The Hidden Costs of Containerization: A revealing article from The American Prospect

The Hidden Costs of Containerization: How the unsustainable growth of the container ship industry led to the supply chain crisis

A New Day

 Trump will soon be out of office (in about 24 hours let's hope), so maybe it's time to start blogging again. You may remember that this blog started sometime around the beginning of Obama's first term, when I started commenting about the "Affordable Care Act" and how it might become law: it did, but by a pretty narrow, largely partisan vote.

Today we can look forward to more narrow, largely partisan votes. This is still better than the terrible things that happened (or almost happened) in the last four years.

Paul Krugman today talks about policy based on fact, and how that may be staging a return. You can find a link to his "blog" HERE. A key point he makes to back up his assertion is:

"The change started with a remarkable paper by the labor economists David Card and Alan Krueger, who had the bright idea of surveying fast-food restaurants near the Delaware River before and after New Jersey raised its minimum wage, while Pennsylvania did not. As far as I can tell, they expected to see employment declines in the former relative to the latter. But they didn’t.

This result — no noticeable employment decline after an increase in the minimum wage — has since been replicated many, many times. The evidence is now overwhelming that minimum wage hikes don’t have major negative effects on employment, while they do raise workers’ incomes and reduce poverty. This isn’t a conclusion driven by politics... "

Of course, there have been other examples. One is the under-publicized failure of "Tea Party" economics in Kansas, where the low-tax and low-spending conservative policies of Gov. Sam Brownback created such a disaster  -- especially in public education -- that the Republican legislature overruled his spending veto. I blogged about this a while back: http://thatmansscope.blogspot.com/2017/06/an-important-story-in-kansas.html. 

Any way, I am cautiously optimistic that the new "Biden Era" will see important and positive changes in the economy and health of this country. I also am cautiously optimistic that threats of violence by the right will be put down pretty effectively by police and National Guard. I'm not naive enough to think that these organizations aren't riddled with white nationalists etc., but I think, like the country as a whole, a large-enough majority are loyal to democracy. Of course, as Krugman says, what we want is evidence, so we shall wait and hope.

More after the inauguration. 

New Name for Covid-19 in the U.S.

TrumPandemic

Krugman Says it All

The worst president we ever had contends with the worst pandemic since the "Spanish Flu": read today's column by Paul Krugman.

And, of course, there's this quote from Trump:

“The federal government’s not supposed to be out there buying vast amounts of items and then shipping. You know, we’re not a shipping clerk.”

Not only is this wrong factually and morally, it shows what kind of scum the president is.

Medicare For All: Warren's figures

 As a "public service" I am providing three links to articles about Elizabeth Warren's proposal on "Medicare for All".  These are not the last words of course, but they show some of the initial reactions to her numbers from sources that neither endorse her numbers nor reject them out of hand. 

New York Times (just before Warren's plan was announced)

New York Times (just after Warren's plan was announced)

New American Prospect (just after Warren's plan was announced)  

Finally, here is Paul Krugman's take.

Oh, and one other thing: Medicare for Some -- what we have now -- does not even provide 100% coverage for its recipients. Nominally, the coverage is only 80% of costs. That is why so many older folks who are on Medicare also have supplemental plans to pay the remaining 20%.

What Warren should say about Medicare for All

This is from The New American Prospect:

October 22, 2019

Meyerson on TAP

How Elizabeth Warren Can Address the Medicare for All Question. Elizabeth Warren is now dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s on her own Medicare for All plan, which she has pledged to release shortly. As David Dayen astutely notes today, the plans put forth by Warren’s and Bernie Sanders’s primary opponents—chiefly, Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg—will, if they’re any good, end up costing about as much as the Medicare for All proposals they’ve disparaged.

B&B’s emphasis on the taxes that will fund Medicare for All (and, not that they admit it, their own plans, too) misses the fact that the great majority of Americans pay far more for their private insurance than they would in higher taxes, though what they pay now is largely concealed from them because their employer routinely takes it out of their pay. (Of course, if we do go to Medicare for All, workers will have to fight to compel their bosses to transfer the savings to them, rather than divert it into dividends and buybacks.)

