Of course that's what it says. If you want to get fussy about citations, I think the burden's on you to show where they make any sort of viable recommendation that will actually make a difference that doesn't include harming western economies while leaving China and India totally off the hook as they make the biggest growing mess.
Regular people aren't the ones clamoring to do nothing about climate change.
Yes, they are. The businesses who sell them things are keenly aware of what regular people want and are willing to pay for. Regular people don't want to pay $15 for a gallon of gas, have their taxes hugely increased, have their job go away, have their food become wildly more expensive, and have the economy crippled so they can be seen Doing The Right Thing in a country of 300 million people, while billions of people doing a whole lot of last-century-style polluting don't do anything along the same lines, thus making the economic wreckage even worse.
Your state of delusion isn't a real one. Sorry, but what you and the James O'keefes of the world foam at the mouth about isn't an actual problem.
The matter is now before the courts, with evidence of the illegal voter registrations (which are matters of public record) introduced by the research group bringing the suit. Your insistence that the public records showing the very same people claiming not to be citizens while also (within the same calendar year) registering to vote is a "delusion" says more about your wishful thinking or partisan biases than it does about anything else. We're in an election climate where the control of the executive branch and legislatures in a state can hinge on mere dozens of votes. And people like you want to be absolutely sure that the system remains as open to abuse as possible. Why? Because the groups that actively seek to abuse it and proudly announce their willingness to assist people in doing so tend to favor only one party - clearly, you share their world view. All I want is for my vote to count, and all you want is for the process to tilt favorably to one party's illegal tactics, the better to keep them in power.
Meanwhile, in the real world, the utter pointlessness of having people go to the polls personally is quite manifest.
You say that, but you don't say why. If those who cast votes must simply show who they are, their appearance at a polling place that establishes their legitimacy is exactly how such fraud is prevented. And it leaves a trail that can be followed after the fact in too-close elections that might have involved questionable participation. Your implication is that faceless, unverifiable, fraud-friendly mail-in ballots are better than tying faces and names with the act of establishing the government. You can only be slavishly cheerleading for that if you have an interest in propping up the party that likes operating that way.
From reality. Let's see... in my state, you can walk up and register to vote without anyone determining if you're a citizen. There is no process for it. Then, you can walk up to a polling place on voting day, where they don't ask for any form of ID - you just say your name is "Bob Smith," and if that name is on the list of registered voters, you get to vote. Simple as that. There is no mechanism to validate your eligibility to vote when you register, and no method to prevent anyone from using the registered name to cast a vote. That same person could vote multiple times in multiple polling places, because that person's ID is never asked for or shown. Now multiply that sort of thing by the thousands of registrations that some industrious researchers just compared (as private citizens - the government doesn't do this, and refuses to because it says state law doesn't permit such intrusive things) to other public records... such as applications for driving permits and jury pool documents, in which those same multiple thousands of people happily asserted that they were not citizens.
Actually, Democrats recognize that the Republican fetish for voter ID is just a tactic to manipulate outcomes of elections in the same way as poll taxes and literacy tests.
No, Democrats recognize that making sure people that nobody can check whether or not you're allowed to vote helps them with their vote-by-sheep-herding techniques. For example, our state was just shown to have thousands of voters who, when cross checked against their driving records, show that they are not citizens. Thousands of them. And Democrats in Colorado just set up new mechanism that is practically designed from scratch specifically to provide for bogus voting, stewarded by mostly partisan people and oganizations that skew to their favor.
You want vote suppression? Thousands of people voting illegally in my state, as liberal activist organizations circulate flyers explaining where it's possible to vote without your identity being tested - that nullifies thousands of legitimate votes.
If Republicans were really interested in their supposed problem, they'd support making ID a mandate on the government.
If you were paying attention, you'd see that legislation aimed at making sure that liars and illegals can't cast votes include provisions for photo IDs paid for by the state in question. Who, by the way, has no form of ID? You can't cash government checks without it. You can't use social services without ID. You can't sit at the library and use taxpayer provided computers and internet access without ID. You can't live in subsidized housing without ID, or get Medicare coverage (or Medicaid) without one. But thousands of people can cast votes without them, and millions in Colorado can now make a complete circus out of the idea.
