There are more healthy people than there are sick people. Everyone now has to pay for a plan that includes maternity care - including 50 year old men. I will try to find some actual stats to support my impression that overall people are paying more. I know that my company would have to pay more were we on Obamacare (have checked this with our insurance guy) - and that money is going to come out of new hires and wage increases. We are scared of what it will do to us when the law crashes down onto the <50 employee companies.

Jan

" With people being forced to pay more for their health insurance there is less money to spend on goods? Huh? "
Wouldn't healthy people paying higher premiums be offset by sick people paying lower premiums?

I understand the idea that gov't dicking around with the market stifles growth, innovation, etc, but the short-term effect of socializing risk of being sick should be a wash.

Ya think? With people being forced to pay more for their health insurance there is less money to spend on goods? Huh?

Jan

It mentioned briefly that two other retailers in different markets, Macy's and Target, have had disappointing earnings. It makes me wonder about what straightlinelogic said about corporate bond yields increasing while Treasury yields decrease, as if the bond market had priced in risk that the stock market hasn't.

It wouldn't be abnormal to have a recession five years after the last one, but I suspect the expansion will go on for another two years. This expansions is different from all the previous ones in my life b/c of the low rates, so I expected to see inflation and rising real rates prior to the next recession. These are unusual times for monetary policy.

Obama has saved us all. Fore!

As goes Wal-Mart goes so goes the US, or so I'm told (I've never been in a Wal-Mart). I don't expect anything to change in this country until about January 2017. Until then, just Hope and Pray, isn't that what this administration promised, or was it Hope and Change?

"I don't know where they're shopping..."
They're not. They're making do. They are not replacing, they are fixing. They are buying more hamburger instead of steaks and chops. They are looking for the bargains. They are doing without. When the country is being run by a government with an anti-business mentality and an obvious anti-American attitude -- what would you expect?

It is a multi layered issue. I don't believe government is the purveyor of health care services, just look at the VA hospitals. On the other hand, when I purchase a car, for example, which feature on that car is the cost of health insurance? In the classic sense, I don't believe businesses should provide healthcare because it has nothing to do with COGS (cost of goods sold).

So where is the solution? To me, businesses should pay people the amount they have set aside for healthcare and let the individual decide which coverage to buy with their own money. Insurance companies should be able to sell a variety of products to suit the needs of individual customers. If the gov't wanted provide universal coverage for catastrophic costs, then companies could also offer gap insurance.

ObamaCare as it stands today is a bullying mechanisms to force businesses and individuals into 1 choice, with different premiums and copays. These differences are cosmetic, if you save on premium you pay on deductibles. And, all cover the same basics. There is no choice at any level. In making this demand Obama is asking business to cast aside the working model used since industrial revolution and create a new one that pays for his personal legacy. The only ways to do that are; we all take a hair cut, we all increase our productivity, business and stock holders take a cut, or it's all passed on to the consumer. Any one of these tighten the economy. Either things cost more, or workers get less. Productivity increases come from innovation not Presidential pronouncements.

Lay that over a foundation of many people living from pay to pay and you have trouble. There is no disposable income. Money saved this month is spent next month on higher fuel costs. Food and fuel prices continue to climb while our government says there is no sign of inflation. Our President makes speeches everyday on every subject from the improving employment numbers to surrendering personal freedom to a sovereign government capable of caring for all.

People will follow a leader if we had one. Thank goodness Obama is not a leader. With his Communist/Socialist belief system if he were charismatic like Reagan, Thatcher, Churchill, Roosevelt or Hitler the stars on our flag would already be replaced by a hammer a sickle. By his own admission he leads from behind, which we all know is spin for "following"!

Here's my long term prediction and the situation I prepare for each day.

This will go on as is for a period of time. More and more boomers collecting Social Security benefits they have been taxed for their entire life. More and more medicare. More food stamps. More illegals. More technology to replace labor with more laborers receiving benefits. At some point, the checks will bounce. That will be the awhah! moment. When BabyBoomer Bob doesn't get his direct deposit...suddenly he has to solve his own problem.

That is the driving force of freedom. When people solve their own problems. When the checks all bounce and people begin solving their own problems we will suddenly begin to find real solutions for all the political issues. Until then politicians will spin and the over burdened economy will suffer fits and starts.

6.7% earnings is still no slouch. yet, no-growth is a
sure sign of an obama economy. -- j

Truth. Point for you.

If they have the ammo you need, they will ask you what it is for and enter it into their computer.

When you factor in college textbooks, $700 seems pretty low.

You won't be wrong.

Goebbels could have learned a thing or two from the spin doctors in this administration.

An expansion even.