Comments on: Affordable for Individuals Versus Affordable for Wal-Mart Employees

By: tjallen

tjallen — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 01:23:32 +0000

The obvious problem is people like me. I am self employed, uninsured, and currently am spending at or over 100% of my income every year now. Where in the h am I supposed to find another 13% ?????? As someone above said, this is unenforceable because there is no more of my income to be had! It doesn’t exist! Maybe when business is good, I could pay, but when business is slow, like now, I’m under water now and there is no 13% available. I already ration my healthcare. Now someone will be arriving at my door to steal 13% more??

By: wikwox

wikwox — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 10:52:18 +0000

If you think the Founding Fathers were infallible take a look at the Senate. Clowns and fools like Max Baucus run rampant and we’re dumb enough to pay attention.

By: Hmmm

Hmmm — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 03:59:49 +0000

And I totally support you in your unreasonable speculative skepticism.

By: orionATL

orionATL — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 03:22:12 +0000

hmmm @54

yours is a thoughtful comment and i suspect accurate for the nonce.

it would be reasonable to suppose that this is the beginning position in a negotiation.

but what ew and her commenters have highlighted is just how treacherous this, for lack of a better word, “tax” (or “individual costs” stuff) is.

i’m not being reasonable here; i’m being speculative; i’m being skeptical.

what a great route to sabotage “tax/costing” would be if one were so inclined -

political dynamite, not just “now” but forevermore.

would the health industry have any incentive to pursue such a tactic?

would our corporate-funded united states senate have the leadership and concern for the public good that would them handle to defuse this dynamite?

it’s possible.

but when was the last time the U.S. senate operated in such a fashion?

By: Hmmm

Hmmm — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 02:51:43 +0000

Welp, having thought for a few hours now, the Baucus bill seem so far off the mark of anything that could ever have been actually expected to pass, that I don’t see how it can be intended as anything other than a stake in the ground, a pole, an extreme position marking one end of the spectrum. 676/SP would I guess be the other pole. So next comes a fight to see where on the continuum in between the two sides will find equilibrium and a bill.

So it ain’t over yet, not by a long shot.

By: orionATL

orionATL — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 02:41:03 +0000

look,

the baucus bill is a health industry effort to sabotage public, e.g.,government, involvement in the “reform” of in health care costs for generations.

that’s all it is,

a sabotage job.

earl of huntington @7 comes close to this when he observes:

“… This all seems an elaborate ruse to make health care reform impossible. There’s no “splitting the baby” here, except in a literal sense. There’s no wise middle ground. No rhetorical twisting of arms and pocketbooks would make any of this plan acceptable to anyone but an insurester, because it fails to improve health insurance practices or health care costs.

Adopting Baucus’ plan would be a boon to the Republicans, and be a generational albatross on the shoulders of a splintered, wasting, tubercular Democratic Party. It’s the sort of “Democratic” plan that Karl Rove would promulgate..”

BUT

the baucus/health industry lobbyists plan it is not just intended to make public involvement in reform unworkable now, in the present,

it is designed to make it impossible to propose public involvement in the future due to the deliberately punitive and obscure nature of tax “penalty” provisions.

the baucus plan is designed to make public involvement in health care cost containment anathema for GENERATIONS.

isn’t corporate involvement in public policy wonderful. think how much better it will be once republican operative, and supreme court justice, john roberts, persuades the other four bishops to lift all limits on corporate influence in american politics.

thanks, ew, and commenters, for revealing this scheme in detail.

By: bmaz

bmaz — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 02:18:21 +0000

That is really not true. It may be fucked, but it would minimally withstand scrutiny.

By: airmaster2

airmaster2 — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 01:57:07 +0000

Also unconstitutional.

By: Hmmm

Hmmm — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 21:52:46 +0000

If enacted, that should give rise to a challenge lawsuit, and right quick too. Sounds like a taking to my unlawerly ears, but probably lots of other bases on which to challenge it. Unfortunate that extreme illogic per se is not a basis for a legal challenge — “There exists a class of people able to demonstrate such financial need that housing subsidies are made available to them; we observe that members of this class are largely paid by the hour; now therefore, let us undertake to pile an additional unpaid time burden on that same class of people.” Way to write ‘em, Diaper Dave.

By: bmaz

bmaz — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 21:38:36 +0000

Why do you call this the “Bush Toady supreme Court”? Bush had only marginal overall effect on the court, save for ensuring that two conservative seats are protected for longer periods. He replaced Rehnquist with Roberts, that is no net change. He replaced O’Connor with Alito, a small shift to the right, but certainly not huge. The Supremes are certainly far too conservative in bent, but they are not necessarily Bush Toadies so much as they are big business and police state toadies, but they were that already before Bush.