How can you blame Republicans (single-handedly, apparently) for killing single-payer when you couldn't even get your own party united behind it?
Because I can't fucking qualify every single part of every post I make on slashdot.
Here's a hint: I was talking about Republicans. Hence I was pointing out that they could have done something different and we wouldn't have had this nonsense. (And that their people, in fact, invented the mandate.)
If I was talking about right wing Democrats instead who didn't like the mandate, I would have pointed out that their people put that in.
You acknowledge an ineffective bill, yet support it (cheerfully at that) simply because you (and/or your "side") benefits from it and/or you get to "stick it" to the other side. I agree with the AC:
I. Do. Not. Support. The. Fucking. Bill.
Anyone who suggests otherwise will get a knife in their trakia.
For me, me now being able to purchase insurance is better than the original situation, where I was charged huge rates to make up how little insurance companies pay.
This is like being behind the monster destroying the city instead of in front. It is still, clearly, not the ideal situation.
One obvious fourth choice there is to leave things as they are and handle the closet cases specifically: make it illegal for insurance companies to drop existing customers, make it possible for customers to transfer their insurance between jobs (and from family/child policy to self policy) without dispute, and then allow people who were dropped prior to the bill's passing to recover their previous plans.
Oddly enough, you managed to leave me out of that, although I'm sure you just hadn't realized there were people who'd never been able to purchase insurance at any time.
And you do realize that what you just suggested would impose 99% of the same hardship on insurance companies as the current bill does, right?
All your differences actually do is ensure that people who somehow become bankrupt or poor at any point in their life can never get insurance if they've ever been sick.
But hey, why blame them when you can bash Republicans, right?
I will state this clearly: Context. Is. Everything.
I was blaming the Republicans in the context of the right wing tea partiers who don't like part of this bill, by pointing out that it's the right wing that caused that incredibly stupid part.
I know what a spectacular fuckup the Democrats were with this bill. As I pointed out somewhere else, any Democrat who threatened to help filibuster the election-promised legislature should have been bodily thrown out of the party by the majority leader. You can vote however you want, but you don't get to fucking filibuster your own party's election-promised bill.
But Democrats are incredibly stupid and spineless and kept altering the bill without getting the promise of votes. We wasted a fucking year trying to get Snowe on board.
If you want to say I should have said 'The right killed it' instead of 'Republicans killed it', I will happily amend my statement to that so that Democrats on the right are included also.
You say "we need healthcare, not health insurance" and then proudly cheer the passage of a bill that is entirely ineffective in achieving that goal
In what universe did I cheer that bill? I'm cheering the failure of it.
I'm laughing because the goddamn stupid compromise with insurance companies fell apart, and it is at least somewhat possible they'll get fucked from 'their compromise'. (Which was essentially 'This bill can in no way touch the profits we've making while we provide no service')
You have an axe to grind, and you've no problem swinging it, so long as: 1) you benefit from it, 2) republicans and/or any rich person suffers because of it.
If by 'benefit', you mean 'can actually do something besides paying over-inflated health care costs because insurance companies negotiate their costs to nothing', yes.
And if by 'rich person', you mean 'an industry that has personally cost me over 20,000 dollars despite the fact they won't let me have anything to do with them', yes.
I'm just happy this bill lets me purchase some sort of insurance while people, including me, get more and more ready to lynch the insurance companies as it becomes clear what a parasite they are.
Ultimately, my problem with the entire argument is that everyone I know who doesn't have health insurance could easily afford it but for an unwillingness to correct blatant prioritization problems.
Hello, I would like you to meet me. I am David. I do not have health insurance. I do not have it not because 'I cannot afford it'. I actually can afford it.(1)
I do not have health insurance because I had heart surgery as a child, and have a pacemaker, and hence insurance companies will not sell insurance to me.
1) Well, whether or not I can 'afford' something that does not exist is something of a metaphysical question. I could afford what other people seem to pay for their insurance.
I will address the points you bought up, and how to cut costs, with a hypothetical government-paid healthcare system, when the government reimburses doctors for providing medical care.
For one, you have patients who do not think to shop around for maximum value
See, that's just a little silly. Patients are not competent just how much health care they need, nor are they involved enough in the process to actually cut costs.
We do need to cut costs, but it should be because the providers have an incentive to do it cheaper, not because patients figure that one place is 5% cheaper. What should happen is that place makes 6% profit and the other place make 1% profit...and then we racket it down where they make 4% and -1%. (Which would result in people having to pay things out of pocket, and presumably they would go elsewhere when they learned of this.)
and doctors who do not compete because they all get paid mostly the same anyways.
