Global warming err Climate change HOAX

[ALF]

8 minutes ago, KRC said:

 

 

As far as ACA, it relies on 100% participation. Otherwise, the costs become too high and people drop out (causing the costs to go even higher). A self-perpetuating problem unless the government can force people to participate.

 

Just like vehicle insurance

[KRC]

32 minutes ago, ALF said:

 

Just like vehicle insurance

 

Exactly. I am paying for other people.

[3rdnlng]

1 hour ago, KRC said:

 

I completely agree. The demand is rarely reduced when the sin taxes are imposed. Therefore, people just look for alternatives to get their supply. You mentioned a few. When Canada imposed a tax on cigarettes, all it did was increase smuggling of cigarettes from the U.S. 

 

As far as ACA, it relies on 100% participation. Otherwise, the costs become too high and people drop out (causing the costs to go even higher). A self-perpetuating problem unless the government can force people to participate.

Although at the time (and now too) I was vehemently against the ACA for philosophical reasons, I also pointed out why it couldn't work. It allowed an escape clause for the people who needed it the least in the form of minor fines. It subverted the "Law of Large Numbers" which for centuries has been the very tenant of the insurance industry. It allowed the young and healthy to not pay their share and help cover the costs of the sick and/or elderly. On top of that the administration at the time was so incompetent that when they rolled out the program it was so poorly planned and inefficient that very few could understand its so called provisions or even find a way to sign up. If the msm hadn't covered up the severity and waste of the program it would be considered one of the most severe government ***** ups of all time. Liberals, always trying to fit square pegs into round holes.

[3rdnlng]

1 hour ago, ALF said:

 

Just like vehicle insurance

HORSESHIT!!!! A person does not have to buy vehicle insurance to live or get/stay well. It is only required in order to protect other interests. Liability insurance to protect whoever a person might collide with and sometimes collision or comprehensive to protect the loan on the vehicle. Your premise has been brought up time and time again here and has been refuted ad nauseum, but it always is used by the Left to support the principle of the ACA. Is there some unwritten rule that prohibits Lefties from learning new things?

[B-Man]

 

[Koko78]

20 minutes ago, B-Man said:

 

 

Well, that's easy: We'll just tax the 'rich' at 800% of their total wealth per year, instead of the 600% needed to fund all of the other moronic wish-list items.

 

That, or wait for the rainbow-farting unicorns to arrive.

[B-Man]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Orlando Buffalo]

30 minutes ago, B-Man said:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I do have fun asking my most liberal friends to show me one prediction from 1995 that is correct. They have yet to show me one but always come back to" well things have improved" which is incorrect 

[3rdnlng]

1 hour ago, Buffalo Timmy said:

I do have fun asking my most liberal friends to show me one prediction from 1995 that is correct. They have yet to show me one but always come back to" well things have improved" which is incorrect 

Our (USA) carbon emissions have improved in the last decade or two. My guess is the use of natural gas has replaced other dirtier fuels. 

[ComradeKayAdams]

On 7/11/2020 at 7:57 AM, 3rdnlng said:

I make every effort to read your posts. I even categorize them and put them on my reading list.

 

Simply put, government programs that are based on coercing actions by taxing are basically self defeating. If those programs work they defund the government. If they don't work taxes simply are increased and government relies even more on smokers to fund them.

 

The programs that the government put in place must at a minimum be able to work. The ACA was doomed to fail because they went against the basic tenants of insurance by ignoring the "Law of Large Numbers". Liberal government does things like this all the time. They ignore facts and promote "feelz" based programs.

 

Thanks, 3rdnlng (I guess that means I have 5 or 6 readers, not 4 or 5). I’m always appreciative of constructive negative feedback that challenges my ideas.

 

I should clarify my carbon tax idea from previous posts. I shouldn’t have described it as a traditional sin tax (or Pigouvian tax, to be more accurate) because the revenue collected would be almost inconsequential to me. The main goal is to rapidly decrease gasoline consumption behavior and rapidly increase renewable tech innovation. The extent to which these two things are happening in real time, in accordance with greenhouse gas emissions standards set by the scientific community, is what I’d use to determine the efficacy of the taxes. It seems horribly impractical to rely on estimated calculations of marginal social costs of carbon pollution into the future in order to establish carbon taxation levels in the present, especially when you also need to factor in effects that the tax levels would have on the present overall economy. I probably wouldn’t even bother setting aside generated carbon tax revenue solely for future environmental damage reparations.

