On the Road

10 Comments

1. 

   hz on June 29, 2012 at 10:51 am

   Blogging Atrios-style?  Is that where people with pseudo-Greek names about whose opinions nobody cares fill in for you?

2. 

   wvng on June 29, 2012 at 10:55 am

   I agree with your previous post that the victory yesterday makes Democrats strong.  This letter will be posted in next week’s Moorefield Examiner (WV) paper.  The context was a a challenge from a winger, the limit was 500 words, and I will follow up with more specifics.  

   To the Editor,

        In his “Intercepted letter” on June 13, Bill Hill offered to debate me on politics and the Constitution.   Let’s start with Bill’s comment saying: “Show me where he (Obama) or the Congress has any right to monkey around with health care?”   On June 28, the Supreme Court said they did.  But it is a strange question, like Tea Partiers saying “keep your government hands off my Medicare” … because Medicare is a federal government program.  If you have decent health care in America, you should thank the government.
        Here’s how people in America get health care/insurance:

   1.         The Veteran’s Administration provides health care for many honorably discharged veterans of our armed services.   This is socialized health care, with government hospitals staffed with doctors and nurses employed by the federal government.
   2.         Medicare is the federal government’s “single payer” health insurance system for elder Americans, paid for primarily via mandatory federal taxes.  Medicare does not own hospitals or employ the doctors who deliver care.
   3.         Medicaid is a means-tested health and medical services program for certain individuals and families with low incomes and few resources, including about 64% of all nursing home residents.  Oversight and funding for this program is shared by the federal and state governments.
   4.         The government started employer-based health insurance during WWII.  Employers that provide health insurance receive a federal subsidy in the form of a tax credit.  To get that tax credit they have to follow a number of rules; basically, they can’t discriminate based on pre-existing medical conditions or restrict benefits to highly paid employees.   These federal rules and the federal tax credits are why employment-based insurance more or less works.
   5.         Hospitals that receive Medicare payments must treat anyone who arrives at their emergency room doors, whether or not they can pay.  The costs for this expensive unpaid treatment are spread throughout the health care system, with some estimates that $1000 of the average insured individual’s insurance payments go to cover the costs of these uninsured people.

        The majority of Americans are covered by the above government-enabled and subsidized health insurance systems.  That leaves forty to fifty million of your fellow American citizens either uninsured or underinsured with very expensive and/or very inadequate insurance purchased on the individual insurance market.  Many of these people work hard every day, for both large and small companies or in their own small businesses.  Many cannot get insurance at all if they have pre-existing conditions.  Their insurance rates are very high because, as individuals, they cannot buy coverage as part of a group insurance “pool.”
        That changes when the Affordable Care Act (that’s Obamacare) is fully implemented in 2014.  Millions of your fellow Americans will purchase good coverage through their state’s new insurance exchange.
        Obamacare extends the same government protections and opportunities that already enable good health insurance for people who work for companies that offer health insurance, to the more than 40 million Americans who are not so fortunate.  More on that later.

   • 

     TarheelDem on June 29, 2012 at 12:06 pm

     Shazam!!!  Excellent job.

   • 

     rover27 on June 29, 2012 at 4:18 pm

     Very nice work.

3. 

   priscianus jr on June 29, 2012 at 11:16 am

   Magnificent. Like a knife of clarity cutting through the bullshit.

   • 

     priscianus jr on June 29, 2012 at 11:17 am

     This was a reply to wvng.

     • 

       wvng on June 29, 2012 at 11:53 am

       Thx.

4. 

   pillsy on June 29, 2012 at 2:14 pm

   I can’t really say I’m that upset about the majority decision ruling that the mandate is an illegitimate exercise of commerce clause powers.  I think the distinction between regulating activity and regulating inactivity is artificial and silly, but when you get down to it there just aren’t that many useful things that you can do with that power that you can’t do just as well or better with other powers.

   And since this is a new and unique exercise of commerce clause power, the precedent here isn’t going to upend any existing laws. Since we also got a majority decision leaving the mandate intact, nothing actually changes, and the Court has shown appropriate restraint in it’s ruling. If conservatives like George Will find things to like in the decision as well, then I’m not going to begrudge them that.

5. 

   utried on June 29, 2012 at 5:59 pm

   Just get there safe and sound.

6. 

   Andrew Longman on June 29, 2012 at 6:58 pm

   ” I just think that the mandates’s potential to act as a precedent for all kinds of regulation of non-activity was always greatly exaggerated. “

   Word. Roberts practically said it himself. Congress can try to do all sorts of silly things under the authority to tax. And if it is too silly the political process will either prevent it or correct it.

   That’s not a problem for me.

   But if we can’t rationalize 20% of our economic activity while also treating our citizens with dignity and humanity then we don’t deserve much as a nation.