Slashdot Mirror
How 3 Young Coders Built a Better Portal To HealthCare.gov
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Doug Gross writes at CNN that spurred by the problems that have surrounded the rollout of the official HeathCare.gov website, three 20-year-old programmers in San Francisco have created an alternative website to help people get health insurance under the Affordable Care Act quickly and cheaply. The result is a bare-bones site called Health Sherpa, which lets users enter their zip code, plus details about their family and income, to find suggested plans in their area. 'We were surprised to see that it was actually fairly difficult to use HealthCare.gov to find and understand our options,' says George Kalogeropoulos, who created the site along with Ning Liang and Michael Wasser. 'Given that the data was publicly available, we thought that it made a lot of sense to take the data that was on there and just make it easy to search through and view available plans.' Of course, it's not fair to compare the creation of Health Sherpa to the rollout of the more complicated government ACA site, which even President Obama has acknowledged as a horribly botched affair. 'It isn't a fair apples-to-apples comparison,' says Kalogeropoulos. 'Unlike Healthcare.gov, our site doesn't connect to the IRS, DHS, and various state exchanges and authorities. Furthermore, we're using the government's data, so our site is only possible because of the hard work that the Healthcare.gov team has done.' But it does cast light on the difference between what can be done by a small group of experts, steeped in Silicon Valley's anything-is-possible mentality, and a massive government project in which politics and bureaucracy seem to have helped create an unwieldy mess. The three programmers have continued fine-tuning the site as its popularity has grown. In less than a week, the site has had almost 200,000 unique visitors and over half a million page views. '"The Health Sherpa makes it ridiculously easy for anyone to compare health care plans covered under Obamacare in 34 states," writes Connor Simpson at Atlantic Wire. "The result is a simple, beautiful, remarkably responsive website that anyone could use.'"
I'm looking at a zip code and it tells me the price for all the plans, but it doesn't even tell me the deductible or out-of-pocket?
Lipstick on a pig is still a pig.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
This only shows why it's important that organisations, especially public ones publish open data - even if the software is broken, as long as the data is open and accessible and in a known format, someone else can pick up the slack and process it as necessary!
This proves the old adage that no more programmers should be involved on a project than you can fit into a VW Bug with pizza and beer.
This is a nicely done website, there is no doubt about that. And certainly the people who implemented healthcare.gov could learn a thing or too from it.
But I do have to ask, how would thehealthsherpa.com hold up when 100,000's of people try to use it at the same time? My guess is that the site is hosted on a single, relatively small server and wouldn't hold up very well. I could be wrong, but I think that scale is worth considering.
I recall when web pages began to become popular technology. Everyone would ask me how I could possible be paid so much money to develop software when anyone with GoLive could put up a website in an evening.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
"so our site is only possible because of the hard work that the Healthcare.gov team has done"
Sorry, no. this information was already out there. How do you think people found insurance online before? Lipstick on a pig is right.
...if their site gets slashdotted....
Unlike Healthcare.gov, our site doesn't connect to the IRS, DHS, and various state exchanges and authorities. Furthermore, we're using the government's data, so our site is only possible because of the hard work that the Healthcare.gov team has done.
Translation: "We accomplished something in a few weeks that the wastes of flesh in charge of this boondoggle couldn't do in two years and with vastly better access to internal information".
Fire CGI Federal with prejudice (no more government contracts, ever, and no pay for their failures so far). Imprison their CEO for fraud against the American people. And give the 100+ million to these three guys. Give 'em the resources they need to finish their version of the project, and a year to repair this whole massive clusterfuck.
You want a good portal design, hire hungry young geeks, not old-guard defense contractors who still consider ADA an edgy new language.
Until hospitals have a constitutional right to let you die if you show up at the emergency room with no insurance, you need to shut the fuck up.
No, it isn't better than Health.gov. It's a glorified frontend. Good work kids.
IMO and I will probably get downgraded because of this comment... WOOOPEEE DOOOO! So you did a nice job, like you said. However, a UI is only a detail. The backend and getting that work is often much more difficult. I get really annoyed by some Silicon Valley types that think I can rewrite an entire enterprise system over a weekend. It involves a bit more than just fancy UI and greenfield database storage.
My guess what went wrong of the the original healthcare website is that it was designed with enterprise in mind and became bogged down in enterprise details. Would not be the first time, and will not be the last time something like this happens.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Umm i don't consider 20 young. I was coding professionally by that age. By "young", i'm thinking high school age.
Regardless of that, anyone with 1/2 a brain could do a better job in far less time.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
It is a vast difference between what they did, and what was required from healthcare.gov.
The principle I see in action here is that if you break every task down into easy-to-implement components that do one simple thing well, then you can have three young coders build each component for you and each will probably work well. If you try to build a system which is more complex than that, the effort grows something like exponentially with the complexity, and the likelihood of early success shrinks correspondingly. If only we could get by with simple things and not bother with complex integrated online services.
Korma: Good
so in my book; that's much better than good enough. The original site should be nuked from orbit and this one should be put up instead. Pure and simple.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
That's cute, but you're not arguing against the policies with that mantra, but instead resorting to a axiomatic-based argument that if it's not in the Constitution, it's not allowed, at all, period, no discussion.
At most, you're showing to me that the Constitution needs revision.
A search for insurance for a 65 year old single person with an annual income of $35,000 returned a "Market Young Adult Essentials" policy and a link to the insurance company's start page for finding available policies. This is not "A better portal to HealthCare.gov"
And then, there's the warning ... "The information provided here is for research purposes. Make sure to verify premiums and subsidies on your state exchange or healthcare.gov, or directly with the insurance company or an agent."
This is not good to go and less functional that even the real HealthCare.gov.
They left all the hard stuff out.
This. This sums up the big problem the ACA is trying to fix and why the individual mandate is important. The majority of the people in the US are just too fucking stupid or steeped in partisan politics to understand it.
They will be. Slashdot's already had plenty of stories about people getting rung up for using and distributing data that's supposed to be public, and that's for things that Republicans haven't pledged to attack by any means necessary. I wouldn't be surprised to hear about criminal charges. And although it's unlikely, if they are convicted, they will go to and stay in prison. Obama's not going to want to save them, or he'll look even worse for all the awful shit his administration has pulled in the same fashion.
In less than a week, the site has had almost 200,000 unique visitors and over half a million page views.
And now that it's linked on slashdot, I'm sure that number will plateau and taper off.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Having worked for government, I can only say that I wouldn't be entirely surprised if a group of enthusiasts could do a much better job than a bunch of contracted government programmers. I often find contracted government work to be a complete mess, poorly documented and often using as many tools as they can charge for. While not everyone ends up like this it is more often than not the case.
Enthusiasts on the other hand are more interested in what works, not so much in what is politically the best tool to use or how much to charge the taxpayer.
Seems to me that the government ought to be in the API business, making all their tools open to developers that can then take the information and the forms, fill them out get details, etc. Make life easy for developers and then let the public create the interfaces.
I could see a lot of great things coming out of such a model.
Hmm, the humour and sarcasm seem to have been be lost on you.
The US shouldn't be in this business. It's a tried and true path, and they REALLY, REALLY, REALLY screwed the pooch on this one.
Those of us who wanted this should have our heads examined... The US government is not going to be more efficient or better at health insurance than what's been in place for generations...
Just wait until enough people die from having to wait for bureaucratic red tape (or any scenario the US can't do as well as private enterprise), and this blood will be on the hands of those who wanted this, and argued for it.
A website... they can't do it right. Health care? Insurance? OMG. The US is full of morons.
Big government is about the worst idea possible. There is so much evidence of this throughout the world, and it's staring you in the face at home.... yet people somehow think this is a good idea.
Get health care out of government hands... seriously. Stop the takeover of the US government before it's too late.
Is that related to the spherical cow?
Did they ever get those cylindrical cats (aka bonsai kittens) to breed?
Scientists are hunting for the tetrahedral camels as we speak.
The site does not appear to be working. Pages load, but there are no results for queries. Perhaps we should complain?
right to life, liiberty and the pursuit of happiness.
You don't like the website then?
"life" means I (or the govt.) theoretically can't walk up to you and kill you for no reason
it does NOT mean that I have to sacrifice my resources (in the form of taxes) to keep you alive regardless of any poor choices you make or accidents that befall you
They will be.
No, they won't.
Wow! Seeing the prices you pay for private medical insurance (And these are the subsidised ones? And they only cover 60-90% of your expenses?) I'm glad to pay less than that through taxes here in my so called socialist country.
My coworker says the exact same thing about the ACA. She insists that the government should not get involved in her life and intrude on something as personal as health care. Of course she wants the government to intrude in someone else's personal life so that it can protect traditional marriage by telling two people who love each other to not get married because they are the same sex. She also insists that the government should dictate the reproductive rights of women too. Why is it okay for the government to intrude in someone else's personal lives but not our own?
Her mixed message makes me doubt the sincerity of her desire to uphold the constitution. She is not alone, I see thing from a lot of social conservatives.
If only the constitution specified some procedure that must be followed to verify that a law is in fact constitutional like have the highest court in the nation review and approve the controversial law. Wait it does, and yes they did.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Bullshit,
If it's not in the constitution, it's left to the states. If you had read the thing, you'd see that in the, oh, say 10th ammendment. By the way, it can be done that way. Notice this state called Massachusets or something like that, where Obama's failed republican policy has been tried. There's no need, at all, for this to be a federal mandate. It worked better as a state mandate than it can here.
There are two parts to the healthcare.gov website. The one where you can simply search for plans available in your zip code, and the one where you actually sign up. The one where you search for plans in your zipcode works just fine, and that's what they've duplicated here.
The far more complex part of the website (the one that requires talking to, and integrating data from, a very large pile of different databases) is the part not working well.
Translation: They created a pretty front-end to a database-driven site somebody else made. Hardly the labors of Hercules.
Actually, the current Constitution says there are no slaves in the United States. The amendments matter.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
And to think that somebody modded this drivel up.
No where does the constitution say any of that, as the constitution says that all men are created equally, it just doesn't define what men are, but it was left to interpretation as to who is a member of race man, and who isn't. It does define state level representation in that you have both senate and congress so by the senate all states are equally represented and by congress states with bigger populations have more of a say, but again, left individual representation rather undefined. It was more of a framework of how states would work together and operate together and how federal level representation would be carried out. Personal freedoms aren't defined in the constitution at any level. You have to hit the bill of rights for those. And though yes, those are amendments to the constitution, they were not originally part of it.
And I think you might want to learn something about libertarian if you want to call them nihilists. We stand for having government involved where it needs to be, and nowhere else. That's a far stretch from anarchy, which by the way, is an extreme leftist view. But hey, why let facts get in the way of your opinion, right?
Article I, Section 8:
The Congress shall have Power To ... provide for the ... general Welfare of the United States;...
Or in other words, the government is allowed by the Constitution to make America better, as Congress sees fit. By passing the ACA, Congress has invoked this power. The Supreme Court has determined that it is fairly applied and within the mandate of the Constitution, so yes, health care is actually an area the government has Constitutional authority over.
Before spouting off about the Constitution, you might want to actually read it.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
You utterly misunderstand what this website does. You punch in your zip code and age, it spits back plans and rack-rate premiums. That's it. That's the part of healthcare.gov that actually works, and has since they rolled out the feature a few days after launch.
The part of the government website that is having all the problems is the part where you actually sign up for the plans. That's what is requiring a large amount of integration, and has been doing horribly. Because of how the law was written (specifically the parts on subsidy eligibility) it's a little more complicated than processing a shopping cart on Amazon. (Business rules validation/integration is the most difficult part of most business applications.)
Translation: "In a few weeks we created a pretty front end to the part of the website that is really easy to write."
I'm not saying the healthcare.gov rollout was done well, or that the main contractor didn't botch the job. I'm just saying that this website doesn't provide any evidence of it.
I will bet their site didn't cost the taxpayers 50 Mil, just saying...
Of course not. That "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" phrase comes from the Declaration of Independence, which doesn't actually require anything.
Rather, it's the Constitution that requires you to give your resources to help others, according to what Congress considers to promote the "general welfare":
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Until hospitals have a constitutional right to let you die if you show up at the emergency room with no insurance, you need to shut the fuck up.
If you have cancer or something else that takes a while to kill you and you dont get treatment until its an acute emergency you might aswell not get it at all...
You should see someone about your paranoia. It's not healthy.
We are all now slaves, thanks to Obama.
This. This sums up the big problem the ACA is trying to fix and why the individual mandate is important. The majority of the people in the US are just too fucking stupid or steeped in partisan politics to understand it.
Hospitals already can't deny services in an emergency. The ACA and individual mandate only serve to try and limit the hospital's financial loss; it has absolutely nothing to do with the patient.
It is an entirely political question related to the boundary of Government. Do you want to force young, healthy people to have coverage to pay the lion's share for everyone else, or do you allow individuals to take responsibility for the choices they make and the risks they take by not having insurance? Is the government in the business of prop-ing businesses up? Funny for most how that answer changes when the subject is large banking institutions.
Once personal data gets to the government, I would fully expect scammers, identity thieves, etc. to get a hold of this.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Even with the Sherpa team's disclaimers, they've provided a really valuable service. How many people are going to go to the Sherpa site, quickly get information about what's available to them on the exchange, and decide that the exchange is not their best option? It has to be some double-digit percentage of people who would have wasted a lot of time being frustrated on healthcare.gov.
Basically, the Sherpa team has given us a great heuristic optimization, in which part of the load problem is handed off to where it can be handled easier, more effectively, and more cheaply. Nicely done!
Is that actually a constitutional thing? Is there anywhere in the constitution that it says a government institution *must* provide life-saving medical care, or is that just part of societally-accepted ethics?
They are messing with the Gov't plain to keep as many off of having some form of health care. So they can hit up as many as possible with taxes (fines) of not having health care Jan 1st.
I was a big supporter of the ACA for a long time till I saw the prices and what you get for it. Fortunately I don't need the government assistance since my employer pays for my plan. But if you have to pay out a deductible of between $3500 and $10,000 for a plan before you can reap benefits, and you have to pay between 100-300/month per individuals, it's like throwing money in the garbage can! You're not getting anything for your dollar.
