The AMA backed the wacky bill because Obama agreed to drop the threatened $200 Billion cut in Medicare payments in exchange for support on Obamacare.

This agreement may have an expiration date, however.

Jim_M,

I agree there’s nothing wrong with being a good lobbyist. I just find it ironic that you admonished other commenters for name-calling and asked them to engage in actual debate while, at the same time, you offered no actual debate, but instead relied upon calling the AMA and AARP names.

As further irony, you went on to call people who disagree with you “Statists” without analyzing the merits of their arguments.

I guess your idea of debate is to issue grand platitudes like “Allow a free market to compete for each dollar.””

We have a disconnect, obviously. Calling the AMA and AARP liberal lobbyists is not name calling. It may sting some, but certainly not “name calling”. They are what they are. So I fail to make that connection. Sorry. “Grand platitudes” ?? How can making private insurance company’s compete for every dollar be described as something whimsical or platitudinous? Great market solutions are something we make. The State has never produced market solutions, it only consumes. And that will never change. And lastly, whats keeping the leadership in D.C. from just getting this thing done? Their aren’t enough wet noodle Republicans to stop them. What could it possibly be?

I agree there’s nothing wrong with being a good lobbyist. I just find it ironic that you admonished other commenters for name-calling and asked them to engage in actual debate while, at the same time, you offered no actual debate, but instead relied upon calling the AMA and AARP names.

As further irony, you went on to call people who disagree with you “Statists” without analyzing the merits of their arguments.

I guess your idea of debate is to issue grand platitudes like “Allow a free market to compete for each dollar.”

Jim_M wrote: “[The AMA and AARP are] among the largest liberal lobbyist in Washington. . . Why no debate? Why just the name calling? It reveals much.”

Are you suggesting that accusing the AMA and AARP of being the largest liberal lobbying groups is not name-calling, but is actual debate?

Yes. Not a damn thing wrong with being a good lobbyist. It’s a reality whether we like it or not. You don’t believe that the rank and file, in it’s entirety, from these organizations have signed off on ObamaCare? You can bet a months wages that the relatively few individuals who make up the leadership of these groups have. At no time has their been an up or down vote by their membership. Just a thumbs up by those who “represent” membership.

Our representatives have a role to play here, no question. We need portable, affordable heath insurance. Administered much like ummm…automoblie insurance. But your beloved Statists, their pals in the litigation and insurance industry have created this debacle. We need our government to shatter this Cabal. Allow a free market to compete for each dollar.

” There are weird effects, weird incentives. It’s crazy — wacky — to make a military mom drive an hour in DC traffic to get to a doctors appointment, when there are plenty of doctors a few minutes a way who’ll do the work for the same price plus a nominal co-pay. Hour-long drives are not a rational way to keep costs down.”

…………although I did a spell in the military it was an awful long time ago (drafted) and I’ve never used the system since having company plans of one sort and another although I suppose I have some eligibility…..I’m not familiar with the background to introducing a bit more flexibility into the VA system…….I rather doubt Democrats fought in the last ditch to prevent this change and if they did shame on them……it doesn’t alter the fact that in the case you cite the VA is actually playing the classic ’single payer’ function you realize

In any case, what I’m saying is not that Tricare or Medicare or VA or corporate-style plans are bad. Not at all! What I’m saying is they’re wacky, or crazy. The pieces don’t fit together. There are weird effects, weird incentives. It’s crazy — wacky — to make a military mom drive an hour in DC traffic to get to a doctors appointment, when there are plenty of doctors a few minutes a way who’ll do the work for the same price plus a nominal co-pay. Hour-long drives are not a rational way to keep costs down. And it took a Republican congress to stop that nonsense.

…..maybe not allergic but dodging the contradiction perhaps……VA good……socialized medicine bad……I’m not sure I get the allusion to driving apart from you linking me to a google map!….it’s probably going to pass and within a few years it will be part of the wallpaper…..you must have seen those Reagan ads prophesying the commissars were coming when LBJ passed Medicare……now the same people (or their spiritual heirs) are running ads every night telling me the govt is going to gut medicare over pics of the depression, Normandy etc etc. …….as I said in 20 years time the Republicans will be claiming they led the fight to pass universal care for every American over pictures of Palin and Gingrich in wheel chairs.

http://tinyurl.com/yhws8o6

You think you’ll make that drive every time one of your four kids gets a sniffle? For a 9:00 appointment? But that’s how it was until a Republican congress opened it up a bit…

Anyway, if this does pass, I will practice saying “The NHS is safe with us,” and point to the Tricare reforms as an example. All I can do for now.

Are you suggesting that accusing the AMA and AARP of being the largest liberal lobbying groups is not name-calling, but is actual debate?