[Vision2020] The Many Ironies of Health Care Reform: Sad, Wicked, Amazing, Delicious, Socratic, Dramatic, and Cosmic

Wed Jul 11 06:40:43 PDT 2012

I'm pretty sure Donovan was being ironic.
Kris
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Tom Hansen 
  To: Donovan Arnold 
  Cc: vision2020 
  Sent: Wednesday, July 11, 2012 5:46 AM
  Subject: Re: [Vision2020] The Many Ironies of Health Care Reform: Sad, Wicked,Amazing, Delicious, Socratic, Dramatic, and Cosmic

  Mandated health insurance does not go into affect until January 1, 2014.

  Courtesy of HealthCare.gov at:

  http://www.healthcare.gov/law/timeline/

  -----------------------------------

  INCREASING ACCESS TO AFFORDABLE CARE

  Promoting Individual Responsibility
  Effective January 1, 2014

  Under the new law, most individuals who can afford it will be required to obtain basic health insurance coverage or pay a fee to help offset the costs of caring for uninsured Americans.  If affordable coverage is not available to an individual, he or she will be eligible for an exemption.

  Learn more about individual responsibility and the law

  -----------------------------------

  You realty ought to check things out once in a while.

  Seeya round town, Moscow.

  Tom Hansen
  Moscow, Idaho

  "If not us, who?
  If not now, when?"

  - Unknown

  On Jul 11, 2012, at 4:25, Donovan Arnold <donovanjarnold2005 at yahoo.com> wrote:

    Has your health insurance premiums dropped? Has you health improved? If not, then obviously mandated health insurance is a scam because it didn't do as promised. 

    Donovan J. Arnold

    From: Nicholas Gier <ngier006 at gmail.com>
    To: vision2020 <vision2020 at moscow.com> 
    Sent: Tuesday, July 10, 2012 11:23 AM
    Subject: [Vision2020] The Many Ironies of Health Care Reform: Sad, Wicked, Amazing, Delicious, Socratic, Dramatic, and Cosmic

    Hail to the Vision! 

    This is my radio commentary/column for this week.  To read about Socratic, dramatic, and cosmic irony you will have to consult the full version attached.

    May the Force Always be with Universal Health Care for All Americans,

    Nick

    THE MANY IRONIES OF HEALTHCARE REFORM

    Using tax penalties, as we did [in Massachusetts], encourages "free riders" to take responsibility for themselves rather than pass their medical costs on to others. 

     Here is where the federal government can do something
    we could not: Take steps to stop or slow medical inflation.
    —Mitt Romney, USA Today, July 30, 2009

             There are many types of irony: sad, wicked, amazing, and delicious. The tasty ones are those that make you smile and smack your lips as you savor the incongruities of improbable events. 
              Let us begin with the most scrumptious ones. The individual mandate—the principle that all Americans should be required to buy health insurance—was originally proposed by conservatives at the American Enterprise Institute and Heritage Foundation.
              In the 1990s conservatives used at least two principles in their argument for the individual mandate: (1) the obvious truth that the larger the insurance pool the smaller the risk; and (2) the idea of personal responsibility.  Following Republican principles (including states’ rights), no one will pay a penalty if everyone takes responsibility for her/his own health care in the free-market state insurance exchanges.  
              Critics of the Affordable Care Act confuse the tax for noncompliance with the new taxes that are designed to pay for providing about 30 million Americans with health insurance. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that 4 million Americans will refuse to buy insurance, and at $95 per individual the total would be $380 million in 2014. The non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that even with the new taxes Obamacare will provide a deficit reduction of $437.8 billion by 2019.
    Conservatives are now accusing Democrats of lying about the mandate and taxes, but that makes Romney also a liar when he said that those who did not comply with Romneycare would only pay a penalty, one which is actually much higher than that in the Affordable Care Act.
    The most delectable ironies abound in the history of Romneycare.  Bay State Democrats, just as Obama was in his debates with Hillary Clinton, were against the mandate, but Romney vigorously supported the idea and won in the end. He now insists that he never raised taxes while he was governor, but he did impose the mandate tax and added fees totalling $502 million in lieu of taxes. 
    It is sad irony that the Mormon Romney, whose coreligionists are famous for their honesty and probity, not only speaks falsehoods, but repeats them even after they have been publicly corrected. 
    On healthcare Romney repeats a falsehood that many Republicans spout: “Obamacare means that up to 20 million Americans will lose the insurance they currently have, the insurance that they like and they want to keep.”  
    Also false are Romney’s claims that the Affordable Care Act “cuts Medicare by $500,000 billion,” that “ending Obamacare saves $95 billion,” and that “Obama is ending Medicare as we know it.” Romney supports the Ryan budget that truly does end Medicare. The CBO has calculated that repealing the Affordable Care Act will add $210 billion to the deficit over ten years, and that it contains (not cuts) Medicare costs.  
    It is also ironic that many of those who oppose Obamacare want a much more efficient single payer system instead.  In February of 2009 a New York Times/CBS poll showed 59 percent agreed with the statement that “the government should provide national health insurance.” 
    Those who said that Uncle Sam should cover all medical problems made up 49% of the respondents. Except for the mandate, nearly every other part of the Affordable Care Act has overwhelming support, including the insurances exchanges.
    In an op-ed in USA Today (7/30/09) Romney ironically conceded that only the federal government was in a position to control our soaring medicals costs.  This of course contradicts his current position that the states should decide everything on their own. 
    After analyzing Romney’s column, Ryan Grimm (Huffington Post 3/4/12) concludes that the 2010 Democratic Congress did everything that Romney asked for: sufficient time and reflection, a Senate bipartisan effort, provisions for cost containment, deficit reduction (verified by the CBO), and rejecting the public option.  That is yet another delicious irony. 
    Nick Gier taught philosophy at the University of Idaho for 31 years.  

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                  http://www.fsr.net
             mailto:Vision2020 at moscow.com
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   List services made available by First Step Internet,
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                 http://www.fsr.net
            mailto:Vision2020 at moscow.com
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