General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums"We warned the president -- don't ever, ever agree with the Republicans,"
"The individual mandate in the health care law was originally proposed by the Heritage Foundation, the most conservative think tank in the country. It was supported by almost every Republican in the country, including the first President Bush, Mitt Romney and conservative stalwarts like Orrin Hatch. Simply put, it was a conservative idea. There is no question about that; it is a fact.
Let me immediately digress to point out how terrible our media is since about 2% of the country knows that fact. If you asked the average American now, I'm sure they would say it was a liberal idea originally proposed by Barack Obama. Another fact -- Barack Obama was originally opposed to the mandate during his campaign for president."
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/06/25-5
It amazes me how many Democrats continue to defend the mandate. A radical RW proposal that guarantees corporations huge profits, yet somehow, someway, this became a Democratic idea, bill, law. A sad statement on Democrats in general, and a damning indictment of this administration, that the party and this president has willingly embraced, and now fought for, Republican policies.
What is liberal or progressive about forcing people to buy a product from a for profit institution simply as a condition of being alive? A proposal, crafted by the Heritage foundation, supported by Bush, Romney and Hatch among others, yet since Obama flip-flopped and supported it, somehow, someway the mandate is supposed to now be all good? I don't think so.
It is for actions like this that many feel that there isn't a dime's worth of difference between the two parties. When you have a Democratic president and Congress pushing supporting and advocating for Republican policy, it becomes difficult to discern where those political lines fall.
Hopefully the Supreme Court allows their hatred for all things Obama to rise up and strike this mandate down. Otherwise I fear that a corporately controlled Court will allow this monstrosity of a mandate to become law of the land, and we will see even more and more of our money go trickling up to the top. We will become poorer and poorer, while the elite will become richer. That is what this Republican mandate means.
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girl gone mad
(20,634 posts)than to address the real problems in our health care system. Politically, however, it was a major miscalculation.
joshcryer
(62,287 posts)If there was a public option most people here wouldn't give a shit.
Ghost of Huey Long
(322 posts)instead we are forced to buy insurance.
Universal Not for Profit Health Care Now!
And about the media, they have to be stopped!
They are using our public airwaves to LIE to us, raking in billions from the Koch Brothers to protect them and push their agenda.
Koch rakes in billions from speculating on oil, then the media tells us oil prices are Obama's fault. Gee I wonder why.
Koch then uses the billions to pay off the media to buy our elections.
It is not the Koch airwaves, it is OUR PUBLIC AIRWAVES! I am infuriated that everyone accepts this as a OK thing.
Liberal_Stalwart71
(20,450 posts)the message about how the Corporate Media and the health insurance/pharmaceutical industries were colluding against the American people.
He really deserves the Nobel Peace Prize for his whistleblowing on this.
Ghost of Huey Long
(322 posts)"Since I walked away as head of communications at a top health insurance company in May 2008, I've worked tirelessly as an outspoken critic of corporate PR and the distortion and fear manufactured by America’s health insurance industry. It is a PR juggernaut that is bankrolled by millions of dollars, rivaling lobbying budgets and underwriting many "non-partisan" and "grassroots" organizations."
still_one
(92,537 posts)spite of the lies we are told the reason they are in trouble is because Congress stole from the social security fund to pay for the wars
You do realize that if you are on Medicare you are forced to pay for that also.
There are people who cannot afford Medicare premiums, and they also have to be subsidized
If we stopped the trillion dollar wars more money could be put into the economy and healthcare, but I do not see either party doing that.
You seemed upset because of the "forced to buy insurance"
The ACA is not great, but it does pay for itself, and atempt to cover uninsured people who were not covered before.
Most of Those that are so against the individual mandate are the young who believe they are invincible and don't need insurance
Right now if they go into an emergency room, and do not have insurance, we pay for it, and at a premium price. The ACA would have addressed that. I say would have, because I believe the supreme court will rule it down, and the 40 million without insurance, will now continue indefintely. I also believe that if this goes down, it will be at least a decade before it is even looked at again.
Ghost of Huey Long
(322 posts)"if they go into an emergency room, and do not have insurance, we pay for it"
Anyone who has ever been to the emergency room, without insurance, knows that when you get your bill from the hospital, they will hound you until the ends of the earth to get their money.
They will sick a collection agency on you, take your car, your home, your first born child to get their money.
You are not paying for other people's emergency care. Poor people usually go without, and often just die!
Health care costs are why millions of Americans go bankrupt, even with insurance. Many people choose death rather than put their family into bankruptcy.
Where is this free emergency room care that everyone speaks of?
chknltl
(10,558 posts)When I severed a major blood vessel in my hand I was taken to an ER. They stopped the bleeding then put me in an ambulance and drove me 40 miles to Seattle's Harborview Hospital. (The ambulance ride was supposed to be a helicopter ride instead but I insisted loudly that I would fly nowhere because of an acute fear of flying). At Harborview I was rushed into emergency surgery where they not only saved my hand, they attached the tendons which in theory would make it function again.. After surgery I spent an additional 4days in an intensive care ward. While there, a guy came by to get my financial info...I told him I had nothing. Let me repeat that: I had NOTHING! After my release I was sent back home with medications, prescriptions for refill and told to report to a rehabilitation unit at St. Joseph's Hospital in Tacoma. I went through about a years worth of rehabilitation at first twice per week but eventually it dropped off as I regained use of my hand again. Plus I had to go more than a few times back to Seattle's Harborview for extra work and consultation on my hand. Did I spend even one dime on this? No. They even paid my bus fair to and from Seattle for those extra times my hand needed work!
EXAMPLE #2
Recently I suffered a dog bite, it bled and bled. I went in to a local ER. There were others in this ER awaiting to be seen. When I checked in I asked if my bleeding dog bite qualified as a genuine emergency as I did not really want to be here but the fact I could not stop the damn bleeding, I was a bit worried. Not only did the check in nurse feel that it was an emergency, I got placed at the head of the line and ushered into an examining room by a second nurse who immediately went to work on me.
To make a long story short, a doctor and a third nurse worked on me for about half an hour. They cleaned the wound, stopped the bleeding, gave me a shot and sent me off with a prescription.
So far, I have paid not one thin dime for this work either!
You are correct, that they are sending a collection agency after me...they sent one after me years ago for my hand too. But there is an old saying which applies here: you can't squeeze blood out of a turnip!
So tell me my fellow American, should I have been left to die in my first example? To date, I have no idea what the total cost has been for saving my hand in that case...my guess is tens of thousands of dollars! My hand works just fine thank you for that.
I am but one of thousands, perhaps millions of very poor citizens in America. Our numbers are growing. Fortunately I am now under care of the Veterans administration for my health care because I am a vet. Fortunately I now live within 10 miles of a VA hospital. But what of the countless other vets who don't live so close and lack financial resources. Where have they been getting their medical emergency care and how have they paid for it? And what about the homeless...do you think they were just left to die?
chknltl
(10,558 posts)I heard on my local progressive radio channel that the words corporate and corporations are trending very poorly with the American citizenry. You call out a fellow DUer for telling corporate manufactured lies. Are you suggesting he works for a corporation and is paid to spread lies here?
Fear is another thing which the corporatists use to control the thoughts of the citizenry. Your second third and fourth paragraph are meant to cause fear.
Fear as you well know, has been a great tool for the corporatists. It has been used to sway public opinion. It has been used to tear We The People apart. Hell, the bush administration used it to lie us into a war which cost humanity millions of lives and the American citizenry trillions of dollars. (Some of those dollars are being used today to sway public opinion even further by paying agencies and think tanks to come up with words that will keep us divided-and to pay folks to use those words.)
Your final paragraph indicates that you are unaware of our ER wards being used by the poor for medical attention for free. Have you never seen an ambulance tending to a homeless person out on the sidewalk of one of our cities?
We don't know each other but I just wanted you to know that I believe that someone paid by a corporatists to spread corporatist manufactured information could hardly have done a better job....
Just my humble opinion of course...
Welcome to the Democratic Underground.
girl gone mad
(20,634 posts)I concur with the newbie.
chknltl
(10,558 posts)Did some angel unbeknownst to me pay for the thousands of dollars of medical work on my hand? Have you never seen a homeless streetperson receiving free medical care?
These get taken care of by We The People.
Or do you wish to pick a, fight on the topic of medical costs being outrageous? If that is the case no fight necessary, I can cite examples plenty where health care needs drove people to bankruptcy....the house I am renting is in foreclosure for this very reason...two lives gone, spent EVERYTHING and more trying in vain to remain alive...American Healthcare is financially devastating to the bulk of its citizenry.
If I was rude, it was deliberate. I read her posts without issue until the she called out a fellow DUer for spreading a corporate lie. It was NOT a corporate lie and I am proof.
Ghost of Huey Long
(322 posts)It is not easy for most people to escape medical bills if they want to continue using money in America.
You should really watch 'Sicko'. Most medical bankruptcies are people who have insurance.
People in the hospital who could not pay were literally dumped into the street.
Michael Moore then goes to Cuba where the health care costs are 1% or less of what we pay.
9/11 workers who could not afford their drugs for asthma etc. are taken to Cuba where they can afford everything at a fraction of the cost.
We need to remove the profit from health care.
chknltl
(10,558 posts)Medicare now begins at birth. As advocated by many here including Thom Hartman.*
As to the version of free medical that I see among folks: I live among the poor in the Seattle Tacoma area. Of all the people I personally know, half use the ER for their urgent needs. This includes my step daughter who is 28. If you were to ask her, 75% of her friends use the ER for their urgent care needs. If you were to ask her mother, that number rises to 90%. Around here, it is common knowledge among the poor that hospitals treat your urgent care needs, that they will not turn you away even though the hospital knows it won't get a dime out of you. The homeless and the poor are legion in our cities...I can not believe that hospitals will turn away a bleeding batterd homeless girl or in my case an all but homeless painter with a critical wound just because I never could afford insurance.
From my perspective, the use of our hospital ER rooms in order to get free urgent medical care is common. Who pays for it? I can guarantee that the corporatist don't want to pay for it, I'm thinking the hospitals are not enthused about any money they must spend on this so that leaves We The People footing the bulk of that bill.
One of my few friends with a job, (ex-Insurance agent now holds down three waitress jobs) just pointed out that here in Washington we have one of the highest rates of uninsured motorists. She further pointed out that we have one of the highest average rates for auto insurance. She blames the uninsured motorists...I blame the rigged system. Regardless of who is right, her or I, most of those uninsured motorists simply risk getting caught because they can not afford insurance. In my way of seeing things, she blames the poor for the problem. I do not blame the poor, nor do I ignore them.
We may be impoverished but every one of us has an opinion on why shit ain't right in America. Some of us have radios...some of us listen to Progressive radio stations...I am one of those someones....thanks to this so called 'smart' phone with a cracked face plate I am also a fellow DUer. I take strong offense with any suggestion that we are overlooked in the mix. Given the right information and an ability to vote, the poor and the homeless, are not unwilling to be an asset to those who seek to bring about change in this nation. We don't like being where we are any more than anyone else likes us being where we are.
* (I have read everything you have posted in this thread, read some of your stuff in other threads and an OP as well. You might consider chatting with Thom Hartman's people to explore the possibility of doing one of his guest segments.)
still_one
(92,537 posts)chknltl
(10,558 posts)"if they go into an emergency room, and do not have insurance, we pay for it".
That part was accurate, I know this quite intimately and took strong offense when it was suggested to be a corporate lie. Reading my defense of this statement should have made that clear.
I was not defending your assertion that SSI and Medicare are paid for by us and subject to a history of being dipped into by the government, (my paraphrasing of your words). But because you have brought it to my attention I will try to alleviate your concerns on this. Your thinking here btw is flat out misguided and an oft repeated misconception. Please give me this opportunity to get you access to better data my fellow DUer.
I have to give credit where credit is due here, Thom Hartman and Senator Bernie Sanders often get asked questions regarding the solvency of SSI and they are moving mountains on the radio to educate the populace regarding this and much relating to this topic.
Here is a link to the top five myths regarding SSI, as addressed by Thom Hartman which should bring you up to speed nicely. Please go there, read it and pass what you learn around!
http://m.thomhartmann.com/users/zenzoe/blog/2010/07/top-5-social-security-myths
If you are unfamiliar with Thom Hartman he has a daily radio show. He is very knowledgeable about American economics politics and understands these two from a world history perspective. Furthermore his grasp of our Constitution is right up there with any Constitution Scholar and his interpretation refreshing to say the least. He is fearless in who he goes toe to toe with in a debate and best of all: he is a fellow DUer.
For me, Thom is a modern day patriot. He deserves and gets the respect of his peers-peers who are quick to admit that on the radio, he is peerless.
ProSense
(116,464 posts)""We warned the president -- don't ever, ever agree with the Republicans...It amazes me how many Democrats continue to defend the mandate. A radical RW proposal that guarantees corporations huge profits, yet somehow, someway, this became a Democratic idea, bill, law."
Actually, he was warned not to agree with the Hillary and Edwards. It's not like Democrats didn't overlook the mandate in its worst form (garnishing wages) to support the other Democratic candidates.
Why so surprised?
"It is for actions like this that many feel that there isn't a dime's worth of difference between the two parties."
Here are a couple of differences pertaining to the health care law: Republicans never ever supported mandating employer coverage and expanding Medicaid.
Should we talk about women's health?
10 Things You Would Miss About Obamacare
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002851206
MadHound
(34,179 posts)Promoting your own thread in somebody else's thread.
"Promoting your own thread in somebody else's thread. "
...me to cut and paste the information here to prevent you from relying on red herrings?
I mean, I could put the facts in your face.
