Two Years On: Obamacare

Big Government has taken over. I think they're amending the law to also mandate the purchase of no fewer than 15 broccoli stalks per family per year. It will practically pay for itself as long as people use their A&P cards at checkout.

 

That depends on your assumptions. Some (me among them) believe that the rate of increase has been driven by the way we finance healthcare (i.e., hugely biased toward employer-provided insurance). Given that, if you see the ACA as taking that approach to its limits, you might even conclude that its complete implementation will cause health care costs to rise even faster.

 

Broccoli? But I already paid to subsidize corn and sorghum and soybeans. Can't I just get a salad?

 

. . . but a good cigar is a smoke.


"What this country needs is a good five-cent nickel."

-- The One, The Only

 

Yeah, what a great system.

 

Ragu, I think you misunderstood. I'm saying a tax credit for buying a Prius is not the same thing. An offer to help on your tax bill is not the same as threatening an extra tax if you don't do x. Just because the net dollar effect on your tax bill is the same doesn't mean the methods can be treated the same.

 

You can argue against it.

But I don't think that it = "If you can't afford health care, die."

There's also Medicaid.

 

This happened for me with Bush v. Gore. Especially with the remarks by O'Connor.

 

That's because those activist judges make decisions for political reasons.

 

If this gets thrown out by the Supreme Court or repealed by a Republican President and Congress, you probably won't see another legislative initiative even approaching this magnitude again in your lifetime.

Our politics are so polarized, compromise considered so dangerous for one's political career, that even getting the simplest and seemingly most routine of bills through Congress is torturous. And because of the filibuster and both parties' eagerness to use it for short-term political gain, it essentially takes 60 votes - not 51 - to get legislation through the Senate. Even on the rare occasion that one party has 60 seats in the Senate, there will be a Joe Lieberman type amidst that 60 who will gum up the works for the sheer hell of it. So you need people from the other side. Good luck with that.

Why would any Congressman or Senator, who wants to keep his/her lucrative, hard-fought job for as long as possible, want to risk that to pursue a massive, bold legislative initiative?

 

The system is broken, no question.