Health Care Legislation: USA

[horizon200]

Originally Posted by melliedee

I was going to pick you and Craig for my trenches. You can fly planes and helicopters and stuff, and Craig is a cop. I'll read inspirational verse by flashlight, supply cigs, and start rounds of "I never" to pass the time. Whoops, no light in the trenches; I'll do it from memory: Out of the night that covers me, black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever Gods may be for my unconquerable soul...

Zombie apocalypse? Now, I'm gonna have to go with DH because it seems like he might know his way around a cross bow. And Ginger because she's a zombie-phile.

Now see, that would be cool having you in the trenches...especially with that Avatar...nobody's gonna come across the wire! We'll also make sure you have Night Vision Goggles for the poetry readings
I'm OK with the planes....but actually flying helicopters...nu uh...that's a collection of spare parts flying in close formation! So, ugly even the Earth repels them...etc etc...helicopter cliches done.

[D33RHUNT3R]

Originally Posted by melliedee

I was going to pick you and Craig for my trenches. You can fly planes and helicopters and stuff, and Craig is a cop. I'll read inspirational verse by flashlight, supply cigs, and start rounds of "I never" to pass the time. Whoops, no light in the trenches; I'll do it from memory: Out of the night that covers me, black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever Gods may be for my unconquerable soul...

Zombie apocalypse? Now, I'm gonna have to go with DH because it seems like he might know his way around a cross bow. And Ginger because she's a zombie-phile.

True, I happen to actually have a crossbow within 10 ft of me ..

I'm also pretty good with my compund bow, .22 .223 EvilBlackRifle .308 and 9mm M&P.. So the Zombies better get me before I get to my stash..


Do Zombies like Reese's or is that just ET..

I also feel honored you would want me in your trench..

[eccentrictinker]

Looks like nobody listened to poor Barney Frank:

Rep. Frank says he urged Obama to back off healthcare refor

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) thought President Obama was making a "mistake" in pressing for healthcare reform in 2010 and urged the White House to back off after Democrats lost their 60-seat majority in the Senate, the congressman tells New York magazine.

"I think we paid a terrible price for healthcare," Frank told the magazine in a lengthy interview as he prepares to retire at the end of his 16th term. "I would not have pushed it as hard. As a matter of fact, after [Sen.] Scott Brown [R-Mass.] won [in January 2010], I suggested going back. I would have started with financial reform, but certainly not healthcare."

Democrats lost 66 House seats in the 2010 midterm elections. One political science paper estimated that about 25 of those losses could be linked directly to voting in favor of the healthcare reform law.

Frank, who supported Hillary Clinton in 2008, said Obama made the same mistake the Clintons did in the early 1990s by underestimating the concerns of people who already had healthcare coverage.

"When you try to extend healthcare to people who don't have it, people who have it and are on the whole satisfied with it get nervous," Frank said. "The problem with healthcare is this: Healthcare is enormously important to people. When you tell them that you’re going to extend healthcare to people who don’t now have it, they don’t see how you can do that without hurting them. So I think he underestimated, as did Clinton, the sensitivity of people to what they see as an effort to make them share the healthcare with poor people."

He went on to say the healthcare law was a prime factor in Democrats' midterm defeat, along with the economic recession and the fact that "the president didn't want to blame Republicans because he wanted to work together." (editor's note: )Rep. Frank says he urged Obama to back off healthcare reform

http://thehill.com/blogs/healthwatch...lthcare-reform

[D33RHUNT3R]

Originally Posted by eccentrictinker

Looks like nobody listened to poor Barney Frank:

Rep. Frank says he urged Obama to back off healthcare refor

Barney Who

[Seakony]

Originally Posted by D33RHUNT3R

I'm honored by both of you ... Lets hope it never comes to that... Pray for the best and prepare for the worst...


We will fight together in Nov ! ..and vote to remove Obama and his minions from office...

Can I jump in the trenches with you guys? I don't want to get stuck in one where people are whining "that's not fair"...if you know what I mean.

[ryberg]

Originally Posted by Seakony

Can I jump in the trenches with you guys? I don't want to get stuck in one where people are whining "that's not fair"...if you know what I mean.

So Rita's vote is for turning away the people in need of medical care but who didn't get coverage.

Just to bring us back on topic here.

[Brent & Kim]

Originally Posted by ryberg

So Rita's vote is for turning away the people in need of medical care but who didn't get coverage.

Just to bring us back on topic here.

Only you..

[Ginger]

Originally Posted by melliedee

Zombie apocalypse? Now, I'm gonna have to go with DH because it seems like he might know his way around a cross bow. And Ginger because she's a zombie-phile.

Yesss! *fist pump*

[kathy.web]

This article is around 20 years old. That's why there was no mention of Clinton's Welfare Reform that got about half of AFDC recipients off the welfare roles. Why post old stuff? It's just as easy to cut-and-paste newer, more relevant articles.

Originally Posted by D33RHUNT3R

It started under President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s "New Deal" in the 1930s, which authorized the program to make payment to widows with children. Since then, AFDC has been expanded to cover all unmarried parents with children.

