Napoleon, Obama, and Health Care ‘Reform’
Why ObamaCare is different
Now think about ObamaCare. It’s different than all those welfare state policies in a crucial respect: it will create concentrated, visible costs for people, but the benefits will mostly be intangible and diffused. That isn’t a politically successful model. Instead, it’s likely to create a national uprising, just as Napoleon’s invasion of Spain did.
ObamaCare is an attempt to provide expansive health care benefits for millions of people who previously made do with much less, while simultaneously bringing down total health care spending. That will inevitably lead to the kinds of denial of treatment decisions and rationing by waiting list that are found in Britain and other countries with heavily politicized systems. Americans won’t react with indifference when grandma can’t get a hip replacement because some federal panel has decreed that it wouldn’t be cost-effective. Never before has a government program here created large numbers of people who will see themselves as terribly victimized by it.
Let’s imagine a hypothetical conversation between Grandma Green’s daughter and her congressman, whom we’ll call Representative Frump.
Daughter: “My mother needs a hip replacement to be able to regain mobility and enjoy life, but some bureaucratic panel said she can’t have it. You voted for ObamaCare even though we both wrote to you to explain why we were against it. What do you have to say?”
Congressman Frump: “Well, too bad about your mother, but you’ve got to keep in mind that under our reformed system, we are now insuring millions who used to be uninsured. That’s a great step toward social justice for America!”
Concentrated cost versus an abstract benefit. That defense won’t play in Peoria. It probably won’t even play in San Francisco, Boston, or Washington, D.C.
Guerilla warfare to come
The political insurgency will be fueled by cases like Grandma Green’s. Every adverse medical outcome that can plausibly be blamed on ObamaCare will be used to fan the flames. Congressmen and senators who voted for the legislation will be the equivalent of the vulnerable French garrisons and supply trains in Spain. They’ll be attacked repeatedly and many will fall. Political ads built around instances like the conversation above will take a large toll on Democratic loyalists.
Worse yet for the left, Americans who would never have thought about the damage that other parts of its collectivist, anti-individual agenda are doing to the country will become receptive to such messages. Many who were drawn into the insurgency because they dislike ObamaCare will come to understand that it is only one of hundreds of federal programs that harm people, waste money, and make us poorer. In short, ObamaCare will help catalyze opposition to statism itself.
Another similarity to Napoleon’s peninsular campaign will probably be the efforts at suppressing it. One of Goya’s most famous paintings depicts a French firing squad executing Spanish rebels. Doing that might appeal to some of Obama’s staff, but the actual tactics will involve increasing harassment from the IRS, the Federal Election Commission, and other federal bureaucracies capable of making life miserable for those who publicly criticize ObamaCare and its defenders. Like the firing squads, those efforts will only make the resistance more determined.
Could ObamaCare actually be driven out, as the French were from Spain? The conventional wisdom has been that if it passes, we’ll never get rid of it. I’m not sure about that. True, bad laws are hardly ever repealed, but for the reasons I’ve given, ObamaCare is going to be uniquely vulnerable. Combined with the outrages that other aspects of Obama’s statist, authoritarian agenda will keep producing, the United States is going to experience the political equivalent of the uprising against Napoleon.
That uprising has already begun and if ObamaCare is enacted, it will intensify greatly. The political combat will be vicious. My hunch is that Obama will regret that he roused the still-substantial portion of the American populace that prefers liberty and individual responsibility to subservience to the nanny state.
It can’t be put any more simply: If the public option were to pass, we all become serfs. We would be forced into a position as supplicants to the government for our health care. That’s assuming that they’re even able to keep the promises to provide all with the health care we need (which is extremely doubtful).
Most Republicans do not object to legislation that would prevent insurers from dropping sick people, or even legislation that did not allow insurers to discriminate against those with pre-existing conditions if it would kill the public option. (Even this is like buying car insurance after you have an accident).
But insuring the uninsured is simply a pretext for the creation(either incrementally or all at once) of a public option that would (as Barney Frank frankly admitted) inevitably lead to a single payer system.
