JMS

Here is the deal. Does Obamacare suck. sure. Did our system suck more before Obamacare... absolutely... Obamacare was a modest step in the right direction, we should demand a lot more. The world have found better solutions on how to deliver healthcare services much more efficiently than our system. We know this because the Organization which we set up to study healthcare delivery systems sixty years ago, a system which we continue to fund today, tells us so and has told us so for 40 years. Positives about Obamacare... *-Your insurance will actually assist you if you get sick. *-Healthcare cost increases since passing Obamacare are at a 30 year low. *-Our healthcare system will actually cover tens of millions of more Americans. Most of the bad things about Obamacare are frankly things Obamacare didn't address...

So you are suggesting that the "fear of something which costs less than 1% healthcare costs", is a primary driver for why healthcare costs have been growing at two or three times the rate of inflation for more than four decades? But these alternate abuses are of lesser concern..

Not manditory procedures. Manditory coverage for proceedures. Prior to Obamacare it was possible to buy policies which wouldn't cover you if you got sick and needed certain proceedures. Most Americans were under such plans. Which is why health costs were the #1 reason cited in bankruptcies in this country even for folks with Insurance. What's going on now is Obamacare says insurance has to work for sick folks too. Which afterall is the reason why we freaking have insurance in the first place. If you get cancer, need a kidney, or need some sort other expensive treatment your insurance company which has been collecting your primiums for 20 years can't tell you that your plan doesn't cover that type of illness.

Actually Lawyers aren't the problem at all. That's just more scape goating by the cartels.. Lawsuites account for less than 1% of all dollars spent on healthcare in the United States.... So eliminating malpractice would only save 1% of costs. Obamacare has already had a significantly more positive effect on healthcare costs than such a step which would only further remove the consumer accountability from a system which is already almost entirely devoid of consumer choices or accountability.

Actually I don't think that's accurate. The mandates were the cornerstone of the Heritage Foundation's idea, as it was the cornerstone of Nixon's proposal in the early 1970's and Mitt Romney's massachusettes plans which both like Obamacare were based on the Original Heritage Foundation idea.

Yes blaming the doctors for high healthcare costs and out of control spending is like blaming teachers, social security recipients, and union workers for the 2008 financial crisisis and a lethargic economy ever since. It's scape goating folks who's voice can't compete with the companies which are trying to shift the blame..... The problem with the US healthcare system. The reason why we pay almost twice as much as the next most expensive system is entirely at the feet of the big three cartels which dominate our healthcare system. Insurance Companies, drug companies, and hospital companies ( service providers )... They exist in worlds where competition and the free market doesn't effect their bottom line and they complain about any legislation wich tries to make them accountable to consumers.

The CBO is the gold standard for estimating costs of programs. The annual costs estimated for the Affordable Care act has not changed significantly since it was first addressed by the CBO. The ACA was entirely paid for by the Obama administration according to the CBO and that has remained the case. When Republicans were attempting to shut down the ACA, the CBO told them they would need to bring money to the table because the ACA is saving us money today, even in it's innitial years. Those savings are projected to escalate in future years. In it's second decade those savings will ammoujnt to more than a trillion dollars according to the CBO.

Yes if only somebody passed a law requiring folks selling insurance too describe their policies in ways which made them easier to compare. And then created a online marketplace which would allow you to compare services provided by cost across all the insurance companies for your state... And then allowed you as an individual to purchase that insurance and not require you to be part of a huge Union, Government organization, or large company in order to get a reasonable plan at a reasonable cost and your plan wouldn't evaporate when you needed it most. The Congressional Budget office Says it will reduce the growth of healthcare costs and save us trillions... which is very modest compared with what we spend and what we could be saving. According to the CBO the ACA is already saving us money and will continue to do so every year over the next several decades. Obamacare and deficits: Reality check http://money.cnn.com/2013/10/28/news/economy/obamacare-deficits/ Fact Check: Repealing Obamacare adds to deficit - TRUE http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/09/25/fact-check-repealing-obamacare-adds-to-deficit/

Yeah there are like 15 major problems with the US healthcare system. The ACA addresses like two. It is a very modest reform which is endorsed by the insurance companies because it's a huge payday for them. The affordable care act will ensure your plan will cover you when you get sick (check). It also ensures that you can get insurance even if you are sick(check). It very very modestly addresses the huge inefficiencies in out system; and for these benifits the ACA mandates everybody carry health insurance which pumps some 20-30 million more consumers into the marketplace. Next up is trying ot tackle the out of whack costs of the system. as much as 50% of every healthcare dollar spent is wasted. Per capita we pay about twice as much as the next comparable country even though we don't even cover 50 million folks. On the other hand their are comparable countries which pay 20% of what we pay per capita... By the WHO's ranking of healthcare delivery we rank between Costa Rica and Cuba which are both 1 or more orders of magnatude more efficient than our healthcare system for what the WHO considers comparable results..

