[El Chinito loco]

Very disturbing. If you look at extremely long term charts (ie. starting from post WW2) the gains of the market make little sense in a historical context especially after the dot com bust which was the newest driving growth industry in the U.S. From the late 90's until present day there's a pattern of market churn and serious fed intervention which bumps the market up into a secular bull.

[Samseau]

Turns out the USA's STRONG GDP GROWTH is yet another bunch of bullshit and lies:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-03-25...money-2015



Largest expenditure growth by far last year was on healthcare! So much for Obamacare fixing runaway spending, LOL.

And spending on healthcare just means a bunch of insurance companies got insanely rich while the rest of the economy continues to degrade.

And the "food service" industry is now tanking as well:





http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-03-25...ight-month

People have been getting by as waiters/bartenders/cooks because there are no jobs left in America, but these jobs are obviously dependent on a large consumer class that doesn't exist anymore, it's just getting smaller and smaller everyday.

[El Chinito loco]

More evidence of stormclouds coming for the U.S. economy..



Corporate profits do NOT match current employment stats. Profits have dipped by a lot but employment stats are flat but not trending down yet..

Look at the 95-99 period just before the dot com crash and compare it with present day. Very odd divergence there.

[booshala]

Zero Hedge and The Automatic Earth have been crying that the sky is falling for the past 10-15 years. Sooner or later, they'll probably be right, but it's not so much a reflection of their accuracy as it is a function of time. The system is so irreversibly rigged that there's almost no choice but to go along with it like a shill that knows all the secrets to the trick a magician is performing. Obviously, you want to try and shield yourself from as much damage as you can, but what's the point of living in constant fear with one hand on a bug-out bag? No thanks...

Admittedly, I got caught up in it in 2009 and bought a year's supply of freeze dried food, and a decent amount of 9mm and 12 gauge ammo. But the more I think about it, shit is bad and getting worse but what's the alternative? If I store cash, and it gets Zimbabwe'd into hyperinflation, I'm fucked. If I buy precious metals, and shit gets "Book of Eli", no one in their right mind is going to exchange potable water for some shiny bits. Yeah, I got ammo but nothing like those enthusiasts or military vets that make their own rounds and constantly drill and practice. if they want my quickly dwindling supply of dried food, how am I going to protect it with my once a month training and two guns?

Can armchair economist all day long but it doesn't change the fact that 99.9% of us are products of our soft, coddled environments. If this thread is basically an academic exercise to talk about how the US is going to be - or is in - a recession, then I'm in agreement. But I'd be curious to know what plans people have enacted to actually prepare for this.

[Enoch]

I would love to see a graph of the debt / equity ratio of all publicly traded companies since the 08 crash. Something tells me it is not improving. Profits are so slim there is no way they can pay to service the debt when it inevitably must rise.

[El Chinito loco]

(03-26-2016 03:33 PM)booshala Wrote:  

Zero Hedge and The Automatic Earth have been crying that the sky is falling for the past 10-15 years. Sooner or later, they'll probably be right, but it's not so much a reflection of their accuracy as it is a function of time. The system is so irreversibly rigged that there's almost no choice but to go along with it like a shill that knows all the secrets to the trick a magician is performing. Obviously, you want to try and shield yourself from as much damage as you can, but what's the point of living in constant fear with one hand on a bug-out bag? No thanks...

The most reliable barometers to monitor for shifts in economic headwinds are active top traders. That's why I have a twitter account that just tracks several top traders. They usually notice changes and correlate data much faster than mainstream business news or (obviously) even from government sources which have their own agendas to misdirect the public.

I agree that sources like Zerohedge and guys like Peter Schiff are frequently full of white noise chicken little nonsense. They pay their bills through fear advertising, selling gold, and various investment schemes for the clueless.

However, there are kernels of truth even in those flawed sources but you really have to look at people who constantly have their finger on the pulse of the global markets..

