Jamaal is in his late fifties. He has qualified for a full pension from his union plus he has some money squirreled away in savings and a 401(K). If he retired tomorrow, he would be able to get an inflation protected full life annuity that would replace 70% of his current income and as soon as he is Social Security eligible, his income replacement would be in the mid-80s. He has three young grandkids, an interest in making furniture and a medical history that scares away insurance companies after they see the first page. He works and continues to damage his knees and his back for the health insurance. If he could get affordable health insurance that could bridge the gap between retirement and Medicare, retiring to be a full time granddad and a part time cabinet maker looks really good. PPACA allows him to get out of the labor market a year or two earlier than he thought he otherwise would have.
Sally works as a receptionist at a local theatre company. Her husband makes most of the money in the family as a highly skilled roadie for a variety of not quite indy bands. She works for the health insurance. The theatre pays 90% of the cost to cover her, but she has to pay the full cost of covering her husband. Covering her husband is basically half of her post-tax pay per month. She would like to have kids, she would like to go back to school but they can’t afford to go naked. PPACA allows her to get out of the labor market for a couple of years to go finsih her degree and have a kid while spending the equivilent of a week of her former salary a month for family coverage.
Bob lives in a Medicaid expansion state. He has two young kids. The older kid is going to kindergarten next fall and the younger one will be in kindergarten in 2016. His girlfriend is working full time as a shift leader at McDonalds and he works fifteen hours a week as a security guard. He recently qualified for Medicaid, the kids were always covered by CHIP, and his girlfriend is on a cost-sharing assistance Silver plan. The family is doing well enough right now, so when his boss offers him another 15 hours a week and the ability to get on the Bronze level plan at work, he declines as he would rather stay home and raise the kids.
These are the types of decisions the CBO project will occur for millions of Americans over the next decade. Some people will opt out of the labor force because they are not tied to their health insurance any more and they have better things to do with their time and money then work. Some people will not enter the labor force because they no longer have to work for insurance. Some people will voluntarily work part time because insurance is no longer just available to full timers. The summations of all of these projected decisions is two million or more people deciding to get ouf of the labor pool over the next decade.
maximiliano furtive, formerly known as dr. bloor
Sadly, plain English and common sense meet criteria for the “wonkery” tag. Isn’t there a “press corpse” tag or some such to go with it?
Was there any question that this was going to get twisted into an OBUMMER CARE KILLZ JOBZ! headline?
Phylllis
That’s it in a nutshell. People will be able to have the lives they want, not the ones they’re forced to have by employers. There’s an interesting question to Askamanager today that relates to this topic (employee getting pressured due to home commitments with disabled child).
OzarkHillbilly
“Some people will opt out of the labor force because they are not tied to their health insurance any more and they have better things to do with their time and money then work. Some people will not enter the labor force because they no longer have to work for insurance. Some people will voluntarily work part time because insurance is no longer just available to full timers. The summations of all of these projected decisions is two million or more people ARE LAZY MOOCHERS.”
FTFY Richard.
Full Disclosure: I no longer work full time because I am no longer able to work full time as I have arthritis and bursitis in my shoulders, bursitis and tendonitis in both elbows, arthritis in both hands, probably arthritis in both knees, bone spurs on 5 of my 7 cervical vertebrate, high blood pressure and recurring blood clots. I probably missed something.
My wife works up in St Lou and w/o her health insurance…. I’d be dead within 6 months in all likelihood. The ACA allows her the freedom to look at working closer to home even if the job offers no insurance.
dpm (dread pirate mistermix)
And this simple explanation will be beat into the ground by millions of dollars paying for ads claiming that “Obamacare cost 2 million jobs”.
stinger
Doesn’t all those people getting out of the labor pool open up those jobs for people who are currently un- or underemployed? Don’t Republicans want the unemployment rate to go down?
ETA: Rhetorical question.
Elizabelle
And people who have a good idea and the inclination to go into business for themselves are not dooming themselves and their families to no health insurance.
