US Government Shutdown Ends 999
An anonymous reader writes "After more than two weeks of bickering that made the schoolyard appear civilized, Congress has finally passed a bill to reopen the U.S. Federal Government. 'The Senate passed the measure by a vote of 81 - 18, followed by approval in the House by a vote of 285 - 144. The bill now goes to the President, who will make remarks on Thursday regarding the reopening of the federal government. ... Earlier in the day, Speaker Boehner conceded that the House would not vote to stop the Senate-negotiated agreement. In a statement, the Speaker said that, after a fight with President Obama over his signature health care law, " . . . blocking the bipartisan agreement reached today by the members of the Senate will not be a tactic for us." The agreement will raise the debt limit until February 2014, fund the government through January 2014 and establish a joint House-Senate committee to make spending cut decisions.' CNN adds, 'Obama, for one, didn't seem in the mood Wednesday night for more of the same -- saying politicians in Washington have to "get out of the habit of governing by crisis." "Hopefully, next time, it will not be in the 11th hour," Obama told reporters, calling for both parties to work together on a budget, immigration reform and other issues. When asked as he left the podium whether he believed America would be going through all this political turmoil again in a few months, the President didn't waste words. "No."'"
Wow. (Score:5, Insightful)
I didn't think the Democrats were capable of not caving in.
Re:Thank goodness (Score:5, Insightful)
I suspect it will be massaged over the years to work out little wrinkles, with the end result being a single payer system.
Remember this in the 2014 elections (Score:2, Insightful)
They all need to go. Vote out the incumbents in 2014.
Re:Thank goodness (Score:4, Insightful)
That would be my assumption. So it isn't a done deal in the long term, but in the short and medium term, the Republicans won't get many, if any more chances to kill it. I'd say Obamacare, and whatever it ultimately morphs into, is now pretty much cemented into the landscape. Within a few election cycles, no one will be talking about repealing it.
Re:Wow. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why did you think that? They knew the moderate Republicans in the House would eventually force Boehner's hand. Even Boehner knew it, but this little dance had to go all the way because the moderate Republicans are as terrified of the Tea Party as they are of voters.
Obama and Congressional Democrats have seen this growing weakness in the GOP since 2008, and have been waiting for a chance to humiliate Boehner. Now they'll sit back and watch the civil war in the Republican ranks make the Republicans' dominance of the house become an empty accomplishment.
Re:Americans doing the right thing (Score:4, Insightful)
Ends? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe a more accurate headline is "US Government Shutdown on temporary hiatus"? It's only a few months funding, and there's no guarantee we won't go through the entire thing again come January 15th...
yet 33% in the House opposed it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Americans doing the right thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ends? (Score:2, Insightful)
I can't imagine the House Republicans wanting to go through this again. Everyone has taken a beating, but while the Democrats might be battered and bruised, the Republicans have hemorrhaged support. For some time, moderate Republican incumbents have lived in fear of the Tea Party smashing them in the primaries, but now the choice between accommodating wingnuts and winning in 2014 has become very very clear.
I'm sure Cruz and his ilk will want to pick another fight in January, but even he seems to realize the Tea Party has been damaged by this, and his actions and the actions of his compatriots in the House are threatening to bring down a civil war on the GOP.
Re:yet 33% in the House opposed it (Score:0, Insightful)
You are aware that Obama voted against [snopes.com] raising the debt ceiling when he was a senator in 2006. Was he just pandering to the extreme left when he did this? Is it possible that both him and the republicans had legitimate concerns about the budget without calling it "pandering"?
Re:yet 33% in the House opposed it (Score:5, Insightful)
The bill passed the House, but 144 votes were cast against it -- more than 1/3 of those voting! One can only guess at the careful thought that went into casting those votes. Do these people actually believe that funding "Obamacare" for a few months is worse than letting the federal government default on its loans? There is no acceptable answer to this question. If the answer is "yes," well -- yikes. If the answer is "no," and this is just shameless pandering to the extreme right faction of the GOP/"Tea Party", then -- yikes.
