Reasons I cannot vote for Trump

[FlyerInHi]

[quote=livinincali]

I do think that whomever gets elected in this election is likely a one term president. Mostly because I expect a fairly significant economic dislocation to happen within the next 4 years and the government/fed unable to respond to it in an effective manner. Economic concerns are behind the Sanders and Trump movement. A more likable outsider that focused on economic issues would crush this field.[/quote]

Dislocation how? Can it get worse than the bottom in 2012 when Obama got reelected?

The American economy is running rather well and could be doing better with infrastructure spending. In a global economy, the risks we face are external such as Brexit. If Europe, Japan, China, ASEAN, Brazil, Argentina… could boost growth, we would all benefit. Now could be a low for the world and we are about to boom again.

[carli]

[quote=livinincali]
It will be a good thing in the longer term but talking about 1 or 2 years when it initially happens will result in a technical recession. Spending on medical care is included in GDP. It will take a bit of time for businesses to make changes due to the reduced cost and will take awhile to show up in GDP.[/quote]

Livinincali, I’m not clear on how you’re defining the medical monopolies mentioned in your last post. I assume you’re thinking if Trump (don’t know how) could instantly dissolve the U.S.’s business models of medical care delivery, it would have a significant impact on the economy. Might be so, but that involves waving a huge magic wand. I don’t think Big Pharma and others would go down without a gigantic multi-year fight. And they’re very well supported by the Republicans so don’t know who would help Trump on that one.

The Moody’s analysis addresses the most influential drivers of the economy, and they’re reporting it’s going to be more than the “technical recession” you predict if Trump is elected. NY Times posted this article today about the Moody’s analysis:

“If all the [Trump’s] policies were put into effect, the report said, the country would be plunged into a recession beginning in early 2018 and remain there into 2020.

“This would be an unusually lengthy recession — even longer than the Great Recession,” the authors write.

Trade would probably be the first area to be affected, Mr. Zandi said. Mr. Trump has proposed a 45 percent tariff on Chinese imports and a 35 percent tariff on imports from Mexico. This would drive the price of consumer goods higher, and both countries would probably impose in-kind tariffs, Moody’s predicted.

‘That would do a significant amount of damage pretty quickly — setting off something akin to a trade war,’ Mr. Zandi said.

Mr. Trump’s tax and spending proposals would have a longer-term effect. With few spending cuts, his planned tax cuts, which would reduce federal revenues by roughly $9.5 trillion over a decade, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, would produce substantial budget deficits.

‘That would be a pretty significant corrosive on investment, productivity and then G.D.P.,’ Mr. Zandi said.”

Curious to see how Trump responds to this, if at all. Problem is that his supporters apparently prefer to avoid educating themselves on any of Trump’s proposals, or maybe it’s that they don’t even want to know, as the facts would spoil their rhetoric.

BTW, I’m also looking forward to reading Moody’s analysis of Hillary’s proposals, which the authors say is coming next.

[SK in CV]

[quote=FlyerInHi][quote=livinincali]

I do think that whomever gets elected in this election is likely a one term president. Mostly because I expect a fairly significant economic dislocation to happen within the next 4 years and the government/fed unable to respond to it in an effective manner. Economic concerns are behind the Sanders and Trump movement. A more likable outsider that focused on economic issues would crush this field.[/quote]

Dislocation how? Can it get worse than the bottom in 2012 when Obama got reelected?

The American economy is running rather well and could be doing better with infrastructure spending. In a global economy, the risks we face are external such as Brexit. If Europe, Japan, China, ASEAN, Brazil, Argentina… could boost growth, we would all benefit. Now could be a low for the world and we are about to boom again.[/quote]

I agree that I’m not sure that there is “an economic dislocation” in the near future, though there could always be a black swan event to trigger it, or even a slower progression towards recession which I also don’t see building anywhere. But if it does happen, and the government can’t act (which is purely a function of political will, not a function of limited availability of options), the Clinton (2) presidency is likely to be a 1 term affair.

Obama had the benefit of taking office just as the recession was hitting the trough, and the bottom was actually closer to 12 months after inauguration. By his 15th month in office, job growth had begun, and while the recovery has never boomed, the US was already at 30 months of job growth by the time of his 2nd term election. Barring something significant in the next 7 months, Clinton won’t have the benefit of time that Obama had for the economy to stabilize.

[FlyerInHi]

[quote=SK in CV]

I agree that I’m not sure that there is “an economic dislocation” in the near future, though there could always be a black swan event to trigger it, or even a slower progression towards recession which I also don’t see building anywhere. But if it does happen, and the government can’t act (which is purely a function of political will, not a function of limited availability of options), the Clinton (2) presidency is likely to be a 1 term affair.

