Trump cheats at golf - the ONE and ONLY politics thread

Do you not foresee a massive spike in people losing insurance doing it your way, absent some kind of mechanism to aid the transition?

 

If mortgage interest became not-deductible, would there be a massive spike in homelessness?

 

Meet one of the heroes of Trump's alt-right keyboard warriors, Mike Cernovich. And cue up Alanis Morissette for these paragraphs ...

"On his blog, Cernovich developed a theory of white-male identity politics: men were oppressed by feminism, and political correctness prevented the discussion of obvious truths, such as the criminal proclivities of certain ethnic groups. His opponents were beta males, losers, or “cucks”—alt-right slang for “cuckolds.”"

"After law school, his wife became a successful attorney in Silicon Valley. But Cernovich was not admitted to the California bar until nine years after getting his law degree. In the meantime, he says, he got by with “freelance legal research” and “appellate stuff.” Cernovich’s wife earned millions of dollars in stock from an I.P.O.; he told me that he received “seven figures” in the divorce settlement."

Trolls for Trump

 

We just went through a period where all of a sudden people couldn't make their mortgage payments. Doesn't seem like anything we'd care to repeat on purpose.

 

Yeah, see, you're either not trying or you simply can't do it. Either way, I'm done with you on this.

 

Are a lot of businesses taking out mortgages for their employees? Otherwise I don't see the equivalency.

If I'm not seeing this right, then explain it to me. Because what I see happening if we do it your way is a lot of businesses dumping insurance plans, and keeping much if not all of the savings for themselves instead of plowing it back into employee compensation. Many of those employees will find free market insurance completely unaffordable and do without. In the long run perhaps medical costs will come down (we won't get into the kind of economic shock this creates for health care workers, particularly doctors with student loan debt in the six-figure range), but in the meantime a lot of people are going to be negatively effected. This isn't a textbook fantasyland where people will just eat chicken until the price of beef comes back down.

And with Medicare and Medicaid gone (remember, you want the government out of healthcare), a lot of really vulnerable people will get sick and die waiting for the new normal who wouldn't have otherwise. And if you truly want government out of healthcare, say goodbye to many of the university research hospitals that are the backbone of our medical education infrastructure, not to mention all the municipally-owned and operated hospitals that blanket the country, in towns big and small.

So how do we get from where we are to where you want? Show me the way.

 

I liked how he met his current wife.

Trump and Billy Bush would have loved his move -- especially for a guy who isn't a star.

 

Baron?

 

I'd settle for the 8 years before Obama

 

Not trying to be snide, but Poin, how has your insurance status changed, if it has, since Obamacare took effect in 2014?

 

Consider X (e.g., interest on mortgage debt), which facilitates the consumption of Y (e.g., housing). At present expenditures on X are subsidized via tax deductibility. If this deductibility goes away, will demand for X evaporate? Will Y no longer be affordable?

If businesses have the kind of power to do that, why do they even provide insurance now? Per your scenario, businesses can get the labor they want without paying a dime for health insurance. If something's worth $0 to me, the fact that someone will subsidize some hefty percentage of its non-zero cost doesn't make me any more inclined to buy it.

Without the tax deductibility, are you sure health insurance is going to cost exactly the same?

A lot of people are negatively affected now. This is an irrelevancy.

Allow me to make a clarification with regard to my wanting the federal government to "get the fuck out of the way." My intent was to speak strictly to health insurance, primarily health insurance as essentially the only method by which consumption of healthcare is financed.

Our patched-over cluster-fuck of a health care financing regime is fundamentally fucked by the fact that long ago our all-wise federal government created -- quite unintentionally, I might add -- an incentive for firms to incorporate health insurance as part of their compensation package. As the years have gone by, the distortions in the health care market that can be traced to this "original sin" continue apace. Not all of these distortions have been wholly unpleasant for everyone, mind you. We have a tremendous health care infrastructure, the profession itself pays pretty damn well, and if you're fortunate enough to be covered through a generous employer-provided plan (like those of us who actually work for the government), you like having cheap access to all of that. Nevertheless, the distortions are there, they're getting worse and more consequential, and they all trace to the continued reliance on tax-subsidized health insurance.

As a practical matter do I want tax deductibility eliminated overnight? Do I want everyone to be completely on his/her own as re: health care? Of course not. Tax deductibility could be phased out over some number of years such that the market has a chance to anticipate and adjust. Our social safety net could make provision for those who are not capable of providing this for themselves.

Nevertheless, the idea that the only serious solutions are those that have the federal government more heavily involved in the health insurance business ... to hell with that.

 

One last go? You made a first go describing this plan?

To paraphrase The Martian, I believe your plan is to "free market the shit out of health care."