"Portability" would lead to the same situation we have in the credit card industry, where every company flocks to the one or two states that really want to boost their economy by catering to an industry's needs with overly generous regulations. Our founders would likely consider today's credit card lenders to be usurious. I shudder to think of an insurance industry unregulated by the federal government and only regulated by the lowest common denominator among the several states.
When we speak of ideology, what I am emphatically not is an anarchist, because anarchy is the most direct route to tyranny. Getting the government out of anything and allowing "the market" to solve it is an appeal to anarchy. The government is us... you, I, all of us, acting collectively. Our republican system allows us to put checks on that collective action so that it's not sheer mob rule, so that 99 people can't always lynch the 100th and call it democracy. It's not perfect in execution, but it beats the alternative.
Our insurance system "works" (for a certain value of working for hundreds of millions of people), but the more those people learned to leverage their coverage... the less it would work for them. Because the more service people are squeezing out of a profit driven system, the less profits there will be. I'm not as somebody said on a previous post accusing the insurance companies of "cheating"... I'm not even saying they're bad... but the profit motive is driving them in the wrong direction for them to be helping millions of Americans and for what I think our health system needs to do, given my definition of America.
I pray to God this doesn't end with the political elite just doing what they need to stay elected, because that would mean giving into the fearmongering that's been promulgated around the 250 million at the expense of the rest of America. We have 2, 4, and 6 year election cycles for our federal elected offices.
It takes a remarkably principled politician to act to protect all Americans when there's a clear majority/minority divide and the fearmongering talking heads of the far right (who go on each other's shows to deny that they have a voice in the media, and their idiot viewers mindlessly ape it) have got segments of the majority fired up against the minority, which is what we have here.
I don't want the government out of our health care because I don't want myself and my interests out of our health care. That's what our government is. We had an election about this time last year. One of the major points of contention between the two candidates was their health care plans. We the people made our choice clear.
The problem is that in the time since then, President Obama made the classic liberal mistake of allowing the opposition to shape the debate, taking a hands off and low-key approach in the name of compromise and bipartisanship. In the silence, the loudest and most emotionally overwrought voices of the Republican/Conservative bases came in and they changed the landscape, for the worse. Now we're going to have an uphill battle to get a better system than we have now, and we may end up with a worse one (i.e., if the only thing left with any teeth in it after all the "compromise" is a penalty for the uninsured).
no subject
When we speak of ideology, what I am emphatically not is an anarchist, because anarchy is the most direct route to tyranny. Getting the government out of anything and allowing "the market" to solve it is an appeal to anarchy. The government is us... you, I, all of us, acting collectively. Our republican system allows us to put checks on that collective action so that it's not sheer mob rule, so that 99 people can't always lynch the 100th and call it democracy. It's not perfect in execution, but it beats the alternative.
Our insurance system "works" (for a certain value of working for hundreds of millions of people), but the more those people learned to leverage their coverage... the less it would work for them. Because the more service people are squeezing out of a profit driven system, the less profits there will be. I'm not as somebody said on a previous post accusing the insurance companies of "cheating"... I'm not even saying they're bad... but the profit motive is driving them in the wrong direction for them to be helping millions of Americans and for what I think our health system needs to do, given my definition of America.
I pray to God this doesn't end with the political elite just doing what they need to stay elected, because that would mean giving into the fearmongering that's been promulgated around the 250 million at the expense of the rest of America. We have 2, 4, and 6 year election cycles for our federal elected offices.
It takes a remarkably principled politician to act to protect all Americans when there's a clear majority/minority divide and the fearmongering talking heads of the far right (who go on each other's shows to deny that they have a voice in the media, and their idiot viewers mindlessly ape it) have got segments of the majority fired up against the minority, which is what we have here.
I don't want the government out of our health care because I don't want myself and my interests out of our health care. That's what our government is. We had an election about this time last year. One of the major points of contention between the two candidates was their health care plans. We the people made our choice clear.
The problem is that in the time since then, President Obama made the classic liberal mistake of allowing the opposition to shape the debate, taking a hands off and low-key approach in the name of compromise and bipartisanship. In the silence, the loudest and most emotionally overwrought voices of the Republican/Conservative bases came in and they changed the landscape, for the worse. Now we're going to have an uphill battle to get a better system than we have now, and we may end up with a worse one (i.e., if the only thing left with any teeth in it after all the "compromise" is a penalty for the uninsured).