I've been looking around the Senate's website and the only bill I see is a 43 pages long deal.
Where's that supposed 4000 page monster? I'd like to read the whole thing. Where do I get it?
Could someone with the knowledge tell me how and why health care is allowed to be run by monopolies? I keep hearing people say all we need is competition, that our health care markets aren't actually free markets, which is why the prices are so ridiculous.
So yeah, completely unable to answer your question Vanya, and I popped in one of my own. I am a cunt.
Can you give us the link of what you did manage to find, Vanya?
If this is indeed all they have, I'd call your Senator to see if they know anything about it. If they won't budge, raise the stakes by getting your friends or the media to help.
I think I found the whole thing here:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:H.R.3962 (http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:H.R.3962):
Yeah, this must be the thing. 2016 pages; still only half as long as Republicans have claimed.
Edit: While looking at the format of the bill, and by extension all bill, they waste a hell of a lot of space. This thing is really like a thousand or so pages if written in a normal fashion.
Are you sure this is right? I can't see anything.
EDIT: Slow internet, then. Still though, 2000+ pages for a law is ridiculous. Legalese aside, I'm sure some of it involves loopholes as well.
Well, read it and make a judgement.
I think we should all read it instead of relying on media services that are often just as politically partisan and opinionated as the politicians.
We often like to talk shit about political stuff, but don't actually take the time to read the stuff.
Agent 000 (pronounced triple zero) reporting..... (cookie for the reference)
Quote from: "Pickle Girl Fanboy"Could someone with the knowledge tell me how and why health care is allowed to be run by monopolies? I keep hearing people say all we need is competition, that our health care markets aren't actually free markets, which is why the prices are so ridiculous.
So yeah, completely unable to answer your question Vanya, and I popped in one of my own. I am a cunt.
the antitrust exemption is known as the McCarran-Ferguson Act which was made into law in 1945 after the Supreme Court ruled that the US govt could in fact regulate insurance companies under the Commerce Clause
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarran%E2%80%93Ferguson_Act
ironically it was sponsored in a bi-partisan manner
on topic:
the bill needs more public option if the public mandate is going to stay but i see the reason as to why they don't want to let the positives of this bill go down for those reasons either(own opinion though)
Agreed. They do need more public option in there if they expect us to be forced to have insurance.
As for the McCarran-Ferguson Act, seems to me it would be a good idea for the people of the United States to have this act repealed.
I don't see how it is of any benefit to us.
the House actually passed a bill to remove the anti-trust exemption from insurance companies it passed with a 406 yes vote.......after tons of stalling from Republicans on procedural votes.
Now the bill joins the numerous amounts of other House passed bills that are now stalled in the Senate
yay democracy
I don't think I've heard anyone say it was 5000 pages, not even Rush or Hanity
I remember Jon Stewart doing a bit where people in Congress kinda ran with the whole "OMG its HUGE" angle.... gotta head to work so i can't dig through the daily show website to find the clip, nor can i remember how high the Congressional officials claimed how many pages it was
Last time I heard anything it was John Boehner stating it was 2700 pages, which is still almost 700 pages larger than it actually is.
2000 pages is still huge
That's like a stephen king novel. And if you believe the republican party, it's just as scary.
I don't see why we would have to raise taxes to pay for it if we:
1. Made a public-owned, privately-run, for profit-public option, which would serve as competition to reduce prices.
2. Removed all anti-competition stuffs, like having to buy health insurance in your own state.
That state-of-residence shit really sucks. It's the same with car insurance, which is a nightmare for homeless itinerent bastards like me.
Also, when Sarah Palin said we needed to go to war with Iran RIGHT NOW, why the fuck didn't anyone ask her, "How are you going to pay for it?" Oh wait, I know, by taxing my generation when all the fucking baby boomers die off (OH GOD OF BIRD FLU, LEND ME YOUR AID! AVIAN INFLUEZA!)
Considering how fucked up the interest payments are, why don't we just raise taxes now, pay it off, and save money in the long term? Or just legalize pot and tax it? That would serve another purpose too: bankrupting the Weed Cartels that are destablizing our bean eating neighbors to the south.
Because people get really wacky when you raise their taxes.
Take Florida, for instance. For the last 15 years they've been trying to pass a state sales tax raise of 0.005 cents.
