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Healthcare Law Appealed To Supreme Court
26 states and a small business group have filed separate appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court, asking it to strike down Obama's 2010 healthcare law. In August, an appeals court in Atlanta ruled that the individual insurance requirement was unconstitutional, making it almost certain that the bill would go to the Supreme Court. From the article: "The Obama administration earlier this week said it decided against asking the full U.S. Appeals Court for the 11th Circuit to review the August ruling by a three-judge panel of the court that found the insurance requirement unconstitutional. That decision cleared the way for the administration to go to the Supreme Court. The administration has said it believes the law will be upheld in court while opponents say it represents an unconstitutional encroachment of federal power."
What other products will they eventually mandate that we buy from corporations, purely by virtue of existing?
At first glance I read "Healthcare Law Applied To Supreme Court". I bet that would get it struck down pretty fast!
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Strike down ObamaCare, and you've got years of unraveling to do (especially in IT, which has been starting work in anticipation of several key dates coming up), as well as a apoplectic progressive left. Uphold ObamaCare, and you've got a drum upon which every libertarian and conservative will beat any time there's the slightest increase in health insurance costs, and who knows what kind of crazy social conservative will be the one to carry the mantle of the White House (even though most people just want fiscal conservatives).
The sad part, though, is that none of this fight is about health care - it's about insurance. We could mandate universal auto insurance (even for non drivers, since they are either passengers or pedestrians who interact with cars), or we could mandate universal fire insurance (even for non homeowners, since they might start a fire that spreads, or be affected by smoke inhalation from someone else's house), or we could mandate universal food insurance (since hey, everyone eats food). None of that changes the facts about risk and scarcity in our world.
It's clearly established that the US government can force you to pay a tax for services you never use. The health care law is less restrictive than that. It still forces you to pay, but you can choose the entity you pay. If the government can force you to buy something from a single source, then it certainly should be able to force you to buy something from one of many sources.
However, I have no reason to believe that the Supreme Court will come to the obvious and logical conclusion here. That's not their job. Their job is to provide legal cover for the corporate agenda.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Just what we need to drive up costs a bit more.
(Current Most Relevant Search Engine) is my Family Physician, Specialist Omnibus, and triples a plumber.
Dental is where things get tricky.
Just noticed "News for nerds. Stuff that matters." is not in the banner anymore. Don't know how long that's been but at least they're being honest by taking it down.
opponents say it represents an unconstitutional encroachment of federal power.
Don't you mean encroachment of state's power?
Single-payer national health insurance, like Medicare, would have had no constitutional problems. If the "public option" had been retained in the bill, it might have ended up as the only option.
That's not a bad thing; Medicare's overhead is about 3%, while private insurers run a lot higher.
had the argument been framed as "medicare for all" I think it would have gone much better and would have cut back on the people with "keep the government out of my medicare" signs.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Why don't you move to Somalia? Libertarian paradise.
Except single-payer wouldn't have primarily benefited the healthcare industries like the HCR law does.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
While I am a supporter of the healthcare law, ultimately I can't see how it will pass constitutional muster. Anyone remember the Boston Tea party?
Citizens of USA should pay exclusively for the maintenance of the roads they use, the electricity of the lampposts that light their garages' entrances, and the police man-power required to patrol their neighborhoods. Anything else means the communists won.
Disclaimer: perhaps I'm trolling, perhaps I'm not.
Perhaps I'm trolling, perhaps I'm not.
Medicare's overhead is 3% because they don't pay anyone (relatively speaking anyway) to investigate and then deny false claims.
Fewer than 5% of Meidcare claims are audited.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/12/AR2008061203915.html
Everyone always talks about the part of the healthcare law that mandates insurance--the part that was supported in the past by Romney, Gingrich, and, I think, Nixon.
But what about all the rest of it? There's quite a bit of it besides that, like eliminating pre-existing conditions and many other things. Repealing everything is throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
Of course, not including a public option made the new law only a pale substitute for what it could have been. But the public option will never happen, because the huge corporations and their paid big-media mouthpieces (and the millions of gullible believers in that big media) will never let it happen.
I bet they wish they had got behind the public option now.
F_cktards.
Yea, because its not like there was a shit ton of lobbying done by the insurance industry to kill the idea of a single payer system.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
I feel as though if I have a savings account for accidents, why should I have to buy car insurance? Usually I'm told something to the effect of "well they have to make it law or there would be too many people driving around causing accidents and not paying for it". OK, so how is that ok but health insurance is off-limits? Seems like people without health insurance going to emergency rooms are also not paying and racking up bills. Nobody has been able to give me a straight answer. I suspect much of it is irrational hatred of Obama. But I would love to hear a rational argument, either for or against, why I need health and/or car insurance. The government has been mandating one for ages and the other more recently, and so I'm trying to reconcile it in my head (though its likely futile I'm sure, society doesn't have to always do things that are rational and consistent).
The only way this will ever get better in the U.S. is when we have a single payer system, that covers everyone. There is simply no excuse for us to not have it. This is what has been most disappointing about Obama. He's passing center-right and right wing policies (mandates were originally the Republican idea, folks, Clinton rejected it in the 90's), and The Left is taking the blame for it. If we had a real liberal in there, he would have fought for "Medicare For All", and not a 1990's Republican plan.
