Healthcare Bill Passes. (elephant in the room)

[phee]

It passed.... it was signed.... what does this mean?

It has not passed Senate yet.

It is already being protested and trying to be reversed.

Thoughts?

[freydis]

I find it interesting that it has a provision for people to be fined around 700 bucks for not having health insurance, unless you're poor.

However, I've not been able to find out what the bill's definition of "poor" is.

And a tax hike for tanning? Weird.

[Slogo]

Could've been better

[Msterbeau]

My feeling is that both sides are making much ado over what doesn't seem like very much substance. Yeah I know that more provisions come into play over time, but still, this isn't anywhere close to universal health care. The idea that you get fined for not having insurance is beyond stupid.

[kat (1)]

The idea that you get fined for not having insurance is beyond stupid.

I agree.

The middle class are always getting fucked.

I am not sure I understand what the point of National healthcare is, If those of us, the "fake ass middle class", are not going to be covered? ( I say fake ass middle class because the government wants us to believe we can climb the economic ladder, but know damn well we are all a paycheck or two away from fucking poverty) Now, in my case, my position does not offer me insurance. I work, have two kids, and support myself, by myself. I don't want shit from the government but now they want to tell me what I have to do? It is unconstitutional for the government to do this.

[freydis]

Full Text

TITLE IV—AMENDMENTS TO IN6

TERNAL REVENUE CODE OF

7 1986

8 Subtitle A—Shared Responsibility

9 PART 1—INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY

10 SEC. 401. TAX ON INDIVIDUALS WITHOUT ACCEPTABLE

11 HEALTH CARE COVERAGE.

12 (a) IN GENERAL.—Subchapter A of chapter 1 of the

13 Internal Revenue Code of 1986 is amended by adding at

14 the end the following new part:

15 ‘‘PART VIII—HEALTH CARE RELATED TAXES

‘‘SUBPART A. TAX ON INDIVIDUALS WITHOUT ACCEPTABLE HEALTH CARE

COVERAGE.

16 ‘‘Subpart A—Tax on Individuals Without Acceptable

17 Health Care Coverage

‘‘Sec. 59B. Tax on individuals without acceptable health care coverage.

18 ‘‘SEC. 59B. TAX ON INDIVIDUALS WITHOUT ACCEPTABLE

19 HEALTH CARE COVERAGE.

20 ‘‘(a) TAX IMPOSED.—In the case of any individual

21 who does not meet the requirements of subsection (d) at

22 any time during the taxable year, there is hereby imposed

23 a tax equal to 2.5 percent of the excess of—

1 ‘‘(1) the taxpayer’s modified adjusted gross in2

come for the taxable year, over

3 ‘‘(2) the amount of gross income specified in

4 section 6012(a)(1) with respect to the taxpayer.

5 ‘‘(b) LIMITATIONS.—

6 ‘‘(1) TAX LIMITED TO AVERAGE PREMIUM.—

7 ‘‘(A) IN GENERAL.—The tax imposed

8 under subsection (a) with respect to any tax9

payer for any taxable year shall not exceed the

10 applicable national average premium for such

11 taxable year.

12 ‘‘(B) APPLICABLE NATIONAL AVERAGE

13 PREMIUM.—

14 ‘‘(i) IN GENERAL.—For purposes of

15 subparagraph (A), the ‘applicable national

16 average premium’ means, with respect to

17 any taxable year, the average premium (as

18 determined by the Secretary, in coordina19

tion with the Health Choices Commis20

sioner) for self-only coverage under a basic

21 plan which is offered in a Health Insur22

ance Exchange for the calendar year in

23 which such taxable year begins.

24 ‘‘(ii) FAILURE TO PROVIDE COVERAGE

25 FOR MORE THAN ONE INDIVIDUAL.—In the

1 case of any taxpayer who fails to meet the

2 requirements of subsection (e) with respect

3 to more than one individual during the tax4

able year, clause (i) shall be applied by

5 substituting ‘family coverage’ for ‘self-only

6 coverage’.

