This monumental assfucking brought to you by the Democratic party

[SSG]

Everybody knows both parties are comprised primarily of fucktards (personally, I think the Republicans are only slightly less so). The current problem is mainly the lack of balance with the Dems controlling everything. In Nov. and again in 2012, the Reps will likely regain the majority and (just like the Dems now) they'll do everything in their power to fuck the other party and the American people. It's not about the voters anymore; it's about the politicians' spite for each other.

Oh yeah, universal healthcare is total bullshit, any way you look at it.

[WildmanNot]

Originally Posted by SSG

Everybody knows both parties are comprised primarily of fucktards

I agree

Originally Posted by SSG

they'll do everything in their power to fuck the other party and the American people.

No matter who is in power, they will do this.

Originally Posted by SSG

Oh yeah, universal healthcare is total bullshit, any way you look at it.

It's already here. The poor fucks can already go to the emergency room to get medical care. Guess who pays for that?


Iraq was pretty screwed up. So far the Dems have not achieved something as screwed up as that. I'll lean that way until they do.

[WildmanNot]

Originally Posted by spooky

I don't know what kind of friends you have, but all the Republicans I know are pretty damned smart.

Do you know a gal by the name of Sarah Palin?

[spooky]

Originally Posted by WildmanNot

Do you know a gal by the name of Sarah Palin?

Not personally, no. And singular examples of idiots doesn't mean everyone in whatever party are all idiots. Does Paris Hilton represent the intelligence of the average democrat, or even the average American? It's a mixed bag in all parties/populations, why sensationalize or vilify?

You think you can convince me that Sarah Palin is stupid, therefore I must be? McCain is religious, therefore I must be? Reagan was pro-life, therefore I must be? It's all wrong and all illogical/absurd.

What's the point of this sort of thing?

Originally Posted by SSG

In Nov. and again in 2012, the Reps will likely regain the majority and (just like the Dems now) they'll do everything in their power to fuck the other party and the American people.

I do fear an overreaction with popular support, similar to the aftermath of 9/11 or the Bush administration. I fear that opportunity will again be wasted to make real progress in America.

[WildmanNot]

Originally Posted by spooky

You think you can convince me that Sarah Palin is stupid, therefore I must be? McCain is religious, therefore I must be? Reagan was pro-life, therefore I must be? It's all wrong and all illogical/absurd.

What's the point of this sort of thing?

Never said you were stupid, religious or pro-life. I haven't listened to all of your shows but you sound like a pretty decent guy, but I'm only up to show 240.

Just because you don't know any idiots who are republicans doesn't mean they don't exist.

Someone is electing Vitter, Ensign, Craig, etc.

My problem is with those people that think one party is great and the other is shit. Those people are idiots. Unfortunately a lot of my friends are this way and when it comes to politics, I believe they are idiots.

[MalcolmSmith]

Originally Posted by spooky

Think of a CEO like an NFL player, a free agent in a competitive market. This is the guy who has the most influence on how well a huge company employing thousands, maybe tens or hundreds of thousands, does financially. A bad player may cost you the company, an exceptional player may make the game's winning touchdown. If you can't afford to pay top dollar to an exceptional player, that player will go to another team that can pay. You stand on principle and pay peanuts, you are going to get a shitty CEO by comparison and stick it to the working man by causing him to lose his job while the company flounders.

Bad analogy... unless you're imagining there are NFL players that make their teams lose (or go out of business altogether) and still get paid top $. There are a lot of CEOs out there that are completely dysfunctional for their companies, yet rake in 10s or 100s of millions in compensation. In large part, executive hiring and compensation is a feudal rather than merit based system. It is actually possible to pay peanuts and get a good CEO or pay millions and get a Loser.

[MalcolmSmith]

Originally Posted by WildmanNot

It's already here. The poor fucks can already go to the emergency room to get medical care. Guess who pays for that?

This is a misconception. I have an employee who, while he was working for another company, accumulated a rather sizable emergency room hospital bill. He didn't have insurance and he didn't pay the bill. After he came back to work for us, I was court ordered to garnish his wages according to a fairly ruthless formula. They took about 1/3 of his take-home pay, which was not a great deal to start with. He really got hammered. But eventually, he was able to pay it off. They only way he could have avoided it would have been to skip from job to job in order to stay ahead of the court. Some people do that, but it is not where the bulk of our money is going.

One could argue that the whole idea of insurance is about basically the same phenomenon--whether you have it or not. Who costs us, the people who have it more: a) the person with no insurance who skips out on a lanced boil bill of $250; or b) the person who has paid say $50,000 into a health insurance plan and then has a major health crisis that runs $500,000? It is all relative. The only thing that we do know is that costs are out of control, and they are out of control in a specific way that competition alone cannot remedy.

