I am guilty of it too, but man, I knew the second he made that post there was gonna be a 150 post onslaught that I’d have to plow through. The simple fact is that millions of people feel the same way, and he is correct in his overall point, which was missed - if people feel their existing healthcare standard will be taken away with a new plan, it will lose. I agree with that. The battleis convincing them (and people like jman) that this will NOT happen. poo flinging doesn’t do that.
I disagree with the rest of his post. I wish though that minor point had not been missed because I think it is an interesting discussion. I lurk more than you guys realize and I like to read interesting discussions. A lot of the posts here were decent but the signal to noise ratio gets really high at times especially when someone comes in with an unpopular opinion.
Eventually this will just become a poo slinging echo chamber. Sorry for this post. Just wanted to chime in, don’t attack me.
There’s a lot of good information here - there are a lot of bright people here, too and I’ve learned a fair amount hanging around, often about topics that I either really haven’t thought much about or have given me new info that at a minimum makes me reconsider my views.
OTOH, some of the one liners are glib (which I’ve been guilty of, so whatever), and I avoid the true believers on pretty much any topic, because most of this stuff is complex and I have at best a superficial knowledge of some of the topics - which again hopefully lets me learn stuff. And sometimes you do need to shovel thru the horseshit in hopes of a pony, I suppose.
It’s not an irony, it’s just funny, that even the public option, let alone M4A, will ~never happen in America, so taking heaping shits on it as policy seems moot to me. It does move the conversation pretty left though, to that end it’s good.
While you’re right, it really does seem like a lot to people with the opinion Jman holds seem to think they have “better” healthcare than some other people currently. They do not want to have the system that people “below” them have. I’m not necessarily saying Jman believes any or all of this and am not trying to put words in his mouth.
I believe a large portion of Americans like feeling superior in certain services. You own a car because you don’t want to be on public transportation with those who cannot afford it. You like your healthcare because it insulates you from those who cannot afford it. You live in the suburbs because it separates you from those who cannot afford it etc.
There is a strong and well described attribute that people markedly are risk averse - they are MUCH more concerned about losing something they have vs. getting something they perceive as an improvement. I’d guess there’s a fair amount of this going on, and it will be difficult to convince people of something that they’re hardwired to disbelieve.
So much of the “American dream” is just stepping over people rather than helping them out. It’s the attitude that needs to be fixed. There are NIMBY and “I got mine” people on both sides.
I don’t disagree, but in this case it’s a subconscious issue to some degree - our species is designed to be risk averse - which makes sense - if you were the curious guy who decided to look behind that rustling bush, you became dinner. The NIMBY is similar but different, I think.
I don’t agree, at least in term of the public option issue - we’ve had lots of states come into the Medicaid strategy, which is pretty much a public option system. The problem is that Medicaid pays so poorly that no hospital or Dr. can keep the doors open if that is the only way to run an operation - but the THEORY is fine - the $$ are the problem.
We’re talking apples and oranges here, but 26 states (I think) joined Obamacare and that was done on a state-by-state-basis - so that might be a way to open things up. From what I know a fair number of them were Dead Red states - so it would seem even some of the evil socialist types went along for the ride.
And goddamit it to fucking hell - if Hillary hadn’t been such a fucking disaster, we’d probably be there - I think at the time Obama looked at what was going on, and figured that he had at least 4 more years of getting this stuff cemented in because there was no fucking way a goddam failed game show host was going to lose in 2016. Hence, move gradually over the next four years and we’d be in a reasonable spot.
You right. I’ve never joined in one of these as they always felt gross, so I apologize to Jman. I think the language is what did it for me, it just felt so absolutely " fuck you I got mine " that set a lot of people off.
