Your description of “authority” boils down to raw power. My evidence for this is your last question. The president or congress could crank up anything they want. They have decided not to because they lack the raw power to carry it out at this level of tax appropriation. So asserting that the feds have “authority” is really meaningless, since they have this same type of authority to do anything else.
True:o
I appreciate your experience in the insurance industry, and your opinions on Obamacare and single payer health care.
However, I am specifically interested in your position on the conservative proposal to require states to allow insurance companies to market policies from other states across state lines. Within your understanding of states rights under the Constitution, do states have the authority to regulate health insurance that is sold within their state, or does the federal government have the authority to require states to permit policies to cross state lines?
I think this question is germane to your assertion in the OP:
So, in this context, do conservatives support states rights? Or do they support a strong federal government that supersedes the power of the states to regulate insurance within their borders?
Or to put it less prettily, modern libertarians want to remove pretty much all legal rights, legal recourse and government aid from anyone but the wealthy. But they still want the government to prevent violence, because violence is the only recourse the common people will have left under such a system. Libertarians want to create a neofeudalism where the majority of the population are slaves and serfs - or just dead, and the only domestic function of the government is to serve as a giant boot to crush them if they try to rise up. A quote that sums it up:
[QUOTE=Kim Stanley Robinson]
That’s libertarians for you — anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.
[/QUOTE]
As far as the OP goes, state governments are as a rule more corrupt, more incompetent, and more amenable to oppressive behavior than the federal government. And historically state’s rights has been a position used mainly to push various types of bigotry and lunacy, going right back to slavery. Including more recently the anti-homosexual Proposition 8 here in “liberal” California.
Forget state’s rights; I’d support reducing them greatly in power and vesting most of their present authority in the federal government. The Federal government is typically better run, less corrupt and just better in general than the state governments; the lower down the government totem pole you go, the worse they tend to be.
Capitalism is inherently oppressive and aggressive, and cannot be called libertarian in any sense.
Except that many adherents of libertarianism solely oppose coercion by a State, and do not really speak to monetary coercion by individuals or corporations.
You can certainly argue that those libertarians are using the wrong word to describe themselves, but that would seem a fool’s errand, [particularly in light of the laissez-faire libertarians’ successes in recent years to make their definition the most commonly used one.
Did you really think anyone would say “OK, since we got gay marriage, it’s only fair for you to execute mentally disabled black kids?” How many conservatives do you hear saying “Whoa, gay marriage and legal weed, we’d all better step back and calm down before this state’s rights thing gets out of hand.” I am neither for nor against state’s rights; there’s probably a useful imaginary balance between the two, but there’s no sense in even trying to talk about it while conservatives are gerrymandering it with their fake/selective enthusiasm for this particular legal fiction.
“States’ Rights” is a poisoned well to many moderates/liberals, due to its century+ of use by the slaveholders and their descendants who just wanted to use them to keep people of color TREATED like slaves. The concept, in that particular form, remains the functional equivalent of anathema to a lot of people, for good reason. That we embrace things we LIKE being done by states independent of the federal government is separable from the whole vile construction of the original and neo-Confederates.
Agreed but that has no bearing on the thread. Do you think it is a useful or sensible idea today no matter what side you take?
That’s kind of my whole point, yeah.
Agreed but that has no bearing on the thread. Do you think it is a useful or sensible idea today no matter what side you take? Progressives have done a jam up job of getting progressive ideas passed in a really short time in the last few years. Like I said, I am a moderate libertarian and just want to maximize personal freedom whether it is a traditional conservative or liberal idea. The evidence is strong now that any of those goals can accomplished at the state level.
Let me put it to you straight. The U.S. Federal government is impotent and incompetent right now. Obama has low approval ratings and Congress in general has lower approval ratings than whorehouse with hookers with the clap.
