I mostly avoid overtly political posts on this blog. (Yeah, I know … you can all point to a few exceptions.) I tried to save the straight-up political stuff for my other blog, which I’ve since let go dormant because I’m WAY busy and something had to go, at least until I wrap up some current projects.
So while I haven’t said much about Obamacare on this blog, I have expressed my opinions in other forums — most recently on Richard Nikoley’s Facebook page. Richard decided to share some of those opinions today on his Free the Animal blog. So if you want to see some Obamacare comments I’ve made and a little video I produced, go visit his post.
Just don’t come back here and complain about me getting political. You were warned.
If you enjoy my posts, please consider a small donation to the Fat Head Kids GoFundMe campaign.
What has flooded the media is the website failing, people’s premiums doubling and tripling, etc. When I think of “affordable” health care, I think of the prescription that doesn’t cost $106, like my brother in law’s glaucoma medication, which I saw him hand back to the pharmacist when she told him how much it cost. Affordable to me is getting an Advil in the hospital and being charged 25 cents for it, not $100. Affordable to me means the doctor who is not treating you in the hospital stays out of your room, doesn’t spend 30 seconds reading your chart, leaves and charges $500 for it. Affordable to me is the candy striper offering you an extra pillow for your comfort and the hospital not charging you for the pillow or for the striper bringing it to you.
That is where the focus should be. The internal system, the method of billing, has to somehow be overhauled.
That’s what happens when market forces are taken out of the system. When everything appears “free” to the consumer, there’s no incentive to control costs.
By contrast, the one area of medicine where costs have consistently come down is elective procedures. Getting your eyes fixed used to cost something like $3000 per eye. Now it’s $1000 for both eyes. That’s because elective procedures aren’t being paid for by someone else, so people shop around and the providers have an incentive to find ways to make their services affordable.
I was in the hospital for a heart issue. I had an EKG done. Doctor looked at it and gave me a diagnosis. I leave the hospital and two weeks later I get another bill. A different doctor looked at my EKG and charged me 50 bucks for the pleasure. Was never asked if I wanted someone else, never even spoke to the second doctor, before or after he looked at my EKG. I pretty much paid for the pleasure of protecting the doctor from a malpractice lawsuit.
Yup. That’s what defensive medicine is all about.
Firebird, it does not have to be overhauled with any effort whatsoever. Government just needs to stop giving health care away for free and trying to force employers to cover their employees, etc.
If they just gave up, those inflated costs you mentioned would come down, because people would stop paying them.
100 years ago, there was health care for profit, but people were not being charged a 39,900% markup for painkillers in the hospital. Know what was different back then? No Medicare, Medicaid, employer insurance, or anything else that divorced the patient from the cost…
The government is not giving away health care. That is a misconception. No country has “free” health care. It comes out of your taxes in all shapes and forms…income tax, sales tax, with holding tax, gas tax, etc.
I posted a video on here and I don’t know where it went, called the True Cost of Health Care. You can get around those high costs and negotiate down and in some cases even refuse to pay. The problem is is that most people do not know you can do it.
Google Dr. David Belk and watch his video. It’s worth every minute of it’s 54 minute total running time.
Probably wound up in the spam folder. Here’s the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9q1Id41wGo
You are quibbling over terminological specifics. Yes, I understand that the cost does not disappear. My point is that the recipients of these benefits are not being taxed proportionally to what they are receiving (or at all in some cases)–in essence, government is “giving” services away to those people. And I agree, a different way to state that would be to say government is forcing some citizens to subsidize others. The cost-benefit analysis of Medicare is an absolute joke…currently the average beneficiary is costing $5 for every $1 he/she contributed. The end result in any case (Medicare, Medicaid, and soon Obamacare) is the same: the lack of market-based cost consequence to the subsidized individuals results in higher demand for services rendered than is economically warranted, which drives prices up through the roof.
If government stopped this nonsense, prices would come way down. Hospitals, clinics, and other medical facilities would simply be forced to become more efficient, or they would go out of business–because individual patients would not tolerate the $100 advils that you mentioned.
