Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

Come on, man.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

“But what about the lurkers?”

Peak wingnut was a lie.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

This blog will pay for itself.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

Let there be snark.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

Prediction: the GOP will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

Republicans do not pay their debts.

John Fetterman: Too Manly for Pennsylvania.  Paid for by the Oz for Senator campaign.

Infrastructure week. at last.

Eh, that’s media spin. biden’s health is fine and he’s doing a good job.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

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184Comments

  2. 2.

    Jeff Spender

    I’ve had it. I tried to find something to believe in and I picked reason. I assumed that logic, even if it was a transcendent non-material real thing, was still a better bet than any god.

    I was wrong. Humanity keeps proving that reason is fictional.

  5. 5.

    Pooh

    Has any libertarian explained why government control and coercion is categorically worse than their preferred outcome, corporate control and coercion?

  7. 7.

    ruemara

    Or, exactly why I have no use for libertarians. Sadly, I work in tech, gaming and video. It’s like cavorting in a field with evil, single-issue smart, bunnies.

  8. 8.

    Yatsuno

    @Pooh: It’s the same reason every time: SHUT UP THAT’S WHY!!!

    Honestly, I have yet to get any sort of reason why corporate is better, especially when I point out that without an ebil gubmint corporations don’t even exist in the first place.

  9. 9.

    Pooh

    @Omnes Omnibus: if we can desnark for a second, that seems to be the answer, and it’s a crazy answer. As an individual citizen one pretty clearly has more influence over governmental than corporate behavior.

    It’s just head scratching to me that people who actually (as opposed to professional fluffers like Mcardle and the Reasanoids) believe in maximizing individual liberty only seem to recognize one source of constraints.

  10. 10.

    Howard Beale IV

    How quick can congresscritters be impeached for extortion of the Citizens of the United States?

    Citizens’s Arrests?

  13. 13.

    dmsilev

    Huh. Top Newsmax headline in that ad sidebar: “Tea Party Rep. Ross: ‘We’ve Lost the CR Battle'”.

    Fascinating.

  15. 15.

    Mike G

    Matt Welch gets his health care in France (through his wife’s nationality) and admits it’s a much better system, while propagandizing against introduction of a similar system in the US because he doesn’t want to maybe pay more taxes.

    What a classic glibertarian. I wonder if he’s ever asked the people of France how they feel paying for his healthcare when he doesn’t even live there or pay any social insurance taxes.

  16. 16.

    WereBear

    @Yatsuno: Also, the ways corporations force you to do things are more subtle; they don’t show up and tell you the rules, they just change the playing field.

    Wingnuts /= Big Picture

  17. 17.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Mike G:

    I wonder if he’s ever asked the people of France how they feel paying for his healthcare when he doesn’t even live there or pay any social insurance taxes.

    Of course not.

  18. 18.

    Mary G

    Some corporations are not evil. I had to sell my beloved VW Passat because I just can’t get around even with a walker these days and had to go to a power scooter/wheelchair. Since so many people committed fraud and got Hoverrounds when they didn’t need them, Medicare has cracked down. I have a claim in process for a wheelchair but went ahead and bought a scooter myself as I want both and scooters are much cheaper.

    It needs a vehicle with a Type II trailer hitch to hold the lift to carry it around on the car. I settled on a Subaru Forester after doing a lot of research.

    When I bought the scooter, its dealer told me that Subaru has a program where they will reimburse you up to $500 if you have to make modifications to your vehicle to adapt it to your disability. He gave me a photocopy of their claim form.

    I got all the documentation together and was about to mail it in when I noticed that it said that you had to have an original claim form. I called Subaru and after climbing the phone tree from hell, got hold of a person. I told him my problem and asked him if he could mail me an original claim form. He said that it wouldn’t be necessary, that if I could scan in the stuff and email it to him, he could get me a check right away. He had my email address on his system and sent me an email with my claim number that I could just reply to and attach the scans. I did so and about half an hour later he emailed me back that he had requested the accounting department to mail me a check for $500. It should come Tuesday or Wednesday!

    I am a Subaru fan for life now. HBM just also bought a Forester from a friend, so we are now an all-Subaru household.

  19. 19.

    Amir Khalid

    @dmsilev:
    Hmm. I took a look. That story quotes only one Republican Representative, Dennis Ross himself (from Florida). Hardly indicative of a groundswell of despair in the caucus.

  20. 20.

    Kyle

    @Pooh:

    Has any libertarian explained why government control and coercion is categorically worse than their preferred outcome, corporate control and coercion?

    Because corporate coercion is unpossible in Libertarian Bubble World. Only governments can be oppressive, when corporations exploit and extort it’s Freedom.

  21. 21.

    Jeff Spender

    @Mike G: I think we can be assured that glibertarian is to asshole what water is to wet.

    It frustrates me to no end that people can be so easily taken in by this kind of irrationality. It’s like the old Doctor Who pink elephant syllogism. Anyone can spot the flaw in the first premise, but how many people don’t ignore it just out of tribalism?

  22. 22.

    PsiFighter37

    @dmsilev: Fucking bullshit. I hate all these headlines coming out saying that.

    After all the fail the House GOP was involved in this past week, I will only believe something is solved when I see it with my eyes.

  24. 24.

    Jeff Spender

    @Kyle: I had a long discussion with someone about how in “The Virtue of Selfishness” Ayn Rand advocates a “pay-to-play” judicial system. She argues that contracts of all business transactions must be drawn up, and rational people will stick to them out of moral and ethical unicorns.

    The judicial system is like an insurance that you pay for, but if you don’t get the insurance, you can still do business and make the contracts. They’re just not enforceable. My first response was to throw the book on the ground and soak my head in a tub because I thought lack of oxygen might make me see the logic, and my second response was to select a few choice words for that argument to describe it.

    Somehow, though, there are people who take it seriously. The same kind of people who, I shit you not, patronize the Ayn Rand Institute and try to argue to get people to “voluntarily” pay their taxes. The whole philosophy is fucked.

  26. 26.

    Feudalism Now!

    What I find fascinating is that Welch admitted he was bull****ing. He was confronted on his pat glib response and said you make a good point. They are so used to not being confronted and treated as if their utterances were gospel from on high, they don’t even try to dissemble when opposed. You just need to repeat it often enough for it to be truth. Their agenda is furthered by refutation as well as support.

  27. 27.

