I don't get states not grabbing every Medicaid dime they can

I don't get states not grabbing every Medicaid dime they can.  Maybe 50% (rough guess) of would-have-been-covered patient care will end up being covered anyway but thru increased private insurance premiums or via alternate government channels.  Today's (pre-expansion) Medicaid pays something like 65% back to states – leaving something like (okay, rough guess) 15% profit missed for no reason.  States send this money to Washington in the first place; don't they want it back?  ???

Patients who don’t get care for diabetes, early cancer diagnosis, mental health/drug treatment, not to mention for simply controlling blood pressure and cholesterol are going to show up at the health system in the long run with much more expensive symptoms to treat for which they wont be turned away.  The Republican fiscal version of kicking the can down the road.

Medicaid expansion under Obamacare will pay 90% of costs (100% at first).  Inexplicably, 16 governors resist this money dump in their states.  Florida’s governor wont turn on the spigot because he says he doesn’t trust the feds not to turn it back off.  Wonder what crackpot political party would do something like that.

 
States cut businesses billions in tax breaks hoping to attract jobs.  Medicaid wants to shovel states (back) billions of (their own) dollars -- that will create tens of thousands of good paying medical field jobs (where technical training actually pays off).  Am I missing something here?

The dismal universe?

Recently I watched a physicist on TV say that fish and birds on other planets would look the same as they do here because the physics of movement would be the same — even if the underlying biology might be very different. 

A while back, after watching a show on chemistry — I wondered if God had done an economic “sneaky” by including silver and gold in the table of elements: both naturally precious looking, the more attractive of the two being the more rare. What else could have so perfectly filled the need for a medium of economic exchange in early (pre-plastic) civilizations?
 
Now, it occurs to me that silver and gold is the likely medium of exchange in developing civilizations all over the universe -- perhaps with the same contention over gold versus bimetal standard.  The dismal science is everywhere too!

Time to break up medical monopolies of our own making?

 
Sovaldi, the $84,000 cure (90+%) for Hepatitis C. Early research got along on government grants — until researchers smelled money; then looked for private investment. Success: planned sell for $350 a pill but Gilead Sciences “gambled” and paid Pharmasset $11 billion for it, thinking of $1000 a pill …
… enough to cost $300 billion if all patients get treatment (70% will develop liver symptoms) — as much as all other prescriptions cost combined. Pharmasset would only have charged $100 billion.

Scientists ‘incredibly excited’ by asthma treatment breakthrough http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/292947.php - See more at: http://angrybearblog.com/2015/04/open-thread-april-24-2015.html#comments

Scientists ‘incredibly excited’ by asthma treatment breakthrough http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/292947.php - See more at: http://angrybearblog.com/2015/04/open-thread-april-24-2015.html#comments

Alzheimer’s: new ultrasound technique ‘restores memory’ in mice
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/290801.php
Nanoparticles that ferry dopamine to the brain offer potential Parkinson’s treatment http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/292848.php
Scientists ‘incredibly excited’ by asthma treatment breakthrough
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/292947.php

Scientists ‘incredibly excited’ by asthma treatment breakthrough http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/292947.php - See more at: http://angrybearblog.com/2015/04/open-thread-april-24-2015.html#comments

Got to read Medical News Today — multiple stories of progress daily — medical knowledge doubles every two years. Will we rejoice if and when these treatments and dozens of others work out — or will these be more causes of anxiety about how we as a nation are supposed to pay the extortionate rates of multiple medical monopolists?   http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/

Antibiotics Against Superbugs
One line of research our non-hero scientists ($440 million personally to the chief scientist who discovered Sovaldi) don’t trouble themselves to pursue is new anti-biotics — seems the bugs develop resistance too fast and then the money dries up too soon. Welcome back to 1935. 
https://thebrowser.com/articles/antibiotics-against-superbugs/

Meanwhile back on the farm, Bloomberg:
“since 2007, the cost of brand name medicines has soared with prices doubling for dozens of established drugs that target everything from multiple sclerosis to cancer, blood pressure and even erectile dysfunction.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-05-08/why-prescription-drug-prices-keep-rising-higher

John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie could not have invented one monopoly after another to fete themselves on -- temporary, but don't worry, they can invent them faster than they lapse -- and held the nation's health hostage to garner obscene sums.  Time to break up the medical monopolies we are making with our outdated patent system -- don't forget medical device makers and one-and-a-half million insurance bureaucrats (don't care what their profit percentage is) trying not to pay three-quarters of a million doctors?  Time for America to learn to do medicine a different way? 

Played right, the medicine can become America's rust proof, export proof (even to cheaper US locals), recession proof, pollution free, even robot resistan growth industry.  Don't worry; per capita output grows 20% every ten years to pay for it all -- assuming the 1% don't keep scarfing 95% (true figure) of the growth.  

