Gee, it’s like they didn’t pay any attention whatsoever when we warned them:
Like most of the law’s most significant effects on economic incentives, this wasn’t actually done on purpose. It’s a function of the same attitude on display in the Times article: a view of economic actors as drones awaiting instructions rather than reasonable people considering their options. And so of course, the solution is to take away options. The Times’s description of the administration’s thinking is priceless:
The Obama administration is investigating the use of stop-loss insurance by employers with healthier employees, and officials said they were considering regulations to discourage small and midsize employers from using such arrangements to circumvent the new health care law. “This practice, if widespread, could worsen the risk pool and increase premiums in the fully insured small group market,” the administration said in a notice in the Federal Register.
How exactly the existence of a design flaw in the law somehow empowers the administration to fix it by “discouraging” self-insurance through regulation is so quaint and naïve a question as to not even merit mention—a vestige of our barbarous past.
Marxism is ever thus. We will build the New Soviet Man.
Pity more folks didn’t support Senator McCann in 2008. Yes, he wasn’t the best Republican option, but he was Republican 🙂
Pity more folks didn’t support Reid’s opponent in 2010. Yes, she wasn’t the best Republican option, but she was Republican 🙂
You warned the Obama administration not to make it possible for companies who self-insure to keep doing so? Funny, I don’t recall that.
They were warned about passing the bill before they knew what was in it.
As Nancy Pelosi famously pointed out, you can’t fully know the effects of a law without enacting it. That’s true of Obamacare, the Ryan budget, or any other law.
wrong ( as usual).
What she said was that you have to pass it to KNOW WHAT’S IN IT.
That’s vastly different from knowing it’s impact.
Why, Jim, would you want to pass a law so complex you haven’t the slightest idea as to what will happen?
Why do you care SO LITTLE about how you affect other people’s lives?
Is your hubris so enormous that you know it will all work out?
“wrong ( as usual).”
Indeed. Jim should put together a collection of essays, featuring his fact-, logic- and economics-challenged takes of a wide variety of issues, and call the collection (borrowing a phrase from Larry David) “One Big Bowl of Wrong.” It would sort of be the Bizarro Planet contrast to, say, Mencken’s PREJUDICES.
Why do you care SO LITTLE about how you affect other people’s lives?
According to the best information available, Obamacare will expand health insurance to 20-30 million people. That’s what I care about. Please explain why you care so little about those people getting coverage.
Come now, Jim, just how stupid do you think we are? You seriously expect us to swallow that spin?
Tell me you’re lying and you’re really not that cynical. Or that stupid.
How about you explain what you think Pelosi meant. That it’s literally impossible to read a bill before it’s passed?
“ccording to the best information available, Obamacare will expand health insurance to 20-30 million people. That’s what I care about. Please explain why you care so little about those people getting coverage.”
Twaddle. It’s already falling apart. They are running out of money to finance the pre-existing condition people…and they haven’t even taken care of as many as they thought they would have to take care of. So they planned poorly.
“How about you explain what you think Pelosi meant. That it’s literally impossible to read a bill before it’s passed?”
That’s not what she said. I take her at her word. Here is what she said…this will take 10 seconds of your life..a good investment for you:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hV-05TLiiLU
It is only impossible to READ a bill before it is passed if it’s 2500+ pages of gobbledygook festooned with unrelated bribes and gimmicks.
One lib-dem said he couldn’t be bothered to read it, before voting on it, since it was so big and so chock full of legalese.
They are running out of money to finance the pre-existing condition people
You’re referring to the high-risk pools that were set up as a stop-gap until the law takes full effect next year. Yes, it’s a shame that those pools ran out of money 10 months short of their finish line. But remember that it’s the GOP that has been pushing high-risk pools as the permanent answer to covering people with pre-existing conditions. Fortunately, Obamacare only used them as a temporary measure.
It’s still the case that Obamacare will cover 10s of millions more people than if it hadn’t passed (or had been repealed). Just today Rick Scott agreed to Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion for Florida, which all by itself will give insurance to a million poor and near-poor Floridians. Shouldn’t we care about those people?
