NY Soda ProhibitionFollow

We usually buy 1 big drink and split amongst the 4 of us. We all know the government can't force people to do things for their own benefit.

This is America dammit.

Obama wasn't elected because of his health care proposal. When passed, more people opposed it than supported it. This is not a great example of democracy in action, but it is a great example of how representative democracy can result in people getting elected for one reason but doing something else that the people didn't want.



Obama wasn't re-elected because of his health care either.



The system is what it is. And one aspect of it is that we vote based on a collection of positions and actions of any given candidate and not directly on any single issue. If we used a direct democracy, Obamacare would not have been passed. Again, that's the system we have, and it does allow for this sort of thing to happen. Claiming that because an unpopular law was passed and the person who pushed it was re-elected means that said law was intended or desired by the voters is extremely questionable. In this case, it means that the negatives of that action didn't outweigh other positives for him (or negatives for his opponent).

There's a pretty massive difference between infrastructure (part of the environment we live in), and specific benefits to individuals. I'll also point out that those systems are not as simple as you're implying. Most of what made the internet useful to most people happened only after privatization of it. Similarly, while the government (at various levels) does fund major road and highway construction, a whole hell of a lot of the end point stuff is paid for by private contractors as part of their license to construct homes in a given area. Same deal with electricity, phones, light posts, signal lights, sewer, water, gas, etc. I couldn't tell you the ratio of fully public versus private funded infrastructure in the US offhand, but the privately funded portion is probably a lot higher than you think. And in those cases, government serves the function of standards, but lets the private market determine the rest.

HellthKare4Zombies!

I didn't say they would. You insure against future events, not past ones. Insurance companies should not have to insure against something that happened in the past, and customers should not expect them to. The problem with Obamacare (well, one of many) is that it's effectively requiring them to do this. Which is insane.



Yes, it would be. Which makes you wonder why our government is choosing to force companies to do just that. Then we're all supposed to sit back and wonder why the hell our premiums have just skyrocketed. Duh!



Sick people die even when they have money. Healthy people die randomly all the time. The idea that we can magically make the world a perfect place if only the government can address one issue, is astoundingly arrogant and stupid. If people pay for insurance against major illnesses, then when they get major illness, they will be covered. There is no "running out of money". In the same way that if you pay for life insurance and then die, the insurance pays out. If you don't pay for insurance and die, it doesn't. Trying to force things to work differently is absurd.



No debate on what? Sick people die if they run out of money and *don't* have insurance. Insurance costs are driven up by government forcing companies to provide "comprehensive care". Thus, most people can't afford to insure against the most expensive health care costs because we've flooded the insurance market with money spent paying people to have checkups and spending $500 bandaging up sprained ankles. If we didn't do this, more people would be able to afford major medical insurance, and the insurance companies would have to honor the contracts they've signed requiring them to provide care when those rare and expensive medical problems occur.

Again, the problems aren't caused by the free market here. They're caused by existing government regulation. Responding to those problems with yet more regulation that is basically just doing the same thing is doubling down on stupidity.




Of course they don't. Why do you think they would, or should? This is why we should make it so that if insurance companies want to make money, they need to get customers to buy insurance before they get sick. And a great start to that would be eliminating all the silly mandates which price insurance so high that most people can't afford that insurance in the first place. I could have sworn I explained this in my last post, but it's like you just ignored it all and repeated the same argument again.

I know that insurance companies don't insure people after the fact. But forcing them to do this doesn't change the reality that this is a really stupid thing to do. Yet, that's exactly what Obamacare does. So... stupid.

The ironic thing here is that Obamacare essentially encourages and rewards people to not purchase health insurance. It increases the costs of health care by mandating coverage levels, but at the same time requires insurance companies to provide for people even if they never purchased insurance prior to the day they show up, already sick. Worse, the fine/tax for failing to purchase insurance is far far less than the cost to purchase insurance in the first place. So basically, the government will collect $1500/person from all the healthy people in the country, then when they get sick, they'll allow them to buy insurance from the industry and use the money collected over time to pay for the premiums now required.

