I want to draw your attention to an op-ed at the Wall Street Journal from Andrew Puzder, CEO of the food service company that operates the Carl’s, Jr. and Hardee’s fast food chains. In the op-ed Mr. Puzder explains some of the reasons why the ACA may not function as expected. It’s closely reasoned and difficult to excerpt so you may want to read the whole thing.
I read Mr. Puzder’s op-ed as more of a lament than a diatribe. If I had to provide a rough summary, it might be that the incentives provided in the plan are those that would appeal more to well-to-do middle-aged or elderly white guys than to the young and healthy.
Just as a trip down memory lane, I should repeat that my objections to Obamacare, as I still feel uncomfortable in calling it, were that the United States frequently goes a long time between drinks at the healthcare reform bar and even if it were completely successful the plan does not effect the changes we need.
Sadly, contra Mr. Puzder, a “bipartisan, market-driven approach that might actually work” was never on the table. The Powers-That-Be hate each other and love their ideologies more than they care for the American people and their well-being.
“market-driven approach”
Spanish peasant: What windmills?
Too much ideology, like too much sugar, provides nothing more than pie-in-the-sky highs and short term, empty solutions.
1) A market driven approach has never worked anywhere. This is wishing for unicorns. Might work, no one knows and there is good reason to believe it will not.
2) He doesnt show his work. Is he using the bronze level plan, or the catastrophic insurance allowed in the ACA?
3) The young who are not paying now are free riding. Of course they do not want to pay.
4) Maybe I should listen to this guy, and I am totally wrong. Carl’s Jr. is one of the fast food joints expected to survive and prosper well into the future (see Idiocracy).
Steve
I’m inclined to agree with you, steve, but let me play devil’s advocate. Has a market-driven approach been tried anywhere? Is it a case of having been tried and found wanting or not having been tried?
Obviously, our system can’t be used as an example of a market-driven system. Like most other public/private hybrids in the United States it’s more an instance of public expenses and private profits.
I’d be more inclined to listen to the man were it not for the fact that Carl’s Jr. has tried to poison me with raw chicken on more than one occasion. I avoid them now as I avoid Burger King, as a “restaurant” with staff so unmotivated and untrained they can actually be dangerous. We’re being lectured by a man who runs a sweat shop.
Also, ditto Steve. Huge surprise: free riders like riding free. Who knew? Oh, wait, we all knew, which is why it had to be dealt with.
And Dave, how would insisting on a market-driven approach in the face of evidence that it does not work in the real world not be just another case of preferring ideology over practicality?
People need to get straight in their heads a basic fact: the Republicans oppose ALL health care reform plans. Their own presidential candidate basically had to disavow his own Massachusetts plan. It is ridiculous to pretend that there was a negotiation just waiting to happen if only. . . This is not a “both sides do it.” There was never going to be a debate about X vs. Y vs. Z. It was always something vs. nothing. That was the sum total of what was do-able.
Now that we have something, we have something to fix.
Perhaps a more fundamental question is, is a pure market-driven health care system possible in a democratic society? (And by health-care system, I mean a system that can provide for the health care of all citizens without government subsidies either coming or going– it need not do that, but must be able to do that.) I think not.
Don’t expect me to defend a purely market-driven solution. I think such a thing would be unacceptable. I started supporting a single-payer system more than 35 years ago.
I think that my disagreement is with this:
Quite to the contrary I think that you’re going to see Republicans lined up to destroy it and Democrats lined up to defend it regardless of the merits for years to come. The history of healthcare law in the U. S. is that we get major reform about once a generation and I doubt that little things like the old system collapsing will change that.
That’s been the history of Social Security. Combine a tax that nobody likes with a set of subsidies that nobody likes and it becomes the Third Rail of American Politics.