Dress it up however you want, forcing people to buy insurance from private companies is a SCAM

[FLAprogressive]

plain and simple.

Barack Obama said it himself, it's like solving homelessness with a law that says every person must buy a house.

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[ThomCat]

21. There is nothing stupid about the OP.

the OP is quoting Obama from the Campaign, unless you think Obama was spouting stupid hyperbole during the campaign. :eyes:

It seems to me that your post contributes absolutely nothing but useless and petty insults.

[polpilot]

65. THIS BILL IS ABSOLUTELY GREAT, FANTASTIC, AND A TOTAL BLESSING...

for the healthcare insurance industry.

[Clear Blue Sky]

71. You said it.

[donco6]

23. Not hyperbole at all.

It's irrefutable. We do have to pay for insurance. We should just be paying for health care. But corporations must have their cut, I guess. That's how it works now.

[Freddie Stubbs]

2. It works for car insurance

[jobycom]

3. Yeah, that was my thought, too. nt

[FLAprogressive]

5. Here's the inherent problem with that logic: Not everyone owns a car

EVERYONE will be required to have health insurance.

[CJCRANE]

8. Everyone owns a body

that needs looking after at some point in their lives.

[FLAprogressive]

11. so the solution is to make them buy health insurance they may not be able to afford?

[Freddie Stubbs]

14. That is why the bill provides for subsidies based on income

[FLAprogressive]

19. nice, so the gov will help you funnel your money to a for-profit company.

[tinrobot]

24. Then limit their profits.

Oh, wait... that's exactly what the Senate bill does...

[DIKB]

33. What does it do

to regulate the hospital costs and medication costs?

I see loopholes forming already.

Insurance companies shoring up with hospitals and pharmaceutical companies to guarantee they meet the legislative requirements by keeping costs high. Expect a LOT of mergers and acquisition deals, so they can get away with paying themselves or their own branches.

[Hannah Bell]

41. doesn't limit their profits at all.

[Raineyb]

31. And if you fall through the cracks?

Or right in the world of magical thinking there are no cracks to fall through.

[dflprincess]

39. According to the Insurance Bills cost calculator

A 55 year old single person making $45,000/year will, under the Senate plan, will be expected to come up with between $440 and $660 a month depending on whether they are in a low or high cost area. Probably close to what they'd pay now, except in the future they'd be forced to come up with this money - plus cash for anything this doesn't cover.

I'm sure most people will find it "affordable" to squeeze another $450 or so out of their monthly budgets. :sarcasm:

Here's a link to the calculator

http://healthreform.kff.org/SubsidyCalculator.aspx

[Le Taz Hot]

75. That calcualtor is completely worthless

as the vast majority of people fall outside of "single" or "family of 4." I know it's not your calculator but I'm saying it's not useful unless one can plug in one's actual circumstances.

[GreenArrow]

12. So why not let for-profit insurance cos. EXPLOIT that!

.

[arcadian]

59. You don't "own" a body.

You don't even "own" your own body.

[SoCalDem]

84. most homeowners buy fire insurance but will NEVER use it (thankfully)

"their" premiums help to pay for the losses for the very small numbers who DO have a fire...

EVERYONE who has "health insurance" WILL use it at sometime in their coverage...and many put OFF going to the doctor until the coverage kicks in, and then IMMEDIATELY start going..

People buy it BECAUSE they plan to use it..

If you buy fire insurance and then set your house on fire, you go to jail..insured or not..

The reason for insurance is to pool a lot of small amount premiums from MANY people, so there is ample money in the pool, when a few covered people have need of it... if premiums get too high, too many people will stop buying it, and costs go up for everyone, and then more people drop out, only making it cost more.. the only "solution" then is for the companies to limit coverage... of course , if the goal of the company is to jack up premiums AND to pay out less and less, while keping all the rest for themselves....well that;s where we are now..

[AVID]

9. but everyone will have pay for your ass in the nursing home eventually

[BuelahWitch]

88. Unless you die young because you couldn't afford health care

Not health insurance, health CARE.

[Tailormyst]

15. Car insurance also doesnt run into the 10k+ range per year.

[Freddie Stubbs]

32. One trip to the ER can cost more than that

[JVS]

48. That depends on how bad a driver you are

;-)

[Bette Noir]

69. 20K for a diabetic over 50.

And the guy I'm thinking of hasn't worked in a couple of years.

