Woops. Just read on HuffPost that the Medicaid expansion (the part I always thought we needed) was made opt-in (for the state governments) by the court. Never mind, you just got screwed by the court/are about to get screwed by your state legislature. Sorry.
The tighty-righties are all in a funk because they all lost their erections at about 10:20 this morning. Can’t wait to see the replay in November.
A mandate was a REPUBLICAN idea. It was the REPUBLICAN counter-proposal to the Clintons’ suggestion in the 1990s. REPUBLICAN.
REPUBLICANS don’t like anyone to get a free ride. They don’t like it when someone “sucks at the teat” of government handouts. That’s why they wanted to make sure everyone chipped in. THEY wanted this.
You can call it “tax”, you can call it “Fred”, you can call it “another lonely day”. It is what it is.
Some people on both sides thought Obama should have admitted it was a “tax” a while ago, during the Congressional debates. Maybe so. To the extent that doing so might have just tipped the scales toward (politically) dooming the whole program, then any (pro-reform) complaints about its being called a tax now are a bit of a hypocrisy. But only because idiot Americans are so goddamned afraid of the word “tax”. Not the reality of it, when push comes to shove, just the word.
This is a clever plan by liberals. Red states can refuse the Medicaid expansion, then explain to poor rural Republicans in their state why they can’t have the same benefits poor rural people get in other states. Here is a big softball wedge issue for the November elections.
Thread winner! Seriously, I didn’t know this.
Foreigner pretending to be American to bitch about our politics detected.
When you get sick, and you will, where exactly will you find the cash to spend on healthcare?
No. Seriously. Please answer the question.
So, I assume that there isn’t going to be any public insurance scheme offered besides the private ones?
Also : I know that mutual insurances(*), that are extremely common in France or Germany, for instance, aren’t quite common is the USA. But are they just “uncommon” or are they plainly non-existing?
(*) FTR : a mutual insurance is a non-profit organization. It’s ran by the insured through elected admninistators.
Yeah, it’s amazing to me that the press doesn’t make it clear that Obama’s plan was largely based on the Republicans’ plan form the 90s. It really shuts up Republicans when you point this out (but be prepared to show them links on you smart phone, if they watch Fox, they tend to be “informationally challenged.”)
I was curious to see how Fox News reported this story, so I went to their website. Under a headline saying, “Guess What’s Now A ‘Tax’” was this lede: “Before this morning’s Supreme Court decision upholding the Affordable Care Act and calling the individual mandate a tax, President Obama strenuously insisted it ‘absolutely’ was not a tax — now that ‘tax’ takes effect in 2014, and the battle over ObamaCare enters a new chapter.”
Fair & Balanced, my eye.
And here I was under the impression that the bigger the risk pool for insurance, the better.
But hey, I’m happy to leave it to the states, just so long as there’s a federal regulation that all states must have a single-payer system.
Now, people can go the doctor before the situation gets out of hand. You can deliver medicine to prevent major illness, medicine by the spoonful, so maybe you won’t need to use the shovel. For whichever reason.
Remember what happened with the stimulus package. Lots of Republican governors loudly refused the money, and then no doubt told the state legislatures to take it anyway behind their backs.
However that might work here, since by not taking it they’d be letting the poor die, and since the poor vote Democratic …
Hannibal Lecter was a Republican. Making government smaller, one census taker at a time.
I don’t know that this really belongs here, but I’m posting strictly for the point and laugh, so what better place than the pit.
Buzzfeed has rounded up a nice selection of twitter-ers that are so pissed about the SC ruling that they will move to Canada. (Some are surely ironic, but some are just moronic)
Lucky for them that’s covered under most health insurance plans.
Finally, the enclaves of Americans who fled to Canada after GWB’s re-election will get some ideological balance!
So that’s why porn site traffic was down ten percent this morning!
I pit Justice Roberts and the liberals for being corporate partisan hacks.
Thank Og we have four justices looking out for us on the bench, willing to stand up to corporations and tell them NO, WE WON’T FORCE PEOPLE TO BUY YOUR PRODUCT.
Scalia, Thomas, Alito, Kennedy… you have my sincere thanks. You are the most principaled, reliable justices looking out for THE FOLKS.
Exactly. I am fed up of hearing the standard excuse of “the US is big so OBVIOUSLY it could never work” with absolutely nothing to back it up. Just, apparently, big countries can’t do it. The reason why I don’t buy it? Well the EU (with a bigger area than the US and a much bigger population) can manage to have the European Health Insurance Card and the EU isn’t even a country, it is an area made up of 27 member states (and the EHIC is also valid in 4 other countries).
Note, “temporary” is almost meaningless as (ignoring a few minor things regarding some newer countries) if you are from an EU country you have the right to live in any other one. You just move there and register and then you’re covered there with no need for the card.
Again, this is when we’re not even a country yet the much smaller US, that is a single country with a Federal Government, can’t organise themselves a health insurance programme because they are “big”.
Bollocks I say.