Heisman Gator
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quote: Thanks and I cheated. I Googled and took out any links that had any Greek-American sites. Cats suffers from acute Arianna/Moulitsas Phobia. We have a very very expensive health care system that cannot work with the size/age/health of our population. As Rick mentioned above, we have to make something cheap for the masses. Have a two tiered system. Rich can eat cake while the rest can eat bread. X-Rays for us, MRI for rich...
A poster who left this board last year indicated he was involved in preparing a report for the Governor (FL). The info was dated around 1997 and as I recall he stated that there were more MRI machines in Orange County, CA than in the entire country of Canada. |
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Heisman Gator
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quote: Spur,
Could it be that many doctors do not want to work in small towns? Schools are bad for their kids? Maybe, rural America is not that great to raise a family? I know they have Green Cards for foreign Docs who finish medical school and work in small towns. These Doctors do their time in rural America (couple of years), get their green cards, and move to cities. Reminds me of the movie that made close to Gainesville (when I was in school). It was called Doc Hollywood or something like that.
Micanopy. Also the best way to 441 (off I-75)when coming from the south to attend home games. |
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Head Ball Coach
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quote: Originally posted by spurdog:
Yeah, single payer would be great if you wanted people to flee the profession and if you want to step into a public clinic for the flu and get treated 8 hours later. Hold down costs? You mean the way medicard holds down costs? By telling a provider that they have to treat a patient and this is all they are going to get for it? The next thing the govt would have to do is draft people into the medical profession and make them treat patients because the shortage of nurses and Dr.s would be astronomical. Rick, what works in Canada wont work in the U.S. The shear population disparity alone would be a deal breaker. Once all the banks, investors and other profitable entities have been destroyes with all this reform, where do you guys suggest we invest? Oh..thats right..green energy.
This post is mostly just rhetoric. Single payer and other forms of regulated private care work in most other countries. Medicare works. It has its issues, but mostly it works. I do think it would ultimately force us to make some choices though. We in the US want it all. We are opposed to any sort of rationing. You can either ration by money, which most in the US oppose, or you can ration some other way, like other countries, which most in the US also oppose. We all think we are entitled to as much health care as we want from whoever we want. That system will fail, and is failing, and it doesn't matter if it is single payer, public or private. Motown, ultimately I agree with you - I have always thought we need a 2 tier system. One that gives you choices, and you pay for the choices, and another that is much more basic, and cheaper, with less costly options. quote: Originally posted by soflagator:
When Bobby found out that Mickey and Jimbo were at each others throats, he drove straight to the Magic Kingdom to see if he could calm the situation down.
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True Gator
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Robalino:
Read a little deeper:
"The danger for Democrats from Tuesday’s results can be overstated. Polls from the contested states show that Obama’s approval ratings remain basically the same as compared to the 2008 election; the defeated Democrats were bad candidates or under-performers; and the Democrats managed to pick up a Congressional seat which they haven’t held for more than a century.
But there is clearly a rising dissatisfaction with the political class among voters, and the majority party typically bears the brunt of that backlash. Tuesday night may be the first sign of that process if Democrats do not remember who elected them and why."
And: "Despite what Republican spinners have argued, the message delivered by voters in Virginia, New Jersey and upstate New York yesterday carried neither a partisan nor an ideological bent to it. Rather, it was the latest indicator of a populist anger that rages against any convenient target of either party."
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Heisman Gator
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quote: Originally posted by MotownGator:
I miss Gator Jersey's posts here. Wish he would come back and post his thoughts on the NJ debacle. I do not think he would have been a fan of GS alum Corzine.
Motown hit the key point of the NJ election in his GS alum comment. While this would have been a close race anyway, the republicans were able to turn this race into the vilification of Goldman Sacs and that doomed Corzine. The interest rate swap scandal that came to light a few weeks ago was just the final nail in Corzine's coffin. For all of the hey that our local right wingers want to make about this election having anything to do with President Obama, I think it speaks more to the growing discontent by the Amreican public, which is ever so slowly waking up, to the corrupt link between Corporate America, the Financial Institutions and both political parties and all of the political elite in our country. quote:
New Jersey Taxpayer Paying Goldman Sachs $1 Million Month For Bonds That Don't Exist (GS)
Back in 2003, the New Jersey Transportation Trust Fund Authority, which funds rail and road projects in the state, sold $345 million in auction-rate bonds. That's where the trouble began:
Bloomberg: “This vividly shows the risk of entering into interest- rate swap agreements,” said Christopher Taylor, former executive director of the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board in Alexandria, Virginia. “The world’s got to see what stupidity even the sophisticated investors like the transportation fund can get into.”
While New Jersey replaced the debt with fixed-rate securities in 2008 after the $330 billion auction-rate bond market froze, the swap -- in which two parties typically exchange fixed payments for ones based on floating interest rates -- isn’t scheduled to expire until 2019.
So thethe state was sick of paying a variable interest rate on its massive debt load. So it "swapped" interest rates with Goldman, opting for a fixed rate instead:
In New Jersey, the 3.6 percent fixed rate the trust fund is paying on the swap has pushed the cost to taxpayers of the original $345 million borrowing to 7.8 percent, the most the authority has paid since it was formed in 1985, according to records posted on its Web site.
The state paid $940,000 under the agreement last month and a total of $11.4 million since the auction-rate bonds were redeemed. The expenditures come as the fund reaches its borrowing limit and Governor Jon Corzine, Goldman’s former chairman who was a U.S. senator when the contract was signed, seeks $400 million in budget reductions as tax receipts fall.
This is just one of several stories of interest-rate swaps gone bad. But bear in mind a few things. Everyone seems to have been caught off guard by the decline in interest rates over the past few years. This isn't just a matter of banks foisting bad deals on state and municipal governments -- Larry Summers (no fool) got burned when serving as the President of Harvard.
On the fact that the bonds don't exist anymore is a red herring. The state chose to replace the bonds, voluntarily, from floating to fixed. There's no reason that should get them off the hook from a side bet.
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| Posts: 1681 | Location: Too Far From Gainesville | Registered: February 17, 2008 | 
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