Supreme Court Upholds Obamacare

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-18630837

Eminently sensible decision.

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Elroy Blue said:

Equally, a lot of ordinary workers in the US are NOT happy about it.

That's mainly because they've been lied to by the rabid right.

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12gauge said:

Not surprising. Maobama has gone to great lengths to install judges who hold the constitution in contempt.

You win the prize for the most uneducated moronic comment of the day.

The Supreme Court has a 5/4 Republican bias and the swing vote was that of chief justice Roberts, an appointee of George W Bush who opposed the 4 other Republicans who voted the party line.

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Caulkhead said:

As I understand it, currently if you don't have insurance but can afford it, if you need medical care you have to pay for it. If you don't have insurance and can't afford it, tax-payer funded medicare/medicaid pays.

Now if you can afford insurance and don't buy it you get fined by the IRS and if you can't afford it you get fined by the IRS?

Or have I got that wrong?

Right and wrong. Medicaid covers relatively few people, not the working poor. If your company doesn't have a plan it can be very expensive to buy healthcare as an individual for your family. This will make it much easier and more cost effective.

You also forgot about people who have previously been ill who are denied coverage under the "pre existing" condition clause that insurance companies all have. They then get ill and are treated and often have to go bankrupt to pay their medical bills. These are often people who are able to and want to buy insurance but it is denied them. That will change from 2014.

Nobody need get fined because the healhcare cover offered to those who cannot get it elsewhere will be affordable. If you are too poor to pay tax you will be exempt from paying, AS YOU ARE IN THE UK.

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12gauge said:

unrepentant said:

You win the prize for the most uneducated moronic comment of the day.

The Supreme Court has a 5/4 Republican bias and the swing vote was that of chief justice Roberts, an appointee of George W Bush who opposed the 4 other Republicans who voted the party line.

eh?

Did i not just say above both parties are beholden to the healthcare lobby.

learn to read buddy.

Except I was quoting this

12gauge said:

Not surprising. Maobama has gone to great lengths to install judges who hold the constitution in contempt.

You're a moron.

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Engineer1 said:

Jasandjules said:

Hmm, this seems a touch odd. I wonder if this is going to cost Obama the presidency.

With Mitt magic pants Romney? Against him? I really hope the US is intelligent enough to not just vote for the other guy as a backlash.

It's a myth to say that Americans are against affordable healthcare. They voted for Obama in 08 and it was front and centre of his campaign. If anything what we ended up with a watered down version because Obama wanted to placate the Republicans. What we have had is a concerted cmapiagn by vested interests and the Obama hating right against the bill ever since it became the law. They have foamed at the mouth over it and still do - Rush Limbaugh suggested at lunchtime today that Sandusky will get pardoned because paedophilia is "bound to be legalised under Obamacare". That is the level of right wing discourse on this subject.

As you say, hopefully the public will prove to be more intelligent than the loonies on the right believe them to be and see through the rhetoric.

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johnfm said:

If health insurance and provision is so bloated and overpriced in the US, why hasn't some enterprising soul (like Branson or similar) come into the market and undercut the current market players?

Who knows. It's a cosy club. Interesting to see that the share prices of major medical insurers fell sharply on the announcement whilst those of major hospital groups rose.

Nobody is suggesting that the standard of healthcare for those that can afford it is not excellent here, by and large it is. It's also ludicrously expensive.

It's interesting that the USA spends 17% of GDP on healthcare, no other country spends more than 12%. And yet the US ranks very low in terms of life expectancy and very poorly when infant mortality rates are taken into account.

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Engineer1 said:

Because the guy is from a fringe religion he isn't able to swing the faithful behind him in the way a Catholic, Jewish or Muslim could, that and he seems to have been rather extreme / nutty in his campaign.

That and a religion that was made up recently, has an angel named Moroni, etc leads me to think the guy is possibly a little fked in the head.

Whilst I tend to think that a persons religion is a personal matter (although the American right led by Trump and other wackos have been hell bent on proving their erroneous belief that Obama is a Muslim because that would somehow render him satanic) you have to wonder about anyone who seriously belives what practicing mormons believe.

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Caulkhead said:

The average healthcare bill for family with no employer cover in 2011 was $414 a month. An average UK family earning the equivalent pays about $4000 a year in NI contributions. Of course that pays for more than just the NHS but if more than one member of the family earns, they pay more.

Wherever you got that figure from I doubt it's veracity and I would look again..

Here's some figures closer to reality;

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/16/us-health...

"Take away costs paid by employers, and the employee's share of costs has still doubled. In 2010, the average employee paid $8,008 for his family's healthcare, up from $3,634 in 2002".

And that's for those where the employer is paying the bulk of the premiums. No employer and you're on your own.

We have a pretty good scheme in our company. I asked a colleague who is in his early 30's, fit with a wife and two kids aged 3 and 6. He pays $7k per year, that's after the company picks up the lions share.

There are plenty of other examples;

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-27/health-be...

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Caulkhead said:

Americans like the freedom to choose and many don't see why they should fund healthcare for other people.

That's what's so dumb about the right and their spurious argument. The central plank (and the part that the right have the most issue with) of the affordable healthcare act is the individual mandate. The individual mandate requires everyone to take responsibility for their own healthcare insurance. Sounds pretty reasonable and should appeal to conservatives? Wrong.

Scenario: Someone chooses to be uncovered and never pay a premium, even though they can afford it. They have a serious heart attack / fall off a cliff and are badly injured / whatever. The bill is $250k / $500k / whatever. They can't pay. So they declare bankrupcy. Their bill is settled by everyone else.

