Ah, but as long as there are multiple payers, you recognize that the private ones are superior?
A lot of right-wingers, myself included, don’t necessarily like Megacorp or Republicanomics, but support the Republicans because of social issues even if we think the Democrats have a better economic theory. I’ve been called all kinds of names on this board, but that is the reality for me and a lot of people. I do believe that Obamacare is just being used as an excuse for jacking up prices even when it has absolutely no relation. Since they fine is less than the cost of providing insurance, costs will actually go down for companies that take that option. (I can’t name names but an absolutely huge telecom company, for one, is exploring that).
And we wonder why some people say that the left is dedicated to socialism. No company should pay for anything that is above the wage that the market dictates for that work. If a worker is worth $7.50/hr, then he’s worth $7.50 and the government shouldn’t compel anyone to pay him more. If there are 5 neighborhood kids wanting to cut my grass for $30, should I be forced to pick one and pay him $40?
Further, why does this made up belief stop at health care? Surely workers need food to eat. Perhaps the government should run a calorie and nutritional analysis on each worker and demand that businesses provide a stipend for food. Workers need a place to live. How about a government mandated stipend for reasonable square footage in the locale?
Too much? It’s no more absurd than making an arbitrary statement that an employer should have to pay for health insurance.
Further, Wal-Mart is a publicly traded company. Most of us have that stock in our 401(k) plans. This money is to pay for our retirements, and not for socialist fantasy camps. The board of directors has a fiduciary duty to all of us to maximize profits, and if hiring two people at 20 hours per week at no healthcare versus one employee at 40 hours per week with health care, then that is the duty owed to us. Paying wages above market rate can expose the board to countless lawsuits.
I would love to live in a society where everyone has access to good things in life, but forcing businesses with the power of the state to provide it hampers the economy and invites these type of work arounds.
California’s Insurance Commissioner recently condemned Anthem Blue Cross for raising prices in anticipation of ACA implementation costs. So, there’s one answer: the insurance companies, expecting prices to go up…are raising prices.
Meanwhile, right wing hate radio hosts are blaming the ACA for these price increases. Circular logic at its finest.
Further, it also allows us to fob our societal obligations off on someone else. Which is about the only way these lame ideas sell in America. Lefties learned long ago that you can’t get the middle class to support a welfare state anymore.
The only solution politically possible?
The right gives corporations a pass because money is their god. Simple as that. They’d happily, or at least calmly, walk over the dead bodies of former WalMart employees in the street if it meant their annuities went up by a tenth of a percent. Everything else they say is cover.
The left think money grows on trees and if they vote the expenditure it will just show up.
Obamacare fucked a lot of people in the ass by jacking up the cost of insurance along with the loss of work hours it triggered (because it’s not the job of businesses to generate tax revenue). This was predictable and yet the clownfucks did it anyway.
And don’t even have the basic maturity to avoid pointing fingers everywhere but at themselves.
You’ve evaded the question, repeating only what you’d already revealed. Just to be clear, you would support no version of UHC but might prefer “European style” as a lesser of evils, right?
And now, after refusing to engage in compromise at the time, your team blames “liberals” for passing the only legislation the GOP permitted them too.
Obviously, I don’t blame you personally, Mr. Mace, unless you are secretly one of the key players in a smoke-filled room! 
But the fact is that GOP steered the health-care legislation to its imperfect form. For the right to condemn it now for not being single-payer is the height of absurdity – that option was never on the table in the U.S. Some of the GOP opposed health-care because anything resembling socialism is anathema. But some of the leaders and donors (including Walton family, see above) steered toward Obamacare deliberately since it was win-win for them: bonanza for certain corporations yet, hoping it fails, will increase Americans’ hatred of government.
Just as absurd is to condemn “progressives” for Obamacare’s foibles. We got this not because progressives controlled Congress, but because they didn’t.
The clownfucks were the Republicans who fought universal healthcare and single payer healthcare in the first place. Obamacare would have been MUCH better if the Republicans had not done everything they had in their power to fuck it up.
