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survival
Big Wall climber
Terrapin Station
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Jun 29, 2012 - 12:12pm PT
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Take a peek at the statistics, they don't lie. We spend more per student in the multi-colored community, they have a higher rate of being on government programs, and a higher incarceration rate for violent crime.
And your solution is to ignore them? Spend less on them? Wash our hands of them? If the money doesn't go to education and health, it will surely go to prisons, but I guess that's what you want.
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zBrown
Ice climber
chingadero de chula vista
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Jun 29, 2012 - 12:12pm PT
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If one chooses not to purchase insurance, you will be penalized via an additional tax that is based on one's income (this is why Roberts chose to consider the law under Congress's taxation powers).
With essentially no enforcement mechanism. I don't have the language readily at hand, but the gov't is enjoined from taking the violators to court.
Perhaps some reader(s) of this thread will be able to post just what "value added" the insurance companies provide to the health care "industry". I'm sure there is some (somewhere).
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survival
Big Wall climber
Terrapin Station
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Jun 29, 2012 - 12:14pm PT
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By the way, I didn't even have to try to find out that 100 percent of male black basketball players graduated at these colleges.
Belmont
BYU
Creighton
Davidson
Duke
Notre Dame
Vermont
Vanderbilt
Western Kentucky
Gawd you piss me off sometimes.
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apogee
climber
Technically expert, safe belayer, can lead if easy
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Jun 29, 2012 - 12:20pm PT
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"Perhaps some reader(s) of this thread will be able to post just what "value added" the insurance companies provide to the health care "industry". "
Havin' a hard time coming up with anything.
Our current private insurance-based healthcare system has a primary interest in minimizing payouts, and maximizing shareholder profit. Any kind of 'reform' that doesn't substantially change this premise (that would be Obamacare) is just going to perpetuate this dysfunction, and give 35 million people the aggravating experience of dealing with insurance companies.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Jun 29, 2012 - 12:23pm PT
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The main thing the public is uncertain about in Obamacare is the public mandate Which Romney invented and is on tape defending. How sucking is it when your main beef with the opposition is their adoption of your program? What was the other big thing you did as Massachusetts Governer?
The other talking point is that business doesn't like it because they might have to offer healthcare when they don't want to. Screw them. These same guys don't want government to offer health care so they're basically saying "Let them eat cake"
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/06/29-1
Supreme Court Leaves Romney in the Cold
by Robert Scheer
Mitt Romney is an idiot or, even worse, is pretending to be one. His tantrum of a response on Thursday to the Supreme Court’s health care decision was pure playground: As president I will own the ball, and the game will be played by rules that leave me a winner.
That game has already been called in a decision written by the top-ranking conservative jurist, and shorn of the constitutional objection; Barack Obama’s health care plan now will be judged by its practical outcomes. Romney’s promise that “I will act to repeal Obamacare” from “my first day as president of the United States” is a prescription of destructive gridlock for a program already well under way.
By immediately committing to reverse a health care reform based on the very program he implemented as governor of Massachusetts, Romney has gone to war with himself. Obviously, neither he nor his advisers has yet grasped that the decision written by Chief Justice John Roberts has changed the terms of the debate.
The issue is no longer one of states’ rights. That would have been the case if the court had relied on the Constitution’s commerce clause, leaving Romney to argue that it was legal for his state to have required a mandate but is illegal for the feds to do so. However, the court decision, based as it is on the right of the government to raise taxes to pay for a public need, makes the states’ rights claim irrelevant.
The issue faced by the court was the same on the federal level as it was on the state level; if the public, through its government, must ultimately bear the cost of caring for the uninsured—as would be so in any society possessed of even a modicum of shared social responsibility—then it can vote to levy taxes to finance that effort.