Not allowed to use hospitals?? Thousands of dollars a year??
Right. Can you choose any hospital you want for any procedure you choose without any wait, where you come from? No? You mean you have some sort of system that makes sure that not everyone in the country lines up at the same one best hospital to use the one most famous cardiologist in your country? So, how does that work, exactly? Obviously you don't allow normal market pressures to impact that. Could it be that there is some committee or even a normal government bureaucrat that decides how to deal with 1000 people who all want their heart surgery performed by the same couple of people in the same one hospital? Or does nobody ever get told that they'll have to go across town to a different facility because the one they want can't accommodate them that week, or that the very popular neurosurgeon they want can only work 12 hours a day, and they'll have to go somewhere else?
And yes, thousands of dollars a year for health care. Oh, wait, I get it. You're one of the people in your country that doesn't pay any of the taxes that fund your healthcare system. I guess it does feel like a pretty good system, having other people buy for you the professional services you want. Does it work that way for electricians, too? If you want someone to write a sophisticated piece of software, do you just demand it, and the government gets other people to pay the professionals needed to make you that software? No? Why not? If you have the right to the use of a podiatrist because you're too lazy to trim your own toenails, why don't you have a right to an electrician's services to come and change a lightbulb in your house?
How about the out of pocket maximums? Lifetime maximums? Every other detail that you've omitted? They've all stayed the same?
My out of pocket maximum has gone up under the "affordable" care act. I had a lifetime max of $2M, since I was carrying a long-held policy before it was declared unfit for the new market because it didn't provide no-deductible birth care, which is completely irrelevant to me.
And "every other" detail? Like what? Like the fact that even though the new policy also covers the same preventative screening procedures/tests as my old policy, there are now much higher co-pays during those visits? Or that the co-payments on prescriptions are now higher than they were on the plan I was forced to give up? What sort of details are you looking for? I was happy with my old plan, and was lied to about whether I'd get to keep it. I was lied to about how monthly costs would go down, I was lied to about how the entire new arrangement was going to lower real health care costs and not contribute to the federal deficit (wrong on both!). And now we're looking at another 48% increase in rates for the coming year. So affordable, this new affordable care act.
If your costs went up that significantly, then your coverage has changed dramatically.
No, that's just what the government-mandated plans cost, now, as produced by the regulators in the liberal-monoculture government of this state, where rates are set by the government. Yes, my coverage changed... it's worse. We can't use the two best local hospitals, and we can no longer use our doctor of 20 years. We do have primo coverage, though, for maternity-related matters that we can't possibly use. So, yeah, significant change in coverage: triple the monthly cost and quadruple the deductable for a big drop in what we get out of it.
In short, you're complaining that passage of the ACA has forced you to upgrade your previous Fischer-Price insurance (which is a lot more like "no insurance" than it is like "today's insurance") so that your unpaid medical bills wouldn't be spread amongst the rest of us. Welcome to the world of personal responsibility and pulling your own weight.
Had the same plan for many years, always paid what's not covered by insurance, and always had a plenty-large cap. The "toy" insurance you think I had dealt with medical matters large and small. The exact same situations would now involve far more cash out of pocket, on top of the much higher monthly rates. This isn't because I've been forced to buy better insurance, it's so the difference in cash can be used to cover subsidies for other people.
Do you mean the 10 million more people who have access to healthcare now?
Access to it, and being able to pay thousands in non-insured costs because of sky-high deductables aren't the same thing. And taking away other people's money and options in order to hand it over to those people is something you actually like? My family's health care just got many thousands of dollars a year MORE expensive because of the law you're cheerleading.
the dramatic reduction in the rate of increase of healthcare costs?
Thanks a lot, if you're one of the people who helped to keep Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid in power so that our costs could triple and our deductibles could more than quadruple. Regardless, what BS. The ACA was rammed through as those two and Obama stood there and lied through their teeth. Remember the promise that buying health insurance would be as simple as booking a plane ticket, and that monthly rates would go down to about what a mobile phone bill looks like every month? Yeah I remember that. Those promises were made right along side of the promise that if I liked my plan I could keep it (woops! I couldn't - even though we're in our fifties, our plan was cancelled because it didn't include the mandated no-deductable coverage for pregnancy and drug addiction treatment we don't need... so we lost the plan we liked, and had to buy an inferior plan at triple the price), and that if I liked my doctor I could keep her (woops! the new government-mandated plan no longer allows that, so we have to pay cash which doesn't count against our deductable).
