Obamacare Going Down?

[HoreTore]

Would you be so kind as to point to any U.N. resolution condemning China's human rights record?

Why would that matter?

Does speed limits only apply when I'm caught and punished?

And China is, of course, a veto-member. But they're always on the look-out for ways to improve their propaganda.

Edit: the policy towards african-americans in the 50's was of course a gross violation of their human rights. And of course the human rights applied even though there was no condemnation from the UN about it.

[rvg]

Why would that matter?

Because there are rules and rules matter. If one rule doesn't matter, then why follow any of them?

[HoreTore]

Because there are rules and rules matter. If one rule doesn't matter, then why follow any of them?

Enforcement of the human rights is of course a sketchy matter, and in the case of the non-eu veto-members, next to impossible.

[rvg]

Enforcement of the human rights is of course a sketchy matter, and in the case of the non-eu veto-members, next to impossible.

Which leaves persuasion by individual countries on one-to-one basis, which is what the U.S. does. Not in any official U.N. capacity of course. Anyhow, the point being, we can use the U.N. Human Rights Declaration as toilet paper and still be compliant with the UN regulations. The declaration doesn't say anything specific about healthcare either, but that's beside the point and largely irrelevant even if there was something in it.

[Lemur]

As I stated earlier in the thread, I think talk of "rights" serves only to confuse the issue. Much more logical to approach this from a "common good" or "common harm" perspective. Here's a very good essay on why this is the case:

In my previous column, I briefly discussed John Stuart Mill and the harm principle as a way for Democrats and liberals to justify the idea of the individual mandate. [...] [I]n Mill’s words: “The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.” Get that. The only purpose. That is, our natural wills guide us toward being left alone, not being part of community. And that’s just fine—until our actions harm others. Then, governmental power is justified. [...]

Millions of people in this system don’t pay insurance premiums. They are bringing direct and obvious harm to the many more millions who do pay premiums. They make our premiums higher. When they get in a car wreck or have a stroke, they’re amassing medical bills that they can’t possibly pay. The rest of us pay for them.

And that is why the harm principle applies here. The government, under Mill’s definition, has the right and duty to step in to prevent harm to others—by making the free-riders pay. It’s exactly a Millian case of harm to others. And just as it explains why the mandate is valid in this case, it also explains why this kind of government action is limited to health care and can’t be extended to the purchase of broccoli or Chevy Volts or funeral plans or whatever else the conservative justices came up with Tuesday. If you don’t eat broccoli, you cause me no harm. Some would say, well, you increase your odds of colon cancer if you don’t eat broccoli, you might harm me if you don’t have insurance, but that’s speculative and very indirect and frankly pedantic. I can’t seriously claim injury based on your diet. Or whether you drive a Chevy or a Volvo. Or whether you are buried or cremated. These are not systems in which we’re all participants, either paying or nonpaying. Following Mill’s harm principle ensures that this kind of governmental activity is limited to cases in which person or Group A’s action directly harms person or Group B. That limits this to health care, answers the broccoli question, and shuts down that entire line of attack.

[gaelic cowboy]

So this would mean Obamacare stays


So no ANHS then for you.

[Lemur]

So this would mean Obamacare stays

So no ANHS then for you.

Not necessarily. If the individual mandate is ruled unconstitutional, we will have a situation very similar to New Jersey, which tried to implement universal coverage without a mandate, and is in the quick and predictable process of imploding. This is a concept referred to as "adverse selection" and/or "the death spiral."

The New Jersey effort began in the late 1980s, when rising health care costs were getting the attention of business and political leaders across the country. And a big worry then, as now, was what to do about people who couldn't get insurance from a large employer. When those people tried to get coverage in the individual or small-group market, they underwent scrutiny from insurers, who were wary of taking on big medical risks. "Insurance companies make their money not by being efficient, or managing care, but by weeding out the sick and insuring only the healthy," a frustrated Jim Florio, then governor of New Jersey, said in 1992. [...]

