Young Voters Cool on Obama

The ones that do go to the polls are still going to vote for Obama.

“this represents an opening for Mitt Romney, but taking advantage of it will require a certain finesse. Consider, for example, the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the Affordable Care Act: one of the law’s most popular provisions is the ability for young adults under the age of 26 to remain on their parents’ health insurance plans. It is worth watching how the Romney campaign balances the commitment to repeal Obamacare “on Day One” while ensuring that young people are not priced out of the market for health insurance”

Finesse? Nah. Young people are smart. They know the difference between RobamaCare and ObamneyCare. One’s good, the other’s evil and tyrannical. The name alone tells you all you need to know.

Now, middle-aged and pre-retirement Americans facing personal and family ruin on account of being denied insurance because, well, you know, it’s the American way to let insurers capriciously apply their own definitions of a “pre-existing condition” – well, that’s a different ball of wax. A little harder for the Flip-meister to finesse that audience.

And they vote:

Voter participation rates for the under-30 population in recent presidential races tops out at about 42%.

Voter participation rates for the population aged 50-64 is almost 70%.

Even at 12% that leaves 88% working.At those levels there is a large base for O to extract a victory from in the fall.Same for the general populace,at 11% that leaves 89% of the work force humming along as if nothing went wrong in 08 and THAT will decide the fates come November.Who is most unhappy and willing to change the linup hoping for a better season next year.

The college students at my college (where I work) know that the President tried to double their student loan interest rate, and resisted Republican attempts to bring it back in line. I kept the press release from the US Department of Education that explained the financial aid program changes that were based on and mandated by the President’s budget. I’ve got proof.

If they are on their parent’s plan, they should be denied the vote. Adults are responsible for themselves. I know its a hard concept for progressives to understand, but insurance is predicated on excluding or limiting known events that are occurring. You don’t expect your homeowners policy to cover a fire if you purchase a policy while the fire is occurring. So thanks to the liarcratic party 85% of the population has to be [profanity removed] to enable 15% to acquire a health care payment system for something they should be paying for themselves. And seniors are going to find out how $500 billion cut from Medicare is going to impact them, that money being used to finance in part liarcare. Its arrogance of the highest order to expect other people to forced to become indentured servants in order to subsidize irresponsible adults. It would be a lot cheaper to simply enroll those that are not covered in an HMO. And as for the pre-existing conditions, those people can be put on medicaid for treatment of those conditions and the rest can be covered by their health plan or pay out of pocket. The assumption that individuals are incapable of deciding what is best for them is offensive.

Have the kids finally figured out that the “freeloaders” that the Democrat spokemen are talking about are in fact the under 30′s who don’t need health insurance?

The insureres want to mine these little left leaning darlings for all the cash they can, ecause that demographic will have little or no cause to go see a medical practitioner before they reach 30 and the money the insurance companies get from them is all gravy.

If they don’t get insurance, on top of their loans, they get taxed.

Perfect.

thibaud@11:

Clear as mud. Your preferred health-care solution is simple, but I still can’t figure out your reasoning. Let’s try the following question (and I’m not going for a debate, simply trying to understand you): assuming that health-care insurers suddenly found Jesus (ie greatly reduced administrative overhead and limited their avarice), do you think that they could have what you would consider a reasonable “pre-existing conditions” policy while still earning a small profit?

Kris – read this book:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Healing-America-Global-Cheaper/dp/B004TE6AFW

A good review of it’s here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R1T12UOVDLO80T/ref=cm_cr_dp_cmt?ie=UTF8&ASIN=1594202346&nodeID=283155&store=books#wasThisHelpful

The bottom line here is that our private insurers are set up to generate healthy profits and handsome returns to shareholders (as well as to bandits like the United Health CEO, and the sadsack ex-pols on the make like Donna Shalala who as a director approved the United Health pay package).

It’s precisely that maniacal emphasis on preserving the insurers’ profits that poisons our system.

Only in the US are the wishes and profits of the private insurance sector allowed to trump all other considerations. Private insurance is a robust sector in France, but it’s a _non-profit_ sector. Private insurance is also robust in Germany and Holland, but rates are tightly regulated.

An interesting, not altogether sympathetic to my cause, discussion is linked below, with reference to intelligent pieces by Jake Weisberg and James Fallows (you’ll have to google their articles yourself, sorry).

http://seriousmedicinestrategy.blogspot.com/2009/08/jake-weisberg-and-serious-medicine.html

This right-of-center author makes a distinction between what he calls “Serious Medicine” and “Routine Medicine”. The former, aka “gold-plated medicine, is the really expensive advanced stuff. America does this very well. The latter is the basic stuff, which we do well enough but can’t figure out how to deliver to everyone. Other countries ALL do routine medicine well, and most do serious medicine well.

