Timely Remarks About The Permanent Failed State Of Healthcare Reform

Let me first say that I believe health care is a right as noted on here countless times.  As is a living wage.  As is economic determinism.   None of those exist within our current structure.  Generally because private, for-profit capital determines our socioeconomic fate in almost all aspects of society’s lives.  An undemocratic fate at that.  

I think I have noted on here before that our economic system can be described very well as a finite state machine.  And I have designed, tested and debugged many state machines.  I believe this gives me a unique ability to understand all of the moving parts and interdependencies in this global control system we call corporate capitalism.  If I compare corporate capitalism to a state machine or engineered control system, one recognizes what I have written on here many times.   That is, this system must rely on greater and greater force to maintain itself because of its inherent instabilities.  Most people don’t recognize that this dynamic has been building for 200 years in the U.S. and well longer in Europe.   It wasn’t always recognizable because we were primarily an agrarian economy not that long ago.  So, the greater and greater force exerted by corporate capitalism was always limited in scope but always growing.   In other words there was always some ability to essentially “outrun” the gains of force exerted by corporations.  That is, up until the last thirty or forty years where the grip of corporate capitalism has become nearly all consuming.   Corporate capitalism defines nearly everything about mainstream society, our political system, our military system, our food system, our media system our culture and on and on and on.  The culture we export is Coca-cola, Monsanto, Pizza Hut, Starbucks and Lockheed-Martin. 

But behind all of these illusions over the last 200 years has been a system that has continuously garnered greater and greater control by exerting greater and greater force.   This greater and greater force is necessary because of the inherent instabilities and contradictions that define corporate capitalism.   There are some in the modern day libertarian arena who believe corporate capitalism just sprung forth like a wild seed in nature.  That is perpetuated by many people associated with this Mises ideology.   Corporate capitalism is an invention of the state.  It sprung forth from class, privilege and power.  Obamacare is a manifestation of this dynamic.  It is a statist system that is reliant on force to succeed.  Without that force our corporate-controlled healthcare system would collapse.  Our healthcare system is not a merit or market-based system.  It is a corporate capitalist-controlled system that is propped up by the state.   

There is no such thing as a free market.  And there certainly is no such thing as a corporate capitalism-based free market.  There are fair and equitable markets.  A properly engineered control system will can reach a steady state and maintain that state with a continuous and consistent application of force.  The same can be said of our healthcare system.   A poorly designed control system, or one that is inherently unstable, requires greater and greater force.  Yet there is a finite amount of force that can ever be applied to any control system.  And, thus, one that requires ever-increasing force will eventually destabilize and fail when those forces are exceeded.   That is where we are today.  We are at a state of permanent failure of this system.  That includes our healthcare system. 

That is why we see an ever-increasing level of force used by the state in all aspects of society and economics.  Because this system is not a virtuous system.  People on a record would choose not to participate if they could.  I have seen some recent polling that shows nearly 90% of Americans are unhappy in their jobs and would leave if they could.   Is that democracy?  Freedom?  Empowerment?  I can’t remember who said this, but I believe it was a sociologist half a century ago who remarked that no tyranny is not long for this world that requires regular use of force to survive.  Most tyrannical systems either convince people through propaganda that society benefits or that they are virtuous and thus limits the use of overt force.  Cuba, the Soviet Union, North Korea, etc.  Pictures of their fearless leaders, public propaganda about a worker state, creation of an external enemy to unite society, etc.  These ploys are meant to brainwash society into accepting control so that limited force is actually needed to maintain the system.  We obviously know from war that people can only absorb so much human-initiated violence before they succumb to emotional breakdowns and even emotional collapse.  The same can be said of a social dynamics.   We witness this every day in people breaking down.  Just something to be mindful of when you think about this healthcare system and the larger picture; the state exists through violence and violence alone.  This healthcare system exists through violence and violence alone.  

This obviously leads to a revelation that most people are unwilling to recognize in themselves.  That is, it’s amazing how many people will adopt another ego’s violent beliefs and incorporate them into their own.  It’s amazing how many people incorporate corporate capitalism into their belief systems.  How many people cheered their own victimization with the passage of Obamacare. 

Corporate capitalism and corporations were originally created by the aristocracy as mechanisms to control society and loot the world.  It is a disturbing fact that the self or the ego is generally responsible for its own self-victimization.  The self is responsible for all violence, evil and harm in this world.  And, who is on the receiving end of that victimization?  Me.  I victimize myself.  And Obamacare is no different.  People outsource their thinking and beliefs to those who wrote Obamacare without having any idea what they are supporting.  They outsource their power to their oppressors and, thus, create their own self-victimization.  The incredibly disturbing reality is that they actually will fight to defend their own victimization.  Our society is really no different than any other repressive society.  The same dynamics exist whether it’s the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany or Korporate Amerika.  The human condition truly is a walking paradox without becoming mindful to our own insanity.  Even when we are mindful, it is still often a life-long struggle to overcoming it.  To subsuming the endless violence of the self or the ego.

