“So,” they said. “We don’t think SCOTUS will repeal the entire health care reform law, or gut the law and effectively end it, because that would put all the pressure on the GOP to replace it with something. There would be a hole in one-sixth of the US economy. They’d have do something about it.”
And as anyone who is familiar with The Neverending Story can tell you, the GOP is all about embracing the Nothing as far as health care reform (and with it, government itself). As the Rock Biter said when asked what was destroying his peoples’ lands and what was left as a result:
A hole would be something. No, it was…Nothing.
Steve Benen points out that the GOP is perfectly okay with the HCR Nothing taking over. Repeal and Replace is now just Repeal and The Nothing.
When the debate over health care reform got underway in earnest in 2009, Frank Luntz and other GOP pollsters/strategists warned the party that Americans expected improvements to the dysfunctional system, and Republicans couldn’t simply say “no” to everything.
Three years later, that’s effectively where the party has ended up: wanting to go back to the mess “Obamacare” is cleaning up.
But what about McConnell’s main idea? It’s one of the GOP’s favorite talking points: we don’t need real reform; we just need to let consumers buy across state lines. President Obama and the Affordable Care Act allow this, but set minimum standards that states must abide by. McConnell and his party want to go further, removing, or at least severely weakening, those standards.
This is generally called the “race to the bottom.” Under McConnell’s vision, state policymakers would tell insurers that if they were to set up shop in their state the rules would be written in the industry’s favor. The industry would go with the state that offered the sweetest deal — which is to say, the most lax oversight with the fewest restrictions — and before long, it would be consumers’ only choice. Why? Because every insurer would move to that state, leaving Americans with no other coverage to buy.
That’s exactly what happened with the credit card industry, and it’s a model to be avoided, not followed.
But tossing us all into The Nothing is what the GOP wants. They “want to give the power to the states” because it’s FREEDOM and junk, and instead we’ll get the same awful abuses that the credit card industry has been perpetrating on consumers for years, only far worse because this time it will involve health insurance and health care itself. The cheapest, meanest policies that cover the least in health care and have massive deductibles will be the only ones left for the vast majority of Americans and the insurance industry will pocket the difference. Can’t afford it? There’s Nothing you can do about it. Keen observers will note that the Nothing applies to any social government functions: Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and retirement, environmental protections, education, food safety, financial products, everything. You can’t provide it yourself because you can’t afford it? You get Nothing.
So no, I don’t believe for a second that the GOP will have to replace HCR with something. That would be something, after all. What they want is Nothing.
[UPDATE] And the folks that are expecting single payer to rise from the ashes should HCR get mauled? With a GOP House? No. the rocks must be delicious in your world, but single payer ain’t happening until there’s a seismic shift in the red/blue ratio. Unless you think this particular SCOTUS is going to rewrite the universe and declare that Congress has to pass a single payer law, in which case the rocks are delicious in your world and they’re made of 100% unicorn poop.
Chris
Quoted for truth.
The foundation of their ideology for thirty years has been that kind of Nothing, after all. So I don’t believe it’s a problem for them either.
Scott
Exactly. The GOP has been working hard to make things worse for more Americans. Part of it is an electoral strategy — part of it’s pure greed — part of it is just plain ornery meanness.
Bulworth
Ha ha.
David in NY
Well, so when it all (or mostly) gets struck down, what’s the next move? Or are you saying we shouldn’t even contemplate that result?
That is, of course the Republicans don’t want universal health care in any form. But we do. How about we focus on that, and not just whistle in the wind?
c u n d gulag
They are no longer Conservatives.
They are no longer Republican.
They are now Nihilists.
With a teaspoon of Anarchy.
David in NY
And how the hell do you skip lines between paragraphs again (I thought double underscore, but that didn’t work — maybe I’ve got it wrong).
Chris
@c u n d gulag:
Nihilists! Fuck me. I mean, say what you want about the tenets of National Socialism, dude…
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
Too bad too many Americans have been convinced that Nothing = Freedums.
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
Aka: “Confederacy”.
__
The Boss Hoggs of America prefer to run their little fiefdoms with minimal interference from the Feds. Getting to watch others suffer is just the frosting on the cake for them.
Democratic Nihilist, Keeper Of Party Purity
What idiot said this? We’re talking about a party comprised of folks whose only objection to the wholesale slaughter of poor people is that it would make them look bad.
Chris
@David in NY:
Word up!
Also, I see the word “soshulism” is still banned. :(
Schlemizel
I noticed during questioning that Antonin “Fat Tony” Scalia felt the problem that the mandate was meant to cover for was caused when the government required emergency rooms to treat people even if they didn’t have health insurance.
So there is your GOP answer right there – remove the necessity to provide a gawdam thing to people & voila! the need for ACA, or really any reform is gone- POOF!.
Welcome to Dickensian America.
Raven
@c u n d gulag:No ethos.
Veritas
Shorter Zanadar: WAAAH! WAH! It’s no fair!
You’re just going to have to deal, losers. ObamaCare is dead and we’re not under any obligation to replace it with anything.
And given the principle of federalism, it is much better off in the hands of the several states than in the hands of the feds.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@David in NY: He wasn’t saying anything about not contemplating further.
But, I do have one question for everyone who thinks the Supreme Court striking this law down means Universal Healthcare to the rescue: How are you going to convince enough Americans that having the government run the health care system is the best thing when they run to Republicans when Republicans state they want to end Medicare and Social Security?
Satanicpanic
Republicans only are saying “buy across state lines” because they feel compelled to have a response. They’d probably be just as happy not talking about it at all.
beltane
@David in NY: Maybe the smarter, better segment of the American public should work on forming their own, alternative, health care system. I have no problem with a clinic that would use a conscience exception to refuse to treat Republican voters. I am sorry for those of you with beloved wingnut friends and relatives, but these people are the root of all our country’s problems. They deserve to be bankrupted by an exorbitantly expensive, inhumane, craptacualar health care system; the rest of us do not.
BlueDWarrior
@Veritas: I for one welcome the market being nothing but junk insurance because every HMO and other large-scale insurance provider will relocate to Oklahoma which will have the worst regulations.
Woo, more race to the bottom!
SenyorDave
There is no reason for the GOP to do anything but say no – they never pay a price for it. The VSP who write in the pages of the NYT, WSP and other “great” dailies almost never call them on it, and when they do it becomes a both sides to do it argument.
And as can be seen from Rachel Maddow’s show, Romney can lie all the ding dong day and basically never get called on it.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@Schlemizel:
Well, the GOP already thinks it’s just peachy keen to deny emergency abortions to women even if it means sure death. It’s not a drastic jump from there to denying emergency anything to prevent death if it’s financially or morally inconvenient. And considering just how often financially = morally in GOP eyes…
Veritas
@BlueDWarrior:
It’s called the free market. Suck it.
