Tom Toles for October 18, 2013

Learns?

The elephants were fools. If the ACA is as bad as they say, it will fail. Then it can be repealed or fixed. Little point in trying to kill it now, except vindictiveness. In the meantime, whatever its problems, it is doing a great deal of good. A friend of mine, a self-employed doctor no less, calls it a lifesaver. The coverage for his family went from $20,000 a year to about $10,000. I think about an acquaintance, call her Mary, who died a couple years ago. She got cancer, lost her job as a teacher when she could not work, and lost her health insurance along with her job, and could not get new insurance because of her “pre-existing condition.” She figured she was doomed and quite treatment so she wouldn’t leave her daughter penniless as well as an orphan. It is too late for her, but not for millions of others. Instead of making sure the ACA worked as well as it could, the action of the elephants to obstruct the thing meant too many states did nothing to set up the markets where insurers could compete in selling policies, and too many of the state that did, did so half-heartedly thinking that the effort might be wasted. The result is a difficult rollout, where the Feds were left doing what ought to have been the states’ job, which has further frustrated those seeking coverage. Preserving the lives of the citizens of this country is of no interest to elephants. Of course some elephants I know disapprove of health insurance altogether. It is always based on the principle of the fortunate paying for the unfortunate, and that is socialism, they say. Each person should pay his own way. It should all be between the patient and the doctor. There should be no third party involved. If Mary had not enough friends or family or savings to pay for her treatment, well, they say, that’s just too bad, or what charity is for. But it wasn’t anybody else’s business what happened to her. And in an insurance-less environment, competition would keep costs down and benefit everybody. That doesn’t sound like the kind of society I want to live in. I think preserving the health and lives of our fellow citizens is very much in the interests of us all. To the elephants, I guess I am just soft-headed as well as soft-hearted.

“It is my duty to leave nothing undone that I may lawfully do, to pull down this administration… They who, from indifference, or with their eyes open, persist in hugging the traitor to their bosom, deserve to be insulted… deserve to be slaves, with no other music to soothe them but the clank of the chains which they have put on themselves and given to their offspring.”Does that sound like anyone today? Yet this was said in 1826 by Senator John Randolph “of Roanoke” from Virginia. He was speaking of the “intolerable” administration of John Quincy Adams.This was the same man who said, “I am an aristocrat. I love liberty, I hate equality.” Kind of sums up a certain kind of person, even today.

$24 billion in 16 days lost. this is what the gop cost us. they can’t govern. they can’t be trusted with economic issues. not to mention the credit downgrades.

Try the Mule Kicker!

Hint: That’s a urnal not a food tray….

You seem to be implying that the only thing that can be done to stop the red ink is to stop Obamacare. Is there nothing else that the government funds that can be cut? Perhaps as a balance to the increased costs involved in helping people live, we could reduce what we spend to kill them?

I am reminded of Mr. Romney and many of his teammates, who suggested that there would be cuts in loopholes and spending to balance the increase in debt caused by more proposed tax cuts. However, no one would identify anything that could be cut.

Talk is cheap. Some people get it wholesale.

The problem with this type of operant conditioning is that if the rewards and punishments are delivered randomly, the elephant may keep trying to get the reward.

Obama should have said “No” unconditionally the first time the destruction caucus tried to cause mayhem, AND every time thereafter.

“Move to Britain or Western Europe now !!— They’re already where Obama wants the US to be…’subservient socialist states.” I used to live there. Visit often. Very nice. In many ways, one is freer there (in Germany and Austria where I lived) than here, and as well as safer. More social mobility, longer life expectancy, healthier population, — in Norway they even have higher median incomes. If either my wife or I found a good enough job there, I would be happy to move. Even though I would have a tough time with the language! Measured per capita, the United States has SEVEN TIMES as many people behind bars as Austria does, and yet a higher crime rate. So which society is freer by that measure? The fact that you call them “subservient socialist states” demonstrates that you know nothing about them. And nothing about socialism. My best friend in Berlin grew up under socialism in East Germany. Hates socialism. Her father escaped over the wall, as it were, and was making plans for the rest of the family when the wall came down. She laughs when Americans call Democrats socialists. The Republican Party are a far-right party, she says, the Democrats are a center-right party. There is no leftist party in America, as far as she is concerned. She like America, she likes Republicans and Democrats both. She thinks they both have their good points. But, she says, there is no leftist party in the United States. So you prefer every-man-for-himself-and-the-devil-take-the-hindmost? Says a lot.

Bush left a ticking time bomb of debt in his wake, racking up expenses even after he was out of office. Much of his spending was in off-book dipsy doodles that didn’t show up until Obama had a clean accounting.

A bigger problem is that a significant faction of the GOP (not the majority, but apparently in the driver’s seat) subscribes to a brand of libertarianism that values property over lives. That’s a cancer that poisons a lot of their interactions.

Thanks for that link, martens. I agree with Toles, but I think Obama will not press for anything but compromise. Unfortunately.

And yet Western Europe has the highest rated health care systems in the world, at a fraction of the cost of that in the US. How can that be, I thought we were living in paradise!!

Thanks for showing us insanity defined… again. I guess 1995 was too far back for Dumb(o) to remember how that went.