[Freddie Stubbs]

16. Everyone gets sick

And when they get sick enough they show up to the hospital ER. Federal law prohibits most hospitals from turning people away.

[dflprincess]

40. Exactly

and when you buy a car, insurance is one of the costs you add to the cost of owning one... Just like gas, oil changes, new tires, etc.

Mandatory car insurance generally allow you to purchase only liability coverage so that other drivers are protected if you cause an accident. The law does not require you to cover your own car against damage you do to it (though lenders usually make that a condition of a car loans).

Mandatory car insurance and health insurance are not comparable at all.

[ThomCat]

27. Not everyone is required to buy car insurance.

There are public transit alternatives in many areas.

Many people live their entire lives without ever having a drivers license, or a car, or car insurance. I'm one of those people.

Car insurance also protects OTHER PEOPLE from you in case you cause an accident. It is there to make sure you don't cause damage without the ability to pay restitution. That is an entirely different purpose and concept than Health Insurance.

We all have a right to survive. Existing and continuing to exist in as health a state as possible is a human right. Given that access to health care is controlled by corporations, and costs are determined and controlled by corporations, insurance is absolutely required in order to afford health care when it becomes necessary.

Your are trying to squeeze two absolutely different things into identical packages just because they share one word in their names.

[Gormy Cuss]

107. This point is the one most people miss: the purpose of mandatory car insurance is to protect OTHERS

not to take care of you. There are other car insurance products that can be added on to protect you, but they're not mandatory.

[sabrina 1]

42. That is a very bad analogy. No one is being forced to buy

car insurance. They have a choice to use other forms of transportion and many do.

Most all of my friends in NYC do not own a car. To make your analogy relevant, they would still have to buy car insurance.

I can hear the argument for that already:

'It's the way insurance works. Auto insurance can only cover all accidents if everyone pays. If you are injured as a passenger, you are a burden to the rest of us who have to pay for your care'.

I'm sure they've thought of it already. Your post shows that you already it is a good idea. Worse, you use it to support the bailout of the Private Health Insurance Industry. You are easily won over to giving our rights. And there far too many more willing to do the same, all for the sake of party politics.

Thanks for a clear demonstration of why people across the political spectrum so strongly object to this unprecedented attempt to violate people's rights to buy whatever they ever they want or can afford.

Once this dangerous precedent is set, what's to stop Congress from mandating that everyone must buy a car the next time the Auto Industry needs a bailout? Or as Obama said, a house the next time the Real Estate Industry is in trouble?

It's not only a bad idea, it is most likely unConstitutional.

[hulka38]

60. Not everyone lives in NYC or Chicago....If people want to get to work in a non-urban area

they need a vehicle and are compelled by law to purchase car insurance.

[sabrina 1]

83. And they still have choices. They can take a trian, many do who live

the suburbs, or a bus, or a cab or a bicycle, or move to the city OR they can choose to own a car and pay insurance or share the expense of gas and get a ride from someone who does own a car. Whether anyone makes those choices is up to THEM, not the Government. Is it so hard for you to see that in a free society people are not forced to buy something they choose not to buy?

Iow, since you seem not to understand removing choice as this bill does, auto insurance is only mandated, at least for now, if you CHOOSE to own a car.

I am pro-choice ~ that is what makes this a free society.

You are equating people's lives and well-being to an inanimate commodity. Just like the right does as I've had this argument with rightwingers many many times.

Believe it or not, mandates are the part of this bill that rightwingers love. The reason, they are certain that some lazy, 'welfare queens' are living off them when they get sick. There is nothing they love more than 'enforcement' (they even love the word) mechanisms, including jail, to get those 'lazy liberal bums to pull up their bootstraps and start paying their own way'.

Since when did this attitude become a Democratic principle? In the campaign, Obama took a democraticly principled stand against that attitude, as expected from a Democratic candidate. He said to force people to buy something they could not afford would require some kind of enforcement, and he said that it 'would be unethical to force people to buy something they cannot afford'. I liked that Democratic candidate.

Now, he has joined the rightwingnuts in using their false claim that anyone who is poor is probably just not buying insurance because they don't want to. He actually used an argument I have never seen a real Democrat use before, that the uninsured 'are a burden on the rest of us'.

I assume that like everyone else here you supported him in the election. Did you argue with him then about 'auto insurance' being mandatory to try to change his mind about mandates? Or did you, like so many of the rest of us, agree with him then because he was talking like a Democrat? If you agreed with him then enough to support him, you have flip-flopped pretty seriously since them.

