Obamacare

[GoIrish41]

If you believe that insurance companies are getting together and having price fixing agreements amongst themselves, there is nothing I can say that would change your mind.

Based upon your first hand experience, it would seem that the company doing the price gouging is not the insurance company, it's the pharmaceutical company.

the point is that they are all in it together, insurance companies, doctors, and phameceutical companies. The drug companies couldn't gouge on their own because insurance comanies simply wouldn't pay their outrageous costs. But when they are in bed together and they bring the doctor into the mix, they now have all the pieces in place. Drug companies need the doctors and the insurers to make their system work. They are all equally culpible and they all profit from the system they feed.

 

[Cackalacky]

There's a difference between bad ideas and socialism.

Thats right, bad ideas definitely don't work. May be socialism doesn't work either, but this is not socialist. This is capitalist.

Individual health care is clearly different that forcing me to pay for someone else because they can't afford it.

That is what we are currently doing. This changes that.

It was a terrible idea, sure. But it wasn't socialist like Obamacare.

Once again, this is not socialist, this is captialist. Does Progressive, Geico, esurance, Safe Auto ring a bell. These compaines sprang up after states started requiring vehicular insurance.

If someone works their tail off their whole life and makes enough money to get by, why should they pay for healthcare costs for some bum who uses his money for booze and cigarettes and turns down job offers because he doesn't want to work? Just because he isn't making any money means he can use someone else's money?Why should we reward laziness and terrible lifestyles?

These people will now be required to have their own insurance as well as for their children.

I don't get it. As if 40% of my paycheck doesn't already go to taxes.

Your effective tax rate is much lower than that. Much or your taxes are state taxes. I personally pay more insurance premiums per pay check than what is deducted for fed and state taxes. My employer pays half of my premiums as well.

I've had full health coverage that I pay for for 4 years now. Do you want to know how many times I've visited the hospital? Once. I was glad I paid for it all those years, and I was glad I could get in and out fast.

Great. Congrats

Now that everyone will have it they will be abusing the hell out of it and we all know it. I can't wait for the next time I go in 4 years when I actually have a medical issue and I have to wait in line for 4 hours behind people who are abusing their insurance that I'm paying for.

You have to wait 4 hours at your family doctor? I would find another doctor. My wait is typically 10-15 minutes. Even at emergency rooms.

Google the waits at hospitals and emergency rooms in Canada. It's a scary, scary world when a patient has to wait several days to have an "emergency" surgery to save his life.

we dont have Canada's program.

I'm going to pick up smoking and extremely #reckless behavior I think. I might as well visit the hospital as much as I can. And if I die sooner, that's less time I have to be socialist!

I like#reckless

 

[Sherm Sticky]

Well, the United States is one step closer to joining the rest of the developed world.

lol true

 

[ACamp1900]

These people will now be required to have their own insurance as well as for their children.

I believe much of the frustration from killer and those like him... myself for example... is that they almost certainly won't be forced to get it on their own dime... I believe a growing segment of the middle and upper classes are becoming fed up with having to pay more and more for people who simply don't try and or make bad choices but aren't held to them. In most cases it is the neighbors who are actually trying to live honestly who have to pay for those mistakes... at least finacially

People keep talking about the 1%... I could give a damn about those who make money... I'm much more enraged by the 45% that contribute absolutely nothing, rape our tax dollars and then complain about the rich...


little off topic... but at least I feel better now... lol

 

[Bluto]

Well, the door has been slammed open... I just can't wait for all the 'evil' and 'hilter' attacks coming from the left when a conservative gov. one day uses this 'tax' garbage as a means to force upon the whole of the American people a strictly right wing ideology...

I'm not saying I support anything, but I'll be expecting much more talk of succession coming from certain state legislatures...

You know it's interesting because all kinds of left wing kooks use basically the same rhetoric and black helicopters the Feds are out to get us type arguments that are pretty main stream in the GOP these days.

As for the succession thing...Mississippi, Kansas and Alabama could all leave and I would probably be ok. Actually, most of the Gulf Coast and Florida are gonna be underwater in a few decades due to sea level rise. Might as well cut em loose now.