MadHound
(34,179 posts)Sorry, but I've already been to your thread, saw the errors and inaccuracies, decided it wasn't worth hashing it out with you. Now here you are, trying to hijack this thread to promote your own
Sorry, but I'm not going to feed the beast. Have a nice day.
here's the "worst form" I mentioned.
November 28, 2007
Chapel Hill, North Carolina – Senator John Edwards released the following statement today on the need for clear, direct answers on how we will reach universal health care:
"We need true universal health care reform that covers every single man, woman, and child in America. It is wrong to leave anyone without the care they need. A universal system will work better for all of us – delivering better care at lower cost.
"Barack Obama's plan leaves out 15 million people. The truth is that some people will choose not to buy insurance even though it's affordable, knowing that the rest of us will pay for their emergency room visits.
"But it is just as bad to say that everyone will have insurance without a plan to get there. Hillary Clinton says her plan will cover everyone through a 'mandate' but does not provide even the most rudimentary idea much less a detailed plan of how this 'mandate' would work. To get fundamental change in our health care system, we need a fundamental change in our politics. That starts with being clear and direct about what we are going to do and how we are going to do it."
Edwards' truly universal health care plan will ensure that every American has health insurance. He will require proof of insurance when income taxes are paid and when health care is provided. Families without insurance will be enrolled in Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP or another targeted plan or be assigned a plan within new Health Care Markets.
Families who lose coverage will be expected to enroll in another plan or be assigned one. For the few people who refuse to pay, the government will help collect back premiums with interest and collection costs by using tools like the ones it uses for student loans and taxes, including collection agencies and wage garnishment.
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=91170#axzz1qqZ9tZYk
More: http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002512603
dionysus
(26,467 posts) 
kenfrequed
(7,865 posts)How is it Clinton, Edwards, and President Obama embracing of some form of mandate make it less of a Republican idea in origin?
I'm sorry, but I was against Mandates in the first place and I had to put up with some people on this board that kept trying to tell me that "this is just the first step" or "This is just like social security."
Blue Dogs and apologists and useless at that.
Trying to get all cozy and moderate with the rabid badger that was the 2009-2010 republican minority in congress got us bit and it left us with nothing inspiring we could run on. We embraced all manner of conservative economic policies and we are still considered tax-hiking, pinko, commies.
When the hell are we going to learn?
msongs
(67,507 posts)
Skittles
(153,321 posts)I WILL KICK YOUR ASS!
Liberal_Stalwart71
(20,450 posts)But I understand the logic behind the individual mandate. I understand what it was attempting to do.
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)True.
Then again, I can understand the logic of Al Capone.
Liberal_Stalwart71
(20,450 posts)Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)Not, as he used to say, "providing a service to the community".
eridani
(51,907 posts)--benefit levels and prices. There are NO Platinum, Gold, Silver and Bronze people in any civilzed country.
Bluenorthwest
(45,319 posts)providing mandated services. The US law is the first and only health care mandate to demand purchase of a for profit product.
unapatriciated
(5,390 posts)I read this bill from front to back and there are no controls regarding pricing. There are also no penalties if the Insurance Industry delays or refuses coverage, something they do on a regular basis if you have a chronic illness. There are plenty of penalties if the insured makes a mistake.
quinnox
(20,600 posts)they had offered a non-profit government backed option, but being forced to pay a slimy insurance corporation for lousy high deductible insurance? No thank you.
ProSense
(116,464 posts)...mean you're uninsured by choice?
MadHound
(34,179 posts)Why are you fighting so hard for something that originated with the Heritage Foundation, supported by people like Hatch, and passed by Romney? Why are you fighting so hard for a mandated monopoly for the insurance industry?
Makes one wonder.
ProSense
(116,464 posts)"Why are you fighting so hard for a Republican policy?"
..."I'm "fighting" for the uninsured, low-income Americans, those with a pre-existing condition and those who die without insurance.
Why are you fighting for the Republican outcome?
Kucinich on the Affordable Care Act: "I hope the law is upheld."
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002503243
MadHound
(34,179 posts)Why?
Ironically, if Obamacare fails, that is pretty much going to fast track single payer UHC. Isn't that what you want?
"You are fighting for a Heritage Foundation mandate"
...I'm not.
"Ironically, if Obamacare fails, that is pretty much going to fast track single payer UHC. Isn't that what you want? "
And that's just silly.
MadHound
(34,179 posts)As shown above, and many other places, the individual mandate originated with the Heritage Foundation, supported by Bush, Hatch, and passed into law in MA by Romney. Those are the facts.
And yes, if Obamacare fails, it paves the way for quick passage of UHC single payer the next time there is a Democratically controlled Congress and White House(unless the Dems wimp out, again).
...I'm not, and if pigs fly...
Kill the bill and hope...
Seriously?
choie
(4,112 posts)some people will back Obama's policies no matter from where they emanate. Debating with them is a lost cause.
Skittles
(153,321 posts)Hoyt
(54,770 posts)Once it was clear there was no way forward, the mandate became acceptable to many.
Face facts, you are going to have to pay for it one way or other.
The medical loss ratio and exchanges will help put lid on profits. And, there are provisions in law that could help not-for-profit health delivery systems develop.
If we keep electing Democrats, this law can be easily changed including addition of public option.
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)Let's say America was attacked.
Every major city is hit with bombs like the London Blitz. Millions of people, including children are suffering from broken bones, cuts, burns, lacerations, contusions....
Should the government say those people should be checked for coverage? Or should they just provide the best care possible, no matter the cost?
The way things are now, Republicans would make sure the rich were unaffected except for using the bombing to get richer.
Hoyt
(54,770 posts)The biggest worry if something like that happened is people fighting in the streets for power.
In any event, if ACA or mandate is struck down -- we are back to square zero and nothing will happen for years and years. What ought to be, won't be.
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)Oh sure, then the zombies will rise up and we'll all get really good at head shots.
The fact is, the Republican crap about "the government shouldn't do anything" will be ignored.
Hoyt
(54,770 posts)While you and I might agree on the way things should be, I think there are a lot more fundies out there than you believe. And those losers could care less about what is moral and ethical.
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)They WANT civilization to fall. They dream of the day when they can pack the SUV with guns and run like scared rabbits to the hills until it's all over and then come back and be a warlord over some valley with a handful of survivors and get their pick of the women.
Hoyt
(54,770 posts)Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)Not as long as there are little people who think guns make them big people.
eridani
(51,907 posts)It will work at the federal level because why?
Hoyt
(54,770 posts)Exchanges will put pressure on costs.
And if I'm not mistaken, insurers are already making refunds to patients/subscribers under federal MLR requirements. So, something is happening.
Private insurance companies -- Blue Cross, United, Cigna, etc. -- administer Medicare right now at the local level (under federal rules). If the "profit" is capped, I have no real issue with using that framework (again, under federal guidelines) to transition to where we need to be.
Again, I'm not saying ACA is better than single payer or public option. But, it's better than what we had before and can be modified much easier than starting from a big hole. It is so easy to add a public option to ACA. And, we can purchase insurance from not-for-profit health delivery systems.
TheKentuckian
(25,035 posts)Most people never will according to the plan.
Not to pick on you because there are several who keep saying "if there was a public option" when it doesn't really matter if there was one because they would still just have to take whatever their employer elects.
Any pressure on costs will be extremely minimal. Yes, even the market reform is mostly a hoax. The exchanges have been touted as a cost controlling aspect themselves and people have been given the impression that they will be going online and getting to exert the power of the purse over the cartel which allows market forces to correct issues of both quality and cost and it just isn't the case. Most people will just go on as they have minus the option of dropping your employer based plan if the coverage stinks, it costs too much, or both.
The plan makes questionable to terrible assumptions about the large group market in fundamental ways from plan popularity, to cost, to rate of growth, to quality of coverage which bake significant levels of FAIL into the cake, it through great pains and convoluted paths leaves all existing structures and profit centers firmly in place, and does not address cost control while creating a precedent of unbounded government ability to dictate after tax spending of the individual, even to compel activity and confer the decision making process to a person's employer.
Hoyt
(54,770 posts)freely among plans. If Kaiser's HMO provides best price and quality, most will move to the more desirable plan. That forces other plans to respond.
Truth is, if we were fortunate enough to go to Medicare for all tomorrow, your cost might be 10 to 15% less than now (unless you qualify for a new subsidy).
Now, if we ever cut the heck out of defense, raise taxes on well heeled, etc., we might get somewhere. But people will still bitch.
TheKentuckian
(25,035 posts)"Most" have no options because "most" must take whatever their employers select. The market forces you are arguing and depending on are no operative. Most people are excluded from the exchanges and their is no ramping, the only hope to get where you think we are is for employers to drop coverage on a massive scale, which is not the current intent or we'd not still be married to the silly ass employer based system.
I don't see what there is to disagree with, Hoyt.
Hoyt
(54,770 posts)Small businesses will get subsidies. If you lose your job, you are not at the mercy of COBRA if you have a pre-existing condition. If you become poor, your health coverage will be subsidized.
Most importantly -- your focus on how you will come out totally ignores that 30+ million people will now have access to coverage; Medicare will be improved; there won't be "shitty" health policies; pre-existing will be thing of past; you won't be locked into a job because of health care; feds will monitor insurers; etc.
While not as good as single payer might be, it's a whole lot better than what we had 2 years ago.
I don't see what there is to gripe about, Kentuck.
eridani
(51,907 posts)--and put it back on the states. At any rate, the feds are just as dependent on insurance company numbers as the states, and insurers can and will fiddle the numbers.
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)she consistently defends on these boards.
Corporate tentacles run deep, even on internet discussion boards. 
jeff47
(26,549 posts)Yes, because that happened when Clinton's health care reforms were shot down. That's why we have single payer now.
....oh wait, that didn't happen.
If the ACA goes down, Democrats won't touch the subject for another decade. And there's no way in hell Republicans would bring about single payer.
MadHound
(34,179 posts)Medical prices going through the roof, faster than before, people finally paying attention and wanting change. Oh, and one other thing, most people now want single payer UHC.
People want real change, and if Obamacare fails, the only real change left will be single payer UHC. I imagine that the next time Congress and the White House are in the hands of Dems, it would get passed.
It will certainly happen a lot faster if Obamacare fails than if it succeeds. Once corporations can latch onto a mandated monopoly, they're not going to let go, and they have the money to keep it going.
...will that be?
MadHound
(34,179 posts)Hopefully we won't have a President who will waste it like Obama did.
"Oh, when that pendulum swings again"
...kill the bill and someday we'll have single payer. In the mean time, screw everyone who is suffering without coverage.
MadHound
(34,179 posts)And kill the entire middle class. Your choice.
ProSense
(116,464 posts)"Or have the individual mandate upheld, And kill the entire middle class. Your choice."
...drivel!
Bluenorthwest
(45,319 posts)health insurance. Many other nations mandate purchase, ALL of them make it a crime to profit from the sale of mandated products. 100%. The US law is the first and only to use law to compel citizens to contribute to the profits of other private citizens. So the question is why do you support this mandate, this unique mandate, unlike all others? To say 'we need A mandate' simply does not address why you feel THIS mandate to purchase profit based, private products is such groovy sauce.
Barack Obama as candidate mocked the individual mandate. He said using such a mandate to try to solve the health care crisis was like trying to solve homelessness by passing a law that everybody had to buy a house. An absurdity, which he now supports.
But why do you support the for profit mandate, first on the planet? Be specific?
ProSense
(116,464 posts)world do you envision returning to the status quo on the hopes that someday single payer will pass as a prescription for saving the "middle class"?
davidpdx
(22,000 posts)Single payer can't be done overnight. It may take several years. It is a shame we didn't get the bill passed in the 90s so we could be making changes now. If we wait for the next president and congress that is progressive enough to do it, we maybe waiting another 10-15 years.
patrice
(47,992 posts)patrice
(47,992 posts)TheKentuckian
(25,035 posts)of time at anything like present growth rates without subsidies and a captured market, the money isn't there in a large enough percentage of the population to maintain pools.
The Wealthcare and Profit Protection Act is designed to prop up and perpetuate the insurance cartel, a few very basic pay to play features is a little bit of sugar to make the real medicine go down and by the time the mess can be unknotted the cartel is on life support for another twenty years while sucking the economic life out of our nation and people.
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)Designed that way from the outset. Sold as a scam.
What galls me about this most of all is that we pretend that this wasn't obvious all along. The outcome was decided long ago, just as in the debt ceiling debates. The corporations always win, and the people always lose.
If the fact that Roberts voted for this does not pull some collective heads out of some collective asses to acknowledge what is really going on here, then we have very little hope to save our party.
jeff47
(26,549 posts)The people want economic stimulus. Have they gotten it?
The people want higher taxes on the wealthy. Have they gotten it?
The people want the war in Afghanistan to be over. Have they gotten it?
The people want the government out of women's bodies. Have they gotten it?
The people want the bankers thrown in jail. Have they gotten it?
The people want Citizens United overturned. Have they gotten it?
If the ACA goes down, the Democrats will flee health care reform just like they fled all the above subjects.
Yeah, it's not like the ACA contains limits on medical loss ratios or anything.......oh wait, it does.
We will get universal health care much faster by working within the ACA. It's a lot easier to lobby a blue state to go single-payer or include a public option in their exchange. The success of those programs can be used to sell it to purple states, and finally red states. Once a large majority are already covered by de-facto single payer, it will be much easier to finish the job with true single-payer.
In your alternative, we have to sell universal health care directly to red states. If you'd like an example of how that's gonna go, how'd "gay marriage" work out in North Carolina?
MadHound
(34,179 posts)Might as well grab the bull by the horns and do it all at once rather than piecemeal.
jeff47
(26,549 posts)Republican FUD is what keeps us from selling it to red states.
