways how many are debt free?
Perhaps that is too much to ask, how many owe less than 20 thousand, or 10 or 5?
Keeping in mind "job security" today is at best wishful thinking at worse endangered species:peace
 
Re: We're Number......LAST

Yet another example of Fear of Big Numbers. One trillion dollars doesn't mean anything at all except in comparison to something else. The typical something else is GDP, and that comparison shows that while high by normal standards, debt is not out of line with levels reached during other national emergencies. Interest payments on the debt in FY 2012 were meanwhile lower than they were in FY 1998. Much ado about nothing. Or at least, very little.
 
Well, of this report I can only say to transfer 40% of the funds alloted in the non existent budget, under the non existent title DEFENSE and place those funds in the column of the non existent budget heading entitled HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES and let us see if maybe things will get better.
 
Re: We're Number......LAST

Cardinal Fang said:
Yet another example of Fear of Big Numbers. One trillion dollars doesn't mean anything at all except in comparison to something else. The typical something else is GDP, and that comparison shows that while high by normal standards, debt is not out of line with levels reached during other national emergencies. Interest payments on the debt in FY 2012 were meanwhile lower than they were in FY 1998. Much ado about nothing. Or at least, very little.
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A trillion dollars of federal government debt works out to ten grand apiece, figuring a hundred million taxpayers.

That may not be exact, but it is, as they say, close enough for government work.



So, 16 trillion would be $160,000 per each of us on average.

A trillion in credit card debt depends on how many credit card users don't pay their cards off at the end of the month. How many that is, I have no idea.

But, a trillion at 18% works out to $180,000,000,000 per year in interest. Surely, that has to be significant for someone.
 
Re: We're Number......LAST

These reports ranking Health Care are so much rubbish.....

//townhall.com/columnists/johnstossel/2007/08/22/why_the_us_ranks_low_on_whos_health-care_study"]http://townhall.com/columnists/johnstossel/2007/08/22/why_the_us_ranks_low_on_whos_health-care_study[/URL]
 
ChezC3 said:
Well, of this report I can only say to transfer 40% of the funds alloted in the non existent budget, under the non existent title DEFENSE and place those funds in the column of the non existent budget heading entitled HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES and let us see if maybe things will get better.
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I suspect that you do not in fact realize that Congress never votes on or passes budgets and that toxic overdoses of right-wing propaganda and disinfomation are responsible for your thinking that they do. The President writes the budget and transmits it to Congress. They then develop non-binding spending guidelines for their respective committees of jusrisidction which proceed to draft and pass a series of a dozen distinct and separate authorization and appropriation bills that are forwarded in their final form back to the President for signature or veto. That process has not occurred in either of the past two years. First, because in response to Republican carping over his FY 2012 budget as submitted, Obama called for abandonment of annual processes in order to work instead on resolving long-term imbalances instead. Republicans of course couldn't deliver the goods on that score. We got an S&P debt downgrade instead. That failure helped trigger the stupid Budget Control Act of 2011, the fiscal-cliff provisions of which made writing FY 2013 legislation totally pointless. People need to face up to the simple fact that having boneheaded Republicans in control of the House has made everything sensible less possible while bringing all sorts of insanity into the range of the entirely probable.
 
Cardinal Fang said:
I suspect that you do not in fact realize that Congress never votes on or passes budgets and that toxic overdoses of right-wing propaganda and disinfomation are responsible for your thinking that they do. The President writes the budget and transmits it to Congress. They then develop non-binding spending guidelines for their respective committees of jusrisidction which proceed to draft and pass a series of a dozen distinct and separate authorization and appropriation bills that are forwarded in their final form back to the President for signature or veto. That process has not occurred in either of the past two years. First, because in response to Republican carping over his FY 2012 budget as submitted, Obama called for abandonment of annual processes in order to work instead on resolving long-term imbalances instead. Republicans of course couldn't deliver the goods on that score. We got an S&P debt downgrade instead. That failure helped trigger the stupid Budget Control Act of 2011, the fiscal-cliff provisions of which made writing FY 2013 legislation totally pointless. People need to face up to the simple fact that having boneheaded Republicans in control of the House has made everything sensible less possible while bringing all sorts of insanity into the range of the entirely probable.
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I suspect you didn't see the humor in my post and latched on to that instead of the point. That being spend less on death and more on life.

