@Puddle - Rush doesn't know you take one pill every day for it to work, huh? And you base this statement on what? <sigh...> Another undocumented hit job by the lib...

I really want to know what birth control she's using that costs 250 a month? That's absolutely unreasonable and people have a right to be outraged by that amount.

@Puddle - Not about the scotch and cigars but very much so about the healthclub membership *porescribed* by my physician but *not* covered by my insurance and about the glass of red wine every night at dinner. Yes, if she can get her birth control covered for free so she can fuck the football team, I should be able to keep my heart healthy and sugar under control on the government's dime.

@krellin - thanks. I'll check it out. I do enjoy the wlaking at the healthclub (Mercy Healthplex in Fairfield, OH, google it and see the awesome facilites including a 1/6th mile walking/running track around the indoor tennis courts and the indoor pools, both traditional and warm aquatherapy).

@Puddle - also, birth control pills are not that expensive when generics are bought. My wife used them as hormone therapy when she was peri-menopausal until she switced to cenestin (an estrogen replacement) afte rgetting a radical hysterectomy. $3000 a year is *way* more than generic birth control runs. I speak from experience being the bread winner in my family. Have you ever paid for birth control? Thought not.

Puddle,
Lit class, damn I hope that is a GDR. ;)

I don't like Romney or Sandtorum and also Bush was from an ivy league, didn't help us much financially, did it, he still spent money like a drunken sailor. Even though he is doomed, my guy is Newt, you can say what you want about him but he is clearly the smartest man in the running, as of now.

About health insurance, you do understand that private health insurance companies run on a 5-7% margin, right, that is low even by supermarket standards, they are not the big enemy the main stream has portrayed them to be. The problem with health costs are more complicated than just raising prices of insurance companies. What we have is people who don't pay for insurance of any kind(acutally an agrument for mandatory health care) using a vast amount of health resources. So who pays, the remaining suckers like me who pay for health insurance, and our rates continually go up.
There is no easy answer to this, in some respects I like the idea of Romney care, big difference from obamacare is it is at the state level. Now if independt states required their own people to carry health insurance like car insurance you could have a good argument.
I would still rather have private insurance companies handle it, again with proper federal oversight, so people don't get screwed. Open up state to state competition, start health care savings accounts, lets begin with these easy starts, see when it takes us and continue on. We would have to lower the insurance premiums enough to get vast majority of people AFFORADABLE heath care. Again, remember insurance for health is intended for catastrophic situations, going for a nose bleed, flu, "contraceptives"(for you puddle) is out of your pocket. That would stop people from needlessly going to the ER or doctor unless they felt is was very necessary, otherwise you will have every clown going for anything tying up very valuable resources. What's wrong with this idea, Puddle?

Well, my guy didn't even run this year, unfortunately. Huckabee all the way!

@DEFIANT - You do know health care savings accounts exist, right? They are called FSAs (Flexible Spending Accounts). the problem is you can't carry the money form year to year so you can save up long term. If we revise the FSA to allow a person to contribute more pretax when they have more flush years so they can blead off the excess in the lean years, then we would see today's younger crowd putting money into the FSas even if they opted out of insurance. and most companies provide very cheap basic insurance unless they are real small. The real place government should come into health insurance is in requiring employers ot offer it. Period. I worked for a place that had a huge profit margin. the owners wer raking in money hand over fist. they gave me a nice slary with the promise of insurance in the next 6 months. I stayed there almost 2 years and they *still* hadn't started offering insurance. It would have cut into their 30% profit margin. If government would look at those types of a-holes and say "you made X profit and insurance could have been offered to each employee for a total of Y so we are fining you Y for your profiteering" then small but still highly profitable employers would start offering insurance.

