U.S. Senate
See Full Big Line
(D) J. Hickenlooper*
(R) Somebody
80%
20%
Governor
See Full Big Line
(D) Joe Neguse
(D) Phil Weiser
(D) Jena Griswold
60%
60%
40%↓
Att. General
See Full Big Line
(D) M. Dougherty
(D) Alexis King
(D) Brian Mason
40%
40%
30%
Sec. of State
See Full Big Line
(D) George Stern
(D) A. Gonzalez
(R) Sheri Davis
40%
40%
30%
State Treasurer
See Full Big Line
(D) Brianna Titone
(R) Kevin Grantham
(D) Jerry DiTullio
60%
30%
20%
CO-01 (Denver)
See Full Big Line
(D) Diana DeGette*
(R) Somebody
90%
2%
CO-02 (Boulder-ish)
See Full Big Line
(D) Joe Neguse*
(R) Somebody
90%
2%
CO-03 (West & Southern CO)
See Full Big Line
(R) Jeff Hurd*
(D) Somebody
80%
40%
CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado)
See Full Big Line
(R) Lauren Boebert*
(D) Somebody
90%
10%
CO-05 (Colorado Springs)
See Full Big Line
(R) Jeff Crank*
(D) Somebody
80%
20%
CO-06 (Aurora)
See Full Big Line
(D) Jason Crow*
(R) Somebody
90%
10%
CO-07 (Jefferson County)
See Full Big Line
(D) B. Pettersen*
(R) Somebody
90%
10%
CO-08 (Northern Colo.)
See Full Big Line
(R) Gabe Evans*
(D) Yadira Caraveo
(D) Joe Salazar
50%
40%
40%
State Senate Majority
See Full Big Line
DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
80%
20%
State House Majority
See Full Big Line
DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
September 01, 2009 03:40 PM UTC
25 Comments
The other central part of commerce is to lower the costs of doing business. That indicates a shift in tax policy to assure that all businesses are paying taxes, but at a lower level of burden to the end consumers (you) who consume their services and products.
Can someone answer me this …. do lobbyists and lawyers charge sales tax on their bills?
Same as a marketing firm, advertizing, accountants, realtors, insurance…
Ask Ben Alexander. He proposed a sales tax on services and got his but kicked from the Montrose Chamber to the Durango Rotary Club.
Back to the Post editorial:
http://www.denverpost.com/opin…
The Post likes it, doesn’t argue with its merits, but fails to address at its core why the Brophy proposal is wrong.
Someone please help me out with this Denver Post logic.
regarding the neutrality of the public option on the deficit.
Whoever is appointed to be the controller of the public option is sure to be some Washington insider hack. Not necesarily partisan, but definitely a perpetuator of the status quo. And surely he/she will run the public option with the philosophy that in order to manage the finances of the public option most effectively and with the most safety it is necesary to purchase treasury securities with their cash reserves.
Well when those government bonds are bought, that means all tax paying Americans have to pay back interest. It’s not deficit neutral. Interest accumulates constantly and the debt grows as a result of the public option. The most powerful force in the universe is compound interest. There isn’t any other way around that truth.
…HR3200 has this bock o text that’s gotten everyone worked up in a frenzy:
“The Secretary of Health & Human Services is responsible to create a low-cost plan without compromising quality or access to care.”
It would offer three different cost-sharing options, would vary premiums geographically, and would have payments to health care providers set by the Secretary based on
Medicare payment rates, with adjustments.
That’s some pretty ambitious stuff, but that’s what needed for this. The trick is what does it end up looking like?
Is the Dept of HHS going into the insurance biz with control over the whole process from forms and administration to designing checks and brochures? Or is it a clone of TriCare, where there’s a core of folks managing the eligibility and payments, but subcontracting the working innards to the private insurance industry? Or something in-between?
(I’ve already ranted that we should split TriCare into two parts, and just supplement the cost of adding new people to the pool initially.)
It won’t be a cloning of the VA, and I doubt if it’ll be a version of Medicare Advantage. And I doubt, Libertad’s ranting to the contrary, a nonprofit health care plan like what SEIU was proposing.
The vague answer is until this – until they say exactly what the plan is, there’s no way of knowing what it’ll cost. I do know the cost of doing nothing is far far far worse for the deficit, and by extension, the economy.
Amen. And here’s another thing to consider. Imagine a public option as one of our choices freeing us all up to consider careers, job changes, creative business ventures, without fear of a having no affordable health insurance. If you love your job and your employer provided coverage, fine. But people in jobs they don’t like and aren’t much good at would feel freer to try something else, something they are passionate about, something they feel enthusiasm for.
