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You really don't get it, do you Whembly? Even Frazz agrees that tying something unrelated to a vote on whether to tank the world economy or not is different from discussing that something in its own context.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
You really don't get it, do you Whembly? Even Frazz agrees that tying something unrelated to a vote on whether to tank the world economy or not is different from discussing that something in its own context.

No... I get it.

But you are wrongfully disregarding the House's power of the purse. They can legally do what they just did.

Their counter part wanted nothing, NOTHING to do with them. So, it was the last resort.

 whembly wrote:
No... I get it.

But you are wrongfully disregarding the House's power of the purse.

You keep saying 'power of the purse' as though it means something. I keep explaining that it means nothing more than where a bill is first written, and that given the bill must still be voted on by the senate and signed by the President then in terms of real power it means nothing.

They can legally do what they just did.

And just because an action is legal doesn't mean it is a good way to govern the country.

"Trying to use the threat of government shutdown and the debt ceiling to extort concessions from the other side is poor governance and harmful to the nation and it's economy"
"It's legal!"

Their counter part wanted nothing, NOTHING to do with them. So, it was the last resort.

The Republicans weren't offering up anything. They weren't saying 'in exchange of ACA defunding/delay/reform we'll agree to higher taxes or something like that'. How do you still not see that? How do you still fail to understand that 'if you give me something then I'll agree to do something we both want' isn't negotiation?


And you didn't respond to my last reply to you, where among other things I made this point (for the second time, cutting and pasting it from the previous response);
"No, it's to establish that Republican opposition to ACA has nothing to do with the content of the bill. That such a bill came from a conservative think tank isn't a crude effort to say 'you thought of it therefore you can't protest against it', but to establish that the structure of the ACA is straight up centre right politics. The ACA is exactly the structure that Republicans claim they believe in - it's a market based solution and Republicans are supposed to be all about market based solutions. But none of that mattered when Democrats put this thing up in 2008, when Republicans had just copped an electoral hammering and made the political decision to rebuild their brand and political position by hammering the Democrats over healthcare reform."

I'd be genuinely interested in your response to the above, and if it affects your opinion on how original Heritage Foundation piece relates to the debate.

 sebster wrote:

And you didn't respond to my last reply to you, where among other things I made this point (for the second time, cutting and pasting it from the previous response);
"No, it's to establish that Republican opposition to ACA has nothing to do with the content of the bill. That such a bill came from a conservative think tank isn't a crude effort to say 'you thought of it therefore you can't protest against it', but to establish that the structure of the ACA is straight up centre right politics. The ACA is exactly the structure that Republicans claim they believe in - it's a market based solution and Republicans are supposed to be all about market based solutions. But none of that mattered when Democrats put this thing up in 2008, when Republicans had just copped an electoral hammering and made the political decision to rebuild their brand and political position by hammering the Democrats over healthcare reform."

I'd be genuinely interested in your response to the above, and if it affects your opinion on how original Heritage Foundation piece relates to the debate.

How 'bout this seb.

The Heritage Foundation doesn't fething speak for me. Okay? By the Holy Terra, I wish you stop trying to say "hey... these guys are generally your teammate, so... stop dicking around and support their principle that they were theory-hammering 20 years ago!"

Doesn't. fething. Matter. Okay!?!

It's one thing if some actual Congressional Republican Leader tried to push this and debate it within the halls of congress... but, the Hertiage Foundation is not Congress.

Okay?

Can I haz an opinion? I'm not your typical Conservative/Tea Partier/Republican... I'm whembly... .who generally opposes anything Obama and Current Democrat.

 whembly wrote:
How 'bout this seb.

The Heritage Foundation doesn't fething speak for me. Okay? By the Holy Terra, I wish you stop trying to say "hey... these guys are generally your teammate, so... stop dicking around and support their principle that they were theory-hammering 20 years ago!"

It isn't about you. It's about the Republican position on ACA, and how they lurched from being all for market based solutions until the other side of politics passed a market based solution, at which point that became the worst thing imaginable.

And proposals along these lines were suggested as alternatives to Hillarycare. It wasn't just one Heritage piece and then nothing. There's a reason that Romney put it in place that has nothing to do with him just being an R in a blue state.... it's because this really was the the solution to healthcare Republicans broadly believed in.

