The GOP campaign against the Affordable Health Care Act was always a disgraceful piece of scare-mongering founded entirely on the unwillingness of the wealthy to provide public benefits — Wayfarer

Not really. You're generalizing here.

The ACA was derided as 'socialised medicine' for that reason alone, and subjected to the most egregious campaigns of lies, obstructionism and distortion. — Wayfarer

They predicted it would be a failure and do the opposite of what it intended, which, lo and behold, has come to pass. I really could give less of a crap about the supposed good intentions of the bill's drafters.

Ryan and his technocrats never had any intention of improving the healthcare system — Wayfarer

Nonsense. Once again you're uncharitably trying to be a mind reader. The fact is that the act has made things worse.

Incorrect. — Wayfarer

No, I'm correct. Tax revenues went up and deficits went down after the tax cuts. The deficits went up in 2008 and 2009 as a result of the bailouts. So, once again, explain to me how tax revenues went up and deficits went down after the Bush tax cuts and prior to the bailouts.

The Kochs are involved in a credible orchestrated move to change the constitution, which stands a pretty good chance of succeeding. — unenlightened

They're explicit about the amendment they want to add. The article suggesting that, once a convention is convened, more amendments (read: "scary corporatist ones") will be added is pure fear mongering and baseless speculation. — Thorongil

It isn't baseless. If a constitutional convention is called for by 2/3 of the states, it would meet, establish operating rules, and then would proceed to do whatever it wanted with respect to amendments. Having written one or several amendments, it would send the amendments to the 50 states, 75% of which would have to ratify them.

How likely is it that 3/4 of the states would ratify?

“There’s no controversial idea on the left or the right that won’t have 13 states against it.” (article in the NYT, 8/22/16)

Could be. Don't know. But it's possible.

Conservatives have been diligently at work doing what any political group should do -- strengthen its grip on the political apparatus of the state. The only reason for discussing a constitutional convention is that enough state legislatures are in the hands of Republicans to get quite close to being able to call for a constitutional convention. They may make it.

The convention itself might be bad, and it is quite possible that the political turmoil stirred up would be worse. Much worse.

The GOP campaign against the Affordable Health Care Act was always a disgraceful piece of scare-mongering founded entirely on the unwillingness of the wealthy to provide public benefits
— Wayfarer

Not really. You're generalizing here.

The ACA was derided as 'socialised medicine' for that reason alone, and subjected to the most egregious campaigns of lies, obstructionism and distortion.
— Wayfarer

They predicted it would be a failure and do the opposite of what it intended, which, lo and behold, has come to pass. I really could give less of a crap about the supposed good intentions of the bill's drafters. — Thorongil

The ACA attempted to several things: end pre-existing conditions as a bar to health insurance; allow young people to maintain health care coverage for 3 or 4 years after college (until they get a job where they can pay their own way, or receive coverage as a benefit; reduce the number of people without any health care insurance; increase hospital income where emergency rooms supply primary care, and some other points.

The ACA did achieve these things. Was it perfect? Not at all, but it did extend health care to more people who otherwise didn't have it. Did it rein in costs? No, and unless congress eliminates rules of the sort that prevent the government from negotiating pharmacy prices, it won't. It can't.

Single payer with teeth. That's what we need.

scare-mongering founded entirely on the unwillingness of the wealthy to provide public benefits. Their attitude was, it's not 'the American way' to rely on the public purse for anything, — Wayfarer

The wealthy have a long history of objection to all of the 20th century efforts in the US to create a semi-adequate social welfare program--one that some European countries had had for quite some time.

The wealthy objected to Social Security, Unemployment Insurance, Disability Insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamps, and various other programs that were designed to enhance or preserve the quality of life (like the EPA).

Charm School has taught the rich not to sound like Ebenezer Scrooge, but that doesn't mean they don't share his views:

Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir."
"Are there no prisons?"
"Plenty of prisons..."
"And the Union workhouses." demanded Scrooge. "Are they still in operation?"
"Both very busy, sir..."
"Those who are badly off must go there."
"Many can't go there; and many would rather die."
"If they would rather die," said Scrooge, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."

How likely is it that 3/4 of the states would ratify? — Bitter Crank

Ratify what exactly?

How likely is it that 3/4 of the states would ratify? — Bitter Crank

Ratify what? The cloud cuckoo amendments you, un, and that article are soiling themselves over in fear or the ones they have explicitly said they would ratify?

Something to keep in mind: the US is a republic in which the states created the federal government, which was designed to be extremely limited, not the other way around.

The ACA did achieve these things — Bitter Crank

You cite two things. Great. Did you know that many Republicans are in favor of those things too? Did you know that they could have been addressed in separate bills, not in a 3,000 page document with 30,000+ pages of regulations?

it did extend health care to more people who otherwise didn't have it — Bitter Crank

Did all of those people need to have it? Why must health insurance be essentially forced on people?

