It's Official: Mandated Private Healthcare for everyone

[Leopolds Ghost]

"Free riders" in the working and middle class, who according to leading Democrats
(blue dogs, the ones who lead the party now) are responsible for breaking the
existing system, will be fined almost $1000 a year for not having healthcare under
all existing proposals, including the "liberal" Congressional plan being advocated
on many supposed "left-leaning" Democratic blogs.

Here's the latest on the closed door negotiations with Health Care lobbyists, who
"had a field day" according to the Washington Post, trying to get the individual
mandate provision -- a hobby horse of the right-wing Democrats in the Clinton
administration -- inserted.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/05/AR2009080503996.html

This will solve the crisis by wiping it off the books, eliminating the problem
much like welfare and public housing are being eliminated by the same cadre of crooks.

LISTEN to me, DUers (and family members who have a rally round the flag mentality!)

WHAT the hell do you think the following paragraph can mean,
if not to require everyone left over to buy private health insurance,
even if a public option exists?

Other Democrats disagree, saying that reform without a strong public option
is doomed to fail, with private insurers reaping a bonanza of new customers
while costs continue to escalate and premium subsidies fall short.

In other words supporters of this so-called "universal health care" package
ON THE LEFT -- i.e. yuppie dems who voted for people like Mitt Romney in MA
and Tim Pawlenty and Tommy Thompson -- ACTIVELY ASSUME it will create a
"windfall of new consumers for private health care" whether a public option
exists or not

(cite: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/06/AR2009080601574.html )

Not that it matters to the Constitution whether a public option exists or not,
since the very definition of a public OPTION implies, by definition, that it
would not necessarily be available to the people being fined. Contrary to the
lies of everyone to the right of Howard Dean on this issue, this is about
solving the "problem" by ending it. Government programs are NOT unconstitutional
-- such as single payer -- forcing private citizens to purchase private plans is.

And fining them creates the practical effect of doing this (but of course the
Blue Dog Dems and Clinton-model advocates will lie in court and say that was
not the intention and that if they're "too poor to afford a measly $1000 fine"
they can go on Medicaid.)

Many technocrats on the "left leaning" blogs are already stepping up their
attempt to exile all those evil Trotskyists who want their freedom and privacy
of health care not to be infringed by exiling them from the Party and lumping
them in with all those "ignorant right wing protesters who support the existing
system."

Most Americans, especially educated professionals I meet, are already saying
"if those yahoos in Tampa are against it, I'm for it." Hell, a family member
who WORKS in health care for the federal government told me:

1. "I don't believe they'd do that" (mandate private insurance, with fines).

2. "That's ridiculous. Don't believe everything you read in the Post"

3. "If they do it, well, it's needed. The system is broken. Just ask us research professionals"

4. "WE NEED UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE NOW and I support whatever plan gets passed
by the Democrats. The private insurance companies are lobbying against it!
We have to support the Democrats in Congress or Health Care will be defeated.
Is that what you want?"

5. "We already have a public option, it's called Medicare and Medicaid"

6. "It's not a violation of your rights. People like you who don't have
health care are dragging down the system. If you're too stubborn to
purchase health care, You should be fined."

This is the sort of rhetoric I'm hearing from people (friends and family)
who consider themselves on the (affluent) "left" of the Democratic party.

For more info, see here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6151364

Note: In addition to having your rights to health privacy and freedom of contract
revoked, did you know you no longer have the right to enter the US Capitol using the
main entrance? Only Congressmen and REGISTERED LOBBYISTS, including Health Insurance
professionals who have amply funded leading so-called Democrats (including many on
the supposed "left" who are in fact technocrats, not Democrats) are allowed to
enter by the above ground entrance.

Peons must enter thru the servants entrance (underground security tunnel).

[babylonsister]

1. Something's official? News to me. And PS, don't believe

everything or nearly anything you see in the WaPo. They're notorious for being wrong or at best misleading on purpose.

