Gcomeau's Waterfall
Oh, well that settles it then. The Catholics say he wasn't one of the,... so clearly he was an atheist who didn't believe in God despite all evidence being to the contrary.
Wait... when exactly did ATHEISTS claim him? Or does that only work one way?
For one thing, like I said before, they are the allocators of the entire electromagetic broadcast spectrum. And like I asked you before, do you know what happens if we remove that regulatory apparatus and people just start being able to broadcast whatever they want however they want?
Do you think this:
http://reboot.fcc.gov/spectrumdashboard/
Just organizes and maintains itself with no regulatory body enforcing transmission protocols? That it just spontaneously happens and regulates itself? It stuns me how many people just drift through their lives with no idea how much work is being done in the background to keep everything they take for granted on a day for day basis running.
Sigh...
Yes. I know the FCC does that. I SAID the FCC does that. I also said that is not the ONLY damn thing they do. That is just the one thing they do that the general public pays any attention to so people THINK that's the only thing they do. What is remarkable is that after I've ponted this out to you three times now you STILL seem to think that's the only thing they do.
And the FCC is the reason GM was in debt? WHAT?
Wow. Even after I pointed out to you that I was pretty sure you only had an awareness of one tiny portion of FCC responsibilities AND pointed out to you what some of the other ones were... you STILL based your argument entirely on the one trivial little aspect of their operation as if that's all they do. Bravo.
Being in debt or being partly government owned doesn't make a company a "zombie". Neither does sales figures being down DURING A GLOBAL RECESSION.
Less spending or more taxes. I prefer less spending.
Then you prefer staying in debt. It's that simple. This is not an "either/or" situation. It's both or we're not getting the job done. Spending is too high AND taxes are too low and they BOTH need to be corrected as soon as the economy is back on firm footing.
Is that intended to be a serious list?
I'll give you NASA as unecesary. Important, but not necessary. But you don't think the FCC is necessary? I'm betting you're only thinking of the occasional meddlesome idiot from the comission that gets their panties in a twist about a wardobe malfunction on television or something, which is the only thing about the FCC that ever really catches the attention of the general public, and the fact that they are the regulators for things like the allocation of the entire electromagnetic broadcast spectum is not even on your mental radar. Do you appreciate what happens if we remove that regulatory apparatus and people are allowed to broadcast whatever they want however they want?
And you don't think we need a Department of Energy? How do you think we have a national power grid without a Department of Energy?
And GM and Chrysler are already paying back their bailout money. They are not zombies. Your concerns are a little out of date, that was the GOP talking point from last year.
I care about money being spent wisely, and paid for, but the thing about America is that we want all of these government services, but America is clearly unwilling to pay for them. This is why we are $12 trillion in the hole.
Actually, mainly Republicans are unwilling to pay for them, which is why they practically riot in the streets any time anyone says the word "tax".
And nobody needs a deficit commission to figure out the problem. You need it to reach common ground on the solution. It's all well and good to say "Duh! Don't spend more money then you're bringing in"... but then try actually doing it. Everyone agrees you need to reduce spending, but try putting that through congress or the senate and everyone agrees you need to reduce spending in someone ELSE'S district, sure as hell not in theirs. And bottom line is spending cuts aren't getting you there even if you miraculously manage to get some significant portion of them through. The deficit and the debt are too massive. Taxes need to be raised. But you can't even say the words" raise taxes" without half the country throwing a screaming tantrum. And instead of talking them down the GOP just whips them into a frenzy because that's their party base.
I still the understand the difference between necessary and unnecessary spending.
Yet, the fundamental difference between you and I is that you believe in high government spending at no matter what the cost
If you understand the difference then explain why you're harping about THIS spending. Do you consider avoiding a Depression to be unnecessary?
And how do you get me harshly criticising unnecessary spending during times of economic stability as me believing "in high government spending no matter the cost"??? Do you even pay attention to my posts when you respond to them? Or do you just react to certain key words that jump out at you?
the cost while I don't as noted before. Our system is based on profit-loss system, not a profit system. No matter what industry it is, they are not entitled to government bailouts because of mismanagement.
Entirely agreed!
Of course the bailouts had nothing to do with "entitlements". It had to do with preferring bailing them out to letting them take down THE ENTIRE NATIONAL ECONOMY when they collapsed.