The planners of this system were blind to the cost effectiveness and availabilty of healthcare. They should have capped plan costs at $500 deductible/year and put a max outlay of $200/month. But you can't buy health insurance with or without the government for that amount of money. Insurance isn't getting cheaper as long as we have politicians supporting the insurance company's greed. And all the politicians, regardless of what they say, don't listen to the little guy! They're all bought and paid for.
I thried both the Colorado and New York sites. Colorados let you "bypass" signing up to see the prices of the plans available. Required just age and zipcode. It worked fine during the first morning "sladhdotting" rush. The New York site (looking for a friend) made you create an account first with all sorts of personal information before you even see a list of plans. It was tedious and possible dangerous.
The only reason this is an issue is that the government is involved in marriage the first place. If there was no government sanction of marriage, then gay marriage would be a non-issue.
Abortion is a balance of rights between the mother and the unborn child. Obviously, her opinion rests on the unborn child having full rights as a human being, so she is basically supporting murder being illegal. Do you support murder being illegal?
There is no inconsistency in her positions as far as you have stated them.
DHS knows who the suicide bombers are, and they get a discount for never surviving.
By ignoring all the hard problems.
Fucking political theatre.
Interesting. Punched in my stats and selected Gold, which is what I have now. My current provider doesn't appear. That said, there are seven plans less expensive than what I have now. I guess the real question is: what are the requirements to get one of these? Do they require a physical and if so, do those results factor into the rates?
Even though this site takes only the easiest task of healthcare.gov, which completely works from healthcare.gov BTW...the "how much are these plans" thing is not what's broken, but the results are wrong. From health sherpa, the cost of a humana bronze plan is 194.72, but from healthcare.gov it is 166.99.
Since the price is relatively close, I guess this site does *something*, but it looks like it is not accurate, in which case it's kinda useless.
Can an editor change the title to "How 3 Young Coders Built a Broken healthcare.gov Portal"?
My Blue Cross is being cancelled. Thanks, assholes. Go ahead, mod me down, hiding the issue, just like all people in power try to hide the dissenters who are in trouble.
In a free country, "for my own good" is my decision, not yours.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
"general welfare of the united states" is, and has, meant a lot of different things to different people.
For some, it's healthcare for all.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
The Constitution does doesn't say that everybody gets medical care.
However, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act says (massively simplifying here) that all hospitals must treat all seriously sick patients.
The Constitution is not the end all and be all of American Federal law.
She opposes the existence of gay marriage. I doubt she cares about someone's tax status or estate rights. Marriage in of itself is a social contract to define what constitutes a household. I see nothing wrong with the government determining the tax structure of a household or protecting the ownership rights of an estate if someone in the household dies.
It's not just abortion, but I love how you zinged right to that part. It's also about access to birth control.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
I read it. Funny, it doesn't have any ellipsis anywhere so that you can fill in the blanks.
It also says that the power of Congress is specifically limited to the powers spelled out in the document.
I suppose you think that the Founders were stupid enough to make a document that contradicted itself. It is far more likely that the comment was indicating that the General Welfare was best served by a limited government.
So before spouting off with your middle school debate quality analysis of the Constritution...well, just shut the fuck up because you know jack shit.
The Declaration of Independence says "all men are created equal." Not the Constitution.
The only thing the ACA is trying to "fix" is the voting blocks for a specific political party. It doesn't nothing to make things "Affordable" or give people "Care" unless you think multi-thousand dollar deductibles and paying for services an individual doesn't need is affordable and that a law mandating everyone have insurance, which will do nothing more than increase demand on hospitals without fixing the supply issue is "caring".
I was pretty interested to see what Obama would do in 2007 about Health Care but as it turns out he's about as bad a president as we could get. Creating name-signature law that was nothing more than written by major corporate billion dollar health insurance companies, hospitals and big pharma. A law written by so many non-legislators that they legislators didn't even know what was in it.
No, the problem with health care is cost. ACA doesn nothing but raises costs and then forces everyone to pay them. What a fucking stupid law. If some politician wanted to solve the problem of health care they'd pass a law banning insurance and make every single American find out what the real cost of health care is and stop shoveling it into insurance companies pockets. Insurance is and should never be a payment system, it should be a security system. No one should have to pull out insurance for a basic 30min doctors visitor (not counting wait time).
The ACA does exactly what it was written to do, make the insurance companies more money. Thanks Democrats! Your campaign coffers will surely benefit. Politics like usual.
* Note, you can point to Republicans doing the same thing for some other topic. It's how politics now function. But it's time people stop trying to rationalize stupid laws because they treat their political party the same way they treat their favorite football team. But who cares, Miley Cyrus is doing something stupid on TMZ, lets go watch...
No, it does not. I'm sick and tired of seeing that lie perpetuated over and over by people looking to pass unconstitutional law. The general welfare clause is entirely dependent on the other enumerated powers in the Constitution, none of which gives Congress the power over health care. Madison himself wrote extensively on exactly how that phrase was suppose to be interpreted, and he should know best, given that he wrote the fucking Constitution of the United States. Please educate yourself on the issue.
Remember, you can't look dignified when your having fun! Don't take life too seriously, you'll never get out of it alive
You might want to actually READ that constitution. See "interstate commerce clause".
And you can thank Blue Cross for that. The ACA didn't cancel your plan, your carrier cancelled your plan because it was no longer profitable under the ACA's rules. Your insurer had the option of improving their efficiency and lowering their costs so that they could meet the 85% rule the ACA requires, but they decided that that was too hard. The ACA's wrong move there was assuming that for-profit insurance companies 1) should continue to exist and 2) would exchange the mountains of new business they're getting for not acting like complete money-grubbing parasitic sociopathic asshats.
tl;dr: Your plan got cancelled because your insurer made a marketing decision.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
Uh, no, it doesn't.
Actually, article 1 section 2 states non free people count as 3/5 a person and indians don't count for its purpose of assigning representatives and taxes.
It was put in place to stop the over representation of people not allowed to vote and the over taxation of area with these people in order to aviod to much power of representation due to owning slaves or having indian reservations/populations in the state who wouldn't be participating in the country.
Outside of indians not being taxed, it had nothing to do with race as whites were also slaves at the time too.
Why should I need insurance to pay for a $100 bottle of anti-venom?
When I was growing up, my parents didn't have insurance. They didn't need it. They paid out of pocket. Why the fuck do you think everyone needs insurance now, asshole? Until you've been charged $83K for a bug bite, you to shut the fuck up. Obamacare didn't do a damn thing about hospitals constitutional right to commit fraud against people who will die without their $100 bottle of medicine.
The website looks nice, but it doesn't actually allow you to compare the different plans to each other. All it shows is the name of the plans that are available. To get any details regarding deductible/copay/out of pocket max you have to call the plan provider directly. I'm not sure how useful that really is.
Excellent. Let's apply 200-year-old interpretations to modern life!
Or, we could follow the modern interpretations of the Supreme Court, since that's actually their job:
Shortly after Butler, in Helvering v. Davis, the Supreme Court interpreted the clause even more expansively, disavowing almost entirely any role for judicial review of Congressional spending policies, thereby conferring upon Congress a plenary power to impose taxes and to spend money for the general welfare subject almost entirely to Congress's own discretion. Even more recently, in South Dakota v. Dole the Court held Congress possessed power to indirectly influence the states into adopting national standards by withholding, to a limited extent, federal funds. To date, the Hamiltonian view of the General Welfare Clause predominates in case law.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
But it doesn't send data to 57 agencies does it? I read somewhere that they have 57 different agencies that are sharing in all the data and information that people put in and search on the website and also the goverment has to follow the 503 rule (I think it's called that the one that calls for disability features and such) also all the diffrent languages is these guys website in? only english? what about Spanish? and so on that the goverment one has to have. I know the article says "bare bones" I'm sure the Healthcare.gov site worked when it was bare bones to. I'm not defending how the site is right now but I'm guessing when it was first frameworked without all the added layers of what the goverment has to have in it could be causing some of the issues. I'm not part of the site just my thoughts on it.
Oh and when I went though both sites the goverment one gave me diffrent cheapter plans than this one did. So the question is how up to date are the databases are or is it just the search Algorithms or maybe even the time of day since I did my Obama search last night and this one right now?
Paul: Father... father, the sleeper has awakened! - Dune
You sir, are a sociopath
Look here. I'm sick and tired of liberal morons painting everyone with the same brush. We're not all the same. I oppose the ACA, not only because it gets the government, the IRS, and the DHS involved in my personal healthcare decisions (which are all bad enough), but because also it takes away my freedom to make my own decisions regarding how I live my own life, puts even more tax on the already-burdened middle class, and limits the charity care that the lower middle class/poor are already receiving. You think people are dying in the streets now, wait until this shit takes effect.
That being said, I also think the government should stay out of people's bedrooms, marriage chapels, and wombs. Again, it's one more place the government doesn't belong. But, you see, it's not that the leftists want government out of all of those places (like I do in addition to my doctor's office), it's that they want the government IN all those places, on THEIR side.
Therein lies the problem, people wouldn't be happy with only being left alone by the government, oh no. They want their own lifestyles mandated onto everyone else. These are decisions that should be made at the local level. If there is enough demand for same-sex marriage in a given area, then of course that local community should be free to allow it. Additionally, if there is enough demand for abortion at a local level, then a doctor should be free to provide those services. The opposite applies, as well. If a given community has no need for an abortion doctor or same-sex marriages, why should they be federally mandated to provide those services? Because it hurts liberals feelings otherwise, and that's the only reason.
Again, I could care less about abortion, same-sex marriage, or any of these wedge issues because they are distractions designed to polarize left vs. right and keep people divided. But the ACA affects everyone, and that's why it is so dangerous. It brings a whole new level of intrusion into people's lives who don't want it there. If states and municipalities decide that this healthcare system is something that is needed in their area, then they should be free to provide it, and people should be free to opt-into it or ignore it, whichever option fits them better. That's freedom.
What limitations on contraceptives has she stated she would like to be enacted as federal law?
Let me Google that for you
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
I don't want to live on your planet. Thankfully, you're in the minority and our country isn't one where we let thousands die in the streets so you can keep more of your precious money.
Partly correct. There is also the additional requirements that the ACA (obamacare) requires all plans carry, even if they make little sense. For example being a young single male, I really don't need pediatric care or birth control. But my plan got canceled and replaced with some monstrosity that included those and other provisions.
State government and federal government are not the same thing. Perhaps when you idiots understand that....
Also, the us constitution does not make the courts an arbitriator of what is constitutional. That is a power the courts just assumed. And the ppaca was only upheld as constitutional by the dupreme court changing the penalty which the administration argued was not a tax into a tax. To say something should be championed because the court changed the law in order to squeeze it into being constitutional is a bit fucking ignorant.
Umm i don't consider 20 young. I was coding professionally by that age. By "young", i'm thinking high school age.
Just because you were working doesn't mean you aren't young. Twenty years old IS young in the working world. The vast majority of working professionals are older than 20 so it's merely a statement of fact. Saying someone is young doesn't mean they are saying they are incompetent though they might be implying that they are inexperienced.
Do you people even read the ruling you are commenting about? The aca completely failed on the general welfare argument, portion were found unconstitutional, and the only reason the mandate was allowed is because the court changed the penalty to a tax.
FFS, if you are not going to bother knowing what happened, please don't make something up in order to maintain your ideology.
Try reading Federalist 41 by Madison and some of the other founders on the meaning of the general welfare clause. Just because the liberal courts have warped it into a term that lets the federal government pretty much "do anything", it actually had a succinct meaning to the people that wrote it that has been bastardized over time.
Your reading comprehension skills need improvement. The portion of the Constitution which you butchered with ellipses states that Congress shall have powers in order to do a list of rather specific things.
In addition, if you actually had a clue (which you do not), you would know that the justification accepted by the Supreme Court was the "lay and collect taxes" portion of the Constitution since the law taxes people who do not have health insurance of a sort Congress finds acceptable.
Name one administration in the last 50 years that hasn't.
You as an individual may not have the same idea. However the social conservatives have documented their political platform and fully subscribed to it. You can find it on the tea party patriots site,Heritage Foundation site, and the actual republican party site.
if you don't subscribe to their philosophy then good for you. You are not the target of my "brush"
You did immediately lose your moral high ground with:
You assumed that since I didn't agree with your beliefs in this particular instance that I'm not only liberal but I'm a moron too.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
She considers emergency contraception taken within 24 hours of unprotected sex as being equivalent to abortion despite the actual mechanism being used by the drug.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Federalist 41 is not the constitution. If it was, they would have included it.
Oh, and let's talk about that Militia clause...
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Well, the plan might also not have been grandfathered because it did not meet the new minimum standards. Without knowing more about the plan, I don't think we can completely blame the insurance company.
The aca completely failed on the general welfare argument
Try again. The Taxing Clause that I quoted, including its support for general welfare, is the mechanism that was upheld.
Note that I did not comment on the commerce implications of the ACA, nor did I try to argue that enforcing health insurance is necessary and proper. Those are the arguments that were rejected by the Court.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
"The founders" were not, as is sometimes believed today, all in agreement over what they were writing at the time. Madison believed in a narrow interpretation of the general welfare clause. Hamilton believed in a broad one. I'm sorry you disagree with the Supreme Court of the United States, but their ruling and precedent siding with Hamilton has been in place since 1936. If it were at all controversial, they've had many opportunities to overturn it.
Everything is better with chainsaws.
You haven't tried the healthcare.gove website, have you?
I just did a search a few days ago and did not need to register to perform a search in order to get premium estimates.
For some, it's healthcare for all.
In fairness, for others it's saving money, even if it hurts others.
That's why Congress is given the power. Ideally, Congress changes its opinions about what's good every few generations, as the impulsive and optimistic youth mature into politicians who can balance their morality with the realities of managing a large country.
I said "ideally".
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
The ACA didn't cancel your plan, your carrier cancelled your plan because it was no longer profitable under the ACA's rules.
Having the ACA rules make the plan too expensive is the same as the ACA canceling the plan.
