Gyroscopic Investing

Add in a rate increase and the fools may just send us into another Depression.

[quote=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/2 ... 52172.html]The Senate early Friday passed a Republican budget plan that would cut spending by $5.1 trillion over 10 years, raise military funding and repeal Obamacare.

The non-binding budget, debated all week and passed 52-46 during a 15-hour marathon session before the Easter recess, gives Republicans another crack at repealing the Affordable Care Act, probably through a process known as reconciliation, and increases defense spending while slashing funds in other areas, including education and health care. The House passed a similar spending plan Wednesday.[/quote]

MachineGhost wrote: Add in a rate increase and the fools may just send us into another Depression.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/27/senate-budget-vote-republicans_n_6952172.html wrote:The Senate early Friday passed a Republican budget plan that would cut spending by $5.1 trillion over 10 years, raise military funding and repeal Obamacare.

The non-binding budget, debated all week and passed 52-46 during a 15-hour marathon session before the Easter recess, gives Republicans another crack at repealing the Affordable Care Act, probably through a process known as reconciliation, and increases defense spending while slashing funds in other areas, including education and health care. The House passed a similar spending plan Wednesday.

Note the "non-binding" part, which means this is about as useful as a guide to the future as Miss Cleo's forecasts.

Libertarian666 wrote:

MachineGhost wrote: Add in a rate increase and the fools may just send us into another Depression.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/27/senate-budget-vote-republicans_n_6952172.html wrote:The Senate early Friday passed a Republican budget plan that would cut spending by $5.1 trillion over 10 years, raise military funding and repeal Obamacare.

The non-binding budget, debated all week and passed 52-46 during a 15-hour marathon session before the Easter recess, gives Republicans another crack at repealing the Affordable Care Act, probably through a process known as reconciliation, and increases defense spending while slashing funds in other areas, including education and health care. The House passed a similar spending plan Wednesday.

Note the "non-binding" part, which means this is about as useful as a guide to the future as Miss Cleo's forecasts.

Well, it does show what the republicans (House/Senate proposals are close, I believe) want to do.

Which continues to scare me.

[Edit: move comment outside quote....]

After being laid-off last week, I bought Blue Cross Blue Shield in the private marketplace online in a few minutes. It was expensive. But I appreciate:

No pre-existing condition exclusions
Adult children up to age 26 can stay on the plan

Those things must stay in. If private insurance was like it was pre-Obamacare, my wife and I would both be excluded pariahs, uninsurable, and one illness away from financial ruin and destitution. If the GOP wants to repeal those things, they might as well try to repeal Social Security. That too would be political suicide, and for good reason.

And, full disclosure, I am a Republican!

ochotona wrote: After being laid-off last week, I bought Blue Cross Blue Shield in the private marketplace online in a few minutes. It was expensive. But I appreciate:

No pre-existing condition exclusions
Adult children up to age 26 can stay on the plan

Those things must stay in. If private insurance was like it was pre-Obamacare, my wife and I would both be excluded pariahs, uninsurable, and one illness away from financial ruin and destitution. If the GOP wants to repeal those things, they might as well try to repeal Social Security. That too would be political suicide, and for good reason.

And, full disclosure, I am a Republican!

Why didn't you go to your state's insurance exchange so you could get the Federal subsidy?  It's F-R-E-E money although I'm sure the insurance companies have jacked up the premiums to account for it.

In discussions with family and friends, I've found that most people fall into one of three categories as it relates to Obamacare:

1) Those who've seen their premiums increase dramatically with a decrease in benefits (higher deductibles and/or max out of pocket) tend to hate it
2) Those who've either a) had prior difficulty getting insurance due to pre-existing conditions, b) are 26 or under previously without insurance, or c) qualify for subsidized premiums tend to love it
3) Those who've been otherwise unaffected by it directly love it or hate it depending on their political ideology

I expected the newly Republican Senate to do something like this, although I'm a bit surprised at the increase in defense spending.  It's almost like they just reached into the standard playbook and didn't really think hard about what specifically they wanted to accomplish.  Of course this is just stale political posturing and I can't understand what was going through their little pointy heads.