[MalcolmSmith]

Originally Posted by Ansur

No, you don't understand. What the bill did (as is stated above and in the article) is make it CHEAPER for these big corporations to STOP providing health insurance to their employees.

The employees will be told to get their health insurance through the government mandated exchanges, and the employees will either have to do that or pay the fines stipulated in the bill.

1. We have a high unemployment rate.
2. It will save the average large company about 70% to cut health insurance and pay the fine instead.
3. Individuals will be required by law to have health insurance or pay a fine.

Now, if you make it cheaper for all large companies to not provide health insurance AND still know that all of their employees will still get covered, you get all large companies cutting benefits because it helps thier bottom line.

To compete for better employees, they can take some of those savings and offer a higher salary and still be saving millions.

Now, would you like to guess where the money comes from to cover everyone else? Government subsidies pay a part and the individual pays the rest. This will of course cost billions of extra dollars, which will mean the government needs more money. Between the higher cost for your own health care plan and the extra money from taxes needed to pay for it and the now guaranteed customer base for health insurance companies, the only way to get costs down will be to make doctors charge less. That will cause fewer people to see 8 years of school and spending/borrowing $40k-100k+ as a good career choice.

So, with fewer doctors making less money and more people going to them, this will not increase the quality of medical care you get and it will cost WAY more than they said. And what I am mad about is that a bill was forced though without being read or understaood by many that voted for it, unless they did understand it and this was their plan all along.

No. This is not brought to you by the Democrat party. Basically, what we have here is a medical bubble--similar to the .com bubble and the housing bubble. The entire world of American health care is inflated, overpriced, etc. And there is a giant ball of credit out there supporting: new facilities; unnecessary equipment, technologies and research; massive salaries and profits; high-cost, ineffective or even dangerous pharmaceuticals, etc. That big medical credit bubble is about to burst--meaning we don't have the money to support the inflated costs of the medical industry as a whole. But, right now, it's still alive and the people who profit from it are loath to see the party end. So, they are using their leverage with government to keep it afloat by socializing the costs (through insurance or government--it makes no difference) in the same way we socialized the costs of the housing/financial crisis. It's a game of musical chairs. The only problem is all the health care people and bankers, etc. get to sit down first.

American businesses have been, are, and will continue to dump any employee they can from health care (the only real preventers of that now are nostalgic social values, which are rapidly evaporating). It has nothing in particular to do with either party. It has to do with the fact that the U.S. runs on a bubble-to-bubble economy. If there is one guy to hang the blame on for the bubble-to-bubble mindset, it's probably Ronald Reagan. He took the governor, guilt or social conscience, off of our economy. But, it's probably not fair to him alone--the American people elected him, because we liked that message. There's plenty of blame to go around. The question shouldn't be: Who is to blame?; but rather, What do we do now? We have trillions of dollars of bubbles up there that have to come down. How do we do that without killing each other?

[WildmanNot]

Originally Posted by MalcolmSmith

This is a misconception. I have an employee who, while he was working for another company, accumulated a rather sizable emergency room hospital bill. He didn't have insurance and he didn't pay the bill. After he came back to work for us, I was court ordered to garnish his wages according to a fairly ruthless formula. They took about 1/3 of his take-home pay, which was not a great deal to start with. He really got hammered. But eventually, he was able to pay it off. They only way he could have avoided it would have been to skip from job to job in order to stay ahead of the court. Some people do that, but it is not where the bulk of our money is going.

One could argue that the whole idea of insurance is about basically the same phenomenon--whether you have it or not. Who costs us, the people who have it more: a) the person with no insurance who skips out on a lanced boil bill of $250; or b) the person who has paid say $50,000 into a health insurance plan and then has a major health crisis that runs $500,000? It is all relative. The only thing that we do know is that costs are out of control, and they are out of control in a specific way that competition alone cannot remedy.

I'm not buying it. The guy who doesn't have insurance and has the $500,000 med bill is worse than the guy who pays $50,000 and then has the $500,000 med bill. Basic math.

Either pay for the insurance or suffer on your own. That's the only fair way to do it.

[MalcolmSmith]

Originally Posted by WildmanNot

I'm not buying it. The guy who doesn't have insurance and has the $500,000 med bill is worse than the guy who pays $50,000 and then has the $500,000 med bill. Basic math.

Either pay for the insurance or suffer on your own. That's the only fair way to do it.

What I meant was a guy with no insurance, but a much smaller bill, say even $5,000 or $50,000. I know a lot of people with insurance who run up bills way above and beyond the total of anything they ever paid in. Those costs are immediately shared across their insurance pools, but the overall costs affect everyone. Insurance companies lose on some pools and make up those losses on other pools. Doctors lose on some providers and make those costs up on other patients. In many instances, the single insured and the cash customer actually subsidize managed, insured costs. I'll look into it. I'm pretty confident that the volume of really high dollar treatments and surgeries is not entering, unpaid, through emergency rooms.