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House Passes Massive Medical Insurance Bill, 219-212
The votes are in: yesterday evening, after a last-minute compromise over abortion payments, the US House of Representatives narrowly passed a bill effecting major changes in American medical finance. From the BBC's coverage: "The president is expected to sign the House-passed Senate bill as early as Tuesday, after which it will be officially enacted into law. However, it will contain some very unpopular measures that Democratic senators have agreed to amend. The Senate will be able to make the required changes in a separate bill using a procedure known as reconciliation, which allows budget provisions to be approved with 51 votes - rather than the 60 needed to overcome blocking tactics." No Republican voted in favor of the bill; 34 Democrats voted against. As law, the system set forth would extend insurance coverage to an estimated 32 million Americans, impose new taxes on high-income earners as well as provide some tax breaks and subsidies for others, and considerably toughen the regulatory regime under which insurance companies operate. The anticipated insurance regime phases in (starting with children, and expanding to adults in 2014) a requirement that insurance providers accept those with preexisting conditions, and creates a system of fines, expected to be administered by the IRS, for those who fail or refuse to obtain health insurance.
you are always going to pay for it. about time that we stopped the system of some people getting "insurance" only when they get sick
Congrats US citizens! You're on your way to a non-broken health care system!
This Bill will cause Billing
Not being a USA citizen, I can't think of any reason why this bill is controversial.
What exactly are the pro's and cons?
FYI, AHIP (insurance company reps) wrote the health care bill word for word. Do you actually believe this will help the common man?
This is going to be awesome fight.
Please remain calm, there is no reason to pani... wait, where are you all going?
It's a 4 page bill that basically proposes to extend Medicare benefits to everyone from age 0 to age 64 with a simple 'buy-in.' You buy in at cost and you're covered.
That means no Cigna Corporation sitting around denying you a liver transplant - which cost at least one girl her life.
Spread the word. This bill got 50 sponsors in 2 days.
http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h4789/show
http://www.open.salon.com/blog/brinna_nanda/2010/03/10/a_public_option_we_can_all_love_hr_4789
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
There are other perverse incentives. The $750 fine per employee (for firms with between 50 and 199 employees) constitutes a regressive payroll tax, discouraging the hiring of lower-wage entry-level employees in favor of higher-wage higher-productive employees.
You're right in that it's not strictly face-value news of the geek type, but lets face it, it affects nerds too. It may well affect them in large ways. All the new tech that has to be put in place for this may well bring healthcare to headlines on /. more often.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
This bill sells out the American people to some of the largest campaign contributors. The insurance companies, the AMA, and the pharmaceutical companies will reap hundreds of billions from their investment of tens of millions in bribes.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
So the bill does a lot of good things. It stops insurance companies basically doing whatever they like, which was the main problem with the US health system. But it actually rewards those same insurance companies by delivering millions of new customers to them. A competitive public option would have pushed down insurance company margins and made them actually compete for business, instead of retaining their confusopoly. And then there's the issue that women will now be required to purchase abortion coverage separately because the government is forbidden to pay for that procedure. This is basically a regression, since lots of plans will probably stop covering abortion in order to be eligible for government subsidised customers. Overall though, lots more people who were unable to get coverage will now be able to get it. Imperfect as it is, this bill will save lives, and contrary to what Fox will tell you, it will not affect anyone who is currently happy with their insurance.
It was the "right to life" people that threatened to block life-saving medical care for millions.
Cry you fucking piece of shit.
Now we will wait and see if the apocalypse that conservatives told us this would bring arrives. Reasonable people realized some time ago that this bill most likely won't change much of anything in their lives. If the Democratic Party had a publicity group that was worth a shit, they would take advantage of that when the midterm elections come in November (at which point this bill will be law for several months and have done pretty well nothing that the fearmongerers had told us).
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
People like to harp on Massachusetts as Taxachusetts, especially after Mitt Romney(R) forced the people of his state to buy insurance whether they wanted it or not, thus creating a new expense people had to pay, but now the federal government has seen fit to follow the Republicans down the social/fascist rabbit hole.
The biggest problem is no one has ever given me an answer as to why my money has to go to pay the medical bills of my neighbor who smokes half a pack a day, or my neighbor on the other side who thinks it's funny to drink a case of beer each weekend by themselves.
What about my coworkers who refuse to walk up one flight of stairs or drink a liter of Pepsi every day? Why should I have to pay for their medical expenses when they can't be bothered to take care of themselves?
Further, why should I have to buy something I don't want? Are you next going to force me to go to a store and buy something to keep the store alive?
The ONLY winners in this whole fiasco are the insurance companies who will reap huge profits from the influx of money and still, despite the wording of the bill, will not cover everyone or every procedure.
While the Republicans can try to claim they stood their ground on this bill, they shouldn't be too smug as their party started this nonsense.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
What?! That sounds totally reasonable and pretty sane. What am I missing?
The ONLY winners in this whole fiasco are the insurance companies
You forgot: 1) the AMA, which still gets to limit how many people may enter the profession, 2) the pharmaceutical companies, 3) the bureaucracy, and 4) the congress.
The Republicans set us on the road to financial ruin, and the Democrats have just floored the accelerator.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
According to Wikipedia, Insurance is, "a form of risk management primarily used to hedge against the risk of a contingent loss".
But with the mandate for coverage of pre-existing conditions, I don't see how there is a contingent aspect of this anymore. It is like selling "fire insurance" coverage for houses that are already on fire. That is not really "insurance".
You can call the new health care legislation many things, but it is more in the nature of a new medical welfare program than any form of insurance as we know it, since it does not appear that costs are based on actuarial risks.
I understand that many hard working people deserve health insurance. I think it would be great if I could switch careers or start a small business and not have to worry about how I will provide health insurance for my family and I.
However, I have one major issue... I know so many people in this country who try to game our systems of unemployment and welfare, and quite frankly its rather sad. I really am unsure if the government should take care of these people, as they are already a drain on our society to begin with...
Not really a total troll here, but I have heard that people like Rush Limbaugh have stated that they would leave the US if this bill was passed. Not that he will be missed by me, but are there people who are now seriously considering emigrating because they believe the government has failed them? I know that there have been a lot of trash talk from right leaning people along the lines of "if you don't like it here then leave", but I am curious to know what will happen now that the boot is on the other foot. Maybe it could be a good poll?
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
He's closing his practice at the end of this year... in fairness, he's been talking about it for a couple of years. He quit seeing medicare patients 2 years ago (but thankfully still sees my dad since I make up the difference of what medicare refuses to pay).
On the business side of the coin, my accountants tell me I am going to cut costs equivalent to laying off almost 15% of my workforce to pay for the additional burden this "health" bill creates. My other option is to shrink my business enough that it fits underneath the cutoff.
How long until Americans figure out that it is much cheaper to pay the fines and pick up health insurance when you need it (now that insurers are required to sign people with preexisting conditions) than to pay premiums year-round?
Or was this the Democrats' intention? Bankrupt the insurance industry and come in as Mr. Government, Savior of All.
for all that Iraqi oil profits to pay for health care, just like it paid for the Iraq war!
"would extend insurance coverage to an estimated 32 million Americans" No, it doesn't. It requires you to buy insurance. There's nothing in that bill that addresses health care costs. Insurance is not health care, those are two separate issues. It just mandates you buy insurance. If you can't afford it, which is the main reason most people don't have it at lower pay scales, it just creates a larger bureaucracy to shuffle money around from one person to the next, with the government taking a skim in the middle. Big fines if you don't go along with this idea.
It would have been better if they addressed three decades of job losses instead, and approached it from that angle, because with more and better jobs, more people could afford healthcare anyway.
This is another stealth subsidy bailout for huge corporations in the "financial services" arena, and they have the bulk of the Ds faked out this is "health care reform". It's no different from the big investment bank bailouts.
I may be wrong, but from the UK perspective this is not "NHS Lite" socialised healthcare, rather this is the wetware equivalent of compulsory motor insurance, now applied to human beings...
Nice civil liberties you have there citizen, shame if anything happened to them, better buy this here medical insurance, know what I mean?
Sounds like this bill has nothing whatsoever to do with medical treatment per se.
One small step from the RIAA et al doing the same thing.
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
Here's something funny: if everyone jointly pays for healthcare and everybody gets treated health costs go down. This is because no one puts off going to the doctor because of expense. Cancers are caught sooner, infections are treated before the victim starts coughing up blood. What selfish libertarians like yourself don't realise is that a persons health is mostly unrelated to their choices. No one chooses to get prostate cancer, no one chooses to get bitten by a rabid dog.
Wait, so people with chronic conditions will be able to get healthcare now? The horror!
There are near and long-term changes to healthcare in this bill/soon-to-be law as I understand it, the near-term changes will require the definition of "child" to be expanded to age 26 and pre-existing conditions will no longer be a basis for exclusion. Fine, but I've also been told that these changes will somehow lower my health insurance coverage premiums, but I don't see how,,,
Ken
The US was 'Born' a Monkey.
Monkeys are crafty, crazy, explosive, clever little bastards. Simple and clean just isn't fun enough. It's ONLY fun when somebody loses an eye!
So of course you're going to get a screw-ball health system which is hopelessly messed up. Monkeys are insane. They deserve the misery they create for themselves.
So, yeah, nice job.
The U.S. took a ridiculously simple concept and made it unbelievably complex and punishing.
BTW, Canada is a "Rabbit" --Cordial, diplomatic, comfy, but fundamentally selfish, and smart enough to slip it all past the radar with a smile.
Rabbits piss me off almost as much as Monkeys. Those selfish rodents will be your friend until there's no room in the life boat.
The West deserves itself.
-FL
patriotism, as in caring for the health of your nation, the welfare of your fellow man, belief in the common good, as opposed to the prophets of blind ultimately self-defeating selfishness: i don't know why that's "patriotism"
morality, as in standing up and saying that i don't believe in a society where a corporation takes care of its stockholders and denies middle class americans health benefits while gouging them with skyrocketing rates
freedom, from disease and sickness, as opposed to the false "freedom" to choose between paying for your broken arm, or depending upon society to pay for your broken arm because you can't afford it (while you rail about your "right" to "choose" to not have health insurance)
if you understand why you can't drive legally without car insurance, you understand why health insurance must be mandated. even the young and healthy break their arms. then, what happens? does the hospital turn them away for not having cash? can you live in a society that does that?
furthermore, what currently happens if they have no health insurance? hospitals have unpaid bills, and remains eternally on the verge of bankruptcy, eternally needing bailouts from the state and feds. in other words: you already pay for it, but now you pay for it in the most common sense way
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Medicare's hideously inefficient, for one.
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
Well obviously that it's been suggested by one of those Communist Nazi Liberal Fascists who hate America and want to see it become like China, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Nazi Germany.
How many political stories will we see posted to /.?
this legislation had nothing to do with health care or insurance reform.
I'm 25 and I have bone cancer. I started having strange problems almost ten years ago, and my idiot doctor took six years after I had fairly obvious symptoms to detect my low grade sarcoma. I blew $30,000 on all kinds of blood tests and scans in the wrong places that I paid out of pocket after insurance, when the only successful detective method was an x-ray or better in the right place. I can't sue because of no discovery clause and the statute of limitations laws in my state.
I don't have insurance because I'm not on my parents anymore because of my age. I have medically withdrawn from college eight times, most of which were pre-diagnosis. After my discovery and surgery, I only received two weeks of physical therapy. That's when the insurance company cut me. It took them 19 months and a lawsuit to get them to actually pay my bill. I still haven't had any measurable physical therapy and my quality of life is ... let's just say not good.
What should I have done differently? Why is my life worth nothing to you?
I do believe the government DID buy into several banks and car companies recently without asking you just to keep them alive.
When it comes to politics, why do people talk about things like "down the social/fascist rabbit hole" - is that some sort of Alice in Wonderland reference? It sure confuses the hell out of me...
"The biggest problem is no one has ever given me an answer as to why my money has to go to pay the medical bills of my neighbor who smokes half a pack a day, or my neighbor on the other side who thinks it's funny to drink a case of beer each weekend by themselves."
Because it's a liberal progressive mentality bordering on socialistic/marxist ideals.
What would you do to help your mother/brother/sister/father?
How about your next door neighbor you hang out with?
The guy in the next street, or the next town?
At what point do you draw the line and say that I am going to help these people and not those people?
I think that part of the US problem is more that in general this line is drawn closer to home compared to other people who draw it further out.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
The 1,990-page health care bill (PDF) is ugly. It's full of insufficiently rigorous thinking and poor quality communication.
Most of the manner in which the new legislation will operate is not specified in the bill. For example, on page 77 it says, "The Secretary shall adopt and regularly update standards consistent with the goals described in paragraph (2)."
The U.S. Congress uses an outdated font. It is not possible to generate a readable copy because each line is preceded by a number. There are numerous quirks, like sometimes capitalizing the word "website".
Here is a guess: Possibly there is no one in the media who writes about the bill who has actually read and understood the bill.
Still, in my opinion the bill is better than nothing. As many have mentioned, the present U.S. health care system would otherwise be one of the biggest causes of U.S. government bankruptcy.
Because when you decide you don't want to buy insurance and subsequently get a ruptured appendix (which there is no way of reducing your risk for aside from possibly exposing yourself regularly to cholera and other digestive diseases), you're not about to lay down and die on principle. You're going to demand that the ER save your life, then demand they swallow the tens of thousands of dollars it cost (which gets passed on to everyone else in the end). Imperfectly "socializing" the worst case scenarios has roughly the same net effect as requiring everyone to buy health insurance, except that the status quo meant a reverse lottery where specific unlucky individuals go bankrupt and their hospitals lose money disproportionately. Yeah, it subsidizes the lazy and those with unhealthy habits, but I somehow doubt people are choosing to smoke so as to take greater advantage of their health care. Demanding that the guy with the ruptured appendix or the type I diabetes must die so the guy with the pack a day habit or the type II diabetes isn't "rewarded" is inhuman.
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
Not necessarily a bad thing. Similarly, if my house catches on fire, it is a good thing that the city sends a fire truck to put it out. But I don't call that "fire insurance". They are entirely different things.
Typical private insurer: 15 to 30%
Of course, if you define "efficiency" by the ratio of things they decline to cover, sure, they're way more efficient.
Now they should try a health care bill.
You pay regardless. The hospitals have to treat them and you don't expect the medical profession to tell them to piss off and die somewhere else do you?
That's really fascist.
This bill while sounding like an okay step (I haven't read the entire bill). I say this because although I didn't understand it at the time I witnessed my Nana go from being self sufficient to living with my Aunt all because her insurance company refused to help her when she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
Due to the insurance company not covering her she had a choice of dying and leaving some money to her kids and grandkids or spending every penny she had. This debate delayed her actions and she ended up dying with nothing as she used her entire savings as well as selling her assets to try and stay alive. If the insurance company had just done what she was paying them to do she wouldn't have died at that time but she was afraid of being a burdon on her kids.
However I still think the goverment should have changed the private companies by making them not for profit companies that could hold money to cover claims but could not have shareholders so they would not be at the mercy of profits to give to shareholders.
Ok, now that supposedly everyone will now have insurance what about the 32,000,000 people having to pay the co-pays? And what about the costs of prescription drugs? I know people on some regimes that cost them $300+ a month in bills. They have pretty good jobs and have a Health Savings Account that helps them pay those bills but can the 32,000,000, who couldn't afford to purchase health insurance, be able to afford those costs? And another question, for those Americans that couldn't afford health care and had jobs and had assistance via Medicaid, will they continue to receive assistance via Medicaid. Medicaid already did help keep some of those costs down that I just mentioned but the government considers health care insurance as part of your income in this new bill (I believe - if I'm wrong then just ignore and I'm sorry) which means that would raise some people AGI so that they would no longer receive Medicaid.
Did we need Health Care Reform? Yes, I agree that we do. Is that what we received with this bill? No, I think that we didn't. I think we just helped the government raise taxes for everyone. When congress and the senate sit down and work through the tax issue it will be brought up that raising taxed for the higher income people would not be very democratic and that everyone should help foot some of the this bill. Even if it they don't, and I don't have that much faith in our government not to, people with high incomes have usually had great loopholes to lower the AGI.
Did you know that you can donate almost up to 50% of your stuff to reduce your AGI? So, a single person making $100,000 donates up to $25,000 (charity, IRAs, etc) will have an AGI of $75,000 minus $5,700 for the standard deduction making their AGI $69,300. Now figure out any deductions for mortgages. Agreed this is an overly simplistic view of the situation but if you are making more the $100k a year why aren't you protecting it?
I just hope that during this current recession that details of this bill and the trillion dollars it will cost in the next 10 years is something that America can afford and it will help continue to slow our economy more.
Save Pangaea!! Stop Continental Drift!!
November. Remember? The time when so-called representatives find out what happens to them, under our style of non-violent revolution, when they subvert the will of the people they’re elected by.
I can’t wait. This should be fun.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
the AMA, which still gets to limit how many people may enter the profession
That isn't entirely true. It is possible to practice medicine in this country without going through an AMA medical school. We have 28 schools of osteopathic medicine in this country; you can also obtain an MD or DO outside the US and then takes the boards here and practice medicine in the US.
I also know of another MD-granting medical school that opened in the past 2 years in Pennsylvania; and based on the size of entering medical school classes right now, the best way to generate additional qualified MDs for our country would be to open more schools.
the pharmaceutical companies
Indeed their profits will at worst (from their perspective) remain at the same level as before. Nothing in this bill changes that at all.
3) the bureaucracy, and 4) the congress.
I'm not sure how those benefit from this bill.
The Republicans set us on the road to financial ruin, and the Democrats have just floored the accelerator.
Indeed this has only further entrenched us in the existing system.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I understand Medicare has among the highest rate of fraud and abuse in the insurance industry, expanding that "flawed" program to every breathing American would likely lead to unheard-of levels of fraud and corruption...
Aside from that likely reality, sounds like a fine idea.
Here's one example from the NY Times on a recent bust in Florida:
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/16/us/16fraud.html
Ken
the part where "totally reasonable and pretty sane" is the hallmark of a bill that's going nowhere, no matter what it's about.
That intelligent people such as slashdotters have no knowledge of the United States Constitution. Nowhere in the constitution does it guarantee the citizens healthcare.
The only thing missing are the Tea Partiers calling congressmen niggers and faggots. But forget reality - what are CNN and Fox News saying?
CNN: Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Missouri, released a statement late Saturday saying he too was called the "N" word as he walked to the Capitol for a vote and that he was spat on by one protestor who was arrested by U.S. Capitol Police. Cleaver declined to press charges against the man, the statement said...
Protesters also hurled anti-gay comments at Rep. Barney Frank, D-Massachusetts, who is openly gay, as he left the same health care meeting that Lewis attended in a House office building.
A CNN producer overheard the word "faggot" yelled at Frank several times in the lobby of the Longworth building. Frank said he heard someone yell "homo" at him.
FOX: Republican National Chairman Michael Steele and one of the organizers of Saturday's Tea Party rally strongly condemned the racial slurs that some black lawmakers alleged were yelled at them by some health care protesters as they headed for a procedural vote at Capitol Hill....
But black lawmakers weren't the only targets of the protesters' invective. Rep. Joe Crowley, D-N.Y., alleges some of the demonstrators also castigated Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., who is gay.
"I don't even want to repeat it," said Crowley when asked what they said to Frank.
A spokeswoman for the U.S. Capitol Police said she was unaware of any law enforcement inquiry into the incidents.
Oh Fox... will you ever be more than a conservative mouthpiece?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
THIS is ONLY about power and money, NOTHING to do with helping people.
Don't kid yourself, they (Democrats) want this so they can control MORE or YOUR money.
Bend over, we have some more taxes you might (or not, we don't care) enjoy.
you understand the legal logic behind requiring people to have car insurance before driving, right?
so if you understand why you can't drive legally without car insurance, you understand why health insurance must be mandated. even the young and healthy break their arms. then, what happens? is everyone an upper middle class paragon of financial virtue with $200,000 in the bank for unforeseen health problems?
furthermore, does the hospital turn them away for not having cash? can you live in a society that does that? so what is the "choice" here? there is no choice: you need health insurance
furthermore, what currently happens if they have no health insurance? what happens is hospitals have unpaid bills, and remains eternally on the verge of bankruptcy... eternally needing bailouts from the state and feds
in other words: you already pay for all of the uninsured with your taxes!
but now you pay for it in the most common sense direct way
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
That's none of your business and you have no right to point a gun at someone and require him to help someone against his will. That's slavery.
Most of us have health insurance that we purchase through our employers, provided by insanely profitable corporations.
Except for the 35-50 million who don't and can't get health insurance. Never mind that losing your job has meant a double whammy of losing your health insurance too. Happened to me. It also matters for those who can't get coverage because of pre-existing conditions. Has happened to members of my immediate family.
Does this bill cure everything? Of course not. But it does change things for a lot of people, hopefully for the better. If you have been lucky not to be affected by the broken parts of the US healthcare system, consider yourself lucky.
Cool. Government mandating that people buy PRIVATE health insurance (never been done...and no car insurance is not the same as you don't have to buy a car and many people don't own one). Private health insurance stock is going to skyrocket! Profit!
I predict a good chance it will be knocked down by the Supremes since the court is Majority conservative. Their justification will be the one I put above.
What about the tactics of employers who hire part time or 90 day temporary employees to avoid providing them with insurance? Also, many companies keep part time employees longer than 90 days giving them full time hours which is illegal since they don't make them full time employees - just to avoid paying benefits. It all looks good on paper - toilet paper!
Have no cost controls whatsoever for health insurance companies and force everyone to buy it.
How is this not more corporate welfare? Which follows big bank welfare? Which follows car company welfare? Which follows big pharma welfare? (medicare drug benefit).
And I voted for change and health care reform. How can we cram welfare reform down on people, but never companies?
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Can we please stop calling it health 'insurance' now, since with this legislation it has nothing to do whatsoever with the term?
Here's how we do it: 23% of your paycheck is ripped from you. For that you get: As many sick days (with pay) as you have to get (of course they come check on you if you're sick too long), full accident and sickness insurance, including medication (albeit with a small fee, around 5 bucks, per prescription), hospital of your choice if you need one, pretty much all checkups your doc deems sensible, any life saving (or ability-saving) operation, hospital stay as long as you need to (iirc with a nominal per-day fee of a few bucks, unless you either absolutely HAVE to stay there or are needy, which also eliminates all other fees you'd have to pay) and a few other nifty things.
On the downside, you get the doc that happens to be available, you get crammed into a room with 12 other people, the food is pretty much ... well, let's say it doesn't instantly kill you and no TV, internet or other perks. You can of course invest in a private "additional" insurance that covers these expenses, or you pay for them directly when you need/want them.
I don't know about you, but somehow I like that system. Yes, it's anything but cheap (hey, it costs me a fourth of my income), but it means that I get any operation, any medication and any treatment I could possibly require to stay healthy (or return to that state as well as medically possible). I'd say it's worth it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The text of the bill:
:)
http://www.opencongress.org/senate_health_care_bill
The economy of the bill:
http://cboblog.cbo.gov/?p=508
Congrats from Europe
That's a bit extreme considering that, while I may be paying to keep my fellow canadian healthier, I am not subsidizing his purchase of a 52in TV. Of course there are incentives to be better than your neighbour, it's to get all the things you couldn't get if you didn't try hard enough.
I don't see why people keep thinking socialized medicine is the end of social classes. It's not, it's simply strengthening some foundational work of society, that's it. Healthier people are more productive and cheaper people. So it's better for you who wants that big screen TV because healthcare costs for employers and government will be less over time, as people can have access to basic care whenever they need it, leading to healthier people.
This is not the same as destroying social classes that give the incentive to work (or cheat) harder. I would be a bum and depend on tax-funded government healthcare, but then all I'd have in life is tax-funded government healthcare. So what?
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
What about my coworkers who refuse to walk up one flight of stairs or drink a liter of Pepsi every day? Why should I have to pay for their medical expenses when they can't be bothered to take care of themselves?
I know. It sucks. You work hard to pay your bills, get educated, take care of your family, exercise, keep yourself out of trouble, and for what? Some jackass politician just walks in and takes away things from you that represent a great deal of denying yourself pleasures along the way.
The constant erosion of freedom and opportunity in this country just makes me heart sick. Makes me just want to say "fuck it", and figure out ways to game the system like everyone else.
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
> about time that we stopped the system of some people getting "insurance" only when they get sick
On the contrary, we've made doing it easier than ever before. Because insurance companies are no longer allowed to "discriminate" against me for preexisting conditions, it is actually better for me to not buy insurance until I get sick. The uninsured fee will only be $700 and there's a pretty high income threshold (~$80000? I think) before you have to pay it. Insurance costs on average $6400/year, so if you are buying insurance yourself, it's TEN TIMES more expensive to buy insurance now than it would be to wait until you need it. I predict that this is exactly what I and most other the uninsured are going to do. In fact, even those that have insurance now, might consider getting rid of it for the enormous financial gain that provides. How would you like to have and extra SIX THOUSAND dollars of disposable income every year?
But with the mandate for coverage of pre-existing conditions, I don't see how there is a contingent aspect of this anymore. It is like selling "fire insurance" coverage for houses that are already on fire. That is not really "insurance".
You forgot the important qualifier. "a form of risk management PRIMARILY used to hedge against the risk of a contingent loss". Insurance can be to hedge against gains, it can be to share risk, it can be to shift risk to another party. It's not so simple as a single sentence quoted from wikipedia. You cannot cover pre-existing conditions unless you force everyone to have coverage, otherwise the smart play is to buy insurance only after you get sick which destroys the financial structure of insurance (no premiums being paid in).
According to Wikipedia, Insurance is, "a form of risk management primarily used to hedge against the risk of a contingent loss".
But with the mandate for coverage of pre-existing conditions, I don't see how there is a contingent aspect of this anymore. It is like selling "fire insurance" coverage for houses that are already on fire. That is not really "insurance".
You can call the new health care legislation many things, but it is more in the nature of a new medical welfare program than any form of insurance as we know it, since it does not appear that costs are based on actuarial risks.
From one (non-Free) dictionary:
"1 a : the business of insuring persons or property b : coverage by contract whereby one party undertakes to indemnify or guarantee another against loss by a specified contingency or peril c : the sum for which something is insured
2 : a means of guaranteeing protection or safety "
From another,
" 1 arrange for compensation in the event of damage to or loss of (property, life, or a person), in exchange for regular payments to a company. 2 secure the payment of (a sum) in this way. 3 (insure against) protect (someone) against (a possible eventuality). 4 another term for ENSURE."
I really am unsure if the government should take care of these people, as they are already a drain on our society to begin with...
If you have a better system, please let us know.
this is a pretty huge thing for any nerd who is looking to become self employed.
I see a lot of discussions on my geek mailing lists about whether it is possible to get reasonably priced insurance if you go self employed (particularly if you have a sick kid).
This should make that a lot easier...
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Precisely right. You can’t “insure” someone who has a pre-existing medical condition that will require continual expensive treatments. You can subsidize them, but that’s not “insurance”.
Insurance is for things that you hope aren’t coming, not for things that you know are.
Expecting insurance companies to insure people who are 100% certain to incur consistent and high medical expenses is insane. Lumping them in with everyone else is even more insane.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
The more people who pay into the pot, the less it costs for everyone.
You could see it as "you subsidising your neighbour" or "he is subsidising me" - when everyone is paying in, it does become cheaper for you, even though you are doing something as terrible as making the system better for your neighbour as a side effect for making it better for yourself.
Who cares if your neighbour gets cheaper care if overall it is better for you too.
It still not perfect (needs single payer system), but it's a step forwards, even with all the drastic cuts and compromises made for the Repubs who voted no anyway. Alas.
I'm not from the US, but, imho, what is currently wrong with the US health care is:
1) It costs more than needed in the US, and most money goes to administration/lawyers/patents/... instead of going to the actual production of medicine and the actual work done by doctors. Health care of the same or better quality can be provided much cheaper.
2) In the insurance system, people are excluded based on the current status of their body. Nobody should be excluded based on that.
I'm not sure if the new system now voted for, improves the above points, but the old one scores very bad at least.
Whatever one may think of the health insurance changes brought about by this bill, it is essentially a new tax on all Americans to pay for those who cannot afford it on their own. I think it will, long term, contribute to unemployment and higher budget deficits across the country.
Although there are provisions to protect the middle and lower income classes from higher taxation, there are also huge tax increases on higher income groups, and the effects will be felt by all Americans.
A high earning physician told me his tax load will increase by $100,000 per year when this bill is fully implemented. That has a nice populist sound to it--tax the rich, give it to the poor. But the people who won't see that money will be master carpenters and their assistants, automobile factory workers, boat builders, waiters and bus boys, and all those businesses that he would have spent the money on. Also, the money won't be invested into the stock market. Instead, it will go to a new bulked up government bureaucracy which will then redistribute some fraction of it to this new policy purpose.
The states that are doing things right, relatively speaking, will be punished and the states that are screwed up will be rewarded. That is, the states like Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and California, where overregulation has driven insurance costs sky high, will accrue the greatest benefits from this redistribution effort, while states that have allowed relatively free markets for high deductible, basic plans (Arizona health insurance premiums start at about $60 a month) will have to pay more.
The companies that exceed 50 employees on the full time payroll will be forced to pay a fine per employee for lack of health insurance coverage. Will this cause millions of small to medium businesses to budget for health insurance, if they don't already have it? I suppose those who can afford it may, but the incentive will obviously be to keep the payroll to under 50, and perhaps contract out when they need the extra help. We'll probably see an uptick in contracting and temp agencies, and we'll probably see less of a commitment to salaried career positions within medium companies. The incentive will be to stay under 50 head count, plain and simple. I would expect to see unemployment stay at a permanently high rate for the next few decades, probably in the 8-10% range, up from the 4-5% range it has been for about the past 15 years up until 2008.
Will this bill actually reform health care? One of the principles underlying this legislation is that physicians should work in larger offices in order to afford the required electronic medical record systems and other changes that favor hospitals and larger practices. Internists and family practice docs will find it much harder going forward to open a private or small practice. Does this benefit the patient? I doubt it. Larger practices do have economies of scale, and of course they can afford the large staff necessary to deal with expanded Medicaid and other funding systems. But the freedom to practice medicine independently will be lost, and I think we will see less connection between physicians and individual patients. Add to this the plan to mandate "best treatments" nationally, and the system will become more faceless, more cookie-cutter, and less flexible to the needs of each unique individual. Probably we'll see a lot more midlevels like physicians assistants and nurse practitioners playing the front line diagnostic role, and physicians with their much longer and more expensive training will retreat to specialties and consultative roles.
I don't see this as the best move for our nation, but then I could be wrong. It'll be interesting to watch what happens, anyway.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
Here's a link if you would like to read the health care bill (PDF). It is 1,990 pages.
I'm curious, does the sick day thing go across salaried and hourly workers?
I ask because it seems rare in the US for hourly workers to get paid sick days (beyond a couple) so at some point one must make the decision to expose all your co workers to whatever you have, or watch your paycheck get smaller.
Food in US hospitals sucks too, no loss there.
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
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It's not my fault that if I injure myself others feel compelled to help me. If I think I can go it alone, who does it hurt? Do you really think it's my responsibility to make sure people like you can live in a society that takes compassion on me without having to pay for it? Why can't you let other people take responsibility for themselves?
I don't want free health care. Now, I have to pay for it. That doesn't seem like a good situation to me.
Legally required car insurance is insurance for other people/property you injure/damage.
You are not required to insure your car against theft, you are not required to insure your car against the damage done to it when you crash it.
Health insurance is not for other people that you might harm in some way, it is for yourself. And hence is nothing like mandatory car insurance.
"you understand the legal logic behind requiring people to have car insurance before driving, right?" ...so this means you can't live legally without health insurance?
I'm confused about this bill... Some honest questions:
1) What is in it to stop the premiums going up as the money from subsidies comes in? In other words, will the basic laws of supply and demand in a free market not still apply? This bill does not seem to limit the dynamics of the free market.
2) What will stop the insurance companies from making their own rules that slowly erode the value of coverage by limiting the treatments that they pay for?
3) How will someone who is poor be ensured the same treatments as someone who is wealthy?
From what I have been reading, these have been the biggest issues with US health care, does the bill do anything about this? Making sure 'everyone has something' seems to be a drop in the bucket to me; or am I missing something?
Please don't label me a troll for these questions.. I think they are important questions.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
It actually is, in many ways. Every infection is a potential health hazard for others.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Health care systems are a mixture of insurance and welfare. Pure insurance denies coverage in cases, where the adverse outcome is almost certain. No sane insurer will give flooding insurance to a house standing in a flooding area. Indeed, why should he be forced to? People who have caused multiple car accidents also get very high rates.
We treat health care differently, because we think that it is unfair to deny it to people. That is why in most First World countries everyone pays MORE than he would pay in the free market and the uninsurable sick ones get a kind of welfare transfer.
That is the price of having a more caring, dare I say Christian society.
..., only auto liability is required b/c you have to be able to pay for damage you cause to other people. Also it is only required by the states, not the federal government.
"fuck you, got mine"
This bill has so many things about it that are unconstitutional.
On the simplest level, the requirement to buy insurance is tantamount to a license for being an American. I hate to break this to the Democrats, but my citizenship, by birth, is not revocable by them or anyone else. And the conditions for its exercise will not be licensed nor legislated by anyone.
Fuck the State.