[Late note: "Hepatitis C linked to increased risk of liver cancer, other cancers"  Double the risk of cancers other than liver cancer?
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/293082.php]

Sovaldi, the $84,000 cure (90+%) for Hepatitis C. Early research got along on government grants — until researchers smelled money; then looked for private investment. Success: planned sell for $350 a pill but Gilead Sciences “gambled” and paid Pharmasset $11 billion for it, thinking of $1000 a pill …
… enough to cost $300 million if all patients get treatment (70% will develop liver symptoms) — as much as all other prescriptions cost combined. Pharmasset would only have charged $100 billion.
Alzheimer’s: new ultrasound technique ‘restores memory’ in mice
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/290801.php
Nanoparticles that ferry dopamine to the brain offer potential Parkinson’s treatment
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/292848.php
Got to read Medical News Today — multiple stories of progress daily — medical knowledge doubles every two years. Will we rejoice if and when these treatments and dozens of others work out — or will these be more causes of anxiety about how we as a nation are supposed to pay the extortionate rates of multiple medical monopolists?
Antibiotics Against Superbugs
One line of research our super-overpaid scientists ($440 million personally to the chief scientist who discovered Sovaldi) don’t trouble themselves to pursue is new anti-biotics — seems the bugs develop resistance too fast and then the money dries up too soon. Welcome back to 1935.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/292848.php
Meanwhile back on the farm, Bloomberg:
“since 2007, the cost of brand name medicines has soared with prices doubling for dozens of established drugs that target everything from multiple sclerosis to cancer, blood pressure and even erectile dysfunction.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-05-08/why-prescription-drug-prices-keep-rising-higher
Time to break the medical monopolies anyone?
- See more at: http://angrybearblog.com/2015/04/open-thread-april-24-2015.html#comments

[UNDER DE-STRUCTION?]

[UNDER DE-STRUCTION:  See "Labor Unions Trump Luddites" above:  http://ontodayspage.blogspot.com/2015/05/working-on-angles-to-make-criminalizing.html ]

There are two RICO prosecutable sides to firing employees for attempting to organize labor.  The side everybody naturally thinks of is the extortionate side – the pain of unemployment.  The side everybody seems to miss is the illegal blocking of participation in the legally prescribed process of assembling a collective bargaining unit – solely for the sake of depriving employees of monies they could win from the employer in true free market negotiating.

Think almost perfect parallel with prolifers sued under RICO for blocking clinics – except that prolifers slipped off the RICO hook because they were not seeking to squeeze clinics for financial gain.
 
Let’s make up a situation which is all blocking -- no firing; no extortion.  Imagine that the federal organizing formula required online application (Obamacare style) and that for some reason the computers needed to be on the work site – and that the employer permanently barred employees from computer access.  If this is RICO/Hobbs prosecutable, then, firing is too.

Firing employees means they no longer have anything to organize -- inherently severs them from the legal prescribed process. 

Deprivation of economic participation for attempting to organize – not to reduce staff or for poor performance -- ought to be RICO/Hobbs prosecutable all by itself.  But the offense has been practiced without prosecution so much for so long (the free market?) that it may be hard for the courts to ever get their heads around the extortionate side of it.

Unions do not have to wait for prosecutors to catch on – should be able to seek injunctions against blocking of the federally prescribed organizing process – or sue after the fact.  Get cases going; watch the perps run for the hills while the cases run their courses (not sure what their liability will be) – we can organize the country out from under them before the rulings come down.

Alternate route: states can make blocking of and/or extortion against union organizing activity a felony punishable by one year – that would meet a requirement for RICO prosecution.  If pro union legislators everywhere attempt to pass such legislation every year – whether successful or not – I can think of no better ed-u-cational process about the criminality of habitually depriving most Americans of their economic and political wherewithal that Americans have gotten so used to tolerating (except maybe if our ed-u-cator-in-chief decides to make it his or her number one topic).

SS Trust Fund foie gras?

When FICA income no longer covers SS retirement outgo we will do one of three things: raise the FICA rate, raise the FICA cap or raise the income tax (or expand the deficit) to cash the Trust Fund bonds.

When the TF bonds run out (should keep one year of full replacement, not shortfall coverage -- the statutory definition of solvency) we can easily make a rule that income tax will from then on will cover the FICA shortfall -- easily because that's what we would have been doing for a couple of decades prior.

Politically, cashing the TF bonds may be the most doubtful outcome because that would in effect reverse the cap: the bottom 50% would pay nothing, the top 10% would take the biggest hit.  Most doubtful under today's 1% rule politics anyway.  Which doubtfulness makes today's Trust Fund stuffing remind me of foie gras.  :-)

Dem party seems at best to want to hang on to the paltry past

Dem party seems at best to want to hang on to the paltry past:
Obamacare that leaves tens of millions out -- too expensive for too many;
General support for some kind of minimum wage hike (min now several dollars below 1968 -- double per capita income later!)
Hang on to SS, Medicare, Medicaid;
Hang on to Dodd-Frank;
Nothing to do about the defining economic -- and political -- pathology of de-unionization.

Nothing to wake voters out of their deep sleep and rouse them to the polls.

