Its still up for now. I actually expect I will be able to, as I doubt the load at midnight will be too high. If not it isn't a big deal- the insurance doesn't kick in until January 1st, so doing it tonight vs later this week doesn't make any practical difference except removing a chance for me to forget. And that 3 month gap I don't think is a permanent thing, its that the law doesn't technically come into effect until Jan 1. Although if one of the policies would let me start early at the same price (since I'll be paying full price) I'd be happy to start sooner.
Nope, not at all. A private entity that the government does not set prices on decided to raise prices. This raise was not mandated by the ACA. A second private entity, his employer, decided not to increase his pay to cover that increase. Had there been no government exchange, his options would be to pay for the increase or not have health care. With exchanges his options are to pay for the increase, buy from the exchange which will likely be far cheaper, or not have health care.
In fact his choices are most likely exponentially increased by the existence of exchanges, as its unlikely that his employer offered more than 2 or 3, and may have only offered 1. My state has over 40 options on the exchange.
Decreasing the cost for the poor, and increasing it for the middle class and rich who can afford it. Just like every other social program. Sounds good to me. It would be better if the rich and upper class shouldered more of the increased cost than the middle class, but I'm not about to let lack of a perfect system get in the way of implementing a good one.
I am, in about 30 minutes. And he can keep his insurance. But if he can't afford it, as he seems to be claiming, he should look on the exchange for a cheaper deal.
Getting other people to pay for your medical costs when you've never helped them out, and doing it under force of law, is not charity and it's not fair, it's theft.
All I need to read. Sorry Libertardians, you do not get to redefine the word theft to your liking. If I was a worse person I'd sit here and hope your family gets cancer so you too can experience knowing that someone you care for is sick and you can't help them. But since not even heartless bastards like you deserve that, I'll just sit here and smile knowing that you have no real say in our government.
And accepting pre-existing conditions means that insurance is no longer insurance, it's a discount healthcare plan subsidized by those who are stupid enough to think it is insurance.
I'm ok with that.
No, it just moves the costs off to other people. The costs will increase because we'll need more providers and those we currently have will be stretched thinner. People with pre-existing conditions will appear on the "insurance" rolls needing expensive treatments from day one, never paying more than their care costs. You think those costs will magically disappear? This is how you make costs lower?
It will distribute them evenly so people aren't bankrupted by illness. It will also reduce costs by allowing people to use less expensive forms of care and more preventative care.
As for businesses playing with hours- blame the Republicans for that. We were forced to this path by them refusing better solutions like a public option. Employers shouldn't be involved with healthcare at all. But you're ridiculously overblowing things. Very few employers will reduce hours to 30 because that requires more people. It might make things better if they did, it would reduce unemployment. What does need to happen is to shame or boycott them. Or to fix the law to prevent it- perhaps requiring them to provide healthcare for anyone above 10 hours, or to force them to provide it for the next X years to anyone who's hours are reduced below 30 from above. But no legislative solution is viable with the current Congress.
1)When they qualified for a group plan, they insurance company was happy to insure them for that price. That means that its profitable to insure them for that much. The insurance company just doesn't want to, because they can make more money without doing so. Boohoo, poor insurance companies.
2)And why should people who have hereditary conditions, accidents, or just the bad luck to have cancer be uninsurable and have to live in pain or die?
I've read your counter-evidence and... oh wait, you didn't offer any. Until you can show a peer review study showing that it isn't applicable to the US, you're just wrong.
I have great news for you- they actually are! There are only 3 things they're allowed to charge more for- location, age (to a maximum of 3x) and smoking. Pre-existing medical conditions are NOT a legal cost raise. I suggest looking at your state's exchange tomorrow, the first day you can sign up. Coverages start as of Jan 1.
you're more likely not to be insured if you have a pre-existing condition
Citation please.
Logic. If they won't sell it to you if you have a pre-existing condition, then you're more likely to have a pre-existing condition if you don't have insurance than if you do. This is a direct result of Bayes theorem. Look into conditional probability.
And even if we accept your #'s as factual, why not consider the break down of them, to quote a book sitting on my shelf (Liberty & Tyranny (Page 107)):
Yup, that's a real impartial source there. ROFL. Actual studies, government or by a respected university (public or private) or STFU.
Also, use numbers that aren't most of a decade old and from before the worst financial crisis of the last 60 years.
Mostly because people didn't know about it at first- it wasn't well marketed. But FYI, the Maryland plan was sold out for the year months ago. I tried applying for it and was put on the waiting list. And told not to expect to get it this year (I haven't).
