Not to derail this thread, but this is pure retard gold. No, YOU "captainjackass" will never run a successful company. Why? Probably a combination of extra chromosomes, fetal alcohol syndrome, and your own belief that the rich are oppressing you. But mainly because you're either too afraid of failing or have convinced yourself it's impossible. That's really fucking sad, but keep the failure on your end and stop spreading propaganda that social classes are locked in. Tell that to Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Ted Turner, etc.
Hey, why don't you have another scotch, buddy. I never said the social classes are locked in, or that I'm somehow too lazy to accomplish something or work hard to have a fulfilling life. Go find another straw man to attack. No, I'm not going to "start my own cell phone company" because I feel the current companies are price-gaugers. I'm not passionate nor even barely interested in that industry or its work. Why you feel someone would revolve their entire career and life over the fact that a company overcharges for texts in beyond me or any mentally-functioning human being. Hey, crotch rot, why don't you go start your own insurance company? That'll solve the problems with the current health care system. Oh, you're a lazy defeatist who believes the social classes are locked in? Nevermind then.
Nahh, I started my own cell phone provider. I'm going to spend hundreds of millions of my own capital and financing in infrastructure putting up towers, fiber optics, R&D, and marketing. I'll revolutionize the way humans communicate with each other. But here's the kicker, I have this master plan to overcharge on texts. It's genius. I'll stick it to the serfs with a text plan that the peasants will have no choice if they want to text! And the best part? It will all be detailed in a contract!! No one will care, except Captainjackass, because everyone else will be focusing on shit that matters like wars and health care. Sorry kids, back to your regularly scheduled programming of discussing how businesses do nothing but screwing Joe Blo on health care.
I was seriously debating whether or not to put this up, since it veers a little off the healthcare debate, but what the hell. Robbie Clark rebutted me and I was so flabbergasted it just blew my mind. To be fair here is first his rebuttal to my post, and second my response to his rebuttal, both in spoiler tags so if you honestly don't care you just don't have to be bothered. This is insanity. Spoiler Subject: Health Care Reform Please answer why a hick in the hills should have to pay for a road near my house. "Why is it ok to infringe upon the rights of one to benefit another?" is the fundamental question that must be answered but few ever try. "Because that's how it's done" is a shit answer. I happily condemn the system of taxation. How on earth would I have missed this obvious implication? But it's not the same as insurance, which is a voluntary exchange. No, not to eliminate insurance, but it would be a much smaller system in a free market I'd bet since it's so large because of the government programs that have been implemented over the past 75 years. Other than that you were right about the logical conclusion of the elimination of the national government. But way wrong about the US having too large a population for a decentralized government. It actually makes more sense to have smaller regional/tribal/county governments for a large and diverse population. It's very difficult for a small number of people to represent a large number (impossible). Think about the Internet. Millions of people, no centralized rule at all and no regulation. It's divided among many corporations. What's so bad about the national government dissolving and ceasing to exist if we don't need it? Not at all. I'm making an argument for human rights (life, liberty, property, pursuit of happiness) to be recognized, not ignored. Spoiler I was just using a singular non-healthcare example of how government expenditure never benefits everyone either, so your argument applies equally to the government as a whole, and since you most likely enjoy the ability to drive to work, use public transportation, or just in general have the infrastructure of society maintained at the cost of those who don't use, or even live anywhere near you, then you need to recognize that your argument carries no weight since comparatively you are doing exactly the same thing you're complaining about to that hick in the hills who doesn't even work in the city and so doesn't use the things he's paying for. Insurance is a voluntary exchange, if you forget the fact that it is mandated by law for everyone to have insurance. Taxation is voluntary, since if you don't want to pay taxes all you have to do is emigrate. Or you can simply stop paying and the government will put you up in an all-expenses-paid vacation at a prison. Hell, not paying taxes sounds like a pretty sweet deal. Is there no competition for insurance? Is there only a single healthcare provider to choose from? Does one company own a monopoly? If the government entered the field as a competitor there would be a real incentive to compete with the then standardized offer of service. Also there would be no reason to subsidize the companies since the government program would provide a safety net for people in the case where the private companies were to completely fail. Wow. Just...wow. Do you know why the "Dark Ages" were called "The Dark Ages"? It's