It doesn’t take Stephen Hawking to figure this one out

DEAR BIRTHERBAGGERS – QUIT DRIVING ON OUR ‘SOCIALIST’ FEDERAL HIGHWAYS SO THAT I CAN GET HOME FROM WORK FASTER. THANK YOU!! Geez…

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Thanks for the truth Elizibeth. I know a number of Brits who live and work in the U.S. who find it is cheaper to fly back to the U.K. for any major medical procedure and they do have employer based health insurance in the U.S.

For anything more costly than a simply office visit, the airfare and time taken off of work is less expensive than having paying the share that they would have to pay of their American employer based insurance plan. I know a number of them and I do not know anyone who actually has anything that requires a hospitalization or same day surgery sort of procedure that has it done in the U.S. They fly back to Britain.

Everyone I know who has lived in both the United States and France says that the French system is miles superior to anything that is offered in the United States as well.

For example this is the kind of falsehood that the right in the United States issues as fact. One of the ten questions listed above:

“6. Will you vote for a plan that will allow a board of politicians and bureaucrats to override decisions made by you and your doctor?”

Actually this does NOT occur in any national system anywhere in the world. The boards that decide what will be covered and what will not be covered all over Europe consist not of politicians an bureaucrats, but an independent group of doctors who tell the GOVERNMENT

It is only in the current system in the United States where a board of insurance businessmen and insurance actuaries come between you and your doctor to override the medical professional with regard to what will be paid for. That is the reality in the United States. In Canada, Great Britain and Europe the doctor has the last say, and the insurance company has to abide by it.

In Canada, or Great Britain, if your doctor says you are going to have a test, an operation, a procedure, or a medication you are going to get it and it is going to be fully covered. In the United States if an insurance claims person says you are not going to get, it, you are not going to get it.

That entire list of “questions” is basically a set of false assertions. There is no nation that has a health care system that is more rationed by an set of bureaucrats than the United States, Except in the United States, the bureaucrats work for the insurance industry. The United States has more claims and health care rejections than the other five largest national health systems put together and it has more uninsured than the entire population of 20 of the top 30 nations with national health care put together.

This set of questions is typical of most Republican or conservative ways of framing arguments. The person is setting out with the assertion that what he is asking about health care reform is not already a reality in the United States.

In the United States, over the last eight years, the insurance industry has seen about a 425 percent increase in their profits, but the number of people they have covered has dropped by about 20 percent. How did they accomplish this business miracle. Easily. Eight years ago they spent 95 cents out of every dollar paying for health claims. Today they pay 80 cents out of every dollar paying for health claims.

To put it simply, they increased their profits by denying 425 percent more claims.

Right now, Americans already have someone other than their doctors deciding what treatment they will or will not get. Unfortunately those doing the deciding cannot be removed from power. A person who is going to get a very generous raise if he decides NOT to pay for what your doctor orders now controls your health care decisions.

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I’m a Canadian watching the debate from the outside.
I simply cannot believe that you have allowed your politics to be debased by the extreme positions of both sides.

you’re supposed to be the shining example of democracy. The same democracy you are holding up to the world as the best way to govern (Can you say Iraq, Afghanistran, North Korea, Iran, etc. etc.)

And yet you take any issue and argue it in terms that are as ridiculous as you would hear coming from any third world despot.

You have marginalized yourself so badly, NOTHING good will ever happen in your country again unless something changes.

Don’t destroy. Make things better. Don’t ridicule. Recommend.

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Thanks to your good work, and the bloggers who wrote about it, I have learned that over 300,000 caregivers in the UK (they call them carers) receive services from the NHS. Over a million people 65 and older received NHS community-based services. Oh, how
I wish I could have had a carer’s allowance when I was caring for family members.

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NJ says, “Republicans basically tell falsehoods.”

This is quite a statement from someone who has posted multiple falsehoods on this blog alone. Among them:

-false state abortion rates

-quote from John Adams taken out of context (trying to show he was not a Christian)

-saying that “Even Martin Luther stated that he had no scriptural basis at all for the concept of ‘justification by faith alone’ which does not exist in the New Testement (sic) at all…” (On this a bible.org column notes, “The doctrine of justification by faith alone is, according to Luther, the center of Paul’s theology. Calvin saw the doctrine as the ‘principal hinge by which religion is supported.’ It was this rediscovery of the judicial/forensic nature of justification that gave birth to Protestantism and delivered the church from the Augustinian-Roman Catholic concept of justification as infused righteousness.”)

Given your history there’s no telling what you’ve misrepresented on this thread as well.

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Trust the government to do something, anything well? Ask the Indians.

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To everybody that says Hawkins is getting by because of his wealth…in the U.K. a person cannot even have personal coverage. The health system is for everybody…rich or poor. I personally like Canada’s system better, it is mandatory if you make under $50,000.

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Britain’s National Health Service began in 1948, and Hawking was born in 1942. Failing to mention this in your article leaves the false impression that he was born under the National Health Service and was treated just fine by it. I can’t help but think this was intentional on your part.

Because, um, it totally negates your whole point, you first class fool.

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Lets look at other Red State phenomenon:

Porn in the USA: Conservatives are biggest consumers

Americans may paint themselves in increasingly bright shades of red and blue, but new research finds one thing that varies little across the nation: the liking for online pornography.

A new nationwide study (pdf) of anonymised credit-card receipts from a major online adult entertainment provider finds little variation in consumption between states.

“When it comes to adult entertainment, it seems people are more the same than different,” says Benjamin Edelman at Harvard Business School.

However, there are some trends to be seen in the data. Those states that do consume the most porn tend to be more conservative and religious than states with lower levels of consumption, the study finds.