We were promised LOWER REAL COSTS, but instead we have dramatically higher costs. We've also just been informed that because too many young people have decided they'd rather pay a fine than buy this incredibly expensive new insurance, that our rates for this coming year will jump up by another 48%. Again, thanks a lot if you're someone who supported this new arrangement. Really appreciate it.
My wife and I, who are in our fifties, had a plan that cost us about $250/month, and which had a $2,500 annual deductible. Then came the affordable care plan. Now we have to buy insurance that covers babies we'll never be having, treatment for drug addictions and mental problems we don't have, and our monthly rates that have jumped to over $800, with a $12,000 deductible. We're also no longer able to use our familiar doctor unless we pay cash that doesn't count against that deductible. That is the least expensive plan available in our state's Obamacate-compliant regulated market. Yay!
Don't blame the President for laws written by and enacted by Congress. President Obama is the chief executive, not a legislator.
The law was passed by not-veto-proof 100% partisan vote.If he wasn't in support of it, he could have stopped it cold or used his ability to kill it (by not signing it) to insist that changes were made. He did absolutely nothing along those lines. He is equally responsible, and don't kid yourself about the administration's direct involvement in the writing of the bill.
Yeah, cause emergency rooms are turning away people in droves.... try again...
No, they're not, of course. But people with modest income are no more "insured" than they were before. That's the whole point. What is a family who makes $45,000 a year (gross) supposed to do with a $12,000 deductible? Well, at least they're insured now, right? Right. Thanks, Pelosi, Reid, and a Obama! Oh, and of course millions of other people who DID have insurance they wanted and could use, no longer do, and that's about to happen to millions more when the illegally-delayed changes hit the employer-provided plans. After the election, of course.
I see, so instead of constructively engaging to modify a plan built on a Republican plan, they decided to take their ball and go home. That's so mature of Republicans
The legislative agenda surrounding the 100% partisan ramming-through of the ACA precluded any Republican involvement. The Republicans put forth a constant barrage of their own ideas and (looking back on them) very accurate predictions about all of the wreckage that the ACA is now causing. Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi ran the entire show, and shut down any involvement by Republicans. Those two leaders of the Democrat party, and the chief executive, actively and deliberately lied - over an over again - about the nature of the law and the fallout that would come from it. That's why more people opposed than supported it as it was being rammed through, and why even more people are opposed to it now. The way in which the Dems carried on at the time is about to cost them a lot of legislative seats, and the president who championed this new tax/entitlement redistribution plan is spiraling downward in terms of any public support for his priorities.
The Republicans had no ability to "constructively engage" in the creation and underhanded passage of the ACA. They could only shout out loud about how outrageous so much of it is, since their votes - in committee and generally in the house and senate - were incapable of impacting the law.
So how else would you describe it. One year, our health plan costs about $250/month and has a $2,500 deductible. The next year, as new entitlements and subsidies are being dished out under a brand new law that was passed in 100% partisan fashion in the middle of spectacular lies about its actual costs and requirements, our monthly costs have gone up to over $800, and our deductible is now $12,000. We no longer have access to our family doctor unless we want to pay cash, and we can no longer use two of the best local hospitals. So, we get less service, and thousands of dollars more each year are taken from our family budget and given to another family's budget. That is redistribution of income, by definition. Huge new government-enforced costs placed on one person, and bloated-with-overhead bureaucracy hands some part of it over to another person under a law written and put into place entirely by one political party that lied about it from beginning to end.
No, it's not. It's an income re-distribution plan. It takes people (like me) who already had insurance at a good rate, and takes it away in order to give it to somebody else. The "affordable" care act has tripled my monthly costs, and quadrupled my deductible, while forcing us to give up on the family doctor and rule out the use of good local hospitals. This, so that the much higher new health tax that we now pay (which is what it is, a new tax) can be handed over to someone else. That's NOT a health insurance plan. It's taking more money, by force, from one person, and giving it to another person.
Ever heard of the Works Progress Administration? You know, that government program way back in the 1930s that actually gave useful productive jobs to the jobless?
