Obama wants credit for trying

[Bfgrn]

poor Obama, the people were smart enough to vote in the Republicans to stop the idiot from his great "visions" of transforming Amercia...

so lets give the PEOPLE who voted for that a hand, and a big, waaaaaaaaaaaaaa for Obama and his cult followers

And we got Republican's vision of destroying the President of the United States, and to hell with the country. Conservatives had made it perfectly clear, they don't accept any governing unless it is under their dictum and decree.

In what fucking universe do you believe Republicans will allow Obama and his democrat minions to push anymore bullshit through???

Everything he and his progressive majority passed from 2008-2010 was an epic failure that did nothing but further setback the economy.....

You think Republicans are going to allow that jackass to continue his "destruction of the US" tour????

Emote all you want. But the FACTS don't support what you parrot.

Here is the 'rub'...We are on The Extended-Baseline Scenario trajectory Obama and the Democrats put us on. If Congress does nothing the Extended-Baseline Scenario is already in place.

IF the Bush tax cuts don't expire and the AHA is not fully implemented or repealed the The Alternative Fiscal Scenario is the trajectory Teapublicans will take us if they gain enough power.

the CBO lays it out perfectly clear...CRYSTAL.

Federal Debt Held by the Public Under CBO’s Long-Term Budget Scenarios
(Percentage of gross domestic product)

The chart shows 2 scenarios. For all practical purposes, you can call the Extended-Baseline Scenario the Democrat scenario and the Alternative Fiscal Scenario the Teapublican scenario.


The Extended-Baseline Scenario adheres closely to current law. Under this scenario, the expiration of the tax cuts enacted since 2001 and most recently extended in 2010, the growing reach of the alternative minimum tax, the tax provisions of the recent health care legislation, and the way in which the tax system interacts with economic growth would result in steadily higher revenues relative to GDP.

The Alternative Fiscal Scenario
The budget outlook is much bleaker under the alternative fiscal scenario, which incorporates several changes to current law that are widely expected to occur or that would modify some provisions of law that might be difficult to sustain for a long period. Most important are the assumptions about revenues: that the tax cuts enacted since 2001 and extended most recently in 2010 will be extended; that the reach of the alternative minimum tax will be restrained to stay close to its historical extent; and that over the longer run, tax law will evolve further so that revenues remain near their historical average of 18 percent of GDP. This scenario also incorporates assumptions that Medicare’s payment rates for physicians will remain at current levels (rather than declining by about a third, as under current law) and that some policies enacted in the March 2010 health care legislation to restrain growth in federal health care spending will not continue in effect after 2021.

 

[gallantwarrior]

Word bound = honest, you scum. You provide a link that is supposed to support your statement that lack of insurance kills people..

Your link doesn't come even close to that. It's just garbage that says preventative medicine could help.

People WITH insurance don't utilize preventative medicine, so stop with your dishonest twaddle and pick up your goosestep, propagandist.

Word bound is the least of your problems. I suggest you utilize preventative psychological services. I suspect severe retardation will be the diagnosis.

BTW, you asked for a name...

For years, Paul Hannum didn't have health insurance while he worked as a freelance cameraman in southern California.

One Sunday, Hannum complained of a stomachache which alarmed his pregnant fiancée, Sarah Percy. "He wasn't a complainer," she said. "He's the type of guy who, if he got a cold, he'll power through it. I never had known him to complain about anything."

Hannum thought he had a stomach flu or food poisoning from bad chicken. On Monday, his brother saw him looking ashen and urged him to go to the hospital. "He had a little girl on the way," his older brother Curtis Hannum said. "He didn't want the added burden of an ER visit to hang on their finances. He thought 'I'll just wait,' and he got worse and worse."

By the time Hannum got to the hospital and was admitted to surgery, it was too late.

Paul Hannum, 45, died on Thursday, August 3, 2006, from a ruptured appendix. His daughter, Cameron was born two months later.

Seems to me he made some poor choices. Tell me again why it's my responsibility to pay for someone else's bad choices and poor decisions?

 

[gallantwarrior]

Link?

Lol...seriously, you think medicaid pays ER bills across the board?

Nope. Particularly if you happen to be outside your coverage area. You go the ER, then an insurance agent decides whether or not your emergency should be covered.

And often, it isn't.

And people often mistake appendix symptoms for something that isn't urgent, and by the time they realize it's urgent, it's too late. That's the thing about appendicitis. And, genius...it can't be predicted or prevented no matter HOW many preventative care visits you make on the state dime.

In other words, piss poor example. Completely irrelevant to the topic, as your abstract was, and as anything else you dredge up will be.

Because lack of insurance doesn't kill people. Insurance won't prevent appendicitis.

WOW, your retardation is acute. If anything this one falls almost completely ON a lack of health insurance. A preventative care visit may not detect appendicitis. BUT, a visit to a doctor or hospital WILL when it is acute, AND, the family of the deceased stated that "He didn't want the added burden of an ER visit to hang on their finances."

Again, his choice.

 

[candycorn]

Does anybody know if Michelle Obama was the prom queen?

 

[Bfgrn]

Word bound = honest, you scum. You provide a link that is supposed to support your statement that lack of insurance kills people..

Your link doesn't come even close to that. It's just garbage that says preventative medicine could help.

People WITH insurance don't utilize preventative medicine, so stop with your dishonest twaddle and pick up your goosestep, propagandist.

Word bound is the least of your problems. I suggest you utilize preventative psychological services. I suspect severe retardation will be the diagnosis.

BTW, you asked for a name...

