djAdvocate
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Post by djAdvocate on Nov 1, 2013 10:49:15 GMT -5
Joined-up thinking required of serious people, dj. Your first point describes a promise to insure more people. Ceteris paribus, that costs more money. Since the "more people" here are the high-risk population, it costs a lot more money. I'm not sure most lay people without experience in the industry appreciate how much more money we're talking there. of course. but it need not cost more GOVERNMENT money. you aren't conflating those, right?Your second point describes a promise to reduce costs. The first promise raises the bar on this: the President's emphatic pledge that the bill must add "not one dime" to the deficit (conveniently, this stricture on the bill only extends to the law if you faithfully uphold it, and thank God, Obama never promised to do that. Well, just that one time. Two times, Roberts fluffed it. Three times, he got re-elected. But apart from that, not at all. And heck, are we really going to count something he said just three times against him? He's a yappy guy. Says a lot. They can't all be Nobel Prize acceptance speeches). i am still confused by that promise from Obama, but i never considered it very important.Your third point describes a redistributionist scheme: subsidy by the rich of the poor. I'm not at all sure this was ever part of the sales pitch, actually, to the extent that I'd like to see your source. I'd substitute the more sourcable pledge that if you have healthcare, you can keep it. Period. That explicit claim meant that the magic of expanding coverage and cutting costs was somehow going to leave the existing structure alone. When Republican critics called Obamacare a 'government takeover' of healthcare they got responses like this: www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2010/dec/16/lie-year-government-takeover-health-care/It is pure revisionism for you to recast the promises made for Obamacare now as having always made clear they would change insurance as people had it, and that it would cost some people more so it cost others less. Mojo- i never claimed that it was "made clear". what i said is that that SHOULD HAVE BEEN CLEAR to anyone with a mind capable of reason.
so your claim that i am being "revisionist" is a red herring.Neither of those things were promised; both are obviously true. it is just basic accounting. the kind that should be a high school graduation requirement.
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djAdvocate
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Post by djAdvocate on Nov 1, 2013 10:52:44 GMT -5
You would prefer there were no health insurance? A philanthropic world of free medicine and free love? i would prefer that there were no private insurance whatsoever, Mojo. i loathe it.Wouldn't we all. Sadly, in the real world, socialization of risk has to be monetized to harness the profit motive, or enforced by the oblique violence of legal mandate. Or both, as with Obamacare. i am inclined to believe that the world is what we make of it. if the world is small, evil, and ruthless, then that says more about us than anything "real" about this place and time.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 1, 2013 10:59:50 GMT -5
We are talking about how it was sold.
The promises that were made about Obamacare.
What should have been obvious doesn't matter; insofar as the promises made don't square with what should have been obvious, they were (being kind) misleading.
There is no grey area in "you can keep your healthcare. Period."
Go back and read your own #450, so you can keep track of what you're claiming when you come back to me on this. According to you, Obamacare explicitly promised to cover more people, reduce costs, and introduce a subsidy scheme whereby wealthier insureds subsidized poorer ones. I don't believe the third was promised, and I do believe you've ignored the explicit promises made that Obamacare would be deficit-neutral and not change anybody's existing healthcare plan. The sum of those pledges was always incoherent, which is why the law has always been unpopular with a plurality, and why those of us watching the President baldly lie about it for years couldn't understand how it never attached to him personally. It seems as though it belatedly is doing now.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 1, 2013 11:02:39 GMT -5
I am inclined to characterize that belief unfavorably. It isn't, principally because 'we' aren't anything like sufficiently coordinated to make of it anything coherent. Who do you think 'we' are?
Heck, the few individuals in the limitless notional space of this board can't make anything. What on earth makes you think vastly multiplying the scope for incoherence and vastly restricting the practical freedoms of each party improves that potential?
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Post by Deleted on Nov 1, 2013 11:04:11 GMT -5
Those stupid voters, eh?
The only difference between a useful idiot and a useless one is that the useful one agrees with you. It's why the appeal to idiocy is such a short-termist strategy.
