Politics Obamacare

I searched to see if there was a thread specifically for Obama care and I couldn't find one.....

This is in conjunction with the card pictured here

Having been there I'll tell you what, I don't care who you are, when you wake up and the pain is gone and you are alive.... you are grateful to be alive, Obama care or not.

So GOP if you are so against Obama care sign the card. Tell the world you do not want treatment, you'd rather die. Go ahead. Then post your picture with the card. Go ahead.

Beck, Limbaugh, and your talking heads on Faux News... THEY DON'T CARE BECAUSE THEY HAVE THE MONEY TO PAY.... DO YOU?

Trust me when it comes to life or death and you're lying in that bed so full of pain that they max the morphine on you and it doesn't touch the pain, you'll do whatever it takes to stay alive even if you may not like it at the time.

But it's up to you, if you honestly believe you have the insurance and healthcare that will pay for everything and you or your family member will get the best possible care and live through it all then don't sign the card.

But IF your insurance has a lifetime max of less than $500,000 and you truly believe what I went through and the expenses to keep me alive you or a family member will never go through then sign the card and carry it.

Remember there are many many many diseases out there that take YEARS of medical treatment. COPD, Cancer, Cirrhosis, Congenitive Heart Diseases, MS, MD, Autoimmune Diseases like Rheumatoid Arthritis, Sarcoidosis, Psorisasis, Psoriatic Arthritis, Alzheimer's, and so on. Not to mention mental illness which aren't considered "physical" and thus given their own statuses as far as what insurance will pay. NONE of these include prescription meds, follow up visits and so on.

IF you truly believe the insurance you have, you will have for your lifetime and will cover all you family members for their lifetimes and none of the above conditions will EVER affect you or them and you will NEVER max out the insurance, then sign the card. Don't care about your neighbor who doesn't have insurance and can't afford it, don't care about friends that don't have insurance and can't afford it or are underinsured...... care ONLY about YOURSELF and sign the card.

When does money stop becoming your GOD and people's lives matter? Just remember IF you sign that card, you are saying you do not give a damn about anyone else, neighbors, friends, etc. So do not claim to me to be a Christian when Christ himself said love thy neighbor...... So what are you waiting for sign the card. Prove to the world you only care about yourself and "your" money.

Meanwhile, bitch about how we should have federal laws that could be just as costly like anti abortion laws and Capital punishment laws and God in school laws and so on. Keep demanding we stay at war in the Middle East.... all the while telling everyone in the world that Obamacare and universal healthcare is too expensive. So sign the card already.

 

I just really want the republicans to say what they mean. If you don't have health insurance, sorry but you're out of luck.

I've had this happen to my family on both sides relatively recently. My mom works part time, so no health insurance. A few years ago, she had a bad bronchial infection and it ended up bankrupting her. Currently, my father-in-law has cancer. It is highly treatable and he's lived with it for about three years now. He's had three surgeries and has to take constant medication. A month ago, he found out the plant he works for is closing in August. He will probably be able to get subsidized COBRA for a while, but he will have to scramble to find a new job because he can't have a lapse in coverage.

I think there will always be a market for independent health insurance, there probably are a lot of things that wouldn't be covered by state run health insurance. But there are a lot of americans currently with nothing.

 

I don't understand how you can sign a card like that on behalf of other people.

Before you go there - I did not miss the point - but the effectiveness is greatly diminished when there is such a large error in execution.

 

this is so stupid. the way things stand now and before obamacare all those things happen anyway. i can have no insurance, i will be resuscitated if i'm critically wounded, and i will be treated in the case of an emergency.

so obamacare has nothing to do with this dumb ass card.
--- merged: Mar 28, 2012 at 9:17 PM ---
i dont agree with obamacare because i dont think the government has our health in their best interest. i mean i disagree with it from a libertarian standpoint, but beyond that if they wanted us to be healthy they wouldn't allow gmos, hfcs, msg, pesticides, herbicides, artificial sweeteners etc. into the food chain (many of these are known carcinogens, known to cause neurological degenerative diseases, known to destroy liver and kidney function). we are being poisoned by design and offered the only cures by big pharma. give me healthy food first then come argue for socialized healthcare systems. the whole system is a scam.

subject to change, but i've been very healthy taking my health into my own hands, avoiding doctors, eating healthy foods, exercising, and not taking the brave new world pills they push on us everyday. really all i want is to be insured for catastrophic problems like horrific accidents or the rare non preventable disease. day to day crap i can easily do better than the status quo.

