...and a difficult habit to break.

But other times - people are just fucking stupid.

The freepers see the world a different way - that's all. Right?

but I know several libertarians, Republicans, and teabaggers who are pretty damn smart and, while it would be nice if they came with an unrec button so I could shut them out when discussing politics, they don't. Thus, I not only need to know my position backwards and forwards but theirs as well before I get into the conversation.

That's it, in a nutshell.



Sid

how they're going to be able to pay for this mandatory insurance or extra taxes they cannot afford to pay?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=870040

I'm going to vomit.

Go read the freaking bill. Read about the subsidy to help pay for the insurance that you'll get if you earn up to 400% of poverty level (that's $43,320 for an individual, and $88,200 for a family of four). If you're too poor to need to file a tax return, then you won't have to pay the penalty if you don't get the insurance.

God, I wish everyone would stop playing dumb on this question. Or maybe they really are dumb. I don't know. Either way, it's no longer an excuse.

Go ahead and vomit away, dude or dudette. If a few questions bother you then tough.

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The government would be paying 60% of your premium. That would leave the individual with premium payments of about $172 per month.

People who earn $28K per year and who do get insurance through their employer are paying these rates (with the employer picking up a portion of the tab and leaving the employee with the same $172 per month or $86 per pay period) ... but since it is automatically deducted from the paycheck, people don't really see it. It is now your obligation under the law to insure yourself, because if you don't, that same employee who is paying his/her $172 month for insurance will be paying a higher premium to pay for YOUR accident/cancer/back surgery/etc. And at age 41, you're going to have health problems.

People don't seem to mind paying $60 for a cable bill, or $89 for a cell phone with data plan and texting, or $50 for a ticket to a rock concert or basketball game, but they absolutely rebel when asked to buy something "abstract" like insurance. Things like insurance should come first, along with rent, food, and basic utilities.

Of course, if you don't want to buy it, you won't have to. Your penalty may be zero or very small.

BTW Cable TV customers are disappearing nationwide - people are going to Hulu and free alternatives instead. Yet with student loans, rising food costs, auto insurance, gasoline prices and rents, $28K can EASILY be insufficient to meet the basics. Much less rock concerts and all that other stuff you THINK the poor are doing, which not a lot of them are. Lots of poor people don't have any of those luxuries.

Adding $172 onto that and you're looking at not paying rent, not buying food or not having a phone to keep in contact with society. Even the worst places in Africa have cell phones.

Your argument is bordering on condescending.

We were young and very poor once, lived with very little, but always managed to get insurance. My kids are millennials who have struggled on less than ideal incomes while paying student loans. We all know how to be frugal in our family. Even though my husband now makes a good income (and I earn a piddling one from freelance work), we still have a minimal $27/mo. cable bill with no premium channels; have a 15-year-old television, turn down the heat in winter to conserve, and just bought a $18 part to fix our coffee maker rather than buying a new one. Just force of habit because we struggled for many years. Sure, we eat dinner out more than we did when we were younger or had kids, but not really a lot compared to many.

My son had to live on $23,000 a year while attending graduate school. Of that, he had to pay more than $1,000 for month in a subsidized apartment offered by the university--500 square feet shared with another person (who turned out to be crazy). Needless to say, he cooked his own meals mostly and once in a while got $3 falafel sandwiches. He has steadfastly refused to own a car, and does not have a television. He got the (subsidized) health insurance, which was admittedly a good deal. He did not, however, opt to purchase the dental insurance for $400. Several months later, he bit into a pumpkin seed in a bowl of soup and ended up with a bill for $1,800 for a crown (the insurance would have paid $1500 of it). It was a lesson worth learning: he got the dental insurance the next year. That could have been a medical problem: like getting hit by a taxi, or coming down with a major illness. Health insurance is not a luxury; with the cost of medical procedures, it's really a necessity.

