Ya Think?
Want to see another example of how any data can be spun in any way you want? A Huffington Post (liberal) article concluded that “Obamacare enrollees turn out to be more aggressive shoppers than many experts had predicted.” Really? Ya think? Yes! People will shop and try to get the cheapest insurance they can get! That is why competition across state lines is forbidden. That is why you never see commercials for health insurance like the ones Assurance or Geico or Progressive do. This article states that:
Of the 4.2 million people who were returning customers, about half let themselves be automatically re-enrolled with the same plan. The rest came back to HealthCare.gov and contemplated their options, with roughly equal numbers selecting new plans or sticking with what they had before.
Andrew Slavitt, who is principal deputy administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and is about to become the acting administrator, said that “This is a much more active consumer than anybody expected. We wanted to create maximum choice while we had maximum protection.” Maximum choice? The choices suck. This is one big tax on any one who can pay it where the money is redistributed to any one who they feel cannot. Just because you show that people will shop a little doesn’t mean the public healthcare debacle is any good.
This article wants to make it appear how great Obamacare is. It is not! I agree that more people with some protection is a good thing but the cost is way too high. And even when you get insurance you still have to pay large deductibles. Yes, Americans will cost shop so let’s make some real competition out there. Oh wait, we can’t. Why? Because the biggest secret was that this administration (like the Republicans before them) have been in bed with the insurance companies all along and no one is talking about it.
One of the niftiest and most successful successes in conformist propaganda in the last century is the exaltation of CHOICE.
Bare compulsion only works at the end-stage of tyranny when individuals have become to enslaved to even harbor doubt. End-stage tyranny only allows one choice; to get there, one must offer several choices, over and over, until people have become benumbed to the principle.
“CHOICE” is the act of selected what has been offered to you. All too often, many of the meaningful decisions have been made long before CHOICE is offered. It is a successful ruse – many totalitarian governments have offered “elections” so that the masses can choose the leader, often by a 99% margin. Such elections merely differ in degree but not in essence from many other “free” elections.
America has created the cult of the consumer – a mirror-image to the cult of the worker during the times when we were a noteworthy industrial manufacturer. To be a properly programmed US consumer, one must choose between brands, as the Huffington Post article points out. Assurance? Geico? Progressive? How do those packaged bundles fit one personally, and how is one to know?
It is important to create a myth around choice, so as to throw the liability back on the customer. “You stood on a 16 and lost, play again, friend.” In gambling, unlike many choices in consuming, one can see the actual cards one is playing.
If you have the Bronze plan, and your child has lymphoma, you will be expecting to have lesser care than if you chose the Gold plan – it is inherent, and you have been well-trained by now to recognize these things.
In the act of choosing, you can select the Democrat or Republican, the Silver or Platinum plans, the Mercedes or the Chevy, the MBA or the engineering degree, Katie or Barbara or Teena for your spouse.
It becomes a dim memory to be human, where you had wishes and desires, not choices – to fly a kite, to dance in the grass, to sing, to travel to Peru or go surfboarding or play chess. Those sorts of things require independence of thought and desire, which requires human freedom. And your civilization can be measured on its freedom by the independence of its people, each in their own way. Direct Patient Care requires an independent decision, not a choice; and to decide, one must have a free opinion, and therefore a free mind. That is why I am concerned that DPC will not last out the decade – there are too many forces lined up against individual freedom for it to flourish.
But we watch cable, and surf the channels we are given – and pick the Orange or Brown or Gold insurance plan. And we all sit around with the glimmer of an idea that something has terribly wrong.