RE: So when the GOP replaces the ACA with their own version will it "be the best ...
January 16, 2017 at 11:46 pm
(January 16, 2017 at 1:42 pm)Minimalist Wrote: The sad fact is that among supposedly advanced nations the US is the only one which has not figured out how to deliver medical care to its citizens on a consistent basis. Now this is one of two things. Either we are fucking stupid or the bribes paid by the medical industry to congressmen are sufficient to keep them from worrying that they look stupid.
I think that ideology can make smart people believe demonstrably false ideas. In the USA conservatives have completely ignored demonstrable market failures that apply to health insurance such as adverse selection. This is completely ignored in service to the idea that the free market can solve every problem even though economics itself never makes this claim and the empirical evidence shows otherwise.
Even the bribes you mention are encouraged by the ideological idea that "money is speech" and that "corporations are people". Both silly notions that guarantee the corrosive influence of money in politics and were accepted by very smart people on the supreme court who were only thinking ideologically with no concern for the real world consequences.
The interesting question to me is how did the USA become so immune to pragmatism? Is it the two party system that pushes everyone to extremes? Is it the fact that there appears to be no time limit on elections and you're always campaigning therefore always appealing to ideology?
If god was real he wouldn't need middle men to explain his wants or do his bidding.
