Let's All Move To Albania...

(More Yglesias unfriendliness.)

Much to my delight, I spent most of this week alternately entertaining and chauffeuring an old college pal who was visiting the wilds of Central Ohio. As opposed to sitting in front of a computer speculating about whether Obamacare would pass. I said last week that I thought it would pass, and it will. Anyone who was paying attention to Bart Stupack's imitation of Hamlet should have known by last Thursday that he was never going to vote 'no'.

So Obama and Pelosi will have their bill, and Democrats own health care for better or for worse.

Sure, it's shitty legislation, but I can't say I'm all that worried. If there's one thing I've learned in 25.5 years of dealing with people and their money, it's that they will do anything to ensure their standard of living is not lowered. And that's why I think that much of Obamacare will never actually see the light of day. In the end the mandate will go away, rather quietly, and by mutual consent. Probably via an indefinite delay in implementation. People simply will not tolerate a government order to lower their standard of living, and demanding a family making $88,000 pre-tax to spend $15,000+ after-tax to fulfil Obamacare's mandate is just that.

And while Obamacare does in many ways threaten our way of life, our liberty and so on and so forth, I'd be lying if I didn't confess that it really has had its upside as well. It's been pure, unadulterated joy to watch legions of sanctimonious, holier-than-thou progressives sell out for the sake of pure partisanship and/or personal gain. It's been fun to watch the kept men like Markos Moulitsas, Matthew Yglesias, Josh Marshall and countless others ditch single payer and the public option as if they had never once considered either worthy of interest, much less their support.

We're to the point where progressives are now out-Clintoning Bill Clinton. They're now worse than the DNC Bill Clinton forced upon them. The DNC they loathed. The DNC they've so often derided as being so centrist as to be sell-outs. Now they've got health care reform written by AHIP and financed by PhARMA, and they couldn't be happier. They're now in the same league with boob-jumping evangelists, Hummer-driving treehuggers and spendthrift Republicans... and they couldn't be happier.

Like I said, that almost makes it all worthwhile.

Comments

[Eric Blair]

It is pretty amazing. I'm just waiting for the average person to figure out what just got done.

[Buck O'Fama]

You are correct, one way or another all or part of this "reform" is going to get blown off. One little noticed piece of news from last week is that Social Security has to start tapping the IOUs from the Treasury (the "lockbox" surplus that SS was accumulating each year was being lent to the Treasury to narrow the year's budget deficit) nine years ahead of schedule. They didn't think this would happen until 2019 or so but the great recession mangled that prediction. Treasury does not have the cash to give SS so they will have to ISSUE MORE DEBT to repay them. And in addition to all the debt Captain Utopia has piled on already, his health care reform is going to require still more borrowing. How much more US debt does the world want to buy? I think a whole lot less than we're gonna try and sell them.

[Jim Ryan]

This post summarizes the entire episode, Big D. Well done.

[Texasyank]

Three minutes of pad-and-paper math informs one of the following, if what you say is true:

1. A family making 88 grand will look to settle in at a mortgage of, say, $1600-1700 per month. (Good luck with that in 2018, but--another story.)

2. Said family will be on the hook for $1200 per month for health insurance, assuming no employer picks up the tab (at which point the insurance is labeled "compensation," cue the Beatles).

So: Said family whose head-of-household runs his/her own business will shed 40 percent of its pre-tax income before Mom goes out to buy a dozen eggs. Insanity.

[Don Brouhaha]

Although the CBO 'scored' this so-called bill in certain terms on the face of the legislation, many (especially Paul Ryan) have noted the impossibility of double couting the money at hand.
And Dennis may well be right that this monstrosity will be dismantled before it is ever actually implemented.

But in the meantime, what will happen to the US T-bill's AAA credit rating? More objective minds will evaluate this and note the implications. What will be the swirling toilet water consequence of dropping to AA bond rating?
This will all cost us dearly, no matter what.

[Pablo]

Once again, they got what they wanted. God help us.

[ema]

In the end the mandate will go away, rather quietly, and by mutual consent.

At this point we can only hope that will happen. But just to be on the safe side I say we all read "How to Start and Run a Health Insurance Co for Dummies."

[sparky the icky commie]

your last paragraph is unfortunately pretty accurate. the only thing i would add is that commies like me are now called firebaggers or purity trolls or some such for having had the temerity to say this legislation is an abomination.

i was a bit surprised that everyone, and i do mean everyone, folded so easily and for so little. no wonder the GOP keeps rolling them. i could say that they are dimwits but i think your first observation about a reluctance to change the status quo is a more likely explanation. god forbid the Ds actually risk something. i guess the only thing that's still ok to do is kill brown people; that keeps the OTHER industrial complex busy.

[richard mcenroe]

"Treasury does not have the cash to give SS so they will have to ISSUE MORE DEBT to repay them."

If anyone wants to buy it now. The last sale of T-Bills... did not go well. That's part of the reason the gummint is talking about forcibly converting private 401k's to "secure" government notes.

I also hear from personal sources in the commodities industry that the feds are making noises about retricting the private ownership of gold, to force actual wealth back into circulation...

[Everett D.]

"i guess the only thing that's still ok to do is kill brown people; that keeps the OTHER industrial complex busy."
The military defense industry is all about money and latent skinhead. Troops die and are maimed while trying not to carpet bomb or nuke whole populations of those brown people just for the up-close enjoyable kill. Big bombs translate into bucks, but outfitting the troops, establishing LOCs is more lucrative. Oh that smell of profit and dead brown people in the morning.What a war. Bush gave his rich buddies billions in business and expendable darkies. Good thing we elected a brown president.

[JeffS]

Sounds like Everett D is off his medications today. Unless he's just bats**t crazy, beyond any medical help.

sparky -- don't forget the OTHER OTHER industrial complex, the one of choice for the Democrats: entitlements. True, it doesn't kill brown people, but I'm sure that you'll find a way to deal with that.

[Everett D.]

JeffS, your guano detection meter meeds a little calibration. Interjecting f******** race into everything is leftie shit. A blanket apology to all: I am soooo very sorry that the 9/11 jihad movement includes "brown people" among the fairer complexioned, yellows and reds.

[JeffS]

My BS detector is working fine, thank you, Everett. You should use "/sarcasm" tags more, if I'm wrong.

[Bob Smith]

Even if the mandate goes away, what about the taxes and regulations? Medical device taxes, pharma taxes, tanning salon taxes, payroll taxes on non-wage income, payroll tax increases on wage income, dozens of new commissions and regulatory bodies, etc. The sum total of these is as bad or worse than the insurance mandate.