On Deck : Government Universal Health Care

[u2sarajevo]

Originally Posted by chumdawg

I don't think we should have to buy car insurance, either.

Me getting sick and dying is not equal to me running into your car and you having to pay for the damage yourself.

[chumdawg]

Originally Posted by u2sarajevo

Me getting sick and dying is not equal to me running into your car and you having to pay for the damage yourself.

If you don't have insurance and you go to Parkland for treatment, it's closer to the same thing than you think.

[jthig32]

Originally Posted by chumdawg

If you don't have insurance and you go to Parkland for treatment, it's closer to the same thing than you think.

Something being a good idea doesn't mean it's ok to make it a government requirement.

[kg_veteran]

Originally Posted by chumdawg

If you don't have insurance and you go to Parkland for treatment, it's closer to the same thing than you think.

This is a flawed example. In the car insurance example, you are required to carry liability insurance to pay for bodily injury and property damage that you cause someone else to incur. In the Parkland example, you're assuming that it's the patient's fault they got sick/hurt and don't have the money to pay for treatment. While that might be true in some cases (maybe they ran the red light or smoked the cigarettes), but maybe they didn't. Either way, the example is still flawed because the people at Parkland are still going to receive subsidization under the new legislation. It's not like you're going to be forcing them to buy anything.

[Underdog]

Originally Posted by u2sarajevo

Me getting sick and dying is not equal to me running into your car and you having to pay for the damage yourself.

In both cases the government is FORCING you to put money into a private corporation's pocket.

If the government is going to take absolute control of an industry, then why keep it private? Just fund it through tax dollars and run it like NASA (although the lack of a private entity makes it a lot harder to skim off the top...)

[u2sarajevo]

Originally Posted by Underdog

In both cases the government is FORCING you to put money into a private corporation's pocket.

If the government is going to take absolute control of an industry, then why keep it private? Just fund it through tax dollars like NASA (although the lack of a private entity makes it a lot harder to skim off the top...)

How so? I'm not putting money into anyones pocket if I chose not to insure myself and then get sick and die. Well, my family puts money into the hands of the funeral industry but that would happen eventually anyway.

[Underdog]

Originally Posted by u2sarajevo

How so? I'm not putting money into anyones pocket if I chose not to insure myself and then get sick and die.

Um, you're about to not have any choice in the matter...

[kg_veteran]

Originally Posted by Underdog

In both cases the government is FORCING you to put money into a private corporation's pocket.

If the government is going to take absolute control of an industry, then why keep it private? Just fund it through tax dollars and run it like NASA (although the lack of a private entity makes it a lot harder to skim off the top...)

The government didn't take absolute control of the automobile insurance industry.

See my post below. Also, it's worth noting that automobile insurance is handled by the states, not the federal government. Health insurance mandates (if there are to be any) should be as well. The Supreme Court may not stand up and stop this nonsense, but they should. If they don't, it will pave the way for the feds to take over anything and everything they want.

[Underdog]

Originally Posted by kg_veteran

The government didn't take absolute control of the automobile insurance industry.

See my post below. Also, it's worth noting that automobile insurance is handled by the states, not the federal government. Health insurance mandates (if there are to be any) should be as well. The Supreme Court may not stand up and stop this nonsense, but they should. If they don't, it will pave the way for the feds to take over anything and everything they want.

Fair point, but it's still a government entity forcing you to pay a private one...

[jthig32]

Originally Posted by Underdog

Fair point, but it's still a government entity forcing you to pay a private one...

No, they're not. You are under no pressure to own and operate an automobile. Insurance is simply the cost of operating a car, no different than the cost of inspections and registration.

And no different than the choice to own a house.

[mcsluggo]

While I am not in the "we" discussion here (i am not a republican)... I think many Davis Frum's strategic observations here are on teh mark.

Conservatives and Republicans today suffered their most crushing legislative defeat since the 1960s.