    Yatsuno

    @PsiFighter37: When I’m told to come back to work, the problem is solved. Notice I’m not holding my breath here.

    @WereBear: Libertarians also want to greatly curtail the right to sue. So if your product is defective or dangerous well sucks to be you, you should have done your research now shouldn’t you? Plus if they were REALLY selling dangerous products well the free market will solve that by people just not buying it. And yes I know people who believe exactly this.

  28. 28.

    Keith G

    Wait! You mean Real Time is approved viewing now?

    Actually, the above clip was not the best line of the night. Reich used a three word comment that kicked Welch to the curb and brought the house down.

    It’s on iTunes. Watch it. Reich is his usual awesome self.

  29. 29.

    Kyle

    @Jamey:

    Why are you people so against Librarians?

    You’re thinking of Republicans, the party of willful ignorance. Especially the Science section.

    Actually, probably every part of the library except the one shelf with the Bible on it, because libraries promote commie sharing of resources that take profits away from booksellers.

  30. 30.

    Roger Moore

    @PsiFighter37:
    And if you read what he’s saying, he’s talking about fighting on the debt ceiling instead. So they’ve lost the CR fight only because they chose the wrong hostage, not because hostage taking was a mistake.

  31. 31.

    dmsilev

    @Amir Khalid: It’s more that propaganda-machine Newsmax published (well republished; the original is actually a Bloomberg News article) and promoted a story with that headline.

  32. 32.

    lahru

    This whole thing starts with 24,Jack Bauer 24.
    Disrespting a black POTUS.
    1’st season.
    Fiction meets reality.

  33. 33.

    Mike G

    @Pooh:

    The same way that paying a couple grand in taxes and premiums for Obamacare is Worse! Than! Eleven! Hitlers! but paying $15k to an HMO is Freedom.

  34. 34.

    WereBear

    @Mary G: Since so many people committed fraud and got Hoverrounds when they didn’t need them, Medicare has cracked down.

    I’ve never understood that. And while I don’t expect you to know the answer, isn’t it weird? I’ve sure all of us would rather not need it, so why get one for chuckles?

  35. 35.

    Tommy

    @Jeff Spender: I hate paying taxes. But alas I don’t so much mind if I pay more. If that money goes to somebody that might need some aid. I don’t know what world you live in where you don’t want to pay a little more so a kid has food. A single mother gets some aid. A vet help when they need it. It seems to me like a first world nation would do this.

  36. 36.

    PsiFighter37

    @Roger Moore: They’re going to simply hold both hostage. If this has demonstrated anything, it’s that the Teabaggers are impervious to negative political consequences. Let’s say we raise the debt ceiling – who says that they won’t simply keep the government shut down indefinitely? I feel like these people are so stupid that they would be willing to do that.

    These people are nuts, and the Villagers need to start being a bit impolite in how they talk to these nutjobs.

  37. 37.

    Kyle

    @lahru:

    This whole thing starts with 24,Jack Bauer 24.

    While back here in reality, Kiefer Sutherland (who played Jack Bauer) is the grandson of Tommy Douglas, who introduced universal healthcare in Canada. Sweet irony.

  39. 39.

    Roger Moore

    @WereBear:

    I’ve sure all of us would rather not need it, so why get one for chuckles?

    Because free stuff. Lots of people will take free stuff even if they know they don’t need it because they just can’t resist the temptation of free.

  41. 41.

    Jeff Spender

    @Tommy:

    I’m not sure what you’re replying to. I have no problem with paying taxes to aid people in need.

    I have first hand experience with people who make a living saying it is the worst kind of tyranny. I’ve done my homework on the basics of their philosophy and it is always found wanting. Hume calls it the is/ought problem, and I think that’s being a bit charitable.

    I once met Milton Friedman’s granddaughter at the University of Chicago. We got into an argument about labor unions. She doesn’t support them, obviously, nor did she seem to enthusiastic about collective bargaining. It made sense when I learned she’s lived a sheltered life and never had a factory job, which was the bread-and-butter of my family.

    The…sheer irrationality astounds me, especially coming from people who are, at their foundations, intelligent.

    We had a lively and awesome discussion of whole-brain emulation after that. We didn’t come to an agreement about it–whereas she argued that a human brain copied into a computer would be a functional human, I argued that it would be at best a simulation if the brain wasn’t copied down to the last hormone or a new kind of life because it divorces itself from certain human needs, like sex and food, and divests itself of the greatest mystery of the human condition, death.

  43. 43.

    srv

    Somebody needs to invent an app that will flash the corporate logos that lobbyists/talking heads/congresspeople take money from whenever they appear in a video.

  44. 44.

    Amir Khalid

    @WereBear:
    Maybe some people want one to help feed their self-pity. Or they’re outraged at being (in their minds) wrongly refused. Being merely too lazy to walk is also a conceivable motive, although I find it a little hard to imagine such a person.

  45. 45.

    Tommy

    @PsiFighter37: I am almost in tears as I agree with you. My best friend works as an enforcement lawyer at the EPA. Graduated at the top of his class. Could work anywhere. He wanted to chang the world. When I lived in DC I’d go to EPA parties with him, yes those actually exist, and folks would introduce themselves by the kind of work they did. He did “ground water.” He worked just so you and I had clean water to drink. He just did that. Our government. And if you talked to him much, well getting us clean water to drink isn’t as easy as you might think.

  50. 50.

    jl

    I don’t get the ‘one size fits all’ argument, given the current federal and state regulatory environment.

    In a sense, there is one size fits all aspect to human health, since we all die sooner or later. More or less one size of hole in the ground, or ashes in the urn, or whatever. And regardless of family health history, anybody can come get very sick with pretty much anything, so what ‘size’ health care we each will end up using can be predicted with only extremely poor precision.

    So, I guess the glibertarians are saying there should be complete consumer sovereignty and each person should be allowed to take their chances on when they will need what kind of insurance when.

    But it’s almost impossible to predict. So a lot of people will end up in and out of ER, and if cannot be stabilized in ER, in and out of hospital because of fed and state regs. So they get thrown into the (more or less) one size fits all of standard of care that can be provided to uninsured.

    But glibertarians won’t get on TV and recommend gutting compassionate care laws and regs.

    But Maher’s gotcha was a good one, and addressed a simpler point: they are just wrong one the facts, or offering BS double bind word games rather than serious arguments.

    Well, the glibertarian and GOP nonsense on ACA is manifold, deep and eleventy dimensional!

    But every day a few more million people get info on what they can buy from the exchanges to will be harder to go back.

  51. 51.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    I found a longer version of the Carole Lombard quote I love:

    I enjoy this country. I like the parks and the highways and the good schools and everything that this government does. After all, every cent anybody pays in taxes is spent to benefit him. I don’t need $465,000 a year for myself, so why not give what I don’t need to the government for improvements of the country. There’s no better place to spend it.

  52. 52.

    opiejeanne

    @Mike G: He was on another show, maybe a radio interview, and I guess it was an unpleasant situation for him, being confronted and called on his bullshit.

    Yeah, I know you google your name, Matt, and I am not your friend when it comes to politics so let’s leave that here and not whine about it on the baseball blog.

  53. 53.

    opiejeanne

    @Mike G: I was in Paris a year ago in September and came down with a UTI. They treated me very kindly and said they’d send a bill. I still haven’t seen it and wonder if I should send them a thankyou note with $50.

  54. 54.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Mnemosyne (iPhone): The other thing for me is, let’s say you are a multimillionaire… Where would you rather live – Switzerland or the Philippines, the Netherlands or Brazil? Do you want to live in an armed compound? Or would you rather be able to go out for a walk? The cost of the security measures is probably equal to what they would pay in taxes to support a decent safety net and infrastructure investment.

  55. 55.

    jl

    @Mike G: Pennies from heaven, and all for me! What’t the problem.

    No fee lunch for you or that loafer in the shade.
    But I deserve my bennies, and don’t care how they’re paid!

    Dean Backer addressed a similar problematic attitude in financial reporting on recent trend in apparently inefficient bias in pricing IPOs. Find a way to get wealthy by brown nosing you way up the corporate poop ladder, and you come down with “FREE C.R.E.A.M. what’s the problem!” syndrome.

    Potbelly’s Stock Doubles on Day of IPO, Redistribution to the 1 Percent?
    http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/potbellys-stock-doubles-on-day-of-ipo-redistribution-to-the-1-percent?

  57. 57.

    Tommy

    @opiejeanne: Michael Moore had his movie on health care. The scene that will always stick with me is him talking to a group of Americans living in Paris. There is this women that had just had a kid. She hears a knock on her door. A person says I am from the government, you just had a kid. I am here to help. Do you need help? Ponder that for a few seconds. I mean how cool is that?

  59. 59.

    JordanRules

    @Mnemosyne (iPhone): I tell people I like paying my taxes as much as I can. It’s a thought-process as a citizen that must eventally take hold in this country if it is to survive in any humane and semi-sustainable way.

    I remember growing up and just assuming it was bad and I should be pissed about it. Then I really grew up and learned how the world works. Its not bad and I am happy to help collectively fund our country.

  62. 62.

    the Conster

    Bill did good, but I would have argued that one size fits all clearly shows that Welch has no idea what’s in the bill – every policy offered on the exchange is a PRODUCT – sold by an insurance company to customers forced into their arms by their government. Then watch him try to explain how that is one size fits all, anti-business.

  65. 65.

    opiejeanne

    @WereBear: I see people on the things all the damned time who I am pretty sure can walk, but they don’t want to.

    Or maybe I’m just a mean person and they all have heart trouble or some other problem and really shouldn’t walk very far.

  67. 67.

    Howard Beale IV

    Boehner has two choices: sacrifice himself for the good of the country or sacrifice the country for his own good.

  69. 69.

    Linnaeus

    @Tommy:

    He worked just so you and I had clean water to drink. He just did that. Our government. And if you talked to him much, well getting us clean water to drink isn’t as easy as you might think.

    No, it isn’t easy. I work for an environmental consulting firm on stormwater-related issues and water issues really are more challenging than you’d think.

  70. 70.

    Ash Can

    @Pooh:

    Has any libertarian explained why government control and coercion is categorically worse than their preferred outcome, corporate control and coercion?

    They’ll never be able to answer that question honestly because, for all their crowing about “reason,” the fact is that libertarianism is first and foremost a religion. They revere and worship the free market because, to them, it has revealed itself as divine. It doesn’t lend itself to questioning any better than any other belief system does — believers adhere to it because they connect with it spiritually, not intellectually. Libertarians, however, then turn around and say that libertarianism is too based on reason, and not only that, it’s the most reasonable position of all. Basically, they’re saying the same thing as fundamentalist, creationist young-Earthers — the Book of Genesis is too factual, it is too provable, it is too scientific; while those of us who are connected with reality know it’s nothing of the sort. And in both cases, the rest of us are left standing there, saying, “You’re nuts.”

  72. 72.

    Tommy

    I just threw up a little in my mouth. Watching 60 Minutes and a story on disability. A judge says that things have changed cause more of the folks that come in front of her court have a lawyer. Look this sounds like a total scam, but to blame it on me and/or you having a lawyer, well that is a bridge too far for me. I thought that was my right, to legal representation.

  73. 73.

    Suffern ACE

    Hmmmm. 60 minutes has a troubling report on SSDI. Of course, Coburn admits that the reason for the increase of claims is the high number of people out of work over 40 who are finding it problematic to get jobs. But I don’t see a solution there. It’s not a surprise that the poorest regions are also the sickest and the ones with the highest unemployment rates. That’s why those are the poorest regions to begin with.

  74. 74.

    Foregone Conclusion

    Even in Britain, I got a burst on my Facebook of conservative anti-Obamacare blather just now. A libertarian Facebook ‘friend’ (more out of politeness than anything) put up an article which argued that the Democrats are the reason for the shutdown. Besides the usual blather (job-killer, why won’t Harry Reid sign up, etc.), it argues that Obama is shirking his constitutional duty to compromise with the House. I have asked him where exactly this clause might be found, other than in the super-secret constitution in his head.

  76. 76.

    raven

    @Tommy: I broke my back in 1975. I spent 2 months in the hospital and 9 months in a full bodycast. I was not hurt bad enough to get SSDI and I was hurt too badly to get unemployment in Illinois!

  78. 78.

    Tommy

    @Linnaeus: He does all his work on stormwater. It is kind of staggering how often raw sewage backs up into our water source. He tells me what he is working on and I am stunned. I can’t believe this is what is happening. He is like you have no clue.

  79. 79.

    SectionH

    @opiejeanne: Dunno about that. They probably wouldn’t want to do the paperwork.