So you should have put a sarcasm smilie there.

I think you got that wrong. The democrats aren't going around saying this republican idea was a stupid plan... The Republicans are calling the "Affordable Care Act" comunism, socialism, and end to the free market, or government controled healthcare. The Democrats are pointing out that this act is extremely modest, conservative plan, first proposed by a conservative think tank, and first proposed nationally by Nixon, and first implemented on the state level by a self described severely conservative Governor of Massachusetts Romney. Which pretty much tells you this is (1) not a radical plan. (2) not a plan with huge upside. It is a modest attempt to cover most of the 50 million Americans who live without insurance while making sure the insurance actually works when you need it. There are very modest cost controls built into the ACA. Taken alltogether it's supposed to save us 1 trillion over the first 10 years right... Only we are going to spend 40 trillion in healthcare over those ten years as a nation. So 1 trillion is very very modest. At it's core it's a reform to our existing system which is severely broken. Are their better ideas in the Democratic party. Absolutely.. a single payer system is performing much better in most industrialized countries in the world. Better outcomes, and significantly more effiencet way to handle healthcare delivery. The left wing of the Democratic party was touting single player solution. Only nobody listens to the left wing of the democratic pary. Obama choose to implement the much more conservative, less ambitious reform and then had to bascially fight the same battle he would have if he had gone with the more ambitious total solution of single player.

That's the thing people don't realize.... Yeah today you can buy an inexpensive policy, but the problem is when you get really sick that policy probable won't help you much. They can deny you for preexisting conditions, not all types of issues are covered by all policies, some policies are cap'ed per year or per life time, and then even if it does cover you they can jack up your monthly bill so you can't afford to keep your coverage. Today Healthcare costs are the #1 cause cited in Bankrupcies even for people with insurance. So if you are happy with you're plan chances are it's because you haven't had to relly on that plan.

Ahhh, Bush passed Medicare Part D healthcare reform for 800 billion in his second term... Cost roughly the same as Obamacare but just didn't do anything. Also ,you do know the affordable care act was first proposed by the republicans don't you? It is one of the GOP's ideas... thought up by the Heritage Foundation, first proposed by Nixon. Implemented on the sate level by Romney. It's not that the Republicans don't have any ideas... It's that they don't have any good ideas, at leas not for several decades..

Most Americans who have insurance get their healthcare from the federal government via Medicare or Medicaid. Basically the poor and elderly. Those the public companies deem unprofitable. I think the "affordable care act" significantly increased the roles of the private insurance companies buy mandating everybody including young healthy folks buy insurance. Not sure if it increases the public roles nearly as much as it does the private insurance companies. No they really don't. IF you have fewer than 50 employees the Affordable care act doesn't effect you at all. If you have more than 50 it still doesn't say you have to insure them just give them a voucher which your employees can themselves use to purchase insurance.. which will be subsidized by the federal government for folks who can't afford the rest of the costs of the insurance.... So Wallmart one of the most profitable companies of the last two decades in the country, has to pay an extra 1$ per hour for full time employees... So their employees can't soak the rest of us for healthcare costs....