 

I’ll cover ACA, M4A, and all big-government concerns in the Trump Economy thread. So you can read and comment later as you feel is necessary. I recommend sitting down for that one and making sure your blood pressure is at a healthy level before proceeding. Just so you know, I consider myself a pragmatist and not an ideologue. So if y’all can convince me that government intervention is not the best solution for any particular issue I take up, then I will quickly discard that pro-government idea. My default position, believe it or not, is to require as little government involvement in our lives as necessary. It’s that tiny little detail of what’s considered “necessary,” however, that apparently separates me from most on this message board.

 

On 7/13/2020 at 8:53 AM, KRC said:

Passing the buck to others (employers, the "rich," etc.) is not a viable plan. As the cliché says, eventually, you run out of other people's money. Especially when you have a laundry list of other programs that also need money.

 

While gas taxes may not be new, does not mean we need to continually add more. I constantly hear about how this or that tax will be used for x purpose. It rarely works out. After you pay the kickbacks to Congresscritter's friends to do the work and kickbacks to your campaign contributors and funneling money to your personal campaigns, there is no money left and we hear "we need to raise taxes again."

 

I look forward to your economic thoughts. Spoiler alert: I probably will not agree. ?

 

I will keep reading, even though you and I are on different ends of the political spectrum.

 

Seems like we’re overdue for a lovely demand-side economics conversation! My laundry list of programs consists of 4 beyond a strict constitutionalist Republican’s tolerance levels: health care, education, public housing options, and public works projects. Because there’s nothing truly novel about these ideas, the good news is that we have plenty of data (historical and current, national and international) to examine the successes, the pitfalls, and the funding.

 

See my above comments to 3rdnlng on environmental Pigouvian taxes.

 

Spoiler alert: no, you won’t agree with my economic thoughts. Not initially…

 

Are we at “different ends of the political spectrum?” I guess so. We have huge differences on a few key (expensive) issues for sure, but I was also known to multiple campaign Bernie Bros as a secret right-wing canvassing saboteur. You have no idea how much grief I took for my moderate stances on immigration, second amendment, PC culture, protectionism, nuclear energy, Russiagate, Trump impeachment, etc… We share the same concerns about government waste and corruption. We both theoretically want to keep government as small and efficient as possible and keep politicians as accountable to the people as possible. I know we both agree that waste and corruption are present in our military, but we both also don’t want to abandon the idea altogether of a publicly funded military. You see where I am going…

 

On 7/14/2020 at 12:11 PM, B-Man said:

 

Yup, I hear Joe Biden is calling for zero power plant carbon emissions by 2035 and zero net greenhouse gas emissions for the entire economy by 2050. These are okay goals, but I don’t see how they can be done without nuclear energy, which will anger many environmental leftists if that’s what Joe is proposing. And if that’s the case, then the impetus to build these generation 3+ nuclear plants should have begun years ago in order to realistically make these deadlines…like during the Obama regime. We also know Joe is still big on fracking (a huge methane polluter, among other pollutants) as a “bridge” energy source because those companies fund his campaign and because he badly wants to win Pennsylvania. This is the same strategy that Obama and Hillary Clinton used.

 

I guess Joe Biden can say anything he wants on climate change solutions because none of it is legally binding. Obama used lots of nice and beautiful pro-environment words too for 8 full years, the first 2 during which he had the support of both the House and the Senate. Obama’s record on lifting the crude oil export ban in 2015, increasing domestic oil production by 80%, and on leading the domestic natural gas drilling boom told a different story…a story of environmental equivocation that masked the Establishment’s foreign policy agenda under the guise of “energy independence.” I doubt Joe will operate any differently than Obama on climate change because he has hinted at this numerous times in the past and because they share the same energy corporate benefactors. I know, I know…jobs jobs jobs. But there are jobs in renewable energy too. Some politicians are just not as serious about climate change as others. Then again, Joe’s opponent is climate change hoaxer, Donald Trump. I give up.

