ObamaCare - exchanges ,report your states options!

[rockfist]

I knew Stupak could be bought for money. I grew up next to his district. Its really poor. If you've ever been to the Upper Penninsula of MI you'd understand that. I doubt $750K was much of a buy-off though....that's really really cheap. If I were representing that district and Obama needed my vote I would've held out for a grant for the Catholic hospital in Marquette.

[Night Strike]

I knew Stupak could be bought for money. I grew up next to his district. Its really poor. If you've ever been to the Upper Penninsula of MI you'd understand that. I doubt $750K was much of a buy-off though....that's really really cheap. If I were representing that district and Obama needed my vote I would've held out for a grant for the Catholic hospital in Marquette.

All Kucinich needed was a ride on Air Force One.

[Nobunaga]

I knew Stupak could be bought for money. I grew up next to his district. Its really poor. If you've ever been to the Upper Penninsula of MI you'd understand that. I doubt $750K was much of a buy-off though....that's really really cheap. If I were representing that district and Obama needed my vote I would've held out for a grant for the Catholic hospital in Marquette.

All Kucinich needed was a ride on Air Force One.

...

... He's such an ass.

...

[Phatscotty]

Wow, health care is so much simpler all of a sudden! We're on our way to nirvana baby.

P.S.

Love how Obama went from pre-bill:

-your premiums will be reduced by 3000%
-this will cut over a trillion dollars off the debt


Immediately after the bill passed...

-This bill does not solve all our problems.

He understands the problems that are going to occur from this bill, and he already has the answers. He's just waiting. The problems are coming for sure. Then we'll put in "the fix".

[bradleybadly]

I would like to post this in response to the people spouting how the bill was passed despite the "fact" that "Americans don't want it."

http://www.gallup.com/poll/126929/Slim- ... ssage.aspx

Not buying it. BUT look at the dems though! almost 80% favor government control! You don't say? The government already gives them the working mans money.... gimme, gimme, gimme... I'd be so ashamed to be a democrat.

I think you assume they have a conscience.

[notyou2]

Yes, I agree, the answer is a one party democracy. That would settle it once and for all.

[Phatscotty]

Yes, I agree, the answer is a one party democracy. That would settle it once and for all.

no opposition? implying, no freedom of speech or thought? implying further, no right to bear arms? implying further, no right to a trial?


SUCH an EASY PICK http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4rBDUJTnNU

[notyou2]

Apparently that,s what Jay was espousing at the end of the previous page. He seems to want only 1 party. Not a good idea.

[rockfist]

Most people have a conscience, they just value things differently. My RL brother is pretty far left. I understand what he values and he understands what I value and we agree to disagree for the most part. We can do it in a civil manner because we understand each other. What gets him and gets me is people who don't make any sense, yet with some issues we can get emotionally attached to them and not make any sense to outsiders, but we understand the emotional attachment we each have and can ignore it until it passes.

[Phatscotty]

And what happens to health care distribution when the economy get REALLY bad? Sure, the care may be available you can get what you need just like before, but if the economy sucks, then the Administrations budget projections for 2011-12-13-14-15 of how much they expect to take in by way of taxes to pay for health care will come up short, and that in turn will put a huge pressure on the federal annual budget, and probably force cutbacks in other areas. Expect percentage of gov't spending on health care to grow....and grow....and GROW.

[PLAYER57832]

The thing that both of you ignore is that nobody really has no insurance. If you get seriously sick or injured, you DO get care. And then, after you have lost whatever you own, the rest of us pick up the tab for your bills... and often wind up supplying you with a house, food, etc (since you lost what you had to bankruptcy).

Also, MANY americans HAVE insurance, pay for it, but face ridiculous limits, high co-pays and the threat of having their policy dismissed.

The REAL truth is that having a healthy population is the best thing we can do for our economy. That does involve more than just health insurance, but insurance is a big start.

[thegreekdog]

The thing that both of you ignore is that nobody really has no insurance.

You might want to have a discussion with Democrat leadership on this one.

[Night Strike]

The thing that both of you ignore is that nobody really has no insurance. If you get seriously sick or injured, you DO get care. And then, after you have lost whatever you own, the rest of us pick up the tab for your bills... and often wind up supplying you with a house, food, etc (since you lost what you had to bankruptcy).

Also, MANY americans HAVE insurance, pay for it, but face ridiculous limits, high co-pays and the threat of having their policy dismissed.

The REAL truth is that having a healthy population is the best thing we can do for our economy. That does involve more than just health insurance, but insurance is a big start.

Then what's the difference in this plan? The people that can't afford the health insurance under this law will be subsidized, which means the public is still paying for them. Furthermore, ALL insurance prices will have to rise because they are no longer allowed to charge high-risk people higher premiums (since that's unfair). So really, this law does NOTHING to take care of the problems you keep complaining about with the public paying for other people.