I agree with you 100% that people can shop around. But as Tom frequently points out, why should most of them? They pay a constant co-pay or deductible, and there is little incentive for them to shop around first. This encourages employers and insurers to limit the medical facilities they will do business with, which eventually turns out to be a big, inefficient mess altogether. If people had no insurance, and particularly no employer- or government-provided insurance, this problem would disappear. Economics would force it to.
Lastly, skipping a bill is a moral issue. It is one thing if a medical facility springs a bunch of surprise charges on you when they deliver the bill; i.e. things you did not agree to. Then that kind of thing is warranted, if the hospital refuses to remove the charges when you ask them to. But a patient who is being charged for what procedures he agreed to at the prices he contracted (or the hospital’s standard prices, if he was too foolish to check ahead of time) and arbitrarily skips the bill deserves every bit of credit ruination (and other legal consequences) he suffers.
$1000 for eye surgery? That’s cheaper than glasses in the long run. I think I’ll do it.
Count me as one of the people losing her individual health insurance plan thanks to the ACA. I just cancelled my maternity coverage last year because I didn’t need it, which saved me $90 a month. At a minimum, my premium with a new policy will be $70 higher (which includes maternity coverage), and I suspect that overall I have less coverage than I would have had if I kept my current plan. Most of the plans I’ve been offered have big chunks of 100% co-insurance in addition to a really high deductible.
So, I’ll cancel my health insurance and continue to take the best care of myself that I can, and hope for the best.
That’s what I’ll be doing. I figure the best thing those of us who oppose this massive assault on individual liberty and common sense can do is refuse to comply — en masse.
Our insurance rep at work told us that if we don’t show proof of insurance by the deadline our tax return will be penalized, and if we don’t show proof the year after that, our employer will be required to sign us up for the lowest plan if we want it or not. She said they (government I suppose) put the responsibility on the employer to make sure all have insurance. I’m not sure how they plan to enforce self employed people.
I just completed my enrollment on healthcare.gov. I have been on a catastrophic policy since I lost my full time job with benefits when the college where I taught closed as a result of the economic recession of 2008. I believe one of the major factors in the financial problems the institution faced was the high cost of providing health insurance to the employees. Most higher ed institutions started relying on adjuncts years ago to cut those costs and full-time faculty positions are next to impossible to find at my age. I get by with part-time, adjunct and freelance work but have been concerned about my lack of decent health insurance. I figured with my good health, I could get by with an almost affordable catastrophic policy so I wouldn’t be bankrupted if I landed in the hospital with some unexpected emergency (which is the only thing my policy covered). Little did I suspect that catching my toe on a sidewalk grate outside Coors Stadium would leave me bleeding on the curb screaming “don’t call an ambulance, I don’t have insurance.” I have been told had I taken an ambulance to the emergency room, the bill would have been a minimum of $3500 and my policy would not have paid one cent. I was paying $127/month for that piece of crap. I was very happy to receive my cancellation notice and inform Blue Cross Blue Shield that I was not interested in having them automatically roll me over into their selected plan. Rather, I was thrilled to be able to go on the exchange and enroll in a perfect HMO plan with unlimited $10 a visit copay before deductible and coverage for outpatient and emergency room visits with a reasonable coinsurance out-of-pocket cost. The premium will be $104/month – considerably less than I’ve been paying for a policy that will actual have some benefit to me! On January 1, I can breath easy that I never will find myself in the nightmare I experience in Denver again.
You’ve mentioned that incident before, and I agree it underscores some of the problems we had in our existing system. I don’t know anyone who denies we had problems in the existing system. The debate was over how we fix those existing problems. One course of action would be to identify the specific problems and fix them specifically. The course of action taken by the big-government socialists was to kill a fly with a flamethrower, replacing as much of the existing system as possible with the system they prefer.