When Californians and New Yorkers aren't dropping dead from universal health care, it's gonna be a lot easier to defuse that FUD in Kansas.
RBInMaine
(13,570 posts)stockholmer
(3,751 posts)The USA has to remove the profit motive from BOTH health care and education. Obamacare was at its heart a further entrenchment of the oligarchs latching on to a huge pool of capital. Combine this with the debt enslavement that marches on in the form of exploding student loan debt and you have a picture perfect 2-pronged example of corporate fascism.
Government being used as the whip-hand for the largest private financial controllers on the planet. It is the utter perversion of a mixed economy that works so well (and is now under all-out assault in countries such as Germany and here in Sweden).
Read some Gabriel Kolko to start to see the nexus of big banks/business and government.
What you have is an artificially constructed choice called either 'deregulation' by the so-called right-wing, OR 'government oversight' by the so-called left-wing. Both are false paradigms. The last thing the systemic controllers want is a 'level playing field'.
The problem with the US experiment is not big government per se, it is big government that has morphed in all areas over the last 100 years into nothing more than an enforcement mechanism for the systemic controllers. Agencies that should be for the public good are simple the tools of the elite designed to to crush all competition from small and mid-size firms.
This started in the USA during the so-called Progressive Era under Theodore Roosevelt, wherein huge monopolies like Standard Oil, etc, utilized a 'don't throw me in the briar patch' argument to get the force of government into regulating business practices (regulations that many times in the 100 years since they have written, then had a bought and paid for Congress pass). Far from creating a free market, this quashed their rivals in so many cases, and made it exceedingly hard for small entrepreneurs to compete.
The US Animal ID act is a perfect example, wherein a small sized chicken farmer has to pay exorbitant licensing fees per chicken, thus forcing them out of business, whilst monstrously huge consortiums like Tyson, etc, simply are allowed to buy one large bulk license that covers millions of birds.
Check out New Left historian Gabriel Kolko, who in his book "The Triumph of Conservatism: A Reinterpretation of American History, 1900-1916."
In it, he lays out a case for the rise of modern corporatist system during the Progressive Era.
This in turn, allows for the violation of a anti-fascistic principle – No socialization of losses and privatization of gains
(ie the confluence of big business and big government in mutual reinforcement)
http://www.amazon.com/Triumph-Conservatism-Gabriel-Kolko/dp/0029166500
https://thepiratebay.se/torrent/7226293/Triumph_of_Conservatism___A_Re-Interpretation_of_American_Histor
Kolko was soon joined by other New Left historians such as William Appleman Williams in challenging the reigning "corporate liberal" orthodoxy. Rather than "the people" being behind these "progressive reforms," it was the very elite business interests themselves responsible, in an attempt to cartelize, centralize and control what was impossible due to the dynamics of a competitive and decentralized economy.
This was done by advancing the corporate liberalism idea whereby the old Progressive historiography of the "interests" versus the "people" was reinterpreted as a collaboration of interests aiming towards stabilizing competition .
According to Grob and Billias, "Kolko believed that large-scale units turned to government regulation precisely because of their inefficiency" and that the "Progressive movement - far from being antibusiness - was actually a movement that defined the general welfare in terms of the well-being of business" .
Kolko, in particular, broke new ground with his critical history of the Progressive Era. He discovered that free enterprise and competition were vibrant and expanding during the first two decades of the twentieth century; meanwhile, corporations reacted to the free market by turning to government to protect their inherent inefficiency from the discipline of market conditions.
This behavior is known as corporatism, but Kolko dubbed it "political capitalism." Kolko's thesis "that businessmen favored government regulation because they feared competition and desired to forge a government-business coalition" is one that is echoed by many observers today . Former Harvard professor Paul H. Weaver uncovered the same inefficient and bureaucratic behavior from corporations during his stint at Ford Motor Corporation (see Weaver's The Suicidal Corporation)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel_Kolko
http://miltenoff.tripod.com/Kolko.html
http://www.stateofnature.org/liberalElitesAnd.html
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)was a response to two developments in my view.
The first was the Gilded Age which brought about something we see today -- unbridled monopolies, the accumulation of extreme wealth by a few oligarchs (while the rest of us all over the world live in varying degrees of poverty) and control of the government by those same oligarchs. The inequity in the distribution of our nation's natural resources and wealth resulted in repeated and surprisingly regular economic crises -- in each of which the oligarchs strengthened their financial and power bases.
The natural reaction to the Gilded Age and the misery that it brought to ordinary people -- workers and farmers -- was a movement of (surprise!) workers and farmers. That movement was particularly strong in Minnesota and Iowa as I understand it. I know about this because one of my ancestors was involved in it. That populist movement lead to the formation of cooperatives, especially rural cooperatives some of which still operate on a very reduced scale today and cries for other reforms.
The Teddy Roosevelt progressive movement arose out of the concern for somehow dealing with these opposing oligarchic/populist movements. I believe that Teddy Roosevelt was also interested in preserving the beauty and recreational value of the open spaces that still remained in the West and was part of a movement that saw the need to rid the country of the graft and corruption that existed prior to the formation of a clear legal requirements for the hiring, firing, pay and benefits for public servants.
The problem with the libertarian, free-market, no-regulation idea is that we tried it, and it failed. It led to even worse market manipulation and fluctuations than we have today. It permitted the rich to take even more advantage of the poor than they do today. It promoted charlatanism in the field of health care and know-nothing idiocy in government, to say nothing about the corruption that was, although it does not seem possible, even worse and more blatant than today.
America's biggest problems are that Congress has abdicated its constitutional responsibility and authority for issuing our money, calling up our military, deciding on military expenditures and the treatment of prisoners of war and many other duties.
The president has filled the void that Congress has left.
Another of America's problems is that we do not regulate our financial sector well enough.
The Fed is a huge problem. It needs to be completely rethought and restructured. Essentially, the Fed is a den of foxes guarding the hen house. What a stupid idea! The Constitution provides that Congress should issue the money. We should return to that concept.
We have a lot of other problems like making sure that the rich pay a larger share of our taxes.
In my view, the portion of a person's income that the person pays in taxes should be determined by the likely portion of the person's income that can be spent for non-necessities measured by how much income the average person has after paying for basic existence. That sounds complicated, but as I see it, it is the only fair way to allocate the tax burden.
stockholmer
(3,751 posts)Number one, we both seem to agree on the Fed. It needs to be nationalised, and returned to its original constitutional intent and place.
Number two, I am most definitely NOT arguing for a right-libertarian form of control. That would be an unmitigated disaster, as then the oligarchs would truly have free reign to run riot over all aspects of human life, be it political, financial, social, cultural, military, environmental, penal, etc. If you ever want to stop a libertarian/Austrian school adherent in their tracks, simply point out the origins of movement (pushed by City of London bankers) and also the fact that David Rockefeller's personal tutor in economics was none other than Ludwig von Mises himself.
Competition is a sin.
John D. Rockefeller
Kolko's (who comes from The New Left school of thought) main point is that the systemic private controllers used the coercive power of the state to further their dominance by pulling a sleight-of-hand. Under the guise of so-called regulation, they actually cemented their status at the top of the food chain, with so-called 'trust busting' and anti-monopoly regulation in reality written (or completely influenced) by themselves.
All the power that was supposedly rent asunder from the plutocrats grasp has been carefully, grindingly reassembled. This was baked in the cake. Think of the landmark AT&T breakup in the USA in 1984. AT&T is now, just 25 years later, basically rendered whole again, through M&A, and manipulation of both federal and local laws. In fact, they have gained the largest market share in an arena that barely existed in 1984 (cell phone service). The 1996 Telecommunications Act (passed under a Democratic president, I might add) aided greatly in this.
The repeal of Glass-Steagall, NAFTA, and the horrid Commodities Futures Modernization Act of 2000 (again all passed under a Democratic President) are also perfect examples of the dialectical nature of further oligarch power usurpation, regardless of who is in control. These massive bills all laid the foundations for the financial consolidation by the global bankster networks and an accelerated stripping away of economic and social gains from the populace at large.
The foxes are not only in charge of the hen-house, but they also control the very organs and institutions of authority that can potentially punish and stop them from the fowl slaughter they so deeply lust for.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)ProSense
(116,464 posts)From your current comment above, to this from your previous comment:
The USA has to remove the profit motive from BOTH health care and education. Obamacare was at its heart a further entrenchment of the oligarchs latching on to a huge pool of capital. Combine this with the debt enslavement that marches on in the form of exploding student loan debt and you have a picture perfect 2-pronged example of corporate fascism.
Government being used as the whip-hand for the largest private financial controllers on the planet. It is the utter perversion of a mixed economy that works so well (and is now under all-out assault in countries such as Germany and here in Sweden).
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=855044
...you appear to be rewriting history specifically to condemn Democrats. I mean, Clinton made huge mistakes, but the horrors of the 2000s occurred on Bush's watch. A Democratic President (for example, Gore) would not have simply enable destruction of the economy upon seeing the effects. There is evidence to support such a claim, as Democrats tried to take action in the early 2000s to prevent the 2007 outcome (not that they specifically knew the severity, but Enron was a huge clue).
Also, you say, "I agree, that is the true devastation that Obamacare will leave (regardless of the SC decision)," but look at the comment to which you responded:
....oh wait, that didn't happen.
If the ACA goes down, Democrats won't touch the subject for another decade. And there's no way in hell Republicans would bring about single payer.
What "devastation" are you referring to? The "debacle" relates to the law being struck down, not if it's upheld.
Most people don't see adding 16 million to Medicaid, banning the practice of dropping people because of a pre-existing condition, free preventive care for seniors and the other benefits of the health care law as "devastation."
stockholmer
(3,751 posts)in different rhythms and to different degrees. I think the best Democrat the US has in the Congress is Bernie Sanders, he is a national treasure, but all too often thwarted by a corporate controlled group consensus. I would say there are several dozen other Dems who tend to somewhat (to varying degrees) vote in the average citizen's interest the majority of the time, but their numbers just are not there to affect a rollback of the fascism. Thus is the trap of a sham 2-party system.
Other than Walter Jones and Ron Paul's (and I disagree with both of them on almost every other thing) stances on the empiric wars (and even there both Jones and Paul STILL voted for the Authorization of Force Afghan bill in 2001, which is the fountainhead of tyranny that Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, Somalia, etc etc all flow from) there are NO Republicans I would ever support on 98% of the issues.
As for devastation, as long as the profit motive is left in place for health care and education, you will have massive price inflation. When that becomes unsustainable, the devastation will most assuredly occur.
Single payer health care (with profit motive utterly stripped out), universal free college tuition, nationalising the Fed, and an end to the wars of empire (along with other reforms of lesser extent) are the only way to save the American ship.
Warren Stupidity
(48,181 posts)I stumbled across him in the late 70s, and it was like a light went on. He put the whole bent system into proper perspective.
The poster you are responding is not going to debate the issues you laid out, but I think you know that.
There is a core problem with our republic: pervasive corruption, and that corruption has a strangle hold on federal and most state governments. The electoral process currently holds no hope of real reform, as it's structure precludes empowerment of an actual reform party. We are left voting for the facade of a labor party, knowing full well that it is just the "less rightwing alternative". We have witnessed all the symptoms of the core problem in the ACA. We needed healthcare for all, we got insurance reform, we needed to cut the for profit insurance industry out of the system, we got them baked into it with a mandate. And now we are going to see even the miserable pathetic reforms we got scrapped by the most vicious rightwing court in nearly 100 years.
We cannot gain effective reform at the ballot box. We are not going to occupy our way to a mass protest movement that forces the issue. The duopoly will make sure that we are not so put upon to actually revolt, and even if we did they are well prepared for that nonsense.
It seems pretty hopeless to me. We will all go vote. Perhaps Obama will win, perhaps he wont, but the long rightward slide, this 30 year spiral, is far from over.
stockholmer
(3,751 posts)30 MILLION PRODUCTIVE JOBS TO REBUILD US INFRASTRUCTURE, INDUSTRY AND AGRICULTURE: THE PROGRAM TO END THE ECONOMIC DEPRESSION
The US and the world are gripped by a deepening economic depression. There is no recovery and no automatic business cycle which will revive the economy. This bottomless depression will worsen until policies are reformed. The depression results from deregulated and globalized financial speculation, especially the $1 quadrillion world derivatives bubble. The US industrial base has been gutted, and the US standard of living has fallen by almost two thirds over the last four decades. We must reverse this trend of speculation, de-industrialization, and immiseration. Current policy bails out bankers, but harms working people, industrial producers, farmers, and small business. We must defend civil society and democratic institutions from the effects of high unemployment and economic breakdown. We therefore demand:
1. Measures to reduce speculation and minimize the burden of fictitious capital:
End all bailouts of banks and financial institutions. Claw back the TARP and other public money given or lent to financiers. Abolish the notion of too big to fail; JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Citibank, Wells Fargo and other Wall Street zombie banks are insolvent and must be seized by the FDIC for chapter 7 liquidation, with derivatives eliminated by triage. Re-institute the Glass-Steagall firewall to separate banks, brokerages, and insurance. Ban credit default swaps and adjustable rate mortgages. To generate revenue and discourage speculation, levy a 1% Tobin tax (securities transfer tax or trading tax) on all financial transactions including derivatives (futures, options, indices, and over the counter derivatives), stocks, bonds, foreign exchange, and commodities, especially program trading, high-frequency trading, and flash trading.
