However, I rely on principle to guide me. The answer is always going to be “remove government obstacles put in place by well-meaning or well-paid-off politicians.” These politicians and their work cause far more problems than they ever fix and that would be because they never fix anything. The more money and power we hand over, or is forced from us, the more problems we face from our government and its ensuing corruption. What I don’t understand is how the general public does not see how money and power corrupt. I don’t understand how the general public so eagerly throws money at the government to “solve” problems that never get solved. Problems get worse, and then of course liberals demand more money.

No matter how complicated life gets from ERISA or any other legislation, the answer is always simple – SIMPLIFY the law. Fixing health care would be so easy and cost the federal government NOTHING. Remove government from it. Remove employers from it. Why don’t we have these problems with car insurance? Because our government and employers aren’t involved. The consumer of the insurance benefit is the person buying the insurance. Inject freedom into the system, and we will find better choices and people making more wise decisions. We also must find a way to make torte reform to reduce the burden of malpractice insurance costs. Mostly, however, we must let people make decisions for themselves, and then the market MUST respond.

What politicians and elites everywhere don’t like is how people make decisions. They don’t like freedom, they would rather people lived by their standards. They want people dependent on government so that they can control those people, how they live, the decisions they make. They think people can’t take care of themselves, and they certainly don’t want us taking care of each other. They want to decide who gets what and how, and they get this power by promising people an easier life. It is arrogant, corrupt, and down at the core just plain evil. Their ideologies are no different than Hugo Chavez’ or the Ayatollah’s, they simply want control. Thankfully, our idealogues are just not willing to kill or jail or torture people over ideology. Or maybe they just aren’t allowed to.

I believe I can convince most AMericans to do the same, including the Left. The former, not the latter.

But I hope you realize that most of the people in positions of power and those who vote in those pols, don’t know the background as you do. They don’t know how to navigate what politics in DC really is. So they can be convinced to support things that they haven’t been fully briefed on, while pols benefit from favors being traded.

It’s a sad but true state of affairs that in America, only lawyers or those with an extreme interest (or OCD) are interested in pursuing these issues at the detail level.

And that’s what the media tries to keep as a status quo. So that the American public cannot make informed choices. Not about insurance, not about their employers, and not about healthcare.

It’d be a good thing if people actually stupid. But they’re not, just ignorant and deceived and mislead. That makes it worse. Stupid people know they’re stupid and try their best to solve issues by putting in hours and hours of hard work. If they don’t get it, they’ll find help that will.

But smart people… even if I just take myself as an example as a person with slightly above average intelligence, don’t tend to take advice well given the preconceptions of smart people. And since those people are smart and can think lots, there’s a lot of prejudices, preconceptions, arrogance, Ivy League standards applied. They’re smart enough to deceive themselves, even. WHile stupid people are too dumb to waste brainpower deceiving themselves in a web of consistent lies.

Wisdom will hammer arrogance out. But, American culture doesn’t focus on cultivating wisdom. If it did, politicians would make better laws and justices wouldn’t have to decide to rule them unConstitutional. I believe I read an article about Sotomayor dealing with ERISA cases. They were almost always brain twisters. But unless the Justices are wiling to render ERISA unConstitutional… it’s in the ball of Congress to elucidate what they really meant.

That’s how the system is supposed to work. But doesn’t, because somebody stabbed a 9 foot steel blade in its back.

Book is like Neo. Very… liberal. And I don’t mean that as an insult ; ) Classical liberal, not fake liberal.

They’ll want some kind of guarantee or ‘fix’ or loophole in the law to guarantee their dominance. What form they dominance takes, however, is a bit more murky.

Perhaps that’s why they oppose getting it changed. So long as ERISA is not reformed, they can ‘reform’ healthcare. It may not even be that they are getting big bucks from the insurance companies, certainly many of them are private, not employer, based. Perhaps the big insurance companies aren’t shelling out cash like Bi g Pharma has been.

The big insurers are involved in group and individual coverage — you see the same names in both realms. You know I found myself scratching my head when the insurers seemed so acquiescent about health reform early on. One concern I have had in trying to figure out why the Democrats are not invoking ERISA abuse as a club to keep the black hats on the insurers is that there may have been a back room deal to get the insurance industry on board in the first place. This, although not widely appreciated, is a very very big deal to the insurance industry, and it would not surprise me one bit if they said do whatever you want, just leave ERISA alone, and we’ll stay out of your way.

As long as the debate is civil and intelligent, I don’t get upset about highjacked threads. Some of the most interesting thoughts come out of this organic movement from one idea to the next.

Anyway, to respond to Ymarsakar on a few things.

Federal law is not “supposed to” preempt state law except under limited circumstances. In fact there is a working presumption against preemption when it comes to traditional state police powers, which include contract law,tort law, insurance company regulation, and such. In those areas federal law is supposed to preempt only if that is the clear and unmistakable intent of Congress, and that’s one of the major places the courts went wrong with ERISA, because any intent to preempt in the manner we have now is very difficult to ascertain, and it certainly isn’t unmistakable. But since I do not have the honorific “Justice” in front of my name my opinion about that means nothing.

Also, to be clear, while I am certainly an ERISA reform advocate I am by no means sold on what is currently proposed by way of health reform. I will cop to being of the “we have to do something” school of thought, but I am not at all sure that what that something is should be what is currently on the table. And I agree your concerns about overly vague legislation which leaves too much up to administrative agencies and/or courts is quite problematic.

I move away from arguing the merits of the law and have argued Constitutional principle.

The government that governs best, governs least.

This is for clarification purposes in case you overlooked what I meant with those comments.

Perhaps that’s why they oppose getting it changed. So long as ERISA is not reformed, they can ‘reform’ healthcare. It may not even be that they are getting big bucks from the insurance companies, certainly many of them are private, not employer, based. Perhaps the big insurance companies aren’t shelling out cash like Bi g Pharma has been.

When government has the power, all the rich blokes and obscenely big corporations go there to shaft the rest of us. With the help of lawyers, even.

That system is unsustainable.

That’s pretty much clear here pertaining to my case. If it wasn’t for the Feds butting in, with aid of Dems like the radio host’s funds, support, activism, and political votes… well, it would follow logically.