 

19 hours ago, Buffalo Timmy said:

I do have fun asking my most liberal friends to show me one prediction from 1995 that is correct. They have yet to show me one but always come back to" well things have improved" which is incorrect 

 

Oh gosh I could list a lot more than one, but some people here get angry at my post lengths. So if I choose just one, it will be the big one: global land/surface mean temperatures (+0.55 deg. Celsius) and sea level (+85 mm) continuing to rise in lockstep with carbon dioxide atmospheric concentration (+55 ppm) from 1995 to now, in accordance with theoretical greenhouse gas canon (data source: NASA). We could get pedantic and quibble over the exact numbers that various scientists predicted in 1995, but the data trends from the past 25 years are obvious and more so when you zoom out to a timeline beginning just before the Industrial Age. Similar data trends from the past 25 years hold for a bunch of other important stuff, like ocean acidification and ice sheet sizes.

 

17 hours ago, 3rdnlng said:

Our (USA) carbon emissions have improved in the last decade or two. My guess is the use of natural gas has replaced other dirtier fuels. 

 

Yes, technically this is true. Our overall carbon emissions have improved over the past 15 years or so. This is almost entirely due to natural gas replacing coal. The problems are the following: the decrease isn’t happening fast enough here in the US, overall worldwide carbon emissions have been increasing by a lot more, and fracking has now led to lots of methane released into the atmosphere which is much worse than carbon dioxide.

[leh-nerd skin-erd]

On 7/10/2020 at 8:52 AM, SoCal Deek said:

And in July no less!! Someone call the media!

The concept of “July” is rooted in the tyranny of a patriarchal European Judeo-Christian society.  It’s oppressive, manipulative and as I am running out of words to express my outrage, whimsical.  
 

Unfortunately, the Fahrenheit methodology is as well. 
 

The whole concept of weather is felonious and when you think about it, bodacious. 

[billsfan1959]

8 minutes ago, leh-nerd skin-erd said:

The concept of “July” is rooted in the tyranny of a patriarchal European Judeo-Christian society.  It’s oppressive, manipulative and as I am running out of words to express my outrage, whimsical.  
 

Unfortunately, the Fahrenheit methodology is as well. 
 

The whole concept of weather is felonious and when you think about it, bodacious. 

 

All great points; however, doesn't it really begin with what you "mean" when you say July?

 

Edited July 16, 2020 by billsfan1959

[plenzmd1]

On 7/14/2020 at 12:11 PM, B-Man said:

 

Outside the wells and weathering homes, At the most basic the answer is Solar. 

[leh-nerd skin-erd]

On 7/13/2020 at 9:07 AM, KRC said:

 

I completely agree. The demand is rarely reduced when the sin taxes are imposed. Therefore, people just look for alternatives to get their supply. You mentioned a few. When Canada imposed a tax on cigarettes, all it did was increase smuggling of cigarettes from the U.S. 

 

As far as ACA, it relies on 100% participation. Otherwise, the costs become too high and people drop out (causing the costs to go even higher). A self-perpetuating problem unless the government can force people to participate.

Great posts, but I disagree on your ACA analysis in part.  I’ve mentioned this in the past, and I’ll add it again here.  
 

There is an actuarial approach to calculating the true cost of benefits offered and provided by a redistributive scheme like Obamacare, at least with some degree of reasonable accuracy.  The same approach can be applied to programs like Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare.  Heck, I’m half-convinced that @RealKayAdams could get the job done if we put her and all the friends milling about in her head on the case.  
 

The challenge is that the cost to carry the burden would be neither attainable nor sustainable. The concept is a pipe dream, a pyramid scheme and simply a push towards nationalized health care, where the projection is that the hundreds of thousands of jobs/lives impacted in the move away from private health care models (those also regulated and manipulated by governmental intervention) will simply be absorbed by a low-cost model staffed by state/federal employees.  That the governmental model will also be a pyramid scheme, and result in a product that is neither low cost nor actuarially sustainable is irrelevant to those who favor this model.  
 

I also read RKA’s posts and follow 75% of it (that’s a concentration issue on my part, not a reflection on the post), and in turn simply offer that the model proposals discussed are simply the latest iterations of wealth redistribution models wrapped in the same fear and guilt mongering that has moved the masses for thousands of years.  I am a realist, consider taxation an obligation of every patriotic American, believe in doing my part to be a sensible steward of the environment, but excessive taxation and ceding control to activist politicians and b’crats is not my particular cup of tea. 

