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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Karkadinn
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
I don't see how that's different from every other boogieman complaint people make about regulation killing jobs. Every single time, either they're crying wolf or the industry dies because it wasn't doing what it was supposed to be doing in the first place - bettering the lives of the people.
No one likes being regulated. That's why they don't do it to themselves, after all. But everyone NEEDS it.
edited 9th Oct '12 11:29:50 AM by Karkadinn
Furthermore, I think Guantanamo must be destroyed.
Citizen
I'm only speaking anecdotally here, but a doctor that I know says that his hospital only actually collects about 1/3 of its bills. Medical billing is extremely complicated and behind the times.
Hospitals set rates for various services, everything from a surgeon's time to the cost of a bandage. Nobody knows where these numbers come from. They bill patients or their insurers, but insurance companies have their own list of what they will pay the hospitals for those same services. Hospitals then sell unpaid and uncollected bills to third-party debt collection agencies who sue the patients in court. Since the patients don't have money, they default on the lawsuits, which gives the collectors a judgment they can use to garnish what little wages the patients have. (This is not anecdotal, I deal with this stuff a lot.)
Insurers meanwhile, will refuse to insure you if you have a preexisting condition, if you have a gap in coverage, or if you actually make a claim on the insurance policy. If they can't refuse coverage, they'll just price themselves out of affordability.
In short, both the health care industry and insurance industry have utterly failed at making healthcare available and affordable to the public.
edited 9th Oct '12 11:35:23 AM by Lawyerdude
What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly.
Serocco
Obama took Social Security off the table for all Democratic candidates in Congress.
???
Now that I think about it, I wonder if Obama's rather right-wing comment about Social Security during the debates had anything to do with his drop in the polls.
Karkadinn
If we're going to mess around with the Onion for lols, I like this article better:
“I’m lying a lot more, and my lies are far more egregious than they’ve ever been,” a smiling Romney told reporters while sitting in the back of his campaign bus, adding that when faced with a choice to either lie or tell the truth, he will more than likely lie. “It’s a strategy that works because when I lie, I’m essentially telling people what they want to hear, and people really like hearing things they want to hear. Even if they sort of know that nothing I’m saying is true.”
“It’s a freeing strategy, really, because I don’t have to worry about facts or being accurate or having any concrete positions of any kind,” Romney added.
Romney said he is telling at least 80 percent more lies now than he was two months ago. Buoyed by his strong debate performance, which by his own admission included 40 or 50 instances of lying in one 90-minute period, the candidate said he will continue to “just openly lie [his] ass off” until the Nov. 6 election.
Whether it’s a senior citizen, military family, working mother, businessman, or middle-class American, Romney said, he will lie to every single one of them as often as he can if that’s what it takes to win the presidency.
“The best part is, it’s really easy to lie,” said Romney, who added that voicing whatever untruths come into his mind at any given moment is an easy thing to do because all it requires is opening his mouth and talking. “For example, if someone accuses me of having a tax plan that makes no discernable sense, I just lie and say that I do have a tax plan that makes sense. I also say there is a study that backs up my plan. See that? Simple. None of it is remotely true, of course, but now we’re moving on to the next topic because people are usually too afraid to ask me straight up if I’m lying, because that is apparently not something you ask someone who is running for president.”
This might sound weird, but the problem I have with the Onion (and other parody sites) is that people don't take them seriously. Obviously, they shouldn't, but...I mean when they actually have a point, albeit couched in humor, it's hard for people to tell the difference from when they're just making stuff up. The boy who cried wolf problem, basically.
The Daily Show and Colbert Report are sometimes like that.
Lost in Space
One of the problems with the current design of our healthcare system is that primary care providers get paid crap compared to specialists. Obamacare doesn't directly address this issue but it does other things that may impact it in the long run:
- It reduces Medicare payments to providers and insurers. Medicare already forces providers to operate on razor-thin margins, to the point where some already refuse to accept it and more have threatened to. The proposed cuts are not supposed to affect what individual doctors make but I don't know exactly how they work so I can't say for certain.
- The addition of large numbers of people to the insurance pool should result in more business for primary care providers, which is paid at rates that are negotiated with the insurance companies. I don't see how this would affect their margins; if anything it should increase revenue but may also result in some degree of rationing give increased demand, until more doctors can be trained and brought into the workforce.
- The requirement that insurers' operating margins be capped, plus the increased number of healthy people being covered, is intended to drive down premiums. This may result in healthcare being seen as more affordable. More covered patients also means less people not paying their bills.
Obamacare doesn't address malpractice insurance and medical education costs, which are the two largest things eating away at doctors' earnings.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Karkadinn
Speaking of medical education expenses, I would think that Obama's attempts to get student loans under control would help in the future, if not necessarily for doctors graduated out of school right now. By contrast, Romney's rhetoric seems to be along the lines of 'Let them sink or swim based on how much money their parents can afford to toss them while they're at college.'
edited 9th Oct '12 12:18:42 PM by Karkadinn
Furthermore, I think Guantanamo must be destroyed.
Will kill you
I swear to god I want to punch the nitwits that think the debates matter at all. Also the idiots that believed Romney's bullshit. By the way yesterday I found this:
http://thinkprogress.org/romney-facts/
People should know about that two-faced twit Romney.
edited 9th Oct '12 12:34:42 PM by Couchpotato20
"I don't give a rat's ass about going to hell. I guess it's because I feel like I'm already there." -Mugen
I didn't read the whole list, but a lot of that is stuff people do know and either don't care about or outright approve of.
<><
Regulation shouldn't have an impact on jobs, but the current form of implementation frequently does. For instance, there is a combination bait shop/notary public/tax prep/U-Haul rental/etc. place down the road from us. They need to do all of those odd services to break even. However, being certified to legally do taxes now requires paying to take a course, paying license fees, paying to take a test, etc.
As we live in a rural area, the 20-30 client a year don't recoup the compliance costs.
The sensible answer to me is that the IRS, funded by taxes, should make the certification process free, or at most charge for the paper and ink. But somehow I get the feeling that a certification company is too busy getting their rent off that to let such an idea pass unchallenged.
Do you highlight everything looking for secret messages?
Lost in Space
That's an argument for simplifying the tax code more than it is anything else.
edited 9th Oct '12 1:11:33 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Romney is now ahead of Obama according to RCP.
That's the first time this has happened.
@Tangent: I agree with that, but was that replying to someone in particular? Because if I so I'm sad I missed the earlier part of the convo.
edited 9th Oct '12 1:11:33 PM by EdwardsGrizzly
<><
I dunno, Tangent, I'm pretty sure most people approve of there having to be a certification process and a class you have to take. Hell, consider that we already have to pay to take classes in order to get specific jobs (IE, NEARLY ALL OF THEM) and the idea of making it so that H&R employees don't have to do the same to be employed doesn't exactly seem all that fair.
Also, that situation for that one place seems... highly unusual, to say the least.
It's not unusual at all in rural areas. There's still a niche in small towns for the "general store", especially in areas with some tourism they can tap into.
<><
I'm supposedly taking a free online tax preparer course, and shit's complicated.
But I haven't seen a single thing that I think "This is dumb why do they do it like this." It's very complicated, but everything makes sense from an "incentivizing people to do shit" standpoint.
Serocco
Says the guy who never did a thing to his own children, mind you.
edited 9th Oct '12 1:29:14 PM by Serocco
In RWBY, every girl is Best Girl.I can't wait to find out the full context of that.
<><
Serocco
In short, it's exactly how I said it was. He's not advocating for parents to grab a gun and shoot their kids indiscriminately - he wants the "proper procedure", as in, a full-court trial. Are you not merciful.
edited 9th Oct '12 1:35:29 PM by Serocco
In RWBY, every girl is Best Girl.
Yeah, that was posted last night. And I have to say that the whole thing sounds hinky. I mean, what the fuck? Exactly how much rebellion justifies killing a kid? Does he just want to instill fear in children?
Shit's fucked up, yo. I can't think of any sane parent that would even cooperate with this.
He actually says that he doesn't think most parents will take advantage of it but he feels it should be there as a looming threat just to keep them in line.
His reasons for supporting this seem to be because the Bible says it's okay if you go through a proper procedure and the court finds this a suitable punishment.
Don't blame Obama for Romney's rise in the polls, blame the millions of half-witted Americans who think debate performance matters more than the survival of Social Security or Medicare. Blame them for watching TV news to have their senses dulled and their head filled with nonsense, but where they get virtually no news of value.
In RWBY, every girl is Best Girl.