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Read the rules in the OP before posting, please.In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up! NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action. |
On October 27 2016 16:52 xM(Z wrote:Show nested quote +On October 27 2016 15:32 The_Templar wrote:On October 27 2016 15:26 xM(Z wrote:
i think your assumption is flat out wrong; the idea that Trump is a brilliant strategist is said as a joke or at most, is some low level sarcasm(yes, by his supporters). I've been reading a lot of comments (mostly on reddit) from their end - it doesn't seem like sarcasm. Nor did it when Adams wrote about it in his blog. maybe i should've generalize less because he has his base and if Trump tells them that grabbing women by their pussies would make America great again they'll probably do it but those would inflate any(if) trait of his perceived as positive - e.g., brilliant player of medias in this case. i was referring there to the other ones that vote for Trump, aren't his base and are trying to rationalize the screw up somehow. Edit: so where i think you people fuck up - you're hell bent on showing Tump's voters that they're making a/the wrong choice. that, from start, falls on deaf ears because(except his base) people already know they'll fuck up(in the dark corners of their minds) but they'll do it anyway. you should instead focus on why they do not care about making that wrong choice.
This is not correct, except the note that his base is never going to be swayed. Independents and moderate Republicans have fled him because of how easily a convincing picture was painted of Trump being an incompetent and dangerous leader. Hell, half the time he was doing the painting himself.
To become President you have to convince the majority, and it is time well spent to convince people who usually vote for a party that the opposing one has valid views as well. You're never going to convince a hardcore Trump supporter. Same can be said of a Hillary supporter, a Obama supporter, a Romney supporter, and so on. But that's not who the fight is for and over. It's for those that aren't smitten by the dogma of a candidate. And we're seeing already that traditionally Republican localities are voting Clinton because holy shit, Trumps a mess.
Unless you mean specifically on the internet and I gotta say, a fuckton of Trump supporters on the internet are trolls who won't be voting and there's no need to argue with them.
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One can just as easily posit that the truly naive thing is to suppose that Trump has intelligence that is beyond the pale of our ability to conceive of people who think differently than the average TL user. In the end, it really doesn't matter, he's going to lose this election and the future prosperity of his business has yet to be determined.
(Besides, TL users don't all think alike, in this thread especially)
On October 27 2016 22:05 Sadist wrote:Show nested quote +On October 27 2016 20:39 iPlaY.NettleS wrote:That "conference" resulted in the entire media getting tired of his shit and changing their entire tone to be more combative. They were always combative.It was always obvious they were going to be more aggressive as the election got closer. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/27/us/obamacare-affordable-care-act-tax-penalties.html?_r=0
Health Law Tax Penalty? I’ll Take It, Millions SayWASHINGTON — The architects of the Affordable Care Act thought they had a blunt instrument to force people — even young and healthy ones — to buy insurance through the law’s online marketplaces: a tax penalty for those who remain uninsured.
It has not worked all that well, and that is at least partly to blame for soaring premiums next year on some of the health law’s insurance exchanges.
The full weight of the penalty will not be felt until April, when those who have avoided buying insurance will face penalties of around $700 a person or more. But even then that might not be enough: For the young and healthy who are badly needed to make the exchanges work, it is sometimes cheaper to pay the Internal Revenue Service than an insurance company charging large premiums, with huge deductibles.
“In my experience, the penalty has not been large enough to motivate people to sign up for insurance,” said Christine Speidel, a tax lawyer at Vermont Legal Aid.
Some people do sign up, especially those with low incomes who receive the most generous subsidies, Ms. Speidel said. But others, she said, find that they cannot afford insurance, even with subsidies, so “they grudgingly take the penalty.”
The I.R.S. says that 8.1 million returns included penalty payments for people who went without insurance in 2014, the first year in which most people were required to have coverage. A preliminary report on the latest tax-filing season, tabulating data through April, said that 5.6 million returns included penalties averaging $442 a return for people uninsured in 2015.
With the health law’s fourth open-enrollment season beginning Tuesday, consumers are anxiously weighing their options.
William H. Weber, 51, a business consultant in Atlanta, said he paid $1,400 a month this year for a Humana health plan that covered him and his wife and two children. Premiums will increase 60 percent next year, Mr. Weber said, and he does not see alternative policies that would be less expensive. So he said he was seriously considering dropping insurance and paying the penalty.
“We may roll the dice next year, go without insurance and hope we have no major medical emergencies,” Mr. Weber said. “The penalty would be less than two months of premiums.” (He said that he did not qualify for a subsidy because his income was too high, but that his son, a 20-year-old barista in New York City, had a great plan with a subsidy.)
Iris I. Burnell, the manager of a Jackson Hewitt Tax Service office on Capitol Hill, said she met this week with a client in his late 50s who has several part-time jobs and wants to buy insurance on the exchanges. But, she said, “he’s finding that the costs are prohibitive on a monthly basis, so he has resigned himself to the fact that he will have to suffer the penalty.” 60% obamacare premium hikes for some next year? God damn.... I heard the average was 25% but this is beyond the pale. The ACA has some good things in it but didnt go far enough. This was going to be a side affect since health care costs were never on the table to be cut. The people not buying insurance arent very smart though. One trip to the hospital or an expensive prescription and you are basically fucked.
This is correct.
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It's not that it is beyond the pale of our ability to conceive but rather that it does not come naturally for us to be intelligent in that way and so we do not respect it. Most people on TL are probably analytical and very systematic, less right brain oriented, it's just the type of crowd it attracts sorry.