The money would go to paying for road maintenance & expansion. The big extra benefit is that it would also kill ALL THE TOLLS.
That's right! It would make it so no one has to ever pay a toll again. And the people that don't drive on toll roads and don't drive at all have killed the tax increase because they don't want to pay a half a penny more for "other" people. Instead traffic is shit, the roads are shit, and the tolls are out of hand.
So yeah, people are stupid about taxes.
(http://i.imgur.com/YT55k.jpg)
I don't know how credible this graph is; I just got randomly linked to it.
That looks like it was made to be funny.
Seems like it matches what the Democrats say.
Yeah I'm a bit suspicious of it entirely because of the United States being put above the graph limits.
the US is correctly placed there if you go with the $7,290 spent on healthcare figure
it's meant to highlight that number vs how low the age expectancy is regardless of the fact
Quote from: "Voldemort"the US is correctly placed there if you go with the $7,290 spent on healthcare figure
it's meant to highlight that number vs how low the age expectancy is regardless of the fact
so if that trend continues.....
we'll be paying top dollar for a standard of health care that is comparable to Mexico's (assuming the U.S. line continues downward and Mexico's line continues upward) until eventually we'll be throwing away money fro crappy health care.... all in an effort to not pay for other people's health care
which is what we do now...just in the worst way possible (uninsured go to emergency rooms the hospitals then pass on the cost to insurance companies and insurance companies pass it along to policy holders)
I have no idea if this is true or not, but it would explain the "high" infant mortality rates in the US if it were. Basically, during a conversation on politics, someone said that the reason the US's infant mortality rates are so skewed compared to the rest of the world is because the rest of the world doesn't treat premature babies, so they don't include them in their statistics. But the US will send any under-developed child to the neo-natal unit, sometimes just to be on the safe side. That would make a lot of sense to me, and it would explain why our stats are higher.
I googled it to be sure, and this Wordpress blog post (http://tarheelred.wordpress.com/2009/11/06/infant-mortality-rate/) was the number 3 result, after two Wikipedia articles. Not sure which is a more trustworthy source, but even the wikipedia article on Infant Mortality (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infant_mortality#Comparing_infant_mortality_rates) has a section on the problems when comparing two countries' published stats. On one line it mentions a CDC report that seems to confirm this, but the citation links to a WebMD article (http://www.webmd.com/baby/news/20091103/preemies-raise-us-infant-mortality-rate), yet another bona-fide source of information. Nevertheless, that article does contain some good info like this:
Quote from: "Web MD ¬_¬""We don't know why the preterm rate is so much higher than in Europe," MacDorman tells WebMD. "But teens, older mothers, smokers all have higher preterm rates."
It would stand to reason that the US has more "teens, older mothers, and smokers" having birth, but that's just more commentary on how messed up the American Society is. That Web MD article also has a normalized list of infant mortality rates if you take out premature births, which shows that the US isn't that bad, but still double some of the top European countries.
EDIT: I just realized that Kaijyuu's graph has life expectancy on the right side, not infant mortality, so I just spent the last 30 minutes being randomly off topic.
Anyone see the daily show last night? John Stewart had this guy on, Harry Markopolos, who started mailing the authorities about Bernie Madoff back in 2000, telling them Bernie's buisness was a giant ponzi scheme.
He seems really fucking dorky.
I like him.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Markopolos (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Markopolos)
That has what to do with this topic, exactly?
Not to say the guy isn't awesome. Anyone who takes down organized crime using *math* is either frickin' awesome or a huge nerd. Or both.
Quote from: "Zypher"(assuming the U.S. line continues downward and Mexico's line continues upward)
I dont believe the graph is some sort of flow chart, but just lines(in varying sizes) linking to numbers on the sides of the graph. No necassarily in any particular direction, just to the numbers as it is now.
I haven't had time to read the bill, but the liens im hearing about keeping me on my parents insurance until my later 20s would help me BIG time. The health insurance company tried to drop me THE moment i turned 18(i got a call from them that day) and i was in the ER(great way to spend the b-day i know), i had to fight with them and have them call the doctor to help prove i was really that sick.
now i turned 19(woot, 22cnd, anniversarry of the hospital visit was today =P) and i got another call from them again, requesting a conference with one of their agents. its silly retarded how much fighting i have to do, just to try and get money to be healthy.