I agree @Mike 100%. But, put a bunch of politicians in a room, and the obvious and best solution is the last thing they come up with. It doesn’t take but a few well informed and savy people to come up with a better solution. But, these people cannot running for the next election. That always gets in the way. Many conservatives and most liberals have for years agreed that single payer health insurance from not for profits, saves lives and reduces the deficit too, but is much leaner. We start there.
Guys, if the ACA created a single payer health insurance from -not-for-profits program available to all citizens, perhaps along the lines of the British and Canadian systems, I’d be 100% behind it.
But this bill isn’t even a close second. It simply forces citizens and companies (employing a minimum number of employees) to buy plans from for-profit insurance companies, uses the IRS as an enforcement agency, and outlaws budget plans by making the mandatory plan include coverage that drives the cost up for everyone. Beyond that, it mandates of healthcare providers reporting requirements that drive up their administrative costs enough to force many of them out of the business, meaning many (myself included) are losing doctors that they’ve had for many years.
And then there’s the issue of forcing us to buy the health insurance programs that the for-profit insurance companies create.
The ACA is NOT IMHO an acceptable second choice. It appears that many millions agree. If you think we’re pissed now, just wait until everyone finds out that there’s a clause in the bill reimbursing the health insurance companies for any losses the incur.
@same
You may go along with single payer because you are a rational person. All D s in congress would consider single payer as well many Rs. But instead, congressmen in general need to get reelected and there is a Teaparty faction that is funded by the wealthiest donors, enough to knock of many Rs in their primaries. ACA has worked on the state level and was designed that way as an R plan who generally favor state control. The same with a lot of issues. Our gov. was the recipient of Teaparty support and won a three way elected with 36% of the vote. He caters to the Teaparty philosophy, admittedly and refused to participate. Our state insurees not on Medicare, are on their own with no state ( very little) help. If you wonder why it is struggling…Please remembering it’s an R plan designed to run at the state level, and Rs govs. refuse to participate.And receive Medicaid funds which drives up costs for everyone.
The for profit is addressed in ACA by limiting overhead in private insurance coverage. It pretty much matches the Heritage plan. So, ACA WILL happen, it will improve just like Mass had teething problems.
The IRS is not an enforcement agent. If you refuse as an individual, you are fined a non collectible fine, which can only be paid out if your OVERPAYED TAXES. That is the only authority the IRS has. So…the IRS is not an enforcement agency…they are a collection agency and only if you have ALREADY GIVEN THEM THE MONEY in the form of over paid taxes. The fine will then be deducted from your refund. That’s it. You can’t be arrested or fined some more or have your wages garnished for tax evasion. It is a fine you are not obliged to pay if you don’t want to and know how !!
The IRS has requested an additional 6,000 agents and $1Billion to, in it’s own words, enforce Obamacare. A simple Google will confirm my statement. There are countless articles from all news outlets on the subject.
Yes, they will fine you via their calculation if your taxes owed. If you don’t own any, you will after their adjustment. Refusal to pay will confirm their ability to “enforce” the fine. People who’ve served time in prison for nonpayment of income taxes would disagree with you about that statement that you can’t be arrested. They were.
The SCOTUS ruled that the originally included “mandate” to purchase insurance was unconstitutional, but specifically stated that the IRS had the authority to use its tax collection function to fine anyone not buying insurance. IMHO it was one of the SCOTUS’ more questionable decision. Scalia agreed with emphasis when he wrote the “minority opinion”. The SCOTUS disagrees with you about the IRS’ ability to “fine” you.
The ACA limits overhead. And in another clause allows for the bailing out of health care insurers that cannot be profitable with ACA compliant health policies. It’s a shell game. Insurance agency accountants are laughing so hard they’re falling off their chairs. Any accountant that can’t see through THAT smokescreen doesn’t deserve his/her title.
Our former Gov. Lynch is a whole different discussion, as is out current lady Gov.
Unfortunately, our state’s elective offices have not been populated lately by many honest politicians, Senator Ayotte being the exception. But that’s a whole 'nother forum.