Single payer with teeth. That's what we need. — Bitter Crank

Nope. We just need the free market in health care.

Not really. You're generalizing here. — Thorongil

That's a response? It has been subject to literallly thousands of pages of newsprint, thousands of hours of media analysis.

Ryan and his technocrats never had any intention of improving the healthcare system
— Wayfarer

Nonsense. Once again you're uncharitably trying to be a mind reader. — Thorongil

No, news reader. Every single piece of Paul Ryan proposed legislation (which is mercifully scant) comprises winding back public benefits and providing generous tax cuts for the wealthy. This is all on the public record, with which you're apparently unacquainted.

once again, explain to me how tax revenues went up and deficits went down after the Bush tax cuts and prior to the bailouts. — Thorongil

I provided a reference, which you ignored.

Done discussing politics with Thorongil.

That's a response? It has been subject to literallly thousands of pages of newsprint, thousands of hours of media analysis. — Wayfarer

Surely you know the fallacious nature of this statement....

comprises winding back public benefits and providing generous tax cuts for the wealthy — Wayfarer

Sounds good to me. Why do you equate these things with being opposed to "improving the health care system," though? It's almost like you don't even acknowledge that people might disagree with you on how to do so while still having the same goal in mind. Wow! What was that word I used? Ah, yes, "uncharitable."

I provided a reference, which you ignored. — Wayfarer

I did a Google search and saw on the sidebar: "The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities is an American think tank that analyzes the impact of federal and state government budget policies from a progressive perspective."

Of course it does.

If you're really that interested, you can just look at the official statistics, published by the Obama administration no less. Go to page 411: https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/administration/eop/cea/economic-report-of-the-President/2012

Did all of those people need to have it? Why must health insurance be essentially forced on people? — Thorongil

They may not have wanted health insurance. Perhaps they thought they were invincible. They may have thought they did not need insurance. Actuaries know better.

Quite likely, they just plain couldn't afford insurance.

Sooner or later, most people get seriously ill or have serious accidents. The quite sick and seriously injured will ask for care which they will not be able to pay for -- it just costs too much. Care will not be denied. Rather than the cost of care being distributed over everyone in a large group, it will fall entirely on the hospital to cover.

Further, people who think they need no insurance are also likely to think they need do nothing to prevent disease or injury, and thus arrive at the ER in worse shape than if they had received vaccinations, preventive care, or early treatment--all of which is cheaper and easier than curing advanced disease. Poor people, of course, can't afford these early interventions, or late ones.

If hermits want to go deep into the outback and get sick and die there, fine. But that is not what most people do.

Sooner or later, most people get seriously ill or have serious accidents — Bitter Crank

You don't say....

people who think they need no insurance are also likely to think they need do nothing to prevent disease or injury — Bitter Crank

Really? I probably do not need health insurance. I exercise daily, eat a vegetarian diet, do not drink (not even carbonated beverages), do not smoke, do not take drugs, sleep 8+ hours a night, have a perfect BMI, perfect blood pressure, etc. I can't actually remember the last time I had a cold. Anything more serious than that, such as the flu, I haven't had since I was a kid. I've never broken a bone. The only surgery I've had is to remove wisdom teeth, which I did in the 9th grade. Why should I be penalized into paying for health insurance? The most I would need is dental so I can continue my annual cleanings. That's it. And even then, out of pocket cost for those is not much at all. The cost of a computer game for me basically.

Nope. We just need the free market in health care. — Thorongil

A real "free" market in health care would be like the free market in anything else: If you can't afford it, you are shit out of luck.

If you can't afford to buy gold, or trips to Thailand, or high end sports cars -- whatever it is you decide to buy -- your suffering is entirely private and doesn't affect anyone else.

Disease and injury, however, do affect other people and sometimes very quickly.

Treating infectious disease, for instance, limits the spread of the disease. A guy who gets syphilis or gonorrhea and doesn't get it treated can infect a lot of other people (and gonorrhea, in particular, is becoming much more difficult to cure). Someone with TB can infect other people without having sex with them. Just hanging around the same people is sufficient. Yellow fever, hepatitis, Zika Virus, West Nile Virus, various tick-born diseases, mumps, measles, chickenpox, whooping cough, and so on have been suppressed because people availed themselves of health care.

A free market in health care with freely spreading diseases isn't much of a bargain.

I suspect you don't know what you're talking about. — Thorongil

I suspect that you're an obnoxious individual with no sense of humour. But tell us again how insults aren't really necessary.

