I’m assuming if I fail to respond to the repeated invitations to snipe, eventually there will be an interest (or if not, at least a reluctant pressure) to actually debate the merits at hand.
Right. But at present, the choice between plans is defined by actual competition – the prices set by plans must permit the companies offering those plans to remain profitable. With a government plan in the mix, I am suggesting that it will “win” the competition by offering lower prices, since it can safely operate at a loss. For this reason, I am suggesting it doesn’t fit the model you describe.
But this whole line from Obama is in response to people who say that they like their current plans just fine and don’t want to change them. Obama is trying to lead them to believe that nothing will happen to their current plans because of his new plan.
I understand that the free market would cause this shift BECAUSE the government is injecting itself in a large way in that free market, and it WILL in fact cause some people to lose their current coverage in favor of the government solution.
Now, we may agree that this is a very good thing. But it is simply misleading for Obama to attempt to assure everyone that their current coverage will not change as a result of this plan.
So, this isn’t about much at all, then? Just a critique of rhetorical devices best suited to a meeting of the Professional Organization of English Majors (P.O.E.M.)? Well, all right then, I’ll step up! Tsk, tsk! No, you heard me right, I said it! Tsk, tsk!
How ironic.
Is the last line properly parsed as “most people would agree that he did suggest such a thing was impossible”? If not, then I really don’t care: there are a bajillion things his speech didn’t suggest were possible. If so, then I think “most people” are misinterpreting what he said.
There’s a lot of insinuation out there right now that Obama is calling for a single-payer plan, a plan under which everyone would be forced to go to the doctor the government tells them to go to. That’s nonsense, and that’s the nonsense the quote in the OP appears to be addressing.
There’s never been a situation in this country in which people have absolute choice in health care providers. Employers currently base their offered health plans on government actions, e.g., the fact that health insurance isn’t taxed. Of course employers might change their plans based on new health legislation: it would be ridiculous to deny that.
It’s really weird to me that anyone would interpret Obama’s quote not as denying the “Big Government Will Choose Your Doctor” bullshit making the rounds, but as denying the “Employers Look At Government Actions When Choosing Employee Benefits” self-evident fact.
I really think that your hostility toward the plan is coloring your interpretation.
No they would not. They would believe that Obama meant that the Government was not going to force; as in tell your boss that they had to take the public plan or else. That IMO is the most average perception of Obama’s words.
IMO most people realize that their employer will take whatever plan was best for the company, as is right. We as employees realize that we have little to say in the matter, except to change jobs.
We understand that our Employer may adopt the public plan; (hell I bet some us hope they would) the same way that we know our employer will take whatever plan that saves the company money, be it public or private.
The results are the same to us, we take what is given or leave.
The important distinction you are missing is that while the results (ie, losing our current plan to the public one) may be the same, the method is not the government **demanding **the change and that’s what Obama promised; now perhaps he was not specific enough for a lawyer; but the rest of us knows what he meant.
A lot of people would like their health care coverage changed, in that they’d really like to have some.
No. I am addressing the plan as I understand it: there will be a government-funded plan that is offered as an option, for some subset of private-sector employees. My contention is that if that plan exists, an inevitable result will be some subset of private sector employees will be changed to that plan from the insurance plan they now have.
Yes, but it’s a level playing field: all companies enjoy equal tax-free status. So it’s not reasonable to compare the government action of taxing, which favors on one entity, with the government action of offering a plan, which favors the entity unconstrained by the need to operate at a profit.
Perhaps that’s all he meant. But he had a simialr message concerning income tax during the campaign, and he didn’t say, “No one will have their taxes raised.” He said what he meant: “MOST OF YOU won’t have your taxes raised.” Here, he seems to have lost the willingness to add the qualifier.
What evidence might change your mind on this point?
In other words, if someone were to assemble twenty random voters and ask what the President meant, and sixteen of them agreed with my interpretation, would you then concede that your view about “the rest of us” was mistaken?
Nope. I think this is a strange and bizarre nit to pick, but you’re clearly invested in it; so have it.
But Americas Companies are the most efficient and innovative in the world. How can the government compete? Unless you have Medicare and see the difference, that is.
The government would be a health care provider. The health Care Companies would still be health care deniers, trying to cherry pick the most profitable and remove any that could possibly be not profitable enough. They are cutting and limiting service. Your health is meaningless. You are just a financial probability. Get old, show potential sicknesses and you are gone.
The government does not have to just compete on money but services. It would not be hard. They actually provide service.
What evidence have you got? :dubious:
Sorry I wasn’t clear: I referred to the Obama quote in the OP.
I think you’re kind of reaching on this one, Bricaker. Anyone who gets their health care through a corporate plan is giving up a large measure of control over their choice of health care providers. At any time, your employer can decide that it can get a better deal from a different provider. There’s certainly a chance that an employer can decide that the government program is a better deal than the one they’re currently using, and change. I suppose you could ding Obama for not specifically mentioning this scenario as a possible way that health care could change, but that honestly seems akin to the scenarios LHoD came up with in post 5 - the sort of thing that’s so obvious, that it shouldn’t need to be explicitly stated for it to be understood.
Isn’t that between them and their employer? That’s what Free Markestists like to say anyway. After all if they don’t like their employers offering then they’re free to find a new job, or buy their own insurance.*
Would this result in worse healthcare though? I could cite a list of countries where government healthcare programs work great, lower costs, healthier populations, etc.
If private healthcare insurance companies can provide a better product then they’ll do fine. If they can’t then well that’s their problem. Who needs them? They aren’t entitled*
But they aren’t forced, at most they’ll just have to decide if they want to pay for it themselves.*
*note free marketists arguments used for irony.
Far from being a “nit,” this is central to my point. You claim that the President’s words are very clear and obvious to “the rest of us.” I claim that the ordinary listener would be misled.
If you’re right, then clearly I have nothing to complain about.
So when I ask what evidence you’d accept to rebut your claim that “the rest of us” clearly understood him, and you say, “None,” then you’re essentially saying that it’s NOT relevant what an ordinary listener would understand.
Yes, yes. But AGAIN I point out the fundamental difference between a government plan and the private plans with which it would compete: the necessity of the private plans to set price points so they don’t lose money, and the government plan’s immunity from that need.
Not one person has addressed this point, depsite the fact that I’ve mentioned it four or five times now. Why is that?
Then you need to go further and explain why that’s such a bad thing.
I think that if you read those words to a person who has worked for companies that switch health plans annually (and some times more frequently), that person would know what he meant.