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On October 27 2016 22:08 farvacola wrote:One can just as easily posit that the truly naive thing is to suppose that Trump has intelligence that is beyond the pale of our ability to conceive of people who think differently than the average TL user. In the end, it really doesn't matter, he's going to lose this election and the future prosperity of his business has yet to be determined. (Besides, TL users don't all think alike, in this thread especially) Show nested quote +On October 27 2016 22:05 Sadist wrote:On October 27 2016 20:39 iPlaY.NettleS wrote:That "conference" resulted in the entire media getting tired of his shit and changing their entire tone to be more combative. They were always combative.It was always obvious they were going to be more aggressive as the election got closer. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/27/us/obamacare-affordable-care-act-tax-penalties.html?_r=0
Health Law Tax Penalty? I’ll Take It, Millions SayWASHINGTON — The architects of the Affordable Care Act thought they had a blunt instrument to force people — even young and healthy ones — to buy insurance through the law’s online marketplaces: a tax penalty for those who remain uninsured.
It has not worked all that well, and that is at least partly to blame for soaring premiums next year on some of the health law’s insurance exchanges.
The full weight of the penalty will not be felt until April, when those who have avoided buying insurance will face penalties of around $700 a person or more. But even then that might not be enough: For the young and healthy who are badly needed to make the exchanges work, it is sometimes cheaper to pay the Internal Revenue Service than an insurance company charging large premiums, with huge deductibles.
“In my experience, the penalty has not been large enough to motivate people to sign up for insurance,” said Christine Speidel, a tax lawyer at Vermont Legal Aid.
Some people do sign up, especially those with low incomes who receive the most generous subsidies, Ms. Speidel said. But others, she said, find that they cannot afford insurance, even with subsidies, so “they grudgingly take the penalty.”
The I.R.S. says that 8.1 million returns included penalty payments for people who went without insurance in 2014, the first year in which most people were required to have coverage. A preliminary report on the latest tax-filing season, tabulating data through April, said that 5.6 million returns included penalties averaging $442 a return for people uninsured in 2015.
With the health law’s fourth open-enrollment season beginning Tuesday, consumers are anxiously weighing their options.
William H. Weber, 51, a business consultant in Atlanta, said he paid $1,400 a month this year for a Humana health plan that covered him and his wife and two children. Premiums will increase 60 percent next year, Mr. Weber said, and he does not see alternative policies that would be less expensive. So he said he was seriously considering dropping insurance and paying the penalty.
“We may roll the dice next year, go without insurance and hope we have no major medical emergencies,” Mr. Weber said. “The penalty would be less than two months of premiums.” (He said that he did not qualify for a subsidy because his income was too high, but that his son, a 20-year-old barista in New York City, had a great plan with a subsidy.)
Iris I. Burnell, the manager of a Jackson Hewitt Tax Service office on Capitol Hill, said she met this week with a client in his late 50s who has several part-time jobs and wants to buy insurance on the exchanges. But, she said, “he’s finding that the costs are prohibitive on a monthly basis, so he has resigned himself to the fact that he will have to suffer the penalty.” 60% obamacare premium hikes for some next year? God damn.... I heard the average was 25% but this is beyond the pale. The ACA has some good things in it but didnt go far enough. This was going to be a side affect since health care costs were never on the table to be cut. The people not buying insurance arent very smart though. One trip to the hospital or an expensive prescription and you are basically fucked. This is correct.
The other thing to point out with this whole Obamacare price changes is the fact that the subsidies are indexed to whatever the "second least expensive" silver plan on the exchange is (see here). This means that if the subsidies aren't going up much, which they aren't, then there is at least one provider who is maintaining prices near the previous year's level. Some plans have gone up by quite a bit, but you have the choice now whether you choose to remain in that plan or switch to a more affordable plan of similar quality, maybe your doctor isn't in the plan, but at least you can keep one for about the same amount of money.
Welcome to the free market folks now you have information and the ability of choice. I doubt the voucher program supported by republicans years ago would have resulted in a much better situation than where we are now.
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To me Obamacare is like this:
Health insurance companies are no longer able to screw over people (through annual or lifetime caps, or denying coverage to people with health issues), so what they instead do is set their rates really high and screw over everyone except the rich.
Obamacare is proper, normal legislation which should be helping people get good health coverage. Health insurance companies are all hell-spawn which don't mind letting people die if it means more money in their pockets.
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That I totally agree with. Both sides are saying "Oh my bandaid on the infection will cure it" and both sides are fuckin wrong.
I don't care what the political parties name is. I want someone to get the goddamn testicles to fight the absurd amount of power pharmaceuticals hold. It is destroying us.
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On October 27 2016 22:25 biology]major wrote:
It's not that it is beyond the pale of our ability to conceive but rather that it does not come naturally for us to be intelligent in that way and so we do not respect it. Most people on TL are probably analytical and very systematic, less right brain oriented, it's just the type of crowd it attracts sorry.
You really ought to expose yourself to some of TL's more storied disputes (in this very thread, no less) before deciding that you can draw broad lines as to how TL posters think. On average, you may be right, but this and other general threads attract a lot of extremely different people and you aren't doing them any justice with this basic qua myers-briggs hand-waving. However, if it makes you feel better to pretend that the bulk of anti-Trump TL posters are all alike, go right on ahead, just don't be confused when folks discount your opinion of them or others.
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On October 27 2016 22:26 Trainrunnef wrote:Show nested quote +On October 27 2016 22:08 farvacola wrote:One can just as easily posit that the truly naive thing is to suppose that Trump has intelligence that is beyond the pale of our ability to conceive of people who think differently than the average TL user. In the end, it really doesn't matter, he's going to lose this election and the future prosperity of his business has yet to be determined. (Besides, TL users don't all think alike, in this thread especially) On October 27 2016 22:05 Sadist wrote:On October 27 2016 20:39 iPlaY.NettleS wrote:That "conference" resulted in the entire media getting tired of his shit and changing their entire tone to be more combative. They were always combative.It was always obvious they were going to be more aggressive as the election got closer. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/27/us/obamacare-affordable-care-act-tax-penalties.html?_r=0
Health Law Tax Penalty? I’ll Take It, Millions SayWASHINGTON — The architects of the Affordable Care Act thought they had a blunt instrument to force people — even young and healthy ones — to buy insurance through the law’s online marketplaces: a tax penalty for those who remain uninsured.
