Daniel Henninger of the WSJ believes that, if passed, Obamacare will do just that:
This thing called “ObamaCare” carries on its back all the justifications, hopes and dreams of the entitlement state. The chance is at hand to let its political underpinnings collapse, perhaps permanently.
If ObamaCare fails, or seriously falters, the entitlement state will suffer a historic loss of credibility with the American people. It will finally be vulnerable to challenge and fundamental change. But no mere congressional vote can achieve that. Only the American people can kill ObamaCare.
Henninger goes on to explain how entitlement programs, once established, perpetuate themselves even if they aren’t working all that well. He gives examples not only in this country but from others.
So why does he go on to write that it now seems likely that the public will reject Obamacare even after it’s implemented? In other words, what would be so different about Obamacare?
Henninger doesn’t quite say. He cites the fact that dislike of Obamacare has been growing rather than shrinking, and he adds that indications are that Obamacare will be “a disaster.” I assume that’s why he thinks Obamacare will be different—it will be a disaster on a larger scale, and people will make the connection and reject it.
I wish he were right, but I think he’s wrong. His prediction rests on the assumption that (a) it will be a big enough disaster that most people will turn on it; and (b) most people will connect the “disastrous” results with the bill itself. But if history is any guide (and I believe it is), it ain’t necessarily so. Did people reject the New Deal because it didn’t end the depression and in some years actually seemed to worsen it? Did people reject President Obama for a second term even though the economy was doing so poorly? Has Greece rejected the welfare state?
In fact, even if Obamacare is a disaster for a lot of people, they may go in the other direction and double-down on big government control: they may be just as likely to say that the problem with Obamacare was that it didn’t go far enough, and reject it in favor of single payer.
Of course, Henninger doesn’t think that’s likely. But it’s always dangerous to let a bad policy go forward on the assumption that there will be a backlash in the direction you’re hoping for. Best to nip it in the bud. If that doesn’t work, best to fight it at all stages, and to come up with a good alternative.
[Neo-neocon is a writer with degrees in law and family therapy, who blogs at neo-neocon.]
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Comments
There’s a fairly large segment of our population that wants a free ride predicated on the assumption that as human beings, they have a right to have their needs and wants met with zero effort on their part. Short of an extinction level natural disaster, I don’t know how we get rid of those people. They love the idea of obamacare, they know they’re not going to be paying for it and they can be reliably expected to vote for any progressive politician who vows to keep and expand the gimme state.
In other words, if we don’t kill this now, it’s going to be with us until this country is completely destroyed.
That’s the way I see it. All the progressives want this thing and will promise to fix all the warts to appease the takers and retain their control. The people will have to kill this thing. Now if the people do kill Obamacare then they will discover that killing bad programs is exhilarating and uplifting and the squealing of the takers sounding like babies who just had a Binky jerked out of their mouth is almost musical. The people will probably then kill off a bunch more of these supposed entitlements just for sport.
This seems like dreaming, but I like it.
From the editorial:
Bull! When (not “if”) Obamacare fails, the same LOFOs who elected Obama twice will claim “The free market has failed” and DEMAND the government totally take over health care. The GOPe will be fine with that, of course.
I’m not in the camp that continually lectures us that there’s nothing we can do to prevent this calamity so we should just shut up, smile, and let the Country collapse…Oh, and be sure to vote Republican.
Henninger was on the right track when he mentioned Bismark, but came to the conclusion that the results in America will somehow turn out differently than they did in Germany.
I always figured Obamacare’s failure was planned. Get people so fed up with it that they’ll want (or at least think they want) the feds to take over healthcare directly.
For the first time in decades the Dems had an iron fist on Congress and a Dem President. So, they pass a law written by lobbyists that they never bothered to read.
Gosh – who could have predicted there might be problems?