    I had a v. bad experience with the NHS in Yorkshire in the ’70s, which meant that when I had an infected foot in Australia in the ’80s, I was afraid to go to a doctor (yeah, stupid…) so when I got back to the US – wellll, Hawai’i – I went to a clinic, which immediately sent me to Straub ER. (It’s kind of Star Trek to watch the red creeping up your leg, but not at all funneh, and that’s what was happening.) I got shunted to the Tropical Disease ppl, who gave me some heavy-duty antibiotics, and told me to get ‘scrips filled for more. And to come back in 48 hrs.

    Did you know that Medicine was subject to state sales tax there, then? Bloody hell. We speculated that because almost everybody in Hawai’i was covered by insurance even then, it was just we tourists who had to pay that tax.

    The drugs worked. I was still unable to walk when we left to catch our flight back to the mainland a few days later, but they weren’t worried (and yes, I’d been back to Straub, they were that concerned) any more.

    But of course, my own insurance wouldn’t pay a penny of any of it. “Out of area”.

  80. 80.

    Suffern ACE

    @Tommy: This lawyer issue isn’t one that just started six years ago. Suffern ACE in a former life was a paralegal in a social services organization to help people get through the appeals process for SSI. If the person we had was eligible for SSDI because they had the work history, there would be lawyers. That said the lawyers got paid out of the back benefits a person was owed. If the Agency determined on appeal that a person was disabled, the Agency needed to pay the benefits back to the date of disability. At the very least, that would be the date that the person first applied for benefits. The lawyers would extract their fees from that payment.

    I can’t tell if this has changed. It seemed from the report that the Agency pays the legal fees. That was not the practice at the time. Granted it was 20 years ago when I had to manage SSI appeals.

  82. 82.

    Anne Laurie

    @WereBear:

    I’ve sure all of us would rather not need it, so why get one for chuckles?

    There’s a continuum of “need”. I’ve recently been officially diagnosed with osteoarthritis in the knee I broke some years ago, which is opposite my congenitally dysplastic hip, and there are times when I plan my shopping trips so I’ll have to do as little walking as possible. (That, dear consumers, is why chain stores have motorized shopping carts, which I’m too proud to use… yet.) I have a dear friend who needs two knee replacements, but her insurance won’t pay for them until she looses weight (and of course they won’t pay for nutritional counseling, or discounts on gym memberships, to help her do so). On the other hand, they would certify her as “requiring” a power scooter, probably because the feds pay for scooters but not joint replacements.

    Nobody “wants” to be confined to a scooter — even the best of them are cumbersome & severely restrict where you can go, no curbs, no cobbles, watch out for potholes, and getting one in&out of the car is a complicated process — but if the choice is a scooter or permanent home isolation, people will “exaggerate” their need for a scooter… especially when the scooter sales agent is giving your orthopedist a kickback and padding his own commission from the government. Another example of why our patchwork, piecemeal health care system just doesn’t work!

  83. 83.

    opiejeanne

    @raven: my husband is a retired Civil Engineer. Over the course of his career he did sewers and storm drains, curbs and gutters, and airport stuff, and dug wells, built local roads and state highways and freeways. He had to meet with a guy from the CIA a couple of times in 2002 to discuss water security at the reservoirs, and now we just laugh whenever the plot of a thriller involves some mysterious contaminant that can make millions of gallons of water unsafe. The biggest danger according to this guy was from hackers messing around with the controls somehow, but said it wouldn’t be a big problem because of the manual overrides.

  84. 84.

    GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)

    @Tommy:

    Used to be a hardcore VWAG fan. I can’t picture myself buying anything bur Fuji Heavy Industries (subaru) going forward.

    Next car will be a Baja XT or a Forester XT. Currently drive a ’96 legacy with 185k miles.

  86. 86.

    Jeff Spender

    @Ash Can: Well, reason has nothing to do with it, which is the first thing you have to try to get them to admit.

    I’ve had discussions with a creationist who bows at the alter of William Lane Craig tell me he believes in the literal truth of the Bible, but then uses big bang cosmology to try to prove his logical syllogisms right for creation. I asked him once when he said that he didn’t believe that dinosaurs and man lived to together, how could he reconcile that and the book of genesis which he takes to be true. I didn’t get an answer, and afterward he changed it to believing in the literal truth of Genesis 1:1.

    He also repeated several claims made by those in the “reformed epistemology” school of “thought” about how belief in the Christian God was properly basic. When you start to ask the kinds of inconvenient questions that arise from the foundational flaws in the logic they use, they either shut up or change the subject. If they shut up, you can set your watch by how predictable it is that they’ll bring it up again and quote you out of context.

    It isn’t about reason with creationists or libertarians or objectivsts. They use the same kind of bastardized lojiks and ultimately come to the same conclusion. They just have a different word for it.

  87. 87.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    @Suffern ACE:

    IIRC, the two groups with the highest unemployment rates are under 25 and over 50. If you don’t have a job and you’re over 50, in many parts of the country, you’re SOL until it’s time to start collecting Social Security … which is now age 67, not 65, for people born after 1959. Thanks, Ronald Reagan!

  88. 88.

    SectionH

    @raven: Mr S is accused of being the guy who thinks sewage treatment plants are interesting.

    He was also the guy who was credited with inspiring a younger kid who lived next door to him then to become a hydrological engineer. There was this creek behind the houses, and Mr S used to demonstrate how water flow could work.

  89. 89.

    Hill Dweller

    @Foregone Conclusion: Republicans refused to participate in a budget conference. Boehner reneged on the deal he struck with Reid last month. Boehner refused to allow a vote on the CR sent over by the Senate because he knew it would pass.

    All that said, Republicans are using the shutdown and default threat to extort policy concessions unavailable using the normal legislative process. That sort of extremism will undermine the constitution and nullify elections. It should never be rewarded.

    But I suspect your “friend” is impervious to reality.

  90. 90.

    Danack

    @opiejeanne: I was in Paris a year ago in September and came down with a UTI. They treated me very kindly and said they’d send a bill.

    David Sedaris Bend Over and Say Ah Video

    At no point during my 4 hour stay did anyone ask if I had health insurance and payment was not discussed until I brought it up myself.

    “Pay?” The doctor said. “Oh, you can pay the next time you come in”

    Or I guess we can send you a bill.”

    I asked if she had my address “No, but you can give it to me if you want to.”

    It was as if everyone was on Demerol.

  91. 91.

    Yatsuno

    @SectionH: Hawai’i has an employer mandate. Basically, if you work, your employer gets you insurance. I think there are exceptions but not many. It’s why Hawai’i has one of the highest insurance rates in the US. ACA will just make things even more golden there.

  92. 92.

    Tommy

    @Suffern ACE: Look a lot of the lawyers on that 60 Minutes story advertise where I live 24/7. But I got this thing about legal representation. Years ago I did something stupid. I got a DUI. I could afford a lawyer. I recall going to court and others that couldn’t afford a lawyer getting screwed.

    I recall all the charges read against me, and I didn’t harm anybody or damage any property, but the list of laws I broke was long. When they were read to me folks in the court room started to say I was fucked. I walked out of the court room with no charges. I stuck around a little and those that didn’t have a lawyer and less charges, well they got screwed. Some got jail time for far less then what I did. It was then that I realize there was a legal system that wasn’t “cool.”

  93. 93.

    WereBear

    @Anne Laurie: Thanks, you make excellent points. The concept has been cranking away in the back of my head since my comment, throwing up examples.

    Like you might be okay early in the day, but at the end of a long, rainy, one, you’re not. Or okay for a trip to the drug store, but not up for covering all of Costco.

    Don’t let pride make matters worse than they need be, ya know.

  94. 94.

    opiejeanne

    @raven: Are you the guy with the older house and the sewer that runs through the yard, and… a tree?

    I don’t know how he’d solve that one, really, and I’ve heard him deal with all sorts of stuff that would entertain you for hours.

  96. 96.

    raven

    @SectionH: It’s “interesting” to me that the city sewer and water dept issued us both a historic preservation and building permit based on a totally erroneous sewer map. After 4 months and 2 different proposals the head of the department realized he had not taken 2 houses that connect to the mainline BEHIND our house. This in addition to them not knowing that line runs under two house down line from us.

  97. 97.

    SectionH

    @Yatsuno: It’s so long ago, there’s no sting left… ;-> But yes, even then we were aware that most Hawai’in residents were covered. It was the “even f’ing prescription medicine is TAXED?”

    Our Aussie friends occasionally mention their tax rates. My response is always “Yabbut, you get stuff for your taxes.” And they shut up.

  98. 98.

    Linnaeus

    @raven:

    I’ve recently had to deal with the water & sewer folks in my city and I’ve learned that no one really knows where everything is.

  99. 99.

    WereBear

    @Anne Laurie: (and of course they won’t pay for nutritional counseling, or discounts on gym memberships, to help her do so)

    It drives me crazy! They will pay for when you are sick, when it’s so much cheaper to take steps which help us stay healthy.

  100. 100.

    Linnaeus

    In re the topic of libertarians: they’re better described as propetarians.

    There’s a saying in advertising (and I think it was even mentioned here before) that you sell the sizzle and not the steak. The “sizzle” for libertarians is the talk about rights and privacy. Now, some libertarians may take that stuff seriously, but the “steak” of libertarianism is a defense of entrenched property. That’s what matters. The stuff about personal liberties is what libertarians steal from liberals to sell their ideology.

  101. 101.

    SectionH

    @raven: OMG. I know (I read here but don’t comment that much) that you’ve been dealing with major sewer issues on your own property. What are you facing now?

  102. 102.

    opiejeanne

    @Danack: That’s a good description of my experience.

    I had taken AZO, hoping it was not actually an infection, and that stuff dyes your urine orange. That confused the “doctor” who saw me and who spoke almost no English (everyone else did). I couldn’t explain to her what the product was, similar to aniline dye (I think).

  104. 104.

    Foregone Conclusion

    @Hill Dweller:

    Oh, I imagine so. Still, it’s worrying that in a country which has single-provider healthcare without the sky falling in, Obamacare is considered by these clowns to be some massive socialist jobkiller.

    “That sort of extremism will undermine the constitution and nullify elections”

    I think most libertarians are happy with that as long as ‘socialism’ (defined as anything the government does, except maybe stopping the peasants from attacking their lords and masters) is rolled back. More than happy.

  105. 105.

    opiejeanne

    @raven: Oh geez, you’re THAT guy.

    I’m sorry but I have no idea how anyone can help you with your addition. I think it’s up to the city to come up with the plan, but if your city is smallish that may not happen, or at least in a timely manner. It’s already not a timely manner.

    We are nearly finished with an addition to our house, probably mid-November. When we started we were warned that it would probably take months to get the plans approved, but when the plans were completed the contractor sent them in and they were approved in less than an hour, and this set of plans is for an addition to the kitchen, you know, with plumbing and stuff.

    That Never Happens.

    We are still a bit stunned by it and waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  106. 106.

    Splitting Image

    @Belafon:

    I have that question, because at least with the government I have some sort of say in what they do.

    I think this is actually the problem that libertarians have with it. As Stan Lee loved to say, “with great power comes great responsibility”, and libertarians generally define liberty as freedom from responsibility. So it follows that empowering civilians through voting or involving them in governmental decisions means taking away their liberty.

    They would rather live in a dictatorship where no one knows what is going on or could do anything about it if they did. Everyone would have complete freedom to be ignorant about what was going on in the world. Libertarians habitually follow that up with the assumption that they are so S-M-R-T that, unlike the rest of the sheeple, they would always know how the world really worked. After all, don’t they read Ayn Rand and watch Glenn Beck and Alex Jones?

  107. 107.

    pseudonymous in nc

    @Tommy:

    She hears a knock on her door. A person says I am from the government, you just had a kid. I am here to help. Do you need help? Ponder that for a few seconds. I mean how cool is that?

    The idea that there’s a collective desire to invest in kids’ healthcare is, y’know, pro-life. But in the US, the possibility that someone might say ‘hey, you just had a kid, we know it’s a big scary new world for you, anything you need help with?’ is either Government Parenting Indoctrination Socialism Blagh or Why Are You Breeding, You People?

    The idea that kids don’t get their healthcare paid for through taxes full stop, no argument, are we really discussing this? is just fucked up.

  108. 108.

    WereBear

    Of course, it’s just the Republican way to demonize anything their opponents do, since they cannot attack on the merits.

    They make fun of feeding the hungry and helping the sick. They think it’s terrible to have feelings. And I suppose you want clean water and apples without DDT, ya pansy!