The game change begins.
raven
@stinger: I was gonna ask that.
smintheus
@stinger: Yes. What the CBO is really saying is that there will be about 2 Million jobs opening up for younger people to fill.
RaflW
This is good for the overall workforce. Young people and folks who are laid off are finding steep resistance to entry into decent work. Helping people leave so they can pursue their non-work dreams is good.
So the GOP of course opposes it. They also oppose worker mobility, because that increases wage stickiness.
Dems have got to message this well, and fast: GOP opposes workers taking early retirement. That, to me, is the message.
Omnes Omnibus
@stinger:
No. They don’t care what happens to the unemployment rate. They don’t care about policy at any level beyond punishing people of whom they disapprove, tax cuts, and more guns.
BGK
So I got to the gym a little late this morning, and the Fox-watching geezer brigade had already deployed around me. After the screaming headlines about “entitlement nation,” the graphics blared about “OBAMACARE COSTS 2.3 MILLION JOBS!!!”
Which is a lie, of course.
In the car later, NPR had a surprisingly straight-ahead piece where a CBO person, sounding decidedly exasperated, explained what their numbers really said and how it would be a net-positive for the economy.
See? That wasn’t hard.
Redshift
@Omnes Omnibus: Don’t forget, they also want people to desperately cling to their jobs whether they like them or not, so the job creators can make higher profits instead of having to pay more to complete for workers!
khead
My sister is a lot like Jamaal.
56 and her husband is retired with a health plan locked in. Sis discovered in her early 50’s that she really likes to paint – and it turns out she has some skillz – but there was no way she was leaving her full time gig because of the health insurance. So she spent the last few years at her job having her soul sucked from her while doing fun things like training the person that got the promotion she wanted.
Now, she’s “retired”. She works a few hours a week at another job and they are looking for a new house – one with room for an art studio.
GregB
What about BENGHAZI!
gene108
@Omnes Omnibus:
They care about policies. These are policies that will allow them to maintain power forever and ever.
If opening an abortion-plex on every corner would lead to the elusive Permanent Republican Majority, they sure as hell would be opening those up.
Deficits don’t matter, because it interferes with what will lead to the Permanent Republican Majority. On January 20, 2009, defecits are the worst thing ever, because bringing down deficits will lead to the Permanent Republican Majority.
OzarkHillbilly
OT: Great rant by Barbara Wood (i was actually able to watch it!!) on the Coke ad.
Mudge
@stinger: The key, to my way of thinking, is that indivduals who work only because of the health insurance, but otherwise can manage by doing “better things with their time” will open up jobs for people who lack them now and who may be on unemployment. The net result is a shift of jobs from those who are actually relatively financially secure (outside of the pressures put on them by the previous health insurance industry) to those who are financially insecure and currently are much more dependent on government help. Looks like a zero sum job result with an actual lowering of government cost.
Howlin Wolfe
Won’t those jobs abandoned or refused by some be taken by others? The only way this would kill jobs is if we were at full employment, amirite?
greennotGreen
I am a perfect example of a person who will take advantage of affordable insurance to cut my hours to half-time. This will allow my group in our pared-to-the-bone research institute to hire another part-timer to train to replace me when I retire next year. Yes, I’m pulling back from the work force…and giving a younger person the opportunity to build a career in biomedical science where we search to find cures for diseases that affect everyone – including Republicans. Or Congress can just continue to cut our funding to give tax breaks to the “job creators.” See how much good that tax break does when that job creator dies of a disease we didn’t discover how to cure because the country didn’t fund the research!
Howlin Wolfe
@Mudge: Sure, Mudge, steal my thoughts. Glad to see I’m not crazy, though. I’d say great minds think alike, but that doesn’t apply to my mind.
Redshift
One of the groups I wish had been highlighted more in the ACA debate (and now) is farmers. It may just be anecdotal, but years before, I was reading stories about how “farm wives” were getting jobs in town to get family health insurance they could afford, even though they were needed on the farm and would rather be there.
