Ahira's Hangar

Haha, that's ok, I'm sure I've been guilty of longer and more boring (much longer and much more boring) ones.

So you're saying that the medicare problems are because of the SS problems?

--A

They are all tied in together, Av.

I know of no single person in my age group (mid-forties) or younger who expects anything to be left in either program when we are of retirement age. We all expect the Baby Boomer generation to suck it dry through their sheer numbers, with fewer and fewer workers to support the system through payroll taxes.

wow, things are getting really really ugly as the big vote approaches this weekend

Y'all are just gonna implode at some point. This level of acromony isn't sustainable.

--A

I agree. I have to start making connections with boat owners so my family and I can flee across the River to Canada if the worst comes...

--A

obviously I have not read through the 2000+ pages of the law, much less the second bill full of tweaks that has passed in the House and is now before the Senate, but...

good things in the law:
* insurance companies can no longer deny coverage based on pre-occurring conditions
* insurance companies can no longer drop you if you get sick or injured
* parents can now keep their kids on their insurance policies until age 26 (this greatly helps college students)
* insurance companies can no longer impose lifetime or yearly limits on payments for your medical treatments (this obviously helps people with serious recurring cancers and HIV and the like)
* millions of people (most of whom do have jobs) can now get insurance who could not get it before
* big emphasis on preventative care (routine physicals will now be free for seniors, as an example, with no co-pays)
* hopefully sickness will no longer force people into bankruptcy over unpaid (and unpayable without insurance) medical bills

things I am concerned about:
* how can states which are pretty close to bankruptcy (like Michigan with its huge job losses) pay for this????
* how much will our taxes (and our children's and grandchildren's taxes) be increased?
* what will this do to the already sky high federal deficit???????????

I am not upset over some of the things others are nearly hysterical over:
* I do not have a choice over other forms of insurance (if I were to be caught driving without auto insurance it is a felony) - and have no choice about other things like paying social security taxes (when I honestly believe there will be no social security left by the time I am of retirement age) - so how is this any different? Unlike social security which I have to pay into no matter what, I do have a choice here between having insurance and a fine - and the highest fines do not kick in unless you belong to the upper middle class ($88,000 income for singles and $250,000 income for couples) or above, and those people are much more likely to be able to afford to pay the fine than the rest of us...

* this does not point us towards socialism (or as one Republican Congressman said, making us the new USSR) any more than other pieces of the social safety net like social security, medicaid, medicare, and WIC do. It is just the missing part of that net. So why all the screaming over this as opposed to the others?

* from what I understand, this bill is very close the the one the Republican party brought forward as an alternative to Clintoncare in the Bill Clinton years. So why the hysteria over it now from the Republicans if that is true?

* for the first time in years, Washington actually got something important done!!! Might not be to everyone's tastes (and is that an understatement or what?? ) - but they actually broke through the gridlock and got something done!

* the government has not taken over the health care system - they built upon and greatly broadened the existing system


food for thought:

how will this law affect you?

according to this little gadget, I will have the same coverage, and will pay no additional taxes.

If you read the blog entry that I linked to at the bottom of my long post, you will see numerous links that compare the new law to various Republican proposals from the past, and see that this is actually more conservative than some of them.

In my mind this is not health care reform per se so much as health insurance reform - forcing insurance companies to act more responsibly towards consumers and expanding health coverage for something like 32 million people who could either not get it due to pre-existing conditions, or simply could not afford it (such as the working poor, whose employers often do not offer it). The massive expansion of numbers of people who will be getting coverage is actually good for the insurance companies, as the risks in being forced to coverage to people who are sick will be offset by sheer greater numbers of new customers. And obviously, this is good for those individuals who could not have insurance previously for whatever reason.

For now, this looks as if it will only increase taxes on fairly well off people (family incomes of $250,000 or more). And those people get other tax breaks the rest of do not (people with huge salaries do not have to pay social security on their whole earnings, which I consider to be BS), so I really do not mind that so much...

This bill truly pisses off the far right - but also truly pisses off the far left for not going far enough in reforms! And perhaps that means it is really not so bad as people are saying.

I am also pretty excited that a politician actually kept a campaign promise. While I am sure it happened before, I cannot remember one doing so before this. My husband (a few years older than me) says he remembers Reagan (who also tried to get some health care reform, by the way) promised to bring down the USSR in his campaign, and that is the only other time he can remember a candidate for high office keeping a major campaign promise.

All of the people screaming about the Fall of the Republic over this need to keep in mind that Obama, the (then) super majority in the Senate (at least those up for election in the last cycle), and the majority of the House campaigned on bringing in health care reform. They were all duly elected by the American public. They actually kept the promise of reform. How does this indicate in any way, shape, or form that democracy and the republic are dead? The government did what a majority of voters wanted them to do - no matter what a really loud and large minority group is now saying.

Laws do sometimes pass that are unpopular with a sizable minority loathing them (look at the Patriot Act as another example). Just because something is unpopular with a large minority does not mean that it is not a product of a democratically elected government.

Wow. Just wow. I have been wondering if this would come to deaths/violence, and now wonder if this was a deliberate act on the part of some nutter to harm a congressman.

Sure sounds like it, doesn't it? Jeez....

Reports are coming in of vandalism of congressional offices all across the country. This is soooooo not good.

The Republicans need to try to discourage these Tea Bagger asshats rather than encourage them. Or someone might get badly hurt or killed.

(if I remember I will look for links for the vandalism tomorrow Av. Too late and too tired right now).

Haha, no probs. And thanks for pointing out the link in your earlier post. Found a nice comparison chart to disagree with somebody who thinks they're not similar.

--A

There have been death threats to a Michigan congressman named Bart Stupak (note that he is not my congressman). They played three of the anonymous death threat calls on the local Detroit noon news. Not just frightening, but none of the three callers even had a Michigan accent. One sounded like she was from New York, one from the South, and one from Texas.

I really hope that the more responsible elements of the Republican party and from the Tea Baggers (the ones who just want smaller government and lower taxes, and aren't batshit crazy racist xenophobic homophobic hate filled loons) try to calm things down.

If I were a member of Congress who had voted for this law, I would now be getting shooting lessons at the local range and investing in a high grade shotgun and buckshot. That way if my home address somehow gets posted on the internet by Tea Baggers and some nutter tried to break in to harm my kids, I would shoot to kill with no hesitation.

I have never owned a gun, but I honestly feel that those members of both Houses who voted for this law (and their immediate family members) are in danger right now. And I do not know how far the secret service can extend to protect all of these people. So if they did arm themselves in self defense (including carrying concealed) I surely would not blame them.

here are s link to two of many stories about the vandalism and threats:



if you google a bit you will find many more stories about vandalism, death threats, threats to the children of congressmen, etc.

And you can listen to a couple of the nasty anonymous calls to Stupak here: