[excon]

Hello again, Steve:

So you're willing to forsake the first amendment because of a movie? That's kind of ironic and weird.

Uhhh, not if the movie is telling the truth, and I BELIEVE every word. It would be weird NOT to react to what they did.

Excon

[talaniman]

Just trying to present some facts and opinions that are outside the opinion of YOU, and the church. Despite the lawsuits, other churches, religions and businesses are on board with not only the accommodations put forth so far, but the level of effort, and commitment by this president.

So the process continues.

[speechlesstx]

I believe his level of commitment to 'compromise' is driven by the court issuing a mandate of their own, and seeing as how the latest version is just another shell game. On to other features of Obamacare, the 'family penalty.'

HHS 'family penalty' rule passes buck

[talaniman]

You are so pessimistic, so not condusive to making adjustments as you go. Makes a tough journey even tougher.

[smearcase]

" On to other features of Obamacare, the 'family penalty. "

Sounds like Nancy was wrong when she said we had to pass it to find out what was in it. Looks more like having to operate under it for a year or so before all the ramifications are discovered. Maybe the real plan is to get things so screwed up that single payer will have to be implemented as an emergency measure.

[tomder55]

There's no maybe about it. That's the plan.

[speechlesstx]

You are so pessimistic, so not condusive to making adjustments as you go. Makes a tough journey even tougher.

Dude, I don't like passing laws to find out what's in them and that was Politico reporting, not Freerepublic.

[tomder55]

And Paul Krugman who made a speech and said that to pay for the society the left envisions that we need middle class sales taxes and "death panels "(his words ;not Palin's)

[smearcase]

Combine the reference from Politico that speech posted with the comments by George Will linked in my earlier post (#16) and here are a few excerpts from that post:

"A willow, not an oak. So said conservatives of Chief Justice John Roberts when he rescued the Affordable Care Act -- aka Obamacare -- from being found unconstitutional. But the manner in which he did this may have made the ACA unworkable, thereby putting it on a path to ultimate extinction.
This plausible judgment comes from professor Thomas A. Lambert of the University of Missouri Law School, writing in Regulation quarterly, a publication of the libertarian Cato Institute. The crucial decision, he says, was four liberal justices joining Roberts' opinion declaring that the ACA's penalty for not complying with the mandate to purchase health insurance is actually a tax on not purchasing it. With this reasoning, the court severely limited the ability of the new health care regime to cope with its own predictable consequences."
(One paragraph not quoted)

"This did not, however, doom the ACA because Roberts invoked what Lambert calls “a longstanding interpretive canon that calls for the court, if possible, to interpret statutes in a way that preserves their constitutionality.” Roberts did this by ruling that what Congress called a “penalty” for not obeying the mandate was really a tax on noncompliance. This must, Lambert thinks, have momentous -- and deleterious -- implications for the functioning of the ACA. The problems arise from the interplay of two ACA provisions -- “guaranteed issue” and “community rating."
3 paragraphs not quoted

"So, Lambert says, the ACA's penalties are too low to prod the healthy to purchase insurance, even given ACA's subsidies for purchasers. The ACA's authors probably understood this perverse incentive and assumed that once Congress passed the ACA with penalties low enough to be politically palatable, Congress could increase them.
But Roberts' decision limits Congress' latitude by holding that the small size of the penalty is part of the reason it is, for constitutional purposes, a tax. It is not a “financial punishment” because it is not so steep that it effectively prohibits the choice of paying it. And, Roberts noted, “by statute, it can never be more.” As Lambert says, the penalty for refusing to purchase insurance counts as a tax only if it remains so small as to be largely ineffective.
Unable to increase penalties substantially, Congress, in the context of “guaranteed issue” and “community rating,” has only one way to induce healthy people to purchase insurance. This is by the hugely expensive process of increasing premium subsidies enough to make negligible the difference between the cost of insurance to purchasers and the penalty for not purchasing. Republicans will ferociously resist exacerbating the nation's financial crisis in order to rescue the ACA.
Because the penalties are “constitutionally” limited by the reasoning whereby Roberts declared them taxes, he may have saved the ACA's constitutionality by sacrificing its feasibility. So as the president begins his second term, the signature achievement of his first term looks remarkably rickety. "
(end of article)

The potential situation discussed in the Politico article affecting family coverage will have to be addressed and may be the straw that breaks the camel's back as discussed in the Will comments.

[excon]

Hello again,

Yeah, it needs to be tweaked... Medicare for all would work, and we could write the law on ONE page..

The truth is, I'd RATHER have the free market system, as it was designed to be... But, when the market starts SCREWING the people, it's time for government intervention.

Not only would Medicare for all SOLVE the Obamacare 2.0 problem, but it would save us BILLIONS and BILLIONS of $$$'s.

