The problem is forcing people to get insurance is socialism
What is socialism? What do you mean by socialism? Do you mean the definition of socialism? Does forcing people to get socialism fit the definition of socialism? What's the definition of the definition of socialism? Okay, got silly with the last one, but that's the problem with saying socialism, what the heck do you mean by socialism. I blame it on the Republicans for amorphousizing it to nothingness. To me, it's politically become the go-to term for 'something that I don't like', almost equivalent to 'heretic', except without the religion and shouting.
Come on smjjames, work with my muh brother. I'm saying that as a shorthand for "It's something that will be accused of socialist because it is a government action which forces people into taking certain economic decisions (as opposed to
coerces or
incentivizes, which is perfectly ok, which is an illustration of a doublestandard regarding some abstract belief that you still have the freedom to make a decision, even if you cannot actually afford it in practice; in essence, you still have freedom even if one of those decisions is not realistic, which is a major assumption underlying american culture and US society and government), which is a common definition of socialism in the United States, and is thus politically unpalatable due to decades of cold war against an ideological foe associated with socialism which led to endless tarring of it and anything associated with it. Therefore, the label 'socialist' and 'socialism', regardless of its actual meaning (which is, in fact,
a completely irrelevant question to begin with), will be used to endlessly tar the program with decades of association with the Soviet Union and anti-americanism, which will lead to very public attempts to avoid or subvert the policy even if it leads to going to prison, because then those people will be 'standing up to an oppressive system' and all sorts of nonsense that will be very bad politics indeed. Therefore, coercion/incentivization is used instead, because that avoids, at a minimum, people not following the system because it's
'unpatriotic' and instead creating an illusion that there is a freedom to make an economic decision to buy insurance or not (which as I said before is very common recurring bit in the US); this is not actually the case, since the cost of not making the
correct decision can be made arbitrarily high, but as long as the
illusion of freedom of choice exists, people will accept it, even if the only people who could actually use it are the ultrarich. By doing so, you actually prevent opposition in the first place; opposition still exists under the current plan, mind, but it's far less than it would be."
You see why I didn't want to write all that out? For fucks sake man, just
assume. My hand is sore now, are you happy?
Seriously though, you have to somehow incentivize the healthy people to get into the pool and stay to keep prices down for everybody, otherwise you'd end up with a death spiral. That's why I asked on the EU thread if anybody knew how it worked in other countries or how they did it elsewhere, but from what LW said, it sounds like the US is the only one actually trying to tackle that particular problem right now, or HAS tackled it for that matter.
That sounds remarkably like what I just said! Amazing. The fact is that there
is a country with a model that would help. A quote from Politico:
President Donald Trump has promised that his replacement for Obamacare will “increase access, lower costs and provide better health care,” an ambitious standard for a policy revolution in a modern industrialized nation. But in recent years, there is one country that managed to pass a reform achieving all three of those goals.
The problem for Trump and the Republican Party is that the country is the United States, and the reform was called “Obamacare.” It has well-documented flaws, but it has helped expand coverage to 20 million uninsured Americans, reduce the growth of U.S. medical costs to historic lows and start to shift the focus of the health system toward results—while also reining in the federal deficit and stabilizing Medicare’s finances.
This new baseline helps explain why the long-awaited House Republican bill to repeal and replace Obamacare is getting such brutal reviews—and why GOP leaders released it before the Congressional Budget Office could calculate how much it would cost or how many Americans it would cover. Critics on the right are trashing it as “Obamacare Lite,” while critics on the left are warning that it will throw millions of families off their insurance, jack up premiums and deductibles and finally create the insurance “death spirals” that Republicans have warned about under Obamacare. And really, both sides have a point.
That’s because health care is about choices, and Republicans who want to re-reform the system face a slew of uncomfortable policy and political trade-offs. Their repeal bill tries to duck many of those trade-offs, by preserving Obamacare’s most popular elements while ditching more controversial reforms that helped hold it together—and by punting on uncomfortable questions like how to pay for it all. There are several serious ideas in the Republican bill that could help improve Obamacare, but the overall result is an unworkable hodgepodge that might satisfy some of the GOP base’s demand for some kind of repeal bill—although judging by the initial conservative reaction, even that looks iffy—but would not achieve Trump’s stated goals.
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Topic: AmeriPol thread (Read 4459548 times)