 

[95NDAlumNM]

Insurance rates for the decade before Obama signed the Affordable Health Care Act rose about 5% each year (some up to 8%). After the act, rates began to rise 16.5% each year. Do you honestly think this is just a coincidence?

Plus 20,000 is the average. Families in areas with higher standards of living and higher salaries pay more. Families in the midwest with lower salaries pay less. That's pretty irresponsible to just say everyone is paying $20,000.

Yes, I have a source: Average family health insurance policy: $13,375, up 5% - USATODAY.com

What? Nothing in the source that you quote supports anything you said. Also, the afforadable care act has not gone into affect so any increase in insurance rates have very little to nothing to do with the actual act. please.

 

[Polish Leppy 22]

1) Liberalism: ideas so good they have to be mandatory.

2) The designers of this $hitstorm (obama, reid, pelosi) will NEVER be subjected to the program. Why? Because socialism is for everyone else, not the socialist.

3) Insurance company stocks are in freefall right now

4) Prices will go up, quality of care will go down

5) This sucks. Big time.

"Socialized medicine is the keystone to the arch of the socialist state." --- Vladimir Lenin

 

[GoIrish41]

What? Nothing in the source that you quote supports anything you said. Also, the afforadable care act has not gone into affect so any increase in insurance rates have very little to nothing to do with the actual act. please.

Like I said ... gouging!!!! :makeadeal

 

[Bogtrotter07]

I stayed off of this thread until the furror started to abate. This thread is proof that most people impassioned, are willing to talk out of their @ss. There were only a couple of people that bothered to back what they said on this thread. Cackalacky was the only one to do it effectively. And he didn't have anything outrageous to say, no wild predictions. He merely stated the fact that politicians are not the most creative among us and tend to recycle the same old stuff, some times it is donkey droppings, sometimes elephant turds.

Case in point. The five hundred million dollar medicare question. Republicans are now saying Obama cut beaucoup bucks out from under retirees. What really happened is a whole lot of bureaucracy got shifted. Not a payment got cut. Check it out. Everybody is lying for political gain. Who gets take advantage of? The simple-minded, knee-jerk reactionists that know every damned thing. Because they trivialize themselves out of existence.

Case in point two: My maternal grandfather, he was a big-industrialist type, of laissez-faire, type of free wheeling, pull yourself up by the bootstraps kind of guy. He hated Truman, called him "Go-to-hell Harry." I cannot even tell you the vitriol my grandps had for Democrats. You know who he saw as the end of the political system? The political anti-christ? Ronald Regan. Said the man was more untrustworthy than Nixon. Said he was nothing but a comunistic, New-Deal Democrat that shifted his position to beat the pendulum of shifting public opinion to get elected. And he would sell us all out. I guess he did from a budget standpoint, spending more than any administration until the Bushes, but generally he was wrong because of the passion of his convictions.

And you are wrong too if you feel sold out by Justice Roberts. Or anyone else.

A major movement often starts with a Supreme Court ruling. The judiciary has the ability to do the right thing even if it isn't the popular thing. And this is one of those situations.

I strongly believe we will be judged by what we do. And as a country and a society that is true also. And the real test of what we do in the big view, is how do we take care of those who cannot take care of themselves. We do it by taking care of them. The right way. I hear an awful lot people whining about the cost and their rights, but I just don't see any activity on doing the right thing for others. Like you know, Jesus became famous for saying.

To me there is too much money that has too much to lose in this equasion. But I bet that if everyone has health insurance, and we get to a system of true national health, the overall costs go down. We are still as a society paying an obsene amount for health costs above what are covered for millions of people.

 

[GoIrish41]

1) Liberalism: ideas so good they have to be mandatory.

Like forced transvaginal ultrasounds?
2) The designers of this $hitstorm (obama, reid, pelosi) will NEVER be subjected to the program. Why? Because socialism is for everyone else, not the socialist.

designers were actually in a conservative think tank. This didn't become a bad idea until the Democrats accepted it.
3) Insurance company stocks are in freefall right now

I'm tearing up at the thought of this.
4) Prices will go up, quality of care will go down

That has been happening for the past 30 years.
5) This sucks. Big time.

