When the government says “Hey- health insurers, we’re not going to let you lie to the public,” our lady of the free market blows a gasket. And gets a whole bunch of shit wrong in the process.
Seriously- how out of whack does your thought process have to be that you consider government regulators frowning on deceiving their customers as “thuggery?”
(via)
Sarah T
PLEASE let there be a remake of “All About Eve” with O’Donnell as Eve Harrington to Palin’s Margo Channing ! Man, who do I have to sleep with to get this done ? Better yet, who does someone yonger & more attractive have to sleep with ? Oh please let it happen…
El Cid
As out of whack as the Liberty Leaguers of the ’30s or the Birchers of the ’50s or the Republican Party’s think tanks of the 1980s or of the entire Republican Party now.
Arclite
Back to bed with you sir! Obviously you’ve been at the sudafed again.
beltane
Despite her relative youth, McMegan is basically a bitter, miserable person who enjoys nothing better than watching the powerful beat up on the weak. If she were not young and female she would be characterized as a ghoul rather than an idiot.
artem1s
just whacked out enough to be part of the Randian cult. How can Social Darwinism possible work if we keep the system from weeding out the weak? DUH!
Steve
John, you don’t understand the issue. If you assume that the insurers only want to communicate truthful information to their customers, and if you assume the government is threatening that there will be punishment even if the information is totally truthful, then that’s thuggery and it is HIGHLY disturbing.
To put it another way, as long as you’re willing to presume bad faith on the part of the Obama Administration, then this is clearly an example of bad faith on the part of the Obama Administration.
I hope this explanation is helpful.
Allan
Because the president is blackety black black, that’s why.
SATSQ
beltane
@Sarah T: Palin does look haggard and worn out in comparison to O’Donnell. It’s got to be killing her.
OT, but there are strong indications that Lisa Murkowski is launching her write-in campaign this afternoon http://newsminer.com/bookmark/9563149-Alaska-Sen-Murkowski-to-run-as-write-in-candidate-supporters-say. The GOP has turned this country into a 50 ring circus.
noncarborundum
Just so you know, John, the “Elephant/Moon” picture is Photoshopped, and therefore doesn’t actually represent a Fail.* Unlike the actual McMegan.
—————————–
asterisk: except possibly on the part of those who believe it
ETA: FYWP
BR
That she still has a job at one of the top magazines is a sign that our system of free press is broken at its core.
Martin
Let’s just make it clear now that the photo above is a hoax. I’m engaged in a multi-relative crusade against forwarding untrue email. I’m making progress, but it’s clear as day that the main problem is that if nobody calls out the hoax as a hoax early on, each additional participant that stays silent actually adds credibility. After a remarkably short time, it becomes impossible to debunk.
General Stuck
On a related note, the winguttery is deep today on HCR
Huckabee, Let Them Eat Cake and Die
jeffreyw
Regulators frowning upon businesses cheating their customers are just like this dog stepping on a little kitteh.
BR
@General Stuck:
As someone pointed out at TPM, Huckabee has a preexisting condition: Diabetes. But of course he’s an important person and therefore is guaranteed health care, unlike the millions of unimportant people who are obviously, as he says, the same as a burned down house.
DonkeyKong
Yer all jealous of David Brook’s praise for Meg’s shiny brain.
jah
Well it isn’t just hacks like McMegan who believe this. This editorial form the Chicago Tribune goes there as well.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/ct-edit-obamacare-20100913,0,7734523.story
Reading the editorial made my blood boil. Its full of gross distortions of the truth, innuendo and, hell, why not throw in a quote from a cato institute propagandaist in there for good measure. The whole thing is incredibly dishonest.
The Chicago Tribune – the McMegan of newspapers (sadly there are many more of its kind)
CT Voter
I would have thought she’d be a little chastened by that hilarious takedown of her “review”, but I guess some people simply cannot be shamed.
300baud
@General Stuck:
It pains me to say it, but Huckabee has a minor point here; he just doesn’t draw the right conclusion from it.
For health insurance, he is exactly right. Insurance is where people pool their money so they are jointly protected from unlikely but expensive risks. E.g., my house will probably never burn down, but I pay a little each month for fire insurance, because it’s inefficient for me to save up enough to rebuild on my own.