Set up a 15% reserve requirement for all OTC derivatives. Use Tobin tax revenue and a revived corporate income tax to provide immediate tax relief to individuals, families, the self-employed, and small business by increasing personal exemptions and standard deductions. Stop all foreclosures on primary residences, businesses, and farms for five years or the duration of the depression, whichever lasts longer. Set a 10% maximum rate of interest on credit cards and payday loans. Re-regulate commodities markets with 100% margin requirements, position limits, and anti-speculation protections for hedgers and end users to prevent oil and gasoline price spikes. Enforce labor laws and anti-trust laws against monopolies and cartels. Restore individual chapter 11.
2. Measures to nationalize the Federal Reserve, cut federal borrowing, and provide 0% federal credit for production:
Seize the Federal Reserve and bring it under the US Treasury as the National Bank of the United States, no longer the preserve of unelected and unaccountable cliques of incompetent and predatory bankers. The size of the money supply, interest rates, and approved types of lending must be determined by public laws passed and debated openly, passed by the congress and signed by the president. Stop US government borrowing from zombie banks and foreigners -- let the US government function as its own bank. Reverse current policy by instituting 0% federal LENDING with preferential treatment for tangible physical production and manufacturing of goods and commodities, to include industry, agriculture, construction, mining, energy production, transportation, infrastructure building, public works, and scientific research, but not financial services and speculation.
Issue successive tranches of $1 trillion as needed to create 30 million union-wage productive jobs and attain full employment for the first time since 1945, reversing the secular decline in the US standard of living. Provide 0% credit to reconvert idle auto and other plants and re-hire unemployed workers to build modern rail, mass transit, farm tractors, and aerospace equipment, including for export. Extend 0% federal credit for production to small businesses like auto and electronics repair shops, dry cleaners, restaurants, tailors, family farms, taxis, and trucking. Maintain commercial credit for retail stores. Create an unlimited rediscount guarantee by the National Bank for public works projects to provide cash to local banks for bills of exchange pertaining to infrastructure and public works. Repatriate the foreign dollar overhang by encouraging China, Japan, and other dollar holders to place orders for US-made capital goods and modern hospitals. Revive the US Export-Import Bank. Set up a 10% tariff to protect domestic re-industrialization. Nationalize and operate GM, Chrysler, CIT, and other needed but insolvent firms as a permanent public sector. Maintain Amtrak and USPS.
3. Measures to re-industrialize, build infrastructure, develop science drivers, create jobs, and restore a high-wage economy:
State and local governments and special government agencies modeled on the Tennessee Valley Authority will be prime contractors for an ambitious program of infrastructure and public works subcontracted to the private sector. To deal with collapsing US infrastructure, modernize the US elgeneration, pebble bed, high temperature reactors of 1,000 to 2,000 megawatts each. Rebuild the rail system with 50,000 miles of ultra-modern maglev Amtrak rail reaching into every state. Rebuild the entire interstate highway system to 21st century standards. Rebuild drinking water and waste water systems nationwide. Promote canal building and irrigation. For health care, build 1,000 500-bed modern hospitals to meet the minimum Hill-Burton standards of 1946.
Train 250,000 doctors over the next decade. The Davis-Bacon Act will mandate union pay scales for all projects. For the farm sector, provide a debt freeze for the duration of the crisis, 0% federal credit for working capital and capital improvements, a ban on foreclosures, and federal price supports at 110% of parity across the board, with farm surpluses being used for a new Food for Peace program to stop world famine and genocide. Working with other interested nations, invest $100 billion each in: biomedical research to cure dread diseases; high energy physics (including lasers) to develop fusion power and beyond; and a multi-decade NASA program of moon-Mars manned exploration, permanent colonization, and industrial production. These science drivers will provide the technological spin-offs to modernize the entire US economy in the same way that the NASA moon shot gave us microchips and computers in the 1960s. These steps will expand and upgrade the national stock of capital goods and enhance the real productivity of US labor. Return the federal budget and foreign trade to surplus in 5 years or less.
4. Measures to defend and expand the social safety net:
Restore all cuts; full funding at improved levels for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, jobless benefits, WIC, Head Start, and related programs. Offer Medicare for All to anyone under 65 who wants it at $100 per person per month, with reduced rates for families, students, and the unemployed. Pay for this with Tobin tax revenues and TARP clawback, and by ending the Iraq and Afghan wars. Seek to raise life expectancy by five years for starters. No rationing or death panels; savings can come only by finding cures. Quickly reach a $15 per hour living wage. Repeal the Taft-Hartley Act and affirm the right to organize. Pass card check to promote collective bargaining.
5. Measures to re-launch world trade and promote world recovery:
Create a new world monetary system including the euro, the yen, the dollar, and the ruble, plus emerging Arab and Latin American regional currencies, with fixed exchange rates and narrow bands of fluctuation enforced by participating governments. Institute clearing and gold settlement among member states. Replace the IMF with a Multilateral Development Bank to finance world trade and infrastructure.
The goal of the system must be to re-launch world trade through exports of high-technology capital goods, especially to sub-Saharan Africa, south Asia, and the poorer parts of Latin America. Promote a world Marshall Plan of great projects of world infrastructure, including: a Middle East reconstruction and development program; plans for the Ganges-Bramaputra, Indus, Mekong, Amazon, and Nile-Congo river basins; bridge-tunnel combinations to span the Bering Strait, the Straits of Gibraltar, the Straits of Malacca, the Sicilian narrows, and connect Japan to the Asian mainland; second Panama canal and Kra canals; Eurasian silk road, Cape to Cairo/Dakar to Djibouti, Australian coastal, and Inter-American rail projects, and more. American businesses will receive many of these orders, which means American jobs.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This program will create 30 million jobs in less than five years. It will end the depression, rebuild the US economy, improve wages and standards of living, re-start productive investment, and attain full employment with increased levels of capital investment per job. Most orders placed under this program will go to US private sector bidders. Because of the vastly increased volume of goods put on the market, inflation will not result.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)would grow really, really big, and the Republicans would hate it.
But there are some really good ideas in there.
Bit ambitious, don't you think, but fun to play around with.
Anyway, it's a plan . . . . .
A very, very, very comprehensive plan, but . . . who knows???
At least it is a plan and nobody else seems to have one.
I think you should float it. Somebody fishing for a plan, any plan, just might hook it in and decide to make a meal of it.
Fantastic Anarchist
(7,309 posts)... Kevin Carson's " Studies in Mutualist Political Economy" (free-market socialism).
www.mutualist.org/id47.html
Fantastic Anarchist
(7,309 posts)AUSTRIAN AND MARXIST THEORIES OF
MONOPOLY-CAPITAL
A Mutualist Synthesis
http://www.mutualist.org/id10.html
INTRODUCTION
My starting point for this article is a
ground-breaking study by Joseph
Stromberg. In "The Role of State
Monopoly Capitalism in the
American Empire ," (1) Stromberg
provides an insightful Austrian analysis
of state capitalist cartelization as the
cause of crises of overproduction and
surplus capital. In the course of his
argument, he makes reference to
Progressive/Revisionist and (to a lesser
extent) Marxist theories of imperialism,
and analyzes their parallels with the
Austrian view.
Although the state capitalism of the
twentieth century (as opposed to the
earlier misnamed "laissez faire" variant,
in which the statist character of the
system was largely disguised as a
"neutral" legal framework) had its roots
in the mid-nineteenth century, it
received great impetus as an elite
ideology during the depression of the
1890s. From that time on, the problems
of overproduction and surplus capital,
the danger of domestic class warfare,
and the need for the state to solve
them, figured large in the perception of
the corporate elite. The shift in elite
consensus in the 1890s (toward
corporate liberalism and foreign
expansion) was as profound as that of
the 1970s, when reaction to wildcat
strikes, the "crisis of governability," and
the looming "capital shortage" led the
power elite to abandon corporate
liberalism in favor of neo-liberalism.
But as Stromberg argues, the American
ruling class was wrong in seeing the
crises of overproduction and surplus
capital as "natural or inevitable
outgrowths of a market society." (2)
They were, rather, the effects of
regulatory cartelization of the economy
by state capitalist policies.
The effects of the state's subsidies and
regulations are 1) to encourage creation
of production facilities on such a large
scale that they are not viable in a free
market, and cannot dispose of their full
product domestically; 2) to promote
monopoly prices above market clearing
levels; and 3) to set up market entry
barriers and put new or smaller firms at
a competitive disadvantage, so as to
deny adequate domestic outlets for
investment capital. The result is a crisis
of overproduction and surplus capital,
and a spiraling process of increasing
statism as politically connected
corporate interests act through the state
to resolve the crisis.
Although I cannot praise Stomberg
enough for this contribution, which I
use as a starting-point, I diverge from
his analysis in several ways. Stromberg,
himself a Rothbardian anarcho-capitalist
affiliated with the Mises Institute, relies
mainly on Schumpeter's analysis of
"export-dependent monopoly
capitalism," as read through a Misean/
Rothbardian lens. Secondarily, he relies
on "corporate liberal" historians like
Williams, Kolko and Weinstein. To the
extent that he refers to Marxist analyses
of monopoly capital, it is mainly in
passing, if not utterly dismissive. But
such theorists (especially Baran and
Sweezy of the Monthly Review group,
James O'Connor, and Paul Mattick) have
parallelled his own Austrian analysis in
interesting ways, and have provided
unique insights that are complementary
to the Austrian position.
Starting with Stromberg's article as my
point of departure, I will integrate both
his and these other analyses into my
own mutualist framework. More
importantly, as a mutualist, I go much
further than Stromberg and the
Austrians in dissociating the present
corporate system from a genuine free
market. Following the economic
arguments of Benjamin Tucker and
other mutualists, I distinguish capitalism
from a genuine free market, and treat
the state capitalism of the twentieth
century as the natural outgrowth of a
system which was statist from its very
beginning.
THE RISE OF STATE CAPITALISM
Stromberg's argument is based on
Murray Rothbard's Austrian theory of
regulatory cartelization. Economists of
the Austrian school, especially Ludwig
von Mises and his disciple Rothbard,
have taken a view of state capitalism in
many respects resembling that of the
New Left. That is, both groups portray it
as a movement of large-scale, organized
capital to obtain its profits through state
intervention into the economy, although
the regulations entailed in this project
are usually sold to the public as
"progressive" restraints on big business.
This parallelism between the analyses of
the New Left and the libertarian Right
was capitalized upon by Rothbard in his
own overtures to the Left. In such
projects as his journal Left and Right ,
and in the anthology A New History of
Leviathan (coedited with New Leftist
Ronald Radosh), he sought an alliance
of the libertarian Left and Right against
the corporate state.
Rothbard treated the "war collectivism"
of World War I as a prototype for
twentieth century state capitalism. He
described it as
a new order marked by strong
government, and extensive and
pervasive government intervention
and planning, for the purpose of
providing a network of subsidies and
monopolistic privileges to business,
and especially to large business,
interests. In particular, the economy
could be cartelized under the aegis
of government, with prices raised
and production fixed and restricted,
in the classic pattern of monopoly;
and military and other government
contracts could be channeled into
the hands of favored corporate
producers. Labor, which had been
becoming increasingly
rambunctious, could be tamed and
bridled into the service of this new,
state monopoly-capitalist order,
through the device of promoting a
suitably cooperative trade unionism,
and by bringing the willing union
leaders into the planning system as
junior partners. (3)
This view of state capitalism, shared by
New Leftists and Austrians, flies in the
face of the dominant American
ideological framework. Before we can
analyze the rise of statist monopoly
capitalism in the twentieth century, we
must rid ourselves of this pernicious
conventional wisdom, common to
mainstream left and right. Both
mainline "conservatives" and "liberals"
share the same mirror-imaged view of
the world (but with "good guys" and
"bad guys" reversed), in which the
growth of the welfare and regulatory
state reflected a desire to restrain the
power of big business. According to this
commonly accepted version of history,
the Progressive and New Deal programs
were forced on corporate interests from
outside, and against their will. In this
picture of the world, big government is
a populist "countervailing power"
against the "economic royalists." This
picture of the world is shared by
Randroids and Chicago boys on the
right, who fulminate against "looting" by
"anti-capitalist" collectivists; and by NPR
liberals who confuse the New Deal with
the Second Advent. It is the official
ideology of the publick skool
establishment, whose history texts
recount heroic legends of "trust buster"
TR combating the "malefactors of great
wealth," and Upton Sinclair's crusade
against the meat packers. It is
expressed in almost identical terms in
right-wing home school texts by
Clarence Carson and the like, who
bemoan the defeat of business at the
hands of the collectivist state.
The conventional understanding of
government regulation was succinctly
stated by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., the
foremost spokesman for corporate
liberalism: " Liberalism in America has
ordinarily been the movement on
the part of the other sections of
society to restrain the power of the
business community." (4) Mainstream
liberals and conservatives may disagree
on who the "bad guy" is in this
scenario, but they are largely in
agreement on the anti-business
motivation. For example, Theodore
Levitt of the Harvard Business Review
lamented in 1968: "Business has not
really won or had its way in
connection with even a single piece
of proposed regulatory or social
legislation in the last three-quarters
of a century. " (5)
The problem with these conventional
assessments is that they are an almost
exact reverse of the truth. The New Left
has produced massive amounts of
evidence to the contrary, virtually
demolishing the official version of
American history. (The problem, as in
most cases of "paradigm shift," is that
the consensus reality doesn't know it's
dead yet). Scholars like James
Weinstein, Gabriel Kolko and William
Appleman Williams, in their historical
analyses of "corporate liberalism," have
demonstrated that the main forces
behind both Progressive and New Deal
"reforms" were powerful corporate
interests. To the extent that big
business protested the New Deal in fact,
it was a case of Brer Rabbit's plea not to
fling him in the briar patch.
<snip, more at link>
stockholmer
(3,751 posts)
patrice
(47,992 posts)away from them?
