healthcare reform passed

[Drem]

[leah]

i'm shocked no one has had anything to say yet.

my friend kyle sent me this today, it's kinda cool: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/sp ... id=topnews

[KaiineTN]

Time will tell whether this turns out to be a good or bad thing. Do me a favor though, and if there are problems, if prices continue to be out of control, etc., and those problems are once again blamed on insurance companies, pharmaceuticals, etc., take a step back and consider the very nature of centralized government control being the cause.

If everything turns out better than it was, I'll be happy to admit I was wrong. Just, if it doesn't, I'm asking all of you to not blame anything and everything except government, as I'm sure all those in government will be.

[Reynaldo]

You know if it fails it will be Bush's fault somehow.

Now that he's got this under his belt, lets hope he goes after oil companies next so we're not paying $3.50 a gallon again!

[Arlos]

Actually, I think next should be going after the banks and financial institutions. They really need to re-instate a lot of the protections that were put in after the 1929 crash and Great Depression, like Glass-Steagal, etc. Notice how there were NO massive banking crises from 1930 onward, until the GOP started chipping away those regulations under Reagan. What did we get? Less than a decade later, we had the Savings and Loan collapse during Bush 1, and things have only spiraled downhill since then.

-Arlos

[DangerPaul]

So I will admit, outside of construction and simple shit I am a pretty stupid person. Can someone explain what exactly this health care bill is supposed to do, without adding your own political agenda please. Seriously, so do I now need to figure out how to get myself money for insurance? Is it paid for by the governemnt? WIll I be fined since I am one of the people too poor to buy it for myself. I am being completely serious here, everyone keeps asking my thoughts on it, and I do not even know how it affects me, let alone my thoughts or opinions on it.

I am actually worried over this, I am so broke and stupid that when I broke my arm last month I made my own "cast" and didn't go to the hospital because I couldn't afford itand knew I didn't want medical bills piling up, am I seriously going to get fined for being without? If I can go a week not eating for lack of money, I sure as hell should be able to chose whether or not I can afford insurance.

[Tossica]

So I will admit, outside of construction and simple shit I am a pretty stupid person. Can someone explain what exactly this health care bill is supposed to do, without adding your own political agenda please. Seriously, so do I now need to figure out how to get myself money for insurance? Is it paid for by the governemnt? WIll I be fined since I am one of the people too poor to buy it for myself. I am being completely serious here, everyone keeps asking my thoughts on it, and I do not even know how it affects me, let alone my thoughts or opinions on it.

I am actually worried over this, I am so broke and stupid that when I broke my arm last month I made my own "cast" and didn't go to the hospital because I couldn't afford itand knew I didn't want medical bills piling up, am I seriously going to get fined for being without? If I can go a week not eating for lack of money, I sure as hell should be able to chose whether or not I can afford insurance.

If you are uninsured and can't afford insurance right now you can buy insurance through the federal plan and depending on your income, it may be subsidized or free. If you have insurance through your employer, nothing will happen unless your employers insurance company decides to raise rates, if they do that, your employer can then get insurance through the federal plan. If you are uninsured and make enough to afford it but refuse to, you will be penalized.

The whole idea behind the plan is to provide coverage to those that can't afford it and who are denied coverage currently due to preexisting conditions, etc. The other thing it will hopefully do is to force insurance companies to lower their premiums in fear of losing customers to the federal plan. If the Gov can do it cheaper and more efficiently than the private companuies, why would you stay with your current provider? Competition... this is basically forcing the greed fuck insurance companies to do what's right.

[Arlos]

Tossica is absolutely right. For those who cannot afford it, the penalty for not subscribing is waived, and you will probably even be subsidized to pay for it for you, so that you will HAVE insurance, and thus could actually go see the doctor for a broken arm without piling up medical bills.

