ObamaCare Staggers Toward the October 1 Finish Line (2) By Lambert Strether of Corrente
Perhaps this will be a useful metaphor to explain how ObamaCare really works:
Imagine you walk into a hospital seeking health care: Perhaps for something major, like heart failure, or something minor, like a broken arm. You sign in at the front desk and explain your situation to the nurse on duty. In response, they reach under the desk and pull out an extraordinary contraption: A combination, it seems, of a miniature steam engine, the Wheel of Fortune, a cuckoo-clock, and a football scoreboard. There’s a crank on the side of it, which the nurse, having rolled up their sleeves, turns vigorously with one arm, while feeding lumps of coal into the steam engine’s firebox with the other. Clutching your chest (or your arm) you notice two doors behind the desk. They have signs which read: Special Limited Facilities, and Service Grand Royale. The cranking stops: The steam engine emits three shrill whistles: The Wheel of Fortune judders to a halt at $500: you hear “Cuckoo, cuckoo”: and see (in lights) 42. The nurse notes these results, consults a large three-ring binder, and points you to the door marked Special Limited Facilities. Or perhaps it’s your lucky day, and Service Grand Royale is yours, all yours!
Yes, that really is how ObamaCare works: ObamaCare is a machine that delivers random results; unfair results, unequal results. The health care will actually be available to you will vary capriciously by past (and projected (and reported)) income, jurisdiction, geography, family structure, employment on Capitol Hill, age, existing insurance coverage, jurisdiction, and market segment. But the suffering from heart failure (or from a broken arm) is the same for everyone, so why isn’t the same health care available to everyone? So, when ObamaCare apologists say that ObamaCare helped some people* — or, when they want to really pile on the emotional blackmail and start taking hostages, they ask “Why do you want my spouse to die?” — ask them “Why don’t you want to everyone to get the help that some do?” or “Why don’t you want everyone to get the help your spouse does”? And if you get a good faith answer, offer to write a joint letter to the editor with them, supporting single payer Medicare for All. (Congressional offices pay attention to Letters to the Editor as, you will find, do your neighbors.)**
CONTINUES AT LINK
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/08/44889.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29
= new reply since forum marked as read
president and Dem Congress have signed 20% of taxpayers' second biggest pie (education is first) over to Big Insurance, they won't be letting go of it.