@Same
With all due respect, you are incorrect in your assesment of the IRS role in collecting fines or penalties if you will. They are forbiden by law to force collection beyound what I have said. The ACA is on line as is the IRS. You Need only read it and google any interpretation , other then Faux, and you will find what I said is true…See two below.
I want to see where you got your information that it is treated the same way as failure to pay taxes and punished accordingly. To insinuate in your same paragraph that it has any relationship to people being imprisoned for tax evasion sounds like fear mongering to me.
You get tax credits to pay it if you qualify and you are penalized ( or fined) if you don’t but their ability to collect the fine is limited to withholding tax refunds and is UNENFORCEABLE beyound that.
Just under pay your taxes in your weekly check, bank the amount you owe and pay your taxes due at the end of the year if you want to avoid any penalty. Just as anyone who wants to get paid interest on their taxes.
Please read this synopsis of the IRS role in collecting penalties … by Rush Limbaugh
You have to believe Rush…even he gets and appears to promote it ;=)
Another summary in USA today
You may be correct Dag but I would be curious how many have actually read and interpreted the 2300 pages of the law or the 10,000 pages of accompaning rules. Like Pelosi said, you have to pass it to see what’s in it. I doubt even the potus has read it and certainly his minions have not been known to be blunt or truthful with him if he has not read it. Me thinks he would be the last to know like so many other things.
If we were concerned about the 10% who do not have insurance, at least half of which was by choice, and for which the hospitals ended up footing the bill when they got sick, I think there would have been far simpler methods to achieve that goal without disrupting the whole industry. Some of us believe that it was a calculated failure to further the goal of a socialized medical system and a single payer that otherwise would be unacceptable to the vast majority of the population. Just talk to a few docs in the system to see what their opinion is.
The cost for my surgery last summer was $120 plus $10 for drugs, and by the hospital I chose and the surgeon I chose. What could be simpler or cheaper?
@Bing
There are a lot of people out there who have summarized this thing for us and even Rush, they all agree on these items.
What amazes me is what Rush Limbaugh has for a rationale to encourage people to avoid the fine. Let’s all not get insured, avoid the fine, so we can defeat Obama care. Now you and I don’t care, but the friends and family of the 30k a year who died for lack of insurance, just to defeat Obamacare so Rush can be immortalized might think differently. The object is for us is to SAVE lives by making it affordable to those who are now DYING. In the mean time, you and I get better preventative care, me in Medicare and you in (?, not get dropped and move anywhere and still get insurance regardless of our condition. Some people will be paying more because they no long can buy that plan with the $10,000 deductable for what ever and can drop them at any time. Sure, that was cheaper…till you got sick and died.
Btw, these people didn’t choose not to have insurance. They had to choose between insurance and food. Now, 9.5% of your salary maximum single payer premium. More then that and you get tax credits to bring you down to it. What could be simpler then that for the previously uninsured. Now Rush, would rather have you take a chance on dying, just to prove what? He doesn’t care about people ? We knew that !
You guys are flat out wrong. The IRS has a right to “fine” you for not purchasing healthcare by adding the fine to your taxes owed, and it does have enforcement venues for nonpayment of income taxes. The terminology used by the IRS and by the SCOTUS is “fine” and “enforcement”.
Dag, the problem with your last paragraph is that it’s just plain wrong. Millions are finding they have to pay more because the program that they could afford can no longer be offered. Of course, they will no longer have to decide between insurance and food…they’ll have to buy insurance and forgo the food. Millions are now losing the policies they can afford and will now have to buy policies they can’t afford. And you think that’s good?
It’s too bad we don’t have a system lime Great Britain where the Prime Minister has to go before a full house of commons and defend his policies openly. With the current system, Obama simply invites hos supporters to stand behind him, makes a grand speech, and it’s up to others to find out the truth. You need to stop getting all your information from Obama’s speeches and the 97% liberal mainstream media. Try watching Fox. Or reading.
it (the IRS)does have enforcement venues for nonpayment of income taxes.
I thought we were talking about collecting the ACA penalty ? There is a difference . Let me repeat, please read Rush’s article on how to avoid them and not pay a cent or be forced to. Or, actually read the ACA, I did, this section.