[leh-nerd skin-erd]

On 7/13/2020 at 11:03 AM, 3rdnlng said:

HORSESHIT!!!! A person does not have to buy vehicle insurance to live or get/stay well. It is only required in order to protect other interests. Liability insurance to protect whoever a person might collide with and sometimes collision or comprehensive to protect the loan on the vehicle. Your premise has been brought up time and time again here and has been refuted ad nauseum, but it always is used by the Left to support the principle of the ACA. Is there some unwritten rule that prohibits Lefties from learning new things?

 

On 7/13/2020 at 9:50 AM, KRC said:

 

Exactly. I am paying for other people.

EARMUFFS 3rd!! 

 

You’re correct of course but if Tibsy’s mom walks by and sees that sort of language we’re all going to be in dutch. KRC, not accurate at all.  
 

For all the knocks the American insurance model takes—many appropriate from a service/expectation model—it’s fundamentally a risk transference model.  You, individually are not paying for other people—that’s assumes you have no stake in the game and no opportunity to avail yourself of benefits in the event of a loss.  You’re part of a much larger group that shares risk based on individual characteristics in relation to the whole.  
 

It took me a long time to get here—and a healthy debate on cost, benefits, regulation etc is always welcome here—but the reality is that our system does not work without risk transference/risk sharing.  Let’s assume you’re a pristine credit guy, married or civilly partnered with a like-minded spouse interested in buying a new car and a new house in 2020. Total outlay is $400,000,  You certainly have the option to purchase both on a cash basis and avoid most of the insurance trap  altogether. Legislatively, in most states anyway, the only requirement is that you own a liability insurance policy (and maybe carry some medical coverage)  that has been deemed to be in the public interest.  Again—we can debate whether or not that should be mandated, but the theory seems to be if you cross the double yellow line and hit me, seriously injure me and total my car, the choices for me are...self-fund my own recovery, try and recover from you or become a burden in others, 
 

In the alternative, you choose to put your good name on the line, borrow from a bank to assist with some of the $$$, and M&T offers to lend you the money.  Heck, they’ll give you a good rate based on your ability to manage household expenses (much better than the next guy in line, your old pal Leh-nerd a career ne’er-do-well who’s father-in-law correctly suggested would never amount to anything back in 1988) and they’re happy to do it because—hey, you’re fun to be with.  It’s you, Mrs. KRC and off you go....except:

 

As good as you are, bankers are dispassionate souls.  They recognize the risks inherent in lending money to even nice folks like you.  Electrical wires arc and burn $&#@ down. Pipes break. Dipshits like your old pal Leh-nerd spill coffee on their speedo spot and veer into your lane. The problem is solved by shaking your hand and asking you to do just a bit more and insure their interest. 
 

Apologies for the tangent, I’m off to buy insurance on a rental property I’m buying.  It’s my first at age 58, and brother, I’m insuring the crap out of it.  Peace. 
 

 

 

 

[Cinga]

28 minutes ago, plenzmd1 said:

Outside the wells and weathering homes, At the most basic the answer is Solar. 

 

How do you propose to do that? Seriously?

If we're going to discuss saving the environment, yet do it with something that kills thousands of birds a year? Or is it that the birds should just be written off as collateral damage?

But you also need a plan to dispose of old panels. Keep in mind, a good solar system life span is about 25 years, so you need a plan for retrofitting, and a way to dispose of the old, in a totally environmentally friendly way.  

[plenzmd1]

1 minute ago, Cinga said:

 

How do you propose to do that? Seriously?

If we're going to discuss saving the environment, yet do it with something that kills thousands of birds a year? Or is it that the birds should just be written off as collateral damage?

But you also need a plan to dispose of old panels. Keep in mind, a good solar system life span is about 25 years, so you need a plan for retrofitting, and a way to dispose of the old, in a totally environmentally friendly way.  

That all could be , I do not know the answer to those.  It I am confident that Solar is in the “ exponential” growth phase right now that with 8 years we will not only have the capability to produce all the energy currently needed, but also the means to store it efficiently. I mean Tesla talking bout a million mile battery? 
 

EV will be ubiquitous within 10 years, can envision most not owning cars , etc. 

 

as you say, I am not sure about the collateral problems that presents , and do need to learn about that. 