I already have great healthcare. I don’t need to pay for welfare bums and college kiddies who moved back in with their parents because their degree in Queer Theory wasn’t marketable.
David in NY
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): So this is just an exercise in whining about both the “professional progressives” and the Republicans? That’s worth doing.
JGabriel
Zandar @ Top:
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Dahlia Lithwick nailed it yesterday:
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jrg
@Veritas: Yes, you do have to pay for them, when they go to the E.R., you fucking troll. That’s the problem.
Veritas
@jrg:
Most of them are illegals. Crack down on the border and 90% of the problem is solved.
David in NY
@Veritas: Well, you discredit youself with every word you write. Let’s hear more. I gather you like the Scalia solution — “the Hospitals should just let people die on their doorsteps if they don’t have a job that provides health insurance.” Let’s hear more.
Veritas
@David in NY:
They should rely on charity if its an emergency.
Veritas
I know someone who had to go to the emergency room for a serious injury–the bill was $27k, but Catholic Charities paid for all but $5k of it. He paid the $5k off using a payment plan.
Raven
Does the pie thingy still work?
David in NY
@Veritas: Oh, and you’ll be right outside to pay their bills, right? Someone who has just proclaimed his belief in the selfish “I’ve got mine” solution now is all for charity? You are sick.
flounder
So McConnell’s two health care solutions were federally mandated weakening of state tort laws, and federally mandated weakening of state insurance regulations (race to the bottom).
Unremarked in all the commentary on McConnell’s statement is that the only two policy proposals the GOP now pretends to offer are federal mandates of a very anti-state’s rights fashion.
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
@Veritas:
For now.
Veritas
@David in NY:
No, dipshit, there are large charitable organizations out there. Read above what happened to my friend.
dedc79
I like the Neverending Story reference, but wouldn’t Mcconnell be that giant turtle creature?
Schlemizel
@Satanicpanic:
Not true – the reason they say “buy across state lines” is because it removes control from individual states & allows those with the worst protections to gather all the insurance providers. This allows them to charge more for worse protection.
Veritas
@Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor:
Yes, for now. Let’s hope ObamaCare doesn’t screw it up.
Raven
@Veritas: A scumbag like you doesn’t have any friends.
Steve
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): Republicans don’t say they want to end Medicare and Social Security. They say they want to “reform” them in order to “strengthen” and “protect” them. Some people are fooled by this.
Schlemizel
@Veritas:
I truly hope for the day that you need healthcare but don’t have coverage. The only thing that makes assholes like you wake up & understand is when it happens to yuo.
Look up sociopath in the dictionary – the picture next to it will be familiar, its you.
SenyorDave
@David in NY: @jrg: 90%? Please cite your data on that statistic.
While you are at it, please let us know your clear line of sight as to how you are going to remove all 12 million undocumented people from this country.
Schlemizel
@Veritas:
And the plural of anecdote is . . . bullshit
Veritas
@Schlemizel:
Not gonna happen, sorry. I work for a living, instead of living off the government dime (either through welfare or government jobs) or in my parent’s basement whining that my Queer Theory degree entitles me to six figures like most Obambi supporters.
jibeaux
No.
Thread’s borked now. Someone start a new one?
Satanicpanic
@Schlemizel: You may be right. I just don’t think it would rate up there with their priorities of taxing the rich and bombing brown people.
Cacti
Race to the bottom, tort reform, and health savings accounts.
Those are the GOP’s “solutions”.
Amir Khalid
So far, double underscore works for me. Let’s have another go.
__
New paragraph. So the Republican party will tear down any Democratic legislation, break any promise to them, destroy generations of effort to improve the lot of the ordinary American (some of it undertaken by their own party), all in the name of a nihilistic partisanship. And all marketed to its faithful voters as a restoration of an America truer to its values.
__
There’s a guy who’s going around asking:
Where’s the promise from sea to shining sea
That wherever this flag is flown
We take care of our own?
Every nation worth the name makes that promise to itself. By turning away from it, the Republican party has made itself quite un-American.
Satanicpanic
Can we not feed the troll today? I know it’s tempting, but we all know the stupid things its going to say, and you’re never going to convince it of anything
beltane
@Veritas: I realize you think you are terribly clever for paying Ferrari prices for a Yugo health care product, but who provides your health insurance? What if your employer was to say, “Wow, this Veritas is engaging in time-theft, spending his whole day trolling Balloon Juice. I’m going to can his lazy ass.”? How would you obtain health insurance then?
Remember, psychological problems also count as pre-existing conditions for purposes of private insurance, which would leave virtually every wingnut in the country uninsurable.
Sly
@jrg:
The money isn’t the issue. The poor must be punished for being poor, even if that punishment costs more than any alternative that allows them to have a shred of human dignity. The life of a conservative is meaningless otherwise.
dedc79
@Veritas: You seem to be making some pretty unfounded assumptions based on one experience you had with one friend and one charity. What charities are paying so that people without insurance can have an annual checkup at a doctor’s office (which can now cost well over $100 in many places)? What charities are paying for the $50,000 surgeries? And where was that money going before it got coopted to pay a single person’s medical bills?
Redshift
@David in NY:
Because what we need to do in the near term, elect more and better Democrats, isn’t changed by the outcome of this case. It’s perfectly reasonable to gripe about this now because it’s the current news, and I don’t think there’s a lot to be gained strategically by focusing on what we might do when the case is decided in three months, rather than on the election that will definitely be happening in November.
JGabriel
Veritas:
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Not people. Illegals. Outlawed things. To be herded into camps, because that worked out so well when the Germans did it.
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Illegals.
__
Most slurs build their power through usage. Few are so immediately dehumanizing, merely on the basis of simply defining a person’s very existence as an affront to the law.
__
The inhumanity of that term is disgusting, revolting, and sociopathic. You should be ashamed of yourself, Veritas.
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Chyron HR
Shorter @Veritas:
No, wait, that’s not shorter, it’s just Regular Veritas. Never mind.
jrg
@SenyorDave: What are you talking about? Did you mean to link to my comment?
All I’m saying is that people with insurance pay about 1K more a year to cover people without it. I don’t have a link for that, I heard it on NPR yesterday.
David in NY
@Veritas: Oh, it’s “I don’t have to contribute to anyone’s care but my own — the charity fairy will take care of anyone else.” Except, of course, that doesn’t work even now, or hospitals wouldn’t be burdened with non-paying patients since, as you explain it, the charity fairy should be paying for them. Wow!! You’ve solved the hospitals’ problems, just go tell a few Hospital CEO’s about the charity fairy — they seem not to have heard of it.
Veritas
@beltane:
I’m an extremely valuable employee. Very unlikely I’d ever be fired. And if I was, I have the education, skillset, and drive to get a new job quickly.