About the time that Obamacare passed I viewed a video of Pelosi talking about how eventually we the people will “beg” for government to take over healthcare. I’m certain she used the word “beg” because it was so shocking and appalling for me to hear her arrogantly talk as if we the people are servants to our beneficent government master that I cemented it in my memory. I’ve spent hours trying to find that video again but have had no luck.
Sorry to say this, but it may be too late. There may already be a sufficient number of people in this country who will vote for the free lunch. It will not work, but they aren’t intelligent enough to see it.
Dan: Your Lips to GOD’S Ears.
It’s just bad policy. A law that was initially over 2000+ pages, has now grown to over 20,000+ pages of regulations.
How can anyone with a MODICUM of sense, believe that installing a bureaucracy that size in health care would lower costs?
It may be that the American experiment fails, but ultimately we have only ourselves to blame if we let this horrendous debacle of unconstitutional legalism be the first step.
John Roberts: What a small, small, man.
small, small, small man.
he’s a tax not a man….
In a rational environment, Obamacare, AKA DMV Medicine, would collapse of its own putrid weight. Government programs, however, tend not to exist in a rational world. The government essentially has unlimited sums of money it can throw at disasters such as Ocare, and keep them stumbling along, creating vested interest groups that thrive on those funds, and relying on the compliant media and academia to Mau-Mau critics into silence.
We have a Fed to print money.
Henningers’s “collapsing of its own accord.” Sadly not so much working with a limited set of examples —
— US debt
— foreign “policy”
— public “education”
— HUD edicts
— energy regulations
— Justice Dept overreach
etc.
On the plus side, Taranto (I think) pointed out the other day that…
1. getting the young to subscribe was essential
2. it will cost them in some cases the most
3. it will benefit them least
Me? I am in open defiance. I will not comply with any part of this. They can try to make me, I suppose. I will impose all costs I can.
Think Prohibition. Any time a civil disobedience movement is sufficiently supported, it is unstoppable.
There really is no downside to non compliance from a punishment standpoint. Yes, they can send you a zillion notices of fines for disobeying but there’s zero enforcement as long as you plan your taxes correctly. If the government isn’t giving you a “refund”, there’s no money for them to seize.
Maybe it’s a sneaky way of funding the post office by sending out all those notices! /sarc
Thought that the IRS was to have direct access to your bank accounts to facilitate Obamacare? Watched a rerun of Breaking Bad tonight. Two planes collided mid-air. Would be grand if Fate acted on our glorious so-called leaders in the same fashion. Choom will never be a martyr in my eyes. Know too many people who feel great electing a “black POTUS”. Ugh. And how vote for McCain because of his POW status?
Same here. I refuse to comply. I’ve made arrangements.
surWith regard to FDR and his “New Deal,” the Depression was a terrible period, worse than this “Recession,” and information was much less available and promulgated. I presume, since I wasn’t alive then but was born just after WWII, that people did not experience much loss as the result of the New Deal.
Obamacare will be different. Doctors are planning on retiring en masse. Other doctors are establishing “boutique” practices in which they will not accept any insurance. Hospitals will go out of business.
When medical care becomes scarce or even unavailable to those folks bringing in their Obamacare insurance cards, they will sit up and take notice.
The task is to educate those people who expect to enjoy the Obamacare entitlement that the future is not what they want. This should happen NOW before the disaster hits.
As a retired physician, I fear that the future of medicine is so bleak that the profession will no longer attract bright and motivated students. I have a daughter who is completing a residency in anesthesia at an extremely prominent university. She chose anesthesia, in part, because the provision of anesthesia cannot be “offshored.” But she didn’t anticipate “Obamacare.”
Anesthesia professionals can be put on salaries and 40 hour work weeks. They will then join unions. We can anticipate the resulting scenario. The same holds true for physicians in many different specialties. Do we really want “barefoot doctors”?
Yes, don’t neglect the unionization of physicians. Logical next step.
“Anesthesia professionals can be put on salaries and 40 hour work weeks. They will then join unions. We can anticipate the resulting scenario. The same holds true for physicians in many different specialties. Do we really want “barefoot doctors”?”
