We already know this healthcare bill will make healthcare more expensive, cause premiums to skyrocket, increase wait times and deliver worse service. Absolutely everything the government “regulates” or runs is worse because of it. But I am not talking to the people who understand basic economics. I am talking about why anyone in their right mind would want somethng that is unconstitutional mandated by the IRS? I realize liberals, progressives and socialists don’t believe in the constitution let alone understand economics but what were they thinking creating IRS-Care? I propose that the elections in November are going to be a bloodbath of which this country has never seen. I have yet to talk to a true independent who wanted this big government take over of healthcare and destruction of liberty. A ridiculous majority do not want IRS-Care and I cannot wait for November. Bring it on.
Utter garbage. Without government regulation you have scams, incompetence and people literally dying in the street. Or dying in buildings when they collapse, for that matter. As for running things, there’s plenty of things governments do better than private industry despite all the fantasies of the free market fundamentalists.
More nonsense. It’s not unconstitutional, and liberals are if anything more dedicated to the Constitution than conservatives, who only seem to care about the Second Amendment and would typically cheerfully burn the rest.
Most people supported health care reform with a public option, rather than the watered down bill we got. And there’s no “destruction of liberty” here.
And I rather suspect that you have a definition of “true independent” that amounts to “agrees with Poptech”. For a so called independent you sound more like a dedicated right winger in the threads I’ve seen you in. Including this one to put it mildly.
That is the delusion. Government regulation doesn’t stop scams (Bernie Madoff), people do. Government regulation has not prevented anyone from dying, that is just wishful thinking. There is absolutely nothing the government runs better that the private sector.
Of course it is, it requires someone to buy a product, no such powers are granted to the government in the constitution.
Only those who don’t understand what is actually wrong with the healthcare system (all the problems are government created). Of course there is destruction of liberty, you are now not free to not have health insurance.
Libertarians are not right-wing but I don’t expect liberals to understand the difference.
The entire history of the nineteenth century of the United States was a long series of financial excesses ending in bank runs and “panics”. It was a bumpy roller coaster ride that was the inevitable result of a unregulated financial system. Eventually, the Federal Reserve was created at the beginning of the 20th century, in order to rein in the excesses of the financial system.
The Fed failed spectacularly.
They ended up worsening the economic situation in the early 1930s by doing exactly the opposite of what they should have been doing. The result was the Great Depression. But in the Depression, a new series of bank regulations was enacted, including deposit insurance in the form of the FDIC. And during this period of well-designed bank regulation, for nearly half a century, the United States did not suffer a single incident like the crisis that caused the Great Depression. It was only after US financial regulation was allowed to deteriorate starting in the 1970s and going into the 1980s, with the development of the “shadow banking” system, that we have returned to have similar sorts of financial panics.
Unfortunately, I’ve had to use a lot of polysyllabic words in my post so far, and I am unable at present to draw you any simple pictures with the crayon colors of your preference, so I’m not sure that the point of this story will get its message across to you in a form that is understandable. But suffice it to say that you haven’t got a fucking clue what you’re talking about. And what’s most startling is that this little factually incorrect piece of nonsense that you start with might be the least ridiculous thing you wrote in your whole OP. Truly a remarkable achievement.
No, obviously not. It appears instead that you’re writing a rough draft for your next 5th grade social studies assignment.
Now we can add constitutional law as yet another field in which you claim expertise.
It’s not enough that you can teach us about economics and climate change, but you can also opine with authority about the endlessly complex legal profession. You’re a regular Renaissance man, you are.
Well, maybe I should give it a try to explain.
But first, I’d have to know which crayons I should use.
The remarkable thing about the internet is that there are people of vast knowledge of various fields, people who are willing to share their knowledge with the rest of us. All we have to do is find out who they are.
In the field of election predictions, the site to look at is http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/. Before making wild-ass speculation about what will happen in November, I would highly recommend you refer to that site, see what they have to say, and incorporate any data they happen to be using. Suffice it to say that this November will result in losses for the Democrats. But that was already true. This new health care law does not, at present, appear to change the landscape considerably. In fact, the initial polling on the new law appears to be positive, but there’s no indication yet of whether that initial “bounce” will last.
I have yet to meet a true Scotsman who wouldn’t wear a kilt.
The polling, limited as it presently is, says otherwise.
There’s one bit of good news I’ve got for your, Poptech. Given the attention to detail, factual accuracy, and rhetorical restraint you’ve shown thus far, I think you could go very far in today’s Republican Party. I suggest that you apply to become a new speechwriter for Sarah Palin.
I was ready to dismiss everything you have said up to this point as being nothing but partisan, uninformed political ax-grinding, but how DARE you say that yahoos like Blackwater are better at their jobs than the US military.
I’m proud to be a liberal, and proud to support the men and women in this country’s uniform. How you can denigrate their service and sense of duty is beyond me. Based on this statement alone, you have no credibility.
I understand economics, not to mention history and current events enough to know you are wrong. You have the classic “it may work well in fact, but it’ll never work in theory!” right wing denial syndrome going on here. Whether you like it or not government run or regulated health care is the norm in most of the world, and it isn’t having the effect you claim. Fact trumps ideology.
Nonsense. Without government regulation, nothing would stop anyone who felt like it from selling poison and garbage; we know this because that’s exactly what happened, and that’s why those regulations were created in the first place. And government does plenty of things better than private industry; anything where there’s no profit in doing the job right.
The government requires people to buy insurance, safety equipment and such all the time.
:rolleyes: Utter nonsense. But typical; no matter how blatantly private industry preys on people, the Right blames government.
Of course they are right wing. Typical right wing sociopaths who feel no responsibility towards the rest of humanity.
Say, Poptech, if you don’t mind, could you define in what way the government has ‘taken over’ healthcare, since the recently-passed legislation seems to have done nothing of the sort?
Your question is disingenuous to start even before I read your post. Calling something “IRS-Care” (or “ObamaCare” for that matter) is just a way of shifting the terms to give people a negative feeling. Most people don’t like the IRS, so therefore you call health care reform IRS-Care, even though the IRS does not perform any care at all, of course.
Come on. You’re making a huge assumption – that HCR is unconstitutional – without even defending it. Further, HCR wasn’t mandated by the IRS. It’s been mandated by Congress.
And frankly, its constitutionality really doesn’t make a difference to 99% of anti-HCR folks. It’s just a tactic to oppose a law you don’t like.
You’ve started with a number of misleading questions and false assumptions that “we all know” x, y, and z things that we clearly don’t all believe. Are you interested in an honest discussion?
Don’t forget regulations like the building codes and floodplain ordinances, which prevent folks from building deathtraps.
One example of the government stepping in and doing a job that private industry won’t do is the National Flood Insurance Program, which by the way is funded entirely from its own premiums. Nobody offers private flood insurance in this country.
Look, the notion that the government is always worse than private enterprise is disproven in several ways. We don’t have a free enterprise road system do we? We don’t have a free enterprise military system. We don’t have a free enterprise judicial system. And so on.
So while it is true that in general competitive private enterprise tends to provide goods and services at a lower cost than a monopoly provider like the government, it isn’t always true.
And for the notion that government health insurance will enevitably be ruinously expensive yet provide substandard care, let me point you to the examples of Canada, France, Germany, Britain, Italy, Australia, Japan, and so on. Since all these countries have universal health insurance, but the United States has private health insurance, we should be able to see whether these countries have more expensive health care and worse outcomes than the United States.
We spend much more per capita than comparable first world countries. So the notion that private insurance will lead to lower costs is debunked. But we should get pretty good outcomes from all that spending, right? No, US life expectancy at birth is way below countries that spend far less on health care. Like Portugal.
So if we have a system that costs us much more than the systems in every other country, yet provides worse outcomes than the systems in comparable countries, what conclusions should we draw?
The second biggest mistake people like you make is assuming we have a competitive free market in health insurance and health care in this country. We clearly do not, we haven’t had a free market in health care for decades. Maybe there was a free market solution to the health care crisis, but that was never on the table, even from the Republicans.
The core problem with health care in this country is third party payments. The direct consumer doesn’t usually pay for their own health care, the provider doesn’t pay, instead, a third party does. Well, it won’t much matter whether that third party is a private insurance company or a government insurance system, you’re not going to have a competitive free market in any case. And so the choice isn’t between a government run system and a free market system, it’s between a government run system and the status quo. And the status quo is intolerable.
The first biggest mistake people like you make is to claim that the health care reform bill will implement government-run health insurance. Except, no it won’t. The bill that was just passed is bill to reform private health insurance, and doesn’t create a government run insurance program, the infamous “public option” was removed from the bill long ago.
This is pretty awesome - an OP in Great Debates were pretty much every single sentence is incorrect.
Also, I must ask, how do you “know” what will happen ahead of time, and will you still be around to admit you are wrong when what you “know” will happen doesn’t.
In particular I look forward to your crow-eating regarding the unprecedented “bloodbath” this fall. Republicans gained 13 Senate seats in 1947 (and 12 in 1980) - do you reckon they’re gonna beat that this time?
Lets get some numbers - how many House and Senate seats will the GOP pick up this fall, in your informed estimation? This way we will have a benchmark to assess how much weight to give what you “know” in the future.
Ah, but according to true American patriots, the US is a bad country filled with bad and irresponsible people who can’t be trusted to take care of themselves the way those health elites in Europe do.
a) No one, except you, just now, seems to claim anything like “the US is a bad country filled with bad and irresponsible people”; b) the assertion that a difference in which health insurer pays out on claims somehow equates to treating people as if they can’t take care of themseves, makes no sense.
ETA: OK, maybe I’ve misread the intention of your post.
Someone better tell the rest of the world then, they all have mandated coverage that is significantly cheaper than the US and they have better health outcomes. But why let facts get in the way.
Okay, let’s start at square one and work our way down the list. First order of business; just what part of the Constitution do you feel is being violated by the health care bill?
See that’s the problem. It’s not basic economics. It’s advanced economics. It’s very complicated economics. When the experts are saying one thing, and “everyone with a basic understanding” are saying something else, the experts are almost always right, however counterintuitive it may seem on the surface.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and all that.