Well, as an adult male in his thirties, I don't need to pay for dialysis, cancer care, endocrine problems, prescriptions, birth control, asthma treatments, vision care, women's wellness visits, or any other thing that's not catastrophic care. But, if you only paid for what you use, then why would you cover insurance at all? Just to get the 50% "I have insurance" negotiated rate?
I think you're missing the point of insurance -- that is, an individual's problem is everyone's problem. Stop treating insurance like it was capitalism. That's what got us into this mess in the first place.
This. This sums up the big problem the ACA is trying to fix and why the individual mandate is important. The majority of the people in the US are just too fucking stupid or steeped in partisan politics to understand it.
Hospitals already can't deny services in an emergency. The ACA and individual mandate only serve to try and limit the hospital's financial loss; it has absolutely nothing to do with the patient.
It is an entirely political question related to the boundary of Government. Do you want to force young, healthy people to have coverage to pay the lion's share for everyone else, or do you allow individuals to take responsibility for the choices they make and the risks they take by not having insurance?
False dichotomy. Try this. Do you want people with pre-existing conditions to be excluded from any type of insurance, or do you force health insurance to give them coverage (passing the amortized cost to the rest of the people w/o pre-existing conditions.) In other words, do we do something about that, or do we live by a "I got mine, fuck you very much" philosophy?
It is interesting (and sad) how people paint every narrative in terms of absolute personal choices. Where are the personal choices in having a pre-existing condition? Over 50% of bankruptcies in the states are related to medical bills. How do we impute "personal choice" when people fall through the economic ranks due to factors predominantly out of their control (globalization comes to mind) and have to make do with zero health insurance (or with crappy money pits like Vista health care plans)?
This is no different from the leftie loonie toons who paint everything in terms of the big, fat, lazy rich man exploiting the hapless but hard working and ethical little man. The same ideological bullshit that just happens to sit on the other side of the political spectrum.
Reality sits somewhere in the middle and solutions requires compromise from everybody involved. Painting everything in terms of either class struggle or personal choices is just a way to pampering their ideological pets over actually giving a shit about their compatriots and their nation.
Is the government in the business of prop-ing businesses up? Funny for most how that answer changes when the subject is large banking institutions.
Yes. The economy is a national strategic asset (oh yes, even in a capitalist economy, this is a truth.) Also, you are asking the wrong question. A more appropriate question to ask is "do the current actions (or in-actions) taken by the government with respect to X or Y line of business provide a positive (or negative) net effect on the economy?"
No his plan got cancelled because it didn't meet new federal requirements, idiot. Just like mine did.
1. I AM FOR UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE, AND AM WILLING TO PAY MY SHARE.
2. 'Obamacare' is NOT universal health care, it is the "Entrench Rentseeking Useless Middlemen FOREVER" act. health insurers are STEALING OUR MONEY, not helping us, dolts.
3. I STRONGLY resent being -effectively- FORCED to purchase shitty, overpriced policies that will NOT cover what needs covering in a simple and reasonable manner. We are simply marks to fatten the wallets of parasitic insurance companies.
4. Our benevolent insurance overlords ARE and WILL continue to skirt the laws, get exemptions, define principles out of existence, and generally game and work the system to THEIR ADVANTAGE (which is how it got enacted in the first place), and screw us all, ESPECIALLY when we most need that insurance coverage.
And just to drive the point home: now we will ALL have the privilege of overpaying our benevolent insurance overlords so they can throw millions more at lobbyists, etc who WILL game and slant the system to THEIR ADVANTAGE over time: WE ARE PAYING THEM TO SCREW US OVER WITH OUR OWN MONEY *AND* THEY WILL GET TAX DEDUCTIONS FOR IT ! ! !
sheeple don't bleat, this is what happens...
power NEVER devolves voluntarily, where does that leave us, kampers ? ? ?
So you condone slavery, segregation and other forms of racial discrimination, and the subjugation of women?
After all these were local community standards and how dare the federal government mandate what lifestyle they should have.
And why wouldn't they? I do not understand why this is confusing. If you take away competition, you no longer have to compete. Why wouldn't an insurance company want to hedge their losses on the unhealthy by forcing healthy single males to buy maternity insurance?
If everyone was suddenly forced to have tornado insurance, you bet that insurance companies would cancel plans that didn't cover tornado insurance. It's an easy hedge.
This really wasn't unexpected either. It's how this system works. If the healthy didn't have to buy insurance they didn't need then it would cause premiums to skyrocket. Now this isn't me dissing or supporting this plan, but just telling it like it is. The plan all along was that the healthy had to buy insurance they didn't need to support the unhealthy who wouldn't have been insured otherwise. Whether that is a good thing or not simply depends on your opinion.
There is a law called EMTALA that requires hospitals to stabilize your health when you show up at a hospital. The bill signed under the Reagan administration created an unfunded universal healthcare system.
It is an entirely political question related to the boundary of Government. Do you want to force young, healthy people to have coverage to pay the lion's share for everyone else, or do you allow individuals to take responsibility for the choices they make and the risks they take by not having insurance?
Your use of language shows your bias. Please allow me to present a competing point of view by using your own words, but slightly modified.
Do you want to force young, healthy people to run the risk of financial ruin due to no coverage or take responsibility for helping to build a stronger, more vibrant society by sharing the risks and benefits of a national health care plan?
I use to buy into this bullshit, then quickly realized I could easily have to relocate into an area that doesn't agree with me. Wether it be a rainbow flag waving or shotgun toting area; baby killing or abortion clinic bombing area. I don't care if its federal government, local government or my nosey neighbors...they should mind their own business and let me discard my dirty oil in the lake in my OWN back yard, treat my female prisoners as I deem they be treated, and experiment with quantum physics at my own pace.
> I'm sick and tired of liberal morons painting everyone with the same brush.
When you start off with something like this, the rest of your entire argument is ignored. Good job.
Is that actually a constitutional thing? Is there anywhere in the constitution that it says a government institution *must* provide life-saving medical care, or is that just part of societally-accepted ethics?
Societally-accepted ethics can (and will) add/remove/change the constitution. Also, a lot of the constitution has been left to the interpretation of social mores through the ages: think about what "all men are created equal" meant through the different interpretations given since the constitution was written, and what "unalienable Rights", "Life", "Liberty" and "Pursuit of Happiness" have stood for many people through time.
Unless every single possible contingency is written, shit will always be open to socially-accepted/ethical interpretation.
Abortion is a balance of rights between the mother and the unborn child. Obviously, her opinion rests on the unborn child having full rights as a human being, so she is basically supporting murder being illegal. Do you support murder being illegal?
No, but I do support a ban on the ridiculous use of the phrase "unborn child" to describe everything from a just-fertilized egg to a zygote to a full-term baby in the process of being born, in order to obfuscate the difficult medical and ethical question about when a developing fetus actually becomes a human being with some degree of consciousness and thus deserving of those rights.
Huh. I thought McCarran-Ferguson specifically bars us from being able to purchase health insurance from out of state. That's not a problem. The Government will just argue that not buying insurance somehow affects interstate commerce, and gives them the power to regulate non-activity.
Why is it no longer affordable? Because the ACA forces the contract that I and my insurer had agreed upon to change to such a degree via required coverage that it no longer is economically viable? The root problem is that the ACA essentially forces me to pay for coverage I don't want, and provide services/coverage that my insurance company must charge more for.
As the GP said: "In a free country, "for my own good" is my decision, not yours." The ACA just tramples all over that concept.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
As we have seen recently, the Constitution and the Law is merely a suggestion.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
No his plan got cancelled because it didn't meet new federal requirements, idiot. Just like mine did.
And my last mod point just expired...
Blue Cross had a plan that they liked. Blue Cross had a plan the customer liked. Both were happy. Obama said "If you like your plan you can keep it"... Knowing that the law would require the plan to be changed to meet the requirement. He tried to spin this as "removing the under-insured" but no... People had plans they liked.
Blue Cross now has to offer "Government Approved" plans, and I'm sure all the canceled policy holders got a note of what new "Government Approved" plans they can switch to (With the hike in premiums).
Ever now and then we need a reminder that: There is no such thing as a free lunch.
if (it != oneThing) it = another;
Ah, yes. the clause that you people think means Congress can do whatever the fuck they want.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Haven't seen a Walgreen's, Rite Aid, or CVS yet that requires proof of marriage before you buy condoms...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
This is a misunderstanding on your part, thinking that our healthcare "insurance" is about paying for only the things you need. In fact, it is, and has always been, about paying for things that you don't need in order to fund things that you do need.
It's just that when you unfuck a system for a bunch of people, some other set of people are going to lose something. Like if you abolish slavery, slave owners are going to lose their "property". If you pay the slave owners for the loss, then that money will come from the people who never owned slaves. It's not a zero-sum game, but it's not completely elastic either.
The system got a lot less fucked for a lot of people, so you, as a previously lucky-SOB, have to pay a little extra.
If you're going to live by the concepts of a 200 year old document, then how about using interpretations that were contemporaneous to the concept? Better yet, how is ignoring the very clarifying words of the author a better approach?
And of course the SC has consistently allowed expansion of the Federal Government. As an arm of the Federal Government, the SC is yet another case of the fox guarding the hen house, albeit in fancily dressed black robes...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Not that I care, but RU-whatever the fuck it's called is in fact, an abortifacient.
So there are NO restrictions on contraception except for who pays for it. Of course in your and Nancy Pelosi's world, my refusing to pay for YOUR rubbers somehow intrudes on your right to fuck anyone at anytime.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
tried the Sherpa link...got nothing for my state. But then, NY doesn't need to be shown how to steer folks to health insurance options. Newyorkstateofhealth has been delivering the questionable ACA goods for a while now.
Why would a guy with no insurance call it "questionable"? It used to offer 170$/mo plans with 1200$ deductibles to guys in my category but now that any strung out hooker or dipsomaniac can be assured medical care, the cost is 300/month and the deductible is 3000$.
Where is the incentive to be personally responsible for your own health and its costs in a scheme like this?
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
"You are posting: as Anonymous Coward "
- what a moronic thing to say to someone who just felt like commenting on your site - you data trail idiot.
2. I'd consider this news post SPAM. Btw, this Health Sherpa doesn't even work - zero results for me. Possibly, they're on a host where they've passed their bandwidth or it is buggy - either way I'd consider it poor development when you design a site for the masses and you don't make sure it can handle the brunt.
Most importantly, people should realize this is an attempt by 3 young spammers at getting some attention. /* via Hugh Pickens */
The only reason this is an issue is that the government is involved in marriage the first place. If there was no government sanction of marriage, then gay marriage would be a non-issue.
Abortion is a balance of rights between the mother and the unborn child. Obviously, her opinion rests on the unborn child having full rights as a human being, so she is basically supporting murder being illegal. Do you support murder being illegal?
There is no inconsistency in her positions as far as you have stated them.
If you want to paint the picture that black and white then "pulling the plug" on someone who is brain dead is "murder"
Ellipses aren't "blanks" you can fill in. They cut out irrelevant text.
That section specifically spells out what congress is allowed to regulate.
In it is the "commerce clause". Look, it's right there:
Section. 8.
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;
To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;
To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;
To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;
To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;
To establish Post Offices and post Roads;
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court;
To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offences against the Law of Nations;
To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;
To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
To provide and maintain a Navy;
To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;
To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;
To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings;--And
To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.
Because the cost of healthcare is so ludicrously out of control and it's a common source of life-shattering debts, it's become a political issue and congress is passing bills working on regulating the inter-state commerce that surrounds healthcare. And the economy is so interwoven that interstate commerce is national commerce.
But the constitution allows congress to try and fix the economy. How far that reaches varies on how fucked up everything is. And healthcare is pretty fucked up.
Amen! All the people bitching about their constitutional right to refuse health care insurance know damned well that if they're dying on the side of the highway, they'll be screaming for someone to help them. And, if not them then a wife or child.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
OK, technically Congress under the Reagan administration created universal healthcare by passing EMTALA requiring almost all hospitals to provide treatment regardless of the ability to pay: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Medical_Treatment_and_Active_Labor_Act
The ACA or ObamaCare tries to shift the financial burden back to the individual rather than continuing an unfunded mandate. Don't like it? Pay the $95 or 1% tax.
In summary, Congress under Reagan created universal healthcare. Congress under Obama came up with an effective tax incentive to fund it.
This appearance of this website along with existing health insurance brokers seems to make make the individual healthcare insurance much more transparent. ACA or not, that is a good development.
Healthcare technology is better now and more expensive. You can get hit with a bill for a couple million (friends of mine had complications during birth of twins and now owe $2million PLUS to the hospital. You think they're going to support an out-of-pocket payment model with those potential charges? I guess YOU'RE good for it!
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
article 1 section 2 states non free people count as 3/5 a person and indians don't count for its purpose of assigning representatives and taxes. It was put in place to stop the over representation of people not allowed to vote
It was put in place to prevent southern states from counting slaves and thus increasing their census count and thus their representation in congress based on that census count. It had nothing to do with whether they could vote or not. Women and children couldn't vote but you'll note that they were still counted.
Outside of indians not being taxed, it had nothing to do with race as whites were also slaves at the time too.
Really? You're seriously going to go with that? Virtually all slaves were black at the time the Constitution was written and you are seriously going to argue it had nothing to do with race? Wow... Just wow.
Lol.. ok i feel ya know. You deleted everything in the clause excep the general welfare part and that somehow after i pointed out how utterly stupid that was, means you were talking about the power to tax all along. Its cheap, not rational from your initial comment, but if you need to change midstrean to something factually correct, i will not disagree dedpite your original statement not resembling it at all.
But, the aca will fail on the tax clause too. You see, even though the supreme court changed the law in order to make it constitutional via taxing, it is still a penalty that does not provide fifth amendment due process rights and the 9th amendment say no right the constitution givs can be construed to deny other rights and guarentees in it. This means that as soon as someone is actually penalized- if they do not recieve a fair trial and due process, the challenge to its constitutionaliy will be made. This is largely why the mandate for businesses were suspended by a year, those are the people with the cash to fight it the most effecctivly. But a challenge on those grounds cannot be made until someone is actually fined.
