Health Care: A Historic Win for Obama

…talk about timing.
KT, at same time you posted here, over at Amy’s last Stupak post I lightly kidded if you were still awake but seriously wished for you to speak to John Dingell soon for his thoughts given his father’s legacy and your excellent posts about this, such as….
http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2009/09/09/john-dingell-sr-a-legacy/ (just watched his brief speech)
…but if you, Jay, Amy, and Katie want to sleep in late for all of your work, go for it. Thanks for your coverage.

What a long strange trip it’s been.

In the famous words of LL Cool J, I implore you and yours, KT: “Don’t call it a comeback”

KT:

I can’t thank you enough for your sustained professionalism and clarity in covering this complex issue over all these months. I could (and did) nitpick about a story here or some speculation there along the way, but you stand head and shoulders above the great cesspool of “reporting” committed by the media at large.

…agreed, thanks and props, KT. Great job. There will be more HC stuff for you and Kate (improvements / changes, insurance / pharma whining, I mean pushback, etc.) but I’ll look forward to your next big stories, whether they’re finance reform, jobs, immigration, etc.

Well we have been here a year arguing about it, and now it passes, and most of us can’t get on here to post.

No sh!t. How tedious. Simply going thru the motions to get on must = addiction. And before I did, the look was diff. too–commenter names were coming after the comments. Was thinking how am I going to skim past the wank-brigade. Finally got logged in and it looks the same.

I’ll double down with jcapan on the frustration level. Posted twice on Amy’s Stupak thread, only to have both posts gobbled by the ether. And I won’t even mention the unspeakable number of hours I spent today on a single post to get it formatted so that links were distinctly colored, only to have all formatting stripped after posting. F*cking web monkeys!!

KT, I was able to sneak in and reply to your posting through your bio. I explained in one of your other posts what has been happening to some of us trying to comment. I have also sent an email to your tech dept.
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Like Nancy Pelosi, the women reporters on this site have been exceptional. Thanks for all of your hard work. It isn’t over yet. We still have the Senate and a chance to see Republicans making bigger fools of themselves.

I’m looking forward to posts from rusty and his brethren. Will we see these guys send postcards from Galt’s Gulch, CO., replace the USA flag with the USSR, etc.?

See post number 6. You can try going through a reporter’s bio and click on the post you want to respond to. Sometimes it works.
As I told KT, I have left msgs on a couple of threads and sent a message to their tech department. I said earlier I am in serious withdrawl.
I also suggested when there is a problem it would be helpful if it was acknowledged so we know it is being worked on. Several people have mentioned they are having trouble with the log on procedures.
Please respond tomorrow.

apr – thanks for the tip on sneaking in through KT’s bio. I was wondering if I’d done something to offend Word Press.
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Of course, most of the hullabaloo that I wanted to comment on is already done and gone.
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But I’m glad that the Dems were able to get something, anything, passed.
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Watching Erick Ericksson declare a Purity Jihad on the GOP is just about worth the price of admission alone.
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But of course, now I get to deal with my coworkers crying into their coffees tomorrow morning.

Anon,
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(Smiing) I really thought you called her Amy Stupak at first. Far be it from me to judge another, but “unspeakable # of hrs” on a Sunday your time + Swampland = time better spent?
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Apr, agreed about an acknowledgement–though it’s never been KT’s job, no one else seems to take on such a respons.

Smi(l)ing!

Cliff, while I’m hardly in a celebratory mood re: the bill itself, when I read something like this:
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http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/health-care/rep-ciro-rodriguez-targeted-with-ethnic-slurs/
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It does make me slightly joyous, that the neanderthals are going to wake up tomorrrow in soiled diapers.

I didn’t see that about Rep. Rodriguez, but I had read about Barney Frank and John Lewis.
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It makes me wonder how long this behavior can be ignored or brushed away by the ‘sane conservatives.’
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It’s clear that this is what the Tea Partiers are, and this is what they do, and it’s time for the moderates to realize that the GOP is bound inextricably to them.

The Republicans have already apologized for that blamed it on the Democrats.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2010_03/022973.php

Another tea bagger reveals their true identity.
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Although, aren’t you afraid once Obama signs the bill and reconciliation we will wake up the next morning to brown shirts and cossacks marching down the street? Although their ideologies are totally different, they will ban together to honor “the One”.
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Being a person of a certain age I am sure I will be selected by a death panel and sent to the soylent green plant.
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Forced abortions will be commonplace.
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Guns will be confiscated. How will we defend ourselves at Starbucks?
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The jihadists will declare victory and Obama will admit with pride that he was born in Bavaria and went to school in North Korea.
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I think that if Obama makes another appearance or two on Fox News, the bulk of the ugly GOP hatred will subside. Its all about entering into a rational dialogue with your political opponents.

Well, here’s one of the few remaining “sane conservatives”
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http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/republican-waterloo.html
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At a time when a progressive dem party seems absurdly out of reach, I’m left with hopes the GOP can san[e]tize itself. A less batsh!t crazy/more moderate opposition would make for less moderate/compromising dems. The longer the tone-deaf loons are in charge of that party, the longer soft corporate lackeys rule our own.

Wiki: Optics, in politics, is the superficial appearance of an event or person as formed through coverage and opinion in the broadcast media and blogosphere

@JC- To Bible Spice? I’d never presume to be so offensive!

re. time better spent- easy to say in hindsight. In my (sorta) defense, I also have a infant critter, so hours spent on a post really means a little time typing, a lot of time parenting. On second thought, yeah there’s a lot of better things I could have done, especially considering the target of my post. Sigh.

“Guns will be confiscated. How will we defend ourselves at Starbucks?”
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Reminds me of the San Ysidro McDonald’s Massacre. I guess they weren’t clear enough about the restaurant being a gun-free zone.

What’s really interesting about this (to me at least) is how this will play out during the rest of the year.

Numerous states (31 last I heard) are in the process of, or are considering starting the process of amending their state constitutions to basically cut this program off at the knees (by saying the government can’t force you to buy insurance). This will probably bring lawsuits saying that the states don’t have this right (they do, and the Supreme Court will affirm it as long as the state’s constitution doesn’t directly contradict the federal constitution, that’s settled law and the Supreme Court won’t even waste it’s time with cases like this other than to affirm the state’s rights to do this) but that’s not the interesting part.

The real interesting part is that after the states win that battle there will be other people suing the states saying that this same amendment means the state can’t force them to buy auto insurance, and that will probably get really, really messy.

Further, as of today 15 or so states are planning to file suit against the federal government (and probably ask for an injunction against the implementation of this bill until those proceedings are finished which could take years) on various legal grounds.

Should they be granted an injunction this will change the landscape of the next election cycle dramatically.

Republicans will scream that they are protecting people from bad public policy though the courts and therefore should be voted for while Democrats will scream that they tried their best but those damn conservatives just had to drag the lawyers into it so the average person can’t see the benefits of the bill yet, and as such you must wait until the court finds in their favor so you can see the benefits but vote for us because we’ll find a way to make sure you see those benefits one way or another.

This is probably going to come down to both sides screaming about lawyers and legal processes come November. At least it will be entertaining.

But what do I know, I’m just a liar who makes things up as he goes along (wait, didn’t the chair of the rules committee just admit that they do the same thing last week?).

Squatch!
Well, its true, you are a liar. Are you finally making an explicit acknowledgement, or are you being tongue in cheek?
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Either way, I detailed the ways in which you lied in the last thread. I even made nice pretty links for each point, but the incompetent web monkeys here at the Time blogs have insured that all formatting was stripped away. Anyway, there’s links in there that show the ways you were disingenuous on that thread. I’m not yet motivated enough to see if the same holds true here.

Health Care: A Stupendously Watered Down Extension of the Status Quo Falsely Cloaked in the Facade of an Historical Win for Obama.
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There, KT, a much more fitting headline. Though, your description is sure to pay far more political dividends for the self-congraulating contingency.

Guys: We have left a message at the rehab center alerting the High Sheriffs to this problem. We are hoping that they will deal with this the minute they are released.

Thanks as always, KT, for responding to your readers.

Those state lawsuits aren’t going anywhere.
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http://www.law.georgetown.edu/oneillinstitute/national-health-law/legal-solutions-in-health-reform/Individual_Mandates.html

Karen: I couldn’t help thinking as this was being voted, about you and your brother. I don’t know if this will help him in any way at this point, but in the long run it will help others avoid some of the things your family went through. I don’t really know anyone who was in that dilemma, and so you were the personal face of this outrage for me. To be sure, there have been touching stories that have been worse, but I didn’t have the connection to them that I felt to your story. So I thank you for the umpteenth time for your dedication to the facts (both emotional and statistical) of this painfully contorted saga.

A sad day for America, freedom, and liberty.
The majority of Americans will not let this country die or be “transformed” into a left wing dictatorship. It is now obvious that Democrats are either incredibly stupid and gullible or part of the coup. The lies told about this legislation and the extortion, coercion, and dirty deals that helped to pass this abomination will be exposed. Where did America go wrong? We got complacent and figured that no one would have the cojones to blatantly disregard the Constitution. We allowed the disease of liberalism and political correctness to infect our schools and our children over the last several decades. When you let something like freedom and liberty go, the price to regain it is dear.

“Those state lawsuits aren’t going anywhere.”

You might be right, you might be wrong. Depends (in some cases) on the court district they are lodged in. It doesn’t really matter in the short term, look at all of the items both public and private that have been held up for years due to lawsuits that never really went anywhere.

Whether they pan out or not was not the point of my post. Merely that they will tie things up far past November; creating a circus on both sides of the electoral ring.

The issue of states constitutions being amended still undercuts the bill and there isn’t much that can be done to stop it. The Supreme Court has said that it will not even look at cases that are well grounded in state constitutions given that the state constitution is not in direct conflict with the federal constitution. I don’t see an argument that could would even amuse a judge for a few minutes that this is the case without first amending the federal constitution for the explicit purpose of making the state constitutions conflict with it, and due to the process that requires, is not going to happen.

Note:

Yes, I read the executive summary on this with the Commerce Clause etc. I didn’t have time to read the 25 page full opinion. We’ll have to see. After all, aren’t liberals the ones saying that lawyers opinions from the previous administration might be grounds for incarceration?

This is a group of lawyers opinion, it’s not binding. Even if they are from a well respected school like Georgetown.

Didn’t Rush say he’d move to another country if this thing passed? Can I help him pack?

Elections have consequences. You guys always holler about what “the American people” are wanting…back in ’08 “the American people” clearly told you what they wanted. Now sit back and grumble as your leaders continue to offer up enough hot air to run a power plant instead of solutions.