Seems like the kind of heartwarming story that would explain this issue well.
skwerlhugger
For the last 10-15 years, most of the non-professional adults I know have at least partly arranged their lives around trying to obtain access to health insurance. Most of the small employers I have direct knowledge of consider benefits costs (meaning employee count and employment conditions) one of their major business drivers.
It has always astonished me that businesses, from tiny to megacorp, aren’t screaming to have the government help them out of the health insurance provider business. The best thing the Republicans could do to promote entrepreneurs and small business owners is to establish Medicare for all. The Republicans are dumb as dirt for not grasping this, and the Democrats are not far behind for failing to take advantage of that and pound the Republicans into that dirt over this.
Baud
@dpm (dread pirate mistermix):
They were going to run those ads anyway. And they will fail.
NorthLeft12
It is just incomprehensible to the RWNJs that someone would actually choose not to work. By Gawd, that’s UNAmerican!!
I will always remember Dubya’s response to the woman who talked about having to work three jobs to support her family; [I may be paraphrasing a bit here] “Wow, three jobs. What a country!”
Baud
CBO: Two million people are freer today than they were last year.
bg
You would think that these “family values” folks would be happy to have a government policy that allows one parent to stay home with the kids. Isn’t that the family model they tout?
They never really mean anything they say, do they
stinger
@smintheus: And maybe the retiree/cabinet maker becomes so successful that he hires a younger carpenter to help (because, after all, he only wants to make cabinets part-time). Thereby becoming a Job Creator, all hail.
g
@Elizabelle: Exactly. Entrepreneurs – you know, the ones the Republicans call “job creators” – will be able to start their businesses or go out and take entrepreneurial risks without fear of leaving their families without health insurance.
I’m in a dead-end job that pays pretty well with great benefits, and it sucks the soul out of me every single day. But I stayed for the health insurance and the pension. Now, if I want to, I can retire before 65, because I can get health insurance.
Violet
I’ve said for a long that making sure people can get health insurance outside of having a full time job with a large corporation is going to increase entrepreneurship and then eventually create jobs. People have been staying in jobs for the health insurance for a long time. There’s no reason for those to be linked and separating them means people have the ability to do what they want to do.
currants
@stinger: YES! And…. who cares?.
S-Curve
@RaflW: Yes, this is the key, IMO. Messaging this as being about early retirement and/or flexibility will work if done right. Everybody understands that they’ve been working in less-than-ideal conditions just for the insurance — this is a kitchen-table issue.
Also, this is one of the main reasons Republicans and corporations (but I repeat myself) opposed the ACA. It was a nice setup for them to be able to immobilize the labor force by using insurance as a perk, or more accurately, using lack of insurance as a cudgel.
Matt McIrvin
In the Republican version of reality, this “Obamacare as job-killer” mechanism is not a mischaracterization of the CBO; it’s how unemployment works. They already believe, more generally, that people are out of work because they aren’t being kicked hard enough to go get a job. Anything that kicks them less will, by this theory, produce misery in the long run.
Redshift
@dpm (dread pirate mistermix):
And unless that outweighs people’s experience with people they know getting coverage and changes votes, it’ll just be so much economic stimulus. Every election, Republicans lie about economic statistics and it has little effect, because most people don’t vote based on the unemployment rate or GDP estimated, they vote based on how they directly perceive the economy and the direction it’s going.
As long as Democrats don’t buy into conservative bubble logic that Obamacare is a disaster and run away from it, they can do fine. They don’t even have to try to explain the lies about the CBO report. If it’s brought up, just turn it back toward coverage: “Show of hands, who’s willing to give up their health insurance to improve an estimate of the number of workers ten years from now? Anyone?”
Patrick
@BGK:
CNBC did as well. CNBC is supposed to be the channel that helps people invest their money.
This is stunningly poor journalism. It rivals the Iraq war coverage in outright lies.