So for insurance, it makes sense to price it based on risk. Getting fire insurance on my storage facility for gasoline-soaked rags should be very expensive. And once a fire has broken out, I shouldn’t be able to buy insurance at all, because the fire isn’t a risk, it’s a certainty. It’s too late for insurance.
The lesson Huckabee should be taking from this is that insurance is the wrong model for health. What a lot of Americans actually wan’t isn’t health insurance, it’s affordable life-long health care. That is, they’d like what most civilized countries already have.
kindness
If only The Atlantic had comments. It would be so gratifying to read what people would tell them.
jl
This thuggish government policy would render the nation ungodly, for it says in the Bible
“What is truth?”
John 18:38.
What more argument is needed?
Greenhouse Guy
@ photo … please let this be some photoshop! The Stoopid Burns! Release the hounds!
Dork
@beltane: Nah, she’s really a ghoul.
Arclite
I’m gonna get sh!t for saying this, but Glenn Fvcking Greenwald.
It’s human nature to give much greater weight to negatives than to positives. Thus the enthusiasm gap.
Even here in Hawaii, a Dem stronghold that went 75% for Obama, the most of any state in the nation, the repubs smell blood and are out in force. I’ve heard from every repub candidate for every office in my district by phone, some personally called me. I’ve seen them on street corners , I’ve seen their signs everywhere. I have yet to have one Dem call. I have yet to see one Dem on the streets with signs. The enthusiasm gap has even infected the Dem politicians here.
General Stuck
@300baud:
Well, yea, comparing life saving medical care to anything else that has an insurance model, is amoral wingnut horseshit. But do think he would even consider single payer, nope, that would upset the gods of profit and make baby jeevus cry. So your point is moot with the likes of Huckabee. Because he would never support the truly moral system that wouldn’t and shouldn’t assess risk relative to a for profit business model for human beings needing life saving medical care.
cat48
If McMegan is wounded by Sebelius, I can’t wait until Warren lays into one of her pet corporations/banksters! She hasn’t seen nothing yet!
jl
@General Stuck: The Huckabee burned down house analogy is why health care reform has to be sold as a package, and all parts of the package have to be acceptable to the population.
Huckabee does have a minor point, allowing coverage of people with preexisting conditions will not result in a viable insurance risk pool.
So you must have
universal coverage with coverage for preexisting conditions.
And because the lack of sound insurance or provider regulation in health care in the United States, in order to make those two items palatable, you need to add
public option, or near equivalent.
I’m not sure the proposed exchanges are a near equivalent, it seems like they are not so perceived by the voting public.
At any rate, we can see how far Huckabee’s populist instincts go in practice.
ronin122
Call me stupid because I understand that they’re Glibertarians and not actually serious but….I thought that the free market was by definition and of necessity a market with–amongst other things–where all needed information was freely available? It’s as if asking for insurers to be honest actually ENCOURAGES a free market. Funny that….
NonyNony
McArdle was hired because she lies to people and feels no guilt about doing so. That is the only hypothesis that fits the evidence.
McArdle being on the blogroll of the Atlantic – and treated like an econoblogger – is one of the reasons that I can’t take it seriously anymore. Even the dead tree print publication. Any publisher who hires someone like McArdle to write about economic matters is either a blistering idiot whose status as a gatekeeper of opinion is disturbing and laughable, or someone who is paying lying propagandists to disseminate what he wants people to hear. Neither interpretation is good for the Atlantic.
SB Jules
@beltane:
I noticed the Palin/O’Donnell contrast too. Whatever will Sarah do?
Bullsmith
Stay on Megan, please and thank you. She’s an open sucking wound, spreading infection.
fasteddie9318
The updates at your link are hysterical. The idiot or idiots at Insureblog literally wrote that there is no gag order, but the fact that they could have a fever dream about one and believe it to be true proves that Obamacare sucks and Soshulist Voodoo Hitler, also too.
Even though Sarah Palin does not really bite the heads off of infants and suck out their organs, the fact that I can credibly imagine her doing so is proof that Sarah Palin is an inhuman monster.
cat48
@jeffreyw: I adore Homer already….too cute…..