As Mark Steyn wrote in NRO, this would have the effect of permanently changing the political culture to a left of center one that would redefine the relationship between the citizen and the state in matters as personal and as basic to personal liberty as one’s own body. Your health care choices would ultimately be left of to Congress, special interest lobbies and the courts. (One might have the unfettered right to an abortion, but could not get an MRI if she so wanted unless she went to Mexico or China). Are you really free if you can’t get an MRI or some other medical treatment, regardless of its usefulness unless the government says so?
except that “guerilla” isn’t an anglo-saxon instinctive reaction, but rather political “plots” are
To me Rationing is not the issue so much. It is the “public option” or whatever the left is calling it today. The public option is like a football game where one team owns the stadium, the opposing team, makes the rules, controls the referees and doesn’t have to pay it’s players the same wages as the home team. In addition the opposing teams fans get in free. How can that be fair competition?
I am not against getting more people access to health care/insurance but ObamaCare is NOT the way to do it.
George,
EXCELLENT article. I totally agree with you. Obama and his minions are so arrogant they cannot see the “forest for the woods.” Just the mention of “ObamaCare” these days is mobilizing many citizens to stand up and fight, ie: the 9/12 march on Washington DC which is looking like it is going to be in the millions.
If ObamaCare passes it will be over for the retards in Congress and the Administration. The people will look at this power grab by government as the “final straw.”
Bring it on baby! We are fed up.. the sleeping GIANT is finally waking up and guess who is going to be the first casualty of war? Obama!
As “public choice” economists have long understood, even terribly inefficient and wasteful government programs will survive if they have concentrated benefits and widely diffuse costs. The beneficiaries will fight much harder to keep the goodies coming than the people who pay the resulting higher taxes and prices will fight to end the program. In fact, the latter usually don’t even know that they are being mulcted.
Try discussing anything but “redistributive justice” economics with the Left and see how far that gets you.
I have been thinking about this same angle on the issues related to actually implementing ObamaCare, rather than talking about it in the abstract. Many will point to polls of other countries with programs akin to ObamaCare and show the high levels of satisfaction reported, but that ignores the fact that many of those countries, especially the ones in Europe, got those health care systems after their societies had been completely destroyed in WWII, so it’s not as if they had a lot of alternatives. Plus, those countries already had a strong left-wing bias and almost no culture of individual rights (you still don’t see individual rights written into European national constitutions, really). Finally, those other countries are usually more ethnically homogeneous than the US, which creates a sense of solidarity that is much more attenuated here, as chronicled by the scholar Robert Putnam, who has shown that as ethnic diversity in a neighborhood goes up, trust levels and willingness to participate in communal activities goes down. As is typical, the Left draws upon false analogies and equivalences to advance its arguments. I have seen many post here at PJM saying that ObamaCare will be so wonderful that we’ll all laugh at how stupid we were for opposing it. But, their conclusions are built on sand.
“…gigantic blunders. One of them was Napoleon’s decision to invade Spain in 1808 and put his elder brother Joseph on the throne. … I strongly suspect that Obama’s decision to “reform” American health care by thoroughly politicizing it will become his Spain.”
Congratulations, George! You’ve won the Wackiest Analogy of the Year Award!
NO CO-OP’S! A Little History Lesson
Young People. America needs your help.
More than two thirds of the American people want a single payer health care system. And if they cant have a single payer system 77% of all Americans want a strong government-run public option on day one (86% of democrats, 75% of independents, and 72% of republicans). Basically everyone.
According to a new AARP POLL: 86 percent of seniors want universal healthcare security for All, including 93% of Democrats, 87% of Independents, and 78% of Republicans. And 79% of seniors support creating a new strong Government-run public option plan, available immediately. Including 89% of Democrats, 80% of Independents, and 61% of Republicans, STUNNING!! Senator Max Baucus, You better come out of committee with a strong government-run public option available on day one.
The History:
Our last great economic catastrophe was called the Great Depression. Then as now it was caused by a reckless, and corrupt Republican administration and republican congress. FDR a Democrat, was then elected to save the nation and the American people from the unbridled GREED and profiteering, of the unregulated predatory self-interest of the banking industry and Wallstreet. Just like now.
FDR proposed a Government-run health insurance plan to go with Social Security. To assure all Americans high quality, easily accessible, affordable, National Healthcare security. Regardless of where you lived, worked, or your ability to pay. But the AMA riled against it. Using all manor of scare tactics, like Calling it SOCIALIZED MEDICINE!! :-0
So FDR established thousands of co-op’s around the country in rural America. And all of them failed. The biggest of these co-op organizations would become the grandfather of the predatory monster that all of you know today as the DISGRACEFUL GREED DRIVEN PRIVATE FOR PROFIT health insurance industry. And the DISGRACEFUL GREED DRIVEN PRIVATE FOR PROFIT healthcare industry.