For years, Paul Hannum didn't have health insurance while he worked as a freelance cameraman in southern California.

One Sunday, Hannum complained of a stomachache which alarmed his pregnant fiancée, Sarah Percy. "He wasn't a complainer," she said. "He's the type of guy who, if he got a cold, he'll power through it. I never had known him to complain about anything."

Hannum thought he had a stomach flu or food poisoning from bad chicken. On Monday, his brother saw him looking ashen and urged him to go to the hospital. "He had a little girl on the way," his older brother Curtis Hannum said. "He didn't want the added burden of an ER visit to hang on their finances. He thought 'I'll just wait,' and he got worse and worse."

By the time Hannum got to the hospital and was admitted to surgery, it was too late.

Paul Hannum, 45, died on Thursday, August 3, 2006, from a ruptured appendix. His daughter, Cameron was born two months later.

Seems to me he made some poor choices. Tell me again why it's my responsibility to pay for someone else's bad choices and poor decisions?

Try to absorb THIS fact... we ALL pay for people who don't have insurance.

Irony abounds with the conservative mind. Conservatives created the 'individual mandate', and always beat their chests about 'personal responsibility'. Now, conservatives are saying the individual mandate is not 'fair'. And they are arguing for personal IRresponsibility.

Our tax dollars will continue to cover hundreds of millions of dollars in medical costs for uninsured individuals who seek help in hospital emergency rooms or who have to be hospitalized.

Critics of the Affordable Care Act call it everything from an attempt to turn America into Europe to another move to force government down citizens' throats. They say the government shouldn't be able to make individuals buy insurance if they don't want it.

It's a sure bet, though, that many "shouldn't-have-to-buy-it-if-I-don't-want-it" folks will be the first to seek help for themselves or a family member at a hospital emergency room if a medical crisis arises.

That is the fallacy of the main criticism of the act -- if they don't buy insurance, the insured pay for the uninsured's negligence through higher insurance rates.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

3,000 Americans were killed by terrorist on 911. 45,000 people die in the United States each year -- one every 12 minutes -- in large part because they lack health insurance and can not get good care.

OK, then Republicans are terrorists. Glad we can agree cowpoke.

Wow! You do realize that everyone dies? Sooner or later, we all take a dirt nap.

Are you barbarians for real? The sooner or later can be controlled with proper medical care.

I want to hear you justify the premature and preventable death of fellow Americans. The first 50 year old woman in this story is probably dead from something that could have been prevented.


Health reform's human stories

New Orleans, La. — — It happened as I watched a 50-something woman walk out, after spending several hours being attended to by volunteer doctors. "She's decided against treatment. A reasonable decision under the circumstances," the doctor tells us as she heads for the next patient. The president of the board of the National Association of Free Health Clinics tells me why: "It's stage four breast cancer, her body is filled with tumors." I don't know when that woman last saw a doctor. But I do know that if she had health insurance, the odds she would have seen a doctor long ago are much higher, and her chances for an earlier diagnosis and treatment would have been far greater.

After watching for hours as the patients moved through the clinic, it was hard to believe that I was in America.

Eighty-three percent of the patients they see are employed, they are not accepting other government help on a large scale, not "welfare queens" as some would like to have us believe. They are tax-paying, good, upstanding citizens who are trying to make it and give their kids a better life just like you and me.

Ninety percent of the patients who came through Saturday's clinic had two or more diagnoses.

Eighty-two percent had a life-threatening condition such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, or hypertension. They are victims of a system built with corporate profits at its center, which long ago forgot the moral imperative that should drive us to show compassion to our fellow men and women.

We have all made mistakes. But Dante tells us that divine justice weighs the sins of the cold-blooded and the sins of the warm-hearted on different scales. Better the occasional faults of a party living in the spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a party frozen in the ice of its own indifference.
President John F. Kennedy

If proper insurance is such a wonderful thing you should be able to come up with numbers that show a new benefit instead of resorting to sob stories.

 

[flacaltenn]

Word bound is the least of your problems. I suggest you utilize preventative psychological services. I suspect severe retardation will be the diagnosis.

BTW, you asked for a name...

For years, Paul Hannum didn't have health insurance while he worked as a freelance cameraman in southern California.

One Sunday, Hannum complained of a stomachache which alarmed his pregnant fiancée, Sarah Percy. "He wasn't a complainer," she said. "He's the type of guy who, if he got a cold, he'll power through it. I never had known him to complain about anything."

Hannum thought he had a stomach flu or food poisoning from bad chicken. On Monday, his brother saw him looking ashen and urged him to go to the hospital. "He had a little girl on the way," his older brother Curtis Hannum said. "He didn't want the added burden of an ER visit to hang on their finances. He thought 'I'll just wait,' and he got worse and worse."

By the time Hannum got to the hospital and was admitted to surgery, it was too late.

Paul Hannum, 45, died on Thursday, August 3, 2006, from a ruptured appendix. His daughter, Cameron was born two months later.

Seems to me he made some poor choices. Tell me again why it's my responsibility to pay for someone else's bad choices and poor decisions?

Try to absorb THIS fact... we ALL pay for people who don't have insurance.

Irony abounds with the conservative mind. Conservatives created the 'individual mandate', and always beat their chests about 'personal responsibility'. Now, conservatives are saying the individual mandate is not 'fair'. And they are arguing for personal IRresponsibility.

Our tax dollars will continue to cover hundreds of millions of dollars in medical costs for uninsured individuals who seek help in hospital emergency rooms or who have to be hospitalized.

