I'd argue that there's nothing especially wrong with wealth redistribution through taxation and the like - but that requires a different view on society. It's a way of bringing more money into circulation and generating economic activity because money injected into the bottom of a society will usually be immediately be spent in local stores and the like, where it goes towards keeping people in employment and keeping them consuming, keeping others in employment and so on and so on. It then filters on its way back up to the top rather than just stagnating up there, or shuttling between the different tops.
A dollar is best in the hands of the person most likely to spend it, than sat in a bank account accruing interest. It'll filter its way back up eventually, probably with interest because so many people will be actually partaking in the economy. The more people able to take part in the economy, the better it is... even if their sole function is to stay at home and buy food, pay rent and make car payments. That money goes to someone, then on to someone else.
The economy is healthiest when the most people are able to take some token part in it.
But that's another argument....
I doubt they were working on it for 4 whole years. Even so, 4 years is a surprisingly short time to go from nothing, to something so massive. Amazon, Google and the like have taken 10-20 years almost to get to the size they are now, growing organically as functionality has expanded and new avenues of business introduced. It's a Big Damn Project, not just 'a website'. This thing is starting from scratch, to a full-featured functional site. It's like trying to launch a moon mission when you haven't even mastered sub-orbital flight, and haven't even flown the whole rocket stack yet.
Also, if my experience is anything to go by, 90% of signups happen in the last 10% of time available. 5% of them happen after that. It's human nature.
That all depends on who owns the companies in the first place. Whether they're not all regional subsidiaries of much larger national organisations. If that's the case then you're right back to the same problem - except the new larger national juggernauts can just squash the few pure regional insurers remaining. It strongly depends on who owns what and how it's structured. In theory, a wholly national market would work - in an ideal world. The right deregulation can work if someone kept an eye on it. It'd need someone on the ball looking for anti-competitive behaviours and the like, but nobody really seems willing to do that anymore.
Nobody seems willing to challenge large businesses anymore, especially when they start getting destructive. A free market is like a free society. It needs proper policing. For a long time it did, and it worked reasonably well. The right controls stabilise a free market and protect everyone's freedoms - rather than allowing one group to tramp over everyone elses. It's one thing the EU does well is that it tends to kick companies being anti-competitive.
However, I think for a fully free market to work, not having insurance needs to be an option as well. People always have the option not to buy a car - do you really have the option not to go to hospital? When even a minor injury can lead to bankruptcy because of exorbitant hospital charges, is not having insurance really an option? Even without a law requiring it, effectively you have a mandatory purchase already...
This means either getting hospital bills under control to the point where a child's broken arm won't bankrupt the average family (Even assuming they have insurance, and the company decided to drop them like a hot potatoe as soon as they actually need their coverage), or instituting a proper public healthcare system as a backstop. Medicaid/medicare is a crock, in part designed to appease those people who call anything that directly challenges the insurance industry as 'anti-business', or again the dreaded C-word. As I understand it, the government isn't even allowed to negotiate on the prices a healthcare provider asks? That's not fair. That's not pro-business - that's a blank cheque with taxpayers money. No wonder the US government spends twice as much as the rest of the world on healthcare - per capita.... and that's before individual insurance contributions come into it. That's a ridiculous statistic.
In many ways, hospital care is an emergency service, the same as the police or the fire department. It's something everyone needs at some stage, or everyone will need. And definitely something everyone will benefit from. I certainly benefit from someone coming along to put the fire out in my neighbours house, as do I benefit from a police service. I also benefit from my neighbours either not spreading disease, or being chronically ill and either losing all their money to the hospital, or just dropping out of participating the economy, falling out of work and going onto benefits. Or dying... I like my neighbours not to die. They're nice people. Good healthcare is clearly a public good. Everyone benefits from it.
It keeps more people in the economy. And more people in the economy is a good thing for everyone in the economy. It keeps other people in employment. It keeps other businesses afloat. It keeps money moving.
It doesn't mean the death of private insurance or mass layoffs in the private system either.
Britain, with the NHS, proves that a private healthcare system can operate in parallel with a public system. It means that the private providers actually have to work for their money and provide a good service because going uninsured is an alternative. Arguably, they do. The NHS is great at making people not die. The private system is great at quality-of-life operations like hip-replacements that might take years on an NHS waiting list to get. It works, despite what David Cameron wants the world to believe. They work in tandem, each complimenting the other's benefits. Nobody in the UK but the cranks dares threaten the NHS.
Unfortunately, the insurance industry seems to have grown averse to working for its profits. In fact, it's built on supplying as little benefit as possible, while raking in as much money as possible. And it'll aggressively attack anything that threatens its cosy little moneyspinner, no matter where it comes from.
