I heard an interesting interview this morning on the John Gambling show. He was interviewing a weekend host from Fox Business channel. She had a guest on her show over the weekend who was the CEO of a staffing company who's business right now is booming as are all temporary staffing companies. (I was driving so I apologize for not having all of the names)
The general discussion was on why unemployment is so stubbornly high and instead of the general common sense factors she got into specifics with her guest. He had done a lot of research and polling and the biggest factor he found was two fold.
One, A lot of companies that were forced to lay people off due to the economy have come to discover that they can get the job done with less people. Basically they're more efficient.
This makes perfect sense of course. There are inefficiencies in all businesses at every level but especially the larger companies. When times are good they're not really noticed and there is little focus on it.
This doesn't explain however why the temporary staffing companies are doing so well which leads us to our second factor. Health Care. According to the numbers this CEO had, with the new regulations CURRENTLY in place (they get more onerous down the road) it costs an extra 3%-7% per employee to provide health care. 3% doesn't seem like much but if you're a small business it can be the difference between staying afloat or not and if you're a large company it would be 3% x a large number of employees which would add up to a big number.
I see this going in only one direction. 100% government provided health insurance. Obviously that was the goal of the Obama administration and it seems almost inevitable. Pretty soon it will be too costly for employers to provide health insurance and if you can't afford private insurance you will be FORCED to switch.
In the short term I don't think we will see unemployment get any better because the incentive to look for work will be taken away with the extension of unemployment benefits and because the opportunities will be less and less due to the costs associated with health insurance "reform".
The Aurora has been predicting this since the start of the debate but honestly I didn't personally think we would be seeing the effects so soon.
Obamacare must be repealed.
15 comments:
Fewer and fewer companies offer health insurance, a long-term trend that will obviously continue as companies cut expenses. And most temp companies do not offer health insurance. Therefore we should repeal healthcare reform that offers healthcare to those who don't have it. I feel to see the logic here.
All or most major indstrialized companies offer universal healthcare at about half the cost per capita that we do. So it can be done. As to whether it should be done that is a question for the democratic process, and obviously involves differing political philosphies and moral values.
I also don't buy the argument that unemployment insurance stops people from looking for work. Unemployment doesn't provide enough to live on. When I was
Lets put aside for a moment how we feel about whether or not the government can provide health care on the same level that private companies can at half the cost. If that was the case then everyone would have the same or better health care than the U.S. and clearly....they don't.
The point is that Obama's pitch was that you won't have to switch unless you want to. This is not the case because you will be forced to. It costs too much to do it any other way.
The other part is that Obamacare didn't actually address the costs of health care. Free market ideas weren't even considered. No mention of tort reform, no mention of portability, etc.
Finally, i'm not implying that everyone that is currently collecting unemployment benefits is gaming the system or not looking for a job but as with any program like this a certain percentage of them are. Even if it's just 3% (i think it's higher) that would mean we would have 7% unemployment instead of 10%. It would also mean that the businesses that are paying for those benefits (you didn't think it was jus the government did you?) would be able to stop paying for that employee and make more of a profit, or stay afloat, or maybe hire someone else who is less expensive or whatever.
Bottom line is we're headed for socialized medicine which is EXACTLY what Sarah Palin said it was and the opposite of what Obama claimed.
you're blaming high unemployment rates on "obamacare" which hasn't even kicked in for the most part yet? i always thought you were nutty (and i say that only with the sincerest of affection), but now i know for sure.
there are economists out there of all stripes, left, right and center out there who do nothing but study unemployment. it's a very complex subject. the very tip of the iceberg is that there are numerous types of unemployment, structural, frictional, cyclical, etc. (i'll leave it up to you to look them up.) to so totally and completely oversimplify the matter is (again, saying this with nothing but affection) almost laughable. and to bring sarah palin's deep knowledge of economics into it, oh my god. i'm rolling on the floor.
seriously.
Actually no i'm not blaming unemployment on Obamacare.
However I do KNOW that when you increase the cost of hiring employees you will naturally get less hiring. So Obamacare has actually exacerbated the problem. This is not my theory, this is FACT.
I'm glad I can make you laugh anita but what I find to be funny is how all of these economists don't have any answers when it's really pretty simple.
Why is Texas doing so well and California doing so poorly? Hmmm... could it be as simple as being business friendly versus being Union/green/hippie friendly?
Sarah Palin doesn't have the fancy degrees that I guess it takes to impress you but I think she knows how to read and apparently you don't because I also didn't say anything about her knowledge of economics, I just said she correctly predicted that Obamacare would lead to socialized medicine.
There's a difference between SMART and Intelligent. You should look that up because I think you're intelligent........
See thats the problem, you think complex subjects always require complex solutions. Rarely the case.
... and I just love deranged libs get about Sarah Palin, without ever discussing her ideas. What is it exactly about her economic policiesyou disagree with?
Let me guess.... shes a dumb dumb.
Your hero Reagan warned against "socialized medicine. You ran the video clip. He was talking about Medi-care. Whether you call it socialism or not I'm in favor of it. If we do it right costs will go down, as they have in other countries.
1. IF costs have gone down it goes hand in hand with the level and quality of care.
2. Reagan was right about Medicare.
3. If we do it right? You mean if the government does something efficiently?
And Anita thinks I'm nutty.
Anita's right. Actually Social Security has been administered very efficiently. Of course you're opposed to that I imagine, as well as Medi-Care. For all I know you want to "privatize" National Defense as well (the Bush administration got into a good start on that anyway).
Dude social security? Are you serious? It's completely bankrupt!!
ahahahahahaa...oh man that's a good one.