NonyNony
@ronin122: That’s because you actually understood whatever econ courses you took.
People who took Econ 101 and actually paid attention understand that the “free market” is a mathematical model that can’t actually happen in real life because so many of the assumptions used in the model (perfect information, humans as rational actors) are laughably false in real life. All you can do is approximate it. And one way to approximate a free market is to have a state actor (the gubbmint) step in and correct places where assumptions aren’t being met. Like providing information in areas where, absent intervention, it wouldn’t exist. This is why the FDA is actually really damn important to a true free market – without the FDA the information on drugs is completely one-sided and hence not a free market.
Glibertarians fail to understand the ramifications of the free market model. Some of them are just too damn stupid to get it. Some get it but the imbalance of information is a net positive for them (or at least they think it is) so they lie about it. I’m convinced that McArdle lies somewhere in between those areas – she clearly failed to understand a good bit of her Econ classes (or else she wouldn’t say things that get her called out on fundamentals by folks like DeLong and Krugman), but she’s also clearly someone who will say the sky is green as long as you pay her enough.
Zifnab
@jah:
I like this statement, as though it’s some kind of opinion that can go either way.
Well sure, YOU guys say the rate increases are strictly the result of profiteering and price gouging on the part of the insurance companies. But MY guys say the rate increases are the result of nebulous unmentioned portions of the Health Care Act that aren’t scheduled to go into effect for another four years.
If you call me a liar and threaten to punish me for my misrepresentation, you are violating my freedom of expressed opinion!
General Stuck
@Arclite: I seriously doubt that calling the pro left retards, which they are btw, has more than a micro nanometer of cause for the enthusiasm gap, at least beyond the tiny blog world. What is it the wingtards in Hawaii are saying? the same as everywhere else, that Obama is the soshulist devil come for gawd fearing republican’s precious bodily fluids. It is the disconnect that drives me crazy about the GG’s of the world.
They claim Obama isn’t liberal enough, but the opposition energy fully belies that take on things.
Big mouth, hurt feelings, trying to make the prog molehill into a mountain of reason why dems are behind in enthusiasm. it is not a dem lack of it, but frothing wingnuts and tea tards who have way more than normal, that is primarily causing the enthusiasm gap. The is not a new phenom for mid terms elections, and goes both directions. But dems having their guys in power are starting to pay attention, and those gaps are narrowing and will narrow more, when they tune in fully the reality of letting goopers back in power.
john b
@300baud:
YES
scav
Whew, those must be some seriously perfect people with seriously perfect lives to allow the self-proclaimed Values Voters to cheer on the idea that somebody that, say, had a brain tumor successfully operated on at age 16 shouldn’t be able to buy health insurance and thus die from the trauma incurred in a car accident 30 years later. Damaged good, ya know? Why bother.
Linkmeister
@Arclite: I’ve had a few robocalls from Schatz and Caldwell, and lots of door-knocking from Blake Oshiro in my district. Blake even left me a nice e-bag to cart my groceries in.
And don’t get me started on all the e-mail from local Dem candidates; it must be upwards of 200 by now.
licensed to kill time
From the link, tominola said: I understand the theoretical outrage, but…(asks her for an analogous hypothetical outrage)
Heh. Megan McArdle, Theoretical Hypothetical Outrageist.
Linda Featheringill
Why did you do that to me, John?
I actually went to the website and read the ramblings of the lady in question, the first time I every have.
Once was enough. Hopefully, I will be able to resist such suggestions in the future. Ugh.
[I do wonder about her relationship with the anonymous but very, very, very reliable source, though.]
Redshift
@NonyNony: Yeah, I’m always struck by the fact that the people who most loudly insist that the free market can solve all of our problems constantly demonstrate they have no idea what a free market actually is.
beltane
@scav: Hey, don’t knock the values people. Even Jack the Ripper and Vlad the Impaler had values and these people can too.
valdivia
@General Stuck:
this. many times.
Mark S.
What kills me about these supposed fiscal conservatives is they never admit that every other industrialized country covers everybody for considerably less than we spend.