(1997 Slick Willy signed into law a real life, honest to goodness budget. So, never say never.) :peace
 
Re: We're Number......LAST

Dittohead not! said:
A trillion dollars of federal government debt works out to ten grand apiece, figuring a hundred million taxpayers.
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More than 140 million 1040's are filed and that of course reflects only federal income tax, the source of about one-third of federal revenues and no state or local revenues at all.

Dittohead not! said:
That may not be exact, but it is, as they say, close enough for government work.
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No, it is so far off as to be worthless for any sort of work.

Dittohead not! said:
So, 16 trillion would be $160,000 per each of us on average.
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In the same sense that each of us has an annual income of $160,000. Except of course that we will never repay the debt -- just service it -- so no matter what it is, knowing what one's share of the debt is would be completely pointless, as the number would be absolutely without any sort of implication whatsoever.

Dittohead not! said:
A trillion in credit card debt depends on how many credit card users don't pay their cards off at the end of the month. How many that is, I have no idea.
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National governments are not households and public debt is not at all analogous to credit card debt. Your education in these areas would appear to be woefully incomplete.

Dittohead not! said:
But, a trillion at 18% works out to $180,000,000,000 per year in interest. Surely, that has to be significant for someone.
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The average interest rate on the public debt has been running a little lower than your estimate, checking in at 2.52% per annum as of December 31. Interest payments on the US public debt in FY 2012 were $359 billion. US offsetting receipts of interest on its holdings of the debt of others were $127 billion.
 
Re: We're Number......LAST

Wayno said:
These reports ranking Health Care are so much rubbish.....
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As if townhall.com were not a 100% predictable source of partisan nonsense. Worse yet, these are reports by the notorious fictionalist-for-hire, John Stossel. Then there's the troubling fact that these reports appear to be from 2007 and aren't any longer to be found at the other end of the links you failed to type properly.
 
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Re: We're Number......LAST

Cardinal Fang said:
As if townhall.com were not a 100% predictable source of partisan nonsense. Worse yet, these are reports by the notorious fictionalist-for-hire, John Stossel. Then there's the troubling fact that these reports appear to be from 2007 and aren't any longer to be found at the other end of the links you failed to type properly.
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LOL....

Anything to put forward your propaganda and deny reality.......

I believe your source is from a group of notorious liars.

Try posting this in your browser, if you don't intend to continue thru life in ignorance on the subject.


Why the U.S. Ranks Low on WHO's Health-Care Study - John ...

The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is. Winston Churchill
 
Re: We're Number......LAST

Cardinal Fang said:
More than 140 million 1040's are filed and that of course reflects only federal income tax, the source of about one-third of federal revenues and no state or local revenues at all.


No, it is so far off as to be worthless for any sort of work.


In the same sense that each of us has an annual income of $160,000. Except of course that we will never repay the debt -- just service it -- so no matter what it is, knowing what one's share of the debt is would be completely pointless, as the number would be absolutely without any sort of implication whatsoever.


National governments are not households and public debt is not at all analogous to credit card debt. Your education in these areas would appear to be woefully incomplete.


The average interest rate on the public debt has been running a little lower than your estimate, checking in at 2.52% per annum as of December 31. Interest payments on the US public debt in FY 2012 were $359 billion. US offsetting receipts of interest on its holdings of the debt of others were $127 billion.
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140 million 1040 forms filed does not equal 140 million taxpayers. Some of those form fillers paid no income tax.

And yes, I'm aware that the 160 grand will never be paid back. We'll be paying interest and paying in the form of inflation for as long as the US exists.

The credit card debt is another matter. Perhaps I wasn't clear, but the original statement I quoted was about the size of a trillion dollars, and about how people were paying for the nice cars and the shopping trips. The credit card debt is individual debt, not public. That one doesn't bother me so much as I personally don't share in it.

But the 18% figure is pretty low. Credit card companies have ways of jacking up t he interest rate even higher than that. Read the fine print on the throwaway that comes with a credit card sometime, and see just what you pay if you don't pay the cards off at the end of the month.
 
ChezC3 said:
I suspect you didn't see the humor in my post and latched on to that instead of the point. That being spend less on death and more on life.
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Right, the humor has actually escaped me still even upon multiple rereadngs.

ChezC3 said:
(1997 Slick Willy signed into law a real life, honest to goodness budget. So, never say never.)
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No, he didn't. The budget request for FY 1998 (submitted in February 1997) resulted in the following separate acts...