It’s called being a winner in life through persistence and hard work. Liberals should try it sometime, instead of getting the government to punish the winners for the benefit of the losers in life.
gorram
@Veritas: Jesus H Christ, charity? So that the survival of the poor is dependent on the rich feeling bad about them dying? The poor have to be popular with the wealthy, they have to ingratiate themselves with the wealthy, they have to let their right to existence become conditional on the wealthy’s acceptance of that right.
Do you really want a communist revolution that badly?
Veritas
@David in NY:
Again, how many of those “non-paying” patients in the emergency room are illegals?
A good start would be forbidding ERs from treating illegals. No documentation, no service.
Cacti
@beltane:
Trolling is his employment.
And I doubt it comes with a healthcare plan. Everything it ever says follows a script.
Redshift
@Satanicpanic: Yep, not gonna do it. But I’m actually feeling a little better about the Supreme Court, since our own personal Bill “always wrong about everything” Kristol is absolutely certain that the case will go their way.
middlewest
http://ok-cleek.com/blogs/15196/bj-pie-filter-updated-for-new-layout/
David in NY
@Redshift: Well, I guess that starting right now to tell our crappy Democrats and Republicans that we expect that if this is struck down they’ll extend Medicare to everyone would be a better use of everyone’s time than commenting here.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@David in NY: While I was thinking about my question some more, I had this idea: In 2015 – I want 4 more years of Obama not only because he’s doing pretty well, but because it drives them insane – we as Democrats should flat out state that if the Republicans pass universal healthcare with a minimum 10 year run and marriage equality for all adults, that we will not run a candidate for president in 2016. Because the other side it willing to destroy the country just to prevent a Democrat from running things.
David in NY
@Veritas: From selfishiness to immigrant-baiting. You are losing it.
Cacti
To be fair to trollburger, it has gotten a little better at its job.
It used to pop in and start ranting about global warming no matter what the thread topic.
Splitting Image
I actually agree with Scalia about the two mandates standing or falling together. If they strike down the individual mandate, the mandate for hospitals to provide health care irrespective of insurance will go down too. As some other people have pointed out, insurance companies will also work to take down the requirements to insure high-risk patients and people with pre-existing conditions.
I think people are right that the GOP is entirely nihilist and wants to price the entire health care system out of the range of everyone they don’t think deserves it. Unfortunately for them, this is only politically viable if enough people actually have health care and don’t believe that the GOP will really take it away from them.
Take away health care from the wingnuts and pensioners who depend on it, and the GOP loses every culture war issue in one swoop. Even abortion will become a political loser if they can’t rely on a base of people who have their own needs covered and aren’t in any danger of needing that particular operation.
The Republicans are playing with fire here and I don’t think most of them have any clue what they are doing.
Veritas
@David in NY:
You’re saying that illegals don’t contribute a hell of a lot to the lines and cost of emergency rooms?
We need border security now.
David in NY
The one instructive thing about this thread is that what I’d like to call for preseent purposes the Veritas-Scalia “Let ‘Em Die” solution should be branded on the head of every conservative officeholder in the country. That, I think, might get us some more and better politicians.
Sly
The Conservative Idea of Charitable Healthcare.
David in NY
@Veritas: You’re changing the subject. Let’s go back — exactly how does the charity fairy work? Tell me again, I like fairy tales.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Veritas:
pansy assed SOCIALIST! We need the legalized hunting of everyone with a Mexican sounding name NOW!!! Leave to a moocher like you Veritas to whine to get the government to fix the problem.
Veritas
@David in NY:
Do illegals contribute to the rising cost of healthcare in this country through their presence in emergency rooms, or not?
Rommie
Just like how too many people seem to believe Daffy Duck was a Role Model, and not satire, Willy Wonka telling Charlie to get lost was a test, and not a statement of his true feelings.
I got mine, you get nothing, FU. It’s as important for them to tell people they get nothing as it is to have their something.
Cacti
@Veritas:
“Border security” is the least practical solution, but provides the best optics for tough-talking pols who like to puff up their chests and pull out their pricks.
Asset forfeiture for the employers of undocumented labor would staunch the flow from our southern border in a hurry. Oddly, no one wants to touch that one.
Litlebritdifrnt
I want to know where all these magical charities are, cause I sure would like to give their name and number to all of the people with pickle jars on convenience store counters.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Veritas:
Yes, yes, you work for the Federal government. That was always painfully obvious.
maya
Freedom’s just another word
for Nothing left to lose
Who knew the GOP were Janis Joplin fans?
4tehlulz
@Veritas: Awesome; I’ll be sure to *cough* to thank you for the pandemic that guarantees.
Chyron HR
Thought Experiment: What if the number of “illegals” going to the emergency room was, as Veritas wants us to think, a very high number? He’d be repeating it in every one of his posts, obviously.
So, what can we deduce from the fact that Veritas has not told us this number even once?
Veritas
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Try Catholic Charities, for one. Again, read the story of my friend above.
Ash Can
@Raven: Yes, the pie thingy works, and it can be found here (all hail cleek). I’m glad I already ate breakfast, or I’d be tearing the kitchen apart searching for tasty baked goods right now.
jwb
@Cacti: I vacillate as to whether Veritas is designed for entertainment purposes (like BOB, it’s amusingly dumb at times) or is simply, like Romneybot 2.0, a very poor investment by the overlords.
Cacti
@Litlebritdifrnt:
.
Catholic charities will pay for 80% of your healthcare costs according to internet troll, Veritas.
Unless of course it’s an ectopic pregnancy. In which case, Jesus demands you die.
Veritas
And, even if the charity doesn’t write off the whole thing or if you get nothing at all, work out a payment plan.
Call me old fashioned, but I believe in paying what you owe.
Yutsano
@Cacti:
Amazing, that. It’s almost like they don’t want to solve the problem or something! Now why would that be I wonder?
And the illegal/ER story is a distraction and ultimately not relevant. Lack of a coherent payment system for healthcare is. And if it’s not fixed, it will fall apart.
Mnemosyne
Ah, the perfect Republican world, where paraplegic patients are dumped on Skid Row without their wheelchairs because they can’t afford their hospital bills.
.
Hey, if that guy didn’t want to be left in the street with only a hospital gown and a colostomy bag, he should have planned better.
.
catclub
@Amir Khalid: I like to put it:
—
There is no US in USA
maya
Who knew the SC(R)OTUS Five was a Death Panel?
David in NY
@Litlebritdifrnt: In my rural part of New York state, there’s almost always a jar on the counter of my diner — and, you know, the little boy with his picture on the jar doesn’t have brown skin!! Or a Hispanic name!! But Veritas-Scalia says, “Let ‘Em Die,” he’s just an “illegal” or the “free market” will take care of him, or something stupid like that.
eric
With due respect to all of you, the GOP are not nihilist insofar as they are Cynics. The only reason the GOP wants to defeat “Obamacare” and do nothing is because (i) it is the work of Obama and (ii) it is the desire of Obama to “fix” health care. All of these ideas are GOP friendly and the work of GOP think tanks. They do not “want” the poor to go without healthcare, they want Obama to go without a victory. That they care little about “collateral” damage is a feature not a bug of their political cynicism that has its genesis in the Southern Strategy.
stratplayer
Isn’t it axiomatic that the fewer, shittier and more expensive our options are, the freer we are as a people?