Mike E
Something about no honor amongst thieves, inserted here, also. Too.
beltane
@Mark S.: Yes, but they will regale you with anecdotes of six-month waits for pee pee enlargement surgery. Scandalous stuff.
jl
@NonyNony: What you say is true, in the standard model of welfare maximizing free market equilibrium under uncertainty, everyone has to have the same beliefs (or, same probability distribution of potential states of the world) in order for all the pretty theorems to work that explain why the market does good things.
NonyNony
@Redshift: It was one of the things that woke me up about how bankrupt libertarianism was as an economic philosophy – finding out that most libertarians have no fucking clue how an economy is supposed to operate. That and their insane belief that people are supposed to be serving the economy, rather than the other way around.
Redshift
@Mark S.: Well, sure, but all that “wasted” money is going to good American corporations, so what’s wrong with that?
jl
Also, in an update to to the McArdle’s post, it is all a false alarm, There was never any gag order. The company was updating its enrollee marketing and information materials.
“Regarding your post, “What Hath Sebelius Wrought At the Health Insurers?” > – This is not accurate for HCSC. There is no order from the HHS and we are still writing business. The confusion may be related to the production and replacement of marketing and member communication that will be required to comply with the Affordable Care Act deadline next week. As you know, a number of changes will go into effect for our members on September 23 and we are working to ensure we have accurate and timely information for policyholders.”
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2010/09/what-hath-sebelius-wrought-at-the-health-insurers/63098/#disqus_thread
Phwew! That was a close one.
But the Republic survives!
Paul L.
So The US Government can punish anyone who they consider lying.
And you call the Republicans authoritarian.
Or We Can’t Handle The Truth
maus
FREE MARKETZ
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@kindness: What are you talking about? McMegan has comments. And plenty of people(including me) there do tell her what an idiot she is. She also has a lot of fanboys/girls that kiss her ass, so you’ll need hip boots.
John Bird
How in the hell are you supposed to sell anybody anything if you’re not allowed to lie about it?
This is the elite American view of how the market works, and it’s been officially approved by the Supreme Court.
The Bobs
@Allan:
Allan, It can’t be that can it? Just what is it about the elegant, professorial Obama that makes her think “thug”?
Cain
@Martin:
It looked fake to me. Nobody could be that stupid.
cain
Huggy Bear
You libs don’t get it. MecMegan is right. More than that, she is on to something. This is just the beginning. Think about what the next Senator from Delaware, the lovely (and chaste) Ms. O’Donnell knew way back in 2007, even before Obamacare. The mice with the human brains. That was the start. Next, it will be mice with human penises, all part of the Gay Agenda that warriors like the Tea Party are fighting. I mean, why would one need the awesome procreative power of Christian love, if all you need to do is milk the baby making matériel from an unsuspecting human-animal hybrid? That is what Sebelius doesn’t want them to tell you about. Goodbye, sacred missionary-style baby-makin’, hello milkmaids of the Gaypocalypse.
Sentient Puddle
@NonyNony: I still have no clue how the libertarian economic philosophy survives contact with the first half of a microeconomics 101 class. Anyone with a functioning brain should be able to tell how far off from reality the theoretical construct of perfect competition is.
slag
@Paul L.:
Not only that, but did you know that the government can quarantine foods that they consider contaminated? How will our Republic survive?!
jl
@Paul L.: Did you even look at the link in the post. The HHS letter does not say anything even close to “The US Government can punish anyone who they consider lying”.
And a gag order never existed. The company was updating its files and did not want to distribute anything until it was finished.
Is McArdle trying to step up her blogging game by taking lessons from Glenn Beck and Michelle Malkin?
Steve
@Paul L.:
Well, that’s what Martha Stewart found out, yes.
Also, the government can punish companies that engage in consumer fraud. I know, I know, Hitler did exactly the same thing!
And the easiest case of all is that if your company chooses to participate in a voluntary government program in order to make big-time profits – like Medicare Advantage, or the health insurance exchanges – then yeah, the government can control what you say to participants in the program, EVEN TO THE POINT OF STOPPING YOU FROM LYING. Yes, folks, the health insurer is the Gypsy of liberal fascism.