It’s a very flawed bill, but still an important victory I think. When the debate is so dishonest that what is essentially a huge giveaway to the insurance industry gets routinely described as socialism it’s hard to imagine the bill actually getting much better. In the end, the most important thing to come out of the drawn out process is that the Dems may have finally realized that they have no honest legislative partners on the other side of the aisle. Hopefully, instead of dawdling about with “bipartisanship” they will go to reconciliation while they can still get better legislation.

This isn’t an extension of the status quo.
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That’s like saying that FISA “modernization” was an extension of the status quo.
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Having the same problems as before isn’t the same thing as having the same situation.

“This high-tech public spanking was brought to you by Karen Tumulty . . .”
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I would have thought that, by now, the High Sheriffs would understand that you don’t mess with K-Teezy.
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Thanks!

Well, I looked out my window this a.m. and the world does not seem to have ended. No boiling masses. Sun is out for the first time in MONTHS. Guess it has not immediately caused “Armegeddon”.

Well, get ready for this bill to do the opposite and make your healthcare more expensive. That is, if you actually take responsibility for your healthcare. Also, good luck getting future congresses to enact legislation to make future cuts in Medicare/Medicaid to meet the figures put out by the CBO. We all know how popular cuts to the two big M’s is when election time comes around. Even if all other measures are successful, there is no way future congresses will cut these 2 entitlements. This alone will cause this bill to cost drastically more than Dems are claiming now. After all, they were only off by 1,200% on the cost of Medicare. Not everyone who is against this bill believes nothing needs to be done to healthcare. This just isn’t the answer. You CAN make things worse while trying to make them better. The Law of Unintended Consequences will rear its ugly head once again.

I see the overnight effects of the Couvoisier have begun to wear off on the neocons

As I ask all who scream about the Constitution: what article are you referring to? What specific part of it has been violated? You can say that this bill is a bad idea, but I’m tired of people talking about the Constitution as being an extension of whatever their personal beliefs are.

Or Waterloo

Cry me a river, Ricardo.

Ricardo,
I have no idea what you and/or your family went through in Cuba, but, the United States unlike even France and England (Oliver Cromwell in England and Napoleon in France) never had a dictatorship.
If you’ve been here more than ten years then it’s about time to get some new eyeglasses if you still keep on seeing communists in your cornflakes and dictatorships in your dishwasher.
Take a trip up North to Canada and you can do all of the praying you like, own as much as you can earn and say whatever you want to say. Your right wing agenda will by the free speech they, also, have will be politely disagreed with far more than even you will here, but, you have nothing to be scared of.
Sometimes I think the right wing of Cuban Americans all have severe cases of PTSD.
When you are done with a trip to Canada, go down to Mexico (and bring weapons – I do not recommend traveling to much of Mexico unarmed) and see what no government looks like.
Then, come back to this blog and tell me what you fear, a castrated government of Mexico or cheap college tuition for yourself and/or your children in Canada.

sasquatch,

A quick check on Wikipedia will tell you that only nine states have complete Republican control, so your 31 state concept is completely off the wall.
An uninsured person takes the Path train from New Jersey to Manhattan to work at a fast food places and sneezes on or too close to customers – this is about interstate commerce in any reasonable sense.
You are a devout libertarian and just have to look at the fact that two things of the Adam Smith’s thought experiment later to be known as capitalism involves two untrue (or nearly always untrue) assumptions: perfect competition and perfect knowledge.
When people are well informed and have nearly an infinite number of choices for goods and services without what economists call externalities or spill overs, then the market works.
If I do not have health care and sneeze something awful on you or a surface you will touch it will make you (I assume insured) ill. Therefore it is in your best interest that I, also, have health care coverage.
Adam Smith and the early economists did not take this into account.
Your 31 state concept, unless you can provide a link, sounds like it came from your most unpleasant orifice.

xxx (I guess your name tells me that your profession is pornography),
Do you have any basis for this statement or is it just something a right wing radio host or Fox “news” told you.

“When you let something like freedom and liberty go, the price to regain it is dear.”
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Absolutely correct, Ricardo, and now we are getting back on track.
Sure…there are some who feel congress has gone too far…
(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andy-borowitz/teabaggers-new-protest-no_b_506934.html)
but that is of no importance here. That the people of the United States regained a voice in the government is good for CELEBRATION, even if there’s more work to be done, burrs to be sanded, insurance companies to be denied their filthy lucre…
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Welcome to America, buddy!

“Whether they pan out or not was not the point of my post.”
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sasquatch08, I would like to read your post.
Where is it?

you can bet your bottom dollar on the fact that some of us are very serious about bringing charges against tha last administration for willfully misleading this country to a war that ended with 4200 of our children MURDERED, and you can also bet that the two faces at the top of that investigation are bush junior and his puppet master, Dick C. Iraq is only war #3 in the investigation.
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But you are correct in your assumption of time. The events being spread out over so many presidents that it may take another twenty years to tie down all the ropes.
On the other hand, you may also remember that the new Healthcare package won’t actually come to full fruition for a while?
What’s the difference between a lawyer and a catfish?
One is a scum sucking bottom feeder…
the other is a fish.

sasquatch08

Please don’t tell me that you are supporting the “right” of Bush administration attorneys to encourage our government to break the Geneva Convention by dreaming up the third concept of “enemy combatant”.

One of my relatives is a conservative Republican who served in Army intelligence in Europe during the 1960s (about half of our armed forces, like him, were fortunate enough to be Europe, not Vietnam). He (supposedly as a Catholic – I say because he is a good person who, coincidentally prays) found everything involved with torture very repulsive. His Army Intelligence training as a lieutenant and, in the reserves, as a Captain was almost exclusively about the Geneva convention.

Are you, otherwise a libertarian (if you do not mind my giving you a category) defending an attorney who would mislead our country to committing torture?

totally missed the point of the bill, didn’t you?

Or Waterloo
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Not for the Dems, anyway. I can’t get to Frum’s site, for some strange reason, but indirectly…
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/michaeltomasky/2010/mar/22/republicans-healthcare

So today’s defeat for free-market economics and Republican values is a huge win for the conservative entertainment industry. Their listeners and viewers will now be even more enraged, even more frustrated, even more disappointed in everybody except the responsibility-free talkers on television and radio. For them, it’s mission accomplished.
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For the cause they purport to represent, it’s Waterloo all right: ours.

At the very least, the House Republicans have been shown to be toothless and irrelevant. We’ll see if the reconciliation bill in the Senate proves the same.

I will say this is a historic win, however, it WILL not be bring him any GLORY.. I was never a Political person I found it boring because you couldn’t really find out any real information , now that is not the case.. it is to bad that our grandparents didn’t have access as we do today we just might not be in this position..
I have to admit I had NO expectations that the PROGRESSIVES would not pass this bill, during the Bush administration I was a DEMOCRAT and watched many of these same spineless, sheep of representation vote WITH Bush while their constituents called, faxed and emailed NO..
Now history will hold Obama and the Democrats responsible for what he did.. I have created a history book for my kids and grandkids on that will show ALL the corruption and THUG tactics that took place, I have pictures of me trying to stop this, They will know I STOOD UP for their freedoms and liberty.. and how it was the PROGRESSIVES who allowed without moral or values for them to become slaves for the elites. It will have a complete list of names of those who fought against the bill and those that followed and sent our future generations into slavery.. Obama will go down in history as a President more corrupt than Nixon, and dumber than Carter.

This was a curious vote. After campaigning against the ‘corn-husker kickback’ and other problems in the senate bill, the republicans voted against removing them. I know we’re expected (by republicans) to accept the argument that dems ‘voted for it before they voted against it’, but the republicans really did vote to prevent removing the kickbacks. How can they justify that? If they had prevailed, none of the measures intended to fix the senate bill would become law — and all of the problems in the senate bill would remain.

I naively expected that the republicans would vote with the dems on the reconciliation package because they had campaigned against the issues the bill was intended to remove. Instead they voted to retain them. Was this more than a legislative temper tantrum? Didn’t they just very transparently prove that they’re more interested in playing politics for themselves than doing the nation’s business?

If I were a dem running against a goper that voted to keep the ‘corn-husker kickback’ I wouldn’t let that vote be forgotten.

There is only one Federally Run and Funded health care program. You can use this program to judge for yourself whether or not the federal government can adequately run health care. It is the VA Medical Centers. As a patient in a VA Medical Center you can expect to see a nurse practitioner instead of a doctor, wait up to eight months to get an operation and be given second rate drugs to cure your ills. Makes you wonder if, in the future, complaints will be met with “If it is good enough for our veterans it is good enough for you.”

“…Obama will go down in history as a President more corrupt than Nixon, and dumber than Carter”
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He msy not be as smart as a nuclear physicist, I grant you that. But more corrupt than Nixon? I’m waiting for a longer-than-18-minute gap for your rationalization.

And more Frum on the GOP’s Waterloo..
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I’ll leave it for someone else to post the ABBA tune.

The republicans understood what you do not! The bill is going to penalize citizens of this country, give inadequate coverage. Those who have decent coverage will drop it because of the penalizing taxes. This is an in your face socialist move. There is no freedom in this bill only dictatorship on what you must do to keep from paying penalties. There are parts of our US Constitution that forbids the US government from getting involved in the private business sector and this government has overstepped that. Reforming medical care is one thing, but taking over the insurance companies is a whole new ball game. What do you think the 5 million people who lost their jobs are going to do? One of those people said they would pay the fine – it would be cheaper!.

Jefferson and Hamilton, leaders of their own factions, were debating two issues here in New York when this was the temporary capital of the United States.

Jefferson wanted to put our capital in a rural place where, as he wanted it, the swam carried malaria such that by Summertime, if the debates were not ended, the houses of congress would run for their lives or suffer with their wives and children a high risk of malaria.

Hamilton wanted to the capital of the US to remain in New York.

Jefferson wanted the States to cover the costs of the revolutionary war and pay their own separate debts.

Hamilton wanted New York with unusually high war debts to be covered by the federal government.

“Horse trading”! “Thug tactics”! “Corruption”!

DC became our capital and the revolutionary war debt became federal debt.

This is how it works, Icky.

Slavery?

“…without moral or values…”?

“…for the elites…”? Wait FOR, not AGAINST?

What health care bill were you looking at?

The long and short of this is: if you are an employer, you have to pay for the health insurance of your employees.

Oh, the IMMORALITY!

Huh?

Seeing as how this bill doesn’t create a “Federally Run and Funded health care program” like the VA, you probably don’t have much of a point.

“xxx (I guess your name tells me that your profession is pornography),
Do you have any basis for this statement or is it just something a right wing radio host or Fox “news” told you.”

Actually he does have somewhat of a point here patrick; I don’t know where the 1200% came from but when it was started Medicare was supposed to cost somewhere on the order of $16 billion a year.

In 1980 it cost (according to medpac.gov here: http://www.medpac.gov/publications/congressional_reports/Jun04DataBookSec6.pdf) $33.9 billion and over the next 23 years ballooned to $272.4 billion in 2003. That means that it cost just a bit under 12.5% (12.4449%) in 1980 of what it cost seven years ago.

