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.

Grats, Buster! I'll be applying for my program of choice this summer and praying I get accepted; still a year+ away from even starting, but I do enjoy hearing of others' successes. Good luck on your boards!

This is exactly how I see it as well: DNP is a solution to a non-existent problem. There is a wise old phrase from the story of Nixon's Watergate scandal that I like to apply to situations like this: Follow the money. In the case of DNP as entry to advanced practice nursing, where does following the money lead to? Academia. From the beginning, this move has been pushed by who? The American Association of Colleges of Nursing. Academia wants this because it means they get two more years of tuition and fees out of people who want to be NPs. This move would make a lot more sense if it were being driven by hospitals, physician practices, or patient advocacy organizations due to an actual clinical deficiency of Masters-prepared NPs. Has anyone seen any indication that MSN-NPs are inadequate to satisfy their scope of practice? Are their patients dissatisfied with their care? If there was a clinical need for mid-level providers to start as DNPs, then academia would not need to be trying to force it, would they? I think we need to consider this MSN-NP vs. DNP debate from a context that has been missing on these threads so far: the financial condition of our health care system as it stands today, and what will be happening to it over the next few decades. I doubt anyone will argue the point that regardless of what Washington does with the politics, our healthcare system is stretched to the limits and cost-cutting will be the name of the game for the foreseeable future. As such, we all reasonably expect to see increases in the need for mid-level providers such as NPs and PAs, who can take some of the load off physicians at a lower cost. So why do we need to throw up an obstacle - the DNP - to people who want to practice as NPs if there is no demonstrated clinical justification? A person willing to invest the time and money into a DNP would rightly expect to get some financial benefit from it, no? I sure would. So if we push the DNP as the mandated entry point for advanced practice nursing, aren't we increasing the cost of healthcare and diminishing the value of NPs as midlevel providers? Is this wise in today's economic climate? With money being as tight as it is, I would expect MSN-prepared NPs would have somewhat lower expectations in terms of financial compensation than someone who spent the money and effort on a DNP (again, I certainly would). So, doesn't this make an MSN-NP more attractive to a hiring hospital or practice than a DNP, if there is no clinical need to warrant the DNP?

I have a Littman Master Cardiology, which I love. In the back of a noisy, bouncing ambulance, my aging ears need all the help they can get. I think it will be overkill for school, but since I already use it for work, I'll use it at school too.

Personally, I find study groups utterly useless. From my own experience in school, I have found there are two types of students: (a) ambitious, self-motivated students who sacrifice in other areas of their lives and would do just fine on their own. These people generally get nothing out of trying to participate in a study group, and inevitably end up wasting time that would have been more productive for them on their own. They'll get their A with or without the study group, but will waste less time without it. During group projects, this is the student in the group who does 90% of the research and actual work of the project, while the others receive equal credit when the job is done. This is the person I would want to work with in practice, or whom I would want as a nurse if I were a patient. (b) Unfocused, lazy, selfish students who don't want to spend the time reading the books, doing the research, and learning the concepts. They have other distractions in their personal lives with romantic drama and critically important business on Facebook that requires their constant attention via their cellphones, which seem to have become surgically attached distal appendages. They need study groups in order to use the alpha students as a filter to sift through and put together for them the overwhelming amount of info that is thrown at you in nursing school. The alpha students aren't their Facebook friends, so there is no loyalty, gratitude, or even recognition once help has been rendered. If they don't do well, they'll blame the alpha who wasted time trying to help them. I'd rather not work with this person in practice or have them as my nurse when I'm a patient. What irritates me more than anything is that the type A students are the ones most frequently criticized for not "being a team player". No, a TEAM is a group of people who work together and pull their own weight by merit of equal effort. I love working on a real team, and in fact, I do it every day: I'm in EMS and I work directly with a partner all day, every day. Eventually, the real world of the workplace weeds out the type B's (if they made it through school in the first place). Teamwork is necessary in healthcare and it works great when you have solid group of dependable individual contributors, but ultimately we all succeed or fail on our own merits (unless you work in a union environment where individual excellence is less important).

