1 Welcome to my state future Massholes!

Oh wait the main candidate against the Commie in Chief is Mitt my former Governor..... we are so boned.

2

It will be cool

 

3 Obama is a stuttering clusterfuck of a miserable failure. Breitbart is here in spirit and Brian Dennehey will play him in a future biography funded by Ace.

4 I forget who said that.

That was Reagan, when he was campaigning for Goldwater. (Well, he said "medicine", not "insurance", but same thing.)

5 "I forget who said that."

Ann Coulter at CPAC, right?

Am I actually banned this time, by the way?

6

Never forget that "Social Security" was  originally presented as "Insurance" - hence the "OASDI" on your paycheck.

 

It, too, was "voluntary" - until it wasn't.

 

And then it was turned into a tax.

7 I'm suffering from an extremely nasty rectal wart named Obama

8

I have been saying for years that the Healthcare cost issue is really an insurance issue.  Because Healthcare insurance is not really insurance, its really a disassociation between the user of the good or service with the payer of the same.

 

Make the user of healthcare feel some of the financial pain of the cost and most healthcare cost issues go away.

9 Future ain't what it used to be. Sorry serfs.

10 good post. and socialist insurance for non risks can't work unless 1st amendment freedom of association is violated.

11 Obama is a stuttering clusterf*ck of a miserable failure.

12 When I force you to pay for my birth control, I'm f*cking you all. Sounds right to me.

13 Yep,they already adsvanced it a long long way.

14

O/T, but shamelessly blogwhoring my latest post, "Fisking Fluke's Fables", wherein I lambast Ms. Fluke's testimony to SanFranNan's dog-and-pony show:

Somebody better go check on Gloria Steinem – she’s got to be in absolute vapors on the floor of her living room. All those bras that were burned back in the 70s, and the Women’s Movement has been stopped in its tracks because some poor little twenty-something couldn’t give up a couple of Double Espresso Lattes at Starbucks each month.

LetÂ’s hear it for Girl Power! YouÂ’ve come a long way, baby.

http://t.co/k9ofFRCt

15

I forget who said that. I think it's insightful and correct.

I said it the other day.

They've got us herded into an insurance-bound system.  They use that shared risk to justify controlling behavior (obesity, smoking, etc.), and control the system with regulation (Obama's edicts,etc.).

It's progressively socialized to the point where they can drive the system to death and then assume full control (ObamaCare, singlepayer).

And once they control that, they control you.  There are no individuals in the collective, so no individual rights.

16 Well once that happens I am the biggest damn couch potato ever.  If everything is shared, why bust your butt?  Its always the end answer to socialism.  And starvation.  And death camps. 

Couch potatoes, starvation, and death camps.

17 but if nobody has to pay for anything, then nobody has to work!  It's so simple!

18 need a few constitutional amendments to get around the totalitarians. In this case, the commerce clause needs its own bill of rights, such as the right to free insurance association. Thereby letting consumers ditch expensive programs by forbidding requirement mandates, state and federal.

19

(Can somebody clean up my formatting on #13?)

 

Thx!

20

Also, under Socialistic Insurance, the state now suddenly starts acting all responsibly and stuff now that they have to pay your bills. This will lead to all kinds of diktates in your daily life, since your (formerly personally responsible) decision now affects everyone thanks to them (see Care, Obama).

 

Which is bullshit, as we all know. It's selective, as they don't seem to care where all the other money they waste is going, but when it comes to you and your life, it's important to them that you do the "right thing."

21

Where can I get me some gasoline insurance?

22 This post seems oddly familiar.

23 But even without full socialized medicine, they're practically in control now with regulation and their constructed necessity of being insured.

24 I take that back. It wasn't campaigning for Goldwater. It was in 1961:

"one of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine. ItÂ’s very easy to disguise a medical program as a humanitarian project."

Roger Kimball linked to the speech from here a couple of days ago:

http://tinyurl.com/7nrk44t

25

16 Well once that happens I am the biggest damn couch potato ever.

 

Here ya go:

 

http://is.gd/UPzKR1

26 24 But no one listened.

27 Once it was mandated that hospitals could not turn anyone away, the system was fubared. Essentially that says 'You are now slaves. You WILL work for free if you are a hospital worker.' So they are busy trying to pass on those 'free' services to everyone that does pay.
 
Someone pray tell me how that isn't true. So once you start down the path there is no end to it. Just arguments along the way.

28 >>>You can buy some kind of food plan -- like they have at college eating halls, or diet companies like The Zone offer -- but that's not "insurance."

Seems like a good point to insert the "Dollar Shave Club"

http://youtu.be/ZUG9qYTJMsI

29 I'm just angry because I lost my virginity to a 43 year old male gym teacher who didn't reciprocate oral pleasures.

30 'Shared costs' is the argument for murdering babies after birth that 'medical ethicists' in Britain are debating now.

31 >>>but if nobody has to pay for anything, then nobody has to work! It's so simple!

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."

32

hey morons, Please join my insurance group! it pays out to the morons if there should be more than one double post a week, provided that you are on the blog within 1 hour of the occurance. of course, i can't allow pre-existing morons to benefit (it would be unfaaaiirr), but to keep costs low, everyone shall pay per minute on the blog. also it pays to ace if there is a double post because of the shame he must face.

33 29 Back for negative attention, erg?

34 We are all Monty now.

35 There is always a way out. those who surrender and proclaim - This IS all there is - take the blue pill. I took the red pill and I'm glad I did. This is the shit that separates the men from the boys. That's why they call them red states and blue states

36

Really good explanation, Ace.   The key insight is that there are certain health care needs that aren't surprises, they're pretty much just the cost of doing business -- contraception is one of them, but a more mundane example is eyeglasses.   If you have bad vision (and most of us do nowadays) it's 100% certain that you're going to need eyeglasses.   So at least some cost is baked in the cake.   You can decide how often you need new glasses, you can decide what brand you want to buy at what cost, but you are going to have to have glasses, or you won't be able to see.  

