Latest problem with Obamacare. Too many people now have access to healthcare.

[BaalsTears]

Born, I'm persistent. I will get back to you at my earliest convenience. I appreciate the fact that we can continue our reasoned discourse to exhaustively examine all of these issues.

 

[damngrumpy]

when all Americans have health care the number will be just right

 

[BaalsTears]

Baals said:

It probably would have been a good idea to proceed incrementally on health care on a bipartisan basis rather than to fundamentally change one-sixth of the US economy on a party line vote. A better approach would have been to cut the military budget in an amount sufficient to begin funding health care for the uninsured. It probably would have been a good idea to adopt tort reform, and to let insurance companies sell insurance policies across state lines. That would have brought over enough Republicans to permit characterization of the ACA as bipartisan legislation.
...

Born responded by saying:

...
This clearly would never have happened.

Massive cuts to the military budget would in no way be something that would increase the likelihood of Republicans supporting the bill.

Baals poses the following question for his friend Born Ruff:


How do you know this is clearly something that "would never have happened?"

After all, it is the Republican Party that opposes deficit fincancing, and which supports sequestration of spending including, but not limited to, military spending.

 

[JLM]

In my opinion this is one of the stupidest threads I've seen for awhile, first of all I didn't think there was a limit on how many people have medical coverage, second of all what is the maximum number of people who should be eligible for health care and third of all, what would be the reason there is a limit on the number? As I pointed out earlier the limit should be on the amount of service NOT the number of people...............dumb situation, dumb thread!

 

[lifeblood]

In my opinion this is one of the stupidest threads I've seen for awhile, first of all I didn't think there was a limit on how many people have medical coverage, second of all what is the maximum number of people who should be eligible for health care and third of all, what would be the reason there is a limit on the number? As I pointed out earlier the limit should be on the amount of service NOT the number of people...............dumb situation, dumb thread!

the only limit should be to needless surgeries, not to people with needs

 

[JLM]

the only limit should be to needless surgeries, not to people with needs

Unfortunately in this life, available funds does set a limit we have to adhere to. (Unless you can find medical professionals and staff willing to donate their time).

 

[coldstream]

Obamacare was lost once they dumped the 'public option'.. ie government owned and administered insurance. It just became a sellout to the private insurance industry after that.. and worse a platform for social engineering and feminist politics with contraception and abortion mandates.

I expect it'll be a big bust over time.. and they'll have to get back to the debate of whether they want a Public Health Insurance System.. or a private one. There doesn't seem to be any room in between.

 

[Sal]

Unfortunately in this life, available funds does set a limit we have to adhere to. (Unless you can find medical professionals and staff willing to donate their time).

I am missing your point here. What is the limit we adhere to? And I have never heard of a patient needing to seek out professionals and staff and ask them to donate their time.

You said you have used the medical here in Canada quite a bit...were you told you were on a budget with your doctors or specialists?

 

[Tecumsehsbones]

Obamacare was lost once they dumped the 'public option'.. ie government owned and administered insurance. It just became a sellout to the private insurance industry after that.. and worse a platform for social engineering and feminist politics with contraception and abortion mandates.

I expect it'll be a big bust over time.. and they'll have to get back to the debate of whether they want a Public Health Insurance System.. or a private one. There doesn't seem to be any room in between.

As I understand it, Australia has a public/private system that works OK.

And I don't think we'll dump it. Unfortunately, government programmes of this size tend to take on a life of their own, and continue no matter how expensive or ineffective they are. Especially when the programme in question is a license to print money for the medical and insurance industries.

 

[PoliticalNick]

Unfortunately in this life, available funds does set a limit we have to adhere to. (Unless you can find medical professionals and staff willing to donate their time).

Or maybe we citizens all band together and demand FULL funding for healthcare by our govt and that they cut from the pork-barrel or useless programs to achieve this. If 300+ MPs all got the message their job was over in the next election unless they voted for this it would pass quite quickly.

