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Supreme Court: Affordable Care Act Is Constitutional
This morning the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the Affordable Care Act is constitutional. The health insurance mandate, also known as "Obamacare" was found to be "permissible under Congress's taxing authority." The full ruling (PDF) is now available, and the court's opinion begins on page 7. Amy Howe from SCOTUSblog summarized the ruling thus:
"The Affordable Care Act, including its individual mandate that virtually all Americans buy health insurance, is constitutional. There were not five votes to uphold it on the ground that Congress could use its power to regulate commerce between the states to require everyone to buy health insurance. However, five Justices agreed that the penalty that someone must pay if he refuses to buy insurance is a kind of tax that Congress can impose using its taxing power. That is all that matters. Because the mandate survives, the Court did not need to decide what other parts of the statute were constitutional, except for a provision that required states to comply with new eligibility requirements for Medicaid or risk losing their funding. On that question, the Court held that the provision is constitutional as long as states would only lose new funds if they didn't comply with the new requirements, rather than all of their funding."
Further coverage is available from CNN, the NY Times, and Fox.
First dissent
If you don't do what the government wants, you will find a new "tax" will appear to make you do it.
I already have health insurance. It's expensive and overly complicated, but I do have it. So, will this actually change anything for people like me? Hopefully I won't be picking up the tab for so many others who opted not to buy insurance before getting sick. But otherwise I don't see a huge impact.
What ever happened to the public option? You know, cutting the profit motive out of funding health care, so that people do not have to fight with their insurance companies or with hospitals just to get the treatment they need?
Palm trees and 8
I got MY healthcare.
You and your family can take a FLYING LEAP.
The most selfish American generation says SCREW YOU!!
Medical insurance is not only incredibly frustrating to deal with, but a huge unnecessary expense in the system.
Maybe you could, I don't know, skip the article?
Brilliant brainstorm, save the most important piece of democratic legislation written in decades by calling it a tax. The fact that a conservative Republican is the one that came up with this is true irony.
It's not a tax. Obama even said so. We have a honest man in the house. Why are you all doubting him?
Life is not for the lazy.
Can we please stop with all the fucking political news stories now polluting slashdot? This use to be a great site that delt with technical stories, now it's just legal bullshit between samsung and apple and political garbage such as this and non-stop global warming nonsense.
You're Right!! Let's go back to the good old days of SCO vs IBM.
One, Justice Roberts took something that was not written as a tax, only defended as one, and changed the legislation.
Two, Justice Roberts confirmed that every time Pelosi, Reid, and Obama claim something isn't a tax, they are liars. Which most of us already knew.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
Quite surprising to see Roberts cross the aisle on this decision. For all of its flaws (and there are many), the Affordable Care Act is a step in the right direction. Health care is one of the major issues of our time, and it's not realistic to suppose that a single piece of legislation can resolve it.
tax:
noun
1. a sum of money demanded by a government for its support or for specific facilities or services, levied upon incomes, property, sales, etc.
2. a burdensome charge, obligation, duty, or demand.
As the mandate is to give money to private insurers, and not the government itself, it does not fall under the Constitutional definition of a legal tax. I'm a bit shocked to see the SCOTUS uphold the law under an obvious and blatantly false definition of taxation, although after Citizen's United, nothing those berobed assholes do is really all that surprising.
So, the real question is: Our government is imposing an illegal tax on the people in direct violation of the Constitution; what do we do now?
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
I find it interesting that it was found Constitutional under taxing power. I don't recall anyone pushing that angle to support the law in the court of public opinion.
There, FTFY.
But, I wanted socialized health insurance!
The whole problem with this is the insurance angle. This becomes a guaranteed income stream for private insurance companies. They have so many ways to hide their finances, people will pay ever higher costs for reduced care. There are a thousand studies saying health care costs will increase in the future, not including inflation. There are many ways the government could improve health care and reduce the cost of it, but this is not it. If the government was the insurance company that would be different, all they would have to do is add .5 % to the current medicare deduction. Simple. Let anyone that wants join a government health plan (with no existing condition clause). Simple.
The individual mandate was designed (by Republican think tanks) to avoid freeloaders, who we've all been paying for when they show up in the emergency room.
I also have insurance and the 2 big things it does for me are that it'll be tougher for an insurance company to deny benefits based on a pre-existing condition (which has been interpreted ludicrously loosely at times) and that if I (or someone close to me) ever does have huge medical bills, it will be less likely to bankrupt me.