The plan went into effect in late 1993, not long before President Bill Clinton's efforts to reform health insurance nationally started foundering. And, for a while, it looked like Florio and his advisers had done what Clinton and his advisors could not. Nobody believed New Jersey's plan would bring universal coverage to the state. But "people thought this would have a significant impact," says Bruce Siegel, who was the state health commissioner and is now president of the National Association of Public Hospitals. "They thought it would … change the situation for the uninsured."

An early assessment of the program, by researchers at Harvard and sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, declared the experiment a success. But, by 1996, enrollment in the regulated plans started to slide after peaking at about 186,000. By 2001, it was down to about 85,000. Not coincidentally, the mix of people left in the program changed dramatically. According to a study published in Health Affairs, the median age for enrollees jumped from 41.9 years to 48.4 years in just five years, and premiums rose by between 48 percent and 155 percent, depending on the plan.

These were the tell-tale signs of adverse-selection death spiral: An exodus of healthy people from the insurance pool, leaving behind a population of ever-sicker people whose high health costs keep driving up prices. [...]

New Jersey's experience hardly seems unusual. Kentucky, New York and Vermont all tried to reform their insurance markets without a mandate. All ended up with higher premiums, lower enrollment in insurance or some combination of the two.

If the author were to Mill's logic, then the obvious solution would be to turn away the uninsured at the ER, rather than buying into the mandate mumbo-jumbo.

Raise your hand if you think the public really has the stomach and fortitude to watch people die in the streets. Ain't gonna happen. Two or three well-publicized cases of sweet little girls and innocent grandmas keeling over from preventable causes and we'd be in some form of NHS faster than you can say social darwinism.

[rvg]

As I stated earlier in the thread, I think talk of "rights" serves only to confuse the issue. Much more logical to approach this from a "common good" or "common harm" perspective. Here's a very good essay on why this is the case:

In my previous column, I briefly discussed John Stuart Mill and the harm principle as a way for Democrats and liberals to justify the idea of the individual mandate. [...] [I]n Mill’s words: “The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.” Get that. The only purpose. That is, our natural wills guide us toward being left alone, not being part of community. And that’s just fine—until our actions harm others. Then, governmental power is justified. [...]

Millions of people in this system don’t pay insurance premiums. They are bringing direct and obvious harm to the many more millions who do pay premiums. They make our premiums higher. When they get in a car wreck or have a stroke, they’re amassing medical bills that they can’t possibly pay. The rest of us pay for them.

And that is why the harm principle applies here. The government, under Mill’s definition, has the right and duty to step in to prevent harm to others—by making the free-riders pay. It’s exactly a Millian case of harm to others. And just as it explains why the mandate is valid in this case, it also explains why this kind of government action is limited to health care and can’t be extended to the purchase of broccoli or Chevy Volts or funeral plans or whatever else the conservative justices came up with Tuesday. If you don’t eat broccoli, you cause me no harm. Some would say, well, you increase your odds of colon cancer if you don’t eat broccoli, you might harm me if you don’t have insurance, but that’s speculative and very indirect and frankly pedantic. I can’t seriously claim injury based on your diet. Or whether you drive a Chevy or a Volvo. Or whether you are buried or cremated. These are not systems in which we’re all participants, either paying or nonpaying. Following Mill’s harm principle ensures that this kind of governmental activity is limited to cases in which person or Group A’s action directly harms person or Group B. That limits this to health care, answers the broccoli question, and shuts down that entire line of attack.

If the author were to Mill's logic, then the obvious solution would be to turn away the uninsured at the ER, rather than buying into the mandate mumbo-jumbo.

[gaelic cowboy]

If the author were to Mill's logic, then the obvious solution would be to turn away the uninsured at the ER, rather than buying into the mandate mumbo-jumbo.

No because that would harm society by allowing tens of thousands to die for want of treatment.