Strapping your dog to the top of your car for a long trip on the highway isn't the easy decision and it's not the popular decision.

Oh and it also demonstrates what a raging psychopath you are and how little you value any life other than your own.

Putting that aside, even, he's a corporate raider who's thrown more Americans out of their jobs than any president before him.... Since you can tell what kind of President he'll be by how he led his life??? So, vote Mitt if you want to lose your job, your health care, and watch your loved ones carted off in roof-top carriers for that long trip to 'the vacation home'.

@lantern53 @bobknight33

http://www.alternet.org/no-obama-didnt-lie-you-about-your-health-care-plans

just saying. @RFlagg is correct.
obamacare is a republican policy,or was initially.

and @lantern53
what is this drivel?:"hey RFlagg, you don't understand insurance, or business, or economics...all you know is what makes a utopia, and like all progressives, you don't know how to go about it, so you just make up rules, and devise policies, none of which work, but you have awesome intentions and the world would be a perfect place if only you were in charge.".

you peered into @RFlagg 's soul and discerned his innermost philosophies and all you could come up with is some one dimensional,vapid blather about "utopia"?

what special tool did you use to discern his most intimate visions and philosophies?
crystal ball?
are you a mystic?
did you fall into a vat of nuclear waste and survived only to find out you had superpowers to peer into a mans soul?

come on man.
what you posted in not only intellectually dishonest,it lacks imagination.
if you had shown some flair at least i could appreciate your comment for its creativity.
but its just the usual boring clever monkey flinging poop.

republican,democrat.
same animal.
i thought most people had come to terms that we were all being manipulated by those who wish to dominate and oppress in order to retain their silver crown.

you have more in common with Rflagg than you do with the very people fucking you and your family in the ass.
doesnt matter which team they play for.

disagree with him all you want but stop buying into this "republican versus democrat" bullshit line.
they are in a small club.
you aint in it..you will never be in it.
they dont like you..they will never like you.
the political class serves their own interests.
you? you can go fuck yourself.

or continue bickering with people you have more in common with while the elite class (that are holding all the cards) ass-rapes your kids future.

they like that.it serves their interests.
stop.
being.
a tool.
for the slave masters.

But if you like your health plan, you can keep your health plan. That lie doesn't bother you at all.

But if you like your health plan, you can keep your health plan. That lie doesn't bother you at all.

lol

If you have children with serious conditions, you still have to worry about small to medium sized businesses finding some reason to terminate you due to your child making their premiums go up. I mean they could do it to the employee, but chances are if you have something fairly serious it'll affect your job at some point and have to be mentioned before too long.

Or people who would rather not get treated for conditions because it puts them in a "high risk" category. While their insurance may not know exactly what they have, getting certain scripts will make it clear soon enough. So you run into the situation where the person is putting their health in the backseat to keep premiums low. Something that comes to mind here is Diabetes, and off the top of my head two reasons. 1) CDL Truck drivers and probably as some point in the future, regular licenses have to get tested and approved more often if they have diabetes and have more restrictions on them. Makes you unattractive to trucking companies, you can't conceal it easily since you have to make it known to get your license.
2) It puts you at a higher risk for other health issues or is often linked to other health issues. So your premiums are going to go up because of this. If you're on a tight budget, it might not be within the realm of out of pocket costs if you have to carry your own insurance.


As much as companies bitch about health care costs, they really have some people by the nuts with how it's setup.

And I don't think he's making the point that money should be given to anyone, he's making the point that having it tied to businesses puts you at a severe disadvantage if you have a urgent NEED for healthcare due to chronic conditions. The case and point being the guy who needs "catastrophic coverage" and pays out 10 grand a year before his insurance kicks in. A very large company can absorb people like that, even a medium to large could. Small and even mediums could not without a really lucrative cash influx. It really limits your options, because unless you are making more than the same people in your position...they will find a way to replace you if you get too expensive. They do it all the time, they just need to find one reason to terminate you. And it's pretty damn hard to be perfect, especially when you're sick and have to deal with the issues that come with it.


It's a really messed up situation if you're not a very skilled sick person or a very healthy unskilled person (with no sick family).

Have to look at other government ran healthcare systems for examples of maybe what he wants. I don't think the US is going to get there....too many people with lobbying power making bank on your health. Which is pretty much happening across the board in many markets, they aren't controlling themselves because the people profiting have too much power over them.

yeah, it'll trickle down, through the IV drip you'll need because you broke your health on the cheap unhealthy diet you could barely afford with the salary from your underpaid, overworked jobs (should you be lucky to have them).

No wait, you won't be able to afford the IV drip either.

Hey guys, don't worry about your health, worry about keeping job creators creating jobs and stuff. Yep.

IF YOU THOUGHT HEALTH CARE WAS EXPENSIVE BEFORE, WAIT UNTIL OBAMARXCARE MAKES IT FREE!


Although some of the "fiscal cliff" taxes can be avoided through a deal made in Congress, new ObamaCare taxes are guaranteed to kick in on January 1, amounting to $268 billion tax hike.

The Obamacare Medical Device Tax – a $20 billion tax increase: Medical device manufacturers employ 409,000 people in 12,000 plants across the country. Obamacare imposes a new 2.3 percent excise tax on gross sales – even if the company does not earn a profit in a given year. In addition to killing small business jobs and impacting research and development budgets, this will increase the cost of your health care – making everything from pacemakers to prosthetics more expensive.

The Obamacare “Special Needs Kids Tax” – a $13 billion tax increase: The 30-35 million Americans who use a Flexible Spending Account (FSA) at work to pay for their family’s basic medical needs will face a new government cap of $2,500 (currently the accounts are unlimited under federal law, though employers are allowed to set a cap).

There is one group of FSA owners for whom this new cap will be particularly cruel and onerous: parents of special needs children. There are several million families with special needs children in the United States, and many of them use FSAs to pay for special needs education. Tuition rates at one leading school that teaches special needs children in Washington, D.C. (National Child Research Center) can easily exceed $14,000 per year. Under tax rules, FSA dollars can be used to pay for this type of special needs education. This Obamacare tax provision will limit the options available to these families.

The Obamacare Surtax on Investment Income – a $123 billion tax increase: This is a new, 3.8 percentage point surtax on investment income earned in households making at least $250,000 ($200,000 single). This would result in the following top tax rates on investment income:


The Obamacare “Haircut” for Medical Itemized Deductions – a $15.2 billion tax increase: Currently, those Americans facing high medical expenses are allowed a deduction to the extent that those expenses exceed 7.5 percent of adjusted gross income (AGI). This tax increase imposes a threshold of 10 percent of AGI. By limiting this deduction, Obamacare widens the net of taxable income for the sickest Americans. This tax provision will most harm near retirees and those with modest incomes but high medical bills.

The Obamacare Medicare Payroll Tax Hike --an $86.8 billion tax increase: The Medicare payroll tax is currently 2.9 percent on all wages and self-employment profits. Under this tax hike, wages and profits exceeding $200,000 ($250,000 in the case of married couples) will face a 3.8 percent rate instead. This is a direct marginal income tax hike on small business owners, who are liable for self-employment tax in most cases.

Not only does this tax increase costs on companies, it also increases costs on hospitals, doctors and people in need of medical treatment that requires medical devices to be used. As a consequence of this, biomedical or medical device engineering firms are already laying off workers who develop crucial medical products due to the "unforeseen" costs, or in other words, the costs of ObamaCare. Not to mention, the more money these companies pay to the government, the less money they have to invest in research and development.

With this new medical device tax, students who pay large sums of money to get degrees in the field of biomedical engineering, just like doctors, will no longer see the benefits of going into the field and therefore, we will have a shortage of engineers developing new medical device technology. The medical device tax is a death sentence for American medical innovation.

OWN IT, LIBS!

Lv,

QM

@bareboards2

I'm also glad that we can discuss these issues like reasonable people. I apologize if I've come off as unreasonable in the past. The truth is that I'm always willing to talk things out.

I've heard the rhetoric about death panels from both sides; I just haven't put in the effort to separate fact from fiction. Now that I've looked into it, this is what I've found. What you're describing (end of life consultations) is not the same thing as what are now being called death panels in Obamacare. Yes, it is true that the provision you are speaking about was demonized by republicans and ultimately removed from Medicare. I'm actually not sure how I feel about it, because it is a form of assisted suicide, and it could be abused. Some seniors may feel pressured into forgoing care, just as you hear of some people receiving substandard care because they are organ donors.

http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/dad-rescues-brain-dead-son-from-doctors-wishing-to-harvest-his-organs-boy-r

In any case, the conversation has evolved, and we are no longer talking about these end of life consultations when we are talking about death panels. The death panel in Obamacare is an unelected board of 15 "health care experts" (the Independent Payment Advisory Board, or IPAB) who will make critical decisions on what services within Medicare are financially viable, and which aren't. Here is a quote from President Obama in the first debate acknowledging this:

"It — when Gov. Romney talks about this board, for example, unelected board that we’ve created, what this is, is a group of health care experts, doctors, et cetera, to figure out, how can we reduce the cost of care in the system overall?” Obama said.

“Now, so what this board does is basically identifies best practices and says, let’s use the purchasing power of Medicare and Medicaid to help to institutionalize all these good things that we do,” Obama added.

This is also acknowledged by a senior adviser to Obama:

"WE need death panels. Well, maybe not death panels, exactly, but unless we start allocating health care resources more prudently — rationing, by its proper name — the exploding cost of Medicare will swamp the federal budget."

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/17/opinion/health-care-reform-beyond-obamacare.html?_r=2

So call it death panels, or rationing, the principle is still the same. The recommendations this board makes will become law unless it is overridden by a 2/3's majority vote in congress. Here is a good example of how this type of legislative oversight is making health care "better" (penalizing hospitals for readmitting patients within 30 days):

"Beginning Monday, the hospitals will receive lower reimbursements on Medicare claims filed with the government for each admitted patient. Over the year, the total amount of those reductions will vary from $1.2 million for MedStar Washington Hospital Center in Northwest Washington, the region’s largest private hospital, to about $12,000 for Reston Hospital Center in Virginia. Of 16 hospitals in the District and Northern Virginia, all but three will get paid less."

"Some of the hardest-hit facilities are inner-city hospitals that tend to treat sicker, poorer patients. These patients sometimes end up being readmitted because they have a harder time getting medication and follow-up doctors’ appointments, often because they lack transportation, hospital officials said.

“Not only do we have the very sick patients, they also have very significant social needs,” said Kamaljit Sethi, who heads quality and safety at Providence Hospital in Northeast, where officials estimate they will lose about $320,000 in the coming year."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/hospitals-in-dc-va-to-lose-millions-from-medicare/2012/09/30/2fe0f96c-08ca-11e2-afff-d6c7f20a83b
f_story.html

What this means is that patients with the greatest needs will lose the most services, because the hospitals will no longer be able to serve them because of this penalty. This outcome could turn out to be deadly for thousands of people, ultimately, all in the name of efficiency. This is a perfect illustration as to why Government should have as little power over your health care as possible. Here is testimony from the front lines:

" Today while working my shift in the emergency room, an old lady was brought in very sick and in fact near death. I did my usual workup and evaluation and attempted to administer life saving treatment. It was my plan to admit this woman to the hospital. I found out a little later that this same woman had been a patient here just slightly more than 2 weeks ago with a DIFFERENT DIAGNOSIS. I was told that if this woman was admitted, the hospital would not be paid.

The new Medicare rule now is that if the same Medicare patient is re-admitted to the hospital within 30 days, the hospital will not be paid. When they first started this nonsense they said this only applied to patients with the same diagnosis. Now they have "expanded" the rule to include re-admissions for any reason. So if you're in the hospital for pneumonia, and 3 weeks later, you break your leg.......too bad. Medicare will not pay the hospital to fix your leg."

http://grouchatrighttruth.blogspot.com/2012/10/death-panels-are-here.html

This is completely outrageous, I think you will be forced to agree. Personally, I think we need to have a national conversation about this issue, and both sides need to come together to hammer out this issue. Obamacare is clearly not ready for primetime, and as it stands it is going to hurt people.

As far as your other comments, I'm not limiting myself to any particular news source. I am a political independent and I will share with you that I won't be voting for either candidate this year. I will still participate in the local elections but I cannot vote for either candidate in good conscience. While I am socially and fiscally conservative on many issues, I am liberal on others, such as helping the poor, the environment (within reason), and immigration. I don't fit into a polical cookie cutter and I don't automatically support a candidate because they give God lip service.

your "parallels with homosexuality" are offensively idiotic. hiding behind the disenfranchised to justify lack of personal responsibility... i couldn;t give fuck all if everyone in this country wanted to eat themselves into an early grave, but what the fuck does that have to do with sex? how the hell is becoming healthy some crazy magical thing - WELL THE GAYS COULD ACT STRAIGHT?!??! thank god your on the other side of the internet right now

(edit) and BMI, waist size, the scale, these all have no correlation with your health(?).... but doing the most pull-ups, thats the real key..????
if you can stomach it, the information is all there, having a +30 bmi will kill you early. not that we need you breathing all the air anyway
>> ^bmacs27:
...gay people could act straight...

>> ^messenger:

Jobs was a businessman and a marketer. He wasn't all that good with computers, relatively. Steve Wozniak was the scientific genius, but had no interest in business or the limelight.


He's also scientifically obese. I love nerds but for the sake of your health take a walk or something.

I'm on a weight-loss journey at the moment - here's my take...

I'm following in the footsteps of my sister who's super slim now and very healthy. She's virtually a vegetarian and regularly sees a nutritionist and gets her blood tested (due to a medical problem she's hopefully overcoming).

She eats every three hours and is militant about avoiding sugar. It's the big problem in most people's diets. The mileage from exercise seems to vary for many but she takes regular brisk walks whenever she can and is also now biking.

She gives me good tips all the time, like avoiding the low-fat options. Those will almost always contain a bunch of unhealthy additives and you're better off with the full-fat version.

Finally my standing desk bits just arrived from IKEA. Not looking forward to putting it together...

http://howto.videosift.com/talk/Standing-desks-may-improving-your-Sifting-and-your-health

>> ^ant:

Isn't it bad to stand all the time?


Definitely. You should sit every so often or have a lie down. But sitting all the time is the worst pattern you can adopt.

>> ^quantumushroom:

This corrupt, incoherent decision goes way beyond socialized medicine.
This is what you need to take away from this: the Supreme Idiots have now given the federal mafia unlimited power. Fuck your health insurance or anything else, it does not matter because you are no longer free. The pigs can now penalize you for doing something they don't like, and "TAX" your dumb asses when you DON'T do something they command you to do.
We are no longer free, a message lost on whose who didn't give a damn about freedom to begin with. To you ninnyhammers still whining about "greed", we've only spent 9 trillion dollars on a failed "War on Poverty".
Why you lefties born in America (by accident) just don't up and move to Europe I'll never know. They already have a socialist paradise.


Wait, does this mean I can't legally smoke marijuana now?

This corrupt, incoherent decision goes way beyond socialized medicine.

This is what you need to take away from this: the Supreme Idiots have now given the federal mafia unlimited power. Fuck your health insurance or anything else, it does not matter because you are no longer free. The pigs can now penalize you for doing something they don't like, and "TAX" your dumb asses when you DON'T do something they command you to do.

We are no longer free, a message lost on whose who didn't give a damn about freedom to begin with. To you ninnyhammers still whining about "greed", we've only spent 9 trillion dollars on a failed "War on Poverty".

Why you lefties born in America (by accident) just don't up and move to Europe I'll never know. They already have a socialist paradise.