Sentient Puddle
I think the proper reply to Paul L. is something along the lines of “Dude, you have no Koran.”
PTirebiter
For the people raised believing that the Gilded Age was the true natural order of things, it’s not whacked out at all. They really just assume that they’d automatically take their place above the salt. In reality, most of them would wake up covered in shit, then hustle their kids off to the garment district to make their share of the rent.
wasabi gasp
If nothing else, debt-wracked sick folks take comfort in knowing nobodies ox is being gored. Don’t take that away from them.
Redshift
@NonyNony: For me, it was hearing libertarians in the SF community declare with great certainty that the government shouldn’t fund basic scientific research, because if they didn’t do it, private companies would. That’s when I came up with my line that I don’t debate libertarianism because I was taught it’s not polite to argue about religion.
MobiusKlein
@Paul L.:
Fixed:
specifically, lying in certain contexts where the law provides for remedies. See truth in advertising, perjury, lying to officers, fraud.
jeffreyw
@cat48: Homer is growing on us. Buddy has tried to get him to run with a mock attack and is perplexed seeing Homer stand his ground.
scav
@beltane:
Well, I tried ringing the doorbell (the lights were on) but there was no one home.
Martin
@Cain:
You are aware who the subject of this blog post is? You want to reconsider your answer?
Brachiator
@300baud:
But countries with universal health care take different paths to get there, including insurance. These countries use a combination of methods, including regulation and mandates, but they don’t necessarily rely solely on government tax revenue to provide health coverage.
Whatever system you come up with, you have to come up with a way to deal with the equivalent of this. It’s one thing to say that people want affordable life-long health care. It’s another thing to say that you will guarantee coverage to everyone no matter the condition and no matter how expensive it might be to provide that coverage. France appears to have come up with a (for now) humane and workable way of dealing with some of this:
But what do you do for people who deliberately put themselves at risk or who deliberately make choices that result in the need for continual and expensive health care responses? The guy with the storage facility with gasoline soaked rags either pays a high premium or is priced out of the market. Or modifies his behavior so that he can afford insurance.
Josie
@jeffreyw: Those pictures of Homer are giving me a serious case of kitten envy, and the last thing I need is another kitty. I had a kitten with a cast on her back leg (I think the akbash dog stepped on her by accident while playing) and she clackity clacked around the house for six weeks. I still have her years later, and she is the sweetest cat ever. Homer is just too cute.
Jbird
@Brachiator:
I think you would have to admit that France’s public/private system works in part because the way France has treated the right to health care since World War II is drastically different. That’s thanks to their Social Security program, first conceived by the French Resistance during the war, and because the practical history that resulted is that health insurance companies in France serve a small niche market, while here they are government-approved monopolies that craft legislation.
A lot of people I know wonder aloud why single-payer is the only system that is viable in the long-term for the U.S. if France and other countries have a public-private hybrid.
The answer is that in the U.S., we have to break the private insurance industry like an ornery bronco, or we’re all going to get bucked.
LittlePig
@Sentient Puddle: I was thinking more SASQUATCH ISREAL
Martin
@Brachiator: Well, health conditions are not so mysterious that we cannot distinguish between preventable and non-preventable causes in the majority of cases.
What the current system fails to align (which we are currently stumbling through) is how to provide proper economic feedback from health costs to institutional contributors. Sure, the system pushes back against the guy with the gasoline soaked rags, but that’s a problem that already has behavior incentive – the guy has a personal incentive not to set himself on fire. What we lack is the health cost incentive to BP to not poison the people that live around their plant, or to the automaker to not make their cars safer, and so on. Once you make health care the responsibility of government, suddenly government has a much more direct interest in dealing with those issues.
Jbird
In sane systems, you have to buy health insurance for the same reason that you have to pay into our (way too restricted) retirement system: because otherwise, your poor planning ends up costing everyone else money anyway.
We have somehow managed to craft a system, instead, where there’s a possibility that by being forced to buy insurance, you will cost everyone else even more money. It’s mind-boggling, but all you have to ask is cui bono?
What influential group might gain, rather than lose, money on this mug’s game? Hint: they probably weren’t intended to be eternally exempt from antitrust laws under a 1930s sunset provision, but every time someone brings up putting them into the marketplace to compete, the proposition dies mysteriously.
Jbird
By the way, I’ve noticed that many Democrats don’t understand the self-interested viewpoint that fuels such depraved behavior. You have to put yourself in the minds of these people to get it: they’re part of a very lucrative industry that has little to no risk of losing profits even in a downturn, since most companies can hike rates without fear of competition, and you are naturally dedicated to maintaining the company that feeds your family and keeps you in a home.
I’ve found that you need to immerse yourself in the viewpoint of the side that stands to benefit personally; pick an organization that lobbies for that side and track their behavior.
I picked NAIFA. You’ll find some very lovely bits as the organization justifies itself to its members by explaining how its inside access prevented the public option from ever happening.
They also have a blog, which is a real treat and rivals this one for amusement. “CEO Susan Waters: NAIFA members need NAIFA ‘now more than ever'”.
dms
@beltane:
She’s 37. That might be relatively young, but it is not “young”. She’s old enough, way past old enough to know better.
Brachiator
@Jbird:
Actually, this is putting things bass ackwards. Some people are more interested in punishing the wicked insurance companies than they are in getting quality, affordable health care for citizens. And so they make a fetish of single payer as health care nirvana.
@Martin:
In California, people deliberately move into fire hazard regions and deliberately fail to get insurance on their homes. When fires break out, they count on the state using its resources to fight the fire, and on state and federal disaster designations to help restore their homes after the disaster.
On a more trivial, but related level, my dentist tells me that a certain portion of his patients just refuse to practice good dental care. They look on periodic cleaning, which is partly covered by their health insurance, as a kind of luxury treat, and don’t care that their lack of diligence might cause them problems down the road.
People are perverse, and sometimes may resist following healthy practices, especially if they expect their government to serve them.
Svensker
@Paul L.:
And declare them a terrorist and lock them up without ability to contact a lawyer or anything! You must be so upset about that.
Cat Lady
Once again, a shout out to aimai in that comments section for schooling not just McMegan but the other wingtard blaming Obamacare for her insurance problem that won’t be fixed until Obamacare comes online in 2014. You go girl.
Tsulagi
Think you could look to Barton for that answer. You know, the guy who apologized to BP in the name of all real Americans calling establishing a claims fund for BP’s fuckup as a “shakedown.”
Sebelius wrote a sternly worded letter to AHIP. BFD. It’ll probably have the same impact and be filed in the same manner as all other sternly worded letters.
Steve
@Brachiator:
Not sure why they don’t just make fire insurance mandatory in those places, kinda like flood insurance is mandatory in certain places. Also, don’t those people worry about dying in a fire? Getting your house fixed for free is awesome, but not having it burn down in the first place is also awesome.
Mark S.
@dms:
I didn’t know she was that old. She still writes like a freshman in college.
AhabTRuler
Not only is that pic a ‘shop, it’s a really shitty one. And I am an expert at shitty ‘shop-jobs.
Cain
@Redshift:
Honestly, it is the science fiction community, you need not take them seriously.
cain
Cain
@Martin:
Can I use a life line?
cain
Syz
Can we add “whatever the facts” to the Balloon Juice Lexicon?
Odie Hugh Manatee
This fall we get the joy of seeing what happens to our insurance costs with the new contract. This year the company people came into her job and told the employees that the rate hikes were caused by “Obamacare” and that they were trying to do the best they can for their employees. Every fall they try to get employees to fall for a “Health Screening” offered by the insurance company. Normally they just tell the employees that if they take the screening they MAY save up to $50.00 a month. This year the company told the employees that the screenings can either take place at the company or at their doctor.
They were given a package of papers that states that noneof the information gathered in the screening would be available to the employers. I flipped through the package and sure enough, on page one it states that. The last page in the package is a release of information form that you are to sign and give to your doc if you opt to have them do the screening.
On that form it clearly states that the doctor is to release the information TO HER EMPLOYER. Yes, they outright lied to the employees. A new twist this year is that now they are tripling the deductible but you MIGHT get it reduced by 1/2 if you opt for the health screening! All you have to do is not be predisposed to hypertension, overweight or be a candidate for diabetes, which is the purpose of the health screening!