[Samseau]

(03-26-2016 07:56 PM)El Chinito loco Wrote:  

(03-26-2016 03:33 PM)booshala Wrote:  

Zero Hedge and The Automatic Earth have been crying that the sky is falling for the past 10-15 years. Sooner or later, they'll probably be right, but it's not so much a reflection of their accuracy as it is a function of time. The system is so irreversibly rigged that there's almost no choice but to go along with it like a shill that knows all the secrets to the trick a magician is performing. Obviously, you want to try and shield yourself from as much damage as you can, but what's the point of living in constant fear with one hand on a bug-out bag? No thanks...

The most reliable barometers to monitor for shifts in economic headwinds are active top traders. That's why I have a twitter account that just tracks several top traders. They usually notice changes and correlate data much faster than mainstream business news or (obviously) even from government sources which have their own agendas to misdirect the public.

I agree that sources like Zerohedge and guys like Peter Schiff are frequently full of white noise chicken little nonsense. They pay their bills through fear advertising, selling gold, and various investment schemes for the clueless.

However, there are kernels of truth even in those flawed sources but you really have to look at people who constantly have their finger on the pulse of the global markets..

Most of the top traders are completely clueless and live in la-la land. They trade in markets with nothing but printed money, and the markets stopped represented fundamentals back in 2008. Nowadays it's just a big casino of floating numerals that can be exchanged for slave labor in a variety of third-world countries.

The volume of retail investors has almost completely vanished and nowadays at least 80% of the volume comes from HFT algorithms.

[Seth_Rose]

(03-26-2016 03:33 PM)booshala Wrote:  

Zero Hedge and The Automatic Earth have been crying that the sky is falling for the past 10-15 years. Sooner or later, they'll probably be right, but it's not so much a reflection of their accuracy as it is a function of time. The system is so irreversibly rigged that there's almost no choice but to go along with it like a shill that knows all the secrets to the trick a magician is performing. Obviously, you want to try and shield yourself from as much damage as you can, but what's the point of living in constant fear with one hand on a bug-out bag? No thanks...

Admittedly, I got caught up in it in 2009 and bought a year's supply of freeze dried food, and a decent amount of 9mm and 12 gauge ammo. But the more I think about it, shit is bad and getting worse but what's the alternative? If I store cash, and it gets Zimbabwe'd into hyperinflation, I'm fucked. If I buy precious metals, and shit gets "Book of Eli", no one in their right mind is going to exchange potable water for some shiny bits. Yeah, I got ammo but nothing like those enthusiasts or military vets that make their own rounds and constantly drill and practice. if they want my quickly dwindling supply of dried food, how am I going to protect it with my once a month training and two guns?

Can armchair economist all day long but it doesn't change the fact that 99.9% of us are products of our soft, coddled environments. If this thread is basically an academic exercise to talk about how the US is going to be - or is in - a recession, then I'm in agreement. But I'd be curious to know what plans people have enacted to actually prepare for this.

Great post.

[Samseau]

I don't get critics of ZH at all. ZH has been pointing out that the markets are shit since 2009, are nothing but printed money, and lo and behold the US economy today is shit with the lowest money velocity since they started recording the metric in 1960.

https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/M2V/

ZH has been more accurate than any other financial news source by a landslide and they are not given enough credit. The problem is that they are way too intelligent for the average reader, a person needs at least 120 verbal IQ to follow it properly.

[El Chinito loco]

(03-26-2016 08:30 PM)Samseau Wrote:  

(03-26-2016 07:56 PM)El Chinito loco Wrote:  

(03-26-2016 03:33 PM)booshala Wrote:  

Zero Hedge and The Automatic Earth have been crying that the sky is falling for the past 10-15 years. Sooner or later, they'll probably be right, but it's not so much a reflection of their accuracy as it is a function of time. The system is so irreversibly rigged that there's almost no choice but to go along with it like a shill that knows all the secrets to the trick a magician is performing. Obviously, you want to try and shield yourself from as much damage as you can, but what's the point of living in constant fear with one hand on a bug-out bag? No thanks...

The most reliable barometers to monitor for shifts in economic headwinds are active top traders. That's why I have a twitter account that just tracks several top traders. They usually notice changes and correlate data much faster than mainstream business news or (obviously) even from government sources which have their own agendas to misdirect the public.