Why is this so fricking difficult to understand for even the MSM? Hell, even Dana Millbank couldn’t understand it in one of his dumbest columns ever yesterday. My neighbor is a good example of this issue. Thanks to the ACA, he was finally able to quit his job and try to start a small business. He hadn’t been able to before due to astronomical health care costs. He did NOT lose his job. And presumable his former firm will hire somebody else, which by the way will be good for unemployment numbers.
Seriously, how much dumber can the media, politicians and frankly the voters be for believing this crap. It is the Iraq war all over again…
MomSense
Every “journalist” who reported this CBO story as ObamaCare is a job killer should be asked whether they are stupid or lying. How is a 21st century democracy supposed to function with this constant stupidity and dysfunction?
I work for a very small business that doesn’t provide health insurance. I now have health insurance and a lot less panic.
S-Curve
Also too, corporations and Republicans (but I repeat myself) have been pushing job-sharing ever since the recession started. But if employers aren’t the ones who *control* the conditions of this job-sharing, and instead it’s workers who decide how much and where they want to work, then the corporatists view it as the end of the Republic.
currants
@Redshift: Farmers are an interesting and more problematic group, actually. The average age of farmers is something like 57, and the fastest growing group is 65+. For small farmers, at least, beyond insurance, one problem that arises at retirement is $$: for many, if not most, of them, the vast majority of their assets are tied up in the farm. Selling at market price usually means selling to developers because young farmers can’t make a go with that level of debt. Not selling means not retiring. (So, fewer farmers, less food….) There are other more creative solutions people are working at, but it’s a problem with real impacts for all of us, and becoming increasingly significant each year. (This is obviously not the complete picture, but this is a short comment, after all.)
redoubt
@OzarkHillbilly: Brenda Wood is good people (we’ve met a couple of times), a fixture on Atlanta news (the show is “Brenda Wood’s 11 at 7”), and Coca-Cola is a major advertiser. Anyone inside 11 Alive gives her any BS on this from outside complaining, she’ll be down Peachtree Street at WSB tomorrow. And her viewers will follow her.
SiubhanDuinne
@OzarkHillbilly:
Yup. We in Atlanta are proud that Brenda Wood’s rant is getting so much national play.
daveX99
That’s a great explanation. I shared on FB… hopefully people will understand this as reality, but of course this has to somehow rise above the bullshit being shoveled all over it. Id like to think a nice calm explanation like yours will do the trick.
… but i’ve always been hopelessly naive. : )
Kristine
To take matters a little further, folks like me who 1) retired before age 65, 2) have retiree health care from the job but 3) expect their former company to at some point attempt to wriggle out of that obligation because reasons now have a back-up plan.
Truth is, I wouldn’t be surprised if large companies looked into transitioning their health care coverage to the exchanges. Assuming they aren’t already.
SiubhanDuinne
@NorthLeft12:
Here’s an audio clip — couldn’t find video of the debate.
Ruckus
I’m one of those people who only works part time just because working full time at what I know how to do is untenable. But because of health care (VA) and SS I can work only part time for a while longer. Maybe a couple of years, maybe 4.
That others will now have that option (like me if I didn’t have the VA) is an immense thing.
gVOR08
I don’t get it. OK, marginally attached people will quit their jobs. But the jobs will still be there, with different names on th paychecks. But the CBO doesn’t usually make simple Econ errors. What am I missing?
karensky
Memo to all the freakn Ayn Randers and their creepy buddies, other folks will leave FT work to CREATE businesses and JOBS. They are the new MAKERS. Talk about full circle.
smith
@gVOR08: CBO didn’t make the error — it said about 2 mil people would leave work or reduce hours. It’s right wingers and their enablers in the MSM that are talking about 2 mil jobs lost. It’s willful misrepresentation magnified by the echo chamber.
blueskies
Couple of observations and questions about this topic:
1. Is it really “early retirement” that the CBO is considering here, or is it more “retirement at an age that most of us used to think was normal right up to just a decade ago?” You know, like age 65. I think a lot of people are working past 65 just to maintain employer-provided benefits.
