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Yes, John Oliver's Daily Show segment was delightful. For example: > Oliver: > What would you say to the Hawaiians who say 'I have government- > mandated healthcare and I love it'? > > Republican National Committee member: > Do they have government-mandated healthcare here? > > Oliver: > Yes. > > RNC member: > Well I would say that he that pays the piper calls the tune. > > Oliver: > And what would you say to a Hawaiian who says, 'What? That's > meaningless. That's just a bit of folksy nonsense. That doesn't > have any real substance.' > > RNC member: > [pause] I lost my thought. But then there are the facts of the matter. Is there "socialist medicine" in Hawaii? Really now! Hawaii "mandates" that employers purchase private health insurance for employees who work 20 hours per week or longer. (If someone knows the statistics about how many part-time (<20 h/wk) workers there are in Hawaii, please share.) Thus John Oliver is precise and correct: "government-mandated healthcare." Hawaii enacted "government-mandated" private health insurance in 1974. That year Richard Nixon (before he resigned the Presidency) proposed employer mandates as his way to expand health insurance coverage,-- in response to renewed momentum for national health insurance. (It took a long time for Hawaii to implement the reform, thanks to corporate lawsuits that ultimately failed.) http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/17/health/policy/17hawaii.html And the result?? -- Hawaii neither has universal access to care, nor affordable health care -- > Residents of Hawaii Without Health Insurance In 2007-2008 > > More than one out of four people (27.1 percent) in Hawaii under > the age of 65 went without health insurance for all or part of the > two-year period 2007-2008 (see chart). > > Of the 294,000 uninsured residents of Hawaii, two-thirds (66.3 > percent) went without health coverage for six months or longer > during this period. http://www.familiesusa.org/assets/pdfs/americans-at-risk/hawaii.pdf What the Democratic Party proposals in Congress have in common with the Hawaii mandate is government coercion to purchase private health insurance. The delicious ironies of Oliver's piece might lead some people (-- no one on this list of course! --) to conclude that "government-mandated" private health insurance is a good thing. In fact the Hawaiian example shows how far things have sunk. Nixon's idea remains to the left of Obama's. Nixon never could have won support for the "individual mandate" -- a "reform" written by the insurers themselves (and first enacted in Massachusetts with a bipartisan push). This idea (which even Obama opposed as a candidate) is to coerce individuals to purchase private health insurance. It is also worth noting that San Francisco has a rather new city-wide "mandate" insurance law that requires employers (of 20 or more workers) to spend at least $1.31 per hour on health costs. The central labor council there made the crucial difference in winning the reform ... starting in 2008 they achieved Nixon's goal ... how far we have (not) traveled ... http://sfgsa.org/index.aspx?page=418 ... the many cruel, if hilarious, ironies of the crisis ... ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
