Would the GOP types push the USA into default ?

[DinoDoc]

Read the wiki article on the history of the ACA and healthcare during the Obama Administration.

Again they was a bill batting around Congress at the time that had been scored well by the CBO and had bi-partisan co-sponsors. That bill was jettisoned by the Democrats in favor of the ACA. It's a little much to say that no compromise was possible when I've yet to see any evidence that it was attempted.

Edit: Working Across the Aisle for Health Reform

 

[KMRblue1027]

The HAA had absolutely no chance of passing through the Senate let alone the house, although it would be nice if it could have. Also every one of the Republican Senators that supposedly supported the bill except 1 or 2 are out of office. What does that tell you?

 

[Gucumatz]

Obama might need to rethink the "We don't negotiate with terrorists" thing

 

[otago]

Compromised? It was rammed through without a single Republican vote.

The Supreme Court had to twist logic into pretzels to justify taxing someone for not engaging in commerce.
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/chi...-tax-it-tax-its-law-its-not-unlawful-break-it


It's a thing now because the entire thing starts on January 1st and there is no rolling it back once the subsidies begin.

How about the supply of doctors?
http://www.forbes.com/sites/sallypi...-a-20000-doctor-shortage-is-set-to-quintuple/

So let's see:
Insurance mandated by law.
10,000 pages of new regulations.
More patients.
Less doctors.
Each newly minted doctor starts out $170,000 in debt and must charge big dollars or go bankrupt. (And student loans can't be discharged in bankruptcy, so their life is over essentially if they go that route)
Government will pay the rest of a silver plan beyond a certain % of a person's income thus removing any natural limits on how high the price can go.


Bearing all this in mind, will insurance rates go up or down over time based on the principles of supply and demand?


Then we get to the issue of calculating Obamacare subsidies.
It is purely based off of how much money you made that year and how many people are in your family.
You pay the premiums all year and get the tax credit subsidy the following year as a refund.
I doubt you can get an upfront loan to pay for the insurance in expectation of the subsidy 1 year later because you have to earn a certain amount of money to qualify for it. And it scales quite rapidly depending on whether you make $12,000 or $24,000.

For this math challenged country, it will be a struggle to line up people's expectations with reality.


The biggest subsidy and hardest calculation is for the older working poor.
They could spend thousands of dollars on health insurance all year expecting to get a refund that pays for 95% of it, but if they get laid off in say October, and only make $11,200 that year and don't reach 100% of the poverty level ($11,500 if single), they get $0 at tax time instead of $3000 or $4000.

If you have a kid, the poverty rate you have to earn past goes up by $4000, so an unplanned pregnancy might mean the difference in your refund check being $2500 or $0.
I guess you could just not claim the kid as a dependent at tax time, but what about someone with 7 kids doing this to go from 9% to 2% subsidy by leaving off 3 kids?
Does not claiming a kid lower the poverty level that applies to you?

And the poverty rate is indexed to inflation, so if you are right on the line make sure to demand a $.10 raise every year. Have to pay attention or you get clobbered.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States

Heh, Alaska and Hawaii have different poverty rates than the rest of the country.

Does anyone even know for sure yet whether the unemployed get hit with the tax penalty yet?
I've looked around and all I can get is "depends"

If any of these examples are in error, it is not obvious to me where the error lies. Doubtless there are rules about these very things somewhere in those 10,000 pages.
Maybe the answers are in here http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/09/29/2682291/obamacare-questions-2/


Seems like 1 more surprise bankruptcy for poor Americans to me unless they are skilled at math and planning ahead.

Yet you conservative types are against single payer health care, hell even the Aussies can run a single payer system at far less cost than the USA.
You conservatives argue it cannot be run without death panels.
At this point the USA spends over 17% of its GDP on health care, at what percentage will you join the rest of the civilised world, 60% 70% ?

 

[Cutlass]

If everyone knows it then it should be easy for you to provide some sort of evidence to that end. If that request offends your delicate sensibilities, perhaps should take a long hard look in the mirror before accusing someone of being more interested in spouting partisan lies rather than discussing the subject at hand.

And yet you never provided any evidence either. Go figure.

 

[DinoDoc]

The HAA had absolutely no chance of passing through the Senate let alone the house, although it would be nice if it could have.

Were any attempt(s) made by the President made on that front before barely passing the abomination of a bill known as the ACA in the face of massive opposition from the public?

What does that tell you?

It tells me that compromise was possible but never actually attempted.

 

[DinoDoc]

And yet you never provided any evidence either. Go figure.

I've given you the existence of a bi-partisan health care reform package (that received favorable scoring from the CBO) rejected in favor of the unpopular and partisan ACA as evidence that compromise was possible but never seriously attempted. You've given me varying degrees of derision and disbelief in the face of an objective fact.

