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Journal damn_registrars's Journal: What is the opposite of ... 12

... no change?

The House and Senate wrote up "health care reform" bills that contained no reform. The bills at one point, a long time ago in a galaxy far away, had some potential reform aspects to them. However this congress - unlike certain congresses of years past - feels the need to compromise with people of differing views; so they stripped out anything that resembled meaningful change from said bill. Then the people of differing views continued to complain and scream out "ZOMG! Iz Socializms!", and they made it their purpose in life to oppose this non-reforming health care reform bill.

Now those people have another Senator who opposes the non-reforming health care reform bill. It is now much more likely that the non-reforming health care reform bill will not pass. One of many ironic parts of this is that the most recent non-reforming health care reform bill is actually starting to get approval from the for-profit insurance companies (who have come to realize it is actually their big bailout bill).

Which leaves the question - if you reject a bill that does nothing, in the end do you accomplish something?
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What is the opposite of ...

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  • who wins or loses the most? "insurance"

    they take money in dribs and drabs, and figure out how to give out the least amount, so

    profit!

    and if that involves buying, influencing, or replacing the legislature, the executive, or what ever,

    it is only money

    the pharmecuticals? hey, just a subsidiary of the insurance companies. The doctors? hourly workers. you don't get rich working for a living, you get rich when the money comes in even when you sleep.

    • I'm afraid you're wrong on that:

      who wins or loses the most? "insurance"

      For the insurance industry this is a no-lose situation. If the bill passes, people buy more insurance. If the bill fails, people buy more insurance. Hell if congress was destroyed by an asteroid tomorrow and the bill was left in limbo indefinitely, people would buy more insurance. No matter what, the insurance companies are getting more customers.

      It would be more accurate to call it "The Insurance Company Bailout of 2010", except they weren't in debt to begin with. We

      • Mandatory purchase of health insurance....well, I looked, ain't none out there I can afford, even with a huge deductible. When it comes to mandatory car insurance, well heck, if I couldn't' afford it, I'd drive a dang moped, where it isn't required, or walk, and if I needed to move freight, horses and a wagon. ha! Nice to be in the position where I can do that, too..

        With mandated health insurance..nothing I can do, no options. So if it passed, I would be either a criminal, because I couldn't possibl

        • car insurance is mandated plenty of places, and people drive without it, and raise the price for others.

          you might be a criminal, but you will have plenty of company.

          i just don't see this working out the way they hope

          i think the big problem, is health insurance should have a big deductible, and employers should not provide it, they should provide that money to the employees to buy it on the free market that includes a government plan for the poor

        • Mandatory purchase of health insurance....well, I looked, ain't none out there I can afford, even with a huge deductible.

          Isn't that what the health insurance exchange is supposed to accomplish?

          With mandated health insurance..nothing I can do, no options. So if it passed, I would be either a criminal, because I couldn't possibly "follow the law"

          The very concept of "mandated health insurance" is still quite nebulous. It isn't that well defined right now, in terms of what is actually mandated, or who it is mandated upon. It isn't clear what will be done for those who cannot afford insurance under the current conditions, nor is it at all clear what would happen for those who don't buy when/if any such "mandate" occurs.

          And like you pointed out, just goes to support businesses that aren't really profitable today anyway

          Actually, that is how this bailout is different. The "he

          • Unfortunately, you missed about everything I wrote about canada, in this reply and in my previous mentions of Canada here and there. Not your fault, my fault.

            So, seeing as how I failed to get my thoughts across adequately enough to be understood, I will reattempt this a little. Just random here., I never said Canada was broke, I said the US and most of europe with the exception of germany was broke. Their deficits and projected outlays compared to real wealth creation-broke. That's what the long ran

  • In this case I would say that killing the bill would be accomplishing something. It may do nothing, but it spends a lot of tax money doing it. Might as well kill it and save the money.
    • Might as well kill it and save the money.

      I would consider that a good reason to start the process over, not kill it outright. While I do not in any way dispute that the US is deep underwater financially right now, I would say that with this issue, the problem is more important than the cost of designing a solution. And if we kill the bill because it is useless and accomplishes nothing, then I suspect the odds of starting on another one would not be good.

      • There's no way the bill will be rewritten significantly in conference. The only option are to pass the reconciled version when it comes back, or kill it. Killing it means introducing new legislation which likely won't happen until the next Congress in January. Passing it does no good, because modifying it would still require new legislation that again won't happen until the next Congress.
        • Killing it means introducing new legislation which likely won't happen until the next Congress in January

          I think you are more optimistic on that matter than I am; I see no reason to believe that health care reform would be introduced again at any time in the foressable future.

          Passing it does no good, because modifying it would still require new legislation that again won't happen until the next Congress.

          Well, if they were to pass this big fluffy bill right now, at least they would have passed something. Granted the passage of this is far from certain, and it doesn't accomplish anything on its own. However, if they at least had something resembling "health care reform" on the books it would at least be a measure of having done somethi

I had the rare misfortune of being one of the first people to try and implement a PL/1 compiler. -- T. Cheatham

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