Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
Track your TV Shows with your iPhone - FREE
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?
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.
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".
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.
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
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
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