Obamacare Doesn’t

The following has been a footnote to the article “America’s Most Important Import”, posted in 2011.  I decided to expand it a bit and post it as a separate article due to the sudden interest in the subject matter shown by many young American men.  It’s certainly not a complete explanation, of course, but it does help explain some of the “thinking” behind the “Affordable Health Care Act”, which was eventually enacted as the “Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010”.  This law makes some changes to the major legislation enacted a little earlier as the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act”.  Since most members of the Republican Party in Congress were strongly opposed to the new program as finally configured, these two laws (creating a single major program) have since been popularized by political usage under the title “Obamacare”.  Even though both chambers of Congress (Senate and House) are about equally divided between Democrats and Republicans, “Obamacare” managed to become law in 2010 without one single Republican vote in either house.  “Obamacare” is undiluted leftist dogma.

(President Obama and his Democrat Party in Congress were very strong proponents, but it’s impossible for Republicans to argue openly and rationally against the program without being accused of “attacking women”, so their tightly confined voiced opposition, which does not mention women, appears to defy “common sense”.  It’s just another case of politics in America seeming to be designed for lunatics – because so much of the discussion has been censored out before it even begins.  But this case is really huge.)

While there are a few provisions in the program that are beneficial to all Americans, such as requiring all Americans to be insured and enabling them to retain that insurance when moving, the net effect is to benefit some groups at the expense of other groups, i.e., it performs a certain societal “leveling” process under some hypothetical “fairness doctrine” which further reduces personal responsibility and initiative in the interest of more birthright entitlements paid for by “someone else”.  The “someone else”, of course, gets the responsibility for picking up the tab for the rights claimed by the “special” people.  And there is, of course, nothing in the new law that is actually “affordable”; it is designed to very significantly increase the size of the already staggering national debt and thus bankrupt a decidedly un-American America.  In essence, the government is deciding for you which medical needs your health insurance policy must cover, knowing that such coverage will significantly increase the premium cost of most policies, which, in turn, will force you to buy expensive insurance you don’t need, or pay an extra tax to government. Those with low or no incomes will have their premiums subsidized by taxpayers or they will be directed to the no-premium social welfare program Medicaid already funded by taxpayers.  (And despite the government’s spin, the semantic trick for dummies, a “fee” imposed by government is a tax.)

In order to get from there to here required a significant amount of willful deception on the part of government, which censored out the negatives and made the positives sound like they applied to all Americans.  “Free stuff for everyone!”  People who understood basic math also knew that the government’s descriptions were mathematical impossibilities; those descriptions made sense only if you realized that they were addressed solely to very specific groups, mainly that very important voting bloc of young unmarried urban women (18-35) – who always vote very heavily for free stuff from government for “special me” paid for by “someone else”.  (This bloc, whose votes are always for sale to the highest bidder, was also the bloc which voted most overwhelmingly for President Obama, twice.)  The next group is “older” career women between 45 and 65 who are also eager to sell their votes in return for promises of free stuff for “me”.  Everyone else was presumed to be too stupid to figure it all out.  (And, apparently, most were.)  Powerful women like Rep Nancy Pelosi, White House Advisor Valerie Jarrett, Senator Barbara Mikulski, Secretary Kathleen Sibelius and former Secretary Hillary Clinton always speak with broad terms like “the American people”, “middle class families”, “concerned voters”, etc., but when you take a careful look at what they are actually talking about, there is no male anywhere in their “thinking”.  These women, down to the lowest woman bureaucrat, are interested in only one thing: themselves and their own group, i.e., women, and right now, and they are dedicated solely to getting those dumb men to pick up the tab for whatever they want.  Anything else, including the future viability of the nation, never enters their minds.  It’s ALL about “me”.  (And they’ve been doing it so long that they now just assume that men are so stupid and well trained that they’ll simply fall in lock-step behind the nonsense.  And, obviously, they are correct.)

So, the primary purpose of “Obamacare”, like all such government social programs over the past forty years, is, first and foremost, to buy as many women votes as possible – by shifting as much of their costs as possible to “someone else”.  (The next women’s vote-buying campaign will be federally funded pre-school programs, which also shift costs and responsibilities of our “special” people to “someone else”.)

Consider this 2010 scenario:  There sits a 2,500-page bill that is about to sail through Congress on the basis of liberal Democrat majorities in both House and Senate.  No voting Representative or Senator is ever going to take the time to read that monster, but will instead rely on their staff members for any detail stuff that might come up.  Now, all elected Democrat women, and most elected Democratic men, in both houses of Congress have large majorities of women on their staffs, and most of them, as well as many of the President’s powerful advisors in the White House, are all flaming socialist “feminists”.  Now just what is the probability that these women staffers will NOT take advantage of such a situation to slip into that bill all sorts of extra goodies just for “me”, while removing anything they might not like?  With very powerful representatives like Nancy Pelosi and Barbara Mikulski running interference for them, only a moron would estimate such a probability at above 20%.  My guess:  close to zero.  Most of the bill’s language is written with terms that require bureaucrats, mostly women, to later “interpret” its provisions when writing tens of thousands of pages of additional regulations and policies that will also benefit the most important voting blocs, mostly other women.  It’s the way these dependency fanatics run the show by pulling strings in the shadows rather than running for election out in the open with their “me” agenda bared for all to see.  American women have rights; they do not have responsibilities.  That bill would never have become law if it did not have over 85% support of our “special” women.  None of us would ever have heard the end of it if there was anything in there that those socialist “feminists” and their lobbies did not just love.  Knowing full well what was actually going on and what would continue to go on, all the many women’s lobbies have been deafening silent throughout this long process from the very beginning.  It’s small wonder that, despite all the problems since its passage, Pelosi never stops stating that the Act is now “the law of the land”, i.e., locked in stone forever, that women got a Really Big One over on those Really Dumb Men.

Because those who will significantly benefit from the program are a minority, and those adversely impacted are many, it is likely that the program will eventually evolve into a “single-payer” system wherein the government is the sole arbiter and payer of all health care in America under a universal tax system similar to Medicare and Social Security for those over age 65.  This, of course, was the intent of the failed “Hillarycare” program devised in secret by women’s lobbies under considerable suspicion and deception during the 1990s when Mrs. Clinton was the unelected wife of the President.  This time around, however, the grand scheme was developed by committees and lobbies working solely on one side of a closely divided Congress.  The resultant 2,500-page bill was so huge and complex that none of the representatives or senators who voted for it actually read what they were voting for.  As Rep Nancy Pelosi (Dem, California) famously stated, primarily as always to her like-minded sisters, “We have to pass the bill so we can all find out what is in it.”  The image was of a prettily wrapped gift box that only needed to be unwrapped for women to discover all the surprise free goodies it contained just for “me”.  (I saw it as an 8-carat diamond engagement ring offered to women by Big Daddy Government saying, “Marry me”.)  Now the rest of the people are finding out what their elected Democrat representatives in Congress have thrust on them.

