That ACA argument is just a hot mess.
Democrats got together and, facing universal Republican obstruction, pass a health care reform bill that is a compromise, and this demonstrates that Both Sides Are To Blame because…some people on the left, who failed to block the law, don’t think it goes far enough?
Let me emphasize that middle point: WHO FAILED TO BLOCK THE LAW.
You’re right here Jep. But this is how Republicans govern. Take Voter ID laws, for example. If the goal were to decrease fraud in elections, there are other ways to do it that would be more effective – vote by mail, for example, like we have here in Oregon. No, Republicans see government only as a means to redistribute wealth upward, spreading the costs to the average tax payer.
Malpractice does in fact increase the cost of health care, but not in the way Republicans want you to believe. It’s not the lawsuits, but the malpractice itself. When people are injured by malpractice, they need health care. They are also often taken out of the work-force, so they end up on Medicare or Medicaid. In other words, the externalities, to use an economics term, are absorbed by the taxpayers, while insurance companies, doctors, and hospitals avoid paying the true costs of their negligence. “Tort reform” merely makes it less expensive for the doctors and hospitals (and their insurance companies) to provide substandard care.
Our two corporate party system is a joke. This column is just pathetic excuse making.
Nice as it is to imagine a coolly rational overhaul of the existing system, are massive economic systems ever reformed by going back to the designing board?
A warmed over version of Robert Gibbs verbal diarrhea about drug testing all the dirty hippies who want “Canadian style health care”.
Just more Third Way “bipartisanship” from the middle of the road, where the dead armadillos and yellow lines lay.
Both sides DO “do it”… for the 1% and their donor base. Of course Democrats are light years ahead on most social issues, when it comes to Wall Street, destructive “trade acts” ( like the TPP being shoved through right now by Obama), etc. - they are just as corrupt - bought and paid for.
And Wall Street knows it.
T]he most palatable alternative to a nominee such as Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas or Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky would be Clinton, a familiar face on Wall Street following her tenure as a New York senator with relatively moderate views on taxation and financial regulation. … “If it turns out to be Jeb versus Hillary we would love that and either outcome would be fine,” one top Republican-leaning Wall Street lawyer said over lunch in midtown Manhattan last week. “We could live with either one.”
That Wall Street is “fine” with either Jeb or Hillary speaks volumes.
And then none of them voted for it and it had to be further amended just to get the Blue Dogs to vote for it.
Wall street has, of late, noticed that as the Republican party drifts farther and farther to wing-nut teatard territory, it threatens some of its interests. It would like to keep a balance between the two parties so that gridlock assures no new regulations or taxes on them. It’s not because they think Democrats have suddenly become their best buddies. They still hate Warren’s new agency.
Liberal position: Guns should be totally outlawed to civilians.
This has never been a liberal position. Ever.
Fair enough. I exaggerated. It doesn’t really change my point.
Liberal position: Robust and effective gun control
Conservative position: Almost no gun control
Compromise: Minimal, ineffective gun control
Now the compromise position is redefined as the liberal position, so the Overton Window moves right.
Updated conservative position: No gun control; full open-carry rights; waving guns around at Chili’s should be socially acceptable.
And now a supposed compromise would be something like no gun control but the gun nuts stop waving their toys around at Chili’s. Then that becomes the supposed “liberal” position and the window moves some more.
Hopefully for once this cycle stops.
Much better. I felt like you were inadvertently doing exactly what conservatives and the media have done, which is to represent the liberal position as some strawman extremist position. Obummer wants to take away your gunz!!!
verbal diarrhea = logorrhea. Seriously.
No, just heightening the contrast to make the point about how the discourse moves. FTR, I think a lot of people would like to see European-style gun control without guns for civilians. It’s never been the Democratic Party’s position, but regardless, the point is that’s a reasonable position that has been moved out of the window of acceptable discourse.
The problem is, the Democrats are still a real party, with left, right and center wings. The GOP has the extreme right, ultra-extreme right and Louie Gohmert. The only rational force left in the Republican party is that of the oligarchs (the Kochs, Adelson, Murdoch etc,) and they have become rent-seekers, using their access to government to maintain their wealth.
I agree. We shouldn’t blame both sides. We should blame all sides.
"[T]he Left pretends that [the ACA] is a radical step forward to justice, when actually it is a very modest reform of the existing – exceedingly, unsustainably expensive – system, based largely on onetime GOP proposals, "
I’m still trying to figure out the leftist overreach in this one. By being satisfied with a Republican solution instead of going for a more liberal option the left is too captivated by its own ideology?? So the centrist position here is actually to insist on single payer?? I’m confused.
Schindler is just being intellectually lazy. Democrats and liberals have been more than willing to make political compromises with Republicans. However, it is hard to compromise with Republicans when they are beholden to nihilistic voters. It wasn’t Democrats who forced government shutdown and tried to default on the debt ceiling limit. Republicans still have those who insist that defaulting on the full faith and credit of the U.S. government will have no consequences.
And as one of those little people who got heath insurance through the ACA, it is a big deal for me. Could we have done better with Medicare for all? Yes. But we got the ACA instead, and it did make a huge difference in my life.
Frankly, I don’t know Mr. Schindler, but he sounds like he has been assimilated by the Beltway collective.