Same goes for the car companies on a smaller scale. They wouldn't have smashed the entire national economy flat if they'd imploded and dissapeared, but they would have taken a huge chunk out of the Great Lakes economies . Do you have any idea what the unemployment rates would have hit in Michigan if the car companies and al the businesses that supply them and get business from them went under? Bailing them out was an investment in keeping the regional economy functional.
Now yes, steps need to be taken to reform the financial regulatory system so that kind of thing isn't necessary anymore, but not doing it was not a sane option.
And yeah, they did allow Lehman to fail. Within a month the Dow had dropped 2000 points and it triggered a global financial crisis that almost caused the entire international system of credit to lock up. That was a hint they wanted to not do that kind of thing anymore.
There is no way to prove that if nothing was done, the economy would have collapsed, but it is better to be safe than sorry.
If you recognize it was better to do the bailout why spend the first half of your post complaining about doing the bailout?
And I don't care if government spending increases in the long term. Just saying "government spending increasing" doesn't mean anything by itself. I care if it's being spent usefully, and if it's paid for.
If government waste is increasing, I care.
If government is setting long term plans to just keep spending money it doesn't have I care.
I do not care if spending increases are offset by revenue increases that cover them, and if the spending increases is on something we want the government spending on.
However, that said, Obama has already spent considerable time trying to get the GOP to sit down on a deficit commission, that would have the power to make calls to CUT spending going forward to address the budget deficit, and it took him all year to get them just to finally agree to send anyone to sit on it... which they finally did a couple weeks ago. And they will now no doubt stall as long as possible to avoid actually doing anything because anything the commission accomplishes means something was accomplished during Obama's watch, and they refuse to cooperate in allowing that to happen no matter what the consequences are for the nation.
What happened to understanding the difference between necessary and unnecessary spending? Of course the deficit is going up right now. Spending enough to dig the national economy out of the worst recession since the Great Depression will tend to do that. It's why the deficits of almost every nation on the face of the planet massively increased right about now. There was this little incident with the global financial system back in 2008.
When the economy is back on firm footing and growing at a sufficient and sustainable pace and the private sector is able to pick up the slack on the demand side of the economy... then you start getting serious about deficit reduction. Like Bush should have been doing for years during his terms when that was an entirely possible thing to do.
You mean the projections BEFORE all the fallout from the financial catastrophe were different than the ones from after that fallout was largely known. You're kidding.
Now explain why you keep insisting on calling attention to the old, since invalidated, projection as if it has any meaning?
Dude, what Bush projected for the 2009 budget deficit is irrelevent. Bush couldn't be trusted to project the sun will rise tomorrow. The CBO projected a 1.3 trillion on-budget deficit for 2009, and they're the ones ultimately responsible for providing those projections. That's what the state of affairs was when Obama was sworn in. And that was when the CBO still thought the economy was only declining at an anualized rate of -3.8% of GDP at the end of 2008. Then they later figured out it was actually declining at an annualized rate of closer to -6% of GDP, which means it was nosediving way faster than they had accounted for.
As for you just "messing around"... if you say so.
Oh boy, you're so much fun.
One second the current deficit is all Obama's fault. The next minute a single guy in the Senate is who is actually responsible for deficits as soon as we start talking about Bush's deficits.
Give me a break.
Of COUSE they voted for TARP. It was that or a Depression. Which would you have preferred? Same goes for the stimulus. You really need to learn the difference between necessary and unnecessary spending. Spending to prevent a looming financial Depression? You need to DO THAT. Massive spending to give tax breaks to your rich buddies or bribe seniors before an election? Not required.
Same goes for the omnibus. It's like you have no ability to recognize economic contexts.
And the fact that you are STILL apparently are completely uncomprehending of what it means that the Federal Deficit was already projected to be at 1.3 Trillion dollars for 2009 before Obama was even sworn in and why it makes your "Obama is so great at running up deficits" remark asinine is just stunning.
I don't need to see "section 1101" to refer to the government providing insurance. It's called Medicare. It happened when JOHNSON was president.
And yes, forcing them to take on higher risk customers does, by definition, increase their risk. If only there was some way to offset that risk by also giving them access to a larger customer base of lower risk customers to cover the difference. Something involving mandated insurance... now that sounds familiar for some reason...
And yes, the people who were working on the bill didn't do it to achieve nothing. You're so amazingly astute to notice. They perhaps did it to extend coverage to tens of millions of people. And they perhaps did it to reign in costs that are rapidly on their way to either bankrupting the nation or pushing health care out of reach of a steadily climbing percentage of the population. Neither of those things is nothing.
