Boz
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Post by Boz on Oct 30, 2013 8:53:30 GMT -5
Some famous lies from over the years...
"I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again: Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars."
"Sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima, an important Japanese Army base."
"People have got to know whether or not their President is a crook. Well, I'm not a crook!"
"I'll never lie to you."
"Read my lips. No new taxes!"
"I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky."
"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
"If you like your health care plan, you'll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what."
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Elvado
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Oct 30, 2013 8:56:13 GMT -5
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Post by Elvado on Oct 30, 2013 8:56:13 GMT -5
Bigot.
How dare you lump Barry O in with those liars?
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DoctorHoya
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Post by DoctorHoya on Oct 30, 2013 9:01:19 GMT -5
Hope you're joking Elvado
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quickplay
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Post by quickplay on Oct 30, 2013 9:20:58 GMT -5
The ACA is not a good bill in my opinion. Republicans have no serious alternatives of their own.
Is it too much to ask for at least a discussion of the good/bad of single payer? As much as I'm tired of Republican outrage over cynically selected "crises," I'm just as sick of Democrats happily being the lesser of two evils for anyone to the left of Atilla the Hun (joking...mostly).
This grandstanding and pandering on both sides is a great distraction from them having to address real issues.
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TC
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Post by TC on Oct 30, 2013 9:49:25 GMT -5
Is it too much to ask for at least a discussion of the good/bad of single payer? I feel like we had that discussion throughout 2008-2010, and everyone agreed that on policy it was probably the better policy choice but it was completely politically unviable - the votes weren't there, and the opposition would have been multiple levels worse from with many of the stakeholders that agreed to this plan being radically opposed to single payer and fighting it tooth or nail. A public option didn't even survive - single payer didn't really have a chance. Most of the goals Democrats had for Health Care in 2008 are accomplished in the ACA - pre-existing conditions, universality, prevention of recission, improve preventative care, etc. Single payer isn't some panacea that would have prevented issues we have now - IT problems, market forces adapting to change, having to listen to buffoons compare insurance companies un-grandfathering plans that there are now better and cheaper replacements for to the lies of the Iraq War.
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Boz
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Post by Boz on Oct 30, 2013 10:26:31 GMT -5
...insurance companies un-grandfathering plans that there are now better and cheaper replacements for... So much wrong with that right there, I don't even know where to begin. I suppose I am just a buffoon. And, apparently, a bigot.
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quickplay
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Post by quickplay on Oct 30, 2013 10:29:25 GMT -5
Don't disagree at all. I think from a negotiation standpoint, dismissing single payer as politically unviable, while likely true, also allowed the public option to be dismissed as well. Don't understand throwing away your bargaining chip and negotiating from an already compromised position.
The universality of the ACA, while commendable in concept, leaves a lot to be desired (to say the least).
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DoctorHoya
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Post by DoctorHoya on Oct 30, 2013 10:31:21 GMT -5
...insurance companies un-grandfathering plans that there are now better and cheaper replacements for... So much wrong with that right there, I don't even know where to begin. I suppose I am just a buffoon. And, apparently, a bigot. Agreed... I actually teach health policy courses to medical students and would gladly send a summary of the ACA titles to anyone who wants them--PM me. The bill had great intentions but is absolutely not meeting it's promises. Insurance companies are not willy nilly canceling plans, they're canceling them because HHS is preventing them from grandfathering those plans--contrary to what Obama preached for the past 5 years. Boz wins
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TC
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Post by TC on Oct 30, 2013 10:54:16 GMT -5
Insurance companies are not willy nilly canceling plans, they're canceling them because HHS is preventing them from grandfathering those plans--contrary to what Obama preached for the past 5 years. Boz wins No, they're not being grandfathered because the insurance companies are changing them in ways to make them incompatible. Granted, the requirements there are ridiculously strict, but HHS is not the actor here. washingtonexaminer.com/6-ways-a-health-care-plan-can-lose-its-grandfathered-status-under-obamacare/article/2538125The problem with this whole argument though is it ignores what is available on the exchanges. If you want to make the argument that ACA is harming people rather than just it is causing market change, you have to show that the plans on the exchanges are fundamentally uncompetitive with these plans that are being canceled. I've heard tons of people go to the conclusion of this argument without actually showing that.
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TBird41
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Post by TBird41 on Oct 30, 2013 13:37:48 GMT -5
Insurance companies are not willy nilly canceling plans, they're canceling them because HHS is preventing them from grandfathering those plans--contrary to what Obama preached for the past 5 years. Boz wins No, they're not being grandfathered because the insurance companies are changing them in ways to make them incompatible. Granted, the requirements there are ridiculously strict, but HHS is not the actor here. washingtonexaminer.com/6-ways-a-health-care-plan-can-lose-its-grandfathered-status-under-obamacare/article/2538125The problem with this whole argument though is it ignores what is available on the exchanges. If you want to make the argument that ACA is harming people rather than just it is causing market change, you have to show that the plans on the exchanges are fundamentally uncompetitive with these plans that are being canceled. I've heard tons of people go to the conclusion of this argument without actually showing that. How, pray tell, would one go about showing that the plans on the exchanges are uncompetitive? Wouldn't one need to actually be able to see said plans to do so?
