Orwell would be so proud. Big Brother reports GDP “growth” of 1.1% in the first quarter an the vast majority of the “growth” is from the working stiffs in this debt ridden State of denial having to pay vastly more for their healthcare because Obama and his lying minions jammed Obamacare down our throats in 2009. What a fucking shitshow this country has become.
Remember when the Supreme Court decided that Obamcare is legal but it’s a tax? Well, the nuances were irrelevant, but when it comes to the Bureau of Economic Analysis they could not have been greater: by effectively counting a tax as part of US economic growth, Obama, the Supreme Court and the US government’s beancounters assured themselves of a steady stream of “economic growth” for quarters to come, and sure enough, Q1 was no different.
As regular readers know, when it comes to the one constant source of US economic growth, nothing is more reliable than Healthcare, which is merely another name for how Obamacare figured in the bean-count reports. And, we are confident, it will come as no surprise that in Q1, when real GDP grew by $44 billion in real terms, or 1.1% annualized, from $16.471 trillion to $16.515 trillion, Healthcare was responsible for $26 billion (rising from $1,896 billion to $1,929 billion annualized) or a whopping 58.4% of the total.
This was revised strongly upward from the last number, which had Healthcare rising by $15 billion less, to “only” $1,907 billion.
Putting this number in context, the Q1 increase was the third biggest quarterly increase on record, the second largest in the past decade, and as the chart below shows the surge unexpectedly comes at a curious time, just as the quarterly increases in healthcare spending were supposedly trending lower.
If that’s the case then Aunt Yellen needs to raise interest rates to at least 2% . Let’s get this bonfire going !
Families who still have decent incomes are spending 20-25% of their income on healthcare which is robbery that will never be prosecuted. Not hard to believe that this criminal enterprise is counted as 58% of US economic growth. Wait til next year with the premium increases scheduled, this number will go to 70%. They have no shame, we have no balls.
We get what we deserve.
Apparently, the BEA counts any increase in costs to the consumer as growth in the GDP. Damn, our economy could be healthy like a mo’fugga if we’d all just voluntarily pay twice as much for everything, ennit?
@Bea: I don’t know as I like the comment “We get what we deserve.” As an o-l-d American living in a new country (called Amerika now), I deserve one hell of a lot better than I’m getting as far as honest politicians are called (which is an oxymoron of the first order).. As far as health care and big Pharma, it can be cured very simply if we had honest politicians in office.
All that needs doing is to enforce existing laws and prevent medical/pharma monopolies from raping individual citizens as they are doing every day. One year ago, it cost me $100 for a simple filling at my local dentist. Last week it cost $500 for two simple fillings and I told them to shove it. They gave me a “professional discount” and brought it down to a mere $300. I suggested they post the prices they charge up front and in bold print or they’d lose a 18 year customer. Never happen and I likely will not be back to that dentist – even though he’s damn good and as painless as they come. It pissed me off and I don’t like to get pissed twice over the same problem..
Get the monopoly practices out of medical/pharma practices from top to bottom. Drop Medicare and Medicaid on their ass and stop paying it. Prices will either come way down or people will start dying. Either way, in the intermediate to long run, Amerika will be better off. If people start dying from lack of medical care or lack of medicine they need, just watch the SHTF..
Muck
Muck
I appreciate your point that we should do this or that but we never DO anything. We could demand the rule of law by withholding money spent that benefits large corporations busting them one by one but we DO nothing. We all screamed that we would not buy Obamacare so we let the criminals blackmail us with IRS threats so we bow and scrape and pay ever increasing premiums with outrageous deductibles. O-L-D geezers who pay $260 a month for Medicare don’t feel the burn like younger people with families paying $1,500 per month for healthcare which is higher than many of them pay for their housing.
You say Amerika would be better off if people will start dying from lack of medical care or lack of medicine they need and I guess that is DOING something but don’t you think that is a little harsh and easy for you to say? I’m betting Muck that you don’t pay $1,500 per month, now do you?
As an after-thought, it might change the medical profession from one whose members know that an MD or OD after their names guarantee a mansion, big boat and big bucks back to where it used to be that people who cared for people went into the medical profession as opposed to those now who do it for the BIG BUCKS..
Don’t get me wrong — there are some great Doctors out there. But there are Corporate interests who own them and hospitals (even “non-profit”ones) who are interested only in collecting as much money as they can so that the administrative salaries and bonuses of such “non-profit” institutions can be obscenely high and climbing. We have one here in town – the boss gets a $250K salary and a few more hundred thou for bonuses —- of a non-profit hospital.. Puke..
Muck
Muck,
real concerns voiced by you…can’t really comment
on your dentist (professional discount-they exist) but
regarding the doctors. Hospitals own many of our doctors
now…they are salaried and have to see too many patients
a day. Their documentation is complex and they better
be just right. I see my doctor, the entire time she is typing.
Then, a few comments, and see you next time. I have created
some animosity by saying no to the suggestions re “shots”.
Good luck young man, and pay for the fillings already. Teeth,
dental health, is paramount.
Yet nobody calls for tort reform. Doctors have to order every test under the sun to cover their ass, because some lawyer is going to sue them if they dont.
Doublethink smartdumb thoughtcrime
We are living in a time when we can not (or cannot, if you are a zealot) trust a thing any politician says. Not one.