MOST of the time, there are more than 2 things possible.
To insist that there are 2 and only 2 is a false dichotomy AND it therefore undercuts one's own position.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)It is ridiculous that people who can afford to pay for health care think they don't have to pay their fair share for it.
Health care is expensive, and we all have to help pay for it. Even seniors on Medicare pay a co-pay and, if they are on a Senior Advantage plan or something similar, a premium.
I would prefer single payer. I would prefer to have the essential insurance coverage be directly between the doctor and the patient with the doctor billing a non-profit, single payer administrator. I think that would be cheaper and certainly just as efficient as what we have now.
Ironically, one of my Republican relatives who rails against Obama-care has had to wait for months to get knee surgery that she needs. Our "best health care in the world" is, while having different priorities than health care in European single payer countries, not a bit faster or better.
In my experience, the European health care emphasizes prevention more than ours does. Since Obama's health care bill passed, I think that our system is promoting prevention more than it previously did. That is a great improvement in and of itself.
Unfortunately, some of the best aspects of the Obama plan will not be felt by people until 2014 -- if ever.
The mandate is intended to lower the health care costs for the individual by spreading the burden of covering the costs of the uninsured across the entire population. Good idea!
MadHound
(34,179 posts)Secondly, what other Heritage Foundation policies do you favor in addition to the individual mandate? What other "good ideas" have they ever come up with in the past couple of decades? So why do you think handing the insurance industry a mandated monopoly is a "good idea"?
jeff47
(26,549 posts)JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)with non-profit or government-run administration.
What I support is health care insurance for everyone. I would prefer that the cost just be taken out of people's paychecks and out of the profits of the corporations.
Insurance for all (but not for-profit insurance) should be covered by taxes. Congress has the right to tax and spend. If Congress can tax us in order to pay military contractors for government services to support our military, it can tax us to pay medical contractors for government services to support health care for Americans.
Same difference. Everyone should be covered. I prefer single payer, but am comfortable with the Obama bill if it covers as many people as possible. We can improve it in time and move to single payer -- which will be less expensive in the end.
MadHound
(34,179 posts)This individual mandate. As it stands, it gives the insurance industry a mandated monopoly. It forces citizens, simply as a condition of being alive, to purchase a product, whether they need it, want it, or not, from a for profit corporation. That is a really huge, nasty legal precedent to set.
Furthermore, do you really think that, once the insurance industry gets this mandated monopoly, they will willingly give it up? This interim step will take decades to overcome, if we ever can. Not to mention the fact that once big legislation such as this is passed, inertia takes over and the issue won't be revisited for years and decades.
Better that we have this big bust now, for such a bust will once again create a crisis atmosphere and create a drive towards getting single payer UHC quicker.
patrice
(47,992 posts)coverage rates and more alternative services changes the pools, the MLR will hold ins co profits at 15%. That's going to kill off insurance companies, at some point something like HR 676 will have to be enacted in order to save the ins cos. The final result could be Medicare for All (a.k.a. Single Payer) with some few remaining ins cos who provide upscale coverage for that market.
The questions are how long this will take compared to throw-Obama-out-and-start-over-from-scratch and what will Medicare for All/Single Payer cover relative to supplemental insurance packages (i.e. who's going to get the lion's share of that alternative services market).
Threatening a sitting President results in the OPPOSITE effect on your issue. Saying the strategy won't work and ergo you won't vote INSURES that it won't work. Letting everyone know that you won't vote, for whatever reason, does not happen in a vacuum. Opposing forces know what's going on so they know that all they have to do is wait and they will have to do NOTHING on the issue, as the movement away from a position insures policies that insure further movement away from a position. Their ascendance in this situation WILL create enough inertia to destroy literally in a Congressional vote HR 676 and set Single Payer waaaaaaaaaaaaay further back than going through the current process which includes the mandate that, combined with market forces, will reduce the size and power of the ins cos to something that can be throttled until it submits to its assigned place in a Single Payer system.
Uncle Joe
(58,584 posts)becomes even more concentrated.
The 15% profit cap will drive up the cost of health care even faster as the for profit "health" insurance industry has a strong motive to pay for higher health care costs, at least for so long as 15% of $10,000.00 remains greater than 15% of $1,000.00.
Hospitals, doctors and big pharma will have even greater motivation to increase costs as the for profit "health" insurance industry's motivation to pay higher cost increases in tandem.
patrice
(47,992 posts)Because ins co is going to have to shop in order to cover all demand with nothing more than 85% of the premium dollar.
15% is a good improvement over nearly 30-35%, don't you think?
In addition to the MLR there is the PCORI, which is a tool by means of which ins consumers will be able to put pressure on ins providers for additional services and also, depending upon the effectiveness of a given treatment modality, make a case for higher rates of coverage on services.
http://www.pcori.org/
Lower profits + Increasing Demand for more services (e.g. Mental Health parity and Long-Term Care) and increasing demand for higher rates of coverage per service will break ins co up, leaving only those who can survive in niche markets, opening the door to Medicare for All.
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)It was the right wing who came up with the claim that the poor were just lazy bums who could afford it but didn't want to pay.
I just recently saw an article that this 'meme' was planned to be used as a selling point for the mandate and that the president was urged to use it.
Considering HE made the argument in the campaign AGAINST the Mandate, that 'if forcing people to buy a house would work, we could solve the homeless problem' as he pointed out that it would be very unfair to try to force people to pay for HC who could not afford it, I don't know how he dealt with that suggestion, but we did begin to hear it coming from Democrats, however carefully they tried to word it.
I do not know a single person who would not have HC coverage if they could afford it, especially those with children.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)Unfortunately, that part of the plan hasn't kicked in, and in my view it is the most important part. It is also the part most often forgotten or ignored.
Bluenorthwest
(45,319 posts)The way y'all say 'for those who can't afford it' without bothering to note that 'those' is defined using tax code definitions of family, that is 'gay families are counted as single people'. Why is that ok with you? Please be specific.
Why is it that none of you asked that the tax law be made fair if it is to be used as part of a health care plan? The answer is because no one cares about anyone but themselves and their own 'adult children' Gay couple together for 50 years is called 'strangers' 'single' and so forth. Does that make you happier with the law? That it harms some of us so badly to enrich the 'real families'?
That which is unjust is simply unjust. This law treats my family unfairly. That is not ok with me.
girl gone mad
(20,634 posts)I've been curious about this strategy of scapegoating the uninsured, when in reality they add almost nothing to the premiums insured people pay or to medical care costs in general.
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)mention that we should not have to support those who refuse to pay into the system'. If I find it I will P it to you, ggm, I should have bookmarked it as it simply confirmed what we already knew, that they were pushing this rightwing talking point on Democrats.
Obama had to do a complete flip flop to start using it though, since int the campaign he stated that it would not be right to force poor people to pay for something they could not afford. He used an analogy to illustrate his point, that if forcing people to buy homes they could not afford worked, there would be no homeless people.
FedUp_Queer
(975 posts)Why is it I this sounds an awful lot like the Reagan comprehensive drug plan..."just say no." Let's not forget the homeless plan: "just go buy a house." The problem is not Obamacare or single payer or whatever silly mantra we want to come up with. The issue is that we have a political system that is broken...beyond repair. The time to tear it down and take Thomas Jefferson's admonition seriously about government who ignore the people. That's the only way. Will we do that? Doesn't look that way.
SomethingFishy
(4,876 posts)You could give less than a fuck for those people. You are fighting for Democrats and their candidates. Not for policies that help "the poor and uninsured". At least be honest. You are here to promote the Democratic agenda, if it happens to correspond to "helping the poor and uninsured" that is a bonus you get to lay on thick. But if the Democratic agenda were, to say, send drones in to drop bombs on those same poor and uninsured people because there are "suspected militants" among them you would be defending that.
Tierra_y_Libertad
(50,414 posts)Juror #1 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE and said: No explanation given
Juror #2 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE and said: The origins of the mandate should be open to discussion. The post itself does not seem to violate Community Standards.
Juror #3 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE and said: No explanation given
Juror #4 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE and said: Alas, the Republican policy referred to is supported by both Republicans and Democrats. Some of them on this thread. Which is the fact the poster is accurately pointing out.
Juror #5 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE and said: No explanation given
Juror #6 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE and said: No explanation given
Dragonfli
(10,622 posts)She particularly appears to like to argue the points of the Heritage Foundation, and Most everything involved in the US Chamber of Commerce regarding "job growth", (mostly, it appears by context, because the Democratic leadership tends to agree with them).
Not a liberal, but as with Lieberman and Bauccus, likely registered as a Democrat.
Remember, we had many, many Republicans do such registering when their religious lunatics began their purges and they had to take over, I mean find a new political party that would give power to their voice and business views.
You should know Mad, it is MAD to argue with a third way loyalist that has no problem accepting Republican policy as long as Third-Way can post similar views for triangulation purposes, the goal is to steal Republican issues in order to get elected, such thinking got us welfare deform, bank deregulation, Free Trade, and a general lack of respect for anything Constitutional.
One does not need to wonder about anything when things are clear on the surface.
Dokkie
(1,688 posts)individual mandate.
Ghost of Huey Long
(322 posts)That is all we are asking, doesn't sound like too much to ask.
Art_from_Ark
(27,247 posts)While there is private health insurance offered through employers ("Shakai Hoken"
, there is also a public option ("Kokumin Kenkou Hoken" . I don't know exactly how the private insurance works, but the public option is funded through premiums that are based on age, income, and family size, and is mandatory for everyone who doesn't have or want the private insurance. The public option insurance pays for 70% of all necessary medical and dental procedures, as well as 70% of the cost of prescription drugs (which are generally not too expensive to begin with). No deductibles, no hassling over who pays what. There are also generous programs for seniors and young children, and ambulance service is free.
AnotherMcIntosh
(11,064 posts)While we will never know the answer to this, I wonder how many politicians who voted for this (and parties related to them) bought stock in health insurance companies before voting in favor of the mandate.
Uncle Joe
(58,584 posts)to your last paragraph, I will be extremely surprised if this authoritarian loving, corporate supremacist dominated Supreme Court strikes down the mandate.
Corporate supremacy is the Prime Directive of this reich wing controlled Supreme Court as was just recently re-exhibited with their overturning of the Montana Supreme Court's challenge to "Citizens United" and in the final analysis it makes no difference to the money-changers which party or person promotes or enables corporate domination over the people so long as someone does.
The American People are the mark.
"Henry Gondorff: You have to keep this con even after you take his money. He can't know you took him."
Thanks for the thread, MadHound.
MadHound
(34,179 posts)Which impulse will override the other, their fealty to all things corporate, or their all consuming hatred of Obama.
Uncle Joe
(58,584 posts)Corporate Supremacy; has its' origins going back to the 19th century.
I believe the money changers are wedded to the long run and will allow any political opponent a "political victory" battle if that's what it takes to win the corporate supremacist policy war.
EFerrari
(163,986 posts)"Which impulse will override the other, their fealty to all things corporate, or their all consuming hatred of Obama. "
...do you believe they harbor "consuming hatred of Obama" if he's a corporate tool?
It's hilarious when Obama detractors cite other people's hatred for Obama to support their POV.
Uncle Joe
(58,584 posts)Obama chastised them for "Citizens United" during his state of the union address but in the big picture they're not going to look a gift horse in the mouth.
Response to Uncle Joe (Reply #16)
Tuesday Afternoon This message was self-deleted by its author.
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)They passed Citizens United after all.
It's tough for them, granted, they would like to destroy Obama's HC program right before the election, but then they will remember why they got their jobs, 'money trumps everything'.
Thav
(946 posts)What if they put that in there to draw the ire of some, when they know it'll get struck down? "Everyone will get pissed off about this part, and won't focus on the rest which has a real benefit to the nation."
Freddie Stubbs
(29,853 posts)MadHound
(34,179 posts)Does it hand a mandated monopoly to an entire industry?
No, it doesn't.
Thanks for playing.
Kingofalldems
(38,519 posts)Try again.
just1voice
(1,362 posts)Why would you try to hijack a thread on the topic instead of discussing the content which is this: most Americans do not want for-profit health insurance, we want universal health care for all.
Autumn
(45,120 posts)in office now. Nixon wouldn't be allowed in the puke party today.
just1voice
(1,362 posts)A few of the responders/supporters of the for-profit hell remind me of this locked post yesterday:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002850016
treestar
(82,383 posts)Isn't that a conservative think tank? Most right wingers don't want any government involved health care plan at all.
stockholmer
(3,751 posts)joshcryer
(62,287 posts)Unsurprisingly the OP I was responding to there is the same one making another OP here.
joshcryer
(62,287 posts)ie, pay $2000 in insurance a year get a tax credit of $200 or something like that (just an example). It's not a mandate, it's an incentive.
joshcryer
(62,287 posts)Obama / Hillary / Edwards' mandate is a barely enforceable fine.
Single payer would be a fine and possibly criminal charges (tax evasion).
Every person who rec'd this thread is buying a right wing meme that Obama did a right wing thing when the fact is he did not. Yes, the bashing of mandates originated with the right wing. Look at the Harry and Louise ads that the Democrats were pushed into, Obama even ressurected them during his campaign, in order to marginalize the left, and in order to appeal to the moderates and the low information voters who don't understand what mandates mean.
This is a right wing talking point. It is not true. A tax credit is not a fucking mandate. I'm sick and fucking tired of the left allowing the right wing to drive the narrative.
Maven
(10,533 posts)Tax reforms were part of the HF's original plan (1989-1990) but that plan also included an individual mandate with a fine on free riders.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/aroy/2011/10/20/how-a-conservative-think-tank-invented-the-individual-mandate/
The HF has since changed its position (shocker) but that does not change the fact that they were one of the earliest adopters of the idea.