My wife jumped their asses about the bullshit claim that “Obamacare” was causing all of these changes and their lying about her employer not having access to her medical information. Other employees are going for it to reduce medical costs but we are having nothing to do with it.
Sebelius is on target, these fuckers in the insurance industry don’t give a shit about anything but profit and they will blame this administration in an attempt to cover their asses.
Fuck them all.
Redshift
@Cain: Hey! Don’t talk about my peeps that way!
And seriously, Heinlein acolytes come closer to making sense than most libertarians on political blogs.
Jbird
@Brachiator:
All I can tell you is that you are pretty wrong and that a quick refresher in the parallel histories of American and French private insurance companies, as well as the history of social programs in both countries, will reveal why. That is, it will provide the historical and factual backing behind the argument that I’ve already presented here and can only repeat so many times.
It’s actually much more interesting reading than you might assume, and I’d suggest books that also put France’s system in the European context of other countries in the region.
I would love to demonize American health insurance companies, but as you can see, I don’t really have to do that, as simply describing them is enough to make most Americans feel a little sick to their stomachs. They are already unaccountable monopolies who write most of the legislation concerning their industry and hold unprecedented influence over policy for a civilized, Western country, and the proper thing to do is to take the small hit on our economy by utterly recreating the system outside of their influence.
After a period of some years, once we have reoriented health policy to serve the interests of the country, I allow that we should probably let the health insurance companies back into the negotiations in a limited fashion to ensure their compliance. That’s quite generous, I think.
arguingwithsignposts
What I would like is for all these damned assholes to stop calling it “Obamacare.” Yes, I know it’s wingnutese like Democrat Party, but it was the fucking Congress who passed the POS we got, complete with public option. Obama signed the law that was given to him. So it’s not “Obamacare.”
Jbird
@Odie Hugh Manatee: Nothing says America like a system where you have to appeal to a public body for redress when you’re offered an obscene price gouge by a single seller.
Jbird
@Redshift:
Wait, I thought those were the same groups of people.
Jbird
@Brachiator:
By the way, if you don’t understand why people see dental care as a luxury, people, who, say, get reimbursement for dental bills by a complex formula that minimizes coverage for the likely cost of specific procedures, including cleaning, you are so out of touch with people in the United States that the values of your opinions are in question.
There’s two possibilities with your dentist: the first and most likely is that he’s telling you things that benefit him as an individual, and the second is that he doesn’t really pay attention to patients’ health insurance because he has ‘people’ for that, which is where a lot of older doctors fall.
AhabTRuler
@Jbird: I’d give my eyeteeth for affordable dental coverage.
No, seriously.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Jbird:
Freedumb baby!
I need to correct something in that post above. Her employer wasn’t lying when they said that they would not have access to the health screening information. The medical release form states that it is to be released to the company that owns her company, so I guess that excuses them.
@arguingwithsignposts:
Agreed. My wife pointed out that very thing to the assholes who were saying “Obamacare” at her job. She also pointed out that many aspects of HCR will not be implemented until 2014 and that it’s clear that insurers are trying to screw us over one last time before it’s fully implemented. Good thing that her job is secure. They want her to move into management but she has been putting them off because she doesn’t care for the people who would be above her.
She’s very good at her job so she doesn’t have to kiss ass to keep it. She’s been given so many gold stars and bars by her employer that when she puts them on her jacket lapels for some company event we refer to her as Generalissimo.
RSR
Is this a fake, a la Joaquin Phoenix, where she’s trying to see how stupid she can get before she gets fired/’serious’ people notice???
slightly_peeved
The British have plenty of people who eat crap, and in cases have strongly resisted government efforts to get them or their children to eat less crap. Parents were pushing hamburgers through the fences of schools when new healthy menus were created at the schools, for Chrissake. Yet the NHS is still one of the best value-for-money health systems in the world. It’s certainly not because the British are healthy, or particularly inclined to listen to their dieticians.
asiangrrlMN
I did not read the original post by MM2, but I did see the rebuttal by SusanofTexas via TBogg. “Whatever the facts”. That right there is MM2 in a nutshell. Seriously, how do I get her job?