wdprice3 changing a light bulb:

8/20/2013 4:30:37 PM

I guess all of these companies cutting hours to avoid having to pay for insurance is also completely unrelated to ACA.

Sure, blame the evil companies - that is why the bill was written the way it was, so no blame could ever be pointed back to the bill or those that wrote/endorsed it.

8/20/2013 5:32:00 PM

Quote :

""blame your insurance company, not ACA""

obvious troll is obvious.

8/20/2013 9:21:55 PM

^^ there is really not much of that, most already limited hours to prevent requiring health insurance. that's been going on for decades.

(I hate ACA, I made a thread against it and everything, but these arguments against it are dumb)

8/21/2013 7:46:05 AM

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/21/obama-hurricane-katrina_n_3790612.html?utm_hp_ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false

8/22/2013 10:56:00 AM

Tea Party: the gift that keeps on giving.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/aug/26/tea-party-obamacare-now-boehnercare/

Quote :

"Tea party activists are planning to rally outside of House Speaker John A. Boehner’s Ohio office on Tuesday, telling the Republican speaker that if he doesn’t use this year’s spending fight to defund the health care law, it will hence be known to them as “BoehnerCare.” "

8/26/2013 5:11:06 PM

Oh by the way for those of you saying the ACA isn't to blame for me losing insurance. I glanced back at my letter, and it literally states that as required by the new law, xxx insurance will no longer provide health insurance in NC.

But go on thinking the ACA isn't really fucking over people.

Don't think I'm a big opponent to the ACA. I completely agree with many of the changes. But to say that "You can keep your current coverage" and that the ACA makes insurance "more affordable" is far from being true, at least in my case.

9/10/2013 4:17:59 PM

I'd like some boehner care.

(sorry)

9/10/2013 4:29:04 PM

they can blame it on ACA, but its because they don't want to meet the requirements. ACA didn't kill your insurance.

9/10/2013 4:36:12 PM

Yeah, if your company cuts your hours because they don't want to offer you health insurance as a full-time employee, are you more angry at the ACA or your company?

9/10/2013 10:02:19 PM

It's completely predictable that if legal requirements hurt a company's income, they will attempt to circumvent them.

9/10/2013 10:25:16 PM

Quote :

"Yeah, if your company cuts your hours because they don't want to offer you health insurance as a full-time employee, are you more angry at the ACA or your company?"

ACA since the policy makers should have known that this would happen. This has already happened in other countries that implemented similar policies.

9/10/2013 10:31:08 PM

Wrong. The correct answer is that your company should treat you like a human being and follow the law. Thanks for playing though.

9/10/2013 11:03:19 PM

^

9/10/2013 11:11:32 PM

^^
That is not how most corporations work, and the government knows this. Maybe by not paying for healthcare, they could keep a few more people employed? Employers should not be responsible for healthcare.

Single payer son

[Edited on September 11, 2013 at 8:16 AM. Reason : .]

9/11/2013 8:13:54 AM

Agreed, but since the onus is on the employer in our system I don't mind giving them the lion's share of the blame when they decide they don't feel like insuring their employees. How big does Papa John's mansion need to be?

9/11/2013 8:40:06 AM

Just looked back and we both misread what wdprice3 was saying. His employer isn't dropping coverage, his insurer is. So it's entirely reasonable that an insurance company would leave a state that isn't as profitable. They aren't a charity. That's what happens when you put healthcare in the hands of capitalism.

[Edited on September 11, 2013 at 8:53 AM. Reason : .]

9/11/2013 8:52:32 AM

No, this is what happens when you put health care in the hands of the market and then sabotage the market at every step to ensure that it fails.

Single payer probably is better than what we have now, which is a tightly regulated health care industry with vestiges of the free market only visible in select area (i.e. treatments/devices that aren't directly paid for by insurance). Single payer isn't going to happen in the United States though, it's a pipe dream. Look at the opposition to something like ACA. Single payer would be about 50 times worse.

9/11/2013 9:58:36 AM

So we all agree that single payer is the way to go then?