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TC
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Post by TC on Oct 30, 2013 13:59:18 GMT -5
How, pray tell, would one go about showing that the plans on the exchanges are uncompetitive? Wouldn't one need to actually be able to see said plans to do so? I know the narrative is that nothing works - and I know that at first when they launched they made a boneheaded decision not to let people see plans before they registered - which blocked people from even peeping at prices because of the problems with registration. If you go on now you can check out estimates without registering. I tried it out a couple of days ago, I was able to see prices in less than a minute of clicking.
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bmartin
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Post by bmartin on Oct 30, 2013 14:03:33 GMT -5
The biggest insurance problem before, during, and after ACA is that insurers are determined to compete by avoiding risk, not by managing it.
In order to get a bill through the Senate, the Administration cut deals with the insurance industry and the drug industry, killing the public option and drug negotiation, in exchange for neutrality. Basically, for a promise of no Harry and Louise, they gave away the public option that probably would have been forced to take the higher risk uninsured but also would have forced insurers to compete for the moderate risk people where all the money is.
There were no good deals on health plans in the individual market before ACA. The individual insurance plans being cancelled now are the crappy plans that charged too much for not enough coverage and didn't keep people out of bankruptcy if they had a serious medical problem. Unfortunately, many parts of the country may not get anything better for a while, because insurers do not want those people so they are not competing for their business. This is all the predictable consequence of creating a program that gives so much authority to insurance companies and state governments.
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Post by AustinHoya03 on Oct 30, 2013 14:45:06 GMT -5
I tried it out a couple of days ago, I was able to see prices in less than a minute of clicking. I just did this, and it worked fine for me, too. What I discovered: I can get a top-of-the-line (according to the government) insurance plan for myself for about $250/month. That is good. Here's the bad thing: my employer currently pays $500/month for my health insurance. Under the ACA can my employer stop paying $500/month for my insurance and instead increase my salary by $250 to increase economic efficiency (without paying a penalty)? No. Who benefits from this system? It sure looks like insurance companies to me. Supporters of the ACA would likely argue that the cost of insurance purchased by my employer will go down over time. I'll believe it when I see it.
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TC
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Post by TC on Oct 30, 2013 16:01:31 GMT -5
Here's the bad thing: my employer currently pays $500/month for my health insurance. Under the ACA can my employer stop paying $500/month for my insurance and instead increase my salary by $250 to increase economic efficiency (without paying a penalty)? No. If your employer is paying $500 a month per employee, your employer can probably kick you off the plan, increase your salary by $250, pay the penalty, and come out ahead, as long as no one they employ ends up with a subsidy. They'd risk a lot of goodwill in doing so, and let's be honest, not everyone at your company wants a $250 plan or would be happy with that decision. But I don't think the takeaway really is that the insurance companies are raking in on this in your situation - my bet is that you've got a better plan with your work and you are kind of comparing apples to oranges.
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Post by AustinHoya03 on Oct 30, 2013 16:42:36 GMT -5
Here's the bad thing: my employer currently pays $500/month for my health insurance. Under the ACA can my employer stop paying $500/month for my insurance and instead increase my salary by $250 to increase economic efficiency (without paying a penalty)? No. If your employer is paying $500 a month per employee, your employer can probably kick you off the plan, increase your salary by $250, pay the penalty, and come out ahead, as long as no one they employ ends up with a subsidy. They'd risk a lot of goodwill in doing so, and let's be honest, not everyone at your company wants a $250 plan or would be happy with that decision. But I don't think the takeaway really is that the insurance companies are raking in on this in your situation - my bet is that you've got a better plan with your work and you are kind of comparing apples to oranges. The $250.00/month number is for a plan identified as "platinum" by the healthcare.gov website. I thought that was supposed to be a heck of an insurance plan. At least, that's how the government is spinning it. If you're saying that the very "best" plan (a.k.a. covers the most out-of-pocket expenses) I can buy as an individual is actually kind of crappy compared to the insurance my employer provides, that seems to be a different type of flaw in the system. But after thinking about it a little bit more, I think I agree with you that insurance companies aren't necessarily raking it in based on the figures I provided alone, assuming that $500/month/employee is an across-the-board fee and some of the older/less-insurable folks employed by the state university I work for would pay more than $500/month if they acquired insurance on the private market. If that's the case paying $500/month/employee is just as efficient as moving everyone to the open market if it is the average cost of insurance for all employees regardless. But I don't really know what the "average plan" costs, so it's difficult to say what's more efficient. So I'll retract my previous assertion that the ACA provides an "obvious subsidy" for insurance companies and replace it with a complaint that its difficult to tell whether the system is delivering on its promise of reducing the total amount of money spent on healthcare.