Obama had the benefit of taking office just as the recession was hitting the trough, and the bottom was actually closer to 12 months after inauguration. By his 15th month in office, job growth had begun, and while the recovery has never boomed, the US was already at 30 months of job growth by the time of his 2nd term election. Barring something significant in the next 7 months, Clinton won’t have the benefit of time that Obama had for the economy to stabilize.[/quote]

That’s a pretty well-considered take on a Clinton presidency.

I tend to think of 2011/2012 as the bottom in housing which, as your rightly pointed out, doesn’t coincide with economic bottom.

The Tea Party came to life in 2010 and Romney was convinced that he would win in 2012. The conventional wisdom was that Obama as just the result of anyone-but-a-Republican because of Iraq and housing meltdown.

Today, I believe that the economy is doing better than all the dour talk in the presidential campaigns. The housing recovery will make people spend again. Europe has been in the doldrums and there is pent-up demand that could drive spending once Brexit is settled.

4 years is a long time. Democrats have a generational demographic advantage, especially during presidential elections. They just need to turn out the votes during the midterms. Bernie Sanders is doing a good thing to energize young democrats. Sanders staying in the race until the convention is a smart move to signal to the base that Sanders is changing the party for them.

[joec]

On the medical front, there were some articles in the SD Union Tribune or LA times, I forget which was saying how some tests when paid with no insurance cash/rates were like $20, but with the crooked Blue Cross, was like $70 or something or over a hundred for a few simple tests since that was the “negotiated” rate. The health care operations and insurances are just scamming everyone else and over inflating a lot of medical costs IMO.

I don’t know why, but I would think it’d be better for ALL businesses to not have to worry/provide basic health insurance and just decouple that part and work on spending the money on hiring people and their research/growth/whatever.

Just try to move to some form of limited single payer option with limits on what is covered…

If someone wants a Porsche plan with special cancer / new fighting drugs, pay for that special option, but don’t provide the latest and greatest for everyone.

You smoke? and you got a smoke cancer/problem, I guess that’s too bad for you…

I willingly support rationalized/limited healthcare since anything else is just too costly (since most of the money is wasted anyways with nearly everything you read)

[carli]

[quote=joec]On the medical front, there were some articles in the SD Union Tribune or LA times, I forget which was saying how some tests when paid with no insurance cash/rates were like $20, but with the crooked Blue Cross, was like $70 or something or over a hundred for a few simple tests since that was the “negotiated” rate. The health care operations and insurances are just scamming everyone else and over inflating a lot of medical costs IMO.[/quote]

I’m not one to defend hospitals or insurance companies in general, but part of the reason that hospitals charge their uninsured/cash patients less than their negotiated rates w/insurers is not because they’re being kind or feel they can gouge consumers who have insurance, but because they can write this deficit off. In other words, we’re all paying for it. And to make matters worse, built in to the rates that hospitals and other providers negotiate with the insurers (which show up in our premiums) is this write-off. So it all comes around in several ways. But at least the Affordable Care Act caps insurers’ MCR (Medical Cost Ratio), which stipulates how much profit over medical and admin expenses they can take.

[Coronita]

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[no_such_reality]

[quote=flu].[/quote]

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[zk]

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🙂

[Coronita]

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:)[/quote]

(^ ^)

[livinincali]

[quote=carli]
I’m not one to defend hospitals or insurance companies in general, but part of the reason that hospitals charge their uninsured/cash patients less than their negotiated rates w/insurers is not because they’re being kind or feel they can gouge consumers who have insurance, but because they can write this deficit off. In other words, we’re all paying for it. And to make matters worse, built in to the rates that hospitals and other providers negotiate with the insurers (which show up in our premiums) is this write-off. So it all comes around in several ways. But at least the Affordable Care Act caps insurers’ MCR (Medical Cost Ratio), which stipulates how much profit over medical and admin expenses they can take.[/quote]

Technically it should be a crime for hospitals to charge different amount to different people for the same procedures. The Clayton Act from 1914 makes it illegal to practice price discrimination yet that’s what hospitals and medical providers do everyday.

The Sherman act should also be used against the pharmaceutical companies. They set different prices in different countries and then artificially prevent foreign trade where I could go buy the drugs in another country and then bring them here to use or to sell. Obviously the government enables this behavior and pharma’s lobbying gets the government to crave out exceptions to the Sherman act. All you’d have to do to fix a lot of the drug prices is to enforce the Sherman act on the pharma companies. Drugs would cost less here and they’d cost more in other countries until there was some sort of equilibrium.

