Voting for President, for the wrong reasons?

[Queequeg]

 

What are you, then?

[DGuller]

What are you, then?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actuary

[OttoVonBismarck]

Considering that my family left the Old World due to being Jewish, and a significant part of it went to Israel, your little squirt of verbal diarrhea is a little off the mark.

And you moved to America and became a leftist anti-semite, what does what the other parts of your family did have jack shit to do with you?

[DGuller]

Considering that my family left the Old World due to being Jewish, and a significant part of it went to Israel, your little squirt of verbal diarrhea is a little off the mark.

And you moved to America and became a leftist anti-semite, what does what the other parts of your family did have jack shit to do with you?

[Eddie Teach]

What are you, then?

An accountant who knows calculus.

[DGuller]

What are you, then?

An accountant who knows calculus.

Are you people trying to give me stroke? 

[Eddie Teach]

Guller counts the beans that haven't ripened yet.

[ulmont]

Going back to the original premise of the thread:

[DGuller]

Guller counts the beans that haven't ripened yet.

  That's actually a pretty good description.

[Neil]

A gay accountant?

[DGuller]

An even better description would be counting the chickens before they hatch.

[11B4V]

Faulty logic. You would have to count the eggs before the chickens.

[jimmy olsen]

You like centrist and moderate but you're supporting a candidate whose policy positions are neither.  I don't believe that there's a real Mitt who is actually a conviction moderate who would pass universal healthcare, but better; manage Afghanistan, but better; do stimulus, but better.  In my view if he's not his views are very conservative, if he is then he's been lying constantly for these past six years and doesn't deserve to be in office.

Going back some pages, but this jumped out at me. I can't imagine such a thing as a moderate who would pass universal healthcare. That's an issue wholly owned by the left over here.

Romeny passed it in Massachusetts and in the '08 primary when he ran to the right he championed it for the entire nation. However when Obama stole it from him it became heretical.

[Phillip V]

You like centrist and moderate but you're supporting a candidate whose policy positions are neither.  I don't believe that there's a real Mitt who is actually a conviction moderate who would pass universal healthcare, but better; manage Afghanistan, but better; do stimulus, but better.  In my view if he's not his views are very conservative, if he is then he's been lying constantly for these past six years and doesn't deserve to be in office.

Going back some pages, but this jumped out at me. I can't imagine such a thing as a moderate who would pass universal healthcare. That's an issue wholly owned by the left over here.

Romeny passed it in Massachusetts and in the '08 primary when he ran to the right he championed it for the entire nation. However when Obama stole it from him it became heretical.

No. In 2007, Romney did not champion his Massachusetts healthcare plan for the nation, especially regarding the individual mandate. He resorted mostly to "let each state decide".

In 2007-08 running against Clinton, Obama did not want the individual mandate, either.

[Sheilbh]

Sort of.  Romney did explicitly tout it as a model for other states.  The debate wasn't much about individual mandates on the Republican side.  Rather it was whether the federal government would require states to adopt a Romneycare model.  Romney's position was this, 'I would not mandate at the federal level that every state do what we do, but what I would say at the federal level is we'll keep giving you these special payments we make if you adopt plans that get everybody insured.'  All the while he was saying that his plan that got everyone insured - a good conservative plan in his view - was a good model for other states to achieve that.

You're right on Obama and the individual mandate (he also stole one of McCain's ideas on healthcare).  As I said Obama was running to the right of Clinton on healthcare and with those two exceptions - one from Clinton, one from McCain - what he campaigned on was what was passed.

Compare with this Romney article from 2009 about his opposition to Obamacare, I think the tone, emphasis and policy is rather different - and closer to the Republicans in 2008 - than what's going on now:

This opinion article by Mitt Romney appeared in USA Today on 07/30/2009. It is entitled Mr. President, What's the Rush?

Because of President Obama's frantic approach, health care has run off the rails. For the sake of 47 million uninsured Americans, we need to get it back on track.

Health care cannot be handled the same way as the stimulus and cap-and-trade bills. With those, the president stuck to the old style of lawmaking: He threw in every special favor imaginable, ground it up and crammed it through a partisan Democratic Congress. Health care is simply too important to the economy, to employment and to America's families to be larded up and rushed through on an artificial deadline. There's a better way. And the lessons we learned in Massachusetts could help Washington find it.

