The Supreme Court of the United States largely upheld the Affordable Care Act in a hotly-debated and long-anticipated decision Thursday morning.
The individual mandate, a key provision of the law that requires most Americans to maintain “minimum essential” health insurance coverage, passed muster with the judges.
Their decision did however limit the ability of the law, known as Obamacare, to require states to expand their Medicare programs.
You can find the text of the court's ruling here.
The ruling will affect millions of people; it is also expected to boost President Barack Obama's chances in the November presidential elections.
What's your take on the court's ruling on the health care law? TELL US IN THE COMMENTS
• Increases your happiness • Increases the feel-good part of the brain • Reminds you how relatively blessed you really are • Feeling of connectedness to others • You feel needed and effective • It takes your mind off of your worries for a while • Feel generous • Add a sense of purpose and meaning to life I went on Google and searched helping others increases happiness, there were several articles about the subject and these specific thoughts were from an article in the Sacramento News. If we are helping others by supporting a "tax" for medical care, we will not get the same benefits as us finding a person in need and helping them ourselves.
And what's really funny is these are the same jokers who don't consider putting the government smack dab in the middle of our personal lives, telling us who we can and can't love, spying on us sans court order and any number of other authoritarian "Big Government" actions isn't "Big Government" but keeping greedy ultra wealthy characters like the Koch Bros. from dumpling carcinogens throughout our environment, is. Go figure
The last time I went to an emergency room it was to treat my wife, who had no insurance at the time (it kicked in one day later). For five hours of treatment I was eventually billed $10,000 (a bill that an insurance company would have negotiated way down, and of which I would have paid about 10 percent). Emergency room treatment is fantastically expensive, and anything we can do to keep people out of emergency rooms saves us all money, because as things are now we all end up getting stuck with the bill. There is no free lunch, but some lunches are more healthy and less costly than others. The ACA is far from perfect, but it is light years better than the current system.
You are barking up a dead tree. You want to discuss the "facts", but the original post has all the red flags of a fact-free intellect. 1) "we are all going to be taxed for this healthcare" 2) "who pays for illegal aliens in this country" 3) "use our hospitals for babies" 4) "Obamanation" 5) "obamacare is crap" Red flags all. Apex most likely doesn't even know what the ACA actually does (hint: when asked if they support the individual provisions of the ACA in stand alone mode over 60% of Declared Republicans supported all but one provision). The bottom line is with all the red flags, this isn't about the ACA, it's just regular hate of "the other". Whether "the other" is a black man running the country or brown people, it's all about hate. Having no real control over their lives these haters will hate anything that is different from them and actually discussing the issue is futile, as it's not the issue, but "the other".
There are those that believe in "the common good" and those that don't. There are those that actually feel that they are their brothers keepers, that they should treat others as they want to be treated, that understand that lifting the least among us lifts us all. Generally these people are called progressives. They don't do it because that increases their happiness, but because they know it is right to do it, to give. It is part of their identity. You see it in things like Doctors Without Borders, and that random person who actually offers a homeless person work so they can earn some money to help make their life better. There are people that understand in their hearts that one of their roles here on earth is to cast bread upon the waters. They don't do it for themselves, but because they know it is the right thing to do. And then there are those that believe in "I get mine, you get yours yourself." They believe in survival of the fittest. They think that life is a I win you lose proposition. A competition where if you get better then they are losing something in the process. In general in America these people are called Republicans. Consider that if every American had access to Medicare the cost would drop by over 60% (it's already 30% less expensive than for-profit health insurance). So for about 40% the cost of a for-profit health policy you could get a health program that would cover everyone.
Black guy in the White House really pisses you off, doesn't it? I don't see you bitching about Mrs. Romney, whose husband instituted this policy (about 80% of it) in MA. White rich lady married to white rich guy who did this = good. Got it. Now you can start to explain why your not a racist pig.
It's a very impt question.
Why am I not surprised?
