One of my Conservative activist friends was getting depressed, so I rattled off the following. (I hope I am right.)
***
Reagan used to tell jokes about how Communism didn’t work. Reagan understood that stupidity ultimately destroys itself. All the people around him assumed the evil would last forever. Hardcore Conservatives, like me, thought he was naive. Turns out we were naive. The modern welfare state really got started in the 1960s. It lasted about two generations and it is totally dysfunctional. The first Conservative movement gave us Reagan, who did some good but did not reverse the trends. The new reform movement has barely gotten started. But this movement looks to be broader and deeper than the first Conservative movement. The Tea Party started around the turn of the year 2008/09. That is 5.5 years. Major reform movements usually take a generation to start winning lots of elections. The GOP has just taken over more elected offices than any time since the 1920s, and the reformers are driving it, and the RINOs have to at least talk the talk or they can’t get elected. We are moving along very well. We are in the process of taking over the GOP, and in the process of taking over the government. I thought Obamacare would be embedded and unmovable by now, and it would take us decades to dismantle it. It may go much better and quicker than that. People on the Right have lots of competing ideas of what to do. The internal conflicts are a sign of vitality. The Democrats have NO IDEAS. Zero. All they do is attack and lie and say their opponents are racists. That’s it. That is all the cards they are holding. They nakedly abuse power to insulate themselves. They cannot tell the truth about who they are or what they want to do or they will lose. They are like the Soviet Communists under Brezhnev. Hillary even looks like an old, corrupt, smug Communist bloc apparatchik. Their day is over and they are clinging to power. The worst menace is crony capitalism, but even there people are increasingly aware of the problem and starting to push back.
This is going to be a long struggle, and we will lose battles, and there will be betrayals, and people will get exhausted and give up.
But the deep trends are in our favor.
We are right, factually and morally.
They are wrong, factually and morally.
They will lose.
We will win.
Be happy.
FTW
I thought Romney was our chance in 2012 and am very worried that we have no one who understands how to dismantle a dysfunctional company, which happens at the moment to be the USA.
Maybe Carly Fiorina is actually the best possibility in that mold but she has no political experience and her one campaign was not all that good. Remember Demon Sheep ?
Tom Campbell was a typical RINO but that ad became famous for the wrong reasons.
Wow. What downers. I look at the trunk field and think, what a shame they can’t all win. No one who understands how to dismantle a disaster? what did Walker do? What would Christie do? OMG!
We leave three Millenials. They are still growing up. Life has been hard (in the 21st century sense) because they aren’t trust fund babies. But they’ll end up at the right place. My only concern is whether we assimilate the recent immigrants in a timely fashion. But then I look back on what we did with the Irish and the Germans. If we could bring them along, what can’t we do?
I may not live to see it, but I will die with utter confidence that our great grandchildren will wonder at our lack of confidence just as we cannot fathom the fears of our forbearers. For our destiny was manifest.
It shall remain true that special providence provides for drunkards, fools, and the United States of America. May she ever earn God’s blessing.
The Republican party was founded in 1854. Lincoln was elected in 1860. That’s FAST!
Carly Fiorana ran HP into the ground. She tried to be a ‘rock star’ CEO, all show and no substance. She would be the worst possible nominee for any office but dogcatcher.
Vladimir Putin has lived under Communism and the police state and has rejected both. He believes in free markets and knows that regulations destroy free markets. He has brought free markets and the rule of law to Russia – and wants these ideas to conquer the world. We need his help.
The founding of the Republican Party was near the final stage of the abolitionist movement, not the beginning. The anti-slavery society was founded in 1833, and there had been agitation against slavery going back before the American Revolution. The formation of a mess political movement which turned into a political party and elected president was something that took a couple of generations to accomplish.
The Democrats have NO IDEAS. Zero. All they do is attack and lie and say their opponents are racists. That’s it. That is all the cards they are holding. They nakedly abuse power to insulate themselves. They cannot tell the truth about who they are or what they want to do or they will lose. They are like the Soviet Communists under Brezhnev.