The fact that you think you said something clever doesn't actually render it into some profound argument beyond my understanding.
Your ridiculous attempt to imply that the only possible reason Democrats and Republicans could have been fighting was over whether or not to actually nationalize the nation's health care provision and therefore the Democrats winning means health care nationalization must have occurred is infantile.
The link works fine. Apparently you lack the ability to read pdfs.
Try this one instead: http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/99xx/doc9957/
And yes, I know what Obama's current budget deficit is. The problem is you clearly do NOT know what the budget deficit already was when he took office if you think he "produced" that deficit. His policies have had relatively minor impact on it, almost entirely as one shot short term fiscal stimulus measures needed to prevent the economy from imploding as it was in danger of doing when he took office.
Hey...
Pssst...
Read this: http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/99xx/doc9958/
Now tell me when that document was written, and what the budget deficit for 2009 is in that document.
Do you, or do you not, understand what that means? WHOSE budget deficit is that?
We also had the Reagan adminstration illegally selling arms to Iran and funelling money to Nicaraguan contras... if you want to feel all nostalgic. If Reagan hadn't been showing early signs of alzheimers and a total inability to remember anything relevant when he was called to testify in front of the federal prosecutor after he left office we might have had the second ever case of a president having to pardon his predecessor to keep him out of prison.
Oh, and thank Reagan for financial de-regulation too. That worked out great.
And massive unnecessary budget deficits. He was great at producing those.
Yay Reagan!
please...
I'm sorry... "widely disseminating" to at least 6 people? According to... oh look! Something Ann said! How surprising. And she knows this how? I don't see a CC list on her e-mail. And who exactly were they? Were they, by any chance, university officials that he was supposed to be copying these kinds of notifications on? Let me guess, she doesn't mention that part?
Coulter is the one who took this public. That is so absurdly ridiculously clear it's not worth further discussing. She's the one who slapped the letter up on the internet and started whining to anyone who would listen about it. And there was NOTHING about it in any news or blog or media source prior to her doing that. Houle did not publicize the notification, Coulter did.
And no, it will not "come out in trial", don't be absurd. No judge in the country will do anything but take one look at this and dismiss it instantly.
No, he did not. The e-mail was privately sent to Coulter. SHE then published it online. Right here:
That's her posting a screenshot of the PRIVATE e-mail and making it public on Mar 21st at 3:39pm. Want to show me where Houle made it public before that? Go ahead. I'll wait.
I don't know how much you earn, and I am not judging here or anything, but the facts are these:
People who got tax reduction are ones who earn a little over the poverty amount
You're ridiculously clueless, you know that?
I make near 6 figures. I got the tax cut. I am almost certain that I am not "little over the poverty amount". Your inability to notice what is happening on your pay check does not define reality. There were 280 BILLION dollars in tax cuts in that stimulus package, how the hell do you think they only went to people a little over the poverty level? Do you have any clue what you're talking about? Can you perform basic math? Do you know how much money that would be per person?
Let's say "a little" over is 25% over. You're talking about something like $6000 a person. In TAX breaks. To people below, at, or near the poverty level. How the hell many taxes do you think those people pay in the first place???
Yes, I was... and assuming your parents aren't making over a quarter million a year so were they and so were you. The fact that you didn't notice the lowered levels of withholding on your paycheck doesn't make it disapear. It just means you don't pay attention.
You know, before spouting off on a subject it's generally a good idea to know something about it.
95% of people in the US had their taxes cut by the stimulus. There were payroll tax offsets, homebuying tax credits, car buying tax credits, student tax credits... none of those are directed at "the homeless" you clueless wonder.
Yes, prioviding health insurance is an aspect of the provision of care.
The PRIVATE SECTOR is still providing the health insurance. Except for Medicare and such, which were all already there and were not expanded by this bill.
You can't just say...
"The government did something big about health care."
"Hmmm... 'government'... 'health care'... in the same sentence... OMG! Nationalized Health Care!"
It doesn't work that way. Your argument appears to be the government did something, therefore that's nationalization. Which means you don't know what nationalization means. The government does lots of things... even really really big things... that in NO WAY involve nationalizing the sector they are dealing with. And this is one of them.
Nationalized health care is when the government takes over the provision of care. As in, it nationalizes the doctors and hospitals such as the NHS system in Britain.