Scenario: Someone has a serious health issue and cannot get insurance. They want to pay in to the system but the insurers will not cover them so they can't. They have a heart attack / stroke / whatever. The bill is $250k / $500k / whatever. They can't pay. So they declare bankrupcy. Their bill is settled by everyone else.

American's are funding other people. The affordable healthcare act makes it mandatory for the feckless to take care of their own insurance and makes it possible for those with pre existing conditions to buy their own insurance. Republicans hate it because it's a democrat policy implemented by Obama. FFS, Romney, their standard bearer, bought in an almost identical programme in Mass when he was govenor. Now he views it as satanic! It's laughable.

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Caulkhead said:

As with most things, the topic is more complicated than you make out. The examples you give above comes under the heading of catastrophic insurance. Under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act 1986, hospitals are forced to treat the results of such catastrophic accidents irrespective of whether the victim can pay or not.

Ability to pay is irrelevant. The biggest single cause of bankrupcy in America is medical debt. Catastrophic or not if you have a major incident and are uninsured you will be given a huge bill and often the only way to discharge the debt is bankrupcy. Happens many times every day.

As for the "few". 48 million Americans have no health insurance.

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The right are suffering from apoplexy today.

Limbaugh and co have been confidently predicting that the act would be struck down by the republican dominated supreme court. Now that same court has done the right thing Limbaugh is now referring to Roberts v USA.

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Jimbeaux said:

unrepentant said:

Caulkhead said:

Americans like the freedom to choose and many don't see why they should fund healthcare for other people.

That's what's so dumb about the right and their spurious argument. The central plank (and the part that the right have the most issue with) of the affordable healthcare act is the individual mandate. The individual mandate requires everyone to take responsibility for their own healthcare insurance. Sounds pretty reasonable and should appeal to conservatives? Wrong.

Scenario: Someone chooses to be uncovered and never pay a premium, even though they can afford it. They have a serious heart attack / fall off a cliff and are badly injured / whatever. The bill is $250k / $500k / whatever. They can't pay. So they declare bankrupcy. Their bill is settled by everyone else.

Scenario: Someone has a serious health issue and cannot get insurance. They want to pay in to the system but the insurers will not cover them so they can't. They have a heart attack / stroke / whatever. The bill is $250k / $500k / whatever. They can't pay. So they declare bankrupcy. Their bill is settled by everyone else.

American's are funding other people. The affordable healthcare act makes it mandatory for the feckless to take care of their own insurance and makes it possible for those with pre existing conditions to buy their own insurance. Republicans hate it because it's a democrat policy implemented by Obama. FFS, Romney, their standard bearer, bought in an almost identical programme in Mass when he was govenor. Now he views it as satanic! It's laughable.

Wrong. You see, the ignorance is rampant on this issue on PH. This is understandable as it is "over here". You say it forces everyone to buy insurance. That would be great if true. Those that cannot afford it will be covered by the higher premiums and taxes. Guess what, all of a sudden, many more people will not be able to afford it. The criteria to qualifying for the alternative to buying insurance will be eased. This will allow many more to be "entitled". Once this happens, there is no going back. The Dems will get the vote from the entitled base.
The point of the argument against the mandate is constitutional. The Feds cannot force an American to buy any product, full stop. The mandate was held up as a tax, not a mandate. BTW, the POTUS promised it would not be a tax, yet that is how it was upheld. We all want to improve the healthcare system. The care available is better than anywhere, that is not the question, it is the system. Everyone agrees to lower costs of drugs, procedures, no pre-existing condition refusals, etc. There are better way to do this however. This plan is very flawed, included no doctors in its making, and was quickly forced through against the majority of American's will (which is why 33 members of Congress were voted out). I look forward to improvement; this is not it. More to come.

Yawn. I didn't say it "forces everyone to buy insurance". I said it makes everyone take responsibility for their own insurance. If people are on such a low income or no income that they cannot afford it then it will be provided for them, as it is in every other first world country.

The bill was not forced through against the will of the majority of Americans. It was voted on in the house after Obama beat McCain very soundly with it as the central theme of his capmpaign. The majority of Americans voted for it. And will again in November.

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Jimbeaux said:

You harp on relentlessly in every post about "the right". You need to tone down because you dive deep and often into things you do not fully grasp. It is about freedom of choice based upon our founding rules. We are different than you (over the pond), think different than you, etc. We think much alike on many things but not on a few critical matters. That is why the "experiment" of a group of you breaking away from the homeland happened. Try to respect that a bit.

I fully understand the "right" as it pertains to you and your pals matey. And I live where you live.

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Jimbeaux said:

As I said, those who cannot be forced will rise suddenly as criteria is eased. Don't be silly, wake up. As to "we voted for it"; bullst!@ The majority of Americans disapprove of this plan and demonstyrated so in the 2010 election by throwing the Dems out of the House of Representatives. The Dems have not been mentioning the Obamacare plan at all on the campaigne trail. Harp on but please do not try to piss on me and tell me it's raining. If you want to dare say that the people support Obamacare, prove it and show me clear stats.

There's only one poll that counts, the one in November. So when Obama is re-elected you can come here and admit that you're wrong.

Demonstyrated? Wtf??

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Jimbeaux said:

Romney's website received $4.8 Million in 4 hours after the plan was upheld.

Of course it did! Those vested interests are scared boy! This is a golden goose.

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Jimbeaux said:

Is that the best you can do? Sad. I am off work today and am gone to do more important things. I will come back around when other like minded rabid Obama hating right wing loonies are here to foam at the mouth with me. Cheers!

EFA.