Talk Elections

Dear Forum Community,

It may have gone unnoticed by most of you, but the last political post I put up on this forum was a fairly unpleasant rant.  I didn't mean to disparage anyone at all.  I'm not trying to attention-whore with this post; I just want to exit at least a little more gracefully than I managed to do last time.  The older I get, the more important it becomes to me to try to end things well, even though things must end.

That lousy post of last month was written in the immediate wake of the SCOTUS oral arguments about PPACA. and in a mood of despair that came over me during that week.  I'm certainly not a die-hard defender of that particular law and understand its numerous shortcomings.  But, to me, the pending decision is not just about the fate of that law.  I believe that it signals a more far-reaching outcome, in that we will simply never have universal access to insured basic health care in the United States.  I personally find that a grave shame, and I think it's very bad for our country in all kinds of ways, and is bound to get worse if a way to it is not found.

Despite those feelings, I didn't have warrant to leave with the min-rant that I did.  So, I'm sorry about that.

But, I'm sure to everyone's relief, my days of commenting on politics are done.  No more endless posts that you have to crawl through or skip over.  I've lost faith in our political processes, so I'm movin' on to other hobbies.  I'm finding recently that, if I pick up a guitar, practice long enough to put my fingers in the right places at the right time, the thing sounds good, and it can make people around me happy, no matter what they happen to believe.  I think that's a better use of my free time now.

I'll probably continue lurking, but won't comment on anything political.  I do think you all are a very cool group of people, and if anyone might be interested in being fb friends or something, please pm me and we'll arrange that.  If not, no worries.  Thanks for putting up with all my bs over the past few years, and best wishes to all.   

Cheers,
"anvi"

Or, you could just stay.

This. Also there might be some random politician out there worth 2 shakes of a rat's ass. Just saying.

I didn't find that post awful at all. It was more thoughtful than disparaging. Even though I disagree about that particular law, I can see why you would be politically dispirited.  I just really hope you continue to post some, at least in religion and forum community.

Thanks, guys.  Like I said, I'll probably continue to lurk, and, as shua suggests, I might put something up in Forum Community now and then.  But, the posts you all write are more fun to read than mine anyway.  And, jfern, we'll see about that random politician that, you know, really reaches for the icy heights of ueber-rodent behavior.  But, in the meantime, I'll be sure to keep breathing.  :)

That's too bad, I think you're one of the better posters here. You should stick around.

I've felt pretty devastated about losing on an issue in the past, so I know how you feel. Stick around, lurk if you have to, and take time off if you have to, but don't become bitter or depressed about it, it's important to push on. Stick around if you can because you're a great poster.

welcome to Nihilism.  I left the town a handful of months ago: I left a few good friends behind, ask for Tom and Chase and see how they are doing for me.

No worries. I've lost faith in politics since 2008-2011, and I'm just following politics as a much superior and more entertaining alternative to pop culture and sports.

Without question I agree with this, Anvi.  Stay! 

Seriously, I wish I was as good of a poster as anvi is.

No need to apologize anvi, and I am sorry that you are burned out. Perhaps you had unrealistic expectations about the political class. Most politicians are in it for themselves, and nothing else. Far too many are simply not prepared to handle or understand complex issues, and just accept representations from others. Part of the problem is that the medical subsidies issue requires actions that will prove to be very unpopular in the end (to wit, cuts). But there  is no escape. Hopefully it won't take a fiscal collapse to get there.

Anyway, the important thing to do is what you enjoy doing of course. I hope that we can stay in touch. And hopefully if you are lurking and feel moved to say something, or say hi, or whatever, you will do so.

Best, Steve

wat

Sam is an open homophobe.

I kind of doubt he fully believes what he says. A lot of it is just trolling, IMO.

To whom was Sam Spade referring?  :P

wow, every time I think I'm not part of the current mayhem....I prove myself wrong:


I am honored to have been mentioned in your last dying Atlas breath.

I guess that post was a bit more of a rant  in places than I remember it. Ah well, no harm done. :)

Perhaps I'm being presumptuous here, but I've always gotten the impression you love feuding with Afleitch. While you probably hope your anti-gay comments will get under someone's skin in general, I always wonder if it's really Afleitch who you want to irritate more than anyone.

