Trump: The First Year

But what about the poor, put-upon Baby Boomers who deserve to have their lifestyles subsidized by young people with no money and dim prospects? Will no one think of them???

Sorry, mild derail. Please continue.

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This is, of course, just the manifestation of a much larger problem.
http://www.nam.org/Data-and-Reports/Cost-of-Federal-Regulations/Federal-Regulation-Full-Study.pdf

It doesn’t lower the actual cost of healthcare, though, which is what I’m saying. Yes, premiums go down for some. Others are forced to pay premiums that they otherwise wouldn’t need to pay for care they’ll never use.

It’s like, you have a boat with a hole in the bottom and instead of trying to plug the hole you just make the boat bigger.

There is no reason why we can’t achieve both. I doubt it’ll happen, but it can happen. [quote=ā€œpfury, post:1664, topic:229190ā€]
There’s a reason most of the 1st world countries on the planet are moving towards a social option. Free market allows for casualties on a massive scale. I’m not the one that has to sleep with that at night, politicians are.
[/quote]

I have a number of thoughts on this too, but I won’t get into it.

Agreed. I was talking strictly about premium amounts. Edit: premium amounts of those that are going to get HC regardless of what laws are passed, ie sick/old people.

Healthcare lobbyists fighting lower prices and the bureaucracy of DC. To me, it’s as unrealistic to think DC will get this right as it is to have a pure form of communism. Human nature and greed will always triumph. Just my 2 cents.

People can’t afford health insurance as it is. I really don’t think the government cares all that much to begin with, though. They just want control imho. Maybe we should stop subsidizing unhealthy lifestyles to start and let people make their own choices on what to cover. Maybe, just maybe they will undergo a lifestyle change if they are the one’s covering it. Obviously this isn’t a perfect world and people do get sick regardless of choice but their are charities/churches that provide financial help.

Not only should people have the right to choose what they would like to cover under their insurance without government intervention(that would also lower insurance costs) but it is morally wrong to force others to pay for someone else’s(not you specifically because you don’t like the mandate either) vision of what health coverage should be.

If Trump wanted, he could achieve both, eliminating a mandate and lowering cost but he doesn’t. He wants Ocare with his name on it. Privatized healthcare is a pipe dream, though.

The issue arises when every American is fully aware they can eat McDonalds until it almost kills them, and once you’re financially worthless, qualifying for govt assistance is a slam dunk. The only way to effect accountability on a massive scale is to remove the safety net, which goes back to the casualties on a massive scale.

You’ll see just as much pushback from the HC industry as anywhere else on this note. They WANT you to have to keep paying for things you don’t need, so they’ll just keep buying politicians and sending lobbyists to accomplish that goal. Not to sound tin foil hatty, but they are businesses after all. The bottom line is what matters.

norse, thanks for posting this piece from Thomas Sowell. He cuts right to the heart of it doesn’t he?

ā€œcosmic injusticeā€

As I have always said the new democrat party is based mostly on emotion. Running about here and there to try to ā€œfixā€ things that seem to be unfair, but in reality are not. And Obamacare is nothing but one very large social program that as Sowell states tries to ā€œhideā€ the costs of health care. But, in the end is nothing more than taking this apparent injustice and forcing others to share in it…those who do not deserve it.

ā€œA major failing of liberals, especially those in government, is the constant inclination to fix the unfairness of life and improve the cosmic justice in the universe.ā€

So true and in the end stealing from the working, middle, upper middle class and the rich and handing it to the poor is just one more form of injustice but one that the left can live with.

A party based mostly on emotion.

While I agree that Ocare was mostly a flop, I feel like I have to question this.

Both parties are based ENTIRELY on emotion. What do you FEEL is fair? What do you FEEL is right? The passing of every law, every program, every etcetc is about what we FEEL to be right. Democracy is the enacting of laws by the majority at its core (whether or not its bastardized). Which means people vote whichever direction they FEEL is right based on their views of the world.

If you’re not going to get emotional about something, you probably don’t care about it.

Free market healthcare will just become harder and harder to implement with all these physically and mentally broken people being churned out as a result of these pointless wars.

