The general welfare of the United States is hardly paying for each individual's every need. I do recognize this is what the Supreme Court hung its obamacare decision on, the taxation clause, and that's the current law. I didn't approve of segregation, either.
Last edited by bigsky; 03-03-2013 at 06:35 PM.
...the general welfare of the United States. That's a far cry from free health care. The key word there is general. It's the pursuit of happiness that is free.
Last edited by badrose; 03-03-2013 at 06:31 PM.
Cool as a rule, but sometimes bad is bad.
"Common defense" is a far cry from a multi-trillion dollar military, but there it is.Originally Posted by badrose
At any rate, I don't expect to change the minds of unwavering ideologues. Please continue in your supplication to dogmatic philosophy that serves no one as well as the corporations to which you have allowed yourselves to be sold.
Well well. The last defense of the indefensible. And your analogy with trillion dollar defense industry is apt; your attempt to enslave me is just like theirs.
Last edited by bigsky; 03-03-2013 at 06:53 PM.
The myth that the middle class can't afford insurance is just that, a myth. When I got out of school we were lower middle class yet because I had a child and a wife, we made it a priority to have health insurance. We put that priority above having a nice car, above owning a home, above taking vacations, above having a big screen TV, etc. It was right up there with paying my and my wife's student loans and other debts, putting food on the table and a roof over our heads. I didn't need the gov't to "provide my general welfare". I took care of it myself. The problem with the middle class not having insurance is that it isn't a priority. There have always been affordable medical insurance to cover major illnesses. As a 30 year old father of 1 it was quite affordable to have a policy with a large deductible that covered major illness. It didn't cover birth control like ACA, every sniffle or boo boo, but then I could have taken a policy that did for more money. Back then, we took what we could afford that offered us the coverage that gave us security to know that if somebody got injured or ill, we wouldn't end up in the poor house. The ACA removes that option of having a high deductible policy because those are no longer "approved", cuz the government knows best! If somebody who was living on 35,000K a year back in the early 90's could do it, I'm pretty sure a whole lot of today's uninsured folks could as well.
Last edited by Doc; 03-03-2013 at 08:32 PM.
Because everybody is enslaved by corporate AmericaUnlike "big government" where there is no other option.
So true, Doc.
The other interesting aspect is that if I elect to have deluxe coverage (aka a cadillac policy) I have to pay additional taxes. Isn't that a hoot? Penalize you more for having better coverage
President Robbin HoodThe other interesting aspect is that if I elect to have deluxe coverage (aka a cadillac policy) I have to pay additional taxes. Isn't that a hoot? Penalize you more for having better coverage
Don't plead about personal attacks when you make insulting, conceited posts like this one.
Your interpretation of "general welfare" makes the Constitution meaningless and contradictory, and it belies everything we know about the Founder's intentions for the nation. If we interpret the commerce clause and "general welfare" and the rest the way you and the Left do there's really no point to having a constitution at all really, as it apparently allows unfettered Federal authority to make any law it chooses. There is no limitation of government whatsoever intended by the document or its creators, it's just a procedural manual for the 3 branches of government and a lousy one at that since it didn't actually spell out things like SCOTUS review.
That's how you know you've defined a term or statement wrong: when accepting that definition or interpretation makes the term or phrase meaningless.
Just like in the discussion of Texas education. If the Holocaust isn't a "genocide" then the word genocide loses any meaning. If we abandon the preamble's clear distinction, and that of dozens of writings of the Founders, to say that promote the General Welfare means government run health care, something about as intimate to people as possible, there's no limit on the ability of the government to make any law, and there never was a desire to found a nation free of the tyranny of government.
Of course that's false. Denying that the Founders had a deep fear of government and wanted to limit it as much as possible with the Constitution is like denying the earth revolves around the sun.
But please don't continue to insult the intelligence of people on here. This isn't the first time.
It's always those nasty evil corporations. You know, the ones who take your money and if you don't give it to them send armed people to drag you to jail. Oh, wait....Because everybody is enslaved by corporate America
They can't be stopped. Huge companies like GM and the investment firms. Oh wait, it's government that protects them and saves them. The power of corporations is the power to control government. If we got rid of the ability of the government to regulate every aspect of our existence the corporations would have to compete more, and many like GM would fade into history. yet somehow the solution to this is MORE government power and regulation, not less. lol.
Those evil corporations; Red Cross, deaconess hospitals, blue cross blue shield, md Anderson, the thousands of corporations incorporated under 501, not to mention the s corporations that are family farms and small businesses. Or even the dang investors of all this for profit corps whose pensions and retirements depend on them making money from willing buyers. Gosh darn that Nike and apple and ford!