Don't fall for that nonsense. People talk, the party whips do what they do. Everyone is reasonably certain of how everyone is going to vote long before the actual event. It can sometimes be beneficial to vote no on something that will assuredly pass, and you may even want passed, merely because voters and donors that care to keep track in such detail want you to vote no.
Now it gets worse. (Score:3, Insightful)
The federal government is still spending far more than it's taking in, and seems to have little to show for it.
We're not even borrowing the money any more; the Federal Reserve just changes a number in a computer to create more money, then lends it to the U.S. government at near-zero interest.
This is a shell game of the highest magnitude, and all historical precedents point to this ending badly.
Federal spending has to be brought under control. It appears there's no will in our so-called leaders to do so. A shutdown and default, despite the chaos it would lead to, would have stopped the out-of-control spending. I would like to think there's another way to get federal spending under control, but I'm not that gullible.
This was a chance to stop the hemorrhaging. This chance is gone. The problem will only get worse.
And if you think there's something special about the United States that'll keep it from collapsing like so many other empires in history...I hope you're right. But I'm still constructing my compound on raw land in the middle of nowhere.
Re:Thank goodness (Score:4, Insightful)
Early reports of those trying to renew insurance or get into exchanges are finding rates near double or more of the previous rates. Guess that is the cost of adding pre-existing conditions to the covered. I expect this to be the new norm with a whole batch of subsidies that anyone earning a living will be unelegible for.
To keep health coverage.. lose the job and apply for assistance. The only casualty is the economy.
Re:Thank goodness (Score:5, Insightful)
I second his motion. I wanted a single payer system, not a crazy clone of Romneycare.
The fundamental problem is that the actual cost of healthcare is way too high, mostly because a healthy market cannot be established when the option is pay or die and many of the 'customers' come in unconscious. If insurance could fix it, it would have done so in the last several decades.
While Obamacare has addressed some of the issues like 'pre-existing conditions' and rescission, it falls far short of what we really need.
Re:Ends? (Score:1, Insightful)
Congratulations! You have correctly absorbed the media's message on this fiasco:
Government shutdown
Democrats in Senate and Democrat President refuse to negotiate
So...It's all the Tea Party Republicans' fault.
See any logical flaws here?
Re:Americans doing the right thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Depends. A good deal of additional revenue could be appropriated simply by revisiting the corporate tax code. Preventing eg, Apple, from doing a "double Irish with a Dutch sandwich", and hiding $11bn from the us's 30-ish% tax alone is 3bn. (Extend that to microsoft, oracle, and pals as well, and you get the picture.) Playing footsie with investors only works when the market isn't at death's door. In the long run, making those companies pay their goddamn taxes is way better than having debt limit crisis 2014, return of the deficit bomb, both for them, and the world at large, and for the same said investors.
There's plenty of revenue that isn't being properly appropriated. The major problem is the byzantine tax system the US uses, which has more holes in it than a whiffle ball.
We don't really need new taxes, we need to revisit and refine the taxes we already have, and sanitize the tax code. Of course, that would almost certainly never see the light of day, since like term limits, it stands to cost all of the corrupt people on the hill a good deal of money. (Eg, it demonstrates a genuine conflict of interest for them.)
Re:Now it gets worse. (Score:5, Insightful)
This was a chance to stop the hemorrhaging.
No, it wasn't. This was a manipulation tactic by a minority group of legislators to change the law even though they knew they couldn't really change the law legally (they tried and failed) and knew their tactic had no chance of success anyway. That they were able to do this points to a systematic problem that will only get worse. That they hemorrhaging resources into the military (see: Roman Empire) is only a symptom of that systematic corruption.
Re:Thank goodness (Score:4, Insightful)
Nobody ever scared anyone with tales of $50 ER visits. Who'd buy insurance to cover cheap healthcare?