I mean, I just really, really think you need to understand how much the Republican opposition to ACA has had absolutely nothing to do with the content of the legistation. That's the point of the Heritage Foundation piece. But instead the Republicans decided it was the way to score a big hit on Obama and rebuild the party in the wake of 2008.

Can I haz an opinion? I'm not your typical Conservative/Tea Partier/Republican... I'm whembly... .who generally opposes anything Obama and Current Democrat.

Of course you can. And I will likely have an opinion on that opinion

I just think its really, really important to recognise that Republican reaction to ACA was essentially, started from a political strategy, not decided by the content of the bill, and that really nothing has changed in the years since then. It doesn't mean everything in the bill is good, but it does mean we need to really think about everything we read that bags ACA and ask 'is this story being honest with me?'

The same applies to efforts to sell the bill, of course. The recent efforts to claim the bill is delivering cheap healthcare were also nonsense, as they were comparing CBO estimates of what premiums might be to what they actually are... with no reference at all to what people were really paying. The point of difference, I believe, is that we're seeing on dakka a hell of a lot more cut and pasting of dodgy articles coming from the anti-ACA side.

 sebster wrote:

I mean, I just really, really think you need to understand how much the Republican opposition to ACA has had absolutely nothing to do with the content of the legistation. That's the point of the Heritage Foundation piece. But instead the Republicans decided it was the way to score a big hit on Obama and rebuild the party in the wake of 2008.

That's politics seb AND that the PPACA is still a gak sammich of a law.

Those 30 million who did NOT have coverage, they could've crafted the PPACA to just target those folks. But, no... the Democrats wanted to fundamentally change the entire industry.

During the crafting of the PPACA the Republicans were SHUT OUT of the negotiation.

The Democrats owns this.

 whembly wrote:
That's politics

Yeah, it's politics that leads them to oppose a bill that was exactly what they wanted, and it's politics that causes them to pump out bs stories and opinion pieces that tell the same lies over and over again. And those basic political facts aren't going to change any time soon.

But the thing where you and so many other accept those lies, ignore the explanations as to why they're lies, or accept them this time but still keep reading the sources that were straight up lying to you... that isn't politics. I don't know what it is, but I refuse to believe that it can't change. I refuse to believe that people can't, eventually, just stop listening to the people that keep lying to them.

The Democrats owns this.

Yes. As I've said many times now, the point is not to try and make the Republicans responsible for the law. The point is to try and show that Republican opposition to healthcare is based entirely on political theatre, and not at all on the substance of the bill.

 whembly wrote:

 sebster wrote:

I mean, I just really, really think you need to understand how much the Republican opposition to ACA has had absolutely nothing to do with the content of the legistation. That's the point of the Heritage Foundation piece. But instead the Republicans decided it was the way to score a big hit on Obama and rebuild the party in the wake of 2008.

That's politics seb AND that the PPACA is still a gak sammich of a law.

Those 30 million who did NOT have coverage, they could've crafted the PPACA to just target those folks. But, no... the Democrats wanted to fundamentally change the entire industry.

Strange, because you also advocated for Single Payer, but you now claim that the industry shouldn't be fundamentally changed? Sounds a bit like you're talking out both sides there.

Meanwhile, the main part of the law that is generally disliked is also the part of the law that only affects those without insurance. So yay? You should be happy about that right?

 whembly wrote:


During the crafting of the PPACA the Republicans were SHUT OUT of the negotiation.

The Democrats owns this.

During the crafting of the PPACA, democrats tried to bend over backwards to accommodate republicans and conservative "blue dog" democrats. The republicans would not negotiate, and spun out the process into a year and more of bull gak. Liberal democrats wanted single payer or at the very least a public option, and they didn't even get that, because they were stonewalled. Still, while it isn't the best system by far, it's at least an improvement on the "do nothing" and "make it worse" options that Republicans have proposed in recent times.

Still, I think the Democrats will be happy to own in general (even though it doesn't go nearly far enough), but it's a pity that red state governments tried to sabotage everything they could, including the Medicaid expansion and negotiating lower insurance prices.