That didn't boost prosperity, it just prolonged the depression and set the stage for decades for more endlessly growing expensive government bureaucracy and entanglement in every last aspect of your life. It used force to make one person work part of their day in order to support another person who was assigned make-work that had nothing whatsoever to do with growing the economy. Real prosperity comes from actual economic growth, not a fake economy powered by the threat of jail time that uses confiscatory entitlement programs to whistle past the economic graveyard.
I'm guessing you're a big fan of Hillary Clinton, who just asserted that it's not businesses/employers who provide new jobs. There are plenty of places on the planet where you can see the fantastic prosperity that comes with the government deciding which jobs should exist, and which launders all economic activity through corrupt labyrinth of smarter-than-you bureaucrats. Pure paradises, every one of them, right? Maybe instead of lecturing the GP about reading some history, you should do so yourself, and take on board some actual facts about what happens when you rely on central government command and control over jobs and wages. That's been tried over and over, and results in exactly the opposite of real prosperity.
Actually, we are sending several fighter jets to bomb ISIS, right now. Odds are that's what is precipitating these attacks.
No, nutballs who decide to kill soldiers on the street because they are part of an organization that is taking some modest steps to help stop other nutballs from killing more innocents as those nutballs attempt to institute a medieval Islamic thugocracy in as many places as possible... that's what precipitated these attacks.
If the crazies weren't mad at the concept of having their Islamist wet dream torn down, then their followers in places like Canada wouldn't be getting the message to go out and kill soldiers in the street. None of that would happen without theocratic wackadoos deciding to kill those who are trying to stop their tactics. The attacks in Canada were precipitated by religion, not by Canada's involvement in trying to stop any army of tens of thousands of religious murders.
My bullshit meter always starts kicking into life when the hyperbole starts flowing, like the reading comprehension or random amount of payment received having a causative effect on the function of an organic process.
For me, it's my Political Correctness Meter. You know how it works.
Headline: "Huge Comet To Smash Into Earth, Instantly Ending All Life On The Planet! Activists Say Women and Minorites Unfairly Impacted."
Let's see: total number of Ebola Patients in the U.S. is... 1. Mssr. Duncan is dead and cremated and no longer spreading the disease. So, the answer is "no".
You didn't bother reading the summary or the article, did you? Not just 1, Mr. Duncan. The next victim is the trained, well-equipped health care professional who - despite having far better protection and awareness than the vast majority of people in the world - just tested positive for having caught the virus from him.
What's your point in ignoring that glaring little dose of reality?
In the US, more poeple have died of gunshot wounds in the last month than have died from Ebola since it was discovered. Let's not talk about rational, effective responses from conservatives.
Yes, and far more people die every in the US from being beaten to death by killers using fists and blunt instruments than have died by killers using rifles of any kind, let alone the small number that involved scary looking rifles with black plastic parts on them. So what? Someone deciding to kill someone else - with a knife, a pipe, a gun, or their bare hands - isn't nearly as common as stupid kids killing themselves and others in cars, but mostly: it's an active decision. There's no comparing that to an outbreak of an ugly infectious disease, especially one with a high mortality rate that can kill you weeks after pick it up from someone's spit on a doorknob.
You want rational responses to both topics? OK, don't let violent criminals out of jail. Don't tolerate the existence of violent gangs like MS13 in our cities, and stop making it so politically incorrect to lock up crazy people who are plainly dangerous. And of couse, find ways to reduce one of the largest sources of death-by-gun stats, which is suicide - like, make Oregon's option more widely available. And in the meantime, work globally to stop travel out of West Africa until their outbreak problem is under control.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course that's what it says. If you want to get fussy about citations, I think the burden's on you to show where they make any sort of viable recommendation that will actually make a difference that doesn't include harming western economies while leaving China and India totally off the hook as they make the biggest growing mess.
Regular people aren't the ones clamoring to do nothing about climate change.
Yes, they are. The businesses who sell them things are keenly aware of what regular people want and are willing to pay for. Regular people don't want to pay $15 for a gallon of gas, have their taxes hugely increased, have their job go away, have their food become wildly more expensive, and have the economy crippled so they can be seen Doing The Right Thing in a country of 300 million people, while billions of people doing a whole lot of last-century-style polluting don't do anything along the same lines, thus making the economic wreckage even worse.