This former co-op would grow so powerful that it would corrupt every aspect of healthcare delivery in America. Even corrupting the Government of the United States.
This former co-op’s name is BLUE CROSS/BLUE SHIELD.
Do you see now why even the suggestion of co-op’s is ridiculous. It makes me so ANGRY! Co-op’s are not a substitute for a government-run public option.
They are trying to pull the wool over our eye’s again. Senators, if you don’t have the votes now, GET THEM! Or turn them over to us. WE WILL! DEAL WITH THEM. Why do you think we gave your party Control of the House, Control of the Senate, Control of the Whitehouse. The only option on the table that has any chance of fixing our healthcare crisis is a STRONG GOVERNMENT-RUN PUBLIC OPTION.
An insurance mandate and subsidies without a strong government-run public option choice available on day one, would be worse than the healthcare catastrophe we have now. The insurance, and healthcare industry have been very successful at exploiting the good hearts of the American people. But Congress and the president must not let that happen this time. House Progressives and members of the Tri-caucus must continue to hold firm on their demand for a strong Government-run public option.
A healthcare reform bill with mandates and subsidies but without a STRONG government-run public option choice on day one, would be much worse than NO healthcare reform at all. So you must be strong and KILL IT! if you have too. And let the chips fall where they may. You can do insurance reform without mandates, subsidies, or taxpayer expense.
Actually, no tax payer funds should be use to subsidize any private for profit insurance plans. So, NO TAX PAYER SUBSIDIES TO PRIVATE FOR PROFIT PLANS. Tax payer funds should only be used to subsidize the public plans. Healthcare reform should be 100% for the American people. Not another taxpayer bailout of the private for profit insurance industry, disguised as healthcare reform for the people.
God Bless You
Jacksmith — Working Class
Twitter search #welovetheNHS #NHS Check it out
(http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/25/why-markets-cant-cure-healthcare/)
Senator Bernie Sanders on healthcare (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSM8t_cLZgk&feature=player_embedded)
American HEROES!!
Click replay to play http://bit.ly/j31oU
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbWw23XwO5o) CYBER WARRIORS!! – TAKE THIS VIRAL
An interesting analogy. However, I’m a bit disappointed about the lack of detail about French fortunes in Spain after the conquest.
If you were going to use a quick example from history to make your point you might have used on closer to the present. How about the time some idiot put on a flight suit, landed on an aircraft carrier, and stood in front of a banner that read “Mission Accomplished”. Now that would be a great example of a short-term victory that turned into a major blunder.
Man’s Finger Bitten Off in Scuffle at Health Care Rally
“THOUSAND OAKS — A 65-year-old man had his finger bitten off Wednesday evening at a health care rally in Thousand Oaks, according to the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department.
Sheriff’s investigators were called to Hillcrest and Lynn Road at 7:26 p.m.
About 100 protesters sponsored by MoveOn.org were having a rally supporting health care reform. A group of anti-health care reform protesters formed across the street.
A witness from the scene says a man was walking through the anti-reform group to get to the pro-reform side when he got into an altercation with the 65-year-old, who opposes health care reform.
The 65-year-old was apparently aggressive and hit the other man, who then retaliated by biting off his attacker’s pinky, according to Karoli from DrumsnWhistles.
The man took his finger and walked to Los Robles hospital for treatment.
Neither man has been identified.”
———–
Definition of Irony: After attempting to beat the crap out of a fellow citizen simply for voicing a favorable opinion about a public option in health care, 65-year old right wing nut will get his finger reattached courtesy of Medicare, a SOSHULIST! government program.
Too bad Medicare doesn’t also pay for anger management classes. Or a new brain.
The biggest of these co-op organizations would become the grandfather of the predatory monster that all of you know today as the DISGRACEFUL GREED DRIVEN PRIVATE FOR PROFIT health insurance industry. And the DISGRACEFUL GREED DRIVEN PRIVATE FOR PROFIT healthcare industry.
Interesting that nowhere in your screed do you actually prove that for-profit health care is any of the things you say it is. You simply assume it. Hardly convincing.
The French Revolution and Mr. Obama’s Hope and Change
To take the analogy a step further, Napoleon rode to power by promising hope and change to the people of France. He promised to instill within the French government the ideas of the French Revolution, to end their partisan divides, and to lead France into the future. In reality all he did was make himself emperor, gather power unto himself, and oppress the people exctly the same way as the former kings had. Mr. Obama is no different.