Non-Americans don't seem to understand the issue with this bill and that is simply because they capitulated on their Rights as human beings generations ago. And just because something makes you feel good, doesn't make it right.
How do you propose that the Federal Government should pay for this? The "buy-in" that you speak of does nothing to cover the cost of covering the individual.
I guess we could just raise taxes even more. After all, Obama will be signing the largest tax increase in U.S. history this week.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
a nice compound fracture say, there is no way, even if you are macgyver, that you can repair this damage by yourself
if the injury is such that you can no longer care for yourself, you will wind up cold and starving at my doorstep. or perhaps you really do have some sort of loner pride where you would rather die in the woods than ask anyone for help. then the question is: why not simply admit you are part of a community and get your arm repaired to you can continue to do what you want to do?
you will, in your life, with certainty, come to depend upon others to aid you at some point. you are a social creature, homo sapiens. you have language, you have empathy, you exist within a social structure. why deny the obvious?
either you blind to this simple reality, or you are willfully being intellectually dishonest
either way, your argument depends upon the illusion that you are an island. you are part of a community, simply by virtue of having internet access and typing on slashdot: if you truly weren't part of the community, why would care about our policies? and you will need that community's aid at some point. do believe yourself immune from the possibility of breaking your arm?
to imagine, by yourself, that you can always take care of yourself in every possible scenario, is an obvious and simple logical fallacy
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
You are correct, it isn't pure socialism, and it isn't a free or open market approach, it takes the stupidest parts from both approaches and tries to make a hybrid. Man, it's dumb.
That's all it does, mandate you or your employer get coverage (in a rapidly borking and falling apart economy). It doesn't do a thing to reduce healthcare costs, just adds more middlemen to the stew with their hands out to get paid for electron rearranging, with big fines and threats of jail if you don't fund these new middlemen.
I'll try and follow your car insurance analogy, past the point of it being mandatory.
It requires you to buy mercedes-ownership-level car insurance no matter if you drive a skateboard, a moped, a used old ford, or a pair of sneakers, because that's the transportation you can afford.
Too bad there wasn't "healthcare reform" in the bill, stuff like opening up the medical schools to be cheaper, creating a new class of a lower level type doctor for first look-sees so it is cheaper, open sourcing medical knowledge, restricting medical patents, allowing for a more fast track approach to generic drugs and medical equipment, stuff like that. It makes healthcare costs higher, then requires by law that everyone pay those new inflated costs "or else".
They'll be a slew of court challenges filed one second after it is signed into law, so we'll see how it shakes out. I do know the money just ain't there without addressing healthcare costs, as opposed to health care insurance. Of course, the money ain't there either to cover most anything related to the US government at this point, and private sector debt is ridiculous as well.
There are just too many people who don't understand the differences between money, currency, produced wealth, and credit, they equate those as all being the same thing, hence they fervently believe in the "free lunch" theory of existence and think that real stuff can be poofed into existence by "passing a law".
You think health care was expensive before. Now the money gates are open and greed will spend every last dollar. But the Chinese will keep giving us loans forever right?
Welcome to the civil world, America....
Posts like this make me really wish I could see who posted them.
if everyone jointly pays for healthcare and everybody gets treated health costs go down.
Hogwash. If I'm forced to pay for something and I don't use it, that's a cost to me. My health costs have not gone down, they've gone up. Unless you're saying I should intentionally get sick so I can use the money I've put into the system.
Which comes back to another point I didn't address. We're going on the presumption that people who are forced to pay for this will actually use it. What if a person pays for a decade then suddenly dies. All that money they've put into the system has been a cost to them for which they received no benefit. The only ones receiving a benefit are those still living.
Further, just because people pay for something does not mean they'll use it. People who are healthy don't use health care on any regular basis. The amount they will now be forced to pay, one way or the other, will far outweigh the amount they would pay out of their pocket visiting the doctor once a year.
The only reason insurance exists is in case something major happens. It's a suckers bet because in th end, the only ones who get any benefit from the premiums are the insurance companies.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Using the analogy of mandatory auto insurance, you, as an operator, are protecting yourself from financial ruin whether you are responsible for an accident or not. If you haven't been in a serious accident before involving an uninsured motorist, you wouldn't fully appreciate how balanced this system is. Compulsory medical coverage also protects you from financial hardship should you have an acute medical condition, and protects the hospital from writing off expenses you can't pay, or the state from extending Medicaid to you temporarily. There are some inexpensive plans with high out-of-pocket deductibles and catastrophic coverage that protects you if something devastating happens to you.
you understand the legal logic behind requiring people to have car insurance before driving, right?
Yes, but do you? You are only required to have liability insurance not repair insurance. It is up to you whether you want insurance to help repair your car. The requirement is only to ensure you are solvent if you cause someone else harm. (Technically liability insurance isn't even a requirement as long as you can post a bond ($30,000 IIRC) showing that you are solvent.)
What?! That sounds totally reasonable and pretty sane. What am I missing?
Several million dollars to donate to various legislator's campaigns. With absolutely no expectation of any sort of quid pro quo, of course. The mere thought would be preposterous.
I am officially gone from
Libertarians are the biggest hypocrites, anyway.
In Germany, one part of the ruling coalition is the German equivalent of the libertarian party: FDP. When they were in the opposition, they were the loudest against big government, welfare, taxes, corruption and so on.
Only 100 days after they went to power, FDP has risen the number of civil servants and repealed the law which mandated lowering the number of them every year.
FDP ministers have put their army buddies, elder FDP officials and other buddies into high positions, they have lowered the tax for a corporation that donated to FDP, and the head of the FDP has actively promoted the business of his gay boyfriend.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
are you immune to the possibility of breaking your arm? yes or no
can you cure a broken arm by yourself? yes or no
when you eventually receive aid for that broken arm, will you always be in a financial position to be able to afford that care? yes or no
logic, morality, and now legality: yes, mandated health insurance is obvious
there is no choice on the issue. the idea of a choice on the issue is saying you have a right to go without health insurance, get treated when you get a broken arm... and not afford the bill: you want the "choice" to be a freeloader
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
...on my right of association (by forcing me to purchase a good or service). Freedom died a little bit with this monstrosity.
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
Well, unfortunately, that is not the case. We are required to have car insurance in order to HAVE a car, not just to drive it.
FALSE
I (and no other members) of the public are under NO OBLIGATION to pay for your sickness. There is no constitutional right to health care of any kind. That the people now pay (for some) of these incidents is thanks to legislation passed in the 60s and 70s, ie MEDICARE.
The only relation to auto insurance would be a requirement to pay damages for any communicable disease which you passed on to somebody else without their consent, similar to an auto accident. The reason you have auto insurance is because the potential costs to the injured party are very large and the ability of you to pay are very low - compounded by the fact that a significant portion of the population is exposed to that risk.
If a certain segment of the population feels that strongly about providing medical coverage to those they deem "needy" then they should do so by setting up a charitable trust to provide that care. Not by forcing those who do not need or want coverage to buy it.
They get more power and control, which is why they love to work those jobs. I'd imagine that it must be pretty cool just write something down or tell someone to do something and see it happen. They must imagine they are capable of anything. They're like gods, really.
I really can't argue with you. Because you are relying on the fact that no one would ever want to assist other unfortunate human beings. You also seem to be under the impression that your health is your own choice, when really it is mostly down to luck. Not getting sick is really its own reward. At least now people unfortunate enough to get a chronic illness won't be hit by the double whammy of bankruptcy too. Do you object to paying for the fire service because your house hasn't yet caught fire?
Found this. Decent quick summary of what's in the final bill going to the presidents desk: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20000846-503544.html
While I think the current legislation is an incredibly misguided approach, I think health care should be universal. So I am not sure. Is it better to have universal health care that is implemented poorly and will cost more than it’s worth, or is it better to pass on this, until we can find someone who will do it right.
Universal Health Care:
My republican friends are probably screaming. "Oh my god, how can you even think about backing this socialist crap?!" Well, in my opinion, health is at least as important as education to society. We don't seem to have a problem with socialized education. Social programs are certainly not a foreign idea to our American Society and some of them work (arguably) quite well. Others, of course, are hopelessly broken.
I think everyone should have access to health care, just like everyone has access to education. I don’t think anyone should have to decide between getting treatment for a medical condition and eating or having a place to live. I think it’s sad and very telling that people, who live in places that do have universal healthcare, live longer healthier lives than Americans.
The main problem with the current legislation is that the primary concern does not seem to be providing healthcare, but rather protecting the business models of the AMA, the big insurance companies and the big drug companies. We can either have universal health coverage or we can continue to profit off of peoples health problems. We cannot do both.
The Free Market people are probably going nuts about this. “Private Enterprise will do a better job than the government. There will be no incentives for medical innovation. The government makes everything more complex and more expensive. What about my ability to control my medical care?” You may be right but I doubt it.
Private enterprise can do a better job for fewer people, but the government can do an adequate job for everyone. You see this in the education system. The government does OK with education. If you want more than the standard, you have to pay out of your pocket.
The government could create incentives, just like they have for military contractors. Private organizations (colleges, drug companies) could compete for money to experiment. Innovations that come from this would belong to the government. They could be managed for the benefit of everyone. If a company chooses to go it alone, and they have a huge success, the government could choose to reimburse them for their R&D and they would be guaranteed a reasonable profit. This would get rid of the $1000 a month prescriptions and the $25K test because someone owns a patent for a gene.
Everything will be different if the government were to run it. There would be growing pains. But think of all the problems it would solve and all the money it would save. That’s right I said save. Medicaid and Medicare would go away. The prisoner healthcare problem would be gone. Healthcare for Veterans would be exactly the same as everyone else. These things would no longer be part of anyone’s budget problem.
You control your medical care? Really? So you must be really, really rich. My medical care is controlled by my insurance company. I am not sure how this is any different than it being controlled by the government.
How do we pay for it?
Well part of it would be paid for by cost savings. If you remove the profit margins from healthcare a huge amount of the cost disappears. With a single payer plan, the government is able to take advantage of huge economies of scale. Throw in the money from Medicare, Medicaid, Veteran healthcare, and prisoner healthcare, we get a bit farther toward paying the bill. The rest would have to be made up in either taxes or employer contributions. Between healthcare premiums, deductibles, co-pays and out of pocket expenses, I will end up spending more than $12k in healthcare costs. My job is probably putting in another $6k. That is $4500/person in my house. That is obscene and I am sure that ther
Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels.
"America overwhelmingly voted for Socialism when they elected President Obama" - Al Sharpton
Do they not assign 1984 to be read in school anymore? Seriously, what the hell is wrong with people?
Speaking as an outsider, and one from the UK where we have both the NHS (socialised healthcare) and a lot of private practice on top...
I just don't understand the attitude in the parent post. I am generally in favour of small government and low taxation, and I am generally against a primarily socialist system, but there are certain services that really do benefit everyone. No-one goes through their entire lives in perfect health, no-one can predict whether they will be the unfortunate one to get $SERIOUS_CONDITION, and just about everyone would want to be treated if they were the unlucky one.
In the 21st century, it seems barbaric to me that you can have a system where tens of millions of citizens aren't protected in the event of conditions that we can easily treat, and where the health service doesn't routinely practice universal preventative medicine. And it seems it's not just those who can't be bothered to work who lose out: there is a woman from the US who has been on some of our TV channels over here, came across as perfectly decent and worked a real job, but couldn't get proper healthcare cover from insurers because of "pre-existing conditions" (I think they were allergies and some old broken bone from an accident years ago, neither of which significantly increases her chances of getting unrelated conditions). What is this, the Middle Ages?
Faced with evidence like this, I can't accept the opposition argument that this law just helps freeloaders. It sounds like there are plenty of people who play the game under the current system and only take out "insurance" when they are becoming sick, and it seems to me that they are far worse than the woman we saw on TV.
Finally, the anti-socialist argument that people will sit back and bleed the system dry seems a bit hollow to me in this case. As I said, I am all for a system that promotes and rewards hard work over layabouts, but it's not as if you think "I know, I'll screw the healthcare system out of some money" and the next day you deliberately get cancer. No-one wants to get sick.
Are there flaws in our socialised healthcare system over here? Sure, you get better care and a wider variety of treatment options in a private hospital where you're paying a lot of money for the privilege. And IMHO, the socialised system that we all support should pay for much more routine/preventative/advisory care, since in the long term that keeps everyone healthier and avoids paying a greater amount to treat more serious but avoidable conditions later.
But at least over here, if you get hit by a car and left with life-threatening injuries, they treat you first and ask questions later.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I do not care how people around the globe want to handle medical expense insurance or the delivery of health care. I am an American, not a Canadian nor a Brit. Yesterday, the elected leaders of the United States of America decided that we are no longer a nation of laws but rather of men (see John Adams). We are, and have been, operating outside of the bounds of the U.S. Constitution, the framework that is supposed to reign in the excesses of Federal power. Today, our government has dictated that you must purchase a product which meets their standards in order to remain a law abiding citizen of the United States. We can argue what the bill will or will not do, but one thing is certain. We are less free today than we were yesterday, and for that all Americans should weep. Our Federal government has failed in its primary responsibility as our Founders declared in the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." They have failed to make secure our Creator-given rights, seeking rather to deprive us of our rights, our liberties, in the face of a large majority opposing this legislation.
that's why the Republicans, especially the Tea Party nutters, are still allowed to roam free.
Whoever is against a universal health care is the real fascist here. The Constitution is more than 200 years old, from a time when something like health care was unthinkable and usually the equivalent to a bottle of whiskey and a blunt hammer.
Being conservative is a good thing at times. But sometimes you need to accept that times change and that not everyone is running around with a colt on his hip anymore and doing justice by simply shooting the opponent.
I know that you Americans have trouble to see that social != communism (or whatever you think communism is).
"God's own country" - my ass! Did any of the die-hard christians over there ever read the bible (and understood it)? Then no one would even think a split second about universal health care anymore and simply do it because that's the core of all the stuff in that ancient book. I'm no christian at all but that's pretty much the only good thing in this book: taking care for each other, without looking at the bank account every time.
Damn you cheap bastards! One day it'll bite your butt to be so selfish.
That intelligent people.... will fight so hard for other people's profits at their own expense.
Auto insurance does not compare. I do not require auto insurance if I don't own a car.
Not to mention it is unquestionably unconstitutional to require a US citizen to BUY something simply because they exist.
"In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash"
"The biggest problem is no one has ever given me an answer as to why my money has to go to pay the medical bills of my neighbor who smokes half a pack a day, or my neighbor on the other side who thinks it's funny to drink a case of beer each weekend by themselves."
Because it's a liberal progressive mentality bordering on socialistic/marxist ideals.
What would you do to help your mother/brother/sister/father?
Yes, they are my family
How about your next door neighbor you hang out with?
Perhaps. They are not my responsibility.
The guy in the next street, or the next town?
At what point do you draw the line and say that I am going to help these people and not those people?
I think that part of the US problem is more that in general this line is drawn closer to home compared to other people who draw it further out.
No. My family is my primary responsibility. I do not have the means to help anyone else at this point.
If I did have the means, I would make the decision of my own accord, and fight tooth and nail any attempt for someone else to make it for me, and enforce it at the point of a gun.
You people seem to think this is all some reasonable trade-off - it isn't. It is a direct assault on personal liberty, and the very ideas that this country was founded upon. To quote Patrick Henry:
What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!
You underestimate the importance many American place on that simple concept - the idea that the individual has a God-given right to work for themselves, provide for their family, and dispose of their own possessions as they see fit.
Learn about Photography Basics.
Where is your link to the "updated version"?
I want to download the bill from a government web site, not CBS News.
Will this save anyone a dime? Can the U.S. Government provide heath care less expensively or more efficiently than the private sector? Health care Insurance companies had around a 2% profit margin. My guess is that insurance companies are actually going to come out of this happy happy feelgood government oversight and regulation bill with more profits then they had before. Same with drug companies. Democrats could have included such crazy ideas as allowing health insurance companies to compete across state lines but somehow that didn't make it into the bill. You know, the same way car insurance works? And just so everyone is clear on this, few people actually know what is going to happen because this law is over 2000 pages long and was cooked up behind closed doors with NO debate. In a nutshell - we've been taken to the cleaners and the grins will soon disappear.
'I don't know what it's called. I just know the sound it makes, when it takes a man's life.' ~ Four Leaf Tayback
selfish libertarians
You, sir, are too kind. Compliments such as this truly lighten a dark day.
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do you believe in living in a society where hospitals can turn away people because they can't pay?
the only "right" you are referring to is the "right" to freeload. you are saying this out of willful intellectual dishonesty or honest ignorance to reality
if you have no health insurance, and you break your arm, there is no moral society that can deny you care. if you don't have the money to pay for that broken arm (because you "chose" not to have health insurance) then you are impinging on my rights and freedoms by forcing me to pay for your broken arm
this is the imposition on others you are referring to
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
> The Republicans set us on the road to financial
> ruin, and the Democrats have just floored the
> accelerator.
I'd say it's more like the Republicans sold us a Toyota Camry and now we've got run-away acceleration.
Oh, right, because they're just itching to end up in the hospital to spend all that gu'ment money.
Don't worry; this is step 1. Now that a precedence has been set for health care reform, it will be amended and perfected later.
Buckle your ROFL belt, we're in for some LOLs.
i think you're confused as to what pre-existing conditions mean. it doesn't mean i get sick and then try to get insurance and my being sick is considered a pre-existing condition. its more like, i was born with a defect and the condition existed beforehand. or i got some sort of chronic illness that i can't be cured and since i got it before i got insured, they won't help me anymore.
Asking for assistance is entirely different that demanding that others be responsible for you problems.
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The biggest problem I see with this bill is that it doesn't take effect until 2014. That gives Republicans/Insurance plenty of time to repeal it long before anyone gets to see *any* benefit from it. By 2014 we could well have already had a year of complete Republican rule (White House and Congress), and you know if they retook the White House and Congress, repealing this would be number 1 on their agenda.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I think an employer who denies sick leave should have to talk to the employee about it. In person, face-to-face, breathing in the employee's germs.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Who is going to pay for this?
The people is going to pay for it.
Okay, but isn't the US in a recession? Is it wise to raise the taxes in a recession?
And is it at all constitutional ?
Ron Paul clearly think it's not.
http://www.campaignforliberty.com/
You're absolutely right.
If your neighbor's house is burning down, why should you have to pay for the fire brigade to put it out.
If the girl next door is being raped, it's not your problem, so why should you pay for the police.
You're like that joke on the movie Airplane... "They bought their tickets, I say let 'em crash!"
What benefit do you get?
'cos it's all about you right?
I agree with you, you shouldn't have to buy health insurance. You should be taxed for it.
Yeah and why subsidize the dumb-ass that eats beef, the complete moron that thinks she can survive on nothing but lettuce, the meth user, the gay man upstairs, and any dipshit that voted for AND still believes in Obama?
You see, that's what people think health insurance is: just a way to get others to pay for their problems. Socialism and its "single payer" system will arrive eventually, it will just take a while. First, all the people who have insurance now will stop buying it. Insurance costs $6400/year while the fee for not having it is $700. Furthermore, many states have already passed nullification laws prohibiting the federal government from charging you the above fee, so if you live in, say, Idaho, you will not have to pay a thing. Then, when you get cancer, you can simply go to any insurance company and buy coverage at that point; the company will be forbidden to turn you down for this preexisting condition. Then employers will eventually start doing the same thing. The fee for employers not providing insurance is higher, $3200, but it is still higher than the coverage premiums. So the boss will tell you to just buy insurance when you need it and take an extra $2000/year raise (or not).
The insurance companies will start losing lots of money, since only the sick will be subscribed, and will raise your premiums. If price controls are instituted (and they will be), the insurance companies will start going bankrupt. Then we can have another huge bailout bill for the "too big to fail" ones, which will then end up being mostly owned and financed by the government. They will stay that way because there is no way to turn a profit when you stop being "insurance" and become "entitlement". Then we'll get another health reform bill, where the government will step in, raise everyone's taxes and just pay for health care itself, like most of the other countries do.
Of course, you'll have to contend with various problems that will bring, like long waiting times, care rationing, and "for your own good" legislation. But at least, everyone will finally be equal.
It's not my fault that if I injure myself others feel compelled to help me. If I think I can go it alone, who does it hurt?
When you're unconscious after a car wreck, there's no way to know if you want to live or die. So, as a society that values life - at least American life - you are resuscitated at all costs.
I don't want free health care. Now, I have to pay for it. That doesn't seem like a good situation to me.
Let me give you a piece of advice I got while protesting the Iraq war, which is about to roll over the trillion dollar price tag:
LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT! FREEDOM AIN'T FREE!
...but I'm glad it finally passed. Unfortunately, Obama sacrificed his entire presidency to get this through - the tea party crowd is going to go on an insane campaigning binge and take away the Democratic majority in Congress. As of November, nothing will get done for the next 2 years; the Republicans will see to that.
Anyone who disagrees with these new rules has clearly never been in a situation where they're self-employed, or unemployed, or have a pre-existing illness, and therefore can't get affordable health insurance. Or, they are/have been, and are just so anti-government that they don't understand that this helps people. I actually see this a lot among peers...they're well-educated, grew up in wealthy households, and have never been unemployed a day in their life. They also work for companies that have reasonably decent health insurance. Insurance companies do a really good job of hiding actual costs...you actually have to dig into those statements they send you to find out how much the provider billed and was paid. If you didn't do this, you would have no idea how much that $1000 MRI cost you -- you might think it only cost the $20 copayment.
This law isn't for people who have good insurance through stable companies. It's for the people that work crappy jobs with no insurance benefits, are self-employed, or work for a tightwad small business owner who refuses to buy adequate health insurance.For those who think that's a minority of the population -- just wait until all those nice safe white-collar jobs get outsourced as well. Everyone complaining about this will be in the same boat that today's uninsured are.
That said, it has flaws. It's expensive, it only reins in the insurance companies instead of replacing them, and it doesn't address the actual cost of care. The expensive part can be taken care of by taxes -- although everyone in this country seems to have a problem with that unless they're getting direct beneifts. Cost of care is going to be the hard one - there are so many inefficient niches in the medical world that are all trying to protect their turf (malpractice lawyers, medical billing people, larger-than-needed office staffs at healthcare providers.)
if it were me, I would have proposed extending Medicare coverage to everyone, raising the Medicare tax appropriately, and leaving the insurance companies to fight over the 20% of cost that doesn't get covered by Medicare. But it's not me, so this is what we have to work with. At least it's better than nothing.
has ruined a once great nation. This bill will make insurance companies insane profits, cover a bunch of illegals, pay for abortions, and limit health coverage to those that really need it. All so a retarded foreign bastard can be the next Hitler, thanks idiots.
No. My family is my primary responsibility. I do not have the means to help anyone else at this point.
If I did have the means, I would make the decision of my own accord, and fight tooth and nail any attempt for someone else to make it for me, and enforce it at the point of a gun.
You people seem to think this is all some reasonable trade-off - it isn't. It is a direct assault on personal liberty, and the very ideas that this country was founded upon.
The problem with isolationism is that it only works when you can't see the borders to your domain from where you stand. However with continual growth of you and everyone else there comes a time where you *will* bump into those borders, and the only sane course of action is for everyone to move in the one direction.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
The biggest problem is no one has ever given me an answer as to why my money has to go to pay the medical bills of my neighbor who smokes half a pack a day, or my neighbor on the other side who thinks it's funny to drink a case of beer each weekend by themselves.
If your neighbor has group-based health insurance, you're probably already doing just that.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
How come members of congress are not on it, but they have their own Cadillac system which is also exempt from higher taxation?
What good for the goose not good for the gender?
I live in a 3rd world country, and we have universal health care. It doesnt matter if you are poor and cant pay: if you have a heart attack, a ambulance will take you to the hospital, and you will have treatment. Well, you will not have 5 star treatment, with naked nurses and stuff, maybe you even have a room, but hey, this is a 3rd world country! They will ask you (or look in your wallet) if you have some private-insurance, and take you to a private hospital if you do. If all the public hospitals are full, the private ones WILL accept you, and the government will pay then later. Of course, it has some flaws. If you need som exam, u may wait for months (it depends on what state you are, some are better than others)... but if you have diseases like diabets, heart problems and stuff like that, you will have FREE medication, for the rest of your life.
Your lifestyle is a huge factor in determining your health. Alcoholism, cigarette addiction, poor diet and a sedentary lifestyle are all practically guaranteed to cause health problems later in life (and most Americans do more than one). Incidental injuries like the ones you've listed are relatively inexpensive to treat compared to the medical conditions caused by the things I've listed above. The only major exception is cancer, which is often associated with lifestyle too.
I am not a libertarian, but let me ask you:
Who is more selfish: someone who refuses to pay for your care, or someone who demands that you pay for their care?
As a society, we seem to have lost all respect for other people's boundaries. And to be sure, our boundaries are what define us. That means that we have lost all respect for each other. It is never appropriate to compel or demand that someone do something. We are human beings and we need more respect than that. I am not a beast of burden, I am a human being.
Then move whatever direction you wish, just leave me alone.
Learn about Photography Basics.
I know my state enables more than 2k a month
http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/SavingandDebt/LearnToBudget/how-much-jobless-pay-would-you-get.aspx
apparently MA is highest, 628 per week possible
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
As far as I remember, the stats say that if you are supposed to have a cancer, you'd better have it in the USA. All this works ASSUMING people don't change their behaviour. The insurance companies actually like you to have prevention as it LOWERS their outlays. However, if you have the care free - you could care less.
The $6400 is just an average I saw somewhere. I can't find that article; however, here's a breakdown on employer provided plan costs. Your employer pays $4824 for just you, or $13375 for a family plan. Since individuals buying health insurance don't have as good a bargaining position, I would expect the premiums to be much higher, and $6400 sounds about right. Note the $13375 figure for the family plan, which is what most people will be buying.
Wait a sec. Aren't the even richer people paying even higher taxes and contributing an even greater percentage?
If they all just disappeared, things would not be the same as they are. All those government sponsored functions like the schools you learned at, police and other services that protect you from needing to get into as much trouble, Department of Transportation to get to and from your job, government sponsored monopolies like utilities that you pay your bills to, and even the existing government medical services for the poor like Medicaid would not be the same.
Aren't you getting a free ride from these people? Sure you're tossing in a few cookies but its nowhere near the sum pile of contribution.
I can only reason that you are a selfish, hedonistic, egotistical bastard. What I am trying to say is that you are being too narrow, too narrow in your scope of your "neighborhood", too narrow in your thinking in regards too others, and too narrow in attributing your particular state of circumstances to your own effort and not random happenstance. A minor underlying biological defect uncontrollable by an individual can really put a damper on hard work and good intention.
If you really think everything you do is being exploited by the lazy, that really says something about your psychology.
AFAICT, all the provisions in this bill relate to Health Insurance not Health Care. How it this magically going to reduce the 15+% GDP spent on health care? (Well, OK, it does expand MedicAid and cut MediCare which I guess counts as Health Care.)
The best I can see this bill doing for Health Care costs is making the currently uninsured seek preventative care rather than putting it off until it results in an expensive emergency room visit. But even that theory doesn't work if they all buy the cheapest insurance which will likely have a $25,000 deductible, which means they will still put off preventative care.
So I ask again, what does this bill do to reduce Health Care costs?
You seem to forget that there would be no "pre-existing conditions" if everyone would have had access to health insurance previously. It is only a problem in the current transition phase, going from optional to mandatory insurance. Where I live, you are insured automatically from the moment you are born (conceived actually, because it also covers pre-natal illnesses). Never heard of "pre-existing conditions".
C'mon guys, stay in your lane. You had almost no stories about this, and now you post this. How is health care reform a nerd topic?
Stick to Linux news. I fear the upcoming flamewars about to ensue. Or maybe that's what you really want.
Given the transient state of IT employment, I'd bet a much larger than average number of Slashdot readers are self-employed/contractors for whom employer-subsidized insurance is a rarity. This would be very interesting to those people.
Hollywood, Television, has become the dream machine. We need to take that back; each of us is a Dream Machine
I took a look at one of my recent paystubs. When you consider federal and state taxes, social security, medicare/medicaid, state disability insurance, state unemployment insurance, 401k, flexible spending, health, dental, vision (including the part that my employer pays) it adds up to about 50% of my gross income. Not so different from Europe, as far as I can tell... only here i get to deal with private providers that try to screw me every chance they get.
If con is the opposite of pro, is Congress the opposite of progress?
Stupid idea all around. Socialized medicine is a complete and utter failure everywhere that it has been implemented. Welcome to Obamacare, a subsidiary of the welfare state paid for by honest workers so the slackers can get away with doing nothing...
> You get your kraft dinner and a shack paid for, you don't get a nice meal and a house
> with a large screen tv and high speed internet and fancy clothes paid for.
Gee, that's really unfair. Think of all the poor children who don't have a large screen tv or high speed internet! Wait! I have an idea! Let's create an individual large screen tv mandate legislation, requiring by law for everyone to buy a large screen tv. Anyone refusing to do so, will be subjected to a fine. Subsidies will be provided to low-income families. And finally, after so many years, a high standard of living will no longer just be a privilege of the rich, but will become accessible to all. Isn't that something worth fighting for?
And let's not forget the pony! Millions of children in the country are suffering because they don't have a pony! It's time for the individual pony mandate! Bring a smile to your children's faces with the priceless (literally) gift of pony ownership. Isn't your children's happiness worth a measly extra 5% in taxes?
People that do not have education, work from early age, are single, drink lot of alcohol, smoke and die before they retire are most beneficial to society, because they pay lot of taxes and don't use lot of public services.
Why you should have all those tax deductions?
And when you've put off going to the doctor for 15 years and have Parkinson's from drinking your diet soda, you'll be wishing you'd bought your insurance, as the benefits will scale based on how long you've been alive, vs how long you've had coverage... =) - oh wait - they're not being sensible - that's right. But now, you'll get fined for not having it, and thus will be paying in, like social security, for when you *do* need it.
Because he's your neighbor, son of a b****!
Inconvenient fact number 1: usage of Emergency Rooms as a first-line of healthcare delivery are UP in Massachusetts since the passage of RomneyCare (which is now ObamaCare on the federal level) - multiple sources, look them up yourself.
Inconvenient fact number 2: RomneyCare (again, ObamaCare nationally) is bankrupting Massachusetts (source: The current State Treasurer who, until about a month ago, was a lifelong Democrat and made a fair amount of ink last week on this very subject)
Inconvenient fact number 3: RomneyCare has failed utterly at bringing down, or even slowing the rate of growth of, health insurance premiums (again, multiple sources)
Inconvenient fact number 4: This is all in spite of the fact that virtually all of the private health insurers in Massachusetts, and certainly all of the major ones, operate as NOT FOR PROFIT ENTITIES (sources, the Ins Co's P/L statements).
Original source
I love it when someone forgets the "hidden" stuff.
If you are paying for Health Insurance yourself, on an individual plan or through COBRA, $6400 is a steal. If your employer is providing it, with you paying some part of the premium, $6400 is about average. If you have a very large employer, they may be getting a break but $6400 (employer part plus employee part) is still within the norm.
Back in '96, when I got laid off at Lam Research, my COBRA was just at $585 per month as a single guy. Undoubtedly, it's gone up.
If you shop around for individual coverage, it's going to be more.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
No.... that's called civilization and democracy
It takes a big man to cry, but it takes a bigger man to laugh at that man.
Yes, but i f you come to a body shop and ask them to repair your smashed car without paying, they'll refuse. If you come to a hospital having a heart attack, they can't refuse you. It's a pretty big point where your analogy breaks down.
They got it before this bill. Try not to gloss over that point.
"In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash"
No, the problem is no one wants to step up and do anything, they all want "someone" to do it for them.
I draw the line very far out. I give every week to charity, cutting my own expenses to do so. When I was younger I donated my time helping the elderly, fixing up poorer areas of the community, and watching children in after school programs.
I don't need the government telling me that I HAVE to give money to my neighbor, or "the guy further away". I can do it myself.
The problem with our society is simple. People want cheap / free healthcare not to help others, but to make sure others will help them in their time of need. It's a matter of motivation, US citizens treat justice and altruism as a social contract- I'm going to be nice to you so that you will be nice to me. This will never create a truly good society. There will always be those aiming to "get more" at others expense. You have to be willing to help others to help them, and expect nothing in return.
If you feel so bad for the woman who has cancer, donate to a local or national cancer institute or support group. Hell, give her a couple hundred dollars if you can spare it instead of buying that big screen TV. Why do you need the government to take your money to distribute it in a fair manner. Do it yourself.
Congratulations, USians, you may eventually be able to enjoy the long-standing advantages of the rest of the free world (and even some of the un-free world). But take my tip from now on - for details, get the advice of qualified actuaries, not politicians. Even full-state-guaranteed systems fail if they are actuarially unsustainable. Yes, IAAL - at least in this field.
one has ever given me an answer as to why my money has to go to pay the medical bills of my neighbor who smokes half a pack a day, or my neighbor on the other side who thinks it's funny to drink a case of beer each weekend by themselves.
For the same reason I have to pay for Oil companies to protect their interests in Iraq, or the same reason I have to pay for public schools when I send my kids to private schools.
