Similar policies are cropping up more and more over here as well, where the obvious aim is just to enrichen someone, somewhere with taxpayer's money under the guise of being business friendly. Britain is considering charging for elements of the NHS - which led to the hilarious image of David Cameron demanding more austerity while wearing White Tie, sitting on a golden throne and drinking champagne.
There's a picture of modern politics if ever there was one.
I like how the fact that people on both sides seem to be giving the insurance companies a buy on this. When frankly, that right there is the heart of the problem. Nobody dares challenge them for fear of '!Communism' - not the contents of a book by Karl Marx, but the abstract terror of Cold War annihilation that still lingers in the back of people's minds. There's no political will to tackle what is clearly an industry that is causing harm to a good number of people. Arguably, it's the base insurance industry itself that has caused such an explosion in hospital bills - because a good number of people will have insurance anyway, insurance companies are able to negotiate better rates than the book-rate the hospital offers, and having such massively high rates benefits both the hospital as negotiating leverage (And encouraging people to buy insurance when they know a broken arm will bankrupt the average household).
It's not about making insurance uneccessary for most people -which might rock the boat for the companies a little - but by making insurance available for more people by making it mandatory for everyone who falls outside of government programs- which suits the companies just fine. Especially the part about subsidised premiums.
I've sat out most of the argument on the merits of the law - because frankly, in my opinion, both sides are flat fucking wrong, but it's impossible to say that both sides are flat wrong anymore because everyone must take a side. Does the system need to be reformed - yes, it does. Badly. Horrifically. But already that's enough to push me to one side before I say that this most definitely is not the way to reform it. Ultimately, the sides people take seem to be governed more by which order they say that in, than what they actually feel on the matter.
Furthermore, reducing a concept as complex as the ACA down to a single word that means two seperate things depending on what side of the debate your on, that you can either be for or against depending on what party you support rather than picking and choosing from the various contents and having an educated opinion, makes it so much easier to either ram through - or kill outright. It shuts down all the real debate on the matter and stops the real reforms that're obviously necessary. It's either all-in, or all-out and is symptomatic of a serious failure in modern democracy. It's a demolition of informed debate and opinion.
But. my biggest fear - and the reason I've been watching this - is that this bullshit will be exported as an example of another 'Business-friendly' policy that the privatisation-hawks over on the continent will shove down everyone's throats. Even worse - the scumbags will call it employment friendly and dress it up in fancy language to make people swallow it. When in truth, it'll be anything but. (You don't make money by hiring more people, you fire as many as you can get away with, cut everything right to the bone, then leave people no other option so you can do the absolute bare minimum to keep the government from fixing it - or worse, pay 'em off). Frankly - the private sector fucks things up far more than it fixes them.
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?
There's a picture of modern politics if ever there was one.
I like how the fact that people on both sides seem to be giving the insurance companies a buy on this. When frankly, that right there is the heart of the problem. Nobody dares challenge them for fear of '!Communism' - not the contents of a book by Karl Marx, but the abstract terror of Cold War annihilation that still lingers in the back of people's minds. There's no political will to tackle what is clearly an industry that is causing harm to a good number of people. Arguably, it's the base insurance industry itself that has caused such an explosion in hospital bills - because a good number of people will have insurance anyway, insurance companies are able to negotiate better rates than the book-rate the hospital offers, and having such massively high rates benefits both the hospital as negotiating leverage (And encouraging people to buy insurance when they know a broken arm will bankrupt the average household).
It's not about making insurance uneccessary for most people -which might rock the boat for the companies a little - but by making insurance available for more people by making it mandatory for everyone who falls outside of government programs- which suits the companies just fine. Especially the part about subsidised premiums.
I've sat out most of the argument on the merits of the law - because frankly, in my opinion, both sides are flat fucking wrong, but it's impossible to say that both sides are flat wrong anymore because everyone must take a side. Does the system need to be reformed - yes, it does. Badly. Horrifically. But already that's enough to push me to one side before I say that this most definitely is not the way to reform it. Ultimately, the sides people take seem to be governed more by which order they say that in, than what they actually feel on the matter.
Furthermore, reducing a concept as complex as the ACA down to a single word that means two seperate things depending on what side of the debate your on, that you can either be for or against depending on what party you support rather than picking and choosing from the various contents and having an educated opinion, makes it so much easier to either ram through - or kill outright. It shuts down all the real debate on the matter and stops the real reforms that're obviously necessary. It's either all-in, or all-out and is symptomatic of a serious failure in modern democracy. It's a demolition of informed debate and opinion.
But. my biggest fear - and the reason I've been watching this - is that this bullshit will be exported as an example of another 'Business-friendly' policy that the privatisation-hawks over on the continent will shove down everyone's throats. Even worse - the scumbags will call it employment friendly and dress it up in fancy language to make people swallow it. When in truth, it'll be anything but. (You don't make money by hiring more people, you fire as many as you can get away with, cut everything right to the bone, then leave people no other option so you can do the absolute bare minimum to keep the government from fixing it - or worse, pay 'em off). Frankly - the private sector fucks things up far more than it fixes them.
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?