Results:
U.S. insurers and providers spent $812 billion on administration, amounting to $2497 per capita (34.2% of national health expenditures) versus $551 per capita (17.0%) in Canada: $844 versus $146 on insurers' overhead; $933 versus $196 for hospital administration; $255 versus $123 for nursing home, home care, and hospice administration; and $465 versus $87 for physicians' insurance-related costs.
So almost exactly the same as out of control tuition costs?
No there's quite a bit more to it than that. Healthcare "administration" largely refers to the non-medical labor of verifying coverage, finding coverage for patients without insurance or to fill gaps, and billing. Billing is extremely complicated because there are so many different possible payers both in aggregate and at the individual level. A single event can include (but isn't limited to) a co-pay, a bill to the insurer, a bill to a gap insurer, and then a bill to the patient for whatever isn't covered. Now compound that bill with all the different insurance companies, different hospital networks, medicare, medicaid, etc. There's also a lot of labor that goes into the never ending battle with insurers. Their initial response to any clerical anomaly is to deny coverage which leads to disputes some of which ends up being handled by legal departments. Don't even get me started on state and local governments using loopholes to stick healthcare providers with bills for their dependents. Prisons love doing that shit for care given to inmates.
All of this extra labor adds up fast and inflates the cost of literally everything because providers have to get their money from somewhere. A bag of saline administered in the ER isn't billed at $500 for funsies, they do it because a large portion of the care given doesn't get covered so they have to overcharge where they can to make up for what insurers won't pay and what patients can't afford.
It's a gigantic goddamn mess that my wife lives every day and it's far more complicated than tuition which can be better explained by cuts to higher education funding at the state level over the long-term.
Feinstein, who voted against NAFTA in 1993, said in a statement that she was in favor of the USMCA, calling it an improvement over NAFTA and one that would be good for the nation and California. Feinstein cited as an example the $300 million allotted to clean up pollution from the Tijuana River.
Harris, however, said it was precisely because of shortcomings in the environment chapter that she could not vote for USMCA. The accord doesn’t address climate change, she said, and as such “fails to meet the crises of this moment.”
USMCA drew opposition from leading environmental advocacy groups such as the Sierra Club and the National Resources Defense Council. Senate Democratic Leader Charles E. Schumer of New York said he would vote against the bill “because it does not address climate change, the greatest threat facing our planet.”
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce expressed disappointment that the administration, under Democratic pressure, stripped out a provision that would have given 10 years of exclusive market protections for certain drugs. The chamber argued that USMCA should not be a model for future trade deals, although that is exactly what U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said it would be.
Still, the chamber and other groups like it saw USMCA as better than the possible alternative of losing NAFTA, which would have caused major disruptions in supply chains and tariff-free trade in North America.
Estimates of USMCA’s economic impact vary, but on the whole most don’t see it as having a major effect on the U.S. economy. NAFTA already had done away with most tariffs in North American trade.
NAFTA had 22 chapters. USMCA contains 34 chapters, 13 annexes and 16 side letters. They include new rules and standards on digital trade, state-owned enterprises and currency matters.
USMCA pries open Canada’s closed dairy market. It raises the minimum North American content for cars to receive tariff-free treatment and for the first time links auto production to workers’ pay, in the hopes of curbing the movement of jobs to low-wage Mexico.
The new accord largely does away with a provision allowing foreign firms to sue governments for discrimination or breaking contracts, which critics viewed as a corporate handout and incentive for offshoring.
Most other provisions in NAFTA were maintained or updated to reflect changes in the economy over the last three decades.
Yeah...fuck off with that 10-years-of pulling-a-Martin-Shkreli thing. The rest of the changes seem ok, though it is mostly NAFTA still.
The US gets something Canada has wanted to give them for awhile now anyway and it kinda pushes Mexico around a bit more in service of some mostly-mid-west-specific gains where the ability to enforce them is ... questionable.
Mostly, it gives Trump a win to trumpet in the key states Democrats need to win this november.
Results:
U.S. insurers and providers spent $812 billion on administration, amounting to $2497 per capita (34.2% of national health expenditures) versus $551 per capita (17.0%) in Canada: $844 versus $146 on insurers' overhead; $933 versus $196 for hospital administration; $255 versus $123 for nursing home, home care, and hospice administration; and $465 versus $87 for physicians' insurance-related costs.