I get it, you want to manipulate the electoral process yourself
Yes. I want to manipulate the process into the perfectly rational form in which it's used all around the world: one citizen, one vote.
Your state of delusion isn't a real one. Sorry, but what you and the James O'keefes of the world foam at the mouth about isn't an actual problem.
The matter is now before the courts, with evidence of the illegal voter registrations (which are matters of public record) introduced by the research group bringing the suit. Your insistence that the public records showing the very same people claiming not to be citizens while also (within the same calendar year) registering to vote is a "delusion" says more about your wishful thinking or partisan biases than it does about anything else. We're in an election climate where the control of the executive branch and legislatures in a state can hinge on mere dozens of votes. And people like you want to be absolutely sure that the system remains as open to abuse as possible. Why? Because the groups that actively seek to abuse it and proudly announce their willingness to assist people in doing so tend to favor only one party - clearly, you share their world view. All I want is for my vote to count, and all you want is for the process to tilt favorably to one party's illegal tactics, the better to keep them in power.
Meanwhile, in the real world, the utter pointlessness of having people go to the polls personally is quite manifest.
You say that, but you don't say why. If those who cast votes must simply show who they are, their appearance at a polling place that establishes their legitimacy is exactly how such fraud is prevented. And it leaves a trail that can be followed after the fact in too-close elections that might have involved questionable participation. Your implication is that faceless, unverifiable, fraud-friendly mail-in ballots are better than tying faces and names with the act of establishing the government. You can only be slavishly cheerleading for that if you have an interest in propping up the party that likes operating that way.
Nobody can check? Where do you get these ideas?
From reality. Let's see ... in my state, you can walk up and register to vote without anyone determining if you're a citizen. There is no process for it. Then, you can walk up to a polling place on voting day, where they don't ask for any form of ID - you just say your name is "Bob Smith," and if that name is on the list of registered voters, you get to vote. Simple as that. There is no mechanism to validate your eligibility to vote when you register, and no method to prevent anyone from using the registered name to cast a vote. That same person could vote multiple times in multiple polling places, because that person's ID is never asked for or shown. Now multiply that sort of thing by the thousands of registrations that some industrious researchers just compared (as private citizens - the government doesn't do this, and refuses to because it says state law doesn't permit such intrusive things) to other public records ... such as applications for driving permits and jury pool documents, in which those same multiple thousands of people happily asserted that they were not citizens.
Actually, Democrats recognize that the Republican fetish for voter ID is just a tactic to manipulate outcomes of elections in the same way as poll taxes and literacy tests.
No, Democrats recognize that making sure people that nobody can check whether or not you're allowed to vote helps them with their vote-by-sheep-herding techniques. For example, our state was just shown to have thousands of voters who, when cross checked against their driving records, show that they are not citizens. Thousands of them. And Democrats in Colorado just set up new mechanism that is practically designed from scratch specifically to provide for bogus voting, stewarded by mostly partisan people and oganizations that skew to their favor.
You want vote suppression? Thousands of people voting illegally in my state, as liberal activist organizations circulate flyers explaining where it's possible to vote without your identity being tested - that nullifies thousands of legitimate votes.
If Republicans were really interested in their supposed problem, they'd support making ID a mandate on the government.
If you were paying attention, you'd see that legislation aimed at making sure that liars and illegals can't cast votes include provisions for photo IDs paid for by the state in question. Who, by the way, has no form of ID? You can't cash government checks without it. You can't use social services without ID. You can't sit at the library and use taxpayer provided computers and internet access without ID. You can't live in subsidized housing without ID, or get Medicare coverage (or Medicaid) without one. But thousands of people can cast votes without them, and millions in Colorado can now make a complete circus out of the idea.
This is the dumbest thing I've ever heard.
Why? Clueless emoto-voters are why we currently have such an incompetent executive administration, and Harry Reid setting the legislative agenda.
Low information voters (across the spectrum) are toxic.
Not allowed to use hospitals?? Thousands of dollars a year??
