Quote:Dartz wrote:See for the most part I respect this POV. And pretty much agree with you vis-a-vis the insurance companies.
I want to see what happens in a year's time..... One month. Two months. It's still too soon to tell if something will succeed anywhere or fail anywhere. It'll take time for things to stabilise and fluctations to work out. Nothing in government or policy is an instant fix, and the expectation of such often leads to mass disappointment or disgruntlement at best. Is that what you want someone to say?
it's the truth anyway.
I dislike the law for entirely different reasons to everyone else here. And no, I don't believe the insurance companies in the states are just 'doing what they have to'. Arguably, they're the very heart of the problem and exactly why the system is so broken. Nothing will fix the system unless it takes straight aim at them, but who's going to take aim at their biggest contributor? Or when the dreaded C-word gets trotted out in the face of any government policy that actually threatens a businesses profits or business model. There is one relevant quote that always comes to mind, from the Heinlein story Life Line
Quote:There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest.
A government's duty is to do what is best of the people as a whole, not for one specific business model. Especially when that model is now clearly causing far more harm than good.
I disagree that we need to wait to see what'll happen in a years time. Lets leave the whole website thing by the side. THAT will be fixed by this time next year most likely. At least well enough it will no longer be the joke it is now. But the damage will have already been done by then. As Whittle said in one of the above videos - it took longer for them to produce a working WEBSITE than the length of time from Pearl Harbor to the end of WW2 (won't say what he said - "longer than it took us to win WW2" because it was hardly the USA alone that did so) and they FAILED horribly. The question then becomes - do you trust these people to handle your healthcare? Cause I sure don't.
So yeah. Website operational in a year? Sure. I'll give you that. But it's not the most important thing, and it won't matter. It's just fun to make fun of now. And it's a fun tool to beat the lefties over the head with rhetorically. I'll admit that straight up. Why hide it?
What will still be a horrible failure in a years time is that tens of millions of people are going to lose their healthcare plans - that they were perfectly happy with - and they'll have to pay much much more to get LESS overall coverage along with things that they don't need. I don't need maternity care, so why do I have to pay for it in my plan? Oh yeah - that's right. I'm paying for someone else to have it. It's called redistribution of wealth. Thanks Barry. Mr. "If you like your plan, you can keep your plan. PERIOD." Well that was a lie. How about costing less? Well that's a lie too. In fact the entire "official" name of the thing - "The Affordable care act" is now widely regarded as a misnomer and a bad joke.
And we won't be able to keep the doctors that we want either. In fact we're about to suffer a massive doctor shortage as those doctors in their 50s look at the onerous regulations and likely most of them will opt for early retirement - "Screw this!" And who will be there to replace them? Who will want to get into a field where the future of advancement and monetary return looks so bleak?
Yeah - a lot of this can be laid at the feet of the previous system of insurance, as I've agreed with you before on. But you know what? One very simple fix would have been to allow interstate competition such as the car insurance companies have now. There are national auto insurance companies now where there were none a generation ago and that's GOOD for consumers. It has resulted in extremely low auto insurance rates across the US. One of the major reasons why medical insurance was so high in the first place was that companies couldn't compete or advertise across state boundaries. And the medical insurance companies encouraged this to protect their regional monopolies. Then they got into bed with Obamacare thinking to salvage some part of the old system rather than allow competition. Well now it's come back to - as I said before - bite them in the ass. And I'm damn sure not crying for them.
I do like your Heinlein quote and agree with most of the rest of your position.