It may very well be the case, that doctors may have to unionize, and self-insure in order to provide union healthcare to themselves if that is the case.
Otherwise, a hospital might limit them to 29 hours per week, in order to avoid paying Obamacare penalties.
The height of irony, eh?
Under Obama, she wasted her money getting a proper medical degree. She should have just become a nurse:
“A new draft VHA Nursing Handbook would eradicate all existing VHA policies concerning physician supervision, and would designate all advanced practice registered nurses (APRNs), including nurse anesthetists, as licensed independent practitioners (LIPs). This means that they would be able to practice on their own without any requirement for physician oversight or support. ”
Of course, when the people who made these rules need surgery, who do you think they’re going to get to do their anesthesia: a nurse or a proper anesthesiologist? Darned right. It’s just the commoners who will have to make do with a nurse from here on in.
When my wife was teaching, I was under her school insurance. When she retired, I was under the IL TRS plan for $800/mo and that was the HMO type … the PPO was $1000/mo. That’s too much on fixed pensions, so I shopped for a high-deductible plan with the intent of paying out of pocket for office calls, routine stuff. I applied for several and was turned down because I had my gall-bladder out the year before. A “pre-existing” condition they said – which would be funny if it weren’t so damn ignorant of them … what am I gonna do? Have it removed again? 😀
Turns out IL has an insurance program called “CHIP” for about half what I was paying, a high-deductible plan, which to qualify I needed only show I was turned down by other insurers and was ineligible for employer / retiree insurance.
About 6 months ago, IL CHIP began sending out notifications that the plan will be terminated the end of this year, and I’ll have to choose between the available ACA compliant plans during ‘open enrollment’ commencing Oct. 1.
Still on vacation now and won’t see the info packets until I get home. If the rates are more than I’m paying, I’ll go without and pay the penalty. About that, I’m reminded of a story I heard when I worked at a certain Seattle-based aerospace company.
Management sent an employee to Minot, ND to work on a missile wing, in winter. The employee, a native of temperate Seattle was not prepared for frigid ND and bought a down filled parka among other severe weather clothes. Upon return to Seattle, he itemized the parka which was denied by accounting. He argued that it was the work assignment that necessitated the clothing, to no avail. Determined to recoup his costs for clothing, he simply padded out his non-itemized entries (food/gratuities) on a subsequent expense report and affixed a post-it note to his expense report which read: “there’s a down-filled parka buried in this ER – try to find it” …
I suspect the OCare penalty/tax will be met with similar resistance by those forced to pay it …
He’s dreaming if he thinks this will cause the entitlement state to collapse on itself. I believe the opposite will happen; with this massive new welfare program the 47% will become the 51% and then it’s rapidly downhill from there.
Obamacare can drag on no matter how bad it is. No matter what happens, on it will stumble while A National Conversation is undertaken. On it will stumble as congressional committees are established to study the matter and publish their report at some easily postponed date. On it will stumble as congress argues over fixes and amendments. As long as one person benefits from it, the media will have their windowfront mannikin for the sales job. On and on. It will bleed money in gushers as it stumbles and careens. Good thing we can’t just borrow more money when we need it, huh? Obamacare will go bankrupt! Uh, no.
Obamacare will survive until we see a coalition between Americans who want it killed, a GOP House & Senate, and GOP president willing to do what it takes.
I watched Dick Durbin’s exchange with Ted Cruz. All I can say is, until conservatives find a better response to the question: have you stopped beating your wife? have you stopped stealing candy from babies? have you stopped denying medical care to the poor? They will lose. And lose big. It is a matter of rhetoric.
Ted did treat Durbin’s attempt to paint him as a big meanie as a legitimate line of questioning. The only way to stop the democrats is to shut them down Newt-style.
“The only way to stop the democrats is to shut them down Newt-style.”
The soggy mayonnaise and cucumber sandwich on white Republican crowd will absolutely never shutdown the Democrats Newt-style, they are perfectly fine with Obamacare and can not understand why the grassroots don’t like it.
