td11 wrote:amazing. why even answer question about it at this point?

Relaxation as the cure to infertility is such crap anyway. So... start from a premise known to be wrong for decades and extend it to rape. Wonder what medical school this clown graduated from.

chris hayes made the point that medicare has pretty much always been projected to be solvent for the next 10-15 years. why is this not common knowledge? why are we worried about the solvency with medicare when it is solvent? because we're NOT worried about its solvency, just that it helps people.

pacino wrote:chris hayes made the point that medicare has pretty much always been projected to be solvent for the next 10-15 years. why is this not common knowledge? why are we worried about the solvency with medicare when it is solvent? because we're NOT worried about its solvency, just that it helps people.

It's "solvent" now only because of general revenue transfers. And costs are going to continue to increase. If you're going to make changes to a program that people rely on in retirement, it's better to do them with a decent lead time to allow for adjustments.



A SUMMARY OF THE 2012 ANNUAL REPORTS - Social Security and Medicare Boards of Trustees

TenuredVulture wrote:

Werthless wrote:

drsmooth wrote:I haven't checked all that recently, but i believe people making capital allocation decisions around the world are still lining up to loan the US money, at essentially negative rates of 'return'. What did Boehner say about "candy & nuts"?

Guess who the (far and away) biggest buyer of US Treasuries is lately?

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-0 ... bonds.html

Woohoo! Printing money! We've got the paper, we've got the presses, let 'er rip!

it's like a trillion dollar coin made out of paper & ink

jerseyhoya wrote:

pacino wrote:chris hayes made the point that medicare has pretty much always been projected to be solvent for the next 10-15 years. why is this not common knowledge? why are we worried about the solvency with medicare when it is solvent? because we're NOT worried about its solvency, just that it helps people.

It's "solvent" now only because of general revenue transfers. And costs are going to continue to increase. If you're going to make changes to a program that people rely on in retirement, it's better to do them with a decent lead time to allow for adjustments.



A SUMMARY OF THE 2012 ANNUAL REPORTS - Social Security and Medicare Boards of Trustees

can you clarify this chart; what's "total non-interest income" (the y-axis label) and why's it expressed as a percentage?

From the link: "How Will Cost Growth in the Different Parts of Medicare Change the Sources of Program Financing? As Medicare costs grow over time, general revenue and beneficiary premiums will play an increasing role in financing the program. Chart C shows scheduled cost and non-interest revenue sources under current law for HI and SMI combined as a percentage of GDP. The total cost line is the same as displayed in Chart A and shows Medicare cost rising to 6.7 percent of GDP by 2086. Projected revenue from payroll taxes and taxes on OASDI benefits credited to the HI Trust Fund increases from 1.4 percent of GDP in 2012 to 1.8 percent in 2086 under current law, while projected general revenue transfers to the SMI Trust Fund increase from 1.4 percent of GDP in 2012 to 3.0 percent in 2086, and beneficiary premiums increase from 0.5 to 1.0 percent of GDP. The share of total non-interest Medicare income from taxes would fall substantially (from 43 percent to 31 percent) while general revenue transfers would rise (from 42 to 50 percent), as would premiums (from 14 percent to 17 percent). The distribution of financing changes in part because Part B and D costs increase at a faster rate than Part A cost under the Trustees" projections. By 2086, the Medicare SMI program will require general revenue transfers equal to 3.0 percent of GDP. Moreover, the HI deficit represents a further 0.8 percent of GDP in 2086. There is no provision under current law to finance this deficit through general revenue transfers or any other revenue source."

jerseyhoya wrote:From the link: "How Will Cost Growth in the Different Parts of Medicare Change the Sources of Program Financing? As Medicare costs grow over time, general revenue and beneficiary premiums will play an increasing role in financing the program. Chart C shows scheduled cost and non-interest revenue sources under current law for HI and SMI combined as a percentage of GDP. The total cost line is the same as displayed in Chart A and shows Medicare cost rising to 6.7 percent of GDP by 2086. Projected revenue from payroll taxes and taxes on OASDI benefits credited to the HI Trust Fund increases from 1.4 percent of GDP in 2012 to 1.8 percent in 2086 under current law, while projected general revenue transfers to the SMI Trust Fund increase from 1.4 percent of GDP in 2012 to 3.0 percent in 2086, and beneficiary premiums increase from 0.5 to 1.0 percent of GDP. The share of total non-interest Medicare income from taxes would fall substantially (from 43 percent to 31 percent) while general revenue transfers would rise (from 42 to 50 percent), as would premiums (from 14 percent to 17 percent). The distribution of financing changes in part because Part B and D costs increase at a faster rate than Part A cost under the Trustees" projections. By 2086, the Medicare SMI program will require general revenue transfers equal to 3.0 percent of GDP. Moreover, the HI deficit represents a further 0.8 percent of GDP in 2086. There is no provision under current law to finance this deficit through general revenue transfers or any other revenue source."

by 2086

Any reputable actuary - including the guys who wrote this - will tell you that actuaries aren't any better than anyone else at forecasting health care financials with useful accuracy 5 years into the future, much less 73 years.

It can be entertaining, but there is no useful purpose to speaking of health care costs and spending 73 years in the future.

We need to make plans for changing what we do with health care, and how we'll finance it. Talking about trends out to 2086 has no part in those conversations.

this aaron swartz story is pretty sad. feds dropped all charges on him today.

maybe i dont get it, but he stole stuff and then couldnt handle the consequences? i dont know if that is sad. i mean it sucks he killed himself but he still committed a crime, no?