I'm already taxed for not having a mortgage, not producing "clean" coal, not having children, and numerous other things that we as a culture have decided should be incentivized. The former two items in your list would be a clear violation of the first amendment, which this case did not rest on, whereas the third would be constitutional(but also kind of silly).
Nobody had to. According to Roberts, it is the court's duty to seek out and find any possible angle to keep a law constitutional. If it fails by one interpretation, use another. Only if everything fails is it struck down.
Everything is better with chainsaws.
It was an "interesting" lawsuit to begin with. The entire basis of the lawsuit, that the mandate was unconstitutional, is a legal theory that was concocted and purchased in to public awareness via conservative media outlets. When the law was being written, this sort of challenge was not even on the radar and had no legal precedent whatsoever. Plenty of other insurance mandate style laws already exist. (We're compelled to buy all sorts of insurance for all sorts of reasons)
Now, though, that the mandate-is-tax ruling is a supreme court ruling it opens the doors to more legislation of that type in the future. The repubs own that one for putting up a flimsy case to begin with.
While I understand your sentiment I think legal proceedings have been a focus on /. for quite some time. This is also highly relevant to all freelancers, contract workers, and those that are self-employed. Which I'd imagine is a good chunk of the reader base.
I'm actually shocked that the legality of the House to levee the tax passed. If anything I thought they'd walk it back and require that provision removed. It seems ill advised to apply more blanket tax burdens to support individuals without the means or forethought to prepare for the future. Given how these sorts of Government run systems balloon out of control.. I suspect this one might implode faster than Social Security.
Yet another reason to stop voting for any of these candidates in this 2-party system. Yea, if we vote Romney in, I'm sure he'll overturn this debacle. But at the same time he'll figure out other ways to funnel our tax dollars in to industries that him and his party supports. Burn it all down.
*plays the Apogee theme song music*
You want a technical aspect? Computerized medical records are one of the most complex software systems being worked on right now. There is an entire programming language that was developed for that purpose:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUMPS
Palm trees and 8
It was argued as a side argument at SCOTUS. basically the argument was that 'this is permissible under the Commerce Clause, but oh, even if it isn't then it is a tax and is permissible as that'. Always smart to give the court multiple possible reasons something can be constitutional as this case clearly shows.
"There are laws that enslave men, and laws that set them free. " - Sean Connery as King Arthur
Congress and Obama denied it was a tax at the time of passage but the first day of the supreme court arguments was whether it was a tax or not (and if you look back at the coverage, the unanimous opinion was: not a tax).
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
It's a new tax to cover the healthcare costs of those who end up in the hospital without insurance.
You can get a tax break for having your own insurance, as proof that you won't be costing taxpayers anything when you end up defaulting on $200k of hospital bills after an accident.
I don't know why the democrats couldn't shape the message that way. That's really what it is, and sounds better than "pay up or pay up".
Nonsense.
There are all sorts of contingent taxes.
It is clear you have a human conscience.
We'll talk about that whole Citizens United thing later.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Chief Justice Roberts: “It Is Not Our Job to Protect the People From the Consequences of Their Political Choices”
There you go... bring on the consequences!
So who's job is it to look out for the best interests of the country? Is that one of those mystery jobs that Americans just don't want to do?
Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats. -HLM
The federal government has done this for decades. Goes back to Nixon, who got universal adoption of the 55 MPH speed limit from all states--despite highways being a state responsibility--by threatening to withhold federal highway taxes.
your argument is the same kind of argument as "if gays can marry, soon you can marry dead people and animals!"
or "if marijuana is legal, soon meth and coke will be too!"
it's bullshit fearmongering. your point of view depends upon the fact that people don't think and can't tell the difference between different subject matter and weigh them separately
of course they can. well, maybe you can't
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Whether or not you like the Act, it is a great victory for freedom.
Conservatives bitch about activist judges, until they get the majority. Then liberals bitch about activist judges until they get the majority.
Judges should let the legislators legislate, as much as possible!
The Federal Government must not allowed to bootstrap powers merely by passing a tax. That is a horrible precedent that muddies things even further.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
have been for decades
when someone uninsured shows up at the hospital with a broken arm, then avoids the bill or declares bankrupcty, we bail out the hospital from bankrupcty and you pay the bill
the only thing that has changed is that irresponsible people, people who think freedom means not to taking responsible for their healthcare, now have to do that, and stop freeloading off of us
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Probably so--the individual mandate was a Republican idea to begin with.
I admire the Democrats for helping to tackle health care reform. There are some really good things in there--preventing insurance companies from rescinding coverage, allowing parents to insure kids up to 26, etc. But as a Democrat, I have mixed feelings about today's decision. I do not like the individual mandate, as like you, I feel that Congress shouldn't have the power to make you buy something from a private company.