 Maddermax wrote:

 whembly wrote:

 sebster wrote:

I mean, I just really, really think you need to understand how much the Republican opposition to ACA has had absolutely nothing to do with the content of the legistation. That's the point of the Heritage Foundation piece. But instead the Republicans decided it was the way to score a big hit on Obama and rebuild the party in the wake of 2008.

That's politics seb AND that the PPACA is still a gak sammich of a law.

Those 30 million who did NOT have coverage, they could've crafted the PPACA to just target those folks. But, no... the Democrats wanted to fundamentally change the entire industry.

Strange, because you also advocated for Single Payer, but you now claim that the industry shouldn't be fundamentally changed? Sounds a bit like you're talking out both sides there.

Nah... I'd still support single payer... but the entire government would have to change in order to reach that (tax reform, Medicare/Medicaid, etc...).

The PPACA double down on the exact same system but adding a feth ton of more regulation/taxs on top of the existing system.

Meanwhile, the main part of the law that is generally disliked is also the part of the law that only affects those without insurance. So yay? You should be happy about that right?

Conceptually, those aren't bad ideas.

Collectively, it's poorly crafting... especially egregious is that people's reactions to incentives/disincentives were largely ignored.

It's all "pie-in-the-sky" wishlisting.... such that the negatives right now is far outweighing the positives.

And that's the true shame about the PPACA... it could've been crafted/implemented much better.

 whembly wrote:


During the crafting of the PPACA the Republicans were SHUT OUT of the negotiation.

The Democrats owns this.

During the crafting of the PPACA, democrats tried to bend over backwards to accommodate republicans and conservative "blue dog" democrats. The republicans would not negotiate, and spun out the process into a year and more of bull gak. Liberal democrats wanted single payer or at the very least a public option, and they didn't even get that, because they were stonewalled. Still, while it isn't the best system by far, it's at least an improvement on the "do nothing" and "make it worse" options that Republicans have proposed in recent times.

Step away from the cool aid.

Many Democrats didn't want single-payor.

Once the Republicans realized that Reid/Pelosi were going to push for a plan, they came to the table. They were largely ignored.

Still, I think the Democrats will be happy to own in general (even though it doesn't go nearly far enough),

Red-state Democrats are getting clobbered now. It's interesting... guess where those democrats are located that are now clammoring for a delay of the individual mandate?

but it's a pity that red state governments tried to sabotage everything they could, including the Medicaid expansion and negotiating lower insurance prices.

What the ever feth are you talking about? I don't think you know what you're talking about here...

 whembly wrote:

 sebster wrote:

And you didn't respond to my last reply to you, where among other things I made this point (for the second time, cutting and pasting it from the previous response);
"No, it's to establish that Republican opposition to ACA has nothing to do with the content of the bill. That such a bill came from a conservative think tank isn't a crude effort to say 'you thought of it therefore you can't protest against it', but to establish that the structure of the ACA is straight up centre right politics. The ACA is exactly the structure that Republicans claim they believe in - it's a market based solution and Republicans are supposed to be all about market based solutions. But none of that mattered when Democrats put this thing up in 2008, when Republicans had just copped an electoral hammering and made the political decision to rebuild their brand and political position by hammering the Democrats over healthcare reform."

I'd be genuinely interested in your response to the above, and if it affects your opinion on how original Heritage Foundation piece relates to the debate.

How 'bout this seb.

The Heritage Foundation doesn't fething speak for me. Okay? By the Holy Terra, I wish you stop trying to say "hey... these guys are generally your teammate, so... stop dicking around and support their principle that they were theory-hammering 20 years ago!"

Doesn't. fething. Matter. Okay!?!

It's one thing if some actual Congressional Republican Leader tried to push this and debate it within the halls of congress... but, the Hertiage Foundation is not Congress.

Okay?

Can I haz an opinion? I'm not your typical Conservative/Tea Partier/Republican... I'm whembly... .who generally opposes anything Obama and Current Democrat.

Whembly has a point. Thgats Democrats trying to cover their keisters now that the horror is finally being reviled. Soon all your secrets are belong to us.