So almost exactly the same as out of control tuition costs?
No there's quite a bit more to it than that. Healthcare "administration" largely refers to the non-medical labor of verifying coverage, finding coverage for patients without insurance or to fill gaps, and billing. Billing is extremely complicated because there are so many different possible payers both in aggregate and at the individual level. A single event can include (but isn't limited to) a co-pay, a bill to the insurer, a bill to a gap insurer, and then a bill to the patient for whatever isn't covered. Now compound that bill with all the different insurance companies, different hospital networks, medicare, medicaid, etc. There's also a lot of labor that goes into the never ending battle with insurers. Their initial response to any clerical anomaly is to deny coverage which leads to disputes some of which ends up being handled by legal departments. Don't even get me started on state and local governments using loopholes to stick healthcare providers with bills for their dependents. Prisons love doing that shit for care given to inmates.
All of this extra labor adds up fast and inflates the cost of literally everything because providers have to get their money from somewhere. A bag of saline administered in the ER isn't billed at $500 for funsies, they do it because a large portion of the care given doesn't get covered so they have to overcharge where they can to make up for what insurers won't pay and what patients can't afford.
It's a gigantic goddamn mess that my wife lives every day and it's far more complicated than tuition which is more better explained by cuts to higher education funding at the state level over the long-term.
A bag of saline costs $500 so the insurance company negotiator can claim to negotiate a 95% savings. It screws over people without insurance.
Results:
U.S. insurers and providers spent $812 billion on administration, amounting to $2497 per capita (34.2% of national health expenditures) versus $551 per capita (17.0%) in Canada: $844 versus $146 on insurers' overhead; $933 versus $196 for hospital administration; $255 versus $123 for nursing home, home care, and hospice administration; and $465 versus $87 for physicians' insurance-related costs.
So almost exactly the same as out of control tuition costs?
No there's quite a bit more to it than that. Healthcare "administration" largely refers to the non-medical labor of verifying coverage, finding coverage for patients without insurance or to fill gaps, and billing. Billing is extremely complicated because there are so many different possible payers both in aggregate and at the individual level. A single event can include (but isn't limited to) a co-pay, a bill to the insurer, a bill to a gap insurer, and then a bill to the patient for whatever isn't covered. Now compound that bill with all the different insurance companies, different hospital networks, medicare, medicaid, etc. There's also a lot of labor that goes into the never ending battle with insurers. Their initial response to any clerical anomaly is to deny coverage which leads to disputes some of which ends up being handled by legal departments. Don't even get me started on state and local governments using loopholes to stick healthcare providers with bills for their dependents. Prisons love doing that shit for care given to inmates.
All of this extra labor adds up fast and inflates the cost of literally everything because providers have to get their money from somewhere. A bag of saline administered in the ER isn't billed at $500 for funsies, they do it because a large portion of the care given doesn't get covered so they have to overcharge where they can to make up for what insurers won't pay and what patients can't afford.
It's a gigantic goddamn mess that my wife lives every day and it's far more complicated than tuition which is more better explained by cuts to higher education funding at the state level over the long-term.
A bag of saline costs $500 so the insurance company negotiator can claim to negotiate a 95% savings. It screws over people without insurance.
But people without insurance can rarely afford a hospital bill anyway, so the hospital tends to have to settle with them, since medical bills do disappear in bankruptcy. Fictional pricing doesn't benefit anyone.
Results:
U.S. insurers and providers spent $812 billion on administration, amounting to $2497 per capita (34.2% of national health expenditures) versus $551 per capita (17.0%) in Canada: $844 versus $146 on insurers' overhead; $933 versus $196 for hospital administration; $255 versus $123 for nursing home, home care, and hospice administration; and $465 versus $87 for physicians' insurance-related costs.
So almost exactly the same as out of control tuition costs?
No there's quite a bit more to it than that. Healthcare "administration" largely refers to the non-medical labor of verifying coverage, finding coverage for patients without insurance or to fill gaps, and billing. Billing is extremely complicated because there are so many different possible payers both in aggregate and at the individual level. A single event can include (but isn't limited to) a co-pay, a bill to the insurer, a bill to a gap insurer, and then a bill to the patient for whatever isn't covered. Now compound that bill with all the different insurance companies, different hospital networks, medicare, medicaid, etc. There's also a lot of labor that goes into the never ending battle with insurers. Their initial response to any clerical anomaly is to deny coverage which leads to disputes some of which ends up being handled by legal departments. Don't even get me started on state and local governments using loopholes to stick healthcare providers with bills for their dependents. Prisons love doing that shit for care given to inmates.