[Orlando Buffalo]

3 hours ago, RealKayAdams said:

 

Thanks, 3rdnlng (I guess that means I have 5 or 6 readers, not 4 or 5). I’m always appreciative of constructive negative feedback that challenges my ideas.

 

I should clarify my carbon tax idea from previous posts. I shouldn’t have described it as a traditional sin tax (or Pigouvian tax, to be more accurate) because the revenue collected would be almost inconsequential to me. The main goal is to rapidly decrease gasoline consumption behavior and rapidly increase renewable tech innovation. The extent to which these two things are happening in real time, in accordance with greenhouse gas emissions standards set by the scientific community, is what I’d use to determine the efficacy of the taxes. It seems horribly impractical to rely on estimated calculations of marginal social costs of carbon pollution into the future in order to establish carbon taxation levels in the present, especially when you also need to factor in effects that the tax levels would have on the present overall economy. I probably wouldn’t even bother setting aside generated carbon tax revenue solely for future environmental damage reparations.

 

I’ll cover ACA, M4A, and all big-government concerns in the Trump Economy thread. So you can read and comment later as you feel is necessary. I recommend sitting down for that one and making sure your blood pressure is at a healthy level before proceeding. Just so you know, I consider myself a pragmatist and not an ideologue. So if y’all can convince me that government intervention is not the best solution for any particular issue I take up, then I will quickly discard that pro-government idea. My default position, believe it or not, is to require as little government involvement in our lives as necessary. It’s that tiny little detail of what’s considered “necessary,” however, that apparently separates me from most on this message board.

 

 

Seems like we’re overdue for a lovely demand-side economics conversation! My laundry list of programs consists of 4 beyond a strict constitutionalist Republican’s tolerance levels: health care, education, public housing options, and public works projects. Because there’s nothing truly novel about these ideas, the good news is that we have plenty of data (historical and current, national and international) to examine the successes, the pitfalls, and the funding.

 

See my above comments to 3rdnlng on environmental Pigouvian taxes.

 

Spoiler alert: no, you won’t agree with my economic thoughts. Not initially…

 

Are we at “different ends of the political spectrum?” I guess so. We have huge differences on a few key (expensive) issues for sure, but I was also known to multiple campaign Bernie Bros as a secret right-wing canvassing saboteur. You have no idea how much grief I took for my moderate stances on immigration, second amendment, PC culture, protectionism, nuclear energy, Russiagate, Trump impeachment, etc… We share the same concerns about government waste and corruption. We both theoretically want to keep government as small and efficient as possible and keep politicians as accountable to the people as possible. I know we both agree that waste and corruption are present in our military, but we both also don’t want to abandon the idea altogether of a publicly funded military. You see where I am going…

 

 

Yup, I hear Joe Biden is calling for zero power plant carbon emissions by 2035 and zero net greenhouse gas emissions for the entire economy by 2050. These are okay goals, but I don’t see how they can be done without nuclear energy, which will anger many environmental leftists if that’s what Joe is proposing. And if that’s the case, then the impetus to build these generation 3+ nuclear plants should have begun years ago in order to realistically make these deadlines…like during the Obama regime. We also know Joe is still big on fracking (a huge methane polluter, among other pollutants) as a “bridge” energy source because those companies fund his campaign and because he badly wants to win Pennsylvania. This is the same strategy that Obama and Hillary Clinton used.

 

I guess Joe Biden can say anything he wants on climate change solutions because none of it is legally binding. Obama used lots of nice and beautiful pro-environment words too for 8 full years, the first 2 during which he had the support of both the House and the Senate. Obama’s record on lifting the crude oil export ban in 2015, increasing domestic oil production by 80%, and on leading the domestic natural gas drilling boom told a different story…a story of environmental equivocation that masked the Establishment’s foreign policy agenda under the guise of “energy independence.” I doubt Joe will operate any differently than Obama on climate change because he has hinted at this numerous times in the past and because they share the same energy corporate benefactors. I know, I know…jobs jobs jobs. But there are jobs in renewable energy too. Some politicians are just not as serious about climate change as others. Then again, Joe’s opponent is climate change hoaxer, Donald Trump. I give up.