Why did Massachusetts under Romneycare have a right to tax to pay for mandated health care but the federal government would have no such right? All the Obama campaign needs to do is play that video clip from April 12, 2006, when Romney signed into law a Massachusetts mandate, justifying his tax penalty on those who failed to comply by saying it would help “hundreds of thousands of people ... have healthier and happier lives.” President Obama could claim correctly that he added 30 million Americans, not blessed to be living in Massachusetts, to the healthy and happy category.
Clearly the Romney campaign staff was not prepared for what it must now view as Justice Roberts’ betrayal. Based on the oral proceedings of the court, Romney’s aides felt assured that Justice Anthony Kennedy would join his four conservative colleagues in voting to reverse the law.
“My guess is that they’re not sleeping real well at the White House tonight,” Romney chortled the day before the ruling. With egg on his face the morning after, a subdued Romney, standing behind a podium sign promising to “Repeal and Replace Obamacare,” committed to sinking into a political swamp of winless contradictions.
The danger for Romney is in the word “replace,” for there is no way he will persuade even a Republican-dominated Congress to get rid of the obviously popular requirements of the new law, now declared constitutional. While the mandatory aspect—pay for insurance or pay a fine—remains unpopular, not so the programs that expand medical coverage to the uninsured. Three-quarters of those polled by The Associated Press said they wanted Congress, instead of sticking with the status quo, to come up with a new plan if the court threw this one out.
Romney’s devil is now in the details. What exactly in this massive overhaul, much of it widely popular although costly, would he shed? The court already has limited federal pressure on the states to increase assistance to the poor. Bereft of that handy demagogues’ argument, Romney and his fellow critics are left with eviscerating programs that assist the struggling middle class through obviously fairer access to heath care than has been provided previously by the insurance industry.
If Romney now dares to oppose the popular items in the bill, such as requirements for the insurance companies to cover young adult children or people with pre-existing medical conditions, he is finished as a candidate before he begins. And if it is the universal coverage mandate that he would eliminate, he is left with the government stepping in to fund the good stuff, and that is what the Republican right derides as socialized medicine.
This is the petard that now hoists Romney.
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Ksolem
Trad climber
Monrovia, California
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Jun 29, 2012 - 12:28pm PT
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Kris, you don't need to wait 15 years for that, it's our current system. Healthcare decisions are being made by accountants.
Gary that is not quite right.
I can only talk from my own experience. That is, that up until this law takes effect I have protected myself with relatively inexpensive health policies with a very high deductible and only the coverages I need. This has meant that when I have needed medical care I have had to pay quite a bit initially but the coverage protected me from long term debt or bankruptcy. This has worked well for me and given me access to great care in a variety of circumstances and no interference from accountants.
I don't think anyone can accurately explain what is in this new law in detail, but as I understand it the mandated coverages will make the kind of policies I have had illegal. The deductible is mandated, so checkups etc will be covered. I will have to pay for substance abuse, mental health care and obesity coverage. Everyone will. This, btw, makes Obama a liar or at least uninformed (since he had almost nothing to do with writing the new law.) "If you like the insurance you have you can keep it."
Don't you find it even a little suspicious that no one really knows what is in this bill, and that most of it will not kick in until well after the 2012 election? Is this really the way to improve our health care?
It's too late anyway, the deal is sealed. But when you have otherwise rational people coming on here and saying things like it's racist to question this thing it just makes me wanna puke.
And for those of you upthread who had so much fun with my comment that Romney hasn't started his run yet, you left off the other half of the sentence, we have two conventions and the Olympics to get through first. Fact. After all of that the rubber will hit the road. Too bad we're given such a poor choice at such an important time.
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Elcapinyoazz
Social climber
Joshua Tree
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Jun 29, 2012 - 12:29pm PT
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and a higher incarceration rate for violent crime.
Yer showing the slip of yer robe and hood.
A higher incarceration rate, that is disproportional to the actual commission of crimes rate. In other words, put the brown folks in jail and give the white folks a slap on the hand and let em walk.