Numerous critics — ranging from Charles Murray, author of "Losing Ground," on the right, to Mickey Kaus, author of the upcoming The End Of Equality, on the left — have documented how such payments discourage pregnant women from getting married or encourage women with children to get divorced.
"In 1960, it (welfare) was so meager that only a small set of young women at the very bottom layer of society could think it was ’enough’ to enable a woman to keep a baby without a husband," writes Murray in the July issue of Commentary.
"By 1970, it was ’enough,’ both in the resources it provided and in the easier terms under which it could be obtained, to enable a broad stratum of low-income women to keep a baby without a husband," he adds. "That remains true today."
Kaus puts it more succinctly.
These need to come equipped with two parents, not one.

"Without AFDC," said Kaus, "the culture of single motherhood could not sustain itself."

But, says Kaus, an editor at New Republic magazine, "Johnson hated welfare ... Most of the explosion occurred on (Nixon’s) watch."
In constant 1980 dollars, the federal government spent $66.2 billion on public aid from 1965 to 1969, more than double the amount spent in the previous five years under the Eisenhower and Kennedy budgets. But in the next five years, under Nixon, public aid spending increased another $80 billion.
Poverty programs continued to grow after Nixon left office. Neither Reagan nor Bush gutted, slashed or even reduced welfare programs overall.
Federal contributions to Aid to Families with Dependent Children decreased only 1% in constant dollars from 1981 to 1989, even though 1981 was a recession year when need was considerably greater. Total federal cash assistance to the needy increased 3% in constant dollars.
Kaus and other critics also blame the food stamp program for encouraging welfare dependency.
That program was in fact part of Johnson’s Great Society legacy, beginning in 1965. During Johnson’s term, it ballooned from 424,000 participants to 2.2 million, according to the Department of Agriculture. But food stamp participation exploded during the Nixon years, quintupling by the end or his first term.
By 1980, 21.1 million persons took part in the program. The number dipped slightly during the Reagan boom years, but rose again during the recent recession to an estimated 24.8 million.
During the same period, state and local cash assistance payments increased 82%.
Thus, blaming LBJ for the massive expansion in the welfare state may be unfair. But is it fair to blame the welfare state for the problems of South-Central Los Angeles?
Welfare critics point to a steady decline in family unity since the explosion of the mid-’60s. It’s no coincidence the two are happening at the same time, they say.
According to the Census Bureau, a single-parent family is six times more likely to be poor — and thus a recipient of welfare — than a two-parent family. Women heading families are particularly vulnerable.
In 1980, there were 6.2 million families headed by single women, making up 19.4% of all families with children. By1990, that number had risen to 8.4 million families, or 24.2% of the total.
Blacks have been especially hard hit.
The percentage of black households headed by women grew from 28% to 40% between 1970 and 1980.
At the beginning of World War II, the illegitimate birth rate among black Americans was slightly less than 19%. Between 1955 and 1965 — the year of the Watts riots and also the start of the War on Poverty — it rose slowly, from 22% to 28%.
But beginning in the late 1960s the slow trend rapidly accelerated, reaching 49% in 1975 and 65% in 1989.
Empirical studies have borne out the theory that welfare is behind much of this disintegration.
For example, a study at the University of Washington showed that an increase of roughly $200 a month in welfare benefits per family correlated with a 150% increase in the illegitimate birth rate among teens.
According to the House Ways and Means Committee "Green Book" for 1990, about 40% of parents collecting AFDC were black, 38% white and 17% Hispanic. Blacks make up about 12% of the population, while Hispanics make up about 9% of the population.
The Green Book took its data from the Congressional Budget Office and the Office of Family Assistance of the Family Support Administration.
The concept of welfare dependency was also bolstered recently by a study by David Elwood of Harvard University. He found that of the 3.8 million families currently on AFDC, well over half will remain dependent for more than 10 years, many others for 15 years or longer.
Studies also show a correlation between crime and broken homes. It isn’t so much the crime committed by the members of the broken home itself, says Robert Sampson, a sociologist at the University of Chicago, as it is the impact of broken homes on the community.
"A high threshold of single-parent families in a community means a low capacity for social control of kids," he said. A child is "more likely to find peers in that community who are not supervised."
Sampson said the relationship between broken homes and crimes "is large and certainly larger than many of the other factors that I looked at in the analysis."
Other research shows that not only is there a link between single-parent households and crime, but that the difference between black and white crime rates may largely be explained by the difference between their single-parent household rates.
Jim Maddox of the Washington, D.C.-based Family Research Council, said men who come from such families don’t "have any role models for what a responsible, good family man is. Masculinity then is defined by gangs rather than good family men in the community."
But is it fair to blame the breakup of the black family entirely on welfare, Great Society or other?
Long before the Johnson administration, blacks had high rates of illegitimate birth and single-parent families. But illegitimacy began rising sharply in the 1960s.
Indeed, it was this steadily rising rate, along with a comparable rise in black single-parent households, that led to the publication of Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s controversial 1965 report on the travails of the black family in America.
Dinesh D’Souza, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, says that while minorities raise the cry of victimization too often, "There is something to the argument that there have been structures of segregation that have had a strong cultural impact (on blacks)."
But whatever the problems that blacks have suffered in the last half of the century, D’Souza said, "There’s no doubt that it’s become incomparably worse and the question is, ’What else (besides the welfare explosion) could have done it?’"
Sampson contends, however, that welfare is not as important a factor as a lot of people think it is. . . (Illegitimacy) rates have always been higher among blacks than whites."
The problem is "probably more rooted in the marginalization of black families," Sampson said. "The availability of men has always been lower in black communities than white ones," for a variety of reasons, including higher rates of murder and heart disease.
Sampson’s University of Chicago colleague, William Julius Wilson, author of The Truly Disadvantaged, is the major proponent of the theory that male joblessness breaks up families.
That idea has received fresh new political impetus from New York Gov. Mario Cuomo, who said recently, "It’s not welfare that threatens us, it’s a lack of jobs. It’s growing poverty. It’s a low-wage economy."
Indeed, the percentage of unemployed blacks males age 16-24 increased from about 17% in both 1960 and 1970 to more than 28% in 1980, dropping slightly to about 24% in 1990.


