Thursday, January 2, 2014

AFFORDABLE CARE ACT AND RAW POLITICS

When the American people felt a change in pressure in the area of their back pocket, they swirled and grabbed. What they came up with was the grubby grasping invisible hand of health care insurance companies in the form of Adam Smith picking their pocket. No one can deny that free enterprise failed in the health care industry. Capitalism is great, but uncontrolled, it is a disaster; some refer to it as savage capitalism. Insurance companies are at the current headline-grabbing center of that problem and that problem is ascribable to one political party.

It is common knowledge that there is a political party association to pros and cons of the ACA. For a democrat to deny healthcare for everyone would be inhumane. Republicans say they do not deny health care for people; however if anyone cannot afford it they should not have it. This is where the die-hard Republican denies culpability; if any one cannot afford it, it is their individual responsibility. This is clearly a minority stance and is a partisan stance. However, in a quest for allies in their unpopular stance, Republicans distort the issue. If 1,000 people are saying this and ten of them are Democrats, to a Republican, it is a bipartisan issue. This thought is at the heart of my contention that politics—political behavior—is in our genes.

We are born with greed just as surely as we are born with a hierarchy dominance trait. We deny this because of the pejorative connotation, which makes no sense. Without greed we could not survive; therefore, greed in different degrees of intensity are part of us. We do not intentionally teach our children to be greedy but some of them grow up to be that way. Psychologists say it is because of the environment in which we raise our children but concede that around 30% of political affiliation is genetic. Regardless, from personal experience I believe that Republicans, or conservatives, have a more intense level of greed, which makes it one of many foundational traits of their political beliefs. Physical scientists tend to say this is a falsifiable contention because, unlike a falling apple, the same question asked of a Republican can yield two different answers. Can you find a Republican that is less greedy than a Democrat is, of course?

The old trope that business executives hate regulations is true—bank robber do not like the police. It curtails their greed. Because CEO’s control corporate money, the Republican Party benefits by taking a position that please these administrators; it results in big campaign donations. These classic “benefits from bribery” themes get politicians, or anyone in a position of power, in trouble with those of us who suffer from having our pockets picked. This brings us to the question, “how can a human being vote for a Republican who is stealing their money—picking their pockets?”  Can we say that they vote the way they do because they do not know that is what is happening? Obamacare revealed that millions of insurance policies were below acceptable standards; that is, insurance companies were collecting premiums but not providing what the people think they are buying. Insurance companies can no longer cancel policies when you need them the most. They cannot put caps on the amount of coverage, and many, many other things insurance CEO’s wrote into the law to guarantee excessive profits; in fact, there is a cap on profits. They have to return the excess of premium money minus 20% to the policyholders if they do not spend the money on insurance coverage—wouldn’t you like a guaranteed 20% profit margin on your investments—why such an excessive profit margin? Like greedy little pickpockets working a New Years day crowd in Times Square, Insurance company lobbyists are everywhere. They wrote the legislation. Which begs the question, if you are a Republican, why do you vote for pickpockets?



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