I understand and even agree with your overall point.
However you’ll need a cited example before I consider the excerpted sentence to be anything but absurd hyperbole.
True, you go to war with the party you have, not the party you wish you had. The downside is that if the party can’t fight the war competently, it would have been better had they not tried.
The Democratic Party of 1993 wisely backed off on health care. If this turns into a massive clusterf**k, it’ll severely tarnish the Democrats and do even more damage to Americans’ trust in the government to do big things.
Let me speak for myself.
I was never a fan of Clintoncare or Obamacare, and felt that allowing the flawed system to fester further might well be best. I recall a Senate health-care hearing in the mid 1990’s which convinced me Teddy Kennedy was a pretentious clown: ever since I’ve been boggled by the adulation he received.
Nevertheless, Obamacare will improve health for millions of Americans and, supposedly, will reduce costs. One can understand the idea that it “is better than nothing.”
However one only has to click on News to see that many Republicans are actively seeking to sabotage Obamacare. They do not want it to succeed and are trying very hard to ensure it does not.
What’s your reaction to the preceding paragraph, adaher? Agree that it’s true? Agree with GOP’s sabotage efforts?
You know, my daughter has a lot of friends who were working retail in the recession after getting out of college, and not one of them got 40 hours a week - so that the company did not have to pay them benefits. This was before ACA even passed. At least with ACA these kids will have some chance of getting affordable coverage.
There are no GOP sabotage efforts, because the GOP does not have the power to sabotage the law. The law is being implemented exactly as it reads, minus the parts the Supreme Court excised, which also does not count as sabotage.
The GOP is not helping, but it’s not their job to help. The Democrats passed the law by themselves and they have total power to implement it themselves seeing as how they control the White House.
ACA does do one thing well: it insures people who couldn’t get insurance before. Which is why I’m scratching my head at pissed off liberals who are concerned about WHO is doing the insuring rather than the other very real problems with the law.
No matter what, everyone gets access to affordable health insurance now. That mission is going to be complete come 2014. The real challenges are making sure that insurance is something people will like as much as their old insurance(for those that lose theirs after the law going into effect), and making sure it doesn’t blow up the deficit.
Actually we have that - it is called minimum wage, which prevents companies colluding to decide that the market value of work is $1 an hour. And then of course all these workers can go on welfare so that they don’t starve. That is basically the health care situation today.
I’d love an example of shareholder lawsuits - that went anywhere - for paying too much. Is the Costco board getting sued? Hell, look at the CEOs who get big raises for driving companies into the crapper? How are those suits?
Not to mention that WalMart has enough money to bribe Mexican officials.
So, basic health care is a “good thing in life” to you, kind of like steak dinners and luxury cars. Let them eat cake, eh?
The right thing to do with WalMart is to level the competitive playing field, so that no company can increase profits by dumping health care costs on the taxpayers and the insured - which is what they are doing now. You and your ilk treat health care as a nice to have, not a must have.
A single payer system would be much better. But ACA is better than what we have now. It would be nice if companies like WalMart didn’t use it as one more excuse to screw their workers - but I guess the screwed workers will continue to produce less than the unscrewed workers in Costco, and maybe some day WalMart will wake up and realize that there is a better way. And I’ll continue to avoid that cesspool like the plague.
It doesn’t screw them though, anymore than Canadian companies not providing health care screws their employees. We have two single payer systems and private insurance. All that’s happening is that Wal-mart is letting employees take Medicaid instead.
And they aren’t the only ones. Even governments are taking that step.
Wal-mart’s model, like Costco’s is based on a rational plan. Costco uses fewer employees per store, and expands relatively slowly. They use a high-skill/high cost/low employment model. Wal-mart expands quickly and is extremely large, making that a very difficult thing to implement. So instead they go for low-skill/low cost/high employment. Get a lot of warm bodies in the stores and hope for the best.