Health care reform almost at the finish line... correction: it's finished

Do you have evidence for those claims, Buz? If not, I fail to see why any of us should heed your warning.

For some reason, I'm skeptical that doctors will abandon years of expensive education and all of their experience in their trade simply because of this healthcare bill.Especially since the bill gives 10% bonus payments to primary care physicians and general surgeons.That, and reading your source makes me question the results. It contradicts the Doctor's own lobby, as the article itself states, and "results are still coming in," which means they didn't even finish counting the responses before writing up a report.I don't doubt more IRS agents will be hired. I also don't particularly care. More jobs, fewer people getting away with tax evasion.

1) NO insurance is offered by the Government. THis is simply wrong. We will now be forced to purchase insurance from private industry. It's not at all unlike my State's requirement that I purchase automotive insurance in order to drive my car.2) We are required through taxes to purchase police protection, which pays your salary. Some of us (not all, of course) are footing the bill.This isn't a unique concept, Flyer. It's not new. In any government service, the many pay for a service which serves the relative few who need it, so that it's there when any of us need it. I pay for my fire and police protection regardless of whether I've been robbed or had my apartment catch fire this month. I pay for road maintenance on roads I've never driven on. My tax dollars subsidize farmers who produce food I never eat. I even pay to fund wars I don't agree with.The only difference is that this time we're forced to involve a private industry - so instead of paying for it through taxes so that you don't directly see that you're paying for services that help even those too poor to pay for them themselves, you pay the money directly. The Founding Fathers are irrelevant - they've been dead for a couple of centuries, give or take. The needs of the people of the US have changed significantly from the time of Revolution, where we didn;t have to subsidize extending power and phone grids to remote areas because they didn't exist yet; where we didn't pay for the national highway system because it didn't exist yet; where even fire protection wasn't yet paid for by taxes.Here are the facts, Flyer:1) US health care is much worse than most other First World nations who use Universal health care. The exception is the extremely small top percentage of income - if you have enough money, you get the absolute best. You and I, on the other hand, are regular schmucks, and we get vastly inferior care to what we would get in, say, Canada or the UK. Every set of numbers (infant mortality rates, etc) agrees with this, regardless of what Fox News and the Teabaggers like to claim.2) Without health insurance or a public option, people in the US die from treatable diseases. Do you think it's morally acceptable to tell someone that it's okay for them to suffer and die because they couldn;t afford health insurance? What about those who are dropped from the health insurance they did pay for because they got sick, and the insurance company decided they liked taking money more than paying it? What about those who became too sick to work, and lost their jobs and thus their insurance? Is it morally acceptable to allow people to have to choose between their life or the life of a loved one and financial ruin? The vast majority of bankruptcies in the US are from medical debts.3) Health insurance rates are currently rising at an astronomical rate, The only way to bring that rate down is to expand the risk pool - in other words, to get more people paying into the system. Insurance of all types, including your homeowners insurance, automotive insurance, etc, are the subsidization of the few who need to use the service by the many who pay their premiums every month and never actually use it, so that it will be available if you do need it.I'm fairly anonymous here, so I;m going to be more specific about something I've been vague about before.My girlfriend has HIV. She takes several very expensive medications daily in order to control the disease. Her viral count is currently kept so low that some kinds of tests wouldn;t even show her as infected.However, she graduated college just a few years ago, and could no longer be on her mother's health insurance. She has a pre-existing condition, so she couldn't get private insurance at all. Even the supplemental care her mother was paying for to add to what she got through her job was several hundred dollars monthly - there was absolutely no way she could pay.Without those pills every day, the HIV virus would regain a foothold in her body...and it would mutate rapidly, to the point that it's very likely her current drug combination would stop working. This leads to the long and extremely uncomfortable road of ever-stronger drug cocktails, with ever stronger side effects (even on her current meds, she feels sick all the time, literally all the time, every day, she feels like she might vomit. She has to take another prescription just to take down the nausea enough to eat. And it doesn't work all the time.)Her pills cost us about $100 per month. Without insurance, that number goes up to thousands of dollars. I'd basically need to devote my entire salary to paying for her pills. We'd be homeless.I fortunately managed to get her put on my insurance as a Domestic Partner. But guess what? There's a lifetime maximum of coverage. It's pretty high, because I pay for the best plan my company offers, but her pills alone will exceed that limit in less than 80 years. That sounds like a lot...but it doesn't take into account her frequent doctor's visits, all the lab work and blood tests (she needs to get regular kidney and liver panels, for instance, because her medication damages them), and normal things like getting sick.She's considering getting on partial disability, because her pills make her so sick and weak that she can't work like you or I can.Oh...and I can't change jobs, because there would be an interruption in her health care. If I get fired, she's fucked. She's working on getting a better job that provides its own health care, but job availability is rather shitty right now, as you may have noticed.So I have a rather more realistic perspective on health care than most people. When someone says that it's okay to let a few million people in the US go without health care, they are effectively saying that it would be okay to let my girlfriend die. I understand that that's not what you're thinking, but it is the effect of continuing to allow private industry to run amok with health insurance. Think about that when next you say that it's inappropriate for the government to mandate health coverage for everyone. Think about it when you say that it's okay for my girlfriend, and all the other chronically ill people like her, to die, because you don't want higher taxes.In comparison...if we were Canadian citizens, my girlfriend could walk into any clinic, see a doctor, and get the pills she needs to stay alive without paying a cent. Sure, she'd have to wait a while to see an HIV specialist...but she does here, too. It takes about a month to see her doctor. We'd move to Canada, or hell, any other First World nation...but of course, we can't afford to immigrate, and until very recently most countries had an HIV embargo - she wouldn't be allowed to immigrate in any case.That's my $.02 worth.

