The left wants Republicans to cave on ObamaCare

Oh really? Then why were none of the other, more qualified Democrats not selected as president?

 

Ha! Now I hate Obamacare as much as anyone, but that's some serious hyperbole. Worse than the law which allowed an English lord to rape a Scottish bride on her wedding night? Worse than pre-civil war laws regarding slavery? Ridiculously stupid statements like this, IMO, are just further evidence of a wider conspiracy. Republicans are falling on their swords, because the public is supposed to want the Democrats right now. The Repubs had 8 years of Bush to perpetrate right-wing tyranny, but now it's time for left-wing tyranny, so the public opinion factory manufactures a love for the Democrat party by making you hate the Repubs, and WTF, you've only got two "choices". The short memory, drugged out masses can always be swayed back to the right when needed.

 

Qualification has nothing to do with it. Just look at Bush Jr. That man wasn't qualified to read me the ingredients off the back of a Flintstones Push-up yet he won. Presidential elections are more about image, charisma, and perception than qualifications.

Honestly though, the Democrats could have run a Ficus plant in 2008 and won. That election was as much a referendum on 8 years of Republican rule as it was on who the candidates were. Sarah Palin wasn't helping the Republican's chances either. The people who liked her were the people who were already going to vote Republican anyway. I think she scared the living crap out of everyone else.

 

Because the voters who elected Obama to his second term are not allowed to vote for the Democratic nominee!

 

Answer this hypothetical question:

Republicans put a puppy in an airtight room and say they'll let it suffocate unless Obamacare is defunded.

Democrats refuse. The puppy suffocates.

Who is responsible for the death of the puppy?

 

In my case, I merely expect the right to have some solutions and claim it is equal work for equal pay.

 

Nothing?

http://www.policymic.com/articles/44543/37-failed-gop-attempts-to-repeal-obamacare-and-counting

 

Nice try, but we were talking about the 2008 election. See post 25.

 

Yeah, well some of us are living in the past--feel free to join the rest of us in the present and talk about the future!

 

It is a ridiculous analogy, since it assumes that ObamaCare is merely an innocent hostage of Those Mean Old Republicans, rather than a fundamentally terrible concoction.

Moreover, the original Republican position of defunding ObamaCare has morphed into delaying its implementation; and then, into merely repealing some as its more onerous provisions (such as the tax on medical devices), and ensuring that it applies to Congress just the same as it applies to the rest of the American people.

If you are unaware of this, you must not have been keeping up with the news; but merely accepting the White House's latest spin...

 

According to the author of the article (who is unabashedly triumphalist about the Democrats' 2012 election victories), "all routes to repeal" of ObamaCare are "now closed"; so opponents of this horrid legislation should settle for "put[ting] their own twist on implementation" of it.

So, I will reiterate: Many defenders of ObamaCare (including this one) believe that its opponents should do nothing to try to stop it...

 

What an irrelevant response. I could have used "slimefish" instead of "puppy". The point isn't whether Obamacare is an "innocent" hostage: it's the fact that it is a hostage. Thank you for confirming that.

Yes, and still not a single GOP compromise involved. As another poster here wrote (I paraphrase):

The GOP asks if they can burn down the Democrats' house. Democrats say no.

So the GOP "compromises" by saying "How about just half of it? Just the roof? Just the garage?"

Those aren't compromises; those are still one-sided demands, without offering anything in return.

When only one side is being asked to make real concessions, it's not a negotiation: it's a hostage situation.

 

We will find, at the end of this mess, that all of the ad campaigns and "grass roots" organizing and impetus for this ridiculous fight against Obamacare is financed and organized by the health insurance industry.

 

some on the left believe we should be getting competing solutions under our "adversarial" form of politics as a form of equal work for equal pay.

 

Actually, insurers like the plan, because it's a huge new pool of customers.

 

The fight against ObamaCare is the fight to delay single payer.
To roll back the steps that bring us closer to Medicare for all, it's funded by a small group of very wealthy individuals who know that ObamaCare will work for a while, but that sooner or later, the costs of supporting a huge expensive private insurance bureaucracy with scads of well paid executives and CEOs taking home multi million bonuses will prove to much, and the next step will be Medicare for all, and that is when the pressure will shift to cutting costs, and the US will need to stop paying more than any other country in the world pays for the exact same drugs, and the system will come out of taxes, and taxes will be graduated, with the wealthy paying more.
So delaying the process, to keep a system which benefits the people the system currently benefits is something they will organize to fight.

