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The new health care proposal...Follow

#1 Sep 17 2009 at 5:28 AM Rating: Good
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2009-09-16-health-care-bill_N.htm

Specifically this:

Quote:
Would require U.S. residents to buy insurance or face yearly fine up to $3,800 per family;


Why is this in there? I'm trying to wrap my head around how it would be beneficial to fine people who can't get insurance. Or am I reading this wrong?
#2REDACTED, Posted: Sep 17 2009 at 5:31 AM, Rating: Sub-Default, (Expand Post) Wint,
#3 Sep 17 2009 at 5:34 AM Rating: Decent
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Sounds to me like they're proposing to enforce a social healthcare system via a private health-care plan. Instead of taking a 'national health' type premium from a persons salary, they force people to ensure they have health care off their own back, thus appeasing the insurance companies.

God you guys know how to **** things up.
#4 Sep 17 2009 at 5:44 AM Rating: Excellent
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Wint wrote:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2009-09-16-health-care-bill_N.htm

Specifically this:

Quote:
Would require U.S. residents to buy insurance or face yearly fine up to $3,800 per family;


Why is this in there? I'm trying to wrap my head around how it would be beneficial to fine people who can't get insurance. Or am I reading this wrong?


Call me a skeptic, but perhaps this has some influence.

Quote:
Sen. Max Baucus, a leader in the troubled effort in Congress to write a health care overhaul bill, has received more campaign donations from the health industry than any elected federal official except President Barack Obama and three other senators.


*snip*
Quote:
The stream of generous campaign contributions from doctors, drug makers, hospitals and other medical interests didn't stop at the chairman's door. It extends to the other members of the so-called Gang of Six, the two Democratic and three Republican senators who labored with Baucus since June to produce what he hoped would be a bipartisan bill. All have received above-average donations from the health-care world.


*snip*
Quote:
Since 1989, five of Baucus' top 20 campaign contributors have been from the health care world: drug makers Schering-Plough Corp. and Amgen Inc., insurers Blue Cross/Blue Shield and Aetna Inc., and DaVita Inc., which provides dialysis services.


*snip*
Quote:
"Companies like the health care industry don't spend money on members of Congress because they think it's like burning their money and throwing it away. They spend money on members of Congress because they believe it gets them results," said Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard Law School professor and co-founder of Change-Congress.org, an advocacy group seeking to end large private political donations.


*snip*
Quote:
"I resent any implication that any of my actions or decisions are a result of contributions," Baucus told the Independent Record newspaper of Helena, Mont., last month. "I resent that because that is totally inaccurate. I do what I think is right, period."


uh-huh.

Nexa
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#5 Sep 17 2009 at 5:45 AM Rating: Excellent
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Wint wrote:
I'm trying to wrap my head around how it would be beneficial to fine people who can't get insurance.

Without supporting it or whatever, the thought is to make insurance mandatory in the same manner auto insurance is mandatory. Making everyone get covered would help prevent abuses of safety net systems. If you know that you're going to be covered in the event of an accident or catastrophic illness, you might think "Why bother getting insurance? When the time comes, the government will take care of it." Which it will to a point via government reimbursement on unpaid emergency room visits and the like but that money has to come from somewhere. Essentially, the "fine" is the insurance premium you're paying by not getting insurance.

The "up to" is an important part of the reported fines. $3,800 is what you'd pay if you have a family of four and are making 300% or more over the poverty line. Provisions in the bill mandate that companies not refuse people insurance and provide assistance to lower income families. Personally, I think there's not enough assistance but it was watered down to help appease Republicans who wound up roundly rejecting the bill anyway.
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Belkira wrote:
Wow. Regular ol' Joph fan club in here.
#6 Sep 17 2009 at 5:49 AM Rating: Decent
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Quote:
Why is this in there? I'm trying to wrap my head around how it would be beneficial to fine people who can't get insurance.


It's a punishment for not having insurance. Apparently that makes more people get insurance. Disregard, for the moment, the already egregious punishment for not having insurance, and that such a measure is basically just a codification of already present limits.

Punishing someone for not doing good, of course, is completely counter-intuitive to the ideal of public aid in the first place. If not stricken (though I'm sure such provisions will be stricken or highly qualified) something like that would just be ignored by the really poor people anyway.

Liberals can and will blame conservative self-reliance fetishism, and conservatives can and will blame liberal big government fetishism, for any instantiation of such a principle in the health world.