How many mediocre teachers who don’t really like kids would feel free to let go of their benefits to try something else if they could pick up decent benfits with a public plan not tied to that job? How many healthy young people who can’t afford private insurance now would be brought into the system to spread cost via a public option. How many self-employed now scraping together payments for shaky, expensive, high deductible insurance would be putting more money into the economy with a cheaper alternative to that huge burden?
How great for the economy a workforce free to be creative and a pool full of the young and healthy would be. How much more vibrant and competitive our economy would be. A public option, as one of our choices, should be a major economic stimulus, well worth the intitial investment.
There is an opportunity cost for businesses even when it all works well. Every year we have to look at available plans and try to find which one works best for the range of employees we have.
Giant PITA where we could instead be working on how to increase sales.
And you can repeat the talking points assertion that “Doing nothing is more expensive than doing something.” But none of that adresses the concerns I am raising.
The public option is desperately needed by both Republicans and Democrats because their culture is fading fast. It’s not going to be possible to continue to borrow at the low long term interest rates that the US government currently does, unless they find something that can plug the gaps that Social Security and Medicare have provided. Those programs use their dollars that are lying around to purchase Treasuries. Thus the market for Treasuries is watered down with all this extra “demand”, which lowers the interest rates that the government needs to pay on its debt. But those programs are fast approaching their zenith, whereby due mostly to demographic problems, not necesarily government mismanagement, these will require assistance from the budget not the other way around.
Combined with the stimulus and the banker bailout, the US can’t keep borrowing at the levels that it has without interest rates rising to allay the concerns that investors have regarding inflation and inevitable quantitative easing. Therefore, their “solution” is to create another big government program. Oh sure, it’s deficit neutral. But you can bet your bottom dollar that the program will buffer the demand for US Treasury’s, and thus “solving” our nation’s debt problems.
For some period of time.
And then our nation will reach another crisis that will dwarf our current crisis in magnitude and severity. What do we do then? The sooner that people realize that the public option doesn’t have anything to do with insuring people, and everything to do with keeping people who are in power in power, then a real discussion may take place. I’m not some conservative who believes that the people proposing this are downright evil Nazis who want to kill grandma, but the power elite realize that the sun is setting in the culture of debt, unless they can inflate the bubble up again and play for a little while longer.
The only possible end game if we allow the culture of debt to ensue is hyperinflation or outright default.
in all the other modern industrialized nations of the world. In fact, one of the reasons that countries like Germany didn’t feel such a pressing need to invest in stimulus is because their populations, with firm safety net in place including healthcare for all at much less cost to the economy than healthcare in this country, were not in danger of being put in nearly such desperate straights by the recent financial melt down crisis.
Not that we need to emulate the German or any other system. No reason we can’t learn from all to create what works best for us. Just saying that public health care has hardly led to the end of civilization as we know it in spite of being adopted by every other modern wealthy nation on the planet and resulting in systems that cover everyone at less cost to their economies than what we have. The financial melt down was our bad and we are the ones with an out of control healthcare drain on our economy, making our busineses less competitive with costs growing at an unsustainable rate.
A public option would be good for the US economy, good for our positioning in the world economy and therefore good for generating wealth and reducing deficit and debt.
A Dual system for long and short-term care, with a mix of private and government options.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H…
And to all the Conservative trolls out there, this is NOT socialized medicine. Sorry.
My view is that the public option addresses the problem of the uninsured and the impact of the insurance companies cherry picking. And this is one of the two big problems we face in healthcare.
But the public option does not do squat to address the cost issue. And nothing else in the bill does either. Yet this problem is the larger of the two problems and the one you talk about in you post.
The public option is irrelevant to the cost issue.
If you have a choice of taking out a public insurance policy that increases by 5 % per year and a private insurance policy that increases by 30 % per year which one are you going to pick ?
If a private insurer keeps posting increases well above their public competitor every year they’re not going to have anyone left to insure. That’s why they don’t want a public option !
Ceteris paribus, and my percentage numbers are arbitrary, but an option without a huge chunk of profit sliced off for Wall St. is going to be a cheaper one, and definitely effects cost.
Why not stick your employees with shitty government health care? It will save you money.
The Equal Opportunity Commission has ruled against them this a.m. on the discrimination suit brought on behalf of 100 Somali employees.
Just saw it on Channel 9 News.
An excellent press release from CAIR.
http://www.cairchicago.org/pre…
Good publicity is fine. Bad publicity is fine. But, spell his name right.
Andrews everywhere, from across the political spectrum, are appalled by this lapse.
Luke Korkowski doesn’t get any odds?
Shouldn’t he be in the Gov or Senate or whatever race he has announced for?
the former CD2 Rep pulls the ejection handle and you don’t bat an eye
The party’s over…