Last time I checked the health care system in the US was still very much private sector, with the exception of some VA facilities.
And health insurance is still mostly provided through the private sector as well, with the exception of the VA and medicare, etc... and this bill did not expand those either. In fact the GOP was screaming about the bill killing Grandma because it tries to REDUCE medicare outlays to reign in spending.
This bill isn't even vaguely related to nationalized health care, or nationalized health insurance. If it was the latter, it would work a hell of a lot better than it's going to. But it's not.
FYI, he has lowered taxes. Remember that stimulus bill everyone was screaming and ranting about? Several hundred BILLION of it was lowered taxes. It was one of the largest tax cuts in history. Where were you when this happened?
And Iraq troop levels are falling and continuing to fall on a trajectory towards a planned withdrawal date.
And he did not promise to get out of Afghanistan. He campaigned on INCREASING troop levels in Afghanistan. Which he has done.
etc...
Basically, you're wrong about everything. Which is impressive, because you'd think you'd get something right just by sheer chance.
He did send it only to Ann. SHE then blasted it all over the public media so she could cry about it and play the victim because someone politely asked her to be civil and to make sure she was familiar with local laws.
And how the hell does urging someone to show respect constitute an accusation of hate speech?
The fact that a large number of people think that this IS nationalized health care... something it does not even remotely resemble ... is all the demonstration necessary that they are not equipped to judge whether they want nationalized health care.
You have to know what it is before you can say if it's a good or bad thing.
Please show me the accusation in the letter. I've read it, and can't find it. If anyone else would like to read it, and you'll notice Coulter does not provide it's actual text in her snivelling complaint about it, it's here:
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/
The only thing it did was make her aware of Canadian law before she potentially ran afoul of it, and politely ask that she try to express her opinions with respect and civility. She might think of saying "thanks for the heads up" instead of whining like a 6 year old and then pretending like she's somehow been victimized. But then I don't expect more than that from Coulter.
It depends what claim you were trying to establish.
If all you were trying to say was that we all kill things, then I believe "exterminate" does the job. Or for that matter... "kill". But then that's a pretty trivial point. I'm eating lunch right now, and something was killed to make it. Lots of somethings actually. A potato... a cow... a lettuce... an onion...
What does matter who has better care?
Ummm, we ARE discussing health care right? Better care is the entire point of the exercise.
And ALL health care systems ration care. Yes, even the US. The difference is in how they do it and what results they acheive. And if you think you know of any system that doesn't ration care please do point me at the fantasy utopia that has unlimited medical resources to lavish on it's citizens for the asking. I'd very much like to emigrate there.
Please familiarize yourself with the proper definition of "genocide" and the difference between it and generalized "extermination". They're not the same thing. The term "genocide" is primarily a legal term and is not applicable to insects and rodents. If you want to debate the moral equivalency or lack thereof of killing a cockroach and killing a person then have that debate, but don't distort the meaning of the terminology we use to discuss them to just try to manufacture that equivalency with textual slight of hand.
You mean pay money into the system every year and get absolutely nothing out of it, just waiting for the time when some major medical expense hits you and hoping it does so with enough advance warning you can get insured first?
Yeah, you do that. That's a brilliant strategy. Because you know serious catastrophic medical conditions always call ahead and schedule their appearance to make sure it's convenient for you... so I'm sure that'll work out fine. And the rest of us will all appreciate the free money you're tossing into the system in the meantime.
You display the same deep insight into this aspect of the system as you have into all the others.
I didn't say one individual, I said one entity.
And no, doctors and hospitals do NOT work "under the control" of the AMA. It's just a professional association, and at last count only 22% of doctors and physicians are even members of the AMA for cripes sake. If they somehow controlled the industry I think they'd be able to get their membership numbers a bit higher at the very least.
And the people at CATO think a lot of ridiculous things.
Since you are the economist and health care expert, tell me exactly how the medical field not a monopoly aided by government.
Because monopolies are singular entities with control over a market that prevents any competition from entering. Doctors and hospitals are seperate entities that COMPETE WITH EACH OTHER.
The truth is that I don't care whether you or my neighbor can afford insurance. I only care about myself and family. I have no interest in higher risk people.
Then you clearly DON'T understand insurance, since whether or not "you and your famiuly" can afford insurance depends on the costs to the insrance providers that determine what rates they're going to charge you. Which is dependent on what OTHER FREAKING PEOPLE are paying into the damn system.
