Monday, November 18, 2013

The Ultimate Example of Leftist Patronizing

I'm sure you, my good reader, has seen this poster by now:


It's common knowledge that for Obamacare to succeed, it needs to charge less-risky people (men, young, healthy) in the healthcare marketplace an unfair price in order to pay for the more-risky people (women, old, sickly). Conservatives, libertarians, reactionaries, and generally anyone that knows a thing at all about the basics of economics has said this for years. Still, those on the left refused to believe it. The lower-IQ among them probably thought that it was going to be a handout.

To their shock and horror, they realized that their own insurance premiums are being cancelled or increasing in price. As I have said before, the situation reminds me of the time the Carthaginian Senate weeped rivers of tears as they began to pay the indemnity owed to Rome after their loss in the Second Punic War, all the while Hannibal, who was offered no meaningful assistance by his country when it mattered, laughed at their hysteria. I share these feelings.

Amidst a broken website, the lie that all Americans would be able to keep their existing healthcare coverage being exposed, and the reality that yet more wealth generated by the productive classes will be redistributed to the less-productive ones, the governmental PR campaigns have begun in earnest to rescue the fledgling program. There are many subliminal messages in the above poster.

Firstly, the representatives of young men- the people that Obamacare needs the most in order to succeed, are depicted as drunken, low-intelligence, badly-dressed, low-class, pussified, unsophisticated frat boys. Secondly, there is a distinctive lack of diversity in the poster. While in most ad campaigns there is usually a token minority, this poster is of three young white men. Perhaps the makers of the poster thought it would just be too offensive to depict any minority in such an idiotic fashion, and this instinct is probably correct. No one but the nuts in heterodox, anti-Cathedral communities can legitimately represent the interests of white men as a distinctive group, so the path of least resistance is naturally the way to go. And to a large extent, the stereotype depicted above is indeed, true. Can't argue with that.

Nevertheless, the poster is presented this way at its own peril. Young, working, professional, single, middle class men (which are probably white to a somewhat disproportionate degree, but I could be wrong on this), are the demographic that Obamacare needs most to survive. Without them, the system will not work, period.

The smarter among us already know that buying Obamacare insurance at this point is a fool's gambit. We know that paying the fine is going to be less than the cost of the insurance, even when it does go up. There is simply no reason to be paying many thousands of dollars more per year when our risks of health problems are exceedingly low. Of course, nothing is certain in this chaotic world, but the laws of probability are on our side. As the Spearhead says, all we needed before was cheap, catastrophic insurance, which is now illegal according to Obamacare. We are being told to pay a price higher than what we need to, including paying for services which we do not need and will never benefit from: maternity coverage.

Fortunately, there is a form of catastrophic insurance written into the law itself: providers can no longer deny coverage for pre-existing conditions. While this component of the law is the primary driver of higher premiums among the less-risky, it is also our trump card in the off-chance that something terrible really does happen. If we find we are sick, we can simply buy the insurance, and after a possible waiting period, get the coverage we need.

So, while the situation is still likely more expensive than what we had before, we will not need to pay the exorbitant insurance costs year after year in our 20's and 30's when we don't need it (and during which time we want to start building our fortunes in earnest). We have our catastrophic insurance.

It is for these reasons that the idiotic poster above is stupefyingly counterproductive- it patronizes the group it needs the most, portraying them as irresponsible idiots without a clue, when there is an option written into the system itself for that group to get out. I'm sure that most of us that understand this will continue to laugh with glee like Hannibal when the people that made this poster weep for the lack of their target demographic's cooperation. Obamacare Health Insurance Leftism Brosurance

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