That’s no surprise, of course. As Thomas Sowell explains brilliantly in his book “The Vision of the Anointed,” the Anointed in society always favor fixing problems by imposing a Grand Plan (which they design), and the Grand Plan always involves restricting other people’s freedoms and spending lots of other people’s money. Historically, those Grand Plans have produced more problems than they solved because they were based on pie-in-the-sky theories favored by intellectuals instead of solid economics. We are already seeing the failures of Obamacare: millions of people having policies they liked canceled, premiums skyrocketing, people in the middle of ongoing cancer therapies losing access to their doctors, hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars spent on exchanges like those in Delaware and D.C. that have signed up a total of nine people combined so far, young and/or healthy people not signing up because of high premiums resulting from “comprehensive” coverage they don’t want or need, a disproportionate number of those signing up coming from the ranks of those who will draw out of the system instead of paying into it, etc. It’s already clear that employers are cutting back on staff and reducing hours in response to Obamacare — an entirely predictable result that will harm the marginally employed — and it’s already clear that this program will cost way, way more than predicted and will add hundreds of billions if not actual trillions to a debt burdern that threatens to sink the country.
So I sincerely hope you’re not arguing that you’re okay with seeing millions of Americans getting screwed financially by the federal government as long as you came out ahead.
I may be mistaken, but this injury and resulting trip to the ER would probably have been covered under EMTALA.
From CMS.gov:
Emergency Medical Treatment & Labor Act (EMTALA)
In 1986, Congress enacted the Emergency Medical Treatment & Labor Act (EMTALA) to ensure public access to emergency services regardless of ability to pay. Section 1867 of the Social Security Act imposes specific obligations on Medicare-participating hospitals that offer emergency services to provide a medical screening examination (MSE) when a request is made for examination or treatment for an emergency medical condition (EMC), including active labor, regardless of an individual’s ability to pay. Hospitals are then required to provide stabilizing treatment for patients with EMCs. If a hospital is unable to stabilize a patient within its capability, or if the patient requests, an appropriate transfer should be implemented.
I think this means emergency rooms have to treat you. They still send you a bill.
I just completed my enrollment on healthcare.gov. I have been on a catastrophic policy since I lost my full time job with benefits when the college where I taught closed as a result of the economic recession of 2008. I believe one of the major factors in the financial problems the institution faced was the high cost of providing health insurance to the employees. Most higher ed institutions started relying on adjuncts years ago to cut those costs and full-time faculty positions are next to impossible to find at my age. I get by with part-time, adjunct and freelance work but have been concerned about my lack of decent health insurance. I figured with my good health, I could get by with an almost affordable catastrophic policy so I wouldn’t be bankrupted if I landed in the hospital with some unexpected emergency (which is the only thing my policy covered). Little did I suspect that catching my toe on a sidewalk grate outside Coors Stadium would leave me bleeding on the curb screaming “don’t call an ambulance, I don’t have insurance.” I have been told had I taken an ambulance to the emergency room, the bill would have been a minimum of $3500 and my policy would not have paid one cent. I was paying $127/month for that piece of crap. I was very happy to receive my cancellation notice and inform Blue Cross Blue Shield that I was not interested in having them automatically roll me over into their selected plan. Rather, I was thrilled to be able to go on the exchange and enroll in a perfect HMO plan with unlimited $10 a visit copay before deductible and coverage for outpatient and emergency room visits with a reasonable coinsurance out-of-pocket cost. The premium will be $104/month – considerably less than I’ve been paying for a policy that will actual have some benefit to me! On January 1, I can breath easy that I never will find myself in the nightmare I experience in Denver again.
You’ve mentioned that incident before, and I agree it underscores some of the problems we had in our existing system. I don’t know anyone who denies we had problems in the existing system. The debate was over how we fix those existing problems. One course of action would be to identify the specific problems and fix them specifically. The course of action taken by the big-government socialists was to kill a fly with a flamethrower, replacing as much of the existing system as possible with the system they prefer.