I agree that sources like Zerohedge and guys like Peter Schiff are frequently full of white noise chicken little nonsense. They pay their bills through fear advertising, selling gold, and various investment schemes for the clueless.

However, there are kernels of truth even in those flawed sources but you really have to look at people who constantly have their finger on the pulse of the global markets..

Most of the top traders are completely clueless and live in la-la land. They trade in markets with nothing but printed money, and the markets stopped represented fundamentals back in 2008.

Most but not all. The good ones I follow actively watch fundamentals too for longer term economic trends. They aren't all just rooted in price and pattern movements. I agree the fundamentals no longer make sense in this market but the important thing is how they track liquidity.

The economic calls they make tend to be pretty accurate because they can see where the broader market is trending. The market and economic cycles are still linked.

I run a business too so it's easier to discern fact from fiction and what is actually going on just based on real life results.

There's too much dogma in sources like ZH for it to be taken at face value. When someone is crying the sky is falling everyday it's not necessarily good info unless there is overwhelming evidence to make decisions for present day investment or business.

It can even lead to negative biases especially when people read sources like ZH and pull all their cash during market runs because they were too scared to make pragmatic decisions.

[booshala]

(03-26-2016 08:31 PM)Samseau Wrote:  

I don't get critics of ZH at all. ZH has been pointing out that the markets are shit since 2009, are nothing but printed money, and lo and behold the US economy today is shit with the lowest money velocity since they started recording the metric in 1960.

https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/M2V/

ZH has been more accurate than any other financial news source by a landslide and they are not given enough credit. The problem is that they are way too intelligent for the average reader, a person needs at least 120 verbal IQ to follow it properly.

Your tone and level of condescension is incredible. I was turned off by it earlier in this thread but I tried to steer my question by asking what people were doing to prepare for the coming recession/depression. You reiterated that only people with a high level of intelligence and an IQ of 120 can truly understand the information that ZeroHedge is putting out. I'm sure that you include yourself in that vaunted group.

If you're so smart, what are the external indicators to show that you've employed this IQ into something tangible? Are you a successful banker or some sort of respected professional in a prestige field like law/medicine? Do you pull in 5, 10, 20x the average income in the US as a small business owner? Have you made big money (let's say $100k+) capitalizing off of info from ZH, kinda like the guys who bet against the mortgage market and CDO's during the housing bust?

Cuz if not, I'm calling your legitimacy into question and straight saying that your 120+ IQ level is just like the 212 rep points you have on this site: purdy cool but functionally useless.

"They helped me save thousands" = not impressive at all. I'm not even disagreeing with you when you say they're putting out good info. What I'm saying is that we likely have no choice but to play along with the financial machinations because there isn't any feasible alternative. Started the rant because your arrogance is so unseemly and I don't feel like you've really positioned yourself to be an authority on the subject save from quoting money velocity, Austrian economics, additional generic buzz words/terms.

[Samseau]

(03-26-2016 09:33 PM)booshala Wrote:  

(03-26-2016 08:31 PM)Samseau Wrote:  

I don't get critics of ZH at all. ZH has been pointing out that the markets are shit since 2009, are nothing but printed money, and lo and behold the US economy today is shit with the lowest money velocity since they started recording the metric in 1960.

https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/M2V/

ZH has been more accurate than any other financial news source by a landslide and they are not given enough credit. The problem is that they are way too intelligent for the average reader, a person needs at least 120 verbal IQ to follow it properly.

Your tone and level of condescension is incredible. I was turned off by it earlier in this thread but I tried to steer my question by asking what people were doing to prepare for the coming recession/depression. You reiterated that only people with a high level of intelligence and an IQ of 120 can truly understand the information that ZeroHedge is putting out. I'm sure that you include yourself in that vaunted group.

If you're so smart, what are the external indicators to show that you've employed this IQ into something tangible? Are you a successful banker or some sort of respected professional in a prestige field like law/medicine? Do you pull in 5, 10, 20x the average income in the US as a small business owner? Have you made big money (let's say $100k+) capitalizing off of info from ZH, kinda like the guys who bet against the mortgage market and CDO's during the housing bust?