Private insurance companies also spend much more than Medicare to investigate and deny legitimate claims.
had the argument been framed as "medicare for all" I think it would have gone much better and would have cut back on the people with "keep the government out of my medicare" signs.
Except the Republicans (and blue dog dems) fought to get this option removed.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
"You can't win... If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine."
Ah, if only it involved killing foreigners. Then you don't have to worry about laws.
Bush is really lucky that Cheney did that whole 9/11 thing. After that he did whatever he wanted.
American Dream becomes nightmare
I will translate it for those poor follows that are not gifted with the understanding of the Dutch language:
46 miljoen Amerikanen leven onder de armoedegrens; 41 miljoen Amerikanen kunnen zichzelf en hun gezin niet voeden zonder gratis voedselbonnen; 30 miljoen basisschoolkinderen kunnen op school ontbijten dankzij het National Breakfast Program; 10 miljoen kinderen krijgen ook een gratis of goedkope lunch op school; 48 miljoen Amerikanen hebben geen ziektekostenverzekering; 38 miljoen Amerikanen zijn onderverzekerd voor ziekte of arbeidsongeschiktheid; 2 miljoen Amerikanen moesten dit jaar hun huis veilen; 5 miljoen huiseigenaren hangt dit boven het hoofd; 14 miljoen Amerikanen hebben volgens de officiële cijfers geen baan, deskundigen schatten het werkelijke cijfer op 25 miljoen werklozen.
46 million Americans live below the poverty line; 41 million Americans can't feed themselves and their familye without free food coupons; 30 million primary school kids can eat breakfast at school thanks to the National Breakfast Program; 10 million kids get a free of cheap lunch at school; 48 million Americans have no health insurance; 38 million Americans are insured to low for disease or becoming unable to work; 2 million Americans have to sell their house this year; 5 million are awaiting a similar fate; 14 million Americans have no job according to official figures, experts estimate the true figure at 25 million.
Are these figures accurate? I know that for instance mortgage is a different thing in the US, in Holland the debt stays with you and if selling the house doesn't cover the debt you get to keep paying, whereas Americans can apparently just abandon the house and walk away, the debt is with the house. That changes things a lot, in Holland loosing your house often results in personal bankruptcy.
Neither do I want to pretend that Holland is much better, we have foodbanks here and they were appealing last winter for extra funding and donations to deal with the increased demand. And the Dutch government happily pretended that none of it was needed. Health insurance cost keep going up, hold you hats Americans, De basispremie voor de zorgverzekering gaat omhoog van 1107 euro dit jaar naar 1211 euro volgend jaar, verwacht het kabinet. De precieze bedragen verschillen per verzekeraar en worden later bekend. Ook de inkomensafhankelijke premie stijgt: van 7,05 naar 7,75 procent. the base insurance which covers a LOT but not everything (the basics real medicine is covered for ill or injured people, the fruity stuff less and less) is going up from 1107 euro this year to 1211 euro for the next year.
Insurance by the way is mandatory.
The increase is just more prove for most that the commercialization of health care isn't working at all in Holland. What are the American insurance rates for a single male who won't see 40 again and doesn't like taking to much risk? Both under the new system and the old system?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I looked it up and found that John Adams signed a law mandating sailors to purchase health insurance. Here is a link to the law: 5th congress passed law and an article talking about it: daily KOS article So if precedent means anything it doesn't look like the law will be struck down. Though stranger things have happened before.
.
Through the 1990's, various Republicans submitted health care bills specifying the individual mandate.
The Republicans are, as usual, being quite hypocritical in their objections to the individual mandate in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010. Perhaps it is time for the Republicans to back away from their objection to everything and roadblock generation, and get down to the business of governing.
You act as if uninsured people cost us nothing. Who do you think pays for their emergency room visits?
Yep to the above and some of the money comes out of the margins of the hospital - which is what SHOULD happen for non-profits.
This debate is getting irksome. The medical lobby (AMA) jumps in with non-sense like "we to pay physicians high wages to attract the best and brightest" or "we need to do all these expensive tests because of lawsuits" or "physicians have hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loans!"
1. THE best and brightest go to Silicon Valley to be a billionaire before they're 30.
2. All those expensive tests are a BIG revenue stream and a BIG profit center. The "hedging against lawsuits" is for PR purposes.
3. The payments for med school student loans are chump change to a specialist who's pulling in $500k a year. And as for the GPs and internists - everyone I know are children of physicians who got free ride in Med school. They also LOVE being a family doc.
What's my point? Docs get paid waaayyyy too much for what they do and too much for the training they receive.
Life and death decisions? Really? Say that to a brake mechanic.
Training received? Tell that to a chemistry, physics, biology, or other scientific post-doc.
Expensive training? Well, let's put it this way: med school is the last place where some bright person can almost be guaranteed a career where you'll be rich - unless you're a complete idiot with your money.
Insurance premiums too high? *snicker* Docs just pass it on to us.
And let's look at the insurance industry. They charge too much for their services. Period. Every reason they give for charging as much as they do is horseshit. It's all about keeping the margins for those assholes on Wall Street.
My solution? Single payer government healthcare. Don't like it? Get private insurance.
Secondly, stop caving into AMA lobbying. Allow nurse practitioners and PAs to do more. Please, you don't need an MD to prescribe an antibiotic or some other meds. As a matter of facts, MDs are over qualified for 90% of what they do. In other words, they're too many docs and they're overpaid for what they do.