Of course, they will no longer have to decide between insurance and food…they’ll have to buy insurance and forgo the food.
You do know the max individual yearly insurance premium you have to pay is 9.5% of your TAKE HOME PAY for the poor, that should not then be a choice to buy food or not .
You need to stop getting all your information from Obama’s speeches and the 97% liberal mainstream media. Try watching Fox. Or reading.
Let’s see, in our discussion I used and referred to the ACA web sight, Rush Limbaugh, the CBO and USA today and Heritage. AMA number for 30k die each year I did not refer to.
That seems pretty well rounded and fair. You use Faux News and want me to read that or a bio of Barry Goldwater. You don’t think that actually reading the AFC act is reading…or a CBO report or a Rush Limbaugh article. That seems like the horse’s mouth version.
I have SEEN NO references from you except Barry Goldwater !
btw, The New Yorker is an excellent read. We get it. Here is an article that exemplifies why we don’t quite trust Faux News.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2013/10/why-obamacare-might-help-the-man-on-fox.html
Well I don’t know. I agree with the same. Like I said a good portion of the uninsured were by choice, not poor, just a choice. The poor (not really so poor anymore with all the programs) in Minnesota had programs with low cost insurance but the “poor” still didn’t sign up for them largely because they just didn’t know or didn’t think about it. This isn’t choosing food over insurance but just being irresponsible to the public and their kids. Even the folks with pre-existing conditions (which I agree is a good idea) still had the risk pool to get insurance from.
All my life I have had health insurance of one sort or another, and I haven’t always had a lot of money. Its just a responsible decision. When my son turned 25 and was still a student and couldn’t be on my family policy, I bought a $2K deductible for $104 a month. That’s a pretty low cost and actually a pretty low deductible compared to Obummercare.
So I’m just having a hard time seeing the real needy target market and how this is the best way of taking care of those reluctant souls. In Minnesota, the hospitals are required to provide care. Last year our hospital lost 4% to these non-payments. Seems to me the hospitals not being paid for providing care is more of a problem than the uninsured. Maybe I’m a little tainted because I know of these people pushing this program in Minnesota and I was not impressed in the past.
Medicare is in the black
Social security is in the black
Medicaid, care for the uninsured is the biggest cause of our increased debt problem.
Either we treat them in hospitals and pay for it, or let them die ( which is the faux mantra.) Or…
Insure them, make sure everyone has preventative care to lesson for example, the biggest expense in the elderly which is treatment for diabetes related illnesses which is mostly preventable.
Obamacare is a compromise, a necessary one. Because the real solution, Medicare for all just won’t get passed…for now. Now, if you subscribe to Faux News with a main interest in the status quo where the rich get richer and the poor die, you won’t believe any of this and you follow thier idioms and believe the poor are to blame for not being insured like they are to blame for everything. Even though 80% (AMAnumber) are gamefully employed and just can’t afford it.
We are the only industrialized democracy without it and we are getting deeper in debt because of the delay. The CBO ( refernce I gave earlier)estimates a conservative savings of 106 billion dollars over the years following full implementation of Obamacare.
But, if you prefer to listen to Faux instead of the AMA or the CBO or countries that have universal healthcare, you can keep being in denial. But, don’t forget to sign up for Medicare. Because no insurance company will give you insurance for any money you can afford except the evil Fed. . Welcome to the 46%.
I have two very conservative neighbors who have been hit by no health insurance. One is looking at a $30000 bill he has no means to pay off, and the other, a wealthy business man, just buried his uninsured daughter who lived in NY who died on her second visit after waiting 6 hours in the emergency room for surgery that was too late, for appendicitis. So it hits home for everyone. .
So @Bing, my experience doesn’t allow me to put the uninsured into the “let them die catagory” or the " let them go bankrupt category". Going to one’s funeral and writing out donation checks that won’t come close to solving the other’s problem, is too little too late for all of us.
Well my rates are $104 for part B, and $270 for the coordinating coverage plan that pays for what part A and B don’t and part D. Funny thing I was paying $525 before Medicare so I’m not sure its all that great a deal and I think it is not in the Black.
