Next up: Medicaid
Perhaps the most important Obamacare lie will turn out to be the one about Medicaid:
The biggest lie of all is that 15-30 million additional people who will be enticed or shoved onto Medicaid will receive quality health care.
In reality, they will receive health care “insurance,” but there will be few doctors willing to see them because the reimbursement rates are so low.
Everyone who was even remotely familiar with the way Medicaid works was quite aware of this at the time Obamacare was passed, because Medicaid recipients were already having great difficulty getting a doctor to see them due to the low reimbursement rates. The Obamacare Medicaid expansion provides people with the trappings of care but is unlikely to be able to deliver all that much of it.
Unless, of course, more doctors come under the thumb of government:
Forcing doctors to accept Medicaid patients will be the inevitable solution.
Oh, doctors. They earn too much money anyway, don’t they?
Not in the Soviet Union. Not even in post-Soviet Russia. Why? Here’s why [emphasis mine]:
Soviet doctors never had anything like the status and money of Western doctors. The medicine they practice was considered to be below the levels of the West, the system always suffered from shortages, and the social status of a provincial general practitioner was akin to a schoolteacher’s, respectable, but modest…
But under Communism, doctors at least lived no worse than anybody else — and maybe a bit better.
That has changed. Caught between an impoverished government that cannot afford universal medical care and a deep-rooted Soviet scorn for medicine-for-profit, many of Russia’s doctors, especially here in the provinces, seem worn thin, out of canteen water but still marching ahead.
”When everything else took the capitalist road of development, and medicine was left on the socialist road, we got an imbalance that is killing medicine,” said Dr. Aleksei Golland, one of a handful of private doctors in Kostroma.
”It’s an economic death,” he said. ”If it continues like this, I see the murder of medicine in that the masses of quality doctors don’t have ground to stand on. A surgeon has to plant potatoes to feed his family.”
Ask what keeps the government-paid doctors going and the same words keep coming up: Vocation. Duty. Mercy. Naked enthusiasm…
A few doctors are doing pretty well. There are a handful of legally private doctors. And there are the doctors who practice a sort of black-market medicine in which they operate in state facilities, but charge their own little tolls.
Has the situation changed much in Russia since the above quotes were written in 2000? It certainly doesn’t seem that way. And I wonder if that’s part of the reason life expectancy there is so lousy.
W. Churchill pointed out that, “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.” So too with medicine based in capitalism and medicine based in socialism.
What socialists refuse to see is the truth in another of Churchill’s metaphors; “Some see private enterprise as a predatory target to be shot, others as a cow to be milked, but few are those who see it as a sturdy horse pulling the wagon.”
In medicine, the ‘wagon’ is medical progress.
ObamaCare and the left would ‘bless us’ with the permanent and “equal sharing of miseries”.
Except of course for the elite nomenklatura.
Some Democrat idiot woman legislator already suggested forcing doctors to take on Medicaid patients. Legalized slavery is the only way to make this system work.
The posters here are not exempt from the coming consequences. You’d best take it personally, and that means think of your spouse, kids, grandkids, all the individuals that matter. They will be included in the Democratic roadkill, smashed by the great vehicle headed to utopia.
The reason why civil war is inevitable isn’t because I was doing a Cassandra from 2008 onwards.
It’s because when people get hit in the face, they’ll have no idea what it is they were up against. No idea.
Generally nations and factions that think the other side has a clue on how to hit back, and hit back hard (MAD nukes), war is too risky to start. But if one side is full of sheep and idiots who thinks money comes from federal printing trees ready to be redistributed to the needy, eventually a faction will gain enough power that they will turn from doing “con jobs” into doing “wet work”.
Medicaid – insurance coverage that no provider can afford to accept. I don’t know why the progressives can’t get it that medical care providers have overhead and a need to pay for their personal expenses as well. Which includes their health insurance. The cost of which is going up for all those who are in private practice.