I take her at her word.
What, exactly, do you think her words mean?
One lib-dem said he couldn’t be bothered to read it
Would his opinion of the bill or his vote been different if he had read it?
What, exactly, do you think her words mean?
Hmm…that’s a puzzler! I dunno, maybe her words meant what they actually literally mean?
“What, exactly, do you think her words mean?”
I repeat: She means there’s no time to read the bill just pass it and then you can see what’s in it.
“Would his opinion of the bill or his vote been different if he had read it?”
Are you serious? Yes Jim reading the bill might have made a great deal of difference on his vote.
Are you suggesting it’s not prudent to read what you are about to vote on? Are you saying it’s OK to do that?
The Congresscritter specifically said he wasn’t gong to bother reading the bill – are you actually trying to say that’s NOT an impediment to passing such large bills?
Why do you love government so much? Government is an evil — a necessary evil, but an evil nonetheless. Its only legitimate role is to govern. Government has no legitimate role in providing medical care for anyone, and any attempt to use government to provide medical care will fail.
I will never understand the love people like you have for government. Why can’t you understand that we free men simply want to be left alone?
Government is a blunt instrument wielded by morons, knaves and the corrupt.
any attempt to use government to provide medical care will fail
How do you define fail? I got good medical care from the US government as an Army dependent. The private health care system fails all the time. The world is more complicated than “government bad, business good”.
The services really represent a very small part of the health care universe. And they didn’t do such a hot job either. I’m sure youve forgotten the mold on the walls of Walter Reed just a few years ago.
Horror stories coming out of VA hospitals in the 60’s 70’s and parts of the 80’s were rampant.
The government handles health care horribly and inefficiently however it must be handled for our veterans. I say it would be much cheaper and more efficient for service people, their families, and the veterans if they were allowed to pick the insurance they wanted and the government paid the full boat for it.
I say it would be much cheaper and more efficient for service people, their families, and the veterans if they were allowed to pick the insurance they wanted and the government paid the full boat for it.
That’s the option Jim pretends could never exist.
pretends could never exist
Of course it could exist, it already does — I believe that most civilian federal employees have that sort of arrangement. B Lewis is the one claiming, in contradiction to reality, that “any attempt to use government to provide medical care will fail”.
That’s because people provide medical care.
Jim
Do you not realize that politicians are every bit as money hungry, power hungry, venal and ignoble as businessmen?
If you hate business so much then you should hate politicians even more.
How about we play the politicians and businessmen against each other, so neither can dominate our lives?
Spoken like a true divider.
Do you not see how your point of view creates emnity, anger, division?
You really are a piece of work.
If you are so willing to say government can dominate your life – as you seem to say above (I don’t believe you really think that, by the way), then why are you so willing to cede to them ever greater amounts of control?
You are self-contradictory.
How about you leave business people alone and the make government limit itself to providing the means to ajudicate fraud and abuse?
How about you give up your liberty which you clearly do not value, but don’t force anyone else to?
How about you have the slightest regard for your fellow citizen and realize that government’s goal is to gain more power and control over YOU. And that they really don’t give a rat’s ass about you?
How about you get a clue? Question your premises – we’ve done that endlessly here and shown you that they are faulty.
Spoken like a true divider.
Like Madison, when he set up the Constitution’s checks and balances?
“Like Madison, when he set up the Constitution’s checks and balances?”
God the wiggles you will attempt to avoid facing the simple fact that you are wrong.
Madison put checks nd balances between politicians IN the government.
He wanted government to leave businessmen alone.
He did not want to set one faction of the citizenry against and angry at another.
He wanted government to leave businessmen alone.
Which is why he gave government the power to levy taxes and tariffs, and regulate commerce between the states? Madison didn’t want unfettered commercial power.
He didn’t want states manipulating markets, which is essentially Gregg’s point. The power to levy taxes and tariffs were for international trade to provide a means to raise a military and defend against both shooting wars and trade wars; both of which might interfere with free markets.