That’s no surprise, of course. As Thomas Sowell explains brilliantly in his book “The Vision of the Anointed,” the Anointed in society always favor fixing problems by imposing a Grand Plan (which they design), and the Grand Plan always involves restricting other people’s freedoms and spending lots of other people’s money. Historically, those Grand Plans have produced more problems than they solved because they were based on pie-in-the-sky theories favored by intellectuals instead of solid economics. We are already seeing the failures of Obamacare: millions of people having policies they liked canceled, premiums skyrocketing, people in the middle of ongoing cancer therapies losing access to their doctors, hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars spent on exchanges like those in Delaware and D.C. that have signed up a total of nine people combined so far, young and/or healthy people not signing up because of high premiums resulting from “comprehensive” coverage they don’t want or need, a disproportionate number of those signing up coming from the ranks of those who will draw out of the system instead of paying into it, etc. It’s already clear that employers are cutting back on staff and reducing hours in response to Obamacare — an entirely predictable result that will harm the marginally employed — and it’s already clear that this program will cost way, way more than predicted and will add hundreds of billions if not actual trillions to a debt burdern that threatens to sink the country.
So I sincerely hope you’re not arguing that you’re okay with seeing millions of Americans getting screwed financially by the federal government as long as you came out ahead.
I may be mistaken, but this injury and resulting trip to the ER would probably have been covered under EMTALA.
From CMS.gov:
Emergency Medical Treatment & Labor Act (EMTALA)
In 1986, Congress enacted the Emergency Medical Treatment & Labor Act (EMTALA) to ensure public access to emergency services regardless of ability to pay. Section 1867 of the Social Security Act imposes specific obligations on Medicare-participating hospitals that offer emergency services to provide a medical screening examination (MSE) when a request is made for examination or treatment for an emergency medical condition (EMC), including active labor, regardless of an individual’s ability to pay. Hospitals are then required to provide stabilizing treatment for patients with EMCs. If a hospital is unable to stabilize a patient within its capability, or if the patient requests, an appropriate transfer should be implemented.
I think this means emergency rooms have to treat you. They still send you a bill.
I saw this today:
“Putting things in perspective: March 21st 2010 to October 1 2013 is 3 years, 6 months, 10 days. December 7, 1941 to May 8, 1945 is 3 years, 5 months, 1 day. What this means is that in the time we were attacked at Pearl Harbor to the day Germany surrendered is not enough time for this progressive federal government to build a working webpage. Mobilization of millions, building tens of thousands of tanks, planes, jeeps, subs, cruisers, destroyers, torpedoes, millions upon millions of guns, bombs, ammo, etc. Turning the tide in North Africa, Invading Italy, D-Day, Battle of the Bulge, Race to Berlin – all while we were also fighting the Japanese in the Pacific!! And in that amount of time – this administration can’t build a working webpage.”
Yup. Three-and-a-half years and hundreds of millions of dollars later, they couldn’t build a web site that works — but chose to roll it out anyway. And yet we have millions of “progressives” who think if we put this crowd in charge of the entire health-care system, it would be work out just fine and dandy. I don’t understand how their minds work. I can only conclude that when they form opinions, wishful thinking outweighs evidence.
(I always put “progressive” in quotes because I don’t believe putting people under the thumb of government is a form of progress. Progress was what happened in 1776, when a group of brilliant men declared that government’s legitimate function is to prevent people from harming one another and otherwise leave them alone.)
I saw this today:
“Putting things in perspective: March 21st 2010 to October 1 2013 is 3 years, 6 months, 10 days. December 7, 1941 to May 8, 1945 is 3 years, 5 months, 1 day. What this means is that in the time we were attacked at Pearl Harbor to the day Germany surrendered is not enough time for this progressive federal government to build a working webpage. Mobilization of millions, building tens of thousands of tanks, planes, jeeps, subs, cruisers, destroyers, torpedoes, millions upon millions of guns, bombs, ammo, etc. Turning the tide in North Africa, Invading Italy, D-Day, Battle of the Bulge, Race to Berlin – all while we were also fighting the Japanese in the Pacific!! And in that amount of time – this administration can’t build a working webpage.”