Basically, it all depends on your income compared to where the federal poverty level is at. Anyone making up to 4x the poverty level (currently that would work out to a single person making 44k, or a family of 4 making 88k) will get subsidized, and will be exempt from the penalty. The subsidies are on a sliding scale. If you're making near the max where you get the subsidy, the subsidy works out such that you'll only have to pay about 10% of your total income out of pocket to get full and complete health coverage. If you're near the lower end, that drops to 3-4% out of pocket. If you really at the low end, below 133% of the federal poverty line, you get to enroll in the newly expanded medicaid, which gives you full coverage for free.

Now, how is this paid for, you might ask, I am sure. Well, the biggest chunk is a slight tax increase for the uber-wealthy. People making 500k a year or more will see their taxes go up by about 4%. Also, there's a new tax on purely investment income for people making that kind of money off their investments. That last new tax alone raises nearly 60 billion a year. There's other taxes in there as well, like a new tax if you go to tanning salons, for example. (No wonder Boehner was so opposed! rofl. I swear, the guy looks like George Hamilton's twin).

There's other things involved as well, like a requirement for businesses with a greater than 500k payroll to provide insurance, or at least subsidize insurance purchases on the aforementioned exchanges. It also provides more than 50 billion in tax breaks to small business to help them pay for doing so.

There's also rules that changes how the health insurance companies have to do business, and these are arguably among the most important changes.
1) They will no longer be able to deny ANYONE coverage based on pre-existing conditions. Period.
2) There will no longer be annual limits on what they pay out. So no more situations of people, say, getting cancer or hit by an uninsured driver, only to find themselves saddled with huge medical bills because their insurance refused to pay more than X dollars that year.
3) No more lifetime caps on medical bills. (see above)
4) They no longer have carte blanche to raise people's rates as they see fit, with no reason whatsoever. Rate changes have to be announced and justified.
5) They can no longer cancel policies of people who get sick. (this was so common there was a industry-wide term for it. Get sick, and boom, they pull your insurance.)
6) They are now required to spend at least 80-85% of all money taken in on actual health care. If they spend less, they must rebate the difference to all their customers.
7) Parents can now keep non-dependent children on their insurance plans until their kids are 26 years old.
8) They must offer policies at the same price to everyone, regardless of age, sex or current medical status (including the aforementioned pre-existing conditions)

That's pretty much it. For people who have insurance already, their day to day lives won't appear much different. They still see the same doctors, their doctors still decide what care and treatments to prescribe, etc. There's no government panels telling you which doctors you can or can't see, there's no secret conspiracy to kill old people, etc. Now do note that most of this isn't going to take effect til 2014. Some things will happen sooner, like expanded coverage for children, and an early implementation of the insurance exchanges specifically for people who got denied for coverage due to pre-existing conditions will happen with in 3-6 months of now, as will a small rebate to people on medicare whose charges have reached the "donut hole".

So yeah. Specifically for you, Paul, once this is all enacted, if you're REALLY not making much, (ie, below 133% of the poverty line), you'll get to be on Medicaid, which is 100% coverage for you and your family that will be completely free for you. Depending on how much more you make, you will have to shell out some, but never more than 9.8% of your total yearly income out of pocket, unless you're making over 4x wherever the poverty line is, at which point you need to buy insurance from a company rather than the exchange, but they MUST sell it to you, at the same rate they sell it to anyone else.

That clear it up for you?

-Arlos

[DangerPaul]

Yeah, I think it does. By the time it goes into effect it really will not matter, since my 6 month outlook is completely different to my current situation.

Thank you Arlos and Tossica, now people can go back to making it seem like a bigger deal than it really is.

[brinstar]

i'm shocked no one has had anything to say yet.

my friend kyle sent me this today, it's kinda cool: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/sp ... id=topnews

that IS cool imo. apparently i will not pay any more taxes than i am now, and if my premiums go over 1400 bones i will probably get tax credits

also, vastly more important: my dad will finally have some fucking health insurance, anyone who says that's not a good thing will get fucking put in the fucking ground

[Phlegm]

Fox News is going nuts over this.