Getting paid mostly the same is an excellent reason to cut costs. I think you're looking at the problem backwards.
What we should have is set payments for stuff, and doctors get paid that much. If they can do it cheaper, hey, look, they just made money. Once everyone starts doing it cheaper, we lower payments a bit.
What we absolutely need to stop doing is having medical facilities set their own prices, and have the government, or insurance companies, or even random people who really can't comparison shop, pay whatever they are. That way lies madness. (In fact, we've already gone that way, and gone insane.)
Then there is the negotiated payments from insurance companies which encourage the industry to artificially inflate prices (for those without insurance) to get what they believe is a fair compensation (less than list price).
As an uninsurable person who actually pays their bills (Yes, we exist.), negotiated prices piss me the fuck off, especially when insured people assume I'm the one freeloading. They're freeloading off me. My last hospital visit I paid about $17,000 for something that should have cost $6000.
Then there is the administrative cost for doctors to process the paperwork.
Right, which is why I think 'insurance', even single payer, is the wrong model.
A doctor turns in evidence they did a certain procedure. They get paid a fixed rate for that. That's it, the end. No administrative overhead. (At least not for payment, obviously doctors have a lot of other paperwork.)
Yes, we have to worry about fraud...but we always have to worry about that. And we don't have to worry about some of the fraud, either...we don't worry about is doctor lying how much they charged (A common medicare scam) because they don't paid based on that. All we have to worry about is doctors making up stuff.
And we don't have to worry if they're 'covered' or what their 'deductible' is.
For health insurance companies to turn their fat profits, we need to spend a LOT more on our insurance premiums than the entire country is spending on health care.
They make about 5% profit, and about 20% overhead, so by definition, we are paying 25% more than if we just threw all our money in a big swimming pool and grabbed some when we went to the doctor. (And that's not counting the administration on the doctor's end.) It's insane.
This is madness even in a pure free market.
Having a middleman who makes more money the less he resells is...well, we're past 'melted clock faces' territory and into complete dadaism.
And that's absurd enough, without having what they fail to provide result in the sickness and death of people...well...
From the outside, the health insurance industry looks essentially like a satirical deconstruction of the free market by communists.
Look at us, comrade, mocking the free market, as it cannot provide basic services because of the bourgeoisie sucking all the money out. The lack of health care is a metaphor for the living death the proletariat is forced to toil in...wait, what? It's not a metaphor? People are actually dying?
The fact is, and I'm clearly speaking from experience, Obamacare is bad for EVERYONE.
Except for me, who can now (Well, as of 2013) purchase insurance when I could not before because they wouldn't sell it to me.
I love how people just keep making blanket statement about how no one is better off, despite the fact that I repeatedly say that I am.
And, um, incidentally, Obamacare hasn't gone into effect yet.
If your insurance company is claiming that's why premiums went up, they are lying. They do not have to change their behavior and allow people with pre-existing conditions until 2013.
Incorrect. The bill passed with exactly ZERO republican votes. Any concessions to the bill were made not to secure republican votes, but to secure moderate and rogue democrat votes. Straw polls showed no support for a public option from the democrats themselves.
What you said makes sense in a sane universe where Democrats are intelligent.
However, as was clearly demonstrated, Democrats are total fucking morons who made concessions to make the bill better for Republicans without actually getting the promise of votes for it.
Meanwhile, they couldn't even control their caucus enough to get members to allow a vote on their most important work. Not vote for it, but to stop a goddamn filibuster.
I'm sorry, if I'm in charge of a party, and someone in my party goes along with a filibuster of our goddamn election-promised legislature of the party, they're out. They are fucking kicked of the party. They can turn in their D and go sit in the damn isle, and turn in all their committee seats. They can vote for the bill however they want, but they cannot filibuster it. (I'm not sure if, legally, that's possible...but we can sure as fuck shun them and treat them as if they were a member of the opposition party. Have a bill they want on the floor? They better find a Republican to second it.)
At this point, those, it's one of those great mysteries of life: Are the Democrats deeply stupid, or at they on the right, wanted to fail, and just pretending to be stupid?
We shall argue over it no more. It makes no difference.
As for the rest of your statement I agree 100%. There is no need for insurance companies. Let the Government pay the bill and we'll all pay our "premiums" to the tax man.
Indeed. Even the idea of 'single payer' in incomprehensible. We don't need 'insurance'. We need health care.
And the mandate isn't 'the progressive way of doing it'.
The mandate is the right wing way of doing it that the Obama administration 'compromised to', like a bunch of idiots. It was invented by Republicans back when the Republicans last fucked over health care reform, with Clinton.
