You may not be up on the latest way companies get around this. In the fine print you waive your legal right to sue in exchange for arbitration should a dispute arise. And given that most people don't read and understand this stuff before signing the dotted line, how many homeless people do you think will understand this pitfall?

DVD players are relatively cheap and as appliances they last for years on average.

Before claiming Netflix and/or the studios are conspiring to hold back streaming, maybe you'd better research their customer base.

What is a market penetration of streaming devices into the living rooms of households within the bottom 50% of incomes? Of DVD players?
How many are comfortable with their current DVD player setup and renting through Netflix or through a DVD kiosk at the grocery store?
How many can afford or are willing to spend money on high-speed Internet suitable for streaming purposes?
How many would replace a broken DVD player with a streaming appliance?

They make front-pocket wallets for men. I love mine. The only drawback is they aren't made to carry a lot of cards otherwise it defeats the thin profile that prevents your front pocket from bulging outward. I've found there are only a couple of cards I need to carry with me anyway.

This.

It's also the underlying reason why the two conservative health care panaceas of tort reform and selling insurance across state lines won't do squat to bend the cost curve.

Tort reform doesn't address the underlying problem (and only results in a piddling amount of savings across the board while screwing a lot of people who are legitimately harmed).

Selling insurance across state lines makes the problem worse because it allows the insurers and the middle-men to set up shop in the states with the least consumer protections, enabling them to inflate their costs even more.

Free birth control is an incredibly cheap "luxury" that insurance companies are only too happy to provide because it offsets the higher cost to the them for paying for more pregnancies, which in turn helps lower premiums. It's all part and parcel of why so much preventive care comes as a basic element under the ACA. The number-crunching analysis shows it helps lower the costs of covering more expensive services in the long run when they are caught early with cheap intervention.

Maybe I'm a bit naive about this being covered under insurance by my employer as I didn't get to choose from a menu on micro-coverage options when I signed on to the company health plan. Perhaps this is different on the individual insurance market? When you shop for coverage under the old system you got to choose: well I'll take cancer treatment; I don't want pregnancy coverage; yes to broken limbs; no to cosmetic surgery (even if I'm disfigured in an accident); definitely no on annual physical because I'm in great shape; etc. etc. And then you present your list to the insurance companies and they give you a quote?

If every major country in the world in swimming in debt, who are they in debt to?

Your question about the employer mandate being delayed in answered in the article below. It also explains the impact. Specifically RAND Corporation conducted a study on the issue. Only about 1000 companies, or 0.02% of all companies that must comply with the ACA will take advantage of the delay in the employer mandate to 2015.

http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2013/10/obamacare_obama_mandate_delay.html

OK, for the sake of accuracy...

DOMA was passed by Congress in 1996 in reaction to the possibility that Hawaii would make same-sex marriages legal following a state supreme court ruling on the subject. Hawaii never did because the issue was rendered moot via a state constitutional amendment. Congress decided to guard against future attempts by other states to do the same thing Hawaii had come close to doing.

The SCOTUS? They had nothing to do with Congress reacting to this issue.

This is all history. You should read up on it before you post.

All code submissions become the property of the company sponsoring the contest.
Brilliance in your programming does not equate to a job offer. After all, we already got the work we needed done out of you.

Just because some Canadians come to the US for healthcare doesn't mean they are footing the exorbitant costs that come with the US medical system out of their own pockets. There are provisions to cover treatment if there are shortages or delays in being able to get the same care in Canada and a qualifying US provider can offer it. This is especially true of near-the-border communities that are closer to more comprehensive US health-care facilities.

So go back to your friends and get some specific data points. How many of them had non-elective procedures done in the US, and of those how many were covered by Canadian health insurance?

Grumpy Cat is already in my computer. He'll protect me.

"It's just us Chinese hackers wanting to inspect your--"
"No."

Stunning image. And yet, I can't help but think it looks at lot like parts of New Mexico. It's easy to do a mental subsitution of low-growing, evergreen-type shrubs for what are actually rocks in the picture. :D

For anyone old enough to remember. D&D was maligned in its glory days as an sinister force that warped its players into becoming suicidal/homicidal recluses unable to distinguish reality from fantasy. There were even "true crime" novels written about people who played the game, and it turned them into murderous psychopaths. This was all total bullshit, of course. Having played numerous RPGs with pen and paper and then later going on to study acting, the very thing these games were maligned for was a grossly simplified (and more rule-based) version of what any theater major would do on a daily basis in a university actor training program. I can't recall an abundance of actors that went on mass killing sprees, even when performing in shows like "Annie Get Your Gun".

I think that's somewhat immaterial at this point. The screw-up was the patent getting approved in the first place. As the article states, many companies who have been hit with this legal scam have already been advised to settle because it's the least costly option for a small business that can't afford a protracted court battle. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the Mafia was, in fact, behind this. Shaking down small businesses has been their game for some time.