All of this extra labor adds up fast and inflates the cost of literally everything because providers have to get their money from somewhere. A bag of saline administered in the ER isn't billed at $500 for funsies, they do it because a large portion of the care given doesn't get covered so they have to overcharge where they can to make up for what insurers won't pay and what patients can't afford.
It's a gigantic goddamn mess that my wife lives every day and it's far more complicated than tuition which is more better explained by cuts to higher education funding at the state level over the long-term.
A bag of saline costs $500 so the insurance company negotiator can claim to negotiate a 95% savings. It screws over people without insurance.
But people without insurance can rarely afford a hospital bill anyway, so the hospital tends to have to settle with them, since medical bills do disappear in bankruptcy. Fictional pricing doesn't benefit anyone.
Hospitals can write off the bad debt, so the inflated costs help their bottom line. The problem is that the accounting has gotten so flexible that individuals with and without insurance can be financially destroyed, insurance costs go up, the government is cheated of tax money, financiers are hurt because the hospital's debt and profit margins are based on constantly shifting fuzzy accounting, and the hospital can still go broke because they are also paying inflated costs from their providers and suppliers.
It's almost like capitalism and saving lives is a bad combination.
Capitalism tends to work best on things that you can take or leave, like where to buy groceries, or which vacation to take. It works really badly when the product is your health or life, because the value of both of them tends towards "everything I own."
It's almost like capitalism and saving lives is a bad combination.
Capitalism tends to work best on things that you can take or leave, like where to buy groceries, or which vacation to take. It works really badly when the product is your health or life, because the value of both of them tends towards "everything I own."
Kenneth Arrow had a super famous paper in 1963 that explains how the market for medical care is different. It’s a relatively non-technical read for those who might be interested in the basis of health economics and why laissez-faire is a poor approach to that market.
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Results:
U.S. insurers and providers spent $812 billion on administration, amounting to $2497 per capita (34.2% of national health expenditures) versus $551 per capita (17.0%) in Canada: $844 versus $146 on insurers' overhead; $933 versus $196 for hospital administration; $255 versus $123 for nursing home, home care, and hospice administration; and $465 versus $87 for physicians' insurance-related costs.
So almost exactly the same as out of control tuition costs?
No there's quite a bit more to it than that. Healthcare "administration" largely refers to the non-medical labor of verifying coverage, finding coverage for patients without insurance or to fill gaps, and billing. Billing is extremely complicated because there are so many different possible payers both in aggregate and at the individual level. A single event can include (but isn't limited to) a co-pay, a bill to the insurer, a bill to a gap insurer, and then a bill to the patient for whatever isn't covered. Now compound that bill with all the different insurance companies, different hospital networks, medicare, medicaid, etc. There's also a lot of labor that goes into the never ending battle with insurers. Their initial response to any clerical anomaly is to deny coverage which leads to disputes some of which ends up being handled by legal departments. Don't even get me started on state and local governments using loopholes to stick healthcare providers with bills for their dependents. Prisons love doing that shit for care given to inmates.
All of this extra labor adds up fast and inflates the cost of literally everything because providers have to get their money from somewhere. A bag of saline administered in the ER isn't billed at $500 for funsies, they do it because a large portion of the care given doesn't get covered so they have to overcharge where they can to make up for what insurers won't pay and what patients can't afford.
It's a gigantic goddamn mess that my wife lives every day and it's far more complicated than tuition which is more better explained by cuts to higher education funding at the state level over the long-term.
A bag of saline costs $500 so the insurance company negotiator can claim to negotiate a 95% savings. It screws over people without insurance.
But people without insurance can rarely afford a hospital bill anyway, so the hospital tends to have to settle with them, since medical bills do disappear in bankruptcy. Fictional pricing doesn't benefit anyone.
Hospitals can write off the bad debt, so the inflated costs help their bottom line. The problem is that the accounting has gotten so flexible that individuals with and without insurance can be financially destroyed, insurance costs go up, the government is cheated of tax money, financiers are hurt because the hospital's debt and profit margins are based on constantly shifting fuzzy accounting, and the hospital can still go broke because they are also paying inflated costs from their providers and suppliers.