Oh, if you think that's bad, try being born with pre-existing condition.
I couldn't get coverage when I was forced to leave my mother's health insurance. A decade ago. Still can't get it.
Oh, and corba lasts, at most, three years. Usually two. Better hope you aren't one of the 99ers who've been unemployed 99 weeks.
But everyone knows that people with pre-existing conditions are just scammers who decided to go without insurance until they got sick! It's absurd to think there might been some situation where their coverage might lapse because they can't afford it, or, hell, they might never have had the chance to buy it at all.
I think you're the one attempting to redefine insurance. Insurance doesn't mean profitable insurance, and plenty of insurance companies have accidentally sold policies that do not, on average, make them money.
But whatever. I'd actually argue we already didn't have an health 'insurance' system.
Insurance gives you money when certain conditions are met. Health 'insurance' didn't operate anywhere close to that setup in the first place. It paid someone else for services.
Yes, some other insurance, like comprehensive car insurance, sometimes does that, but you usually have the option of just taking the money.
But health insurance has managed to go so far in that direction it's functionally stopped being insurance, and now is some weird-ass middleman to the health care industry.
How do you know the coverage you are offered will be affordable to you? Just because they're required to offer it doesn't mean you'll be able to afford the price.
Huh?
Because the government has subsidies if no plans are affordable?
Does no one here actually remember the more-than-a-year of debate?
No, it's perfectly normal for insurance companies. That's what ALL insurance companies are in the business of doing: gambling that their customers will file fewer claims than they bring in in premiums.
No, normally, insurance companies do not provide 'services'.
Normally, insurance companies provide compensation. You are objectively harmed by something covered by the policy, and when you submit a claim, you get made whole.
Health insurance is nothing like that. You do not submit a 'I have a flu' claim and they pay you $150 dollars.
Strangely enough, we do have actually insurance that compensates for injury...workman's comp, life insurance, and disability all do, to some extent, at least for crippling injuries. That is 'health insurance'.
I don't know what the current health insurance industry really would be classified as. Weird useless middlemen. They're like...anti-resellers.
Insurance is nothing more than legalized gambling, but for many things (like fire, car accidents, etc.), it makes sense to spread the costs of rare catastrophe around.
No, it really doesn't.
In a modern society, there should be absolutely no reason for the common person to have insurance, and there's certainly no reason to require them to have it.
Insurance is for stuff like rare paintings, or a bank to have a house that isn't paid for, or whatnot.
If 90% of people do have a particular sort of insurance, society's safety net is fucked up and someone's profiting off it. There really should be no 'general' insurance. If almost all people need it, then we should figure out some sane compensation and pay it out of taxes.
And if all people who have X need it, like car insurance, we should tax the cars for it. Same with homeowner insurance.
The idea that the government shouldn't provide all necessary services, all services that all citizens need, that we should instead have everyone go to corporations, is perhaps the second stupidest idea that the American people have ever internalized.
Your mistake is in thinking insurance companies care about health care.
I'm pretty certain I'm not making that mistake in any way, shape, or form. I assure you, I believe as much the opposite of that as humanly possible. I actually think insurance companies would wander around stabbing people insured by other companies in the face if they thought they could get away with it.
If you think the government should care about health care, then you need to get insurance companies totally out of the equation, as their entire reason for existence opposes providing quality health care.
'I' need to do this? I'm pretty sure I wasn't in charge of the law.
If I was in charge of the law, the government would pay hospitals and doctors to provide everyone with care.
Not even the nonsensical 'single payer' system, which is government health care inexplicably wrapped in the entirely stupid 'insurance' paradigm. We'd just pay for the damn health care of legal residents, full stop. (People here illegally would just get emergency and contagious disease care.)
I swear, 90% of my responses on this article is me explaining that, yes I do know how insurance works, yes I do know why insurance companies deny people claims, and yes I know it's a goddamn stupid fucked up system.
Actually, I don't think it's going to get tossed at all.
And I don't think the entire thing would get tossed if it did.
If it would, whatever. It's a piece of shit law anyway. Tossing it would just make us go it again, and there's if that's unconstitutional, there's no way to fix health insurance that's farther tot he right.
I agree that claim was bogus. In fact, I automatically assume that insurance companies are lying. About everything. All an insurance company would have to do to kill me is to claim that I shouldn't stab myself in the throat with a knife, and I would assume it was vital that I do so and do it immediately.
How do you know when a health insurance company is lying? They exist.
