1876 replies to this topic

[Codus N]

Here's a fun quiz for the election:
Which candidate are you likely to choose??

[Nate River]

It's an interesting thing, if just for fun. I didn't like the format though because many questions had multiple responses I would have picked and there were others that had respionse I like, but the reasons were completely different. And of course, none of the personality things were in there, for example, Mitt's flip flopping. It just goes by stated positions.

Anyway, it told me I support: John Huntsman followed by Mitt at number 2 and Newt at No. 3.

I knew it would be Huntsman, too. Mitt is not a surprise, Newt kinda is though. I was originally a Pawlenty supporter until he bailed. Now, I'm in the undecided.

[Strangelove]

That was fun

Choices were

Paul followed by Huntsman, followed by Mitt.

[Codus N]

Best political memes of all time:

Notes from Hillary

[catsi563]

No surpise I got President Obama as my top pick But John huntsman as my second came as a bit of a suprise, but the third one was Rick Perry?>????????? talk about a WTF moment, id sooner have all my teeth extracted with a power drill then vote for him.

[Sakura Blossoms]

History made today -

http://news.yahoo.co...-191348695.html

[Insurrection]

Obama Health Care Law Upheld 5-4

http://www.usatoday....ling/55888742/1

CNN, FOX Fail

http://www.huffingto..._n_1633950.html

[Nee-sama]

Ok good, you guys have gotten the ball rolling on today's big news. I have a question and no idea where to ask it but here.

Romney says that "up to 20 million people will lose the coverage they already have and would like to keep." But Obama says I will "be able to keep my existing coverage," and that it will become, "more secure and affordable."

Well, I can already tell Obama that he's wrong in my case because I work for Savemart and am a member of the Union for Commercial Workers. He might be right for people that are paying for private insurance. However, at this very moment in time the company and the union have reached a stalemate in negotiating a new contract. Part of the problem stems from the fact that Savemart doesn't want to pay the full amount of our health benefits anymore (and a lot of other bene's that don't need to be mentioned here). So I'm already looking at an increase in payments for my insurance, and this started before the decision in the SCOTUS today. If an agreement isn't made, the union will vote for a strike. All this is made worse by the fact that once a contract is finally struck, it's only good for the next two years. At which point it will be 2014 and the cost of health care is supposedly going to increase again, and the national debt is predicted to sky rocket by the cost of the ACA. What will Savemart want to charge me then, huh!?

My situation aside, my question is who can explain this discrepancy between what Romney and Obama are saying? Why does Romney think that up to 20 million people will not be able to keep their current coverage? Or does he just mean that they wont be able to pay what they're currently paying because the costs are going to rise?

Also, some people say that Insurance companies wanted this mandate passed because they stand to make more money on the increase in premiums. Others say that that because of the mandate premiums will rise because costs of care will rise. Insurers will raise premiums because they stand to make less money because of the rise of costs, but how can they be making less money if their profits are already rising from the increase in customers?

Gah I just don't know what to think. Can anyone make sense of the way my brain works and clear this stuff up for me?

[catsi563]

First off nee-sama honestly your getting information from Mitt Romney. As a baseline anything the man says is either a lie, or a deliberate distortion.

To put it bluntly the current iteration of Obama care is based on the health care system in Massachusets that wa sput in place under. wait for it, Mitt Romeny. So yes Obama care as it currently stands is Romeny care. But Mitt romney is running as far and as fast from that as he can, and deliberately missleading the public about the issue.

Secondly several of the laws provisions dont kick in until 2014 so any speculation is premature esepcialy from Romney. Also as I udnerstand the law the baseline answer is that you will NOT be losing your healthcare coverage. The law has provisions that allow you to stay on it, and furthermore protect you from being dropped or not given health care due to any pre existing conditions.

Im not suprised that your company is fighting your union on medical coverage this though has nothing to do with the health care law. it has to do with good old fashioned greed. And you want to know how you can tell? Simple look at the duration of the contract theyre offering. barely a 2 year contract when they should be pushing a 5 or even 10 year deal to insure worker stability.

This is common practice with companies that deal with unions, push the shortest deal possible and cry poverty and bankruptcy when the union asks for anything. Theyve been doing this for decades, they especialy dont want to cover workers health care costs.

ironic that they fought against the single payer system which would have lowered companies healthcare costs in the first place.

