Duke, please try to keep your hard-on for me under wraps, you are really embarrassing yourself at this point.
Hey, you’re the one who crawled back here. The “Dope” in our name isn’t literal, you know.
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Many of us would be happy to pay for health insurance. But we are either kicked out of the market due to pre-existing conditions. Or if we do have insurance, we know it will be rescinded on a technicality the second we try to use it. This reform was meant to address those problems. If I could find a policy that accepted me and wouldn’t rescind my coverage, I’d pay for it.
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The fact that you capitalize HUSSEIN shows you are appealing to the most ignorant, xenophobic aspects of people by trying to paint Obama as a scary foreigner. Your income of 400k is nice, but the fact that you are appealing to xenophobia is a huge strike against you.
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Getting people dependent on government doesn’t make people vote democratic. Senior citizens are the biggest welfare recipients in the US. They collect over 1.2 trillion in medicare & social security. They also voted McCain by large margins. Old people, despite being the most dependent on welfare, are also among the biggest supporters of politicians who want to dismantle the welfare system.
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People who make less money than you work for a living too. And they work hard too. The fact that you earn more money than them doesn’t mean you work harder. You can choose to believe that (I don’t doubt you do). But its not true.
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The majority of american people, when polled, understand almost nothing about the health reform bill as far as I know. Their opposition really isn’t based on an indepth understanding of policy. It is probably more exasperation about how long it has taken.
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This is why many liberals hate the rich. Your sociopathic desire to deprive us of programs that you yourself do not need is bothersome. Do you need medicare, social security or health reform? No. But many of us who would consider ourselves lucky to make 1/10th of what you do, do. And many of us are willing to pay for them. I’m perfectly fine with my taxes going up in exchange for universal health care and solvent entitlement programs.
Do you see me going to Africa and slapping the malaria pills out of people’s mouths? Nope. The fact that I am wealthy enough to not need them doesn’t mean I don’t think other people should get them.
Either way, kudos to you. You are a bigger recruitment tool for liberal policy than you’l ever realize. Your disdain for those who earn less than you, your desire to deprive them of programs that you yourself don’t need, etc. is not helping turn people onto the GOP.
LOL. I take back every bad thing I’ve ever said or will say about you.
Why do you limit him to only two choices? There are so many, many reasons to despise our new foreign-born, Anti-Christ Overlord! Open your mind, man!
Who’s sayin’?
Christ-fucker, you’re thick. Who besides the government has the power to mandate a fix to our woefully inefficient, ineffective (because not everyone can afford to be covered–even as they can’t afford not to be), and cripplingly expensive health-care insurance system? The Invisible Handjob? He’s already had his chance and all he did was worsen the current mess we’re in. That leaves either the Federal government or Superman.
One of those is made up of Democratic and Republican (and Independent) representatives of the citizens of the USA.
The other is best portrayed in comic books. Like Howard Roark or John Galt.
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You are incorrect that the free market “had its chance.” Government is very heavily involved in health care now in many different ways.
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Your inability to envision a non-governmental solution is not an argument for government action.
Let insurers sell across state lines and then you can say the invisible hand has had its chance and failed. Until then, yeah, the artificially hampered competition has only gotten us to the point where upwards of 80% of folks report being satisfied with their own coverage; why figure that means more interference with competition will solve the problem?
Allowing insurance companies to rush to the state with the most generous laws as far as limited liability, lawsuit protection, lack of consumer protections, etc. is likely to amplify the current problems in the system where people get denied coverage over technicalities and such. It may lower cost, but it would definitely lower consumer protections, which in turn would end up screwing the people who had reason to feel that they were covered. It’s easy to think that everyone who doesn’t have coverage, or adequate coverage, is a “freeloading parasite”, but the majority of medical bankruptcies come from people who have insurance.
Incidentally, which state or which company is the example we’re looking to as a paragon of consumer satisfaction and cost which currently is restricted from making health care across the country better? It seems like there’s an unstated assumption that there are successful companies that are needlessly hampered by being restricted to their own state. Where is this happening?
The race to the bottom scenario has some holes in it. Here are a couple:
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Generally a business that operates in a state is subject to the laws of that state. So, a business that sells insurance in South Dakot can’t escape a South Dakota consumer protection law just be being organized in Montana.
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People will generally choose companies that do a better job. Now their choice is limited because insurance is so tied to employment and companies can’t operate across state lines. So, if several companies are sucking ass on claims processing or whatever, then consumers would flock to the one that doesn’t, and the ability for this to occur makes the other ones do a better job in the first place.
