The Unfreeing of American Workers
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Americans love capitalism because it is the best system known to distribute resources. But we need to separate the idea of being pro-capitalism from the idea of being pro-corporate lobbying. They are not always the same.
Keep in mind, you can support some kind of exam and educational requirement while asserting that the scope and scale of ABA requirements represents regulatory capture.
There's also states that have an apprenticeship pathway to the bar, but people seem to think those are pretty onerous too.
Sure, the regulatory capture of the legal market does extend to areas beyond the standard law school market.
As you can probably tell, I do think the ABA does still function effectively as a cartel. In fact, the seemingly paradoxical co-existence of brutally indebted and underemployed law grads and the lack of available and affordable legal services may in fact be a consequence of cartel-like behavior in the legal industry.
If very smart people were allowed to self-study and take the bar, they might be able to offer lower cost legal services, free of the severe debt that accompanies a 3 year JD at UC Irvine, for example.
Honestly, I'm not even sure the quality of lawyers would go down if we eliminated the requirement. Why? Because really smart people who can learn rapidly may be turned off by a program that forces them to go through 3 years at 50k a year, when there are other fields that allow them to learn at a more rapid pace. If the bar exam remained rigorous, allowing smart people to learn at their own pace might actually draw more talented people in, yet in a way that would allow them to keep prices lower. It might also be possible to require some apprenticeship and coursework, but less onerous and with less debt. Keep in mind, regulatory capture can involve expanding reasonable requirements for licensure into unreasonable and onerous ones. Arguing that regulatory capture exists does not commit you to arguing agains any regulation.
I want to be clear this is just a thesis - I'm intrigued by the possibility, and as you can tell, it think there's a good chance it's true, but no, I'm not totally convinced, and it's hard to test - to really know, it would have to happen at scale, with enough time to ramp up, something that could take a generation or more.
http://www.calbar.ca.gov/Admissions/Requirements/Education/L...
But again, do you think that, generally speaking, these edge cases (and notable underemployment among law grads) indicate that the ABA is largely ineffective in restricting supply and increasing costs?
I read his book about lobbying and campaign finance. I don't recall that it did much to point out specific cases where a person or corporation lobbied for the government to create anticompetitive conditions. It might have been a more persuasive book if it had.
> Mega corporates bleeding red until the competition can no longer afford to compete, closes shop and we are left with oligops in most categories.
This is indeed a thing that happens a lot. But it does not mean the government has been used as a tool to suppress competition.
The disturbing trend I see is more and more decision-making power collecting to relatively few people, whose power is enough to change the market environment rather than reacting to it.
Our democratized political environment is far from perfect, but I'll certainly choose that over Communist despotism, and I fear if we don't do something we'll continue our slide to privatized oligarchy/despotism.
But the result of that fear it's a form of corporate totalitarianism. You're free to choose your fate, but the options were dictated ahead of time by those in power, those with wealth. And all of the options will give them more power, more wealth.
The system exists today, sadly, in a form where those with wealth and power are also able to strongly influence culture, beliefs, society. And once you control those, you can control a democracy.
Not everyone who eats unhealthy food dies, nor does not everyone who eats healthy food lives to see 100. But fundamentally looking at other people who have managed to live despite of eating unhealthy food or some combination of these isn't the way to go.
The people who have lived to see 80 despite of eating McDonalds burger everyday, have done that due to a combination of good genetics + some other redeeming qualities. This does not mean that everybody should eat McDonalds or anyone talking about harmful effects of unhealthy food should shut up because clearly there are people enjoying their lives while eating unhealthy food.
Take for instance, an African country trying same socialist policies will not see the same effect as a European country trying them. Same thing goes with Capitalist policies.
Socialism in Russia was very 'Russian', and when they got Capitalism, it's again very 'Russian' in nature. In fact when you go back to Tsar's times, you'd find the same 'Russian' entity about their culture.
Of the few truly socialist ones, the only one I wouldn't consider an outright failed state is China, and that's a can of worms unto itself.
There is a natural order to this world, and those who try to upend it do not fare well.
The natural order is the law of the jungle. The strong eats/exploits the weak. Would you agree that this is the most natural order? I think the whole point of civilization is that we can do better than that.
Let's define socialism as the collective control and ownership of the means of production and their profits, and capitalism as the private ownership of these things. In this case I'm not sure which is intrinsically more "fair". I care deeply about individual freedom and not having some collective telling me how I should live my life. But at the same time I care a lot about social justice and not having the rich and powerful grind the poor for personal profit.
