Obamacare and cosmic justice
I have a new post up at PJ on the topic of Obamacare and justice, winners and losers. Please comment here or comment there, or both.
The New Neo
A blog about political change, among other things
I have a new post up at PJ on the topic of Obamacare and justice, winners and losers. Please comment here or comment there, or both.
Cosmic justice would be an asteroid or a horde of angels descending on DC.
Well said, Neo. The proponents of Cosmic Justice believe that they occupy the moral high ground.
They are nevertheless practical enough to include among their beneficiaries those population clusters who are also natural political allies or paying constituencies. After all, they must win elections if they are going to have the opportunity to do so much good for so many.
Yeah, I think basing an evaluation of the law on a head-count of “winners” and “losers” is highly problematic and quite misguided.
Suppose we had a law that authorized HHS to go and murder the 10 wealthiest families in the U.S., seize all of their assets, and then use that wealth to subsidize health care for millions of uninsured Americans.
One could enact such a reform and then easily arrive at the conclusion that it produced more winners than losers. But the scorecard wouldn’t actually reflect the true merits of such a law. In truth, EVERYONE would be a loser because of the manner in which the supposed benefits were generated.
It’s the same with Obamacare: We’re all losers because it takes away freedom, it encumbers economic growth, it raises debt, and it makes our health care system just that much crappier in the future.
Right on. We must exploit the issue of “Who Decides?” much better than we have. In the Coercive Compassionate State the few members of the New Nobility make decisions that alter the lives of hundreds of millions – to the genuine benefit of a very few and the detriment of millions of the many.
And we have no recourse for bad outcomes. When I decide, I have power (the power of the marketplace, the power to sue, etc.)
When the State decides, the only real power is the power to submit or get punished.
If we are all losers when we all become supplicants, then the system is unsustainable and collapse of the system inescapable.
The Obama administration’s Justice department argued in court, while Obama made his assurances, that the majority of American would have their health plans cancelled. The majority will lose their family doctor. Many will lose the ability to see a doctor for all but the gravest of health problems with nurse practitioners filling in for doctors, so the quality of care will go down. A majority will lose their hospitals. Many American children will lose their Pediatrician…
On top of all that, premiums have to skyrocket because many of the 18-30 yr olds, who MUST be enrolled, don’t have jobs. it won’t be a matter of affordability, it will be a matter of not having any money.
Collapse isn’t a possibility, it’s “baked into the cake”.
Neo,
A fundamental problem is that Progressives simply will not admit to the cognitive dissonance of their own position. You quote Drew Altman as saying: “. . . ‘winners’ greatly outnumber the ‘losers’ . . . .” He says this as though this justifies the redistributive scheme, but, the entire point of redistributuion is that it’s done to avoid a winners and losers outcome. You point this out with regard to Obamacare (“Obamacare was promoted as a program . . . that would create no losers at all.”) but it’s more than Obamacare. That winners or losers exist at all belies the very raison d’etre of the Progressive ideology.
The “T”ranslator: “Progressive ideals can’t and don’t work, but that doesn’t invalidate Progressive ideals as thought they didn’t work.” The mind explodes!
The battle (war?) is being waged on an intellectual level and our side has not realized this and has not shown up.
“Justice” has certain “principles” – hammered out since the dawn of Western Civilization.
The first principle is actually a faith-based decision about the universe of reality – that is, are we created by God and therefore endowed with certain inalienable “rights”? The Founders and our Founding Documents say Yes. The Left says No.
Your major battle is right there.
After that the principles are: rights (which are basic, and which are secondary); responsibilities, which are the flip side of the same coin as rights, such that you cannot have rights without assuming your own responsibilities in life. The Left never talks about that side of the coin and therefore its notion of rights is simply insane, crippled, deranged and destructive.
It has always been a corollary, for example, that “extreme claims of rights leads to extreme injustice”. Right off the bat we can take as a rule of thumb that the Left is not just, but unjust, and extremely unjust at that. That we even consider they are just at all is our fault. We should not concede any ground to these tyrannical monsters on that issue.
Next are the principles of the common good, preferential treatment for the poor and needy (in terms of basic rights and not whether they have IPhones), and finally the principle of subsidiarity (the most tragic loss America has had since Wilson is the loss of this principle, and I wonder if people even know what it is anymore).
“Justice” is when all those are operate together and in a harmonius balance.