So you have an article title that says one thing, that 3 coders build a better portal, a body of a summary that says the exact opposite thing, in that it A) isn't the same thing at all, B) is actually based entirely on the real portal, its data, and the work done by others, and C) is only partially working, and then a conclusion at the end that inexplicably verifies the original article title.
This is writing at it's worst, misleading, and ridiculous. I know people make fun of the story submission rules and editing here at slashdot, but really. Is reputation worth sensational short term page views?
The only reason this is an issue is that the government is involved in marriage the first place. If there was no government sanction of marriage, then gay marriage would be a non-issue.
Ok, I'll bite.
So there are a lot of rules on the books about spouses. Like who gets your money by default after you die. Who is allowed to pull the plug. That whole "next of kin" thing. These are real issues that need a legally binding and practical answers. You can't just get rid of it. You need to replace it with something.
So what are you going to replace it with?
Spouse is now defined as anyone you've lived with for X+ years? If you put that value at less than 4, you've got a lot of college kids that are legally married by the time they graduate.
Limit it to genetics? There is no marriage, just your babies daddy? That strips a lot of rights from non-breeders.
Enforce everyone to write out a will, and state who acts like their spouse is? That's a lot of paperwork, cost, and is effectively the SAME DAMN THING.
yes, please educate yourself
" However, in 1790, the first Congress, which was packed with framers, required all ship owners to provide medical insurance for seamen; in 1798, Congress also required seamen to buy hospital insurance for themselves."
source: (New England Journal of Medicine)
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1113618?viewType=Print&
Actually, no, Blue Cross didn't send a note saying what new plans were available, they tended to resort to "hey, we're going to dump you in this plan, which is like six thousand times what you already pay" rather than provide any meaningful support for a potential customer.
But no, Blue Cross didn't like that plan, or they wouldn't have changed it to get past the grandfather clause option, thereby denying above insuree the chance to keep the plan.
that is, an individual's problem is everyone's problem.
Bullshit, bullshit, BULLSHIT! Your problem is your problem, not mine, unless you are saying because it's your problem I get to solve it in which case I get to yank the cigarette from your mouth when you're walking down the street because it's known to significantly raise the risk of getting cancer. By doing so, I will be getting a better bang for my buck since I'm the one who has to pay for your medical care (based on your false assumption).
If your premise were true, that would also mean I get to harangue you when I see you at a restaurant shoveling high fat, high cholesterol food into your 300+ lb gullet, put up signs at bars and package stores notifying them not to sell you alcohol because you're an alcoholic and when you're busted for using drugs, force you into treatment, no matter how severe as well as have you tell me where you get the stuff so they can be prosecuted.
That is what you meant when you said your individual problem is everyone else's problem, right? Or did you mean everyone gets to pay, and pay, and pay some more so you don't have to have any personal responsibility for your actions?
That's what got us into this mess in the first place.
No, what got us into this mess is people like you believing everyone else should pay for your lifestyle choices. You want to smoke, go for it. Just don't expect me to pay for your replacement lung or cancer treatment. You want to be obese, fine. You pay for lapband or other surgeries, not to mention paying for your diabetes treatments. You think doing drugs is cool and doesn't hurt anyone, then don't expect people to revive you when you OD or care for you when your brain is fried. You made the choice, you pay for it. You're not my responsibility.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Right. And because they cannot deny coverage, AND reality means many people cannot pay for that emergency service, it means we should be REALISTIC about how we manage a sustainable system. That means not allowing people to be de facto covered via the most expensive health care possible, emergency services, without demanding that they contribute, upfront and for cheaper services than emergency care. Or how about preventing unwanted pregnancies via inexpensive contraception so that society doesn't have to bare the burden of an expensive person.
As to the large banking institutions ... That is because large banking institutions are not the same as healthcare. If you don't know that already I can't explain it to you. But I'll give you a hint: when was the last time you had to have an emergency banking procedure? And when you did, how much time did you have and many banks did you research before obtaining service for your life-or-death emergency banking procedure?
Sadly the financial bail-out, for all the ways it should have been done differently (like exerting more control over banks receiving support and consequences for people), was at its core necessary to prevent more damage. It sucks but that is the truth. We made our bed via deregulation and we had no choice but to solve the short term problem of the liquidity markets freezing up. The important question is not should we or shouldn't we have done it (or how should we have done it differently)? The question is, what are we doing now so we don't ever have to do it again!?!?! I was appalled that the banks were not allowed to fail. I was even more appalled that they COULD NOT be allowed to fail, and I'm down right disgusted that for the most part they STILL CANNOT be allowed to fail.
If you can't be good, be good at it!
Do you also support the ridiculous use of the phrase "fetus" to describe everything from a just-fertilized egg to a zygote to a full-term baby in the process of being born, in order to obfuscate the difficult medical and ethical question about when a developing childactually becomes a human being with some degree of consciousness and thus deserving of those rights?
Didn't think so.
And they were also invalidated by Constitutional amendments. There were obviously enough people who agree that slavery, segregation, and treating women as second-class citizens were a bad thing that those amendments could be passed.
If you can find enough people to support a Constitutional amendment allowing the government to mandate the legality of same-sex marriage, the ACA, and abortion, then by all means, go for it! I think, however, that there are enough people who disagree with all of those things that getting the Constitution amended to allow them is never going to happen.
When you equate servitude forced at the barrel of a gun or treating women as property with the inability of two people to enter into a legally binding contract in a certain area, you are seriously deluded and need to take a step back and realize why half the country thinks you're crazy.
First, that isn't an "interpretation", that is exactly what is intended, with detail provided by the individual who wrote the document. Second, Madison knew there might be points where the document no longer applied to current society, so he provided a way to change it. It is called the amendment process. If you think the general welfare clause should be expanded, that is how you do it. Third, you need to educate yourself on what the Supreme Court's actual job is. That don't get to decide how to interpret the law - they judge new laws against the Constitution. "Legislating from the bench" is a violation of the separation of powers explicitly put into place by the Constitution.
Finally, let's quote the part of the Wikipedia article you left out:
Prior to 1936, the United States Supreme Court had imposed a narrow interpretation on the Clause, as demonstrated by the holding in Bailey v. Drexel Furniture Co., in which a tax on child labor was an impermissible attempt to regulate commerce beyond that Court's equally narrow interpretation of the Commerce Clause. This narrow view was later overturned in United States v. Butler. There, the Court agreed with Associate Justice Joseph Story's construction in Story's 1833 Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States. Story had concluded that the General Welfare Clause was not a general grant of legislative power, but also dismissed Madison's narrow construction requiring its use be dependent upon the other enumerated powers. Consequently, the Supreme Court held the power to tax and spend is an independent power and that the General Welfare Clause gives Congress power it might not derive anywhere else. However, the Court did limit the power to spending for matters affecting only the national welfare.
To sum it up, for roughly 150 years the Supreme Court held that the general welfare clause was constrained by the rest of the document, until they decided it was just too inconvenient and reversed the decision. Since then, they have been on a continual power grab, just like the other branches of government. None of that changes the extremely clear intent of the phrase, and any justification under the claim of "general welfare" is pure bullshit. If you want the federal government to do that, then do it the right way, and pass an amendment. But as far as I am concerned, you are just another petty tyrannical individual propping up bigger tyrannical individuals who happen to agree with your kind of tyranny, because you know you can't get the required support to pass an amendment.
Remember, you can't look dignified when your having fun! Don't take life too seriously, you'll never get out of it alive
Out of mod points. But you couldn't be any more right.
Common Sense (+1)
subjugation of women
Did someone say Islam?
I have just two words: HIRE THEM!
And while you're at it - FIRE the useless 50+ contracting company cabal + 535 politicians + the Executive Branch + Justice Roberts for casting the deciding vote in the Supreme Court ACA case.
That's true. But since insurance companies are for-profit, I have to believe they had already worked that part out and don't need the government to help them manage their finances.
Common Sense (+1)
This is WAY off topic but what the heck...
Abortion is a balance of rights between the mother and the unborn child. Obviously, her opinion rests on the unborn child having full rights as a human being, so she is basically supporting murder being illegal. Do you support murder being illegal?
So you think a fetus is a person. Ok let's roll with that and say that a fetus is a person from the moment of conception. Following your logic answer the following:
1) Do you then think that if a mother smokes or drinks and the child becomes handicapped as a result that the mother should be put in jail for child abuse? Do you support child abuse being legal? (see how I framed that issue the same way you did?)
2) How about if the fetus develops in such a way that it is a life threatening danger to the mother. Is the mother committing murder if she aborts the fetus to save her own life? Or should the mother commit suicide to save the life of the fetus so that she does not commit "murder"?
3) Is the fetus guilty of murder/manslaughter if it kills the mother? (Remember the fetus is a person under your logic so a person just killed a person)
4) How about if the mother is raped and the implanted fetus eventually kills the mother. Is the rapist then guilty of murder too?
5) If a mother takes birth control pills and thus prevents the zygote from forming when it would have otherwise. Is the mother guilty of murder?
6) If a child is born prematurely because of some action of the mother and dies during the birth is the mother guilty of murder?
These questions are of course absurd just like yours is. The real question is when does a fetus attain legal standing as a person? I would argue that if the fetus is not viable outside of the mother then all legal rights should be retained by the mother up to and including abortion of the fetus. Until such time as a fetus can reasonably be expected to survive independently, any discussion of its rights as an individual is absurd because it is not an individual. It is effectively a parasite. If the mother wishes to go through with the pregnancy then that should be her right. If she doesn't then that should be her right as well.
Unless there were state laws making them do so.
Eisenstadt v. Baird fortunately made that a non-issue.
But, if you only paid for what you use, then why would you cover insurance at all? Just to get the 50% "I have insurance" negotiated rate?
This issue has always mystified me. What kind of "insurance" includes the bi-annual dental cleaning? That applies to everyone who has teeth (pre-existing condition?).
Shouldn't insurance be distributing costs for things that may or may not happen?
You're getting your documents confused; you quoted the Declaration of Independence. The Constitution says life, liberty, and property.
Free Martian Whores!
You deleted everything in the clause excep the general welfare part...
Yes, for brevity and clarity. Taxes weren't a part of the discussion until afterward. The question was whether the government has the power, and the answer is "yes, under Article 1, Section 8".
But, the aca will fail on the tax clause too.
...But it didn't when it was already examined. The opinion of the Court was that the Taxing Clause allows the government to tax behaviors, and "not buying health insurance" is a taxable behavior. Other taxable behaviors are things like smoking tobacco, burning fuel, and importing foreign goods - things that Congress has determined to be detrimental to the general welfare of the United States.
as soon as someone is actually penalized- if they do not recieve a fair trial and due process, the challenge to its constitutionaliy will be made ... [Such a challenge] cannot be made until someone is actually fined.
...but there is no "fine". Failing to buy insurance isn't a crime. You have the choice whether to buy insurance or not, and no law enforcement personnel will likely ever know or care about your choice. Rather, the tax is applied along with income and other taxes by the IRS. If you don't pay the tax, the IRS can do approximately nothing. They can withhold the amount from your refund, but the ACA tax itself has no provision for enforcement. The only way I know of offhand to actually be "fined" relating to the ACA is if you explicitly claim that you have insurance to avoid the penalty when you really do not. That's either fraud or tax evasion depending on circumstances, and that routinely goes through a courtroom. There's your chance for due process, where you can argue that you don't need to pay the tax because it's unconstitutional... ...except as mentioned before, the Supreme Court determined that not buying health insurance is taxable.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
I don't think 20 really counts as "young coders" in this industry.
Blue Cross had a plan that they liked. Blue Cross had a plan the customer liked. Both were happy.
Indeed -- and this idyllic utopia was going to be maintained until the customer needed some significant coverage. I am sure the plan was great until you had to use it to actually cover stuff.
People are notoriously bad at reading fine print (or their contracts in general, in fact). I think no matter what else ACA did, instituting a minimal requirement of what counts as "health insurance" is definitely a good thing.
He tried to spin this as "removing the under-insured" but no... People had plans they liked.
These two statements are not in contradiction. I just read an article about one of those "plans" that people liked which had a payout cap of $50 for any medical expense, no matter what how high it was. The plan was really cheap, so of course people liked it, but it was also useless (which people would only truly learn after they had to use it)
So what you're saying is, you wish the government would force private companies to continue offering a product against their will? 'Cause that's what "being allowed to keep your plan" would really mean.
I bet you also argued that the individual mandate infringed your rights, but completely fail to see the hypocrisy inherent in that.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
So what you're saying is "it's not your money, you greedy capitalist, it's the peoples money, and you should be grateful for any of it the people let you keep"?
Setting aside the definition of insurance you just made up, how about we agree that charity is something needed by the poor, and when the government subsidizes the middle class it's just a power grab?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Of course in your and Nancy Pelosi's world, my refusing to pay for YOUR rubbers somehow intrudes on your right to fuck anyone at anytime.
You do realize that married monogamous people use condoms too? And some of them are poor?
Anybody who jumps straight to the "fornicating in the streets" line is so mindlessly compliant with the party line as to be irrelevant. Learn something or be quiet. You're too ignorant to talk in public.
We're not all the same. I oppose the ACA, not only because it gets the government, the IRS, and the DHS involved in my personal healthcare decisions
The government is already involved in your healthcare decisions. There is NO possible way they could not be. Healthcare is a finite resource with nearly infinite demand. Without the government being involved how do you think we could safely evaluate the efficacy of medicines? Who would insure the poor or the elderly? (Certainly not private insurance companies unless they are forced to) How do you prevent hospitals from turning away indigent patients because they cannot pay? Do you not realize that ALL insurance companies basically follow medicare when it comes to pricing?
The government is a necessary part of health care for EVERY country on earth because governments are the only party involved that has the potential to be a neutral arbiter. We can have a reasonable debate about what should be an appropriate extent of government involvement but pretending that somehow it is possible to separate the government from healthcare regulations is just patently absurd. You claim they are somehow infringing on your "freedoms" but if you have an alternative plan to provide insurance to everyone you have failed to provide it.
because also it takes away my freedom to make my own decisions regarding how I live my own life
What freedom are you being denied? The "freedom" to not get insurance and thus be a leach on society?
puts even more tax on the already-burdened middle class, and limits the charity care that the lower middle class/poor are already receiving.
