That’s the reason for the mandate, to prevent people from only getting insurance after they have a problem. But people get dropped with problems today. Auto companies don’t get to drop you because someone ran into your car before paying - health insurance companies did. (Or at least before paying for the full course of treatment.)
Auto insurance is cheaper because there is a cap on payments, and, excluding personal injury cases, collision coverage has a lower cap on the value of the car. Also people inevitably get sick (unless a piano falls on them) but not everyone has a big car claim. So auto insurance is cheaper. And mandated.
But how does this differ from “You have our permission to die?” If the individual cannot afford the necessary medication or surgery, what, then? Bankruptcy? In that case, the public is paying for it. So…why not simply have the public pay for it?
You’re not offering a solution that actually keeps people alive.
Well, I already said we might as well just have a European Single Payer system rather than Obamacare. Said it twice. You don’t like that?
But my preferred solution, if we were starting from scratch, would be private insurance with government assistance, either through vouchers or something like Medicaid, for those who can’t afford it. But keep in mind that most people can afford insurance. And decouple it from your employer!!
Want to mandate that all employers who now pay insurance would be forced to increase pay by that amount - or a bit more, to make up for the lack of bargaining power of the single insuree?
And just about everyone else on the left would also. Wonder why we didn’t get it?
You never heard anything called socialized medicine? :eek: I bet you could find a cite about Obamacare being called socialist in about five seconds.
Here’s one. Took me less time than that.
No, I’m not a fan of mandates. Right now, if you have insurance, that’s considered part of your compensation. Companies figure this out all the time. Pay would have to raise if people were expected to buy their own insurance. That’s how the market works.
So what? That post was directed at me and my argument. I don’t care what someone else not on this MB or participating in this thread said. Go back to post 133 and if you don’t think I called “strawman” correctly, then make your argument.
Here’s a radical solution: have a system where the same healthcare is available to all, where decisions on the necessity of a test or procedure are not based on whether you have a fancy insurance package or not, where everyone can get problems checked before they become major issues, where pre-existing conditions bear no relation to your medical expenses, where you can arrive for your appointment giving only your name and leave after your appointment without even a hint of paperwork.
I wonder what the financial cost is of the unnecessary burdens, including the results of conditions going untreated, caused by the current US healthcare system. I wouldn’t be surprised to find that sick days, emergency treatment of preventable issues, financial anxiety and actual deaths have a huge dollar cost to the economy and taxpayers. I would be equally unsurprised to learn that such inequality is fuel for a “healthy” capitalist economy.
Wal-mart has a 3 to 5% profit margin. Paying for Obamacare would probably put it in the red.
April 30, 2013 3.31%
Jan. 31, 2013 4.38%
Oct. 31, 2012 3.19%
July 31, 2012 3.51%
April 30, 2012 3.31%
Jan. 31, 2012 4.19%
Oct. 31, 2011 3.03%
July 31, 2011 3.48%
April 30, 2011 3.26%
Jan. 31, 2011 5.20%
Oct. 31, 2010 3.37%
July 31, 2010 3.47%
April 30, 2010 3.31%
Jan. 31, 2010 4.19%
Oct. 31, 2009 3.16%
July 31, 2009 3.44%
April 30, 2009 3.21%
Jan. 31, 2009 3.49%
Oct. 31, 2008 3.19%
July 31, 2008 3.37%
On what cost analaysis do you base that conclusion? Or is it just common sense?
WalMart profit15.7 billion. Employees 2.2 million. Appx. 7100 per employee. Surely, given their size, they can find a plan for far less than that.
That seems quite high for a massive retailer like WalMart.
From here.
High volume retailers and grocery stores always have relatively low profit margins - that is the business model. I don’t have time to research it, but I’d suspect that payroll at WalMart is trivial compared to the cost of product, so it is not like increasing payroll by 5% for insurance is going to increase their costs by 5% - or anything like it. Also, given how WalMart is losing out by having unmotivated staff as compared to Costco, better treatment might actually increase profit margins.
Whenever I see conservatives say stuff like a 3% profit margin for a retailer is low, I see a conservative who knows nothing about business. WalMart and Apple have very different business models.
Have to? With our unemployment rate? Not at all obvious. Or it might get raised, but not enough to cover insurance costs.
You said
Someone did. Maybe not in this thread, but you didn’t say that.
Yet, the stock market is at an all time high. Wonder how that comes to be.
The reality is that this has little to do with Obamacare, and more to do with the attitude of businesses towards their workers.
Workers are not assets, they are liabilities. When you have an asset, you maximize its value. Liabilities, you minimize their value. Companies have gotten very good at minimizing the value of their workforce. They install expert systems to do all the thinking, so that the worker only needs to be vertical, warm blooded, and present. Workers need no skills, no work ethic, no decision making ability, they stand and hit the buttons they’re told to hit, move the boxes they’re told to move, etc. Thus, you can pay them squat, give them no benefits and rest assured that they’re not going to find a better job somewhere else, because all the businesses are doing the same thing, and the job market sucks.