Critics of the Affordable Care Act call it everything from an attempt to turn America into Europe to another move to force government down citizens' throats. They say the government shouldn't be able to make individuals buy insurance if they don't want it.

It's a sure bet, though, that many "shouldn't-have-to-buy-it-if-I-don't-want-it" folks will be the first to seek help for themselves or a family member at a hospital emergency room if a medical crisis arises.

That is the fallacy of the main criticism of the act -- if they don't buy insurance, the insured pay for the uninsured's negligence through higher insurance rates.

Actually you're missing the point. Which is the intent was to cover the 40Mill "uninsured" (which never really were). They DID drive up the cost of insurance, but furthermore, they drove up the actual costs (because of meager govt reimbursement) and they drove up taxes (because we paid thru MediCaid and other existing programs)..

All the ACA does is to give the Feds a bigger cut of this scam thru 12 new taxes and many penalties. Because there IS NO DIFF between the existing patchwork of covering them and the idea that we will subsidize or buy their insurance outright. Especially when the bill FORCES many more of them onto MediCaid. The only diff is the perhaps 4 million of them who could ACTUALLY AFFORD insurance -- but elected to not pick it up.. And adding this amount of cost and bureaucratic growth to do that is just insane..

 

[Qball]

Only a man who's spent his entire life voting Present to look like the "adult in the room" would think he deserves a Participation trophy. The only thing he's tried at is passing the buck. Oh, and golf. He's tried at that.

 

[Bfgrn]

Wow! You do realize that everyone dies? Sooner or later, we all take a dirt nap.

Are you barbarians for real? The sooner or later can be controlled with proper medical care.

I want to hear you justify the premature and preventable death of fellow Americans. The first 50 year old woman in this story is probably dead from something that could have been prevented.


Health reform's human stories

New Orleans, La. — — It happened as I watched a 50-something woman walk out, after spending several hours being attended to by volunteer doctors. "She's decided against treatment. A reasonable decision under the circumstances," the doctor tells us as she heads for the next patient. The president of the board of the National Association of Free Health Clinics tells me why: "It's stage four breast cancer, her body is filled with tumors." I don't know when that woman last saw a doctor. But I do know that if she had health insurance, the odds she would have seen a doctor long ago are much higher, and her chances for an earlier diagnosis and treatment would have been far greater.

After watching for hours as the patients moved through the clinic, it was hard to believe that I was in America.

Eighty-three percent of the patients they see are employed, they are not accepting other government help on a large scale, not "welfare queens" as some would like to have us believe. They are tax-paying, good, upstanding citizens who are trying to make it and give their kids a better life just like you and me.

Ninety percent of the patients who came through Saturday's clinic had two or more diagnoses.

Eighty-two percent had a life-threatening condition such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, or hypertension. They are victims of a system built with corporate profits at its center, which long ago forgot the moral imperative that should drive us to show compassion to our fellow men and women.

We have all made mistakes. But Dante tells us that divine justice weighs the sins of the cold-blooded and the sins of the warm-hearted on different scales. Better the occasional faults of a party living in the spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a party frozen in the ice of its own indifference.
President John F. Kennedy

If proper insurance is such a wonderful thing you should be able to come up with numbers that show a new benefit instead of resorting to sob stories.

Sob stories? They are human stories. And there are way too many tragic human stories.

One thing that really stood out to me in that article was THIS fact:

Eighty-three percent of the patients they see are employed, they are not accepting other government help on a large scale, not "welfare queens" as some would like to have us believe. They are tax-paying, good, upstanding citizens who are trying to make it and give their kids a better life just like you and me.

It is called personal responsibility. Something conservatives like to beat their chests about. But when conservatives talk about personal responsibility, they are not talking about themselves, they are talking about others. So typical.

Here is a fascinating story...

Plaintiff In Landmark Anti-Obamacare Lawsuit Bankrupted By Medical Bills - You And I Pick Up Her Tab

Oh, the irony.

Mary Brown is your average, 56 year old Florida resident. And while you may never have heard of Mary, her name is destined to live on in American history as a key player in one of the most important legal cases ever decided by the United States Supreme Court.

Mary Brown is a name plaintiff in one of the challenges to the Affordable Care Act —Obamacare—that will be taken up by the Court in just a few weeks.

Why Mary? When the National Federation of Independent Business was preparing their court challenge, the organization needed an individual to put their name to the lawsuit. Mary Brown fit the bill.

As someone who chose not to purchase health insurance —and felt strongly that the federal government had no business telling her that she had to buy it whether she liked it or not—Mary had become an active and outspoken critic of the law. As a result, she was the perfect candidate to be a human face on the challenge to Obamacare.

As it turns out, Mary is, indeed, a great symbol for the court challenges to the ACA—but not for the side she had in mind.

Last fall, Mary Brown and her husband filed a petition of bankruptcy seeking relief for some $55,000 in debts the couple had run up when they suffered a reversal of fortune in their auto repair business. Like so many Americans who have experienced small business failures during these difficult times, Mary could no longer earn enough money in her business to keep up with her bills and she needed a way out.

The thing is, among the debts listed in the bankruptcy filing are $4500 worth of medical bills—obligations that, presumably, would have largely been paid had Mary chosen to purchase health insurance, something she will be required to do come 2014 when the insurance mandate of the healthcare reform law kicks in.

Almost half of the medical debt run up by the Browns is owed to Bay Medical Center in Panama City, Florida. A spokesperson for the hospital had this say about their experience with the Browns and the many others who cannot pay their medical bills because they have chosen to remain uninsured.

