Obama recently had his health care bill passed into law requiring every US citizen to have health insurance. What are your opinions on this subject. Do you like or dislike this bill. I personaly dislike at the moment because at this time we are all required to be insured, but the goverments not paying for it, we are.

Also, Non-American users feel free to comment I would like to see your opinion on this.

Written by Guest on 26.03.2010 at 18:10

(...)recently had his health care bill passed into law requiring every US citizen to have health insurance. (....) at this time we are all required to be insured, but the goverments not paying for it, we are.

Welcome to the reality of The Netherlands that has been in place ever since I was small kid.

I don't really like the part where it is mandatory to buy private health insurance. I'd rather have no health insurance than to have mandatory private insurance. Of course, I have social security, so I'm pretty much covered. Also, I find it strange that Republicans are bitching and moaning about how the health care bill will destroy America even though they offer up no health care plan of their own. The way I see it, the Republican health care plan is basically this: "Don't get sick, and if you do get sick, die quickly." Of course, the Democrats are not free of guilt. They're the majority party, but instead of standing up for themselves, they decide to concede to Republicans at every corner of the road like a bunch of wimps. It's this kind of bullshit that proves that the American government is completely broken.

I feel they shouldn't force people to have health care, if you don't want it, you don't get care. Period!
And people who are wealthy enough to just pay as they need don't need to be forced into health care.
You know someone on the sidelines is going to profit from this, that is how our Gov't works, personal agenda.

For starters, Insinerate, you are completely wrong in regards to the Republican "don't get sick" approach. Hooray for just believing what you are told.

the GOP plan has been up and available on the web for MONTHS, the media simply opts not to cover it because they don't like the Republicans (outside FOX news... which is accused of being propaganda, while it slants to the right just as every other fucking network slants equally to the left. most Americans are just to dense to grasp that) ...

the GOP plan is one that made more sense to me and centered around two principals.

1. Tort Reform. Fuck the lawyers. keep them out of healthcare. Tort reform would limit two things - 1, the amount that can be awarded due to a lawsuit and 2, what the lawyer's percentage cut would be. i.e. instead of suing a hospital and getting $35,000,000 because a surgeon made a mistake while performing surgery to save your life, with your lawyer getting 35% of it... instead you get $250k, of which the lawyer gets $50k. game over.

people bitch about insurance costs without knowing what Doctors have to pay. a co-worker of mine worked at a hospital for a decade. a Doc confided once that though he made $250,000 a year, he had to pay over $100,000 in malpractice insurance just in case he gets sued.

Hospital costs are inflated because they run additional, unnecessary tests preemptively to defend against law suits. And they need to generate income to cover their legal liabilities.

the Senate bill, 2,700 pages, contains NOTHING on tort reform.

Pelosi's House bill actually had wording in it PROTECTING lawyers, denying some funding to any state which passed a law capping either the amount of a financial award, or the lawyer's percentage take.

2 - portability. Competition is good. it drives prices down as businesses compete for marketshare. i can get my car insurance from anywhere in the US. my mortgage is from a bank half a country away. but i can only buy insurance from a provide in-state. it seriously impacts costs when there are only 2-3 providers for a state. open up insurance to competition across state lines. when more companies are competing, they will have to provide better service at a better price if companies want to survive.

(incidentally, evil health insurance companies only make 2.5 cents to the dollar... that's a slim profit margin).

these two fixes would succeed in reducing cost to people like me, who buy their own insurance, as well as reduce costs to businesses who provide it for their employees.

and these two ideas would cost very little to enact.

cost being kind of important at this juncture.


instead...

We get a $1,000,000,000,000 bill which requires 10 years of taxation to break even covering only 7 year's worth of service. and it only broke even after the Dems engaged in the same kind of shady accounting that caused Wall Street companies and Enron to come crashing down.

the costs NEVER match up with projections. historic cases with things like Medicare have shown they end up being about, oh, off by a factor of 900%. and not in the favor of savings.

we get the creation of huge amounts of bureaucratic institutions that will now exist between you and your health care provider... all gobbling up $$$$$ off the public teat. and once created, the will not easily go away.

we get a bill rife with bribery and extortion - the cornhusker kickback, the louisiana purchase, spending $100,000,000 on an airport to buy Stupak's vote.

we get a major overhaul of an industry that is 1/6th the US economy* that instead of typical Legislative rules require 60% support, got jammed through with barely 50%. it's mob rule.