I just found it absurd that you thought people can just dictate 'Hey, I like these insurance prices, I'll take three or four years of them.', when that is manifestly not the way insurance premiums work at all. No insurance company has ever let anyone do that. A few few might offer two year plans, but you can't just invent such plans by asking.
Okay, I will fucking start over because your sheer stupidity made me unable to grasp what you were talking about until now:
I said, and this is a fact: If we had stay on the gold standard, with gold a $35 dollars an ounce, we could not operate our economy as '(our economy/$35)*ounces of gold' does not exist. (Hell, barely enough gold exists at current prices.)
You apparently think we would, at this point, be using microcents for things. You're trying to assert that 'deflation' would happen, that bread would now cost, say, 0.0002 cents a loaf or something? (Obviously, we'd make a new unit for it so it's in manageable numbers, but whatever.)
Is that correct?
Okay, now I'd like you explain why deflation would happen? If we introduced half-pennies into the US, would deflation happen? What, exactly, do you think causes deflation?
Introducing smaller bits of currency does not cause deflation. Deflation happens when less money cases more goods and services, and making smaller money parts does not make less of it exist.
Now, the government could just remove gold from the economy and cause deflation, but removing physical money is not a very useful answer to the problem of 'not enough physical money'.
Secondly, even if the government could somehow 'cause' deflation by taking in a dollar bill and rereleasing it as four quarters in our world, that doesn't change the fact in yours, it's still pinned to gold and thus can't move.
The value of gold does actually mean something. It's the amount of work people will put into to getting that much gold. It's not some random value, and you can't just magically change that value, even pretending was some inflationary or deflationary thing you could do.
Thirdly, massive deflation is so much worse for the economy than inflation. Inflation causes people to stop saving, which is bad, sure, but deflation causes people to stop selling. Aka, the Great Depression.
Economies where no one has any money can be fixed. Economies where no one is willing to sell because their goods will be worth more tomorrow are utterly fucked. It took us decades to get out of it...and we got out of it by borrowing and, tada, causing inflation.
Fourth, in your world, let's pretend all that happened anyway, there was deflation, and somehow it's not a recession.
In your world, an ounce of gold was worth 300 loafs of bread in 1930, but 300,000,000 loafs now. (As opposed to the actual world, where it's still worth 300 loafs.) That is just an example, but you've tilted things so that gold is worth staggeringly a lot.
Would not everyone simply spend all their time panning for gold? Or trading in computers for the gold connectors? I mean, the smallest trace of gold, and you can live for a month on it!
I don't think your hypothetical economy makes any sense at all. You've forgotten gold is an actual real thing. Even if you can somehow get the magic deflation you think you can, that just makes things even weirder. You've made gold worth its weight in...um...analogies fail me.
Furthermore, what's to stop them from $20k for the first month, and assess that fee every time you switch a job or your previous insurance company decided to go under or change plans it offers so you don't qualify (which can be conveniently arranged to happen quite regularly)?
This is all covered under the law. They can't just randomly assess fees.
They could assess 'fees' on everyone (Or just raise rates), but, um, as I pointed out, at that point they will have destroyed themselves with lack of customers.
Which I wish they would do, but they aren't that stupid.
There are two kinds of people in this country:
Those who are happy with their insurance, and those who have had a major sickness.
As you are in the former, I suggest you locate someone in the latter and actually talk to them.
And while you probably missed it, there's actually a third group who can't get insurance at all, of which I'm a member of.
And before you start with some slander about how I didn't try to buy insurance until I was sick, or don't 'exercise', which you apparently think is all you need to make you healthy, I will point I was born with my condition, and the second my mother's insurance company was able to drop me, they did, and I have been unable to buy insurance since.
And, while I'm at it, I will point out that I have no medical debts at all, and am freeloading in no way...in fact, you guys with insurance are freeloading off me, because I'm paying three times as much for medical services as your insurance companies have 'negotiated' with health care providers.
That is the system you don't want to change. The one in which you're fine...if you're healthy.
Slashdot Mirror
How can you blame Republicans (single-handedly, apparently) for killing single-payer when you couldn't even get your own party united behind it?
Because I can't fucking qualify every single part of every post I make on slashdot.
Here's a hint: I was talking about Republicans. Hence I was pointing out that they could have done something different and we wouldn't have had this nonsense. (And that their people, in fact, invented the mandate.)
If I was talking about right wing Democrats instead who didn't like the mandate, I would have pointed out that their people put that in.
You acknowledge an ineffective bill, yet support it (cheerfully at that) simply because you (and/or your "side") benefits from it and/or you get to "stick it" to the other side. I agree with the AC:
I. Do. Not. Support. The. Fucking. Bill.
Anyone who suggests otherwise will get a knife in their trakia.