Ill grant you this. im not a fan of the individual mandate myself, its a republican idea that hoenstly only benefits the insurance companues by flooding customers to them. I hoenstly would have prefered a canadian style of single payer medicare for all. But for now the law puts forth several provisions that have long been needed, includuion pre-existing condition coverage, keeping your kids on health care until 26 and subsidies for those who need to buy healthcare.

So on the whole you dont need to worry.

Also honestly anything that comes out of romneys mouth is suspect at best. The man has more positions then the kama sutra, save one and that is the position that if Obama is for it Im against it.

[Jake]

First off nee-sama honestly your getting information from Mitt Romney. As a baseline anything the man says is either a lie, or a deliberate distortion.

That is your opinion... and a heavily biaesd one at that, but if you want to say Romney lies then I have proof that Obama lied, Obama (and the other Democrats) said that Obamacare was not a tax but the Supreme Court said that it was constitutional because it was a tax.

Also honestly anything that comes out of romneys mouth is suspect at best. The man has more positions then the kama sutra, save one and that is the position that if Obama is for it Im against it.

Honestly anything that come out of ANY politician's mouth should be treated not with a grain of salt but with the whole damn salt shaker, all politicians are the same they wake up every morning and screw their pants on, the only differnce is that the Republicans screw their's on to the right and the Democrats screw their's on to the left.

[Nee-sama]

First off nee-sama honestly your getting information from Mitt Romney. As a baseline anything the man says is either a lie, or a deliberate distortion.

To put it bluntly the current iteration of Obama care is based on the health care system in Massachusets that wa sput in place under. wait for it, Mitt Romeny. So yes Obama care as it currently stands is Romeny care. But Mitt romney is running as far and as fast from that as he can, and deliberately missleading the public about the issue.

Secondly several of the laws provisions dont kick in until 2014 so any speculation is premature esepcialy from Romney. Also as I udnerstand the law the baseline answer is that you will NOT be losing your healthcare coverage. The law has provisions that allow you to stay on it, and furthermore protect you from being dropped or not given health care due to any pre existing conditions.

Im not suprised that your company is fighting your union on medical coverage this though has nothing to do with the health care law. it has to do with good old fashioned greed. And you want to know how you can tell? Simple look at the duration of the contract theyre offering. barely a 2 year contract when they should be pushing a 5 or even 10 year deal to insure worker stability.

This is common practice with companies that deal with unions, push the shortest deal possible and cry poverty and bankruptcy when the union asks for anything. Theyve been doing this for decades, they especialy dont want to cover workers health care costs.

ironic that they fought against the single payer system which would have lowered companies healthcare costs in the first place.

Ill grant you this. im not a fan of the individual mandate myself, its a republican idea that hoenstly only benefits the insurance companues by flooding customers to them. I hoenstly would have prefered a canadian style of single payer medicare for all. But for now the law puts forth several provisions that have long been needed, includuion pre-existing condition coverage, keeping your kids on health care until 26 and subsidies for those who need to buy healthcare.

So on the whole you dont need to worry.

Also honestly anything that comes out of romneys mouth is suspect at best. The man has more positions then the kama sutra, save one and that is the position that if Obama is for it Im against it.

Thanks for the reply Catsi. I'd like to say that my quote from Romney doesn't really qualify as information, and I tend to agree with you about swallowing anything he says with a grain of salt. The same could be said about Obama according to a lot of people, but I like to think that he has a history of being at least mostly truthful. People like to make him sound like more of a liar than he actually is because they simply just hate everything about him and don't give him credit for anything good.

I really just wanted to know where the comment came from, because distorted or not, it has to have some kind of source. One of his people gave him that statistic and that line to use, I know he didn't just pull it out of thin air.

