I suspect you may think that I'm some how arguing its something more benign sounding than being socialistic but that is the opposite of what I suggest.
This is more of a government regulated and facilitated cartel and they don't control the payments but rather just insist that they be made to one of the limited corperations whose market positions are, in part, ensured by aspects of the mandate and the inherited regulatory and legal system surrounding them. This sort of close relationship between a cartel of private corperations whose place in the market is enforced by the requirement to buy and fairly strong barriers to market entry (both natural and regulatory) is very reminscent of corperate statism - whose more familiar synonym would serve as a distraction due to the weight of history associated with it. As thrasher pointed out, what I am referring to is effectively a tenet of fascism.
I would be far less unhappy with acctual socialized medicine for all the difficulties it entails. What the mandate makes this though is almost the worst of both the worlds of government intrusion and plutocratic crony capitalism. It turns out that the worst of both worlds in this case sounds a little like facism. It's like an anti-compromise.
Obama care as envisioned though? Well single payer would be full on socialized medicine of some flavor and yeah that would be an accurate description. A public option would have probably been a more honest "compromise" because it could have failed or succeeded on its own merits. That's why both sides ended up shying away from it; the proponents of universal care of some sort had good reason to fear it would fail, the insurance interests had good reason to fear it would succeed, and republicans had reason to believe it would fail eventually but oppose it on principle. So that is why we have neither socialized medicine or an honest compromise between socialized and market driven insurance; what we have is this anti-compromise which is not accurately socialist or market capitalist in nature but more reminiscent of "corporate statism" elements of fascism and feels antithetical to both.
And, if we're going to dig out our textbooks here and impress each other, I'd say you could make a fairly convincing argument that ObamaCare isn't that far from Webster-approved socialism. While the government would not technically own the means of production, by controlling all payments made within it the government would have an incredible amount of control upon those means. I believe control of means of production satisfies the textbook definition of socialism, yes?
This is more of a government regulated and facilitated cartel and they don't control the payments but rather just insist that they be made to one of the limited corperations whose market positions are, in part, ensured by aspects of the mandate and the inherited regulatory and legal system surrounding them. This sort of close relationship between a cartel of private corperations whose place in the market is enforced by the requirement to buy and fairly strong barriers to market entry (both natural and regulatory) is very reminscent of corperate statism - whose more familiar synonym would serve as a distraction due to the weight of history associated with it. As thrasher pointed out, what I am referring to is effectively a tenet of fascism.
I would be far less unhappy with acctual socialized medicine for all the difficulties it entails. What the mandate makes this though is almost the worst of both the worlds of government intrusion and plutocratic crony capitalism. It turns out that the worst of both worlds in this case sounds a little like facism. It's like an anti-compromise.
Obama care as envisioned though? Well single payer would be full on socialized medicine of some flavor and yeah that would be an accurate description. A public option would have probably been a more honest "compromise" because it could have failed or succeeded on its own merits. That's why both sides ended up shying away from it; the proponents of universal care of some sort had good reason to fear it would fail, the insurance interests had good reason to fear it would succeed, and republicans had reason to believe it would fail eventually but oppose it on principle. So that is why we have neither socialized medicine or an honest compromise between socialized and market driven insurance; what we have is this anti-compromise which is not accurately socialist or market capitalist in nature but more reminiscent of "corporate statism" elements of fascism and feels antithetical to both.
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