“Some of the people who are most outraged turn out to be consumers of the very things they claimed to be outraged by,” Edelman says.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16680-porn-in-the-usa-conservatives-are-biggest-consumers.html

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Lets try who has the lowest divorce rates:

United States 1,191,000 4.6

1 Massachusetts 14,530 2.4
2 Connecticut 9,095 2.8
3 New Jersey 23,899 3.0
4 Rhode Island 3,231 3.2
5 New York 59,195 3.3
Pennsylvania 40,040 3.3
7 Wisconsin 17,478 3.4
North Dakota 2,201 3.4
9 Maryland 17,439 3.5
10 Minnesota 16,217 3.6
Louisiana *** 3.6
12 Illinois 43,398 3.7
13 District of 2,244 3.9
Columbia
Iowa 10,930 3.9
15 Nebraska 6,547 4.0
Vermont 2,316 4.0
17 Michigan 38,727 4.1
18 South Dakota 3,022 4.2
South Carolina 15,301 4.2
Hawaii 4,979 4.2
21 California *** 4.3
22 Maine 5,433 4.4
New Hampshire 5,041 4.4
24 Ohio 49,968 4.5
25 Virginia 30,016 4.6
26 Kansas 12,093 4.7
Utah 8,999 4.7
28 Delaware 3,385 4.8
29 Montana 4,153 4.9
30 Missouri 26,324 5.0
West Virginia 9,179 5.0
32 North Carolina 36,292 5.1
Colorado 18,795 5.1
34 Georgia 37,001 5.2
35 Oregon 16,307 5.3
36 Texas 99,073 5.4
37 Alaska 3,354 5.5
38 Washington 29,976 5.6
39 Mississippi 15,212 5.7
40 Kentucky 22,211 5.8
Arizona 23,725 5.8
42 Florida 82,963 5.9
43 New Mexico 9,882 6.0
44 Idaho 7,075 6.2
Alabama 26,116 6.2
46 Indiana *** 6.4
47 Wyoming 3,071 6.5
48 Tennessee 34,167 6.6
49 Oklahoma 21,855 6.7
50 Arkansas 17,458 7.1
51 Nevada 13,061 9.0

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Wait a second… I believe I remember reading that people with the disease Hawking has, have an average of 10-20 years to live– so any claims that he gets healthcare because he’s wealthy are d.o.a; unless of couse my rememberance is incorrect or his family was wealthy during his childhood.

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@Wyld Byll Hyltnyr or whatever.
No, Stephen Hawking has not always been rich. He was diagnosed with motor neuron disease at 21. While he was far from poor, he was not immensely wealthy and was treated by the National Healthcare Service (NHS). His “immense wealth” had nothing to do with it. Later he used it to fund other avenues of research but he is still treated by the NHS.

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I dunno dude, doesnt take a rocket scientist to figure it out!

RT
http://www.anon-web-tools.net.tc

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Tim: Hawking has ALS or Lou Gehrig’s Disease. It is not congential (uh that means he wasn’t born with the condition). He developed it in the 60’s and wasn’t profoundly affected until the 70s well into the institution of socialized medicine. Also to the folks who claim that Dr. Hawking is using his vast fortune to obtain better, private insurance (which is allowed in most Western nations who have government run plans like France, like England, like Canada which sort of blows the ole Obama-care or nothing argument 8-\): uh, you realize Dr. Hawking is a math professor, right? And yes he’s a math professor at Cambridge and he has a side line in theoretical physics, but as Richard Feynman used to say, that and $1.50 will get you a cup of coffee. Stephen Hawking’s father was a medical researcher for the British National Institute of Medicine?!?! So where’d this vast fortune come from; he’s not Jude Law, or Richard Branson or JK Rowling. I really don’t think those residuals from Star Trek: The Next Generation get him much more than a nice vacation in Cannes. And don’t tell me that it all those royalties from A Short History of Time. I know all of my college professors were forking in the big bucks from their text book earnings, NOT! And even if he was earning vast sums, he’d be taxed to the poor house, right? After all it IS Britain and that socialist economy. But let’s let someone who actually knows tell you: http://www.spectator.co.uk/alexmassie/5255761/stephen-hawking-has-not-yet-been-murdered-by-the-nhs.thtml. As recently as this past April Dr. Hawking was cared for in an NHS (yes, a socialized medicine) hospital. And yet he’s still alive. Wow, I guess he just snuck through that inefficient, government run death panel. And if that weren’t enough let’s consider how Dr. Hawking has been treated under socialized medicine and how your average, uninsured post doc would be treated here under the land of commercial only insurance: hmmm can you say pre-existing condition? Just make a quick Google search of ALS and insurance coverage. You’ll find lots of horror stories of insurance companies refusing coverage or patients quickly hitting their lifetime coverage limit even before the worse symptoms show up. Sweet Jesu, come to your senses now and stop being morons. We promise the Obama-care death panels won’t qualify you for the Soylent Green track just because you are idiots!

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It never ceases to amaze me how afraid the right wing Americans are of socialist health care, when there are several other countries that have had it for years and it hasn’t killed EVERYONE. Every political agenda or ideology has a flaw. And clearly, the current health care system is just one big major flaw.

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Re: euthanasia and death panels…..This country is having an attack of stupidity.

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I’m still looking for the first Republican to offer sane, fact/reality-based opposition to President Obama’s reform. Too bad I’ll never find that at AJC. Or really, anywhere on the right…

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There are no and there will be no government death panels. Obama’s idea is to simply put all the uninsured on the Federal Employees Insurance Plan. That has been the solution to the nations health problems that Democrats have been suggesting for well over 20 years now.

Of course the death panel blather is coming from the same political party that called Medicare Communism.

What the Republicans are attempting to do is to of course, create conditions where the elderly can sign documents that allow the hospitals or insurance companies to pull the plug on the elderly without knowing what they are signing.

As it stands, it is already law, passed under George Herbert Walker Bush and a Republican dominated Congress that all hospitals must ask every patient if they have a living will and if they do not, to offer them one. This law does require the hospital to actually explain what they are signing, so Congress now wants to make sure that before someone signs one, they actually know what they are signing. Republicans hate the idea of consumer protection to begin with, so they are dead set against the idea of having the patient counseled on what they are signing before they sign it.

They like the status quo, where a hospital or insurance claim representative can simply shove the document under their nose with a pile of other papers and then get them to sign it.