Americans were duped into believing it's "Free" health care.

it's not. Every fucking one of us will pay for it. and keep paying for it. and our children will REALLY pay for it.

we get a bill that has so much bureaucracy associated with it that 35% of physicians said they would be willing to leave the profession if it passed. (How is access going to improve when lose 35% of doctors, but add another 30,000,000 people to the mix?)



* oh yes, and the US economy.

we hear a lot about how Bush spent like a drunken sailor (he did), but 0bama is spending like the drunken 7th Fleet.



that was done BEFORE the passage of this health care monstrosity.

Medicare is horribly in the red.

social security is a time bomb just starting to go off this year, when there will be more in payouts than revenue.

the post office is so far in the red they are talking about closing on Saturdays and 5 day delivery now.

even 0bama's "Cash For Clunkers" ended up horribly overbudget with American taxpayers paying an average $24,000 per vehicle....

at the rate we WERE spending before this passed, those of you US metalstormers just getting out of college now were going to pay, in your lifetime, some $113,000 in income taxes just to meet the interest on the debt this administration is adding.

think about that for a moment. $113,000 just to even out the interest - not to pay down our debt, nor pay for whatever services the gov't provides in 2015, 2020, 2040, etc... just on INTEREST.

shit came out today stating that by 2020 our debt will account for 90% of our GDP.

the reason we had an economic crash in this country was too many people lived beyond their means, buying shit they couldn't afford and putting it on a credit card.

thanks to dems pushing Fanny and Freddie, too many people bought houses they couldn't afford.

too many companies also spent likewise, or engaged in risky behavior.

Credit ran out, market crushed.

People started defaulting on mortgages, the housing market collapsed (and still has yet to recover. i'm responsible, thank you, bought a house Mrs. COld and i could afford... and our mortgage is now "underwater" - our house is actually worth less than we owe on it, as result of the housing boom that occurred to handle the demand from douchebags buying houses when they couldn't afford car payments, let alone mortgages) ...

same shit with companies... of course WE ended up bailing them out.

Now 0bama, Speaker Cryptkeeper, and Harry Reid are engaging in the same behavior that got the private sector, and U.S. citizens i trouble - but only at a much more rapid pace and on a national level.


if you are living well beyond your means when the bell tolls, you and yours are fucked.

if a company is living well beyond it's financial capability, when the bell tolls, that company and it's employees are fucked.

and when the gov't is living well beyond it's means.... well, when it collapses, we're all fucked. and not just Americans, for those of you reading and gloating. there will be disastrous consequences across the global economy.


the fact is some 10% of our country is unemployed (actually closer to 18% when you count those whose benefits have run out or who have just given up)... which means state and federal revenues are down. the primary issue should be job creation - not ramming down a piece of legislation which will shackle economic recovery by adding all sorts of provisions and taxes which will stifle job creation.

it seems to me to be simple math:

more people working = more money going in to the system and less money paid out of it to those on entitlements.

less people working = more money coming in and more money paid out to those requiring entitlements.

0bama keeps claiming that the economy and job creation are his key concern, yet he has spent the last year trying to push this through... this will result in more and more unemployment.

the Dems in power were not listening as they tried to ram this down our throat for the past year.

they weren't listening when 66% of people were against it.

they weren't listening when usually democrat strongholds Virginia and NJ suddenly found Republicans in the Governor's mansion last fall.

they weren't listening when over 1,000,000 people marched on Washington last July.

they weren't listening when one of the most liberal states of all, Massachusetts, ended up voting in a conservative to the seat formerly occupied by the "Lion of the Left", 40 year Senator, and date-killer Ted Kennedy... you know, of those Kennedys.

they still aren't listening now - which is good.

time to vote out all the bastards this November.