I'm grateful that one of those evil for profit drug corps invented the drugs that knocked back my leukemia, and another the 5k dollars shots that boosted my white blood cell count after the chemo.
I have great insurance and it still cost me $7-8k for that first round of treatment, not to mention the thousands spent on Drs and tests under the yearly deductible trying to find out what was wrong with me over the last six years.
I get it. People will buy just about everything before they buy at least a catastrophic health policy. I did it as a young man; of course that choice is a taxable event now. Young men have to pay a penalty if they don't buy insurance that covers birth control, anxiety and menopause drugs. And btw, I did once pay several thousand bucks over time for an ACL operation I had to have while a young ski bummin uninsured adventure seeker. Hospital carried my loan and I paid it off in three or four years.
bigsky I want the cure for cancer to be worth billions to the person who finds it, b/c that way I know the best and brightest are looking for it. Obviously we'd want that cure available to everyone, but without the big reward what company or group or individual would be willing to risk hundreds of millions on research or spend their lives in poverty to find it? Without profits who would buy the stock and bond issues to generate the funding?
It would be great if the world were filled with pure altruists who would teach and research and provide medical care and be willing to live in hovels, but there aren't enough of them to run the country. People won't go through all those years of medical school and residency to live no better than the guy who spent a summer in trade school. They for sure aren't going to accept the weight of life and death decisions without compensation.
America didn't invent the drive of economic self interest, we simply harnessed it. Whether we vote to ignore it or not it won't go away. All we'll do is bury its benefits and strengths in the form of graft and corruption. Far better to accept that it exists and work to direct it rather than to try to suppress it. It's how we went from an insignificant backwater of the world with no production base whatsoever to the most powerful economic nation in history in less than a century.
I just don't see the "pure altruism" model going anywhere that "good intentions" don't usually go.
It won't even go that far. lol.
There are a lot of problems with the healtcare coverage plan out there. I will start with insurance companies who make money by paying into a system and not paying out.
Insurance companies give you back pennies for the dollar and don't want to really help.
Great example: My wife has an eye disease that grows her corneas into points which makes it difficult for her to see. No surgery is approved in the country (experimental is being done in Canada). Glasses don't fix the problem but contact lenses that physically resist and push back do help.
But guess what? Insurance companies say that contact lenses are cosmetic in nature and there is no questioning that.
It is a damn racket and only the rich get truly good service consistently from insurance companies and doctors.
Doc, the myth that the middle class can't afford insurance will quickly become reality thanks to Obamacare.
The next logical question is do you believe that a federalized health care system would help that?
My personal belief is that it will do exactly the opposite. I'm 100% for letting a licensed doctor determine my treatment plan. I've personally had my health care affected by what the government will allow despite my Dr wanting to do something different. I believe that the chances of having something non-traditional approved is greater thru private coverage because essentially you can sue a private company and you can't the gov't. Additionally, if the insurance companies give back "pennies on the dollar" they why would anybody have health insurance? I mean if you pay thousands a year in premiums but only expect back a small fraction, then why have insurance? No, insurance companies do pay out a large percentage of their revenues back to providers. I'm not here to defend insurance companies but there is a false sense that they are out to screw you. They aren't. Should they be allowed to "drop people" who have paid premiums for years? No. Should they be allowed to jack up your rates when you get older on clients who have paid for policies for years? No. However they should be allowed to make a profit without being vilified for doing so.
I disagree. You might not get what you want but that does not mean you can't get quality care. I'm hardly "rich" but over the years I have had good consistent health care through a wide myriad of medical problems. At times I have not gotten what I wanted but I'd not equate that to failing to receive good service. Insurance companies are a business and like any other business they have a right to be profitable otherwise they go out of business. The profit margin for insurance companies is roughly 3% (link). In my business, a 3% profit margin would put me out of business (currently we run in the 19% area)
Last edited by Doc; 03-04-2013 at 04:57 PM.
True. But the idea that we needed Obamacare because it was unaffordable to the middle class is a myth. Obamacare has made it more expensive because those paying are being forced to cover more people who are not.
Deleted, multiple post.
Last edited by KeithKSR; 03-04-2013 at 05:06 PM.
Deja Vu..... LOL
I didn't think we needed it when it was passed, I know we cannot afford it now.
Well, I feel compelled to speak up on this one. To get my premie out of the hospital in 1984 cost $129,000 out of pocket after insurance. It defined my life. It wiped out my savings and it left me with large bills to pay. But, we made the decision to have the kid. It was our responsibility. No one told us we had to have a kid. Why should someone else pay for what we chose to do?
