No. There is nothing to wait for. You didn't have that restriction in the claim you made, so it does not apply.

Wow, are we really going to be THAT dishonest, here? The Republicans (not McCain, but as a whole) came out with a different proposal, and the Democrats attacked the Republicans for bothering to come out with a proposal at all, since it had no chance of passing and was therefore a waste of time. Spare us the bullshit.

The fact is, this proposal was well-known and out there. No, it was not in bill form, but, again, you didn't say anything about that.

... which disproves the claim you made, that "There was no alternative plan proposed that would not have increased prices."

Well, insofar as basic economics is 100% speculation, sure. In other words, no, it's not.

I can prove that the broadly accepted laws of economics -- by both liberal and conservative economists -- show that they would have been driven down. Shrug. It's very simple, and everyone agrees with this: the biggest driver of high prices is that consumers are dissociated with the prices they are paying, so there is almost no competitive pressure to keep prices down. This is entirely clear.

As a side note: did Obama know this would happen when he was secretly negotiating with the insurers (despite saying it would be public, during his campaign)? If not, he's incompetent. If so, he's a malicious liar.

Anyway, that option is only temporary. The grandfathering runs out after a few years, so you're not actually making a point here, because it still holds that "Obamacare" drastically limits competition beyond what it is today (which is scant), and has only half-assed price controls, and is therefore destined to see huge price increases.

I am not, of course, in favor of price controls, but they are the other option for keeping prices down. But with no real competition and no real price controls, prices rise. Duh. This plan was designed to further increase prices, while they were lying and saying it would decrease them, most likely because they were secretly giving handouts to the health insurance companies. This might also explain why the Democrats did everything they could to not work with Republicans on the bill, because even though it is clear that Republican input could have helped increase choice and decrease costs, it would have come at a cost of the insurance company handouts like minimum coverage and individual mandates.

All of that is irrelevant to the claim you made. Shrug.

Yes, some problems would still exist, but they would be fewer and less significant, and you could mostly solve it through simply taking your business elsewhere.

False, obviously. McCain's proposal in the 2008 election would have decreased the cost of insurance, and everyone knows it. By simply taking away the the business deduction for health insurance premiums for employees (as well as any mandates for businesses supplying such insurance to its employees), and giving individuals a tax credit for purchasing insurance, the immediate increase in competition in insurance would have pushed prices down. The effect would increase over time as people would take on more responsibility for themselves (high deductible plans and HSAs etc.) in order to get lower rates, which increases competition not just insurance, but in the provision of health care itself, which would then drive down insurance prices more.

Why don't we see that now, in the individual market? Simple: because "Obamacare" drastically limits competition with all sorts of minimum and maximum mandates, and by forcing us to cover more, there's even less competition pressure on health care provision.

Yep.

Nope.

Only those bills that would have given more power to the insurance companies, or not taken away any subsidies/powers granted to them.

Yes, because that system had massive handouts and protections for them, such that they could do that without significant repercussions. The answer is to take away the handouts and protections.

False.

Again, this was McCain's proposal in 2008. And yes, the insurance industry didn't like it. Obama was in bed with the insurance lobby, McCain wasn't. And McCain got hammered by the media over his proposal, even though it makes a ton of sense, because it was reducing government control, even though it was the very government control that led to our current problems.

As opposed to the door already open for atrocities *with* permanent damage, yes, I understand that fully. I choose the non-permanent damage, thanks very much. As an analogy, which would you rather have happen to you: get shot or get tasered? I can assure you, the former is much more painful and damaging than the latter.

When we capture a guy carrying an IED, that's as "convicted" as it needs to be, whether he's killed anyone with it yet or not.

Since I've never demonstrated the ability or desire to do any such thing, the likelihood of this scenario coming to pass is so ridiculously tiny as to relegate your point to Reductio ad absurdum. The people we are waterboarding, on the other hand, have demonstrated both the desire and the ability to do us harm. Indeed, many of those we've released from Gitmo have been recaptured later doing exactly the same kind of stuff they swore they'd never do as a condition of their release. You've never experienced the fanatical hatred these "people" have for those who don't share their ideology. They'd kill you, right now, not even knowing you, your views, or anything else about you other than the fact that you're not "one of them."

Traditional methods are indeed more effective...assuming you have the time and facilities and manpower to use them. That isn't always an option.

Yes. I do. Because the people subjected to this stuff aren't just random civilains snatched off the street for the fun of it. They're hardened, zealous, fanatical psychopaths who want all of us dead and our way of life destroyed. Perhaps you can't conceive of that kind of evil residing in a person. I can, due to bitter experience. You sit in pious judgement yet you've never been there, in that situation, where stark contrasts between "good" and "bad" are clearly evident.

I will admit there are methods of information extraction that are more reliable than waterboarding. However, many of them require one thing usually in short supply: time.

Here's a thought experiment for you to consider:

Think of the person (or people) most dear to you in your life. They are kidnapped. You managed to capture the kidnapper yourself only to find out that those dearest to you will die in a matter of hours unless you can extract their location and have them rescued. The kidnapper is zealous, resolute, unyielding. None of the "more effective" means of information extraction are available in the short time you have before your loved ones are killed. Do you (a) do nothing, and let them die, or (b) use whatever means available to you -- including waterboarding -- to attempt information extraction?

I challenge anyone to realistically choose option (a). The partisans in this argument will blithely say they'd choose the moral high ground, but in reality they would not. If lives are at stake -- lives that mean something to you -- you do whatever you have to do to save them, morals be damned.

You have the luxury of living in a world where people's lives don't hang in the balance. It's all fine well and good to sit in judgement when you're safe and secure at home or at work. When you have people who are willing to eviscerate you and your friends just because you don't bow to their religion or ideology, people who are more than willing to sacrifice themselves and any number of innocents around them to further their agenda, you cannot maintain the mindset you have now. If you do, you get killed. I'm sorry to say it, but you're just too naive about how the real world works.

This old chestnut again? When are people going to stop comparing the US -- a vast geographic area with large areas of low population density -- with Europe? Or Korea for that matter? It costs more because larger areas need coverage compared to European counterparts. It costs more because rural areas get artificially-low costs because they're subsidized by urban areas with artificially-high costs.

Wrong. Doctor can refuse to take Medicare patients. Historically 10% have refused to do so. Recently this has increased to 13% and its still increasing.

But a doctor can't refuse to pay Medicare taxes. So how does a doctor get back that money from the government to complete the flow-of-money circle?

The answer for most doctors is that they much treat Medicare patients for below cost. After that they start to make money on everyone else.

Those doctors that refuse to treat Medicare patients still somehow have to get back the Medicare taxes they paid. This can happen if they treat a disproportionate number of workers that benefit from Medicare spending. And this explains why most doctors that refuse to accept Medicare paradoxically live in areas that disproportionately receive Medicare.

But only if that skepticism is also applied to one's own ideas.

Vanity makes it easy to be skeptical of others' theories but it's leaving open the possibility that one's own theories could be mistaken that makes one a scientist.