[Leopolds Ghost]

4. What do you think about the chain of reasoning I'm hearing (see original message)

From my hard-core "affluent progressive" friends and family members,
not to mention every blogger out there who is telling me you're
either in support of this bill or the Commies (Freepers) and the
evil Health Care Industry?

The insurance majors are clever enough to steal your data and sell
it to crooks whenever you attempt to purchase a decent plan. You
think they aren't clever enough to fund astro-turf right wing groups
in order to provide the appearance of opposition to a bill that they
themselves are writing, behind the scenes? the way they wrote the
telecom bill to sell off America's bandwidth, formerly a public
resource? Well, that's what this bill is about -- forcing the
market to buy private health insurance.

Many a movie producer has privately thanked right wing groups for
protesting a controversial film to end up getting more people to see it.

This allows the insurance co's to keeping the pressure on from the right,
Overton style, to allow them to get a bill passed that the insurance
industry can "live with", i.e. increase their profits further, by claiming
the alternative is the "crazy people out in the streets". The left used
to know how to do this until they got taken over from within by a narrow
technocratic elite. Decreasing profits is off the table, and if the only
way to "fix the system" (meaning increase industry profits in such a way
that "serves more people", like Hillary's 1993 plan to put all Americans
into an HMO) requires the state to fine people who don't purchase health
coverage from them, well, that's the provision they insisted on being
in every bill! They will complain all the way to the bank.

It's called mercantilism -- the state-subsidized version of capitalism
espoused by the French and British Empires at the time of the Stamp Act.

[Le Taz Hot]

12. Excellent analysis.

[Leopolds Ghost]

11. Do people unrecommending threads support the mandate or just feel the plan has enough enemies?

If enough people unrecommend a thread, does it get dropped? My last post on this subject got archived after a day.

Is all people want to talk about those eevil right wingers and useful idiots in Tampa, who are providing the semblance of controversy over a deal that was done the minute all parties on both sides of the table decided to FORCE all Americans to buy health insurance as a way of guaranteeing that everyone will be insured?

Do people unrecommend threads that say "face it, even people on DU seem to support mandated private health care!"

People should be proud of that, if it's something worth supporting.

When folks post messages like "don't believe everything you read" or "you sound like a right winger!"

-- it kind of implies they OPPOSE private individual mandates and don't wish to go that route of fining consumers without insurance.

(Even though that is integral to the premise of the current reform plan.)

Folks say it is slander to claim that the current health care plan does that.

but "you know, if it does, I don't have a problem with it".

As some friends and family said when I brought this up.

This is classic lawyerly rhetoric indicative of a defensive, "rally round the flag" "take what we can get" mindset.

Many people are willing to accept a rightward shift in Health Care (the Mitt Romney plan) instead of no change at all. Classic moral relativism.

The article in the OP has a direct quote from the President about how he now supports fining people who do not show proof of insurance, although he opposed it earlier, because Clinton et al. convinced him these were mostly people who could afford it, "as long as there is a decent public option" for people who can't afford the fine.

Is it heresy to say so?

No mention of "injustice for one person is an injustice for all people." Because you know, that's too absolutist for this day and age. majoritarianism is in vogue. (Just look at the "rate it down" concept.)

This plan is unfortunately broken from the get go, Just as HMO's, a now discredited concept, were integral to the 1993 plan. The insurance giants still had a field day using it as an excuse to elect right wingers on both sides of the aisle a year later who could get a plan they like -- one that forces Americans to buy insurance -- on the table.

They started lobbying for it in 2000. Leaving aside the fact that it's not single payer, this bill was originally written BY THE INSURANCE LOBBY and peddled to the center-right (formerly center-left) Brookings Institution et al. as a successor to the Clinton plan (which was itself engineered to set up HMOs as the industry equivalent of PACs). The new plan was designed specifically to KILL single payer.

Of course, people have latched onto the public option as a fig leaf that is there mostly to provide us the semblance of choice -- "you have NO EXCUSE for not having insurance so it is only natural we fine you" --

So when even that is taken away, will they cheer the compromise and urge us to rally round the flag, or will they come out against the compromise bill if it has no public option even though they support trying to drive 90% of uninsured consumers into the private insurance marketplace and the public option is only for the remaining 10% "if they qualify"?

My hunch is we will be hearing a lot of rally round the flag, take what we can get rhetoric soon.

[Fumesucker]

13. Rally round the flag, take what we can get rhetoric "soon"?

I don't think so, we have it already..

[Hannah Bell]

2. The biggest pool of folks without health care = the "working poor" & kids starting out,

too old for their old for their parents' policies with starter jobs that don't offer employer-provided HC.

That low-middle bracket is going to take a hit.


"Only Congressmen and REGISTERED LOBBYISTS"

telling.

[Leopolds Ghost]

6. Notice we started registering lobbyists, now we will start registering "insurance evaders"

By imposing a sharia-style tax.

[Buzz Clik]

3. For those visiting this thread, don't forget to read the links, They are not quoted at all here.

Every word in the OP is strictly the opinion of the poster.

[Leopolds Ghost]

5. Did you see the graph of options in the article?

This sort of sophistry is why I highlighted the opinions of my very liberal
family member who works in health care, to illustrate the fact that the people
who deny this is in the works are the first ones to admit they don't have a
problem with it. Why deny it?

The top article I cited (the lead in to this Post) is two Post articles
emphasizing (in an accompanying ''graph'') that NONE of the plans moving
thru Congress would NOT require Americans to show "proof of purchase" of
private insurance or else be fined. (the "public option" BY DEFINITION
is set up to provide people a choice of REQUIRED privately funded
health care providers. The "public option" MEANS individual mandate
"with public option". That's what it's short for.)

Not only that, but the original Post article I cited on my previous thread
(bottom of OP, "Click here if you will burn your mandated private insuricare card")
emphasized the unusually strong coalition of "liberal" bloggers (if MoveOn
and the Young Turks et al. are considered the left wing) business Republicans,
unions and employer-mandate advocates, and industry lobbyists who have
"rallied round the flag" of Clinton's original idea of fining Americans who
don't purchase insurance in order to drive premiums down for "the rest of us".

This sort of philosophy is known as "Tyrrany of the majority" and implies
a distinction between an already-insured ruling class, including elite
technocrats such as bloggers on the left and right, who assume it will
only affect "deadbeats" because nobody they know is "stupid enough not
to have health insurance".

The only difference of opinion between the so-called "left" elites and
the right wingers is cultural issues: The right wing wants the uninsured
merely to suffer, and still force everyone to buy private insurance. The
left assumes private health care will "wither on the vine" if we fine all
the deadbeats who do NOT purchase private insurance, and then give them
the option of a public plan after premiums continue to rise.

Why would the insurance industry embrace a "windfall of new customers"
if the resulting windfall would decrease their profit margin? Lowering
premiums would by definition decrease the per-person profit margin.

The windfall will result in raising premiums. As Econ 101 teaches us,
increased demand increases the capitulation price for a private good.

Which is what the entire "blue dog" coalition wants health care to be:
a private good that not enough people are buying, thereby "hurting us
who already have it by limiting the pool of customers".

It does so even further then there is an oligopoly. If, on the other hand per
microeconomics, increasing the number of customers by fining them (meaning they
are not choice customers and are willing to pay higher rates to avoid the fine)
if increasing the number of "sales" resulted in lower prices for the good in
question, it would only be due to massive supply-side economies of scale that
are not present in the decision to try a "demand side" approach of forcing the
consumer (unconstitutionally) into the market place by interfering in their
privacy rights on their 1099 or small-employer 1023 tax form.