  109. 109.

    MomSense

    @Jeff Spender:

    I still believe in reason. I think the problem with libertarians is not so much their capability to reason, but a combination of opinions born of being (mostly) middle to upper middle class white males who haven’t had to deal as much with the underbelly of our society. I have also noticed the tendency to want to simplify complicated systems such that things that would challenge their assumptions are set aside as externalities.

  110. 110.

    opiejeanne

    @Linnaeus: If they were built before 1920 the plans may only be approximate. For some reason they didn’t keep track of stuff like gas lines and sewers before then. We knew more than one backhoe driver who bailed out of his cab when he hit an unmapped gas line.

  111. 111.

    jibeaux

    That’s basically the best possible comeback, and Maher had it so fast. If that wasn’t scripted, that’s real talent. And I will have to remember that line.

  112. 112.

    raven

    @SectionH: Just waiting. The city said they would relocate but couldn’t give us a solid timeline. They say they don’t like lift stations and that seems like it would be the most sensible solution. Plan A was a really long like that would have been super expensive. The latest proposal involves going 17 ft deep in the street in front.

  115. 115.

    elftx

    LOLWUT !!!
    Louie Gohmert on Fox: “I think it’s tragic you have a United States president who says when a bill is voted by both houses and I sign it and it bears my name, and the Supreme Court doesn’t overturn it, then it’s the law and we’re not changing it,” Gohmert said. “I’ve never heard a president say that before. And that’s exactly where the debt ceiling is. Both houses passed it, he signed it into law, it bears his name. So if he’s going to be so recalcitrant, he’s going to find the debt ceiling is exactly as he described it: it’s not going to move if he’s not willing to help us deal with the debt.”

  116. 116.

    raven

    @opiejeanne: We think the sewer lines may have been given to the city by the mills that were in the area. We’re trying to walk that line where we stay on top of it but don’t piss them off. We have a friend on the city council and he helped us get the original “agreement”. I don’t want to go back to him unless it’s the last resort.

  117. 117.

    Suffern ACE

    @Tommy: The thing is, one does need a lawyer or social worker to deal with the disability appeals process. And a lot of the people do need to see doctors, but they don’t see doctors because they aren’t working or aren’t working in jobs that have medical insurance that pays for doctor visits. So they lose their jobs because they can’t work but have no medical history to back their claims. The law firms and social workers know how to find and organize that information. I don’t have a problem with the lawyers.

    Coburn was very careful go with the “lawyers are to blame” because SSDI is for former workers. These are the guys who feel that they’ve earned their government cheques because they worked their quarters (unlike those other WIC and foodstamp people).

  118. 118.

    opiejeanne

    @raven: ACK! 17 feet down? I’m going to tell mr opiejeanne about this. He’s only watching the Dodgers and Braves right now, probably asleep.

  119. 119.

    Linnaeus

    @opiejeanne:

    Sure, if the infrastructure’s really old, I can understand some ambiguity about where it is. It got better in the 1950s with better recordkeeping and whatnot, but it’s amazing how tangled all this stuff is. The local water utility folks basically told us, “You can’t trust what the manhole covers, etc. on the street say. It’s all intertwined.”

  120. 120.

    raven

    @opiejeanne: The reason they turned in the street in front of our house with the main line is that there is a gentle rise up the street. We understand that it is a major project and are counting on them acting in good faith when they told us they’d relocate.

    Crap, 3 run homer.

  123. 123.

    SectionH

    @raven: Jeebs. So your municipality and/or local authority actually has that much money to spend? That’s good, isn’t it?

  124. 124.

    Jeff Spender

    @elftx: See, to anyone who is paying attention, they’re becoming more and more incoherent and less rational as time goes on. That word salad is a primary example of the complete destruction of responsible public discourse.

    To think these people are government representatives makes my blood chill. They like to go on about the founding fathers and the constitution but they wouldn’t know western liberal democracy if it drown them in a bathtub.

  125. 125.

    Mandarama

    @Anne Laurie: Yep, sometimes the need for mobility assistance isn’t very visible. I tore my ACL and cracked my tibia this summer, and after my surgery I’ve had to use the embarrassing carts in the stores. I also have a 6-month handicapped parking tag. But because I’m only 42, I’ve gotten the Look a few times from observers. I keep wearing shorts so at least the recent scars will be visible!

    This experience has made me want to take better care of my joints, for sure. And I’ve practically been on my knees thanking every possible deity or cosmic force for my husband’s health insurance. Both my parents died with no coverage.

  127. 127.

    Mary G

    I could write a book about “medical durables suppliers” and how many crooked ones there are. For years they gave people crappy $800 scooters, charged Medicare $6,000 (Medicare reimburses about $4,000), and went out of business after a year before the scooters broke down and they could be prosecuted, opening up a week later in another state under another name.

  128. 128.

    David in NY

    @opiejeanne: We’ve gone to doctors in France during vacations on and off for 35 years. Doctors’ visit cost about $20 and a prescription maybe another $10. Get to see the doctor right away, too. And I bet they don’t all drive Mercedes.

  130. 130.

    opiejeanne

    @raven: Good idea to tread lightly.

    My husband was shocked by how vindictive one particular city was when he was a new employee of one city and mentioned that B Street really needed to be repaved. They knew it needed it and weren’t doing it because of something that had happened maybe 10 years ealier that pissed off his department, the residents had fought them on street widening.

    He got it paved.

    He never ran across it in any other agency he worked for and he worked for quite a few, both in public and private practice.

  133. 133.

    SectionH

    @opiejeanne: One of our trips – a not that long one – we discovered that while we were gone, the “city” (fuck that, I know who the bastard was) had had the curb on the side street beside our house painted yellow, which meant a few days later, our car had been towed.

  134. 134.

    raven

    @opiejeanne: Yea, I’m playing it cool. I don’t want to spend one dime that doesn’t move the project forward. As of now we are down a few thousand but most of the dough is in the bank. If it doesn’t happen we’ll figure something out. First world problem.

  136. 136.

    MomSense

    Holy shit! Did Boehner actually make the rounds on all the Sunday “news” shows and no one really called him on his BS????

    Do you ever watch the news and feel like if they would just give you 3 minutes with that insufferable jerk you could do the interview justice?

    And what is up with Gohmert?? The guy is clearly imbecilic but how the hell do you serve in the Congress past the orientation and NOT KNOW HOW A BILL BECOMES A LAW??

