Court rRuling on Obamacare

[onmyknees]

The US Supreme Court has 2 monumental rulings regarding the constitutionality of The Affordable Care Act signed into law in 2010:

1) Does the Federal government have the authority to require its citizens
to purchase health insurance, the so-called mandate?
2) Does the federal government have the authority to require states to
expand Medicaid as a condition of receiving federal health care funding, the so-called all or none coercion doctrine?

Item 2 is far reaching. AFA will provide millions of low income adults with health insurance and not cost any state a dime until 2017. If you're rooting for the Court to overturn Obamacare you probably already have insurance for your family and don't give a shit about anyone but yourself.
But I don't want to stifle debate with my opinion.

http://thirdbranch.update.crooksandl...s-all-or-nothi

Another sweeping generalization...good job.

And if you're contention is correct, and it's not........nearly 60% of citizens are selfish scum bags. My health care premiums have gone up 15% since the bill passed, and my deductible went from 0 to 1500 for the same coverage...so there's noting affordable about The "Affordable" Health Care Act. And that's just the start....there was so much budget trickery in the original bill to keep it under a billion it was a joke... Now the CBO has revised it's original number and it's a budget buster. Check it out...you might need CPR ! I hope you have the proper coverage. lol


Ultimately it's the same old shit...the producers pay the freight for the non producers...and don't give me that liberal bilge about a safety net...we all get that.

And if that's not enough....there's the Constitution, as Faldur properly pointed out. You act like it's some small militant, uncaring minority who opposed it. Wake up and read the papers dude...it's 26 states !

And if this was just about covering the uninsured, he wasted a year of super majorites in Congress and enormous political capitol and put the country through a twisted, corrupt process when if he sat at a table across from Paul Ryan they could have modified Medicare and Medicaid and increase coverage thresholds. This is about the liberals endless appetite to run every aspect of your life from a bloated, inefficient central government.

[Faldur]

The "special interest" here is the insurance companies. I don't see why anybody owes them a damn thing. Since they managed to take full control of the healthcare industry in the '80s, costs have risen exponentially until it's now 1/6 of the entire US economy. None of this is ever going to come under control until we stop treating the insurance industry as if it has an entitlement.

You really think the government can do a better job of managing health care than private industry? Ya, there track record with running programs efficiently is outstanding.

How about we look at the "models" liberals like so much. Canada is bleeding so much money from health care they are looking to reverse the government run aspect of it. And England, well that place speaks for itself.

[Odelay]

The founding documents of this country supersede the need of any special interest. Get your head out of your ass, and discover what made this country what it is.

One of the things that contributed to making this country what it is is slave labor from 1605 to 1865. Most of the founders were definitely hip to that and even the ones who weren't looked the other way.

[flabbybody]

I understand why Brits think we're fucked up.
It's amazing. 9 people sit on the US Supreme Court. We know 4 will vote to uphold and 4 will vote to overturn. So the law that ultimately determines how most of us regular folk get the medical care we need to live (or die) will come down to one person's decision.

I don't think this is what George Washington and Alex Hamilton had in mind when they created the American government. But they never needed to wait for their insurance company to approve their MRI and authorize their hip replacement surgery.

[hippifried]

You really think the government can do a better job of managing health care than private industry? Ya, there track record with running programs efficiently is outstanding.

How about we look at the "models" liberals like so much. Canada is bleeding so much money from health care they are looking to reverse the government run aspect of it. And England, well that place speaks for itself.

Canada? Pfffft! We already have a working model. It's a real good one. It covers the largest group of healthcare consumers in the country, & costs pennies on the dollar (if that much) compared to private insuranbce. It's called Medicare. So yeah, the government can do a better job of managing health care than private industry.

[Prospero]

If Obamacare is indeed overturned what will become of the car insurance mandate?

A very pertinent observation. To drive in the US (and most anywhere) you MUST have car insurance. So is your government ignoring the constitution when it insists on this?

[Faldur]

Canada? Pfffft! We already have a working model. It's a real good one. It covers the largest group of healthcare consumers in the country, & costs pennies on the dollar (if that much) compared to private insuranbce. It's called Medicare. So yeah, the government can do a better job of managing health care than private industry.