Would anyone in Congress work for nothing or not enough to cover their cost of living? Maybe a few of the millionaires would, but most of them need to pay their personal expenses and expect to be paid well. They also don’t participate in Obamacare because it’s not good enough for them. They get platinum plated health insurance, which we, the taxpayers, pay for. If any of those utopians ever tried to learn how the real world works, they might understand why Obamacare and expanded Medicaid are such awful ideas.
Hate is required to fight a war (though victory requires higher level strategy). Hate, ironically, is fueled by love. The more things people love, the more potential they have to hate the things that keep destroying what they love.
Until a person sees their child or loved one smashed in the head, repeatedly, by the boot of a Leftist elite and/or thug. They will not understand.
Tyranny is easy to understand intellectually, at least for those not born as slaves to the Ivy Tower. Emotions are to be felt and experienced. Hate is an emotion. War is fueled by emotions, not intellect.
In a sense, those fighting a war requires suffering. They require that enemies suffer. But they also require that their own side suffer. Because until there reaches a balancing point, victory is unfeasible for either faction(s) involved.
Evil is an experience. It is not a word. It is not a political platform. It’s not a phone call.
It is not enough to disagree with the Left. It is not enough to dislike their policies or politics.
The requirement for deserving victory is that one hate the Left. All of them. Those on the Left are not your family members or friends, they are Leftist members. They are not co-workers. They are not relatives. They are not associates. They are not friends.
Hating Obama may be a good start, but it is never good enough.
Until people have enough hate, they don’t even meet the bare minimum requirements for deserving victory, let alone the actual prerequisites for victory and prosperity.
“I don’t know why the progressives can’t get it that medical care providers have overhead and a need to pay for their personal expenses as well.” JJ
“from each according to their means, to each according to their need”
Those who embrace the above quote, hard core leftists, of course exempt themselves from that imperative. But more importantly, they have sold the liberal rubes on the premises that capitalism itself is an unjust system because its blessings are unequal. One that rewards an obscenely rich elite who have stolen from the public (the proletariat) and were they to return their ill gotten gains and merely take a ‘living wage’ could empower a cornucopia of wealth for mankind in a future utopia. Liberals suffer from arrested development and on a fundamental level reject reality in favor of an idealism disconnected from reality. That cognitive dysfunction is emotion based and appeals to fact and reason have no more effect upon their illusions than the Atlantic ocean’s waves upon Gibraltar.
“The requirement for deserving victory is that one hate the Left. All of them. Those on the Left are not your family members or friends, they are Leftist members. They are not co-workers. They are not relatives. They are not associates. They are not friends.” Ymarsaker
That is as fine an example of demonization as I perhaps have ever seen. Congratulations, Lenin himself could not have done better.
Many of our family members relatives, friends, co-workers and associates do foolishly and ignorantly support the left. But they are not of the left. They are dupes and for that, the only response that allows us to retain our humanity is to “forgive them for they know not what they do” while legally opposing the left at every turn possible.
When and if the day comes when the left imposes a violent tyranny that cannot be denied, then civil war will erupt and anyone who picks up arms to defend and impose that tyranny will be fair game. But there will be no herding of leftists into mass executions and, that is where the path that you advocate leads.
Many of the Leftists in a family with Republicans, don’t hide their hatred or other negative feelings about conservative capitalists and patriots being evil or stupid. Yet these Leftists function quite well married to so called patriots and Republicans who have different politics.
GB must think he and his ilk cannot function at the same level as these operatives. They can’t bring themselves to demonize their spouses and function in a marriage, but a Leftist spouse can function at that kind of split in philosophy.
That is as fine an example of demonization as I perhaps have ever seen. Congratulations, Lenin himself could not have done better.
You’re one of those people who aren’t willing to accept certain things, aren’t you.
Essentially, a zombie tool cannonfodder of the Left, one of the lowest possible level of operative, can function at a higher “life” quotient than so called conservative patriots are expected to.
And people think they can win a war while riding their moral high horse around, is that it?
They are dupes and for that, the only response that allows us to retain our humanity is to “forgive them for they know not what they do” while legally opposing the left at every turn possible.
We’ll be sure to post that on the gravestones of those who got killed because your relatives, GB, led the death squads to them.