Cuz if not, I'm calling your legitimacy into question and straight saying that your 120+ IQ level is just like the 212 rep points you have on this site: purdy cool but functionally useless.

"They helped me save thousands" = not impressive at all. I'm not even disagreeing with you when you say they're putting out good info. What I'm saying is that we likely have no choice but to play along with the financial machinations because there isn't any feasible alternative. Started the rant because your arrogance is so unseemly and I don't feel like you've really positioned yourself to be an authority on the subject save from quoting money velocity, Austrian economics, additional generic buzz words/terms.

Do you seriously think I'm dumb enough to dox myself to prove myself to... a bunch of words on the internet?

Tell you what bro, show us how brave you are and post your tax return first.

Also if you'd like to actually discuss ZH why don't you post an article you find objectionable to show ZH is just doomsday nonsense? Most of the time it's not at all. It easily surpasses any other financial commentary, leagues above MSNBC.

[Blaster]

Samseau Wrote:

And spending on healthcare just means a bunch of insurance companies got insanely rich while the rest of the economy continues to degrade.

... and hospitals, and private practices, and drug companies...

The ZH article you linked above used some slight-of-hand to slam Obamacare and make it seem like the GDP was entirely a tax which isn't what their data (or the chart you linked) says at all. Frankly this kind of "careless" bait-and-switch typical MSM technique.

I'd love to see a good discussion and analysis of the impact of Obamacare, health insurance premiums, and healthcare spending as it relates to the GDP but the Zerohedge article really doesn't have anything useful. Healthcare spending was the largest component of 2015 US spending. So what? Healthcare is something people want, it's a valid part of the economy. Does federal mucking about with insurance laws cause taxpayers to fund some of this? Absolutely! But how much? That's a rather critical part of the question that Zerohedge doesn't even bother to ask, much less offer any answers.

[Samseau]

(03-27-2016 08:23 PM)Blaster Wrote:  

Samseau Wrote:

And spending on healthcare just means a bunch of insurance companies got insanely rich while the rest of the economy continues to degrade.

... and hospitals, and private practices, and drug companies...

The ZH article you linked above used some slight-of-hand to slam Obamacare and make it seem like the GDP was entirely a tax which isn't what their data (or the chart you linked) says at all. Frankly this kind of "careless" bait-and-switch typical MSM technique.

I'd love to see a good discussion and analysis of the impact of Obamacare, health insurance premiums, and healthcare spending as it relates to the GDP but the Zerohedge article really doesn't have anything useful. Healthcare spending was the largest component of 2015 US spending. So what? Healthcare is something people want, it's a valid part of the economy. Does federal mucking about with insurance laws cause taxpayers to fund some of this? Absolutely! But how much? That's a rather critical part of the question that Zerohedge doesn't even bother to ask, much less offer any answers.

Actually they offered plenty of answers for anyone who wanted them. Had you followed the links you would have found this report:

http://freedompartners.org/wp-content/up..._FINAL.pdf

With lots of charts and graphs showing what a disaster Obamacare has been over the years, it's effect on premiums, etc.

Again, your criticism is exactly what I see all the time on ZH. People simply do not understand ZH because it's written in such a way that anyone under 120 Verbal IQ will not appreciate all of the nuance. It is extremely elitist, and expects you to be smart enough to connect the dots on your own. For example, they expect you to do the math if you want to know what percent of GDP the healthcare spending is, by looking up GDP on your own and dividing against total spending.

ZH's attitude is, "We are here to report the news, it's not our fault if you're too dumb to understand it." They hold no one's hands. This definitely costs them readership, I believe the founder must be independently wealthy who runs it merely to spit in the faces of other traders and financial elites. He does it to get at other intellectuals, page hits and viewership seems to be an important but secondary goal.

[Blaster]

No, I understood the Zerohedge article quite well, thank you. The article makes a blatant, careless statistical error bordering on innumeracy and actually makes the issue harder to understand than if I had just done a google search to find my own sources.