Oh, yes.
“The peasants are simply so ungrateful.”
And, it what century will this “dream” ticket occur?
Most politicians are realists. First, you show them da’ money.
Today, I heard an orchestra leader lament. Did you know only about 3% of our population has heard Beethoven’s 9th symphony?
How is it possible that a large chunk of American citizens are unaware of the beauty in classical music?
You think people are even paying attention to what nominally passes for headlines these days?
We’re not going to collapse over this, because most people are healthy. And, those who get sick are treated.
Perhaps, you’ve never seen the emergency rooms at big NYC hospitals. I have. (And, back in the 1970’s … a lot of people came into Kings County Hospital’s emergency room because at Noon. Lunch was served.
Were waits long?
Sometimes, a patient died waiting.
It wasn’t always noticed.
If Obamacare causes enough pain in this country the populace needs to have Ted Cruz in their ears championing it’s defeat before the 2014 election
I’m of the opinion something in the middle will happen. Without the Republican’s leading a push to defund or repeal, the law will remain on the books indefinitely. However, it will become one of the biggest, if not THE biggest, drain on public revenues.
The law will collapse when monies start to run out. Then people will become desperate, maybe violent, when the treatments they need are obtainable. Obstacles to life-saving treatments are going to be the final straw.
The money will never run out because
a. the people who receive government benefits are convinced that the rich can always be taxed a little more, and in fact
b. the Fed prints money, which taxes us all.
“b. the Fed prints money, which taxes us all.”
Well, not all the time. At lunchtime they go out and borrow money.
an important distinction … the (private) federal reserve “prints” money, and has thus controlled interest rates for decades. But someone used to have to borrow the fiat money that was printed.
The new improved trick is the fed “buys” the money they print (with some $4 trillion in promises so far), because there are not enough willing buyers/lenders in the market. Bernanke at first lied and said he would not and was not doing “quantitative easing”.
Finally they had to admit they were, and despite declarations of “tapering”, they could not taper. Lovey Dovey Yellin will probably be next as fed chair, and printing may well INCREASE until the rich start dumping bonds, with a resultant calamity. Some think the fed has already lost control, and we are close to the turning point. The fed is trapped.
All this is important because the Obamaconomy is propped up with our third bubble of this funny money. Despite bogus hedonistic measures of inflation, energy and health care and even food costs are “skyrocketing”, which seems to be the left’s plan, to end the world as we know it.
The 2000 stock market crash, the 2008 real estate crash, now will the next crash be 2014, or 2016? Is it Democrat suicide, or is it the plan? Obama likes change via breaking things. “Your electricity rates will necessarily skyrocket”. He wants “single payer”, ushered in by destruction of private insurance plans. Even Geithner spoke openly about a global currency.
Obamacare will be a fiasco, but what will emerge when Democrats try to “never let the crisis go to waste”? The next bursting bubble will be the one the others have led up to, and as I see it, Obamacare will be swept away with it. But in what direction is unclear. Will it be so bad people scream for big government intervention? That seems likely, but big gov will be broke(n).
The trick, it would seem, is to be in power when Obamacare crashes, so as to control the fix.
Yes, the low info Obama supporters will force the nation to go down in flames, complaining that they are not getting more benefits and blaming the conservatives for trying to keep the nation alive.
“Did people reject President Obama for a second term even though the economy was doing so poorly?”
I’ll be haunted by this question for the rest of my life.
They did reelect Obama but they did so because…
Businesses are like big boats — they need lots of time to change direction. To businesses it looked like Obama was going to lose and the business environment was going to improve, so they started acting like it was going to happen.
Many of the people felt the economy was easing and Obamanomics was maybe not as bad as they thought. So the voted for Obama instead.
The period after the election, the stock market crashed big time when businesses realised their mistake.
