Mergers an anti-dote for competitive pricing - Consumers wary of Comcast, Time Warner Cable merger

Consumer advocates, industry analysts and cable customers wasted little time Thursday in airing concerns about the blockbuster deal to combine Comcast and Time Warner Cable, the nation's two largest cable companies.

The $45 billion deal, if approved by federal regulators, would result in a total customer base of 30 million subscribers and could bring technological advances to the world of cable TV and high-speed internet.

But the proposed merger comes at a time when customer satisfaction with the cable TV industry — and the two companies in particular — is low. Last year, Comcast and Time Warner Cable came in dead last in an industry consumer satisfaction survey performed by the American Customer Satisfaction Index.

Time Warner Cable has had numerous customer service and operational issues that have hampered its reputation, exacerbated last year by its high-profile fight with and decision to drop CBS over retransmission fees. This ire was seen across social-media sites such as Twitter and Facebook Thursday, as users voiced concern about the megamerger.

The merger would give Comcast the leverage to demand higher fees from programmers, such as HBO and AMC, and would also likely result in higher fees for consumers, he said. The new megacompany could more readily drop smaller programmers, such as IFC, who don't agree to new payment schemes, leading to fewer channel choices for viewers.

Note EU-Digest: as we have seen with the airline industry mergers these mega-mergers do not lead to competitive pricing but rather to increased pricing and bad customer service

Read more: Consumers wary of Comcast, Time Warner Cable merger

US Health Care - a warning for European medical free marketeers: "the free market in American medicine is a myth"

Those who work in the health care industry and those who argue over health care policy seem inured to the shock. When we debate health care policy, we seem to jump right to the issue of who should pay the bills, blowing past what should be the first question: Why exactly are the bills so high? 

What are the reasons, good or bad, that cancer means a half-million- or million-dollar tab for people living in America? Why should a trip to the emergency room for chest pains that turn out to be indigestion bring a bill that can exceed the cost of a semester of college? What makes a single dose of even the most wonderful wonder drug cost thousands of dollars? Why does simple lab work done during a few days in a hospital cost more than a car? And what is so different about the medical ecosystem that causes technology advances to drive bills up instead of down?

In hundreds of small and midsize cities across the country — from Stamford, Conn., to Marlton, N.J., to Oklahoma City — the American health care market has transformed tax-exempt “nonprofit” hospitals into the towns’ most profitable businesses and largest employers, often presided over by the regions’ most richly compensated executives. And in our largest cities, the system offers lavish paychecks even to midlevel hospital managers, like the 14 administrators at New York City’s Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center who are paid over $500,000 a year, including six who make over $1 million.

Taken as a whole, these powerful institutions and the bills they churn out dominate the nation’s economy and put demands on taxpayers to a degree unequaled anywhere else on earth. In the U.S., people spend almost 20% of the gross domestic product on health care, compared with about half that in most developed countries. Yet in every measurable way, the results our health care system produces are no better and often worse than the outcomes in those countries.

According to one of a series of exhaustive studies done by the McKinsey & Co. consulting firm, we spend more on health care than the next 10 biggest spenders combined: Japan, Germany, France, China, the U.K., Italy, Canada, Brazil, Spain and Australia. We may be shocked at the $60 billion price tag for cleaning up after Hurricane Sandy. We spent almost that much last week on health care. We spend more every year on artificial knees and hips than what Hollywood collects at the box office. We spend two or three times that much on durable medical devices like canes and wheelchairs, in part because a heavily lobbied Congress forces Medicare to pay 25% to 75% more for this equipment than it would cost at Walmart.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that 10 of the 20 occupations that will grow the fastest in the U.S. by 2020 are related to health care. America’s largest city may be commonly thought of as the world’s financial-services capital, but of New York’s 18 largest private employers, eight are hospitals and four are banks.

Employing all those people in the cause of curing the sick is, of course, not anything to be ashamed of. But the drag on our overall economy that comes with taxpayers, employers and consumers spending so much more than is spent in any other country for the same product is unsustainable. Health care is eating away at our economy and our treasury.

The health care industry seems to have the will and the means to keep it that way. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the pharmaceutical and health-care-product industries, combined with organizations representing doctors, hospitals, nursing homes, health services and HMOs, have spent $5.36 billion since 1998 on lobbying in Washington. That dwarfs the $1.53 billion spent by the defense and aerospace industries and the $1.3 billion spent by oil and gas interests over the same period. That’s right: the health-care-industrial complex spends more than three times what the military-industrial complex spends in Washington.

When you crunch data compiled by McKinsey and other researchers, the big picture looks like this: We’re likely to spend $2.8 trillion this year on health care. That $2.8 trillion is likely to be $750 billion, or 27%, more than we would spend if we spent the same per capita as other developed countries, even after adjusting for the relatively high per capita income in the U.S. vs. those other countries. Of the total $2.8 trillion that will be spent on health care, about $800 billion will be paid by the federal government through the Medicare insurance program for the disabled and those 65 and older and the Medicaid program, which provides care for the poor.

That $800 billion, which keeps rising far faster than inflation and the gross domestic product, is what’s driving the federal deficit. The other $2 trillion will be paid mostly by private health-insurance companies and individuals who have no insurance or who will pay some portion of the bills covered by their insurance. This is what’s increasingly burdening businesses that pay for their employees’ health insurance and forcing individuals to pay so much in out-of-pocket expenses.

Note EU-Digest: this in depth report by Time Magazine should be read by every politician in Europe calling for a free market based health-care system. As the American model of healthcare has proven it does not provide affordable healthcare.