If you don't have mandates and low risk people drop out of the system YOUR bill goes up. If the insurers only get higher risk populations in their customer pool YOUR bill goes up. How do you not get this?
By the way, medicare is socialism. The only reason why the spineless Republicans of today don't oppose Medicare is because they would lose to the socialist Democrats for good.
But the spineless Republicans who not only don't get rid of Medicare but EXPAND it when they're in power are totally going to repeal health care reform this time, right? That was what you were declaring one post ago.
And no, I'm not kidding that having professional standards isn't establishing a coercive monopoly... it's a completely ridiculous idea.
So, if the government wants professional standards, then WHY DON'T ARCHITECTS need a license? They design buildings and bridges. Millions of people depend on these things everyday.
Wow! What a great point! I can't believe architects don't need a licence!
Of course the reason I don't believe that is probably because they DO need licenses. The licensing requirements vary state to state but in California practicing as an architect without a license will get you up to a $5000 fine and possible jail time. Oh No!!! Architecture is a coercive monoploy too!
I make it on my own quite well thank you. I also however am capable of contributing to society without throwing a crying screaming tantrum over it and thus have no issue at all voting for Democrats, who generally enact far more responsible and intelligent policy, even if they do do the occasional really stupid thing. At least it's not the constant really stupid things the GOP do when they're in charge.
Take... oh... the last two major peices of health care to be enacted by the two parties. The Democrats just passed a bill that the CBO scored as reducing the deficit by over 100 billion in the next ten years and by over a TRILLION in the next 20 years. As in, in a show of fiscal responsibility they made sure their changes were fully paid for and threw in deficit reducing measures on top of it.
When the GOP was in power they passed a health care bill too. Just before the 2004 elections they gave a huge bribe to the nations seniors by creating a massive prescription drug giveaway in medicare... and left it COMPLETELY unfunded. Provided no mechanisms to pay for it whatsoever, just piled hundreds of billions of dollars on top of the debt to buy votes.
Hmmm, which of these approaches would I prefer to support... it's a real dilemna.
No, I must know how to do math to think that mandates will do something.
Do you or do you not understanmd how insurance works? It is a risk pooling mechanism. You take the total risk to the insured population and mitigate it's effect on any one individual member by spreading the costs across the group so nobody suffers some fluke financial catastrophe. I mean, that's not complicated right? Now... what happens to the level of average risk if you insure all the higher risk people and lots of low risk people leave the pool? Does it go up, or does it go down? And if risk goes up, what does price do?
On the other hand, if you increase the size of the pool to include all the lower risk population then what happens?
As for the Republicans repealing, good luck with that. What it's like in your world anyway? Because in my world there are a couple issues with that idea:
1. It is literally impossible for the Republicans to win a Senate Majority of sufficient size to over-ride presidential veto in 2010, so it's not happening before 2012. Even if they won EVERY SINGLE senate election in the country in 2010 they wouldn't get there.
2. It's fine and good to rant and rave and call this some kind of socialist take-over of the nation's health care now, when they can spout bullcrap like that and get away with it because large percentages of the population have no idea what is actually in the bill (are you aware that the 1993 GOP health care proposal presented as an alternative to Clinton's health care proposal had mandated insurance coverage? Hmmm? The GOP is completely full of crap on this issue... or the GOP was the socialist party in 1993 maybe?). However, repealing it after it has been in efffect for at least three years and people know what it's actually doing? HA! Hilarious idea. Never going to happen. The republicans were up in arms about medicare being one step away from communism when that was enacted. How quick were they to repeal that once it was in place? But if you think they're going to jump on this, well, enjoy your fantasy.
And no, the medical field is not a coercive monopoly either. Having professional standards is not establishing a freaking coercive monopoly.
And just an FYI, 3 hospitals for 250,000 people is actually probably pretty close to right in terms of efficiency. You do realize that the hospitals aren't the only medical service providers right? There are clinics, there are private practices... people don't need to go to an actual hospital every time they get sick.
And you have got to be kidding about the government and AMA blocking people from medical school. You mean... by having standards? It's like I don't even have to write these responses, you make a mockery of your own arguments without me even helping. Yes, let's do away with those nasty restrictive standards for graduating and licensing doctors. They're such a great evil. Let the free market decide if that guy over there is qualified to take out my appendix by seeing if he's able to convince me to pay him to try doing it.
