Obamacare cost...

[Jacob]

Well, Obama has been able to work with Boehner. They agreed on a grand compromise and on a number of other things, only to have the tea party wing of the GOP throw their own leader under the bus and drive back and forth over him a few times. I don't blame Boehner - he has tried. I don't blame Obama, he has tried and has been willing.

Boehner says Obama backed out of the deal. Obama doesn't deny it, his people say there was no deal. So are you claiming the tea party somehow forced Obama to back out? How odd.

[calicoug]

I'm sure you are all again absorbing new data that shows premiums are going to be lower than even the CBO forecasts which conservatives said were unrealistic. I'm sure you all are also reading about the continuing trends with health care costs.

If not, start here:

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer...r-is-over.html

It's like the guy knows AA personally and wrote a letter just to him.

[calicoug]

Which is total bullshit. The GOP was in a mild and meek state after the 2008 election. The tea party bogeyman wasn't around as the scapegoat. Eric Cantor went to that meeting prepared with an outline of GOP policy hopes/positions. Obama proceeded to tell the GOP participants that he didn't give a shit what they had to say or wanted.

This argument bandied about that poor ol centrist Obama just can't make any headway with the recalcitrant GOP is nonsense -- at least in the sense that Barack Obama can be described as a centrist. And his and the Democrats' conduct in 2009 and 2010 tells you everything you need to know on this point. If the Democrats were operating out of some centrist position at that time, why did Massachusetts, of all places, repudiate them when they elected Scott Brown. In response to that rather alarming election, why didn't they take a step back? Why were the 2010 elections a landslide from state legislatures through federal congressional races? Is the argument here that the voters in Massachusetts in January 2010 and nationwide in November 2010 a bunch of nutjobs?

You are aware that this doesn't comport with reality, right?

http://swampland.time.com/2012/08/23...bstruct-obama/

Conservatives are continuing to fall into the trap of reading only media that supports their views and the media authors are doing the same thing resulting in an entire group of people who have no idea that what they are saying doesn't match facts and reality.

You guys have "unskewed" just about everything at this point.

[calicoug]

I'm just glad we have a party as wise as the Republicans who can ask the House to pass a bill, then filibuster that bill and get mad at other Republicans who won't, then give up and have a vote on the bill, then threaten to defund the entire government or even default on the debt if legislation unaffected by a government shutdown isn't totally repealed.

Republicans at this point are like the kids on an Ally Bank commercial and Boehner is stuck sitting at the kids' table asking them what they want and pretending it is rational.

[dabrockster]

I'm sure you are all again absorbing new data that shows premiums are going to be lower than even the CBO forecasts which conservatives said were unrealistic. I'm sure you all are also reading about the continuing trends with health care costs.

If not, start here:

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer...r-is-over.html

It's like the guy knows AA personally and wrote a letter just to him.

:confused2:

[imanihonjin]

You are aware that this doesn't comport with reality, right?

http://swampland.time.com/2012/08/23...bstruct-obama/

Conservatives are continuing to fall into the trap of reading only media that supports their views and the media authors are doing the same thing resulting in an entire group of people who have no idea that what they are saying doesn't match facts and reality.

You guys have "unskewed" just about everything at this point.

Uhh....you cited TIME to support your theory that conservatives are prone to confirmation bias? What about the Woodward reporting that was cited earlier in the thread? No one, and I mean no one could accuse Woodward of being a republican party hack.

I have no doubt that Republicans had a mission early on to limit Obama's ability to govern.....but guess what it had more to do with where republicans found themselves after 2008 than it did with Obama. No matter how much republicans wanted to obstruct after 08, it didn't matter. They were powerless. So even if they didn't want to work with Obama, it didn't matter, they couldn't do anything to stop him. So after 2 years of having crap shoved down their throats, I can understand why repubs didn't want to work with Obama.

[imanihonjin]

I'm just glad we have a party as wise as the Republicans who can ask the House to pass a bill, then filibuster that bill and get mad at other Republicans who won't, then give up and have a vote on the bill, then threaten to defund the entire government or even default on the debt if legislation unaffected by a government shutdown isn't totally repealed.

Republicans at this point are like the kids on an Ally Bank commercial and Boehner is stuck sitting at the kids' table asking them what they want and pretending it is rational.