We are ALREADY paying to support medical care for the uninsured through higher insurance premiums. Since everyone is going to use medical care it is absurd to not have everyone participate in the insurance pool. There is NOTHING preventing charities from continuing to provide care and the only reason many of them needed to was because we were excluding poor people from the right to receive health insurance.
Therein lies the problem, people wouldn't be happy with only being left alone by the government, oh no. They want their own lifestyles mandated onto everyone else.
And you think the right is somehow any different? They don't want the government to be uninvolved. They want the government to be involved in the way THEY want, according to their philosophies and ethics. I think the right is fundamentally conflicted because they claim to want government to go away except when something they don't like bothers them.
No. Blue Cross could have kept the plan, but they had to keep it exactly. Including not raising premiums. Blue Cross wanted to raise premiums, so they chose to cancel the plan.
What would you have the government do otherwise? Force Blue Cross to keep offering a product against their will?
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Do you support murder being illegal?
Yes. Forcing a woman to bear a fetus to term that will kill her is murder.
You couldn't be any more wrong, individual insurance plans were not protected from the grandfather measures. Further groups could even change plans or providers and as long as they met the deductible rules they do not have to include the expensive extra coverage the government decided everyone needs.
Oh Americans- I really don't know if there is anyone better a spewing nonsense and strawmen in the face of mountains of contradictory evidence. It's nice you can go off on diatribes about obese alcoholic drug addicts but those really aren't much of an issue. Even healthy people can get sick (and often do).
I assume since you assert that no one else is your responsibility you also don't think you are theirs. I hope you have never had insurance of any kind and if you were forced to then you better have never made a claim. Insurance means having other people help with the costs when you need it while helping them with theirs while you do not. How else do you think a few dollars a month can pay for medical bills costing hundreds of thousands?
It's nice you live in a little fantasy world but here in reality if people really need something they will take it with force. Most civilised nations have discovered it is best to try and provide what people need rather than to assume they'll just roll over and die. That's where an individual's problem becomes everyone's. You can either pay a few dollars to help the problem or deal with high crime rates.
If you took the time to actually research the topic then...
From the National Conference of State Legislatures (emphasis mine):
Emergency contraception (EC) can prevent pregnancy when taken up to five days following sexual intercourse. There are two EC pills approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that are a concentrated dose of progestin, a hormone found in many birth control pills, which inhibits or delays ovulation and will not work if a woman is already pregnant. Emergency contraception is not intended to be used as a regular form of birth control, and emergency contraception methods should not be confused with the abortion pill, RU-486 (mifepristone). The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics estimates approximately 10 percent of women in the United States have used emergency contraception. Emergency contraception pills are estimated to be 75 to 90 percent effective at preventing pregnancy.
Except the same website contradicts your assertion:
The following states have taken legislative action related to accessing emergency contraception: Twenty-one states—Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin—and the District of Columbia have statutes related to accessing emergency contraception.
Sixteen of these states—Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Washington, and Wisconsin—and the District of Columbia have enacted legislation requiring hospitals or health care facilities to provide information about and/or initiate emergency contraception therapy to women who have been sexually assaulted. Ohio has a law that directs the state’s public health council to establish procedures for gathering evidence for victims of sexual offenses. The council created the Ohio Protocol for Sexual Assault Forensic and Medical Exams, which requires medical personnel to discuss and offer options for emergency contraception with survivors of sexual assault.
Pennsylvania has established the requirement that health care facilities provide information about emergency contraception and administer it onsite upon the victim's request through administrative code.
Nine states—Alaska, California, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Vermont, and Washington—allow pharmacists to initiate emergency contraception drug therapy if they are working in collaboration with a physician, and/or after they have completed a training program in emergency contraception.
Really? You are so concerned about who's paying for "rubbers" that you totally went off topic which is access to emergency contraception. Just in case you didn't know, condom use lowers the need for emergency contraception significantly.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
You do realize that the government is not in the health insurance business? Well, judging from your post, you don't. So please allow me to explain a few of the basics for you.
The exchange merely lets you browse through insurance from the for profit private insurance market. There isn't a government option to choose from. So if you have a problem with the options being offered, complain to the insurance companies, not the evil gub'mint. They're the ones that made and offered the plans.
And just a side note: what's been offered for generations isn't working. That's that whole reason we're trying to revamp the health care industry in the first place. Our health care costs twice as much as the rest of the world and gets worse results. What's so efficient about that? Woo hoo! I get to pay more money for worse care! USA! USA! USA!
The real morons in this equation are the idiots who think our previous system was somehow good as it siphons money out of their pockets and ignores the uninsured. How dumb is that?
What we really need is single payer universal health care coupled with compensation reform linked to outcome-based results rather than procedure-based. Unfortunately ACA is none of those, but then neither was the previous system.
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
The exemptions given to congress, it's staff, and significant donor companies and unions, would make this unconstitutional then.
Many people make this mistake. The "morning after pill," e.g. Plan-B, is simply an extra-large dose of hormonal birth-control, and is indeed emergency contraception and not an abortifacient. RU-486 is an "abortion pill," but it's typically taken after several weeks to induce an abortion after the fertilized egg has been implanted and begins to develop, not within 24 hours (before implantation). According to wikipedia, RU-486 could be used in a much smaller dose as emergency contraception, but in practice is only used for such in China and Russia. Confusion between the two pills is often used in the US to rally opposition to OTC availability of Plan B, which is safer than OTC painkillers.
We're already seeing the American healthcare system split into cash-only "boutique" doctors and people stuck in the insurance-based system. The former system is surprisingly affordable, you might be amazed at how reasonable most things are.
What's needed isn't some gigantic bureaucracy here, but simply the ability to pay cash-up-front (no surprise billing afterward by 20 different providers you didn't even know ere involved) plus catastrophic insurance. You know, actual insurance against rare large expenses they same way you insure your house against burning down. The way it all used to work once. Those are the very plans outlawed by the ACA.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Local community standards did prevent women from voting and seeking employment in the good o' USA.
> I am sure the plan was great until you had to use it to actually cover stuff.
Cue variations on "we know better than you do".
No, the plan doesn't suck. You can't know that without actually having some real information about it. You're willingness to declare something in the absence of any actual real information here what Nixon called "liberal elitism".
"You can't be trusted to decide for yourself. We will run your life for you."
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
"emergency contraception" is abortion, there's no two ways about it, and we shouldn't hide behind euphemisms. There's also no rational reason to oppose it, as it requires some really poorly thought through theology to even begin to mount a defense. I think you'll find that the only opposition here comes from very orthodox Catholics, stuck to a church policy designed to ensure maximum population growth among Catholics at any cost (something I find outright evil, myself, and most Catholics in the world are fine with birth control whatever they hear at church).
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I'd like to have comprehensive car insurance on my car with a $1000 deductible. But the car loan company insists I have no more than a $500 deductible (and since they get named on the policy, they know if I've changed it...). Waaaah, I can't get the car insurance *I* want!!!
Regardless of the general welfare clause, congress does have the power to create the ACA in the very first section of the very first article in the constitution.
"All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives."
Congress can pass whatever law they want, it is up to the supreme court to rule it unconstitutional. They did not in this case.
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
I guess it's a good thing those exemptions don't actually exist, then.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
My cut-in-past left off the last bullet from the NCSL report:
For information about state laws related to pharmacist conscience clauses, including states that allow a pharmacist to refuse to dispense emergency contraception, please click here.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
It's cool that me explaining how insurance works means that you can jump to conclusions about "People like you" and my political views (which were not mentioned AT ALL).
Whether you want to call bullshit or not, you're incorrect. When is the last time car insurance made you pay for the damages in your own auto accident? It didn't. When is the last time someone had to pay replacement value put of pocket on their home because of a fire? They don't. When is the last time you paid the entire hospital bill yourself because you had a baby? You didn't. So whether you like to admit it or not, you belong to a pool of insured people who all collectively pay for 'things that happen'. That means, by definition, that an individual's problem is everyone's problem. If you can't see that, you should talk to an actuary.
So, here's an idea: let's start a health plan where we kick out the fatties, the smokers, the reckless people, and people who engage in sex without birth control, and anyone who has a mental health issue? Medically, all of that stuff means higher costs for our insurance members. But that's the heart of the issue -- now it's illegal to not offer coverage for that stuff, so that type of plan would be NOT CALLED HEALTH INSURANCE. Which is why the plans are getting cancelled. Whether you personally like it or not (and I don't) all of that stuff is EVERYONE's problem now.
My Blue Cross is being cancelled. Thanks, assholes. Go ahead, mod me down, hiding the issue, just like all people in power try to hide the dissenters who are in trouble.
In a free country, "for my own good" is my decision, not yours.
You were paying too much and getting too little, and now that the ACA took over and stopped you from making a stupid fucking decision, you are free to pick up any number of other private plans that offer more coverage for less money.
oh and YOU'RE WELCOME
> "emergency contraception" is abortion, there's no two ways about it, and we shouldn't hide behind euphemisms.
What euphemism? You would be "aborting" a Zygote.
That's at least two stages before being a fetus.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
> Do you also support the ridiculous use of the phrase "fetus"
He isn't the one engaging in that kind of nonsense. If anything, YOU are the one pulling that kind of dishonest nonsense.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
simple is ALWAYS better.
No, the plan doesn't suck. You can't know that without actually having some real information about it. You're willingness to declare something in the absence of any actual real information
You are right that I should have been clear that this is my educated guess and not a fact. However, I think it is a good guess, junk health insurance is (apparently) a real thing. I would have expected they were illegal already but they were not.
"You can't be trusted to decide for yourself. We will run your life for you."
I believe in the "social contract" theory advanced by many. You should be able to decide for yourself, sure.
But if you decide to forego insurance that will actually cover you in case of an emergency, then you should also decline your right to be treated at any emergency room for free. And since we do not consider the latter to be acceptable...
(note that all of this applies to anyone who prefers "affordable" insurance to the real kind. If you cannot afford any insurance, that's a different story)
Madison himself wrote extensively on exactly how that phrase was suppose to be interpreted, and he should know best, given that he wrote the fucking Constitution of the United States.
How the Constitution is to be interpreted is the function of the Supreme Court. The interpretation of the Constitution is not fixed in stone for all eternity and that is the strength of the document. But by all means, let's not look at it based on modern society. Let's worship some guy who has been dead for 200 years and blindly follow what he said even though he lived in a world which was almost unrecognizably different from the one you and I live in.
Given also many medical problems can be contagious it is also a good idea we help everybody to keep shit from spreading.
In many cases it boils down to anti-fornication then pro-life.
My Blue Cross is being cancelled. ... just like all people in power try to hide the dissenters who are in trouble.
But are you in fact in trouble? I'm hearing it reported that almost every "canceled" policy is due to either that policy doing things that are illegal under the ACA, like having ridiculous its-hardly-insurance-at-all deductibles and caps, or due to them just being a really crappy deal compared to what you can get from the exchanges. Every concrete example I've seen proffered so far has ended up falling into one of those two categories.
Now "reporting" is admittedly often a load of malarkey. However, I notice there's nothing whatsoever in your message/rant that implies that you are unable to get a better policy from the exchanges. Is that the case?
Bullshit, bullshit, BULLSHIT! Your problem is your problem, not mine
Here you have it folks: The modern Republican Party in a nutshell. Enjoy!
I know people like this. If some other church somewhere wants to perform a gay "wedding" they don't care. They don't consider it to be a real wedding (of course, what do we care about what they think?). But if someone legally marries gays they go into a hissy fit. Remove the government involvement, you remove the issue. At most you'll have some churches splitting over the issue. Keep the government in the issue, and the government's definition of marriage constitutes legally defining our society. They are part of our society, so they get a say.
And you didn't answer that part. But about birth control, what are you talking about? Are you talking about making taxpayers pay for it? Forcing conscientious religious objectors to dispense it? They have a valid government involvement point when it comes to that.
As far as making it illegal, yep, some are hypocrites. Unless you're talking mifepristone, which isn't birth control (well, as much as abortion is after-the-fact birth control).
> Blue Cross had a plan that they liked. Blue Cross had a plan the customer liked.
And by pointing-out the problems, you're supporting the Republicans so you should just stop. Please stop supporting fascists by point-out the small flaws with the ACA.
Over 50% of bankruptcies in the states are related to medical bills.
Is this a surprise considering how paper-thin most people budget themselves from paycheck to paycheck? Let's at least try to be honest here. The average American household no longer has any significant savings. The average American household carries the same credit card debt as the income they bring into their homes in total for 4-6 months. A good number of Americans own a vehicle that costs nearly as much as a home in a lot of suburban neighborhoods.... and these same people are unlikely to see the auto loan to term but instead trade in before that and get further underwater on a new vehicle. And just go out there and look at some of the numbers when it comes to retirement.... we're in for a big hurting if we're going to carry the balance of people who aren't prepared for life's little problems because they'd rather have a 200 dollar cable bill, a shit-ton of DVDs they'll never watch and a 50 inch flat panel in their toddler's bedroom.
It'd be one thing if you could say that people are doing right by themselves by get blindsided by a medical bill but the fact of the matter is that the average American family couldn't handle the costs of having their car's transmission rebuilt without credit cards. Medical bills are just the last nails in the coffin, not the cause of death. We live high on the hog and turn to others when we're ill prepared for the curve balls. As long as being irresponsible has no repercussions you can expect more of the same.
Ummm. No.
ACA is government regulation. If this regulation doesn't take these matters into account then it falls squarely on the shoulders of the regulation, not the industry.
Sorry guys, you keep passing off regulation as a magical cure but won't take it to task when it fails. Obama isn't willing to do that either and that's why his approval rating is close to that of Pol Pot.
The whole reason why Obamacare is such a shambles is that the GOVERNMENT demanded that it be integrated with all the other systems so you never saws plan price without the attached government handout you would get to bring back down the cost of the plan. Otherwise you'd have happen what is happening now, people realizing that Obamacare is a plan to force every American to buy the most expensive insurance plans and then also make the middle class pay for the poor to have said expensive plans, all while charging even more for the expensive plans than they used to...