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Here’s a little secret for all you dumb American guys out there:  The main purpose of “Obamacare” is really to buy the votes of our super-majority women with free goodies paid for, as always, by “someone else”.  What are the goodies?  The bill is designed just like other entitlement programs that buy the votes of women – Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Prescription Drugs, etc. – to enshrine in law nifty mechanisms that require men to pick up the full costs of their own health care PLUS a very major share of the costs of women.  (See Footnote #1.)  The overall size of that subsidy for women will be at least the same as for the other entitlement programs – at least 35%.  When you add up that 35% from each of those programs, you arrive at a really significant chunk of extra cash that comes out of your paycheck every month, not out of hers.  Women are just as dependent on men as always, but now the dependence is much better hidden behind mandatory government taxes.  It’s all part of our “special” women’s ever evolving definition of “equality” – in which “someone else” has the responsibility parts.  And, in the case of social welfare programs, the legal responsibility of men is to pick up over a third of the costs of women and (this is important) the choices they make.  (Just don’t ever expect to see all those huge subsidies included in any discussion women bring up about “equal pay”; they are compensated much better than you are for the same job – a fact they’d prefer to keep quiet so they can continue to wallow in their “eternal victimhood”.  And, even more egregious, all that extra compensation for women, just like the compensation in the form of platinum health care and pension programs demanded by government employee unions, including for those in the “education” industry, is all tax-free.)

Social Welfare Program

The next thing you have to understand is that you are not buying an insurance policy.  You are being forced to participate in a social welfare program that redistributes costs from high-price people to low-price people, a social welfare program that reallocates costs incurred by the choices some make to those who don’t make such choices.  This is known in radical leftist circles as a “wealth redistribution” mechanism.  (If it were all about covering people with catastrophic costs incurred from major illnesses, such as cancer, Congress could have passed a much more limited program intended solely to assist people who unexpectedly incur such very major costs.) The new program works the redistribution magic by forcing insurance companies to throw out most factors heretofore used in actuarial tables to determine premium rates.  Similar to auto and homeowner’s insurance (which use some different factors), actuarial tables for health insurance use normal birth factors like age and gender, plus directly applicable lifestyle choices such as marital status, children, type of employment, drug use, smoking, obesity, etc., to determine fair and equitable premiums for each so defined sub-group as a consequence of their own elective choices.  (They do this by determining how much it costs insurance companies for each such defined group, and they can do this with extreme precision.  All actuarial table factors applied to a specific person are subject to adjustment with new lifestyle choices; for example, they change dramatically with a legal marriage, when both husband and wife are covered under one policy that addresses medical matters that are likely to develop for each.  Premiums for both parties drop, but then are adjusted for possible pregnancy, and such premium costs are then born by both parties, etc..)

When you buy auto insurance, your age, car and driving record are key factors in setting premium rates.  When you buy homeowner’s insurance, the home’s size, location and formal appraisal are key factors.  Such factors assist insurance companies in estimating the amounts they will have to pay out due to losses typically incurred by each defined group.  To buy health insurance you first fill out a questionnaire similar to the one you fill out during your first visit to a new general practitioner doctor or clinic.  Your responses to the doctor’s questionnaire enable the doctor to evaluate your lifestyle and existing health condition so the doctor can zero in quickly on likely medical problems to examine.  Insurance companies do the same to determine the cost of treating those likely medical problems – according to actuarial tables.

(In very recent times, the study of DNA has led to a quite high degree of predictability for certain medical problems, which is a major reason why so many have been so concerned about keeping such information private and secret.  Knowledge of such existing factors in DNA, on the one hand, would enable a person to seek specific early treatment, but on the other hand, might make an insurer reluctant to offer a policy at a reasonably affordable price.  Knowledge of the existence of such factors in a person, which are usually inherited involuntarily, might also make it difficult for that person to obtain a marriage partner, secure a particular employment position, be entrusted with certain responsibilities, etc..  It also raises ethical questions about a person knowingly passing on undesirable DNA factors to offspring, or knowingly selecting desirable DNA factors through such procedures as in vitro fertilization.  Congress could have also addressed such matters in more confined legislation, but did not.)

DNA notwithstanding, the extensive use of actuarial tables is considered an equitable way to ensure that those who make lifestyle choices that impact their health and medical posture pay premiums for insurance that adequately address the risk of insurance payouts for their subsequent treatment and care.  No one, apparently, has problems applying that principle, for example, to people who smoke versus those who don’t smoke.  Smoking or not smoking is a lifestyle choice.  People who make wise lifestyle choices usually end up paying lower premiums; those who make unwise lifestyle choices usually pay higher premiums.  Costs are shared by everyone in that risk sub-pool of policyholders.  Because policies that cover every possible medical eventuality are very expensive, most people opt to assume a measure of their own risk and decide which coverage they want to buy and not pay for coverage they don’t want.  Underlying it all is the assumption that adult people in a free society naturally assume a measure of personal responsibility for their own health and risk.  But the new system is not about personal responsibility; it’s all about wealth redistribution, about getting “someone else” to pick up the costs of “me” and “my lifestyle choices”.  (Unfortunately, smokers are excluded from this game; they don’t have a lobby.)  And, except for smokers, “me”, according to the “thinking” behind it, is just incredibly stupid and helpless, and therefore unable to decide for themselves which level of risk and responsibility they should assume based on their own health status and lifestyle choices.

Young unmarried women, for example, with no employment career, who are overweight, smoke pot and drink and still make several discrete choices in succession to get pregnant and give birth to a child are assuming a significant degree of risk of expensive medical treatment, not only for themselves, but also for a child that is likely to be born with medical needs well beyond the norm.  Since the risks are very high, with such choices should also come a significant degree of personal responsibility to ensure they purchase health insurance that will meet those likely costs.  But this is very often not the case.  Furthermore, such lifestyle choices are very likely to lead to on-going medical costs for both mother and child well into the future.  Ideally, such choices should be made only after the woman has married a spouse with a good steady job, and the responsible couple is able together to afford the insurance that is appropriate for their family.  But this, too, is often not the case.  The same applies to women who choose to adopt children, including through adoption agencies at foreign orphanages, with already existing severe medical problems.