This then puts all the power of end of life situations into the hands of the hospitals and the insurance companies and out of the hands of the patient and the families. Republicans are at it again. They want to make absolutely certain that they can get the elderly to sign these things before they actually know what they are signing.

My favorite thing about all this is that the primary sponsor of the amendment with regard to Medicare paying for a private health care advocate unaffiliated with hospital or insurance company is our own Georgia Republican Senator, Johnny Isakson as reported in a number of places. Isakson wanted Medicare to pay for the elderly to be able to have this counseling in their own homes:

Isakson is a member of Senate Health committee that played a key role in shaping the health care reform legislation. He successfully offered an amendment in committee that allows funds for a government-funded program that provides in-home services to people with disabilities to be used for advance care planning, according to the national Hospice and Palliative Care Organization.

Another article notes that the amendment was attached to the legislation in committee by two Republicans, Johnny Isakson and Susan Collins of Maine:

The living will provision that the right-wing fear mongers have perverted into “euthanasia for Grandma” is actually a bill sponsored by Republican Senators Johnny Isakson (Ga) and Susan Collins (ME). It provides that medical providers will be reimbursed for their time in discussing living will and advance medical directives with you (currently, medical providers have an ethical obligation to discuss this with you at your initiative, but Medicare does not reimburse them for their time).

The fact is that the existing text of Medicare Law PROHIBIT euthanasia by law. Medicare law PROHIBITS the government from paying for services “the purpose of which is to cause, or assist in causing,” suicide, euthanasia or mercy killing.”

Its illegal for the government to pay for any assisted suicide at all and section 1233 of the new health legislation changes the law prohibiting Medicare from paying for assisted suicide.

http://arizona.typepad.com/blog/2009/08/how-gop-fear-mongers-have-perverted-living-wills-into-euthanasia-for-grandma.html

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“Defeat fear and ignorance by any means necessary!!”

Both sides promote fear and ignorance; don’t think for a second that your side is any better!

Join no party, join no ideology, turn off your tv, turn off your radio…your world is not what it seems.

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On page 837 the bill clearly says that when the bill is finally signed into law, every Republican will get a lobotomy and the co-pay will only be $10.

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Again various medical journals have put together totals of the executive and upper managerial remuneration of health insurance companies and determined if their extremely generous remuneration was cut in half, there would be enough money to purchase health insurance policies for the 47 million uninsured from these companies directly.

In 2005 the head of United Health earned 124 million dollars a year, This year it is more than double that at 258 million a year The head of Wellpoint the lowest paid of the top 22 health insurance companies in the nation got 23 million with a five year average of 46.8 million meaning that between 2000 and 2005 this guy increased his salary from a relatively reasonable one to an extremely large one. The head of United Health had a five year total of 342 million in 2005 and again he earned half of that amount in 2005 alone.

Why was 2005 a bellweather year for health insurance executives. They knew that John Kerry was not going to be president and so they would not be facing Kerry’s put everyone without health insurance on the Federal Employees Plan and they also knew that George Bush had no intention of following through on his 2400 dollar tax credit campaign promise. Bush promised 1900 dollars when he ran in 2000 and forgot about it the day after the counting stopped.He promised it again in 2004 and nothing came of that either.

One thing that is certain. Any private option that is promised to be funded by tax credits will be forgotten by the Republicans immediately.

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LD: Perhaps ONE of the reasons Sarah backed off her comments is she may have noticed that most private insurance companies will not cover the care of Down’s Syndrome. It’s considered a pre-existing condition. Of course Sarah IS the same governor who cut funding for special education programs in Alaska, all the while pimping her son, Trig, as the reason she would understand “medically challenged” families. Or maybe she, like most of the hysterical right, is just completely confused/insane by having to keep track of all of the Faux News/Big Insurance Company, Limbaugh/Beck/Dobbs/Hannity talking points while completely ignoring things like FACTS.

BTW: Kelley Stevens: Brilliant!! That gave me one good laugh before nighty-night!

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Let’s think about the ‘rationing’ issue this way: say this plan is the utopia that liberals contend it is. You suddenly insure the 46-50 million uninsured (or whatever the number is this week. Next it will probably be reported at 100,000,000). The first question out of the box is: who will pay for their care? If they’re uninsured now, chances are they are not able to sustain medical costs. The answer was already announced last week in the form of keeping middle-class tax increases on the table (like it was ever really not an option for this administration. There’s only so many rich people and private businesses to demonize). Now you’re creating not only stress on the sector that employs the middle class, but you’re putting stress on a level of people who are already stressed enough with their own medical premiums (among other things), now they have to take on the added burden of paying for 50,000,000 newly insured patients by government mandate.

However, there is another question not examined: who is going to care for these newly-minted 50,000,000 insured? Where is the additional hospitals, medical professionals, support staff going to come from? Since its clear Obamacare by all accounts will force out more doctors and medical professionals than it will bring in, there will have to be degredation of care in some form or fashion. This is on top of the stress some hospitals in the south and west face now with treating uninsured illegal immigrants and the costs involved with they don’t recoup.

And the CBO’s already said the numbers don’t add up. Costs are going to rise with Obamacare, not drop as the President likes to tout. The results have been studied in countries that have socialized medicine, and the numbers make it clear this liberal utopian plan is a pipe dream:

http://mises.org/story/3586

The government’s initial step in attempting to create a government-run healthcare monopoly has been to propose a law that would eventually drive the private health insurance industry out of existence. Additional taxes and mandated costs are to be imposed on health insurance companies, while a government-run “health insurance” bureaucracy will be created, ostensibly to “compete” with the private companies. The hoped-for end result is one big government monopoly which, like all government monopolies, will operate with all the efficiency of the post office and all the charm and compassion of the IRS.

Of course, it would be difficult to compete with a rival who has all of his capital and operating costs paid out of tax dollars. Whenever government “competes” with the private sector, it makes sure that the competition is grossly unfair, piling costly regulation after regulation, and tax after tax on the private companies while exempting itself from all of them. This is why the “government-sponsored enterprises” Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were so profitable for so many years. It is also why so many abysmally performing “public” schools remain in existence for decades despite their utter failure at educating children.
America’s Healthcare Future?