Cosmic Justice? The Left breaks 3 or 4 principles before it gets out of bed in the morning. It is either an ignoramus or a demon or both and that’s it.
The Democrat Party and its voters are the single most unjust and unprincipled people to ever exist in America.
But we have to fight them in the intellectual streets and never back down. As a start, for each new ‘right’ the Left finds we should demand a relevant responsibility.
Health Care is a perfect opportunity. You want cheap insurance? You want others to pay? Fine. It becomes your responsibility to quit smoking, drinking, drugs, lose however many pounds you need to and live like you wouldn’t even need insurance. Then you get the benefit for the real medical conditions and not the ones you have brought on yourself.
Let there be AT THE VERY LEAST – a weigh-in every 6 months. You don’t pass, you lose the bennies.
Put that fat clause in there and Dems will repeal Obamacare themselves by next Tuesday.
It should be obvious by now that everything that these lying shitbags are really for is the opposite of what they say they are for. The Affordable Care Act really about making insurance unaffordable. Seattle Children’s Hospital is apparently suing the state insurance commissioner because they have been excluded from the state exchange. Earth to Children’s Hospital: These people don’t think that critically ill children should receive any care at all. That is why they don’t care about cancer patients losing insurance in the middle of treatment. They want them to just die already. HHS Secretary Bilious said so.
These people are evil evil evil.
Pincky, who is this “we” you talking about?
you sound like the academics who write papers in which the “we” is the state and masses forced by others and others acting to do what you suggest while you dont act… kind of like an armchair marx in a coffee shop… except you dont get laid this way.
Lurker, see inverted totalitarianism, neoliberalism, authritarianism, and managed democracy, and enlightened despotism. i put it in the other thread.
thsi stuff was worked out in the 40s to 60s. you guys have barely caught up to the 30s… and you still have the 80s and 90s to discover… these writings are not on the operah list and are a resonant fishbowl all to themselves.
given the severity of things going on, i figured you guys wanted to look at the answers… but i been feeding them to you all, and that is not true.
i guess its cause you all know the answer you will find if you bone up on it, so not boning up on it delays the day you have to act.
or in case you are not familir, read bout the CALLUS REVOLUTUON (cuba)
One of the most hurtful aspects of this process was the silence and complicity with which many of our fellow citizens accepted the lawlessness of the regime. As the abuses increased and the repression grew unabated, large segments of the population out of fear, apathy and even envy, opted to look the other way. Even as the injustices intensified and became more blatant, the majority said nothing; lest they become targets themselves.
The Callus Revolution: As the government continued to trample over the civil society, a curious thing began to happen. Well known sycophants of the regime began to have overnight epiphanies that would transform them from supporters to dissidents the minute their own interests were at stake. This phenomenon did not go unnoticed by the populace, who began to call the Cuban revolution by the name of the Callus Revolution. The name was in honor of all the suddenly “enlighten souls” whose enlightenment had occurred only after their calluses (or toes) had been stepped on.
http://floppingaces.net/2013/11/22/the-callus-revolution-2-0-reader-post/comment-page-1/
A lot of people in America doesn’t believe evil exists. Except in Republicans, that is.
Subsidizing the fat clause would mean losing Santa Clause.
The streets of Pleasantville are combed with trees
and horses champing at their bits. The leaves,
clank like metal over the ivory.
From Clee to heaven, please, God, save the free.
Packing the courts with progressive judges is a sure way to destroy the rule of law. When the facts of a case and the settled precedents take a back seat to a judge’s version of social justice or redistribution, we are talking about a nation of men, not a nation of laws.
From Bookworm: “As with everything else the Left touches, law is not about applying settled, reliable principles to known facts. Instead, on the civil side, it becomes purely redistributive. I cannot tell you the number of cases I’ve handled that saw the judge rule against my corporate client, even while admitting that my client had the better legal case. Nor can I count how many times judges have engaged in obscene intellectual contortions to ensure a redistributive outcome.” Read more here:
http://www.bookwormroom.com/2013/11/21/harry-reids-nuclear-option-is-a-red-herring-but-the-effects-will-still-be-profound/#comments
We’ve been trending this way for some time, now the progressives are trying to put it in overdrive. More ammo for the 2014 campaign, if the Repubs will but use it.
Altman’s assertion is wrong on its face. Adding more Medicaid recipients makes every present Medicaid recipient who utilizes health care services worse off. In addition, not all of the new Medicaid recipients will even be winners, but will likely just be indifferent. As for the insurance buyers, those who only buy due to the mandate are objectively worse off. Those who were buying previously, but now must pay higher premiums to cross subsidize the new, more expensive buyers are objectively worse off, and they will certainly outnumber any new buyers who wanted to buy previously, but couldn’t.
But you don’t even need to do that analysis I just did above. If Democrats had done this honestly and openly, they would have raised taxes and bought every uninsured person a policy, but then you would know for certain there were more losers than winners since the tax hurt more people than the new policies help.
JJ:
I was in an attorney’s office and reading some sort of legal magazine. The editorial by the editor was horrendous. It was about a program in of all place, I think, Montana, where attorneys and judges remarked on a sensitivity training program. The article described something like a “One Flew Over the Cukoo’s Nest” encounter group where they unburdened their inner selves and found social acceptance. I wish I had taken that magazine, and I have searched online to find that article, but to no avail. It was like watching an extraordinary event and feeling a sense of displacement: Can’t be real.
On another note, I wanted to pinpoint your “math determines we must get the independent’s vote” argument. No, definitely, No. Governor Scott Walker explains:
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303985504579206210388287976
Excerpt:
When I faced the need to reform collective bargaining in the government, I wanted to win, but I wasn’t afraid to lose and didn’t worry about getting re-elected. That was profoundly liberating.
Too many people in politics today spend their time trying not to lose instead of trying to do the right thing. They would better serve the country by worrying more about the next generation than the next election
CARGO CULT
Cargo cult science refers to practices that have the semblance of being scientific, but do not in fact understand, or follow, the scientific method.
The term was first used by the physicist Richard Feynman during his commencement address at the California Institute of Technology, United States, in 1974. “Cargo cults”–the religious practice that has appeared in many traditional tribal societies in the wake of interaction with technologically advanced cultures–focus on obtaining the material wealth (the “cargo”) of the advanced culture by building mock aircraft, landing strips, and the like.
Had a brainstorm today: What we’re seeing is Leftists doing “Cargo Cult enterprise.”
Leftwing politicians and Leftwing academics have no more idea than a pre-Stone Age tribesman of how to:
1. Create wealth,
2. Organize a going concern,
3. Make anything worth buying,
4. Sell anything substantial, or
5. Service what they sell.
Like the New Guinea tribesmen who thought, after watching our SeaBees in WW II, that the way to summon these huge metal birds from the skies was to clap coconut halves to their ears and wave sticks in hieratic gestures, the Leftists are trying to ape the people who built the insurance and medical industries, using similarly crude approximations.
So what do you get? A sort of Frankenstein, a mockery of the real thing, built by people who have, literally, No Idea of how to Make. Extraction they understand, all too well. Creation? Apart from fantasies, no idea in the world.
Example: Stephen Cohen, Princeton prof. and “expert on the USSR” who was often asked to be on Charlie Rose, was interviewed by him some years ago, not long after the fall of the Soviet government. Charlie (a lawyer, btw) asked Stephen, “What can the Russians do to boost their economy?”
Stephen, who had been fluent and voluble up to that point, was flummoxed. He sat there for a moment or two, then offered tentatively, “They could increase their oil production….?”
I realized in that moment that Leftists have NO IDEA how wealth is created: they only know how to extract, to take; they think there’s a finite amount, even though they’re surrounded by a fabulous civilization that was clawed out of virgin forest. They are — I was going to say they’re like babies, but even babies try to make things from a tender age.
CARGO CULT:
The name derives from the apparent belief that various ritualistic acts will lead to a bestowing of material wealth (“cargo”).[1][2]
Cargo cults often develop during a combination of crises. Under conditions of social stress, such a movement may form under the leadership of a charismatic figure. This leader may have a “vision” (or “myth-dream”) of the future.
[Sound familiar?]
Yance: Isn’t that the truth that mere claims suffice for proof.
Obama claims the website will be fixed by the end of this month.
Obama claims that after one year the overall effect of Obamacare will generate popular support for its continued implementation.
Altman merely claims that the number helped is greater than the number hurt.
Just claims and promises!
But as you stated, when more people find entrance into the free pool (Medicaid), the amount of pro rata coverage and treatment reduces. The now covered applicants, finding an entrance to healthcare, discover and use it, and claim a portion that before went to just the previous Medicaid recipients. Rationing follows.