About a week ago, some Republicans cheered at a debate when Ron Paul implied letting a 30 year old die without the money to pay for treatment. Requiring ERs to treat people is shifting the cost onto other people. This country should be one way of the other. The hard core Republicans know which way they want it to be.
For those that are in favor, answer me this.. Why shouldn't ALL income go to the government first, have all programs paid for, and then (if anything is left over) divided by 340 million is our "new" income. What is your argument against that? Everyone is dancing around the most obvious. We simply can't afford everything we want.
It was inevitable it was going to get there. Guess they wanted the economy to wallow a little longer in uncertainty while they waited to take this up. Too bad Obama blew his wad on a coverage bill rather than focusing on spiraling costs. Now no one is gonna touch that for several more years.
The net effect of a lack of a mandate is that we absolutely cannot eliminate preexisting conditions (something with near-universal support).
Maybe a Constitutional lawyer will come along and straighten me out on this, but that seems to be a clear-cut instance of regulating interstate commerce.
If the "public option" had been retained in the bill, it might have ended up as the only option.
That's not a bad thing
Unless, of course, you were an insurance company, or on the take of insurance companies (in other words, most of Congress).
If Congress were really trying to create the highest quality health care system the world has ever seen for the lowest cost possible, we'd be talking about how to introduce a completely socialized system into the US. That's because all of the top-notch health care systems are completely socialized, and even within the US the most socialized systems (like the VA) do far better than the most privatized systems in terms of providing care at low prices. There are ways of getting kinda close to that with a highly regulated private system, but there's very little question that's the best you can possibly do.
I am officially gone from
If the SC kills the healthcare law, the Republican model will be considered dead for good, having been rejected by Clinton and now the Supremes. The elections would then very likely include a proposal from the Left in the form of single payer unless something else can be envisioned.
Currently it looks like a win-win for Obama et al.
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
Right now, we're at about 300 million population. By some estimates, about 30 million are uninsured. That's about 10%. Let's say that ALL of them become insured under Obamacare, or whatever it devolves to. This should represent, on average, a 10% increase in health care load.
I don't think you can make a legitimate case that this will create "queues of ambulances" or any other kind of major change in the quality, delivery, or cost of health care.
But it sure will make a difference in many of the lives of those who were previously uninsurable, or simply uninsured.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The GOP doesn't make money off healthcare. Life insurance is a different story.
Come on, we all know where this goes...
Except the Constitution explicitly gives congress the power to collect taxes. It is not at all clear that it has the power to "mandate that individuals enter into contracts with private insurance companies for the purchase of an expensive product from the time they are born until the time they die".
All laws where similar things are done (such as requiring car insurance, requiring contractors to be licensed and bonded,etc), differ in significant ways. Some are enforced by the state, not the federal government, who have different powers granted to them. Some only apply when participating in an arguably optional activity not to everyone alive. Some are only required to engage in business, and thus more clearly fall under the interstate commerce act. This is an open legal question, one that was bound to challenged when the law was passed. The faster it gets resolved in the Supreme Court the better.
However, I have no reason to believe that the Supreme Court will come to the obvious and logical conclusion here. That's not their job.
No it isn't their job. Their job is to interpret the law and constitution as it is written, not according their own personal opinion/logic nor yours.
Not the auto insurance thing again.
If you don't have a car, you don't have to buy auto insurance.
I guess if your dead, then you don't have to buy Health Insurance under Obamacare...but don't quote me on that. Odds are that some idiot bureaucrat will insist some recently deceased person is required to show proof of health insurance.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Republicans and affiliated constituents have been trying to tear this healthcare bill down from the moment it was passed into law. Obama blew all of his political capital on this stupid bill. Only now when he knows that he needs to boost his approval rating (if he wants to get elected) does he start pushing jobs. meh what a total waste.
"We are just a war away from Amerikastan. When god vs god the undoing of man." Dave Mustaine
Not only does Congress not have the power under the Commerce Clause to regulate inactivity, but I have the freedom of associate. If I don't want to buy something from any private entity, I still retain that right.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Nothing gets modded up quite like a seething hatred for an ideology we've never experienced in our lives and never will.
(If you think libertarianism/decentralization is an actual threat to your own ideology of consolidated/centralized power, then you are dreaming. History has proven over and over again that governments only expand in power and revenue over their lifetimes, never willingly or permanently relinquishing power.)
Medicare pays above the marginal costs but not the average cost, so putting everyone into Medicare wouldn't work without controlling costs. In other words, everyone else subsidizes Medicare.
It's like the jerk driver who cuts in front of everybody at the last second waiting for an exit. If everyone engaged in that behavior, it wouldn't work.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Hawaii, Tennessee, and Washington have tried partial single payer exercises, but pulled back on them. Vermont is going to try it. California is looking into single payer. I want to see how those states fare, before doing it nation wide.
Libertarianism requires a framework of laws to protect the rights of all parties, and provide for legal recourse should the rights of one party be infringed by another.
Even at its worst, Somalia operated under a combination of religious law (Sharia), feudalism and anarchy.
Please, tell me: which one of the many different governments in Somalia has implemented a Libertarian society?
Rhode Island does not require auto insurance. Others let you self insure.
By the way, what is a "Federal Road"? - and are they not goverened by state laws - not national ones?
Your complaint is rather baseless. Of course if you were to stop existing that would be a plus, since I'm tired of having to subsidize the parasitic tendencies of self important idiots like you in the first place.