7 ‘‘(2) PRORATION FOR PART YEAR FAILURES.—

8 The tax imposed under subsection (a) with respect

9 to any taxpayer for any taxable year shall not exceed

10 the amount which bears the same ratio to the

11 amount of tax so imposed (determined without re12

gard to this paragraph and after application of para13

graph (1)) as—

14 ‘‘(A) the aggregate periods during such

15 taxable year for which such individual failed to

16 meet the requirements of subsection (d), bears

17 to

18 ‘‘(B) the entire taxable year.

19 ‘‘© EXCEPTIONS.—

20 ‘‘(1) DEPENDENTS.—Subsection (a) shall not

21 apply to any individual for any taxable year if a de22

duction is allowable under section 151 with respect

23 to such individual to another taxpayer for any tax24

able year beginning in the same calendar year as

25 such taxable year.

[TitsMcGee]

So it's back in the senate right now for added amendments, one of which is banning sex offenders from getting erectile dysfunction medication. If they do vote yes on it, that means the whole process has to go back through the house, which probably means they will vote that down.

Now I'm not against universal health care, I'm just against this bill. They could have done many other things to make health care more affordable such as being able to purchase across state lines, banning the restrictions on preexisting conditions, and overhauling the Medicaid and Medicare system to make more incentives for doctors to take them. Fining people who don't want insurance just isn't right.

Take my father for example, he is now considered totally disabled and cannot work & he is receiving disability starting in July. But he's not eligible for Medicare until he is 62, which doesn't happen for 2 more years. What is he supposed to do for insurance for the next two years? Thankfully his company is working with us so he can keep his insurance for a while, but they shouldn't have to do that since he's not working. If Medicare was overhauled to allow people who are close to 62 and disabled we wouldn't be worrying so much.

And frankly I personally think that the members of our government should be on the same insurance they want the rest of the country to be on.

[phee]

And frankly I personally think that the members of our government should be on the same insurance they want the rest of the country to be on.

I agree

And there is this always this positive: http://www.dccc.org/page/s/rushfarewelltw

[the eternal]

IS IT PERFECT?

HELL NO!

IS IT COMPREHENSIVE UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE?

YOU'RE KIDDING RIGHT!

BUT

It is designed to allow 32 million Americans to get coverage over the next four years, and unlike under Bush THIS is truly a plan where no child is left behind.

A sneek peek at what will go into effect in November if it passes unchanged

•This year, children with pre-existing conditions can no longer be denied health insurance coverage.

Once the new health insurance exchanges begin in the coming years, pre-existing condition discrimination will become a thing of the past for everyone.

•This year, health care plans will allow young people to remain on their parents' insurance policy up until their 26th birthday.

•This year, insurance companies will be banned from dropping people from coverage when they get sick, and they will be banned from implementing lifetime caps on coverage. This year, restrictive annual limits on coverage will be banned for certain plans.

•This year, adults who are uninsured because of pre-existing conditions will have access to insurance through a temporary subsidized high-risk pool.

•In the next fiscal year, the bill increases funding for community health centers, so they can treat nearly double the number of patients over the next five years.

•This year, it'll also establish an independent commission to advise on how best to build the health care workforce and increase the number of nurses, doctors and other professionals to meet our country's needs. Going forward, it will provide $1.5 billion in funding to support the next generation of doctors, nurses and other primary care practitioners -- on top of a $500 million investment from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Health insurance reform will also curb some of the worst insurance industry practices and strengthen consumer protections:

•This year, this bill creates a new, independent appeals process that ensures consumers in new private plans have access to an effective process to appeal decisions made by their insurer.

•This year, discrimination based on salary will be outlawed. New group health plans will be prohibited from establishing any eligibility rules for health care coverage that discriminate in favor of higher-wage employees. (They carve out great benefits for the top people and screw the rest)

•Beginning this fiscal year, this bill provides funding to states to help establish offices of health insurance consumer assistance in order to help individuals in the process of filing complaints or appeals against insurance companies.