For me, me now being able to purchase insurance is better than the original situation, where I was charged huge rates to make up how little insurance companies pay.
This is like being behind the monster destroying the city instead of in front. It is still, clearly, not the ideal situation.
One obvious fourth choice there is to leave things as they are and handle the closet cases specifically: make it illegal for insurance companies to drop existing customers, make it possible for customers to transfer their insurance between jobs (and from family/child policy to self policy) without dispute, and then allow people who were dropped prior to the bill's passing to recover their previous plans.
Oddly enough, you managed to leave me out of that, although I'm sure you just hadn't realized there were people who'd never been able to purchase insurance at any time.
And you do realize that what you just suggested would impose 99% of the same hardship on insurance companies as the current bill does, right?
All your differences actually do is ensure that people who somehow become bankrupt or poor at any point in their life can never get insurance if they've ever been sick.
But hey, why blame them when you can bash Republicans, right?
I will state this clearly: Context. Is. Everything.
I was blaming the Republicans in the context of the right wing tea partiers who don't like part of this bill, by pointing out that it's the right wing that caused that incredibly stupid part.
I know what a spectacular fuckup the Democrats were with this bill. As I pointed out somewhere else, any Democrat who threatened to help filibuster the election-promised legislature should have been bodily thrown out of the party by the majority leader. You can vote however you want, but you don't get to fucking filibuster your own party's election-promised bill.
But Democrats are incredibly stupid and spineless and kept altering the bill without getting the promise of votes. We wasted a fucking year trying to get Snowe on board.
If you want to say I should have said 'The right killed it' instead of 'Republicans killed it', I will happily amend my statement to that so that Democrats on the right are included also.
You say "we need healthcare, not health insurance" and then proudly cheer the passage of a bill that is entirely ineffective in achieving that goal
In what universe did I cheer that bill? I'm cheering the failure of it.
I'm laughing because the goddamn stupid compromise with insurance companies fell apart, and it is at least somewhat possible they'll get fucked from 'their compromise'. (Which was essentially 'This bill can in no way touch the profits we've making while we provide no service')
You have an axe to grind, and you've no problem swinging it, so long as: 1) you benefit from it, 2) republicans and/or any rich person suffers because of it.
If by 'benefit', you mean 'can actually do something besides paying over-inflated health care costs because insurance companies negotiate their costs to nothing', yes.
And if by 'rich person', you mean 'an industry that has personally cost me over 20,000 dollars despite the fact they won't let me have anything to do with them', yes.
I'm just happy this bill lets me purchase some sort of insurance while people, including me, get more and more ready to lynch the insurance companies as it becomes clear what a parasite they are.
And then what happens? ;)
Uh, please scroll down to 'Subtitle F--Universal Coverage' in that page.
For enforcement, see 'SEC. 2401. UNIVERSAL COVERAGE.'
The fine appears to be 120% of the cost of a plan.
Ultimately, my problem with the entire argument is that everyone I know who doesn't have health insurance could easily afford it but for an unwillingness to correct blatant prioritization problems.
Hello, I would like you to meet me. I am David. I do not have health insurance. I do not have it not because 'I cannot afford it'. I actually can afford it.(1)
I do not have health insurance because I had heart surgery as a child, and have a pacemaker, and hence insurance companies will not sell insurance to me.
1) Well, whether or not I can 'afford' something that does not exist is something of a metaphysical question. I could afford what other people seem to pay for their insurance.
And now, on to disagreeing with you! ;)
I will address the points you bought up, and how to cut costs, with a hypothetical government-paid healthcare system, when the government reimburses doctors for providing medical care.
For one, you have patients who do not think to shop around for maximum value
See, that's just a little silly. Patients are not competent just how much health care they need, nor are they involved enough in the process to actually cut costs.
We do need to cut costs, but it should be because the providers have an incentive to do it cheaper, not because patients figure that one place is 5% cheaper. What should happen is that place makes 6% profit and the other place make 1% profit...and then we racket it down where they make 4% and -1%. (Which would result in people having to pay things out of pocket, and presumably they would go elsewhere when they learned of this.)
and doctors who do not compete because they all get paid mostly the same anyways.
Getting paid mostly the same is an excellent reason to cut costs. I think you're looking at the problem backwards.
What we should have is set payments for stuff, and doctors get paid that much. If they can do it cheaper, hey, look, they just made money. Once everyone starts doing it cheaper, we lower payments a bit.