You have got to be kidding.
Ok, so we have no mandates. So lots of people in the low risk segment of the population decide they're not buying insurance because they think they can get away with it. Since these are the profitable segment of the population for insurance companies they have to charge higher prices to anyone who does get insurance to maintain a profit margin.
Additionally, some of those geniuses who bet they didn't need insurance? They were wrong. Big. But good luck affording insurance AFTER you find out you're seriously expensively ill. So now we have a situation. We let these people die in the street, or we treat them. What do you advocate? Because if we treat them then somebody needs to cover the costs of, say, the neurosurgery to remove the brain tumor. And it sure isn't going to be the guy who can't afford insurance. Guess who it is going to be? The people who actually did buy insurance, who now get their rates jacked to cover the higher prices the hospital charges the insurers to cover the costs to the hospital of treating Joe Genius who decided he didn't need health insurance. So higher prices again.
Then we revoke the anti-trust exemption. The reason that exemption exists is to allow insurance companies to share demographic data so they can build accurate models of systemic risk and set their pricing structures accordingly. Now if you remove their ability to access all that data you may get lucky and it has no effect and they're still able to model just as accurately with the more limited available information. But if they aren't and the error bars on their models go up so do their prices to cover the uncertainty. They sure as heck do not go down. You're on a roll with these policies of yours.
Then we start building new hospitals! Yay! Let's see... Tehachapi, CA.... which is a little town outside Bakersfield, happens to be currently planning a new hospital construction. This is not exactly going to be a giant facility, feel free to look up Tehachapi on google maps. Current projected construction costs are $65 million . That's just to build the building. Then you have to cover maintenance and upkeep costs indefinitely. Then you have to actually fill the thing with equipment. Expensive equipment. Then you have to staff it with admins and accountants, etc... and then you have to hire the doctors and nurses and pay all of their salaries.
Now, do tell me exactly how much you think the added competition this hospital is going to bring to Tehachapi and the surrounding area is going to lower health care costs while prices are kept high enough it will cover the doctors salaries, and the nurses salaries, and the administrative staff's salaries and the maintenance and upkeep on the building, and the cost of equipment AND make back the $65million in construction costs for the facility? I'd really love to hear you make that argument.
And unless those two hospitals in your town are owned by the same people, go look up "monopoly". And I'm going to pretend I didn't even see you try to argue that doctors have no competition just because you don't think there are enough hospitals for your liking.
As for putting more people through medical schools, who is doing this "putting" you speak of? I thought you were a "market will fix things" guy? Why isn't the market driving these people to become doctors to fill this giant demand you perceive? Is the government blocking people from going to medical school or something?
We were not talking about "subsidizing". Please don't mix terminology. We were talking about insurance mandates.
The only thing insurance madates have to do with subsidies is that they LESSEN the need for subsidies since it lowers average costs across the board. So do you want more subsidies (no mandate) or less subsidies (mandate)?
Or do you just not want any subsidies, but we still need to give emergency medicalcare to people when they need it. Which is the most expensive care possible. And the hospitals aren't just going to eat the loss when those uninsured people can't possibly pay the bill so they hike up the cost to the insured patients and you pay for it anyway... only now you're paying for the more expensive emergency care so you're getting gouged?
Or do we just let anyone who can't pay for health care die in the street?
What, exactly, is your preference here? None of the things you just listed comes near solving the cost problem.
You realize insurance companies already have anti-trust exemptions?
And hospitals cost money. How does this reduce cost exactly?
Do you understand how insurance operates?
If you want insurance to work most efficiently you need everyone bought in. If big chunks of the low risk low expense population opts out then the system either needs to charge far higher rates to everyone who is opted in, or it bankrupts. And insurance rates are already reaching levels where it is becoming flat out unaffordable to very large segments of the population. The need to stop out of control cost inflation is one of the primary driving forces behind the need for reforming the system. So just letting the costs keep climbing higher isn't really a workable option.
You want those pre-existing exclusions and lifetime limits you say you understand the need to eliminate actually eliminated? Then you need people buying into the system to cover the cost. You do not get one without the other without driving the system into total bankruptcy or driving the cost of getting any insurance out of reach of an unacceptably large percentage of the population.
If you want to complain about buying insurance that's your call. But do so with the awareness that without requiring people to participate you are forever guaranteeing that large percentages of the population will not be able to get insurance at all.
