WSJ (Peggy Noonan): Pull the Plug on ObamaCare

[Vicious]

You know, solving that problem doesn't necessarily mean that we jump to government health care. Maybe it would be better to start with reforming the system to help figure out how to reign in costs of the actual care and the costs of insurance.

Furthermore, the article specifically talks about the lack of clarity on Obama's "plan" to this point, which I tend to agree with..

http://edlabor.house.gov/documents/111/pdf/publications/AAHCA-BillText-071409.pdf

Here you go. Did you think a Healthcare Plan should be more simple? Kind of like trying to wrangle through insurance.

[SkinsNumberOne]

http://edlabor.house.gov/documents/111/pdf/publications/AAHCA-BillText-071409.pdf

Here you go. Did you think a Healthcare Plan should be more simple? Kind of like trying to wrangle through insurance.

Well the main point is less a link to a pdf that you have to find, and more the public's awareness of what's going on. You can make the best policy in the world, but if the people don't grasp it, it arguably *should* fail.

I just hope, as Longshot said, we don't all lose out on having a positive intellectual debate.

Meanwhile, a side story here is stuff like this: http://boingboing.net/2009/07/01/shaming-congress-int.html

Sad.

[twa]

If O wishes to jam this POS thru he will own it.

I'll wait :munchout:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0312/74119.html

Health care reform: 4 inconvenient truths

4) “The more they know, the more they'll like it” isn’t happening.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0312/74119_Page3.html#ixzz1pUJWhpE5

[Thiebear]

No plan survives the first day in the field: All they need to do is adapt:

Can't exclude groups from coverage.

When items that were expected to pay for this end up 'not': Have a plan B in place.

Plan a: (if 700$ mandate fails) .

Plan b: (Open up Shale in the Rockies with leases paying 30% towards coverage)

Plan c: 10% vat tax

When Companies drop 30% of the coverages adding 30million people

Plan A: not expected but can see it now: have a corp tax that is 80% equal to what they pay now: for the avg (only for those companies dropping employee coverage.)

Plan b: Open up Anwar in Alaska with leases paying 30% towards coverage)

Plan c: 10% vat tax

Cross them off when used and have the others available for other surprises that have matching sums of money.

Setup a AMA groups like we have now to oversea medical stuff and not a political board.

Let the Repubs complain about common sense approaches on items they actually want..

win/win

[AsburySkinsFan]

Murdoch turning WSJ into Foxnews, him and his people just can't help themselves.

Yep, Peggy Noonan is FAR from being an unbiased source.

[Riggo-toni]

There's absolutely no meat in this article. I love Noonan's prose, and her criticisms do reflect the pulse of the nation, but there's nothing in here that shows one way or another if Obamacare is ultimately detrimental or beneficial to the nation's healthcare system. Her essential point is that people are too stupid/intellectually lazy to understand anything more than the most simplistic terms, and are therefore suspicious/angered by any sweeping changes.

Here's a simple observation for everyone - people are vitriolically opposed to mandates...until they start getting more out of them then they pay in. Once it's a drain on the public treasury in which individuals get tens of thousands of dollars more out of it then they pay in....then it's not a mandate - it's an entitlement dammit!!!! We've had a health care mandate since the 60s - it's called medicare. It's run entirely by the gov't. But nobody calls it socialist anymore because people on the average get something like around $80k more over the course of one's life than they ever put into it.

The grotesque flaw in all so-called health reform is that it never addresses the real fundamental problems with our system - it's dependent/determined by employment and paid for by 3rd parties. The producers and consumers have little incentive to keep costs down. Here's the reform that should've been passed - require (yes, a mandate) at least catastrophic coverage from everyone, end employer coverage completely. replace it with employers giving their workers tax-free "benefit dollars" which they can allocate as they see fit between healthcare insurance and 401k. You want to choose a plan that covers birth control (or viagra) - fine, but now you might have to pay a higher premium and have less money to put away for retirement. Come up with a single set of insurance guidelines at the federal level, allow all insurers to cross statel ines, and end all state by state charters. Cut paperwork costs by mandating universal forms so Drs don't have to hire twice the staff to be able to decipher all the paperwork.

Will this happen? Of course not, because as Ms Noonan said, people are too stupid to understand any issue that requires more than a soundbite. Let's just keep having more "reforms" that push more and more of the cost onto employers.

[Madison Redskin]

I oppose Obamacare for several reasons, but I can't stand Peggy Noonan. Her writing is so-so and she's about the most pompous person on TV.

[Kilmer17]

Did you know Noonan was a speechwriter for Reagan?

If you didnt, just watch her for a few minutes. She'll tell you.

[Wrong Direction]

So many ways to respond to this thread, but it's too many words that most won't even care about after my second sentence.

Bottom line...Obama won't have to say it was a mistake until/unless the Supreme Court says part or all of this law is unconstitutional.

ObamaCare has some good parts that are and should be very popular (e.g., not denying people based on previous conditions, some pathway to decentralize power from the feds). It also has some terrible parts (the pathway from the feds is small, Obama wants to do as much at the federal level as possible, state-state partnerships have way too high of a hurdle, mandates are just not well-liked and I don't think they're constitutional, doesn't curb costs in a meaningful way nor does it fund the costs inherent in the law).

I just wish the SC didn't forbid the proceedings from being aired publicly. I guess I get it. OJ Simpson's public trial became a mess. However, for those of us who really care about the arguments for/against this stuff, a chance to watch some of the most substantive debate/discussion about an important topic that we'd ever get to see would have been awesome.

Oh well.