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

[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.