Cite for the bolded part, please.
Well, let me ask you:
When thousands who are now covered are dropped from their insurance companies for having pre-existing conditions, and when pregnant women of lower income do not qualify for Medicaid any longer (which is explicitly stated in the document); and when the Medicaid cuts (which are quite severe; this bill also transitions Medicaid from a federal program to a state program with means testing) kick in; and when the “Obamacare” subsidies are removed (also part of the bill), what do you think will happen to all those people? People who are currently ill, or who cannot afford health insurance?
What’s going to happen to poorer, sickly people on Medicaid when they can’t meet the new work requirements (part of the bill), or, because of decreasing funding each year from the Federal Government (also part of the bill) find that their states are unable to cover them? What’s going to happen to the program overall (and thus, many of the people who need it) when - by 2020 - most of the costs of Medicaid are shifted to the States - which lack money and resources compared to the Federal government?
How can you have a cite for something that is a possibility?
No, that’s not how it works. You made a declarative statement, to wit,
that the bill will “likely kill thousands”.
Back your statement up.
How many people do you think currently get life-saving health care from medicaid?
I just pointed out your semantic nitpicking. Why would you assume doing it again would work?
You have discussed the topic of equality before. So I know you understand what it means. We (the liberals on this board) have discussed the topic and come to a broad consensus. You also know that no one uses the word “we” to mean that every single person agrees with them. You also are aware that snark only produces the illusion of bolstering an argument, and actually only shows its weaknesses.
If you cannot argue without taking small bits out of context, you are tacitly admitting you have no counterargument. Is that what you wish to convey?
Yes, he is. He is arguing against Trinopus’s position. That is why he taking one part of what he said and arguing it isn’t true, thus attempting to invalidate the conclusion. That is him taking the position that the conclusion is invalid. He is taking the position that this law is fair.
You are doing the same thing I pointed out Bricker was doing. You know that Trinopus was not claiming that six year olds are equal under the law, so any interpretation that assumes that meaning is disingenuous.
It is semantic arguing. You know what someone means, but you choose to argue with the words they used. It is an attempt to avoid the actual argument being made.
I just wish it was less successful on this board.
Past studies have found that uninsured Americans die at a rate that is somewhere between 25 to 40 percent higher than the rate for insured Americans. According to this research, which was conducted by the Centers for Disease Control, Harvard Medical School, and others, that equates to 18,000 to 45,000 deaths annually.
Even the Economic Policy Institute found that the involuntarily uninsured do have higher death rates, even when controlling for things like tobacco use. They seem to estimate the higher risk at about 3 percent, and when we’re talking about estimates of 20 million people losing insurance – the substantial majority of them involuntarily, but certainly not all of them – even the most optimistic group’s statistics seem to bear out a general estimate of at least a few thousand increased deaths per year.
Wow.
The answer is “Yes.” The rule is as follows:
When a law purports to treat two classes of people unequally, we first determine if the two classes are “suspect,” classes. If the classification is related to race, national origin, or religion, then the courts will strike down the unequal treatment unless the highly exacting standard can be demonstrated: that a compelling governmental interest is being served AND that the law is narrowly tailored the law to achieve that interest.
If the classification is related to gender, then the courts will strike down the unequal treatment unless a more moderate standard can be met: it must further an important government interest by means that are substantially related to that interest.
And finally, if the classification is unrelated those, but still treats two sets of people unequally, the courts will only intervene if the law not even rationally related to a legitimate government interest.
Can you point to them in a book?
Yes. These rules may be found in a book: The United States Reports, starting in volume 304, page 144. Of specific interest is Footnote 4. These rules have been further explained in volume 316, page 535 related to banning forced sterilization; volume 347 page 483 related to ending racial segregation in schools, and volume 897 page 113 relating to intermarriage between races.
I agree the “parasite,” comment was not relevant or serious, but as to the remainder of your post: no. Nope, no, nein, no. The question of how “equality” is actually determined is not sematic nitpicking, and I absolutely reject the idea that there is a broad consensus on this board about all the examples I gave: May a state deny voting rights to a felon while he’s in prison? May a state deny voting rights to a felon after he’s released? May a state forbid firearm sales to a felon after he’s released? May a state refuse a business license to an alcohol seller if he’s within 1000 feet of a school?
My words aren’t getting through, so let me borrow some:
What I’m asking is: what is the framework? If there is none, then we’re granting the courts the power to decide each new question about equality on the basis of what the specific judges think is right, nothing more. Maybe that’s good enough for you.
Will it be good enough after four years of Trump judicial appointments?
I say that the far better approach to to have identified a way of analyzing each situation ahead of time, and then agreeing to be bound by the results. That way, the judges are not simply applying their view of what’s right. The Trump judges, remember.
All of this applied before the ACA, correct? Saying that modifications to the ACA is “killing people” is just a bit overblown, don’t you think?
If the modifications lead to more uninsured people then it’s the obvious conclusion given that research. In what way is that overblown?
Heh.
AHCA doesn’t kill people. Cancer kills people.
Good luck with that.
I’m not following your argument. The ACA, in very rough terms, halved the number of people without health insurance. The AHCA, in very rough terms, returns to pre-ACA levels of uninsured people.
To the extent that there are more people with health insurance, those studies indicate that we can expect fewer preventable deaths. To the extent that there are fewer people with insurance, we can expect more preventable deaths. So if we pursue policies – whatever they are called, whomever proposes them – that increase the number of uninsured, deaths are expected to go up.
So, one more time, what point are you trying to make?
A few examples to illustrate:
[ol]
[li]If a homeless person you happen to walk by is starving and you do not feed him and then he dies, did you kill him? I would say no. [/li][li]If you feed that same person on day 1, and he lives, but on day 2 you do not feed him and he dies, did you kill him? I would say no. [/li][li]If you promised him that you would continue to feed him for as long as he is hungry in some kind of binding way and he relies on that promise and then you renege on that promise in some kind of improper way and he dies, did you kill him? Maybe.[/li][/ol]
I don’t think anyone is contemplating bringing murder charges against Sen. McConnell.
Here the word “kill” means “cause to die.” Obviously, the death of someone who dies because AHCA allows their insurer to impose lifetime care limits is the result of many causes. Nevertheless, one of the necessary causes of that death is the change in law.
Indeed. And moreover I think it’s reasonable and appropriate for us to expect our legislators to weigh heavily the question of whether a piece of legislation will contribute to people’s deaths, and for us to criticize them as callous when they fail to give that question proper consideration.
If the trench you’ve chosen to defend is the difference between *kill *and allow to die when you could easily have helped, you’ve already lost.
How many people will be “killed” by this pending legislation is something that can’t be known. But it’s surely an inhumane bill. It’s also pretty goddamned stupid from the perspective of public health to discourage millions of people from using the health system. Yes, there might be public health clinic that offer vaccinations but a lot of people who are used to getting regular care are just going to say ‘fuck it’ unless they happen to get something serious. We’re going to end right back where we were at the dawn of the first vaccines when people spread all sorts of preventable but communicable diseases, and those little microbes don’t really care if you’re living in a slum or shopping at Whole Foods.
I’d say a more equivalent analogy would be if you had some sort of program that delivered meals to the elderly, vets, or other disabled people who have difficulty leaving their homes and shopping and cooking.
If you then defunded or otherwise crippled or eliminated that program, and people started dying due to the change in the program, that would be much more similar to changing the healthcare system in such a way that tens of millions will no longer have insurance.