Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

You have the option to ignore him, and probably should. You're oil and water. Does PW go over the top. Absolutely, but I do too at times ... so do you. But you and he are actulaly on the same side, so his anger (my assumption) has to do with strategy not message.

I'm somewhere in the middle, agreeing that sounding the alarm too often gets your message ignored, or irritates people you wish to impress. On the other hand, the ACA is far from perfect, and will need to be resivsed in a big way ... just not now. After 100 years of trying, something is launched. Let it get going, then start to suggest improvements. Just don't kill it. We can't start over.

It's all in the timing.

Over the long run, Debs and her ilk with their instant gratification hysteria have done great damage to achieving the ultimate goal that all Progressives want. Over the short run, I blame them for the millions in those Red states that will not benefit from the Medicaid Expansion.

Yes, I'm pretty pissed off over their self-centeredness posing as legitimate concern for the less fortunate. Does it show?

Originally Posted by The Wonkette

This is unfair. I have a feeling that John Mc82 never voted for the TP in his State.

I understand and appreciate your passion for ACA. You know how I feel about it. However, I object to the tone and to you jumping on someone who may be one of the few losers under ACA. Let's stop the name calling. It's not helping win arguments and its definitely driving saner voices off of 4T.

Well the silver lining is I make you look really good.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

Ted's actually an ally.

I know that now.

It's just that whole 'equivalency' thing we get 24/7 from the mass media numbnuts pushes one of my buttons.
I realize I have maybe one or two more buttons than most.

Originally Posted by playwrite

Over the short run, I blame them for the millions in those Red states that will not benefit from the Medicaid Expansion.

That's funny, 'cuz I blame people who are mostly concerned with their investments, posing as liberals.

Originally Posted by JohnMc82

This is the root issue right here. Full stop. I wonder if you and I can only see so clearly this because we've spent a unique amount of time dealing with chronic illness. There are typically two groups of people in America, those who are really happy with the healthcare system, and those who have had to use it a lot.

85% of Americans had insurance before the ACA. The HHS and CBO projections expect this law to increase that number to 90% in the next ten years. In the same time frame, the amount of money we spend on healthcare is expected to grow by 20% - from about 17% of GDP, to more than 20%.

What do we get for that cost? A system with every incentive to maximize billing, run unnecessary and often invasive procedures, and absolutely no incentive to contain costs or send people back home healthy.

People who are actually at risk of spending their OOP maximums and receiving some benefit for their insurance, are also at great risk of losing their jobs and income. PW wants to talk about the family who makes $90k, but what happens when the breadwinner gets sick and loses the $60k job? Suddenly, a $12k OOP cost doesn't sound so good.

If you have a good job and you're healthy, American insurance is great!!!

This is like blaming the fact that you're in the grave over having inadequate life insurance.

You do understand that there is a difference between medically-related bankruptcies and medical cost bankruptcies????

People get sick, loss the inability to work and loss income to cover the bills. Just because the ACA is going to limit the extent those bills are medical bills doesn't mean that all those other NON-MEDICAL bills just disappear.

You know, just because you are going to have to pay a higher insurance premium doesn't necessarily mean you should turn your brain off.

We've got to resist!!!

Originally Posted by JohnMc82

That's funny, 'cuz I blame people who are mostly concerned with their investments, posing as liberals.

yea, and you're mommy wears army boots.

grow up.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

You totally miss the point. Being a sore winner angers people, and that's how it's perceived. Instead of saying its all bad, say, "This is good, but we can make it better." Same message. different feel.

Read Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals.

Maybe you missed my posts that say that I support what good there is in the ACA. Although there looks to be less and less good for the people and a heck of a lot of good for the corporate coffers.

A really good way to discount the message of an activist is to deem them a radical. Amazing that those of us who speak out in response to the misinformation about the ACA are considered radicals. Yet Americans have an abundancy of amplified promotion of this program, yet we who shine a light on the discrepancies speak up too frequently. But it's just fine for those who promote and support this dysfunctional system to speak their minds often?

If we are not frustrated about this corporate takeover of our healthcare system, then possibly some of us actually don't fully understand the ramifications for millions of human lives. I suppose when you see people dying early because they can't afford the co-pays and deductibles, which won't change with the ACA, it makes one quite passionate about the reality of this scam.

I am but a small voice in the midst of a huge ocean. If that makes me a radical in your eyes, then so be it.

Originally Posted by JohnMc82

This is the root issue right here. Full stop. I wonder if you and I can only see so clearly this because we've spent a unique amount of time dealing with chronic illness. There are typically two groups of people in America, those who are really happy with the healthcare system, and those who have had to use it a lot.

I do think there is some truth to this. Knowing the fear of being in the hands of an insurance corporation, when you need medicine to live or have a better quality of life, is quite an eye opening experience.