[hulka38]

89. Obama wasn't the one who made auto insurance mandatory. I know Chicago is small compared to NYC but

do you actually think we all know each other here? I certainly haven't had an opportunity to talk to Obama let alone have an argument to change his mind about anything. And why would I? It's something he had nothing to do with in the first place.

The simple point of my post is that people are compelled to buy auto insurance because they need their cars. A lot of people live in the 'burbs and take trains, busses etc. but a hell of a lot more people don't have that option. I live in the burbs and have a sixteen mile commute to pick up my first client. I need my car for this. I suppose it's possible for me to buy a tandem bicycle and ride that distance and get him (although it would be a little cold these days) put him on the back seat and go. Or I could quit my career and get a much lower paying job without health coverage nearby. These things are possible but any rational person can see they are completely unreasonable. The fact is that many Americans need their cars. The entire society is set up that way. I don't like it but that's the way it is. There really isn't a choice for many. You buy a car and you buy insurance.

As for the rest of your rant I have no idea what you're talking about.

[sabrina 1]

92. Well that makes two of us. I have no idea what your ranting

about Obama and Auto Insurance is all about. You must be talking to someone else as I did not say Obama was responsible for that.

What he is responsible for is going along with Big Business to pass into law, a bill that will be challenged Constitutionally from the left and the right.

As for people needing cars, no, they could live without cars. You, eg, have the choice to get another job if you don't want to own a car. The Government is not forcing to keep that job, are they? What is it you dont get about the Government controlling your life? If you came to a point where you could not afford a car, you would not DIE! Life would be less the way you want it, but you would adjust and find some way to LIVE without a car.

Your body is not so easy to get rid of if it begins to cost too much. But, in a decent, humane society, no government forces people to go into debt or to got to jail because they cannot afford health care. In such a society, the government provides basic life sustaining needs for its citizens.

Keep supporting Private Insurance, because that's all you're doing and without making even a decent case for your support.

Ben Franklin got it right when he said that those who would give up their freedoms for a little security, deserve neither freedom nor security. Seeing you defend this travesty, this absolute disregard for the right to life, to compare people's health to owning a car and to say that there is any comparison in the choice of whether we live or die and whether we own a car, would make the Founding Fathers roll over in their graves.

Ben Franklin also said, as he, like me and so many others ranted about silly things like democracy and freedom and rights, that they gave us a Constitution but that it was up to us to defend it.

You go ahead and defend the right of corrupt private businesses to profit from people's lives. I'll go ahead and try to defend the Constitutional rights we were lucky enough to have people die to provide for us.

[WorseBeforeBetter]

96. Do you honestly think, in this economy, that people...

can just go out and find another job to suit their transportation needs? That's pure fantasy.

But I'm with ya on the travesty known as "health care reform."

[sabrina 1]

100. No, I know it is very difficult.

My point though, which I obviously didn't make very well, was that there is no way to compare the loss of a job to the lose of life, as the commenter I responded to was claiming. Iow, the defenders of this bill like to compare car insurance to Health Insurance and there is simply no way to compare the two, as no matter how devastating it might to not own a car, I find it appalling to compare that to losing one's health and as we know many have, one's very life. It's simply insane to make such a comparison. One of the lamest defenses of this mandated insurance bill.

[hulka38]

97. Okay

Here's what you said, "Did you argue with him(Obama) then about 'auto insurance' being mandatory to try to change his mind about mandates?"

I said, I've never talked to Obama in my life and he had nothing to do with mandatory auto insurance.

Then you respond with, "I have no idea what your ranting about Obama and Auto Insurance is all about. You must be talking to someone else as I did not say Obama was responsible for that."

Look, I'm saying that I need car insurance to keep the job that I not only like, but need in this economy. You're saying that I should quit and look for something else? Clearly you're not living in the real world. Then to go on about Ben Franklin, the Founding Fathers, the Constitution, democracy, freedom, the right to life, Life and Death, when all you really know about me is that it's really important for me to have a car.

[sabrina 1]

102. Again, putting words in my mouth that I did not say.

I'll try to simplify it as you really do seem to have a problem grasping things.

'Did you argue with Obama' was not meant to be taken literally which I'm sure most people realized. So, I'll ask it again.

When Obama declared in the debate with Hillary Clinton, that he disagreed with Mandated Insurance because such a system would require some kind of enforcement mechanism, and 'it would be unethical to force people to buy something they cannot afford', did you agree or disagree with him with him then?