Cacti
@jwb:
It’s this.
The way he used to thread-jack everything into a rant about global warming made it too obvious that he was paid-per-post troll.
Unlike Romneybot though, it has gotten a bit more polished, and at least it’s trolling is topical. It shows a capacity for learning that the Romneybot hasn’t displayed.
David in NY
@maya:
Oooooh, nice!
Satanicpanic
@Redshift:
That actually is heartening. Like you, my rule of thumb is that if Kristol believes something, there’s a 90% chance that the opposite is true. If Friedman and Halperin are also on board, they becomes the Holy Trinity of Wrongness and the opposite is a certainty.
Veritas
@David in NY:
Why don’t you contribute to the jar instead of trying to force others (at the point of a gun) to do it for you?
Mnemosyne
@Cacti:
.
Personally, I advocate that the CEO or owner of a business that’s found to be employing even one illegal worker be put in jail for one year.
.
I’m a nice, softhearted liberal, so they can go to minimum security, but a crime is a crime and the company’s owner or CEO needs to pay the penalty for hiring illegal workers.
.
beltane
@Veritas: Oh please. “Illegals” are employed in physically demanding jobs that make them far more fit than native-born Americans. They are also mostly from cultures that consume a much healthier diet than the Real American slog of pink slime, high-fructose corn syrup, and rancid hydroginated fats. The real culprits in rising health care costs are the 40+ white conservatives who believe that exercise and green vegetables are s0c1al1st plots tomake them gay, and who spend all of their leisure time parked on the couch watching Fox News as they cultivate their love-handles and man-boobs with the help of estrogen infused meat products washed down with overly sweetened “energy drinks”.
I don’t care if wingnuts want to consume a tub of Crisco every day-be my guest. I do resent that they expect young people, immigrants, gays and liberals to subsidize their disgusting lifestyle.
catclub
@Cacti: Or asset forfeiture and time in prison. neither seem to come up when the GOP is looking for solutions to the problem.
—
Now, a dime bag of marijuana — that’s a whole nother ballgame. Ask any texas sheriff who gets to keep what he catches.
Veritas
@beltane:
Healtheir diet? Bwahahaha. Mexico is even fatter than the US.
David in NY
@Veritas: I do. Now, why don’t you support a humane system instead of one based on your own selfishness? That would be an even trade, I think.
Veritas
If anything I wonder if the rise in obesity in the US since the 1960s has to do with the increasing number of latinos in the US, since they tend to be on the heavier side according to the data.
Shinobi
Giving all the power to the states == the true path to Freedumb
Mnemosyne
Also, too, can we take a moment to point out that conservatives are the real looters and moochers in this country? They want to have other people contribute towards their Social Security, their roads, their fire departments, their police departments, their wars, but when the bills come due for all of those things that they wanted to have, all of a sudden it’s “Dude, I left my wallet in my other jacket” and “I only had two bites of that appetizer, so I shouldn’t have to pay anything for it.”
.
They want to live in a nice society but have other people pick up the bills for them. That’s why they screech so loud about the “illegals” who are taking their stuff — they’re trying to distract you when they put their hand in your pocket.
.
Gin & Tonic
Test comment.
Satanicpanic
@Mnemosyne: I remember reading that story when it came out and it was possibly one of the most depressing things I’ve ever read. The richest county in the world treating people like trash. Shameful.
Democratic Nihilist, Keeper Of Party Purity
@Veritas: Agreed. Tragic that the GOP has chosen to fight any attempts at border security tooth and nail.
jwb
@Cacti: I don’t know what that says about BJ: on the one hand, the overlords deem the site sufficiently important that we warrant a paid troll (or, as I suspect, several—not all of them trolling from the right); on the other hand, we get this? Even if Veritas has learned a bit, it is still in the best case an amusing display of the GOP id. From the standpoint of return on investment, the overlords should be paying for far more trolling from the left, as it is more effective in sowing dissension and so also weakening the opposition.
4tehlulz
@David in NY: Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?
redshirt
I think I’m going to become a troll – guaranteed to get responses from earnest folks who they they’re the one’s who’ll show me the error of my ways. Stay tuned!
beltane
@jwb: My hunch is that the ones trolling from the left are the ones being paid by the right. If someone is paying Veritas, they are just about as stupid as the people who are paying $50 to have their picture taken with Newt Gingrich.
Mnemosyne
Conservatives would rather pay $200,000 for unsuccessful attempts to save the life of a kid with a brain infection than let Medicaid pay $100 for the tooth extraction that would have avoided the fatal infection in the first place.
.
Because, you know, they’re all about fiscal responsibility.
.
Mnemosyne
@redshirt:
Veritas is a spoof, so I don’t bother responding to it anymore.
Argive
@Veritas:
It’s nice that things worked out for your friend. It would be even nicer if we could rely on charities to be able to do that sort of thing all the time. But we can’t. They don’t have enough money.
Do you have any evidence to indicate that private charity would be able to help tens of millions of people who lack health insurance? You have indicated that you are aware of an instance in which charity helped ONE person. ONE. Anecdotal evidence is the worst possible basis for making policy.
bemused
@Veritas:
Lucky you. Then I assume your fantastic health insurance did not have a lifetime cap coverage before ACA. If you get cancer or become paralyzed or mentally disabled requiring constant care, you don’t have to worry about your care cost going over $1 million or whatever cap. Of course if your insurance did have a cost cap and ACA goes away, you can easily find a charity to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on you.
SenyorDave
@Chyron HR: Sorry, didn’t mean to link to your comment. Was responding to the 90% of the cost problem was from illegals comment.
JGabriel
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Zandar @ Top:
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Unicorn coprophagia. Is there a DSM IV entry on that one?
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Hoodie
You’re right that the GOP wants nothing, but they want nothing that they can call something because that gives the added benefits of bamboozling their dimwitted supporters while privatizing public cash for campaign donors. They always have such gimmicks, be it vouchers or “premium supports.” The interesting thing is that the mandate in the ACA is actually one of those gimmicks, and it’s ironic that the opponents are having to attack this very Republican idea. I’m not sure “selling insurance across state lines” is going to sell all that well as a replacement, because people already have enough frustrations dealing with insurance companies in their own state. The GOP wet dream would be to uphold the mandate while getting rid of the regs on medical loss ratios and other cost containment of the private sector, and then extend the whole kit and kaboodle to Medicare using increasingly worthless vouchers. They can’t do that the way the court case has been framed, because the opponents have put all their eggs in the mandate basket. I still think Roberts and/or Kennedy will find a way to uphold the mandate, using either an exception based on the nature of the insurance market or by finding the authority for the mandate under the taxing power, not the commerce clause.
redshirt
@Mnemosyne: But so many folks inexplicably do. It’s fascinating, in a way.