Now only three factors can influence premiums: age, location and smoking.  Smoking remains the only lifestyle choice allowed in actuarial tables; all other such choices are thrown out.  We also have only one uni-sex organism – something women never accept if there’s a remote possibility they might not benefit.  Prices are the same for everyone, for both genders, regardless of any other factors, who falls within these three groups.  Everyone, except one group, thus gets “someone else” to subsidize their behavior and health status.  The “biggest loser” is the healthy non-smoking young man (18-35) with a good job and an appropriate weight.  (His group has no lobby, so it certainly wouldn’t surprise me if some of these guys are programmers tasked with designing the computer technology needed to implement the massive scheme dreamed up by women and their ideologues in government who didn’t understand where all their demands for “me” would lead or who would have to pay for it all.  See Footnote #2.)  Since the risks of more than minor insurance pay-outs for him are very low, his high premiums will subsidize everyone else, and most especially single unemployed obese women who choose to have children.  This group is the “biggest winner” since the likelihood of enormous insurance payouts for her and her elective children are very high.  “Affordable” health care is just another huge birthright entitlement heaped on our “special” women, right along with all the other entitlements for which they don’t pay their fair share up front.  “It’s your responsibility to ensure and fund any choices I elect to claim as my birthrights.”  It’s just more of American women shifting the consequences, and costs, of their own behavior to “someone else”.

Over 40%, and rising, of American women do not use birth control, and half of all US pregnancies are “unintended.”  Actually, given the ready availability of a wide range of free or inexpensive contraceptives, including abstinence and government welfare, the far more accurate term for most American pregnancies is “deliberately irresponsible choice.”  The sad irony is that abortions, even as they have become legal, inexpensive and safe, are also becoming increasingly rare – as is married child rearing.  Quite obviously, most American women, with all those free choices, with all those rights devoid of responsibility, prefer to marry government for their guaranteed dependency and force everyone else to assume the responsibility for them and their children.  It just makes them feel better about themselves to shift the blame to “absent fathers”.  It’s just the usual “feminist” bullshit; when it’s all about emotional perception, logical truth is irrelevant.

Self-serving “feminists” have absurdly reversed simple truth in their own twisted minds to arrive at an asinine conclusion that anyone who does not submit to their demands for “me” is denying them “rights”.  The truth is that American women have choices, that no one is forcing them to do anything, that no one is denying them anything, that all they have to do is make their damned choices within the options available to everyone, up front, and then accept their own responsibility, and accountability, for their own choices.  I’d really like to leave my home and fly to Paris or Hong Kong or Dubai without being made to feel at every step along the way like a rat in a cage, constantly subjected to a huge number of insulting affronts and indignities from everyone I encounter, from bloated offensive fellow travelers to prying intrusive gestapo officials.  But I know that all that crap is now another price of travel, that people who elect to travel by commercial airline are now essentially cattle, that they are even forced to pay to be treated as cattle, and that I do have the choice of not traveling at all.  Frequently anymore I elect to make that choice and just retain my dignity and humanity in my own home.  I make my choice within the options available to me, the same choice available to everyone else.  Any rational person who is not a “special” American woman can easily come up with dozens of similar examples.  I am a responsible adult, and I accept full accountability for the choices I make.

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Most of the propaganda used to sell “Obamacare” involved very liberal use of key terms like “middle class workers” and “families”.  “Family” is an especially perverse form of propaganda used to garner goodies from government.  It relies on the always-vilified “1950s” popular image of a legally married mother and father hanging in there through thick and thin, mutually sharing respective equitable responsibilities to ensure their three healthy children have a warm, stable and comfortable home through adulthood.  But this iconic image actually applies to less than 25% of American “families” today.  “Feminists” obliterated that icon a half century ago.  Over 75% of “families” in America today are solely defined by whatever women want, for themselves.  Over half the children born in America are born to single women exercising their right of choice, and, no, they are NOT all members of racial minority groups, nor are they all in financial straits.  On the contrary.  Over half of the remaining children are “raised” by women after they have made the choice to get a divorce.  Then there are all those single career women who at middle age electively manufacture or adopt children (mainly as a trophy to place on a cozy shelf).  Because of all the choices women have, and all the rights they claim, less than one in four boys in America can count on a father through age eighteen.  Just who is “raising” all those loser “men” women keep complaining about?  (I complain about those jerks, too, but from whom do they derive their “values”?  They definitely do not get them from men like me.)  Exactly where in the US Constitution does it say that “all men are created equal, but females are created “special””?  When has anyone else ever assumed responsibility for all the stupid choices men make?  What twisted “reasoning” concludes that everyone else must assume responsibility for all the stupid choices women make?  No one is forcing American women to do anything.  Just who is making up all these perverted definitions of “equality”?  Why do women get all the rights, while men get all the responsibilities?  And just where is the incentive for men to continue assuming the responsibility for such self-involved “special” women, especially when such huge numbers of American men have already concluded that it just isn’t worth the effort or the expense?  Who is “teaching” all of us how to think?  Such a “feminist” concept of “society”, serving only the “special” people, is simply unsustainable.  We spend all of our time trying to get government to address the steadily rising epidemic of various symptoms while trying with all our might to ignore the causes.  This country now wastes a majority of its resources just trying to address those symptoms, playing asinine whack-a-mole – which are a direct consequence of the choices women make.  How brilliant is that?  Those symptoms will ultimately destroy us, and no amount of blame-shifting propaganda will ever erase their causes.

And there are many more costs of government assuming the costs of choices made by women.  As in all recent elections, in the 2012 election, , the one group that decided the election with overwhelming majorities was comprised of single young urban women making less than the medium wage (about $52,000), so it’s not at all surprising that this group was the Biggest Winner with “Obamacare”.  Under the new law, a single person earning up to $45,000 is eligible for thousands of dollars in annual taxpayer subsidies to reduce their out-of-pocket premium costs, but a married couple living together can earn up to only $62,000 (not $90,000) and still qualify for those subsidies.  Since there’s a much greater incentive – estimated at over $200,000 over a lifetime – for people to remain single, the new law is, predictably, actually anti-marriage.  As with all social entitlement programs, there’s a much greater incentive for young women to “marry government” instead.  (I am told that the new law could also be the final nail in the coffin of Catholic hospitals, charities, schools, and universities  – a colossal combined societal benefit to all citizens that, in its absence, will increase government costs astronomically.  This concerns me most because Catholic K-12 schools are just about the last place in America where boys can be reasonably assured of a decent basic education equitable to that provided to girls – something that is no longer assured in the nation’s women-dominated public school industry.)

