After presiding over an economy with a record disappointing performance, which usually gets incumbent presidents fired, Intrade puts Obama’s chance of re-election at 79%! I attribute an important part of this to the politics of medicine. Here’s recent US medical politics in a nutshell:
The main issue with Romney has been that he's been acting like he is simply stupid. Everyone I know who at all followed news here - I'm speaking of perspective outside the US - considers Romney to be simply stupid, and that's the end of it, without looking at all into how he would influence this country (as we aren't voting).
I don't even think two party democracy substantially works via choosing candidates on basis of personal agreement with their plans. If you want to choose plans, you should decide them by referendum. What you get is two parties trying to pick not obviously evil, intelligent candidates, to win the election, and this happens to be more effective than a king, and less disruptive (and more coherent) than having a referendum on every issue. Anything fancier and more direct than 'elect good guy to be a temporary, power limited king' would require instant runoff voting at least.
Economies of scale are important, if that's what you mean by price controls. Having a patchwork of systems and providers is something that leads to high costs.
My theory is that Obama is going to be re-elected in spite of the bad economy because it is impossible for any reasonable candidate to survive the Republican primary season. Basically, this election is the Republicans' to lose, and they've decided they'd rather lose it than agree to adjust their platform in the direction of the proverbial median voter. In contrast, Obama's positions tend to match the median voter pretty well. Obama may be in the same kind of pickle that Jimmy Carter was in when he ran for re-election, but his opposition is no Ronald Reagan. (Imagine if the only candidates for the Republican nomination in 1980 were Gerald Ford and Barry Goldwater, and you can see why Obama is doing as well as he is.)
Medicare costs will have to be cut, not just the same rising costs passed on to Medicare recipients. Vouchers were not a solution to higher costs, so no solutions have been forclosed.
So this got me thinking about constitutional limits on government spending, which might be a remedy for sectional interests like Medicare. So how could a constitutional limit on GDP spending - say 25% - be distrubuted or managed given three tiers of goverment? Perhaps by ordering the tiers as;Federal > State > Localand then requiring that each level below Federal can spend no more than;25% minus Federal percent [State], or(25% minus Federal) minus State percent [Local]In each case weighted by State (or perhaps Local) total income.Workable?
If the academic literature disagrees with Intrade, why should the literature be taken seriously?
I've been betting on Obama at Intrade based mostly on how the economy has been doing recently.
I was puzzled by claims that Obamacare might hurt Obama. But it's not obvious that the benefits he'll get from it are much larger than what a typical Democrat gets for appearing to care more about providing medicine.
I may increase my bet slightly in response to your analysis, but I don't consider it as important as you do.
But the point is that the fact (or what I take to be a fact) that they're supporting Romney less than expected that's wrecking Romney's election plans.
I suspect I may have underplayed the shortfalls of the NHS. This was a reaction to the completely absurd comparison of the euro health systems to Medicaid.
I would be amazed if the US system did not provide a better service than the NHS to those with Insurance or Medicare. It spends 2.5 times as much per capita and delivers a very low quality service to a large proportion of the population.
What I do think is that is that the NHS could deliver the same objective quality of healthcare as standard US health insurance for much less than 2 times the current budget. The NHS is just run more efficiently than the US health care system; as are the majority of OECD health care systems.
No, its cheaper because they very, very strongly limit and delay the expensive stuff.
How long does it take to get an MRI for something non-life-threatening but extremely painful in the UK?: Months. How long in the US?: You often can same day.
U.S. medical students are considerably more likely to be liberal than conservative and are more likely to be liberal than are other young U.S. adults.
http://www.medicarevirginia...
The main issue with Romney has been that he's been acting like he is simply stupid. Everyone I know who at all followed news here - I'm speaking of perspective outside the US - considers Romney to be simply stupid, and that's the end of it, without looking at all into how he would influence this country (as we aren't voting).
I don't even think two party democracy substantially works via choosing candidates on basis of personal agreement with their plans. If you want to choose plans, you should decide them by referendum. What you get is two parties trying to pick not obviously evil, intelligent candidates, to win the election, and this happens to be more effective than a king, and less disruptive (and more coherent) than having a referendum on every issue. Anything fancier and more direct than 'elect good guy to be a temporary, power limited king' would require instant runoff voting at least.
No, they didn't.
Medical problems caused 62% of bankrupcies filed in 2007.
http://www.businessweek.com...
Economies of scale are important, if that's what you mean by price controls. Having a patchwork of systems and providers is something that leads to high costs.
My theory is that Obama is going to be re-elected in spite of the bad economy because it is impossible for any reasonable candidate to survive the Republican primary season. Basically, this election is the Republicans' to lose, and they've decided they'd rather lose it than agree to adjust their platform in the direction of the proverbial median voter. In contrast, Obama's positions tend to match the median voter pretty well. Obama may be in the same kind of pickle that Jimmy Carter was in when he ran for re-election, but his opposition is no Ronald Reagan. (Imagine if the only candidates for the Republican nomination in 1980 were Gerald Ford and Barry Goldwater, and you can see why Obama is doing as well as he is.)
Medicare costs will have to be cut, not just the same rising costs passed on to Medicare recipients. Vouchers were not a solution to higher costs, so no solutions have been forclosed.
So this got me thinking about constitutional limits on government spending, which might be a remedy for sectional interests like Medicare. So how could a constitutional limit on GDP spending - say 25% - be distrubuted or managed given three tiers of goverment? Perhaps by ordering the tiers as;Federal > State > Localand then requiring that each level below Federal can spend no more than;25% minus Federal percent [State], or(25% minus Federal) minus State percent [Local]In each case weighted by State (or perhaps Local) total income.Workable?
To be precise, I just saw that Romney's lead among seniors has declined from 20% to 4%.
I thought that they spend less in Europe mainly due to price controls.
If the academic literature disagrees with Intrade, why should the literature be taken seriously?
I've been betting on Obama at Intrade based mostly on how the economy has been doing recently.
I was puzzled by claims that Obamacare might hurt Obama. But it's not obvious that the benefits he'll get from it are much larger than what a typical Democrat gets for appearing to care more about providing medicine.
I may increase my bet slightly in response to your analysis, but I don't consider it as important as you do.
But the point is that the fact (or what I take to be a fact) that they're supporting Romney less than expected that's wrecking Romney's election plans.
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I suspect I may have underplayed the shortfalls of the NHS. This was a reaction to the completely absurd comparison of the euro health systems to Medicaid.
I would be amazed if the US system did not provide a better service than the NHS to those with Insurance or Medicare. It spends 2.5 times as much per capita and delivers a very low quality service to a large proportion of the population.
What I do think is that is that the NHS could deliver the same objective quality of healthcare as standard US health insurance for much less than 2 times the current budget. The NHS is just run more efficiently than the US health care system; as are the majority of OECD health care systems.
No, its cheaper because they very, very strongly limit and delay the expensive stuff.
How long does it take to get an MRI for something non-life-threatening but extremely painful in the UK?: Months. How long in the US?: You often can same day.
Actually seniors, on average, prefer Romney by a fairly decent margin. Its everyone else that prefers Obama.
A single tragic incident or a chronic illness can deplete the savings of responsible individuals and families long before the afflicted die.