No, you're not understanding what happened. The new law made lots of insurance policies no longer allowed. For example: if you're a married couple 80 years old, you still have to carry, by law, insurance that includes full maternity care. So a lot of existing insurance simply evaporated. People who lost those insurance plans lost their health insurance. They then had to go find a way to buy new insurance - usually at much higher prices, often from a different carrier ... which wouldn't do business with the doctor you used to use.

This isn't a matter of the doctors retiring. This is about the law forcing people to buy very expensive new health insurance from a new provider that - because of all of the heavy new requirements of what and who they must now cover - greatly reduce the number of doctors they'll work with. And so people lost access to their familiar doctors, despite Obama's promise that no such thing would happen - remember, he said nobody would have to leave their plans (a lie).

Which is exactly why I said what I said. There are people who show up here to scold people about holding onto (or exploring) some of the more exotic physics frameworks and compare that to being a True Believer (in the traditional religious sense). These are NOT the same things.

He said that because people were worried that the doctor the currently had would suddenly be unavailable to them when the law kicked in. This is exactly what happened, to a lot of people. It happened to our family. The insurance policy with which we were perfectly happy evaporated because the law considered it unacceptable (the new law requires that we buy insurance that covers, among other things, maternity care ... which is super handy now that we're in our 50's). The new plans from which could choose did not include the doctor we're happy with, and precluded the use of two of the nearest (and best) hospitals. Our premiums went from roughly $250 a month to over $500, and our deductible went from $2,500 to $12,000.

Each of these things was predicted with great clarity by not only the people opposed to the law's passing, but also by the people who WROTE the law. But in front of cameras, Obama lied about each and every point of it, repeatedly, and deliberately. If he had been honest, and if he'd talked Pelosi and Reid into also being honest about the consequences of the law (instead of the "You'll have to pass it to see what's in it" explanation she provided), it would never have passed. Democrats talked into voting for it have since said they wouldn't have voted for it if they'd understood the huge new costs, taxes, and service limitations that it puts on middle class families.

You know, and Obama knew, EXACTLY what "you can keep your doctor" meant when he said it - he was trying to tamp down the very vocal concerns that exactly what has happened would in fact happen. He knew it was going to, but he lied about it anyway. What I don't understand is why you're trying to spin it for him. What do you gain by attempting to back up the deception?

Hilarious.

What does it matter if there is some future change to the law (not counting the illegal unilateral changes made by the president by selectively choosing whether to follow the statute's specific requirements once he realized it wasn't politically expedient). If you've already lost your insurance plan, or you've had to give up your doctor, and can no longer use the convenient nearby hospital because of the law's impact (all things that we were promised wouldn't happen, which the law's partisan authors knew WOULD happen, and about which the president repeatedly and deliberately lied), then that damage is already done. Not that it matters. Even if you can afford one of the new plans, the deductibles are hugely higher - making the effective premiums even higher than their new, higher stated values.

So for many, many people the "affordable" care act has: blown away existing insurance plans, removed choices of doctors and hospitals, doubled and sometimes tripled premiums, and in many cases quadrupled deductibles. All of which was well known in advance, and was proactively lied about, repeatedly, by Pelosi, Reid, and Obama. Republicans also knew it was coming, which is why NOT ONE of them voted for that monstrosity of a law.

How is that off topic? The entire thread is about some hand-waving "priorities" she'll have as president. Which has absolutely nothing to do with which compromises she's willing to make the legislative branch when it comes to things like tax credits or other regulatory/funding matters. Pointing out how disingenuous she's been on pretty much every other issues she's ever mentioned is NOT off topic. It points out exactly how to think about anything and everything she says during her limited, poll-tested public remarks.

You've already fallen for it! It's NOT a campaign promise. It's an aspiration. A "priority." The president can no more wave her hands and make such a thing happen than he or she can wave his or her hands and make healthcare get cheaper. Now THAT was a campaign promise ("You can keep your doctor. Period. You can keep your plan. Period. The average household will save $2,500 year on health insurance, and it will start costing about what a mobile phone does.") See the difference?

