Reassessing views due to personal experience

[Xing]

I thought a “public option” was good enough when it came to healthcare...

Until I had no choice but a public option, since my job at the time did not provide insurance, and I had to endure going shopping for hospitals, having my previous doctor, dentist, and optometrist suddenly become out of network for me (as well as the majority of clinics.) That made me realize that a public option is hardly an improvement if it isn’t a good option, and private insurance companies will continue squeezing out the market, since clinics will almost always opt to only accept the pricier private insurance, and have the chance to charge fake inflated prices to anyone out of network. I’ve become increasingly convinced that unless many legal protections are put in place for those with a public option, we need to phase out private insurance.

I’ve also became far less sympathetic to the anti-immigration folks, since they almost certainly have no idea what it’s actually like to go through an immigration process, and don’t understand the many problems with our immigration system which make legal immigration a costly, absurdly time-consuming process that incentivizes illegal immigration.

As for issues where I’ve moved “rightward”, I used to be more sympathetic to the woke crowd, until several within my circle argued that “searching for solutions” to racism is actually a racist micro-aggression, because it’s “skipping over the hard work of self-reflection.” Absolutely lost me there.

[Kingpoleon]

The main thing I think I changed my perception on was prior tentative support for single payer or a public option. I didn’t change my mind due to experience, but due to research, and found the HHA the best plan for healthcare yet. Here’s a summary for those unfamiliar:

1. Health Help Agencies, made by government; these approve health plans from private insurers, provide for enrollment in plans, and act as a conduit for premium payments from the federal government to individual insurance carriers
2. Shift from employer provided healthcare; payment would be made via tax withholding by employers; the government would direct such funds to the HHA and then to insurance.
3. Taxpayers given large deduction for healthcare, tied to inflation; those below the poverty line would be eligible for premium assistance.
4. Mandate that employers must now provide salary and wage increase over 2-6 year period, dependent upon company size and profits, within 97.5% essentially to prior healthcare benefits provided.
5. Employers pay a new tax equal to between 3 percent and 26 percent of the national average premium for the minimum benefits package for each employee, depending on their firm size, amount of gross revenues per employee, and (to some extent) amount of profit per employee.
6. Basic plan equal to FEHB Plan.
7. Copper, bronze, silver, and gold plans.
8. Premiums can vary only to reflect geography and smoking status.
9. Individuals can have more expensive (i.e., non-basic) coverage plans paid directly to insurers.
10. Certain individuals would be phased out of the Medicaid program, via participation in their state's HHA.

[Del Tachi]

I thought a “public option” was good enough when it came to healthcare...

Until I had no choice but a public option, since my job at the time did not provide insurance, and I had to endure going shopping for hospitals, having my previous doctor, dentist, and optometrist suddenly become out of network for me (as well as the majority of clinics.) That made me realize that a public option is hardly an improvement if it isn’t a good option, and private insurance companies will continue squeezing out the market, since clinics will almost always opt to only accept the pricier private insurance, and have the chance to charge fake inflated prices to anyone out of network. I’ve become increasingly convinced that unless many legal protections are put in place for those with a public option, we need to phase out private insurance.

The solution to this is to literally have the public option be Medicare as opposed to some new program, since no American healthcare provider can fathom staying afloat without the 65+ crowd.

Splitting up the public sector health insurance market into three separate programs:  Medicare, Medicaid and some new "public option" for everyone else unnecessarily dilutes the power of the government to negotiate competitive prices.

[Damocles]

I must say that my views on various subjects have changed quite dramatically as I got older. When I was a teenager, I had some psychological issues that prevented me from maintaining consistent peace of mind. I experienced the world chiefly as a series of isolated events with no connection to each other, rather than a holistic and unitive world. I thought of ideologies like Venetian masquerades - you’d put on a mask, take it off, put another one on, and so on. It was a convenient, safe, cohesive way of explaining the world when you had little to go on.

I was one of those kids who loved to read and learn new information. I fondly remember going into the back yard with my dad and his friend - a metallurgist who worked for Huntington-Ingalls - and sitting by the chiminea, discussing all sorts of high-minded topics. It was my first introduction to topics like global politics, international trade, economics, treaties, and others - all at the age of seven. I remember reading The Economist at the age of ten or so, and I was engrossed with how big and beautiful the world seemed. Its cheeky sense of humor, easily digestible content, and affordable prices made it quite entertaining.