What really sucks big time is being sick and not being able to get insurance.

 

[95NDAlumNM]

Insurance rates for the decade before Obama signed the Affordable Health Care Act rose about 5% each year (some up to 8%). After the act, rates began to rise 16.5% each year. Do you honestly think this is just a coincidence?

Plus 20,000 is the average. Families in areas with higher standards of living and higher salaries pay more. Families in the midwest with lower salaries pay less. That's pretty irresponsible to just say everyone is paying $20,000.

Yes, I have a source: Average family health insurance policy: $13,375, up 5% - USATODAY.com

Also, I was not saying that everyone is paying 20,000. That is what I am paying for my family of four. By your reasoning I guess I was also saying that everyone has had 2 kids in the last 4 years, that everyone has had kidney stones disintigrated, etc.

 

[Cackalacky]

A major movement often starts with a Supreme Court ruling. The judiciary has the ability to do the right thing even if it isn't the popular thing. And this is one of those situations.

I strongly believe we will be judged by what we do. And as a country and a society that is true also. And the real test of what we do in the big view, is how do we take care of those who cannot take care of themselves. We do it by taking care of them. The right way. I hear an awful lot people whining about the cost and their rights, but I just don't see any activity on doing the right thing for others. Like you know, Jesus became famous for saying.

To me there is too much money that has too much to lose in this equasion. But I bet that if everyone has health insurance, and we get to a system of true national health, the overall costs go down. We are still as a society paying an obsene amount for health costs above what are covered for millions of people[/B].

EPIC

 

[Cackalacky]

1) Liberalism: ideas so good they have to be mandatory.

Like forced transvaginal ultrasounds?
2) The designers of this $hitstorm (obama, reid, pelosi) will NEVER be subjected to the program. Why? Because socialism is for everyone else, not the socialist.

designers were actually in a conservative think tank. This didn't become a bad idea until the Democrats accepted it.
3) Insurance company stocks are in freefall right now

I'm tearing up at the thought of this.
4) Prices will go up, quality of care will go down

That has been happening for the past 30 years.
5) This sucks. Big time.

What really sucks big time is being sick and not being able to get insurance.

Oh the LULZ.....

 

[k1ssme1m1r1sh]

Here I am....

Let's clear one thing up...insurance rates go up because Americans do not want to be healthy. They like eating food that could be considered a chemical sh!t storm, they don't like to be active, and if anything is wrong with them, they will take a pill for whatever is wrong with them. Americans want things to be wrong with them. Right now, I'm working in endocrinology with diabetic and hormone disorder patients. Everytime I tell someone their thyroid is not the cause of their fatigue, 4 out of 5 will BLOW UP on me about how stupid the doctor is, and they want second and third opinions. Blood doesn't lie. Also, we drink crap like Monster and Red Bull, then take ambien so we can sleep. We get depressed? Take a pill. High cholesterol? God forbid you change your diet, take a pill. Got diabetes? Don't lose weight, or watch what you eat, just keep titrating your insulin on your own against your doctors orders. Your kid is a brat? Shove some Adderall down his throat instead of whooping his ***. You like to smoke? Go ahead. But when you get lung cancer, don't throw benefits to help you pay your medical bills, you did it to yourself. Can't handle being born white? Lay in a tanning bed and bake yourself into melanoma. THESE are the reasons health care costs are through the roof.

Come on, sitting here blaming the government for reforming health care is ridiculous. The United States is the greatest country on Earth but the problem is not our government. The problem is, if something is broke we don't fix it, we throw it away. If we are not happy about something we throw tantrums like a toddler, instead of using rationale and logic like adults. We don't control our diet, we don't control our weight, we don't control our kids.

I am glad the Supreme Court upheld Obamacare. I am glad Obama finally gets a chance to be President instead of fighting with a bunch of elitist self entitled ninnies. That's just my two cents. Like it or hate it. It's true.

 

[theclassickiller]

We'll have to continue this discussion after work... Peace out my socialist friends! (kidding)

 

[Polish Leppy 22]

1) Liberalism: ideas so good they have to be mandatory.

Like forced transvaginal ultrasounds?
2) The designers of this $hitstorm (obama, reid, pelosi) will NEVER be subjected to the program. Why? Because socialism is for everyone else, not the socialist.

Who's forcing you to do that?

designers were actually in a conservative think tank. This didn't become a bad idea until the Democrats accepted it.[/B

Democrats in a super majority rammed it down our throats.
3) Insurance company stocks are in freefall right now

I'm tearing up at the thought of this.
4) Prices will go up, quality of care will go down

Ask people in any country with socialized medicine how much fun it is to wait 9 weeks to get a broken leg fixed.

That has been happening for the past 30 years.
5) This sucks. Big time.

What really sucks big time is being sick and not being able to get insurance.

Is someone sick because of an unforeseen diesease like cancer? Or did they eat themselves to 400 pounds and get diabetes? Or were they engaging in sexual activity without protection and got an STD? Or did they drink/ smoke themselves to a disease?

Tell me at what point someone else's poor life decisions become my moral/ financial responsibility. You can't.

 

[Kingbish01]

Because I am paying for those pre existing conditions. I worked long and hard to make sure I was covered by insurance at all times even when my work didn't offer insurance to prevent me from getting a pre existing condition. I now have to pussy for those who didn't make those sacrifices and work the extra like I did to get that issuance. I know life sucks and things go wrong. I have had to buy my insurance when between jobs, when without a job, and when I had a job that didn't offer it. Now that is all washed away and I will be lumped in with anyone who didn't. Can you see a reason for frustration?

Please tell me how having insurance at all times will help you from developing bone cancer like my 23 your old friend? Or a pituitary tumor that my wife developed that needed 2 brain surgeries? This is a 100% serious question as I am kind of a hypochondriac, and if I would have known all along that just having insurance prevents illnesses I wouldn't worry so much as I have always been covered.

 

[Pa Golden Tate Fan]

America is turning into Europe. Why is America running healthcare when this this country is in trillions of dollars in debt and USPS is almost bankrupt. Its time to hold the politicians in Washington accountable for their actions.

 

[GoIrish41]

Tell me at what point someone else's poor life decisions become my moral/ financial responsibility. You can't.

June 28, 2012 -- the day Obamacare was upheld by the Supreme Court!

Look, I can make a list of stupid **** people do that makes them unhealthy. We all can. There wasn't anything i did to get Crohn's Disease. There wasn't anything my grandmother did to get Alzheimer's. I can give just as many examples about people getting sick despite doing the right things. Should this country's attitude be "f*ck em"? I'd like to think you don't think that.

 

[ACamp1900]

Is someone sick because of an unforeseen diesease like cancer? Or did they eat themselves to 400 pounds and get diabetes? Or were they engaging in sexual activity without protection and got an STD? Or did they drink/ smoke themselves to a disease?

Tell me at what point someone else's poor life decisions become my moral/ financial responsibility. You can't.

EPIC...

no seriously... I think this is really teh main divide in all honesty... I know it is for me... Maybe it's what we see regionally, what we see first hand kind of thing... I can't imagine it's the same as So Cal everywhere else when you consider what others are noting here... but here, those that "need" help simply choose to not help themselves.

 

[irishknight35]

Hahahahahaha. Who told you that one, Obama himself? Hahahaha that is really laughable!

Why is it laughable?

 

[In Lou I Trust]

Geez, another political thread...

 

[ab2cmiller]

LOL @ Lou

 

[Me2SouthBend]

No offense, but f*ck insurance companies.

Reps my man. If health insurance rates didn't climb at some ridiculous multiple of inflation, none of this would ever have come up.

 

[Polish Leppy 22]

June 28, 2012 -- the day Obamacare was upheld by the Supreme Court!

Look, I can make a list of stupid **** people do that makes them unhealthy. We all can. There wasn't anything i did to get Crohn's Disease. There wasn't anything my grandmother did to get Alzheimer's. I can give just as many examples about people getting sick despite doing the right things. Should this country's attitude be "f*ck em"? I'd like to think you don't think that.

1) You can make all the lists in the world you want, but you can't break my argument. Other individuals' insane lifestyle choices that lead to poor health/ health problems do not turn into MY responsibility. People have the rights to live any way they wish, but in turn their responsibility that comes with those rights does not fall upon me.

2) You and your grandmother deserve medical treatment and didn't do anything wrong. My hear goes out to people like that.

If obamacare goes as well as US public ed, the postal system, medicare, and medicaid, I predict we look like Greece financially by the year 2018. Take that one to the bank. Oh wait, we're a bankrupt nation...

 

[Cackalacky]

Reps my man. If health insurance rates didn't climb at some ridiculous multiple of inflation, none of this would ever have come up.

Fortune 500 2011: Fortune 1000 Companies 1-100 - FORTUNE on CNNMoney.com

There are some well known insurance companies in here.

 

[GoIrish41]

1) You can make all the lists in the world you want, but you can't break my argument. Other individuals' insane lifestyle choices that lead to poor health/ health problems do not turn into MY responsibility. People have the rights to live any way they wish, but in turn their responsibility that comes with those rights does not fall upon me.

2) You and your grandmother deserve medical treatment and didn't do anything wrong. My hear goes out to people like that.

If obamacare goes as well as US public ed, the postal system, medicare, and medicaid, I predict we look like Greece financially by the year 2018. Take that one to the bank. Oh wait, we're a bankrupt nation...

The problem is you can't separate the ones who brought it upon themselves and the ones who didn't. Every civilized country in the world takes care of its citizens. This country is decades behind the power curve.

 

[ACamp1900]

The problem is you can't separate the ones who brought it upon themselves and the ones who didn't. Every civilized country in the world takes care of its citizens. This country is decades behind the power curve.

It's definately not an easy situation we find ourselves in...

First, no one really knows exactly how this bill is going to work just yet... moving on from that obvious flaw... if there is going to be cost controls in this thing and any kind of body prioritizing need/health care you could in theory use that to do the very seperation you discuss... time will tell, though I imagine it'll continue to be a freebie to everyone regardless if you can't cover yourself... and nothing is truly free.

as a cancer survivor I can say I never expected someone else to pay for my treatments and I did nothing to bring my form of cancer on myself...

I'll also say that I would be surprised to see any civilized nation have greater percentages of the population that basically contribute nothing to the overall pool and drain the vast amounts we see here... that's a major difference between us and them when it comes to financial sovereignty and I believe that has to be addressed at some point if we are going to continue down this road.

anyway, the libs won this battle... congrats to them... the war's far from over.

 

[Cackalacky]

Well again, no one really knows exactly how this bill is going to work just yet... moving on from that obviousl flaw... if there is going to be cost controls in this thing and any kind of body prioritizing need/health care you could in theory use that to do the very seperation you discuss...

I agree. We must see how this proceeds.

as a cancer survivor I can say I never expected someone else to save my butt and I did nothing to bring my form of cancer on...

I had family not so lucky and were on both sides of the fence with being insured an not insured. I would say the one's with insurance were under more daily duress because of the insurance company beauracracy as compared to the Medcare/Medicaid, though that is my opinion.

I'll also say that I would be surprised to see any civilized nation have greater percentages of the population that basically contribute nothing to the overall pool and drain the vast amount ours do... that's a major difference between us and them when it comes to financial sovereignty and it has to be addressed at some point if we are going to continue down this road.

This is why America need's a major attitude adjustment. People have forgotten "America" is an idea not a place......

 

[ACamp1900]

The insurance company bureaucracy is definitely not worth defending... though I personally don't trust to gov. to fix anything in regards to proper, inexpensive or (especially) efficient health care… hopefully I’m wrong here because this is all leading towards single payer imo