Wow. So it's Constitutional for the Government to force you to buy goods and services, even if you do not want those goods and services.

So I guess if the peanut industry begins to suffer, the Government can force you to buy 5 pounds of peanut butter, even though you don't eat peanut butter or are allergic to it.

Bad day for Freedom.

The government forces you to buy auto insurance. I don't agree with that either, but it is what it is. I guess you could argue that driving is optional.

I don't participate in the health care industry. Arguing against the ACA (like so many issues) is just an intellectual excercise for me. My mother is a retired nurse and we've been debating the ACA every time we visit. I told her a few months ago that the worst thing for Obama's legacy would be if the courts allowed Obamacare to proceed. Had they struck it down, Obama could have blamed his failure on an "ultra-right-wing" Supreme Court. Now, this piece of garbage (and a cluster bomb of unintended consequences) is going to see the light of day. Only the most sophist of Obamacare defenders will continue to claim that Obamacare makes healthcare more affordable.

The pre-existing conditions and 26 year old dependents and all the other mandates can only make insurance policies more expensive. My mother was fooled by the requirement that insurance companies have to cap their administrative budgets at a certain percentage of their overall budget (she thought that was a cost control). Percentages are tricky. A company has the option of cutting its admin budget (the numerator) or growing its overall budget (the denominator). How do you grow the overall budget? Raise the price of your policies. If you were the CEO, would you rather cut your salary and bonuses or would you simply prefer to raise prices? People are forced to buy your product anyway, and many insurance companies have near monopolies in their markets because you aren't allowed to buy insurance across state lines.

There are 2700 pages to this bill... too much to cover here. But, the joke is on those who defended it. There is absolutely nothing in the bill that controls costs. It was written by and for the insurance companies, and the fact that it's been named the "Affordable" Care Act is going will become the punchline for years to come. Eventually, the whole thing will be repealed (one would hope).

Otherwise, if it isn't repealed, this thing is going to become so expensive for individuals and taxpayers that much more impetus is going go toward mandating how much soda and popcorn and white bread we are allowed to eat, and the government is going to force everyone to join a gym in order to reduce medical costs to the system.

Heh, I actually don't fly out till tomorrow morning.

Tax dollars are used on roads, tax paid police, police the roads, thus they can force you to have auto insurance. You don't need auto insurance in any state to drive a car on your property, just to drive it on roads.

Tax dollars help hospitals, if you want to be sick in your yard you can be, but if you want to use the hospital you need to buy medical insurance -- THAT I could understand, but that isn't what happened. They are saying you have to buy it, period, end of discussion, even if you want to get sick and die under your porch, you still must be making insurance payments until you do die.

_________________

the government only forces you to buy auto insurance if you drive a car. If you walk, ride a bicycle, take a taxi or the bus, you don't have to buy auto insurance. This health insurance mandate forces you to buy insurance based on the fact you are alive and that the health insurance industry is in trouble and needs help. And the government's argument that 'well, you might fall and break your ankle today. And if you don't have health insurance, you'll just have to go around with a broken ankle because you can't get medical care without insurance" is alarmist and a lie.

I work in a doctor's office. We have patients who don't have health insurance and pay out of pocket for their medical care. Sometimes I wish we had more patients who paid out of pocket because it eliminates the middleman (the insurance companies/government) and it shows the free market works. Patients get the service they want and the price they want to pay. They're happy, the practice is happy, everyone is happy except the insurance execs and the government.

I'm surprised you mother fell for that, tree. Because since Obama was elected the health insurance companies have been increasing their premiums and decreasing benefit coverage and physician reimbursements.



No. I think they will ration health care. Oopsie, I mean make cost-benefit determinations on an individual basis. They're already setting up "cost-benefit" guidelines ---the screening mammogram and PSA recommendations. So it will be easier for them to say "Well, M. If you want a PSA, you can pay for one yourself. But we aren't paying because our experts have demonstrated that screening for prostate cancer does not decrease the overall rates of prostate cancer nor improve prostate cancer survival rates."

And with the electronic health records, it will be easier for them to access your medical records so they can "intervene" and "improve" your health.

The sad thing is that I know people who specifically voted for Obama because he campaigned against mandates; this clip is from 2008.

_________________
“They see only their own shadows or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the Cave.”
~Plato, The Republic

That thinking is fundamentally flawed.
Driving IS a choice. Now you can argue the practicality of not driving until you're blue in the face, but at the end of the day driving a car is a choice therefore purchasing auto insurance is optional.

The only way to opt out of health care would be to kill yourself.