And yes I am opposed to social security. I liked the idea of giving private citizens their own accounts like an IRA but that would be a problem for the dems because they wouldn't be able to control the money.
I am NOT opposed to the IDEA of medicare but it is also completely bankrupt, corrupt, and inefficiently run.
I would NOT privatize National Defense but it is also inefficient and bloated.
No government does anything efficiently.
Social Security is currently running a surplus and has enough funds to pay full benefits until 2037. After that it has enough funds for 85% of benefits, and there are a variety of proposals that would extend that for decades. After which the problem begins to solve itself.
Let me explain it to you because you're not very bright. The reason for the upcoming strain on the system is the large bulge of boomers hitting retirement age. Push out solvency for a few decades and you have a large bulge of boomers dying. Dead people do not collect social security.
Ok so when was the last time any of you visited a nursing home?
Maybe you can visit one where all of the residents are totally dependant on Medicaid and Medicare. Better yet see if you can spend a whole day in a veteran's home. If your stomach is strong enough to handle the smell.
There are nursing homes that do not accept medicaid. These are the really pretty ones with coffee shops and beauty salons in them. Then as the elderly liquidate their assets and the money runs out they become totally dependant on what Medicaid and Medicare allows. Thats when you will see them be transferred to a more budget friendly type of facility. These are the ones you should visit.
In Ohio nursing home residents recieve an allownace of $40.00 per month for all of their clothing toiletries (soap and shampoo) and frivoulus things like hair cuts and razors. Of course if they blow thier budget and can't afford clothes well, the nursing home has plenty of those dignified hospital gowns.
The current population in our nursing homes are the parents of the baby boomers. WWII Vets.
Spend some time with this population and the $10.00 an hour nurses aides that are in charge of them and then I would love to hear how you can believe that state controlled healthcare is good for our country and for the baby boomers.
You will do some research and find that the best quality of care in this environment is provided by non profit organizations who accept donations to cover the the wide gap between what the state pays for care, and what it takes to deliver quality care. If they had to do everything the way the state mandated it, we would see a dramtic decrease in quality of care for a constantly increasing population of patients. However it might actually give your point about he baby boomers some creedence. Right now the average person lives in a nursing home for about 18 months. I bet they wouldnt last that long under Obama care........ And dead people don't collect benefits.
sorry, samw, but the sorry state of nursing homes in the country has less to do with medicare and medicaid than on the greed of the nursing home owners (typically consortiums and groups of investors) looking to maximize their profits by robbing from medicare and medicade and treating their patients like animals while they get rich on the profits. people who worked long and hard throughout their lives end up being treated like garbage out of pure greed.
and i speak from experience. my father, who was lucky enough to have the assets to be put in a higher end (read: expensive) nursing home during his last days suffering from alzheimers. even though we were paying thousands and thousands of dollars of his hard earned money to get him the "best care possible" the nursing home (actually an assisted living facility for advanced alzheimer's patients) was consistently extremely low on staff and outsourced the medical services to their patients to doctors who came in once a month and listened to the patients vitals pronounced them "healthy." this facility was so cheap rather than deal with my father's symptoms, they sedated him with massive doses of tranquilizers. we ultimately found a smaller more residential type of facility for my father, where he ultimately had a stroke and died last summer.
but bottom line this has NOTHING to do with "obamacare" and had EVERYTHING to do with greed and fraud in the medical profession. things that the changes to the laws that obama has implemented with hopefully implement.
if a lonely old widower who is for the most part physically healthy (as healthy as a 90-year old man can be) is treated like garbage in a $10K-month facility, then the problems are top to bottom, endemic, to the entire system. and that has to be changed.
you're welcome.
Youre absolutely right. It has to be changed and the Medicaid Medicare system is too easily corrupted.
It does not meet the basic needs of the patients and it does not pay for quality care. Thus comes the slippery slope of creative accounting.
If you read my post you will see that the best healthcare you will get is in a non profit facility. But they have to accept donations and do fund raising to meet the standard of care the Medicaid medicare system does not rach alone. Non profit organizations have to show where every penny went. They pay their staff competietive wages and they provide better care.
This is why the Obama healthcare plan is bad for us. It is really more of the same. And just plain too easy to corrupt. You think that people will just stop being greedy beacue the money comes from the government?
Nursing homes prove my point. Alot of that money comes from the government but the care is still sub standard.
The reason no one has pushed for non profit is because no one makes a profit.
If the democrats were truly after the good of the people we would have seen reforms that would safeguard against greed and monopolies. But we didnt.
Who is going to get the government contract for EMR that is required of all of us in the industry by 2012?
The biggest amount of money recovered by the governmnet from Medicaid fraud was taken from Drug companies. Do you think when the government tells each patient they can only use certain medicaitions that it will drive the cost down?
I spent enough years in Nursing homes to write volumes on how and where changes need to be made. And yes, in healthcare all over changes need to be made. The problem is that the government took the worst possible and most corrupt system of operation and used that as the model. It will make things worse. The conditions will be even less dignified.
We have to understand that the goverment can not mandate empathy. They can only prevent known and anticapted ways greedy peple will exploit people in need. But they instead they used the most exploitive system possible and they want the whole nation to pay for it.
At the risk of sounding like algore....I invented the Internet....oops wrong quote....I meant to say....the debate is over!
samw makes some very important points in his last comment. and i agree with many of them. samw i see that on this issue you have given this much thought and i respect you for that.
one last point. i'm VERY surprised that an auroran is agreeing with samw regarding the removal of the profit motive one of the largest industries in the united states.
but we'll leave you to explain that one away in another post. this thread had obviously gone on too long.
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