Oh, and 2 out of 3 House/Senate Democratic plans cited in the Post would
have an employer mandate as well, forcing small businesses to prove they
make less than $x amount per year or be sucked into the private insuricare
system, further destroying the American industries that guys like Austin
Goolsbee, Rahm and the Clintons wanted to offshore anyway by making them
responsible for paying private insuricare plans for unions, the way Americans
are used to being fined and/or have their house or car confiscated if
they don't pay for, say, electricity or car insurance from an approved
and restricted list of private firms. This is what's destroying the
unions, since failing American industries can legitimately argue they
can't afford to fund the package of benefits that is provided by the
government (or by the union itself) in other, more Commie countries,
unless they decrease the work force, which existing union members are
happy to do because it strengthens the bargaining position of the
remaining highly skilled union workers with the implication that they
will be the last generation to benefit from the union's policies on
these shores. Again, Econ 101.

This is known as mercantilism.

[Fumesucker]

7. "I can envision a day when you will have to show proof of insurance at the job interview".

-Hillary Clinton on the 2008 campaign trail.

Hillary isn't psychic, this is where the insurance companies want to go..

What big money wants in DC, big money gets and you don't find much bigger money than the insurance companies.

[Leopolds Ghost]

8. To quote Staff Sgt. Sykes: Fuck.That.Shit!!!!!!!!

And screw anyone, liberal or conservative, who supports that sort of authoritarian, technocratic elitist agenda.

Does Hillary envision the day when you have to show a drivers license or credit check?

Because that sort of thing gets people turned down from jobs. The response from my
"liberal" friends was "don't be a fool, get a car! Of course they will penalize you
for not having a car or credit check or insurance in interviews. Do you want to look
like a bum, like (mention so-and-so friend who is too poor to afford a car)?"

And many folks who were born after Reagan are even worse. The instinct of
many people in the younger generation is to look at you cross-eyed if you start
to talk about not penalizing people who aren't as wired into the system,
and well-appointed as they are. They expect everyone to work to prove that they
are "competent to get by" as opposed to "trifling and beneath notice" which means
a mortgage, multiple credit cards, a cell phone (and the ability to purchase and
discard cell phones on a daily basis), proof of insurance etc. and they don't see
a problem with the government FINING PEOPLE who are "not like them".

(On a related issue, I went into a Smithsonian museum DURING the inauguration,
and asked to use the pay phone. They told me they ripped out the pay phones
(what if it's urgent, I say?) and they said "You should have brought your
cell phone. People are expected to have cell phones." And, in CA, cash
in your pocket. And, in LA or any public housing project, a mortgage (even
if your family used to own a home in the city for generations until it got
siezed to make way for urban renewal in order to take care of the "problem
of poverty" by decreasing the number of poor people living in the city.)
Same logic as insurance mandates. In fact, DC's new "liberal" technocratic
mayor wants to end welfare by imposing a "new covenant of personal responsibility"
and implementing the Gingrich policy of cutting off all non-temporary assistance
in DC by "mandating" full employment of people on welfare in order to "get people
back to work". They are slowly depriving the working class of their rights
in an effort to create a "uniform society".

They are hiding behind a few symbolic social issues but the mainstream of the Democratic Party is shifting inexorably to the right, and each new class of young people support "change" that is further and further removed from an understanding of traditional liberalism or left. As reflected in their embrace of talk like this.

Dems are actually absorbing four groups of right wingers at once:

1. Economically conservative "progressives" from the millenial generation,
often anti-civil-libertarian, who support Democrats on social issues but
oppose the "excesses" of earlier liberalism and have no problem with the
restriction of other people's rights

2. affluent bloggers who have a we're in power now, the rules are different,
"rally round the flag" mentality

3. Moderate Business Republicans turned off by Bush -- the Obama and Clinton
bills are essentially identical to the Mitt Romney plan, and the Obama
electoral coalition is identical to that of the Wilson and Mckinley era
of upper-middle class white "progressives" and anti-populist "reformers".
It's a shift in party identification, not

4. Overton-window strategists and Blue Dogs who are rebranding themselves
as progressives, including people whom Obama has surrounded himself with,
such as Rahm Emanuel, Pelosi (a wealthy fundraiser-turned politician who
got appointed due to her family connections) and the Clinton folks.
When Geithner is probably the most liberal Cabinet member, that's fucking scary.

