Powerful Stupid from Michele Bachmann, talking about the Obama administration’s decision to fast track the legal dispute about the individual mandate to the Supreme Court:
I think that it can’t stay there. We have to go with full-scale repeal of Obamacare. Of course were going to be hoping our best for the Court. We have four votes that are against Obamacare. Do we really want to put the one fifth, swing vote, potentially Anthony Kennedy, to say that because of that, we’ll strike down this terrible bill as unconstitutional? I don’t want to go that route. The Supreme Court should not be deciding our laws. That’s the people we elect, that’s who should decide our laws.
Even her assertion that her side of the argument has four votes is highly dubious. All we now for certain is that Clarence Thomas is going to vote against the individual mandate. Beyond that, it’s a matter of whether the other conservative Justices will succumb to peer pressure or follow their own precedents. If they have any integrity, even Roberts, Scalia, and Alito will uphold the government’s right to regulate interstate commerce. As we saw with Bush v. Gore, anything can happen, but that doesn’t make it very likely that the Supreme Court will go all tea-baggy on us.
Also, too, I don’t know why Bachmann has a problem with the Affordable Care Act since the country’s lawmakers were the ones who enacted it. If the Supreme Court shouldn’t be overruling the will of Congress then she should be quite happy about them upholding the law. Or maybe she thinks they should just refuse to hear the case. Actually, I guess she doesn’t think the Supreme Court should hear any cases. They might have to “decide our laws.”
As an opponent of the Affordable Care Act, I am hopeful that the Supreme Court does NOT strike the law down…if the law is ruled unconstitutional, then it will not be a campaign issue…56 percent of all Americans oppose the Affordable Care Act…we NEED it to be a campaign issue…
Weirdly, most Americans support the components of the Affordable Care Act when asked about them individually.
Just curious, where do you get your health insurance?
Most Americans support many Liberal specifics, while opposing the general concepts, because when you ask them about “specifics”, those focus on benefits, while the general concepts take into account the entire picture…
For example (I know, very basic, but to illustrate a point)…consider the following two imaginary poll questions…
A. Do you support every single American having access to affordable health care?
This question would certainly have support from 90 percent plus of respondents…
B. Do you support paying for the health care of every American if it means you would have to pay twice as many taxes, and the Unemployment rate would never go below 9 percent…
You wouldn’t likely get a 90 percent favorable response…
Support of individual Liberal policies, without reference to the adverse effects of funding those policies, always yields a positive response…Americans are the most charitable people on earth…
RE: my health insurance…I own a business…if your Affordable Care Act goes into full effect, I have three choices…
Go out of businesss…or reduce the pay of my people…or lay people off…since I have no intention of failing, and I don’t like to lay people off…probably reduced pay.
Good work, Progressives…
If the ACA puts you out of business, that is a reflection of your management skills, not the ACA.
As for paying “twice as much in taxes” – well, that’s Paulite fantasy. You mentioned universal health care – well, let’s look at Canada, which does far more than the ACA. Canadians pay less than we do for their health care. I’ve lived there. It’s great. My uncle ran a business in Canada for 40 years and never had any health care related issues with his staff. He never had to worry about it. He was a huge supporter of that system, and he employed over a hundred people. Now, the ACA isn’t Canadian health care – it’s not nearly as good – but it’s a start, and allows states to implement real universal health care – which they will. Montana’s talking about it, California’s a sure thing as soon as the Dems get their supermajority, which will likely happen in the next 6 years.
Don’t worry, we’ll let you use it when it happens. We won’t kick you to the curb just because you didn’t figure this out. In fact, I predict an influx of libertarians and teabeggers to the states that create these systems.
Your comment about management skills illustrates that you have never run a business…
That you don’t understand profit margins…and that specific industries tend toward certain profit margins due to the nature of the competition in that business..
Besides…management skill, to some degree, largely depends on your ability to control expenses…
Labor is by far, my largest expense…I will need to control it…that means firing people, or laying them off…
Wow…I guess if I stay in business by firing people I have good mangement skills…
BTW…don’t worry about me…I’m okay…I am blessed enough to have the resources to move to Costa Rica…and pay out of pocket for health insurance costs…
It’s the team that has built our organization…they will suffer…maybe I’ll relocate the entire company to Costa Rica!