The best possible arrangement is two separate pieces of property, one owned by each person, no marriage, so you both have independent addresses, independent security, and immunity from the abuse the government and society will dish out to married persons as a consequence of the actions/positions of just one of them.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
It is not authoritative, but an aid to interpretation. The Constitution is about granting limited powers to governments and securing the rights of the people. The founders thought this framework would "...promote the general Welfare..."
Note I said "governments." There are two levels of governments involved, and each is granted powers. The federal government's powers are limited and very narrowly specified. The states' powers are much broader and undefined, expected to have more to do with the day to day lives of the people.
Universal healthare could be accomplished under the Constitution, but it must be accomplished by individual states. A lot of people complain about "RomneyCare" in MA, but at least he did it within the powers of the state, according to the Constitution.
The federal government was given nothing close to the power it attempts to seize under ObamaCare. Its multiple conflicting arguments defending this have been absurd.
Single-payer national health insurance, like Medicare, would have had no constitutional problems. If the "public option" had been retained in the bill, it might have ended up as the only option.
That's not a bad thing; Medicare's overhead is about 3%, while private insurers run a lot higher.
... and Medicare fraud and abuse is around 20% while Medicare denies coverage at a rate twice that of private insurers, all the while heading directly toward insolvency at break-neck speed.
One more handful of grist for the mental mill. How exactly would you appeal coverage denial in a government-dictated single-payer insurance system? Another insurer? No, there are none. The government? No, they already have a vested interest in the denial.
Single-payer national healthcare has huge Constitutional problems (it is not granted under Article I, Section 8). It also has the virtue of being the worst solution possible.
Except I don't want a system like the UK that has overcrowded hospitals that let people die in hallways. Or wait months to see specialists. Or the tax increases that come with single payer.
IMHO, it would make more sense to get rid of all of them and expand Medicaid (the program for the poor). At the rate we're going, we'll all be on it anyway.
While we're at it, we should consolidate all the social programs, including social security. What we should *not* do is means test the programs. Instead, we should tax cash benefits (ie, social security) as ordinary income. Why? Because means testing beurocracies have proven to be too expensive. Turns out, it's actually cheaper to send social security checks to Bill Gates and then tax him.
Another thing we shouldn't try to do is guarantee equality of outcome. We shouldn't outlaw premium plans for the wealthy. When you try to guarantee equality of outcome, you find yourself in a regulatory and/or black market hellhole. The rich will always do better than the poor. You can't change that. Social programs work well at providing a minimum standard, a "floor", "safety net", or whatever you want to call it.
For example, safety regulations put airbags in all our cars and it hasn't made cars too expensive. Safety regulations do NOT give us all BMW M5s, or force us to all drive Hyundais so everybody is equal. The former would result in a Soviet-like car shortage. The latter would result in V-12s installed under the hood with full power available at the flip of a switch, and well-connected people paying cops to look the other way.
Please read this through.
What was struck down by the lesser court was the mandatory requirement that says everyone must buy (private) insurance. This clause was put in *by the insurance companies* because otherwise the "cannot deny anyone health coverage", and "no lifetime benefit limit" clauses will bankrupt them. Only by forcing the healthy to participate by law would the insurance companies be able to stay afloat.
Now, if this clause is struck down, then insurance companies will all go bankrupt up or must ask government for subsidies, which means we'll end up with basically a government paid health insurance (single payer), or a government run health insurance.
There is really no way the insurance companies can wiggle out of this one. They either have to accept a single payer system to stay in business, or pay the conservative governors to drop the law suites. Oh the sweet irony.
In Soviet Russia, articles before post read *you*!
Taxes are admitted to be required to maintain the basic level of services necessary to secure the rights of the people.
Libertarianism does have a large diversity of thought regarding the degree of the role of the state, but in no case does it look anything like Somalia. Where you see the rights of people being violated by those in power, you do not have libertarianism.
Just try finding a specialist who accepts Medicare, even with supplamental insurance. You may not find one in your city. Quality of care under Medicare is pretty crappy, much like trying to do anything else on the cheap.
And even so we can't afford it. The unfundd liabilities of medicare exceed the total wealth of every citizen, corporation, and small business in America combined. It's somewhat pointless to talk about "Medicare for all" when we have no sort of plan to pay for Medicare as it is now.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Are health and justice.
Without a method of law and justice, there's anarchy. And a civilization can't exist in an anarchy (well, not a big one anyway, and certainly not a world player).
Hand in hand with that is health. When you're sick, you're returned to work, or the ability to go and get the next job.
Without both of those, life would be hard. That's what prompted the NHS in the UK years ago, and much as though it's a popular whipping boy sometimes, and a big money sink, we do have a well functioning medical body that will fix most things.
If you want it faster, by all means, take up private insurance as well (hell, when things go wrong at the private hospitals, they pack the patients back to the NHS where they know it'll be fixed).
If you really don't think the state should be involved in the general wellbeing of the people, then how do you feel about a completely privately owned police force and court system. You think you get it rough now with the MPAA and RIAA lobbying to get through a heavily one sided deal? It would be orders of magnitude worse under a completely private, for profit, arrangement.
Personally, I rate my health as highly as I rate a chance at getting a bit of justice (the legal system doesn't always give you the answer you want, same as a hospital won't always give you good news, but at least everyone should have a shot at getting some, without having to reach for a credit card).