Written by Guest on 26.03.2010 at 19:03

Of course, the Democrats are not free of guilt. They're the majority party, but instead of standing up for themselves, they decide to concede to Republicans at every corner of the road like a bunch of wimps.

this statement is beyond full of fail.

if the entire health care debate were a family holiday dinner, the democrats got all the spots at the grown-up table. the republicans didn't even get to sit at the kiddie table. instead, they were relegated to the role of family dog, kept outside and unable to see in on the dinner as the blinds were drawn shut.

as the dems had their supermajority, they simply felt they did not need (or want) any GOP input.

all this during 0bama's "post-partisan" government.

in the end, because the dems couldn't bribe, blackmail, and extort each other in an attempt to pass this (i.e. the stupak $100m airport, louisiana purchase, cornhusker kickback) quickly enough before Massachusetts voted in a Republican to replace Kennedy's seat and the supermajority was lost, they *had* to finally give the republicans some say.

net result, probably around 24 pages out of 2,700 are GOP ideas.

the rest is all the democrats own filth.

if this piece were remotely bipartisan, and the democrats conceded as you implied, i imagine maybe they would have gotten at least one republican to cross the line and vote for it.

instead, they couldn't even get their own party to vote for it.

but go ahead and blame the "obstructionist" (labeled as such even when they lacked the power to actually obstruct anything) republicans. you done been indoctrinated real good.

BitterCOld's posts: tl;dr

Written by Guest on 26.03.2010 at 22:09

BitterCOld's posts: tl;dr

funny, that's what most of our elected officials said about the 2,700 page bill they just passed into law.

Written by BitterCOld on 26.03.2010 at 22:14

Written by Guest on 26.03.2010 at 22:09

BitterCOld's posts: tl;dr

funny, that's what most of our elected officials said about the 2,700 page bill they just passed into law.

I don't care about your opinions.

Written by Guest on 26.03.2010 at 22:17

Written by BitterCOld on 26.03.2010 at 22:14

Written by Guest on 26.03.2010 at 22:09

BitterCOld's posts: tl;dr

funny, that's what most of our elected officials said about the 2,700 page bill they just passed into law.

I don't care about your opinions.

actually a good chunk of that rant is fact. particularly in regards to the horrible financial state of Medicare, Social Security, and this plan which requires 10 years taxation to break even on 7 years services (with shifty accounting)...

that handy chart is per White House and non-partisan Congressional Budget Office figures. not my opinion. their projections.

but you're 19.

enjoy paying off and for the babyboomers and my generation's sins for the rest of your life because you just swallowed what they fed you.

Written by BitterCOld on 26.03.2010 at 22:22

Written by Guest on 26.03.2010 at 22:17

Written by BitterCOld on 26.03.2010 at 22:14

Written by Guest on 26.03.2010 at 22:09

BitterCOld's posts: tl;dr

funny, that's what most of our elected officials said about the 2,700 page bill they just passed into law.

I don't care about your opinions.

actually a good chunk of that rant is fact. particularly in regards to the horrible financial state of Medicare, Social Security, and this plan which requires 10 years taxation to break even on 7 years services (with shifty accounting)...

that handy chart is per White House and non-partisan Congressional Budget Office figures. not my opinion. their projections.

but you're 19.

enjoy paying off and for the babyboomers and my generation's sins for the rest of your life because you just swallowed what they fed you.

I reject your reality and substitute my own.

I am all for reform of the health care system, within what is cost-effective and we can afford. it needs to be done in a way that is sustainable.

i am not a "teabagger" - and just the fact you used the derogatory colloquialism to describe them shows you are likely predisposed against them.

the tea PARTY movement in modern America largely stemmed up from center/center-right citizens who have had enough of the politicians on BOTH sides.

they are negatively portrayed in the media in this country because the the media sold out their journalistic integrity and are hitched to the President's wagon. the media is no longer the watchdogs of the public, but rather the 4th column of the government. whether fox or cnn, they do not report the news, the dictate to you how you should feel about it.

it's funny how all the anti-war protesters that marched around with widely distributed mass produced signs were deemed "grass roots" (note they disappeared completely once Bush was gone... even with BO sending MORE troops to war)... whereas the teapartiers are viewed with disdain and as 'astroturf' as they disagree with the establishment.

for 8 years we heard dissent was the highest form of patriotism. now it's just nutjob lunatics.

or at least that is how msnbcnn is instructing people to feel.

and lots of people are gobbling it up.