How can Elizabeth Warren address the major savings workers can win by shifting to Medicare for All? My friend Steve Tarzynski, who’s president of the California Physicians Alliance, suggests something like the following:

Right now, you and your family pay $18,000 a year in premiums for employer-sponsored insurance that doesn’t even cover everything and that you could lose at any time. Plus another $2,000 in deductibles before it even kicks in and another $1,000 in co-pays. That’s about $21,000 every year for a basically defective product. That’s the “private tax” you’re paying right now. And your choice of doctor is restricted and you can even lose access to your doctor at any time. All that would go away with Medicare for All—no more premiums, no more deductibles, and no more co-pays. And all the care you and your family need will be covered and can never be taken away. You can choose any doctor you want. Yes. You’ll pay $5,000 more in taxes for all of that. But it will put $16,000 back in your pocket. And it doesn’t even include the share of the premium that your employer pays now that you could get back in wages and salary. Would you settle for that?

And to my fellow Democrats on the stage here who oppose Medicare for All, who are you really working for? Because what you propose is exactly what the insurance industry wants.

That’s so good I got nothing to add. Would work not just for Warren but for Bernie, too. ~ HAROLD MEYERSON

The Cost of Medicare for All

Both Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have come out as favoring "Medicare for All" as the only healthcare plan for America they support. Neither has given a definite figure for the costs; Warren has been cagey and Sanders does not deny a figure in the $30 trillion dollar range. 

The claim (by both Sanders and Warren) that fails to be emphasized is the net cost to Americans: While their taxes will certainly go up (you can't get something for nothing), their total out-of-pocket expenses may very well go down, since they will pay no premiums and have no deductibles. The media, in its need to create controversy and "gotcha" moments, keep insisting that the candidates talk first about the increase in federal taxes. Maybe this is an attempt to bring up some sort of anti-government feeling in the electorate. It is unfortunate that this conservative attitude has been allowed to grow. The Democrats a long time ago should have pointed out that the government is our government -- we have a direct say in what it does and a constitution that codifies this say; this is opposed to our direct say in what private entities like corporations do, which is nil.  (Why don't our kids learn this in school? Answer: because right-wingers have eliminated or emasculated "civics" courses where we used to learn about our government, how we direct it, and how it protects us.)

Of course, the belief that current premiums and deductibles are greater (in dollars) than the (projected) increase in federal middle-class taxes under Medicare for All has itself has not been definitely established. Bernie points out that similar programs in other countries have produced medical care that is at least as good as what we have now, but at half the cost. This argument itself has been attacked (see below).

A lot of the cost estimates are discussed in a fairly long Politifact article which can be found HERE.

What has happened in other countries is not necessarily a foretaste of what will happen here. First of all, not all other countries that have universal healthcare (and that is pretty much all developed counties except the US) have a Medicare for All system -- some, like France, have a very good hybrid system with both public and private insurers. Secondly, drug expenses may be lower in other countries because of the simple fact that they are high in the US. Big Pharma still makes enough profit here so that they can charge less there. Also, the financial culture of doctors and hospitals in other countries is different from ours: Here doctors pay a lot for their education and consequently expect to get paid a lot after they become credentialed (they've been told this for decades by their peers and their guild, the AMA). Hospitals here have a different style of ordering and paying for tests and using doctors (and nurses) and charging for rooms; this "style" is the result of the influence of Big Pharma, the medical device industry, and doctors themselves who are often associated financially with these industries (e.g. many doctors have interests in medical scanning and testing businesses). These things will all have to change in order to bring down the costs of healthcare here, and it will not be easy. 

(In response to questions from both the media and other Democratic presidential candidates, Elizabeth Warren has  announced that she will publish her plan for Medicare for All, including proposed finances. She obviously has to be careful since everyone will be ready to pounce on her inevitable use of increased taxes.)