Exploding debt threatens America

CNS (Conservative News Source) is a very biased publication. The differences is in the assumptions. And frankly Obama's assumptions make a lot of sense versus those used by the CBO. First Obama uses a economic growth rate .4 percent greater than that used by the CBO. Two, the CBO ignores any savings generated by healthcare reform. It adds all of the costs of heathcare reform but none of the cost savings. The CBO is not always right either.

http://www.cbo.gov/aboutcbo/faqs.shtml
How accurate are CBO's budget projections?
By statute, CBO's baseline projections must estimate the future paths of federal spending and revenues under current law and policies. The baseline is therefore not intended to be a prediction of future budgetary outcomes; instead, it is meant to serve as a neutral benchmark that lawmakers can use to measure the effects of proposed changes to spending and taxes. So for that reason and others, actual budgetary outcomes are almost certain to differ from CBO's baseline projections. For a related discussion, see Chapter 1 of CBO's Budget and Economic Outlook; see also The Uncertainty of Budget Projections: A Discussion of Data and Methods for supplemental information

 

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So your saying David Walker doesn't know what he's talking about? the CNS is using what the CBO has said. just google and you will get many sources. Congress always uses numbers from CBO and not from presidents. we all have seen how off his projections were for the stimulis package in terms of its effect on unemployment

 

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Having a background in corporate finance, forecasts are all based on assumptions. And people can legitimately disagree about assumptions. I am not saying David Walker doesn't know what he is talking about. The CBO is being very very conservative in his assumptions to the point that I think it is at odds with probability. But that does not mean his is not a good man or not talented. The CBO has its forecasting rules built up over the years that causes it to sometimes make unrealistic assumptions. And given the politics on the hill I can easily understand how that can happen. In private industry forecasts are made for precision not for benchmarking. CBO is not contrained with precision only baseline estimates.

And as I mentioned the CBO makes zero provisions for improvements in healthcare effectiveness. So its methodolgy is flawed. Obama is approaching the situation like a CEO. He is more concerned with precision, the likelyhood of correctness. Obama has put on the table 950 billion in spending cuts to cover the estimated 1 trillion dollar cost of universal healthcare - excluding the anticipated cost savings from improved effectiveness.

I prefer a freemarket system of healthcare as freemarket are great at allocating resources. But the healhcare system and government are so screwed up it will never work. There is always an industry that has a buck to spend on a congressman, senator or politcal party for legislative favors and their always lots of hungery amoral poltiticians in Washington.

 

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I think the cost is much more, but why not fix social security, medicare and medicade first befor starting another programe.

The problem is that I don't think the free markets can compete with a government backed program. some of these cuts will hurt the private sector, this in time will either make costs go up or they will fold. if they fold the the government backed program will be the only thing standing how much will healthcare cost then? will this cover illegals immigrants? how long will the lines be?

 

He is addressing Social Security/Medicare and Medicade by addressing of healthcare. The reason a public system is so important is because of the lobbyist with buck and politicians in Washington. The current state of healthcare in the US is poor and getting poorer by the day...in many respects. You do not have to look far in the American healthcare system to find problems. I can give you a few of my own. We need change, the quality of healthcare needs to improve NOW and costs need to come down NOW. And it can happen, I was a corpsman. So I know something about healthcare.

If you believe in freemarkets you know that competiton weeds out inefficiency. The healthcare industry in the US is riddled with inefficiency. I would love to do some Six Sigma work with the healthcare industry. Guess what, while the airline industry is functioning as six sigma level, the healthcare industry lags far behind the airline industry...that is bad and not representative of a competitive economy.

To your point about government out competing the healthcare industry. One party of me says if the healthcare industry is that bad, they don't deserve to be in business. But they have proven their ability to manipulate congress is quite amazing. So I don't think they will have any problem co-existing with public healthcare. But it will require them to change their ways. They are going to have to go back to making money the old fashioned way - earning it. And that is a good thing in my book.

 

Woot woot!!!

I agree that healthcare isn't working but I would say the aviation industry is doing that well either

I just don't think the government can do that much better, I have already stated my opinion and I know you disagree so I'm not going to repost what I posted on my last post. I guess we will have to agree to disagree.

 

I guess we will have to agree to disagree and that is fine. Social Security is going to need reform as well and I favor removing the cap on the Social Security Tax. Those earning in excess of 103k per year do not pay Social Security Tax on income above 103K.