North Carolina refused the Medicaid expansion and federal funding for it, and spent the money the feds gave it to set up an exchange on something else.
That has exactly what to do with rate hikes? Nothing really.
Yes, actually. In blue states, rates are going down because the risk pools are expanding like they should. See California, for instance.
Oh stop it. You can go off into the wilds and stay away from the IRS, UPS, AT&T and likely the NSA. Very, very few people stay completely off the grid. If you want to have the benefits of civilization, then you have to pay for it.
Or as Adam Smith said, those who benefit from society have an obligation to pay for the costs of running society.
Tell that to the 1%. All they're interested in is buying politicians to make sure they keep getting federally mandated profits.
There's more of us than there are of them. All we have to do is vote for politicians who will follow the interests of the citizens who elected them.
Although we seem to have difficulty doing that. There appears to be something wrong with democracy.
Get rid of the Citizens United decision, and fund presidential campaigns strictly through income tax, and we'll do just fine, thank you. The problem is lobby money, particularly when it's dark money like a lot of the Republican 'nonprofits' that are around strictly to fund 'friendly' pols.
According to science, we're all brothers (and sisters, and whatnot) descended from the same greatest grandmother, Mitochondrial Eve. So in that sense, it was your great (etc.) grandmother, and mine too. Burn?
Finding out that most Europeans are descended from just a handful of people is not shocking, for a variety of reasons.
Yes, yes, yes, my family tree needs some serious pruning. I'm kinda busy at the moment, though...
Oh stop it. You can go off into the wilds and stay away from the IRS, UPS, AT&T and likely the NSA. Very, very few people stay completely off the grid. If you want to have the benefits of civilization, then you have to pay for it.
Or as Adam Smith said, those who benefit from society have an obligation to pay for the costs of running society.
Tell that to the 1%. All they're interested in is buying politicians to make sure they keep getting federally mandated profits.
North Carolina refused the Medicaid expansion and federal funding for it, and spent the money the feds gave it to set up an exchange on something else. Typical red state. In fact, the ONLY red state to implement the Medicaid expansion AND provide an exchange is Kentucky, but they rebranded it as something other than Obamacare/ACA. Some red states just expanded the Medicaid coverage, like Arizona.
Insurance companies dropping coverage when someone gets sick, has been illegal since 1997. It's called recission. We didn't need the ACA to fix that.
But they did it anyway. You can't put a corporation in jail. When the fines to pay for that offence are less than the costs to pay for the patient's treatment, it's a no-brainer. And there was no requirement for the insurance company to reinsure the patient again. With the ACA, insurance companies canNOT 'disenroll' somebody because they got massively expensively sick. What they can do is, not pick up their mail for a couple days and cancel the policy for nonpayment, then cash the check as pure profit.
Gawd, the amount of Obama boot licking going in that post is unbelievable.
You guy lied. He lied deliberately. Democrats believed it and supported the law. Now, you say only idiots believed it. Well, that just happens to be the Democrats in Congress.
Yes, yes, yes, how could I be so blind??? Romneycare GOOD, Obamacare BAD. I see the LIGHT!!!!
You do realise, don't you, that Obamacare IS Romneycare with some more of the 'gotchas' removed?
I know if I had a copper level plan, I would be bankrupt if I had a major medical issue. With a 6K deductible and 12K yearly cap on expenses I might as well be paying out of pocket.
Really? 12K is practically nothing for a serious condition. Try having a heart attack. You'll get billed for about 80-90K. Get a stent put in, it's 87K. Come down with cancer and watch the money SERIOUSLY flow out fast.
While he was on the golf course or out demonizing somebody, that's when. He's never in the office doing his job.
Where were you when Dubya took off goddamned near a full YEAR of vacation days during his 8 years? Obama's had 92 days off so far, that's like 18 days a year. Had Dubya continued playing golf after 2003 at the rate he was doing, he would have played 192 rounds of golf during his term rather than the 24 he put in because he thought it wasn't a Good Thing to be caught playing golf while American troops were getting their asses shot off. So Obama plays golf. I don't blame him, they tell me it relieves stress. And if you don't think he's stressed, care to explain how grey he's become over the last 5 years?