“Grandma Green sees her check, but the working people who were taxed to pay for it never saw their money.”
I realize the point of the article is something different and that you are not “knocking Grandma Green” here, but because it is seldom acknowledged, I will point out that Grandma Green (like me) very likely ALSO PAID (involuntarily) Social Security and Medicare taxes for 40 years and never saw that income.
Hubby and I paid (unwillingly) over $100,000 in Soc Sec taxes alone during our(combined)85 years (and counting) of pulling a paycheck. I’d love to have that back (with compound interest please) figuring from 1959 or so.
Definition of Irony: After attempting to beat the crap out of a fellow citizen simply for voicing a favorable opinion about a public option in health care, 65-year old right wing nut will get his finger reattached courtesy of Medicare, a SOSHULIST! government program.
Actually, he’ll probably sue the guy who bit it off. Of course, the guy is probably a smelly, good for nothing with no money. I hope at least the old guy DID beat the crap out of him. That would be nice.
13. venividivici: “Actually, he’ll probably sue the guy who bit it off.”
Of course he will sue. It is so very typical for a hypocritical right-winger to spend his entire life grumbling “let’s kill all the lawyers” only to find himself hiring one to sue someone over a violent incident that he himself started.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_FINGER_SEVERED?SITE=NYONE&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
“An Associated Press report published Thursday afternoon indicates that the protester had successful surgery on his finger, and was covered by a government health plan.
“A hospital spokeswoman says the man lost half the finger, but doctors reattached it and he was sent home the same night,” the AP reports. “She says he had Medicare.”
Durrrr.
Great analogy. Victorious defeat: Quite a stunt if you can pull it off! Obama may some day become recognized as the political genius who managed to turn millions of otherwise quiet citizens into vocal protestors, simply by threatening to demote those proud citizens into mere subjects.
Health care reform, misguided as it is, is small potatoes compared to the systematic assault on American values, already initiated earlier through a costly and ineffective stimulus, a takover of the financial and automotive industries which would have made Mussolini proud, and the cap and trade madness, failing to recognize science as a non-prophet entreprise.
The legend of Robin Hood is kinda cute, but let us keep it as a legend, not a policy principle. By the way, keep in mind that Robin Hood was not an ordinary robber, he was a robber with an exceptional talent for public relations, long before the teleprompter was invented.
Dale,
I know you typed something, but all I can see is “Blah blah blah, winger, blah, blah, blah”.
Like I said, let him sue. That dirty hippy that bit him probably had tetanus.
And it’s not hypocritical to get benefits from something you’re FORCED to pay into. What’s wrong is to TAKE benefits where you haven’t paid in. You know, like the 50% of people who get benefits from things funded by the income tax revenues the government collects, yet pay no income tax.
To Professor Guvinoff: We must also remember that Robin Hood actually robbed from the government and gave back to the poor over taxed peasants. My favorite line is from the Disney cartoon version where Friar Tuck (played by Andy Devine as a possuum) says “Praise the Lord and pass the tax rebate!”
The popular saying is that Robin Hood robbed the rich and gave to the poor but in the story the elitiest government overtaxed everyone who did not support that government and pretty much kept it. Robin Hood was not redistributing wealth but restoring the government’s ill gotten gain.
“even terribly inefficient and wasteful government programs will survive if they have concentrated benefits and widely diffuse costs. The beneficiaries will fight much harder to keep the goodies coming than the people who pay the resulting higher taxes and prices will fight to end the program.”
Bravo! I doubt I’ve ever seen a better modern restatement of Tytler’s Law.
Unfortunately in your Napoleonic analogy you’ve overlooked a highly significant detail: the guerilleros could bleed the French, but couldn’t defeat them or drive them out. It took Wellington’s army to do that.
So where is our Arthur Wellesley? What Great Power is going to support our own contras against the Obamanista regime? Nowhere to be seen, I’m afraid.
——————-
Jacksmith: Thank you for reminding us, yet again, what reality-free whackjobs you Lefties really are.