 

The real question is whether, for these types of items, the cost is likely to be lower if you choose when to buy, how much to buy, and from whom to buy all by yourself; or whether it will be lower if you "insure" against the cost through an insurance company bureaucracy or, ultimately, through a government bureaucracy, where the cost is hidden from you because you hypnotize yourself into believing that you're not actually paying for it because some magical money-printing genie is paying for them.   The question answers itself... of course the cost will be lower if you pay for it yourself.

 

On the other hand, an economist might say that what people are really doing is saying "I'll pay more to have these things paid for by 'insurance,' because I want to avoid the 'transaction costs' of having to make decisions myself."   There's probably something to this.... as we have more and more a culture of dependency, the psychic transaction costs to doing anything yourself become prohibitive.   You'd rather just sit there and let Big Daddy Government take care of your "health" needs, because getting off the couch to do it yourself is just too much hassle.  

 

 

37

Oh noes!  Barky won't be able to get his message to his fanboyz in the Islamic world now:  " Egypt: Top Islamic Scholar Says Facebook And Twitter Are Outlets For The “Deviant Thoughts” of “Secular Liberals”…

 

 

 

http://is.gd/ZG2Npm

38 The trend is towards poverty. The material well-being peak of Americans has probably already been passed. We will live in smaller, colder, more dense housing. We will travel less. Everything that uses energy we will do less of. We will be encouraged/nudged at every level to spend our days mainly on the computer and consuming media, which is not very energy intensive. The future is pod people. Travelling, moving, building. Do anything with real stuff is energetically costly and will be discouraged at all levels of govt. Sitting alone in a dark cubicle with an iPad. That's the future. Most people won't mind that much. They'll be games and porn. You can watch cool videos filmed by the ruling class who are allowed to travel. You'll experience the world -- or at least as much as can be experienced through an iPad while sitting in a cold, dark cubicle.

39 I didn't think of this angle before, and of course it's obvious once pointed out.

It's an important point, and needs to be repeated often.

40 Insurance will be mandatory, and prices will be controlled.  The insurance companies will go bankrupt, threatening all of us, forcing the government to step in and nationalize them, for our good.

Yeah, we really need to push back against mandates.

41 In the future, all restaurants are Taco Bell.

42 Was that from Reagan's address on socialized medicine back in the 50s?

43

"Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program." -- Milton Friedmann.

I agree overall Ace, but I think you're missing the obvious bread and circuses that this whole system relies on as well. Social is appealing to the unreflective precisesly because it provides "free stuff" to people (Yes, I realize it's not free, hence the quotes.) That's part of how insurance came to be the way it is now, it became a form of compensation to workers (via in part the Unions and the Tax law.)

Couple this with the fact that a basic level of healthcare becomes necessary not to die, and you get people demanding it be handed out for free using other people's money, which the populace likes since they get free stuff.

44 You'll experience the world -- or at least as much as can be experienced through an iPad while sitting in a cold, dark cubicle.

The only thing missing from your dystopia is that it won't be an iPad. Government contracts don't like being tied to single vendors, so it'll be the cheapest tablet you can get, running some cut-rate version of Android.

45 How else are you going to get people to obey unless you hold them hostage?

46 Hmmm...little communes don't work.  You know what we need?  Bigger communes!

47 silly ace........"insurance" IS communism, for vicious fan-boy retards

all you morons should google 'Fabian Socialism' iffn you  don' already know it

48 What's the premium on idiot coverage?

49 The only thing you left out is that we will no longer be allowed to determine the quality or quantity of those things.  As in Regular Guys example, because I pay for my eyeglasses, I purchase very good frames that will last me for several years.  Under a government solution, my choices are limited to a small selection of lower quality frames.

50 I demand italic insurance because I want to use them every day and yet I can't have them.

51 The pioneers would have never made it across the Great Plains without insurance.

52 1 in 7 American are on food stamps now. What % of Europeans are their version of food stamps? We'll all get a weekly food allowance, a monthly housing allowance, a govt iPad. And our very own cubicle that we are allowed to personalize several square feet of. It'll be glorious.

53 So if the government is paying for our sexy fun time, don't they get to say who we share it with? Gay? That's a health risk! Living the Sex in the City lifestyle? That's a health risk! If the governmet is trying to lower health costs, they should mandate that we are all sterilized and have sex only within marriage. It's for our health, afterall, and to save money!

54

Pixy's computer hamsters demanded insurance, and when they didn't get it, they went on strike after they ate all the spaces in the comments.

 

AceTML Insurance for all!

55 >>>and every other anticonvulsant, be an out-of-pocket patient expense.

Wow! Not one person in my family takes anticonvulsants. I wonder what the odds are you would need them? Odds ....risk, I wonder if they are related.

Ooops I take that back, one the family dogs has to have anticonvulsants for epilepsy. We pay for that out of pocket though.

56 Future? We still have a future?

57 I think it's one in six on food stamps-----a nation of moochers, layered onto and worsening the Plight of the Poor

58 And therefore everything will be fair. It works for ants and termites. Maybe we should give it go?

59 the Regular Guy, It always has to be remembered that "health insurance' offered by employers is not really insurance, especially as to routine costs like eyeglasses. It's some kind of "health plan," an indemnification of such costs, but it's not insurance really. Employers have chosen to pay you $x in lieu of salary. When a cranky pants like Sandra Fluck whines about an employer health plan not covering contraception, she's really whining that they choose to give employees $120 in cash rather than in "insurance." It's the same thing. If you know it's going to cost you $120 per year, I can either give you cash and let you handle it yourself (like an adult) or have a company pay it out for you. But either way, that company paid $120 to you. so much of this is whining for a stealth government-mandated RAISE in salary. if an insurance policy must include, say, $1000 per year in various minor-cost riders, and the government mandates employers cover that, they're really trying to force companies to just pay each worker another $1000 per year. Of course, what will probably happen is that the company will slow down any raises so that the $1000 in raises is mostly rolled back to almost nothing, and then you get your raise in this $1000 extra in health plan coverage.

