What is Obamacare?

Aulleas123

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SciMal said:
Aulleas123 said:
All I'm saying is that the president did make a very clear promise and this ruling violates that. If he wants to keep to his promise, then he should attempt to rework the bill, however I'm skeptical that he will do this.
Good info.

I wouldn't expect him to. Expecting a President to not raise taxes - especially after what happened right before he took office - is a little absurd.
Agreed, as much as I'm not a fan of increasing taxes on anybody, making that pledge is part of a recipe for disaster no matter how conservative or libertarian he/she wants to sell themselves as.
 

Chunga the Great

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Sep 12, 2010
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TwiZtah said:
Why in the fuck don't they just go with the scandinavian system (I think it is the whole of scandinavia) and tax everyone a few percent and then everyone gets free healthcare. If your medicine costs go over about 1000 SEK (about 140$) you get that money back and won't have to pay for medicine or hospital. Why would anyone have anything against a system like this?

Oh wait, Republicans... Why are they still alive?
*sigh*

We're trying, there are just too many idiots who scream "DAT DER R COMMUNISM! SOCIALIST DICTATOR! TAKIN OURR MONEH!"
I just wish people were more educated on how communism and socialism actually work.
 

Clive Howlitzer

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The majority of the Obama care stuff has meant so little to me because I live in MA where health insurance already is massively overpriced and mandatory. If you don't have it, you will be fined.
That is unless you squeeze out babies or just don't work. The less responsible you are, the more the state gives you.
 

DeadFOAM

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The Lazy Blacksmith said:
Anybody else find it ironic that more non-Americans have replied than Americans?
I generally stay out of these threads because of the America-bashing these threads tend to dissolve into. But I'll make an exception this time.

OT: I'm not incredibly knowledgeable about the topic. To my knowledge, its a tax/fine on people without health insurance. They can choose to not by health insurance if they so desire. However, they have to pay a tax so if they do something that their insurance WOULD have covered, they aren't purely a drain. Similar to car insurance.
 

thebakedpotato

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Obamacare is a law that allows President Obama, regardless as to whether or not he is in office at the time; to personally euthanize any American for any reason he sees fit.
Glenn Beck told me so.
 

Mau95

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Nov 11, 2011
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I thought most of the developed world had this. U.S. seems pretty late to the party.
 

Mau95

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Nov 11, 2011
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TwiZtah said:
Why in the fuck don't they just go with the scandinavian system (I think it is the whole of scandinavia) and tax everyone a few percent and then everyone gets free healthcare. If your medicine costs go over about 1000 SEK (about 140$) you get that money back and won't have to pay for medicine or hospital. Why would anyone have anything against a system like this?

Oh wait, Republicans... Why are they still alive?
Belgium does this too. I think pretty much all of Europe has that by now.
 

Mau95

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Nov 11, 2011
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thaluikhain said:
MASTACHIEFPWN said:
Republicans and FOX news try to shove stuff down peoples throats about how public healthcare kills everyone, "Oh what's that you need an operation? Well, you'll die two years before we can cure you!" Not.
Why are we ranked so low in medical care? I think Australia is above us, and they have SNAKE EATING SPIDERS, AND EVERY POISONOUS THING KNOWN TO MAN IN THEIR COUNTRY!
I mean, the platypus is even poisonous! They still have a lower chance of death in the 16-60 catagory. Dafuq?
Presumably most of the Australian politicians and media personalities actively out to destroy the country were eaten. The US needs to import more dangerous animals and mail them to Republicans, I guess.
That is an awesome idea. +1 likes. Or whatever currency is used here.
 

Mau95

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Nov 11, 2011
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DaRigger420 said:
Anyone looking at the $190 fine needs to take a closer look.
It goes up in 2016 to $695 or 2.5% of your income, whichever is greater.

If you can't afford insurance now, how can you afford a $700 fine (or more) on the same pay?

If an employer is found (by the government who collects the money) to not have a complient program, they will be fined anywhere from $100/day to $2000 per employee.

Can you say goodbye small mom and pop businesses?

We are ALREADY paying into the program but will not recieve any benefits untill 2014.
That equals paying in for 10 years for only 6 years of services.

Sorry, I expect to recieve items/services at the time I pay for them, not years later.

And as for those saying that it is now going to be handled through the Tax Code so don't worry, do you really want your healthcare handled by the IRS?
Saying they dont have th eability to inforce this doesn't take into account the 1600 new agents they have just hired and (oh yeah) ARMED with military grade weapons.

