It's going to be killed. You may as well enjoy the parts of that you can.
My only hope right now is that the true blue states like New York and California, that set up robust exchanges, set up state-level mini-ACAs (similar to Massachusetts before the ACA) so that people here continue to get covered, which will minimize the damage for blue state residents and yes, heighten the differences between the democrats and republicans.
Of course, if the GOP gets their wish list item of allowing health plans to cross state lines, that goes out the window, because then individual states will lose any/all ability to regulate insurance within their borders.
It will be like the Mann Act. You can cross states lines without trouble unless you are doing so for immoral purposes, such as trying to help a poor person.
1: You don't think they'll try to salvage some of the most ridiculously popular provisions in order to fly under more people's radar?
The vindictive side of me wants them to burn the entire thing to the ground and turn it into a maximized clusterfuck and make everyone hate the GOP.
That's the same side of you that wanted to see Donald Trump get the Republican nomination.
I'm hoping for a repeat of the GWB Social Security attempt to privatize social security -- Republicans spend a bunch of time and energy on it and don't end up passing anything.
I'm not optimistic that will happen, but I think it would be the best outcome.
4: The provisions that are actually popular cost tax dollars or require the mandate in order to not cost tax dollars.
5: No, the vindictive side of me wanted Ted Cruz to get the nomination.
7: Oh sure, I get the contradiction and why they've fucked themselves. I just still think they might salvage some of them. Certainly things like staying on your parents' insurance until age 26 - that doesn't cost anything and it's pretty popular.
6 is what I'm hoping for too. I'm probably a little more optimistic than Nick, but still not very.
9: That might stay. Also, I bet that shitty websites are still used.
Didn't they already vote to kill some of those ridiculously popular provisions at 3 am?
I always thought Obamacare was a huge triumph, but I also had a lot of sympathy for the lefty Obamacare detractors.
But look at how durable Obamacare is! The Republicans are fanatical and unified, and are still going to have a hard time with repeal. It really is possible that repeal will lead to electoral problems for the fuckers. (Of course, non-repeal would also be trouble for them.)
13: One persons "huge triumph" is anthers "demonstrations of the low bar of what is possible in today's environment" I suppose.
always has been. Gets it from his mothers side.
This is totally my reaction too. Plus I walk around thinking to myself 'This country is so fucked.' and 'I hate all these Wisconsinites now and I didn't before. Idiots.'
"I would totally kick your ass, but these guys here keep holding me back". "Guys?" "Guys?" "Aw, shit"
12: What was passed in the Senate last night, as far as I can tell and Lemieux tells me, is nothing but a symbolic shell, a placeholder for provisions to be passed later. This will be I presume be quickly passed to the House where Ryan will do the same, and then there will months of reconciliation? "Obamacare is repealed!!" but no parts of Obamacare are repealed. Yet.
There were the usual "13 Amendments" but have no details on those. Could be Rudy Heinrich Day or Life is Good or no Federal money to people with kinky hair who support terrorism or could be substantive.
I don't have a clue as to what they will actually do, and nobody including them does either, although Ryan may have ideas. Very bad things.
14: You get my point exactly. It's remarkable that such a thing was accomplished in that country, and I am astonished that it was so well-constructed that it might actually survive in this country.
2 Our law is still on the books, do we would still have it if the ACA were repealed, although more people got coverage under the ACA than under Rombeycare. We were able to find it through a Federal Medicaid waiver. It isn't clear how we'd pay for it without the Federal money.
2 Our law is still on the books, do we would still have it if the ACA were repealed, although more people got coverage under the ACA than under Rombeycare. We were able to find it through a Federal Medicaid waiver. It isn't clear how we'd pay for it without the Federal money.
Same here. Mini ACA needs many billions that we might conceivably have, I guess, but it would be a heavy political lift and take years to pull together.
19: Yes, this was the framework to do it via reconciliation later and avoid the filibuster.
Honestly don't know what I can say to Americans these days except "good luck and try to keep the pressure on your politicians." The Trump voters who appear to have believed that the ACA and Obamacare were different things are a solid source of black (pun intended) comedy, though.
On the bright side, everybody in my family who is currently not healthy is getting Medicare.
26: My parents are on Medicare and Medicaid both. Scary times.
Yes. I don't really want to get into it now because it seems to be getting better so I'm going to try to repress some memories.
is nothing but a symbolic shell, a placeholder for provisions to be passed later.
Yeah, okay, maybe it's just an empty shell of cruel and vindictive and spiteful intentions that have yet to be realized. But that doesn't mean they don't mean to make good on their promises (er, threats) as soon as the opportunities arise.
It's the pure spite of those intentions that have left me feeling disoriented, unnerved, and somewhat unmoored. I honestly expected better of the American voting public, and of its elected officials. I was wrong in my expectations.
Have s/b has, of course. Because I'm a coastal elite liberal who was educated by the nuns.