That’s about eight times what it cost in 1980. This is all based on CBO numbers (supposedly, I haven’t fact checked it to my personal satisfaction but it is a .gov site). If it is indeed using CBO numbers, I assume that inflation was taken into account, but I can’t find any mention of “inflation” in the document proper.

Either way, even if inflation isn’t taken into account eight times the expenditure in that time frame is nuts.

Fixed allready. It takes a strong woman to get anything done. You and Nancy all the way.

When I think of this debate, and all of the very disturbing misinformation, I just have this immage:

A guy in a Burger King Uniform is sitting in a pediatrician’s office.

The receptionist tells him that it is his turn.

As the son, sitting on his father’s lap say “AAAAH” airplanes fall from the sky! People start running down the street screaming! Men punch out their wives! Teenager punch out their parents! Up from the ground right outside that first doctor’s office the ground opens up and Satan arises laughing maniacally.

You know, maybe this is just me, but, I have trouble seeing that happen. It just doesn’t sound right.

I have this strange feeling that the kid will get a prescription for amoxicillin, get a lolly pop and they drive away in his beat up old car and have a happier life.

Who knows? Maybe Satan likes people healthy and god wants us and our children to be ill.

Can somebody please give me a REASONABLE conservative concern which is more serious than a possible tax increase for the very wealthy?

I can assure you the dems are going to be finding out in coming elections just how upset the American people are about this. The first thing is that no one knows what the heck is in that bill. What I have gathered from several different news sources is that people are going to be taxed for their “elite” insurance plans. How many of those do you think they will drop? Small business is going to be fined for not carrying health insurance for employees! Right now the only new jobs being created in this country is small business. Now they are adding to the reasons for not opening a small business. This bill is not a reform on health care. It is a way for the government to offset loosing federal tax dollars (5 million jobs lost so far that is a lot of federal income tax money) as the rich take their business to foreign countries so they can increase their profit margins. The democrats have lost touch with reality; 70% of American voters did not want this bill passed.

You’ve completely missed the point of my post.

patricksartor I understand now where your thoughts come from Wikipedia. There is not one college professor that will let you use information from Wikipedia. Know why? Any one can post what ever they want to on it! You have to check the facts to make sure a post is accurate. So if you want to be credible don’t use Wikipedia.

You can pick it to death, but it’s a done deal.
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FYI, there are immediate benefits, which I urge others to relate here.
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For myself, and two others I know, they can now immediately enroll our dependents to age 26 in our insurance plans.
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I plan to start the process today.
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As for the tax on the wealthy, stuff it.
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Why?
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TANSTAFL

People tend to be blind sided when they are so involved in the party and not the facts. This country operates on checks and balances. They were put in place by the founding fathers who wrote the Constitution. The reason they did that was because of the oppression of the English government. The worse thing about being blind sided is that you fail to see what is really, truly happening. Health Care Reform???? Are they going to stop someone from fleecing 2 million from Medicare? They should have fixed the programs they have in place first. Medicare, Medicaid, Health Departments and even the VA Medical centers. If they cannot run these programs adequately what makes you think they can do any better with health care coverage?

pbock55:
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Guess what?
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The country is the same as it was yesterday. No commies. No socialists. Just the same Americans I saw yesterday.
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And of course, I know for a fact that you could care less about those that must buy insurance. After all, they are our working and nonworking poor, and your Great Communicator Goon Guy (fergot his name!) said that poor people are lazy.
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So what the heck.
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Whine on.
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The sun is rising, and in the east, just like it used to, too!

Unless stated “in 1980 dollars”, “in 2010 dollars” or “adjusted for inflation” then it is very safe to say that it is not adjusted for inflation in any way.

Since January of 1980, inflation went brought up costs of everything 178.59%

Post inflation, then, it would be only about four times as much.

Although I could not find a good source of numbers (am I the only nerd who uses numbers to figure out economics problems, is that why find it hard to find) other countries with national systems have not had this type of increase in costs.

Just like everything else, additional cost control measures will be put in.

I am very unworried.

patricksartor- I’m gonna ignore the insane rantings of the guy that followed your posting and go straight to you because past experience shows that you are reasonable.

As for supporting the “right” of these lawyers I am of two minds on the topic. On the one hand I don’t want attorneys giving counsel to a president when they know they are counseling to do something illegal. On the other I don’t want attorneys on either side of the aisle to have to worry that give they give advice to an administration that might be deemed to be “close to or over the line” at a later date to fear they will be prosecuted. This may well lead to attorneys being more worried about their own butt than giving the best advice then can in a given situation.

Personally I feel that many of the treaties we have signed have outlived their usefulness in the world of modern war. They were designed to deal with an enemy who wore a uniform, when things were as close to black and white in warfare as they could ever be. I do not advocate breaking those treaties just for fun, nor do I advocate it just to prove we can. But when we must do so for the safety of our soldiers and civilians then I say they may be outdated in certain regards. I am not, nor would I ever say that if another “regular” or “old school” war broke out they shouldn’t be observed. However against an enemy that targets civilians and has shown that it has no problem using them as human shields the lines start to blur and I am willing to grant some leeway. SOME, not a lot.

I am against torture. Not because I think it’s inhumane, it is. Personally I think you should use all weapons available against the enemy including his or her own religion if the opportunity presents itself (For example, taking all convicted terrorists who are Muslim out on a Navy vessel to shark infested waters, chumming the water, cutting their leg and kicking them overboard after smearing them in pork fat so they think they’re going to hell all on live TV. It makes the point that we’re serious, not only will we kill you, we’ll make sure you burn in the afterlife). Harsh? Yes. Effective, probably. Romanesque? For sure. Destroy the city, kill everything and sow salt so crops can’t grow then move to the next city and ask “You want some of this?”.

And before you ask, yes I’d tell Iran that they can play ball or we destroy your 5th largest city with a nuke in 30 days, clocks ticking Akmed… and your 4th largest city is next and so on. And again, yes, if I ran the country I would actually do it. Empty threats are meaningless. Do that once and see how fast Iran, North Korea and everyone else falls into line. I am not advocating that sort of treatment for everyone, but in Iran’s case, I’ll make an exception. What’s the UN really going to do? We fund a lot of it, we have veto power… quite frankly we pretty much run that useless organization is a lot of ways. Notice how France and the rest of Europe bitches about us but every time some area of the world needs troops in blue helmets who pays for it and puts the bulk of those troops on the ground and then gets reamed when things go wrong?

The reason I don’t like torture is because it’s ineffective. To quote Nice Guy Eddie from Reservoir Dogs “If you f—-ing beat this pr!ck long enough he’ll tell you he started the godd@mn Chicago fire, but that don’t make it f—ing so!”.

Sometimes, when the enemy plays hardball you have to as well, if they want to find out what hardball is you have to have the cojones to show them.

As for the rest of what you said: Kudos to your friend, I appreciate the service. Yes, you can classify me as a libertarian, I won’t be offended because that’s pretty much what I am.

NOW watch how many people scream I’m part of the GOP!

ricardo4max:
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You have some ‘splaining to do. Sorry.
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I woke up this morning and everything is the same as it was yesterday.
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The sky is overcast, which disappoints me a bit, but it is definitely not falling. No commies, no socialists, no one taking my gun, or anything at all like that.
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As a matter of fact, I can now immediately enroll my eldest son in my insurance plan!
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Thanks, O + Dems!

Peacock,

When the site is no longer overloaded, check out what Lee Iacocca said.

He knows business.

He knows about exporting jobs outside of the US.

He knows that lacking a national system was shoving jobs out of the country.

Once again, can I please hear INTELLIGENT conservative arguments?

Numerically (which is how one must measure money not in words) your concepts of job losses just are not there.

Now finally someone who sees what is going on!!! You have it right on the money., Everyone has been convinced that our health care needs to be “fixed” why? Is it because people come here from other countries to get operations and treatments? Or maybe we should be like other countries and have health care for everyone, no matter how bad it is. We do not need reform we need someone to really look at the whole picture and fix the problems., Did you know that women on welfare are more likely to take their children to an emergency room instead of a doctor’s office? They use an ambulance service to get there and their child usually has a head cold. Can you do that on private insurance? No, if it is not an emergency your insurance plan will probably not pay for you using an emergency room for a doctor’s office. If you really want change look at what is being wasted and stop it. The money saved would provide a lot of people with adequate health care. And we would not have to start paying taxes on insurance coverage and penalties for not having it. Wonder what the 5 million Americans who lost their jobs to free trade agreements are going to do now?

Gee, my nephew who has a lot of serious health issues and gets all of his care at VA centers in New Mexico has a completely different story. Guess you should try going there.

ricardo the writers of the Constitution have lost their voice, people have forgotten why provisions were put in place to control what the federal government could and could not do. It looks like un-Constitutional acts are going to become the norm.

Pbock,

Wikipedia is accurate a huge majority of the time, but, if I were writing a paper, I would only use it to find original sources.

Writing papers is about finding original sources and statistics.

I am not going to spend ALL of my time researching answers to conservatives who, so far, have shown no reason to object to this very mild change to our health care system.

There’s no way I am going to go the library and check out ten or fifteen books as I would for a college paper.

Sorry.

Since conservatives have presented NOTHING then I think Wikipedia trumps Fox “news” very easily.

Indeed, the point of your comment got lost in teh stupid, but it was a good one. If any of the repubs voted for the bill that took out the items they were fighting against, I would certainly respect them more.
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When I have trouble sleeping, I hit the sleep button on the radio and listen to the BBC until I fall asleep again. Early this morning I was jolted awake because they had a Repub representative on (don’t know who) who repeated three specific lies and I got very irritated. The bill will pay for any abortion on demand, for example. Guess he could be even more blatent than usual because he was talking to furriners.

I’ve read the posts.

They fall into three broad categories

1: Rational commentary
2: Tea Party silliness based on fear
3: Obama synchophant slaverings

Unfortunately, the bill is NOT a gift to the insurance companies it is a poisoned pill designed to require a number of urgent “fixes” Anyone who analyzes the insurance industry for Wall Street will see one basic fact:

If you require insurance companies to provide cradle to grave unrestricted coverage the average cost must go up.

The addition of massive numbers of new subscribers will not offset the huge costs of required treatment for our hyponcondriac citizens and those who have huge health problems that cost millions to address and are now off the books due to a lack of coverage.

Not disputing that the latter need coverage just the cost.

Cost control is a matter of covering the “average” person.

Once you require all illnesses to be covered at any stage of illness and at any point the average cost must skyrocket.

Notice the cost to the poor is subsidized.

This means taxes must go up.

Premiums must go up

Which means taxes go up more….

