General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Every American citizen is now required to help make insurance corporations richer. Enjoy! [View all]Leopolds Ghost
(12,875 posts)at least one refusenik provision in the law.
I have always, always, refused on principle to participate in carrot and stick scheme offered on behalf of marketing a private commodity, it is immoral and unethical and demeaning, it is always targeted at consumers that they believe to have no choice, e.g. the uninsured; be it a phone plan that charges you extra for your existing service and drops calls to get you to switch to the next service, in which case I'll change providers, but more and more the attitude amongst large corporations that adopt "carrot and stick" strategies is that changing providers is no threat because there's no real competition amongst the one, two or three providers and they can afford to lose the few people that are not willing to be mistreated because so few people are unwilling to be mistreated by corporations; it's an oligopoly. Just look at how people yawned at the collusion between most of the major telecoms in violation of their service agreements in the wiretapping scandal.
Why just today I found out that our local government passed a law that further restricts the livelihood of a place I work at, the purpose of the law was to protect the profit margins of wealthy business interests.
Why do people expect this groundswell of support for public health plans of any stripe when we are living in a society where the phone company is no longer required to pay a toll free operator to run a toll-free directory for 800 numbers, and the park services are not expected to maintain water fountains, much less other public amenities? Because everyone's required to have their own everything: bottled water, health insurance, etc. on an individual consumer basis. It's a Ron Paul wet dream, the only reason they don't like it is that the government is actually mandating this privatized fantasy land.