- Joined
- Jul 14, 2012
- Messages
- 16,516
- Reaction score
- 8,206
- Location
- Montreal, QC
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Liberal
I was reading this article on CBC form their Washington correspondent and I found it rather interesting. It talks about Obamacare and Obama saying if you like your policy you can keep it. People are complaining that their old policies are being cancelled by Obamacare because they are substandard, while the reason they are substandard is that they are crap and provide no real protection from healthcare costs.
THis quote illustatres the point very nicely:
All Obamacare does is prevent people from being screwed by insurance companies because then everyone else has to pick up the tab. He goes on to say how is it different than requiring car insurance or banks having to have insurance to protect themselves form bad loans. After all the banks chose to finance sub-prime mortgages it is their fault, but we ended up having to pay for it the end same happens with healthcare.
THis quote illustatres the point very nicely:
Obama and his Democrats are responding that these new rules are to protect people from "crappy" or "lousy" policies.
But this is America. A lot of people treasure their right to buy lousy crap.
"Why do you get to decide what's lousy?" Fox News's Megyn Kelly asked a Democratic member of Congress recently. "Why can't the American people say 'It's lousy for you. To me, I like it?'"
And there it is. The great American question. Should the government protect people, nanny-like, from their own bad judgment?
The conservative view here is no. Republicans despise anything they see as interfering with the free market, from industrial inspections to bank reforms to President Obama's Consumer Protection Bureau, with its powers to get between citizens and debt collectors, banks and credit card companies.
If someone wants to pay 30-per-cent-plus interest, basically for life, to a credit card company based in a state with no anti-usury laws, that's his or her right. No one's forcing them to borrow the money, right?
The core premise of Obamacare is collective responsibility, a notion that underpins laws in most Western countries to one extent or another, but which is regarded with great suspicion by American conservatives. This, to American conservatives, is socialism, even though the principles behind Obamacare are essentially a lift from earlier conservative thinking. But conservatives here have moved far to the right in recent years.
All Obamacare does is prevent people from being screwed by insurance companies because then everyone else has to pick up the tab. He goes on to say how is it different than requiring car insurance or banks having to have insurance to protect themselves form bad loans. After all the banks chose to finance sub-prime mortgages it is their fault, but we ended up having to pay for it the end same happens with healthcare.