particularly with respect to pre-existing conditions. "Insurance" which covers the likelyhood of an event cannot as such be applied to a definite event other than at a disproportionate cost.

The sheer amount of resistance and money that the pharmaceutical companies and health insurance companies along with right wing media would throw against the Democrats is quite a formidable challenge if they proposed something like a strong Public Option or expanding Medicare to everybody, not to mention the fact that millions of dollars worth of donations came from these industries to the campaign coffers of some of the Democrats. You typically don't anger the wealthiest donors if you want to stay in your seat for re-election or land a cushy job in the private sector working for those wealthy donors.

This is just how our election system works.

You know, the way ALEC pushes through all manner of stuff on their agenda. Instead of some "signature health care reform bill", Obama and the Dems in Congress should have been submitting riders to appropriations bills lowering the Medicare eligibility age, adding spouses and dependent children to VA benefit eligibility, and expanding Medicaid so that it flowed like crack-filler into the bottom of the safety net. Pretty soon, there would be a de facto single payer system. All that would be left is to reorganize it into one department. It's amazing what you can get done when no one is paying attention to what you are doing.

Please allow me to repeat:

and they should have been throwing all kinds of crap in the GOP /right wing faces to keep THEM distracted and on the defensive.

Are the Dems not doing this because they are inconceivably stupid and inept or because they've been irredeemably corrupted by bribes and threats?

answering a cry for reform with a sweetheart deal for industry. Sucker the people, succor the Insurance Mafia. Hey let's go for it: the system is so rotten now, the rubes won't even know they've been cheated! They'll thank us as even the bribes keep rolling in! But if the SCOTUS rules as widely expected now, the Democrats will have fallen into a trap of their own lazy devising.

is simply amazing. It is a layer of phone calls and paper work a mile thick between providers and patients.

would be one of the funniest things I've ever seen if it weren't so pathetic and so very deeply corrupt.

crap legislation from making it to the floor for a vote, because they were, you know, progressive, unlike the proponents of a nearly identical plan: Newt Gingrich, Bob Dole, and the heritage foundation that provided the blueprint for this corporate welfare at the expense of the sickest among us.

Health care should be about health, not profit.

I am paying for my own health care right now: health food, natural whole food supplements, exercise equipment, health newsletters, books, etc.

The basic concept of health insurance is nonsense except for cosmetic stuff which should be totally optional.

the Democrats first tried to get a health care program passed in the 1940s and failed. Many continued to try and failed. The bill we have now is not perfect just like Social Security was not perfect in the beginning. But if the gets overturned - are we going to be waiting another 57 years to get one started again?

It was always a government-administered program.

If FDR had taken the Obama approach, he would have required everyone to invest in a private pension fund (a la Pinochet's Milton Friedman-inspired program in Chile).

If LBJ had taken the Obama approach to the Civil Rights Act, he would have required African-Americans to buy permits to patronize formerly segregated facilities, institutions, and businesses.

The claim "The Social Security Act/Civil Rights Act wasn't perfect initially either" talking point is just that, a bogus talking point using false analogies.

cases. It's ridiculous.

Social Security AT ITS INCEPTION taxed payrolls to provide old age and survivors' benefits. It was pretty much what it is now. It NEVER had any private component.

"January 1, 1940 Monthly benefits first became payable under old-age and survivor's insurance to aged retired workers and their dependents and to survivors of deceased insured workers. The Federal Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund was established as a separate account in the United States Treasury to hold the amounts accumulated under the old-age and survivors insurance program. Basic provisions for hearing and review instituted by the Social Security Board under authority to establish procedures, hold hearings, and take testimony in relation to determination of rights to old-age and survivors insurance benefits (Office of Appeals Council)."

Just because you are standing next to a hospital building does not mean that you have "access to health care" if you can't afford to pay for it.

there is no way any individual can know in advance what level of expense his/her own health care will require - thus no way to know exactly which of the varied insurance products offered will suit. And no way to know if they are "affordable" for that individual. The whole premise as applied to an individual is meaningless.

Not to mention that if you are poor or working poor you can not afford that ANY percentage of your own income go toward health care - you have NO percentage to spare for it without taking it out of the food/rent/utility/child care/transportation pot. You can't even afford co-pays.

Call me I commie; I don't care. I want the US to join the ranks of civilized countries.

eom

Thanks for the thread, xchrom.

For so long we have fought the Republicans because they are corporatist. Now the SCOTUS justices that we are so used to fighting are questioning the corporatism in the ACA, with questions like "Where will government power end?" and we root for corporatism.

Where indeed?

Is it OK for government to require you to buy a very expensive corporate product? If you can be required to spend 20% of your income on insurance (and an individual policy can easily come to that), then why can't you be required to spend money on sending your kids to private school, or whatever?

Is the ACA really a step in the right direction? Is it really better than nothing?

If the Supreme Court strikes down the compulsory purchase of insurance from private companies, does this not also make the Republican proposal to replace Medicare and Social Security with private options un-Constitutional?

If they really want to give us control of our retirement money, why not just stop collecting it -- why not leave it with us -- rather than force us to buy stock at prices that are inflated by the requirement for everyone to buy?

to put it into private accounts that THEY select, just shows you how corrupt their entire "It's YOUR money" schtick is.

I'd like to see something more like the Dutch system where we are allowed whatever modality, or combination there of we want. I get medicare, it costs me almost $100 a month, but I still have to pay for my acupuncture, homeopathy and whatever alternative treatments I choose.

I developed a patch of eczema, after joining a health club to use the swimming pool (a suggestion by another doctor) I didn't know what it was, so I went to another "regular" doctor and they wanted to give me steroids and topical steroid creams. That doctor only spent 8 minutes with me. There was no discussion of my life style,, diet or anything. In fact no actual test were done. It was, what seemed to me a flash judgement. The regular doctor after my questioning her prescription, made an appointment with a dermatologist. It took 3 and a half months to see the dermatologist. When I got into the room, he strutted around and again wanted to give me the steroids. I asked if there was anything else and was told no. Take it or leave it, so to speak. At that time my health insurance was costing me almost $700 a month, plus $30 office visit fee. I canceled that insurance. Now I only have Medicare plan A and B. for those who don't know a lot about it, plan A is hospital and is "free", plan B is office visits and costs around $100 a month.

I kept on with my traditional Chinese Medicine, which composed of acupuncture, diet, herbs, chi gong and tui na. My eczema vastly improved. When I'm off my diet or stressed I get patches, but nothing like before. I know the steroids would only have provided symptomatic relief, but no cure. The side effects would have caused skin atrophy and thinning....and who knows what else? I pay for each visit to for TCM.

My medicare does not pay for any of that. If I used "regular" medicine it would pay some of it.

where profits dictate our well being, our healthcare. Its a sick society that is causing unnecessary suffering of many for the monetary benefit of a greedy few.