I was actually hoping that the law would stand as-is, except for the individual mandate, which I was hoping would be overturned. At that point, insurance companies would be screwed--they'd still be forced to cover those that they traditionally worked so hard to drop off the rolls, but without money coming in from those who are statistically healthier and less likely to pay for insurance. At that point, one of two things would happen: either 1) the insurance companies would lower prices on their policies to reasonable levels to be more conducive for healthy people to buy, or 2) the insurance industry would basically petition government to expand Medicare to cover those that they don't want to. Either way, it would be win/win.
Ultimately, the only answer is a single-payer system. As long as you have private companies in the insurance business, there is a perverse incentive to screw their customers over. People whine and complain about government's incompetence, and I'd never say there's no waste or that government is perfect. However, I trust government a hell of a lot more than I trust the insurance industry, which has proven time and again that they're scum.
For political reasons, it couldn't be called a tax. The Supreme Court wasn't impressed by the semantics.
I don't practice what I preach because I'm not the kind of person that I'm preaching to.
I don't think the ACA is a bad bill, but it misses many opportunities for better healthcare reform. The biggest for the Tech community in my opinion is that it keeps up the relationship between health insurance and employers. In the Tech industry we need the ability to change employers fast and to start up new companies inexpensively. It makes it harder to start a new tech statup if I have to offer employees healthcare. As an employee I'm less likely to work for a new start-up as I fear it failing and losing my health insurance. Also, in technology we have a lot of people working for themselves, these people have always had trouble getting insurance. We need to eliminate the relationship between employment and health insurance. It should be illegal for employers to give you health insurance. Everyone should buy on the open market, there should be no more "groups". In short we should buy health insurance like we buy car insurance.
I don't see why people that get government approved insurance don't pay it. If it's a tax and not a shitty way to coerce people into the program then it should apply to everyone.
To only apply it to people that don't get the policies is a bill of attainder.
You are nuts. There are GOBS of taxes that not everyone pays. Do you pay Alternative Minimum Tax? How about the Luxury Tax? Estate tax? etc., etc., etc.,.
Get a clue.
"There are laws that enslave men, and laws that set them free. " - Sean Connery as King Arthur
...We're compelled to buy all sorts of insurance for all sorts of reasons
None of which compel you to buy insurance for merely existing.
The big issue is that now the gov't can tell you what to do vs what not to do. This is a big legal quagmire.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
1. Canada and the UK have socialised medicine handled by the government. You don't have to buy insurance, you just pay taxes, fill out some paperwork, and voila, medicare (however, in Canada, different provinces have different schemes for drug insurance) I don't understand this idea of forcing Americans to BUY insurance. Isn't it usual that if the government forces people to BUY something for whatever reason (eg: you have to goto drivers school to get a drivers license), then the thing they are buying will suddenly sky rocket in price?
2. What are HMOs?
3. Why are Americans so convinced that amoral profit seeking corporations have their best interests at heart, and not an elected government whose power is given to them by the people?
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
If you don't think government is driven by profit, you're dreaming.
When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators. P. J. O'Rourke
"There are laws that enslave men, and laws that set them free. " - Sean Connery as King Arthur
Well, not entirely absolute. You can always vote for someone else.
I assume to know who will get 'taxed' on this? There are swaths of exemptions, eg if you already have your own insurance you won't to pay the monthly $286 per family tax, military is exempt, VA exempt, religious organizations who oppose are exempt, the poor are exempt etc. The people who the tax is targeted at are those who can pay but refuse because they'd rather be parasites on the rest of us who do pay, such as yourself I can only assume.
Justice Roberts had this little gem hidden in his commentary.
"The individual mandate cannot be upheld as an exercise of Congress's power under the Commerce Clause.That Clause authorizes Congress to regulate interstate commerce, not to order individuals to engage in it.
But in the odious 1942 Wickard V Filburn case the Court ruled exactly the opposite. The Court decided that Filburn's wheat growing activities reduced the amount of wheat he would buy for chicken feed on the open market, and because wheat was traded nationally, Filburn's production of more wheat than he was allotted was affecting interstate commerce. Thus, Filburn's production could be regulated by the federal government.
In essence, they ruled that he can't grow wheat for his own use he MUST BUY IT IN THE MARKET.
I wonder if this ruling can be used as precedent to challenge Wickard v Filburn?
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
So it's only absolute power to oppress a minority.
