The NOT Overturning of Obamacare

I just wanted to say...That GLP is absolutely blowing up about this and if thats the case it really makes me wonder what the average talk is on the streets and I really am starting to wonder just how pissed off the 'ordinary' person is about this?

I mean if you take the comments over at GLP as a cross section of society. A Percentage? Tho I wouldnt know how much. Perhaps someone here can comment.

Can we please keep this a non in your face happy/sad about the decision thread? I would just like to know how many of you are thinking TS is HTF and this is the straw breaking the camels back?

I have a theory as to WHY it happened. Roberts is rumored to be gay and so is Obama. I'll just let your imaginations run wild . . . I can just picture a late night "tryst" in the Lincoln bedroom. ; ) And on the other hand, it could just imply be that Roberts is a pure constitutionalist . . . as pure as the driven Mexican methamphetamine.  ; )

people will either sit down and accept a dictatorship
or they will rise up and deal with this

watch out for the rise up tax..
but wait..
there's the sit down tax..

callling H$R bl0ck..

audit insurance for useless breathers

As someone who has always had health insurance, but hasnt had it for about 2 years now (due to unemployment) I must say that my thoughts about socialized medicine have changed considerably.  I don't really know (and I don't think anyone else does either, at this point) what exactly Obamacare will cover and how much it will really help those of us who are uninsured, but it's pathetic that the US can't afford to provide healthcare for everyone.  How many people have gone bankrupt and lost everything due to a serious illness, even with insurance?  How many people don't get checkups because they can't afford it, and then die from something that they could have been treated successfully for, had it been caught earlier?  I have cataracts that I can't do anything about because I have no insurance and no money to pay for the operation!  I just hope I don't go blind before I'm eligible for Medicare--if it's still around in the next 10 years!
Obamacare isn't a perfect solution, but at least it's something.  If the US .gov would stop spending billions and billions on foreign wars and foreign aid, maybe we could do something to help our own citizens. 
Sorry for the tirade--I'm just upset tonight.

I will second that.  Good rant, 777.

Personally, I think Obamacare is kinda/sorta part of the revealing, if you will.

They HAD to do something.  It was becoming obvious that the rest of the world was able to give their citizens free health care - hell, all the "third world" Central American countries have it for their citizens - then we should be able to do something for ours.

What this really all boils down to is, slowly but surely, all things are coming into the open.  All the thievery, all the lies, all the deceptions. 

Of course, the insurance companies wrote the damn thing, so how great can it be?  But, again, at least it's something.  CYA is mostly what it is.  It will be interesting to see what comes of the whole thing.

Funny how billions and billions can be spent on new weapons systems, black projects only a few people even know about, that new facility in Utah designed to spy on everyone on the planet (quite literally), all to protect us from some faceless terrorists in some country that just happens to have oil and not like us too awful much because we think it's OUR oil... but the concern for the common man's security doesn't lend itself to the spending of money on health care, or education for a legion of doctors and technicians who could devote their lives to the common good whilst making a good wage for themselves.  

That guy from Florida was right, the Republican health care plan is 'don't get sick' and if you do, 'die'.  

What if 'national security' meant everyone employed, everyone housed, everyone fed and everyone with a free education to the extent of their natural abilities and up to the minute, modern health care?  

What if, to accomplish this feat, a standard work week was 20 hours instead of 40, and people had more time off to pursue hobbies, learn, read, spend with their children and grandchildren, and grow a garden?  

What if our entire society didn't seem hellbent on bombing as many poor people as possible, but instead helped them come up to modern technological standards, rather than stealing their resources? What if Tesla's free energy knowledge had become common knowledge 100 years ago, rather then shelved as 'nonprofitable'?
What if a government lying to their constituents about anything was considered unthinkable and treason, punishable as such?  Lying about 9-11, lying about going into war, lying about aliens, lying about where the money all goes?  

What if, down through the ages, we as a people actually tried our best to search out the truth, no matter how odd (the earth is a globe? Heresy!) or intellectually and spiritually challenging?  What if new ideas were discussed rationally rather than ridiculed?  What if every religion since worshipping the sun (the true source of all life) had never been dreamed up and then turned into a ridiculous power base?  What if money didn't rule the world, but fair play and equal access to necessities for everyone did?  

What if?  