Quote:

For example, they expect you to do the math if you want to know what percent of GDP the healthcare spending is, by looking up GDP on your own and dividing against total spending.

In other words, do the work Zerohedge has pretended to do but hasn't actually. I also read your link. Here's an excerpt:

Quote:

With health care costs still rising faster than inflation
six years after passage of the Affordable Care Act, it is clear that
the law is not helping lower the burden of health care expenses
for American families.

Yeah well, no shit. Obamacare was never about making healthcare more affordable for anyone outside the bottom tax bracket. Obamacare was never going to make healthcare costs go down. This can even be explained in fairly simple microeconomic terms. Obamacare is a thinly-disguised money grab from higher income to lower/zero income groups. This allows lower income groups to demand more medical care which the higher income groups must pay for. Healthcare is a broken market in the first place due to massive information asymmetry between providers and consumers. Doctor says you need this, who are you to argue? So costs keep going up, and premiums keep going up with costs. Mucking around with methods of payment and insurance isn't going to do a thing to address underlying costs in the system.

And in fact, when I follow up on the questions I have from the zerohedge article, I find an article that does in fact go into greater detail about the questions I had, although it is from 2010 and published by an insurance company: Facts about Rising Health Costs

Quote:

Health care spending in the United States totaled nearly $2.6 trillion in 2010. Of total spending, half (51 percent) goes to pay the cost of medical services provided by hospitals and physicians. Prescription drugs spending accounts for 10 percent. While prescription drug costs represent a significant portion of overall health spending, this is one area where there has been some recent success in slowing the growth in spending. From 2009 to 2010, prescription drug costs grew by just 1.2 percent while hospital and physician costs grew by 4.9 percent.



While private health insurance administrative costs sometimes receive a significant amount of political attention, they represent only 3.75 percent of overall national spending on health care.

Quote:

An increasingly important factor driving hospital price increases is consolidation of the hospital industry. Hospital mergers and acquisitions jumped by 33 percent between 2009 and 2010. Research shows that hospital market concentration leads to increases in the price of hospital care. In fact, price increases exceeded 20 percent when mergers occurred in concentrated markets.

Quote:

Wasteful spending likely accounts for between one-third and one-half of all U.S. health care spending. PricewaterhouseCoopers calculates that up to $1.2 trillion, or half of all health care spending, is the result of waste.16 An Institute of Medicine (IOM) report estimated unnecessary health spending totaled $750 billion in 2009 alone.17 The biggest area of excess is defensive medicine, including redundant, inappropriate or unnecessary tests and procedures. Other factors that contribute to wasteful spending include non-adherence to medical advice and prescriptions, alcohol abuse, smoking and obesity.

Warning, the next bit is heavily biased to favor insurance companies. Nevertheless, it's hard to argue with the data they present without simply claiming that they are lying. They provide citations at the bottom and I have not followed up on them.

Quote:

Insurance industry profits are not a significant driver of health insurance premiums. A Yahoo Finance analysis places the health insurance sector’s average profit margin in 2012 at just 4.5 percent. By comparison, major drug manufacturers have an average profit margin of 16.7 percent; medical instrument and supply companies, 13.6 percent; biotechnology, 11.9 percent; and medical appliance and equipment companies, 13.7 percent.22

Administrative costs represent less than 2 percent of health care spending growth. Private insurance administrative costs are actually comparable to Medicare’s administrative costs when comparing similar services. In 2009, private payers expended $12.51 per member per month versus $13.19 for Medicare.23

Importantly, private insurer administrative costs include fraud detection, disease management, wellness programs, and investments in information technology.

In other words, based on the Aetna article, I would guess the impact of Obamacare on that big red bar in the Zerohedge graph is maybe a few percentage points at best, quite possibly nothing at all. So they are employing a blatant trick to make it seem like Obamacare is fueling GDP when reality is far more complex. It's obvious disinformation that I am forced to correct for myself if I want to understand the issue.

[Samseau]

2010? You serious?

