Obama's Dead Souls

I saw this blog post that explains the philosophical issues far more eloquently than I can.

http://www.whitehousedossier.com/2013/1 ... ead-souls/

Obama’s Dead Souls
by KEITH KOFFLER on NOVEMBER 21, 2013, 11:36 AM
What Socialism does is, it destroys the soul. It puts just enough money in the bank account, but bankrupts the spirit. And eventually, as we saw with the Soviet Union, even the meager rations provided eventually run out too.

It kills your spirit by telling you that you are not responsible, cannot make your own decisions, and can’t care for yourself, and that you have the State – and not God, your parents, and your fellow man – to thank for your existence.

I’m not a libertarian. I believe that we need a government backstop when circumstances have left people in desperate straits, and family and private charity can’t or don’t provide enough. For most, the help should be temporary. For some, particularly ailing seniors, it may have to be permanent. But it must be as limited as possible.

But that’s not what President Obama – and his Obamacare – are about. He seeks a broad government intrusion into our lives aimed to hook us on the ingeniousness of the utopian schemes of our betters on the faculty of Harvard University and in the Great Liberal Think Tanks of America.

As we stagger from fix to fix from our government pushers, our humanity will be subsumed to the narcotic effect of having others take care of us; the basic dignity of work and reward – the ancient instinct to forage and hunt for our own food and care for our own young – replaced by dependence on the state.

Dead Souls destined for Chichikov’s estate.

Here is one of the souls killed by Obama. It belongs to the mother of Nicole Hopkins, who wrote up her story in the Wall Street Journal. Below, a synopsis of the tale:

*******

My mother is not one to seek attention by complaining, so her recent woeful Facebook FB +0.86% post caught my eye: “The poor get poorer.” It diverged from the more customary stream of inspirational quotes, recipes and snapshots from her tiny cottage in Pierce County, Wash.

The post continued: “I just received a notice: ‘In order to comply with the new healthcare law, your current health plan will be discontinued on December 31, 2013.’ Currently my premium is $276 and it is a stretch for me to cover. The new plan . . . are you ready . . . projected new rate $415.20. Now I can’t afford health insurance.”

Since she couldn’t afford the new plan offered by her insurer, she told me she was eager to explore her new choices under the Affordable Care Act.

The exchange had determined that my mother was not eligible to choose to pay for a plan, and so she was slated immediately for Medicaid.

“How has it come to this?” she asked in one of our several talks over the past few weeks about what was happening. When she was a working mother and I was young, she easily carried health insurance for our whole family. “How have I fallen this far?”

Unable to secure employer-sponsored health care, she had, until this fall, chosen to pay $276 a month for bare-bones catastrophic coverage. “I think that we should be able to take care of ourselves and to earn enough money to pay for basics, and health insurance is one of them,” she told me. For two years she had paid out of pocket for that plan, but now she is being told that the plan isn’t good enough for her.

The Sept. 26 letter from my mother’s insurer promised that the more expensive plan “conforms with the new health care law”—by covering maternity needs, newborn wellness and pediatric dental care. My mother asked: “Do I need maternity care at 52?”

Of course, Medicaid is not a new option for my mother; she knew that she was poor enough to qualify for cost-free health care. It was a deliberate choice on her part to pay that monthly $276 out of her own pocket. Clearly she had judged that she received a personal benefit from not being on Medicaid.

“I just don’t expect anything positive out of getting free health care,” she said. “I don’t see why other people should have to pay for my care, whether it be through taxes or otherwise.” In paying for health insurance herself—she won’t accept help from her family, either—she was safeguarding her dignity and independence and her sense of being a fully functioning member of society.

Now she has been forced to join the government-reliant poor, though she would prefer to contribute her two mites. The authorities behind “affordable care” had erased her right to calculate what she was willing to spend to preserve her dignity—to determine what she thinks is affordable.

That little contribution can mean the difference between dignity and despair.

I did read one ObamaCare alternative a few days ago. The author suggested that what we really needed was universal catastrophic insurance. He suggested that the catastrophic insurance would kick in at 20% of income and be subsidized by the government for those who can't afford it.