My dad, originally a political refugee from what was then Czechoslovakia, held strongly conservative libertarian beliefs. It is unsurprising, given the environment and context he was born in, and how his family defected from the Eastern Bloc and came to the United States during the Carter administration. He served in the US Army as an infantryman, and participated in several military operations in Central America. He married my mom, whose family’s presence in Pennsylvania dates back to well before 1776.

I experienced that memetic fracturing and that collapse in identity in my teenage years, as I continually struggled with a notion of perfection being more valuable than development. I hated myself and my life. My relationship with my mom was characterized by laconic and toxic arguments and a sense of feeling unheard, which only contributed to a positive feedback loop that led to further issues. I only recently managed to overcome that narrative, realize that I can in fact do good, and be assured that there is such a thing as growth, development, opportunity, prosperity, and wealth.

I achieved a lot in my short life. I participated in the Scripps National Spelling Bee at the age of twelve, and placed 51st in the entire United States. Together with my older brother, our quiz bowl team managed to place 5th in Pennsylvania, smacking the crap out of elite, big-city, big-money private school teams. I outperformed 98% of the State of Washington on the ACT, without even trying much. In just one year, I earned a varsity letter for track sprinting in high school, routinely outperforming and upsetting peers who had practiced for years.

But, even when I shined in that period, it was because things came too easily to me. I did not have the skills I needed to match my talents with hard work, discipline, attention to detail, and developing coherent understanding. Unsurprisingly, I struggled mightily in university, got distracted, had serious psychological problems, and ultimately left. Now, I drive forklifts. I have done well for myself, gaining valuable experience, building my professional network, making friends, and earning promotions. However, I don’t want to do that for the rest of my life.

I realize now that my parents and grandparents really did want the best for me. I occupy a position of substantial privilege compared to most people in the city I now live in. I am my family’s living, breathing American Dream. I realize that they set me up for success, and now it is my responsibility, and my solemn duty, to realize those aspirations. I am the son of two continents, two countries, and two cultures, but ultimately, one world. If it is not me who does this, or if I shirk those responsibilities, someone else will take up that position - and I might not like what they come up with.

[PSOL]

On a real change of heart, I have just realized that I’ve unfairly chastised most small business owners—aside from cabbies—for years. I’ve criticized their supposed higher insistence on kicking down and kissing up, a psychological phenomena coming straight from the top, but haven’t applied the same standard to wide swathes of the working class who do the same thing. I’ve ignored the struggles faced by them in the light of regulatory capture, while going at them on their own usage of NIMBYism against more artisanal establishments like food trucks. The reality of the matter is that most small businesses have been misguided and confused on their true interests in upholding rather than eliminating the rule of the elite Haute Bourgeois of both Land-and-manufacturing productive varieties and of the financial elites. Yes, they display deep coping and have their senses blocked from reality, but so do many working people themselves. Ignoring them and letting fascists and libertarians take away all of that populist energy is just idiotic.

It took a year for me to realize the diversity within sectors of the wider business sectors, nor divorcing small from productive industries, nor from variations of proletarians utilizing small-scale rentseeking primarily for wealth. From reality we must separate it from unscientific notions of caricatures that don’t work well outside of cheap memes and platitudes that I’m not specialized at. Not all are completely irredeemable to be as anti-change as the worst caricatures, John Dule and the Tiger King himself.

Ironically, it took the Tiger King docuseries to arrive at this refined Marxist hypothesis and truly see the  observations missing from the model. The realization of inter-class competition occurring should have been obvious to any scientific model. Still, it took the unfair practices of the SEC ensuring the stock Market as a Casino only the House and its members, the superstructure of capitalism, to fully see the writing others like the 20th century’s AES realized to utilize and how in the electoral field MAS and SAlt won. The working class is key to put up at the forefront in leadership and composition for change, but as a science, history should have let me know before that reality is complex. Sadly, I was not listening.

In not having the right model, it allows for reactionary and liberal deadended roads confuse and entrap people, and let the wrong lessons be seeped out in the very story Nathan presented. It’s wrong to say that those who do not work (in good faith) get z without building up reality into all of my arguments than idealism.

It will take time to reform this hypothesis and to garner more sophisticated evidence, but right now I must let my thoughts be set loose to reflect on them.