"I don't want to live in a society where people have to $thing, so let's ban $thing and punish the companies involved in it" is approximately the most destructive fallacy of our time. Making upper-middle-class the minimum allowable lifestyle doesn't give everyone an upper-middle-class standard of living. It just punishes those who don't already have it.
We're going to keep ratcheting up the minimum allowable job, housing, food, etc. until a tiny minority of liberal elites are congratulating each other for having eradicated exploitation and all the liberated victims of exploitation are unemployed, homeless, and starving.
I don't want to live in a society where people have to live in RVs and work in Amazon warehouses. But banning Amazon warehouses (or RVs) isn't going to help.
We need redistribution, retraining, a real social safety net, healthcare, etc. so that people actually have better options than exploitative employment situations. Then it isn't even necessary to ban them, because no one would want them anyway.
More destructive than, "oil companies can spill oil anywhere" (Nigeria) or "let's kill everyone from the 'wrong' ethnic group" (Rwanda) or "let's exploit orphans" (Ireland)?
Those things are clearly evil and clearly demand a response.
The "let's ban symptoms and coping mechanisms" bandwagon, on the other hand, gives citizens who are concerned about a situation the feeling that they're helping, disarming and distracting them from actually constructing a better world. The collective loss to society of the solutions that could be built but aren't is quite large.
Imagine if we had single-payer health care instead of more regulation on employer-employee relationships. Imagine if we had public housing instead of regulation stonewalling private development. Imagine if we actually built world-class public transportation systems instead of just starving out the parking. Etc, etc.
I think the whole ObamaCare fiasco is one of those things that the typical millennial liberals on HN have gotten entirely wrong.
For years, the mantra here has been that all those red state deplorables who were wary about government health care were voting against their own interests, and ignorant for not wanting it.
Trust us. We know better than you.
Well now we've seen what's happening. Premiums have skyrocketed for average workers and everyone has been moved to high deductible plans that pay for nothing.
My own insurance had gone from decent to worthless, and it costs twice as much. As a single guy who makes a high income, it's no big deal. For many of my coworkers who have a spouse and 3 kids, it has been devastating. And it's getting worse as more states drop plans.
The problem with the ACA isn't that everyone can get coverage, the problem is that insurance companies are still involved. The idea of designing a solution where private companies are free to profit from the basic operations of a public service is bonkers. They add nothing of value, and will only push prices up. I could've told you from the start that the ACA was doomed to failure, and I come from a country that has socialised healthcare and has benefited from such a system.
Take health insurance companies out of the picture, and address price gouging by pharmaceutical companies, and you'll almost certainly see costs come down. I'm pleased to see there has been some momentum for single payer, so the US can scrap the ACA.
On a side note, ACA was similar to a plan proposed by Republicans back in the 90s:
Yes. But they also charge more because they can. Healthcare is not special. It's like any other limited resources. That is, increase demand and the price goes up.
On the other hand, lower demand and prices will fall.
As it is we're getting older and intentionally living a more unhealthy lifestyle, but expecting prices to fall?
No doubt there are vast disfunction in the current system. However, the biggest - literally - component of that system are the humam seeking / needing care. What's more unhealthy, those people or the insurance companies? I can't see the line between the diabetes dot or the smoking dot and the insurance companies.
> "Yes. But they also charge more because they can. Healthcare is not special. It's like any other limited resources. That is, increase demand and the price goes up."
If you're talking about pharmaceutical prices, there are ways around that. For example, drugs that are FDA approved and available elsewhere in the world for a lower price should be able to be legally imported and sold at that lower price. To give an example of how this could be implemented, there was a bill that was proposed to allow drugs from Canada to be imported and sold:
By increasing competition from imports, drug prices can come down. Also, allowing generics to come to market faster for the most commonly used drugs (i.e. cutting down the time for which a single pharmaceutical company has a monopoly on producing a drug) is another approach that can stop pharmaceutical companies from over-inflating drug prices in the US.
Agree. But to be fair to ACA is was very ambitious legislation. It would be naive to expect any such thing to be even close to perfect out of the gate. It should be evolving. It is not. Given their oath this falls on both parties. They don't work for their parties as soldiers against the other party.
They. Work. For. Us.
I don't care who is in charge. I want results. Where is the fine tuning? Where is the sense that they work for us?
That being said, and not to get too off topic, but there isn't a healthcare system in the world that can support our collective dietary and lifestyle habits. Obama blew it becausr he failed to tie (personal) health to health. He failed to explain how there are things that can be prevented (e.g., Type 2 diabetes) that we all but refuse to address.
Furthermore, these preventable gateway diseases - again let's stick with diabetes - significantly increase the risk of cancer, Alzheimer's, etc.
Cost are increasing...as are waistlines and age. How are costs going to decline if more people are in need of more and more serious treatment? They fact that a fair amount is in fact preventable only makes the current disconnect even more confusing.
> "We need redistribution, retraining, a real social safety net, healthcare, etc. so that people actually have better options than exploitative employment situations. Then it isn't even necessary to ban them, because no one would want them anyway."
What we (aka The Market) needs is choices. We willingly got ourselves into this. We bought into the idea that cheaper (and disposable) is best - a la Walmart - and then rotted our communities from the inside out. The local mom & pops replaced by a browser and a UPS truck.
So while Widget X was/is less expensive we're still at the end of the year out of pocket for just as much, if not more, in order to yield all the intangibles the more expensive widget supported.
Yes the solution legislation? It might be. The question is will that help to solve the root problem, or simply create another gov program that creates long term dependency, instead of working towards an enabled citizenship; a society where better individual decisions matter.
It seems to me we've bought into the idea the price is the only thing that matters, and then we wonder why we're treated as human resources.
We're going to keep ratcheting up the minimum allowable job, housing, food, etc. until a tiny minority of liberal elites are congratulating each other for having eradicated exploitation and all the liberated victims of exploitation are unemployed, homeless, and starving.
I don't want to live in a society where people have to live in RVs and work in Amazon warehouses. But banning Amazon warehouses (or RVs) isn't going to help.
We need redistribution, retraining, a real social safety net, healthcare, etc. so that people actually have better options than exploitative employment situations. Then it isn't even necessary to ban them, because no one would want them anyway.