"It would be nice if outsourcing of medical care could actually drive down costs. My employer just gutted our health plan and we have the option of going uninsured or paying roughly $11,000/year to maintain our family plan.
I really don’t understand why it’s not possible to “see” a doctor in India, Pakistan, etc. over a video conference. While definitely not ideal, it’s better than paying $11,000/year for a health plan with a deductible so high that it never covers anything."
That’s not why health car costs so much. The doctor’s fee is just the tip of the iceberg. The astounding number of tests done on a patient and the constant bombardment of services for even the tiniest issue are the real monster. There are these wonderful machines and fabulous procedures that seem to be looking for another customer. It’s fine when there really is something wrong that needs to be addressed, but reasoned, professional recommendations often are obscured by practicing avoiding a law suit. Doctors do that because the public demands it.
“Eliminate employer sponsored health care, get it off their backs and watch small businesses grow !”
Public health care won’t address the most difficult issues. The cost of health care will continue to spiral higher as long as it the business is carried on as it is now. This has nothing to do with the payer, but is related to how medicine is practiced.
Ideology has nothing to do with it. Someone greases the palms of all politicians, and wants something in return. If only the public had a lobbyist to state our case…
I believe that Whitey brought this to our attention. Not only is this “article” hilarious, it is: Dead. Nuts.
“Re the antebellum south, slavery was a terrible institution but often miners and the Chinese railroad workers and children working in mills outside the south in the 19th century suffered equally it not more so than than many slaves. It is such a shame that politicians are so quick to jump on whatever gravy train is available and rationalize its existence.”
The first wave of Irish immigrants in Louisiana worked in the swamps building the levees. Slaves were too important (read: expensive) to subject to snakes, gators, and diseases. If the poor Irish immigrants died, it was no big deal. You just hire some more. So there was a class beneath the slaves.
Actually, it is no more dangerous than candles on cut trees. My late father told me that when he was growing up, they used real candles on the family Christmas tree. Of course, they put the tree up on Christmas eve.
However, as another post noted, this was meant to be a joke. I pulled a muscle in my right knee about the time I was going to hang the icicle lights on the eaves troughs. With some prescribed exercises, I was able to take care of the muscle problem, but my wife insists that I stay off the ladder, so we skipped that part of Christmas decorating.
The decision to outsource automobiles or other more electronically related products, I don’t feel is made in isolation. A lot of times, it has as much to do with the subcontracting and the availability of parts. If a plethora or electronics firms and electric motor makers were located in Singapore, for what ever reason, that would go a long way in locating an electric car maker there.
This may have little to do with labor cost per say, but as much transportation and logistics. That’s why I say that outsourcing was years in the making and not a sudden phenom.
A few political decisions won’t change reality.
Sorry, the wizard can’t help and you can’t go home again Dorothy.
If you want health care costs to go down, then people have to except death, realize they are not entitled to live forever, and not sue their doctors for every little mistake.
I am with Mike.
Life is great and I would gladly take more, but at some point you are not prolonging life. You are denying inevitablity
America is a "dog eat dog"society. Everyone is out for themselves, to heck with the other guy.
You can bet all the billionaires that have agreed to donate the bulk of their money will go overseas. They probably have family members that are having difficulties or a neighbor down the road, but to heck with helping an American.
China and Brasil will be the countries that lead the world soon. Too bad we have been looking east and west, but not south .
I understand the reasons behind labor unions, but as a mechanic, it really burns me up that factory workers have a climate controlled environment, don’t buy their own tools, have full benefits,get paid twice as much as I do, and have special equipment to install a part in two minutes, that takes me 6 hours to access for repair.
I agree with your feelings for China merchandise, though China’s quality is slowly improving. And I agree with your sentiments as well. I think for me the thing that really made me feel that I was an alien among idiots was after 9/11 when everyone jumped on the patriotism bandwagon and purchased all those little American flags–most of which were made in China, of course. It also makes you wonder what goes through a Chinese worker’s mind while working in a factory that makes American flags and such, for low pay, in a Communist regime that is gung-ho about China, and exclusionary to all others.
The world is a crazy place, for sure.
On a side note, if you buy $1.99 Christmas lights, you get what you pay for. I have some strings of LED Christmas lights, purchased 3 years ago that see outdoor use and still work great. They too are made in China.
I don’t support outsourcing, and think it undermines companies’ strength as well as this country’s global relevance. But I have mixed feelings about it as it has affected me personally: I lost a job partially due to outsourcing, then gained one because another company was outsourcing. My extended stint as a contractor led me to get hired in as a full-time worker at the company I was contracting for, on the same week that dozens of long-term employees were laid off and brought back as contract labor. (the ones whose jobs weren’t outsourced to India)
As long as we are on political rants, I have learned how to think like Obama and our current Congressmen and Congresswomen. The answer to the projected Social Security insolvency is to cut Social Security taxes. The answer to the huge growing deficit is to dole out billions of dollars in tax cuts. SOMEONE ELECT ME TO CONGRESS SO I CAN VOTE FOR MY OWN RAISE! In order to think like our President, I have lobotomized my math skills!
I’m starting to make a list of anthing in my house as to WHERE it is made, whether Union made or open shop, and the product quality and reliability.
So far, starting in the garage, we have two locally made cars, manufactured in non-union shops that have excellent quality and reliability and the manufacturers needed no bailout money.
Will post further progress later.
As a side note, the Saudi Arabia government some years back did not enjoy buying wheat from infidel countries like the US, Australia, Argentina and Canada. They irrigated land (with fresh water, a rare commodity there) at vaste cost and subsidized “farmers” to cultivate the wheat. The result was a financial and ecological disaster. The little wheat produced cost many times more to produce than world price. The few jobs it produced were a drop in the bucket in cutting unemployment.
You just cannot violate the Laws of Comparative Advantage; countries should do what they do best in terms of quality and production cost. A Canadian professor of agriculture, 30 years ago, developed a strain of peanuts that would grow in the much colder climate there. The peanuts were OK (I tasted them), but the cost and effort were far in excess of Jimmy Carter’s family farm in Georgia. Today in Canada you would be hard-pressed to find locally grown peanuts.
Europeans don’t export much grain, except France. But those countries are also “infidels”, with possbile exceptions of Macedonia, Albania nad a few other who can’t grow enough to feed themselves. Egypt does not have a lot ot export either. In Roman times the global population was much smaller and Egypt’s population (now at nearly 100 million) was tiny comparitively. The amount of cultivated land in the Nile valley was about the same. So Egypt could have been called the “bread basket” of the Middle East.
The whole program was geared to absorbing an exploding population that went from 8 to 14 million since the oil boom of the 70s. The goverment wanted to diversify to get more people actually working. Backing out grain imports never made any sense to me; growing roses of export, as the Isrealis do, would have been a great idea.
It’s not the Chinamen; they build what they’re told to. It’s Wal-mart choosing to build and sell SIERIES CIRCUIT LIGHTS!!! For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, in this type of light set, if one fails, they ALL go. Should be outlawed.
WalMart has a business model that is successful because their customers want inexpensive goods. If we did not shop at WalMart or Target (or Meijer or…), that would have a big effect.
Because of the volume, Walmart can specify models to be sold built to their specs directly from manufacturers. That’s where they get of selling many products cheaply. But, I don’t see the products sold by anyone one else coming from any different manufacturers. They just have to deal more with the middle man and standard models from the manufacturer.
example. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3092/is_n1_v31/ai_11768299/