Right. Can you choose any hospital you want for any procedure you choose without any wait, where you come from? No? You mean you have some sort of system that makes sure that not everyone in the country lines up at the same one best hospital to use the one most famous cardiologist in your country? So, how does that work, exactly? Obviously you don't allow normal market pressures to impact that. Could it be that there is some committee or even a normal government bureaucrat that decides how to deal with 1000 people who all want their heart surgery performed by the same couple of people in the same one hospital? Or does nobody ever get told that they'll have to go across town to a different facility because the one they want can't accommodate them that week, or that the very popular neurosurgeon they want can only work 12 hours a day, and they'll have to go somewhere else?
And yes, thousands of dollars a year for health care. Oh, wait, I get it. You're one of the people in your country that doesn't pay any of the taxes that fund your healthcare system. I guess it does feel like a pretty good system, having other people buy for you the professional services you want. Does it work that way for electricians, too? If you want someone to write a sophisticated piece of software, do you just demand it, and the government gets other people to pay the professionals needed to make you that software? No? Why not? If you have the right to the use of a podiatrist because you're too lazy to trim your own toenails, why don't you have a right to an electrician's services to come and change a lightbulb in your house?
How about the out of pocket maximums? Lifetime maximums? Every other detail that you've omitted? They've all stayed the same?
My out of pocket maximum has gone up under the "affordable" care act. I had a lifetime max of $2M, since I was carrying a long-held policy before it was declared unfit for the new market because it didn't provide no-deductible birth care, which is completely irrelevant to me.
And "every other" detail? Like what? Like the fact that even though the new policy also covers the same preventative screening procedures/tests as my old policy, there are now much higher co-pays during those visits? Or that the co-payments on prescriptions are now higher than they were on the plan I was forced to give up? What sort of details are you looking for? I was happy with my old plan, and was lied to about whether I'd get to keep it. I was lied to about how monthly costs would go down, I was lied to about how the entire new arrangement was going to lower real health care costs and not contribute to the federal deficit (wrong on both!). And now we're looking at another 48% increase in rates for the coming year. So affordable, this new affordable care act.
If your costs went up that significantly, then your coverage has changed dramatically.
No, that's just what the government-mandated plans cost, now, as produced by the regulators in the liberal-monoculture government of this state, where rates are set by the government. Yes, my coverage changed ... it's worse. We can't use the two best local hospitals, and we can no longer use our doctor of 20 years. We do have primo coverage, though, for maternity-related matters that we can't possibly use. So, yeah, significant change in coverage: triple the monthly cost and quadruple the deductable for a big drop in what we get out of it.
In short, you're complaining that passage of the ACA has forced you to upgrade your previous Fischer-Price insurance (which is a lot more like "no insurance" than it is like "today's insurance") so that your unpaid medical bills wouldn't be spread amongst the rest of us. Welcome to the world of personal responsibility and pulling your own weight.
Had the same plan for many years, always paid what's not covered by insurance, and always had a plenty-large cap. The "toy" insurance you think I had dealt with medical matters large and small. The exact same situations would now involve far more cash out of pocket, on top of the much higher monthly rates. This isn't because I've been forced to buy better insurance, it's so the difference in cash can be used to cover subsidies for other people.
Do you mean the 10 million more people who have access to healthcare now?
Access to it, and being able to pay thousands in non-insured costs because of sky-high deductables aren't the same thing. And taking away other people's money and options in order to hand it over to those people is something you actually like? My family's health care just got many thousands of dollars a year MORE expensive because of the law you're cheerleading.
the dramatic reduction in the rate of increase of healthcare costs?
Thanks a lot, if you're one of the people who helped to keep Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid in power so that our costs could triple and our deductibles could more than quadruple. Regardless, what BS. The ACA was rammed through as those two and Obama stood there and lied through their teeth. Remember the promise that buying health insurance would be as simple as booking a plane ticket, and that monthly rates would go down to about what a mobile phone bill looks like every month? Yeah I remember that. Those promises were made right along side of the promise that if I liked my plan I could keep it (woops! I couldn't - even though we're in our fifties, our plan was cancelled because it didn't include the mandated no-deductable coverage for pregnancy and drug addiction treatment we don't need ... so we lost the plan we liked, and had to buy an inferior plan at triple the price), and that if I liked my doctor I could keep her (woops! the new government-mandated plan no longer allows that, so we have to pay cash which doesn't count against our deductable).