Or you can become Amish because the Amish are exempt.

The sad thing is that everyone is brainwashed into thinking "we need to follow an insurance model if we want affordable healthcare". Let the free market work---really work---and you'll see affordability.

The main reason why the government and insurance industry are involved with healthcare is Medicare. Through Medicare (which is Government health insurance), the government dictates the healthcare industry--not only payments and benefits but also influences your medical care decision-making. And the chances are slim that the government will give up that control over your life.

But wait until the electronic health records kick in....then you'll really see government involved in your health care. I can imagine people getting penalized by the IRS for missing a doctor's appointment or being overweight or not refilling prescriptions/taking medications as directed, etc. And women better watch out---because with the EHR system, government will know exactly how many pregnancy scares/abortions a woman has had. And they will even know if you are taking your birth control pills based on the refills and the doctor's note.

Auto insurance is NOT optional, it's forced on drivers against their will, the same exact way health insurance is being forced on Americans against their will. The choice has no bearing on making insurance "optional." It is involuntary. If I am a tomato farmer and the government comes to me and says "you can't sell tomatoes without insurance" is my choice to sell tomatoes somehow ipso facto justification to force me to buy insurance? Of course not.

Health insurance is exactly the same because there is still an element of choice in the matter. You can "choose" to live here, can't you? If you don't like it, move away! See, it's "optional." Amurrika, love it or leave it!

The idea that choice matters and makes it acceptable to force these things on people is BS because choosing to live in the US, like choosing to drive a car, carries no responsibility to buy insurance or any other thing. There are arguments about the roads being public property, but as we know public property is a misnomer: it is stolen property in the hands of a violent criminal organization (government). So it is illegitimate for this organization to lay claim over it and enforce these measures, even our beloved traffic laws. The same goes with healthcare.

The only people who pay auto insurance are drivers. People who do not drive cars do not pay auto insurance. You don't have to buy auto insurance if you don't drive a car.

Likewise the only people who pay a tobacco tax are people who buy tobacco products.

This health insurance "tax" is a penalizing a person for NOT purchasing a good/service. That's not how taxes traditionally work .

And their argument is "well, everyone uses healthcare. And the people who don't have health insurance get a free ride, because they're a bunch of deadbeats who won't pay their doctor's bills and hospital bills. So they're driving the cost of healthcare up" Their assumption that "people without health insurance are deadbeats" is incorrect, because the patients we send to collections for failure to pay are the people WITH health insurance and who don't want to pay their deductible for whatever reason. We have never had to send a patient who pays out of pocket to collections because at the end of the visit, the patient plunks their money on the counter.

Also for some weird reason, people think health insurance is a guarantee of payment or a substitute for payment. Or worse, people think they aren't responsible for paying their deductibles, copayments, etc.

Believe me, I have "pleasant" conversations with patients almost every day who cop an attitude that we sent them a bill for a deductible and insist that we are in error because their insurance "covers" it. As pitiful as it sounds, one woman freaked out in the waiting room because the front staff asked for her copayment. She stood there screaming at the girls "I don't have a copayment! My insurance plan doesn't have a copayment". So I asked her to call her insurance company. And she did, all the while telling the other patients in the waiting room that we are cheating her. Lo and behold, her insurance company tells her she has a copayment. Shut that woman up fast.

But like I wrote, I deal with people like this every. single. day. "I don't have to pay a deductible." "I don't have a copay." "My insurance company says I don't have a deductible." Etc.

BUT I never, EVER, hear this crap from the uninsured patients who pay their bill at the end of the office visit.

well, just to be clear, I don't like being forced by law to buy any kind of insurance. I don't have health insurance. I'm not going to get health insurance. All a doctor is, essentially, is a consultant. A doctor is a reference tool. Okay, if you've got a bullet in your leg, then you need a surgeon, but aside from surgery I'm perfectly comfortable diagnosing and re-habbing my own problems. A body doesn't heal unless it heals itself.

The ACA is an assault on liberty. But, there is a subtle difference between liberty and freedom. I'm still free to opt out of health care, and they can send me a "tax" in the mail, and then I'll be free to not pay it. And then they can send the IRS to my front door, and I'll be free to not answer the doorbell. I'm sure I'll have a lot of solidarity with many other of my fellow "free riders".

I figure that a citizen will need to be micro-chipped in the near future in order to participate in all these government programs. I'm not going down that road.

off-topic; Man! I've never heard so many large illegal fireworks as I did last night. Really, people in my neighborhood have been setting off M-100's and such all week long. It's encouraging.