OR

Premiums stay down and the company goes bankrupt and the Government then takes over the entire process…

Which is the ultimate fix the crafters want here…..

The fixes are the numerous flies in the ointment

Tea party people are scared by all the peripheral commentary around the bill and the very real threat that the government will take over all health care. Thus they say some wise things but often sully them with silly and overblown comments that are easy to make fun of.

Obama synchophants are terrified that someone will effectively point out the massive inadequacies of the Administration. Thus they bray and berate and denigrate with abandon whenever anyone dares to sully their god’s imago.

Either of the extremes are foolish and are book ends.

Both look a bit foolish trying to denigrate the other.

They are both playing with no cards in their hands.

Karen, thank you so much for all your work and attention to this topic. I really appreciate the way you tried to keep us informed and up to date with what was going on. I feel I understood the whole process much better because of you.

pbock55 — You said:

We do not need reform we need someone to really look at the whole picture and fix the problems.

Really? Do you not see the problem with your statement? From Merriam-Webster:

Main Entry: 1re·form
Pronunciation: \ri-ˈfȯrm\
Function: verb
Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French refurmer, from Latin reformare, from re- + formare to form, from forma form
Date: 14th century
transitive verb
1 a : to put or change into an improved form or condition b : to amend or improve by change of form or removal of faults or abuses

Another gem:

Did you know that women on welfare are more likely to take their children to an emergency room instead of a doctor’s office? They use an ambulance service to get there and their child usually has a head cold.

Do you have evidence of this or is this just part of your bias? I would love to see your substantiation for this if you actually possess any.

Peacock,

I downloaded the bill from Time.
I did not read much of it and I am not an attorney.
However, if you want to prove a point and want to do better than Wikipedia, do not search for things to put up inside of your anal cavity.
Please look at the bill and tell us all where these hidden dangers are.

As for being blinded by your own party…

Rethink who is OBSESSED and staying up all night worried about this and buying into complete absurd things and who looks over the ACTUAL BILL and sleeps soundly.

Then tell me which people are caught up in their own party’s point of view.

“I don’t belong to an organized political party. I’m a Democrat” – Will Rogers.

Republicans, not Democrats, move in lockstep.

53_3 it is not the same! Since when is the majority of the country ignored, criticized, and been told they are racist for not agreeing with something? Times have changed! Whether or not for the good is still to be seen. The dangerous thing that is happening is people not asking “Why?” When that question is ignored, then you become hood winked. One of my favorite sayings is ask the question “Why?” then follow the money you will find the answer.

Lots of conjecture but no content, xxx.
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However, let me serve up some reality for you, and under the current state of affairs:
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My pharmacy expenses increased by $750 and my insurance increased by $62 / month.
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So, you are trying to instill this, uh, recreational fear in what you think might happen (which I doubt, or at least consider much less of a threat), versus the reality that under the current system, my expenses have already increased dramatically!
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Oops fer you. Try again…

Our veterans have given a lot to this country whether you agree with it or not. They deserve to have really good health care whether you agree or not. When the VA made changes under Bill Clinton they started charging Vets for duty related health care… meaning that if you were exposed to Agent Orange to get treated you must pay a co-pay. One veteran was asked to pay $5oo up front to be treated for skin cancer that came about from the exposure to Agent Orange. I am not saying that all the medical care at the VA is bad, but I have personally experienced the changes brought about since Clinton was in office. Now can you prove to me that the government knows how to run health care or insurance?

It looks like un-Constitutional acts are going to become the norm.

Your level of hypocrisy is astounding. You must be referring to the war in Iraq, “enhanced” interrogation techniques (torture), warrantless wiretapping, politicization of the Justice department, etc. right?
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Please explain what precisely is unconstitutional and provide evidence for it. It’s unlikely that you’re a constitutional scholar or lawyer and you are merely repeating the right-wing talking point that suit your beliefs.

pbock55:
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Well, judging by what I saw on TV yesterday, racism isn’t a problem for us. It’s more a problem that you and your peers have to address. I’ve already pointed out the fact that if you do not want to be perceived that way, then get your peers to STFU!. Simple. Easy.
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As for following the money?
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I did.
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Dick Armey’s “Freedomworks” is funded by the HCICs. They poured money into GOP coffers. Simple. Easy.
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Your memory should last so long…

pbock55:
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Um, guess what?
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Have you looked at the rest of the planet?
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Have you?
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Thought not…

Oh, almost forgot, pbock55:
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Since when did those crackhead teabaggers become a majority?
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I do remember a couple instances where they were so aware that they weren’t a majority, that they tried to at least look like one:
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In the first, they debarked behind the Black Family Reunion (660,000 attendees) in order to appear larger in number to those that use aerial photos to estimate crowd size.
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In the second, in a truly Pravda-style fit of artistic flair, Hannity at FOX spliced in some of that footage into the 9/12 demonstration “coverage” to make it appear the teabaggers were larger in number!
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Hell, I grew up during the height of the Cold War, and I know what propaganda is….

Thank you!

People use to be able to debate politics in this country without all the name calling.

You use to be able to ask questions and get a reply without being called right winger, left winger, racist, or tea party fanatic.

I remember my grandparents telling stories of what the old country use to be like. How fear became an everyday feeling, and how they hated leaving their homeland., They were Germans from the southern part of the country, dark haired and darker skinned than the blond hair blue eyed Germans of the north. They left Germany during the Hitler uprising for fear of their lives and because they did not want their children to be afraid of stating their beliefs or their opinions.

There are things going on that people see as going against our Constitution and it truly scares them of where it can lead.

How are you so certain as to the motives of “the crafters”?
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Why isn’t it just as likely that the people who made this legislation are incompetent ideologues who believe in a “compromise solution” that, due to their political philosophy, makes perfect sense to them?
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What you’re asserting is that these motives can be reasonably surmised from the obviously bad outcome inherent in continuing to allow prices and costs to rise. That’s like saying that Bill Clinton/Larry Summers wanted the banks to fail when they pushed for the “compromise solution” in 1999 that repealed Glass-Steagall prohibitions on financial industry mergers.
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The logic goes “Well, they created a policy that was bound to fail, anybody could have seen that, so they must have wanted to take over CitiGroup, etc when the whole thing collapsed! Government Takeover!”
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Obviously that’s not what happened. Centrist Democrats made horrifyingly stupid policy, then the financial system imploded ten years later, and then…Nope, no government takeover. They just bailed out the banksters, and then tried to erase their part in the failed policy from public memory.
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That the policy is ultimately likely to weaken the health care system’s value and effectiveness for most Americans even further doesn’t mean that the motives of those responsible for this policy are to destroy the whole thing, and take it over. That’s you’re claim, not a logical necessity.
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Unless you have some information that supports your claim, how can you be so certain about the “government takeover” motives of those who fought to enact the Dole-Daschle health care reform plan?

This is a very accurate assessment. However, I don’t look at the ultimate path that our country will take as bad at all.
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After all, there is a reason why we are only one of four countries in the world with a private system.
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And, there is no denying the current system is broken.
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There is also no denying that others, regardless of the ideological (read recreational) “fears” expressed, have found a solution to the problem.
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Keep in mind that there is no such thing as a free lunch…

“When facism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.”
· Sinclair Lewis

Our veterans have given a lot to this country whether you agree with it or not.
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No one’s disagreed with that. You’re making a strawman argument.
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Now can you prove to me that the government knows how to run health care or insurance?
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Again, this bill does not create an institution like the VA or nationalizes the health insurance industry. Perhaps you should read the legislation?

Yeah, you’re right – it’s Costa Rica.

So the same kid who’s sitting on his father’s lap is going to drive away in his beat up old car. Is the father a prevert, or is that kid way too young to drive?
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The reasonable conservative concern is that the cost savings accepted by the CBO but predicated on future congressional action (or restraint in the case of possibly repealing the Cadillac tax scheduled for 2018) will not materialize because future congresses won’t act as required. It’s also a reasonable liberal concern, and even a reasonable moderate concern. And we’d all be better off if we didn’t have such concerns. Right, SZ?

Thanks, KT. We know you’re not an IT tech wizard or a High Sheriff or a senior editor, but you get things done. That matters more than the job title.

I am dis interested in the crafters intent I am merely pointing out the inevitable effect of this flawed and malign piece of mis understood legislation.

Wrap it in the flag or newspaper and either way it will result in a government take over.

At worst it will give us a horrible state run system which will make the worst nightmares of the tea party people dim in comparison

At best it will get rid of insurance companies, provide mediocre R and D due to the lack of incentives, and give us VA style health care for all….(except for the elites who will ALWAYS get better care)

Without it?

A great system for the elites which increasingly provides less real coverage for all others who do not have massive cash and resources…..

Not a very nice picture but if you remove politics we are headed for one of these routes.

Obama synchophants…bray and berate and denigrate with abandon whenever anyone dares to sully their god’s imago[sic].
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Anyone else notice the irony of this statement?
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Malousethan offers no solutions, only disapproval, in his ‘pox on both houses’ commentary.

Utter tripe. There’s many different variations on health care systems out there not represented by the binary choice you’ve presented.

Awww… my comment that is sure to mark me as an ultra right-racist-nazi-hater of the poor-hater of other religions-GOP member is still awaiting moderation after 2 hours.

That’s bureaucracy for you.

If we put Peacock and Ricardo together for five to six hours of constant dialog, we may – may – find one substantiated fact.
What part of the CONSTITUTION forbids, limits, governs, refers to, is related to in the least health care?
NONE OF IT.
Health care is all about interstate commerce and, therefore, is well within Federal jurisdiction.
Our founding fathers did not have doctors as we know them!
People in that time even with the most sophisticated doctors of that era were dropping dead of illnesses in their teens, twenties and thirties. They had NO IDEA that medicine would be this good!
For that reason, they did not put in national health care or a plan for it when medicine did get this good.
There is NO CONSTITUTIONAL ISSUES with this.
In most states, you have a choice to either buy insurance for your car or to give up your car.
Now employers will have a choice, pay for the insurance of employees or close your doors.
If a company’s financial health is so weak that paying for health care insurance would sink them, they would be on the verge of falling apart due to BAD MANAGEMENT.

“tripe” interesting but not a reply

Not a pox on both houses but a call for the middle ground (if you had read carefully without taking umbrage)

I see no reason to provide my thoughts on solutions. They are not real in this world of foolish politicians and none of the political realities provide any hope.

Empirics tells us that providing fanciful solutions is a waste of time.

Unfortunately, most political decisions, like this bill, are fanciful and thus only real in the world of the politician.

NONE of our politicians have the wit or courage to provide proper micro solutions and that is the unfortunate REAL atmosphere we find ourselves in…

Instead, politicians provide fanciful solutions that ignore reality and that result in misery for the average citizen.

Politicians play to the lowest common denominator in their electorate…

They provide solutions that are, at best, inadequate and at worst horrific.