Is there anyone who can't see how this will massively increase insurance premiums? It'll actually decrease the real size of the insurance pool, and more or less do the exact opposite of what the Dems claimed it would do. It's not designed or intended to be a functional health care system. It's designed to break what last vestiges of a private health care system we have left. And while I'm sure some of you think that's a great thing, I'd caution you that you might just get exactly what you wish for and will find it's not what you really wanted.

They wouldn't do it out of the "kindness of their hearts". Why are you placing that requirement on this? They would do it because people would pay them in advance for "cancer insurance", and when the one in 1000 person gets cancer, they will pay for their treatment. They don't have to do it out of any kindness. They'll do it because if they charge 1000 people money for cancer insurance, but then don't pay for the one person out of that group that gets cancer, the other 999 people will cancel their insurance. And then they'll go out of business. The profit motive requires that they provide the services they've promised to their paying customers.

The reason they can do things like deny coverage today is because the government has passed laws effectively mandating that businesses that offer any sort of health benefits must provide "comprehensive care". Which means that insurance companies make "free money" covering regular checkups and minor health issues at a markup. Instead of covering X number of people and calculating the percentage that will suffer a given rare/expensive medical problem, and then calculating the cost they have to charge the entire group to cover that, they instead know that an average number of people will go to the doctor in any given year for any of a number of minor things, and they charge that cost plus their profit/overhead. It's automatic money for them. They can't lose. And if they refuse to cover an expensive thing that comes along, it's no loss to them because the overwhelming majority of their customers are not there by choice. They're paying them because the government requires them to do so.

When your customer can't refuse to pay you even if you refuse to provide them with what they think they're paying you for, what do you think is going to happen?



Why would anyone buy insurance then? In an actual free market, if insurance companies did this, they'd go out of business. In the non free market we have today, they don't. The problem is the lack of a free market, not the other way around.

Almost all the things people complain about today regarding our health care system are caused by the very thing they're arguing for.



Only if they can get away with it. And they can only get away with it because we have government mandating that businesses buy insurance for their employees. How the hell do you not see this? If the government passes a law mandating the purchase of something, it removes the normal market forces which require the producers of that thing to provide a good value. This is not magic or anything. It's basic market reality. We have caused this problem with government mandates. Adding more mandates isn't going to improve things. It's going to make it worse.

Edited, Mar 20th 2013 5:30pm by gbaji

Admittedly, there's a whole bunch of Democratic ideas that people far prefer over the Republican counterparts. Health care was just one of them

Only if they can get away with it. And they can only get away with it because we have government mandating that businesses buy insurance for their employees. How the hell do you not see this? If the government passes a law mandating the purchase of something, it removes the normal market forces which require the producers of that thing to provide a good value. This is not magic or anything. It's basic market reality. We have caused this problem with government mandates. Adding more mandates isn't going to improve things. It's going to make it worse.


Well, shit, too bad you assholes lost then, I guess. Oh and that your Chief Justice went off the reservation. Oh and that every other first world nation in the world has moved to comprehensive government mandated coverage. Oh and that health care costs and outcomes are better when that happens. Oh and that every analysis indicates cost savings from ACA.

Which is the real problem, the savings. What the GOP is attempting to protect is the profit margin of private insurers and big pharma. Trust me, I spent the last few years working with the pharma side. Their biggest concern is falling reimbursement rates, that's what 90% of their lobbyists spend all day working on. They don't really give a **** who pays, so long as the rate is the same or increased. It'll be single payer in 15 years, there's really not another viable option.

Why is it then if free market is the way to go that other nations with out it are not only paying less but are getting better outcomes from their healthcare systems.

FOURTH AMENDMENT!

Our roads are relatively fine, and we shipped off the homeless to New Jersey.