because after the fall of the Roman Empire people spent the next thousand years in a totally and completely decentralized state. Most people lived in tiny communities, were organized tribally, were interested only in their own affairs, had no overarching government, and even the places that did have monarchies were so decentralized through the system of nobles and lords that there was no coherent government control from the top to the bottom of the people as a whole, and society and technology advanced in absolutely nothing for over 700 years until the first crusade was called to attack Spain. And what happened when Spain was captured from the Muslims? The people of Europe discovered how wealthily and lucratively the Spaniards had been living through organization and knowledge and suddenly the people clamored to emulate this organization once again, mostly through Crusades of conquest and adaptation of Muslim systems of organization that had been taken from the Romans before them. If you can't recognize how total decentralization and loss of government results in complete and utter anarchy and the loss of the ability to organize and accomplish goals in-tandem and ultimately more effectively than an individual with a single lifetime in which to live, then you simply don't have a good grasp on human nature, the mechanism and requirements behind social and technological advance, and the fact that a complete loss of government would result in the end of the country as a country and a reversion to extremely localized and tiny rival tribal governments arguing, forming alliances, and bickering through small-scale warfare and ultimately limiting each others' growth. At that point what would happen would be another organized country taking advantage of the situation and invading the now up for grabs land and resources available, most likely the Chinese, which, ironically, would result in the imposition of a highly socialized government. If you doubt me all you need to do is research the Dark Ages, research the genocide of the Native Americans by Americans, and look at the British colonizations of Africa, India, and anywhere else. I can't believe I have to actually explain this to you, my mind is blown. ...that just happens to have the ugly side effects of destroying the United States as a country, incentivizing the invasion of the United States by a foreign power, and the total loss of any coherent ability to advance society and technology as a whole which, dare I say, would result in human rights taking quite a steep nosedive. ...And those corporations are under the rule of government. What would happen if suddenly that government disappeared? The internet would be used to organize lawlessness and destruction. On top of DDOSing a rival site, the people might send over a hit squad to kill the top level organizer of that site. A bombing of the rival office might be planned, or the extermination of individual members might begin. If you STILL DON'T understand how lack of an overarching government organization promotes wanton wild-west style destruction look at gangsters during the prohibition in the 1920's, or look at cartels smuggling cocaine and heroin in the present day. Their practices are totally illegal, so obviously the government was not involved in their regulation and they formed an ENTIRELY GOVERNMENT-REGULATION-FREE ORGANIZATION THAT OPERATED THROUGH PURE DESTRUCTION AND CHAOS TO ACHIEVE ITS GOALS BECAUSE IT OPERATED, BY NECESSITY, COMPLETELY OUTSIDE OF THE LAW. 1920's gangsters and modern cartels are demonstrations of organizations with no regulation, were regulation and the government to disappear every corporation would operate under a similar premise with the most wealthy being the most destructive and ruthless. I personally guarantee you that the day the government ceases to exist in place of absolutely nothing is the day that rival corporations, rival religions, rival socio/economic, rival socio/political, and rival anything organizations within the former USA devolve into brutality and murder to achieve their goals, the former nation is thrown into chaos, and all social and technological progress is halted if not reversed until either nothing is left but a stone age level of population, someone imposes a large scale government and somehow amasses the army to enforce it, or, what is far more likely, a rival nation uses the chaos to its advantage to invade and imposes its own government upon us. Hell, if you want to look into the jaws of anarchy, just look at Afghanistan, first occupied by the British, then the Russians, now the US. Blasted to shit, completely disorganized, and with only ruins upon ruins of its former glory it is the epitome of total decentralization and lawlessness that results in backwards social progress and the destruction of life. You are proposing what will ultimately result in the destruction of a great many people's lives, and a pointless end to a prosperous nation. History has proved my point over and over, do I have to keep giving examples? Go read a book. Jesus "Jesus-tit-fucking-Christ" Christ
on a stick. Edit: Don't forget being told you'd be toppling the biggest computer companies in existence with nothing but a garage full of scrawny nerds. This is priceless, at first I thought ScotchCrotch was pissed off calling someone "Captain Jackass" but to realize that's actually his username? You can't make this shit up. I think his title of "Should still be lurking" sums it up in a nutshell.