“When the VA made changes under Bill Clinton they started charging Vets for duty related health care… meaning that if you were exposed to Agent Orange to get treated you must pay a co-pay.”
>

Funny, I never had to pay a co-pay at the VA

Kathy (and everyone else who had kind words for our coverage): Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. We have tried to take this issue very, very seriously. So much of politics is a game of who’s up, who’s down. But this one is going to have a real impact on people’s lives. For me, it has been the most satisfying kind of reporting, and the reason I wanted to get into this business.

I am dis interested in the crafters intent
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I had realized that, when you wrote “Which is the ultimate fix the crafters want here…..,” you were expressing disinterest.
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I am merely pointing out the inevitable effect of this flawed and malign piece of mis understood legislation.
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No, you’re surmising something happening in the future, and then labeling it “inevitable.”
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By doing so, I think that you haven’t considered the obvious lessons of TARPs I and II, which boil down to that, when elites f*ck up policy, they tend to bail out the beneficiaries of that f*cked up policy (other elites), and not to institute socialism.

Sorry, I hadn’t realized…

Finally, after a year of waiting, health care reform finally passed. I was watching the debate last night before the vote in the house on the senate bill. The GOP house members that debated this issue were all lying and saying things like we were becoming the same as the old Soviet Union. The democratic congressmen were saying things like this bill is not perfect, but it was a good start. I think this is going to be a tough sell for the GOP. There are a lot of good things in this bill. Now we see which party cares about all Americans, and which party cares only about their corporate masters.

I have no idea what “they drive away in his beat up car” has to do with sexual perversion nor that it explicitly says that the son, not the father alone, is doing the driving.
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I’ll have to look again, but, it applies to health care plans for a family costing over $32,000 per year who will, for every dollar OVER that amount pay 40%.
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So, if it costs, say, $32,01 (adjusted for inflation – which the bill stipulates) then the “Cadillac tax” would be forty cents per year.
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Also, it includes an exemption for higher risk jobs since health insurance for such jobs such as fire fighter are higher.
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The goal of this is to continue to have some kind of a deductible or copay so that people will, due to these, exercise some caution with their use of health care services. The top priced health care has $0 deductible and $0 copay.

“They provide solutions that are, at best, inadequate and at worst horrific.”

.

And you provide neither. The fense sitter who deserves nothing, condeming the world for it’s actions.

Fanciful solutions

For those of you who want them look up the word Onanist

It will provide you with all the insight you need.

Those Republican politicians may feel a little peaked this morning after that marathon session and their efforts to stymie even minimal HCR for our country.
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Not to worry. They have the best free health care and facilities at their beck and call to visit for any or no reason at no cost. With all of the shouting last night (“Hell, no!!!), they will need at least a lozenge or throat spray. They will take advantage of health care without batting a eye. The disconnect is amazing.
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When they meet with the 4,000 AIPAC lobbyists this week and make more plans to send massive amounts of money directly to Israel, and indirectly in the wars, if there is a moment available, they should ask about health care in Israel, their beloved adopted homeland.

Malousethan,

You must have seen me dealing with absurd objections such as this being against our founding fathers, against the constitution, against Christianity. So, when I found another objection, I changed his name to that of a proud and handsome flightless bird. I could have done MUCH WORSE.
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First, numbers critical of this bill are missing a few things.
1) I have seen estimates (which make sense since this is where I am) that a huge majority of the uninsured are under forty years old and childless. This means that a huge share of us will, until we grow older or have children will be paying into health insurance more than we would get out from one annual physical and a case of the flu every three to four years.
2) The super ill and uninsured are not dying on our streets. They are on Medicare since the earlier rounds of uncovered care has already eaten their savings and, in many cases, had the illness itself cost them their jobs.
3) The uninsured – not people on welfare as Pbock says – go to emergency rooms. In urban areas, they split the emergency room into two parts. One is for real emergencies and the other is a clinic for ordinary illnesses. For ordinary illnesses, the wait is about six hours. You still get billed until you can show with a W-2 form that you are eligible or reduced rates. Due to the discomfort of such long waits and having to negotiate a deal with the hospital administrators, the uninsured wait until their illness is more severe than those who go to a regular doctor do. So, the treatment is more expensive. Who pays the difference between the reduced bill and the amount paid by the uninsured? The insured pay the difference. Hospitals tack it onto the bills of those who pay full price via insurance.
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In summery:
The uninsured are, on average, far healthier than those insured and will pay in more money than they will get out in services.
The sickest are already getting paid for by us.
Giving a person access with a small copay results in cheaper care for the otherwise uninsured person waiting and waiting before deciding to tolerate the emergency rooms.
The uninsured are already being paid for, but, at a higher price (stated above) via hospitals transferring the costs from the uninsured to the insured.
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Second, copays and deductibles will continue to keep health care costs moderately low since they will discourage over usage as they are now.
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Third, it is not per se the goal of progressives to take over things. This does not take over anything besides an advisory board set up to limit rates. Progressives look for the best answer. If the numbers and facts work out that it will involved more involvement of government to protect consumers from private companies telling them what they can and can not get, then, not being worshipers of an idealized view of Adam Smith, are more practical and will make use of government.
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Fourth, I think, most dramatically in this case, an honest conservative mantra should be “Government wants to tell people what to do! But telling people what to do is big businesses’ job! How dare they steal away our obedient peasants for people they can elect!”.
We will not have infinite health care but, it very well could be far, far less limited than it is since corporate honchos in board rooms are not making life and death decisions based upon THEIR PRIVATE PROFITS.

patrick, of course you would think that. After all, nobody using logic and past consequences of actions to predict what might happen in the future. They MUST have had their ideas fed to them. I notice you don’t refute anything I’ve said. As a matter of fact, it is the beloved liberal Time that reported about the CBO figures and how future congresses must pass legislation for them to be accurate. If you honestly think that will happen, I would put forth the argument you are severely lacking in political history.

53_3 There is no more conjecture in my analysis than there is in the bill to make sure it recieves a favorable score from the CBO. If conjecture is wrong in my case, it should be wrong in this case too. You talk as if BO’s conjecture is foolproof and mine is pulled from the stars. Also, you seem to forget that it is the POLITICIANS in Washington that have lead to us having the “current system.” They passed law after law that hamstrung you into have little to no choice or competition. The free market isn’t working because it isn’t being allowed to work. That would be like trying to run a gasoline combustion engine on vinegar and using that as an example to show that the combustion engine does not work. So, only by an employing an extreme lack of logic can you say I’ve “failed”.

Free healthcare and facilities? IS that what this has been about all along? Never mind that NOTHING is free. Somebody is paying for it. As long as it isn’t you, right?

malousethan,
You’re really not helping the discussion as much as you seem to think you are.
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The question is, what can be done to get the uninsured covered in an affordable way.
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The compromise is a great start.
Health care is, has been and always will be “rationed”.
No insurance company gives out infinite care. The top priced ones drop the set in incentives for self rationing.
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What I see is, if the public option can be used in more than just an exchange (which it is in there for a health care exchange) then the non-profit health care will drive the for profit companies down to minimal profits, minimal CEO pay and minimal executive offices but not completely drive them under.
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Competing non-profit insurers seems to be the best idea.
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Continuing without having had this bill would be costly due to the fact that ill workers (nearly all mildly ill since the very ill are on Medicare or Medicaid – no I am not aware of all of the differences, I admit) is costing us in productivity.
…

xxx,
Please do explain how the government had, prior to this bill, prevented free competition among health insurers.
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If you know economics, there is a concept called economies of scale.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_scale
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Since I do not wish to spend hours on this, I will just use wiki to explain it.
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I have explained above how universally requiring insurance reduces costs. What more could the government have done to create or had it done to stifle competition?
…
I am asking for specific facts. If you take any surprising facts you may have and send a link, it would be appreciated. If you just want to come up with things and have no explanation, then you are being annoying and counterproductive.

Not a pox on both houses but a call for the middle ground
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You wrote ‘Tea party silliness’ and ‘Obama synchophant slaverings’. That’s pretty both houses.
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if you had read carefully without taking umbrage.
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I only noted the irony of your statement about braying and denigrating while you were doing exactly that. Perhaps if you had read carefully, you would have better understood my point.
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I see no reason to provide my thoughts on solutions.
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Given your unwillingness to express them and your defensive responses, I doubt that they are of much use.
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Empirics tells us that providing fanciful solutions is a waste of time.
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Yes, because other solutions that already exist and are working are fanciful.
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Again, tripe. This time from a supposedly centrist troll.
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…look up the word Onanist
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Yes, that’s what a troll basically is, Malousethan. Congrats.

I’d rather they pay me the money (after all it was budgeted to hire me). This is where liberals have the disconnect. That money will come out of the employee’s pockets just like it always has. When a company hires you, it costs them your salary, unemployment insurance, healtchcare costs they bare, etc. All of this money was budgeted for YOU, but the feds just get their hands on it for you because you in your stupidity might not spend it right, as Clinton said about the “budget surplus” during his time in office.

xxx,
You do know that the Congressional Budget Office are economists who study these issues and are accepted by both Democrats and Republicans and frequently – if it is factually correct – give out facts which disagree with the leading party.
It has disapproved of conservative measures even when Republicans were dominant and Liberal measures even when Democrats are in office.
Please provide a source of information as qualified as the congressional budget office if you want to assert that there is a serious flaw with their numbers.

When Dems passed Medicare in 1966, they told the American people it would cost $9 billion a year by 1990. When 1990 rolled around, it cost $110 billion. A 1,200% figure was used because it is nice and round. It is actually a little lower than the difference. So, tell me again where this is factually incorrect? All I did was vet a statement Dems made and then find out what it actually cost.

sasquatch08,

I said that you seemed like a libertarian (not an insult per se no more than a compliment).
It seems to me that, like conservatives, even if – and I know this is not true with health care – the government could do EXACTLY the same thing as a private company for ten cents on the dollar of what the private sector can do it for, you would STILL prefer the private sector.
As for defending Bush torture…
That is completely unlike a libertarian.
That would be unlike thoughtful consideration of an issue.

patrick, I would like to see your source for #1 and also to see if they break it down further. According to my research, the vast majority of people that are uninsured are young people with little to no health problems that make a conscience decision to go without. These people (as I did at that age) make a decision that they are LESS likely to need health insurance and are willing to assume the risks. I didn’t carry health insurance when I was young and dumb. I thought I would never get hurt and I would much rather spend the money on a little bit nicer car. That is a very common decision that is made by people at that age.

patrick, that one is very easy. I am not allowed to shop for health insurance across state lines, therefore the competition for my insurance dollars is limited. There are others, but that is the easiest to debunk your statement with.

patrick, you missed the point about the CBO. My point was, that if they can use conjecture (educated conjecture, but conjecture, i.e. predicting the future) than I can educate myself and make a logical conclusion as to what I believe the outcome to be. To discredit my opinion because it is “conjecture” but to hold the CBO’s conjecture as if it is set in stone is asinine.