Now Obummer likes to talk about health care, but insurance is not health care. Anyone anywhere in the US can walk into any hospital or clinic and receive health care no problem. What we are talking about is paying for it. Insurance is just a pool of money to even out the expense, but its not health care. Its like saying car insurance is auto body care. You still have to find a body shop willing to do the work for the money you are being provided. Funny he never seems to care about the kids that can’t continue going to their hospital for cancer treatment that they have been going to or two available doctors for 20,000 people. That’s not health care, its fraud and shell game on our way to the socialist republic.
@Bing
"I think" is never an issue if you have a computer. All that data is published on line ! So, saying you don’t believe Medicare is in the black doesn’t mean a thing if you haven’t checked yourself.
It is solvent through 2026 with no adjustments ! It is in the black.
http://acafine.com/faq/
This is too.
Your assertion that anyone can walk into an emergency room and receive adaquate healthcare is FALSE. t You need to read my comment about my neighbor’s daughter dying after “just walking” into an ER.
I have a long standing friend who managed an emergency room at a local hospital. You are triaged and managed when they get to you, totally unlike the rest of the staff. Then, they take care of your acute symptoms and send you on your way. No follow up , no tests…that’s when many die.
But this debate can go no further if all people do is enjoy their own good healthcare from the govt. and diss it for everyone else and use no research other then Faux idioms. It’s the " I got mine screw the rest of the world" attitude they promote. Advocates for Faux who feel 95% of the rest of the media is liberal bias and believes nothing about govt. reports limits their research to Faux, because the then have a built in excuse to eliminate 95% of everything in print and every word uttered. It gives them a chance to disregard the rest of the world that does not cater to fear…which Faux depends upon.
CBO, eh?
Perhaps you’d like to read the CBO’s official estimate of the cost of Obamacare.
AMA? Perhaps you’d like to read this article from Dr. Lee Hieb - Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, Former President
Guys, Obamacare, a troubled law created in secret and passed only by using back room deals, is a disaster. It’s a disaster of a health system, it’s a disaster financially, it’s a disaster economically, and it has and will hurt millions upon millions of working people. It’s also going to hurt business, doctors, and everything else it touches.
These “let them die” and “let them go bankrupt” comments are right out of the administration’s playbook. Rather than address the bill, attack the criticizers; paint them as demons. Dag, you’re smarter than to be quoting that crap. Sorry, but there’s no other way to say it.
Where is your reference ?
"Let them die " , simply, because you cannot come up with one R plan that will increase the number of participants in healthcare in the Ryan budget, the R platform or any suggestions they have made. The only R supported in the past plan that does increase insurance for the one in seven who are currently uninsured is the Heritage supported, Romney signed into law, Oamacare which is what we are talking about.
Association of American physicians is a satellite group of 1300 members with a focused agenda, , hardly comparable to the AMA the main group of all heath care professionals of 232000 members.
you need to use ligit references if you USE them at all…and I have yet to see ANY.
Rush Limbaugh in the article I GAVE you advocates the one in seven, who DONOT have healthcare, defeat Obamacare by not enrolling, not paying the fine and continuing not being insured. He is now showing them the way and champion the chances they “will die” . So I will go a step further. It sounds like your national spokes person is advocating that the uninsured continue to increase their chances of dying. That’s worse them " let them die" I am being kind !
I am waiting for an R plan that they NOW support that insures people and saves lives. As defeating Obamacare without a valid plan is “letting them die” …you need another plan to save lives before you take away a plan that does.
Faux News does not want you to read truthful articles like this. Take a chance. Then, tell me where in the article there is a lie.
Dagosa, will you knock off that “faux news” crap. It’s insulting, ignorant and irritating. I will, however, acknowledge that this approach to debating; insulting the opponent personally, is from the playbook of the current democratic party, so I guess I should expect it.
I just discovered that my links apparently did not come through. I don’t know why, but I’ll have to work on that.
In the meantime, there’s no sense carrying on this conversation. The original post was to quiet those who keep claiming that the GM bailout didn’t cost us anything, and/or that they paid us back in full. I thing the point that this is BS has already been made and is beyond debate at this point.
