Deal or no deal, ObamaCare taxes poised to hi

[MiskatonicGrad]

wow your delusions grow by leaps and bounds. And yes I have intimate knowledge of this process.

So what your saying is you have a beef with paying someones bills if the file bankruptcy but you will stand in line to pay the bills of someone who is to freaking lazy to work? wow that helps understand you.

[F3SS]

Sir Fess, I must agree with this statement completely, at its roots anyway... What I do in my life, what I purchase and dont purchase... where I go and dont go... should be my decision. I dont need the government telling me exactly how to spend my money or what to spend it on. I do believe that this mandatory insurance issue could turn into something else entirely... now that the gov knows they have the go ahead what is to stop them from forcing us to purchase anything? What if the gov deems it necessary that every home have a state of the art filtration system because it cuts down on air polutants by .30% but the only hitch is that system cost 85k and it has to come out of YOUR pockets... unless you are on government assistance of course, then it has to come out of everyone elses pockets.... Where do we draw the line?

We don't. Government now draws that line for us.

You make great posts btw. Always on task and always proving and making excellent points.

You don't live in a vacuum. Society has been paying for your shortsightedness (or lack of funds)

Are we living in Minority Report now? You don't know for certain about any future shortsightedness. I've been to the doctors 2 times in my adult life and one of them was actual hospitalization. One for street throat, one for a broken back. I paid all the bills. If I had been buying insurance since I was 18 I would've paid far more in premiums than the total of all my hospital bills combined. I'll be insured soon anyways. My personal limit was to wait till I'm 35 but that jerk you elected might make it sooner. I haven't decided yet.

So what your saying is you have a beef with paying someones bills if the file bankruptcy but you will stand in line to pay the bills of someone who is to freaking lazy to work? wow that helps understand you.

thats pretty much what I was thinking.

Edited December 14, 2012 by -Mr_Fess-

[Startraveler]

All that aside.... MY personal issue with obamacare is that its the government forcing me to buy a product and if I dont buy the product I get punished with taxes or "penalties". It is not the governments place to force me into anything especially where buying a product is concerned. I happen to pay for my own medical expenses as they happen, I like my current setup and in the last 13 years, I havent had an issue with it at all.

Out of curiosity, how is it you come to say that? By your own admission, your average annual medical expenses over the past decade have been more than your current annual salary. That's exactly what insurance is for: to prevent a handful of medical events from entirely erasing a decade or more of your working life.

I understand opposing the mandate on a philosophical level, even if it has a very strong economic rationale in its favor. I even understand opposing on a practical level for someone who says they never incur medical expenses so they prefer to be uninsured.

But I don't understand a practical argument that's based on the circumstances you've described.

[F3SS]

Hey startraveller, if you don't mind me asking, I'd like to know what you do. Actually what I'm asking is how you've come to know and understand obamacare so well? I've heard you simply read it. You seem to have absorbed it. So you're either incredibly smart, are in the insurance industry or you are Barack Obama. I don't mean to be rude but you do seem to be the defacto guy on the matter. Just curious, but if you don't care to answer, that's cool.

[Startraveler]

I do research in the nonprofit sector. Some of it overlaps with this stuff.

But in the end it comes down to reading it and many of the truly excellent resources that exist out there about it. And even many of the truly awful resources that exist out there about it.

[AsteroidX]

Kudos to the House of Representatives to sticking to the process and pushing the appropriate legislation through. They have no other option but to send forth what they are. One of the better responses by our government Ive seen in quite awhile.

[Yamato]

I watched CNN and NBC for years because there was nothing else. We called CNN the Clinton News Network because it adamantly refused to question the man's performance and acts. Massive deceit which is teh reason they are fading away.

And ya found Fox News Channel where nobody would question President George W. Bush's performance and acts.

Problem not solved, only doubled.

Edited December 20, 2012 by Yamato

[AsteroidX]

I only watch news if I want to know what there up. If i had my choice wed communicate better through the internet. I get all my updates faster. Use less electric. I can check what I want when I want. I find Im most happy with the news turned off.

