Fun crowd! Keep in mind that this is the same bunch that called people "unamerican" for daring to speak against anything the great George Bush did as president.
You really buy in to that MSM propaganda huh? Can you not see they media are taking one or two people (who knows who they are) and using them to smear any opposition to this president? You claim you are offended by anyone calling anti-war protesters unamerican, yet you fully support transparent smears against protesters you disagree with. Stop pretending you are on some kind of moral high ground.
^I can't read what that says because I have him on my ignore list... but let me guess: it has something to do with the MSM.
I think I'm in the same boat as PhillGates. Ideally, I'd like to see health care return to an actual free market system, but it was inevitable health care would pass, the democrats literally went on a jihad to pass this. Since this thing was ultimately going to pass, I would have rather seen a public option, since it's not entirely evil. The bill that just passed is stupid, there's literally nothing good about it. It's a legislative abomination, and you can mark my words--health care costs will CONTINUE to spiral upwards, unemployment will rise (This health care bill creates a peverse incentive for business to NOT hire people with no insurance, so basically this bill fucks over the people it was supposed to help), medical innovation will be shipped over seas, and insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies will become obscenely rich. At least in a single-payer, we'd still have remnants of our 'private' system, poor people wouldn't get fucked over, and insurance companies would get punished for their behavior. This bill is nothing but corporate welfare disguised as 'reform'.
Why is the bill stupid? How is there nothing good about it? Show me in the policy why health insurance costs will rise. Show me where in the legislation this preverse pokicy is created. How is medical innovation going to be shipped oversees, that doesnt even make sense. Health care is not being outsourced...How does this make insurance and pharmaceutical companies rich? From Reuters (neutral): Insurance companies will get 31 million more customers, many of them subsidized by the federal government. However, in addition to new coverage regulations, insurers will be required to spend a minimum of 85 cents of every premium dollar on medical care for large group plans and 80 cents on every premium dollar for individual and small group plans. By requiring everyone to obtain insurance, hospitals will have fewer cases of uncompensated care. Many people without insurance seek care at hospital emergency centers because they do not turn away patients. When patients are unable to pay, hospitals make up those losses by charging more to those with insurance. So basically insurance companies will get more money but will be required to spend it on providing care. Hospitals will get more business but ultimalte save money as opposed to losing it due to losses created by the uninsured. I love having a political debate and I am willing to here other's beliefs if they arent just radical and obviously quite biased. If you are going to make all these claims support them with fact. Back them up somehow.
Well! The bill is a great idea and is truly a step in the right direction to making sure everyone has access to medical care... but I can't help feeling that with America's enormous debt it might not be particularly wise to impliment such a costly thing at this point in time. So ideologically, yes, it's brilliant - at a practical and circumstanial level, it's not entirely appropriate.
The point of the bill is to get people who otherwise couldn't afford insurance, to be able to afford insurance. As I'll demonstrate below, this bill actually HURTS those that need it the most, and will only serve to lessen the efficiency and quality of those that ALREADY have insurance. If you ask me, that's a pretty big failure. It will not extend the solvency of Medicare, it WILL contribute to the deficit through the 'Doc Fix', and over the long term, according to CBO. These are the main reasons why we were supposed to support the bill. It wasn't going to impact the deficit (Lie), it won't affect Medicare (Lie), it won't affect those that have insurance already (Lie), Perhaps most stunningly, according to the CBO, health reform will spike "in a broad range around one-quarter percent of GDP" which, using the current GDP numbers, is $600 billion. So in 20 years, our deficit will spike $600 billion, just because of this one bill. That's easy. Someone already did that for me. There are more perverse incentive, as well. The CBO has already stated that under 'Obamacare', health care premiums would be higher under Obamacare, than if we did nothing. So what will end up happening is, insurance premiums will rise, but you know that little tax you get for not getting insurance (Something like 2.6% of your income, or a $2,600 fine, per year) will actually be CHEAPER than buying insurance. The reform bill mandates that insurance companies provide a 'minimum essential coverage' for their clients. Of course, that 'minimum essential coverage' is Government mandated, and when you give companies a 'minimum' amount of anything to aspire to, you create laziness. In a free market, insurance companies would be forced to provide new medical innovations constantly, to keep up with competitors. In this system, you'll see insurance companies get lazy, and become slower to adopt new technology. This is quite common in Medicare/Medicaid... they're extremely slow to adopt new technologies because... they