It has not worked all that well, and that is at least partly to blame for soaring premiums next year on some of the health law’s insurance exchanges.
The full weight of the penalty will not be felt until April, when those who have avoided buying insurance will face penalties of around $700 a person or more. But even then that might not be enough: For the young and healthy who are badly needed to make the exchanges work, it is sometimes cheaper to pay the Internal Revenue Service than an insurance company charging large premiums, with huge deductibles.
“In my experience, the penalty has not been large enough to motivate people to sign up for insurance,” said Christine Speidel, a tax lawyer at Vermont Legal Aid.
Some people do sign up, especially those with low incomes who receive the most generous subsidies, Ms. Speidel said. But others, she said, find that they cannot afford insurance, even with subsidies, so “they grudgingly take the penalty.”
The I.R.S. says that 8.1 million returns included penalty payments for people who went without insurance in 2014, the first year in which most people were required to have coverage. A preliminary report on the latest tax-filing season, tabulating data through April, said that 5.6 million returns included penalties averaging $442 a return for people uninsured in 2015.
With the health law’s fourth open-enrollment season beginning Tuesday, consumers are anxiously weighing their options.
William H. Weber, 51, a business consultant in Atlanta, said he paid $1,400 a month this year for a Humana health plan that covered him and his wife and two children. Premiums will increase 60 percent next year, Mr. Weber said, and he does not see alternative policies that would be less expensive. So he said he was seriously considering dropping insurance and paying the penalty.
“We may roll the dice next year, go without insurance and hope we have no major medical emergencies,” Mr. Weber said. “The penalty would be less than two months of premiums.” (He said that he did not qualify for a subsidy because his income was too high, but that his son, a 20-year-old barista in New York City, had a great plan with a subsidy.)
Iris I. Burnell, the manager of a Jackson Hewitt Tax Service office on Capitol Hill, said she met this week with a client in his late 50s who has several part-time jobs and wants to buy insurance on the exchanges. But, she said, “he’s finding that the costs are prohibitive on a monthly basis, so he has resigned himself to the fact that he will have to suffer the penalty.” 60% obamacare premium hikes for some next year? God damn.... I heard the average was 25% but this is beyond the pale. The ACA has some good things in it but didnt go far enough. This was going to be a side affect since health care costs were never on the table to be cut. The people not buying insurance arent very smart though. One trip to the hospital or an expensive prescription and you are basically fucked. This is correct. The other thing to point out with this whole Obamacare price changes is the fact that the subsidies are indexed to whatever the "second least expensive" silver plan on the exchange is (see here). This means that if the subsidies aren't going up much, which they aren't, then there is at least one provider who is maintaining prices near the previous year's level. Some plans have gone up by quite a bit, but you have the choice now whether you choose to remain in that plan or switch to a more affordable plan of similar quality, maybe your doctor isn't in the plan, but at least you can keep one for about the same amount of money. Welcome to the free market folks now you have information and the ability of choice. I doubt the voucher program supported by republicans years ago would have resulted in a much better situation than where we are now.
On October 27 2016 22:27 Incognoto wrote:
To me Obamacare is like this:
Health insurance companies are no longer able to screw over people (through annual or lifetime caps, or denying coverage to people with health issues), so what they instead do is set their rates really high and screw over everyone except the rich.
Obamacare is proper, normal legislation which should be helping people get good health coverage. Health insurance companies are all hell-spawn which don't mind letting people die if it means more money in their pockets.
These are both fairly accurate; I think it's highly likely (and I hope) that Democrats use the successes and failures of Obamacare as a means of showing everyone why single payer or a more hybridized system like Germany's will work here in the US.
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On October 27 2016 20:39 iPlaY.NettleS wrote:Show nested quote +That "conference" resulted in the entire media getting tired of his shit and changing their entire tone to be more combative. They were always combative.It was always obvious they were going to be more aggressive as the election got closer. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/27/us/obamacare-affordable-care-act-tax-penalties.html?_r=0
Health Law Tax Penalty? I’ll Take It, Millions SayShow nested quote +WASHINGTON — The architects of the Affordable Care Act thought they had a blunt instrument to force people — even young and healthy ones — to buy insurance through the law’s online marketplaces: a tax penalty for those who remain uninsured.
It has not worked all that well, and that is at least partly to blame for soaring premiums next year on some of the health law’s insurance exchanges.
The full weight of the penalty will not be felt until April, when those who have avoided buying insurance will face penalties of around $700 a person or more. But even then that might not be enough: For the young and healthy who are badly needed to make the exchanges work, it is sometimes cheaper to pay the Internal Revenue Service than an insurance company charging large premiums, with huge deductibles.
“In my experience, the penalty has not been large enough to motivate people to sign up for insurance,” said Christine Speidel, a tax lawyer at Vermont Legal Aid.
Some people do sign up, especially those with low incomes who receive the most generous subsidies, Ms. Speidel said. But others, she said, find that they cannot afford insurance, even with subsidies, so “they grudgingly take the penalty.”
The I.R.S. says that 8.1 million returns included penalty payments for people who went without insurance in 2014, the first year in which most people were required to have coverage. A preliminary report on the latest tax-filing season, tabulating data through April, said that 5.6 million returns included penalties averaging $442 a return for people uninsured in 2015.
With the health law’s fourth open-enrollment season beginning Tuesday, consumers are anxiously weighing their options.
William H. Weber, 51, a business consultant in Atlanta, said he paid $1,400 a month this year for a Humana health plan that covered him and his wife and two children. Premiums will increase 60 percent next year, Mr. Weber said, and he does not see alternative policies that would be less expensive. So he said he was seriously considering dropping insurance and paying the penalty.
“We may roll the dice next year, go without insurance and hope we have no major medical emergencies,” Mr. Weber said. “The penalty would be less than two months of premiums.” (He said that he did not qualify for a subsidy because his income was too high, but that his son, a 20-year-old barista in New York City, had a great plan with a subsidy.)
