The ER is hardly the best or the least expensive option for medical care. Many people end up in ER due to illnesses that would have been better controlled if they had seen a doctor much earlier. But they didn’t, because…they had no insurance.
Very good point, but I was responding to someone who asked what happens if you have an accident or something. That’s an ER situation whether you have insurance or not.
The GOP is way ahead of you on this. Pubbie Shrubbie put death panels into law into law in Texas when he was governor: section 166.046 of the Texas Health and Safety Code (HEALTH AND SAFETY CODE CHAPTER 166. ADVANCE DIRECTIVES).
Ryan’s plan imposes a 30% surcharge on anyone who purchases insurance after going without coverage for more than two months. I suspect young people will not be lining up to get covered under this plan.
Is that what we call *incentivizing? *
Sounds like a penalty to me. Isn’t that one of the problems with the individual mandate, penalizing not having insurance?
Ah, but since it only penalizes the poor who may “choose” to forego insurance from time to time it’s all good, bro.
Yeah, Ryan apparently has no idea how the concept of “insurance” works. Shoehorning the usual GOP tactic of telling citizens “you should resent the lazy people who are living off YOUR hard work” onto the way insurance actually works (lucky people subsidize the unlucky), results in pure nonsense.
Of course the real problem is that health care, like certain other aspects of human society (provision of street lighting or flood-control systems, for example), does not function well as a private-sector, for-profit enterprise. But the GOP will never concede that.
I’ve not clicked to read Ryan’s plan: this crap just makes me despondent now; it no longer provides recreational outrage, but …
Ryan’s plan imposes 30% surcharge? I thought such things were up to the free market in a free market system. It looks to me like our Brave New World combines the worst of two extremes: central socialist planning and hyper-capitalism, deliberate transfer of wealth from common citizens to connected corporate kleptocrats.
I guess ‘surcharge’ has a more plutocratic ring to it than ‘mandate.’
By that logic, it makes sense for tax credits for people who buy private insurance to decrease with age. Yet the Ryan plan pays more in tax credits the older you are, without regard to income.
Whenever I read “healthcare” and why should the young and healthy subsidize us old geezers - I substitute things like oil seizure adventures, border walls, boondoggle military systems for healthcare. I don’t need that shit, why should I pay for it. Let the rich old chickenhawks pay for them.
We all pay for children’s education, roads and bridges, airports, national security, parks and beaches. Why not health care for all. A healthy populace would seem to be advantageous economically and part of national security.
Yeah, I know i’m being pollyannish above. The GOP can’t wait to “repeal” the nigger’s health plan to tout it to their white racist base. They’ve lied and told the base it will just screw the blacks/browns; in reality it fucks the poorest whites as well. Making it racial are you Steve? Damn right. The shitbags spent the first term trying to make Obama a one term president and fuck all with the country’s recovery from GOP sponsored financial skullduggery. The second term was all about blocking everything they could to tarnish Obama’s legacy.
And when they fuck up healthcare beyond all hope in the next 4 years? Their plan is to blame Obama for the entire thing.
Same way that some of them currently blame Obama for just sitting in the White house doing nothing when 9/11 happened. (No, I’m not kidding. Republicans actually think that)
Ryan actually said the other day that Obamacare is collapsing and their new law will “save us” all. He called it an act of mercy. So, yes, it’s Obama’s fault if their system doesn’t work. Since it’s Obama’s fault when anything and everything goes wrong, from their point of view.
Oh, look, birtherism is back. This page is linked from Drudge Report’s front page.
http://www.theamericanmirror.com/malik-obama-shares-photo-brother-baracks-kenya-certificate-birth/
Reading the comments on the page may be good for laughs. Or, depending on your reaction it might be a good page to bookmark — for when you need to induce vomiting but don’t have an emetic handy.
My guess is the messages weren’t written by ordinary Trumpist simpletons. The plethora of adjectives makes me think Breitbart staffers are paid to outdo each other with hyperbole. Here’s one:
Well, shit. I guess that means Obama can’t be President any more 
This snopes page from 2009 has the exact same “birth certificate.” Some guy had put it on sale on eBay. I wonder if this will ever stop coming up to feed the ignorant, racist masses.
GOP Congressman Asks Why Men Should Have To Pay For Prenatal Care
Well, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion has been popping up periodically since 1903. So I’d say no.
If “shimkus” isn’t a Yiddish term for “dumbfuck,” it should be.