“This is a very common problem. We cover $30 million in charity and uncompensated care every year,” “If it’s a bad debt, we have to absorb it.”

Of course, ‘absorbing it’ means that the loss will be passed along to the rest of us who do take responsibility for the medical obligations that, for almost all of us, are inevitable.

While the bankruptcy court will forgive Mary’s medical debt, taking Brown and her husband off the hook, this by no means suggests that the bills won’t be paid.

In fact, they will.

The bills will be paid by you and they will be paid by me. They will be paid by every American who takes responsibility for planning for their healthcare needs and, as a result, purchases health insurance in the knowledge that almost every one of us will need the coverage at some point in our lives.

The medical providers will pass along the losses suffered as a result of the Browns’ non-payment to the insurance companies by raising the prices the insurance companies pay for the services provided. The insurance companies will, in turn, pass along those increases to their customers by raising the price of our monthly premiums.

It is precisely this cost shifting away from those who will not take personal responsibility for covering the costs of their own health care and onto the rest of us that forms the very basis of the government’s argument as to why Congress acted properly and within the Constitution when creating the insurance mandate as there is a true economic consequence to most Americans when Mary decided to let the rest of us pay for her medical care.

Plaintiff In Landmark Anti-Obamacare Lawsuit Bankrupted By Medical Bills-You And I Pick Up Her Tab - Forbes

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Are you barbarians for real? The sooner or later can be controlled with proper medical care.

I want to hear you justify the premature and preventable death of fellow Americans. The first 50 year old woman in this story is probably dead from something that could have been prevented.


Health reform's human stories

New Orleans, La. — — It happened as I watched a 50-something woman walk out, after spending several hours being attended to by volunteer doctors. "She's decided against treatment. A reasonable decision under the circumstances," the doctor tells us as she heads for the next patient. The president of the board of the National Association of Free Health Clinics tells me why: "It's stage four breast cancer, her body is filled with tumors." I don't know when that woman last saw a doctor. But I do know that if she had health insurance, the odds she would have seen a doctor long ago are much higher, and her chances for an earlier diagnosis and treatment would have been far greater.

After watching for hours as the patients moved through the clinic, it was hard to believe that I was in America.

Eighty-three percent of the patients they see are employed, they are not accepting other government help on a large scale, not "welfare queens" as some would like to have us believe. They are tax-paying, good, upstanding citizens who are trying to make it and give their kids a better life just like you and me.

Ninety percent of the patients who came through Saturday's clinic had two or more diagnoses.

Eighty-two percent had a life-threatening condition such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, or hypertension. They are victims of a system built with corporate profits at its center, which long ago forgot the moral imperative that should drive us to show compassion to our fellow men and women.

We have all made mistakes. But Dante tells us that divine justice weighs the sins of the cold-blooded and the sins of the warm-hearted on different scales. Better the occasional faults of a party living in the spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a party frozen in the ice of its own indifference.
President John F. Kennedy

If proper insurance is such a wonderful thing you should be able to come up with numbers that show a new benefit instead of resorting to sob stories.

Sob stories? They are human stories. And there are way too many tragic human stories.

One thing that really stood out to me in that article was THIS fact:

Eighty-three percent of the patients they see are employed, they are not accepting other government help on a large scale, not "welfare queens" as some would like to have us believe. They are tax-paying, good, upstanding citizens who are trying to make it and give their kids a better life just like you and me.

It is called personal responsibility. Something conservatives like to beat their chests about. But when conservatives talk about personal responsibility, they are not talking about themselves, they are talking about others. So typical.

Here is a fascinating story...

Plaintiff In Landmark Anti-Obamacare Lawsuit Bankrupted By Medical Bills - You And I Pick Up Her Tab

Oh, the irony.

Mary Brown is your average, 56 year old Florida resident. And while you may never have heard of Mary, her name is destined to live on in American history as a key player in one of the most important legal cases ever decided by the United States Supreme Court.

Mary Brown is a name plaintiff in one of the challenges to the Affordable Care Act —Obamacare—that will be taken up by the Court in just a few weeks.

Why Mary? When the National Federation of Independent Business was preparing their court challenge, the organization needed an individual to put their name to the lawsuit. Mary Brown fit the bill.

As someone who chose not to purchase health insurance —and felt strongly that the federal government had no business telling her that she had to buy it whether she liked it or not—Mary had become an active and outspoken critic of the law. As a result, she was the perfect candidate to be a human face on the challenge to Obamacare.

As it turns out, Mary is, indeed, a great symbol for the court challenges to the ACA—but not for the side she had in mind.

Last fall, Mary Brown and her husband filed a petition of bankruptcy seeking relief for some $55,000 in debts the couple had run up when they suffered a reversal of fortune in their auto repair business. Like so many Americans who have experienced small business failures during these difficult times, Mary could no longer earn enough money in her business to keep up with her bills and she needed a way out.

The thing is, among the debts listed in the bankruptcy filing are $4500 worth of medical bills—obligations that, presumably, would have largely been paid had Mary chosen to purchase health insurance, something she will be required to do come 2014 when the insurance mandate of the healthcare reform law kicks in.

Almost half of the medical debt run up by the Browns is owed to Bay Medical Center in Panama City, Florida. A spokesperson for the hospital had this say about their experience with the Browns and the many others who cannot pay their medical bills because they have chosen to remain uninsured.

“This is a very common problem. We cover $30 million in charity and uncompensated care every year,” “If it’s a bad debt, we have to absorb it.”