 

[JLM]

Or maybe we citizens all band together and demand FULL funding for healthcare by our govt and that they cut from the pork-barrel or useless programs to achieve this. If 300+ MPs all got the message their job was over in the next election unless they voted for this it would pass quite quickly.

The idea is good Nick, but it would go nowhere near far enough. I have no idea what health costs the entire country but to take a "stab in the dark" I might suggest somewhere around $35 billion on more. I doubt if there are THAT many useless programs, even if you added the proceeds from the trough. Like all other types of insurance I would like to see a system where the patient can have some choice in where he buys his/her insurance. This system of forcing everyone to buy it from the Gov't is bullsh*t, not to mention far too much bureaucracy.

 

[PoliticalNick]

The idea is good Nick, but it would go nowhere near far enough. I have no idea what health costs the entire country but to take a "stab in the dark" I might suggest somewhere around $35 billion on more. I doubt if there are THAT many useless programs, even if you added the proceeds from the trough. Like all other types of insurance I would like to see a system where the patient can have some choice in where he buys his/her insurance. This system of forcing everyone to buy it from the Gov't is bullsh*t, not to mention far too much bureaucracy.

I think you might be out to lunch on that number. BC spends about $2billion/yr. I would hazard a guess that there is easily $20 billion or more to be found in waste or unnecessary programs. Heck, there is $2.5billion for promoting multiculturalism. There may be too much bureaucracy but if we are gonna force the govt to do the will of the people that can be changed and I like the idea of full and complete coverage for everyone which you wouldn't get if it were privatized. In a private system you will get people who choose to be cheap and then get cancer and guess who winds up paying then so we might as well just have everyone covered for everything and be done with it.

 

[JLM]

I think you might be out to lunch on that number. BC spends about $2billion/yr. I would hazard a guess that there is easily $20 billion or more to be found in waste or unnecessary programs. Heck, there is $2.5billion for promoting multiculturalism. There may be too much bureaucracy but if we are gonna force the govt to do the will of the people that can be changed and I like the idea of full and complete coverage for everyone which you wouldn't get if it were privatized. In a private system you will get people who choose to be cheap and then get cancer and guess who winds up paying then so we might as well just have everyone covered for everything and be done with it.

Did I not say my estimate was a stab in the dark, but I think if anything I erred on the lean side. I was thinking a $1000 per annum per head, but some operations alone cost $10,000 to $50, 000 and that is just the operation, there's probably a good percentage in follow up care and prescriptions etc. Waste and unnecessary programs are often a matter of opinion. You for instance (and I) might figure $100,000 a year incarceration charges might be a total waste when 20' of good hefty rope can be bought for $20. Some people take a dim view of funding programs for druggies and alcoholics. Maybe you could start a thread listing programs and waste that should be terminated to support healthcare and see what the other posters think! - There's a good "homework" assignment for a Saturday night! - Good luck.

 

[BaalsTears]

How do you have so little shame about completely making up numbers?

The best course of action for you is to be very nice to me, and to express your opinion without rancor.

How many times now have I pointed out that your numbers are fabricated, and you just trudge on.

Your persist in error and I am relentless in disagreement.

If all of the facts you are basing your opinions on continue to be shown to be wrong, maybe you need to reevaluate.

Reevaluation is always necessary in order to determine that one's opinion is consistent with external reality. So far external reality doesn't require a change in my opinion.

What is the difference between the 600 billion and the 900 billion?

That depends on whether one is using gross or net numbers consistently. I don't think you are consistent.

Why is only one of them considered unsustainable to you? What exactly is your criteria for unsustainable?

My basis for concluding that the American welfare state is unsustainable in the long term is my belief in the power of external reality grounded in mathematics and the sure and certain knowledge that all things are finite. The American national debt is almost $18 trillion dollars in current terms. American fixed long term liabilities reduced to present value are in the neighborhood of $70 trillion dollars. No one on the CC board has a greater understanding of historical processes than I do. That is not a boast. It is a statement of fact. You should believe me when I state that protracted financial instability brought down Bourbon Dynasty France, Qing Dynasty China, Romanov Russia, and a host of other polities throughout history. Debt service will bring down the American polity. All complex societies collapse in time due to the progressive inability to maintain dynamic homoestasis. The progressive inability to service accumulated debt will bring down the United States. Americans are not immune to the forces and processes of history.

