Stop the lies: Dems are now shutting down REPUB efforts to remove the horrible Individual Mandate

[Leopolds Ghost]

Obama's deal with Drug Firms Survives

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/24/AR2009092401614.html

Drug industry has been a staunch supporter of Obama's plan to privatize and individualize the concept of universal health care. Republicans failed in another effort to remove a provision that would not just have an Individual Mandate but REQUIRE EVERY AMERICAN, on penalty of fine, to carry (i.e. purchase from a provider) health insurance.

This is the fascist option (or the right wing Swiss/Franco model anyhow) version of universal health care.

In other news, the Administration is quietly lobbying the Iraqi government to shut down efforts to pass a referendum that would require US troops out of Iraq within a year. Obama and the generals are demanding that the referendum not go to a vote!

[babylonsister]

1. Before Dems go to conference, the House and the HELP have this covered.

Don't panic until you absolutely have to! :)

[grantcart]

4. Once you pass a law that requires insurance companies to take everyone without

precondition you set up a situation that requires a mandate.


Think about it. If there was no mandate and insurance companies were required by law to accept you then everyone would quit their insurance and sign up only when they got sick. If you are going to require insurance companies to take everyone regardless of their preconditions then you will have to have a mandate.

Of course a single payer system would be the most logical way to go but under a single payer system you are also requiring everyone to pay into it regardless of whether or not they get sick so even a single payer system has a mandate.

[babylonsister]

5. Hey.

I wasn't badmouthing a mandate. I realize the validity of it. I also realize the fact that there will be subsidized programs in place that can help those who cannot afford what will be required.

As a woman who will lose her health insurance in about 6-8 months if not sooner, I'm paying close attention.

[grantcart]

6. as somebody who hasn't had any for 9 years I am too!

Also even if the new plan would allow me into the system I would be against it if I couldn't get the public option.

[ShortnFiery]

9. But you employ people in the Middle East? You said in your last thread. You don't provide THEM ...

with health insurance. I'm confused. You must be within the military contracting system or the government?

[grantcart]

21. Your confused because your reading comprehension is very low

1) I never said that I employed people in the Middle East. I said that I had employed Muslims and you assumed that it was the middle east. Most Muslims do not live in the Middle East. Most Muslims are Asians, the three largest Muslims countries are Indonesia, Pakistan, and Bengladesh. There are more Muslims in China than there are in Saudia Arabia. Islam is a predominately Asian religion and only those who follow the MSM think of it as basically a Middle Eastern Religion.

2) I employed Muslims, as well as Buddhists and others in both private enterprise and hired them when working for the UN community. I also worked with significant numbers of Muslim refugees including those from; Cambodia, Afghanistan and Iran. You assumed that I was hiring Middle Eastern Muslims to work in oil related industries but again your reading skills are not well developed.

3) Continuing a dispute in one thread in another thread is considered "stalking"

It is against the rules:

Do not "stalk" another member from one discussion thread to another. Do not follow someone into another thread to try to continue a disagreement you had elsewhere. Do not talk negatively about an individual in a thread where they are not participating. Do not post messages with the purpose of "calling out" another member or picking a fight with another member. Do not use your signature line to draw negative attention to another member of the board.

I was wondering which one of the two "ignores" I have was following me around from thread to thread.

Now that I answered your misinformed accusation I am now returning you to your former status. Any further stalking will be reported.

[babylonsister]

33. Sweet. nt

[cliffordu]

35. Kinda fucking scorched earth, there , good buddy....

:rofl:

man o fucking man, that'll leave a mark.....

:bounce:

[ShortnFiery]

38. I'm not following you around. You are intelligent but you are also wrong and rude.

You're right that I should not have commented in this thread. Yes, for that I am wrong and will not challenge you again.

However, since you brought up what I consider a lie - what would ANYONE conclude from your statement:

"Having lived in Islamic countries, employed hundreds of Muslims ..."