What we absolutely need to stop doing is having medical facilities set their own prices, and have the government, or insurance companies, or even random people who really can't comparison shop, pay whatever they are. That way lies madness. (In fact, we've already gone that way, and gone insane.)
Then there is the negotiated payments from insurance companies which encourage the industry to artificially inflate prices (for those without insurance) to get what they believe is a fair compensation (less than list price).
As an uninsurable person who actually pays their bills (Yes, we exist.), negotiated prices piss me the fuck off, especially when insured people assume I'm the one freeloading. They're freeloading off me. My last hospital visit I paid about $17,000 for something that should have cost $6000.
Then there is the administrative cost for doctors to process the paperwork.
Right, which is why I think 'insurance', even single payer, is the wrong model.
A doctor turns in evidence they did a certain procedure. They get paid a fixed rate for that. That's it, the end. No administrative overhead. (At least not for payment, obviously doctors have a lot of other paperwork.)
Yes, we have to worry about fraud...but we always have to worry about that. And we don't have to worry about some of the fraud, either...we don't worry about is doctor lying how much they charged (A common medicare scam) because they don't paid based on that. All we have to worry about is doctors making up stuff.
And we don't have to worry if they're 'covered' or what their 'deductible' is.
For health insurance companies to turn their fat profits, we need to spend a LOT more on our insurance premiums than the entire country is spending on health care.
They make about 5% profit, and about 20% overhead, so by definition, we are paying 25% more than if we just threw all our money in a big swimming pool and grabbed some when we went to the doctor. (And that's not counting the administration on the doctor's end.) It's insane.
This is madness even in a pure free market.
Having a middleman who makes more money the less he resells is...well, we're past 'melted clock faces' territory and into complete dadaism. And that's absurd enough, without having what they fail to provide result in the sickness and death of people...well...
From the outside, the health insurance industry looks essentially like a satirical deconstruction of the free market by communists.
Look at us, comrade, mocking the free market, as it cannot provide basic services because of the bourgeoisie sucking all the money out. The lack of health care is a metaphor for the living death the proletariat is forced to toil in...wait, what? It's not a metaphor? People are actually dying?
Why not let the government be the "insurer of last result"?
Huh? Didn't you read what I said?
We tried doing that. It was called the public option. The Republicans killed it.
The fact is, and I'm clearly speaking from experience, Obamacare is bad for EVERYONE.
Except for me, who can now (Well, as of 2013) purchase insurance when I could not before because they wouldn't sell it to me.
I love how people just keep making blanket statement about how no one is better off, despite the fact that I repeatedly say that I am.
And, um, incidentally, Obamacare hasn't gone into effect yet.
If your insurance company is claiming that's why premiums went up, they are lying. They do not have to change their behavior and allow people with pre-existing conditions until 2013.
Hey, you got it in one! ;)
Incorrect. The bill passed with exactly ZERO republican votes. Any concessions to the bill were made not to secure republican votes, but to secure moderate and rogue democrat votes. Straw polls showed no support for a public option from the democrats themselves.
What you said makes sense in a sane universe where Democrats are intelligent.
However, as was clearly demonstrated, Democrats are total fucking morons who made concessions to make the bill better for Republicans without actually getting the promise of votes for it.
Meanwhile, they couldn't even control their caucus enough to get members to allow a vote on their most important work. Not vote for it, but to stop a goddamn filibuster.
I'm sorry, if I'm in charge of a party, and someone in my party goes along with a filibuster of our goddamn election-promised legislature of the party, they're out. They are fucking kicked of the party. They can turn in their D and go sit in the damn isle, and turn in all their committee seats. They can vote for the bill however they want, but they cannot filibuster it. (I'm not sure if, legally, that's possible...but we can sure as fuck shun them and treat them as if they were a member of the opposition party. Have a bill they want on the floor? They better find a Republican to second it.)
At this point, those, it's one of those great mysteries of life: Are the Democrats deeply stupid, or at they on the right, wanted to fail, and just pretending to be stupid?
We shall argue over it no more. It makes no difference.
As for the rest of your statement I agree 100%. There is no need for insurance companies. Let the Government pay the bill and we'll all pay our "premiums" to the tax man.
Indeed. Even the idea of 'single payer' in incomprehensible. We don't need 'insurance'. We need health care.
Feel free to invent your own way, then.
And the mandate isn't 'the progressive way of doing it'.
The mandate is the right wing way of doing it that the Obama administration 'compromised to', like a bunch of idiots. It was invented by Republicans back when the Republicans last fucked over health care reform, with Clinton.
The progressive way of doing it is single payer.