They were probably trying to find some dirt on Snowden`s previous life. It would make more economic sense to them.
After all the drumbeat for the Iraq war, I feel it`s even refreshing that someone still thinks there`s something called investigative journalism in America.
Good news is, there is. Bad news is, it's on Al Jazeera America.
One of the big parts of the ACA is the "healthcare exchange" where health insurance providers are required to basically bid in a centralized exchange. Supposedly to create competition. There are two options.. either your state can create its own exchange (insurance laws vary by state) or your state can opt out and you'll be dumped on the federal exchange. The "website" everyone is talking about is the federal exchange. If it's down, you can't purchase the health insurance you're required by law to purchase. It's pretty big egg on the face of Obama for it not to work, even though he obviously had no part in the technical aspects of it.
Each state was supposed to provide their own exchange. Red states tend not to have them (Kentucky being a major exception, but they're not marketting it there as 'ACA' or 'Obamacare', they put their own brand name on it) and mostly tend to turn down the federal funding to expand their Medicaid program to close the 'donut hole'. The Federal exchange wasn't designed to have 2/3 of the country's states decide to do nothing, not spend state funds that they could have been reimbursed for, and dump the whole damned thing on the Feds for shits and giggles.
That's because both parties would rather tell you what's best for you. One Party things the Government should be all things to all people, the other says we'll tell you what to do but we won't pay for you to do it.
It's a great system but there's no reason this shouldn't have been done right the first time. The budget was there, it was spent but we got a shitty deal.
Two words. 'Government contract'. Why do it right the first time when the big bucks come from maintaining the sucker? That's a cost-plus contract, basically a blank check. Remember the classic definition of an elephant is 'a mouse built to government specs on a government contract'.
>> a culture that prefers deluding the boss over delivering bad news
I'm pretty sure the guy at the top was in on the ruse too.
>> no one who understood the problems was able to tell the President
Isn't there a petition system for that?:)
OK, so the guy at the very top, the guy who's trying to talk 535 overblown egos into co-operating and getting things done, (which, by the way, haven't been co-operating one damned bit in 5 years) carrying on secret talks with a government who hasn't talked with us in like 30 years to try to defuse some of those 535 overblown ego's dreams of American imperialism and military adventurism, putting up with a childish ally in the region of said 'black sheep' government that wants nothing else but to turn said black sheep's country into a fucking parking lot, trying to keep yet more American boots off the ground in yet another country in the same damned region while aforesaid childish ally insists turning that country into a golf course, and trying to run his department of the government while being chronically shorthanded due to some of 100 idiots as a subset of the 535 overblown egos who are determined to ratfuck him at every instance possible, having to deal with multiple manufactured scandals (in particular, one created by a subset of those 535 idiots defunding a program that would have mitigated the damage done to an American embassy with concurrent loss of life in an attempt to create a Pearl Harbor-type incident as a precurser to demand American military intervention in yet another country the 535 don't particularly like) designed to boost support for their ideology, this guy supposedly has detailed information on the planning, design and implementation of a fucking website designed and built on a cost-plus government contract? When'd he have TIME to deal with that?
Wait a minute. You're saying that they can call you when *you* don't want them to, and then sue you for *their* wasted time because you didn't want to talk to them? Nice fucked up country you've got there. Here that constitutes misuse of the telephone system and gets them a £5000 fine *for every infraction* at the very least.
Nope. They can only sue on validated debt that has not passed the statute of limitations in the state of residence. Validation is as simple as providing a copy of the original bill plus a copy of the assignment letter given to the agency by the client who placed the debt with them. Every agency I worked at wouldn't let anything in the door without a copy of the original bill and an assignment letter. No original bill or contract specifying what needed to be paid, so sorry, go away and quit wasting our time.
Or just put the receiver on the desk, and waste a bit of *their* time.
That only succeeds in informing them that your number goes to a live person, and further that said person isn't taking their calls; That's a good way to get out of the collections department and into legal. And legal will just take out a court order for the money against you ex parte in many states. You'll find your bank account zeroed and good luck fighting back then, since you won't be able to pay the court fees to file a counter-suit, or retain a lawyer.
