How the Affordable Care Act benefits you

[Honu]

What if everyone refuses to pay the penalty? Then where does the revenue come from? I know that in this recession my partners boss has made some changes to the companies insurance program a slight increase in premiums and they dropped the life insurance policy. I also want to know if in this fabulous newly run program are people who are in very high risk jobs like me still get the shaft or will I just be considered no more of a risk than someone who pushes paper?
I guess Im one of those people who will believe it when I see it.

[ArlJim78]

there are no benefits to the bill, it's simply the worst disaster foisted on the country by democrats in half a century. none of what was said about it is true including the costs which are astronomical. it is so bad that it won't be around for long because it will collapse of its own weight.

before it has even fully been implemented the estimated costs have doubled according to the CBO. it's hysterical that someone would post statements from barackobama.com or any .gov website, as if that is anything you can rely on. it's nonsense.

[hi_im_god]

Originally Posted by ArlJim78

there are no benefits to the bill, it's simply the worst disaster foisted on the country by democrats in half a century. none of what was said about it is true including the costs which are astronomical. it is so bad that it won't be around for long because it will collapse of its own weight.

before it has even fully been implemented the estimated costs have doubled according to the CBO. it's hysterical that someone would post statements from barackobama.com or any .gov website, as if that is anything you can rely on. it's nonsense.

wow! a rare arlington jim sighting.

it must be an election year.

[Riot]

The Executive Branch is trying to get the SCOTUS to review this right before the election.

Why is that?

Hummmmm.

[joeydb]

Originally Posted by Riot

The Executive Branch is trying to get the SCOTUS to review this right before the election.

Why is that?

Hummmmm.

Because they think it will be upheld.

They have two plays:

If upheld, he gets to brag about it (even though 70% of the people hate it). Brilliant.

If thrown out, he says "I told you it wouldn't be easy. I need a Democratic congress and a second term, and next time it will be airtight legislation."

Of course, if it gets thrown out, it's empirical evidence of his being a failure.

[geeker2]

Excited about all the events planned to celebrate the 2 year passage.

Obama's speech praising it should be inspiring.

Remember it's " a big fucl<ing deal"

[Danzig]

Originally Posted by joeydb

Because they think it will be upheld.

They have two plays:

If upheld, he gets to brag about it (even though 70% of the people hate it). Brilliant.

If thrown out, he says "I told you it wouldn't be easy. I need a Democratic congress and a second term, and next time it will be airtight legislation."

Of course, if it gets thrown out, it's empirical evidence of his being a failure.

i think they decided not to fight it because its not popular. they originally were going to try to drag it out, but changed their mind. with all the states and their populace up in arms, its not exactly something the WH wants to be on the wrong side of. then theres probably their desire to have that as a topic rather than the economy.

[Riot]

The worse thing about the ACA is all the false information out there, and the false information still being spread about it. The administration did a terrible job of messaging, and they know it.

The Dems are running for re-election on the ACA, which is why they wanted it to get to the Supremes before the election. The SCOTUS decision to uphold removes the ACA as an election issue for the GOP. Although Romney is unable to run on it, anyway, due to his passing the virtually identical law in his state as Gov. That's how confident the Dems are of what the court will decide.

Millions have already benefited from the ACA. Removing the law throws millions of currently insured off insurance, removes current benefits from virtually everyone, causes massive increase in healthcare costs over the next years. The GOP knows this. That's why current in-office GOP isn't messing with the ACA. They Dems are now publicizing how people have benefited. Late, but finally on the scene.

[Danzig]

Originally Posted by Honu

What if everyone refuses to pay the penalty? Then where does the revenue come from? I know that in this recession my partners boss has made some changes to the companies insurance program a slight increase in premiums and they dropped the life insurance policy. I also want to know if in this fabulous newly run program are people who are in very high risk jobs like me still get the shaft or will I just be considered no more of a risk than someone who pushes paper?
I guess Im one of those people who will believe it when I see it.

smaller groups are expected to cut coverages. matter of fact, bcbs already doesn't offer their less than 20 emp. group plan any longer.
one of the issues with obamacare is they ran the numbers based on one million losing employee coverage, when in fact six million or more could lose it. but using the one million number kept the cost under a trillion when they passed it. of course we now see theyve increased the costs, and concede it could be still higher.
does anyone rememeber legislation before ppuca being passed with no real idea of cost? no bottom line? anyone remember any bill being explained with the words you have to pass it to see whats in it?

[Riot]

Originally Posted by Danzig

anyone remember any bill being explained with the words you have to pass it to see whats in it?

Yes. That was when three different versions were being worked on separately, in Committee, the House, and the Senate, and a final version was not yet brought up for passage.

[Riot]

Interesting comment. The oral arguments before the Supremes start a week from Monday, the 26th.

This aggregation review of previous decisions essentially says the Supremes will likely hold with the two other conservative lower court judges opinions in support of the mandate. Points out a libertarian (conservative) court view of individual responsibility supports the individual mandate, and to overturn it would go against previous court rulings on the commerce clause.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/0...n_1354804.html

Neal Katyal, the former acting U.S. solicitor general, said iIn an interview with HuffPost that the government responds to this argument by saying that "everyone consumes health care in this country."