It's a giant wet kiss to the insurance industry.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Ya know, most illness and injuries are not due to lifestyle. Would you prefer your insurance pool to deny coverage for asthma, type I diabetes, arthritis, cancer, pneumonia, or getting mugged? How about a condition that is perhaps ~25% +/- 20% (welcome to evidence based medicine) due to lifestyle choices? Can those be everyone's problem, or as jerpyro said do you just want a fee for service plan?
Premiums regularly change. The ACA prevents premium changes over $5 (for non-compliant plans only), which is a bar no insurance policy could ever actually meet.
The official one did better than this and it gets lambasted.
You do this and even though it's still a "work in progress", it gets plaudits and fingers pointing at the official site for being pants.
Well done on doing it, but the entire fucking point is that you're doing a worse job than the original, when the title says "built a better portal".
YOU DID NOT.
I hope you have never had insurance of any kind and if you were forced to then you better have never made a claim.
Talk about spewing nonsense and strawmen... The difference is that people who carried insurance up until now AGREED to join a group effort. I realize that when I pay my insurance that I may never use it to the point that I pay for it. I had a choice and I took it.
That's no longer the case. Now I'm being forced, by the government, to buy the product of a private institution. And this is just the tip of the iceberg we're sure to hit... If you don't know this difference or if you can't see this difference then maybe you need to sit down and shut up until you do.
Indeed. Negotiating non-insured rates at hospitals and with individual doctors frequently costs less than carrying health insurance and paying out-of-pocket costs at the rates insurers negotiate. This was certainly the case with my father and an otherwise very expensive surgical procedure, as well as the time he dislocated his shoulder. Had he paid via insurance rather than negotiating directly with the doctors and hospitals, he would have paid many thousands of dollars more for going the route of insurance.
Of course, the above isn't sustainable for end-of-life care or cancer treatment, since those tend to be expensive in the realm of millions of dollars, but then that's due to pharmaceutical costs (though even those can be negotiated; most pharma companies have discount and fee-waiver programs if you actually ask).
Blue Cross canceled my policy. Thanks Obama!
No, if the ACA canceled the plan that would be the same as the ACA canceling the plan. Making changes in the market that may or may not have been the cause for Blue Cross canceling your plan is NOT the same thing.
Blue cross had a plan that they liked. Blue cross could have left the plan the way that it was (same deductibles and coverage) and kept offering it: it was grandfathered in. Instead Blue Cross chose to:
1. Increase deductibles or decrease coverage, thus losing the exemption.
2. Terminate the plan because it made fiscal sense for them to do so.
That's what Young Coders means to me as most Devs I've met are in their 20-30 years unless working on Cobol/Fortran and legacy systems.
Guess I'm getting Old
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
The "socially-accepted ethics" argument has also allowed things like indefinite detention, extraordinary rendition, and "police actions." Many of the positive change shortcuts have then been used for negative changes by less-scrupulous politicians. When you shortcut parts which prevent certain actions for what some consider "the common good," you leave the door open to nasty individuals to do the same for bad things, like allowing tainted evidence to be introduced at trial as long as the officer claims they thought they were following procedure (or secret evidence, as in any case claimed to involve national security). The list of bad things done via shortcutting the process is easily as long as the list of good things done.
Indeed. If you want to allow powers not enumerated by the Constitution as being allowed to the government, you need to amend it.
The problems come when people clamor for shortcut changes to address a problem. Once it became standard practice to ignore the need to amend the Constitution, those shortcuts were used to do very bad things as well. People who support the former have no business protesting the latter, because they allowed it to happen.
Premiums change every year. Obamacare was written so if there is a change (including any changes to premiums, as little as a $5 change), the new policy will have to be 'updated' to meet Federal guidelines.
What would I do? Only require insurance companies to adhere to federal guidelines for plans to be put on the exchange. Allow non-exchange policies to qualify for the individual mandate (or better yet, get rid of the individual mandate).
if (it != oneThing) it = another;
Any chemical birth control also contains the means to abort an implanted embryo. While I am politically pro-choice, I do understand the opposing position, and the previous sentence is why they oppose birth control. It is biologically equivalent to abortion, even though it happens at a much earlier stage than is possible with surgical abortions.
Every year premiums are updated. Every insurance company (health, car, home, etc) does this.
ACA was written with this in mind and in full knowledge that all plans will be forced to lose money, or change to meet the minimum federal guidelines.
If a premium goes up $5 per year, they shouldn't be forced to change the plan. If a person is insured by a company, then as long as they carry insurance through that company, they should be grandfathered. If the company changes the plan, the customer can go someplace else and 'experience' the 'joy' of the exchanges.
if (it != oneThing) it = another;
The difference is meaningless. Those sick people are still society's problem even if they haven't bought into private insurance (possibly a larger problem). Society is, by definition, a group effort and you just can't opt out of every part of it just because you want to save some money.
I assume that in United States' law you are required to hold private insurance on your motor vehicle? We do in my country and although annoying it certainly hasn't destroyed civilization. Nor has a universal health care system. This is where the "mountains of contradictory evidence" comes in. Many places in the world use these systems and they end up being much more successful than the American "pass the buck" system. How can you continue to assert the awfulness of these systems when they've proven themselves highly successful?
Maybe the people that need to "sit down and shut up" are the ones that are hysterically shouting doom over something most other western nations have enjoyed for years.
The use of a common private contract would actually vastly simplify most estate rights. States would have whatever rules they felt necessary to determine the above by default, and a private contract would specify any changes desired by the contracting individuals.
States have no business determining who should be able to enter into those sorts of contracts, except to the extent of determining who can legally enter into private contracts of any sort.
It's effectively the same thing, except it's not. It would allow a lot more fine tuning of rights and additionally would prevent others from interfering in who makes those contracts. It would completely eliminate the gay marriage rights debate, which does currently prevent two people from using the powers of "spouses" you listed above in very many States.
Additionally, while it would complicate the paperwork to enter into an agreement (for some people, usually those with more than enough money to pay for a lawyer to do the work), it would drastically simplify the dissolution of such a union. The latter tends to be the more contentious under current US law; far more so than is necessary.
If the "general welfare" clause was intended to be interpreted as broadly as you claim here, there would be no need for Constitutional amendments.
The Supreme Court also claimed that growing wheat to eat yourself was interstate commerce. There's been a lot of silly SC decisions.
Some people refuse to let facts get in the way of a comforting ideology. That seems to be especially true of those with a libertarian bent.
No, that's not what I'm saying at all. What people seem to think I'm arguing (and I'm not) is that medical care needs to be a social service rather than insurance. I love how people are jumping to conclusions :P
I was simply trying to point out the reasons that the line-item-veto for pediatric care and birth control won't work -- because if you get to line-item-veto those, I should get to line-item-veto cancer care, dialysis, and diabetes treatment -- and then it becomes individualized coverage where you may as well just pay for what you use. If everyone line-item-vetoed the things they didn't need to buy, then the collective insurance model would break down. That's exactly WHY the ACA mandated certain things be covered.
I should perhaps point out that the British National Health Service is just that - a scheme to maintain the Nation's health. And a very efficient way of doing that is to make it straightforward (and free) to see a doctor, so people generally start receiving treatment earlier, while they're still only mildly ill.
This is one of the reasons the UK's cancer survival rate is lower than the USA - almost everybody's diagnosed, while (presumably) many Americans without insurance simply die and are uncounted.
The nearest US equivalents to the NHS that I can think of are US Military Hospitals which may not have the swishest of decor, but the treatment is world class.
Madison believed in a narrow interpretation of the general welfare clause.
In general, Madison believed in a narrow (strict constructionist) view of the Constitution, until he and that other noted strict constructionist, Tom Jefferson, threw the whole idea in the trash to make the Louisiana Purchase. At least they knew that they were throwing their previous view of the Constitution in the trash, and stopped claiming a narrow interpretation. That's right folks, for the last 210 years the strict constructionist view of the Constitution has been dead, killed by the very people who created it. If you want to bring back the strict constructionist interpretation, you should start by returning the Louisiana Purchase.
I assume that in United States' law you are required to hold private insurance on your motor vehicle?
Maybe, maybe not. In some states you can opt not to have insurance if you provide proof you have a certain amount of assets or put up a certain amount of money.
Further, the car analogy fails because there is no government requiring you to own a car. There are many people in this country how don't own a car and never will. That is their choice.
Contrast that with this Un-ACA where the federal government has dictated everyone must hand over their money to a private company or face having that same government reach into their personal bank account and forcibly extract money because one didn't hand over money to a private company.
How can you continue to assert the awfulness of these systems when they've proven themselves highly successful?
The difference between here and elsewhere is we don't consider a nanny state a good thing. We don't (well, most rational people at least) expect the government to insinuate itself into every minute aspect of ones life. One of the contributing reasons to our revolt from Britain was the fact that the Crown was dictating to the colonists in the form of who they could buy products from (only England), how they should worship (The Church of England), and so on.
When our Constitution was written it was deliberately worded so the power of the central government was limited in scope. While one can argue its reach has significantly expanded over the centuries, never has the central government been granted the power to tell people what they must buy. Ever. Under any circumstance. Until now.
I realize looking in from a country where your every need is taken care seems like a good thing, but we don't see it that way. We like to make our lives on our own terms without the government saying, "You must do this, or else." Some take this notion to the extreme but most people just want as little government interference in their lives as possible with the understanding there will always be a need for some government.
Just because something is successful doesn't necessarily make it a good thing. By that logic the success of McDonald's hamburgers is a good thing for the food industry.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
> it does cast light on the difference between what
> can be done by a small group of experts, steeped
> in Silicon Valley's anything-is-possible mentality,
> and a massive government project in which politics
> and bureaucracy seem to have helped create an
> unwieldy mess
It also casts light on the 90/10 rule. As if we needed more examples.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
200000 unique visitors vs. 200000 visitors per minute but you couldn't resist to make a comparison? Come on...
As far as giving power to the government, that's correct - there is no need for amendments to add additional powers. That's why almost immediately after the Articles were ratified, a bunch of amendments were added to denote a few key freedoms that the government wouldn't be able to touch. Almost all* of the amendments since then have been to refine the political process or clarify further rights the government will not be able to affect. Since then, practically everything the federal government has done has been authorized under Section 8.
* The 16th Amendment establishes that the government can create a federal tax on income that is not uniform to everyone. The Supreme Court had previously determined that Congress didn't have that power, as it was limited by the clause I quoted to being uniform.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
What if Obama takes out the individual mandate, so no one has to buy health insurance. In return, Republicans admit what they know in their hearts, that the national debt doesn't matter. The Fed can fund the government indefinitely at zero cost. Fund government services with Federal Reserve debt. Taxes aren't even necessary!
It's all a part of the growing "I've Got Mine, Fuck You!" attitude that is spreading like wildfire in this country. I wonder if they would still feel that way if they got too sick to work or if their precious insurance company dropped their coverage because they were costing the company too much money.
This one works.
http://www.opm.gov/healthcare-insurance/healthcare/
It has tons of plans. Run by US Office of Personnel Management. For my state it had far more options than ACA. And you can look for dental and vision too.
During the ACA debate it was proposed that other people get access to these plans & system. Republicans vehemently opposed it.
Let's look at the opinion of another Founding Father, Alexander Hamilton:
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_1s21.html
He tried to spin this as "removing the under-insured" but no... People had plans they liked.
This is the problem right here. Obama's statement was based on the assumption that people don't like shitty plans. That's a false assumption.
Impy here had a shitty health plan from Blue Cross. We know this because the plan is no longer being offered due to the passage of the ACA. The ACA outlawed predatory plans that offered no meaningful coverage, or suffered from other shortcomings which made them unsuitable for ensuring plan members' wellbeing.
Of course, Impy still liked this plan. Whether this is because Impy enjoyed paying less for healthcare knowing that he could rely on the rest of society to pick up his tab for uncovered visits to the emergency room, or because Impy was simply ignorant of this plan's shortcomings, we don't know. But Impy liked his shitty health plan.
Now, Impy can't keep his shitty health plan. Impy can't even find another health plan that he likes, because all the other shitty plans are also gone. Now Impy has to get real health insurance, which has real costs. Obama's mistake was assuming that people actually want health insurance that works. Really, what people want is health services that they don't have to pay for. Obamacare does seek to close that loophole, and that's why so many people are up in arms. That loophole is what they want, and Obama is the antichrist for trying to get rid of it.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
But that's absurd. Why should medical care be a social service? There are serious problems (mostly known) with the current system, how about we fix those with minimum government involvement? Or is totalitarianism your goal?
Some people can't afford care? Fine, we can and should fix that. Huge administrative burden because every insurance company's paperwork is different? Fine we can and should fix that. Those problems simply don't requires government takeover of a significant portion of the economy to fix!
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
The root problem is that the ACA essentially forces me to pay for coverage I don't want
You're omitting the other part of the root problem: that hospitals are forced to provide emergency care to uninsured/underinsured persons that don't pay for coverage that they don't want.
Of course you don't like the idea of paying for coverage that you don't want. It stops you from being able to get "free healthcare", paid for by everyone else.
Here's a tiny violin.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
Most people don't understand that since the 1940's companies could assist employees with Health Insurance or with reimbursements for healt insurance using pre-tax dollars. This year the government made it illegal to pay for ACA health plans using pre tax dollars. Some quick math will prove this to be using 60 cents on the dollar, after tax dollars. Stated differently if you multiply the cost of ACA health plans by 1.4 you get a compatible comparison, since normal health insurance can be used pre-tax to pay for health insurance. This is the dirty little secret of ACA health plans. Spread the word, it's scummy.
More info:
"Beginning January 1, 2014 the Affordable Care Act (ACA) adds a new section 125(f)(3) to the Code that excludes (only) individual insurance premium offered through a State Exchange. All other types of individual health insurance premium outside the State Exchange program can still be deducted using a Section 125 Premium Only Plan."
From:
http://www.coredocuments.com/how-health-care-reform-affects-section-125-premium-only-cafeteria-plans-january-1-2014/
Yes, exactly. You're aborting a zygote. The words "abortion" and "zygote" are both the correct words to use.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Further, the car analogy fails because there is no government requiring you to own a car.