Which unfortunately doesn't answer the question. Health care is not health insurance. Health insurers are, for most of us, one of health care's customers. If this law leads to greater consumption of health care, meaning more people showing up at the doctor's office door, and there isn't slack capacity ready to serve it, economically you shouldn't be surprised if doctors start raising their rates. Just think about it. If you can work 2,000 hours per year but have 2,200 hours of work available to you and some of it pays better than others, where do you set your price? You set it so the least profitable 200 hours of work decides you're too expensive, but the most profitable 2,000 sticks around.
So, yeah, it's a bit of a pipe dream to think we're going to start providing coverage for 30 million people and it's somehow going to cost less. Getting those 30 million preventive care might make a difference, but that will depend on them actually choosing to get the care. After all, some people who don't have health insurance choose not to. Some people who don't go to the doctor don't go because they aren't sick and just don't choose to get regular exams.
...why did we need the law?
My favorite is the conservatives who, upset that the SCOTUS upheld the individual mandate, say they're moving to Canada because America is just too socialist.
Churches are already tax-exempt, so I have to pay for services that they use that they don't have to pay for. So, in essence, I am already paying for churches that I don't go to. Also, some places have passed laws requiring you to have a gun.
At least the ACA forces private health insurance companies to spend 85% of the premiums they receive on health care and limits overhead to 15%. A lot of people received rebates from their insurers this year because of that provision.
Tax code is where most political power resides. Companies buying political favors are usually looking for tax breaks. States use dueling tax incentives to lure people/companies/film production to their state. Individuals receive various tax breaks for being good little wind-up-robots and doing what they are told.
Anyone who believes we will ever have a flat tax doesn't understand they are asking government to neuter itself. It just isn't going to happen.
is they can't get cheap preventive care
now they can
so they get $100 worth of care and stay healthy and stay working, rather than $100,000 worth of care later when they are already sick, because they don't have the financial resources to attend to their healthcare
sanity prevails
thank you justice roberts, you have a human conscience
we'll talk about the citizens united thing later
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Vote for someone else? What someone else?
This is like saying "You can always pick up the turd by the clean end."
doing those things, then why shouldn't you have to pay it?
Or do you think the rest of us should have to subsidize your desire to save a few bucks by destroying the earth and not pay a cent for your health care? Because I guarantee that when you have some devasting health problem you will show up at an ER and demand quality care.
I am surprised and disappointed by this ruling. But not for the reasons you might expect.
I want the US to have universal health care, but I think the mandate was a back-asswards way of getting it and I dont think it will be successful.
It would have been far better to just make it a tax. This mandate only helps the health insurance industry slow its inevitable downward spiral.
Accoding to a 2007 study by Kaiser Permanente, http://www.kff.org/insurance/7692.cfm
Healthcare spending has risen steadily and has outpaced wages. This means that less and less people can afford healthcare, and in turn less people will be purchasing insurance. Of course this is cyclical, since with less people buying insurance, the insurance sompanies will ahve to increase their premiums.
And so the health insurance industry is already in a downward spiral that will eventually collapse.
I fear that the health insurance mandate will not stop this downward spiral, since it will be less expensive for healthy people to just pay the fine than to buy insurance. Eventually, the US government will have to intervene.
Taxpayers already pay for a large percentage of the populations medical services. If you count Medicare, Medicaid, Federal, State, and Local governments, that makes up over 100 million users, or 30% of the population. As less people can afford healthcare, the government will be shouldering a higher percentage.
Dont fool yourself. You are paying for this one way or another. Either by taxes, or by rising insurance costs. If your company is paying the premiums, you may want to ask them why you did not get a raise this year and they will tell you it was eaten up by premiums. insurance is after all a 'tax' that you pay in order for 'services' to be available when you need them. The healthy people end up paying for the sick people with chronic problems caused by obesity, diabetes, heart disease, lung and liver diseases, all could be prevented by good diet, exercise, and staying away from drugs, alcohol, tobacco, fat, and sugar. How does that make you feel when your hard earned dollars are going to pay for someones lung cancer treatment who has chain-smoked for 20 years?
Not that I am bitter or anything. i paid more for health care in the last 5 years than I did in taxes. The last 2 years I paid more in health care than I did for my mortgage. And that is with an employer sponsored plan and a healthy family. But the good news is that this will HAVE to change. We know it and there is a clear path to where we need to go. In the next 5-10 years we will have universal healthcare whether we vote for it or not.
oldhack: "Security is a waste of money until shit hits the fan. 5 minutes later, it becomes waste of money again. "
Obama's lawyers said that it is independently authorized under both the commerce clause and the taxing authority, and then made the case [with precedent] that in cases where a law would be constitutional under one clause of federal authority but unconstitutional when read under another clause of federal authority then the Supreme Court is obligated to interpret under the clause which renders the law constitutional, regardless of the language within the law or political verbage utilized when debating the law outside the courtroom.