Yup. Three-and-a-half years and hundreds of millions of dollars later, they couldn’t build a web site that works — but chose to roll it out anyway. And yet we have millions of “progressives” who think if we put this crowd in charge of the entire health-care system, it would be work out just fine and dandy. I don’t understand how their minds work. I can only conclude that when they form opinions, wishful thinking outweighs evidence.
(I always put “progressive” in quotes because I don’t believe putting people under the thumb of government is a form of progress. Progress was what happened in 1776, when a group of brilliant men declared that government’s legitimate function is to prevent people from harming one another and otherwise leave them alone.)
It is not connected to a health care insurance, just to the government regulations, but my husband just told me it was in a technical news that the use of wood-burning stoves may be illegal in a nearest future http://www.care2.com/causes/woodburning-stoves-could-soon-be-illegal.html, and I thought about you and people like you.
Yeah, I read about that. So my wood-burning stove pollutes, but if I don’t use it and heat my house with electricity generated by a coal-burning plant, that doesn’t?
Probably, you and other individual users are just easier targets.
It is not connected to a health care insurance, just to the government regulations, but my husband just told me it was in a technical news that the use of wood-burning stoves may be illegal in a nearest future http://www.care2.com/causes/woodburning-stoves-could-soon-be-illegal.html, and I thought about you and people like you.
Yeah, I read about that. So my wood-burning stove pollutes, but if I don’t use it and heat my house with electricity generated by a coal-burning plant, that doesn’t?
Probably, you and other individual users are just easier targets.
Hi Tom,
I have really enjoyed the comments on this article. Do you think the old words socialist or free marketeer (?) are relevant to modern political debate? These ideologies though occasionally espoused by politicians and pundits seem to have very little to do with modern political reality.
A form of corporate capture resulting in something similar to our favourite definition of facism (can’t find a direct quote from Mussolini on this though) as being a merger of the state and corporate power. It often seems to me that while we can have lively ideological debates what Governements actually do seem to be quite different to the dialogue and frames of reference we and they use.
I read about the wood burning stove thing too….mental!
Neal
Yes, I think those words are still relevant.
Hi Tom,
I have really enjoyed the comments on this article. Do you think the old words socialist or free marketeer (?) are relevant to modern political debate? These ideologies though occasionally espoused by politicians and pundits seem to have very little to do with modern political reality.
A form of corporate capture resulting in something similar to our favourite definition of facism (can’t find a direct quote from Mussolini on this though) as being a merger of the state and corporate power. It often seems to me that while we can have lively ideological debates what Governements actually do seem to be quite different to the dialogue and frames of reference we and they use.
I read about the wood burning stove thing too….mental!
Neal
Yes, I think those words are still relevant.
Okay Fat Heads, here’s some numbers.
The penalty for not having qualified insurance for 2014 is 1% of household income with a minimum of $95 per person ($47.50 per child, $285 minimum per family).
It rises in 2015 to 2%, and 2.5% in 2016, with annual adjustments for inflation.
So if you have household income of $60,000 in 2014, your fine will be $600, but the only enforcement mechanism is that the feds will reduce any income tax refund you’re due. They can’t come after you.
It’s always been a bad idea to have your taxes withheld in such a way that you get a big refund, but at least you got it back after loaning it to the idiocracy at no interest for the year. Now it would be insane assuming you don’t have one of the Big Brother approved plans.
Underpayment penalties only apply if you owe more than $1,000, and then only if you haven’t paid EITHER 90% of your tax liability or AT LEAST 100% of the tax you paid the prior year.
For example, say you’re outrageously old-fashioned and are hence married, with two kids and gross $60,000 for 2014, and managed to sock $5,000 into an IRA but didn’t want to spend $15,000 on an Obamacare policy. The IRA, standard deduction ($12,400), and 4 exemptions ($15,800) reduce your taxable income to $33,200. Your income tax would be $4,073, but if the kids are still 17 or under you get $2,000 in Child Tax Credits for a net liability of $2,073. Follow?
