While one can argue that politically biased, driven by building a coalition to gain and maintain control over political offices is the near the bottom of the barrel as far as good goes (maybe just doing it for the money and having no ethics is worse), it doesn't mean being ideologically driven doesn't have its own problems and isn't good.  Libertarians are a prime example of this, as would about any ideologically driven group.   The problem is a denial of reality, which ends up doing biased filtering and seeing what is going on and adjust to it.  And apparently Reason is even more ideologically driven than the Libertarian Party is, based on what you said.  The ideologically driven person really doesn't do much in the world at all.  MAYBE if they have a business, they can do things, but what they do has little to do with their ideology and more with how they serve and solve problems.  There is the religious angle, and they have agendas.  But I would say very likely anything they do that would fit the agenda would have to be tied back to actually serving people and doing things pragmatically.

With a few exceptions like Eric Hoffer, writers generally don't do much in the world at all.

And since no human being is free from bias, it seems far sillier to put on a charade of acting like an objective source of information like the dinosaur networks do than to say, "Hey, we're libertarians. Here's what we think about this." It seems to me a far healthier and more honest approach because it's much easier to discuss things in an open manner when you're not expending energy on pretending to be a fair and unprejudiced arbiter of the facts.

If someone goes to be informed to make a proper decision on something, you end up in a place where you are being sold to and spun, and the people with the agenda are being served, not the person going to get the information to be informed.  Markets have reviewers who are trusted to help filter through this in things as simple as videogames.  I would say that things far more important, like politics, also benefit from this also.

Much better, then, to get your news from a Sean Hannity or a Rachel Maddow or a Reason because then you know exactly where they're coming from and to take it with a metric fuckton of salt. The more information you consume and the more varied the sources, the easier it is to find the incongruities and thus the truth.

That's why whenever I read a news story I try and aggregate 4-5 different articles at least...

and if it's a huge controversy story I like to at least read one super opinonated piece from "That side".

So if a democrat has a huge gaff, i'm headed to the huffington post story to see their spin and defense, because if it's a context issue, they're probably going to post the context.

Intrestingly, i'd say the most "balanced" newspaper source I can find is funny enough, the "Christian Science Monitor."

Who'd of thought a Newspaper funded by a group most would consider a cult could do such award winning news writing.

Thankfully their funding came with only two preconditions

1) The name of the newspaper.

2) An article a day about religion, any religion.

Maybe not stupid, but definitely psychotic

Oh man, you've really lost form there.

So, what you're saying is that low wage people who would never be able to afford the full price of decent health insurance, many of who indeed would not even get a good policy if left to their own devices are seeing that they are entitled to a subsidy for their insurance. The fact there's a differential amount of subsidy depending on how the insurance policy is established (own or through employer) doesn;t change the fact that there's a subsidy. It's redistributive govt spending either way.

However, without that entitlement what you're faced with is the state paing the full cost of their health care because they are using the "free" service through ERs that the state is obliged (or perhaps feels obliged) to provide. So that's redistributive spending too. It just looks slightly different.

So either the state pays a proportion of a low wage person's / family's health insurance, or they pay the full cost of their ongoing ER visits (status quo). Or there are other costs related to people who don't seek medical treatment at all.

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. This means tax dollars are being used for treatments and diagnostics and equipment and facilities rather than profits for shareholders in insurance companies ahnd executive boni.

So in one respect subsidies for health insurance are more like an insurance company "entitlement" programme than an entitlement programme for low wage families. So the redistributive spending is actually taking from the middle class and giving to the uber-rich. I always new Obama was a closet Republican. The people who actually believe in the vitues of a true public helath system (I believe there are at least 3 of them in the USA) hate Obamacare as much as the tea party, only for slightly different reasons.

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.

Yeah she's just so fake like most of them. likw Bill o reilly, Glen Beck etc, just to sell there damn books!!

They shouldn't say something they don't agree with, just because they get mega bucks!! i wouldn't do it, its just pathetic

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.