What are you actually talking about? Consider mentioning who you're talking to, what you're referring to, and how and why you're constructing the sentences you type so that readers will know what things like "those" are.

Except that we have actual evidence of species-exterminating asteroids. Lots of them.

Right. So we're back to God being a deliberately cruel SOB, since he allows another (less powerful than him) supernatural being to kill children as part of his little laboratory experiment. Pretty cool.

Except, the one (believing in magical all-powerful beings that have a history of being cruel and petty) requires the active embrace of completely irrational BS ... whereas taking up as a working theory the concept of something like Hawking Radiation (especially in the context of a proper scientific mindset, in which there is pure delight in being shown a new and better explanation) involves none of that baggage, and none of the word-view-corrupting philosophical compromises that come baked-in with religious mysticism as an explanation for the physical world.

What? That's the classic, repeated here a million times, "If you're willing to "believe" in [string theory/black hole evaporation/dark matter/whatever], that's the same as invoking God" meme. It's a meta-rant, all wrapped up in a succinct little code phrase. THAT was the off-topic bit. Pointing out that it's BS isn't off-topic, it's calling it what it is.

Obviously. Otherwise you'd be trotting out the much more polished responses that trained theologians use to try to explain the all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving, but unspeakably mean and petty God scenario. Professional theologians and similar shamans have a lot more practice and selling that concept than you do. Clearly:

Are you sticking with the all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving god model? Well, since you're sticking with pure invented fantasy, that's actually a trick question, isn't it? But since that god is involved in every aspect of creation, then: yes. And even if you don't like that answer, there's the fact that despite is apparently boundless mercy and his ability to make otherwise physically impossible things happen (including bringing people back from the dead during publicity stunts), he really doesn't are if pure-as-the-driven-snow innocent infants (and millions of other people) die in agony after months of suffering. Who cares if man is capable of inducing cancer. Are you proposing that ALL such horrible fates, including every way in which a toddler can be made ill and prematurely die in misery is the result of human action? No? I see.

I see. So, things like childhood bone cancer, or being born with a major heart defect, etc., is just people choosing. OK.

You really are new at this, aren't you? Are you actually saying that the only measuring stick for evil is that which a particular bronze-age desert tribe or two jotted down, and had re-hashed by people centuries later for political reasons? That only people who follow that recipe are allowed to objectively weigh someone's actions as evil? Hint: it's possible to objectively define a value system (which then allows you to separate things into good and evil) without even once having to invoke magical invisible all-powerful but part-time and petty gods. In fact, it's a lot EASIER to define a rational code of ethics/morals if you're NOT using made of fairly tales as the basis for them, philosophically. Why? Because that way you don't have to paint over all of the BS mixed premises, loopholes, and please-don't-look-behind-the-curtain nonsense that comes with basing your value system on imaginary magic.

Have you poured your nice strawman a cup of coffee yet this morning? He's probably getting tired.

Nope, just laying down the counter-meme for the toxic "If you believe in Hawking radiation it's just like believing in the Jude-Christian God" meme.

You know, and I know, that people who immediately trot out some scorn for those "believing" in so far unobserved things like Hawking radiation/black hole evaporation will sometimes equate that willingness to (for now) accept such things as plausible working theories... with being the same as having faith in anthropomorphic deities. My point is that it's a crappy analogy, and the GP to which I was responding was basically trolling. But because there seem to be a large number of people who actually don't understand the the difference, it's worth contrasting the two things, as opposed to conflating them, as was trollishly done.

I'm pretty sure that's not what he's trying to say. But if that's your take on it, why are putting words in the mouth of a god that also sees to it that small, innocent children die in agony of cancer? Are you a paid representative working on a spin campaign, or just a fantasist?

On the other hand, maybe you're a satirist, making fun of the GP, who has put forth a commonly proposed explanation for the non-apocalyptic nature of putative mini-black-holes. His embrace of that explanation isn't the least bit like assigning a personality to a fabricated, omniscient, all-powerful (and therefore unspeakably cruel) imaginary friend/god and then making up reports of what that imaginary being thinks and wants. So regardless of how serious or satirical you're being, bad show.