The birthers, the anti-healthcare reformers, etc. etc.

[yesthattom]

Reasoning hasn't worked. We are dumb to reason with them because their goal isn't to have a constructive debate, it is to destroy the conversation so that there is no progress.

What we really should do is yell at them, "If you hate it so much, why don't you move to France!?!?!?"

Maybe that will confuse them.

Comments

[dieppe.livejournal.com]

Wait... does France have universal health care?

But yeah, it does boggle my mind sometimes how vehemently against universal health care otherwise reasonable Christian folks are. They're doing the "don't take my money!" chant, while forgetting that their God told them to give all of it away, to the poor.. and other stuff. Anyway.

[la-directora.livejournal.com]

I have almost precisely this thought every time I hear someone tell me that poor people are "lazy" and that they shouldn't have to "give them handouts" and that it "isn't fair" to have to spend their "hard earned" money on people who aren't bothering to do it for themselves.

I'm sure Jesus was severely pissed off about all of those lazy, free-loading poor people he had to help.

[drglam]

I think the meme should be "WHY DO YOU HATE AMERICA?"

That and continually asking why they're such bad Christians (while quoting extensively from the Sermon on the Mount).

[dballing.livejournal.com]

So, wait... if you're "anti-healthcare-reform", you're automatically lumped in with people who don't want a debate?

I'll happily debate healthcare reform 'til the cows come home but "constructive" does not always mean "come around to your way of thinking". I've engaged in a number of constructive debates about healthcare reform, and still believe that the left is flat-out wrong-headed in their way of trying to attack healthcare.

I did see one idea the other day that I liked... how about a trade-off? You get your public-option but then TRUE competition is enabled by removing all the regulations on the insurance industry.

Let them operate however they like, just like the gov't operation can operate however it feels like. In other words, "a public option can exist only so long as the remainder of the industry is un-regulated".

And let's see which products and services thrive. I'll put money on the private-sector. :-)

[edhorch.livejournal.com]

Two words: "Adhesive contract".

[dballing.livejournal.com]

Not sure what you're trying to say.

[edhorch.livejournal.com]

Which is why you think it's safe to deregulate everything.

[dballing.livejournal.com]

I understand what an adhesive contract is, but I don't understand why it's relevant. If anything, an adhesive contract, such as an insurance policy, would be interpreted in favor of the insured, since they did not construct the insurance contract.

If you'd like have a discussion, it generally requires prudent combination of both nouns AND verbs. That's how, in the English language, we form complete thoughts. :-)

[edhorch.livejournal.com]

Grammar Nazi, correct thyself:

Not sure what you're trying to say.

Back on topic: Interpreted by whom? Adhesive contracts exist all over the place, and rarely land in court. Deregulate the insurance industry and they'll load down their policies with so much fine print that they'll pretty much never have to pay for anything. With nothing to stop it, the industry will coalesce into a small collusive oligopoly, with little or no differentiation, but large armies of lawyers. Who's going to sue them, sick and dying people who are already broke from denied claims?

[dballing.livejournal.com]

And if they write their contracts in that fashion, then people will stop paying them money and they'll go out of business. Those people will then have the ability to go to the public-option the left is bandying about as Manna From Heaven.

People aren't idiots and don't need to be coddled. If "BigInsuranceCo" starts screwing people over -- when there's an option of a public-run insurance company -- people will simply stop paying that insurance company money and use the public-option company.

If the gov't can pass laws so it can run its public-option insurance provider any way it darn well feels like it, why shouldn't the competition have the same capabilities?

[edhorch.livejournal.com]

People are more ideologically driven than that. The current system is broken, but a large chunk of the population is literally screaming to keep things the way they are, because they're convinced that any change at all would be for the worse.

In the scenario of a deregulated private industry and a public option, they'll take whatever crumbs the corporation throws them rather than go over to the evil gummint. Logic has nothing to do with it.

To answer your question: The government can run its public option any way it wants because its primary motivation is to deliver health care. The private insurance industry does not have that luxury because its primary motivation is not to deliver health care, but to deliver profit to its shareholders.

[xthread.livejournal.com]

Which regulations on the insurance industry are you thinking of removing? I'm very, very much in favor of, for example, removing the state-level regulations that effectively prevent new insurers from entering given health-care markets, because that is very nearly purely-anticompetitive. That does, however, hurtle headlong into both issues of local control ("State's Rights") and would create a regulatory race to the bottom). Having a public option in place, to my mind, is simply the mechanism for guaranteeing that any insurer in any market will have actual competition for the customers in that market.