don't really have to. They have no profit motive, and therefore don't care about gaining an edge over their competitors. Basic economics here. Insurance companies care more about reaching that 'minimum essential coverage' threshold, rather than pleasing it's customers now. Well first of all, when you insulate any company from market competition, you increase it's profitability through an 'inefficiency monopoly'. Inefficiency monopolies always increase costs, whereas efficiency monopolies decrease costs. Second, this bill effectively decreases administrative costs for insurance companies by making it easier to dispense treatment, once again, because of the 'minimum essential coverage' threshold. Also, pharmaceuticals will always continue to profit, their profit margins are 22%. Back in December, Democrats voted against importing drugs from Canada (Oh right, the Democrats are LOOKING OUT FOR THE COMMON MAN) which would decrease drug prices, and further allow big pharmaceuticals to keep their monopoly on premium drugs. 33 million more people on insurance will mean more pills will be sold. Remember, Pharmaceuticals aren't being punished by 'health reform', they're going to massively profit. In fact, they're exstatic, let's hear it straight from the horses' mouths'! Drug lobby applauds 'reform' passage | Washington Examiner If that wasn't bad enough, here's some more bullshit. Obama gives sugar plums to the special interests | Washington Examiner Even if this were true, I honestly don't think it holds a candle to the very obvious, and gigantic negatives of this bill. I've already demonstrated how this will be a very big boon to the pharmaceutical and insurance industry. I mean, look at the stocks of these companies, nearly all of the insurance companies that are supposedly being 'punished' by the Democrats for recission are hitting 52-week highs, coincidentally, the day following the passage in the Congress. The market knows this bill is nothing but a cash cow for these companies. I think I backed them up pretty well, I don't like to disappoint
Oh, and another nail in the coffin, Harvard economist Greg Manikw puts in perspective the Democrats' magical accounting feats that allow them to claim this is 'deficit neutral', and then follows up by saying "my judgment is that this health bill adds significantly to our long-term fiscal problems". His analogy; Then of course, there's this bit; So on top of the fact that, in 20 years, the budget deficit caused by this bill will become extremely large, the GDP will have shrunk because of the Economic havoc wrought by this bill. Look at the brightside, if this bill shrinks the GDP, that means that the percentage of GDP we spend on paying for the deficit will be less than if our GDP grew!
Props for backing things up. Now we get into the legitmacy of sources. Really, the problem is there are too many conflicting sources. I think we can post sources back and forth forever. Some say this is armageddon, some say this will save us. Ezra Klein clearly disagrees with the bill, others do not. I think your point is well made though, there is a potential for the resulting effects of this bill be negative. Some say that there is a risk of increasing the defecit. Whether or not these perverse policies or rationing come into effect we need time to see what happens. People are too quick to denounce this bill I think. The same kind of thing happened with medicare/medicaid. Now everyone loves it to an extent. This bill needs time. I honestly like businessweek.com's view on the whole thing. Experts Talk Health-Care Reform Bill Impact - BusinessWeek Realistically there is a lot of risk to this bill. Its national health care, we have to accept that. Its not going to be easy. But the bill needs time, if there are problems give the administration time to correct them. Simply because of the proposed risk we cannot repeal this bill. Or we can. I have no problem in repealingthis bill IF, we give it proper time to take shape and give the government a chance to address issues before the bill gets deemed a failure. “Thes best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly.â€-Abraham Lincoln I am NOT saying this is a bad law. I believe that we need national health care and this is a good first step. I look forward to seeing it evolve. At the very I believe this law does well by bringing more money and attention to our health care system. This is why the insurance companies are doing well in the market right now. No matter what your opinion of the bill is you cant deny the fact that money flowing through will boost numbers initially, someone somewhere is always anticipating profit. My mother works in the health care system with insurance companies. She is thrilled at this bill being passed. She works mately with providers and hospitals a she feels as if this bill will increase transparency and lead to less corruption within insurance companies and that will be best for the people.
advantages: helping other americans disadvantages: we aren't giving everyone in the world some form of healthcare. If it was me, I would have free A+ healthcare for every living human on this planet.
Because everyone gets sick eventually, and everyone will eventually require some form of health care at some point in there life. That is a fact of life whether you want to accept it or not. If you aren't paying for your own health care, then I (and everyone else who pays for it) is paying for your's. Does that seem fair to you?
sounds fair to me. I mean, why wouldn't you want your fellow brother to have the same health care as you do? We are all humans... if we don't have each other then what do we have?