Good work, Progressives…
I had a software business. What business are you in? Besides snake oil.
Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, my 25 year old son, who has had Type I diabetes since he was 14 months old, is still on my health care insurance. Thank you, President Obama! I look forward to implementation of further provisions and, hopefully, strengthening of the Act in the years to come.
Meanwhile… it’s hard to believe Michele Bachmann actually went to law school. Apparently she thinks Marbury v. Madison 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137 (1803) was wrongly decided.
Lynn…I am very happy for your son…
But what if you could have realized the same benefit without bankrupting the country, and creating artificially high unemployment created by businesses anticapting the high cost of hiring workers once this plan goes into effect…
For example, we provide a means-tested (means evil rich people don’t get any) voucher for private health insurance, that you can spend as you see fit…and any family that has a family member with pre-existing conditions receives a proportionately higher amount to cover than insurance…the vouchers introduce competition, reducing costs…
Your son still receives treatment…overall costs are reduced…the country is solvent…
Don’t be a slave to Government dependency…PLEASE research market-oriented solutions…
dude, that’s cold. That’s seriously cold. Do you even know what type 1 diabetes is?
she’s not dependent on the government. She’s paying for private insurance.
Your voucher/junk insurance plan wouldn’t even cover someone like him. He has a serious pre-existing condition.
Thank you, cruzy. Yes, that’s right. I pay for private insurance through my job. Initially I was insulted when I read his remark about government dependency, but you know what? I do believe there are things government can do better than any private entity — and ensuring health care is one of them.
So I decided to own his ignorant remark instead.
just ignore L4A, he’s our resident randian. still clinging to the fantasy that trickle down economics and the free market are the holy grail.
sadly, history over the past 30+ years has proven otherwise, but s/he persists in the belief that we should just leave the rich alone….good civic minded citizens that they are…and they’ll magically solve all our problems.
perhaps we’d all be better off if he and his compatriots backed up their bravodo rhetoric and pointed us to some factual data that supports their position; or actually went galt and showed all us non-believers the reality of what they perceive to be the downside…
nah…never happen.
they’re making too much money running the scam.
it’d be an interesting experiment tho….eh.
I know that Type 1 diabetes is a condition that you are born with, while Type 2 diabetis is a condition you acquire by eating too many carbohydrates, which causes your body to produce too much insuling, which results in your cells developing insulin resistance…which leads to dangerously high blood sugar…
I want a solution to Lynn’s son’s problem as much as you do…
I do not think we need to bankrupt our country to do it…
Yeah, just bankrupt Lynn and her son, like the other millions of Americans!
Well, that’s not quite right, but I appreciate your efforts to understand. The distinction isn’t really relevant to this discussion, but just for informational purposes, Type I means the pancreas no longer produces insulin. You may be born with a genetic tendency to develop it, but you aren’t generally born with the condition. Most people who develop it do so sometime before their mid-20’s. Type II means the pancreas produces insulin but for whatever reason the body isn’t particular efficient at using it. The condition may be triggered by being overweight. I don’t believe it matters whether you got overweight by eating carbohydrates, proteins, fats or whatever.
But back to this:
Quote: “I do not think we need to bankrupt our country to do it…”
Absolutely. And I think there is no doubt that government can lower health care costs more effectively and efficiently than any of your “market-oriented solutions.”
Lynn…
Thank you…
I did not know that Type 1 diabetes was not congenital in nature…but that the pancreas could stop producing insulin after birth…
Although you say that, in the case of Type II, “for whatever reason” the body isn’t efficient at using insuling…don’t they know the reason?…insulin resistance…
We honestly disagree about the key to solving these problems…
God willing, we will find the solution to our health care dilemna…
Boy are you talking to the wrong person. That my son has diabetes is hardly my sole reason for supporting the ACA — although it is certainly a clarifying one for me. But my belief in the social compact and in a reasonable, meaningful safety net predates my son’s diabetes.
