Davos: How Will This Crisis Change Us?

Yes, here, unlike those other industrialized "first world" nations, when you lose your job here, and can't get another (now the norm) you lose your access to health care, too.

Get seriously sick while unemployed during the Wall Street-manufactured New Great Depression and you either go bankrupt or die, or both.

The "invisible hand" here choked off good paying jobs and the deficit was hidden by massive accumulation of unsustainable debt - for a time.

Now the billionaires are being bailed out - the banksters, to use the dirty thirties term - and the rest of us are having to bail out of their doomed financial Hindenburg without any parachutes at all, let alone their tax-financed $19 billion golden ones.

I assume you are talking about Michigan. In that case, you are talking about a state that has generally been governed by the Democratic Party and a fairly liberal bunch of Ds at that. Plus a state with very powerful unions that pull it even further to the left. And a dysfunctional disaster area of a city known as Detroit that has been under the control of the civil-rights left for decades.

Acknowedging these facts might help you understand how Christians (not so-called -- I mean actual Christians) might support Republicans, at least in your neck of the woods.

LV

German is the official language of Berne. Bernese German, spoken by most of the switzerland clothing inhabitants, is the local Swiss German dialect.

there are positive externalities to providing comprehensive insurance for major health incidences that cannot be smoothed over through drawing on future earnings and savings. This is preferable to "free" health-care because it still keeps up incentives while helping workers with medical conditions not to have to pay for healthcare thru the nose or be tied down in the wrong job for healthcare reasons.

It also would help with the proliferation of decentralized local house churches that are only capable of providing at best part-time relief from having to get other employment to its "ministers"..., since most part-time jobs do not offer health-care benefits (for good reasons) or pay that well...

dlw

COBRA coverage (what you can pay for at an unsubsidized rate of 102%) is currently averaging $1500 per month, if you can afford to keep it for the one year period before it runs out. Obviously, this exceeds almost all unemployment compensation. There are other caveats - it's not even available at all if the employer ceases operations, significantly alters their existing plan, or decides to no longer offer health benefits.

If you don't have insurance, access except at emergency rooms, some of which bill at a beginning minimum rate of $5000 per incident, with any additional care required bumping that easily into six figures, is not possible, For instance, without health insurance, your cancer is going to be fatal, as all the statistics prove. You will not have any meaningful access to treatment without the ability to pay.

The fact is, this New Great Depression, just like the last one, is made in Wall Street, USA. The suffering is radiating worldwide, it's true, but at least other democratic, First World countries have a safety net for other than billionaires.

It's not that medical bills "can be devastating," they are devastating. There is absolutely no question about that.

And it's also true that the Madoff apologists of this world, as former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan observes, are so out of touch with reality and drunk with a lavish sense of entitlement, that they now complain, like he does, of being cooped up in their multimillion dollar penthouses, as if they are spoiled teenagers who've had their allowances cut slightly, while average people suffer terribly.

Saying you've never had a problem, is like Marie Antoinette saying, "Is there no bread? Let them eat cake, like me."

It's easy to pooh-pooh others' problems, even on this growing mass scale, when you've never experienced, with an "I'm all right, Jack, (Keep your hand off my stack.)"

Do you want an answer????

Reaching people usually involves listening. So maybe one of the answers about how this changes me (us) is that we learn to listen to each other and walk together; and not make our first move as one of indicating how we cannot change unless another group of people (i.e. political opponents) change first.

"COBRA coverage (what you can pay for at an unsubsidized rate of 102%) is currently averaging $1500 per month."

This is true, which I found out this summer as I was changing jobs. I didn't opt to take COBRA, given I had no income at the time. I'm not sure who can afford it, especially with lack of income. And certainly, a few years ago when I was drawing unemployment, that would have more than exhausted my unemployment income, which was all I had to live on at the time.

"If you don't have insurance, access except at emergency rooms, some of which bill at a beginning minimum rate of $5000 per incident, with any additional care required bumping that easily into six figures, is not possible."

So that one time when I was unemployed and my ankle swelled up mysteriously, and I went to a local cllinic (not an emergency room) and got it treated for a couple hundred bucks -- that was impossible.

Wow! I performed a miracle on myself!

Am I in trouble with God for that?

LV

Republicans never listen to the other side. It's their way or the highway.Elections have consequences. It's time for Republicans to get out of the way.

Type your comment here.Sure, a one-time doctor's visit might cost only several hundred dollars to treat a minor ailment that requires no more than a prescription.

If you have no insurance, many will tell you what an examination of the above costs, and ask for payment in advance.