Good string of posts, edrnbailey. I work in EMS and I completely sympathize with your frustration. Nothing bugs me more than bringing a patient to the ER in my ambulance whom I know is simply gaming the system. We have some known frequent flyers whom we take in and out of the ER several times a week for completely bogus reasons. They either have psych issues, are drug seekers, or both. I feel so bad for the nurses in the ER that have to deal with this. Then there are the "disabled" who spent the decades of their youth destroying their own bodies with tobacco, ETOH, drugs, or food and are now living completely on government support from their housing to food to health care. It makes me crazy when I have to bring a Medicaid patient to the ER for SoB 2° COPD exacerbation, and the patient presents in a government-subsidized apartment, on O2, surrounded by overflowing ashtrays in a room that reeks of stale cigarettes. I'm sorry, but willful continued use of organ-destroying toxic chemicals ought to be a disqualifying factor for Medicaid eligibility. Virtually every person I see who is receiving extensive government aid still somehow seems to have huge flat-panel TVs, cellphones, and money for cigarettes and/or ETOH. For all our modern good intentions, we are creating a HUGE population of completely dependent people who will take absolutely no responsibility for themselves whatsoever, and it is crushing our healthcare system.

sorry, but this defense of social security is full of holes big enough to drive a truck through. what?! it does have a continuous stream of new "investors": every single person that works and has ss taxes withheld! we are all captive "investors" - we don't even have a choice to "invest" or not. note: i am quoting usage of the word "invest" because social security is most certainly not an investment in anything, other the the government's ability to confiscate the earnings of future generations. there is no "investment". you money is immediately gone, the very second the government withholds it from your paycheck. your future benefits are entirely dependent on a continuous, ever-increasing stream of money from future "investors" - this is the fundamental defining characteristic of a ponzi scheme. all of these attributes make social security far, far worse than any private-sector ponzi scheme. participation in a private ponzi is voluntary. paying taxes is not. printing money to finance a failed ponzi is obscene and i am utterly appalled that someone would actually suggest this as a redeeming quality - printing money debases our currency and makes everything we buy more expensive - that's what causes inflation. have you bought gasoline or food lately? i already covered this earlier on this thread. and why are the majority not responsible? because they don't have to be! perpetuating a myth that big brother will always be there encourages irresponsibility! it's a simple fact of economics that when you subsidize something, you get more of it. how, and where? don't even try to sell me europe as a story of sustainable long term success - keep in mind that the countries of europe, with their current form of socialist welfare-state governments, are much younger than the united states, having been reworked several times by two world wars. and most of them are in far worse shape economically than even we are (although we are catching up fast). what happened under reagan in the 80's was anything but actuarially sound. all they did here was to play some clever accounting games which enabled them to disguise the real amount of debt our government was racking up. they increased the withholding tax, immediately spent all the money from the increased tax revenue, and gave the social security administration a pile of ious in exchange, all the while selling the american people the outright lie that we had a wonderful "budget surplus" going. no, we did not. we were piling up debt and hiding it off the budget in these social security "special issue securities". in the private sector, what the governent did here would have been considered malfeasance and probably criminal felony. it is outrageous book-cooking.i already covered this on this thread - this is the essence of the "special issue" bonds that the ssa holds as its horribly misnamed "trust fund". these special issue bonds do not show up as part of the national debt because they are not marketable securities in any way, shape, or form. they have no value to anyone other than as a claim against the treasury - they're ious. but in reality, they are debt because as soon as the ssa goes to redeem them with the treasury, the treasury needs to borrow more money to cover the iou. i've said this countless times on this thread and i'll say it again - the money is gone. it's not "invested" in anything. the $2.5 trillion in "special issue bonds" held by the ssa is in fact, $2.5 trillion in additional debt that our future generations are going to have to figure out how to pay. are we clear on this?

that in and of itself is part of the solution (don't forget means testing). well, i'm still trying to figure out how i'm going to finance my own retirement, or if i'm even going to get to have one, and you want me to solve this for everyone else? sheesh. seriously though, i'm not sure i understand your question. how are people to finance their retirement? work hard and save. if you want some future years of comfortable retirement, maybe defer some gratification from today. do you really need the new suv every couple of years? do you really need the $100/mo "smart" cell phone? how important is going out to eat and taking those vacations? make a choice: spend what you make now, or save for retirement. that's about it. however, if you are looking for an alternative retirement solution that involves the federal government, i reject the question as unanswerable. retirement costs money, and there are only two options here: (a)either you work and fund it yourself, or (b) you expect someone else to pay for your retirement. anything involving the government falls under option (b), and as we've already shown on this thread, government-run retirement doesn't work and is entirely unsustainable in the long run. here's an observation which is not going to make alot of people happy: nobody has a right to retirement. the ability to retire is not a civil right, by any possible construct. in that vein, here's a real shocker that i bet most people aren't aware of: you have no right to the money you've been paying in to social security! how can this be? simple. social security was never set up as legal, contractual agreement. in fact, the supreme court ruled way back in 1960 in fleming vs. nestor that congress can change the rules regarding eligibility and benefits however it wants, whenever it wants. they could decide tomorrow to change the rules of eligibility that would deny you any benefits and there is nothing you could do about it. if you were not aware of this, you can read about it right here on the social security administration's website: fleming v. nestor. i ask you this: would you willingly put your money in any investment or bank that operated under rules like this, where they could merely change the rules one day and, poof!, your money is gone? of course not! so why on earth are we so gullible that we'll give this sort of blind faith to professional politicians in washington? it blows my mind that people look to social security as some sort of iron-clad guarantee of retirement security when it is nothing of the sort, and we don't even have so much as a legally enforceable contractual agreement!

