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7th March 2017, 11:51 AM | #681 |
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7th March 2017, 12:30 PM | #682 |
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Don't feed the trolls. Just ignore them. |
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7th March 2017, 12:31 PM | #683 |
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7th March 2017, 12:32 PM | #684 |
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Gunter Haas, the 'leading British expert,' was a graphologist who advised couples, based on their handwriting characteristics, if they were compatible for marriage. I would submit that couples idiotic enough to do this are probably quite suitable for each other. It's nice when stupid people find love. - Ludovic Kennedy |
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7th March 2017, 12:39 PM | #685 |
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You added nothing to that conversation, Barbara. |
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7th March 2017, 01:11 PM | #686 |
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7th March 2017, 01:17 PM | #687 |
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It's not really an enforceable tax though. The IRS can't put a lien on your assets to force you to pay. The only thing the IRS can do is deduct it from your refund, if any.
The only thing of any value in Obamacare was the Cadillac tax, which has already been delayed once, and which now the Republicans will delay again. Oh well ... |
7th March 2017, 01:21 PM | #688 |
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I've always believed that cluelessness evolved as an adaptation to allow the truly appalling to live with themselves. - G. B. Trudeau A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it. - Kay, Men in Black. Enjoy every sandwich. - Warren Zevon |
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7th March 2017, 01:23 PM | #689 |
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So I've started a blog about my writing. Check it out at: http://fourth-planet-problem.blogspot.com/ And my first book is on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B077W322FX |
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7th March 2017, 01:31 PM | #690 |
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It's much much worse.
Instead of encouraging people who do not have insurance to obtain it, it becomes harder for more people who cannot afford coverage to carry insurance. Preexisting conditions must be covered. Where is the motivation for the healthy uninsured person to carry insurance? Why should they, they need not purchase insurance until they have an expensive medical need. But for the poor person having trouble keeping insurance, it gets harder and harder. And that's only a fraction of the problems with this alt-reality these right wingers live in. Everyone gets a tax break regardless of income? Heaven forbid a poor person get a handout a rich person doesn't also get. And the amount of the subsidies in no way helps the poorest people get health insurance, and the rates for the elderly are going to skyrocket because the insurers can now charge 5 times more than younger policy holders instead of 3 times as much while the subsidies don't cover a fraction of that increase. This plan is a joke. **** the poor, we all know they are just lazy moochers. |
7th March 2017, 01:32 PM | #691 |
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Pacifism is a shifty doctrine under which a man accepts the benefits of the social group without being willing to pay - and claims a halo for his dishonesty. Robert Heinlein. |
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7th March 2017, 01:33 PM | #692 |
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The whole point was to create a viable market for individual insurance. It has failed miserably in that respect. All it has managed to do is redistribute money and health care resources from the middle class to the poor, from the young to the old, from the moderately healthy to the sick, and from the responsible to the irresponsible. It has also had the effect of redistributing customers from good doctors to bad doctors (via the incentive of health insurers to narrow networks).
As for this idea that it gave health care to all of these uninsured people who weren't getting it before, I bet that for every one of those people there is at least one formerly insured person who has had to cut back on his health care consumption because of rising premiums, deductibles, and co-pays. There really is no free lunch unless you move to a more market-based system where people can express their preferences and do their own cost-benefit calculations. Obamacare exacerbated the fundamental problem of overconsumption of medical care in the US. It jumbled the distribution somewhat, but the fundamental problem remains. |
7th March 2017, 01:35 PM | #693 |
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I believe you'd be wrong. From what I am hearing on the news, the current penalty for not carrying insurance is a mere $600 or so a year.
30% more in rates if your insurance lapses for 2 months and you try to purchase it again can be a couple hundred more a month, times 12 months, $2400 or 4 times the current penalty. |
7th March 2017, 01:35 PM | #694 |
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7th March 2017, 01:35 PM | #695 |
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Life - a preexisting condition.