When my teenage son was downed by a hit and run driver who was never caught outside a shopping mall, the hospital bill we received was $235,000 for a week's care.

We weren't in trouble with God for that, but we certainly were in trouble. The insurer, a major provider, never did pay because they claimed he'd been admitted without the prior authorization required.

Your flip, sarcastic attitude really is a case of, "Is there no bread? Let them eat cake."

Madoff morality became the de facto modus operandi of business over the last decades. Becky141 is absolutely correct as well as eloquent, for while socialism is obviously flawed, the problem with capitalism is capitalists, as William F. Buckley used to like to quote. Before he died, Buckley found what was known already known then to have become morally obscene, and he hadn't lived to see you ain't seen nothin' yet.

This crop of crony capitalists of ours has been completely shameless in their self-interested greed and exploitation, unprecedented in scale in human history.

Ideology is often an excuse to avoid reality.

"We have trusted in 'the invisible hand' to make everything turn out all right, and believed that it wasn't necessary for us to bring virtue to bear on our decisions. But things haven't turned out all right and the invisible hand has let go of some things, like 'the common good.'"

That's just a wee bit of an oversimplification. Actually, we've trusted in a mixed economy of private business overseen by an often burdensome regulatory state, backed by a substantial welfare state. That's especially true in Europe, which hasn't escaped any of the difficulties of this recession, and largely true in the US (although the welfare state aspect is much less substantial here.

I think Jim's reference to Gandhi's "Seven Deadly Social Sins" was quite apt, but I think a strong case can be made that much of what has gone wrong is more a failure of the regulatory and welfare state than of markets. For years governments have been inclined to see the goods that private enterprises actually provide, however imperfectly, as secondary to their value as a source of tax revenue or as tools that they can redirect toward their favored ends. In the process, they have created many of the things that Gandhi rightfully scorns: wealth (redistributed) without work, education (in public schools) without character. Not to mention politics without principle. (See: HR 1, the "Stimulus Bill" Heh heh.)

A free-market advocate will not go for very long without acknowledging that markets are to some extent a deal with the devil; much of what we propose to do is harness self-interest. But the same self interest is present in all persons, in the market or in government. Advocates of activist government seldom acknowledge that self-interest affects government as well. If we have romanticized anything in this age, it is the state. And now, I suspect, we are paying for that mistake.

LV

Of course, Jim is basically "preaching to the choir" here. But this is a case where the choir needs to consider how to "get the word out" to others. I agree with Lord Voldemort that Jim's reference to Gandhi's "Seven Deadly Social Sins" is remarkably apt. Perhaps that is the place to start - i.e., even atheists and non-Christian believers might accept Gandhi's philosophy. Just a thought. Peace.

Yes, here, unlike those other industrialized "first world" nations, when you lose your job here, and can't get another (now the norm) you lose your access to health care, too.

Get seriously sick while unemployed during the Wall Street-manufactured New Great Depression and you either go bankrupt or die, or both.

The "invisible hand" here choked off good paying jobs and the deficit was hidden by massive accumulation of unsustainable debt - for a time.

Now the billionaires are being bailed out - the banksters, to use the dirty thirties term - and the rest of us are having to bail out of their doomed financial Hindenburg without any parachutes at all, let alone their tax-financed $19 billion golden ones.

Sounds like you think everything is just dandy. Promoting Max Weber may not help. Some people are questioning the Calvinist baloney Weber favored and the resulting multi trillion dollar ripoff of money invested with unscrupulous greed mongers, and the exploitation workers that generates the wealth they have emptied into the pockets of a few.

Are you familiar with Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther King?

This is called mirroring. How do you feel abut it, Witness for Peace?

How do I feel? I feel like you're violating the guidelines. There are millions of people who are members of Reformed denominations, including 2 million American in the PC(USA), Reformed Church in America, Christian Reformed Church and many others.

I will gladly accept your apology and continue our discussion. If you read becky's posts, she was advocating absurd conspiracy theories. Max Weber was a respected scholar; you are free to RESPECTFULLY disagree with him, as I expect I do on a number of points.

NMRod,

No, an employed person does not lose access to health care. I've been unemployed and still been treated for injuries and infections. Sometimes I've kept up my health insurance under COBRA, sometimes I've resorted to paying for care out of my own pocket.

What you lose when unemployed is employer-provided and paid-for insurance.

I won't pretend that's not a problem. I've never needed really exotic or expensive care, employed or not, for which I am grateful. Medical bills for a severe illness can be devastating without insurance.

But if we're going to address this problem we should be specific about what the problem is. The problem isn't access, it's insurance. Hyperbole helps no-one.