Okay, I think that's all for the platitudes.
#7 Sep 17 2009 at 5:53 AM Rating: Excellent
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The idea isn't to fine people who can't get insurance (that's what the assistance and insurance company mandates are supposedly for), it's to fine people who won't get insurance.
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Belkira wrote:
Wow. Regular ol' Joph fan club in here.
#8REDACTED, Posted: Sep 17 2009 at 6:02 AM, Rating: Sub-Default, (Expand Post) So when Obama said he wasn't willing to raise the taxes on the middle class that was just another lie then wasn't it. Joe Wilson was censured for what again?
#9 Sep 17 2009 at 6:10 AM Rating: Excellent
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publiusvarus wrote:
Joe Wilson was censured for what again?

Disrupting a joint session of Congress.
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Belkira wrote:
Wow. Regular ol' Joph fan club in here.
#10 Sep 17 2009 at 6:15 AM Rating: Excellent
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This is not Obama's plan. This is what came out of committee.

Also, fines are not taxes.

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#11 Sep 17 2009 at 6:19 AM Rating: Decent
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Jophiel wrote:
The idea isn't to fine people who can't get insurance (that's what the assistance and insurance company mandates are supposedly for), it's to fine people who won't get insurance.


Yes, that's the idea, and it's a good idea, but if you already can't make premiums through either independent wealth or co-pays through work, then you ought to be scared of stuff like this just in case someone forgets the idea.

Expect the worst; hope for the be.. goddammit. Okay, that's the end of the platitudes, I swear.

Quote:
The idiocy of the entire situation is liberals are willing to believe what he says about healthcare.


Why shouldn't we? You aren't supposed to assume that every damn thing that the president says is a lie. There's quite a difference between questioning someone's motives and talking to him about his intentions, and refusing to believe them even after such talking. Do you want to make the world so damn sad that every word from the mouth of an elected official should be treated as anathema?
#12 Sep 17 2009 at 6:25 AM Rating: Good
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rofc.
#13 Sep 17 2009 at 6:28 AM Rating: Excellent
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Samira wrote:
This is not Obama's plan. This is what came out of committee.

Also, fines are not taxes.



Yes, it's the piece of **** that came out of committee with no public option since Democrats are spineless and bow to pressure from various contingencies instead of standing up and doing what's good for the citizens of the country when they have the power to do just that. It's crap.

I ******* ******* love run on sentences.

Is it Friday yet? Jesus.

Nexa
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“It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes. But a half-wit remains a half-wit, and the emperor remains an emperor.”
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#14 Sep 17 2009 at 6:29 AM Rating: Excellent
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Nexa wrote:
Samira wrote:
This is not Obama's plan. This is what came out of committee.

Also, fines are not taxes.



Yes, it's the piece of sh*t that came out of committee with no public option since Democrats are spineless and bow to pressure from various contingencies instead of standing up and doing what's good for the citizens of the country when they have the power to do just that. It's crap.

I @#%^ing @#%^ing love run on sentences.

Is it Friday yet? Jesus.

Nexa


Yes, yes, this is just the first step. /soothe

I do agree with the spineless comment, though. Jesus, people, stand up for something.

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#15 Sep 17 2009 at 6:32 AM Rating: Decent
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Quote:
Is it Friday yet? Jesus.


It is for me!

Once I get home today I'm just going to chug some nyquil and catch up on a few assignments.

And apparently I lost my wallet so I can't go anywhere today anyway, because I have neither the change for a train, nor the license with which to drive to the bank to get change for the train, nor the card with which to retrieve the change for the train. At least I was sick in the first place.

Edited, Sep 17th 2009 10:53am by Pensive
#16 Sep 17 2009 at 6:54 AM Rating: Excellent
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Nexa wrote:
Yes, it's the piece of sh*t that came out of committee with no public option since Democrats are spineless and bow to pressure from various contingencies instead of standing up and doing what's good for the citizens of the country when they have the power to do just that.

And it did absolutely nothing. For all the concessions and things given up versus the House bills, not a single Republican is willing to give even qualified support for it. Here's hoping that this serves to drive the lesson home that the GOP has zero intent on allowing any health care reform legislation to pass. If anything passes and Obama can say that he started us down the road to reform, they'll consider it a catastrophic failure.

