Health Care Reform Gearing Up - Page 41

Unless there's case law that says otherwise, I don't see how the feds can't do it.

In my home state along with others, car insurance is mandatory to be on the roads.

I can see a valid argument being made that health insurance is needed in this country.

The car insurance rationale is because of the idea that people at fault for car accidents should have insurance to pay for the injuries to life and property they caused. The legitimate governmental interest would be the ability for people to pay for that. Government cannot sustain a citizenry of drivers that cannot pay for their faults.

A similar argument could be made for health care. All people need health care so that when they do get injured, the bill isn't taken care of by the guvment, but the insurance policy. I can't see the conservative justices saying that's not a legitimate interest.



There could be an equal protection argument made, but that would most likely fail also through the legitimate governmental interest framework as well. Any classification (in this case, insured vs non-insured) would be held up to lesser scrutiny unless the plaintiff could make a claim that the discrimination was related to race. Race is pretty much the only real way someone could make a viable equal protection argument and have it win past a legitimate governmental interest argument. The standard is a lot higher when dealing with race-based classifications.

You can't make a similar argument for health care. Car insurance is only mandated on those who choose to own a car. By enforcing an individual mandate Congress is implying that merely living is an economic activity. Whether or not you agree with the bill, that is a problematic view.

Is it wrong to hope that those pictures were shot tonight?

On the other hand, when considering medical expenses, living pretty much IS an economic activity.

It's a long way from now until November. A lot of people who are all riled up right now could lose their fervor if this bill isn't a complete disaster. Some might change their tune once some of the more immediate benefits kick in. And there are plenty of people who will jump on the Tea Party bandwagon who won't come close to setting foot in a voting booth come November.

Congratulations guys!

Free mind control Antichrist branded chips for everyone! And don't forget to turn children between four and twelve and people over sixty-five for re-education and termination respectively.

Vive la Internationale Socialiste!

I just think back to what happened when Canada and Great Britain collapsed due to their nationalized health care systems.

Stupak hails from my hometown. That makes my head hurt.

Or how {insert name of Western country} fell apart when national health care passed.

Late to the party, but: Both my parents, for one.

Even later to the party, a pretty general summation can be found here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/22/yo...nsumer.html?hp

Google is your friend. On line, you can find anything to support any argument.

My own take on this is supported here....

http://photo.newsweek.com/2010/3/healthcare-reform.html

(Fewer doctors being paid less) x (30 million new patients to care for) = longer waits to see doctors for necessary surgeries and treatments.

That's a negative effect right there.

It will be like Canada, where the leaders leave their own system to pay for better care here in the States. People who can afford to pay will continue to get the best care. Those of us whose current work-provided medical plans will have those plans eliminated, priced out of range, or watered down in their coverage.

The President said I could keep my current plan if I liked it. Of course, he didn't say he wouldn't make it so that current plan would no longer be available to me because my workplace doesn't provide it any more or I can't afford it.

Oh, well. The genie's out of the bottle. What's the worst that can happen?

We'll still be America. No one's trying to immigrate elsewhere. Well, not yet, at least.

So you're FOR someone else paying for your healthcare, right? I don't see how you can hold Obama responsible if your workplace decides to be fucksticks about it. Why not get a better job, pull yourself up by the bootstraps? That's what you righties are all about.

Doesn't the bill require companies to provide insurance to their employees?

You shouldn't talk about things you don't know. The conservatives here try to push for a private healthcare system, but people all across the country will fight tooth and nails to keep it public. It's a matter of pride. They'll be out the minute they publicly threaten the system. Some rich people go to a private clinic, and that's fine, but it's the exception, not the norm.

What the system need is better management anda reform, and countries like Finland and Sweden are great exemples of it.

Next time, try reading your own link...

Dude, you constantly show up here, make some declarative statement of the way things are going to be, and then when called on it, you just say "Google it". Screw that shit.

I pay for my own healthcare though deductions from my paycheck. I pay for my share of the healthplan I'm on. That plan has already gone up in price and had reductions in quality and quantity of services provided. My copays keep going up.

How can I hold Obama responsible? Was he not the driving force behind this? It's in all the papers this morning saying he was.

I have a somewhat decent job, and I'm helping Lady Vivisector go through College right now so she can get a better job. I don't want what I do have to get worse, or eliminated entirely.

And I voted for Obama. I consider myself a fiscal conservative with more liberal social leanings.

My only problem with comparing Scandinavian countries and what not to our country is the sheer fact that we are creating a system with a gigantic amount of sick people already and future amounts coming down the pike that I'm really unsure health insurance is really going to help.

I'm sticking to my guns in saying that if America really wants a better health care system, they need to dump this bill and make some serious fixes to the food industry and to the medical industry. Better health insurance in general isn't going to make people eat any better, exercise more, and find a suitable doctor in their area. Now, with this bill passed, we're gonna see people get their aliments taken care of, but what about a consistent regimen of preventive care? Where's the stronger regulations on what kind of food food stamps will buy? Where's the stronger regulations in how much shit is thrown into our food?

This bill is the epitome of putting the cart before the horse.

Plus, that Firedoglake chart that Reasor posted scares the bejesus out of me.

So I'm like the other 98 percent of people who post on here of all political leanings. Only folks like yt really do great jobs of supporting their arguments.

Everyone else just spews their own crap and berates the other side.

If I offended you, Jacob, I throw myself upon the mercy of Christina Hendricks.

No, but even if people do eat better, exercise more, etc, they still get sick and come down with serious diseases. Without this bill, their insurance could be taken away the moment they get sick. That's not supposed to happen now.

There is not much money to be made with preventive care. Now curing the symptoms and having people coming back for more, that my friend is where the money is!

I just hope to hell I don't see my insurance rates go up.