You seem pretty fixated on the fact that healthcare costs money. That is not something that is ever going to change. In order to provide healthcare to those who can't afford it, it is going to have to take money out of government revenues, which ultimately has to be funded by taxes.

The wealthy will never allow themselves to be taxed into oblivion. The taxes will fall on the middle class and progressively reduce it until it is a shadow of its former self. Leftists are unwilling to accept the fact that all things pass in time. Radically increasing the scope of the American welfare state will accelerate its collapse.

If you can think of a free way to provide healthcare for people who can't afford it, please let us know.

It's possible to delay collapse of the American welfare state by playing to America's strengths. However, that requires permitting the ruthless dynamics of the American economy to function in order to create wealth that can be harnessed. One of the ways that can be accomplished is by preventing the US to become top heavy with Big Govt. and and the rent seeking crowd it attracts. Permit each state to seek its own way towards caring for its people in what the US Supreme Court has referred to as the great laboratory of democracy. Let the states experiment.

What on earth makes you think that Obamacare reduces the benefit of becoming a doctor?

My understanding of the inexorability of a cost/benefit analysis for all human actions except the love of a parent for a child.

Why would insurance companies limit doctors and medical facilities available to people insured by ACA policies?

Insurance companies are like all other capitalist enterprises in that they seek to maximize revenues and minimize expenses in order to realize current and accumulate earnings and profits.

What policies are you actually talking about? Private, medicaid, medicare? They are all affected by the ACA.

Since all health insurance policies are affected by the ACA all insurance policies will seek to minimize expenses by limiting the choices of insureds by steering them to doctors and hospitals that will permit the maximization of profits through the minimization of expenses. This isn't rocket science. For example:

Covered California Enrollees Complain About Limited Doctor Choices Nearby « CBS San Francisco

If you look at the books, the real issue you are talking about here is Medicare, not the ACA. When people retire, they are going on medicare, and it is a very expensive program. You seem to think that attempts to reduce costs in medicare are evil though, so your alternative is to prevent younger poorer people from getting health care?

Medicare and Social Security were produced by bipartisan consensus into which everyone paid and then everyone received benefits. Obamacare was the product of partisanship in which some people win and others lose.

That is not something that Obama imposed, it is something that he simply didn't change.

Obama changed everything in the realm of health care. Why didn't he use the federal preemption doctrine in order to permit insurance companies to compete across state lines?

It is a puzzling argument coming from you, since you repeatedly talk about allowing states to figure out healthcare for themselves, yet this proposal from you dramatically reduces a state's ability to control healthcare in their state.

Obama screwed up. I'm simply pointing out his error. That's just objective analysis.

The nature of insurance is risk pooling. You use things that some other people don't, and visa versa.

Now I'm speaking subjectively to complain. If Obama had sought bipartisan consensus my complaint would simply be minor background noise.

Because, as you have pointed out, Medicare is extremely expensive, and enrollment is only going to go up. They need to be doing everything they can to fight waste in this massive bureaucracy.

The previous system of oversight was inefficient, so this allows Medicare to hopefully act more efficiently.

I am still waiting for your reasoning on how this proves that Obama Care is imposing "government panels" on people. Medicare has always been government run and the government has always made attempts to keep costs down. Any rational insurance plan, public or private, has to do that.

It's too late to seek cooperation or to try and reason with opponents. The die is cast. Your side has created a panel that can be fairly viewed as stealing health care from seniors in order to transfer it to a group of non-seniors. The ACA creates a clear review system that will alter the prior system in which all efforts were made to extend the lives of seniors. That subjects your side to relentless political attacks in which divisive partisan advantage can be obtained by pointing out that the lives of seniors will be shortened by the ACA...besides the ACA took something like $250 billion directly from the Medicare hospitals and providers trust fund. Your side will bleed. That's one of the reasons your side should have sought bipartisan advantage.

