Sure To Be My Favorite Obamacare Remark
10/07/2013
From an Obama voter who just found out how much her health insurance premium is going up:
“Of course, I want people to have health care,” Vinson said. “I just didn’t realize I would be the one who was going to pay for it personally.”
Update: On second thought, I have to quote a bit more from Neo for people who might not bother to click over and read the whole post; this bit certainly describes a lot of people:
Perhaps their thinking stops at the “Of course, I want people to have health care” point. That makes them good people in their own eyes: nice people, compassionate people, unlike those who disagree with them and are imagined to be mean people who do not“want people to have health care.” The idea that conservatives actually might also “want people to have health care” and yet be more realistic than liberals about the costs and benefits of such an undertaking, and might have different ideas about the best way to effect the greatest amount of health care for the greatest number of people, seems to be a foreign notion to many who think as Vinson does.
“Of course, I want people to have health care,” Vinson said. “I just didn’t realize I would be the one who was going to pay for it personally.”
Oh dear. The one thing we can be sure of in all this is that Big Business will continue to make a lot of money. (Hence, the premiums going up).
Posted by: Louise | 10/08/2013 at 10:40 AM
We can also be sure that the government will have a great deal more control over every individual and organization.
We already know that it's insanely complicated and will be exploited to the max by all the sorts of people who know how to exploit insane complication. I think it's also very likely, if not certain, that costs will continue to go up and quality down. If we're lucky, only one or the other will happen.
Posted by: Mac | 10/08/2013 at 11:04 AM
It will be exploited by people who can afford the lawyers and lobbyists to exploit insane complication.
The longer excerpt pretty accurately describes me as a young undergraduate. I can still remember the shock I felt when a professor whom I knew to be conservative expressed concern for the poor! Not only that, but he had first-hand knowledge of poorer people than anyone I knew and he admired their resourcefulness in the face of constraints. In short, he respected them far more than my progressive friends and I did. So when he expressed frustration at how much more effectively they would be served by economic development rather than larger handouts, it was a real turning point for me.
Posted by: Anne-Marie | 10/08/2013 at 12:21 PM
Lawyers, lobbyists, and consultants. Now that I'm almost at retirement age, I've more than once run across advice to hire a consultant to help me navigate Social Security, Medicaid, etc. Obamacare will be a gold mine for all such.
I think what continues to amaze and irritate me, in spite of constant exposure to it, is the fact that progressives who have that attitude STILL pride themselves on being generous and open-minded.
I don't really remember having a shock at the discovery of non-evil conservatives, but a bit of one when I began to say conservative things and realized that some people saw it as a moral lapse. As James Kalb said:
"Ruling elites came to understand conservatism as simple resistance to the plain demands of public morality...."
Posted by: Mac | 10/08/2013 at 01:27 PM