60 There are so many overlapping welfare and unemployment programs in Europe that you can't get reliable stats on Who's On Welfare.   

61 'insurance' spreads risk, socialism forces others to pay for your choices.

62 Come on, look at the bang-up job our government's doing now!

63 GOD This is the third DHHS oil spill depression hotline commercial I have heard today. We are so much worse than the Romans at the end. Prepare for Dark Ages II, Revenge of the East.

64 Having a Guinness for Lex.

65

>>a govt iPad.

 

And yet there will still be a gov't program working on getting land lines for everyone...

66 'insurance' spreads risk, socialism forces others to pay for your choices.

When it's compulsory, it's the same thing.

67 I knew we were headed into the Sh_tter thirty years ago when govts began paying employees to NOT take sick days.  

68 Time for the hit and run obvious.

When the SCOAMF is a rectal cancer we all suffer.

69 > govt. IPad. It'll still be made by apple. Assuming they make the right campaign contributions...

70 Insurance for regular expenditures reduces the incentive to improve the items bought through the insurance; and it increases the cost of those times, partially because the overhead of shifting the money around has to be paid for, but also because there’s no incentive to reduce costs. The people paying the money aren’t the people providing the money. John H. Cochrane: “Insurance is a bad idea for small, regular and predictable expenses. There are good reasons that your car insurance company doesn’t add $100 per year to your premium and then cover oil changes, and that your health insurance doesn’t charge $50 more per year and cover toothpaste. You’d have to fill out mountains of paperwork, the oil-change and toothpaste markets would become much less competitive, and you’d end up spending more.” Me (follow link in name): The problem isn’t just about cutting costs. It’s about advancing the field of medicine. Amazing innovations happen when there is an incentive to cut costs imposed by the end-user. We wouldn’t have the computers we do today if it weren’t for companies like Radio Shack on one end and Apple’s Steve Wozniak on the other trying to make computers for people who were buying on their own budget. Remember the huge luggable portables of the eighties? If we bought our computers like we do our health care, instead of going to the computer store and choosing what we want, we would have a computer plan from our employer. Our employer would hire the purchaser, who would be answerable to our employer, not to us. We would tell our employer-funded purchaser that we needed a portable computer. The purchaser would go down a checklist of government-mandated features that all computers must have and then tack “portable” onto the list. And the result would be a computer as big as a suitcase costing thousands of dollars. Where is the incentive to cut down that computer in this scenario? Where is the incentive to innovate? Sure, the person who ultimately gets the computer would want one that’s easier to carry. But they’re not paying for it. And then when some conservative suggests that people ought to buy their own computers, we’d complain that the average family can’t afford thousands of dollars.

71 John H. Cochrane link in name this time.

72 Socialists eventually run out of Other Peoples Money - Margaret Thatcher

73

This is an oldie but a goodie, and seems appropo for this thread

http://tinyurl.com/2qttsh

 

74

The only way to begin to reverse this process is by providing citizens an opportunity to use government funding to opt out and purchase private insurance in lieu of government benefits. 

It's not a perfect solution because the costs will still be reasonably high to the government, but at least it starts to get the government out of the decision-making process.

That's my guess as to why the left flips out about a rather moderate plan like Ryan's roadmap.

I hate Mittens passionately, but I may vote for him just with the wildly unlikely hope that the GOP somehow holds the House, takes the Senate, and rams the Ryan plan through using reconciliation. 

Scratch that.  No way that happens.  The Republicans will cower with fear, start back-stabbing each other instantaneously, and will gang-bang that chicken.  (See Bush's Social Security Reform proposal).

75 "It's just a kind of Commune system. You take from the Pile of Free Money what you need, I'll take what I need."

Hmmm. Commune. Commune. Seems like there's a political hierarchy I ran across once upon a time that kinda, sorta hints at that. What was it called?

76

Ace,

Absolutely brilliantly put. Succinct and yet perfectly descriptive.

Now, what happens after is that costs will be so high that the government will need to go in and bail out insurance companies or offer their own cheaper insurance for those industries still priced profitably.

Then, in order to control costs (this assumes the state doesn't go belly up in the meantime), it will limit services (that it once demanded were included) and legistlate strict laws proscribing costly behaviors (ie, over-eating, smoking, etc.).

In the end, it is all about control.

77 I demand italic insurance because I want to use them every day and yet I can't have them. Posted by: Mama AJ at March 09, 2012 06:20 PM

Oh, you can still have them.  You just have to pay for the premium blog package.  Your children up to age 26 are covered, too.

78 In the 90s, FL came up with an "Insurance of Last Resort" for homeowners who couldn't get coverage from any company after a run of hurricanes ripped the state.  The insurance by law cost more than the cheapest plan on the market and by law was the crappiest coverage - just enough to satisfy mortgage company requirements.  The concept was to be the very last option, a liffeline & not a competitor in the insurance market.  And periodically, said homeowners had to reapply for "regular" coverage, to get out of the state's policy.  Barkycare is the opposite of the FL plan. 

79 Insurance companies charge probably ~1.20 for every 1.00 they pay out.

It's worse than that. If you include all administrative costs -- that is, the insurance companies, and the hospital's admins who keep all the insurance requirements straight -- it's 48% of the total spent.

