Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

Ted Cruz

7 (6.5%)

Rick Santorum

16 (14.8%)

Michelle Bachmann

13 (12%)

Chris Christie

23 (21.3%)

Rand Paul

49 (45.4%)

Total Members Voted: 107

[Max White]

This should be a good primer.

So basically the plan is to force everybody into health insurance?
That is pretty shitty, relative to many other places. I recently had a mole on my arm I was worried might be serious, so a few weeks ago I walked into a multiclinic, saw a GP who recommended I get it cut out, so I walked upstairs to dermatology to have it removed, and on the way out I got some pain killers from the pharmacy. All without any sort of insurance, instead just relying on the public sector.

I mean it might be better than what you guys have now, but it still sounds somewhat crap to an outsider.

[Descan]

Well, yeah. That's basically how it's going down down there.

[Helgoland]

What's bad aabout mandatory coverage? Sure, single payer's more efficient, but in Germany it seems to work pretty well. We have tax-funded insurance companies along with private ones, though...

[wierd]

Personally, I'd return the barbed bait.

"Sure. But only if we pick which orgs and programs go together in which bills."

Then put NASA and EPA in the bill for military R&D.

Watch the blood boil.

They would have no choice but to...

send it back amended and start again, ad nauseam. They're nothing if not predictable.

Oh indeed! I know!  The idea was to appear at least open to compromise, and to make the obstinance of the GOP become yet more egg on their face. I can rationally justify putting those 3 together.

Here, let me demonstrate.

"It is far too reckless to destroy the space agency and the environmental protection agency, while continuing funding for weapons research; in the immediate case, we would have many skilled rocketry and advanced jet propulsion and nuclear scientists out of work, unable to find new work domestically, and under extreme pressure to migrate to foriegn countries to find work. That alone constitutes a serious security problem, which is why defunding NASA while continuing funding for military R&D is beyond incomprehensible.  In the long term, military R&D freed from the oversight of environmental protection would most certainly begin work on technologies and systems that present consistent and pernicious long term threats to american providence: providence which the afore mentioned R&D programs are intended to protect. Thus, without the EPA, the very conception of such development projects going forward is a complete tautology. We have to be sure that the systems and technologies re safe for america."

[Jopax]

Spoiler: Ehehehehe (click to show/hide)

[Flying Dice]

It's not really public healthcare per se, IIRC, simply a requirement that people be ensured. In other words you are basically legally required to buy insurance from private companies, as opposed to something more sensible (like, say, a tax-funded public insurance agency). I seem to recall something very similar to this plan being proposed by conservatives back in the '80s, actually.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

This should be a good primer.

So basically the plan is to force everybody into health insurance?
That is pretty shitty, relative to many other places. I recently had a mole on my arm I was worried might be serious, so a few weeks ago I walked into a multiclinic, saw a GP who recommended I get it cut out, so I walked upstairs to dermatology to have it removed, and on the way out I got some pain killers from the pharmacy. All without any sort of insurance, instead just relying on the public sector.

I mean it might be better than what you guys have now, but it still sounds somewhat crap to an outsider.

It's the trade-off for essentially eliminating the ability to refuse someone coverage for anything but not paying. There are exceptions, but at this point if you ask an insurance company for coverage, they have to cover you even if you are on death's doorstep.

It's not really public healthcare per se, IIRC, simply a requirement that people be ensured. In other words you are basically legally required to buy insurance from private companies, as opposed to something more sensible (like, say, a tax-funded public insurance agency). I seem to recall something very similar to this plan being proposed by conservatives back in the '80s, actually.

You should, because Obamacare is based off of Romneycare, which in turn is based off a Heritage Foundation plan for health insurance that was written in the mid-90's.

[Baffler]

Maybe all those out of work nuclear and rocket scientists can find work in a certain smoothly running country, which is far superior in every way to it's southern neighbor.

[Darvi]

Hey now, Belgium isn't exactly that great.

*duck*

[Descan]

Sudan?

[Baffler]

Not the nation I had in mind, but you go where the work is.

[GreatJustice]

Obamacare is the brilliant idea that, despite ~50 someodd years of transferring control of healthcare to politically connected cartels of insurance providers having nothing to show for it but absurdly high prices, the previous laws passed just didn't go far enough so let's force the remaining Americans to pay what amounts of a lump sum for whatever healthcare costs they rack up. Because disconnecting people from the costs of their healthcare even more and making the system exceptionally easy to basically rob (Read: Everyone that isn't filled with pride in their healthcare system is going to either pay the "penalty" or else buy the cheapest plan possible while taking every unnecessary test/drug they think of, driving up costs even better than the current system already does) is cunning.

Also, just because the idiot Republicans of the 80s/90s thought this was a great idea doesn't mean they were right.

[Max White]

Oh ok, forcing a large part of the poorest slice of the population onto drug tests in a nation that has both been waging a pointless war on drugs and has proven to be happy to work with corporations to collect various pieces of sensitive personal data. No I'm sure it will be fine. 

[Descan]

I'm just gonna focus on one thing you mentioned here. Regardless of what you actually meant in total, the mere use of the idea of "insulated from costs" is a bit of a null argument, both logically and empirically. People are -already- disconnected from their healthcare costs. If you're sick, especially life-threateningly sick but also livelihood-threateningly and just plain "I don't want to be sick", then people don't tend to try and haggle.

Healthcare providers have you by the pursestrings, basically. It's hard to haggle for something you -need to survive-, -right now-. Food can be haggled because, even though you need it to survive, you're buying food to use in the future, so you have time to go to another, cheaper place. Health care, you either get fixed now or you die. At least for the life-threatening stuff.

That's why having a united front to negotiate with healthcare companies is good. Health insurance sounds like it could do that, a united group of people behind the insurance company who negotiates for them, but with a profit motive behind it, that doesn't work out. The insurer can negotiate cheaper prices from providers, then pocket the money instead of passing the savings onto the consumer. A government is better in that regard because, not only is there little-to-no profit motive, but they negotiate for the entire populace. More competition in that case, in a safe manner.

And empirically, a public health care system is pretty much the epitome of "insulated from costs", since you pay the same amount in taxes no matter how much of it you use. With insurance, you decide "Do I want this much coverage or that much?", which is sight more cost-weighing than "Eh, I'm sick, I'll go to the clinic." And in those countries with such a healthcare system, not only is it cheaper per capita for both public costs and private, but Americans pay more public costs for healthcare per capita than other countries pay per capita at all, both public and private. Then you add on the American private health costs and the American costs doubles. All for a country with mediocre-at-best health care, downright appalling at worst.

[Nadaka]

Obamacare is the brilliant idea that, despite ~50 someodd years of transferring control of healthcare to politically connected cartels of insurance providers having nothing to show for it but absurdly high prices, the previous laws passed just didn't go far enough so let's force the remaining Americans to pay what amounts of a lump sum for whatever healthcare costs they rack up. Because disconnecting people from the costs of their healthcare even more and making the system exceptionally easy to basically rob (Read: Everyone that isn't filled with pride in their healthcare system is going to either pay the "penalty" or else buy the cheapest plan possible while taking every unnecessary test/drug they think of, driving up costs even better than the current system already does) is cunning.

Also, just because the idiot Republicans of the 80s/90s thought this was a great idea doesn't mean they were right.

Of course obamacare is utter horseshit worthless trash. It is the result of compromise with republicans. They accept nothing less than the worst that we can inflict on this country. As long as they retain even the smallest fragment of political power, this nation will never be allowed to improve.

It is so incredibly pathetic that the democrats are the good guys in this country.