    I need ObamaCare right away for some meds to deal with all this stoooooopid.

  137. 137.

    opiejeanne

    @Mandarama: Ok, you are the reason I try not to give people The Look, but I’m sorely tempted sometimes because I suspect they vote for Republicans.

  139. 139.

    PsiFighter37

    @elftx: I want some of the crayons Louie’s been chewing on. They must be filled with some grade-A stupid. Also, he should watch that ‘How a bill becomes a law’ video that all of us had to watch when we were in elementary school.

    @MomSense: Of course no one on shows like Press the Meat are actually going to point this out. The only way these shows exist is by repeat business. Can’t go scaring away your clientele by being anything other than Very Serious and Unable to Ask Follow-Up Questions on The Fly.

  142. 142.

    MomSense

    @Kyle:
    I can’t imagine that there is any government agency that is 1/3 as inefficient as Bank of America. Was dealing with a client’s foreclosure and honestly I wanted to slash my wrists trying to deal with them. People who complain about “big government” must be blissfully unaware of how soul crushing mega corporations can be.

    @GHayduke (formerly lojasmo):

    Driving a 2001 Outback with 243,000. Before that I had a 93 Legacy that had 185,000 when I sold it to a friend and he drove it well over 300,000. Best. Cars. Ever.

  144. 144.

    scav

    @Tommy: V. late to babies and the government, but did he mention that all Finnish babies get boxes of starter stuff? The mothers can opt for a cash grant, most don’t, (it’s got a lot of decent stuff ) and it’s looped into some prenatal care. What a catastrophic hell hole of anti-democracy that place must be. And they educate the kids after showering them with clothes and blankies!

  145. 145.

    opiejeanne

    @SectionH: Oh, shit. I came home and parked my car in front of my house, came out not 20 minutes later and the curb was painted red.

    I was almost surprised there wasn’t a cop with a blow-dryer waiting to write me a ticket. I got it removed, eventually. It was a stupid idea that the bus needed to have a red curb and bus stop at every corner of my street because of the hordes of people catching the bus on our street. No one ever caught the bus on our street back then.

    One of the city council members (not ours) had it removed.

  146. 146.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @MomSense:

    A

    nd what is up with Gohmert?? The guy is clearly imbecilic but how the hell do you serve in the Congress past the orientation get out of seventh grade and NOT KNOW HOW A BILL BECOMES A LAW??

    Fixed for accuracy.

  147. 147.

    hilts

    Where’s the Open Thread for the Low Winter Sun season finale?

    This show has gotten a serious bum rap and is much better than the critics have given it credit for.

  152. 152.

    ? Martin

    Bottom line argument to every libertarian:

    The free market has had 100 years to solve [insert problem]. That they haven’t isn’t a failure of government – it’s a failure of the free market.

  153. 153.

    opiejeanne

    @SectionH: My husband had worked for the city for 8 years but had left a couple of years earlier. His department didn’t do it, it was the result of some well-meaning committee’s recommendation to city council. This was a few blocks from downtown and they went from one bus stop every 3 or 4 blocks to one on every block.

  154. 154.

    Linnaeus

    @? Martin:

    The free market has had 100 years to solve [insert problem]. That they haven’t isn’t a failure of government – it’s a failure of the free market.

    As a corollary to this argument, no functioning capitalist economy has ever operated as a completely free market. Ever.

  155. 155.

    MomSense

    @PsiFighter37:

    The basic premise is that somehow this is just normal political maneuvering and not one party acting completely outside the constitution and doing harm to the country in the process.

    If they want to repeal or replace ObamaCare–fine. Write legislation, get it passed in both houses and put it on the president’s desk to sign. Shutting down the country or destroying the world economy in order to make changes to a law you don’t like is not legitimate.

    And am I correct in my understanding that Boehner did “negotiate” with Reid and Obama and the deal was that he would pass a clean CR if Reid agreed to sequester level funding? Reid and the president kept their agreement and Boehner blew up the deal. Why would the president or Reid waste a minute negotiating with someone who acts in bad faith?

    Also too, there are enough votes for a clean CR so Boehner is full of crap and merlot in saying he doesn’t have the votes.

  156. 156.

    MomSense

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    The dude went and I believe graduated from Texas A&M. Inconceivable! Besides the fact that I find it hard to accept he graduated from a fine university, wasn’t A&M set up with massive federal funding as a Lincoln land grant college? I would bet that it still gets a hell of a lot of federal funding.

  157. 157.

    Hill Dweller

    @MomSense:

    The basic premise is that somehow this is just normal political maneuvering and not one party acting completely outside the constitution and doing harm to the country in the process.

    If Dems had done the very same thing, the Village sociopaths sure as hell wouldn’t treat it as normal political maneuvering.

  160. 160.

    opiejeanne

    @Mandarama: I can’t tell. I live just outside Seattle which is blue and all of our state and Federal officials are Democrats, but a lot of my neighbors are Republicans, the ignorant kind despite their money.

  161. 161.

    4jkb4ia

    Here is T.R. Reid describing the French healthcare system:

    France’s health care system is a variation on the Bismarck Model, a system that would be familiar to Americans. It is not “socialized medicine”. Rather, it is largely a system of private doctors treating patients who buy health insurance to cover most of the cost. As in the United States, most French doctors are in the private sector and charge patients on a fee-for-service basis; there’s a specific charge [set by the government] for each office visit, injection, X-ray, and so on. As in the United States, the French buy health insurance through the job, with the employer and the worker splitting the cost; the monthly premium is withheld from the worker’s paycheck. As in the United States, patients generally have to pay a fee, or co-pay, at the time of treatment; unlike the United States, the French patient will later have most or all of this co-pay reimbursed by the insurance fund. As in the United States, there are both public and private hospitals; the French for-profit hospitals tend to specialize in certain illnesses and procedures. For the most part, French workers don’t have a choice of health insurance plans; they get the one that was set up for their line of work, or their geographic region, and stick with it for life.

    Already we see that the French system is NOT one size fits all (there is understanding that different occupations have different healthcare needs). Technically it’s not even single payer. In some ways Obamacare is less one size fits all than this system. In the next paragraph Reid goes on to explain that the insurance funds are nonprofit and so have no incentive not to take people with preexisting conditions, to delay payment, to have deductibles etc.

    (I should h/t Jon Walker for having read that book, because he would refer to foreign health care systems often.)