The problem with the CBO score is that it is reliant on future congresses to enact cost saving measures and cutting back on Medicare in order to reach that number. If these measures aren’t enacted, the cost of this bill grows dramatically.
If they want to score it that way, I think it would only be honest to score it with those measures included and also score it if NONE of the measures are enacted. That way we have a best and worst case scenario. That would be the only way to do it accurately.
To act as if future congresses are going to jump to what this bill demands they do is disingenius at best.

I like how the Libs have perverted my name from “xx” to “xxx”. Freudian slips?

patrick, would you also deny that the government has ENCOURAGED the current system by granting businesses tax breaks for health insurance while denying you and I the same tax breaks if we wanted to carry our own insurance? This leads to less portability, which in turn leads to less competition.

And so it goes

pointing out that the extreme left and extreme right are fools or mistaken or too emphatic for their own good is not pointing out that all who marginally support variations of those stances in the middle are fools etc.

sounds like it struck a bit too close to home

An extreme synchophant and/or a fool never likes to have that pointed out….

It is pretty obvious that this discussion is so politicized that hardly anyone can take their golden calf being taken away…..or even criticized.

That there is no realistic solution is obvious

Insuring “everyone” and “proper care with low costs” are oil and water and not achievable…..

We can either insure everyone using cost controls (rationing)

We can insure everyone and see costs skyrocket.

It is insane to blithely assure Americans of something that is impossible economically.

What is likely to happen is a sad mix of rationing AND skyrocketing costs…..

Solution?

You must be kidding right?

Given the parties and forces at play there is NO solution except one that results in a gradual or rapid decay of our health system.

The narcissism of our current crop of national and politicians guarantees that only a grandiose and ineffective solution will EVER be adopted.

Although, I may need to use Obamacare to see a proctologist after what this bill will do to me.

I did that and told you right away!

It’s much better than calling you actual names.
I am saying by mocking your unusual choice in names (Unless your name is Xavier Xavier Ception) that I do wonder where you get your ideas.
I could be much meaner, but don’t want to be.
Since you didn’t answer – and I would not know about the field – apparently your choice of using a double xx means that your primary profession is gay porn.

Kevin,
It’s the mature intellectual leftist poster such as you, that leads me believe we can regain our freedom, liberty, and our country.

Judging from your writings, your problem with constipation is a pre-existing condition. You don’t need to thank Obama for that.

patricksartor:
.
Thanks very much for posting much more readable commentary.

CBO

Use the rules given

If the rules in a given bill are inherently unreal the CBO still uses them to come to a firm unreal conclusion.

They are not investigators who point out how unreal some of the assumptions are……they use the given rules and come to the given conclusion.

Politicians write bills in such a way that the CBO is forced to come to conclusions that no independent auditor ever would allow.

It seems as if you have a few ideologically-based assumptions yourself.
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Insuring “everyone” and “proper care with low costs” are oil and water and not achievable…..
.
Really?
.
How do the nations of Germany, France or Japan do it, then?
.
Surely you’re not going to claim that those first world countries have substandard health care, are you?

Not exatly, you did it and said my name made you think I work in porn. It is merely a deviation of a name I use on numerous places, “Exception.” Which came about because my wife told me I made her break all her rules about men when we were dating. Hence, I was the Exception to her rules. Various spellings are sometimes used due to others already being taken. So much more boring than your fantasy ideas, I know.

It’s not constipation. It’s more of a pounding sensation with minor tearing and burning.

Correction, socialized health care. And yes, I pay taxes, therefore I am paying for it.
..
xx, can’t get anything past you, eh? Sharp as a razor, and just as potentially deadly.

http://aspe.hhs.gov/health/Reports/05/uninsured-cps/index.htm#age

This backs up my explanation that a huge portion of the uninsured are people who would cost less than they would pay in.

Hence, getting the uninsured insurance would alone cut down costs.

patricksfartor, The Constitution of the USA is not a document of negatives. It specifies the powers of the federal government and protects the rights of our citizens. Powers not specified are reserved to the states. So when a giant intellect such as you writes, “Show me where this or that is prohibited by the Constitution,” it only reveals your ignorance.
And you are correct. The Constitution does not mention health care. So the federal govt. has no business involving itself in that matter.
BTW, I am not from Cuba nor are my ancestors. But your obsession with race color and/or ethnicity is typical of hypocritical liberal lefties.

You could also argue these people aren’t going to be paying in. Let me paint a scenario for you. You are a strapping healthy 22 year old male with the logic and reasoning of a 22 year old male. Your employer offers healthcare insurance, but it would cost you $5,000/year due to all the expanded coverages. The fine with the IRS is $3,500/ year. What do you do? Do you pay the $5,000/year insurance that you will in the majority of cases never use or do you pay the $3,500/year fine and pocket the $1,500/year difference to spend on beer, food, and chicks? You and I both know that all too often, that 22 year old is going to choose option B. If you worked in heavily unionized fields with generous health plans, you might additionally have to pay taxes on that cadillac plan if you purchase it through your employer. I know when I was 22 I elected to go without health insurance because of the cost vs. benefit argument. Granted in hindsight it was a bad decision that was one accident away from ruining me financially, but you don’t think about such things when you are 22.

Well said, ricardo, and accurate. Now get ready for the “interpretation” , the “living, breathing document”, and the “out of touch with times” arguments.

This could be applied to more than just the healthcare issue, but I just love this quote: “The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.” Thomas Jefferson

Did you notice that I have been explaining to conservatives over and over the same very simple concept of how health care works and yet I get a very limited number of nearly identical looking comebacks.
….
It’s like this: did you ever go to work, find out that there was a really popular show on TV but not get around to or, possibly, not interested in watching it. Then, out of the blue everybody at work is saying the same joke or the same phrase you never heard before. 99% of the time, you find out that this is a line from that show you never watched.
….
So, when I hear the same thing over and over again for over a month now, I do have to wonder why it is being said over and over if it is not from some source Republicans trust.

1) If access to heath care isn’t fundamental to life and liberty then nothing is.
.
2) If you didn’t scream bloody murder when George Bush and Dick Cheney were shredding multiple Constitutional provisions then now you can just STFU and start your journey to where partisan hypocrites go to die.

Oh Ricky, you forgot the commerce clause, which is often in conflict with the 10th amendment.

xxx,
…
First, explain when Democrats created states rights or, if not, forced the insurance companies to remain only within certain states. If I am not mistaken, blue cross blue shield already is in all fifty states.
…
Second, if you haven’t noticed, rates for individuals buying their own insurance as a part of a diverse group (the very sick and the very healthy) cost less per worker than buying it one’s self. So, the federal government (and I do not know if this tax break was Democratic, Republican or bipartisan) gave tax breaks to do the MOST EFFICIENT OPTION. I like efficiency, so, I do not feel cheated.
….
Economists consistently do a much, much better job of predicting things in the future in terms of economics than do house wives, ministers, doctors, tooth brush salesmen …. everybody. Just like weathermen, they do not do the job perfectly, but, I would still check the news for the weather rather than just take a guess and believe that it is true because I wish it to be true.

That’s an interesting thought experiment, but there are two missing parts:
…
1) Would a reasonable employer, considering that rates go down lower and lower per person with the more people you insure would a significant number of employers give this option? I would say exceptionally few would ever offer this option. If you are self employed at 22 and a college graduate, your college must have been awful or, if you never intended to work for anybody else, you owe your parents a serious apology for going to college just to get laid.
…
2) If rates would be that high, where does that hypothetical $3,5000 go? It goes to take care of insurance for others. Hence, it would be, instead of paying $5,000 for $200 of medical services, it would be paying $3,500 into the pot for no medical services.
….
It sounds like this would be an option offered in the single digit numbers and, perhaps about 40% of that number would take that offer.
That 2% or doesn’t seem like it would break the equation.

Of course it’ the most efficient now. It has all the advantages. Secondly, you are seriously equating a researched, and informed decision to “wishing it were true?” Really? That’s a serious stretch. Even for a Lib, where wanting less of an increase is cutting something.

patrick, blue cross is the only xxception to the state line competition issue. Secondly, I care not whether it was Dem or Rep or Ind that put this barrier in place, it is just wrong and contradictive to lowering pricing. The issue I have is letting the same ilk of people that thought it was a great idea and didn’t think of the further consequences “fix” healthcare. They have shown themselves to be shortsighted. Or for letting people that can’t balance their own checkbook (Remember the House Banking scandal) bring us out of this economic mess. Though both parties are well meaning, they have both caused more troubles in one area while trying to fix another. One only needs look at the impact of using large amounts of corn for ethanol on the world and U.S. food markets to see an example. I would much prefer that they remove all but reasonably sane barriers and let the market work as it should. Let me be responsible for my healthcare. Let me maintain power over it and let me choose what type of coverage I need. With freedom comes responsibility. Security is the antithesis of freedom. A man in solitary confinement is probably the most secure, yet least free man in the world. It’s a sliding scale. Do you value security or freedom more? You have to give up some freedom for security. The question is how secure you expect your government to make you and how much freedom you are willing to give up in order for it to be so. I know some don’t like bringing these lofty ideals into issues, but that is what makes us who we are. When do we decide that the lofty ideals are more important than what our government can do for us?

I guess you don’t want a lecture about pronouns and antecedents, but by far the most obvious reading of what you wrote is that the car is the kid’s. I figured if he owned it he’d be driving it, although I guess there may be places where preschoolers can own cars and have others drive them for them.
.
As for perversion, if the kid is old enough to drive, isn’t it a bit weird that he’s sitting on his father’s lap?
.
Glad to see you’ve finally figured out how to put gaps between paragraphs.

Your hypothetical percentages are not bolstered by what single people in that age range today are deciding. You are looking at the issue of a 22 year old with a 30+ (i’m guessing) year old brain. Are you seriously trying to tell me you were as logical and mature and as well thought out about future events at 22 as you are now?

Self-employeed at 22 is a bad thing and indicates a bad college? I would think that a college that could churn out a 22 year old entrepreneur would be an exceptional college. You look at being a self-employeed entrepreneur as a bad thing? Really?

