President Obama forces GM boss Rick Wagoner to step down

No one does. Nationalization would have these employees working for the government, which they do not. But they can't just take public dollars without public scrutiny, nor can they simply operate business as usual without restructuring. Bankruptcy would have treated them far worse.

 

And are they not scrutinized? Waste and fraud exists for sure, but they DO operate under federal guidelines if they expect to get federal money.

Stop being so defensive, this isn't about AIG, it's about GM.

 

I'm saying that there is oversight and guidelines. There are spending caps to help prevent those $40 box of kleenex charges. There are approved procedures to help prevent surgeons from choosing surgery as a first option before medicine treatments are considered. Most procedures are covered, but they try to make them as reasonably priced as possible.

The waste and fraud happens under both medicare and private insurance. It comes from hospitals, doctors, and pharmaceutical and medical suppliers. Prescription of unneeded services and and drugs, approval of unneeded procedures, overcharging, and other fraudulent practices go on all of the time.

They prescribed my terminally ill mother a computerized, metalflake-painted, motorized, wheelchair! She didn't ask for it, she didn't need it, and she couldn't operate it very well by herself. She had 24-hour care, so she always had someone to help her, so an ordinary $400 wheelchair would have sufficed for the short time she had left.

I think the rehabilitation doctor collaborated with the wheelchair provider for this to happen. They didn't even ask us. We were told a wheelchair was coming and that was what it was. They knew she had medicare and private insurance and money.

It ain't that sophisticated a device, but guess what? The company that sells it lists its price as $15,675! You could buy a Harley-Davidson or an economy car for that! Medicare values it at $8,200 so the wheelchair company takes a paper loss on their taxes. Medicare will pay 80%, leaving $1,700 for her private insurance policy to pay. They actually paid $1,100 bucks and Mom got billed for $600 about a week before she died. Now I am stuck with a like-new, left-handed Star Wars wheelchair to deal with.

I guarantee that the chair costs no more than $1,000 to construct and should retail for about $2,500. The medical industry is used to making huge markups from insurance and medicare and it needs to be regulated better. We got no choice of chairs or chair companies, no competitive bids or anything.

The doctor wrote the prescription, so Medicare will cover it, so the wheelchair company hoses medicare for too many bucks and leaves patients with very large co-payments.

 

It will increase under present circumstances. It is not a certainty that this will always be the case and has not always been the case. There are other variables besides the tax rate and if they change the situation can change.

You assume too much. The wealthy investor of whom I speak lives on his investments and can no more stop investing than an airline pilot could stop his engines and glide. The consequences are a sharp and steep decline.

I say we are reducing the unearned bonus, The reward is the much greater profits that they earned.

Yes, people do. But, it is the responsibility of the government to make sure that one man's ability to take advantage of the system doesn't leave others with a larger share of their stake to pay.

They are not mutually exclusive concerns. There is a balance point to be found between those who earn by investing and those who earn by working. Discontent on either side fades when there is balance.

Equality is inherent in our Constitution, why do you abandon it in such a cavalier fashion? But I don't advocate equality here, only balance. The people I'm trying to help is everyone collectively.

Conservatives have developed an "every man for himself" philosophy even if it results in a large, poor criminal underclass among us. Liberals have adopted an "every man a king" philosophy even if it results in everyone having to conform to the lowest common denominator like clones. Moderates have an "We're all in this together" philosophy and seek a balance, even if it means taking some positions on both sides of center to find some common ground. I seek balance . . . This country works best the way it was in the 19th and 20th centuries--a huge middle class and very few wealthy and very few poor. All national policies should favor the middle class.

The first question is "Does it actually hurt the economy". I don't think it does.