Jim,
Face the facts, BHO and the Democrats in Congress considered any opponents of their planned PPACA to be enemies to be overcome and crushed. Well, here’s a quote for you (and for Mr. Obama, Ms. Pelosi, Mr. Reid, and all their lackeys) that seems appropriate, by a very famous and successful Prussian Field Marshal, Helmuth von Moltke the Elder: “No plan survives contact with the enemy.”
I told many friends and co-workers back in 2009 and 2010 that the Democrats should hire a large, bipartisan crowd of lawyers and health-care administrators to participate in several simulations , each at least two-to-three months long, to learn how their monstrosity of a bill would play-out in the real-world. But they thought it best to simply pass the bill so we all could find out what was in it. Rep. Conyers of Michigan said (I’m paraphrasing him here) what good would it do to read the bill if it takes 2 days and you need several lawyers with you to understand what’s in it? Gosh, maybe that would have been a good thing for all the Democrats to have done before Pelosi and Reid held the votes for the PPACA, huh?
BlueMoon
One of the basic tenants of Conservatism is that, while change is necessary, one should make very small, distinct, changes. Changes that are simple enough that the mind has a chance to encompass the impacts.
So you make the change, then sit back and wait and watch. Carefully.
Because Conservatives are humble enough to know it’s not easy to foresee all the possible outcomes. Especially in a system as complex as a 14 trillion dollar, 350 million person economy. If, over time, you get positive results you keep the change.
If the results are negative, it’s MUCH easier to rescind a small change.
Therefore, on the face of it, a 2500+ page law is far too complex to comprehend and predict the outcome.
A lot of us knew it and said so.
As we are now seeing.
535 Washingtonian knuckleheads who have lived in a bubble all their lives haven’t a clue as to how to craft a law that complex.
No one does.
Examples of small distinct manageable changes that they COULD have taken would be to:
1) Remove the limitation on insurance companies so that they can sell across state lines.
2) Reform Tort law so that superfluous tests to protect doctors from silly malpractice suits can go away.
In addition, we are suppose to be using 50 laboratories operating in competition so people can vote with their feet.
3) Expand the Health Saving Accounts. For young people they represented growing savings, safety from catastrophic medical events and spending THEIR OWN MONEY for the normal stuff like the flu. Of course, HSA’s were cancelled.
Instead, young folks are going to find out who really got screwed in the Obamacare deal; and hopefully, by who.
one should make very small, distinct, changes
That’s a nice idea, but it can leave you stuck at a local maximum, where things are bad but no small change can get you anywhere better. Our history is full of big steps with utterly unpredictable outcomes: the Erie Canal, the Louisiana Purchase, the Emancipation Proclamation, Social Security, Interstate Highways, Medicare, the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, etc.
1) Remove the limitation on insurance companies so that they can sell across state lines.
That sounds like a small step, but isn’t: it would send every insurance company to whatever state had the most lax regulations (the way nearly all credit cards come from S. Dakota, and nearly all big corporations are incorporated in Delaware), and put every person with health insurance at the mercy of that state’s legislature.
2) Reform Tort law so that superfluous tests to protect doctors from silly malpractice suits can go away.
Texas did so, and it hasn’t affected health care spending much.
“That’s a nice idea, but it can leave you stuck at a local maximum, …”
More nonsense.
“That sounds like a small step, but isn’t: it would send every insurance company to whatever state had the most lax regulations (the way nearly all credit cards come from S. Dakota, and nearly all big corporations are incorporated in Delaware), and put every person with health insurance at the mercy of that state’s legislature.”
Even more nonsense. It’s hard to know where to begin here:
First off if you don’t like what your legislature does you have more influence in fixing that than you do fixing the Feds.
Secondly, if you can’t change things to your liking you can go to another State (see California v Texas today).
Thirdly, you LOVE government control…why are you worried about what a state legislature will do
Fourthly…..yet NOT worry about what the Feds can do? Said Feds being so much more removed from you?
To say you are worried about what your state legislature will do but NOT worry about what the Feds will do shows your “thinking” is not worth the appellation.
