Obamacare’s Exit Options?

Death? That's an obvious exit strategy....

[The rewarding part being the generational ponzi scheme, so your progeny are immediately poorer..nice job muirgeo]

So what about Scott Gottlieb? You're not fond of it, I am not particularly enthused, Russ is down on it, and the intelligent posters here find it appalling.

Yawn! Bend over they are going to stick it to you anyway.

Well....isn't this a delight? I bet everyone is very happy they voted for these idiots.

BTW, given the enormous amount of regulation in medicine anyway, the American Nomenklatura will find a way to avoid issuing "certificates of need" and other fun stuff to build private clinics. After all, that would take power away from the politicians and that's what this entire bill is about. Anyone who thought it was ever about health care is a fool (including me - originally, I thought it was).

I expect American doctors to start opening clinics in resort towns in Mexico and the Caribbean. Cash only. American medical tourism to countries like India, Thailand, Costa Rica and Cuba will pick up - but this time for heart surgery, not face lifts.

To get the medical care you desire, you will have to pay. This system is basically outlawing private care without actually saying so. Eventually, desperation of the population will perhaps allow some loosening of restrictions, but care will suffer in both quantity and quantity. This isn't a "public option" per se, but it is a fully fascist system where the government is completely and utterly in control. Personally, I never thought there was much difference between a fascist and socialist system. What matters is not who nominally owns the assets but who is in control. We have lost our ability to control our own health care consumption and the additional taxes that will be levied along with America's insistence on taxing its citizens no matter where they live in the world will ensure none of us are ever rich enough to buy our way out of this nightmare.

I'm glad every day I never had children.

I'm almost tempted to vote to keep Blanch Lincoln and Vic Snyder here in LR. Sometimes, I start the think the best thing to do is give them all the rope they could ask for, it won't be long before they hang themselves. Then I think about all the horrible things that those kinds of asshats could do with more power.
What do you do...try to fight the fire even though over 50% of the house has already burned...or pour gas on it and hope the arsonists dies in their own fire?

Here's the problem, Justin, with the rope you give them, they will hang you first. You can pour gas, but experience says that it'll take about 100 years for the house to burn down (and that's not a given either).

The arsonists never die in that fire. That's a libertarian pipe dream.

Personally, I think the best thing to do is vote them out - in part because they're selling the fiction that the only reason they lost in 1994 is because they didn't pass health care destruction and in part because our best chance of rolling anything back is before the plan starts by electing the opposite party with a clear mandate to gut this thing. BTW, notice how quickly they jammed this monstrosity through before they could be voted out for it?

The house will eventually burn down just as it did in Russia. But before a single political weasel gets so much as a first degree burn, the population will be burned to a crisp. I'm not interested in Pyrrhic victories.

The other thing that I would do personally is prepare to buy yourself out of disaster by upping your savings rate and diversifying away from the dollar. You have a couple of years before the poo starts to hit the fan.

Oh I know we will all suffer. We are all going to suffer anyway. Do we do it quick and dirty or long, drawn out and painful?
Vote them out sounds good, but are the GOP any better? I mean really? Bush is second on the list of biggest Keynesians (his tax cuts as stimulus). The system we have breed this type of corruption.
I'd love a third party, I vote for third parties, but it will take a whole lot more before the Dems and GOP have the scales fall off their eyes. They still cling to their false notions that their parties are pure and true. The disillusioned GOP, in the last election voted for Obama for christ's sake! Sorry but again I'm just not feeling that optimistic at the moment.
I'm not interested in Pyrrhic victories either but this seems to me like Kobayashi Maru, and we can't reprogram it to win.

nfortunately, quick and painful is not an option. Long and drawn out is the only option. You either fight every step of the way to preserve your freedom or you lose all of it and long, drawn out AND painful is all you and your children can look forward to. This country is still powerful enough to enslave you, making it worse to be a citizen here than a citizen of France.

Third parties are a waste of time. The two parties have ensured that. A vote for a third party is a vote for a Democrat (unless you weren't going to vote anyway). Is the GOP better? I argue that it is marginally better (Bush is not the entire GOP - plenty Republicans didn't like him). Republicans only nationalized banks :)

Seriously, though, only the opposition party can do anything about the current situation and can you honestly say that Democrats haven't made everything much worse in a shorter period of time than the Republicans? Whether the Republicans are better or not (they have the same incentives but are infected with fewer socialists) is largely irrelevant. They both behave badly when in power too long - for Democrats "too long" is apparently less than a year. Political competition is better than both parties. I don't favour super majorities by either party but I'd favour Republican super majority to mitigate this mess in the hopes that they lose it right after.