It seems obvious that a good system would be one that strikes the right balance between these conflicting interests. It certainly isn't whatever is most "natural". Nature serves no purpose.
Also, a force we have to contend with is the development of technology. I think it has the consequence that the "right balance" is shifting more towards intervention from the state: due to increasing automation, the capital is getting an ever greater share of profits. At some point the state has to intervene to enable some redistribution of wealth.
> I care deeply about individual freedom and not having some collective telling me how I should live my life
Indeed, you're critiquing an inherent characteristic of socialism, that you even mentioned in your own definition in the first quote. Good so far.
> capitalism as the private ownership of these things
> I care a lot about social justice and not having the rich and powerful grind the poor for personal profit.
... Wait what? Capitalism doesn't prevent social justice and doesn't mean that the rich and powerful grind the poor for personal profit.
This is a textbook false equivalency.
> At some point the state has to intervene to enable some redistribution of wealth.
Not really, in a true capitalist society the producers would know that they need consumers or else they'll lose their income, it's self-correcting. A state is tangential to that.
The reason the USA might or might not be going into a totalitarian oligarchy is because of the state, not in spite of it.
Not surprisingly this seems to occur most commonly where public education is underfunded or nonexistent: you end up with an undereducated electorate putting undereducated people into positions of leadership who then make underinformed decisions.
Sociological, economic, and political issues are multidimensional and must be treated as such.
TL;DR Education is important. Stop electing dumb people.
However, won't educated people in power make informed decisions for their own benefit?
However, I would surmise that a better educated society, having learned how to apply rational thought, would reduce the likelihood of that occurring and/or would minimize the damage when it does (and it would.)
Politics are a horrifically inefficient and error prone way of enriching yourself. To the extent that politicians value money, it's usually about getting elected again, possibly to pursue higher offices where they think they can have more impact.
Our corruption problem is not so much about money for politicians to spend personally, but to spend on further campaigning.
You don't see irony in that statement?
Also, your statement that the "democratized political environment is far from perfect" was the understatement of the century.
There are plenty of cases where it's rational for participants with the necessary resources to participate in some portion of the market to work together to "distort the market." This is why antitrust law is designed not just to target monopolists, but also cartels.
Communism and socialism are very different systems.
Communism includes centralized government control over markets, and pseudo-religions. It falls apart because sane people come to power and realize just how stupid it is.
Socialism, as practiced in some European countries, has free markets. That's a critical difference lost on people who bring up communism in these kind of discussions.
You mean state-capitalism. Communism is where the people, not the government, own the results of production. An example on a much smaller scale, existing inside a different system, would be workers being given shares in the company that they work.
We should replace "free market" with " functioning market". It's pretty clear that a lot of markets are dysfunctional and benefit only a few.
Given that one of the defining characteristics of humanity is that we've been cultivating ecosystems for millenia, it's not that much of a stretch to say we're going to cultivate our own invented ecosystems for the betterment of the system. It's actually a stretch to say -- we're just going to throw all these actors into a system of shared responsibility, and they'll just work it out.
I'd argue they should change in response to challenges by new entrants, unless actually necessary to deliver some actually valuable benefit to the public.
Stopping corporate-driven regulatory change now just locks in the position of whoever got their regulatory capture done early.
If we had real free markets, we would have sound money, we would not have a huge federal government with multi-trillion dollar budgets, the change in your pocket would still be worth something, not that anyone even BOTHERS with change anymore. I can go on and on, but the point is we aren't free and THAT is the problem!!!!
None of us have ever experienced anything remotely free market in our entire lives in the macro sense. Hell, people are even afraid to simply haggle on the price of a new car and we're even fearful of cash money nowadays.
My point is that the people who are shouting "free market" the loudest don't like it when they have to experience it themselves.
Free markets don't experience inflation? A free market-having nuclear global superpower with 300M people wouldn't have huge budgets?
A free market with free money (and not a govt controlled money like today), would experience a natural inflation or deflation. Most likely it would experience a natural deflation (considering it would have gold or silver as the basis of its currency).
But it may be worth switching language to something like your "functioning market" because at this point it will be hard to convince most people that this is what "free market" means.
Well, as far as "distributing resources" goes, Swiss or Nordic capitalism (which Americans would call "socialism") is far better.
Their citizenry doesn't have large swaths living like third world workers / peasants at the mercy of their corporate overlords and sudden illness and such, and that's enough for me.
Norway's approach seems to be a very smart way to handle the oil wealth and atypical of most outcomes. See the phrase "resource curse," natural resource riches like oil typically hurt the economic growth of the nations that should be benefiting from it.
It has been used in various ways, in various contexts, over the years and generations. But at base, it remains a political trope.
In fact, most are scared by the idea of it and actively try to limit the meme. This explains why the US has basically become a prison state and has roughly 4% of the world's population and 33% of the incarcerated inmates, with no serious efforts at reform seeing the light of day.
I suppose given our evolutionary biology, these attitudes aren't surprising, and really represents just another form of tribalism where the ingroup works safe "corporate-drone" jobs and the outgroup don't.
But there could be a chicken or the egg argument as to which step occurred first in the loop (crime vs criminalization), because blacks didn't make up such a large percentage of prisons until the last few decades.
Are you also indicating that slavery enabled rather than caused the current predicaments?
The “War on Drugs” was actually a political tool to crush leftist protesters and black people, a former Nixon White House adviser admitted in a decades-old interview published Tuesday.
John Ehrlichman, who served as President Richard Nixon’s domestic policy chief, laid bare the sinister use of his boss’ controversial policy in a 1994 interview with journalist Dan Baum that the writer revisited in a
When you deprive a group of people equal opportunities over the span of 200 years, you're bound to develop a culture and community which has grown around the notion that one cannot succeed using standard methods.
Regarding fatherless homes, I don't think one can take for granted which way the arrow goes. Is it fatherlessness --> problems or Problems --> fatherlessness? In other words chicken/egg redux.
That could also be attributed to strict drug laws. If we decriminalize drugs, that number will fall dramatically. It may not be as philosophical as "people are scared of [freedom]".
Not so much. Drug charges are common, but sentences are often short. Releasing everyone in state or federal prison solely or chiefly for drug crimes might manage a 14% drop. That's important, definitely, but we would still be #1 globally in incarceration rate.
And worse, that's everyone in on drug charges, up to and including smugglers and major dealers. Some of those people are fine to release, but remember that drug charges are very easy to get convictions with. So some people doing long sentences for dealing are also known murderers, but got convicted of possession/intent conviction because it's easier to prove in court. If we let them out, they'll probably reoffend violently. If we hadn't pressed drug charges initially, they'd have gone to prison for one of their other offenses. (The difficulty of identifying these people is one reason politicians are more opposed to decriminalizing than other people - they don't want to enable Willie Horton ads.)
None of which makes drug decriminalization bad! Our drug laws are ineffective and immoral. But something like cut50 is totally unattainable via drug law.
I'm seeing articles everywhere about it. Some of them are politically slanted against the current administration, but I can't recall any party doing anything about it for some time.
If I look at California and Texas (blue & red), in one it is legally unenforceable and the other it is practically unenforceable.
None of articles about non competes seem to have any details either. It all seems to be a hypothetical. They seem forced and driven by something else (or are they just copying each other).
Just me?
There is also synergy where even a miracle free lawyer none the less requires time off from work. "I need time off on Monday for court, previous employer problem" "Oh OK you're fired take all the time you want".
Finally like many legal agreements they're primarily CYA.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/13/business/noncompete-claus...
The articles seem to be split into two flavors of "sympathy for the worker" or "let's associate this with Trump".
This is a problem that is likely having a detrimental affect on economic growth and innovation, and that could get worse.
Giving the benefit of the doubt as to why this could be more popular:
1. Confirmation bias. You're assuming your observation is correct that it suddenly has blown up relative to past coverage. Maybe you just haven't noticed it. If you search for stories on HN, it's a common topic over the years.
I am more of the view that it has actually increased in popularity over time because of #2.
2. The abuse is becoming more commonplace.
What started getting abused due to hot tech talent markets is now being applied to more job sectors.
If some companies try and successfully abuse noncompetes to reduce turnover or wages, then other companies will follow. It's a tactic destined to snowball until a court case strongly rules against the broad application of NCs, or law is passed prohibiting this abuse.
3. Political issue "consciousness raising" could have some exponential shape. Your inquiry is more of a general interest in political science. There is likely some literature on how this process happens that would provide insight.
- The use of noncompetes in low- and even un-specialized roles has risen a lot. We're hearing about landscapers getting threatened over noncompetes as a way to keep wages low. This is a real change, but over the last ~decade so it doesn't explain the recent spike of articles.
- "Low unemployment, stagnant wages" articles are catching on, and noncompetes are a plausible factor in that.
- A few states have discussed banning noncompetes recently. Chicken and egg, but that would make it timely for news stories. Possibly a few politicians have emphasized this and offered to do interviews?
- Everyone is just borrowing the same story from everyone else.
Noncompete agreements, preventing free competition of labour -- those are free market?
And the answer to these problems is somehow _more_ regulation, and more lock-in arrangements with fixed payments to benefit the usual suspects? Whoa.
Free market _does_ solve many problems. Healthy competition and low barriers of entry is the only way to make things more affordable. However, free market is not a natural state of affairs -- ironically, we need government help to promote it, to create competitive playing field. Unfortunately, this is also not natural, and corruption prevails.
Socialism equals inefficiency. Revolving door crony "capitalism" is indistinguishable from oligarchic socialism. Only competition brings efficiency to complex systems.
Level playing field. but in the us the playing field is never level. Big money companies lobby rigorously to rig the game for their advantage.
Direct democracy (like we have in Switzerland), where most of laws are initiated by the public and voted in (or rejected) on referendums also helps. But it only works with fast enough iterations, where poorly thought laws can be easily repented. However, representative democracy is worse in any way.
It seems that what happens now is the combination of those two. Politicians take money (and campaign donations etc.) more or less in secrecy from private organizations/corporations.
I don't think there's any way for them to represent the people anymore in an unbiased fashion. They just represent the companies where they get their money from.
But is the goverment for the people or for the businesses? In the US for the latter.
Lawrence Lessig suddenly changed his focus from copyright law to corruption after many years. He had an epiphany of sorts - he's been right for decades, but it doesn't matter. Why? Because corporations can openly hand out cash to congress.
So, he focused on corruption, but exactly as you've defined it to be ok. He explicitly said he isn't talking about lobbying behind closed doors. He's talking about the fact that Disney can walk into congress with a pile of cash, completely open about what it wants to do: we're giving you cash so for the first time ever, nothing new will enter the public domain for the next 20 years (or perhaps more, in 20 years, there will be a knock on your door, and we'll be there, with a pile of cash, to make that 40 years instead of 20).[1]
Is it really not corruption if it's in the open? This seems like almost total capitulation to corruption and corporate rule.
[1] probably clear, but I should emphasize, this is what I interpreted Lessig's argument to be. Read his words for his opinion.
What.. How can that be completely reasonable? It might be reasonable if the company isn't allowed to fire her, but as far as I understand it is quite easy to get fired in the US to..
In almost all states, government jobs are hard to be dismissed from after your initial probationary period (typically 1-3 years). Though sometimes getting to an extreme in cities like NYC where it can be so hard to dismiss a teacher, they just box them up in a teacher version of in-school suspension.
In a Right to Work state, you can generally be dismissed very quickly for very little cause, with little recourse.
All US states have at-will employment, which means that if you don't have a union contract, you can be fired for any reason or no reason.
All of them. "Right to work" is a completely different policy question.
Nobody except for union workers and some executives in the United States has what other First World countries consider a binding employment contract. All employment in the USA is by the mercy of the employer.
My current place of employ has you sign a copyright assignment that lasts one year post-termination, and it's not the first place I've seen these in place. I wasn't in a position to turn down the offer at the time, so now I have to figure out a way around it (which probably just consists of "keep my head low and don't be a target").
It bothers me, but with the at-will employment laws, the employers effectively have all the power in the relationship. Working for myself as a contractor has its own set of problems (and doesn't exempt you from problematic copyright assignment clauses). What's an employee to do?
... you understand how socialism is paid for, right?
Should you prefer, you may go and invest elsewhere, assuming the other collective would have you. If non of this suits you, you can move to a truly free place, like Somalia, and build your own medical, justice and defense systems, where you can compete with the other warlords that have done the same.
Perhaps the black Americans sick of Police brutality should leave for Africa? Jews targeted by anti-semitism could always leave for Israel. I don't know what they stick around and complain for. /s
Leaving that part of your argument aside: the rest is a false dichotomy. You present two examples of rights violating societies - mixed-market socialism, and barbarism (feuding warlords) - while ignoring a solution that respects human rights:
Non-competes, for instance, are largely unenforceable in California, and it would be hard to argue that it has hurt the tech economy out here. In fact, the absence of non-competes may be so important that California can make a muck of almost everything else and still beat out other states that enforce non-competes.
Beyond that, I do agree that factors that limit the mobility of the workforce probably do harm the economy. Interestingly, the issues can move from the political left to the political right - mortgages that are underwater, health care, occupational licensing that makes it difficult to move from state to state, visa restrictions that make it difficult to change employers (or, perhaps more importantly, change fields), no-hire collusions like the one between Jobs and Brin, it runs the gamut.
I think that because large corporations and wealthy individuals are often such beneficiaries of capitalism and market economies, people sometimes think of them as being innately "pro-market". The truth is a lot more murky. Wealthy people and corporations will absolutely undermine free markets if it suits their interests, and because they are powerful, they often succeed. Keep in mind, skilled immigration may be something we should expand in the US, but the approach pushed by US tech companies essentially puts their HR departments in charge of who gets to live in the US, and the conditions under which they are allowed to remain. The no-hire collusion between apple, google, and so forth was an unusually brazen and galling abuse of free labor markets.
I'm ok with a fairly activist government where it comes to making sure large corporations can't use their power, especially where it comes to collusion, to undermining labor markets. This is a moral issue to me, but it's an economic one as well - a more free and open labor market will absolutely generate more economic growth.
The thing to me is, it's not a left vs right issue - some of the issues that free workers up appeal tremendously to the left (job protections, health care), others tremendously to the right (at will employment). The problem is that you get strange contradictions (someone who argues that employment should be at-will where it comes to firing people without notice or severance, but that the employee should not be free to change employers to get a higher salary).
Socialism is when the state controls production and _capital_. Setting rules on labor is, in effect, a control on human capital.
I hate the way socialism and capitalism are pitted as a binary choice. That binary choice is a false dichotomy. In reality, they are only binary if every single action of every single person in an entire economy follows the rules (and assuming those rules are perfectly designed to support the official system).
China's foray into capitalism was a group of farmers who quietly made a contract to distribute earnings from their harvest proportionally by yield (which was illegal at the time) -- this was covered by Planet Money, an NPR show. Even deep in the midst of the most socialist time in China's history, they had a streak of capitalism which was later encouraged by the local government.
A Welfare State on the other hand covers the things you mentioned, and has fewer negative connotations. I'm saying this here because the state providing a minimum welfare guarantee to its citizens should be an unquestionably accepted idea, but the confusion with socialism often undermines it.
A related read - http://quillette.com/2016/01/21/socialism-is-worse-than-capi...
I only went with the word 'socialism' because it triggers many. ^^'
I agree that in principle this is a problem that should be addressed, however in practice in my personal experience it's never actually a problem. I've not been CEO/CTO of any company, but I have been team lead and/or considered a 'senior' member of the engineering team. I also have friends who've held those types of positions. Both myself and the aforementioned friends have never had one problem transitioning to a better deal elsewhere despite having signed these non-compete agreement, even in the same industry.
Do others have different (bad) experiences with non-competes in practice? My assertion is that while these agreements might be sometimes enforced/pursued when talent flees, it seems exceedingly unlikely unless the person fleeing under agreement is at the very top of the ladder (meaning that way less than 30M are actually affected/limited, in practice).
edit: Clarified that I DO AGREE that it's a problem in principal.
"The usual poor decision making" is more erratic. Mix up poor education, poor info, weird ideas about causality, etc., and you'll get all sorts of different behavior.
Well planned disinformation, strong persuasive ads, policy that leads to desperation + overly obvious option to get out... These sorts of things would create a lot more focused of a result.
That definition encompasses almost any human interaction. When I politely ask you to pass the salt, I sure hope to lead your behavior. Is this manipulation?
Requiring employers to shop for and provide health insurance is only going to complicate the already complex system and lead to crappier less competitive outcomes.
> ... if the Freedom Caucus gets its way, [bad thing]
> ... few expect the Trump administration to [good thing]
> the Trump administration is [bad thing]
Even in an article about non-competes Krugman can't help but slather on the bias. It amazes me that people still take this man seriously and that his books are so widely used in economics classrooms. Krugman has long since abandoned any hint of objectivity, and thus his conclusions should be considered with a heaping scoop of skepticism.
I didn't even read the rest--the NY Times needs to go out of business if they can't do honest journalism without injecting their anti-Trump agenda into Every. Single. Article.
May you and your extended family continue to enjoy the perfect health with which you have all been blessed.
> It's nice to think we can look out for our nation's most vulnerable people, but what if we can't do that and maintain viable economic growth? What then?
I dunno, take down the statue of liberty I guess?
It's quite clearly an opinion piece.
Imagine their agenda is to post the perfectly ideal set of articles. Success of that agenda would be the perfect outcome for their readers and your statement would still be true.
It seems to work for the whole, entirety of the rest of the developed (and most of the developing) world, because the truth is socialized medicine is cheaper and more efficient.
Further, even if it wasn't cheaper, the value gained from a more efficient allocation of labor (due to the reduced friction from healthcare concerns) more than repays the costs of the healthcare.
I'm getting sick of people advocating inefficient capitalism as a good economic policy -- and that's all you're doing with your weird, social darwinist approach.
But since no one wants either, the pressure usually ends up on doctors. If there is an exodus from the public sector, instead of a slow downgrade, then it will collapse.
edit: the original point is that the US should have a system like the UK - but is the NHS even sustainable?
The problem of rising healthcare costs is a real one, not an artefact of a particular system, and there is no easy fix for it.
However, it's not taking your freedom away -- it's trading one kind of freedom for another: the freedom to not pay for collective welfare for the freedom from your (or your dependent's) health being used coercively during labor negotiations or to extract rents.
On balance, I think that the freedom to have less social responsibility is less useful than the freedom to be healthy regardless of employment status or job transitions, particularly since it saves me money.
I have more money to spend (because of less rent extraction from healthcare) and am freer to pursue my economic goals (because I am less dependent on an employer for my health).
To me, it simply sounds like I'm freer by having socialized medicine.
Assuming you sign a non-compete, whether or not you can work the field for another employer may require you to consult a lawyer which costs you $$$. Your previous employer may try to bully you, or your future employer into terminating your arrangement. While it's true several state have largely neutered non-competes for "Low-wage employees", higher paid professionals still have less freedom.
The ACA is missing a public option and is suffering from insurance markets being actively sabotaged by politicians who want to replace it with their own flavor.
The AHCA only protects you for your pre-existing conditions if you maintain continuous coverage (No gap greater than 63 days in the prior year), something that millions of people experience every year. This also means, during any significant recession, millions will lose insurance.
And until that happens, I let the suckers pay premiums.
Edit: Corrected my misuse of AHCA.
But here's the flaw in your premise, sure your new condition will be covered. But I had gall stones, needed surgery, it couldn't wait long. I had two weeks to get insurance using your strategy, feasible.
Then I had a toe torn off. Surgery that night. There's no opportunity to get insurance, and the cost was (without insurance) probably $10-15k (the hospital, the surgeon, the ambulance). Unless you're calling and getting insurance on the ride in, you're on the hook for a large portion of that, unless you don't value your credit score or lie to them about your name and social.
I actually have whats called "short term insurance". It's only allowed for 6 months, but because of that and because it can set pricing based on pre-existing conditions I get roughly the same benefits of the $1800 ACA package for only $200 a month.
The negative is I have to reapply every 6 months, so there if I get gallstones or my toe torn off, it's fine unless it falls right on the end of the 6 months.
Since all of these policies have $5K deductibles per person, and $10k per family, I"m paying for most of those situations out of pocket anyways. The benefit of the insurance is for really serous expensive problems, which will tend to last until I can get ACA. And that the insurance company will knock down the hospital bill to what they deem acceptable, saving me lots of money there.
There haven't been any plans priced under it as law, so you can't be quoting a meaningful price there.
The likely scenario in the AHCA would be that an uninsured with a preexisting condition would apply for a high risk pool (with who knows what premium) or enjoy the only market plans available, plans regulated in a state convenient for the insurer.
The continuous care incentive mandates a 30% premiun surcharge if you didn't have continuous coverage, and the AHCA also allows states to obtain waivers, for insurance within their state, of the rule prohibiting medical underwriting (price discrimination based on pre-existing condition.)
I assume you've based this conclusion on your extensive experience reading noncompetes from many different verticals in many different markets, and not just what the average tech worker sees.
> The whole "pre-existing" condition FUD is crap, too, since the new healthcare bill doesn't do away with that "protection".
