House Of Represntatives Passes Health Care Bill

[altoecko]

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1109/29282.html

220 For 215 against. 39 Democrats voted against it, 1 Republican for.

Cost: 1.1 Trillion spread out over 10 years. Paid for through new taxes and cuts to medicare.

It would insure 36 million Americans that don't have Health Insurance now and would create a government health care program. A public option if you will. Not single payer by any means, but a policy funded by the government.

It mandates that the public option will not pay for abortions or provide to illegal citizens.

It mandates that all businesses making $500,000 or more a year must provide health insurance for their employees or face up to an 8% pay roll tax.

The other taxes in the bill are on individuals making $1 million dollars a more a year or on couples making $1.5 million or more. It used to be much lower in the minimum income that you will be taxed but that got a bit too much ire from lobbyists. Last I heard it was an 8% tax increase for those people, but I'm not sure.

It's kind of dead when it gets to the Senate, but half the battle is over. The Senate doesn't have 60 votes for yet and may not even pass this year. Mostly over Republican obstruction and "Blue Dog" Democrats. Blue Dogs are mostly all from the Conservative mid-west states and would have run on the Republican ticket had it not gotten such ire from Bush since 04. Joe Lieberman said he would vote against any bill that has a public option and many have said he should lose his chairmanship in the Democratic party for this.

[DarkwingChuck]

Re: House Of Represntatives Passes Health Care Bill

I wonder if politicians would start thinking for themselves if they didn't have the two-party system to tell them where to fall on every issue. But then I wonder how many are even capable of thinking for themselves.

[Denmo]

Re: House Of Represntatives Passes Health Care Bill

i think it's the opinion of many in the white house that the idiot masses need a 2 party system to keep it simple.

[Wavelength]

Re: House Of Represntatives Passes Health Care Bill

I'd like to see more details about actually implementing it--what the baseline is for coverage and how to administrate it--before I voice any real opinion on this, because I think either God or The Devil are going to be in the details here. The skeletal structure presented here is agreeable, innocuous, and kind of obvious.

$110 billion a year for ten years is chump change in comparison to the financial bailout money. Hopefully being closer to universal healthcare will pay for itself by getting rid of unnecessary costs and negative externalities all over the place. But I doubt this kind of program could even do that much with $1 trillion. Don't be surprised if it triples. In the IT business we call this "scope creep"--if we're lucky.

Also, Lieberman, while a very component man, is also a conservative Republican masquerading as a Democrat and probably should be booted from the Democratic Ring.

[SheepThursday]

Re: House Of Represntatives Passes Health Care Bill

Joe Lieberman said he would vote against any bill that has a public option and many have said he should lose his chairmanship in the Democratic party for this.

I dislike Joe Lieberman.

Dull and boring, or boring and dull (SNL weekend update), I dislike him for this d-bag move.

Plus his neck looks like a wrinkly old scrotum. Just sayin'.

[Red Dragon]

Re: House Of Represntatives Passes Health Care Bill

It passed by 5 votes.

woo....

Now it's time to wait 20 months for the senate to pass this while arguing about death panels and satanic lawyers.

[Cutter De Blanc]

Re: House Of Represntatives Passes Health Care Bill

Does this mean I'm legally required to have health insurance now?

[Stormy]

Re: House Of Represntatives Passes Health Care Bill

Only if the Senate passes it too, and only if you don't want to pay a %2 income tax for not having medical insurance.

[Valkysas]

Re: House Of Represntatives Passes Health Care Bill

curious. if it passes, what does this mean for me? I'm unemployed, and pay no income taxes. but I would really like to have some kind of insurance.

anyone know?

[DarkwingChuck]

Re: House Of Represntatives Passes Health Care Bill

Most likely it'll mean if you need to go to the hospital and they find out you don't have private insurance, instead of tossing you out one the street they'd transport you to some understaffed poorly equipped government subsidized craphole where you're slightly less likely to succumb to your illness/injury.

[Ωbright]

Re: House Of Represntatives Passes Health Care Bill

Considering that's what happened to Joe when he went to the ER about a month ago, and he HAD insurance, I'm afraid you're probably right.

[Leish]

Re: House Of Represntatives Passes Health Care Bill

I wonder if politicians would start thinking for themselves if they didn't have the two-party system to tell them where to fall on every issue. But then I wonder how many are even capable of thinking for themselves.

I honestly think we need to get away from individual politics and have more party politics. It creates more accountability that way, and it's easier to know which party to vote for if they have a straightforward platform. The Republicans are more party-disiciplined until, under their control, bad conditions in the U.S. arise which can go back to them. Then they decide to split off and say, "Well, I'm not with that group who screwed you over." Democrats, however, distance themselves away from their own party when they're not supposed to, i.e. those blue dogs.

Congress usually has about a 20% approval rating yet 95% of incumbents get reelected, and that's because of people voting for an individual's personality/platform instead of a party platform.

i think it's the opinion of many in the white house that the idiot masses need a 2 party system to keep it simple.

A 2-party system actually makes things more complicated due to the need to strategically vote. For instance, I was in favor of health care reform, yet there were some Republican ideas I liked over the Democrat's during the last election. I decided health care weighed more, but I did have to put some thought into it.

The reason we have a 2-party system is because of our plurality electoral system (Duverger's law). The road to multipartism begins with either the double-ballot system (my preference) or proportional representation.

[Wavelength]

Re: House Of Represntatives Passes Health Care Bill

Considering that's what happened to Joe when he went to the ER about a month ago, and he HAD insurance, I'm afraid you're probably right.

Ugh, that's awful! Is he doing OK now?

[Czechs Mex]

Re: House Of Represntatives Passes Health Care Bill

Who's Joe?

[Wavelength]

Re: House Of Represntatives Passes Health Care Bill

I'm addressing the blatantly wrong parts of your post, Leish. There were other things you said in there that made some sense but I don't really have much to add there.

I honestly think we need to get away from individual politics and have more party politics. It creates more accountability that way, and it's easier to know which party to vote for if they have a straightforward platform.

This might be true in a system with five or more viable parties, a majority of votes necessary to pass a bill, and no interparty alliances. To my knowledge that combination hasn't occured in any nation in six thousand years of civilization.

Congress usually has about a 20% approval rating yet 95% of incumbents get reelected, and that's because of people voting for an individual's personality/platform instead of a party platform.

This comment was clearly born out of some spectacular misconstruction of logic. If you don't like an individual's personality or platform, you vote their ass out. (This is done in really extreme cases.) But instead, in a two-party system, or frankly any party-based system, you tolerate that individual's personality/platform so someone from another party (the "enemy" party) doesn't get into the seat.

So in the final and sometimes only election for a position, you're stuck with 2 choices, in the US at least, and the incumbent wins because most of the people voting belong to the same party as last time, and vote along party lines for the reasons I just explained.

A 2-party system actually makes things more complicated due to the need to strategically vote. For instance, I was in favor of health care reform, yet there were some Republican ideas I liked over the Democrat's during the last election. I decided health care weighed more, but I did have to put some thought into it.

That's not strategic voting, that's being given two choices and picking the one you like more. In general the strategy of voting increases when either several viable candidates are chosen, or you are allowed to assign candidates "shades of gray" in your voting, such as ranking them all or giving them all ratings from 0 to 100. There are some great articles about this on Wikipedia.