Health care is a human necessity. The fact that people can be bankrupted by medical costs is outrageous and completely unnecessary. I am not interested in your market-based solutions. (And oh my God: vouchers?! Seriously??!!) Frankly, I see no reason to insert insurance companies into the mix at all. But, if they must be there, I want to see affordable health care FOR EVERYONE. Our system is ridiculous.
There are things government can do better than any private entity. If that belief makes me “a slave to government dependency,” I’ll plead guilty right now.
Shall we move on?
A friend of mine at work (violently Conservative, he worships Ron Paul) told me that when his severely disabled daughter was born twenty years ago the cost was some $900,000 and he had to declare bankruptcy. Nevertheless, even though Obamacare lets him keep her on his Federal Blue Cross for five more years instead of one, even though it guarantees her insurability after that, he opposes it as an unwarranted government intrusion into private commerce.
Instead he believes that Republican nonsense about selling insurance across state lines (evading state regulators) and capping damage awards. He thinks that would dramatically cut medical costs. “There are none so blind as those who choose not to see.” It’s like a religion. You can argue until you’re blue in the face. It goes in one ear and out the other.
I never understood capping rewards on lawsuits. WHY DON’T THEY BELIEVE IN THE FREE MARKET!
I mean, after all, if this person is a real believer of Ron Paul, he would actually subscribe to what Ron Paul believes: allowing people to sue other people for environmental or medical damages.
The theory seems to be that juries award money like Santa Claus. I don’t buy it. I was foreman of a jury in a tort case. Although opinions varied widely, every person on that jury took their oath seriously.
Yeah I get the theory, and of course it’s bullshit, but even if it wasn’t: the market determined the price of that medical malpractice, so who are we to put caps on their awards?
Impeccable logic, Seabe.
Wow. That’s pretty amazing. And incredibly uninformed. You’re right: it’s like a religion.
Are doctors slaves? Are medical researchers slaves?
They are the ones discovering the solutions to problems like Type 1 diabetes…
If they do not have an economic incentive solution to do so, then the cures will not be there!
Our evil “profit based” society has produced more solutions to more problems that any society in history…
but Progressives attack the very foundation of that society…
Progressives want the benefits of the profit motive (for example, a cure for disease), but hate the profit motive…
I just don’t get it…
Most researchers do research not to get rich but because they are fascinated by the problems that they are researching. On the other hand, charlatans develop phony products to get rich ala Laetril. Jonas Salk was not motivated by the thought of getting rich. Albert Einstein did not get into Physics to get rich. Robert Goddard did not develop liquid-fueled rockets to get rich. Indeed, he was hounded from one end of the country to another. Werner Von Braun was not motivated by money, although he did get rich, at least by my standards of rich.
excellent point. and I find it pitiful that some think $ is the only motivation in life.
Thank you, Errol. The late W. E. Deming once said, “Money is not a motivator.” My first reaction was, “It certainly motivates me!” But as he explained, money is, at best, a short term motivator. Unless there is other psychological rewards, money will not keep a person doing a particular behavior. People eventually leave jobs they hate, even if the pay is better than a job they like.
Actually a great deal of early-stage drug discovery has traditionally been carried out by universities and research institutions in America. The companies buy the patents mainly.
Right. And those researchers are primarily motivated by interest in the research subject. And, in the case of grad students, to get their PhD so they can do research they are interested in.
Companies compete, reducing costs and introducing competition, and innovation…
Government does none of the above…
That’s why we need private insurance…
There is nothing to innovate.
I want to go to the doctor and pay the doctor for his services and expenses, including his staff, rent, insurance, etc.
Why do I want to pay for the staff, rent, lobbying fees, legal expenses, etc. of an entirely different corporation?
What does that do for me? How does that lower costs.
How’d you like to go the hardware store to buy a hammer only to discover that you can’t pay the hardware store owner. Instead, you have to pay some other company that has a bill of its own that they charge you for handling the transaction.
The hammer was ten bucks. But you had to pay $14.
That’s all medical insurance is. It has no purpose. It just adds cost to medical care. There’s no way that competition between redundant companies can reduce cost.
