Discussion for article #231065
You can lead a horse to water…the many who benefited from Obamacare who either didn’t vote or voted GOP I have little sympathy for.
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If SCOTUS takes away people’s health insurance on a technicality, people will die. If Congress doesn’t fix it, people will die.
This is conservatism. This is the Republican Party. This is evil.
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The GOP would do away with SS, Medicare and who knows what if they could and voters just don’t know that or if they do, don’t believe it’s possible.
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There’s one more political (and practical) question: If tens of millions of people lose coverage they’ve had for a year or two, will they know who’s at fault so they know who to vote against in the future? Or will they blame the party of Obama? Or will the press’s obsessive false equivalency tell them Democrats are as much to blame as Republicans?
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They will kill SS and Medicare if they take the White House, A liberal Judge passes and they do a little more gerrymandering. They are a minority who now runs the country. They are like white slave masters.I can’t even begin to describe their evil intentions. Cold hearted Plutocrats.
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This is actually good news. Widely publicizing the crisis that striking down the law will bring makes it that much likely that the court will do so.
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Thing is, it is not even a technicality or a drafting error. The law is fairly clear. There is not really an error other than legal jargen. Following the definitions of words up the tree leads to the whole several sentences that say a state can establish an exchange or HHS will do it for them.
The only confusion is added in, if you ignore the definitions the law sets within itself and use outside logic while ignoring what the bill actually says. Not to mention you are willing to ignore the surrounding areas, and assume that one phrase in a seperate part of the law deals with the tax credits, instead of the section dealing with it.
The fact that the DC circuit court ruled the way it did was a disgrace. It was purely political and nothing more. The SCOTUS should be better than that but we shall see. The fact of the matter is, that if there is any ambiguity at all in the law the courts are to defer to the agency and executive for implementation. The law is fairly clear but in terms of definitions there could be some confusion. In both ways it leads to support the government’s case.
From a political side this would be a death blow to the ACA in many respects, and could cause major havoc with the insurance market. It is surprising that the GOP are willing to risk all of that to hurt Obama. As most companies have been adjusting over time with this, so a sudden change would be catastrophic and would cause premiums to skyrocket. It would be like jumping out of a plane with a parachute to have somebody else drop by you and cut it off before everything stabilizes smoothly at ground level.
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Since the MSM is repub owned and repub corp board run, folks will be told it’s the Dems and PBO’s fault.
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So will folks be kicked out of hospitals, rehab centers and treatment programs (cancer, stroke, MS, ALS etc.)? I hope letters go out to all the ignorant folks in Kentucky who love the health insurance plans, but have no clue it’s ObamaCare no matter what you call it.
If there is a hell, repubs will be rotting there. I love the land my country occupies, but I hate what is ahead of us with the repub run government that is coming our way in January.
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O care contains many semi-independent provisions like those concerned with your kids being covered under your insurance for a few more years or those concerned with life maxes or pre-existing conditions. Some of these could potentially survive the debacle, assuming there is one. Small things, but of actual benefit to many people.
If the Democratic Party—from the President down to state legislators—had the slightest fucking clue about communications and issue framing, it would have already constructed and put into motion an extensive and well-coordinated messaging campaign designed to inform the American people just what the radical right-wing justices are trying to do, and what the consequences will be to the people when Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, and Alito vote to gut the ACA.
Instead, we get the functional equivalent of disorganized crickets.
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I think this will come down to one word for the Robert s court. Legacy.
I don’t think the GOP wants to kill ACA. Insurance companies are making WAY too much money from ACA and hospitals would suffer dearly in the confusion if the law were ham-strung but the court.
AND they can do much better politically by stealing it. This is about the GOP getting credit for Democrats efforts. I think that’s why the supreme court agreed to take AFTER the election and before the DC court could revisit it. The SC and the two houses of congress have set this up so that the GOP takes over the ACA. Can you see it?
1) The Court will kick this back to the legislators to clarify the wording.
2) To fix the wording, the GOP will demand repeal of the employer mandate, killing the medical device tax and the 80/20 rule, demand better refreshments at the Death Panels. Likely other things the big cigars want, as well.
3) They will get their concessions.
4) They will claim to have fixed the law.
5) It will no longer be Obamacare in their eyes. Fox will rejoice that the GOP has replaced Obamacare with a much better plan.
6) Discussion of repeal will cease.
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Money is still their llfe blood. The big cigars only used the crazies for votes. The big cigars want their money. And your money. NOBODY makes money if this goes away.
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All President Obama would have to do is rename the websites that each state has going thru the main website and call them base exchanges. The web site is already created and each person is already directed to the insurance companies that are for their state. I don’t see a big problem or a legal problem of doing this. If the states want to sue than do so, but I bet they won’t. I think that it would be better for President Obama to do that now before the SCOTUS makes a decision, and let the states who want to sue do so. The states who have their own web sites created with a state insurance plan can continue to do so.
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Analysts at FOX, the Republican Party and, in general, the 0.01% have already staked out the things which make Americans vote against their own interests.
Most reading these words may infer that I am talking about Old People, racists, Southerners, bumpkins and the like.
In fact I AM.
But they also took care of the Great Mass in the Middle (the “Independents”) as well.
They also took care of African Americans
They took care of Single Women
They took care of Men, especially older ones
They took care of Millennials
They, in fact, took care of most people under 50.
In any other developed country, the spectacle of a government institution (in this case, a COURT) removing healthcare from millions of people with impunity would be ludicrous.
And yet, it probably will occur, because the analysts I mentioned above have already guided the strategy which would, essentially, let the Americans enslave themselves.
- The “race” war is alive and well. FOR SOME REASON
- Independents lean Republican, FOR SOME REASON
- African Americans (AND Latinos) have thrown away their hard-earned right to vote. FOR SOME REASON
- Single women are notoriously an under-voting segment of society. FOR SOME REASON
- (white) Men are overwhelmingly Republican. FOR SOME REASON
- Millennials will never, as a group, outvote Old People. FOR SOME REASON
- People under 50 also get outvoted by Granny and Gramps. FOR SOME REASON
Frank Luntz would probably be able (if pressed) to explain how American mass culture contains things which, simply, Groove people into predictable patterns of behavior.
Although, as my wife has said, there are hundreds of channels on TV and we have the Web, Mass Culture contains things which practically assure the state of affairs we have today. I am not going to go into all of the “FOR SOME REASON” entries, but I will address ONE:
Madison Avenue has given us the world of the Gadget. That’s fine. But, in so doing, the subtle, hiddle message (which is far more salient in one’s personal makeup) has been that THE GADGET, INSTEAD OF BEING A TOOL AND NOTHING MORE, IS AN END IN ITSELF, leading to the kinds of people who would move away from anything NOT dealing with the gadget. This leads to a different notion of one’s importance and, pivotally, a flawed self-evaluation of one’s place in social stratification. I used to tell my students:
“Gadgets are fine, making lots of calls and texts are fine, but it isn’t the amount of calls you make it’s the social stratification level of the person making that call. ONE call from a CEO (laying off 10,000 people, for example) is worth more that any of the 500 texts and cell-phone call a working-class person makes”
THAT right there says so much about our non-voting Millennials
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Other GOP demands would be:
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Tort reform: If your surgeon amputates the wrong foot, you get peanuts. Also, the correct foot still needs to be amputated. So you’ll have no feet and peanuts for compensation.
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“Letting insurance companies sell across state lines” (policies which violate consumer protection laws in the states where the patients live): Insurance companies already sell policies across state lines which comply with state laws where the patients live, but Republicans want them to be able to sell plans which are so rotten and deceptive that they violate state laws.
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And we’d be thrown right back into an unsustainable healthcare system, and right back into skyrocketing costs and increasingly unobtainable health insurance for the middle class on down. And with a legislature that is not only unwilling to fix it, but is now quite apparently completely incapable, we’re absolutely screwed. The people willing to do this are the same people who have been defending torture all week. At this point I almost wonder if Republicans want our nation to fail.
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I must conclude many of you are dropping acid, considering some of the comments. “Tens of millions will be…” There are not ten million enrolled, total. “…skyrocketing costs…” They have significantly grown under this system. I got a quote for a pretty good package from Blue Cross in 2010, as good as the gold package. Late 50s, overweight, was $350 a month. You can’t touch a gold package for that. The program has totally failed to attract the one group needed for success, the young and healthy.
The law reminds me of the description of a camel is a horse designed by a committee. Nothing is working right, but it’s Obama’s legacy, so we have to keep it. By every poll the clear majority of Americans want it gone. I thought liberals were all for the people, and the people have spoken. let it die.