patrick.net

Oxygen says

This is why concentration of wealth also slows down the economy.

Very true.
Refinancing works only for a small group of people but I agree it can help the economy. There are still many more stimuli are needed to bust economy.
One which comes to my mind is fixing taxation mess. Portion of tax people will pay should be known from “day one”. That will help a lot for small and large business to plan ahead. Flat tax for everybody on any source of income with starting point poverty level (I presume its $11,000/y. now) should be good solution. Russia has it and its works. Get rid of thousands often doubling programs requiring other thousands of FED employee just to track it. Also will be nice have sales tax included in price. “You pay what you see”. We have it now on gas station, Europe have VAT.
Minimum health care should be guaranteed for everyone with absolutely free preventive care.

How many new cars can buy one household with 1 million in cash vs. ten households with $100,000 in cash?
Why we pay sales tax for the SAME car EVRY time when is traded? Is any value added?

KILLERJANE says

I want to start my own health savings plan and get rid of paying out to someone else.

Self-insurance is a valid option. The high deductible plan is part way to this -- you have a massive deductible that essentially serves as self-insurance unless something catastrophic happens.

I don't think it could work in the US.

Your costs for a major illness can easily go over $1 million, because we charge so much more for health care than any other country on earth (with worse results, BTW).

I think the solution is publicly funded elections and a ban on private campaign contributions. That would take most of the corporate lobbying out of the picture, and allow Congressmen to do rational things, rather than to jack up costs with laws that please the pharma, hospital, AMA, and insurance campaign donors.

rather than to jack up costs with laws that please the pharma, hospital, AMA, and insurance campaign donors.

Costs aren't jacked up, profits are.

And profits are high because being in good health is worth a lot.

Patrick, Is it possible (this must be done already) for self employed people/unemployed people to 'ban together' to form a 'company' on paper that they 'work for' for the sole purpose of getting decent rates on a large group medical policy?(not talking illegal, just a co-op )

We all know large companies get the best rates since they have bargaining power with 30,000 employees. So the individual has zero bargaining power. Maybe there exists some type of bargaining/health co-op for the sole purpose of getting the same rates that GM or Apple employees get? even without the employer subsidy the rates would be way lower, no?

millions of people only keep 'working for the man' due to this issue of too expensive insurance. its crazymaking for sure.

Yes, people have tried:

http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/17/so-whats-a-health-insurance-coop-anyway/

But I think it could be done if you were determined and organized. After all, you get your health care locally almost all the time. You can literally walk or drive over and talk to the peopel you want to deal with.

Assuming that Refi really does stimulate the economy, how does one do that when they are underwater in their mortgage??

Even an easier solution to bring down the costs: free market

allow doctors from other countries to practice in USA. Many from Europe will be willing to get more than the 30k-40k euros/year than they get. Today is a monopoly of the medical schools/associations. Engineers in apple don't have to go to an American school. They just need to know how to do their job

make public the $$ amount (or at least the max) that a given practice can charge, and force the patient to pay an important part of it.

Shouldn't we start killing doctors, one by one, till they surrender?
We have been doing (with good sense) the same with unions.

APOCALYPSEFUCK is Tony Manero says

Doctors won't allow it.

Exactly. The AMA is one of the biggest bribers of Congress, number 14 on the all time biggest briber list:

http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.php?source=patrick.net&order=A

The AMA restricts the supply of doctors to extract more cash from their public milk-cows:

http://patrick.net/?p=1061994#comment-768584

We're just completely screwed until we get publicly funded campaigns and a ban on all private campaign contributions.

In America, we are all free, but some are more free than others.

I'm getting offers to refi that would cut my payments in half it's pretty amazing really

We're just completely screwed until we get publicly funded campaigns and a ban on all private campaign contributions.

You can't fix this without getting the right people in congress though and that is effectively impossible given the way things work now.

The truth is we're pretty much screwed for the next couple of decades while the assholes in charge run this country into the ground.

tts says

The truth is we're pretty much screwed for the next couple of decades while the assholes in charge run this country into the ground.

ayup. Only Bernie Sanders has the balls to take a true Left position to his constituents. But they number ~300,000 LOL.

We probably need to atomize this country's politics. Even though there are many "purple counties", there is a very deep red/blue divide in this country.

Team Red fucked things up pretty bad 1995-2006, so I think a divorce would be better than this battered spouse shit we're dealing with now, as they creep back into power.

PockyClipsNow says

We all know large companies get the best rates since they have bargaining power with 30,000 employees.

This is a few days old...but...

From what I understand (from when I worked for a huge corporation) these guys don't actually buy policies the way you are thinking. Once they are big enough they self-insure and use an insurance "company" to manage the benefits. The amount they charge employees is used to pay other employee's claims. I'm sure they have some insurance backstop in case things go haywire. Perhaps this has changed in the past ten years but that's the way it was when I was in mega-corporate land.

DrPepper says

Unfortunately, with increased health care costs, insurance, etc and no raise for 3 years the reality is most of the $220 per month will go to negating those increases.

Exactyl what I would expect to happen.

EightBall says

From what I understand (from when I worked for a huge corporation) these guys don't actually buy policies the way you are thinking. Once they are big enough they self-insure and use an insurance "company" to manage the benefits. The amount they charge employees is used to pay other employee's claims. I'm sure they have some insurance backstop in case things go haywire. Perhaps this has changed in the past ten years but that's the way it was when I was in mega-corporate land.

It worked that way when I worked for a few small companies as well. I mean like 20 people.

ja says

Even an easier solution to bring down the costs: free market

allow doctors from other countries to practice in USA. Many from Europe will be willing to get more than the 30k-40k euros/year than they get. Today is a monopoly of the medical schools/associations. Engineers in apple don't have to go to an American school. They just need to know how to do their job

make public the $$ amount (or at least the max) that a given practice can charge, and force the patient to pay an important part of it.

I really think eliminating lawsuits, getting doctors to prescribe the most recent generic prescriptions instead of the most recent drug, and denying people without insurance medical care would do more to lower medical costs than simply paying doctors less.

I hate to admit it, but yes I agree, refinancing should help the economy.

The main problem is that interest payments mostly go to some very rich institutions and inviduals and they just don't spend the money. They have mountains of cash already and don't know what to do with it.

The middle class, on the other hand, is very likely to actually spend it soon and cause economic activity.

This is why concentration of wealth also slows down the economy.

That's true, but only to an extent. The reason being that if these same middle class people that have extra money left over from refinancing spend it on imported goods, it really doesn't help the US economy.

zzyzzx says

I really think eliminating lawsuits [...] would do more to lower medical costs than simply paying doctors less.

Yes, but you can be shown to be wrong. See links I've provided above. Lawsuits are a tiny tiny percentage of medical costs already and payouts have stayed roughly stable for many years. You're giving a talking point.