I learned a lot from the experience at a very young age. I learned to review the invoices completely and get line items corrected where necessary. There were a bunch of errors on the invoices. I learned to negotiate with the doctors and the hospital to eliminate charges. Do you really think any federal bureaucrat would challenge an invoice or negotiate lower rates or get charges comped? They have no knowledge of what was really provided or not provided. They can develop some inflated sense of what a comparable charge should be, but they have no way of knowing the specific circumstances. All of that adds to the burden of the healthcare tab for everyone. There wasn't a baby in that neonatal unit that was neglected or allowed to die because the parents could not pay.
The burden needs to be placed on the cost causer. It's the only way there is accountability.
Trillion dollar price tag! The old bait and switch.
Mick, I can sum up the reason health care is a disaster very simply.
Markets function on consumers choosing products based on some combination of cost and quality once we define the parameters of their product demand. In health care the consumers, patients, have little reliable info on the real quality of care beyond what they subjectively feel they get as the government collects a lot of data on hospital quality performance but doesn't release it. there's no consumer reports for hospitals like there is for cars, one of the larger purchase items most people make, nor is there a home inspector or appraiser for your physician's office like there is for your home purchase.
Far more important, consumers are removed from many if not most cost decisions due to the medicare/medicaid/insurance system. Once the deductible is paid what do they care if the MRI costs $4,000? I went in for a severe abdominal cramp some years ago. Worst pain I'd ever felt b/c I don't run to hospitals. They did a MRI, found out it was a kidney stone. When I was leaving, having gotten morphine and told to come back if it didn't pass, they said "yeah we could tell it was a kidney stone from across the room." So why did they run a MRI? the bill for it was $4,000, paid by my insurer.
I went to a close hospital with no knowledge of their actual quality of service, and allowed procedures without consideration of their cost (once my deductible was met, which was almost immediately).
You show me an industry where consumers make choices without significant (or any) consideration of cost or quality, and I'll show you one f-ed up industry.
It really is that simple. Until we re-introduce market forces by having consumers incentivized to make decisions based on cost and quality it will only get worse whether government is running it or not. That's why the basic concept of medical savings accounts is a good one. Don't let a bureaucrat make the decisions on what to pay for and what procedures to have done, push that dollar expenditure decision to consumers and let them decide if they're willing to pay for the MRI and forgo something else somewhere else or if they'll give it a day to see if the stone passes.
FWIW they never told me it was probably a kidney stone pre-MRI. If they had I'd have said "OK, give me the morphine and if it doesn't pass by tomorrow I'll be back." Health care doesn't mean getting the $4,000 MRI for a belly ache just in case of the 1 in 1 million chance something is wrong only it can catch and it must be caught before we try seeing if it's a kidney stone.
If it cost me that $4,000 I guarantee we'd have waited on the stone to pass. A generation ago that's how it was handled, but now if we don't bring in Dr. House for every person off the street with a pain it's a lawsuit and a moral outrage.
Yes the health care industry can be fixed. by going in exactly the opposite direction we are going now re who makes the decisions. Subsidize those decisions, fine, allocate how much each person gets in "health care dollars" every month and they can spend them or save them or if they don't spend them they get to keep a percentage or some such. Let's try those very imperfect solutions versus the utterly useless solutions of Obamacare and government centralized planning.
I agree with Mick, sky, Keith Doc on all they said. Like Mick, and probably the rest , I learned to negotiate payments and get nice discounts on large dr or hospital bills. Best yet has been 35% for paying off the bill. They will work with you on monthly payments or discounts for paying the whole thing. Had one bill for my wife for injections in her back for $1400 because she had not met deductible. I asked for a disc to pay it at once. Was told they didn't give disc because if BCBS found out they would make the dr office rebate back to insurance. My argument was I was paying and it was between me and the doctor. After some back and forth she told me to not pay my bill for 3 months and they would declare it uncollectible. She assured me she would keep it separate and not affect my credit. 3 months later I walked I and she gave me 35% off the bill. I found if you are honest they will work with you, they want their money.
Obamacare will screw the middle class. Corp must make reasonable profits or they are gone, too much and they lose their competitive edge. Most people have no clue what companies make net profit. Have a good friend that is a successful lawyer who thought companies had a profit of 40%
One thing I might add, most of us are a little older and have experience and understand the real world and accept our personal responsibilities and not depend on government to take are of us.
had an interesting little joke sent to me by a friend who sent it to his sister who is charge of some dept at UT. She said she had a student whe wanted his refreshments paid for at some meeting. She turned him down so he paid with his food stamps. It seems many younger 'adults' and use that loosely, want more and more from the government, less responsibity and no accountability.
And History, am sorry about your wife. But Doc is right, the gov will not help her. When I read some of the things Obamas advisors have said, your wife would get no help and just be discarded
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