(4 pm. – promoted by ek hornbeck)
I’ll be honest. I haven’t read the decision on “Obamacare” by the Supremes. I left that to my lawyer acquaintances. I read the spin with disgust and dismay. I usually read pending legislation before opining, but c’mon, so much has been made of this thus far that it doesn’t really take a rocket scientist to figure out what would, hence did happen. The Supremes backed forced-purchase. The decision pivoted on the idea that the mandate “was justified as a tax. Because people who don’t obtain insurance pay a tax to the IRS, the mandate was within Congress’s power to raise taxes for the general welfare. As a result, the Affordable Care Act was upheld.”
Got that? Its ok because its ALWAYS ok to tax the poor more. If you can’t afford to directly pay the Insurance Companies, the Government will make you pay it as a tax and give it to the mother-fuckers anyway, dig?
That is the real problem. But Duh-merica’s wee heads are exploding for all the wrong reasons. And Liberaloi-duhs are celebrating against their own interests too.
The right is calling it Socialist and a loss. They want to be free to cough up their hard earned dollars to whatever Insurance company that will have them. You know, the people with ACTUAL death panels, where high quarter profits is the end game and refusing treatment is the means. It is the direct OPPOSITE of Socialism to force us to purchase something from a company whose sole goal is the profits of the few. Socialism is about the welfare of everyone being served, not a few 1% shareholders of Giganto Insurance Inc.™
I quote another misguided fool: “These socialist scum have no idea what they support. They are too busy cheering for Bill Gates saying kill grandma to hire more teachers.”
I mean really? This is how the Powers that Be obfuscate any real perception of what is going on in this country. The reason we have no money for teachers is that our taxes have been rerouted to bailouts (read welfare) for Billionaires. They not only don’t pay taxes, they get refunds, tax credits, loopholes and offshore the rest. Medicare has never had death panels. However, Insurance Companies regularly refuse treatment for reasons of “cost.”
Let me examine the flip side of the coin, here too.
Quoting how “good” it will be for “the poor,” well meaning liberaloids tell us from on high what is in our best interests… with their PHD’s, their BMW’s and their Gym memberships, they “know” whats best for us. I mean, for gosh sakes, these people get their hands dirty work with us every day, and Obamacare is a blessing!
Except for the part, where for those of us feeding our kids ramen noodles at the end of the month? Its not. But they won’t hear of it. “It will be CHEAPER!” they cry. Cheaper being relative to the cc’s of O-negative you can pump out of pumice. Which, by the way is none.
“Women can still get free pap smears and mammograms!” they squeal with delight! “Except if they found anything, people like me couldn’t afford the fucking chemo.” Oh wait, thats right, we can lose our homes by buying the Insurance they mandate we have, so we will be covered. Unfortunately, you have to have an address to get any of these services. Ask any homeless person. Besides, surely that will, like any other crumb thrown us, surely be rescinded after the (s)election.
“Change comes incrementally,” they lecture. Like the change from forced car insurance and home insurance to now forced health insurance? I SEE which direction these changes are going, its the little we have left being siphoned off to the top. This is not, nor ever shall be a “step” towards Universal Health Care. No more than the PAT ACT was temporary, or the Wars would be over once we got Bin Laden. No more than Affirmative Action which has now been betrayed, was permanent.
This is a CLASS WAR, to those of you seeking the solace of your blinders. I know it hurts to read, I know how hard it is to admit it. You need a win so bad, that you will settle for anything that isn’t outright murder as a win. Wait, this administration outright murders, too. So much for THAT argument. Here’s the truth:
The corporations just got a big win again. Their for-profit industry just gained the constitutional right to make you pay them for your very health and life. By law.
Think about that.
This is THE loss, but not the only loss.
The real loss, is that much like rape-scanners and wiretapping, this will become the “new normal” for our citizenry, who prefers the slow-froggie boil to jumping out in the cold clear air of reality.
They will have to realize what we really have lost.
All control of our lives to the Corporation and their Puppet Government.
They will have to see what they really have become.
That is the Greatest Loss of All.
Diane Gee, a Contributing Author at Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox, is a writer, talk-show host, and outspoken critic of the corporate-dominated status quo. She is the Founding Editor of The Wild Wild Left blog; her radio show of the same name has garnered “Featured Host” status on Blog Talk Radio under Progressive Politics. She is also the founder and chief moderator of Links for the Wildly Left, one of Facebook’s most respected left discussion groups, and a Senior Editor at The Greanville Post. Diane lives in Michigan with her 13-year-old son and two dogs.
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disguised by the ACA (and the Supremes) as a tax. Actually, it’s worse than a toll, it’s a mandated toll. Wonder if there were any Dark Age laws against swimming around a toll ferry?
The average person doesn’t have any idea how fucked we are.
over the bodies of the uninsured with no access.
I blasted Sen Gillibrand on Twitter. She takes her constituents for fools. The ACA does NOT guarantee access to healthcare even if you can afford the insurance
I never liked the idea of a mandate, but of course it never was really a mandate if you can avoid having to do it. And you can avoid it if you are willing to pay additional tax instead of health insurance.
But here is what I found really interesting about the opinion — the medicaid extension. Roberts, correctly I think, called the medicaid extension (which he declared as being constitutional) far more than a simple extension. He said that traditionally medicaid covered only four classes of people: the elderly, the blind, certain children, and certain very low ( as in way below poverty level ) income families with children. Not it appears that every one who is 133% of poverty level will be eligible for medicaid.
This looks like a huge step toward single payer. I don’t know how many people will be added to the medicaid roles but that number has got to be in the millions.
What Roberts also found unconstitutional is the gun the Congress came up with to hold to the head of the states to force them to sign on to the medicaid extension. The gun was a threat that all medicaid funds for existing programs would be cut off.
Alright, so the federal government won’t be able to hold a gun to the states’ heads. But it still has a huge carrot of something like a trillion dollars in new funds for the medicaid extension. Roberts thinks most states will sign on. And — think about it — the states that don’t sign on will face an exodus from their citizenry. Lower population means fewer representatives in Congress and fewer fed dollars for other things.
Single payer may be coming in the back door and that is kind of exciting to me.
Saying the same thing. He predicts the opinion will not have the effect the insurance mandate was supposed to have — instead healthy people will opt to risk paying the tax instead of insurance and they will get coverage under medicaid instead when they need it.
He also predicts that all states will sign on to medicaid and the four dissenters all complained that states would almost have to sign on for the medicaid extension.