Says you (if true)... but still ignoring the immediate secondary effects, not to mention tertiary items such as the loss of insurance by others due to the new law.
Not a single person will lose insurance due to this law. Blatant fearmongering.
Nope. I applied multiple times int he last 2 years and get rejected on at least a half dozen times by several companies. In one of the most liberal states in the nation (Maryland). You're just wrong.
I'm not sure what you're saying. Before, if you didn't qualify for a group plan (usually via your employer buying it), you had to buy an individual policy. In that case you weren't getting the main advantage of insurance- spreading the risk. Instead you had to pay 3-10 times the amount if you had a pre-existing condition. Why? Because the insurance didn't really want you as a customer, they make more money if they only insure people who don't need the insurance.
Now anyone can buy in at the group plan rates via the exchanges. So people who previously were basically made to pay that 3-10x rate now will pay the same rate as everyone else. So the risk is spread over everyone. This means everyone gets care, and everyone accepts the same amount of risk. The old way left people unable to afford insurance (and actually cost the insured people anyway, in the form of higher medical bills in hospitals). This is a far more fair way of doing things.
I suggest you look on the exchanges to see if you can get a better rate. In MD the cost depends on the plan you choose, but will be between $100 and $300 a month for an individual. With you, your wife, and one kid it can't be more than 3 times that. Rates in your state may differ, but you may be able to get coverage cheaper by not going through your employer.
You'll be paying exactly $0 for my insurance. I'll be paying for it, and I don't qualify for (or deserve to qualify for) reduced rates due to income. What this law does is force them to sell it to me, for the same rate they were quite happy to sell it to my employer at 3 years ago when I last worked for a company that provided insurance. Instead you'll be forcing them to do what insurance is supposed to do- mitigate risk of a population by spreading it between all of them, whereas before you only got that benefit if you qualified for a group plan.
Well, there's 48 million uninsured in America, by the latest estimates I can find. HHS finds that 129 million americans would be considered to have pre-existing conditions. With about 300 million americans, that's 43%. Assuming that those two are independent (they aren't, you're more likely not to be insured if you have a pre-existing condition) that's 21 million people who are now able to get insurance who couldn't before. As they aren't independent, it's more likely to be 30 million. So 1 in 10 to 1 in 15 people. That's a pretty dramatic positive benefit.
Yup. My state exchange opens tomorrow. For the first time in 2 years, I'll have insurance (due to my weight no insurance provider was quoting me prices below 500 a month). That literally is the difference between life and death if I get seriously ill- it will be a huge weight off my shoulders.
And I've personally known many people who decided not to build a business because they couldn't afford to be without health insurance. I know even more who decided to take a job at a stable company rather than a startup for that reason. It will absolutely make more people give it a shot, because it lowers the risks involved. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something- most likely the world's most morally bankrupt philosophy libertarianism.
Yes it does. It requires insurance companies to accept people with pre-existing conditions (which can include mere weight), which is a major problem for anyone trying to buy individual coverage. It also provides rebates for people who make under a certain threshold, reducing costs.
It's not perfect by a long shot, but it's better than what we had.
Many do. Not all, and many of those only offer to help pay for Cobra-ing into your existing plan. That doesn't help if you don't have an existing plan, or if you're in a high risk category (weight, pre-existing conditions, etc). And none of this applies to founding a startup, when you're pre-funding.
Exactly. If you can't be there, skype or some other solution while they're at home is a much better solution than giving them an expensive electronic device that will serve as a distraction to them at school. Not to mention any 4 year old I've ever known will quickly break or lose it. Buy a webcam, attach it to the PC, and call every evening. Or get a tablet, but make it stay at home. There's no advantages to the cell phone, and a lot of negatives.
1)Apps are never properly written. The most quoted way for doing a splash screen, for example, is to implement it via a thread. And if you rotated the phone during it, it would spawn another. And all of these would never terminate.
2)Because relaunching the app would use these saved variables. If that's login info (which is quite common- an app will login in activity 1 and save it in a singleton or global for activities 2-N) it will use that old info. So any app that requires a login will save that info. Hand your phone to someone to watch a video and you're handing them all of your banking info.
3)I don't want the OS randomly picking what apps to close in low memory situations. I know what's important, it doesn't. The main reason it has these problems to begin with is that it isn't closing old apps by default.
I'd be ok with it being managed by the OS if close is the default and you have to choose to not close. But even intelligent people and programmers don't understand this model. And I know what apps I want to keep open, the OS doesn't and can't. How would it know that my email app can safely be closed, but my word processor can't because I'm coming back to that in 2 minutes and don't want to wait for it to load?