Re:Americans doing the right thing (Score:2, Insightful)
Given the history of the deficits, if the GOP is serious about fixing it they should just not field a candidate for president for a few cycles. It's the Dems in the White House that lower the deficit every time (including right now, it's headed down, though the shutdown may cause a reversal) only to have the next Republican come along and blow it sky high again.
But if they want to cut all funding for domestic spying out of the NSA's budget, I'll be all for it. They can cut the TSA and DEA entirely while they're at it. Any one of those will be an order of magnitude more than cutting food stamps would save and nobody gets hurt.
Re:US Government logic (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wow. (Score:5, Insightful)
Welcom to the welfare state. You voted for it.
The rest of the civilized world makes this shit work. You don't think America can do it better? Why do you hate America?
Re:As the saying goes... (Score:5, Insightful)
And nothing of value was lost. Or gained.
Nothing was lost? All the work that the government workers could have been doing during the shutdown was lost. All the revenue from the National Parks were lost. Two weeks food inspections, drug inspections, VA claims processing were lost . Worldwide confidence in the US and the US dollar was lost. US credit rating was compromised with the possibility of higher interest rates on new deficit. Scientific tests will have to be thrown out and restarted.
You might not be personally affected, but plenty of money and confidence has been lost during the past three weeks.
~~
Vote out ALL the incumbents! (Score:3, Insightful)
But just watch as election time rolls around. Everyone will have forgotten about this mess, likely focusing on some new manufactured crisis. And even then it will still be a choice between Kang and Kodos.
You know, if you or I threatened to shut down the government we would instantly be thrown in Guantanamo or gunned down by capitol police. But somehow these terrorists that occupy the White House can get away with this nonsense and even expect us to praise them for coming to an "agreement" at the last minute?
Re:Thank goodness (Score:5, Insightful)
Lol, insurance used to be very affordable before the govt included health care in tax deductions for employers but not for employees. That alone killed the transparency because there is no market for individuals. That means nobody in the whole system gives a fuck how much things cost. Healthcare user, as long as he has one, doesn't care because he doesn't see the bills, employer doesn't care because it's not his health, hospitals don't care either as it's in their best interest to inflate the costs, so who is supposed to put a downward pressure on prices?
Any 3rd party payment system based on spending someone else's money is prone to suffer from overuse and cost inflation. Yes, in theory it's employee's money because it's his compensation but the difference stems from the fact that the employee doesn't have to kiss the dollars in his possession goodbye. Out of sight, out of mind. If it all happens beyond the curtain, he doesn't feel the money was ever his.
Also insurance is about risk management, but in the current form it's far from that. Huge chunk of the cost is about trivial 'maintenance', yearly checkups, flu, etc. These things should be paid out of pocket and you insurance in the meaning of the word should cover only disasters. Recurring costs 100% certain to happen have nothing to do with risk management. Yes, for that reason insurance is a lousy model in case of preexisting conditions but trying to fit a square peg into a round hole as the ACA tries to do won't work and expect to see increases in prices across the board.
Re:Thank goodness (Score:4, Insightful)
Medicare/Medicaid consistently push prices down (for medicare/medicaid, not for anyone else). Make that the single payer and prices get pushed down across the board. If you try to bill Medicare $8 for a Tylenol you will get a big fat nothing (as it should be).
Doctors complain about getting squeezed but then fail to pass the squeeze on to their suppliers for some reason. Probably because the suppliers know someone is getting away with the $8 tylenol and they can pay the inflated prices.
Re:Wow. (Score:5, Insightful)
Bah. Weak sauce. Both Reps and Dems want to use the coercive power of the state to control my life. They just have different priorities. It's not that the Dems want a nanny state and the Reps want to set me free. The Reps just want to fire the current nanny and install a different nanny with different rules. Unless the libertarian-leaning wing of the Republican party manages to give Boehner and his ilk a full spinal transplant we are doomed. Oh... and all the Republican bible-thumpers need to back-off, too. Don't use the coercive power of the state to enforce your morality on your neighbor. You see we have this thing called the constitution, and you have to live by the parts that you like as well as the parts that you don't so much agree with.
