Politics 09: Fire Reid and Steele.

[Grefter]

Well, near as I can tell most view it as effectively a mandate for people to get health insurance off the private market, and a massive subsidy for the health insurance industry.

This is different than what they already had how?

[Shale]

It wasn't illegal to not buy health insurance before.

[Grefter]

Making it illegal isn't what I would call a mandate.  That is you know, making it the law.

It certainly works well enough here for cars (there is a very limited basic coverage a car has to have to be registered), it is one way of doing the same thing we have with fairly expensive medicare levies and the way you get a discount on it if you have health insurance and whatnot.  Buuuut I would still argue why the shit should you be propping up an industry when you could just have the government do it properly, with the correct oversight and just tax for it.

[Cotigo]

Because it's not propping up the industry.  The problem isn't that the industry's failing, the problem is that the industry is too powerful.  Healthcare reform is at its core an attempt to wrestle the power away from these companies.  And the reformers are too neutered by asstarded congressional politics, a heaping helping of conservative obstructionism, and the fact that most of congress is on the insurance companies' payrolls in one way or another.

The mandate that one must own health insurance is a great setback to the reform process, as I see it.  How the fuck am I going to be able to afford this nonsense?  (Hint:  I won't, not on my own anyway.  Hm.  Maybe if there was an option that had its price set by some regulatory institution that I could opt into.  Eh.  Who wants that, though?  Socialists.)

[Taishyr]

Yeah, this pretty much cements desire to find employment in another country if I can pull it. Looks like a massive step back for actual reasonable healthcare, though will want to see how it works or doesn't work in practice.

[Cotigo]

Eh, in fairness, that's a weakness of the bill... on this front.  Eliminating caps on amount of money spent per patient, ensuring a minimum loss ratio, and disallowing companies from discriminating on the basis of "preexisting condition" are all things that needed to get done.  However, while the bill does accomplish a few things, where it fails, it fails hard.

[Grefter]

Propping up a dominant monopoly is still propping it up even if it doesn't need it.  I dunno should I have phrased it as quadruple glazing the windows on their insurmountable glass walled fortresses constructed entirely of ground up glassed cash?  Shoring up the battlements?

[Dunefar]

Closing and destickying. It's time for a politics '10 topic.

Aren't we all thrilled?