The Affordable Care Act II - Because Mr. Obama Loves You All

[DC Tom]

"You break it you own it!" How about "you built you own it!"

 

"You didn't build that, somebody else made it happen."

[unbillievable]

We have to break it, to find out what's in it.

[Doc]

"You didn't build that, but if it breaks, it's your fault."

[B-Man]

Nancy "doubles down" on her stupidity (and projection)............good, the GOP could always use more seats.

 

Thanks again House dems...

 

 

 

Nancy Pelosi

✔ @NancyPelosi

The GOP wants to dismantle ACA & consequently increase costs. It's wrong. It will have an major impact on hardworking families & raise taxes

1:29 PM - 2 Jan 2017

 

 

Nancy Pelosi

✔ @NancyPelosi

Republicans will leave millions of Americans without health insurance -- and worsen the coverage of many more. http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/02/politics/house-democrats-obamacare-repeal/ …

 

 

 

Washington (CNN)House Democrats who ushered President Barack Obama's health care reforms into law say they failed to sell it from the start.

 

Now, as congressional Republicans prepare to repeal the law, Democrats are asking voters to "take a second look."

On a call Monday with top Democrats, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said one thing she would have done differently on health care reform from the start was "message it in a much stronger way."

.

Edited January 3, 2017 by B-Man

[Nanker]

 

Nancy "doubles down" on her stupidity (and projection)............good, the GOP could always use more seats.

 

Thanks again House dems...

 

 

 

 

 

 

Washington (CNN)House Democrats who ushered President Barack Obama's health care reforms into law say they failed to sell it from the start.

 

Now, as congressional Republicans prepare to repeal the law, Democrats are asking voters to "take a second look."

On a call Monday with top Democrats, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said one thing she would have done differently on health care reform from the start was "message it in a much stronger way."

.

 

She sounds just like gator.

[Tiberius]

She sounds just like gator.

Thanks

 

20 million got health insurance, GOP to take that away, very stupid!

[DC Tom]

Thanks

 

20 million got health insurance, GOP to take that away, very stupid!

[This is an automated response.]

 

You're an idiot.

 

Created by DC Tom-bot, beta version 0.4.

[Deranged Rhino]

[This is an automated response.]

 

You're an idiot.

 

Created by DC Tom-bot, beta version 0.4.

 

While I cannot confirm this yet, I hear rumors that version 0.5 will include lasers...

[DC Tom]

 

While I cannot confirm this yet, I hear rumors that version 0.5 will include lasers...

 

Wasn't planning on it...but I can't dismiss the idea entirely.

 

I cannot express how much of a time saver the DC-Tom-bot is. I have so much more time to partake in other forms of goofing off now...

[B-Man]

LIVE BY RECONCILIATION, DIE BY RECONCILIATION:

 

Senate Republicans just introduced an Obamacare repeal plan Democrats can’t stop.

 

Senate Budget Committee Chair Michael Enzi (R-WY) introduced a budget resolution Tuesday that includes “reconciliation instructions” that enable Congress to repeal Obamacare with a simple Senate majority. Passing a budget resolution that includes those instructions will mean that the legislation can pass through the budget reconciliation process, in which bills cannot be filibustered.

 

That means Republicans will only need 50 of their 52 members in the Senate, and a bare majority in the House, to pass legislation repealing the Affordable Care Act. According to the Wall Street Journal, the budget resolution could be passed by both houses as early as next week.

 

To

be c

lear, passing the budget resolutions does not itself repeal Obamacare. But it’s the necessary first step if Republicans are to do that this year, a

nd unless three or more Republican senators defect (or 24 House members do), it’ll be smooth sailing for the repeal effort from there on out.

 

 

First day of business, too.

 

Updated with this flashback: “Reid: Dems will use 50-vote tactic to finish healthcare in 60 days.”

The move would allow Democrats to essentially go it alone on health reform, especially after losing their filibuter-proof majority in the Senate after Sen. Scott Brown’s ® special election victory in Massachusetts.