So what are Dems offering as a compromise? I haven't seen them touting anything as some sort of a grand bargain to raise the debt limit. All I hear spewing forth from the left is we aren't negotiating (with Republicans that is....Syria and Iran? Sure dems would love to negotiate with them, but Republicans? No way no how).

[Pelado]

I'm sure you are all again absorbing new data that shows premiums are going to be lower than even the CBO forecasts which conservatives said were unrealistic. I'm sure you all are also reading about the continuing trends with health care costs.

If not, start here:

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer...r-is-over.html

It's like the guy knows AA personally and wrote a letter just to him.

He has an interesting idea of what the word "again" means. This sentence appears near the beginning of the article:

The Obama administration today released the final numbers on the premiums in the state health exchanges.

This sentence begins his final paragraph:

Again, the news to date is provisional.

At no previous point in his article does he use the word "provisional." Nor does the website he cites show any unsubsidized premium amounts.

Oh, and as you are aware, the premiums displayed are the subsidized premiums. So who picks up the tab for the subsidized portion?

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has estimated that this new premium assistance program will cost $113 billion annually by 2019, with premium assistance going to an additional 19 million Americans (the Medicaid expansion will add 16 million new people to the program at a cost of $97 billion in 2017).

This CBO estimate of the cost of premium assistance assumes that tens of millions of otherwise eligible households will not be eligible for this new entitlement because their employers will continue to offer them qualified coverage at their place of work. Under ObamaCare, if a low income household is offered qualified coverage by their employer, they are automatically ineligible for additional federal premium assistance (this is the so-called “firewall” rule aimed at creating a barrier against mass migration out of employer-sponsored insurance).

Former CBO Director Doug Holtz-Eakin has estimated that employers will have strong incentives to move as many as 35 million workers who will be eligible for premium assistance out of employer plans and into subsidized coverage provided through the exchanges because both the employers and the workers will be better off if they are able to access the large new federal subsidies available to exchange enrollees. Holtz-Eakin estimates that adding this many additional subsidized workers in the exchanges would add about $1 trillion over the next ten years to the cost projections provided by CBO.

http://www.obamacarewatch.org/primer...mium-subsidies

So the greater the subsidy, the greater the incentive for businesses to drop coverage, and the more the taxpayers are getting raked over the coals.

[calicoug]

So what are Dems offering as a compromise? I haven't seen them touting anything as some sort of a grand bargain to raise the debt limit. All I hear spewing forth from the left is we aren't negotiating (with Republicans that is....Syria and Iran? Sure dems would love to negotiate with them, but Republicans? No way no how).

You don't negotiate with terrorists.

Republicans are making demands. In exchange for their demands they won't force the US to default on its obligations (aka ruin the economy). That isn't a negotiation. It is a hostage situation. If they want to get a deal, push for a deal that doesn't involve them making threats to sink us all if they lose.

[imanihonjin]

You don't negotiate with terrorists.

Republicans are making demands. In exchange for their demands they won't force the US to default on its obligations (aka ruin the economy). That isn't a negotiation. It is a hostage situation. If they want to get a deal, push for a deal that doesn't involve them making threats to sink us all if they lose.

So you want them to surrender leverage....I see. Democrats do this all the time, right? That is nice and all, but come on, get real. There are real issues with our economic outlook and most of those start and end with the exorbitant amount of money that our government spends and how much debt is accumulating (not to mention our unfunded obligations that are not currently reflected in the debt). This is the perfect time to negotiate those ideas. Republicans are right to voice their concern and realize that this is solid leverage to be able to do so.

The repubs have offered numerous proposals that would reduce debt, help the economy, and create jobs, only to be shot down by the democrats in the senate. Well, now they have some leverage on those on the left (its quite extreme that you call the right terrorists, I won't go as far to call the left terrorists for doing the same thing). Why would you expect republicans to back down when their fear, and rightly so at that, is that without some concessions the American economy is going to sink in a far worse fashion in the not to distant future than it would if we shut the government down for a few weeks.

[calicoug]

He has an interesting idea of what the word "again" means. This sentence appears near the beginning of the article:



This sentence begins his final paragraph:



At no previous point in his article does he use the word "provisional." Nor does the website he cites show any unsubsidized premium amounts.
you also could say effectively so what?
Oh, and as you are aware, the premiums displayed are the subsidized premiums. So who picks up the tab for the subsidized portion?



http://www.obamacarewatch.org/primer...mium-subsidies

So the greater the subsidy, the greater the incentive for businesses to drop coverage, and the more the taxpayers are getting raked over the coals.