” [The Congress shall have power] To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes;
…
Contagious illnesses along side interstate commerce (commuting across state borders – incredibly common in NYC – is a part of this).
…
Bring your, say, North Dakota Flu to New York City and you, constitutionally, have caused it to be a part of federal jurisdiction.
…
Interestingly enough, conservatives have often tried to bring murder cases from states without the death penalty into federal court on some far, far less sound grounds. In Massachusetts, a nurse working at a VA hospital was found to be a serial killer. (BTW: this exists in local, for profit, Catholic, other Christian, State and independent hospitals as well). It was tried in Federal Court since MA does not have the death penalty on the grounds that the VA is federal property and subject to Federal law.
….
What did John Adams intend about VA nurses who were serial killers? Dumb question, right? He had no way of knowing any of these things would ever exist. So, you have to take the existing language and apply it to modern reality and see how it fits.
…
Published words on paper and people praying in churches, for example, are exactly the same now as they were then. So, just as then, no government can make printed words illegal. No government can forbid religious practice. No government can make attedance of any church mandatory.
…
The FCC, bipartisan but more conservative than liberal determined that televised words are a different kind of speech and therefore, forbids us from using particular words or particular graphic images of sex or violence.
…
Unless we all want to ride on horses and have no health care, no television, etc, we have to live in a world where new and different events cause different interpretations of the constitution.
…
I don’t want to ride a horse into Midtown Manhattan.

xx,
So you opposed the Bush tax cuts!
You opposed the unfunded war in Iraq from the begining!
That is, unless you only are being selective considering that this particular proposal appears to be, by the best estimates we have by a non-partisan group of economists budget neutral.

My biggest issue with this, however is probably the mandated insurance. The federal government has never required the citizens of the U.S. to purchase anything and unfortunately this sets a precedent. How would you Libs have felt, for instance, if Bush had mandated the purchasing of war bonds to fund the war in Iraq and Afghanistan? Or if Ronald Reagan would have mandated citizen investment in the various companies working on Star Wars or for the continuing Cold War? Sure, those aren’t the greatest examples, but they are what came off the top of my head. The point is, when guys like this you disagree with are in office in the future, they too will be able to mandate you purchase something if they believe it’s in the best interest of the country. Then when you try to not purchase this item or what you consider to be an adequate alternative, the power of the IRS will be used to fine you. I hope you are as supportive of this new power then as you are now. Me, I’ll still be saying it’s wrong.

xx,
Second to my uncle, I think you have the best sense of humor of any conservative I have run across in years.
A huge majority of the ones on this website are pissed off, totally closed minded and totally argumentative.
You are not.

I had a myriad of problems with the Bush administration. Ummm, budget neutral? You are being very selective with your sources. And those sources are taking into account that every single future action mentioned that must be taken is taken as written. Those are some very large assumptions.

I’m more Libertarian than conservative. There IS a difference, if you cared to educate yourself. Although, you may already know.

When I had a high school job, Ronald Reagan forced me to pay for part of Star Wars, send money to Saddam Husein to gas the Kurds and, in more recent years, I have been forced by GWB to send money to attack that same country after our former puppet with our help wrecked the place and made it inhospitable for Democracy.
…
Our CORPORATIONS are going to be forced to pay to an insurance company because, in order not to p o you conservatives too badly.
…
Progressives would want it to be a single payer system. Since you guys are in love with insurance companies, we couldn’t make it a tax. We had to make it a mandate. If it were a tax, the Tea Party Right would, likely have (as Tea Party right member Joe Stack did in Austin Texas) become suicide bombers or very violent.
…
If you aren’t at all a part of the Tea Party movement, then I am not writing about you. I am writing about those who spit on congressmen.

…
Also, we did it for you since you would have put more pressure on everybody you could find to kill this bill.
…
If Ronald Reagan could take my income as sixteen year old and use it to murder Kurdish women, children and other non-combatants, then don’t complain if your insurance money gets a Burger King Employee a chance to take his son to the doctor.

An employer would not GIVE you the option of not purchasing health insurance?? Now you are FOR corporations and companies being able to force their employees to purchase the policies they provide? Please tell me I didn’t read that correctly.

pointing out that the extreme…
.
Of course, everyone who doesn’t agree with your rather depressing view from the middle is an extremist. H3ll, if they just disagree with you, they’re being extremist.
.
Nice how that works.
.
sounds like it struck a bit too close to home
.
If so, then you may need to get your hearing checked. You are overreacting to the people here who disagree with you.
.
Given the parties and forces at play there is NO solution except one that results in a gradual or rapid decay of our health system.
.
While I am sympathetic to that statement and can understand why it is being made, I do not agree that health care reform in the US is a lost cause. Perhaps you can move to one of the other modern countries where the health care system works, i.e all are covered, proper care, and low costs?

xx,
This is the full quote: “The system of banking [is] a blot left in all our Constitutions,
which, if not covered, will end in their destruction…
I sincerely believe that banking institutions are more dangerous
than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to
be paid by posterity… is but swindling futurity on a large scale.”
The statement was about banks giving out loans.
I believe having a mortgage on a home I could afford is a reasonable thing.
…
Also, I believe a standing army is a good thing.
“A standing army is an army composed of full-time career soldiers who ‘stand over’, in other words, who do not disband during times of peace. They differ from army reserves who are activated only during such times as war or natural disasters. Standing armies tend to be better equipped, better trained, and better prepared for emergencies, defensive deterrence and particularly wars.” http://www.answers.com/topic/standing-army
…
It is interesting how dead people get quoted to say things they do not mean.
Would be okay with you if, after you die that somebody deletes things like the word “not” or add that word in to make you sound like a liberal Democrat? (I am going to guess not).

pbock: Please back up your Beckian statements with some links to actual facts.

Thanks KT. This will cease my whining. My addiction to commenting can be met.

SZ~
Point taken. Though, I must also point out that having the same problems is in itself an extension of the status quo. Different methods, same results. That’s a variation of status quo.

When, on another post you said that not all Latinos were stupid.
hablo pocito Espanol por que respecto los Latinos.
Es muy facil a olividar quando se practicar mucho ahora.
..
(I speak a little Spanish because I respect Latinos. It is easy to forget when one does not practice very often.)
…
You spoke about Communism implying that you were familiar with this first hand.
…
If you are not Cuban, ask a politically moderate Cuban American (or Russian American, for that matter) what Communism is about.
…
Communism is about perogie carts in the parks of Moscow being order to walk through the parks even after the inefficient system didn’t provide them anything to sell.
…
This is 0% similar.

Well said Patrick.

IN THROES OF NEW HEALTHCARE PUBLIC BECOMES THE VICTUMS ….

hate to break it to you the only nut cases are the one’s whom choose to believe that even though the DEMS ARE DENYING THE VETS & PUBLIC MEDICINE indefinitely —the DEMS & the ACLU can stupidly count on attempting to claim —-they are actually insuring people or giving them healthcare???

When YOU are stuck home WITH a screaming child without MEDS & healthcare you will think differently..

UNDER NEW HEALTHCARE ONCE DENIED MEDS—PUBLIC & PARENTS ARE BRANDED ILLEGAL CRIMINAL FUGITIVES WITHIN & OUTSIDE USA BORDERS IF

*THEY SEEK MEDS OR HEALTHCARE FOR THEMSELVES OR THEIR VETS OR THEIR CHILDREN

ALSO, AT THE TIME ANY DOCTOR AT WHIM CHOOSES TO LIE TO CLAIM THE PUBLIC/CHILD ISN’T SICK AND DOESN’T GET MEDS & THEY DENIED MEDS & HEALTHCARE PUBLIC CANNOT SEEK 2ND OPINION OR SUE FOR MALPRACTICE, NEGLIGIENCE, OR WRONGFUL DEATH .

Anyone with any reasonable amount of intelligience should know if you AREN’T BEING GIVEN MEDICINE (for new or pre-existing condition) & NOT BEING GIVEN HEALTHCARE —-YOU CANNOT CLAIM YOU ARE INSURED OR RECEIVING HEALTHCARE.

DEMS & ACLU are counting on the public being to gullible to know this.

WHAAAAT DO YOU CALL IT WHEN people like MR. RUSH LIMBAUGH or anyone of USA PUBLIC Is FORCED TO LEAVE THE COUNTRY TO GET HEALTHCARE & MEDS—-DOES ANYONE think they can claim MR. LIMBAUGH OR ANYONE OF USA PUBLIC ARE PROPERLY INSURED BY USA GOV OR RECEIVING MEDS FROM USA GOV…..if you DO—then THE DEMS HAVE AN ADDITION TO THE BROOKLY BRIDGE THATS FOR SALE and they’ll throw that into the HEALTHCARE PACKAGE TOO if you will be gullible to believe that too…

I DON’T SPEAK for the TEA PARTIES and be thankful I don’t otherwise the DEMS would ALL BE IN JAIL.

seek legislative and LEGAL action to get SOC HEALTHCARE & stimulus and bailout kicked out see American center for law and justice OR GOOGLE the problems with socialized health care OR GOOGLE handsoffmyhealth.org OR GOOGLE bigGovhealth.org OR stoptheaclu.com OR Health science institute OR familysecuritymatters.org

Ricardo,

If your knowledge of Communism is not from experiences but from a text book, go back to school and read more.
…
Communism is about a command economy where all goods and services are government owned, prices set by the government and, by far the most important, the government is a “dictatorship of the proletariat” being a body of self appointed peasants who do not go through democratic elections.
….
Soviet elections gave the people a choice between to or more people chosen by the Communist party to run.
…
Membership to the Communist party is not like signing your name as it is to be a Democrat or Republican. You had to be appointed.
….
Political protest and opposition was suppressed with jail sentences and/or execution.
….
What part of a law saying that CORPORATIONS must buy health insurance has to do with creating an elite party almost nobody is allowed to join, taking over every single business down to food carts, putting that party in charge of all elections or jailing or executing political opponents.
….
When GWB was the president, Republican rhetoric was that people who disagreed with the administration were “unpatriotic”, didn’t “support the troops” and were “anti-American”.
…
Democrats aren’t even making such suggestions about you.
At worst, we find some of the things annoying and tell you so.
….
So, tell me again who’s rhetoric is more like that of an authoritarian?.
….
The first amendment saved many Democrats butts during the GWB years and nobody has ever suggested any change to that.

Aussie,
It is very clear from your entry that you need your meds.
Put out your name and phone number and, if I have to, I will PERSONALLY see to it that you get all of the medication you need.

Wow! Talk about someone who needs meds!

Okay, the son is twenty four but is getting growth hormone treatments because he is only three feet tall and the amoxicillin is because his ear infection is so bad that it effects his balance and needs to be on his father’s lap.
…
Happy now?
…
One thing agreed upon by both sides is that posting here really SUCKS as it eats up spaces between paragraphs.