But a lot of their business practices, the laws under which they can be sued, etc. are influenced by the state they’re based in. This is why pretty much every credit card company is based in Delaware.
Health insurance is difficult to assess in this way. What are the odds that you’ll end up having a procedure that they’ll find some reason to deny in the future? How does another company compare to this? By the time you find out, you may be screwed - once you’ve been deemed as having a pre-existing condition, you can’t switch companies. You’re locked into your current one for life. So if you find out that they’re not really living up to their end of the agreement, you’re fucked. The free market has somewhat limited value when you can’t switch to another product or service should you deem the one you’ve been using inadequate or poor.
People like you want to paint the whole issue is “should we give free stuff to freeloaders or not?!?!” but it’s a broader issue than that. Responsible consumers who had reasonable expectations that they were doing the right thing and had coverage get fucked all the time with no recourse, and on life and death matters. If we simply look at breaking down state barriers without addressing that issue, it’s going to make the problem worse.
You have a cite for me saying anything about “freeloaders” ever? I’m looking at the issue from the perspective of what I consider legitimate state activities. Redistributing wealth ain’t one of 'em. I haven’t said shit about freeloaders.
I’ll address the substance of your post later.
You do not chose your insurance company in America, your employer does. You negotiate nothing. I suppose you can quit over your medical coverage and find a job with better insurance. How smart would that be? It also requires luck. if you get sick or in an accident while you are waiting to get your coverage to take effect you can be totally screwed. These problems are unique to America.
Forget the unstated assumption; I was responding to a stated assumption:
“Who besides the government has the power to mandate a fix to our woefully inefficient, ineffective (because not everyone can afford to be covered–even as they can’t afford not to be), and cripplingly expensive health-care insurance system? The Invisible Handjob? He’s already had his chance and all he did was worsen the current mess we’re in.”
I disagreed with that stated assumption: whether the invisible hand of supply and demand has had its chance. We can shift to arguing about unstated assumptions, but only if we all first acknowledge that the current system does not yet involve letting the free market allow successful companies to compete absent needless restrictions that hamper fair play.
You wrote: “The free market has somewhat limited value when you can’t switch to another product or service should you deem the one you’ve been using inadequate or poor.” Okay; let’s talk about fixing that problem. You say the free market has limited value when you can’t so switch; how do we make it so people can switch, so the market can have more value?
Gonzomax wrote about how employers rather than individuals choose health-insurance policies – which I can’t help but note isn’t the case for car insurance or homeowner’s insurance and so on, where companies get to compete across the many borders in this vast patchwork of states; he thus wrote of health insurance: “These problems are unique to America.” Okay; let’s talk about fixing those problems likewise. How can we make it more like car insurance or homeowner’s insurance, where competing insurers pitch to individuals across state lines?
That particular language I took from Bricker and I don’t recall you using that term. But your general demeanor (including the pit thread from a while back that you started) certainly made it seem like you were concerned that people who contribute less than you might get better access to care.
Incidentally, how do you feel about public/universal K-12 education?
Heath insurance is allowed to be a monopoly. Almost every state is serviced by 2 or 3 large companies. The insurance companies do not want to have to compete. What makes you thing they want that? Competition is good for the consumer. Controlling markets is good for the corporations. They merge and collude to avoid competition. Every time a corporation wants to buy up a competitor ,it is approved. That is why cable keeps getting more expensive. That is why gas is all the same price.
The insurance companies in Michigan just raised the price of Medicare extra insurance. Every single company in the state did it at the same time. The newspaper ran a supplemental section showing how your rates were going up, regardless of who provided the policy. We have an insurance board that is supposed to approve or deny price hikes. They always approve. LIke Durbin said “they own the place”.
So let’s change that. We’ve dealt with monopolies before.
Man, it’s like you’re reading my mind.
So: what is the classic response to monopolistic behavior and price-fixing? This is a problem that’s come up plenty of times before; have we typically reacted with the one-two punch of creating a government-operated public option capable of competing against those private corporations while suddenly requiring every consumer to purchase the product in question?
:dubious:
I suppose it’s true that you didn’t actually use the word freeloader.
Like every word the guy utters, the presence or absence of the word ‘freeloader’ is unimportant. But I’d like to put the lie to the statement that liberal douchebags don’t work. I work, and I invested in my work such that I made in a phone call what that dink makes in a year so he can suck my ass in that regard. But that was then and this is now, and now I’m working on one of the Predator Drone’s communication systems his government uses in the execution of defending him (yuck!). I wonder what that dink has ever done for me or anyone else here that we should take his personal preferences into account.