[booshala]

(03-27-2016 07:51 PM)Samseau Wrote:  

Do you seriously think I'm dumb enough to dox myself to prove myself to... a bunch of words on the internet?

Tell you what bro, show us how brave you are and post your tax return first.

Also if you'd like to actually discuss ZH why don't you post an article you find objectionable to show ZH is just doomsday nonsense? Most of the time it's not at all. It easily surpasses any other financial commentary, leagues above MSNBC.

A simple "I'm a scrub" would've sufficed... I'm guessing you can't claim that you're balling because other forum members have met you, but your pride is keeping you from admitting that you're not using your 120+ IQ to make money. Tough break, brah...

[Blaster]

(03-28-2016 10:33 AM)Samseau Wrote:  

2010? You serious?

Yes, serious.

[Blaster]

That pie chart I linked is not the kind of thing that is going to change dramatically over a 6 year period without something equally dramatic happening (I'm thinking eruption of Yellowstone Caldera dramatic). I assume that a really smart person reading my post will be able to make that kind of reasonable induction and either research specifics themselves or ask me about it. As it so happens, I decided to check it myself and I am right. There isn't any kind of drastic change in the market share between 2010 and 2014 (most recent data).

The article I linked used data from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (http://www.cms.gov).

Here is a link to the 2014 data: https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-...Tables.zip

In this zipfile, look at "Table 2: National Health Expenditures; Aggregate and Per Capita Amounts, by Type of Expenditure.xls"

There is a row titled "Net Cost of Health Insurance"

Quote:

Net cost of health insurance is calculated as the difference between CY incurred premiums earned and benefits paid for private health insurance. This includes administrative costs, and in some cases, additions to reserves, rate credits and dividends, premium taxes, and plan profits or losses. Also included in this category is the difference between premiums earned and benefits paid for the private health insurance companies that insure the enrollees of the following programs: Medicare, Medicaid, Children's Health Insurance Program, and workers' compensation (health portion only).

Here I find some potential bias in the Aetna report, which uses "Private Health Insurance Admin Costs" as 3.75%. The "Net cost of health insurance" during 2010 according to the report I linked is 5.9%. For 2014, it's 6.4%. So it has grown, but not by a crazy amount. In fact it seems to have been highest in 2006. The link in their citations is broken, though, so it's possible that CMS.gov changed the way it reported on its health insurance data (data is clearly still collected the same way though since they have data back to 1960).

[weambulance]

(03-28-2016 02:01 PM)booshala Wrote:  

(03-27-2016 07:51 PM)Samseau Wrote:  

Do you seriously think I'm dumb enough to dox myself to prove myself to... a bunch of words on the internet?

Tell you what bro, show us how brave you are and post your tax return first.

Also if you'd like to actually discuss ZH why don't you post an article you find objectionable to show ZH is just doomsday nonsense? Most of the time it's not at all. It easily surpasses any other financial commentary, leagues above MSNBC.

A simple "I'm a scrub" would've sufficed... I'm guessing you can't claim that you're balling because other forum members have met you, but your pride is keeping you from admitting that you're not using your 120+ IQ to make money. Tough break, brah...

I have no dog in this fight, but this kind of argument is bullshit. Demanding someone put out proof that would likely materially damage their life, then claiming victory when they refuse, is hardly what I'd call a valid debating technique.

[JacksonRev]

(03-26-2016 09:33 PM)booshala Wrote:  

(03-26-2016 08:31 PM)Samseau Wrote:  

I don't get critics of ZH at all. ZH has been pointing out that the markets are shit since 2009, are nothing but printed money, and lo and behold the US economy today is shit with the lowest money velocity since they started recording the metric in 1960.

https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/M2V/

ZH has been more accurate than any other financial news source by a landslide and they are not given enough credit. The problem is that they are way too intelligent for the average reader, a person needs at least 120 verbal IQ to follow it properly.

Your tone and level of condescension is incredible. I was turned off by it earlier in this thread but I tried to steer my question by asking what people were doing to prepare for the coming recession/depression. You reiterated that only people with a high level of intelligence and an IQ of 120 can truly understand the information that ZeroHedge is putting out. I'm sure that you include yourself in that vaunted group.