I tend to be libertarian in my views, but if I had to start a list of basic services that my government should provide, I would think health care would be at the top of the list, certainly above funding for bank bailouts (thank you GWB). And when it comes to something as basic as the ability to see a doc when you get sick (people who don't drink or smoke get sick too!), a system that is set up to maximize profit at the expense of human suffering (which we have now) is completely immoral and even contrary to the founding father's intent (isn't Life the first of our unalienable rights as stated in the declaration of independence? - We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.)
Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an oncoming train.
>>It's a 4 page bill that basically proposes to extend Medicare benefits to everyone from age 0 to age 64 with a simple 'buy-in.' You buy in at cost and you're covered.
I'm a Libertarian, and I'd actually support this - if it was actually at cost. Given the massive deficits, it appears very likely we'd end up subsidizing anyone "buying in" anyway.
When I did an analysis of Medicare costs, it wasn't actually very cheap at all. Something like $650pp/month.
so what is the "choice" here? there is no choice: you need health insurance
Before yesterday, you could choose to live "off the grid". You could grab some stuff, head out for the mountains, build a shack, and provide for yourself. While you were still technically supposed to file taxes, etc., no one really cared if you didn't apply for the tax credits and social programs you'd almost certainly be eligible for.
Today is different. As of now, you are officially a tax cheating criminal if you choose to wander off alone. You can bet the government will be interested that you're not filing returns that certify that you owe money for being uninsured.
The world is changed this morning, and I awake to applause. This is not the country I grew up to love and swore to protect.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
The government likes when it can use your opinions to divide yourselves. Remember a house divided cannot stand.
What you really being seeing is another opportunity for them to put their foot in the door using a pre-existing opinion. Now it is only time before that foot kicks the door a little more open. Understand?
Being is I predicted the recession a decade ago I sure hope I'm wrong on this. Think about a country on the verge of bankruptcy, and an increasing number of states showing their defiance to the bill by amending their own constitutions. Looks like history could soon repeat itself.
...On top of that, it does not say "you must buy it or we will provide it", rather it says "you must buy it or pay a fee ..
Replace 'fee' with 'fine and jail time' and you will be correct.
Yes, but do you? You are only required to have liability insurance not repair insurance. It is up to you whether you want insurance to help repair your car. The requirement is only to ensure you are solvent if you cause someone else harm.
Are you seriously so blind that you don't realize what you're saying? There's no such thing as medical insurance that doesn't include "repair" insurance. That's what medical insurance is: fixing your ass after something bad happens.
If you don't have medical insurance, the rest of the population gets to pay for fixing your ass, because we aren't allowed to say "he said on /. that he didn't want 'repair' insurance, so let him die."
I'll remember you said that when you get cancer and demand to be treated... really I think we should just let you die... too expensive
It takes a big man to cry, but it takes a bigger man to laugh at that man.
This is not about your coworkers. You already sponsor their healthcare today thanks to collective bargaining of your employer. Your coworker's fat asses are already covered. This is about the guy who flips your burger and coughs at it because he cannot afford to get it treated and cannot afford to stay at home when sick either. It's about the guy that cuts your hair, while talking to you and spreading whatever he's got that he cannot treat. It's about the guy stacking all the fresh fruit and vegetables in the supermarket.
Did you ever wonder how diseases get spread? It's from sick people to healthy people in everyday contact. If you reduce the number of sick people, there are less diseases spread and everyone gets healthier, including you. So shut up and pay for your own well being. Because that's what is being asked of you.
Not to mention the fact that most countries in Europe that pay for everyone tend to spend half of the total sum (prorated to population) compared to what US is spending on health care while covering just half of their people.
Requiring health insurance also is designed to prevent the harm of others. The harm, in this case, is financial. When people go to the hospital with no health insurance, they expect the hospital to treat them anyway, and the hospital does (as it should).
The problem is, that's not free, and since the patient can't pay, and has no insurance, the hospital eats that. Guess what that does to the cost of health care in this country? Mandating insurance will help keep health care costs down.
Mind you, that's not ALL that needs to be done to fix health care costs. We should do something about tort reform, as well as curbing the greed of HMOs who attempt to price-gouge their own customers, too, but requiring health insurance and fining those who choose not to have it is a good first step.
This is because no one puts off going to the doctor because of expense.
Mhahahahaha *cough* *ahem* hahahahah *cough* *cough* haha *cough* *wheeze*. (I guess I should get that cough looked at, but with my deductible I'd be paying out of pocket to see the doc so I'll wait another week to see if it clears up on its own.)
There should be some kind of Health Insurance which gives you lower premiums if you lead a healthy lifestyle - certainly I remember that being available in the one country I lived in where Health Insurance was the way people paid for healthcare (Holland). I myself paid less because I neither smoke nor drink heavilly.
If you don't have access to this option (because the US system is designed in such a way that Health Insurance is cheaper when bought as a block by the Employers and as such individual behaviours cannot affect the price) then the problem is with the Rules and Regulations behind it, since in a proper free market, players will soon appear offering lower premiums for those willing to go the extra mile to keep healthy - just like Car Insurance premiums are cheaper for those with a long history of accident free driving.
on the bond for insurance, I lived in Washington state very recently. there the bond requirement is 10k.
Bill Gates story. So Bill had a hot car and tended to drive very fast. A local cop nailed him and among other things gave bill a ticket for no insurance. The poor cop's chief reamed the guy really badly. Bill apparently did his best to stay out of it, but had the bond posted rather quickly.
Did you read my post? In your selfish system people don't get things checked out until they end up in the emergency room and then the government pays anyway, because no civilised nation lets hospitals turn away people in critical condition. Ill health is punishment enough for bad life choices. Getting lung cancer from smoking will often still kill you. Getting leukaemia and then going bankrupt from medical bills? The illness is awful, and the bankruptcy is a fucking travesty.
Wait, so if someone came at the hospital bleeding to death but didn't have insurance, you'd let him die off? Seriously, what the hell? You may not have a legal obligation to heal the person, but you have a moral obligation to do so (and if you don't, you have other issues).
And fully 1/3 of all drivers in my state (California) drive without insurance anyway. What's the point of passing a toothless law?
Congrats US citizens!
This comment really struck me. Normally this quote is followed by a sarcastic or mocking comment. I never realized how embarrassed and shitty I've felt about my country's policies over the last 10 years or so.
So thanks for that, that somehow made my day.
That stuff is usually called "universal" health care. So it means it doesn't matter if or what you work and how much.
Depending on which country you look at you sometimes get some kind of payment deduction when you are on sick leave and not the full 100%, differs quite a bit though.
I am continually called selfish on this forum by people who have never met me but are literally demanding I pay their bills.
Well, in most social democracies smoking is good for the budget. People always whine about increased health care costs, but where do you think those smoker's pensions go when they kick the bucket 10 years earlier?
House Passes Massive Medical Insurance Bill, 219-212
Calm, rational discussion of its effects ensues.
(QD takes slow puff of cigar and a contemplative sip brandy)
So, gentlemen and gentlewomen, what sort of contraption has our legislative conclave unleashed into the wild?
And I'll give you the bill that was just passed. Today marks the death of liberty and freedom. Welcome to just being another country folks! YAY leftist douchbags!
This is, in my opinion, the worst part of American conservative fiscal policy - it seems like we are deathly afraid of someone, somewhere, potentially getting something they don't "deserve". It's almost pathological; we have ridiculous amounts of bureaucracy centered around making sure that nobody gets a benefit they don't deserve, when it would be more effective to just remove a lot of the bureaucracy and use the savings to loosen the criteria.
Sure, and your completely ignorant of the reality-
Britons die of diseases at higher rates than americans, fact
NHS is a fucking disaster and you know it with famous cases of incompetence and long waits, rationing etc.
If you believe the "information" which is controlled by the same entity that controls health insurance in the UK, the govt, then of course you would come to your rosey conclusions and your silly ear infection story offers 0 evidence of your claim that national healthcare is a superior system.
You believe it so, because your so dependent and deprived and when you get a little crumb of care, you think its the real deal.
And how would you know better unless you experienced better and that better has been here in the US.
Spare me the simplistic rationale, it means absolutely nothing
>>Here's something funny: if everyone jointly pays for healthcare and everybody gets treated health costs go down.
Nope. The funny thing is that as health care lowers in cost, people go see doctors more often. Your cancer hypothesis aside (and it's probably true), this results in a net increase in health care costs.
Supply and demand is a bitch, ain't it?
I'll have to start consuming more healthcare for the rabid dog problem we're having. "An ounce of prevention..."
An illegal immigrant gets a runny nose and goes to the ER and gets treated....
All of us tax-paying, legal, citizens, still foot the bill for them not paying.
what does this change for any of that?
Nothing.
Get rid of the fucking illegals in this country and our tax money footing the bill for educating their kids, delivering their babies (who should be illegal regardless of being born on our soil), etc.
The biggest item missing in all of the debates is the competitiveness of the USA vs. China vs. Europe. Smart people are leaving the USA for China everyday because China has more opportunities. More opportunities equates to trying to take care of yourself. By increasing the tax burden, we've given people more reason to leave to pursue a better life with more personal freedom.
"I'd rather live in a society that lets people die in the street (and I don't want that at all) than one that demands they pay for health care."
it is not possible for a moral human being or a moral human society to do this (walk by someone dying in the street)
therefore, you've made a choice that is reprehensible: you'd rather be immoral
forcing someone to pay for their healthcare IS FAR LESS FREEDOM DESTROYING than letting them die in the street. you don't have any freedom when you're dead
what you see before you is a forcing, a compelling: to render aid and then demand repayment. you examine this compulsion against someone's will in a vacuum of other choices. but in reality, the other choice is to leave them dead or permanently disfigured, which is far more freedom destroying
so your argument has two logical fallacies:
1. that freedoms exist in a vacuum. in reality, freedoms exist in tension with other freedoms, and your job is to pick the more freedom affirming avenue
2. only society and government impose on your freedom. reality: simple hunger or sickness destroys more of your freedom than a totalitarian government ever could
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
that's why the Republicans, especially the Tea Party nutters, are still allowed to roam free. Whoever is against a universal health care is the real fascist here.
But sometimes you need to accept that times change
Yeah. People who disagree with the precious, perfect, unassailable opinion some random computer geek on a tech forum should be declared fascist and locked up.
I know that you Americans have trouble...
But bigoted, blanket statements against extremely diverse populations are still perfectly OK!
not everyone is running around with a colt on his hip anymore
Yes. America in 2010 is *exactly* like a Sergio Leone film.
fadir = vast cosmic genius!
Except that in the case of health insurance, there is no "repair" insurance. If you do not have insurance and you have any medical procedure provided, the cost of that procedure is offset by those who do have insurance. Even more so if you declare bankruptcy or use other debt settling means to get out of paying for the bill.
So if you don't have insurance you are effectively taxing everyone else for your care. Sure, maybe they should add a solvency test, but what would the dollar amount be? $10,000 won't cover a torn ACL. $50,000 won't cover open heart surgery. $100,000 won't cover a muti-year battle with cancer. So what, maybe a quarter of a million dollars? How many people can front a quarter of a million dollars for a bond? Anyone with the brain power to have those kinds of resources laying around is going to have the intelligence to get the insurance they want or will just pay the annual penalty.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
As much as you "debate" over health care is fun to watch from here (France), and as much as I support the reform I must agree with the guy : this isn't "insurance".
Question : should health be "insured" ?
Should your health depend on your body's liability?
(as determined by either a private corporation or a health state)
Of course not and that's why this reform is both mandatory AND will greatly improve the overall welfare of the US population.
PS: you are really scary discussing the worth of your own people's lives this way for months...
Stop being a selfish twit.
me an answer, my money, my neighbor, my neighbor, my coworkers, why should I? why should I? I don't want? force me.
> What selfish libertarians like yourself don't realise is that a persons health is mostly unrelated to their choices. No one chooses to get prostate cancer, no one chooses to get bitten by a rabid dog.
This is where you and all of modern western allopathic medicine is wrong. Health is almost 100% purely based on lifestyle choices. The key to good human health is to eat proper food. I.e. raw unprocessed simple foods. The entire health care debate is moot. The single biggest thing the fed could do to improve human health is to repeal farm subsidies.
I for one would like to congratulate our transatlantian cousins for joining the civilized world.
It is up to you whether you want insurance to help repair your car.
Trust me. It's not up to you whether or not you get life saving surgery.
> if everyone jointly pays for healthcare and everybody gets treated health costs go down.
Only for those who already pay for insurance, and only assuming that the insurance companies will pass on the savings to you, which they won't. Except, they won't get any savings, because:
> This is because no one puts off going to the doctor because of expense.
When people don't have to pay for doctors, they go more often, raising the overall health care expenditures and cancelling any savings you may have incurred for increasing the insured pool. So, if anything, your rates will go up, and MUCH higher.
> Cancers are caught sooner, infections are treated before the victim starts coughing up blood.
Cancer screening is not
good for you. Yes, early detection can be helpful for some cancers, but false positives and
unnecessary treatments can cause a great deal of harm. Prostate cancer, which you mention, is an
excellent example. Very few men die from prostate cancer, treated or not, because it grows so slowly
that you are much more likely to die from other causes before it kills you. In most cases, treating
it will just cause you lots of misery that chemo and radiation create.
Even when you have some other cancer, you need to realize that with the exception of breast and
testicular cancer, nearly all of them are fatal. You might buy yourself a few years with treatment,
but you'll die anyway. It might be worth taking a hard look at your own life and see if you really
want to have an extra few years at the cost of pain and suffering that chemo will give you. (In
socialized health care, other
people may make this decision for you)
Other infections are also frequently overtreated. Your body really is very very good at fighting
diseases. Give it food and water, and it will kill the infection all by itself. For centuries,
people have got by just fine without ever seeing a doctor, and you would do well to try to do
the same. Doctors often cause more harm than not and avoiding them really is good for you.
> What selfish libertarians like yourself don't realise is that a persons health is mostly unrelated
> to their choices. No one chooses to get prostate cancer, no one chooses to get bitten by a rabid dog.
On the contrary, health is very much related to your choices. Smoking and obesity are both personal
choices and are the most damaging things you can do to yourself. Nearly all diseases, cancers, and
heart problems are manyfold more likely if you make these choices. Then there's the impact of
stress), which damages your
immune system and contributes to many disorders, possibly including cancer.
If we're going to talk facts, how about a few citations? Look, it's easy:-
Source: The CIA World Factbook.
Of course, in Singapore it's 2.31, so there's nothing much for either of us to crow about :-(.
The horror is who ends up paying for it. The horror is the massive tax hikes that come with the price tag of this legislation. The horror is the socialist direction of this country. You are responsible for yourself, that is it. Nobody should be forced to pay for the insurance of anyone else, especially since 99.9% of all cases involved are people paying for people they don't know at all. Keep in mind, there's a difference between insurance and actual health care.
The better idea would have been to inject money into research to make medicine cheaper overall, but no, that makes too much sense.
You can remember whatever you want.
The fact is that I, and most people, will probably pay much more for health insurance than it will ever give me in return. It’s only cost-efficient for those few people who incur incredibly high treatment costs who will get more from their insurer than they will ever pay, and I am subsidizing them.
Your douchebaggery aside, I never said that someone with a serious illness shouldn’t get care. I just said what they need isn’t insurance. You don’t buy fire insurance for a house that’s already burned down.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Here's something funny: This bill doesn't set up things so that everyone pays jointly for healthcare, it sets things up so everyone pays jointly for healthcare insurance. (Which isn't the same thing at all.)
And even if everyone does get insurance, it doesn't really change things much. People will still avoid going to the doctor because they can't take a day off work. (Not that his bill provides access to doctors anyhow.) People will still not go to the doctor because of minor symptoms (thus catching things early) because of the crowds at the ER (still the only access to medical care people have), or the massive and intrusive paperwork, etc...
That's the truly sickening thing about this bill - it doesn't actually fix health care. It's a massive expansion of welfare, combined with some minor regulatory changes to insurance, that doesn't fix the actual problems with actual health care. It not only leaves the (massively broken) for-profit medical insurance and medical care systems in place, it hands those systems the keys to the asylum.
It could be a rabid dog, it could be a slip on ice, it could be a drunk driver. My point is that there are plenty of freak accidents that can befall you.
I wrote about this before, but the biggest problem with this bill is that it doesn't meet the original aims of fixing healthcare. During the election, the proposal was to reduce the cost of healthcare, thereby extending coverage to uninsured Americans. Many of the cost-saving measures originally proposed were dropped and now we have a bill that only extends coverage, but doesn't fundamentally reduce the costs in a meaningful way. Democratic and Republican ideologies prevented this from becoming a true overhaul of our healthcare. It's depressing that something this important became cannon-fodder for midterm elections. My fear is that we missed our only opportunity to get this right and will have to bear the consequences of what's been passed today. I think back to the architect of the Social Security Act, who's name I can't recall and I don't have time to google, stated from it's inception that it was not durable long-term solution, yet almost 75 years later we still haven't done anything to prevent it's insolvency. We saw something like this on a smaller scale when the Bush administration expanded Medicare to part D, but underestimated the costs of the program (and publicly accused heathcare providers for "stealing" from the government). I'm afraid that the assumptions that the Democrats are making about how this will be paid for in the future are grossly off the mark, and our generation and that of our children (for those readers in their forties) will be paying the penalty.
I'd love to agree with you there, but it has been my understanding that smokers still end up costing the system more overall, because they don't just die earlier, they usually have long term care for years before dying that is much more expensive. That said, most of those figures are on health care alone; factoring in other forms of social insurance like social security and pensions it might be closer to the break even point.
That said, the taxes on smoking cover some of the costs; a "sin tax" to cover externalities makes sense in this case. If we let people do whatever they want to their bodies, but tax them in proportion to the costs they will eventually inflict on society then the end result is mostly equitable. It doesn't cover the case of people not exercising, but I don't think we want to become that intrusive. My socialist economic beliefs and my libertarian personal liberty beliefs reach an impasse at that point. A pure libertarian would argue that not providing (or at least not requiring) health care would achieve a similar result, and it would, but at the expense of the millions of people who get sick or injured through no fault of their own, and ignores the fact that the vast majority of people simply don't have the foresight to link heart attacks at age 60 with the hamburgers and inactivity at age 20.
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
That sounds like more than health insurance would normally cost
Specifically, a 30yo. male non-smoker living in Austin, Texas with Blue Cross/Blue Shield:
(All plans include prescription coverage but no dental. And are the no frills hook-em-with-low-cost-then-upsell-them-with-addons plans.)
I don't know how many visits to a GP are needed to outweigh a month in the ICU, but I suspect it's quite a lot.
Why do we have car insurance again? Because your freedom choose no car insurance impedes on my freedom to drive. If you go around crashing into other people without any car insurance, then you should have to pay. I should be free to drive without have to worry about you.
You can still chose not to pay car insurance, if you chose not to drive. Car insurance isn't forced to pay for accidents that happened prior to your insurance date.
If the new health care bill was anything like car insurance, then it would say that you can chose not to be insured, but you won't be allowed in a hospital bed.
I don't understand why we have to wait until 2014 to get pre-existing condition exceptions repealed. I'm proud of the Congress for some sort of insurance reform, but am appalled that such a basic part of this reform goes into effect so late.
Perhaps I'm missing something about how these laws work...
From one of the articles:
I fully understand the need for having everybody paying into the system. What I don't understand is how paying into a profit-driven system is in anybody's interest. We should have had a public option at minimum, but what we really needed was universal single payer. As it is, for-profit health care with meddling middle men whose interests lie in denying care has just been enshrined in law.
The stench of the Randroid droppings is thick in the air this morning!
Guaranteed! This comment 100% Anthrax free!
Yeah, and I get to pay for it. I'm glad there are so many people on Slashdot that think if they want something, then someone else should have to pay for it.
I work extremely hard for my money to take care of my family. I am truly tired of all the philosophy going on that says why I should have to take care of everyone else too.
These financing options the govt talks about only work so long as there is a solvent tax base. The more strain you put on that, the worse everything gets. It is not wise to demotivate the people that are earning the money to pay for these schemes.
The only good things to come out of this are that it pretty much guarantees Obama will be a single term president and that the outing of Democrats will continue in November elections. I'm not sure that the $5 trillion cost is really worth it.
The difference is that you can choose NOT to drive.
...You're going to demand that the ER save your life, then demand they swallow the tens of thousands of dollars it cost (which gets passed on to everyone else in the end).
I have been in this exact situation. In grad school I went to the ER with abdominal pains and ended up having my appendix and some other bits out. My roommate in the hospital had the same thing happen. Since I was in the room when the social workers came to visit, I learned that my roomie had no insurance though his income was roughly 4x mine due to the unemployment compensation he received. The end result of our $35,000 hospital stays was that thanks to my insurance I only had to pay $4000, while he had to pay $0. Yay!
Currently, my share of family insurance through employer is $6000. For routine health, dental, & vision services we receive about $1000-1500/year in benefits. It would be far cheaper to have no insurance, pay routine stuff out of pocket, and sign up for insurance when health needs dictate.
I don't have the answers, but I don't think this bill is the solution to our problems. The entire system is broken. This bill is nothing but gravy to insurance companies. Yeah, they have to take on some undesirable customers, but they also get millions of new ones to offset.
So we fix the problems.
As for how terrible Medicare is, try to say that at an AARP meeting. But I hope you can run fast, because they'll kill you if you can't.
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
Why should I pay for you internet connection. your roads, sewers and water connections? Even though I am reasonably sure that I don't live near you I am stilling paying for the roads, sewers, water and internet connections. Grow up
It's about as likely as those whiners who threatened to "Go Galt" actually doing it, which is to say, of course it was an empty threat.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Ummm... no.
"The moral test of a government is how it treats those who are at the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the aged; and those who are in the shadow of life, the sick and the needy, and the handicapped." - Hubert Humphrey
And if you're religious (I'm not but this is a good lesson to teach people):
Matthew, Chapter 25
Come, blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the world's foundation:
for I hungered, and ye gave me to eat; I thirsted, and ye gave me to drink; I was a stranger, and ye took me in;
naked, and ye clothed me; I was ill, and ye visited me; I was in prison, and ye came to me.
Then shall the righteous answer him saying, Lord, when saw we thee hungering, and nourished thee; or thirsting, and gave thee to drink?
and when saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in; or naked, and clothed thee?
and when saw we thee ill, or in prison, and came to thee?
And the King answering shall say to them, Verily, I say to you, Inasmuch as ye have done it to one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it to me.
you understand the legal logic behind requiring people to have car insurance before driving, right?
The only reason you have to have auto insurance is because you drive on public roads paid for by tax dollars. If you drive on private property, you don't need insurance. You have a flawed analogy.
Oh great so we're on the road to ruin in a Toyota?
I've seen a lot of people talking about the clause that says that insurance companies cannot deny you insurance for pre-existing conditions.
One thing that's never clear to me is whether they are allowed to charge you a premium for pre-existing conditions. I assume yes: can anyone enlighten me?
For example, lets say two people apply for health insurance. One is a smoker that has had cancer that is in remission, and the other has had a clean bill of health their whole life.
In theory, under the previous rules, the insurance companies were able to either turn away the one with cancer, or charge him outrageous premiums to cover their risk.
Now, the insurance companies cannot turn him away. But, they can still charge higher premiums, right?
It would make no sense to me if each of these guys was paying the same price, but this seems that most comments about the issue are suggesting that they would be the same price.
For reference, I've been comparing it to car insurance.
If I have a perfect drivers record (clean bill of health) I should be able to buy cheap insurance.
If I have gotten a few tickets, or into a no-fault accident (pre-existing condition), I should be able to buy insurance, but would expect to pay a little more.
If I have a sports car and live in a bad neighborhood (chronic condition), I should be able to buy insurance, but would expect to pay a lot more.
If I got drunk and crashed into a pizza hut (pre-existing condition that could be controlled: smoking, obesity due to lifestyle, heavy drug user), I should be able to buy insurance, but either with heavily reduced coverage or dramatically higher premiums.
Is this how it works with medical insurance under the new rules?
My dad accidentally hit my dog with his truck three days ago. We brought him to the vet with a massive wound in his leg. The vet put him under anesthesia and repaired some muscular damage. He closed the wound with 9 staples. We were given antibiotics and powerful painkillers.
The tally? $600
It is an unsavory analogy, but veterinary medicine is what healthcare would be like if it were truly private. The reason we are where we are today is because government regulation, excessive tort, defensive medicine, and 'healthcare theft' have all conspired to make our healthcare cost unreasonable.
This silver lining to this all: we will get real healthcare reform when the conservatives repeal this in 2014.
It's because the more "faithful" (read: fanatically pious) among the religious Right felt that money is better spent on saving people they do not understand, and as such have serious problems interacting with, than on helping their neighbors, whom Jesus called to love as they love themselves.
It's also because they allied themselves with conservatives and libertarians, who found that Christian demographics are easily manipulated-- just tell them that the other side wants to kill babies or outlaw Christianity, even if they are outright lies.
"We are Microsoft. You shall be assimilated. Competition is futile."
That's none of your business and you have no right to point a gun at someone and require him to help someone against his will. That's slavery.
No, it's you choosing to live in a country that has those laws, which by the way (via representative democracy) you have a voice in.
Calling taxes your representatives chose that you don't personally agree with slavery is like saying George Lucas raped your childhood with the Phantom Menace: amusing, but obvious hyperbole.
The stuff in the Stimulus bill was just a tide-over. Now its required. This could mean some interesting projects for slashdotters.
You're going to need a cite for that, it's universally acknowledged as not true. Medicare has lower administrative costs then any insurance company. It does have relatively high costs, but that's because it only covers people over 65, who require considerably more care. I can't find the paper off-hand, but I recall a study that compared the spending of 64 year olds covered by private insurance vs Medicare on 65 year olds, and the difference was enormous and in Medicare's favor.
Economics 101: Price controls create shortages.
I only hope this bill can help you and it isn't too late. I've lost a lot of friends and family to cancer. Keep fighting it!
If I were to walk by someone dying in the street, I would help them. That's my choice. If, as you say, most people would, then there is no reason to compel that behavior through threat of force (even if you do believe that would be acceptable).
I made no logical argument in my previous comment. I only stated my opinion. Therefore, it is impossible for me to have committed any logical fallacy.
I desire freedom from compulsion by earthly rulers and other false things, but I love hunger and sickness because they are real. You seem to want to be free from real things but bound by false things. In the end, you will be free of neither, so I think my portion is the better one.
Because health insurance isn't really insurance. You expect to use it and you plan to use it, I don't plan to get a house fire, or a flood - if I did, it'd be fraud. But I do plan on having insurance so if I need cholesterol medication (likely given my history) I won't have to pay the whole cost. And I do plan on my annual checkup, which would be several hundred dollars without insurance.
All these health insurance problems seem perfectly reasonable to me. It's not really insurance.
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
Then move whatever direction you wish, just leave me alone.
The thing is, unless you live alone in the wilderness like some kind of mountain man, that isn't possible. What you do or don't do affects others in your society. Pretending otherwise is just that, pretending.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but there are a lot of fictional sources of funds in this bill:
Not a pretty picture. I wouldn't get too excited about the benefits, just yet. They pushed all the truly hard decisions off to the future. The Republicans WILL be back in power. If the timing stinks, the HC bill may be on the books, but de-funded.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
you understand the legal logic behind requiring people to have car insurance before driving, right?
Actually, I don't if you want me to be honest. I'm sure that there is some sort of logic to the whole thing and I've sort of accepted it so far as "I can't fight city hall" type of attitude and a fatalistic attitude about government, but it still seems like a legalized scam of sorts.
At the very least, I can choose to go without car insurance by simply choosing not to drive a motor vehicle, and instead use a bicycle or other alternative forms of transportation, including moving to a part of the world (at least my country... it is big enough) where I won't need to have an automobile. I lived about 10 years of my adult life without an automobiles, but I had to make some substantial sacrifices including impacting my earning potential in a negative manner and limiting my mobile freedom by doing so.
In this case, I suppose that I can choose not to pay this tax by:
1) Checking out of this life. Likely in a dramatic fashion that shows up on the 10 o'clock news. It is debatable if an honor guard goes with me in this case.
2) Moving out of this country and finding some place I don't have to pay such a tax. The question there is.... where?
3) Going to prison.
None of those options appeal to me. This isn't the same thing.
BTW, Yes, I have been turned away by a hospital. Worse yet, on a couple occasions I've had my wife and kids (in separate treatments) go in, have somebody essentially hold their hands saying "oh, I guess that hurts" as the only treatment (not even some pain reliever pills), and get stuck with a $10k bill.... with the billing done by a dozen different entities that I had to ultimately find out the last ones by checking my credit report as they wouldn't even send me a bill.
I'll also note that it is less than comforting to note that in the local hospital I walk through the halls, see the list of employees at the hospital, and note that the "business" staff of the hospital (mainly those processing insurance claims) outnumbers the medical staff by nearly a two to one ratio. Something is seriously screwed up when that is the case. Due to a lawsuit, at least the first person you talk to at that hospital isn't a billing representative that is asking for your credit card when you show up. That used to be the case.
BTW, the next closest hospital is nearly 150 miles away, so choosing the "competition" doesn't cut it here either.
I completely agree that the U.S. medical system is screwed up. Something needs to be fixed, but I seriously doubt that this particular legislation is going to be the "fix" that will correct the problems. There are also some very good people in the medical profession that want to genuinely help people and do the right thing. I don't mind that a well trained physician gets a generous salary. There is a whole lot of fat that can be trimmed, and some responsible ways to get people the medical treatment that they need.
It is too bad that ways to genuinely improve the health care system in the USA was not legitimately debated, and instead it was "my way or the highway" attitude.
Also, if there are some details about the "health care reform legislation" that you can legitimately point out to me that are going to be in the final bill signed by Obama, I'd like to know them. A bunch of promises were made, no doubt, but a lot of broken promises as well and backroom deals with other grunge that is the worst of the worst that comes from the U.S. Congress. I have yet to find a link to the actual text of the actual bill that is likely to become law. No, you can't find it on THOMAS either, and yes I've tried. My own elected representatives in Congress tell me they can't get the text of the bill either. What was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives was not the actual legislation.
Just watch as slashdot conservatives with mod points go bananas moderating any liberal or moderate comments into oblivion while moderating all the conservative posts through the stratosphere. It's a good thing we have a good mechanism in place to ... oh, nevermind, we don't.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
You don't have to read or comment on the story, you know. The fact that it's been posted for two hours and has 677 comments says you're wrong.
Free Martian Whores!
There are vast cultural differences between the U.S. and Europe here : An M.D. costing $100k+ ensures that most M.D.s are financially ambitious people. If we fixed the costs, we'd be laying off the doctor's secretaries who put up with the insurance company bullshit, plus oodls of insurance companies staff. etc.
Insurance prices are not regulated by this bill. If you market is open, you can shop around, and explore reasonable options. If your market's providers are locked up by 1 or 2 insurance companies, they'll charge outrageous rates, and you'll be fined for not paying them.
We're still very unsure how this will all shake out over the long run, but change has now arrived.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
You haven't really thought about what it means, have you? The youngest (and healthiest) in the population WON'T BUY INSURANCE, they'll just pay the fine, which is cheaper. Then, the overall costs to the insurance companies to cover the people who have insurance will rise on a per capita basis, so they'll raise rates. Oh, and when those young, healthy people suddenly develop expensive cancer, they'll go buy insurance at some absurdly-low rate and cost the insurance company millions of dollars for treatments. Which means the company will have to raise rates on everybody else to make up for their losses. Which means more healthy people will drop their coverage and wait until they get really sick before buying in again. Rinse, repeat.
The only way you can make something like this work is if insurance companies can look at people without insurance and say "Hmm, you've gone this long without it, guess you don't need it now, either." That would be a much stronger incentive for healthy people to maintain coverage than the stupid fine they have now.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
that do not know how to game the system; the big insurance companies that can game it will do quite well. Compare that to the Credit Bureau industry that disolved in the 80's (except for 3 players) due to government 'good intentioned' regulation, and ended up with billions in bad loans.
There is indeed no constitutional right to health care. There is an ethical right to health care, however.
Physicians cannot ethically deny you treatment for lack of insurance when your life is in immediate danger. They will and must treat you to the best of their ability, regardless of your ability to pay. Now, long term illness is another matter, but if you're ever bleeding out on an ER floor no one's going to pull out your wallet and check your insurance before stitching you up.
My comrades, now its more important than ever to continue the struggle for a strong public option and universal healthcare for all.
Do so many in the US really think their system is great?
I really don't get it. 32 million left uncovered to die because they are sick or poor? You judge a society by how it treats it's sick and poor! The very people who are against covering these people seem to be the loudest christians!? How christian is it to leave the sick and poor to die!? Making it even more confusing, the argument is "Why should we pay for them?". I just can't get my head round the morality of it. It's so alien. I swear it's because it's the US, that so many in the US think it's best. Far too much chanting "USA! USA! USA!" to stop and critically look. From the outside, the US looks brutal and uncaring. When I'm sick, I get tucked up in bed by nanny state, and she looks after me until I'm a well tax payer again. If a crime is committed against me, I tell nanny state and she does her best to catch the criminal. When my house is on fire nanny state puts it out for me. If I loose my job, nanny state feeds and shelters me. All she asks from me is to pay taxes and obey laws that hold society together. Yes, she is fat and inefficient, but she covers all and does the job with a heart in the right place, answerable to the people directly. The market solutions may be more efficient, but they never cover all, and their heart is replaced by creed. Give me nanny state!
