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Friday, December 13, 2013

Welcome to Brooklyn!

Every once in a while the journalistic Dasein of the NY Times produces a gem of comedy, generally unwittingly. H/T Ann Althouse. There will be many good comments over at Ann's.

In this case, the unforeseen tragedy of the creative elites being forced to queue with truck drivers from Brooklyn in order to get health insurance gets a sympathetic placebo treatment. 

Cry for the children.
Many in New York’s professional and cultural elite have long supported President Obama’s health care plan. But now, to their surprise, thousands of writers, opera singers, music teachers, photographers, doctors, lawyers and others ... will be treated as individuals, responsible for their own insurance policies.
For many of them, that is likely to mean they will no longer have access to a wide network of doctors and a range of plans tailored to their needs. And many of them are finding that if they want to keep their premiums from rising, they will have to accept higher deductible and co-pay costs or inferior coverage. ...
“All these people had these customized plans which are better than most of the things out there, and most of them are saving only a small amount of money,” he said.
This is shocking and baffling, and the NYT staff is trying helpfully to explain it, because everyone knew that those in flyover country who were complaining about their ACA insurance options were too stupid to know what a great deal they were getting. All the WH press releases said so. 

The last three paragraphs are work of Mel-Brooksian farce - there must be some mistake - they're not from Brooklyn or Kansas, they're Obama people! 

Comments:
Almost as if mandatory health care insurance expansion was about making more people pay more for less coverage with force of law rather than some law about better health care.
 
Rob, maybe you should call up the Times and help them out with the analysis.

We can just sit back and enjoy the incompetence, even though this feels increasingly like the end of the Soviet Union, as the accumulated party inefficiencies slowly crushed the system under its own weight.

There's not a chance in hell that we will end the year with more people insured than before ACA.
 
Given the immutable laws of economics and software development, there's not a chance in hell that we will ever see more people insured under ACA.

They'll never get the ACA back-end software done. Never. Too many legacy databases, and too many programmers.

They're also driving families to the cash market. For households in between $65K and about 90K, they're going to go bankrupt if they get sick. Sorry, a family earning $75K pre-tax cannot pay $22K after-tax in premium and deductible. They'll go bankrupt sooner or later. Or move to a state that didn't take the Medicare expansion (which seems to make a big difference).

Appropos of Mel Brooks, didn't I hear a Congressman shouting "Gentlemen, we've got to protect our phony-baloney jobs!"
 
Oops, I meant Medicaid expansion.

 
I am grateful to the Germans for providing the term Schadenfreude, which perfectly describes my reaction.
 
The only fair thing is obvious.

Single payer.

Of course that means disparate contributors.

Gee, let me check. Will I and everyone you know be a disparate contributor or lucky beneficiary?

Wait until the provider retirements take hold.
 
Eschew schadenfreude. Embrace epicaricacy.
 
Rob, I think I'll eschew unpronouncability instead.
 
I'm going to vote for schadenfreude over epicaricacy, because I find schadenfreude easier to spell.

Yet neither word describes my reaction, which is really a sort of stunned awe at discovering a humanoid life-form with a mentality so different from mine that communication appears effectively impossible.

There is no freude at all, because there is far too much schaden in this, and while the people in the article will survive, those in slightly more precarious circumstances, or those who are really ill, will not. No one can be joyful over that.

But what kind of thinking process can be surprised at the results in the article? I don't understand any of those who seem surprised at the ACA policies.

There must be a huge swath of the population that thinks in pure words without any ability to place the words in meaningful context. Essentially, all these people, including those on the NYT editorial board, are the types of people who believe that a 20 by 55 mile cavity can contain 125 billion cubic miles of material. All space/time must be infinitely warpable?

WHAT IS GOING ON IN THESE PEOPLE'S MINDS? Remember, they vote.
 
I live amongst many of these people, MoM. It works like this: I believe it to be so, because my self-esteem is based on my being a loving, caring, superior being. Forcing others to pay for free shit is a loving, caring act (and, incidentally, relieves me of the messy burden of acting on my beliefs).

Because I believe it, it shall be so.
 
Sorry, a family earning $75K pre-tax cannot pay $22K after-tax in premium and deductible.

I wouldn't wish Obamacare on my worst enemies. Well, maybe I'd wish it on Congress.



 
Gordon - I think there's a psychological term for that.

Also there is a cultural term "The Terrible Twos".
 
What some do not get with their call for Medicaid expansion is most doctors no longer take on these patients.

I find it funny and sad at the same time that someone thought they would not be paying more when the government basically took over how medicine will be provided to everyone. I opened the new law and read most of it. There is a reason why many parts of this law got delayed and that is the 2014 elections.

I just want to facepalm everytime some do gooder wants more people with healthcare and they think they will not be effected. Whats even worse is they want this but get upset now they too will have to pay for it.

Nothing the government provides is free. It is taxpayer funded.

In the end these people wanted this and now they will have to pay for it. Maybe they will exercise their brains next time and stop listening to the rhetoric.
 
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