Thank God all the non-essential workers are coming (Score:0, Insightful)
back. Its a miracle we survived this long without them. That should at least end the little temper tantrum the administration threw when it allowed monuments to be blockaded off to try and make the shutdown visible and inconvenient for the citizenry. See you again in early 2014 when we hit the $18 trillion debt mark and do it all over again! Hopefully by then I'll have finished divesting all my dollar denominated assets into durable goods and commodities.
Re:Thank goodness (Score:4, Insightful)
the problem with centrally planned price ceilings is that they tend to ignore economic reality and if they happen to be too low in at least some areas, you can expect shortages of things affected by them. The Hippocratic oath takes you only so far when the doctor has $200k to repay.
Re:Thank goodness (Score:5, Insightful)
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/09/17/1239587/-Obamacare-or-Affordable-Care-Act-Don-t-ask-GOP-to-choose [dailykos.com]
So...saying more people oppose it than support it is a Microsoft answer...technically correct, but bullshit. As soon as you change the question to do they support the ACA (instead of Obamacare), almost 60% of conservatives change their tune. The real answer is: more people don't know enough about it, or are ideologically incapable of agreeing with ANYTHING that has Obama's name on it.
Re:Wow. (Score:5, Insightful)
Would it make sense to trim your spending to borrow less?
It would, but if given the choice I'd also like to get a raise, and use the additional income to help pay down the debt and reduce the necessary size (and therefore pain) of the spending cuts. The one thing I definitely wouldn't do is go to my boss and demand that my salary be reduced -- that would be counterproductive.
Can we afford ACA?
Are you asking, can we afford to provide health care to our citizens? As a first world nation, the answer is definitely yes. Every other first world nation manages to do that without going bankrupt, so there's no reason the "greatest nation on Earth" can't do it too. It's not rocket science. The only question is whether we have the will and self-confidence to make it work, or whether the conservatives have demoralized people to the point that they don't think our nation is capable of it.
If you have a choice between housing and insurance, which will you drop? Between food and insurance?
Conservatives, for some reason, have come to the conclusion that health care is a luxury. It is not, it is a necessity, that's why it is illegal for emergency rooms to turn people away. So the only remaining question is, who pays for it? Under the old system, health care for the uninsured is paid for either by the insured (in the form of inflated premiums) or by the taxpayer. Under the ACA, people are for the first time required to take personal responsibility to plan for their own (inevitable) health care costs, rather than foisting them on to the rest of us, and somehow conservatives think that is a bad thing. Which is odd, because it was their idea in the first place.
Welcom to the welfare state. You voted for it.
Yes, and I'll continue to vote for it. I prefer civilization to social darwinism.
Re:153 GOP voted to default (Score:5, Insightful)
What amazes me is that those people seriously considered a situation that could have had a devastating economical effect on the US. Things like this cause nations to implode. A bankrupt, non-functional state has time and again led to violent overthrow and civil war. This is what their game of chicken was risking. And when you listen to some of their backers they would welcome this in the hopes to build a different state from the ashes. Only their vision is really frightening.
And yet come next election they will present themselves on TV spots with flowing stars&stripes banner and parade their patriotism in front of everybody who is stupid enough to believe in it.
I feel our definitions of patriotism differ substantially.
Re:Now it gets worse. (Score:5, Insightful)
Austerity did not work for Hoover, nor Europe recently. It just makes the problem worse. You cannot pay off debt if the economy remains in a slump. Keynesian policy may be counter-intuitive to some, but some things in life are like that. At least pick the middle ground if you hate stimuluses.