Don’t you see the advantage having more local control? I live in Massachusetts which is a rather small state geographically yet we are still bigger than some European countries. Our public schools rank in general rank in the top 10 in the world and come close to first place worldwide in the area where my daughters go to school. Vermont is an extremely beautiful state that I used to live in. They want single-payer health-care and they got it. Vermont is both very extremely liberal yet oddly conservative at the same time.
I have also lived in New Hampshire. It is the most libertarian state of all and very successful by any measure. My home states are Louisiana and Texas. Louisiana is a unique and you can’t apply anything you know about the rest of the U.S. to it. It is both poor and extremely wealthy like a 3rd world country but it has a unique history and any federal intrusion is not welcome. Texas is the counterargument to the idea that conservative policies do not work. Texas is going like gangbusters these days even while the rest of the country is still recovering from the recession.
I don’t understand how anyone can put up a serious fight against the idea against mostly autonomous control for strong state governments in the U.S. It is an imbecilic idea in the best. We have already had shutdowns of the federal government in recent years because nobody in Congress can agree on anything meaningful.
Meanwhile, the states (which actually run the show) keep humming along just fine and nobody notices anything except for a few minor inconveniences. Imagine if the entire country could be shut down through a temper-tantrum at the federal. We don’t have to worry about that now. It is bad design for any system and we certainly don’t want to encourage more single points of failure.
So you are against forcing states to allow the sale of health insurance across state lines?
I want states to com up with the best approach for their own citizens and not to worry about the country as whole because that is a fool’s errand. ObamaCare is a less successful version of RomneyCare coming out of Massachusetts. Vermont is trying a single health payer initiative and I think that is good for them.
However, these are all still capitalistic initiatives that still require legacy health insurance carriers to work. You can’t get rid of them overnight and you also have to let them make a profit. The flip side of this argument is that states or the federal government can dictate whatever they want but health insurance companies have the right and responsibility to make a profit themselves. They aren’t running a charity.
Fazing out the legacy systems will take a long time and none of those decisions should be dictated unilaterally because they are extremely nuanced and complicated.
The answer to your question is yes, all those moves are best handled at the state level because that gives the best opportunity to see what works and has the least overall risk.You also get the largest number of smart people to work on the problem that way. If you leave it up to federal control, you get the crack team that was responsible for rolling out the ObamaCare back-end infrastructure including the web site combined with the negotiation skills of the highest ranking Republicans in Congress. To call it a clusterfuck would be a compliment at this point but that is status quo with the feds these days.
Can anyone tell me with a straight face that is the best the U.S can do? Don’t say it too loudly tough because I am certain the NSA will be monitoring it. When I was growing up, we made Soviet Russia jokes about that type of thing but now it is us.
People who are concerned about the latest wave of voting restrictions and voter ID laws disagree.
Off Topic: just for clarity, we all realize that the people who are shouting states rights when it comes to gun control are the people who are in favor of gun control, right? Heller and MacDonald struck down state laws as unconstitutional. Gun nuts may or may not be in favor of federal gun regulations (depending on the gun nut), but almost all of them would prefer regulation only at the federal level rather than regulation at BOTH the federal and state/local level.
The gun grabbers are the ones shouting states rights in that debate.
And now back to your regularly scheduled programming.
Now it is becoming clear that you would rather bash Obamacare than defend the premise of your OP; that conservatives are for states rights, and liberals are for big government. I have shown that conservatives want big government when it suits them (pushing for insurance across state lines), so your premise pretty much falls apart at that point.
Uh huh.
Anectdotaly, I’ve asked my gun enthusiast friends about exactly that scenario - making gun laws completely federal. It would eliminate the state-to-state transport issues, get rid of the patchwork of varying state regs, and possibly ensure a uniform standard of training.
They invariably shoot down (heh) that idea with highly unprintable expletives. They all seem to prefer taking their chances with the states.
No. One exception does not justify tossing out an otherwise correct philosophy. States’ rights are an arbitrary and pointless idea (though the idea of federalism generally is not).
This isn’t true. There are a few states who have passed or pushed nullification laws in an effort to not recognize federal gun laws in favor of state level gun laws.