__________________________________________________________________

as for health care reform, as i said i am for it. i laid out two simple points that would reduce cost drastically to consumers, health care providers, and companies that provide employee benefits - without draining the economy.

at some point in time, we could see how that effects the market and costs. and, provided our President engaged in action that would result in fixing the economy rather than slowly murdering it, we might have more people working - paying more into the system - giving us the money to help those who CANNOT help themselves (as opposed to those who can help themselves and simply opt not to)

and just when did you take the time to read the bill?

or did you just spew forth those same lefty favorite talking points that have been coming up (and getting shot down) since the bill was signed?

i imagine you, like our elected officials, didn't you just regurgitated talking points. because i can tell you listed two of the points that my (hopefully soon to be ex-) Rep cited as why she voted for it - only there are loopholes built in which render them void.

you mention the doughnut hole - that's been in place for years, part of Bush's Medicare Part D initiative - and that did not go over swimmingly. i know, i worked for a company that provided discounts to people with holes in their prescription drug coverage. it was a debacle. the seniors were left clueless by new regulations, leaving them irate - and the plan put me (and 70% of my co-workers) out of work.

you'd also be aware that the Gov't just fucked over seniors with this plan by caving to pharma and increasing the duration on exclusive patents by five years... and promising that we would not import generics from abroad.

so instead of 7 years of paying $1,000/year (or whatever) for some new drug before switching to a cheaper generic, those poor bastards have to pay that $1,000 (or whatever) for 12 years.

that's really putting the needs of the people first, eh? (at least that doughnut hole will help them out a little bit... right?)

never mind the part about boosting reimbursements to docs who already lose money with medicare - medicare is already in the red before this bill just yanked $500,000,000,000 from it. and the "doc fix" reimbursement, projected at $200,000,000,000 was not actually factored in to the existing "break even" budget for the plan.

just out of curiosity, what is the total cost of socialized health care?

how much does it REALLY cost the people? let's compare your tax rates versus ours...

if it is so good, why do rich canadians/canadian politicians fly to America whenever they need a procedure done? i guess it is not so good when you must wait two years for a procedure...

and what good is a health care solution if enacted so horribly as to implode the country's economy by the end of the decade?





we fail to see eye to eye and never will.

your viewpoints and mine are, and forever will be, different.

both in health care and in terms of government.

The fact you think the NYT still has integrity and that the tea party folks are extreme right (not even close, lots of independents and centrist dems have started showing up) shows just how little you get it. no further political debates are going to happen as it's a useless exercise. you simply see things how you wish to from across the pond and in your academic ivory tower. then poke moral holes in any policy with zero regard to actual impact. it's the curse of the career academic. reality is things that look good on paper often don't when the rubber meets the road.

the negative of the economic impact will far outweigh any "good" done by this.

it's just a matter of time - and conveniently shielded by the design of the bill, that time will come long after the politicians who have passed it are out of office.

but at least we can discuss metal and H2G2, as you said.

The USA should just do what we do up here...you should all stand to get taxed an additional seven percent...that money goes to things like us having the ability to walk into a hospital and be able to get taken care of...maybe if they increased the overall minimum wage to 10.25/hr (the minimum wage in Canada) then the average income of someone in the USA would increase and as a result you all would probably pay more federal taxes and that could be used to help pay the health care...this way the overall burden wouldn't be on the backs on the average small to medium sized business owner...this way large cooperation such as Wal-Mart would be paying their employees more and they would be able to contribute more tax revenue into the health care plan...

Even if you are forced to pay the $800/month for health care insurance you can just go to State Farm right? And it would be something like $200-300/month instead but with the whole $2000 deductible which will come in handy for you if you have a real problem in the future, my American neighbors...a $150,000 surgery and you only have to pay $2000 out of pocket and the rest is paid for...or am I wrong?

Still...what I said in the first part is something that would work perfectly in the USA...