Draugnar,
Yes, I have a flex plan here where I work, but we have to have a certain number of employees to join, both salaried and time card or it can't be offered. It should be offered no matter what the number is and like you said it should be carried permantly so you can make it grow and it should act like a bond, just grow interest, no stocks on this one for the possibility of a major loss.
On the second note I am giong to respectivefully disagree. A company should not be compelled to give health care insurance. With that said, they should not also get the best employees, good health care is an incentive to attract the better employees, they don't offer it, they will lose in the long run because their employee base will be weak.
Now if they said they were going to offer it to you,that should have been in writing in your review, then they are obligated to give it to you, otherwise you have the choice of going somewhere that has it. And if you are doing a good job for them, you should have no problem getting is somewhere else, I know seems unfair, but put yourself in their shoes, do you want to be told how to handle your business by the Fed on this?

@DEFIANT - Bonds *can* lose money too. It depends on the type of bond. But if you mean US savings bonds - meh. I would say it should be more like a CD or savings account in that the interest is a set rate and guaranteed.

@DEFIANT - I also did say they should be forced to *give* it, but forced to *offer* it. How much they choose to contribute is up to them, but the fact is a company, even if they don't contribute, can get a better rate and can guarantee an employee has insurance if they opt in because being a company means they are usually part of a business council somehwre and, even if not, that can get in on small business council group plans that make the total much more reasonable than an individual plan and that prevents someone from being denied, something individual plans could do up until obamacare. Obama focused too much on the insurance industry when he should have focused on corporate america's mindset. things like tax incentives to small businesses if they added a group plan for their employees and requirements to at least join up with a group plan and offer it, even if the employee has to cover all the premium.

yes, the 1% rate of return BUT the risk is low.

All my former employer had to do was go in to the local SBA office and get the info and then be willing to take the premiums out of my check. They weren't even willing to do that becausre it would have been too much of a headache. Yes, I left and went elsewhere. I now make more than they paid (that was 5 years ago when I left) *and* have very good benefits for a reasonable monthly cost.

Also I meant he doesn't know how birth control works as in, you take one pill every day regardless of how much sex you are having.

Yes, but that one pill doesn't cost $8.33. That is outrageous.

Not sure why that reposted

On a phone by chance, Puddle?

Draugnar,
If you offer it, unless your spouse has a better one, the employee will take it, I believe in this instance there would be very little difference between offering and giving it, the result is the employer would have to pay for it, it will cost them money, no doubt.
there is no tax incentive to offset the cost of health insurance that I am aware of, I know for certain, that the company I work for would drop us in a heartbeat if obamacare passed and I think you would see that in a majority of companies, thus throwing hundreds of thousands on the gov't plan. And I guarantee you salaries would not rise much either if this did happen.

Lets forget the birth control argument though because as best I can tell we are talking a little past each other, and getting no where.

As far as government subsidies, give me like 10 to type this out properly.

Draungar, that's the american system at work, you are an execellent employee and it is the loss of that first company, congrats to you.

Sandra Fluke said that the contraception may cost more than 3000 USD over three years, not one. Still absurdly high, but not as insane as Limbaugh's "Her sex life is active and she's having sex so frequently that she can't afford all the birth control pills that she needs.” which means that he doesn't know how it actually works. He reiterated this thought 13 times during one show.

Puddle,
I think the contraceptive argument is cemented by me, draugnar and others, the only seemingly not getting past it, is you, bud. But I will concede the argument and go to the next one.

that's correct 3000 over 3 years, still 1000 a year.

@DEFIANT - My point was that a company can offer a group plan without contributing to the premiums themselves. I know cause KForce offers it to all their consultants. It costs them nothing to offer it as the consultants pay the entire premium, but it guarantees they can get it without the concern of being turned down or dropped. Individual insurance plans like to drop people when they get too expensive but group plans are legally required to keep the coverage and have been since long before Obama came into office. That's the beauty of the group plan - it spreads the cost across a larger base of subscribers and guarantees every subscriber that as long as they pay their premiums they will have coverage.