9/11/2013 2:07:26 PM

not me, i want government provided (which is sometimes what people mean when they say single payer, but its not exactly single payer)

9/11/2013 2:20:39 PM

^
Right, so you want to go a step further.

With single payer, the government would only provide the insurance coverage.

You're advocating the government provide the care itself?

9/11/2013 4:37:57 PM

yes. let the market provide whatever ervices and insurance that people want free of interference, and let the government provide a certain level of healthcare themselves (not by contracting it to private companies)

[Edited on September 11, 2013 at 4:41 PM. Reason : FYI i'm a radical socialist per that survey that was posted recently]

9/11/2013 4:40:48 PM

Quote :

"You're advocating the government provide the care itself?"

Ah, yes, let's use the DMV model for health care services. It's astonishing to me how much faith some of you have in bureaucrats to organize incredibly complex systems.

9/11/2013 7:38:24 PM

It's not like the idea is in a vacuum. I mean, it seems like it's been pretty successful elsewhere.

9/11/2013 8:16:30 PM

Ok then.

Bureaucrats in the United States are especially bad.

Fixed.

9/11/2013 8:22:46 PM

Immigration reform, duh. Let's get some of those nice imported bureaucrats!

9/11/2013 10:59:25 PM

Large corporations are filled with bureaucrats too, the difference with private corporations though is that the public has even less oversight and is now paying for profits.

9/12/2013 1:17:52 PM

Quote :

"t's astonishing to me how much faith some of you have in bureaucrats to organize incredibly complex systems."

have you ever dealt with private insurance companies? time warner cable?

9/12/2013 1:28:09 PM

Insurance companies are hit or miss. It really boils down to your relationship with your local rep.

Yes, insurance is definitely one of those things that you DONT want to administer entirely online or over the phone.

TWC, yeah fuck em. Horrible. Still in this context thats not a great analogy.

I think if TWC was administering my healthcare id just find a local witchdoctor instead.

9/12/2013 1:34:11 PM

Quote :

"have you ever dealt with private insurance companies? time warner cable?"

I had Blue Cross for a while and never had any problems. TWC is garbage, of course. That's why I switched over to U-Verse a couple of years ago. I've had literally no problems with U-Verse. That's the great thing about getting services from the private sector: at least there's some competition.

When the federal government takes over some service or function, "shopping around" means leaving the country and your life behind. There's no real competition or choice. If a government department has a poor organization model, they'll probably get even more money, especially when every incompetent bureaucrat's excuse is, "we just didn't have enough funding". Guess what happens when a private company doesn't have enough "funding"?

But at least we have some democratic input with bureaucracies, right? We can directly impact reform in a department. Oh, bureaucracies are staffed with non-elected officials? Ah, right. Well, we can vote for political representation, and those representatives directly impact bureaucracies in the ways that we want, provided that the representative we vote for gets elected...and the politician stays true to his word, and a majority of the other representatives agree with them, and the Executive branch doesn't veto the legislation. It's a government for the people, by the people guys! We have a voice, we really do!

Yeah, when [insert private company] provides a product or service and I don't like it, "reform" is really fucking simple. It's called I don't give them my money anymore. And, if enough people agree, that company ceases to exist.

[Edited on September 12, 2013 at 3:38 PM. Reason : ]

9/12/2013 3:37:20 PM

The private market is welcome to provide services for you to use if you are not happy with the government provided services, plus now the private market would be free of most of the government interference

9/12/2013 3:41:18 PM

Quote :

"TWC is garbage, of course. That's why I switched over to U-Verse a couple of years ago. I've had literally no problems with U-Verse. That's the great thing about getting services from the private sector: at least there's some competition."

Quote :

"Yeah, when [insert private company] provides a product or service and I don't like it, "reform" is really fucking simple. It's called I don't give them my money anymore. And, if enough people agree, that company ceases to exist."

So I gather your genius plan is to switch back and forth between TWC and U-Verse until the service is magically infinitely awesome?

9/13/2013 12:29:56 AM

In before "if the government wasn't involved there would be more than two choices."