What is really funny is you could cut and paste arguments made before the UK got the NHS and use them in today's US debate. This bill doesn't give the US a NHS, but it appears to be a step in the right direction. Hopefully a step towards a more caring, less brutal US.
If someone feels a religious obligation to feed, clothe and house those in need. That's great. I don't oppose that at all.
Why can't you get it through your head that it's fine to use your resources to do this but wrong to to break into your neighbor's house, take his food and clothing and give it to some third party?
Don't try to hide the behind the government. If you support forcible wealth distribution then morally you're still the one holding the gun.
I'd say that saying "Let this other guy die so I'm not inconvenienced!" is VERY human, just not humane....
So, I'm supposed to forfeit my own life because I might impact someone else?
You don't have the right not to be "affected" by me, and I don't have the right not to be "affected" by you.
That doesn't mean that you have any moral authority to use to coercive power of government to achieve your own ends.
Learn about Photography Basics.
Incorrect and a fundamentally naive argument.
If you break your arm and cannot work, you are now someone elses problem. FIxing that problem at that stage is now more expensive on all levels.
Good health care pays for itself in the longer term, and if youa re too short sighted to see that - well, that is why mob rule isnt in place.
This is something everyone loves to clobber the US with, but it is a case of "statistics" - as in "lies, damn lies, and statistics".
Before comparing the mortality rates of different countries, it is helpful to know just what the numbers actually represent. For example, in the US, an infant born at 28 weeks (two months premature) who then dies soon after birth is counted as an infant mortality. This is not the case in countries with "better" child mortality rates.
As to the bill itself, it might make some folks feel good, but it does not address the cturcural problems with the healthcare industry. I understand it will take 4 years before it really kicks in - for good or bad, but:
1> many docors have stated their intent to cease practicing under the new law for economic reasons
2> medical school takes 8 years and considerable money (and generally massive debt)
3> We already have a shortage of doctors (and nurses as well)
That is an example of a stuctural problem.
You either believe in rational thought or you don't
Socialism != communism is not completely true if you take a closer look at the base principles between the two forms of governemnt. The base principle for socialism lies in the theory that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, etc in the community. However socialism is also the stage in Marxist theory on the road towards communism that is still highlighted by the socialist values and ideas where such 'sharing' of property, land, money, etc is controlled by a totalitarian state, the government. Calling people against universal health care fascists if facetious at best
Basically the Pub strategy is closer to Agile software development and the Dems is closer to waterfall. (Both have their ups and downs as far as I'm concerned.) Just trying to wrap my head around this issue. (But mostly I find quantum mechanics easier to understand and more straightforward than what all these politicians are talking about.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
you understand the legal logic behind requiring people to have car insurance before driving, right?
- liability.
Liability insurance in case you hurt someone else, not for your own enjoyment. That's the insurance that is necessary if you drive a car.
Health insurance must not be mandated, you have just declared it to be illegal to be an individual person that does not own property and does not want to pay taxes, lives off the grid. One by one you are taking the right of people away not to be slaves to the system, you should not be surprised at the people, when they start fighting that system, call it terrorist or whatever you want.
You can't handle the truth.
Insurance prices are not regulated by this bill. No public option either.
If your local market is open, you can shop around, and maybe find competitively priced insurance. If your market's providers are locked up by 1 or 2 insurance companies, they'll charge outrageous rates, and you'll now be fined for not paying them.
There are some weak anti-monopoly rules embedded in the bill, but they're fairly toothless. If your local market is locked up, you're likely to see your house prices fall as people move away.. rental property will be hit especially hard.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Now it is mandatory to pay for this shit? We have a system for paying for federally provided services, it is called income tax. It is already designed to use a fair and progressive system to spread costs.
Grow a damn pair of balls and provide no premium insurance and fund it 100% via the existing tax system.
I'm a "die-hard Christian", and I'm in a right bind when I'm trying to vote. It's as though the parties purposely decided to divide up things that I might actually vote for, so it's always a lesser of two evils. God made the world and, from my perspective, made us stewards. So we have a responsibility to care for the environment. The Bible has a lot to say about the rich and the poor, employers and workers; and it's not in the favor of the rich. I think unions have often gone too far in the wrong direction, but they, along with laws which protect workers are absolutely necessary. I'm in favor of many of the health care proposals Obama put forward, including the public option, no exclusion of pre-existing conditions, and required coverage.
On the other hand, I think overall that big government is not the way to solve things; it causes more problems than it fixes. I can see the dampening effect of socialism on efficiency and creativity where I live here in England, and although I can see the benefits of government-run health-care, overall I'm still not in favor of it. My belief that we should care for the weakest and most helpless in our society makes me want to protect workers and help the poor, but makes me also strongly opposed to the idea of the very weakest, those without a voice, being killed for the convenience of others (abortion).
And of course there are some things, like copyright extensions, DRM, and so on where neither of the major parties vote my way.
At any rate, there are Christians who take try to take their faith into their voting, but it's not really that simple to do. And the the "God bless America" people annoy me too. :-)
TCP: Why the Internet is full of SYN.
You're going to demand that the ER save your life, then demand they swallow the tens of thousands of dollars it cost
Please don't paint with such a broad brush. Many people value their ethics over their lives. I am one of them.
I am not an American citizen and have only a passing interest in the internal shenanigans of American politics, however for some reason this healthcare bill is international news. Having scan read a few articles on the subject, I have to admit that I am I do not understand the issues surrounding this bill.
From my outsiders point of view this whole thing seems to me that America is arguing over how much pain the poorest members of its population should endure before the richer members of the population subsidise their healthcare needs. Would that statement summarise this?
Your lifestyle is a huge factor in determining your health. Alcoholism, cigarette addiction, poor diet and a sedentary lifestyle are all practically guaranteed to cause health problems later in life
So, you want to completely deny the coercion of the tobacco companies who knew the facts on nicotine addiction but continued to advertise them as a lifestyle enhancement and deny the health implications? You want to ask Native Americans how much of a choice alcoholism is? Have you noticed where the subsidies from the USDA go? We, economically, make it such that if you are lower middle class, the only nutrition you can afford is of such poor quality that you are just about guaranteed to either be starving or obese, not healthy. Its hard to not be sedentary when you're either dealing with malnutrition or horrid side effects from the onset of diabetes due to our ag system being a subsidized corn syrup production model.
Learn a little bit about the socio-economic factors and the serious corporate corruption in our system that cause these things before you start immediately blaming the "lazy poor". How many poor people do you know? I grew up wondering where the next meal was coming from and it wasn't because my mother wanted to work two jobs and never see her kids.
My Babylon
Yes, brain cancer is a real learning experience. Jesus Christ, what the hell is wrong with you? Frankly, yes, I believe everyone should be entitled to good health, or at least the best shot at that goal.
Times change, get used to it. The injustice of many not having access to healthcare outweighs the desires of a few people to wander off into the sticks.
You walk out into the woods and turn up for any reason at a hospital, they are still required by law to treat you, see? What's fair about my healthcare costs going up because you can't pay to have your leg reset or whatever?
I really don't see what you guy's problem with government doing things is. Surely something like health care, which everybody should have the right to, and therefore isn't a viable business environment, should be run by someone with no interest in trying to make money out of it. Health care should be about providing for people, not making money for share holders, something that no money making business will ever achieve. That all assumes that you do want there to be health care for all, not just those wealthy enough to afford it.
Technically, yes, but not practically, given the setup of nearly everywhere in the US.
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
Health insurance must not be mandated, you have just declared it to be illegal to be an individual person that does not own property and does not want to pay taxes, lives off the grid.
You can only get away with non-mandated health insurance as long as health care providers are not required to provide treatment under any circumstances. This means that they are free to leave a unconscious person to die on the curb if they are unable to verify that said person wants to be treated and has a way of paying for it.
Otherwise, you'll get freeloaders who don't get insurance, but still expect to be treated in emergencies, sticking hospitals and doctors (and therefore all other patients who _are_ able to pay) with their bills.
Glenn Beck was found dead in his room at the mental asylum, where he was taken on the evening before, because he tried to storm the White House with his assault rifle, clad in tin foil and tea party stickers.
He hung himself after cutting off his penis, swallowing it whole and failing to suffocate in the process. The note that he left states that he thought that that was still better than what the government would force upon him by tomorrow.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
So, I'm supposed to forfeit my own life because I might impact someone else?
No; just grow up a little and accept life for what it actually is, not what reading Atlas Shrugged too many times would make it out to be. Society doesn't deserve or own 100% of what you accomplish, but equally, neither do you. Nothing occurs in a vacuum; there is nothing of worth that you or anyone has accomplished that didn't require other people to happen.
and furthermore, you are not arguing about your personal choice, you are angry at the compulsion society places on you, so you are interested in social policy
so: either remain true to your asceticism and refrain from commenting on the policies of a society you do not view yourself to be a part of
or: admit you are a part of society and that society must have moral policies in order to function. one of which is: you need to aid those who are sick or hurt. and, being part of this society, you realize that at times the social policy binds you to its will. accept that as a pact you make in order to continue to receive the overt and subtle benefits from the society you are part of. like: the goddamn internet you are typing your opinions on!
(smacks forehead)
you have a blind spot. you believe you are not bound by certain realities of the world you live in. one of which is the rules of the social creatures called homo sapiens you are a member of. you have a false, conceited way of looking at the world. at the root of your conceits, i see a gigantic narcissist at work. you are part of society. humble yourself to this reality
or don't. and become a true hermit. and stop trying to matter to the policies of a society you choose not to be a part of by commenting about them on the internet!
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"I (and no other members) of the public are under NO OBLIGATION to pay for your sickness."
No, but it'd be wise to do so, because in return you don't run the risk of being confronted with healthcare costs you can not afford because you insisted on going at it alone.
How many people do you think can afford open heart surgery out of their own pocket? Oh, you're not going to need open heart surgery? Are you sure thats only a matter of personal responsibility?
They have always been able to get healthcare. There has been a lot of misinformation in an attempt to gain support for this bill.
If you have a chronic healthcare issue- like a genetic disease, etc, that you cannot have helped you could not be denied coverage. I know because my sister has this very issue. They cannot refuse you.
"Preexisting conditions" only covered things like broken arms. The point being that you cannot sign up for insurance with a broken arm. The point of insurance is to pay a little to offset potential tragedy. The insurance company makes money by collecting from many people, knowing that statistically, only a few will meet tragedy.
They don't let you buy insurance with a broken arm because you are essential just asking a bunch of other people, customers and employees of the company, to bail you out.
The only reason this issue is complicated at all is because of things like cancer, which can bankrupt someone if they have it and are uninsured. Of course, alternative programs could be created instead of turning insurance into welfare, but that would make sense...
the federal government can not force anyone or everyone to buy anything, not a TV, a particular brand of automobile or heath insurance, i hope this falls on its face before it gets implemented.
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
I felt a great disturbance in The Force...as if millions of voices cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. Welcome to crappy Canadian healthcare. There is no "right" to healthcare. Nowhere does it even hint at this in the Constitution. This is all being shoved up our collective ass through the Interstate Commerce clause of the Constitution.
Here's the Wikipedia article on that girl. (Decide for yourselves if you think the insurance company did or did not have a point denying that liver transplant.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nataline_Sarkisyan
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
>>I don't know how many visits to a GP are needed to outweigh a month in the ICU, but I suspect it's quite a lot.
It's not theory, though. Actual analysis of real numbers shows that costs increase as you make more care available. Make doctors free, and medical costs go through the roof - it's just not the patients paying to see them any more.
Nobody's going to eat your civil liberties if you don't buy insurance. You just get fined. There are subsidies to help out people who can't afford the premiums.
It's the same system they have in Switzerland, basically. It's certainly better than what we had before; at least it'll no longer be the laughingstock of the civilized world.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Most wealthy people have these problems, I wasn't even talking about poor people.
The idea is supposed to be it requires you to have insurance before you get sick... just like having fire insurance is required (by mortgage lenders) before your house catches on fire.
"I (and no other members) of the public are under NO OBLIGATION to pay for your sickness."
As a practical matter you are. Emergency rooms treat people regardless of their ability to pay. If they are uninsured, the ERs write off a large portion of the bill and raise their rates to compensate. This expense is then passed on to other customers including you and every other member of the public. The only way to get around this would be for ERs to be required to verify payment before treatment, but then people (possibly you) would regularly die due to billing mix ups and public would be outraged.
Since nobody is going to thing "we'll I don't have health care coverage, I guess I'll just sit here and die rather then obtain medical treatment I can not pay for" the reasonable course of action is to make it such that everybody can pay for health care.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It really bugs me when non-Christians take it on themselves to paraphrase the Bible. If you're not a believer, the LEAST you could do is find an actual passage to back yourself up, rather than just popping off what you yourself admit is, at best, an uninformed opinion.
Here's a wonderful essay by C.H. Spurgeon on what it means to be "my brother's keeper". The Bible teaches that there is a balance between individual responsibility ("If a man does not work, do not let him eat.") and individual compassion ("love your neighbor as yourself"). It does not teach that the government ought to be the primary carekeeper for those in need. The Bible's view of care is far, far more personal than that.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
There is no constitutional right to health care of any kind.
so why are you paying for libraries and fire departments? there's no constitutional right for that, but i'm pretty sure the majority of the us public wanted it the way it is now rather than how it was in the early 1900s when you had to PAY for fire coverage
Not by forcing those who do not need or want coverage to buy it.
what do you think happens to the kid making $45k/year who doesn't have insurance because they want to take that money and buy more beer or ps3s or whatever. their dumb fault right? now in their drunken stupor they fall off a balcony. someone sees and calls 911 (mind you this kid didn't want insurance and said they will suffer the consequences themselves). 911 shows up with an ambulance and takes the kid to the hospital. now the kid comes to and is denying coverage left in right... but the hospital has already accepted the kid, so they stablize the kid and let them go. the kid ends up with a $40,000 bill. the kid doesn't have money.. attempts to pay the bill over the next 6 years but the kid loses his job. so the kid faces garnishment and levys and goes into depression. mind you the kid does not have a follow up visit, so the kids arm does not set properly and can't move a certain way without extreme pain, limiting the kids work. the kid files for bankruptcy, $28,000 of the debt is discharged. WHAT HAPPENS TO THAT $28,000 IN DEBT.
Oh right... taxpayers like you and may pay for it. So not only do we STILL pay for uninsured americans, but the uninsured american may not be able to work again meaning we get to continue paying for them to live on our dime. Not saying healthcare will fix every single case, but imagine if that kid was forced to have insurance. He could still make the choice to not go to the hospital, but we're all now $0.0001 richer because we didn't have to pay for him. Multiply this by the number of people who could be in similar situations and suddenly you see the savings.....
What does this mean for the everyday average leech? I am uninsured. They pass a law saying "you have to have health insurance or we fine you $800 a month." I made something like $2000 last year total; less than 3 months worth of health insurance fines. I'm basically a dependent of my parents but some legaleze in our insurance says I am not covered because I am over 21 (I actually think this is bullshit and they are just screwing me over). If I just straight up do not have cash will the government step up and help me pay for insurance? OH WAIT. Republicans killed the public option right?
What are the regulations on immigrants in foreign countries with free healthcare? If I have a serious illness and travel to some nation with free healthcare and pass out in the middle of the street, will they fix me up for free?
Your view point seems to be the common failure(IMO) with the average American view point. America is all about ME and NOW without thinking about others and even FUTURE YOU. Well what happens if you suddenly get sick, lose your job, you're totally screwed. I don't like that some people are not taking care of themselves thus raising health costs for everyone here(Canada) but when you weigh that with the benefits of not having to really worry about costs if you happen to get sick, well that is much better IMO then getting stuck with some huge bill you can never pay off.
I once read someone in America talking about saving up $20,000 just to pay the hospital when his wife has a baby. Living in Canada, this is such a foreign idea to me that you would even have to think of such a thing if you don't have insurance. Sure kids are a big financial burden overall but the last thing any new parent should be thinking about is a huge bill just for having a kid in a hospital.
I flatly disagree - no one has claim to the fruits of your labor other than you. Period
How can you justify your position? You've just stated that a man lives his life at the behest of society, and owes that society - is that what you really believe?
BTW - I appreciate the honest, non-screeching debate. It's a rare thing these days when men can discuss ideas in a public forum without personal attacks and strawmen. While I don't agree with you it seems, I can appreciate your viewpoint.
And by "men", I mean humans - as in, "the race of men". Stupid PC drivel...
Learn about Photography Basics.
Why didn't we fix the problems now? Where are the medicare "fraud busters" in this reform bill?
All I heard about was the new IRS agents needed to enforce compliance with this bill.
I never even hinted that the CARE provided by Medicare was in any way inferior - I said there was rampant fraud, and I provided a link to support my fraud claim.
Ken
You're right. It sounds exactly like a tax. Taxes work for the public good even if they don't affect you personally. They should have made this a tax, and done away with private insurance for all but those who want it. And I'm a very conservative person, politically. It's just the only kind of reform that would have made sense given all the corruption going on in the current system.
...what you think it means.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/netdict/contingent
contingent
2 entries found.
1. 1contingent (adjective)
2. 2contingent (noun)
Main Entry: 1contingent
Pronunciation: \kn-tin-jnt\
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French, from Latin contingent-, contingens, present participle of contingere to have contact with, befall, from com- + tangere to touch -- more at tangent
Date: 14th century
1 : likely but not certain to happen : possible
2 : not logically necessary; especially : empirical
3
a : happening by chance or unforeseen causes
b : subject to chance or unseen effects : unpredictable
c : intended for use in circumstances not completely foreseen
4 : dependent on or conditioned by something else
5 : not necessitated : determined by free choice
synonyms see accidental
-- contingently adverb
You know... there is likely, but not certain chance that you can "catch" any bacterial or viral disease.
Or sustain any form of physical injury possible.
Or even acquire an illness due to the changes in your lifestyle beyond your control - such as due to aging.
None of those have anything to do with "pre-existing" conditions, but you sure as hell can make SURE that in case it happens - your ass will get the necessary treatment.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Do you call public roads, tax paid fire fighters and general taxes already Socialism?
This bill is as much Socialism as all the other public services are.
Socialism in the usual public understanding is something different than social services provided by most countries in the western world, even when the Americans tend to call pretty much every country but their own to be a socialist country.
Socialism and Communism are terms for societies that are pretty much tainted by what happened during the last century. They have not much to do with the original idea behind both of them though. In theory at least Socialism doesn't say much about the government at all. It could be a dictatorship (like all the examples in the last century were) or it could be as well a western democracy. It's pretty much undefined.
Socialism is first and foremost a form of economy, less a governmental form. The same to some extend applies to Communism. Both (the latter more) tend to encourage dictatorships though, which is the real problem.
I suggest to stop to think of every social aspect to be some kind of Socialism or the way to it because of the said implications and prejudice.
If you are a Republican on the other hand and just want to spread fear and the like to win the next election then it's of course the way to go! It works very well in the U.S. because people have some kind of primal reflex as soon as the terms "Socialism" or "Communism" are used.
>
When I did an analysis of Medicare costs, it wasn't actually very cheap at all. Something like $650pp/month.
That's fairly inexpensive compared to most non-employer subsidized health insurance, especially when you consider the general poor health (compared to fit 20 somethings) of the entire Medicare pool! If you have health insurance you can get a good back-of-the-envelope estimate of what the employer is paying for you by multiplying your premiums by a factor of 2 to 3, and that's with a insurance pool to spread the costs and risks. I'll imagine for most people it will be near or over $650 per person/month
I (and no other members) of the public are under NO OBLIGATION to pay for your sickness.
You are now.
If a certain segment of the population feels that strongly about providing medical coverage to those they deem "needy" then they should do so by setting up a charitable trust to provide that care. Not by forcing those who do not need or want coverage to buy it.
Nobody is forced to buy health insurance. People who make a sufficient amount (which is far, far above the poverty line) are forced to choose between health insurance and a $700/year fee administered by the IRS. This fee guarantees that when you slip and fall on your uninsured ass, the hospital can provide you with emergency care without worrying about your ability to pay your bill. Essentially, you're paying to keep hospitals from going bankrupt, which (surprise!), you were already paying for.
and when you broke your arm off the grid, and wandered in bleeding to the emergency room 50 miles away, you gratefully accepted the aid of a society you rejected
i do weep for american society too. that so many people are so blindly selfish and irresponsible that they think aggressively defying what is obviously just common sense fiscal policy is somehow being patriotic or american
just admit you have no interest in american society, and leave social policy to those who actually care about american society
after all you are the one championing going off grid!
don't you see the simple logical fallacy in your attitude?:
"i am declaring myself apart from american society in the name of american society!"
pfffffffft
logic fail
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
furthermore, does the hospital turn them away for not having cash?
A hospital cannot turn someone away who goes to the ER.
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
But that isn't what health insurance covers. If I get the flu and pass it to someone else, my health insurance does not pay for their health costs related to that.
You can still choose to live off the grid and not pay any taxes including the health insurance penalty. It would be a waste of time and money to chase some guy who decided to build a shack in the mountains. This is just like saying that when they added "under God" to the pledge of allegiance, they unleashed the American theocracy that is going to come kill all of us Atheists. And we all know the only reason you didn't hear about the mass slaughter of Atheists is because the theocracy has kept it hidden all these years...
At least those voting on such a bill can read the dang thing before they vote on it.
The legislation that was just passed was so terse in legalese and so huge that I doubt if any single human has ever actually read the whole thing.
your opinion is valid as long as it is logically coherent. currently i don't see that
you understand you are part of a society: good. you understand that you receive benefits from that society: good. but you do not understand, apparently, correct me if i am wrong, that you owe a contribution for receiving those benefits
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Plenty of people die in the system US currently has even when they do have insurance, so this point is moot. People die today and they will die tomorrow, but now they have another law that makes them into criminals and not free people.
You can't handle the truth.
Can we stop with that? It's not like anyone would normally read the whole thing anyway. Have you gone and read any of the other millions of pages of laws that already apply to you? Or thanks to case-law, all those decisions rendered in random cases that might, if brought up by opposing counsel, be construed to apply to you as well? No. You didn't. And you won't.
So how about you let legislators do what they're paid and elected to do, which is write legislation, not fortune cookies or hallmark cards. The goal isn't to be short, nor even particularly readable -- it's to be comprehensive and precise, because it'd suck to be the victim of the activist-judge boogieman or the loophole scam artist. There's really no reason to think that the more important some legislation is considered to be, the shorter and more accessible it ought to be, and there's nothing new about this.
For fuck's sake, the whole point of the republican system of government (as opposed to a direct democracy) was that the common people were too busy, uneducated, disconnected and uninformed to be handling this complex stuff themselves. Complaining about this is like having your clueless customer butt in every few seconds while you try to write complex code to solve their problems, or seal a joint, or do whatever professional work it is you do, telling you that you need to do it in a way they understand.
So, seriously. Let's stop this. It does nothing to advance the overall debate.
Do you vomit when you look in the mirror? Do you think anyone has ever truly loved you, or every truly will when your heart is so black? You really are scum, aren't you? Reply, or don't. You know the answers.
Putting out the fire is a 1 time thing, and it's done to protect your neighbor's propertay.
Rebuilding / restoring it *DOES* require fire insurance.
So if you get cancer and end up with $2 million in hospital debt and no way to pay it (because in the US hospitals must do life saving procedures regardless of your ability to pay) who do you think pays for that now? Everyone else who uses that hospital system and everyone's taxes already subsidize the uninsured because the uninsured are guaranteed care if they need it (which incidentally is the care that tends to be the most expensive). Nothing has changed except that now maybe the people who would have been uninsured otherwise will go to the doctor for that weird mole on their leg instead of waiting until they're coughing up blood and treatment is two orders of magnitude more expensive than it would have been earlier.
The damage of you not paying your impossible to pay medical bill is done to all of society. Forcing you to pay for some minimum amount of insurance protects society from that damage.
So why is per-capita spending on health care higher in the US than anywhere else, but with a lower life expectancy?
What does any of that have to do with the simple fact that legally required car insurance does not cover damages to yourself and your own property but instead covers damages to other people and other people's property.
And in that way is fundamentally distinct from making health insurance legally required?
Should we also make car insurance against theft legally required? After all if you can't get to work, you are doing to be someone elses problem.
It's irrelevant that good preventative and diagnostic health care pays for itself in the long term. Since you can do that without making paying huge gobs of money to health insurance companies a legal requirement. Basically every other country in the developed world manages to after all.
Apply the patch for me and re-upload it.
The problem isn't the cost of insurance. The problem is the cost of health care. Reduce the cost of health care and insurance companies will be able to make a profit without exclusions. Reduce the cost of health care, and insurance won't be as necessary. Reduce the cost of health care and more people will be able to use the system.
This bill isn't about health care reform. It's about forcing the 30 million young healthy people who don't need insurance to pay premiums to cover the expense of health care for those who consume more than they pay for.
What surprises me is that nobody seems to be recognizing the incredible secondary effects of this bill. Forcing people to buy insurance they hadn't planned on when they bought their house is going to drive a lot more foreclosures. A lot of smaller business owners are going to be terminating employees because they can't afford to pay for the mandatory coverage. A lot of big corporations aren't going to hire anyone until the need is desperate.
This bill is going to deepen the recession, increase the number of foreclosures, and make finding a job almost impossible for the long term unemployed. Will it reduce the cost of health care? No. Will it reduce the cost of insurance? No. Will it limit the spiraling cost of heath care and insurance in the future? No.
Smug fucker aren't we? Eat shit much?
Actually, if you go to a hospital, they're required to treat you even if you're uninsured. So you're still shifting the burden to somebody else.
You can't even choose not to go to the hospital. If you get injured to the point of being unresponsive and somebody else calls 911, you're going whether you'd like to or not.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
I certainly hope he'd be fined for littering
Which is completely irrelevant to the legally requiredness of auto insurance, which is the only thing I mentioned.
There are hundreds of other posts actually about health care and not whether the it's the same model as car insurance. Why not post your preformulated and irrelevant (to this post) rant as replies to one of them?
I've got $100 to put into a travel fund if it helps that venomous malevolent hate monger to get out of here. The only problem is that I wouldn't wish him on anyone else.
I wonder how much Virgin Galactic would charge for a one-way trip.
Few, if any, people are so selfless as to choose suicide over going to the ER full well intending on stiffing the bill. In many cases, they aren't even conscious enough to decide until the bill is a multiple of their annual income. It is this liability to others you are insuring against unless you intend to have "just kill me" tattooed on your forehead and a law passed allowing anyone passing you in distress to summarily dispatch you for the mere cost of a bullet.
Your lifestyle is a huge factor in determining your health. Alcoholism, cigarette addiction, poor diet and a sedentary lifestyle are all practically guaranteed to cause health problems later in life (and most Americans do more than one).
Not just that, they are the biggest factor in healthcare costs. Something like 70% of all healthcare costs are lifestyle related. I really wish the healthcare bill had focused on reducing those, instead of some weird insurance reform.
Qxe4
Insurance is not like betting.
You are not betting that the cancer will not metastasize - you are making sure that if it does the patient will get the necessary treatment.
You've been brainwashed into thinking that it is OK and even necessary to run everything as a for-profit operation. Hint - it isn't.
Things like education, health-care, transport networks, defense, environment etc. are primarily SERVICES. They provide support and continuous operation of a civilized society.
That is why it is A-OK for money gathered from the taxes to be spent on those.
It is your money being used to provide you with a better quality of life. It is also other people's money.
And it is gathered from EVERYONE, all of the time, so any-time ANY-ONE needs it - it is there.
THAT is your flying car. Your jet-pack.
May not be as flashy as in The Jetsons, but it will keep you alive and slashdotting for a long time.
We are going onto a 100-year lifespan nowadays, haven't you heard?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
You insure others against the 'damage' you'll do to the hospital when they fix you, although those damages should only consist of financial damages. Nobody cares about you, you'd probably be saved even without insurance if a dog ripped off your foot. Y
So IMHO, health care is a lot like car insurance. But I never really questioned the sense behind it, just have to vote right next time one of those nutcases of the 'Free Democratic Party' in Germany wants to turn our health care system into something resembling your system.
And I'm not objecting to that. But this bill isn't really about that, and the fraud issue should be addressed in a separate bill.
You just know that Fox would find and misrepresent some edge case that the proposed bill would be considered fraud, and try to use it to take down the whole bill. This was hard enough to pass as it was.
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
It must suck to be so offended by someone who doesn't share your value system.
If you get so upset with someone being different on the internet, I imagine your reaction in person would be quite amusing to watch.
Learn about Photography Basics.
I really don't understand why the parent is modded as troll, as he seems to simply be expressing his opinion that he likes aspects of the health care bill.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
Legally required car insurance is insurance for other people/property you injure/damage.
You are not required to insure your car against theft, you are not required to insure your car against the damage done to it when you crash it.
Health insurance is not for other people that you might harm in some way, it is for yourself. And hence is nothing like mandatory car insurance.
Not true. Ignoring that if you have an auto loan, the lienholder will probably require collision and theft insurance, your analogy would only hold true if the hospitals were permitted to turn away those who could not pay or similarly behave the way that auto repair facilities can.
When a hospital has to eat the cost of indigent care, they extract if from those who can pay directly or via insurance. We've just re-adjusted the way in which those payments are made.
Failure to carry health insurance is not a "victimless crime". Crime or not, there are definitely victims.
You've got that wrong.
Health Insurance protects US from paying YOUR medical bills when you get really sick or injured. Because you get emergency care whether you insured yourself or not.
It's the same reason we require motorcyclists to wear helmets in most states. So that WE don't have to bear the burden of the costs of YOUR choices.
It's a good idea. Get over it.
i love this libertarian cheat:
"and, uh, charity takes care of all the rest"
yeah, because a philosophy that champions selfishness is a society full of bountiful giving people ready to give their hearts out! pffffffffft
truth is, you need taxes, you need to compel people to give, charity alone doesn't work. because too many people are like you: too blindly ignorant and/ or selfish to see they are part of a society and OWE a contribution for the benefits they receive from society
i swear, every time i argue with this libertarian tea party ignorance i feel like i am talking to scrooge in "a christmas story"
do you understand the simple lessons of a christmas story a kindergartener can perceive? you do? then do you see scrooge is the ultimate archetype of the libertarian/ tea party asshole?
libertarians and tea bagger morons: kindly get a visit from four ghosts or whatever it takes to cure you of your loud, strident ignorance. the rest of us rightfully perceive of and understand the common sense value of the idea of the common good
i swear, this libertarian tea bagger moron ignorance is destroying this country from within with greater virulence than any fascist, communist, or terrorist religious fundamentalist force that has ever fought the usa
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
So when you pay taxes for police to protect other people's property, that's slavery. When you pay taxes and we build roads so you can conduct commerce, that's slavery. I think you can think of a few more examples. Maybe you can go to the library and do some research. Oh, the library is slavery too.
That is very insightful. You belong to groups - family, friends, co-workers, people at community organizations (church, clubs, HOAs), school (from your kid's grade school to your alma mater), state, and nation. In health care, people (especially the health nuts) like to group into "those that deserve good health for living the lifestyle they do, and those that don't". Those that deserve to pay more because of smoking or for not wearing a seat belt.
Unfortunately that relies on knowledge that we do not have. We can't figure out that the health nut for the 20 years lived in a mining community as a child. Everything you've done and not done plays a critical role in determining your overall health - and not only have we barely scratched the surface of understanding, our understanding sometimes stands at odds (took them 30 years to figure out which part of the egg does what for our bodies). And some eastern beliefs and practices are wholly ignored because of disbelief or pharmaceutical interests.
So we need to stop drawing that line around our yard, or around our workplace, or around smokers and just have universal health care. I know this bill doesn't do that, but it is at least a step, and maybe in another 20 we can take another.
Egads. I'd expected Slashdot to have a higher collective IQ.
Instead it's infested with libtards. And I'm not a wingnut saying that.
Fixing healthcare requires 2 things: (no, I didn't come up with these, but I don't remember who did)
1) Changing insurance so the companies make more money for providing service than denying it. Although any actual analysis shows their profits as a percentage of premiums are not excessive. Can you think of any other industry that makes more $ by providing *less* service?
2) Changing health care so it pays to keep you healthy instead of merely treating you once you're sick.
This bill does neither of these things.
It contains one decent thing- the interstate insurance exchanges. Competition is good. You hear auto insurance ads every day- when was the last time you saw a health insurance ad?
It contains a truckload of crap-
-eliminates the exclusion of pre-existing conditions, while having inadequate penalties for not having insurance. The obvious math has been posted above. If you can't work such basic arithmetic, go back to preschool. They could have done something smarter- like changing the rules so that if you're denied coverage based on a pre-existing condition, the insurance company has to refund every penny you ever paid them (since they said your policy was invalid)
It creates a huge new bureacracy.
It's not long-term solvent. The taxes start right away, but the benefits wait 4 years. So it's 10 yrs of taxes for 6 yrs of benefits. Anyone want to check the balance sheet after 11yrs?
It's riddled with payoffs. If it's such a great thing that we really need, and since the Dems had a filibuster-proof supermajority for 11 months, why didn't this sail through? Because it stinks. Instead it's filled with payoffs to states, judgeships for congressman's brothers, etc.
Did they take on the malpractice lawsuit problem? Nope- too many congress critters are trial lawyers.
I recently ate lunch with a guy whose wife is a child psychologist. She used to work in a hospital that took Medicaid patients, and now works in one that doesn't. Her old patients are seeking her out and paying cash (that they can hardly afford) because the Medicaid payments are so low the doctors can only give 15 minute appointments- basically med checks, not real listening and diagnosis. To see the future study the past- and this picture isn't pretty.