Well, jmfcst, though I was responding to you, I wasn't mad at you; just disappointed about the way things worked out.  My expression of that disappointment was pretty poor, so, as above, I apologize.

You're right that the law in general, and the mandate in particular, are pretty unpopular in the country over all.  In some way, despite all these arguments about federalism and compulsory economic activity and all that, I'm just personally a bit baffled by that unpopularity.  I suppose I don't worry too much about my freedom being trampled when a requirement is placed upon me to do something that, so long as I was able, I would do anyway, like buy health insurance.  Particularly so if complying with that requirement meant that others, my fellow citizens, who have more dire needs than I do, could have an easier time getting access to insurance that they currently lack.  When I think of my citizenship, I suppose I just find that my responsibilities to my fellow citizens are just as important, sometimes even more so, than my own rights, and this area of life, to me, is one of those cases.  I've lived in countries where this kind of arrangement, in my opinion, works very well too--I never met anyone in Germany or Japan who felt oppressed by a health insurance mandate. 

But, those are just my personal feelings.  I'm weird.  Other people feel and believe much differently than I do, and on this issue, in this place, I appear to be outnumbered.  So, there it is.

Take care.

Anvi, there was nothing wrong with that post that I can see. And your last post is well said as well. Healthcare is a necessity,even for the rich. If you access healthcare without insurance in the US, you are a fool due to the way pricing works. And it is quite clear that most everyone who can afford insurance will get it anyways, and by getting insurance they make it more affordable for the rest of us. If the government can mandate us to buy a good, health insurance is a good candidate. Of course there should be a line drawn in the sand, but it's quite obvious forcing people to get health insurance is for the greater good and impacts others ability to access it. The Obama administration was dumb for not presenting a reasonable limiting principle for the Supreme Court, but for a case of this magnitude they should create one for themselves. There is a difference between this and forcing people to buy bicycles or purchase airline tickets or whatever and I am sure they are smart enough to realize that. Now if for blatant political reasons they refuse to acknowledge that, well that would be quite disappointing. And of course I'm putting that lightly.

Of course what we need to do is create a public option. It's the no-brainer option. Pay for it with additional payroll taxes taken from both employers and employees. Institute co-pays to ensure people only access healthcare when needed and institute a cap for the chronically ill. Enact mechanisms to move people from hospitals into skilled nursing facilities and other common sense solutions. Then we wouldn't have to fight an idiotic war over whether the government can force us to buy a private good, and we won't have to hear how having to pay 2.5% of your income or $695, whichever is greater, is some epic assault on our freedoms. Oh yeah, if you can't find a plan that isn't less than 8% of your income, you are exempt from the fine! How tyrannical! But the government being able to strip search you without convicting you isn't!

Bottom line is don't feel bad for sticking to your guns on this issue. We need more people to fight for our side to make sure we get universal coverage in this country, and hopefully something better than was instituted under the PPACA.

Thank you, sbane.  It's really hard for me to see how comprehensive health care reform can happen in the U.S. after SCOTUS rules that mandates are unconstitutional.  That rules out anything like Bismarck-style universal coverage, within our for-profit system, in the future.  I'm not such a fan of "single-payer" systems, but I'm sure that the U.S. would literally sink into the ocean before any such thing was ever adopted here.  There is the Torie Plan, which combines tax-credits and subsidization for basic care coverage.  But as far as I can tell, the subsidization part would require tax increases that, after campaigning so hard against the current law, being so dead-set against revenue enhancements and determined to implement cuts, I'm pretty sure the GOP would never get behind such a plan.  Then, there is what we've got, which isn't satisfactory, and as time passes, will become even less so.

The "public option" that was embedded in PPACA died an early death because of Senate Dems.  It wasn't for everyone, of course; it had eligibility caps that made it available only to very low-income citizens, so it reached a small set of the population that private insurers aren't inclined to cover anyway.  But, in 2009, I corresponded several times with Kent Conrad (as his former constituent) about the public option, and he explained and sent data to me demonstrating that the reimbursement rates that even the Senate version of the "public option" offered providers caused the latter to balk, and he and about ten other Senate Dems took it off the table quite early.  

I never minded fighting for some sort of universal coverage plan (as noted, I do believe we should do better than PPACA).  A Bismarck-style plan for the States, which would operate in the context of for-profit insurance, seemed to me for a long time like the medicine that could go down in our country the easiest.  But the pending SCOTUS strikedown will slam the door shut on that option for good.  I'm not aware of anything plausible that is left to fight for.

