Supreme Court gives Obama second big health care win in ruling upholding nationwide subsidies

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WillyAL said:
Then who were the 4 dissenters? (I bet you can’t name four.) 😃
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Maybe that’s because there were only three dissenting votes. There are nine Supreme Court justices.

Later today I will be visiting a friend in the hospital who is very close to death from an extremely deadly and rare form of breast cancer. When she was diagnosed, one of her first comments to us was, “Thank God for Obamacare. With it I’ll still die, but at least my DH won’t be bankrupt after my death.” Both she and her husband are free-lance graphic designers and before the ACA the insurance they could afford would have paid for only a very small portion of their expenses. She’s on her fifty-somethingth day in the hospital from complications caused by her treatments. She probably would not have lived this long without the ACA.

If we’re really so concerned with the impact providing health care to our citizens will have on the deficit, perhaps we should give some consideration to not invading countries that have not harmed us and not funding wars while giving tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans.
 
bibcat said:
The difference is that HMOs answer to shareholders. A single-payer system (or those who ultimately are responsible for it) answer to voters.
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bibcat, unelected bureaucrats do not answer to the voters. If you think they do, then talk to someone who received their care through the VA system.

Ishii
 
WillyAL said:
…
The rest of the industrialized world has single payer health coverage and generally better health care. I honestly don’t understand why some folks start foaming at the mouth at the idea of universal health care.
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The U.S. is not “the rest of the world.” When the dust settles, we will have something closer to what the Veterans Administration provides. It is not hard to see that: government program administered by government employees. :sad_yes:
“In order to reduce the cost of health care, the government would have to operate the system more efficiently than the market does. I can’t think of anything the government operates more efficiently than the market.” – Economist Thomas Sowell
 
WillyAL said:
…My wife’s elderly aunt, on the other hand, lives in Canada. She had open heart surgery last month, got great care, and didn’t pay a dime.
…
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Certainly she did. She pays taxes right? If she didn’t pay for it, who did? The government isn’t a profit making enterprise producing goods and providing it’s own revenue. They taxed somebody to come up with the money to run the facilities, pay for the staff, the doctors, the supplies etc. So, taxpayers paid for her surgery, now, a system with a balanced income stream which can cover the services/benefits it’s providing is a good system. But it’s erroneous to think healthcare being provided is free… it’s paid for via taxes extracted from someone.
 
ishii said:
bibcat, unelected bureaucrats do not answer to the voters. If you think they do, then talk to someone who received their care through the VA system.

Ishii
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It will be interesting since all government run organizations are subject to bureaucratic bloat/creep. Staffs always seem to rise while point of service personnel tend to remain stagnant in number or drop. US college/universities are a good example of this— student teacher ration has dropped as the admin/bureaucracy has increased dramatically. With more funding sucked into their salaries/benefits.

No reason it has to be that way, would really depend on the personnel in charge over the long term and their focus. Resist the ‘budget war’ temptation of trying to show relevance by increasing the ‘empire’ under one’s control.
 
johnnykins said:
Let the poor rot! Let them go without health care! They can go to the ER for stabilization…if they self-select against it…great as it saves our kids money!

So what if every other first world nation can provide universal healthcare coverage - we CAN"T or WON’T!! I have mine - die poor suckers!

Oh, I just love getting to say those things - they are just soooooo “Christian”!

I’ll take a little Mammon this afternoon, please…
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Indeed. Also the Holy Father once said that universal healthcare is a human right. Obamacare may not yet provide that, but it sure is a step up from what we had before. Obamacare is what currently is politically possible in this country, single-payer alas is not (yet).

And yes, while others may find your post offensive, to me it speaks a lot of truth about the thinking of certain Catholics in this country and on this forum. I am disgusted. In fact, this forum sometimes makes me embarrassed to be a Catholic.
 
Al_Moritz said:
Indeed. Also the Holy Father once said that universal healthcare is a human right. Obamacare may not yet provide that, but it sure is a step up from what we had before. Obamacare is what currently is politically possible in this country, single-payer alas is not (yet).

And yes, while others may find your post offensive, to me it speaks a lot of truth about the thinking of certain Catholics in this country and on this forum. I am disgusted. In fact, this forum sometimes makes me embarrassed to be a Catholic.
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Al Moritz, I will give you the same opportunity that I gave the other poster. Do you think that I worship mammon and do not care about the poor or those without healthcare? I want the poor suckers to rot and die?

Ishii
 
Book_Worm said:
Maybe that’s because there were only three dissenting votes. There are nine Supreme Court justices.

Later today I will be visiting a friend in the hospital who is very close to death from an extremely deadly and rare form of breast cancer. When she was diagnosed, one of her first comments to us was, “Thank God for Obamacare. With it I’ll still die, but at least my DH won’t be bankrupt after my death.” Both she and her husband are free-lance graphic designers and before the ACA the insurance they could afford would have paid for only a very small portion of their expenses. She’s on her fifty-somethingth day in the hospital from complications caused by her treatments. She probably would not have lived this long without the ACA.

If we’re really so concerned with the impact providing health care to our citizens will have on the deficit, perhaps we should give some consideration to not invading countries that have not harmed us and not funding wars while giving tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans.
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Medicare spending this year (so far) 951 billion
Social Security spending this year (so far) 873 billion
Defense spending this year (so far) 591 billion
Income security this year (so far) 301 billion*
Interest on the debt this year (so far) 245 billion
  • Income security is Supplemental SSI, Earned Income credits, Unemployment Insurance, Nutrition Assistance, Family Support, Child Nutrition, Foster Care, Making Work Pay.
Our entitlement programs far outstrip defense spending, and note CBO now categorizes the interest on our debt as the 5th largest expenditure in the budget. (6th is federal pensions) Entitlement programs are considered non-discretionary spending right now, defense is discretionary and easier to cut. You can’t just cut entitlements in the budget bills as there are other laws mandating the funding levels-- you have to change those laws.
 
Book_Worm said:
Maybe that’s because there were only three dissenting votes. There are nine Supreme Court justices.

Later today I will be visiting a friend in the hospital who is very close to death from an extremely deadly and rare form of breast cancer. When she was diagnosed, one of her first comments to us was, “Thank God for Obamacare. With it I’ll still die, but at least my DH won’t be bankrupt after my death.” Both she and her husband are free-lance graphic designers and before the ACA the insurance they could afford would have paid for only a very small portion of their expenses. She’s on her fifty-somethingth day in the hospital from complications caused by her treatments. She probably would not have lived this long without the ACA.

If we’re really so concerned with the impact providing health care to our citizens will have on the deficit, perhaps we should give some consideration to not invading countries that have not harmed us and not funding wars while giving tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans.
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👍

And thanks for the story.
 
Listen - Obamacare has always been a mixed bag, and it’s been an easy target. Legislatively, a single-payer program would have been easier (all it would have required is renewing the Medicare Act and striking the line stipulating an age restriction). But most of the outcry against Obamacare has come from people whose employers used Obamacare as an excuse to drop the coverage they were probably going to drop anyway. Seriously. And now that the SCOTUS has saved the legislation TWICE, we have to understand that it’s here to stay, unless the GOP ends up with a supermajority in the Senate (which is highly unlikely - the next group of Senators up for grabs in 2016 are majority GOP, and the Dem Senate seats are in “safe” Dem areas). Remember, even the Dems when they had a Supermajority (which they used to pass Obamacare in the first place) only had it for less than a year.

Instead of trying to repeal Obamacare now, the idea should be to try to make it better.
 
powerofk said:
Listen - Obamacare has always been a mixed bag, and it’s been an easy target. Legislatively, a single-payer program would have been easier (all it would have required is renewing the Medicare Act and striking the line stipulating an age restriction). But most of the outcry against Obamacare has come from people whose employers used Obamacare as an excuse to drop the coverage they were probably going to drop anyway. Seriously. And now that the SCOTUS has saved the legislation TWICE, we have to understand that it’s here to stay, unless the GOP ends up with a supermajority in the Senate (which is highly unlikely - the next group of Senators up for grabs in 2016 are majority GOP, and the Dem Senate seats are in “safe” Dem areas). Remember, even the Dems when they had a Supermajority (which they used to pass Obamacare in the first place) only had it for less than a year.

Instead of trying to repeal Obamacare now, the idea should be to try to make it better.
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Obamacare doesn’t mean a whole lot to the truly wealthy. The poor had Medicaid before, and have it still (with some 17 million added to make it harder to actually get care). What Obamacare really is, is an income redistribution plan within the middle class. It increases the cost to those on the upper part of the middle class while subsidizing some, but not all, of those in the lower middle class. The trick with the subsidy is not to get thrown onto expanded Medicaid so you can still at least have coverage by those odious insurance companies that liberals love to hate.
 
ishii said:
Medicare for a portion of the country is a little different from single payer for all, stinkcat.

Ishii
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If single payer works so well for medicare, then why not extend it to all? Of course, we know why medicare works so “well”. First, it is a massive redistribution from the working class to the leisure class. Second, there is cross subsidization going on from with private health insurance paying more and medicare less. How anyone could who is not a liberal could defend such a scheme is beyond me.
 
Al_Moritz said:
Indeed. Also the Holy Father once said that universal healthcare is a human right. Obamacare may not yet provide that, but it sure is a step up from what we had before. Obamacare is what currently is politically possible in this country, single-payer alas is not (yet).

And yes, while others may find your post offensive, to me it speaks a lot of truth about the thinking of certain Catholics in this country and on this forum. I am disgusted. In fact, this forum sometimes makes me embarrassed to be a Catholic.
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Universal Healthcare in this country is not possible because so many Catholics hate the President more than they want to make universal healthcare possible.
 
Crossbones said:
Universal Healthcare in this country is not possible because so many Catholics hate the President more than they want to make universal healthcare possible.
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I don’t hate the president, I hate what he (and those on the left) are doing to this country. Interesting to note that liberal catholics deal with disagreement by demonizing those with whom they disagree - calling them haters of the poor, wanting the poor to rot and die, worshipers of mammon. When conservatives disagree they generally say, “I disagree with you for these reasons” , but when liberal disagree they say, “you hate the poor, you’re a racist, etc.” Sad to see so many catholics lose their sense of charity.

Ishii
 
stinkcat_14 said:
If single payer works so well for medicare, then why not extend it to all? Of course, we know why medicare works so “well”. First, it is a massive redistribution from the working class to the leisure class. Second, there is cross subsidization going on from with private health insurance paying more and medicare less. How anyone could who is not a liberal could defend such a scheme is beyond me.
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When did I say medicare works so well? Please don’t put words into my mouth, stinkcat. I’m busy enough as it is dealing with the smears and demonizations from other posters without having to deal with that tactic as well.

Ishii
 
ishii said:
I don’t hate the president, I hate what he (and those on the left) are doing to this country. Interesting to note that liberal catholics deal with disagreement by demonizing those with whom they disagree - calling them haters of the poor, wanting the poor to rot and die, worshipers of mammon. When conservatives disagree they generally say, “I disagree with you for these reasons” , but when liberal disagree they say, “you hate the poor, you’re a racist, etc.” Sad to see so many catholics lose their sense of charity.

Ishii
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That is funny coming from you. See the abortion discussions on this forum.
 
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