If you're so smart, what are the external indicators to show that you've employed this IQ into something tangible? Are you a successful banker or some sort of respected professional in a prestige field like law/medicine? Do you pull in 5, 10, 20x the average income in the US as a small business owner? Have you made big money (let's say $100k+) capitalizing off of info from ZH, kinda like the guys who bet against the mortgage market and CDO's during the housing bust?

Cuz if not, I'm calling your legitimacy into question and straight saying that your 120+ IQ level is just like the 212 rep points you have on this site: purdy cool but functionally useless.

"They helped me save thousands" = not impressive at all. I'm not even disagreeing with you when you say they're putting out good info. What I'm saying is that we likely have no choice but to play along with the financial machinations because there isn't any feasible alternative. Started the rant because your arrogance is so unseemly and I don't feel like you've really positioned yourself to be an authority on the subject save from quoting money velocity, Austrian economics, additional generic buzz words/terms.

His tone...

[Samseau]

(03-28-2016 02:56 PM)Blaster Wrote:  

That pie chart I linked is not the kind of thing that is going to change dramatically over a 6 year period without something equally dramatic happening (I'm thinking eruption of Yellowstone Caldera dramatic). I assume that a really smart person reading my post will be able to make that kind of reasonable induction and either research specifics themselves or ask me about it. As it so happens, I decided to check it myself and I am right. There isn't any kind of drastic change in the market share between 2010 and 2014 (most recent data).

The article I linked used data from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (http://www.cms.gov).

Here is a link to the 2014 data: https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-...Tables.zip

In this zipfile, look at "Table 2: National Health Expenditures; Aggregate and Per Capita Amounts, by Type of Expenditure.xls"

There is a row titled "Net Cost of Health Insurance"

Quote:

Net cost of health insurance is calculated as the difference between CY incurred premiums earned and benefits paid for private health insurance. This includes administrative costs, and in some cases, additions to reserves, rate credits and dividends, premium taxes, and plan profits or losses. Also included in this category is the difference between premiums earned and benefits paid for the private health insurance companies that insure the enrollees of the following programs: Medicare, Medicaid, Children's Health Insurance Program, and workers' compensation (health portion only).

Here I find some potential bias in the Aetna report, which uses "Private Health Insurance Admin Costs" as 3.75%. The "Net cost of health insurance" during 2010 according to the report I linked is 5.9%. For 2014, it's 6.4%. So it has grown, but not by a crazy amount. In fact it seems to have been highest in 2006. The link in their citations is broken, though, so it's possible that CMS.gov changed the way it reported on its health insurance data (data is clearly still collected the same way though since they have data back to 1960).

According to the report you posted, the net cost of insurance is currently at a all time high, that has only been tied since 2006.

When Obama was running, he said he would lower insurance costs. Insurance costs were actually decreasing up until the point where Obamacare was passed. Since the passing of Obamacare in 2010, costs have gone right back up to all time highs in 2014 and judging from ZH's latest report have already passed 2006's old highs.

[rudebwoy]

Secret Meeting to take down the dollar by the G20 countries.

http://www.usagold.com/cpmforum/2016/03/...-s-dollar/

[El Chinito loco]

(03-29-2016 11:34 PM)rudebwoy Wrote:  

Secret Meeting to take down the dollar by the G20 countries.

http://www.usagold.com/cpmforum/2016/03/...-s-dollar/

Illustrates probable fed impacts on the market with monetary base adjustments.










We live in very sketchy but interesting times. Print money all day every day. No bear market again. Bull forever. Nothing bad can happen..right?

[Blaster]

(03-28-2016 08:07 PM)Samseau Wrote:  

According to the report you posted, the net cost of insurance is currently at a all time high, that has only been tied since 2006.

When Obama was running, he said he would lower insurance costs. Insurance costs were actually decreasing up until the point where Obamacare was passed. Since the passing of Obamacare in 2010, costs have gone right back up to all time highs in 2014 and judging from ZH's latest report have already passed 2006's old highs.