Answer me this: Why do you worry about what the State will do but NOT about what the Feds will do?
(Who will give me odds he’ll decline to answer?)
First off if you don’t like what your legislature does you have more influence in fixing that than you do fixing the Feds.
The point is that my legislature won’t have any influence at all, because the insurer will be based in another state, whichever state makes life easiest for insurers. By forcing every state to accept insurance sold across state lines, you make the residents of 49 states subject to the laws of the 50th, despite having zero influence over it.
Secondly, if you can’t change things to your liking you can go to another State (see California v Texas today).
No, you can’t, because residents of every state will be getting insurance from whichever state won the race-to-the-bottom of health insurance regulation.
why are you worried about what a state legislature will do
It almost certainly won’t be my state legislature, and by definition it will be the worst state legislature in the country for consumers like me.
Why do you worry about what the State will do but NOT about what the Feds will do?
Because I have a voice in what the Feds do, and the Feds have reason to listen to consumers as well as insurers and health care providers.
Who will give me odds he’ll decline to answer?
I guess you’d lose that bet.
“The point is that my legislature won’t have any influence at all, because the insurer will be based in another state, whichever state makes life easiest for insurers.”
Absolutely false. Your state has all kinds of rules that companies operating in that state must follow….rules which do not exist or are different in other states.
Simple example even you could have come up with if you were to use yrou head for something other than a hat rack:
A company has to pay more taxes and follow more regs in California than they do in Texas. Which is why they are moving to Texas.
It seems you just think up stuff to say to prop up a loser position without giving it the slightest thought.
“No, you can’t, because residents of every state will be getting insurance from whichever state won the race-to-the-bottom of health insurance regulation.”
The whole point is that you can buy your insurance from ANY company. You are still stuck on the notion that your state is limiting your choices. So if you consider one insurance company to be a wretched bottom feeder – don’t buy from them. Get it from someone else.
And OF COURSE you may have to pay more – as you should; the better the policy the more it can cost. But you at least have the choice.
“It almost certainly won’t be my state legislature, and by definition it will be the worst state legislature in the country for consumers like me.”
See above…and try to think it through before typing.
“Because I have a voice in what the Feds do, and the Feds have reason to listen to consumers as well as insurers and health care providers.”
You have a FAR GREATER voice in what your state government does than you do the Feds.
“I guess you’d lose that bet.”
You didn’t bet.
Do you not know this?
Your state has all kinds of rules that companies operating in that state must follow
Yes, but your proposal is to make those rules inoperative. Insurance companies can sell across state lines today, if they follow the rules of every state that they operate in. You are proposing we change that, and let insurance companies operate by a single set of rules, the rules of their home state, while selling their services across the country. But you haven’t thought through the ramifications — it seems they come as a complete surprise to you!
It seems you just think up stuff to say
:). No, I don’t just think them up, I read articles about this stuff, and remember some of what I read. The pitfalls of letting insurance companies sell across state lines have been discussed regularly in health care reform circles since at least 2009.
“Yes, but your proposal is to make those rules inoperative. ”
The only rule I want to make inoperative is the one where the State limits which companies you can buy insurance from.
“Insurance companies can sell across state lines today, if they follow the rules of every state that they operate in. ”
No they can’t. In my state, I can buy auto insurance ONLY from state-sanctioned companies. I could NOT buy, say, from Geico, until a couple of years ago where the State allowed Geico to sell here. (This is not an ad for Geico).
You don’t know what you are talking about.
“You are proposing we change that, and let insurance companies operate by a single set of rules, the rules of their home state, while selling their services across the country. ”
Again you are stuck in the State controlled paradigm. You keep applying state control to a suggestion you clearly do not understand.
The insurance companies would NOT have to follow their own State rules. I would eliminate State control other than the basics on Fraud (for example).
“But you haven’t thought through the ramifications — it seems they come as a complete surprise to you!”
Of course I didn’t think through ramifications of a paradigm I never suggested.