Well, if I don’t don’t support the corrupt Marxists in the DNC, then I want helpless babies to die miserable deaths of starvation and I want to push poor old people in wheelchairs off cliffs! That’s what I heard on TV, anyway. I saw that in the paper too. And I see tweets like that.
That’s the propaganda we’re up against. There’s an an entire generation who now believes the USA was like the above in the 1950’s and before. There’s even something like a war on the 50’s, it is being painted as a dark, oppressive, miserable time. Like the communists made Trotsky an unperson, the 50’s must be made an un-decade. It’s too attractive an alternative otherwise. The propaganda is deep. And young people don’t know any better. They don’t know these are lies.
I think it’s important to push back. I think it’s important when you hear a young person rattling off Progressive nonsense to make an effort to set them straight. Don’t tell them fairy tails, but see that they are at least exposed to the truth. I proselytize for Hayek, liberty and small government whenever I deal with young people (or even older people) who seem unaware of alternatives to Progressivism.
Things I’ve found particularly effective:
* Point out how hundreds of millions of people have been lifted out of grinding poverty in China after they adopted free market economics. Have them look at photos of China in the 1960’s and China today.
* Make them aware of the genocidal killing the Marxists/Communists carried out the 20th century. Something like 40-80 million in the USSR and another 45 million in Mao’s China just in the Great Leap Forward. Make them aware Hitler was a socialist and radical leftist.
* Tell them about the oppression and corruption that always accompanies leftist policies. Explain why.
* Introduce them to Hayek. This is often very effective because he started as a socialist.
They don’t know these things. Thanks for the pep talk Lex.
Grey Bear is Grey Eagle’s alternate identity, Russian Disinformation Ops.
Weird to have a Putin fanboy make an appearance in this obscure venue.
I wish I could be optimistic. But, I fear the rot has gone far to deep. Many vital institutions including the entire educational system, the law, the courts, and the legal system, the health care system, the federal government have all sunk too far into marxist sclerosis. I cannot see how they can be rescued.
After the French Revolution, Britain managed to restructure its institutions to meet popular demands for democracy and freedom without bloodshed or economic catastrophe.
The US is in the same sort of pickle, but I don’t think we can summon up Disraeli and Gladstone to show us the way out.
I fear we are in for an economic collapse followed by a civil war.
“Fear of China” by Robert D. Kaplan in The Wall Street Journal, on page A14, on April 21, 2006.
* ISBN 0297846272
With all due respect, I am with Robert Schwartz.
This makes several assumptions. One is that we have a generation’s worth of valid elections left. I fear the absolute last chance of voting our way out of this mess was deliberately squandered by the DIABLO nee “Republican” party the day after the election. Since then they have [despite some Potemkin moves to pretend resistance] funded everything that Obama wants into 2017, funded and ratified Obama’s claim to be able to rule by decree with Amnesty, confirmed an Attorney-General who testified under oath that she also believes that the president can rule by decree outside the law and Constitution, supported the right of the NSA to spy on Americans at home without warrant or probably cause, supported the fast track trade bill without allowing any of the Republicans to read it [vote expected Friday] despite it giving Obama power with no accountability, and are saying that if the Supreme Court kills the Obamacare subsidies . . . rather than allow it to die they are going to extend the illegal subsidies until August 2017, and then promise they will kill it.
This is a Republican Congress, both Houses, which we elected in an historic landslide with the specific mandate to resist the Left. All they have done for half a year is collaborate. Functionally, the day after the election the two parties merged. We have no opposition party in this country.
The DIABLO’s are intent on running a presidential candidate who has no real policy differences with Hillary, and the DIABLO congressional delegation now is going to be the one running in any putative 2016 election. The same people who have been stabbing us in the back since the last election.
