Ted Rall for March 19, 2010

There he goes again. (I mean Ted.)

Meet Obamaman; same as The Otherman.

Remember when Democrats actually stood for something besides their own self-interests?

Is there any point in trying to figure out the logic of this strip?

Not sure how helping people get coverage is an example of “their own self-interests” but it’s a great catch-all accusation, as long as nobody bothers to think about it.

Meanwhile, Rall has no understanding of economies of scale. Both Massachusetts and Hawaii require insurance and the size of the general pool means it is quite affordable.

That’s a good point. What happens when someone loses their job and can’t afford to buy a policy all on their own? Even Democrats are saying that premiums probably won’t go down.

How are they going to help the poor get insurance? Tax credits… They don’t help much if you don’t have the money up front.

They should have simply expanded medicare to cover those who, for whatever reason, don’t have access to health insurance.

HSA’s with catastrophic coverage would be an affordable alternative to traditional medical insurance.

Do you need to buy fire prevention insurance to qualify for protection by the fire department? Do you need to buy crime fighting insurance to qualify for protection by the police? Do you need to buy national defense insurance to qualify for protection by the military? You pay taxes for those things. They don’t require a middleman who is only there to make a profit. They’re not supplied by subsidies from an employer, either. The total illogic of our current health care system is utterly incomprehensible to any objective observer.

The reason Massachusetts can afford their health insurance is due to the dumping of 30K legal Americans (many Latino and Chinese) from the state healthcare roster, as reported in Boston recently.

Food is tax deductable as a medical expence. If I don’t eat, I get sick.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/15/us/15insure.html and the Boston Globe recently did a follow up that this is still going on…