OBAMA/TRUMPCARE MEGATHREAD

[EvilMonkey]

I agree, especially because that's the price AFTER insurance. So that means the hospital charged even more than that $300+.

AND, how does screwing over INSURANCE fix any of this? Medical billing is a clusterf*ck. Wife went to emergency room with severe stomach pain, stayed in emergency room several hours and then was admitted to hospital for a kidney stone the size of a jellybean. She WORKS for an insurance company, and the bills we got were a lot less than I thought they would be, but we have been getting bills for 2 weeks. Every single person that talked to her seems to have sent in a bill from $20 to $2000. How about some sort of consolidation or something? If they didn't have 50 different doctors and such all doing the same billing and so on, perhaps some savings could be had there. Then they wouldn't have to charge $40 for 2 aspirin.

[Jenksismyhero]

Who's ready for higher insurance premiums that will cost more in the long run? Me! Me!

 

http://yourlife.usatoday.com/health/medica...trol/49755156/1

Edited August 2, 2011 by Jenksismybitch

[StrangeSox]

Who's ready for higher insurance premiums that will cost more in the long run? Me! Me!

 

http://yourlife.usatoday.com/health/medica...trol/49755156/1

 

Shouldn't you be applauding this since you don't think anyone should have kids until they gross over $100k?

[Jenksismyhero]

Shouldn't you be applauding this since you don't think anyone should have kids until they gross over $100k?

 

I see what you did there.

 

 

[Y2HH]

I see what you did there.

 

So do I.

[StrangeSox]

I see what you did there.

 

I was poking fun, obviously, but doesn't it make sense from the "don't have children until you're financially stable" perspective?

[Jenksismyhero]

I was poking fun, obviously, but doesn't it make sense from the "don't have children until you're financially stable" perspective?

 

I suppose, if you ignore the fact that now middle america gets to pay for that "free" mandate for everyone.

[Balta1701]

I suppose, if you ignore the fact that now middle america gets to pay for that "free" mandate for everyone.

You already are paying for it.

[southsider2k5]

You already are paying for it.

 

Not if he is in the bottom 40% of so of taxpayers.

[Jenksismyhero]

You already are paying for it.

 

Right, but now we get to pay even more, that's my point. Premiums are going to go up for everyone, whether you/your wife take birth control or not.

[Balta1701]

Not if he is in the bottom 40% of so of taxpayers.

 

Now this is just stupid. Literally stupid.

 

Not only are you repeatling a moronic falsehood, but in this case it's even dumber...since Medicare, Social Security, and state taxes are the taxes that the poor pay...and those are the taxes that explicity pay for taking care of unwanted pregnancies.

[StrangeSox]

New study out on efficacy and efficiency in healthcare programs. Britain's NHS was the main focus but other countries are examined as well.

 

The NHS is one of the most cost-effective health systems in the developed world, according to a study (pdf) published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine.

 

The "surprising" findings show the NHS saving more lives for each pound spent as a proportion of national wealth than any other country apart from Ireland over 25 years. Among the 17 countries considered, the United States healthcare system was among the least efficient and effective.

 

Researchers said that this contradicted assertions by the health secretary, Andrew Lansley, that the NHS needed competition and choice to become more efficient.

 

"The government proposals to change the NHS are largely based on the idea that the NHS is less efficient and effective than other countries, especially the US," said Professor Colin Pritchard, of Bournemouth University, who analysed a quarter of a century's data from 1980.

 

"The results question why we need a big set of health reform proposals ... The system works well. Look at the US and you can see where choice and competition gets you. Pretty dismal results."

 

The study will be a blow for Lansley, who argues that patients should choose between competing hospital services and GPs.

 

Pritchard's last academic paper, which argued that surgeons were being distracted from frontline work by "unfunded" targets in the NHS, was used by Lansley to justify government reforms.

 

Using the latest data from the World Health Organisation, the paper shows that although Labour's tax-and-spend strategy for the NHS saw health spending rise to a record 9.3% of GDP, this was less than Germany with 10.7% or the US with 15%.

 

Not only was the UK cheaper, says the paper, it saved more lives. The NHS reduced the number of adult deaths a million of the population by 3,951 a year – far better than the nearest comparable European countries. France managed 2,779 lives a year and Germany 2,395.

 

This means, the paper says, that dramatic NHS improvements have led to a situation where that there are now 162,000 fewer deaths every year compared with 1980.

Paper here

 

 

[StrangeSox]

11th Circuit finds that the mandate is unconstitutional but is severable.

[Balta1701]

11th Circuit finds that the mandate is unconstitutional but is severable.

The Dissent is one piece of work.

"Quite simply, the majority would presume to sit as a superlegislature, offering ways in which Congress could have legislated more efficaciously or more narrowly. This approach ignores the wide regulatory latitude afforded to Congress, under its Commerce Clause power, to address what in its view are substantial problems, and it misapprehends the role of a reviewing court. As nonelected judicial officers, we are not afforded the opportunity to rewrite statutes we don't like."

 

.....

 

"It would surely come as a great shock to Congress, or, for that matter, to the 47.5 million people covered by Medicare, the 44.8 million people covered by Medicaid, and the overwhelming number of employers, health insurers, and health care providers regulated by ERISA, COBRA, and HIPAA, to learn that, because the health care industry also 'falls within the sphere of traditional state regulation,' Congress was somehow skating on thin constitutional ice when it enacted these laws."

 

....