You can't program any government to win for anyone but the pols. The incentives for politicians aren't there for you to win. You have to reevaluate what it means to win. We escaped the Soviet Union. That's a win. If we can dismantle part of the socialist state, that's a win. You punish the politicians in the next election - that's a win. The political parties remember how they got there for about 5 years. Then, they relax and do what they want. When people are paying enough attention to make them uncomfortable, that's a win. I don't think they have delusions about the purity of their parties, btw. I just think they lack the incentive to change anything. Why would they? It works for them.

I'm not optimistic, btw. I think if we can't unwind this healthcare disaster, this country is on the fast track to destruction and giving up U.S. citizenship now includes banishment and asset confiscation, so it's moving closer to turning the guns in on its own citizens. How long before you can't escape? That's why you have to do what you can always....and prepare for the worst.

"Bush is not the entire GOP - plenty Republicans didn't like him"
And yet plenty of those voted for Obama as well. Not all mind you but enough to tip key states. Was McCain perfect? No but far better than O-boy.

"This country is still powerful enough to enslave you"
Any government can. Most people are enslaved to ideology now. It's all one form of control or another. Propaganda is rampant.

Re: USSR, see that's the biggest puzzle to me. How is it that in Russia the Communist Party is the second largest party? They treat Stalin's birthday as an almost national holiday there. You'd think millions of dead Russians would have completely debunked the socialist idea, but it hasn't. Arguably, Communism is even more popular now than in the 60's and 70s. I know Putin hasn't exactly helped matters but seriously did 70 years of socialcommunist rule mean nothing?

"I don't think they have delusions about the purity of their parties"
Go read some Kos posts, or HuffPo. They absolutly believe they are right and everyone else is wrong and needs to be shown the way. To me that delusions of purity. Maybe there is a better word for it, but I'm at a loss right now.

"I think if we can't unwind this healthcare disaster, this country is on the fast track to destruction"
That's why I'm so pessimistic right now. I see the HC bill passing. At this point the Politicians do not care about the wishes of the people. We are on the verge of some quasi-fascist state. Even if the GOP gets control of one or both Houses, they won't have the political will or power to repeal Obamacare.
The SCOTUS is useless. Obamacare is totally unconstitutional on numerous grounds. Baring some sort of miracle, they will continue to role over to the Executive and Legislative branches, a remnant of FDR castration of the SCOTUS during the 30's.
Right now I'm almost hoping for a Black Swan event to jar the country on a different path.

By "powerful enough to enslave you" I mean powerful enough to enslave you wherever you are in the world. Most countries are not that powerful. They lack the resources.

With regard to Russia, you bring up very complicated issues which are not well suited to a blog comment section. In part, it's the state controled education of young people who were not born before the collapse receive. In part, it's the fact that there is neither rule of law nor free markets in Russia. In part, it's the disintegration of all other institutions - including and most importantly, family - in Russia as a result of Soviet rule. In part it's the general Eastern love of strongmen.

Go read some Kos posts, or HuffPo. They absolutly believe they are right...

I thought you were talking about politicians and political parties. I agree that for many, politics is just team sport. I do think some supporters don't see any truths, but I've rarely met a supporter of either side who has a high opinion of politicians. One such person springs to mind and it's bizarre. There are enough people who aren't like English football fans to change which party is in power, though.

I don't know for sure what will happen if the GOP wins a majority in this election, but I've never seen the GOP do anything THIS disastrous and I think they're still smarting from 2008. No way they could be worse than the fascist lot in congress and the presidency now. Obama makes me long for Bush. NEVER thought that would happen.

SCOTUS will uphold this thing as constitutional. They'll find a way. The constitution is a meaningless piece of paper - as meaningless as your right to health care. I'm with Crawdad (and you, apparently). We are far along on the road.

Methinks,

I know these blogs aren't always the best venues for your take on Soviet history, and your personal experience with Soviet life, but I do appreciate your comments on the topic when you get the opportunity.

I live in a city with a large (Yugo) Slavic population, and I've played in bands that cater to that group, and the leftist bent of so many of them baffles me. Your comments give me ammunition when debating with those friends, and I always wonder how their politics would have changed if their parents and grandparents had escaped Tito, instead of emigrating a generation or two earlier.

BTW: You mentioned once that no one who hasn't lived through such a dire existence can understand it. I agree wholeheartedly. My Grandmother regales us with stories of the Depression, and how hungry they were (maybe three or four meals a week), and I know my imagination can't come close to wrapping around how that must feel, and I don't think even the Depression is an adequate comparison to Soviet life.

You know a lot of Slavs? My condolences.

There's a big difference between Moscow and Leningrad and Soviet satellite countries. The fire burns brightest at the center. Satellite countries had a lot more freedom than Russia. I think Yugoslavia had a system where the factories were owned by the workers. That presented problems, but had better results than Russian state owned factories.

A few years ago, I was found by a couple of long lost relatives - descendants of people who left just before or right after the revolution. My GOD are they ever socialist. I don't know if that's because they are now American Jews and socialism is popular among them or because they're just clueless. All I know is that nobody else in my family who immigrated in 1976, 1980 and 1991 from either the Jewish or the slavic side (including former military and KGB) is socialist. "We've eaten our fill", is what they say translated into English.