Impermissible Ratemaking in Health-Insurance Reform: Why the Reid Bill is Unconstitutional http://www.medicalprogresstoday.com/pdfs/MI_Health_Care_act.pdf I think the discussion starts and ends with this article. There is a shitload wrong with the Reid Bill from a constitutional, economic, and antitrust perspective. But I'd like to focus on a smaller side issue. The overall level of federal control is heightened by the requirement that all health-insurance issuers in the individual or small-group market provide an essential benefits package that includes a wide range of "ambulatory patient services, emergency services, hospitalization, maternity and newborn care, mental health and substance abuse disorder services, including behavioral health treatment, prescription drugs, rehabilitative and habilitative services and devices, laboratory services, preventive and wellness services and chronic disease management, pediatric services, including oral and vision care." Section 2707. Why the fuck is the government mandating one size fits all policy minimums to health insurance offered in the new exchanges? These are Cadillac policies in their own right, and the average uninsured young adult with a decent income will be forced to shell out something close to $1500 annual premiums for it. If you want to drive a car, you need car insurance. Fine, I'll accept that as a tolerable analogy to health insurance. But the unmarried college bachelor driving his Nissan Sentra is not forced to buy the 5 million dollar umbrella policy his parents have. I don't understand why the lowest tier isn't some catastrophic policy that only kicks in for major hospitalizations. This message board, healthy and employed young adults, will be forced to buy far more insurance than we need in order to subsidize others.
Heh, fair point. My friend is working for AIG, and she has two options for her health care through AIG: one with a $2,000 deductible, or one with a $3,000 deductible. My car insurance has a deductible of like $500, and that's a high one. It appears that health care reform is well on its way to reforming the policies you can get through your employers. I love to see it when a win/win idea at the outset becomes a lose/lose idea in practice.
From Ezra Klein at the Washington Post http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/12/jane_hamshers_10_reaons_to_kil.html If you don't have employer-based coverage, Medicare, Medicaid, or anything else, and premiums won't cost more than 8 percent of your monthly income, and you refuse to purchase insurance, at that point, you will be assessed a penalty of up to 2 percent of your annual income. In return for that, you get guaranteed treatment at hospitals and an insurance system that allows you to purchase full coverage the moment you decide you actually need it. In the current system, if you don't buy insurance, and then find you need it, you'll likely never be able to buy insurance again. There's a very good case to be made, in fact, that paying the 2 percent penalty is the best deal in the bill. First, that $1500 annual premium I mentioned was a gross understatement. I'm a graduate student and I took a stab at a number closer to what I was forced to pay for University insurance. But I make next to nothing. Premiums will be 8% of your income. But you can opt to pay a 2% penalty and have premium insurance rates and services available to you when you want it. Who's going to want pay low then trade up? Everyone that gets sick. And if you just found out you have cancer, you can't be denied insurance for that preexisting condition. So bump your premium up to 8% and get all those expensive treatments you wanted. I believe this creates a free rider problem far worse than the current lot of uninsured crowding ERs. Currently, those of us with employer-based health insurance are paying fairly lofty premiums, often well in excess of 8%. But that's not out of your pocket, your employer pays the majority of that premium and pockets a tax deduction for their trouble. Now with "Cadillac" plans being taxed, you and your employer will be less likely to maintain this arrangement. In fact, you may very well be dropped from employer coverage, pay the 2% penalty out of your own pocket and live out the scenario I described above. The 6-10% drop off on premiums paid may be $5,000 for the average American leaving employer coverage. You and your employer can split the savings, giving you a bump in salary. These two cases combined are a huge revenue loss for insurance providers. Employer-based plans will shrink, healthy individuals will opt for 2%, and they'll be stuck with an 8% cap on those sick individuals that eat up hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical care. This type of dynamic effect is not always included in CBO calculations. CBO economists are not idiots and they make plenty of disclaimers about this fact.