Most of those extra earnings from cutting the value of your workforce line the pockets of the big investors. It contributes to the increasing wealth inequality and stagnant real wages during decades of increasing productivity.
It’s you who keeps going around in circles without getting it.
Unless you’ve been deliberately confusing us, you prefer UHC through individual mandates and taxes to employer-financing, but prefer no mandates at all to either of those. Let us suppose 30% of voters agree with you.
Many of us also prefer non-employer UHC to UHC with employer mandates, but prefer either of those to no UHC at all. Let’s suppose 45% of voters are in that category.
Finally, 25% of voters prefer employer mandates to no UHC, but have been deceived by cries of “socialism” to reject any non-employer UHC.
Let’s suppose the choice is made democratically. What do we choose, given these three choices? Supporters of single-payer and related UHC systems only have 45% so needed to ally with one of the other groups. By default we ended up with the option among the three that you, John Mace, like least of all. Had you allied with us instead, we could have had the form of UHC most of us prefer.
You pays your money and you takes your choice. Stop complaining.
Well, you got me! You sure did. Got any other tricks up your sleeves?
No you can’t. Because the GOP have lied to the American people and fomented so much fear and misinformation that it cannot pass right now. Sure, in an ideal world, maybe we’d both get the UHC that we want. But I’m speaking pragmatically. We cannot get it in this world, therefore, we must get employers to pay for it. Because the alternative is much much worse
Ok. My argument is that it is perfectly moral and legal and Constitutional for the federal government to force you to buy something or face penalties. I have no problems with that and think everyone in the US should be forced to buy health insurance of some kind. I also think its fine for the government to define gun ownership strictly to essentially eliminate the right for most Americans 
In gross profit, they still make billions. Maybe that 3-5% should be a 1-3%. Given Walmart’s size, that’s still billions. If you’re trying to get me to feel sorry for them, you’ve failed
Actually it was Obama who poisoned the well by lying about Obamacare. Remember him* saying that the fees under Obamacare absolutely weren’t a tax, and then going before the Supreme Court and admitting that he had been lying thru his teeth? That’s what I mean.
Regards,
Shodan
*Okay, I know you don’t, but it happened nonetheless.
We’ve discussed this. Belief that it wasn’t a tax that later gets retconned into a tax doesn’t make the belief a lie. At most, his belief that it wasn’t a tax was wrong. So what? People are wrong sometimes, even Obama, though he’s wrong less than most of us. Besides, if he had to sell it as a tax, it would have been harder to pass, and in this case, it was more necessary to pass the bill than the characterize it semantically accurately. Could have called it a health blowjob and I still would have supported it.
It wasn’t a retcon - it was the whole basis for his authority to create Obamacare. Otherwise it would have been un-Constitutional. Obama used to teach Constitutional law - he knew all along he was lying.
It was certainly easier to lie than tell the truth, and you are probably correct that Obamacare would not have passed if Obama had not lied about it. But that is the problem - Obama did lie, to get his health care bill passed, and that poisoned the well for anyone except Obama-ites.
Right, but that is what I mean - you don’t care that Obama lied, and support the bill anyway. And yet object when you think the GOP lied.
The issue is how non-Obama-ites see things. You may swallow it and be ready to fall for the next lie - not necessarily the rest of us,
Regards,
Shodan
I don’t understand the need to place labels and use them as substitutes for thought. The financial mandates of Obamacare are what they are; there were never any secrets about them. Whether a given lawyer or dictionary would call them “tax” has no effect on what those mandates are. You can like them or dislike them, but to base your affection on whether they are labeled as “tax” seems to me to be just a way to avoid thought. And to accuse of Obama of “lying” because a given jurist chose to call the mandates a “tax” is to grasp at straws.
One sees this a lot. “Are pension schemes Ponzi schemes?” They share some similarities but not others. Please base your approval on the actual advantages and disadvantages, not useless scrutiny of a dictionary.
That is incorrect, obviously. Obama denied that he was imposing new taxes, and both YogSosoth and I agree that he lied in order to get the bill passed. So that it imposed new taxes was a secret, at least to the extent that Obama could manage it. Obama said “absolutely” that it wasn’t a tax. He was lying in order to deceive the public into supporting his bill, thus keeping secret what he knew all along wasn’t true.
Again, as mentioned, this is totally incorrect. Obama refused to admit they were taxes (falsely). If he had admitted it, the bill may not have passed.
And the whole basis of his argument before the Supreme Court was that it was a tax - exactly the opposite of what he earlier claimed. He had to admit that it was a tax, because otherwise the bill would have been found un-Constitutional. So there are two instances where it matters very much what you call it. Earlier, Obama denied that it was a tax, and was lying. Then he admitted in court that it was a tax, and therefore he was lying when he claimed earlier that he wasn’t going to raise taxes on the middle class, and that he was lying when he denied that it was a tax.
YogSosoth claimed that UHC couldn’t pass because the GOP lied about it. So you should be addressing yourself to him. Because Obama is the one lying, not the GOP, and if anyone hurt the chances of UHC by lying, it’s him - it was his bill.
Regards,
Shodan