By the way, the far left still voted for this bill because the public option is already included!!! Government panels will decide what must be covered under each insurance plan, so they will be telling the private companies what to collect on behalf of the government. The private companies can no longer offer basic insurance if the government doesn't approve of the plan. That's government control!! And what happens when these insurance companies are inevitably driven to bankruptcy?? Will the government bail them out, or let them fall and take over their plans under their direct control. It's astounding how much control you liberals give to the government.

[Titanic]

The thing that both of you ignore is that nobody really has no insurance. If you get seriously sick or injured, you DO get care. And then, after you have lost whatever you own, the rest of us pick up the tab for your bills... and often wind up supplying you with a house, food, etc (since you lost what you had to bankruptcy).

Also, MANY americans HAVE insurance, pay for it, but face ridiculous limits, high co-pays and the threat of having their policy dismissed.

The REAL truth is that having a healthy population is the best thing we can do for our economy. That does involve more than just health insurance, but insurance is a big start.

Then what's the difference in this plan? The people that can't afford the health insurance under this law will be subsidized, which means the public is still paying for them. Furthermore, ALL insurance prices will have to rise because they are no longer allowed to charge high-risk people higher premiums (since that's unfair). So really, this law does NOTHING to take care of the problems you keep complaining about with the public paying for other people.

By the way, the far left still voted for this bill because the public option is already included!!! Government panels will decide what must be covered under each insurance plan, so they will be telling the private companies what to collect on behalf of the government. The private companies can no longer offer basic insurance if the government doesn't approve of the plan. That's government control!! And what happens when these insurance companies are inevitably driven to bankruptcy?? Will the government bail them out, or let them fall and take over their plans under their direct control. It's astounding how much control you liberals give to the government.

Insurance prices will not rise, comparable plans will fall by around 14% on average. The progressives in the Democrat party only supported the bill grudgingly because they realise that it will be an improvement to the status quo.

[PLAYER57832]

The thing that both of you ignore is that nobody really has no insurance. If you get seriously sick or injured, you DO get care. And then, after you have lost whatever you own, the rest of us pick up the tab for your bills... and often wind up supplying you with a house, food, etc (since you lost what you had to bankruptcy).

Also, MANY americans HAVE insurance, pay for it, but face ridiculous limits, high co-pays and the threat of having their policy dismissed.

The REAL truth is that having a healthy population is the best thing we can do for our economy. That does involve more than just health insurance, but insurance is a big start.

Then what's the difference in this plan?

effectiveness

The people that can't afford the health insurance under this law will be subsidized, which means the public is still paying for them. Furthermore, ALL insurance prices will have to rise because they are no longer allowed to charge high-risk people higher premiums (since that's unfair). So really, this law does NOTHING to take care of the problems you keep complaining about with the public paying for other people.

We all have final health "coverage", but is relying upon going to the emergency room and the highest levels of cost for stricly emergency issues, followed by bankruptcy for those who have any wherewithal REALLY the most cost-effective way to deal with this issue? Evidence shows not.
'
Right now (that is, prior to passage of this bill, before its full implementation), insurance prices AND health costs keep rising. Two primary reasons heath costs have increased are the huge increases in paperwork (this bill won't fix that much at all) AND the cost of covering those who don't pay. Further, people who pay privately, whether buying private insurance OR simply paying out-of-pocket almost always face far higher costs than those with group insurance, who pay with insurance. SO, the bottom line is that

EVERYBODY pays for the indigent, right now. That won't really change.

EVERYBODY pays for those who "elect" not to have insurance or who have insufficient insurance. (and not that many of those with insufficient insurance don't even realise it!). THIS will be reduced .. a LOT.

INDIVIDUALS and some small businesses buying insurance help subsidize the bigger groups that get discounts on their politices. THIS will change. It will change in 2 ways
a. In 4 years, the exchanges will offer policies that will better match large group policies. In some cases, they will cost more (if you are getting the very minimum types of insurance now), BUT the coverage will be much greater. The result is that while insurance costs will go up for some, overall healthcare costs will generally go down. It is projected to balance out. Also, better coverage means more people with insurance will be able to get preventive care, which will reduce the overall healthcare burden.

b. Because so many more people are now covered, the numbers of deadbeats and people who have to go bankrupt, then wind up depending on taxpayers, will go down. This will BOTH reduce the actual healthcare costs AND decrease the amount insurance companies need to charge for policies.

Also, add in this:

c. countering #b is that insurance companies will have to cover more people with serious illnesses, BUT, what happens to these people right now? Right now, they wind up on the fall back taxpayer system of either qualifying for Medicaid (children with disabilities, primarily) OR waiting until the issue is a life-threatening emergency, whereupon the taxpayers and/or other hospital patients will pick up the tab through increases in their fees. This part is projected to essentially balance out, eventually to create substantial savings as fewer and fewer people let preventable things slide to the point the get to be emergencies. (some emergency things are not fully preventable, of course).