The majority opinion said that it was unconstitutional under the commerce clause, but clearly constitutional under the taxing authority, regardless of the labels used.
That argument makes a lot of sense to me as an engineer who is far more concerned with mechanics than with labels.
coverage--why haven't they?
"Healthcare" is a limited resource, consisting of the time and money of doctors and nurses, of the people involved in the creation of medical devices, compounds, and procedures. To say you have a "right" to healthcare is to say you have a right to the time and money of other people. Your right to free speech doesn't mean anyone has to provide you the means to speak, the right to keep and bear arms does not mean you will be furnished a gun. This is huge step in blurring the definition of a "right", and in my opinion just pushes us further towards a world with no consequences for failure or motivation to succeed.
Health insurance is not required for healthcare. They are two separate things. If a tree crashes through your roof and you don't have home owner's insurance, you can still get your roof fixed.
What we've done with Obamacare isn't "making healthcare affordable". It has nothing to do with looking at "why" various components of healthcare are expensive, it just bluntly tries to spread the money around and artificially cap expenses. We've basically made private insurance companies tax collectors. Everyone must pay them now. That means you and I are part owners of that big pool of money, and we will be responsible for making sure it never gets drained. With the added burden that now everyone must be covered by health insurance, the 9 pack a day smoker who eats 12 sausage links at each meal and can't leave the house will be free to drain that pool for their cholesterol medications, Mucinex, eventual cancer drugs, etc. But it is up to us to pay more and more to keep that pool full.
There are very few people who legitimately can't work. That group gets even smaller if you throw away the ones who very squarely put themselves in a position of being unprepared for life, whether through their financial idiocy of not saving a dime their entire lives, or just a series of boneheaded moves. There are some people who are poor, and nothing they could have ever reasonably done would have prevented it. But there are very few of those people, relatively speaking. Since we can't distinguish those who absolutely CAN'T do for themselves... the ones who actually NEED welfare... from those who have turned society's safety net into a hammock, our system of welfare is slowly eroding the beauty of life and living free... living and dying with the decisions you make. There are risks in life, there are unfair things that happen, there are unlucky out of nowhere things that will totally F you through no fault of your own. I would hope that people can donate their time, money, skills, kind words, to people in those situations. However, forcing "charity" like this is wrong on so many levels.
We have moved beyond charity. We have been marching towards becoming a society which has grown so used to comfort, so used to easy existence, that when something bad happens it must be someone else's fault, someone else's responsibility to fix. You're the victim because you paid for college and the degree didn't get you a job. You're the victim because you developed cancer. You're the victim because you don't have any money at retirement, but man those apartments you lived in your whole life sure looked good full of rental furniture. You're the victim because you made a sure-thing investment in a house, the value went to shit, and now you're under water.
We have abandoned tightly knit social circles, living within our means, and exchanged them for 700 Facebook friends who don't give a shit about us, 4 flat screen TVs in our apartments, and a thought that retirement is when we are given a bunch of money and get to stop working. We don't have any idea what emergency savings are. We lose our minds and are in complete despair that a car problem will cost us $250, but man Starbucks coffee sure is good every day. We think a 25 year old should still be living under the financial wing of his parents.
If people decided to throw their money into a pot and use it for charitable giving for medical purposes, that woul
What should concern everyone, and the reason John Roberts supported the mandate, is that it sets a precedent to allow privatization of taxation.
The "Left" supported it because the mandate was attached to health care, but this is a step towards corporatism much bigger than Citizens United.
So, You could exist before this law without paying tax. You never generate income (income tax), never own property (property tax), never purchase anything (sales tax), never drive a car (gas tax + have to buy insurance). You can't exist and not pay taxes. Face it man. That is not a real argument.
No sigs in BETA. Beta SUCKS.
It was voted on by two houses of Congress from the legislative branch (all elected) and signed by the President (also elected) from the Executive branch, and then had its legality endorsed by the Supreme Court from the Judicial branch.
Just because some Fox News opinion polls show that a majority of inbred tea-partiers don't like "ObamaCare" doesn't mean that democracy isn't functioning as intended. You just aren't in the majority on this one.
Also, Libertarianism is stupid.
It is called a surplus when you are talking about governments. And we actually had one in recent history.