Of course, ‘absorbing it’ means that the loss will be passed along to the rest of us who do take responsibility for the medical obligations that, for almost all of us, are inevitable.

While the bankruptcy court will forgive Mary’s medical debt, taking Brown and her husband off the hook, this by no means suggests that the bills won’t be paid.

In fact, they will.

The bills will be paid by you and they will be paid by me. They will be paid by every American who takes responsibility for planning for their healthcare needs and, as a result, purchases health insurance in the knowledge that almost every one of us will need the coverage at some point in our lives.

The medical providers will pass along the losses suffered as a result of the Browns’ non-payment to the insurance companies by raising the prices the insurance companies pay for the services provided. The insurance companies will, in turn, pass along those increases to their customers by raising the price of our monthly premiums.

It is precisely this cost shifting away from those who will not take personal responsibility for covering the costs of their own health care and onto the rest of us that forms the very basis of the government’s argument as to why Congress acted properly and within the Constitution when creating the insurance mandate as there is a true economic consequence to most Americans when Mary decided to let the rest of us pay for her medical care.

Plaintiff In Landmark Anti-Obamacare Lawsuit Bankrupted By Medical Bills-You And I Pick Up Her Tab - Forbes

No actual evidence, good to know.

 

[auditor0007]

I give him credit for doing his damnedest to divide this nation.

Come on you guys, give credit where credit is due.

Immie

Not doing exactly as the Republicans want now equates to dividing this nation; kinda funny. What is funnier is that in many cases he actually did exactly what the Republicans wanted. But funniest of all is a con trying to convince me that Obama is some left wing nut job who is completely out of touch with the people and reality.

 

[Bfgrn]

If proper insurance is such a wonderful thing you should be able to come up with numbers that show a new benefit instead of resorting to sob stories.

Sob stories? They are human stories. And there are way too many tragic human stories.

One thing that really stood out to me in that article was THIS fact:

Eighty-three percent of the patients they see are employed, they are not accepting other government help on a large scale, not "welfare queens" as some would like to have us believe. They are tax-paying, good, upstanding citizens who are trying to make it and give their kids a better life just like you and me.

It is called personal responsibility. Something conservatives like to beat their chests about. But when conservatives talk about personal responsibility, they are not talking about themselves, they are talking about others. So typical.

Here is a fascinating story...

Plaintiff In Landmark Anti-Obamacare Lawsuit Bankrupted By Medical Bills - You And I Pick Up Her Tab

Oh, the irony.

Mary Brown is your average, 56 year old Florida resident. And while you may never have heard of Mary, her name is destined to live on in American history as a key player in one of the most important legal cases ever decided by the United States Supreme Court.

Mary Brown is a name plaintiff in one of the challenges to the Affordable Care Act —Obamacare—that will be taken up by the Court in just a few weeks.

Why Mary? When the National Federation of Independent Business was preparing their court challenge, the organization needed an individual to put their name to the lawsuit. Mary Brown fit the bill.

As someone who chose not to purchase health insurance —and felt strongly that the federal government had no business telling her that she had to buy it whether she liked it or not—Mary had become an active and outspoken critic of the law. As a result, she was the perfect candidate to be a human face on the challenge to Obamacare.

As it turns out, Mary is, indeed, a great symbol for the court challenges to the ACA—but not for the side she had in mind.

Last fall, Mary Brown and her husband filed a petition of bankruptcy seeking relief for some $55,000 in debts the couple had run up when they suffered a reversal of fortune in their auto repair business. Like so many Americans who have experienced small business failures during these difficult times, Mary could no longer earn enough money in her business to keep up with her bills and she needed a way out.

The thing is, among the debts listed in the bankruptcy filing are $4500 worth of medical bills—obligations that, presumably, would have largely been paid had Mary chosen to purchase health insurance, something she will be required to do come 2014 when the insurance mandate of the healthcare reform law kicks in.

Almost half of the medical debt run up by the Browns is owed to Bay Medical Center in Panama City, Florida. A spokesperson for the hospital had this say about their experience with the Browns and the many others who cannot pay their medical bills because they have chosen to remain uninsured.

“This is a very common problem. We cover $30 million in charity and uncompensated care every year,” “If it’s a bad debt, we have to absorb it.”

Of course, ‘absorbing it’ means that the loss will be passed along to the rest of us who do take responsibility for the medical obligations that, for almost all of us, are inevitable.

While the bankruptcy court will forgive Mary’s medical debt, taking Brown and her husband off the hook, this by no means suggests that the bills won’t be paid.

In fact, they will.

The bills will be paid by you and they will be paid by me. They will be paid by every American who takes responsibility for planning for their healthcare needs and, as a result, purchases health insurance in the knowledge that almost every one of us will need the coverage at some point in our lives.

The medical providers will pass along the losses suffered as a result of the Browns’ non-payment to the insurance companies by raising the prices the insurance companies pay for the services provided. The insurance companies will, in turn, pass along those increases to their customers by raising the price of our monthly premiums.

It is precisely this cost shifting away from those who will not take personal responsibility for covering the costs of their own health care and onto the rest of us that forms the very basis of the government’s argument as to why Congress acted properly and within the Constitution when creating the insurance mandate as there is a true economic consequence to most Americans when Mary decided to let the rest of us pay for her medical care.

Plaintiff In Landmark Anti-Obamacare Lawsuit Bankrupted By Medical Bills-You And I Pick Up Her Tab - Forbes

No actual evidence, good to know.

You want to turn the benefits of having insurance into a partisan issue, good to know.