Some years ago, the Nobel-laureate economist Milton Friedman studied the history of healthcare supply in America. In a 1992 study published by the Hoover Institution, entitled “Input and Output in Health Care,” Friedman noted that 56 percent of all hospitals in America were privately owned and for-profit in 1910. After 60 years of subsidies for government-run hospitals, the number had fallen to about 10 percent. It took decades, but by the early 1990s government had taken over almost the entire hospital industry. That small portion of the industry that remains for-profit is regulated in an extraordinarily heavy way by federal, state and local governments so that many (perhaps most) of the decisions made by hospital administrators have to do with regulatory compliance as opposed to patient/customer service in pursuit of profit. It is profit, of course, that is necessary for private-sector hospitals to have the wherewithal to pay for healthcare.

Friedman’s key conclusion was that, as with all governmental bureaucratic systems, government-owned or -controlled healthcare created a situation whereby increased “inputs,” such as expenditures on equipment, infrastructure, and the salaries of medical professionals, actually led to decreased “outputs” in terms of the quantity of medical care. For example, while medical expenditures rose by 224 percent from 1965–1989, the number of hospital beds per 1,000 population fell by 44 percent and the number of beds occupied declined by 15 percent. Also during this time of almost complete governmental domination of the hospital industry (1944–1989), costs per patient-day rose almost 24-fold after inflation is taken into account.

The more money that has been spent on government-run healthcare, the less healthcare we have gotten. This kind of result is generally true of all government bureaucracies because of the absence of any market feedback mechanism. Since there are no profits in an accounting sense, by definition, in government, there is no mechanism for rewarding good performance and penalizing bad performance. In fact, in all government enterprises, exactly the opposite is true: bad performance (failure to achieve ostensible goals, or satisfy “customers”) is typically rewarded with larger budgets. Failure to educate children leads to more money for government schools. Failure to reduce poverty leads to larger budgets for welfare state bureaucracies. This is guaranteed to happen with healthcare socialism as well.

Costs always explode whenever the government gets involved, and governments always lie about it. In 1970 the government forecast that the hospital insurance (HI) portion of Medicare would be “only” $2.9 billion annually. Since the actual expenditures were $5.3 billion, this was a 79 percent underestimate of cost. In 1980 the government forecast $5.5 billion in HI expenditures; actual expenditures were more than four times that amount — $25.6 billion. This bureaucratic cost explosion led the government to enact 23 new taxes in the first 30 years of Medicare. (See Ron Hamoway, “The Genesis and Development of Medicare,” in Roger Feldman, ed., American Health Care, Independent Institute, 2000, pp. 15-86). The Obama administration’s claim that a government takeover of healthcare will somehow magically reduce costs is not to be taken seriously. Government never, ever, reduces the cost of doing anything.

All government-run healthcare monopolies, whether they are in Canada, the UK, or Cuba, experience an explosion of both cost and demand — since healthcare is “free.” Socialized healthcare is not really free, of course; the true cost is merely hidden, since it is paid for by taxes.

Whenever anything has a zero explicit price associated with it, consumer demand will increase substantially, and healthcare is no exception. At the same time, bureaucratic bungling will guarantee gross inefficiencies that will get worse and worse each year. As costs get out of control and begin to embarrass those who have promised all Americans a free healthcare lunch, the politicians will do what all governments do and impose price controls, probably under some euphemism such as “global budget controls.”

Price controls, or laws that force prices down below market-clearing levels (where supply and demand are coordinated), artificially stimulate the amount demanded by consumers while reducing supply by making it unprofitable to supply as much as previously. The result of increased demand and reduced supply is shortages. Non-price rationing becomes necessary. This means that government bureaucrats, not individuals and their doctors, inevitably determine who will get medical treatment and who will not, what kind of medical technology will be available, how many doctors there will be, and so forth.

All countries that have adopted socialized healthcare have suffered from the disease of price-control-induced shortages. If a Canadian, for instance, suffers third-degree burns in an automobile crash and is in need of reconstructive plastic surgery, the average waiting time for treatment is more than 19 weeks, or nearly five months. The waiting time for orthopaedic surgery is also almost five months; for neurosurgery it’s three full months; and it is even more than a month for heart surgery (see The Fraser Institute publication, Waiting Your Turn: Hospital Waiting Lists in CanadaDownload PDF). Think about that one: if your doctor discovers that your arteries are clogged, you must wait in line for more than a month, with death by heart attack an imminent possibility. That’s why so many Canadians travel to the United States for healthcare.

All the major American newspapers seem to have become nothing more than cheerleaders for the Obama administration, so it is difficult to find much in the way of current stories about the debacle of nationalized healthcare in Canada. But if one goes back a few years, the information is much more plentiful. A January 16, 2000, New York Times article entitled “Full Hospitals Make Canadians Wait and Look South,” by James Brooke, provided some good examples of how Canadian price controls have created serious shortage problems.

*

A 58-year-old grandmother awaited open-heart surgery in a Montreal hospital hallway with 66 other patients as electric doors opened and closed all night long, bringing in drafts from sub-zero weather. She was on a five-year waiting list for her heart surgery.
*

In Toronto, 23 of the city’s 25 hospitals turned away ambulances in a single day because of a shortage of doctors.
*

In Vancouver, ambulances have been “stacked up” for hours while heart attack victims wait in them before being properly taken care of.
*

At least 1,000 Canadian doctors and many thousands of Canadian nurses have migrated to the United States to avoid price controls on their salaries.

Wrote Mr. Brooke, “Few Canadians would recommend their system as a model for export.”

$14

Canadian price-control-induced shortages also manifest themselves in scarce access to medical technology. Per capita, the United States has eight times more MRI machines, seven times more radiation therapy units for cancer treatment, six times more lithotripsy units, and three times more open-heart surgery units. There are more MRI scanners in Washington state, population five million, than in all of Canada, with a population of more than 30 million (See John Goodman and Gerald Musgrave, Patient Power).