You are going to have to start posting direct links to your posts about what you claim the CBO says, because you have so far been dramatically off the mark every time you have "cited" their numbers in the past.

First of all, there is nothing I am compelled to do. This is not a debate. It is a conversation between the two of us in which I am being brutally frank. Having said that I use the CBO report cited by you and Obama's own claims to arrive at the following computation:

$2.1 billion +/- in costs on a gross basis minus $600 billion +/- in receipts produces a net of about $1.5 trillion +/- in costs on a net basis.

$1.5 trillion in net costs as per the CBO minus $900 billion in net costs as per Obama's promise at the time of enactment of the ACA results in a net net cost of $600 billion.

$600 billion in net net costs over ten years averages $60 billion per year to the end of the American Republic.

Nothing. Please show me any evidence to the contrary.

I asked you a question. You answered my question by posing another question. Don't you realize how rude it is to answer a question with a question? The burden of proof is on you, not me.

What does that even mean? Lets see what report you are getting those numbers from?

It means there was no greater lack of health care at the time of partisan passage of the ACA than there was years before. The overwhelming majority of the American people were satisfied with their prior health care and health care insurance. Passage of the ACA was the opportunistic product of the partisan leftist agenda at a transitory moment of complete leftist power. Now the left must pay the price for the opportunism by fighting a never ending battle reminiscent of Sisyphus rolling a stone uphill over and over and over again world without end.

Why is that the right question?

Because the left needs peace in order to enjoy the fruits of its opportunism. Was the real purpose of the ACA the growth of federal power or health care insurance coverage for the uninsured. The two are not synonymous.

The number of people who come to the US for healthcare is a very very small portion of the population in Canada.

Isn't it a fact that the Canadians who came to the US for medical treatment were the folks who required a higher level of care they couldn't wait for by standing in line. The Canadian system works for noncritical cases that can afford to wait in line, but not for acute cases requiring high levels of skill ASAP.

Far smaller than the number of US citizens who travel outside of the US to get affordable healthcare in other countries.

Few Americans travel to Canada for skilled health care. Rather they travel to India, China or elsewhere in the third world.

You being a **** about it isn't really a reason not to reform healthcare.

Did you ever see the movie Alien? Do you remember the xenomorph? That's the kind of relentlessness I find admirable.

Again, the fact that it costs money isn't a reason not to implement it. Any plan is going to be expensive.

Then bleed.

That is obviously sad, but there are countless stories of the exact same thing happening in the US because people didn't have enough money or the right insurance. Anecdotes are not good evidence of anything.

Opinion is informed by personal experience. It has always been thus.

 

[JLM]

The best course of action for you is to be very nice to me, and to express your opinion without rancor.



Your persist in error and I am relentless in disagreement.



Reevaluation is always necessary in order to determine that one's opinion is consistent with external reality. So far external reality doesn't require a change in my opinion.

Now, now, boys quit your squabbling and bickering. From what I've observed of both your histories on the forum, neither one of you is in a position to call the other down. -

 

[BaalsTears]

Now, now, boys quit your squabbling and bickering. From what I've observed of both your histories on the forum, neither one of you is in a position to call the other down. -

I'm quite a charmer ain't I?

 

[JLM]

I'm quite a charmer ain't I?

I'll leave that up to someone you've charmed! -

 

[BaalsTears]

I'll leave that up to someone you've charmed! -

Don't hold your breath waiting for someone to speak up.

Oh btw, Katherine Sebelius, the Commissar of Obamacare has resigned. Her resignation speech was missing a page. What a screw ball! Perhaps her flawed speech is a metaphor for Obamacare. Here is the youtube video of her screw up:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXQr5qIeSeo

 

[JLM]

[/HTML]

Yeah, for that little gaffe she should definitely be tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail. -

 

[Nuggler]

So what you're saying is that there are no educated conservatives.

Huh.

They tend to prove that, time and time again.