Political Economy category archive

TPM:

Total spending on health care, per person, 2007

United States: $7290
United Kingdom: $2992
Italy: $2686
Spain: $2671
Japan: $2581 (2006)

Reuters:

The number of U.S. workers filing new claims for jobless benefits fell last week to 550,000, according to a government report on Thursday that also showed the number of those collecting long-term aid tumbled.

Analysts polled by Reuters had expected initial claims to drop to 560,000, after reaching 576,000 the prior week, which had previously been reported as 570,000.

As regards the “tumbling” number of persons collecting long term benefits, it “tumbled” all the way 6,247,000 to 6,088,000. That’s a “tumble” of about 3.5%.

I’ll be looking to know whether it “tumbled” because persons got jobs or because their benefits expired.

Unemployment benefits do expire.

This is still a Republican scorecard. Their policies caused this. And this was the result of policy–not of blind dumb luck.

To the extent things might be looking up a little, it’s not their doing.

Choose your indicator: upsy or downsy.

A Labor Department report on Thursday showed initial claims for state unemployment insurance benefits fell 4,000 to a seasonally adjusted 570,000 last week. However, the four-week moving average for new jobless claims, considered a better gauge of underlying trends, rose 4,000 to 571,250.

Still over half a million.

Addendum, the Next Day:

9.7% Unemployment. QOTD from Marketwatch:

Economist Robert Brusca said the trend is favorable, adding that he couldn’t understand the pessimism of so many observers. “I feel like a parent locked in a car with a little kid screaming ” DADDY! ARE WE THERE YET?”

Many economists think the unemployment rate will top out near 10%, late this year or early next year. “What really matters is when payrolls and the jobless rate will turn, and we still believe that the timeframe on both is soon, probably sooner than most other forecasters expect,” wrote Stephen Stanley, chief economist for RBS Securities.

Joseph DiStephano discusses the walking dead.

This is wrong on so many levels I don’t know where to start.

I’ll put it this way. Somebody burns down a house. Someone else comes along and tries to rebuild the house.

That does not change who set the damned fire to begin with.

570,000 is a decrease from last week.

The number of U.S. workers filing new claims for jobless benefits fell last week to 570,000, and those collecting long-term unemployment benefits dropped to the lowest level since April, government data showed on Thursday.

(snip)

Continued claims fell to 6.133 million in the week ended August 15 from 6.252 million the prior week. That was the lowest since the week ending April 4 when they were 6.045 million.

In other news, GDP didn’t fall as much as expected.

It could have been worse has become a bright spot.

Medical-insurance prices for adults of working age will rise more than 10 percent again this year, says Aon Consulting, after collecting prices from Aetna Inc., Cigna Corp., and dozens of other private and Blue Cross health insurers.

How is that possible, when the Consumer Price Index is flat, and prices for food, clothing, and other basic goods have been falling?

“It’s unsustainable,” said Joseph Reilly, head of Aon’s Northeast health and benefits advisory practice in Parsippany, N.J., which advises big employers on what benefits to buy, and what to cut.

(snip)

But managers aren’t eating all those costs. “Employers might see a 5 percent increase,” Reilly explained. “They’re passing the other 5 percent on to the health-care population” – that’s the public – through higher co-payments, higher drug payments, higher employee contributions.

After all, someone has to make up for all the money those CEOs lost in the stock market.

Soap opera audience increases:

Initial claims for state unemployment insurance benefits rose 15,000 to a seasonally adjusted 576,000 in the week ended August 15 from 561,000 the prior week, the Labor Department said.

(snip)

The number of people collecting long-term unemployment benefits edged up 2,000 to 6.24 million in the week ended August 8, the latest week for which the data is available. However, the four-week moving average declined 2,500 to 6.27 million.

The end of government:

Public services in the US city of Chicago have been shut down for a day as the authorities face an expected budget shortfall of some $300m (£184m).

Non-essential services such as rubbish collections, libraries and health centres were closed, in the first of three planned reduced service days.

It’s what insurance companies do. Richard Blair explains the dangers of allowing persons with a fiducuiary interest in (that means who will make money from) denying care to be making decisions about care:

Ms. Sarkysian had leukemia, and was admitted to a California hospital for a bone marrow transplant. As is possible with such procedures, there were complications, and her kidneys and liver failed. Her brother donated a kidney. She was ready for a liver transplant (a relatively routine procedure in this day and age), but even though hers had failed, her family’s insurance company would not approve the procedure by claiming it was “experimental”. In other words, a bean counter at Cigna made the decision that since they had already shelled out a lot of cash for the bone marrow and kidney transplant, that the cost of a liver transplant and followup care was just too high.

(snip)

To Cigna, the cost of Nataline’s transplant was like buying a Nintendo Wii. When you buy a Wii, it’s not so much the initial investment in the game machine, but the ongoing followup costs in purchasing games and other hardware add-ons. The risk managers at Cigna who made the decisions in Nataline’s case weren’t so much looking at the cost of the initial transplantation procedure, but the annual cost of followup care and medication.