9/13/2013 8:55:37 AM

Well, the cable industry is especially fucked since government regulation really does prop up local or regional monopolies. That's not opinion, that's just factually accurate. Even with that cable providers are slowly losing their grip over the consumer. Greater access to content through alternative means is a huge deal. The dish services are a nice alternative, but the availability of content through the internet is what is really eliminating the power of goliaths like TWC.

9/13/2013 9:17:18 AM

if you breakup the government-caused monopoly, it will eventually come back together on its own




but that's beside the point, because the free market would be allowed to exist alongside government provided healthcare, and it would be able to do so free of much of the regulations that exist for the industry now.

9/13/2013 9:29:58 AM

Quote :

"It's not like the idea is in a vacuum. I mean, it seems like it's been pretty successful elsewhere."

Yeah, it's working astonishingly well at the VA right now

Quote :

"The private market is welcome to provide services for you to use if you are not happy with the government provided services, plus now the private market would be free of most of the government interference"

So, your brilliant solution to the current problem of rising healthcare costs is a two-tiered system that is more expensive than the current one? Count me out, man

[Edited on September 13, 2013 at 9:31 PM. Reason : ]

9/13/2013 9:27:25 PM

the government plan would cost less, the free market plan for anything extra would cost whatever a now actually mostly free market would support

9/13/2013 10:55:33 PM

the gov't plan might cost less than the private ones, for far inferior care, probably for worse care than people can get right now. But the total cost would still be more because you are adding on the gov't waste. I don't see a blatant two-tier system where the poor are further separated from being able to afford decent care than they are now as being preferable to the current system, but that's just me.

9/14/2013 2:15:33 AM

I'd pay for it by drastically cutting military spending, your taxes wouldn't increase

9/14/2013 9:50:36 AM

If you have to cut something else to pay for it, you're not saving money, you know that, right?

9/15/2013 12:03:59 AM

except you can cut a program in which you get little to nothing in return in favor of a program in which you get greater in return

9/15/2013 2:09:30 AM

Military spending is one way that you really don't want to get your money's worth. Just like how I don't want to ever have to use the gun I keep locked beside my bed.

Can you think of any instances where our government has actually produced and provided something that is a higher quality product at a cheaper cost than the private sector? That isn't rhetorical, I'm seriously asking. Just b/c I can't think of any doesn't mean there are some instances out there.

9/15/2013 8:32:49 AM

I see your point, but that is an extremely tough question to answer considering many (most?) government programs are contracted out.

9/15/2013 11:31:51 AM

Roads

9/15/2013 11:52:46 AM

Education

9/15/2013 12:12:55 PM

^^built by contractors. (although i will agree that infrastructure is a legitimate role for a government to be involved in.)

9/15/2013 12:45:41 PM

Only sometimes

Government run prisons are better than private ones, government run veteran housing is better than contracted housing, outsourcing programs to enroll people in food and healthcare assistance programs keeps failing in state after state, public employee health plans suffer when privatized, traffic and parking enforcement are better when government run, etc...

and there are still plenty of inherently governmental functions that are not allowed to be contracted out, however definitions are being changed with each administration to reduce this

9/15/2013 1:18:17 PM

Quote :

"Roads"

ahhh, yes, I know all about those private roads we all know about. And the gov't road builders are definitely better than all those private road builders I pass every day...

^ so what you're saying is that a quasi-gov't-private venture usually sucks pretty bad. Well, color me shocked!

9/15/2013 2:51:42 PM

i'm saying that privatization is almost always a bad deal for the public

so lets let the private market do what it wants and let the government ensure that some basic level of services are available to the public from government run services

9/15/2013 3:17:27 PM

you still don't understand that "privatization" as you see it is NOT the fucking free market. In your mind, if even one guy is not explicitly on the govt's payroll, well golly gee, it must be the free market! Nevermind that the whole outfit is still run by gov't edicts and mandates and has to follow all the policies and procedures put in place by the gov't, that one fucker over gets a check that says "bob's company" instead of "US gubment" (and we'll ignore that that check was funded by the gov't), so that settles it, the free market sucks! Such stupidity is tiring.

I mean shit, you're telling me that contracting out a job to lowest or most minority bidder without any thought to actual quality yields distressingly horrendous results? Who knew?

9/15/2013 3:28:57 PM