Healthcare and Oil's effect on RE Prices

alpine - in the TV/Media world Toronto is kicking NY and LA's ass. Between the government grants to start companies and low cost of health insurance, Canada has become the video game and virtual development hub. America cant keep up at all with talent or cost.

You can get a animation developer in Toronto for a 5th of the price you would pay for the same talent in the US. Most of that cost difference is due to health inusrance costs.

Therefore Canada is getting all that video game and virtual world development revenue that the US is not.

And before you say "who cares abotu video games", the video game industry now dwarfs the US movie industry in revenues.

Can't believe I'm still wasting my time with you, but since when is Fortune Magazine a GOP site? And commondreams.org is a more reliable, somehow unbiased blog? Ridiculous. If you still don't understand that doing away with employer-sponsored coverage just means that employers will hand you the money and have you elect coverage on your own, than there's not much hope for an actual discussion here.

ok - went to the GOP article it said nothing about McCains plan other than " he has objectives"

The McCain website goes on to say that he wants to lower the cost of insurance through competition but doesnt say how.

It does say exactly what i said previously that he wants to give tax incentives to individuals to buy their own insurance. it does not admit that his plan will shift the purchasing of insurance from an employer to the individual which is sneaky, and doesnt say that his incentives will pay less than half of the actual health insurance cost.

The rest pretty much says he wants to encourage competition and promote promotion or prevention. No substance and no meat. Basically a lot of more of the same.

It also doesnt say that his own plan would not cover McCain himself.

"i noticed that none of you could summarize McCains plan or why it is good for america. All you did was copy and paste links to GOP and conservative sites."

spoke like a tru ultraliberal. may i suggest reading on your own and forming your own opinions. I know Keith Olbermann's dreamy, but that thing between your ears has several other uses.

The McCain website does say:

"Within a decade, health spending will comprise twenty percent of our economy."

So if health spending will become 20% of our economy that is 20% less money Americans will have to use to buy homes therefore crashing the real estate values in America.

I am now on board the straight talk express.

McCain Health Care Plan = Bush Health Care Plan

Bush Health Care Plan = Patients dying on floor of Kings County Hospital Waiting Room

Can I make this any simpler???

Hah - directly from the McCain site "47 million people living in the United States lack health insurance."

Does McCain also ocunt all them there Wetbacks too?

Hah - directly from the McCain website:

"While still having the option of employer-based coverage, every family will receive a direct refundable tax credit - effectively cash - of $2,500 for individuals and $5,000 for families to offset the cost of insurance. "

What is doesnt say is that the employers wont be offering the same option of employer based health care because the employer will 1 - be losing more than half of its current tax incentives to offer health care, and 2 - if some employees buy their own insurance, employers will no longer have the bulk buying power they did before. No one will. Therefore the individual buying their own insurance and the employee getting it through the employer (if they still offer it) will also get less insurance for a greater cost.

totallyanonymous - I have a great deal for you. You give me $15K over the next year and the following April I will hand you a cool $5K.

Deal?

alpine292, I assume you're being facetious?

petrfitz, still not acknowledging much other than what's in your head, are you? That 47m figure is not particularly useful - it's an estimate of course, and doesn't tell you very much. There are people who are covered for part of the year only, there are people who are "under-insured," etc. And then the 20% of economy devoted to healthcare? That is NOT 20% less Americans will have to spend. We're already around 16% of GDP (not a particularly useful figure either, but I'll play along). Furthermore, why is spending so much money on health an inherently bad thing? You always claim to be thinking for yourself, but you just spout cliche and superficial talking points. What does any of this have to do with real estate again?

McCain Health Care Plan = Bush Health Care Plan

Bush Health Care Plan = Patients dying on floor of Kings County Hospital Waiting Room

Can I make this any simpler???

Alpine that sounds like a result of Universal Health care. Kind of similar to Kings County Hospital but throughout e US. Go Hilary!

bjw says "47m figure is not particularly useful" hmm - the GOP site, McCains site, Fortune and Common Dreams all site that number so there must be some credence to it. Also tell the 47 million people who do not have insurance that their situation isnt useful or matter to you.

To make it simple - the more money Americans spend on insurance the less then spend on other stuff. Spending less on other sutff means the stock market tanks, salaries go down, real estate prices go down. How can you not see that connection? The same goes for the price of oil.

Oil and Health care being two of the major costs to Americans outside of rent/mortgage.

BJW - you have not made 1 point in favor of McCains plan. You just picked apart my posts. Please defend his plan. Give me one reason why its better than or different than Bush's current disaster.

Or why iindividual buying is better than group rate buying. Anything please just show us that you actually thought this through and not that you jsut accept his plan is better because he is a Republican.

Still no one has made one point in favor of McCains plan. Not one.