Also, please do not conflate the fine chargeable to an individual who fails to obtain private insurance to the consequences of not paying one's taxes to pay for public services.
joshcryer
(62,287 posts)Second, we sought to induce people to buy coverage primarily through the carrot of a generous health credit or voucher, financed in part by a fundamental reform of the tax treatment of health coverage, rather than by a stick.
And third, in the legislation we helped craft that ultimately became a preferred alternative to ClintonCare, the "mandate" was actually the loss of certain tax breaks for those not choosing to buy coverage, not a legal requirement.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/story/2012-02-03/health-individual-mandate-reform-heritage/52951140/1
It remains a fact that currently the right wing is fully against the mandate.
Maven
(10,533 posts)What I don't see is an outright denial that he espoused the idea. Which he did. If you read carefully, all he is asserting is that HF did not "invent" the idea and that he has since "changed his mind." He can't say that he never supported it, because he did.
Here is an excerpt from his actual paper, which is still available on the HF website:
The requirement to obtain basic insurance would have to be enforced. The easiest way to monitor compliance might be for households to furnish proof of insurance when they file their tax returns. If a family were to cancel its insurance, the insurer would be required to notify the government. If the family did not enroll in another plan before the first insurance coverage lapsed and did not provide evidence of financial problems, a fine might be imposed.
...
But as part of that contract, it is also reasonable to expect residents of the society who can do so to contribute an appropriate amount to their own health care. This translates into a requirement on individuals to enroll themselves and their dependents in at least a basic health plan -- one that at the minimum should protect the rest of society from large and unexpected medical costs incurred by the family. And as any social contract, there would also be an obligation on society. To the extent that the family cannot reasonably afford reasonable basic coverage, the rest of society, via government, should take responsibility for financing that minimum coverage.
The obligations on individuals does not have to be a "hard" mandate, in the sense that failure to obtain coverage would be illegal. It could be a "soft" mandate, meaning that failure to obtain coverage could result in the loss of tax benefits and other government entitlements. In addition, if federal tax benefits or other assistance accompanied the requirement, states and localities could receive the value of the assistance forgone by the person failing to obtain coverage, in order to compensate providers who deliver services to the uninsured family.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-weigant/the-individual-mandates-c_b_1386716.html
In fact, this is exactly how the ACA works. Those who do not obtain requisite coverage are assessed a tax "penalty" by the IRS. One could just as easily say that failure to obtain coverage results in the loss of a tax "incentive," if one were predisposed to use your vocabulary. To the taxpayer, the loss of an "incentive" is the same as imposition of a "penalty." They are just different frames for the same concept.
joshcryer
(62,287 posts)Maven
(10,533 posts)Obviously he understood back then that he was proposing a fine, or increased tax burden, on free riders. Even in his "soft" mandate scenario he refers to "the loss of tax benefits," which has the same exact result for the taxpayer as the current tax penalty under the ACA. In both cases, no coverage = higher taxes. In both cases, the goal, as Stuart plainly points out, is to require individuals to get coverage.
The ACA mandate and the one originally proposed by the HF are the same basic idea. They are pivoting with all their might now that it is an Obama administration policy, but that is all.
joshcryer
(62,287 posts)They're fundamentally different.
In both cases your "taxes" are not higher than the insurance if you were to obtain it.
In the former case, you get fined with respect to how much money you make.
In the later case, you can be completely oblivious to the system.
Just as now many people are unable to take advantage or are ignorant of the credits they have available to them in the tax code, they don't feel penalized. It's not there, it doesn't exist to them. Likewise the tax credit approach would have been just as opaque.
Would you say we had single payer if instead of being penalized for not paying their individual taxes, individuals got rewarded with money if they paid their individual taxes? It's preposterous.
Maven
(10,533 posts)His proposal was to impose a financial penalty, i.e., a higher tax burden or fine, on those who did not obtain coverage.
In fact, the header to the pertinent section of his proposal reads:
"Element #1: Every resident of the U.S. must, by law, be enrolled in an adequate health care plan to cover major health care costs." (emphasis mine)
He goes on to propose a fine on free riders as an enforcement mechanism for such a requirement. The individual mandate.
He proposes tax credits for those who need financial assistance complying with the law or who pay out of pocket for care, NOT as the sole "reward" for choosing to obtain coverage, as you would characterize it. His proposal was for a mandatory system, not an optional one.
Bottom line, Stuart Butler of the HF proposed the exact same mechanism in 1990 for enforcing coverage and reducing costs as the one that eventually became the ACA. You've received some incomplete information, and bought the HF's spin.
joshcryer
(62,287 posts)He says there "might" be a fine, it's never established that they actually intended such a thing.
Regardless, the Heritage Foundation has disavowed that weak "tax credit mandate" already (which I'm not convinced was ever Heritage Foundation adopted policy for long) and wrote a brief to the SCOTUS to shoot it down.
The only spin here is the one trying to equate a credit (incentive) to a fine (mandate).
Maven
(10,533 posts)The tax credits have nothing to do with enforcement of the requirement to obtain coverage. They are meant to complement the mandate by assisting with compliance and to attract popular support for the mandate. They do not constitute the mandate, or legal requirement, to obtain coverage.
Health insurance is repeatedly referred to in his paper as "mandatory," an "obligation," a "requirement." Two different approaches are proposed for enforcement, from a fine (harder approach) to "the loss of certain tax benefits" (the softer approach). However, the intended effect in both cases is the same.
"Regardless, the Heritage Foundation has disavowed..."
Well, of course they have! It's now Obama's policy - much like the insurance exchanges which Obama himself credited to them!
joshcryer
(62,287 posts)I'm pretty sure the Cato Institute, Heritage Foundation, and ALEC would not be happy if we got a public option passed.
But good luck with that with the right wing driving the narrative all this time and people conflating penalties with incentives.
girl gone mad
(20,634 posts)They picked the weakest, most unpopular part of the ACA and they attacked it. If Democrats had listened to what the polls and the people were telling them rather than putting on their political blinders and following neoliberal technocrats down the garden path, we wouldn't be in this position.
joshcryer
(62,287 posts)Specifically designed to divide and conquer: http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002514451
The Democrats were boxed in since they didn't have the votes. I am somewhat convinced the public option could've been implemented during reconciliation but I'm not certain on that (since it arguably could've been considered revenue language). Someone did make a convincing argument to me though and I can't find it.
If only Teddy lived 6 more months.
Maven
(10,533 posts)he dealt away the public option early then. 
joshcryer
(62,287 posts)The Public Option was still alive Nov. 8th. 2009. Scott Brown got elected on Jan. 28, 2010. Obama's new proposal had exchanges on Feb. 22, 2010, with the public option dropped.
People blame post-partisan Obama for being exactly how he said he would be and bargaining away whatever he could.
Note: I do still think Obama should've dropped the post-partisan, uber bipartisan crap as soon as Ted was diagnosed with cancer, and then when Franken was finally seated (a 29 day gap between Franken being seated and Ted dying) push one crazy ass uber package of legislation. End DADT, DOMA, implement EDNA, EFCA, ACA (with a public option and a mandate). But he didn't do it and I doubt he would've ever done it since he wanted to reach across the isle so badly. Hell, he's still doing it. He needs to ramp up the populism.
TheKentuckian
(25,035 posts)currently the insurance cartel would benefit from such a thing by allowing a dumping ground for the least desirable of the no bargaining power market. As enacted, the pool is too small to have any impact on the market in the best case and will do everything they can to throw anvils by directing folks that need the most care (not to mention self selecting of those who need the most care to who is most likely to provide it) to the public option.
The public option is only as good as the environment it exists in and the rules that govern its operation.
The plan won't work or ever gain broad popularity and the mandate will always be particularly repellent because something like 85% of Americans are sequestered out of the exchanges (the plural marking another huge failure, it needs to be one national exchange).
I honestly don't see why we even are discussing a mandate of this construction, it is shockingly unbelievable. Why would an even arguably (or even aspiring to be) free people would tolerate an arrangement that allows for Congress to dictate that you may be compelled to not only participate in a for profit market but your employer, if they so desire, to make your election of the various products on the market at whatever cost up to X% of your income.
This has been argued very, very broadly on the commerce clause and to get this particular inept construction through the case is made for essentially unlimited government empowered to order your nickles and dimes of AFTER TAX income which means we are literally arguing against any level of financial liberty for all without enough wealth and/or income to meet the mandates.
Throw in being in the midst of serious issues of corporate capture of government and unlimited money and I have to ask how is the idea not insane? Well intentioned maybe but batshit crazy for sure. How many logs does this inferno need?
joshcryer
(62,287 posts)Possibly even an MLR of 99% if it is digitally handled and has maybe a few thousand workers running the thing (with states paying for the individual hires, btw, this isn't in any plans but it's something I just thought up). With such a high MLR there's no way that private insurance can compete.
Otherwise I agree with you about for-profit insurers, but you replied to a post that specifically talked about the fact that the Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute, et al, not wanting a public option. It scares the fuck out of them.
TheKentuckian
(25,035 posts)I do know before it went down for the last time the focus was on making sure for profit plans could compete with it so various scammy set ups were being batted around to balance the public option to account not only for administrative and marketing costs but it would have to adjust for profit, there was no intent to allow any advantage for a public plan to have a cost to consumer advantage but I never heard of any MLR associated with the PO.
In fact the MRL, which is a dangerous cost control that without other price controls and cost containment systems, probably will drive up systemic costs rather than reduce them. If they have to stick to a MLR then the path to profits is higher overall costs and there is absolutely no way to control this obvious out because the only MLR is on the people with the purse or in other words the exact point in the system where it doesn't make much sense. All they have to do is edge up their allowable charges, which have plenty of stretch room as they are generally well below market.
A MLR makes a hell of a lot more sense on the delivery end and doesn't work logically if you only place it on the financing end both locks it down but the important end is delivery, from there you can begin to manage cost.
As is it threatens mostly to drive up costs.
It is also a bit of a nothing because the level is set where the cartel says they are and the little refund checks seem to generally support that, the refunds are infinitesimal compared to systemic costs, probably well under 1% meaningful to individuals getting checks for a few dollars but it is not systemically meaningful.
The MRL was a 12th hour toss in to respond to deafening criticism that the measure had no cost containment and either wasn't very well thought out with no functional understanding of how the industry makes its money or was intentionally a scam.
girl gone mad
(20,634 posts)predicated on the absurd notion that the FIRE sector has our best interests at heart. How could anyone dream of making this argument and being taken seriously after 2008? The FIRE sector is a parasite which has now essentially destroyed its host.
To sell this dumb policy, Washington somehow had to try and convince people that the uninsured are the cause of high costs in our health care system. But what actually happens when you take the middle man out of the equation and have transparent pricing and direct pay?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/30/health-insurance-costs-cash_n_1556291.html
Suddenly, medical costs are a fraction of what they were. Go figure.
joshcryer
(62,287 posts)Otherwise the uninsured need to pay their fair share, I don't care about the dubious arguments scape goating the youth and rich who either don't pay for their coverage or who are rich enough for it to not matter.
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)He correctly argued that it would be unfair to force people who could not afford HC, and the vast majority of people who do not have HC, cannot afford it, to have to pay for it. He went on to say that if forcing poor people to buy houses, we could solve the homeless problem.
The Right Wing meme that the poor are lazy and greedy, hiding all that money so that everyone else will have to pay for them, used to be argued against by real Democrats. Still is, actually, because Democrats tend to know the facts..
44,000 lazy, greedy, poor people die each year because, presumably, they would rather die than pay for HC according to Republicans, and now I guess, some on the 'left'. So many greedy suicidal poor people! If only they would pay up and not make the rest of us have to pay. Wait, we don't have to pay if they die, 'die quickly' is even better, as Alan Grayson said.
Obama was right of course, another reason I supported him. He understood that the poor were not hoarding money they just didn't have any. But then, something happened, just as something happened to change his mind about Offshore Drilling.
His thinking devolved and he ended up agreeing with John McCain on both those issues.
joshcryer
(62,287 posts)He argued against the mandates to differentiate himself from Edwards and Hillary, but he couldn't really fulfill that "promise" because the OMB would've calculated that without a mandate HCR was unsustainable. Obama had to sacrifice the public option to get mandates, otherwise for his reelection the OMB rates for health care would've been horrific.
Obama was a naive junior senator who didn't understand or appreciate what he was getting in to. Hopefully now after almost 4 years with obstructionist Republicans he's realized what top level politics are all about.
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)People know what's going on. That's why there is OWS. The people refusing to listen to those old excuses anymore.
You sound like someone who has a very low opinion of this President btw.
joshcryer
(62,287 posts)He got lucky. Simple as that.
And yes, I have a very low opinion of this President. I made it clear during the primaries, yet I support him more than the most voracious supporters of him in 2008 (despite being against him in 2008). It is amusing to say the least. Obama was not the candidate that people thought he was. I at least understood that he was campaigning from a post-partisan uber bipartisan position and that in the end he wouldn't be able to get what he wanted done.
You may search for my name and mandates if you are curious. You will find me debating mandates with the best of them in 2008. It is hilarious but at one point in 2008 Krugman was thrown under the bus for being against Obama's right wing anti-mandate rhetoric. By hundreds of DUers. Many of them long timers.
joshcryer
(62,287 posts)Obama's bipartisanship is not what we need, but it sells well to the American public, particularly the independents and low information voters who don't really want to align themselves one way or another. I hate that. I want partisanship, I want "schoolyard rhetoric," I want total obliteration of the Republican party. But we're not there yet. Cowardice remains.