We were promised LOWER REAL COSTS, but instead we have dramatically higher costs. We've also just been informed that because too many young people have decided they'd rather pay a fine than buy this incredibly expensive new insurance, that our rates for this coming year will jump up by another 48%. Again, thanks a lot if you're someone who supported this new arrangement. Really appreciate it.
My wife and I, who are in our fifties, had a plan that cost us about $250/month, and which had a $2,500 annual deductible. Then came the affordable care plan. Now we have to buy insurance that covers babies we'll never be having, treatment for drug addictions and mental problems we don't have, and our monthly rates that have jumped to over $800, with a $12,000 deductible. We're also no longer able to use our familiar doctor unless we pay cash that doesn't count against that deductible. That is the least expensive plan available in our state's Obamacate-compliant regulated market. Yay!
Don't blame the President for laws written by and enacted by Congress. President Obama is the chief executive, not a legislator.
The law was passed by not-veto-proof 100% partisan vote.If he wasn't in support of it, he could have stopped it cold or used his ability to kill it (by not signing it) to insist that changes were made. He did absolutely nothing along those lines. He is equally responsible, and don't kid yourself about the administration's direct involvement in the writing of the bill.
Yeah, cause emergency rooms are turning away people in droves.... try again...
No, they're not, of course. But people with modest income are no more "insured" than they were before. That's the whole point. What is a family who makes $45,000 a year (gross) supposed to do with a $12,000 deductible? Well, at least they're insured now, right? Right. Thanks, Pelosi, Reid, and a Obama! Oh, and of course millions of other people who DID have insurance they wanted and could use, no longer do, and that's about to happen to millions more when the illegally-delayed changes hit the employer-provided plans. After the election, of course.
I see, so instead of constructively engaging to modify a plan built on a Republican plan, they decided to take their ball and go home. That's so mature of Republicans
The legislative agenda surrounding the 100% partisan ramming-through of the ACA precluded any Republican involvement. The Republicans put forth a constant barrage of their own ideas and (looking back on them) very accurate predictions about all of the wreckage that the ACA is now causing. Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi ran the entire show, and shut down any involvement by Republicans. Those two leaders of the Democrat party, and the chief executive, actively and deliberately lied - over an over again - about the nature of the law and the fallout that would come from it. That's why more people opposed than supported it as it was being rammed through, and why even more people are opposed to it now. The way in which the Dems carried on at the time is about to cost them a lot of legislative seats, and the president who championed this new tax/entitlement redistribution plan is spiraling downward in terms of any public support for his priorities.
The Republicans had no ability to "constructively engage" in the creation and underhanded passage of the ACA. They could only shout out loud about how outrageous so much of it is, since their votes - in committee and generally in the house and senate - were incapable of impacting the law.
Income redistribution my hairy ass.
So how else would you describe it. One year, our health plan costs about $250/month and has a $2,500 deductible. The next year, as new entitlements and subsidies are being dished out under a brand new law that was passed in 100% partisan fashion in the middle of spectacular lies about its actual costs and requirements, our monthly costs have gone up to over $800, and our deductible is now $12,000. We no longer have access to our family doctor unless we want to pay cash, and we can no longer use two of the best local hospitals. So, we get less service, and thousands of dollars more each year are taken from our family budget and given to another family's budget. That is redistribution of income, by definition. Huge new government-enforced costs placed on one person, and bloated-with-overhead bureaucracy hands some part of it over to another person under a law written and put into place entirely by one political party that lied about it from beginning to end.
It's a fucking health insurance plan
No, it's not. It's an income re-distribution plan. It takes people (like me) who already had insurance at a good rate, and takes it away in order to give it to somebody else. The "affordable" care act has tripled my monthly costs, and quadrupled my deductible, while forcing us to give up on the family doctor and rule out the use of good local hospitals. This, so that the much higher new health tax that we now pay (which is what it is, a new tax) can be handed over to someone else. That's NOT a health insurance plan. It's taking more money, by force, from one person, and giving it to another person.
Ever heard of the Works Progress Administration? You know, that government program way back in the 1930s that actually gave useful productive jobs to the jobless?
