> My point is that this is political poison.
By "this" you mean: a government mandate for everyone to have a health plan?
> Every uninsured person out there is probably thinking, like me,
> what the hell?
I guess my point was: we've already got plenty of precedent for this. Are you truely "uninsured" ...? Or just "traditional private health uninsured" ...? Are you a W-2 worker? You have some Workers Comp insurance (if you don't, you should turn your boss in!). Are you a driver? You probably at least are required to have some liability insurance. Are you a renter? Your landlord probably provides fire insurance[*]. Have you got an emergency? You'll go to an emergency room, and you'll get service.
[*] Yes, it won't help you much if the house burns down and burns everything in it; but if there's a small fire, and, say, you get a hole in "your" roof because of it, it's likely your landlord will fix the roof with insurance proceeds so that you can continue to live there without a hole in the roof; it's not great, but it's not "uninsured" ...
That oil filter guy used to say: You can pay me now, or you can pay me later.
It's not that you're "uninsured" -- it's that the coverage you have is spotty, inefficient, and corrupted throughout.
> As with the original Clinton plan, it won't get the public support
> it'll need in order to tame the insurance companies and therefore
> NOTHING WILL HAPPEN.
So you say. If you think the insurance companies are absolutely required for buy-in to any proposed plan, we should just stop this thread completely: no radical change will be comfortable for insurance companies[*]. We should just stop all this bickering about who will be "President" and ask: which Insurance CEO should be in charge this year? Ok, I joke.
[*] This is as it should be, because "health insurance" is a misnomer: insurance is for unforseen events; the maintenance of your health, through good times and bad, is not an unforseen event. Treating it like it is has been a boon for (some) insurance companies; a bust for others; and tragedy for some of the rest.
--- I believe that the support that was missing from the original Clinton plan was not withheld from the insurance companies; the support was missing from The President. Everyone seems to nay-say all kinds of ideas with "it'll never get the support of [fill in the blank]" -- well if there's one thing the last 7 years should teach us all is that a very unpopular thing can be accomplished through the sheer will of a single person. You say you can't get single-payer health insurance in your lifetime? I turn you to PNAC who said: we'll never get to invade Iraq. George Bush single-handedly took this country to war, and he did it in a way that still leaves Senators shaking their heads. But: he did it. $1T spent so far with not much end in sight. Hell, he's even still got 20-30% of the (potential) voters buying yellow ribbons. ---
Which brings us back to the beginning of this thread: Krugman says that Hillary says that as President she will do this. Can she make good on it? I think that she certainly "can" -- whether she will or not is really the unknown-unknown ... but she does say that she will. And Barack does not say that.
Ok, I think we all now have our positions on the table:
Hillary: I will mandate health insurance Barack: I will not Jenny: "That trick never works" Jordan: It only requires the will, and if it happens, it will be
better than not doing it
and perhaps:
Jenny: If it happens, it won't be better than not doing it
I think that covers it?
---
> which is why any talk of eliminating insurance companies is
> kept out of the running
There's precedent for 'elimination of insurance companies' if you include 'self-elimination' ... several insurance markets have become "unprofitable" for insurance companies, and so they decline new policies and attrite themselves out of a market. In their place steps the government. Speaking as a Californian, I can assure you that a law to "eliminate earthquake insurers" would have been dead on arrival; and yet, that's exactly what happened: they just went away. And the replacement is a government-run fund, much like, as I said, workers compensation: there is an insurer of last-resort. When I first got a policy, it was crappy and expensive. Over time, the fund has grown, and the policies are better now. It's still expensive, and no one knows how it will fare if there's a Big One, but no insurance company is getting rich off of it, and it's a shared, collective effort to try to make sure that this risk is covered.
Don't say it can't happen, because it for sure won't.
/jordan