COMPANIES will benefit less than individuals. Those who currently offer very extravagent policies (the "cadillac" plans) will see increases. BUT, those are also policies that rather distort our healthcare system right now. Because requirements are so low and coverages so high, those policies are pretty much always subsidized by the other "more normal" policies.

LARGE companies are generally already required to offer healthcare. Those offering the absolute bottom-of-the barrel policies may have to up the ante, but most of those policies were a joke anyway. Really, they were just ways that companies could advertise that they "had insurance", but had such high co-pays that most people would have been better off or almost better off without them. (putting the money instead into just getting the care they needed).

BOTH large and small employers will get some better tax breaks. The breaks are better for small companies, but they are the ones who have had to pay higher premiums all along. Big companies have already negotiated their "breaks" with the insurance companies directly.

In the end, only will tell if this is correct or not. Right now, its just one opinion versus another, but that is what the congressional budget office projections said.

By the way, the far left still voted for this bill because the public option is already included!!! Government panels will decide what must be covered under each insurance plan, so they will be telling the private companies what to collect on behalf of the government. The private companies can no longer offer basic insurance if the government doesn't approve of the plan. That's government control!! And what happens when these insurance companies are inevitably driven to bankruptcy?? Will the government bail them out, or let them fall and take over their plans under their direct control. It's astounding how much control you liberals give to the government.

You might try actually looking at those policies. My family had one of those policies. We faced $1000 deductable per person, per year, with co-pays NOT counting toward that $1000. Even after that $1000 was reached, only 80% of any bill was covered until we had paid another $2000.

Just add those figures up. Consider what happens when, like us, you wind up having to take your child to the hospital in December.. and then again in January. In 3 months, we had over $3000 in medical bills. FURTHER, even though legally, we were supposed to be offered payment plans, they were really handled by independent billers who are jsut glorified collection agencies. So, even though we paid over $1000 toward this bill by the end of January, we had collection agencies calling us DAILY throughout March. Finally, I did what they expect you to do and put the rest on my credit card, where we are still paying 15.99% interest.

ALSO, look at the cost to taxpayers. The ONLY reason we did not go bankrupt, wind up yet another drain on our community, is because I am an absolute penny-pincher, my husband managed to get another job with better insurance AND, then both my kids were diagnosed with disabilities that then qualified them for Medicaid (temporarily). Medicaid wound up paying a final $200 of one bill and a few co-pays (less than $400 total) .. and amount I regret, but at the same time, my husband and I have both given far, FAR more to this community and state than $400 worth of service, so I don't feel too guilty about it.

If that happened now, ... we would have coverage enough that we could have handled the payments, would not have had to seek Medicaid and my husband would not have left a job where he had 25 years in.

[spurgistan]

Anybody else think that the reason that polls on HCR went up considerably right after the bill was passed has to do with the fact that the media has been forced to report on what was actually in the bill, and not what people SAY is in it and about it? Which could get me started on how the bias in American "news" media isn't so much on the left-right axis but on the axis of favoring politics over policy. As well as generally erring on the side of being complete rockheads (Christiane Amanpour's recent promotion being one of few bright spots for me)As Fred Durst so memorably put it,

It's all about the he-said she-said bullshit/ I think you'd better quit/ Talking that shit/ Or you'll be leaving with a fat lip

Portentous, I think you'll agree. Anyways, I'm fairly certain that when the embers die down, people will look at the projected savings and 32 million added to the ranks of the insured and wonder why this makes us all Commie Nazis.

[Night Strike]

The thing that both of you ignore is that nobody really has no insurance. If you get seriously sick or injured, you DO get care. And then, after you have lost whatever you own, the rest of us pick up the tab for your bills... and often wind up supplying you with a house, food, etc (since you lost what you had to bankruptcy).

Also, MANY americans HAVE insurance, pay for it, but face ridiculous limits, high co-pays and the threat of having their policy dismissed.

The REAL truth is that having a healthy population is the best thing we can do for our economy. That does involve more than just health insurance, but insurance is a big start.

Then what's the difference in this plan?

effectiveness

ROFL!!!!!!!!!!! The moment you say government is effective is the moment your argument has absolutely no credibility.

By the way PLAYER, your arguments are the epitome of "Woe is me, I have to have the government take care of me." Nearly every single argument you use is how you have had a hard life so the government has to make it better. F'ing get over it and take care of yourself. Just because good health care is expensive doesn't mean the government has the right to dictate insurance coverage. If you want to take care of your family, you have to PAY for it, not cry to the government. Things happen in life, so quit making the rest of us take care of YOU through the government. If your insurance plan isn't good enough, get a better one. Or even better, remove the employer based system and allow a personal pick your coverage plans rather than blanket polices. Prices WILL drop.