About the company I work for, I already know their actions are based on greed. Every two years the contract expires and they negotiate the new one. This isn't the first contract that only lasts for so long. And for as long as I am aware of every two years in the past they have whittled down the benefits piece by piece. I started working there almost 10 years ago. My bene's are exponentially better than those of the people hired in the last 4, and 2 years.
The company claims at every turn that profits are down, and they need to do everything possible to stay out of the red. Even though we don't see the top executives taking a pay cut, or a reduction in benefits. What we see is middle management jobs being slashed, prices going up, micromanagement of departments in an effort to reduce shrink and increase sales. A couple stores have even been closed since the company was sold by Albertson's and bought by Savemart.
The union has acknowledged that the economy is down and this and that leads to lower profitability, including the rise in competition from non-union stores like Wally world. However, they stand firm that the amount of money they are trying to take from our paychecks is unfair. At some point they were talking about trying to take away health insurance from retirees. . .

That is your opinion... and a heavily biaesd one at that, but if you want to say Romney lies then I have proof that Obama lied, Obama (and the other Democrats) said that Obamacare was not a tax but the Supreme Court said that it was constitutional because it was a tax.

Honestly, I don't think he meant for it to become a tax. Maybe the writers of the bill did, that's not for me to say. At any rate, it's only going to be applied to people who refuse to comply with the mandate. It's not a tax on everyone like income tax. While I'm sure that our tax money is going to go towards the cost of Obamacare (I laughed at Obama purposefully pointing out the name as Affordable Health Act in his speech this morning) our taxes are still not going to be raised so high that all this doom and gloom coming from the right is justifiable.
Yes, our children for generations are going to be paying into this. Yes, the debt is going to be higher than ever before. I'm not arguing this. I simply don't swallow that line, "This is just another step toward the death of the country."

So, how about it? Does anyone know why Romney claims up to 20 million people are going to lose the coverage they already have and want to keep?

[catsi563]

Youre welcome neesama and let me answer that one too.

The claim hes making is ywt another reason I call the man a liar and or deliberate misleader. I believe the number hes quoting, is a deliberate exageration of the number of people currently on medicaid. One part of SCOTUS ruling was that the fed could not force states to not opt out of the medicaid expansion, nor could the fed take the money for medicaid they allready have if they do. Given that the fed will reimburse the states for 100% of medicaid expansion and then 90% of it over the next decade plus. it is highly doubtful that any of the states will opt out.

This is I belive the root of the lie hes telling about 20 million people losing their healthcare coverage. and it is simply not true as it would require all the states in the union to opt out of the medicaid expansion. So to answer your question yeah hes pretty much pulling the whole thing out of thin air, much like hes done since his campaign began.

To do a devils advocate one part of his statment that might be slightly true. is that anumber of people might get kicked off their corporate health care plans. However! They would not be just unceremoniously dumped, instead they would be put into the General pool that would be created so that people could shop for inexpensive health care. This is a possibility not a guarantee.


With Romney take his statement after the decision. he said it--Obama care-- would add trillions to the defecit. This is a lie, the CBO has stated clearly that in fact the ACA would save and cut billions. He said its a job killer. This is a lie, The ACA has been shown to create numerous jobs in the health care industry upwards of 3+million in fact. He said Millions would be denied healthcare. Again a blatant fabrication or distortion, since the impetus of the ACA is that people cannot be denied health care for any reason inclusing age, gender, pre existing conditions and so on.

In regards to the mandate, no President Obama did not lie about it. it was not a tax. What the SCOTUS said was that the Individual mandate could fall under the Feds power to raise and levy taxes which is a power it possesses. But the mandate is not a tax nor did the president ever present it as such. And no it is not splitting hairs either.

Edited by catsi563, 29 June 2012 - 12:41 AM.

[Strangelove]

Obama Health Care Law Upheld 5-4

http://www.usatoday....ling/55888742/1

CNN, FOX Fail

http://www.huffingto..._n_1633950.html

Oh God, John Stewart is going to have a field day.

[KnS]

That is your opinion... and a heavily biaesd one at that, but if you want to say Romney lies then I have proof that Obama lied, Obama (and the other Democrats) said that Obamacare was not a tax but the Supreme Court said that it was constitutional because it was a tax.

Correct. In fact, labeling the penalty component of the mandate as a tax (for NOT buying something) was the only way this ponderous and poorly written law could fly.

For further illumination on the point that the mandate is in fact a tax, here are a few quotes from the opinion of the dissenting Justices -- Alito, Kennedy, Scalia, and Thomas.