Thirdly why aren’t there consumer protection laws that apply to medical services. If you go to the mechanic they have to give you a written estimate of the price. They can’t just demand that you pay them $2,000 to get your car back. Why aren’t medical providers held to this same regard when it comes to routine services. I understand emergency situations are somewhat different.

[carli]

[quote=livinincali]
Thirdly why aren’t there consumer protection laws that apply to medical services. If you go to the mechanic they have to give you a written estimate of the price. They can’t just demand that you pay them $2,000 to get your car back. Why aren’t medical providers held to this same regard when it comes to routine services. I understand emergency situations are somewhat different.[/quote]

I feel your pain, I really do. One of my kids had to have a surgical procedure a few years ago and we had a plan with a $10,000 deductible (this was before the ACA and I was consulting so had no employer-sponsored insurance). Since the surgeon had admitting privileges at two hospitals, I thought I’d call around to find out rates from each one. Ha! That never happened. Both hospitals said there was no possible way to give me even a ballpark idea of how much we’d pay for the surgery and associated costs like anesthesia. I asked if they could treat us as a cash patient since our 10k deductible basically made us uninsured for this procedure and even though they were willing to do that, the billing office told me they had no idea if the negotiated rate our carrier (BCBS) had for the surgery would be cheaper than the hospital’s cash rate. Part of the reason was that it was proprietary info (treating their negotiated rates like a closely guarded secret) but mostly they said their systems were not set up to estimate costs before a procedure. They said we needed to specify up front if we wanted to be treated as a cash patient or wanted them to submit to BCBS, where the charges would be adjudicated according to the BCBS negotiated fee structure, and then we’d pay our 10k share according to this fee schedule. There was no way to find out which was a better deal for us as consumers. We could only wait and see after the surgery the charges that were spit out of their system.

Crazy that the consumer just has to blindly go in to have surgery without any idea of the charges. We’re lucky that we’re in a position to cover any costs and had obviously enrolled in the high deductible health plan with eyes wide open to our risk, but for many, that kind of plan was all they could afford at the time (pre-ACA). Even now, many people face the same issue. For those people, trying to do the right thing by being insured, it’s a huge blow to be handed a bill for thousands of dollars with no ability to predict or budget beforehand. Many surgeries, although medically necessary, are technically elective so someone in a different financial position than ours may have opted to put it off until they could budget for it or had a different insurance plan. But again, no one would have been able to give them the tools to arrive at an estimate.

I’ve been in the health insurance/managed care industry a long time, and for many years the industry buzz has been all about empowering consumers to make better/wiser/more efficient health care decisions, yet the health delivery system does not have the tools or more accurately, is not willing to use the tools on behalf of the consumer, to get us all the way there. This is something that the ACA will help do but getting there will be a long time coming, in tiny baby steps.

[FlyerInHi]

Livin’, you sound like you will vote for trump.
What do you make of his anti business stances? Are you willing to give up money and have the US retreat to isolation?

On the hand, Obama has been called the anti business president who’s been really good for business.

[livinincali]

[quote=FlyerInHi]Livin’, you sound like you will vote for trump.
What do you make of his anti business stances? Are you willing to give up money and have the US retreat to isolation?
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/06/29/upshot/donald-trumps-economic-nostalgia.html

On the hand, Obama has been called the anti business president who’s been really good for business.[/quote]

At this point I don’t think I’m going to vote for president. I don’t really like either candidate at this point. The hate on both sides means nothing will get accomplished. Maybe, I vote on some CA referendums and local elections.

I think both parties are going to be anti business for different reason. Democrats will want to focus of minimum wage increases and further protections for workers which will stall business creation and increase youth unemployment. Trump wants to become more protectionist which will likely result in tariffs and possible trade wars. Neither is going to be optimal for a productive economy. I don’t know which one is worse though. Macro economic theories are impossible to verify before they are implemented so they often result in unexpected consequences.

I do think the next recession is going to be fairly bad. I do think there’s nothing Congress or a president can do to prevent it from being fairly messy. Even with a 1 trillion dollar infrastructure investment it will take at least a couple of years for projects to be vetted, planned, approved, and under construction. It will be too slow of a response and the alternative of just sending out checks so the masses can go to Walmart and buy junk from China doesn’t really create any lasting impact either. Maybe a little boost to food and dinning for a month or 2 but then the money will be gone.

I’d like to vote for a candidate that will break the medical and pharmaceutical monopolies. Unfortunately even if someone was willing to do that it would create some significant short term economic damage.

[SK in CV]

[quote=livinincali]I’d like to vote for a candidate that will break the medical and pharmaceutical monopolies. Unfortunately even if someone was willing to do that it would create some significant short term economic damage.[/quote]

I don’t think there is any way it could do any short term damage to anyone but shareholders of pharmaceutical companies.

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