dagblog - Comments for "We Don't Need No Stinking Mandates"

A good discussion. We'll

Flavius — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 02:45:41 +0000

In reply to We Don't Need No Stinking Mandates

A good discussion.

We'll know tomorrow what sort of Health Plan Rodgers intends us to have. Or rather who he thinks should make that decision.

Dworkin in the NY Review thinks it comes down to whether the Supremes think a Government is supposed to govern.And they should

Jeffrey Rosen on Diane ditto but with his fingers crossed.

Personally I'm for the Mandate until I decide I'm against it.It was needed to get a bill that would pass a Senate with only 59 healthy Democrats. Sometime-after Citizens United is repealed there'll once again be a liberal Administration and Congress.. That may be 2030 but "God sees the truth but waits".

Destor, the irony of all this

Peter Schwartz — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 14:09:06 +0000

In reply to We Don't Need No Stinking Mandates

Destor, the irony of all this hand wringing over the mandate is...

The mandate appears to be toothless...

The penalty can be as low as $100...

The penalty can be waived and would be in the case of financial hardship...

And even if it isn't waived, nothing happens if you don't pay it.

Apparently, the much-maligned Democrats whittled down the penalty in committee until it was a stub of its former self.

So the only people it is like to catch are those who are cocky financially and health-wise and are willing to pay the fine until they need the insurance.

There needs to be a waiting period to catch them folks.

Obit with his age is

artappraiser — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 06:14:44 +0000

In reply to It was sad to hear about our

Obit with his age is here

http://obits.reviewjournal.com/obituaries/lvrj/obituary.aspx?pid=144515095

Guestbook here

http://www.legacy.com/guestbook/lvrj/guestbook.aspx?n=kenneth-turner&pid...

Took me a while to find that because of the damn TPMCafe site being taken down (his sister's link in the guestbook to a memorial thread at TPMCafe is now no good )

The Supremes' lips are sealed

artappraiser — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 19:12:02 +0000

In reply to We Don't Need No Stinking Mandates

The Supremes' lips are sealed on this until Thursday: Reuters

Hah the good old days. "Major

artappraiser — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 18:58:43 +0000

In reply to Things were different in the

Hah the good old days. "Major Medical" insurance was what most people had, and that basically meant hospital insurance only. You paid for anything outside of the hospital and you paid for your doctors' fees even when in the hospital. But you didn't have to pay for those aspirin provided by the hospital (for which Blue Cross/Blue Shield sometimes was billed $5 each, if I recall the good old days outrage correctly.)

Doctors took time payments because nobody had credit cards and there was no insurance covering much of what they did. Some big labor unions offered free or low cost medical care for members and families in their own clinics, but there you were stuck with their lousy docs and things like one choice of eyeglasses frame (Army surplus?)

Lots of retired people only chose the free Medicare Part A hospitalization in 1965 when Medicare came into being, they didn't take optional Medicare Part B for doctors because of the premiums, they figured if something happened, they needed surgery or whatever they would pay the doctors themselves like most people had to.

Oh and remember this--people died young from heart attacks and stroke and breast cancer and stuff like that back in the good old days--there wasn't a lot of high tech medicine--it was take two aspirin for those bad knees of yours and call me in the morning!

I remember it like this: my parents talking about finally paying off the doctors' bills for each birth of my brothers, and for the pediatrician when the they did stuff like break bones, but they never ever seemed to be out of hoc with the dentist.

Things were different in the

MrSmith1 — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 11:58:10 +0000

In reply to We Don't Need No Stinking Mandates

Things were different in the good old days ...

Note: "Polio included."

It was sad to hear about our

Resistance — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 09:00:55 +0000

In reply to Actually, usually they have

It was sad to hear about our TPM friend "Pseudocyants"

How old was he?

They called Kevorkian a

Resistance — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 08:52:07 +0000

In reply to Actually, usually they have

They called Kevorkian a monster

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Kevorkian

Actually, usually they have

artappraiser — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 03:49:02 +0000

In reply to Once stabilized, they dump

Actually, usually they have to go through the process of qualifying for Medicaid before they will be accepted somewhere like that for more treatment. She's right, if you don't luck into a good social worker or have savvy family/friends to get that started for you, you're just going to proceed on the dying. People already covered by Medicaid are the ones that are transferred to the proverbial at "county" by those hospitals that don't deem Medicaid sufficient payment. Not the uninsured with unpaid medical bills; they are not welcome there either.

Say you are uninsured, find out from the emergency treatment that you've got cancer that caused the emergency--dearly departed TPM friend "Pseudocyants" went through that, his family helped a great deal, he couldn't do all that while basically being paralyzed by a back operation; when you're sick it's not easy to do that stuff. Without knowing that he was in the process of getting Medicaid (which required getting rid of any nonesssential assets,) they would've sent him home to be an invalid with cancer, rather than take him at the equivalent of "the county." Meantime the drug he needed was a derivative of thalidomide and wasn't covered by Medicaid, he ended up getting it on a charity program from the drug company that made it.

Make no mistake, nobody has to treat you without insurance if you've got something like cancer, they just have to take you if your writhing and screaming in symptoms from it and give you some pain meds, send you home again to continue the dying or seek charity care. Same thing for, say, complications from severe untreated diabetes, they just have to amputate your leg for the gangrene and send you home without diabetes care, i.e., they give you a warning that you should be seeing a doctor or you're going to lose another leg, that's it. They don't have to give you therapy after an amputation or anything like that, either, and better find a place that donates wheelchairs.

Another example, I knew of a uninsured healthy guy who like in his 30's got a serious heart infection which caused damage to the valves. They took him in emergency, stopped the infection, sent him home with a $60K bill due and damaged heart valves and then no one else would see him to treat the problem because he hadn't paid that emergency bill, couldn't work, used all his credit. Friends and family lent, mortgaged, held fundraisers, etc.

There was always the crucial delay in treatment before people could get on Medicaid, that's where the dying part comes in. In some states there are ways to get emergency Medicaid coverage but you have to be savvy or have a savvy social worker, willing to put in a lot of work, too (Not that people with insurance don't have to put in a lot of work to deal with their claims, too; both private varieties and government varieties are notorious on this! As with other kinds of insurance claims!)

Saw this on UP with Chris

Ramona — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 03:05:23 +0000

In reply to We Don't Need No Stinking Mandates

Saw this on UP with Chris Hayes this morning. The human side of Obamacare and the mandate