I previously quoted Senator DeMint calling health care Obama's "Waterloo" and the GOP's chance to "break" the president. But, to go further, look at how the GOP continues to poison the well on health care. Hysterical accusations of death panels and Mexicans stealing your insurance and medical rationing and socialism and doctors fleeing the US and all the rest of that shit. All designed to get the Tea Party sign-wavers and town hall screamers worked into a froth. Do you really think these guys are going to go back their base of people and say "You know, we worked it out with the Democrats and think we can meet them halfway on the death panels and rationing and socialism..." Of course not. They have no intent of ever working with the Democrats on this. They never did. You don't whip up a group of people into a hysterical frenzy just so you can say "Ok, settle down now and listen to how this bill from the Democrats is gonna be okay." This was a pure slash & burn campaign and people suggesting otherwise are outright lying.

It's time to say "fuck it" and come up with a liberal bill, public option & all, get it through the House and push it through the Senate via reconciliation. The GOP has their chance to be at the table and they not only passed it up but they never wanted it in the first place. Throwing health care under the bus to score political points against the president is much, much more important to them.\

Some of you were lucky enough to see a similar rant posted on Facebook!
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Belkira wrote:
Wow. Regular ol' Joph fan club in here.
#17 Sep 17 2009 at 7:07 AM Rating: Excellent
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Jophiel wrote:

It's time to say "fuck it" and come up with a liberal bill, public option & all, get it through the House and push it through the Senate via reconciliation. The GOP has their chance to be at the table and they not only passed it up but they never wanted it in the first place. Throwing health care under the bus to score political points against the president is much, much more important to them.\


Exactly this. I'm sick of the Dem's acting like quivering pussies whenever they have a chance to actually DO something and then ***** and moan when the pubs are in power and pushing everything through without consideration for the "feelings" of Democrats or concerns about non-existent chances at bipartisanship. You're IN ********, just ******* DO IT.

Nexa
____________________________
“It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes. But a half-wit remains a half-wit, and the emperor remains an emperor.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones
#18 Sep 17 2009 at 7:11 AM Rating: Excellent
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The irony is that the "progressive" party does more to maintain the status quo than the "conservative" party does.

Don't try to figure it out. It's like staring directly into the sun.

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#19REDACTED, Posted: Sep 17 2009 at 7:16 AM, Rating: Sub-Default, (Expand Post) Jophed,
#20 Sep 17 2009 at 7:20 AM Rating: Excellent
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publiusvarus wrote:
LMAO...boohoo poor liberals having a tough time getting anyone from the GOP to sign on to a piece of sh*t bill.

Keep those tears in mind once the liberal version gets passed Smiley: smile
Quote:
Does anyone hear really think Democrats give a sh*t aboout Republican opinions.

Until the Republicans give a shit about Americans, it doesn't really matter.
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Belkira wrote:
Wow. Regular ol' Joph fan club in here.
#21 Sep 17 2009 at 7:23 AM Rating: Decent
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Quote:
Don't try to figure it out. It's like staring directly into the sun.


Makes sense to me. You have party of people who are ostensibly, in the ideal, supposed to listen to what other people say. The gop is composed of people who are (also ostensibly) people, to whom you should listen, so you should be all tolerant and such.

I don't really know when tolerance turns into milquetoast. Reconciling tolerance with efficacy is just another example of ethics versus reality, and it's still just as frustrating.
#22REDACTED, Posted: Sep 17 2009 at 7:24 AM, Rating: Sub-Default, (Expand Post) Jophed,
#23 Sep 17 2009 at 7:26 AM Rating: Excellent
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Baucus is crafting solutions with people who have a political disincentive to find them. Thus, this result is not at all surprising.

I did like the WarGames reference though.
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#24 Sep 17 2009 at 7:28 AM Rating: Good
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Quote:

Yes, yes, this is just the first step. /soothe

I do agree with the spineless comment, though. Jesus, people, stand up for something.


And this is why a direct democracy would be hilariously more effective.
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#25REDACTED, Posted: Sep 17 2009 at 7:30 AM, Rating: Sub-Default, (Expand Post) Time,
#26 Sep 17 2009 at 7:31 AM Rating: Excellent
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publiusvarus wrote:
Says the man who doesn't mind taxing middle class americans out of existence.

Wait.. when we tax the middle class out of existance, do I get bumped up or down? This is important.
Quote:
You must enjoy starving children.

Do you mean I enjoy depriving children of food or that I enjoy hanging out with the malnourished? This is also important.
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Belkira wrote:
Wow. Regular ol' Joph fan club in here.
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