The Hillary-thread

[laklak]

Well, I just get to pay about $14,000 a year for medical insurance, and it's supposed to go up again next year, so I'm planning on paying about $16,000 to $18,000 in 2017.

We paid over 12K last year, for major medical only, $5000 deductible each, no coverage outside a hospital or ER admission. Could have lowered the cost to about $8K by going to a 10K deductible, again for each. Got the premium increase notices saying they were upping the premium to almost $15K a year. For the same shit coverage.

When we had the opportunity to jump on the subsidy we jumped goddamn fast. Would never have considered it except I was drinking with my daughter's boss, who's an insurance broker, and was bitching about the premium increase. He and Accountant George got together and came up with a plan. It worked, because it's perfectly, absolutely, 100% legal and aboveboard. When they wrote the law they considered ONLY income, not net worth or capital gains, so the $800 I paid George last year was money well spent.

To call the ACA a clusterfuck is an insult to clusterfucks the world over, it's a goddamn GalactoFuck. The fucking Vogons could come up with a better system. How any sane person ever for a half a second believed it could possibly work is beyond my ken, it's doomed to crash and burn even if Shillary gets elected. Which, if memory serves, plenty of fucking people said at the time but were dismissed as reactionary right-wing bigot sexist racist Republicans who just didn't understand. Well, we see how well it's all worked out now, don't we? As for Medicare for everyone - - fuck me that's fucking hilarious. Medicare is the most bloated, useless, money wasting, bureaucrat ridden piece of shit program in the entire history of bloated, useless, money wasting, bureaucrat ridden piece of shit Federal programs.

What the ACA has done, in the name of some supposed "fairness" or "equality" or whatever, is a goddamn crime. It's crippling the middle class, it's done nothing to reduce the number of uninsured, health care costs are skyrocketing, the medical professionals are fed the fuck up, and the whole house of cards is about to collapse in a puddle of stinking political bullshit. And people wonder why Trump is doing as well as he is. It's because the people who actually work for a fucking living are sick and tired of being shat all over and treated like beef cattle to feed the useless slackers who routinely vote for Mo' Free Shit.

There's a backlash a'comin, but it remains to be seen whether it comes too late. We're at the tipping point already, where the Have-Not-Jobs are about to outnumber the Have-Jobs, and once that happens it's all over but the crying. I can still get out, with a bit of time to liquidate assets, but I despair for my children's futures. I don't have the money to get them out with me, so maybe the best thing to do is get my and Mrs. Lak's asses out, put the money offshore, and they get it when we pop our clogs. Better than a lifetime of Victory Gin and boiled cabbage.

[Tero]

It was never going to lower healthcare costs as it's not Medicare. The healthcare profession and pharmaceutical companies were on board from the start. The capitalism part just does not work as long as it's one size healthcare. There are no discount providers or economy clinics other than the nurse practitioner at Walgreens.
(The costs it could control were those of insurance. If the medical providers raise their rates, nothing we can do there. You want socialism?)

[laklak]

It was sold to the American public as cost cutting. Premiums would fall, everyone would be covered, and we'd all float down Brotherhood River in rainbow inner tubes singing Kumbaya. Of course the idiots lapped it up, YAY OBAMACARE! It's a new world!

Most people are too fucking stupid to suffer to live.

[Tero]

Premiums would fall if you could double the pool. One problem is that corporations are self insuring and have the largest pool of healthy customers.

[Forty Two]

A record number of Americans just don't like Hillary Clinton -- https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the ... y-clinton/

if you look just at registered voters, the new poll actually shows Clinton's image is about as bad as Trump's, with 38 percent having a favorable impression and 59 percent unfavorable, compared to a 37/60 split for Trump.

[Forty Two]

Hillary Clinton continued sending classified information even after leaving the State Department, The Post has exclusively learned.

On May 28, 2013, months after stepping down as secretary of state, Clinton sent an email to a group of diplomats and top aides about the “123 Deal” with the United Arab Emirates.

But the email, which was obtained by the Republican National Committee through a Freedom of Information Act request, was heavily redacted upon its release by the State Department because it contains classified information.

The markings on the email state it will be declassified on May 28, 2033, and that information in the note is being redacted because it contains “information regarding foreign governors” and because it contains “Foreign relations or foreign activities of the United States, including confidential sources.”