Here again you completely twist what I actually said:

You're saying that I should quit and look for something else?

No I did not. The word is 'could', not 'should' which changes the whole meaning of what I said.

I said that you, since you made it about yourself, COULD quit your job if you could not afford a car. While that would not be a great thing for you, the fact is you would not die. Quitting your job would not be a desirable thing to do, but if you did do so rather than try to work out some other way of getting there, it would be a CHOICE. If you stayed, and worked out a way to get there without a car, that too is a choice. Choices aren't always pleasant, that doesn't mean we don't have the right to make them.

Your claim was that Auto Insurance and Health Insurance are both mandated. Not true, as I just pointed out how you have a choice not to buy auto insurance.

The notion that losing your life and losing your car are even remotely comparable, is a particular indication of how dependent many Americans have become on what in other societies are considered luxuries.

The people I know who have decided NOT to own a car, have not been FINED or TAXED for making that choice. Because there IS a choice involved.

This bill will punish people who decide not to buy Private Ins. And they have NO CHOICE as they cannnot decide not to own their bodies. That's why the Public Option was so important.

Is this so hard to grasp, really That comparison makes zero sense and if you can't see it by now, I give up.

[hulka38]

103. This is getting to be a comedy act.

The theme you repeat that as long as you are given an alternative that falls short of death, then it's technically a choice. If you insist on being technically rigid, I can give you countless hypotheticals where a person is given a choice of having something bad happen to them vs. being raped, tortured, ruined financially, etc. Do you want to move your threshold a little bit now or keep it at death? Technically, I could choose to loose my livelihood or buy car insurance, just as an inmate could choose to be raped vs. making the other guy's bed. Is that really a choice? Who would choose the former?

The question is not technical. It is what is reasonable and practical in the context of people's lives and what are the projected consequences? Can you imagine what would happen if half the commuters in Chicago, which has decent public transportation, decided to exercise their choice and cancel their auto insurance when that law was passed? Public transportation would be overwhelmed to the point of chaos. Project that out across America. The economy would tank, families would suffer.

Well, they still had a choice didn't they? They aren't dead are they? My friends in NYC... - come on.

[sabrina 1]

104. You haven't answered the question

If you decide not to own a car, will the IRS as a collection agency for your Auto Ins. company go after you or not?

[hulka38]

105. The issue that I had with your post 42 is and has always been that a lot of people

like myself realistically need a car and in order to use a car we must buy car insurance. In addition, as I explained in post 103 I think your definition of the word "choice" is excessively rigid and doesn't reflect what most reasonable people would consider a choice in these times.

The question you just asked me isn't the issue I challenged you on and it's not relevant to the issue we've been arguing all this time. Look at my posts. I took issue on a narrower topic.

And on that note Sabrina, I'm out.

[sabrina 1]

106. The issue initially was that you claimed that

Auto Insurance is mandated in the same way that this bill mandates Health Insurance. It clearly is not as you have a choice, which many people have made, not to own a car. No one can discard their body in order to have that same choice.

Anyhow, thanks for the discussion ~

[WorseBeforeBetter]

94. Is that so?

I live in Raleigh, NC:

--There is no train system.
--The bus route doesn't go anywhere near my office.
--Taking a cab to work would cost me close to $500 per month, while my 6-year-old car is paid for.
--While I bike the Greenway in Raleigh, it doesn't go anywhere near my office. And biking the roads around here is a death wish.
--Carpooling is not an option due to highly irregular hours.
--Telecommuting isn't an option.
--Moving downtown would do me no good, since my office isn't downtown to walk to.

Any other ideas? In a perfect world I'd be back in the big city walking to work, but it isn't a perfect world.

P.S. IRS-enforced mandates to buy private insurance with no cost controls SUCK... I can hardly wait for the middle class to wrap its collective brain around that.

[ima_sinnic]

50. oh, "blue dog," yoohoo, nobody's buying the bogus "car insurance" ANALogy anymore.

but you knew that, and you know it's bullshit.

[Obamanaut]

66. That argument doesn't work. One can buy a car and keep it on one's

property, driving it there until the wheels fall off, and no insurance is required UNTIL the car goes onto public roads.

Also, there is no rule/law/requirement to buy a car, so not everyone must have auto insurance.

Inasmuch as they are not the same, or even close - why do people insist on comparing a mandate for health insurance with automobile insurance? They really are not the same.