That, in and of itself, should make any student of history and politics pessimistic. There is no electoral route out of this before a host of foreign and domestic catastrophes impact.
I was nervous, even before the things I have been seeing in the last couple of weeks. I have lived here in Colorado for most of my life [retired now]. I am not far from Fort Carson. Convoys of support vehicles; trucks, the different flavors of HMMV, etc. are common. Combat vehicles are moved around by train, or by special transporter vehicles. You do not see combat vehicles on the civilian roads. They do not mix well with traffic, they tear up the roads, and they intimidate and anger the civilians. Up till now I have only seen one combat vehicle convoy on civilian roads here in 30 years, and that was kind of an emergency trying to get some troops that were downrange back on post before a major blizzard hit. And they proved that they do not mix with civilian traffic well, with a fatality.
In the last couple of weeks I have personally seen two mixed combat vehicle/support vehicle convoys on civilian roads here. And I have reports from friends in neighboring towns that they are seeing them too. And the visible troops are in full battle rattle. This is not normal, and at a time when the loyalty of the government to the Constitution is at best in doubt, is cause for pessimism.
We have given the DIABLO’s the elected offices, and they have turned on us. And given their behavior, there is no reason to vote for them in any putative election in 2016. Because they are proving beyond any doubt that when they win, they will still make sure the Democrats get what they want, even if it means lying to their own voters.
Lex, it seems generally not a good idea to underestimate Americans nor the power of the ideas if we can assimilate – as we’ve done countless times before – others. Every day between energy and medicine and the genome and the space race, new, really ground-breaking ideas/innovations/inventions are working. Even the weight of this presidency hasn’t suppressed genome research or Space X or technology. Even the weight of this presidency hasn’t suppressed speech or assembly or belief or press.
The Sons of Liberty were the first act; by the end of the second, we’d defeated a power of imperial size.
The bench seems remarkably deep, young, and energetic. I wish someone would soon be the winner, the vice-president chosen and out of all the other rather inventive and lively people (and with Romney, I would hope) a cabinet of distinction and originality could come in, ready and waiting. For instance, Perry did wonders here, but he’s not going to get far. He sounds and acts like an Aggie, even among Texans. I see that as good but doubt many others do. But get him in a place where he can do tort reform, get rid of bureaucracy, etc. and he can do for the country what has been happening in Texas. It isn’t just energy – which he only had a part in – but between Bush and Perry there began to be doctors in the valley again and people didn’t have to drive hundreds of miles to see an obgyn. Of course, the tort lawyers started closing shop and some of them moved, but I’m not sure that’s a bad thing.
And it goes on like that. I suppose such a cabinet would just give the NYTimes more parking tickets and school loans to look up, but it would give a sense that here are people that plan and create and aren’t going to accept the status quo. I like Walker – I like Midwesterners, like people who fight and fight – and don’t stop. And he’s proved himself through all those ridiculous recalls.
I can’t see someone moving from the business world to the governmental one without a learning curve and perhaps Fiorina was lousy at what she did. All I know was that tonight we listened to a Weekly Standard interview with her about her book and the audience gave her a standing ovation at the end – and often within the talk. She sure pushed the right buttons for me – and she doesn’t blink or waffle about controversy, she steps in.
But you get the feeling with most of these guys that they are really straight shooters; you don’t get the weird answers and waffling, you don’t get the ad hominems and red herrings. Listening to them, you really think they are looking for solutions.
May I suggest a first step; make it easier to amend your Constitution. That won’t empower The Left, since they ignore it whenever they want to anyway. But it might make it possible for The Right to argue a case for Constitutionalism, which is difficult at the moment since the Constitution looks unfit for the times. As one example, you need to solve the conundrum of the Supreme Court’s being able to rule by judicial putsch whenever it feels like it – that presumably requires amendment of the Constitution.
“Carly Fiorana ran HP into the ground.”
I have read several versions of this. This for example, from the woman who should be governor of California.