80 The CHANCE of my getting, say, a blowjob, tonight, yeah tonight, is small, so . . . . . . Can we pool this "risk?"

81 I think this means "the government" will screw more people than me.  UNFAIR!

82

 

Flukin socialist control freaks, man. ....They've been planning this takeover for a long time.

 

And they will try to sell it as "Power to the People", when nothing could be further from the truth.

83 >>>It's some kind of "health plan," an indemnification of such costs, but it's not insurance really.

I would say that some of it is cost prevention. Health insurance is akin to buying a warranty on a car. If the car runs great awesome, the money you spent for the warranty is gone. If it breaks down the warranty fixes it.

Part of a lot of repair warranties is maintenance. Because if you don't change your oil your chances of a catastrophic engine failure approach certainty. So with a warranty they require as a provision of the warranty that you get your car serviced at regular intervals so progressive problems can be solved prior to catastrophic failure.

Things like routine doctors visits are in that category in an insurance plan. Costing enough so that you don't go hypochondriac and go constantly, but cheap enough that if you have a valid concern you won't hesitate for the cost of seeing a doctor.

84 *fap*
*fap*
*fap*
*fap*
*fap*
*fap*
*fap*
*fap**fap**fap**fap**fap*
*inconsequential drip*

85

>>Oh, you can still have them. You just have to pay for the premium blog package.

 

huerfano, don't try to give me a pre-tax fund that I can fill with my own brackets and 'i's. Cuz that would be super misogynist or something.

86 Again, Fascist, not Socialist.  Until that last 'insurance' entity is technically owned by 'The People', it's still just Fascism, not Socialism.

Why do I care about this precision?  I guess because some people (the masses) still have a small revulsion toward the term (associated with a lot of murder).  The term socialism doesn't really have an instant, negative, gut-reaction out there for the sheep (anymore).  They don't know what we know, all the millions of murders, etc.

Fascism, is still a little 'scary' to some people.  But then again, it's 'extreme' to properly label people as fascist and people are scared to consciously acknoweldge it.  Conflict must be avoided, true evil must not be named, etc...they have been trained.

87 And stop staring at my  >>s.

88 I also think govt run healthcare is also a fairly effective way to crush dissent. The bureaucrats deciding whether you "deserve" to receive a certain treatment will no doubt be socialists and leftists. Write something mean Obama on Facebook? Contribute money to those evil, racist, sub-human Republicans? Awww, too bad, looks like you don't qualify. So sad, too bad.

89 good post

90

Which is why Sandra "The Snatch" Fluke's assertion that sex change operations should be covered by insurance makes no sense. Insurance covers unforeseen risk. Things (illnesses) that may happen, but hopefully don't. Babies, incidently, aren't unforseen. Ya gotta do a specific act to get one of those, and for the vast majority of females, its a deliberate act. Rape/incest are the only exceptions, but statistacally insignificant, and against current law in any case.

 

The left has turned insurance into 'shit I don't want to pay full price for, 'cause its expensive, and my job at the local convenience store doesn't pay enough so the rest of the insurance pool must kick over the dough', type event.

 

The bastardization of the language continues apace.

91 It's worse than that. If you include all administrative costs -- that is, the insurance companies, and the hospital's admins who keep all the insurance requirements straight -- it's 48% of the total spent.
Posted by: Meiczyslaw at March 09, 2012 06:36 PM

I used to do medical billing for home health and hospice.  Insurance companies all have different rules and different billing requirements and need different coding on their bills.  Sometimes the requirements change between the time you get your first denial and send in another bill.  It's not any surprise that clerical costs are high.

92

 

But like socialism is cool, because it's like, all about being more social. 'And rich people should pay for everything anyway...because they're rich.

93 >>>Rape/incestare the only exceptions, but statistacally insignificant, and against current law in any case.

There are rare cases of pregnancy sans intercourse via second hand contact with sperm. It is exceedingly rare but does happen.

94

Hey waiters, you know when I said give each other $20 and put it on the Underhill bill?  Forget that; give each other $20,000 and put it on the Underhill bill.

95

84 I would say that some of it is cost prevention. Health insurance is akin to buying a warranty on a car. If the car runs great awesome, the money you spent for the warranty is gone. If it breaks down the warranty fixes it. warranty company comes up with some reason that it's not covered.

 

----------

 

FIFY. Not that I'm bitter or anything.

 

96 FIFY. Not that I'm bitter or anything.

Yeah, but that Tesla was a sweet ride before it bricked.

97

There's another word for when you work, and the fruits of that labor are taken from you by force, and you are then given the basic necessities of food, shelter, and medical care by that coercive power.

 

Hint: It's what Professor Bell thought whitey was going to allow the aliens to do in his crappy book.

98 >>>Yeah, but that Tesla was a sweet ride before it bricked.

Karma?

99 Oh for Pete's Sake, Someone forgot to latch the gate to the kennel, and media slut Gloria Allred promptly slipped her muzzle and called for Rush's arrest for questioning Fluke's nonexistent chastity.

100

There are rare cases of pregnancy sans intercourse via second hand contact with sperm. It is exceedingly rare but does happen.

 

Damn near SMOD type events. Not exactly an event that requires a law. 

101 Socialism will advance through any itty-bitty crack in our social structure, which it is entirely capable of making, to begin with.  If they couldn't get everyone under their centralized yoke through a redefinition of "insurance" (already far along) then they will do it through a redefinition of "competition" (remember how the "public option" was being sold almost purely as "providing competition to the private sector" -  I mean, that was such a bunch of WTF moments ... I still can't believe that America let them get away with that shit).  Crap+Trade was also being sold as "the competitive choice".  If that doesn't work, socialism and its useless idiots will try to worm their way in through a redefinition of "pollution". ... and on and on.  They cannot be stopped.  But, that doesn't matter as America has been letting them run wild for years.  Really wild.

