President Barack Obama

[professor]

We quoted this article from a source we believed was credible.At this time the article is hereby being retracted as it may be in error.

[John]

I commented on some of David Kaiser's views a couple of months ago:

** President Obama scores big diplomatic victory in a world waiting for ... what?
** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/cgi-bin/D.PL?xct=gd.e090405#e090405

John

[The Grey Badger]

I think what you've quoted is a spammer taking his name in vain. Every recent blog post has been headed with the news that he's been afflicted by a spammer who is comparing Obama to Hitler, and he is dissociating himself from such views with every post.

Here is the link to Kaiser's own post on his own blog, which I've been reading for years. DO NOT BE FOOLED! ACCEPT NO IMITATIONS!

[John]

-- Revenge of the Boomers

The opposition to the health care plan is apparently being led by the
Boomers or, as I just heard someone call them on MSNBC, "angry old
folks."

For years, I've been listening to Generation-Xer Obama express
his dislike of Boomers, his mouth dripping with contempt.

** Barack Obama to Boomers: Drop dead!
** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/cgi-bin/D.PL?xct=gd.e070123#e070123

** The inane style over substance debate over closing Guantanamo prison
** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/cgi-bin/D.PL?xct=gd.e090525#e090525

Now the Boomers are finally getting revenge against this contempt by
Obama and other Gen-Xers.

The chickens are coming home to roost.

John

[shoshin]

John, I have a lot of respect for you and your work on this website and your knowledge of GD, but you miss the boat on health insurance reform.

First, I am a boomer (64 years old), and I like and respect Obama. I don’t hate him. He’s trying to deal with a several difficult situations, and I tremble to imagine how McCain/Palin would have butchered the landscape.

You treat health care using the supply/demand paradigm, but that just doesn’t apply. You say if we had more doctors, the cost of health care would go down. That’s just wrong! It would go up! All those new doctors want to make the same living their peers do, so they will find a way to do it. The system is biased in their favor, if they can figure out to take advantage of it. A supply/demand function works in a situation where you have informed consumers. They can pick and choose from the various offerings, and competitive pressure forces the suppliers to produce a quality product at a reasonable price, or they are out of business. Medical care is NOTHING like that. (Another good example is education, which would require a whole separate essay. The “consumers” (parents and their kids, or college students) have no idea what an education is, so they focus (at least nowadays) on the obtaining of “certification.” The “educators” take advantage of the naïveté of their customers, and up goes the price. That’s why education is lousy and very expensive.)

For a good description of one very important aspect of the health insurance system, read this article from the New Yorker. (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009 ... ct_gawande). The writer (himself a doctor) describes how some doctors “game” the system to make huge incomes (i.e., fleece the taxpayers). And the temptation is such that soon, many doctors are doing it –why not? I deserve it!

I don’t know about you, but my health insurance costs have steadily increased, while the coverage had gotten worse. Is that what you call a good system? Do you really think “more doctors” will help?

[John]

> John, I have a lot of respect for you and your work on this
> website and your knowledge of GD, but you miss the boat on health
> insurance reform.

> First, I am a boomer (64 years old), and I like and respect Obama.
> I don’t hate him. He’s trying to deal with a several difficult
> situations, and I tremble to imagine how McCain/Palin would have
> butchered the landscape.

Who said anything about hating Obama? Are you indirectly implying
that I hate Obama? If you are, then I would find that as offensive
as the mainstream media's stuff that anyone who opposes this health
care plan is racist. Those claims are outrageous and offensive.

It's not Boomers that hate Gen-Xers. Boomers are clueless about this
stuff. It's Gen-Xers that hate Boomers.

> You treat health care using the supply/demand paradigm, but that
> just doesn’t apply. You say if we had more doctors, the cost of
> health care would go down. That’s just wrong! It would go up! All
> those new doctors want to make the same living their peers do, so
> they will find a way to do it. The system is biased in their
> favor, if they can figure out to take advantage of it.

This makes my head explode. If this were anything close to the
truth, then everyone would do it. More farmers would grow corn, and
corn prices would go up, because farmers would find a way to do it.
Car companies would manufacture more cars, and car prices go up.
Contractors would build more houses, and house prices would go up. Oh
wait -- the opposite happened in all those cases.

Everyone always says that "this time it's different." House prices
won't fall because "everyone needs a home." Now we're in a period of
elevated health care prices, and "this time it's different because
doctors will find a way." This is nonsense. Economics 1.01 applies
to all of these cases.

As I wrote a few weeks ago, the only way to bring down health care
costs is through more doctors, etc., and my expectation is that this
will be accomplished in the next ten years through intelligent
computers that accomplish many of the routine jobs that doctors and
nurses currently do. Enforced wage/price controls will only make
things disastrously worse, as they did for President Nixon.

** Obama's health plan, a proposal of economic insanity, appears to be losing support
** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/cgi-bin/D.PL?xct=gd.e090725#e090725

> A supply/demand function works in a situation where you have
> informed consumers. They can pick and choose from the various
> offerings, and competitive pressure forces the suppliers to
> produce a quality product at a reasonable price, or they are out
> of business. Medical care is NOTHING like that. (Another good
> example is education, which would require a whole separate essay.
> The “consumers” (parents and their kids, or college students)
> have no idea what an education is, so they focus (at least
> nowadays) on the obtaining of “certification.” The “educators”
> take advantage of the naïveté of their customers, and up goes the
> price. That’s why education is lousy and very expensive.)

Once again, this is nonsense. We do have informed consumers -- the
insurance companies. They can pick and choose which doctors they'll
insure, and what offerings they'll insure. When there are few
doctors, then insurance companies are more or less forced to provide
insurance for all of them; when there are many doctors, then
insurance companies will refuse to insure the ones that charge the
highest prices, thus forcing prices down.