You would certainly not be castigated at this time to be fish-eyed and trench-mouthed about the stinking mire of the upcoming healthcare reform battle, but reflection on what got us to this vomitus projecting conjunction is what is largely valued and needed at this time. What got us into this slippery Mucinex-related morass, ultimately, is the educational system, which now prepares students for the job market (Would you like to supersize that?) instead of offering a general education, kind of like adding more fiber to your mental capacity. Pinheads scream about the menace of “liberal education”, but it is in fact the failure of assuring a liberal education that has created this maddening situation, where educated people cannot even debate the pros or cons of the issues at hand due to the lack of independent and critical thinking processes unacknowledged by the simpletons our MSM seem to delight in beaming into our homes at night. Behold the spectacle! So called conservative politicians, those festering gobs, the pork rinds of our communal food for thought, are willing to exploit these misguided fools for their own munificence, despite fish-lip service to family values, and worker ants and their families, along with this rabble of idiots, are expected to subordinate their lives to the needs of their manipulators, be it some panty-sniffing subnormal at the RNC or that insurance industry fat pig loving every minute of it. Material success is the crux of existence, rather than goals and Yahtzee bonus points such as parenting, teaching, and serving the community, which are considered worthless and their practitioners the dimmest of rubes. Those elites with the angry means and real stopping power can succeed while all those creatures lacking are abandoned by the freeway or worse. The cause: The anomie cultivated by the American Dream and, since the prominence is on the competence of the market economy, political opportunism and crime are often seen as the most foxy strategy for making obscene and pointless material gains. The Dream also embodies the use of material success to measure one’s self-worth.
18. venividivici: “What’s wrong is to TAKE benefits where you haven’t paid in. You know, like the 50% of people who get benefits from things funded by the income tax revenues the government collects, yet pay no income tax.”
You must be referring to the South and the Midwest – America’s Welfare Belt – which receives more $ in federal subsidies each year than they pay in taxes.
Meanwhile, your elected reps like Jindal and Sanford are bilking your states out of hundeds of thousands of dollars so that they can take first class flights to Argentina and private helicopter rides to church.
What a joke.
Concentrated health care costs conflict with the reforms diffuse benefits? Yeah. So the over the hill Baby Boomer’s worst nightmare comes true; to save the planet from carbon induced climate change Baby Boomers like Michael Moore get to die for oil on a morphine cocktail just to forgo more oil drilling. If those Hollywood senior citizen medicare hedonists are lucky, they’ll die in the saddle, weekend special myocardial infarctions, Prince Valiants riding Princess Viagras. I always thought medicare covered Viagra was a Yankee imperialist ploy to reduce social security costs anyway.
To Kipling (#19)
Thanks for the additional data.
In both cases, however, I would argue that the core of Robin Hood’s genius was his intuitive mastery in the art of propaganda: Our disagreement is only over a technical difference between loot redistribution and wealth redistribution, merely a superficial tweak on social justice theory, if you consider whether such theory provides adequate cover for whatever self-rightheous fiscal manipulation you have in mind.
Later on, Grahma Bell invented the telephone, (unfortunately, that was before the invention of the Nobel prize, so he could not get it), Al Gore invented both the Internet and the planet fever (with proper Nobel sanction), and Dan Rather invented the synthetic memo, etc…, so our contemporary community organizers could extend the scope of their malfeasance to an unprecedented scale.
We can take comfort in the preservation of the initial poetic appeal, but this is precious little consolation for the magnitude of the damage.
You must be referring to the South and the Midwest – America’s Welfare Belt – which receives more $ in federal subsidies each year than they pay in taxes.
Two points. One is that most of the discrepancy can be explained by the location of military bases and, two, you do realize that it’s “red” individuals in “blue” states that pay most of those income taxes? I myself and pretty sure I support four or five parasite families with my income tax dollars.
Oh wait, you mean the Midwest States like Michigan,Illinois, Wisconsin, Missouri,Ohio, Indiana and Pennsylvania where unions, environmental do-gooders, excessive government regulations and high taxes had destroyed the steel industry, the automotive industry, the mining industry and textile industry. Thanks Dale, for reminding us on how the Democratic party and people like you really see the working class Americans. And oh, btw , the South, where most of the US bases are, they don’t count.
Dale, I understand that California is now currently issuing IOUs, New York and New Jersey as well as Maryland have a budget problem and my own state, Illinois is already sinking in debt because of welfare to illegal immigrants and empowerment of the professional racists and poor, graft and corruption and political waste. The Blue States have budget problems because they have this misconception that increasing taxes on the wealthy and the middle class would solve the budget deficit.
Carl,
Thomas Pynchon called. He wants his critique of fin-de-siecle American capitalism and its concomitant anomie back.
