Obamacare, Healthcare, etc.

[Gwynplaine]

http://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arg...98-Tuesday.pdf

Here's Tuesday's transcript you can CTRL+F search it. Too hard to quote much without cutting off awkwardly, or making enormous mouthbreather Youtube commenter quotes.

[SwampdonkeyPLD]

http://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arg...98-Tuesday.pdf

Here's Tuesday's transcript you can CTRL+F search it. Too hard to quote much without cutting off awkwardly, or making enormous mouthbreather Youtube commenter quotes.

Yea I skimmed it, didn't see anything.

It sounds like Kennedy is open to the idea of the mandate though with his "burden of jurisdiction" or w/e statement/question.

[Sepukku]

Now that they got past the whole "we're allowed to talk about this now and not in 2014" thing, I don't see an issue; to be frank, requiring every adult to have health insurance is only a small step beyond requiring all drivers to have auto insurance - the only difference being that driving a vehicle is optional, where as merely being alive is qualification enough for being hit with the health insurance requirement.

[Demosthenes11]

apart from the constitution, do people have a problem with the mandate? I mean, we are already paying for people that have no insurance, why not charge them? I don't consider it a personal choice because it does affect the country through taxes and the allocation of funds. buying mustard is a personal choice and affects nobody. buying health insurance is a responsible choice that affects society (when it's affordable)

[falloutboy14]

I think that's really the argument that the guy needed to nail home and I don't think he did. If people don't buy broccoli or a cell-phone, other people don't pay to provide you with those items. With all of the talk of scarey federal government requiring people to act/purchase an item. People are being asked to act/purchase an item they presently receive for free.

fwiw, universal healthcare seems so much easier.

[Xantavia]

Depending on the exact way it works out, I am against paying money to a private company because I'm alive, but I wouldn't have a major issue sending a check to the state government for insurance.

[Gwynplaine]

I mean, we are already paying for people that have no insurance, why not charge them? I don't consider it a personal choice because it does affect the country through taxes and the allocation of funds. buying mustard is a personal choice and affects nobody. buying health insurance is a responsible choice that affects society (when it's affordable)

People are being asked to act/purchase an item they presently receive for free.

The problem in both cases is the moral hazard of government subsidy. The Occupiers had at least that much of a point that government shouldn't be subsidizing banks (or anything) which socialize the losses and privatize the profits. Instead the government shouldn't subsidize the banks and let them stand or fall in a free market.

The same goes with insurance and medicine. *If* you're going to grant that government *should* be subsidizing other people's insurance/medical *then* you shouldn't be surprised or complain when certain people drive up the costs. That's the exact image of the slippery slope unrolling before your eyes. Begin at the unquestionable premise that government *should* socialize costs with subsidized healthcare, and then when it causes issues and makes it expensive point to "greedy" companies and demand more subsidizes by law, and more until it's nationalized.

Falloutboy your quote is doubly ironic in that case. If it is okay to ask people to pay for something they're currently "getting for free" then why not ask them to pay via the free market and not *force* them to pay via government fiat? In either case they're having to pay to get insurance.

Insurance and medical care are largely so expensive because of existing past laws that attempted to fix the same problems we have now. Only now they've been made worse. Such as the tax incentives that bound insurance up with your employer instead of you. Initially it began to get around idiotic government price-controls. Failing to use the Commerce Clause for its actual purpose, politicians could enable insurance to be traded across state lines which would broaden the market and spread out risk pools even more. Things like guaranteed issue, community rating, and now being required to cover pre-existing conditions for children tack on tons of hugely expensive perks that have to be paid for by the healthy.

Scrapping all this past garbage that is choking the insurance and medical industry would be a massive improvement and make them less expensive for everyone. But now instead Obamacare would just add an enormous new heap of garbage onto the pile. In the process violating all of our rights, particularly doctors and medical workers who take a decade or more to learn their profession. Not to mention costing an impossible amount of money which has to necessarily result in poor care, rationing, and social favoritism where the V.I.P.'s with connections get ahead.

[hey]

I should have just no clicked on this thread when i saw gwyn was the last to post in it.

[Talint]

The problem in both cases is the moral hazard of government subsidy. The Occupiers had at least that much of a point that government shouldn't be subsidizing banks (or anything) which socialize the losses and privatize the profits. Instead the government shouldn't subsidize the banks and let them stand or fall in a free market.

The same goes with insurance and medicine. *If* you're going to grant that government *should* be subsidizing other people's insurance/medical *then* you shouldn't be surprised or complain when certain people drive up the costs. That's the exact image of the slippery slope unrolling before your eyes. Begin at the unquestionable premise that government *should* socialize costs with subsidized healthcare, and then when it causes issues and makes it expensive point to "greedy" companies and demand more subsidizes by law, and more until it's nationalized.

I've yet to hear of a decent answer as to why we don't have a private police force/fire department/complete educational system/etc. Looking at health care through that lense makes as much sense to me as the rest of those.

I don't want the government to subsidize private health insurance either, but I do want free/sufficiently cheap, universal coverage. I'd rather it come at a tax dollar.

[falloutboy14]

Falloutboy your quote is doubly ironic in that case. If it is okay to ask people to pay for something they're currently "getting for free" then why not ask them to pay via the free market and not *force* them to pay via government fiat? In either case they're having to pay to get insurance.

Isn't that the system we had? I'm not sure what you mean by asking them to pay via the free market. It sounds like you're suggesting we continue doing what we've been doing.

In the process violating all of our rights, particularly doctors and medical workers who take a decade or more to learn their profession. Not to mention costing an impossible amount of money which has to necessarily result in poor care, rationing, and social favoritism where the V.I.P.'s with connections get ahead.

What rights are getting violated? People having to buy health insurance isn't the end of the world. I'd much rather see someone take on the TSA then he individual mandate. Also, how are doctors/nurses negatively affected by this? I was unaware their rights were being trodden on.

Also, I've seen no evidence to suggest that health care will be rationed significantly. Unless you're looking in the direction of death panels. Also, V.I.P's getting ahead never happens presently.

[hey]

I've yet to hear of a decent answer as to why we don't have a private police force/fire department/complete educational system/etc. Looking at health care through that lense makes as much sense to me as the rest of those.

I don't want the government to subsidize private health insurance either, but I do want free/sufficiently cheap, universal coverage. I'd rather it come at a tax dollar.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-...ers-didnt-pay/

[Headspace]

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-...ers-didnt-pay/

some of the comments

[Demosthenes11]

gwyn, I'm not sure if you are advocating that people that do not have insurance should be left for dead when they become sick

[Talint]

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-...ers-didnt-pay/

I'm actually familiar with this story (or similar ones). My sympathy goes out to them, and it illustrates nicely why libertarianism is hogwash.

But if you don't pay for the insurance that's what happens. The mayor is correct in saying, "If the city's firefighters responded to people who didn't pay there would be no incentive for anyone to subscribe."

[Sepukku]

Scrapping all this past garbage that is choking the insurance and medical industry would be a massive improvement and make them less expensive for everyone.

Scrapping all of this *except pre-existing condition ban* would be an improvement and make things less expensive for most. Scrapping pre-existing condition ban means that people like myself, who have a medical condition through no fault of their own (not from drinking, being fat slob, being stupid and getting in some haphazard accident, etc), who cannot get health insurance through an employer (and its becoming less and less accessible through employers), would be forced to pay extreme sums of money just to keep ourselves alive. For me, somewhere in the range of $6,000-$10,000 a year. If I have no complications or issues arise from the normal daily routine medicine and appointment care. And I know its far worse for others.

Besides the fact that it would be a waste of 13 years of education money invested in me to become a productive tax paying citizen for the next 40-50 years plus whatever other less obvious costs the government has incurred from me over the past 22 years, from a strictly moral standpoint, do I deserve to die because I have a medical condition through no cause of my own and I cannot afford the treatment I need?

I don't care what happens to individual mandate, cross-state insurance, etc. All I care about is that insurance companies cannot deny me coverage or give me coverage but factor in the medical condition and charge me $1000+/month when figuring out my premium. People don't deserve to die, theres a lot of good people suffering from medical ailments who unfortunately don't have good coverage or any coverage. Banning pre-existing conditions means the cost has to be diffused amongst the entire insured population. If anything, individual mandate is a way of increasing the insured population (snaring the "Im healthy, I dont need insurance" crowd) to even diffuse that risk amongst even more healthy people, lowering the cost of premiums to healthy insurance patients than had they simply passed the pre-existing condition ban without the individual mandate.