[sledgehammer]

70. Not the same thing

There is no requirement to buy insurance to cover your own damages/losses.

However, to protect others on the roads who you could harm, liability insurance only is required.

That's a big difference.

[varelse]

81. Does it really? So many poor people in California drive uninsured

or they walk.

[laughingliberal]

4. He did say that. How strange to look back on that, now. nt

[Echo In Light]

17. Well, 'strange' would be one way of putting it.

[Sebastian Doyle]

6. It's worse than a scam. Much worse

It is fascism according to the standard set by Bennie Mussolini himself. Corporate power to DEMAND money from every American citizen, enforced by law.

It's wrong, it's evil, and if the insurance criminals are allowed to get away with this, other corporations WILL follow the precedent, you can take that to the bank. Assuming you still have a bank account after this sick joke.

[FLAprogressive]

7. Next, you'll be forced to buy a credit card and use it to solve the credit crisis.

[Cronus Protagonist]

10. We bought a president to end a war

Look how well that worked.

[FLAprogressive]

13. sad but true. obviously corporate/MIC dollars are worth a lot more.

[Echo In Light]

18. They somehow spend better, bigger, more dumb, more evil.

[Odin2005]

87. Bingo!

[laughingliberal]

20. Until now workers often found themselves enslaved to the corporations for whom they worked due to

needing to hold on to their employer sponsored health care. Now, that remains as the cost of purchasing it privately will still be out of reach for many.

And it is fascism. We are so screwed. Americans since WWII have asked why no one was speaking out in Germany as the fascists rose to power. There were those speaking out. They were marginalized, branded as crazy or 'negative,' and discounted. We have not gotten to the point of disappearing our dissenters and, God willing, we won't. But the march towards fascism is unmistakeable. The difference may be one of degrees. Perhaps the march is slower in the Democratic party but it is still moving that direction.

[donco6]

22. No mistake. Dems are out there waving flags with the rest of them.

Sad to see. I sometimes wonder if it's all inevitable.

[laughingliberal]

25. That sense of inevitability continues for those of us who have hoped to stem the tide

Yes, many Democrats cheering cause it's our team. Pay no attention to what they are actually doing as long as it's our team. That could be a new slogan. Democrats: we're slowing the march towards fascism. Or it could be: Republicans are bigger fascists than we are.

[FLAprogressive]

26. "Democrats: we're slowing the march towards fascism"

sad but true

[donco6]

28. It's not far off already.

How many "So, would Palin have been better" posts have you seen? Yeah, wow, THAT'S our standard of measure. You get to choose between the totally nutball crazy fascist, or the slicker, more well-spoken fascist. Golly, which one to choose . . .

[Echo In Light]

29. Appearances count for everything in the land of Big Dumb

[ima_sinnic]

54. +++1 I say, let's have the overt fascist next time and get it over with

at this point, we're numb enough that a fast boil would be more humanitarian and less painful than the "incremental" boiling we're getting now--and hopefully might actually move The People to revolt. Sadly, however, all the pieces are being put in place by the "slow fascists" to crush any revolt.

[donco6]

76. I don't think they'd have pulled it off trying it "fast".

The "frog boiling" technique with phony dems seems to work PERFECTLY.

[glitch]

35. The insurance sector is 1/6th the economy. What do you bet they threatened default

unless this was enacted, IOW, protection racket. They saw how well the financial sector did, after all.

Too big to fail means too big to deny.

So, who's next?

[The Gunslinger]

90. We have a winner!!

[earth mom]

30. Enron on steroids is what it is.

Anyone that can't see that will find out soon enough when their health care premiums skyrocket just like what happened with Enron.

[phasma ex machina]

108. +1 K&R nt

[ipaint]

34. Goldman Sachs is getting into the health insurance business

in January 2010, right after the bill passes.

When the announcement came last July that's all I needed to know.

And remember:

Private insurance companies push for 'individual mandate'

"Private insurers lost an estimated 9 million customers between 2000 and 2007. In many cases, people lost coverage because they or their employers could no longer afford it as premium increases outpaced wage growth and inflation.

Recession job losses are adding to the toll. Some economists estimate that every percentage-point increase in the jobless rate adds 1 million people to the ranks of the uninsured.
The industry's real trouble begins in 2011, when 79 million baby boomers begin turning 65. Health insurers stand to lose a huge slice of their commercially insured enrollment (estimated at 162 million to 172 million people) over the next two decades to Medicare, the government-funded health insurance program for seniors.

"The rate of aging far and away exceeds the birth rate," said Sheryl Skolnick, a CRT Capital Group healthcare investment analyst. "That's got to be very scary. . . . This is the biggest fight for survival managed care has ever faced, at least since they went bankrupt in the late '80s."

...The industry fears that the government would force lower fees on hospitals and physicians, enabling a public health insurance plan to offer consumers a better bargain.
That, they say, would make it hard for private companies to compete for customers. Insurers also fear that a public option could easily be converted later into a single-payer healthcare system.
Health insurers don't see a public plan "as the nose of the camel under the tent; they see it as the front half of the camel under the tent," said Robert Laszewski, a former insurance company executive and industry consultant.
"They are interested in 45 million new customers," he said, "but the first thing in everybody's mind is preserving their right to do business in a way that can be profitable and meet shareholder needs."


http://articles.latimes.com/2009/jun/07/business/fi-healthcare7?pg=3



BAILOUT.

[HughMoran]

62. Well, that is an argument about whether mandates were needed ...

NOT

[Raine]

36. Agree nt

[amborin]

110. +10

[phasma ex machina]

37. K&R From "Healthcare Reform" to "Health Insurance Reform" without missing a beat.

"That's my baby!"

:rofl:

[Faryn Balyncd]

38. K and R

[nvme]

43. K & R

[snot]

44. K&R'd

[Vidar]

45. Simple, elegant & entirely correct. Recommended.

[shotten99]

46. We're forced to buy insurance here in Croatia.

and it's public.

Pay me now or pay me later.
You choose.

[JVS]

47. It's a solution so idiotic that it can only come from the minds of "centrists"

[shotten99]

49. I'm honestly begining to wonder what people really want...

A public, single payer system that doesn't raise taxes and isn't required by the government?

Quite simply...that's not feasible or even sane.

[thotzRthingz]

51. AMEN! but this ain't over... it only takes a few HOUSE votes to KILL this (without public option)

see: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7320157

[ima_sinnic]

52. but it sure is a solution to the "insurance profit crisis," isn't it? (nt)

[Junkdrawer]

53. "Make them buy cake!" Marie Antoinette, eat your heart out. n/t

[Swede Atlanta]

55. It might be a workable solution IF............

as is done in many countries in Europe, there was tight regulation of the health insurance industry.

This bill simply facilitates millions more customers for the same health insurance companies that operate for profit and that pay big bonuses to their executives, have raised insurance premiums through the roof, continued to raise co-payments, denied coverage and reduced payments to providers. I have a friend with kidney cancer and the so-called oncology analyst commented that the chemo therapy was very expensive and suggested my friend seek hospice care. That was 3 years ago!! What if she had prevailed? My friend would be dead. And the right wing dares to suggest there will be government death panels. There are death panels today, they are the insurance companies.

If there was tight regulation on premiums, co-pays, reimbursement to providers and strict oversight of coverage policies and decisions, this might be a workable solution. But with this bill the cost of private insurance will skyrocket because the insurance companies can no longer cherrypick the healthy. There is no incentive for them to be more efficient or improve coverage and care. With no competition the existing broken system will become even worse.

Mark my words that in 2020 we will be in a crisis of unimaginable magnitude unless the bill that comes out of conference is significantly different than the Senate bill. But traitors Nelson, "Lie"berman, Landrieu and Lincoln will refuse to support it.

The greatest debacle to our nation was when the Supreme Court recognized non-persons such as corporations as having recognizable rights including limited right of freedom of speech and to lobby. With that we became a corporatist state where moneyed interests control every facet of our existence.

[boredonafriday]

56. It's ironic..

I remember Obama criticizing Wall Street and denouncing them as "corrupt Fat Cats". Well,there goes another victim to Corporate America. Real change comes from changing the system!

[theFrankFactor]

57. Damn Right!

[LiberalEsto]

58. My daughter just got fined $423 by Maryland

because she didn't have enough money to make her car insurance payment last month. So they imposed a penalty for not having car insurance, and threatened to cancel her car registration.

The logic escapes me. If she didn't have enough money to pay her monthly car insurance payment, where was she going to get the money to pay a $423 fine on top of that? Luckily for her, we were able to bail her out, this time. But how many people don't have any fallback option? Most of us don't.

The system punishes punishing a person for being poor by making them poorer, while at the same time making them less able to earn the money to pay the fine and the car insurance, by taking away the means of transportation to their job.

THIS is the kind of thing we will be facing with mandatory health insurance.

I'm old enough to remember when car insurance was optional, not mandatory. When the car insurance companies decided they wanted to force everyone to have coverage, they started refusing to write policies for all kinds of arbitrary reasons, while significantly raising prices. I remember when insurance companies told New Jersey they would no longer write policies for NJ residents, unless the state legislature passed a law requiring everyone to have car insurance. And making the same threats every time they wanted to raise their rates beyond what the state allowed, like a kid throwing a tantrum.

I'm not saying that having car insurance is a bad thing. If you get hit by someone without insurance, and you don't live in a state with a no-fault law, and you can't afford to hire a law to sue the person, or the person is poor and/or an illegal immigrant, you are screwed on medical bills and car repairs.

But now we will be at the utterly merciless mercy of the health insurance companies. And I don't trust them one iota.

[Bette Noir]

79. Edit this post, and send it to Obama, your congress-critter, and both your senators.

[Lorien]

95. K & R this post. nt

[truedelphi]

111. You've got it. And to make the HCR bill scam palatable

There is a subs section that says that although we the people can be fined, our property will remain intact.

However, I am fairly sure that is one part of the bill that will be left out or will be reformatted very soon.

The Powers that Be love those penalties. Always have, always will.

Ironically the matter you discuss abt car insurance has been carefully considered here in California. At one point, maybe five or six years ago, some one in the legislature decided that based on surveys and studies, for an extra 1.75 cents per gallon at the pump, the state simply use that revenue to pay for everyone's car insurance.

Then "Conservatives" went nuts. "No, no, no! We can not start paying for everybody at the pump! Certainly not for the damn immigrants! Over my dead body!"

And on and on and on. So the proposal was killed.

So now if you're driving down the road, and some poor schmuck who couldn't afford his car insurance las t month should fall asleep at the wheel and seriously injure you, you are out of luck in getting your hospitalization and recovery bills paid for.

[HughMoran]

61. Guaranteed coverage, no prexisting condidion and no lifetime limits can't work without mandates

It just can't - so while it will seem like a burden at first, having everybody insured (eventually) is the only way the system can work.

[TheKentuckian]

99. Can't is off base. I grant can't does come into play if a primary concern

is big insurance's bottom line while protecting the employer based system.

Make 'em operate at a loss or put them out of business if need be until they demonstrate they will play by the rules themselves.

[Nikki Stone1]

63. A-fucking-men!

Fuck Obama and his fucking Hawaiin Christmas.

I GOT NO SLEEP, YOU MOTHERFUCKER, THANKS TO YOUR JOHNS IN THE HEALTH INSURANCE INDUSTRY.

[Joe Chi Minh]

64. I think it means that, technically, the government of the richest, proudest country

in the world has turned its citizens into a nation of 'peons'.

From Dictionary.com

'Peon
An unskilled laborer or farm worker of Latin America or the southwest United States. Such a worker bound in servitude to a landlord creditor.'

You owe your soul to the company store. Or all but. 'Another day older and deeper in debt.' What was the name of that song? 'Saint Peter don't you call me, cos ah cain't go. I owe my soul to the company store.' Such workers, as well as being very poorly-paid, were, apparently, obligated to buy their provisions from the company store. And I doubt their prices were too stringently regumalated.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfp2O9ADwGk

[Serge A Storms]

67. so if I don't buy insurance will the govt spend many times the cost of the insurance prosecuting

and jailing me

what if none of us buy it ?

how many can they jail ?

[northernlights]

68. we have the option of paying the fine

and paying for our health care out of pocket. I plan to use that option, since I've been without health insurance most of my life and when I did have health insurance the corporations left me to die anyway. I realize that's not an option for everybody, but I believe that those who can...should. I'm writing this as a Medical Lab Tech student. Imho, you're all putting the cart before the horse.

A major bottleneck to affordable universal health care is the shortage of facilities and trained providers. And the bottleneck to that education is student funding and the critical "clinical" training. Hospitals can only take on so many students at a time given the need for close supervision with a low teacher:student ratio to prevent medical disasters.

