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We're just going to go in circles here, so unless you want to talk about the subject in the OP, I'll just bow out.

 whembly wrote:
More than half of Obamacare's 23 health cooperatives have now failed.

The basic rules of capitalism work the same, even for co-operatives and other not-for-profits. Attrition is brutal for start up companies. Even in a new industry with blue sky kind of growth, most companies fail. Around the turn of the last century there was probably somewhere around 1,500 car manufacturers in the US, most of them disappeared within a decade. A generation later and there was about a dozen remaining. It wasn’t because car manufacturing was a bad, or an unprofitable idea. So it shouldn't be surprising to see high failure rates for companies attempting to start up in a mature industry.

This isn’t to say that the rules for the co-ops were sensibly established. The ban on advertising meant the co-ops could only attract market share with pricing. So to get a viable portion of market share they had to price aggressively. But then the government loans had rigid payment conditions, so if they priced too aggressively in one period they were done. That’s a really tough business model, imposed by pretty bad government rules.

But it isn’t necessarily terminal, and among the remaining co-ops there’s been some success and growth. Whether that growth can be built in to a sustainable base or whether the other co-ops will disappear one by one we’ll see. I do know that it’s not terminal for ACA, co-ops are an interesting experiment that adds new players to the market, it’s not essential to the ACA structure.

But what is interesting, I think, is how co-ops have become a story. Do you think, whembly, honestly, that if the remaining co-ops do well in 2016 and 2017, that any of the conservative press will pick up a story that their doom and gloom stories were wrong?

Because there’s a pattern of ACA coverage in the conservative press that latches on to some bad number or poor result in some part of ACA and talks about that with glee. Then a month or so later it turns out things weren’t that bad it’s just never mentioned again. They move on to some other bad story. Remember the jobkilling predictions? The death spiral? They’ve just been forgotten/Just not mentioned again.

 whembly wrote:
Nicely put...

Here's the video in question:

The U.S. calling Italia out on food is like the most deluded thing EVER!

 Iron_Captain wrote:
Unless you are comparing it to Europe. Then America sucks a huuuuge lot more. We Europeans are just better at everything, not to mention we have actual culture and history, as well as better food. God bless Europe!

Europe, and Japan, and Korea, and Singapore, amirite?
Though America sucks less than Somalia, no doubt guys .

I do appreciate insights into what Obamacare means to you, but seriously, in the overall issues the US seem to face, that is one of the least important ones, i.e. only one very specific aspect of on of the mentioned general issues - the anemic national safety nets.

I updated the first thread with the full report, will work through it tonight.

What the study summary says is the following:

a) The flexible (hire and fire) US labour market is not the job-creating machine liberal propaganda wants to make you believe and there is no sign that highly regulated labour markets perform less good - quite on the contrary!

b) Because the US policy traditionally nurtures the beliefs that a) market outcomes are the outcome of competitive processes and b) that these outcomes are therefore legitimate and must not be challenged or altered, the US has a much higher disparity in wealth distribution (extrems are not capped) as well as "anemic" national safety nets (health system, unemployment aid, pension schemes) and missing guarantees to socio-economic prerequisites for a success on the labour market (access to higher education, access to childcare etc pp).

c) Since there is no or only a rudimentary state-administered saftey net, even basic social needs are commodified, i.e. need to be paid for on the private market.

d) Poor people have a much harder time to make it out of poverty in the US than in other "rich countries" (hence: "the American dream is a lie") because when they fall, the fall deep, i.e. they lose - or never get the chance to get - access to the means necessary to get out of poverty (a good education, financial stability, time, social stability...)


There is a direct link between safety net, labour market and poverty:

- If John Doe loses his job with 2 mortgages to pay and minimal savings in Denmark, he will not be cut off from the means necessary to find a new job soon - he can still participate in the social life, he will get help to reeducate himself if necessary, he does not lose his house immediately, he has the time and stability to look for an adequate new job - and with a new job, he will stay out of poverty. (Granted, he has to pay higher taxes).

- If John Doe loses his job with 2 mortgages to pay and minimal savings in the US, he is royally fethed.

That also means that welfare-states are much more robust when it comes to diminished economic growth or even crisis.
As long as economy is growing and there are more jobs than jobseekers, US & DK John Does can smile. Once that growth falls flat, you have more jobseekers than jobs, the competition becomes harder, and those with money on the side can move up while those without are pushed down. In the US, the result is a downward spirale for the poorer - and an upward spirale for the richer. Once economy is growing again, the richer are in a better position to profit from that than the poor, since, again, the key factor is the commodification of basic social needs).

The only way to break that spirale is long phases of economic growth, something which becomes more and more unlikely in highly globalized markets.

EDITS for missing words and clarity.

 treslibras wrote:

a) The flexible (hire and fire) US labour market is not the job-creating machine liberal propaganda wants to make you believe and there is no sign that highly regulated labour markets perform less good - quite on the contrary!

It's typically conservative propaganda , not liberal propaganda.

In Europe, Liberal can mean something different to in the US. We may mean "economic liberal", which is someone who wants to do away with state intervention in the market and let it be truly "free" through privatising national assets and deregulating everything.

 sebster wrote:

 whembly wrote:
More than half of Obamacare's 23 health cooperatives have now failed.

But what is interesting, I think, is how co-ops have become a story. Do you think, whembly, honestly, that if the remaining co-ops do well in 2016 and 2017, that any of the conservative press will pick up a story that their doom and gloom stories were wrong?

Honestly? No. Because you're ignoring the "pains" that the vast majority went through with the changes to the plans. The plans are way more expensive, way more inefficient and the "out-of-pockets" expense has skyrocketed.

Now, one can argue that in order for all of this to work, this needed to happen.

However, that's not how it was advertised. We were sold a bill of goods under false pretense and now we want a refund.