Poor people are at a distinct disadvantage in our justice system. Whether the court action is legitimate or not, without money you can't prevail. And odds are, the money you'll spend will never be recovered.
That's for a LEGIT debt collection agency. The scammers won't bother calling their lawyers. For the legit agencies, they have to document the debt, show that it is a real live debt, give you 30 days to dispute it in writing by sending you a real live dunning notice that has the 'mini-Miranda' clause: 'This is an attempt to collect a debt. Any information gathered will be used for that purpose'. In the US, these activities are governed by the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. Violate the 'rules' of the FDCPA, you lose your license.
Caveat: I used to be a debt collector. And yeah, you can collect on what they call 'bad debt', or debt that's so old it cannot be sued on because it's past the statute of limitations for that debt. A lot of 'bad debt' is sold for maybe 5 cents on the dollar to what we used to call 'chop shops' that called it 2 or 3 times to get a quick fast settlement over the phone for whatever they can get for it. The 'chop shop' collectors would bully the hell out of the debtor in an attempt to get what they can. The biggest thing to remember about old debt is, they can't sue you for it because of the statute of limitations. And yeah, it is a violation of the FDCPA to threaten to sue someone when you have absolutely no intentions of suing them. You can tell the debtor 'You may be sued, and if so, and we receive a judgement against you, you will also be responsible for court costs and interest on the debt, liens may be placed against your property in that event' and so on.
I'm pretty sure the post is largely nonsense. Both wiretaps and bugs have been used by the police to investigate many type of crime for decades. It didn't start on September 12, 2001.
But before 9/11 you had to actually go get a warrant to place one. Then the PATRIOT Act made that unnecessary, you could spy to your heart's content and say 'Sorry, National security!' if somebody stumbled over you looking into your neighbor's window.
And if you found some other 'wrongdoing' while spying, you could then go and get a real warrant to search and arrest for criminal charges, no fuss, no muss, no questions asked, other than 'citizen complaint or personally witnessed?' asked by the judge while signing the warrant.
Are you saying this was classified information too?
Reminds me of a line in a Babylon 5 episode where the episode bad guy says to Garibaldi, "I'd call you an idiot, but that would be revealing a state secret."
So hilarious to see all the statists coming out of the woodwork to attack this plan. If it were up the usual slashdot lieberals, the NSF would get unlimited direct access to every americans checking account.
well I for one am glad to see there is at least one party still bringing common sense ideas to goverment.
For basic research, why not? Eventually, it pays off. It might not fix the problem you're looking at, but it might inspire somebody else to fix a problem they're looking at.
"Promotion of scientific progress" seems pretty broad. Can anyone think of some basic research going on right now that wouldn't fit in one of those six categories? Seems to me like this is just an extra layer of paperwork, rather than an actual restriction on science, despite coming from vaunted luddite Lamar Smith.
Considering ol' Lamar's pretty much a brainless puppet, I'm curious to know who put him up to this. Tea Party, anyone?
lets not pretend on which side the intolerant religious extremism resides.
GOD BLESS AMERICA, IN GOD WE TRUST
Clue: Using the word "God" in a motto or slogan is not religious extremism.
Clue. 'In God We Trust' only got stuck on money during the mid-50's, when we were fighting the Cold War and were totally opposed to 'them godless commie bastards'. Before that, the national motto was 'E Pluribus Unum', Latin for 'From Many, One'.
It's the government - just make shit up. It doesn't matter even if it turns out right or works at all - get a new grant next year with more bullshit rationales.
That only works for politicians. If a 'civilian' makes shit up to get government funding and spends it on something else instead, say, a line of research you conveniently forgot to tell Congress about, you've committed fraud, and are subject to some serious jail time. Congresscritters tend to have no sense of humor when they're made to look like assholes.
Slashdot Mirror
You sure about that? I'm not a simianlogist but from what I've seen they seem to have very expressive faces and make use of posture quite a lot.
Or do you mean they can't read, which is hardly news. They don't write too well either.
These days, most American high school students can't read or write either. 'No Child Left Behind', my ass.
North Carolina refused the Medicaid expansion and federal funding for it, and spent the money the feds gave it to set up an exchange on something else.
That has exactly what to do with rate hikes? Nothing really.