I'm pushing for Bernie Sanders 1350 or so new Community Health Centers (which I understand will also be training centers) to remain in the bill to provide low-cost health care to anybody who walks in the door. Increasing the number 4 or 5-fold (over the existing 350 community health centers) will make health care more available. 10-fold would be sweet! (btw, as an aside, building 1350 community health centers is *major* economic stimulus)

And increasing the grants and loans to students -- so weeding out is based entirely on ability to do the job as opposed to ability to finance learning the job -- is critical. Personally, I'm in a situation along with multiple other students, who may be forced out with one year of training to go due to terminated education loans. It's not our doing and at least 2 of us (myself and one other student) are 4.0s. We could face financial ruin and you could be short several providers as we were blindsided by fine-print rules...that were on a financial aid web page that isn't even public!

The bottom line is that health care is a *Community Service* and should be funded by the community. That means infrastructure and training. Fund the training -- train more providers and stop burdening healthcare students with loans the size of a hefty mortgage -- and service fees will come down.

Without the infrastructure to deliver, universal health care and single payer remain impossible. The fact is that until more *health care* is available, in terms of more trained medical staff and more facilities (beds), both universal health care and single payer will remain out of reach. This is a case where supply-side economics will work.

So I strongly recommend that all of you quit whining about the "sellout," recognize where the real problem lies, and help focus on that. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. And that first step is within reach.

FWIW, I can see a scenario in which, as more and more community health centers come on line, providing lower cost health care while training more and more students, people will start "opting out" of the insurance industry and paying the "fine" (think "tax for down payment on community centers")

[Christa]

72. K & R nt

[CRH]

73. Does anyone know, do I have the right to opt out of healthcare reform, ..

without paying the fine?

What if I don't believe in corporate health care the AMA promotes and provides?

What if I don't believe in treating (suppressing) symptoms with drugs?

What if I don't believe in or want organ transplants?

What if my only need for health care would be an accident, which is more easily covered by other types of insurance?

What if I want to choose the type of health I pursue, i.e., natural holistic methods, and alternative applications?

Where is my right to not pursue unnatural life extending, possibly invasive, procedures?

Why should I be fined if I do not choose to use an unnatural type of health management?

Why should the government have the right to punish me for my believe in the natural order and process of living and death?

What, does the government own the 'right of maintenance' of my body now?

I think the Obama administration has crossed the line insisting I must buy into corporate health care. Who the hell do they think they are? By what precedents can they assert their right over my personal choice of health maintenance? How is this different than telling a woman she can not plan her family, choose whether she has children, prevent having children? How does my not having mandated insurance for corporate drug peddling medical maintenance, put any other person in this society at risk?

How dare the Obama administration?

[Major Hogwash]

74. Yeah, but ya gotta die to do it. And they'll want to see the body first.

Because they aren't going to issue any refunds!!

[CRH]

78. This buy or be fined really bothers me, ...

and I wonder if it could pass constitutional muster?

Imagine if I were to refuse to buy in, then what?

They would not send me my tax refund?
or They would cut my disability pension?
or They would attach my bank accounts?
or They would attach my future Social Security awards?
or They would put a lien on my IRA?

Just what methods would they stoop to for compliance, and could you imagine the headaches they could cause once they used computerized methods of enforcement? You might never be able to use a bank account again.

[panzerfaust]

77. Christmas Gift to the Insurance Industy

[rollingrock]

80. And a lump of coal for the middle class

who voted him into office.

[varelse]

82. What do you give to the people who voted for his opponent?

It's not like we had many options - remember, Kucinich dropped out of the primary :shrug:

[rollingrock]

85. Remember,

Pelosi killed the Kucinich state single-payer amendment at the request of the White House. so a lump of coal for you Kucinich voters as well, compliments of the Obama White House. Merry un-Christmas!

[SammyWinstonJack]

91. He can be voted out, assuming he decides to run for re-election

that is. :shrug:

[Odin2005]

86. The state has no right to force me to buy the product of the corporation.

[Poll_Blind]

93. K&R n/t

PB

[Thickasabrick]

98. What ya do as has been suggested elsewhere, pay the penalty and

only buy insurance when you are sick. It should bankrupt the insurance companies eventually.

[libodem]

101. Had the same thought the other day

only I thought of the word 'sham' which can be thought of a magic spell to give the Insurance bastards
even more control over all of our lives.
Sham-onic. Hocus-Pocus.

Wonder how long it will be before we will get a discount for having all our insurance with the same company, like house, multi-car, boats, motor-homes, life, health?

The richer you are, the more stuff you have, the less you pay?

Expect it.

[Little Star]

109. Yep, that was his argument & a darned good one too. n/t