dp1200

This rhetoric of partisan class warfare and incessant harping on the Obama tax cuts (Bush isn't President anymore and it was Obama who last signed the law reauthorizing these tax rates) not only fails to address the actual problem or offer a real solution, it is downright disingenuous. The TOTAL cost of the Obama tax cuts amounts to approx. $1.3 billion per year (source). Note this is the TOTAL reduction in revenue from ALL the cuts, not just the undeserved cuts given to the evil super wealthy - these were across-the-board tax cuts to ALL income brackets that everyone who earns a paycheck benefitted from. I'm trying trying to find a breakdown of the cost of these tax rate reductions by income bracket so we can directly address the cost of the cuts to the upper income brackets. Nevertheless, even if we raise ALL the tax rates back to the higher pre-2001 levels, this would only restore $1.3 billion per year to federal revenue (less actually, because that $1.3 billion would no longer be in our pockets to be spent in the economy, thus reducing real revenues). But, for the sake of argument, let's keep it simple and say the Fedgov would get back $1.3 billion per year from this tax increase. Well, the current Federal budget deficit is approx. $1.4 TRILLION. $1.3 billion / $1,400 billion = 0.0009 = .09% ALL of the Obama tax cuts amount to less than 1 tenth of 1 percent of the federal budget deficit! Right now, our budget deficit is $1.4 billion per year. You know what the deficit would be without the Obama tax cuts? $1.3987 billion/year. These tax cuts are completely insignificant in the face of our staggering budget deficit crisis! They are NOT the cause of the budget deficit - not even close (just 1/10 of 1%). Let's look at it another way: As I've stated before, our government currently has to borrow $0.41 of every dollar it spends (source) - a fact you have repeatedly ignored. Raising ALL tax rates back to pre-2001 levels saves only $0.0004 of every dollar spent. If you are currently borrowing $41,000 a year against an income of $59,000 to maintain a yearly budget of $100,000 (this is exactly proportional to what the fedgov is doing), does it really matter to your financial picture if you get a $40/year raise? You are still borrowing $40,960 per year. Are you in any better shape? Of course not - it's insignificant! Are you beginning to understand the horrible magnitude of what our fedgov has done, and how pointless it is to harp on something so factually irrelevant as the literally insignificant Obama tax cuts?