What is anyone supposed to conclude from that statement? Yes, you employ Muslims within Islamic countries. If you wished to convey that you have not, that's fine. However, your statement is easily interpreted otherwise.

Yes, I broke the rules by challenging you in this thread.

I promise not to behave inappropriate again by commenting in an "off thread."

However, I am NOT stalking you. You can sleep well at night, my promise.

For that one element, you have my sincere apology.

[ShortnFiery]

10. Of course, even if they have to accept you they can raise your premiums into the ozone. eom

[grahamhgreen]

11. They will simply charge so much you go elsewhere, or get fined. Problem solved.

It's evil, coercive, extortionistic, and utterly bogus - I do not believe for one second they even have the slightest inclination to do anything in our favor.

I would be a fool to trust these insurance sharks who failed to pay out after Katrina, etc.

IMHO

[Leopolds Ghost]

12. Do not people have the right to drop their health insurance policy if they want to risk it?

Or does the State now want to mandate a risk free society with no individual freedom of contract, etc?

Actuarially, it makes no sense for small pool insurance to accept people without precondition -- the concept is a Frankenstein's monster attempt to preserve small pool insurance plans by forcing people to buy into them in order to keep them afloat by claiming "you have the right to buy health coverage from anyone, but you will be fined if you don't buy it" There is nothing in the plan that requires the preferred providers to offer it to you at the same price as the last resort providers.

And doing so removes any incentive for the gov't to establish a universal safety net health coverage for people with & without preconditions. The gov't will simply say "suck it up, every insurance company is required to offer you a policy, you don't need help."

Just like they've done (same wing of the Party) and are doing to destroy welfare and Public Housing and paratransit.

[grantcart]

14. Do people have a right to drop Social Security if they want to risk it?

The answer is no.


The same now applies to health care. If you are going to require that a health care system (public or private) must take somebody with AIDS (or anyother expensive disease) for example then unless you require that everyone participates that system will go bankrupt.

In your hypothetical the person doesn't take the insurance and gets sick - who should pay for him when he now gets sick.


All single payer systems require 100% participation. The question becomes how you subsidize those unable to pay.

[Leopolds Ghost]

16. False analogy. First of all, people are NOT required to participate in Social Security.

It is paid for by a tax on certain kinds of payrolls. Those eligible for those payrolls get paid back by the government -- automatically -- if they so choose. Totally different system and it proves my point.

The notion of "requiring 100% participation" in a system of purchasing private plans would be meaningless to a European, unless you were Swiss or one of those right-wing regimes that's adopted Reagan-style health care policies.

[grantcart]

18. all employees and all self employed people are required to join SS

It is not an optional program and unless you own your own business or are independently wealthy then you are mandated in.


All single payer systems require 100% participation, either with taxes or fees, you cannot opt out and get a refund.

[Leopolds Ghost]

19. You don't understand the distinction and no, not everyone qualifies for SS benefits.

It is called a payroll tax, and by the way, it's a tremendously fucked up and regressive collection mechanism that makes it difficult for small employers to hire people. The program is administered equitably, the payroll tax is not.

Everyone DOES get an SS card, which people who think the way the statists seem to think, have managed to turn into an identity card, contrary to the stated intent of the program.

A tax is NOT the same as a stamp requiring you to purchase something from a private provider. Why the fuck hasn't anyone noted WHY the teabaggers keep talking about the Stamp Act? Ironically they are too ignorant to realize that this is an argument from the LEFT against MERCANTILE CORPORATE STATE That you guys are trying to construct.

State capitalism as practiced in Switzerland or Poland or wherever, with major corporations in bed with the state and turning insurance into a mandated utility, is not the solution.

Next you will mandate the purchase of bottled water.

[grantcart]

24. They payroll tax is only one way that Social Security receives revenue

Self Employed Americans pay an additional income tax to pay for their social security.



In any case the larger point is that if you are going to require companies to take everyone, regardless of their precondition you will have a system of mandates.