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djAdvocate
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Post by djAdvocate on Nov 1, 2013 11:06:52 GMT -5
Those stupid voters, eh? i never actually said that anyone believes that this was free money. what i said is that anyone that does shouldn't really even be commenting about policy, or voting, or doing anything else of a civic nature, probably.The only difference between a useful idiot and a useless one is that the useful one agrees with you. It's why the appeal to idiocy is such a short-termist strategy. no doubt. but again, i am thoroughly unconvinced that anyone actually THOUGHT there was free money. they either knew there wasn't, or they didn't think.
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djAdvocate
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Post by djAdvocate on Nov 1, 2013 11:08:24 GMT -5
I am inclined to characterize that belief unfavorably. It isn't, principally because 'we' aren't anything like sufficiently coordinated to make of it anything coherent. Who do you think 'we' are? citizens of modern democratic republics.Heck, the few individuals in the limitless notional space of this board can't make anything. i make stuff all the time. it is what i do for a living.What on earth makes you think vastly multiplying the scope for incoherence and vastly restricting the practical freedoms of each party improves that potential? not following you. are we back to the social contract argument again?
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djAdvocate
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Post by djAdvocate on Nov 1, 2013 11:10:28 GMT -5
We are talking about how it was sold.. products are not sold on their weaknesses. it is up to us, in a consumer society, to discern them. now, if you are going to argue that good leaders should point them out- maybe you are right. maybe Bush should have pointed out the negative aspects of invading Iraq. maybe you should send me a 1kg gold bar. maybe maybe maybe.
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djAdvocate
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Post by djAdvocate on Nov 1, 2013 11:18:49 GMT -5
Go back and read your own #450, so you can keep track of what you're claiming when you come back to me on this. According to you, Obamacare explicitly promised to cover more people, reduce costs, and introduce a subsidy scheme whereby wealthier insureds subsidized poorer ones. i didn't say that, Mojo. what i said is that it would subsidize those who could not afford insurance. the bill ITSELF specified the mechanism. i also object to the wordd "promised". that implies a guarantee, and i don't think anyone (well, let's just say me, if you prefer) presumed such a strong position.I don't believe the third was promised, and I do believe you've ignored the explicit promises made that Obamacare would be deficit-neutral and not change anybody's existing healthcare plan. i haven't ignored it. i explicitly stated that i never understood the claim. but if you missed that, i will say it here again:
i never understood the claim.
The sum of those pledges was always incoherent, which is why the law has always been unpopular with a plurality, and why those of us watching the President baldly lie about it for years couldn't understand how it never attached to him personally. It seems as though it belatedly is doing now. the law is unpopular with a plurality because half of us that hate it wanted it to go further, and the other half think it went too far. treating these two groups as one coherent whole is just as wrong as anything we are discussing here.
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AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP
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Post by AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP on Nov 1, 2013 11:19:00 GMT -5
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Post by Deleted on Nov 1, 2013 11:19:12 GMT -5
There's no maybe there. It's an absolute responsibility, and Obama's failure is not in the least mitigated by being typical of the class.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 1, 2013 11:23:43 GMT -5
Then you shouldn't have used that word in #450, that being partly why I invited you to re-read yourself before re-parsing yourself.
Given that the bill was deficit-neutral, that the people being added to the rolls were nominally those priced out of the insurance market, and that people were told their existing healthcare plans would be unaffected - where do you see any sort of claim being made that there would be subsidies?
Why, indeed, in a bill that makes more affordable options available through competition on state-run exchanges, are subsidies even implicitly necessary? The second stated promise, whcih we both agree was made, renders the third unnecessary. In fact, had it been the focus of the legislation, it would have secured the first as a consequence. Sadly, it was a lie.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 1, 2013 11:28:10 GMT -5
I don't think you're accurately characterizing either 'half,' neither can you possibly know the makeup and rationale of opposition. My assertion that the bill as presented clearly couldn't be the bill that would actually keep its promises would, in any case, cover both your 'halves.'
People who wanted a public option - Medicaid for all? - wouldn't want the bill to go further, even granted that Medicaid expansion ended up being the de facto driver for increased coverage (it will, I am convinced, reduce access to compensated care for the new Medicaid population). Who would want more of what Obamacare offers? More mandates, more regulations, more overheads, more costs, more complexities, more intrusions?