Iris I. Burnell, the manager of a Jackson Hewitt Tax Service office on Capitol Hill, said she met this week with a client in his late 50s who has several part-time jobs and wants to buy insurance on the exchanges. But, she said, “he’s finding that the costs are prohibitive on a monthly basis, so he has resigned himself to the fact that he will have to suffer the penalty.” 60% obamacare premium hikes for some next year? God damn.... I heard the average was 25% but this is beyond the pale.
http://www.dictionary.com/browse/average
On a serious note:
I'm just waiting till the full penalty for the ACA kicks in.
As I mentioned before, back in the day two parties got together and worked together to fix big government programs like Social Security and Medicare because the initial legislation didn't get it quite right. And once they finally made the needed tweaks the programs worked pretty well. Now the Republicans would rather score petty political points and hurt people rather than finally admit "gee this program actually is okay and we can improve it". That's how Dems should attack them on it IMO.
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On October 27 2016 22:34 farvacola wrote:Show nested quote +On October 27 2016 22:26 Trainrunnef wrote:On October 27 2016 22:08 farvacola wrote:One can just as easily posit that the truly naive thing is to suppose that Trump has intelligence that is beyond the pale of our ability to conceive of people who think differently than the average TL user. In the end, it really doesn't matter, he's going to lose this election and the future prosperity of his business has yet to be determined. (Besides, TL users don't all think alike, in this thread especially) On October 27 2016 22:05 Sadist wrote:On October 27 2016 20:39 iPlaY.NettleS wrote:That "conference" resulted in the entire media getting tired of his shit and changing their entire tone to be more combative. They were always combative.It was always obvious they were going to be more aggressive as the election got closer. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/27/us/obamacare-affordable-care-act-tax-penalties.html?_r=0
Health Law Tax Penalty? I’ll Take It, Millions SayWASHINGTON — The architects of the Affordable Care Act thought they had a blunt instrument to force people — even young and healthy ones — to buy insurance through the law’s online marketplaces: a tax penalty for those who remain uninsured.
It has not worked all that well, and that is at least partly to blame for soaring premiums next year on some of the health law’s insurance exchanges.
The full weight of the penalty will not be felt until April, when those who have avoided buying insurance will face penalties of around $700 a person or more. But even then that might not be enough: For the young and healthy who are badly needed to make the exchanges work, it is sometimes cheaper to pay the Internal Revenue Service than an insurance company charging large premiums, with huge deductibles.
“In my experience, the penalty has not been large enough to motivate people to sign up for insurance,” said Christine Speidel, a tax lawyer at Vermont Legal Aid.
Some people do sign up, especially those with low incomes who receive the most generous subsidies, Ms. Speidel said. But others, she said, find that they cannot afford insurance, even with subsidies, so “they grudgingly take the penalty.”
The I.R.S. says that 8.1 million returns included penalty payments for people who went without insurance in 2014, the first year in which most people were required to have coverage. A preliminary report on the latest tax-filing season, tabulating data through April, said that 5.6 million returns included penalties averaging $442 a return for people uninsured in 2015.
With the health law’s fourth open-enrollment season beginning Tuesday, consumers are anxiously weighing their options.
William H. Weber, 51, a business consultant in Atlanta, said he paid $1,400 a month this year for a Humana health plan that covered him and his wife and two children. Premiums will increase 60 percent next year, Mr. Weber said, and he does not see alternative policies that would be less expensive. So he said he was seriously considering dropping insurance and paying the penalty.
“We may roll the dice next year, go without insurance and hope we have no major medical emergencies,” Mr. Weber said. “The penalty would be less than two months of premiums.” (He said that he did not qualify for a subsidy because his income was too high, but that his son, a 20-year-old barista in New York City, had a great plan with a subsidy.)
Iris I. Burnell, the manager of a Jackson Hewitt Tax Service office on Capitol Hill, said she met this week with a client in his late 50s who has several part-time jobs and wants to buy insurance on the exchanges. But, she said, “he’s finding that the costs are prohibitive on a monthly basis, so he has resigned himself to the fact that he will have to suffer the penalty.” 60% obamacare premium hikes for some next year? God damn.... I heard the average was 25% but this is beyond the pale. The ACA has some good things in it but didnt go far enough. This was going to be a side affect since health care costs were never on the table to be cut. The people not buying insurance arent very smart though. One trip to the hospital or an expensive prescription and you are basically fucked. This is correct. The other thing to point out with this whole Obamacare price changes is the fact that the subsidies are indexed to whatever the "second least expensive" silver plan on the exchange is (see here). This means that if the subsidies aren't going up much, which they aren't, then there is at least one provider who is maintaining prices near the previous year's level. Some plans have gone up by quite a bit, but you have the choice now whether you choose to remain in that plan or switch to a more affordable plan of similar quality, maybe your doctor isn't in the plan, but at least you can keep one for about the same amount of money. Welcome to the free market folks now you have information and the ability of choice. I doubt the voucher program supported by republicans years ago would have resulted in a much better situation than where we are now. Show nested quote +On October 27 2016 22:27 Incognoto wrote:
To me Obamacare is like this:
Health insurance companies are no longer able to screw over people (through annual or lifetime caps, or denying coverage to people with health issues), so what they instead do is set their rates really high and screw over everyone except the rich.
Obamacare is proper, normal legislation which should be helping people get good health coverage. Health insurance companies are all hell-spawn which don't mind letting people die if it means more money in their pockets. These are both fairly accurate; I think it's highly likely (and I hope) that Democrats use the successes and failures of Obamacare as a means of showing everyone why single payer or a more hybridized system like Germany's will work here in the US.
The frustrating thing about how the ACA has been handled is that everyone who has been paying attention knows several ways it can be made to work better for people, but Congress (unsurprisingly) refuses to touch it.
The basic problem with the exchanges is that the proportion of sick people who have signed up is larger than expected, making policies more expensive. This has made it difficult for some insurers to make money on the exchanges (like United Healthcare and Aetna) which have historically only participated in the employer-based market where customers tend to have higher incomes and to be relatively healthy.
The fix this, the proportion of healthy people who use the exchanges needs to be increased. There are a lot of ways to do this:
1. Allow everyone 55 and over to use Medicaid. This would cause a group with high healthcare expenses to leave the exchanges causing premiums to decrease.
2. Strengthen the individual mandate. I don't have much sympathy for people who don't buy health insurance. They are basically saying "if I have a catastrophic healthcare emergency, I am okay with have society pay for that." If the penalty for not having insurance is increased more healthy young people will enter the exchanges causing premiums to decrease.
3. Tweak the benchmark plans so that insurance companies can offer cheaper higher-deductible plans, which would be attractive to young, healthy people.
4. Increase the income level where the subsidies start to phase out (I think currently the subsidy if phased out once a person hits 400% of the poverty line or something like that). This will cause more middle-income people to join the exchanges.
5. Allow insurers to price discriminate based upon age. Currently insurers are restricted from exceeding a 3:1 ratio for premiums paid based upon age. This means that younger healthy people are subsidizing the insurance policies of the elderly. If this ratio is increased, premiums would fall for young healthy people and more would enter the exchanges.
6. This will never happen, but they really should get rid of tax breaks for employer sponsored health plans. This would cause more employers to require their employees to purchase insurance on the exchanges, and would dramatically increase the proportion of healthy people using them.
7. Also unlikely, but a public option will really help by ensuring that every county has at least one available healthcare plan on the exchanges.
All that being said, and despite it's other issues, I don't think it's fair to call the law a failure. Yes, it hasn't really transformed the insurance market and it kind of screws over healthy middle-income people who have to pay high premiums now. However, it has been an enormous success in increasing access to coverage by allowing millions of people to purchase insurance for the first time.
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United States42654 Posts
On October 27 2016 22:25 biology]major wrote:
It's not that it is beyond the pale of our ability to conceive but rather that it does not come naturally for us to be intelligent in that way and so we do not respect it. Most people on TL are probably analytical and very systematic, less right brain oriented, it's just the type of crowd it attracts sorry.
Alternative perspective. His business success was due to being the heir of a successful business and has been average, with some notable failures. Decisions in which he has had his hand in personally have backfired significantly while his core business keeps him afloat. His obsession with running small time scams, from claiming shit like small business recovery grants in the wake of 9/11 that were only worth thousands of dollars to trying to bully out individual tenants, have displayed an unworthy pettiness. Trump succeeds in spite of himself, not because of himself. The momentum of being born into that kind of aristocracy was so much that even Trump couldn't derail it, despite continually starting feuds with everyone he interacts with, from the city of Palm Beach to Scottish farmers to poor tenants to his own contractors, none of which represented good business.
Trump was seduced by his own propaganda. He started to believe his own myth and this election is him being shown that the Emperor has no clothes.
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On October 27 2016 23:14 Mercy13 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 27 2016 22:34 farvacola wrote:On October 27 2016 22:26 Trainrunnef wrote:On October 27 2016 22:08 farvacola wrote:One can just as easily posit that the truly naive thing is to suppose that Trump has intelligence that is beyond the pale of our ability to conceive of people who think differently than the average TL user. In the end, it really doesn't matter, he's going to lose this election and the future prosperity of his business has yet to be determined. (Besides, TL users don't all think alike, in this thread especially) On October 27 2016 22:05 Sadist wrote:On October 27 2016 20:39 iPlaY.NettleS wrote:That "conference" resulted in the entire media getting tired of his shit and changing their entire tone to be more combative. They were always combative.It was always obvious they were going to be more aggressive as the election got closer. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/27/us/obamacare-affordable-care-act-tax-penalties.html?_r=0
Health Law Tax Penalty? I’ll Take It, Millions SayWASHINGTON — The architects of the Affordable Care Act thought they had a blunt instrument to force people — even young and healthy ones — to buy insurance through the law’s online marketplaces: a tax penalty for those who remain uninsured.
It has not worked all that well, and that is at least partly to blame for soaring premiums next year on some of the health law’s insurance exchanges.
The full weight of the penalty will not be felt until April, when those who have avoided buying insurance will face penalties of around $700 a person or more. But even then that might not be enough: For the young and healthy who are badly needed to make the exchanges work, it is sometimes cheaper to pay the Internal Revenue Service than an insurance company charging large premiums, with huge deductibles.
“In my experience, the penalty has not been large enough to motivate people to sign up for insurance,” said Christine Speidel, a tax lawyer at Vermont Legal Aid.
Some people do sign up, especially those with low incomes who receive the most generous subsidies, Ms. Speidel said. But others, she said, find that they cannot afford insurance, even with subsidies, so “they grudgingly take the penalty.”
The I.R.S. says that 8.1 million returns included penalty payments for people who went without insurance in 2014, the first year in which most people were required to have coverage. A preliminary report on the latest tax-filing season, tabulating data through April, said that 5.6 million returns included penalties averaging $442 a return for people uninsured in 2015.
With the health law’s fourth open-enrollment season beginning Tuesday, consumers are anxiously weighing their options.
William H. Weber, 51, a business consultant in Atlanta, said he paid $1,400 a month this year for a Humana health plan that covered him and his wife and two children. Premiums will increase 60 percent next year, Mr. Weber said, and he does not see alternative policies that would be less expensive. So he said he was seriously considering dropping insurance and paying the penalty.
“We may roll the dice next year, go without insurance and hope we have no major medical emergencies,” Mr. Weber said. “The penalty would be less than two months of premiums.” (He said that he did not qualify for a subsidy because his income was too high, but that his son, a 20-year-old barista in New York City, had a great plan with a subsidy.)