Now that she’s in charge, Whitman has been forced to make many job cuts of her own in an effort to turn HP around. Even after overseeing 55,000 layoffs since 2011, Whitman told CNN more cuts are likely in the cards.
Despite the huge challenges she’s faced remaking the company, Whitman joked, “It’s a lot easier than running for governor.”
In fact, she says being on the campaign trail and the ensuing media scrutiny made her a “better CEO,” a more effective communicator and “a lot tougher.”
The argument is whether HP would still exist if Fiorina had not begun the restructuring.
Remember that Whitman is a self made billionaire.
She is also a normal human with a husband and two children.
Dearieme: The Constitution is fit for the times. The problem is that no branch of government obeys it.
Fiorina’s legacy at HP is dominated by the question of the merger with Compaq. As time went by, it gets more confusing as to whether it really was a good idea.
Now that Whitman is splitting up the company into a separate PCs & printers company and enterprise services company, it looks to the critics like they were right.
Of course, it’s far more complicated than that.
The critics pointed to IBM and said the future should have always been in services not hardware. On the other hand, a lot of those enterprise customers that the corporate division will service came from Compaq.
The critics say that a leaner, more narrowly focused company will always be better at achieving efficiencies and value. On the other hand, under Fiorina HP’s profit doubled and revenue quadrupled with the acquisition pretty much timed at the market bottom. Not a bad value in that case.
But all the layoffs of American workers, the critics say. On the other hand, does anybody really think that in 2000 HP would have been able to chart any course that didn’t result in losing lots of workers? HP was 60 years old and staring into the abyss of the Dot Bomb crash. IBM lost 50% of its workforce in the 90s reinventing itself and HP was supposed to do it painlessly with no bloodshed? Not bloody likely.
I’m fear that something I have been afraid was true is now abundantly, clearly the case—my generation, the boomers, is the middle generation from that old adage about ” shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations”.
Our parents generation defeated worldwide fascism, held out, and generally prospered, in the face of the Marxist threat, until it too collapsed, and bequeathed to us a world in which the U.S and its allies had reached the top of the ladder.
But my generation has utterly squandered that magnificent inheritance, spending madly, and wasting the great strength of our society in adventurism without strategic planning or purpose.
The richest, most powerful civilization in history is now bankrupt, not only financially, but also morally and spiritually, and bleeds from a thousand cuts, far too many of which are self-inflicted.
The formidable task of those of us who never bought into this profligate spree is to maintain and transmit the values of liberty and constitutional government to our heirs, in order to provide the intellectual and moral tools they will need to rebuild a free society from the inevitable collapse of the bankrupt, multi-cultural house of cards they are inheriting from our folly.
I believe this great work can be successfully accomplished, but it will require greater wisdom and courage than my generation of delusional profligates could ever manage. The dark age the world would face if they fail is fearful to contemplate.
Grey Bear is Grey Eagle’s alternate identity, Russian Disinformation Ops.
He has also showed up on other websites trolling for Putin there too. The comments I saw there from him were so much like old grey eagle I thought it was him.
“The worst menace is crony capitalism, but even there people are increasingly aware of the problem and starting to push back.” – Lexington Green
This is one of the more promising signs I have also noticed. When the leftist LA Times takes note of Elon Musk’s $4.9B take at the government trough , it suggests to me that enough is becoming enough. Solar and electric cars are supposed to be sacred to all who live on the west side of LA. That’s everybody who writes for the Times, and a good chunk of their readers. Now even they are beginning to ask questions.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-20150531-story.html#page=1
Optimism is all well and good, but I’d like to point out that if we are in a rough recreation of the political dynamics of the Civil War era we still have a terrible and bloody conflict ahead of us.
Never forget that failure is an option- and a potentially bloody nation-ending option at that.
“The Constitution is fit for the times. The problem is that no branch of government obeys it.” Not so; if the Constitution contains no provisions that effectively ensure that the branches of government respect it, then it is unfit for the times.
so much depression convinces me that the renewal cannot be long in coming.