But Murray says that a better indicator than unemployment is labor force participation. Here, the rate dropped from about 74% of black males ages 16-24 in 1960 to 62% by 1980, with a further decline to 59% by 1990.

"The troubling reality," Murray writes, "is that a large proportion of young black males of prime working age are not even available for work."
Murray told Investor’s Business Daily that there is a connection between young black male unemployment and single-parent households.
But it’s not joblessness that’s causing the breakup. Rather, he says, the loss of families to the pull of welfare has led to a marginalization of the men who had headed those families.
Compare black male unemployment increases to what was happening in the rest of the country at the time, he says. In 1960, Murray notes, black youth unemployment was only 6.7 percentage points above that for whites. But by 1980 it was 15.4 points higher.
"Black older workers did just fine. It was the young and ablest workers who lost out and the question is, why?"
Kaus advocates starting anew. He would junk welfare, including AFDC, housing subsidies and food stamps, and replace it with a guaranteed government job for every able-bodied citizen over 18."I don’t talk about causes," said Kaus. "The point is what are we going to do about the problem (now)?"

[Jacko]

Five Obamacare Myths

Anyone care to rebut this? And I mean to rebut the specific points made....

[Luv2Dance]

SAN FRANCISCO — Restaurants and other San Francisco businesses charged customers $14 million in extra health care fees last year, but a big chunk of that money didn't go to health care.

City records show that dozens of businesses with the surcharges spent less than half of the money they collected on medical expenses last year. The companies, including high-profile restaurants, say workers aren't claiming benefits.

'Healthy SF': Records Show Millions In Restaurant Fees Didn't Go To Health Care

[TAPPY]

I will be switching insurances Oct 1 with a pre exsisting condition and in the middle of treatment...all of my doctors have expressed concern about this, I am hoping it goes smoothly. I am wondering if I should just pay Cobra for a year or put my faith in the system.

[gingele]

Originally Posted by TAPPY

I will be switching insurances Oct 1 with a pre exsisting condition and in the middle of treatment...all of my doctors have expressed concern about this, I am hoping it goes smoothly. I am wondering if I should just pay Cobra for a year or put my faith in the system.

Pay for COBRA. No question. And I am pretty sure that COBRA benefits can be last for up to 18 months, not just the 12 months as you mentioned.

You will know by November who will be our next president.

If it is Obama, the ACA's provision against pre-existiing condition discrimination for adults kicks in January 1, 2014. If you elect COBRA, you can pay for the continuation of your current insurance for up to 18 months - which will get you to January 1, 2014. Then you can enroll in the new insurance plan and NOT be denied coverage for your pre-existing condition and drop the last few months of COBRA coverage.

If Romney is elected and ACA gets repealed, then you can thank those who voted for him after your COBRA runs out, but at least you will be able to continue with your current course of treatment uninterrupted. Sad, but true.

How could you possibly consider rolling the dice on this one and NOT electing COBRA, Tap?

[TAPPY]

It is a roll of the dice. I have talked to the new insuance company - BCBSLA - which is the same coverage that I have now, with the same insurance company (BCBS) - just thru my hubbys company - not mine - they said as long as there is no lapse in coverage that there will be no pre-x. problems. Not sure if that is true or not. Which is fine- I can go from one to the other with no lapse. I just dont know if I trust the whole process. I think I will double cover myself for at least a year anyway.

[Jacko]

Originally Posted by TAPPY

It is a roll of the dice. I have talked to the new insuance company - BCBSLA - which is the same coverage that I have now, with the same insurance company (BCBS) - just thru my hubbys company - not mine - they said as long as there is no lapse in coverage that there will be no pre-x. problems. Not sure if that is true or not. Which is fine- I can go from one to the other with no lapse. I just dont know if I trust the whole process. I think I will double cover myself for at least a year anyway.

I believe that IS true..Tappy, you should be able to get a clear and definitive written answer to that without having to pay double.....