Sorry, I've been rather busy with work and school, haven't had a chance to revisit this thread in a few days. Anyway, to be precise, I'm really not "arguing" about anything on this thread so far: all I've been trying to do is to get through to people the facts of what Social Security ACTUALLY IS - an unsustainable, bankrupt Ponzi scheme. So, now that that point has been made, we can talk about alternatives. Right now, I think we'd all be better off with anything that wasn't an unsustainable, bankrupt Ponzi scheme. We are really talking about about two different things here: (1) a social safety net of last resort, and (2) providing for a comfortable retirement. I have no problem with #1; I've never suggested letting our elderly go homeless and hungry. But that's not what Social Security is - it is far more than a safety net of last resort. When the Social Security program was enacted in 1935, the age of eligibility was 65, and the life expectancy was 62 for men and 67 for women. So, right off the bat, you can see that this was really only meant to provide minimal supplemental security near the end of life. Now, the age of eligibility is 62 and life expectancy is 76 for men and 81 for women. How can a system originally designed to cover minimal end-of-life security for 0-2 years now be expected to cover 14-19 years of retirement? It can't!!! So, if Social Security is supposed to be what it was originally intended to be, we need to raise the minimum retirement age for collecting to 78. Secondarily, if Social Security is supposed to be a safety net of last resort, it needs to be means tested, based on income and assets, so only the truly needy receive it. Under these criteria, probably nobody in this audience reading this thread would ever receive a penny of benefits from Social Security. But hey, that's what a social safety net is supposed to be, right? Let's be honest - none of us are as noble as we pretend to be in the anonymity of the internet. We've all been paying into this system for years and expect to get something out of it when we retire, right? Is anybody here perfectly OK with just looking at their decades of contributions to SS as pure (forced) charity, to be given to others, with no expectation of ever getting any when your time comes? Well, that's what CHARITY is, and that's what a social safety net is supposed to be. But that's not really what we're talking about here. Just talk about raising the retirement age to 78 and/or means testing benefits, and you'll see how much people like the idea of government-mandated charity. No, most people think of Social Security as a legitimate retirement plan that they can count on to at least partially fund a comfortable retirement. Hence, the unsustainable bankrupt Ponzi we have now. What we are really doing is expecting a guarantee that our children and other people's children will at least partially fund our comfortable retirement (because the money we are paying in right now is immediately blown by the government). I'm sorry, but the only real solution is to make people more responsible for funding their own retirement years. I think it's tremendously selfish and greedy to live high right now, blowing the money I make on huge $50,000 SUVs that get 14mpg, $100/mo cellphone plans, oversized McMansions, and any other frivolous luxury you can think of, but not actually saving anything and then think I can retire at 62 and have my kids and grandkids pay for it. So, you want an alternative solution? There it is. A means-tested social safety net of last resort. Beyond that, we're responsible for ourselves. A universal retirement plan controlled by the government does not and can not ever work. We've already proven that.