P.L. 105-45, -55, -56, -61, -62, -65, -66, -78, -83, -86, -100, -118, and -119.

That includes the DC appropriations act (P.L. 105-100) that some people like to count and some people don't.
 
Re: We're Number......LAST

Wayno said:
LOL....Anything to put forward your propaganda and deny reality.......
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The inescapable reality is that the US has perhaps the worst overall health care system in the developed world, but without any question at all, it has by far the most expensive.

Meanhwile, Stossel is a shameless hack and his now five-year old nonsense screeds seeking to debunk the 2000 WHO study on which exactly none of the facts above are actually based is a fruitless and silly effort that people like Stosssel are driven to because they cannot address the facts directly.

Wayno said:
I believe your source is from a group of notorious liars.
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ALL of them? And what basis do you have for passing such a judgment? You once read a John Stossel article at townhall.com? Is that the extent of your effort and qualification in the matter?

Wayno said:
The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is. Winston Churchill
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Oh yeah, Churchill. Isn't he the guy who said that the best argument against democracy was a five-minute conversation with the average voter? You're doing great at proving him right on that one.
 
Cardinal Fang said:
Right, the humor has actually escaped me still even upon multiple rereadngs.
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Well, it was no fart joke, I know but I didn't know I had a hostile crowd to contend with...


No, he didn't. The budget request for FY 1998 (submitted in February 1997) resulted in the following separate acts...

P.L. 105-45, -55, -56, -61, -62, -65, -66, -78, -83, -86, -100, -118, and -119.

That includes the DC appropriations act (P.L. 105-100) that some people like to count and some people don't.
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You mean that whole 2 bills, 40 pens, applause applause, "Newt's the best" "Oh no you are Bill" love fest didn't happen?

agreed on May 15,1997?

No?

signed on Aug 5, 1997?

No?

God's beneath us!?!?!?
 
Re: We're Number......LAST

Cardinal Fang said:
The inescapable reality is that the US has perhaps the worst overall health care system in the developed world, but without any question at all, it has by far the most expensive.

Meanhwile, Stossel is a shameless hack and his now five-year old nonsense screeds seeking to debunk the 2000 WHO study on which exactly none of the facts above are actually based is a fruitless and silly effort that people like Stosssel are driven to because they cannot address the facts directly.


ALL of them? And what basis do you have for passing such a judgment? You once read a John Stossel article at townhall.com? Is that the extent of your effort and qualification in the matter?


Oh yeah, Churchill. Isn't he the guy who said that the best argument against democracy was a five-minute conversation with the average voter? You're doing great at proving him right on that one.
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That must explain why so many people needing life saving surgery fly to the United States, if they can..............

And you need to read the article.

Not only does Stossel "address the facts directly," he reveals the study as little more than a propaganda tool.

And there are MANY sources besides Stossel who debunk the nonsense that our Health Care system is somehow sub-par....

BTW, latest CBO estimate for ObamaCare is 2.8 TRILLION, and rising.....

After he told us it would only cost 800 Billion....

Good luck paying the bill!
 
Re: We're Number......LAST

Cardinal Fang said:
Yet another example of Fear of Big Numbers. One trillion dollars doesn't mean anything at all except in comparison to something else. The typical something else is GDP, and that comparison shows that while high by normal standards, debt is not out of line with levels reached during other national emergencies. Interest payments on the debt in FY 2012 were meanwhile lower than they were in FY 1998. Much ado about nothing. Or at least, very little.
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It may not be "much ado about nothing" now, but what of the next generation and if the debt keeps rising what of the next and the next.
Are we to keep passing the buck to the next generation, or are we to start taking responsibility for the debts the generation as accumilated.:peace
 
Re: We're Number......LAST

Dittohead not! said:
140 million 1040 forms filed does not equal 140 million taxpayers. Some of those form fillers paid no income tax.
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And many were filing joint returns. Your point? People pay no NET tax because they owe no NET tax. You understand the concept of NET, right? I know a lot of people don't really understand it, including some who host TV shows on FOX News. But consider some working-poor family sort of guy who's getting juiced every day by payroll, excise, and state and local taxes who also owes $300 in federal income tax, but has $2200 coming in EITC and/or ACCC credits as well. He'll receive a net of $1900 out of the deal but will be counted as among those who paid no net tax.

