tv Forbes on FOX FOX News January 4, 2014 8:00am-8:31am PST
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>> ben, what do you like? >> spiders discover the index you'll do great. >> ben, thank for the shout out and watching the cost of freedom continues on the place for business, you know what it is, fox. sit back and enjoy a new year show full of resolutions to save you money. first up, be it resolved, no more bailouts. as the individual obama care mandate kicks in new worries popping up that insurance companies will need a government rescue from obama care. here's a big reason why. so far nearly three times as many health plans getting canceled as the number of folks actually signing up and evidence those who are signing up are not the ones that insurance companies need to break even. this news coming as we discovered our great american auto bailout was more about bailing out foreign car companies than saving the u.s. auto industry. fiat took a 100% stake in
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chrysler this week for a fraction of the money americans originally paid into the chrysler bailout. all this evidence that it's time to stop bailouts for good. happy new year, i'm david asman. welcome to "forbes on fox" in focus with steve, elizabeth, sabrina, rick and john. steve, stop all bailouts. >> david, it's got to be done, but sadly it's not going to be done this year. this resolution will be violated. the insurance companies are in bad shape. one of the reasons why. and they have this thing called risk in that crazy legislation will give the government the discretion in their view to give money to keeps they think need it. >> didn't we find out with the auto bailout, fiat buying all of chrysler they don't work as they originally plan to. >> let's make a separation here. i think -- i'm not quite on board with what you're all
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saying about the potential for bailouts in the health insurance law. the risk corridors were programmed in, built in, there are rules governing how they may or may not be used. i am however, kind of with you, kind of with you on the fiat thing. i don't mind that we bailed chrysler out, i think it saved a whole lot of jobs all the way down the chain, but there should have been a provision in that deal that called for the taxpayers to be paid back, plus some interest before fiat was allowed to take the company over. >> yeah, essentially what they're going to do is bleed chrysler to pay off the losses they have going in europe, but sabrina, let's talk about the coming insurance bailout. rick is right, hhs, which is controlling obama care so far, or doing its best to, came out with a rule book in which they predict that there's going to be a $2 billion of insurance companies in 2014 and $1 billion in 2016 direct from the u.s. treasury. there's kind of a bailout written into this thing.
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>> there is. not a good way to start off the new year. we're only a few days into the new year. i thought ending a great resolution. i don't have much sympathy for the health insurance companies. they were given this great opportunity with the individual mandate and i remember a big headline en routers in 2010, ceo, don't repel the health care law, pouring money into the romney and obama campaign because they both supported the individual mandate. my sympathy only goes so far. >> bill, i don't have much sympathy for the insurance companies either but i have a lot of sympathy for us taxpayers who are going to have to bail them out. >> eliminate all bailouts? >> yes. >> all safety nets. >> yes. >> i wouldn't go that far. there are deserving recipients. >> like who, for example? >> take a broader picture look at this. i think wealthy people have to bail out needy people, but i would not be in favor of taxing successful corporations in order to bail out unsuccessful ones
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nor do i think we should be taxing responsible homeowners in order to bailout spend thrifts next door. there are deserving recipients. >> i so far haven't heard you tell me any. the fact is that 65% of americans don't want a bailout and looks like it's coming. >> yeah. government as a rule should never bail out corporations. if we had bailouts 100 years ago, web van today would be delivering us groceries on a horse drawn carriage. when you bailout corporations you by definition rob the economy of its future by propping up the past and applied to obama care insurers they got in bed with the federal government. we need to let them fail to signal to future insurers not to get in bed with the federal government. >> as john points out rightly there were no bailouts for buggy whips. >> we would be bailing out the horse and buggies if this was the way we were doing it back then. we're talking about lemon
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socialism. bailing out some bad companies and i have to say when the government changes the rules as they did with health reform, basically saying you can keep your catastrophic plan, then that is a built-in bailout for the insurance companies, that is in the law. what we're talking about is the president and the administration has built this big field of dreams economy, build it and they will come and if they don't then tax payers have to foot the bill for the profits that don't come in the door for the insurers. insurers are now too big to fail with car companies and big banks. isn't it something that the federal reserve did not step in to buy the bonds from chrysler or ford or gm. >> bottom line is, taxpayers ended up paying -- we were in the hole for that chrysler deal. talk about another bailout, hospital bailouts. word on friday and surprisingly the "new york times" suggesting that all these new medicaid entries and we've got -- the president was bragging about a million of them, turns out they like to use hospitals if they can go into hospitals for free, as they lowered the bar for entry to medicaid, there are going to be a lot more people,