For example those making $20,000 would be required to get catastrophic insurance that would kick in at $4000. More than likely this would be subsidized by the government.

Those making $100,000 a year would be required to get insurance that kicks in at $20,000. Most people making that money already have insurance that exceeds that minimum but for those who don't they should be able to afford it.

The plan is not perfect, in fact I see 1 major flaw already but it is a lot better than the ObamaCare boondoggle.

The real issue with any healthcare plan that our government will manage to implement is our government's crippling desire to pander to the insurance industry and their own inability to build a system that can care for our people. somehow most first world nations consider universal heath care a bare minimum to be considered among their company. We don't, what we'd prefer is that we spend 12% of GDP to provide healthcare for less than 50% of our population while those "socialist" systems our GOP/Tea Party/Libertarians revile spend 6% of GDP and deliver a minimum standard of health care to 100% of their population.

For some reason we have accepted the lie that it would be bad for business, this is patently false. In almost every one of those "socialist" systems the insurance industry sells expansion of that basic health care and are a vibrant part of the nation's economy. I've lived in one of those nations as well as growing up in this country. Most jobs that I had while working in Canada had health insurance that went beyond the basics provided by Government. Yet, we can't accomplish it? What happened to America the bold? the innovator? the leader?

We sacrificed ourselves on the altar of ideology. McCarthy lives today.

Nameless, how can you like something like the SKM/SEM when they require universal health care including prolong for all of its citizens? Isn't that exactly what you are railing against?

Textev on universal health coverage in the SKM.

Thanks in advance,
T2M

BrightSoul wrote:The real issue with any healthcare plan that our government will manage to implement is our government's crippling desire to pander to the insurance industry and their own inability to build a system that can care for our people. somehow most first world nations consider universal heath care a bare minimum to be considered among their company. We don't, what we'd prefer is that we spend 12% of GDP to provide healthcare for less than 50% of our population while those "socialist" systems our GOP/Tea Party/Libertarians revile spend 6% of GDP and deliver a minimum standard of health care to 100% of their population.

For some reason we have accepted the lie that it would be bad for business, this is patently false. In almost every one of those "socialist" systems the insurance industry sells expansion of that basic health care and are a vibrant part of the nation's economy. I've lived in one of those nations as well as growing up in this country. Most jobs that I had while working in Canada had health insurance that went beyond the basics provided by Government. Yet, we can't accomplish it? What happened to America the bold? the innovator? the leader?

We sacrificed ourselves on the altar of ideology. McCarthy lives today.

Nameless, how can you like something like the SKM/SEM when they require universal health care including prolong for all of its citizens? Isn't that exactly what you are railing against?

thinkstoomuch wrote:Textev on universal health coverage in the SKM.

Thanks in advance,
T2M

BrightSoul wrote:The real issue with any healthcare plan that our government will manage to implement is our government's crippling desire to pander to the insurance industry and their own inability to build a system that can care for our people. somehow most first world nations consider universal heath care a bare minimum to be considered among their company. We don't, what we'd prefer is that we spend 12% of GDP to provide healthcare for less than 50% of our population while those "socialist" systems our GOP/Tea Party/Libertarians revile spend 6% of GDP and deliver a minimum standard of health care to 100% of their population.

For some reason we have accepted the lie that it would be bad for business, this is patently false. In almost every one of those "socialist" systems the insurance industry sells expansion of that basic health care and are a vibrant part of the nation's economy. I've lived in one of those nations as well as growing up in this country. Most jobs that I had while working in Canada had health insurance that went beyond the basics provided by Government. Yet, we can't accomplish it? What happened to America the bold? the innovator? the leader?

We sacrificed ourselves on the altar of ideology. McCarthy lives today.

Nameless, how can you like something like the SKM/SEM when they require universal health care including prolong for all of its citizens? Isn't that exactly what you are railing against?

At the office but it was a talking point (from Terekov or Medusa) in the first or second Shadows book.

thinkstoomuch wrote:Textev on universal health coverage in the SKM.