Look... the supporters are now calling out conservative/Republicans for refusing to fix PPACA.

O.o

That is implicit acknowledgement that PPACA is going to make things worse, despite their claims to the contrary.

No one in the conservative/Republican camp wants things to get worse. We just know things will get worse.

PPACA will be deeply destructive.

People are already seeing it.

The only way the PPACA would ever work in it's current iteration is if people behaves irrationally. It is a system that requires the young to go out and by their own insurance, but allows them to stay on their parents’ insurance until they are well into their twenties. For feth's sake! o.O The law operates only as if people do not behave like people. Seriously... this law's success depends on those young, traditionally uninsured people!

This is the incentive/disincentive I've been harping about...

IMO, Republicans should be opposed to any and all fixes of PPACA. The GOP should not accommodate the Democrat's demands for changes. Instead, if they want the GOP to play ball at all, the GOP ought to exact some concessions from the Democrats elsewhere... such as, tax cuts/reform, actual fething budgets, their spleen.

The Democrats planned and implemented Obamacare without a single Republican vote. I don't give a flying feth where the ideas it came from... They made it CLEAR they did not need the GOP's votes. They used a budgetary procedure in the Senate to get around a filibuster in order to pass the PPACA, after the people of Massachusetts sent a Republican in Ted Kennedy’s steed to try to stop it. O.o Seriously, wrap your head about that for a moment... a Republican won that seat... in MASSACHUSETTS for feth's sake!

So the Democrats can own it. They can own every damned deleted application, every damned delayed entry into the website, every damned cancellation of current insurance, every damned decline in full time work, and every damned price increase that comes from this horrible law.

The Democrats can own it all.

Republicans who have said forever that the law will crumble on its own (looking at you, Paul Ryan... that fether been too quiet... he needs to lead the charge again!), need to step back and let it collapse.

I hope the lawsuit seeking an end to subsidies in states without state run exchanges is a smashing success.

Let’s follow the law and see where it leads.

If it leads to worse, it is not that conservatives/Republicans wanted it to be, just that we knew it would be so and the Democrats refused to listen.

So wait, now you want to fix it?

After all this time of you calling to not fix it and to instead scrap it and replace it completely?

Your posts look like a Glenn Beck chalkboard...

 d-usa wrote:
So wait, now you want to fix it?

So wait...

Didn't the House tried that during the shutdown?

After all this time of you calling to not fix it and to instead scrap it and replace it completely?

Re-read it... I said take that position of not offering to help. Instead, demand serious concessions in other non-ACA realms of government.

Your posts look like a Glenn Beck chalkboard...

I don't even know what that mean... I mean, I know who Beck is. I'm assuming he's known for using a chalkboard as a prop... just like Karl Rove's famous whiteboard.

EDIT: Oh... you mean this?


Where's my arrowing, circling and whatnot?

Besides... I'm better looking.

You'll have to excuse Whembly; he's having a talking points meltdown. He's not sure what he wants at the moment.

 Easy E wrote:
You'll have to excuse Whembly; he's having a talking points meltdown. He's not sure what he wants at the moment.

Which part? o.O Go back and point it out. Please.

Well, I'm not sure what you want between repealling ACA, modifying ACA, adding more people to the ACA, single-payer, the status quo; expansion of medicaid/tri-care etc, etc.

You have argued for all of these positions over time.

The specifics don't matter, as long as it is anti-Obama.

 d-usa wrote:
The specifics don't matter, as long as it is anti-Obama.

Indeed, down with the great destroyer!

 Easy E wrote:
Well, I'm not sure what you want between repealling ACA, modifying ACA, adding more people to the ACA, single-payer, the status quo; expansion of medicaid/tri-care etc, etc.

You have argued for all of these positions over time.

A) I believe we're heading to single payer. I think in order to achieve that lots of things need to happen.

B) I am for repealing the ACA, but given that it's not going to happen, I'd take the delay.

C) "adding more people to the ACA"... wut? I'm just reiterating that in order for it to be successful, the young'uns need to sign up.

D) status quo? Nah. You're projecting...

E) expansion of medicaid? Nah. You're projecting...

