“For the corporation by the corporation”
“Election rhetoric shuns the big picture in favor of the bigger platitude. Now that The Show is over, we are left with the equivalent of a Sunday morning hangover following a binge of promises and lies. We leave the theatre of political spectacle on steroids for the real world of unstable economy, a globally and publicly subsidized financial sector, and increased costs of living on everything from food to education to health-care; outpacing declining median incomes. The average cost for health insurance for a family is $15,745per year vs. a median income of $50,502, or about half post-tax take-home pay.
“Obamacare” is the name commonly used for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) of 2010. The very moniker is indicative of how name-and-image-centric our world has become; Medicare was never called “Johnsoncare” when President Johnson signed it into law in 1965 and Johnson was not exactly a man of small-personality. At any rate, Obamacare or the PPACA ranks as one of the most misrepresented issues from the campaign, by both sides of the ever-slimming aisle.
The Tea-Party Conservative types get it embarrassingly wrong when they call it a “government takeover of health care.” Likewise, Progressive Obama-supporters are deluded in accepting it as the most sweeping healthcare reform since Medicare. (Side note: I wish the word ‘sweeping’ could be retired from politics until it actually means -sweeping.)
Here’s why. The PPACA does nothing to restructure the health insurance industry, anymore than the Dodd-Frank Act restructures the banking industry. This means everything else it attempts to do, positive or negative, will be vastly overshadowed by an industry accelerating to morph itself into a acquisition machine in order to circumvent anything that even smells like a restriction, including laws that exist and ones to come.
How? By doing the same thing energy and telecom companies did after they were deregulated in 1996, and that banks did after they were summarily deregulated (after moving that way for decades) in 1999. They are merging, consolidating, eliminating competitors, and controlling their domain. They are manufacturing power.
Investment bankers are roaming the world to exploit this hot new opportunity. That’s one reason insurance companies don’t even call themselves that anymore. Now, they are ‘managed health care’ companies. Call yourself a managed health care company, and you can buy everything from other insurance companies to hospitals to clinics to doctors. The more consolidation, the more fees bankers rake in, and the more premiums and medical reimbursements and health care procedures, each company can control.”
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Obamacare leads to fascism? Who’d a thunk it?
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It’s all crony capitalism Jake. Left and right are responsible equally.
Big government leads to businesses coming with hat in hand to beg DC for favors…who then erect barriers to entry for their intercessors. This is the definition of fascism… and a product of the left’s wishes for a state controlled economy….
Reap the whirlwind….
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Jake,
I’m aware of the definition.
What you fail to see is both sides of the aisle are working towards the same goals.
Both sides deliver favors for campaign contributions, both sides are in and out of public companies that receive favors from friends from high offices,
One side deregulates which cause major problems as corporations rape and pillage what they can. The other side seeks to correct the problems of deregulation by creating what appears to be state controlled regulation, but actually is in reality no regulation at all or a way to make more control for the corporations. The regulations are also for the purpose of raising revenues for government gone on a wild spending spree.
Despite all the partisan rhetoric and said differences, in the end both sides of the aisle cast their votes in unison to make the world we have.
You need to take off the belief structure blinders indoctrinated into your skull.
I am for small government, and that is not “both sides.”
True, their are Repubs who have been in too long, who have become part of the problem. At least my side is trying to address that part of it.
We are still “nominatively” the party of smaller government, even as we struggle to do that. In time, we will become that party or a party will take it’s place… harsh reality has a way of making things happen one way or another. The FACT is, however, that your side believes GOV’T is the answer to our problems… definitively. The problems on OUR side is the fools who have bought into that precept.
Dare you gainsay that basic truth?
Also, now that PPACA will help more people get insurance than every before, where are all the new doctors going to come from to meet the new demand?
out of semi retirement ultramarine…
many have left the business due to sky high insurance premiums. perhaps they will pick up some slack.
we also still have high attendance in medical schools across the country.
Oh, and they are going to flood back into the market for more work and less pay?
Truly, you are delusional.
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