Thats actually a great example of governments incompetence. $60 billion dollars a year in fraud. A program that is projected to go bankrupt in 2024. And what does this marvelous program provide? Medicare provides health insurance to 46 million elderly and disabled americans. And lets not forget the fine example of medicaid, another 53 million lower income families are recipients of this program.

So 99 million americans benefit from the medicare/medicaid program, thats almost 1/3 of our countries population. At an annual cost of $835 billion dollars. Thats the example you want to use? I am not disagreeing that this is a viable and needed service. But come one, were talking $8.4 million per recipient. At last check my health insurance didn't quite cost that much.

Anything the federal government does, it does extremely poorly. We spend 4% more annually in medicare/medicaid than we do for defense. And that number is only growing at a rate that is unsustainable. If thats your example of how well our government will run our health care system, no thanks count me out.

[Faldur]

Arggh.. corrections.. $8,434 per recipient.. my bad. Look at the zeros.. still an equal amount to what my health care costs me.

[Stavros]

In this country Stavros, health care insurance is something responsible citizens buy for themselves, or negotiate into their employment. It ensures various levels of there health care costs are covered. The majority of Americans support the continuation of this in the private sector.

I think that you provide precisely one side of the argument to balance with the other. The balance of argument, on the principles, is whether or not you want a health care system for the whole country paid for out of a special tax, or health care provision based on personal insurance plans, which you advocate.

I cannot agree with you because my experience of the NHS in the UK, which I use and once worked in. I am aware that the NHS is flawed, that successive governments have tried to reform it, which is code for making it less expensive than it might be, just as I am aware that the quality of healthcare, particularly in the hospital sector, varies from one part of the country to another. But right now I get my medicine free of charge (because of my age), and if I fall ill or am involved in an accident, I am treated. I paid for it for years when I was fit and healthy, and it doesn't bother me that I have been subsidising the NHS which treats people who are sick because of the way they live -smoking cigarettes, for example, creating cancers and heart disease to name but two consequences of that bad habit. The NHS belongs to all of us, drug addicts, smokers, the obese, children who fall out of trees, pregnant mothers, and so on; it is as strategic a resource to the country as the military, and certain industries. People here are also free to, and do buy private health insurance. Its also known as queue jumping.

Two issues: what happens to people in the USA who cannot organise the day ahead, quite apart from the rest of their lives? And haven't there been families in the US which went bankrupt because of medical bills?

I agree there are horrendous cost issues and poor management, on both sides of the Atlantic, but I don't see these as problems that cannot be solved.

[hippifried]

Faldur, you're full of shit. Where to start...

1st) Medicare is not an insurance policy & never has been. It's not a savings account either.

2nd) You lumped Medicare & Medicaid together. Not the same thing at all. If you're going to add all government healthcare programs together, you have to add the VA. Wow! We just went over 1/3 of the population. Dollars to donuts says that just those 3 programs account for more than half of the healthcare services used. I don't have the figures in front of me, but I'm thinking that statement could apply to Medicare alone.

3rd) & the #1 stupid argument in here is... The comparison of a single premium paid into a minor piece of the total to the payout per recipient of the biggest consumers of the services. What? You didn't think anybody'd notice that you don't know the difference between in & out? You really should try taking a second look at all the crap you parrot. Make the real comparison. If you have a job, your paystub lists your payment into Medicare. Hold that up next to your private insurance premium. By the way, were you figuring in your employer's contribution? If so, less than 8.5M per annum wont get you much private coverage these days.

4th) $60 billion in fraud? & that # comes from ...? No matter though. You understand what Medicare fraud is, right? It ain't somebody lying about their age. It's over billing & double billing by the industry, & most of that's by the insurance companies. It happens all through the private market too, but they have ways to make it all look like losses so it can re written off taxes. There's your private industry at work. You pay more. You get less. They're ripping off the taxpayers, so you're paying even more for less. Providing you actually pay taxes. Meanwhile, the government's providing more services for less money than the whole private insurance industry combined. But they can't do anything right, right? Hope you're enjoying that idiotlogue fantasy world you live in.