102
That's just socialism, of course.




You misspelled "safety net"
Posted by: Your Inevitable Republican Nominee

103

@11: "Obama is a stuttering clusterf*ck of a miserable failure."

The fuck are you talking about? He's succeeded beyond our wildest dreams!

104 99 >>>Yeah, but that Tesla was a sweet ride before it bricked. Karma? Posted by: MikeTheMoose finally remembers why he's here at March 09, 2012 06:49 PM (0q2P7) Bad Karma.

105

100,

Now there's a woman who needs to be longdicked.

106 And those administrative costs are paid with healthcare dollars that don't pay for healthcare. It adds a layer of costs that make it even more expensive.

107 Ace, Mark Levin says hi.

108 99 >>>Yeah, but that Tesla was a sweet ride before it bricked.

Karma?   --------   Karma may be a bitch, but AFAIK they don't brick themselves. They just spontaneously decide to stop running.   A Tesla will brick itself, requiring a new $40,000 battery, if you allow it to fully discharge.
 

109 GAHHHH! That's number 4 from the DHHS. Are we made of F*ing money? How can they afford to advertise so often? And for the love of pete why are they doing it on conservative talk radio? Just to rub my face in wasting my money?

110 101 There are rare cases of pregnancy sans intercourse via second hand contact with sperm. It is exceedingly rare but does happen. Damn near SMOD type events. Not exactly an event that requires a law. Posted by: AZ Hi Desert at March 09, 2012 06:49 PM (ial2b) Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit whacking off in the municipal pool...

111

@17: "t if nobody has to pay for anything, then nobody has to work! It's so simple!"

 

Uh, you missed subclause 17(A)(3)(b)(iii) - you cracka-ass crackas still gotta work, since your ass owes everyone reparations for your cracka-ass crackadom.

112 112 WORD!!!

113

^Whitey^Why'd he^ 

Ha ha can you beleive we got away with that shit?

114 Why hasn't anyone defined 'Fluking' on urban dictionary yet?

115 Someone forgot to latch the gate to the kennel, and media slut Gloria Allred promptly slipped her muzzle and called for Rush's arrest for questioning Fluke's nonexistent chastity.

Posted by: CoolCzech at March 09, 2012 06:49 PM (niZvt) 

  

This is hysterical.  Comes under the heading of "you can't make this shit up".

 

Only problem is, Palm Beach is a notoriously lib county that has busted Rush's balls over stupid stuff before.  Let's hope the DA has the sense not to waste taxpayer dollars on a politically motivated nuisance prosecution.    On the other hand, if she files a civil suit, I'd pay money to see Roy Black bitchslap Allred in court.

Did I say BITCHslap?!   I denounce myself.

116 Adam Smith's Pump Hand doesn't like insurance, gotta feel the sting to stop misbehav'n

117 Every one dies. Doesn't matter how big you make risk pool or how much you pay.
Dying is something any one can do.

118

@38: "We will live in smaller, colder, more dense housing.
We will travel less.

Everything that uses energy we will do less of.
We will be encouraged/nudged at every level to spend our days mainly on the computer and consuming media, which is not very energy intensive.

The future is pod people. Travelling, moving, building. Do anything with real stuff is energetically costly and will be discouraged at all levels of govt.

Sitting alone in a dark cubicle with an iPad. That's the future.

Most people won't mind that much. They'll be games and porn. You can watch cool videos filmed by the ruling class who are allowed to travel.

You'll experience the world -- or at least as much as can be experienced through an iPad while sitting in a cold, dark cubicle."

 

 

While that might be true for some of the more loyal subjects, you counter-revolutionaries here need not worry about such things.  You future is nothing more than a few beatings and a sudden sharp pain in the base of your skull.

119

Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit whacking off in the municipal pool...

 

If your sperm can survive the chlorine, you deserve to propagate the evolution of the species!

 

And might I say... eewww! Wanking off in the public pool is so Bill Maher-like its pitiful.

120 01 There are rare cases of pregnancy sans intercourse via second hand contact with sperm. It is exceedingly rare but does happen.

When I was a young, rutting buck, I was paranoid this would happen to me.  Consequently, I left a lot of ready-and-willing high quality opportunity on the table.   I denounce myself

121 OMG Lou Dobbs opens up his show with "good news" on jobs and Wall Street.Good?

122 115 Why hasn't anyone defined 'Fluking' on urban dictionary yet? Posted by: thisheavenlyhell at March 09, 2012 06:57 PM (Q9QTT) Isn't Fluking the act of queefing for money in front of middle aged paunchy congressmen?

123

Obama is losing the male vote.
Females get free birth control. Males nothing. Why? Per the administration they prevent unwanted pregnancies and help women's health.

Males should get free condoms. They also prevent unwanted pregnancies and also help women's halth by preventing the spread of STDs.

Free Condoms for all.

The Obama administration should be sued for sexual discrimination.

124 Left-wing, 28 year old Facebook billionaire just bought New Republic, left-wing mag. Their billionaire's spend their money to control the media. What do ours do? Do we have any? Koch bros. funds Cato.

125 I think the only psychos on airplanes these days are flight attendants and federal air marshals. I weep for my country.

126 Make the user of healthcare feel some of the financial pain of the cost and most healthcare cost issues go away.

Posted by: AndrewsDad at March 09, 2012 06:04 PM (C2//T)

Can't do that.  That would require some personal responsibility, and Dims adamantly oppose that.  We can't have people thinking and making decisions for themselves; best to leave that to our betters in government.  

We can trust our government overlords to do what's best for everyone, right Danica? (After all, they went to Hah-vaaard and they're all so much smarter and more enlightened and more moral than us bitter clingers out in flyover country).

127

Ask your lefty friends why auto insurance doesn't cover oil changes and new tires? Why doesn't home insurance cover worn out carpeting? See if the lightbulb goes off.

128

 

I just don't understand the strategy of Gov. Bob McDonnell sucking Obama's dick.

 

But then....maybe I'm just stupid and unable to see the brilliance of it.

129 A compounding deleterious effect of centralization and socialization of expense is that people tend to have little or no respect for things they don't work or pay for.  They treat gifts worse than anything.  The more you socialize expenses, the more those expenses go up and the worse the product gets.

Kibbutzim found out that people who didn't have electric meters tended to leave their heaters on (very expensive out there) all day long, whether they were home or not (and these are homes with no insulation).  The waste was absolutely phenomenal.  No one cared.

130 Left-wing, 28 year old Facebook billionaire just bought New Republic, left-wing mag.
.
TNR used to be considered the Leftie equivalent of National Review: high minded, academically-oriented approach, low vitriol.  Maybe he'll turn it into a bomb-thrower

131 We have before us a future governed by an actuarial expert system. Holdrens wet dream, Heinlein's nightmare.

132

125....Their billionaire's spend their money to control the media.

....What do ours do? Do we have any? Koch bros. funds Cato.

 

They're busy buying islands....and building lavish underground secret bunkers.

133 Ask your lefty friends why auto insurance doesn't cover oil changes and new tires? Why doesn't home insurance cover worn out carpeting? See if the lightbulb goes off.

Posted by: Warden at March 09, 2012 07:08 PM (lYg4F)

.

BRILLIANT!

134 125 How many do "we' have?The very rich tend to skew left.No consequences for them.

135 That's why they call them red states and blue states

Posted by: Morpheus at March 09, 2012 06:14 PM (0TdUk)

 

That's the rub. With Federal solutions, there is only Blue State.

136

"See if the lightbulb goes off." 

Warden you never fail to crack me up!

137 101 There are rare cases of pregnancy sans intercourse via second hand contact with sperm. It is exceedingly rare but does happen.


I know.  It happened to my wife.

138 134 Yeah,but it's too fucking late.It's become expected.Health benefits were something they came up with during WW2 as an extra benefit to get around salary caps.Became moot after the war ended,they should have ended.

139 "Second hand contact with sperm." I'm trying to picture exactly what that means, and all I can come up with is a guy whacking off without a Kleenex handy...

140 >> Yeah,but it's too fucking late.

It can be changed, if we make it a priority, and force our unwilling Republican representatives to make it a priority.

We need to get rid of the interstate boundaries, and we need to give individuals the same tax break for health care expenses that corporations get.  With that in place, individuals can start opting out of the system.

141 The other angle of the health insurance endgame is that Obamacare is going to try to make all "legitimate" healthcare expenditures something that is covered by health insurance. EVERYTHING will get channeled through your insurance. That's why contraception has to be covered now, because they don't want people paying for it out of pocket. Once that is set up, then you close the door on the private transaction for healthcare. If you want to accept reimbursements for Obamacare, or keep your medical credentials, doctors and hospitals will have to stop taking private payments for care. This will be justified in the name of controlling healthcare costs, and curbing wasteful and ineffective medical treatments. Can't have "black market" medicine, right? That way, they get to an egalitarian healthcare system, where wealthier people can't buy access to top tier medicine "unfairly." Of course the elites will just jet off somewhere to get their private healthcare, but the rest of us will get the healthcare as specified by the Obamacare bureaucrats - and ONLY that healthcare.

142 >>Ask your lefty friends why auto insurance doesn't
cover oil changes and new tires? Why doesn't home insurance cover worn
out carpeting? See if the lightbulb goes off.

I get your point but too many lefties this would just put this on their list of goals for SCOAMF's second term.

143 Last year I switched from my traditional employer health care plan to my wife's high deductible plan. I love the way it works: We're on the hook for everyday expenses while the insurance covers catastrophic expenses in exchange for a very low premium. Meanwhile, we are able to fund our expenses through a tax deferred health savings account which can double as an investment vehicle if we don't spend all the money we put in. This is how insurance SHOULD work. Trust me, you're a lot more careful about day to day health care expenses when you're shouldering the entire cost.

144 141 I agree it's not technically too late.What I mean is that people are conditioned now that it their "right" and they wont give it up easily.The left has been very good about creating these "rights".

145 What millions died in the creation of it will happen to the US overnight and without bloodshed until someone tries to takes it away. All it will take is one edict that is more powerful and evil than Executive Order 9066.

146 And we told our  government we wanted this done, when, exactly?

147 133 125....Their billionaire's spend their money to control the media. ....What do ours do? Do we have any? Koch bros. funds Cato. They're busy buying islands....and building lavish underground secretbunkers. -------------------------------- That's a great point. No expense is spared in the pursuit of tyranny by the Left. Where IS the infrastructure spending for FREEDOM on the Right? I read this recently: "The big money on the Right is only requested when there are 4 counties in Ohio that must be won to secure an election.". It's always last minute stuff on the Right to pull out an election. The Left plans for our destruction. Over decades.

148 Trust me on this , it's a really fucking bad idea .

149 Great post, Ace.

150 Just found out I can get meds cheaper if I go to Walmart and tell them I have no insurance. Crazy system.

151 One of McCain's planks was to shift the tax benefits of health insurance from the employer to the individual.  It would have been a start.

152

>>>Once that is set up, then you close the door on the private transaction for healthcare. If you want to accept reimbursements for Obamacare, or keep your medical credentials, doctors and hospitals will have to stop taking private payments for care. This will be justified in the name of controlling healthcare costs, and curbing wasteful and ineffective medical treatments. Can't have "black market" medicine, right?

That way, they get to an egalitarian healthcare system, where wealthier people can't buy access to top tier medicine "unfairly." Of course the elites will just jet off somewhere to get their private healthcare, but the rest of us will get the healthcare as specified by the Obamacare bureaucrats - and ONLY that healthcare.

