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Wikileaks Receiving Gestapo Treatment?
An anonymous reader writes "Wikileaks announced on Mar 21 (via its twitter account) its intentions 'to reveal Pentagon murder-coverup at US National Press Club, Apr 5, 9am.' It appears that during the last 24 hours someone from the State Department/CIA decided to visit them, by 'following/photographing/filming/detaining' an editor for 22 hours. Apparently, the offending leak is a video footage of a US airstrike."
I'm in the Land of the Free(tm).
Sigh. And certain groups are screaming that this new health care plan is 'oppression' and taking away from all of our rights.
Near Norway,
How did you end up so not farked up.
Signed,
American.
Most young adults I know(which is a lot, I'm one of them) don't have health insurance because low wage employers don't provide it.
It took me about 6 years of working to find a good job with good pay that also provided health insurance. Every other place I worked prior either didn't offer it or didn't pay me enough to cover the balance of the very small subsidy they provide. Taken into account that a lot of young teens are working for ~$9/hr or less($1440 gross monthly before tax! assuming 40 hours/wk), healthcare just isn't affordable.
Look at the economics of it. If you rent an apartment and have a roommate, you might pay $500 a month for rent and electricity/water. That leaves you like $600 a month for gas, transportation, phone, and food. When your budget is this small, paying even $200 a month for health insurance is a deal breaker.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
Most young adults I know(which is a lot, I'm one of them) don't have health insurance because low wage employers don't provide it.
There's no such thing as free. SOMEONE is paying for it.
My employer provides health insurance and I have to pay a significant premium for it. I've just learned that my premiums are going to jump over 200% percent next year to pay for your health insurance due to the new legislation that just passed. I can barely afford it now. Forget about next year. Hope you enjoy your "free" insurance.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
It took me about 6 years of working to find a good job with good pay that also provided health insurance. Every other place I worked prior either didn't offer it or didn't pay me enough to cover the balance of the very small subsidy they provide. Taken into account that a lot of young teens are working for ~$9/hr or less($1440 gross monthly before tax! assuming 40 hours/wk), healthcare just isn't affordable.
See, I have a hard time believing that. I have a GED, and I've had health insurance since I was 18. Worked as a mechanic for three years, and have been working as a mail merge programmer for five years. I was making serious bank when I was a mechanic (41k my first year, 49k my third and final year), and I'm making around 30k now. Again, health insurance since I was 18.
And I'm a REALLY lazy bastard. If I can do it, there is no reason someone else can't do it (again, assuming they are on a 40 hour work week...being a student is a different story)
Living With a Nerd
The irony of it is, that having these people pay in to a plan would probably make the plan cheap enough for them to afford because they're still healthy and would be using less healthcare than the folks who have it. The more healthy people you have on a plan, the cheaper it is.
Does this sig remind you of Agatha Christie?
It does effect you. When people without health care go to the emergency room, you end up paying with higher health insurance premiums. These higher premiums lead to even more people being unable to afford health care. It's a cycle that had to be stopped.
That's not true. By denying someone coverage due to prior conditions or via recission, insurance companies skew the risk pools. When uninsured people show up needing emergency medical care and can't afford to pay it, it drives prices up for everyone who has insurance and can pay.
The government should regulate anything that one person's actions directly affect another person's rights. ie. FDA makes sure some company doesn't sell you shitty drugs. however, health insurance doesn't affect me if you don't have it.
If you live in a bubble this is true; if you live in society, it's not. If enough people don't have insurance that enough people don't get vaccinated then it will affect you. You may say that doesn't matter because you have insurance so you'll have the vaccines. Do you have children (or will you)? You can't get the measles vaccine until you're one year old - what happens when your three month old comes into contact with someone who couldn't afford the measles vaccine? Even for other vaccines that there aren't an age requirement - if it's given enough human hosts it can mutate to the point that our vaccines aren't affective.
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There's no such thing as free. SOMEONE is paying for it.
That's correct.
For example, persons in positions of high pay will be taxed and pay more than others will by virtue of their higher salaries. That tax money will, in part, fund health care for the low-paid people who are just entering the work force. This is a good thing; this is the way stewardship of a government-imposed fiat monetization system is supposed to look. There should be taxes to redistribute wealth acting in opposition to the inherent structural toward concentrating the wealth in the hands of some few.
In terms of making a smart investment for the national future, I think the current legislation missed the mark. So-called "health care" reform really amounts to "health insurance" reform. Where is the money to perform basic research on the mitochondria, on diabetes, on common weaknesses of virus families; where is the money for actual care as opposed to payment?
The answer, my friends, is that there is no money for those things because the congress was not paid by any lobbying group to consider such expenditures.
Meanwhile... Wikileaks claims that our CIA engaged in a non-military illegal killing. Really?
So, to stop this cycle, we're changing from "we have higher premiums because some people use the ER for free" to "we have higher premiums because we're subsidizing the people who used to use the ER for free"?
Note, by the way, that even the White House has said that they expect health insurance premiums to rise by an extra 10% as a result of this "reform".
Note also that this "reform" doesn't include a single element that is even intended to reduce health insurance costs.
And note that it doesn't expect to provide universal health insurance either. It's expected that not much more than 2/3 the people currently without health insurance will have it as a result of this "reform".
Finally, I note that people are already talking about "reforming the reform". Which is probably a good idea, but wouldn't it be smarter to see what, if anything, it actually accomplishes first?
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Didn't you know? Hillary swings both ways.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
I'm not even aware of the Republican's claiming the bill just passed will increase premiums for existing policy holders, certainly not by the scale you mention. Assuming you're not trolling, it sounds a lot like your employer wants to do some cost shifting and this reform is a convenient scapegoat.
Perhaps you could ask your employer what provision of the Bill is raising your premiums so you can raise this with your representatives? Or perhaps you could write to your insurance firm directly?
Insurance also allows hospitals to charge patients 200$ for a tooth brush. You may create a bigger pool of usable money by putting more healthy people in it, but nothing in that plan addresses the obscene amount of waste caused (in part) by insurance in the first place.
If a medical bill is under 50 000$, insurance companies typically don't even look at the invoice. And now they'll have even less of an incentive to pay attention to the costs since insurance becomes mandatory. I'm quite happy for those who'll finally get covered instead of suffering, that's a good thing... But I really don't kid myself as to who this bill really aims to help the most and it's not them.
You never ever drive the cost of something down by having the government (tax payer) pay for it.
Mind the frickin' laser...
Neither. I'm saying I have a hard time believing that someone who is mildly intelligent would struggle to find a job that offers health insurance in a semi-affordable capacity.
I'm a freakin' high school dropout, and I've had health insurance since the month after I walked out of the building.
This isn't so much a "you're lying!" sort of thing as it is a "wha? How is that even possible?" sort of thing.
Living With a Nerd
The Senate bill has been around for how long exactly? Certainly that's not based on the proposed house reform, but it could very well be based upon the actual senate bill. Of course, the elephant in the room is that the proponents of HCR are ignoring that it was fucking stupid to link insurance to employment in the first place. but hey, government knows best. They knew what they were doing then and they know what they're doing now.
So they made it better by making those that already pay, pay more in case someone who does not pay will show up at the emergency room and can't pay? Hmm, sounds perfectly logical...
So, to stop this cycle, we're changing from "we have higher premiums because some people use the ER for free" to "we have higher premiums because we're subsidizing the people who used to use the ER for free"?
So you think its more expensive to send people to the doctor BEFORE they have to go to the ER... ER Costs > Doctors costs . I mean either way your going to pay for it, which would rather pay for? Dont shoot the messenger here, Im not saying its right, or fair or whatever. Its the facts of the situation, and honestly ive been one of those "poor" people, i just finished paying off my medical bills from 4 and a half years ago. My credit is ruined, im underemployed beacuse of my credit rating (Had interviewers specifically state this), And Ive lived well under the poverty line, even though I made more then the poverty level. Im not saying its right for people to not pay the bill. Im saying when you have a medical bill in one hand and a rent,power,gas,water,phone,food bill in the other, you have to choose one, and honestly which would you choose? All of this would have been avoided, if I could have afforded to go to a doctor before it got serious.
All of it would have been avoided if insurance weren't tied to an employer. And you could have gone to a doctor, you just would have had to pay out of pocket. ERs are required to treat you. I don't know any doctors that would turn you down though. I'm sure you could've worked something out with a doctor.
But now you have the pleasure of being required to buy health insurance, otherwise you can go to jail. You'll be subsidized of course, by everyone here, so you'll have far less incentive to find anything more than basic coverage. At least until the system fails and the country goes bankrupt. Then you'll be right back at square one and everyone else will be screwed. The government has successfully replaced a government created problem with a new government created problem.
But. . . but. . . but. . . Obama promised this wonderful plan would save me, an already-paying-for-health-insurance-quarterly citizen, a heap of money! Are you telling me Obama LIED? Say it ain't so!
Insurance companies can no longer deny coverage due to preexisting conditions, which means they must now provide coverage for far more people where they are going to dole out serious dollars.
How would that not significantly raise premiums across the board?
That would be my first guess.
I'm all for trying to help provide health coverage, but I would have preferred tort reform to get premiums down in price. As for kids who aren't covered, my wife and mother-in-law both work for a rehab clinic. Most kids who come there initially have no health coverage, basically because they never applied for it. So the rehab clinic does the paper work and gets them on medicare. They either weren't aware they qualified, or never bothered with the application process.
In addition to medicare, my state (Nebraska) also has additional programs aimed specifically at kids such as Kids Connect. When I was out of work and had zero income, I apparently still didn't qualify for medicare because I previously had high income, and I should have opted for Cobra. However, my daughter got free coverage from Kids Connect, even though I didn't qualify for medicare.
There are tons of existing programs like these that most people just don't seem to realize exist.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Because it wouldn't surprise me if some employers used this health care bill as an excuse to jack up the employee-paid portion, so that they pay less.
Either way I pay more. I don't care how it works, I don't want to do that.
Why can't we just have a nationalized health care system that covers only catastrophic issues? I have several friends in this "young" age group who have been able to get catastrophic coverage for $50-75 a month. I feel that should be a reasonable thing to aim for for everyone. Then the private insurance companies could stay in business selling additional coverage for people who want the doctors visits and the prescription coverage. Seems like a good plan to me.
On a side note, I would argue that there are VERY few people who can't afford some level of health coverage. They might not be able to afford the coverage they would like (or had previously), but they can afford catastrophic coverage. They might CHOOSE to not prioritize it in their budget. Maybe they would have to give up their iPhone to get coverage. Maybe they would have to get a 3rd room mate instead of having a bedroom to themselves. If it was a priority, people would get it done. The problem is that it isn't a priority, because while society says "Get insurance", it's secretly whispering into their ears "If you don't get insurance, we'll still cover you if something bad happens".
The difference is that you don't need to drive to get a job (well, for some, but not most), but you need to be able to get out of bed to have any job.
You know what happens? A person has insurance for decades (paid by the employers, usually), they get sick - cancer, for example, they stopped being able to go to work, they employer stops paying the insurance company, the person dies.
It has happened many times.
It's really nice to tell people: "So you had the bad luck to have a cancer? Well, not only you have cancer, you'll have to pay more!"
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Ok. So when these people show up at an Emergency Room with a bone hanging out of their arm, and do not have cash in hand, they should be turned away. It is their responsibility to have the foresight to have insurance. it is not mine to have higher rates because they are leeching off my insurance company making my rates higher.
Hence the penalty for being uninsured (even though it's relatively small). I'm also not sure if there's a cap placed on such coverage. For example, if you have a preexisting condition that requires on average 20x the average yearly medical expenses, I don't think there's anything to stop them from offering you a new plan in a high-risk pool with 20x the premiums. By the same token, though, the ban on dropping your coverage for new medical conditions (you were seemingly healthy, now you are revealed to have a rare condition) is a very good thing (again, assuming the penalties were high enough to actually dissuade the insurance providers).