And THAT, my friends, would SAVE the country.

excon

[tomder55]

Medicare pays out only pennies on the dollar compared to private insurers ,and yet Medicare hemorrhages taxpayer's dollars .For the calendar year 2011, the Medicare receipts were $306.7 billion, while the expenditures were $549.1 billion, a loss of $242.4 billion. That's with the baby boomers only now getting into retirement and Medicare eligibility . The system now has 3 workers for every retiree receiving benefits ;but that ratio is rapidly decreasing .
Unless we reign in Medicare expenses, the amount of money that we spend on on the entitlement will continue to grow as a percent of the economy and as percent of government spending .And that's before you would make it universal.

[paraclete]

Don't worry Tom the nanny state is here to stay. Cwrongress has no intention of decreasing any expenditure, so you can only hope those job creators will start spending soon

[talaniman]

Its like anything else we have ever done. We start building and see what it looks like when we finish it. Ugly as building this nation was, we are still building. Heck they tweak social security and medicare every few years too.

The wingers cry about that too, so why are we surprised they cry now? Don't let the gloom and doom crowd fool you though, they will take the benefits like everyone else. I mean they think the sky is falling on sunny days too.

They holler about what won't work, offer no real alternative that will, just tear it down. Then years later they still think its not working but has anyone seen a TParty type stick to their principles and refuse those social security checks, or NOT sign up for Medicare?

Yet still they cry about getting the government out of their lives. Except when there is money or benefits to be had. No wonder they cry about the 47% being lazy, because they are part of that too. What you think that all poor people where lazy democrats, and liberals?

They fooled you so you must be a republican listening to the TParty crying. The rest of us ignore the gloom and doom crying, and the kicking and screaming. They will be right with us in line to get there cut of the pie.

[paraclete]

Tal I find it amazing, all the whinging and complaining, here we have various medical benefits, some of which are inadequate, but I don't hear anyone complaining that the scheme should pay less, or that certain people should be excluded.

I think I will put Tom down as a whinger and move on

[talaniman]

The righties don't want you to even think of other options or opportunities except gloom, doom, lets just don't try. That's unnacceptable to the left.

[paraclete]

Thats unnacceptable to the left.

You talk about left but you guys aren't really left, you are more like all in the centre with left and right tendencies. You should experience what some real lefties are like, mad ideas, big taxes, big expenditure programs

[tomder55]

When the system comes crashing down ;don't blame me.
Trustees warn of looming insolvency for Social Security, Medicare - Los Angeles Times

http://www.dailyfinance.com/2013/02/...share_facebook

[paraclete]

when the system comes crashing down ;don't blame me.
Trustees warn of looming insolvency for Social Security, Medicare - Los Angeles Times

3 Social Security Shockers From the CBO's Latest Report - DailyFinance

Why should we tom you are part of the SYStem, that group whowants nothing to change

[tomder55]

Oh I have some great ideas for change. You won't like them however .

DR. CARSON: Here's my solution: When a person is born, give him a birth certificate, an electronic medical record, and a health savings account to which money can be contributed -- pretax -- from the time you're born 'til the time you die. When you die, you can pass it on to your family members, so that when you're 85 years old and you got six diseases, you're not trying to spend up everything. You're happy to pass it on and there's nobody talking about death panels.

Number one. And also, for the people who were indigent who don't have any money we can make contributions to their HSA each month because we already have this huge pot of money. Instead of sending it to some bureaucracy, let's put it in their HSAs. Now they have some control over their own health care.

(21:15 mark... but watch the whole address)

Dr. Benjamin Carson's Amazing Speech at the National Prayer Breakfast with Obama Present - YouTube

[talaniman]

Trustees warn of looming insolvency for Social Security, Medicare - Los Angeles Times

Medicare, which is expected to provide health insurance to more than 50 million elderly and disabled Americans this year, is expected to start operating in the red in its largest fund in 2024, according to the annual assessment by the trustees charged with overseeing the programs.

The Obama tweaks are what extended the solvency of the program, and has traditionally been such tweaks done before after a warning of insolvency by the trustees.

3 Social Security Shockers From the CBO's Latest Report - DailyFinance

Over the last three decades, the two political parties have periodically forged compromises that extended the solvency of Medicare and Social Security. At one point in the mid-1990s, Medicare's hospital trust fund was projected to run out of money in just four years, before an improving economy and a budget deal between Democrats and Republicans headed off disaster.

It is unclear whether a similar compromise is possible in today's hyper-partisan environment.

That's the bigger issue, not the money, but a collective agreement how toaddressthe issues as been done before. But I also had to note the solution further down at he botom of the article you cited.

There's little you can do to stop the collapse of the Social Security Trust Funds, but you can improve your chances for a comfortable retirement anyway. A strong investing approach is to choose great companies and stick with them for the long term. In our free report "3 Stocks That Will Help You Retire Rich," we name stocks that could help you build long-term wealth and retire well, along with some winning wealth-building strategies that every investor should be aware of. Click here now to keep reading.

Somebody is always looking to cash in on any issue. Must be a capitalist seeing opportunity.