I don’t know why I’m doing this and I didn’t read the whole thread, but did anyone notice this line in the article?
Since it is now the 21st, shouldn’t there have been some little news blurb about a decision by now?
The $150/month in your case is a handout.
The “large odds” and the stakes I described following the line you quote make clear that I wasn’t talking about money:
My bad. I thought you were talking about the $100 bet against Terr.
Which servers to illustrate my point. There is no need for a monetary wager.
But i take no consolation in that. I don’t want him to suffer because he needs health insurance. (I do want him to suffer because he’s wrong and won’t admit it – but i don’t want him to suffer a loss of health insurance.)
But the fact that the law as written doesn’t authorize subsidies on the federal exchanges is still true. I didn’t write the law. I didn’t sign it into effect.
I am simply pointing out that the Emperor has no clothes, and you lot are outraged because you take this as evidence I want the Emperor to suffer frostbite.
The law was poorly drafted. When Republicans pointed this out, they were told that we have to pass the law to see what’s in it. Now it’s passed, we see what’s in it, and – surprise – it’s poorly drafted!
It’s not the role of the courts to fix these kinds of miscues.
You’re either paying for that, or your paying for his ‘free’ emergency room treatment. Either way you will be paying. Unless you are actually advocating letting all of those who can’t afford health care just die that is. As long as the law says that no one can be turned away from emergency care due to inability to pay, you will be paying for someone’s care. Would you rather that they pay for whatever part they can afford and actually have insurance, or just pay nothing at all and you get the entire bill in the form of inflated medical costs?
You not paying for the health care of others is not an option in our current society. What is the point of bitching about it so much? Society is not going to go along with the idea of just letting the poor people die, so for now you’re just going to have to suck it up and accept the fact that one way or another you will be paying for others to get health care. The decision you can make is whether you want them to pay for the part they can, not whether they’ll get care or not. The ACA is more cost effective for you because at least the poor people have to pay something. The freeloading was way worse under the old system, so I don’t understand why you want to go back to that if your personal costs are the real consideration here.
I’m pretty sure Bricker’s accepted terms for a non-monetary wager before, though. A statement in a poster’s signature, for example.
No, because of the aforementioned inequitable stakes. There is a need for a monetary bet, because the current “bet” has no downside for GIGO. The rest of the board will not criticize him in the slightest for his confident but erroneous prediction. He’s wrong, but won’t incur any penalty for being wrong.
I’m right, but when the decision comes out, I’ll be derided as celebrating, gloating, and unseemly.
And should it fall the other way, there will be no dearth of people here gleefully and repeatedly pointing out my error.
So this current “bet” has no win upside for me, just loss if I lose.
You poor dear! Need a moment? Hanky?
Yep.
(That poster, by the way, lost. And he has apparently chosen to honor the terms of that bet by not displaying the signature in his posts, even as he claims to have set the required signature and won’t change it for six months. And of course, because he was on the liberal side, there won’t be any condemnation of that tactic).
We did a thread on the merits of this suit, btw: So - what happens if these lawsuits succeed? - Great Debates - Straight Dope Message Board
So you admit that the bet is not entirely an indicator of your confidence? It’s also an indicator of your wish to inflict a penalty on the loser?
Believe me, I get what you’re saying. That’s kind of why I segued from talking about “you” to talking about generic people. As in “Variable amounts to different people at different times.” (Although I admit I might have been as clear as I would have liked.)
But again, I don’t think that MEANS anything. Someone betting against you might be perfectly comfortable losing money to look confidant. They may feel that no one cares and no one is paying attention enough to remember that they lost a bet. The results being that their only cost is a financial one they are happy to pay. It seems like to onle value that betting gains you is a vindictive one.
As you’ve pointed out, I’m a liberal. Assuming that your summation of what happened is accurate, context, yadda yadda; yep, that sounds like a dishonourable thing to do. I condemn it.
I thought the OP made an excellent point which seemed to get lost on most people here, who instead wanted to debate the merits of the suit. The OP reminded me of the scene in Apocalypse Now where Col. Kurtz talked about the will of the people who could hack off all those vaccinated arms of children. That utter will to do whatever it takes and hurt whoever you need to is what you see in the GOP today. In their view, the ACA MUST be stopped because it will work. They have invested so much in trying to stop this law at every turn that they will stop at nothing to kill it, else be exposed as the lying scum that they are when it succeeds. The poor schmucks who stand to lose their health insurance are just collateral damage. Keep up the hate, make people think it’s socialism, lie about death panels, lie about rate increases, make people think it cost jobs, whatever it takes to rile up people enough to vote against their economic self-interest and keep those tax cuts for the rich in place.
The Dems underestimated them. Figured that if they offered to expand Medicaid and even pay for it, not even the most tight-ass Republican governor with a stainless steel rectum would deny health care for the poor and sick. i mean, since so many of them are totally Christian, and all.
Wrong again, guys.
If they’re perfectly comfortable losing money to look confident, that’s fine – the act of PAYING the money will be an excellent reminder of how they were acting confident but were wrong.
Inflicting a penalty on the loser is a necessary part of this – my point is that on this board, there is no penalty for confident but wrong opinions offered in the service of the liberal cause, and plenty of penalty for confident but wrong opinions offered in the conservative cause.
Much of the reason the decisions like Hobby Lobby come as a shock is because the liberal world wraps itself in an echo chamber, where each of you tells your brethern how certain you are that you’re correct. Then reality hits, and there’s no room for understanding the simple fact that the court ruled on the basis of the plain text of the law.
This is shaping up to be a similar shock. People will rail about activist judges and ignore the simple fact that the law, as written, does not allow subsidies on federal exchanges.
What? You don’t get a fair hearing because everybody is so lefty? You should have said something!
You sure you want to go out on a limb like that?
Today, no sig: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=17566883#post17566883
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http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=17560995#post17560995
I appreciate your willingness to so strongly condemn his approach.
So say you. I think there are people who can pay the money and not give it a second though.
Fine. But let’s stop pretending that betting is necessarily an indicator of confidence. It could be a lot of other things too. For them it could be an indicator that they are willing to LOOK confident for a certain cost.
For you, it seems more like you are betting to force an additional cost on someone for confidently declaring a liberal position. Because the rest of us aren’t hard enough on those wrong people for you. You want to hurt them because we wont.
I was pointing out that the $150/month is a handout. You admit it. That’s the point. I don’t mind the government providing some services to the populace (depends on the services etc). I mind hooking millions more people on government handouts, which is what Obamacare is doing and that is why I hope it dies the death it so richly deserves.