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7th March 2017, 01:35 PM | #696 |
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I've always believed that cluelessness evolved as an adaptation to allow the truly appalling to live with themselves. - G. B. Trudeau A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it. - Kay, Men in Black. Enjoy every sandwich. - Warren Zevon |
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7th March 2017, 01:37 PM | #697 |
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Rand Paul and his camp are announcing now their completely market based plan (what did we have before the ACA?)
Magic, costs will go down. |
7th March 2017, 01:38 PM | #698 |
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And if you can show those people exist outside of your imagination that would be great but you seem to have about the same relationship with evidence that Trump does.
ETA: Actually if you are saying now many more people got coverage than previously then that's an admission your previous post was false, unless you're planning to argue more people lost out than gained. I do hope you are because that will be hilarious. |
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So I've started a blog about my writing. Check it out at: http://fourth-planet-problem.blogspot.com/ And my first book is on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B077W322FX |
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7th March 2017, 01:52 PM | #699 |
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All I see is we're going back to the way it was. I hate to break the news to you conservatives, but our health care system was an embarrassment before the ACA. All you've done is go from one embarrassment to another while other wealthy countries actually DO SOMETHING about controlling costs.
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7th March 2017, 01:59 PM | #700 |
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You added nothing to that conversation, Barbara. |
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7th March 2017, 02:10 PM | #701 |
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Sufficiently advanced Woo is indistinguishable from Parody "There shall be no *poofing* in science" Paul C. Anagnostopoulos Force ***** on reasons back" Ben Franklin |
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7th March 2017, 03:11 PM | #702 |
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My bold. What we had was far from "completely market based"; rather a mish-mash of employer plans, private plans, Medicare, Medicare supplements, Medicaid, and cost-shifting from those who couldn't or didn't pay but got treatment anyhow to those who could; and from those with insurance (which could negotiate prices) to those without (who couldn't). In other words, a complete, bolloxed mess. Paul's plan would no doubt revert to something like that, only worse.
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7th March 2017, 03:14 PM | #703 |
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Prove it. The only way that would be possible would be for someone to file limited claims. But one of the primary complaints about the previous system was the practice of "rescission," where insurers looked for pretexts to cancel policies when someone started to file big bills. And nothing would prevent a company from refusing to renew a policy that started to cost them money. So those people you're talking about -- if you can find any -- might have been getting cheap office visits and flu shots, but if they ever needed lung cancer treatment or a heart transplant or expensive medication for a chronic condition, they'd be out in the cold. Some of them might have discovered that the hard way.
The ACA is certainly not perfect, as Obama himself acknowledged. But it was based on Republican proposals to expand coverage and share costs. Democrats going back to the '70s supported some variation of taxpayer-supported universal care, which still makes the most sense. |
7th March 2017, 03:19 PM | #704 |
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“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago |
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7th March 2017, 03:20 PM | #705 |
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We still have the mish-mash (and you left out the VA and Tricare for the military and vets). But the ACA was intended to make insurance available to individuals who couldn't get it any other way, and it would have worked a lot better if the Repubs hadn't blocked Medicaid expansion in many states, which has been pretty successful in the states that permitted it.
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7th March 2017, 03:25 PM | #706 |
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7th March 2017, 03:30 PM | #707 |
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That's the key point. Health care is not an optional consumer good, like a new car or big TV or even a house. People buy it because they need it, and they are not in a position to haggle. And if they don't get it because they can't afford it, they end up worse off and we all ultimately absorb the cost one way or another. A "market" presumes that buyers and sellers compete on an equal footing. That's just not the case for health care.
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7th March 2017, 04:07 PM | #708 |
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You added nothing to that conversation, Barbara. |
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7th March 2017, 04:45 PM | #709 |
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So I've started a blog about my writing. Check it out at: http://fourth-planet-problem.blogspot.com/ And my first book is on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B077W322FX |
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7th March 2017, 05:23 PM | #710 |
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The magic of the marketplace will provide health insurance for $75 a month just like the good old days.