As the responsible head of my household, I make sure no one can take away everything I and my family members own. If you believe not having insurance is wise, please explain.

 

[Bfgrn]

I give him credit for doing his damnedest to divide this nation.

Come on you guys, give credit where credit is due.

Immie

Not doing exactly as the Republicans want now equates to dividing this nation; kinda funny. What is funnier is that in many cases he actually did exactly what the Republicans wanted. But funniest of all is a con trying to convince me that Obama is some left wing nut job who is completely out of touch with the people and reality.

Exactly, here are the FACTS:

In fact, says Len Nichols of the New America Foundation, the individual mandate was originally a Republican idea. "It was invented by Mark Pauly to give to George Bush Sr. back in the day, as a competition to the employer mandate focus of the Democrats at the time."

The 'Free-Rider Effect'

Back in the late 1980s — when Democrats were pushing not just a requirement for employers to provide insurance, but also the possibility of a government-sponsored single-payer system — "a group of economists and health policy people, market-oriented, sat down and said, 'Let's see if we can come up with a health reform proposal that would preserve a role for markets but would also achieve universal coverage.' "

The idea of the individual mandate was about the only logical way to get there, Pauly says. That's because even with the most generous subsidies or enticements, "there would always be some Evel Knievels of health insurance, who would decline coverage even if the subsidies were very generous, and even if they could afford it, quote unquote, so if you really wanted to close the gap, that's the step you'd have to take."

One reason the individual mandate appealed to conservatives is because it called for individual responsibility to address what economists call the "free-rider effect." That's the fact that if a person is in an accident or comes down with a dread disease, that person is going to get medical care, and someone is going to pay for it.

"We called this responsible national health insurance," says Pauly. "There was a kind of an ethical and moral support for the notion that people shouldn't be allowed to free-ride on the charity of fellow citizens."

Republican, Democratic Bills Strikingly Similar

So while President Clinton was pushing for employers to cover their workers in his 1993 bill, John Chafee of Rhode Island, along with 20 other GOP senators and Rep. Bill Thomas of California, introduced legislation that instead featured an individual mandate. Four of those Republican co-sponsors — Hatch, Charles Grassley of Iowa, Robert Bennett of Utah and Christopher Bond of Missouri — remain in the Senate today.

The GOP's 1993 measure included some features Republicans still want Democrats to consider, including damage award caps for medical malpractice lawsuits.

But the summary of the Republican bill from the Clinton era and the Democratic bills that passed the House and Senate over the past few months are startlingly alike.

Beyond the requirement that everyone have insurance, both call for purchasing pools and standardized insurance plans. Both call for a ban on insurers denying coverage or raising premiums because a person has been sick in the past. Both even call for increased federal research into the effectiveness of medical treatments — something else that used to have strong bipartisan support, but that Republicans have been backing away from recently.

'A Sad Testament'

Nichols, of the New America Foundation, says he's depressed that so many issues that used to be part of the Republican health agenda are now being rejected by Republican leaders and most of the rank and file. "I think it's a sad testament to the state of relations among the parties that they've gotten to this point," he said.

And how does economist Pauly feel about the GOP's retreat from the individual mandate they used to promote? "That's not something that makes me particularly happy," he says.

 

[frazzledgear]

The notion that people die because they don't have insurance is just a lefty lie meant to terrify people into supporting the health care act. It has no basis in truth. None. I challenge the idiot to provide one real example of someone who died from not having insurance.

People are not dying at home of treatable diseases because they don't have health care. It's not happening. This is right up there with saying "if you don't support this tax, old people will die!!! Children will suffer!!!"

It's just scare tactics.

WOW, the right wing mind is something to behold. You really can't be THAT fucking stupid, are you koshergrl. Please tell me you are 5 years old.

Deaths preventable in the U.S. by improvements in use of clinical preventive services

For example, the all-cause model predicted that every 10% increase in hypertension treatment would lead to an additional 14,000 deaths prevented and every 10% increase in treatment of elevated low-density lipoprotein cholesterol or aspirin prophylaxis would lead to 8000 deaths prevented in those aged <80 years, per year. Overall, the models suggest that optimal use of all of these interventions could prevent 50,000-100,000 deaths per year in those aged <80 years and 25,000-40,000 deaths per year in those aged <65 years.


CONCLUSIONS:

Substantial improvements in population health are achievable through greater use of a small number of preventive services. Healthcare systems should maximize use of these services.

2010 American Journal of Preventive Medicine. All rights reserved.

What the HELL are you babbling about? You pull up a study about more effective treatment of hypertension and dare to contend this somehow proves tens of thousands of people are dying because of lack of treatment because they have no insurance!

Several problems with acting like the tool and useful idiot of the left (as they call their own supporters-personally I would not be flattered if my own side revealed that kind of contempt for their own supporters they clearly believe are ignorant about the REAL agenda). Your study in no way has a damn thing to do with lack of insurance. It is a FACT the vast majority of people who lack insurance but want it will have it in a matter of MONTHS. In spite of leftist bullshit lying ass propaganda, it is a TEMPORARY problem for the vast majority. So let's not pretend being without it for a few MONTHS is killing TENS OF THOUSANDS, ok? You have to be a true ignorant moron to believe it. The number going without at any given time but want it is a fairly constant number- but who those people are CHANGES and does so fairly rapidly! We are actually talking about a tiny minority who suffer a chronic lack of health insurance as opposed to the vast majority who suffer a temporary lack. So naturally the massive-powerful-government-controlling-every-aspect-of-everyone's-lives-loving liberals insist the best and only possible way to help those who actually want insurance but suffer a chronic lack of it - is by destroying what is in reality the best medical system in the world and turning it into yet one more sad sack, mediocre at best, inefficient, waste and fraud ridden system.