2. We all understand what the CBO report meant in terms of not killing jobs but rather allowing people to leave those jobs from choice and still be able to obtain healthcare insurance. Many of the RWNJs are realizing that the “job killing!” red herring is not playing well enough in Peoria, so now they’re adding the argument that “well then, those people are now being encouraged to not work because they’re getting subsidized insurance! They’re moochers! Stealing from hardworking taxpayers!”
How does one counter that argument? Remember, many of the people projected to leave jobs from choice will be in that low-income demographic that actually doesn’t pay federal income tax, so the baboons will also have THAT pooh to sling at the wall.
becca
@Baud: thank you, Baud. I refuse to be discouraged by knee-jerk fatalism.
pseudonymous in nc
Shorter GOP: working a shitty job you hate just for the health insurance is the freest form of Freedom.
The idea that the US economy could actually benefit from this makes their little heads asplode.
OzarkHillbilly
@Patrick: Most voters are “low information” voters. Not necessarily by choice or their fault. They are busy making a living, raising kids, keeping the house up, the car etc etc. If they listen to the news at all, it is with one ear while the other is being nagged by the wife/husband, listening to crying/whining children etc. And at the end of the day, they just don’t have the energy to find out the truth.
pseudonymous in nc
@g:
Parents — you know, the ones the Republicans say should be raising their kids because Pro-Life Family Values — will be able to cut their hours or quit entirely if the numbers work out for them. But that apparently just makes them welfare moochers.
NorthLeft12
@Patrick: Come on Patrick, I think you know the answer to your rhetorical question.
“Seriously, how much dumber can the media, politicians and frankly the voters be for believing this crap?”
I think the best is yet to come. ie. November 2014.
Patrick
@OzarkHillbilly:
I don’t dispute what you are saying. But in a democracy, it is still up to the voters to figure out what the truth is. It really isn’t that difficult. And if it in their eyes is, then they deserve the government they get. It is beyond me that so many workers vote against their own self-economic interest. Sorry, but after 8 years of Bush and now the whining about Obama, I have no patience for voters not taking the time to inform themselves better.
Patrick
@NorthLeft12:
Haha – of course I know the answer to my rhetorical question. Their unfortunately is no limit to the lengths of absurdity the MSM goes to reach their own agenda/talking points. They have decided that ACA is bad, so now they reach after whatever talking point they have to badmouth it. As we saw yesterday. And that one was a serious stretch. I thought for myself; how can anyone fall for this? And sadly, many do.
aimai
@Patrick: Sure, its annoying, but so what? People are people. They don’t think of themselves as “voters” at all–just people who are struggling.
JaneE
I thought Republicans liked supply side economics. The workforce (may have) decided to supply less labor. Demand for labor is projected to stay essentially the same. Maybe wages will rise as a result, but not likely. I expect that the media will pivot from “Obamacare is killing 2 million jobs” to “Obamacare created 2 million welfare queens” in about a day.
catclub
I think one of the White House spokesmen put it well: “If we had no Social Security, more 95 year olds would be working, but we don’t consider Social Security a job-killing program.”
NorthLeft12
@blueskies:
“they’re getting subsidized insurance! They’re moochers! Stealing from hardworking taxpayers!”
How does one counter that argument?”
As some here have said, some of the “moochers” are starting up their own small business, and others are choosing to use the extra time to help their families whether that is their grand/children or parents. And also pointing out that most of the people making these choices are at the normal retirement age anyway.
But really, you are worried about convincing that rabid 38% or so of the voting public that they are completely wrong [again] and believe in some kind of fantasy? Never gonna happen.
Patrick
@blueskies:
If someone chooses not to work, they presumably must have worked hard earlier in life to live off that money.
Or in the case of my neighbor, he choose to quit his corporate job and start his own business. The RW should love that, the small business spirit!
Or in the case of a co-worker who had a child born with a pre-existing condition. Until ACA, he was basically a prisoner to his employer. Thanks to the ACA, he now is finally able to go to the ACA and if he wants to quit his company and perhaps get a PT job so he can care for his child.