Dittohead not! said:
And yes, I'm aware that the 160 grand will never be paid back.
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Why would you mention it then?

Dittohead not! said:
We'll be paying interest and paying in the form of inflation for as long as the US exists.
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Yes, and all the other successful economies in the world who are carrying public debt -- which is all of them -- will be paying interest forever as well. It's sort of like how everyone not living in a cardboard box under a bridge is paying rent of some sort. Just like all the people in Zimbabwe and the Weimar Republic did.

Dittohead not! said:
The credit card debt is another matter. Perhaps I wasn't clear, but the original statement I quoted was about the size of a trillion dollars, and about how people were paying for the nice cars and the shopping trips. The credit card debt is individual debt, not public. That one doesn't bother me so much as I personally don't share in it.
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OK, so credit cards (and consumer debt in general) are actually a consumer matter in both practice and theory. No public sector implication. That's progress.

Dittohead not! said:
But the 18% figure is pretty low. Credit card companies have ways of jacking up t he interest rate even higher than that. Read the fine print on the throwaway that comes with a credit card sometime, and see just what you pay if you don't pay the cards off at the end of the month.
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Actually, Obama did away with a lot of that fine-print garbage back in 2009. Still senseless to charge more than you know you can pay off, but when you can get free gas and free cash, NOT charging things can also become a waste of money.
 
ChezC3 said:
You mean that whole 2 bills, 40 pens, applause applause, "Newt's the best" "Oh no you are Bill" love fest didn't happen? agreed on May 15,1997? No? signed on Aug 5, 1997? No? God's beneath us!?!?!?
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Oh, all that existed alright, it simply wasn't a budget in any sense of the word. The tax and spending agreements of 1997 were no more a budget than the recent and fiscal-cliff avoiding ATRA was. The actual FY 2013 budget is of course and for the moment at least still cruising along on the same old CR that expires on March 27.
 
Cardinal Fang said:
Oh, all that existed alright, it simply wasn't a budget in any sense of the word. The tax and spending agreements of 1997 were no more a budget than the recent and fiscal-cliff avoiding ATRA was. The actual FY 2013 budget is of course and for the moment at least still cruising along on the same old CR that expires on March 27.
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Well at any rate they can trim the money going toward defense and put it towards something useful, is the point I was making.
 
Re: We're Number......LAST

Wayno said:
That must explain why so many people needing life saving surgery fly to the United States, if they can..............
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You can get the surgery anywhere. The super-wealthy however do enjoy recuperating in the luxury of our high-roller, upscale resort-style hospitals. Meanwhile, why don't you google "medical tourism".

Wayno said:
And you need to read the article. Not only does Stossel "address the facts directly," he reveals the study as little more than a propaganda tool.
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Let me guess. It's a sign of extreme bias and a warped socialist mentality to count the share of a population that actually has access to the health care system as a category at all.

Wayno said:
And there are MANY sources besides Stossel who debunk the nonsense that our Health Care system is somehow sub-par....
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No, there aren't. Only a limited number of clowns holds that point of view.

Wayno said:
BTW, latest CBO estimate for ObamaCare is 2.8 TRILLION, and rising.....After he told us it would only cost 800 Billion....Good luck paying the bill!
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LOL!

CBO and JCT now estimate that the insurance coverage provisions of the ACA will have a net cost of $1,168 billion over the 2012–2022 period—compared with $1,252 billion projected in March 2012 for that 11-year period—for a net reduction of $84 billion. (Those figures do not include the budgetary impact of other provisions of the ACA, which in the aggregate reduce budget deficits.)

The projected net savings to the federal government resulting from the Supreme Court’s decision arise because the reductions in spending from lower Medicaid enrollment are expected to more than offset the increase in costs from greater participation in the newly established exchanges.

-- CBO. July 24, 2012
 
Re: We're Number......LAST

presluc said:
It may not be "much ado about nothing" now, but what of the next generation and if the debt keeps rising what of the next and the next. Are we to keep passing the buck to the next generation, or are we to start taking responsibility for the debts the generation as accumilated.:peace
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Was Obama or anyone else calling out for TARP or ARRA or any such thing before the Great Bush Recesssion became the global calamity that it did? What if we had kept up the Marshall Plan forever? Then what? What is some Superstorm Sandy struck someplace new every day? How would we deal with that? Face it, the numbers since 2007 are all an aberration brought about by the singular global emergency that Bush's economic malfeasance and incompetence spawned. Like the waters after a tsunami, the effects of that monstrous collapse are slowly receding. The best thing we could do now to protect the future would be to accelerate the recovery, rather than retard it as the Republicans wish to do. One thing is for certain, the clowns who got us into this mess do NOT know the way out.
 