[Fumesucker]

9. Staff Sargeant Sykes sounds a lot like Gunny Tom Highway..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heartbreak_Ridge

My favorite quote, which applies to most pols in DC these days: "You're a poster child for prophylactics".

I had a Gunny like Highway, he could chew your ass for ten minutes without repeating himself once, it was awe inspiring.

As for your four groups of rightists, I couldn't agree more.

[cdsilv]

10. Said before - insurance cos. are scared of the impending baby boomer's retirement and subsequent....

...enrollment in medicare. That's why they have to have mandated insurance for all, to keep their revenues up.

[ima_sinnic]

14. isn't $1000 per year quite a bit less than insurance?

if that is my "option," then so be it, because I will NEVER buy "health insurance," even if I can "afford" it. I work for myself as a freelance copy editor, so I have no paycheck to "garnish," and I will NOT be applying for any jobs. I refuse to pay money for "insurance" for which I will be penalized if I make a claim or that will be denied if my particular condition isn't "covered" or is "pre-existing."

I am very disappointed that Obama is allowing it to go this way. He should emulate LBJ and use the power of his office to pressure key people in Congress and set the tone of the damn thing rather than letting the astroturfers, lobbyists, and terminally stupid determine its course.

[Leopolds Ghost]

15. We just had to purchase insurance for a not-forprofit business

(They're required not by law, but by lease, to have insurance, and
also because of the danger of public liability from any establishment
that allows the public to come in due to our litigous society, and
besides, it's the sensible thing to do when your a business)--and even
so, guess what? There's a $1000 deductible on a place that has less
than $25,000 in physical assets. So naturally we can't even get money
after the place was burglarized by armed robbers. And that is with
a NONPROFIT insurance provider!

And I can't afford insurance for myself, or more precisely, I can
afford a policy that's not worth the expense compared to my limited
income, which many analysts don't bother to factor in, since they
assume that people who are poor should not "have the luxury" of
making sound business decisions with their personal lives.

It's why I'm more left-libertarian these days as I watch
the progressive movement (and socialists in Europe) merge more and more
with the socially moderate Main Street republicans. Maybe this is just
an awkward transition and we'll see the rise of a new populist movement
after the sensible Republicans all become Democrats and the left-behind
remainder is completely marginalized. But unfortunately that puts
the populists on the outside, since the insider politics increasingly
resembles that of Mexico with their permanent political elite.

When I hear the words "personal responsibility",

coming out of the mouth of a Mitt Romney (or Hillary Clinton or
Adrian Fenty or Rudy Giuliani or Bloomberg or any of these other
technocrats who have twisted the concept of liberalism into a
sort of state-centrism that Bismarck would be proud of)

I think of Inigo Montoya:

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

With them, it means the individual's personal responsibility to the state.

[Better Today]

21. It's a fine, not a purchase of insurance, it won't pay your health care costs. (more)

Seems to me that middle class without insurance already pay out the ying yang as hospitals won't let them off the hook as they do indigent. But I guess also that those are the ones that then file bankruptcy because they then can't afford the health care bills. Y'know I hate to say it, but it does seem reasonable for anyone truly in the middle class or higher to either pay into a single payer option or be required to have insurance through a company of their choice or be fined because they are putting everyone else in position of paying for their lack of regular and preventative care (we all know those without insurance only see the docs when they have to causing high costs, even in the middle class). . . since the truly smart answer, SINGLE PAYER HEALTHCARE, seems to be wholly off the table at this point.

[Leopolds Ghost]

28. No, it does not make sense to fine anyone for not having health insurance.

They don't affect you in the least, which is probably why you don't mind fining them. They have to pay thru the nose.

Maybe what's really going on here is a narrow, judgemental-minded majoritarianism about how "middle class people" should BEHAVE in our increasingly regimented society.

And God Help anyone who isn't middle class. People who don't proclaim their "middle-class-ness" and conformity with expectations in what they are expected to afford, deserve only pity and contempt with most Americans.

And why exactly do you think high costs are caused by uninsured middle class people who can somehow "afford" health insurance? I thought high costs were caused by the broken-ness of our FOR-PROFIT system and Americans' pampered insistence on coverage for all sorts of specialized procedures, including extreme end-of-life measures that are considered the God-given right of every American who is afraid of becoming a brain-dead vegetable before the Rapture or the cure for old age and space ship evacuation of earth (secular version) takes place.

Here in DC, they are unambiguous about what they really mean: the New Democrats who have flocked into the city in the past 15 years openly state that destitute uninsured are "the problem" with burgeoning health care costs for the "rest of us" (like them) and that inpatient care needs to be deliberately reduced for the poor (along with welfare benefits) in order to enforce "personal responsibility" on the "freeloaders" who don't understand how to "support themselves". the way, you know, all those policy wonks in NW DC have supported themselves since they graduated from Yale.

Here's a test: How many people with uninsured family members think this bill would be good because it would force their deadbeat relatives to buy insurance or face a deserved fine?

(I actually have a "liberal" family member who feels this way, though curiously, she also denies that this is the plan and says "don't believe everything you read, they wouldn't do that". If it turns out to be true, however, she doesn't have a problem with it, since "those people need insurance anyway, the pool of uninsured is what's causing all our health care problems"! This is an increasingly common form of sophism which Americans are using for issues they wish to embrace but not defend, because they vaguely remember opposing it back when Reagan or Nixon or Bush advocated it.)

She works in health care and doesn't realize the original think-tank version of this plan (I read an article about it way back then about the Insurance Industry's plans to resuscitate and revamp Health Care reform in order require everyone to BUY insurance) was written by health care industry lobbyists ten years ago?

[JVS]

25. People who can't afford insurance don't need to be docked another $1000 for being poor

[ipaint]

16. Reagan's welfare queen = Obama's insurance deadbeats

Blame the victim and throw the middle class, that will continue to struggle trying to pay for mandated overpriced substandard private insurance, some new scapegoats to blame it all on.

Why we are negotiating ourselves into a mandate in exchange for eliminating recission and pre-existing conditions is beyond me. That should just be law. period. We shouldn't have to give up a thing for that.

And if the "incremental change in the future" meme was a viable strategy then we would be phasing in medicare for all today. There will be no future improvements as long as the medical industry is in charge.

The current reform is welfare for wealth hoarding insurance companies on our tax dollar.

[Leopolds Ghost]

17. I've seen people on blogs who VOTE DEM and live in cities who still use "welfare queen" unironically

To refer to BLACK WOMEN, of course.

They did so on a WaPo Discussion forum just recently where all the people are cheering Adrian Fenty's decision to implement the full Gingrich program for elimination of AFDC in DC. (DC had refused federal funds that were contingent on Gingrich's plan since 94 to revoke welfare for more than several months. Fenty explicitly called the people who were "still on welfare" deadbeats, which is kind of like saying "30 years after unemployment benefits, these people are still unemployed. we need to restructure the program to get these people off the rolls and thereby introduce them to the world of work.")

[Orwellian_Ghost]

18. K&R

[bluestateguy]

19. I only support an individual mandate if it's under a single payer system

Otherwise, no dice.

[Leopolds Ghost]

20. Good point.

Individual mandate under single payer = individual pay in to a Social Security like system

Individual mandate under multi payer = turn health insurance cos into a for-profit utility that everyone is required to purchase, like electricity (and even then, until the 1970s, the goal of the left in the US was to make regulated utilities nonprofit -- tell that to the current crowd of elected Dems!)