In addition, preventative health care is an inefficient use of precious resources and most effective when used for those whose history actually puts them at high risk for certain conditions-NOT used as a blanket, one-size-fits-all thing. In addition, a consumer driven plan works better for the most effective use of resources. The MAJOR reason for spiraling health care cost is the widening gap between the consumer and the financial impact on their wallet. Third party payees encourage consumers to believe they are receiving "free" care when in fact they are really paying through the nose for it and far, far more than they would be willing to voluntarily pay for it if they paid for it directly.

The truth is those pushing for government takeover of 1/6th of our economy know good and well what will happen- exactly what is happening in other countries that already did it and now face its collapse. They don't care because in spite of touchy-feely words and promises of rainbows and unicorns, they are NOT motivated by any legitimate concern for others and never were. They have their useful idiots out there insisting that is their motive. But just a lie. They already know the first people on the chopping block when the government cost cutters are put in charge - will be the elderly, sick, handicapped, unwanted- people they believe are little more than useless trash anyway. Just like they are in other countries that went this way already. Who they target for rationing every time reveals the truth. This isn't about CARING for the sick and never was. This is about POWER - taking it from YOU and forfeiting it to government FOREVER while the left continuously chants about how liberty is overrated anyway and "real" rights are nothing but whatever goods and services we covet today and want to demand government just give it you for 'free' so you will forget or better yet, remain totally ignorant about the fact your rights are actually that which protects you from government abuse.

It is about a very, very successful means of massively stripping individuals of of huge chunk of their rights and the power that goes with them in one fell swoop and handing it over to government, unlikely to ever be peacefully returned again. It instantly changes the equation from citizens who consent to be governed - to subjects who must do as they as ORDERED by government or face punishment, EXACTLY the kind of system our founders were desperately trying to avoid creating. The TRUE goal of fascist loving, totalitarian loving, burning with desire to run OUR life leftists. (In spite of the moronic useful idiots of the left constantly accusing the smaller, decentralized, weaker government supporting right of being fascists- fascism is LEFTWING extremism. Always. The right opposes ever allowing government to have the size and power to become fascist in the first place!)

You have another fake study to post so you can claim the founders actually envisioned an entitlement society dependent on government handouts and being micromanaged by it as opposed to a self reliant, independent society? LOL

Congressional Budget Expert Says Preventive Care Will Raise &#8212; Not Cut &#8212; Costs - ABC News

Consumer Driven Health Care Plans

BTW- exactly what is your fair share of the money you don't own and didn't lift a finger to earn while I busted my ass to earn it working 60 hours a week? If I never hear that stupid phrase "fair share" from the tax dodging people of the Obama administration ever again, it will still be too soon. And who the fuck do liberals think they are to claim a right to decide what a "fair share" even is and then demand we must all silently accept THEIR definition? Assholes.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Sob stories? They are human stories. And there are way too many tragic human stories.

One thing that really stood out to me in that article was THIS fact:

Eighty-three percent of the patients they see are employed, they are not accepting other government help on a large scale, not "welfare queens" as some would like to have us believe. They are tax-paying, good, upstanding citizens who are trying to make it and give their kids a better life just like you and me.

It is called personal responsibility. Something conservatives like to beat their chests about. But when conservatives talk about personal responsibility, they are not talking about themselves, they are talking about others. So typical.

Here is a fascinating story...

Plaintiff In Landmark Anti-Obamacare Lawsuit Bankrupted By Medical Bills - You And I Pick Up Her Tab

Oh, the irony.

Mary Brown is your average, 56 year old Florida resident. And while you may never have heard of Mary, her name is destined to live on in American history as a key player in one of the most important legal cases ever decided by the United States Supreme Court.

Mary Brown is a name plaintiff in one of the challenges to the Affordable Care Act &#8212;Obamacare&#8212;that will be taken up by the Court in just a few weeks.

Why Mary? When the National Federation of Independent Business was preparing their court challenge, the organization needed an individual to put their name to the lawsuit. Mary Brown fit the bill.

As someone who chose not to purchase health insurance &#8212;and felt strongly that the federal government had no business telling her that she had to buy it whether she liked it or not&#8212;Mary had become an active and outspoken critic of the law. As a result, she was the perfect candidate to be a human face on the challenge to Obamacare.

As it turns out, Mary is, indeed, a great symbol for the court challenges to the ACA&#8212;but not for the side she had in mind.

Last fall, Mary Brown and her husband filed a petition of bankruptcy seeking relief for some $55,000 in debts the couple had run up when they suffered a reversal of fortune in their auto repair business. Like so many Americans who have experienced small business failures during these difficult times, Mary could no longer earn enough money in her business to keep up with her bills and she needed a way out.

The thing is, among the debts listed in the bankruptcy filing are $4500 worth of medical bills&#8212;obligations that, presumably, would have largely been paid had Mary chosen to purchase health insurance, something she will be required to do come 2014 when the insurance mandate of the healthcare reform law kicks in.

Almost half of the medical debt run up by the Browns is owed to Bay Medical Center in Panama City, Florida. A spokesperson for the hospital had this say about their experience with the Browns and the many others who cannot pay their medical bills because they have chosen to remain uninsured.