No it doesn't. You don't have to own a car but it is, however, a fact of life that you have to be alive to have life. In that sense health insurance is far more important than auto insurance.
The rest of your post continues to illustrate my point. You keep throwing out strawmen like "nanny state" and "insinuate itself into every minute aspect of ones[sic] life". That's not reasoning; that's manipulation. You rabidly shoot(updated for American audiences) your nose off to spite your face for some dogmatic ideal of "freedom". The rest of the world sees through these political and corporate planted "opinions" as nothing more than a way to protect profits. The American people want universal health care- they're just too dogmatically opposed to certain words to be able to explain it without huge amounts of cognitive dissonance. Which is trivial to see in your post. You don't make rational statements; you make emotional pleas.
Your government tells you what to do and buy all the time you twit and probably on the high end of the spectrum compared to other western countries. You don't oppose health care for "freedom" and you know it. You oppose it because you are told to.
Just because something is successful doesn't necessarily make it a good thing. By that logic the success of McDonald's hamburgers is a good thing for the food industry.
That's a pretty glaring false equivalence. Health care and unhealthy American food are pretty much as far apart as things can get. But if you would care to explain how keeping society healthy and productive, doing it cheaper than the American system and reducing crime is not a good thing then I would love to hear it. I'm sorry helping your neighbour occasionally is un-American but it's just part of being a civilized nation.
But let's get to the meat of the matter:
Bullshit, bullshit, BULLSHIT! Your problem is your problem, not mine
Are you suggesting that hospitals are no longer obligated to provide emergency care to uninsured/underinsured persons? Or are you deliberately misrepresenting the problem just to score points for your "healthcare bad!" side of the argument?
Just don't expect me to pay for your replacement lung or cancer treatment.
But... isn't that exactly what's been happening for decades? You're asking us to not expect business as usual, but you have not even hinted at why such an expectation is unreasonable. Hospitals provide emergency care to the uninsured/underinsured, and it's not because of Obamacare. This is an indisputable fact. Why is your argument phrased as opposition to Obamacare when it would be more clearly couched as opposition to the Hippocratic oath?
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
What about this problem that I had before the ACA:
I'm healthy. My BMI at the high end of Normal, but still not enough to be classed Overweight. I am working on this at my own cost to get back more to the middle of the normal road. I do not smoke, anything. I do not take illicit drugs, and even over the counter stuff requires absolute need before I pop a pill. My cholesterol is good. My Blood pressure is normal. I don't drink but maybe once every few months. My only vice would be caffeine, and that's only a cup of coffee and a Mountain Dew a day. I have not called into work because of illness except for once during an excruciating migraine in the last 3 years.
Before the provisions of the ACA, starting in 2009 I was classified non-insurable due to a preexisting condition that wasn't discovered until a Workman's Compensation claim. I was probably born with it. I have no physical disability from it. I have no mental disability from it. It's not likely to kill me before anything else would. If the condition was a bit worse, I could get surgery to correct it, but at the moment it's too small to touch without neurological damage. Basically it could go away on its own, it could enlarge to a point where it's fixable, or it could always be the size it is now and show no adverse effects, but because it's on my record, I couldn't get insurance.
No. My Pineal Cyst is not your problem. It's not my problem either; not directly my problem, anyway. I'm not going into any other details but there are procedures that I needed that were denied me since I didn't have insurance to afford them. I finally got insurance this year through my employer under the new initiative for compliance with the ACA that they started in July. When my coverage kicked in, I started to get things fixed that have been getting put off for affordability. Things that would have been covered by Insurance to begin with. Things that would not have been as bad as they were had I been able to get to a Doctor sooner. Nothing serious. Nothing life threatening. But they did make day to day living interestingly painful at times.
And one final note. You apparently have no idea how insurance works. By its very definition, in purchasing a policy, you are putting money into a giant pot to cover the costs of catastrophic events for anyone with a stake in that pot. Through this method, the healthy are going to carry the burden of the unhealthy. What makes it worthwhile to put money into this pot is no one knows when anything would happen to shift a person from healthy to unhealthy. Step off the curb at the wrong moment...and live? You are now unhealthy and drawing from the pot. Run over someone who legally stepped into the way of your vehicle at just the wrong moment...and lived? He is now drawing from your share of the pot. Perfectly healthy person finds out the hard way he has a genetic heart condition that won't immediately kill him... he draws from the pot until something does. The big thing with why Insurance Companies are restructuring their plans to fit with ACA guidelines and forcing Policy holders into more expensive plans is so they can grow the pot to cover the influx of potential unhealthies while they minimize the dip in their profit pool.
Of course, I can see why you'd be upset about being forced into participating in the pot. If you've got a good bit of health, you probably don't want to support anyone who's not as lucky or as disciplined as you. But, if you turn out to be not as lucky as you thought you were and wind up having to pay $50,000 - $500,000 for a single stay in a hospital for surgery, or a broken leg, or losing traction in a snow storm and slamming broadside into a tree, breaking a leg as it gets smashed in the door, or any other event... I don't want to hear one iota about how far in debt you are. It can be something very trivial, fleeting, and unexpected that could leave any one of us in the hole for millions and destitute in a wheelchair...or worse, regardles
Is the government in the business of prop-ing businesses up? Funny for most how that answer changes when the subject is large banking institutions.
This is why I wish we had just gone to a single payer system. We wouldn't be using law to prop up a business (though we would be killing one). Personally, I hate the individual mandate, I don't like any law that forbids a boycott, on the other hand, I have little issue with using tax money on the public good (roads, schools, water, police, fire protection, medical service).
How is that the government's fault?
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I think the issue is that, many birth-control medications can act as an abortifacient. That is, rather than preventing conception (joining of the sperm and ovum), it prevents the embryo from adhering, thus starving it.
If you feel that human life begins at conception and that the embryo has human rights at that point, then taking a medication that causes it to starve would be murder. If you do not, then your opinion likely differs, but the point is that non-barrier methods of birth-control could be considered murder if you start from the assumption that the embryo was a human with all the rights that entails.
Big government is about the worst idea possible. There is so much evidence of this throughout the world, and it's staring you in the face at home.... yet people somehow think this is a good idea. Get health care out of government hands
Tell me why our health care system is nowhere near first place in any metric except cost? We pay more for health care than anyone else. The government can't possibly fuck it up any worse than it already is.
For my zip code and household--Shrepa worked like a champ. Confirmed what I already knew in less than a minute. i.e. the information is accurate and came quick. Took the better part of three weeks to get the "official" word.
I'm not saying it should be a social service -- reread my previous post. Canadians have health care as a social service included in their taxes, and their system is broken for entirely different reasons. I'm not here to debate whether healthcare should or shouldn't be a service -- but one thing that we agree on is that the current system is wasteful and needs to be fixed.
All I'm saying is that the law mandated a certain level of coverage to qualify as an insurance plan. Anything below that line doesn't qualify, and the law specifically mentioned a few types of coverage that need to be included, so that's why some plans are getting cancelled (because they didn't meet the spec).
"For some, it's healthcare for all."
Without our health, the other pursuits of happiness are that much harder to achieve. So, I'd say healthcare isn't just one of the myriad pursuits of happiness but rather a requirement for any other pursuits of happiness to even be achievable.
Everything else hinges on our health.
So a working-man and a stay-at-home-mom enter such a contract. He gets paid and that income is taxed. Can he give money to his wife without it being taxed? Can she go to the store and buy groceries with his money without it being taxed as her income?
I mean, sure, they have a shared bank account, but they're seperate entities only being held together with a contract. Is his income taxed again when she spends it? It shouldn't be, they're married.
So two businessmen enter into a contract. They share a bank account. One makes some money, the other spends some money. Is that transfer of money taxed? It damn well should be.
Additionally, while it would complicate the paperwork to enter into an agreement (for some people, usually those with more than enough money to pay for a lawyer to do the work), it would drastically simplify the dissolution of such a union.
Oh, so do such contract state who owns the kids? I'm sure that everything stays perfectly the same from the time a young couple enter a contract to the time after they have children. And it's SO SIMPLE now that there's a contract absolving/forcing the daddy from having to pay child support. Because careers NEVER change over decades. Seriously, you think LIFELONG contracts are going to make things simpler?
ok ok, lemme explain it this way: When you marry someone you ARE entering into a lifelong contract. A premade, long-established contract that's similar to everyone elses' (save a few rich dicks with pre-nups), and it's been codified into law in a dozen different ways. It gives special privileges to a couple in the same way that parent/offspring relationships have special privileges. To keep slimy businessmen from abusing some of these privileges, you can't wantonly marry people just for a tax break.
Seriously, just let the gays marry.
We've been through this with inter-racial marriages, we really should have learned our lesson.
And in a couple of decades we'll go through all this again with robots. Mark my words.
"... none of which gives Congress the power over health care."
But, Congress DOES have the power to regulate business, and that is precisely what our healthcare system has become. If you don't want government involved, remove profit from the equation.
One can say the same thing about religion, now that I think about it.
In other words, throw out the law? Gee, that's helpful...
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Why not instead let people choose insurance that meets their needs? (It's not so much the law as the regulators kicking plans out, and those regulations are still in motion). That's why "if you like your plan you can keep your plan" was so important - it let people opt in to this new untested system.
Instead people are being forced into this system (financially they had to be, it never made sense that you could cover pre-existing conditions without a large bump in premiums), and for the most part they aren't happy. apparently congress will vote Friday on a "keep your plan" bill. If that should pass, it will inevitably mean insurance company bailouts, as you can't change the math on pre-existing conditions. Yay, more bailouts! Won't that be fun!
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Your history needs improvement. The first Secretary of the Treasury, Andrew Hamilton, interpreted it in a much more general manner than you do. And he was a Founding Father.
"lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, " is not irrelevant text. It's quite specific in what Congress is allowed to do in order to "pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States".
Funny how the Federalists, represented by Founding Father Alexander Hamilton, had a different, much broader interpretation of "General Welfare" than you do. Selection bias, much?
Well, NOW it's fucked up.
Before, it was working pretty well for the majority of us. It's only going to get worse.
Had your insurance cancelled yet?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
The problem comes when people resist any change whatsoever with a flat denial and a refusal to discuss anything, because it's not in the Constitution, so the conversation is over.
Once it became standard practice to rely on such stonewalling to circumvent discussion and justify oppression, then bad things were allowed to keep happening, and they were only resolved when people finally had enough of the bullshit to defy the past.
People who support such willful obstruction and deliberate blindness, they have allowed evil to happen.
The Amendment that the Constitution most sorely needs is one telling those people to stop treating it as a testament of faith.
Don't talk about facts right in front of my face!
How dare you?
If I wanted that I'd watch Fox News!
Obviously the solution to this bad legislation is to put everyone into the pool the bad legislation already dumps 47% of the people into.
That's right: Medicare.
That's telling 'em happy ol' boy...
You do realize how uncomfortable it'd be to use the constitution as TP, right? It's single ply for crissakes.
Like one of those Bronze level plans with a 6K deductible and 12K cap on yearly expenses can be classified as anything but crappy. Now they're just government sanction and way more expensive than they were. But of course you can enjoy the free birth control pills.
Seems to me that maybe this is complicated because it is? Maybe it will never be smooth and simply and maybe people need to realize its just another part of the lie about the affordable care act. After all their have been millions that have accessed the site. But have never chose to register or go any further. I think affordable is a oxymoron when it comes to health care. The people obviously who could get it the cheapest won't buy it because they generally believe its cheaper still to do the pay as you go plan. Most have only minor health issues and pay the walk in clinic or emergency room visit which might actually be less then a deductible. What Obama and the Democrat's should have done was offer plans that fit the age and gender of the groups they cover. For example don't have elderly paying for birth control and pregnancy coverage. They obviously thought having everyone pay this would reduce its costs. But that's only if you get the right age groups in the right quantity. The unfortunate thing government is learning about health care is that a minimal group of choices will not make people happy. Plus, it looks like it will not save everyone money on health care insurance. I am not surprised the Affordable care act is failing. It was designed to fail and believe me the solutions will be even more government control.
I don't want to pay for their fucking either.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
It doesn't matter what the politicians call it. It IS an abortifacient.
Maybe you will believe wikicrap?
Or, perhaps Web MD?
I know! The God Damned Manufacturer of the drug
But I don't expect you to follow any of the links, even the ones to the government site and the manufacturer's site. You are too invested in your open erroneous opinion.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
You think they're going to support an out-of-pocket payment model with those potential charges?
Goddamnit you people are so fucking stupid. You put on your Blue D or your Red R and you throw all logic right out the goddamn window. READ the fucking article. SHE WAS INSURED. After insurance she still owed $25537 to the hospital. Having insurance does not solve the fucking problem.
The charges are fraudulent. That was my point. There's not another country on Earth where child birth costs $2mil, where treating a bug bite is $83K. THAT is what is broken. Obama's solution is to force me spend 15%+ of my income on insurance to partially pay these fraudulent charges. I've got a better idea: OUTLAW THE FRAUDULENT CHARGES.
Yes, I have read that before. The main problem with that is James Madison, who wrote the Constitution, explicitly spoke prior to that directly contradicting it. Alexander Hamilton was a noted strong government advocate, and this was part of his attempt to "reinterpret" what was already made clear, much like the Supreme Court, and Republicans, and Democrats, do today. We have very clear indications as to the use of this phrase. Until someone can explain why the author's own explanation is not good enough, I don't see why anyone should care about other people's opinions on the matter.
Remember, you can't look dignified when your having fun! Don't take life too seriously, you'll never get out of it alive
I just tried the healthsherpa.com site and put in the applicant at 46 years old and the second at 42 smoker area code 23454 Income at $28000.No plans found. I tried multiple incomes all with the same result. Obviously as broken as the gov site. I have tried numerous different applicant ages and incomes and area codes in Virginia all with the same result.
Yeah that'll just be a huge pile of joy :-/ I'm crossing my fingers that my health plan doesn't go up -- I get it through my company, and I have a feeling that insurance companies are going to "equalize" the rates for everyone, which means even the corporate renewal prices are going to go up.