Supposedly, the cost is recouped through efficiency (right!) and volunteer payments in return for lifetime and beneficial coverage. More of those promises. That’s all Obamacare is: Promises. But no one volunteers to “save” now for later, and only a pittance penalty is collected to cover the increased cost.
Meanwhile, an invidious tapeworm impedes everything: Healthcare is directed to the politically correct. From voter and gun registration to opinions regarding the role of family and government, healthcare is provided as a reward for correct political views and action. In the superb new documentary about TWA Flight 800, one lady testifies before Congress that FBI agents made a veiled threat that her immigrant status would not result in citizen status if she spoke her eye witness testimony about the event. She stated she did not speak. She wanted American citizenship. How much more do people want “access to affordable health care,” or more specifically, pain killers when in dire pain, corrective surgery, diagnosis of their symptoms, and hope for their future. As the hypocricy of Martin Bashir’s outrageous comments about Sarah Palin show, we cannot trust the allocation of healthcare to ideological bureaucrats. Their standards our for them, and them alone.
Every one of us will fall, sooner or later, into that one-sixth of the economy. There is the rub. We kind of think, ohh, only one-sixth, but it is worse than that because that one-sixth will claim you, sooner or later. It isn’t one-sixth. It is all, sooner or later, you will experience it as all.
In fact, it has claimed you already. It is the law and you are its subject.
Obama claimed American prosperity and international respect will rise up as the sea levels lower when he is put into power.
Beverly,
I have read various metaphors for the left (and written one or two myself here), but your description of the New Guinea shaman is, without a doubt, the clearest and most devastatingly accurate exposition of the Progressive mindset that I have ever read.
Well, done! Well done, indeed!
Let’s remember what the messiah indicated was his most important criteria for a judge: empathy. Empathy is emotional, subjective, arbitrary. As a child, I was taught that the code of Hammurabi was a great advance in civilization because law was now fixed and known to all who were subject to it’s rules. How obsolete that idea has become.
Beverly: “Leftwing politicians and Leftwing academics have no more idea than a pre-Stone Age tribesman of how to:
1. Create wealth,
2. Organize a going concern,
3. Make anything worth buying,
4. Sell anything substantial, or
5. Service what they sell.”
Exactly! They have a childlike belief/faith that the money will always be there if they go through proper ceremonies. They have no understanding of human nature and how humans react to risk and reward. Adam Smith saw how wealth is created and wrote it all down in “the Wealth of Nations,” but all they seem to be able to understand is a weird faith in government as the source of wealth creation “You didn’t build that – the government was the prime mover and helper behind you that made it possible.” No, what creates wealth is private property laws enforced by impartial courts coupled with individual efforts to improve one’s standard of living. Extraction of natural resources – agriculture, mining, oil and gas drilling, timbering, fishing, hydro-electric plants, etc. – is the bedrock on which are built the creative, manufacturing industries. From those activities flow the service industries – banking, stock markets, insurance, transportation, retailing, healthcare, etc. – which make the basic wealth creating activities more efficient and spread the wealth to all corners of a society.
Back in the 1800s the idea of communes was popular in the U.S. The city of Greeley, Colorado was started as a commune and was backed by Horace Greeley who was enthralled by the idea. It didn’t take too long before it was plain that some people were willing to work harder, longer, and smarter than most. And that some did little, but wanted an equal share of the crops and other products of the settlement. The commune fell apart because – human nature. (The progressives would claim excessive greed by those who worked harder.) The facts are out there, but the progressives keep clinging to the belief (and yes, it does resemble religious faith) that it just hasn’t been done right.
delete.the.alternative: “When I faced the need to reform collective bargaining in the government, I wanted to win, but I wasn’t afraid to lose and didn’t worry about getting re-elected. That was profoundly liberating.”
I saw Scott Walker interviewed on Greta Van Susteren’s show. From that interview it’s obvious why he has been able to win in a mostly democrat state. He is typically middle class in appearance and manner. Good looking enough, but not Hollywood handsome. He is earnest, speaks his thoughts clearly, and comes off as honest. He talks about how his policies will improve the situation in Wisconsin while refraining from going too negative on his opponents. He now has a record of success to run on for another term as governor. Mild mannered though he be, we all know he was very courageous in his battle with the unions and the recall attempt. IMO, he is a formidable candidate for 2016 because of all those points. His Mr. Smith (everyman) persona will gain him votes from the mushy independents (as it did in Wisconsin) and that is where (because of the math) national elections are won.