In the UK as well — thanks to nationalization, price controls, and government rationing of healthcare — thousands of people die needlessly every year because of shortages of kidney dialysis machines, pediatric intensive care units, pacemakers, and even x-ray machines. This is America’s future, if “ObamaCare” becomes a reality.

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A 2.5 percent tax is still lower than a the average increase in premiums and the government program will bring down all premiums by no less than ten percent according to the CBO as well as the Comptroller Generals office.

And of course that 2.5 percent tax only applies to those who earn more than 250,000 dollars a year, which you rather forgot to mention…so did the Free Republic website which carefully cut off the line before the sentence ended

The line with the 2.5 percent note applies to these income brackets:

1) 1 percent of so much of the modified adjusted gross income of the taxpayer as exceeds
23 $350,000 but does not exceed $500,000,

1 ‘‘(2) 1.5 percent of so much of the modified
justed gross income of the taxpayer as exceeds
3 $500,000 but does not exceed $1,000,000, and
4 ‘‘(3) 5.4 percent of so much of the modified
justed gross income of the taxpayer as exceeds
6 $1,000,000.

Bang…earn less than 350,000 dollars a year and there is NO TAX AT ALL on income.

It also requires certain businesses with large enough incomes who decide to NOT take provide their employers with health insurance to pay an eight percent tax on their companies income so the government can subsidize their employees separate.

I read the FULL legislation on this and the section that you put up with the cut off line says the 2.5 percent increase that can be applied only applies to income levels in 4 section 6012(a)(1) with respect to the taxpayer.

Go to that section and you see that the income range for this starts at 350,000 dollars a year.

As I said Republicans play by the Goebbels playbook. They lie by telling a part of the truth and excluding the most important part. They say that the government can increase taxes, but fail to say whose taxes they are going to increase. Those who earn 350,000 dollars a year or more. No one else will be taxed to pay for “Obamacare”

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“Kelly Stevens

August 11th, 2009
12:20 am

On page 837 the bill clearly says that when the bill is finally signed into law, every Republican will get a lobotomy and the co-pay will only be $10″

That’s great, Kelly, then we can all live in ignorant bliss with our “friends” on the left. Sounds like a plan.

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Has anyone seen that old movie where Sean Connery plays an insane poet who is finally given a lobotomy and is just as insane afterwards as he was before hand, I think it was called “A Fine Madness”

I am afraid that you have to have an upper brain and higher brain functions for a lobotomy to work, and that aint in the cards for Republicans who we know rely on the lower fear functions of the reptilian brain.

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Read pages 425 thru 430 of Obamas health car plan. Lucky for my parents, they are not here.

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NJ, I’m sorry to spoil your party here, but your administration, the one you keep quoting for your ‘facts’, has already left an out for themselves in taxing the middle class to pay for Obamacare. They did so last week:

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/2-Obama-officials-No-apf-2491158742.html?x=0&.v=7

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama’s treasury secretary said Sunday he cannot rule out higher taxes to help tame an exploding budget deficit, and his chief economic adviser would not dismiss raising them on middle-class Americans as part of a health care overhaul.

As the White House sought to balance campaign rhetoric with governing, officials appeared willing to extend unemployment benefits. With former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan saying he is “pretty sure we’ve already seen the bottom” of the recession, Obama aides sought to defend the economic stimulus and calm a jittery public.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and National Economic Council Director Larry Summers both sidestepped questions on Obama’s intentions about taxes. Geithner said the White House was not ready to rule out a tax hike to lower the federal deficit; Summers said Obama’s proposed health care overhaul needs funding from somewhere.

“There is a lot that can happen over time,” Summers said, adding that the administration believes “it is never a good idea to absolutely rule things out, no matter what.”

During his presidential campaign, Obama repeatedly vowed “you will not see any of your taxes increase one single dime.” But the simple reality remains that his ambitious overhaul of how Americans receive health care — promised without increasing the federal deficit — must be paid for.

“If we want an economy that’s going to grow in the future, people have to understand we have to bring those deficits down. And it’s going to be difficult, hard for us to do. And the path to that is through health care reform,” Geithner said. “We’re not at the point yet where we’re going to make a judgment about what it’s going to take.”

Selling that proposal, however, has proved tricky.

On Friday, the government released a report that suggested the worst recession in the United States since World War II appears on the verge of ending. The economy dipped only slightly in the second quarter of this year — falling at a 1 percent annual pace, better than expected.

The president cautioned against instant turnaround, though.

“Well, as I’ve said, I think we maybe are beginning to see the end of the recession, but it’s still going to be some time before we are seeing companies hiring again. That’s usually the last thing that happens,” Obama said in an interview with Univision that aired on Sunday.

“So I think we are still going to have a tough remainder of the year — probably until next year — but, you know, at least what we are seeing — we’ve pulled back from the possibility of a depression. That’s not the danger.”

Many analysts think the economy is starting to grow again in the current quarter, setting up a long-awaited recovery.

“Most private forecasters — and let’s use their judgment — suggest you’re going to see unemployment start to come down maybe beginning in the second half of next year,” Geithner said, adding those same economists predict positive growth during the second half of this year.

At the same time, Geithner and other administration officials are contemplating how to ask Congress to extend — again — unemployment benefits for the millions of Americans who have lost their jobs in recent months. The proposal drew measured support from Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., as long as the benefits are drawn from the already approved economic stimulus package.

“We need to take care of those who are unemployed, but we also need to make sure they get jobs,” he said.

Those jobs, though, are still elusive. Greenspan said the economy is slowly coming back.

“Collapse, I think, is now off the table. We were teetering for a while,” he said.

Greenspan said he doesn’t think the Federal Reserve should be considering raising interest rates to ward off inflation, although he added that the Fed will have to rein in credit and raise rates at some point.

Obama’s opponent for the presidency, Sen. John McCain, questioned whether the administration’s actions will prove beneficial for the country.

“I think it’s pretty clear, if you pump trillions of dollars into the economy, you will see some recovery,” the Arizona Republican said while giving Obama credit for the improvement. “But the long-term consequences, I think, are going to be, unfortunately, devastating unless we do something about it.”

Geithner and Greenspan appeared on ABC’s “This Week.” Summers appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” and CBS’s “Face the Nation.” DeMint was interviewed on “Fox News Sunday.” McCain spoke with CNN’s “State of the Union.”

You’re doing a great sell job tonight, trying to sell everything liberal to everyone here, all the way from the Founders outright hating Christianity (in reading your various quotes from multiple sources it’s clear they hated the clergy moreso than the religion, which is not terribly unusual among the religious in any sect or deitists such as the Founders , and even Thomas Jefferson later in life appreciated the teachings of Jesus: “He also rejected the idea of the divinity of Christ, but as he writes to William Short on October 31, 1819, he was convinced that the fragmentary teachings of Jesus constituted the “outlines of a system of the most sublime morality which has ever fallen from the lips of man.” http://www.monticello.org/reports/interests/religion.html) all the way to repeating the Administration’s talking points on Obamacare.

Really, though, it’s pretty clear that the same people that didn’t buy it coming from the Clinton’s in 1994 aren’t going to buy a version of it today when all they’ve done with that pig is give it redder lipstick. It’s a nice try, but really you’re just rearranging the deck chairs, and if the next step is to insult the intelligence of the skeptical (which liberals always make the mistake of doing) then you’re not only failing to sell your case, you’re just ticking us off.

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And of course someone like Hawking has a HUGE advantage living in Great Britain that he would face in America. If his employer dropped one insurance and started another, chances are that Hawking might have to find at least one new doctor out of the several he likely has to see because of his condition, and the new doctor might not agree with the same treatment regime, the same medication, the same anything, that may be working fine for Hawking.

This occurs often in the United States, Your boss changes your insurance and your doctor does not accept that plan, you are S.O.L. Change your job and you face the same situation. It has happened to me more than a few times. Over a 13 year period my employer changed insurance 4 times, one time NONE of my doctors were on the plan, and the other three,at least one of my doctors didnt accept it and in another case, my doctor had closed his books on the number of people he would accept for that insurance. I was fortunate in that he decided to make an acception for me, but he just as well could not have.

Another massively terrible aspect of the American employer based system. Your employer decides when you have to switch doctor and even medication. A friend of mine here in Georgia just had to stop taking a medication that he has been on for years, because his employers changed carriers and the formulary of the new carrier didnt include his very expensive medication.

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“Another massively terrible aspect of the American employer based system. Your employer decides when you have to switch doctor and even medication.”

Really? I’ve had a few employer insurance plans, and not once have I been called into HR or my bosses office and been told ‘This week, you’re going to Dr. Smith’. In fact, when my employers have changed insurance coverage, typically the doctors and their practices are wise enough to be covered under multiple employer-based insurance plans, so usually I keep the same doctor. All anyone has to do is search their doctor out on Cigna.com or Humana or UHC, or BCBS, you name it.

Your assertion is completely false on its face, NJ.

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“…If Obama care is so nifty, why do the liberal sheople spend so much time explaining the flaws in the conservative thought process rather than explaining the good characteristics of Obama’s so called plan.”

Simple. There is so much intentional misinformation that a lot of effort is spent just correcting that. If you are not talking about the same thing, you can not have a meaningful debate, and opponents seem hellbent on discussing some fiction created by whatever fears they have buried in their collective psyche. At town hall meetings where there is an attempt for proponents to explain, opponents are jeered and booed. Is that what you would call a constructive dialogue. The quote from the editorial sounds like it is based very loosely on Obama’s meeting with AARP members, but is so far from what was actually said that it is laughable. I wonder if the author had enough confidence on his take to include a reference to the actual event so people could hear the remark for themselves. Nothing like a little fact checking to keep an editorialist honest.

Others bring up that we should not have to pay for illegal aliens’ coverage. Guess what people, we already do. Insurance premiums take into account what is spent on the uninsured. We should not be too upset about it anyway because it is essentially exposing the cost of having clean pools, trimmed hedges, shiny toilets, and fresh vegetables at a low price.

And just to help me out can someone explain who the “true citizens America” and “real Americans” are?

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No, all you have to do is look at your plan, and see that doctor smith is no longer on your list of doctors who accept your NEW insurance

The figures various figures that exist in the medical journals indicate that when an employer changes his carrier 30 percent of the employees will have to change doctors.

The simple truth is that when your employer changes carriers, changes coverage, changes benefits, he doesnt have to ask YOUR opinion or approval. He changes you are screwed. An employer can change the basic policy offered from a PPO to an HMO at the drop of a hat. You might be able to select the PPO as an option but at a much larger co premium sum.

Doctors mention this all the time in the New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association, They lose a lot of patients every time a local employer switches carriers:

NEJM — Changes in the Delivery of Care under Comprehensive Health …
No longer will doctors have to ferret out details of a patient’s insurance policy … Too often patients are forced to switch doctors because the loss of a job or a change in employer means loss of or change in insurance coverage. …. Insurance carriers, peer-review organizations, and state and federal inspection …

How long are you going to sit there and be wrong, over and over and over again. The most commonly claimed pain in the ass that employees and doctors talk about is that when a carrier is changed for any reason, a lot of patients lose their doctors and a lot of doctors lose their patients.

Again this explains why every recent poll in the last 15 months shows that doctors support a SINGLE PAYER option by 59 percent to 30 percent against.

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[...] It doesn’t take Stephen Hawking to figure out that he’s the wrong example for right-wing…blogs.ajc.com [...]

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This forum proves that government education works for the Democrats as liberal have no rational capacity for reasonable dialog or analysis. Once rationing occcurs it will be for all Americans except for the elite like other socialist countries. This means when you get older or have a major disease like cancer, have the priest say your last rites because you will have to wait for treatment because of the cost analysis.
Now, as for the 50 million, studies have proven and they are on several websites including USAToday, 20% of Americans of the 50 million make 50-80K and choose not to purchase insurance, 8 million of the 50 million are illegal aliens, and some are eligible for Medicare and Medicade.