I am not saying it is in any way easy to afford this insurance, even with the subsidies. But going forward, people need to treat it with the same seriousness as auto insurance, utilities, and rent. The future is different.

Where I'm at, that would mean you'd starve. We're in a food desert. And on your son's income rent would be brutal. It's 1400 a month for a rat trap here.

So then you add the cost of moving, too. Of course you could just drop all your belongings and thumb a ride out, I suppose.

By the way lots of bankruptcies happen to people who are insured.

Adding health insurance to one's expenses is going to cause a lot more bankruptcies, homelessness and people jamming soup kitchens. Remember I told you so when it happens.

Or people will simply evade.


Raising people's cost of living right now will simply not work. The poor cannot adapt any longer - they're in over their heads. This is the killing blow. Count on that.

under an employer that won't offer health insurance.

I'll wait, but I won't be holding my breath.

That would make its usefulness as a funding mechanism... suspect... to say the least.

He should have no problem getting re-elected

I'm surprised people don't post the list in those threads.

He signed the following "free-trade" agreement:
2011 - Panama - United States Trade Promotion Agreement
2011 - Colombia - United States Trade Promotion Agreement
2011 - Republic of Korea (South Korea) - United States Free Trade Agreement

While he hasn't quite re-negotiated or modified NAFTA, his Administration is working on another "free-trade" agreement that has the support Of Rmoney.

since April?

Were you on DU2 for teh list meltdown? Sounds like you're familiar, Capt. Obvious.

Most people won't care if a star athlete was taking performance enhancing drugs when they won a game, only that they won.

Obviously we don't all want the same thing. A political win doesn't necessarily translate to a policy win. Some people value one over the other.

I hope it lasts for days and humiliating days for the wingnuts.

The policy itself is another matter.

so it's really hard to clap for this as policy since there are so many uncertainties about it.

I personally don't like the private health insurance provisions, since my experience with private American health care insurance is that it sucks.

doesn't mean it will stop acting like a vampire.

all the Dems in congress and about half of the DUers. Unhappy about the decision: Rmoney, Cantor, Boehner, Bachmann,
and about half of the DUers? Weird huh? A loss would have given Rmoney a big boost. The ACA is not perfect but it is a step.
A loss would have put back health care for many years.

Mussolini made the trains run on time. I like trains that run on time. Oh shit! That must mean I am a Mussolini supporter!

It certainly added to my knowledge about the issues being discussed here. Unfortunately, even though you put a lot of time into your response, it did not address the question posed. Perhaps the person who actually made the statement to which I responded has a better grasp on the point being made. We can only hope.

Aren't you the sweetest thing!

For what it's worth the poster you're talking to is like in the top 5-10% or something like that.

figure the only way we can make it through our retirement years is by having housemates like we did during our 20s and early 30s. If we can hang on to our apartment. (Crossing my fingers that we can hang on for 7 more years and then I become a "protected tenant".) My daughter goes to community college and works 2 part-time jobs. The only things I buy new are socks and underwear. My entire income goes towards paying our health insurance and our self-employment taxes. The only people I know who are in the 5%-10% are the people who I work for. And I don't hang out with them. My friends and colleagues are bar tenders, dog walkers, school teachers, nurses, school bus drivers, social workers, musicians, etc.

...given that you told me that you pay something like $1600 in insurance fees.

Last edited Fri Jun 29, 2012, 01:12 AM - Edit history (1)

Fifteen years ago my own insurance premium was $238 a month. Now it is $802 a month for less coverage. I can't switch because nobody else will take me because I was diagnosed with breast cancer 13 years ago. I won't qualify for an exchange because (guess what!) I already have insurance! And my insurance company won't drop me because (guess what!) I have had an excellent prognosis and a clean bill of health confirmed every 3 months for the last 12 years. So, because my hourly rates that I charge my clients have been stagnant over the past 13 years, I have gone from working 35-40 hours a week to working 50-60 hours a week. Yeehaw! I am exhausted.

politics and are ecstatic for their team's win. Others don't so much care about that and have the same policy concerns they had before the SCOTUS decision.

I'd say the "clueless" people are the ones who thought the SCOTUS decision would also change peoples' minds about the policy itself.

Look at all the anti-Semites on the "left."

Because, as you know, the left's position in regards to health care is a single-payer system and if the left is truly meeting the right on this issue, then logically, the right must also be for single-payer. Right?

I for one, am really glad to learn of this. I can so totally understand why nobody in the entire world has reported or blogged about this. It has been said many times over that DU is a premier news source and DUers are the smartest people on earth. So true. So true.

Digesting, of course, one finds nuance, but it's not particularly interesting since progress happens on the surface, not in deeply rooted details.

It's the same reason, for instance, the "left" jumped on the Ron Paul bandwagon even though he, in truth, is a fascist.

without the intellectuals entrenched in the details there is no basis of historical information for activists and politicos to latch onto.

And their is no "left" latching on Ron Paul. Partisans will pretend otherwise because partisanship relies on ignoring nuance.

In such an environment surface views are better when they're tied to progressive ideals rather than ideological ideals.

ie, rather than bitch and moan about how not everyone gets free food for the rest of their life without ever having to work I practically, pragmatically, progressively champion food stamps.

It would be so trivial to just rail on and on every day about how the cost of food is going up, etc, etc. About how I eat freaking canned beans and rice because it's the cheapest food available. But I don't.

But that's what people do about health care, either every day or almost every day they rail about it. You know how many people in my family have any kind of coverage at all? 1. My mom. She got Medicare after she turned 65.

People latch on to an imperfect piece of legislation, make no overtures about fixing it (indeed, the argument generally goes that it would've been better if it failed and then something else could come in its place), and rail on about it as if it's the worst thing ever.

Partisanship, btw, is what we need more of, not this bullshit bipartisan, everyone can contribute shit. Obama's failed public option was precisely because he was a post-partisan stooge, for all intents. I'm just glad that as a Constitutional Law Professor he was wise enough to know the needed, progressive, mandate was constitutional, despite all the cries to the contrary by the right wing.

Sid

I miss unrec, too; I'd use it on this thread.

I like it that they at least made public when someone recs a post and when someone votes in a poll.

DU is awesome.

Thanks for not making me type too much.

Now we have something we can work on fixing as opposed to nothing at all.

Say it in words.

Ah phooey!

It really IS all about you, isn't it?

It's like an obese sports fan, cheering for his team, as if their victory is somehow his victory, too. But it isn't.

A win for Obama is not necessarily a win for you. The SCOTUS decision doesn't magically transform the health insurance bailout act into good policy.

Whether the law should be realed or not is one issue. But I agree with the majority that the law is not unconstitutional.

but a very vocal group of crybabies whose bloviations made this place unstomachable at times won that battle. I didn't use it often, but it was nice every now and again.

Unfortunately some of us already have a pre-existing condition. I would love to have a national single-payer plan, but the conservative content of Congress is not going to accept it. Their alternative is get government completely out of healthcare. Their for-profit private health plans would be a real death panel for some of us. We couldn't get insurance at all or what we could get would be unaffordable. Do I want a voucher to pay a huge fee for service, or do I want a tax (premium for a much more affordable non-exclusive plan)? Well, I'm happier with ACA until our country becomes civilized enough to offer not-for-profit healthcare for our citizens.

with what's best for the country.

Waaaaaaaaaah.

Who the hell do these people think they are expressing an opinion you don't agree with on YOUR website?


The fucking nerve of 'em.


BTW..

DU unrec

this crazy shit down. We're only months from a national election, and the site devoted to "electing Democrats" has been taken over by Christ only knows who.

These tactics are aimed at suppression. They run from site to site spreading their propaganda, and I think it's tantamount to rooting for Romney.

Bring back Unrec!

It's better than nothing. It will help scads of people.