Corporations DO NOT pay taxes. ALL TAXES are passed on to the consumer.

ricardo:
.
It’s two in the afternoon here and I’m still here looking for commies, socialists, and gun snatchers.
.
Nothing. The sun is shining, too. Baro 29.87 ^, temp 59F. Normal day here.
.
Also, I seem to remember that the preamble to the Constitution mentions something about life, liberty, and happiness. Seems to me that GOP crackheads aren’t exactly an expert on the Constitution, anyway, given their conduct with respect to it between 2001 and 2008, inclusive.
.
Oops. Forgive me. I forgot. Absliartly nothing happened during those years.
.
It was all Clinton’s fault!

xx,
I know that in college I was covered by Kaiser of California. It was through my mother’s work in Connecticut. However, I was in college in Massachusetts. So, I met the requirements for health care for two or three weeks a year besides the university clinic when I was at my parents’ house.
…
Kaiser got to be in at least two very distant states.(I don’t know how many others – but I think that they were in Ohio, too).
….
Blue Cross is the only one in all 50 states.
…
Unless you know otherwise, it would seem most probable to me that MARKET FORCES and not rules and regulations prevented these insurance companies from spreading.
…
For a link to prove your point since market forces can do and often do limit the geographic area of a company as my link pointed out, the ball is your court.
…
Send a link to some regulation forbidding or discouraging insurance companies from crossing state lines and I will agree with you that this is not a failure of market forces.
…
Keep in mind that the credit crunch was a failure of market forces. Regulations to prevent such mass delusions amongst bankers and so on was slashed and burned by Republicans (with little resistance from Clinton, unfortunately). Market forces do, sometimes, fail. Observing those failures is where progressives come from. Those who are blind to them tend to remain conservative.

WELL, it appears patricksartor & babcn1 forgot to take theirs otherwise they wouldn’t be so cheerful if they had half a clue that OUR VETS and our CHILDREN are going to be left to die WITHOUT MEDS forever if the DEMS don’t stop their spending and that means YOU TOO.

WHY do you think the REPUBLICANS were seeking in writing that DEMS WON’T RATION MEDS???

did ya know if an ear infection is left untreated it results in PERMANENT handicapping & death even more so in children??

did ya know…if allergies/asthma are left untreated it results in PERMANENT handicapping & death even more so in children???

DID YOU KNOW??? ALLERGIES/ASTHMA LEFT UNTREATED WILL CAUSE PERMANT HANDICAPPING/DEATH ESPECIALLY IN CHILDREN???

WELL….DEMS DID AND STILL WANT TO SELL THE USA DOWN THE RIVER EXPECTING THE UNSUSPECTING USA PUBLIC TO PAY FOR illegal & UNCONSTITUTIONAL HEALTHCARE BY EXISTING WITHOUT FOOD MEDS HOUSING JOBS & WITH THE LOSS OF FREEDOM & LOSS OF LIFE …SO DEMS CAN LIVE ON PORK AND EVERY ILLEGAL ANYBODY MOOCH OFF THE PUBLIC.

DID ya know… the DEMS from the start of this year have wanted the PUBLIC TO PAY FOR THIS BOONDOGGLE by having the DEMS MAKE ILLEGAL CLEAN ORGANIC FOODS, WATER, & POTENT VITAMINS AND PROBIOTICS???

WELL, for some ignorance is truly bliss but you can bet it won’t be bliss for long if the public doesn’t repeal that.

seek legislative and LEGAL action to get OBAMA HC & stimulus and bailout kicked out see American center for law and justice OR GOOGLE the problems with socialized health care OR GOOGLE handsoffmyhealth.org OR GOOGLE bigGovhealth.org OR stoptheaclu.com OR Southeastern Legal Foundation OR health science institute OR familysecuritymatters.org

Yet in none of these cases were you forced to buy an additional good. To think that you are going to like everything your tax money is spent on is ludicrous. Forcing you to buy an additional good that is outside the scope of normal government powers is a vastly different thing than spending your tax money in a way you see unfit. You basically seem to be saying, tax or mandate we were going to make you pay for it for your own good. Also, if you honestly think any adult that has made even a modicum of good decisions in his life is working at Burger King raising a child on minimum wage, I would invite you to get out and live a little. The vast majority of people working for minimum wage are teenagers or those semi-retired. Furthermore, the average worker only works at the minimum wage for less than 3 months before they are accorded a raise. There are menial labor jobs that will pay much more than the minimum wage. If you are limited in life to working at Burger King, you have bigger problems than using the power of the imperialistic federal government to seize the money I’ve worked hard for to pay for your child’s healthcare. Furthermore, if you brought a child into the world knowing that was the best you could provide, you have done the child morally wrong. Your FIRST obligation is an adult is to take care of your child. If you can’t take care of them, you have failed them. I don’t want to take care of your child nor do I want you to take care of mine.

I am self employed and, even though this could be a great paying job when the market is right and I put in enough time and would give my right arm to have the tuition money for the rest of my college (lost time from transferring – have over four years) go on to Law School, put in my fifty to seventy hour workweek and let somebody else worry about the ups and downs when I have my day and a half a week off for family life and an income to support them comfortably.
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The number one reason to graduate from college is to give a good impression to employers.
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If you want to start a business, audit a few cheap classes and read, read and read more until you know how to do what you want to do. Take the burden of tuition money off of your parents.

” * Most minimum wage earners are young. While 2.2% of all hourly workers earn minimum wage or less, just 1.4% of workers over the age of 25 are paid at or below the Federal minimum wage. More than half (51.2%) of minimum wage workers are between 16 and 24 years old. Another 21.2% are between 25 and 34.
* Most minimum wage earners work in food service. Nearly two-thirds of those paid minimum wage (or less) are food service workers. Many of these people receive supplemental income in the form of tips, which the government does not track.
* Most minimum wage earners never attended college. Just 1.2% of college graduates are paid the minimum wage. If you only have a high school degree, you’re more likely (1.9%) to be paid minimum wage. Those without a high school degree are nearly three times as likely (3.7%) to earn minimum wage. 59.8% of all minimum wage workers have no advanced education.
* Finally, as you might expect, part-time workers are five times more likely to be paid the minimum wage than full-time workers.”
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http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2007/10/09/who-earns-the-minimum-wage/
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Go to Wal-Mart, convenience stores, non-union grocery stores…. There are PLENTY of minimum wage workers who are adults and have children.
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If only the young earn so little, no moms or dads would ever need assistance. In that alternate universe (with different rules of economics – hopefully not physics) I would be a devout Republican.
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Don’t forget that, in most places, minimum wage for a family is not much more than HALF the poverty rate.
So, you are mistaken, again.

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/03/the-view-from-your-recession.html

For those of you on this site who state that people are just lazy, need to get jobs and get their own coverage the above statement by a small business person who received over 200 applications for a minimum wage job puts the lie to all the rhetoric about lazy people.
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Also, someone on this site stated people shouldn’t stay or apply for minimum wage jobs, there were plenty of construction jobs. My ex is a skilled, journeyman heavy equipment operator who has been unemployed for almost a year. What about recession don’t these people understand?

xx,
Employers do not give employees the option of what desk they have, what office space they have and so on.
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I can easily imagine, if you are low wage or have a large family even expensive tastes that you would prefer to have a widowless room with a cheap desk to grab more money in salary.
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Employers tell employees what to do.
The market orders the employers what to do.
So, if the government comes along as says that, instead of taxing this company for health insurance, you will have to buy it or pay a fine, the company will not suddenly turn everything upside down and have the employee tell the employer what he/she wants.
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When I got a job with mostly twenty two year olds when I was twenty nine, ALL of the ones I met (about forty in my training group) took insurance of all kinds.
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So, as I often find with libertarians – different in many ways from conservatives (often humor can give me a clue that one is not a hard core conservative) it seems as if you have engaged in an interesting thought experiment unrelated to how businesses beyond the single digit number of employees operate as one size fits all.
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Sure, I know the difference between a Libertarian and a conservative.
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Libertarians: Give me liberty or give me death!
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Conservatives: give me liberty from sin and taxes so that I may go to heaven after death and leave big bucks to my kids.
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Being an employee is much more social than being self employed and your finances are much easier as your job description does not change every five minutes to suit the business.

Does the government ever mandate a person to buy a good or service?
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Yes: fail to provide food, adequate shelter, clothing and supervision (mandating one’s time) to your children and social services take them from you.
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Yes, just as the uninsured do not get taken care of for free, the costs BEFORE THIS BILL were passed onto the insured. Now it will be a separate charge outside of a hospital with a regular doctor’s office.
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Like you would find it unimaginable not to take care of your own children and, therefore, could hardly care less about the government mandating such, nearly all workers would prefer insurance. If their employer says they must when that was EXACTLY what they would have chosen to do otherwise, who cares that they have a hypothetical “freedom” to say no to insurance. If the government mandate that you feed, clothe and house your child(ren) were dropped, you would still do the same thing and take good care of them and not even notice that this mandate was no longer there.

xx,
Go to any poor neighborhood and walk into any of these places and, even more so, in small, poor towns throughout America and the people waiting on you for minimum wage are from eighteen to eighty including people in their twenties, thirties and forties.
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Apparently you live in a nice town like the one I grew up in where all parents had tuition money for their children and, for those who do not want an education, a loan from parents to start a business. In my experience the self employed are the recently former underemployed who lack the credentials to get the same pay working for somebody else and, therefore, work for themselves.
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All I know is that if I had a child who I just paid to send to college turn around and ask me for a loan to help them start their own business, I would be infuriated.
I guess you are a more lenient dad than I would be.
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I know from experience that if you are not a part of the top 1% of high school students who get full scholarship, then you are economically drafted into the armed forces or economically drafted into low paying menial jobs.

“Also, if you honestly think any adult that has made even a modicum of good decisions in his life is working at Burger King raising a child on minimum wage, I would invite you to get out and live a little….”
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Those people were my neighbors in poor neighborhoods in or near Boston.
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Some did make bad deccissions.
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Most others had no choice and couldn’t even visualize the American dream.
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Get out of your very nice suburb and go to a slum or a small, poor town (don’t bring you child(ren) this isn’t fun for the whole family) and see how most Americans really live.
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WELL, for some ignorance is truly bliss

Ignorance, thy name is aussifaire. You continue to rant and rave about complete nonsense. Do you really believe that ranting combined with your caps-lock obsession makes your point? It makes you appear an unhinged loon.
..
While you’re in bizarro world, maybe you could bring some facts back with you to support your nuttery, though I seriously doubt it.

You know, Apr, it’s funny you should bring up that article today.
I was offering to pay people $20 to clean up my apartment for about four hours and got six applicants. All six of them worked for an organization called AHIP.
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Has anybody heard of that organization?
Whoever they are they are, apparently really hurting.

If only. I would hope they were AHIP execs.

my home doctor detected the lump in my chest, had me go to the VA for further tests/’fixing’…
Was in a bed in a week, lump cut out, when it came back benign, I was cut loose,paid for some minimal medications.
So much for speed of work in a VA, which might have something to do with the injury/disease/medical condition.
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Now, as for the other question being asked under the table?
Do insurance companies need regulation by the government?
http://www.humortimes.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=161
….funny you should ask (or not) but, yes.
Most definitely and without delay.