The math works out a bit like this. Customer pays $75 a month and doctor visits have a $20 copay. The insurance pays the doctor an additional $100 for each visit. Sounds like a much better deal than Obamacare. The trick is that the insurance doesn't cover more than six visits a year. The insurance company pockets $25 a month even if the customer visits the doctor six times. Several of the Obamacare horror stories publicized when the program first came out involved people who had this kind of health insurance policy. One that only provided the illusion of coverage. |
7th March 2017, 06:23 PM | #711 |
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Well, I for one am rather disappointed in this effort. This is only marginally different than ACA and it's certainly not seeming to be much better. The party in power seems to have cobbled together a crap plan quickly rather than taking their time to craft something truly innovative.
IMO they are just paving the way for the eventual single payer or government owned healthcare system. |
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7th March 2017, 06:24 PM | #712 |
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7th March 2017, 06:53 PM | #713 |
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"A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep." "Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation." |
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7th March 2017, 07:19 PM | #714 |
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Yes it is. At least, the vast majority of it is. The fact that occasionally, medical intervention is life-saving is no different than everything else, which under certain circumstances can be life saving. If the only way to escape the murderer is a gun, then healthcare won't help.
Lest this sound like argument for argument's sake, I'd like to point out that underlying the issue, in a major way, is how much healthcare is the "right" amount and what are we willing (as a society) to pay for. We must not lose track of the choice element in play. |
7th March 2017, 07:32 PM | #715 |
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If you think a doctor's visit costs $120, you haven't seen a billin statement lately. Try more like $300 for the GP visit and $600 for the specialist, not counting procedures, labs and drugs.
My dental insurance OTOH, they insist the dentist charge less to an insured person. I pay $50/mo and the coverage they provide amounts to the discount they insist the dentist give. I'm trying to talk my dentist into collecting my monthly payment and just charging me less. |
7th March 2017, 07:39 PM | #716 |
Nasty Woman
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No it isn't. And I've pointed out the flaws in Libertarian thinking re heath care many times.
The uninsured get emergency care and leave the hospital with bad debt that paying consumers end up paying. The market encourages copycat drugs to take a share of the known market usually by marketing and almost never by being better drugs. The market is not conducive to investing R&D in new antibiotics until deaths from drug resistant infections are rampant. The list goes on. The market does not solve all ills and it's not just about the right to healthcare. And why the hell shouldn't people have the right to life? That doesn't mean taxpayers need fund everything from food to flu shots, but the society as a whole benefits when they are at least part of the process. |
7th March 2017, 07:43 PM | #717 |
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7th March 2017, 07:54 PM | #718 |
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For some reason, they want to push this through before the CBO can crunch the numbers and give us estimates on how much it will cost and how many more (or less) people will be covered.
Heck, they haven't even given their own estimates have they? |
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1. He'd never do that. 2. Okay but he's not currently doing it. 3. Okay but he's not currently technically doing it. 4. Okay but everyone does it. 5. He's doing it, we can't stop him, no point in complaining about it. 6. We all knew he was going to do it which... makes it okay somehow. 7. It's perfectly fine that's he's doing it. |
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7th March 2017, 07:57 PM | #719 |
Penultimate Amazing
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That's what I've heard. If that is true, how can anyone support it? I'd like to hear from right-wingers how it would be acceptable to rush a bill through without a projection of costs?
Then again, rumors from the last GOP meeting is that they are going to need D support to get it to pass, because they don't have enough GOP votes. |
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Gunter Haas, the 'leading British expert,' was a graphologist who advised couples, based on their handwriting characteristics, if they were compatible for marriage. I would submit that couples idiotic enough to do this are probably quite suitable for each other. It's nice when stupid people find love. - Ludovic Kennedy |
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7th March 2017, 08:03 PM | #720 |
Penultimate Amazing
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While it is not true that "everyone pays less" it is true that healthcare can be delivered differently.
Quote:
I understand the idea that medical care is a commodity is met with moral outrage, but let's leave that card for the WWJD crowd to play. The truth is the life-saving bit is far outweighed by consumers desiring treatments not directly linked to mortality or even quality of life issues. In a commodity environment there is one tried and true path to cost reduction - buy less. |
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