Quite obviously American women would prefer to marry Big Daddy Government than marry men, while still getting all those dumb men to pick up their tab – under penalty of law.  If they do decide to marry some guy, it’s just icing on the cake of getting some dumb man to pay for even more of her lifestyle choices. And, as usual, the guy does not have a choice.  The irony here is that employed men who are young (18-35) and healthy will pay the largest subsidy under “Obamacare”; they’ll take a really big hit even before they get married.  (Guys, they’ll try to play on your “sense of responsibility” to sign up for the mandated policy.  It’s the same tactic they use to get young men to register for the mandated Draft, while they play on young women’s “sense of rights” to voluntarily register to vote.  Men have responsibilities; women have rights.  Get it?  That’s “equality”.)  But, trust me, the policy that you will be required to buy, at a huge premium, will include a lot of coverage that you simply do not need, like gynecological problems, birth control pills, in vitro fertilization, pregnancy tests and care, abortion, pre-natal care, childbirth, post-natal care, lactation treatment, maternity leave, menopause treatment, drug addiction treatment, child social autism care, mental health, etc., plus all those major illnesses that are direct consequence of obesity, and which you won’t need for a very long time, if ever.  These and many similar medical matters are now considered universal policy minimums or “standards”; if your policy does not include all this stuff, at your expense, as if you will actually need and use all such coverage, your policy is now considered “sub-standard”.

(Just to be clear:  If sex leading to pregnancy is not a matter of her free choice, then it’s rape; if it’s not rape, then she has at least five choices that are solely hers before a child is born and accepted for raising, and this is the case regardless of any legal marriage.  Men are held responsible for the choices women make, also regardless of any legal marriage.  If all this was taking place within a legal lasting marriage between a man and a woman, it wouldn’t be as major a problem as it is, but the intent of the new law is to benefit women regardless of marriage, and thus the vast majority of beneficiaries will be single women, marrying government and creating new armies of “single mothers”  – who are already the majority of those “raising” our legions of fatherless loser boys, wringing so much sympathy and expensive assistance out of our society simply due to their own free choices, their own behavior.  It’s just more of the usual asinine “rights” without responsibility crap, of women off-loading onto society a huge portion of their own adult and parental responsibilities.  It’s also extortion, and stupidity.  We already have many tens of millions of women who are single by choice using their children to extort all sorts of free goodies from society, voluntarily and involuntarily, from “someone else” to assist “victim me”.  It’s become a major societal racket, while our boys go down the tubes by the millions.  Rather than make an intelligent effort to reverse such destructive trends in our sick society, the new law actually fosters it.)

But the law is the law.  It’s been rammed down everyone’s throat – by liberal Democrats buying the women’s votes guaranteed by all those powerful women’s lobbies working in the shadows.  ALL policies must now uniformly cover everyone, including very high-cost people.  If your policy does not treat you as a young overweight single woman who is going to make all the choices to get pregnant and have children, then your policy is no longer legal; the insurance company will have no choice except to cancel your policy and offer you a new no choice policy at significantly higher premiums.  This will happen to many tens of millions of health insurance policies.  (You can lower monthly premiums if you are willing to accept much larger out-of-pocket (deductible) costs when you receive medical bills, but those costs can be huge, especially since most people don’t keep $4-8,000 lying around for such contingencies.)  Such “standards” will now apply to all insurance policies, including those offered by companies and government for their employees.  All policies must cover “whatever women want”, for themselves.  So, guys, you’d be smarter to not play their game and simply pay the mandated “fine”; this will save you a lot of wasted money.  It will still benefit women, of course, just not as much.  Either way, men are still going to pick up the tab for a lot of the expensive consequences of the free choices made by our self-involved women.  On the other hand, women are counting on you being even dumber than your father.  After all, that “fine” is just a cheap re-labeling of “tax”, a propaganda trick for dummies.  Politicians even determined that it was more important to get your worker money than it was to get company money, so companies were given a one-year delay before that “fine” mandate kicks in, but you were not.  (You don’t have a lobby.  See ‘Small Business’ below.)

Pre-Existing Conditions

One of the other things that the new law does is ensure that people with “pre-existing conditions” will be able to buy policies at the same rates as those who are healthy.  (Women heretofore preferred to view different premium rates for men and women as a consequence of “discrimination” because it feeds their “eternal victim” delusion, rather than face the harsh reality that premiums are a direct consequence of their own lifestyle choices, their own behavior.  Remember: logic is not required.  Our majority women have rights; they do not have responsibilities.  And, of course, no one dares challenge their view.  Insurance premium rates were always a direct consequence of a group’s own behavior record.)  This “thinking” in the new law requires insurance companies to throw out their actuarial tables and treat everyone as one uni-sex moron who is going to make all sorts of unwise choices.  This has many ramifications, including the fact that many consider just being female as a “pre-existing condition” for costly medical purposes in the US, especially given the way American women regard expensive medical drugs and trips to the doctor for anything that bothers them every other week.  The United States is far and away the “sickest” nation on the planet.

Think about it a moment: Childbirth is humanity’s oldest medical procedure, a procedure for which the female body was specifically designed, the most natural procedure in all of humankind, and for the first 80,000 years of civilization, not until the last 50 years or so, did it ever require more than the assistance of a second human at a cost of zero.  Now in the US, unlike for a billion far less privileged women around the globe, it’s a major campaign requiring a dozen “experts” plus a whole floor of elaborate high tech equipment and drugs at a cost of over $20,000.  Why?  I once had a ranch neighbor who was quite strong, rather attractive, and in very good shape.  With the help of a mid-wife, she gave birth to ten children in her home over a period of about a dozen years.  I never realized she was pregnant until a month or two before birth, and within a couple of weeks afterward she was back out there pitching hay for farm animals.  All of her children were just as healthy as she was.  She said, “What’s the big deal?  Giving birth is the most natural thing there is.  All you have to do is stay fit, and it’s easy.”  Now, I’m not suggesting that any American woman have so many children, but you’d think that having a baby in the US has become a “stations of the cross” ordeal for our “victim” women on the way to their crucifixion.  It’s just another aspect of the “reverse evolution” now afflicting our entire society.  And, of course, the more voluntarily unhealthy women become, through their own lifestyle choices, the more involuntarily unhealthy children they will bear.

Here’s another example:  About 38% of Americans are now classified as obese, which is a precursor to a wide range of other major health problems, including diabetes and heart disease (the nation’s number one killer), and the obesity rate has been rising rapidly, right along with that in the closest competitor in this area – Mexico.  Almost all cases of obesity are a consequence of elective behavior, of lifestyle choices.  Obesity in women also leads to a huge increase in children born with major medical problems, and obese parents are far more likely to “raise” obese children.  (Even their pets are obese!)  Being obese is now a “pre-existing condition”, and the health care costs associated with it are far higher than those associated with, say, smoking.  Unlike the case with smokers, however, no one has yet opted to use exceedingly oppressive tax laws to extort money for other purposes, extremely offensive segregation laws to excoriate violators, or extremely insulting ad campaigns designed to ostracize and criminalize offenders, etc., … to combat obesity, so there is now actually an incentive to be obese.  (It’s apparently more acceptable to be a drug addict than a cigarette smoker, since there has also been no effort for a half century to tap into the mother lode of money available in illegal drug use, either – which is also a precursor to a wide range of major health problems, including mental problems.  This indeed is curious, since people in government are relentless in their pursuit of ways to confiscate other people’s money.)  We demonized, ostracized, criminalized and taxed evil smokers into the far fringes of society, but we will now actually financially reward people for being obese!  Their premiums will now be considerably below what their own behavior would otherwise warrant.  Just what is the financial inducement for people to maintain a healthy weight?  None.  In fact, they will now be penalized with higher premium costs!  It’s the same way men are penalized just for being men, people who work their whole lives at tough jobs pay for those who don’t, etc..  Isn’t that just ingenious?  It’s that dazzling Baby Boomer Brilliance, logic not required.  (As usual, it’s all about rights; responsibility doesn’t enter the picture – unless there’s a way to extort money from “someone else” for “me”.)