Crime is vastly more correleated to socioeconomic status that race. Brown folk get longer sentences for the same crimes, are incarcerated vs. put on probation more, receive less consideration in plea deals.
Pull your racist head out of your fat ass...might require a Massey Ferguson or D-9.
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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Jun 29, 2012 - 12:31pm PT
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Survival writes:
"By the way, I didn't even have to try to find out that 100 percent of male black basketball players graduated at these colleges."
You're supposed to graduate.
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survival
Big Wall climber
Terrapin Station
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Jun 29, 2012 - 12:38pm PT
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You're supposed to graduate.
Yeah thanks Chaz, I know that.
Fat was gleefully reporting that no black bball players graduated at Berkeley last year (I guess).
And yes, I already know that the graduation rates are disproportionate for colored vs white athletes. Maybe because these schools recruit sports gifted kids from high schools that don't have the academic skills to make it in college.
But they take the scholarship anyway, with the hopes of going pro.
Wouldn't you?
It's not the fault of their blackness, as fatty seems to suggest. It's the fault of our failing education system, massive money behind NCAA sports, TV advertising and greedy people that refuse to invest in society as a whole.
Republicans insist, and theory and evidence back them up I love how theory "backs them up" BWA HA HA hahaaaaaa!!!!
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monolith
climber
albany,ca
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Jun 29, 2012 - 12:40pm PT
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Yep, some will drop coverage and if they don't return the money to employees in increased salary, then they will just appear to be tools and suffer the consequences. It's better to get employers out of the insurance business and get the employees into exchanges which is basically portable insurance.
This will be a short term disturbance in compensation that will eventually reach an equilibrium. That's what the free market is all about.
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Skeptimistic
Mountain climber
La Mancha
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Topic Author's Reply - Jun 29, 2012 - 12:40pm PT
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If the money doesn't go to education and health, it will surely go to prisons
Yes, exactly.
Having just worked in state prison for a year and a half seeing firsthand what the system spends its money on, I can tell you that the dollars spent in the prison system are not spent on rehabilitating miscreants, it's spent on sham overtime & perks for the overpaid/severely undereducated guards and brass. A basic guard (only a GED needed) makes in excess of $120K plus all meals, uniforms & protective gear paid for. They "clock in" the minute their bumper crosses the property line & don't even think of getting in their way out at the end of the day. They constantly provoke the inmates to create lockdown situations so that they can keep the inmates locked in their cells, allowing them to surf the web, watch TV, gorge themselves & justify their positions ("We need extra staff because of all the unrest!").
Certainly there are good guards, but the great majority of them are knuckle-dragging bullies who would be indistinguishable from the average inmate if you saw them both on the street. Perhaps the inmate would be the more reasonable one...
All of the funding for education has been pulled so that the only thing an inmate learns is how to be a better criminal. Once you're inside for more than 2 years, the odds of you getting out or not reoffending drop precipitously. (= job security)
Yes, there are people who need to be in prison, but I would say that at least 70% of the people behind bars can be productive members of society if given the opportunity to better themselves.
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survival
Big Wall climber
Terrapin Station
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Jun 29, 2012 - 12:43pm PT
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Yes, there are people who need to be in prison, but I would say that at least 70% of the people behind bars can be productive members of society if given the opportunity to better themselves.
Ask Merle Haggard.
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Wade Icey
Trad climber
www.alohashirtrescue.com
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Jun 29, 2012 - 12:45pm PT
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Republicans insist, and theory and evidence back them up, that once all those subsidies and exchanges kick in in 2014, employers are going to drop worker coverage.
some evidence would be cool.
Dunning and Kruger often refer to a "double curse" when interpreting their findings: People fail to grasp their own incompetence, precisely because they are so incompetent. And since, overcoming their incompetence would first require the ability to distinguish competence from incompetence people get stuck in a vicious cycle.