Thanks in advance,
T2M

Found it:

Storm from the Shadows - chapter 14 wrote:Since one of the Star Kingdom's basic citizens' rights was access to the prolong therapies, the fifty-five-T-year ramp up to full representation in the Imperial Parliament wasn't going to be quite the hardship for most of the Talbott Cluster's citizens that it might have been once upon a time. True, it would hit some member systems harder than others (which had required some serious horse trading at the Constitutional Convention), because their poverty-stricken economies hadn't already made prolong available. That meant any of their citizens more than twenty-five T-years old would never receive it . . . and that a sizable portion of their present electorate would die of old age, even with modern medical care, before the Quadrant received its full representation. No arrangement could be perfect, however, and the Star Kingdom had pledged to put those systems first on the list to receive the prolong therapies, while the Constitutional Convention had pledged some very hefty financial incentives to bring their economies up to the standards of their neighbors as quickly as possible.

This one only specifies Prolong but I rather got the impression that prolong was far more expensive than general health coverage and it was a part of basic coverage.

Wonderful you now have access. Who's paying? Not concerned with prolong as such many reasons why that is an investment. Collecting taxes for 200 years will pay for it.

Who paid for Honor's pregancy? Sort of a loaded question the Dr. waived payment. Think he would have done that if it was the government.

But that is fine the current lash up has 52 year old women paying for maternity and natal care. Required by law. But that is fine because a woman who used to be able to pay for her health care can't any more. She is on medicare now.

Read the link. She didn't want. She has no choice. She gets it. Now you pay for it if you pay federal taxes. Congratulations. This is much better.

T2M

BrightSoul wrote:Found it:

Storm from the Shadows - chapter 14 wrote:Since one of the Star Kingdom's basic citizens' rights was access to the prolong therapies, the fifty-five-T-year ramp up to full representation in the Imperial Parliament wasn't going to be quite the hardship for most of the Talbott Cluster's citizens that it might have been once upon a time. True, it would hit some member systems harder than others (which had required some serious horse trading at the Constitutional Convention), because their poverty-stricken economies hadn't already made prolong available. That meant any of their citizens more than twenty-five T-years old would never receive it . . . and that a sizable portion of their present electorate would die of old age, even with modern medical care, before the Quadrant received its full representation. No arrangement could be perfect, however, and the Star Kingdom had pledged to put those systems first on the list to receive the prolong therapies, while the Constitutional Convention had pledged some very hefty financial incentives to bring their economies up to the standards of their neighbors as quickly as possible.

This one only specifies Prolong but I rather got the impression that prolong was far more expensive than general health coverage and it was a part of basic coverage.

The real issue is the solution that was forced down everyone's throats. There are viable solutions out there both private and single payer (government) systems but none of them were permitted to be fully explored by the assorted special interests in this country. When I talk special interests I mean on both sides of our ludicrous ideological divide.

I fully beliee that the deal worked out was a deliberate effort to sabotage any functional coverage system that would insure 100% of our population at a minimum level.

Think on this, My granfather was born in 1918, he was taking care of his own healthcare need by the age of 16 which would be 1934. From 1934 to 1981 when he died he payed cash for all of his family's needs. This included the last 3 years of my Grandmother;s life as she spent them in the hospital and his own care after having his first stroke at 48 years old. Who in the upper middle class could afford this today? Anyone? I thought not.

There are solutions, unfortunately our government and those very same special interests want it there way or no way so they'll cripple any effort to make something that works.

Thanks BrightSoul, you said it so well. As an outsider I can't see the reason that health care is so expensive in the US. Is it greedy doctors, lawyers, or insurance companies? Possibly it is that your systems are so fragmented they are inefficient? Maybe all of the above?
We have had to legislate to limit what our media calls "The American Disease" of excess litigation. Ambulance chasing lawyers started driving up premiums because they encouraged dissatisfied patients to sue doctors over frivolous claims, and make ridiculous claims for minor accidents. We do have some greedy specialist doctors who make obscenely inappropriate incomes. I have a son who works in the field and a senior partner recently swapped his swimming pool and tennis courts to each others sites in his yard, because he felt it might look better that way.