Nataline was 17 years old. The average lifespan of a woman in America is 79.1 years.

(snip)

The (possible projected–ed.) cost of her followup care for the next (projected) 62 years: $1,302,000.

Noz ruminates on how all the lies about healthcare got so much traction:

the conservatives who i have been arguing with are not lying. they don’t think they’re misleading anyone, they’re just repeating what they think is true, even though it comes across as nuts to anyone who has tried to follow the legislation. their seeming detachment from the real debate is more of a byproduct of the alternate universe that the conservative media has built for itself. if you get you information from fox news, rightwing blogs and talk radio, you’re probably unfamiliar with any of the basics that are necessary to participate in any substantive discussion of the real policy issues.

I think he has a point. The teabaggers screaming “read the bill” clearly have not.

I gave up on broadcast news a long time ago. Not just cable. All of it. Even the folks who try to do a good job (that is, who try to be accurate) don’t have enough time to be thorough. And it seems that the folks who have the most time (such as three-hour radio shows) have no interest in accuracy.

Full disclosure: There are some more or less sane NPR shows that I listen to via podcast, because they devote and hour to a story and really do dig into it.

Atrios reports that the monthly job losses for July were less than projected.

Wonder whether any banks will bite the dust tonight.

When even makers of pain relievers are hurting:

Whisky producer Whyte & Mackay has confirmed plans to cut dozens of jobs at sites across Scotland.

Up to 85 posts will be lost, with another 15 overseas sales staff facing the axe. A month-long consultation and review of operations is under way.

. . . slopping at the public trough.

Cookie Jill points out that five of the 20 biggest cases of private companies bilking the federal government involve those bastions of fee enterprise, health insurance companies.

They don’t want their gravy train to end.

Transcript here.

As Atrios pointed out recently, people don’t pay attention to the revisions. Maybe because it’s usually worse than they thought:

The first 12 months of the U.S. recession saw the economy shrink more than twice as much as previously estimated, reflecting even bigger declines in consumer spending and housing, revised figures showed.

The world’s largest economy contracted 1.9 percent from the fourth quarter of 2007 to the last three months of 2008, compared with the 0.8 percent drop previously on the books, the Commerce Department said yesterday in Washington. Gross domestic product has shrunk 3.9 percent in the past year, the report said, indicating the worst slump since the Great Depression.

Follow the link for more revised numbers.

And, remember, this was the logical outcome of Republican economic theory. People who weren’t blinded by the DOW saw it coming.

Bonddad considers reports that Gross Domestic Product last quarter was down at an “annualized” rate of one percent, rather than the 4.5% that was forecast. His conclusions (follow the link for the full analysis):

1.) Government spending really saved the day last quarter — it was the one positive area of growth.

2.) The rate of decline in several important areas occurred at a slower rate. Gross private domestic investment decreased at a far slower rate as did exports and imports.

3.) The rate of decline is more along the lines that occurred in the 4th quarter of 2008 rather than the 1st quarter of 2009.

Michael Lewis dispels some myths about Goldman Sachs. A nugget:

Rumor No. 1: Goldman Sachs controls the government.

Every ninth-grader knows the U.S. government has three branches. Goldman owns just one of these outright; the second we simply rent; and the third we have no interest in.

What small interest we maintain in the government is, we feel, in the public interest. The financial crisis has its roots in a single easily identifiable source: others’ envy of Goldman Sachs.

The bozos at Merrill Lynch, the dimwits at Citigroup, the nimrods at Lehman Brothers, the louts at Bear Stearns, and even that momentarily useful lunatic at AIG took risks that no non-Goldman person should take, in a pathetic attempt to replicate our returns.

Now we are working with Tim Geithner and Congress to ensure that we alone are allowed to take the sort of risks that might destroy the financial system.

Read the whole thing.

Report from the field. Ashley Sayeau writes in the Guardian:

Wooed by healthcare lobbyists, Republicans love to berate countries like England and Canada for their bureaucratic healthcare systems – where, they claim, politicians not doctors make decisions! But the truth is that nowhere is healthcare more impersonal and de-medicalised than in America. And until the profit motive is removed (or at least challenged), it’s a lie to suggest that anything but money is determining the quality of care Americans receive.

It wasn’t until I arrived in England that I understood this completely. Thirteen weeks before my recent operation, I had given birth at the same London hospital. I was able to hold my daughter for maybe 20 minutes before the midwives and doctors discovered that I had a very serious and rare fourth-degree tear in my perineum. After the finding, I was immediately wheeled into surgery, where for the next three hours, I was stitched up by, I’m told, one of the best surgeons in the field.

(snip)

Indeed there was nothing bureaucratic about any of it. Far from impersonal, I had repeated conversations with the surgeon himself about the injuries and the operations. The clinic’s nurse, a wonderful woman named Ann, held my hand through some seriously uncomfortable pre-operative exams. This Monday, her babysitter called in sick. I know because I talk to her all the time. Not once in any of these encounters did anyone bring up money. Not once was a politician present.