Computer people are fond of defining idiocy as "doing the same thing in the same way and expecting a different result". Well- I guess those thinking this is a good thing fit this description.
I've long loved the quote from Ben Franklin- "He who would trade his liberty for security will have neither". I usually quoted it in reference to the (misnamed) Patriot Act, but it applies here. So all of you who are celebrating that your health care is now "secure" should enjoy the party- for the shackles this "security" brings are coming and they will be heavy.
My experience with a Nurse practitioner was that she listened to what I said (night sweats, irregular heart beat, fatigue), instantly new what was wrong, and told me to stop drinking soft drinks. That is it. No follow up, nothing.
Fast forward a year later, returned with same symptoms experienced over an entire weekend, went in Monday and luckily my heart beat was still irregular while in the Doctor's office. Same Nurse practitioner this time brought in the Doctor, hooked up an EKG, and told me to have a co-worker drive me to the hospital ER, no explanation, no urgency, just told me not to drive myself. When I got there, ER folks said "Oh, we expected you an hour ago by ambulance." I was found to be in Superventricular Tachycardia (SVT, extreme rapid heart rate).
Because of an arrogant Nurse practitioner who thought she knew everything, she did not even forward my initial comments to the doctor, just told me what she thought and sent me on my merry way. The only way I found what was happening was because it just happened to occur while in the Doctor's office a year later. How much permanent damage was caused by this repeating who knows how many times over the next year?
Is this how you want healthcare run for everyone? There is a reason they call it going to the DOCTOR.
Not to rant on every Nurse Practitioner, as I know it is a thankless job, but I would prefer my expert medical opinions to come from an expert. Oh, and this particular Nurse practitioner left the practice (or was asked to leave) within 6 months of my return visit. Wonder how many other people she attempted to doctor with similar results? And now you want the government running things, using more and more NPs as first-line caregivers?
I think you just stumbled onto the main problem with health insurance. It also seems to be the problem that everyone seems to overlook. We all seem to be arguing about the concept of mandating health insurance. That's not the real problem here. The real problem here (IMHO) is the price gouging that happens here. Out of pocket care is orders of magnitude cheaper almost anywhere in the world. A couple hours in the ER laying on a bed getting some fluids is billed at over $10,000. Providers started charging ridiculous prices because the insurance companies would just pay it. Now we're dealing with the results of that spiral. There are a LOT of things that need to be fixed with health care in the US. Fixing some things without fixing the gouging rates will only cause further economic issues.
>> The Republicans set us on the road to financial ruin, and the Democrats have just floored the accelerator.
Please stop talking about Democrats and Republicans as if they were separate entities.
-- I was raised on the command line, bitch
Before yesterday, you could choose to live "off the grid". You could grab some stuff, head out for the mountains, build a shack, and provide for yourself. While you were still technically supposed to file taxes, etc., no one really cared if you didn't apply for the tax credits and social programs you'd almost certainly be eligible for.
Today is different. As of now, you are officially a tax cheating criminal if you choose to wander off alone. You can bet the government will be interested that you're not filing returns that certify that you owe money for being uninsured.
The world is changed this morning, and I awake to applause. This is not the country I grew up to love and swore to protect.
For off-the-grid hermits everywhere, this would seem to be a bad thing. There is an obvious fix though. Extend health coverage to everyone automatically, just like other social programs, and pay for it through a progressive income tax. That way the hermit can go back to not filing his tax returns and no one caring. Better? (I suspect not... :-) ).
More seriously though -- someone with no ability to pay is technically indigent, and eligible for medicaid already. Do you really think this bill throws the entire roster medicaid-eligible individuals into jail, as sort of a debtors prison? Really?
(What do these off-the-grid hermits do when they get sick by the way? They are one log-splitting accident away from a painful death from gangrene after all.)
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
selfish libertarians
This is a problematic way to describe most libertarians I've known, because:
1.) They see selfishness as a good thing, in the sense of acting in their own self-interest
2.) They have such a narrow, small-minded, and poorly-conceived view of "self-interest", that they wind up taking action against their own self-interest most of the time.
You would be better served with descriptors such as unrealistic, or perhaps ignorant.
And they have no fear, because their seats are secure at least until reelection time.
And if they can make a shitload of money in bribes^Wpolitical contributions before their terms are up they have every incentive to milk their positions for all they are worth and then breeze out of office laughing all the way to the bank.
We the people cannot fire (recall) bad federal politicians. They can only be impeached by their fellow corporate teat sucking buddies.
Because there is no threat of insolvency. Zilch, none, nada, zip, ninguno....
See this article for a nice debunking of the propaganda you've been suckered into. These meme that there's a Social Security "crisis" or that "it wont be around for me" is a bunch of Cato propaganda called the Leninist Strategy.
Because really, how is a system that's funded directly out of paychecks ever going to go "insolvent"?
But how it passed.
Tiberius Gracchus lives on in Obama, Pelosi and Reed.
Now the question is, it took 150 years from when Gracchus broke the Roman Republic until Caesar, how long before our first Dictator?
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
Except for when you do finally need it, then decide to not disclose the information about your pre-existing condition, then get insurance (negating the whole idea of "insurance" in the first place) and unfairly harming everyone else who has been paying into the system all along.
uh huh..
It does have relatively high costs, but that's because it only covers people over 65, who require considerably more care.
This needs to be understood. Not only so that people understand that medicare isn't a wasteful program, but so they understand this fact: our current setup is another way in which we privatize profits and socialize losses.
Think about the insurance pool. When are people generally assets (net contributors) to an insurance plan? When they're younger, healthier, and employed... and, generally, paying into a private plan. When do we have people on public insurance? Generally during their least productive and most expensive years.
Anyone who wants to imagine a purely private insurance business should think about what would likely happen to premiums if private risk pools suddenly had to cover the population medicare covers now.
Of course, what's more likely isn't that we'd have a private setup where the elderly actually participated in the risk pool. Probably we'd get a system where private insurers limited their downside systemically by finding one way or another to avoid covering that population.
Tweet, tweet.
Up until the moment you're actually faced with such a scenario. Most people hold strong principles so long as they're never tested. And most of them abandon them when they are tested, particularly in cases like this where you're not sacrificing another person directly, just spending other people's money.
That said, who knows? Maybe you are one of the suicidally idealistic and would actually do what you say. But even if that's the case, we're not planning for you. We're planning for the 99% who hold strong convictions that break when faced with life or death.
Beyond that, I personally would feel ashamed of our country if they did let you die of an entirely treatable condition, thereby depriving you of who knows how many years of productive life. I had an appendectomy at age 4. While I was covered by my parent's insurance, the idea of letting someone in the same situation die because their parents lacked insurance and refused treatment is abhorrent.
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I have a health insurance which covers everything. If whatever operation/perscription I have costs over 50euros, everything - including the 50 euros - is paid back to me.
This costs less than 300 eur/year.
-Finn
Your analogy presupposes too narrow a definition of 'preexisting condition'.
A woman who is denied insurance for several years after she is raped because it's considered a preexisting condition is merely high risk and not necessarily in current treatment.
My case more accurately fits your semantic objection, however even then your burning house analogy doesn't fit. The fire very literally and completely destroys the house or a part of it. If my mental illness destroys me, say, if I commit suicide or am mistaken in the madness of an episode as being violent and killed or some such, then it would fit. But it's much more likely that I'll survive until the episode is over. The house doesn't recover from its symptoms on its own, I do, with whatever collateral damage usually also being temporary. At the same time, I could argue that this will indeed be insurance for me. I'll explain.
With regular medical treatment, I've been able to avoid any serious episode that would cause me to use emergency services or cause any noticeable personal damage for over a year. Without medical treatment, this would have been nearly impossible for various reasons. This part would fit Wikipedia's definition. At the same time, current studies suggest that continued use of medications such as antipsychotics reduce or prevent the worsening of certain mental conditions over time. This as well fits the definition you quoted.
I am currently on Medicaid, but looking for work. My biggest worry has been finding myself unable to continue treatment and therefore being unable to continue working once I went downhill. This would land me (in my hopes, at least) back on Medicaid and SSI. I'll be paying no taxes and no copay. So even if you define the "loss" stated in the Wikipedia definition as being economic loss, the situation fits again. With some form of insurance, I can work, pay taxes, as well as pay some premium for my coverage.
This is where I lament the loss of the public option. I suppose I don't mind paying one and a half times what someone with no condition pays, but I'm dreading whatever ways the private insurance companies will find to weasel out of actually covering me while I pay it. Ah well. Now I just need to make it to 2014.
Omnes tuae crepidines sunt nobis sunt. Ascendo tuum!
Do you object to paying for the fire service because your house hasn't yet caught fire?
False dichotomy. If my neighbor's house or the apartment above/below/beside you catches fire, that does affect me. If you break your arm or get cancer, that doesn't affect me. That's the difference.
And you're correct. Not getting sick or injured does come down to luck. You have to live with the genes you've been given and the life you lead. That's life. Just as we can't all be millionaires, not all of us can be healthy for our entire lives.
If we're going to say that everyone must be forced to pay for everyone else's insurance, then we should also dictate what life they can lead. No more skydiving, except for the military, no base jumping, no skateboarding, no driving faster than 40 mph, we'll ban all guns like England does, all knives should have dull edges, no more baseball bats. See where I'm going?
For a bunch of people who talk about how much government intrusion in their lives there is and ways to get around it, it's amazing how much government intrusion you folks want. You sound just like AIG, Goldman Sachs, BoA and the rest of the Wall Street incompetents. Free market! Free market! Until their failures show then they want all the government intrusion they can get.
If you want to help someone pay their medical bills, then great. Go right ahead. But forcing me to pay for someone else's health bill smacks full face of socialism (mingled with fascism).
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Constitutional rights have nothing to do with this. Congress can, at the will of the people, write any law it pleases. It is up to The Supreme Court to, upon challenge, find if parts of a law are unconstitutional.
If you don't like the laws Congress is passing, make sure to vote for congressmen aligned to your principles next time.
HTML is obsolete. It's time for a new, simpler and richer markup language.
Why should they have to pay for your medical expenses either? Insurance works by spreading out risk. Everyone has medical risks, even fools like you who believe those risks are only other people's problems. Anything that reduces the size of the insurance pool works against the concept.
If you think that smoking, lack of exercise, and soft drinks are real health problems then get involved. Those things have nothing to do with insurance. Curious, though, that taking your thoughts to their logical conclusion that you would oppose being forced to do something yourself (buy insurance) but support forcing others to make your choices. You sound like a classic republican hypocrite.
What abou thtose people who *choose* to get prostate cancer, or leukaemia, or who have children born with heart defects? Why should you be forced to pay for them?!?
Sorry, like schools, police and fire service Heatl is a community concern and your choice does nto come into it. Welcome to civilisation.
Well, almost, the US has a long way to go before it can be called civilised.
In a way, people seem to overestimate the impact of this bill. It is not like the healthcare in the US is part of the market anyways.
49% of the healthcare spending comes from government already.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703575004575043490639289022.html
I have a good idea.
Each year, tax a person a dollar a year for every pound they weigh, but give them credits for good health:
* A dollar for every pound they can bench
* 10 dollars for every point they score on the VO2 max test
* other measures of good health.
Quick and clean incentive to get healthy.
The fast food and snack industry would whine, but screw them.
I assume you dont pay for the police either? On the assumption you would never choose to be burgled?
Oh wait, your argument has a massive, massive flaw in it. ONe so big you seem incapable of seeing it.
for the most part? to pay for the direct damage you do to someone else's life and property.
which has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of your argument, so i can see why you ignored it.
mod parent +6
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
You're post was about how auto liability insurance is required because it protects other people from the damage you can do to them with your car. My post is about how health insurance should be required because it protects other people from the damage you can do to them with your unpaid medical debt.
So you dont pay for the Police force either, from the same misguided "ideals"? What about a fire service? After all, if your house / car never catch fire, what are you paying for?
With everyone paying into the pot, the individual costs go down.
Yeah, people used to understand things related to supply and demand
Well, since we're invoking the "duhr, people just don't understand economics" argument...
What's the "supply" of insurance?
Or, more explicitly: where does the money for the risk pool that backs insurance come from?
Tweet, tweet.
Out of curiosity, which country are we talking about? 23% sounds like a real bargain to me, but then I'm living in Sweden, where we pay anything between 40-55% in taxes.
You got that completely wrong. Allowing people to choose things that may not be in their best health interest is called freedom.
The original poster, and you, can't think straight. Complaining about smoking and beer is far closer to your "socialistic/marxist ideals" than universal healthcare is. We end up paying for emergency healthcare for the uninsured anyway. A program to address the insurance problem is better and cheaper in the long run.
It's funny so many are complaining how HMOs are one of the biggest problems, then pass this health care bill with nods to Edward Kennedy, crusader of health care for the people.
They forget it's Kennedy who championed the creation of HMOs in the first place.
Yes, HMOs, a Democrat creation.
Will they do better this time?
I've answered you in another thread, but there is a big difference between providing for a police force via taxes - something the federal and state governments are specifically empowered to do - and forcing individuals to buy something from a private company.
And no, I don't have fire coverage where I live. There is a volunteer department nearby, though I live outside their coverage area. I do have fire insurance, though. I also live within my means, and if my car were to be destroyed, even in a way my insurance wouldn't cover, I wouldn't be demanding that the government give me a car.
Learn about Photography Basics.
This is a classic example of why we need to have single payer.
Indeed, calling an Objectivist a Libertarian is far too kind. Libertarians don't preach selfishness as a virtue. Only the Randians who have mostly hijacked the movement would find that a complement.
I prefer the more accurate term, Sociopath.
The enemies of Democracy are
In the UK you have "Statutory SIck Pay", which is the minimum your employer can pay while you are off sick.
Most reasonable employers still pay full wage, either indefinitely or have a number of days per year, after which you are switched to SSP.
And in the UK it is 11% National Insurance whcih goes into hospitals and a (paltry) pension.
The point is that what you (and your insurance company) paid was subsidizing his care. If he (and everyone else) had insurance, then your premiums would be lower in the first place, and the cost per procedure would come down a bit since they aren't overcharging on everything to cover the cost of indigent care. I'm not saying the resulting bill is perfect, only that your scenario was made worse by the status quo at the time. Yes, every healthy person would be subsidizing every unhealthy person's care to a certain extent, but the burden on each healthy person would be less (since more of them are paying in), and both they and their local hospital would be less prone to financial shocks as a result of unexpected emergencies.
The fact that he had just lost his job and therefore was being paid some fraction of his former salary just made for a weird result from your point of view, but frankly, every second he spent in the hospital was costing him time searching for a new job, while presumably you had your graduate stipend to go back to when you got out (if you didn't, you should have been treated similarly when it came to the copays and deductibles, but I'll acknowledge that sometimes the world doesn't work the way it should). He may have been being paid more than you on an annual basis at that point in time, but if he didn't get a new job, he'd be in worse financial straits in the near future.
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People like to harp on Massachusetts as Taxachusetts, especially after Mitt Romney(R) forced the people of his state to buy insurance whether they wanted it or not, thus creating a new expense people had to pay, but now the federal government has seen fit to follow the Republicans down the social/fascist rabbit hole.
The biggest problem is no one has ever given me an answer as to why my money has to go to pay the medical bills of my neighbor who smokes half a pack a day, or my neighbor on the other side who thinks it's funny to drink a case of beer each weekend by themselves.
What about my coworkers who refuse to walk up one flight of stairs or drink a liter of Pepsi every day? Why should I have to pay for their medical expenses when they can't be bothered to take care of themselves?
Further, why should I have to buy something I don't want? Are you next going to force me to go to a store and buy something to keep the store alive?
The ONLY winners in this whole fiasco are the insurance companies who will reap huge profits from the influx of money and still, despite the wording of the bill, will not cover everyone or every procedure.
While the Republicans can try to claim they stood their ground on this bill, they shouldn't be too smug as their party started this nonsense.
Because you are already paying for it now.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
"The biggest problem is no one has ever given me an answer as to why my money has to go to pay the medical bills of my neighbor who smokes half a pack a day, or my neighbor on the other side who thinks it's funny to drink a case of beer each weekend by themselves."
What is the value of a life then? What is the cost of mistakes, choices, and life events, versus contributions to society?
Not all contributions can be easily quantified into cost and profit. It easy to look at someone and make assumptions of their 'value'. But we really have no idea what type of life they've had, and what the rest of their life will be. We haven't lived it. Which lives have they (or will they) enrich or burden?
It's unfortunate that you can't find any incentive to better yourself, but are unwilling to help others who have. All they need is some help escaping whatever burden that has kept them from it (in this case, health). As a Canadian, I pay taxes to support the health care and well-being of others, fully aware that such services are there if I need them myself. The quality, cost, and care of such services can be argued, and will always be argued about in my country. It's not a perfect system, but the intent is there. Health care for all, for the benefit of all.
I have always found it puzzling that our American friends south of us, with all our similarities, have such a divide on something that we have long integrated into our country, and our culture.
you'd rather live a life of unenlightened brutal substinence, slave to the fickleness of nature, weather, and random outlaws
and you somehow believe this is better than simply paying a small portion of your earnings and with that, getting all of the bountiful riches of civilization. like the fucking internet you're tapping your brain droppings on right now
i am not trying to insult you dude, but this is simply a balanced, fair, prudent and rational appraisal of the quality of the thoughts you just wrote: you're a fucking moron
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"Expecting insurance companies to insure people who are 100% certain to incur consistent and high medical expenses is insane."
No, it is not. We are all 100% certain to incur medical expenses sooner or later. What constitutes high and consistent is subjective. If you ask an insurance company, high and subjective occurs at the first claim. They drop you and you become uninsurable.
"Lumping them in with everyone else is even more insane."
It's not insane, it's exactly what you do. It wouldn't be insurance if you didn't.
Insurance companies only want to sell policies to people who will make no claims and they've been extremely good at doing just that. What they do isn't insurance, it's stealing money from people while sticking the individual with the ultimate bill anyway.
The govt could offer them. So when the libertarians are lying on the ground after a car crash the emergency personnel would know not to interfere with their lives. They could be exempted from having to buy insurance.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.
I know of no state that requires anyone to insure their own car. People are only required to purchase insurance for the damages they might cause to other people's property. So, no the logic doesn't apply.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
You're starting to catch on. Taxation is slavery.
How can you justify your position? You've just stated that a man lives his life at the behest of society, and owes that society - is that what you really believe?
Well, let me be clear: I don't think your position (you owe society nothing) is correct, and I don't believe a pure Communist position (you owe society everything) is correct, either. The truth, for me, is somewhere in between.
If I start a business in America (for example) and it's successful, that's in part due to my hard work, willingness to take a risk, and intelligence/savvy to forsee what has market value. Some of the fruits of that logically should belong to me; I did something successful where others with similar resources and opportunities didn't.
But neither I or my business exist in a vacuum.
Probably it's important that no one's robbing my business, extorting me, or shooting me in the head, and that in general a safe enough environment exists for me to do business and others to be willing to buy my product. I owe government in the form of law enforcement some amount of debt for that, which I pay in the form of taxes. (If I were living in Somalia or someplace where there isn't the same kind of law enforcement, either I'm probably paying local thugs for protection, or I'm buying a rifle and hoping to do it myself and devoting time and energy that way -- no matter what I can't get this security for myself and my potential customers "for free.") Here we could also include other 'basic security' that society/government provides -- I generally don't have to worry that my house will burn down while I'm working, if something goes seriously wrong with my sewage someone will take care of it, the chances that half of my workers will be out sick for a month due to eating unsafe meat is low, etc.)
Does my business need to use mail or the internet or highways? Those ultimately come from other people in the form of the government as well.
I didn't grow up in the woods raised by wolves; probably my relatively safe and nurturing upbringing in some way contributed to my success. I owe my parents/family something for that.
Does my business employ others? Obviously I owe some kind of debt to them for my success, and they to me for as much of it as they share in, possibly only via their salary. We need each other.
Did I hire skilled workers of some kind, or do I have specialized knowledge of some kind? Probably it helped me that society/government provides (to varying degrees depending on the specifics) for education. Directly or indirectly, it probably helped me that unemployment benefits help skilled workers to find work that utilizes their specialized skills, even if that means it takes them a month to find a good fit job instead of taking the first job they can to survive.
My business couldn't be viable at all without customers. I owe some kind of debt to them, although if you argued that I discharge that debt fully in the form of the good or service I provide to them I probably wouldn't disagree.
In all these ways and many more, my success is to some degree dependent on the foundation the government has provided and on the other people I interact with. If other people were somehow universally able to strike against me or withdraw all of their support for my endeavors (the reverse John Galt, if you will), my business would almost certainly instantly fail. I don't owe society everything for that, but I don't owe it nothing, either. As humbling as it is and as hard as it can be to admit, people need each other and there's almost no decision we can make that doesn't affect other people for better or worse.
No, if health care was free I wouldn't see the doctor more often. It's a pain in the ass that why don't go has nothing to do with cost.
Now the test to detect that cancers won’t be perform which is why we have far more cancer survivor in the US compared to Universal health care state, look it up yourself. Our life expectancy is low because we are a nation of fat asses.
How can you justify your position? You've just stated that a man lives his life at the behest of society, and owes that society - is that what you really believe?
Well, let me be clear: I don't think your position (you owe society nothing) is correct, and I don't believe a pure Communist position (you owe society everything) is correct, either. The truth, for me, is somewhere in between.
If I start a business in America (for example) and it's successful, that's in part due to my hard work, willingness to take a risk, and intelligence/savvy to forsee what has market value. Some of the fruits of that logically should belong to me; I did something successful where others with similar resources and opportunities didn't.
But neither I or my business exist in a vacuum.
Probably it's important that no one's robbing my business, extorting me, or shooting me in the head, and that in general a safe enough environment exists for me to do business and others to be willing to buy my product. I owe government in the form of law enforcement some amount of debt for that, which I pay in the form of taxes. (If I were living in Somalia or someplace where there isn't the same kind of law enforcement, either I'm probably paying local thugs for protection, or I'm buying a rifle and hoping to do it myself and devoting time and energy that way -- no matter what I can't get this security for myself and my potential customers "for free.") Here we could also include other 'basic security' that society/government provides -- I generally don't have to worry that my house will burn down while I'm working, if something goes seriously wrong with my sewage someone will take care of it, the chances that half of my workers will be out sick for a month due to eating unsafe meat is low, etc.)
Does my business need to use mail or the internet or highways? Those ultimately come from other people in the form of the government as well.
I didn't grow up in the woods raised by wolves; probably my relatively safe and nurturing upbringing in some way contributed to my success. I owe my parents/family something for that.
Does my business employ others? Obviously I owe some kind of debt to them for my success, and they to me for as much of it as they share in, possibly only via their salary. We need each other.
Did I hire skilled workers of some kind, or do I have specialized knowledge of some kind? Probably it helped me that society/government provides (to varying degrees depending on the specifics) for education. Directly or indirectly, it probably helped me that unemployment benefits help skilled workers to find work that utilizes their specialized skills, even if that means it takes them a month to find a good fit job instead of taking the first job they can to survive.
My business couldn't be viable at all without customers. I owe some kind of debt to them, although if you argued that I discharge that debt fully in the form of the good or service I provide to them I probably wouldn't disagree.
In all these ways and many more, my success is to some degree dependent on the foundation the government has provided and on the other people I interact with. If other people were somehow universally able to strike against me or withdraw all of their support for my endeavors (the reverse John Galt, if you will), my business would almost certainly instantly fail. I don't owe society everything for that, but I don't owe it nothing, either. As humbling as it is and as hard as it can be to admit, people need each other and there's almost no decision we can make that doesn't affect other people for better or worse.
And, yeah. Non-screeching debate is a nice change.
However, as much "damage" as health care reform may pose to incubment Democrats, Republicans shot themselves in the foot by using the filibuster an unprecedented number of times, even on legislation that THEY introduced. Democrats would be foolish not to use this to their advantage.
And sadly, Democrats WILL be that foolish. The DNC has never properly taken advantage of the Republicans' hypocracy. They should have been pointing out up and down all the dirty tricks that the GOP used to pass the prescription drug benefit several years ago, a bill that added a trillion dollars to the deficit over several years with no offsets to pay for it, and they should have pointed it out every time the GOP whined about the arm-twisting in this bill or the overall cost. But Dems are too polite for that, and that politeness will get them killed at the polls in November.
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
I believe that you've found the very core of the anti universal health-care movement. The vast majority of the argument is "you're dying, that is your problem not mine" which is disgusting. The argument isn't even whether or not there's a better system it's "them damn socialists."
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
Complaining about smoking and beer is far closer to your "socialistic/marxist ideals" than universal healthcare is. We end up paying for emergency healthcare for the uninsured anyway.
No, it's not. I'm merely pointing out that some people have chosen to live their lives a certain way. Hooray! That's what freedom's about.
However, the way they chose to live their lives does not obligate me to take care of them because of the way they lead their lives. If they want to engage in reckless behavior, that's their business. What you're saying is these people should be rewarded for their behaviors. That's not freedom.
A program to address the insurance problem is better and cheaper in the long run.
No it's not. If they can afford to smoke or drink a case of beer a week, they can afford to pay for their insurance and medical bills. Just like people who complain they're always broke but they have no problem finding money to pay for cell phones for everyone in the family or have all the premium cable channels. It's called priorities.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
We are all 100% certain to incur medical expenses sooner or later. What constitutes high and consistent is subjective. If you ask an insurance company, high and subjective occurs at the first claim.
So don’t ask them. And don’t ask insurance to cover the expenses that you’re 100% certain to incur, because that’s not insurance. That’s asking somebody to hold your money for you to keep you from spending it between now and when you need it, which is 100% stupid because of course they’ll take their cut.
You wouldn’t expect an insurance company to sell you fire insurance if your house has already burned down. Why do you expect an insurance company to sell you health insurance if you already have cancer?
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
The funny thing about health insurance is that it's only insurance if you're young; when you're old it is a payment plan. Of course, we try not to pretend this is true, thinking that everybody can live forever and that these health "events" are randomly spread out through life; it's not true to any degree. Insurance, used broadly, is something one uses to protect oneself from catastrophic events (e.g.: hit by a bus) that are unlikely to happen. It is a way of hedging one's bets by pooling money with people of similar risk factors. Unfortunately, health insurance does not pool people of similar risk factors -- the old don't pay a rate representing their actual risk; this makes health insurance a poor bet for anybody young.
Compounding problems is the idea that people with preexisting conditions must be insured, and at the same rate; this brings up two groups of people, and while neither shouldn't be denied medical care outright, they ought to be willing to pay for it. The first group of people are those that simply didn't buy insurance until they became sick. These people are completely dishonest and the people paying into the insurance pool should not have to assume the risk someone took by not purchasing health insurance beforehand. In the second group is someone who has perhaps has had a lifelong illness and could never obtain coverage. Should they pay the same rate as everyone else? Absolutely not. Should they be able to obtain insurance for things OTHER than their illness? Certainly; however, nobody really knows how to distinguish between the two.
As an example of how new healthcare legislation is a complete failure, look into Massachusetts. The state mandated that every person must purchase health insurance or pay a fine, and that nobody could be turned down for preexisting conditions. The price of insurance has skyrocketed: the fine is low enough that people pay it until they get sick, buy premium insurance, get cured, then stop paying insurance. It rewards the dishonest and punishes those who actually pay for their insurance.
No, hospitals will not turn you away in the emergency room. You just end up screwed with a huge bill.
So you're a tax-cheating criminal. Let me see... what's the income tax on an income of zero? What's the tax liability on anything if you plug in as your income "0"? My guess is: "0" again. Feel free to demonstrate that I'm wrong, but I expect that your discussion will also contain the various provisions for people who can't afford to pay the mandatory health insurance.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
The Democrat's did not use a normal procedure to "pass" the previous Senate bill. They created an entirely separate bill; put text in there to try to fix what they saw as problems in the Senate bill; and then added text saying that by passing this second bill they deemed the first bill as being passed. There were articles from constitutional law professors last week explicitly saying that this procedure is unconstitutional; listing Supreme court cases to back up their viewpoint. You can bet that opponents of that bill saw those articles, and that if there is a signing ceremony to "finally" enact the bill; lawsuits will be filed on this basis within days.
They're hoping to use what's called a reconciliation procedure to pass the second bill in the Senate. The problem is that this new house bill contains explicit points that violate restrictions on the reconciliation procedure. Articles last week said that Senate Democratic leaders expected those points to be brought up and didn't know whether they could be worked around.
And from articles last year. The Senate bill that narrowly passed last December contains language that some say "bought" a few votes; specifically that some states wouldn't have to contribute local taxes to health care. Multiple organizations back then said that they were preparing federal lawsuits saying that that language was unconstitutional; that all states had to be treated equally.
Right! Everything we get is from our government and a society that takes care of us and to which we owe everything. We should happily work like drones for the good of everyone and smile at the little scraps that our all-wise leaders let us keep for ourselves. Hell, we don't even deserve those anyway!
From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.
Yeah, I really understand where you're coming from, Mr. Anonymous Coward.
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
How dare you? This is a gross misrepresentation of the conservative mindset and quite frankly, I'm offended.
You let him die and then check his wallet for cash. After all, he won't be needing it and a man's only moral obligation is to make as much money as possible.
(What do these off-the-grid hermits do when they get sick by the way? They are one log-splitting accident away from a painful death from gangrene after all.)
If they actually exist, I suspect either they either:
die lying there in the snow and are never heard from again
or: Call it in, resulting in an SAR or airlift operation to get them out of of the wilderness into the ER, amusingly resulting in a tremendous bill which the hospital will write off, as they have no ability to pay.
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
Clinton tried to fix everything that was wrong with healthcare in one fell swoop. That didn't work out too hot. Would we be in this stew if they had adopted a more conservative approach, one that could be tweaked and revised over 15 years?
Yes, there are flaws in the plan that will only be uncovered as it goes into effect. However, the law is not stone, future Congresses will be able to use these reforms as a base which they can improve.
And perhaps the funding wont work out like the CBO predicts, but it might. It might work out even better than their predictions. (That's why they're called predictions.)
But health care is a tightening noose around this country's economy. We could ignore it for fear that rising debt and inflation will eventually choke us to death, but it seems like those dangers are much further off in the future.
It breaks my pluginses, my precious!
Seriously ! I'm paying (when you add my employer's contribution) about 14k for a family of 4
If the president line items vetoes that abortion change.
I dislike line item Veto's, and this would spur the republican to have to take a stance against them. Then maybe we can get rid of them.
It also removed another instance to religion being shoved into the government.
No, I'm not going to read this thread or talk about the bill because last time this topic was posted, if became very clear, very quickly that very few people with opinion actually read the bill.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
In the UK you have "Statutory SIck Pay", which is the minimum your employer can pay while you are off sick.
Most reasonable employers still pay full wage, either indefinitely or have a number of days per year, after which you are switched to SSP.
And in the UK it is 11% National Insurance whcih goes into hospitals and a (paltry) pension.
11% that you see on your paystub, and 12.8% stealth "employer contributions" that you don't even see, because it gets paid before your gross salary. Cheap, it ain't.
Naw. If you're off the grid and not earning any money, you don't owe the penalty. There is a minimum income to require it, and it's pretty high.
Here's my lifestyle choices:
I stayed in school
Didn't join a teenage gang
Never smoked
Rarely drink alcohol
Wear my seatbelt
Eat a balanced diet that includes lots of fruits and vegetables
Exercise at the local rec center 3x a week
However, now that I'm in middle age, I'm not as healthy as I used to be when I was in my teens and 20's. I know that if I had made bad choices I'd be much worse off than I am now, but the point is we're all going to wear out and die someday.
- roads ...
- fire fighters
- the army
I fail to see how any of those are more relevant than a healthy population and why making you pay for health care would be against the constitution.
You do, however, live in a society and profit off of the work of others. At its most basic, you profit off of someone else enlisting in the army for you. You profit off of someone else spending 30 years in school to become a doctor. You profit off of someone else being on call for 48 hours straight in a firehouse. All of these examples - and there are a million more if you want to hear them - require that you pay for someone else to perform a service that you may or may not need. But the mere existence of the service vastly improves your quality of life. In short, you're paying into a pool of money so that your quality of life gets raised along with everyone else's.
Same with health insurance. It can only work if everyone pays a certain amount of their income into a general pool at all time. Otherwise, the amount of gaming that the system allows for is atrocious.
Lastly, you mention lifestyle having a big impact on health. Let me clue you in on something else: an active lifestyle leads to a ton of injuries as well. Spraining an ankle can happen easily during any activity involving walking. Breaking a bone is easily done when falling for whatever reason. That means that there is nothing that you can do to guarantee an injury and disease-free lifestyle. You can merely change the odds in your favor. But if shit happens, you still have to pay. And shit will happen to somebody. Are you willing to abandon somebody just because they got unlucky?
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
If the reports I have heard are true, and 38 states have this kind of legal challenge in the works, then there is theoretically enough support to call a constitutional Convention over this thing.
choosing to live in a country
What makes you think people choose where they are born? Their parents choose for them.
Before yesterday, you could choose to live "off the grid". You could grab some stuff, head out for the mountains, build a shack, and provide for yourself.
Whose mountain land would you be building that shack on? Scavenging and/or farming on? fishing/hunting on?