It's not directly out of your pocket, but there isn't one person I know in my industry (law) who isn't made aware of the fact at review time what their health insurance is costing their employer. And that cost is calculated as part of your salary/benefit package. So you do pay for it, maybe not directly, but indirectly. Uh, most employers above a certain size had absolutely no choice 'in this arrangement' as they were required by law to do so. They weren't doing it out of the goodness of their hearts. The idea behind this is that working Americans should have health care, so the government required employers to provide it. In essence, it was a social tax that the government expected companies to pass on in greater costs to consumers of their products and slightly lower salaries to their employees. Since you mentioned 'University,' I'll assume you're not in the professional working world. As someone in that world, I can pretty much guarantee you that an employer will let you fuck their wife before bumping up your salary because they don't have to pay health insurance premiums for you anymore. Especially in the current job market. Or should I say 'lack of job' market. And you are correct, however, I suspect the final bill will address this. As someone who works with, and sometimes against, insurance companies, I can assure you there is no better interest group in looking after their own interests. I'm willing to bet a fair amount of money that insurance companies come out ahead in all of this. Again, you are correct, but rest assured, the final bill will surely result in you paying more for less. I believe the current plan is over 2,000 pages. As an attorney, I'm willing to bet that over half of that is riders, exclusions, and qualifications that are to the benefit of the government first and insurers second. I've been around long enough to see how government operates, and first and foremost, those that are in the government will be taken care of first, those that donate to the campaigns second, and you and I will be a distant third. But you and I will be the ones to bear most of the cost of this clusterfuck. And that you can take to the bank. Or have it taken from your bank account as the case may be.
You admit benefits are factored into your salary. Then you say if that arrangement changed, your employer won't give you a raise when he no longer pays your premiums? I'm not talking about your dealings with your boss. But in the aggregate, those without employer-paid premiums will take home greater pay. And none of what I said applies to a law that doesn't exist yet. This pertains to the Reid Bill that passed the Senate.
Why does the Senate need to rush to pass their bill by Christmas eve when any benefits related to it will not take place for 3 or 4 years? I know the Republican answer to this question, but I have yet to hear any supporters make a valid case for this arbitrary deadline.
Without being cynical, the reason is twofold. First, the longer the legislation languishes (and let's not forget, there's a House bill that has to be merged into this one), the more likely there are problems that will crop up and potentially, support for the bill can erode as more 'deals' are cut and publicized, which makes it tougher for folks to support it publicly. Secondly, Obama's approval ratings are dropping, and frankly the view (even among supporters) is that so far, he's bailed out big business, but failed to bring troops home, or anything else that would help the 'common man.' Therefore, it's a perception thing. If this gets wrapped up before break, then the administration is hoping to build up some momentum and ride it to push more for their agenda when the break is over. The other potential reason is the longer you delay, the longer it will be before the very significant infrastructure that needs to be in place for this all to work can be instituted. For all the money being pumped into this, you'll need new agencies, new employees, new oversight regulations, etc. It is a massive undertaking, and everyone involved knows that, so that's part of the reason there's a 'rush' now, because you can't really rush the back end, it's just going to take time.
A little delayed in the response, but the issue with text messaging is that the marginal cost of sending a text message is literally nothing. $0.00. It rides on signals that are already being sent to the phone as part of the normal infrastructure of a cell phone network. That in and of itself doesn't necessarily make it illegitimate to charge for text messages, but the fact that industry wide the price charged for a text message (something with a marginal cost of exactly nothing) doubled between 2005 and 2008, is pretty fucking fishy.