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40% according to this one study, going into hospitals. hospitals are going to need a bailout, right? >> no. >> hospitals are going to need a bailout as well and this whole thing, david, just underscores, beware of governments bearing gifts because at the end of the day they're going to take you over. they've already told insurers if you make too much money on underwriting they will punish, make bad choices they will reward you. you may have different names for insurance companies but they're going to be usa government. >> and you ask any doctor, ask a doctor in an emergency room whether the medicaid patients that come in need to come in, they will tell you 90% don't, but because it's free, not only do they come in, but they often call up ambulance service at $1,000 a pop to get in because the government pays for it. it's free. >> that's the thing. and this has been going on, doctors have been telling me and hospital staff have been telling me for decades. this is how the different income brackets understand, especially the lower income bracket
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understand health delivery service. if they've been going to the emergency system that's the way they're going to keep doing it if it's free. >> john, lead nose think maybe what's coming is the biggest bailout of all, let me throw this to sabrina actually, the biggest bailout is the bailout of obama care itself. all of these problems that we're seeing now, won't it reach such a point, such a pitch, at which we're just going to have to say look, let the government handle it all, we can't bail out everybody? >> that's a concerning thought but we know the only way to actually stabilize prices is to allow them to fall in an actual marketplace. what obama care is not allowing that, right, because government keeps interfering and it has been interfering for four decades now which is why the prices in the health care market are so distorted. of course i would love to see obama care fail. i would love to see real market reform step in to fill its place but i'm afraid we might be moving farther to the left where democrats try to come in and reform it themselves. >> rick i heard you shaking your
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head no about the report on hospitals. it's in your favorite newspaper, the "new york times." >> i can understand why you would confuse us. we think so much alike. >> go ahead, rick. >> the oregon study, you have to look closer. it's important. what it did say what you're saying, the thing is, it was a two-year study. we know in massachusetts which is the only sample that we have of where it's been more long term, same thing happened in the fir two years until people who gained medicaid got acclimated to not going to new york. since that time the -- >> wait a second, rick. your example is flawed. i'll tell you why when you're done. >> i would like to finish my point. >> quickly. >> the use of ers dropped in massachusetts by over 10%. >> okay. go ahead. >> there's harvard university, there's boston college, boston universities, there's a lot of universities there where people can also get their care at the universities themselves. so that's not all -- >> hold on. there's also the university of common sense. if you offer something for free
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to people, they have a tendency to use it more. don't they? >> they do, indeed, and they end up getting less because the supply does not meet the demand and when government is involved you don't get the productivity and innovation that always turns scarcity into abundance. we can do it in health care, we've done it in food and everything else. the quicker we get rid of this and no more bailouts we won't need bailouts. coming up our next resolution to save taxpayers money, reign in the power of public unions. if not, they may help bring down more u.s. cities in 2014. one reportedly on the brink as we speak. wait until you hear which one coming right up. welcome back. how is everything? there's nothing like being your own boss! and my customers are really liking your flat rate shipping. fedex one rate. really makes my life easier. maybe a promotion is in order.
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one-two punch. officials say at least 16 people are dead, thousands without power, all the way from minnesota to maine. most of our country is dealing with record-breaking life-threatening cold temperatures all weekend long and parts of the midwest could see an additional foot of snow. be careful out there. overseas, secretary of state john kerry is reporting progress on a mid east peace deal his announcement after mahmoud abbas. he's set to meet with israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu later today. it's mr. kerry's tenth trip to the region in the past year, seeking to secure a deal establishing a palestinian state alongside israel. i'll see you back here at 1:00 p.m. only on the fox news channel. i'm jamie colby. and we are back with the next forbes news years resolution to save you money. resolve. reign in the power of public unions. chicago is the latest city said to be teetering from the cost of its public pensions.