Pure free-marketism doesn't work - it's inevitably self-destructive. Neither does pure 'socialism', but the right mix allows both to compliment each other's benefits.
Huh... funny. I managed to completely avoid the ACA by accident....
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?
A dollar is best in the hands of the person most likely to spend it, than sat in a bank account accruing interest. It'll filter its way back up eventually, probably with interest because so many people will be actually partaking in the economy. The more people able to take part in the economy, the better it is... even if their sole function is to stay at home and buy food, pay rent and make car payments. That money goes to someone, then on to someone else.
The economy is healthiest when the most people are able to take some token part in it.
But that's another argument....
Quote: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
I doubt they were working on it for 4 whole years. Even so, 4 years is a surprisingly short time to go from nothing, to something so massive. Amazon, Google and the like have taken 10-20 years almost to get to the size they are now, growing organically as functionality has expanded and new avenues of business introduced. It's a Big Damn Project, not just 'a website'. This thing is starting from scratch, to a full-featured functional site. It's like trying to launch a moon mission when you haven't even mastered sub-orbital flight, and haven't even flown the whole rocket stack yet.
Also, if my experience is anything to go by, 90% of signups happen in the last 10% of time available. 5% of them happen after that. It's human nature.
Quote: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
That all depends on who owns the companies in the first place. Whether they're not all regional subsidiaries of much larger national organisations. If that's the case then you're right back to the same problem - except the new larger national juggernauts can just squash the few pure regional insurers remaining. It strongly depends on who owns what and how it's structured. In theory, a wholly national market would work - in an ideal world. The right deregulation can work if someone kept an eye on it. It'd need someone on the ball looking for anti-competitive behaviours and the like, but nobody really seems willing to do that anymore.
Nobody seems willing to challenge large businesses anymore, especially when they start getting destructive. A free market is like a free society. It needs proper policing. For a long time it did, and it worked reasonably well. The right controls stabilise a free market and protect everyone's freedoms - rather than allowing one group to tramp over everyone elses. It's one thing the EU does well is that it tends to kick companies being anti-competitive.
However, I think for a fully free market to work, not having insurance needs to be an option as well. People always have the option not to buy a car - do you really have the option not to go to hospital? When even a minor injury can lead to bankruptcy because of exorbitant hospital charges, is not having insurance really an option? Even without a law requiring it, effectively you have a mandatory purchase already...
This means either getting hospital bills under control to the point where a child's broken arm won't bankrupt the average family (Even assuming they have insurance, and the company decided to drop them like a hot potatoe as soon as they actually need their coverage), or instituting a proper public healthcare system as a backstop. Medicaid/medicare is a crock, in part designed to appease those people who call anything that directly challenges the insurance industry as 'anti-business', or again the dreaded C-word. As I understand it, the government isn't even allowed to negotiate on the prices a healthcare provider asks? That's not fair. That's not pro-business - that's a blank cheque with taxpayers money. No wonder the US government spends twice as much as the rest of the world on healthcare - per capita.... and that's before individual insurance contributions come into it. That's a ridiculous statistic.
In many ways, hospital care is an emergency service, the same as the police or the fire department. It's something everyone needs at some stage, or everyone will need. And definitely something everyone will benefit from. I certainly benefit from someone coming along to put the fire out in my neighbours house, as do I benefit from a police service. I also benefit from my neighbours either not spreading disease, or being chronically ill and either losing all their money to the hospital, or just dropping out of participating the economy, falling out of work and going onto benefits. Or dying... I like my neighbours not to die. They're nice people. Good healthcare is clearly a public good. Everyone benefits from it.
It keeps more people in the economy. And more people in the economy is a good thing for everyone in the economy. It keeps other people in employment. It keeps other businesses afloat. It keeps money moving.
It doesn't mean the death of private insurance or mass layoffs in the private system either.
Britain, with the NHS, proves that a private healthcare system can operate in parallel with a public system. It means that the private providers actually have to work for their money and provide a good service because going uninsured is an alternative. Arguably, they do. The NHS is great at making people not die. The private system is great at quality-of-life operations like hip-replacements that might take years on an NHS waiting list to get. It works, despite what David Cameron wants the world to believe. They work in tandem, each complimenting the other's benefits. Nobody in the UK but the cranks dares threaten the NHS.
Unfortunately, the insurance industry seems to have grown averse to working for its profits. In fact, it's built on supplying as little benefit as possible, while raking in as much money as possible. And it'll aggressively attack anything that threatens its cosy little moneyspinner, no matter where it comes from.
Pure free-marketism doesn't work - it's inevitably self-destructive. Neither does pure 'socialism', but the right mix allows both to compliment each other's benefits.
Huh... funny. I managed to completely avoid the ACA by accident....
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?