{"id":180877,"date":"2016-12-04T20:26:00","date_gmt":"2016-12-05T01:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2016\/12\/04\/yes-6\/"},"modified":"2016-12-04T20:26:00","modified_gmt":"2016-12-05T01:26:00","slug":"yes-6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2016\/12\/04\/yes-6\/","title":{"rendered":"Yes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Over at <i>FT<\/i>, Gillian Tett asks, &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/206b98ec-b74f-11e6-ba85-95d1533d9a62\">Did Obamacare help Trump?<\/a>&#8220;<\/p>\n<p>The answer, of course, is yes, and it did <b><span style=\"font-size: 100%; font-variant: small-caps;\">Even If It Improved Medical Outcomes<\/span><\/b> for one very simple reason:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Or to put it another way, Obamacare is not just a tale about healthcare and costs; <b><span style=\"font-size: 100%; font-variant: small-caps;\">it is also a story of people who feel trapped in a capricious system that they don\u2019t understand, much less control<\/span><\/b>. Little wonder, then, that Trump\u2019s message about empowerment and fixing Obamacare turned out to be so popular this year. Now let\u2019s see if he can deliver.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(<i>emphasis mine<\/i>)<\/p>\n<p>This is typical of incrementalist &#8220;squish&#8221; progressives.<\/p>\n<p>They create a program with overweening bureaucracy with extensive means testing, and create a system that is opaque and abusive to to its recipients.<\/p>\n<p>For them, it&#8217;s a win-win:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>They think that they can sell this to conservatives, because they ensure that all recipients are &#8220;deserving&#8221;.  (Note: this never happens)<\/li>\n<li>They create jobs for the professional class that is the base of the Obama\/Clinton wing of the party.<\/li>\n<li>They create opportunities for private gain, which is an independent good according to their neoliberal worldview, because it will create market driven innovations.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Of course, this makes any of their programs about as pleasant as a trip to the DMV, and convinces the general population that government screws up anything.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Over at FT, Gillian Tett asks, &#8220;Did Obamacare help Trump?&#8220; The answer, of course, is yes, and it did Even If It Improved Medical Outcomes for one very simple reason: Or to put it another way, Obamacare is not just a tale about healthcare and costs; it is also a story of people who feel &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[768,811,882,799,881],"class_list":["post-180877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-fail","tag-healthcare","tag-insurance","tag-politics","tag-public-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180877"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180877"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180877\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}