Read more: Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us | TIME.co

'Free market' is a myth - by Stephen Goldstein

Heaven forbid, reject the sanctity of the "free market" and you're branded a socialist-communist pariah. In short, the "free market" is the equivalent of God to a very large number of brainwashed people, the ultimate economic moral authority.

But the truth is: the "free market" is the Devil — an evil, menacing genie. Whatever virtues economists might ascribe to it in theory are regularly perverted by the reality of the grasping and unscrupulous among us.

The "free market" is a myth, perpetuated by vested interests to guarantee their ongoing success, justify however low they have to go to ensure it, and delude poor schnooks into thinking that, if they're not filthy rich, they're lazy and un-American. In fact, a truly "free market" is a license to steal — and the likelihood thieves will never be caught, caught after too many people have been ripped off, or caught too late to make their punishment fit their crime(s).

Read more: Stephen Goldstein: 'Free market' is a myth - South Florida Sun-Sentinel.com

European Aircraft Industry: Airbus Alleges U.S. Interference in Boeing Deal

Airbus, European based leading aircraft manufacture, accused the United States government of disrupting competition of an order by taking the side of Boeing Co. to facilitate it win a $22 billion aircraft deal in Indonesia.

John Leahy, Chief Executive Officer at Airbus, said lobbying over the aircraft deal on behalf of U.S. President Barack Obama had proved double standards on free market race that is ongoing row between Europe and Washington over aircraft wanes.

Leahy on Thursday at a market briefing inWashingtonsaid that there is only one superpower in the whole world and it’s not France, it is probably represented by U.S. president Barack Obama. Last month, an order of 230 aircrafts was showcased by Obama from Lion Air, Indonesian budget carrier, worth $21.7 billion at list rates, Boeing’s largest commercial deal so far.

For more: Airbus Alleges U.S. Interference in Boeing

Corporate Greed Out Of Control: Why AT&T’s takeover deal of T-Mobile is bad for customers and free market capitalism

..move to take over T-Mobile USA is disastrous news for customers. It will let AT&T shut down a competitor, jack up prices, and save on customer service.

The whole essence of the free market system lies in consumer choice and competition. That’s why companies can charge what they like, and offer the products and services they like. But ultimately, if the consumer is unhappy, they can take their business elsewhere. That at least is how old fashioned capitalism used to work. Today, specially in the utilities, energy, medical and transportation sectors the choices for the consumer are continuously being reduced as a result of mergers.

What’s going to happen to some of these great T-Mobile features after AT&T takes it over? If one listens to what AT&T chairman Randall Stephenson said this weekend "that AT&T “will look hard at whether to continue some of T-Mobile's services one can only wonder what that means?

History has proven now without doubt that these merger deals are always bad for the consumer. If you happen to think wireless and telephone companies are arrogant today, just wait till they’ve cut their cozy wireless communication club down to just three with the possibility of even more “merger misery” in that industry.

Remember the Sprint and Nextel or the FedEx and Kinko’s merger? Or look what happens if you want to book a flight on an airline these days, following the mergers in that industry. Sky high costs, little or no service, additional charges for food, baggage, seating, fuel, taxes, and just about everything else. Also, to make matters worse, one will find that in today's corporate worlds we find that most CEO's don't care. Why should they? They just have their mind on just three things: Stock options, stock options, and stock options.

You as a consumer in the US and the EU can take action if you care about freedom of choice and competition. Write to your local parliamentarian, or US congressman. Write to your representative in the European parliament or US Senator. Write to the European Ombudsman, US Federal Communications Commission or the U.S. Department of Justice. They are ones which must approve deals like the one between T-Mobile and AT&T or others.

EU-Digest

Germany: Merkel slams US ahead of G20 summit

Before heading to meet fellow world leaders in Seoul, South Korea, Merkel warned that the recent decision by the US Federal Reserve to pump $600 billion to prop up America’s fragile economy could have unintended consequences.

"Nobody has an interest in creating new bubbles. Instead, we must see to it that growth in the global economy this year is more sustainable and enduring that we had a few years ago," Merkel told reporters.

Critics argue that the Fed's "quantitative easing" stimulus amounts to an effective dollar devaluation, and has the potential to trigger a 1930s-style trade war if other countries respond in kind.

Note EU-Digest: It is interesting to note that all EU countries which copied the US economic philosophy, which basically comes down to "laissez fair economics", with as little controls as possible, are experiencing serious economic problems   In Europe these include many of the former Eastern bloc countries, Britain, Ireland. Spain, and to a certain extend Italy.

For more: Merkel slams US ahead of G20 summit - The Local

The University of California Press: " Free market forces the end of family life?" - The Commercialization of Intimate Life: Arlie Russell Hochschield

For the complete report from the University of California Press click on this link

"Do free market forces spell the end of family life? "The Commercialization of Intimate Life" by Arlie Russell Hochschield

An advertisement for Quaker Oats cereal in an issue of Working Mother magazine provides a small window on the interplay between consumption and the application of the idea of efficiency to private time in modern America.Beneath the image, we read: "Instant Quaker Oatmeal, for moms who have a lot of love but not a lot of time." The ad continues with a short story: "Nicky is a very picky eater. With Instant Quaker Oatmeal, I can give him a terrific hot breakfast in just 90 seconds. And I don't have to spend any time coaxing him to eat it!" The designers of this ad, we could imagine, want us to feel we've been let in on an ordinary moment in a middle-class American morning.

Quaker Oats cereal may be a paradigm for a growing variety of goods and services—frozen dinners, computer shopping services, cell phones, and the like—that claim to save time for busy working parents. They often save time at home. But the ethic of "saving time" raises the question of what we want to save time for.