That's a big talking point but I'm not sure what exactly the parallels are. In this reform there is a personal mandate to buy insurance but there is no public owned option. That is certainly the future goal and I can sort of see how that would be called socialist in nature but I'm not sold on the current comparison.


It also introduces:
- a requirement that you have insurance with a fee (or jail time as it counts as tax fraud) if you do not. As of 2016 this could be up to 2% of your annual income and is nearly certain to rise as time passes.
- a 40% excise tax on insurance policies over $8500/year (which will likely be passed to the employee in the form of a reduced wage or other benefits).
- a system that even further complicates taxes and has the mandate be enforced by the IRS (really?)
- a reduction in the flexibility of FSAs
- a system run by the government that couldn't even work social security right (take money, don't spend it)
- a trillion dollar[0] debt over 10(I think) years with no clear way to pay

Cosman, as an aside, I'm also curious what your source is that credit score comes into play in some insurance decisions.

[0] last I heard, may be more or less now

That's what gets me. You're punished for either having a good plan or paying too much for insurance?

Is that $8500 per covered person, or $8500 per employee? That would make quite a difference in the number of people affected.

I'm not sure I follow so let me restate it.

A policy for an individual that is $8500 or more will have a 40% excise tax.
A policy for a family that is $23000 or more will have a 40% excise tax.

As a gauge of things my health insurance (on okay, not amazing policy) is around $5100/year. I am young and in pretty good shape.

I still don't really get what's so bad about at least moderately socialized health care. Socialism=bad really isn't much of an argument since certain services in America are socialized already anyway. Take our police and fire departments for example. Those are government systems. Can you imagine calling the fire department when your house is on fire only for them to say "We're sorry, but since your grandfather's house burned down three years back your family has a pre-existing predilection to burning down houses and we cannot help you"? That's basically what private health insurance does right now. In my opinion it's better to have a safety net that won't require you to jump through hoops to land on.

The things that have been noted in this thread have nothing to do with "Socialism=bad"...

Fire Departments were not invented by the government,
Crassus had firefighting slave teams that he used to save property he bought from owners during fires in Rome. (things tend to be cheaper when they are on fire)

In 1700-1800ish in London Insurance Companies began having teams ready to save properties that were insured. Insurance was proven by signs given out by the Companies hung on the front of your building.

However you could not purchase insurance while your house was burning down, because...Insurance does not work that way.

Insurance is when individuals gather to pool their risk. Everyone has a small chance of getting into a car accident when they drive, the purpose of insurance is to share that risk and the cost with others. People with a higher risk have to pay more because they have a greater chance of costing more money, mainly young men in this case. Premiums are paid for the chance of an accident in the future asking to for all the other insurance customers to pay for an event that happened prior to coverage goes against the idea of insurance and justice. Insurance in the healthcare industry has been horribly distorted since the Great Depression, into meaning coverage for all sorts of services, rather than a coverage of risk.

The problem is that the Federal Government does not have the Authority to mandate that everyone purchase insurance. We have a limited government with enumerated powers, and use of the Interstate Commerce Clause would really rankle, because the regulates the doing of nothing, and does not cross state borders.

I find this video interesting, being related to the topic at hand. CNN is not a network I would have expected to see that on.

It was an example of how some private enterprise can give ridiculous terms. It was not about buying fire insurance, it was about calling the fire department.

By the way, why dodge the topic at hand? By arguing a theoretical example, you are trying to avoid this topic. Reasonably, I could conclude that you had no good point, and are just trying to make Dark Hunter and his position look shabby.

By the way, why dodge the fact that he was attempting to make a point about insurance and give reasoning as to why he might not support the bill. By arguing an argument, you are trying to avoid this topic. Reasonably, I could conclude that you had no good point, and are just trying to make icu and his position look shabby.

He was discussing the topic of insurance itself and drew a reasonable parallel between the fire and health bits by talking about risk etc etc.

Also, he did address the original question, albeit somewhat indirectly, with "The problem is that the Federal Government does not have the Authority to mandate that everyone purchase insurance. We have a limited government with enumerated powers." The thing is it's not necessarily that "socialism=bad" the way people are running around claiming but that HCR may be an expansion of the governments power beyond what it is constitutionally granted. And that is bad.

Relevant information some myths about HCR and stuff

Why we need health care reform

Note: neither of those actually address the current HCR. Regardless of whether or not government provided/managed health care is ideal that is not what the bill that just passed does.

Don't know about the second video, but the first is a clear case of propaganda. Exaggeration is one of the mechanisms used in propaganda.

It is a point of view. If that was propaganda, then so is every political position. It did not exaggerate.

You can't simply dismiss a point of view.

You're confusing the point of view and the presentation of said point of view. The latter, in this case, was clearly propaganda. As is much of what appears in the media. The points of view are distorted in propaganda to appear more urgent/appealing/disgusting/stupid/obvious/whatever than they really are, or imply that the proposed solution is better/worse/whatever than it really is. In this case, the implication is that we will all magically be healed and awesome if the bill goes through. Falun's source clearly contradicts that thought.

It (the first video) didn't exaggerate but it did use leading language and made several assumptions that people may not agree with. An example is, "everyone needs it to get by" which is an opinion, not fact. Also, it made the untrue jump from "health insurance should be non-profit" to "health insurance can only be non-profit if the government runs it." Further, it uses Medicare as an example of a fantastic government run insurance group which "According to the 2008 report by the board of trustees for Medicare and Social Security, Medicare will spend more than it brings in from taxes this year (2008). The Medicare hospital insurance trust fund will become insolvent by 2019" ref ref ref -- Wikipedia

Social Security and Medicare "have proved almost sacrosanct in political terms, even as they threaten to grow so large as to be unsustainable in the long run." New York Times


Actually you can (sort of), if you disagree with a point of view on basic idealogical grounds discussing the point of view is silly. Tabling the discussion of the view is feasible if you're trying to address the idealogical concerns before moving to things that are based on them.

Care to tell me what I'm Ya'rlying here? I see a page full of talking points with no support and a 34 page memo I'm skimming.

Also, you realise no one has actually addressed any of the concerns that have been raised about the current HCR?

It's really rare that I know so little about something that I can smell the bias in responses to my questions.

I think I'm going to develop my usual mindset towards these towards of things (seemingly major politcal changes), and that is that I know we need a step in some direction, because the current system feels flawed, but I have no idea whether or not it is the right direction. Is it even possible to have a neutral observation about politics?

To be clear, I was referring to the animation by saying that it exaggerated. (I actually failed to realize that there was sound the first time and had sound set to my other computer.)



That's about as close as you can get without being...oh...God. Being God would give a rather clear "I'm not human" viewpoint. That's also what I think most of the time, but in this case I now know enough more to have an idea that it seems to be another "talk well but don't do anything real, while potentially costing us" bill. (And I know that enough more due to references in this thread. About the bill itself, not attempting to sell it based on points that, while valid [to an extent] in and of themselves, lose weight when taken into the context of this bill.)

I'm just going to jump back to the discussion of constitutionality. I have not read the bill, but if it does indeed mandate that people buy health insurance, a power which is not given to the government in the constitution, then I will agree that the bill is indeed unconstitutional since all unenumerated rights belong to the people. There are perfectly legal ways to do exactly the same thing and that's really not something they should've messed up on.

You have a point, but it should be noted that unenumerated rights can belong to the various states, if they so choose. That's how Massachusetts et al. get to have their own health care things.

Alas, this is all academic, because that ship sailed as the S.S. Medicare.

As for the rest of it, I'm afraid I got distracted by a critical hardware failure before I could form a reasoned position.