No other state has made as much progress in covering their uninsured as Massachusetts. The bill that made it happen wasn't a rush job. Shortly after becoming governor, I worked in a bipartisan fashion with Democrats to insure all our citizens. It took almost two years to find a solution. When we did, it passed the 200-member legislature with only two dissenting votes. It had the support of the business community, the hospital sector and insurers. For health care reform to succeed in Washington, the president must finally do what he promised during the campaign: Work with Republicans as well as Democrats.

Massachusetts also proved that you don't need government insurance. Our citizens purchase private, free-market medical insurance. There is no "public option." With more than 1,300 health insurance companies, a federal government insurance company isn't necessary. It would inevitably lead to massive taxpayer subsidies, to lobbyist-inspired coverage mandates and to the liberals' dream: a European-style single-payer system. To find common ground with skeptical Republicans and conservative Democrats, the president will have to jettison left-wing ideology for practicality and dump the public option.

The cost issue

Our experience also demonstrates that getting every citizen insured doesn't have to break the bank. First, we established incentives for those who were uninsured to buy insurance. Using tax penalties, as we did, or tax credits, as others have proposed, encourages "free riders" to take responsibility for themselves rather than pass their medical costs on to others. This doesn't cost the government a single dollar. Second, we helped pay for our new program by ending an old one — something government should do more often. The federal government sends an estimated $42 billion to hospitals that care for the poor: Use those funds instead to help the poor buy private insurance, as we did.

When our bill passed three years ago, the legislature projected that our program would cost $725 million in 2009. At $723 million, next year's forecast is pretty much on target. When you calculate all the savings, including that from the free hospital care we eliminated, the net cost to the state is approximately $350 million. The watchdog Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation concluded that our program's cost is "relatively modest" and "well within initial projections."

And if subsidies and coverages are reined in, as I've suggested, the Massachusetts program could actually break even. One thing is certain: The president must insist on a program that doesn't add to our spending burden. We simply cannot afford another trillion-dollar mistake.

The Massachusetts reform aimed at getting virtually all our citizens insured. In that, it worked: 98% of our citizens are insured, 440,000 previously uninsured are covered and almost half of those purchased insurance on their own, with no subsidy. But overall, health care inflation has continued its relentless rise. Here is where the federal government can do something we could not: Take steps to stop or slow medical inflation.

At the core of our health cost problem is an incentive problem. Patients don't care what treatments cost once they pass the deductible. And providers are paid more when they do more; they are paid for quantity, not quality. We will tame runaway costs only when we change incentives. We might do what some countries have done: Require patients to pay a portion of their bill, except for certain conditions. And providers could be paid an annual fixed fee for the primary care of an individual and a separate fixed fee for the treatment of a specific condition. These approaches have far more promise than the usual bromides of electronic medical records, transparency and pay-for-performance, helpful though they will be.

Try a business-like analysis

I spent most of my career in the private sector. When well-managed businesses considered a major change of some kind, they engaged in extensive analysis, brought in outside experts, exhaustively evaluated every alternative, built consensus among those who would be affected and then moved ahead. Health care is many times bigger than all the companies in the Dow Jones combined. And the president is rushing changes that dwarf what any business I know has faced.

Republicans are not the party of "no" when it comes to health care reform. This Republican is proud to be the first governor to insure all his state's citizens. Other Republicans such as Rep. Paul Ryan and Sens. Bob Bennett and John McCain, among others, have proposed their own plans. Republicans will join with the Democrats if the president abandons his government insurance plan, if he endeavors to craft a plan that does not burden the nation with greater debt, if he broadens his scope to reduce health costs for all Americans, and if he is willing to devote the rigorous effort, requisite time and bipartisan process that health care reform deserves.

Going back some pages, but this jumped out at me. I can't imagine such a thing as a moderate who would pass universal healthcare. That's an issue wholly owned by the left over here.

That was more addressed at what Phil was saying - that universal healthcare's a good idea and that he likes moderates and centrists.  Though I would point out that all the Republican candidates in 2008 had more developed healthcare policies than Romney currently has and the aimed to 'stop the free-riders' and to reduce the number of uninsured.