But then we decided to go shopping at the war and tax cuts for the ultra rich shop.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
gasoline is already taxed (eventhough this tax doesn't cover the full society cost of gasoline): so isn't that tax an unfair imposition on your freedom in the same way that this health care tax is?
> If he doesn't have a tankless heater, he's the one paying the gas bills for the heater.
> If he doesn't have a programmable thermostat, he's the one paying the utility bills.
The taxes on those items don't cover their societal cost. If you think they do then you are naive.
> Yes, you mentioned the ER. The fix to that isn't to impose insurance, it's to remove the requirement that the ER treat those who won't pay their bills.
Now you've crossed from naive to stupid. I would bet every dollar I have that your opinion on this changes as soon as you or a loved one is in the position of needing emergency health care.
GP is implying that he pays rent instead, which most people do if they do not pay a mortgage. Often monthly rent payments are similar/higher than monthly mortgage payments, but without the tax breaks. So yes, indirectly you are taxed for not having a mortgage.
They're called elections--you may want to look into it.
The government already engages in all manner of taxation based on their accounting of societal cost. How do you think the raise funds for social security and the defense budget? And they already use the tax code to encourage behavior modification (mortgage interest deductions, etc.).
They certainly could pass a law requiring that you pay taxes sufficient to fund their "brocolli initiative", whereby they give every citizen 10lbs of brocolli. There is nothing in this ruling that says they can force you to eat it, and you are free to vote them out of office and change the law. That's how democracies work.
Except that it isn't public health care. It is private health care, mandated publicly. You'll notice private companies handle health insurance like Aetna, Blue Cross, and so on. And they still will. These companies are not going away.
Which is, ironically, why this legislation sucks.
Americans pay 16-18% of our per capita GDP in health care costs. France and Switzerland, the two consistently highest rated health care systems on planet Earth, which both offer true universal coverage to all their citizens, cost their people around 11% of per capita GDP.
You will not hear these numbers being touted by Democrats, Republicans, or the media. It isn't in there interests for you to understand how bad things have really gotten in the USA.
At least the ACA forces private health insurance companies to spend 85% of the premiums they receive on health care and limits overhead to 15%. A lot of people received rebates from their insurers this year because of that provision.
profit == 0.15*X, hmm, how do i increase X? i think the worst part of this bill is that everyone involved has the incentive to increase the amount of health care provided.
me fail english? thats unpossible
Do you hear that sound? It's the sound of millions of far right wingers hyperventilating at once.
In the (d)evolution of each State's history, there is an act that is one too far, when an out-of-control rogue state becomes recognizable. Like Nazi Germany, perhaps for some in Germany it was some public killings of Jews in 1933 or the Fuhrer Oath, for some Europeans it was the Czech Republic in 1938, and 1939 in Poland for anyone with a pulse.
With literal fascism in America, this event does it for us. Been at it for decades with the foreign wars, taxes, medical and securities industries. My spouse has health requirements that are existential and not FDA approved, approvable in the US for corrupt, bs reasons, so course not coverable, although approved in Europe and Asia. The bogus US conventional medicine difference is $40,000+ per month for those in the US, and a dog's death anyway. Live with "Health Freedom" or die (miserable and broke) is the message we get before any "panels". Good luck fellow Americans, you'll need it, some can't even live there. Live free, or die, has new meaning in America.
Do you think part of this may be that the French and Swiss are on average much healthier than the typical U.S. citizen? Since our average population is so incredibly unhealthy the overall risk to insurance companies is much higher, causing costs to rise for all involved.
I'm not stating this as a fact, but asking the question.
I for one look forward to our new DMV styled medical overlords. I hope I don't have to visit a medical center with an artery spouting blood....and get put at the back of the line because my paperwork wasn't filled out quite right.
Yes, I am sure that is what is going to happen. The Tea Party called, and they want their hysterical idiocy back.
This is why the right wing comes off like a pack of retarded children. They take the perfectly acceptable point of view that government should be minimalistic and non-intrusive, and warp it until they look like a pack of asylum escapees.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Oh I agree. But even the little baby steps we're taking with Obama's health care reform act are being met with all kinds of illogical resistance. It boggles me. People standing in the streets with signs wanting to repeal Obamacare. Even though it has provisions like how you can't be dropped or denied for a pre-existing condition. How in the world could someone be against that? I could see a CEO of a health care company not liking it, but the rest of us? How?
We're so screwed up in this country that you can actually get nearly half the people in the streets shouting that this is a bad idea. I have no idea how you accomplish that, but there you go.