I also find there's difference between pre and post collapse immigrants. Those of us who came before the collapse risked not only life and limb but the life and limb of the family we left behind (which, make no mistake, was punished right down to cousins 10 times removed, etc. We only found out what happened in the mid-90's when we could go back). We left for ideological reasons and to escape oppression. The immigrants who left after left because they lost their meager subsidies and had no hope of finding a job. Those immigrants came here to irritate the living crap out of me.

A common complaint amongst them is that they have to work too hard in America. I tell them they can maintain their soviet standard of living on barely any work at all here. They switch to complaining about the lack of "culture" in America. What culture? Well, we had the Bolshoi Ballet, etc. When did you ever get tickets to the Bolshoi Ballet (you had to be connected to obtain these tickets)? Well, never, but it was there. That's when I tell them to go stand next to Lincoln Center and absorb the same level of culture they absorbed driving by the Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow. When I complain about these idiots to pre-collapse immigrants, they invariably offer to buy them a ticket back home.

There is no shortage of stupidity - even with muirdiot soaking up so much of it.

Thanks again, Methinks.

And, Merry Christmas.

Speaking of the SCOTUS, here's a major item that, for themost part went under the radar last week.

http://chris-floyd.com/component/content/articl...

Robert Higgs posted about it but I haven't seen much coverage. We are well down the Road folks.

Higgs' take: http://www.independent.org/blog/?p=4506

Legal recipes
Would taste better if the pols
Ate their own dog food.

Of course the only way to op out is to be super rich. That's the whole point. You don't expect the rich Latte Liberals to have to use the same services as the lowly peasants do you? The elite get special privileges after all otherwise what the point of being elite?

This basically boils down to the same formula that FDR and the early progressives knew so well. Give the illusion of reform, and the ignorant masses will reward you. Look at minimum wage laws for instance. Everyone knows that MW laws hurt the poor, but that doesn't stop the politicians from pursuing those policies one bit. It's all about the illusion of doing something to help the poor. The results are meaningless.

If Obamacare is passed it will never be repealed. Just like Medicare, Medicaid and SS, three big flops of Government intervention will never be repealed or reformed. The reform label is just a smoke screen, reform is meaningless as it is used today. Obamacare isn't reform, it's a hand out and transfer of wealth scheme. Once you create the new special interest group, they will never rationally give up the hand out.

The real costs of HC will increase, even more so than they otherwise would be. Obamacare sets up the exchanges in such a way that they are almost engineered to fail. That way when they do fail, they (Democrats) can conveniently blame the Market for the failure. The public will just eat it up, like they did this whole past year, blaming the Markets for problems caused by Government regulations and interference.

We have just passed another mile marker on the Road.

Justin, I know you don't mean to paint all with the same rush, but quite a few rich people are not latte liberals and quite a few spent quite a lot of money trying to kill this sort of thing.

No wealth will be transferred to the lower earners and less fortunate. All wealth is transferred from those who toil to the political class for they have more power to sell now. You're right that eventually people will not want to give up this worthless right. The more the government conditions them to rights handed down by government diktat, the less people are able to think about how to live without them. Even though they are worthless.

I don't agree that people will eat up anything. Support for health care reform fell steadily from the moment it was proposed. As the senate voted in this disaster, public support for ANY reform was in the 30's. This is the chutzpah of politicians. The unmitigated gall of putting the political glory of one man above the will and well-being of hundreds of millions of people. Where have I seen this before?

I am specifically talking about the Latte Liberals not all the "rich." Of course they are going to give themselves an out. The "Nebraska Comprimise" is about the transfer of wealth, from one state to another. My state gets to pay for Nebraska's, Vermont's, and Mass's Medicaid expansion. How is that not wealth transfer?

They will eat it up, they have eaten up Lib/Socialist propaganda for almost 80 years now. Criticize FDR and see the response you'll get. The educational system that we have, breeds ignorance and irrationality. Kids coming out of American schools have been force fed socialist propaganda, in lots of different facades since kindergarten. These are the same schools that try to ban Huck Finn because of racial overtones, they tried to ban 1984 because they don't think kids can handle those kinds of themes. I wonder why, heaven forbid the kids be given the tools to independent rational though, the kids might start to question the experts!
You have the MSM, Hollywood, Pop Celebs of every kind promoting socialist propaganda. I'm just being pessimistic right now. I know that. Maybe it's cause of Christmas. but I'm just not feeling very optimistic right now.

I agree that wealth will be transferred - just not where they claim it will be tranferred. And not the amounts they think they'll get. I don't know anyone paying the top marginal tax rate who isn't planning to cut back on how much they work and earn next year. Justin, I know just what you mean. If I were optimistic, I wouldn't know so much about renouncing U.S. citizenship.