By the way, Dag, I’ve mentioned more than once before that I don’t watch Fox national news. I watch their weather, sometimes their local news, a few of their shows, and an occasional movie…if I happen to be in front of the TV and it appears interesting. My TV selection criteria are the same for all other channels. For my national news, I read countless newspapers including the Concord Monitor, USA Today, and the Union Leader, I read countless political books, I read from the internet (often the dot-gov sites to get the actual documents), I watch PBS Newshour, BBC World News, countless PBS specials, most political talk shows, and very often C-span usually when there’s ongoing testimony on a subject that interests me.
But I’m going to leave this thread now. I’ve made my original point and am tired of your insinuations. My patience is at an end. I find that I’m losing focus on the Obamacare issue due to the repeated insults, and it was never the point of my post anyway, so I’m signing off.
@same
I appreciate your comments even though they are all opinionated without reference. You are right. It’s time to end it and “move on” to something non political, like…cars?
The GM and Chrysler bailouts no doubt cost the taxpayers money but not nearly as much as that for other firms that failed spectacularly. On the whole, although I am a libertarian. I think it was a good decison. The key is now to watch whether GM has learned anything from this near-death experience. According to the new CEO who promised “no more crappy cars”, that may be true. This girl spent a lot of years as product manager, but not a lot of time in production and quality. She has shown she is willing to learn!!
Japanese and Korean car makers and those in the camera and electronics closely studied their competitors and industry leaders. They copied the best practices and forged ahead.
US car companies’ arrogance and inbreeding prevented them from admitting that they might learn something from others. Somone vulgar reminded me there was a thin line between being inward looking and having your head up your ‘you know what’.
As late as 1975 I was asssured by a GE guy that “The Japanese don’t know how to build good large screen TVs” They’re not a threat.
Many years ago I was in Germany and went to buy a camera flash at a photo shop. I put my 1958 model Taron 35mm from Japan on the counter, whereupon the clerk arrogantly picked up the camera as though it was contaminating her shop and said “Sir, dees ees chunk!” I humored her by telling her: “Don’t knock the Japanese; they make good stuff. After all, they almost won the war, just like yourself”
We all know what happened to the German camera industry.
US car companies’ arrogance and inbreeding prevented them from admitting that they might learn something from others. Somone vulgar reminded me there was a thin line between being inward looking and having your head up your ‘you know what’.
Let me add that from what I have seen, there is an element of arrogance from many car companies including Toyota. They could do a lot better then they do and they were supported early on as was Subaru.
My neighbor, a local very successful businessman with a lot of influence, and honest as the day is long bought a new 4Runner. He loved the car. It had a relatively minor problem having to do with the trim and took it back to the dealer. The dealer agreed to fix it but only after he to listen to a long winded explanation of how great Toyotas were, yada… the usual company line, and this had to be someone else fault. He listened quietly, waited till the car was fixed, went to the manager and told him he was dealing somewhere else he was better appreciated. He traded the car at a loss of thousands that afternoon.
“Just keep your mouth shut and either fix it or not. I already bought your car, I don’t need a lecture on how great you are…” just a few of his parting words
@dagosa I agree that Toyota dealers are often difficult to deal with. The corporation itself will acknowledge defects and make good, but needs proof. Having said that they have given away millions to pressure groups on the “unintended acceleration” issue. All car compnies can probably do better, but the current best performers are really pushing the evelope on quality and applying Six Sigma standards (one bad one in about 534,000 parts) to the manufacture of well designed and tested parts is about as good as it gets. In the 50s US manufacturers accepted 5% rejects in may of the parts the bought or manufactured.
By “inward looking” I was referring to an unwillingness to learn form those that do better. Arrogance is something entirely difference; I’ve received it from GM dealers, Ford dealers, Chrysler dealers as well as a Honda dealer who told me that all service work had to be done at his place or the warranry would be not be valid.
My previous post was mainly about product improvement, which Subaru really mastered, for instance. Ford had been making cars for over a hundred years, while Subaru sold pure junk in the 70s and is now a top rated make, while Ford is still struggling to make a relatively defect free family car!