"The skills needed to produce logically sound arguments, for instance, are the same skills that are necessary to recognize when a logically sound argument has been made. Thus, if people lack the skills to produce correct answers, they are also cursed with an inability to know when their answers, or anyone else's, are right or wrong. They cannot recognize their responses as mistaken, or other people's responses as superior to their own."
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apogee
climber
Technically expert, safe belayer, can lead if easy
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Jun 29, 2012 - 12:45pm PT
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"I don't think anyone can accurately explain what is in this new law in detail, but as I understand it the mandated coverages will make the kind of policies I have had illegal. The deductible is mandated, so checkups etc will be covered. I will have to pay for substance abuse, mental health care and obesity coverage. Everyone will. This, btw, makes Obama a liar or at least uninformed (since he had almost nothing to do with writing the new law.) "If you like the insurance you have you can keep it."
You start off by saying you don't think 'anyone can accurately explain this law in detail' (which I agree), then immediately follow this by your own projection & fear of what the law might mean to you. ???
"Don't you find it even a little suspicious that no one really knows what is in this bill, and that most of it will not kick in until well after the 2012 election? Is this really the way to improve our health care?"
Given the complexities of the healthcare & insurance industry, it's not at all surprising to me that these changes would take years to implement- if Obama could have figured out a way to have more of them go into effect in time to politicize them for the coming election, I'm sure he would have done that.
Yes, I am dubious of the bill, for two reasons: the bill is uber-complicated, and more importantly, it doesn't really make foundational change... it merely magnifies our current dysfunctional system. The various options were beat to a dripping, rotting pulp two years ago, and this is the 'sausage' we wound up with.
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Curt
Boulder climber
Gilbert, AZ
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Jun 29, 2012 - 12:51pm PT
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Republicans insist, and theory and evidence back them up, that once all those subsidies and exchanges kick in in 2014, employers are going to drop worker coverage.
At least you have nicely summarized the latest Republican manufactured hysteria.
Curt
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Jun 29, 2012 - 12:51pm PT
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ncrock:
Fatty
I do not believe that I have not expressed an opinion on your conservative views. I don't think you "defend your position and prove others wrong." From what I see, you often try to support your beliefs with questionable "data" and sources, and are often proven wrong. Also, to be clear, I do not believe that your responsibilities as a reserve police officer were nearly as great as you claim, and am not "troubled" by your stories about taking individuals to jail.
As I said, I think you are delusional, like Walter Mitty, and I think that your incessant posting to non-political threads makes this site less enjoyable. That being said, since being banned you have done a much better job of not creating more BS political threads and confining your spew to a few discussions. I do appreciate that.
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Wade Icey
Trad climber
www.alohashirtrescue.com
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Jun 29, 2012 - 12:55pm PT
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Jun 29, 2012 - 12:58pm PT
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Econ 101 fail.
Sure, employers can give their employees a $14K pay cut. They can do that any time they want. It has nothing do to with ACA.
And many of the employees who lose $14K in compensation will just go work somewhere else (likely at the employer who still offers coverage)
This law doesn't change supply and demand dynamics.
Even the US government can't change the laws of economics.
Dave,
You analyze this well, except for one quibble. Your analysis assumes that the cost to an employer currently providing health benefits will not change as a result of Obamacare. If the costs rise, supply and demand does not remain the same, because the cost curve for labor inputs rises.
[Edited to correct wording. "Change" replace by "remain."]
John
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shakin' man
Trad climber
california
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Jun 29, 2012 - 01:00pm PT
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We can now get climbing gear welded to our bodies for easier aid climbing under the Obama-care plan. Just clip your cranium biner right to the gear.
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Actually this was why you don't fall on Chinese construction sites:
(L-R) Fellow workers, a firefighter and doctors work together to cut steel bars which were pierced through a worker's body during an operation at a hospital in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, June 12, 2012. The worker was pierced by seven steel bars during his duty at a bridge construction site, local media reported. He survived after five hours of surgery. REUTERS/China Daily
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