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Its still up for now. I actually expect I will be able to, as I doubt the load at midnight will be too high. If not it isn't a big deal- the insurance doesn't kick in until January 1st, so doing it tonight vs later this week doesn't make any practical difference except removing a chance for me to forget. And that 3 month gap I don't think is a permanent thing, its that the law doesn't technically come into effect until Jan 1. Although if one of the policies would let me start early at the same price (since I'll be paying full price) I'd be happy to start sooner.
Nope, not at all. A private entity that the government does not set prices on decided to raise prices. This raise was not mandated by the ACA. A second private entity, his employer, decided not to increase his pay to cover that increase. Had there been no government exchange, his options would be to pay for the increase or not have health care. With exchanges his options are to pay for the increase, buy from the exchange which will likely be far cheaper, or not have health care.
In fact his choices are most likely exponentially increased by the existence of exchanges, as its unlikely that his employer offered more than 2 or 3, and may have only offered 1. My state has over 40 options on the exchange.
Decreasing the cost for the poor, and increasing it for the middle class and rich who can afford it. Just like every other social program. Sounds good to me. It would be better if the rich and upper class shouldered more of the increased cost than the middle class, but I'm not about to let lack of a perfect system get in the way of implementing a good one.
I am, in about 30 minutes. And he can keep his insurance. But if he can't afford it, as he seems to be claiming, he should look on the exchange for a cheaper deal.
All I need to read. Sorry Libertardians, you do not get to redefine the word theft to your liking. If I was a worse person I'd sit here and hope your family gets cancer so you too can experience knowing that someone you care for is sick and you can't help them. But since not even heartless bastards like you deserve that, I'll just sit here and smile knowing that you have no real say in our government.
I'm ok with that.
It will distribute them evenly so people aren't bankrupted by illness. It will also reduce costs by allowing people to use less expensive forms of care and more preventative care.
As for businesses playing with hours- blame the Republicans for that. We were forced to this path by them refusing better solutions like a public option. Employers shouldn't be involved with healthcare at all. But you're ridiculously overblowing things. Very few employers will reduce hours to 30 because that requires more people. It might make things better if they did, it would reduce unemployment. What does need to happen is to shame or boycott them. Or to fix the law to prevent it- perhaps requiring them to provide healthcare for anyone above 10 hours, or to force them to provide it for the next X years to anyone who's hours are reduced below 30 from above. But no legislative solution is viable with the current Congress.
Except for two things
1)When they qualified for a group plan, they insurance company was happy to insure them for that price. That means that its profitable to insure them for that much. The insurance company just doesn't want to, because they can make more money without doing so. Boohoo, poor insurance companies.
2)And why should people who have hereditary conditions, accidents, or just the bad luck to have cancer be uninsurable and have to live in pain or die?
I've read your counter-evidence and... oh wait, you didn't offer any. Until you can show a peer review study showing that it isn't applicable to the US, you're just wrong.
I have great news for you- they actually are! There are only 3 things they're allowed to charge more for- location, age (to a maximum of 3x) and smoking. Pre-existing medical conditions are NOT a legal cost raise. I suggest looking at your state's exchange tomorrow, the first day you can sign up. Coverages start as of Jan 1.
Some citations for my numbers:
http://aspe.hhs.gov/health/reports/2012/pre-existing/
http://www.familiesusa.org/resources/publications/reports/health-reform/pre-ex-conditions-findings.html
Notice that the non-government site posits a much higher number. I have more faith in the HHS numbers though.
Census data for the uninsured numbers: http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/income_wealth/cb13-165.html
Logic. If they won't sell it to you if you have a pre-existing condition, then you're more likely to have a pre-existing condition if you don't have insurance than if you do. This is a direct result of Bayes theorem. Look into conditional probability.
Yup, that's a real impartial source there. ROFL. Actual studies, government or by a respected university (public or private) or STFU.
Also, use numbers that aren't most of a decade old and from before the worst financial crisis of the last 60 years.
Mostly because people didn't know about it at first- it wasn't well marketed. But FYI, the Maryland plan was sold out for the year months ago. I tried applying for it and was put on the waiting list. And told not to expect to get it this year (I haven't).
Not a single person will lose insurance due to this law. Blatant fearmongering.
Nope. I applied multiple times int he last 2 years and get rejected on at least a half dozen times by several companies. In one of the most liberal states in the nation (Maryland). You're just wrong.