The voted for Obama because they felt he cared about them and Romney didn’t. Rom Jim Geraghty at NRO had an excellent take on this in his daily Morning Jolt e-mail. For Democrats caring is a transaction- vote for us and we will give you lots of free stuff. That’s why Obama can turn out his voters in elections but not so much for many of the other efforts Organizing for America has attempted. Republicans have a harder sell with such voters because they care the way good parents care about their children by wanting to help them become independent adults.
I remember as a child when the Repubs campaigned on eliminating the Dept of Ed. Gee, it’s still around. There’s never any serious effort to reduce the size of the Leviathan. The last President to enact impressive change was Reagan.
I want Obamacare repealed. Not interested in band aid approaches and cute half-measures. If the Dems can ruthlessly shove it down our throats by passing it using tricky, underhanded methods, the GOP could return the favor in killing it. But they don’t want to.
There should be plenty of strategies to get rid of Obamacare. And no ruthless process should be off the table, not even shutting down the government or passing one bill at a time.
Yes, the commenters are correct in agreeing that Mr H is having a pipe dream.
In addition to all the other excellent arguments give above, remember that OCare first affects the poor and the young. If you are middle-aged, if you have a good job, your employer will continue to offer health insurance at least for a while.
So the weakest members of society will get hit with this, and they will not be able to effectively protest.
I praise Cruz for making a monster effort to crush OCare but I agree with Henniger. The only force that could turn the entitlement group would be fear – real fear. At this point in time the intelligent voices can only sound worrisome and full of projection. And for people of little experience or sophistication the sound of the word ‘ObamaCare’ continually rings of affection and help. Only when the realities of disappointment and pain, when this horrible concoction of falsehood will the word change to ‘ObamaCan’t’. Then fear will lead the way.
Doctors have been dealing with insurance companies for years and years. They usually have to hire extra staff just to handle the paperwork. Then, for the cherry on top, you can add on what it costs individual doctors who need to buy malpractice insurance.
When the GOP’s stance leads to grabbing voters right and left, THEN the current makeup of parties will begin to worry.
Meanwhile, I’ve seen cake batters that look very ugly. But you stick it in the oven. And, not only does it make the house smell nice … You take the “ugly” out of the oven … And, it tastes delicious.
I’m not so sure that the congress critters are coming out ahead on this fight. Most people think the fight’s fixed, anyway. (Like wrestling matches.)
Another part of this are the Death Panels and telling physicians how to practice. The only way to make ObanaCare work at all is to greatly limit the health care provided. The alternative is massive federal deficit spending, and ultimately structural inflation.
As has been pointed out before, it was designed on the assumption that humans would do what was right, and not in their best interests. In other words, it ignored basic human nature. (Which is why socialist policies inevitably fail). The young adults, many of whom are voluntarily uninsured already were essentially expected to all enroll and pay much more than their health care costs. They helped put Obama in office and gave the Dems the majority they needed, but have shown no interest in getting real jobs and settling down – esp the demographic with the lowest health care costs, young adult males.
Why do I think that they will try to tell physicians how to practice? Because the technology is there to statistically determine optimal practice patterns (and easily identify those who don’t meet them). Optimal, of course means lowest overall cost for treating a specific illness or injury.
Obamacare will eventually have to include a N.I.C.E. (what an Orwellian acronym) board of some sort.
Why do I think that they will try to tell physicians how to practice? Because the technology is there to statistically determine optimal practice patterns (and easily identify those who don’t meet them). Optimal, of course means lowest overall cost for treating a specific illness or injury.
Medicare already does this for of cost reduction (rationing by any other word) for anyone over 65. The idea of the ACA is to delimit everyone, not just seniors. Enjoy.
PS: I’m 70 now and can cite examples if necessary.
“…In fact, even if Obamacare is a disaster for a lot of people, they may go in the other direction and double-down on big government control: they may be just as likely to say that the problem with Obamacare was that it didn’t go far enough, and reject it in favor of single payer…”
Yeah, that pretty much nails it. I would predict that that’s exactly the way it’s going to go if we let up on the protest now.