That's true, but what we eat as a society is causing a great deal of problems with our health as a whole. And this is coming from a big guy trying to cut his weight as best as possible right now.

Obesity is becoming rampant and it's causing and going to cause many health problems in the future: including, heart disease, cancer, etc. etc. etc.

So Big Pharma got super big hard-ons when this bill got passed huh? 32 million more people to sell our shit to! Score!

Well, you don't need to dump the bill in order to enact laws regarding the food industry. In fact those fights are and should be separate from the ones we've been having over the health insurance industry wrt this current bill. Scrapping this is literally throwing out all the hard work that went into getting this thing ramrodded through Congress in the first place. Pretty reckless if you ask me. It's so much more obvious that the best thing to do is work and build on what you have. Nothing is going to get repealed any time soon.

And yeah, the Firedoglake link does put a damper on yesterday's victory. I really hope we didn't throw the baby out with the bath water.

Not only that, but it looks like a lot of the regualtions ("pay for delay", extended patent exclusivity for biologic drug makers, another 25% govt-funded discount) included are going to provide a huge benefit to them. I just hope they sink a damn large share of the windfall into R&D.

That says nothing about pricing the health plans out of the reach of those making less that that arbitrarily high salary.

My wife and I make far far less than that, and we pay for our medical plan. I suppose what I'm supposed to do is give up paying for my own coverage and just accept the government plan.

Without these regulations, the public health care system will be a sinkhole of money. People will continue to eat shit, get sick, and we'll pay for it. Is it a good thing people will be finally getting care? Yeah, but at what cost?

I'm a compassionate person, but there's gotta be a line drawn somewhere.

No, I agree with you completely. There's no quick and easy fix to our country's health care issues. But this bill addresses some problems with it. And, hopefully, the health care concerns on a more personal level -- diet, weight, etc -- will be addressed between doctors and patients now that everyone (in theory) has access to health care.

Hopefully, but there are still plenty of people who do have health care that still eat shit and don't exercise.

So again, the insurance company jacks up the price, and Obama's to blame? What if you lost your job tomorrow? Would you still hate this bill?

It seems like those on the right are simply trying to come up with as many tangential reasons as possible for saying "I don't want anybody to have government healthcare". People getting this help is a good thing. Now, after months of moaning that healthcare isn't a right, you want MORE government interference in terms of food regulation and moderation of insurance costs and on and on. It makes all the reasoning put forward by the right seem hollow when, as soon as they lose one battle, they start in with more negativity that's completely idealogically opposed to their previous reasoning.

I got into a big fight with one of my conservative friends about health care this weekend. He talked about how he didn't trust the government to run anything right. I asked him who he trusted more, the government or insurance companies. He wouldn't answer the question.

You complain is that the entire food and medical industry is flawed? That's because they have their own corporate interest at hearth before the populace. Sorry, but that's the nature of the beast, and the US are married it. Remember; to do otherwise is to be "socialist".

And by the way, when we adopted out healtcare system, there wasn't less sick people, and while people are overweight today, there was other medical problems 75 years ago. You hve more sick people because of your population, and the US have the income to provide for it.

Yeah but its not like it's gonna be a sinkhole immediately, if anything we won't feel the effect for decades. There is time to fight the battle you're asking. What you're proposing is basically to throw out the past year of legislative wrangling even though a lot of good will come from this bill, without much of an eye towards the practicality of how legislation is passed. That attitude is dangerously close to the 'perfect being the enemy of the good.' Without this bill, you wouldn't even have the chance to perform preventative medicine in the first place because poor, overweight people don't go to the doctor. Now, there's at least afighting chance that a doctor will demand (as best they can) for their patients to lose weight before they develop diabetes and all that crap. Basically, what you're saying doesn't make a ton of sense.

We have more sick people not only because of our population, but also because of dramatic differences in income level along with other demographics including reasonable distances from suitable doctors, hospitals, etc.

If this was good, I'd buy your argument.

Well, one argument could be made that if you don't like your insurance company you can go to another. However you can't just change your government.

This bill isn't nationalized health care, it isn't single payer. It's giving more money to the insurance companies. Read the firedoglake link, it's pretty factual.

Agree wholeheartedly the food system is fucked, but this is the same medical system that, up till this bill bassed, was able to deny coverage or care based solely on whether the doctor thought your ass was fat enough to qualify as a pre-existing condition or not, which doesn't necessarily have to do with your diet. It doesn't fix the root problem, but it stops doctors from making diagnoses based on the surface issue to begin with.

It would be about as easy for me to leave the country and "change governments" as it would be for me to switch to a different insurance provider than the one my company offers.

But shouldn't doctors be honest about a patient's wellbeing?

This bill will get them at least in the door for the doctor to make that determination.

They are. In theory, they even come to the right conclusions. But ask anyone who's had their BMI tested, or who's been diagnosed with ADD in the past 15 years or so whether every doctor they see actually does the extra legwork required to get there.

Maybe once the economy recovers enough to get the unemployment rate below double digits Obama can give some teeth back to the FDA. Though that's probably a second-term issue to tackle, if he gets it.

Yes, it would be impossible for you to opt out of your company insurance and go private.. that has never been done before, ever.

He needs the full eight years to clean up the mess, and though change has been slow and messy, I'd still be inclined to give it to him given the first chance.

Theres a big difference between the two, though.

Yes, his extention of the Patriot Act was really cleaning up the mess.

He's also pulled out of Iraq like he pledged. I mean, August is only a few months away right... surely we're down to only 60-80k in troops by now, right?*


* We're adhereing to Bush's timeline that he established.

And picking up and moving to Europe is some Herculean task?

Yes, actually.

Yes, one regulates choice whereas the other provides a basic humanitarian service.

I looked into moving to Switzerland a few years back.

Fuckers run a tight ship over there.