Plus, it’s stupid. You insure against things that might happen, not things that will definitely happen. My house might burn down so I have insurance in case that happens. If everyone knew that my house would burn down, they wouldn’t sell me insurance. Well, I’m going to get sick and die. Unless I die suddenly, that’s all but guaranteed. So insurance makes no sense. What i should do is simply pay for my health care during my working years, to the best of my ability. And if we all do that, it will be affordable for everybody.
The competition comes from doctors competing against each other for the business of the insurance companies, who, given their evil profit motive, are more likely to have more information about the cost effectiveness of the offering of various doctors than are individual consumers…
Also, most health insurance does insure against what “might” happen…I “might” get cancer, I “might” get heart disease, etc.
The only thing that might not happen is that I might not die…
Insurance companies also compete regarding the type of insurance that make the most sense…
Being the nut that I am, I believe the human mind is so powerful that most illnesses are a manifestation of unresolved emotional repression…I am also a firm believer in holistic treatments…
Given my beliefs, if I had my own insurance company, I woulld focus on high-deductible, low-cost catastrophic coverage, and educate my customers on how to make themselves well…thought good nutrition, exercise, positive visualization, and understanding how our negative thoughts and emotions can create physical symptoms…
For the materialists out there who believe the universe is random molecules…go ahead and keep your low-deductible, “go to the doctor every time you sneeze” insurance…
In the long run, our philosophy would win in the marketplace, reducing costs and increasing the overall health of the populace…
Trust me…there is competition to be had, and private insurance companies are critical to that competition…
The title of this piece was not an invitation.
Clever…
At least I take the time to read, and seriously consider (then refute, of course) the viewpoints of my opponents on the left…because I am sympathetic to your motives, and at least try to look at your viewpoint, then explain how our viewpoint meets the same objective…
You just call us Stupid…
But then again, I could spend my time on a Conservative website, and write “Obama Sucks”, and have responses like “right on”…
You’re saying a few stupid things, frankly.
You want to have a serious discussion?
Try reading this.
You know what happens when 19 million seniors get free preventative care? It saves us a shit-ton of money, and it saves or extends hundreds of thousands of lives.
Read this.
Isn’t that exactly what Republicans are always complaining about?
Finally, about bankrupting the country:
For every “green quote” that you put forth (I’m embarassed that I still can’t use the “green quote” or “orange block technology”…if my full time job was blogging, I could likely find a “green quote” rebuttal…
Just guessing…
Plus…on another topic on today’s blog, I addressed the problem of “static” analysis versus “dynamic” analysis…
CBO is all about statit analysis…it doesn’t work…
Instead of imagining that you could find matching quotes if only you had time to look, why not address booman’s points? The logic is pretty compelling.
Start with this:
Start for the correct starting place.
CBO scoring is non-partisan. That alone makes it the most objective analysis we can get on the budgetary impact of any proposal or bill.
Part of its rigor is that it has strict rules about what it will score. In many cases, this means that it refuse to score likely costs or, just as commonly, likely savings.
So, yes, they are not perfect. To truly digest CBO data in an intelligent manner, you need to know what they are and are not scoring, and to have some idea about how that might skew the real numbers in the real world.
The CBO analysis on the ACA has been unambiguous. Big savings in the first decade and HUGE savings in the second decade. If you repeal the ACA you will have to pay for the loss of savings.
There are no gimmicks or blind spots in their analysis that can adequately overcome the amount of money being saved by the bill.
Liberty, what the Hell is so magical about markets? They are fine for cutting the costs of fast food and providing a variety of mostly useless variations on products, but does any one really chose a doctor or lawyer by looking for the cheapest one? And do free markets as depicted in Econ 101 really exist? Commodity and stock markets come close, neglecting insider trading and front running, but even they show that free markets are inherently unstable. Most markets are monopolies or oligopolies wherein a handful of CEO’s decide what can be sold and for how much.
Wouldn’t you rather have your healthcare in the hands of a politician who needs to keep at least 51% of his constituents happy than in the hands of a CEO who can only inflate his already obscene income by screwing as many customers as possible (e.g. Goldman Sachs)?
You guys are wearing me out…
What’s magical about markets?
Are you kidding?