There are at least two ways to handle this. You can have an employer mandate. Alternatively you could ask so what? Employers are currently paying a subsidy to employees for healthcare. If employers were to drop coverage they also would no longer have to pay for that subsidy. Instead, that subsidy would be redirected into employee wages. Higher wages of course would result in more taxes being collected. You are making it sound like the government is just going to pay a whole bunch of extra money and it won't be some sort of benefit received.

[imanihonjin]

There are at least two ways to handle this. You can have an employer mandate. Alternatively you could ask so what? Employers are currently paying a subsidy to employees for healthcare. If employers were to drop coverage they also would no longer have to pay for that subsidy. Instead, that subsidy would be redirected into employee wages. Higher wages of course would result in more taxes being collected. You are making it sound like the government is just going to pay a whole bunch of extra money and it won't be some sort of benefit received.

For somebody in the range to receive a subsidy the extra income wouldn't likely produce much in extra taxes. Think about it, if I am the bread winner in my family and I went from making $40k to $45k because my employer was cutting my benefits but giving my extra to offset my insurance costs....hardly any extra income tax will be paid. That is because I wasn't paying jack in income taxes to begin with.

This brings up another point. Why is someone on an exchange, purchasing health insurance with after tax dollars when insurance was provided by an employer it is not included in taxable wages? Why didn't Obamacare address this issue?

[Pelado]

There are at least two ways to handle this. You can have an employer mandate. Alternatively you could ask so what? Employers are currently paying a subsidy to employees for healthcare. If employers were to drop coverage they also would no longer have to pay for that subsidy. Instead, that subsidy would be redirected into employee wages. Higher wages of course would result in more taxes being collected. You are making it sound like the government is just going to pay a whole bunch of extra money and it won't be some sort of benefit received.

No, the government will pay a lot more money, and benefits will be received by those accessing the exchanges (benefits that, by the way, exclude many doctors and major medical facilities from their plans as was mentioned in the NYT piece a couple days ago).

Employers are not generally going to pay employees the full amount of their savings by not offering a health insurance plan, though they may increase the pay somewhat. The increased pay would increase payroll and income taxes, but not to the same extent as the subsidies increase federal expenditures. So who pays for the subsidies? The American taxpayers.

[byu71]

You don't negotiate with terrorists.

Republicans are making demands. In exchange for their demands they won't force the US to default on its obligations (aka ruin the economy). That isn't a negotiation. It is a hostage situation. If they want to get a deal, push for a deal that doesn't involve them making threats to sink us all if they lose.

I made myself listen to your boy speak to a crowd in Maryland on the health care plan. He is as two faced, talk out both sides of his mouth as any politician ever. He does love to hear himself talk and after hearing the same stuff over and over again I backed out on my committment to hear the whole thing.

That man who wants civility can throw out the crap with the best of them, What kept ringing in my ear was not how good the plan was but how good it was for a certain class and how fair it is going to be to stick it to those SOBing rich folks. He has an uncontrollable hatred for the rich who won't agree with him.

Do you buy the shit that comes out of Pelosi's and Reid's mouths. Anarchy, terrorists and all that shit. Well I guess you do since you just used the slogan. I just realized that. You have dropped dramatically as far as someone to carry on a reasonable conversation with with. You have fallen into the cesspool with Nanci an and Harry. How sad. I can't think of any combination of two people (who aren't in prison) I have less respect for.

[calicoug]

No, the government will pay a lot more money, and benefits will be received by those accessing the exchanges (benefits that, by the way, exclude many doctors and major medical facilities from their plans as was mentioned in the NYT piece a couple days ago).

Employers are not generally going to pay employees the full amount of their savings by not offering a health insurance plan, though they may increase the pay somewhat. The increased pay would increase payroll and income taxes, but not to the same extent as the subsidies increase federal expenditures. So who pays for the subsidies? The American taxpayers.

No- the offset wouldn't be 1:1. But pretending there is no offset isn't correct. Individuals would be paid more money and corporations would spend less money (And would therefore have more to either return to shareholders or reinvest). The government would pay more money. There would be a reshuffling of the allocation of payment responsibility for healthcare from private enterprise to the government and more money would be available to the private sector.

Of course, if you are looking for a solution that offers affordable healthcare to everyone but does not cost any money for anyone, I think he will continue to be disappointed.