So yeah, anything more invasive like what France has and it's ARRGH SOCIALISM and people would totally lose their minds. Even though it would be in their best interests.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
It takes considerably less money to give money to the poor to spend on preventive care and ordinary medical care than it does to have them wait until they are really, DESPERATELY sick, quite likely beyond hope of avoiding or reducing the impact of an illness, and then use an emergency room, without warning and at the general public's expense, to attempt to fix their problems before they become abruptly fatal.
Yes, money is still being spent on the poor under the health care act, but considerably less money than is currently the case. So it is a net savings to the general public.
I am seriously disappointed by the vast majority of comments here. Slashdot generally presents some semblance of caring about facts and citations supporting any claims, but as soon as the ACA comes up, it seems like everyone abandons reason and logic. I want to provide a viewpoint applying those two methods to this topic. Hopefully others interested in the same will chime in.
First, to all the foreigners chiming in claiming to have this same law in their countries, I want to reply, no, you don't, and it doesn't matter if you did. No two laws anywhere are exactly the same, so what you have is not going to be the same as what we have. If you are going to make that claim, I am going to demand you provide a citation for the one or more laws that have the exact same text as ours, along with supporting evidence that it is interpreted legally in the same way. Now, you may fairly claim the intent of the law is the same as the intent of the law in your country, which shifts the discussion to how well the law actually implements the intent, and I'll address that in a moment.
Next, I'll give foreigners the benefit of the doubt and assume the law is identical to one in their country that "works". A problem ignored by foreigners is that basically every other law this country has is different from their laws. The United States is governed by a Constitution that is different than the underlying laws of every other country. So even if it works in your system, we can't just wholesale "borrow" your law and magically expect it to work here. We need a law that is carefully crafted to respect the restrictions in the Constitution (or else pass amendments to the Constitution to provide an exemption in this case) as well as maintain our economy.
For a third point, I'm sick of the partisan whining from the Democrats and Republicans. No, the Republicans are not uncaring bastards who don't care if people die. Neither are the Democrats trying to set up a nanny state where they have complete control of other people's lives. Both parties set up a false dichotomy in which there are only two options when there are actually many more. Republicans value personal freedom as the highest value, where Democrats value livelihood. Both of these are valid viewpoints, and having a different opinion does not turn another person into a monster. If you can't talk about the other party without vilifying them, chances are you are a brainwashed servant of your political party.
Fourth, how well does the law implement the intent? This is the point that disturbs me most, and why I am largely against the law. The law ballooned from one hundred pages to over two thousand in an extremely short time period (something like thirty to forty-five days, if I recall correctly). Basically none of the legislature read the law before passing it. No one bothered to look into how well it met the intent. No one tried to run simulations to estimate how well it would work. No one knows what it will cost (we hear one trillion dollars, but that is just as much a guess as the eight hundred billion "needed" to bail out the banks). Even worse, no one knows what sort of side effects there are. Essentially, the government is gambling that this massive law is going to magically make things better, but given the lack of data about it, there is a fifty percent chance it is going to negatively impact the country, as well as a fifty percent change it will positively impact that country - and then only by drastically simplifying things to the level of American "news" organizations. A law this massive can't even be judged by such simplistic terms. Realistically, some things will work great - I am a big fan of the clause guaranteeing health insurance in spite of pre-existing conditions. Other things will be big problems - the time to see a doctor is likely to increase, something foreigners conveniently forget to mention (or just flat don't realize) in comparison to the current American standard (and what's more, the rich of other nations know it, which is why they traveled to
Remember, you can't look dignified when your having fun! Don't take life too seriously, you'll never get out of it alive
People do not like not being excluded due to pre-existing conditions.
People do not like being force to buy insurance.
Sorry, you can't have it both ways. Otherwise young healthy people wait until they have a problem and then expect to start paying the same rate as everyone else. The function of insurance is to amortize the costs of unexpected (randomly occurring?) events over time and over population. This is broken both by people selectively participating and by companies selectively allowing people to participate. You must eliminate the cheaters on both sides or you really screw one side.
Not passing judgement, just pointing out one of the fundamental issues this law attempts to address.
Calm down and have another diet Coke with your double Whopper.
We had a good friend, Ilona Daukiene, who died that way. She was a very gracious hostess, and the beloved wife of an amazing man. We enjoyed his "Freedom in English" camps in Lithuania.
The story is here.
Yes, global warming plays into the story. But a huge part is the destruction that planned economies create.
No, the tea-baggers aren't exaggerating. What they've been saying is real.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Well two things.
