Politically, perhaps. But I don't think we're of similar temperment. I'm much more sarcastic and objective, whereas DA is very earnest and forthright but subjective and emotional about everything and takes almost everything personally.
My financial situation is the result of messes of my own making. I have to live with that. And yes, I do take it personally when you keep dropping that afford line. Because it says to me that no matter how much I bust my ass at my job or taking care of my family, I'm not worthy of decent health care because I'm one of "teh poor".
I have no problem paying taxes so long as I receive value for doing so. Money is essentially work in tangible form, so ideologically I have no problem allocating some of my work for the greater good of society. I enjoy helping others, I find it personally very rewarding and see it as my duty to contribute to the health/success of my functioning society. Taxes are merely a formalized way of ensuring that all members of a society contribute to that society. What I do not enjoy is when people pervert/game this arrangement to their own ends, such as embezzlement ("There's so much. A little off the top for me won't hurt"), pork ("We cheat the other guy and pass the savings on to you"), leeches ("I'll have some of yours, but you can't have any of mine"), etc. They're all forms of theft, really. If nobody is seeding, then nobody can download, right? And if there are too few seeders, then they become overtaxed and no doubt bitter about having to hold up the entire cloud. That's hardly a community attitude, and it's why (ideally) everyone has to seed/tithe/pay taxes...otherwise it doesn't work. It also follows that the people with the fattest pipes will end up contributing the most packets to the flood, and have no legitimate standing to be outraged by this due to the Stan Lee/Voltaire principle. You gotta keep your ratio nice and high, otherwise you are cheating, plain and simple.
There's that break-even point beyond which you have to decide whether working hard enough to earn enough money to repay the debt will kill you anyway, and whether you would just be happier/better off by forgoing care. I don't know if it's a supply/demand thing, but that whole idea of "the sweet release of Death" is abhorrent to me. I never want to find myself in any sort of situation where the idea of just going ahead and dying fills me with more hope and joy than it would if I were to continue to live.
How is this the case when if you have insurance, you're complying with the law? The only way someone would have to trade down is if their employer took away their insurance as a result of the new law, as far as I know.
Which is happening to an alarming degree. The cost of obamacare compliance has raised premiums in many places, and a lot of businesses have dropped either coverage entirely, or shrunk to only providing individual coverage but not spouse/dependent coverage.
There are also companies like Trader Joe's, which eliminated health care for some employees simply because it would be cheaper for Trader Joe's to just cut some of them off entirely (thus making them exchange-eligible) and then give them a check to go buy insurance for themselves on the exchanges.
The rot in the house has been vastly overstated, but it is there. The problem is the high cost of healthcare. This stems from the fact that because the consumer has become divorced from the actual costs ("Here's my insurance, bring on the MRIs and designer drugs because I paid my premiums and it's time to cash in"). I posted a story in an earlier ObamaCare thread a few weeks ago about -
There's plenty of things we haven't tried that might bring the cost of medical care down. Reintroducing competition to the market will help. Some think allowing insurance to be sold across state lines would also help. Perhaps instead of high premium, low deductible health plans we should try out high deductible, low premium HSA plans with employer contributions - for example, the insurance company that provides insurance for where I work offers an HSA plan that has a 10k deductible, but the premiums are less than $100 a month and every month the employer deposits $50 into your HSA account. That means that you're covered in case of catastrophic injury or illness, such as getting hit by a bus or cancer, and you have $600 a year on a debit card to pay in cash for lesser medical services (which as illustrated above can be much cheaper if you tell them you're paying in cash up front). And unlike traditional insurance, that HSA money rolls over from year to year. You can even choose to contribute more to your HSA if you want, and your contributions are tax deductible. So if you start one when you're young and healthy, by the time you're in your 30s you could have a very comfortable medical padding indeed, while actually spending much less over that time period. We could also revisit drug patents (20 years currently) to see about making it faster to get cheaper generics on the market.
Um, follow up question then. Why doesn't it? Is it this way by design or is it by compromise? I mean, Obama wanted other models that he was obviously not able to pass, such as single payer or an option of a government run insurance. Would these have covered part of the cost problem? Wouldn't it have been just an extension of Medicare/Medicaid?
I dunno what the heck he was applying for, but my private insurance has never taken me that long to fill out, nor has it asked me for all that stuff he got asked. Not even Blue Cross/Blue Shield.
That's where I'm at, too.
It probably depends on the state. Private insurance in NJ had really painful application procedures when I was using it a few years ago.
That could be it. Hell, in Texas, the form is only slightly more complicated than
Some of the online questions were just vague enough that I used up all my chances to verify myself that way. Then like an idiot I continued the application process without writing down the Experian reference number when I called outside of their office hours. When I finally did get through, they didn't have any record of me.
I'm going through healthcare.gov. Once everything was working, it took me about 15 minutes (not counting the previous days login attempts) to input the family information and browse all the 31 insurance plans I qualify for.
Which state? I wonder if it's just healthcare.gov's michigan support that's having an issue.
Virginia.
I got in to where you make an account, seems fine to me. I'm in Mn, but chose Michigan as the state. Too lazy to go any farther though.
Geographical fail aside, I wonder what those particular secessionists have against Alabama.
The system eliminates discrimination based on pre-existing condition, which sounds nice and smiley and flowers, but it's death for a company that has to maintain a profit/satisfy shareholders. The only way this can be balanced is if the young, robust, healthy people who rarely need any sort of doctor at all sign up in droves. Fun fact - I didn't bother with insurance until I was 24, I kept the extra money instead, because I was young and healthy and wanted the extra money. There are a lot of people like I was. If you give these people the choice of spending $1200+ per year to get insurance (and closer to $3600 if you want something besides catastrophic), or pay a $100 annual
