Republican Excuses Why "Obamacare is Doomed!"

theprestige said:
ETA: Not to mention the obvious fact that the Administration is doing an excellent job of failing already, without any help from the GOP. And not just them, either. Oregon's exchange failed to sign up even a single person. The head of the Oregon exchange just resigned over this. These failures are not credibly attributable to conservative meddling.
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Uh, not quite....

The Web site for Oregon's exchange didn't work. People can still sign up (slowly, by hand).

The exchange has had to rely exclusively on paper applications, and it hired or reassigned more than 400 workers to process them manually. Oregon has been the slowest state to enroll people in private insurance, though the pace has picked up significantly in the past two weeks.
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http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201...w-development-oregon-health-exchange-resigns/
 
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theprestige said:
While this is certainly a pleasing fantasy, in practical terms their beliefs are worth a lot, if they are able to act on them and bring about some desired effect.

The Nazis had some pretty irrational beliefs about master races and German lebensraum. Not worth a plugged nickel, right? Nobody died over those worthless beliefs, right?
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So, as if comparing the ACA to Soviet Russia wasn't enough, now you're comparing the ACA to Nazism?

Please, continue. This is comedy gold :popcorn1
 
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Upchurch said:
eta: I'm quickly falling in love with this argument.

X is bad.
Soviet Russia is bad.
X is just like Soviet Russia.
QED
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Even better is the updated argument...

X is bad.
Nazism bad.
X is just like Nazism.
QED
 
theprestige said:
But consider the example of Soviet Russia
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Yes, I see what you mean: the ACA is exactly like the Soviet Union.

  1. Those who oppose the ACA will be sent to death camps in Alaska.
  2. The US will build elaborate fences and have daily patrols to keep anyone from escaping the ACA to Canada.
  3. Special ACA agents much like the KGB will have the right to arrest you and hold you without charge if you speak out publicly against the ACA.
  4. There will be a government crackdown on websites that criticize the ACA. The posters to such websites will be arrested and the servers shutdown.
  5. School textbooks will be altered so that children learn that ACA is the world's greatest healthcare system and that flesh eating zombies roamed the streets before it became law.
 
Robrob said:
It's funny, if the ACA was really so doomed - why does the GOP have to create fake websites or pass laws forbidding people from helping others sign up?
:rolleyes:
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It's funny, if the ACA was so great, why do millions have to be spent promoting something that is required by law to comply with?
 
Obamacare is doomed because they hired some crony contractor to do the work and they installed the Death Panels upside-down so now rain comes in and shorted out the website, killing a million patients. Children patients, with sad but photogenic illnesses, nothing gross. Obama, when confronted with this terrible factoid, laughed and twirled his mustache, then took a gun away from an American citizen and shot a doctor and a nurse with it. Also Santa was white, white as the snow in which he dwells, white as his pure Christian soul! (Protestant Christian, mind you, none of this St Nick being a Greek Orthodox bishop or anything.)
 
theprestige said:
But totally different from those nuts who thought Communism was going to fail, but also worked to sabotage it, right?
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There was no sabotage of the Soviet Union that had any significant effect. It might seem rather romantic to believe that spies and operatives somehow brought down an entire government. But, that just isn't reality.

The Soviet Union failed because of a number of problems.
  • It was a cash based economy. There was no checking and no credit. Truckloads of rubles had to be counted and shipped everywhere.
  • The ruble itself was not hard currency. Purchases outside of the Soviet Union required other money and this was not easy to get. The primary source was sales of military hardware.
  • The Soviet Union was undercut in price by China which was selling knockoffs of Soviet military hardware.
  • They were afraid of having to get parts from non-communist countries so the purchase preference in descending order was: Soviet Union, Eastern Bloc, Japan, Western Europe, USA. This meant that, at times, necessary equipment was twenty years out of date.
  • Support of governments that were seen as hostile to the west like North Korea and Cuba was a continuous drain of State resources.
  • The lack of private ownership of the farms meant that production was always much worse than could have been obtained. Roughly half of all the food in the Soviet Union came from private gardens.
  • The Soviet Union lacked a consumer based economy; this alone removed at least half of the potential GDP.
  • The US used the massive and reliable steam-giant locomotives during WWII. However, these were replaced with cheaper diesel-electric locomotives in the mid 1950s. Twenty years later, the Soviet Union was still building the costlier steam locomotives.
  • The Soviet Union wasted money just trying to upstage the US. Examples include the Buran space shuttle and Energia rocket.
  • The Soviet Union was roughly equal in tank technology coming out of WWII but fell behind when the M-60 was upgraded to the A3 model. This upgrade included a gyro-stabilized gun platform similar to what was used on US battleships in WWII but had finally become small enough to fit inside a tank.
  • Soviet fighter technology was quite good during the MiG-23/F-4 Phantom era. However, as US technology shifted with the F-14, F-15, F-16, and F-18 fighters, the cost of developing the newer MiG 29 and Su-27 technology was a severe drain.
  • The Soviet Union never managed to catch up in terms of aircraft carrier, spy satellite, or spy aircraft technology. Trying to counter these was an additional drain.
  • Many Soviet systems were bureaucratic and unproductive. For example, getting meat at a butcher. You had to wait in line to place your order and receive a pay ticket, then you stood in line to pay for the item and receive an order ticket, and then you stood in line to have your order filled. In other words, just buying meat in the Soviet Union was like getting a prescription filled in the US.
  • Soviet authorities had to turn a blind eye to the black market because the economy was unworkable without it. Yet this too was a drain.
  • Soviet doctrine of happiness refused to deal with widespread alcoholism which was also a drain.
  • Many jobs had expectations of not working too hard or of quitting early because the system unrealistically expected everyone to keep up with the fastest and most capable and would punish slower workers instead of simply giving the better workers a raise, bonus or promotion. This was a drain.
  • The only way of getting promoted was to have political favor. This type of system understandably rewards those who are good with politics rather than those who are good with science, business, finance, or engineering. We are only beginning to see problems like this in the US where CEOs often have no understanding of the businesses they are trying to run, but this was rampant in the Soviet Union.
  • Politicians with no way to earn more money instead engaged in corruption including bribes and theft of government property. Bribes were common all the way down to police on the streets. Naturally, this too is a drain.