It is funny to me that they are calling these people moochers, when in actuality the ACA gives them more freedom. Isn’t that what the idiots on the far right claims they love so much – FREEDOM?
Patrick
@aimai:
A federal election is once every two years. If that’s too time consuming to figure out what’s going on, then so be it. But then we should probably no longer have elections. What’s the point?
catclub
@NorthLeft12: “How does one counter that argument?”
Just like the White House did: “If we had no Medicare or Social Security we would have more old people working. Do you want to kill those programs so more of them will work? This is the same thing.”
elm
Ordinary people understand the importance of health insurance.
Ordinary people understand that the previous system was horribly unfair and expensive.
Ordinary people can understand vignettes of the sort that Richard posted here.
Right-wing nutjobs will scream and holler about Obamacare for another century or more. They still resent Social Security and Medicare.
The media isn’t going to report on this accurately. The puke funnel still works pretty well, and that’s not changing soon.
Combatting this b.s. with ordinary people can be simple. Stick to a simple message: “Obamacare gives everybody fair access to affordable, good-quality health coverage — regardless of illness or your employer.”
If you have to spell it out, a message like: “The CBO says that some people will choose to spend more time with their families instead of being forced to work for the sake of insurance — that is what we stand for.” Is accurate and pretty simple.
JoyfulA
@Violet: I’ve been a freelancer buying her own health insurance for 30 years. Through our Internet groups, I have known of many freelancers forced to take regular jobs for the health insurance when a spouse became uninsurable through a medical condition or a child was born with a preexisting condition. They were people who wanted to freelance to raise children or make more money or avoid commuting or relocating. I wish ACA had happened decades ago and helped my online friends.
(Freelancers sometimes become job creators, too. They hire and train people to increase their output or they expand their service lines and hire people in those fields. Freelancers all know how to hand taxes, deadlines, productivity, schedule management, etc., or they couldn’t stay in business.)
NorthLeft12
@elm: Very well put elm.
I don’t want to belabour this, but there is a sizeable chunk of the population that will still moan about what you described. They are people who have jobs with health care and will begrudge those who now will have the opportunity to get it because they are “undeserving”. These people are vile and odious, and unfortunately, are more prevalent [even in my native Canada] than I want to admit. The politics of division and privilege at work.
Gene108
@Patrick:
Freedom is a zero sum game. More freedom for me, the less for you. /wingnut
Tone In DC
@catclub:
LULz.
I like it.
Elizabelle
@Patrick:
We need to get out and knock those voters’ doors.
It’s one of the only things that works with casual voters, and they won’t tune you out as they would the umpteenth phone call from the campaign.
Free exercise and free speech. A twofer.
It’s how we’ve been winning in purple Virginia.
voncey
See MSM, that wasn’t so hard, was it?
Bill in Section 147
If only the ACA could have added a guns and ammo purchase cost guarantee insurance upgrade. Bronze, Silver, Gold, Moar Lead. Then Freedom would have been served. Curse you Obama!!!
“The estimated reduction stems almost entirely from a net decline in the amount of labor that workers choose to supply, rather than from a net drop in businesses’ demand for labor, so it will appear almost entirely as a reduction in labor force participation and in hours worked relative to what would have occurred otherwise rather than as an increase in unemployment (that is, more workers seeking but not finding jobs) or underemployment (such as part-time workers who would prefer to work more hours per week).”
That is CBOian for “death panels will be formed in the FEMA camps” according to my foxgoogle translator.
elm
@NorthLeft12:
Completely agreed. And I don’t think it’s feasible to change the minds of people who think that way (at least not until they find themselves among the “undeserving”).
The lies and distortions about this in the media leave me shaking with rage. But that’s no good for doing something productive. Nor is engaging the liars on their own territory. I hope that short & positive messages can work.
hoodie
Big surprise, Eddie Munster is jumping on the incentivizing moochers bandwagon. Hope that becomes their main theme, because a lot, if not most, of those alleged moochers are 55-65 year olds that have already been on the “ladder of life” for quite a while, working 30-40 years and paying taxes. That’s what killed them with Mitt’s 47% remarks, i.e., he was charging half the population with being worthless. That will win you a lot of votes.