Among other things, repealing Obamacare wholesale won't be very popular - primarily because of exactly those two things that ochotona mentioned.  I think they're going to have to pick it apart and repeal specific parts of it - if it were up to me I'd start by abolishing that PCORI initiative, which is basically a giant toilet flush of money.

WiseOne wrote: Among other things, repealing Obamacare wholesale won't be very popular - primarily because of exactly those two things that ochotona mentioned.  I think they're going to have to pick it apart and repeal specific parts of it - if it were up to me I'd start by abolishing that PCORI initiative, which is basically a giant toilet flush of money.

What is it?

MachineGhost wrote:

WiseOne wrote: Among other things, repealing Obamacare wholesale won't be very popular - primarily because of exactly those two things that ochotona mentioned.  I think they're going to have to pick it apart and repeal specific parts of it - if it were up to me I'd start by abolishing that PCORI initiative, which is basically a giant toilet flush of money.

What is it?

Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute.  Brief article here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient-C ... _Institute

Oh, the DEATH PANEL !!!! 

No, it's basically a duplicate of the NIH except that it favors touchy-feely projects run by foundations instead of actual science.  The grants overwhelmingly are for pediatric conditions...because hey, everyone feels sorry for sick kids.

IMHO (and that of many others), these projects will accomplish exactly nothing.  Not to mention that creating a mirror of the NIH's funding machine is hugely expensive.  It would have been so much more sensible to take the money and inject it into the NIH, which is currently starved for funds to the point where grant paylines are well under 10%, and most investigators are spending too much of their creative energy trying to get grants.

I made too much money for the exchanges, yes. And I am unemployed. Both of those nice things.

ochotona wrote: I made too much money for the exchanges, yes. And I am unemployed. Both of those nice things.

Well after this October when the new enrollment period starts, they will request your next year's estimated income.  So if you're still unemployed, I believe you will be able to put down $0 for wages and thus qualify.  And Medicaid too if your state expanded it.

MachineGhost wrote: Well after this October when the new enrollment period starts, they will request your next year's estimated income.  So if you're still unemployed, I believe you will be able to put down $0 for wages and thus qualify.  And Medicaid too if your state expanded it.

I will be working again fairly soon. I'm having interviews. Deflation, what pain.

If you were curious about PCORI:  got this bit of spam email just now:

27 PROJECTS RECEIVE TIER II "PIPELINE TO PROPOSAL" AWARDS

We've approved Tier II funding totaling $674,328 for 27 projects through our "Pipeline to Proposal" Awards program. This program provides three tiers of support to help individuals and groups not typically involved in clinical research to develop the means to produce community-led research funding proposals. Tier II awards provide up to $25,000 per project to help recipients strengthen community partnerships, develop research capacity, and hone a question that could become the basis of a full PCORI funding proposal. View a list of the Tier II projects and read more about the awards in a new blog post.

Translation for the passage above, in bold:  We are handing gallons of money to people who have never done research before and have no idea what they're doing.  And I can't even begin to guess what "community-led" means in this context.

Also there were links in the email but they were all broken.

WiseOne wrote: If you were curious about PCORI:  got this bit of spam email just now:

27 PROJECTS RECEIVE TIER II "PIPELINE TO PROPOSAL" AWARDS

We've approved Tier II funding totaling $674,328 for 27 projects through our "Pipeline to Proposal" Awards program. This program provides three tiers of support to help individuals and groups not typically involved in clinical research to develop the means to produce community-led research funding proposals. Tier II awards provide up to $25,000 per project to help recipients strengthen community partnerships, develop research capacity, and hone a question that could become the basis of a full PCORI funding proposal. View a list of the Tier II projects and read more about the awards in a new blog post.

Translation for the passage above, in bold:  We are handing gallons of money to people who have never done research before and have no idea what they're doing.  And I can't even begin to guess what "community-led" means in this context.

Also there were links in the email but they were all broken.

I know exactly what "community-led" means in that context: it means that the appropriate level of payoffs to local "leaders" is in the bag (so to speak).