It’s hard to exaggerate the magnitude of the disaster. Conservatives may cheer themselves that they’ll compensate for today’s expected vote with a big win in the November 2010 elections. But:

(1) It’s a good bet that conservatives are over-optimistic about November – by then the economy will have improved and the immediate goodies in the healthcare bill will be reaching key voting blocs.

(2) So what? Legislative majorities come and go. This healthcare bill is forever. A win in November is very poor compensation for this debacle now.

So far, I think a lot of conservatives will agree with me. Now comes the hard lesson:

A huge part of the blame for today’s disaster attaches to conservatives and Republicans ourselves.

At the beginning of this process we made a strategic decision: unlike, say, Democrats in 2001 when President Bush proposed his first tax cut, we would make no deal with the administration. No negotiations, no compromise, nothing. We were going for all the marbles. This would be Obama’s Waterloo – just as healthcare was Clinton’s in 1994.

Only, the hardliners overlooked a few key facts: Obama was elected with 53% of the vote, not Clinton’s 42%. The liberal block within the Democratic congressional caucus is bigger and stronger than it was in 1993-94. And of course the Democrats also remember their history, and also remember the consequences of their 1994 failure.

This time, when we went for all the marbles, we ended with none.

Could a deal have been reached? Who knows? But we do know that the gap between this plan and traditional Republican ideas is not very big. The Obama plan has a broad family resemblance to Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts plan. It builds on ideas developed at the Heritage Foundation in the early 1990s that formed the basis for Republican counter-proposals to Clintoncare in 1993-1994.

Barack Obama badly wanted Republican votes for his plan. Could we have leveraged his desire to align the plan more closely with conservative views? To finance it without redistributive taxes on productive enterprise – without weighing so heavily on small business – without expanding Medicaid? Too late now. They are all the law.

No illusions please: This bill will not be repealed. Even if Republicans scored a 1994 style landslide in November, how many votes could we muster to re-open the “doughnut hole” and charge seniors more for prescription drugs? How many votes to re-allow insurers to rescind policies when they discover a pre-existing condition? How many votes to banish 25 year olds from their parents’ insurance coverage? And even if the votes were there – would President Obama sign such a repeal?

We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat.

There were leaders who knew better, who would have liked to deal. But they were trapped. Conservative talkers on Fox and talk radio had whipped the Republican voting base into such a frenzy that deal-making was rendered impossible. How do you negotiate with somebody who wants to murder your grandmother? Or – more exactly – with somebody whom your voters have been persuaded to believe wants to murder their grandmother?

I’ve been on a soapbox for months now about the harm that our overheated talk is doing to us. Yes it mobilizes supporters – but by mobilizing them with hysterical accusations and pseudo-information, overheated talk has made it impossible for representatives to represent and elected leaders to lead. The real leaders are on TV and radio, and they have very different imperatives from people in government. Talk radio thrives on confrontation and recrimination. When Rush Limbaugh said that he wanted President Obama to fail, he was intelligently explaining his own interests. What he omitted to say – but what is equally true – is that he also wants Republicans to fail. If Republicans succeed – if they govern successfully in office and negotiate attractive compromises out of office – Rush’s listeners get less angry. And if they are less angry, they listen to the radio less, and hear fewer ads for Sleepnumber beds.

So today’s defeat for free-market economics and Republican values is a huge win for the conservative entertainment industry. Their listeners and viewers will now be even more enraged, even more frustrated, even more disappointed in everybody except the responsibility-free talkers on television and radio. For them, it’s mission accomplished. For the cause they purport to represent, it’s Waterloo all right: ours.

http://www.frumforum.com/waterloo

[kg_veteran]

Originally Posted by mcsluggo

While I am not in the "we" discussion here (i am not a republican)... I think many Davis Frum's strategic observations here are on teh mark.


http://www.frumforum.com/waterloo

So it's talk radio's fault? (BTW, the observations about talk radio wanting conflict are basically true.)

