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Comment by PixelJ | Hacker News Reader

Answer: Hell yes. Self-insurance is absurdly expensive while group insurance outside of an employer or credit union is harder to find than a Republican with a conscience.

The lie that "Obama-Care kills small businesses and/or jobs" is a smokescreen for the truth: Healthcare reform would free employees from indentured health care servitude and allow small businesses to hire more competitively, creating more jobs.

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The "Republican with a conscience" line is unfair. Life would be a lot easier if all the sociopaths in the world were on one side, and all the conscientious people on the other. But it's not like that.

Granted, sorry. The problem I have with Republican rhetoric on the issue is the "I got mine" smugness of it all. The message seems to be "If you want health care, get a job like me. Problem solved." But it isn't that simple. Unemployment is real even for the able-bodied and a common consequence of being underinsured. Some jobs don't offer health care (at all) or offer inadequate, unaffordable health care (small businesses, in my experience.) Preexisting conditions can lock hard-working people out or keep them from seeking optimum employment.

I'd love to hear from even one anti-healthcare reform advocate who has ever been "outside the system" (as outlined above) and thinks that's a principled position to take.

This comment is, unfortunately, an illustration of how sites go downhill. It has 19 downvotes, including mine. So how does it have so many points? Because it has twice as many upvotes.

When badness arrives in online communities, it arrives first in forms that make people invite it right in.

It's also an illustration of what stops them from going downhill. Replies like neilk's do more to tone down the rhetoric than any voting button could do.

Is there currently a way on HN to see upvotes alongside downvotes? If not, it seems like a worthy enhancement to me.

You're right that employer-based health insurance is idiotic and economically destructive (conservative and libertarian analysts have been saying so for decades), but your blatant partisanship is not helpful. In 2008 John McCain's platform included a migration away from employer coverage by treating benefits as taxable income, while simultaneously granting a refundable tax credit for the purchase of individual insurance. Obama and the Democrats instantly demagogued that as "taking away your existing coverage" and defended the employer-based system.

Let's please not have political discussions on HN.

> Let's please not have political discussions on HN.

It's interesting that you chose to respond to the person who demonstrated "dems good, republicans bad" was wrong instead of the person who just asserted "dems good, republicans bad".

I got here after both people posted. I posted below both people to indicate that I wanted the convo thread killed. I downvoted both people.

Okay, I know hating on Republicans is fun, but is that really necessary? Why sow the seeds of discord?

Moreover, this discussion is not helpful nor germane to the topic at hand.

This is precisely why I loathe the political articles so much.

For instance, if I'm not mistaken, patio11, who is a great contributor here, has declared his Republicanness (sorry if that's not accurate), something I'm more or less opposed to in its current form in the US. I might find it fun to chat with him about that in person, but I do not want to get into political discussions with him here. First of all, because he has way more valuable ways to contribute his time in terms of discussing his startup, tech or whatever, and because... why introduce discord about a subject that's off-topic here.

I guess this article is closer to on-topic in that it certainly is pertinent to new startups in the US... but look where it got us already.

Please take the vitriol to /r/politics. This is HN. We shall remain civilized.

The Republicans have been trying to kill employer based health care forever... it's the unions responsible for it.

But they don't want to replace it with anything other than everyone buys their insurance on the open market if they want coverage, which is why unions are against it. If they wanted to move to a full coverage system (single payer?), unions would be happy because everyone has healthcare.

No, they wouldn't be happy with that... they would get waivers from the single payer system... just like 650 of the 773 ObamaCare waivers currently go to unions.

This list does indeed appear to be a veritable who's who of the president's campaign supporters. Seems hypocritical to me. If it's good enough for the rest of us, it should be good enough for them too.

http://www.hhs.gov/ociio/regulations/approved_applications_f...

Were there opponents of the current administration who applied for waivers and were turned down, even though they had exactly the same circumstances as supporters who got their waiver applications approved?

I don't think unions would be necessarily happy with single payer- I wouldn't be surprised to see most (non-public sector, at least) unions cease to exist before long if single payer becomes a reality. Negotiation of benefits is one of the few valuable roles unions play these days, outside of political lobbying for the assumed goals of their constituents. Which is arguably part of the problem.

> If they wanted to move to a full coverage system (single payer?), unions would be happy because everyone has healthcare.

Citation needed.

Yes, the health care employers unions have expressed considerable interest in measures that would increase the demand for their members' services, but you're making a very different claim.

> Citation needed.

Here's a good start:

http://unionsforsinglepayerhr676.org/union_endorsers

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