Healthcare Passes! Thank You, Nancy Pelosi!

[metta]

removal of pre-existing conditions as a disqualifier.

I think this part of the bill will potentially improve many lives. There are so many Americans that are stuck in their jobs right now because they can't take the risk of losing their insurance, even minor conditions where they feel that it may get worse in the future and if they change, it wont be covered. This will (hopefully) make it easier for people to build their careers without worrying about not being able to get health insurance.

 

[metta]

I hope that this is only the first step in improving health care. The bill does not go far enough. It is a beginning.

I do hope that we eventually get univeral health care for everyone. We have it already for those over 65. We should be able to offer that option to everyone. I would love to get to the point where people would not have to waste all of that time filling out insurance information in an emergency. That they could just go in and get the treatment they need. California has a bill that they are working on now....I hope that goes through.

 

[VenomGGXX]

Well it's better than just having some company charge 1000 dollars a month as opposed to the government insurance taxing people and charging 90 dollars a month

 

[bankside]

Listen, as a driver, I would expect to drive safely and courteously, and I would expect other drivers to do the same. If that failed to occur, I would expect some convenient way to identify the other driver to pursue damages, or settle the situation howsoever. A very clever way to identify the other driver would be some kind of centralised registry with some kind of unique registration code attached to each car. Hmmmm. How could we do that? Hmmmm. SOCIALISM!!!!! Oh NO!!!!

(I don't count it as forcing someone when you make what they would want to do anyway into a legal requirement.

The reason we have drivers' licenses and license plates is because it serves a very practical need, and it is what people would want anyway, and because government is most efficient at delivering that service. )

There isn't anyone alive who doesn't both need and want timely health care. It is what people want anyway. Do you have health insurance already? Then you're not being oppressed by this law. Do you lack health insurance currently? Then you're not being oppressed by this law. Can you afford a $21 000 health care insurance premium already? Then you're very wealthy, and you're going to be paying for other people's health care as well as your own. Not their cars. Not trips to Disneyland. Not their iPods. Not their nights out at dinner & the movies. You're paying, along with them, to save their lives and keep them healthy.

Of course being alive and healthy will help them to work and pay taxes, and that is in your interests.

This law brings the United States into the company of other civilised nations, and it is decades overdue.

 

[Joshua_me]

I think that we should congratulate both the Republicans and the deep-pocketed lobbyists that control Washington DC....

They have kicked up such a shit storm of misinformation and confusion over the past few months that they actually have people believing that poor folks and the elderly getting life saving medical care is a BAD thing.

Imagine the horror ! Children in pain and distress getting admitted into hospitals instead of being turned away into the streets !

No wonder every one is up in arms !

I can't believe, in this rich and prosperous country of ours, that people are going to be allowed to live !

(And for those of you who think this is cynical, I invite you to imagine your Mother dying in a hospital bed because an insurance company denied her life saving treatment... This happens EVERY day. How much would you care about the COST then ? )

 

[VenomGGXX]

Well you're not being helpful..you act like anytype of progress is the ''devil'' and you are obviously a closet republican red rubber ball

 

[evanrick]

Yep. The bill is almost closer to fascism than socialism, if anything.

why is it when republicans passed medicare part D or any of their wars, which was a give away to drug companies and big pharma A-OK, but if democrats try to fix peoples problems that have existed for a 100 years, its all of a sudden facism.

 

[frankfrank]

I'm just going to make a guess that in May, the semi-annual insurance rate hike letter will hike my rates 32-something percent. Just a guess that I pulled out of my ass or somewhere.

It's too soon to see exactly how all this will shake out, but the elections in November will be very telling. And there's no doubt this bill's passage WILL affect the elections, but I'm not even sure which way it will affect them...yet.

There have been so many lies from all sides that I feel uninformed (or, more properly, MISinformed) about this newest of all federal bills. But finally the insurance companies will no longer be able to deny cancer coverage because somebody had acne 34 years ago, or rescind coverage because of getting sick (or even just because of being abused by a spouse).

I'm not even sure whether I can sort out whether this bill will cause more good than bad. What does this bill do, as far as any requirements for jobs to provide insurance? I still can't picture a universal requirement for that - it would cause a lot of business to shutter the doors forever.

A loose cannon has been unleashed on us...a lot of aspects of this fall outside our experience in this country, and we'll start to see what kind of tactics the insurance companies will surely pull to avoid what the bill seems to require.

 

[Semirhage666]

I'm not really worried about right now. I'm worried about what could happen if I'm 25 and in graduate school, struggling with the cost of living because I'm having to pay health insurance premiums out the ass. The government mandate means that I'll either have to pay to get health insurance or pay a lovely fine every year. That health insurance will be nice and expensive since insurers will most likely offset the profit losses from the pre-existing conditions clause by charging more.