 

[Cutlass]

I've given you the existence of a bi-partisan bill health care reform package (that received favorable scoring from the CBO) rejected in favor of the unpopular and partisan ACA as evidence that compromise was possible but never seriously attempted. You've given me varying degrees of derision and disbelief in the face of an objective fact.

No, you haven't. A bill with 4 Democrats for and 250 against is not bipartisan.

 

[bhsup]

So then you at least acknowledge that Obamacare isn't bipartisan either, yes?

On December 23, the Senate voted 60–39 to end debate on the bill: a cloture vote to end the filibuster by opponents. The bill then passed by a vote of 60–39 on December 24, 2009, with all Democrats and two independents voting for, and all Republicans voting against (except for Jim Bunning, who did not vote).

...

The House passed the Senate bill with a 219–212 vote on March 21, 2010, with 34 Democrats and all 178 Republicans voting against it

Wikipedia article on Obamacare

 

[DinoDoc]

@ Cutlass: I guess now I can add unreasoning disbelief. You're seriously starting to sound like the hardcore Tea Party people I try to convince that this shutdown strategy is poorly conceived and unlikely to get them what they want.

 

[Cutlass]

So then you at least acknowledge that Obamacare isn't bipartisan either, yes?



Wikipedia article on Obamacare

Republicans choose to not be part of passing Obamacare. Democrats choose to not be part of the Republican alternatives. Neither has been excluded.

 

[KMRblue1027]

So then you at least acknowledge that Obamacare isn't bipartisan either, yes?

Wikipedia article on Obamacare

It's final vote wasn't bipartisan but honestly what choice did Republican Senators have? Don't vote or get pushed out considering the Tea Party movement was taking shape then.

The creation of the ACA as an actual bill was primarily a compromise by the people on the budget committee (IIRC 6 Dems and 6 Repubs). The Dems gave up their fight for a public option while the Republicans finally realized they needed to do something and thus the ACA was born.

 

[Rashiminos]

Try looking at the real world.

'More Money has been Lost Because of Four Words than at the Point of a Gun. Those words are "This Time is Different." '

Back at you.

If mirroring your posts resembles partisan lies, that might tell you something, provided you had eyes to see and ears to hear.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

I can remember how keen Republicans were to make compromises on Death Panels in 2009.

 

[FriendlyFire]

I can remember how keen Republicans were to make compromises on Death Panels in 2009.

And don't forget Mandatory computer chips inserted in all Americans.

 

[Janusi]

Are people still arguing that the Democrats adopting a Republican plan is not compromise? Well, no, it isn't. The GOP won, they got what they wanted, and now they're holding the United States hostage to get it to stop before people find out how great their plan is.

Wow, reading that back it sounds even more insane.

 

[Antilogic]

Why is everyone so down on the Tea Party?
Nothing wrong with being for small government and balanced budgets.

Because they aren't?

No seriously, they are clueless on the basic math behind revenues and treat all spending as a cartoonish evil. Never mind all the other inconsistencies with real conservative thought regarding regulatory agencies and markets, the role of the state, and all that fun stuff. Never mind they are hostile to libertarian ideas when other people want to use that freedom to do things they don't like. Nor the rhetoric labeling any compromise as treachery and the destructive scorched earth tactics that are destroying the very governing system they supposedly want to defend. That's all on the surface.

The movement eschews intelligence and data to a fault; it's like they don't believe a real world exists, that information exists and can be determined objectively, but rather that everything is a plot against them and the country. What this comes down to is them not just being incompetent, but that they are dangerously incompetent to the point of being paranoid, delusional, and incredibly destructive to the society they have infected.

Anyone see a scenario where we raise the debt ceiling before we reopen the government?

It's very likely the two will be linked, given how close we are getting to the debt ceiling.

Compromised? It was rammed through without a single Republican vote.

For Christ's sake, they passed the effing Republican health care plan from the 90s because they couldn't get single payer and that doesn't count as a compromise? Obama ran on healthcare during the 2008 election since the primaries, the first speeches discussing the reforms were in June of 2009, and the thing was actually passed at the end of March 2010, 10 months later, and that counts as ramming it through?

The English language must be weeping at how badly it has been abused.

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politic...wait-at-a-table-for-dems-to-negotiate-budget/

Nice photo op. Is there a reason they refused to go to conference between the Senate's budget being passed in April and fifteen minutes before the shutdown which, to remind the audience, was the start of October?

Are people still arguing that the Democrats adopting a Republican plan is not compromise? Well, no, it isn't. The GOP won, they got what they wanted, and now they're holding the United States hostage to get it to stop before people find out how great their plan is.

Wow, reading that back it sounds even more insane.

Yup, should have read until the end of the thread before typing out all the stuff above, I could have just left you a +1 and been done with it.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Thanks for making the effort I couldn't be arsed to because of the immense divide between perception and reality.

 

[DinoDoc]

Back to a more current topic and to borrow the Admin's metaphor, can someone show me an instance where hostage takers offered to let some of the hostages and that offer was refused by the authorities?

 

[peter grimes]

The GOP wasn't consulted in any meaningful way in the process at all. The fact the process took as long as it did was due to overcoming opposition from the now largely extinct Blue Dog Democratic caucus.

Citation needed.

It seems odd to claim that there could be no compromise between the parties when there had been a health care bill kicking around Congress for 2 years already with co-sponsors in both parties. It was jettisoned in favor of the ACA.

I'm still not seeing any evidence to back your position. Smilies while cute don't exactly contribute much of value to an argument.

If everyone knows it then it should be easy for you to provide some sort of evidence to that end. If that request offends your delicate sensibilities, perhaps should take a long hard look in the mirror before accusing someone of being more interested in spouting partisan lies rather than discussing the subject at hand.

Were any attempt(s) made by the President made on that front before barely passing the abomination of a bill known as the ACA in the face of massive opposition from the public?It tells me that compromise was possible but never actually attempted.

I've given you the existence of a bi-partisan health care reform package (that received favorable scoring from the CBO) rejected in favor of the unpopular and partisan ACA as evidence that compromise was possible but never seriously attempted. You've given me varying degrees of derision and disbelief in the face of an objective fact.

http://www.salon.com/2013/10/07/gop...usion_obama_didn’t_negotiate_health_care_law/

But it wasn’t until I read the Finance Committee summary of its work on the ACA that I fully experienced the inanity of Tyler’s argument. It’s actually painful to read. In fact, it was the administration’s determination to compromise, and to let the centrist Baucus drive the process, that led Democrats to head into the disastrous August 2009 recess without an actual bill they could tout, let alone defend – and that vacuum was filled by Tea Party hatred at town halls that Rep. Todd Akin (remember him?) appreciatively labeled “town hells” for Democrats.

And of course it was August when Grassley echoed Sarah Palin’s death panels lie and claimed Obama wanted “to pull the plug on Grandma.” Still, Baucus worked to reach a deal with him, accepting his amendments to the final bill passed by the Finance Committee, along with amendments by Enzi, Snowe and other GOP members. But he never won a single vote from them. Despite that history of desperate efforts to find common ground and win over Republicans, Republicans lie and say it didn’t happen.

The main reason for GOP intransigence, of course, especially in the Senate, was Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s widely publicized determination to hold his caucus together to deny the new president any victories on his agenda. On healthcare, in particular, McConnell himself told the New York Times, “It was absolutely critical that everybody be together because if the proponents of the bill were able to say it was bipartisan, it tended to convey to the public that this is O.K., they must have figured it out. It’s either bipartisan or it isn’t.”

Former Utah Sen. Bob Bennett admiringly compared the minority leader to a healthcare reform saboteur in an interview with Josh Green. “McConnell knew the places to go, around the tank, and loosen a lug bolt here, pour sand in a hydraulic receptacle there, and slow the whole thing down,” Bennett told Green.

Against this backdrop, Tyler’s claim that the Affordable Care Act was passed without negotiation is farcical. But if he hadn’t made that silly claim, I never would have Googled “Obamacare” and “rammed through” to find the worst piece of mainstream punditry on our disastrous political dysfunction. On Real Clear Politics last week, Michael Barone had the gall to use the bipartisan coalition that came together behind the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to indict the president for, that’s right, “ramming through” Obamacare.

Here's a link to the finance committee's timeline:
http://www.finance.senate.gov/issue/?id=32be19bd-491e-4192-812f-f65215c1ba65

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Ranking Member Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) today released policy options for reducing costs and improving quality in the health care delivery system ahead of a Wednesday Finance Members meeting to consider the options. At that meeting, Baucus and Grassley will “walk through” the potential policy options and solicit feedback from Members that will inform the creation of the subsequent proposals the Committee will consider for a comprehensive proposal. The Finance Leaders said the draft being released today will be the first of three sets of potential option papers, each covering a different topic area that members will discuss before a bipartisan Chairman’s Mark on comprehensive health care reform is developed. Each paper is intended to offer potential options for discussion and to provide an opportunity for other options to be offered and discussed.

Three Democratic and three Republican Finance Committee Members hold the first of 31 bipartisan meetings to discuss the development of a health care reform bill. Over the course of the next three months, this group, Baucus, Grassley, Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), and Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), met for more than 60 hours and the bipartisan principles they discussed became the foundation of the health care reform law.

The Finance Committee votes to approve the America’s Healthy Future Act with a bipartisan vote of 14 to 9.

So, well, yeah this was legislation drafted by both Republicans and Democrats. That Republicans refused to vote in favor of it on the House & Senate floors speaks volumes.