If it turns out to be a bad time to be sick can you reschedule? I always seem to be sick when its vacation time.
Sure, the Doc will see you in another 4-6 weeks.
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The Great Universal Health Care Debate w/Poll (note: it just passed both houses)
- Thread starter QuagmireMcGuire
- Start date
Sure, the Doc will see you in another 4-6 weeks.
Mandating coverage is the only way you can get pre-existing conditions covered, otherwise everyone would just wait under they were broken, then apply for insurance. Making you pay a fine as an alternative to getting insurance? Well, as Flash said, they already make me pay for a bunch of crap I don't use already, so I really don't see the difference.
I don't really care if everyone gets health care or not. What I do care about is fixing the spiraling cost of health care, because that is bankrupting us. At some point, we are going to have to accept one of two things:
1. Government controls your healthcare, either directly or indirectly. It rations it and decides what's a rational expense according to cost. You know what? From a logical standpoint, it doesn't make any sense to spend $100,000 to treat an 80-year-old for cancer.
2. Everyone pays for their own healthcare. Some people will get more and better than others. You want your hip replaced? Scrape together $30,000 and it's yours.
oh yeah....there's actually three options....
3. The government keeps making promises it can't keep and putting it on the national credit card. People keep voting out any politician with the balls to suggest things need to change, and eventually the government defaults on its debt. The country descends into permanent second-rate status.
I don't agree with a lot in the bill. It does, or rather did, have some things that made sense, though. But, as always, they didn't make the tough choices. The "Cadillac tax," which would have helped contain costs, was pushed off to 2018 (read: will never happen) as a sop to unions. They promised the "dr fix," reducing medicare reimbursements, would be pushed off to another Congress. Again, something that will never happen.
Hope no one here bought 30-year Treasuries, because they are not going to hold their value!
I don't really care if everyone gets health care or not. What I do care about is fixing the spiraling cost of health care, because that is bankrupting us. At some point, we are going to have to accept one of two things:
1. Government controls your healthcare, either directly or indirectly. It rations it and decides what's a rational expense according to cost. You know what? From a logical standpoint, it doesn't make any sense to spend $100,000 to treat an 80-year-old for cancer.
2. Everyone pays for their own healthcare. Some people will get more and better than others. You want your hip replaced? Scrape together $30,000 and it's yours.
oh yeah....there's actually three options....
3. The government keeps making promises it can't keep and putting it on the national credit card. People keep voting out any politician with the balls to suggest things need to change, and eventually the government defaults on its debt. The country descends into permanent second-rate status.
I don't agree with a lot in the bill. It does, or rather did, have some things that made sense, though. But, as always, they didn't make the tough choices. The "Cadillac tax," which would have helped contain costs, was pushed off to 2018 (read: will never happen) as a sop to unions. They promised the "dr fix," reducing medicare reimbursements, would be pushed off to another Congress. Again, something that will never happen.
Hope no one here bought 30-year Treasuries, because they are not going to hold their value!
Random8145
Registered User
While it can improve things if everyone buys coverage, that doesn't justify them forcing people to purchase it. There were numerous alternatives to this bill. The Democrats were just zealous to pass it because it is a government takeover of one-sixth of the economy, turning the health insurance companies into utilities.
Like what?
And I just don't buy the government 'taking over one-sixth of the economy', how exactly are they taking it over? Medical personnel won't be government employees, most health insurance will be private and you will still have your choice of care if you so choose.
It could be that Pres Obama (and plenty of freshman congressman) ran on healthcare. Maybe that is why they were ¨zealous¨.
Amazing and unfortunately true. It's sad that so many Americans didn't have the depth to understand what exactly is in the "healthcare" plan. Actually not many at all have a comprehensive knowledge about the plan so no one should have supported this mystery bill anyway but I digress. Now we have a mandate that does VERY little to address the root causes of the increasing premiums and how to take action to lower them. What's been shared so far doesn't add up, unless others get rationed care. It's surreal right now. Jo Biden- really said it best.- (quote below)
ryan1234
Well-Known Member
IMHO, Just because it's law now doesn't mean that it will/can stay law.... it may not be repealed but it may be re-shaped. Honestly here this is the first time in US history people have been mandated to purchase a specific product based solely on citizenship. Idaho just passed a law requiring their state to sue over the bill. The US Supreme court is going to busy for a while. This whole deal isn't over yet.