If you can't afford it, you are shit out of luck. — Bitter Crank

You appear to have a utopian standard by which you judge the efficacy of the free market as a solution to providing people with affordable health care. Will it make it so that no one is shit out of luck? No. Will it do a better job than a government mandate? On the whole, I think so, and that's all I'm committed to, so if you thought I was committed to people being shit out of luck, then you're wrong. There are never any final solutions in life, only trade-offs.

I suspect that you're an obnoxious individual with no sense of humour. But tell us again how insults aren't really necessary. — Luke

I do have a sense of humor. And I wasn't insulting you. Do you know what you're talking about?

You have excellent health and excellent health maintenance habits. Good for you. Keep up the good work.

Unfortunately, you good physical condition doesn't make you immune to infectious diseases. You might survive them better than somebody who smokes, drinks, is obese, and eats a steady diet of chips and hot dogs, but good health habits doesn't produce immunity to killer influenza, or some other infection.

Maybe you've been healthy because your parents sensibly got you immunized when you were a child. Maybe your parents arranged for a dentist to remove your wisdom teeth rather than just letting them rot out. Did they have health insurance which covered you?

The best health habits in the world won't prevent your injury if some drunk runs over you. Let's say you survive -- you'll still need extensive medical care.

I'll grant you this: You might make it all the way to the grave at an advanced age without getting sick or getting injured. (In which case, you'll be dying of a heart attack or stroke.) It does happen. But it doesn't happen to most people--and it never has happened to most people--even the ones who didn't smoke, drink, eat poorly, and so on.

NEXT

Do you mean that you didn't intend to insult me? Or are you unaware that you insult people when you tell them that you suspect they are ignorant?

Ratify what exactly? — Mongrel

Whatever amendments a constitutional convention passed on to the states. (The convention itself has no power to effect the amendments. The states have to approve them.

Normally, constitutional amendments go through congress to the states, with 3/4 approval needed. The present constitution allows for the states to bypass congress by calling a convention. (So far, this has not been done.)

you good physical condition doesn't make you immune to infectious diseases — Bitter Crank

Quite so. But I could also drop dead tomorrow for some random reason. What is the statistical likelihood that I will contract some serious disease and why should I care?

Did they have health insurance which covered you? — Bitter Crank

Naturally, but this only highlights my point: they both had jobs and were much older than I am now. I am not opposed to getting health insurance. Indeed, I want health insurance and would prefer to have it than not. By the time I hit 40 or so, it may become useful. But I also don't see why I should be throwing my money away for overpriced insurance right this moment. It's useless for me to complain, though, because I will be forced into doing so anyway very soon.

Do you mean that you didn't intend to insult me? Or are you unaware that you insult people when you tell them that you suspect they are ignorant? — Luke

Why would it be insulting that someone suspects you of being ignorant, on a philosophy forum no less? I often enjoy being proved ignorant. I did the same thing to @Wayfarer earlier, accusing him of being ignorant regarding the Bush tax cuts. He seems to have bowed out of that conversation, but I think I definitively proved him wrong. Despite that, I have a lot of respect for @Wayfarer and very much enjoy reading his comments - just not his political ones, as he more or less noted about me.

He seems to have bowed out of that conversation, — Thorongil

I said, I'm not discussing politics any more with @Thorongil. Doesn't mean I think you're correct about any of it, but I meant it.

I said, I'm not discussing politics any more with Thorongil. Doesn't mean I think you're correct about any of it, but I meant it. — Wayfarer

Yeah, that's fair and probably best for both of us. (Y)

We just need the free market in health care. — Thorongil

Insurance companies intervene in the free market. They negotiate special deals with the hospitals, deals which the uninsured cannot get, so that the uninsured individual may have to pay many times more for the same treatment than the insurance company would pay. No matter how you look at it, insurance is nasty business. Insurance of any type should not even be allowed to be a business. It's extortion.

Whatever amendments a constitutional convention passed on to the states. — Bitter Crank

Yes, I was asking about the content of these supposed amendments. It would have to be an issue that's potent enough to unify a bunch of people who've been at each other's throats for a while now. I thought that when you said a constitutional convention is possible, you were saying such a unifying issue is on the scene.

State legislatures initiate constitutional conventions. Conservatives have control over (possibly) enough of these bodies to make such a call in the near future. The unifying issue for conservatives is the "balanced budget amendment". "Balanced budget" is a loaded term. It has great appeal to a lot of people (apparently).

For many people, "balanced budget" is code for "reduce federal social spending': medicaid, welfare, education, medicare, unemployment insurance, social security, etc. Balancing the budget is NOT code for reducing defense spending or greatly increasing the level of taxation on wealthy people (the top 10%, particularly the top 1%. It's code for anything but that.

You know, prior to 1920, government was financed through excise taxes on alcohol, tariffs on imports, and the like. The income tax was passed in preparation for prohibition, which would end that source of tax revenue. Obviously, the scope of government activity was much smaller then. Paleo-conservatives want to devolve the federal budget to spending levels not seen in a century.