JSTOR is a pretty weird target

they're scholarly articles, not state secrets

he stole stuff = he wrote a script to take every article in the JSTOR archive and save it to a hard drive. he returned all the files and both JSTOR and MIT wanted to drop it. the federal prosecutor wanted to pursue the max 35 year penalty for this kid, who basically wanted to disseminate knowledge freely to the world. it was academic articles on JSTOR, ffs

seems like it was still a crime. the prosecutor was surely zealous in the punishment. if he wanted to give information to the world he could have done it through some sort of grassroots campaign. idk. it sucks he killed himself but i just dont know if sad is the sentiment for me.

I think some people believe that the reason everyone was so zealous in their prosecution was because of some political things he was involved in. I have no idea if that's true.

I'm not a big fan of stealing intellectual property, music, books...etc and making it available for free to everyone. I think artists, writers of scholarly articles...etc are entitled to be compensated if someone consumes their work.

Authors of scholarly articles are almost never compensated for writing them, at least not directly (though they might get promotions and prestige if they publish successfully). And that's part of the issue--many scholars believe that especially the for-profit publishers are making piles of loot on scholarly journals. Much of the funding for research is from government grants, so in a sense, the argument is that taxpayers ought to be able to see the research they're paying for.

JStor is a weird target, as it's not really a publisher. But the issues at stake here are complex.

CalvinBall wrote:seems like it was still a crime. the prosecutor was surely zealous in the punishment. if he wanted to give information to the world he could have done it through some sort of grassroots campaign. idk. it sucks he killed himself but i just dont know if sad is the sentiment for me.

Seems like a crime or was a crime? If you're not even sure it was a crime, with actual victims, then I can't muster any negative judgment toward him... The article that I read compared his crime to checking out too many books out of a library (books that were then returned). He just did it in a way that others wouldnt have the technical knowhow to do. His death is tragic, particularly so for those who share the same values as him.

drsmooth wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:From the link: "How Will Cost Growth in the Different Parts of Medicare Change the Sources of Program Financing? As Medicare costs grow over time, general revenue and beneficiary premiums will play an increasing role in financing the program. Chart C shows scheduled cost and non-interest revenue sources under current law for HI and SMI combined as a percentage of GDP. The total cost line is the same as displayed in Chart A and shows Medicare cost rising to 6.7 percent of GDP by 2086. Projected revenue from payroll taxes and taxes on OASDI benefits credited to the HI Trust Fund increases from 1.4 percent of GDP in 2012 to 1.8 percent in 2086 under current law, while projected general revenue transfers to the SMI Trust Fund increase from 1.4 percent of GDP in 2012 to 3.0 percent in 2086, and beneficiary premiums increase from 0.5 to 1.0 percent of GDP. The share of total non-interest Medicare income from taxes would fall substantially (from 43 percent to 31 percent) while general revenue transfers would rise (from 42 to 50 percent), as would premiums (from 14 percent to 17 percent). The distribution of financing changes in part because Part B and D costs increase at a faster rate than Part A cost under the Trustees" projections. By 2086, the Medicare SMI program will require general revenue transfers equal to 3.0 percent of GDP. Moreover, the HI deficit represents a further 0.8 percent of GDP in 2086. There is no provision under current law to finance this deficit through general revenue transfers or any other revenue source."

by 2086

Any reputable actuary - including the guys who wrote this - will tell you that actuaries aren't any better than anyone else at forecasting health care financials with useful accuracy 5 years into the future, much less 73 years.

It can be entertaining, but there is no useful purpose to speaking of health care costs and spending 73 years in the future.

We need to make plans for changing what we do with health care, and how we'll finance it. Talking about trends out to 2086 has no part in those conversations.

I imagine there is a pretty substantial margin of error on the 2086 predictions, but as you see in the pretty picture 2/3 of the projected increase in the cost of the program takes place over the next 20 years. If you want to say that's too inaccurate, why bother projecting anything? Things could change so let's just see what everything costs when we get there and not plan ahead at all.

TenuredVulture wrote:Authors of scholarly articles are almost never compensated for writing them, at least not directly (though they might get promotions and prestige if they publish successfully). And that's part of the issue--many scholars believe that especially the for-profit publishers are making piles of loot on scholarly journals. Much of the funding for research is from government grants, so in a sense, the argument is that taxpayers ought to be able to see the research they're paying for.

exactly, he wasn't "stealing" anything. like i said, both JSTOR and MIT did not want to pursue the matter.

Werthless wrote:

CalvinBall wrote:seems like it was still a crime. the prosecutor was surely zealous in the punishment. if he wanted to give information to the world he could have done it through some sort of grassroots campaign. idk. it sucks he killed himself but i just dont know if sad is the sentiment for me.

Seems like a crime or was a crime? If you're not even sure it was a crime, with actual victims, then I can't muster any negative judgment toward him... The article that I read compared his crime to checking out too many books out of a library (books that were then returned). He just did it in a way that others wouldnt have the technical knowhow to do. His death is tragic, particularly so for those who share the same values as him.

well put

jerseyhoya wrote:I imagine there is a pretty substantial margin of error on the 2086 predictions, but as you see in the pretty picture 2/3 of the projected increase in the cost of the program takes place over the next 20 years. If you want to say that's too inaccurate, why bother projecting anything? Things could change so let's just see what everything costs when we get there and not plan ahead at all.

I'm just telling you for your reference that actuaries' arms must be twisted hard to put their professional reputation on the line for 5-year projections of health care costs, much less 20 (and never 70+). A more accurate chart would show ranges of variance, particularly around that very firm black "total cost" line. It would make fairly clear that the forecast is not all that instructive.