Stop Wasting Time and Money on the Democrats; and how the US Health System is Poised to get even Worse

Don't waste time or money on the Democrats any longer. For 30 years or more they have been useless. They have been clearly and solidly right wing. There are no prospects for this changing. The Democrats being right wing appears to be locked-in, given what the economy and society as a whole have evolved into.

It could be argued that the Democrats’ unresponsiveness to lower income people and to true progressives is due as much to the changed economic structure as to their lust for campaign money. The US economic structure, in three words, is extreme, unprecedented inequality. For this short article, let's divide the economy into three equal classes, upper, middle, and lower. The low end of the lower third is indisputably living in a third world situation.

Obama himself commonly mentions that he is working for "the middle class." A politician admitting openly he is working for just one economic class is basically unprecedented, although Bill Clinton waffled between saying he was working "for the middle class" and working for everyone. Prior to Clinton, Presidents who said who they were working for at all invariably said they were working for everyone.

It's interesting to note that even in societies that historically have had strong class systems, such as Britain and to a lesser but still significant degree The Netherlands, it has been anathema for close to a century for any politician to claim that he or she is working only or mostly for a particular class. So the USA is moving backwards in this regard, becoming like some European countries were more than a century ago in terms of being hidebound by an inefficient class-based political and economic system.

But realistically, Obama actually has a practical reason for saying he is working only for the middle class. The reason is apparently that the USA has moved so far in the direction of a third world economy in general and a third world income structure in particular, that in many policy areas, unless revolutionary change is brought about, you really with one law can only address at most one "class tier," either upper class, middle class, or lower class.

The new health care reform, as Obama himself says, is designed primarily for the middle class. Even for that class, results will ultimately be grossly inferior both economically and health-wise, compared with what everyone gets in reputable countries that have enacted smart combinations of single payer, good regulations on players in the health industry, true cost controls, and generous subsidies for such things as education for doctors and construction of new hospitals.

For the lower class or tier, the new law, that will supposedly require individuals to purchase health insurance, poses the threat of being devastating. Consider the basic facts. A big majority of the uninsured are in the lower third. The cost of health insurance, especially when you don't make the mistake of not including the deductibles, co-pays, and disallowed items, has become completely prohibitive for any single person with an income of less than between $25,000 and $40,000 per year, with the specific level depending on where the person lives.

The US Government does not have the resources to fully or adequately subsidize the many millions who are in this lower range who do not have health insurance. Nor would the Government want to do so if it did have the reources. Simply but accurately put, the amount of money needed to fully or just truly adequately subsidize the purchase of health insurance, by lower tier people, is far in excess of what the US can possibly afford.

We already know the subsidies are going to be inadequate, though it will be interesting if you are a wonk to find out exactly how inadequate they will be. As a result, non-compliance will be very large scale compared with normal expectations of compliance with national laws. It is plausible that we will be seeing non-compliance similar to non-compliance with prohibition, especially considering that the right wing has clearly dug in it's heals against anything associated with Obama.

There will be two levels of non-compliance. First, at least compared with normal non-compliance rates, there will be extremely heavy non-compliance with the mandate to buy health insurance. Second, there will be surprisingly high and plausibly unprecedented taxation non-compliance, specifically with the requirement to pay a tax penalty if the insurance is not purchased.

Be aware though that this "health insurance mandate" has been talked about and then planned for in right of center elite academic and political circles for at least 20 years. The "health reform" you are going to end up with was indeed decided in advance of all the dog and pony shows you are seeing now. The "town hall meetings" could not be more of a meaningless sham than they are.

Elitists working for rich people long ago decided they would prevent the health insurance system from complete collapse, at least for a few decades, by "requiring purchase" of grossly overpriced health insurance. They decided they would use the IRS as a collection agency for Blue Cross and Blue Shield and other large insurance corporations.

And make sure you understand that the elites know right now, in advance, that there will be heavy non-compliance. So they are designing specific aspects to as much as possible force compliance from the non-compliant. For example, there will be people who lose their tax refunds when they try to avoid chipping in to the bloated and failed health insurance racket.

[The above was in response to this article.]