“To say that the Individual Mandate merely imposes a tax is not to interpret the statute but to rewrite it. Judicial tax-writing is particularly troubling.”

“We have no doubt that Congress knew precisely what it was doing when it rejected an earlier version of this legislation that imposed a tax instead of a requirement-with-penalty.”

“Imposing a tax through judicial legislation inverts the constitutional scheme, and places the power to tax in the branch of government least accountable to the citizenry.”

“The Government would have us believe in these cases is that the very same textual indications that show this is not a tax under the Anti-Injunction Act show that it is a tax under the Constitution.”

“The Court today decides to save a statute Congress did not write. It rules that what the statute declares to be a requirement with a penalty is instead an option subject to a tax.”

The second quote is particularly telling. The implication appears to be that Congress, and by extension Obama who claims this law as his signature piece, purposely avoided calling the failure to comply with the mandate a tax and instead wrote it as a "penalty" -- a penalty that was widely understood to be unconstitutional in this context. Taxes are unpopular, you know, especially while suffering a devastated economy. Penalty is a much better word because it implies a failure of responsibility on the part of those upon whom the mandate is imposed, as opposed to tax which has negative implications for those doing the imposing. Smoke and mirrors.

So for open-minded people seeking the truth in this matter, it raises a question that is difficult to answer. Either Obama, et al., were innocently ignorant of the penalty component's unconstitutionality (which seems unlikely since he is theoretically a constitutional law expert) and that raises additional questions about competence, or it was a deliberate act of subversion. The dissenting Justices appear to believe the latter.

Something to think about.

Edited by KnS, 29 June 2012 - 04:43 AM.

[Nate River]

With Romney take his statement after the decision. he said it--Obama care-- would add trillions to the defecit. This is a lie, the CBO has stated clearly that in fact the ACA would save and cut billions. He said its a job killer. This is a lie, The ACA has been shown to create numerous jobs in the health care industry upwards of 3+million in fact. He said Millions would be denied healthcare. Again a blatant fabrication or distortion, since the impetus of the ACA is that people cannot be denied health care for any reason inclusing age, gender, pre existing conditions and so on.

Yeah, even at face value the way the act does is it that while it increases benefits it increases taxes by more (via the mandate, medical-device tax, and whole host of others). Deficit reduction baby! We don't reduce the cost of jack squat, we just increase takes more and than costs and call it reduction. And don't call use tax and spend!

Also, you mean the CBO's initial analysis? The one that assumed 10 years worth of taxes as compared to seven years of benefits? The one that included the $500 billion raid of Medicare that's never going to happen? Even the CBO director Elemodorf admitted that he didn't know how many of the assumptions made (like the dox fix) were ever going to pass into law, but if the people asking for the analysis set that as an assumption he has to assume it true.

You know the CBO has to assume the parameters given to it by the person asking for the analysis no matter how big a pile dung the assumptions might be, right? CBO reports should always be taken with a grain of salt because of that. It's not partisan or competence. CBO is the epitome of garbage in, garbage out. They have to run with assumptions their given even if they know the assumptions are horse manuer.

Also, I guess I will suspend my disbelief and assume that this time will be different. That unlike the entitlement programs that came before it (medicare) it won't cost much more than the initial projections. I'll do that that despite the government's extensive history of underestimating the costs of these things (and almos everything else it does), and assume that THIS time will be different. I mean the CBO said so and all.

To do a devils advocate one part of his statment that might be slightly true. is that anumber of people might get kicked off their corporate health care plans. However! They would not be just unceremoniously dumped, instead they would be put into the General pool that would be created so that people could shop for inexpensive health care. This is a possibility not a guarantee.

Obama promised that I could keep my plan if I like it.

If my employer dumps me policy then I don't get to keep it. Simple as that.

That I can go to the exchange doesn't mean I will find the plan I like there. ObamaCare mandates what the plans that is on those exchanges must contain. If it contains benefits I don't need and don't wish to pay for, well too damn bad for me. I don't have anywhere else to go. If it's more expensive, oh well. I hope at least when my employer does dump my insurance I will get a corresponding raise in salary at least equal to the cost of the premium I'm going to have to pay otherwise it's going to be a net loss for me.

