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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.
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.
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."
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.
Unless you steal them from someone who does work, isn't allowed to protect themselves because of gun laws and you frankly don't care...
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
I agree. It should be a day to celebrate in America.
I was talking to a friend in the US over the weekend, about this issue. I, in high-tax Britain, earn substantially more than she does, in supposedly lower tax California. It turns out that her medical insurance alone was more than my total income tax (which, in case you missed the point, pays for the National Health Service as well as all the things your federal income tax pays for).
This can't be anything but good news for America. Everyone will be better off, and the only people who even might lose out are a few big corporations.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
I actually work for a car insurance company handling claims, and I have seen plenty of situations like this. If someone is uninsured and causes an accident, it is almost impossible to collect against them personally for damages. If they don't have car insurance in the first place, it is unlikely they have any assets to go after for restitution. The upshot is that if you're poor, don't worry about car insurance and just hit whatever and whoever you want while driving, because there are few consequences. Did you know that in some states (like NJ), municipal entities are legally protected against restitution from car accidents? Just like the uninsured individual, if a local goverment-owned vehicle smashes into your parked car, they're not responsible for your damages and you're out of luck. Its things like this which really burn me about the industry and laws.
How much trust can you place in the words of pathological liars and race baters? Yes, CNN and Black Caucus I am looking at you! And by the way calling somebody a Nigger or faggot is not a crime. Yet.
What a sad day for the nation and the world.
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
"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?
> Funding will be used to kill human fetuses. I did not have the choice to opt out of paying for your idiotic war on Iraq. Screw you and your right wing fetus obsession.
Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
>>> Dimihsing Productivity Graph - http://market-ticker.org/uploads/2010/Mar/Diminishing-Prod.jpg
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"But we have to KEEP SPENDING because we're in a depression! Now is not the time to cut spending." - typical Democrat or Obama supporter. To me this is equivalent to my family carrying a $130,000 credit card debt and saying that I need to go buy a new roof for my house, when in reality I should be canceling my cable/cellphone/internet and other extraneous expenses to pay-off the debt & weather the current storm.
Like this guy wisely said: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94lW6Y4tBXs
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
>>>If i understand the US-founders correctly they had a country in mind where everybody is equal and even the poorest have right to a respectable life in America.
"The best thing that can be done for a poor person is to make being "poor" painful, so they will seek to be industrious rather than slothful, as I did when I was a poor man." - Benjamin Franklin.
I would also add, no matter how poor you are, you don't have a right to your neighbors' money. THEY earned it, not you. They are not your slaves who work for your benefit. Do I think a safety net is a good idea? Yes, but safety nets are for a last resort: To prevent starvation or to help those who can't help themselves (mentally or physically handicapped). Safety nets are NOT for you to smoke/drink/eat yourself into illness, runup an expensive doctor bill for lung or heart surgery, and then expect your neighbors to pay for it.
YOU chose your destructive lifestyle; now it's your responsibility to pay the cost. Not mine. Not your neighbors.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
> 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?
>>>This bill tries to get the people who earn more help the people who earn less get a healthy life.
What is this? They year 1000? It sounds like the same moral dictatorship the Catholic Church imposed on everybody. "Help the poor voluntarily, or else we'll simply TAKE your money and do it for you."
While I think it's a good idea to help people, I don't think holding a gun to their heads (or vacuum to their wallets) is the way to do it. They are free citizens, not Serfs to be ordered around.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
>>Oh Fox... will you ever be more than a conservative mouthpiece?
Or CNN being a liberal one? I've heard twice today people saying that Tea Partiers are all racists as a result of this story. (Hint: they're not. Nor are they any of the other things the idiot children of MSNBC say they are.)
It's silly to pretend that any of our major media outlets aren't biased. Yahoo news reporting the new bill will save billions of dollars. (Oh, and it will - in the same way that Enron was profitable till the end... accounting malfeasance.)
Not that I'm defending Fox - they're almost as bad as CNN when it comes to bias.
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.
Freedom of speech and resistance of government is not the only freedom.
In the united states you need permission from the government to do most anything. Drive, fish, and yes, even to protest against or sue the government. Everything is tightly regulated and tracked and more and more onerous laws are successfully enforced everyday.