Originally Posted by JohnMc82

This is the root issue right here. Full stop. I wonder if you and I can only see so clearly this because we've spent a unique amount of time dealing with chronic illness. There are typically two groups of people in America, those who are really happy with the healthcare system, and those who have had to use it a lot.

85% of Americans had insurance before the ACA. The HHS and CBO projections expect this law to increase that number to 90% in the next ten years. In the same time frame, the amount of money we spend on healthcare is expected to grow by 20% - from about 17% of GDP, to more than 20%.

What do we get for that cost? A system with every incentive to maximize billing, run unnecessary and often invasive procedures, and absolutely no incentive to contain costs or send people back home healthy.

People who are actually at risk of spending their OOP maximums and receiving some benefit for their insurance, are also at great risk of losing their jobs and income. PW wants to talk about the family who makes $90k, but what happens when the breadwinner gets sick and loses the $60k job? Suddenly, a $12k OOP cost doesn't sound so good.

If you have a good job and you're healthy, American insurance is great!!!

OK, but what, if anything, are you proposing? Here are the options ... the only options:

1. Continue with the ACA, flawed as it is, and start working on version 2.0
2. Repeal ACA and start from scratch.
3. Move to Canada.

That's it. For an immediate fix, Canada is nice.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

OK, but what, if anything, are you proposing? Here are the options ... the only options:

1. Continue with the ACA, flawed as it is, and start working on version 2.0
2. Repeal ACA and start from scratch.
3. Move to Canada.

That's it. For an immediate fix, Canada is nice.

Pretend anything better is too radical to consider, while negotiating and compromising with one of the most radical political movements in American history?

- the crap Deb's post.

Look at this piece of shit analysis from the link she provides regarding medical bankruptcies in Mass.

Consider that the cheapest coverage available through the state’s health insurance exchange to a single 56-year-old Bostonian who is not eligible for subsidies (in other words, one who has an income above 300 percent of poverty) costs $4,744

okay, we're talking about someone making $35K as an individual or $71K in a family of four. This person is going to go bankrupt because of $4,774 in medical bills???!!!! Bullshit!

They might go bankrupt because they are sick, not working, and can't pay the rent, the utilities, the student loan, the car payment, the cell phone, the trip to Disney world last summer and a whole lot of other everyday shit that made a lot of sense when they were fully employed and had income. We could chip in and pay off their $5 grand medical bills but that doesn't mean they are not going to avoid bankruptcy because of their NON-MEDICAL bills.

and comes with numerous restrictions on which doctors’ and hospitals’ bills it will pay.

- well that has nothing to do with the bankruptcy issue but lets throw that in there because the little Debs of the world just lap that shit up!

If the policyholder is sick, the policy doesn’t start paying bills until after the policyholder has taken care of the $2,000 deductible. The patient also is responsible for about 20 percent of the next $15,000 in medical expenses.

20% of the $15K is $3K which is really only $1K more than the deductible but lets just try to fool the little Debs of the world with our double counting; we got 'em foaming at the mouth so they won't notice any way. And this $3K is going to be the thing that makes our guy with $35K/$71K go bankrupt??? Oh yea, sure.

Nationally, the Kaiser Foundation estimates that in high-cost regions like New England, the unsubsidized premium in 2014 under the ACA will run $10,585 with additional out-of-pocket costs adding up to $6,250.[8]

So now we're talking about those unsubsidized under the ACA, that would be 400% of the FPG or $45K salaried for individual and $94K for family of four. It would also be those in this salary group going for the Platinum level plans where your OPP expense is supposed to be limited to 10% - so if you're paying $6K OOP you around $70 grand in medical bills - financial issues might not be your top concern.

Such costs will predictably leave tens of millions with large medical debts and drive more than a million into medical bankruptcy every year.

- any one else notice that this sentence from the 'study' comes without any reference to anything???

Like I said, try to resist!

Originally Posted by playwrite

I know that now.

It's just that whole 'equivalency' thing we get 24/7 from the mass media numbnuts pushes one of my buttons.
I realize I have maybe one or two more buttons than most.

One or two?

Originally Posted by playwrite

yea, and you're mommy wears army boots.

They are actually very comfortable. Hold up well to adverse conditions and can be made quite stylish with the right jeans and shirt. Just sayin' don't knock the boots.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

One or two?

Okay, okay, there is that third one, ...

...but I try not to bring that up in polite company.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

That's typical in America though, since the 3T began. The main reason we are ranked at the bottom of those things also has to do with how much the deck is stacked against average people in the USA in post-Reagan America, with all the policies that have been enacted over the last 33-plus years that favor the owners and speculators instead of the workers.

But we're not just comparing America to America, we're also comparing America to other countries who are & have been going through their 3Ts and 4Ts.