That's part of what I call freedom. If the world falls apart around you, at least you have your health 'eh? What, you can't afford the medication, and you have to put yourself in someone's debt to be able to do so? Hmmmm...
Healthcare should be a function of government, with commerce adding the nice bits on top.. Faster, newer, hopefully better, but definitely more expensive. The real grunt work of keeping the masses healthy should be simple and cheap.. Not necessarily profitable.
Those warlords build their own fiefdoms, with alliances and fealty going up and down. That part of the operation of Somalia is more like feudalism.
Currently health insurance companies are licensed and regulated in each state individually. In many cases the larger name (such as Blue Cross Blue Shield) is just a cooperation between multiple state-level insurance companies. IMHO, those proposals don't fly because insurance doesn't always constitute interstate commerce.
The simple solution is to allow insurance to go national. A company in New York can sell insurance anywhere in the US. That is absolutely interstate commerce, and the federal government could say, for example, if you want to sell inter-state, you must not discriminate on the basis of pre-existing conditions.
But the liberals don't want to lift the state-specific operation. The reasoning is that insurance companies will supposedly all move to the one state with the most lax insurance laws, and everybody will be subject to them. They forget the federal law aspect taking over as insurance becomes a national, inter-state operation.
Our esteemed nutbag AG of Virginia took it upon himself to jump out in front of this suit with his own to grab some attention ( "hello, fox & friends? this is the Cuch... why yes, I can be there by 9")
His suit was recently put to bed by the supreme court... would assume this one will be as well.
Why should people in prison get better health care? then sick people? What about people with jobs with very poor plan?
I'm not sure that's true. There's not any innovation at all going on in health insurance. For a long time, the innovation was just them looking for new and inventive ways not to pay out. And innovation in health care is limited to developing new drugs and treatments, not streamlining old ones and increasing efficiency. Health care in the US is shockingly poorly managed. You might be surprised what cost pressures will do for the industry, if they ever come to pass.
That said, anything is better than what we have now. Even if it does turn into a single payer system, I'd count it as a win, and I'm an anarchist.
Just like you are taxed differently if you purchase a house, buy stocks, take out a business loan, or a zillion other products and services.
Health care is not necessary for civilization, because people will usually heal on their own. It's more of an efficiency and quality of life improvement. People say that it's absolutely necessary are deluding themselves. Here is a list of things that are more important for a society:
actually necessary:
Nutritious Food
Clean Water
Breathable Air
more important than health care (in no particular order):
Shelter
Transportation Infrastructure
Education
Currency
Mineral Resources
Communication Infrastructure
I don't know how much I missed, but there's probably a lot more.
health care is pretty vital to "promote the general Welfare" (US Constition - Preamble)
Your premise is that Obamacare promotes the general welfare. One point of disagreement between proponents and detractors is whether, on balance, healthcare provided by The State results in lower quality care at greater expense. This is far from a settled question and so it is premature to hide behind the "general Welfare" argument.
Why does there even need to be a national health insurance system on federal level? Why can't the states figure that out on their own - those that want it - and then those that do want it work with the feds to arrange for cross-state agreements, account balancing etc?
You know, just like it works in Canada.
Technically, anything forced from you under threat is theft or, more correctly, robbery. Taxing (at least income taxes) is forcing you to give the government money under threat of being put in jail. Businesses are forced to collect sales tax under threat of being fined and put out of business.
However, if you consider your relationship with the government to be consensual, and individual taxes as being consented to, then there is no theft. But in our current system the individual taxes really don't have much to do with the consent of the people.
The end goal of libertarianism is liberty -- the free and consual association of people. At a minimum you need enough government to guarantee that. But government can very quickly be the agent that restricts that freedom and the consensual nature of the association.
Hospitals here are already overcrowded with people dying in emergency room waiting areas, and we're already subsidizing them. Just at a much higher cost than we would for a single-payer system.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
That's only the case if you believe the hype that the U.S. is the world's most free country. Sure, it's a reasonably free and pleasant country, but Americans, even libertarian ones, seem to have this strange tendency to think that only darkness and chaos lie beyond the border, and that's not so. Americans' seeming disinclination to emigrate in search of a better life is all the more strange in that they're (almost) all descended from people who did exactly that, in most cases not many generations ago.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
Having experienced what happens in a socialized, European system through what happened to my grandparents, I can tell you that you really don't want it. When they finally identified the cancer with my grandmother, they only would give her pain medication. They would not treat her with surgery, chemo, radiation, or whatnot. She died in the hospital and there was a state-mandated autopsy. When my grandfather needed anything, they gave him pain meds and sent him home... no matter how my mother or my aunt argued with the doctors. The "death panels" are quite real... though they aren't necessarily called that. They do make decisions in those systems regarding what they will and won't do based on a person's age, condition, etc.
Socialized medicine works fine for an overall healthy population that takes care of itself and doesn't have junk food shoved down its collective throat. Until you can get the corn refiners and big pharma out of their shared bed, the US will continue to be a generally unhealthy population.
OCO is Loco
The United States Public Health Service came into being in the early twentieth century, I believe. What you're referring to was a loose collection of hospitals on the east coast for merchant marines paid for by taxing merchant marines. It wasn't a mandatory, universal payroll tax. The only people who received its benefits were those who paid into it. This organization eventually DID grow into the Public Health Service (isn't mission creep grand?), but its mission has NEVER been to provide universal health care.