Martin
@Mnemosyne:
Don’t poke that beehive. You’re going to get a mugging of Deamonte and his parents for letting him eat too many sweets. The GOP will not only inspect their countertops but everything in their refrigerator. Why didn’t he brush 7x a day? Why didn’t he eat nothing but carrots? Why are black parents so negligent? Why are black kids so lazy? Why should we give those people anything at all when all they do is wear hoodies and accost white people with their brain infections.
Tell me The Corner and the Fox Punditry wouldn’t deliver that script above almost line for line.
Argive
So once again, a critical issue facing our country comes down to whatever mood Tony Kennedy found himself in when he read the briefs for this case. That’s some Supreme Court we have.
shortstop
@Satanicpanic: No, they’re saying that for a far more nefarious reason. They want to eliminate the need for insurance companies to abide by state-required bare minimums of coverage. Insurance is already sold across state lines, but it has to comply with the laws of the states it sells in. The GOP wants to create a situation much like that of credit cards: one state incents companies to base themselves there by allowing them to screw consumers far more than any other state does, and companies fall all over themselves in this race to the bottom.
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If we thought patients were being massively ripped off by high-fee, low-coverage insurance companies before, wait until this GOP model is enacted.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Veritas:
Or the rise number of government employees like you who sit around and do nothing all day except talk about how you pulled yourself up by your boot straps.
Satanicpanic
@shortstop: I’m not disagreeing. I just don’t think it’s a top priority. They had 6 years to do this when Bush was in charge and they didn’t. Not saying they wouldn’t want to, they’d probably just get too busy with their main priorities, like making The Handmaid’s Tale a reality.
Mnemosyne
@Hoodie:
I’m not even sure that’s true anymore. They seem to have managed to convince the 27% that nothing is something, that “freedom” is more important than being able to get chemotherapy for your child who has leukemia.
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I’m sometimes reminded of Arthur Silber, who was a staunch libertarian until he became disabled (I think by severe arthritis?) and realized that he really couldn’t do everything by himself and was going to need help from society at large. It was an interesting transformation to watch, to say the least.
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But he was unusually honest for someone on the libertarian side — most of them will continue to claim that government is evil and oppressive while using Medicaid and cashing their Social Security disability checks.
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Yutsano
@Mnemosyne:
Government is evil and oppressive…until I need it. Then I paid into the system all my life and therefore I should reap the benefit of said system. Everyone else is a lying moocher.
gorram
@Veritas: Modest and works well with others too. Sure.
Cacti
@Argive:
When you really think about it, our Supreme Court is really just 9 philosopher kings/queens. 5 of 9 unelected, and almost entirely unaccountable people get the final word on what our rights are, what laws are valid/invalid etc.
That’s an awful lot of power.
shortstop
@Satanicpanic: Fair enough. I couldn’t tell by your wording whether you were aware of the certain outcome of that little proposal. I mean, I know the MSM has done a stellar job in explaining it to everyone, but you might be the only person in the U.S. who missed it. Ha, I slay myself.
Mnemosyne
@Yutsano:
One of the weirdest conversations I ever had with my parents in my life was when one of my brother’s friends was fighting cancer and they were simultaneously singing the praises of Medicaid and the great care he was getting and denouncing “Obamacare” and government healthcare in general.
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It was like they were completely unable to make the connection between the care my brother’s friend was getting and the fact that it was being paid for by the government.
.
The Republic of Stupidity
Is this real? This has GOT to be a parody troll…
Emma
@Veritas: I think you’re a troll. I hope you are. But, in case you are not, I will give you this gift, and accept the karma that comes with it. May someone you love be in the same situation so many people are in this country, and may you be bankrupt and unemployed and have to watch them die.
Except, of course,you’ll be ok with it, because it’s the free market!
Seanly
@Veritas:
You’re missing a step. Your friend with no health insurance would’ve been denied treatment. It’s hard to have a charity lined up before the bus hits you.
And we won’t even get into the pathetic blame-the-illegals idiocy.
beergoggles
I don’t see how u can say the GOP wants nothing. In truth they want everything, but only for their 0.001%. They want this declared unconstitutional so they can use the precedent from this to destroy Social Security.
My only hope is that Roberts is too much in the bag for the insurance companies that he will not side with the rest of the wingnuts in declaring the mandate unconstitutional unless they also strike down the entire ACA.
Steeplejack
@David in NY:
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Checking the double-underscore thing between paragraphs.
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Okay, did that work?
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ETA: Why, yes, it did. Are you sure you’re using the underscore character (Shift-hyphen)?
Yutsano
@Mnemosyne: “Keep your government out of my Medicare” did not develop in a vacuum. I forget the exact numbers, but a majority of those on it didn’t believe it was a government system. And it’s highly efficient. I know: Medicare is my secondary insurer. My primary loves this.
Jay C
@Splitting Image:
After all, is it really likely that any of their jobs (or health insurance) are on the line?
Mnemosyne
Also, too, has anyone ever noticed that the people on the left who want ACA to fail so that single-payer will magically rise from the ashes 10 or 20 years from now sound strangely like George C. Scott in Dr. Strangelove?
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“I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops. Uh, depending on the breaks.”
The Republic of Stupidity
On the other hand, doing NOTHING about healthcare does have a certain… financial efficiency… to it, no? If the poor can’t stop drinking and smoking and won’t work and just want to have cheap, tawdry sex all the time, why should the rest of us pay for it when they finally party themselves into a terminal condition? It’s far cheaper to have NO health care system for them and to just let them DIE. This in turn, will reduce the costs of policing poor communities, funding public education, and protecting our borders, and daughters I might add, from the hordes of slavering illegals looking to rip off the country… not to mention what it will do the the unemployment rate, along with the drop in the number of poor folks sucking up good, decent, hardworking folks’ tax dollars thru scams like “food stamps” or “AFDC”… plus, we’ll have more money to spend on necessities, like aircraft carriers… B-1 bombers… drones to monitor civilians… half tracks for small rural PDs in places like Idaho… high tech, for-profit prisons… for the life of me… I can’t see why you people object to this…
Kristin
@Mnemosyne:
I agree. That “the high rate of obesity is due to fat Latino illegals” thing is not serious.
goblue72
@Veritas: I see our sociopathic troll has arrived. With any luck, it and it’s family die in a raging fire after a home invasion in which they are raped repeatedly by “illegals.”
Thor Heyerdahl
@Cacti:
Veritas’ mom has told it that she’s not paying the healthcare for its 40-something ass while it lives in her basement.
Travelling to other countries people ask me as a Canuck about the US situation (apparently they think I have a better view of our crazy neighbour than they do), “What the fuck is wrong with America and health care? Why are they so scared, nay, repulsed with providing basic service for decent hard working Americans?”
I look at them, shake my head and say I don’t know, but excess greed, hubris and self-interest has made much the country delusional and myopic over the last 20 years in particular.
I was thinking about the exchange between the president of Ireland and teabagger Michael Graham – http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=B5OWRRJh-PI. That cured some of the frustration I have.
Steeplejack
Out of 134 comments (so far), 45 are posts by the troll or responses to the troll–that’s a third of the whole fucking thread.
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People, do not feed the goddamn troll. I’m having enough trouble keeping up with this site as it is, just from the rebuild and all.
Argive
@Cacti:
I would love to be the fly on the wall many many years from now, when future historians analyze the flaws in our political system. Giving so much power to 9 unelected judges who all have life tenure will surely be at the top of the list.
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@Mnemosyne:
Hey, cognitive dissonance, yo. It’s a frustratingly interesting thing.
goblue72
@Emma: With any luck it will be his wife. Or child. And due to his free market employer not providing family coverage. And second best outcome would be medical bankruptcy making him homeless and going on welfare. But only if I get to pee on him.
Hoodie
@Mnemosyne: True, but you need more than the 27%. The bamboozling is for the David Brooks readers, retirees and suburbanites. The thing you sell is “security for me but not for thee” coupled with illusory “choice.” My recent experience with the clusterfuck that Republicans have made of our local school system is that this approach still works with that crowd.
Thought experiment: imagine if the 2009 Congress had passed the ACA with a public option instead of the mandate. That would have been issues of adverse selection, so there likely would have to be some type of anti-cherry picking provision to prevent private insurers from dumping high-risk patients onto the public plan and other cost-containment measures. Do you think that Republican AG’s would have attacked that as unconstitutional?
pk
@Veritas:
I only have one wish for you, you evil troll. A long painful illness, which causes you to lose your job and insurance and ultimate bankruptcy. Maybe then you can write to Romney begging for crumbs while you jack off to his portrait.
shortstop
@Mnemosyne: I have noticed that, yes. And I’m pretty sure that no one at personal high risk of losing his/her insurance goes around saying dumbass stuff like this, just as very few people in danger of actual physical combat ever call for violent revolution.
rlrr
@Shit for Brains:
Only in Shit for Brains’ world is almost none the same as most…
Satanicpanic
@Mnemosyne: The “well if we get rid of ACA we’ll get single payer” is the purest example of Underpants Gnome theory that exists on the left. We had a century to deal with healthcare and we didn’t. Half the country doesn’t want to.
The Other Chuck
I am pleased as punch to have the troll filter working again. Now if anyone could tell me how to make GreaseMonkey’s auto-update feature actually fucking *work* that would be awesome (the @version tag doesn’t appear to do it)
presquevu
Insurance = socializing risk. To minimize the socialist taint from doing this for profit, the bankster model is to offer it, like credit, to those who verifiably need it least.
Argive
@Steeplejack:
You are absolutely right. My problem is that I spend far too much time lurking in the comments sections of conservative blogs which represent the bowels of the Internet (rightwingnews.com, for instance) and as such cannot help myself when someone comes over here parroting the useless bilge that I see all the livelong day at these Tea Party sites.
YoohooCthulhu
What this means, practically, would be that states like California, which have large population and could relatively easily construct an exchange-like system, will. The smaller/conservative states will be screwed for insurance.
JPL
The local news had a story about a family with a child that has reached the medical cap. They know if the Supremes over turn the health care act, their daughter will die. They are ruling on a life and death issue. Democracy is for the common good.
@maya: this
Thor Heyerdahl
@Kristin: So Veritas is actually an Obamabot, working to enrage liberals about the GOP so they’ll get out and vote for Obama?
It’s as plausible as any of the shit that’s already been posted by Veritas.
rlrr
@bemused:
or mentally disabled
Obviously has already happened to Shit for Brains.
StringonaStick
I heard a bit of Fat Tony raking the administration’s lawyer over the coals yesterday, something to the effect of “people who don’t buy insurance now will buy it once they get sick”. There is it, right there; the proof that people like Scalia and all the congresscritters, high level functionaries like Cheney & his crew, and the Supremes have such incredibly good, gold-plated insurance that they can never be kicked out of, and they think this is what the rest of us who purchase a policy have (or will get when we do). __
Let us recall that when Ryan’s proposal first came out, one of the ideas to “save” Medicare was to say that anyone younger than 55 years old would no longer get it, period, and that those less than 55er’s would now be able to properly plan financially so that they could save enough to afford insurance after they are no longer covered by an employer. Really; people who can’t afford health insurance NOW could easily save enough to be able to buy it later when they are older and sicker and thus a real cherry for the insurance industry to add to the rolls. Nice fantasy these guys have, and they have it because their lifetime health insurance from their public service can never, ever be taken away from them. No wonder they don’t get it.
Zach
National healthcare is the solution to the medium/long-term deficit gap with the fewest losers (although they have an outsized level of influence). Either totally nationalized healthcare or single-payer with an aggressive rate schedule will ultimately rise up from the ashes of wherever we’re at, because it’s the only way to instantly eliminate all budgetary problems without increasing taxes or reducing the quality of government services. Eventually, the appeal of such low-hanging fruit relative to less palatable options will overwhelm the power of various interest groups that profit from rapid healthcare cost inflation.
Brachiator
@Hoodie:
Yep.
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Next question.
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honus
@Veritas: How cute. Like many 5 year olds, Veritas has an imaginary friend.
ruemara
@JPL: Would you mind linking that story, if you can. It’s the sort of thing we should share as much as possible to our less wonky friends and relatives.
FlipYrWhig
@Mnemosyne: That’s because, to them, “Obamacare” doesn’t mean the actual health care law that was passed. It means “oodles of free goodies for greedy, ungrateful layabouts.” That’s what everyone who opposes it thinks it is, and why they’re so vehement about it.
Suffern ACE
Heh. In ten years your employer subsidized plan is going to be gone, unless you are in the executive suite. People who think they have coverage are like those who think they own their houses when what they really have is a mortgage payment.
FlipYrWhig
@honus: It’s a great foundation for a health care system. People who don’t have enough insurance can turn to charities. Now, since there will be problems scaling it up, maybe there should be some kind of minimum charitable contribution from people who want to, let’s say, _pool_ their risk, so that everyone in the group helps provide for one another’s mutual needs. With this kind of charity solution in place, everyone should feel much more _sure_ about getting the care they need in an emergency. In fact, they ought to build the word “sure” right into the name of this thing.
The Republic of Stupidity
@JPL:
So we DO have death panels, after all… sweet… anyone here good w/ Photoshop, do a pic of these clowns in black hoods w/ scythes?
PIGL
I think the USA is reaching the point where either the neo Confederates are ceded the permanent right to govern by extra-electoral processes, or else they are permanently defeated by extra-electoral processes. The extra-electoral processes that could crush them are even legal today.
I won’t write in a public forum what I think really needs to be done.
eemom
One thing of which you may be absolutely certain is that the Supreme Court is not going to REPEAL the ACA.
JPL
@ruemara: I am looking for it now.
Elie
@c u n d gulag:
I believe that the right is in “Civil War” mode: they would rather destroy the whole thing and start from scratch again to make their “white is right” world that excludes and seals them off from the changing demographics that are reshaping “their” constitution. I really do think that they want to burn this current structure down and so anything that diminishes and corrupts it is all good. Some of them may feel that they are modern Kamikazes who will go down for the cause in order to bring about the “reset”.
Nothing else makes sense.. they aren’t playing in this system anymore and do not want to preserve it.
JPL
@ruemara: Haven’t found it yet. The local stations sites aren’t easy to search. I’ll keep looking though.
Davis X. Machina
@PIGL: This is basically the Cooper Union address… which is not encouraging.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
*sigh* This. As much as the ACA is a messy kludge of unnecessary favors and compromises, if this goes down, we end up eating the shit sandwich of our fucked-up health care system for at least 2-3 decades more. Because fuck you hippie, freedums forever!
Keith G
@eemom: But then all of B J would have to find something else to be upset about. Think of all those missed page views.
Mnemosyne
@StringonaStick:
That’s the whole point of the mandate, though — without it, people probably wouldn’t buy insurance until they need it, which leaves you with a large pool of people with large medical expenses who haven’t paid much into the system.
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Though it did crack me up yesterday when someone was saying we wouldn’t need a government mandate if we had a single-payer system because everyone would be covered by, um, government mandate.
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Elie
I would be willing to offer the states who want to revisit their confederate identities and break away. Proly shoulda let them do it before, but who knew? They can be the United States of White America. Any brown and black people living in them can escape to the main United States without penalty. Then we leave the neo confederates, “to themselves” — a worthy outcome from my perspective. They can even have their own flag….
pragmatism
this is the worst case of false advertising since my suit against the film the neverending story.
Steeplejack
@Argive:
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Well, you get a couple of day passes. But there are longtime commenters who know the troll is a troll and yet can’t resist getting down in the mud and wallowing one more time. To what point?
Bruce S
You know the GOP has long gone off the deep end of absolute social nihilism when Frank Luntz comes off as a “voice of reason.”
wrb
What the GOP will do to replace the ACA
The Public Option!!!
Like hell
They will
Let insures set up in the state with the least regulation and sell across state lines.
Tort Reform
End Medicaid
Privatize (end) Medicare
Overturn the law requiring hospitals to stabilize the uninsured.
PIGL
@Davis X. Machina: I was not aware of that, thanks for educating this canuck. I know I tend to be flip on this blog…I am not super well placed to fully develop the ideas, and as a creature of the leftist 70s, I am perhaps too eager for definitive romantic solutions. But may the example of your greatest President be my shield and sword :-).
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I don’t see a way out of this for the side of the angles, unless they are prepared to confront and utterly vanquish the forces of darkness. These forces have corrupted the judiciary, utterly poisoned the wells of public discourse, and they are gerrymandering, suppressing votes and rigging elections at all levels in broad daylight.
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In other words, there is an open conspiracy to subvert the realm, the conspirators are easily identified if not allready well known, and all that is needed to break them utterly is the state power that is already in the hands of the President. Many speak of developing a long game, of launching a 40 year progressive campaign to recapture the nation…but I believe it is too late for that for reasons economic, political and environmental.
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
@Elie:
Folks of a certain mindset have been promised their Apocalypse since birth.
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It didn’t come with Y2K. It didn’t come after 9/11. It didn’t come when the financial sector collapsed in 2008. It didn’t come when a Democrat named “Barack Obama” was elected President.
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But, by golly, they will have their Apocalypse and they will have it now. Even if they have to bring it about themselves.
Argive
@Steeplejack:
Same reason why it’s totally awesome when Obama uses TEH BULLY BULPIT! It feels good. Sadly, the troll just laughs its ass off.
Comrade Dread
I suppose if this fails, I’ll start pushing my assemblyman and state senator for a single payer system here in California.
We’re suppose to be a pretty blue state. Maybe it’ll happen.
Of course funding it would probably require an initiative to pass by a supermajority, so I’m probably eating unicorn poop myself here.
Stupid ****ing tax laws.
bemused
@The Republic of Stupidity:
The GOP has no health plan, just repeal. Even McConnell admitted that. I say label them the death panel, loudly and repeatedly.
Ksmiami
@Elie: Yes but not before we take away their medications developed in blue states first or computers or the Internet etc since that was funded by the evil government and IBM … Then build a fence and let them have their thunderdome. They won’t last 6 months before they beg the Chinese to take them over
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
@Ksmiami:
Also all those military bases, NASA centers, and other large Federal complexes like the CDC.
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Though the Confederacy doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to respecting Federal property rights.
Davis X. Machina
@PIGL:
“Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is that you will destroy the Government, unless you be allowed to construe and enforce the Constitution as you please, on all points in dispute between you and us. You will rule or ruin in all events.”
Joe
Why can’t obviously intelligent people ignore an obvious troll?
PIGL
@Davis X. Machina: yes, I followed the link, thanks. The current crop are worse, though…they are corrupting elections in Wisconsin are they not?
...now I try to be amused
@Mnemosyne:
Heh. I wonder, has it sunk into any of those thick skulls yet why we don’t have the option not to pay for police or firefighters? Heck, I’ve called the police only once in my life, and the fire department not at all. What a sucker I was to pay for them all these years!
Davis X. Machina
@PIGL: Just a thread-wrapper-upper. No failure to do homework implied…
catclub
@Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor: I think there is a lot to this.
—
My version is that every day, when I go to read the news, I subconsciously want some big disaster to happen so I can read about it.
—
Or I go to Balloon Juice in order to get my daily fix of outrage.
catclub
@Elie: Partition does not have many happy examples to support it. India/Pakistan being the notable ‘mass murder during partition’ case.
Does anyone know of any _good_ partition examples?
One might argue that a united single nation on the Indian subcontinent would be worse than the present day case.
Mnemosyne
@…now I try to be amused:
To be fair, the person was in favor of single-payer, so it was more that they hadn’t thought through that a single-payer system is still a government mandate. It’s just mandating a different beneficiary of the payment (government agency rather than insurance company).
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I think they were also naively assuming that people wouldn’t oppose a government mandate for single-payer like they do for private insurance even though there are still people out there who constantly bitch and moan because Social Security withholdings are mandatory.
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A Humble Lurker
@Chris:
Actually:
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SociaIism. Just put capital ‘i’ instead of ‘L’.
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Hey, it looks like the double underscore trick works too!
D.N. Nation
“Veritas” is the same fellow who used to post as “The Truth” over at Sadly, No, before earning the hell out of an eventual ban.
The mods over there let out that the dude was trolling from the same residential IP address all day. So this story about him being super valuable to his employer? I somewhat doubt it.
David Koch
How could single-payer survive the Supreme Court that gave us Bush v Gore and Citizens United? It would be struck down.
Now, it could happen in the future, but first you would have to have a progressive majority on the bench.
Renie
@Veritas: You’re not going to have great insurance once all the insurance companies move to the state that has the least regulations and gives them the greatest profits. Why don’t you understand this?
Darkrose
Woohoo! Thanks to Veritas, I made a point of getting the pie filter up ASAP.
RalfW
Between ACA being gutted, climate change accelerating while denialism exponentially propagates, and peak oil having been in 2005, I’d say that we’re totally, utterly, unimaginably hosed.
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Thunderdome, anyone?
RalfW
Meanwhile.
.
When I hear Republicans talk about how Obamacare limits our freedom, I say you’re right: The freedom to go bankrupt. The freedom to die because you can’t afford chemo or other long-term care. Yes hospitals have to treat ER patients, but they don’t have to to treat chronic, debilitating, life-threatening but non-ER illnesses. So those w/o ins are literally being given the freedom to die early and leaving families hounded by bill collectors. Some “liberty” Ms. Bachmann and her pals profess, huh?
jacksmith
REALITY!! And A Fix for Unemployment, Homelessness and Hunger
In addition to fixing healthcare the right way we need a NewDeal. We need a permanent and updated FDR WPA (Works Progress Administration). A Full employment act requiring the government to provide a job for everyone able to work that wants to work at a living wage or better. At safe, meaningful work where they live. Guaranteed by the US government. With free or very affordable excellent healthcare and free or very affordable education and training for advancement or just personal enrichment.
( http://my.firedoglake.com/iflizwerequeen/2011/05/16/how-about-a-little-truth-about-what-the-majority-want-for-health-care/ )
( Gov. Peter Shumlin: Real Healthcare reform — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yFUbkVCsZ4 )
( Health Care Budget Deficit Calculator — http://www.cepr.net/calculators/hc/hc-calculator.html )
( Briefing: Dean Baker on Boosting the Economy by Saving Healthcare http://t.co/fmVz8nM )
START NOW!
As you all know. Had congress passed a single-payer or government-run robust Public Option CHOICE! available to everyone on day one, our economy and jobs would have taken off like a rocket. And still will. Single-payer would be best. But a government-run robust Public Option CHOICE! that can lead to a single-payer system is the least you can accept. It’s not about competing with for-profit healthcare and for-profit health insurance. It’s about replacing it with Universal Healthcare Assurance. Everyone knows this now.
The message from the midterm elections was clear. The American people want real healthcare reform. They want that individual mandate requiring them to buy private health insurance abolished. And they want a government-run robust public option CHOICE! available to everyone on day one. And they want it now.
They want Drug re-importation, and abolishment, or strong restrictions on patents for biologic and prescription drugs. And government controlled and negotiated drug and medical cost. They want back control of their healthcare system from the Medical Industrial Complex. And they want it NOW!
THE AMERICAN PEOPLE WILL NOT, AND MUST NOT, ALLOW AN INDIVIDUAL MANDATE TO STAND WITHOUT A STRONG GOVERNMENT-RUN PUBLIC OPTION CHOICE! AVAILABLE TO EVERYONE.
For-profit health insurance is extremely unethical, and morally repugnant. It’s as morally repugnant as slavery was. And few if any decent Americans are going to allow them-self to be compelled to support such an unethical and immoral crime against humanity.
This is a matter of National and Global security. There can be NO MORE EXCUSES.
Further, we want that corrupt, undemocratic filibuster abolished. Whats the point of an election if one corrupt member of congress can block the will of the people, and any legislation the majority wants. And do it in secret. Give me a break people.
Also, unemployment healthcare benefits are critically needed. But they should be provided through the Medicare program at cost, less the 65% government premium subsidy provided now to private for profit health insurance.
Congress should stop wasting hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money on private for profit health insurance subsidies. Subsidies that cost the taxpayer 10x as much or more than Medicare does. Private for profit health insurance plans cost more. But provide dangerous and poorer quality patient care.
Republicans: GET RID OF THE INDIVIDUAL MANDATE.
Democrats: ADD A ROBUST GOVERNMENT-RUN PUBLIC OPTION TO HEALTHCARE REFORM.
This is what the American people are shouting at you. Both parties have just enough power now to do what the American people want. GET! IT! DONE! NOW!
If congress does not abolish the individual mandate. And establish a government-run public option CHOICE! before the end of 2011. EVERY! member of congress up for reelection in 2012 will face strong progressive pro public option, and anti-individual mandate replacement candidates.
Strong progressive pro “PUBLIC OPTION” CHOICE! and anti-individual mandate volunteer candidates should begin now. And start the process of replacing any and all members of congress that obstruct, or fail to add a government-run robust PUBLIC OPTION CHOICE! before the end of 2011.
We need two or three very strong progressive volunteer candidates for every member of congress that will be up for reelection in 2012. You should be fully prepared to politically EVISCERATE EVERY INCUMBENT that fails or obstructs “THE PUBLIC OPTION”. And you should be willing to step aside and support the strongest pro “PUBLIC OPTION” candidate if the need arises.
ASSUME CONGRESS WILL FAIL and SELLOUT again. So start preparing now to CUT THEIR POLITICAL THROATS. You can always step aside if they succeed. But only if they succeed. We didn’t have much time to prepare before these past midterm elections. So the American people had to use a political shotgun approach. But by 2012 you will have a scalpel.
Congress could have passed a robust government-run public option during it’s lame duck session. They knew what the American people wanted. They already had several bills on record. And the house had already passed a public option. Departing members could have left with a truly great accomplishment. And the rest of you could have solidified your job before the 2012 elections.
President Obama, you promised the American people a strong public option available to everyone. And the American people overwhelmingly supported you for it. Maybe it just wasn’t possible before. But it is now.
Knock heads. Threaten people. Or do whatever you have to. We will support you. But get us that robust public option CHOICE! available to everyone on day one before the end of 2011. Or We The People Of The United States will make the past midterm election look like a cake walk in 2012. And it will include you.
We still have a healthcare crisis in America. With hundreds of thousands dieing needlessly every year in America. And a for profit medical industrial complex that threatens the security and health of the entire world. They have already attacked the world with H1N1 killing thousands, and injuring millions. And more attacks are planned for profit, and to feed their greed.
Spread the word people.
Progressives, prepare the American peoples scalpels. It’s time to remove some politically diseased tissues.
God Bless You my fellow human beings. I’m proud to be one of you. You did good.
See you on the battle field.
Sincerely
jacksmith – WorkingClass :-)