ChezC3 said:
Well at any rate they can trim the money going toward defense and put it towards something useful, is the point I was making.
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Yes, they could and already have although it's been a drop in the bucket. And of course, think of all the WMD that Iran might have.
 
Re: We're Number......LAST

Cardinal Fang said:
Was Obama or anyone else calling out for TARP or ARRA or any such thing before the Great Bush Recesssion became the global calamity that it did? What if we had kept up the Marshall Plan forever? Then what? What is some Superstorm Sandy struck someplace new every day? How would we deal with that? Face it, the numbers since 2007 are all an aberration brought about by the singular global emergency that Bush's economic malfeasance and incompetence spawned. Like the waters after a tsunami, the effects of that monstrous collapse are slowly receding. The best thing we could do now to protect the future would be to accelerate the recovery, rather than retard it as the Republicans wish to do. One thing is for certain, the clowns who got us into this mess do NOT know the way out.
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This is not about politics Right or Left somebody, some person between 2000 and now ****ed up,this is what the current economic system is about.
It's about passing the buck time after time to the next generation, and the next with higher and higher debt.

THIS IS NOT THE AMERICAN WAY WE WERE TAUGHT, THIS SHOULD NOT BE HOW AMERICA CO0NDUCTS BUSINESS TODAY.

For of all the slippery slopes to go down this is one America should avoid.

How can the leaders of American government and American business ask the American people to leave America better for the next generation while they leave America worse?:peace
 
Re: We're Number......LAST

Cardinal Fang said:
And many were filing joint returns. Your point? People pay no NET tax because they owe no NET tax. You understand the concept of NET, right? I know a lot of people don't really understand it, including some who host TV shows on FOX News. But consider some working-poor family sort of guy who's getting juiced every day by payroll, excise, and state and local taxes who also owes $300 in federal income tax, but has $2200 coming in EITC and/or ACCC credits as well. He'll receive a net of $1900 out of the deal but will be counted as among those who paid no net tax.


Why would you mention it then?


Yes, and all the other successful economies in the world who are carrying public debt -- which is all of them -- will be paying interest forever as well. It's sort of like how everyone not living in a cardboard box under a bridge is paying rent of some sort. Just like all the people in Zimbabwe and the Weimar Republic did.
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If all that growing debt really doesn't matter, why pay taxes at all? Why not just print more money as needed?


Cardinal Fang said:
OK, so credit cards (and consumer debt in general) are actually a consumer matter in both practice and theory. No public sector implication. That's progress.


Actually, Obama did away with a lot of that fine-print garbage back in 2009. Still senseless to charge more than you know you can pay off, but when you can get free gas and free cash, NOT charging things can also become a waste of money.
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That's my philosophy: Charge everything, collect the incentives, then pay it off at the end of the month and avoid the interest. Credit card companies call people like me "freeloaders." so be it.

Now, back to the gloomy economic news vs crowded shopping malls, what is your take on that? Are people spending money that they don't have, or is the economy really better than we've been led to believe?
 
Re: We're Number......LAST

presluc said:
This is not about politics Right or Left somebody, some person between 2000 and now ****ed up, this is what the current economic system is about. It's about passing the buck time after time to the next generation, and the next with higher and higher debt. THIS IS NOT THE AMERICAN WAY WE WERE TAUGHT, THIS SHOULD NOT BE HOW AMERICA CO0NDUCTS BUSINESS TODAY.
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With some fits and starts here and there, we've been running up the public debt since 1836. Really fast during times of national emergency, not usually so fast in other times. Nobody ever paid off our WWII debts. We just keep rolling them over. That very much is the American way. And no one much cared about it until January 20, 2009. Then all of a sudden it was time for outrage over spending and debt. Kind of odd when you stop and think about it.

​​
presluc said:
For of all the slippery slopes to go down this is one America should avoid. How can the leaders of American government and American business ask the American people to leave America better for the next generation while they leave America worse?
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Yada, yada, yada. The best we can do for posterity is to get this Great Bush Recession mess cleaned up and out of their way. That's going to take some money.
 
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