Has anyone been follwoing this news about what one of the health care architects,Jonathan Gruber,has said about needing to decieve the public to get Obamacare passed? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G790p0LcgbI
This excellent article in the New York Times cuts through the bullshit and tells us how deception is used to pass many bills in Congress. Basically, it's because they go to great lengths to not make taxes look like taxes. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/13/upshot/the-jonathan-gruber-controversy-and-washingtons-dirty-little-secret.html?abt=0002&abg=0&_r=0
The fact it had to be forced into being should be one clue. It was also the first broken Obama campaign promise. We were supposed to see all bills on the web before they are voted into law. It was also the second broken Obama campaign promise since it was entirely contrived behind closed doors. But, the main reason we should all know it was and still is a scam is simple math. There are not enough resources in the US to cover 320 million people. Not enough doctors, nurses, hospital beds or medicines. It's not logistically possible. A state, sure, but the whole nation? No freakin way. All this has done is drive good doctors underground, where they serve clients who can afford private care. At the same time "doctors" with dubious certifications are given immediate privileges during a waiting period when they come to the US. Utter madness.
the reason we know its a scam is not because it covers every single person in the US (it doesn't, plenty of people fell through the cracks) but because it ensures mandated profits for the insurance agency which is a scam in and of itself.
Actually, it limits their profits by requiring insurance companies to use a certain percentage of revenue from premiums for actual patient care. It they don't meet that percentage then they are required to refund premiums until that statistical threshold is met. I'm not really so sure exactly what everyone hates about the entire program. When polled about the individual facets and mechanisms of the ACA, the majority of those polled are in favor of most of those individual aspects. When the same people are asked if they approve of "Obamacare", the numbers decline significantly. My hypothesis? Simple ignorance. Now...there are some things that I don't like...starting with the mandate. But much of the negative claims I'm hearing simply aren't true or are being blown way out of proportion.
I should clarify - the ACA has fixed several problems but it is the equivalent of putting many tiny bandages on a huge festering wound. Our entire healthcare system needs a huge overhaul and needs to move away from a profit motivated system. ill try to pop in later and expand on this, dont have much time now
lol Are you serious? The notion that it limits insurance company profits is another lie of the administration itself.
To be honest, I do have a hard time reconciling that with my understanding that the insurance industry wrote the bill. I wondered why they would do that to themselves. I have no intention of actually trying to find the fine print in the bill myself (if that's even possible) but I may spend a little time researching it tomorrow. I don't remember exactly where I heard that but I know I heard it from several sources a while back.
http://thehealthcareblog.com/blog/2012/02/04/does-obamacare-limit-profits-for-health-insurance-companies-in-your-state/ Figured I'd do a quick check tonight just to see what a search showed. First place I looked.
It was a starting point. We had to start somewhere. The new system will evolve over time, as other government programs have done, such as Medicare. Increased volume of business was the incentive.
That makes sense. And I do remember where I heard that at...NPR. Duh. Where else would I have heard that? I don't usually listen to the other more mainstream news outlets like Fox or MSNBC, etc
Each bill should require both Houses of Congress to read and discuss the content line by line before a vote can be taken. Never should a bill be passed and signed into law without knowing fully how it will be implemented and the cost of its' implementation both present and future. When our law MAKERS are incapable of understanding and/or explaining the laws they have created they no longer can claim to be representatives of the people who are their constituents, which tends to show Democracy to be a meaningless term.
Excuse me Indie but this seems rather a hypocritical criticism coming from someone that seems incapable of defending or explaining the ideas they promotes here. As to democracy you’ve argued against it in the past and have even suggested a rather plutocratic alternative where wealth would have greater voting power so it could block or overrule the wishes of the majority.
No you don’t - you may have a dysfunctional system where wealth has too much power and influence but it isn’t as bad as Indie would like to make it, he’d not only vastly increase the power of wealth he also seems to want to give them extra votes in any election.
As I said in the Dark Money and Democracy thread - My view is that ‘dark money’ along with the whole wealth based propaganda machine undermines democracy, we need to know who is pushing for what, and from there the question to be asked is why. http://www.hipforums.com/forum/topic/464046-dark-money-and-democracy/ But my point is that it’s still not as bad as it would be if right wingers like Indie got what they wanted. Thing is that the wealth based propaganda machine can pump out a whole load of shit but people don’t have to eat it.