“CBO projections be damned !23 to 33 million Americans kicked out of safety net health support be damned! It is too important to wipe out this black man’s signal achievement and reinvigorate party loyalty.No one will notice that we are ensuring that Obamacare can not work. We the important people demand a wealth transfer to the wealthy from the shaky health surety of the poor!
Never fear our health care is preserved and I think that even if impeached me and my family will still get the care.If not I’ll still be able to fly me and my family to Uncle Vlad for Kremlin-Kare.”
At this point the orator is taken away by the men with the butterfly nets…
The Octogenarians 
Once again the “there will never be enough” rationale underlying the conservative argument ! There already is enough; it is a matter of distribution, which in a democracy is a matter of tax reform. Mutually assured destruction does not require a million man army. We are not Saudi Arabia or Qutar .Our wealth production requires work and genius and can insure reward for the exceptional. The presence of someone in the Presidency who has no understanding of history or diplomacy and whose deal making capability involves one to one negotiation only is running us out of time. ,Time is the entity of which it can be truly said “there will never be enough”.
If the nature of “scarcity” is not understood, the fundamentals of economics (and some basics of life itself) are not understood. Maybe this misunderstanding about a fundamental fact of existence explains in large part why society is experiencing inordinate discord.
That which is readily available is not scarce and thus we do not compete for it. The air we breathe tends to be an example. Less easily available is compressed air such as that needed for SCUBA diving. This requires special effort (some costs) to provide, thus those who wish to dive in this manner offer something of value (such as money which serves as a generally accepted promissory note) competing with others for the product. If more people want this product than there is supply (scarcity) they must bid higher to outbid others for its use. Those who are outbid will not get access to that (obviously scarce) item. As the bid goes higher entrepreneurs motivated by the rewards of profit invent new ways to produce supply thereby meeting the needs of more people (and acquire more promissory notes with which they bid for other things that they want). In short: Any degree of competition for any item (includes healthcare) means that it is scarce. How scarce? That depends on the availability of supply relative to demand.
Daedal2207 states that healthcare is not scarce, that there is enough to go around. If “healthcare” refers to nothing more than finding a hand to hold, he would be pretty close to being accurate. Most of us could find a supply of sympathetic hands readily available with no competition. For an aspirin, the “cost” (scarcity) would be minimal. For those who would want access to the best heart surgeon or team of surgeons on the planet it is impossible for all but a very few (By definition – an extremely limited supply). Even access to moderately skilled doctors and technicians is difficult or impossible when need overwhelms supply. Given that we will all die, at that time our living needs have not been met. A great many will experience diseases for which there are inadequate resources available for all peoples’ life extension. This means that “scarcity” is not as suggested by Daedal2207 a manipulative invention created only to promote conservatism, but it is a fundamental fact of existence. It will always be a part of the “healthcare” equation. Some will receive and others not.
This is a fundamental truth: EVERY society must allocate scarce resources that have alternative uses. How to do this thing most efficiently, with maximum creation of new resources, is our task. Free markets and capitalism have been tested and their exceptional achievements in the production of new supply are proven.
It is wealth that I refer to as being sufficient.How it is employed can and does produce scarcity.Priority setting and planning are essential adjuncts as is regulation.
Daedal2207 says that priority setting, regulation and planning are essential adjuncts – with this I think we can all agree. Where we likely disagree is the best means by which these “essential adjuncts” are employed. A completely free market would do all these things automatically as a consequence of all resources being bid for, priced as need and supply dictates. It would be the potential for making profit that motivates talent at all levels to address ways to increase the supply of those things that levels of demand prove to be of value. And it would be fear of loss that motivates everyone to stop doing what doesn’t work and rethink direction – always “planning” to find new means whereby we can increase supply to meet demand. For the health of an entire economy this is extremely efficient in producing growth and meeting human needs AT EVERY LEVEL. Government’s function here is that of referee, it is to protect competition and the honesty of transactions.
The leftist mindset wants a central control system (Federal Government) that sets priorities, regulates, and plans how to do WHAT THEY DECIDE is good for the country. Government’s function here is to control our activities such that their plans are achieved. For instance, if they want universal health coverage and want it to provide an equally distributed, high level of care for every citizen they will dictate by law that resources be shifted away from other interests and directed to healthcare. Daedal2207 is accurate when he states that we are “wealthy”, but “wealthy enough” for what? And how did we become wealthy? I argue that we are “wealthy” precisely because for most of our history we protected free markets. A new collectivist form of government (new only for the U.S.) that controls, regulates, and plans for us the details of how we are to engage in the process of life robs us of the liberty that generated our exceptional wealth, and robs us of many forms of the happiness that we were supposed to have the freedom to pursue.
When past CBO projections have been so wrong – when hard to measure dynamics of incentives and disincentives are a major factor – if such projections are not “damned”, at least they should be viewed with great skepticism.
A faulty “signal achievement” by any human of any color, of any shape or any size, remains a faulty achievement. So, the real issue is not the color of the man, but that of why “the achievement” is faulty and what can be done about it? Start with the basics: The incentives and disincentives of Obamacare are haywire. The governmental FORCE required to distribute more equally the needed resources discourages and thus diminishes the creation of new life-saving resources. New entitlements obligated citizens who were supposed to be free people to have their labor harnessed to benefit widely expanding “favored” groups. The nature of healthcare need is such that there will never be adequate resources to equally serve all citizens, so demand will always overwhelm supply. If government is allowed the task of allocating what will always be limited resources it will have acquired immense power over the voter. It then decides who will live and die. People are corrupted by power. If instead, a free market is the dynamic chosen to allocate scarce resources those with every level of ability will be incentivized to work hard to fill every level of demand, thereby expanding the range of new life-saving resources. Talent is automatically attracted to where it is needed. If the primary economic function of our government is to protect competition and the honesty of process, power is dispersed and corruption minimized. Greed is minimized by the fact that competition tends to provide BETTER SERVICE at LESS COST so generally we will be paying a fair, market-tested price.
It is true that a free market favors those who bring ability-to-produce to the process and thus a wealth gap will be greater than with a system that holds an equality of distribution to be on a religious-like high moral plane. But having produced (no matter if motivated by profit or altruism), is by definition empirical evidence that life-saving resources have been provided for the potential benefit of all, rich and poor.
Reblogged this on daedal2207's Blog.