But to believe for one minute that federal and state govts can step in like this and that the biggest insurers Kaiser Permanente, Blue Cross and Healthnet (among others) would stand idly by and "lose out", forget it. If you already enjoy a generous health insurance package today through an employer (like a PPO), buckle up.
It is a market problem only to the same extent it always has been. It wasn't exactly invented by Obama, and it was also not the first time someone has tried to do something to help it before it is irreparably broken. 1986. St. Reagan made sure that ERs would not turn away anyone regardless of their ability to pay. Now, I am not criticizing that decision as much as I am pointing out the selective amnesia people have to "government not interfering". "But to believe for one minute that federal and state govts can step in like this and" and what? Make sure that more people are covered so that the most expensive place, the ER, is not the only resort for uninsured sick people? Thereby jacking up everyone's costs? That they'll have to pay for taking the risk on our behalf by getting a job that provides insurance or buying it? That it does not magically solve all the problems with healthcare? Or is it because a Kenyan muslin socialist fascist liberal Soros puppet colonial black borrowed an idea that kinda works in Mass., was originally proposed in a similar form by the other side, but denied just so that he does not have a policy "win" for all of us? As to govt. providing solutions, I do not see Lehman bros. around anymore. I do know that had the govt not built the Erie canal, there would NEVER have been a Lehman bros.
So by calling oneself a progressive and being a long term ZPG advocate, I don't think you have thought things through carefully.
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/06/the-economic-history-of-the-last-2-000-years-in-1-little-graph/258676/ In short, it is true that early (first century AD) more people meant a bigger economy, but the Industrial Revolution changed that. Which is also why the countries who benefited from it early on reaped the most benefits where as countries like India and China are only now catching on. There are other reasons, but a growing population is not warranted like it was in days past. It is, in Japan, for instance, but for a different reason. Hunter-gatherer societies were pretty linear, more the number, more the group flourished. Today, you have better economies of scale. For example, food to feed the entire world population could be grown in about 2% of arable land. (OK, maybe slightly more than 2%, I am going from memory) "the fact that it takes more resources, energy and time to develop a child in a more advanced culture than in a simpler one" Explain, please. What is an advanced culture compared to a simpler one, just so that I have a point of reference.
Not quite, unless I botched it up completely. Firstly, I do not believe that it is a social problem, and secondly I do not see the government necessarily causing serious unintended consequences, merely because they are "government". And I also do not think they tried at all to solve all of it at once. "The PPACA is an attempt to cover more, but does not appear to be bending the cost curve." In my estimation, increasing the insured pool will contain the rate of increases, but not much beyond that. Which means that we will still see increases in premiums, only they might be 7.1% instead of 10.1% (examples only). The 3% is bending the cost curve a little. Remember, ObamaCare regulates access to health care, not health care itself. As long as healthcare remains a for-max-profit business, and this is not to argue whether it should or should not, cost savings comes at the mercy of the providers. As it stands, ObamaCare hands the insurance companies 15-30 million new customers gift wrapped on a silver platter. Paid for. In return, they are expected to keep the rate increases from being too steep. quid pro quo
A really complex issue, which I cannot even begin to address in this limited context. But a one word answer: education. It should be a good topic for discussion in its own right. If only the Patch had a discussion forum where one could start a topic and discuss it. Or may be one can blog an article and then we can all attack it. :-)
Like renters' insurance which will be one of the next boom sectors. Till ObamaCare gave them a temporary reprieve. For about a decade. For better or for worse, we are moving towards single-payer, because the government will soon be the *only* entity that can afford to remain in the market. Their administration costs will be minimal (like they are of Social Security, since profit is no longer the prime motivation), and the healthcare providers would prefer to get paid. Note to wingnuts-wannabe: I did not say that I want a single-payer system, I am simply pointing out that given how we are today, and the reluctance of Congress to do much, we may have no choice but a single-payer system. Status quo before ObamaCare was unsustainable. ObamaCare too is unsustainable, but it gives us about 8-10 years to find a viable alternative