Now liberals, how about the unions attacking protestors. You cry hate when someone else disagrees with you, but cry patriotism when you oppose your opponents.

Liberal what do you expect from people that follow Obama, a community organizer that read Marxist doctrine and follow that guidance of Sal Alinsky.

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Nope the demographics of the uninsured by income is:

The Uninsured by Income

The 45.8 million uninsured are more likely to be poor and low income than higher income. Figure 2 shows that over half of the uninsured are below 200% of poverty, with 25% below the poverty line and 28% between 100% and 199% of poverty.(3) That the uninsured are concentrated among lower-income individuals is not surprising, given that low-income individuals are less likely to:

be working, and if they do work they are less likely to be working full time,
receive an offer of insurance, and
be able to afford an offer of coverage.
Not all low-income individuals are eligible for Medicaid. Medicaid eligibility is based on a combination of income and population “category.” The population groups that qualify for Medicaid are generally children, parents of dependent children, pregnant women, the disabled, and the elderly. The income levels at which these groups qualify differs from state to state, and group to group, with coverage of children and pregnant women being available at higher income levels, followed by the disabled and elderly, then parents of dependent children last (though this varies by state). Childless adults who are not disabled or elderly rarely qualify for Medicaid, even at the very lowest income levels.

While the income distribution of the uninsured is skewed toward those with lower incomes, Figure 2 shows 27% of the uninsured have incomes above 300% of poverty, with one-in-ten (11%) uninsured above 500% FPL.(4) That the uninsured comprise non-trivial percentages of middle and upper income individuals is surprising. Those with incomes above 300% of poverty should generally find employer insurance affordable. Data from employers shows that average single coverage premiums for employer sponsored insurance represent 2.0% of income at 300% FPL, and average family coverage premiums represent 4.7% of income for a family of four at 300% FPL (with a higher percentage for smaller families).

http://aspe.hhs.gov/health/reports/05/uninsured-cps/index.htm

incorrect again:

Next the rate at which employers are covering employees is dropping pretty much in a straight line, downward when graphed. If the set the top left hand corner of the graph as the year 2000, and the bottom right as 2008. the angle of the decline is about 60 degrees. In 2000 64 percent of employers provided health care for their employees. In 2008, it was 59 percent. Roughly 9 percent. The angle show absolutely no deviation no flattening, no steepening over that eight year period, At that rate in the next 8 years the rate will be roughly a 13.5 percent decrease in employer based coverage between 2008 and 2016 you get roughly an 8 point drop in coverage. In 2016 51 percent of employers will cover their employees. In the next 18 months that falls to 49 percent of employees covering their employees and this does not really deal with escalating premiums rates. If premium rates increase more than is usual, that move the drop below the 50 percent level even closer depending on how much the increases are.

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Simply put in about a `decade more Americans will not have health insurance than have it if they rely on job based health insurance. Of course the 80 million Americans who have government health insurance currently will STILL have it. More Americans will have government health insurance than workers who have employers who provide them with medical insurance will. Right now 44 million of that 80 million are on Medicare. 6.6 million have VA insurance. 8.5 have Federal Employee health insurance.Not sure of how many dependents of current military are on tri care, but I assume it is several million.

The government not only already provides health care, it provides health care that is generally used to rate how good non government health care is. The primary consideration that private insurers use to determine which hospitals they will pay their enrollees to use, is Medicare certification. A hospital loses its Medicare certification every major insurer will remove them from their list of approved hospitals

Which hospital has won the gold seal of approval from the National Committee for Quality Assurance which is a private non profit medical organization that rates the quality of care in hospitals. The VHA. None of the first tier hospitals in the United States won the highest level ranking from this organization.

The government already provides better health care than any private insurance provider in the country.

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Simply put by every standard of health quality measurement, the government outperforms the private insurance sector in quality of health care delivery.

One of the most disaterous events in recent health care history was when the government offered incentives for the creation of HMOs in order to lower health care costs. HMO’s failed to achieve their cost reducing potential. This was the first sign that the health care industry does not respond to market incentives particularly when the distortions of allowing businesses to grant these benefits as tax free income. The effect of allowing worker insurance benefits to be granted tax free is the single largest contributor to rising health care costs. This is the same thing that occurs in mortgage deductions. Allow people to deduct their mortgage interest and the prices of housing rises at rates that are not reflected in any real value of the property. In countries where there is no such deduction, there is no such distortion in the housing markets. The prices of houses are lower, and the rate at which they rise is slightly higher than inflation, but not much so. In Canada, the price of a house might rise an average of 3-5 percent per year. That keeps housing affordable. Do not allow health insurance to be tax free income and you get the same effect. It is even more effective to remove the benefit as a single payer tax than as tax free income. This is one of the major factors in countries with single payer plans like France which offers MORE health care services to the public and spends fifty cents for every dollar spent in America. Waiting time for a GP appointment is 15 to 20 times shorter than the average wait in America.

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I pray to God that this piece of teh stupid appeared in the print version of IBD, so they can’t just conveniently disappear it.

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No one wants the Socialist Racist Obama Health Care!

Bottom line:

WE DO NOT WANT IT!

Enough Said!

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Wyld Byll Hyltnyr

Stephen Hawking is a British subject permanently domiciled in the UK who a) had to be treated by the NHS at the onset of his condition because private alternatives did not then exist and b) Is not wealthy – well off but not wealthy. Certainly not rich enough to have afforded private care in the UK all those years ago even had it been available. So he and others like him can be and are supported in a country which cares for all of its citizens all of the time and not just by the NHS. You are wrong, completely wrong, about Hawking, systems for providing civilized health care and much else besides.Not least the easy way in which you insult and denigrate other countries and other ways of doing things from a position of profound if argumentative, ignorance.