Honesly I don't believe the ACA is the end goal. I think it's just priming the pump for what their real agenda is -- a single payer system. At that point you may as well just call it a "tax" and a "social service" and be done with it, no matter what the labels are. I just hope we don't get to that point, because who is going to make the decisions on what reasonable care is then? How are we going to cover second opinions? How do we not force treatment on people in the name of being "preventative"? There are a lot of questions that lead me to very uncomfortable conclusions. I already hate my oligopoly power company and cable provider -- what makes me think healthcare would be handled any better? It's a slippery slope, and it starts with creating a tax for people who don't shell out for the "acceptable plan" in the first place.
Excellent. Let's apply 200-year-old interpretations to modern life!
Or, we could follow the modern interpretations of the Supreme Court, since that's actually their job:
"Interpretation" -- I do not think this means what you think it means.
The job of the Supreme Court (better now known as the Revolutionary Tribunal), as defined in the very Constitution, is to determine whether or not a new law is constitutional. That's it, that's all. A law is either constitutional, or it's not.
It is NOT the job of the Revolutionary Tribunal to invent new law, twist language, invent new meanings for words, and find creative ways to make unconstitutional laws constitutional by "interpretation."
The Constitution is written in pretty plain English -- perhaps 6th-grade level for its time. I didn't have any trouble understanding each and every phrase of it by the 6th grade.
The problem with your "modern interpretation" theory is that it's a slippery slope of unlimited artistic license to determine the meaning of "is". If we're just going to let the SC make words mean whatever they want them to mean, then the Constitution is rendered null and void -- which is precisely what they want, of course, but no way to maintain the Republic.
That I'm right, and you don't like it, doesn't mean I'm a troll.
I like the way you think. I'm telling you 'cause I have no mod points today.
That I'm right, and you don't like it, doesn't mean I'm a troll.
You keep talking about RU-486 (mifepristone). I'm talking about concentrated doses of progestin commonly referred to as emergency contraception.
The sooner you realize your mistake, the sooner you will stop looking like a damn fool.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Right, and they have added a tax/duty/impost/excise/fine if you don't buy health insurance, for the general welfare of the united states.
They could also use those taxes to buy all the bloody hospitals and provide healthcare for the general welfare of the united states, but they're not doing that.
Just found out about mine (company plan) - fortunately it didn't go up, but my deductible went up $500/year. From what I've heard I got lucky! Good luck with yours.
BTW "preventative" => "preventive".
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
In that sense health insurance is far more important than auto insurance.
No, it's not. If I am perfectly healthy (which I am) and able to pay my medical bills from my own savings, why should I have to have the added financial burden of paying for YOUR medical bills? That is what medical insurance is about after all, and something this administration has repeatedly said in the form of, "We need as many healthy people as possible to sign up so they can pay for the sick."
Health insurance is a cost which is never recovered. Ever. It's actually worse than car insurance because the insurance companies are betting you will stay healthy while you are betting you will get sick or injured.
That's not reasoning; that's manipulation.
No, it is reasoning by illustrating one of many reasons the colonists broke away from England. They were tired of BEING manipulated by government. They were tired of having to send the product of their labors back to England and then being told they had to buy finished products, made from their labors, only from England. They were tired of having their taxes go to expand the British Empire, tired of being used as pawns against the French, and so on. Their lives, to use your example, existed solely for the benefit of someone else. What they wanted did not matter. Thus, revolution and independence.
The rest of the world sees through these political and corporate planted "opinions" as nothing more than a way to protect profits.
Corporate planted? How is arguing AGAINST giving my money to a company a corporate planted opinion? I'm arguing against giving companies free money. If anything, I should be heralded by the Slashdot crowd for fighting against corporate governance and greed. The only one who is protecting profits is the Obama administration who gave insurance companies this windfall.
Your government tells you what to do and buy all the time you twit
Really? Explain how that works. Do they tell me I must buy my cable service from a specific company? Phone/cell service? Broadband (local government yes, but not Federal)? How about what food I must buy? The car I drive? Name one item the government tells me I must buy. Remember, this is on the Federal level we're talking about.
You don't oppose health care for "freedom" and you know it. You oppose it because you are told to.
No, I oppose being told I have to pay for your health insurance while you can continue to smoke, be obese, be an alcoholic or do drugs without having to change your ways. I oppose being told I must give up the fruit of my labors to people who won't take personal responsibility for their lives (going back to your original comment). I oppose having the government reach into my bank account and forcibly extracting my money and handing it over to a private company because I didn't "voluntarily" hand over the money to the company.
Health care and unhealthy American food are pretty much as far apart as things can get.
No, they're not. Americans eating junk food has a very high correlation to bad health. Witness the most recent result which shows why medical costs are so high in the U.S.: The reason what you think. Diabetes and heart disease come from two main issues: regularly eating food which is bad for you and not having an active lifestyle.
But if you would care to explain how keeping society healthy and productive, doing it cheaper than the American system and reducing crime is not a good thing
Considering UACA doesn't keep costs down or make people productive, it's a moot point. Nowhere in the bill are costs contained. The only thing this bill does is force people like me to pay for those who can't, or won't, take care of themselves. That is all. There will be no cost redu
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
If I am perfectly healthy (which I am) and able to pay my medical bills from my own savings, why should I have to have the added financial burden of paying for YOUR medical bills?
Firstly because you may not be perfectly healthy next month and can very very quickly become bankrupted from the medical bills. Your "I'm not currently sick so fuck everyone" attitude is why everyone laughs at you. It is, quite frankly, shortsighted and idiotic. Secondly: all of society pays for unhealthy people within it in one way or another. Most people that can see things past their own wallet have decided that paying a little bit of money for universal healthcare is the cheapest option. You still seem to think your frothing at the mouth somehow defeats real world data.
It's actually worse than car insurance because the insurance companies are betting you will stay healthy while you are betting you will get sick or injured.
Which is exactly how auto insurance works so I fail to see why that makes it different. It is exactly how all insurance works because that is what insurance is (worded in a super selfish manner of course). As another example why should I be expected to pay for a fire department? My house isn't currently on fire.
No one gives a shit about why you think America broke away from England. It is entirely irrelevant to the discussion of whether universal health care is good or not. "blah blah [largely uninformed understanding of history] blah blah Church of England" is not reasoning or an argument. It is you knowing you don't have a point to make but pulling one out of your ass anyway.
Really? Explain how that works. ... The car I drive?
Police services, fire department, numerous other requirements for other things. They certainly do tell you what car you are allowed to drive. How ignorant can you be? Nice way to conveniently ignore all the regulations in that area.
No, I oppose being told I have to pay for your health insurance while you can continue to smoke, be obese, be an alcoholic or do drugs without having to change your ways
This is a blatant strawman you fool. Stop using them. Not only is it pointless and utter bullshit it's clearly not the real reason you oppose it. Why is auto insurance okay? Why don't you mind paying for auto insurance so other people can be bad drivers?
No, they're not. Americans eating junk food has a very high correlation to bad health.
Which had absolutely nothing to do with how you were comparing them. That two things can be tangentially related in one way does not mean they can be compared equivalently in an unrelated way. The fact that I called it "unhealthy" was to show you I understood that it was related to health. What it is not related to is universal health care. Evidently you missed that.
Considering UACA doesn't keep costs down or make people productive, it's a moot point.
It fails because fools like you force it to. The rest of the world seems to handle it fine, remember?
As to the crime issue, if you mean people who deliberately commit a crime so they can go to jail to get medical help [blah blah strawman blah blah]
There you go with your fantasy world again. Ignoring the fact that they may not be able to get a job which seems to be the case for a lot of Americans. You have quite the unemployment rate. I'd think if all the unemployed people had jobs waiting for them your labour market would collapse from lack of people. We have already established they are sick though (need healthcare, remember?). Many times sick people can't work for several reasons.
The "fuck you; I got mine" attitude will work great for you I'm sure. Up until you get sick or your country degenerates so far someone bats you in the back the head with a pipe (w
I know this is late, but...
You are not being forced to buy a product. That's just the smart thing to do. You can instead pay a tax penalty. It's your choice, but you do have a massive personal debt to society to settle, even if you never set foot in a hospital. That's the price of living in a society gifted with modern medicine. You have been incurring costs upon us all and reaping the benefits from birth, before you had any say in the matter. The law isn't punishment or arbitrary, it's correcting an injustice committed against everybody.
Here's the first example to my mind: you have no real concept of the abject terror of polio or the bubonic plague or any of a hundred other horrifying diseases because we as a society are working together to keep them in check. Vaccination only works because enough of the herd is participating. If too many other people opt-out, your own vaccination becomes worthless. and it's a pretty high percentage to meet. But those diseases aren't extinct. If we stop vaccinating, they come back and hit harder than ever. That's why we as a society inject every infant and child we can get our hands on.
So fuck you, you ungrateful little shit. If you want to reject the luxuries thrust upon you against your will, then get the fuck out. Such luxuries as: actually being alive; having mostly functioning limbs, organs, senses, and mental capacities; and extremities like fingers and genitals that don't literally turn black and rot off. Move to Africa or something and pray your family doesn't come down with something absolutely, life-shatteringly awful.
You are paying for healthcare things you don't want to pay for right now. But in the most inefficient manner possible.
If you want a truly free country, that means that hospitals should be free to let kids die outside their emergency rooms. As soon as you are on board with that 'freedom', your arguments are at least logically consistent.
Until then, get used to living in a society that tries to manage shared costs (shared based on common resource pools or common morality) in an efficient way.
If you want a truly free country, that means that hospitals should be free to let kids die outside their emergency rooms. As soon as you are on board with that 'freedom', your arguments are at least logically consistent.
And I have no problem with that. I do not make a habit of forcing other people to work for me - you know, slavery. A hospital should have the right to demand some sort of payment for services rendered. And it just so happens I pay insurance to cover those services, if they exceed a set financial amount (my deductible). Of course, that agreement is now subject to the terms and conditions of a third party who knows nothing of my needs or medical history - but apparently is willing to demand I do things that simply waste money. And that is efficiency?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
No, it's not cancelled. We actually just got that newsletter, they aren't raising their rates this year. (But some copay go from 10-15)
It was working well for "the majority"? Well no shit, the majority is HEALTHY. Health insurance doesn't do jack fucking shit for the healthy. It's those unlucky few that have serious medical bills. It's a thankfully rare event. You buy INSURANCE against RARE and COSTLY events.
Want to start your own business? Work freelance? Have to work part-time? Going to college? YOU CAN'T AFFORD HEALTH INSURANCE! If you get sick or hurt, YOU'RE FUCKED!
And the health insurance industry was entirely devoid of the free market. Individuals don't shop around for healthcare, they get what's available through their job. Companies shop around for healthcare, but don't actually give a shit about it other than as a bullet point for hiring people. You can't shop around for emergency healthcare, and the hospitals thankfully can't turn you away. They also can't force you to pay medical bills, so the actual cost gets shuffled off onto those that can pay/have insurance to charge to. And hospitals/doctors/patients are all spending "other people's money", so they don't give a shit about how much things cost. Insurance companies are not in the business of selling insurance, they're in the business of saying "no". Remember "pre-existing conditions"?
Shit is so bad that even middle-class families are getting crushed by medical bills they have no hope of paying. (Those are the upstanding citizens that actually try and pay their bills).
When you compare our system of how we handle this to nearly any other first world nation, it's a laughable clusterfuck. It's been such an obvious major problem that they were making jokes about it on SNL, TWENTY YEARS AGO, and it's gotten progressively worse each year since.
But hey, yeah, it's a fantastic system, if you're healthy or wealthy.
Most pro-life people hold the position that theraputic abortion should remain legal.
When it is the convenience of the woman vs. the life of the fetus, the fetus wins. When it is the life of the woman vs the life of both the fetus and the woman, the fetus loses.
Sorry about the delay in responding, I had to leave the country for a short bit and didn't have internet I could use.
Well, no. The government does not have the power and it will be challenged and overturned as soon as someone is subject to the fine (due to the rules on challenging a tax). The court said the government has the power to tax and pretty much that was it. It did not say the government could mandate anyone purchase anything and it did not say the tax was constitutional, it only changed a penalty to a tax and said the government can tax.
It was never examined on the government's ability to tax. The court said the penalty was essentially a tax and the government can tax. It did nothing to determine if they government has absolute authority to tax or if taxes as penalties could negate the first, 4th, 5th, and 9th amendments which this tax does. As for comparing it to taxing tobacco, fuel and importing goods, you are off the point there. Those taxes happen because someone does something. The ACA penalty happens when you don't do something. If the penalty was an across the board increase in taxes with deductions or credits allowed if you purchased insurance, there would be no constitutional questions. But it doesn't, it says if you act in contrary to a law, you will have a penalty assessed by way of tax. This penalty has no due process, no first amendment exceptions, and clearly violates the 9th amendment that says no rights granted in the constitution can be construed to deny or disparage others.
It is a fine. It is a penalty for not doing something a law claims you are supposed to do. No amount of slick talking can get rid of that fact until the actual law is changed. Law enforcement is government so attempting to distinguish between the two is moot.
Nope. Count with me, 1,2,3,4... Notice something about those numbers? What's that, they are in succession. Good. Now, if the ACA penalties were just like any other income tax, you would be subject to it then deduct the amount when you show compliance. That is how every single other income tax has worked. All the sudden, you have a penalty or additional tax on top of your normal tax if you did not do something the government says you are supposed to do.
Lol.. So the government up and taking something from the refund or the amount of taxes that was over paid without your express permission, is not the government penalizing you by confiscating your money? And the so called no provision of enforcement is exactly why it is unconstitutional. You have a right to due process of law. Where can that happen when the government takes something from you without just compensation if there is no mechanism to redress it?
Now, I know you are going to go in circles and fall back to the entire it is a tax and the government can
Actually, the 13th amendment specifically permits slavery.
Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Someone who has been found guilty, and sentenced to jail, can be forced to work for the government (involuntary servitude) or lose other rights besides mobility and/or liberty (slavery).
If the "3/5th" rule were enforced, then states that take the view "you are our slave" would lose representation, and have a reason to NOT make them slaves.
I think somebody's figured out mind control. Half of us can't be THIS stupid.
Wonder if they'll open source this? If it takes off, they're going to spend a lot of time to maintain it. If they open sourced it, otoh...