Isn't there still a sunk cost within the infrastructure? The "free" ride on another signal is still essentially the phone company's that not only needs to make a profit, but also maintenance and R&D.
I'm just going to say that having used British, Australian, Canadian and American health care at various times - In my purely anecdotal experience, America's health care isn't currently noticeably different in terms of quality of care, wait times or general patient experience. All the things that shit me about Australian hospitals, shit me about American hospitals as well. I think that as long as America can take a mature perspective on health care and look at the commonwealth models that are existing and in place and learn from them at the basic reading and comprehension level you'd expect from somebody who writes legislation for a living - there are no impact barriers preventing centralized health care from working as well as it does anywhere in the world. Frankly, from my view of the way your insurance system works - I think it would be dramatically improved in terms of cost management and out of pocket expenses for the average individual. The argument about American health care that I think is actually relevant to an informed discussion is do we want to have a centrally funded health insurance system run by the government? Personally, while I'm reluctant to trust the government with most things - I'm far more comfortable with the government running fundamental health care services with premium services (hospitals with nicer food, doctors who see you faster, pretty nurses that give hand jobs as part of your sponge bath, etc) being funded by people who feel that they need insurance above essential fundamentals - being managed by luxury service providers. I think putting insurance companies in charge of essential fundamentals for health care is a bit like putting the KKK in Harlem's education programs. Insurance companies are fundamentally motivated to not pay, and essential services are most required when you're least able to argue with the insurance provider about the terms of your contract coverage. I don't want anyone who's stated primary purpose for existence is to make a profit for shareholders involved in my primary medical care. I mean fine - if I want liposuction or whiter teeth - I expect that to be a financial decision. But if I've got chest pains - I don't want to be on the phone arguing with my insurance company about the presence or absence of the word 'the' in clause 22 of my coverage agreement, finding financial documents for a credit check, or mentally debating if I can afford to go see the doctor or if I should just try and walk it off and hope it's nothing.
The one thing that really pisses me off about this is they're requiring me to spend my money on something I won't use or need. I have assets, but I have no real income. I chose to spend my money in a certain way that I thought was appropriate. Why should I have to sell off my assets to purchase health insurance that I don't want and don't need? If I'm diagnosed with a terminal disease I'm going on my back forty and kissing a .45. We already have welfare parents that take full advantage of our health care system and go to the emergency room every time they have the sniffles on my nickel. Now I'm being forced to pay even more? What the fuck? How is that even remotely fair? I've been to the doctor 2 times in the last 30 years, once for a really fucked up heart. And I payed cash for my treatment. I made my decision as to what I would spend my money on, so why is someone else telling me what I should spend my remaining money on so that people that have never worked a day in their lives can get free health care? Bull fucking shit. I understand things like mandatory auto insurance...if I fuck up it's going to impact someone else's life and I'm fine with that. However, I am not fine with someone else fucking my life up for a free ride because they are to lazy to work. And that's basically what this whole thing boils down to. If you want health insurance, go get a damn job. It's not up to me to provide it for you.
This might be stirring the pot, but I have to ask all the people that support only paying for yourself this question: What happens if something catastrophic hits? Yes, there are most definitely people that misuse the system. We have them up here, with our 'free' health care. I think often, though, there is poor access to available family doctors that causes overloading of hospital ERs for non-emergency illnesses. But that's not the point of my post. A great many people who have posted have essentially said: I want to pay for what I know I will use. I do not want to pay for services I will never require. Fair enough. But what happens when: - You get hit by a bus - You get struck by lightening (no, seriously) - You are felled with a catastrophic illness that was wholly unpredictable (say, aggressive cancer in a healthy 25 year old, with no previous medical history) - You have a baby 4 months early that has severe health issues What then? I would hope that no one on this board thinks people in the situations I just listed should be bankrupted by their misfortune. Or, worse, have to leave or restrict their treatment because of the cost. What measures or controls are acceptable to be put in place that ensure nobody has to think about money when it comes to treating an illness or injury that they couldn't foresee or avoid? Who pays then?