 

That dumb ass card is a political cartoon simply exaggerating the arguments of those opposed to Obamacare. Why would you take it as anything more than that?

From a libertarian point of view, Ron Paul said “What he should do is whatever he wants to do and assume responsibility for himself.....That’s what freedom is all about, taking your own risk. This whole idea that you have to compare and take care of everybody…”

And if one has a pre-existing condition and denied coverage, one should go bankrupt in order to obtain health care?

Or if one has a chronic condition and exceeds the lifetime limits in the plan, one should go bankrupt in order to obtain health care?

Or if one has a serious accident and no insurance, just go to the emergency room and expect "free" treatment or for the hospital to cover the costs beyond your means (and pass it on to everyone else)?

 

no i'm pretty sure pan is 100% serious about signing it.

i really dont know how to handle the pre-existing conditions. i mean, i suppose it easy for me to say not to cover pre-existing conditions because i dont have one. on the other hand how much should society be on the hook for to pay for it? i think this could of been resolved in less than 2700 pages of obamacare that has little to do with preexisting conditions.

i think even the justices are kinda of overwhelmed at attempting to understand and decide on such a huge bill. pelosi's famous quote of 'we must pass it to find out what's in it' comes to mind.

 

And the chronic conditions? I have a chronic form of arthritis that requires self-injections with Humira, a drug that would cost $1,200 - $1,500/month if I didnt have insurance. I pay $30. You never know when you might get what becomes a pre-existing condition anytime, mine came in the 40s. If I change employers, I would likely be excluded by the next employer's plan or denied coverage on the open market.

Or the serious unanticipated accident that requires surgery and after-care at a cost of $thousands?

In order to spread the cost, a larger pool of people (included many healthy people) is required and that is what the individual mandate (that Republicans supported when it was part of their alternative to HillaryCare) and the health exchanges that provide greater competition among the providers and requires more options (including ones where you can choose get minimal coverage and bear the risks yourself) while mandating specific provisions (no denying pre-existing conditions, no lifetime limits, etc). You cant do that in a few pages.

 

The answer for pre-existing conditions is to decouple insurance from your work. Pre-existing conditions only are relevant when you switch insurers or start getting insurance on your own. If you have personal insurance from day one that you can take with you, the problem goes away, because then the only pre-existing conditions are what you had when you were born.

Most of the supposedly insoluble problems (not all) can be solved by thinking outside what we have become used to.

 

I would agree that decoupling insurance from work is the ultimate solution.

But I dont think you can get there from here w/o intermediate steps given that nearly 200 million people are currently covered by employer-based plans.

 

My own view on this is that we already have too many people sticking their noses into how we get our health care, the worst of which are the govt and insurance companies. I'd get them all out of the business except for catastrophic care -- what used to be called "major medical." The system should be, for other than unforeseen emergency care, you go to the doctor and you pay for your visit. If you have an emergency you get catastrophic insurance (i.e. real insurance, where you pay a premium for an unforeseen emergency) to cover it. And if you don't have the insurance and you have an emergency, you set up a payment plan to pay for the treatment. And if you're poor welfare/Medicaid will cover at least part of it. At a stroke you'll see costs come down once people pay for their own care and don't have third parties paying for their medical expenses.

The ACA was very very poorly constructed, badly drafted and badly conceived. It was a political document through and through, and unsurprisingly, it was bad policy. There is always some excuse that can be given for giving the govt more power, but it sure helps if there is at least some competence in putting the oppression together. This statute is a huge clusterf**k. I'm quite far from being a conservative, but on this question the conservatives have it right.

From Andrew Klavan.

 

Andrew Klavan, the mystery writer? And his credentials in health care are what?

Under your routine care scenario, I go to my doctor for my arthritis, a non-emergency, four times/yr (cost of $couple hundred/visit) and get a prescription that would cost me $1,200-$15,00/month as well as blood tests each visit (another $couple hundred/visit) to be sure the prescription is not causing possible side effects? Total cost of $20,000/yr for just one non-emergency in my family. Doesnt that take away from my individual freedom?

Would you prefer the private market crushing your freedom by allowing them to cherry pick customers or the pharmaceutical industry crushing your freedom with needed drugs that many cant afford?

Insurance is all about risk management and risk aversion. Why would any insurer in the business to make a profit voluntarily agree to cover high risk consumers (pre-existing or chronic conditions, elderly - if the Republicans get their way and privatize Medicare, etc.)
--- merged: Mar 28, 2012 at 10:15 PM ---
How will your solution lessen the fact that health care costs are the number one cause of personal bankruptcy...not always a result of an emergency, but of costly chronic conditions as well...like cancer treatments.

 

This I know firsthand is fucking BS. I'm not yelling at ya Sam but you have no concept of the truth.

The truth is YES, IF you present in a life or death situation they HAVE to treat you. HOWEVER, IN my case, even though I had green puss coming out of my nose non stop, couldn't walk, couldn't talk, was in excruciating pain, had a history of being treated at THEIR STATCARE and was in THEIR ER the day before, since they couldn't figure out what was wrong they were going to send me home, because they considered me a "drug overdose" due to the EMT's radioing me in, telling the ER that I was a "Drug Overdose" even though the EMT's NEVER found a drug in my apartment that was not prescribed not was abused. I WAS FUCKING HAVING A STROKE AND COULD NOT TALK OR USE MY LEFT SIDE. THE ONLY THING THAT SAVED MY LIFE WAS MY MOM WHO WAS A NURSE, STATING you need to take his temp anally since you can't get it orally or from is head or arm pit. When they took my temp anally I was at 104+. THEN and ONLY then was the hospital willing to admit me and run tests on me. The CTScan of my head showed the infection in the brain.

I had to have emergency brain surgery the next morning, even then it was less than a 50% chance of my living and less than that of me coming out anything but a vegetable.

Without Obama care, since I had NO INSURANCE once I was out of danger the hospital could have dumped me and the Doctors refuse follow up care. (I did have one doctor refuse care AFTER I left the hospital.) Had I not had the follow up care and 6 months of IV antibiotics pumped into me twice daily through a picc line at home, the infection would have returned. I still had some in the brain even then.

All the after care was due to Obamacare. And for months afterward as I recovered and was on home IV antibiotics (Rochephin, think that is how it was spelt), I got letters from "friends" I grew up with in my facebook pm box telling me I should die because I was a waste of THEIR tax dollars.

SO I TAKE THIS SHIT EXTREMELY PERSONAL BECAUSE OBAMA CARE SAVED MY LIFE.

Now, do I believe we should be forced to buy it? NO, but I believe we should offer it to ANYONE who would want it at a lower and affordable price. Had I had insurance and been able to have gotten treatment for a GOD DAMNED SINUS INFECTION, instead of treated like a scumbag by the hospitals and doctors, I would NEVER have had the stroke or the 4 brain operations. In the long run the early treatment would have been much cheaper for the taxpayer, than the non treatment I got before the stroke. PLUS, IT WOULD HAVE BEEN A LOYT FUCKING EASIER AND LESS PAINFUL FOR ME.

THAT'S MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE.I thank God every day that ObamaCare was there for me.

 

private companies can't crush your freedom because you always have the ability to go elsewhere and refuse to deal with them. You don't like insurers? Don't buy insurance. You don't like the particular insurer you have now? Find another one. With the govt making rules you have nowhere else to go. Be very careful of giving the govt more power over you -- you might not like what it chooses to do with that power next year, next month or next week.

If it was up to me I'd get rid of insurance altogether except for major medical.

Chronic conditions are a special case. But you still need to explain to me why it's everyone else's job to pay for the health care of those who have chronic conditions. I'm sorry, I don't see it. And I say this as the parent of a child with a chronic condition. Seems to me you are so immersed in the way things are now that you can't envision other ways things can be.
--- merged: Mar 28, 2012 at 10:49 PM ---
[this was a reply to redux]

 

Yes, as a matter of fact I am. I do understand that it is a political cartoon, But as I just stated above, my personal experience is that a person WILL do anything to stay alive.

I get tired of having to defend my health situation... (well you brought it up)... yeah and so? That gives you the right to tell someone to fucking die because they are wasting your tax dollars? HOW FUCKING CHRISTIAN AND CIVILIZED. You truly feel that way go fuck yourself. I'm sorry but i lived through it, did YOU?

The above was not addressed towards antone here in particular, but when you have literally MONTHS of hearing people tell you, "why don't you just die instead of being a tax burden to ME." It pisses you off. I DID NOT CHOOSE TO BE SICK. Yeah, I sat around thinking, "I need to have a stroke and be disabled an unable to work for a year and a half. FUCK RON PAUL, THE MAN IS A FUCKING PSYCHO WHO STANDS NO CHANCE OF WINNING. THE MAN CAN'T EVEN SAY "YES, MY NEWSLETTER WITH MY NAME CONTAINED RACIST AND ANTI-SEMITE TONES AND ARTICLES. ZEIG HEIL YOU FUCKING ASSHAT CRAZY MAN RON PAUL. You make Ross Perot sound sane.
--- merged: Mar 29, 2012 3:17 AM ---

I was going to reply but why bother your post shows you give a damn about NO ONE.

 

look, i really dont know how to address what you're talking about. i'm sorry about what you had to go through and wish it upon nobody. to say i care about no one doesn't reflect who i am at all.

but you bring up ron paul for some reason and since i'm a fan and supporter, i have to defend him. he gave free healthcare to people who couldn't afford it. that's not the norm in today's society, but the exception. the man set up a drop box to pay for his services IF YOU COULD AFFORD IT. that's the way healthcare use to be administered. he took the hypocratic oath and continued to follow it until government intervention became too overwhelming to deal with. this is when he ran for congress.

i mean its great to say fuck ron paul, but how many doctors give free treatment despite the customers ability to pay?

 

I'm pretty sure cell phone service providers and ISPs have demolished the notion that a dissatisfied customer can simply take their business elsewhere. Invisible hands are the easter bunny of people who've fooled themselves into thinking the economy is simple.

If government only has to perform better than private industry when it comes to improving the health care system for all Americans, then the bar is pretty fucking low. Pretty much all of the problems that are attributed to ACA existed before ACA and won't be solved by throwing ACA out.

 

Sam, that last part that was merged did you miss the quote from Loquiter? That was what I was referring to.

And no, I tend NOT to believe a word from Ron Paul's mouth. He may have been a great person and doctor before he got into politics and took office or put his name on racist and anti-semitic newsletters and then denies having known anything about the articles written.

Redux posted :

And that was what my rant about Ron Paul was for. I am truly sorry if you thought I was ranting on you.

FOR THE RECORD the following is NOT in ANYWAY directed or meant to be directed at any one individual on this board. It is solely MY personal rant over the issue at hand.

Like I stated I had MONTHS of people literally telling me to die because I was a burden on society. So this is a very hot topic for me, very personal.

I was a hard working taxpayer for OVER 20+ years and part of my taxes were to provide these benefits so that should I ever need them they would be there. I needed them. $500,000 from the federal and state budget IF THAT is so fucking horrendous that I should DIE... then people have serious fucking greed issues.

I GET FUCKING TIRED OF HAVING TO JUSTIFY MY HEALTH ISSUES TO FUCKING GOP AND LIBERTARIAN ASSWIPES WHO BELIEVE I SHOULD HAVE JUST DIED. FUCK YOU, I PAID MY TAXES, I SERVED IN THE MILITARY AND WAS WILLING TO SACRIFICE MY LIFE FOR THIS COUNTRY, WERE YOU?

I'd have gone through the VA but I didn't have the fucking time to, and because of tax cuts the VA wouldn't have done much anyway. Hell, on Obamacare my meds are cheaper anyway.

IF YOU HOLD OTHER PEOPLE'S LIVES SO UNCARINGLY THEN SIGN THE FUCKING CARD AND PUT YOU PICTURE UP IN HERE AND SHOW YOURSELVES. SHOW THE FUCKING GREED OVER YOUR TAX DOLLARS MEANS MORE THAN SOMEONE'S FUCKING LIFE. I DARE YOU.

IF I GET TO CHOOSE WHERE MY TAX DOLLARS GO, THEN I WANT THEM TO GO TO SOCIAL PROGRAMS SUCH AS SOCIALIZED MEDICINE AND EDUCATION AND NOT THE WARS THAT JUST SAP FAR MORE DOLLARS THAN ANY SOCIAL PROGRAM EVER COULD.

There that is out of my system and so is this thread.