If you do not want mandates, and I understand that position, then you cannot also have a law requiring the health care provider to take everyone, the system would not be sustainable.

Again all single payer systems are, by definition, universal in both offering care and imposing revenue requirements whether tax or fee.

[Leopolds Ghost]

28. I see no point in creating a demand-side subsidy and then offsetting it with a supply side one

You're saying that a blue-stocking insurance firm is "required" to insure a homeless lady without preconditions even though we know they'll find a way not to, then you're off-setting it by "requiring" the homeless lady ("every American" according to the Post) to purchase or hold insurance, thereby "incentivizing" the blue-stocking insurance firm to hand her a card to a back alley insurance dealer (literally -- one of those health purchasers clubs certainly qualifies)

on the basis that the homeless lady's rich aunt was forced to purchase a plan and picked a preferred one, thereby subsidizing the cost of the government-mandated, corporate run referral service for the people they will never pay out to anyway. the same way the Blue Dogs have crafted the unemployment, mortgage counseling, and housing programs (to deliberately shut down welfare, public housing, and every other universal safety net program -- I don't even hear people utter the word "safety net" except in a Reaganite context of limiting the public option to catch only the hardest of hard cases). By ensuring everyone pays in, even if they'll never get a payout (the Mafia started out as an insurance company 2000 years ago) so that the folks who do get a payout (because they're insured as a matter of course, can afford a house and a car as a matter of course, etc) can pretend we're all sacrificing equally.

[sabrina 1]

32. All that needs to be done to get to a single payer system

is eliminate the middlemen who take one third of all the revenue paid for health-care, and that would eliminate the premiums people pay. A tax, which would most likely be less than the cost of premiums and co-pays, could be imposed which would pay for a single payer system. Businesses could afford to pay higher salaries because they would no longer be required to pay the huge cost of covering their employees.

We cannot afford to keep these insurance companies around.

In Mass. eg, where they do have mandates, it is failing. The costs are soaring for one thing, and nearly 5% of the people are still not paying into the system, mostly because they cannot afford to. So, the problem of people who have no coverage still exists. Multiply that by the whole country and it will be a disaster. For everyone except the Insurance Cos.

You cannot get blood from a turnip. There will always be people who just cannot pay. Right now, many of them are dying. A mandated system is doomed to failure, mainly because it is the poor who are not covered. Most can barely afford to feed their families, so where are they going to get the money for insurance?

Obama's solution is to have the government pay subsidies to cover these people, but those subsidies will go to an insurance company first losing one third of their value which will go to profits in the process. That's one third that won't be going to healthcare.

It's a windfall for Insurance companies. For the rest of us, it will be a mess, worse than it is now. Because when you make something illegal that people simply cannot afford, many of the poor will suffer even more stress than they are now under, and will eventually, end up in jail for being poor, although we won't call it that.

There are plenty of people in jail already who ended up there because they got a fine for not having auto insurance. When they don't pay fines which keep escalating, they end up in jail. I have met some of them. All this will do is add to those numbers.

The whole thing is a disaster. Obama had the momentum to go for a Single Payer system. Instead, he started off with a compromise, and now even that is being watered down. And he seems to be fighting hard to keep the Insurance Cos happy so much so they got to write the bill he's considering signing. I can't think of anything more cynical than this. What a joke, if it turns out to be his decision, on the people who supported him. A golden opportunity missed, because we trusted the wrong guy and it won't happen again for a very long time.

[naaman fletcher]

26. Huh?

Please tell me how I can not participate in Social Security. I am self-employed. Thank you.

[Leopolds Ghost]

30. Payroll tax is not SS participation. It's just a tax.

A tremendously regressive one that progressives USED to see as a problem that needs reform.

SS ID number has been turned (unconstitutionally) into a federal tax ID number for the sake
of database integration, but that's another story.

Do you want to convert SS into a program like the proposed health care bill? I assume you guys would support that?