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they are unfunded by nearly $27 billion. it's not alone. most states in the united states are struggling with their own pension problems. so what do we do? how do we reign in the public unions? >> it can be done. chicago, by the way, is in worse shape than detroit. wow. and so what you do is, you do what the government accountabilities office has already suggested is going on, studies show what's going on, restructuring the pensions into 401(k)s, happening in states across the country. lo and behold, chicago's city parks department said no longer can you retire at age 50. wow. and also you have to put more towards your own retirement pot. that is what's going on. >> i would like to put some to my pot. john, the fact is, that this just cannot continue, can it? >> i think the better resolution here is to tell cities and states that if they run into insurmountable debt problems they will be allowed to default. i mean to some degree they can run up these big deficits and
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fund all sort of union pensions precisely because investors know that if their debt they won't get burned. if we let investors and city and state get burned, they will be less likely to fund and market forces will rain in a positive way. >> steve, that would create a huge hole in the economy. i'm wondering how do we reign in the public sector unions right now in. >> i think the very fact that cities are on the brink of a crisis. that ruling in detroit, by a federal judge, that said public pensions are part of the bankruptcy proceeding, there's no special protection in state constitutions for things like that, is a way mayors can say as liz suggested we need 401(k) type of plans. >> and rick, i would like to retire at the age of 50. of course i didn't risk my life the way that firemen or police officers did, but again, some of these deals are bankrupting cities and states. this has to stop. >> here's what i would like to do. i'll sign on to your resolution
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if you sign on to mine. i agree with you. but my resolution is to bring some of that power back to the unions and the private sector with new and better leadership and have someone to stand up for private enterprise workers once again which we've lost. if you'll go for that i'm with you on the public sector. >> sabrina, it's not up to me to provide good leadership. the private unions can't provide it for themselves. the fact is we have to deal with this crisis now otherwise chicago will go bankrupt just like detroit did. >> you're absolutely right. 2342011 the journal of finance found if you combine all state unfunded liabilities from public employee pension systems, somewhere between 3.2 and $4.4 trillion obviously state budgets cannot handle that and i think it's something that the firefighters and teachers and policemen ought to, you know, be aware of. the fact is we want people to be compensated fairly but governments have been lying, have been overpromising and that can't continue. >> that's rightp.
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and there are a just a few honest politicians willing to say that, bill. >> i wouldn't eliminate all pensions or disturb the ones that have been earned but i agree with the other panelists here, that we need more transparency. so let's freeze the old style hidden cost pension and put in place a new 401(k) style pension where you see the dollars going in, let those dollars which may be very large for a teacher or firefighter, let those dollars be very visible to the workers earning them and let them be very visible to the taxpayers paying for them. >> it's beyond transparency. it's called cooking the books. they've been using phony pension math for years in government that the private sector doesn't use. expected rates of return of 10% or more, that's bernie madoff territory. >> and to rick on this, hold on a second, rick, what is wrong with having public sector unions deal with 401(k)s like the rest of us do? >> actually, i think you know i
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don't have a big problem with that. i do think that we're being a little naive when we try to blame everything and put all of the problems of the cities on the backs of the public unions. there are other issues. >> but that's the single biggest, i would say, wouldn't you, sabrina? >> yeah. i think it clearly these numbers suggest that and one of the big things we're forgetting the other side of the equation which are the taxpayers. tax payers are supporting this and they're not seeing this kind of benefits in their own retirement packages. i think we need to remember as much as we want to help the public sector employees there's other hard working americans who also want to benefit from their hard work. >> john, taxation without representation, people want to have this thing cleaned up. >> yeah. they want to and i think we've got to say maybe a few city bankruptcies would be beautiful. remember the government spending is the big barrier to economic growth because it's government taking from the private sector from the if funding of real things. if chicago goes under, investors get burned and they reappoint their capital in better places. >> might be creative destruction
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but beautiful, i don't know. >> yes. >> i don't know if it would be beautiful. we have to leave it at that. we're not done with our resolutions, though. how massive snowstorms, record low temperatures, and global warming scientists can save us all. ♪ [ male announr ] this is the story of the lile room over the pizza place at 315 cnut street. the modest first floor bedroom in talln, tonia and the dusty basement at 1406 35th street. it is the story of the old dining room table at 25th and hoffman avenue. the southbound bus barreling down i-95. ...and the second floor above the strip mall at roble and el camino. ♪ this magic moment it is the story of where every gre idea begins. ♪ so different and so new where those with endless vision
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it took a lot of juggling to keep it all together. for some low-income families, having broadband internet is a faraway dream. so we created internet essentials, america's largest low-cost internet adoption program. having the internet at home means she has to go no further than the kitchen table to do her homework. now, more than one million americans have been connected at home. it makes it so much better to do homework, when you're at home. welcome to what's next. comcastnbcuniversal. so now the final forbess new year's resolution rescue your tax dollars. resolve, put the global warming agenda on ice.