First thing, if you don't have health insurance and you get sick, who pays? That's right - I do. And everyone else who contributes to the system. But you don't. It's not fair.
Second thing. Health insurance just got a whole lot less scammy now that the reform act is in place. Go read it - you'll see. There's a ton of lousy crap they're not allowed to do now.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Heres the problem,
If you don't allow insurers to price their services based on pre-existing conditions then insurance will become a good deal for those with pre-existing conditions and a poor deal for those without pre-existing conditions. So people without pre-existing conditions won't buy it until/unless they develop a condition. Of course once that happens the price will go up and health insurance will become a poor deal for those with minor pre-existing conditions. Repeat ad-nauseum until health insurance is not an option for most people.
Mandatory insurance combined with not allowing insurance to price their insurance based on pre-existing conditions is basically socialism by the back-door. Of course forcing hospital emergency rooms to take uninsured patients without paying them to do so is also socialism by the back-door.
Not that I think socialism is bad but if it is to be done it should be done by the front door and appear in the governments budgets.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
No, I don't think so. US healthcare is unreasonably expensive even if you consider it not as fraction of GDP, but as cost relative to level of care offered. You can count how many doctors you have for each 1000 inhabitants, you can count how many times various procedures are performed, you can slice and dice it however you want, and still the conclusion is that the costs are much too high, relative to performance.
Swiss people *are* more healthy, but that doesn't explain why they get 3.6 doctors for each 1000 people while USA gets 2.3 doctors for each 1000 people -- despite paying less for healthcare, for example.
Want a horror story?
Since the federal and state governments embarked on their massive intervention in the medical system, they have DICTATED prices to medical service providers. You get $X for performing procedure 'A', no arguments.
They also passed a law called EMTALA which DICTATES that hospitals provide treatment to anyone that shows up in the ER, regardless of their willingness or ability to pay.
Guess what the result is? A hard working middle class person who needs medical services has to pay as much as 10X or 20X (no exaggeration. for medications it can be 1000X) the price that Medicare/Medicaid pays for the SAME service!
I therefore got stuck with $30,000+ worth of bills when I needed a life saving medical procedure in 1997. What would the free market price have been? Maybe $5000? At least something manageable that I could pay in 2 years (vs. TEN)
Working people pay the taxes for government programs so that deadbeats can get free services and then get shafted covering the losses those programs force on the providers? Thank you federal government. You're doing so well, that I want to give you MORE control over the system.
I'm from Canada and I can attest to that there are lines. They can be frustrating. Sometimes you get lucky (my last visit a few years ago, 20min in and out, was awesome, was for an xray I think). However that is not the norm. My typical visit would be in the 3-5 hour range I would suspect, most of that just siting in a waiting room.
However it is called Triage. You are served according to need, not anything else. So yes if you came in with an artery spouting blood, you would be quickly at the front of the line.
The only problem (at least from my perspective, and it isn't really a problem, its just frustrating) is that by its very nature Triage is about helping those who's illness is most serious risk to them. I got the same problem with my private airline a few years back with a canceled flight.
I'm a single male, in early 30's, with no conditions, pretty healthy, no kids, etc... So in other words, not only last, but falling fast. So not only is my number not a good one, it would get bumped by just about everyone for anything (unless I'm actually dying, which hasn't happened yet). Usually I am in there for sporting injury, and while some are very painful (particularly while sitting in a waiting room) not really life threatening. However an older person with a cold could die from it, as could a baby, etc...
The other frustrating part is because of demographics, and increased life expectancy, we have a lot of old people. Now I love old people particularly my relatives, however from a clinical view, they get sick a lot, and when they do get sick, they use up a lot of hospital time. That's just life. The other frustrating part are paranoid parents. If their kid/baby even gets a sniffle, they are in the hospital. Perhaps a LOT more so if they actually had to pay for it. Perhaps if I had kids I might feel the same way but I don't, and to be honest, when I was a kid it wasn't that way. When I went to the hospital It was because I needed A) stitches for a wound, or B) a cast for a broken appendage. I recall (sort of) having a temperature above 100 and not going to the hospital, and having ice baths at home. Now I'm sitting in a waiting room with a concussion or a broken foot, next to another guy like me with a nail through his hand, while a parade of worried mothers take their young kids with the common cold to emergency... that and a steady stream of older folks with various aliments.
Anyway the bottom line is I ain't gonna die from a broken foot, and the buddy next to me isn't gonna bleed out from a nail through the hand, so we sit patiently and wait, that's how it works. Why else do you think they are called patients? :)