The main intent of the new scheme is to enshrine in law the responsibility for “someone else” to pick up the costs of the rights of women to do whatever they want to do (except smoke cigarettes).  Unemployed obese women who do drugs and drink may now have as many fat fatherless children with medical problems as they wish – who will then be supported by other social programs run by women also at taxpayer expense. 

What do healthy young men get?  Zip.  (Except enormously higher premium bills.)  Such men are needed in this grand scheme only to pay the tab, under penalty of law.  (My guess is that a LOT of men, thanks to our dismal schools, will be too stupid to figure it out, and, if they do, they’ll assume it’s just another responsibility they are supposed to assume under the proposition that “all men are equal under the law” (except, of course, our “special” women.)  Men are being denied one of the few choices they have left, so that women can have more choices.

(Concerning smoking and obesity, obviously some things are far more lucrative for easy extortion in the name of “good health” than others; it’s mainly a matter of getting the “afflicted” down to a small minority that can be easily attacked and exploited while also socking it to a legal industry that is small and heavily regulated.  If the afflicted are a very large group and associated with many industries, and, most importantly, with many votes, it’s best to ignore the “good health” angle and leave them all alone so they can bankrupt the nation with their much higher health care costs.  It’s just another case of societal bullying, of that now very familiar “tyranny of the majority” bullshit – to the overall detriment of everyone.  I suspect that an important difference, as with so much else in our society, is that most smokers are men, while most of the obese are women.  The lifestyle choices of men are responsibilities; those of women are rights.  Almost none of all the many billions of dollars in taxes extorted from smokers and the tobacco industry, of course, actually goes to the stated ostensible purpose of “health care”; it goes into state and federal general fund coffers to be spent any way the politicians wish, mainly to buy votes from the “me” and other “special” people.  But while the US Baby Boomers were topping their own record to show the world the biggest examples of official deception and incompetence in American history, Mexico, at least, in an actually adult effort to alter unhealthy citizen behavior leading directly to obesity, diabetes, heart disease, etc., and enormously higher health care costs, in November 2013 placed an 8% tax on fast food, candy, chips, sweets, soda, etc., as a long-overdue first step.  Since many American mothers have become so irresponsible, the US should have done at least the same over twenty years ago, and kept adding to that tax until the desired results were achieved, while also using the same ruthless campaign tactics as those used to fight smoking.  But what are the chances that anyone will propose making the obese as much a pariah as smokers?  Zero.)

You can police smoking everywhere, even in one’s own home, but you can’t police people who gorge themselves and their children to obesity and a dozen major diseases, people of any sexual persuasion who engage in unprotected casual sex leading to STDs, AIDs and unplanned pregnancy, parents whose abject neglect of infants results in socially autistic children.  And, of course, there are many other examples. Illegal drug users and alcoholics have “pre-existing conditions”.  So do the plethora of neurotics raised in unhealthy revolving door “family” environments.  So do those who maintain medicine cabinets packed with wide ranges of potent prescription drugs.  As with most things behind American lobby propaganda, “pre-existing conditions” are in the eye of the beholder.  In America we choose our sucker targets carefully.  To be easily bullied, at a minimum, the targets can’t have effective lobbies, significant votes or independent minds that might present problems.  Smokers, and boys, make very easy targets of hatred, but other groups might object to the tyranny.  Just what twisted mind is doing our “thinking” for us?  Let’s face it: “Obamacare” is mainly about further absolving people, mostly women, of personal responsibility, and accountability, for their own behavior, their own lifestyle decisions, their own choices.

Shift the blame, dodge the bill.  And it gets easier and easier the longer it remains cowardly unchallenged.  The only thing you earn by requiring me to foot the bill for your irresponsible behavior is my very deep and valid resentment, my disgust, my contempt no matter how much propaganda your lobbies generate to change truth into self-serving bullshit.  But then I have the same regard for “men” who are too cowardly to stand up.

Under the new law, “children” can now also remain covered by their parent’s insurance policy until age 26 – a good deal even if the kids are in college where they can get one of those group student policies.  Not that long ago, of course, the 26th year used to be the last year when a man could be drafted for military service; men can still be drafted at age 18.  When I was 26, I had had income earing jobs for twelve years, had paid taxes and insurance premiums for ten years, had been on my own in my own apartment for eight years, had purchased and insured three cars, had paid for and graduated from college, served in the US Army, survived my first war, gotten married, become a widower, and lived in three different countries.  Childhood, at least for men, used to end a LOT earlier than it does today.  (For women, it never ends.)

Another “benefit” of the new health care plan is that it also provides for mental health treatment.  This will provide employment for those millions of otherwise unemployable women with social science degrees to “treat” people who were made that way when they were young by other women.  (Just contemplate the genius of that for a moment.)  This will offer a great opportunity for these women to create even more twisted “men” in their own all-perfect image – at the expense of “someone else”.  (But, even so, this might be better than simply warehousing these broken guys in prisons, and it might even be a few dollars cheaper for the taxpayer.)  Of course, these “social scientists” can also leisurely “treat” all those tens of millions of American women with a thousand different self-made neuroses which they, as “eternal victims”, naturally always blame on men.

The Real Plan

The driving force behind “Obamacare” is the same as that behind the failed “Hillarycare” scheme in the 1990s– “feminists” and the almighty women’s vote.  The idea is to lock in law the requirement for America’s legions of stupid men to pick up the tab for the costs of the choices women make, and most especially to realize the benefits of marriage without the responsibilities of marriage.  (It’s an absolute guarantee that the women’s lobby juggernaut will go into super-overdrive to spin to a sucker public the exact opposite of this truth.  Trust me: they already have waiting on the shelf a hundred petty things about the law for women to whine about, to keep the “eternal victim” myth churning, with a wide range of emotional propaganda (mostly of the ‘anecdotal extrapolation’ variety).  And they’ll also point to things like Viagra, which absurdly must now also be covered.  Don’t fall for it; most Viagra and similar products are purchased by women – so their older trained monkey mates don’t have an excuse for not “performing” on demand.  Just keep a close eye on the silence of the main beneficiaries: young urban women voters and parents of such children – and, of course, their lobbies.)

