I really am not in the mood for hand-wringing about the ObamaCare legislation. It happened. People actually wanted it – despite what the polls say. Politicians actually wanted it. In the meantime, it makes sense to continue to educate people about how our health care system really works.
I happen to think the current system sucks. It is not anything resembling a private market, nor is it anything resembling government control. And to be honest, as skeptical as I am about what the government does, I really don’t believe that medical provision would be much worse than it is if the government actually took it over. I am not using that as an endorsement of course. I am not all that upset with the current bill that has been signed. What I am upset with is the utter lack of understanding by both politicians and their constituents about how health care works, and the utter lack of respect for process – both democratic and market. This ignores the impact of medical delivery reform on what the drug companies are doing, and so forth. It is really, really tiring trying to read a website story and glancing at comments like, “we have a right to health care, or what good is the first amendment right to life if we die from having no insurance … and so on …” I no longer try to speak to those things. They are infantile, uninformed arguments. In regard to the manner in which this thing got passed? Well, I think it is evident how much of a joke the political process is. It is about power, plain and simple. And what we witnessed was par for the course. I am not shocked – that is what we have observed here for over 100 years. I am shocked that people are shocked. All I would add is that it is appropriately nauseating having to listen to these crooks in Congress parade around proclaiming that some great national interest has been served, that their intentions were noble, and that they have saved America. For one, being intelligent people, I sure do not think these people believe what they are saying. Thus, what are we to make of their actions? I’ll leave it for you to think about.
In any case, my brief observations on the bill and health care in general (there is obviously much more to say than this):
That’s it for now. They’ll be lots to say about it in the coming months.
One of my random thoughts today, which I’ll state is made out of a lot of ignorance of the current situation and things involved with this bill, is if a state really wanted to undercut this bill, what if it applied the healthcare law and rules only to AMA certified doctors while legalizing non-AMA doctors to function soley on cash payments? In other words, can we just allow a free market system to exist legally while letting the regulated one to die on its own accord? It would probably mean giving up the war on drugs and really increase some snake-oil risk (in short-run), but in due time, I beleive that other systems of verifying quality of drugs and doctors.
Wintercow, I could not get past your clause, “People wanted it.” As they say, it all depends on what the word “it” is.
Tonight I’m foregoing reading the rest of your analysis, and this all goes back to Socrates — whether anyone will do evil voluntarily.
What was passed was a big mess, and I am concerned whether we will ever recover.
What passed is a few thousand pages of federal law that are a mere outline, each page to be passed to a government employee who may have tens or hundreds of employees under his or her charge, all with the task of issuing regulations. Just take your cheap calculator and multiply 3,000 pages times 20,000 people times 2,000 manhours, times $126.50 per manhour just to get the regulations written. My calculator yielded $E75.900000. Help me with that number. Then there are the agencies, you guess how many and how they will be populated, times X hours to review and decide about how many decisions have to be made?
These “jobs” will be counted as “jobs created” the same as the job created to hire someone to drive your tractor to plant your corn, or for someone to prepare your taxes while you attend to other details, like buying your corn seed and fertilizer.
Meanwhile, while people are planting corn there is a huge army out there to advise you from the USDA. And then, should you injure yourself, there is another huge army of lawyers out there to sue the federal government should your federal benefits be denied by the folks in the paragraphs above, who don’t want to pay a doctor more per hour than a gardener or a free-lance painter.
The only figure in this drama who did anything productive was the guy who took a chance on planting corn, and the people he hired. The rest was overhead. Overhead never mattered to medieval kings, but then they never got very far, either.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/24/business/24leonhardt.html
Read up… this ought to turn the nausea into pure vomit. I guess people were sleeping during their 108 classes where they learned that wealth inequality can actually be a good thing… or rather, that the lack thereof is a bad thing.