No, it simply makes it impossible to take advantage of any protections by allowing insurance companies to charge any price they deem fit to the most vulnerable patients.
> Americans badly need any replacement that might control costs better.
I don't disagree with you here, but neither does the AHCA. And its glaringly obvious to anyone that knows healthcare policy well that the ACA has plenty of room to be adjusted to correct inadequacies. The "Repeal and Replace" mantra on the far right is just political gamesmanship. If Republicans really cared about free markets, they would have brought to the table measures that helped create an educated market, like pricing transparency and enforcing laws against anticompetitive behavior.
> I should add that I don't think it is fair that un-insurable people push their problems onto the rest of us because all that does is bring everyone down! It's nice to think we can look out for our nation's most vulnerable people, but what if we can't do that and maintain viable economic growth? What then?
Man, I gotta hand it to you, this is some Grade A supertrolling here. In the span of just a few sentences you've managed to combine fear, a begrudged sympathy, and a false dichotomy into what passes for an argument, flimsy though it is.
Maybe read up on the idea of the veil of ignorance[1] for that first point. Had you put it a different way I might agree with you in principle—we should stop talking about healthcare as insurance and start talking about how to provision healthcare for everyone. Its not insurance when everyone is guaranteed to need it at some point in their lives. There's nothing in doing so that demands we limit economic growth—the US is for all intents and purposes the only developed country in the world that fails achieve this.
Remember when Obama said we could keep our existing plans?
Edit: corrected my misuse of AHCA.
I'm not "super trolling" I really want an answer as to why my insurance doubled in the past few years while all I got was a bunch of bs shoved up my ass, which is all I ever get!
"the US is for all intents and purposes the only developed country in the world that fails achieve this"
I disagree with that statement--I don't think you get how bad healthcare is even in Europe. Yes, you can get "free" treatment there, but your taxes run 60%, unemployment is ridiculously high, and the outcomes are no better! Where is the magical answer that socialized medicine provides?
Here's an idea--let's outlaw insurance completely. I look at my monthly budget and between car insurance, homeowner's insurance, health insurance, and two life insurance policies, I'm seeing a pretty good bit of my take home going up in smoke here. It's bullshit--my biggest takeaway in all of this is that insurance is simply bullshit.
"Well then just dont get sick" is a bit of a stupid way of life. Getting sick is rarely optional.
Blue collar workers get injured. Thats just the nature of their jobs. If you work in a coal mine, your lung is fucked up, at some point. If you work in construction, it fucks up your back.
Wishing for medical care to be outlawed is not just a bit retarded.
Even if you're one of those wholly arrogant retards who think that people who "didnt manage to not be blue collar" - someone has to do it. Its conceptually impossible for the entire population to make it big. Even if every indivdual had the "chance" to be a millionaire, not all of them can be.
Insurance is just about the most basic necessity you can think of, to maintain society.
Or you can just solve it with outlawing insurance, forcing everyone who ran a streak of bad luck into crippling debt and then imprisoning them. Thats what they did in the middle ages. We progressed past that for the better.
Ok then, I disagree: a replacement is not needed. What is needed is to amend the original law to address shortcomings.
> I really want an answer as to why my insurance doubled in the past few years while all I got was a bunch of bs shoved up my ass, which is all I ever get!
I won't speak to your particular case because there are too many variables at play between individual markets. One problem is that you don't know what would have happened had the market, such as it was, been left alone in 2008. I know I'd have been screwed several times over in that case—my provider tried to rescind coverage on my 2yo son just after the child provisions took effect, and the ACA prevented that.
Additionally, (and I'm assuming you lean right given your argument) its disingenuous for the GOP and GOP voters to pretend that the ACA is problematic on its merits, when they have been doing everything in their power to ensure it fails for the last 9 years. States that refused the medicaid expansion have only themselves to blame for the substantial number of problems in those states. You can't yell "because FREEDOM" and cut your nose off to spite your face, then complain because you got a nosebleed.
I'm American, and I live in northern Europe. I no longer fear getting hurt and going broke nor the ills of old age. Know why? Taxes pay for health care.
Know where that magical answer is? In the diabetic kids. The elderly not choosing between medicine and food. In anyone that gets in an honest accident. Those that develop mental illness or MS.
And I'm not sure where you get this information about outcomes. Every system has its flaws, but at least this one isn't stealing hope from folks and at least tries to take care of their ills.
Yes, it does, because it allows states to get waivers of that protection.