So, if this is all coming from one weekly paycheck while Dad stays home with the kids (okay, maybe you’re not THAT outrageously old-fashioned), you don’t want to see more than $39 a week being withheld in Federal Income Tax. Anything more and you’re chipping in on this fiasco. In this case, as long as you’ve had $1,074 withheld ($21 a week), you’re under the $1,000 owed and don’t have to worry about an underpayment penalty. You will have to come up with the other $999 for your taxes though, so stick closer to the $39 a week if you don’t want to have to come with that kind of scratch in April 2015.
The crucial point to keep in mind as you consider this whole meltdown is that in our present system, Obamacare or not, the function of health insurance is not to protect your health. Sure, it helps with access and quality of care, but if you show up at the hospital after having been run over by a bus or with cancer, you are still going to receive health care. The real function of health insurance (or any real insurance) is to protect your financial health.
So if you have or foresee having significant assets, that’s what you are leaving exposed by not having insurance. Contrariwise, that’s why it’s economically insane for healthy young people without many assets (and likely with negative net worth if they have student loans), to pay big premiums.
The one thing the Big Thinkers haven’t factored into their computer models (along with, “how do you turn this thing on, again?”), and that I mentioned in a previous post’s comments, is that they’ve now created an overwhelming incentive for massive non-compliance with the tax code among the portion of the younger generation. Or at least the portion of them who have or intend to have careers.
This could be awesome.
Cheers!
Oh yeah, and also
BABS FOR PRESIDENT!
Just sayin’.
Cheers
Yep, just what we all need…another woman in power *eye roll*.
Okay Fat Heads, here’s some numbers.
The penalty for not having qualified insurance for 2014 is 1% of household income with a minimum of $95 per person ($47.50 per child, $285 minimum per family).
It rises in 2015 to 2%, and 2.5% in 2016, with annual adjustments for inflation.
So if you have household income of $60,000 in 2014, your fine will be $600, but the only enforcement mechanism is that the feds will reduce any income tax refund you’re due. They can’t come after you.
It’s always been a bad idea to have your taxes withheld in such a way that you get a big refund, but at least you got it back after loaning it to the idiocracy at no interest for the year. Now it would be insane assuming you don’t have one of the Big Brother approved plans.
Underpayment penalties only apply if you owe more than $1,000, and then only if you haven’t paid EITHER 90% of your tax liability or AT LEAST 100% of the tax you paid the prior year.
For example, say you’re outrageously old-fashioned and are hence married, with two kids and gross $60,000 for 2014, and managed to sock $5,000 into an IRA but didn’t want to spend $15,000 on an Obamacare policy. The IRA, standard deduction ($12,400), and 4 exemptions ($15,800) reduce your taxable income to $33,200. Your income tax would be $4,073, but if the kids are still 17 or under you get $2,000 in Child Tax Credits for a net liability of $2,073. Follow?
So, if this is all coming from one weekly paycheck while Dad stays home with the kids (okay, maybe you’re not THAT outrageously old-fashioned), you don’t want to see more than $39 a week being withheld in Federal Income Tax. Anything more and you’re chipping in on this fiasco. In this case, as long as you’ve had $1,074 withheld ($21 a week), you’re under the $1,000 owed and don’t have to worry about an underpayment penalty. You will have to come up with the other $999 for your taxes though, so stick closer to the $39 a week if you don’t want to have to come with that kind of scratch in April 2015.
The crucial point to keep in mind as you consider this whole meltdown is that in our present system, Obamacare or not, the function of health insurance is not to protect your health. Sure, it helps with access and quality of care, but if you show up at the hospital after having been run over by a bus or with cancer, you are still going to receive health care. The real function of health insurance (or any real insurance) is to protect your financial health.