While you can forgive transgressions against you, nobody gave you permission to forgive the crimes against humanity or other actual humans. That’s not for you to say, guy riding on his moral high horse, now is it.
Such weak sauce rationalization from you is why your side doesn’t even deserve to win to begin with. You don’t want it enough. You have the resolve equal to a person at the mall, thinking he’s supporting the war overseas because he has the strength to choose between vanilla and chocolate.
“GB must think he and his ilk cannot function at the same level as these operatives. They can’t bring themselves to demonize their spouses and function in a marriage, but a Leftist spouse can function at that kind of split in philosophy.”
Ilk? “moral high horse”? My relatives leading “the death squads”? “crimes against humanity”?
Well. To paraphrase Maggie Thatcher, “When they attack one personally, it means they haven’t a single coherent argument left.”
Firstly, you cannot have the least iota of what moral character my relatives may consist. Stereotypical speculation does not a valid argument make but it’s fine as character assassination, the very leftist methodology you denigrate.
As for the ability of a leftist to “demonize their spouses and function in a marriage”..that’s NOT a marriage and only willful denial could lead a spouse so demonized to pretend they had a real marriage.
“people think they can win a war while riding their moral high horse around, is that it?”
Not at all and were you not so ‘offended’ and emotionally defensive at being called out on demonizing those opposed to your POV, you would have considered my caveat, “When and if the day comes when the left imposes a violent tyranny that cannot be denied, then civil war will erupt and anyone who picks up arms to defend and impose that tyranny will be fair game.”
Nor was Christ’s admonition to forgive transgressions against us a blanket amnesty for any and all transgressions. There’s a great difference between someone slapping your face and imposing tyranny at the point of a gun.
As for my opinion as to the correct response to “crimes against humanity” my right to express my opinion is as valid as yours. Nor does the majority’s opinion necessarily confer validity as to the truth of the matter. A million can be as wrong as one.
It’s not a matter of ‘wanting it enough’ it’s a matter of the response being proportional to both the offense and the law. If circumstance should ever require it, you’ll find that my resolve is equal to the issue. Words are cheap, actions determine whether one’s words have real meaning.
Forced (medical) labor…
Yeah, that’s really going to work out well….
Someone said, “Hate, ironically, is fueled by love.”
Is that ironic?
Maybe it is ironic, but is it because the speaker is saying something he doesn’t really believe is true?
We expect hate to be the equal and opposite of love, if hate and love are emotions. But what if they are choices? Wouldn’t it be ironic (a subterfuge by the examiner) if we concluded, at the end of the examination, that, since you have a choice, whether to choose hate or love, the statement, “hate is fueled by love” is wrong. Hate is fueled by choice.
Hate is fueled by unforgiveness. And is this not what we experience and see? Do you know a lot of loving people who hate?
The irony, perhaps, goes even deeper. Hate, as the proverb goes, is the proper action against evil by those who love God (good). To love God is to hate evil. Ps 97.10.
So, hatred of good is evil, but hatred of evil is good, and, therefore, hatred can be fueled by love.
The statement is not ironic, just undefined. Hate, as we all know, can be evil or good. Just like guns. The “transformation of “hate” into just evil is a lie, a deception, and the removal of a very awesome commandment from God.
“Forcing doctors to accept Medicaid (or Medicare) patients”
Ha! a couple of years ago I would have said that would never happen; but, since US citizens are now “forced” to buy a product or service from a third party I’m not going to be so quick to say “it would never happen.”
sigh . . .
I keep telling people Medicaid is a death sentence. Yes they’ll force docs to accept Medicaid patients. But w an ill grace? I got on the Freelancers Union plan at the last minute, the Only private option I cld find; but thats due to Sheldon Silver’s pull. I expect it to be killed next yr when the other mandates are imposed.
Re relatives: yes theyre dupes and fools mostly: but remember that kids informed on parents for the Gestapo.
Old comment of mine from Feburary 2013 on the same topic with GB.
