National Health Care, coming soon...?

In new poll numbers collected over the past week, the New York Times is showing that 72% of respondents are in favor of a government-run health care plan. Even more shocking -- 50% of Republicans were in favor of this.

See the original article here -- NYT Poll on Government Health Care.

This would have been astounding to me a few years back, but after wrestling with health care costs at my last company, and then shopping for private health care while starting my new business over the past 6 months, I am not that surprised.

Because I left my prior employer at the end of the year, and had to make the Cobra Election decision before the stimulus package was signed, I was not eligible for the low cost Cobra option in time to take advantage of it. Instead, I had the dubious pleasure of shopping for personal health insurance. In the end, it didn't take that long to find coverage, but the coverage options were terrible, and the costs were/are very high. I settled on a low end plan with very limited prescription coverage, and still spend almost $500/month to cover myself and a child.

I would imagine that challenges like that are behind the poll results that CBS news and the NYT found. It wasn't that much better when purchasing insurance in a small business -- there is only so long that companies can absorb 8-15% annual premium increases before even diehrd libertarians are willing to accept a government progam.

It will be very interesting to see if other polls find similar responses, and if so, where the debate goes from here...

Stay tuned...

The Law of Unintended Consequenses strikes again...

This link is to a great piece in Roll Call on June 15th about the impact of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA), and the unintended consequences that this law has generated...

I have commented on this before a number of times -- the law is overreaching, under-informed, and will absolutely put a large number of small businesses out of business.

If you sell or make a product that could be marketed for use by children 12 and under, even if it is a reseller that is marketing to this group, this law applies. Not only that, but any violation is required to be reported within 24 hours, and may be criminal...

Worst of all, each state's Attorney General is now empowered to independently prosecute under this law.

Here is another link to the same piece in Roll Call...

And here is a link to another piece on CPSIA from CNN Money.

Lastly is a piece from Overlawyered.com -- a great site in general -- on the whole CPSIA debacle you can find here.

State Spending Transparency Hearing

State Spending Transparency Hearing

This is a great post from across the Delaware where they are debating a bill on making spending by the Commonwealth transparent to taxpayers...

I was particularly interested in the note from the testimony from the former Chief of Staff to the Governor of Missouri, who noted that their web portal had more than 20 Million hits, and that constituents had already identified savings for the state. All this, and according to him, the site was built with current staff and no additional funding.

In an era of fiscal distress, this would seem to be a natural way to improve government... and yet there is significant opposition. The more things change...

Graphic view of the current bailout....

I ran across this post today, and was left with my jaw hanging open... Go ahead and take a look, I'll wait...

Back? Good. Now for those of you who didn't feel like clicking, it was a graphic representation of the costs of the programs enacted over the last 12 months to combat the financial crisis as compared with some of the largest single item expenditures in our country's history -- like the Apollo program, the Korean War, and the New Deal, to name a few...

He did adjust the numbers for inflation, but a quick review of the comments shows that there is some significant disagreement over whether to value "investment" activity, like TARP funds that will be repaid as sunk costs...

I won't debate that here, except to say, that not valuing them ignores the fact that they are being paid for with Debt, which will have to be paid back with interest...

The only quibble that I have with the graph is that the author has assigned a value to the New Deal that I don't think is completely accurate... In the comments, the author mentions opportunity costs as part of the justification of calculating the costs of the recent programs, but I am not sure that the same opportunity costs were used in calculating the historical costs. Social Security is an ever-growing expense that came out of the New Deal -- and I don't think that he is including the current and expected costs from this program.

That said, the dollar amounts are staggering... The government is/will be issuing tremendous amounts of debt to cover these costs, and that is not something to be taken lightly...

Have these programs kept the economy from getting even worse? Quite possibly...but the bigger question is whether the costs of these programs will cause more pain in the long haul then the immediate pain would have been had they not been enacted.

Chancevs

Gold for sale -- at what real cost....?

So apparently the Germans have a strong desire to buy gold, and an entrepreneur is looking to help them out by placing Gold-vending machines in train stations all over Germany...

If this is true - and this article is from the Financial Times -- then folks in the EU should be pretty nervous about the long term health of their economy.

Germany is the largest economy in the EU, and of course in the Euro zone. If German citizens are anxious enough to replace their individual currency holdings and Euro-denominated investments with personal holdings in gold that is a serious issue. Not only is this indicative of terrible consumer confidence, which would be an albatross around the neck of the economy, but it poses a risk to the value of the Euro, which would have an impact on the entire Euro zone.

Granted, one entrepreneur setting out to sell gold in small lots does not a crisis make, but if there is real market demand for this type of "investment" then I would add it to the list of reasons to be nervous about holding Euro-denominated investments.

Also -- wouldn't this be an invitation to petty larcenists of to camp out near the machines?

Here is a link to the article in the Financial Times: Link

Just thinking out loud...

ChanceVS