Thursday, April 18, 2013
White Pitcher: “Obama Gonna Take Our Guns Away, Man”
(www.politico.com)
“Today’s day and age has gotten so crazy. Shoot man, Obama wants to take our guns from us and everything. You got all this stuff going on; it’s just a little bit insane for me, man. I’m not sure how to take it.”
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< 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 > Last ›That's neat. We need to coordinate this with Carlin's early routine that includes the bit about holding hostages until the infield fly rule is repealed.
But unless you're willing to let that "someone" die on the street if he gets run over by a bus and gets his legs smashed, he's not going to be "minding his own business" once the hospital bill arrives and the rest of us are stuck with it.
He's going to be---what's the word?---a "freeloader", and if he can afford to buy insurance there's absolutely no philosophical justification for not requiring him to obtain it----unless again, your position is that we should simply refuse him treatment, or just keep him alive but let him remain a cripple rather than fixing his broken legs.
Milo Minderbinder lives! Take the respective governments out of war. Let free enterprise contract with the parties and take care of it.
And for medical care--use The Soldier in White principle. Just switch the input and output jars when it is time.
1) Regulation of insurance to provide affordable care to everyone who can pay
2) Subsidization of insurance and Medicaid expansion to provide affordable care to everyone who can't pay
3) Mandate to purchase insurance to stave off adverse selection effects and fully fund the private insurance system
Most countries with universal care fund a central government payor through the tax system. If you're going to have universal health insurance without a central government payor, some other form universal buy-in is necessary.
Not only that, it's unenforceable unless you have a refund coming back to you. There are no criminal or civil sanctions. You can't bring them to criminal court and you can't place a lien on property or garnish bank accounts or wages, etc. It's a pretty pathetic bill, but it's a start.
You need to take it back a step further. Why didn't these people with pre-existing conditions have insurance? Because they either didn't want it or couldn't afford it. What this bill does is say that you can't "not want it" anymore -- you are required to purchase it -- and if you "can't afford it" (as judged by income level), well, then, we won't force you to purchase it - we'll just force other people to pay for you instead.
Since people were already getting free emergency room care, and since this scheme is not really "insurance" at all (insurance is when a group of people VOLUNTARILY band together and AGREE to pool THEIR assets according to RISK), then at its core this is a wealth redistribution, although this time it's not being done through taxing but by requiring people by law to participate in the market.
Instead, this scheme is a group of people being FORCED BY LAW to band together WHETHER THEY AGREE OR NOT to pool their assets but NOT according to risk so that SOME people who have put NO assets in get to be in the group and reap the benefits. And that ain't insurance.
#54: Took me a second to get the Catch-22 reference. Long time since I read it.
Yes. I mean, there's the entire Social Security Act, including the tax for Medicare. At one time, not long ago, people who were not covered by Social Security did not pay a tax for Medicare and thus were not eligible or entitled to receive it. Then that changed. Those under retirement systems that excluded Social Security coverage could still pay that part of the Medicare tax so as to be covered. Guess what, those systems and those people jump on it like stink on broccoli.
This is incorrect, or at best incomplete, and what is worse you know it. Shame on you.
MCoA, I agree with the first part. Social Security and Medicare enjoyed broad public support when passed and ever since, whereas Obamacare has consistently polled under 50%. In any event, the lousy economy would be issue no. 1 for Romney even if he didn't have the baggage.
I wish people would stop using the word "affordable" in this context. The lie in using that word is that insurance was already affordable. The vast majority of people were able to "afford it," and so it was already "affordable," pretty much by definition. (Contrast that with the low percentage of the population who, say, own their own plane or mansion or have a chauffer.) Insurance was as "affordable" as a car or a home or anything like that, which people already could "afford."
If you couldn't afford it, the problem was not the cost of the insurance. The problem lied elsewhere. It is just misleading and deceptive to use that word to describe insurance.
Yes, not once they had the preexisting condition. But before they had it, they were. Which is of course the state in the state diagram that I'm speaking about.
You should be familiar with the concept of "social insurance", which is generally not voluntarily. Social insurance schemes make sense in situations where adverse selection would otherwise be prominent.
So in which OT thread does this belong?
Or they were born with heart arrythmia or something.
Would you call a $3000 suit "affordable"? Technically, most people could find the money for that suit somewhere, if they cut back on consumption in other areas. That's not how the word is ever used - "affordable" is used in contexts which presume a household budget typical for people at a certain income level.
And the presumption, which is as close to irrefutable as can be, is that people will avail themselves of medical care, so they should have medical insurance. Medical care costs, one way or the other, and to extent we can make them pay, they should pay. To extent government can systematize it, it can. Just like for Social Security and Medicare, there's no opting, except under strenuous circumstances where you have what is recognized as equivalent substitute. You're going to drive a car, you have to have insurance; you're going to use medical care, you have to have insurance or pay a penalty/fee/fine/bond. It's not abstruse.
Fourth rate team for a 3rd rate politician ...
Whatever its merits as a policy, this is not insurance. This is welfare. Or free riding off the backs of others. Because there is no way any premium from "insurance" will cover your condition at that point.
The idea that it's just so evil for the insurer not to offer you a policy once your house is burning down (or once you have a preexisting condition) is one of the most unfortunate pieces of propaganda put out by liberals. It would make no rational economic sense for anyone to offer you a policy at that point. It doesn't make them bad people.
Just like Social Security. Many people couldn't afford to save for retirement. They pay what they can, when they can, and others take up the slack. You'll be surprised what you can afford if comes off the top.
TAFKaR hath decreed: this is the only possible definition of insurance.