Jane, you get Devils tix for next Friday? Singing O Canada like Casablanca?
Jane, you get Devils tix for next Friday?
They're playing the Habs? No, I don't have tickets, but I might be persuaded...
The first Habs game I ever saw live: when I was about 12 years old, my dad took me and one of my sisters to Montreal, to see the Canadiens in action. But first we went to Brother André's (shortly thereafter venerated as Saint André of Montreal) shrine at St. Joseph's Oratory. Because, you know, hockey is all well and good, but: priorities.
It is the sheer monstrous wickedness of the proposal that gets me: the existence of people like Grover Norquist who are happy to cause children tp die if it means lower taxes on those who earn more than $250,000 and are unashamed to say so is still shocking in a way that --- say -- young men murdering babies directly is not. Because there is no emotion in the Republicans, no anger: just calculating greed and lack of empathy. That seems somehow less human than murderous rage.
Ryan town hall:
Questioner: Thanks to the affordable care act, I'm standing here today alive... Why would you repeal the ACA without a replacement?
Ryan: Oh, we wouldn't do that! We want to replace it with something better! First of all.... um... I'm glad you're standing here.
Polifact: We rate Ryan's statement "I'm glad you're standing here" as "false".
Anyway, Ryan's town hall was actually informative, as evidenced by Gaba thread. Ryan made it clear that his plan is to undo the concept of insurance by pitting politics against the nature of health spending. When 5% of people account for 50% of costs, all you have to do it tell the other 95% that if they vote to take away coverage from the suckers who are sick, the rest of them will save money. If everyone votes their wallets, fundamentally the ideas of health insurance and democracy are incompatible. Fortunately most people, unlike Ryan, have a conscience and sort of feel bad about letting people die from expensive but treatable conditions. Most people also believe in "there but for the grace of <insert deity> go I."
*Everyone in the world* seems to be trying to destroy the very idea of insurance instead of mere saving.
If everyone votes their wallets, fundamentally the ideas of health insurance and democracy are incompatible.
Well, no, only if everyone votes their wallets and knows (or thinks they know) for certain whether they're in the 5% or the 95%.
Ah, so the future of social insurance is dependent on the American public being introspective and having a good sense of statistical risk. Now I feel better.
Unless you get totally crushed by a bus or the like one day we'll all be one of the 5%.
He means you specifically, SP. It's your duty to sacrifice yourself.
I bet you'd feel really bad if I actually got hit by a bus in the near future.
The counter-flow bus lane is actually a non-trivial player in my mental game of feared causes of my death.
I've never considered Habs-Devils games as a possible cause of death before, but now I'm scared.
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Okay, this is over 40
Just read a review of a new Wallace Stevens biography, and encountering references to Stevens in my semi-annual Fredric Jameson book, the review ends by claiming that Stevens was not an "intellectual poet."
Hmm. Stevens in my mind was deliberately the anti-Elliot, with "Comedian as the Letter C" a direct rebuke of Wasteland. Hmm. Was Stevens anti-intellectual like maybe Dylan Thomas? Is lyrical poetry anti-intellectual? Basho? I'm no expert, but no, I don't think Stevens was turning the intellect against itself, nor quite lyric. Romantic, yes...but something else.
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I guess maybe Stevens is materialist in opposition to Elliot's transcendentalism. These guys are a good example of varieties of conservatism.
Useful maybe to compare Stevens to Blake, imagination being central to both but expressed in different ways, hard to imagine Stevens engaging the usual modernist architectonic constructivism.
2: if the GOP gets their wish list item of allowing health plans to cross state lines
This is already allowed.
The truth is that it actually is legal today and specifically enabled by the Affordable Care Act.
Several such regionally based cross-state arrangements already exist:
the ACA already allows states to reach compacts with other states to allow cross-border insurance sales (compacts are essentially interstate treaties). Georgia, Maine and Wyoming have passed laws enabling such compacts. No other states have joined them, and not a single insurer has expressed any interest in taking advantage of them.
Insurance companies haven't gone for it, because
The key is that healthcare is almost always delivered locally. Even if a Southern Californian's insurer is located in, say, Idaho, his or doctors and hospitals are almost certain to be nearby. To provide coverage, Joe's Insurance would have to make network deals with local providers in its new markets, creating its own local networks and agreeing on fees.
I just read the actuarial table linked here and it turns out my family is fucked if they go back to underwriting. We're not a particularly unhealthy family- we've never met our OOP max, only one with a significant health risk in their medical history, a few others with sporadic issues. But according to this chart I would have one who would be auto-denied (4 year old girl due to an illness at 10 months that was discussed here previously); four of us would be either higher premiums or possible deny; and only one who might get tier 1 premiums.
This is the one thing that would make me seriously consider leaving the country. Well, that or when Trump gets around to rounding up the Jews.
He would only round up all the Jews that aren't married to his daughter. And I think he's got at least one that's single.