 

 

Oh gosh I could list a lot more than one, but some people here get angry at my post lengths. So if I choose just one, it will be the big one: global land/surface mean temperatures (+0.55 deg. Celsius) and sea level (+85 mm) continuing to rise in lockstep with carbon dioxide atmospheric concentration (+55 ppm) from 1995 to now, in accordance with theoretical greenhouse gas canon (data source: NASA). We could get pedantic and quibble over the exact numbers that various scientists predicted in 1995, but the data trends from the past 25 years are obvious and more so when you zoom out to a timeline beginning just before the Industrial Age. Similar data trends from the past 25 years hold for a bunch of other important stuff, like ocean acidification and ice sheet sizes.

 

 

Yes, technically this is true. Our overall carbon emissions have improved over the past 15 years or so. This is almost entirely due to natural gas replacing coal. The problems are the following: the decrease isn’t happening fast enough here in the US, overall worldwide carbon emissions have been increasing by a lot more, and fracking has now led to lots of methane released into the atmosphere which is much worse than carbon dioxide.

I am just responding to what you said to me. It is funny how I am pedantic when the prediction was 4-5 degree shift in temperature and you give me .5 degrees. The earth is always changing and that is well with normal changes in a single year much less 25. Secondly it is interesting you cut the time line off at the industrial revolution when if you go back a 1000 years it shows more instability of climate. As for the ocean rise, I have a hard time determine how a constantly moving body is less than 1 cm different than 25 years ago, you cant just measure it against the beach because the beach changes, the waves are constantly in motion, the measurement can not be precise enough to, with any honest confidence, state the entire ocean is different by fractions of a cm.  The satellite they currently use was not even launched until 2016 and it still has a variance of 4 cm so why would I trust any info within that variance? Lastly since so much data is available exclusively to scientists who agree with findings I will always be skeptical.

 

[KRC]

5 hours ago, RealKayAdams said:

Are we at “different ends of the political spectrum?” I guess so. We have huge differences on a few key (expensive) issues for sure, but I was also known to multiple campaign Bernie Bros as a secret right-wing canvassing saboteur. You have no idea how much grief I took for my moderate stances on immigration, second amendment, PC culture, protectionism, nuclear energy, Russiagate, Trump impeachment, etc… We share the same concerns about government waste and corruption. We both theoretically want to keep government as small and efficient as possible and keep politicians as accountable to the people as possible. I know we both agree that waste and corruption are present in our military, but we both also don’t want to abandon the idea altogether of a publicly funded military. You see where I am going…

 

 

The "we are at different ends of the political spectrum" may have been a bit much. You have moved me a little closer to your POV on some issues, but we are farther apart on others. Always appreciate the well thought out posts.

[KRC]

4 hours ago, leh-nerd skin-erd said:

Great posts, but I disagree on your ACA analysis in part.  I’ve mentioned this in the past, and I’ll add it again here.  
 

There is an actuarial approach to calculating the true cost of benefits offered and provided by a redistributive scheme like Obamacare, at least with some degree of reasonable accuracy.  The same approach can be applied to programs like Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare.  Heck, I’m half-convinced that @RealKayAdams could get the job done if we put her and all the friends milling about in her head on the case.  
 

The challenge is that the cost to carry the burden would be neither attainable nor sustainable. The concept is a pipe dream, a pyramid scheme and simply a push towards nationalized health care, where the projection is that the hundreds of thousands of jobs/lives impacted in the move away from private health care models (those also regulated and manipulated by governmental intervention) will simply be absorbed by a low-cost model staffed by state/federal employees.  That the governmental model will also be a pyramid scheme, and result in a product that is neither low cost nor actuarially sustainable is irrelevant to those who favor this model.  
 

I also read RKA’s posts and follow 75% of it (that’s a concentration issue on my part, not a reflection on the post), and in turn simply offer that the model proposals discussed are simply the latest iterations of wealth redistribution models wrapped in the same fear and guilt mongering that has moved the masses for thousands of years.  I am a realist, consider taxation an obligation of every patriotic American, believe in doing my part to be a sensible steward of the environment, but excessive taxation and ceding control to activist politicians and b’crats is not my particular cup of tea. 

 

I understand the calculation of the costs. I also understand that you need to continually recalculate as people drop out of the plan. With those increased costs, more people drop out, causing costs to go up. A perpetual cycle. Not something I need to explain to you as I know you understand it. That is why Obamacare is mandating people participate. As participation goes down (especially the healthy people dropping out), costs will skyrocket and will continue to skyrocket as only the unhealthiest of people will be left in the plan.