I guess the reason I don't agree with you (or Davis Frum) is that it seems to me that the Republicans made quite a few alternative proposals, all of which were rebuffed. The universal mandate (with or without public option) was correctly seen as a stepping stone to a single payer system, and the Democrats weren't going to compromise on that.

Bear in mind that I'm not a big fan of the national Republican party. I just don't see what they could have realistically done to achieve compromise in this instance.

[Jack.Kerr]

Originally Posted by mcsluggo

While I am not in the "we" discussion here (i am not a republican)... I think many Davis Frum's strategic observations here are on teh mark.


http://www.frumforum.com/waterloo

Were you referring to THIS David Frum, the now former conservative 'think' tank fellow?

March 25, 2010, 4:17 PM
Frum Forced Out at Conservative Institute
By ADAM NAGOURNEY

Updated: Over the past week, David Frum, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative research organization, has emerged as one of the leading critics of the way Republicans dealt with President Obama’s health care bill.

The party, Mr. Frum said, put politics over policy in trying to damage Mr. Obama’s agenda, and lost both the political battle and the ability to influence a key piece of legislation. In a column Mr. Frum posted at the FrumForum, he wrote that the House passage of the health care bill had become the Republicans’ “Waterloo,” rather than Mr. Obama’s, as a leading G.O.P. senator had once warned.

As of Thursday, Mr. Frum had become a former fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

Mr. Frum said he was taken out to lunch by the president of the organization, Arthur C. Brooks. He said Mr. Brooks told him the institute valued a diversity of opinion, and welcomed that one of its scholars had become such a high-profile critic of Republican legislative leaders. Mr. Frum, who has been with the institute since 2003, said that he was asked if he would considering being associated with the institute on a nonsalaried basis.

Mr. Frum declined.

“Does it have anything to do with what would be the most obvious explanation of what happened?” he said in an interview after his lunch. “I don’t know. That’s not what they say.”

Asked if he believed that explanation, Mr. Frum responded, “I’m not going to say that they’re not telling the truth.”

Update: Mr. Brooks later issued a written statement confirming Mr. Frum’s departure, but declining to say what had happened. “While A.E.I. makes it a practice not to discuss personnel matters, I can say that David Frum is an original thinker and a friend to many at A.E.I.,” his statement said.

At the same time, Mr. Brooks suggested that it was Mr. Frum’s decision to leave and that he had not been forced out. “We are pleased to have welcomed him as a colleague for seven years, and his decision to leave in no way diminishes our respect for him,” he said in the statement. An aide said Mr. Brooks was not available for further comment.

[Underdog]

Originally Posted by jthig32

No, they're not. You are under no pressure to own and operate an automobile. Insurance is simply the cost of operating a car, no different than the cost of inspections and registration.

Except inspection and registration money goes to the government, your insurance goes to a private company...

If I was sending my checks to the Texas State Department of Automobile Insurance, it might be a different story (well, the difference between fascism and socialism, but certainly nothing resembling free ownership of property...)

[jthig32]

Originally Posted by Underdog

Except inspection and registration money goes to the government, your insurance goes to a private company...

If I was sending my checks to the Texas State Department of Automobile Insurance, it might be a different story (well, the difference between fascism and socialism, but certainly nothing resembling free ownership of property...)

Inspection money goes to the government? That's an honest question, I don't really know. I certainly pay it to a private company.

Regardless, there's still the option to not own that property. It's an important point in distinguishing it from the requirement to buy health insurance simply because you're alive. That, to my knowledge, is absolutely unprecedented, and an incredibly slippery slope.

[dude1394]

Originally Posted by jthig32

No, they're not. You are under no pressure to own and operate an automobile. Insurance is simply the cost of operating a car, no different than the cost of inspections and registration.

.

Correct...whereas this bill is a tax for you being alive. It is your "license" to live.