[kuronosan]

Fuck people who don't want to buy health insurance because they're "healthy". So the fuck what? I don't like forcing hands as much as the next person, but let's be realistic. This is nothing like auto insurance - people who don't drive don't need it. No car, no insurance. Even still - many states require you to purchase insurance before you can register a car and every car dealer I've been to requires insurance before you drive the car off of the lot whether it's leased, paid, or loaned - and that's for a car, which is completely optional to own.

A life is not optional. When you are born (into this country) you have a responsibility to also care for others (ironically, one of the tenants of Christianity despite the conservative view trying to say people are responsible for only themselves). Theoretically, if everyone having health insurance will drive the cost of insurance down, you are doing your country and fellow citizens a huge disservice by not chipping in. In effect, you're like that guy who says he's not hungry at work so everyone else chips in $5 each to buy a pizza and then he wants to pay you for a slice because suddenly hunger sets in. You score even bigger dick points if you don't chip in and just take the slice after everyone paid for it. Everyone else paid more, so why should you pay less or nothing at all?

I also see it from the other side - I really don't want to have to pay for lazy fat shitfaces to receive health care when they refuse to take care of their bodies and lives and sit on their asses collecting free welfare and food stamps to feed their lazy addiction with my tax dollars. I really don't want that to happen, but it does - and it will - regardless of whether I want it to or not.

Rather than shoveling this fear-mongering shit down peoples' throats as if the world will end if we suddenly decide to help each other out, we need to allow for our citizens to take care of themselves without all of this indulgence going on. A large part of this is that there are more laws in place to protect businesses than the consumers that give them money. Why?

[archibaldcrane]

This is the continual gambit.

People who lose the birth-lottery (getting lupus or childhood leukemia or type-1 diabetes or any of the rest of shit ailments you can't do a fucking thing about to prevent) are fucked completely in the current system. Their only route to avoiding completely crippling medical bills as adults is to work jobs exclusively that offer group health insurance plans. They can't buy on their own, because noone will insure someone with a pre-existing condition like that. Fired or laid off? Fucked. Want to start their own business? Fucked.

That's fucked up, unfair, those of us lucky enough to win the medical birth-lottery can and should socialize the expense for those who lost it due to no fault of their own, by eliminating the use of pre-existing conditions as a barrier to entry for private health insurance.

But then, shit, well, then everyone can just wait til they get sick, buy insurance (since their pre-existing condition can't exclude them) and then only be paying in when they are taking way more out than they pay.

That doesn't work either.

The individual mandate solves the second problem, which is created by the first problem. Of course a single-payer system eliminates both problems, but that's socialism.

Of course, all insurance is a form of socialism, but don't tell that to mouth-breathers.

[Sepukku]

Couldn't have explained the pre-existing condition ban's need and the consequental need for an individual mandate better, awesome explanation Archibald.

[Olo401]

How is a mandate passed by Congress a mandate by head of state?

How is a mandate passed by Congress NAMED FOR a head of state?

[SwampdonkeyPLD]

This is the continual gambit.

People who lose the birth-lottery (getting lupus or childhood leukemia or type-1 diabetes or any of the rest of shit ailments you can't do a fucking thing about to prevent) are fucked completely in the current system. Their only route to avoiding completely crippling medical bills as adults is to work jobs exclusively that offer group health insurance plans. They can't buy on their own, because noone will insure someone with a pre-existing condition like that. Fired or laid off? Fucked. Want to start their own business? Fucked.

That's fucked up, unfair, those of us lucky enough to win the medical birth-lottery can and should socialize the expense for those who lost it due to no fault of their own, by eliminating the use of pre-existing conditions as a barrier to entry for private health insurance.

But then, shit, well, then everyone can just wait til they get sick, buy insurance (since their pre-existing condition can't exclude them) and then only be paying in when they are taking way more out than they pay.

That doesn't work either.

The individual mandate solves the second problem, which is created by the first problem. Of course a single-payer system eliminates both problems, but that's socialism.

Of course, all insurance is a form of socialism, but don't tell that to mouth-breathers.

Do these people not already have access to medicaid/care or w/e it is?