Include Congress in those who don't understand what's in the bill. Health care in this country is not "broken", yet amazingly this does nothing to address most of the areas that could be improved. Or not so amazingly, when you consider that improving health care wasn't the driving force behind this. It's about increasing government control.
Besides opinion, what do you base this on? Just curious.
Make no mistake, those 37 million+ people are already in the "health care system," it's just that the system they're in involves no preventative care. What it does involve is getting treatment through the local emergency room, which is much more costly and takes up greater medical resources. If all those people who view the on-call emergency room staff as their primary care physician actually got taken care of before needing to visit the ER, costs for everybody would go down, because we all pay for those ER visits. Getting those 37 million+ into the health care system as you and I know it shouldn't necessitate an increase in the numbers of doctors and nurses.
Comments from Democratic politicians concerning subsequent (hoped for) actions.
Steps taken in the bailouts that bring a much higher level of government involvement than previously.
That's one of the main problems with the bill. It's very specific about how it plans to grant access to health care to everyone, something you admit is already available. It does not specify where the cost controlling measures of health care reform come from, and completely ignores others. Tort reform, open competition among insurers, etc etc are not laid out clearly in the bill, and could have had immediate effects on the cost of health care.
Random8145
Registered User
Work to try and get Medicare and Medicaid under control, which are drivers of increasing healthcare costs, tort reform, remove the ban on being able to purchase health insurance across state lines, remove the tax exemption on employer-provided health insurance which encourages excessive spending because it is a left-over price control from WWII, individual states might want to check the mandates they have on health insurance companies which can drive up costs, etc...
It is a takeover of control of one-sixth of the economy. Government doesn't need to own the whole economy to control it.
It's like the EPA being able to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant. In effect, that gives one government agency a massive amount of control over virtually the entire economy.
Health insurance will no longer be private, except on paper. It turns the health insurance companies into utilities. They give up freedoms for guaranteed profits, and essentially become appendages of the government. The government will end up being the main decider and designer regarding the health insurance programs.
Random8145
Registered User
There is a difference I'd say between being zealous to pass a massive health bill that allows them to increase control over the system and economy and being zealous to truly reform healthcare. This bill also federalizes the student loan program.
The two primary ways in which to control society are to control healthcare and energy. You can also control education and finance.
The Obama administration seems on a course to grab control of all four.
Once the "government is paying" for your healthcare, they get to regulate, tax, and dictate to you in all sorts of new ways.
For example, here in New York state, they are trying to push through legislation to severely curtail the salt used in restaurants. Why? Because "it will help reduce healthcare costs in the state."
Obama said he wanted to change America in three fundamental ways: healthcare, education, energy.
Healthcare via quasi-nationalizing the healthcare system.
Education via a government takeover of the student-loan program
(they just did the above two with this bill)
Energy via carbon cap-and-trade to control carbon emissions, thus rationing energy and controlling the economy in this sense (in Britain, some want to mandate a "carbon card" in which every time any citizen makes a purchase, they draw from their mandated yearly carbon ration). Congress won't do cap-and-trade it seems, so the administration wants to place control of regulating carbon under the EPA.
There is a fourth area of control however, which is finance. Because of this crises, we now have fewer, and even more massive, financial institutions.
Financial regulatory reform is up next. The government, if they write the regulations right, could place these massive financial institutions, a very concentrate industry, under such regulatory control that these institutions become appendages of the government.
Then they would control the pricing and allocation of credit, the lifeblood of capitalism.
And of course we all know Democrats would love to pass the Fairness Doctrine to regulate free speech and nationalize the oil industry to control energy in this sense as well ("every other country in the industrialized world" has a nationalized oil industry).
So the party that wants government to control healthcare, education, energy, finance, and free speech, they then rail they are not socialists.
Depends on how you want to define the term "health care." If by "health care" you mean the ability to receive walk-in treatment at an ER, than yes, health care is already available to everyone, because many hospitals are legally obligated to treat those who present at their ERs, regardless of ability tp pay. This is arguably the most expensive way to treat disease, and it drives up costs for everybody. On the other hand, if by "health care" you mean being enrolled in a plan of insurance with half-decent benefits (i.e. covers preventative care and doesn't have a $15,000 annual deductible), than this is soemthing that has not been available to everyone.
My previous post was meant to point out that the 37 million + people referenced by jarhead who are not enrolled in an insurance plan (second definition above) are already players in and absolutely do have an impact on the overall health care system and the cost of providing medical services to all Americans. Supposedly, one of the major cost savings of the legislation will come about because expensive ER care for the previously unenrolled will become the exception rather than the norm.