World War II created a huge debt which was, eventually, paid off (around 1970, if I remember correctly). Vietnam together with an expansion in social spending (Medicare, medicaid, Great Society programs) greatly increased federal indebtedness. Before that had been paid off, Reagan's and Bush I's military programs (like Star Wars) greatly increased debt again. After Star Wars, it was Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Great Recession which jacked up federal spending to the current very high debt levels.

The chart below depicts discretionary spending. Debt service and social security are not included (because they are mandatory spending items).



The second pie chart shows how mandatory spending is distributed.



Military spending though, isn't blamed, usually. It's Social Security, Medicaid, and the like which are blamed. Exactly what share military, social spending, and debt service (plus everything else) have can be manipulated by including mandatory spending, or just talking about discretionary spending.

The fact is, though, that past and current military spending, and debt service on that spending, accounts for a huge chunk of the budget.

The unifying issue for conservatives is the "balanced budget amendment". — Bitter Crank

I don't think it's unifying because it's politically self-defeating. Europe starved itself to get through the recent economic mess. Americans never starve themselves on purpose.

Unrestrained capitalism is basically a trickle down economy. Not much trickles down. The rich keeps us poor by exploiting the society, and short changing the employees, and they yield to high an influence on the government.

Of course, the rich and the legislatures are all people, who possess greed the same as we all do. It is the system that is at fault.

What we need is a way to defuse the power of money on economic decision-making, releasing the economic factors from the narrow channels of money flow that keep enriching the economically high and mighty. This needs to be effected without blocking individual’s ability to acquire wealth, which motivates economic production. It is best to achieve this economic power diffusion with least interference from other entities, like continued manipulation by government.

This can be achieved by limiting the number of persons any business can employ. In conjunction with this there has to be a limit to the maximum percentage interest an individual can own in all other businesses.

Bear in mind that the balanced budget obsession is, in part, code for shafting the least powerful population--a population conservatives have never had much affection for. It is not code for cutting defense spending or raising taxes on the rich.

If we were to enforce a balanced Federal budget through a constitutional amendment with no way out, it would mean not just metaphoric starvation, but likely real starvation for some people. It would be an economic disaster for the country as a whole, and would probably trigger a global economic recession. Never mind paying off the National Debut of $13.62 trillion.

It is unlikely that enough states would ratify the amendment. If they did ratify it, and it were seriously enforced, I predict a severe social reaction would be ignited, which would result in a repeal.

In my opinion, the federal budget should, over time, be put in balance. The national debt should, over time, be reduced. Private (personal) debt should also be reduced over time. All of this debt reduction and budget balancing would require very committed thrift and a major extraction of wealth from the richest segments of the population. My call for a balanced budget is code for reduced defense expenditure, increased taxation on the rich, and a major shift in spending priorities. (Is my coded proposal likely? Sadly, no.)

I don't think the US national debt will ever be paid. It will just disappear in the next great depression as the British debt disappeared in the last one.

This was published around the time of the 2013 'Government Shutdown' crisis:

Before that had been paid off, Reagan's and Bush I's military programs (like Star Wars) greatly increased debt again. After Star Wars, it was Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Great Recession which jacked up federal spending to the current very high debt levels. — Bitter Crank

A little-remembered moment from the GW Bush presidency was that, shortly after getting into office, he ordered the military to restart R&D into "Star Wars," leading to god knows how much more money pissed down the drain on that boondoggle. Then 9/11 happened, and, well, the rest is history. Depressing, depressing history.

Star Wars still has its defenders, though. Some claim that our outrageous military expenditures were actually an economic weapon against the USSR, as the latter bankrupted itself trying to keep pace with our spending, thereby hastening its downfall. At least one conservative commentator (i.e. Dennis Prager) has claimed that Israel's mostly-successful Iron Dome missile shield vindicates the concept of Star Wars. Because, of course, defending a nation the size of New Jersey from small missiles armed with conventional explosives using a ground-based missile system is the exact same thing as shooting down nuclear-armed ICBMs with x-ray lasers fired from orbiting satellites to protect an entire continent.

Some claim that our outrageous military expenditures were actually an economic weapon against the USSR, as the latter bankrupted itself trying to keep pace with our spending, thereby hastening its downfall. — Arkady

And some claim that the new Russia is a staunch ally, so that ended well.

A little-remembered moment from the GW Bush presidency was that, shortly after getting into office, he ordered the military to restart R&D into "Star Wars," leading to god knows how much more money pissed down the drain on that boondoggle. — Arkady

This point goes two ways though. We are now dependent on satellites for just about every aspect of our lives, and a lot of this technology probably came about from the R&D push for "Star Wars". War and defence motivates R&D, but the technology developed can have a wide range of applications.