*sigh* so, in other words, you don't want to think critically about the points i raised, illustrating that what the government is telling us is a bunch of rubbish? i reject your attempt to characterize the issues i raised as "phony right wing talking points". they are mathematical truth, and the application of honest logic and critical thinking. if what i have been saying is phony right wing talking points, than it should be easy for you to tell me, in your own words, exactly what i am wrong about. show me where the $2.5 trillion in real money is sitting, waiting to be doled out by social security. show me where i am wrong in what i have been saying here about our deficit crisis. at this point i don't even understand what it is you are disagreeing about - all you are doing is putting blind faith in the government. why are you so willing to invest so much blind faith in professional politicians? let's boil this down. you state the following claim as fact: "there is a trust fund and the funds aren't iou's". ok, so then you tell me, in your own words that actually make logical sense, what the trust fund actually is, and where the money to redeem that $2.5 trillion will come from. do you have any comment on the analogy i offered to illustrate what a real trust fund is, vs. what ss is? look, the official social security government website itself supports what i am saying! here is a verbatim quote from ssa.gov faq regarding how the "trust funds" are "invested": the truth is right there, although it is masked with a stunning deception that makes it sound like something good to a person who won't ask questions about it actually means. the first paragraph tells you right there that the ss funds are held in the form of "special issue" treasury securities. do you understand what this really means? it means that these "securities" have absolutely no value whatsoever except as a claim against the us treasury - i.e., the treasury owes that money to the ssa when ssa goes to redeem them. it's an iou!the second paragraph goes on to confirm this, by noting that in the past, ss funds were held as real, marketable bonds that have value and can be sold on the open market, like us savings bonds you may have yourself. this is somewhat better, because under that mechanism at least the debt was already on the books and recognized by the government. now, these special issue securities let the government hide the liabilities of social security as something other than real treasury debt - it doesn't become real debt until ss tries to redeem them. this second is a beautifully worded paragraph that very easily fools people who won't use any critical thinking to evaluate what is actually being said here. it makes it sound like these special issues are wonderful! "same flexibility as holding cash"! awesome, right? well, no, it isn't! please, just take a moment to think about this critically. if they are saying that these special issues have the same flexibility as cash, that means one thing - it isn't cash, right? because it if was, they'd just call it cash and we'd have a real trust fund. but no, this is something that has to be redeemed for the real cash that will be sent out to people collecting benefits. i'll ask you again: where will the cash to redeem these special issues (if you like that term better than iou) come from? now, here is the real kicker. scroll down in the ssa.gov website to this q&a: got that? the social security tax money - your real cash - goes into the general fund. do you understand what that means? well, since our government is running a huge budget deficit, it can only mean one possible thing - it immediately gets spent!so there you have it, straight from the ssa.gov website: the money is gone - i'll say it again: the social security trust fund is an instrument of debt from one branch of government to another, an iou, and that is all! this is clearly stated on the ssa.gov website. can you explain to me what part of this you disagree with? you know, sometimes it is best to just admit that you were wrong, and accept the new knowledge that you gained in the process. i'm not insulting your intelligence here; you would not be the first person to have bought the deception our government has sold us. we have been raised our entire lives to believe a promise that simply isn't true. and this is not "right wing talking points" - both political parties have been guilty of this, and i condemn them both for their respective roles in it.

mediajunkie, was there a point to that massive cut & paste from the social security soothsayers? if you are trying to challenge the simple math of my prior post, can you do so directly? a couple questions about your cut&paste info: 1) this would have us believe that the social security shortfall is no big deal because of the interest that will be paid on their treasury ious. question: where will the money to pay that interest come from? 2) you highlighted a couple passages which referenced "redeeming trust fund assets". question: can you describe exactly what these "assets" are, and where the money to redeem them will come from? folks, we really need to stop believing the political propaganda like that posted above which uses outright deception to have us believe everything is a-ok with social security. people in this board's audience ought be capable of critical thinking: let's use some of that now. the article posted above by mediajunkie gives up the truth when it mentions "redeeming trust fund assets". if this were a real trust fund, "redemption" would not be necessary, because the money would already be there. it isn't. the government already spent it, and the social security "trust fund" is nothing but a pile of ious saying that the treasury owes ss $2.5 trillion. well, the treasury doesn't have $2.5 trillion sitting around to give ss when they have to redeem their ious. remember, our government is currently in debt to the tune of $14 trillion - thus that means they don't have $2.5 trillion sitting around to give to ss. there is no getting around this simple truth - the money isn't there, and there is no trust fund. the social security trust fund is in fact, debt. let's all just accept this simple fact of life and move on. let me put out a simple analogy which will make this easier to understand: let's say you have a grandchild, and from birth you set up a trust fund into which you contribute $5000/yr until she's 18, at which point she can use it for college. let's ignore interest, for the sake of simplicity (if we count interest, it gets uglier, not better!). so, for 18 years you sock away $5k in her name, and on her 18th birthday, she's got $90k available. now, that is a real trust fund - the money is there; all she has to do is go get it, at no additional cost to you. this is what normal people like you and i think of when we hear "trust fund". but, that is not what our government has done with social security! here's exactly what they did, applied to our analogy: let's say that instead of actually putting away that $5k year, you instead write out an iou on a piece of paper, saying that you owe the girl that money on her 18th birthday. you don't actually save the $5k a year, you spend it on whatever you think is important at the time. so, on her 18th birthday, what do you have to give your granddaughter? nothing! you have a box full of paper ious and now you need to come up with the money when she tries to redeem them to pay for her tuition. how are you going to do that? by borrowing money (increasing the deficit), increasing your income (raise taxes), or by taking the money away from a different part of your budget (cutting from something else). now, the government has a fourth option to try to cover those ious that a person would not: they can just print more money via the federal reserve, thereby monitizing the debt, which causes inflation and is why we are all seeing higher prices in energy, fuel, and food (and soon, clothing). this is not a solution, and it hurts everybody except the banker thieves at the top who are profiting off this. if we're ever going to fix the problems with our economy, we first have to come to terms with these very simple mathematical realities, and chief among them is that there is no social security "trust fund". so long as we continue to believe the political deception and fantasies propagated by those in power from both parties, we have no chance of ever fixing anything.