Keeping this as a conflict between machinic entities: The Socialist Knowledge Kollectiv Known as Wikipedia (TSKKKaW) disagrees.
If you couldn't afford it, the problem was not the cost of the insurance
So TAFKaR hath decreed unto his subjects.
For a guy who insists on evidence for every claim every made, your argument that insurance is affordable came down to "some people without health insurance have iPhones and flat screen TVs." It wasn't backed up by anything resembling math or serious thought; basically it was just a rehashing of '80s welfare queen stories.
My sister is jobless (post-college) right now and her COBRA's expiring. She's paraplegic, and hunting for a job with health insurance, but failing that, she's trying to buy some insurance. The last quote she got was roughly $1000 a month. COBRA's costing her around $500 right now. Even if you don't mind living out of a tent, that's not "affordable." It seems like you have no concept of what insurance actually costs, but have no problem telling us that people without it could easily afford it.
Yes, when I was eleven years old. And totally lazy about my finances.
No. That is how liberals use the word - as a marketing label when they want to pass their pet redistribution bills. Such as their "Affordable Housing Act" or whatever it was called.
The fact that some people can't afford a loaf of bread does not make bread "unaffordable."
---
And why couldn't people "find the money" for health insurance, if they had it but just needed to reallocate? We've been told that health insurance is SO IMPORTANT, that people can't go without it, that they might GO BANKRUPT if they didn't have it. Your argument that they had the money but prioritized other things over it proves too much.
I wouldn't call a $3,000 affordable to the vast majority of people. And I also wouldn't call a $3,000 suit important. If people thought it was so important to have a $3,000 suit -- like they think it important to have a $20,000 car -- they would reallocate. Why didn't they do that with health insurance? Because they decided health insurance wasn't that important to them. That in no way means that health insurance wasn't "affordable" for them.
But let's not consider that?
How about the paying of medicines? Medicines can run you thousands of dollars a month if you're not covered by insurance? Example: for Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia, Gleevec is over $4K for a month's supply; the backup Sprycel is ovre $8K for a 30-day supply. Who will pay that if you don't have insurance and you can't pay otherwise?
I have never heard of anyone but you saying this as a straw man. People do say insurance companies are evil (mostly because they are), but no one expects a policy on a burning house. Because your pre-existing condition/burning house analogy is deeply flawed (as we have discussed pretty much every time you bring it up).
And what was it when the insurer was young and healthy and the insurance company was collecting a premium but paying out little or nothing in care--and getting to invest those premiums in those boom markets? Was that welfare for the insurance companies? Then when the market go bust, they raise the premiums? Sweeet.
The comparison actually would be if you could opt out of say, service by the local fire department and because of whatever reason you refuse to pay the annual, and then your house catches on fire. You're pleading with the fire department, who shows on your doorstep and *they* refuse to do anything to stop the fire, and are only really there because they want to make sure the fire doesn't spread out to other houses who did pay the annual fee. You might think this is ridicoulious and it doesn't happen, but read this story.
Now, that's evil and cold blooded.
Sprycel is ovre $8K for a 30-day supply. Who will pay that if you don't have insurance and you can't pay otherwise?
Do society a favor and die already, cancer boy.
Well since 60% of bankruptcy is caused by medical bills, then yeah it just might here in the real world.
EDIT: And many of them have insurance already, but with life time maximums, co-pay, insurance company weaseling and so on even insurance is no guarantee (but it helps, especially since ACA limits some of that).
VIRUS
Regardless, I think your idea that we should judge what is "affordable" by looking at those who can least afford it, rather than by what the vast majority of people can afford, is ridiculous.
So, you get the Medicaid expansion and subsidies for the latter two groups, and community rating for the former. In order to cover the costs of the subsidies and Medicaid expansion, you get the "excise tax" on insurance plans to force insurance companies and health care providers to cut costs. In order to cover the costs of community rating, you get the mandate.
You raise a good point. How does one define affordable? Or, what percent of uninsured is OK? My answer is much lower than yours I suspect, since I think 100% is just about right.
Exactly. That's what I've been saying forever. Health outcomes don't function properly on a profit/loss, "free market" mechanism. Congratulations. You've just stated simply why health insurance should be single-payer and universal.
And in 5-10 years, unless the law is repealed by President Romney, we'll have a much better idea of how the system works and what reforms it needs. (I like the Medicare public option, of course, but that was fought tooth-and-nail by insurance companies the first time around already. I don't know what will both be a good reform and be sale-able to entrenched business interests.)
Is it really that hard to grasp the concept that what may be affordable to some people----is not affordable to others? And is it that hard to understand that when people say that insurance is unaffordable----they're talking about people who can't afford it?
Of course the third concept is completely beyond your reach: The idea that people whose income is $25,000 a year can't afford to pay half of that for health insurance. All that says is that you find the whole idea of a social contract unacceptable and immoral, but then we've known that since 3:42 PM EST on March 13th, 2007.
And BTW since you keep ducking the Iraq war funding question, why should we pay for freeloaders who use the emergency rooms?
It's a nonsensical thing to object to.
EDIT: What Andy said in his first paragraph of #95.
And we're back to philosophy of language!
Because Ronald Reagan signed that law into being, not Obama. You're such a silly.
I mean, he didn't bother to say how a juvenile diabetic would manage to get insurance when he developed his pre-existing condition as a juvenile, but if you don't understand his answer is "tough, work", then at this point I'd say - debate-wise - the problem is yours, not his.
Ray has endorsed current US law under which emergency rooms must provide care regardless of ability to pay. His position does require some finessing if he's going to support that while opposing more direct forms of social insurance.
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