"Does McCain also ocunt all them there Wetbacks too?"

Guy, maybe that word is acceptable in your group of friends, but in mine it ain't. I know you ultraliberals always assume anyone conservative is white, but not all of us are, and you call me a Wetback to my face and I'd knock you on your ass, gringo.

I have a better deal for you. You vote for your guy and I'll vote for mine. Keep your stupid opinions to yourself and your racist amigos.

hmm still not one reason why his plan is good or even not a disaster.

petrfitz, LISTEN - I am NOT in favor of McCain's plan. I'm not even a Republican, as you seem to think. You must have done just swimmingly on reading comprehension on standardized tests. All I've been saying is that your knocks on the plan are not well-founded at all. So I "picked apart" your posts. The 47m figure is oft-cited, but it doesn't tell very much - it's just a general gauge of coverage in this country. You just blindly accept it as an all-powerful stat. You yourself have not made a single convincing argument as to why healthcare costs are related to property values. If health insurance costs were just dumped on employees, yes, this would pose a problem, but that just won't happen. Health benefits are part of your compensation, and wages will adjust if policy "wipes away" employer-sponsored coverage. It's a fairly easy thing to see. If you disagree with it, fine, but you're clearly paranoid and just like to hear yourself talk/type.

directly from the Money article... under McCains plan ... "the raison d'être for corporate health benefits would vanish"

that is the basis of his plan to get rid of employer supplied benefits - do you not understand that?

Yes, I get that. But it's not the cost-shifting you make it out to be - capisci?

please show me the math

Really? Again? Man, you are dense.

1. McCain's plan goes through unscathed. Employers lose tax breaks on providing health coverage.
2. All employers drop coverage. Major bill is cleared off the table. Newfound cash on their balance sheets.
3. In order to retain employees, employers pass these "savings" on to their workers in the form of increased wages/salaries.
4. Employees can still afford health coverage; they just no longer have an employer to broker the deal for them. They now have the tax break themselves. Not much has actually changed (which is why I don't really like this plan to begin with).

3 - In order to retain employees, employers pass these "savings" on to their workers in the form of increased wages/salaries.

Hmmm companies give new found cash to employees - sure! I believe that.

4. Employees can still afford health coverage; they just no longer have an employer to broker the deal for them. They now have the tax break themselves. Not much has actually changed (which is why I don't really like this plan to begin with).

sure an individual will be able to get the same pricing and coverage as a company that is buying for 100,000 employees. And you forgot to mention the $8-15K extra out of pocket costs if the inidivual can actually get the same price as a major corporation. If not even more out of pocket.

Don't believe it. But I'm much more likely to pay attention to a benefits consultant than a guy who works in media when it comes to these matters.

Group pricing does not matter if no one has access to it anymore. Insurance companies will have to lower the cost of individual policies in order to avoid losing a huge chunk of market share. Pretty basic stuff here, fitz.

hmm just to clarify Bjw's position:

1 - companies will give new found money to employees - no doubt about it.

2 - buying insurance in bulk by the thousands has no price discount. A corporation who buys for 100,000 will get the same price as a guy off the street.

the above is basic stuff that happens every day.

(pst - I am a guy who works in media, but owns the company and buys for 100+ employees. I get bulk rates)

How are you such a moron? Health benefits = part of your compensation = it's already your money. And group discounts obviously exist in the current environment - show me where I said otherwise. In McCain's scenario, that's all gone and the current individual policy pricing is no longer sustainable, so insurers will be forced to adjust, otherwise enrollment will plummet and their premium revenue will follow. Believe me, they don't want that.

McCains's plan recaptures tax revenue that is lost when companies provide upper management with gold plated health plans that effectively reduce the taxable income for those individuals. There is a huge de facto subsidy of those health plans - it is a quirk of the tax code that McCain is trying to root out.

Forced to compete vigorously for individual customers' health plan dollars, managed care organizations would more aggressively roll out clinical transformation initiatives (e-Prespriptions, CPOE, etc.) and revenue cycle transformation initiatives (back-end billing efficiency, fraud enforcement). Therefore the out of pocket costs for coverage would decline. The subsidy would kick in to make the net effect on an average family basically zero, or even slightly positive. Highly paid individuals with gold plated plans would lose the tax subsidy they enjoyed before. For those at the bottom who could "fall through the cracks," there would be stopgap coverage plans with heavy subsidies.

Hope this helps you better understand the situation in a more balanced way.

east_cider, I applaud your cool in explaining this to him. Apologies to the rest of you for losing mine a bit. I do think your comments will go way over his head though - if you're unshakeably convinced of something, no amount of reason will move you.

bjw and east cider you provided no reason only more of the same BS. The math says that the "net effect" is that the consumer gets soaked with huge increases in healthcare costs and poorer service.

