The bill is a huge loss of personal freedom. It is a cost sinkhole. It will not improve health care delivery, reduce costs, or improve the quality of care. It will pad the bottom lines of insurance companies, delivering by force 33 million new customers. For those who cannot afford to pay tribute, the government will do so on their behalf. It is a massive subsidy to our least deserving sector.
But Democrats are all over it, and sadly so are my own children wildly cheering today. I, among all people I know, recognize the depth of perception management in this country, but even I did not realize how sunk we are in this awful propaganda system. I use the number 1 in 500 to guess at the number of people who can break free, and have no shame here in boasting that I am one of 500, in my own estimation. But I have to live among 499 others, and it is indeed very hard.
This is not a new phenomenon, by the way. Napoleon observed that most men in his time did not want to be free. That quality was reserved to a few of “noble mind.”
At the turn of the twentieth century, leadership had decided for nefarious reasons that the US needed to enter the latest European war on the side of Great Britain and France. There was no need, no moral imperative. The British and French were as much villains as victims. They were just having another one of their ongoing wars, as that was one bloody violent place to live. Arab culture is saintly by comparison.
A commission was set up, the Committee on Public Information, or Creel Committee, to persuade the population to enter the war. One member was Edward Bernays, a nephew of Sigmund Freud, and for the first time mass media and symbols were used, not to persuade, but to undermine public opinion.
The results were stunning – riots, jail time for people of Germanic descent, book burning, a major presidential candidate running from his jail cell. A school was burned down in Lewistown, Montana. Montana! The US entered the war, thousands of men were slaughtered, Great Britain and France prevailed, and the stage was set for the Second War.
What if Germany had prevailed? Who knows. Nothing could have been worse than what we got, however.
Bernays went into advertising after that, realizing the power of the new tools that had been discovered. He would later use these tools to successfully encourage women to smoke cigarettes. He wrote a book called “Propaganda”, which was really only about advertising, but the word was not tainted in those days. I cite a passage therefrom:
The systematic study of mass psychology revealed to students the potentialities of invisible manipulation of motives which actuate man in the group. Trotter and Le Bon, who approached the subject in a scientific manner, and Graham Wallas, Walter Lippmann, and others who continued with searching study of the group mind, established that the group has mental characteristics distinct from those of the individual, and is motivated by impulses and emotions which cannot be explained on the basis of what we know of individual psychology. So the question naturally arose: If we understood the mechanism and motives of the group mind, is it not possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it?…
No serious sociologist any longer believes that the voice of the people expresses any divine or specially wise and lofty idea. The voice of the people expresses the mind of the people, and that mind is made up for it by group leaders in who it believes and by those persons who understand the manipulation of public opinion. It is composed of inherited prejudices and symbols and clichés and verbal formulas supplied to them by the leaders.
I quote a close loved one:
And all of us Roberts-bashers are suddenly saying “I always liked that guy.”
[sigh]
I don’t know the future, but for myself I intend to disobey the law on principle. I will not be subject to private tyranny. If forced to pay a fine, I’ll have no choice. If Obama wins in November, I might be thrown in jail (assassinated?) for defiance. If I have opportunity to leave this crazy country, I will do so. Hard to imagine that other countries, even poor ones, have better health care systems.
Try telling a Democrat that. They are, after all, one of our biggest problems, right after climate change.
Piece of Mindful 
I’m honored to be quoted on your blog, even if it is to call me out as an imbecile. For the record, I care deeply about this issue; I approach it thoughtfully; I am horribly conflicted on the ACA; and jokes I make on Facebook shouldn’t be interpreted as your daughter moronically following the herd over the cliff.
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This is the problem I encounter no end, the insult factor. People are individually smart. You are very smart – I’ve long vewied you as smarter than me and have relied on your wisdom. That is not a polishing comment. But groups are not so smart. Group behavior is the key, the magic that Bernays discovered.
I’ve thought about this quite a bit, why groups exhibit different characteristics than individuals, and have come to think it is because every group has within it authoritarians who patrol the boundaries. The primary tool they use to keep
grousegroups in line is authority, followed by ostracism and ridicule.So your behavior is not a matter of your cerebral capacity, but rather just group membership. For most of my life, I adhered to groups and drew my opinions from them. The change that happened to me was self-employment at age 36. I did not plan to change my attitudes and beliefs, but no longer constrained by boss/employee and a Republican work place, i just naturally grew out of it.
The group that is dominating you right now, as I view it anyway, is the Democratic Party. Tell me I’m wrong, but that is a forceful operation in charge of perceptions of millions of people [and] with bold leaders. They affect us individually.
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You are going to disobey the law on principal? Does that go for medicare too? How would this law be a restriction on your freedom but not medicare (or any single payer)
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Government programs are better run, for one thing. I don’t feel coercion there – like just about everyone, I breathe a sigh of relief when I am eligible for Medicare and can kiss the private cartels good bye.
I am not forced to be in Medicare, but rather only eligible for it if I so choose. Private insurers have abandoned us by that time anyway, most everyone opts in. (There would have been no need for Medicare if private insurers saw the elderly as a potential profit center).
I am now forced to buy a substandard* product from a private for-profit corporation. No way.
*Do you know what they call “gold plated” coverage in other countries? “Basic coverage.”
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Where in the tax code does it allow a salaried employee like me to legally opt out of paying Medicare payroll taxes on my taxable income every two weeks?
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I pay it I full as a self-employed person. That’s the deal with taxes. I’d like to opt out of obama’s wars, but I have to pay anyway. At least Medicare isn’t killing people. But Medicare not for profit,, runs very efficiently, so given that choice and private corporations, I’ll take the former.
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First of all, I would like to point out that this isn’t a black and white deal. Just because I’m happy it wasn’t overturned doesn’t mean that I’m 100% in favor of the bill or the way it was implemented. It doesn’t mean I’m a cheerleading Obamabot. Not that I could convince you.
But, leaving aside the individual mandate, which parts of the bill are the most tyrannical? Is it:
1. Allowing parents to keep their children on their insurance plans until they are 26. (Insurance companies hate this)
2. The expansion of Medicaid eligibility to lower-middle class earners. (Insurance companies aren’t a huge fan of Medicaid either)
3. Cutting $500 Billion from Medicare Advantage over the next 10 years, as it was just a giant subsidy for the Insurance industry. (They do love their free money)
4. The fact that the tax imposed for failing to purchase insurance is around $700 – far too low to even really be effective in covering everyone else. In other words, there’s a big question as to whether or not the “mandate” will even work.
5. The requirement that insurance companies spend 80 to 85 percent of their premiums on medical care – instead of “overhead” costs such as Administration or advertising (they REALLY hate that one).
6. The creation of the Medicare Advisory Board, designed to hold the cost of Medicare to Inflation +1%, making sure that it does not grow to the point where it eats up an increasingly large and unsustainable percentage of Federal outlays.
You knew about all of that stuff, right? Because for having such sharp criticism of the bill and accusing everyone who didn’t want it overturned as being idiot pawns, you sure don’t actually seem to go into detail about what’s actually in it.
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Yeah, I knew about that stuff. It is all part of the (small) price that insurers were willing to pay for a permanent captive market worth hundred of billions of dollars in forced premiums and subsidies.
Point by point: Insurance till age 26 is factored into premiums. No additional cost to insurers. haven’t heard that hey hate it.
Expansion of Medicaid was of no concern, as poor people have never been clients of health care companies and never would be. the sick and the poor have always been a concern of private insurers – how to avoid them, that is. in the past, they dumped them on government or hung them out to dry. This time, thank god, they only dumped them on government.
Medicare Advantage cut was one thing they did indeed give up. But the MA base was taken from the Medicare Supplement market, and is now restored to that market. Medicare supplements are a huge profit center for the cartels. MA was more so. This indeed appears to me to be the only thing they gave up.
The current tax is $700, a mere teaser rate. If it’s not effective, you can bet they will raise it.
Wall Street watches medical loss payout very closely. Investors get worried when it exceeds 80%. Back in the early 1990’s, before the cartels moved in, it was in the 90-95% range. There was talk of lifting it to 85%, but it was left at 80% right where it was, as I understand. And never forget that these companies have accountants and will figure a way anyway. That was perception management – tough old Obama forced them to stay right where they were at anyway.
Finally, Medicare cost controls, but none on private sector? You do know the Medicare works within the private sector, so that imposing cost controls there but not on the private sector is just another way of squeezing Medicare?
I’ve been writing about health care for six years now, and am pretty familiar with the problems. I’ve also been writing about perception management during that time. I can’t talk about the latter without getting to the insult game, as if. Should I pretend that everyone is forming their own opinions independent of groups and leaders? You’re big on self-awareness. Have at it.
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A couple of things, in order of most-wrong to least-wrong:
1. Insurance companies spend 31% of every dollar they receive on Administration and other overhead. This is a number that you’ve probably repeated several times in your 6 years of writing about health care issues. Now you’re saying that number is more like 20%, and always has been. In other words, making up numbers to prove your point that this bill doesn’t do any good. No me gusta.
2. You’re totally right – that $700 tax will totally be raised. Because if there’s one thing Congress can do on the drop of a hat, it’s raise taxes. Oh, and then they’ll make it punishable by death. That also will be quite popular.
3. So the Medicaid expansion is not hated by insurance companies… but covering poor people under Government insurance is still a good thing, right? Right?
4. Perception management – it exists, and you write about it over and over again as if none of us heard you the first time. We get it. No. Really. We do. Really really. You’re calling us stupid. We get it.
If, at any point, you’d like to stick to the substance of an issue before labeling your opponents as pawns (one of the 499 idiots that make enlightened ones like you possible), you might actually be able to change people’s perceptions yourself. Or even get people to come over to your side a little. But I look at your previous comment, see some good points, and yet am totally disinclined to mention them or point them out because… well, because screw you for starting this discussion by calling me an idiot. You really oughta work on that.
Anyways, my point is this: I don’t like the ACA very much. Really, it’s true. But I believe it was genuine attempt to reform health care and make Medicare more sustainable over the long term. It was done under the ill-advised assumption that the Health Insurance industry could be allowed into the process as a rational actor, and as a result there’s a lot of crap in the bill. But there’s still some seriously good policy in the bill too, and it’s already having a positive affect. I don’t know if it will work in the long term, but I know it has already alleviated some genuine human suffering, and will certainly do more of that in the future.
So I’m taking the bad with the good, and even saying that the bad is worth the good. I know that basically makes me a surrender-monkey in your eyes, but I’m pretty sure I can accept that, and will continue blindly into the future, waiting for my daily memos from the DNC on what I’m supposed to believe.
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Point by point:
31% is a number cited by Harvard as the total cost of administrative overhead in the land, of which perhaps 20% is internal to health insurance companies, and 11% borne by hospitals and doctors. both numbers are, if Harvard is correct, correct
Saying that Obama would execute people who don’t buy health insurance is sarcasm, given that he has taken the right to kill American citizens. Sarcasm.
If health insurance companies avoided poor people before, they are not hurt by not having them aboard now. They got 33 millions new clients by force. What more could they want?
Perception management, when broached, usually induces anger in those whose perceptions are managed, which is why it rubs on you and so many others. It has nothing to do with intelligence. In fact, those who think themselves least susceptible, intelligent and educated people all, are most susceptible. The only defense is awareness. The anger … Yeah, it has to do with cognitive dissonance. You lash out at me due to internal discomfort. I’m very used to it!
Health care reform was genuine, and carefully manipulated to serve AHIP. They derailed it in total. Maybe some people were really hoping for more and got screwed. But lining up little bullet point good things about the bill, each of which is easily defeated, and then saying I’ll take the good with the bad, is poor reasoning. The bad far far far far overshadows anything good. We got screwed. Royally.
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Shorter you: “When I inform someone that they are an idiot, it usually angers them, which proves that they are an idiot.” Or, “Only the true Messiah would deny his own divinity!”
You’re right about the 31% being the administrative overhead of the entire system. Granted, you just made the other two numbers up – but your point still stands. I’ll grant you that because you waited until the end of your comment to call me an idiot. Again.
I didn’t ask you if health insurance companies avoided poor people. I asked you if it was a good thing that the Federal Government is stepping in – and if, being one of the largest parts of health reform, the Medicaid expansion could actually be called a good thing that the bill accomplished. Granted, you avoided that question deliberately, but it doesn’t hurt to ask again.
I have not once questioned your intelligence in this argument, nor would I. But you end every one of your posts and comments by informing the people who hold opposing views that they are, in fact, mindless zombies. And I don’t intend to dive into the substance with you any more as a result. Why? Because i can’t do so without being an asshole. Now, I know you think you garner that reaction from people because you’re crashing in on our DNC-created reality. But you’re actually just acting like a jerk.
You believe that the healthcare bill was more bad than good? Fine. Believe it. I don’t think you’re out of line for believing it. I do think you’re out of line when you assume that everyone you disagree with fits into your larger narrative and quasi-psychological theories. Some of us have actually studied the policy, and find that the good outweighs the bad. We can argue the merits if you want, but the next time you tell me my perceptions are being managed, I’m going to… I don’t know… not respond. So quit being a jerk.
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Point by point: I did not make the other two numbers up, nor did I deliberately wait till the end of the argument to spring them. The 20% figure and Wall Street eyes on it comes from Wendell Potter, former Cigna exec, who stated as much and also supplied the 92-95% number. The 31% comes form Harvard. Now you cannot strictly apply 20% across the board when private health insurance does not account for 100% of the medical loss payments (Medicare administrative cost is 3%), but 20/11 is a nice good round number.
And again, and again, I only made it to where I am due to luck, that is, by becoming self-employed. Prior to that time, I was totally in the grips, and did not know it, of course, would have reacted just as you do had someone said something. Once on my own, no longer subject to paycheck or workplace pressure, I slowly began to ease up inside, and within a few years had quit the church, and yikes, even told my folks I was pro-choice.
If you equate that to my being a Messiah, think again. Luck is luck. There is freedom in self-employment that you have not tasted. There is far more pressure on you to conform than you are aware of. There is far more discipline for nonconformity going on around you than you know. We internalize it. It becomes part of us. I am on the outside looking in, the only groups i belong to being hiking, friends and family. They don’t treat me as bad as Democrats do.
I describe what I see and take my lumps for it. Your reaction is so typical! Did you not mention at some point that I would win more converts if I did not behave that way? Did I ever say I cared about that? In fact, I’ve said repeatedly that there are two ways to change people’s minds – one, to hit them over the head with your view, the other to persuade them with reason
Neither works.
There are ways to change minds – one is to psychologically undermine people by use of perception management. Politicians do it by means of wedge issues, pitting groups against one another, appealing to ignorance and prejudice.
the other, interestingly, happens every day across the country in juries, where people dispassionately listen to evidence presented by two sides. People do indeed change their minds on juries. But in politics there is no dispassionate presentation of evidence, ever.
Tell me you haven’t seen this, haven’t seen it work, don’t know it is true.
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tl; dr
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Perhaps the biggest perception con of all is that this will work. Without black-letter cost containment, fees and services, insurance premiums, national debt and taxes go up, wages don’t. Sell more bonds, print more money — a tip of the hat, and how about a wave if Old Glory to top things off before the Olympics get underway. A sweet little sing-along tune to remember the occasion. Going (more) broke and lovin’ it.
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your claim of privileged perspective is wasted by how you use it. imho, you actually do your perspective a disservice with the bland redundancy of your antagonizing messaging in the places guaranteed to be the most hostile to your sneering.
as you vacation and blog and muse upon fleeing south, enjoying the high-mark many of your generation still reap, the subsequent generations must figure out how to begin really navigating the decline, with the nagging fear that the world you are leaving behind is beyond the tipping point.
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There are only maybe 3% of the population (I sometimes say 15%, the percentage of agnostic/atheists/non-religious, but more often fall back on 3%, the percentage of the vote that Nader got in 2000) that are even able to hear my message. To the rest it is blah blah blah. I was them. I got lucky. I cannot go in and pull them out – they have to find it themselves. I was not pulled out of the American propaganda system – I worked my own way out, and only by chance while I was trying to figure something else out. That’s all that ever happens, and rarely.
Just is that way. Do you really think I care about the reaction I get? Under the thread “Dealing with Contradictory Beliefs“, about three threads ago, a fellow named Bill stopped by and dropped off a YouTube assembled by his group. It’s beautifully done, and he’s marketing it. So far, he’s had 150 hits. He found me. That made my day. That’s all the good that ever happens – when two of us hook up like that. Otherwise it’s a desert.
Not much I can do about the world or your age or what lay behind in our wake – I only know I want out of this crazy place. Like so may things in my life, I never knew it would be possible. But it is.
____
I’m going to post this comment and edit it to insert a link above.
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ok Moses.
but you are missing out on so much.
I offer you a poem written by an 8th grade girl named Aimee
MUD
My father was never allowed to get dirty.
Underneath he wasn’t ever a little boy
Dad, when will you be born?
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OK, Frost. I’ll offer you this: Blogs are not people.
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