2013/02/16/allan-bloom-on-the-ubiquity-of-moral-relativism-in-1987/
“Many loathe bible thumping, hell and brimstone, dogmatic, literalistic types who are not uncommon among fundamentalist Christian groups. The type who pay far more attention to the Old Testament than to the New”
Given that people consider 99% of religious people in existence to be part of that category, doesn’t really mean they are making a specific discrimination. They cannot tell the difference because the propaganda targeting was never designed to allow them to make that distinction accurately.
When people are made puppets, their emotions, distinctions, decisions, choices, reactions, and discriminations are less theirs than the puppet master’s.
“If ever we should “forgive them, for they know not what they doEit is now.”
Moral agents may be forgiven, but not tools. Because tools are not responsible for what they do, only the user. Many Leftist members are not users, but merely tools and cannofodder. There’s no need to forgive a tool, a gun, or a bomb. There’s no particular need to blame it either, of course.
“If they find that things aren’t going well for those people despite their policies, they sincerely think it just needs to be done better.”
Tyrants usually find it easier to blame external factors for internal failures. So if social democrats think their policies aren’t working, their first response should be to say that it is the fault of X. X being Republicans or conservatives or other counter-social revolutionaries. Even when it shouldn’t be, that is the instinctual response, due to propaganda control. It’s some one else’s fault, the fault of evil enemies.
In this way, tyrants can gain even more power as a result of their failed internal policies.
There seems to be this inclination to blame individual Leftists because people assume they are personally responsible for their own actions and are aware of the evil they do. The opposite reaction seems to prefer to forgive those that do evil without realizing it, whether through foolish or ignorance. I just don’t think the issue is whether they are fools or evil. This reminds me of the issue with Obama being a foolish incompetent or an evil master mind. To me, it didn’t really matter as much, because evil is the result. So long as evil is the result, whether it comes from one or the other isn’t very critical.
I don’t see why one needs to blame people for the evil they do nor forgive them. It’s far more convenient to treat them as the tools they are. Moral agents, they are not. If these people had free will and were using it, the results might be the same as anything else. But our response would not be. When people choose evil of their own free will, they must be obliterated or redeemed. Tools that are used to achieve evil, does not necessarily need to be destroyed. Whether we are supposed to convince or destroy evil people, whether we are supposed to make use of the tools of our enemies or not, is a strategic decision. It hinges greatly upon how our side perceives who the human resources of the enemy are: moral agents that have chosen evil of their own accord, or mere tools.
Destruction is preferred for the former, conversion/capture for the later.
Your problem, Ymarsakar, is being too sure of your positions.
This attitude leads one to imagine they can see the future (after all, isn’t it “inevitable?”). Coupled with this faulty “knowledge” is the seductive idea of being one of the anointed; you know better, and sneer at the sheeple.
This of course is exactly the thought-process on the left.
Epistemological humility is a hallmark of conservatism. I think we’ve all had our own brushes with it: remembering something important said to us, but we didn’t understand it at the time. Only later did we grasp the truth.
Some on the left are completely hopeless. They can’t be saved. Others are converts in waiting. The problem is that it’s very hard to tell them apart.
We make our best arguments and trust it will sway skeptics, especially with the aid of proof. We take irrevocable actions only when we must.
OTOH, maybe you’re just having a bad day. Take a nap; you’ll feel better.
the Public option can go several ways – one alternative to forcing doctors to accept Medicare patients is to set up licensing so that those who otherwise would not pass medical exams can be licensed as “public practitioners”. The state can set up medical schools and those who promise to participate in public option healthcare will go through debt free. Ultimately this leads to a 2 level system where the Public option consumers get the lower level medical care (vrachi in Russian) and the paying customers including the politicians and cronies get the competent physicians.
There is a puzzle here: enrolling massive numbers of poverty stricken HEALTHY young’ns accomplishes what?
I’d say the gambit is purely political. They want registered democrats.
For this particular crowd is just too healthy to even NEED actual medicaid attention.
Certainly, NO PROVISION of extra resources is on order — far from it.
I’m just going to write one sentence.
I think fiona has cracked the code.
I’m sorry to see Ymarsakar and Geoffrey Britain having a dispute in this thread. I always cherish your comments, both of you.