Then why are you so upset about this bill making you buy health insurance?

I am upset because of this massive power grab by the Federal Government.

Massive power grabs by the Federal Government began under George Washington

Indeed, it could be said that our Constitution, so beloved of the teabaggers, was a massive power grab by the Federal Government from the Articles of Confederation

I am upset at the way this was railroaded into law.

However, weaknesses in the Articles of Confederation became apparent before the Revolution ended. The Articles left most of the power in the state governments as a response to fears of re-creating the centralized power like Britain. The need for a revenue stream was widely conceded. Under the articles, Congress lacked authority to levy taxes. Instead, it could request the States to contribute a share to the common treasury. The amounts gained through this technique were not sufficient. To remedy this defect, Congress applied to the States for power to lay duties and secure the public debts. Twelve States agreed to such an amendment, but Rhode Island refused its consent, thereby defeating the proposal.[1] Congress did borrow money and sell western lands.

The veto of each state was a second weakness in the Articles of Confederation. Not only did all amendments have to be ratified by each of the thirteen states, but also all important legislation needed the approval of nine States. With several delegations absent, one or two States were often able to defeat legislative proposals of major importance.

On what planet does "majority vote" == "railroaded"?

You shouldn't post links to articles that you have no intentions of reading yourself.

When they talk of using "Nuclear Options" & parliamentary sleight-of-hand to avoid debate & discussion Bridgier I consider it to have been railroaded.

That's politics dumbass

"But what we will do is, we'll have the negotiations televised on C-SPAN, so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents, and who are making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies. And so, that approach, I think is what is going to allow people to stay involved in this process."

They had 12 months of debate. It was time to shut those windbags up

Then we'll be able to make better choices for health care on our own, without those pesky doctors making us go through expensive tests.

Or maybe the fact that they made $10 billion in profit last year makes that $100 million seem like chump change.

I'm still trying to find a reputable source that says CAT claims the health care bill will cost them $100 million in the first year.

Richard, you have never offered your thoughts for a healthcare solution other than to ask the sick to die. Do you have an interest in a funeral home?

It is time to quit giving the Pirate-in-Chief a pass as though he is some sort of bumbling idiot. He is being very intentional as he wages economic jihad against the American people.

http://www.nytimes.com/20...hardt.html

"In Health Bill, Obama Attacks Wealth Inequality
By DAVID LEONHARDT
Published: March 23, 2010


For all the political and economic uncertainties about health reform, at least one thing seems clear: The bill that President Obama signed on Tuesday is the federal government's biggest attack on economic inequality since inequality began rising more than three decades ago.

Over most of that period, government policy and market forces have been moving in the same direction, both increasing inequality. The pretax incomes of the wealthy have soared since the late 1970s, while their tax rates have fallen more than rates for the middle class and poor.

Nearly every major aspect of the health bill pushes in the other direction. This fact helps explain why Mr. Obama was willing to spend so much political capital on the issue, even though it did not appear to be his top priority as a presidential candidate. Beyond the health reform's effect on the medical system, it is the centerpiece of his deliberate effort to end what historians have called the age of Reagan.

Speaking to an ebullient audience of Democratic legislators and White House aides at the bill-signing ceremony on Tuesday, Mr. Obama claimed that health reform would "mark a new season in America." He added, "We have now just enshrined, as soon as I sign this bill, the core principle that everybody should have some basic security when it comes to their health care."

The bill is the most sweeping piece of federal legislation since Medicare was passed in 1965. It aims to smooth out one of the roughest edges in American society - the inability of many people to afford medical care after they lose a job or get sick. And it would do so in large measure by taxing the rich.

A big chunk of the money to pay for the bill comes from lifting payroll taxes on households making more than $250,000. On average, the annual tax bill for households making more than $1 million a year will rise by $46,000 in 2013, according to the Tax Policy Center, a Washington research group. Another major piece of financing would cut Medicare subsidies for private insurers, ultimately affecting their executives and shareholders.

