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Getbig Main Boards => Politics and Political Issues Board => Topic started by: Dos Equis on November 14, 2010, 04:59:27 PM
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Wow.
Krugman: Death Panels, VAT Will Fix Debt Crisis
Sunday, 14 Nov 2010
Economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman says the only way the U.S. will get its debt crisis under control is by the use of "death panels" and a national sales tax.
The national sales tax, referred to as VAT (value-added tax) and widely used by governments across Europe, will help cut the U.S deficit, Krugman argues.
Krugman made his comments on ABC's “This Week with Christiane Amanpour” during a roundtable discussion about the economy and the recent findings of the U.S. Debt Reduction Commission.
Here's the key excerpt:
"Some years down the pike, we're going to get the real solution, which is going to be a combination of death panels and sales taxes. It's going to be that we're actually going to take Medicare under control, and we're going to have to get some additional revenue, probably from a VAT. But it's not going to happen now."
The Obama healthcare plan passed by Congress in 2010 includes government-run healthcare committees with sweeping powers, including the power to engage in competitive pricing and cost analysis, a system used by Britain that has led to rationing of medical care for the elderly.
Critics of the Obama plan, including former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, quickly dubbed the committees "death panels," saying government agencies would decide who would live and who would die. Supporters of the Obama health plan dismissed such suggestions as nonsense.
Krugman apparently thinks otherwise, and suggests that such death panels could be one way the federal government will be able to deal with soaring medical costs under control as the Baby Boomers enter retirement.
He continued: "If they [the Debt Commission] were going to do reality therapy, they should have said, ‘OK, look, Medicare is going to have to decide what it's going to pay for. And at least for starters, it's going to have to decide which medical procedures are not effective at all and should not be paid for at all. In other words, it should have endorsed the panel that was part of the healthcare reform.’"
Krugman also criticized Republican plans to fully extend the Bush tax cuts, including those who make more than $250,000 a year.
He said: "The cost of permanently extending just the upper-end Bush tax cuts, as opposed to only extending the middle-class tax cuts, the 75-year cost of that is just about identical to the 75-year accounting shortfall in Social Security. So we've got people who are saying, ‘Oh, Social Security, got to do something about it, but let's extend those tax cuts for rich people. This is showing how the priorities are all skewed.’”
Apparently realizing his comments were inflammatory, Krugman took to his blog Sunday afternoon to immediately “clarify” his comments.
“I said something deliberately provocative on This Week, so I think I’d better clarify what I meant, which I did on the show, but it can’t hurt to say it again,” he wrote. “So, what I said is that the eventual resolution of the deficit problem both will and should rely on “death panels and sales taxes”.
“What I meant is that:
"(a) health care costs will have to be controlled, which will surely require having Medicare and Medicaid decide what they’re willing to pay for — not really death panels, of course, but consideration of medical effectiveness and, at some point, how much we’re willing to spend for extreme care
"(b) we’ll need more revenue — several percent of GDP — which might most plausibly come from a value-added tax
And if we do those two things, we’re most of the way toward a sustainable budget.
He then provided a link to a June 20th column in which he also described “death panels,” but only in passing and in a mocking way. The column is actually about budget deficits.
What he doesn't say is that he has written at least half a dozen columns repeatedly referring to death panels the last year in an ongoing effort to malign Palin and other conservatives.
Krugman also conceded his solution may be “politically impossible.” But, he added, “I believe that some day — maybe in the first Chelsea Clinton administration — it will actually happen.”
http://www.newsmax.com/InsideCover/krugman-death-panels-vat/2010/11/14/id/377008
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Looks like a certain someone was right.
Krugman is just saying openly what the rest of us already know is going to be rammed down our throats.