49: Don't you get employer insurance? Also, Massachusetts had community rating and guaranteed issue even before health reform. Premiums were based on age and zip code. (medical care costs more in Boston than it does in the Berkshires.)
51- yes, but underwriting could also mean that they can reinstate waiting periods when switching jobs. Probably we're safe in MA, but I'm also thinking when she's older and may live elsewhere. What kind of medical system declares someone uninsurable for the rest of her life when she's 10 months old?
46, 47: You probably don't need to care about whether Wallace Stevens was intellectual, or anti-intellectual (though I will say this: for an insurance company executive, Stevens was unusually literary in his tastes, and surprisingly high-minded). Nor need you worry about the (persistent, but not quite documented) rumours that he converted to the Catholic faith on his deathbed (not a bad faith to convert to at the eleventh hour; but I would say that, wouldn't I?).
It may be enough to just read his poetry.
Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
If one were to submit to an emperor at the eleventh hour, the emperor of ice-cream would not be a bad emperor to submit to.
Huh, I've heard that line before but didn't realize it was Stevens.
Yeah, people usually think it was Eisenhower.
As well they might.
Anyway, though I (obviously) have essentially no familiarity with Stevens's work, I can't resist noting his membership, which we've discussed before, in the early-twentieth-century intelligentsia associated with the insurance industry in Connecticut. Benjamin Lee Whorf, for one, was a longtime colleague of Stevens at The Hartford.
If you remove the "in Connecticut" qualification you can add Kafka.
Yeah, the original discussion was more broad, I think. I forget who else it included.
Insurance companies haven't gone for it, because
Surely the main reason is that insurers don't really care about selling insurance in both Georgia and Maine, except at the margin. What they care about is selling from the lowest regulation/tax state to the rest of the country. Inter-state compacts don't let you do that.
Yeah, selling insurance across state borders would totally make sense, if it was regulated at the Federal level. Nobody seems to be asking for that, though.
re: 58
Charles Ives, too.
Although he actually was in Connecticut.
Who is the Delaware of health insurance regulation? Probably Delaware.
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Is unfogged mobile blank for everyone?
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You have unfogged mobile? Check your privilege.
65 is me. Unfogged needs to check it's Name box privilege.
If you're a member of the ruling class like Mossy, apparently yes.
The little car icon top left that's been there since God was a lad, and yes, it's blank.
I would tell Walt to check his apostrophising, but maybe it's time to accept that that particular hill has already been died on.
I, like chris, am smart enough to game the system, thus demonstrating my worthiness.
57: Well, the context of reading the review of the Steven's biography was that I was simultaneously reading 30 dense pages of Fredric Jameson on William Carlos Williams Paterson (and skimming the book itself). Of course for Jameson, form is political. Stevens was a casual Republican.
All very deep and difficult and probably pointless.
Like most of your reading, by the sound of it.
I can't even get the fucking Name box to work, and you expect me to apostrophise correctly?
Like I said, that hill is looking pretty bleak.
The Name Box is tricky. I have to have the "Remember personal info?" box checked on my phone but not on my computer. Also, for some reason autocomplete says I've used dozens of "Opinionated" names since the last time I cleaned my browser.
AND WHOSE FAULT IS THAT?
The fault is Mossy and his hipster mobile and his apostrophe obsession. You're just an innocent victim.
It's a Samsung. Definitely not hipster.
I have Samsung. (Looks at Mossy with profound new sense of respect.)
What did you take me for, an Apple user? I am affronted, sir, affronted.
Of course the dick-swinging neo-Cold War Russophobic bloodlust above is appalling. Terrifying. I started on the Web, not because of Lesser Bush or 9/11 but to oppose the supposed center-leftys Klein and Yglesias jumping on board the genocide bandwagon.
The Left is opposed to war. The Far left is opposed to all war. A socialist citizen of the Imperialist Hegemon doesn't really need to think much. War is bad, revolution is to prevent the inevitable wars of Finance Capitalism. Mandel and Mattick, good commies, opposed WWII all the way through.
I also have a Samsung phone. I'm too cheap for Apple.
The little car icon top left that's been there since God was a lad, and yes, it's blank.
For real? Wouldn't, I don't know, a mobile phone have been a better icon? And why is Unfogged encouraging browsing while driving?
Ogged is trying to kill us all. I thought everybody knew that.
A Nokia 3310 icon would be somewhat embarrassing today. Not necessarily more embarrassing than the blog roll of the dead, but still.
Of course the Samsung-swinging neo-WAP Applephobic phonelust above is terrifying.
It's ok to genocide Apple designers, they're Democrats.
A sociable citizen of the Imperative Hedgehog doesn't really need to think much.
82: I thought you were fancy. You know, classy. Not the kind of guy who puts his pants on one leg at a time, like the rest of us.
You can put two pant legs on simultaneously? Mind. Blown.
My Samsung is terrible, but at least I'm not a hipster.