“The dismal reality of governing under trying economic conditions has sapped that enthusiasm.”

Correction: The dismal reality of governing like a 24 carat idiot under trying economic conditions has sapped that enthusiasm.

So some young people are finally wising up. About time. Obama is currently spending a completely bloated, and unprecedentedly high 25% of GDP, with no plans at all to reduce it. By contrast, the ryan plan will reduce spending to a much more manageable 20% of gdp. Maybe these young people are finally wising up, and realizing that when the bill comes due, and the gov goes broke, in about 20-30 yrs, us old people will be dead, and they will be the ones that get stuck with that bill. Anybody who is under 30 yrs old, and still votes for Obama, has a death wish.

Jim, it’s our system that leads to uncontrollable public debt.

We spend twice as much per capita on healthcare for results that are with few exceptions not better than the results obtained in advanced countries that have universal healthcare.

Actuarial realities and increasing longevity are challenges that all the advanced democracies face, but the reality is the opposite of what most Americans think: universal health care topped up by private insurance is far more efficient than our botchjob.

Doc, I detect a labored attempt to [unnecessary jibe deleted).

Try, doc, TRY.

thibaud,

So you favor slavery to finance medical care?

How liberal.

Just to make it clear – taxation is a form of forced labor. Otherwise known as slavery. How like a Copperhead.

Oddly enough – or not, given the massive amount of cynicism and disinformation at work here – the GOP leadership has repeatedly called for higher taxes on employers who provide health insurance!

Like the ACA, the proposals of first Bush in 2007, then McCain in 2008, and now Romney ALL favor imposing limits on the ability of employers to deduct insurance premium expenses.

In other words, the GOP like Obama favors TAX INCREASES to fund their version of health insurance reform.

Oops.

For more details, here’s a clear, well-researched summary by one of those “legacy media” scribes that VM despises:

Excerpt:

“[the ACA includes] a tax on unusually expensive, employer-provided health insurance plans. It begins at $10,200 for an individual plan and $27,500 for a family plan. Above that, there’s a 40 percent tax on the excess premiums. So if your plan is valued at $11,200, your employer will pay a 40 percent tax on the $1,000 surplus.
Over time, the thresholds will rise more slowly than health-care costs, which means the tax grows bigger. But the idea behind the tax isn’t to raise money: It’s to change behavior. The hope is that it will pressure employers and workers to choose less-expensive plans. If it works, additional tax revenue will be generated less by so-called “Cadillac” plans subject to the excise tax than by employers delivering more of their workers’ compensation in the form of taxable wages and less in the form of expensive health-care benefits.

“This is actually an attempt to address a core Republican concern: The tax break for employer-provided health insurance, which Republicans believe encourages employers to spend too much on health care while also making it impossible for a health-care system not based on employers to emerge.

“Republican Ideas

“Don’t believe me when I say that’s high on the Republican agenda? In 2007, President George W. Bush announced the only major health-care initiative of his eight years in office other than the 2003 Medicare prescription drug bill. The policy, which went nowhere, sought to “level the playing field for those who do not get health insurance through their job” by ending the unlimited tax break for employer-based insurance in favor of a $15,000 tax deduction for families and a $7,500 tax deduction for individuals to purchase health insurance.

“In 2008, Republican presidential candidate John McCain offered a similar plan: He proposed ending the unlimited employer deduction and instead giving every family a $5,000 tax credit and every individual a $2,500 tax credit.

“This year, Mitt Romney’s health-care proposal — although it’s so vague it hardly merits the term — gestures toward the same idea: His website says he will “end tax discrimination against the individual purchase of insurance.”

“All of these proposals, including the Affordable Care Act’s excise tax, work in fundamentally the same way, by imposing limits on what is now an unlimited deduction for employer- provided health insurance, thereby encouraging employers to offer cheaper health plans and provide more compensation to workers in the form of taxable wages….”

/end excerpt

There are few issues in the US today that trigger more mendacity, bad faith and scurrilous politicking than health insurance reform.

Only when we start demanding honesty from our political class, and show them that we will not be demagogued by their hypocritical, foolish lies and scare-mongering about taxes, will we start to fix this horrific multi-trillion dollar mess that we’re saddled with.