The bad debt write-off pales in comparison to the losses for the healthcare provider when they can't collect. They typically sell the debt to a collector for a fraction of it's worth instead. The hospitals aren't run by altruists that's for sure but the main culprit here is the insurance companies and the breadth of different payers the care providers have to deal with. This is why I trust M4A would be at worst cost neutral but more likely will save us all money if ever realized in full.
Results:
U.S. insurers and providers spent $812 billion on administration, amounting to $2497 per capita (34.2% of national health expenditures) versus $551 per capita (17.0%) in Canada: $844 versus $146 on insurers' overhead; $933 versus $196 for hospital administration; $255 versus $123 for nursing home, home care, and hospice administration; and $465 versus $87 for physicians' insurance-related costs.
So almost exactly the same as out of control tuition costs?
No there's quite a bit more to it than that. Healthcare "administration" largely refers to the non-medical labor of verifying coverage, finding coverage for patients without insurance or to fill gaps, and billing. Billing is extremely complicated because there are so many different possible payers both in aggregate and at the individual level. A single event can include (but isn't limited to) a co-pay, a bill to the insurer, a bill to a gap insurer, and then a bill to the patient for whatever isn't covered. Now compound that bill with all the different insurance companies, different hospital networks, medicare, medicaid, etc. There's also a lot of labor that goes into the never ending battle with insurers. Their initial response to any clerical anomaly is to deny coverage which leads to disputes some of which ends up being handled by legal departments. Don't even get me started on state and local governments using loopholes to stick healthcare providers with bills for their dependents. Prisons love doing that shit for care given to inmates.
All of this extra labor adds up fast and inflates the cost of literally everything because providers have to get their money from somewhere. A bag of saline administered in the ER isn't billed at $500 for funsies, they do it because a large portion of the care given doesn't get covered so they have to overcharge where they can to make up for what insurers won't pay and what patients can't afford.
It's a gigantic goddamn mess that my wife lives every day and it's far more complicated than tuition which is more better explained by cuts to higher education funding at the state level over the long-term.
A bag of saline costs $500 so the insurance company negotiator can claim to negotiate a 95% savings. It screws over people without insurance.
But people without insurance can rarely afford a hospital bill anyway, so the hospital tends to have to settle with them, since medical bills do disappear in bankruptcy. Fictional pricing doesn't benefit anyone.
Hospitals can write off the bad debt, so the inflated costs help their bottom line. The problem is that the accounting has gotten so flexible that individuals with and without insurance can be financially destroyed, insurance costs go up, the government is cheated of tax money, financiers are hurt because the hospital's debt and profit margins are based on constantly shifting fuzzy accounting, and the hospital can still go broke because they are also paying inflated costs from their providers and suppliers.
The bad debt write-off pales in comparison to the losses for the healthcare provider when they can't collect. They typically sell the debt to a collector for a fraction of it's worth instead. The hospitals aren't run by altruists that's for sure but the main culprit here is the insurance companies and the breadth of different payers the care providers have to deal with. This is why I trust M4A would be at worst cost neutral but more likely will save us all money if ever realized in full.
Not sure what the instead is doing in there. If you have a debt for a $100 and you sell the debt for $5 you still write down a $95 dollar loss on it.
Results:
U.S. insurers and providers spent $812 billion on administration, amounting to $2497 per capita (34.2% of national health expenditures) versus $551 per capita (17.0%) in Canada: $844 versus $146 on insurers' overhead; $933 versus $196 for hospital administration; $255 versus $123 for nursing home, home care, and hospice administration; and $465 versus $87 for physicians' insurance-related costs.
So almost exactly the same as out of control tuition costs?
No there's quite a bit more to it than that. Healthcare "administration" largely refers to the non-medical labor of verifying coverage, finding coverage for patients without insurance or to fill gaps, and billing. Billing is extremely complicated because there are so many different possible payers both in aggregate and at the individual level. A single event can include (but isn't limited to) a co-pay, a bill to the insurer, a bill to a gap insurer, and then a bill to the patient for whatever isn't covered. Now compound that bill with all the different insurance companies, different hospital networks, medicare, medicaid, etc. There's also a lot of labor that goes into the never ending battle with insurers. Their initial response to any clerical anomaly is to deny coverage which leads to disputes some of which ends up being handled by legal departments. Don't even get me started on state and local governments using loopholes to stick healthcare providers with bills for their dependents. Prisons love doing that shit for care given to inmates.