As a number of people have pointed out, the government should not be in the business of picking winners and losers. Of necessity, any government program will help or hurt some people more than others. However, that should not be the primary objective.
It is very clear that Obama and Holder have picked sides.
2016: An optimistic view.
Walker in the Whitehouse for 8 years.
Cruz appointed to the Supreme Court.
Rand is majority leader in the Senate.
Karl Rove and Chris Christie affirm their tea-party status.
No matter how talented the leader, they cannot win a war without an army.
There is no army here.
There is an excellent comment to neo’s column at PJ saying that the effect of Obamacare will be to push down most Americans into lower-tier care with only a few wealthy people who can afford to bypass the system altogether able to get good medical care. This is what happens now with the British and Canadian systems where the people who can afford it come to the US for their medical care. So the effect of Obamacare will be to make medical care *less* equal rather than more equal.
Near as I can tell, Healthcare.gov can’t be made functional in less than a full year. It’s THAT complex.
Most of the media still think that the website can be brought up to speed in the nick of time.
Yet, the Federal government has built a track record of mega-failures in software design over the years. I give you the F-22 Raptor. It’s really a hunk of flying software. Take a look at its final price tag. (!)
A special language, Ada, was developed just for that plane. It famously used strong data typing to stop errors. Without a doubt much of the F-22 Ada code has been ported to the F-35. It’s flying software, too. In all of the travails, no-one admits that software headaches completely dominated these planes during development.
In comparison, the Healthcare.gov website is scaffolded with lies and self-delusions. For political reasons/ election fraud the underlying regulations were delayed until the tyrant was re-selected. Then the fun began.
The only part of the Hub that’s working is the quick default to Medicaid. Naturally, since the resources dedicated to Medicaid have scarcely changed, rationing is going to occur on a massive scale.
One can only conclude that 0-care is Barry’s Barbarossa. He’s painted himself into a corner that has no exit.
This is the best explanation as to why Reid went nuclear. He’s looking at a lame duck president — with more than three years in office. We’d have to look back to Andrew Johnson to find a president so isolated.
In the meantime, the world is going to Hell in a hand basket.
Our navy is largely sitting in port… our army no longer trains!
It’s now obvious that Bibi is going to HAVE to do what must be done. After which, Iranian furies will be inflicted far and wide.
As LBJ could tell you, even appearing to lose a war punks one’s poll numbers.
I can easily imagine Barry threatening Israel with an economic boycott — and termination of military exports — already.
He’s put certified kooks in critical positions of authority. When not zany, his high officials are light-weights, dillies.
The ramping American real estate market really represents a flight from the US Dollar. It’s the number one mechanism for shorting the US Dollar. This gambit is what’s driving Wall Street mega-hedge funds into epic real estate sprees — buying SFH far and wide.
This effort is widely misinterpreted as an effort to be mega-landlords — collecting rents far and wide. But a quick glance at the economics indicates that collecting rents is NOT a priority. Shorting mortgages IS the priority.
In this the hedge funds are merely repeating the one-way bets of six years ago. They design to unload their exposure before the proles get hip to just what a turkey the smart money is unloading into their pension funds. All that is required is to wine and dine the idiots in charge of these asset pools. You’d be staggered to find out just how naive, vain and stupid that crowd is. They’re not appointed on merit — not by a long shot. Old school ties count for far, far, more.
And in the meantime, intangible capital is being utterly destroyed by ZIRP — thank you Mr. Fed.
ZIRP makes lending to small businesses very unattractive. They suffer all the slings and arrows of Barry’s maladministration — without any of the cronyist advantages. All in all, very poor bets.
As bad as Barry is, Europe is even zanier. Hollande is absolutely crushing the French economy. The compounded taxes paid by the proles over there are frightful. Not surprisingly France can’t get out of first gear.
The difficulty scale of what the gov is trying to do is several orders of magnitude more difficult than a mere shopping website.
After reading your article, Neo, I wonder what action the government will take when middle-class people start taking the advice I’ve heard in the lunchroom and the church parking lot: 1) Raise the number of exemptions on your payroll paperwork so that there’s no tax refund to take the “noncompliant” penalty out, 2) make adjustments to pre-tax investments to lower their taxable income, and/or 3) enter some of the faith-based payment pools that are exempt from the ACA. These aren’t people who will stand up and try to shout these things down, but they aren’t complacent, either. They’ll quietly change the way that they do things.