A hypothetical recently crossed my mind.  Let's say it's 1996.  Bill Clinton proves unable to overcome the political travails that haunted his first two years in office, and news of the Lewinsky scandal breaks during the general election campaign.  Bob Dole wins the presidency.  Instinctively drawn to Bill Krystal's famous advice and following his own inclinations, Bob Dole decides to take away the issue of comprehensive health care reform from the Democrats once and for all, and introduces his own comprehensive health care reform bill, strongly resembling the '94 Senate bill backed by the GOP.  DoleCare features an individual mandate.  It passes Congress, and Dole signs it into law in 1997.  How many states, under this scenario, would have filed lawsuits against the law, alleging that its mandate posed an immanent threat to federalism?  If former Senator Bob Bennet, a co-sponsor of the '94 GOP bill, is to be believed, my guess is probably none.  He was opposed to PPACA's costs, not its mandate.  People like Grassley, Snowe et al never raised mandate objections in 2009 either.  The mandate, after all, is what got AHIP on board for almost the entire duration of the legislative process, and they only bailed when, under pressure against the mandate which only only appeared at the end of the year from a few Senate Republicans, its enforcement provisions were stripped out.  Until very late 2009, almost every serious person interested in comprehensive reform believed that mandates were an essential piece in the puzzle, and none of them sang the special carnival tune of federalism that's been only very recently composed as the battle-hymn against Obamacare.

But, when PPACA passed Congress, the only way left to bring it down was in the courts, and that's what happened, and as you note, the dismal job Obama's lawyers did defending the mandate there brought down the sword.  All this has led us to the brink of shutting down a road toward universal coverage (again, not PPACA itself, but the one element of it under discussion) that was probably most amenable to our system, and that road ended in the middle of a field where no other roads can be found, and right at the point that the supply of construction materials also ran out.  

I wish there were something else that was actually viable left to fight for, but I can't see it.  It's just one of those things, you know--there are some things in life that, while gravely important, just turn out to be futile causes.  Universal coverage in the U.S., sadly, is one of them.              

Enough of this nonsense, anvi, back to posting!  :)

France doesn't have a mandate and yet 99% of their population is covered. The 1% being people who don't want to be covered, or are too lazy to sign up. And they cover more than what the PPACA would have ended up covering. We would neither have to mandate people get insurance or that insurers cover those with pre-existing conditions if we had a public option that covered them. In France (using this example since they are rated #1, have private providers and I just did a presentation on their health system) the public option (which almost everyone uses) has no premiums except for the payroll tax but has copays of 30-40%, with none at all for some procedures. Many purchase private insurance to cover this. I agree that passing something like this would be damn near impossible,especially since you have to get 60 corporately owned Senators on board, but don't underestimate how popular the public option is. There are many people vehemently against the mandate precisely because there isn't a public option. :)

Doesn't France have its own unique form of mandates?  Employer and employee contributions to the national insurance funds are required by statute, aren't they?      

Aren't Medicare and Social Security taxes mandatory in the US?

Yes, of course.  But the French national funds are for everyone, not just pensioners. And so, effectively, the French tax system forces its citizens to buy coverage for themselves through mandated contributions adjusted to income levels, and covers citizens who can't pay at all.  I don't think the national sickness funds featured in Bismarck systems like France's will ever exist in the U.S., especially when even Democrats shoot down an analogous public fund with a low income eligibility cap, vastly limiting enrollment.  We've made the choice to use for-profit insurers in the U.S. (not my idea either), and so any universal coverage scheme in our country will require purchases of their coverage for the majority of citizens.  But, as noted, SCOTUS is about to lock that door too.     

What is wrong with private insurers competing for business, with subsidies on a means tested basis for the premiums? 

Because if you then mandate people buy from those private companies, they tend to get pissed off. And then the wonderful supreme court rules it unconstitutional!

You forgot about the Torie finesse already?  Given that memory is the second thing to go, unless you are on the Torie regimen (which I assure you "works"), you are in trouble man. Seek help!  :P

Oh I remember it but it should be wholly unnecessary. It should have been done that way at the start but it wasnt and now the consequence of the supreme court striking it would be that nothing gets done. The Torie finesse, nor anything else for that matter, will get passed. Not in the short term at least and those with pre-existing conditions get thrown back to the sharks. I doubt anything gets done until the Democrats get full control again. The Republicans are too far gone to pass anything. I hope I am wrong.