The only thing I hope is that my signature is prophetic and Obama pulls out the whoop ass when he is reelected. Otherwise I'll just have to wait until 2016 until Warren or someone else runs who is a real populist.
AnotherMcIntosh
(11,064 posts)sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)clang1
(884 posts)'Butler's clearly stated intention was to fine people who failed to insure themselves'
ANY change was doomed to begin with by them.... People should understand message.
treestar
(82,383 posts)And the left just helps them.
bvar22
(39,909 posts)It opens the door to the Public Treasury.
ACA has been marketed as "giving subsidies to the poor" to make it more palatable to those Democrats to the left of Reagan,
but it really doesn't give subsidies to "The Poor",
it gives this tax payer money directly TO the Health Insurance Indusrty.
So for all the Health Insurance Contributors to the Democratic Party,
[font size=4]Welcome aboard the Big Tax Payer Gravy Train!!!![/font]
*Manufactures NOTHING
*Produces NO Wealth (Value Added)
*Provides NO useful service...
Money for NOTHING!!![/font]
Thanks to the AKA,
this completely parasitic INDUSTRY will receive BILLIONS of Tax Payer Dollars,
some of which WILL PAY for Yachts, Summer Homes in Aspen, Personal Jets....and MORE for the 1%.
The Poor will receive...."Bronze" (3rd Class) Health Insurance.
Have anyone here tried to convert "Bronze" insurance into actual Health Care?
Think how much good these tax dollars could do IF
they were spent on actual Health Care.
THIS guy had the right idea about MANDATED Health Insurance.
We should have voted for HIM!
Skittles
(153,321 posts)
Honeycombe8
(37,648 posts)Yet when they get in an accident or get sick, we all pay for that person's health care. Or their rich parents.
Everyone should have ins. because they are already IN the healthcare pool, whether they like it or not. Just like we have auto insurance to protect OTHERS from our costs associated with accidents, we should have health insurance.
At least until the single payer system comes along. Actually, the mandate is a step toward single payer, in my view.
lonestarnot
(77,097 posts)trouble is the party of bullies don't see themselves as bullies.
Laelth
(32,017 posts)-Laelth
upi402
(16,854 posts)and still they call is "soashliss" and rally the rabid again' it.
WorseBeforeBetter
(11,441 posts)
SammyWinstonJack
(44,130 posts)
Poll_Blind
(23,864 posts)PB
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)Without it, you could go without paying until you get sick.
The mandate isnt any different than the mandate to pay into Social Security or Medicare esp Medicare part B.
If you strike the mandate, you kill the bill.
I would much prefer Medicare for all but even that would require a mandate to pay in.
I hate the mandate that I must pay for defense.
eridani
(51,907 posts)--is NOT the same as a mandate to pay mass murderers to stand between patients and medical providers.
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)I will continue to fight for single payer. But if the mandate isnt included the AHCA will not work. Only the sick will subscribe. Figure out a way to make it better and I am in.
eridani
(51,907 posts)--plan for everyone (no platinum, gold, silver or bronze people), and DICTATE the price at which it must be offered. No age rating allowed. People would of course be allowed to buy all the extra bells and whistles they might want. That's how it works in other countries that have universal health care through private insurance in whole or in part.
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)Plez see my post #206 below.
Bluenorthwest
(45,319 posts)providing mandated services. It is in fact a crime to take such profits in ALL nations with mandates for health insurance. So the question I have for you is not about 'a mandate' it is about
THIS specific mandate, which is unlike all others.
Make your case. Why are private company profits part of this mandate, you claim such profits are 'essential' for health care to work, but not one nations allows such profits, and their systems work way better than anything we have managed to do.
So tell us why the profit is so 'essential' here when other nations see that profit as criminal. If you can come up with anything. Most can not, and I expect you can't either. Defend the For Profit Mandate, which is unique on planet Earth.
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)You said, "you claim such profits are 'essential' for health care to work". I made no such claim.
I have said a number of times that I favor a single payer system. I want to remove private insurance companies from primary health care. I am not at all satisfied with the AHCA. But it is the best we have at the moment and it will fail w/o forcing everyone to participate. Most people will already participating. If we dont force everyone, they will wait until they are sick and then join. This would be a major burden on the rest. If you dont pay in, you dont get benefits.
Do you want to abandon the AHCA all together?
Bluenorthwest
(45,319 posts)A mandate to purchase is that which forces all to participate. The world has many such mandates. Not one of them allows profit taking from providing the mandated services, all other mandate nations make such profit a crime. ACA requires such profits and provides no nonprofit option of any kind. So repeating again and again that you feel a mandate is needed simply does not address why you think THIS sort of a mandate, unique on the planet, is needed. There is a huge leap from 'we need a mandate' to 'we need a 100% private and profit driven mandate'. I'm not even arguing against a mandate, I'm arguing against a mandate to buy profit making products. And you are in fact arguing that such profits are 'essential' as you conflate the mandate with the profits. Needing a mandate does not explain why that mandate needs to profit some on the backs of others compelled by law to purchase.
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)Am I correct that this is your "specific" question? "why you think THIS sort of a mandate, unique on the planet, is needed."
It is needed to make AHCA work. I feel AHCA is the best we have and we need to support it. Of course we need better.
Here is my specific question to you, are you willing to kill AHCA over the mandate?
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)number of Americans?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/26/health-care-mandate-urban-institute_n_1381211.html
edit to add link
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)The mandate takes money for Corporations. We would all support a HC tax, but profits for the predatory private Ins. Agencies is a different matter altogether. Which is why it was always supported by the right. This is their way of getting their hands on what should be Public Funds, with a small overhead cost and to funnel approx one third of those funds into private hands. They want to do the same thing with SS.
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)Thanks for your patience (to those that were patient). I am stepping out for a while and will comment more later.
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)I tried to understand it also and it took a long time to figure out. I know I don't have all the percentages right but am still working on learning more. And I don't know at this point what would be better, to have it struck down, since I always opposed it, or not.
Don't worry about being right or wrong as most of us are really still very much in the dark anyhow. Thank you for considering my comment without taking it badly though, it's often difficult to see someone's intentions on this medium
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)The mandate isnt as huge a deal as some would like us to believe. As it will affect a very small number of people, it isnt like forcing a whole population to change their current practice which of having health insurance.
On the other hand, this small population that would be affected, wouldnt be a significant impact on the whole should they cheat and not get their insurance until they are sick.
If they do cheat and dont participate until they are sick, they will have an affect first on the insurance companies. Of course the insurance companies will try to dump that burden on those that been carrying insurance all along. But the AHCA does have restrictions on how much insurance companies can profit, making it harder for them to scam us.
As has been pointed out to me a few times, the mandate wouldnt be forcing people to join a government insurance like Medicare, but forcing them to buy from the rip-off insurance companies.
As much as I hate to admit it, I mite have been w-w-w-wrong on this issue. But I am still thinking it thru.
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)small number of people. What I do not know is how it would affect the rest of the bill if the mandate were overturned.
I have seen only one reference to the ramifications of that happening, and it did point out that it might not be that big a deal to the overall bill. However, I really do not know.
Good, thoughtful post, thank you
How anyone let's these people have anything to do with social policy in this country amazes me.
"The individual mandate in the health care law was originally proposed by the Heritage Foundation, the most conservative think tank in the country. It was supported by almost every Republican in the country, including the first President Bush, Mitt Romney and conservative stalwarts like Orrin Hatch"
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/06/25-5
patrice
(47,992 posts)landed white males?
patrice
(47,992 posts)rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)is one of the best, if not the best ever written, IMHO. And those aristocrats that were our founders risked and in many cases gave a lot for the Constitution and its freedoms. Many were hanged and many others died broke.
patrice
(47,992 posts)Shall we reject the Constitution because of the imperfections/bad traits of those who proposed it?
Is that a good standard upon which to accept or reject an idea, . . . who proposed it? wow. Shouldn't the comparative MERITS and liabilities of an idea or person be primary?
The Constitution is the best, unless you are African American or Female and, because it was written by and for landed aristocracy who got that way through genocide on American Indians, we should include them in those who might have a less than worshipful attitude toward the Constitution.
Those who proposed the Constitution, exclusively white males with significant real estate, fought amongst themselves for about six months, to divide up and control power by designing a republic with somewhat less than direct democratic representation (look at the "balance of power" between the House and the Senate) of white males without real estate, screw everyone else . . . Is it any surprise that they FORGOT to define the Civil Rights of American Citizens, so when they sought ratification from their lower class supporters, the first thing that happened was that they had to go back and amend the Constitution to add The Bill of Rights? and, even then, they left a few out. It was imperfect even to those who wrote it and it has been amended on average a little over every 8 years since.
African Americans from whom these landed white males had been transferring wealth/labor for almost 170 years by the time the Constitutional Convention decided that they were 3/5 of a person each, purely as property of slave holders in order to increase THEIR power, were not freed by the Constitution when it was written and a great deal more wealth was legally transferred (by their status under the Constitution) from them until they were emancipated in 1863. That's 244 years of wealth transfer made legal by the Constitution. And that doesn't even mention the nearly 100 more years that it took the Constitution to recognize their Civil Rights.
Pretty much the same thing for women, except that that they got the right to vote quicker than African Americans did, but STILL are not protected from economic discrimination by an Equal Rights Amendment.
......................................................
Just as you cannot love someone unless you admit who they are, flaws, bad habits and all, you can't love what the Constitution is, what it did to create this nation, unless you love it warts and all.
The Constitution, an imperfect idea proposed by imperfect people, has since come to be seen as a structural PROCESS that CONTINUALLY takes us somewhere we weren't, but which we hope to be.
Why is it so hard to think the mandate, an imperfect idea proposed by imperfect people, could serve a similar purpose?
Or shall we just reject it out of hand, because of hate, because of who proposed it? My mother used to call that cutting your own nose off to spite THEIR face and it's fucking ignorant.
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)I have been ok with it but after debating with people that are honest debaters, I think I am changing my mind.
Now, part of me, as a liberal, says that we shouldnt just reject the mandate because the Heritage Fdn supported it (Thom Hartmann says George Washington supported it also), but I have been know to use that same logic to be against the Iraq invasion. George Bush was in favor, therefore I was opposed.
I think Hartmann supports the mandate, for what that's worth.
Your feelings re. the Constitution make me think we need to discuss this further. I appreciate a good discussion.
Doctor_J
(36,392 posts)I wonder if he thought that embracing a right-wing idea would make Hate Radio like him.
Rosa Luxemburg
(28,627 posts)no health insurance companies. Doctors and other health workers paid by the government. 'The government' can be state or fed or both. Enough of this privatization.
I think that healthcare is a right and we have to get out this mess.
clang1
(884 posts)Drunken Irishman
(34,857 posts)
BRAVO! STANDING O! YOU GOT IT! There is absolutely, positively no difference between the Democrats & Republicans. NONE. Whatsoever. I'm glad someone here at DU finally had the balls to stand up and say it.
No difference. None. They're both working, hand in hand, to overturn a woman's right to choose, to roll back equal pay, fair pay and discrimination laws directly targeting women. They're both using harsh language attacking women, suggesting their opinions don't matter and stacking the Supreme Courts with justices that are some of the most pro-life justices we've seen in American history. They're working, both parties, to overturn a woman's right to choose, and passing archaic laws that will soon, one day, force women into the back allies once again.
Both parties are working like hell to discriminate against gays and lesbians. I haven't seen a more anti-gay president than this current DemocRAT president! He, and Democrats, have passed the most regressive agenda toward gays and lesbians in American history, showing their true colors and siding with every issue from denying gays and lesbians the basic right of marriage, to openly serving in the military. In fact, Pres. Obama and Democrats have worked with Republicans to fight for gay and lesbian inclusion in anti-discrimination bills! THIS HAS GOT TO END! THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE!
You've got both parties vowing to drill, drill, drill, drill - open up the Keystone Pipeline, use more and more and more foreign oil, strip our public lands for mining and other industry and push just about every other anti-environmental agenda you can think of! ALL THE FUCKING SAME, AM I RIGHT?
Both are pushing the same budgets that decimate Social Security, Medicare, and public employees. Both are working to bust unions. Obama is the most anti-union president in the United States history! Even Reagan was better with unions than Obama!!!!!!!! I'll tell you what, guys, I wouldn't be surprised if EVERY union sat this election out and failed to endorse Obama (HAVE THEY YET BECAUSE I DON'T THINK THEY HAVE OR WILL!).
Both parties are advocating for war with Iran. I'm pretty sure we're even AT war with Iran right now...and Iraq! Yeah! I mean, Mitt Romney and Barack Obama have absolutely no differing opinion on Iran - both saying BOMB THOSE MOTHER FUCKERS INTO THE GROUND! I SAY FUCK YOU OBAMAROMNEY! FUCK YOU REPUBLICRATS! GET OUT OF IRAQ NOW! GET OUT OF IRAN!
NO DIFFERENCE!
No difference.
These parties are so similar! I mean, yeah, sure, Obama advanced a pretty progressive healthcare policy that has rewarded consumers with $1.3 billion worth of rebates and yeah, he's done away with pre-existing conditions, allowed kids to stay on their parents' healthcare plan and made it affordable now for millions of Americans who, prior to the healthcare act, couldn't afford healthcare. But dammit, that mandate IS SO WORTH THROWING THE WHOLE THING OUT! And it automatically makes it a Republican plan! Because, when I turn on my TV, I'm pretty sure I hear the Republicans endorsing every provision in this healthcare plan! BOO! BOO OBAMA! BOO! It's sooo conservative! I bet Obama's healthcare plan doesn't even cover contraception coverage.
