How do we clean up the American health care mess?

Her’s an idea. Arbitrary enforcement of this increasingly unsettled law can work for the next president too:

washingtonexaminer.com/obama-has … le/2540241

[quote]The changes instituted by the Obama administration in response to implementation snags have ranged from perfectly legal areas of administrative discretion stemming from the vast regulatory powers granted to the HHS secretary under Obamacare, to more creative interpretations of that discretion, to Obama simply choosing to ignore parts of the law that became inconvenient.

Obama has turned his signature legislative accomplishment into a constantly evolving wikilaw, with editing privileges restricted to himself and a few administration officials.

He’s largely been able to get away with it due to the difficulties posed by gaining standing in court for legal challenges.
[/quote]

A precedent of lawlessness to help cope with a law that never should have been.

It’s still tyranny, but at least it’s a lesser tyranny.

Trying to bring universal healthcare to the richest nation in the world is tyranny now? :unamused:

If healthcare is tyranny in the minds of right-wingers, I shudder to think of their opinions of libraries, roads and garbage pickup.

You do have a remarkable talent for missing the point.

You do have a remarkable talent for missing the point.[/quote]

No we all get it. Law is a remarkably flexible tool, a partisan led legal challenge is not the same as proving an illegal action has occurred.

I’ve seen very smart people argue that their is no separation of Church and State. They sound very convincing and it takes someone very knowledgeable in law and the constitution to refute them. Reporters are by nature not very knowledgeable and so they are easily led to report on matters that they have no way of judging. They are also required to give both sides even when one has no merit.

In any case, the irony of the right now complaining of illegalities and executive over-reach after staying silent throughout the Bush years is rich.

You do have a remarkable talent for missing the point.[/quote]
No, I get it. Somehow, in the bizarre world of right-wing “thinking”, government regulation = tyranny.

Perhaps the right-wing will listen to one of their own.

Colin Powell’s thoughts on the matter.

and

and

[quote]Every country I’ve visited, every developed country, they have universal health care. They don’t understand why the United States of America, which uses more health care than just about anybody else, still (has) 40 million people not properly insured.”
“I think universal health care is one of the things we should really be focused on, and I hope that will happen,” Powell said. “Whether it’s Obamacare, or son of Obamacare, I don’t care. As long as we get it done[/quote]

bizjournals.com/seattle/blog … l?page=all

[quote=“cfimages”]Perhaps the right-wing will listen to one of their own.

Colin Powell’s thoughts on the matter.[/quote]

CP is not right wing. At all.

I get it. Let’s have universal health care for all lefties, and none for the right-wing. Let people choose which one they want to vote for.

Oh, wait: they did.

[quote=“Tigerman”][quote=“cfimages”]Perhaps the right-wing will listen to one of their own.

Colin Powell’s thoughts on the matter.[/quote]

CP is not right wing. At all.[/quote]

Powell’s a registered Republican. Last time I looked, they were the right-wing in American politics.

That’s a canard. Infrastructure is one thing nobody disputes (and provides many opportunities for privatization actually…private library contractors, garbage collectors), a redistribution of one sixth of the American economy under the control of the federal government another

Do you not recall the Repub meltdown over high speed rail? Or trains in general? George Will went so far as to write liberals love public transport because it collectivizes people. :laughing:

Anyway, on topic, it looks like the ACA is such a disaster now that insurance companies are planning to spend half a billion dollars in advertising to get people to sign up for their plans. Yes, sir, that’s a ringing non-endorsement if ever I heard one.

Causality. Some people don’t quite grasp how it works.

EDIT: All right, I’ll throw you a bone.

http://washingtonexaminer.com/insurers-predict-100-to-400-obamacare-rate-explosion/article/2529523

That’s either good news or bad news, depending on your point of view.

EDIT 2: Here’s another clue. Google “adverse selection death spiral.”

Well, sure. It’s going to destroy the country. It’s just a matter of how.

We old school types can’t help but feel that something has been lost when government expands another notch and individual freedom contracts a notch as a society crosses the line from rule of law to “iindividual mandate” territory. While I understand that the ends justify the means that just doesn’t make it better for me for some reason, especially in an era when that government has crossed so many other lines already such as torture, denial of due process, rogue surveillance, recreational warfare and drone lynching. Where is the next line drawn, I wonder, or will we one day find ourselves right back where we started five hundred years ago serving the state rather than the other way around.

You could just do what is proven to work in every other country that’s tried it.

Yeah it would be simpler, more efficient and cheaper , but the problem is it may have the words ‘national’ and ‘social’ involved and some business people would lose out.

What the U.S. government does is purely of academic interest to me but we are talking the government here which has botched nearly everything it’s touched in recent memory from postwar reconstruction to delivering the mail . . . disaster relief, educating its children, regulating banks, managing the economy, operating its Amtrak trains on time . . . to rolling out a simple website. Maybe handing America’s entire, admittedly ailing health care system over to such a bunch of buffoons would turn out differently but I’m glad I’ll never have to find out personally.

Who are these old school types you imagine? None exist on Fcom as the same people opposed to the ACA were perfectly fine with torture during the Bush years. I would say that is generally true in the right wing media as well. There are a few conservatives, such as Bruce Bartlett, who were opposed to torture and support medical reform (as well as higher taxes) but these are vanishingly rare and have been largely ostracized by the right.

My alternate universe continues…my 2014 Himark plan just rolled over with…wait for it…

No changes!!! What am I doing wrong?