Yes, actually. In blue states, rates are going down because the risk pools are expanding like they should. See California, for instance.
Oh stop it. You can go off into the wilds and stay away from the IRS, UPS, AT&T and likely the NSA. Very, very few people stay completely off the grid. If you want to have the benefits of civilization, then you have to pay for it.
Or as Adam Smith said, those who benefit from society have an obligation to pay for the costs of running society.
Tell that to the 1%. All they're interested in is buying politicians to make sure they keep getting federally mandated profits.
There's more of us than there are of them. All we have to do is vote for politicians who will follow the interests of the citizens who elected them.
Although we seem to have difficulty doing that. There appears to be something wrong with democracy.
Get rid of the Citizens United decision, and fund presidential campaigns strictly through income tax, and we'll do just fine, thank you. The problem is lobby money, particularly when it's dark money like a lot of the Republican 'nonprofits' that are around strictly to fund 'friendly' pols.
According to science, we're all brothers (and sisters, and whatnot) descended from the same greatest grandmother, Mitochondrial Eve. So in that sense, it was your great (etc.) grandmother, and mine too. Burn?
Finding out that most Europeans are descended from just a handful of people is not shocking, for a variety of reasons.
Yes, yes, yes, my family tree needs some serious pruning. I'm kinda busy at the moment, though...
Oh stop it. You can go off into the wilds and stay away from the IRS, UPS, AT&T and likely the NSA. Very, very few people stay completely off the grid. If you want to have the benefits of civilization, then you have to pay for it.
Or as Adam Smith said, those who benefit from society have an obligation to pay for the costs of running society.
Tell that to the 1%. All they're interested in is buying politicians to make sure they keep getting federally mandated profits.
In NC, individual rates are increasing across the board by about 50% under ObamaCare.
North Carolina refused the Medicaid expansion and federal funding for it, and spent the money the feds gave it to set up an exchange on something else. Typical red state. In fact, the ONLY red state to implement the Medicaid expansion AND provide an exchange is Kentucky, but they rebranded it as something other than Obamacare/ACA. Some red states just expanded the Medicaid coverage, like Arizona.
Insurance companies dropping coverage when someone gets sick, has been illegal since 1997. It's called recission. We didn't need the ACA to fix that.
But they did it anyway. You can't put a corporation in jail. When the fines to pay for that offence are less than the costs to pay for the patient's treatment, it's a no-brainer. And there was no requirement for the insurance company to reinsure the patient again. With the ACA, insurance companies canNOT 'disenroll' somebody because they got massively expensively sick. What they can do is, not pick up their mail for a couple days and cancel the policy for nonpayment, then cash the check as pure profit.
Gawd, the amount of Obama boot licking going in that post is unbelievable.
You guy lied. He lied deliberately. Democrats believed it and supported the law. Now, you say only idiots believed it. Well, that just happens to be the Democrats in Congress.
Yes, yes, yes, how could I be so blind??? Romneycare GOOD, Obamacare BAD. I see the LIGHT!!!!
You do realise, don't you, that Obamacare IS Romneycare with some more of the 'gotchas' removed?
I know if I had a copper level plan, I would be bankrupt if I had a major medical issue. With a 6K deductible and 12K yearly cap on expenses I might as well be paying out of pocket.
Really? 12K is practically nothing for a serious condition. Try having a heart attack. You'll get billed for about 80-90K. Get a stent put in, it's 87K. Come down with cancer and watch the money SERIOUSLY flow out fast.
When'd he have TIME to deal with that?
While he was on the golf course or out demonizing somebody, that's when. He's never in the office doing his job.
Where were you when Dubya took off goddamned near a full YEAR of vacation days during his 8 years? Obama's had 92 days off so far, that's like 18 days a year. Had Dubya continued playing golf after 2003 at the rate he was doing, he would have played 192 rounds of golf during his term rather than the 24 he put in because he thought it wasn't a Good Thing to be caught playing golf while American troops were getting their asses shot off. So Obama plays golf. I don't blame him, they tell me it relieves stress. And if you don't think he's stressed, care to explain how grey he's become over the last 5 years?
They were probably trying to find some dirt on Snowden`s previous life. It would make more economic sense to them.