As I noted in my post back in mid 2009 in the comparisons to Herbert Hoover and Obama, which are often striking, it was Hoover that actually started the New Deal programs.  And, that contributed to the collapse and Great Depression.  Obamacare fits into that category on many levels.  It is a massive new state-enforced corporate tax that is intended to suck incredible amounts of money out of our economy and transfer power from citizens to corporations; rent-seeking corporate force.   Yet literally half of the population cheered it when it was passed.  Our society is choking on its on vomit because of the lack of money in our economy.  When you look at Detroit, as just one of many examples, you should see an entire community of people who are denied their democratic and economic rights.  This is accomplished by denying access to society’s wealth, resources and capital.  And the control mechanism that is used to do that is corporate capitalism.  Obamacare will make coming economic crises that much worse.  It will contribute to the end of this system. 

Let me make a remark here that is mildly off topic.  In many regards Democrats are much more dangerous because they support big government and outsourcing their thinking and responsibility to others.  If we had a working democracy, there may be some merit to allowing representatives to make decisions on our behalf.  But we don’t.  So, it is liberals with a big “L” who are primarily responsible for creating this crisis.  That is why true conservatives are actually closer to reality than the Democratic party at this point in time.  And that is why small “L” liberals who support a just and virtuous system often find themselves agreeing with conservatives and even some Tea Party members.  Human values are not derived from political beliefs. 

So, let’s move forward to today on Obamacare.  First, the Sunlight foundation has compiled a list of what are likely crony or fascist contractors in Obamacare’s implementation.  I would expect that everyone on this list may have somehow gotten their place at the table though political favors.  Especially since some of the large contractors are embroiled in existing lawsuits for incompetence and fraud in other countries and this current administration is the definition of cronyism. 

The whole Obamacare process has involved endless deceptions and outright lies perpetuated by Democrats and the mainstream media.  First, corporations wrote the health care law and thus Max Baucus excluded any public option.  Then reconciliation, which is arguably an unconstitutional method dreamed up by politicians, was used to ram this through both houses of Congress.  Otherwise, Congress never would have passed it into law.  Then, we got upwards of another 50,000+ pages of regulation to enforce this clusterf*ck.   It’s hard to get accurate information but the regulatory code for this is insanity defined.  All the while, those who outsource their thinking to politicians cheered that we all now had healthcare.  Some even thought that the healthcare bill meant we were all going to receive free healthcare. 

So, here we are.  No one knows the extent of the mess that is Obamacare.  The nonfunctioning web sites are just one minor aspect of that mess and its unintended consequences.  Another is that people are losing healthcare because of it.  All political propaganda aside, I know as a fact that many corporations are cutting healthcare or hours to subvert this system. 

As far as the web sites, I see a lot of mess and, while it has been ages, I have written a lot of code.  More recently I have worked with some of the top firms in industry and am well aware of the processes necessary for successful application development and deployment.   Given the back end integration requirements and the apparent complete lack of testing of Obamacare’s applications and their integration,  I suspect we could be looking at years before this system works properly.  Maybe politicians will attempt to slog through this and keep the site up during that time, and maybe they will be able to take manual enrollments during the fix period, which is absurd in itself,  but then everything these days is  absurd. 

And, by the way, from what I have seen, the issues these sites are dealing with has zero to do with scalability or too many excited users that are anxiously trying to sign up to pay what appears to generally be much higher premiums.   That is political propaganda of people who don’t have any idea what they are talking about.  In other words, politics as usual.  This is standard fair from an administration and political system that endlessly deceives and outright lies to the American people.  

The application logic doesn’t even appear to work.  ie, They wrote an application that was designed to test the temperature of McDonald’s hamburgers on the planet Mars.  So, there is no way it ever could have been scalability tested.   At least properly.  The application actually has to do what it was intended to do before scalability testing can be started.   That process alone, which is just one of many required test processes, could take a year for complex applications.  Especially poorly written ones.   I have no idea how complex this system is or how poorly written and integrated it is.  No one really does.  Not even the developers or systems integrators.  If they did, we wouldn’t have this problem. 

Thus, I am incredibly dubious that the government web sites can be fixed during the 180 day open enrollment period.  That would be a feat of near immortal accomplishment.   And this is one hell of an incompetent administration that has proven its mortality time and again.

We should have had Medicare for everyone anyway.  130 million Americans are already on Medicaid or Medicare.  The infrastructure is in place and the bill could have been a few dozen pages.  An addendum to what already works.  Then, some of this money we are wasting on bureaucratic bullshit could have been used to improve Medicare and deal with the massive corporate corruption and fraud that exploits it.   If we have an ability of referendum, the American people would probably vote to overturn this law and replace it with a public option.  It appears many of this bill’s supporters have finally awoken to their own victimization in supporting it.