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DoctorHoya
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Post by DoctorHoya on Oct 30, 2013 18:12:39 GMT -5
I tried it out a couple of days ago, I was able to see prices in less than a minute of clicking. I just did this, and it worked fine for me, too. What I discovered: I can get a top-of-the-line (according to the government) insurance plan for myself for about $250/month. That is good. Here's the bad thing: my employer currently pays $500/month for my health insurance. Under the ACA can my employer stop paying $500/month for my insurance and instead increase my salary by $250 to increase economic efficiency (without paying a penalty)? No. Who benefits from this system? It sure looks like insurance companies to me. Supporters of the ACA would likely argue that the cost of insurance purchased by my employer will go down over time. I'll believe it when I see it. The penalty is 2k per employee so it might actually be worth it for them...
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bmartin
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Post by bmartin on Oct 30, 2013 23:19:25 GMT -5
That is ignoring why businesses provided health and retirement benefits when there was no legal requirement or sanctions.They need to recruit and retain skilled productive people. They could hire young single people with more money instead of benefits but people with families want health coverage and older experienced workers want pensions and retiree health coverage. Those workers and families are not going to be $250 to cover. The employer paying premiums instead of extra pay gets a federal tax subsidy for employer and employee - no payroll taxes, no income taxes, no unemployment insurance taxes. Employer plans are more expensive than a young individual rate because large employers are insuring a lot of baby boomers.
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Boz
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Post by Boz on Oct 31, 2013 7:52:36 GMT -5
Just FYI, I didn't mean to hijack the thread into being a discussion of the merits, or lack thereof, of Obamacare.
Just kind of wanted to point out that his oft-repeated statement is probably going to go down as a fairly big whopper of a lie, along the lines of those that have been remembered over time. A conscious lie? A lie based on lack of information? A "scandal"? TBD, I suppose (or not, depending on your point of view), but when you add it in with the other topics that have been brought up in this thread, I think you have an administration with a serious credibility problem.
Not saying the conversation has to go down this road (probably won't get us anywhere, like most of the political threads). Just clearing up my original post.
Proceed as you will.
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Elvado
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Post by Elvado on Oct 31, 2013 9:52:03 GMT -5
I am sick and tired of people calling Barry a liar over this issue. Clearly, he could not have been lying, because like everyone else in Washington, he had no idea what was in the law.
Incompetent? Yes
Empty Suit? Check
Liar? Not this time
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Post by rustyshackleford on Apr 30, 2014 10:58:07 GMT -5
And given the news on the Rhodes' emails (http://www.thewire.com/politics/2014/04/heres-how-newly-released-benghazi-emails-could-actually-embarrass-the-white-house/361412/) the conclusions from this report should make clear that there was a massive state dept failure at Benghazi and that (unsurprisingly) the video claims were bs: www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=f7a12d96-a314-40ba-9007-f7eac1313fcbwww.mediaite.com/tv/sen-feinstein-state-dept-has-to-come-to-grips-with-fact-that-benghazi-deaths-were-preventable/Key Findings of the Report: Significant Strategic Warning Provided by the Intelligence Community—In the months before the attacks on September 11, 2012, the IC provided strategic warning through numerous intelligence reports that the security situation in eastern Libya was deteriorating and that U.S. facilities and personnel were at risk in Benghazi. State Department Failed to Increase Security Enough to Address the Threat—The State Department should have increased its security posture more significantly in Benghazi based on the deteriorating security situation on the ground and IC threat reporting on the prior attacks against Westerners in Benghazi—including two previous incidents at the Temporary Mission Facility on April 6, and June 6, 2012. “Tripwires” Were Crossed, But Other Nations Kept Their Facilities Open Along with the U.S.—There were “tripwires” designed to prompt a reduction in personnel or a suspension of operations at the Mission facility in Benghazi and although there is evidence that some of them had been crossed, operations continued with minimal change. Some nations closed their diplomatic facilities in Benghazi as the security conditions deteriorated during the summer of 2012, but other nations stayed along with the United States, contrary to some public reports and statements that the U.S. was the last country represented in Benghazi. U.S. Military Assets Were Not Positioned to Respond in Time to Save the Four Americans Killed—There were no U.S. military resources in position to intervene in short order in Benghazi to help defend the Temporary Mission Facility and its Annex. Unarmed U.S. military surveillance assets were not delayed when responding to the attack, and they provided important situational awareness for those under siege during the attacks. The Intelligence Picture After the Attacks Contributed to the Controversial CIA Talking Points—In intelligence reports after September 11, 2012, intelligence analysts inaccurately referred to the presence of a protest at the U.S. mission facility before the attack based on open source information and limited intelligence, but without sufficient intelligence or eyewitness statements to corroborate that assertion. The IC took too long to correct these erroneous reports, which caused confusion and influenced the public statements of policymakers. Failure to Bring the Attackers to Justice—More than a year after the Benghazi attacks, the terrorists who perpetrated the attack have still not been brought to justice. The IC has identified several individuals responsible for the attacks. Some of the individuals have been identified with a strong level of confidence. However, insight into the current whereabouts and links between these individuals in some cases is limited due in part to the nascent intelligence capabilities in the region.
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