The backlashes of the [[Affordable Care Act]] have already begun, disrupting employments patterns and steadily raising premiums for many. The HMOs are having a field day in anticipation, spending vast sums of advertising to win their share of Washington’s promised pie. And sadly, apart from a Congress that didn’t read the law and insist it on passing it to “find out what’s in it” (apart from the usual abundance of pork), those willing to look to the CBO knew costs would increase, albeit under the radar of “saving money” via other convenient statistical perspectives.
But the reason this sort of government reform absolutely will not work — and in fact continue to make things worse — is because it is attempting to fix a system that is fundamentally no longer appropriate for the here and now.
From “The Origins of Business, Money, and Markets” (2011), Keith Roberts writes:
Despite the enormous technological and political changes that made large scale empires possible and greatly increased wealth, old economic and social structures remained … The extraordinary persistence of social and economic structures continues. As I write, efforts to change the structure of healthcare in the United States have fallen short and floundered once again. Virtually everyone despises the structure, which imposes huge and apparently unnecessary costs that threaten to destroy the economy, but remains impervious to reform. As with economic and social structures of the ancient Middle East, healthcare took shape under particular historical circumstances that no longer exist. But it so rewards its beneficiaries that they can defeat any unpleasant changes, thus preserving the structure itself.
And this is part of a larger battle, between those who believe Capitalism has outlived it’s usefulness and those who say government methodology is out-of-date both philosophically and techno-socially.
I say they are both right.
The structures of both Capitalism and government (in their current forms) were borne out of a vastly different time. For reasons of technology and the natural progress of humanity, the whole game has changed, but not the rules or tactics.
One can find smaller-scale business and local governments doing a tremendous job at innovation and pertinence to today’s world. But larger institutions — those that command whole industries and economies — have no idea what century we are in. There is no sustainable benefit in old-school Capitalism, nor the heavy-handed legislative responses of micro-managing regulation that in the end only serves the former. Both big business and big government are breeding generations filled with contempt for one or the other — or both if you don’t get caught up in the propaganda war between their respective approaches.
So here’s one more reason to hate “Obamacare” — it can’t work, and all the tweaking in the world won’t fix it. The system isn’t just broken, it’s as obsolete to where the “reform” is irrelevant in equal measure. Like Einstein says, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”