Eventually enough men and private insurers will conclude that “Obamacare” was always a feint anyway, that the real objective of the Ponzi scheme was to get everyone in the country under one “single-payer insurer” – the socialist government taking care of our majority whiners.  This is because insurance companies will be forced by the law to cancel many millions of existing policies and offer far more expensive policies many millions of people simply will not buy.  This, in turn, will push more and more people into available alternatives – no insurance but tax “penalties” or the burgeoning taxpayer-funded social welfare program Medicaid, the standards for which have been further lowered.  There are some really smart people out there who are convinced that the new system was actually “designed to fail” for this specific purpose, i.e., to get to “Hillarycare” by a different route, one intentionally intended to trick all those dumb American men.  Just ask women “leaders” like Pelosi, Clinton, Sibelius, et al; the only things that have ever mattered to such women are themselves and their own group, at the expense of all those really dumb men out there.  The “special” people, of course, always take care of themselves.

When you require insurance companies to offer only policies that cover a very wide range of medical expenses that the huge majority of responsible people simply don’t need or want, two things are absolutely certain to happen:  (1)  The premium prices of those policies MUST rise dramatically, and/or, (2)  insurance companies will decide that the hassles are just not worth the effort for the slim profit margins (if any) and simply get out of the market for such insurance.  This will result in fewer and fewer insurers competing to keep costs down.  Eventually the costs to the consumer will rise so high that the government will decide to step in and “save the day”, i.e., fix the problem it created and take over everything as the nation’s “single payer” of everything.  Voila!  ‘Hillarycare’!  This will be followed immediately by a really huge increase in taxes on that half of the adult population that actually works and pays taxes.  State and federal taxes will also have to go up to pay for all those people who are now being channeled into the burgeoning cost-free welfare program Medicaid.  In the process, any personal responsibility and accountability that still remains in our society gets tossed on the trash heap.

These people have a plan, a very detailed plan, and they will execute that plan step by step until it’s all a fait accompli.  It will look sloppy, haphazard, accidental, even incompetent, and they will have zero compunction about refusing to provide straight answers to justifiable questions, about censoring out all the inconvenient truths, about making bold-faced lies to the American people at every step along the way.  But, in the end, they WILL succeed, and ‘Hillarycare’ (under the guise of ‘Obamacare’) WILL become the universal single-payer “health care” system throughout the land.  They are counting on everyone being every bit as stupid and helpless as these people fervently believe everyone else is.  And, as with all other social welfare programs in this country, the responsible people will be forced to pay for the people who have only rights.  And THAT is The Plan.  (Until, of course, there are no responsible people left, and inevitably rising costs force ever more government borrowing until the country collapses under the weight of its own astronomical debt.)  Liars, leeches, whiners, other slackers, and poorly educated people who don’t understand simple math, “win”.

Whoever came up with the “Affordable” word in the law’s title was probably the same irony-loving jerk who came up with the “Patriot” Act title – which, because it greatly expands the police powers of the state, is just about as far from the anti-tyranny American patriots as it’s possible to get.  If such a new entitlement health care system follows the examples of Medicare and Social Security, where supposedly adult citizens have for forty years refused to accept simple mathematical realities and make adult adjustments to benefits, age eligibility, premiums, etc., it will totally bankrupt the country well before 2040.  Until then, the end result will also, conveniently for “feminists”, obviate any necessity for marriage between men and women.  Women instead will just marry Big Daddy Government for their guaranteed dependency – and make all the cost-free choices they wish, all paid for by that “someone else” through “more taxes”.  (But they’ll still expect their real dumb daddy to fork over the $40K or more for that white princess dress and the Cinderella wedding – for a fake marriage that will last, oh, maybe as long as a year before she bails and runs back to Big Daddy, along with any kids that resulted, while the sucker husband keeps getting the bills.  That’s “equality”.)

Because the costs of those “free” entitlement programs always continue to climb higher, the rising costs inevitably out-pace the money collected from premiums and fines (taxes), so increasingly the ever growing shortfall has to be met from elsewhere – which means the government has to borrow it via loans, which, in turn, puts our children and grandchildren on the hook for trying to pay our bills.  When you don’t have to consider your responsibilities, it’s easy to keep demanding “free” goodies as more “rights” at the expense of “someone else”, even as such childish demands inexorably send the country into bankruptcy and disintegration.  It’s all about “me”.  “It’s your responsibility to pay for my right to make any lifestyle choices I want to claim as more rights.”  Get it?

Also notice that our privileged politicians and bureaucrats set themselves up with a different and even better health care system – which enjoys subsidized premiums based on realistic and appropriate factors such as age, gender, health status, etc., but is also dependent on money confiscated from “someone else” – those really stupid taxpayers.  (Health care plans now offered by many huge employers like government, major corporations, major industries like “education”, etc., already offer these very expensive uni-sex policies, and those policies have driven up taxes, state and national debt and business costs – all steadily holding down job creation – and will continue to do so.)

Question:  What is the sense in putting women who are arrogant, unassailable and unaccountable, who have a million rights and no sense of responsibility for anything beyond themselves, in charge of a colossal new social welfare program, in which they are the primary beneficiary and which constitutes a full one-sixth of the US economy?  It’s just mass idiocy.  Our nation simply cannot survive a continuation of such asinine “thinking”, of censoring out so very much of the relevant discussion, just to keep buying the votes of self-serving women setting themselves up as an entitled nobility class.

Tip

The smartest guys are those who maintain a separate savings account to use for medical contingencies.  It does require personal discipline, but some young men build such accounts with the premiums they would have otherwise paid for an expensive insurance policy that underwrites the costs of women, while instead paying much lower premiums for a very basic policy.  After the new system goes into effect, just drop the basic policy, pay the fine (tax), and put the savings into your own personal medical savings account.  Those who are able to pay cash for medical treatment of injuries are almost always able to get that treatment at huge cost savings – especially if they are willing to take a little time to shop for deals.  Yes, it is possible to shop for specific medical treatment deals on-line through a number of very good web sites.  Some even facilitate having medical clinics competitively bid on treating a person’s specific injury.  Then it’s a matter of factoring in travel costs, which can mean going across town or to the next US city or to another continent – for treatment that is equal to or better than that available at home.  You can also buy “Accidental Death And Disability” (ADD) policies at reasonable prices that cover many injuries or disabilities resulting from accidents; just be certain to buy the policy from or through a reputable company.