 

 

 

 

ADDED: For obvious (hilarious) reasons

 

CNN Politics

✔@CNNPolitics

Sen. Chuck Schumer: I wish we hadn't triggered the "nuclear option" http://cnn.it/2i6L7K1

1:03 PM - 3 Jan 2017

 

 

Edited January 3, 2017 by B-Man

[Nanker]

Yes, when the shoe's on the other foot and it's your ox getting gored, it's a horse of a different color. Isn't it Chuckie?

[Doc]

Payback's a female canine, idn't it?

[/dev/null]

 

Wasn't planning on it...but I can't dismiss the idea entirely.

 

I cannot express how much of a time saver the DC-Tom-bot is. I have so much more time to partake in other forms of goofing off now...

if the laser sharks don't make into version 0.5, there's talk on github about forking off into version 0.5a

[B-Man]

The Health-Care Double Bind

by Kevin D Williamson

Republicans have begun the process of repealing the grievously misnamed and soon-to-be-unlamented Affordable Care Act through the process of budget reconciliation, a parliamentary maneuver the Democrats had threatened to use to pass the ACA over minority Republican opposition. (In the end, it was not needed, though significant changes to the law were made via subsequent reconciliation bills.) As with President Barack Obama’s pen-and-phone aggrandizement of presidential power and Senate Democrats’ weakening of the filibuster, Chuck Schumer’s party is going to regret a great deal of what Harry Reid’s party did.

It is not the case, as Democrats insist, that Republicans are simply repealing Obamacare without having given sufficient thought to what ought to replace it. Congressional Republicans finally seem to have learned that their prior strategy — simply insisting that a set of incoherent policies causing a great deal of stress and uncertainty constituted “the greatest health-care system in the world” and doing nothing more — was a mistake, a critical one.

But there is a problem.

There are two big, important pieces of the Affordable Care Act that will be of concern as Republicans go about replacing it. The first is the so-called individual mandate, which actually isn’t all that much of a mandate but which theoretically requires the great majority of American adults to purchase a federally defined minimum level of health insurance. The second is the rule requiring that insurance companies cover “preexisting conditions,” which mandates that U.S. insurance companies participate in the fantasy that we can insure against events that already have happened.

{snip}

The way to cut this Gordian knot is to treat insurance like insurance.

Insurance is not a way to pre-pay for health care, though we insist on treating it as though it is.

Properly understood, insurance is not a health-care product at all: It is a financial product, the purpose of which is to mitigate the risk of incurring large and unexpected costs, whether that is damage to an automobile (your car insurance does not pay for oil changes) or health-care costs. It is necessarily prospective, which is to say, forward-looking. No one can say whether you’ll have a heart attack tomorrow or get brain cancer in 20 years, though our actuaries are really very good at determining how many people out of a million will have a problem like that in any given year, and what it will cost to treat them. But we insist on trying to bend insurance into a retrospective product, as though it were possible to play the odds on something that already has happened. So long as we try to push off the obligation for paying for preexisting conditions onto financial firms — which is what insurance companies are — we are simply using those companies to launder health-care benefits that are in reality publicly financed, in part or in total.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/443502/republicans-obamacare-repeal-plan-preexisting-coverage-problem

Edited January 4, 2017 by B-Man

[Tiberius]

Yes, when the shoe's on the other foot and it's your ox getting gored, it's a horse of a different color. Isn't it Chuckie?

So true! Republicans better get ready to put on the health care shoe, because they will own it! I love hearing the Republicans say it will be better and more affordable to get health care after they kill health care for 20 million people.

[Azalin]

I work in what's generally considered to be the lower-income side of Austin, and over the last couple of weeks I've noticed a lot of signs being posted around the area urging people to sign up for "Obamacare" (apparently it's called that in both English and Spanish, since the signs are printed in both languages). These signs weren't posted anywhere until recently - they're obviously a part of a new campaign to enlist as many people into ACA coverage as possible. Since these signs say nothing about the impending repeal of the ACA, it strikes me that this is nothing more than an effort to rile up even more people by creating a larger pool of 'victims' once the laws change.