&#8220;This is a very common problem. We cover $30 million in charity and uncompensated care every year,&#8221; &#8220;If it&#8217;s a bad debt, we have to absorb it.&#8221;

Of course, &#8216;absorbing it&#8217; means that the loss will be passed along to the rest of us who do take responsibility for the medical obligations that, for almost all of us, are inevitable.

While the bankruptcy court will forgive Mary&#8217;s medical debt, taking Brown and her husband off the hook, this by no means suggests that the bills won&#8217;t be paid.

In fact, they will.

The bills will be paid by you and they will be paid by me. They will be paid by every American who takes responsibility for planning for their healthcare needs and, as a result, purchases health insurance in the knowledge that almost every one of us will need the coverage at some point in our lives.

The medical providers will pass along the losses suffered as a result of the Browns&#8217; non-payment to the insurance companies by raising the prices the insurance companies pay for the services provided. The insurance companies will, in turn, pass along those increases to their customers by raising the price of our monthly premiums.

It is precisely this cost shifting away from those who will not take personal responsibility for covering the costs of their own health care and onto the rest of us that forms the very basis of the government&#8217;s argument as to why Congress acted properly and within the Constitution when creating the insurance mandate as there is a true economic consequence to most Americans when Mary decided to let the rest of us pay for her medical care.

Plaintiff In Landmark Anti-Obamacare Lawsuit Bankrupted By Medical Bills-You And I Pick Up Her Tab - Forbes

No actual evidence, good to know.

You want to turn the benefits of having insurance into a partisan issue, good to know.

As the responsible head of my household, I make sure no one can take away everything I and my family members own. If you believe not having insurance is wise, please explain.

Asking for evidence of something is an attempt to turn it into partisan politics?

 

[Quantum Windbag]

I give him credit for doing his damnedest to divide this nation.

Come on you guys, give credit where credit is due.

Immie

Not doing exactly as the Republicans want now equates to dividing this nation; kinda funny. What is funnier is that in many cases he actually did exactly what the Republicans wanted. But funniest of all is a con trying to convince me that Obama is some left wing nut job who is completely out of touch with the people and reality.

Exactly, here are the FACTS:

In fact, says Len Nichols of the New America Foundation, the individual mandate was originally a Republican idea. "It was invented by Mark Pauly to give to George Bush Sr. back in the day, as a competition to the employer mandate focus of the Democrats at the time."

The 'Free-Rider Effect'

Back in the late 1980s — when Democrats were pushing not just a requirement for employers to provide insurance, but also the possibility of a government-sponsored single-payer system — "a group of economists and health policy people, market-oriented, sat down and said, 'Let's see if we can come up with a health reform proposal that would preserve a role for markets but would also achieve universal coverage.' "

The idea of the individual mandate was about the only logical way to get there, Pauly says. That's because even with the most generous subsidies or enticements, "there would always be some Evel Knievels of health insurance, who would decline coverage even if the subsidies were very generous, and even if they could afford it, quote unquote, so if you really wanted to close the gap, that's the step you'd have to take."

One reason the individual mandate appealed to conservatives is because it called for individual responsibility to address what economists call the "free-rider effect." That's the fact that if a person is in an accident or comes down with a dread disease, that person is going to get medical care, and someone is going to pay for it.

"We called this responsible national health insurance," says Pauly. "There was a kind of an ethical and moral support for the notion that people shouldn't be allowed to free-ride on the charity of fellow citizens."

Republican, Democratic Bills Strikingly Similar

So while President Clinton was pushing for employers to cover their workers in his 1993 bill, John Chafee of Rhode Island, along with 20 other GOP senators and Rep. Bill Thomas of California, introduced legislation that instead featured an individual mandate. Four of those Republican co-sponsors — Hatch, Charles Grassley of Iowa, Robert Bennett of Utah and Christopher Bond of Missouri — remain in the Senate today.

The GOP's 1993 measure included some features Republicans still want Democrats to consider, including damage award caps for medical malpractice lawsuits.

But the summary of the Republican bill from the Clinton era and the Democratic bills that passed the House and Senate over the past few months are startlingly alike.

Beyond the requirement that everyone have insurance, both call for purchasing pools and standardized insurance plans. Both call for a ban on insurers denying coverage or raising premiums because a person has been sick in the past. Both even call for increased federal research into the effectiveness of medical treatments — something else that used to have strong bipartisan support, but that Republicans have been backing away from recently.

'A Sad Testament'

Nichols, of the New America Foundation, says he's depressed that so many issues that used to be part of the Republican health agenda are now being rejected by Republican leaders and most of the rank and file. "I think it's a sad testament to the state of relations among the parties that they've gotten to this point," he said.

And how does economist Pauly feel about the GOP's retreat from the individual mandate they used to promote? "That's not something that makes me particularly happy," he says.

The fact is that the idea of a mandate was around a long time before Pauley wrote the paper that supposedly invented it. By the way, he clearly said upfront that the mandate was a tax, which is why Democrats opposed it in the first place

 

[PoliticalChic]

No....really.....he said this:

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pO1bukAiJIM]Obama: I Tried Real Hard - YouTube[/ame]



This was the same guy.....

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2pZSvq9bto]Obama speech oceans receding, planet healing - YouTube[/ame]




So...generations from now, I am absolutely certain, we'll be able to tell our children...

....he tried real hard.


Just lacked competence.....

 

[francoHFW]

GOP= most disgraceful, dishonest opposition EVER.

 

[Truthmatters]

hell they cheer cheating in elections and the death of Americans right on TV

 

[SniperFire]

Presidentin's too HARD!!!'

- B. Hussein