And nothing is a surprise coming from you. All one has to do is assume surrender to the State by you and your position is crystal clear.
“You don’t want Congress to have control over what the government spends money on? ”
Nice straw man. I never said that. I don’t want the State to have control over how and from whom I get my health insurance. I don’t want the State to have control over 1/6th of the economy.
“Over how many immigrants we let in? Over what countries we’re at war with? Over safety standards for food, drugs, and consumer products? Really?”
More strawmen and unrelated to the topic. Whenever you are cornered you go wildly astray with all these issues superfluous to the topic. It’s the hallmark of your style.
“You’ve defined “statist” to be anyone who thinks there should be a government. ”
I have not. That’s only a definition you’ve conjured up after making unwarranted assumptions.
At this point your replies are merely attempts at distraction or uncoordinated scattershots to try and buck up a position that’s destroyed at every turn.
Go get a well thought out position and get back to us.
Actually, the real purpose of Health Care Reform is to save money.
You see, the 50 million without a health plan are not without health care because they are allowed to present themselves at an Emergency Room when they are ill, and the hospital ER is required to treat a person regardless of ability to pay.
The ER is a rather expensive way to deliver health care, hence, if you make health insurance mandatory, you will cut costs.
It seems that Health Care Reform is only going to raise costs. So, Mr. Obama’s Health Care Reform looks to be a change in the system, but it is going in the wrong direction.
It is kind of like in Driver’s Ed, where I was about to pull forward from a parking space but had the transmission selector in Reverse. The instructor, however, frowned on my explanation of gear selection from my model train hobby, which was, if you goose the throttle and move the wrong way, you stop and change the selection to the opposite direction.
So, go give everybody health insurance appears to be the wrong direction, and we don’t need to tip in even more throttle to smash into the car parked behind us as my instructor thought I would do.
If the selected direction is wrong, just change the selector and go the right direction this time.
So I propose that we do away with all health insurance plans, and everyone go to the ER every time a person has serious symptoms. This change will save trillions of dollars.
Actually, the real purpose of Health Care Reform is to save money.
Rebuttal for Obamacare:
1) increases demand for health services by insurees through mandatory coverage,
2) increases mandated coverage by insurers for health services,
3) no pre-existing conditions, and
4) increases demand for health services by heavily subsidizing the purchase of health insurance.
So here is some “health care reform” that doesn’t actually reduce cost of health care.
The entire effort was misnamed. It wasn’t Health Care Reform. Health care is what you get from doctors, nurses, etc. ObamaCare makes few changes to health care itself other than imposing a vast new bureaucracy between the doctor and patient. If you think dealing with your insurance company was a hassle, just wait!
No, this was Health Insurance Reform. The majority of ObamaCare is dealing with paying for health care, not the care itself. It’s an attempt at misdirection and manipulation. There were far simplier ways to address the issue of those who need insurance and couldn’t get it (as opposed to those who made the choice not to buy health insurance) than a takeover of 1/6th of the economy. However, those simplier solutions would’ve had less opportunity to expand the bureaucracy ($$$ to Democrats), less opportunity for consolidating more power to the federal government ($$$ to Democrats), as well as the normal graft and corruption.
The Obama administration is investigating the use of stop-loss insurance by employers with healthier employees, and officials said they were considering regulations to discourage small and midsize employers from using such arrangements to circumvent the new health care law.
Yet another incentive to be a “too big to fail” business. There’s a lot of people who think regulation is needed to hold back large businesses. This little blurb up there indicates that regulation can instead encourage the creation of large, powerful businesses.
Had enough government yet?
Or do you need some more?
Imagine if the government were not involved at all…
People would fall ill or have accidents. Would that have no result?
Of course not. Others would provide a service, let’s call them doctors and nurses (in either case, no particular gender implied.) There would be many levels of health services, some in big hospitals, others in local communities that even made house calls. All that would be called health care and would follow economic laws without any help from any government which means competition would keep costs to a minimum. Especially since people would pay their own bills directly. Supply would follow demand with many clinics everywhere for the majority of cases that do not require hospitals. Consumers, paying the bill themselves, would have no problem regulating the many clinics competing for their money. We could call some of these clinics emergency rooms.