A country, by definition, is more than just you. This bill doesn't change that.
Exactly. I expect those parents who do not get their children immunized will suddenly find a clause in this bill which forces this immunization. Look for a lawsuit on this topic.
Every mans' island needs an ocean; choose your ocean carefully.
gives you the right to have roads to walk/drive on or fire fighters to help you when your house is burning? Doubt that. So why are those 2 points more valid and important than a healthy population?
Gladly it's "shoved up your ass" because you are too cheap to help those that need it by yourself.
Stand back a while and empty your mind. Now look at what sort of hell on earth the profit motive creates when it is allowed to run wild in essential sectors like health care. What is the advantage of running health cost insurance in a profit-driven system? Does the quality of health care go up? That does not seem to be the case. Do the costs of providing health care go down? This does not seem to be the case, the opposite is true. Does it lead to universal access to health care? No, it does not.
If your house is on fire and you do not have fire insurance should the fire brigade just let it burn down and let you perish?
If you get robbed and you did not sign police insurance should the cops refuse to hear your case?
Why then should health care insurance be handed over to profit-driven companies? What is the profit? Who profits?
The companies do. Society as a whole does not. Why should those companies profit on the back of society? Who gave them the right?
--frank[at]unternet.org
You don't understand the logic behind requiring car insurance. It's to cover the damage you do to others, not yourself. Full-coverage insurance isn't required once you have paid off your auto loan (your creditor owns it until then), only liability. I'm not commenting on anything other than the fact that your analogy sucks.
Spread out over the entire country, other people's ill health does affect you. The uninsured reduce the productivity of the country and when they require emergency hospitalisation for a treatable illness then the government will have to pay the bill. And by the way, socialism isn't a dirty word.
if the oh so friendly Republicans and some rather conservative Democrats would have agreed to it. The initial suggestion included a public insurance but got shot down.
You were always Just Some Dirty Squatter. That land you built your unauthorized shack on belonged to somebody. Sarah Palin built McMansion cabins on her own land and didn't file for tax purposes. She got caught eventually. Hey Sarah, we have these things called airplanes now. ... you're gonna have to pay taxes or you're gonna have to pay bribes. It's your choice.
Instead of whining, why don't you just move to Somalia and have a good time? Just remember, wherever you go
Of course, this works great for healthy people. It absolutely sucks ass for people with chronic conditions. That's the problem with a health insurance that isn't mandatory: someone will game the system, regardless of the rules. Either healthy people make out like bandits, or insurance companies make out like bandits. The only solution to this is health care where everyone pays.
The choices are really rather simple:
* allow healthy people to save money by letting them sign up for insurance only when they need it.
* allow companies to guarantee profits by allowing them to cover only people who are profitable to them on a quarter-by-quarter basis.
* drop the notion that a society can function without common sacrifices and make everyone pay into a pot, all the time.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Where I'm from, aside from the taxes you pay, you only pay a nominal amount for medicines (depending on the medication; .20euro for a 50-pill beta-blocker box, .80 euro for a 28-pill omeprazol box), unless you're retired (in which case you don't pay even that). The hospital stay and everything else is completely free, and most hospital rooms are for 2 persons (there are 4 persons rooms in some pediatric departments, and there are also several one person rooms). At least in my hospital there ARE tv's and free wifi, and patients who aren't on low-calorie, low salt, or diabetic diets don't usually complain about the food. The rest is pretty much the same.
On the downside, you don't get to choose ANY doctor you want (however you get to choose one amongst the ones available at your corresponding primary health center), non-critical procedures and tests have a waiting list (which ranges from same-day for xray or next day for blood lab tests [but due to you needing to have fasted during the night] to 2-3 weeks for an MRI or similar test; and for surgeries [of course all non-critical, like hernias and such] you may have to wait as long as 2 months. If the waiting lists get too large, the system will pay for third party companies to perform the procedures/tests). The emergency rooms are almost invariably overcrowded (>90% with absolutely menial and stupid problems that would be FAR better off (and even faster!) treated by your family doctor (appointment requests are usually given for the same day or for the next day at the worst, while I've heard of people with non-urgent problems in the ER having to wait as much as 12 hours), but nevertheless, critical care is not bad (disclaimer: this is from the physician's POV as I've never had to go to the ER as a patient [touch on wood]).
And some people would consider a con the fact that doctors in the system serve as doctors, not as friends or therapists (well, it depends on the doc, really). They don't frivolously give out unrequired medication (specially antibiotics, psycotropics or opiates), but then again they don't expect people to be stoics (meaning they WILL give people with sleeping problems benzos, and they WILL give powerful painkillers [opiates and such] to people with objective injuries, and the appropriate treatments to neuropatic pains [SSRI's and such], and a long list of etceteras [for those americans fearing in a public option they might only get bare-bones medication]); so people who like to be "pampered" and given half-hour long consults may purchase private insurance (or pay the doctors out-of-pocket, they aren't crazy expensive like they are over there [for a rough estimate, say 40-60 euros for a specialist consult, depending on the specialty {OB-GYN are notorious for being crazy expensive, maybe 100 euros or so}]).
So that is that. In the end people don't give a second thought to their healthcare, and I think that is a good thing. At the very least we don't fear the cost of being ill, and much less the pòssibility of going bankrupt for it. I don't think it's a bad deal.
Well, the learning experience benefits others more than it does the person on his deathbed.
I think that socialism tends to be necessary due to the nature of our society. We have become a society of specialists, which means we get paid good money when we're working, and we end up with extended periods of time where we don't make money. Some people never end up working (for a decent wage) because they lack the necessary skills.
The challenge is to preserve the incentive to work so that we don't have one big tragedy of the commons.
Most fire departments are local. You will find many that oppose the health care object to the fact that's being done federally and outside the constitutional authority of the federal government. Notice that some places (MA if I remember) already had their own health care policies in place. I would expect people to oppose an attempt to regulate and replace fire departments with a federal, one-size-fits-all solution as well.
Well then...
You subsidize what already IS. That is, WHEN the cancer metastasizes - there is a subsidy of the costs for the treatment.
You can't subsidize a 0% of something, right?
BUT... you can make sure that your are ready in case it doesn't happen to be 0%. Cause you insure against something that MAY or MAY NOT happen.
You know... leave the money aside to buy a shovel in case the cat is dead, OR to buy cat food in case it is alive.
Being ready only for one of those cases is gambling. Being ready for neither is being fucked.
So, while you can't subsidize a closed box with a cat that exists in two states at the same time inside - you CAN make sure that you are ready for both possibilities.
Oh and... there is no "probably" in insurance - not for the insured.
For him/her it is "in case I need it". You don't make a calculated gamble with your or your kids' lives.
"Probability" part is jammed in there by the insurance company. You know, the ones that run a SERVICE TO THE SOCIETY as a for-profit operation.
They are the ones calculating the probabilities to make sure you are paying just a little bit more than you probably should - as far as they can tell.
And gambling that you will never actually use that money because you will die from something else (with a greater probability), before some of your probabilities turn into a near certainty.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
The government only kick-started the internet with the early DARPA projects and university internet connections. It hasn't been run by the government for a long time. Thank GOODNESS it's not run by the government too, it'd be 5x as expensive & 1/10 the speed.
Rush will be leaving.
http://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/rush-limbaugh-says-hell-leave-the-us-if-health-care-reform-is-passed/19389808
Hell, even if I was against it, I would vote for it if it meant that liar left the country.
Ironically, Costa Rica has universal health care.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I don't believe a pure Communist position (you owe society everything)
To inject a minor nitpick into the debate - I wouldn't call that a pure Communist position. In orthodox communism, there is a mutual debt between the society and the individual. "From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs." That one-sided debt to society is a totalitarian thing, and communism is not necessarily totalitarian, at least in theory. One might say that an isolated "you owe society everything" is rather fascist. Compare the Nazi concept of "Volkskörper" ("body of society") as the entity on which history is actually working. Under this concept, individuals are like cells of your body - getting shed, replaced, worthless in itself, only of importance in the context of the whole.
Apart from that, I am on your side there. Modern society is so interconnected, that owing society nothing is not in any sense a viable position. Oh, and also agreed on the civility of this subthread. Keep it up, guys.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
I was unaware that the current health insurance reform bill mandated that insurance companies remove all caps to coverage, all limitations to coverage, and have a $0 deductible.
Oh wait...
Yippie. We still have a lot of the downside of the old system, but now we're mandated to give them more money.
I fail to see how it has changed. Unless you're rolling in cash when you leave, then likely you wouldn't meet the minimum income threshold to make it mandatory to obtain health insurance. If you leave with tons of cash in the bank or wherever, I fail to see how you are truly disconnected from the world anyway.
You sir, and everyone else of the same mind have an option. Move out of the country, don't worry we wont miss you
I had guessed it was something like this, thanks.
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
you do not choose to enter to it. you are in it by default
if you wish to choose something, choose to leave society
and therefore, stop typing your opinions on the internet (fruits of society) about social policy (about a society you declare your desire not to be a part of)
saying you are not part of society is a fantasy unless you are guru on a mountaintop. and even then, when you break your arm, you go to society's hospital and freeload off of our generous aid
undeniable rock of gibraltar reality: you exist in human society. you derive benefits far in excess of what society asks you to pay. so shut the fuck up and stop trying to be such a lazy selfish freeloader
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"Good health care" isn't a boolean value. It's a tradeoff. You can pay for this one extra test, and maybe detect something, maybe not. If the likely-hood & severity & immediate and long term cost all have the "correct" ratio, then it's a good idea to have the test.
With this brave new world, the balance is shifted dramatically, which means usage will increase dramatically, which means costs will skyrocket.
If you're too short sighted to see that - well, you're in the company of a lot of people that are in the process of bankrupting our country....
"Why should I be content to simply live in this world, when I, as a human being, can CREATE it?" - Oertel
Before yesterday, you could choose to live "off the grid". You could grab some stuff, head out for the mountains, build a shack, and provide for yourself. While you were still technically supposed to file taxes, etc., no one really cared if you didn't apply for the tax credits and social programs you'd almost certainly be eligible for.
Are you really this naive?
The IRS takes a close look at people who do not file taxes. Even if you never work, you are supposed to tell them "hey, i never worked", or they come around and start asking questions like "where'd you get money for food, etc".
You can bet the government will be interested that you're not filing returns that certify that you owe money for being uninsured.
Ahh...well there ya got me. i do not feel it is the IRS' responsibility to figure that out.
This is not the country I grew up to love and swore to protect.
Hate to break it to ya...but neither was the Country you grew up in. you were just blind to what was happening.
'Off the grid' you say? What part is "off"?
- The one where you rented a Caterpillar tractor from the dude down the interstate to level your pad?
- The one that used PVC piping from Dow Corning to build your well and leach field?
- The Monsanto engineered seeds that grow the veggies to supply almost 60% of all calories in the entire US market, including the ethanol?
- The one that used a hugely complex system of energy generation, transmission, regulation to form anything made of glass, metal, plastic, paper, etc.
- The systems of cartography, tax districts, property ownership that map, photograph and check on your little patch of homemade campground?
Dude, there's been tons of reliance on an external system of commerce, energy, logistics, information that "off the grid" has been a misnomer for decades in the US. A chainsaw and a generator does not make anyone off the grid.
What you're mistaking is that the concept of "pay as you use" for medical care is gone - rightly so, because it;'s been gone a long time. When you are pried out of your crashed pickup truck and driven to the hospital, patched up and sent home, the $50k is took to get you through that isn't just wrapped into taxes, it's now a separate line item. Oh, unless you were holding onto that 50k for just such an occasion. In a cabin. Off the grid.
Medical emergency situations occur many times a week. Would you rather we just moved folks that couldn't pay to the side and left them there? We're paying for medical system that anyway. Now you can help us, those that understand and accept an interdependent world, while still play-acting "off the grid".
The FDP is in no way libertarian - they are, or rather have devolved into, a clientèle party for the interests of big business and the self-employed in the highest earning bracket. They ceased to be liberal in a somewhat classical small government, minimal state intrusion into the citizens life sense starting in the 70s and for sure under the CDU/FDP coalition under Kohl. I'll give you that they still carry somewhat libertarian concepts on their banner, but that has been transparently false for at least 30 years now.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
That's because it's a god-given duty for every American to defend the entirety of your paycheck against commie take overs like the one you described. Or at least, that's what I get from listening to republicans.
For what it's worth, I agree with you. I grew up in France, where I got a house call when I got sick. When was the last time you got a house call from a doctor in the US? Yes, the hospital food was a joke, yes you wait in a tiny room with people coughing all over you... but you got a fricking house call. And for people wanting the latest medical gizmos to treat their ailments, there is always private insurance.
Here's what I want to see: a government supplied basic health care plan, funded by mandatory contributions out of everyone's paycheck. It covers preventative care, emergency care, and standard, well-tested methodologies and equipment where manufacturing is almost at a mass scale. For everything else, there's private insurance. It doesn't solve the problem that health care is still an expensive undertaking (and never will), but people are covered, and if you're rich, you can still get the luxury care you can afford.
Everything else is just insanity.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Great, as if I didn't have enough aZZholes painting a target on my back. Now I've go Congrezz adding more responsibilities to my workload. This is not what taxes are supposed to be used for. Protection of the country, not social engineering. By the way, medical care is not a right, or a privilige, but a responsibility. I keep a crappy, high stress job to keep my health coverage. And as a Federal employee, IT WON"T CHANGE. You make your lifestyle choices, or genetics does, or get out of the gene pool.
Never ever are they defrauded. Never. It does not happen. If it does, it's all a communist conspiracy. But it does not. Only Medicare gets defrauded. Not the private sector.
it's kind of stupid to think that you can get away with not filing taxes but you can't get away with not paying the health insurance fee. if no one knows you're living in the mountains then no one knows. the irs isn't going to double it's motivation over a couple hundred bucks.
k thx bye.
Welcome to the new USSA. Of course, it's been that way for some time and even Lincoln predicted the corporations would do this.
All the property of this country now belongs to the state and will be used for the good of the state. –
FDR, 1933
"Our Govt" is a foreign corporation.... wise up so we can throw the bums out!
Because private insurers don't generate paperwork, they don't waste doctors' time by having them argue the need for a procedure over the phone ...
Right.
I tend to agree with you that sometimes it is cheaper to provide care to everybody than to try to figure out who does or doesn't deserve it.
The problem is that this assumes that the number of people who would try to freeload remains constant.
In reality, if you lower the barriers to freeloading, more people will do it, and that is the moral hazard here.
Consider the illustrative example of crime enforcement. If I were running law enforcement in a small town, I'd give serious consideration to spending $20k to apprehend and punish somebody who stole a $100 stereo. The $20k doesn't just recover a $100 stereo - it also deters thousands of others who might contemplate committing similar crimes.
That said, as society becomes more specialized we do need better ways to cope with people who can't get good-paying jobs or who end up between jobs. The trick is to avoid giving people incentive to stay in those conditions when they could be working productively.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, and that among these, are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Enshrined right there in the constitution that all men (humans) are created equal. Meaning that they should be granted equal chances to succeed in life. Now, if all the land, resources, and capital are owned/controlled by a few, in what way does anyone else have an equality of opportunity?
As a side note: some would argue that "endowed by their creator" means God. But, that is provably not the case by looking at Federalist papers and such. They explicitly chose not to use the term God, or anything like that, because creator leaves up to the individual the nature of what is the creator. For me, my creators are my Mother and my Father. They, by joining there sperm and egg, created me. So, I am endowed by my Mother and Father with certain unalienable rights. The Constitution enshrines that my creator has the right to so endow me. It is unalienable or the entire constitution is a fraud and is null and void. It is an agreement, see. If we violate the agreement, then it is null and void.
So, the question is this: Does someone, who by birth, has no "right" to any meaningful resources (property, education, healthcare, capital) have an equal chance to pursue happiness, life, and liberty? If the answer is "No", then it is unconstitutional.
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
For all the applause and cheering on one side, and hand wringing, breast beating on the other... There isn't any real.. change... here.. It's really pathetic.
No single payer, no public option... Just a mandated tithe enforced by the IRS to racketeers and profiteers that make BILLIONS off the suffering of others..
Sure, you won't get denied coverage for a "pre-existing condition" like having had a c-section in the 70s, they'll just charge $10,000/year for that coverage..
There's little to no reform here. All this is is more of the same old same old political theater, and idiots on both sides of the issue parroting talking points from pro and con propaganda like a bunch of fracking retards.
A mandate w/o at least a public option is nothing more than a sloppy wet blowjob to racketeers and profiteers whose industry shouldn't even exist.
Sad.
"At what point do you draw the line and say that I am going to help these people and not those people?"
When it is no longer my choice. THAT is what the liberals think is so good, is really tyranny in disguise.
Compassion Fascism is not compassionate. Share the misery is not an option in my opinion. People should be responsible for themselves, and themselves alone. Yeah, life sucks sometimes, get over it. People get sick and die. It happens, get over it.
I've seen people drain MILLIONS of dollars trying to get an extra 6 months of life out of 75 year old person, to what end? And I'm forced (where's the compassion in that) to help pay for it???
This bill does nothing to fix what is wrong with Health Care, and will make things even worse, at which point, Obama, Pelosi and Reed (if they are still in office) will trot out the next anecdotal evidence of why even MORE reform is needed, and so on and so forth. Till they get Single Payer Universally bad health care.
NEVER will they undo what they've done, nor admit that it is a colossal failure when it collapses under the debt (and slavery) being handed over to our children.
Social Security, Medicare, and now Univerally Bad Health Care are bankrupting our country in the name of "compassion". AND yet they can't even admit there's a problem.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
So basically civilization is slavery.
It was the "free health care for everyone" people who choose fund a procedure that ends a baby's life. What is your point?
One last thing: Sometimes I wonder; "Is that someone's signature? Or do they type that at the end of each post?"
i lose my stuff. you lose nothing
if you have no health insurance, and break your arm, you go to the hospital, and they treat you. they send you a bill, you can't pay for it, and the hospital (always on the edge of bankruptcy in this country) bills the states and feds to keep running. then, i pay for that in terms of higher taxes
so ok: my car insurance analogy totally sucks. you win. but then so does your home alarm analogy
all i know is that i pay, in the form of higher taxes, to support constantly bankrupt hospitals, for all the assholes freeloading without health insurance
you don't have the right or freedom to be irresponsible. i don't know why you suddenly start yearning for the exalted ideals of american freedom and hear "battle hymn of the republic" play in your head... when we're simply discussing fiscally irresponsible freeloading assholes
let's put it this way: if the founding fathers were reading this thread, they would be nodding at my words right now, and smacking themselves in the forehead and rolling their eyes at your words. there is NO commentary on what made this country great, there is NO death of something of american ideals, there is NOTHING going on here except simple common sense fiscal responsibility! got it? please pinch yourself out of your propagandized trance. if anything, confusing blind ignorant irresponsible selfishness with rational free choice is the death of this country, which is what opposition to this common sense health bill is doing
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Except it doesn't protect them. Since the only people who don't have health insurance are those who can't afford it, or are rich enough that they will payt their bills anyway (or are crazy, but that's a reasonably small group).
They still can't afford it, and making it illegal for them not to doesn't change that.
Hence either there will still be uninsured people, or insurance companies will be forced to insure those that can't pay enough to be a good insurance candidate and hence we'll all pay to bail out the insurance companies.
If you want universal health care, then implement universal health care. Forcing universal insurance is a different beast, a less efficient beast, and one that's doomed to fail because it is trying to use insurance to cover something that doesn't fit the model.
Now, I haven't looked at what they have passed (since it still has a way to go, so I'm not going to bother yet). But if it is like some of the proposals I heard then I'll be dropping my health insurance, and putting the $12,000 I pay each year to an insurance company in my pocket and paying the $3-4000 fine. Then if I get leukemia, I'll buy insurance then, since they can't refuse me for that preexisting condition and go back to paying the $12,000 a year when my bills far outweigh that.
So my health costs have just shifted more on society and less on me. And I have an incentive to not bother with the cheaper earlier intervention through check-ups and so on. What a great plan!
What idiot liberals like yourself don't realize is that a persons health IS mostly related to their choices. One chooses to get lung cancer, one chooses to eat McDonalds, one chooses to get liver disease.
Here's something funny: you're 100% wrong. You know nothing of economics. What you're reciting is basic "common sense" that also happens to be a total fallacy.
That fallacy is: prices are determined by expense.
WRONG!
If that were the case a 50lb bag of rice would cost the same in an American supermarket as in a Jamaican supermarket.
Prices are determined by profit maximization, with competition vs. monopoly putting downward pressure on that equilibrium via market competition.
Excessive profits invite competition which is why not every necessity is priced to gouge the consumer. In many cases: the competition is so intense, and the profit margins are so low: being in business barely justifies itself.
This is seen in almost any industry which has to compete with the price of overseas labor. The free-trade proponents arguing that American's shouldn't be doing those jobs if they can be done more cheaply overseas.
It is products and services which have high barriers to entry which invite monopolies. This means that it is difficult for competitors to enter the market due to the high initial investment required and the scarcity of start-up capital. IE. Semiconductor manufacture/Health Insurance/Petroleum Refineries/etc.
Monopolies set prices based not on expenses. Expense determined prices exist only in cut throat competitive industries. IE. Airlines
Monopolies set prices based on profit maximization. This is because they have no competition putting downward pressure on their ability to charge whatever the market will bear. They can enjoy outrageous profit margins without inviting the average jackass to open up shop across the street who will work for $2/hr to call himself a business owner. aka: Farmers/Logging companies/ect.
Expenses determine prices ONLY in that they impact the attractiveness of a market/product to potential competitors.
So how are prices ACTUALLY determined?
Jack and Jill represent the working class. They own nothing but the health problems incured as a result of their marketing/peer pressure induced lifestyles. IE: Lung damage, heart disease, liver problems, debt.
Carl represents the middle class. He has overextended his finances to make a speculative investment in a real estate bubble taking advantage of the maximum available leverage provided by his local mortgage servicing institution(glorified change machine/customer service representative.)
Ted represents the upper class, he owns the hospital, the bank, and the insurance company.
Example #1:
Four friends are looking to buy non-mandatory car insurance. The price of car insurance is $100/month.
Carl and Ted buy car insurance because they don't want to get sued. Ted make's $100 profit.
Jack doesn't buy car insurance because he doesn't own anything and doesn't care if he get's sued.
Jack and Jill went up the hill in his 1991 Honda Civic to have some sex and drink a pint of booze. Jack got drunk and totaled Carl's car, and Jill got thrown from the vehicle.
Carl is crippled, loses his job, misses a house payment, & Jill has to have her legs amputated due to a spinal injury.
Ted get's Carl's hard saved equity in his house, loses the opportunity to sell Jack and Jill insurance at $100 a month, and because of democrat passed legislation: is footed with the expense of cutting off Jill's legs with a PHD.
Ted pays Carl/Jill a disability check for the rest of Carl's short paraplegic life via tax dollars on the profit he made selling Carl's house, as he writes off $100/month in business expenses due to a lack of customers.
Example #2:
Four friends are looking to buy non-mandatory car insurance. The price of car insurance is $40/month.
Carl, Jack, Jill, and Ted buy car insurance because they don't want to get sued.
Fascist Liberals. Name calling is easy. Libertarians value liberty, and you call it selfish. LIBERTY is selfish, but it serves all of society equally.
Those Who Sacrifice Liberty For Security Deserve Neither - Ben Franklin
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
The United States of America as it was constituted in 1787, and as properly amended thereafter, will no longer exist once the Health Care Bill and its companion "fix-it" bill is signed into law. We now live under an Imperial Government, with an Imperial Retribution System (IRS) that will take whatever the Imperial Congress and Emperor Obama deem desirable. That's change I can revolt against!
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you already were "officially a tax cheating criminal if you choose to wander off alone" Now there is just one more thing your not paying.
letting an idiot know they are an idiot is not a game... it's a responsibility. - by Kristopeit, M. D. (1892582)
The lien holder is enforcing a private contract, it's not a legal requirement. And I can avoid it by borrowing from them to buy the thing in the first place.
I have no problem with universal health care, I'm just from a non-retarded country and hence realize that "insurance" (that is fundamentally different from insurance) is a stupid way to go about it. And destined to do as well as fannie mae and freddie mac did for the american housing market.
There is no such thing as a 'constitutional' convention'. There is only an amendment convention.
Article V
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
Who pays any significant income taxes before the age at which they're considered a legal adult? Their parents pay for them. If he'd like to move to Somalia or Rapture or wherever he finds no taxes, he's free to do so then.
Of course, the premise that taxation is slavery is flawed anyway but everyone sane already understands that. But hey, he can freely leave any time he scrapes together the money for airfare.
So, by your logic, if I don't want to pay car insurance, then I should just stop driving...and if I don't want to pay for health insurance, then I should just stop living, right?
__I think it would be my moral duty to NOT have health insurance, since the alternative is philosophically bankrupt
>>So why is per-capita spending on health care higher in the US than anywhere else, but with a lower life expectancy?
Maybe because people in the US make more money than other countries, and we eat like pigs?
No, civilization does not require a state.
That's asking somebody to hold your money for you to keep you from spending it between now and when you need it, which is 100% stupid because of course they'll take their cut.
Not true.
1 - They are not holding your money for you. You are paying them. That is why there is a "cut".
In return, they give you a contract that says that in case you need that money spent on the stuff that is listed in the contract, they will cover your expenses.
2 - They are not just holding your money.
They are holding the PROFIT your money will create over time.
Which is AT LEAST equal to the amount you would get if you've put it in the bank instead and collected interests on it.
Since they are a business - they will by definition make more than that. That is economics 101 - why start a business when you can make more or the same by just keeping it in a bank?
But... you are buying their service only with your money - NOT with "your money + profit".
3 - They can't have everyone paying exactly the same - as that would mean certain loss of money for them. A for-profit organization can't run that way.
So, in order to be constantly making money, they calculate the chances that you will not get to use the service money you've paid for - and then set your specific rate so that even in case you do they will still make a certain percentage.
So... They take your money now and take a cut from it.
They keep the profit it will create over the years.
They give you just a tiny fraction less than what you should be getting for it. (Not what you could mind you. You can't sign the kind of contracts they can. Nor pay for the lawyers they can.)
So it is actually three different cuts that they take - before they even try to deny you the use of the services that you have already paid for.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Let's talk to you when you turn 35, shall we? My husband 1. doesn't drink (maybe a couple of beers per month?) 2. doesn't smoke 3. eats a great, healthy diet bordering on vegetarian & 4. exercises one hour a day, but he tends to get high cholesterol. It's called genetics -- look it up. But then, he probably pays much more tax than you do, since he's working when you're commenting on Slashdot. Does he mind? No. He minds entitlement to so-called "freedom" much more, because it's not working.
You haven't really thought about what it means, have you? The youngest (and healthiest) in the population WON'T BUY INSURANCE, they'll just pay the fine, which is cheaper.
If that happens, they can amend the law to make it more expensive for them. NO ONE thinks this bill is perfect, and lots of adjustments and improvements over the next few years are inevitable. The same thing happened with Social Security. Lots of bugfixes followed.
This looks like a job for selective quoting!
"While you were still technically supposed to file taxes, etc., no one really cared..."
"As of now, you are officially a tax cheating criminal if you choose to wander off alone."
"This is not the country I grew up to love and swore to protect."
You mean the country that was too lazy to chase you down if you cheated the law yesterday, and probably doesn't actually care one iota more today? The country that likely wouldn't criminalize this activity anyway, since by your description you wouldn't have an actual income and would be exempt?
Hilarious. Go get your gun, move into your shack in the Appalachians, kill some possums, and get "off the grid". Since this freedom is so precious to you, maybe you should exercise it and see how it goes.
Precisely where I choose to, and if you think you should get to tell me where I ought to draw it, go to hell.
(And to answer the actual question: further out than you think, and perhaps less far out than those outside it might want.)
Universal health care would be socialist.
Government directed health insurance (which this bill is) is fascist
Actually health care was a major part of the discussions. One or two of the founders was a doctor, set up hospitals where they lived. Look it up yourself, you seem to need to read a few facts anyways.
"In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash"
So... Being an unpatriotic hermit tax-cheat is good and we're sad to be losing that?
Sorry, but you can still live off the grid and pay your taxes.
You're going to demand that the ER save your life, then demand they swallow the tens of thousands of dollars it cost (which gets passed on to everyone else in the end).
This is the root of the problem, why the fuck is this being passed onto anyone else. You got the surgery, you pay for it. End of story.
But hey, he can freely leave any time he scrapes together the money for airfare.
Not necessarily. For one thing, since WHTI has become law, US residents can't leave the country without a valid passport. For another, one must first qualify for a visa in the other country.
This analogy is incorrect. I can choose to not drive or buy a car and thus not have car insurance.
If a young person breaks an arm the parents pay for treatment, your second sentence is an artificial number which means nothing.
Hospitals turn away people all the time when they run out of beds, you realize health care is not unlimited and restrictions to supply exist. I can choose to not have health insurance, well I could yesterday. The original purpose of insurance was for catastrophic events, not daily medical treatment.
Moving bankruptcy from hospitals to the federal government does not the solve the issue of high medical costs. This bill in fact does nothing to address higher medical costs, if anything it raises costs.
Actually we do live in that society right now. I have heard antic-dote after antic-dote about people dying in the streets with a crowd of onlookers afraid to help. I would myself hesitate knowing that if I tried to help, I would be liable for the outcome no matter if what I did helped or not. Tort reform would go a long ways farther in fixing that immoral situation than any number of federal mandates on ME.
YOUR logical failings in this area are:
1. Freedom is the ability to CHOOSE a direction independently, without coercion.
2. Totalitarian Government, and Government Malfeasance are the cause of hunger and sickness all over the world.
It's your smugness that's offensive, not your stupid beliefs. Get over yourself.
It should be noted that, while Marx did use the term "socialism" for a very specific thing in his theory, the term existed long before him, and had a broader meaning both before and after that.
And here in reality land, we recognize that Medicare Plan D will cost us more than the bill being signed this week.
Protip for debate: If you try to speak using facts, it makes it easier for you.
You made my point for me. I think we agree.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Apparently you're not familiar with no-fault insurance.
No-fault insurance
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. - Ben Franklin
I noticed you left out some important adjectives from that quotation so I fixed it for you! Don't believe me? Here's the source as written by Ol'Ben Franklin himself.
You are suggesting using TWO forms of health insurance instead of ONE that would do the same?
Only there will be less money wasted on administration and stuff PLUS someone else will get to enjoy the benefits from it instead of just bank and insurance company fat cats.
AND it still works for you in case you lose your job, house, ability to provide for yourself and your family.
But you MIGHT actually save a buck or two if you gamble those two accounts just right and skip a doctor's appointment or two and don't get none of those diseases your particular plan does not cover. Is that it?
Sounds a lot like trying to play the game the insurance companies are playing, only you have only one chip (your health) on the table and they run the gambling house.
And they cheat.
I've read that twice and I still don't know what you're trying to say.
I believe that the problem lies in the fact that you are thinking on a very specific case, involving very specific variables that you believe are working in your favor.
At the same time, I am talking in very general terms and concepts that may or may not cover your very specific case that you have in mind.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
You're offended by someone who has complete confidence in his beliefs, after having spend the time required to examine them thoroughly and understand the moral and logical underpinnings?
Now I'm smug *and* confused.
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http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?ind=H03++&goButt2.x=14&goButt2.y=12&goButt2=Submit
46 & 2
This brings up the question: if one was to immigrate to live in another country - would he/she still obligated to buy US insurance?
I know a guy who got pneumonia in the UK, and it took him a week or two to be prescribed an X-Ray, and a week after that to have it read. He was out of work for a month. In the US he'd have been medicated and sent home same-day. Granted, in the US all kinds of people have unnecessary tests done as well.
Also - when looking at European taxes, be sure to look at VAT as well. In some countries income taxes aren't that high, but they might have a VAT of 15-25% or so.
My impression is that in the US the way you tell if somebody REALLY needs something done is to charge them $500 and see if they come up with the money. In the EU the approach is to have them sit in line for four hours, or wait in line for a few weeks. Obviously when care is free to you need to have some way to get people to not consume too much of it. I think that one's personal preference for time vs money tends to depend on which of those two one is most easily able to dispose of.
Here's something funny: if everyone jointly pays for healthcare and everybody gets treated health costs go down.
Funny, that has never happened [if you can show me an expansion of health care access that didn't result in higher per capita medical costs, let me know!] Health costs go up because there is higher demand for medical care when more people can obtain it.
In every country with universal health care, physician pay is significantly limited (either directly like the NHS/Medicare/Medicaid, or indirectly though "negotiations" between doctors and the government as in Japan, German, France, etc.), and access to newer treatments and drugs is limited. That only slows the rate of medical cost increases though.
