Jezebel 
Enter your username and password.
New York, 11:33 PM
Sat Dec 19
19 posts in the last 24 hours
Tip your editors:
Editor-in-Chief:
Anna Holmes
| Twitter
Deputy Editor:
Dodai Stewart
| Twitter
Senior Contributing Editor:
Tracie Egan Morrissey
| Twitter
Contributing Editors:
Anna North
| Twitter
Sadie Stein
| Twitter
Reporter:
Irin Carmon
| Twitter
Editorial Assistant:
Margaret Hartmann
| Twitter
Contributors:
Rich Juzwiak
Email | Twitter
Latoya Peterson
Email
Jenna Sauers
Lizzie Skurnick
Interns:
Katy Kelleher
Twitter
Weekends/Commenter Moderator:
Hortense
| Twitter
Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
12/18/09
Silly me for thinking the insurance companies could get away with less after a bill passed. I guess my gullibility is a pre-existing condition.
I love America, but I hate how reactive some people get to "socialism" and other words when they don't even know what those words mean. I hate that this is all about an old white man's ability to further control my uterus and not getting better health care for my uninsured friends and family, including a brother who has worked full-time at one job for over a year but is still considered "temporary' and therefore gets no insurance.
Because of people like my worthless senator who can still call herself a Democrat with a straight face, this is getting watered down and watered down and watered down to where it isn't even soup anymore. It's just water that someone probably peed in.
12/18/09
I find this has a fairly interesting explanation with some number crunching on the (semi)current version of the bill. It also has excellent links to other analysis and the bill itself, if people are interested.
12/18/09
The Democrats: Even when we win, we lose!
12/18/09
12/18/09
12/18/09
Oddly enough, I did know about the farm labor exemption, but that's only because I wasn't able to find my grandfather in the SS Death Index (he passed away 16 years before I was born). My dad explained his absence from the index as, "He was a farmer. You think he was going to pay any taxes if he could possibly help it?"
12/18/09
12/18/09
12/18/09
12/18/09
Now I really feel that all hope is lost. If this bill passes as-is it's going to bankrupt hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of hard working Americans who are just scraping by hoping they don't get sick. I can't even afford the $1,000/year fine for not having health insurance much less health insurance. Moreover, unless we're going to start mandating that all institutions of higher learning provide health coverage for their students, we're going to permanently put college out of the reach of millions of students whose families can't afford to provide them health coverage, which means more and more students are going to have to forgo college and opportunities in order to get a job and health insurance. That's just WRONG.
I'm one of the lucky ones, in that I have the option of scraping together a few thousand dollars up-front and immigrating to Australia since my fiance is an Australian citizen and even if he wasn't, I have a friend in Canada who would be willing to marry me. Most people don't have that option and more importantly, you shouldn't NEED that option.
12/18/09
12/18/09
12/18/09
12/18/09
@bluebears: Seconded on the shittiness of the coverage. The University of Idaho's undergrad coverage, the first year it was required, did not cover BROKEN BONES unless they were the result of a varsity university sporting event. Really.
12/18/09
12/18/09
12/18/09
Mr. Pietra broke his leg two years later; thank goodness the school had switched to a different policy that actually covered routine medical care.
12/18/09
However, even if the minimum that goes through is the revocation of the "pre-existing condition" and tighter regulation of the insane and fraudulent current business model of the insurance industry, much good will still have been done for millions of chronically and fatally ill people. But it is not going to be enough to ensure, much less mandate, that the poorest of the poor get coverage. Which as I understand it, is kind of the point of having reform in the first place.
12/18/09
12/18/09
12/18/09
12/18/09
12/18/09
12/18/09
12/18/09
12/18/09
12/18/09
12/18/09
The flaws are so big that millions of people just like you may again have to suffer while waiting decades for any chance of change. So if we have to work to change this bill, even if it goes past the deadline Obama wants- his State Of The Union speech (just so that he can claim a win, no matter how shitty, in his column). Working it out a few days,weeks or months longer is worth the fight for a better, truly public friendly bill.
12/18/09
12/18/09
More importantly, sympathies to your family and your mother in particular. Hopefully something not shit can be done in time to help :(
12/18/09
12/18/09
12/18/09
12/18/09
12/18/09
12/18/09
12/18/09
12/18/09
12/18/09
8% is actually ridiculously low... For a $50000 a year income, that's a cap of $4000 a year on insurance. I'm pretty sure that most family insurance plans are going to be at least that much, and $50000 is well above the poverty line for a single family household.
12/18/09
12/18/09
The mandate 'fine' also starts at under $100 and takes over 5 years to reach the maximum penalty. Also, you are exempt if you've been uninsured for less than three months at the time of filing. If your insurance company booms your premium by 300% in retaliation for eliminating pre-existing conditions, you are probably going to shoot right out to the exempt pocket while you look for a better deal. If EVERY insurance company in the exchange program followed one-another lockstep the only thing they'll do is open the door for a government plan to swoop in and do the mop work. This has worked successfully in other states and with work it can work nationwide. Not perfectly, but it can work.
12/18/09
12/18/09
And for the firedoglake crew: spare us the sanctimoniousness. There's something awkward about opposing a mandate because it will inflict pain on the poor, and then turning around and banking on increased suffering by these same people to expand your grassroots support.
12/11/09
Only slutty, godless women need birth control, so that's not a problem. Nobody who matters cares about those women.
And those that want to plan their family growth and pregnancies are an affront to GOD, who decides, by drawing straws, whose eggs will meet their magical sperm matches and explode into blastulas of divine righteousness.
Pre-natal care? HA! All the care those pre-natals need is inside their mommy's belly! No problem there!
And after the bebehs are out of their mommys' tummies, they are ready to pull up on their tiny bootstraps and get a job that will provide health insurance to them, except for the ones that are too fat.
Problems? No problems here!
12/11/09
Here's the TX info: [www.hhsc.state.tx.us]
12/11/09
One of the "cost-cutting" measures contemplated during the negotiations was to drop maternity coverage from the plans. Several of the male student committee members, as well as the two women from the university administration were very open to the idea. I pointed out how that might discourage female students and married male students from attending the university (I had two male colleagues in my graduate program whose wives had babies on the student health insurance, and one female colleague who had a baby while she was in school).
We finally agreed on a plan that included maternity coverage, and was cheaper and better than our previous coverage. However, I was disgusted that they would even consider dropping it, and shudder to think what would have happened had there been no female students at all in the planning process.
12/11/09
12/11/09
12/11/09
12/14/09
12/11/09
The meeting was last night. People from both sides spoke in the packed room with more waiting in the halls and protesting outside.
Thankfully the board is a rational crew and declined to remove funding: "But because abortions are legal, and "we're not the Supreme Court, we're not Congress, and we're not a church," Heidrick said he believed that continuing the contracts supported the district's mission of providing health services to those who can't afford to pay for care."
12/11/09
Apparently they don't realize that's not how it works.
12/11/09
12/11/09
Oh. Wait. What's that? You mean us straight guys won't get any sex either, if you're all keeping your legs crossed? Well, holy shit! Let's make sure every woman in America gets all the reproductive health care she needs! Boinking for all!
(The Congressional address, in my head. I like this version a lot better.)