That didn't boost prosperity, it just prolonged the depression and set the stage for decades for more endlessly growing expensive government bureaucracy and entanglement in every last aspect of your life. It used force to make one person work part of their day in order to support another person who was assigned make-work that had nothing whatsoever to do with growing the economy. Real prosperity comes from actual economic growth, not a fake economy powered by the threat of jail time that uses confiscatory entitlement programs to whistle past the economic graveyard.
I'm guessing you're a big fan of Hillary Clinton, who just asserted that it's not businesses/employers who provide new jobs. There are plenty of places on the planet where you can see the fantastic prosperity that comes with the government deciding which jobs should exist, and which launders all economic activity through corrupt labyrinth of smarter-than-you bureaucrats. Pure paradises, every one of them, right? Maybe instead of lecturing the GP about reading some history, you should do so yourself, and take on board some actual facts about what happens when you rely on central government command and control over jobs and wages. That's been tried over and over, and results in exactly the opposite of real prosperity.
Actually, we are sending several fighter jets to bomb ISIS, right now. Odds are that's what is precipitating these attacks.
No, nutballs who decide to kill soldiers on the street because they are part of an organization that is taking some modest steps to help stop other nutballs from killing more innocents as those nutballs attempt to institute a medieval Islamic thugocracy in as many places as possible ... that's what precipitated these attacks.
If the crazies weren't mad at the concept of having their Islamist wet dream torn down, then their followers in places like Canada wouldn't be getting the message to go out and kill soldiers in the street. None of that would happen without theocratic wackadoos deciding to kill those who are trying to stop their tactics. The attacks in Canada were precipitated by religion, not by Canada's involvement in trying to stop any army of tens of thousands of religious murders.
About 6 billion of the world population are muslims, that's around 23% of the world population.
I'm going to bet that even some of the most jihad-obsessed radicals, fresh from what passes for school Taliban-land, are better at math than you are.
If there are 6 billion Muslims, and they make up 23% of the world population, that means the world as a population of over 26 billion people.
Do you know some secret place on the planet where we're hiding almost 20 billion extra, previously unknown people?
Are you really that obtuse? Does it physically hurt?
My bullshit meter always starts kicking into life when the hyperbole starts flowing, like the reading comprehension or random amount of payment received having a causative effect on the function of an organic process.
For me, it's my Political Correctness Meter. You know how it works.
Headline: "Huge Comet To Smash Into Earth, Instantly Ending All Life On The Planet! Activists Say Women and Minorites Unfairly Impacted."
We had 0.
Then Mr Duncan arrived. We had 1.
Then Mr Duncan died. We had 0.
Then the nurse tested positive. We have 1.
You're an idiot. If you have to play those kinds of semantic games in order to avoid counting above 1, please just avoid participating.
Let's see: total number of Ebola Patients in the U.S. is ... 1. Mssr. Duncan is dead and cremated and no longer spreading the disease. So, the answer is "no".
You didn't bother reading the summary or the article, did you? Not just 1, Mr. Duncan. The next victim is the trained, well-equipped health care professional who - despite having far better protection and awareness than the vast majority of people in the world - just tested positive for having caught the virus from him.
What's your point in ignoring that glaring little dose of reality?
In the US, more poeple have died of gunshot wounds in the last month than have died from Ebola since it was discovered. Let's not talk about rational, effective responses from conservatives.
Yes, and far more people die every in the US from being beaten to death by killers using fists and blunt instruments than have died by killers using rifles of any kind, let alone the small number that involved scary looking rifles with black plastic parts on them. So what? Someone deciding to kill someone else - with a knife, a pipe, a gun, or their bare hands - isn't nearly as common as stupid kids killing themselves and others in cars, but mostly: it's an active decision. There's no comparing that to an outbreak of an ugly infectious disease, especially one with a high mortality rate that can kill you weeks after pick it up from someone's spit on a doorknob.
You want rational responses to both topics? OK, don't let violent criminals out of jail. Don't tolerate the existence of violent gangs like MS13 in our cities, and stop making it so politically incorrect to lock up crazy people who are plainly dangerous. And of couse, find ways to reduce one of the largest sources of death-by-gun stats, which is suicide - like, make Oregon's option more widely available. And in the meantime, work globally to stop travel out of West Africa until their outbreak problem is under control.