This Week-Paul Krugman: Public Option opponent's arguments are "sheer nonsense"

Run time: 01:36 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCdlD8xZh3Q   Posted on YouTube: August 23, 2009 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: August 23, 2009 By DU Member: babylonsister Views on DU: 1416

 
This Week-Paul Krugman: Public Option opponent's arguments are "sheer nonsense"

That is the real argument against it that the movement conservatives and insurance lobbies are making. A public option that is 20-30% cheaper than private insurance (due to negotiation power and lower overhead) that provides high quality healthcare will outcompete bloated private insurance carriers and prove that a government program can work to make life better for the American people.

Thats honestly the entire argument the conservatives and insurance companies make behind the BS and phony arguments. A public option that works will provide real competition, renew the concept of a functioning federal government and show the government can do things better than private industry.

Look past the BS and pretty much all the arguments come down to that. If a public option works, insurance companies will lose money and conservatives will lose political power and their ideology (government screws everything up, private is better than public) will look like a lie.

More to the point, they'd heve to go back to selling actual insurance instead of milking cash cows.

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Lead, follow, or get out of the way.

1. Age. Conservatives tend to be older, liberals tend to be younger. People under 30 voted Obama and dem 2-1 where as the average Fox viewer and Hannity listener is a white male in their 60s. Within 10 years many of the wingnuts will be dead of old age and replaced by liberal youth. And before anyone rebuts with the Churchhill quote that he never said (liberal in youth, all of that) the reality is youth went for Reagan in 80 and 84. Young people like me have grown up seeing the GOP as incompetent, dangerous, ignorant and petty. Not to mention they disagree with us on every issue (taxes, energy, foreign policy, healthcare, education, etc). No way we'll vote for them.

2. Race and religion. The base of the GOP is religious white people. The base of the dem party is white liberals and non-white voters. The dem base is growing (over 40% of the electorate now, up from 30% not long ago), the conservative base is stagnating and shrinking, and is now under 30%.

3. Women. Women are leaning more and more to the dem side, and making up a bigger % of the electorate. They made up 53% of the electorate in 2008. Not only that, but unmarried women (because they are more economically insecure) prefer the dems even more. Demographics are going to kick your parties ass.

If you think the country is on the left, wait until 2020. By then most Fox viewers will be dead of old age and replaced with liberal youths. Liberal whites and non-white voters will make up 50% of the electorate.

Keep in mind there are even more demographic changes and cultural changes that will further marginalize the GOP. You may think you represent 'the nation' but what you really represent is a group of old, scared, undemocratic people who are desperate to hold onto power. On some level you know you are on the way out and your ideas were rejected by the American people. And I know it will descend into domestic right wing terrorism when that fact finally gets through your thick skulls that the people have rejected you ideas, and aren't changing their minds. But the FBI, state police, local police and american public will not be intimidated by right wing terrorism. It will be crushed violently. We weren't intimidated by 9/11, we won't be intimidated by old people with handguns either.

The wingnuts will have expired from being denied coverage for their pre-existing conditions.

Could someone please call Domino's for this guy? He seems hungry after 2 posts. Allow me to quote from his magnum opus:

"...and their tolerance for the usual liberal activities is at a very low ebb now. From here on it could start to get ugly. Perhaps you, & your buddies, should start thinking about backing off. It doesn't seem that the rest of the country is."

Maybe he deserves some extra bread sticks for his efforts.

We don't want no government death panels and rationing of medicines. That's what private for-profit HMOs are for. They have panels of TRAINED PROFESSIONAL claims processors to determine who needs what treatments, who understand that wasteful "medical" procedures recommended by "doctors" don't really help patients, but do raise the premiums paid by the corporations who provide their employees' medical benefits, and thereby cut into the profits of all corporations, not just health insurance companies. And in these recessionary times, we need to protect and encourage corporate profits, even if we Americans have to make a few sacrifices, or sacrifice a few Americans, for the good of all. Not covering tens of millions of Americans only costs a few tens of thousands of lives a year, and undercoverage and denial of claims only costs several tens of thousands more. I'm not saying we won't get our hair mussed, but 100,000 American lives lost per year tops. You know, depending on the breaks.

the :sarcasm: thingy?

Your argument is to say governmental control is bad, but you do not offer the argument that started that ideology. That argument has some validity. Things like competition in the private sector make for more efficient ways to deliver products.

But you can no longer make those arguments, because the private sector by pooling money and using it to set up societal control mechanisms by lobbing congress and using intimidation no longer fits the arguments for private sector. Private sector has become a governance system. It is not free market, it is governance, one share of stock one vote, then using the system to set social laws. Is the plutocracy government system bad also?

The private sector is a governing body when used to set social policy, and that governance control has the wrong motives to work well when setting social policy.

Look at your post, really read it, where did you make an argument against what you say is bad.

Power grab -- If your argument is against power grab, you are making an ideological argument, you do not argue where that power should be shared, only that you see it moving from one place to another. You do not explain why CEOs working together to make laws is an acceptable power.

judged on results not theories -- Results of current system, people dying without insurance, people with insurance not getting care after getting sick, large profits for some sectors that skim money paid for health care. There are some other results also, because profit first does not have a moral component deception and advocating violence is part of that argument also. Also if you compare the results of National health care countries, Britain, France, Sweden, Nicaragua, Israel, Cuba, and many other countries, you will see you are only arguing for an ideology.


(Many CEOs just want to run a company, they don't want to be part of running society, they want to do whatever the particular task their company was set up to do. And many have high morale standards and use those standards in their actions. This comment is not saying wealthy people are bad, it is only saying that when systems of wealth set up non representative governance control, that system is bad.)

Like the US Postal Service? :eyes:

And look! UPS and FedX are STILL in business!

Uh...no...you are wrong. The majority want a public option.

Try some facts...troll.

Didn't even bother to read past that early lie. Why?



Must be hard to be so delusional.