The phrase, "Bush tax cuts for the wealthy" is nothing but a partisan talking point. Obama wisely signed a continuation of these very same tax cuts, acknowledging the very simple economic truth that raising taxes on anyone during a recession is mistake. The government is overhead, and any money the government takes out of the productive economy (taxes) is money that won't be spent elsewhere in the economy. I reject Keynesian economic theory because we're proving it to be an abject failure right now with. I partially agree with this: the problems we face today were indeed 30+ years in the making, and are the result of an ever-growing, ever more powerful central government which has become a malignant tumor draining the life out of this country. That said, it is entirely appropriate to place blame on an administration which refuses to learn from past failure and instead continues to make things even worse by exhibiting more of the same behavior that caused the problem in the first place. I'm sorry but this is absolute partisan rubbish, and it is so patently misleading that it is worthy of calling outright propaganda. Refusing to increase the debt ceiling DOES NOT equal default. Default only happens if we stop paying on current debt obligations, and the government makes plenty of revenue to cover that. We will only default if our politicians decide that it is more important to continue other spending than it is to service current debt obligations. Actions have consequences and some of what you predict above are going to happen no matter what we do, it is only a matter of when, and how much worse it will be by letting the government delay the inevitable. Point by point:1) The bond market. This is already an abject disaster, and our creditor nations are already losing confidence precisely because of the insane, unsustainable borrowing binge the US has been on for the past several decades. Do you know why current interest rates are so low? It's only because the Federal Reserve has completely broken the bond market via "quantitative easing" - they are inflating the monetary base to purchase Treasury debt with devalued dollars. Our own central bank is now the largest holder of US debt than any other entity, including China. Here is the end-stage reality: the Federal Reserve simply cannot continue to monetize the debt like this or we will end up in a hyperinflationary death spiral like Weimar Germany prior to WWII or Zimbabwe. The inflation we've already seen in food and fuel prices are the direct result of the Fed's currency debasement. Yes interest rates will rise. They have to to rise, and they're going to - it is inevitable because they are only being held artificially low by unsustainable currency basement by the Federal Reserve. Deal with it - this is the first of the "actions have consequences" lessons this childlike nation must learn. 2) The stock market. This is even worse than the bond market. Anyone with any money in stocks right now is certifiably insane. We've just had our sixth consecutive weekly decline in the stock market - the worst since 2002 - as the world is waking up to the hard reality that there is no economic recovery - just an illusion created by the temporary effect of insane deficit spending. If I lose my job, I can continue to spend like crazy and appear prosperous by charging up my credit cards - for a while. That's what our government has been doing with this "stimulus" nonsense. Thus far, the stock market has only been levitated by the exact same debt games that are holding interest rates artificially low. Since those games are unsustainable, it is only a matter of time before it all falls apart. The longer we try to suspend reality and avoid letting the correction happen, the worse it will be. Consequences. 3) Currency You are completely wrong on this point. What the government is doing right now with this deficit spending and debt monetization is what is killing the value of our currency. This is why food and energy prices have gone up so much recently. Stopping this nonsense and showing some fiscal responsibility will restore the value of the currency and increase our dollar's purchasing power. 4) Inflation Tied to my points about currency above. Again, you are completely wrong. Inflation is what happens when a government borrows too much and devalues its currency by printing too much of it. If we stop letting our government borrow $0.41 of every dollar it spends, and in particular we stop letting our Federal Reserve destroy the value of our currency by monetizing the debt, inflation will go DOWN. 5) Housing Housing has been dropping like a rock and will continue to decline for a long time. We've blown a huge bubble in this sector - again with unsustainable DEBT - to create the temporary illusion of prosperity. To pretend that we can restore or continue this nonsense with insane federal deficit spending is dangerous childlike naivete. The housing market only got as high as it did because we played games with DEBT - made it too easy for people to buy homes they really could not afford, by making it too easy to borrow ever-increasing amounts of money. Real estate values will stabilize only when we get back to the point where you've got to have a 20% downpayment and realistic front and back debt-to-income ratios to qualify for a mortgage. We're getting there, but we're not yet there yet. Again, this correction is inevitable - it's only a matter of how long it takes to get there and whether we continue to make things worse by letting our government deficit-spend us into oblivion. 6) Jobs Government deficit spending does NOT "create jobs" in any meaningful way that contributes to actual, sustainable, organic economic growth. I reject Keynsian economics as our government has been practicing it for decades - we are proving right now that it does not work. The so-called "stimulus" did NOTHING except create some temporary busy work and boost the stock market. The fact that we still have >9% unemployment and 400,000+ weekly new unemployment filings shows what a complete waste of borrowed money this was. It has been proven to be an unsustainable failure. You know what Einstein's definition of insanity is, right? If we want jobs, the only way to get them is to make it more attractive for people to pay other people to make things in this country. Increasing taxes and devaluing the currency has the opposite effect. Government is an obstacle. I know this as fact, as in the past I have been my own employer and run my own business. Now you sound like a Bush Republican. 60% of federal spending goes to social entitlement payments. That is bad. All of these things will develop on their own via private investment if there is money to be made in it (capital seeks profit). All the government has to do is stay out of the way, because government is unproductive overhead. If there is not money to be made in it, it's not an investment. How much of our current federal deficit spending is going towards epidemics, war, or natural disasters? Our three current wars in the middle east don't count - it is ridiculous that we are even still there and that Obama has started our involvement in this new war in Libya.It is NOT silly to suggest the nation can and should run its affairs like a household - it's the same dynamics on a larger scale. There is no escaping the simple reality that you cannot borrow infinite amounts of money forever. What IS silly is suggesting that we go on borrowing $0.41 of ever dollar we spend, and debasing our our currency to do it. Consumer and business spending is down BECAUSE of the government. Yes, the government workforce must shrink - it is unproductive overhead.