In many ways, most third world nations enjoy more freedom than the people of the United States.
A few weeks ago, I was talking to a co-worker of mine who grew up in Canada. He told me that he was going door-to-door in high school, selling something or other (I guess they torture kids that way in Canada, too). So he ended up going to the "poor" section of town, where most of the people lived on welfare. He said that when he started knocking on doors, and they opened up, he would peek inside - and the welfare people seemed to have all the same stuff he had. Same video-game consoles, same TV's, same type of furniture... he said he made up his mind then to move to America, where work actually pays off.
That was, of course, until now. Oh, well. I guess it was nice while it lasted.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
Give the dude a break. Glenn Beck or o'reily said it so it must be true. Like all the fantasies, i mean fair and balanced stuff, the Fascists on Faux News say.
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"?
A coop with your own doctors is a great idea until one day you have a heart attack or get into a car crash and they rush you to one of OUR emergency rooms. Then the rest of us are going to be footing your bill, because you're a kook who refused to buy insurance. Either way, we pay. You're "freedom" is nothing of the sort.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
No, that's the scary thing about the bill: stealing is no longer against the law. And the ACLU and ACORN are in on it; they've been plotting it for years, ever since Elvis and the Illuminati told them to advocate health care reform shortly after they plotted 9/11 in an attempt to control how much salt is in your food (which they pretty much accomplished, you have to admit). So now some random poor person, who already gets free Social Security and Medicare and will never work a day in his life, can have your big screen TV and it's perfectly legal. Don't even try to stop him, or a liberal will call you politically incorrect. Meanwhile some guy who says "Jesus" out loud gets arrested for it. (Probably.) I'm telling you, the sky is falling since the House vote last night. I don't even recognize this country ... except the Slashdot bits of it which admittedly look like they did before.
Hey guess what? My wife has an aunt who has diabetes and it's totally under control without medication. Diet and exercise only.
I'm sorry you have cancer but does that give you the right to force me, at the point of a gun, to pay for your care?
Because that's the point that people seem to want to gloss over. They don't want to think of it that way but that's the cold hard truth. You want the government to take my hard earned money from ME and give it to you. There's simply no other way to look at it.
But you kindly neglected to look over my original point. Is it possible that you could have saved up enough money to cover your expenses? Maybe. Maybe not. How much money DID you have saved up for emergencies? I'll wager not a goddamn penny.
This is the point I'm trying to make. It is simply impossible for an individual to provide for their own health care in this country. We've somehow grown accustomed to the fact that it's the responsibility of our employer, and now our government, to take care of us from cradle to grave.
You know what kind of legislation would have made sense?
- Remove the tax on personal medical plans like your company has had forever.
- Allow you to buy insurance across state lines.
- Allow you to have a tax-free savings account with no ceiling and no forfeiture
Medical costs are artificially inflated because the insurance companies have no competition in a given state (because only the biggest can afford to operate) and because of government pricing intervention.
Unless you're cursed by the gods, all three of those things haven't been going on all your life.
I'm sorry about your situation, I truly am but even with all of these hurdles nothing was preventing you from saving money for a catastrophic event. Regardless of that, you're still asking the people with the guns to take from me because you think you need it more. Forgive my lack of compassion.
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
>>>Get off my internet, it was invented by the Government in case you've forgotten. I can only imagine what the corporation created internet would look like. AOL but worse?
>>>
As per usual with extremists, you take my viewpoint all out of alignment, and setup a Strawman argument. I said your neighbors should not have to pay YOUR bills (for a new car or new computer or doctor's bills or whatever), because they are not your Serfs and you are not their master.
I never said your neighbors should not have to pay for their OWN bills, such as using the net, or the post office, or the army (to protect their home). Although I think taxes should be as close to 0% as possible, there are still some legitimate, constitutional services that need to be paid for (the previously enumerated ones).
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
>>>Your life wasn't thrown into utter turmoil, you didn't have to short-sale your home or default on your mortgage, your family didn't go hungry
Bzzz.
I had about half-a million at my time of layoff.
I really didn't need government assistance at all.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall