So, can anyone tell me the actual reason as to why the Republicans want to stop Obamacare? Because down the line that's what this Shutdown thing is all about, right?

I've seen interviews where people where asked what they thought about Obamacare, and 9 out of 10 said the costs were too high and it's a really bad plan. Then the interviewer asked them what they thought about the Affordable Health Care Plan, and everybody was all for it.

Of course that's just what the media wants you to see. I suppose.

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Originally posted by AEther Storm:
Sooooo, revival of the politics post, quite actual again with the whole Shutdown thing.

So, can anyone tell me the actual reason as to why the Republicans want to stop Obamacare? Because down the line that's what this Shutdown thing is all about, right?

I've seen interviews where people where asked what they thought about Obamacare, and 9 out of 10 said the costs were too high and it's a really bad plan. Then the interviewer asked them what they thought about the Affordable Health Care Plan, and everybody was all for it.

Of course that's just what the media wants you to see. I suppose.

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Originally posted by paragondave:
From the corporate perspective, it's bad for business. Most things that are good for people are bad for corporate profits.

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Right, thus the opposite happens most of the time, if not all.

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There is a reason you don't put a vegetarian in charge of a butcher shop, and the Amish don't run power plants.

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Originally posted by Bugger:
If anything good comes of the shutdown, maybe it will be the American people understanding that letting the current Republican Party take charge of literally anything is a terrible ****ing idea.

There is a reason you don't put a vegetarian in charge of a butcher shop, and the Amish don't run power plants.

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I doubt it, unfortunately. They're nicely gerrymandered, and wouldn't risk it (given the hit they took last time) if they didn't think they could do it with relative impunity.

It is worth noting, however, that they did take the time to ensure they'd be getting paid throughout. I suppose the more they throw temper tantrums like this, the less their gerrymandering matters. So maybe it'll be the cherry on the sundae. One can always hope.

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RIP Ari

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Originally posted by AEther Storm:
Sooooo, revival of the politics post, quite actual again with the whole Shutdown thing.

So, can anyone tell me the actual reason as to why the Republicans want to stop Obamacare? Because down the line that's what this Shutdown thing is all about, right?

I've seen interviews where people where asked what they thought about Obamacare, and 9 out of 10 said the costs were too high and it's a really bad plan. Then the interviewer asked them what they thought about the Affordable Health Care Plan, and everybody was all for it.

Of course that's just what the media wants you to see. I suppose.

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To oversimplify a bit, the Republicans are convinced that if the Affordable Care Act is completely implemented, a majority of people will realize they like it, health-related businesses will find ways to increase profits from it, and the Republicans will never be able to overturn it.

Up to now, only a few of the aspects of the Law have been implemented. Unless you got a rebate from your insurer (for overcharging, based upon the coverage you actually received), or were a young adult who was allowed to remain on your parent's insurance plan, you didn't see a lot of the law.

With the state exchanges now opening, people will be able to shop for health insurance. The policies will begin to take effect on January 1, 2014. People who were priced out of the market by ridiculously high premiums for private and individual policies will now get the benefit of group plans. This includes a large number of small businesses (less than 30 employees) and those who are self employed. People who couldn't buy coverage at any price because of pre-exisiting conditions can now find pooled coverage. And if you are poor, there will be subsidies to make the coverage more affordable.

It is estimated that more than 10 million people will enroll in coverage in the first year alone. Many of these people are the ones who already cost the government enormous amounts of healthcare-related money (things like government subsidies to cover unreimbursed expenses at hospital emergency rooms and trauma centers).

The law is actually a good deal for businesses who already provide their employees with health coverage, as the law will make it much easier for them to find reasonably-priced insurance for their employees. Such businesses are already reporting that they expect their costs to be stable or even reduced.

The law is a problem for businesses who deny their full-time employees any health insurance. Such businesses will need to pay an additional expense. Either they will offer health care to their full time employees, or they will pay a per-employee fee (or penalty) to opt out.

Such companies argue that they shouldn't be forced to offer health insurance. Sadly, in the US, the only historical way to get reasonably priced health insurance is through an employer. The state exchanges offer the hope of eventually breaking this norm.

All of this brings me back to one question: Why are we forcing everyone onto health care coverage? Is that how we're minimizing the costs associated with the riskier health care pools? If that's the case, then all this just seems like a giant tax.

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Originally posted by chaos021:
all this just seems like a giant tax.

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Originally posted by PhilipJFry:
That was the basis for the Supreme Court not overturning it - the government has a right to tax, and this (the individual mandate, at least) is a tax.

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Originally posted by PhilipJFry:
That was the basis for the Supreme Court not overturning it - the government has a right to tax, and this (the individual mandate, at least) is a tax.

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Not just that - the idea is that, hey, part of the reason some people aren't on insurance is that they are freaking expensive to insure. If I have had cancer before, I have a better chance of getting it again, if I am overweight, I have a bunch of POSSIBLE health issues that I might not if I wasn't overweight, etc, so to offset that (since those people will almost certainly try to get insured, and companies can't screw them over with pre-existing condition clauses now), we need everyone insured, to spread out the cost of insuring someone who is expensive to insure with someone who isn't as expensive to insure.

Now, if you're healthy, don't believe in insurance, or are furious about words that start with the letter "i," you might not want to get insurance just because, "you have to," so you're allowed to pay a fee (a tax! hohoho) to avoid participating, while still paying your "fair share" (debatable, but not entirely dishonest, especially if viewed as a tax) for not participating.

I might have missed something, and obviously some of those terms or statements are open to your interpretation, and aren't entirely established fact (yet at least) so there might be something you disagree with. I tried to explain it as it was explained/justified, not as I think you need to accept the idea.

To the insurance companies, from a business standpoint, I was a bad investment.

The ACA allows people to be viewed as people who need healthcare.

I ended up paying for 5 months of COBRA until I got a new job. At $650/month, 80% of my unemployment check went to COBRA.

Republicans don't like it because big businesses that back them to keep tax loopholes open don't like it. Like Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart keeps the majority of their employees under the hourly limit for benefits so they don't have to pay them. It's estimated that every Wal-Mart costs a local community $900,000 per year in medicaid, food stamps, etc. And the Waltons would rather have the government do that than give up some of their profits.

By the way, the Waltons are the family that owns Wal-Mart, and they are collectively worth $150 billion. There are six of them.

The $150 billion is the same net worth as the poorest 90 million Americans combined.

Republicans also argue that giving handouts like healthcare and food stamps create leeches on the system who are unmotivated to work.

While the Dems argue that corporate welfare creates corporate leeches on the system.

This whole thing is ridiculous. If you want to have a car, you have to have insurance. It's the law. But if I NEED health insurance, until now, I couldn't get it.

And finally, I think it's fair for people to be penalized if they don't sign up. If someone who is uninsured gets cancer, and they have to get chemo, surgery, etc., then that goes to the people to pick up the tab. 1 in 3 people in the US will get some kind of cancer in their life. Wouldn't you rather have insurance and not need it than need it and not have it?

TL; DR: The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

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Originally posted by chaos021:
If that's how it all generally works, then this all makes no sense. [b]The government will essentially tax unemployed (or those who are under-employed) and companies in general to pay for health care for those who are uninsured and underinsured.
This all seems questionable without more details.[/B]

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The bolded part is 100% incorrect. Where are you getting that idea? It's basically the opposite - if a company with over 50 employees doesn't offer qualifying insurance plans to employees, they will pay a fine/fee/tax to help offset the cost of those employees when they go to insurance exchanges and receive discounted-to-nearly-free health insurance through their state exchange.

Similarly, if you're unemployed or underemployed, you will prove that your job isn't providing qualified insurance (or they are and you just go with it in the case of someone who might be underemployed) at the exchange and receive discounted-to-nearlyfree insurance.

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Originally posted by chaos021:
Since you seem to understand this Health Care thing better than most, hammr7, can you explain the purpose of penalizing individuals who still don't get access to health care services after it goes live? From what I've seen on media, there will still be people who won't be able to afford even the lowest tier plans or high deductible on the lowest tier plan if they choose to buy it. In that case, they way I understand it, you have to pay a penalty called the "individual mandate," which can be reduced or nullified depending on certain conditions.

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The goal of the law is not to try to "penalize" anyone or any group. The goal is to provide everyone with reasonably-priced health insurance to cover their "needs". This is complicated by two realities: 1) that many people don't know their needs until an acute medical emergency occurs, and 2) the laws of our country, and the laws of decency, require that when we encounter an individual in the throes of a medical emergency, we treat first and worry about payment later.

One of the biggest problems with current health insurance is that the government picks up much of the tab already to cover expenses incurred by the uninsured. Current Health Insurance premiums are also higher because they subsidize the unpaid costs of treatment for the uninsured.

This is the harsh reality of the current system. If you don't have insurance, but find yourself needing health care, you get charged full price but rarely pay, or only pay a small percentage. Someone has to pick up the tab for the often-enormous difference. As a group, those who "don't want" health insurance are mooching off of everyone who pays for health insurance, and who pays federal taxes.

Ron Paul would like individuals to have the option to "be denied health services". In our legal system this is functionally impossible. A hospital emergency room or trauma center won't, in an emergency situation, let someone die because they can't immediately confirm medical coverage. For example, someone with a serious gunshot wound or injuries from a horrible car accident. How do you know in that critical moment who was responsible, and then whether the responsible party can pay. Do you potentially kill (or at least allow to die)innocent people who didn't cause their medical emergency? Not a chance!

Given that every individual will get care if needed, and therefore incur costs, the problem is how to fairly allocate these costs. The opt out "penalty" is sort of like uninsured driver insurance in a car insurance policy. It is a minimal cost (or tax if you want) to offset accidental emergency coverage. The cost of this penalty is linked to income, so it is heavily subsidized if you make very little, and rises if you make a lot.

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Originally posted by chaos021:
Many people though, still won't be able to pay the penalty in a couple years based on the uproar from what I'm hearing. Some of those people say that right now, it's cheaper for them to pay the penalty than it is to take to the lowest tier plan and that they will be in a bind as the penalty goes up later.

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The uproar you are hearing is the screams of right wing media and the Tea Party. There is no justification for these screams, since many of the base prices are just being released today. It may be cheaper for people to opt out, but only if they don't need medical coverage. And even then not by much.

Consider that most people, when they need medical coverage and don't have insurance (and don't have a regular doctor) get treated at a hospital emergency room. This is the most expensive type of health care, but the one that currently gives the most care with the least questions (about whether you have insurance). If you have insurance, and are "in-network" a typical visit to the ER runs ~ $500 to $800 in actual billings. If you are uninsured, the costs are well over $1,000 and can easily range to more than $2,500. The higher price reflects that you are part of a higher risk pool, who will likely require more litigation to make you pay, or to prove you can't. You are also being asked to help pay for others who didn't.

The above pricing is just emergency room charges. It includes diagnostic tests but no actual surgeries, and doesn't include any of the additional charges if you actually admitted for something serious. If your problem is serious enough that you are admitted, your costs will likely hit five figures.

With costs this high, everyone is being taxed at least a little to pay for health care. Virtually everyone without health insurance uses healthcare services at some point. And this is the point. This isn't taxation without use of services. This is taxation of individuals who claim they won't use services because the reality is that if they need healthcare services our society will give them at least some expensive services.

Again, the subsidies are designed so that payments won't be overwhelming for anyone. They may not be pleasant, but like sales tax and use taxes, they can be handled.

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Originally posted by chaos021:
All of this brings me back to one question: Why are we forcing everyone onto health care coverage? Is that how we're minimizing the costs associated with the riskier health care pools? If that's the case, then all this just seems like a giant tax.

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The total cost of healthcare in the US has risen to above 16% of our economy. Until the ACA law was passed, healthcare costs were growing at a much faster rate than any other costs, yet quality of healthcare was falling relative to other countries. We spend twice as many dollars per citizen than any other country in the world, and yet life expectancy is getting worse compared to other countries. 15% of US citizens were without any coverage. And the numbers were getting worse every year.

What I am learning is that it will most likely work very well in bringing healthcare costs down. If it is a huge success, which is what I think Republicans fear, then the response to their opposition to it is going to be epic.

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Originally posted by Vegas10:
well considering even at the lowest estimates the Affordable Care Act is 2000 pages long (some estimates are much higher) means there is likely a lot in there people don't really know about. The fact is until it is all out there and have had time to research its effects it is premature at this point to say whether it is overall good, bad, or just ok or a combination of all 3. Also likely to have bugs that need to be worked out and like anything with lots of money involved there will be abuses and fraud to be weeded out as well.

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I have no doubt that we could improve the healthcare law in the next couple years. I do have doubt that conservatives will be very excited about improving it, since any improvement will be an opportunity to be miserable about obamacare instead.

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Originally posted by Vegas10:
well considering even at the lowest estimates the Affordable Care Act is 2000 pages long (some estimates are much higher) means there is likely a lot in there people don't really know about. The fact is until it is all out there and have had time to research its effects it is premature at this point to say whether it is overall good, bad, or just ok or a combination of all 3. Also likely to have bugs that need to be worked out and like anything with lots of money involved there will be abuses and fraud to be weeded out as well.

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Page numbers are largely irrelevant when it comes to laws (they are spaced out for readability, and the ACA seems to have been printed in a novel-size book.

And as with most things, the active bits that most people care about are usually pretty small. There's a lot of junk in there for corner cases. Even national tax codes are strikingly simple for 99% of people. But they are also infinite long.

It's super easy to check how long the document is. Gooooooooogle!

http://housedocs.house.gov/energycommerce/ppacacon.pdf

974 novel-sized pages. Wow, those are some terrible estimates.

US laws are always long, too, because they seem to prefer specificity.

Health care over here is somewhat the same as the Act. Dutch citizens must be insured (by law) for at least the basic health care. Healt care companies are not allowed to decline anyone who applies for the basic package and thus must accept them. Additional coverage can be gotten at either the same company or others, depending on the price and packages (shopping). Companies are allowed to decline requests for additional packages though.

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Originally posted by Volcanon:
Page numbers are largely irrelevant when it comes to laws (they are spaced out for readability, and the ACA seems to have been printed in a novel-size book.

And as with most things, the active bits that most people care about are usually pretty small. There's a lot of junk in there for corner cases. Even national tax codes are strikingly simple for 99% of people. But they are also infinite long.

It's super easy to check how long the document is. Gooooooooogle!

http://housedocs.house.gov/energycommerce/ppacacon.pdf

974 novel-sized pages. Wow, those are some terrible estimates.

US laws are always long, too, because they seem to prefer specificity.

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Originally posted by Vegas10:
In that document there are several sections listed without pag numbers there so there is likely more than the 974 pages, anyway I got that estimate from google searching and it was the lowest estimate of about 10 I looked at before deciding that was enough ( some estimates were over 20,000 but def seemed a bit biased). Another problem with US laws is they tend to add things to these bills that have n othing to do with the main law as political favors to certain people to get it to pass which I hate because federal laws should not have extra provisions (could be for a small road in the middles of somewhere) that a lot of the public may not even want just to pass the important stuff. I'm not saying these other things may or may nor always have merit (probably a lot of both frankly) but they should be passes on there own based on legitimate need, not just to get something else threw.

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The bill gets huge (and hard to read) because someone has to go through and interpret things like:

- how and when the law gets implemented.
- how compliance is determined.
- what penalties for non-compliance are, how hey are determined and enforced.
- how the law interacts with all prior Federal laws that may be affected. This is a huge part of the law.
- how the law specifically interacts with laws in each of the 50 states, as well as the non-state entities where the law will be implemented.
- how the different stakeholders and groups (states, insurance companies, businesses, and individuals) interact.
- all the specifics how implementation is funded
and many more angles of the law that I haven't thought of.

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Originally posted by paragondave:
I've come to the conclusion that anything Republicans hate is probably good for the American people and bad for corporations, but also probably costly to taxpayers.

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I don't disagree with the sentiment, but it's worth pointing out that the insurance companies are actually on board with Obamacare. In fact, they had enormous input when it came to the design of the law, and they're a big part of the reason that you're getting a law mandating that everyone get insurance rather than granting everyone universal access to healthcare. Obamacare is quite good for their bottom line, despite some small inconveniences--certainly much better than a single-payer system would be.

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RIP Ari

Apparantly a Russian diplomat posted in The Hague apparantly molested his kids (not sure here, it's a bit vague in the media) and the cops clobbered, cuffed and arrested him.

Now all of a sudden our exported cheese and milk have 'issues' and some politicians are threatening to throw in the windows of the Dutch embassy in Moscow.

Russian leaders are nuts.

I don't care who you are, if I see you molest your/any kids, I'll put you on your back faster than you can say 'Glasnost'.

EDIT:

Our political leaders just apologized to the Russians. OMFG our leaders are such pussies! I hope they beat the living crap out of him before they let him go.
Sadly our police force usually consists of pansies, too.
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Originally posted by AEther Storm:
LOL, our country is in a diplomatic dispute with Russia. The Netherlands for crying out loud! As if we have anything important to say in this world.

Apparantly a Russian diplomat posted in The Hague apparantly molested his kids (not sure here, it's a bit vague in the media) and the cops clobbered, cuffed and arrested him.

Now all of a sudden our exported cheese and milk have 'issues' and some politicians are threatening to throw in the windows of the Dutch embassy in Moscow.

Russian leaders are nuts.

I don't care who you are, if I see you molest your/any kids, I'll put you on your back faster than you can say 'Glasnost'.

EDIT:

Our political leaders just apologized to the Russians. OMFG our leaders are such pussies! I hope they beat the living crap out of him before they let him go.
Sadly our police force usually consists of pansies, too.

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That's a little nuts. A link for anyone who's interested - http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/netherlands-apologises-to-furious-vladimir-putin-after-russian-diplomat-beaten-and-detained-in-the-hague-8868139.html. The incident just seems like a minor flair up related to the Greenpeace arrests.

On a side note, I just got back from a trip to the Netherlands, and omg, the dairy <3 <3