    So Welch can make a number of points here. He can say that if your system is based on competition between a number of for-profit companies, you need some heavyhanded regulation to blunt the profit motive and make the companies behave like nonprofit ones. He can say that the guaranteed issue in Obamacare or the standard plans are one size fits all when challenged. He made none of them. It is enough to go back to the linked post and see that Welch’s real objection to the French system is having to pay more taxes. The idea that the mandate is a tax, even if Congress has the power to levy it, might be enough for libertarians to object to Obamacare all by itself.

    Also too, it was reported in the NYT that if you are under 30, you can get a catastrophic policy.

    And at the present time, Pedro Alvarez for series MVP. Lance Lynn as possible postseason goat cannot be helped. I would absolutely not admit to paying attention either.

  162. 162.

    MomSense

    @Hill Dweller:

    If Dems had done the very same thing, the Village sociopaths sure as hell wouldn’t treat it as normal political maneuvering.

    This.

    The Republicans used the reconciliation process on numerous occasions to practically zero complaints from the media.

    The Dems use is to pass the ACA and it was vilified ad nauseam. I still hear people complain about ACA because of the way it was passed.

  164. 164.

    SectionH

    @opiejeanne: I actually never worked for the city, but for the Community Development Agency they’d been clever enough to go with. I ran their Section 8 programs, and then, ghods forgive me, as an ebil Contractor, did all their tech for a coupla decades. Including coping with the POS that was the HUD mess online. Also too, the accounting.

    Srsly. The only thing worse than having to deal with the government is not having a government to deal with.

  165. 165.

    pseudonymous in nc

    @opiejeanne:

    What hat? I’ve never seen him before, just talked to him online

    From back in his ‘warblogger’ days, so early 2000s.

  166. 166.

    Botsplainer

    This doesn’t end until Charles and David Koch are machine-gunned at the order of a revolutionary tribunal, the entirety of their assets nationalized and their extended families taken into custody.

  168. 168.

    pseudonymous in nc

    @4jkb4ia:

    Already we see that the French system is NOT one size fits all (there is understanding that different occupations have different healthcare needs). Technically it’s not even single payer.

    The most important part of the French system — and other systems along those lines — is the tarif de convention, which is the standard fee for a service where the primary insurance (CPAM) will reimburse 70%. It’s set in collaboration with professionals, and it becomes the reference price. A doctor can charge above the tarif, but the CPAM will only reimburse 10%. So, basically, price controls.

    (The US takes this model and turns it into the $7 aspirin.)

    (there is understanding that different occupations have different healthcare needs)

    Ah, not really. That’s more a historical legacy. All of the big CPAMs reimburse at the same rates, though there’s variation among the mutuelles that cover the remainder of the bill. That’s the sandbox for the market to work in, and is funded by a fixed premiume, while primary insurance is funded by a payroll tax.

  169. 169.

    Redshirt

    @Botsplainer:

    This doesn’t end until Charles and David Koch are machine-gunned at the order of a revolutionary tribunal, the entirety of their assets nationalized and their extended families taken into custody.

    I surf FreeRepublic and other terrible right wing websites for the purpose of trying to understand them. What I read horrifies me, yet somehow fascinates. I hope no Freeper or RedStater reads this blog, and this reply, and thinks the same. “See!?”, they’d say? “The Liberals are out for blood!”
    I hate being part of any hypocrisy.

  172. 172.

    Ken

    @MomSense: Do you ever watch the news and feel like if they would just give you 3 minutes with that insufferable jerk you could do the interview justice?

    Are we talking the “Blackadder” sense of “An eternity in the company of Beelzebub and all his hellish minions will be as nothing compared to five minutes with me and this pencil”?

  174. 174.

    Sly

    @jl:

    I don’t get the ‘one size fits all’ argument, given the current federal and state regulatory environment.

    The argument makes no sense precisely because the ACA is the direct antithesis of a “one size fits all” approach.

    We don’t have a health care system. We have several health care systems – public and private, for-profit and non-profit – that were developed in an ad hoc manner over the course of a better part of a century. The way in which those systems developed has, predictably, created major gaps both in providing services and managing costs. The basic structure of the ACA is that its a whole lot of things designed to plug those gaps without overly disturbing the underlying systems. Such a structure would, invariably, involve a whole lot of legislative language.

    A “one size fits all” approach would look like this. Its 30 pages.

  177. 177.

    MomSense

    @Howard Beale IV:

    You lie! Really? A judge?

    @Ken:

    Are we talking the “Blackadder” sense of “An eternity in the company of Beelzebub and all his hellish minions will be as nothing compared to five minutes with me and this pencil”?

    I would settle for a relevant and tough follow up question but yours works too.

    @liberal:

    I got a bill from AT&T for .20 and couldn’t believe they would spend twice as much on the postage to mail it to me.

  180. 180.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Redshirt: If you think bloodthirsty language is over the top and inappropriate that is reasonable, and I would tend to agree with you. It is not, however, hypocritical.

  182. 182.

    4jkb4ia

    @pseudonymous in nc:

    I put “set by the government” in brackets within the quote, so I did get part of that. The historical part I didn’t know. The germ of the comment was “Wait a minute, if John means that France has a government-run system, that’s not right.” (I also seemed to have a choice between writing it and being depressed that John was ostentatiously not paying attention to the baseball game. That was childish and I’m sorry.) But price controls are clearly one kind of uniformity that I wanted to argue around somehow.

    So Matt Welch wants to say, “It’s not fair that some people’s premiums will go up because we have restructured the whole health care system for people who could not get health insurance in 2009.” He doesn’t say that or show that he understands what he’s talking about.

  183. 183.

    pseudonymous in nc

    @4jkb4ia: The point about the French system is that it has a high floor, a lowish ceiling, but enough room for the market to dance without bashing its head or causing long-term damage.

    How do you get that? Oh, it’s by a pretty chunky tax. Americans already pay a decentish payroll tax in order to dine at the Medicare and SocSec buffet when they retire, but that’s a bit of a fucker really.

    Matt Welch is a dickbag, because he already knows the kind of collective agreement on taxation that is required in order to have a functional healthcare system, but chooses to believe that some other kind of collective agreement might be okay as long as the large number of people who end up suffering or bankrupted aren’t in his purview. He is far worse, in that regard, than the elected dingbats who think that French healthcare is a glass of cognac and a shrug.

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