 

Word.

153

"It can be changed, if we make it a priority, and force our unwilling Republican representatives to make it a priority."

 

Better yet, let's replace those unwilling Republican reps with people who'll do what we want done.

154

@149 - Damn!  Premature esockulation.  Someone needs to pay for my pills to fix that.

 

 

155 We need an island to move to. Fuck this shit

156 Just found out I can get meds cheaper if I go to Walmart and tell them I have no insurance.

The administrative cost of processing almost anything through "insurance" is significant. 

157 It's another ONE!!!! DHHS!!! STOP ADVERTISING THE STUPID OIL SPILL HOTLINE!!!

158

We are paying for 2 countries health needs, not only our own.

That makes it even more special.

159

Ironically enough, we're sorta kinda very slowly moving away from our crappy ass system.  Been a court ruling or two (in Quebec of all places) and other minor changes that give me a tiny bit of hope.

 

It only took a several decades, but people finally started realizing that family doctor shortages and year long waiting lists for MRI's shouldn't be a permanent fixture of a health care system in a first world country.  Crazy right?

160 Was thinking about insurance recently, and how people have the wrong expectations of what it should cover. 

I think a good way to think about it is that you're gambling against yourself.   The insurance company bets that you'll be okay, while you bet that you'll be struck by lightning/hit by a car/shanked by an ewok.

Nothing happens to you, the insurance company wins and pockets your money.   If something happens to you, you win, and the insurance company pays out based off of what you agreed to in advance.

That's why it doesn't make sense to expect insurance to cover routine medical costs - chances of it happening border 100% - so the payout essentially has to be 1:1 - you pay in X dollars, get back X dollars; minus insurance company overhead.   (House always wins)


I wish I understood this aspect when debating a coworker on insurance companies.   He felt they were money gougers, as he was highly offended that his dad's car insurance policy dropped their family after he had totaled a car, despite 10+ years of being with that insurance company.   I had a gut feeling he was wrong to feel upset about that, but had trouble articulating a rationale.  

161 Thank you for reading another Ace Insta-classic®

162

75 "It's just a kind of Commune system. You take from the Pile of Free Money what you need, I'll take what I need."

 

I get that part. What about the part where people put money into the Pile of Free Money?

 

 

163

138 101 There are rare cases of pregnancy sans intercourse via second hand contact with sperm. It is exceedingly rare but does happen.


I know. It happened to my wife.

 

Posted by: Mitch Daniels at March 09, 2012 07:14 PM (QKKT0)

 

Tell me about it.

164 My sock got socked !

165 We are paying for 2 countries health needs, not only our own.

Its even worse than that.  Drug manufacturers try to recover their R&D costs through domestic US sales, because they know the rest of the world is simply going to pirate/clone their shit.  Essentially, the US public is subsidizing drug R&D for the rest of the world.

166

Posted by: Warden at March 09, 2012 07:21 PM (lYg4F)

I'd love to do this, but my Wife's CDHD plan must have been designed by an idiot, the premiums are higher than the regular plan which is supposed to be offset by the fact that part of the premium goes into your HSA, problem is when you do the math to account for that it still ends up being $3/month more expensive than a traditional plan.

Sadly I have to work in the system we have and I'm  not going to make a stupid economic decision to prove a point that no one's listening to.

(Part of the problem BTW is that my wife's job picks up 75% of whatever the total insurance bill comes to, although the CDHD plan may be cheaper overall, since it's a percentage contribution as opposed to a flat contribution, you effectively shoot yourself in the foot to take a cheaper plan.)

167 What about the part where people put money into the Pile of Free Money?

YOU never get to see the money.  The govt graciously does it for you in the form of confiscatory tax rates (ex. Denmark)

168 There are some, seemly predictable and expected medical expenses for which an insurance company might want to make an exception.  Perhaps they believe that having an annual physical will, overall, lower the catastrophic payouts they will have to make across the risk pool.  HMO's in the 70/80's were trying this.  So, even though an annual could well be viewed as a proper out of pocket expense, it might well be something the insurance company will view as worthy of funding.

Plus, a endoscopy every 5 to 10 years is way cheaper than colon cancer treatment.

The trick is that these calculations are, or should be, voluntary, as Ace notes, and based on business reasoning.

169 Here's the real trap . Canadians see healthcare as FREE . It's been around for more than a generation , sold as free . Got a runny nose ? See the doctor , it's free . Kid has a boo-boo on his or her knee , see the doctor , it's free . I could go on for ever but the masses in Canada view healthcare as free . I run a small business . It's not free. Everytime I hear some fucking asshole tell me how it's free , I feel like enlightening him by helping him into the system , non-volintary like .

170

Its even worse than that. Drug manufacturers try to recover their RD costs through domestic US sales, because they know the rest of the world is simply going to pirate/clone their shit. Essentially, the US public is subsidizing drug RD for the rest of the world.

 

Posted by: Purple Avenger at March 09, 2012 07:45 PM (N0yFT)

 

This. Europe and Japan basically use cost-plus purchasing, which is why pharma fights over the US market. By the time most drugs are approved by FDA they have about five years of patent life left in which the innovator can recoup his sunk costs and turn a profit. THAT'S why drug prices are high in the US.

 

In essence, sick Americans are subsidizing sick Europeans and Japanese. And that ain't right.

171 voluntary works as well ^

172 I hate to get all "Glen Beck" on you Ace, but it doesn't matter.  The economy is going to shit the bed in the next four months.  2008 is gonna look like "smooth sailin' ahead".