Virtually every good and service we enjoy was created by the magical market…
Problem is, there has been no pure “Collective” and no pure “Individualistic” society in world history, so we never know to whom to attribute the wealth of that society…
That’s why the debate rages on…
We believe that, in a way, the market has created everything…even the goods and services the government provides was PAID FOR BY THE MARKET!
His point is that choice for the sake of it is stupid and doesn’t accomplish anything. Government shouldn’t be in the business of artificially providing choice under the bizarre notion that just having choice is a virtue in and of itself, and it really shouldn’t be in the business of providing choices that can’t be proven to work.
Here’s the problem with relying only on the market: Even assuming that inefficiencies get sorted out in the long run, there can be an incredible amount of human suffering — unnecessary human suffering — on the road to that sorting out.
Preventing that human suffering is what regulations are for. And alleviating it is when it occurs anyway is what the social safety net is for.
Advocating reliance on the market and nothing else is baffling to me. I don’t understand why anyone would choose to do that. The principle it serves isn’t even a particularly attractive or appealing one!
Have you read Unsafe at Any Speed?
It’s about the lack of concern for safety among car manufacturers in the 1950’s and 60’s.
It’s what made Ralph Nader famous.
Times have changed but the basic principle has not. You would think, for example, that a Ford or Chrysler executive would not want to make an unsafe product because it could destroy their brand. But they’re often willing to take that risk to increase sales in the short-term (investing in design rather than engineering) . If the brand goes bad, they’ve already made a bundle, have a golden parachute, and they’re off to work for the next big corporation.
Markets get distorted in all kinds of ways. The most important way they get distorted is greed. Just think about how many people knew that they buying or selling toxic mortgages but didn’t care because everyone was making money. Yeah, the dance had to end, but it was fun as hell while it lasted.
One more thing. Imagine if every private heath insurance policy disappeared tomorrow. Imagine if not one more penny went into lobbying Congress on insurance or marketing it to the people. Imagine if all those jobs disappeared overnight and no one needed to pay for every redundant filing clerk. Whether all that money and all that work got consolidated down to one company or it all went to the government, the cost of providing health care would go down dramatically. And that’s because 95% of it is totally superfluous, It doesn’t even happen or exist in most modern economies.
We have zero need for a private health insurance industry. It provides nothing of value on any level. The only thing it is good for other than screwing people is employing people. It’s basically a jobs program, just like our military policy is a giant jobs program.
It provides competition…the fountain of all wealth, or all societal benefit…
In whatever field it endeavors, Government has no competition…
Progressives seemingly hate “Monopolies”, but wholeheartedly embrace the ultimate monopoly that can outlaw its competition (i.e. Gove)rnment
Blessed Be The Name Of The Market!
Liberty for All, I have a healthy respect for the market as a means of provisioning society. But even I can recognize, with a bit of reflection, that to say “virtually every good and service we enjoy was created by the magical market” is a gross overstatement.
Markets work great when there are many buyers, many sellers and generally dispersed information. Absent any one of those conditions (one or a few buyers, one or a few sellers, secret or unequally dispersed information about the goods or services being marketed), markets don’t work as well.
Markets also require a degree of social order—which over the last few thousand years has led to the creation of “the state”—that entity which has a legal monopoly on the use of violence within a society.
“Markets” and “states” are human constructs, not magical or divine entities. They function better or worse in different societies and different times based on many factors—but primarily on we humans and how we interact with each other.
Thanks for pointing that out to our dear friend. Without the state, there is no “capitalism.”
Yes, and corporations are a human construct as well. It is state law that protects shareholders from liability, and without that limited liability and the corporation’s status as a separate legal entity, corporations would find it much more difficult to raise the capital they do and support the ventures they support.
I sometimes use the illustration of the local County Recorder here. Its an unglamorous government office charged with the recording of deeds, bills of sale, mortgage notes, etc. in order to establish legal ownership of homes, businesses, etc. Without this humble government office, officially recognized by the courts, there would be no secure property ownership at all. See Somalia, where the warlords with the largest gangs rule.
IIRC, there was a little problem recently where mortgage market speculators sought to foreclose on properties where this humble step in the process to establish legal ownership was blithely ignored.
Evidently Michele Bachmann really does not hold to the USA form of government.