As I noted above, private insurers are the predominant payers in this country, so any solution that's going to work here has to work for them.  There's nothing wrong with the Torie-plan by me.  But you have to get Congress to pass it.  I genuinely wish you luck with that.

Well, with the Torie finesse having been available, one cannot blame SCOTUS for shutting down the concept of mandatory insurance (effectively). Congress gets the blame for going the disingenuous route for marketing purposes, in order to claim that no "taxes" were involved. Obamacare ironically was packaged as a cost saving measure. Who knew?

Don't be sad however. This issue has to be fixed. There is no other option to avoid the abyss. Be patient (quoted from Sam without copyright permission).   One thing that will force the issue is that I don't think the Medicaid all or nothing part of Obamacare packcage vis a vis the states getting Fed money will be struck down (if it is, that would indeed be a case of SCOTUS gone activist and rogue). That provision alone should cause enough fiscal chaos to get the ball moving again - in a hurry.

I guess what saddens me about this issue, Torie, is where our national priorities are in this debate.  We've got tens of millions of people, fellow citizens, in our country who lack health insurance entirely, and we have many thousands who die from treatable diseases every year because of long-term lack of insurance--these are facts.  And, laudably enough, you saying that we have to do something about it indicates that you are sensitive to that problem.  But, instead of being upset enough about that problem to do anything immediately, we are most upset about whether something is called a "penalty" or whether it's called a "tax," or whether something is called a "mandate" or a "requirement," ect. ect.  Don't get me wrong; I understand what you are saying about Obama's lack of political candor, and I agree with your derision of it, I really do.  But, if we're going to be so high and mighty about how "disingenuous" the Obama team was about their reticence to call penalties for the lack of insurance taxation, then just wait until your GOP friends in Congress hear the news that the subsidies needed to pay for poor people's premiums, especially in the environment of uncontrolled health care cost inflation, are going to need to be financed through higher taxes, and see what they say to the Torie plan then.  If we cared a tenth as much for our fellow citizens as we do for the labels we give to statutory tax provisions, I think we'd be a much better country.  That's what saddens me.         

I didn't write the Constitution, and I am not the one who has much if any interest in states rights anyway really anvi. But I am a lawyer, and I think per the law, SCOTUS really should strike down the mandate. Otherwise, the interstate commerce clause for the reasons I have outlined, has swallowed federalism alive (of which I approve as a policy matter), but that is not the job of SCOTUS. For that, one needs a Constitutional amendment - which I would support. So there you go.

I appreciate your comments, Torie.  You are a lawyer, and I'm not.  But is it after all fair to say that there is only one cogent legal view of this matter?  There are, after all, at least four expert jurists on SCOTUS who will probably vote to uphold the mandate.  With several hundred years of legal precedent regarding the Constitution, and with many different interpretations of what comports with the Constitution and these precedents, the members of SCOTUS, no matter who is in the majority, can probably come up with a legally viable defense of practically any decision they make.  On top of that, unless my ears deceived me entirely, Scalia made a number of overtly political comments in the remarks he made during oral arguments in this case.  SCOTUS too is a political body, not just a deliberative body, and its deliberations are often used to serve the purposes of the members' respective political orientations.  That's why confirmation processes have become as charged as they have, no?  This isn't anything new.  The day I think that any of the federal government's three branches is exercising actual unbiased deliberation in the service of solving a problem, I'll tune back in.   

Well in the sense it is not obvious what the interstate commerce clause means exactly in a modern complex interconnected world economically and every other way, that often requires common rules that "require" coverage of a larger and larger swath of this planet, anvi, sure, informed opinions can differ. But with the cross subsidy aspect of the mandate, and a lack of a clear limiting principle as to that piece, upholding the mandate would effectively gut federalism, and the notion that states can do some things the feds cannot.  That is a pretty big step - and an unnecessary one given the readily available finesse. Why should SCOTUS wrench and stretch the Constitution when the proponents of something just don't have the votes to do it right?

Anyway, that is why the mandate is one legal life support at the moment, with the real prospect that the plug will soon be pulled.