American politics ...

[theorangemonkey]

American politics fascinates me.  You talk about providing people with universal health care and you end up with a bunch of teabaggers talking about Marxism, but a plan for workers to own the means of production gets nothing.

Comments

[nabba]

We need to rework everything I think. Not that it's going to happen, but people tend to have values/ideas from both sides so it's hard to really choose based on party and such. I mean, with the healthcare thing ... I think that there are things with existing companies and systems that could be ammended and then for those who don't benefit from that can get coverage from the state or federal govt.

And about the article... don't like that either.

[theorangemonkey]

No doubt this is a case of both my age and Canadianness showing, but the healthcare thing just baffles me - it just strikes me as one of those things, like public education and road maintenance, that is just so fundamentally important for a society to function properly that you can't leave it to private hands. I've always been something of a George Bailey socialist, though, so I'm no doubt seeing it through a certain lens.

The Chrysler thing will be interesting to watch - I've read of companies thriving after setting themselves up as co-ops, but never with something on this kind of scale, I don't think (and, as one of my students pointed out yesterday, never with people who work for competing companies owning stock).

[nabba]

I think that health insurance should be reasonably priced - which it's not. Getting rid of the stupid "pre-existing conditions" requirement would be a big improvement but that's not being done. Yet, for someone like me, I'd be in real deep shit if it weren't for Medicare - but then again, I only have that because of the disability and I had to wait 2yrs to get it... and I still pay for it. Not everything should be provided by the govt for everyone, which is why insurance companies shouldn't gouge prices and not be so exclusive in who they insure, then for those who can't be on a private insurance PAY for insurance from the govt (state or federal). Am I sounding like an idiot yet, because I'm confusing myself even tho I know what I'm trying to say!

We used to always buy from the Chrysler dealership back home. I don't see a co-op working on this sort of scale either. It just... doesn't seem like a good plan to take. Then again, I know NOTHING about economics and don't pretend to.

[theorangemonkey]

I think the problem is that the fundamental rule of free markets* (moreso even than "supply and demand") is that people will charge the maximum that they find people are willing to pay. For something as essential as healthcare, people will be willing to pay pretty much anything, so it's a system that leaves itself wide open to exploitation and usury.

*note: my economics training is limited to around 20 pages of Capital, 20 of Adam Smith, and Freakonomics