[Vision2020] Top Heritage Reports and Photo: THIS DAD IS FED UP | People Will Pay More Under Obamacare | Obama Said This With a Straight Face | Administration Caught in New Obamacare Dilemma | Health Care Website Discredits Liberalism

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Nick
I do not think that equating Ramsey to Beck or Wllson is a good comparison. I agree with you about more companies offering health care and competition bringing the  cost down. I also agree with you on corporate profits and CEO pay. I won't comment on the rest. I cannot get YouTube to work on my computer.
Roger


-----Original Message-----
From: "Nicholas Gier" <ngier006 at gmail.com>
To: vision2020 <vision2020 at moscow.com>, "Gier, Nicholas" <ngier at uidaho.edu>, "Nicholas Gier" <ngier006 at gmail.com>
Date: 10/28/13 09:40
Subject: [Vision2020] Top Heritage Reports and Photo: THIS DAD IS FED UP | People Will Pay More Under Obamacare | Obama Said This With a Straight Face | Administration Caught in New Obamacare Dilemma | Health Care Website Discredits Liberalism

 
For reason this did not go through yesterday AM.  Please forgive duplicates


Hi Roger:


I've done a little research on Dave Ramsey. He has founded what he calls Financial Peace University, and this has as much credibility as the University that Glenn Beck had every Friday before he was kicked off Fox News.  Ramsey's University, much like Wilson's counseling services, is based on strict biblical principles. He is not an economist nor is he an actuary, and a quick internet search shows that he is a very controversial financial adviser, especially with regard to investing in gold.


Ramsey doesn't strike me as credible either, when he equates liberalism and socialism, and then says that Obamacare is Communism.  Does Ramsey know that the individual mandate was first proposed by the Heritage Foundation and then the GOP? (Perhaps you've forgotten as well.) Ramsey does not realize that the lowest premiums in the state exchanges are found in those states with the most policies being offered.  It's call "competition" and that's what the free market is all about.


I am sure that Ramsey can do basic math, just as you and I can, but I at least try to start with the right numbers.  He repeats the old GOP canard that 46 percent of Americans don't pay taxes, and that Social Security takes 15 percent of our pay.  The first claim of course is totally misleading because he forgets about all the other taxes-property and sales (regressive for the poor)-that Americans pay.  As a far as Social Security goes, employers and employees pay 6.2 percent each and the self-employed pay 12.5 percent.  Not a good start for your man, Roger.


Ramsey also fails to understand how Obamacare will work and how insurance works in general.  If Ramsey is right about Obamacare, then most health insurance companies would not participate in it; nor would they have met with Obama to promise that they would contain costs. Currently their overhead costs are on average 30 percent, while Medicare runs between 10-15 percent.  Obama got the big companies to come down to 15 percent and small companies to 20 percent.  Wonders of all wonders: the free market becomes more efficient, fair, and justice with reasonable government regulation.


According to Forbes: "Of the $2.6 trillion we spend on health care [including Medicare and Medicaid] in this country, at least $650 billion goes toward overhead."  All the other industrialized countries have far, far less overhead, primarily because most of them do not let private insurance companies make huge profits. Nor do their health care bureaucrats fly around in private jets. 


Ramsey's "math" is based on the claim that Obamacare will have to take all sick people and they won't pay larger premiums like professional sky divers do for life insurance.  So he concludes that the rest of us will have to pay more to cover the sick (read: "dead beats" and Romney's 47 percent).  In this calculation, Ramsey neglects many points. 
First, all of us do pay for the sick and uninsured.  As one GOP official once said: "They can go to the ER," and yes they do, for care that is more expensive because in most cases the sick have waited too long. Second, Ramsey forgets to factor in something that the insurance companies are salivating about: millions of new customers, many of them young and healthy, whose premiums will cover the risks that are now less in a larger pool of those insured.
Health insurance premiums have risen 200 percent since 1999, and since Obamaspan>'s agreement with companies, the annual increased has slowed.  Significantly enough, the highest percentage of decrease has occurred in Massachusetts, which now has almost 100 percent coverage under RomneyCare, the success story that you chose to ignore.
Roger, I have a video I want you to watch.  It's on YouTube and the title is "Dave Ramsey Can't Do the Math."
Yours for better sources than these,
Nick
 
  
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