Yup. I mean, Obama is essentially Bush's third term. If McCain had won, does anyone think he would've done anything differently?!? I don't!
clang1
(884 posts)I can see you still don't understand. Would not have said anything, but the extra scrolling is annoying. Nothing more.
Drunken Irishman
(34,857 posts)I don't understand how anyone with a half a brain can sit there and say there is no difference between the two parties. You've got me, clang. I'm officially stumped on that one!
clang1
(884 posts)Last edited Tue Jun 26, 2012, 01:48 AM - Edit history (1)
have to acknowledge there are people trying. No one ever said there weren't. One can either think about the realities to all of this or not. Either way when people say that in a certain, rather broad even, sense that there is no difference in the parties, they are still correct. To say otherwise ignores a lot of reality and a lot of money. Just like I said before as well not everyone wants the same candidates. The problem is top down to me, but hey that's just my opinion and it is what I go with in what I support and don't support. I don't know, I could decide to just blindly support every Democrat out there like you seem to propose we should do, but I just don't find that palatable or even an option. Nor do a lot of other people. What you propose people do just does not make any sense to me. Doing that, what's the point? May as well be a Republican then. No thanks. It is what I dislike about having a single monolithic party like we have. I dislike it even more given the climate we live in today. I don't like picking the lesser of to evils for anything and to have to do this time and time again is not acceptable to me and quite a few others.
Drunken Irishman
(34,857 posts)It's not about blindly following every Democrat. I'm not talking local races, even. But at the top? You better believe it. What do we gain not supporting Obama in November? Nothing. Do liberals really believe they'll be better off, their ideology will be better off, if they throw the election to Romney?
What will Romney do for women's rights and gay rights? Who will Romney nominate to replace a retiring liberal justice? What will happen with Iran? Will Romney even accept a withdrawal from Afghanistan like Obama has? These are major questions and differences that will be defined this election. Obama is not perfect, but he's done some good things and advanced the liberal cause, whether liberals want to admit it or not.
clang1
(884 posts)Last edited Tue Jun 26, 2012, 03:53 AM - Edit history (16)
but look at today...the slide continues...and I cannot accept that myself. It is no long term solution. I am tired of the boom or bust cycle our politics have become for each few generations and it is like that because many of them, on both sides, don't work for the people. Too many in my opinion and it is why things are as they are. What you propose just seems to perpetuate that to me and it doesn't make sense.
Seems to me we are always stuck with the same situation the people in Egypt have. I don't care for that. I'll just say this, what you want is never going to happen. Even trying to focus only on positives is just impossible, there are too many negatives involved. Iraq comes to mind. Patriot Act, Domestic spying, torture, no justice, etc. How much else? Come on..and if you can't see that you are doomed to having once in a generation presidents that barely get enough vote to win. It does not make sense to me. What people need to do is look at why people are so polarized. That's where the problem is.
This polarization weakens us all and the other side exploits it. Pretty simple to me. These are gaps that just cannot be bridged to me. It will not happen right now. Period. To think it would right now is a failed strategy to me. You just saw the 2008 election, you tell me. We have a once in a generation President. I know that..and yet reality is still what it is. Meanwhile the folks that some people really work for are still there, and still get what they want instead of the people getting what they need.
Maybe this will help you understand better... I hope that it does. A strategy of alienating people to get votes just does not make sense to me and yet it is what the Democratic party does, time and again. What people need to ask themselves is, who would benefit from such a strategy. I think the answer to that is a fairly obvious one. I just don't know how much clearer things can be about that than they are now.
I think Obama would love to bring all of us together, and in many ways he has, but the system does not allow for any more than what we have now. All that you can do right now is try to educate people about this as a strategy. But again....you are really back where you started from. Why can't people see this? It is very clear. Obama is an extremely intelligent man, a man of the world in fact, and I am sure that he knows all this too, I hope that he does.
That money spent on Iraq should have been spent feeding Americans,building homes and bridges,educating people...Not in Iraq. And just how many Dems supported the invasion...its just unacceptable.
AnotherMcIntosh
(11,064 posts)Are you a Democrat?
What type of Democrat are you?
clang1
(884 posts)Last edited Tue Jun 26, 2012, 12:19 PM - Edit history (1)
everything he has said. I don't support FAILURE. PERIOD.
re Healthcare reform:
'Butler's clearly stated intention was to fine people who failed to insure themselves'
ANY change was doomed to begin with by them.... People should understand message.
Same for a lot of other people so far as supporting failure. In war people like those that we are being told to support don't win hearts and minds, they only win bodies and either become dictators themselves, or lose the war. Both are lose. This is what happens when you are not even honest about your wars.
We have seen it all over South America, time and again. Around the world in fact. The world has eyes too and has been saying the same things for decades. In my book, it is time for EVERYONE to wake the hell up. What's this country about now! PERIOD
-crickets
patrice
(47,992 posts)make either a false equivalency or a false dichotomy valid.
There's a difference between a perception and reality and that goes for both perspectives, difference vs no-difference, but that doesn't mean that one perspective cannot be more likely valid than the other. And just on the probabilities alone, some differences are more probable than none, because none would mean there would not objectively be two phenomena, Reps and Dems, that we are talking about. They'd all just be Republicans. They'd all just receive the exact same amount of corporate personhood cash and vote exactly the same. And assuming whatever differences there are, they are not significant, is a fallacy too. They may be significant; they may not be, but to simply say they aren't is evidence of biased thinking, i.e. ERROR, so what else are you wrong about?
Here's something: unless and until absolutely everyone in this country becomes exactly like everyone else, IT IS AND ALWAYS HAS BEEN THE LESSER OF TWO "EVILS" anyone who says otherwise needs to examine their own conscience for fascism.
And, btw, speaking of "how you look at things", don't get me going on our sacred cow of a constitution.
veganlush
(2,049 posts)With the op . the mandate is like auto insurance. without it we all pay for the uninsured through higher costs. the law also makes insurance companies provide
better coverage.
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)a car. And if they choose not to buy a car they do not pay insurance.
For that analogy to work, people who do not own cars would be mandated to pay car insurance to help cover everyone.
I have zero problem paying taxes that will cover the HC of everyone.
What I have a problem with is being forced to buy a commodity from middle men whose very existence I oppose.
Zalatix
(8,994 posts)And like you I don't want to fund that.
veganlush
(2,049 posts)The rest of us pay for that. what if I don't like that?
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)insurance true, but then they get the bill. I know this for a fact having seen the huge bills sent to people I know who had no coverage. Also, most people I know without coverage rarely go to the doctor.
Many of them end up dying rather than run up astronomical bills they will be paying for the rest of their lives.
I don't where this notion that people are treated for free when they go to the ER came from, it is simply not true. IF they are indigent, then they are eligible for Medicaid.
44,000 Americans are allowed to die each year in this country for lack of healthcare.
What if I don't like that??
To all those who do not want to contribute to the saving of lives, not to worry, the Right Wing has worked hard for the past several decades to make sure that poor, sick people 'DIE QUICKLY' so they won't cost very much.
Maybe we could set it up so anyone who doesn't want to participate in helping others less fortunate, don't have to pay towards the care of anyone else.
But they should hope and pray that they are never in a position where they need help some day. Lots of people who never expected to be there, ARE there now.
I would willingly contribute whatever I could to keep people alive and hope one day we will become a civilized country where no one ever has to die because of greed and profit. It is obscene.
PBass
(1,537 posts)What is liberal or progressive about forcing people to buy a product from a for profit institution simply as a condition of being alive?
Do you want something (health care for all) for nothing (you don't want to pay for it)? Everybody has to have health insurance! Period! If you can't afford it, you will get assistance.
I would prefer single payer but the decision was made, not to destroy an entire industry (health insurance providers). As a first step towards single payer (oh yes indeed) the president's plan makes sense, and it was the best they could do.
If you think 'no health care reform at all' would have been better than the bill we had to settle for, you're a damn fool, IMO.
Also, it's pretty sneaky to graft your opinion onto the back of Cenk Uygar's editorial piece, as if you are both saying the same thing. You're not saying the same thing at all.
Maybe if President Obama had a magic wand, he could have ramrodded only PERFECT legislation through an uncooperative Congress, but I prefer to talk about real politics and what is achievable, rather than sit around complaining because I didn't get everything I wanted.
The "Democrats and Republicans are the same" stuff is pure garbage. If you think McCain would have done any of the positive things that Obama has done, you are a damn fool!
Bluenorthwest
(45,319 posts)many nations provide universal coverage using other methods. Fact is, many of our peer nations employ a mandate to purchase health insurance, far more of those than there are 'single payer' systems. Our pending law is the first on the planet to mandate the purchase of for profit products in health care. 100% of other mandating nations make it a crime to profit from those mandated policies. A crime. Let's talk about that reality and drop all the rhetoric about single payer and magic wands and pundits you do not care for. Just tell me why you support a for profit mandate, the first in all the world over a nonprofit mandate. Let's assume a mandate is needed. Why then is the profit allowed, much less required in our system? That profit is not part of other mandates, and we could mandate without the profit factor like ALL other democracies do.
Of course the Parties are not the same. That's as obvious as is the lack of good coming from profit based mandates when compared to the realistically functioning non profit mandates the rest of the civilized world employs.
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)Nobody has answered that question yet.
Zalatix
(8,994 posts)joshcryer
(62,287 posts)The Mass. Dems overrode his veto.
Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)The legislature amended Romney's plan, adding a Medicaid expansion for children and imposing an assessment on firms with 11 or more workers who do not offer health coverage. The assessment is intended to equalize the contributions to the free care pool from employers that offer and do not offer coverage. The General Court also rejected Romney's provision allowing high-deductible health plans.
Romney vetoed eight sections of the health care legislation, including a $295-per-person fee on businesses with 11 employees or more that do not provide health insurance.[47][48] Romney also vetoed provisions providing dental and eyeglass benefits to poor residents on the Medicaid program, and providing health coverage to senior and disabled legal immigrants not eligible for federal Medicaid.[49][50] However, the state legislature overrode all of the vetoes.[51]
joshcryer
(62,287 posts)Wikipedia has a rule against original research, or I'd edit that article to reflect the fact that he vetoed the parts of the legislation that enforced the mandate. Go ahead and read the legislation: http://www.malegislature.gov/Laws/SessionLaws/Acts/2006/Chapter58
Search for Section 5. Chapter 17, it's the enforcement arm of chapter 111M.
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)If they whine, sneeze at them.
AnotherMcIntosh
(11,064 posts)
DCBob
(24,689 posts)I dont think a single Republican supports it now.
StarryNight
(71 posts)first repubs propose and support it, kind of like privatizing social security; then dems claim it for their own; then repubs abandon it and oppose it, along with many dem voters, and now the repub SC could quite likely support it, because of course they're owned, just like all the other tools in washington.
RBInMaine
(13,570 posts)others will be covered under expanded Medicaid. Next, there was just no way Single Payer could actually PASS, and in the Senate public option also could not pass. It sucks with those Senate rules, but that is just the way it was. You must remember, the ACA was a
FIRST STEP. It was the best that could be done with what we had to work with in the Congress. The mandate was the ONLY way to get everyone in the system thus helping the exchanges to work right and get costs down for everyone. This was a CENTRIST bill which also stopped eliminations for pre-existing conditions, allows kids to stay on parental plans until age 26, and also included a rider to reduce college loans. There was a lot of good in this bill and the best and most progressive that could be done under the circumstances.
Yes, we would have all preferred a public option, or better yet single payer Medicare For All. But those COULD NOT PASS. So what to do? Nothing at all? You are not considering the big picture here whatsoever.
patrice
(47,992 posts)pressure on demand for services? More services and services covered at higher rates, right?
If my pool doesn't cover more than 3 visits to a mental health therapist, I'm going to move to the pool that covers what I need.
If my pool doesn't cover nutritional therapy for my weight loss, or massage therapy, or colonics, or meditation sessions, or chiropractics, or . . . . with the ACA implemented Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute as a back-up, I can shop for a pool that does. That's upward pressure on services, with MLR downward pressure on profits.
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)who grab approximately 20-30% for their 'work' when before, the poor received Medicaid directly from public funds with a small overhead cost of approx. 3%. Iow, they achieved their goal of getting their hands on yet more public funds and removing some of them for their bottom line. And all of us are now paying to redirect funds into the pockets of private corporations.
patrice
(47,992 posts)who are against your position.
Threats don't happen in a vacuum. The opposition knows what is going on and they know therefore that all they have to do is hold out and the whole issue will be theirs exclusively to do with as they wish. Discounting the social/economic/political inertia of their new improved position which will be even further to the right is really over-simplified and, hence, dangerous.
Presto-change-o a new Democratic, or whatever 3 partyish, Congress to save our asses is magical thinking.
There simply is NO substitution for the hard grind of the daily groundwork.
Bolo Boffin
(23,796 posts)the relative worth of the individual mandate.
Why are you pretending defense of the individual mandate is happening in a vacuum? If the universe bent to Bolo Boffin's wishes, we would have had Medicare for everyone in the 1960's. The mandate is a step. It is progress. Nothing impedes further progress toward our goals of true universal coverage. This shaming of pragmatic Democrats who share your goals is counterproductive and beneath us.
YoungDemCA
(5,714 posts)nt
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)Zalatix
(8,994 posts)UnrepentantLiberal
(11,700 posts)
ZombieHorde
(29,047 posts)Your argument appears to me to say we should like or dislike an idea or policy based on where it came from.
ProSense
(116,464 posts)...the President didn't listen to his detractors.
We won: http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002878457
Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)UnrepentantLiberal
(11,700 posts)step over it and keep walking. Do not converse with any refusenicks lurking in the shadows. Do be a good citizen and report them.
