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monkframe
2012 Mar 29, 2:37pm
Medicare Part-D doesn't mean shit for everyone below the age of 65. Doesn't mean shit.
The problems can be summed up like this
1) Any business that has significant profits and significant training will defend itself against reforms. It is natural as to defend amounts
2) As people age more and lifespan grows so do various aliments. Did anyone really know what Alzheimer was 100 years ago?
3) Population expands more so of course that means more coverage and more demands on medical staff.
We cannot make healthcare cheap but subsidizing demand. Nothing is ever made cheaper by subsidizing the demand.
States need to grant more licenses for doctors and nurses. More assistance for those that want to get in those professions.
Outright denials need to be established for government programs to get people off of bad items. If someone is a drug addict they need to enter rehab before medicare. This goes for all illegal and legal substances. If someone is excessively obese as defined by a doctor that would need to be corrected as well.
If we think that somehow habitual actions have no general effect on health then that is wrong. 10% of people in Kentucky have no teeth. When you combine high smoking rates, high chewing tobacco rates, well water (no flouride), high soda consumption, high hard alcohol consumption and poverty and it takes a back seat.
WillyWanker
2012 Apr 1, 4:33pm
St. Teresa: 'More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones'.
freak80
2012 Apr 2, 5:35am
I think the USA just needs to hit the "reset" button.
Not sure how that would ever happen, short of a major meteor/comet impact. Maybe we'll get lucky and the Yellowstone volcano will finally blow...
Dan8267
2012 Apr 2, 5:52am
I think the USA just needs to hit the "reset" button.
Not sure how that would ever happen, short of a major meteor/comet impact. Maybe we'll get lucky and the Yellowstone volcano will finally blow...
Zombie Apocalypse
The Obamacare thing was designed to cloward-piven collapse the system to get to single payer. A cursory look at the numbers involved should reveal this. At the end of the day it bread and circus for our dying republic. Prepare to go from middle to lower class or figure out how to be part of the 1%.
monkframe
2012 Apr 11, 2:57pm
"1) Any business that has significant profits and significant training will defend itself against reforms. It is natural as to defend amounts(.)"
Agreed, and we need the government to defend the people, not the business. I'm so fucking tired of hearing the business interests defended against the people's interest, specifically in regards to health care. Business and its employees need to have this whole subject removed from the debate to a government program like Medicare, and be done with it.
The HMO executives can go have a nice bonfire with their departure bonuses, as they try and find a new career as corporate bloodsuckers.
rootvg
2012 Apr 12, 7:37am
I forgot to mention another net effect of ObamaCare, in addition to more spending and worse results. It cost Democrats their House majority in 2010, and looks likely to cost them the Senate in 2012.
Ironically, the statute's namesake may benefit politically from its unpopularity. This is because, with the Republicans taking both houses of Congress, President Obama sounds like the lone voice of sanity. He lied about health insurance, but he isn't crazy like Romney, who anyway signed the same plan in Massachusetts (where it produced more spending and worse results).
Yes, right up until the House impeaches him. For what? For whatever they can think of. With a Republican Congress and the Tea Party folks pulling the strings, it's very likely.
If you're white, middle class and live in the burbs, hang on tight. Things about to get very bumpy.
bankr
Bankruptcy is not the end of the world. I would prefer a system where the government gets out of insurance regulation and we have a system of private contracts. It is better for a few folks to go BK than to have any of the horrible problems that modern healthcare and insurance regulations have bought us. People have an odd sense of what BK does. It really is not the end of the world. Credit is over-rated, just as mortgaging a house it.
Dan8267
2012 Apr 12, 3:25pm
I would prefer a system where the government gets out of insurance regulation and we have a system of private contracts.
Isn't that what got us into this problem?
Bellingham Bill
2012 Apr 12, 3:45pm
Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert introduced Medicare Part-D and Republican 41st president George Bush signed it. His son was responsible for America's income tax system becoming the most progressive out of the OECD-24 where the ratio between share of tax burden and share of income among the top earning decile is higher than in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, The Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, The Slovak Republic, Sweden, Switzerland, and The United Kingdom.
You really don't know what the fuck you're talking about.
For one, Part D was passed in the 2000s (Part C was the late 1990s).
I can't even parse what you're trying to assert about 'progressivity' in the current tax arrangement, but http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/04/rich-arent-so-different-you-and-me-after-all shows how we already have essentially NO progressivity in the top 4 quintiles.
Bellingham Bill
2012 Apr 12, 3:47pm
Both parties = socialism for the rich
Democrats stand for bullshitting the poor. Republicans stand for liquidating them.
Choose wisely this November!
Bellingham Bill
2012 Apr 12, 5:14pm
I would prefer a system where the government gets out of insurance regulation and we have a system of private contracts. It is better for a few folks to go BK than to have any of the horrible problems that modern healthcare and insurance regulations have bought us.
How about we stop doing what we're doing and start doing what the rest of the civilized world is doing wrt health insurance -- heavy government involvement.
The system works well all throughout Europe, Japan, Canada, Oz, NZ.
Your preferred solution works exactly nowhere in the real world; it's perplexing to me why you even think you have proposed a serious idea and not just the typical libertarian reality-challenged bullshit that is so common on the internet.
American in Japan
2012 Apr 13, 1:46am
bankr
Bankruptcy is not the end of the world. I would prefer a system where the government gets out of insurance regulation and we have a system of private contracts. It is better for a few folks to go BK than to have any of the horrible problems....
Actually it is more than just a few bankrupcies... Some estimates are around 60% of all bankrupcies in the US.
The sick and the elderly must become gladiators for our amusement. Have them fight it out in a modern day coliseum. Since our pie is apparently fixed in size, the winner will get treated while the loser will be incinerated in the ocean beach bonfire. This is sure to stimulate the economy. And after a 3 month reprieve, the winner must fight again to remain so.
freak80
2012 Apr 13, 6:40am
The sick and the elderly must become gladiators for our amusement. Have them fight it out in a modern day coliseum. Since our pie is apparently fixed in size, the winner will get treated while the loser will be incinerated in the ocean beach bonfire. This is sure to stimulate the economy. And after a 3 month reprieve, the winner must fight again to remain so.
Apocalpysfuck, you are hilarious.
Whoa whoa...that's not Apocalpysefuck...oops...
freak80
2012 Apr 13, 7:44am
No, they must remain profit centers for the medical industrial complex and captive constituencies for politicians. They must neither get well nor die, they must remain on as many pills as possible for as long as possible.
God Bless America.
In the old economy, Americans used to make things. Then, in the new economy, Americans made dot-cons and sold stock to gullible "investors" (speculators). Then, in the housing bubble, Americans sold each other houses with money borrowed from the Chinese.
That's the best summary of the last 30 years I've seen so far.
« First « Previous Comments 105 - 126 of 126 Search these comments
Several years in, it seems to me that the net effect of Obamacare so far has been to do nothing but raise premium costs dramatically.
The core idea of Obamacare is that everyone will be required by law to pay private health insurance companies unlimited premiums.
Sure, health insurers now have to spend 80% of the premiums on medical care, but that just means they have a compelling motive to raise both premiums and medical care payments, so that their 20% profit is 20% of a much bigger number.
Insurers can no longer deny coverage based on pre-existing conditions, but that also means that insurers will both pay out more on medical costs, and raise premiums again to get back to 20% of an even larger premium amount. Their not going to reduce their profits voluntarily.
Insurers have to keep children on their parents' plans to a later age, but yet again, that will raise their payments and therefore raise premiums even more.
So premiums will be too high to pay, and yet we will all be required by law to pay.
Am I misunderstanding something here?
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