What the fuck is up with it? I hear people bitch about it and I hear people talk about how we need it, but I don't even know what it is about...from what I understand the public option is dropped, but wasn't that the only thing this bill was really about?

Weigh in and if anyone knows what it aims to change let me know, cause I can't find details on what will change anywhere online other than the fact that if it passes businesses might drop their healthcare because they feel they won't need to offer it anymore...which would suck

http://www.healthreform.gov/

I refuse to take that link seriously...as it is completely and utterly biased by the fact it says "click on your state to see how it will benefit from the bill" I mean... I was hoping for something balanced, and not fox news balanced.

It's just so the government can have ultimate say in another 20% of our economy. That's all.

and I like the fact that it says it will lessen paperwork cause by private bureaucracy

If I am not mistaken...isn't the government the inventor of Bureaucracy not the private sector....

More bloodletting
More and more bloodletting.

Boston should be unaffected. We are a healthcare industry city.

Hey, shit, I'm in the healthcare industry.

I thought you fix amps?

I fix medical software. I just really like amps.

medical software, lol

I take that back. A number of doctors don't like the plan. Who knows what's going to happen.
Anyone want to read the 1,000+ page bill?

Good Stuff In The Senate Bill:

1. Right now the average family pays 18% of their yearly income for premiums, and UNLIMITED out of pocket expenses on top of it (causing bankrupcy when someone is sick enough). Under this bill, the cap for premiums and out of pocket expenses COMBINED is 18% of yearly income. Big difference.

2. There will be an exchange where everyone can buy into the same plan that federal employees like members of Congress get.

3. Health care is enshrined as a right in law.


Bad Stuff In the Senate Bill

1, 2, 3, and 4. No Public Option at All. Fucking blows.


That's a really minimal cliffnotes summary of the Senate bill, given how long these bills are.

Does the good outweigh the bad? In the long run, hopefully - but the jury is really still out there on whether the US can ever be as dependably regulated as the Swiss health care system that achieves universal and affordable care without a public option, or whether we're just too institutionally fucked up as a country to consistently maintain that level of reliable regulation between corporate ownership of politicians and bucktoothed "anti-govmint" sentiment; ultimately I think we need a public option, just like we needed Social Security and Medicare as full-fledged programs, because mandates without a public option is... well, Massachussetts.

Here's the thing though - this is just the Senate bill. The House bill DOES have a public option, and the two bills still have to be reconciled in conference, which will happen throughout January.

Not over yet.

Just to play devil's advocate, and again point to my dreadful occupation, doctors tend to hate any and all change. You have no idea how many people fight tooth and nail against switching from paper to electronic medical records and then 6 months into the change come back and praise it as the greatest thing that ever happened to them.

Do I think this bill will be great? Hell no. If it will even be good probably will be fairly difficult to substantiate until about a decade of bullshit.

Why is being anti-government synonymous with the Appalachian Hillbilly to you?

Can civilized, educated people not have an anti-government sentiment? or does it make them something less?

and on a side note, Health care should never be a right, it would open a Pandora's box of questions and odd situations over the years through various interpretation of whatever law makes it a right.

Make it affordable and accessible yes, but not a right.

on another side note, did any one hear about how the CEO of Whole Foods wrote an op-ed about how only rich people should have health care and everyone else should just use the emergency room?

I'm more concerned with preventing Pantera's box of pick slides from opening.

Here's the catch, though. Look at it from a monetary point of view. Like I said above, the government will now have ultimate say in something else that is 20% +\- of our economy. Do you really trust the government in the long run? Look at what happened with the bailouts.
Of course there's some pros to the bill, but it all boils down to money and trust. I don't see this as a golden solution in the long run; rather, just another way for corrupt individuals and corporations to make a buck. We are bing experimented on and prodded with in every aspect of our lives now.

Did you guys see the executive order Obama signed the other day? He gave Interpol unlimited authority within our borders. That's jus plain absurd, yet it barely makes the back page of the paper.

null


Anyone notice how none of the Politicians save Ron Paul ever talk about saving money?

Universal Healthcare for 308 + million people?

People can go on and on about European models of healthcare, but none of those countries even have a population greater than 100 mil, and the most successful having < 10 mil.

I see in no way how this is feasible. Especially in the wake of large national debt, an unemployment rate > 10%, and the midst of a two-front war.

We are being drained of every ounce of worth. The US has now officially surrended to the impending world government. We will soon live in an Orwellian world or chaos. Can't wait.

Ah Interpol, the little noted police of the world. He removed the protections on them allowing them to be exempt of the freedom of information act, basically we can't keep records on them and the public can't learn anything about what they do.