You know that HHS granted a bunch of waivers back in 2010 right? It did so for plans that didn't meet the minimum and they were toast under Act without the waiver. For some reason lots of labor unions were recpients and for some reason HHS would never tell anyone what the conditions were for recieving one. Probably just my imagination. HHS quit giving them when people started asking questions.

But I should take his word for it! It's in the law, man!

And, a possibility? ObamaCare incentivizes that behavior by setting the penalty below the costs of the premiums. Stick to your day job, as a Devil's Advocate you stink. You don't even try to be fair when making the argument. You minimize the type of behavior the Act encourages, but then say they can go to the pool for inexpensive care! How do you know it will be inexpensive? You don't really explain why you think this and offer nothing to support it. You just characterize it that way.

If I were the Devil and you were my advocate, I would fire you.

What a minute...are you engaging in premature speculation that it will provide inexpensive coverage? You got proof? I mean, the exchanges don't start until 2014. How would you know? Didn't you imply that premature speculation was a bad thing? I guess it's only bad when Republicans do it.

And since you brought it up....RomneyCare's history suggest that this won't be true. RomneyCare did not decrease premiums. It's killing the State's budget, too.

He said its a job killer. This is a lie, The ACA has been shown to create numerous jobs in the health care industry upwards of 3+million in fact. He said Millions would be denied healthcare

Source? If you site the CBO, see above argument about garbage in and garbage out because I'll have a bunch of questions if you do.

And, for the sake of argument I will assume what you say is true (don't believe it is), then what about every one else? You don't get to say hey, it creates 3 million jobs in this industry and then ignore everyone else. If, for example, 4 million jobs are lost over the rest of the economy because of this law, then it's a net loser.

You only site one industry and claim a benefit. Nice try.

The same could be said about Obama according to a lot of people, but I like to think that he has a history of being at least mostly truthful. People like to make him sound like more of a liar than he actually is because they simply just hate everything about him and don't give him credit for anything good.

Why? Based on what?

In regards to the mandate, no President Obama did not lie about it. it was not a tax. What the SCOTUS said was that the Individual mandate could fall under the Feds power to raise and levy taxes which is a power it possesses. But the mandate is not a tax nor did the president ever present it as such. And no it is not splitting hairs either.

No, that's not what it did. The Act would have been toast and the tax opinion Roberts would have been dicta if all it said was that it COULD fall under that. At that point, Congress could have changed the wording and tried again.

He ruled it was a tax under the taxing power.

Roberts said it violated the Commerce Clause (and refused to extend Necessary and Proper Clause that far as well), but that it survives because it's a tax under the taxing power. He had five votes (including his own) for the notion that it violated the commerce clause (Roberts made it a point to mention this despite there being no need to). So, if it's not a tax in this case, the law has nothing to stand on.

The opinion that it's tax is not that it could be. Laws don't survive on "could." It is.

Of course, you also ignore that the administration tried to argue it was a tax in the early stages of the legal battle and lost the argument (at that stage). In Florida, Vinson (the original federal court judge to hear it) basically used the administration early claims it was not a tax to shoot the argument down. I don't think they tried the argument after that. But they did try it.

The claim hes making is ywt another reason I call the man a liar and or deliberate misleader. I believe the number hes quoting, is a deliberate exageration of the number of people currently on medicaid. One part of SCOTUS ruling was that the fed could not force states to not opt out of the medicaid expansion, nor could the fed take the money for medicaid they allready have if they do. Given that the fed will reimburse the states for 100% of medicaid expansion and then 90% of it over the next decade plus. it is highly doubtful that any of the states will opt out.

You use so many negatives in that second sentence I have no idea what you're saying. Is that what you mean:

ObamaCare tried to say if State's refused to expand Medicaid as ObamaCare demanded then the Feds would yank all the State Medicaid funding. SCOTUS basically said you can offer additional money through ObamaCare and if the State's do not want to play ball you can deny them the additional money (i.e. you can make it conditional), but you cannot punish them for refusing to comply by yanking the funding they already have.

But no, I don't think this is core of Romney's claim. Your "Devil's Advocate" argument most likely is. The penalty for not having insurance (especially for individuals) is expected to be less than the cost of the premiums. Which....gives people an incentive to drop coverage (or not get it all) and pay the fine.