LV

COBRA coverage (what you can pay for at an unsubsidized rate of 102%) is currently averaging $1500 per month, if you can afford to keep it for the one year period before it runs out. Obviously, this exceeds almost all unemployment compensation. There are other caveats - it's not even available at all if the employer ceases operations, significantly alters their existing plan, or decides to no longer offer health benefits.

If you don't have insurance, access except at emergency rooms, some of which bill at a beginning minimum rate of $5000 per incident, with any additional care required bumping that easily into six figures, is not possible, For instance, without health insurance, your cancer is going to be fatal, as all the statistics prove. You will not have any meaningful access to treatment without the ability to pay.

The fact is, this New Great Depression, just like the last one, is made in Wall Street, USA. The suffering is radiating worldwide, it's true, but at least other democratic, First World countries have a safety net for other than billionaires.

It's not that medical bills "can be devastating," they are devastating. There is absolutely no question about that.

And it's also true that the Madoff apologists of this world, as former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan observes, are so out of touch with reality and drunk with a lavish sense of entitlement, that they now complain, like he does, of being cooped up in their multimillion dollar penthouses, as if they are spoiled teenagers who've had their allowances cut slightly, while average people suffer terribly.

Saying you've never had a problem, is like Marie Antoinette saying, "Is there no bread? Let them eat cake, like me."

It's easy to pooh-pooh others' problems, even on this growing mass scale, when you've never experienced, with an "I'm all right, Jack, (Keep your hand off my stack.)"

"COBRA coverage (what you can pay for at an unsubsidized rate of 102%) is currently averaging $1500 per month."

This is true, which I found out this summer as I was changing jobs. I didn't opt to take COBRA, given I had no income at the time. I'm not sure who can afford it, especially with lack of income. And certainly, a few years ago when I was drawing unemployment, that would have more than exhausted my unemployment income, which was all I had to live on at the time.

I really don't see Cobra as anything except perhaps for someone who is so sick they have lost their job and the insurance can be kept up for their last few months of life so not to loose everything they have to medical bills .
Not really that much , but its better then no cobra I guess.

When I was in betwee, jobs " 18 yrs ago" with five kids , all i paid for was a basic medical policy that would pay for expensive hospital stays or medical care , I think the deductable was a few thousand dollars for each kid .

I changed somewhat my view on medial care , sort of a government plan with private sector competition to keep it
on the stick so to speak .

"If you don't have insurance, access except at emergency rooms, some of which bill at a beginning minimum rate of $5000 per incident, with any additional care required bumping that easily into six figures, is not possible."

So that one time when I was unemployed and my ankle swelled up mysteriously, and I went to a local cllinic (not an emergency room) and got it treated for a couple hundred bucks -- that was impossible.

Wow! I performed a miracle on myself!

Am I in trouble with God for that?

LV

Republicans never listen to the other side. It's their way or the highway.Elections have consequences. It's time for Republicans to get out of the way.

Type your comment here.Sure, a one-time doctor's visit might cost only several hundred dollars to treat a minor ailment that requires no more than a prescription.

If you have no insurance, many will tell you what an examination of the above costs, and ask for payment in advance.

When my teenage son was downed by a hit and run driver who was never caught outside a shopping mall, the hospital bill we received was $235,000 for a week's care.

We weren't in trouble with God for that, but we certainly were in trouble. The insurer, a major provider, never did pay because they claimed he'd been admitted without the prior authorization required.

Your flip, sarcastic attitude really is a case of, "Is there no bread? Let them eat cake."

Madoff morality became the de facto modus operandi of business over the last decades. Becky141 is absolutely correct as well as eloquent, for while socialism is obviously flawed, the problem with capitalism is capitalists, as William F. Buckley used to like to quote. Before he died, Buckley found what was known already known then to have become morally obscene, and he hadn't lived to see you ain't seen nothin' yet.

This crop of crony capitalists of ours has been completely shameless in their self-interested greed and exploitation, unprecedented in scale in human history.

Ideology is often an excuse to avoid reality.

Sounds like you're angry about something. Ranting about "neo-fuedalism" won't help. 'You "free market" folks have gone too far'
Are you familiar with Max Weber?

there are positive externalities to providing comprehensive insurance for major health incidences that cannot be smoothed over through drawing on future earnings and savings. This is preferable to "free" health-care because it still keeps up incentives while helping workers with medical conditions not to have to pay for healthcare thru the nose or be tied down in the wrong job for healthcare reasons.

It also would help with the proliferation of decentralized local house churches that are only capable of providing at best part-time relief from having to get other employment to its "ministers"..., since most part-time jobs do not offer health-care benefits (for good reasons) or pay that well...

dlw