Let's see: You would be federally required to purchase a range of privately-held investment packages, as the Clintons and Bush wanted to do; one of which would be SS as an "option" for a percentage of those who are deemed to be unable to purchase a Wall Street plan even if compelled. The remainder of that population who falls in between would be fined, and the reduced SS program would be paid for out of a combination of taxes on for-profit investment firms reaping the harvest from unregulated inelastic demand, and fines on non-participants. Just like paying for police with speed traps! Bill Maher was right about Americans being unable to understand the concept of equitable sacrifice.

[Leopolds Ghost]

7. I would accept an individual mandate if Medicare or the public "option" was universally available

As a safety net, but that is not the case, and if it were, the notion of an individual mandate would be a moot concept as it would make no logical sense.

One is not "mandated as a citizen" to get Social Security, it simply exists for those who are on a payroll, to be taken advantage of or not.

or purchase fire and police protection. (but back in the 1800s, people were! Perhaps we should pass a bill requiring Americans to have fire and police, and require them to pay a private corporation if those services are not available in their home town.)

There is a universal mandate to purchase electricity and water in order to occupy a building, interestingly enough. But those are regulated monopolies.

[grahamhgreen]

8. Bullhockey. It's a crap bill and they'll just try to hide the crap under deep layers of obfuscation

[ShortnFiery]

2. We are so SCREWED by the power elite that it will take generations to recover ...

if at all. :(

[Leopolds Ghost]

3. Downvoted already...we have people hat support fining people into industry health care

Those folks, and they seem to be a significant percentage in the party, are hypocritical so-called "progressives" who support the Mitt Romney / Ronald Reagan plan for health care, which is what folks in Congress are advocating.

They don't even realize it (a lot of Dems who are old enough to remember Reagan and support watering down single payer by removing the employer mandate and converting it into a fascist individual mandate probably VOTED for Reagan!)

And then people try to say nothing's been decided yet. This is what our "friends" in Congress (not what I would call progressive) are actively pushing for.

It helps that the core of the bill is an individual mandate because the Health Insurance Industry WROTE THE DAMN BILL back when it was known as the Romney / Edwards / Massachusetts plan initiative, the lobbyists COMMISSIONED THE DAMN STUDIES and stated publically that the purpose of the reform was to reform health care by increasing insurance industry profits, forcing the uninsured to buy health care on the theory that THEY are the problem.

Everything Obama and the progressive caucus has attached to the bill is a sweetener to try and swallow a package originally foisted on Obama when Clinton left the primary.

I wonder if it was unpopular of me to mention that the Administration is lobbying the Iraqi government to prevent a national vote on us leaving Iraq within a year.

I could hunt down and repost a bunch of articles I've been collecting on the betrayal of the progressive movement, the legitimization of the Iraq war in mainstream progressive circles, and the permanent realignment of the Party as a centrist ruling coalition, but I don't feel like giving myself heartburn.

[grahamhgreen]

13. I often think the ONLY thing they were ever after was the mandatory private insurance provision.

[Leopolds Ghost]

17. I read an extensive article about Mass plan back when Edwards was talking to Brookings Inst about it

Long before this hoopla.

The article made clear that it was an industry written paper (with industry-crafted $$ figures to determine how an individual mandate would save the health insurance industry by carefully calibrating the percentage driven to private versus public health care) and it described in detail (with sidebars and links to the Brookings paper) how the percentage who chose public health option would be required to be a small Matrix-style percentage of those who took the blue pill of accepting private coverage, since taxes on the new PRIVATE insurance consumers would go to pay for the few who got left behind.

An inbetween amount of people who do not qualify is built-in; much like Greenspan's "cushion of unemployed people" that he noted was necessary to sustain the US economy, these percentage get fined, and the fines ALSO (SIGNIFICANTLY) help pay for the limited public option as well as subsidies for the for-profit health industry to accept new guidelines;

The SHEER AMOUNT of the fine is calibrated on the basis of how many people the insurance lobbyists wanted to funnel into new private policies (vast majority) by using the fines to pay for the public option (the people who fall in neither and get fined pay for the latter,)

which incentivizes most to purchase existing private plans unless they have a "reason not to" according to the original math they sold this bill to the Dems with, thus proving the notion that this was a stepping stone or stalking horse for single payer -- an "elegant lie" told to a target audience of progressives.