JustRuss
@hoodie:
Indeed, and that demographic, at least the male cohort, still swings pretty heavily Republican. If they can manage to alienate a chunk of those voters….well, “please proceed”, gentlemen.
Elizabelle
@hoodie:
Speaking of hoodie:
today would be Trayvon Martin’s 19th birthday.
Re your comment: yes! Call those who step out of fulltime employment “moochers” and keep working the “women with uncontrollable libido — Hello Uncle Sugar” message.
Elizabelle
@elm:
I really like your comments and your “elevator speech.”
Michael Z. Williamson
So my question is, we were told in the marketing stage that 50 million people lacked adequate insurance.
6 million people have lost coverage in the shuffle.
There are 800,000 more Americans every month.
So far, 2 million are covered under ACA.
Net loss, 4 million, plus 15% of the 5 million new Americans (following previous ratio of 50 mil of 315 mil).
The US was spending about 17.1% of GDP on health care. We are now modeling our system on Holland’s, which spends about 15.4% GDP on health care. This is not a significant difference, even if the system scales up from their population to ours, which is unlikely.
I’ve yet to see a reasonable explanation for how this is a net positive for society, and what plans there are for the other 55 million Americans (up from 50 million) who lack proper coverage, using the figures most favorable to the DNC’s argument.
Also, my research suggests anything above 90% coverage (we were at 85%, using the WORST CASE numbers floated by the DNC) is on par or better with every industrial nation on the planet, and that our life expectancy, despite terrible diet and exercise, is within a few months at worst of any other comparable nation.
So, how much money are we spending to cover less people?
Please note I have no objection to people not working if there is no need for them to do so, with the understanding that if someone else is underwriting them, all we have done is transfer the work to another party without consent.
boatboy_srq
@Phylllis: Indeed.
Fascinating, isn’t it, how all the policies and positions the GOTea has taken has been in favor of “job creators” (meaning business owners, investors and venture capitalists), yet all the actual policies favor almost none of these people? It’s been blindingly obvious that not everyone – not even a majority – in modern society can start and own a business and “create jobs” since any business larger than a sole proprietership needs staff to be prosperous and fulfill the job-creating requirement, so already we’re talking about less than half the labor pool overall, and most of the things that would make it easier to join that pool (affordable health insurance, better unemployment, working safety net) are all things they oppose. So they push for policies that benefit “job creators” and then push policies that hinder the very people they say they want to help – and all the while they’re still addressing a less-than-majority subset of the citizenry from the outset.
elm
@Michael Z. Williamson: 1/10, try harder.
Mnemosyne
@Michael Z. Williamson:
Link required.
Patrick
@Michael Z. Williamson:
Link please (and no, FoxNews, the Republican propaganda outlet, doesn’t count). Pretty much every industrial (other than the US) nation has 100% coverage since they have universal healthcare. Where do you get your information that we have better coverage than other countries ?
Furthermore, US life expectancy is almost 2 1/2 years below France (not just a few months). That’s pretty bad.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy#List_by_the_World_Health_Organization_.282013.29
Xantar
@Michael Z. Williamson:
First of all, in what universe is 1.7% of a $16 trillion GDP not considered significant? Even assuming that your math is correct, that is tens of billions of dollars every year that’s wasted instead of being spent on more useful things like more capital, education, or infrastructure. Over the decades, that adds up.
Secondly, Holland doesn’t spend 15.4% of their GDP on health care. They spend 12%. Is over 5% of GDP significant enough for you?
elm
Mnemosyne, Patrick, Xantar: Almost every claim it made is a plain old lie, from the U.S. birth rate to the Netherlands health care costs.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@stinger:
No. SATSQ
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@blueskies:
“public option, bitches” (drops mic)