This is also the organization that provided fake medical treatment to black men for forty years (without their knowledge or informed consent) to collect research data on syphilis. Obviously a stellar example of the benefits of government health care.
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
Please stop making sense.
Insurance company profit margins are typically in the 3-4% range. I'd love to see a reputable study and an apples to apples comparison. Considering all the Medicare fraud, I'd say 3% is a hopeful and blatant lie.
That number is manufactured by assuming all sorts of impossible things, such as zero economic growth, etcetera. I'm not sure which fake "medicare crisis' number you're pulling out of your ass, but would you mind terribly producing your sources before we just swallow this fantastic lie whole?
One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel / the next it's rolling over me / I can get back on / I can get back on
Hmm, interesting.
The thing with healthcare is that hospitals don't really turn away people from the emergency room. So it could be cheaper for everyone to take that ounce of preventative maintenance to keep themselves out of the expensive emergency care when they let a chronic condition go unchecked.
I think the U.S. is actually doing pretty well with regards to shelter & infrastructure (at least in populated areas). As to the rest, there's that old saying "health before wealth". Invest in getting your population healthy and well-educated, and the wealth will follow. But I suppose that depends on whether you see people as a resource or a liability.
Are health and justice.
Without a method of law and justice, there's anarchy. And a civilization can't exist in an anarchy (well, not a big one anyway, and certainly not a world player).
Hey, anarchy might not be the best form of government, but it's better than no government at all! ;-)
And there is no justice, but social justice. There's not really anything completely logical right or wrong, or fair or unfair, just some increasingly formal system of mob rule by whatever mob is in power. The best you can do is just try to fit in with the mob, and maybe push the envelope in whatever direction the balance of power allows.
You ignore the obvious alternative that we're not considering: rolling back mandates where the government actively distorts healthcare (such as requiring that things like birth control be covered) and letting an actual market for various tiers of insurance develop, instead of the cost-spreading mess we've got now. High deductible low premium plans would be best for most people, and it would likely have the added benefit of getting the market into actual healthcare and letting it drive down costs, something that a single payer still removed from the actual situation is far less likely to do. Add in a health savings plan that keeps more of my money around to help me, and things would be far better than what we've got now. Modern companies make some pretty bad decisions, but the whole concept of an HMO is basically here because the government (at the behest of the AMA, incidentally) got tired of fraternal orders like the Elks providing affordable, high quality healthcare and figured that they needed to get their grubby hands into the pot.
Aren't taxes theft? that's how this thread started.
is criminal. Agreed?
So do you disagree with the original post which says that all taxes are theft?
Too bad they didn't pass each section as a separate law. We're going to lose all the good things of HCR over the healthcare mandate. I know my insurance company isn't going to call once this is repealed and tell me my rates have gone down by as much as they went up due to HCR being passed.
Medicare's overhead is 3% because they don't pay anyone (relatively speaking anyway) to investigate and then deny false claims.
Medicare also doesn't pay very much, nor does it pay very often. There is a shortage of professionals that will entertain Medicare patients for this reason.
You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button.
Because that was the original post.
My experience is that moderate libertarians are unable to agree amongst themselves what things should be paid for with taxes, but they all agree it should be "less". In most ways they are indistinguishable from fiscal conservative Republicans or the slightly washed fraction of tea partiers.
Answer this question, someone who chooses not to (or cannot) purchase any insurance in your Libertarian utopia and then develops a serious and expensive to treat medical condition--should they be allowed to die? Children included? Physically disabled? Elderly?
Why don't you get a fucking job and earn you perks instead of trying to mandate that someone else should pay for you! MAN UP!!! Be responsible for YOURSELF! YOU FUCKING COMMUNIST!!!
If you want a single payer system then WHY DON'T YOU offer to pay for everyone else? That's a single payer system too! Oh wait, I forgot, you want someone else to give you FREE STUFF!!!
As I said GET A FUCKING JOB!!! You hippie COMMUNIST!!!
When park rangers are driving they are on duty, thus the goverment cover's any issues that might come up. And the Fed Goverment "self insures". i.e. they don't pay a private insurance company to pool their risk - they just write a check.
And, there's not an ounce of sarcasm in that statement. It's like a microcosm of politics in our country. One group drops in spewing talking points they've had jackhammered into their earholes since 2009. The other group comes at it with factual arguments whether they're for or against the program. Unfortunately, it's easier, cheaper, and more effective for politicians to appeal to and incite the former group.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
insurance was effectively priced out of my budget 3 years ago, getting fucked for more money every year for less coverage from big box insurance, or getting fucked by the government for yet again ever increasing costs and jack shit coverage? It doesn't matter I still cant afford the shit, and my shit ass employer like most, just gets a expensive ass plan, pays 1% of it and offers me something that cost more than my rent and car does every month
As opposed to the US, where we have overcrowded hospitals, people dying in *and* out of hospitals. And my last specialist visit took me 4 months and I have good insurance; this is extremely common here. Many single-payer health care systems work rather well, at a per-capita cost below what we pay. Please look into this further, assuming you want to do more than parrot talking points.