After all the drumbeat for the Iraq war, I feel it`s even refreshing that someone still thinks there`s something called investigative journalism in America.
Good news is, there is. Bad news is, it's on Al Jazeera America.
As opposed to the Previous Regime stomping on anything other than 'America!! Fuck Yeah!!'?
Dude, if I can get 300 mil for a website, how much more can I get to maintain the sucker?
One of the big parts of the ACA is the "healthcare exchange" where health insurance providers are required to basically bid in a centralized exchange. Supposedly to create competition. There are two options.. either your state can create its own exchange (insurance laws vary by state) or your state can opt out and you'll be dumped on the federal exchange. The "website" everyone is talking about is the federal exchange. If it's down, you can't purchase the health insurance you're required by law to purchase. It's pretty big egg on the face of Obama for it not to work, even though he obviously had no part in the technical aspects of it.
Each state was supposed to provide their own exchange. Red states tend not to have them (Kentucky being a major exception, but they're not marketting it there as 'ACA' or 'Obamacare', they put their own brand name on it) and mostly tend to turn down the federal funding to expand their Medicaid program to close the 'donut hole'. The Federal exchange wasn't designed to have 2/3 of the country's states decide to do nothing, not spend state funds that they could have been reimbursed for, and dump the whole damned thing on the Feds for shits and giggles.
That's because both parties would rather tell you what's best for you. One Party things the Government should be all things to all people, the other says we'll tell you what to do but we won't pay for you to do it.
It's a great system but there's no reason this shouldn't have been done right the first time. The budget was there, it was spent but we got a shitty deal.
Two words. 'Government contract'. Why do it right the first time when the big bucks come from maintaining the sucker? That's a cost-plus contract, basically a blank check. Remember the classic definition of an elephant is 'a mouse built to government specs on a government contract'.
>> a culture that prefers deluding the boss over delivering bad news
I'm pretty sure the guy at the top was in on the ruse too.
>> no one who understood the problems was able to tell the President
Isn't there a petition system for that? :)
OK, so the guy at the very top, the guy who's trying to talk 535 overblown egos into co-operating and getting things done, (which, by the way, haven't been co-operating one damned bit in 5 years) carrying on secret talks with a government who hasn't talked with us in like 30 years to try to defuse some of those 535 overblown ego's dreams of American imperialism and military adventurism, putting up with a childish ally in the region of said 'black sheep' government that wants nothing else but to turn said black sheep's country into a fucking parking lot, trying to keep yet more American boots off the ground in yet another country in the same damned region while aforesaid childish ally insists turning that country into a golf course, and trying to run his department of the government while being chronically shorthanded due to some of 100 idiots as a subset of the 535 overblown egos who are determined to ratfuck him at every instance possible, having to deal with multiple manufactured scandals (in particular, one created by a subset of those 535 idiots defunding a program that would have mitigated the damage done to an American embassy with concurrent loss of life in an attempt to create a Pearl Harbor-type incident as a precurser to demand American military intervention in yet another country the 535 don't particularly like) designed to boost support for their ideology, this guy supposedly has detailed information on the planning, design and implementation of a fucking website designed and built on a cost-plus government contract? When'd he have TIME to deal with that?
Wait a minute. You're saying that they can call you when *you* don't want them to, and then sue you for *their* wasted time because you didn't want to talk to them? Nice fucked up country you've got there. Here that constitutes misuse of the telephone system and gets them a £5000 fine *for every infraction* at the very least.
Nope. They can only sue on validated debt that has not passed the statute of limitations in the state of residence. Validation is as simple as providing a copy of the original bill plus a copy of the assignment letter given to the agency by the client who placed the debt with them. Every agency I worked at wouldn't let anything in the door without a copy of the original bill and an assignment letter. No original bill or contract specifying what needed to be paid, so sorry, go away and quit wasting our time.
Or just put the receiver on the desk, and waste a bit of *their* time.
That only succeeds in informing them that your number goes to a live person, and further that said person isn't taking their calls; That's a good way to get out of the collections department and into legal. And legal will just take out a court order for the money against you ex parte in many states. You'll find your bank account zeroed and good luck fighting back then, since you won't be able to pay the court fees to file a counter-suit, or retain a lawyer.