Citations:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/05/health/05iht-obese.1.9748884.html
http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/03/22/alcohol-obesity-and-smoking-do-not-cost-health-care-systems-money/
In the forbes study, here were the lifetime costs (in euros, the study was EU)
Healthy: 281,000
Obese: 250,000
Smokers: 220,000
I'm not sure what you're saying. Before, if you didn't qualify for a group plan (usually via your employer buying it), you had to buy an individual policy. In that case you weren't getting the main advantage of insurance- spreading the risk. Instead you had to pay 3-10 times the amount if you had a pre-existing condition. Why? Because the insurance didn't really want you as a customer, they make more money if they only insure people who don't need the insurance.
Now anyone can buy in at the group plan rates via the exchanges. So people who previously were basically made to pay that 3-10x rate now will pay the same rate as everyone else. So the risk is spread over everyone. This means everyone gets care, and everyone accepts the same amount of risk. The old way left people unable to afford insurance (and actually cost the insured people anyway, in the form of higher medical bills in hospitals). This is a far more fair way of doing things.
I suggest you look on the exchanges to see if you can get a better rate. In MD the cost depends on the plan you choose, but will be between $100 and $300 a month for an individual. With you, your wife, and one kid it can't be more than 3 times that. Rates in your state may differ, but you may be able to get coverage cheaper by not going through your employer.
You'll be paying exactly $0 for my insurance. I'll be paying for it, and I don't qualify for (or deserve to qualify for) reduced rates due to income. What this law does is force them to sell it to me, for the same rate they were quite happy to sell it to my employer at 3 years ago when I last worked for a company that provided insurance. Instead you'll be forcing them to do what insurance is supposed to do- mitigate risk of a population by spreading it between all of them, whereas before you only got that benefit if you qualified for a group plan.
Well, there's 48 million uninsured in America, by the latest estimates I can find. HHS finds that 129 million americans would be considered to have pre-existing conditions. With about 300 million americans, that's 43%. Assuming that those two are independent (they aren't, you're more likely not to be insured if you have a pre-existing condition) that's 21 million people who are now able to get insurance who couldn't before. As they aren't independent, it's more likely to be 30 million. So 1 in 10 to 1 in 15 people. That's a pretty dramatic positive benefit.
Actually, obese people cost less in medical care over their lifetimes, they die earlier. So you can thank me for saving you money.
Every person has a right to medical care. If you had any humanity you would be ashamed.
Yup. My state exchange opens tomorrow. For the first time in 2 years, I'll have insurance (due to my weight no insurance provider was quoting me prices below 500 a month). That literally is the difference between life and death if I get seriously ill- it will be a huge weight off my shoulders.
And I've personally known many people who decided not to build a business because they couldn't afford to be without health insurance. I know even more who decided to take a job at a stable company rather than a startup for that reason. It will absolutely make more people give it a shot, because it lowers the risks involved. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something- most likely the world's most morally bankrupt philosophy libertarianism.
Yes it does. It requires insurance companies to accept people with pre-existing conditions (which can include mere weight), which is a major problem for anyone trying to buy individual coverage. It also provides rebates for people who make under a certain threshold, reducing costs.
It's not perfect by a long shot, but it's better than what we had.
Many do. Not all, and many of those only offer to help pay for Cobra-ing into your existing plan. That doesn't help if you don't have an existing plan, or if you're in a high risk category (weight, pre-existing conditions, etc). And none of this applies to founding a startup, when you're pre-funding.
Exactly. If you can't be there, skype or some other solution while they're at home is a much better solution than giving them an expensive electronic device that will serve as a distraction to them at school. Not to mention any 4 year old I've ever known will quickly break or lose it. Buy a webcam, attach it to the PC, and call every evening. Or get a tablet, but make it stay at home. There's no advantages to the cell phone, and a lot of negatives.
1)Apps are never properly written. The most quoted way for doing a splash screen, for example, is to implement it via a thread. And if you rotated the phone during it, it would spawn another. And all of these would never terminate.
2)Because relaunching the app would use these saved variables. If that's login info (which is quite common- an app will login in activity 1 and save it in a singleton or global for activities 2-N) it will use that old info. So any app that requires a login will save that info. Hand your phone to someone to watch a video and you're handing them all of your banking info.
3)I don't want the OS randomly picking what apps to close in low memory situations. I know what's important, it doesn't. The main reason it has these problems to begin with is that it isn't closing old apps by default.
I'd be ok with it being managed by the OS if close is the default and you have to choose to not close. But even intelligent people and programmers don't understand this model. And I know what apps I want to keep open, the OS doesn't and can't. How would it know that my email app can safely be closed, but my word processor can't because I'm coming back to that in 2 minutes and don't want to wait for it to load?
That's their philosophy, yes. It's a horribly dumb idea though.