How about selling:
$15 an hour min wage (45% of workforce gets raise -- only 3.5% shift of GDP);
Push some version of single-payer -- or perhaps just the intention to work out or at least work on some version of single-payer like Obama worked on Ocare (squeezed most out of political lemon: told industries they are either at the table or the meal; promised more business to pay for lower costs);
Face up to core task of re-unionization in concrete way -- how about sicking RICO on union busters: arguable; and while the arguments go on in court, hopefully, the busters will run for the hills, not wanting to pile up anymore liabilities while waiting for rulings to come down, while we organize the country out from under them, too late for them whatever the rulings. Just one idea. Where are the others? Must do in any case: centralized bargaining (one labor contract with different similar firms) the only way to end the race-to-the-bottom, unionized or not.

Need a (non-paltry) party that can actually get our lives back.

Union contracts steer employees and consumers (not employers) towards mutual comfort(/discomfort) zone

 
Imagine a simple market where cloth weavers sell their wares to clothing sewers — many individual sellers, many individual buyers. Prices set at the mutually comfortable level — as in a level at which seller and buyer are equally happy/unhappy. At what other possible level?. Came the steam looms. …

… But wait. I heard a lecture today (by a Hathaway vice-pres yet) which described how investors in steam looms expected to recoup their money in three years and reap the bounty of mechanization for seventeen more. Only to discover of course that the bounty would be reaped instead by consumers — as competition drove prices down. …

… Back to the post-steam loom — separate employees from bargaining directly with the ultimate consumer — labor market. It’s almost too simple to describe. Steam loom operators did not — could not — set the price of their labor at the mutual comfort level with the ultimate consumers — who benefited from the price competition noted above and could surely have afforded to pay a few extra bob. Labor’s price was set instead at bare subsistence level — take it or leave it; we can hire the next starving sod who comes along (not very comfortable). Leaving loom operators families living on oat cakes three times a day because they could not afford wheat bread (forget about meat from my readings).

Unions in centralized bargaining labor markets tend to set labor’s price back at mutual comfort level with the ultimate consumers. There should be plenty of comfort to go around.

"Virtual co-ops" [see post below] can clear the American labor market -- and Chicago's drop-dead ghettos

Under "virtual co-ops" [see post below] the market will clear at a higher price for labor then under what I call our current "two-tier" labor market (unorganized) where labor's price is set relative to other labor instead of consumer preference (bring back the steam looms!).

Actually today's American labor market is NOT clearing because the price of labor is too low to clear: e.g., 100,000 out of (I estimate) 200,000 Chicago gang-age males are in street gangs because the minimum wage (to cite one thing) is $3.50 below LBJ's 1968 $10.75 DOUBLE THE PER CAPITA INCOME LATER!
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/gang-wars-at-the-root-of-chicagos-high-murder-rate/

The proportion out of the labor market may be worse. Somebody pointed me to a Forbes article stating half of Ferguson's young African-American males are missing from the census.

"While the problem of missing African American men is especially severe in Ferguson, young black men are absent from most U.S. cities. In the neighboring cities of East St. Louis, IL and St. Louis, about 38% and 24% of African American men age 25 to 34 are absent from their communities, respectively. On average, about 18 percent of young African American men are absent from large cities. (This calculation is based on the combined population of 33 cities with the largest African American populations, home to about one quarter of African Americans in the U.S.) In contrast, outside of large cities only about 4% of young black men are absent from their communities. The challenges posed by an absence of black men in Ferguson are problems faced primarily by larger cities."
http://www.forbes.com/sites/modeledbehavior/2015/03/18/half-of-fergusons-young-african-american-men-are-missing/

Actually, there may be a ray of hope in this for the long run solution to Chicago's seemingly permanent drop-dead ghettos. Fix the American labor market as a whole and the men and women who live there may be very flexible about commuting or even emigrating to where the jobs are. Then, they can bring demand back into the neighborhood -- or send money back like foreign immigrants! Gradually, economically healthy neighborhoods can emerge.

A NATION of VIRTUAL co-ops

Sure as the pricking of my thumbs something unraveling inequality this way comes. 

Apply RICO and the Hobbs Act to the practice and (in the case of consultants) profession of union-busting -- firing workers who try to carry out the federally prescribed steps to establish collective bargaining with their employer -- and when the prosecutions begin all the busters may head for the hills waiting (how ever many years it takes) for the cases to reach a conclusion in the higher courts. 

Meantime we can unionize the country right out from under them -- be too late to do anything about no matter how the rulings come down (could work).

Be nice if every firm were a co-operative -- where labor squeezed the consumer as hard as ownership? Combine ACROSS THE BOARD UNIONIZATION -- with -- CENTRALIZED BARGAINING (all similar jobs under one contract with different employers) and you have the equivalent of A NATION OF CO-OPS. 

Ask Germany; ask Denmark. Remember, unions are the average persons only political counterweight -- which should make right-to-work legislation allowing free riding employees a serious (devastating) First Amendment infringement on the mass of employees.