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AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP
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Post by AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP on Nov 1, 2013 11:29:25 GMT -5
In the Federal Register- that means it is the official position of the federal government, the Obama regime predicted that at LEAST 93 million Americans would not be able to keep their current healthcare plans. www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/10/31/obama-officials-in-2010-93-million-americans-will-be-unable-to-keep-their-health-plans-under-obamacare/There's simply NO WAY Obama and the Democrats would have held on to power in 2012 if the American people knew about this. This is borderline treason by the media. It may be the biggest lie ever told by a sitting President. It was a bald faced, calculated, purposeful lie to the American people, and frankly a lie of this magnitude in order to sell Americans on a government takeover of healthcare on the scale of ObamaCare- ought to be, and is in my mind an impeachable offense. And btw- you may think I'm nuts, but I've always known something would do in the Obama regime. We simply cannot survive as a country if this level of persistent, consistent abuse of the citizenry goes on unchallenged, and unchecked. I don't think Obama will be impeached, but he is politically dead. His presidency is over. He can no longer be trusted to do anything, and so he will not be permitted to do anything. He is the lamest of lame ducks. Obama may well have given the Senate to the Republicans- and not just any Republicans, but the TEA Party wing of the GOP. People now know we were right. I think they're ready to listen, or they soon will be.
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AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP
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Post by AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP on Nov 1, 2013 11:39:02 GMT -5
This really reveals that ObamaCare was fraud in the inducement.
This is NOT a "mistake".
This is NOT "spin".
This was Obama LYING. He lied in a major way, the media can't run cover for him on this- cat's out of the bag. Obama OWNS his "Signature Achievement".
This will destroy the Obama and the Democratic Party- this may be the beginning of a long-overdue implosion.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 1, 2013 11:41:53 GMT -5
I only found that quote about 40-67% of plans on the individual market, which is a small fraction, relatively. I mean, it's still millions of people, but not almost a third of the country.
I'm prepared to believe something on that order will be adversely affected by corporate decisions factoring Obamacare into the mix, but I don't recall seeing anything in the Register to that effect.
This may yet become a Katrina-type thing for Obama, but I think the jury's out. We're going to start getting some good news rolling in the New Year - there are winners as well as losers under the reform. And people really, really, don't want to engage critical faculty when they're assailed by news. It's depressing to appreciate what a mess we're in, and we don't have to depress ourselves.
That's the biggest problem the Tea Party faces: it's the buzzkill caucus. I have some sympathies with Tea Party perspectives, but they have the same idealism/realism problem -"it should be different" morphs effortlessly into "it can be different! Elect Todd Akin!" Tea Partiers make the perfect the enemy of the good; fringe liberals make the ideal the enemy of the real. Obama's disengagement from reality resonates with fringe liberals, and their prejudices serve his ends; but I think it's a marriage of convenience, the sort of principled compromising that Tea Party candidates have a hard time replicating. Ken Cuccinelli should be cakewalking into the Governor's mansion after McDonnell; he's going to squeak in, if anything, if libertarians coalesce behind him, and it's because he can't tone down the fringe hot-button talk.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 1, 2013 11:50:44 GMT -5
* @patiencetried, that's quite enough with the insults. Quite enough. See that yellow thing under your shoe? That's a banana peel. - mmhmm, P&M Moderator
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Post by Deleted on Nov 1, 2013 12:03:04 GMT -5
Too much hope, not enough change. There's a strong anti-pol sentiment in the country. Something like 63% of voters would apparently turf out their incumbent representative. In that pervasive environment of hostile apathy - we're not demanding special elections, we're not marching on the Capitol - I think the impact on a political party is attenuated. I think the pocketbook impact of Obamacare - especially, the impact of the employer mandate on 2014 open enrolment, and the impact of the delayed decimation of Medicare Advantage in 2014 - will hurt at least some Democrats at least somewhat in 2014. Whether that will be enough to really sway the overall picture I'm not yet sure. My feeling is it's probably worth as many as 4 Senate seats and perhaps twice as many House seats in the overall calculus.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 1, 2013 12:06:19 GMT -5
Your Forbes link does indicate a much more substantial disruption. That's going to hurt Deomcrats next year, definitely.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 1, 2013 12:08:26 GMT -5
You would prefer there were no health insurance? A philanthropic world of free medicine and free love?Wouldn't we all. Sadly, in the real world, socialization of risk has to be monetized to harness the profit motive, or enforced by the oblique violence of legal mandate. Or both, as with Obamacare. You just described Canada.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 1, 2013 12:31:27 GMT -5
Full disclosure: I used to live in Saskatchewan.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 1, 2013 12:37:49 GMT -5
Full disclosure: I used to live in Saskatchewan. Oh, my condolences, I was in Saskatoon once, briefly and was honoured to have the Louis Riel Days experience.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 1, 2013 12:54:13 GMT -5
I was in Biggar.