And when your child grows up and is dropped from your insurance and can't get insurance themselves because they had heart surgery as a child?
Oh, if you think that's bad, try being born with pre-existing condition.
I couldn't get coverage when I was forced to leave my mother's health insurance. A decade ago. Still can't get it.
Oh, and corba lasts, at most, three years. Usually two. Better hope you aren't one of the 99ers who've been unemployed 99 weeks.
But everyone knows that people with pre-existing conditions are just scammers who decided to go without insurance until they got sick! It's absurd to think there might been some situation where their coverage might lapse because they can't afford it, or, hell, they might never have had the chance to buy it at all.
Ah, okay.
I think you're the one attempting to redefine insurance. Insurance doesn't mean profitable insurance, and plenty of insurance companies have accidentally sold policies that do not, on average, make them money.
But whatever. I'd actually argue we already didn't have an health 'insurance' system.
Insurance gives you money when certain conditions are met. Health 'insurance' didn't operate anywhere close to that setup in the first place. It paid someone else for services.
Yes, some other insurance, like comprehensive car insurance, sometimes does that, but you usually have the option of just taking the money.
But health insurance has managed to go so far in that direction it's functionally stopped being insurance, and now is some weird-ass middleman to the health care industry.
How do you know the coverage you are offered will be affordable to you? Just because they're required to offer it doesn't mean you'll be able to afford the price.
Huh?
Because the government has subsidies if no plans are affordable?
Does no one here actually remember the more-than-a-year of debate?
No, it's perfectly normal for insurance companies. That's what ALL insurance companies are in the business of doing: gambling that their customers will file fewer claims than they bring in in premiums.
No, normally, insurance companies do not provide 'services'.
Normally, insurance companies provide compensation. You are objectively harmed by something covered by the policy, and when you submit a claim, you get made whole.
Health insurance is nothing like that. You do not submit a 'I have a flu' claim and they pay you $150 dollars.
Strangely enough, we do have actually insurance that compensates for injury...workman's comp, life insurance, and disability all do, to some extent, at least for crippling injuries. That is 'health insurance'.
I don't know what the current health insurance industry really would be classified as. Weird useless middlemen. They're like...anti-resellers.
Insurance is nothing more than legalized gambling, but for many things (like fire, car accidents, etc.), it makes sense to spread the costs of rare catastrophe around.
No, it really doesn't.
In a modern society, there should be absolutely no reason for the common person to have insurance, and there's certainly no reason to require them to have it.
Insurance is for stuff like rare paintings, or a bank to have a house that isn't paid for, or whatnot.
If 90% of people do have a particular sort of insurance, society's safety net is fucked up and someone's profiting off it. There really should be no 'general' insurance. If almost all people need it, then we should figure out some sane compensation and pay it out of taxes.
And if all people who have X need it, like car insurance, we should tax the cars for it. Same with homeowner insurance.
The idea that the government shouldn't provide all necessary services, all services that all citizens need, that we should instead have everyone go to corporations, is perhaps the second stupidest idea that the American people have ever internalized.
Your mistake is in thinking insurance companies care about health care.
I'm pretty certain I'm not making that mistake in any way, shape, or form. I assure you, I believe as much the opposite of that as humanly possible. I actually think insurance companies would wander around stabbing people insured by other companies in the face if they thought they could get away with it.
If you think the government should care about health care, then you need to get insurance companies totally out of the equation, as their entire reason for existence opposes providing quality health care.
'I' need to do this? I'm pretty sure I wasn't in charge of the law.
If I was in charge of the law, the government would pay hospitals and doctors to provide everyone with care.
Not even the nonsensical 'single payer' system, which is government health care inexplicably wrapped in the entirely stupid 'insurance' paradigm. We'd just pay for the damn health care of legal residents, full stop. (People here illegally would just get emergency and contagious disease care.)
I swear, 90% of my responses on this article is me explaining that, yes I do know how insurance works, yes I do know why insurance companies deny people claims, and yes I know it's a goddamn stupid fucked up system.
You buy the make pretend numbers that we can magically reduce costs by increasing the availability of medical care will decrease overall costs.
First of all, 'the availability of medical care' No, but I do know the numbers that say insurance companies have huge overhead. And moderate profits.
Actually, I don't think it's going to get tossed at all.
And I don't think the entire thing would get tossed if it did.
If it would, whatever. It's a piece of shit law anyway. Tossing it would just make us go it again, and there's if that's unconstitutional, there's no way to fix health insurance that's farther tot he right.
Erm, because mandatory buying services from the government is called 'taxes', and is entirely legal.
Um, yes, I would, in fact, love it if that happened. That is about the best possible outcome I think could happen.