I don’t think Obama is a “strong” as many think. It’s true Obama has been tactful in making certain that his name is kept in the news; however, as with the “public options” and with the “help the president” school dabble, Obama’s name is more and more being associated with BAD things. Bad experiences, bad feelings, bad programs, bad prodings and bad policies. I do agree that all of a sudden there is an overwhelming opposition to Obama in healthcare, in the recession and lack of recory, high gas prices, etc. Obama’s is falling now.
Jacksmith, you fail to point out that at least four of the Blue Cross/Blue Shield affiliates (operated as one company, but each one has its own agreement with the Blue Cross/Blue Shield Association) has absolutely no profit motive.
Regence is a nonprofit health care company. We offer individual and group medical, dental, vision and life insurance, Medicare and other government programs, and pharmacy benefit management.
We are the largest health insurer in the Northwest/Intermountain Region, serving members as Regence BlueShield of Idaho, Regence BlueCross BlueShield of Oregon, Regence BlueCross BlueShield of Utah and Regence BlueShield (in Washington). Each Plan is an Independent Licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association.
http://www.regence.com/about/index.jsp
Research is good. Keeps one from making embarrassing errors, Jack.
To take George Leef’s point about ObamaCare one step further, we are going to turn the American health insurance system topsy-turvy for a very small number of people, compared to those who are insured. Currently, the number of uninsured that is bandied about is about 45 million. As I understand, though, one-fifth of the 45 million is composed of illegal aliens; another one-fifth is composed of people on medicare who are accidentally included in the 45 million; another one-fifth are people with annual incomes of $75K or more who have chosen not to be insured, and the final two-fifths are the twenty-something crowd who thinks it does not need insurance or who have found insurance to be “too expensive” because of all the state mandates. So in essence, we may be taking about destroying the current system which covers some 250 million people for 18 million or so twenty-somethings. Wouldn’t it be better to leave the current system in place and instead use Senator McCain’s idea of a national charter for health insurance companies. That way the insurance companies can compete across state lines and make insurance affordable for those 18 million?
Anecdotally, my youngest daughter is in her mid-twenties and does not yet have full time work, and she has a pre-existing condition. Nonetheless, she was able to find a health insurance that would cover and some portion of the pre-existing condition. I think if the twenty-something set really wanted it, they could find a health plan that would cover at least some of its needs.
Carl Gordon:
Well, your writing sample in all its verbose, shapeless, pretentious, sneering and jargon-laden incoherence is a striking example of why a ‘liberal education’, or at least education as envisioned by liberals, is a misfortune profoundly to be avoided.
But thank you for, yet again, demonstrating that liberals are indeed smug, conceited snots with a boundless belief in their mental superiority- which is (as you so ingenuously prove) utterly without foundation. Balatro ipsa loquitur.
Marie-Claude:
“except that “guerilla” isn’t an anglo-saxon instinctive reaction”
Perhaps you should review events around Boston in 1775, or in the Carolinas 1780-81.
Hey, it’s been almost 12 ours since someone here invoked “call a spade a spade.” You’re overdue.
31. Bohemond:
“Well, your writing sample in all its verbose, shapeless, pretentious, sneering and jargon-laden incoherence is a striking example of why a ‘liberal education’, or at least education as envisioned by liberals, is a misfortune profoundly to be avoided.
A few quick things while on on writing – your criticism was exactly what you criticized. Yep. And if by putting liberal education in quotation marks you’re suggesting that the phrase means something other than what it means on its face, then you should put the quotation marks around only the world liberal, thusly – “liberal.” I believe that is what you meant to imply, that a liberal education is not really an education. I’m pretty sure you meant liberal to mean liberal and so it would not be similarly set off. Finally, it should read “is a misfortune to be (something) avoided” Not “profoundly” and not in that spot. Wrong word. Wrong place.
Expert, don’t you know. Whew. Thank goodness I didn’t choose to correct your entire post. We’d be here till midnight. Such is the plight of the conservative – knows just enough to sound ignorant.
If obeymugabe is now going to be Napoleon, can we skip all the intermediary steps and send him striaght to Elbe?
7. jacksmith:
NO CO-OP’S! A Little History Lesson
~~~
Here, in the 1950′s a healthcare co-op was founded as an experiement. (while technically “health” is in it’s name – those in the know have replaced it with “death” for a reason.) it is still in operation. Young people without much money or health issues think it’s great. Never mind how long they wait for an appointment, and then with a PA/LPN, not an actual MD. People who’ve experienced a number of health issues understand the reality check – but not always. My grandmother thought they were wonderful – but couldn’t make the leap that her sister’s were receiving superior care outside that system than the substandard care she was getting inside it for the EXACT SAME ISSUES.