[leah]

i'm shocked no one has had anything to say yet.

my friend kyle sent me this today, it's kinda cool: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/sp ... id=topnews

that IS cool imo. apparently i will not pay any more taxes than i am now, and if my premiums go over 1400 bones i will probably get tax credits

also, vastly more important: my dad will finally have some fucking health insurance, anyone who says that's not a good thing will get fucking put in the fucking ground

exactly. josh's friends were just bitching about how it's "just another excuse for lazy welfare abusers to collect some more government money" and i cut in and said "yeah, but you know who else will get health insurance? OUR DADS, so stfu."

[Reynaldo]

I wish it wasn't such a spectacle. All this hype and hooplah seems to be a celebration that something got rammed down the Republican's throats rather than doing something positive for the country.

Not a single Republican voted for it and states are already passing legislation for companies to be able to opt out. Doesn't seem like the sweeping glorious fix that everyone wants.

We all know healthcare needs some kind of reform, but I'd have expected it to be more thought out and bipartisan. I could see it as a celebration if it was something that was 90% approval and passed with flying colors and everyone agreed on, but in it's current state, it's none of that =(.

[Drem]

what i'm tired of is hearing people say "we need reform, but not like this." well ok then, why don't all you assholes start throwing out some ideas that make more sense than this? all i hear is partisan whining

[Tossica]

I wish it wasn't such a spectacle. All this hype and hooplah seems to be a celebration that something got rammed down the Republican's throats rather than doing something positive for the country.

Not a single Republican voted for it and states are already passing legislation for companies to be able to opt out. Doesn't seem like the sweeping glorious fix that everyone wants.

We all know healthcare needs some kind of reform, but I'd have expected it to be more thought out and bipartisan. I could see it as a celebration if it was something that was 90% approval and passed with flying colors and everyone agreed on, but in it's current state, it's none of that =(.

The truth is, the current republican party would have nothing to do with any kind of reform. There's no such thing as a bipartisan option. It wouldn't matter WHAT was in the bill, they would have voted against it. They talked about it for a year and got nowhere.

[Arlos]

Rey, a lot of that is the spin you're buying, to be quite honest.

From the very beginning of all this, the Republicans plan was not to try and actually work towards good policy, their entire strategy was to stop this in its tracks and kill it. Their belief was that getting Obama to fail at one of his major policy objectives would be good for them when it came time for elections in November of this year. The Democrats gave the GOP TONS of opportunities to contribute ideas and to be part of drafting the legislation. Look at how much the Senate committees were bending over backwards to get some GOP buy-in, but they did nothing but stall, stall, stall. Hell, the bill is very close to what Mitt Romney did in Massachusetts, and other things like the individual mandate were also originally GOP ideas. Hell, believe me, us on the left got incredibly frustrated at what we felt was the Democrats trying TOO much to get Republicans to participate and contribute to the process and bill, when it was glaringly obvious that they had no intention whatsoever of ever doing so, no matter how much the Democrats tried to include them.

Hell, the GOP right now is crying about partisanship, using reconciliation, etc, but that is *EXACTLY* what THEY did back during Bush's years. Reconciliation is how BOTH Bush Tax cuts got passed, for example. There were other measures that were so contentious that even the GOP couldn't get complete unity, and in spite of having a clear majority in the Senate at the time, they had to get the VP to break a 50/50 vote tie to get it passed. How, exactly, was that bipartisan? For further proof of their hypocrisy on this issue, just look back at 2005. They were screaming then about the Democrats using the Filibuster to block some judicial nominations, and were ranting about how THEY had won the election, that things the President wanted deserved a majority vote, and even threatened to do away with the Filibuster. Today? It's the Democrats who just won an election, and who are passing ONE bill via reconciliation, and suddenly now according to the GOP, that attempt is a horrific assault on the very fiber of the country.