Good god...haven't you people ever heard of HYPERBOLE, SATIRE? LIMBAUGH IS USING HYPERBOLE, it's satire used to make a point. The idea that you people actually think Limbaugh doesn't know how birth control works....I don't know who that makes stupider...You, or Fluke...Once again, when the good lefties use hyperbole and humor to make a point, everyone is expected to get it. If a Conservative does, they are just a lying rotten bastard. Funny....because pretty much *every* conservative I know understood the thrust of his point...it's only the (apparently brain dead) liberals that hang on every word with finality, and apparently are completely devoid of any sense of humor (unless is comes from Bill Maher or comedy Central or blah blah blah in which case sarcasm and humor are wonderfully effective tools to make your point.)

Can just a few of you....just for a day...try exercising your sense of humor, your common sense...just try it for ONE day....

If a given good, say healthcare, is produced a a given production curve P, and demand is the curve D, where they meet is the market equilibrium Eq, with price Pr, and Quantity Q. Lets say price is 10,000 Dollars, and Q is 10 units (working with simple small numbers here). This is a market to start with.

When a good is produced the level provided is determined by the number of factors, primarily costs and demand.

When a consumer makes a decision to purchase a product he makes that decision based on benefit to cost, if his cost is more than his benefit he will not purchase the product.

At Eq, cost and benefit for the average consumer are equal.

There is a third party to consider when looking at macroeconomic markets, society. Most products produce some form of externality, either negative or positive. An externality is a cost or benefit which is borne or enjoyed by society as whole and not just the producer or consumer. Goods with a positive externality have a larger societal benefit than those without the externality. In the eyes of society as a whole such goods are underproduced, or the benefit still outweighs the cost.

The size of the positive externality however needs to be taken into account, many goods have very small externalities and therefore the difference between benefit and cost is negligible. Other goods however have very large externalities, and the difference is quite significant. The goods with large positive externalities are those that government should make an effort to increase the production of.

In order to do his however subsidies of some form are required. This is because at the point when societal benefit equals cost, most individual consumers would be unable to purchase the good at that price, thus not allowing the consumption and production to occur. Therefore government subsidies allow the good to be produced at the point of societal benefit and cost equilibrium, while also allowing the individual to continue to pay the free market equilibrium price.

Returning to our original example, let's say the quantity at which societal benefit=cost is 15 units (Q1). At this point price equals 15000, which on our demand curve reduces actual quantity consumed to 5 units. In order to reach Q1, the government must artificially lower the price for the consumer, to 5000, the price where quantity demanded would be 15 units. The easiest manner in which the government could do this would be by covering the remainder of the price.

Thus the producer makes the proper cost for its good, while society reaches societal benefit cost equilibrium.

"When a consumer makes a decision to purchase a product he makes that decision based on benefit to cost, if his cost is more than his benefit he will not purchase the product. " Exactly...which is why GOVERNMENT health care..."FREEEEEEEEE" in the minds of the Non-Taxing paying morons of this world...COMPLETELY skews any rational cost/benefit/qualtiy relationship.

@draug, the health benefits of you drinking a glass of wine a day has little to no societal benefit, so government subsidy makes no sense. The societal benefits of contraceptives are highly debatable, but I would take the position that they are high enough to justify a government subsidy.

@Defiant, I meant we had moved past what I brought it up for, and I don't even know what we were still arguing about.

@Pudlle - Yes, yes, yes... Weunderstand how macroeconomics works, but the government doesn't pay for the difference in a vacuum and the money doesn't grow on a tree. The consumer still pays for that cost with an additional overhead called a beuracracy through taxes. When the government pays part of the bill, tax dollars are used. And when the government pays for *anything* they overpay. they may get the lowest bidder, but their own overhead is costly and the departments and committees used to determine that bidder and process the PO/cut the check/oversea the project are all costly and something the consumer has to pick up.

@Krellin, I don't even sure what your point is, but I think I might agree with you.

@Puddle - the societal benefit of *everyone* of drinking age having a glass of wine a day *are* beneficial. It supports the wine market which means more tax dollar income from that markets profits and more people working because the market is flush and active, *and* it reduces the occurence of heart disease in the population.