Theres terrible things that happen every day I dont wanna be a part of. But now Im forced to and media is the one blaring down my throat. (ill stay on topic)

[Dredimus]

Out of curiosity, how is it you come to say that? By your own admission, your average annual medical expenses over the past decade have been more than your current annual salary. That's exactly what insurance is for: to prevent a handful of medical events from entirely erasing a decade or more of your working life.

I understand opposing the mandate on a philosophical level, even if it has a very strong economic rationale in its favor. I even understand opposing on a practical level for someone who says they never incur medical expenses so they prefer to be uninsured.

But I don't understand a practical argument that's based on the circumstances you've described.

I honestly dont have a problem with insurance in itself... I have a problem with being forced to purchase it and being penalized if I dont. It is not the governments place to make me buy anything. Period.

[ninjadude]

I honestly dont have a problem with insurance in itself... I have a problem with being forced to purchase it and being penalized if I dont. It is not the governments place to make me buy anything. Period.

and yet you must purchase car insurance. you must have FICA deducted from your paycheck.

[F3SS]

You don't have to buy car insurance just because you are alive. It's a mandatory expense attached to an optional purchase.

[Startraveler]

I honestly dont have a problem with insurance in itself... I have a problem with being forced to purchase it and being penalized if I dont. It is not the governments place to make me buy anything. Period.

Is the problem that you have to buy some or that you have to pay for it? In the vein of the former, some people argue that they don't want to be forced to interact with private companies. But then one wonders if it would become okay if shoppers had the option of a public insurance plan; they won't under this law, but they can choose a nonprofit, member-run insurance plan.

Or is it the fact that you have to finance an insurance product at all? You're already buying yourself (public) insurance for when you turn 65 with your tax dollars. That principle could be extended now, giving everyone access to a tax-financed Medicare-like program, regardless of their age. Then you don't have to buy private insurance, you just have to keep paying taxes (which presumably you're already doing anyway).

What's lost under that scenario is 1) more or less the concept of commercial private insurance, and 2) the idea that you should be able to choose from competing private insurance plans in a marketplace. I'm sure this sounds funny to you, but the point of doing it the way it's being done is to preserve choice: your choice of competing private products. There's even the choice of continuing to go uninsured, though there will be a disincentive for that.

There are only so many ways to go about doing this. They chose the private sector approach, which preserves the system most people are used to anyway, while patching up some of its most serious deficiencies. But making those markets work for the people shopping in them requires that you pay a little bit for the risk you transfer onto others when you choose to go uninsured.

Edited December 22, 2012 by Startraveler

[ninjadude]

You don't have to buy car insurance just because you are alive. It's a mandatory expense attached to an optional purchase.

that's not what he was complaining about. He whined about government forcing him to buy anything under any circumstance.

[AsteroidX]

send my fine in the mail. I cant afford it.

[Startraveler]

send my fine in the mail. I cant afford it.

Then there's a good chance you won't have to pay it.

[F3SS]

that's not what he was complaining about. He whined about government forcing him to buy anything under any circumstance.

And that's what buying something simply for being alive is. That's exactly what he's complaining about.

Then there's a good chance you won't have to pay it.

And that's another issue about this. The middle class once again has to suffer smaller paychecks and in this case signicahtly smaller, and it doesn't really matter to the rich not that I'm looking for them to be screwed and the poor don't have to do anything but remain poor. Many who support this bill cry foul about income inequality when this bill does nothing but stretch that gap further. The rich will remain rich and the upper middle class will be a few steps closer to lower middle class and the lower middle class will be a few steps closer to being poor. Enough of my paycheck already goes towards keeping other people afloat and I'm sick of it. Making me buy insurance is bullsht and for many people once those fines roll in they'll be snowballed into more debt, and your crazy if you think every uninsured person will be getting insurance immediately, and once that snowball occurs they'll be in such a bad spot that they'll just be getting in line to join the crowd who can't afford it and will no longer have to because they'll be broke enough and that is why I and many others view this as an end game towards better than half the country eventually being on the government plan that we keep hearing doesn't exist yet it must in some way because if somebody doesn't have to buy it or pay the fines then they must be covered under some type of government assistance and when fewer and fewer people are paying into obamacare you'll soon have fewer and fewer people paying for the majority of the government assisted country until it becomes so inefficient that the government and the people will decide its just best if the government handles everything.