Iris I. Burnell, the manager of a Jackson Hewitt Tax Service office on Capitol Hill, said she met this week with a client in his late 50s who has several part-time jobs and wants to buy insurance on the exchanges. But, she said, “he’s finding that the costs are prohibitive on a monthly basis, so he has resigned himself to the fact that he will have to suffer the penalty.” 60% obamacare premium hikes for some next year? God damn.... I heard the average was 25% but this is beyond the pale. The ACA has some good things in it but didnt go far enough. This was going to be a side affect since health care costs were never on the table to be cut. The people not buying insurance arent very smart though. One trip to the hospital or an expensive prescription and you are basically fucked. This is correct. The other thing to point out with this whole Obamacare price changes is the fact that the subsidies are indexed to whatever the "second least expensive" silver plan on the exchange is (see here). This means that if the subsidies aren't going up much, which they aren't, then there is at least one provider who is maintaining prices near the previous year's level. Some plans have gone up by quite a bit, but you have the choice now whether you choose to remain in that plan or switch to a more affordable plan of similar quality, maybe your doctor isn't in the plan, but at least you can keep one for about the same amount of money. Welcome to the free market folks now you have information and the ability of choice. I doubt the voucher program supported by republicans years ago would have resulted in a much better situation than where we are now. On October 27 2016 22:27 Incognoto wrote:
To me Obamacare is like this:
Health insurance companies are no longer able to screw over people (through annual or lifetime caps, or denying coverage to people with health issues), so what they instead do is set their rates really high and screw over everyone except the rich.
Obamacare is proper, normal legislation which should be helping people get good health coverage. Health insurance companies are all hell-spawn which don't mind letting people die if it means more money in their pockets. These are both fairly accurate; I think it's highly likely (and I hope) that Democrats use the successes and failures of Obamacare as a means of showing everyone why single payer or a more hybridized system like Germany's will work here in the US. The frustrating thing about how the ACA has been handled is that everyone who has been paying attention knows several ways it can be made to work better for people, but Congress (unsurprisingly) refuses to touch it. The basic problem with the exchanges is that the proportion of sick people who have signed up is larger than expected, making policies more expensive. This has made it difficult for some insurers to make money on the exchanges (like United Healthcare and Aetna) which have historically only participated in the employer-based market where customers tend to have higher incomes and to be relatively healthy. The fix this, the proportion of healthy people who use the exchanges needs to be increased. There are a lot of ways to do this: 1. Allow everyone 55 and over to use Medicaid. This would cause a group with high healthcare expenses to leave the exchanges causing premiums to decrease. 2. Strengthen the individual mandate. I don't have much sympathy for people who don't buy health insurance. They are basically saying "if I have a catastrophic healthcare emergency, I am okay with have society pay for that." If the penalty for not having insurance is increased more healthy young people will enter the exchanges causing premiums to decrease. 3. Tweak the benchmark plans so that insurance companies can offer cheaper higher-deductible plans, which would be attractive to young, healthy people.4. Increase the income level where the subsidies start to phase out (I think currently the subsidy if phased out once a person hits 400% of the poverty line or something like that). This will cause more middle-income people to join the exchanges. 5. Allow insurers to price discriminate based upon age. Currently insurers are restricted from exceeding a 3:1 ratio for premiums paid based upon age. This means that younger healthy people are subsidizing the insurance policies of the elderly. If this ratio is increased, premiums would fall for young healthy people and more would enter the exchanges. 6. This will never happen, but they really should get rid of tax breaks for employer sponsored health plans. This would cause more employers to require their employees to purchase insurance on the exchanges, and would dramatically increase the proportion of healthy people using them. 7. Also unlikely, but a public option will really help by ensuring that every county has at least one available healthcare plan on the exchanges. All that being said, and despite it's other issues, I don't think it's fair to call the law a failure. Yes, it hasn't really transformed the insurance market and it kind of screws over healthy middle-income people who have to pay high premiums now. However, it has been an enormous success in increasing access to coverage by allowing millions of people to purchase insurance for the first time.
Re: #3
They have catastrophic only coverage for 30 years and under.
Re: #4
I think you mean decrease EDIT: never mind i misread. And i would imagine this would be paired with a tax increase no? Who else would cover the cost?
Re: #6
The incentive for insurance companies is to make money. Whether they are getting that profit from the exchange or from employer provided plans doesn't really make a difference. Sure more people would be using the exchange, but those people would have already been purchasing health insurance through a company so the benefits would be negligible if any at all. The tax breaks for the company would become the subsidy for the individual so there's not much ground to gain there.
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Worth pointing out there's some good stuff going on in the healthcare space. PCMH models and exclusive networks on the payor side, and a lot of pretty neat engagement stuff for consumers. All stuff that decreases cost of care longer term. It's just not quite there yet and consumers aren't getting the savings.
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Man this election got pretty boring pretty quick. Ain't shit going on.
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The real way to fix ACA is to tackle healthcare costs. Anything else is a bandaid that will eventually fail.
Things like negotiated drug prices to enter the US market. Medicare for all where the government caps the price for certain procedures and drugs. Optimizing the medical records system would be nice too when i hear about the headaches it causes.
The billing system for healthcare is completely fucked. If you go to the hospital you get 5 or 6 different bills due to each specialist and department having their own billing office.
Its like going to a grocery store and having a separate bill for each food group you buy. Oh and you get the bill later and have no idea what each good costs when you buy them!
Edit:
Also i agree with the post above . We need to divorce insurance plans from employment completely. Nixon fucked us royally with that one.