 

A very crappy thing to do to people, especially those at the bottom of the economic scale. But who cares about that? As long as we can make villains out of Republicans in doing so, it's okay to manipulate people, right?

[DC Tom]

I work in what's generally considered to be the lower-income side of Austin, and over the last couple of weeks I've noticed a lot of signs being posted around the area urging people to sign up for "Obamacare" (apparently it's called that in both English and Spanish, since the signs are printed in both languages). These signs weren't posted anywhere until recently - they're obviously a part of a new campaign to enlist as many people into ACA coverage as possible. Since these signs say nothing about the impending repeal of the ACA, it strikes me that this is nothing more than an effort to rile up even more people by creating a larger pool of 'victims' once the laws change.

 

A very crappy thing to do to people, especially those at the bottom of the economic scale. But who cares about that? As long as we can make villains out of Republicans in doing so, it's okay to manipulate people, right?

 

Why do they have to urge people to sign up for something that's mandated?

[Azalin]

 

Why do they have to urge people to sign up for something that's mandated?

 

Good question. I'd imagine it's probably the same reason that we still need to get people around here to actually get their mandated drivers license and mandated green cards.

[boyst]

so, whats the bet that this all comes down to still getting kicked in the nuts when it comes time for filing your taxes and paying a fine for not having insurance? cuz, ya know... taxes are too good to take away!

I work in what's generally considered to be the lower-income side of Austin, and over the last couple of weeks I've noticed a lot of signs being posted around the area urging people to sign up for "Obamacare" (apparently it's called that in both English and Spanish, since the signs are printed in both languages). These signs weren't posted anywhere until recently - they're obviously a part of a new campaign to enlist as many people into ACA coverage as possible. Since these signs say nothing about the impending repeal of the ACA, it strikes me that this is nothing more than an effort to rile up even more people by creating a larger pool of 'victims' once the laws change.

 

A very crappy thing to do to people, especially those at the bottom of the economic scale. But who cares about that? As long as we can make villains out of Republicans in doing so, it's okay to manipulate people, right?

want to know what is really fun about obamacare? once you're enrolled you stay enrolled. i signed up for it during an impending layoff until the next job began, at that time it had just came out and was much cheaper using this option than just buying my own healthcare and was so basic that i only paid a small amount more for coverage for 4 months than i would have in fine.

 

either way, because of that i stay enrolled in the affordable care act disirregardless of me using insurance through the system or not. I only know this because the year after I kept getting emails and logged in and talked to a "live assistant" chat who told me I would remain enrolled. That was about 4 years ago?

 

of course, i prefer to have insurance due to having the whole farm thing. just last week i landed on barbwire and sliced my eye lid open requiring 8 or 9 stitches.

[Azalin]

so, whats the bet that this all comes down to still getting kicked in the nuts when it comes time for filing your taxes and paying a fine for not having insurance? cuz, ya know... taxes are too good to take away!

want to know what is really fun about obamacare? once you're enrolled you stay enrolled. i signed up for it during an impending layoff until the next job began, at that time it had just came out and was much cheaper using this option than just buying my own healthcare and was so basic that i only paid a small amount more for coverage for 4 months than i would have in fine.

 

either way, because of that i stay enrolled in the affordable care act disirregardless of me using insurance through the system or not. I only know this because the year after I kept getting emails and logged in and talked to a "live assistant" chat who told me I would remain enrolled. That was about 4 years ago?

 

of course, i prefer to have insurance due to having the whole farm thing. just last week i landed on barbwire and sliced my eye lid open requiring 8 or 9 stitches.

 

I had wondered about the tax implications too, but I imagine that a portion of the demographic these signs were aimed at view their tax status as being reflective of their benefit status. I think it's free for some as part of medicaid, but I don't know. If so, then there wouldn't be a tax penalty for them - unless they have to actually sign up for the free version and then they don't follow through.

 

But yeah, I know a few people in food service who were really pissed when they were penalized on their 2015 tax return for not having any health coverage. I'm just waiting for the feds to start counting my employer-provided insurance as additional taxable income before I go ballistic.