EconBob

Integrated Healthcare, owned by Malaysian sovereign-wealth fund Khazanah, launched an $837 million bid for majority control of Singapore’s Parkway Holdings.

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Integrated Healthcare Bids for Majority Stake in Parkway

Abbott Laboratories will buy a Piramal Healthcare’s healthcare solutions business for an up-front payment of $2.12 billion, plus $400 million annually for four years, boosting its presence in India.

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Abbott Buys Unit of India’s Piramal Healthcare

Econ 101 markets exist in produce. They do not exist in finance, or electricity, or airline travel, or healthcare, and they cannot be created, no matter what libertarian economists may claim

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Bank Reform Should Only Be the Start

This would have come as no surprise to the mid-century New Deal liberals who devised the regulatory systems that the neoliberal Democrats and conservative Republicans tore down.

More here:
Bank Reform Should Only Be the Start | NewAmerica.net

By then, China could suffer from what Japan is suffering now, a stagnant economy and a declining population that represents a strain on its healthcare and social welfare system. China was the world’s richest nation until 1850, …

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China Economy 中国经济: China surpasses Japan as the 2nd largest …

The Japanese government is likely to forecast that the domestic economy will grow at a price-adjusted 1.4% next fiscal year, a sign that Tokyo expects a recovering global economy to lift Japan out of its slump.

The climate-change conference in Copenhagen is shaping up as an economic showdown between the U.S. and China.

Representatives from a group of poor nations briefly walked out of the conference to protest the slow pace of negotiations, and EU officials expressed exasperation with the U.S. and China.

By Bob Michaelson, Nov. 2009
When a new CEO talks about “restructuring” or cutting a workforce, one should be skeptical of his skill level. How hard is it to lay off 10% or 25% of the employees? It does not take any great management insight.

Similarly, when a presidential candidate talks about “cost controls” or “capping costs” in an industry as a way of dealing with entrenched cost issues, he or she is not showing any great skill or imagination. Nor is he showing any great knowledge about economics!

President Obama spoke many times about capping healthcare costs during the presidential debates in 2008. For example, in his third debate with Sen. McCain, he said:  “The only thing we’re going to try to do is lower costs so that those cost savings are passed onto you.”  Sounds good, if costs are lowered by adding efficiency to the process. But that’s not really the plan. We now see that costs will be cut by using a model based on Medicare, where the federal government will dictate reimbursement to doctors and other medical professionals based on a schedule set by the government.

Mandates vs. Freedom

Mandates on individuals to buy insurance (which Pres. Obama repeatedly stated he was against during the Democratic primaries) or pay a penalty, mandates on doctors and hospitals to accept their payment limits, mandates on businesses to provide insurance that meets the Fed’s criteria, or pay a penalty. Mandates on insurance companies to accept all applicants, regardless of their health and/or pre-existing conditions (sounds moral but puts the insurance industry at risk of failure).

Why not just fix what’s broken?

Changing many variables at once adds risk and makes it exceedingly difficult to measure what’s worked and what hasn’t. About 85% of the public is covered by health insurance. If the main need is to cover the uninsured, check to see if there’s already a state coverage option (provided by many states); then, look at providing basic coverage to those who are law-abiding citizens and residents.

Cost Issues

We Don’t Have the Money. We are already about $9 trillion in debt and are running some of the biggest deficits in history, in terms of both dollar amount and percentage of GDP. The deficit jumped from about 2.5% of GDP in 2008 to around 10% in 2009!

Competition from the government!

This is a bad joke. Advocates of the overhaul seem to think that if they say it often enough someone will believe it!  Should the government enter the software industry to ensure more competition? (software operating systems, to narrow it to an oligopoly) Or should the government open up tax collections and audits to private companies to garner some competition there (the  IRS could use some competition to reduce wasteful spending).

Prescription: Start over with a modest, stage-implemented plan!

For more info -

The main authors of the site listed below, who are doctors, state the case quite well -

http://www.protectpatientsrights.org/