But costs would not be evenly distributed. Would that have no result?
Of course not. Others would provide a service, let’s call them insurance companies. They would compete keeping costs low. Without government regulations (other than enforcement of contract law) people would be able to choose any provider in the country. Employers are free to use it as a benefit to attract employees. Service would be great (I really miss those days. Kids today have no idea how they’ve been screwed by government ‘help’ since those days.)
But insurance companies are a business, in it for profit. Would that have no result?
Of course not. Others would provide a service, let’s call them educators. They would explain to people that they are responsible for their own lives. They would explain that insurance companies are a business that can be held to their contracts, so choose wisely. They would explain that if you choose wisely and get coverage early, you will not find yourself paying the premiums you would have to when you are older. But it’s your choice, it’s called responsibility.
But some people are poor. Would that have no result?
Of course not. Others would provide a service, let’s call them charities. Charities fill the needs of the poor. But without government to interfere, there would be fewer poor.
But that’s not fair. Well, there is no such thing and you can’t create it. Do you think killing off the rich will improve the life of any of the poor?
Charities fill the needs of the poor.
Really? So the needs of the poor were fully met before, say, 1930, when the government started getting too involved?
“So the needs of the poor were fully met before, say, 1930, when the government started getting too involved?”
And the needs of the poor are being fully met NOW after 40 years and 7 TRILLION dollars worth of the War on Poverty?
What you fail to realize (among the huge pile of things you fail to realize) is that the 1930’s Big Government solutions have conditioned people to NOT CARE about the poor simply because they think “Well the government is taking care of it”. So charitable contributions are lower than they need to be.
Not to mention the fact that it was Big Government Mistakes that caused the poverty in the first place. So, like Obama first they create a problem then they prescribe more problem – big government – as the solution. The 1929 downturn might have been a typical recession if it wasn’t for Big Government.
See The Depression of 1921
That is a fatuous question that does not need to be answered.
The needs of the poor will never be fully met. Any program, public or private (profit or non-profit) capable of clearing that bar is utterly unrealistic. The level of coercion/intrusion to do so would be enormous and unpalatable to the vast majority of the public.
The proper question is what can be done to improve things from where we are today, and how can the programs that were used in the past inform any proposals.
The proper question is what can be done to improve things from where we are today
I agree. The research says pre-K programs, EITC, broader Medicaid eligibility, higher Social Security benefits and a higher minimum wage would help the poor.
“The research says pre-K programs, ..”
Experience proves otherwise.
I’ll take experience over research any day.
The pre-K research is based on experience, in fact on randomized clinical trials.
Jim, my needs have never been met. Way to put things in an unwinable form.
The way to help the poor is to not prevent them from being able to work themselves out of poverty. The history of government programs is that THEY KEEP THE POOR, POOR FOR GENERATIONS. Which is of course, the intent.
Why else would they reduce your benefits if you report working for additional income?
you can’t fully know the effects of a law without enacting it.
Sounds like a good argument for smaller government and fewer laws, particularly at the federal level.
“Sounds like a good argument for smaller government and fewer laws, particularly at the federal level.”
…..and single sheet of paper laws..i.e. not christmas tree ornamentation; no bribing.
single sheet of paper laws
Indeed. I’m for the 3×5 card type sheets myself.
So you pass a 3×5 card law, and let the executive bureaucracy interpret it as they see fit?
We have long, complicated laws because Congress — our representatives — want some control over what will happen.
“So you pass a 3×5 card law, and let the executive bureaucracy interpret it as they see fit?”
The POINT of a 3×5 card law is that there’s no room for interpretation. It’s written clearly and simply.
There is more room for interpretation in a 2500 page law *where* it states over and over that some future board of unelected drones will write the rules.
Sheesh.
“We have long, complicated laws because Congress — our representatives — want some control over what will happen.”
Busted. Spoken like a true Statist.
We don’t want them to have control.