The email from Clinton was sent from the email account — hrod17@clintonemail.com — associated with her private email server.

The email’s recipients were Deputy Secretary of State William Burns, diplomat Jeffrey Feltman, policy aide Jake Sullivan, diplomat Kurt Campbell, State Department chief of staff Cheryl Mills, and Clinton aide Huma Abedin.

The “123 Deal” was a 2009 agreement between the United Arab Emirates and the US on materials and technological sharing for nuclear energy production.

“Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified information was so pervasive, it continued after she left government,” Republican National Committee research director Raj Shah told The Post. “She clearly can’t be trusted with our nation’s security.”

Clinton is believed to have sent 2,101 emails that contained at least some classified information.

http://nypost.com/2016/08/31/clinton-em ... tate-dept/

[Brian Peacock]

I wonder if she is on Obamacare?

Nobody is "on Obamacare." There is no such thing. Obamacare is the legal requirement that individuals buy health insurance from private companies, and some people get subsidies in order to buy it - very few -- but, some. There are about 13 million people who signed up through the exchanges in 2016, and of those about 80% or so get subsidies. Of those who get subsidies, though, it must be noted that most people only get a fraction of the total premium as subsidy. It's a sliding scale.

The Netherlands has a similar system, except everyone is obliged to have basic health insurance and where the government will subsidise it according to a means test. Unlike the US-model though basic cover will entirely meet your medical needs - and you can top up your cover for various ancillary extras. If a physician decides that a particular treatment is appropriate the insurer covers the cost - regardless. Medics prescribe: insurers pay. Insurers still make loads of money because most people are not expensively ill most of the time. The US-model reduces treatment and care to a unit cost equation - in effect, treating only to a level which the insurer considers is profitable for them.

Now, add to it that rich people who can "structure" their incomes so they show low income for tax purposes can get Obamacare subsidies even though they are millionaires..... http://www.cnbc.com/2016/01/27/theyre-m ... idies.html

In order to accomplish this, everyone who pays for their own health insurance has had their premiums triple in the last 3 years.

Thank you! Oh, glory be! What a wondrous program!

Fuck Obamacare, right in the ass. It's a piece of shit. A big, steaming, smelly pile of shit.

I think you are missing the point if you think Obama is responsible for the institutionalised and conspicuous avarice of the US health insurances sector who, it must be acknowledged, provide a financial service (not a medical service) with no social conscience or public health obligation.

[Forty Two]

It was never going to lower healthcare costs as it's not Medicare.

It was sold specifically on the notion that health care costs were rising too fast, and that the ACA was needed to make healthcare more affordable. i can't tell you how many times I told supporters of this fucking bullshit law that it would make things less affordable, not more affordable and certainly would not reduce health care costs -- and I was told I was crazy then. Now, of course, many folks are like you and claiming that it was never going to lower costs in the first place. Horse hockey, my friend. That's exactly what the proponents of this legislation said it would do, and exactly what its supporters thought it would do.

Remember how much money the ACA was going to save? We were were going to save $50 billion a year on fraud controls alone! Tell me you don't remember those lies...er...I mean, "promises.."

The healthcare profession and pharmaceutical companies were on board from the start. The capitalism part just does not work as long as it's one size healthcare. There are no discount providers or economy clinics other than the nurse practitioner at Walgreens.
(The costs it could control were those of insurance. If the medical providers raise their rates, nothing we can do there. You want socialism?)

The costs it could control were those of insurance? It controlled the costs way higher.

I fucking pay like $1200 a month for insurance that cost me $485 per month in 2013. Same coverage, approximately. Same family members. The only difference now is I have a higher deductible. My copays are about the same.

It's shit. No two ways around it. Shit. Piece of shit. Fucking shit. Obama fucked us in the ass, and the problem is that fuckwits on the pro-Obamacare side generally don't care, because most of them get their insurance through employers - the fucking Obamacare architects were smart enough to know that to fuck the country royally, you had to make sure that you didn't make the average employee feel the bite directly.

Self employed jamokes like me, who can't hide their income, get fucked in the ass hard, no grease, and no kiss on the cheek.

[laklak]

Nail, meet hammer.

