SCOTUS Upholds Affordable Care Act!

 Not in my closet!

Well, I generally believe in civility, but I do sometimes get a little too expressive when I'm mad.  Not yet on this site, though.

No one wants to see me when I get mad because I just get even.

I don't think I was talking about people making 250,000 a year.  I was talking about the 1% who certainly need to pay more in taxes. 

We could start by making all people who run for federal office or are appointed to federal office disclose the past 5 years tax returns.  I am not talking about lower level federal employees, only those appointed by the President.  We need strict insider trading rules applied to all law makers and SCOTUS.  It is a damn shame that Martha Stewart had to spend time in the slammer for the same thing that Congress can do with impunity.  By implementing these two rules a great deal of special interest tax rulings could be eliminated. 

There needs to be some sort of regulation on money sent to offshore accounts.  A certain man who is running for President pays a very low tax rate because most of his wealth is hidden in offshore accounts.  He refuses to release more than one years tax return even though his father, who also ran for President, released 10 years tax returns after stating that one cannot tell anything by only one years filing.  Finally there needs to be a regulation that a public record be kept of all people or corporations who donate more than $2500 to a PAC or directly to a candidate.

When we have an open government, health care bills will no longer run 2000+ pages. I support ACA but I think it is far from perfect because of special interest deals. We should have just opened Medicare to all Americans. Since most Americans are healthy, Medicare would most likely be completely solvent after the first few years. Insurance companies would still have a role in covering what Medicare doesn't. Special Interests stopped that from happening; the pie wasn't big enough for them. 

Yes, of course, the 1 percent should pay more (Buffet rule rules), but I don't think it should stop there.

My family makes between 200,000 and 250,000, and I don't consider myself rich.  WE are trying to save to pay for our daughter's education - who wants to go on to medical school, and our retirement.  We're also helping our oldest daughter who's been unable to find a job. And  of course, we could use extra money, like everyone. but we are comfortable -and clearly upper middle class.

But on the other hand, we can afford to pay more, and I've said before, are willing to pay more to ensure health care for as many people as possible,  to improve our infrastructure, to safeguard our environment, etc. even if it is something of a sacrifice.  My attitude is that it is patriotic to pay for necessary programs - that soldiers shouldn't be the only ones to sacrifice to make their country a better place to live.  

This is a personal view. 

We could just shift some money from the biggest money-suck on earth, also known as the US military-industrial complex (Eisenhower called it that, and he was a general and a conservative).

Well, we all studied something different in college.  I studied marketing and journalism.  So I find all the spin out there particularly amusing. 

Alexandria mentioned somewhere above that "26,000 Americans die every year from lack of health care, according to recent newspaper articles."  Actually, the reports say, "26,000 Americans die annually due to lack of insurance," but my favorite headlines are the ones that say, "Three Americans killed every hour by lack of insurance."  What a crisis!  You know, earlier reports said the number was 45,000.

Here are some more balanced articles to read.

This one is from last year:

http://www.politifact.com/virginia/article/2011/jul/12/do-people-without-health-insurance-die-sooner/

QUOTE:  "Kronick, a senior health care policy adviser in President Bill Clinton's administration, found that after adjusting for demographic and health factors ... the uninsured were at no greater risk of dying earlier than people who had employer-sponsored group insurance. .... He suggested that uninsured people are being caught in the social safety net of public hospitals and community clinics before they they die prematurely. PolitiFact, in an August, 2009 story, spoke to a range of experts from the left-leaning Brookings Institute to the conservative Heritage Foundation, who said they found Kronick's results credible."  (End quote.)

If you want to see how far the junk science goes, here's another article on the earlier number of 45,000:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/weblogs/back-story/2009/sep/17/junk-science-expert-sounds-alarm-insurance-study/

The point is:  We don't know the number.  What we DO know is that there are uninsured people who go to the ER, the clinics, and receive preventive care through charity and gov't programs.  And there are uninsured people who don't.  There are insured people who rarely visit a doctor (which is not at all unusual).  And there are insured people who do.

Notself, I am sorry.



I think Obamacare is deeply flawed in many ways. Most notably in not getting rid of the job-insurance tie. I think it also throws way too many bones to the insurance industry.



So, I can completely understand if people are not thrilled with it as a solution.



What I cannot understand, at all, is the argument that the status quo ante is honky-dory.