It's a little different, but not a lot. Yes, you can opt not to drive a car at all. But if you drive, you pay for insurance.There's no fee for not having insurance, at least not like there is in the health care bill. You just get a ticket if pulled over, can;t renew your registration (which leads to crazy late fees and even more tickets), and possibly get your car towed, which is a rather expensive ordeal. The whole thing makes the fees for not having health insurance look pretty light.I used car insurance only because it was one of the few examples I can think of where the government forces the purchase of a privately offered product. Fire, police, education, road maintenance, etc. are all better examples, but the health care bill makes a strange hybrid between the two, by mandating universal coverage but making us pay for it individually rather than collectively through taxation. The end result is similar, we just see more of the details.Honestly though - you only pay a fee for not having health insurance if you make more than over $40,000 per year and still choose not to sign up. Below that, you get government subsidies to pay for insurance - and if you're really poor, they just stick you on Medicare. Even if you're making over $40k and choose not to buy insurance, you'll pay 2% of your income ($800 at $40k per year) in taxes as a penalty. That's honestly not too bad, but should work as an incentive to find insurance and get something for that money instead of just handing it over.

It's set at 4x the poverty level, which comes out to (I believe) around $44,000. It sounds like you might be one of those caught right on the edge, where you make just a hair too much money to get subsidies, but not quite enough to afford coverage - or if you can afford coverage, you wouldn't be able to afford to use it, which isn't really better.It really depends on the state-level insurance pools. If they work as intended, you should get much more reasonable rates for your insurance, with the purchasing power of a large group instead of working as an individual.

That's not so bad at all. And you get Medicare if you make below 133% of poverty.EDIT - Holy crap - I'm just a hair above 4x the poverty level for a family of 2. If my girlfriend and I got married, we'd almost qualify for a subsidy!Edited by Rahvin, : No reason given.

Isn't it funny how few people ever mention the size of the US defense budget? They'll complain about a few million on a "bridge to nowhere" (which I agree is still laughably stupid), but won't say a word about military expenditures that are orders of magnitude larger.America is filthy rich. We just spend it all on bombs instead of improving our quality of life. We're kind of like the idiots who go without health insurance, live in horrible apartments in crime-filled areas, and generally subsist at poverty levels even though they could afford much better if they spent wisely just so that they can afford that really nice car. Except America's car is a bunch of bombs and guns.