If we agree that Bush's economic policy sucked (it did), and that Bush's deficit spending was bad (it was), it is illogical and intellectually bankrupt to try to use that to defend Obama's much, much worse deficit spending (which it is). If you think what your predecessor did was bad (spend money we don't have), how does it make any sense at all to go and spend even more money that we don't have? As awful as Bush was, Obama makes him look like an amateur when it comes to spending money we don't have. Consider the numbers: When Bush took office in 2001, the total outstanding public debt stood at $5.7 trillion and when he left in 2008, it had increased to $10 trillion. That's a $4.3 trillion increase over 8 years. Obama, on the other hand, has taken the debt from $10 trillion to $14.3 trillion in just three years! He has added as much debt in just 3 years as Bush did in 8. Bush ran us $4.3 trillion further into debt over 8 years. That's bad, right? But we're supposed to believe that it is now good that Obama has already added another $4.3 trillion in debt in just 3 years, or that it somehow fixes the problem of Bush's lousy spending, or that Obama's own deficit spending is somehow the fault of the previous President? Please explain how you fix a debt problem by adding even more debt at an even faster rate. People, I really don't care which political party is in charge - they BOTH are guilty of running our economy into the ground, and the simple fact of the matter is this: Our government currently has to borrow $0.41 of every dollar it spends. This is simply unsustainable and it must stop. Try working these numbers with your own household budget to see just how ludicrous what our government is doing truly is. Imagine this: let's say you make $59,000 a year. But, you spend $100,000 a year, meaning that each and every year, you have to borrow another $41,000 to sustain your standard of living. How long do you think you can keep that up? Proportionally, this is precisely what our government is doing, and this is exactly why we have to refuse to allow them to increase the federal debt ceiling again. If you are borrowing $41,000 a year, increasing the limit on your credit cards does not solve your problem, does it?

You know the old saw about making assumptions, right? FYI, I've lived my entire life in a BLUE state, which is bankrupt thanks to its own experiment with "universal health care" (MA). Just answer the question: are VT and its residents going to continue receiving any federal money at all to make its "single payer" system work? It's a yes or no question. I also think it's laughably naive for people to put unquestioned trust in 5 as yet unnamed political appointees, bestowing what can only be described as religion-like faith that these unknown, unelected, all-powerful 5 have " crunched the numbers and no doubt concluded it would save money". Really? How on earth can anyone draw this conclusion when (A) the health care system hasn't even been defined yet, and (b) They haven't figured out how they are going to pay for it! (straight from the original cited article, not me).

Technically, yes it is "sexist", but I'm not bothered by it at all. I'm in school and working as an EMT right now... "I lift things up and put them down." Whenever I'm on a floor waiting to process a patient discharge and I hear a page for lifting help in another room, I always run off to that room to lend a hand, even though it's not my patient and I don't even work in the hospital. The nurse or CNA who called for help is always surprised, but very appreciative, when I show up. I'm just perplexed by other guys whining about having to lift once in a while. No lifting situation in a hospital or nursing home is as demanding as patient lifting in the field when you work an ambulance, and I'm not some young buck either (in my 40's).

Think of it this way: which one would you have been most disappointed about had you been rejected? That's the one you want. :) A) sounds like the best option for career development; B) is a more attractive schedule. If it were me, I'd probably choose the more feasible schedule due to the single mom/young child situation. You'll still be gaining experience, and I assume you still have alot of years ahead of you to develop your career. Your little girl will only be young once, and for just a short time. Either way, grats on actually having two options to choose from, and good luck with whatever you choose!

Goes to show that for-profit, competitive insurance providers are better at cost-containment than supposed "non-profits", eh?

hmm, ok, let's look at the parts of this that the op didn't mention: the entire state's health care system is going to be in the hands of five people? are these five incredibly powerful positions elected public offices? i bet they aren't. no, these are going to be political crony positions outside the reach of the average person who has to live with the system these five people decide on. welcome to centralized, socialized health care. wait, what? they are guaranteeing everyone in the state health insurance, but they haven't even figured out how they're going to pay for it? how can you promise to give someone something when you don't have it to give, and don't know how you're going to get it? this is what passes for "government" these days? now this is pretty funny. vermont needs to get a waiver from obamacare in order to implement its plan. no big deal i suppose, since literally thousands of corporations and unions have already been given waivers.something else i want to know about the vermont plan: when implemented, will it be totally self-sufficient? i.e., will vermont residents still receive any federal money at all from, say, medicare, medicaid, or schip? if so, their little experiment with "single payer" socialized medicine will be completely irrelevant because the rest of us in the other 49 states will be subsidizing it.

