Idiotic Slogans Abound

The New York Times is now charging a monthly fee for online access, and if they think that I am going to pay $8.75 per week to read such idiotic op-eds as today's “A Slogan, Not A Plan” they have another think coming. It starts off reasonably enough, by saying that Republicans offer no alternative for Obamacare as a solution for health care costs.

They then begin offering their solution with some pure fiction by saying that, “..employer-provided health benefits are untaxed, giving employees an incentive to get the most expensive coverage available through their jobs.” Benefits are untaxed, yes, but “the most expensive coverage available” thing? Have these two gourd-heads been getting insurance through their employers lately? Have they been employers providing insurance? To add to that little piece of insanity, many large employers don’t use insurance money at all, they “self insure.”

Their proposal is a “tax credit for insurance” because everything can be solved with a tax credit and they’ve never heard of the deficit. Nobody is talking about the damned deficit, you know. Jeez. Anyway, they want everyone to be able to “shop around for the cheapest coverage.” Well, the cheapest coverage is the policy that denies payment for everything, but…

Seriously. Your employer is using an HR person who knows what they are doing to select a policy, while these clowns want you to be reading sixty-page documents written in legalese from forty different companies to decide which one is better. Because you have the consumer’s freedom to “shop around,” you know. Wonderful.

The real treasure is what would happen to insurance companies. Boy, would we ever get our revenge on insurance companies. They have had it too good for too long and this would really ruin their day. Are you ready? Here it is, “as more Americans bought their own insurance, consumer pressure would bring down costs for everyone.”

Ha, ha, we’re going to bury those bastards with "consumer pressure."

Wait. What does that even mean? That’s actually a Republican marketing slogan. These two half-wits were excoriating the Republicans for having nothing more than a slogan, and then they offer us nothing but a different slogan, “tax credits and consumer pressure.” Yea team.

They go on with such deep thoughts as admitting that the plan would be "disruptive." Well, duh. They add that, “many young and healthy employees would find cheap policies on the individual market, leaving their colleagues to pay higher premiums,” which they seem to regard as irrelevant. They don’t mention those who would forgo the tax credit by not obtaining insurance at all, leaving the problem of uninsured accident victims in hospitals unaddressed. They then offer several incremental approaches, all of which are even sillier than their original plan.

I have some issues with what Obama and the Democrats passed for “health care reform,” but in comparison with anything that Republicans or dimwits like this have come up with, it is a masterpiece conceived and executed by philanthropic geniuses.