We had this saying - "New York is big, but this is Biggar."
How the long winter nights flew by...
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AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP
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Post by AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP on Nov 1, 2013 14:00:12 GMT -5
Your Forbes link does indicate a much more substantial disruption. That's going to hurt Deomcrats next year, definitely. Well, yeah- since: 1. It's the Obama administration's own forecast. 2. Obama and the Democrats knew this in 2010 and they repeated a calculated, purposeful lie in order to sell a government run health insurance exchange, and foist a massive regulatory regime on ALL Americans and 1/6th of the economy. I'll say it again- it was fraud in the inducement. Obama & the Democrats would NOT- categorically NOT- be in power today if this was widely known after the bill was signed into law in 2010. Lie after lie after lie after lie after lie- The lied. People can pretty much assume at this point that Obama and the Democrats will continue to willfully attempt to deceive the American people concerning their train wreck of ObamaCare. They have lost ALL credibility with respect to anything and everything to do with ObamaCare or healthcare in general. The Democratic Party is politically DEAD on healthcare. Obama's Presidency is effectively over. He can't - and won't be - trusted on anything. The Democratic Party as a whole is going to have a tough 2014. Very tough. Think 2010 tough.
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AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP
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Post by AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP on Nov 1, 2013 15:06:44 GMT -5
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Post by workpublic on Nov 1, 2013 15:12:07 GMT -5
in the heat of the moment, stream of conscientiousness, I included the last line. it was a general statement for all posters. not directed at you. the first part was to answer your question. the "parrot" part was in response to what I've been seeing in posts over the last days used as spin for the partisans trying make " if you like your plan, your doctor, you can keep it period. no one is going to take that away" not mean what it means now that the lie has been exposed.
like "read my lips. no new taxes" and "i did not have sex with that girl"
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Post by EVT1 on Nov 1, 2013 16:49:35 GMT -5
Hmmm- access to doctors and hospitals but maybe not the #1 facility vs. no access to doctors and hospitals at all. Sounds like an improvement. Yeah- that sounds like denials and rationing
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djAdvocate
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Post by djAdvocate on Nov 1, 2013 18:19:22 GMT -5
in the heat of the moment, stream of conscientiousness, I included the last line. it was a general statement for all posters. not directed at you. the first part was to answer your question. the "parrot" part was in response to what I've been seeing in posts over the last days used as spin for the partisans trying make " if you like your plan, your doctor, you can keep it period. no one is going to take that away" not mean what it means now that the lie has been exposed. like "read my lips. no new taxes" and "i did not have sex with that girl" i try not to make it a habit of defending Obama. unfortunately, since so much content on this board surrounds factual inaccuracies about him and his presidency, it makes it seem otherwise. i look forward to having another president in office from my own party that i can "defend".
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djAdvocate
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Post by djAdvocate on Nov 1, 2013 18:21:36 GMT -5
There's no maybe there. It's an absolute responsibility, and Obama's failure is not in the least mitigated by being typical of the class. of course. i was using "maybe" in the rhetorical sense. but the flip side to that is that i can't remember the last good leader we have had.
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Post by djAdvocate on Nov 1, 2013 18:22:33 GMT -5
Then you shouldn't have used that word in #450, that being partly why I invited you to re-read yourself before re-parsing yourself. i was using "promised" in the sense of "showing promise", not in the sense of "i will stake my blood against it". second definition, here: www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/promisesorry for the misunderstanding.
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