Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[froot loops]

Jeff - was it amendments that allowed the states to opt out or the Supreme Court decision?


You're right on mandates, you kind of need them to make it work. It is one of the least popular aspects (if not the least popular), but they are needed to make the popular things a reality. That is pre-existing conditions and EHBs.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Front, I think you're right on the mandates re SCOTUS.

I'll defer to those familiar with the applicable law here but, despite our agreement that mandates in some form are essential, issuing them may be unconstitutional.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Eric Trump told James Dodson 3 years ago that the Trump family gets its gold course funding from Russia

"Trump was strutting up and down, talking to his new members about how they were part of the greatest club in North Carolina," Dodson says. "And when I first met him, I asked him how he was — you know, this is the journalist in me — I said, 'What are you using to pay for these courses?' And he just sort of tossed off that he had access to $100 million."


$100 million.


"So when I got in the cart with Eric," Dodson says, "as we were setting off, I said, 'Eric, who’s funding? I know no banks — because of the recession, the Great Recession — have touched a golf course. You know, no one’s funding any kind of golf construction. It’s dead in the water the last four or five years.' And this is what he said. He said, 'Well, we don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.' I said, 'Really?' And he said, 'Oh, yeah. We’ve got some guys that really, really love golf, and they’re really invested in our programs. We just go there all the time.' Now that was three years ago, so it was pretty interesting."

http://www.wbur.org/onlyagame/2017/05/05/james-dodson-donald-trump-golf

[Dr. Strangelove]

Glenn Thrush on Trump constantly lying about & hiding the fact that he's golfing every weekend

[ame]https://twitter.com/GlennThrush/status/861021462316167168[/ame]

[froot loops]

Front, I think you're right on the mandates re SCOTUS.

I'll defer to those familiar with the applicable law here but, despite our agreement that mandates in some form are essential, issuing them may be unconstitutional.

Roberts said they weren't in his decision, he likened them to a tax. That decision did not go over well.

[Da Geezer]

Under then ACA you have a mandate to have insurance or pay a 1,000 dollar penalty. That scenario you painted isn't supposed to happen, because you should already have insurance because of the mandate.

Under the AHCA, there isn't a mandate, so you could actually do what you are saying. You don't have to have insurance, if you don't have continuous coverage the insurance company would have to take you but they can charge you 130 percent for a year as a penalty for not having continuous coverage.

This has the potential of making things worse for premiums, it incentivizes the healthy to opt out and make your insurance pools much sicker. The biggest issue of the marketplaces was that a lot of young and healthy opted out and paid the 1,000 dollar penalty. The opt in is less punitive so logically more young healthy people could wait until they need health care.

That makes sense.

Neither the $ 1,000 fee or the 130% for a year penalty is close to enough to make the young and healthy pay, say, $ 1,200/monthly for a health policy. And raising the opt-out fee(s) to a higher number would alienate the younger voters who are now opting out.

As a conservative, I agree with Entropy that the Rs will take a beating in 2018, particularly with the media replaying the "people are going to die because of this vote" meme that has been on the news. What is slowly happening is that the Rs are arguing for an actual system (ACHA) against what is basically an idealized system (ACA) that is imploding. From a purely political point of view, the Rs should let the ACA implode. But that means real hardship for the Wizards of the world who have done nothing to deserve the massive transfer of wealth from the productive to the non-productive. And all of this is being done in the name of getting 14 million more people signed up for Medicaid.

I'm starting to think going back to the pre-ACA status quo ante would be the best of several bad alternatives. You know, there are a lot of other things like the 29 hour work week and the 49 employee maximum that have negatively affected the economy which are never mentioned in discussions of the ACA.

[Da Geezer]

...She's pushing the EB-5 Visa program, in which Chinese investors can effectively 'purchase' US citizenship at $500k a pop. This is exactly the type of immigrtion program that Trump supposedly ran against....

Why would anyone be against selling citizenship for $ 500,000,00 a pop. Sounds like something Trump might favor? But it is good to know what American citizenship is worth for future discussions of illegal immigration. Perhaps the progressives should pool their money and purchase citizenship for the 18 million illegals. I'd favor that.

[Jeff Buchanan]

What is slowly happening is that the Rs are arguing for an actual system (ACHA) .......

Not sure what you mean by this Geezer.

My view is that the Rs (and in this case I mean the "R's" as they are defined by the Freedom Caucus) have worked to undermine and/or dismantle the contextual framework of the ACA at every turn and the ACHA is a continuation of that work.

Of course, if you are of the mind that the US Government has no role in assuring HC access for its citizens, then there isn't much room for discussion.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Why would anyone be against selling citizenship for $ 500,000,00 a pop. Sounds like something Trump might favor? But it is good to know what American citizenship is worth for future discussions of illegal immigration. Perhaps the progressives should pool their money and purchase citizenship for the 18 million illegals. I'd favor that.

Seriously Geezer, do you have any issue with the Trumps or Kushners peddling influence in this manner? Or is all forgiven because he 'might' pass laws that you like?

[Dr. Strangelove]

First French exit polls are out suggesting Macron will win the election in a landslide...with 65% of the vote according to one French poll. Still, gotta count the votes

[Dr. Strangelove]

White supremacists gather in New Orleans as the city prepares to take down three monuments honoring Confederate leaders. They already removed a monument a few weeks ago that commemorated the Crescent City White League uprising.

Some view it as erasing history; others view it as removing statues that glorify white supremacy.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/07/us/new-orleans-monuments.html?_r=0

[Da Geezer]

What is slowly happening is that the Rs are arguing for an actual system (ACHA) .......

Not sure what you mean by this Geezer.

Yup. I wasn't clear on what I meant, sorry.

I mean that the ACA is a plan developed by academics. I believe they actually thought it would cut health insurance premiums. They thought you could keep your doctor. They thought the mandates would be complied with. I'm willing to grant good faith. I remember arguing at the time that none of this would actually happen as the eggheads believed and that this was just a basic socialist power grab.

But now, the ACHA is supposed to deal with an imploding health insurance system, but it is being compared negatively to the "dream" of the ACA. There are wonderful things mandated by the ACA (the law of the land) that were not and are not financially feasible as a practical matter. It is kind of like Plato writing The Republic, with it being absolutely logical, but then going the Syracuse and trying to set the thing up in practice, which was an abject failure.

For example, and I admit not knowing the facts, let's say the ACA requires insurance to pay for addicts to go to a residential treatment center. Let's say the ACHA amends that to only pay for psychological counselling. What is then said, in attacking the ACHA, is that treatment for addiction is not available under the House Plan. The implication is that something is being taken away that was never feasible in the first place. And the actual evidence of this is the implosion of the ACA. I'm also willing to grant to the Rinos that they are trying to help the Wizards of the world, before he is left with absolutely no alternatives. I doubt there is any real disagreement that the politic thing for the Rs to do is to let the ACA completely implode.

[Dr. Strangelove]

[ame]https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/855368516920332289[/ame]

[froot loops]

It's not imploding for one thing, the CBO said as much. The GOP has actively defined it at every step. Sabotage if you will and it is working. Blatant lying pays off.

[Da Geezer]

Geezer:

Why would anyone be against selling citizenship for $ 500,000,00 a pop. Sounds like something Trump might favor? But it is good to know what American citizenship is worth for future discussions of illegal immigration. Perhaps the progressives should pool their money and purchase citizenship for the 18 million illegals. I'd favor that.

DSL:

Seriously Geezer, do you have any issue with the Trumps or Kushners peddling influence in this manner? Or is all forgiven because he 'might' pass laws that you like?

Read my post. I didn't say anything at all about peddling influence. All I said was that the market price for American citizenship seems to be $ 500,000. I then suggested you and yours simply take up a collection amongst yourselves, and buy citizenship for the 18 million illegals. I figure this comes to roughly $ 9 Trillion, almost the exact amount Obama printed out of thin air and directed to his Democrat backers such as the environmental lobby and the government workers.

Of course, what this actually points out is American citizenship is of great value, not an irrelevancy as so many progressives believe.