It's EXACTLY the same way they sell transit improvements by making it clear that a consistent 90% of funds will go to parallel highway improvements, so if transit funding goes up, highway funding is protected, thereby justifying transit as an overflow valve benefiting motorists.

In the same way, the public option in this bill is designed (mathematically and actuarially) as an overflow valve.

In fact, the original paper Edwards and the folks in Massachusetts were backing made it clear that the idea was to SAVE the private health insurance INDUSTRY by strengthening their profits in order to PREVENT single payer.

and squeezing revenue from the people who fall between the cracks, like we do when lotteries pay for schools.

It also argued (and Hillary Clinton backed this up) that the majority of uninsured were "choice" consumers (ie. "deadbeats") who had irresponsibly "chosen" not to purchase when they could afford to, and could be charged more if forced to purchase (since they were being inelastically driven to purchase), thereby allowing them to charge existing consumers the same and not jack up the rates as baby boomers retire. Of course, those with prexisting conditions (who are being inelastically driven to purchase private health coverage -- the very OPPOSITE of trying to help these people) will also be charged more, we'd be fools not to think so.

Indeed, the plan is designed to increase insurance industry profits, i.e. revenues will go UP from all the uninsured being forced to purchase health insurance.

(I expect the US to mandate purchase of individual property and liability insurance next. DC and other "liberal" jurisdictions are already implementing the 15-year Gingrich plan to eliminate welfare and essentially criminalize non-property ownership.)

The Mass plan was held up as a model of the Brookings(?) plan in the same way the fact that there is no rent controlled housing in Boston thanks to Romney and "no one has suffered adversely" is held up as a model. When the alternative is a fine or imprisonment, people pay more for the necessities of life. Singapore is the ultimate model of the "individual responsibility" society.

I'm not saying Edwards and Brookings think tank (a war supporter) are in bed with the Health Industry lobbyists: These guys are Dems who came on to them first! The lobbyists publically said they wrote the package with out of power Dems as an overture on the basis that the insurance industry would go broke by the time Bush was finished and baby boomers retire. These guys are now staunch industry allies of the Democratic leadership.

[grahamhgreen]

36. I hope you don't mind that I reposted your BLILLIANT MUST READ POSTS HERE

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6634866

[Leopolds Ghost]

15. Frankly, I'm not sure why the Repubs are opposed to this. I guess they know libertarians are pissed

Usually, whatever benefits the Industry and enhances capital at the expense of individual liberty gets supported by Republicans.

Fareed Zakaria even wrote a book about Democracy being technologically obsolete and how we need to move from individual liberty and privacy to a system where freedom of capital is paramount.

All the left/right libertarians who voted Dem in 2008 will be pissed off and Republicans know this is very unpopular.

Usually they can do nothing right but it will be interesting to see what happens to Creigh Deeds in VA. He is losing BADLY in his home turf of (traditionally democratic) mountain men of western Virginia. I've met some of these guys, a lot of them are gun-toting socially moderate libertarians.

If Virginia votes for the evangelical nut-job they're running there, well, it'll probably be because of the anger over the about face the Administration is taking, having promised to protect constitutional rights and liberties and get us out of Iraq, and instead the opposite; we continue to build a corporate welfare state with erosion of individual rights, and the Post has a front page headline about how it's 1965 all over again in Afghnam!

It is possible to craft a health care reform bill that respects the rights of the individual citizen that are "reserved to the people".

We need to stop investing in "stamp act" mercantilism that benefits the East India Trading Companies of our day.