Also, why on earth should good insurance plans be taxed?? It's just another proof that the goal of this legislation is not better health care, it's about government control. Fewer people will have the premium insurance plans because of being taxed on them, so that means actually worse coverage for them.

[Nobunaga]

... From the Boortz:

I guess this what Nancy Pelosi meant when she said that we would have to pass the bill to find out what is in it. And what is one of the first major bits that we discover? This healthcare bill includes an exemption for the people who actually authored the bill. So we won't bore you with the details ... but that is where the devil lies. Essentially the bill exempts senior staff members in leadership offices and on congressional committees from being forced to participate in the government plan.

Maybe this is why Republican Senator Charles Grassley plans to introduce an amendment to require the president, Cabinet members and White House staff to buy their insurance through the government exchanges. Currently in the law, they are prevented from going into the exchanges because they get their coverage through their employer.

Are you shocked, folks? I mean, this sucker was 2,400 pages long. How many details and caveats will we be sorting through for years to come?



http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/03/ ... 4480.shtml

[thegreekdog]

Anybody else think that the reason that polls on HCR went up considerably right after the bill was passed has to do with the fact that the media has been forced to report on what was actually in the bill, and not what people SAY is in it and about it? Which could get me started on how the bias in American "news" media isn't so much on the left-right axis but on the axis of favoring politics over policy. As well as generally erring on the side of being complete rockheads (Christiane Amanpour's recent promotion being one of few bright spots for me)As Fred Durst so memorably put it,

It's all about the he-said she-said bullshit/ I think you'd better quit/ Talking that shit/ Or you'll be leaving with a fat lip

Portentous, I think you'll agree. Anyways, I'm fairly certain that when the embers die down, people will look at the projected savings and 32 million added to the ranks of the insured and wonder why this makes us all Commie Nazis.

I think that's part of it. I think it has to do with who was polled. I think it has to do with people being sick of the healthcare debate. I sure hope you're right that costs go down. We'll have to wait until somewhere around 2018 to find out.

Also, because you said Commie Nazis... "My eyes! The goggles do nothing!"

[jay_a2j]

Apparently that,s what Jay was espousing at the end of the previous page. He seems to want only 1 party. Not a good idea.

Wrong. I favor the NO PARTY system.

[Timminz]

Apparently that,s what Jay was espousing at the end of the previous page. He seems to want only 1 party. Not a good idea.

Wrong. I favor the NO PARTY system.

Ah yes, anarchy. The best system.

[PLAYER57832]

The thing that both of you ignore is that nobody really has no insurance. If you get seriously sick or injured, you DO get care. And then, after you have lost whatever you own, the rest of us pick up the tab for your bills... and often wind up supplying you with a house, food, etc (since you lost what you had to bankruptcy).

Also, MANY americans HAVE insurance, pay for it, but face ridiculous limits, high co-pays and the threat of having their policy dismissed.

The REAL truth is that having a healthy population is the best thing we can do for our economy. That does involve more than just health insurance, but insurance is a big start.

Then what's the difference in this plan?

effectiveness

ROFL!!!!!!!!!!! The moment you say government is effective is the moment your argument has absolutely no credibility.

By the way PLAYER, your arguments are the epitome of "Woe is me, I have to have the government take care of me." Nearly every single argument you use is how you have had a hard life so the government has to make it better.

Apparently you missed the part where I said we DO pay. And we also pay for all of you who feel you "don't need insurance".

I find it pretty ironic that you accuse me of expecting the government to take care of us, when we have insurance, we use it and you keep saying you should not have to buy it.

[
Also, why on earth should good insurance plans be taxed??

It is pay.

A better question is why other forms of compensation should be taxes, but insurance is somehow exempt. And, the result is the decrepit system we have today, were employers and not the people using the insurance are the customers.


Face it, your whole argument is Someone disagrees with me = they are a flaming liberal = I don't have to even try to understand their position, because anyone who thinks differently from me is just an idiot.

And its exactly that kind of thinking that has created the mess we are in today, not any particular ideology, but this idea that "its my way or you're an idiot"!

[Titanic]

Apparently that,s what Jay was espousing at the end of the previous page. He seems to want only 1 party. Not a good idea.

Wrong. I favor the NO PARTY system.

Ah yes, anarchy. The best system.

I think he was talking about Washington then anarchy, but either way a completely unrealistic ideal in the modern world.

[rockfist]

Players I agree they are pay, but I would go along with not taxing cadillac insurance plans for unions. I am fine with that.

[silvanricky]

I cannot wait until the election in November to get those bums that passed this out of office.