> Not so; if the Constitution contains no provisions that effectively ensure that the branches of government respect it, then it is unfit for the times.<
-Benjamin Franklin, Signer of the Declaration of Independence "[O]nly a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters."-
“Never forget that failure is an option.”
With Chicago Boyz readers, that is not likely. Too many readers here consider failure an inevitability.
so much depression convinces me that the renewal cannot be long in coming
Yup.
I like Walker – I like Midwesterners, like people who fight and fight – and don’t stop. And he’s proved himself through all those ridiculous recalls.
Me too. I like Walker a lot. I like Fiorina too. They’d make a good ticket, with either as President.
To quote a well used simile, there isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that your vote, or my vote will have any affect on the current state of affairs other than giving you a reason not to revolt. Hope, Hope in our system of government is used as a pacifier to keep the masses from revolting. With a bit of hope, you don’t revolt, you just keep going to work, paying your taxes, and of course your obmummercare insurance premiums. You watch “TV”, drink beer and hope.
This; as a plan of action, sucks. If you want to know what the next 15 or twenty years will be like, recall that scene in Dr. Strangelove… yes that scene. Slim Pickens riding an atomic bomb to it’s eventual and certain end.
Wish I had better news but the truth is, this is the sugar coated version…
Dearieme,
The Constitution has a provision to handle SCOTUS. Fact 2 means.
1) Legislative. Should the Court get too uppity on a topic the House and Senate can pass laws to address the problem. The court has had a long history of deferring to legislative action. If SCOTUS did not do that ObamaCare would not have been deemed `legal`.
2) Functional. The ONLY court named specifically in the Constitution is SCOTUS. All the lower courts are deemnd authorized under Congressional approval. If it wanted to Congress could deauthorize the 9th Circuit Court tomorrow and all those cases would land on SCOTUS’s docket till a realignment occurred to cover the hole created.
While in general I have a dim view of things to come in the short term, in the long term I think we will be happy again. What keeps me going is math. There is simply no way that the current systems in place (i.e. America 2.0) can work and no government entity or anyone else can fight math. These systems will fail (the IRS and others have already begun to implode), and we will have to begin again – and some of the technological advances that are soon to be upon us will make our lives completely different than they are today. I, for one, want to stay alive as long as possible to see the future. But my kids are the real ones that will be the benefactors of the aforementioned math and tech.
Very Retired makes a fantastic point about the boomers. Soon enough, they will be gone (literally) and things will be different. Very different.
“Too many readers here consider failure an inevitability.”
Not failure. I think America is too rich and has such fantastic potential that whoever lives in this land will eventually regain prosperity.
I agree completely that the “Baby Boomer generation” has destroyed the culture. Like a comment above, I believe the Chinese version to be probable.
“First generation coolie, second generation merchant, third generation rich man, fourth generation coolie.”
I fear we face a civil war of some sort. One scenario might be a regional reorganization of states with blue states and red states separating.
Another might be a race war like some race hustlers seem to think they could win.
The welfare state will probably not survive. The pathology of the welfare state is well illustrated Theodore Dalrymple’s horrendous example of a white version of the usual black pathology here. Britain has no slavery or racism excuse for what happened there,
Who will pay for it ?
No, I think America will eventually survive but we face a very difficult time and, with any luck, I won’t be here to see it. My children will but three of them have voted for this. My grandchildren are innocent but maybe they will survive to see a better day.
Indeed Grey Bear, when Vlad Putin is the good guy, the world is indeed upside down.
I am sorry but I cannot be optimistic about the future until and unless the GOP is replaced by a serious and committed opponent to the totalitarian plans of the current uni-party coalition ruling our country. Based on the campaign rhetoric I had hoped that the GOP 2014 election victories would result in repeal of Obamacare and repeal of Obama’s lawless “executive amnesty”. Instead the “French Republicans” continue to dither when pushed, agree to grant the POTUS whatever power he wants to seize.