You're absolutely right that the whole state-by-state thing needs to go. We didn't fix the broken system, we just got more people who were in the even more broken system (uninsured) into the slightly-less-broken system (insured).
Write your representatives! Repeal the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics!
And now the costs will be driven up even more since sick people will be able to get insurance after the fact.
This is only an issue because tantrums thrown by Republicans and Teabaggers made a simple single-payer system politically impossible. This despite the fact that it is successfully used in many countries, including retirees and veterans in the USA. (Blah blah, "Medicare is broke!" That's because people live longer. Just raise the retirement age and the problem is solved.)
In fact, just about everything wrong with the healthcare reform bill is the ironic result of political pressure from its opponents.
You'd have to be living an extremely sheltered life if you don't know a single "mildly intelligent" person whose employer does not offer health insurance. And even if you don't, you really mean to tell us that, given health insurance's extreme cost, you can't even IMAGINE how some employers wouldn't offer it as a benefit?
::sigh:: NO. You are responding with a knee-jerk reaction. Re-read what I said objectively, and without applying an opinion you have already formed.
In fact, don't do that. I'll just write it in a way you can understand.
What I'm saying is that someone with even a slight bit of decent intelligence has the capacity to find a job that offers health insurance at a rate they can afford. Again, I'm a high school dropout. I'll say it again. HIGH. SCHOOL. DROP. OUT. I live in one of the highest cost of living areas in the country (Montgomery County, MD). I am insanely lazy, my intelligence is right smack dab in the middle of average, and my professional drive amounts to "if I can pay my bills, and save a little, I'm earning enough money." I have had health insurance since the first job I got when I left high school, which was a month after I turned 18. Again, keep in mind: I'm a high school dropout with a GED and not a single college credit.
If I can do it, so can just about everyone else.
Note: If you read my original post, you will see that I clarified that this applies to people that are A. working 40 hours a week and B. are not students. Working part time and/or being a student are entirely different situations.
Living With a Nerd
>>>When uninsured people show up needing emergency medical care and can't afford to pay it, it drives prices up for everyone who has insurance and can pay.
That's one way of looking at it.
Another way is that it reduces the salary of the Medical Corporation's CEO and other managers. I admit I don't cry upon hearing this news. Let the Corporations shoulder the burden of the poor for a change, by giving-away free ER care.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
See, that's just it though: if you can't afford health insurance because you are dedicating yourself to going to college (something I never did), then I personally have NO PROBLEM picking up the slack to help cover your healthcare costs.
I never went to college because I despised schooling...why would I pay thousands of dollars to go back? No, for me (for now, anyway), I make more than enough money for my lifestyle and am quite comfortable. People like you, on the other hand, who have the drive and determination to say "fuck it" and put their life on hold for 4-10 years so they can get an education? You folks have my respect, and I will gladly pay a bit more in taxes if it means you can get taken care of from a health point of view.
No sarcasm in this post. I'm serious.
Living With a Nerd
And now what is the trade off we have?
Well, it looks like we ALL will now have even more increased health coverage costs, both directly and indirectly. If you already have insurance through a company that is even halfway decent...you'll have to pay more for it. Indirectly? Just hearing on the news today that restaurants in the SF area are moving to adding a food service surcharge to all meals or items sold...so as to offset the cost by now having to offer freakin' health insurance to waiters/staff. Yep, so eating food out is gonna get more $$$.
Taxing people's insurance now that had good/decent coverage..etc. And most all of this right on top of the middle class income EARNERS.
It also means, the govt is gonna start taxing more on your retirement investments (dividends, etc)...so, you're gonna have even more trouble saving for retirement.
Frankly, I'm thinking this is an even more expensive tradeoff than you mentioned that we originally had.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I've already heard rumblings of a federal VAT tax coming in on top of all of this. That's about the ONLY way they're going to be able to raise this kind of money to keep us from going into the debt hole and never getting out.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
And they rise 20% a year anyway, so isn't 10% less than normal?
So you think its more expensive to send people to the doctor BEFORE they have to go to the ER... ER Costs > Doctors costs .
sigh...
so we have just mandated that people buy insurance (which will be more expensive) so they will likely opt for the cheapest policies available, the ones that only cover catestrophic care like cancer/ms/etc. So they are not going to be going to the doctor any more frequently than they already do cause that would be out of pocket, they will still only seek care when it is an emergency.
the more things change the more they stay the same.
Tell you what: you are freed from any and all obligations towards the rest of us, and we're freed from any and all towards you. You don't have to worry about a guy who's bleeding to death, and the police doesn't have to worry about your complains that you were mugged on your way to work, that your employer didn't pay you your dues, that your car went missing from the parking lot, and that your house was robbed empty and taken over by squatters who don't let you in while you were at work.
You libertarians want others to respect your rights, but are unwilling to accept any responsibilities towards them. That's not how life works, never has and never will. Accept that and try to reach some kind of compromise with other people, where you get some of what you want and give some of what they want, or keep on complaining that nobody listens to you.
Then again, as you demonstrated, many of you appear to be borderline if not outright psychopathic, so I'm not sure if it is possible for you to really function independently in society; total lack of empathy and severe disconnection with reality usually demand rather extensive external support structures. That isn't really compatible with trying to change that external world, since you'd only end up twisting those structures into an image of your illness, and thus making them unable to keep you from acting it out.
I truly hope that I'm feeding a troll here; then again, Poe's Law applies to libertarians just as much as any other ideological or religious extremists, and it's not like your view is really any different from any libertarian willing to abolish social security to get rid of taxes, even if most will not put it as bluntly, and many will commit amazing logical contortions to avoid drawing the obvious conclusion: that the poor will die like flies on the streets. That's assuming, of course, that they can get on those streets without paying whoever is maintaining them in the absence of taxes.
In short: Fuck you, you psychopathic libertarian scum.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Once enough people are getting "free" health care and the government is determining who should be cared for and who shouldn't, rationing will take hold.
What do you call the fact that people who get sick and cost a lot are getting dropped from their insurance? What do you call the fact that people with some condition who lose their insurance cannot get coverage? What do you call premiums rising and coverage dropping each year?
That's all rationing!!
It's just the insurance companies doing it to increase profits rather than the government doing it to ensure solvency of the health care system.
Right now the system does it's best to force out the sickest people, and is doing an amazingly good job of it judging by the number of people who have been dropped from their existing coverage or who can't get coverage. These people are the ones that end up in emergency rooms for the care they need, can't get any preventative care to help keep them out of the emergency rooms, and who will probably eventually die because they can't get the care they need.
The insurance companies are all too happy to collect your money for as long as possible until you need your coverage. Then they notice some problem with your paperwork and boot you out of the system. Then it's up to the taxpayer to cover you. Screw that. I'd rather have coverage regulated by the government than that. Insurance companies trying to make as much as possible while they kick the sick folks over to the taxpayers to cover is bullshit.
If you want coverage, go out and buy it. If you're not happy with what insurance companies are doing, lobby the government to allow competition across state lines. Government control always ends badly.
How is that any kind of solution for all those people with pre-existing conditions? They can't buy insurance! They've either lost their job and their insurance along with it, or they were booted out by the insurance company when they got sick. What's the solution for that?
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Actually they repeatedly stated it will not raise insurance premiums. Where the 10% keeps getting play is that it was stated that the default you don't get shit but we get paid insurance plans for individuals would actually drop in pricing. And because of that drop in price the good insurance plans will also drop in price. So now for only 10% more you can get an individual insurance plan that actually covers things.
The thing everyone for got is this is not "health care". It is insurance reform. No more saying, "well the kid was born with a cleft pallet, and that's a preexisting condition so the insurance company doesn't have to pay." Or well the basic individual insurance plan cost $650 a month and covers you and your wife. By the way it does not cover birth control and it also does not cover pregnancy. It only covers if you get hit by a bus and happen to live and need surgery.
As an individual you can not get good health insurance. If you are in a group you can get denied for just being born, because that is some how a preexisting condition.
But you just keep thinking it is some how health care. I will see it for what it is. Insurance reform.
love the taste, hate the texture