There's nothing special about this. This is economics 1.01.

> For a good description of one very important aspect of the health
> insurance system, read this article from the New Yorker.
> (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009 ... ct_gawande).
> The writer (himself a doctor) describes how some doctors “game”
> the system to make huge incomes (i.e., fleece the taxpayers). And
> the temptation is such that soon, many doctors are doing it –why
> not? I deserve it!

The reason that they can get away with "gaming" the system is because
there's a shortage of doctors. If there were a lot more doctors,
then they would be competing with one another.

One thing that happened during Richard Nixon's wage-price controls is
that everyone with political clout "gamed" the system. The
implication that the way to keep people from "gaming" the system is
to involve the federal government is bizarre. Everything that the
federal government touches is "gamed." If you're worried about
"gaming the system," then you shouldn't be supporting a this highly
politicized health care proposal, which would be nothing BUT gaming.

> I don’t know about you, but my health insurance costs have
> steadily increased, while the coverage had gotten worse. Is that
> what you call a good system? Do you really think “more doctors”
> will help?

That's the ONLY thing that will help. Once again, this is elementary
economics 1.01.

I get it that you hate McCain/Palin, since they make you tremble, and
probably Bush as well, and that you love Obama. That's nice. It's
even sweet. But it has nothing to do with economics 1.01, which you
have completely ignored.

John

[John]

Since I've been told that I'm "too negative" (heaven forbid), I'd
like to add the following to what I've written above:

There's absolutely no reason why Congress can't pass a law imposing
additional regulations on the insurance industry, such as not
allowing them to drop a patient just because he gets sick. They
managed to pass a law to control some credit card abuses, and
presumably they can do the same thing for health insurance. This can
be done without wrecking the entire industry, which is what the
proposed bill would do.

John

[MisterB]

John;

I’m having trouble figuring out Obama. Is he a lightweight BSer or a devious plotter? Maybe it’s a little of both.

He seems to have little or no input into the health care bills proposed by the House and Senate committees. It’s a repeat of the stimulus bill that he let the democrats in the House and Senate write. His position now is that he will support and sign any health care bill that the Congress gives him.

“Boomers understand at some level that President Obama's health care plan is an attempt to change the rationing equation so that Boomers receive less health care and Gen-Xers receive more. Since Obama's plan doesn't create any new doctors or hospitals, the supply of health care will not increase, and so Obama's health plan will not reduce price increases. It will simply rearrange the rationing priorities away from Boomers toward Gen-Xers.”

This is very insightful on your part! It appears that one of the proposals in Congress is planning on a 40% reduction in future Medicare costs. The Medicare program is already in crisis. When Boomers start to hit 65 these costs are going to explode even higher. Since the private health care system subsidizes Medicare through absorbing Medicare discounts to health care providers, rising Medicare payments by Boomers will increase premiums for Gen-Xers; and of course rising government payments through Medicare will crowd out spending on other programs that Gen-Xers benefit from.

I agree in general that we Boomers have been lazy; however, I also think that we have been cautious. With Obama there appears to be thinking that EVERYTHING that went on before him was wrong and that he can make huge changes to health care and other systems without any real concern about the consequences. That seems to be the hubris and nihilism that you refer to.

Finally, I do think that there is a class aspect to what is happening. The elite that have gone to the Ivy League and other elite schools resent the middle classes in fly-over country. They use the poorer people as their electoral base and they exploit the middles classes for tax money. They resent the fact that the middle classes attempt to have any say in the political process. They also resent that we get in their way on the highway and in the National Parks etc. And of course they are the smartest people in the room and know what is best for the rest of us.

[John]

> I’m having trouble figuring out Obama. Is he a lightweight BSer or
> a devious plotter? Maybe it’s a little of both.

• President Obama is extremely intelligent, a devoted family man,
  and a devoted public servant, interested in what's best for America.
  
• However, President Obama is very young and very naïve, and
  depends heavily on his nihilistic advisers to tell him what to say
  and do.
  
• During the campaign, Obama's oratorial gift and empty promises
  were all that were needed to gain victory. That experience was like
  a drug, and led him to believe that he can solve any political
  problem with a speech. Now that he has to govern, it isn't working
  any more, but he doesn't understand that. That's why he's making
  this disastrous political mistake attacking the Boomers and Fox News.
  
• It's worth remembering that in the early days of Obama's
  campaign, he had no idea what he was talking about (just like Sarah
  Palin in her brief campaign). It took over a year for Obama to be
  able to give a coherent speech with anything more than rhetoric.
  
• When Obama took office, he REALLY BELIEVED that President Bush
  was evil, that Bush's policies were entirely ideological, based on
  special interests. Now that he's President, he's more Bush-like than
  Bush was, but he doesn't understand that yet.

For more information, see my pre-election analysis, "What to expect
from a Barack Obama presidency."

** What to expect from a Barack Obama presidency
** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/cgi-bin/D.PL?xct=gd.e081104#e081104

It's in the best interests of all of us for President Obama to
succeed. Unfortunately, his youth and inexperience is causing him to
make so many mistakes, that success seems less and less likely.

John

[John]

I'm watching Barack Obama's speech as I type this, and I really don't
understand what he's trying to do ... or what he's trying to do
differently.

The speech is so boring that even Nancy Pelosi looks like she's ready
to fall asleep. Joe Biden sometimes looks like he's embarrassed by
what Obama is saying. I doubt that he's connecting with the public
at all.

On lines like "we want to build on what already works," he gets tepid
applause from both sides. On more controversial things, he gets hoots
from the Republicans.

I certainly have no great track record for predicting the effect of
political speeches, but it's hard to see what this speech is
accomplishing for him.

John