I think the Dethguild folks summarized best my attitude in this article:
http://www.dethguild.com/a-reply-to-sara-hoyt/
The only way out of this is to withdraw from the system and focus on “real skills, real friends and real wealth” , then rebuild the nation after the inevitable collapse of the
First American Republic” …
Pep talk is spot on. I’ll be sharing at Ushanka.
I suspect we won’t see how successful the Tea Party movement is for still a while more. It is a full scale infestation of the Marx household from top to bottom.
I recently read a great book that just came out: Red Notice. You Putin fan(s) shouldn’t read it though.
thanks for the comic relief, Chicago Boy. Today, 5,000 new collectivists – legal and illegal – entered the FUSA. Same as yesterday. And tomorrow. By 2025, Whites will be a minority in the FUSA. By 2050: Palestine’d. You are living a in a delusional, that is, Judeo neo-con universe. Once the debtbuck dies, we may be able to shoot our way back to a Republic. We certainly aren’t going to vote our way back to it. But go ahead. Vote for Cruz/Bush/Rubio or whatever Zionist-stooge, warmongering, open borders/free trade, more-gubmint Wall Street twit the Republiscams vomit up. Evidently, you enjoy the punishment
“I had hoped that the GOP 2014 election victories would result in repeal of Obamacare”
then you are a bit misguided about the legislative process. Any repeal of Obamacare would end in a presidential veto. There has to be a GOP congress and a GOP president for Obamacare to end.
That’s where this pep talk comes in. If you want Obamacare to end then you need to keep your head in the game and vote in 2016 for a Republican president.
Judeo neo-con universe
Where is this place? I want to visit.
Amen brother, and thanks for the link. It will be used. Tonight, it happens, I am giving a scorecard report on our new Republican Senator, Cory Gardner, to our TEA Party group. Short form, we have elected a DIABLO that the Leftists will be proud to own for the next 5 1/2 years.
With all due respect, which potential Republican presidential nominee would a) be willing to kill Obamacare, and b) would be allowed to get the nomination by the DIABLO Party’s “leadership”. Keep in mind that the DIABLO’s are perfectly willing to throw the election rather than allow a Conservative to win. We have seen it here in Colorado repeatedly [to the point of the Republicans creating a 3rd Party candidate to split the conservative vote and deliberately lose a US Senate seat to the Democrats] and openly collaborating with the Democrats in Mississippi.
Then there is the matter that the Republican congressional candidates are going to be, best case, 95% the same as the lot that is betraying us now.
I, and pretty much all conservatives, understand the presidential veto. But if the Supreme Court rules that the subsidies are illegal/unconstitutional; all the Republicans have to do is . . . nothing and the whole thing will collapse. The repeal can be the clean up afterwards.
But no, there is a bill with the Republican leadership co-sponsoring, that would fund the illegal subsidies until August 2017. They say that it will kill the individual and corporate mandates. However, neither the Democrats, nor Obama will allow that. And you cannot point to one example in the last 6 years where the Republicans have not caved. They will on that, and Obamacare becomes a Republican program. Their fallback is to claim that in 2017 there will be a Republican president and both houses of Congress, then they will repeal it.
After betraying their voter base so consistently, there is not going to be a Republican president, and I don’t think that there will be a Republican Congress. If there are elections in 2016, it will be their Whig moment.
We can’t vote our way out of this without an opposition party.
“all the Republicans have to do is . . . nothing and the whole thing will collapse. The repeal can be the clean up afterwards.”
I think people need to be thinking about the fact that Obamacare, where it has actually been implemented, is Medicaid.
I spent last week with my daughter in South Carolina. She has a new job. Her old job included health insurance and this one, at present , does not. I worry about this but she doesn’t care about it.