I think you may have a good point about cost John. I hear, however, that health care costs are already not going up as fast as they did before any of ACA was in effect. I think there are some cost controls in ACA, if my memory serves. There no doubt need to be more. American medicine spends too much on end of life treatment, for one thing, but we don't want those "death panels" do we? We also need to pass the reform to the cost of drugs that was proposed but never passed iirc. Drugs were cheaper in other places by a considerable degree. Insurance companies take a lot. Single payer would contain cost a lot more, as Medicare already does, because it's group coverage and dominates the market. What other cost containment measures should be made until we get it?

I posted a link to that, and politifact ranks the cost-controlling effect of the ACA as "mostly false."

It is true that the rate of increase in health costs has slowed - but that started with the recession in 2008, before Obama was even elected. Prior to the recession, health costs were growing a about 3.9% a year. When the recession hit, it dropped to about 3.3% (which, still, drastically outpaces wage growth). From 2008 to now, it has stayed closer to the low 3%, and Kaiser suggests the ACA might play small part of that in the last few years.

But what happens in 2014 when the provisions of the law actually kick in? We're told to expect an immediate 6% increase in aggregate health spending, followed by another decade of cost increases that beat the trend line.

Originally Posted by JohnMc82

That's funny, 'cuz I blame people who are mostly concerned with their investments, posing as liberals.

Here, PW has a much stronger case. Maybe you need to read Rules for Radicals too.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

Here, PW has a much stronger case. Maybe you need to read Rules for Radicals too.

What, my mom wears army boots is a stronger case than pointing out where his financial interests really lie? Gimme a break.

Originally Posted by Danilynn

They are actually very comfortable. Hold up well to adverse conditions and can be made quite stylish with the right jeans and shirt. Just sayin' don't knock the boots.

It's all about accessorizing -

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

Here, PW has a much stronger case. Maybe you need to read Rules for Radicals too.

The women who fought for the right to vote were also considered radicals.

Originally Posted by JohnMc82

What, my mom wears army boots is a stronger case than pointing out where his financial interests really lie? Gimme a break.

Wow, I knew my financial advisor had started sleeping around but he promised that there would be no pillow talk.

I'm firing his ass as soon as he comes back from the Caymans!

I sure hope he thinks you were worth it!

Originally Posted by Deb C

The women who fought for the right to vote were also considered radicals.

I just keep hearing MLK:

I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.”

The truth of his observation is hardly limited to race relations.

Originally Posted by Deb C

The women who fought for the right to vote were also considered radicals.

- don't mind me: I'm delusional and having visions of grandeur!

Next up, freeing da slaves!

Originally Posted by JohnMc82

Pretend anything better is too radical to consider, while negotiating and compromising with one of the most radical political movements in American history?

No, pretending that you can create positive change just because it's right. Change happens by odd trajectory, and being too close to an issue often makes you blind to that. I've been there. In fact, I watched the anti-war movement morph into the RW response we're still enduring today. Remember, people are motivated more by fear than desire, and pushing against people's preconceived notions always generates negative blowback - typically greater than the push that triggered it. There is also the sore winner issue, which I covered with Deb.

I know that getting 20% of what you want is not a victory, but 20% beats 0%, and it's moving in the right direction.

The most important, and most likely, movement trying to make a real change is working below the radar, but it may be the game changer. Physicians have finally started to read the tea leaves, and are staring to lobby for universal single payer health - essentially an upgraded version of Medicare For All. Let them lead.

Originally Posted by JohnMc82

It is true that the rate of increase in health costs has slowed - but that started with the recession in 2008, before Obama was even elected. Prior to the recession, health costs were growing a about 3.9% a year. When the recession hit, it dropped to about 3.3% (which, still, drastically outpaces wage growth). From 2008 to now, it has stayed closer to the low 3%, and Kaiser suggests the ACA might play small part of that in the last few years.

But what happens in 2014 when the provisions of the law actually kick in? We're told to expect an immediate 6% increase in aggregate health spending, followed by another decade of cost increases that beat the trend line.

I don't know who "told" you, but we'll have to see what happens. The whole intent of the law was to lower costs by covering more people, and to make it more affordable for businesses too. You have a point; intent may not play out in reality. I hope it works, but changes may be necessary, if they can be made. The law is good in so far as it makes insurance companies have to behave themselves and not cut people off just to save themselves money. That is a good thing.

The red/blue choice is:

a) regulate and tax more on the theory that business should be required to be fair to people and not rip them off, regardless if it means business has to take a hit in costs and profit, or

b) reduce regulations and taxes, even if this hurts some people, on the grounds that it hurts or discourages business, and that hurts the overall economy.

The nation must in this 4T decide which road to follow. b) has been followed the last 33 years; a) the previous 40 years before that. Which period was more successful?

Originally Posted by JohnMc82

I just keep hearing MLK:



The truth of his observation is hardly limited to race relations.

Crap you beat me to it!

I just have no idea how to respond to this!

Wait, I'm feeling something.

Wait

Wait for it...


Oh yea, here it is -



Next up, comparisons to the Declaration of Independence, then the Magna Carta, then the Bible, then....