They have had financial troubles for years, and are now sharing space with a local hospital to save money, selling their own to get some money. Their nurses have the reputation of being lazy and giving poor care. (this is among other nurses, but I’ve also dealt with some.) What is probably more correct is they are seriously lacking in training and oversight – which results in poor performance and patient care.
If obeymugabe’s single payer plan – which is what he and his cronies want – we will all get to enjoy this “____ Death” quality of care.
13. venividivici:
Definition of Irony: After attempting to beat the crap out of a fellow citizen simply for voicing a favorable opinion about a public option in health care, 65-year old right wing nut will get his finger reattached courtesy of Medicare, a SOSHULIST! government program.
Actually, he’ll probably sue the guy who bit it off. Of course, the guy is probably a smelly, good for nothing with no money. I hope at least the old guy DID beat the crap out of him. That would be nice.
~~~
Rush had a caller who not only witnessed the whole thing, he is the guy who found and transported the amputated finger to the ER for reattachment. The jerk singled out the old guy, and it was COMPLETELY unprovoked.
What if Obama takes the Michigan approach: loading health insurance with so many mandates that it becomes unaffordable for far more people (especially those who do not get the tax break employers do for buying health insurance).
Maybe the current plan is to make things worse with mandatory, fully-loaded private insurance so we’ll end up begging for single-payer.
Dr Ezekiel Emanuel has written that priority should be given people between the ages of 14 and 40. Newborn babies that need expensive medical care are low priority because the state hasn’t invested much in them yet. As they approach the age when they can work and pay taxes to support the state, Emanuel favors protecting the state’s investment in their education with health care. (data from Betsy McCaughey)
Imagine the furor implementing this would cause!
38. Karen
The research has already been done. We can afford several wars, and billions being spent for oil companies and millions dead and wounded and tax breaks and free health care for the priveledged in our society. So if we can afford all that then the way I see it….then we can afford to have a good health care system for our citizens can’t we?
I think the analogy is wrong.
Obamacare isn’t the Spanish Peninsula, its Russia in 1812.
He won, remember, took and occupied Mo0scow and waited (far too long) for the Russian Tsar to formally surrender. Then he got caught in the Russian winter and watched his Grand Armee wither and die on the march to Latvia, killed by the cold, starvation and constant partisan harassment. Napoleon had expended all of his power on the drive into Russia, and was left with nothing to withstand the Russian’s ally, winter, as well as the spoiling attacks by the never surrendered Russian forces that still confronted him.
Obama is in a similar predicament. His political capital is now gone, spent in the ineffective stimulus spending orgasm and the House cap and trade bill. On the way, the corruption and ineptitude of his allies in congress and of his hand picked commissars has been demonstrated over and again. He is powerless to stop the partisans from driving him back from the left to the center. If he does not, then he, and his minions, are dead politically.
Such is the plight of the conservative – knows just enough to sound ignorant.
Yes, which is exactly why, as people get more life experience and wisdom, they become more liberal, right?
billions being spent for oil companies and millions dead and wounded and tax breaks and free health care for the priveledged in our society
Anything else you think we’re spending money on? Wierd fantasies like this are your own problem.
Now there are many reasons to oppose war, but war is actually relatively cheap compared to comphensive entitlement programs. And wars usually end sooner or later, unlike untitlement programs which live forever and increase in size without end.
And we do already have a pretty good health care system, it just doesn’t cover illegals, young people who choose to opt out, and people too incompetent to register for Medicaid, as already pointed out in an earlier posting.
There are certainly improvments we could make to lower healthcare costs, like tort reform and allowing the sale of less comprehensive policies than are currently required. But the proposals on the table now will accomplish just the opposite.
Finally, the dangers of such a comprehensive welfare “reform” endanger not just our wallets, but our freedoms, and our ability to develop new medical innovations in the future.
Cheers.
My pinkie, my pinkie, my kingdom for a pinkie but I guess he has that terrible Medicare a “Single-payer health care insurance” what a hypocrite. Did the little pinkie cry “Wee-wee-wee!” all the way home? It real should have been his right pinky finger that would have been a better story. They are haters not debaters.