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as a large swath of the nation thaws out from brutal temperatures a report showing for the first time in 20 years there were more record low temperatures than record highs in the u.s. last year and did you see this, scientists looking to document melting ice in the antarctic getting stuck in a massive ice. steve, is it time to put the global warming hysteria on ice? >> yes, it is david and will save us tens of billions of dollars, and that's why they've changed global warming to climate change. as if we don't have weather change in the last 4 billion years. global warming is simply socialism in drag. socialism doesn't work so you bring it back in environmentalism. look at germany, three times the electricity costs we have. we have a clean energy called natural gas. let it flow. >> rick, socialism in drag. i've never heard that with regards to this subject. >> neither have i and i wouldn't be entirely sorry if i didn't hear it again. >> you may. go ahead. i would actually prefer to change the resolution and call
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for better science, not being tainted by either side of this argument because you can't deny it's an important issue. i don't want my grandchildren subjected to what could be a very serious problem. but what i do want is good science to tell me more if this is real or if it isn't. i want that. >> okay. . >> i don't want to ignore it. >> the fact is, john, there have been so many different reports, john, for example, we had the hurricane season, 2013, it was suspected we would have three to six major hurricanes in the atlantic region. we had none. back in 2007, i love this, bbc came out with a headline, arctic summers ice free by 2013. in fact, the ice sheet in the arctic grew 29% between 2012 and 2013. so, these scientists have been so dead wrong. should we base billions of our dollars on their wrong forecasts? >> no.
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to steal a line from steve forbes, global warming is a massive human delusion, it's left wing hubris at its worst. solyndra would be booming today and exxon mobil would be going out of business. ultimately we have to ask, do we believe the free markets or al gore? and market signals say that this is a big economy sapping waste of time. >> time to put this waste of time and money on ice. >> well, you know, we -- you know what's terrible, we've spent a lot of money, right? what was it you were saying at the break, $9 billion? >> $26 billion in the stimulus alone on climate issues. >> and $7.5 billion on foreign climate change issues. >> there's a lot of pollution in the world. that is terrible. china consumes more coal than all the other countries combined. i think if utilities are continuing to do methane and carbon capture that's a great thing. stop pollution in the world. >> sabrina, go ahead. >> i don't think the american
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people think this is a serious issue anymore. the pew research center finds people always think of global warming or climate change is the bottom of their priorities. this year it was the bottom of 21 different policy priorities. this has become a political issue entirely and i don't think this is a president who cares about sensible economic policies. >> you put your finger on it. listen to the taxpayers, listen. it's our money. coming up with liberal michael moore calls obama care awful why is that awful news for tax payers? find out on "cashin' in" at the bottom of the hour. not all stocks soared last year. the little known sleepers ready to wake up your wallet in 2014. fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more on car insurance. everybody knows that parker. well, did you know auctioneers make bad grocery store clerks? that'll be $23.50. now .75, 23.75, hold 'em. hey now do i hear 23.75? 24! hey 24 dollar, 24 and a quarter, quarter, now half, 24 and a half
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>> it's a roll of the dice on interest rates but the dice are loaded in your favor. >> rates could rise, that means you get hurt. >> stay warm. that's it for "forbes on fox." eric bolling and "cashin' in" the right now. it's the dirty little secret controversial filmmaker michael moore saying obama care is awful and insisting america needs a single payer system instead. was this the democrats' plan all along? ringing in 2014 with 40,000 new laws? here's one. americans getting flicked off in one state it's a felony to flick your cigarette butt but flick off big government it doesn't end there. we'll all be paying the price. and then back to what jonathan -- break out the popcorn we put together some great clips. we take a look back and relive the funniest moments of the past year and oh, boy, you're going to enjoy this. "cashin' in," kicking off the
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