I apologize for the extremey long running sentence.

[Startraveler]

Like I said, the insurance parts of the Affordable Care Act are mostly about taking what we have now and patching up the holes. That means it's based on private insurance with two public insurance programs for demographics that are especially difficult for the private sector to insure (Medicare for the elderly and Medicaid for the poor). Which means for most people not much changes. So:

• People over 65 still get Medicare.
  
• The holes in Medicaid are being filled in for anyone who's below around one-and-a-third times the poverty line, though that's now a change made at the discretion of individual states.
  
• Most people not covered by those two programs will still be covered by private health insurance they get through their job, but with some extra protections.
  
• The biggest change is for people who are buying insurance on their own because they don't get it through their job (which currently is about 5% of people in the U.S.). They'll get access to new marketplaces and financial assistance to buy private health insurance plans.
  

The people who are currently uninsured are primarily going to go to one of two places: the lower income ones (most of whom aren't even subject to the mandate anyway) will gain access to Medicaid and the rest will go into those new marketplaces to buy their own private insurance, in part using the financial assistance. So yes, there is some new spending associated with that, but that's exactly what defrays the costs for low-to-middle income people.

The fine isn't going to be something all that many people choose to pay.

[AsteroidX]

Go over the fiscal cliff. Theres no reason govt shouldn't feel the pinch everyone else has been enduring.

[F3SS]

So what percentage of Americans will not have to oblige by Obamacare? And what percentage have to pay or get fined?

[Startraveler]

It's a tax penalty, and people below the income tax filing threshold aren't subject to it. Similarly, people who don't have affordable options available to the in their market are exempt. Hardship exemptions are also available.

And, of course, the vast majority of Americans who have health insurance (~84% or so and expected to rise closer to 94% over the next few years) will technically be subject to it but obviously won't have to pay it.

The number of people who actually pay the fine will be relatively small.

[ninjadude]

Many who support this bill cry foul about income inequality when this bill does nothing but stretch that gap further.

it's not a bill, it's a law.

Making me buy insurance is bullsht

and again you are forced to buy insurance to drive and forcibly removed from your paycheck as FICA. So you're argument is really hysterical.

[F3SS]

it's not a bill, it's a law.

and again you are forced to buy insurance to drive and forcibly removed from your paycheck as FICA. So you're argument is really hysterical.

Way to quote 5 words out of a paragraph and take it out of context. Nobody makes me buy a car. It's a choice you make knowing there are mandatory expenses involved. Being alive isn't really much of a choice and in America you used to be able to choose which expenses suited your life. They tax us on freaking everything and you're attitude is since they already do I shouldn't be complaining when they tax us more. Health insurance or not it's a big ass tax taken from our paychecks without a choice and this particular one is crap. I'm going to be insured no matter what probably within a year or so and I'll still be complaining about this LAW. You're so complacent.

[RavenHawk]

and again you are forced to buy insurance to drive and forcibly removed from your paycheck as FICA. So you're argument is really hysterical.

Auto insurance is to cover our reneging on our Responsibilities of driving because it could endanger someone else. People that can’t get coverage because of prior conditions does not threaten anyone else and being forced to pay for them is insufferable. There is a little document you probably have read but haven’t understood the words. I include a portion here:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government”

Now where FICA has been a “light and transient cause” and we have been “more disposed to suffer” such Entitlements. I suppose you’ve never heard of the “The Parable of the Pigs”? Obamacare is “absolute Despotism”. It has crossed the line. You’re just a porker ready for market.

[Startraveler]

People that can't get coverage because of prior conditions does not threaten anyone else and being forced to pay for them is insufferable.

Even the most insensitive proposals usually at least pay lip service to the idea of helping the uninsurable get coverage through taxpayer-financed high-risk pools. But you're going straight for the "let them eat cake" moment here.

I have to wonder what exactly it is you want. You don't like the Democratic ideas (exchanges with guaranteed issue of insurance, regardless of medical history or gender, etc), you don't like the Republican ideas (high-risk pools and higher deductibles). Is there anything that doesn't offend you?

[F3SS]

Constitutional governance doesn't offend me. Twisting, bending, stretching, attacking and ignoring constitutional guidelines does.