No Scotus/Obamacare thread?

True, but you also don't run yourself through with a samurai sword either. Obamacare is the sword through the heart of the country. It's a real killer. Ironic for a healthcare program.

Enough with the drama queen hyperbole. Health care reform isn't a sword through America's heart and it's not the first step on the road to tyranny. Having to pay a small fine because you're dumb enough not to want health insurance isn't the same thing as being rounded up, put on a train and sent to a death camp.

FEMA DEATHCAMPS!!1!11!

And if you don't pay the fine, jail.
And if the other convicts smell weakness on you, a shiv between the ribs.
Death.

Death.

Death.

What some call a party line voter another would just call convinced and outspoken. I daresay the major parties haven't followed their ideologies as strongly as their true ideological forefathers would've had them. Wouldn't you agree?

But I think my point that he tends to favor the use of government as a generic solution to all ills is correct. He'd rather actively use these tools than merely set the stage and see what plays out.

Not hyperbole at all. The individual mandate is one problem with it. Beyond that is the problem that we cannot afford the cost of the program. Despite Obama's lies the cost continues to grow, having doubled since his "cost projection."

Healthcare reform is needed, but the way to do it is not to involve the govt. Every govt program is nothing but a huge bureaucracy and massive wasteful spending.

It's a step in that direction. Give the government more power and control over the people, and soon you have no freedoms left.

This deserves to die a horrible death. And if you feel otherwise, FUCK YOU!!!

But in the decades that it accumulated, did the majority of them do anything but bitch about it?

And they roll their eyes and sit around the lounge bitching about it. And the doctor hires more clinic staff to cope with it, and passes the costs on to his patients, who pass it on to their insurers, who raise their premiums and create more paperwork in an endless cycle that's endured for decades.

Did the AMA or any other professional bloc stand up to the insurers and the pharma companies and say "Enough, already?" Or did they just let themselves be lulled by another breakfast seminar and another golf outing and all those cute little pens and desk calendars and coffee mugs?

Needed to be fixed. For decades. If only what was wrong had raised a fraction of the ire that any attempt to fix it has.

Pixie dust, then.

I actually like and do and would benefit from bits and pieces of this thing. But overall, it's not going to be good for me and it's not the right way to go about this. There are other, better, ways to fix the problems without a "pass it so you can see what's in it" system of legislation.

Whether the individual mandate in this case serves a useful purpose is a relatively small matter. What's troubling is the principle that the law establishes: that the government--through taxation--can coerce you into activity it has the power to regulate.

Now, even if you loooooooooooove everything about Obamacare, the Congress having that power should really, really, REALLY give you pause to think. It effectively gives Congress the power to regulate ANY aspect of your life, to load you up with MANY "individual mandates." (Even that term--"individual MANDATE"--should make anyone who values personal freedom shudder.) This opens the door to all kinds of government perniciousness.

Remember: it won't always be the party you favor with that power or a cause you support where it will be applied.

I'm no fan of the mandate, and when I discuss it with liberal friends, I get lame, weak-ass assurances that my ass ain't going to jail over it.

I've gone through the phases, and reached acceptance, I'm dead, literally dead.


All that said....voting for Obama was still worth it for all those Sokar meltdowns.
If I can leave this world hurting a villain, I had purpose.

A very good point. I wonder how people would feel if Congress required an individual mandate that every American over 18 own a gun and be required to take 20 hours con ed on gun training annually?

It's different when it's people I agree with, making you do thinks I like.

Well...on the one hand, guns are more expensive than shitty cut-rate fly-by-night insurance, but on the other hand..I can see a gun.

Insurance floats out in some fuzzy usury-land....

Actually, this whole thing is the new social security ponzi scheme. The young pay in to support the old and then when the current young get old, the funds have run dry. It's happening with SS and would happen with Obamacare.

The rubric the insurers use is: 20% of patients require 80% of the care.

Now, in an enlightened society, the focus would be on preventing preventable diseases, screening for common and easily-treatable-in-the-early-phases diseases, and ongoing research into genetic and rare but deadly diseases.

And while some of that gets done despite the current situation, ignorance and greed continue to create an unnecessary inertial drag.

Beware anyone who uses "enlightened society" in anything but an expression of mocking or contempt.

If you're arguing healthcare needs reform, you're right. If you think Obamacare and govt run and/or regulated healthcare is going to fix any of that, you've never seen how Medicare billing works.

Hey, I'm all for that. But what I'm 99% certain would actually happen is that "screening for common and easily-treatable-in-the-early-phases diseases" would quickly turn into Gattaca.

Everybody says that. Everybody's been saying that for decades.

I'm aware of how Medicare billing works. But you've got this "all government sucks all the time" attitude that's really unassailable. "The Titanic sank, the Costa Concordia sank, therefore all sea travel is bad." Faulty reasoning.

Depends entirely on your definition of "enlightened."

While I might agree that some or even all of what you said is desirable, I will not agree that any method of achieving them is acceptable.

I believe people should eat right and exercise. I believe people should save money for retirement. I believe people should read a book every once in a while. But I also believe that it must remain THEIR choice to do so. The good achieved through forcing someone to do something is more that offset by the evil that is the force.

300 years ago, Western Civilization finally learned that forcing a religion on others is an evil. In the 20th Century, Western Civilization learned that forcing an organization of society of others is an evil. We have to be careful we don't repeat those mistake with health or the environment, causes that EVERYONE has a connection to, and to which some people attach very passionate beliefs.

Because once you accept the idea that it's okay to force someone into a particular behavior, where does it end?

I'm not scared to die...death will come as a friend...I'm scared to get killed.

I'm betting a prison shivving really fuggin' hurts..

And I'm not suggesting some sort of government mandate to force people to exercise and eat right. But there are any number of "roads not taken" that have brought us to the current situation. One was taking a simple, beneficial concept like the original not-for-profit health insurers and allowing them to become typical short-sighted quarter-over-quarter shareholder-driven megacorporations.

If the ACA is stuck down, here's hoping there's renewed chatter for the one solution I've always thought would help the healthcare situation some. Allow any person below the qualifiing age to opportunity to buy into Medicare.

I'm all for the government giving me free shit because by the time they use their new-found powers for tyranny I will be long dead.

And just look what a major financial success that whole SS thing turned out to be.

Ooops. Did I just Godwin myself?

100 years ago, health care was the doctor and whatever he had in his bag. The biggest part of the health care bill was just paying the doctor's fee.

But health care today is increasingly driven by technology, very expensive often cutting-edge technology that has to meet many regulatory burdens and perform in a highly litigous environment. The old model just isn't going to work.

This is looking like the court is acting like partisan political actors again, instead of just reviewing the law dispassionately, just like they were with Bush v Gore and Citizens United. They're supposed to be unbiased judges not partisan political actors.

I mean Thomas's wife was very involved with this case and both Scalia and Thomas have made public speeches against the bill before the case was even brought before them so that questions their impartiality. That neither recused themselves, and aren't even legally required to recuse themselves, is just total bullshit. This is like having a grand wizard of the KKK sitting in judgement during Brown vs Board of Education; they're obviously not impartial and have a vested interest in one side.

Interesting (hypocritical as usual) that you mention Thomas's wife while neglecting to mention that Kagan was Obama's Soliciter General and very involved in Obamacare.

As for partisan, yes it is. However, it is fairly clear that the gov't is not allowed to force people to buy things like this according to the Constitition. The 4 Left judges have some serious splainin to do on how this is legal.

G, can you name any gov't program that has not been over budget, mired in bureaucracy, and vastly more expensive than it would cost in private industry???