Is Ann Coulter REALLY that stupid?

[binary solo]

badgenome said:

binary solo said:

Personally I prefer subsidised health care over subsidised health insurance because the tax dollars go directly into the health care system rather than to insurance companies.

So do I. And I'm vehemently opposed to both. But to do it this way is just incredibly idiotic. It perverts literally everything it touches. It turns private insurance into a sort of for-profit welfare scheme that can't do what insurance is supposed to do (assess risk). It sets the precedent of forcing people to do business with private companies. If a Republican president tried that, Democrats would recognize it as the corporate carveout that it is. As it is, they feel compelled to rush to its defense because of stupid team-based politics whatever their misgivings about it (and also because they passed the damned thing). You do them a disservice by calling Obama a closet Republican. Dems are plenty capable of engaging in unproductive corporatism all on their own. If you're going to socialize medicine, then go whole hog and kick the middle man out of the way. Doing it this way to avoid being called socialist is both dishonest and incredibly stupid and inefficient. I really don't think it's even possible to have done this in a worse and more cackhanded way.

But my original point was that just because people are in theory being forced to pay for their own health insurance, doesn't mean it's going to be some kind of budget neutral program. Costs are going to spiral out of control just like they would with any other entitlement.

Well I'm glad we agree Obamacare is utter shit. But as I'm vehemently in favor of a proper tax funded public health system, with the option of people getting insurance and going private if they want / can afford it, I guess we part ways at the point of thinking knowing Obamacare stinks. I favour a (downwards) redistributive taxation and welfare system because, like cream, money always floats to the top in our economic system. So trickle down can't ever work with the current economic paradigm where wealth accumulation is a virtue, THE virtue. It was always a false promise to those at the bottom, where the occasional person who does pull themselves up by the boot straps is an exception to the rule but is wheeled out from time to time and portrayed as something everyone can achiece, if you'd just get of your lazy malingering arse and do some work. But the rags to riches story is ALWAYS an exception to the rule. My dad was an example of rags to riches, though not mega riches, but he was blessed with a superior intellect, athletic and artistic (musical) ability and parents who were determined he get a decent education. Take out the athletics and music and you still have a recipe for rags to riches. But take out the genetic, and hence accidental, superior intellect or the parents who were determined that he get well educated, and my dad probably would have stayed somewhere in the bottom half rather than elevating us up to the top 15%.

If you have an economic system which makes money float to the top then you need a counterbalancing political system which shoves some of that money back down to the bottom. Otherwise you get inequity, injustice, oppression and rebellion. Only you need some strings attached to that money to prevent total dependancy and complete obliteration of motivation. So really if you want to eliminate a redistributive taxation and welfare political system and have well motivated people at every level of the socio-economic spectrum then you need to fundamentally change the economic paradigm so that the political system doesn't have to force some sort of balance into economic the system.