Meanwhile, they now as a matter of complete routine filibuster *EVERY* bill to hit the Senate. The Filibuster has been used during this Senate period so often, that if it keeps to this pace, by the end of 2010, it will have been used THREE TIMES as often as ANY other 2-year period in history. What happened to their 2005 rhetoric about the President deserving up and down votes? Hell, the Senate has become a dysfunctional body these days entirely because the GOP has made it so you now need 60 votes to get ANY legislation passed. They have even filibustered bills SPONSORED by Republicans simply because Obama has said the equivalent of "Hey, that's not a bad idea." There are literally not quite 300 bills that the House has passed that are sitting in the Senate waiting action, but they can't, because the GOP refuses to allow anything to happen in the Senate. Why, you may ask? Again, that goes back to the very first point: the GOP is engaged in a very deliberate strategy to try and block EVERYTHING the Democrats are trying to do, regardless of whether it is good policy or not, regardless of if it was a GOP-sponsored bill to begin with, because they feel that that is the best way to get better results in elections this November. Period.

The GOP is no longer interested in governing this country. Period. They are solely interested in gaining and retaining power.

-Arlos

PS. If you think I'm engaged in hyperbole here, I'm not. Every fact I quote in there is easily and rapidly verifiable with just a quick Google search or two.

[KaiineTN]

Yes, the Republican party exists solely to to make Democrats fail and look bad. It's not like they genuinely believe anything at all.

There were many, many things that could have been done that both parties would agree on. Democrats instead said fuck your ideas, we're going with ours. That's the Democrat mantra though, we know what's best and we're going to shove it down your throat whether you like it or not. Oh, and when things go bad due to our policies, we're going to blame capitalism, free markets, and Republicans, somehow.

[brinstar]

retardlicans=bitches, which i believe falls under the first ghetto commandment:

I. If thou art a Bitch, ye shall not breathe
II. Puff, puff, giveth
III. Thou shalt not snitch
IV. Thou shalt not loveth thy hoes
V. Thou shan't knock the hustle
VI. Real shalt recognize real
VII. Thou shalt only pop bottles on models
VIII. It's no fun if the homies getteth none
IX. Never covet thy neighbor's bitch
X. Fuck the police

so far the only thing i don't like about the bill-- oops, i mean LAW -- is the part where choosing not to get insurance incurs a tax penalty, but if that's what the "individual mandate" is then extrafuck them rebitchlicans for putting that in there

[brinstar]

Yes, the Republican party exists solely to to make Democrats fail and look bad. It's not like they genuinely believe anything at all.

mmk how else would you explain filibustering every single bill

they're like some bitchy bald v-neck-wearing children who are tired of losing so they want to take their ball and go home

except it's not their ball

[Tossica]

Put it this way. The republicans can talk all they want about the need for health care reform. The Dems did something about it.

[Arlos]

Yes, the Republican party exists solely to to make Democrats fail and look bad. It's not like they genuinely believe anything at all.

Actually, right now that IS what they are existing for. I certainly grant you that this was not even remotely always the case. It certainly has been since Obama has become president, however.

I can point you at a couple things that completely prove the point. You will have to do your own google searches though, as I already did them, and the learning process will be good for you:

1) Look up instances where, over the past year, REPUBLICANS have sponsored bills in the senate (ie, GOP-based ideas and bills), only then when the Senate wanted to pass them after the Democrats and Obama agreed that they were good ideas, the GOP turned around and filibustered THEIR OWN BILL.

2) Look up instances where the GOP has filibustered a bill, then when the filibuster was broken, turned around and voted FOR the bill, unchanged from what was filibustered. If it was good enough policy that they'd vote for the final bill, why the filibuster?

Get to researching!

-Arlos

[Ginzburgh]

Yes, the Republican party exists solely to to make Democrats fail and look bad. It's not like they genuinely believe anything at all.

There were many, many things that could have been done that both parties would agree on. Democrats instead said fuck your ideas, we're going with ours. That's the Democrat mantra though, we know what's best and we're going to shove it down your throat whether you like it or not. Oh, and when things go bad due to our policies, we're going to blame capitalism, free markets, and Republicans, somehow.

Dude, don't you play video games all day?

[KaiineTN]

Yeah, something like that.

[Drem]

hey flink:

http://i.imgur.com/590Ev.png

[brinstar]

brilliant