Why do we pay so much for health care, when countries with the same standard of living pay so much less to get essentially the same and even better levels of care?
Because a lot of people are in on the gravy train, and they don't want to see it end.
Single payer eliminates a lot of bureaucracy, it standardizes the coverage, reduces underwriting and actuarial costs, and eliminates all kinds of executive positions. Sure any system that large will have problems and inefficiencies, but market solutions only work in certain situations, and the "market" for health care is not a free market, it's a series of monopolies and oligopolies, a system of gatekeeping and rent seeking that is extremely lucrative for some and a burden to most. Single payer reduces the cost of administration, and would save billions, it also focuses on costs, and allows negotiations that significantly reduce costs.
It will be in place some day, costs will force the issue, but the longer it can be delayed, the longer the gravy train lasts.
What is going on now is the equivalent of "tobacco science", like the tobacco institute designed to hinder the inevitable, just like the oil and coal companies seek to delay the onset of carbon reduction strategies with the denial industry.
Progress benefits most people, but it hurts those that have benefited by the less efficient systems that it replaces.
The insurance industry knows it's days are numbered, it's just trying to drag out the process.

 

Go ahead, drink the cool ade, its good! They don't like it because they actually have to compete and don't control the markets. They aren't able to control discreet markets and force high premiums and large deductibles, resulting in self-insured people who still pay large premiums. At present, they can base rates on very small and discreet groups rather than spreading the risk. In fact, they can make a profit on every policy, contrary to the premise upon which insurance was base, e.g. spreading the risk. They will no longer be able to reduce the percentage of premiums that they pay out in claims, contrary to another premise upon which insurance was base, e.g. pay out 100% of premiums in claims and make your money on the float.

 

It is not a new pool of customers. It is the same customers, except that, in the past, some of the customers were not paying in because they were being treated by the health care providers free because they were not allowed to turn away sick people, and the insurers (and us) were paying higher rates to cover all of those who were not paying. Bring in those people to the pay system who were always in the serve system and our rates go down because more people are paying into the system. That is the aim of this system and, for the life of me, I cannot understand why people are fighting a law that requires all of those who are receiving services to buy insurance. We are never going to refuse treatment to people who are ill, so why are some people fighting to protect those who suck on the system without contributing?

 

It's a new pool of customers for the *insurers*. And they're mostly young and healthy, meaning they're the most profitable sort of customers.

 

You are not quite getting it are you? There are about 50 million people out here that earn wages and don't have health insurance. Some of them are young, yes, but even young people get sick and mostly young people get hurt (they do stupid things because they think they are bullet-proof). When they get the flu or miss the jump on the skateboard whatever-it-is, they go to the emergency room and you and I pay for it. So what you are saying is that, since they are young, they can pizz away their disposable income and not pay health insurance and we will pay for it, because, after all, they are young and healthy. Because that is what is happening now. In that sense, we are carrying them. In no sense are they carrying us, unless it is because social security and medicare are bankrupt because our egomaniac congress has raped the SS and MC fund to buy votes with their pet projects (and yes, part of that is welfare and social programs, but part of it is wars that we shouldn't have started and part is corporate welfare and part is their own perks and part is just pizzing it away because it is our money and not theirs). No one who is one social security retirement or medicare is riding someone else, they have all paid for it. If congress stole it, then we should sue them to recover it, hopefully seizing their pensions and health insurance benefits (paid for by us).

 

It would probably be preferable for you to make accurate attributions to other posters--the operative word, here, being "accurate"--which you have (clearly) not done.

Far from my "confirming" that ObamaCare is a "hostage," I dispute the left's (apparent) belief that it is either "innocent" or a "hostage"...

It is very difficult to negotiate with those who gleefully delve in inflammatory language; and your flippant reference to the Republicans as people who wish to "burn down the Democrats' house"--or, at least, a part of it--is not especially useful.

More importantly, the incendiary rhetoric of President Obama, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi--comparing Republicans with terrorists, "anarchists," and "arsonists"--is particularly unhelpful...

 

Well, then, address the substance of the analogy. Who is responsible for the death of the puppy, in the analogy?

I'm just calling it as I see it. If Republicans don't wish to be described as hostage-takers, they should stop taking hostages.

 

As I have noted previously, it is an inappropriate analogy, since I find ObamaCare neither "innocent" nor a "hostage"; so I decline to play your game...

It is only the left that claims (quite erroneously) that the Republicans have taken hostages.

Moreover, if the president really wanted a deal, he would tone down the rhetoric, which is clearly intended to gin up his base--not to reach some sort of compromise...

 

someone previously had the best question for you righties (I can't yet believe that someone is calling ME a leftist)--If this is such an absolutely abominable concoction, then why don't the Republicans just let it happen and melt down and let the Democrats take the blame for it?

The answer is that their financial backers in the health insurance industry know that, once the public sees how it works, they will never go back to being skimmed by the traditional insurance industry. What's more, this is the stepping stone to the public option, which will be the death knell to the traditional, for-profit, insurance industry. Once the profit motive is removed from this vital necessity and the public sees that it is not necessary that we pour 18% of the gross domestic product into it, the traditional health insurance industry will be relegated to insurance supplements for those wealthy enough to purchase cadillac plans.