Here are the tax rates in Australia. We do not have employer related health insurance - it's up to us to take it out if we want it. We do have workers compensation, so if we are injured on the way to work or at work we are covered - this is mandatory - we don't pay for it.

Generally, Medicare levy at the rate of 1.5% of taxable income is also payable. An additional 1% Medicare levy surcharge is sometimes payable in certain circumstances - ie if the higher income earner neglects to take out private insurance.

Sorry about the formatting but I'm sure you can work it out. 

In case anyone wondered where a great deal of our health insurance premiums go:

http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20120515/NEWS03/120519922/blue-cross-parents-ceo-pay-climbs-to-12-9-million

Yes - voting in mandatory and you do get fined if you don't vote. We do not have the presidential style elections here, the leader of each side is chosen by the elected members. The person who runs for each electorate is chosen by the local members of the party unless they are independant.

I published our tax rates so you could see how high our income taxes are. They are about to triple the tax free threshold to 18,000.

Having "free' healthcare is good for low income earners but the quality of the care is not necessarily good. Obviously it's smart (for us of those who can afford it) to take out private health insurance. I pay $164 per fortnight to cover both of us - hospital and extras. Most of our insurers are not for profit or they make a very small profit. We always have to pay something out of pocket though as the refund does not necessarily match the fee. I get my reading glasses free as my optometrist chooses not to charge extra, but if I go to the physio, I pay $40 - the health fund pays $25. I pay nothing for a hospital stay, but the surgeon charges over the recommended fee, so I pay a gap.

It is all very complicated here, so I hope you end up with something a bit simpler.

When my DH had bowel cancer, the health fund paid out over $90,000, so I never begrudge paying the premiums as we will never pay them more then they have paid out for both of us.

Athena, I agree with you.  Everyone should be contributing to the cost of healthcare because eventually, everyone will need healthcare.  And even if they don't, as citizens within society, I believe we all should contribute to something as essential as healthcare.

I don't have a problem with people being taxed for this purpose.  I do however have a problem with a tax that is not being fairly applied to everyone who should be taxed (read the list of exemptions!).  And I do have a problem with a tax that is unenforceable.  Obamacare: Tax Or Penalty? Call It What You Want, But IRS Won't Be Able To Collect It  "Finally, there is the issue of whether the IRS can collect the tax if someone refuses to either buy insurance or pay the fine. The ACA says the IRS should enforce the law by imposing a tax penalty-but then effectively blocks the agency from using most of the tools it normally uses to go after tax scofflaws."  From that, the author reaches the same conclusion that I've reached and have been saying in my previous posts (and I never even saw this article until just now): "Of course, this creates a big problem. The law requires insurance companies to sell to all comers regardless of pre-existing medical conditions. But if the tax fails to encourage healthy people to buy until they need coverage, the rest of us will end up paying higher insurance premiums as a result."

By the way, while I don't have a problem with a healthcare tax, I do have a problem when people are being legally mandated to buy a commercial product at a price that includes a profit margin.  It was nice to see that the Supreme Court had the same concerns. 

If the ACA actually had a hope in #@!! of delivering even just half of what it promises, I'd be all for it. I agree with the objectives.  I don't support the ACA because I don't think that the ACA will deliver on those objectives. The more I dig into it, the more I scratch the surface and look below the rhetoric, the more problems I see with the way that the ACA is structured.  It seems that so many people have bought the story-line and are repeating back the official sound-bites; I suppose I shouldn't be surprised but I am.  The simple fact is that it doesn't take a lot of critical thinking or very much digging to dig up some real problems with the ACA that raise real issues. That's why I don't support it.  Because it's not a good first step. 

By the way, if you believe that the price of insuring employees is one of the reasons why wages in the U.S. are so stagnant, just wait until companies have to pay more to cover each employee, thanks to the changes brought about by the ACA.  Just read the McKinsey article that I linked to in one of my previous posts.  This is exactly the sort of reason why I don't support the ACA.  

Beesie,

Have you read the ACA, the actual bill?  I have read quite a bit of it although not the whole thing. I find sections of it confusing to say the least.  I have posted a list of actions that the bill has already implemented or is going to implement.  It is on a separate thread and I delete any political comments because it is for information only.  Here is the link.  The site is from Kaiser Insurance one of the largest in the country, hardly in the pocket of the Administration.

http://healthreform.kff.org/timeline.aspx

I would be interested to know which provisions cause you concern.