Massachusetts' 5 year-old experiment with universal health care is yielding some interesting results that the rest of the country would be wise to learn from. While Romneycare has mostly satisfied the headline goal of "getting more people insured", this is no cause for celebration as insurance does not equal actual access. The condition of health care in this state is a disaster thanks to universal health care. According to a recent report from the Massachusetts Medical Society, more than half of the state's primary care practices are closed to new patients, there are longer wait times to get appointments, and many practices are choosing not accept the government's health insurance plans. Meanwhile, the physician practice environment index, which measures factors impacting delivery of patient care, has continued to decline (down 5% since 2005) and is substantially below the national average, which has remained flat since 2005. Ironically (but very predictably), the shortage of primary care providers combined with the increased number of people receiving free insurance has resulted in MORE people seeking care at hospital emergency rooms. Of those previously uninsured individuals who have signed up, 68% are receiving free or subsidized coverage. A recent Forbes article illustrates how ER visits have climbed 9% - 3 million visits - between 2004 and 2008, with costs for uncompensated care exceeding $400 million. (Source: RomneyCare's Unhappy Anniversary). Universal health care is bankrupting the state, decreasing quality of service, and makes things worse for those of us working in health care. Given that Romneycare was the template for Obama's "Affordable Care Act", we already know how this is going to turn out. We need to start learning from mistakes and stop repeating them, particularly when there is 5 years worth of experimental data upon which to draw conclusions.

Shadowing may help somewhat if you can actually find an NP that will take a shadow. I asked about this at the NP program I am intending to apply to for next year, and was told straight up that they don't do this for a number of reasons - liability, patient confidentiality, too busy, etc. Mind you, I'm not criticizing. If were a working NP I can't say I'd really want to bothered with a shadow either. Your best bet will probably be to start getting yourself a medical background. That is a HUGE component of the admission process from what I have seen. These programs are very competitive to get into and they want to know that you know what you are getting into and it's what you really want. I'm coming from a non-healthcare background also (engineering), and started this transition by taking an EMT class. I've been working as an EMT on an ambulance for a year now and I love it. I'm also now working a second job in a local hospital ER, which is giving me additional valuable experience and exposure. I love the work, and it has helped me decide that this really is where I want to be. IMO, trying to make the jump straight into an NP program with no health care experience at all, when you're not even certain it's what you want to do, is questionable.

MA has the highest health insurance costs of all states, thanks to Romneycare. 5 painful health-care lessons from Massachusetts Uh, yeah, I know the "Republican" Romney brought us this mess. I wouldn't vote for this guy for town dogcatcher.Whenever you introduce a plan that gives free anything to a huge number of people who don't pay into the system (which is what ANY "universal" health plan does, by definition), the costs get shifted onto those who do pay into the system. Now, you can make the argument that this already happens because nobody is denied service when they show up at the ER, but my point stands: it's a zero-sum game and you can't get something from nothing. I've yet to see ANYTHING that the government does efficiently and cost-effectively.

Let's see how you feel about it in a couple years. I live just south of you in MA - the first state to experiment with "Universal coverage". It's an abject failure, and we now have the HIGHEST health care costs in the country. There is no such thing as a free ride. Socialism may look great on paper, but it never works in reality.

ok, gwin, if you are unaware of some incredibly basic facts such as the true magnitude of our federal deficit and how social security is funded and insist on either ignoring or trivializing these simple facts, then it is going to be impossible for us to have any meaningful discussion about these topics. i'll try again: it's rather shocking to hear such bold opinions put forth by one who does not have a handle on something as basic and accessible as what our government spends vs. what it takes in. my "idea" comes from hard government numbers on the budget. for 2011, we are currently running running federal spending at an annual rate of $3.818 trillion on revenues of $2.174 trillion, for an annualized deficit of $1.644 trillion. this data is readily available on tables published directly on the white house website: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/historicals so, we're borrowing $1.644t against spending of $3.818t. 1.644 / 3.818 = 0.43 i was being generous with my rounding when i quoted $0.42 borrowed of every dollar spent - it's actually $0.43. i have now given you the numbers and shown you the math. this isn't spin or "uber-rightwing" talking points. it also isn't opinion. it is fact. again, you are misinformed about how social security works. that isn't your fault, the government and the media have worked hard to obscure the accounting games used to perpetrate the myth of this surplus. here is how it works: if you look at social security as an independent entity and ignore everything else the government does then yes, there were some years where the ssa took in more in withholding revenues than it paid out in benefits. this is where you get the idea of a "surplus". it would be great if social security actually banked the money from this surplus, in which case we would have a real trust fund. however, it is incredibly naive to look at social security as if it exists in a vaccuum and ignore everything else. unfortunately, social security doesn't operate in a vaccuum. any surplus revenue from ss goes straight to the treasury, where it is immediately spent. in exchange, the treasury gives the ssa a pile of ious. when the ssa needs to redeem these ious to pay benefits, the treasury will have to borrow the money to cover it. thus, the social security "trust fund" is in fact debt. this also not opinion or "uber right-wing talking points". it is pure fact, readily verifiable from the social security website q&a: there never was an actual surplus once you look past the accounting trick played by the ssa and treasury. the money was spent. it's gone, and all that remains is debt. furthermore, social security is already in the red. payouts will exceed revenues to the tune of $45 billion this year, meaning they've got to start cashing in some of the treasury iou's - an act which adds to the national debt since the treasury doesn't have the money. this isn't opinion or talking points. it's fact.