I can see it now, to get your preexisting condition treated you have to fill out form 1040Bio, subtract your age, add the cost of treatment, refer to a table in the back of a booklet and after mailing it all in find that you figured it wrong and are only going to be issued some pain meds so you cant feel the cancer eating your body to death.

These are only a few items.
Folks need to look deeper into the 2700 pages of this bloated beast of a law, but they will no tbe allowed to see the whole thing.
To quote the people who came up with it "We had to first PASS the Law to be able to find out what is IN the Law."

I don't know about all of you, but even to my 13 year old niece obamacare stinks like last weeks sushi in the sahara.
That's called an investment. You pay some money now and it helps out later on. And anyone can get a weapon these days, you really should do something about that.
 

Mau95

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Nov 11, 2011
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Xanthious said:
Imthatguy said:
I do get that, and in both cases it is more important to keep everyone alive and fed then to focus on only feeding the rich. As a country we have to care for everyone in the country. And I would change one word in your last sentence, our health care in canada is not as good as it "could" be. Not should. It can always be better. I would argue that having the best doctors for the richest, and no one for the poor is nowhere near what a health care system should be.
Imthatguy said:
Rather get some than die <-- That is the situation 1/3 of the countries in.
The thing is though the poor weren't dying in the streets with our current healthcare system in the US. As it currently stands if you have a medical emergency you can not be turned away regardless of the hospital. There are government funded healthcare safety nets in place already for the poor and elderly. Nobody is really going without. America has managed to survive just fine without Obamacare just fine and amazingly enough we haven't had to sweep hordes of dead poor people out of the gutters yet.
Do you hear what you're saying? Yet. YET. Soon, my pretty...
 

Talvrae

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Dec 8, 2009
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The main problem it seem with ObamaCare is it does a precedents where the state can force individual to buy a product. At the moment it's only health assurence and might not seem a big deal. But what when the State decide everyone need to buy i don't know, huse assurence, a garbage can? It's a weird precedents
 

Imthatguy

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Sep 11, 2009
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Mau95 said:
Xanthious said:
Imthatguy said:
I do get that, and in both cases it is more important to keep everyone alive and fed then to focus on only feeding the rich. As a country we have to care for everyone in the country. And I would change one word in your last sentence, our health care in canada is not as good as it "could" be. Not should. It can always be better. I would argue that having the best doctors for the richest, and no one for the poor is nowhere near what a health care system should be.
Imthatguy said:
Rather get some than die <-- That is the situation 1/3 of the countries in.
The thing is though the poor weren't dying in the streets with our current healthcare system in the US. As it currently stands if you have a medical emergency you can not be turned away regardless of the hospital. There are government funded healthcare safety nets in place already for the poor and elderly. Nobody is really going without. America has managed to survive just fine without Obamacare just fine and amazingly enough we haven't had to sweep hordes of dead poor people out of the gutters yet.
Do you hear what you're saying? Yet. YET. Soon, my pretty...
Nah... Like good citizens they die at home silent and unknown. The coroner not bothering to figure out the reason their symptoms killed them.
 

Signa

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Evilpigeon said:
Yes, I did read his comment. It's not charity and the whole point of a government is to babysit you.

Government exists to enforce rules and standards, in other words to turn an anarchy into a society. To do this it actually has to look after the people in its society (what do you think laws are for, do you count them as charity as well? How about roads, state funded schooling, public sector jobs etc...).

In a functional society people have basic rights and priviledges, I'd say that the right to be generally healthy is fairly central to the whole concept of a functioning society. You're entitled to your own opinion on the matter of course, I'd just call it extremely callous.
It's not as callous as it is practical. The government's job isn't to feed us, it's to make sure that food of a reasonable quality is being produced at an affordable rate for everyone in the country to eat. This healthcare system (which I admit I'm woefully ignorant of) seems like the government handing us our meals instead of just making sure we can get our own meals.

Over the last 2 years, I've been unemployed or working for minimum wage. I don't have a lot of extra spending cash. One of my saving graces is that I don't need to visit the doctor almost ever. Being forced to spend money on insurance kinda pisses me off. Not enough to directly oppose Obamacare, but I don't see it as the right solution. It seems to me the right solution would have pissed off Big Business (insurance companies), and so the laws were made to not piss them off.
 

Olas

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Dec 24, 2011
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Basically the democrats wanted to create a universal healthcare system so that everyone, even the sickly and poor, can get treatment. The republicans didn't want that so they fought it tooth and nail to make it as privatized as possible, the result being a weird deformed system that doesn't really please anybody that the conservative right has dubbed "Obamacare" to further smear it, despite it being completely different than what he envisioned and him having almost no direct input on it whatsoever.