If it were the case that it was being overdone, then our inflation rate would be higher than it is. Our inflation rate should be higher to encourage the rich to spend their cash instead of sitting on it waiting for better times. About 2.2% would be nice, but we are at about 1.7% right now (annually adjusted, smoothed over several months).
I realize there is risk either way, but history tends to favor stimuluses over austerity during prolonged slumps. I'll go with the horse with the better record.
Re:Thank goodness (Score:5, Insightful)
I think when you say "it's opposed by more people than favor it" you need to distinguish between people who oppose it because they think "it's a government take over of health care" and people like me who oppose it because "it's not single payer". The latter group probably prefers having it over having nothing at all.
Re:Americans doing the right thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Austerity programs in other countries have not helped to reduce their level of government debt, the level of government debt has still grown during this period.
Why? Because the population is spending less from borrowed money. The scale of that change in consumer spending easily dwarfs the change in government spending.
If you want to boost the economy, the government needs to drastically *increase* their spending, with the majority of that money spent in ways that will flow through to the majority of citizens. Don't just throw cash at bank managers, that doesn't help anyone.
Redundant (Score:1, Insightful)
What the shutdown proved, is that the Federal government is redundant. The state governments are what matters.
Re:Americans doing the right thing (Score:5, Insightful)
You give credit to Clinton for the debt going down.
This was the Internet bubble time. The economy was white hot and tax revenues were phat. You could have put a Teddy Ruxpin in as President and the effect would have been the same.
Re:Wow. (Score:5, Insightful)
The government isn't like a family. It's more like a bank.
People (and countries) buy government securities because they want a safe place to store their money while earning a token interest rate. So they "deposit" their money with the US government. They give the US $1 billion, at which point the government now has $1 billion cash and $1 billion of debt. After some predetermined amount of time, the government repays the debt, but at the same time someone else will deposit as much or more money.
As long as the government invests the $1 billion cash in a way that earns a greater rate of return than the interest rate that they pay out, it's a profit center.
Eliminating the debt would be monumentally stupid. It would be like a bank giving back all its deposits and refusing to take new ones.
The goal should be to make sure we take only as much as we can invest well, and the way to do that is to improve the efficiency of our investments. Cutting to the bone makes our spending less efficient.
Re:Ends? (Score:4, Insightful)
No, actually. Where should it be? It's all the fault of the reckless hostage takers, and these are all teabaggers.
Re:Now it gets worse. (Score:5, Insightful)
Slashing the budget during a recession with already-high unemployment is a GREAT way to drive us into a real depression. So yes, doing this soon is a TERRIBLE idea. It needs to wait until the economy is growing.
I agree... If we follow your idiotic advice, that's exactly what we'll get.
So, I take it you've never read or watched "The Grapes of Wrath", and have never heard of The Dust Bowl? Farms didn't save the US from the depression AT ALL. Roosevelt's government programs did...
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Thank goodness (Score:5, Insightful)
The consensus in London once was that the doctors who couldn't hack it in the NHS went to Harley Street.
You might get quicker non-urgent and more hotel-style care privately in the UK, but you'll rarely if ever get better medical treatment. And why would you?
In almost all cases, your problem has been seen ten thousand times before, and a doctor is either competent to fix it or they are not; researchers and advanced specialists are treated well by the NHS and academia, and if they're going to go private, they're more likely to work for pharmaceutical companies, where private industry actually does something that the NHS is not equipped to do already.
The NHS shows that "to each according to his need", where each person is human and "need" can be well defined medically, is entirely workable.
Re:Thank goodness (Score:5, Insightful)
For society as a whole, we single payer countries tend to see better results. But per person, the healthcare in the US is the best. Assuming you have a good health insurance plan.
The last sentence here is the important one. And it means that, if you are either wealthy, or have a good job and no preexisting conditions (especially the kind that would stop you working for a bit) then you're better off in the USA. Or, to put it more cynically, US health insurance is a great deal, right up until the point where you need to make a claim.
Re:Thank goodness (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Wow. (Score:5, Insightful)
The fight to limit spending is a fight for the economy.
In logic 101, you learn to look for assumptions first, because if an assumption is wrong, then the entire rest of the logic chain doesn't need to be examined anymore, as it is meaningless.
Your wrong assumption is that the problem is with the spending. But a deficit is not a problem of high spending, it is a problem of spending more than you have. You can fix it by reducing your spending, or by increasing your income.
Would it make sence to trim your spending to borrow less?
Most western countries have been cutting all kinds of expenditure for two decades now. The cuts have not been equally distributed - military spending has not been affected as much as social spending, for example.
At the same time, taxes have been abolished or reduced for the top income brackets. No, wait, for the very, very top only. I consistently earned quite well for most of that time, I've seen personally what the press has only picked up recently: The destruction of the middle class. The gap between me and the guy working at the supermarket hasn't changed all that much. But the gap between me and the guy who owns supermarket chain, that has become insane.
If you raise taxes on property and wealth by 1%, then half of the additional income from that tax will come from the famous 1% that Occupy has been going on about.
So if you think that the poor can't survive a 1% tax increase, then increase the tax 2% for the top 1% income bracket, and you will get the same net tax increase. I don't know many billionaires who'd have to starve if they were taxed 2% more.
Re:153 GOP voted to default (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wow. (Score:5, Insightful)
The rest of the civilized world makes this shit work. You don't think America can do it better? Why do you hate America?
America has brainwashed itself. I lived in Texas for a few years and have seen it first-hand. Its called cognitive dissonance I think. A 'patriot' seems to be someone who can simultaneously believe that the consitution is perfect, America is the greatest nation, and that they need to be armed in case they need to shoot it out with their own government.
Wow.
--D
Re:153 GOP voted to default (Score:5, Insightful)
What amazes me is that those people seriously considered a situation that could have had a devastating economical effect on the US.
You could say the very same thing about any big legislation. Many people myself included think this healthcare reform might have devastating long term economic effects on our nation yet it was considered and passed
No, that's really not true.
First of all, according to nonpartisan estimates, the ACA will reduce the deficit. But let's ignore that for the moment and assume that you're correct that it will raise the cost of government by a significant amount.
If that happens, how could we possibly solve such a problem? Could it be that we could...pass a law raising taxes? From their current historically low levels, particularly as a fraction of GDP? And particularly on the super-wealthy?
If I'm reading you right, what you're actually saying is that the ACA will cost money to implement, and cost money into the future as well. But you know what? Doing stuff for people costs money. Helping poor people costs money. Fixing the worst economic downturn and the worst economic inequalities in decades costs money. And I don't mean "costs money that we have to give to the super-wealthy, so they'll be even more super-wealthy." Trickle-down economics is a pretty solidly discredited theory by this point. Empirical evidence just doesn't bear it out.
And if you're one of the "all taxation is theft types," well, then, just screw you. You want to go live in a tax-free wilderness off the fruit of your own labour and no one else's, I suggest you up stakes and find some place in northern Canada without another soul for 50 miles in any direction, because anywhere in this country, you're already benefiting from the results of taxation. It was well over 100 years ago that Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr famously said, "I like taxes. With them, I buy civilization." And that's pretty much the way it works: If you want civilization, if you want to live as part of a society, particularly a modern society, you have no choice but to pay taxes to a central governing body of one sort or another. Because anything else is at least as much a theft from everyone else around you.
Dan Aris
Re:153 GOP voted to default (Score:2, Insightful)
+1.
Right now, this country hates itself. The political divide between Red and Blue is preventing us from fixing the things that need fixing. If this is the case, then it's not far off that secessation is going to be much more strongly considered by some states/regions.
It's difficult to read something along the lines of societal collapse [wikipedia.org] and not see the writing on the wall.
Re: Ends? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Wow. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:153 GOP voted to default (Score:3, Insightful)
So how much tax on the super wealthy is right? 70%? 100%? What prevents them from using that super wealth to offer the country both middle fingers and move somewhere that doesn't want to reach into their wallet and take everything?
The 2009 Federal Budget had a bottom line of $3.518T actual spending. The so-called 1% had a total adjusted gross income of $1.3T in 2009. If you tax them at 100%, that gets you about 4.5 months into the fiscal year, or around March 12th.
The "super wealthy" might be a politically expedient punching bag, but they aren't the solution. The solution is to stop spending money we don't fucking have, and we're doing way too much of that. It's not on 1% to fix it. It's on ALL OF US to fix it.
Re:153 GOP voted to default (Score:3, Insightful)
Man, how I wish I had mod points. I always tell the same to every idiot who comes babbling about how they earned their stuff on their own, with nobody's help (self-made man bullshit) so they can justify being self-centered, every-man-for-himself assholes. The fact that some people manage to get where they get in life (no matter how much hard work they put in it), because we live in a society organized in a way that gives them that possibility, and that it's the same society that denies that possibility to others, seems to be incomprehensible to some people. or maybe they're just selfish and don't want to take responsibility for their role in all of this.
Re:Wow. (Score:4, Insightful)
A common fallacy is that governments should run their finances like a family. A family does not (1) live forever, (2) print its own currency, (3) collect revenue as a matter of law, or (4) have a duty to provide public goods like a national defense. Maintaining debt in perpetuity makes sense as long as the economy grows over the long term and as long as that debt doesn't get "too big" (with pretty fierce debate over what that means -- 100% of GDP is not necessarily too big by historical standards, but reputable minds can disagree).
But in terms of the maturity level of *this* particular Congress, this is pretty spot on.
Re:Thank goodness (Score:4, Insightful)
I suspect it will be massaged over the years to work out little wrinkles, with the end result being a single payer system.
Sen. Harry Reid: Obamacare 'Absolutely' A Step Toward A Single-Payer System [forbes.com]
Why do you think the penalties are so weak for individuals that don't buy the required coverage while the act made policies so much more expensive? The same thing for businesses. The penalties for not providing coverage are less than the cost of insurance, which has also grown more expensive for them. That is why so many companies have been dumping health plans and cutting workers hours to avoid being responsible for workers health care. Massive incompetence or planned failure? How about some of both?
Re:153 GOP voted to default (Score:3, Insightful)
Umm, I'll believe it when I see it. So far, it's added over 1.7 trillion in spending and put a severe crimp on business with new costs and regulations (such as mandatory electronic requirements). Or are you one of those "it's budget neutral" morons, simply because they embedded new taxes in it to "pay for it"? Believe it or not "new taxes + more spending + a failure to fix real spending growth problems" can very easily cause long term deleterious effects (some nonpartisan sources say the current continued economic malaise is a partial result of ACA).
We already did that. Many times. Once during the Obamacare passage. Another time in December, on "rich" people. And as much as you like to believe that we can just endlessly raise taxes to solve our problems, it does actually have an effect on the economy.
Highly misleading. Rates on the "super wealthy" are far from historically low. The only people currently benefiting from historically low taxes are the poor. Taxes on everybody else are around "average" historical values: http://www.factcheck.org/2012/07/tax-facts-lowest-rates-in-30-years/ [factcheck.org] (and that article was before the December tax hike)
And since you aren't advocating raising taxes on everyone (perish the thought), instead of only on the people you envy, I'm afraid your statement is false. Additionally, raising taxes on the super-wealthy can't possibly bring in enough money to cover our government's level of spending (again, per unbiased sources: http://money.cnn.com/2012/03/01/news/economy/income_tax_deficit/ [cnn.com])
That isn't a "maybe", that's a fact. And it's predicted cost is beyond estimates (with most of the heavy spending not even beginning until 2014). The belief that it's going to be a net deficit savings requires not only outright lies that try to use tax increases as "savings" but also lots of speculation (since it takes into account a metric ton of complete unknowns and tries to use them as "cost savings"): http://useconomy.about.com/od/healthcarereform/a/Cost-of-Obamacare.htm [about.com]
If you were 100% genuine about discussing the "cost" of something, that discussion should be held in a vacuum (namely, what I spend on the program vs what costs the program reduces). You can't chalk in additional revenue from additional taxes and try to pretend the program isn't costing 1.7 trillion in additional spending. At best, the net effect of the program is "1.7 trillion in spending minus the cost savings of the four things it's actually reducing: drug subsidies to wealthy/Hospital DSH Payments/Medicare Payments/Medicare Advantage Payments". Everything else is smoke and mirrors. Oh, and the net effect IS a deficit increase, based on those numbers. And it's a loss that we believe does nothing to address the real problem of high healthcare costs, and will likely continue to balloon in costs.
And we'd love to see healthcare reform, reform that would actually help people. ACA does not. It passes the buck, shifts around costs, and tries to hide its massive spending behind tax increases. In reality, nothing has been don
Re:Thank goodness (Score:4, Insightful)
Which is exactly why the Republicans were trying so hard to kill it. Now we're stuck with yet another cash cow entitlement that is a pisspoor attempt to solve a real problem that we'll never be able to reform or get rid of since it will be politically toxic to do so.
Re:Thank goodness (Score:2, Insightful)
That would be my assumption. So it isn't a done deal in the long term, but in the short and medium term, the Republicans won't get many, if any more chances to kill it. I'd say Obamacare, and whatever it ultimately morphs into, is now pretty much cemented into the landscape. Within a few election cycles, no one will be talking about repealing it.
I wouldn't count on it. The law is still kicking in, and though not all of the expense and nasty effects are apparent yet, some certainly are. Many people are already shocked at how expensive their coverage is under the law, and the signup rate has been very low. Many people have already had cutbacks on their hours at work due to the law, and many of them lost health insurance in the process. That is ironic given the previous trend of more companies offering insurance for lower wage jobs. Many insurance companies dropped insurance for children due to the regulation changes, and many companies have forced people off their plans. Many unions are very unhappy with it, and their waivers will be gone shortly. Given the way the law was written, in its present form it will probably destroy the insurance companies over time - probably deliberate - but that will still disrupt the economy. It will end up being an expensive fiasco in its present state. Of course that is no guarantee that it will be repealed, or even changed. People love to point to so called "Romneycare" as the model without looking at the big problems that have been developing with it.
I have to wonder if there is any outcome bad enough from Obamacare that would cause you to reconsider your support for it? I'm not sure I can imagine it.
Re:Wow. (Score:4, Insightful)
Mediocre lifestyle?
Re:153 GOP voted to default (Score:2, Insightful)
Except you've just added a half million more people to the unemployment line.
So what? They'll find jobs. And elimination of a couple of the taxes for those entitlement programs means that US labor got more affordable.
Re:Thank goodness (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:153 GOP voted to default (Score:5, Insightful)
how could they ?
By spending that money in the economy. Creating demand, supporting businesses. ,their extra workers also create more demand and incentive for yet more growth and investment.All of which pay more taxes
Causing those businesses to invest and grow their business, make more profits hire more workers and pay more taxes.
This business, its extra workers, its suppliers
etc.
Or American style, they could use their proof of a regular income to take out loans buy houses get credit cards and do all those previous things turbo charged and on steroids. (When the house prices go up they can then refinance and spend yet more still.)
Or they could take their paycheque leverage it and invest in anything profitable, stocks/bonds/derivatives/etc. and pay extra taxes on the profits
Or they could get lucky and gamble their way to fortune, daytrading, online poker.
I'm sure there are more ways.