Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Comment moderation

Comment moderation is now off; comments will be posted immediately.

And, ah, fame is fleeting. There were no comments for me to review this morning.



Comment moderation is on overnight. It will be off and all comments reviewed no later than 11am on Thursday.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Activating comment moderation was like pouring icy cold water on the discussion. Sorry you had problems with a troll, but it was a mistake.

Elise said...

You may be right in terms of squelching discussion although by the time I turned comments off it had been just me and an Anonymous (no idea if you're the same anonymous or not) for about 4 hours.

Also, I'm new to this and would have been uneasy if I hadn't activated comment moderation. If I get another lively discussion I may make a different decision.

Anonymous said...

If you get another link from Instapundit, I'd recommend it.

Elise said...

Thank you for your advice.

Anonymous said...

Why is it that if you don't agree with HR3200 as written you are a RIGHT winger who doesn't have the brains that God gave a monkey. I will only comment that HR 3200 is full of deleterious sections that, in my opinion, if passed as written will be tested in court for its Constitutionality under the 4th, 5th, 9th, and 10th amendments. Health care financing i.e. something we ignorantly call heath insurance should be regulated on a national basis rather than being under the jurisdiction of 50 different state insurance commissioners. HR 3200 is not going to solve anything, it will just make it worse. We need true reform starting at the roots. Health care delivery in this country is seriously broken.

Elise said...

Well, hmm.

Why is it that if you don't agree with HR3200 as written you are a RIGHT winger who doesn't have the brains that God gave a monkey.

Because Obama and the Congressional leadership think it's more politically profitable for them to blame health care reform opposition on the Right than it is to admit that some Democrats also have problems with it. And they'd never, ever admit that most true progressives hate HR3200 passionately because what they want is single-payer.

I disagree that there is any need to have national health care financing/insurance (leaving Medicare out of the picture for this discussion). I'd actually prefer that each State decide for itself what kind of health care it wants its citizens to have and how it is going to pay for it. The simplest argument is one of financial fairness:

Let's say we raise income taxes to pay for national health care. Health care is a lot more expensive in New Jersey than it is in Alabama but national tax rates aren't going to be lower in Alabama. Why should people in Alabama subsidize health care for those in NJ?

Furthermore, I don't believe "health care delivery in this country is seriously broken". I think we have three problems:

1) Some people cannot afford health care. An extension of this is that increasing numbers of people fear they will eventually not be able to afford health care either because the cost will increase too much or because they will lose their jobs.

2) Some people cannot get health care because of existing illnesses. (I'm a little unclear on this one because I do not know how easy it actually is for an insurance company to drop someone who becomes ill. They can't do it in NJ.)

3) Health care costs are eating up an increasing share of the GDP. Per Greg Mankiw, this may not be a problem at all.

None of these problems require an total overhaul of a health finance/insurance/care system that delivers very good health care to a lot of people.