Things we'd be talking about if the forum wasn't deadFollow

He claims to know so much, but then fails to understand why they vote Democratic. He says that he's not asking to be convinced, but at the same, the simple truth isn't good enough for him.

Yorkville was the town on the way to Sandwich, were my dad grew up and my grandparents had a bank account. So were are you working, Joph?

Don't give enough shits to try and look them back up but I chuckled last night when the Washington Post's story started with "Rand Paul blocks progress on Patriot Act bill, allowing several provisions to expire" and the Fox News story was "Senate fails to reach agreement on Patriot Act" with the first mention of Rand Paul being in the 5th paragraph.

And there's nothing stopping the other 49 states all deciding to implement their own system that's just like the one in Mass. See how that works?

Poorly. Hence the ACA

Do you believe that would be better or worse than pretending the subject never happened?

Probably do pretty well until the Mooninites invade again.

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By what definition? It worked very well as a means of allowing each state to address specific health care needs. The process was fine. Better than the one implemented by the ACA. Whether the result is something you liked is a totally different question.




Which, at the risk of repeating myself, only has the virtue of being a more centralized federal control of health care. Which, if that's your goal, is great. But the idea that one group of politicians running a federal program aren't going to do just as "poorly" as 50 different groups of politicians at the state level is naive as hell. Again, the key difference is that when a state does something wrong, there are 49 other states that serve as examples of other ways of doing that thing. When it's just the one set of politicians at the federal level, every single mistake (and there will be tons of them) will be much harder to fix, and much harder to fix well.

It's not about the result, but the process of obtaining the result. The ACA is a huge step backwards in this regard. It may have a small number of provisions that many people like. But, as I said already, those provisions could have been implemented at the state level. The primary change the ACA brings is to make it more difficult to make changes in the future. This is why Obama has had to do a ton of (quite possibly illegal) executive orders just to prevent all the problems in the ACA from wreaking havoc on our health care system and economy. Right now, the entire thing is basically being propped up by actions not actually part of the original law at all. And fixing it is going to be very difficult.

The ACA is a CF from start to finish. It's frankly only some serious partisan blinder wearing that prevents so many from seeing it. It's the signature accomplishment of the Obama administration, so those who want to view his administration in a positive way have a hard time seeing, much less admitting the massive flaws in that law.

Bring me the Red Sox and we'll rename it whatever the hell they want.

No. He's saying let's see a plan actually spelled out concisely and presented as a piece of legislation that could be voted on.


And you are right; the ACA is a bit of a CF. Single payer is much better. Too bad soulless, selfish, arrogant jerks such as yourself cant part with 1% of your income to help other human beings and have a vastly more efficient health care system, eh?

Well, he's actually demanding a piece of legislation that's already been voted on and is sitting on the Presidents desk awaiting signature or veto. But even if he were saying what you're saying, that's still a ridiculously high bar to set for "having a plan". Again, let me remind you that this claim isn't just in the context of the GOP passing legislation today, but has been leveled at the GOP since 2009. Do I really need to go back and quote all the times folks on this very forum made the "GOP doesn't have an alternative plan" going back the last 6 years?

This is not about whether a party is able to put together legislation. This is about ideas. And I'm saying that the claim that the GOP doesn't have ideas is flat out wrong.




The ACA is a CF precisely so that you (and others like you) will demand single payer. I'd actually argue that a host of changes to our health care system by the Democrats going back several decades were done for this reason. Most of the things that were broken about out health care system prior to passage of the ACA were put in place by the Dems, using precisely the same top down federal approach. That's what was wrong with the system in the first place. Trying to fix it with yet more of the same bad idea is obviously just going to make things worse. Some of us have seen the pattern all along.



Tell you what. We move to a flat tax rate for everyone, and then get back to me on single payer health care. One of us is trying to get something for nothing, and it ain't me. Call me soulless and arrogant if you want, but I'm not the one being selfish here.

I'd also argue that an "efficient health care system" isn't necessarily the criteria I'd look for. I'd want a quality health care system. Efficient systems do things like cut off treatment if they cost more than they think it's worth paying (yes, "death panels" if you want to call them that). You're ok with a government run system as long as it benefits you to have one. But the true test of whether a system "works" is when you'll support it when it doesn't benefit you. When you actually think "this is a reasonable cost for what we get". And I've looked at single payer systems around the world. While they look great from a distance, once you start looking a little closer, you start seeing problems. Big problems.

That's not to say that privately funded health insurance systems are perfect. Not at all. My point is that there is no "perfect" solution, and we should stop pretending that there is. The difference is that I support an imperfect system that is fair to all involved. Your supporting a system that is inherently unfair, as long as it's more fair to you than other people (or as long as you think that is the case). The problem (which I suppose ties back to my issue with federal versus state systems), is that once inside such a system you lose the ability to see the flaws. They seem normal because you don't see a better system on the other side of a state line, or a better program being offered by another insurance company or health care plan. They're all the same because the government has mandated them to all be the same. Thus, no competition and nothing for you, the consumer, to compare it to.


I just find it strange that wanting private people to be in control of their own lives is "soulless", but having some monolithic government bureaucracy running everything from some far off ivory tower is just peachy. I'm not even sure how one allows themselves to be bought into that position.

Yes, it is; it's about a viable, votable alternative the the current legislation you GOP people hate so much.