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AlladinsLamp is right: The so-called “Death Panels” that the wingnuts are ranting about were actually an idea from pro-lifer Johnny Isakson! To use their own methods against them, let’s force the media to ask Johnny why he wants to kill grandma! See http://www.progressivepeach.com

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All you Obamacare supporters are forgetting one simple fact: Hawking would not be allowed healthcare to keep him alive under Obama’s system! Case in point: Hitler introduced the same thing in the 30s. Yes, hitler, the same person who EUTHANIZED MILLIONS OF HANDICAPPED PEOPLE!

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Instead of all this he said, she said stuff, why doesn’t this newsapaper simply do it job – do a series on the bills, page by page and put out the facts to speak for themselves.
Remember, income tax started out as a measly 2% only on the wealthiest Americans. How is that working out now – only 60 years later.

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The biggest difference between liberal protesters and conservative?
Liberals complain about what they are not given by the government, consevatives complain about what is taken by the government.

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GUADALAJARA, Mexico (Reuters) – The White House said on Monday that President Barack Obama has a “winning” strategy in Afghanistan and enough forces.

I thought the “War on Terror” was over……..

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The details don’t matter. A majority of Americans don’t want to get their healthcare from the govt. Everything else is just conversation.
KJ

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End of Life counseling is a good idea for everyone. Making a living will is a good idea for everyone.

Euthanasia is illegal in this country and has absolutely noting what-so-ever to do with end of life counseling.

Living Wills are NOT just something the elderly should do either. Think about Terry Shiavo. Had she taken the time to write a living will while healthy, we could have avoided the tradgedy that unfolded.

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http://www.apa.org/pi/eol/role.html

That ^ is a link to the American Psychological Association’s description of “End of Life Counseling”.

As you can read, it has absolutely nothing to do with euthanasia. That is garbage.

End of Life Counseling is helping a person deal with their inevitable death and making sure that they have the medical care necessary. A major part of it is dealing with depression.

Two elderly men in Atlanta killed their wives and themselves this month. Most likely they were dealing with depression. A counselor MAY have been able to help them deal with it and avoid that tradgedy.

To paint End of Life Counseling as something evil is irresponsible and if you are doing that, you should be ashamed of yourself.

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First of all, thank you Kamchak and NJ for even addressing the FairTax here. I’ll respond to your comments below.

Second, where in HR3200 does it talk about Congressional members being allowed to exempt themselves from the public option? It would seem to me this is an important point and should not be glossed over.

Now, to respond to the FairTax comments, no, Kamchak, I’ve never read the Boortz books on the subject. Perhaps I’ll get around to it eventually. Instead, I’ve read the plain English version of the bill itself found here: http://www.fairtax.org/PDF/PlainEnglishSummary_TheFairTaxAct2007.pdf

Both of you seem to fall into the line of thinking that the FairTax is regressive and shifts the tax burden to the poor and middle classes. This is simply not true. Chapter 3 of the summary clearly demonstrates how those at the nationally defined poverty level will be compensated with a monthly rebate check to cover the cost of the FairTax on necessities. Add in that FICA and Social Security are no longer withheld from their paychecks and those at the poverty level reduce their tax from approximately 15% to about 11.5% not an increase to 28%.

Yes, a millionaire rarely goes out to eat a $150K steak dinner, but they do frequently purchase $150K cars or planes. Millionaires spend much more on jewelry, home entertainment systems, and other luxury items than your average working class family. The discretionary items you’ve suggested are not taxed under FairTax, NJ, are exactly the items that ARE taxed. The only “discretionary” items that are untaxed would be items defined as “used property” which is defined as “property on which the federal sales tax has been collected already.” (Plain English Summary, Title II, Sec 201, Subtitle A, Sec 2 – definitions)

The $1K rent shouldn’t increase to $1300 because the landlord is no longer paying an income tax on the rent collected, but instead is filing as a registered seller and submitting his taxes that way instead and is eligible for a $200 credit if he files in a timely manner.

Admittedly, there will be some retailers that would use the FairTax as an excuse to increase their prices on various items or will not reduce their prices to compensate for not paying any corporate taxes and will see it as a means to increase profits, but for the average person who gets to take home their entire paycheck as opposed to only 75% of their earnings, it will make a huge difference. A family making $50K a year will see an increase of as much as $7500 to their spendable income under the FairTax.

As far as the 23% vs 30% argument, this deals with tax-inclusive vs tax-exclusive accounting. To save me from having to type it all, here’s an excellent explanation: http://is.gd/1wEvk

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Well, Jay here we are again. The last time we conversed was over our new Justice of the Supreme Court’s choice of words, and now we are at health care. Let me say, as I have in the past, that I think universal health care is necessary, in some fashion. I had the unfortunate circumstance of spending 6 hours in the emergency room with my 88 year old mother this weekend. While we were there, there were three other people who shared the same room with my mother. One was clearly an emergency. The other two were just as clearly not emergencies. I can say this,even as a layperson, because it was clear that two had no emergency, but rather used the emergency room folks as their personal physicians. The cost of that has to be unbelievable and the savings associated with avoiding that would have to be substantial.

On the other hand, my real purpose here is to address your remarks concerning Stephen Hawkings. This may have been already pointed out, but I refuse to read four pages of pointless meanderings to find out. If you will go to Stephen Hawking’s own web site, in his own words you will find this:

“Up to 1974, I was able to feed myself, and get in and out of bed. Jane managed to help me, and bring up the children, without outside help. However, things were getting more difficult, so we took to having one of my research students living with us. In return for free accommodation, and a lot of my attention, they helped me get up and go to bed. In 1980, we changed to a system of community and private nurses, who came in for an hour or two in the morning and evening. This lasted until I caught pneumonia in 1985. I had to have a tracheotomy operation. After this, I had to have 24 hour nursing care. This was made possible by grants from several foundations.”

Clearly we can’t know how much help he got from the british system, but as he says, when he needed 24 hour nursing care, he didn’t get it from the goverment, but from “several foundations.”

I know things go better when they are black and white, but balance seems important as well.

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