So if you have or foresee having significant assets, that’s what you are leaving exposed by not having insurance. Contrariwise, that’s why it’s economically insane for healthy young people without many assets (and likely with negative net worth if they have student loans), to pay big premiums.
The one thing the Big Thinkers haven’t factored into their computer models (along with, “how do you turn this thing on, again?”), and that I mentioned in a previous post’s comments, is that they’ve now created an overwhelming incentive for massive non-compliance with the tax code among the portion of the younger generation. Or at least the portion of them who have or intend to have careers.
This could be awesome.
Cheers!
Oh yeah, and also
BABS FOR PRESIDENT!
Just sayin’.
Cheers
Yep, just what we all need…another woman in power *eye roll*.
Hi Tom, did my comment get lost in the mail?
Neal
It was in the spam folder. I un-spammed it.
Hi Tom, did my comment get lost in the mail?
Neal
It was in the spam folder. I un-spammed it.
Obamacare’s goal wasn’t to help people, it was to help insurance & drug companies. It’s just another plutocratic policy pushed for by corporate lobbyists:
http://foodfreedomgroup.com/2012/12/10/meet-liz-fowler-architect-of-obamacare-jumps-ship-to-johnson-johnson/
“The pharmaceutical giant that just hired Fowler actively supported the passage of Obamacare through its membership in the Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) lobby. Indeed, PhRMA was one of the most aggressive supporters—and most lavish beneficiaries—of the health care bill drafted by Fowler.”
Besides in a sane world any government entity would have to first demonstrate that their plan/program for X/Y/Z works in a small scale trial before it’s implemented elsewhere. They never do that. They never have to show that they’re competent and can achieve the goals they’re aiming for. If the government was a private company nobody would hire them for any job because their resume is just a series of failures.
Well, we’re back to what Thomas Sowell wrote about in “The Vision of the Anointed.” When they come up with a Grand Plan to save society, The Anointed can’t be bothered with little details like evidence. They are The Anointed, after all. Anyone who opposes them is either evil or stupid. If the Grand Plan fails, it’s only because the evil and/or stupid people undermined it.
When government steps into regulate an industry, we usually see one of three results:
1. Government kills the industry by regulatory strangulation.
2. Government nearly kills the industry and then ends up subsidizing it with taxpayer dollars to keep it alive.
3. The regulatory agency is taken over by industry hacks and essentially becomes a vehicle for procuring government favors for the regulated industry.
Obamacare’s goal wasn’t to help people, it was to help insurance & drug companies. It’s just another plutocratic policy pushed for by corporate lobbyists:
http://foodfreedomgroup.com/2012/12/10/meet-liz-fowler-architect-of-obamacare-jumps-ship-to-johnson-johnson/
“The pharmaceutical giant that just hired Fowler actively supported the passage of Obamacare through its membership in the Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) lobby. Indeed, PhRMA was one of the most aggressive supporters—and most lavish beneficiaries—of the health care bill drafted by Fowler.”
Besides in a sane world any government entity would have to first demonstrate that their plan/program for X/Y/Z works in a small scale trial before it’s implemented elsewhere. They never do that. They never have to show that they’re competent and can achieve the goals they’re aiming for. If the government was a private company nobody would hire them for any job because their resume is just a series of failures.
Well, we’re back to what Thomas Sowell wrote about in “The Vision of the Anointed.” When they come up with a Grand Plan to save society, The Anointed can’t be bothered with little details like evidence. They are The Anointed, after all. Anyone who opposes them is either evil or stupid. If the Grand Plan fails, it’s only because the evil and/or stupid people undermined it.
When government steps into regulate an industry, we usually see one of three results:
1. Government kills the industry by regulatory strangulation.
2. Government nearly kills the industry and then ends up subsidizing it with taxpayer dollars to keep it alive.
3. The regulatory agency is taken over by industry hacks and essentially becomes a vehicle for procuring government favors for the regulated industry.
At this moment I am going to do my breakfast, after having my breakfast coming yet again to read further news.
At this moment I am going to do my breakfast, after having my breakfast coming yet again to read further news.