Yep. Obama lied or was wrong. I suspect it's most accurate to say he was equivocating and when he claimed he'd lower insurance costs he was only talking about a small segment of low-income democrats.

Moving away from Zerohedge for a moment. One point worth hammering home to anyone having these kinds of discussions is that insurance does not and can not reduce underlying costs. There will never, under any circumstances, be a politician who can truthfully advocate that implementing any kind of health insurance policy will lead to lower healthcare costs. That's bogus economics.

All insurance does, all that it can ever do, is reduce the burden on individual payers by sharing costs among a larger group. The whole concept of insurance is to share financial risk by pooling resources. An accident could happen to anyone, and if everyone had to save up the full amount to prepare for those accidents then no one would have any money left over to spend in the economy. So it benefits everyone to chip into a fund that will pay the costs for someone who suffers an accident.

Critically, this does not change the underlying microeconomics of the situation at all. Doctors still have to be paid. Equipment needs to be built and sold. Drugs still have to be bought. Whether the money to pay for all of that comes from an insurance fund or out-of-pocket has marginal effects on the pricing. If anything, insurance will cause more money to be available for healthcare spending which will drive prices up. Worse, healthcare has this problem where people are far more likely to need healthcare as they age. A scenario where everyone will eventually need a payout is not properly called "insurance."

There's no financial policy that will ever seriously reduce healthcare costs. Cost reduction comes from some combination of:

1. Innovation (Process/technological)
2. Resource abundance.
3. Competition.
4. Reduced demand (not always a bad thing, for example if people need less heart surgery because they are living healthier lifestyles...).

If anyone's claiming there will be cost reductions and isn't talking about anything in that list above (it is possible I missed something but insurance is never going to be on the list), they are lying.

Indeed, the whole focus on insurance costs can be spun to benefit Obamacare, by allowing the discussion to be overly focused on the insurance component alone rather than fundamentals:

Reports find competition among Obamacare plans

Quote:

As Republicans argue that Obamacare is ruining competition in the healthcare industry, they are facing mounting evidence to the contrary.

The average number of insurance carriers offering plans in the new marketplaces increased from six last year to seven this year, according to a new analysis the nonpartisan firm Avalere Health is preparing to release this month.

People buying individual market plans, both inside and outside the marketplaces, generally had access to more plans in 2015 than in 2014, a report posted Thursday by the Government Accountability Office found.

Whether Obamacare increases or decreases competition is a point of contention. I'm sure I could find an article about insurance company profits that calls into question the efficacy of Obamacare "competition." But the bigger point is that it doesn't really matter. All this quibbling over six vs seven choices in healthcare plans or whatever (I had 3 as I recall) is all smoke and mirrors distracting people from the actual problem which is the cost of the actual healthcare itself. The cost of insurance amounts to 6%-7% of the healthcare sector.

Consider an ideal scenario where, tomorrow, the insurance system became perfectly efficient with no administrative costs and insurance companies taking no profit. You would see a one-time drop in premiums, probably about 7% (on average). So as a single guy I'd maybe save like $350 a year. But then premiums would keep going up at roughly the same rate, because the actual healthcare services those premiums are paying for for continue to rise.

Obamacare lets politicians pretend like they are doing something when they are mostly just screwing each other while pandering to their core support. In this case, that core support is healthcare industry lobbyists(archive link), who benefit from economic growth and rising costs in healthcare sector, and democrat dregs(archive) who benefit or at least believe they benefit from government subsidies for their health insurance. Everyone else gets fucked.

Quote:

Among industries, 207 hospitals lined up to lobby, followed by 105 insurance companies and 85 manufacturing companies. Trade, advocacy, and professional organizations trumped them all with 745 registered groups that lobbied on health reform bills, illustrating the common Washington strategy of special interests banding together to pool money and increase their influence.

Note how insurance companies make up only a fraction of the total number of interested parties. Hospitals, manufacturing, trade, advocacy, professional organizations... everyone wanted a piece of the action.