"Right now 50 million people don't have insurance, so it means that you and I essentially are paying for them," said Katyal, who defended the law in front of three appeals courts. "Congress said, 'Let's fix that system and make it so that everyone has a certain amount of insurance.'"

Next week's health care cases come from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, which did not buy the government's argument. But high-profile conservative judges on two other appeals courts. Sixth Circuit Judge Jeffrey Sutton, a former Scalia law clerk, was the first among all federal judges to cross party lines to uphold the mandate. D.C. Circuit Judge Laurence Silberman, a Reagan-appointed greybeard of the conservative legal movement, did the same.

The challengers' "view that an individual cannot be subject to Commerce Clause regulation absent voluntary, affirmative acts that enter him or her into, or affect, the interstate market expresses a concern for individual liberty that seems more redolent of" the cramped pre-1937 view of economic regulation, wrote Silberman. That reading "has no foundation in the Commerce Clause," he concluded.

[bigrun]

Top court set to take up health care mandate.

We report, you decide..

One critic dismissed the idea this way: "If things were that easy, I could mandate everybody to buy a house and that would solve the problem of homelessness." That was Obama as a presidential candidate, who was against health insurance mandates before he was for them.

To hear Republicans rail against this attack on personal freedom, you'd never know the idea came from them.

Its model was a Massachusetts law signed in 2006 by Mitt Romney, now the front-runner of the Republican presidential race, when he was governor. Another GOP hopeful, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, supported a mandate on individuals as an alternative to President Bill Clinton's health care proposal, which put the burden on employers.

All four GOP presidential candidates now promise to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which they call "Obamacare." Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum calls it "the death knell for freedom."

Also, because everyone needs health care sometime, if everyone purchases insurance, the price per person can be lower, with the cost of care spread out over many people.

In an Associated Press-GfK poll, 85 percent said the U.S. government should not have the power to require people to buy health insurance. When the question is worded without the specific reference to federal power, acceptance of the mandate grows a bit, but 6 in 10 are still against it.

Even among those who generally support the health care overhaul, one-third said they are against the insurance mandate.

Estimates vary widely of how many uninsured people will get insurance once it's required in January 2014.

About 4 million people would pay a penalty to the Internal Revenue Service for being uninsured in 2016, the Congressional Budget Office estimates.

http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/2...nd-ar-1774284/

[Riot]

One problem is that many people are woefully unawares of what is really in the bill. It's not single payer, it's not government running your healthcare. Too many rumors left over from the multiple plans that were being thrown about at the start of this. Sarah Palin's lie about "death panels" comes to mind.

The ACA has things most people support: not throwing people off insurance when you get sick, encouraging more doctors to enter the profession, encouraging preventive health care, helping your insurance premiums go down.

It's not big healthcare reform. It's little healthcare reform. It's really not even healthcare reform, as much as it is insurance company consumer protection reforms.

Why is someone against this? If you have insurance, keep it and go about your business. If you don't have insurance, you can now get it.

Note that the Republicans have just passed, or are trying to pass, multiple bills across many states mandating an invasive healthcare procedure, and mandating the recipient pay for it.

How can the very people that support mandated healthcare - the government literally forcing a medical procedure on it's citizens against their will- and a financial mandate literally forcing citizens to pay for it against their will, also be against this?

Why are citizens literally not taking arms up in the street, against their government forcing, against the patient and doctor's will, an invasive medical procedure the patient has to pay for! It's worse than Sarah Palin making raped women in Alaska pay for their rape kits. It's the government raping women with an ultrasound probe **, and then demanding the woman pay for it!

That's crazy. All the Dems want to do is leave healthcare up to the privacy of the doctor-patient relationship, but enable people to access it!

Hey, Senator Santorum - why don't you call the mandated ultrasounds, "the death knell for freedom"? If the government forced you to have a yearly colonoscopy, and made you pay for it, you'd freak out.

Obama and congressional Democrats pushed the mandate through in 2010, without Republican support, in hope of creating a fair system that ensures everyone — rich or poor, young or old — can get the health care they need. Other economically advanced countries have done it.

Doing nothing is more expensive than most people realize.

Congress found that when the uninsured go to clinics and emergency rooms, the care they can't pay for costs nearly $75 billion a year. Much of that cost is passed along and ends up adding $1,000 a year to the average family's insurance premium.

The overhaul is neither the liberal dream of a single government program supported by taxes and covering everyone nor the conservative vision of stripping away federal rules and putting free enterprise in charge.

The Obama plan relies on private companies plus lots of regulation to make sure they provide basic benefits, keep premiums reasonable, and cover the sick as well as the healthy. That's where the mandate comes in. If insurers must cover everyone, even those with existing medical conditions, healthy people have little incentive to sign up before they get sick.

Insurance companies argue that if only the sick sign up, insurers will go broke. So the law says everybody must have insurance for themselves and their children, or pay a penalty.

Also, because everyone needs health care sometime, if everyone purchases insurance, the price per person can be lower, with the cost of care spread out over many people.

** insert Dell's head exploding here, no, Dell, I am not saying this is the very same thing as sexual assault by a stranger (or friend), I'm using an appropriately defined word: if someone were to stick an object up your azz without your permission, you'd define yourself as raped, too.

[Riot]