F) Tri-care? I've argued that if the government want to prove that they can manage this, beef this mofo up to such a standard that everyone would want it.

G) Stop projecting and keep up slow-po!


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 d-usa wrote:
The specifics don't matter, as long as it is anti-Obama.

Of course it matters!

 whembly wrote:

If it leads to worse, it is not that conservatives/Republicans wanted it to be, just that we knew it would be so and the Democrats refused to listen.

Well, at least you've managed to openly identify as a "conservative/Republican". And an overtly political one at that.

I have said it quite a few times over the last few years:

If Republicans would have spend just 10% of the effort fixing it instead of trying to get rid of it completely, then maybe they would have something to show for it by now...

Thought this was interesting.

Health insurance rates are so high in Colorado’s mountain resort areas that U.S. Rep. Jared Polis plans to seek waivers from the federal government so people who skip buying insurance in 2014 won’t face financial penalties.

“We will be encouraging a waiver. It will be difficult for Summit County residents to become insured. For the vast majority, it’s too high a price to pay,” said Polis, D-Boulder.

Health coverage guides working to enroll Summit County residents in new health plans through Colorado’s health exchange have been deeply disappointed. They have not enrolled a single new client since Colorado’s health exchange launched on Oct. 1.

“People take one look at the rates and they walk out the door,” said Tamara Drangstveit, executive director of the Family and Intercultural Resource Center, the group that is leading efforts in Summit County to enroll people in new plans that start on Jan. 1 through Colorado’s health exchange.

“This is hard for me to say. We had really hoped that (the marketplace) would bring down rates. Sadly, that’s not what we’re seeing. People just can’t afford it. Their incomes are already squeezed too tight,” Drangstveit said.

Rates for plans on Colorado’s new health exchange, Connect for Health Colorado, are up to three times higher in resort communities from Breckenridge to Vail and Aspen than in other parts of the state. For instance, a 40-year-old buying a mid-level silver plan in Greeley could pay as little as $232 per month while that same person in the resort communities could pay as much as $667 per month.

This one was good, too, from the conservative bastion known as CBS.

The Affordable Care Act was signed by President Obama in 2010 and since then he has repeated one reassuring phrase: "If you like your insurance plan you will keep it. No one will be able to take that away from you. It hasn't happened yet. It won't happen in the future."

But it is happening. The president's health care law raises the standards for insurance policies, which many consider to be a good thing. But hundreds of thousands of Americans whose policies don't meet the new standards are being told that their health plans are being cancelled.

Natalie Willes is a sleep consultant who helps parents in Los Angeles train their newborns to sleep. She buys her own health insurance.

"I was completely happy with the insurance I had before," Willes said.

So she was surprised when she tried to renew her policy. What did she find out?

Her insurer, Kaiser Permanente, is terminating policies for 160,000 people in California and presenting them with new plans that comply with the healthcare law.

"Before I had a plan that I had a $1,500 deductible," she said. "I paid $199 dollars a month. The most similar plan that I would have available to me would be $278 a month. My deductible would be $6,500 dollars, and all of my care after that point would only be covered 70 percent."

Gerry Kominski, director of public health policy at UCLA said: "About half of the 14 million people who buy insurance on their own are not going to be able to keep the policies that they had previously."

He says higher premiums help insurers pay for new requirements including accepting patients with pre-existing conditions and providing preventative care like check-ups and vaccines.

"You're paying more for a better product and for more protection -- and you won't understand the value of that until you need it," he said.

But many can't get past the sticker shock.

"Now I'm being forced to choose from a bunch of new plans that I don't want to choose from that are all more expensive," Willes said.

But. But. All this stuff you don't want and didn't use before makes these new more expensive plans better!! We swears on the precious it does.

The interesting thing with the second one is that it completely contradicts what the "expert" they brought in is saying. Ms. Willes is paying more for a much worse policy. Sure going up $80 a month isn't fun, but her deductible goes through the roof and less of her care is covered. Clearly it's not just her either. The ACA's goal is admirable, but a good goal is not enough when you're crafting public policy. This poor planning and worse execution is truly marking the ACA as a complete cluster feth.

I just want to say, reading through DemocraticUnderground, and watching them tear each other apart because people are talking about how their rates have more then doubled... It's hilarious.

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:



The interesting thing with the second one is that it completely contradicts what the "expert" they brought in is saying. Ms. Willes is paying more for a much worse policy. Sure going up $80 a month isn't fun, but her deductible goes through the roof and less of her care is covered. Clearly it's not just her either. The ACA's goal is admirable, but a good goal is not enough when you're crafting public policy. This poor planning and worse execution is truly marking the ACA as a complete cluster feth.

It's possible that in the aggregate, individual rates may go down, but it was always going to be young, healthy people hit hardest by this. They're the ones who need to pay more to subsidize the lowered costs for everyone else.

Edit: Unless we get into a death spiral, of course. Not enough people join or stay in the market, so premiums go up for the people who do, causing some of them to leave, so premiums go up, causing some of them to leave, so premiums go up...

 Frazzled wrote:
Whembly has a point. Thgats Democrats trying to cover their keisters now that the horror is finally being reviled. Soon all your secrets are belong to us.

No, whembly has a soundbite and a dogged determination to ignore my explanation.

Democrats own this bill. They wrote it, they put it up to vote, and they got it over the line without a single Republican vote. It is a Democrat reform.

What Republicans own their opposition to the bill. And that opposition, let alone the incredible intensity of it, is a real puzzle if one looks purely at the policy of ACA. The core of Obamacare is a market based solution - building a market structure in which insurers compete for each individual not covered by their employer. And ideas like that are what Republicans claim their whole party is about - free market huzzah! So much so that a major Republican thinktank devised a model that's incredibly similar to ACA.

That's why the Heritage piece is important - to show that purely in terms of policy ACA is the kind of thing Republicans claim to love. And so it becomes clear that Republican opposition has nothing to do with the actual content of the bill, and everything to do with political maneuvering.

Is a market really free if a potential consumer is forced by law to participate in it?

 dogma wrote:

 whembly wrote:

If it leads to worse, it is not that conservatives/Republicans wanted it to be, just that we knew it would be so and the Democrats refused to listen.

Well, at least you've managed to openly identify as a "conservative/Republican". And an overtly political one at that.

Heh... I'm more of a South Park conservative.


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 d-usa wrote:
I have said it quite a few times over the last few years:

If Republicans would have spend just 10% of the effort fixing it instead of trying to get rid of it completely, then maybe they would have something to show for it by now...

Well... They've tried... It's just that the democrat didn't want their help.


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 djones520 wrote:
I just want to say, reading through DemocraticUnderground, and watching them tear each other apart because people are talking about how their rates have more then doubled... It's hilarious.

Post some here if you can... Ill be wading through that in a bit.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 sebster wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
Whembly has a point. Thgats Democrats trying to cover their keisters now that the horror is finally being reviled. Soon all your secrets are belong to us.

No, whembly has a soundbite and a dogged determination to ignore my explanation.

Democrats own this bill. They wrote it, they put it up to vote, and they got it over the line without a single Republican vote. It is a Democrat reform.

What Republicans own their opposition to the bill. And that opposition, let alone the incredible intensity of it, is a real puzzle if one looks purely at the policy of ACA. The core of Obamacare is a market based solution - building a market structure in which insurers compete for each individual not covered by their employer. And ideas like that are what Republicans claim their whole party is about - free market huzzah! So much so that a major Republican thinktank devised a model that's incredibly similar to ACA.

That's why the Heritage piece is important - to show that purely in terms of policy ACA is the kind of thing Republicans claim to love. And so it becomes clear that Republican opposition has nothing to do with the actual content of the bill, and everything to do with political maneuvering.

Your explanation is your opinion... Not fact. Who are you to say that the heritage, or any group for that matter, speaks for the republican. Does "MoveOn.org" speak for the democrats????


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 Seaward wrote:
Is a market really free if a potential consumer is forced by law to participate in it?

Heh...that's a very good point. If its not...then what is it.

By the way.... Posting all this via iPad is clunky!

 djones520 wrote:
I just want to say, reading through DemocraticUnderground, and watching them tear each other apart because people are talking about how their rates have more then doubled... It's hilarious.

It is, it very much is.