All of this extra labor adds up fast and inflates the cost of literally everything because providers have to get their money from somewhere. A bag of saline administered in the ER isn't billed at $500 for funsies, they do it because a large portion of the care given doesn't get covered so they have to overcharge where they can to make up for what insurers won't pay and what patients can't afford.
It's a gigantic goddamn mess that my wife lives every day and it's far more complicated than tuition which is more better explained by cuts to higher education funding at the state level over the long-term.
A bag of saline costs $500 so the insurance company negotiator can claim to negotiate a 95% savings. It screws over people without insurance.
But people without insurance can rarely afford a hospital bill anyway, so the hospital tends to have to settle with them, since medical bills do disappear in bankruptcy. Fictional pricing doesn't benefit anyone.
Hospitals can write off the bad debt, so the inflated costs help their bottom line. The problem is that the accounting has gotten so flexible that individuals with and without insurance can be financially destroyed, insurance costs go up, the government is cheated of tax money, financiers are hurt because the hospital's debt and profit margins are based on constantly shifting fuzzy accounting, and the hospital can still go broke because they are also paying inflated costs from their providers and suppliers.
The bad debt write-off pales in comparison to the losses for the healthcare provider when they can't collect. They typically sell the debt to a collector for a fraction of it's worth instead. The hospitals aren't run by altruists that's for sure but the main culprit here is the insurance companies and the breadth of different payers the care providers have to deal with. This is why I trust M4A would be at worst cost neutral but more likely will save us all money if ever realized in full.
Not sure what the instead is doing in there. If you have a debt for a $100 and you sell the debt for $5 you still write down a $95 dollar loss on it.
No, you don't. A business cannot write off revenue it never collected. My business can't bill you $1 million for this post and then write off $1 million on its taxes when you don't pay.
You say that like a write-off is as good as getting paid. It isn't.
It is if the charge should have only been $0.28 in the first place, though. Going back to the example, saline does not cost $500 and one Tylenol capsule doesn't cost $15. Hell, 100 capsules don't cost $15 if you have a coupon.
It's almost like capitalism and saving lives is a bad combination.
Capitalism tends to work best on things that you can take or leave, like where to buy groceries, or which vacation to take. It works really badly when the product is your health or life, because the value of both of them tends towards "everything I own."
Kenneth Arrow had a super famous paper in 1963 that explains how the market for medical care is different. It’s a relatively non-technical read for those who might be interested in the basis of health economics and why laissez-faire is a poor approach to that market.
Well, that is a depressing read.
Loan companies: what if you made the debt nondischargeable and also just kept all the other entry restrictions?
Hypothetical economist: wow, that is fucked up and creates fucked up incentives
Results:
U.S. insurers and providers spent $812 billion on administration, amounting to $2497 per capita (34.2% of national health expenditures) versus $551 per capita (17.0%) in Canada: $844 versus $146 on insurers' overhead; $933 versus $196 for hospital administration; $255 versus $123 for nursing home, home care, and hospice administration; and $465 versus $87 for physicians' insurance-related costs.
So almost exactly the same as out of control tuition costs?
No there's quite a bit more to it than that. Healthcare "administration" largely refers to the non-medical labor of verifying coverage, finding coverage for patients without insurance or to fill gaps, and billing. Billing is extremely complicated because there are so many different possible payers both in aggregate and at the individual level. A single event can include (but isn't limited to) a co-pay, a bill to the insurer, a bill to a gap insurer, and then a bill to the patient for whatever isn't covered. Now compound that bill with all the different insurance companies, different hospital networks, medicare, medicaid, etc. There's also a lot of labor that goes into the never ending battle with insurers. Their initial response to any clerical anomaly is to deny coverage which leads to disputes some of which ends up being handled by legal departments. Don't even get me started on state and local governments using loopholes to stick healthcare providers with bills for their dependents. Prisons love doing that shit for care given to inmates.
All of this extra labor adds up fast and inflates the cost of literally everything because providers have to get their money from somewhere. A bag of saline administered in the ER isn't billed at $500 for funsies, they do it because a large portion of the care given doesn't get covered so they have to overcharge where they can to make up for what insurers won't pay and what patients can't afford.
