[wowDude]

Okay, this right here is pretty absurd.

The perspective is so wrong it begs disbelief on some level. An attempt to open doors, to provide access to medicine is not some thing made of fear. You can drive on roads, you can mail a letter, you can see a doctor.

Instantaneous annihilation, or worse, getting irradiated at lethal doses, only to collapse into a heap of boils and sores, wretching and dry heaving until you cough up your ulcerated intestines, actually is something to fear.

But yeah, you know, guns or butter. Nuclear deterents make war generally unrealistic, once you arm yourself with enough bombs. Nevermind the liklihood that that more bombs you have, the closer we all are to one of them going off accidentally.

But you’re right, because of nuclear secrecy, and the government classification of military secrets, we’re not allowed to know how close we are to having our lives immediately and directly affected, not by “Nuclear War” but by accidents in pursuit of possessing a deterent.

Therefore, since we cannot be permitted to know such things, our lives must not be affected by those things, and it’s irrational to fear them.

Instead, we should fear the government trying to buy us all dog food, because it would be ridiculously inefficient to allocate funds to supply such things, when so many people don’t own dogs. It’s clearly a vector to corruption and dog poisoning. Perfectly expected and rational.

[brandmeyer]

Its a fact of life in this country that your opinion about the ACA depends a lot on where you get your news and your own interactions with the health care system.

I'm fortunate to live in a populous area of a state that wholeheartedly adopted its own exchange. There are plenty of good choices available. When my employer ran out of money and went out of business a few years ago, I could afford a plan for my family that was far cheaper than COBRA. We got affordable health care through the exchange until I could land a regular job.

But many people don't. There are a growing number of markets that aren't offering ACA plans at all. Other markets are seeing 20% y/y growth in their prices. In short, the ACA is failing. You can be mad about that all you want to, but it doesn't change the fact that being afraid of the ACA is totally rational.

[wowDude]

Skepticism, sure. Disdain, maybe. Fear, pointedly ridiculous.

It's not so much that it's failing, as much as it's been resisted and sabotaged. It's a distraction to think in terms of markets. Not when you can plug a money hose, the size of the military budget, into the supply side of the equation.

To name government subsidies as the ultimate and most fearsome form of corruption, and an abyss which has no known bottom, is to call the size of the U.S. military budget the purest form of corruption known to history.

And indeed, if the U.S. military, backed by its nuclear deterrent is such a thing to be feared, then it is assuredly more fearful than the failure of any medical plan.

Consider that we use nuclear powered aircraft carriers and cruise missiles designed to carry nuclear payloads, such to the effect, that in a conventional war, we smear an industrialized nation like Iraq, wiping maybe 100,000 people off the face of the earth, at a cost of 1,000 enlisted personnel. So take that degree of fear (or maybe just the portion of it, that happens to be backed by our global nuclear strike capacity), and point it directly at those who would let an accountant stand between your children and a doctor. What then?