The problem is that even American liberals are actually very conservative relative to everyone else. Saying "reduce the defense budget" immediately sends up red flags among conservatives and our silly excuse for "moderates," with only a few on the far left typically agreeing witht he notion. Reducing the defense budget is met with revulsion that you "don't support the troops," or that "you'll leave America weak for her enemies."The truth is, nuclear weapons and long-range conventional air power have rendered the traditional form of warfare moot. As long as we have nukes, you cannot invade America, full stop. As long as we have nukes and long-range bombers, we can hit you back no matter what you do.Yes, we need some form of conventional military. We use soldiers for natural disaster relief, and they're usually pretty effective. The Army Corp of Engineers is great. We should keep some form of standing army with the infrastructure to project that force anywhere in the globe just in case.But why do we have a military capable of invading and occupying both Afghanistan and Iraq in the first place? Granted, we don't have enough to do it well, but why are my tax dollars being spent to pay Team America, World Police?We spend more on defense than the rest of the world combined. Maybe if we cut that down and spent the money on curing a few more diseases, we might work up some global good will instead of hatred.

Terrorism is now and always has been best addressed through law enforcement and Special Forces deployments, not conventional warfare. Afghanistan had a basic case for a conventional war (in that the established government pre-invasion was allowing the presence of AQ training camps), but invasion of a sovereign nation is something that should only be done under the auspices of the UN, and should be done as an international joint venture against an internationally recognized rogue state that poses a significant threat to global security.Outside of direct state support, however, terrorism exists as a diverse spread of extremism. Contrary to popular belief, not all terrorists are Muslim males between the ages of 18 and 40 - Timothy McVeigh being a prime example. The recently arrested Christian militia group in Michigan who was planning on an elaborate cop-killing spree (including bombing the funeral of a previously killed police officer) would also qualify. And, of course, Ireland - need I say more?This widely diverse phenomenon is tied by really only two common descriptors: they use violence to foment fear and destabilization of political enemies (including religious, racial, anti-government, or other political targets) they otherwise have no hope of assailing, and they operate in small cells, presenting no unified front to target with a conventional military. You;re far more likely to apprehend terrorists (especially before the planed violence, which is obviously the best case scenario) during their planning and acquisition stages - which is obviously a task best suited for law enforcement, not soldiers. "Stealing" to a Teabagger is defined as "government spending I don't personally agree with."The issue is that we live in a representative republic, and this means that we will not always agree with how our tax dollars are spent on an individual level. I don't personally agree with the Iraq war (or the handling of the Afghanistan war), but that doesn't mean the government is "stealing" from me to fund both. Neither is the government "stealing" when it funds programs initiated by the legally elected legislature in a majority vote.What the Teabaggers are really saying is "We hate the American principle of a Constitutional Representative Republic, because our representatives don't always agree with me personally."I mean, I'd love to be Dictator for a Day too, but seriously.

No, I meant exactly what I wrote: terrorism is best addressed through law enforcement and targeted Special Forces actions. Those are the ways we can minimize collateral damage to an innocent populace (therefore creating fewer terrorists, as nothing justifies a "Fuck America" sentiment quite as much as having your loved ones killed in a US air raid) as well as identify, dismantle and legally prosecute terror suspects before an actual attack is successful. Case in point: the Christian militia that I mentioned in my previous post. They were identified and arrested through law enforcement before they had a chance to execute their plans.That doesn't mean there aren't other ways to address terror, just that in the vast majority of cases law enforcement and Special Forces are the best option. The Afghanistan example should not confuse you. The US had relatively sturdy international backing with regard to an invasion post-9/11. The Afghani government was a well-known state sponsor of an established terrorist group and refused to comply with any requests, not simply to extradite bin Laden, but also any requests to even attempt to put a stop to the terrorist training camps within their borders. As such, the Afghani government presented a real and tangible international threat through their status as a free haven for those who seek to destabilize international security through violence.I don't think that invading Afghanistan was necessarily unjustified. I disagree more with the implementation. I would have liked to see significantly more international involvement (though we at least had a lot more international support for Afghanistan than Iraq, with good reason), and more of a focus on tactics that minimized civilian casualties (more Special Forces, less general infantry, tanks, and bombs) and the destruction of national infrastructure as well as a full commitment to the action instead of rushing on to another war. I would rather have seen regime change take more of a background focus in that conflict, as even with regimes I personally despise I am uncomfortable with forcing the issue from a foreign perspective. Indeed, if any foreign nation decided to use a cruise missile attack on any US soil for any reason real or imagined, there would be massive outrage and public outcry, followed by a curbstomp of epic proportions. The US has a major problem with respecting national sovereignty.However, an international commitment, authorized by the UN, to address the issue of a rogue state that is posing an immediate and active threat to international security is a justification for an invasion, and I do believe that Afghanistan would have qualified as such a state pre-invasion.When a single nation violates the sovereignty of another, it's wrong. When the international community agrees that a given state poses a threat to international security and diplomatic tactics are having no effect, military force is an option. Remember, the UN was created expressly to facilitate international defense against rogue nations, primarily through diplomatic means, but also as a means of determining the justification for military action. Bush's handling of the situation was infantile, stupid, and immoral. That said, Al-Qaeda and bin Laden were already well-known to be engaged in international terrorism, and had been since at least the Clinton administration. Even without evidence specifically linking bin Laden or AQ to 9/11, a reasonable request for extradition for even past terrorist activity (which should have been well documented) should have been honored. Similarly, the Taliban should have expressed a commitment to investigating and prosecuting any terrorist camps. Neither of those things happened.Of course, once the Taliban agreed to give up bin Laden for trial in a 3rd-party nation in exchange for a cessation of hostilities, Bush should have accepted the offer instead of focusing on regime change.Again - I don't necessarily disagree with the invasion of Afghanistan in principle, as I still think the Taliban had demonstrated themselves as a real danger to international security. I do disagree with nearly every part of the execution of military action from the day the first bomb dropped until today. Again, I disagree with the implementation of military action, though I don;t necessarily disagree with military action being used in Afghanistan.I agree with you that bombs from us are more likely to harm innocent bystanders and thus instigate others to make bombs of their own. I agree that violating a nation's sovereignty through military action without UN approval as a defense against a dangerous rogue nation serves more to trigger anger towards the US and foment new terrorists than it works to remove existing ones. I agree that bombs and missiles are less effective overall than law enforcement and Special Operations actions not because of their failures to kill targets, but rather because their tendency to kill people other than the targets causes more justified outrage and prompts more people to turn to violence themselves. I use these definitions for terrorism:

quote:

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n early 1975, the Law Enforcement Assistant Administration in the United States formed the National Advisory Committee on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals. One of the five volumes that the committee wrote was entitled Disorders and Terrorism, produced by the Task Force on Disorders and Terrorism under the direction of H.H.A. Cooper, Director of the Task Force staff.[70] The Task Force classified terrorism into six categories.