COBRA is expensive as hell if anyone gets laid off. You were already laid off, why should you be double fucked and have your healthcare insurance taken away. Divorcing it from employment would also promote people to switch jobs more often and raise incomes. Its alot harder to leave a job with a family of 4 knowing you will be without healthcare insurance for a few months
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On October 27 2016 23:35 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On October 27 2016 22:25 biology]major wrote:
It's not that it is beyond the pale of our ability to conceive but rather that it does not come naturally for us to be intelligent in that way and so we do not respect it. Most people on TL are probably analytical and very systematic, less right brain oriented, it's just the type of crowd it attracts sorry. Alternative perspective. His business success was due to being the heir of a successful business and has been average, with some notable failures. Decisions in which he has had his hand in personally have backfired significantly while his core business keeps him afloat. His obsession with running small time scams, from claiming shit like small business recovery grants in the wake of 9/11 that were only worth thousands of dollars to trying to bully out individual tenants, have displayed an unworthy pettiness. Trump succeeds in spite of himself, not because of himself. The momentum of being born into that kind of aristocracy was so much that even Trump couldn't derail it, despite continually starting feuds with everyone he interacts with, from the city of Palm Beach to Scottish farmers to poor tenants to his own contractors, none of which represented good business. Trump was seduced by his own propaganda. He started to believe his own myth and this election is him being shown that the Emperor has no clothes.
Trump is shit got it
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On October 27 2016 23:37 Trainrunnef wrote:Show nested quote +On October 27 2016 23:14 Mercy13 wrote:On October 27 2016 22:34 farvacola wrote:On October 27 2016 22:26 Trainrunnef wrote:On October 27 2016 22:08 farvacola wrote:One can just as easily posit that the truly naive thing is to suppose that Trump has intelligence that is beyond the pale of our ability to conceive of people who think differently than the average TL user. In the end, it really doesn't matter, he's going to lose this election and the future prosperity of his business has yet to be determined. (Besides, TL users don't all think alike, in this thread especially) On October 27 2016 22:05 Sadist wrote:On October 27 2016 20:39 iPlaY.NettleS wrote:That "conference" resulted in the entire media getting tired of his shit and changing their entire tone to be more combative. They were always combative.It was always obvious they were going to be more aggressive as the election got closer. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/27/us/obamacare-affordable-care-act-tax-penalties.html?_r=0
Health Law Tax Penalty? I’ll Take It, Millions SayWASHINGTON — The architects of the Affordable Care Act thought they had a blunt instrument to force people — even young and healthy ones — to buy insurance through the law’s online marketplaces: a tax penalty for those who remain uninsured.
It has not worked all that well, and that is at least partly to blame for soaring premiums next year on some of the health law’s insurance exchanges.
The full weight of the penalty will not be felt until April, when those who have avoided buying insurance will face penalties of around $700 a person or more. But even then that might not be enough: For the young and healthy who are badly needed to make the exchanges work, it is sometimes cheaper to pay the Internal Revenue Service than an insurance company charging large premiums, with huge deductibles.
“In my experience, the penalty has not been large enough to motivate people to sign up for insurance,” said Christine Speidel, a tax lawyer at Vermont Legal Aid.
Some people do sign up, especially those with low incomes who receive the most generous subsidies, Ms. Speidel said. But others, she said, find that they cannot afford insurance, even with subsidies, so “they grudgingly take the penalty.”
The I.R.S. says that 8.1 million returns included penalty payments for people who went without insurance in 2014, the first year in which most people were required to have coverage. A preliminary report on the latest tax-filing season, tabulating data through April, said that 5.6 million returns included penalties averaging $442 a return for people uninsured in 2015.
With the health law’s fourth open-enrollment season beginning Tuesday, consumers are anxiously weighing their options.
William H. Weber, 51, a business consultant in Atlanta, said he paid $1,400 a month this year for a Humana health plan that covered him and his wife and two children. Premiums will increase 60 percent next year, Mr. Weber said, and he does not see alternative policies that would be less expensive. So he said he was seriously considering dropping insurance and paying the penalty.
“We may roll the dice next year, go without insurance and hope we have no major medical emergencies,” Mr. Weber said. “The penalty would be less than two months of premiums.” (He said that he did not qualify for a subsidy because his income was too high, but that his son, a 20-year-old barista in New York City, had a great plan with a subsidy.)
Iris I. Burnell, the manager of a Jackson Hewitt Tax Service office on Capitol Hill, said she met this week with a client in his late 50s who has several part-time jobs and wants to buy insurance on the exchanges. But, she said, “he’s finding that the costs are prohibitive on a monthly basis, so he has resigned himself to the fact that he will have to suffer the penalty.” 60% obamacare premium hikes for some next year? God damn.... I heard the average was 25% but this is beyond the pale. The ACA has some good things in it but didnt go far enough. This was going to be a side affect since health care costs were never on the table to be cut. The people not buying insurance arent very smart though. One trip to the hospital or an expensive prescription and you are basically fucked. This is correct. The other thing to point out with this whole Obamacare price changes is the fact that the subsidies are indexed to whatever the "second least expensive" silver plan on the exchange is (see here). This means that if the subsidies aren't going up much, which they aren't, then there is at least one provider who is maintaining prices near the previous year's level. Some plans have gone up by quite a bit, but you have the choice now whether you choose to remain in that plan or switch to a more affordable plan of similar quality, maybe your doctor isn't in the plan, but at least you can keep one for about the same amount of money. Welcome to the free market folks now you have information and the ability of choice. I doubt the voucher program supported by republicans years ago would have resulted in a much better situation than where we are now. On October 27 2016 22:27 Incognoto wrote:
To me Obamacare is like this:
Health insurance companies are no longer able to screw over people (through annual or lifetime caps, or denying coverage to people with health issues), so what they instead do is set their rates really high and screw over everyone except the rich.
Obamacare is proper, normal legislation which should be helping people get good health coverage. Health insurance companies are all hell-spawn which don't mind letting people die if it means more money in their pockets. These are both fairly accurate; I think it's highly likely (and I hope) that Democrats use the successes and failures of Obamacare as a means of showing everyone why single payer or a more hybridized system like Germany's will work here in the US. The frustrating thing about how the ACA has been handled is that everyone who has been paying attention knows several ways it can be made to work better for people, but Congress (unsurprisingly) refuses to touch it. The basic problem with the exchanges is that the proportion of sick people who have signed up is larger than expected, making policies more expensive. This has made it difficult for some insurers to make money on the exchanges (like United Healthcare and Aetna) which have historically only participated in the employer-based market where customers tend to have higher incomes and to be relatively healthy. The fix this, the proportion of healthy people who use the exchanges needs to be increased. There are a lot of ways to do this: 1. Allow everyone 55 and over to use Medicaid. This would cause a group with high healthcare expenses to leave the exchanges causing premiums to decrease. 2. Strengthen the individual mandate. I don't have much sympathy for people who don't buy health insurance. They are basically saying "if I have a catastrophic healthcare emergency, I am okay with have society pay for that." If the penalty for not having insurance is increased more healthy young people will enter the exchanges causing premiums to decrease. 3. Tweak the benchmark plans so that insurance companies can offer cheaper higher-deductible plans, which would be attractive to young, healthy people.4. Increase the income level where the subsidies start to phase out (I think currently the subsidy if phased out once a person hits 400% of the poverty line or something like that). This will cause more middle-income people to join the exchanges. 5. Allow insurers to price discriminate based upon age. Currently insurers are restricted from exceeding a 3:1 ratio for premiums paid based upon age. This means that younger healthy people are subsidizing the insurance policies of the elderly. If this ratio is increased, premiums would fall for young healthy people and more would enter the exchanges. 6. This will never happen, but they really should get rid of tax breaks for employer sponsored health plans. This would cause more employers to require their employees to purchase insurance on the exchanges, and would dramatically increase the proportion of healthy people using them. 7. Also unlikely, but a public option will really help by ensuring that every county has at least one available healthcare plan on the exchanges. All that being said, and despite it's other issues, I don't think it's fair to call the law a failure. Yes, it hasn't really transformed the insurance market and it kind of screws over healthy middle-income people who have to pay high premiums now. However, it has been an enormous success in increasing access to coverage by allowing millions of people to purchase insurance for the first time. Re: #3 They have catastrophic only coverage for 30 years and under. Re: #4 I think you mean decrease EDIT: never mind i misread. And i would imagine this would be paired with a tax increase no? Who else would cover the cost? Re: #6 The incentive for insurance companies is to make money. Whether they are getting that profit from the exchange or from employer provided plans doesn't really make a difference. Sure more people would be using the exchange, but those people would have already been purchasing health insurance through a company so the benefits would be negligible if any at all. The tax breaks for the company would become the subsidy for the individual so there's not much ground to gain there.
Re: 3 - Thanks, I wasn't aware of that.
Re: 4 - I'm not that worried about the deficit, but there are lots of ways to pay for it. Raising taxes, or funding it with increased penalties for not having insurance could take care of it I'd imagine. Also, note that the ACA is currently under budget because healthcare costs have increased more slowly than expected, and fewer people than expected are participating in the exchanges so less in subsidies has been paid out.
Re: 6 - Maybe my point wasn't clear. I think the biggest problem with the exchanges is that not enough people are participating in them. Employers like to pay a portion of compensation in the form of health insurance, because they get a tax break for doing so. It's cheaper for them to offer health insurance than it is for them to simply offer a higher salary. If this tax break is taken away, they no longer have as big of an incentive to offer health insurance, and instead would send their employees to the exchanges. This means there would be more healthy people using the exchanges, which would cause premiums to fall.
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On October 27 2016 23:45 Mohdoo wrote:
Man this election got pretty boring pretty quick. Ain't shit going on.
In many ways it was never really interesting. We know everything about Clinton email server and Trump's behaviour with the ladies but there hasn't been any substantial debate over basically anything. Now that Trump has been beaten up to a pulp, there is nothing to talk about anymore.
Perhaps out of my bias, I mostly blame Trump, because he is and runs his campaign like a real TV character, has almost no platform and has campaigned exclusively on demonizing Clinton. But democrats haven't been able to resist and that's their own fault.
Also, Democrats have fucked up their own way too ; the most interesting leg of the whole thing should have been been the Clinton vs Sanders part, but that too has derailed into personal feud, conspiracy theories and fear mongering from both sides.
I think Sanders and Sandernistas have made a gigantic mistake on going full personal on Clinton, because they actually do have ideas, and those ideas need and needed to be heard. They made a tactical decision which consisted in saying that Clinton was a Wall Street goon and a corrupt figure of the "establishment", instead of pushing their idea of a Danish model and be a very needed breath of fresh air for leftism is the political arena.
Presidential election is the only time the general public gives a damn about politics, and it's time for a constructive debate over actual policy. Not a clownshow over Crooked Hillary (tm), Commie Sanders (tm) and Pussy Graber Donald (tm).
I remember the 2008 and 2012 campaign being very substantial. We heard of trickle down economics, of global warming, on detailed international policy.
What has happened is bad for democracy, is bad for everyone. And the one that failed the hardest is the media.
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I think Sanders and Sandernistas have made a gigantic mistake on going full personal on Clinton, because they actually do have ideas, and those ideas need and needed to be heard. Presidential election is the only time the general public gives a damn about politics, and it's time for a constructive debate over actual policy. Not a clownshow over Crooked Hillary (tm), Commie Sanders (tm) and Pussy Graber Donald (tm).
I think this has happened to an extent though... There's some clear Sander's influence in the Clinton campaign platform and Sanders has been pretty busy post-primary and seems like he's been building a fraction of the dem party to push his agenda (on top of things like speaking out against the Time Warner/AT&T merger).
But there's certainly a lot less media attention on him now post primary for obvious reasons.
On the flip side though there's a lot of potential for a policy focused government post election which may be even better. If Sanders has a democratic coalition, and the republicans lose influence in the Senate (and possibly House) there could be potential for some Sanders-esque policy work there.
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EPT