The US Supreme Court has never been one much for challenging congress. I am sure the supreme court will find some argument why this this is not unconstitutional rather than face the wrath of both branches of government. What needs to happen for the first time in history (and is well on its way) is an Article V Section 2 convention that 1) Does what Arizona did, bar government control over health care, collect taxes or spend money on health care, and imprison any individual entering the state for such purpose as treason. 2) Repeal the 17th amendment; the constitution is a contract BETWEEN the states, and the Federal government is an agent to that contract. The federal government has no sovereignty than what the states choose to give. The parties to that contract need to be responsible for maintaining it. 3) Clarify the due process clause of the 14th amendment; The bill of rights are a clarification of what the states wanted to make clear that the Federal government had no right to touch with the limited power it was given. Any and all "rights" of the bill of rights desired of the citizens of a state should demand that they be incorporated into their own constitution as that is the only place in which individual protections from all government or other private individuals is meant to be. Again, Bill of Rights as Obama puts it is a list of negative liberties for the Fed as they rightfully should be, as they were intended. 4) Clarify the interstate commerce clause. The interstate commerce clause does not mean that the federal government has as it pleases the power to regulate any and all things that might possibly have an impact on the economy but instead, as it was intended, to ensure that conflicting state laws do not hinder business across state lines, in other words, minimalistically remove barriers to interstate commerce.
Thank goodness for the wisdom of George Mason that insisted on the last minute addition of Article V Section II that allows states to reign in the Fed with NO "approval" of Congress, the Supreme Court, and certainly not the president.
This is the last resort to save this country. The people that still think freedom is worth fighting for must be the ones that take the power back. The idea that the Federal government is going to reign itself because of some morally guiding light suddenly sparking in the minds of the supreme court justices that freedom be necessarily inflicted upon the American people like Health Care "Reform" is laughable. Such action could only be scorned because those apathetic individuals that believe fighting for freedom is someone else's job only see freedom as responsibility someone else may free them from.
Today is a dark day, but there is hope today will be a call for apathetic people to wake up and ask what America once was and do what is necessary to take it back.
its called an anecdote, not an antic-dote. and anecdotes say nothing about legal standards or social status quos
#2:
its called the good samaritan law. you are 100% legally protected to give all the aid you can without fear of being sued
"1. Freedom is the ability to CHOOSE a direction independently, without coercion."
my freedom to listen to my stereo loudly whenever i want exists in tension with my neighbor's freedom to get a good nights sleep. that's a natural limit on my freedom. it's not "coercion"
"2. Totalitarian Government, and Government Malfeasance are the cause of hunger and sickness all over the world."
hunger and sickness is caused by droughts and disease. clouds and viruses don't take orders from totalitarian governments. if there were no totalitarian governments in the world, hunger and sickness would still happen. the point is: there are all sorts of limits on your freedom. not all of them come from the government
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
As a non-US citizen, I wonder what's gonna happen now to all those heart-wrenching US medical dramas if every kindhearted-yet-ill-and-uninsured Ghetto kid that needs a new aortic valve can just get one without any tough ethical/legal/financial dilemma. That's gonna be horrible!
But it was the insurance company that was defining pre existing conditions, not the doctor. My wife's insurer reversed their decision to cover my wife's brain surgery while she was in recovery from the surgery. They stuck us with a $60,000 dollar bill (1980's pricing), and dropped her from their rolls. I guess when they saw how much the surgery would cost they decided her illness was "pre existing." She had been paying into the insurance for 8 years, but the fast growing tumor in her brain was a preexisting condition. Yeah right I had to get a government job to get insurance for both of us (FEHB). Now that I am disabled from my job, I still carry that insurance because we can't change to a cheaper plan. As it is now, health insurance takes up 60% of my pension. At the current rate of premium increases, two years from now they (CIGNA) will take 100% of my pension.
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Well, I certainly don't disagree that a society is completely interconnected - that's obvious, and proven quite well.
The delineation is, though, that all of those connections are entered into willingly - your suppliers can stop selling to you, your employees can go to work for someone else (or themselves), and your customers can go to a competitor.
There is no mechanism for me to "opt-out" of this bill.
As for infrastructure, I'm not convinced the government has the derived authority to build roads or subsidize internet access.
The ultimate question here is this: What is the proper role of the government? I agree with Rand here, in that the only moral use of governmental power is to prevent the use of physical force between parties.
Also note that while I consider myself an Objectivist most days, I am not a Randist. There are many things that we disagree on - her work is not the Bible, merely catalyst for independent thought. I've been kicked out of several "Objectivist" discussions for arguing against Rand, and have developed an intense loathing for those idiots that worship her as a demigod.
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Personally, I hate the idea of forcing anyone to do anything. For me, that's the essence of libertarianism: don't force others to do anything they don't want to do (or prevent them from doing anything that doesn't prevent anyone else from doing something, for that matter). But of your three choices, I think #3 is the lessor evil. I wouldn't have been happy if Congress had gone that route, but I could've lived with it. As it is, they have such a muddled version of #s 1&2 that I can't see how anyone will come out ahead in the long run.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
I hope you were just trolling because everything you mentioned is just a fabrication of your imagination.
Get off my internet, it was invented by the Government in case you've forgotten.
No: The Internet was created by private academic institutions and brought mainstream by PRIVATE companies.
Stop driving on my interstates, again taxes at work.
No: 35% of roads are PRIVATELY OWNED. If you never drive on a Gov' road, you don't need insurance either.
No more postal services for you.
No: Most people would argue the USPS is a failure, and we are better off with PRIVATE SERVICES from UPS and FedEx. You are so wrong it's not even funny, and I shouldn't have even replied to you, but I thought you honestly believed that stuff, and I wanted to (possibly) help you be a little more sane.
It's not so much where do we draw the line as it is am I giving willingly or is it being forced from me.
And if you can't? Medical bills for unexpected and unpreventable ailments can cost as much as a new car, or even as much as a new house. If you can't pay, should they let you die? Enslave you to pay off your debt? What if you die before you pay off the debt? And since the surgery could not be prevented in any way (short of letting them die), you've just decided that anyone too poor for insurance (or between jobs) should be wiped out by an unexpected medical bill. I've got enough money in my bank account to cover a relatively small surgery, but if I need a bone marrow transplant tomorrow, the anticipated expense would be nearly $200,000 dollars. I've got good insurance, so I'd be fine, but it's simply not practical to "prepare" for a $200,000 expense on a low income. If you can't afford to pay for health insurance, you damn sure can't set aside $200,000. This bill isn't perfect, but it covers more of the poor, subsidizes the lower middle class, and requires a perfectly reasonable level of insurance that prevents the upper middle class from bankrupting themselves in the event of an unlucky break.
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Every country that has universal health care pays less per capita for health care (an average of 40% less), and gets better health care as measured by aggregate outcomes like life expectancy and infant mortality. Got that? We pay less and get more.
You pay more and get worse health care than every other first world country. Quit raging about the talking points of the people making money off your backs and start pushing for real UHC.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
Bullshit. You are being mandated to buy health insurance so I don't have to pay for your health insurance. They have more in common than you are admitting.
Not sure that was directed at me, but I disagree, while recognizing that many who call themselves "Objectivists" are indeed sociopathic.
Still, I would indeed hold selfishness - as in, rational, long-term self-interest - as the ultimate ideal. "There are no conflicts of interest among rational men" is a true statement, so far as I can tell.
Learn about Photography Basics.
"That means no Cigna Corporation sitting around denying you a liver transplant - which cost at least one girl her life."
The girl being denied a liver transplant was the right decision. The vast majority of doctors who have examined her case said that the liver transplant would have not saved her life.
plenty of people break their arms, without means to pay. is this not reality in your view? what should happen to them? live life with mangled arms?
and the internet is the bounty of society. the companies (actually, the government projects and universities) that created it only exist because society provides the security, the education, the capital, the stability, the infrastructure, the manpower, and everything else necessary for technological progress to happen
oh, i almost forgot: you're a moron. not an ad hominem. just a prudent appraisal of your apparent lack of abilities to reason
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Wrong, injury and illness affects everyone associated with the victim. Businesses have to deal with loss of productivity, families suffer from the financial costs, and in the case of communicable diseases, everyone around the victim is affected.
photosMy Photostream
Nothing more Temporary than life itself. ;)
We are only delaying the inevitable, only to enslave our children in the process. Bankrupting our country in the name of compassion isn't compassionate as it sounds.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Why do we need health insurance companies? What do they do to keep us healthy? What purpose do they serve?
photosMy Photostream
Your lifestyle is a huge factor in determining your health. Alcoholism, cigarette addiction, poor diet and a sedentary lifestyle are all practically guaranteed to cause health problems later in life (and most Americans do more than one).
I read an interesting study once. Obese people die earlier than other people and overall their healthcare costs end up being less. Most people still favor them being excepted from universal healthcare plans. This is because people are much more interested in punishing those they feel have done wrong than in getting the best "selfish" option for themselves.
One of the nice things about socialized medicine is that people see doctors regularly and those doctors have more opportunities to educate and treat people with alcohol addictions and dietary problems. The rates of problems as a result of both tend to drop when universal healthcare is implemented, at least it has in other countries.
Who is more selfish: someone who refuses to pay for your care, or someone who demands that you pay for their care?
I'm not big on morality, but if you're going to get to the heart of unfairness and immorality one has to go a lot deeper. It's unfair some people are born wealthy and healthy and others are not. As a society we can address and redress this unfairness or we can ignore it. It comes down to basic philosophical issues, often whether or not we believe there is a god or power out there taking care of fairness for us and we all deserve what we get, or whether as a society we should be struggling to be as fair as possible.
In my mind, a fair society would have 100% inheritance tax and every individual would begin life with an equal share. Further, we'd pool our money to pay for the healthcare of those born with congenital conditions or injured for reasons not their fault. Then whether a person can afford healthcare or not would be purely a matter of their own actions and we could justly blame them for poor planning or poor lifestyle or poor economic sense. We don't live in such a society and I don't think trying to create one is practical at this time. So I'm willing to compromise. The government can tax the rich to subsidize the poor as one way of mitigating the financial inequity people started with and I don't see that as the least bit unfair or "selfish" compared to some people starting out with so much more. Maybe there could be an an option of opting out of all government services and taxes while still living here, you don't have to pay for the health of society, but if people come after you with guns the police don't bother stopping them. What do you think is truly fair?
It's funny watching the conservative Republicans and libertarians wet their pants over this.
I don't remember too many libertarians or conservatives throwing a fit over the trillion dollars we threw away in Iraq. It's funny how the teabaggers sat on their asses for 8 years while conservatives looted our country.
As it is, they have such a muddled version of #s 1&2 that I can't see how anyone will come out ahead in the long run.
Sadly, very true. I'm hoping that at some point the rhetoric used will calm down, and it will be possible to have a rational discussion about this. We'll see.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
I think you're missing the part where the just passed bill cuts medicare drastically. But that won't matter since they are also cutting the amount that they will reimburse doctors who care for medicare patients. Some doctors and clinics are already refusing to take on any new medicare patients because they do so at a loss.
you understand the legal logic behind requiring people to have car insurance before driving, right?
so if you understand why you can't drive legally without car insurance, you understand why health insurance must be mandated. even the young and healthy break their arms. then, what happens? is everyone an upper middle class paragon of financial virtue with $200,000 in the bank for unforeseen health problems?
I do understand the legal logic of requiring car insurance. However, you, I, and everyone else who drives, also has the choice to drive or take other means of transportation that doesn't require car insurance. You are only required to buy it, if you decide for yourself that you want/need to drive. That is not an option with mandated healthcare. As for having money set aside for unforseen health risks... YES, you should have some money set aside for unforseen events of any kind, including medical emergency. If you're not wealthy, and don't have a large enough sum to make you feel safe, then you have the OPTION to buy insurance for this. It doesn't matter if your employer offers it or not, you can still obtain it. Do you have to pay for it out of your own pocket? Yep, you bet. I'm self employed, and I obtain a personal plan for me an my family at an outrageous price, but it's cheaper than paying the bills if something bad happens. Is it hard to pay that much, yep. Does it effect my lifestyle? Yep, I pay almost as much for medical coverage as my mortgage payment. Do I have to sacrafice in other areas of my life to afford this on my own? Yes I do. Health Ins. to me and my family is more important than a bigger house, or a nicer car, or cell phones for everyone in the house, etc. The problem is too many people in this country think they are ENTITLED to everything. If someone who does not have health insurance wants it, they should decide how important it really is to them and decide what they need to sacrafice to afford it. This viewpoint may seem harsh to Communists (read Progressives), but this is what Freedom and Liberty are all about. Your decision to decide your own priorities in life is freedom. Too many people screw up their priorities in life and want other to pay for their mistakes.
Ill health is punishment enough for bad life choices. Getting lung cancer from smoking will often still kill you.
Not to be unsympathetic, but I really really don't care if smokers are punished. It is really their choice, and by this point they all know what will happen. Let them smoke, let them enjoy it. I don't want them to be punished for that.
BUT if you come and tell me I have to pay extra for what they did, now you are punishing me, and that sucks. It isn't fair, and it isn't moral. And when close to 70% of all healthcare costs are lifestyle related, it isn't economical.
Qxe4
Look, we are all smart enough to know that there are SOME things about our health care system that need to be addressed. However, a majority of Americans DO NOT WANT the government involved in our health care. Poll after poll shows us about 65 percent of Americans don't believe the government needs to be involved in health care. Do you realize that it will take LESS THAN 300 PEOPLE in Washington to pass a healthcare bill and make it law? The other 300 MILLION of us have to live with the rules pushed on us by these 300 Nanny politicians. In other words, regardless of the views of a majority of Americans, these 300 people will decide what is best for YOUR FAMILY. Here is a 10-minute clip on YouTube about the Healthcare bill (H.R. 3200). This is a point by point description in "non legal-speak" on the Government Healthcare plan taken from the actual proposed bill. I usually don't pass things like this around, but in this case I believe we have to know what is being agreed to by these 300 people behind closed doors. I know it may be tough to watch a 10-minute clip, but this is highly worth your time. Here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcBaSP31Be8 Unfortunately, our so-called "representatives" REFUSE to listen to us on this issue. You know the stories about them. If a plan like this does pass and it has the tragic effect that so many people expect, hopefully the American voter will vote these 300 politicians out of office in the next election. Most voters have a negative view of the federal government, but still continue voting for "their" incumbent locally. If YOUR "incumbent" is one of these 300, it is time to use your vote to send these Nanny politicians to the unemployment line. Hopefully, it isn't too late for the majority of us to make a difference! Please view the clip and pass it on.
Source is key. In the one scenario I am drawing a line for myself, in the other, the government is drawing an line for me, and not with my consent, sensibilities or moral compass.
You're right, that government regulated health care might be more expensive in the long run. However, as the President said, meat prices would be a lot lower if it wasn't for government mandated meat inspections, but it we are still better off with meat inspections than without.
For those of you that can't see how this violates our 4th Amendment rights, I'll make it easy with a car analogy - soon enough they'll be able to legally require you to purchase a car, just for the sake of forcing you to purchase car insurance. So much for your right the the security of your personal effects, property, and papers. How can you be secure when someone else tells you what to do with YOUR HARD EARNED MONEY?
While you people cheer for your 'victory' you cheer for the steady erosion of our security and liberties. You've just applauded the government being able to tell you to 'give your money to this industry or go to jail.'
Enjoy your 'victory' fools.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
the freeloaders don't pay their bills, all the hospitals in the usa are continually teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, and the states and feds, with your tax money, are ocntinually having to bail them out. right now, you pay for the freeloaders
with mandated insurance, the freeloaders are outlawed. if you are a freeloader, you are found out, and you are assessed a penalty. furthermore, since everyone is on insurance, premiums drop because the pool now includes the healthy as well. the current pool is only the people who need insurance: the sickly. of course, EVERYONE needs insurance. only a feeling of godlike invulnerability tells you you don't need insurance: anyone can be injured
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I believe that if your are below the requirement for filing taxes, you don't have to get insurance.
Climate Progress - Hell and High Water
If you were living off the grid and not earning any money --or at least less than 400% of the poverty level-- you would not be subject to the fine for not having insurance. That fine is assessed only on people who can afford to purchase insurance, but do not.
Here's something funny:
"The first is that 70% of all health-care costs are the direct result of behavior" link
so your quote "What selfish libertarians like yourself don't realise is that a persons health is mostly unrelated to their choices." is completely wrong. now that is funny.
Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon. -- Susan Ertz
so why are you paying for libraries and fire departments? there's no constitutional right for that
Those are services provided by local governments, not the Federal government. See the 9th and 10th amendments.
Look, we are all smart enough to know that there are SOME things about our health care system that need to be addressed. However, a majority of Americans DO NOT WANT the government involved in our health care. Poll after poll shows us about 65 percent of Americans don't believe the government needs to be involved in health care. Do you realize that it will take LESS THAN 300 PEOPLE in Washington to pass a healthcare bill and make it law? The other 300 MILLION of us have to live with the rules pushed on us by these 300 Nanny politicians. In other words, regardless of the views of a majority of Americans, these 300 people will decide what is best for YOUR FAMILY. Here is a 10-minute clip on YouTube about the Healthcare bill (H.R. 3200). This is a point by point description in "non legal-speak" on the Government Healthcare plan taken from the actual proposed bill. I usually don't pass things like this around, but in this case I believe we have to know what is being agreed to by these 300 people behind closed doors. I know it may be tough to watch a 10-minute clip, but this is highly worth your time. Here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcBaSP31Be8 Unfortunately, our so-called "representatives" REFUSE to listen to us on this issue. You know the stories about them. If a plan like this does pass and it has the tragic effect that so many people expect, hopefully the American voter will vote these 300 politicians out of office in the next election. Most voters have a negative view of the federal government, but still continue voting for "their" incumbent locally. If YOUR "incumbent" is one of these 300, it is time to use your vote to send these Nanny politicians to the unemployment line. Hopefully, it isn't too late for the majority of us to make a difference! Please view the clip and pass it on.
For the same reason we share costs in infrastructure (that we all enjoy), costs in schooling (even for those who have no children), costs in social programs (in the form of taxes), costs in state-run programs (in the form of taxes), we require those who wish to live in and enjoy our society to join in its upkeep. Caring for our people is part of that.
That's not slavery, that's enlightenment. Maybe you have to be older to understand; many things I thought made no sense when I was younger make sense now. It could be a mellowing of my mind or perhaps I'm just senile.
They are different, but are still fall under the area of risk management, it's just risk management over a population rather than for just one individual. In other words, the people complaining: "I'm healthy, why should I help support all these filthy sickees who can't cover their own care?", aren't grasping that next decade, or next year, or next month, they might be the one who is sick and can't afford their own care.
Whose mountain land would you be building that shack on? Scavenging and/or farming on? fishing/hunting on?
First, to address the straw men that people have set up: I am not advocating anything. I'm a comfortable suburb dweller who get no closer to real wilderness than dragging the family to sleep in a tent at a friend's farm from time to time. But the idea is that you always had the option of becoming self-sufficient - if you were willing to pay the price for accepting that responsibility. You or I might not ever want to do that, but it was a choice that at least some people wanted to make.
Second, that would be public land. There are vast tracts of it maintained by the federal government, and I wasn't able (with a quick Google search) to find any laws against going in and never coming back out.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Here's something funny: if everyone jointly pays for healthcare and everybody gets treated health costs go down. This is because no one puts off going to the doctor because of expense. Cancers are caught sooner, infections are treated before the victim starts coughing up blood. What selfish libertarians like yourself don't realise is that a persons health is mostly unrelated to their choices. No one chooses to get prostate cancer, no one chooses to get bitten by a rabid dog.
Numerous studies have shown that prevention costs are high too, sometimes greater than treatment. Example for the sake of argument: Out of 1000 people, 25 will get ill with a very expensive disease. In some cases, 1000*(cost of preventative care) > 25*(cost of treatment care). You MAY argue that some of the 25 would not get sick --- but it's still MORE expensive.
I haven't looked at what they have passed (since it still has a way to go, so I'm not going to bother yet). But if it is like some of the proposals I heard then I'll be dropping my health insurance, and putting the $12,000 I pay each year to an insurance company in my pocket and paying the $3-4000 fine. Then if I get leukemia, I'll buy insurance then, since they can't refuse me for that preexisting condition and go back to paying the $12,000 a year when my bills far outweigh that.
Some thoughts:
First, your plan assumes that any major medical costs will occur over a long enough time period that you can get insurance somewhere between you finding out about the problem and the majority of the costs coming in. What if you get hit by an uninsured motorist and end up in the ICU for 2 weeks (~$40,000)? What if you fall and break a leg, have a heart attack, a stroke, or any number of other sudden, expensive problems? I'm not sure what the rules are, or even if there are any, but I could see a 30 day waiting period before insurance takes effect, or even just the insurance underwriters taking their sweet time getting your paperwork through if they now about your condition.
Second, insurance is now subsidized for anyone below 4 times the poverty level. If you're really paying $12,000 a year (the national average is about half that) then you probably won't fall into that group, but for a lot of people that don't currently have insurance it will be cheaper to take the subsidized insurance than it will be to take the penalty. Basically, there will be very few people who will need pay more than 1 or 2% of their income for basic insurance.
Thirdly, if your little plan becomes as common as you seem to think, you can bet that the maximum penalty will be going up in the future. It's already tied to your income rate with a maximum yearly penalty, the first year's maximum is only $90, but it goes up every year up to $2000 in 2016, there's nothing to stop that penalty from continuing to increase. Even without an increase, considering all they're asking for is catastrophic coverage, it will be cheaper by 2016 to pay for the coverage than it will be to opt out and pay the fine.
If as I do you had 7 maintenance life-saving prescriptions that cost $2500/month, having your insurance go from $100/month (20% of premium, the rest being employer-paid )to $500/month (full premium) when you get laid off or quit your job is still a pretty good deal, since you wouldn't qualify for any insurance whatsoever otherwise. I agree that it's quite expensive and hard to pay when you are off work, but the alternative of not being able to get insurance at all, as was the case pre-COBRA, is much worse.
-- Julien Pierre http://www.madbrain.com/blog
Damn you cheap bastards! One day it'll bite your butt to be so selfish.
The joke's on you, because you'll be paying for my medical treatment of the bite.
Remember, you can't look dignified when your having fun! Don't take life too seriously, you'll never get out of it alive
It actually provides health care coverage to 38 million people that do not currently have it.
Actually, no, it does not. The bill is supposed to help them buy insurance - that is what the exchanges will allegedly be set up for. And for those two make money below certain threshholds, subsidies will be provided by the government. The government isn't providing health care coverage for much of anyone beyond who already has medicare / medicaid.
If you would have liked to have this choice, remember to vote out the people who insisted on denying you that option.
I fully intend to do so. And then when that doesn't work I'll take a job in a country that doesn't allow for-profit megacorps to make critical life decisions.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Well, I got a pneumonia in Germany. The doctor x-rayed my chest and after a quick look he called a taxi to get me to the hospital right away. I've spent 10 days at the hospital.
I even hadn't have to sit in line, I've asked if the doctor could see me immediately because I could barely stand straight.
Emergencies always go first.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
If you do not have insurance and you have any medical procedure provided, the cost of that procedure is offset by those who do have insurance.
Which is exactly what's wrong with the current system, and one of the few things this new bill will not change. In fact, in many ways it makes things worse, since you can't even opt out of said insurance.
I know this isn't exactly a popular view, but in my opinion the only sane policy is that if you can't (or won't) afford a given medical treatment then you make do without it. This does not exclude private, non-subsidizing insurance programs or voluntary charity, but in the end every individual is responsible for funding their own medical care. Simply knowing that something can be done to treat your condition does not justify spending unlimited resources to effect a cure, particularly when those resources belong to others. After all, just about anything can be cured eventually if you're willing to spend enough on it, but only the owner(s) of those resources have the right to decide whether the cure is worth the cost.
It makes much more sense to start from a position of personal responsibility, extending limited charity to those who actually need it, than to turn insurance into a massive subsidy program with no responsibility whatsoever and later try to reign in the inevitable abuses. The former is manageable with a minimum of administrative overhead, the latter ensures a ponderous bureaucracy and heavy-handed regulation.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
Yeah, sure, and it they pumped money into research you'd be complaining about the "socialist" legislation preventing big pharma from making massive profits off medications developed using public money which would be necessary to actually make pumping money into research save the end user any money at all.
Most of the doctors that turn down Medicare do so because the amount that Medicare lets the doctor be paid is less then the Cost to the Doctor. I have a family member who's doctor who has to use a lot of office meds on them. The cost of the meds are higher then the money Medicare gives him. Plus, Medicare can take a long time to pay. (One time it took over 8 months for the doctor to get paid from Medicare, but the Gap program paid their part in less then a Month)
general Welfare /= heath care. If it did why didn't the Founding Fathers give it back then. If only to the "natural" aristocracy? General Welfare, does that guarantee me a job???? Then doesn't "establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility" me REAL justice, not this criminals rights out weigh the rights of the victim? and doesn't that mean the police are hear to ensure the domestic Tranquility? Hmmm, wonder why so many crimes happen, oh yes No Police around.
When do we start taking care of our selves? If we expect the Government to do it, who pays? The rich? And when we make the rich middle class, then the Middle class?, and when they are the poor, the Poor? Folks the money has to come from someone. This is an example of redistribution of wealth. Ask the Congress critters if they will be paying the cadilac tax on their plan, I bet they will not. They will have us pay for them. As for the companies, if the pay more than $2k/year per employee, the it will be cheaper to drop insurance and let the government pay it. Net savings is GOOD for the company, but BAD for taxpayers.
Are there problems with the current system, ABSOLUTELY!!!. Is this the answer, to total revamp and let the government control YOUR health options? I my humble opinion, ABSOLUTELY NOT!!!
>>>Should your health depend on your body's liability? Of course not
My answer is: "Of course."
Your body has one ultimate destination - failure of the machine (what we call death). Even in France where healthcare is paid by government, the human body reaches that ultimate destination. Therefore a value can be assigned based upon how likely your body is to die within the next year, typically based on age. The lower that likelihood, the lower the liability (cost) to whoever is paying the bill to repair those bodies.
Given that, I find your message message confusing. I find it odd you presume people are entitled to an unlimited amount of money to fix a human body, as if the government has an unlimited amount of funds.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
That was NOT passed. It will be considered.
All the confusion demonstrates the fact that there is little concern for real openness.
Quit making the inane comparison to mandatory car insurance. In every state that I've ever lived, drivers are required to carry liability insurance, so that they can pay for the injuries and property damage caused by failing to correctly maneuver a large chunk of metal at high speeds. They are not required to protect themselves from their own losses.
I will gladly pay for mandatory health insurance if it's to protect me against claims that someone was sicked or injured by my presence. Of course, the premiums would have to be under $1/year, since I don't have that effect on people.
Since we are not talking about personal liability insurance, the comparison is garbage.
Infection is a horrible analogy.
First infections are usually spread before symptoms occur. Incubation period, read about it.
Second, not all money spent on health care is spent on communicable diseases. Cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and trauma problems probably account for a majority of the spending on health care.
Third, even after starting treatment for a communicable disease it can still be transmitted to others.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
... on how to game the new system.
>>>And I do plan on my annual checkup, which would be several hundred dollars without insurance.
It would be more logical to simply pay Cash, and only use insurance for very expensive costs. Like I have. My insurance only kicks in when my annual bill exceeds $20,000..... it's like a safety net.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Nice ad hominem attacks on my character.
Your link leads to an article about the mainstream spreading of the Internet. You're forgetting about all the work by groups involved that essentially designed, tested, built the foundations.
I see quite a few public institutions here. From DARPA, UCLA, UCSB, UC London is a public Uni, all involved in the creation of a core chunk of what became the Internet. It was spread mainstream by private ISPs and such, however let's not forget the 200 billion we were bilked for ala higher rates and fees for empty promises of universal high-speed access.
How often do you actually drive on a private road to get where you're going? Feel free to stick to private roads only on your next trip to the grocery store.
And the postal service. No? No what?
The Constitution itself grants Congress the power to create a postal system. I suppose that is suppose to what, manifest itself out of thin air? I'm not saying it isn't dysfunctional.
No sig for you!!
I think that part of the US problem is more that in general this line is drawn closer to home compared to other people who draw it further out.
I think the problem is that other people want to tell me where to draw that line.
I work hard for my money and want to draw it myself
Good for us that he had the money. Because if not, he'd have gotten his treatment anyway, and we'd all still have subsidized it. But we supposedly don't have (really expensive) national healthcare already...
But if you get sick next year, and lose your job, and can't pay your medical bills or your private insurance premiums, do you really, honestly believe that the rest of us should just let you die? If you think that now, do you really think you'll maintain that opinion when you're lying in bed, suffering in constant pain? If you really believe that, then you must be on some pretty strong medication already.
That link only works in Internet Explorer.
That document is 2409 pages of italics!!
Submit that as a Master's thesis and get expelled from the university.
And what happens if you code in an ER waitroom without insurance? Since, afterall, without insurance you waited on seeing a doctor until you were critical. Do they let you die? No. They do what is necessary to revive you, they stick you in the ICU for as long as it takes to stabilize you, then they show you the door and hand you a bill. Likely for close to 100,000 for an illness that would have cost a few 100 to treat at first symptoms. When you fail to pay that bill...
Who do you think pays?
And if they didn't save you, and you died, and your family sued and won a 100,000,000 settlement?
Who do you think pays?
Yes, thats right. All us other people with insurance, who now pay $200 to see the doctor... via our bloated insurance plans which not only end up covering the cost of the uninsured, but a nice 20% return to shareholders. We pay with the price of our premiums. Or our employer pays.
Want to know why US business can't compete? Because they're footing most the bill for our insane healthcare policy.
Every right winger I know screaming about being self made and about his rights is just a selfish jerk with his hand in my pocket. The teabagger doeth protest too much.
No way. You only have to look at a graph to see how absurd the difference is.
... the idea of letting someone in the same situation die because their parents lacked insurance and refused treatment is abhorrent.
So now you're advocating forced medical care, treating people against their will? Doesn't that contradict the Hippocratic Oath? People have the right to refuse treatment, whatever you may prefer.
Considering only the financial aspects, however, no one is saying that hospitals shouldn't be permitted to take on unprofitable patients if they choose; nor is anyone saying that there should be no other voluntary charity for those who actually need the help. Hospitals would be free to refuse unpaid treatment, curtailing the use of the ER for trivial matters, and competition between them would limit (but probably not eliminate) the practice of passing the bill on to paying patients. Any charity cases would then be funded through donations, including the hospital's normal profits if the hospital chooses to donate its services. You remain free to do everything legitimately in your power to see that others in need of medical care receive it. You just can't force anyone else to contribute.
That's nothing more than a convenient way to dismiss evidence that flies in the face of your own biased perception.
If there's a large and very emotional liberal protest, and some college kid in a Dead Kennedys shirt throws a beer bottle at the cops, do you just assume he was an opposition agent and that none of the real protesters behave that way?
Yeah, me neither. Angry mobs attract and embolden badly-behaved people. Why, in this one particular case, is that so hard for you to accept?
The analogy of car insurance vs mandatory health insurance is invalid because no one forces me to buy a car.
I can CHOOSE to not own one. Take the bus, subway, walk, cabs, limo's (would be nice), etc.
The only way to voluntarily not pay the Health Tax is to kill yourself, which doesn't sound very good, so you are basically being taxed just for being alive.
Politicians have finally taxed breathing.
Yep, there's been lots of civilizations without states. Like, um, well, er... ?
Red to red, black to black. Switch it on, but stand well back.
How about we apply that opinion to everything else?
You can't afford to build a road to your house? Do with out.
You can't afford police protection? Do with out.
You can't afford fire/emergency services? Do with out.
You can't afford to test/inspect all food and drugs that you consume? Do with out.
I'm sure there are some people out there who would be all for such a change, two whom I would suggest, do so with out the Internet, for it is the creation of socialism, government subsidies, and those bastions of liberal thought: the universities.
I feel bold enough to say that in the US a full single payer health system is far more likely than what you suggest. The idea that every doctor, nurse, and hospital would willingly disregard the Hippocratic oath is so far flung that it can't even be humored as a possible route forward.
The medical professionals in our country will continue to attempt to treat as many of the people that come to them seeking help as they are able to. And regardless of how you or I feel about that, we will both be funding their sacrifices.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Quick question: Does that 23% cover only health care?
How dare you show the reality of the current system? You're treading on the anti-HCR's fine alabaster arguments. Hope you recover, and that any reform helps you and your case.
It actually is, in many ways. Every infection is a potential health hazard for others.
Word!
Why do you say abortion like it's a bad thing?
If your mother had aborted you, we wouldn't have had to read this bullplop.
And Bush wasn't foreign...
... and a potential loss of tax dollars.
What?
HMO, Medicare, Medicaid, and countless mandates on insurance companies have already done considerable damage to the health care system. This will ultimately destroy it. The price of health care has been rising ever since the government started intervening back in the 70's. If you look at any other free market item(well mostly free, nothing's totally free market in Socialist America), the price has come down in spite of inflation. You can look at computers, electronics, etc....Of course a defender of Socialism would say health care is more complicated than computers(which I probably disagree with), to which I would rebut with Lasik Surgery and Plastic Surgery....neither of which are covered by insurance.
Insurance is government controlled pre-Obamacare bill. When the government tells the insurance companies what they have to cover for policies, that is government control. Things like maternity costs, diabetes, or eye exams should not be covered by insurance. That would be like having your automobile policy cover oil changes. The purchaser of an insurance policy should decide what he would like to insure. Insurance is for spreading the risk for an unforeseen tragedy. At least a portion of what the government forces insurance companies to cover does not meet that criteria.
It is quite unethical for the health care industry to make you sign to agree to pay the amount, but not tell you what the amount due is going in. You find out AFTER treatment. Well in a free market, you can find out the price before hand and shop around.
The Democrats wrote a 2800 page bill. I can save 2799 pieces of paper AND solve the health care crisis.