•Starting January 1, 2011, insurers in the individual and small group market will be required to spend 80 percent of their premium dollars on medical services. Insurers in the large group market will be required to spend 85 percent of their premium dollars on medical services. Any insurers who don't meet those thresholds will be required to provide rebates to their policyholders.

•Starting in 2011, this bill helps states require insurance companies to submit justification for requested premium increases. Any company with excessive or unjustified premium increases may not be able to participate in the new health insurance exchanges.

Reform immediately begins to lower health care costs for American families and small businesses:

•This year, small businesses that choose to offer coverage will begin to receive tax credits of up to 35 percent of premiums to help make employee coverage more affordable. (Small businesses with less than 50 employees are NOT required to insure their workers)

•This year, new private plans will be required to provide free preventive care: no co-payments and no deductibles for preventive services. And beginning January 1, 2011, Medicare will do the same.

•This year, this bill will provide help for early retirees by creating a temporary re-insurance program to help offset the costs of expensive premiums for employers and retirees age 55-64.

•This year, this bill starts to close the Medicare Part D 'donut hole' by providing a $250 rebate to Medicare beneficiaries who hit the gap in prescription drug coverage. And beginning in 2011, the bill institutes a 50% discount on prescription drugs in the 'donut hole.'

[TitsMcGee]

•This year, health care plans will allow young people to remain on their parents' insurance policy up until their 26th birthday.

Does that mean I will get kicked off of Medicaid and put back on my father's insurance even though we have no idea how long he's going to have it now that he can't work? What about the "children" who have nothing to do with their parents and don't want to be on their insurance? There are A LOT of questions that still need to be answered.

[candyman]

This bill still won't cover everyone...

Also its gonna have more people to cover as long as people in the government seem to ignore the more urgent issue of rising unemployment! No wonder so many people can't get insurance...they have no jobs...well lets make it easy on them and give it to them anyways.

And I am very sorry but I have to bring something else up here. So Obama has been in office for a while and all the way up until now people have told me and keep telling me that I cannot comment on his performance because he hasn't been in office long enough. However, when it comes to this heath care bill which hasn't even fucking passed yet people are making awesome claims about it while they can't prove for a fact that this shit will even happen. Wow...

[phee]

Also its gonna have more people to cover as long as people in the government seem to ignore the more urgent issue of rising unemployment! No wonder so many people can't get insurance...they have no jobs...well lets make it easy on them and give it to them anyways.

And their families when they loose their jobs....

[jynxxxedangel]

I was going to stay out of this, because I've felt the fallout of many of my friends' disagreements, this week...and it hurts my heart.

Personally, I am opposed to this bill. No need to go into "why," even...it just tastes bad, to me.

An old phrase keeps coming to mind; "Divide, and conquer." The divisions are already existent.

Enough said.

Edited March 24, 2010 by jynxxxedangel

[phee]

IMO it is not finished yet... but it is a step in the right direction... if you consider the right direction having more people able to have healthcare.... If you don't consider that the right direction then I guess it is not a very good step in the right direction.

[Tyger]

Personally, I like Canada's health care system and I hope The States adapts to it. I like that we have health care for our children, that we don’t pay for any of their shots and we get flu shots for free. I like that when we go to a doctor/ clinic we don’t have to pay 40 something bucks just to see someone, get a prescription and a kick out the door. That I can to get my back x-rayed (which I have) for free and not have to worry about a bill coming at me. I like that when I was in the hospital (because of my dads insurance plan) I got my own room and free care, and knowing that even if I wasn’t on my dad’s insurance that I would still get free care.

I do think that we have way to long of lines for surgeries and thing and that we should be able to pay someone, somewhere to get something fixed quicker if we wanted.

I know this is mostly about Canada heath care, but I do believe that everyone should get help if they need it and not get turned away. And not die from the cost afterward.

[phee]

I know this is mostly about Canada heath care, but I do believe that everyone should get help if they need it and not get turned away. And not die from the cost afterward.

...this is wisdom....

[TitsMcGee]

...this is wisdom....

I have never heard of anyone getting turned away if they needed care.

[Tyger]

I have never heard of anyone getting turned away if they needed care.

I heard once that someone went to a hospital over there in the states and they didn't have proper insurance so they drove her in an ambulance to another hospital and still charged her for the ride...

Edited March 24, 2010 by Tyger

[phee]

I have never heard of anyone getting turned away if they needed care.

I have... that insurance would not cover surgeries that would help with chronic issues... and that is just my own family.

[KatRN05]

This bill is not universal health care, it has no single-payer system similar to that of Canada or the UK. It's a reform to make it more affordable for those to who don't have insurance to get insurance. I think there are quite a lot of mixed views on Canada's health system, some say the problem is waiting for procedures and some say the system is fine. I'm not really sure what to make of it but I can tell you as a nurse, I see many patients coming over here from Canada to get some of their health care needs met because they would otherwise have to wait.

I really do not know how to feel about this bill. I'm worried with the decreased reimbursements to Medicaid that a lot of hospitals and clinics will be having to close causing doctors and nurses and other health-care professionals to lose their jobs and apparently there is a shortage of these individuals in the health industry. I'm interested in seeing what happens because my feeling is that this will not lower the cost of premiums but only increase it. Now, I'm not sure if that penalty, the one where if you don't have insurance, you could possibly get fined or go to jail, is still included in the bill. I disagree with it. Just because they state that this reform is to make insurance more affordable, it doesn't mean that it will be more affordable to some people like a family of 4 living on $30-50,000 per year.

Edited March 24, 2010 by KatRN05

[Tyger]

This bill is not universal health care, it has no single-payer system similar to that of Canada or the UK. It's a reform to make it more affordable for those to who don't have insurance to get insurance. I think there are quite a lot of mixed views on Canada's health system, some say the problem is waiting for procedures and some say the system is fine. I'm not really sure what to make of it but I can tell you as a nurse, I see many patients coming over here from Canada to get some of their health care needs met because they would otherwise have to wait.

Yes. I find that that is the only flaw in our system that I see. Is our lines...

[KatRN05]

I have never heard of anyone getting turned away if they needed care.

It is illegal for hospitals to turn away patients because of their insurance status. Now some hospitals do not accept certain insurances but they most certainly do not make the patient wait in the ambulance and say "Give me your insurance card". They will however treat the patient and stabilize them and move the patient to the hospital that does accept the patient's insurance. I saw this a lot when I worked at Beaumont in Royal Oak. They didn't accept HAP so every time we got a patient with HAP, the patient was transferred to Henry Ford within a couple of days.

Edited March 24, 2010 by KatRN05

[TitsMcGee]

I heard once that someone went to a hospital over there in the states and they didn't have proper insurance so they drove her in an ambulance to another hospital and still charged her for the ride...

But that's not denying treatment. Denying treatment would be turning them away completely without offering another option. In the case of taking the woman to another hospital, it was probably to a public hospital where they deal with the uninsured all the time. Private hospitals (such as those owned by churchs..like St. Mary's in Saginaw) have the option of turning people away if they cannot pay.

I have... that insurance would not cover surgeries that would help with chronic issues... and that is just my own family.

Phee the hospital wasn't denying the person the surgery, they just expected you to pay for it if your insurance wouldn't cover it. Hospitals do make payment plans with people.

[Guest Megalicious]

This bill is not universal health care, it has no single-payer system similar to that of Canada or the UK.

There are other forms of Universal Health Care besides the single payer system.

As for how I feel on the issue, I will keep it to myself. Being a future nurse, the feeling is a dialectic for me. I fight with myself enough over it, I don't need to argue with someone else.

[the eternal]

I've noticed in the tone here that a lot of people that are already extremely skeptical of Obama and this plan are determined that it won't work or cover what it says it will.

Of course you can easily accuse me of being too Pollyanna-ish about the whole thing too, but I don't think we should assume the worst of every component of this bill

Does that mean I will get kicked off of Medicaid and put back on my father's insurance even though we have no idea how long he's going to have it now that he can't work? What about the "children" who have nothing to do with their parents and don't want to be on their insurance? There are A LOT of questions that still need to be answered.

According to what I've read, no.

If you are currently on Medicaid/Medicare/VA you will stay in your current plan.

It is an OPTION to go under your dad's plan, not a requirement.

(In fact no one's require to get health care until 2014 and the 2.5% fine--with a $695 cap for no coverage WILL NOT go into effect until 2016

EVEN THEN---Six years from now Exemptions will be granted for financial hardship, ie those for whom the lowest-cost insurance option exceeds 8 percent of an individual's income and those with incomes below the tax filing threshold (in 2009, the threshold for taxpayers under age 65 was $9,350 for singles and $18,700 for couples)

People we need to understand THIS IS NOT GOVT RUN INSURANCE.

This is not Communist Russia here.

This is the government giving subsidies and regulation to an industry that has denied and overcharged on health coverage.

It is STILL industry-run.

The plans are the SAME

The companies are still the SAME.

This is just supposed to make them a little more open to higher risk patients and transparent

What's hilarious about the Limbaugh's and Becks of the world is that this is by and large a Republican plan.

Over the past 40 years, liberals and moderates like Kennedy and Dingell have been pushing for single payer govt run health plans,

and Republicans like Richard Nixon and Lincoln Chaffee have made counter-proposals.

Obama cobbled together many of these plans, combined it with ideas of his own, Dem Max Baucus, and even current GOP ideas for what we have today.

This bill still won't cover everyone...

Also its gonna have more people to cover as long as people in the government seem to ignore the more urgent issue of rising unemployment! No wonder so many people can't get insurance...they have no jobs...well lets make it easy on them and give it to them anyways.

And I am very sorry but I have to bring something else up here. So Obama has been in office for a while and all the way up until now people have told me and keep telling me that I cannot comment on his performance because he hasn't been in office long enough. However, when it comes to this heath care bill which hasn't even fucking passed yet people are making awesome claims about it while they can't prove for a fact that this shit will even happen. Wow...

I worry that you've been poisoned by the liberal activist machine in Madison, WI. I had the same when I lived in a college town.

I'm a fervent Zionist and I thought everyone was a Palestinian freedom fighter.

I don't know anyone that hasn't commented on his performance.

He's been tauting this plan forever, playing kissy games with Maine republicans when, in the end, the GOP and Dems are more polarized and ideologically partisan than anytime in history.

I'm pleased to see over the past couple weeks Obama finally growing a pair and acting like a leader.

(Bush may have stunk, but no one can argue he was a leader. When he wanted something done, he got it done)

My list is not full of pie in the sky claims.

They're provisions fleshed out in detail in the bill.

Once the 5000 constitutional protests go away they may actually go into law.

As for Jobs, he passed a bill last year. He was still a pussy last year, so he didn't do it along the Keynesian model, which he should've.

The GOP would've hated him no matter what, so why not go all the way?

That was Bush's philosophy, and in retrospect, I'm starting to respect it.

There is more work to be done, and it remains to be seen if the bill will get reconciled with the Senate with all those provisions intact.

But I sure hope so

---------

Trust me I can see your side.

We have completely opposite philosophies here.

You both view this as wasteful spending that doesn't target what it needs to.

And I may be wrong and this may not work.

But the 800 lb elephant in the room is that the GOP leadership didn't give a g-d damn about health care reform until Obama put it on the table, and didn't take a second to work on it despite having all the branches under their control for several years

Now it's the Dems turn.

From everything I've seen, it makes sense

For all our sakes, and our health I sure hope I'm right.

(edited so I could hit spellcheck)

Edited March 24, 2010 by the eternal