I was thinking later that Obamacare policies have $5,000 deductibles and they are not real insurance. If the USSC does the right thing, and I don’t want to count on that, we will see a panic among the welfare population but I don’t see most people being affected. Obama chickened out on the employer mandates and most people are still insured.
The Obamacare group are almost all loyal Democrat votes, no matter what happens.
“But no, there is a bill with the Republican leadership co-sponsoring, that would fund the illegal subsidies until August 2017.”
That’s Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin that you’re referring to. I’ll admit that he’s not exactly met the expectations and hopes of the Tea Party movement that helped sweep him into office, and he’s probably pushing this mostly to save his neck in 2016.
His plan would extend subsidies for a couple years for those who already signed up if SCOTUS strikes them down. On the other hand (damnit if there isn’t always another hand), his bill also eliminates the individual and employer mandate. It’s a bridge for those those who got suckered into the hope and change con. I don’t support it, but I wouldn’t quite characterize it as a betrayal either.
In addition, last December Congress already eliminated a bailout for health insurance companies and cut IRS funding for Obamacare enforcement and regulation. It’s happening, maybe slower than some would prefer, but it is happening.
“I think people need to be thinking about the fact that Obamacare, where it has actually been implemented, is Medicaid.”
This is why any temporary extension isn’t a disaster. The exchanges are increasingly filling up with people who are
older, sicker, and with pre-existing conditions. Young and healthy individuals weren’t signing up for Obamacare because, as Mike says, they’re eligible for Medicaid or they’re finding it cheaper just to go without insurance. It just can’t go on, period. Whether it ends tomorrow or some form of it lasts a couple more years, it will still end.
I have a great deal of respect for Subotai Bahadur and all his compatriots, and another opposition party does sometimes sound pretty good to me. However, the track record of third parties in the recent and distant past leads me to believe it will do more harm than good. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the only thing that could possibly save Obamacare now is a conservative split which dilutes the opposition.
Two words on third parties:
Ross Perot.
Think about it. No Hillary. No 9/11, probably. No Al Gore and maybe no billions for “Green Projects” and the like.
Mike,
with more young, healthy, and able-bodied people joining Medicaid and fewer doctors accepting it, that should increase efforts to privatize or turn it into a fixed grant like the ’96 welfare reform, don’t you think?
“with more young, healthy, and able-bodied people joining Medicaid”
Medicaid is welfare. The criteria, as I understand it, is 160% of the poverty level. Above that income, there is no subsidy and the premiums are astronomical. A real underwritten high deductible insurance policy is far superior and much, much cheaper.
Medicaid is rotten with corruption and, when I was in practice, most doctors avoided it. I was getting checks (small checks) for two years after I retired because it takes that long to get paid. We’ve had cash clinics around here for years for HMO members and Medicaid people. Visa and MasterCard.
We’ve had cash clinics around here for years…
Maryland has for profit cash clinics where you can see a doctor for a nominal fee. Virginia used to have (maybe still does) clinics where you pay what you can (no tests, just walk in) and the state picks up the remainder. The ones in VA were very small scale – one or two doctors and nurses – and located in towns. I was in one once on a Sunday with a bad case of poison ivy and that was the only thing open. Seemed well run and very low overhead. It struck me as a good model for helping people on low income. Probably easily gamed, but better then some federal level racket where billions are lost per day.
A few examples.
http://getbetterhealth.com/cash-only-physician-practices-could-save-you-a-bundle/2009.03.26
http://www.naplesnews.com/news/local-news/virginia-doctors-practice-cash-only-medicine-diffe
http://money.cnn.com/2013/06/11/news/economy/cash-only-doctors/index.html
http://www.aafp.org/fpm/2006/0200/p61.html
It’s not even that new. When I was still in practice 20 years ago, two women docs ran a walkin clinic in Dana Point that took Visa and Mastercard and no insurance. They had their own lab and simple x-ray. They each took 3 months a year off and were doing fine. I think they have both retired since then.