Re the link: What a surprise–The Mises Institute thinks government regulation is the problem. I know that sounds snarky, but they (Mises) are a one-trick pony. For them, all economic problems are 2ndry to government interference, and all economic solutions consist of switching to a free market. They are the epitome of how everything looks like a nail if the only tool you have is a hammer.

There are many misleading claims in the Mises article. But what struck me as oddest was how the author compared US HC unfavorably to that of Western Europe, when the fact is of course that Western Europe provides universal, govt-controlled HC. Very strange.

That is a matter of opinion. I for one disagree. Consider: Every taxpayer pays for public schools whether or not they have kids. This is so kids whose families can’t afford to pay for school get an education anyway. Is this done solely out of liberal bleeding-heart do-goodism? No. It’s done because an educated populace is in the public interest. In like fashion, a healthy populace is in the public interest as well. Thus, there is a ā€˜selfish’ reason to subsidize the HC costs of those who can’t afford to bear those costs alone.

Essentially everyone uses HC eventually. The number who don’t amount to no more than a rounding error.

As the kids would say, let’s keep it 100 for a minute. Are you saying you’d be OK with a hospital turning you away to die in the street if you, say, sustained a life-threatening injury? How about your mom? Or your child?

So I guess you are OK with being allowed to die in the street, then–you and all the other apparently extraneous individuals who comprise the excess baggage in our ā€œoverpopulated world.ā€

Interesting moral implications involved in defining which lives are worth saving as a function of their wealth.

I don’t believe anyone thinks in these terms (and doubt you really do either). That is, no one is munching on a Big Mac while thinking ā€˜Who cares if I get fat and become diabetic? I’ll just get on the dole. Win-win!’ I’m not saying people don’t make poor lifestyle choices (obviously they do); I’m just saying the safety net does not influence their short-term decision-making in that regard.

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DREAMers staying put. How’s that wall coming?

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But will it? If people are faced with a choice of life or death and taking some self responsibility, maybe they decide to make a change. Maybe not, though ha. I think the best thing we can do for people is help them help themselves as an action that is rewarded is often repeated. Don’t reward bad behavior. Again, pipe dream.

Ya, I don’t really disagree here. Maybe it will equal out more if government stops telling them to cover stuff that isn’t risk(they lose money) and covering unneeded stuff (gain money.)

You should be ecstatic. This is what you wanted?

He nails it here.

I wouldn’t say ecstatic, but I’m fine with it. Till we get border security in better shape, we need to be humane and smart, and this is both of those. Are you staying away from window ledges and sharp objects?

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Well, to be more clear I am not talking about the emotion that causes people to vote for the most charismatic candidate for President year after year. And funny how no one ever talks about that.

What I am talking about is the handing out of gigantic sums of money mostly by the democrats to large groups of people who are capable of working but choose not to. Let’s call this the ā€œfairness doctrineā€ that is at the root of the democrat party. That doctrine demands that the government give this group whatever they can possibly give them in order to help them. That means stealing must occur because the government doesn’t make any money on its own so they now rev up the IRS and start taxing in order to ā€œsaveā€ people who in the end will not only not be saved, but will fall further into poverty because they become dependent on the US government for many of their needs.

A couple of examples:

LBJ’s war on poverty launched over 50 years ago because the government just had to do something about poverty not only didn’t work as planned there are more people in poverty now than ever before.

Obama’s increase of food stamp recipients by about 10 million didn’t lower poverty either. But was it even meant to?

There are certainly far more examples such as subsidizing peoples rent payments. There are federal programs that take care of people almost from cradle to grave. And to be fair some republicans in order to look compassionate are complicit in this activity and do so to try to peel away at least some of the left’s support.

It’s all quite sickening.

Makes me wonder why I bothered to wait over a decade to immigrate here legally.

I assume you FEEL that these programs were failures and shouldn’t have been enacted right?

This seems to me like an emotional stance. Not that I have a problem with it, just demonstrating we all make emotional decisions.

Add that one up to the pile of lies. Remember when China was a currency manipulator, intervening in Syria was awful and NATO was something we were getting out of? His supporters are pretty silent on these things

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Ha I don’t ā€œfeelā€ they were failures I ā€œknowā€ they were. What is a government hand-out program supposed to do?

We have more poor people now. Did any of it work?

Yeah we sure do. But when you start stealing other people’s money in order to get elected and that becomes your parties mantra. I have a problem with that.