Okay, so now let's look at insurance in the US. Under the old insurance system, there was an adversarial relationship with doctors where insurance sought to pay as little as possible even when a visit was more complex. This encouraged poor medical practice such as trying to see as many patients as possible and encouraged dishonesty such as padding the bill with unnecessary tests. This system left emergency rooms as the doctor of last resort for the uninsured which resulted in the drag of more expensive care which was passed along to both the government and those who had insurance. Insurance providers wrote ever more complex and nuanced policies to avoid having to pay claims and it was not uncommon to resort to outright theft by canceling policies when a large claim occurred. Meanwhile, those such as corporate executives were able to receive platinum health insurance for free since this was not counted as income.

So, it does appear that it was in fact the old system that was more like the Soviet Union and that it finally collapsed under its own weight. Apparently, you are in the position now of trying to resurrect the Soviet Union to revive the mythic golden era that never existed.
 
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theprestige said:
The Nazis had some pretty irrational beliefs about master races and German lebensraum. Not worth a plugged nickel, right?
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That's right. Ridiculous beliefs are still ridiculous.


theprestige said:
Nobody died over those worthless beliefs, right?
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That's a separate matter. I'm talking about the beliefs themselves, not what people do about them.



theprestige said:
And if they are based on paranoid or conspiratorial fantasies? Does their opposition suddenly not matter anymore?
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Frankly, no, their opposition doesn't matter. Ridiculous beliefs are still ridiculous. Why should I give any credence to beliefs that are ridiculous and without any factual basis at all? What good does it do for anyone to give in to irrationality? Irrationality should be challenged at every opportunity.
 
My biggest fear is the penalty isn't high enough to encourage young single people who make more than $30,000 or so. Also the lack of enforcement of the penalty. But when you start making a decent amount of money, you start accumulating assets, which makes insurance much more attractive.

However, enrollments really seem to be picking up steam now. When these people actually start paying premiums, the GOP will lose a big talking point.

I linked an article the other day that talks about how, even if we only get 20% young healthy people (goal is 40%), premiums will rise like 3%, which would be a victory in and of itself. I've been seeing my premiums rise by double digits for many years now.
 
Neally said:
It's funny, if the ACA was so great, why do millions have to be spent promoting something that is required by law to comply with?
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Same reason there are signs warning against drunk driving, driving without a seatbelt or while using a cell phone.

Is this all new to you?
 
I just keep thinking about the woman with stage 4 breast cancer that got dropped like a used condom. Oh, yeah, and those other people that lost their coverage. I propose that all the people that voted for 'Bama's plan give up their juicy medical insurance plans and give it to some of the poor unfortunates that they lost theirs.
 
Of course, because before Obamacare nobody ever had their plan changed or dropped.
 
jakesteele said:
I just keep thinking about the woman with stage 4 breast cancer that got dropped like a used condom. Oh, yeah, and those other people that lost their coverage. I propose that all the people that voted for 'Bama's plan give up their juicy medical insurance plans and give it to some of the poor unfortunates that they lost theirs.
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I keep thinking about my brother and family, who thanks to medicare expanding was able to have his brain cancer treatments paid for and as a result of excellent care now has no tumor left.

The difference is that I know my brother exists and was helped because of this, while your example could very well be someone being screwed over by insurance companies and have nothing to do with the ACA. With all the lies and false reports being put forth by opponents of expanded medical coverage (which they probably are because this misinformation isn't coming from people wanting single payer), that it's easy to get cynical and assume an ideological motivation.
 
Peephole said:
Of course, because before Obamacare nobody ever had their plan changed or dropped.
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I recall a report from thirty years ago where a woman had insurance through her work. She had a child with special needs and the medical bills were expensive. This was paid for by her insurance. However, the insurance company didn't want to pay the claims. So, they kept raising the premiums until they had tripled. At that point, everyone else in the company dropped the insurance. Then, they told her that it was no longer a group so they could arbitrarily drop her. And, they did. Since that time, this practice has only gotten worse.

For example, back in 1993 when Clinton tried to change the healthcare system, about 70% of small businesses provided insurance. However, by the time Obama was elected, this was down to 30%.

People can try to invent whatever spin they want but the trends are a matter of record. For the past twenty years, insurance premiums rose steadily, deductions increased, and caps decreased while every opportunity was taken to disqualify pre-existing conditions. The notion that this was a great system is pure fantasy.
 
Denver said:
The next big argument you will see (around March I think) is:

1) Based on current metrics, it will cost more than Obama promised.
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That has been said all along. And it is true. ObamaCare is going to cost far more than projected.

I have little doubt ObamaCare is here to stay. But it will bankrupt the states and the federal government.
 
ObamaCare is doomed. It is going to be a catastrophic failure. Within our lifetimes, it will be replaced by single payer.
 
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