[Forty Two]

Premiums would fall if you could double the pool. One problem is that corporations are self insuring and have the largest pool of healthy customers.

You could never "double the pool." There were, like, 40 million uninsured out of country of 330, 000,000 million. How the fuck do you "double the pool?"

This "problem" you claim to have identified is nonsense. How many corporations "self insure?" Hardly any. They buy insurance policies from Aetna, BC/BS, and other large insurance companies. That's not "self-insurance" - that's buying insurance. Fucking nonsense. Where did you get this stupid idea?

Most of the 40 million odd "unininsured" WERE NOT FUCKING POOR!!! Sorry for the all caps, but it's an indisputable fact that the lame ass fuckwits who supported this law simply refused to accept, ever, even when it was proved, without a doubt, and not even disputed by anyone of any knowledge on the subject. Half the fucking uninsured were young folks making $50k to $75k per year (and thus not eligible for subsidies of any consequence), and they were choosing not to by the then much less expensive insurance. Now, it's fucking 2 and 3 times as expensive, and these people are choosing to pay the penalty at tax time rather than buy the bloated insurance. Then about 1/2 of the remaining 1/2 of the uninsured were undocumented immigrants/illegal aliens.

That's why only about 12 million or so people have signed up on the exchanges - and only 80% of them get subisdies (i.e. about 10 million give-or-take get subsidies), and remember that of that 10 million, it's a sliding scale, and a bunch get a small subsidy and the subsidy increase as income decreases. But the subsidies are largely bullshit, because the premiums have fucking doubled and tripled and people are paying $5000 and $10000 deductible, which means that all they have is catastrophic coverage, and they just pay out of pocket all year, which is why nobody is running there to buy this shit.

It's such bullshit. And what really chaps my ass is the people who still try to defend it, with horseshit -- weapons grade horseshit -- about how it would work great if it wasn't for capitalism.

Oh, my fucking god. The depths of idiocy and deliberate ignorance displayed by the pro-Obamacare cocksucking fuckwits. My god I hate every last one of them.

[laklak]

When we moved back to the States we decided we only needed catastrophic coverage. Neither of us has any chronic conditions, and aren't on any medication other than my one thyroid pill a day. So we got a nice policy, cost about $400 a month, with a $2500 deductible, $5000 max out of pocket, and 100% coverage for anything after that. Still thought it was fucking ridiculously expensive, but doable. Then came Obama. Bang, premium started to rise, deductibles started to rise, out of pocket started to rise. And kept rising, And rising. Then they decided that catastrophic only policies were "unfair". Then they required us to have coverage for bullshit like sex reassignment. Like I'm ever going to cut off my dick. And it isn't going away, you can bet the fucking farm on that. Hillary will be elected, and she can't roll it back. It will change, but only to stick it to the middle class (and particularly self-employed middle class like you, 42) even harder.

As an aside, are you getting drenched? It's dark as a dungeon out and raining like the fucking Flud all morning here. I blame Obama.

[Forty Two]

Mild rain here thus far, but I guess we have some sort of storm potential for tomorrow. Some grumbling about school closings possible for tomorrow.

[laklak]

It's coming down like Armageddon here. Haven't lost power yet, but it's bound to happen. Got the sump pump in the pool full time to keep up with it.

[Forty Two]

Huh - I just checked the weather and that trop storm is heading straight for us. LOL. I'm near the west coast.

Hmmm.. I thought it was going to be a big nothing. Not so sure now.

[laklak]

I'm in Sarasota, about a block from the bay. Looks like a lot of water on the way, 'cuz we're on the south side of the storm. They've hyped it beyond hype, of course. I think that's a stupid thing to do. We haven't had a major storm make landfall since Charlie in '04, and it kicked the living shit out of Port Charlotte and Punta Gorda just to the south. If they overhype every tropical depression then when we get a big one people will ignore the warnings. I've lived here, off and on, my whole life, so I know how bad a big storm can be, even a Cat 1. We're pretty safe even though we're close to the Bay. We're at the highest point on the coast, about 26 feet above sea level (which is why they put the airport here). The house was built in 1950, concrete block, with hip roof, tie downs, and new windows, so we'll weather most of what comes our way. That said, I'll GTFO if we get a direct hit from anything substantial.