"In the course of its opinion, the majority also attaches great significance to the unprecedented nature of the legislation before us. It is surely true that, as the district court concluded, the individual mandate is a novel exercise of Congress' Commerce Clause power. But the mere fact of its novelty does not yield its unconstitutionality. [...]

 

Every new proposal is in some way unprecedented before it is tried. And to draw the line against any new congressional enactment simply because of its novelty ignores the lessons found in the Supreme Court's Commerce Clause cases."

[Jenksismyhero]

The Dissent is one piece of work.

 

Yeah the connection to medicare, etc is a crap argument. If they majority was taking the point of view that health care law was in the purview of the states, then the whole thing would have been dropped, not just the part mandating coverage, which as it admits, has never been done before.

[StrangeSox]

4th circuit voted to uphold the ACA on jurisdictional and merit grounds today. Another ruling that's just setting the stage for a SCOTUS review.

[Balta1701]

Reagan-appointed appellate court judge delivers verdict upholding the individual mandate in the affordable care act, comes down very harshly on the notion that requiring health care purchases is unconstitutional.

Since appellants cannot find real support for their proposed rule in either the text of the Constitution or Supreme Court precedent, they emphasize both the novelty of the mandate and the lack of a limiting principle. The novelty–assuming Wickard doesn’t encroach into that claim–is not irrelevant. The Supreme Court occasionally has treated a particular legislative device’s lack of historical pedigree as evidence that the device may exceed Congress’s constitutional bounds. But appellants’ proposed constitutional limitation is equally novel–one that only the Eleventh Circuit has recently–and only partially–endorsed. [...]

 

That a direct requirement for most Americans to purchase any product or service seems an intrusive exercise of legislative power surely explains why Congress has not used this authority before–but that seems to us a political judgment rather than a recognition of constitutional limitations. It certainly is an encroachment on individual liberty, but it is no more so than a command that restaurants or hotels are obliged to serve all customers regardless of race, that gravely ill individuals cannot use a substance their doctors described as the only effective palliative for excruciating pain, or that a farmer cannot grow enough wheat to support his own family. The right to be free from federal regulation is not absolute, and yields to the imperative that Congress be free to forge national solutions to national problems, no matter how local–or seemingly passive–their individual origins.

The author is a former official in the Nixon, Ford, and Reagan administrations, and also is the author of the appellate court decision which overturned Washington D.C.'s handgun ban.

[StrangeSox]

He went after the attempt to distinguish "activity" and "non-activity" pretty harshly.

[NorthSideSox72]

Funny still that if they had simply made it an outright tax, instead of a mandated purchase, the constitutional arguments would not exist. Even though in some ways, the ultimate result is the same.

 

I still think that a purchase mandate is one subtle difference too far, but that is just my view.

 

 

[StrangeSox]

Funny still that if they had simply made it an outright tax, instead of a mandated purchase, the constitutional arguments would not exist. Even though in some ways, the ultimate result is the same.

 

I still think that a purchase mandate is one subtle difference too far, but that is just my view.

 

According to an article I read earlier today (I'll see if I can find the right link again), courts have looked passed whether Congress specifically calls something a tax in the past and looked at intent and effect.

[StrangeSox]

Scotus granted cert to several cases and set aside five and a half hours for oral argument.

[Balta1701]

Scotus granted cert to several cases and set aside five and a half hours for oral argument.

I have no idea if that's a lot or a little.

[Balta1701]

I have no idea if that's a lot or a little.

After checking, it seems generally agreed that is "A lot". Maybe more than has ever been set aside by the Court for a single case.

[Balta1701]

For once I don't care if people whine about it being a blog, here's the information on waht is being challenged, what isn't being challenged, and the schedule.

So what questions, exactly, will the Court be addressing? The cert-stage briefs are all here, and here's a summary of the questions:

 

1. Whether Congress can tell the states that they have to expand how many people are covered by Medicaid, and force them to pay for the expansion, by threatening to withhold billions in federal funding unless States comply.

 

2. Whether the mandate is a tax and, as such, can't be challenged in Court until it's actually imposed in 2014 or so.

 

3. Whether Congress had the power under Article I of the Constitution to enact the mandate.

 

4. And if it didn't, what other parts of the Act are so inextricably intertwined with it that they, too must go.

 

The Court did not explicitly ask questions regarding whether all of the parties had standing to sue; Denniston suggests this is because "undoubtedly some of those involved in the business trade group case do have a right to sue against the mandate." Nor did the Court choose to review, as it had been asked, whether it was constitutional for Congress to require large employers in the public and private sectors to provide adequate health insurance coverage to their full-time employees. Nor were any recusals noted by the Justices in their consideration of these cases.What happens next? Many, many trees die. Within 45 days (Thursday, Dec. 29—so forget about that Christmas vacation), the various Petitioners must file 40 copies of their briefs on the merits; 30 days later, the respondents do the same; and 30 days after that come the reply briefs. Oral argument may be as late as the last two weeks in April, and sometime in the week of June 25, 2012 (I doubt it'll be sooner), the Court will issue its decision.

[StrangeSox]

After checking, it seems generally agreed that is "A lot". Maybe more than has ever been set aside by the Court for a single case.

 

They broke down the history on All Things Considered today. Until ~1845, there were no limits and the arguments could last days. By 1925, it was one hour per side, and then in the 70's it was reduced to 30 min. per side. Arguments against the Voting Rights Act in the 50's went longer IIRC, but this is the longest since at least then.