It's a gigantic goddamn mess that my wife lives every day and it's far more complicated than tuition which is more better explained by cuts to higher education funding at the state level over the long-term.
A bag of saline costs $500 so the insurance company negotiator can claim to negotiate a 95% savings. It screws over people without insurance.
But people without insurance can rarely afford a hospital bill anyway, so the hospital tends to have to settle with them, since medical bills do disappear in bankruptcy. Fictional pricing doesn't benefit anyone.
Hospitals can write off the bad debt, so the inflated costs help their bottom line. The problem is that the accounting has gotten so flexible that individuals with and without insurance can be financially destroyed, insurance costs go up, the government is cheated of tax money, financiers are hurt because the hospital's debt and profit margins are based on constantly shifting fuzzy accounting, and the hospital can still go broke because they are also paying inflated costs from their providers and suppliers.
The bad debt write-off pales in comparison to the losses for the healthcare provider when they can't collect. They typically sell the debt to a collector for a fraction of it's worth instead. The hospitals aren't run by altruists that's for sure but the main culprit here is the insurance companies and the breadth of different payers the care providers have to deal with. This is why I trust M4A would be at worst cost neutral but more likely will save us all money if ever realized in full.
Not sure what the instead is doing in there. If you have a debt for a $100 and you sell the debt for $5 you still write down a $95 dollar loss on it.
No, you don't. A business cannot write off revenue it never collected. My business can't bill you $1 million for this post and then write off $1 million on its taxes when you don't pay.
Businesses, generally, you are correct.
Hospitals, however, can characterize write offs from bad debt as charity and that does help their bottom line.
However, since (at least as far as not-for-profit hospitals, who are required to disclose financials) claimed charitable giving is usually in the 1-3% of revenue ballpark, how much it effects bottom lines is up to accountants. I don't personally know what the margins are for hospitals, but for the same group debt write-offs for bad debt, not considered charity, is 2-4%; and I don't have knowledge as to why they don't just lump that all into charity for tax purposes, but I suspect there's some lack of loopholes for not-for-profits that are pretty typical for private individuals or for-profits that would let them take more advantage of charity deductions.
Anyway, I'm just trying to say that while it's not as simple as "writing off debt increases their bottom lines", write-offs in healthcare also aren't apples to apples with other industries because of the services being offered and how tied into so many federal programs they are.
It's almost like capitalism and saving lives is a bad combination.
Capitalism tends to work best on things that you can take or leave, like where to buy groceries, or which vacation to take. It works really badly when the product is your health or life, because the value of both of them tends towards "everything I own."
The other factor that differentiates, is that medical costs often are calculated and paid for AFTER they're consumed.
You can't have the hospital undo your heart bypass or emergency appendectomy, so that you can shop it around to different hospitals before you're treated.
It's like not being charged for your groceries until they've been consumed, or your vacation until you're returning home, and the supermarket or travel agency have a significant leeway in how much they charge you.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Chief Executive Officer David Solomon issued the latest ultimatum Thursday from Davos. Wall Street's biggest underwriter of initial public offerings in the U.S. will no longer take a company public in the U.S. and Europe if it lacks a director who is either female or diverse. Asia is not yet included in the firm’s new policy.
The mandate is the latest in a series of signals that non-diverse boards and management are unacceptable. BlackRock Inc. and State Street Global Advisors are voting against directors at companies without a female director. Public companies with all-male boards based in California now face a $100,000 fine under a new state law.
...
Goldman Sachs acknowledged that “diversity” has other meanings around the world — including in Asia, where racial dynamics are different and gender disparities are sometimes even more glaring. The company said in a statement Friday that it intends to eventually expand its board-diversity mandate beyond the U.S. and Europe.
The corporate board has become a rare bright spot for gender and racial diversity at the highest echelons of corporate America. Almost half of the open spots at S&P 500 companies went to women last year, and for the first time they made up more than a quarter of all directors. In July, the last all-male board in the S&P 500 appointed a woman.
...
Next year, the bank will raise the threshold to two diverse directors, which includes diversity based on sexual orientation and gender identity, Goldman said in a statement. The bank said the decision came after it learned more than 60 U.S. and European companies in the last two years went public without a woman or person of color on the board. Goldman Sachs has four women on its 11-member board.
Going to guess this is predicated by the California law, with them basically saying "you're not getting this fine if you want our money, you idiots." Still, something.
deficits are fine. i don't love the generic deficit fearmongering from wapo there.
deficits to line billionaires pockets though, not fine.
if all these billions were being spent on fixing bridges or building rail lines or anything that would lead to economic benefit at any point in the future, you'd be dumb not to borrow the money. sadly we're mostly just pushing it into the money hole.
deficits are fine. i don't love the generic deficit fearmongering from wapo there.
deficits to line billionaires pockets though, not fine.
if all these billions were being spent on fixing bridges or building rail lines or anything that would lead to economic benefit at any point in the future, you'd be dumb not to borrow the money. sadly we're mostly just pushing it into the money hole.
The issue more roundly is that despite this happening under a Republican administration, the second Democrats have control, they'll be screaming for deficit reduction, but demanding those tax cuts be sacrosanct (along with military spending), and that it's entitlement programs that need "reform".
Sure, deficits aren't a bad thing innately, but if the media are gonna run that line (because they're consistently fucking terrible), then Republicans need to own that shit too.
Awesoming that post feels too sleezy despite just desserts.
The dirty little secret here is that, in the long run, American farming going completely corporate is probably a good thing. Farming is a world where the minimum wage does not exist, the work is primarily done by immigrants (illegal and legal) who are routinely abused because farmers know they have no legal power or social status to object, and basic environmental and sanitation regulation is difficult because the industry trots out "the family farmer" every time momentum grows to do something.
It's a lot easier to regulate Monsanto than it is to police "Farmer Bob - Patriotic, salt-of-the-earth Heartland White Man."
Also while the planet is being lit on fire by the mechanisms of our consumption.
I hope for recession. I know it's bad that a lot of people will lose work. But the longer we go without recession the bigger the bubble gets. And if the pop kneecaps our ability to change our system, that will be so goddamned frustrating.
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Funny how helping people affordably deal with their shit results in economic gains.
Jokes on them though, I'm going to Canada.
No there's quite a bit more to it than that. Healthcare "administration" largely refers to the non-medical labor of verifying coverage, finding coverage for patients without insurance or to fill gaps, and billing. Billing is extremely complicated because there are so many different possible payers both in aggregate and at the individual level. A single event can include (but isn't limited to) a co-pay, a bill to the insurer, a bill to a gap insurer, and then a bill to the patient for whatever isn't covered. Now compound that bill with all the different insurance companies, different hospital networks, medicare, medicaid, etc. There's also a lot of labor that goes into the never ending battle with insurers. Their initial response to any clerical anomaly is to deny coverage which leads to disputes some of which ends up being handled by legal departments. Don't even get me started on state and local governments using loopholes to stick healthcare providers with bills for their dependents. Prisons love doing that shit for care given to inmates.
All of this extra labor adds up fast and inflates the cost of literally everything because providers have to get their money from somewhere. A bag of saline administered in the ER isn't billed at $500 for funsies, they do it because a large portion of the care given doesn't get covered so they have to overcharge where they can to make up for what insurers won't pay and what patients can't afford.
It's a gigantic goddamn mess that my wife lives every day and it's far more complicated than tuition which can be better explained by cuts to higher education funding at the state level over the long-term.
They changed the name.
Yeah...fuck off with that 10-years-of pulling-a-Martin-Shkreli thing. The rest of the changes seem ok, though it is mostly NAFTA still.
Mostly, it gives Trump a win to trumpet in the key states Democrats need to win this november.
A bag of saline costs $500 so the insurance company negotiator can claim to negotiate a 95% savings. It screws over people without insurance.
But people without insurance can rarely afford a hospital bill anyway, so the hospital tends to have to settle with them, since medical bills do disappear in bankruptcy. Fictional pricing doesn't benefit anyone.
Hospitals can write off the bad debt, so the inflated costs help their bottom line. The problem is that the accounting has gotten so flexible that individuals with and without insurance can be financially destroyed, insurance costs go up, the government is cheated of tax money, financiers are hurt because the hospital's debt and profit margins are based on constantly shifting fuzzy accounting, and the hospital can still go broke because they are also paying inflated costs from their providers and suppliers.
Capitalism tends to work best on things that you can take or leave, like where to buy groceries, or which vacation to take. It works really badly when the product is your health or life, because the value of both of them tends towards "everything I own."
Kenneth Arrow had a super famous paper in 1963 that explains how the market for medical care is different. It’s a relatively non-technical read for those who might be interested in the basis of health economics and why laissez-faire is a poor approach to that market.
The bad debt write-off pales in comparison to the losses for the healthcare provider when they can't collect. They typically sell the debt to a collector for a fraction of it's worth instead. The hospitals aren't run by altruists that's for sure but the main culprit here is the insurance companies and the breadth of different payers the care providers have to deal with. This is why I trust M4A would be at worst cost neutral but more likely will save us all money if ever realized in full.
Not sure what the instead is doing in there. If you have a debt for a $100 and you sell the debt for $5 you still write down a $95 dollar loss on it.
No, you don't. A business cannot write off revenue it never collected. My business can't bill you $1 million for this post and then write off $1 million on its taxes when you don't pay.
It is if the charge should have only been $0.28 in the first place, though. Going back to the example, saline does not cost $500 and one Tylenol capsule doesn't cost $15. Hell, 100 capsules don't cost $15 if you have a coupon.
Well, that is a depressing read.
Loan companies: what if you made the debt nondischargeable and also just kept all the other entry restrictions?
Hypothetical economist: wow, that is fucked up and creates fucked up incentives
Businesses, generally, you are correct.
Hospitals, however, can characterize write offs from bad debt as charity and that does help their bottom line.
However, since (at least as far as not-for-profit hospitals, who are required to disclose financials) claimed charitable giving is usually in the 1-3% of revenue ballpark, how much it effects bottom lines is up to accountants. I don't personally know what the margins are for hospitals, but for the same group debt write-offs for bad debt, not considered charity, is 2-4%; and I don't have knowledge as to why they don't just lump that all into charity for tax purposes, but I suspect there's some lack of loopholes for not-for-profits that are pretty typical for private individuals or for-profits that would let them take more advantage of charity deductions.
Anyway, I'm just trying to say that while it's not as simple as "writing off debt increases their bottom lines", write-offs in healthcare also aren't apples to apples with other industries because of the services being offered and how tied into so many federal programs they are.
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The other factor that differentiates, is that medical costs often are calculated and paid for AFTER they're consumed.
You can't have the hospital undo your heart bypass or emergency appendectomy, so that you can shop it around to different hospitals before you're treated.
It's like not being charged for your groceries until they've been consumed, or your vacation until you're returning home, and the supermarket or travel agency have a significant leeway in how much they charge you.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-24/goldman-rule-adds-to-death-knell-of-the-all-white-male-board
Going to guess this is predicated by the California law, with them basically saying "you're not getting this fine if you want our money, you idiots." Still, something.
deficits to line billionaires pockets though, not fine.
if all these billions were being spent on fixing bridges or building rail lines or anything that would lead to economic benefit at any point in the future, you'd be dumb not to borrow the money. sadly we're mostly just pushing it into the money hole.
The issue more roundly is that despite this happening under a Republican administration, the second Democrats have control, they'll be screaming for deficit reduction, but demanding those tax cuts be sacrosanct (along with military spending), and that it's entitlement programs that need "reform".
Sure, deficits aren't a bad thing innately, but if the media are gonna run that line (because they're consistently fucking terrible), then Republicans need to own that shit too.
This is the highest number we've had since 2011.
The dirty little secret here is that, in the long run, American farming going completely corporate is probably a good thing. Farming is a world where the minimum wage does not exist, the work is primarily done by immigrants (illegal and legal) who are routinely abused because farmers know they have no legal power or social status to object, and basic environmental and sanitation regulation is difficult because the industry trots out "the family farmer" every time momentum grows to do something.
It's a lot easier to regulate Monsanto than it is to police "Farmer Bob - Patriotic, salt-of-the-earth Heartland White Man."
Mine is intended ironically. In a 'great, this is just great' sense.
https://www.npr.org/2020/01/30/800985774/u-s-economy-slowed-in-2019-to-2-3
2.1% for Q4 leaving us at 2.3% growth for 2019
I hope for recession. I know it's bad that a lot of people will lose work. But the longer we go without recession the bigger the bubble gets. And if the pop kneecaps our ability to change our system, that will be so goddamned frustrating.