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Paul Krugman: ‘Death panels and sales taxes is how we do this’
Economic Collapse News Blog ^ | November 8, 2013 | Andrew Moran
Posted on November 9, 2013 4:19:03 AM EST by 2ndDivisionVet
There is no doubt that the United States is in financial disarray and the future seems quite bleak. In the next decade or so, the U.S. will face extreme difficulties paying for healthcare, making Social Security payments and pretty much keeping entitlement programs afloat. What is the solution?
In a speech made earlier this year in D.C., world-renowned Keynesian economist Paul Krugman concurred that the federal government does have a financial problem. When you add an aging population and rising healthcare costs, the government lacks the necessary revenue to pay for pretty much anything.
According to the Nobel Laureate, the answers to the nation’s problems are death panels and sales taxes.
Here is a snippet from the video, which only recently began to make the rounds after Austrian economist Robert Murphy posted it, Economic Policy Journal cited it and Policy Mic reported on the dangerous remarks.
“Eventually we do have a problem. That the population is getting older, health care costs are rising…there is this question of how we’re going to pay for the programs. The year 2025, the year 2030, something is going to have to give….We’re going to need more revenue….We won’t be able to pay for the kind of government the society will want without some increase in taxes…on the middle class, maybe a value added tax….And we’re also going to have to make decisions about health care, doc pay for health care that has no demonstrated medical benefits. So the snarky version…which I shouldn’t even say because it will get me in trouble, is death panels and sales taxes is how we do this.”
(VIDEO-AT-LINK)
Death panels initially became a media sensation after former Republican Alaskan Governor and Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin claimed the Affordable Care Act (ACA), otherwise known as Obamacare, would establish death panels. She was heavily criticized in the media and PolitiFact named it “Lie of the Year.”
The question is: do death panels really exist? Many countries do in fact have death panels: Canada, the United Kingdom, to name a couple. But mainstream media outlets are continuing to promote the idea of death panel rationing.
Slate published an article about how it’s “a good thing” the Great White North has death panels. Here is a brief statement from the piece:
“When taxpayers provide only a finite number of acute care beds in public hospitals, a patient whose life has all but ended, but whose family insists on keeping her on life support, is occupying precious space that might otherwise house a patient whose best years are still ahead.”
Sales taxes, meanwhile, will be another failed economic policy generated to grow the size and scope of government without actually addressing the budgetary matters and the national debt. Canada also has sales taxes at the federal and provincial level – some mayors and local politicians have been proposing municipal sales taxes for years.
Of course, when a politician proposes a federal sales tax, he or she will start off with a low figure. Indeed, as history has shown with the income tax, as soon as a tax is instituted it will go up year after year.
This is just another example of how Krugman and others want to enlarge the federal government. Remember, the intellects of our society think they know what’s best for the low, common citizenry.
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Krugman? Oh brother, the "solutions" that this charlatan has peddled to the public have all been total failures.
He has no credibility, zero, none, zip.
But yeah, there will be no structural reforms or any actual working answers to our problems....just more taxes for more spending. Which have been failures as well.
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Krugman? Oh brother, the "solutions" that this charlatan has peddled to the public have all been total failures.
He has no credibility, zero, none, zip.
But yeah, there will be no structural reforms or any actual working answers to our problems....just more taxes for more spending. Which have been failures as well.
this.
why does he have a peace prize and why does anyone give this guy a forum to speak on? He has literally been wrong about everything hes ever said.
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Mark Halperin: Obamacare Contains ‘Death Panels’
Newsmax ^ | Monday, 25 Nov 2013 05:07 PM | Bill Hoffmann
Posted on November 25, 2013 11:24:15 PM EST by Olog-hai
The Affordable Care Act contains provisions for “death panels,” which decide which critically ill patients receive care and which don’t, says Mark Halperin, senior political analyst for Time magazine.
“It’s built into the plan. It’s not like a guess or like a judgment. That’s going to be part of how costs are controlled,” Halperin told The Steve Malzberg Show on Newsmax TV. …
(Excerpt) Read more at newsmax.com ...
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