Any person holding any academic degree (except awarded by Hillsdale College) has no choice but to agree with the following:
Nutritious Food
Ban anything that has a pleasant taste. People MUST be miserable eating. It helps to de-link pleasure from food and thus eliminate obesity since people will HAVE to engage in something that they don't like so there will be less of that activity. The usual exceptions hold for the members of the Party. They by reason of holding power get to enjoy that which once defined individual liberty. It is the reason why some are allowed to eat cheeseburgers and the rest MUST EAT THEIR PEAS, (Science) damn it!
Clean Water
Prohibit human presence from any undeveloped land. Concentrate humans into cities where they can be closely monitored. Remember, everyone is a criminal, everything is a weapon and every act is a crime. The usual exceptions hold for the members of the Party. They by reason of holding power get to enjoy that which once defined individual liberty.
Breathable Air
Ban the internal combustion engine and any form of locomotion the satisfies the human yearning to be free and move about. Remember, everyone is a criminal, everything is a weapon and every act is a crime. The usual exceptions hold for the members of the Party. They by reason of holding power get to enjoy that which once defined individual liberty.
Shelter
Soviet style hi-rise human warehousing, complete with bugs and cameras. and remote control poison gas delivery systems with fast acting window gates and door deadbolts. Remember, everyone is a criminal, everything is a weapon and every act is a crime. The usual exceptions hold for the members of the Party. They by reason of holding power get to enjoy that which once defined individual liberty.
Transportation Infrastructure
The whole purpose of public transportation exists for one reason and one alone: To continue calling driving a privilege. Of course this will be tightly regulated and monitored. Remember, everyone is a criminal, everything is a weapon and every act is a crime. The usual exceptions hold for the members of the Party. They by reason of holding power get to enjoy that which once defined individual liberty.
Education
This is the cornerstone of any utopian society so as to cultivate the next generation of members of the Party. The rest are taught their place. Remember, everyone is a criminal, everything is a weapon and every act is a crime. The usual exceptions hold for the members of the Party. They by reason of holding power get to enjoy that which once defined individual liberty.
Currency
Eliminate public pricing. Prices start at as base for the most obedient and rise for the less obedient. A person who discloses what they pay for something to another person gets both disappeared. Remember, everyone is a criminal, everything is a weapon and every act is a crime. The usual exceptions hold for the members of the Party. They by reason of holding power get to enjoy that which once defined individual liberty.
Mineral Resources
The government is in the business of control [BEWCK! BEWCK! BWECK!][sexual moaning][ooooh][AAAAAAH!]. Weapons come first. If the people get rowdy, kill a large enough percentage of the population until the remaining obey. Every product must be examined so as to determine its danger to the state from its misuse, complete with the reformulation and/or elimination of consumer products to preclude their use as weapons.
Communication Infrastructure
A communication system so intelligent that the Chinese Communist Party will orgasm in perfect harmony over the mere thought of its implementation in the PRC. It would be something like Skynet but obedient to the Party.
After reading this, ever
Repeal that stinking healthcare bill. Destroy Obama. Get behind Paul Ryan's plan to end Medicare/Medicade as we know them. Pay your doctor, ya deadbeats. I'm tired or paying for freeloaders.
an ill wind that blows no good
We have the FDA and the EPA because we don't like the air being brown and having formaldehyde used as a preservative in our food. The free market brought us these things in the late 1800s and early 1900s. There was a story about a river that was so polluted that it caught on fire. The water was burning. We didn't like that. Richard Nixon, a Republican, gave us the EPA. Want to see what life was like before it? Visit Beijing.
I'm sure I couldn't even begin to list the things our taxes pay for that we take for granted. The Libertarians and the Tea Party have this utopian vision of a world without those things, but I bet they'd be squealing like a stuck pig as the Interstate Highway system collapses and grows over, air traffic grinds to a halt and the country breaks up into a very loose collection of nation-states. Services that Mr. Paul blithely says should be supplied by the states if at all would be much more expensive on a state-by-state level, and no state is going to take responsibility for many of the services supplied by the Federal government. The Tea Party, in particular, are nothing but a bunch of spoiled children whose agenda is clearly to destroy this country and everything that made it great. Their reactions during the debates make their intentions and mentality clear. These are not the people you want in charge of this country. These are not people you want in a position of power.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
You'd think the public option would be easy to push through. Just treat it like military service. You pay the monthly fee into the public option (Just make it part of your withheld taxes) and use their doctors. But you can't sue them for malpractice if something goes wrong! Try it in the military and see how far you get! I'm pretty sure the Republicans would be all over that.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
That is an argument I've heard from leftists quite often. They talk of descending to the lowest common denominator of state protections for the insured.
Colorado has a required health insurance policy for university students. If you can't provide proof of insurance you have to buy their insurance which is really expensive.
Have you ever actually dealt with the Medicare system? I have aged parents that I'm trying to help out with that task right now. Trust me, private insurance is absolute HEAVEN compared to Medicare - at least you can find someone on the phone that actually has a clue.
When did "low administrative costs" become the primary measure of merit in a healthcare system???
is to broaden the base. The move was 2 fold, 1) prevent insurance providers from discriminating against people who are part of a group deal, and 2) make everyone part of a group deal.
It's a dirty, rotten, underhanded trick, but he had to, the morons in congress left he no other choice. He literally got to the least he could do, and did it.
Actually, last I checked, that number is manufactured by assuming that Medicare must meet the same standards as a private pension does in terms of money set aside to pay for the eventual payout.
Medicare, if it were a private pension, would have most of its upper management under indictment by the Federal Government for flouting laws governing that sort of thing.
Fortunately for Medicare, the government can ignore its own rules, and just increase taxes as needed to make things work out in the end....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
That's not really the worst case--the new legislation would need to *pass Congress* again, which would be really hard.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
How about 90% of the UN-NECESSARY demand of health care due to your option to harm yourself? Smoking, taking drugs, drinking & driving, eating junk food, drinking coke instead of water? How is the society responsible for preventable consequences and ignorance of some? Too many people are ignorant of themselves yet want the "society" to take care of them, so they have "fun". As far as I am concerned, you are a binge drinker or take drugs, or smoke like a furnace, you deserve no "socialized" health care. Why should the society slow the speed of destroying yourself?
It's not that I don't support Obama or anything, but I think that this set of events is very interesting. Mainly in that the government requires you to buy things all the time. For example, if I want to drive, the government has the right to force me to buy auto insurance. By the same rational, that too must be unconstitutional.
This signature has Super Cow Powers
Luckily It was well vetted when it was the republicans idea.
How is forcing a person to give up money anything other than a tax? Jesus you don't have to DO or NOT DO a damn thing, just spend. Big deal. Id10ts up in here and in the general public. What a surprise ROTFFLMFAO that anyone anywhere believes this is litigate-able in the first place it's like believing in UFOs or Fairies. Courts should be closed entirely to argument about opinion and idiotology.
I have no problem with an opt out provision for health care insurance as long as is is coupled with the provision that hospitals and medical facilities can refuse treatment in all cases if a person has no insurance or proof of ability to pay.
I am 71. I cannot buy health insurance that leaves me with money for food or housing or clothes. I have no disabilities, mental or other and I am writing this note to you Americans on Slashdot. My BP is 120/70, I have only the degradation in functions (ears, eyes, speed) that comes with ageing.
I live in Canada in Quebec. If I need immediate attention, as happened two years ago when the flesh eating bacteria caught hold, starting at my toes, if it were not for universal healthcare, I would not be typing this note and my family would be with memories of me.
I went to the emergency at the hospital, they immediately did a triage, and within 30 minutes I was admitted and within an hour I was on intravenous antibiotics. I was in the hospital for 6 days before being given antibiotics that I would inject at home for another ten days.
Given my financial situation, what would be my situation in the majority of the 50 states? Would I come out with zero debts? My total expenses were around $400.00 due to having antibiotics to inject while not in the hospital. The $400 is tax deductable.
We in Quebec have a prescription plan with the government that is a fallback one. It is obligatory if one does not have group insurance. In my case, there is a max filling fee of $20/mo, plus the benefit of a percentage discount that the government assumes. There is also a ceiling per year for any citizen for his medication costs. (I am fortunate, no medication).
I have free examinations, xrays, mri's etc. I do not abuse the system. What is my cost? About $1,000 per year on my income tax. If I earned ten times more, it would be about $3,500 . Yes, I have a wife, and she is included in that annual medical portion of income tax that I pay.
Ask yourself this, does your private plan have a ceiling on expenses? We in Canada have Cancer patients and they are not subject to "your allotment of money ran out, sorry".
Hurrah for universal health care. Europe, Canada, Latin America, Australia, Israel, Russia (I think China as well) has Universal health care. The people in all countries are the resources, not corporate profits.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
My family and I have worried for years about this... myself for mental health treatment and my father due to Chron's Disease. We're not exactly customers that would be given preferential treatment were we to have to find coverage ourselves, and obviously loss of employment would result in us having to do so if either of us were unemployed long (which is a good possibility in this economy). I really hoped for the fallback of a public option, meant to provide that basic care that we might need, but obviously this Congress wasn't going to get that through so I guess this is the best we can hope for.
Link's in my sig, Toadly one. Check the cites from there - it's actually based on absurdly optimistic numbers, IIRC, because it assumes that Medicare will pay doctors 20% less than it actually pays (the doc fix problem), but you should check the details yourself if you are skeptical.
But the liability would still be impossible to meet at 1/2 the projected size, or 1/3. We're really far away from funding Medicare properly, and we're so vastly overspending the federal income in the first place that we just have to spend less going forward - there's simply no more "more" to be had.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
who couldn't be easily defeated in debate by a 12 year old. It's actually kind of boring.
Okay, fine, whatever, Somalia is only one possible example of Libertarianism--you know, the one which taxes==theft.
Single payer is good idea (WAIT FOR IT) but unfortunately I cannot see how the gov would not mess it up.
With single payer, we would no longer have Medicare, Medicaid, Congressional Medical Plan, DoD medical plans, Federal Worker medical plan, etc. POTUS and a homeless person would get the same coverage for everything. People would go to a doctor for everything that pops up when it happens and that would probably save a lot of money from early detection too.
Of course private insurance would not want this and BCBS, et al is a huge lobby. Plus this would bring about price regulation to doctors and hospitals and they do not want that. So a lot of rich people and corporations would be done for with the stroke of a pen.
nonsense. "just not"? You can't be a touch pregnant and you can't believe in 'touch' of rights.
That doesn't even make sense. I didn't ever say "touch", you apparently just imagined it. To be honest if you are so retarded you can't even read for respond to the things I actually say there is little point continuing this debate. How can anyone talk to you when not only do you insist on re-defining words but you assume that when someone else uses a word they mean your definition, not the commonly accepted one? And then you start imagining things they didn't even say.
What a complete waste of time.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC