President Barack Obama is preparing to sign a transformative health care bill ushering in near-universal medical coverage for the first time in the nation's history — and then hit the road to sell it to a reluctant public.There's no need to "sell" anything. Once he signs the thing, it's the law.
We don't have a choice but to obey the thing, or face fines and jail.
Obama said, "We proved that this government — a government of the people and by the people — still works for the people," but if that were the case this bill would not have been passed: a majority of the American public doesn't want this. There is no "selling" here; what Obama will hit the road to do is to try to convince the American people not to vote all Democrats out of office in November. This is damage control.
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ObamaCare is unconstitutional, and many states are unhappy with this. The attorney general of Texas has officially stated Texas will challenge the costitutionality of ObamaCare.
Good luck, guys.
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Dennis says the mandate "will never happen". Dennis thought the bill wouldn't pass. I'm just sayin'.
He lays out some excellent points in his post, but there's one problem with it: the Democrats don't care. No one in government, in fact, ever asks how the private citizens of the country will afford this or that tax increase.
In his fictional example, what will happen is that "you and your spouse" will pay the fine for not carrying health insurance and only buy health insurance if you suffer a medical crisis of some sort (some catastrophic situation). Instead of $12,000 per year for insurance, you'll pay something like $2,000 (I think it was $2k for a family of four) in fines to the IRS.
ObamaCare, you see, prohibits an underwriter from denying coverage for any pre-existing condition. That means that--once the laws go into effect--you'll be covered for all your medical conditions the instant you buy coverage.
Let's say you're a moderately healthy single 25-year-old man. You don't have health insurance through your employer; and you pay the annual $500 fine to the IRS rather than carry your own policy. And then one fine winter afternoon, while you're out snowboarding, you fall and break both your legs, one in multiple places.
While you're waiting for the ambulance, you haul out your iPhone and buy six months' worth of medical insurance for $4,000. Presto, you're covered; you go to the hospital and end up costing your new underwriter some $20,000.
Once you're healed and done with rehab and everything, you can drop your insurance policy without any penalties whatsoever (save, of course, that pesky fine on your tax form).
The mandate will stand. As long as the fine for not having insurance is lower than the cost of insurance, there's no incentive in ObamaCare to make people carry health insurance. Eliminating the ability of an underwrtier to exclude pre-existing conditions makes it so. The plan appears precision-machined to destroy health underwriters.
Of course things won't be like that for very long. Boortz explains. Once the health insurance industry has been wrecked, the US government can then step in.
This is why I say ObamaCare--even as passed last night--is socialized medicine. It's going to end there regardless of what the law says now. Once the economic machinery starts, the inevitable outcome will be government control over your health care.
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This is a really good essay on robot motivation: "What does a robot want?"
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Illness continues, though with vastly reduced misery. My cough is down to a (mostly) dry cough now. I'm using OTC Walgreen's brand cough syrup (dextromethorphan hydrobromide) to quell it. I'm pleased with this stuff: it's grape-flavored and it doesn't have that "OMG I'M GONNA RIP OUT MY TONGUE" flavor that cough syrup usually has. It doesn't taste like candy; it tastes like medicine--but it doesn't make me want to throw up the instant it touches my tongue.
Really, I don't know what the point is of that. We make the cough syrup taste really nasty because...um...some people like to drink it to get high! Well, the addicts don't give a rat's ass what it tastes like. Denis Leary: "NyQuil is the secret for all you twelve-step recovery people. It's the thirteenth fuckin' step! It's over-the-counter! It's legal! You can drink it! 'Are you drunk?' 'No, I have a cold. Same cold I've had for three weeks, I just can't seem to shake it...I'm high as a kite and my teeth are green! Merry fuckin' Christmas!'" Even though NyQuil is "still that green death fuckin' flavor."
Someone who really, really wants to get plastered will drink, snort, or shoot the nastiest crap imaginable, in some cases literally: remember the stories about kids fermenting their own excreta and huffing the gas to get high? That had to smell nice and flowery and not bad at all, right?
I'm glad we're getting away from punishing everyone for the stupidity of addicts.
I had to look very hard to find cough syrup which was only DM (dextromethorphan hydrobromide) and not DM plus guaifenesin. Guaifenesin is an expectorant; it makes mucous more voluninous and runny and easier to hack up. But with the sinus congestion I was suffering, I didn't want the volume increased. I'm not kidding; the left side of my head felt like it was solid. So, no guaifenesin for me!
Yes, it's supposed to relieve congestion. I've tried it; it does not work that way for me. And I can't take pseudoephedrine hydrochloride any more because it raises my blood pressure too much. That's a shame, because that stuff worked well for me.
(I used to get the generic Sudafed in 100-pill bottles. Can you imagine how thrilled meth cookers would be to have those back?)
The cough syrup works well enough. Sunday night I was pretty confident I'd have to go buy cough syrup with guaifenesin today, but the congested feeling has subsided; I'm not going to bother.
I'm still not well but I'm a damn sight better than I was even two days ago.