The Good Guyz (just who the heck are they anyway? Surely not the Republican Party. Not really the Libertarians. Maybe we could call them the Cruzers?) need to 1.) make sure that they ABSOLUTELY know the facts about PPACA (the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act [I can only type Obama’s name just so many times in one day, and today, I’ve have my fill]) and what it does; 2.) make absolutely sure that everything they say about what PPACA means for the future in terms of its effects on the American health care system and the American economy is accurate and supportable; and, 3.) make sure they don’t do anything STUPID that let’s Obama and his merry band of slugs hang a derogatory tag on them. Then they can, and must, 4.) go out and flog the beast without mercy. If and when it DOES collapse, then they can stand back and laugh. And continue their fire.
It would help to have a viable alternative, but that’s a topic for another day…
Oh, yeah… I read somewhere on the InterToobs today that Obama wants his legacy to be that of an even-tempered and cool president. He’s been awful cranky lately. Anything anyone can do to push his buttons might be quite helpful. Just sayin’ it’s always helpful to keep in mind the gaps in the enemy’s armor. 🙂
As far as the math goes, in 2014, Mitch McConnell has to see five democratic seats convert to a GOP candidate.
I’m not betting on outcomes in 2014. But I don’t think Mitch McConnell should be going into Harry Reid’s office just yet, to measure the drapes.
And Mitch McConnell has guaranteed that the Republican base is so furious at the Institutional Republicans that there is absolutely no chance that he will get those 5 seats, and probably will lose seats.
Subotai Bahadur
It is possible that Obamacare will collapse of its own accord. The risk is that it will take a significant portion of our economy down with it.
Combating single payer is easy. Several nations in Europe have transitioned to multiple payer from single payer. NHS as a single payer system is facing widespread corruption. Point out the flaws of single payer systems in comparison to other options.
Just a suggestion, but there is a huge amount of discretionary authority attached to the “Secretary shall determine” provisions of the law. These provisions are open-ended, and it is possible that Republicans could use these provisions to alter the trajectory of the law. Is this an option that has been considered?
Won’t die. Demss (with their willing accomplices the Republicans) will continue to throw more and more money at this hydra.
Henninger is most certainly right. This isn’t Social Security or Medicare where there are immediate benefits and the problems will crop up half a century down the road. People will be seeing large net increases in costs for fewer benefits. Almost no one will experience a net benefit – only those with costly existing conditions who were uninsurable and confined to Medicaid and can now buy other coverage will come out ahead, and they only until the effects on the system hurt overall care.
Is there a danger people will hate it and then double down on government control and trust the people who gave them O-Care to improve it?
Face it: if they do, we are done and there was never a chance of winning anyway.
No one is addressing the root problem of the Healthcare debate in this country yet.
Healthcare IS NOT A RIGHT! It is a service, provided by doctors, or a lifestyle choice of the individual which actively pursues a healthy, preventative care lifestyle.
I tend to argue this ad absurdum (Slippery slope), since where would you obtain healthcare, if hypothetically, there were no doctors or nurses to provide it?
You cannot demand to be healthy. You require Knowledge to keep yourself healthy. Knowledge and a bit of divine providence to avoid accidental physical injury.
The problem with the healthcare debate today is that it assumes people have a right to healthcare.
What you get is a right to long lines, and sloppy healthcare from substandard service providers, with a big dose of bureaucracy to gum up the works.
Can anyone tell me that is an improvement over our previous system?
The only big government program I can remember that got canceled was CETA– Comprehensive Employment and Training Act. That was the only major program that Ronald Reagan was able to get rid of. He wanted to abolish the Department of Energy and the Department of Education, but the Congressional Republicans wouldn’t cooperate. Reagan was only able to shrink the rate of increase of federal spending– for those of you who remember calculus, the second derivative became negative. In other words, even Reagan was unable to reverse the expansion of the administrative state.
If Obamacare somehow fails, it won’t matter at all. Obama will keep saying it works, and the media will back him up. There is no reality other than political reality. Even the laws of arithmetic don’t matter. As in the novel 1984, 2+2=5 if the government mandates that.
Smart, energetic, ambitious young people should emigrate. The U.S., like all other empires, will keep declining. We are not immune to whatever forces bring this about. And they all decline in the same way– see “The Fate of Empires” by Sir John Glubb (it’s free on the Internet).
You will know it’s all over if Congress passes an amnesty act. The U.S. will then get flooded with needy, low skilled, low-IQ uneducated foreigners from the Third
World who will demand and get expensive benefits. At that point, get out while you can.
Another irony. If Reagan had bypassed congress the way Obama has, Reagan would have been labeled a “Dictator” by the left.
Today, they call it “Bypassing obstructionists”.
Their healthcare health costs will follow them anywhere. I think it is a global thing – if one gets sick injured hospitalised it costs.
The difference within the US is that those ‘outside’ top insurance programmes will be expecting gold standards also.
Elsewhere people have less expectations . Some even acknowledge the forbidden . ( death).
It is just not The ACA which might collapse . Medicine & medical expectations of people ( particularly Americans) are through any roof.
For example Jim at Gateway loved to highlight any eruption in ‘socialised ‘ medicine especially the NHS. Many of jim’s readers / posters & those on other conservative sites have an immediate emotional take even praying for God to intervene.
In several cases opined on millions of $$$$$ have been & will be necessary to stave off death for some cases. A baby born without kidneys – no problem . Keep her in. Hospital for 18 months on dialysis until she can get a kidney transplant. A CFCs late stage girl – no problem keep transplanting hearts . ( it is estimated she will need 3-4 per decade.
Somebody will have to pay – either public monies or insurance companies ( also other people’s money mostly ) .
There will always be problems . How on earth did Jim get into the state he is in ? Presumably he had top private surgeons & hospital & monitoring – yet an infection got into the joint & multiplied & attacked his heart? Did they not do blood tests? There is a. Simple test for raised levels even if they do not know why. It should have been on the radar. What sort of hospital has that infection on its instruments ? Geez that is not GB NHS but 3rd world.
The problem is super doper first world expectations of gifting a new body part combined with real world bacteria & $$$$.
Maybe the fairy tale is ending & the costs of increased expectations have arrived . Everything is finite.
kind of screwed on it, I’m already covered by the VA but I have been refusing to utilize that. Now I may have to and, by default, become obamacare compliant.
If you go with the VA, I hope you’re happy to settle for getting your medical care through nurses rather than doctors. Depending on your rank and how well connected you are politically, I guess.
rank not an issue, service connected disability (permanent injures, so am DAV) but looks like that affects everyone.
great, both knees coming close to replacement time.
sigh.
neo-neocon: Did people reject the New Deal because it didn’t end the depression
Most people (and most scholars agree) saw the New Deal as a positive development, providing sustenance when the economy collapsed, and boosting growth. Real GDP grew an average of 7% per year from 1933-1937.
neo-neocon: and in some years actually seemed to worsen it?
You’re probably referring to the recession of 1937-38. That occurred when the Roosevelt Administration mistakenly cut back on the New Deal in an attempt to rein in deficits.
neo-neocon: Did people reject President Obama for a second term even though the economy was doing so poorly?
There are two reasons: Bush left the economy in shambles, so most people blamed him for the problems faced by the Obama Administration; and most Americans thought Obama’s policies were more likely to lead to a continued economic recovery compared to the other guy.
neo-neocon: But it’s always dangerous to let a bad policy go forward on the assumption that there will be a backlash in the direction you’re hoping for.
Agreed. However, threatening to not raise the debt ceiling is very dangerous, and unfair to America’s creditors.
neo-neocon: come up with a good alternative.
Well, yeah. But the Republicans had many opportunities to propose legislation, but didn’t.
I’m not sure “most” scholars believe what you assert they believe about FDR’s policies. Far left statists/socialists like Paul Krugman, Joe Stiglitz, and Robert Reich likely do agree that FDR’s interventionist meddling was a positive.
Free marketeer economists who believe strongly in economic liberty like Thomas Sowell, John Taylor, and the late Milton Friedman certainly do not. Nor does Robert E. Lucas, the 1995 Nobel Laureate of economics who praised the study linked below which finds FDR’s policies prolonged the Depression by 7 years.
The authors of the study, one of whom was a vice chair of economics at UCLA at the time, spent four years analyzing the data before drawing conclusions and writing the study.
“FDR’s policies prolonged Depression by 7 years, UCLA economists calculate”
http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/FDR-s-Policies-Prolonged-Depression-5409.aspx
Read your own citation.
By citing contrary research, you support our claim that most scholars believe the New Deal was a positive economic and social development. They publish in opposition to the prevalent opinion.
It was the prevalent opinion because a distinct majority, if not most, academic economists are liberal. They are social scientists working in academia. Duh. Which means that they have a strong philosophical bias in favor of validating the New Deal, and face consonant dissonance when the see contrary information. This doesn’t make them right, but rather elicits skepticism when a large number of them agree with reigning liberal orthodoxy.
Bruce Hayden: It was the prevalent opinion …
We’ll take that as agreement with our claim.
Cole & Ohanian: “The goal of the New Deal was to get Americans back to work. But the New Deal didn’t restore employment. In fact, there was even less work on average during the New Deal than before FDR took office.”
With cherry-picked statements like that, they are clearly pushing an agenda.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123353276749137485.html
As if the academic economists on the other side, heavily invested in liberal thought, esp working in academia, do not.
Unemployment dropped during most of the New Deal, except when the New Deal was rolled back, leading to the 1937-38 recession. This was a direct test of countercyclical policy.
I agree that republicans need to take out full page ads in newspapers and buy TV time to explain to the American people that the ACA is a terrible idea and is already failing. However, republicans are powerless to stop it.
Will it fail? Of course, it was DESIGNED TO FAIL.
As NV press reported: “[Senator] Reid said he thinks the country has to ‘work our way past’ insurance-based health care during a Friday night appearance on Vegas PBS’ program ‘Nevada Week in Review.’ ‘What we’ve done with Obamacare is have a step in the right direction, but we’re far from having something that’s going to work forever,’ Reid said. When then asked by panelist Steve Sebelius whether he meant ultimately the country would have to have a health care system that abandoned insurance as the means of accessing it, Reid said: ‘Yes, yes. Absolutely, yes.'”
The American people voted for this President, they voted for his minions in Congress, and they voted to reelect him. They are stuck with him and the ACA.
The GOP needs to tell people the truth: They’ve been conned, and they are about to learn a harsh lesson. Let the learning begin. Maybe next time they will make better choices.
Elison once said, “In a democracy, the people get the government that they deserve.”
Or, as H.L. Menchen observed: “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”
The problem with Obamacare is that those with something get hammered and those with nothing get rewarded – once again. Obamacare will never get repealed because people only want to cut those things that do not affect their own situation and the poor, who have done far better in the last 5 years than anyone else, will fight it elimination tooth and nail. Given the way the public continues to vote more and more for handouts while not caring about bankrupting the government, it is becoming increasingly understandable why, centuries ago, only land owners were allowed to vote. Could we be seeing a time coming where only those who pay taxes get a right to vote?
For a while, at least, I expect any unintended consequences of the ACA to be presented in the MSM as features and not bugs, or the product of Republican intransigence,or dismissed out of hand.
The PPACA is the Cloward-Piven Strategy writ large. Designed to fail, of its own weight, and engender the collapse of roughly 1/6th or more of our economy in the process.
It is our freedom that will collapse under the weight of Obamacare.
And the collapse of our freedom is exactly what Obamacare was crafted to do.