173 Crap, I am Stephen Greening!  This is the wrong thread.  Blue Falcon - from your lips to God's Ear!!!!

174 Hurray for the HSA.  And if the government want to increase access, hey try stopping confiscating money INDIVIDUALS spend on health expenses and catastrophic insurance.   A little cost transparency would go a long way to keeping prices down.

175 Isn't R&D is some very small proportion of drug company overhead - about 15%, maybe a bit less?    They spend a vast deal more on advertising and marketing.

176 One fundamental aspect is that this is a -mandatory- middleman. Market forces fundamentally strive to eliminate the middleman - or at least make the damn efficient. Even ignoring the redistributionary aspects, it's the "plus profit" line that fundamentally guarantees you aren't paying the lowest price. There's a reason large institutions like to 'self-insure'. They've got enough capital to fundamentally save themselves the 10-30% overhead of having someone -else- do the insuring. I keep positing that 'The Right' needs to collectively outline a firm vision of -end- goals on various topics. Having $500,000 sitting in a personally owned and controlled health savings account at 65 is, in my opinion, a hell of a lot more conservative than Medicare's promised payout of about $500,000. That's self-insurance. No, we can't get there directly from here. But we can advantage things that look likely to help us down this path.

177 As usual, late to the thread. Yes, compulsory insurance = socialism - especially (or more broadly, I suppose) where the government dictates the terms of coverage as it has been doing for decades. Actually, it isn't socialism precisely. It's technically fascism, i suppose. Tomato, tahmato. But the Fluke testimony is another thing. It might be good to call her back for a real hearing. Rush got pounded over the "slut" business and that is what it is. But what is $1,000/year in contraception as measured in condoms? Yes, there are cheaper ways to go about this, but a Jesuit school would have special problems with abortifacients like the Pill. And obviously a diaphragm is inferior to condoms, so unless we're ready to denounce the mighty condom that has been, uh, pumped up for decades as the mark of responsible sex, it seems condoms are something this discussion is stuck with. $1,000/year is over $2.70/day. Trojan "Her Pleasure Condoms Spermicidal Lubricant" condoms sell for 12.99 for a pack of 12 at CVS. That's less than $1.09 per condom (which I think is a rip off). So, as I understand it, the best case urgency here is to insure each law school coed can have a man ejaculate inside her about 5 times every 2 days, without the risk of pregnancy. Because this is a health issue other people should be forced to pick up the tab for. Perjury is still a crime and I'd say they have had enough time to vet this witness. I think this is a conversation worth having with a full committee under subpoena. The idea that her previous testimony suggests slutiness might very well stop being an issue and the left may want to stuff her previous testimony down the memory hole. This is not a congressional moment determined by its procedural irregularities. This is a Breitbart media moment and if the Reps in the House cannot start playing the game like the bad guys do, it's time to educate them or replace them.

178 Sorry - I just saw Trojan Enz Condoms at at $7.99/12. As a follow up, I'd say, it would be appropriate to adjust the manpower and questioning accordingly. Was I misinformed that many of these people are lawyers?

179 This well written essay is why I come to this website.
It is both insightful and lucid in the way it plainly describes the current climate.
Well done Ace.

180 It's a good essay, but I think this was a distraction issue, as it was intended to be by the Dems. It's a freedom of conscious issue, first and foremost. I certainly don't agree with the Catholic Church's stance, I assume most people do not. If government already is giving out food stamps and welfare to poor people, I do not have a problem with the government paying for their birth control. I'm not in favor of mandating birth control for people who receive benefits, but I must say the idea is worth pondering. I understand the argument, but I think it's a doomed argument for conservatives to make. The reality of life is that there will always be people paying more into the system than they take out. It's the only way it can work. Even in our more Libertarian-esque tax structures, such as gasoline taxes for road construction, the poor benefit more than the rich. Driving a 12-cylinder Aston-Marton will cost the driver far more in taxes than it will cost someone riding a bicycle on the same street, although the rich guy is paying more for road construction. You can call this "socialism" and oppose it for that very reason, but I can't fundamentally find fault with this "unequal" relationship and it's benefit to society. The problem really is employment tied to health care. And then it's also the multiplying layers of regulation and bureaucracy in health care that tangles these costs. I don't know how that goes away without a situation where people are paying more into a pool of money than they will probably see back. Mandates are a bad solution to this problem, but without a longer-term Libertarian approach, it is a bad idea whose time came up with the Heritage and Romney crowd in the past decade. My father lost his health insurance in his 50s, and he's been depending on the VA for the last 10 years for his health care. It makes me uncomfortable that the reality is that the VA is the largest, most obvious instance of a Single Payer system we have in the U.S. Of course it's practically bankrupting us as it is, now, but let us see a Republican run on "privatizing" VA benefits and see how far they get? To me, the problem ultimately comes down to that everything bad is traced back to government being able to tax income. But that's not where I'd start. Ending unfunded mandates would be a good one.

181 VA care is notoriously poor, dude. Private care is not. Yet. Privatization is not as radioactive as you seem to think. And the issue is not the math of risk pooling. It is compulsion by the state to apply the principal to areas in which we do not voluntarily apply it. Once the government steps in, the character of the beast inevitably changes for the worse. Unfunded mandates, at least where the states are concerned, were already ruled unconstitutional many years ago. Honest.

182 This is my blog response to your decent article http://libertyviews.tumblr.com/post/19086397187/birth-control-mandate-socialism though I do have a few things to say concerning your use of terms and definition

183 Am I still banned? 

184

Von Mises dealt with this at some length, but mainstream "free market" supply side cretins in the Republican party thought government promotion of insurance for just about anything was a great idea for decades and are belatedly waking up to the terrifying implications of such a policy.

But in AceofSpadeland because Von Mises supported a gold standard and opposed central bank created cheap credit he was a crazed anti-semite whose followers must be ignored or hysterically defamed as appropriate.

Ron Paul 2012.