I agree that claim was bogus. In fact, I automatically assume that insurance companies are lying. About everything. All an insurance company would have to do to kill me is to claim that I shouldn't stab myself in the throat with a knife, and I would assume it was vital that I do so and do it immediately.
How do you know when a health insurance company is lying? They exist.
I just found it absurd that you thought people can just dictate 'Hey, I like these insurance prices, I'll take three or four years of them.', when that is manifestly not the way insurance premiums work at all. No insurance company has ever let anyone do that. A few few might offer two year plans, but you can't just invent such plans by asking.
Okay, I will fucking start over because your sheer stupidity made me unable to grasp what you were talking about until now:
I said, and this is a fact: If we had stay on the gold standard, with gold a $35 dollars an ounce, we could not operate our economy as '(our economy/$35)*ounces of gold' does not exist. (Hell, barely enough gold exists at current prices.)
You apparently think we would, at this point, be using microcents for things. You're trying to assert that 'deflation' would happen, that bread would now cost, say, 0.0002 cents a loaf or something? (Obviously, we'd make a new unit for it so it's in manageable numbers, but whatever.)
Is that correct?
Okay, now I'd like you explain why deflation would happen? If we introduced half-pennies into the US, would deflation happen? What, exactly, do you think causes deflation?
Introducing smaller bits of currency does not cause deflation. Deflation happens when less money cases more goods and services, and making smaller money parts does not make less of it exist.
Now, the government could just remove gold from the economy and cause deflation, but removing physical money is not a very useful answer to the problem of 'not enough physical money'.
Secondly, even if the government could somehow 'cause' deflation by taking in a dollar bill and rereleasing it as four quarters in our world, that doesn't change the fact in yours, it's still pinned to gold and thus can't move.
The value of gold does actually mean something. It's the amount of work people will put into to getting that much gold. It's not some random value, and you can't just magically change that value, even pretending was some inflationary or deflationary thing you could do.
Thirdly, massive deflation is so much worse for the economy than inflation. Inflation causes people to stop saving, which is bad, sure, but deflation causes people to stop selling. Aka, the Great Depression.
Economies where no one has any money can be fixed. Economies where no one is willing to sell because their goods will be worth more tomorrow are utterly fucked. It took us decades to get out of it...and we got out of it by borrowing and, tada, causing inflation.
Fourth, in your world, let's pretend all that happened anyway, there was deflation, and somehow it's not a recession.
In your world, an ounce of gold was worth 300 loafs of bread in 1930, but 300,000,000 loafs now. (As opposed to the actual world, where it's still worth 300 loafs.) That is just an example, but you've tilted things so that gold is worth staggeringly a lot.
Would not everyone simply spend all their time panning for gold? Or trading in computers for the gold connectors? I mean, the smallest trace of gold, and you can live for a month on it!
I don't think your hypothetical economy makes any sense at all. You've forgotten gold is an actual real thing. Even if you can somehow get the magic deflation you think you can, that just makes things even weirder. You've made gold worth its weight in...um...analogies fail me.
Furthermore, what's to stop them from $20k for the first month, and assess that fee every time you switch a job or your previous insurance company decided to go under or change plans it offers so you don't qualify (which can be conveniently arranged to happen quite regularly)?
This is all covered under the law. They can't just randomly assess fees.
They could assess 'fees' on everyone (Or just raise rates), but, um, as I pointed out, at that point they will have destroyed themselves with lack of customers.
Which I wish they would do, but they aren't that stupid.
Well, frankly, I don't actually think that it will be found unconstitutional anyway.
But, functionally, without a severability clause, it's basically 'whatever the court wants'. Trying to figure it out in advance is crazy.
There are two kinds of people in this country: Those who are happy with their insurance, and those who have had a major sickness.
As you are in the former, I suggest you locate someone in the latter and actually talk to them.
And while you probably missed it, there's actually a third group who can't get insurance at all, of which I'm a member of.
And before you start with some slander about how I didn't try to buy insurance until I was sick, or don't 'exercise', which you apparently think is all you need to make you healthy, I will point I was born with my condition, and the second my mother's insurance company was able to drop me, they did, and I have been unable to buy insurance since.
And, while I'm at it, I will point out that I have no medical debts at all, and am freeloading in no way...in fact, you guys with insurance are freeloading off me, because I'm paying three times as much for medical services as your insurance companies have 'negotiated' with health care providers.
That is the system you don't want to change. The one in which you're fine...if you're healthy.
Nothing stopping that.
They wouldn't have any customers, but nothing stopping that.