Not at all like Dr Who... There used to be an old show on TV called "Night Stalker" in the 1970's where a reporter for a tabloid traveled around reporting on the super natural events and nobody believing him. It's cheesy like that. The cheese doesn't distract from the show.. It enhances the flavor in my opinion. Me if I was hunting demons, vampires, ghosts, even angels or God with the world in the balance; I would hope I would be like bobby fisher( in the best sense).. very calculated, cerebral, cautious.... Dean and Same are more like you would imagine John Mcenroe or maybe the golfer John Daily would be. It's kind of demon fighter meets Jerry Springer somewhat. Makes for an entertaining hour or so. ---------- Post added March-29th-2013 at 01:47 PM ---------- That's a great quote.... Yes Twilight is all about teenaged angst... as told from a girls point of view.. Do I like him, does he like me... he's bad for me.. but I like him.... Ohhhh what am I going to do... Supernatural is more about a character Dean who is the leader of his family unit because his father has been absent most of his life hunting monsters, trapped in his own stunted teenaged angst from a dudes perspective..... Dean has had the responsibility to look after his little brother Sam against all manor of monsters since childhood and takes that seriously... He loves his dad and now as an adult has accepted his role in the family business... He kills monsters... If it's an evil monster.. he kills it. If it's a scary monster he kills it. If it's a nice monster who has killed somebody... he kills it. If you are riding in his car you are listening to mid 1970's rock. If you listen to anything else Dean makes faces like he's in physical pain. If his brother questions their mission he calls him a "little b_tch".. His longest relationship with a woman well into his late 20's was a few weeks long. Although he does grow a little as the show progresses he's basically a very simple guy... He drinks beer, booze, eats greasy hamburgers, and kills monsters. His only other interest throughout the entire series is his car, a black 1967 Chevrolet Impala which he doats over and calls Baby. Nobody messes with his car.. He's a good guy, who has been a monster killer since a child; and he's basically OK with that. That is kind of contrasted with his brother Sam who dreamed as a child of having a normal life. Which Dean constantly makes fun of.... I mean hell it's his little brother.. They make their living hustling pool and scaming people to support their monster hunting profession. They start out killing demons and ghosts and all manor of beasts. and then progress to involve themselves in wars between heaven and hell. Satan, Death, Reapers and all manor of supernatural beasts on a galactic relativity.. They take this war across every plain of existence you've ever heard of.. heaven, hell, purgatory, and parallel dimensions. And everywhere they go and no mater how strange things get; Dean and Sam are basically the same guys.

Supernatural is nowhere near the show that some of the HBO series are... like Deadwood, Rome, NewsRoom, Game of Thrones... etc.... But I love Supernatural. It is a guilty pleasure with a capital G.... There is nothing deep or intellectual but it's just a really well done show. I just finished wathcing seven seasons on NetFlixs.. I don't think it should be on the top of anybody's list... but your life will not be as complete if you haven't seen this series... Like you life will not have been complete if you haven't eaten a ceasar salad with real anchovies at least once in your lifetime. How can you not love a show where the executive producer names one of the main Characters after himself. Bobby Singer... Or the episode where Dean is caught in his ideal life in a parellel dimension. The one so appealing he won't be able to draw himself out of. We find out his wife in this utopia was some chick he saw once in a beer advertisement. Or the writter is the profit of the lord. It's just a well done creative and fun show.

I agree that Trillion plus concerns in our economy can afford a huge political umbrella. I still think it's stupidity which enables the policy to exist. The stupidity of the average American who will accept the burden they know rather than take any risk to improve it, no matter how overwhelming the arguments.

No it's really much simpler than compassion. It's a question of stupidity... Americans pay very handsomely to deny people coverage. You see based upon the costs per capita of every industrialized country in the world which enjoys universal coverage vs our system which leaves about 20% of our population (mostly our middle income) uninsured.... We spend more money than anybody else PER CAPITA . We spend almost 2-1 in order to leave folks without coverage! If we adopted one of the European or Asian systems which cover everybody,, Including the French German or Italian systems which outperform our own system on services.. we would save almost half of our annual healthcare dollars while covering everybody.. That's about 1.5 Trillion dollars a year..... To put that into perspective sequestration is only going to save $81 billion this year or 810 billion over the next decade..... ---------- Post added February-27th-2013 at 01:28 PM ---------- Only the crack head, welfare scammer has healthcare coverage... We cover the poor through medicaid. It's the working folks who earn too much money to be considered poor who are the bulk of the 50 million Americans who have no healthcare coverage.

So according to the article in National Review... The Senate Staffers working for Republican Jefferson Sessions, came up with the 6.2 trillion number over 75 years, not the GAO. Session's staffers calculated that number based on what they think the GAO report says and attributed it to the GAO report... The number is nowhere in the actual GAO report. And how did the GAO report support such an wildly out of control deficit projection for Obamacare? Not by comparing healthcare costs under Obamacare vs No Obamacare as one might think....... No because then they would be directly conflicting with the CBO which says Obamacare will save us a few hundred billion over the first 10 years and more than a trillion over the second 10 years.... No the GAO report compares the most Rosie projection possible for Obamacare ( much more optimistic than what the CBO used ) to the most dire projection possible... and extended the time limit out beyond any reasonable ability to accurately predict ( 75 years)..... and gives us the Delta..... Idiots. The gold standard for budgetary impacts is the non partisan Congressional Budget Office ( CBO )... Being the Gold Standard for projections is why the CBO was created!.... It projects Obamacare is going to save trillions...when compared to what we would pay WITHOUT OBAMACARE!!!!! which is the only meaningful metric... This GAO report is more GOP dishonesty... Let's repeal Obama care not because of the future we face without Obama care.. But because it could cost more if everything goes wrong vs if everything with Obamacare goes absolutely perfectly? What government program, hell what human end-ever could possible stand up to those criteria? Oh and for any of you folks bothering to do the math... We spend about 17.6 % of GDP on healthcare today. That's 3 trillion a year we spend on healthcare a year in 2013... increasing at two or three times the rate of inflation since the 1960's..... Healthcare costs are up from about 5% of GDP from the 1970's... Saying it's going to go up worse case an additional 0.7% of GDP over the next 75 YEARS is not saying much. Without Obamacare it wasn't uncommon for it to go up .7% in just a handful of years.