Not sure why I bothered posting to a thread with a thousand replies already, like anyone's even going to read this.
 

BlueMage

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Jan 22, 2008
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TwiZtah said:
Why in the fuck don't they just go with the scandinavian system (I think it is the whole of scandinavia) and tax everyone a few percent and then everyone gets free healthcare. If your medicine costs go over about 1000 SEK (about 140$) you get that money back and won't have to pay for medicine or hospital. Why would anyone have anything against a system like this?

Oh wait, Republicans... Why are they still alive?
Because people like the Feudalism system that republicans masquerade as freedom.
 

CarlMin

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Jun 6, 2010
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Obamacare is basically the American version of a universal healthcare system, which is a government alternative to private health insurances. With approximately 45 million Americans without any health insurance at all, it's about time really.

Universal healthcare is, in my opinion, a human right which is also way it's utilized in virtually any developed country in the world. America has finally been added to that list.
 

Paladin Anderson

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Nov 21, 2011
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Sober Thal said:
People who can't afford healthcare, will be fined...

*sigh

Canada is looking better every day!
Well, it's expected, that the cost of health insurance will plummet when it becomes mandatory for everyone.

Right now health insurance is very expensive. The reason why being that no one wants to buy it until they get sick. So there's a large percentage of people taking more out than what they are putting in. Which drives up the price and makes even fewer people want it until they get sick. It's a self destructive cycle.

Insurance companies tried to combat this by not allowing anyone who's already sick to join them. But that's causes all kind of problems and some very crooked behavior by companies trying to prove someone who is sick was sick before they got insurance.

So only the wealthy and the sick have health insurance. By forcing everyone to get it, it will force the price down because healthy people are paying in and not just people who are sick. It, should, lower health care costs as well because people will be going to the doctors more often and getting treated early rather than waiting for their condition to become life threatening and, more importantly, very expensive.

I'm upset that the government insurance option was taken out because it would have FORCED insurance companies to lower their costs to compete. But conservatives saw this as government taking control of a private business sector. At the same time conservatives put forward no ideas of their own to combat these problems because their ideology is non-interference. They had no theories on how not doing anything would solve this. Besides, it was just poor people dieing. They tend to do that a lot. Why should the government care?

And, yes, I've dreamed of moving to Canada for years.
 

Syzygy23

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Zack Alklazaris said:
Obamacare has a few major parts to it.

First off Insurance Companies can no longer deny you service because of a pre-existing condition.
It's for that reason alone I begrudgingly support it. You know how hard it is to get good insurance when you have hemophilia?

In the year 2014 you will be required to get health insurance or be forced to pay a fine (I think its $190).

If you do not get private insurance you can get health insurance through your state. This is because your state is required to offer you 3 different levels of coverage at "reasonable" prices.

Theres a bunch more, but thats what I know off the top of my head. You should try wiki.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient_Protection_and_Affordable_Care_Act

Oh I am an American... though I work at a news station so I saw Obama's Speech yesterday.
... Sometimes I feel like Obama just WANTS to make this pill as hard to swallow as possible. Well he and his cabinet, I'm sure it's not JUST him.

I mean, what do they do if you can't AFFORD the health care? Still try to fine you? Trying to squeeze blood from a stone, yeah?
 

Uber Evil

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This [http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/vb8vs/eli5_what_exactly_is_obamacare_and_what_did_it/c530lfx] explains it better than I ever could. You only get taxed for not having insurance if you can afford it, but don't want it. If you can't afford it you are exempt from the tax.
EXEMPTIONS.?No penalty shall be imposed under subsection (a) with respect to?
??(1) INDIVIDUALS WHO CANNOT AFFORD COVERAGE.?
??(A) IN GENERAL.?
Any applicable individual for any month if the applicable individual?s required contribution (determined on an annual basis) for coverage for the month exceeds 8 percent of such individual?s household income for the taxable year described in section 1412(b)(1)(B) of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. For purposes of applying this subparagraph, the taxpayer?s household income shall be increased by any exclusion from gross income for any portion of the required contribution made through a salary reduction arrangement
 

Polock

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SajuukKhar said:
Sober Thal said:
People who can't afford healthcare, will be fined...

*sigh

Canada is looking better every day!
Was that a joke against the people who said that?

Because going to Canada would be...... the exact opposite thing you would want.

considering they have an even more socialized healthcare system then Obamacare is.
Thank you.

I can't believe the amount of people saying "Canada is sure looking much better!"