I'll tell you what if.  We would never had built 9/10th of the weapons we have. The oceans would not be filling with radiation and the skies with drones and pollution. Millions would be alive today, secure in their homes, contributing to the common good (Who knows how many Einsteins, Jonah Salks and Carl Sagans have died in senseless wars as children???)  We never would have built nuclear power plants on EQ fault lines, because if something went terribly wrong the planned response to it of 'evacuating an entire city' would not have been seen as a viable option, but instead the insanity that it is.  A few corporate mega-giants would not be fueling and influencing our political discussions.  Fuckwits like Sarah Palin, Karl Rove and Fox News would not be jamming the airwaves with idiotic comments, and our national discourse would not be easily mistaken for a tabloid headline.  Intellectuals and 'smart people' would be revered for their contributions and ideas, not burned at the stake or ignored by the masses as 'eggheads'.  

We would have been thousands of years down the road to a true civilization, that's what.  What we have now is no better than rock throwing cave dwellers could envision, with the addition of a few electronic toys.  

Wow Signalfire .that was bloody BRILLIANT!!

-What if 'national security' meant everyone employed, everyone housed, everyone fed and everyone with a free education to the extent of their natural abilities and up to the minute, modern health care?  
 
What if indeed

I was laughing over at GLP because there was like 10 different threads on this.

I was reading most of the comments until I just got fed up because realistcally what the whole thing boiled down to was 2 things.

Oh nooooo it's gonna cost me...and I want it for FREE.

Wow Signalfire .that was bloody BRILLIANT!!

-What if 'national security' meant everyone employed, everyone housed, everyone fed and everyone with a free education to the extent of their natural abilities and up to the minute, modern health care?  
 
What if indeed

-concernedmomma

I second that!  Abso-friggin-lutely!

Here's  biggest problem I see with roberts opinion...a precedent is now set for the "affordable car, solar, bathtub" act- don't want to buy what uncle sammy and corp c corp are selling? well pay the IRS your tax penalty...oh...don't have the money you say?..well enjoy Camp FEMA.

how many of you have read the text ?
it was not that answer to anything other than making the health care industry get rich.
this will likely cause many that have health care now to loose it.
it is a horrible law.

I cant really buy into the hype about the 'new price' of this insurance because there is so much speculation running rampant about it.

I mean for me, family of 4 we would seem to save about 1600$ with these 'new plans' Thats super cool.

People who are 'poorer' than us I can still see being able to aford it as obviously the price goes down but then there does come a point that they wouldnt be able to afford it. Wouldnt these same people be on medicaid?
Is medicaid going away?

There are just too many variables in it to fully understand let alone make a judgement call on it being good or bad yet.

Plus. if we are going to save money on healthcare ..shouldnt someone else who makes more than us also end up saving money? How can that be seen as bad?

I just don't think this Obamacare will be the big nightmare that a lot of people are worked up about. There's been so much hysteria from the right-wing wackos; most people are angry about this bill for things that aren't even in it and are totally made up. 

That was brilliant, Signalfire. Sounds like a book I just started reading: "Why America Failed: The Roots of Imperial Decline" by Morris Berman.

Article about the American health system by a Kiwi guy.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/matt-mccarten-on-politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=1502871&objectid=10816559

Excerpt:

It's barbaric that the world's richest country doesn't have a public health system available to all its citizens. Having only private health insurance without any public alternative is mystifying when these private insurance health providers have the right to refuse clients with any potential health issues. It's a no-brainer then that these insurers give prospective clients a medical check and turn down anyone they can't make a buck on. Unless you have good genes, they won't touch you.

And it gets worse. If a client, after signing on, does get some disease or other problem, their premiums increase to a profitable level or their policy is cancelled.

Even the providers limit their coverage, so if a client or their kids have a major illness, they have to take out loans to cover the shortfall.

Once a provider does drop a client as a bad risk, these people, not surprisingly, find it difficult to get new health insurance. Consequently, millions of Americans have no insurance. They live in fear that if they or their kids get ill they will lose everything they have.

When they run out of money they curl up and die.

How is a system allowed to exist where private health providers get away with such a colossal crime against humanity? No other Western country would put up with it.

These corporations provide millions in funds to politicians to stop any reform. That's why, even when the Democrats had the majority in both Houses of Congress, when Barack Obama was elected President, his own supporters wouldn't consider an option where people could choose a government-run scheme. There were more than enough politicians in the insurers' pockets to maintain the moneymaking racket.

Crime against humanity.......
 