1. Repeal the HMO, phase out Medicare and Medicaid.
2. Remove all government regulations on insurance and let the consumer decide what is insured.
3. Remove all government subsidies on cadillac insurance plans.
4. Allow private companies to build hospitals, and compete for patients business. At the same time, stop subsidizing public hospitals.
5. Stop subsidizing education and driving up the cost for Doctors forcing them to charge these outrageous rates.
My point is that I wouldn't want parents to be stuck in the position of bankrupting themselves or letting their child die. I implied that the reason for refusing treatment was financial, but I admit I wasn't explicit about it.
As for "voluntary charity", that's a load of horseshit. People's lives should not be at the mercy of the whims of the wealthy. If you disagree, I don't give a damn, because your libertarian utopia doesn't exist, and a legal system that assumes its existence in the real world is immoral.
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
Welcome to the internet! We have this amazing thing called a "search engine" by which a person can enter keywords or phrases and receive relevant web page links in response. It really is an amazing tool and you should consider using it sometime. Search engines are scientifically proven to prevent 9 out of 10 online foot-in-mouth incidents.
-Summer Glau
How about we apply that opinion to everything else?
I do apply that opinion to everything else.
And you're wrong about the origin of the Internet. The residential and business markets were first served by numerous private networks, including both small BBSs and larger information brokers like CompuServe and AOL, which later migrated to TCP/IP as a common standard. These private organizations contributed just as much to the modern Internet as the DoD or the universities. ARPANET may have formed the kernel, a standard to rally around, but the end result—an integrated, world-wide digital communications network—was inevitable from the beginning.
Anyway, whatever its origins, you can hardly argue that the Internet isn't pretty much 100% privately-owned-and-operated today. Even if it was tainted by publicly-funded research in the past, there's no way to undo that now; we might as well make the best of it. The government didn't buy my PC, or pay my ISP bill; connectivity to the various servers I visit is provided courtesy of private transit agreements. Continuing to use the Internet does not impose an external cost on anyone else, so there's no moral reason to give it up.
The idea that every doctor, nurse, and hospital would willingly disregard the Hippocratic oath is so far flung that it can't even be humored as a possible route forward.
I never suggested that they would do so; only that they would not be required to perform free treatment as a matter of law. If they choose to treat others anyway they are donating their services, which they are perfectly free to do within the extend of their own resources.
Anyway, they don't all have to do it. If even a few refused free treatment, and charged correspondingly lower prices to paying patients, the rest would have no choice but to do the same or face bankruptcy. They can only get away with so much in forced donations, however good the cause.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
Even if the GOP wins every open seat this November, and vote to repeal, they won't have enough votes to reverse a Presidential veto. Everyone in Congress knows that the majority party takes a hit at the midterm elections if the economy sucks. So, the Democrats who survive to serve in the next Congress are going to have zero incentive to help repeal a law they worked so hard at passing.
Luke, help me take this mask off
There should be a Godwin's law for mentioning "privatized" roads in any discussion related to the expansion of government power.
You know that's a false dichotomy, right? I can believe that the government should run some public goods and also believe they shouldn't mandate purchase of health insurance.
Nothing wrong w/ abortions.
When I was a kid, the gov was pushing "Zero population growth"..
Now we have many many more people... and fewer resources.. and there's no talk of zero population growth..
If someone has it in their mind to not bring a child into this situation, good for them.
And you're right, Bush wasn't foreign... ;-) But be careful, "Birthers" can't take a joke ;-)
what happens to those of us who took lower-paying jobs, i.e. for local governments, in large part due to security and health benefits? People working for city and state governments for less money than private sector will have even less motivation to stay. Looks like a big shortage of public servants, in the near future.
I understand the claim you're making, re economic trade-offs. There's a variable you may have missed...
Any single, healthy person that actually elects to play the odds and await some chronic condition before obtaining a policy is overlooking the other reason for holding a policy: an acute condition that lands one in the trauma ward. If an ER receptionist can't dig an insurance card out of Jon/Jane Doe's bloodstained wallet, the patient's odds of timely care drop precipitously.
Luke, help me take this mask off
Not to mention it is unquestionably unconstitutional to require a US citizen to BUY something simply because they exist.
Yet we're forced to buy membership in the government's retirement plan.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
Yeah, for the problems though, you just have to look at Canada.
Doc says: You have cancer and 6 months to live.
You say: Ok, the government will take care of me!! Yay!
Government: Ok, stomach cancer, you are now patient #1827645923674, Congratulations, you are now on the waiting list, the next opening is in 2 years. Oh well.
You: Screw you socialized medicine! I'm going to America to get treated.
You go to America and get treated in 2 weeks.
At least the Health Care's free.
Question: Now that we have socialized Health Care, where are the Canadians going to go? Mexico?
This entire thread seems so very against the charter of slashdot. Though clearly a polarizing issue in the US, maybe there are other forums that can hammer out the inevitable right-versus-left polemic.
Litmus test: does story subject use or create technology to yield unexpected results? If yes - approve for publication. If not - reject.
It's a well known fact, has been publicised all over the place, and it took me a good 30s of googling for you to find this; not the exact same numbers but the rough ballpark.
He puts the Medicare overhead at nearly 6%, but I disagree on one major point, citing that premiums collection is done through the IRS and trying to put a price on this collection. But the point is that the IRS is already doing that kind of things, and it's very likely that if it wasn't collecting Medicare premiums it would still be doing almost the same amount of work and costing the same while not providing that service.
And it agrees that private insurers are wasting up to 30% on administrative costs, on individual plans, and he notes that the larger the pool, the smaller the overhead. From there it logically follows that single payer has even smaller overhead, and that's what we see in Europe.
One point he makes is interesting: But none of those wags, I'd wager, would prefer the small-group market to the large-group market. Others have argued that the difference in administration is that private insurers do an excellent job ferreting out fraud. unless you believe that only holds true for small business insurers, there's no evidence for that claim.
Once upon a time, you would have called it fire insurance, because that's what it would have been. One company with a truck, whom you paid, who would then come put your house out if it was on fire.
You know how that worked out? Competing companies setting their competitors houses on fire, blocking traffic to keep them from getting to the fire, and extorting the homeowner whose house was on fire.
We decided that was a bad idea, and went with a single-payer system, because it kept everyone honest. Somehow...I'm sure through magic...It didn't end up causing unmanageable bureaucracy and firehouse "death panels".
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
The GOP was against any health bill that wasn't focused on 1) tort reform, and 2) interstate insurance sales. The party leadership elected go all in on killing the more expansive Democratic efforts, and hence opted out of significantly influencing what passed. As Matt Yglesias pointed out, most Congressional Democrats were willing to go forward with a lot less than what got passed. But, when it was clear that the GOP was in a take no prisoners mode, any willingness to compromise went down the crapper.
Addressing your two policy points:
- tort reform is a non-starter until we address what drives the lawsuits. When someone gets physically fucked up, either out in the world or by a doctor, fixing it is often big bucks. If getting fucked up didn't fundamentally threaten a family's finances, the need to sue would fade. Going with tort reform first would greatly increase medical bankruptcies.
- interstate insurance is a non-starter unless there is a national standard for what's covered. Otherwise, there would almost certainly be a race to the floor for which state can pass the most pathetic standards, so that they could attract insurers. Much as virtually all large employers incorporate in Delaware, I suspect it would soon become next to impossible to get a policy not issued from [insert pathetic state here].
Luke, help me take this mask off
No actually, costs go up. Death is always the cheapest cure to a disease.
"Food in hospitals sucks worldwide"
FTFY
It all depends on how you define infant mortality, and since the US and GB define it differently that statistic is meaningless.
No idea on Singapore, but if I had to guess.....same thing.
Your error, and the error of the way insurance is currently structured, is to identify the loss to be hedged against as the medical costs of specific individuals. This model is no longer workable, and needs to be replaced with a system that takes a broader view of the loss to be hedged.
The current system developed in an environment where medical information was much harder to come by and the risks presented by individuals was much more difficult to identify. For example, imagine that your fire insurance provider got a lot better at predicting fires, and was able to tell that your house was going to burn down in 15 years. Would anyone insure you? No. This is how medical insurance currently works.
The solution is to *require* everyone to be insured. Now you are no longer hedging against individuals getting sick, but you are treating the risk systematically. This new insurance model looks more like risk management systems that anticipate failure from a certain number of manufactured products. Taken as a whole, the group is being insured, and risk is being distributed among the group.
Similarly, if my house catches on fire, it is a good thing that the city sends a fire truck to put it out. But I don't call that "fire insurance". They are entirely different things.
Chronic conditions are more like the city's fire truck being unable to put it out, and it has to come out day after day to make sure the fire stays under control. Currently, the insurance companies decide after a while that they don't want to come back out, and you're left to burn down.
That's the problem with this "reform": health insurance isn't insurance, and laws attempting to make it so will simply make it fail even faster.
Most European systems have one advantage in how they make those who have bad living habits pay more. Since health care is paid for by taxes instead of mandated insurance, taxation can be used to make those who have bad living habits pay more (or you could also call it a financial incentive to have good habits). VAT on cigarettes etc. is much higher than on most products and proposals have been made to increase VAT on unhealthy food (such as candy) too and some have even suggested lowering VAT on e.g. gym memberships.
Legally required car insurance is insurance for other people/property you injure/damage.
Well, think of health insurance as insuring other people against either having to bear your medical bills via taxes, or insuring them against the guilt of living in a society where selfish, short-sighted bastards are left to die in the streets.
Read Pynchon.
Medicare does not employ a workforce of actuaries (mathematicians with additional specialized training) to do risk assessment and figure out the cost of insuring individuals and groups. Insurance companies do, and Medicare then piggy-backs on the resulting price signals.
Without price signals, no reasonable management is possible, including selecting between efficient and non-efficient R&D. Soviet block economies attempted to get by without price signals, using mathematical models that were supposed to perform better than "market inefficiencies", totally failed at innovation, became non-competitive, and collapsed.
Reminds me of Soviet "peace" arguments about how their 4 million-strong army had a much smaller budget than the US. They just didn't count any supporting civilian labor and stole R&D from the West.
it will affect EVERYONE, because it will reshape the market for insurance. Insurance policies that people are happy with are a local optimum for insurance companies under current conditions, such as pricing of drugs, medical devices, etc. Now that these conditions are going to change (e.g., there is a tax on medical devices, which will be passed on to the consumers), insurance companies are going to change their policies to match. No, you will not be able to buy the same policy that made you happy, because it likely won't be offered in a few years.
It is reasonable to assume that given the taxes on medical equipment and deals with drug companies today's "happy" customers will get LESS access to costly equipment (so far the US is second only to Japan) and LESS access to new drugs (again, second only to Japan, and by far ahead of Europe and Canada).
and people eventually start dying because they cannot actually get care they are "entitled" to, on time or at all.
Innovation needs free movement of capital. Welfare states reduce both the capital with taxes and freedom with regulation. As a result, they fail at innovation. Do you think the USSR *wanted* to lose the hi-tech race? Yet it did.
First: The majority of society are not wackjobs living in mountains, so understandably they could give a shit about sacrificing significant gains just to support that idiot's way of life.
Second: "While you were still technically supposed to file taxes, etc., no one really cared if you didn't apply for the tax credits and social programs you'd almost certainly be eligible for." -- This is exactly the same as that.
You make some good points, but one question remains:
Why do you hate your shift key?
This bill is treasonous.
These people have no intention of providing health care for anyone with this bill. Even if we wanted to, there is no way we can provide care for everyone, we already have a shortage of nurses and doctors. Does anyone here realize how long it takes to produce a doctor? You have to go through like 15 years of schooling.
This amounts to a HUGE money grab by pharma and insurance companies. The stocks are through the roof with these companies.
Who controls these companies? Well of course, the investment bankers and Wall Street does.
WOW, surprise surprise.
When will the looting end with this government?
Everyone just sat by and watched as Bankers robbed 2 generations of GDP growth and now to add insult tot injury they stole another 3 generations of GDP growth.
This is treasonous. This in your face corruption, in the open and public ...
Eventually the giant is going to awake and it is going to end very badly for everyone concerned.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
The quote I gave above is, in fact, from the U.S. Declaration of Independence, not the U.S. Constitution. It is, however, correct and recognized to interpret the constitution through the lens of the declaration as the foundational document of the independence of the American colonies from Britain an so provide the rational basis upon which the U.S. is founded. So, though the words I quoted do not appear in the Constitution, I still consider it a valid point.
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
Sick days count as "normal" work days. I.e. if you're sick on Monday, on a standard contract, it counts as a 8 hour work day. If you're sick on Sunday and it's no work day for you, it does not count towards your working hours. In general, a sick day is what you should have worked this day, in hours.
The first 6 weeks are to be paid by the employer, anything beyond is on the insurance.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
We're not talking tax here. Just social security, which is a flat 23%, no matter how much you earn.
Tax depends on your income. From nothing (to 700 bucks a month or so, IIRC) to 50% for everything beyond 6k.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
That's pretty much how we solved it.
You get standard health care for the nominal, everyone-pays fee. It's not comfortable, it's not like the docs bend over for you and it sure as hell means you wait a few weeks unless you REALLY need your operation. My dad waited 2 months for his hernia op and nearly one for a non-critical one for his hands.
You want it NOW? Possible, of course. Insert coin. You want YOUR doc, not just anyone but THIS one, to be available for you, NOW? Insert coin. Your want your own room in the hospital, with a TV, your own private wash room and toilet, with a private nurse, on your beck and call? Insert coin. You want your non-critical operation NOW? Insert coin... you get the idea.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Quote: Ever been to an auto mechanic? They have a list of prices up on the wall - this much for an oil change, this much per hour for labor. We need a rule for hospitals for the same.
I've been saying that for ages and I'd pretty much given up hope of ever seeing anyone else come up with the same idea. It's really sad that something so obvious is overlooked by seemingly every single person.
Now, if only someone else will talk about coverage for post-existing conditions, I might start to have some hope for the human race.
Healthcare is usually one of the few things that don't get overused if free. Hospital food ain't so great that people willingly spend a few days or weeks there just to enjoy being pampered and fed. Hospitals in Europe are one thing above everything else: Insanely BORING. No TV. No internet. No ... anything resembling entertainment. Lights out at 10pm. Lights on at 6am. Nothing to do in between except read. Do you really think people want to spend any more time than absolutely necessary there?
I cannot remember sitting in line for "hours". I once, a really rare and remarkable event, had to sit for almost an hour at my general practicioner. Mostly because I didn't want to go home and the nurse told me it will only be "really shortly". Usually, when I need his service, I go there, inform his assistant that I need to see him, she tells me the approximate time (usually between an hour or two, unless it's a real emergency, in which case I'd probably rather call the ambulance, they arrive in 3-6 minutes) and I go home for the time being. It's not like I HAVE to sit there and watch the clock tick time away.
Special examinations, like XRay or (worse) MRT, may be a week or two 'til I get an appointment. Unless, again, it's an emergency. Doctors can and do note that on the transmission slip (you can't just go to the XRay doc without first consulting your GP, he's the main deciding factor what happens next, unless, again, emergency), and it's a rare occasion that they send you off with an "emergency" note on your transmission. For good reason, it's under close scrutiny by our health insurances (since that means additional costs), and if he sends off too many people needlessly as "emergencies", he might quickly lose his insurance contract, which means he loses a LOT of income.
So yes, waiting for a few weeks for your non-critical examination is the rule rather than the exception. But it's not like you sit there for those weeks. I never waited on a fixed appointment longer than 10 minutes. Ever.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Actually it's "social insurance", which covers health care, injury (both at work and at home), retirement, unemployment plus something resembling a "judical insurance" which allows a few consultations with lawyers concerning work related issues.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
[citation needed]
Sorry, I get to hear that every now and then, and so far nobody ever managed to provide an example for that spin. I always get to hear about those horribly long waiting lines here, where we have these evil social medicine nobody pays for. Oddly, I've never seen them.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Bull crap. The reason you get car insurance is because driving a car is a privilege and not a right. The state give you a license to drive and the state can mandate insurance if you want to. It is a STATE right. This bill will fail ultimately because the Feds overstepped their bounds. Fining people that don't want health coverage? Riiiiight.
For premium private health care with HBF for a family you can expect to pay around A$320 a month and covers things like Dental, Physio, Chiro, Optical and other therapies as well as full private hospital and ambulance cover. The average Australian Family is 2 adults and 2.6 children. That per year is A$3840.
Now for an individual that cost reduces to about A$160 per month or A$1920 a year for the same plan. This is the premium service, I can cut that down to essentials and pay less if I want to.
Note this is using HBF as a guide, for a 25-30 yr old, with all sliders turned up to full and the "nil excess" option ticked. Please remember that the AUD about 0.9 USD at the time of writing.
Why are health insurance cost so low, simple the government is the lowest cost insurer, for me on my wage it's less then A$750 a year for Medicare and I get full public hospital as well as any essential treatment (as decided by my GP, not the government) and if applicable, a discount on essential medications (For Example, Asthma medication is subsidised, a Hep A/B or Typhoid immunisation is not). How do costs get so low, simple the government has no interest in Medicare making a profit, but they have a massive interest in keeping Medicare costs down, being the largest insurer they have massive buying power and huge influence over the way hospitals, drug manufacturers and other medical institutions are run (cut down on bureaucracy, mismanagement, price fixing/gouging and so forth).
So if public is so good why would I go private, right now I wouldn't but I'll start looking at it when I hit 30. 1. Private cant compete on price so they compete on service (private rooms, nicer hospitals and so forth) 2. you get a discount on the Medicare levy.
Having a public option not only decreases costs for the payer (eventually this will be you*) in public and private but it also increases the quality of care in both public and private care.
* It still surprises me that so many Yanks think they are not already paying for health care. The money to pay comes from somewhere, either you directly or from your productivity, as the company is paying you can bet it's not coming out of their profits as much as it's coming out of your wages. You still pay, there is just a layer of abstraction between you and the process meaning you have no control over how much you are paying.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
"As the author of the first HMO bill ever to pass the Senate, I find this spreading support for HMOs truly gratifying. Just a few years ago, proponents of health maintenance organizations faced bitter opposition from organized medicine. And just a few years ago, congressional advocates of HMOs faced an administration which was long on HMO rhetoric, but very short on action. "
He authored it. I think we can blame him.
So the stupid rules on tobacco should be repealed?
53 million uninsured, and part of our solution is to fine people who are uninsured.
Sure, because those 53 million people are just maverick risktakers and not people ALREADY TOO FUCKING POOR TO AFFORD HEALTH CARE, FUCKNUTS!
What the fuck are these people thinking?
"Let's make a fine for not being able to afford something! That's fucking brilliant!"
You are trying to appeal to people's egotism by picking your neighbor, thus getting them to forget about all the people who are in trouble because of things they can't control in the first place.
Yeah, why keep people alive? Just shoot sick people and save money!
Clever signature text goes here.
I'm not sure what power the feds have enumerated by the constitutions to pass and enforce such an act. I can see how they could mandate it for federal buildings, I'm not sure how they can for private or even state buildings.
Welcome to the interstate commerce clause. Due to the highly interconnected nature of the modern business world, courts have slowly over the past 100 years recognized and ever-growing extension of that clause to regulate economic activities. It would be extremely difficult to run a business that did not engage in interstate commerce today in some form or fashion recognized by the courts. Also, Congress claims power to enforce the 14th Amendment:
"It is the purpose of this chapter . . . to invoke the sweep of congressional authority, including the power to enforce the fourteenth amendment and to regulate commerce, in order to address the major areas of discrimination faced day-to-day by people with disabilities."
Preamble to the ADA, 42 U.S.C. 12101(b)(4)
Healthcare is similarly very much part of interstate commerce, and Congress may regulate how people engage in it and impose fines for non-compliance. As much as a I hate a mandate for me to give my money directly to companies that I hate, I'm going to have to say that Congress has the power to do so.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Most people in their 50s and 60s (but not yet 65) are waiting very eagerly to hit 65 and finally feel safe with healthcare.
I know this by talking to them. Healthcare is something you should talk and learn about with your fellow people. This is a big topic and it affects all of us. We are in a country together and we are in health/sickness together. I think one of the reasons many people oppose health care reform is simply due to their isolation from others and lack of regard for fellow citizens. If you're not trying to help your fellow citizens, what is the point of being a countryman?
So the bill has been in the works for a year or so, and the American people still don't know what's in the bill? Are you really suggesting that?
Yes. Wholeheartedly. Look at the "compromise" that had to be made to pass the bill and the reactions from both pro-life and pro-choice groups over it. The bill contained essentially the same language to prevent use of federal funds to pay for abortions (outside of rape, incest, and the life of the mother) that has been in every healthcare bill since 1976. Obama's executive order to not fund abortions was nothing more than a promise to do what the bill said to do in the first place in section 1303.
But if you listen to both sides wail about it, the bill and Obama's EO both promise a sea change from the way we've always done things to whatever each side fears most. It's plain to see that in the great horse race of politics, people either don't know what the bill actually says or simply don't care. The truth is not as important as scoring electoral points or working up your donor base.
We live in a society where there is a wealth of media sources and no requirement for fairness or accuracy anymore. We live in a nation where some people read the Huffington Post and watch The Daily Show, and others read The Drudge Report and watch Fox News. These people are not arguing based on the same set of "facts." They are seeking news that makes them feel good about their existing beliefs, and this is leading to mainstreaming of conspiracy theory thought patterns. (See, e.g. the 9/11 & Birther conspiracy fans.)
Also, you might be surprised to find out how many people do not support the ponzi scheme that is Social Security, either in part or in whole.
You might also be surprised how many people think we should go back on the gold standard, and you may be even more suprised to know just how unlikely either group is to get their ideas implemented. (Not that I'm arguing that Social Security isn't in trouble, mind you. I'm just saying that people who are opposed to it "in whole" are a vocal minority, and privatization is pretty much dead in the water until a generation forgets the current financial crisis.)
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Here's something funny: if everyone jointly pays for healthcare and everybody gets treated health costs go down. This is because no one puts off going to the doctor because of expense. Cancers are caught sooner, infections are treated before the victim starts coughing up blood. What selfish libertarians like yourself don't realise is that a persons health is mostly unrelated to their choices. No one chooses to get prostate cancer, no one chooses to get bitten by a rabid dog.
The more ridiculous thing is that the costs for all (including the libertarians and republitards) would go down dramatically. But they refrain... why? FOR SPITE.
It's like watching some fool shoot himself in the foot trying to look tough with a gun. Get over yourselves. Single Payer is awesome. Quit acting butthurt just because it wasn't your idea and you're so self-interested that all the good ideas gotta come from you.
If you want to be alone, get out of OUR country.
I'm young and healthy. But I don't plan on being a jerk. Quit telling people I'm going to be a jerk and screw the system. I'm not. Quit assuming I, and others, are going to screw the system simply because you probably would, or enjoy fantasizing it.
You're a troll and what you've posted is misinformation. I do not believe you because what you've said is a misrepresentation of reality.
If you can't argue honestly, why argue? You're like the Fox News you likely enjoy: spewing B.S. loudly because most viewers are too ignorant to discern truth. People who will want to agree with your point will read it and believe you, despite its fallacy. People who care about truth will see how ridiculous you are and either ignore you or do as I am.
I wish you were a better person; I wish you were honest. If you could argue honestly, I would listen. The only people you will influence are the ignorant.
Wow, 2196 comments and counting and not one mention of hyperinflation... My esteem of you "nerds" has just hit the floor. I hope someone in 10 years someone finds this comment and thinks: "What a dumb bunch we were" :)
Huh? I live in that country. Did so for all my life. And for a not so nice portion thereof I was actually dependent on medcare.
What I posted is my experience. True as far as I can tell. It is possible that I do not have total information, mostly because nobody does, but what I posted is true as far as I can tell and can be verified.
Your posting smells a bit like a priest, caught in his dogma, and confronted with scientific research that contradicts his blessed teaching he covers his ears, yelling "lies, lies, damn lies!".
I don't want to say our system is perfect. It has its flaws. It is very expensive. Doctors are more or less forced to spend their first few years in Emergency Rooms and work in hospitals at fairly average wages before they have a chance to get the all-holy contract with one of the state insurances that ensure easy, steady income (because else they could only rely on "private" patients that pay themselves, and they are few and far between because, well, why pay when your insurance would if you chose a different doc?). You get the cheapest possible medication prescribed (unless you pay for it yourself, of course), and getting more expensive pills usually requires the OK of a state approved doc who seems to be rubberstamping "no" on everything that might actually help. You are forced to run the course of cheap examinations even if your doc already knows that XRay and other standard examinations are inconclusive and only an (expensive) MRT would give him the info he needs.
That's some of the drawbacks of the system. Along with having to wait a few days to a few weeks until you get your exam. It's certainly not perfect. But it means that you get medicare in every hospital, for "free" (you pay with your insurance), you will be kept alive and cured if possible, and if impossible they'll do what they can to prolong your life if that's what you want, for as long as you want, no matter whether you're rich or poor.
It's one of the few things left over from our socialist (NOT communist!) time in the 70s. Healthcare for everyone. Not fancy, not enjoyable, but it does the job. And that's what counts if you ask me. When I'm sick or injured, the very last thing I want to ponder is "can I afford surviving?"
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Learn to read. The poster said "keep the store alive", not people.
Plus, I'm waiting for you to sell everything you own and send it to Africa you insensitive clod. They have needs that you're not meeting due to your selfishness.
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
Here's a fact: The Medicare budget is getting slashed by hundreds of billions of dollars with this new bill.
Medicare part D has nothing on this new monstrosity.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
Way to prove you're not a jerk, jerk.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Unfortunately, with very few exceptions, preventive care does not reduce health care costs.
Things like vaccination and sanitation are cheap, and easily pay for themselves. Almost all other preventive care costs more than just treating the disease as it is detected - screening for low-probability problems is expensive, and unless the screen is very accurate, money spent on treatment for false positives can overwhelm savings from early detection.
Remember the breast cancer screening recommendations awhile back? The data on those said that for every cancerous tumor detected when screening women under 50, they also found multiple benign lumps which triggered useless (and potentially dangerous, when you factor in iatrogenic infections) biopsies.
There are good arguments for universal health care. Reducing cost is not one of them, people who crunch the real health care numbers know this, and it troubles me when anyone makes an argument they know to be false.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
How can somebody be free with the specter of poverty around every serious illness?
My only concern is that by passing this gutted bill we have vented the pressure off such that there'll be no more drive towards an actual reform which we still need.
Your employer pays nothing for you, it is a smoke screen.
All the taxes paid in your name are figured when your salary is offered. Just like you figure your net salary so you know what you will actually get in hand, the employer subtracts the tax from what they can offer you. It is really no different than you getting paid $5K more and paying $5K more in taxes instead of the employer tax, it just makes the larger real personal tax rate less obvious so people can brag about our small taxation levels.
This country is going broke because of entitlements. This nightmare passed by a fraud and a tyrant will need thousands of government employees to run it, all paid by taxpayers. The waste, fraud and abuse will escalate through the roof. The bigger government gets the more taxes we pay and the less liberties we have. This is a MASSIVE expansion of government. We had a revolution over this type of dictating. I'm blessed to have seen America in it's heyday, this is the beginning of the end.
Way to prove you're not a jerk, jerk.
No, better yet. Way to prove that I will be. (Which you failed to do.. you simply assume I would.)
In Europe 24% of your income did not go to social healthcare. STFU. It may have been your taxes, but it wasn't all for social healthcare. That, plus your evidence is anecdotal and irrelevant at best.
This is a very interesting story. Any chance you have a source for it?
Regardless of what you Socialists from within the US and from foreign counties think about how great "Socialized Medicine" is, do not realize that under the US Constitution the federal government does not have the power, nor the authority to enacts laws and regulations on private insurance companies, nor create a single payer health care system. There is nothing in Article Six, which states the powers of the Federal Government, that says that it has the right to regulate or establish a health care system. According to The Tenth Amendment which states; "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." The States do have the right to if they wanted to establish one within its borders. The Federal Government would have to Amend the Constitution in order to have the power to regulate health care. I bet that most of you, if not all of you, did not realize that every law at the Federal level of government is Unconstitutional! This includes drug laws. Why do you think that in the early 20 century they had to make a constitutional amendment banning alcohol?
All Hail King Obama
Most Democrats did not want this specific bill
Most Repulicans did not want this specific bill
Do laws for reform to protect citizens need to be enforced to protect citizens from bureaucrats and big business? Of course
The politicans did not represent the people here folks they represented King Obama's agenda.
The Government has Failed us!!! They wanted history and power and control. THey care nothing more about you than your vote to keep the sheeple following them.
not really. i googled washington bill gate proof of insurance and there seems to be quite a bit on the disposition of the tickets in court, but either i cannot get the full articles to display or they cost money. If you are interested in the chief reaming the cop, I did not see anything relevant, within the limits of the search. the whole thing was a bit of a local sensation and i suppose i saw coverage in the seattle times originally. incidently, the police chief was very open about it. it was on the proof of insurance issue. the chief figured the world's richest man was good for any damage he caused, and so he did not need insurance. this was an argument that was not universally accepted.
bill beat both tickets.
I see you are a Kennedy apologist. First trying to distance him from it, then saying this when shown he proudly took whole credit for it.
Most people who want single-payer don't think the new law creates the ideal system.
Will it make things better, or become the bane of the existence many that Kennedy's HMOs did?
We know the track record, so it is more likely the latter.
Residence cards, visas, etc. only increase illegal immigration. These documents can be obtained one way or another, after that they keep people from returning to their home countries, as they have invested into these residence cards.
If there were no visas, no residence cards, no passports, people would come and go home after a while. They would not stick to a certain country, because they had bought a residence card there.
Such residence ID cards are good for officials who would be able to sell them one way or another, but they have nothing to do with reducing illegal immigration.
Market forces would be able to regulate migration global-wise much better than corrupted officials at different countries.
In Kenya, Niger, China, Ireland, etc. there are nice places near rivers, in the woods, where it would be nice to build a house and live. Let those, who want emigrate from these countries, emigrate and those who want to come and live there, come and live there.
Crime? There should be built more modern automated prisons where criminals could be re-educated and reformed. These are the criminals of the Earth and are common global responsibility.
Kennedy is, quite unfairly, since he himself caused many of the current problems.
He didn't settle. He created it. If it's as bad as people say, better not to have created it.
Face it, Kennedy was your standard elitist career politician, looking out for #1 which was him and his continual reelection.
Either that or he was just incompetent.
Remember, he also helped author No Child Left Behind, another disaster.
He is also idolized for his stance on the environment. Yet he voted against an off-shore wind farm because it would block his scenic view.
He is a politician of convenience, as highlighted by him switching from pro-life to pro-choice only after Roe v. Wade.
It's the politicians, as you mentioned. They can't resist the power that comes with greater control. They can't resist the spending that comes with more taxes.
For example, remember TARP paybacks? They were supposed to pay back to the treasury the money lent.
Not long after the ink was dry Kennedy was already working to spend money that got repaid.
The rank and file will dutifully do its job with this health care system, and the politicians will screw it up.
It may or may not take as long for them to screw it up as they did with social security, but they will do it.
Anybody who doesn't believe that needs to learn some history.
I am 28, so I know that maintaining a healthy lifestyle is difficult and that everyone will have some health issues regardless. My claim was specifically that bad lifestyle choices lead to health problems. You've twisted it around to say that I've claimed health problems come from bad lifestyle choices. I did not say that.
That said, your example is not good because high cholesterol in itself is not a health problem. It is only a warning sign that indicates a potential for future health problems.
P.S. It is possible for me to post on Slashdot while I'm at work. Indeed, it's the only time I do;-) If your husband want's to pay a lot of taxes, I will respect his boundaries by not trying to stop him from paying them. I hate taxes, and I wish you would respect my boundaries by not trying to force me to pay them.
The Democrats allowed a few trivial bits of Republican input in order to pretent that some silly "bipartisanship" thing was going on.
Yep, the Democrats were essentially "100 percent my way or no way". OK, 99.999% maybe. Five nines.
There was no room for any other than their ideas. They won by brute force. They knew from the start that they didn't have any reason to even listen to the Republicans regarding any issue of substance.
I should add that saying "NO" is generally the superiour option. Random shit should not become law. Law should be something that nearly everybody can agree on.
Any competent parent or child psychologist can tell you that shielding people from adversity prevents growth and sets them up for failure. I am not going to waste my time defending what should be self-evident to a thinking person. You and whoever moderated your comment are beyond hope if you can not grasp this simple concept: Life without hardship is not worth living.
Shielding people from hardship is a fruitless endeavor that will ultimately lead to tragedy and failure. Already, many people end up requiring health-care because of poor life decisions they made because they didn't know any better. The end result of the struggle to end hardship will be a generation of adult children completely incapable of dealing the hardship we were not able to shield them from.
It is appropriate to look at medical hardship as an opportunity to express love for others through charity. In that light, this idea of medical entitlement is robbing society of ways to express love and engage in charitable acts. We are trading something good for something vile and destructive. Can you understand why I would have a problem with that? I just paid for part of my friend's mother's cancer surgery. Under this new system, my friend never would have asked me for help. What good is it if people have everything they need and never ask each other for help?
Can you see that you are the one actually promoting a "selfish" system? The system you want leaves no room for anything but selfishness. Selflessness has no place in a society where everyone is already "entitled" to everything they need