So without this bill, your options would then be to pay for insurance, same as with the bill, or be uninsured for free.

Either you would choose to be uninsured, in which case, I would ask why, or you would be choosing to be insured, same as with the bill.

WTF are you even trying to argue?

He's saying that anyone making fuckloads of money who is NOT willing to be taxed and have that tax money go to the healthcare of the less fortunate is a fucking dirtbag.

 

[SilverWolf]

Actually, I'm about to go back to the PS3. My franchise on MLB 10 The Show is back in the Wild Card race now that Tommy Hanson and Yovani Gallardo have returned to form.

Buhbye, I'll miss you and your non sequiturs/ad hominem, you sexy beast.

PS3? Marry me

 

[BearBoi]

Welcome to the club, America! (Although Canada has a single-payer system, and you will have an insurance mandate system, we will just call it even. )

 

[VenomGGXX]

I still think it's progress, whether some people on here want to admit it or not

 

[hotatlboi]

Santa Maria!

Btw I was paying $170 for an individual plan insurance. Then I got a notice three months ago saying it would rise to $220/month. The explanation was "Sorry, healthcare is getting really expensive." I am sure they'd drop me too, if I got seriously sick, but I'm not sure. Just a hunch.

Yep, folks, best healthcare system in the world!!!

I was paying $115 for mine, had it increased to $143 this year.

 

[SoulSearcher]

Congratulations, now America can join the rest of the industrialised countries in providing the most basic of human needs, health.

 

[Joshua_me]

Congratulations, now America can join the rest of the industrialised countries in providing the most basic of human needs, health.

Indeed.

And most of those other industrialised countries are dumbfounded by the response of near violence and cries of, "socialism !" from the tea-bagging right wing...

America has enough to be embarrassed about in the free world without these Limbaugh-obsessed idiots protesting quality health care for everyone.

A friend of mine who lives in Denmark called me today. "WTF is everyone SO upset about in The States ?" he asked. "Are people SO self-absorbed where you live that they think the poor getting medical attention is a bad thing ?"

I had no answer for him.

 

[bankside]

Indeed.

And most of those other industrialised countries are dumbfounded by the response of near violence and cries of, "socialism !" from the tea-bagging right wing...

America has enough to be embarrassed about in the free world without these Limbaugh-obsessed idiots protesting quality health care for everyone.

A friend of mine who lives in Denmark called me today. "WTF is everyone SO upset about in The States ?" he asked. "Are people SO self-absorbed where you live that they think the poor getting medical attention is a bad thing ?"

I had no answer for him.

How unAmerican of you to have a friend in Denmark! Next you'll be trying to get the French to run NATO. FREEDOM FRIES FOREVER!!!

LOL.

I feel your pain. I live in the most Republican theocratic part of Canada and the values overlap way too much with your republican states. But, the whining from the crazy right wing should not lessen your pride at the sight of 219 lawmakers doing a decent job. They were put there by your fellow citizens, and decency carried the day.

 

[Krakenbwool]

I was talking with my professor about the bill today, and her biggest concern was that the bill will make it mandatory for everyone to have health insurance (by 2014), or a fine will have to be paid. Is that really necessary?

(And no, I'm not a right wing nut. I'm just legitimately skeptical about that aspect of the bill. The rest I'm fine with.)

 

[JasunStrikesBack]

I was talking with my professor about the bill today, and her biggest concern was that the bill will make it mandatory for everyone to have health insurance (by 2014), or a fine will have to be paid. Is that really necessary?

(And no, I'm not a right wing nut. I'm just legitimately skeptical about that aspect of the bill. The rest I'm fine with.)

There aren't actually any penalties for not having insurance. All the "severe punishments" crap from conservatards is just white noise.

 

[Krakenbwool]

According to this article:

"By 2014, every American will be required to have some form of health insurance or will be forced to pay a fine. The first year's fine would be $95 or 1 percent of their income, whichever is higher. By the second year, however, fines could rise to as much as $695 a year. Families and people meeting certain income requirements ($14,404 for individuals and $29,326 for a family of four) would be exempt from paying the fine."

So what about people who are already retired, and therefore have no income?

 

[metta]

I think that changes and adjustments will happen with future legislation. Nothing has been set in stone but it will be very difficult for them to try and repeal the good stuff in the bill.

A Republican giving advice to the Republican legislatures about health care....not that they will listen...but it is good advice...

How GOP can rebound from its 'Waterloo'

http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/03/22/frum.healthcare.gop.strategy/index.html