The thing about growing up in a country where we just take for granted that "evil socialised medicine" is that I think hardly any of us realise what Americans have to endure.  In NZ (and I guess most other countries with that evil, socialized medicine) we just assume that if you're sick you'll get high quality treatment and care for free.
 
In fact we bitch mightily if there's a delay even for elective things.  My father's had 3 knee replacements, cataract surgery to fix both eyes, a broken arm wired and oh god knows what in the last 10 or so years.  For one of the knee replacements he actually had to stay in hospital for 3 months.   I can't imagine what it would be like having to pay for any of it.......I guess we'd be poor and bankrupt.  I really feel so sorry for what so many Americans have to go through.  It just seems so cruel.

And honestly, think about it, if a tiny little country like NZ with just over 4 million citizens can provide free health for everyone since well - forever - why can't a large, wealthy country like the USA? 

Here's a Map of the Countries That Provide Universal Health Care (America's Still Not on It)

The U.S. stands almost entirely alone among developed nations that lack universal health care.

As excited as American liberals and proponents of expanding access to health care might be about the Supreme Court's decision to largely uphold the Affordable Care Act, the U.S. still stands out from much of the developed world in state efforts to make medical care available to the public. If universal health care in the U.S. is your goal, then today was a big step forward, but maybe also a reminder of how far behind America still lags.

xxxxxx

That brings us to another way that America is a big outlier on health care. The grey countries on this map tend to spend significantly less per capita on health care than do the green countries -- except for the U.S., where the government spends way more on health care per person than do most countries with free, universal health care. This is also true of health care costs as a share of national GDP -- in other words, how much of a country's money goes into health care.

"The overall level of health spending in the United States is so high that public (i.e. government) spending on health per capita is still greater than in all other OECD [Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development] countries, except Norway and the Netherlands," according to a recent OECD report, which covers most of the developed world.

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/06/heres-a-map-of-the-countries-that-provide-universal-health-care-americas-still-not-on-it/259153/#

So let me get this right.  America is spending more per person on health care than nearly all the developed countries with free health care, except millions of Americans aren't actually getting any health care..... ......Instead all the money is going to................"intermediaries".  Wow.  Now that's what you call a corrupt system.

And meantime, a whole big bunch of Americans think the problem is that some people want this "evil, socialized medicine" and the problem ACTUALLY is the money is being spent but is being funnelled off to a lot of "intermediaries".   In effect they're defending the crooks in the middle.  Did I get this right?

See, this makes me mad.  I want you guys all to get free health care!

Yes Em, you have that exactly right.

And people have been told how evil nationalized healthcare is since the day they were born. Sitting on mommy's knee getting told stories about how she was 'lucky' to have given birth here because in 'other countries' she would have had to plop the kid out in the field between picking lettuce heads!

Nevermind poor mommy is STILL paying for your birth until your 10 years old! There goes that College money!

When I moved to England I never thought about the medical, until I got pregnant. I was TERRIFIED of giving birth over there. Absolutely brainwashed into thinking I was going to get killed giving birth to my first child because of the 'crap' healthcare.

I was sooo suprised and very relieved when it came down to it I got beautiful care. A nurse was in my room attentive to me the whole time. Pain relief was whatever method I cared to have. The whole birth was in a private room they even got me a nice cup of tea after the birth and didnt say a word when we popped a bottle of champagne after. It was after all new years! I had that nurse for darn near 12 hours until a new one came to take over for the last 6 hours.
The price? Not a damn dime. My hubby got the girls on the ward a huge huge box of chocolates for being so kind.
Oh and for those who say "well we pay for it in TAXES"...yeah you do but guess what ..everything else is taken into account. Your pay is a little better, the price of food is lower. We lived the same sort of lifestyle there as we do here and guess what..Over there we are not living under constant threat of an emergency making us go bankrupt and loose our house!! I might add that even tho I have insurance I go into fits if we have to go to the doctor because NO ONE KNOWS what I "might" have to pay BEFOR I choose to get anything done! No one knows what my individual different insurance company WILL or WILL NOT approve of. You literally get to wait 3-6 months for them to decide. Then its a case of here's the bill pay or we will take you to colections for everything you have!

American's just dont get it. It makes me crazy. I simply cannot understand how they themselves dont want 'better more affordable, easier access medical care!" Rich, poor, MIDDLE CLASS especially! Anyone with kids should be yelling for them to do away with the friggen insurance companies.

The American way..make money off other peoples misery.