There was a local official here in the DC area (representing a pretty liberal constituency) who wanted to make drivers ed a condition of citizenship in Maryland because there were too many pedestrians in immigrant-heavy suburbs and they were getting run over. (with mandated insurance from local favorite Geico, presumably) "These people come from countries where the automobile is not required" he said. "They may not be used to an American lifestyle"

Let's just make everything required, shall we?

I propose we make freedom a requirement of citizenship. Anyone who does not sign a waiver stating they appreciate their freedoms gets fined $100.

[dysfunctional press]

22. a mandate to buy private insurance will be the death of the democratic party...

the people will hand the power back to the repugs, and it will get even worse.


when are people going to understand that we are going to have to march on dc in HUGH numbers?

[bvar22]

23. The ill informed who are rallying around HR 3200....

....because The Democrats have said it has "The Public Option" are going to be sadly disappointed.

The Public Option as proposed by John Edwards,

The Public Option that was championed by Howard Dean,

The Public Option that would "keep Insurance Companies honest",

The Public Option that would "drive down the cost of Health Care",

The Public Option "like Medicare" that Obama supported,

The Public Option that was going to be available to ALL Americans,
.
.
.
THAT Public Option is DEAD.

It was killed by the Democratic Party, and a Health Insurance Industry Profit Protection Bill was put in its place.
It (HR 3200) contains something called a "Public Option", but it won't be available to the majority of Americans. In fact, the Congressional Budget Office projected that LESS than 10 Million people will be enrolled in it by 2019!

The 72% of the American people who are expecting a REAL "Public Option" (government run, public owned, open to everyone) are going to be sadly disappointed when they realize they are going to be forced to BUY For Profit Health Insurance from the same mother fuckers who have been ripping them off for years!

[leftstreet]

26. +1

Well said

[Leopolds Ghost]

27. For their next act, they should fine people who do not buy stocks.

Why stop at diverting Social Security money into retirement accounts? Mandate it. That would guarantee a massive run-up in the stock market even if unemployment doubles. Anyone who doesn't purchase stocks would be fined.

We could privatize food stamps too. Require people with food stamps to buy from selected merchandisers such as Wal-Mart.

[kevinbgoode]

24. You know, I keep hearing about this stuff called "option" and "choice"

and yet, I am in the first job in my working life of 40 years that I have EVER had any "choice" concerning health insurance. Now I had THREE options offered by the employer, but this is a huge employer. Before that, I only had whatever insurance a company provided - there were NO choices in plans, NO choices in deductions, NO negotiating in contract, NO choice in level of coverage - all provided "benefits" by the employer.

And I might add that at one unionized position I held for 11 years, the company regularly used increases in health care premiums and our deductables as negotiating points in wage and benefits contracts - the excuse being that these increases represented an increase in the cost of benefits (even though the employees ended up with increased premiums and deductables as well)...and no choice. Either take that insurance or try to get your own outside of the company.

Just how many Americans, by the way, ARE self-insured? Meaning, they've negotiated their own individual health insurance plans at an affordable cost with their premiums completely and contractually linked ONLY to their own personal use of insurance?

I do NOT like the idea of FORCED insurance on anyone - I didn't like it when the state forced all car vehicle owners to carry insurance. But at the same time, there isn't a single American who i believe will not require medical treatment at some point in their lives - do any of you know anyone who never needed to ever see a medical professional?

Of course, if we had some town hall meetings where the really concerned public (not the disruptors) were allowed to ask meaningful questions about the direction of legislation, we all might feel more on top of the matter - but the teabaggers have decided for us that we have no meaningful questions.

What I do know is that the present system is broken - it has been headed that way ever since deregulation in the 1980's allowed "competition" which suddenly gave insurance companies hegemony over our own doctor's assessments or decisions, "networks" which dictated what treatment we can seek and who we can see, and huge binders of a "contract" that we have no say in negotiating, provided as a condition of insurance.