You led off with a post declaring those who opposed Obama's agenda as uninformed ignoramuses. How is that not obnoxious? How is a single-payer system, with the government as that single payer, not government-run healthcare? Your earlier response to Elkpark certainly gave the impression that you support single-payer and/or a "public option". Did I read this wrong? If you don't support single-payer or public option, then what's the problem? Of course you don't. Nobody ever wants to give up a government entitlement once they've been promised it, particularly if they've been dumping their hard-earned money down the government black hole for decades. That's not the issue. The problem is, the government simply cannot continue this charade forever. Yes, the government is broke. They borrow $0.42 of every dollar they spend, and 60% of the Federal budget goes to entitlement programs such as social security, medicare, medicaid, welfare, and unemployment. You can ignore these hard facts if you want, but denial doesn't make the reality go away. It won't be there when I'm 70. Of that I am certain, and I am certainly not counting on it. I won't make assumptions about which candidates you supported, but I can tell you that BOTH major parties are equally guilty of the excesses of government spending since World War II. Personally, I have no use for either party. You are talking about Clinton, correct? Well, you are incorrect about the "surplus" myth. There never was a surplus, and we were NEVER all set to cover entitlement programs. The Social Security "trust fund" is an absolute myth - the "surplus" revenues you referred to were given to the Treasury and immediately spent as part of the general budget. In exchange, the Treasury gave the Social Security administration non-marketable "special securities" which are in effect IOU's that the SSA is supposed to redeem when needed to pay out benefits. The $2.6 trillion in "trust fund assets" is in fact, DEBT, because the Treasury no longer has the cash - it was immediately spent. Democrats and Republicans alike are equally guilty of perpetrating this deception on all of us. Bush sucked. I never approved of his economic policy. You are making partisan assumptions once again. Obama has QUADRUPLED the deficit in his first two years. How is that any better? Yes, it is. You cannot continue borrowing $0.42 of every dollar you spend for very long. That is exactly what our government is doing. You really do not understand the magnitude of the debt problem our government has created. They could tax the top 1/10 of 1% - the ultra wealthy you apparently hate so much (many of whom are devout Democrats, by the way) - at a rate of 100% and it would barely put a dent in our deficit problem.

If your intent was to be as obnoxious and offensive as possible, congratulations, mission accomplished. You might be surprised to learn that those of us who oppose government run ("single payor" being your euphemism of choice) health care are not necessarily uninformed "ignoramuses". You also need to get over your own delusion that your sources of "news and information" that speak in favor of government-run health care are every bit as biased and influenced by monied interests as those that you disagree with. Your opinion is not some universal truth that the rest of us are just to stupid to understand. I reject your trivialization of the objection many have to single-payor on grounds that it constitutes socialist policy. It is a form of statist socialist policy. It is perfectly valid syntax to refer to it as such. Our government is already bankrupt. They are borrowing $0.42 of every dollar they spend (try that math with your household budget and let me know how long you think you could keep that up), adding to our national debt with wild abandon, and are debasing the value of our currency with obscene disregard for what that does to us little people every time we need to buy food or put gas in our cars. And you think these career politicians can be trusted with our health care?! No thank you. I want no part of a government-run single payor system. Our current insurance-based system is far from perfect, but its major deficiencies are due to their financial ties and influence with the government. Take the power and money away from the government and the insurance system reverts to accountability to the people they serve - us. It is dangerously naive to assume that vesting career politicians with even more power and money is going to solve this problem - it will only make it worse. I'm willing to have a sane, reasoned conversation about this, but that is difficult when folks start off with an obnoxious insult, calling anyone who disagrees with them an informed clueless ignoramus.