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* Civil disorder — A form of collective violence interfering with the peace, security, and normal functioning of the community.
* Political terrorism — Violent criminal behavior designed primarily to generate fear in the community, or substantial segment of it, for political purposes.
* Non-Political terrorism — Terrorism that is not aimed at political purposes but which exhibits conscious design to create and maintain a high degree of fear for coercive purposes, but the end is individual or collective gain rather than the achievement of a political objective.
* Quasi-terrorism — The activities incidental to the commission of crimes of violence that are similar in form and method to genuine terrorism but which nevertheless lack its essential ingredient. It is not the main purpose of the quasi-terrorists to induce terror in the immediate victim as in the case of genuine terrorism, but the quasi-terrorist uses the modalities and techniques of the genuine terrorist and produces similar consequences and reaction.[71] For example, the fleeing felon who takes hostages is a quasi-terrorist, whose methods are similar to those of the genuine terrorist but whose purposes are quite different.
* Limited political terrorism — Genuine political terrorism is characterized by a revolutionary approach; limited political terrorism refers to acts of terrorism which are committed for ideological or political motives but which are not part of a concerted campaign to capture control of the state.
* Official or state terrorism —"referring to nations whose rule is based upon fear and oppression that reach similar to terrorism or such proportions. It may also be referred to as Structural Terrorism defined broadly as terrorist acts carried out by governments in pursuit of political objectives, often as part of their foreign policy.

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Bullshit. Yes, the Iraq war was based on lies. Yes, the whole thing is a debacle.But the expenditure of tax dollars by our legally elected representatives in Congress is not theft, even when they're wrong, and even when they fall for the snake-oil salesman's pitch. Theft requires someone to have illegally taken your property. Nothing about your taxation was done illegally. The funds may be used for a purpose that you and I would disagree with and may have even been undertaken at the top under dishonest pretense, but the fact remains that our legally elected representatives legally voted to legally spend that money, even if they were fed a line by a childish jackass of a President who epitomized the sentence "I only hear what I want to." Your opinion fails to match up with the actual definition of the word "theft." If you don't like the way your representative votes to spend your tax dollars, vote against that representative in favor of one you believe would spend tax dollars more in line with your thinking.Just because the average Congress-critter seems to be a moron who can be convinced to spend outrageous sums of money on projects and equipment even the military itself says it has no need or desire to have does not mean that any theft is happening. Remember, a great deal of the problem is that representatives from states that host military suppliers have an incentive to protect their states' economies by voting for continued military spending for those companies. It's part of how they get elected for another term - even aside from any potential corruption, if legislators from Connecticut vote against funding for submarine production and maintenance and thus ruin the economic hub of Groton, for example, they will be unlikely to be re-elected as the state's economy takes a hit.It's not theft, it's just a flawed system, some of which can be difficult to fix. And it certainly is an outrage to most of those of us who actually see the numbers. You and I do not disagree at the ethical failure of spending so much money on weapons of war while fighting against providing healthcare at a fraction of the cost.But that doesn't mean that tax dollars spent on programs you or I disagree with constitutes theft. Just watch out - it seems you're engaging in the same argument by labeling expenditures that you disagree with as theft, as well. Apathy for the plight of foreigners (real or perceived) and the poor in favor of their own personal wealth certainly does seem to be a defining trait.

Hi Dronester,I think I can wrap up most of my reply with something uncharacteristically brief:My opinions do not need to be consistent with previous or even present US policy. I need only be self consistent. Don't think for a moment that I approve of all of the various American atrocities, or the funding/training of the Mujahideen, etc.A good rule of thumb? If a military policy was established during the Cold War (which would include the massive ramp-up of "peacetime" military spending post-WW2, the policies of interventionism to prevent the spread of Communism, the entirety of the War on Drugs...), I disapprove. If a policy was enacted by Ronald Reagan for any purpose military or otherwise, chances are good that I disapprove as well.I am stating only that I think military action beyond only Special Forces missions may have been justified in Afghanistan, because AQ and bin Laden were well-known internationally to be a terrorist group with an extensive presence in Afghanistan, and the Taliban government refused to meaningfully act to police that threat to international security themselves.I am not saying that the US is not hypocritical given past policies. I am not saying that Bush's cavalier attitude was a net positive. I am not suggesting that I approve of the limited involvement of the UN. I am most especially not saying I approve of the specific execution of military action in the Afghan conflict.Remember, I'm not a right-winger claiming the US is some unspoiled innocent virgin whose honor was besmirched on 9/11, and who was completely justified in taking unilateral military action. You and I seem to agree to a significant degree in the big picture, and have only small-scale, slight disagreements over specifics.