Basically he has given them the power to become tyrannical...

The scariest thing about it is that our servicemen can be arrested on American soil and brought for war crimes, which may or may not be true.

For example, North Korea could just randomly tell Interpol that such and such a soldier did something, give them shoddy evidence, and bam, now Interpol can go to the house and drag said man off to a war tribunal, granted they might dismiss him...but the problem is the politics, it's always a highly embarrassing thing to have a citizen charged with war crimes.

Yea people always point out sweden and Iceland...those places don't have millions of illegal immigrants using the emergency room for colds... those places don't have high crime or poverty rates like we do.

Plus, we don't have nearly enough doctors in America to handle every single person getting health care, hell we don't have enough doctors to cover the people on health care now.

Yea.. And why wasn't this on the news again? Ah, that's right. Somebody vandalized Jon from Jon & Kate plus 8's apartment. Almost forgot.

The media spectacle.

That's what this inauguration and presidency is: the idea of the spectacle.

Any and all Obamorons who bought into it deserve what they get. Nothing different than before.

I really cannot care as much as I should, because I'll always be poor and struggling. It just matters if I'll be doing it here or in Sweden, where perhaps I'll loathe myself a tiny bit less.

I would recommend a remote pacific island.

Green Party Swedish Candidates at least make me laugh...The remarks by Sofia Bothorp, which have brought her both praise and ridicule, came during a session of the local council in Karlskrona in southern Sweden.

During the debate, Bothorp sought to praise what she saw as a particularly Swedish acceptance of freedom of expression, in particular when it came to discussion of sex.

According to Bothorp, part of being Swedish is being able to “lick pussy in the morning and suck cock in the evening if you want to”.

Bothorp then went on to say she was proud to be Swedish because it meant being able to make jokes about “Allah’s little dick” and “the impotence of God the father”.

She hot?

maybe...MAAAAAAAAAYBE years and years ago.

perhaps if the general populace weren't fat, disgusting, unhealthy, gluttonous, slovenly, whiny scum who need a pill for something as trivial as jumpy legs then this wouldn't be such a problem.

looks fine like that. I'd hit it. Repeatedly.

I'd still hit that in the dark

someone vandalized his apartment!!?!? Details plz!!!! Who cares about healthcare anyway? Jon and Kate got divorced, so I obviously want to know about a guy who used to be on tv.

yes, they even stuck a note on the wall with a butcher knife. fucking old school.

Exactly, I go to the doctors for check ups and if I think something is seriously wrong with me. I mean, I went three months with this crazy cough that left me gasping for air....and finally I decided to give in before I died of it and got some anti-biotics.

What you can't cure with a few weeks of taking it easy and eating right is for the doctors, not colds, flues, or viruses that pass in a few days.

No, I think you read my intent backwards, I wrote anti-govmint to specify that I was ONLY talking about rubes, not ANYBODY who is critical of any government power or concerned with civil liberties (which would be most of us to some degree or another).

There are definitely plenty of people out there who are legit Ron Paul libertarians, I have respect for those views on government, and I don't think we can have a real debate without that side represented.

The problem is that's not what's been happening in recent years. Instead, you have the party that claims to be for individual rights and small government in reality wanting rights only for the few and huge government as long as it doesn't benefit the many.

Then you have the rubes who fall for their bullshit, and elect those people, then take their insurance company talking points to town halls and yell at everyone in the name of a Constitution they clearly haven't read (former Republican Washington insider Dick Army actually organized industry front groups to disseminate insurance talking points in the name of supposedly being anti-Washington).

People who fall for that shit are fucking morons, and I have every right to bust on those people; they're the reason we had authoritarian neoconservative Bush for eight years (the greatest enemy to libertarians, fiscal restraint, Constitutional rights, and small government in the history of the WORLD).

If I could snap my fingers and have all those tools disappear and be replaced by ACTUAL libertarians, we might actually have a real debate in this country.

One pill for an ailment causes another ailment that causes another ailment, and so on and so on......

I know what you mean man, like those tea party folk, horrible disservice to the movement for smaller government. Or what is worse.....

this might shock many and disgust all who have read thomas paine


Glenn Beck has published a book with his name along side Thomas Paine and it's called something something common sense...

scary, what's next, McCain quoting Jefferson.

But Republicans at large have been using Libertarian platforms since Ron Paul rose to fame in the election to make them seem more friendly to the Constitutionally inclined...Like that Christian dude who ran...randomly started saying he was against the fed, but didn't explain why.

the more right you go, the closer you are to the left. the more left you go, the closer you are to the right.

tis nothing but a false paradigm. It's splitting this country in two, though.