Poor people are at a distinct disadvantage in our justice system. Whether the court action is legitimate or not, without money you can't prevail. And odds are, the money you'll spend will never be recovered.
That's for a LEGIT debt collection agency. The scammers won't bother calling their lawyers. For the legit agencies, they have to document the debt, show that it is a real live debt, give you 30 days to dispute it in writing by sending you a real live dunning notice that has the 'mini-Miranda' clause: 'This is an attempt to collect a debt. Any information gathered will be used for that purpose'. In the US, these activities are governed by the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. Violate the 'rules' of the FDCPA, you lose your license.
Caveat: I used to be a debt collector. And yeah, you can collect on what they call 'bad debt', or debt that's so old it cannot be sued on because it's past the statute of limitations for that debt. A lot of 'bad debt' is sold for maybe 5 cents on the dollar to what we used to call 'chop shops' that called it 2 or 3 times to get a quick fast settlement over the phone for whatever they can get for it. The 'chop shop' collectors would bully the hell out of the debtor in an attempt to get what they can. The biggest thing to remember about old debt is, they can't sue you for it because of the statute of limitations. And yeah, it is a violation of the FDCPA to threaten to sue someone when you have absolutely no intentions of suing them. You can tell the debtor 'You may be sued, and if so, and we receive a judgement against you, you will also be responsible for court costs and interest on the debt, liens may be placed against your property in that event' and so on.
I'm pretty sure the post is largely nonsense. Both wiretaps and bugs have been used by the police to investigate many type of crime for decades. It didn't start on September 12, 2001.
But before 9/11 you had to actually go get a warrant to place one. Then the PATRIOT Act made that unnecessary, you could spy to your heart's content and say 'Sorry, National security!' if somebody stumbled over you looking into your neighbor's window.
And if you found some other 'wrongdoing' while spying, you could then go and get a real warrant to search and arrest for criminal charges, no fuss, no muss, no questions asked, other than 'citizen complaint or personally witnessed?' asked by the judge while signing the warrant.
[...] baseball is slow and boring [...]
Are you saying this was classified information too?
Reminds me of a line in a Babylon 5 episode where the episode bad guy says to Garibaldi, "I'd call you an idiot, but that would be revealing a state secret."
So hilarious to see all the statists coming out of the woodwork to attack this plan. If it were up the usual slashdot lieberals, the NSF would get unlimited direct access to every americans checking account.
well I for one am glad to see there is at least one party still bringing common sense ideas to goverment.
For basic research, why not? Eventually, it pays off. It might not fix the problem you're looking at, but it might inspire somebody else to fix a problem they're looking at.
The correct plural is "penes", philistine. It's a Greek word and not Latin; in any case to be "penii" the singular form would have to be penius.
Or you could be /not/ pretentious and just say "penises".
Since I'm a redneck, I'll just call them 'duck dicks'. Everybody around here will know what I'm talking about.
"Promotion of scientific progress" seems pretty broad. Can anyone think of some basic research going on right now that wouldn't fit in one of those six categories? Seems to me like this is just an extra layer of paperwork, rather than an actual restriction on science, despite coming from vaunted luddite Lamar Smith.
Considering ol' Lamar's pretty much a brainless puppet, I'm curious to know who put him up to this. Tea Party, anyone?
lets not pretend on which side the intolerant religious extremism resides.
GOD BLESS AMERICA, IN GOD WE TRUST
Clue: Using the word "God" in a motto or slogan is not religious extremism.
Clue. 'In God We Trust' only got stuck on money during the mid-50's, when we were fighting the Cold War and were totally opposed to 'them godless commie bastards'. Before that, the national motto was 'E Pluribus Unum', Latin for 'From Many, One'.
It's the government - just make shit up. It doesn't matter even if it turns out right or works at all - get a new grant next year with more bullshit rationales.
That only works for politicians. If a 'civilian' makes shit up to get government funding and spends it on something else instead, say, a line of research you conveniently forgot to tell Congress about, you've committed fraud, and are subject to some serious jail time. Congresscritters tend to have no sense of humor when they're made to look like assholes.