[glitch]

27. It's safe for them to be against it, they know the Dems will pass it for them.

They can appear populist with the people all the while winking at their corporate masters.

[madville]

20. I just want to know what the deductibles and co-pays will be

I just want to know what the deductibles and co-pays will be on the mandated policies. If someone gets a subsidized policy it really won't matter if there is a $2500 deductible and 80/20 plan after that, they still can't afford that part. Don't think for a second the insurance companies are going to be hung out to dry, their success is going to be mandated.

[Leopolds Ghost]

23. Will the new bill illegalize scammy "health services clubs" pretending to be insurance cos?

$10 says no... $100 says you will qualify to avoid a fine by purchasing these low-cost, no-insurance scams. If that is indeed the case, I see a future niche economy boom.

[madville]

25. Maybe so

Purchase a $59.99 family plan like what comes in on my fax machine at work and you'll satisfy the mandate. Doesn't matter there is a $10,000 deductible and they only cover 10% after that right? I'm not hearing much insurance company opposition, that's a bad thing with this whole deal.

[Leopolds Ghost]

31. Read up on these "health services purchasing clubs" they're even worse.

They pretend to be insurance cos and I got put on their marketing list when I recently went shopping for individual health care and the blue-chip agencies sold my info to the marketers. Nearly got suckered in by one, and I am a very skeptical person. They had a fake fly-by-night website (complete with rotating fake office locations and ever changing names for their company and officers) that obfuscates their real website! They pretend to HAVE a deductible when in fact they aren't insurance at all and aren't required to pay you anything. And they're legal in many states and have friends in Congress - the new face of corruption I guess. People like me will be screwed to the wall under the new plan since the blue-chips will have no incentive whatsoever to cover me with 40 million person waiting list of required-by-law customers and a 10 million person waiting list for a downgraded public option that is run BY the same companies and paid for out of fines.

Check this one out:

Consumer Health Benefits Association - what a fraud!

http://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/consumer-health-benefits-association-c1437.html


(On a semi-unrelated topic, did you know the Post Office is not required to do anything about scammy online businesses that steal your address to use as a fake office location so they can pay the Post Office and Yellow Pages to pretend to have multiple locations? It happened to us and there is nothing we can do to stop the mail that comes in addressed to a variety of ever-changing names for a fake "online" Locksmith agency. I called them on it and asked "I found you in the phone book, are you at this address?" they hung up REAL quick. They are listed in the phone book at a variety of fake addresses on our street alone! Google and the Post Office make a killing on advertising with these people and don't wish to shut them down.)

[Leopolds Ghost]

22. I really wish I had something good to say about the policies that have been adopted

by the new Administration. People keep saying "I knew all along that we were electing centrists" But these are not centrist policies. These are right wing ideas of yesteryear that have been reframed as centrist.

When you inelastically force people into the "private marketplace" of health insurance, you're taking away their right to even DEFINE VALUE of health insurance for themselves. The value becomes whatever is set by the insurance provider, what it is worth to them.

This is not free-market anything, it's corporate capitalism administered by the state. In a "market", free citizens get to define what an item is worth to them because they are not being forced into a transaction.

The reason electric and water utilities fall under a completely different section of your Econ 101 textbook is that the mandate to purchase those utilities turns them into virtual monopolies whether they control the market or not.

So if you want dealing with insurance to be like dealing with your water and sewer authority where they say "tough luck, you're required to work with us, and in return, we're not allowed to overcharge you, but we're not allowed to offer you much either" that is the economics of regulated supply-side monopolies.

It is the exact opposite of leftism (which is characterized by demand subsidies).

[glitch]

29. "right wing ideas of yesteryear that have been reframed as centrist"

very much so. :(

[TomCADem]

34. "The fascist option "? Republicans Are Looking Out For The HC Interests Of Americans?

That is whole lot of right wing talking points without any real analysis of the policy. Let me guess, health care reform undermines our freedom, too? Thank you Senator Kyl for your thoughts.

[Vidar]

37. K&R