As Gregg wrote busted. Actually busted on two fronts. Neither Gregg nor I said anything about a law limiting laws to a single sheet or 3×5. Passing laws limiting things is what statist do. I won’t speak for Gregg like you did, Jim; but for myself, I’m fighting to get politicians with self control and discipline.
The POINT of a 3×5 card law is that there’s no room for interpretation
So you’re going to print up the DOD appropriation bill on 3×5 cards? How exactly is that going to result in a law that leaves no room for interpretation?
We don’t want them to have control
You don’t want Congress to have control over what the government spends money on? Over how many immigrants we let in? Over what countries we’re at war with? Over safety standards for food, drugs, and consumer products? Really?
You’ve defined “statist” to be anyone who thinks there should be a government. By that definition, I’m happy to be a statist.
You’ve defined “statist” to be anyone who thinks there should be a government.
Perhaps you can show us his definition stating this. I haven’t read anywhere that Gregg said he thinks there should be no government or anyone who wants a government is statist. You quoted him out of context, but even that quote doesn’t support this misrepresentation made by you, Jim. We know you are happy to be a statist, but if you are going to claim Gregg defined something, quote the definition.
“You don’t want Congress to have control over what the government spends money on? ”
Nice straw man. I never said that. I don’t want the State to have control over how and from whom I get my health insurance. I don’t want the State to have control over 1/6th of the economy.
“Over how many immigrants we let in? Over what countries we’re at war with? Over safety standards for food, drugs, and consumer products? Really?”
More strawmen and unrelated to the topic. Whenever you are cornered you go wildly astray with all these issues superfluous to the topic. It’s the hallmark of your style.
“You’ve defined “statist” to be anyone who thinks there should be a government. ”
I have not. That’s only a definition you’ve conjured up after making unwarranted assumptions.
At this point your replies are merely attempts at distraction or uncoordinated scattershots to try and buck up a position that’s destroyed at every turn.
Go get a well thought out position and get back to us.
So you’re going to print up the DOD appropriation bill on 3×5 cards?
I know by this, you mean the current one that makes sure Feinstein’s husband gets his gravy, and Menendez donors can afford their private jets.
Oh yes…if you like your policy you can keep it…..
Universal theme park
will quit offering healthcare
to part-time workers
The Hill [Washington, DC], by Sam Baker
“A 17,000-employee Florida theme park says it´s dropping healthcare benefits for part-time workers as a result of President Obama´s healthcare law. Universal Orlando will quit offering coverage because its bare-bones plan is about to become illegal, according to a report in the Orlando Sentinel. Only about 500 of the park´s thousands of part-time workers are enrolled in the healthcare plan, the Sentinel reported.”
A policy became *ILLEGAL*
Jim must love it….
As Barack Obama famously pointed out, if you like your policy the government will be creating one more or less like it that you can buy from a government exchange when your employer inevitably decides to stop offering coverage.
/Jim
It is very clear what’s happening. The poor vote for Obama and similar ilk. So they do all they can to increase the poor while tickling their ears. No mystery.
Jim took the Mailed Fist of the State out of his rectum long enough to sit down and write: “According to the best information available, Obamacare will expand health insurance to 20-30 million people. That’s what I care about.”
Typical statist. Unintended dire consequences from policies he advocates (not to mention the usual expansion of State power to the diminishment of individual liberty)? No problemo, tax-serfs! All that matters is that the Hive has its way with you!
As Thomas Sowell puts it, it’s the Vision of the Annointed–the “Annointed” being the Hive and its usual idiots. As long as the Annointed force their vision on society, and get to feel good about themselves, nothing else matters.
Also typical–that is, typically inane–is Jim’s next statement: “Please explain why you care so little about those people getting coverage.” In his view, his (coercive) compassion gives him the moral high ground, and the rest of us should have to prove we’re just as compassionate as he is–like being generous with outher people’s money is an indication of compassion.
“I remember when ‘liberal’ meant being generous with your own money.”–Will Rogers.
Please explain why you care so little about those people getting coverage.