Pro and Con
I saw this post the other day, and while I'm not ready to take what the author says at complete face value, it does seem to be a pretty good summing up of why the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act would be something people would endorse.
So, faced with a pretty thorough list of what the Act will do (and many of those things sound pretty good), what is the rebuttal? I looked to see if anyone had written a counter-argument, one that addressed the problems with the Act on the same level (not just that the mandate was unconstitutional or it's too expensive or that we just can't trust the people who wrote the Act to follow through on any of their promises - although those may well be good arguments), a level that an ordinary, average person like myself could follow and understand, and I didn't find one.
In other words, if you and I were discussing the Act and I presented you with that list of all the wonderful things that it will accomplish, how would you convince me (in a nice way, of course) that I'm completely wrong in thinking it's a good thing?
If someone has already made that argument and posted it somewhere, I'd love to read it. If not, how would you make it?
posted by VermontGuy @ 7:50 AM
10 Comments:
The previous system had massive government interference and bureaucracy making health care more costly and less effective that it would be otherwise. This new law adds yet more layers of government interference and bureacracy, taking any markets out of the equation, to make things either far more costly, less effective or, scariest of all, less innovative than otherwise. Is that so hard to understand? It's easy for the government to pass a law promising "we will regulate you heavily to make sure you do everything right" but it generally doesn't work that way in practice.
or not
This will take two comments because this template only takes so many words.
I don't know about you, but I have no trouble finding critiques of Obamacare. And if you do, just Google "critiques of Obamacare" and you'll find hundreds. Some are general, some go into specifics. They explain how it'll slow down research, how it'll make people lose the good health care plans they already have, how it will cost (or already has cost) more than expected, how it'll force many different plans into the same mold, how it'll cut benefits people are used to, how it will limit options for health consumers, how it will cut the numbers of doctors available, how it won't bring down the cost of insurance, how it will force people to fund programs they find immoral, how it will make life tougher for doctors, how it won't reduce the deficit, how it shuffles around numbers in a pointless manner and how it will ultimately lead (quite intentionally) to a complete government takeover of all aspects of health care.
You could look at the Reason archives:
http://reason.com/search?cx=000107342346889757597%3Ascm_knrboh8&cof=FORID%3A11&ie=UTF-8&q=obamacare&sa=Search
You can read this Heartland policy document:
http://heartland.org/policy-documents/obamacare-disaster
Or fairly straght free market analysis of why we can't regulate our way into better health care:
http://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/obamacare-come-seven-bad-ideas-health-care-reform
There are books that make the argument:
http://www.amazon.com/Why-ObamaCare-Wrong-America-Constitutional/dp/B0076TLX7M/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top
And plenty of fact checks of fact checks:
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/a-less-than-rigorous-obamacare-fact-check/
For that matter, the piece you linked to didn't have much to say. It listed a lot of things and didn't describe why they'd be good or bad. Let's just look at a few:
"It establishes a non-profit group, that the government doesn’t directly control, to study different kinds of treatments to see what works better and is the best use of money."
First, the government is setting it up, so they do control it. But second, if this is good, why not fund it at a hundred times the present Obamacare planned level, so it'll be a hundred times better, and why not set up boards to look at every aspect of American life to make sure everything is better in every way. We've already got a tremendous interest in improving health care, but you think setting up yet another government board to look into this is the solution? Maybe you do. I know a lot of people who believe in big government do, which explains why government can get big, but not explain why it's worth it.
Or here's another
"Kids can continue to be covered by their parents’ health insurance until they’re 26."
Why not till they're 100--that takes care of all our health care problems right there.
Looking more at the list, it has all sorts of limitations on what insurers and hospitals can do. Even if we like these ideas, we're still cutting off options for consumers. If they're such good ideas, let there be competition so people can get what they want rather than one-size-fits-all government plans.
Then there's the tax hike which they call "tiny," adding yet another 0.9% on top of the considerable amount of taxes already being paid, on people, at present, making over 200Gs a year--so we'll have that much less to put into the private economy and that much more into yet more government boards charged with taking care of us--even assuming there's no corruption, this sounds like a questionable trade-off.
Then, as we've recently seen, comes the huge tax hike that Obamacare calls a penalty if you don't follow their rules.
Then there are tougher, uncertain rules for businesses with over 50 employees, making them less likely to hire and making it sensible for small businesses on the edge to stay small.
And then, in addition to the significant personal taxes this article tries to laugh away, come more taxes on pharmaceuticals and medical devices, taking money out of the private economy and making it more costly to innovate.
Later comes more taxes on the best health care plans--if you dare to want the best, government will make sure you pay even more for it than you already are. (So the government sees its job as pulling back people who are doing too well, which I suppose might please some, but might also stifle innovation.)
There's barely a single item on this list that sounds good to me. Are you sure this was put out to promote Obamacare?
Anon(s) and LAGuy, thanks for the responses. Here's the thing: my post was actually something of a thought experiment. I'm not a supporter of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and I can't think of an argument that would make me one.
However, after reading the post I linked to and seeing the number of people who had also read it and LIKED it, I realized that most of the arguments I'd read against the Act will not register with the people that thought the summation of the "benefits" of the Act was great.
It makes me think of a parent trying to explain to a child why something the child wants isn't good for them. And no matter how many ways the parent explains it, the child still doesn't understand why this wonderful thing they've seen and want actually won't be good for them.
And in this case, the typical fallback response for a parent ("Because I said so") isn't going to work.
The antis really need to gin up their sky is falling rhjetoric I guess. Hard since their champion basically supports the law
The irony is that some of the arguments that might win the day are the worst ones, such as the threat it'll cut Medicare. That's the kind of reform we actually need.
I think that the argument you are looking for really depends on the audience.
If your audience just wants to know about the goodies in the bill, and doesn't care about how much it costs or its unintended consequences, then the "pro" side will give this audience FAR more convincing arguments than the "con" side.
If your audience is liberal but intelligent, the best "con" argument would point out the most serious flaws in the bill from a liberal perspective. For example:
(1) For any treatment or procedure deemed "preventative", the PPACA pays 100% of the costs, with no deductible or co-pay, even if the patient chooses name-brand drugs when generics are available. This is simply pork for the drug companies (and most likely was their price for supporting the bill).
(2) For almost all middle-class Americans, the plan continues the current absurd system of forcing employers to insure their workers. This is how most Americans today are insured, and it makes no sense: it's a mandate that everyone agrees hurts job-creators and increases unemployment.
(3) Illegal immigrants are forbidden from buying health insurance from the new Exchanges, even if they pay out of their own pockets. Since many companies that pay low wages are moving to the Walmart part-time model to avoid paying for insurance, the number of uninsured illegal aliens will increase under this bill.
And if the liberal audience is politically savvy, they will realize that assuming the PPACA is not repealed in 2013, it will remain a law on the books but will also remain a controversial target. (Our government will run a deficit for the next decade -- nobody can doubt that -- and if the PPACA is not repealed, the Republicans will blame the deficit on Obama for the foreseeable future.) That means that the PPACA and its unpopularity makes it impossible that these flaws will be fixed, or that a single-payer plan will ever be instituted.
One more:
(4) So far, 1,200 waivers from the law have been granted by the HHS Secretary.
If the law is bad, everyone should get a waiver. If the law is good, nobody should get a waiver. But under this system, whomever the HHS likes gets a waiver.
Defenders of Obamacare need to believe that giving the HHS Secretary this much power is good, even though many future HHS Secretaries will be Republicans.
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