Honestly, I don't think he meant for it to become a tax. Maybe the writers of the bill did, that's not for me to say. At any rate, it's only going to be applied to people who refuse to comply with the mandate. It's not a tax on everyone like income tax. While I'm sure that our tax money is going to go towards the cost of Obamacare (I laughed at Obama purposefully pointing out the name as Affordable Health Act in his speech this morning) our taxes are still not going to be raised so high that all this doom and gloom coming from the right is justifiable.
Yes, our children for generations are going to be paying into this. Yes, the debt is going to be higher than ever before. I'm not arguing this. I simply don't swallow that line, "This is just another step toward the death of the country."

I don't think he really cared how it survived so long as it did. I think Obama is vain enough that all he really cared is that the Act he spent so much political capital on survived. I think this is the least preferable way to get it because while he I can say he never claimed it was a tax (which is true) his administration tried to argue it was in the early stages of the legal fight and it only survived SCOTUS because Roberts believed it was a tax.

He can argue it's not a tax but it only survived because it was interpreted to be one. I hope he has lots of fun with that. Much of the made it through the Senate under the concept of reconcilliation (which only needs 50 votes and is fillbuster proof), and now that SCOTUS has ruled it a tax...I don't see any reason the mandate cannot be repealed with a simply majority via the same process. It's now easier to repeal than it would have been,\.

It's not just the tax increase they hate. It's the debt bomb. Not everyone takes CBO as Gospel. Even without ObamaCare the right fears that trajectory of entitlement spending is unsustainable and will devour the budget.

The other issue is one of principle. Not everyone likes to be told that they must buy something or a penalty for no other reason than they exist (or to subsidize someone else). The concern is the limit to which this can be taken? Regardless of the justification, what is that limit?

[Strangelove]

Here to give you an idea as to what the Healthcare problem is in America

http://www.newyorker...-way-comes.html

Basically, is not only the insurance...but the Hospitals as well as the Doctors who are too greedy. As a matter of fact, Insurance companies are there to make Healthcare affordable to those who cannot afford it. If Healthcare is too expensive, then you have to look at those responsible of putting the price tag. If a Doctor denies service to a patient, then that Doctor is violating his oath.

http://en.wikipedia....c_Oath_West.png


Ironically though, it is called the Hippocratic Oath...the oath of hypocrites.

[Burning_Wulf]

[Nee-sama]

Is there anyone on the east coast right now who wants to vote but cannot because of flooding or what have you? A lot of people are saying this is going to affect the outcome of the election... Seems like there has to be something that can be done to get people's votes in.

[Derock]

I can vote since my power is back on.

On the issue of Sandy aftermath affecting the election, though it gave Obama a significant boost in the polls, it shouldn't anyways because NY and NJ are pro-democratic states. I was however surprised that when he visited NJ to see the devastation, Gov. Christie praised him for doing that and he's a Republican! It was an unlikely companionship between the two as the media had said.

[jworks]

Basically, is not only the insurance...but the Hospitals as well as the Doctors who are too greedy. As a matter of fact, Insurance companies are there to make Healthcare affordable to those who cannot afford it. If Healthcare is too expensive, then you have to look at those responsible of putting the price tag. If a Doctor denies service to a patient, then that Doctor is violating his oath.

Insurance companies are there to make money, actually. Besides, the majority of the time insurance will pay the hospital or doctor less than what the doctor's are actually charge. But they gotta suck it up because if they don't accept insurance they don't have any "customers." Doctors and Hospitals also have to charge more because of all the people who DON'T have insurance but still get treatment. That is why ObamaCare requires everyone to buy insurance, in an effort to lower healthcare costs all around.

Besides, it's hard to attack a Doctor's price tag when they essentially hold a monopoly. Consider that out of 350 million people in this country, about 0.2% are Doctors. Capitalism says that justifies a gigantic price.

Is there anyone on the east coast right now who wants to vote but cannot because of flooding or what have you? A lot of people are saying this is going to affect the outcome of the election... Seems like there has to be something that can be done to get people's votes in.

I have been seeing all the news headlines about this too but it hardly seems like it will matter. I'm sure the actual electors won't have a problem getting their votes in. Their votes are sent to Congress via registered mail.