Living in Massachusetts where we have mandatory heath insurance I can tell you about problems we are seeing. The main one being how long you have to wait for an appointment to see a doctor. It can take several months just to get in.
Now and then:
I say again, “But thank you for, yet again, demonstrating that liberals are indeed smug, conceited snots with a boundless belief in their mental superiority- which is (as you so ingenuously prove) utterly without foundation. Balatro ipsa loquitur.”
I should point out that I have rather a good perspective on the topic, having done a double-major in philosophy and chemical engineering (summa cum). And, yes, I fully appreciate the difference between a classical liberal education as our intellectual forefathers understood it, and ‘liberal education’ as you lot mean it, and which unfortunately is what most American Unis dispense.
44
Yes, he’s so hypocritical to first be forced into paying for Medicare without having a choice and then being forced to accept Medicare as his only insurance option for the over-65 crowd, since no private company can reach minimum efficient scale in that segment of the market because of the Medicare monopoly.
But, you run with that “hypocrite” storyline, douchebag. I’m sure that will do wonders for you in the 2010 elections.
47. venividivici: “But, you run with that “hypocrite” storyline, douchebag. I’m sure that will do wonders for you in the 2010 elections.”
Health care reform will pass this fall. The only Congresspeople who need to be sweating are those that are opposing the bill. 2010 is going to be another devastating year for the GOP.
Health care reform will pass this fall. The only Congresspeople who need to be sweating are those that are opposing the bill. 2010 is going to be another devastating year for the GOP.
Hey, whatever gets you through the night, Baghdad Bob.
46. Bohemond:
“. . . liberals are indeed smug, conceited snots with a boundless belief in their mental superiority . . . having done a double-major in philosophy and chemical engineering (summa cum).”
Poor Bohemond, can’t quite figure out if he wants to be smug or smart or snotty. You should have taken an English class along the way. If memory serves, and it does, you weren’t lecturing Cal Gordon on collective consciousness. You were berating him for his writing style.
As for your chemical philosophy, don’t you know that according to all the folks on this here board your hifalutin degrees prove only that you’re nothing more than unemployed, basement-dweling, Cheetos-eating socialist effluent spewed out of the Marxist indoctrination camps called the American university system. All you’re capable of is hiding behind the thighs of real American patriots as they defend your freedom. Is that your story, Bohemond? Or are you just cooking up some crank to meet the rent, cuz I don’t think selling Schopenhauer quotes on the corner pays too well.
Hey, don’t take it up with me. Take it up with them.
PS: How do you know? Really. Know. Really know. You know?
On a personal level…I smoked for years (cue the hisses and boos) I then went into a rapid health decline when I was 56. An angiogram showed 90% blockage, and so they did a triple bypass the next day. Cost = $100K (paid by my company’s insurance). I suspect that if national healthcare were in place I would not have received the surgery no matter what health plan I had (cost benefit analysis and all, you know). The last thing I want is for my health to be governed by the same quality I’ve seen at the Post Office and at the DMV. The insurance companies aren’t great by any means, but good lord, just imagine when they’re replace by the equivalent of social workers. How effective have they been, other than in feathering their own beds?
Some seniors revert to children, its part of the aging process (I guess he forgot to “Keep your hands to yourself”). In the Neil Cavuto, interview he is a protestor but now they are trying to change the fact and say that he just innocent bystander. He makes two punches and (as usual) tries to shove something down someone’s throat and gets his pinkie bitten off, now they make him into a victim. Now the wingnuts have a new idol to worship, a new hero. Please, snore, snore.
All we have here is one side to the story, like many other immature men he just used physical violence because he was not able to articulate his position or use his brain to avoid one, never had the misfortune to be in a brawl myself, I only pity this man who felt the need to bunch his hand into someone’s mouth, so now all of you can claim he is something of a innocent victim. Walking away takes maturity some men have it others do not. What a pity.
It all comes down to what you believe, either you are your brother’s keeper or are not. The healthcare system is broken, even when you play by the rules, because even when you are working and come down with something serious the insurance company can deny your claim and you are stuck using you own funds and filing for bankruptcy when these same insurance companies are paying out bonuses to those employees that deny claims and on top of that the same companies show record profits. We are already paying for emergency room care anyway for those without healthcare, it makes sense to me to cover everyone and not pay 10-20 times more for emergency room care.
Having experienced socialized medicine in Europe, I’m all for it in America.