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the reason i personally think obamacare is in such well-deserved trouble?
simple: it's because we humans are endowed with a very finely-tuned sense of danger--it's what's kept us around all this time.
and this hasty, ill-considered, heedless plunge into healthcare collectivism barack's trying to shotgun us into--on top of all the other radical crap he's pushing--has rightly set off all the alarm bells in that portion of the populace which still has some faint recollection of those qualities which propelled america to the head of the pack in the first place.
the problem is, our state-sponsored educational system has, by gradual dribs and drabs, effectively dumbed us down to such a degree that most americans, when faced with an issue to which they object, are incapable of mustering the critical-thinking skills necessary to do anything much more than wave crudely-crayoned misspelled signs and scream at the other side in incoherent fear and rage.
such is the state of america today.
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7 comments:
but it's more than being 'incapable of the critical-thinking skills necessary to do anything more that...'
the general public is ill informed, and don't even have the basic knowledge of what health insurance is/does.
at a cursory glance, to someone with no insurance or knowledge of the insurance business, there are parts of the HR bill (if you can get through the 1,000+ pages of it) that do look good.
To a layman.
I have argued the points to death with people who can't give a concrete reason as to why HR is a *good* thing. I get the usual "well, just wait until you lose your job/health insurance/have to be on COBRA".
Been there, done that. It was far less caustic than HR will ever be.
oh, and according to whitehouse.gov, i'm now supposed to turn you in for spreading rumors about the HR bill.
I hope you will, in turn, do the same to me.
I'm waiting for Obama to call me so we can discuss this problem more in depth.
There is a natural fear of losing what little the middle class has left in this country. Decent healthcare is one of the few remaining entitlements of the middle class.
So, if you're right and this bill dies, let's just wait another 15 or 20 years until no one has decent health insurance except the very rich or through medicare for those lucky enough to reach the age of 65.
I'm betting most folks have no idea how much their health insurance costs their employer. If I said that for an average family of 4, health insurance costs $10K a year give or take, people would think I was lying. Well, for a PPO network, that's what it costs.
It is not cheap and it is only getting more and more expensive.
If the Obama plan can decouple health insurance from employment, that alone is a very good thing. Then, perhaps, we can have an honest discussion of health care with the average citizen having at least some idea of how much health care really costs these days.
You have neatly put your finger on something I have felt for some time--our government, or perhaps I should say our politicians--have conspired to degrade the educational system to the point that they can do whatever the hell they want and not be called into accountability by their constituents because their constituents are now in no position to understand the situation.
I believe the responsibility for this dumbing down can be laid at the feet of both parties, although the manipulation of it was done brilliantly during the recent Bush administration when all manner of abuses were perpetrated with impunity because the majority of the public simply didn't understand and took the lies as truth.
No, the problem is, all of the propaganda put out by media sources and our educational system has dumbed us down and made us behave like puppets of government/corporations. When we are faced with an issue we respond predictably and are easily manipulated by fear.
Intelligence and the ability to adapt is what has kept us around all this time. Fear of the future and looking nostalgically back at America's glory days will lead us to stagnation.
judi: you'll be happy to know that we no longer have to rat each other out-- the white house has disbanded that little project due to popular demand.
noblesavage: there are at least a dozen ways i can think of off the top of my head to make healthcare cheaper tomorrow, but this is definitely not one of 'em.
will: of course you're right, but i would expand the responsibility for our state of dumbness to include the early robber-baron capitalists, one of whom (i'm damned if i can remember which) played a big part in setting up the model for the public education system which exists to this day, and who famously said, "america doesn't need good thinkers; it needs good workers."
chuck: while i don't necessarily disagree with you in general, lack of "intelligence and the ability to adapt" has little to do with america's rejection of this boondoggle--this thing stinks to high heaven, and most everybody from the office of management & budget to joe six-pack in toledo knows it.
I read somewhere recently, that our educational system was there to just make brainwashed dummies--to continue the retarded masses generation after generation. Funny, 'cause I felt I got a pretty good public school education, but then again, I was around rich white/Jewish kids in high school, so this could've been a factor? LOL!
As for Obamee's health plan, I'm not even touching that, but my bud says it sucks! I don't know what to believe anymore.
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