:doh: how come these reports always always always come out in conservative rags.. and always always always turn out to be wrong, deliberite mis characterizations of what the CBO actually said..... This is like the fifth time isn't it? but I'll humor you....

I don't know we seem to have done pretty well with oil gold, and silver goods which are all inelastic. We don't have a free market healthcare system since the turn of the 20th century when specialization made healthcare too expensive for indivisuals to afford. Since that time we have had a collective healthcare system where healthy people pay into the system to care for those who get sick... The big difference between our collective system and that of the rest of the industrial world is our system is designed not to deliver good but to deliver profits, which it does exceedingly well. The rest of the world uses systms of universal coverage designed to deliver services, which they do much better and more efficiently than we do. So those are really the two choices before you, a collective system designed to deliver profits, or a collective system designed to deliver services. The Obama care attmpts to reform the for profit system to ensure more services are delivered... It still leaves in tact a fatally flawed system which today wastes about half of the money it absorbs, based on the experiences of the rest of the industrialized world and is the greatest long term financial threat our nation faces.

I just saw "Zero Dark Thirty" about the pursuit of Bin Laudin.. It's definitely worth going. Supprisingly enough it's kind of a chicks movie as the main pursurer in the CIA of Bin Laudin seems to have been a woman CIA officer who used her own time and stood up against her bosses at several junctures to both gain the assets to find him and to exploit the information she had uncovered. Almost every man in this movie at one time or another works counter to this womans single minded pursuit of Bin Laudin.. Even people who she is allied against and who she clearly respects ultimately throw her under the bus here. It was a very interesting for it's treatment on what goes on behind the scenes.. There are some pretty glaring falsehoods in the movie based upon other sources; but given the still classified event was less than a year.removed from the origins of this film it's amaizing how much of the story they are able to tell . I also sar Flight with Denzel Washington, which was well done, but unfulfilling, I mean hey Denzel Washington right.. only kind of disappointing, It's a soft pedeled "Leaving LasVeges" type movie with good acting but ultimately left me asking why I bothered. ... Hyde Park on the Hudson"... Great Great movie... next to Lincoln my favorite of the year.. It's another one of Bill Murry's "Razor's Edge" tyhpe performances... One of the best movies ever made which nobody is going to see. Saw Argo... very good. Maybe my third favorite movie of the year. I think Chicks like it more than dudes,

The NEED to change the policy passed under the Democrats to the policy passed under the Republicans is evident in the differences of the two policies. (1) The 111 congress lead by the Dems (had Pay as you Go) which had no blanket exceptions and allowed increases in spending to be paid for by either cuts or revenue increases ( taxes ). (2) The 112th congress lead by the GOP (had Cut as you go) which had two blanket exceptions amounting to hundreds of billions incorporated, and only allowed increases in spending to be paid for by cuts.

Yeah I don't think you can make that case... Obamacare his signature accomplishiment in office was designed to be revenue neutral to adhere to the "spend as you go" approach. Likewise Obama has had the smallest growth in government spending since Eisenhower after inheriting one of the worst economies since Roosevelt. The 112th congress's spending rules including "Cut as you Go" were passed on a strict party vote. The Democrats considered it a free license to grow the deficit because of the exemptions built into the policy. The extension of Bush's tax cuts was done in concert with the whitehouse after he failed to get the house to only pass the extention for the middle class.

---------- Post added July-25th-2012 at 11:17 AM ---------- Not exactly... The House had "pay as you go" rules under Pelosi. Guideline not a real hard rule. It required the house to basically pay for any new spending. They had the choice of finding new revenue ( taxes) or cutting. Exceptions to this rule were Obama's agreeing to continue the bush Tax cuts for a few years, and Obama's stimulus package. The GOP house replaces spend as you go with "cut as you go" rule. Any new spending had to be paid for by cutting somewhere else. But As Larry Said, they exempted (t) tax cuts (2) the cost of repealing Obamacare.