The number of excellent licensed doctors, clinics and hospitals who prefer cash transactions greatly exceeds those who prefer to deal with the gigantic medical insurance and government billing apparatus and all of its enormous hassles and overhead costs, its mountains of petty and obscure codes and rules and regulations and mind-boggling paperwork.  This approach can also be used for routine annual medical check-ups.  Generally such an approach is best for younger and healthier people who are likely to sustain injuries rather than incur illnesses that come with advancing age or pre-existing conditions such as obesity and unmarried pregnancy.  It can be quite beneficial for both individuals and small companies, and some companies, such as those in the construction business, are even willing to pick up the travel costs if it results in an overall cost savings.  There is here a definite element of assuming adult responsibility and paying your own way for your own lifestyle choices.  And there’s nothing like marketplace competition to keep such costs down – something that is never possible wherever Big Daddy Government and women get involved.  Then there’s that certain satisfaction in knowing that the least possible amount of your money is being used to underwrite the costs of hypochondriacs and irresponsible others.  (Just don’t select a woman doctor; to American women, you are automatically “the stupid enemy” just begging to be screwed, stiffed and swindled.)

Also, check out the Doctors On Demand app and HealthTap and AskMD software, the latter developed and used by military doctors.

The Real Problem

Of course, the main problem with health care in the United States is not insurance coverage.  The main problem is its incredibly exorbitant cost.  This is the Mount Everest of waste, fraud, abuse, usury, scams and extortions.  Approximately $2.7 Trillion is spent every year on “health care” in the US.  (How can a huge nation that is marketed as “the greatest” and “most advanced” country on the planet have such a huge portion of its population constantly seeking very expensive medical treatment and care?  A rational person might conclude that the US was a remote region in Sub-Saharan Africa.)  Just running organized rackets against Medicare is many times easier and more lucrative than running illegal drugs, and the amount of taxpayer money lost to fraud in this one program alone every year is astronomical, larger even than the national budgets of many countries.

Until Congress enacts intelligent mechanisms, similar to what most of the rest of the world has done, to reduce the administrative costs of health care; do a far better job of policing waste and fraud; limit the size of medical malpractice awards; require competitive bidding for huge government programs; reduce by at least 50% the incredibly huge number of non-medical “administrative” people living very well off this humongous industry; implement much better procedures for policing and eliminating incompetent or marginal medical practitioners and unsafe clinics and hospitals; adjust tax laws affecting this gigantic industry (including the portion that exists very comfortably and lucratively on university campuses at taxpayer expense); allow insurance companies to compete across state borders and even nationally; and restrict the explosive rise in treatment as well as pharmaceutical, equipment and medical device costs, … NOTHING will EVER solve America’s “health crisis”.  (Without such mechanisms, American citizens end up subsidizing the citizens in the rest of the world, including pampered Europeans (and Canadians), for what their own governments won’t allow the humongous medical industry to change them.  The industry makes up in the US the profits it is denied everywhere else; without that huge imbalance born by Americans, medical prices everywhere else would simply have to rise.)

One of the major reasons for all this is that, as with other industries that get the most government support, including through favorable legislation, well over 80% of those employed in the humongous American “health” industry are women, so women benefit on both ends of the deal.  The ultimate objective is to get all of these employees on the government payroll, and ensure their Big Daddy Government dependence on both the provider and client ends of the sweet equation.  The chief tactic is to buy votes through propaganda that plays on really dumb men.

If women are now able to so easily force others to pick up the costs of their own behavior, perhaps it’s also time to start demanding some higher standards from such women under penalty of law.  One excellent place to start is neglectful practices with their infants that lead directly to social autism, obesity, etc..  Since such neglect becomes enormously costly to society, not to mention the great harm done to such children themselves, maybe it’s time to start removing such children from their homes and charging their mothers with criminal offenses, i.e., make certain responsibilities legally enforceable.  (See Footnote #1 to “Bullies“.)

Congress also needs to come up with a way to control and manage within sensible reason the astronomical costs incurred by normal people when confronted with major illness treatments, such as for cancer.  There HAS to be a better way to handle catastrophic medical costs in the United States of America, business profits be damned.  (Just what has been happening to the hundreds of billions of dollars, from both taxes and charity, that have been flooding into insatiable giant disease industries, such as for that humongous breast cancer scam, for the past half century?)

As an average American citizen, I fear doctors and pharmacists even more than I fear lawyers and bureaucrats, and I fear those last two more than any foreign enemy.  These ravenous people are going to take every last penny they can grab from the ill and dying, and every government “solution” seems devoted to making it possible for them to grab even more.  When you want a cop or a soldier to save your life, even if it costs their own life, you don’t expect his office to send you a million dollar bill for the service, so why should doctors be allowed to do so?  (“Soldiers and doctors – if everyone could do it, we wouldn’t need them.”)  That’s just stupid, especially when they now all specialize in infinitesimally tiny parts of the whole, so that you need a whole squad of “experts” and still end up with almost no one who can play quarterback competently.  And, even more stupid, the guy everyone depends on to play quarterback, the general practitioner (“primary care” physician) is reimbursed the least!  That’s more Baby Boomer Brilliance.  (Another intelligent mechanism would be a steadily rising scale of legally mandated prices – not covered by “someone else” – for people who keep coming back for the same medical problem that is a direct consequence of their own irresponsibility; when the price gets too high, they either alter their behavior or treat themselves – but not on my dime.)

Like every program pushed by “feminists” over the past half century, the net result of the new health care program is the further destruction of the traditional family unit and a plethora of new major and exceedingly expensive social problems afflicting our society – all at exorbitant taxpayer costs, both now and very far into the future.  It’s long past time for some very strong, healthy and intelligent push-back against this self-serving and destructive tyranny, damned their almighty votes.  One excellent way to do that is to require everyone to meet the full costs of their own behavior choices.  There is no “special” in “equal”. 

Women, if you don’t like men, don’t get married, and, for God’s sake, don’t have children!  It’s a bad deal for society and a very bad deal for children.  You have choices; make BETTER choices!  And assume full accountability for your own choices.  In short: Grow up.  This is 2011, not 1811.  Some of us are getting just as really tired of forever suffering under your self-involved misandry as we are under your perpetual childishness.

In sum, guys, “Obamacare” is your classic ‘bait-and-switch’ con game.  Feel suckered?  You should be used to it by now.  You are, after all, the laughingstock of the world.  Hint:  Get yourself a lobby, a big powerful noisy whiny lobby, for your group.  The first step is to finally present a serious challenge to the “thinking” of these women, force them to defend their dogma out in the open in full consideration of all of us.  Show enough spine to take them to court.  These women have been waging war on men for over a half century; it’s long past the time for the few actual men left to play some strong defense – before we all go belly up.  America does not exist to give rise to another despicable birthright entitled nobility class of “special” people.

Until this country holds its women equally responsible, it cannot, will not, survive.

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(Full disclosure:  Although I remain, by design and by luck, in excellent health, am still dependent on no one, and still go in for a routine ten-minute medical check-up every year or two, I am now considered a “senior”.  There has been some speculation out there about the new health care law being designed to get the young to pay for the elderly.  Of course, this might depend on what your definition of ‘elderly’ is; there could be some truth to this if you consider the “elderly” to be women between 45 and 65.  But I seriously doubt this broad view since all Americans over age 65 are already covered by the very long-existing Medicare (and Social Security) government programs – which everyone has been funding for their entire working lives; those programs are not changing and will continue to benefit women far more than men.  And besides, as a responsible adult, I have had a long lifetime to maintain all necessary insurance policies and a healthy cushion to cover out-of-pocket costs while also preparing to cover all of my expenses, including medical expenses, when I eventually reached an age when I could no longer earn a decent income.  One of the reasons I have been able to do this is the fact that, when I was young, I was not required to meet my own costs PLUS pick up far more than my fair share of taxes and insurance premiums to pay for the lifestyle choices of others.  Medicare, for the record, is also the health care system that is available to people who spent their entire working lives in the Regular US military and still managed to survive long enough to reach age 65.  (Even after age 65, they still continue to pay monthly Medicare premiums as well as monthly premiums for a separate dental policy.)  Medicare is the “single-payer” system for ALL Americans over age 65 – which should have been raised at least to “over age 70″ decades ago and continued to climb.  How asinine is it for a society to enable its pampered citizens to spend the last THIRD of their lives in non-productive retirement doing little more than draining the rest of society of its lifeblood – especially when those Baby Boomers in retirement had put so little in place, including enough children, to ease the burden on those behind them who have to pay for it all?)

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Small Business.  I’ve heard that ‘Obamacare’ is also a good deal for “small business”.

In a nation of 320,000,000 citizens, there are 29,500,000 businesses in the US, or, incredibly, one for every 11 people,

but only 7,700,000 (26%) of them have a payroll (employees), and 4,700,000 (61%) of these employ no more than 9 people.  (That means that only 2,950,000 (10%) of total US businesses employ 10 or more people.)

A total of 21,700,000 (74%) of all businesses are “small businesses” that don’t employ anyone (one-person businesses) and have total receipts of less than 3.4% of all US business.  That’s a truly enormous number of businesses producing an incredibly small portion of the nation’s gross domestic product (or actually employing people).

Over 90% of all US businesses employ from 0 to 9 people.  The vast majority of them have no intention of growing and are mostly:  Non-profit organizations, Home-based businesses, On-line businesses, Day care centers, Real Estate agents, Baby-sitters, Home cleaning, Assisted Living, Beauty shops, Catering, Alterations, Self-employed, Independent contractors, …

dominated by women.  (Most of it is just paying someone else to do what a person could probably do better themselves, but just don’t want to be bothered doing it – or as just another cost of having both marriage partners employed and farming stuff out to others, often even paid for by taxpayers or charity.)  Because of long out-dated “thinking” (that small businesses are designed to grow into big businesses), the vast majority of small businesses in America are permanently self-employed people who use a range of tax breaks to support themselves, and nothing more.  Women starting or operating “small businesses” have for decades also enjoyed a range of special government programs and tax breaks to assist them.  This reduces their tax burden even further than it already is.

So, “small business” is just another political code word for at least 25,000,000 “women”  (voters).

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(See “America’s Most Important Import” and “Julia, The 2012 American Woman“, posted separately.)

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(See also “Let’s Change The Rules!” for the way the “thinking” behind this stuff works in other areas, including auto insurance.)

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Footnote # 1.  Analogy.  American public schools no longer teach much math, logic or intelligent reasoning, so I often face obstacles trying to get certain rather basic concepts across to young American men.  So I came up with this little analogy for “subsidy”:

You invite Mary out for dinner, and she insists on going 50-50.  Great!  Fair is fair.  At the restaurant, you each hand the waiter a $20 bill.  Mary orders her dinner, and you say that you’ll have the same.  When dinner comes, Mary is served a sumptuous four-course Maine lobster meal with all the extras on three plates plus dessert.  You are served a two-inch-square White Castle hamburger, no cheese, on a paper plate.  What happened?

The waiter explains:  “I could fill her order only if I used a lot of your money.”

50-50 going IN is not quite 50-50 coming OUT.  Mary made out like a bandit, by using your subsidy.

Hint:  Mary knew all this even before she accepted your dinner invitation, while appearing to be noble to a born sucker.

Lesson:  Next time just ask for separate checks; that way, you each pay your own costs for what you each freely elect to choose for yourself.

(If you and Mary decide to get legally married and share equitable responsibility for both the marriage and any children you both agree to bring into the family, then it is perfectly acceptable to make whatever adjustments to such principles are necessary for the overall benefit of the family, and most especially of the children.  A marriage is a unit of two working as one for the benefit of all, and the most important function of that unit is to properly raise those kids, no matter what that takes, your own personal whines be damned.  It is NOT about “me”; it is about “us”.  The wife and the husband each become equal partners in the relationship – not another dependent child – and share equal rights and equal responsibilities as adults.  This remains so even if, by mutual agreement, the responsibilities are different for each partner.  If both of you are not fully committed to adhere to such concepts and to remain married until any children are grown and gone, then you have no business having children.  Period.)

Footnote #2.  Defying Logic.  The “health care” internet “roll-out” has proven to be the greatest example of governmental incompetence in all of American history, one that has succeeded in making the United States the laughingstock of the world.  Well done.  But doesn’t it strike anyone as a bit odd that those who the government is expecting to fix its thoroughly screwed up internet web site are members of the very group that is screwed most royally by the new health care law?  (One does this sort of stupid thing when one has zero understanding of basic logic.)

Most programmers are single young males in good health with decent jobs who are not obese.  Their insurance premiums for the absolutely minimum coverage the law now allows will at least double, and that coverage must assume that they are single obese young hypochondriac women without decent jobs who are expecting to have illegitimate children.

Does anyone think that these guys are as stupid as people like Nancy Pelosi believe they are?  These guys aren’t stuck in some 1950s delusions about “women” and “family”; they live in the real world, all around them.  Everyone in Congress falls all over themselves to buy as many votes from such women as possible, but some guys still think for themselves.  (Just witness Edward Snowden.)  I love it when Ms Pelosi and her sisters use phrases like “the American people”.  Her definition of “the American people” does not include one single male, and never has.  She is solely concerned with herself and her own group, damned anything else.  Most men these days are too stupid to figure it out, but those programmers live in a world of logic.  Every day the government’s web site is screwed up is a small victory for them.

And some of those programmer guys, of course, have been doing an enormously better job of teaching our young with a few dollars on that internet than the most expensive women-dominated K-12 “education” industry in world history.