Your "reason" is fairy dust voodoo logic that thinks corporations are benevolent and insurance companies will play fair.

Its pretty much the same logic that got us into this credit crisis. " Oh a deregulated lending industry will develop more competitive vehicles that will give the consumers better lending options"

Where did that policy get us? near depression the worst economy since the 30's. now you boneheads want to do the same to healthcare.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson warned Thursday that rising oil prices are likely to prolong the world economic slowdown.

How can you be a housing bull but also support a more regulated lending industry?

Managed care organizations rely on scale for their existence. If employer sponsored plans start going away, the medical payors would hemorrhage money. They would be faced with the choice to either (a) go out of business, or (b) compete for consumer health plans.

These proposals are built on the principals of consumer choice, open competition, personal responsibility and tax fairness. I don't see why you would slap this with the "voodoo logic" label when the alternative proposal of universal care with the federal government as the central payer has been shown to come up short over and over again. I assume you are aware of what goes on in Canada and the UK?

Ok, petrfitz, it's clear you just doggedly believe what you want to believe here. You're right then, housing will be decimated by rising healthcare and oil costs. So it's probably a good idea to sell me all your property at 25 cents to the dollar - best to cut your losses now.

For the record though, east_cider is dead on about MCOs - they need market share to survive. Also, not sure where you threw in the "poorer service" bit from.

yeah in my industry Canada is kicking our American asses. They are able to produce television shows, animation, virtual worlds etc at a much cheaper rate because employers dont have to pay huge health insurance premiums.

I work with the UK and Canada on a daily basis and have employees there. Everyone is estatic with their healthcare. i assume you hear stories about health care in those countries which are false and you have never actually spoke to anyone in those countries about their healthcare.

Well, I spent some time living in the UK - does that count? I never set foot in a NHS facility. Like everyone else with the means to do so, I paid out of pocket for quality care because the public system was such a disaster. And as for Canada...here's an exercise for you. Find someone over the age of 60 up there (use the phone book, it doesn't matter) who needs an "elective" procedure like a knee or hip replacement. Ask them how long they've been on the waiting list.

This is not about "hearing stories." These are facts - widely known and widely studied.

A large part of the cost advantage for film and TV production in Canada comes from the tax incentives and less restrictive union work rules. But you must have known that, right?

ok east cider you are right. What we need to get us out of this disasterous economy is more of the same policies that got us into this disasterous economy. I am voting McCain in November. He is just the dynamic, in touch, forward thinking candidate to move us away from the Bush disiaster (even though he voted 95% of the time with Bush)

You convinced me! Bomb bom bomb bomb iran! McCain 08!

"Everyone is estatic [sic] with their healthcare." That's a joke - it must be. You apparently watched Sicko, great. Have you seen Dead Meat? The NHS is not much different. There is no single health system on this planet that has its citizens "ecstatic" with the care provided. Stop being dramatic. Your initial question (lest you forget) was whether oil and healthcare costs could derail real estate. You then decided to turn this into a McCain vs Obama thread again. Streeteasy is not the place for that.

i bet the 47 million americans without health insurance and the other millions who have gone bankrupt from ppor health insurance would love to have the coverage that the Brits and Canadians do.

How arrogant are you that you speak for 47 million people?

so its not obvious to you that the 47 million people would want health insurance? oh you think that the would rather suffer, go untreated or bankrupt.

Again, you just cannot read, can you? Most people would prefer to have health insurance (although a fair amount of the uninsured is comprised of post-college twenty-somethings who don't feel they need health insurance), but to think that the British or Canadian system would solve our healthcare issues here is terribly short-sighted and ignorant of our country's history and raison d'etre.

hmmm from the Republican Governer of Tennesse:

"By Phil Bredesen

Gas prices are in the political spotlight right now; this year's spike has been painful and the calls for action — and heads — have pushed other issues to the side. But it is worth remembering that when it comes to real, sustained growth in costs, when it comes to real, sustained erosion of families' disposable income, gas still can't hold a candle to the real elephant in the room: health care.

If gas prices had risen during my adult lifetime — since I got out of high school in 1961 — at the same rate as per capita health-care expenditures, gas would not be $4 a gallon today. It would be about $15. "

This again? First, Phil Bredesen is a Democrat, not a Republican, and his background is in healthcare. Second, all he's saying here is that healthcare costs have risen tremendously and will likely continue to rise. All of which I tend to agree with. None of which really corroborate your viewpoints from before.

hmm it doesnt corroburate my viewpoint that rising healthcare costs are a huge impact on future real estate prices in that as people spend more and more of their take home pay in healthcare that means they have less to spend on mortgages?

OK you win. You are right. The US healthcare system is great and we should be lucky to have it and healthcare costs have no impact on the US economy or real estate prices.

Cool, thanks. Glad you've seen the light.