The benefits, meanwhile, flow mostly to households making less than four times the poverty level - $88,200 for a family of four people. Those without insurance in this group will become eligible to receive subsidies or to join Medicaid. (Many of the poor are already covered by Medicaid.) Insurance costs are also likely to drop for higher-income workers at small companies.

Finally, the bill will also reduce a different kind of inequality. In the broadest sense, insurance is meant to spread the costs of an individual's misfortune - illness, death, fire, flood - across society. Since the late 1970s, though, the share of Americans with health insurance has shrunk. As a result, the gap between the economic well-being of the sick and the healthy has been growing, at virtually every level of the income distribution.

The health reform bill will reverse that trend. By 2019, 95 percent of people are projected to be covered, up from 85 percent today (and about 90 percent in the late 1970s). Even affluent families ineligible for subsidies will benefit if they lose their insurance, by being able to buy a plan that can no longer charge more for pre-existing conditions. In effect, healthy families will be picking up most of the bill - and their insurance will be somewhat more expensive than it otherwise would have been.

Much about health reform remains unknown. Maybe it will deliver Congress to the Republicans this fall, or maybe it will help the Democrats keep power. Maybe the bill's attempts to hold down the recent growth of medical costs will prove a big success, or maybe the results will be modest and inadequate. But the ways in which the bill attacks the inequality of the Reagan era - whether you love them or hate them - will probably be around for a long time.

"Legislative majorities come and go," David Frum, a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, lamented on Sunday. "This health care bill is forever."

Since Mr. Obama began his presidential campaign in 2007, he has had a complicated relationship with the Reagan legacy. He has been more willing than many other Democrats to praise President Reagan. "Reagan's central insight - that the liberal welfare state had grown complacent and overly bureaucratic," Mr. Obama wrote in his second book, "contained a good deal of truth." Most notably, he praised Mr. Reagan as a president who "changed the trajectory of America."

But Mr. Obama also argued that the Reagan administration had gone too far, and that if elected, he would try to put the country on a new trajectory. "The project of the next president," he said in an interview during the campaign, "is figuring out how you create bottom-up economic growth, as opposed to the trickle-down economic growth."

Since 1980, median real household income has risen less than 15 percent. The only period of strong middle-class income growth during this time came in the mid- and late 1990s, which by coincidence was also the one time when taxes on the affluent were rising.

For most of the last three decades, tax rates for the wealthy have been falling, while their pretax pay has been rising rapidly. Real incomes at the 99.99th percentile have jumped more than 300 percent since 1980. At the 99th percentile - about $300,000 today - real pay has roughly doubled.

The laissez-faire revolution that Mr. Reagan started did not cause these trends. But its policies - tax cuts, light regulation, a patchwork safety net - have contributed to them.

Health reform hardly solves all of the American economy's problems. Economic growth over the last decade was slower than in any decade since World War II. The tax cuts of the last 30 years, the two current wars, the Great Recession, the stimulus program and the looming retirement of the baby boomers have created huge deficits. Educational gains have slowed, and the planet is getting hotter.

Above all, the central question that both the Reagan and Obama administrations have tried to answer - what is the proper balance between the market and the government? - remains unresolved. But the bill signed on Tuesday certainly shifts our place on that spectrum.

Before he became Mr. Obama's top economic adviser, Lawrence Summers told me a story about helping his daughter study for her Advanced Placement exam in American history. While doing so, Mr. Summers realized that the federal government had not passed major social legislation in decades. There was the frenzy of the New Deal, followed by the G.I. Bill, the Interstate Highway System, civil rights and Medicare - and then nothing worth its own section in the history books.

Now there is.

While extreme, there's a chance some respondents weren't even sure what a Muslim is, for instance. Research reported in 2008 suggested Americans have inaccurate views of Muslims: Many think the Islamic religion is associated with violence and religious extremism, and perhaps even terrorism. In addition, seven in 10 Americans in that study admitted they know very little about the Islamic religion.

Levi wrote:

Everybody knows your only purpose on this board is to follow every post by Richard and Rick with an ad hominem attack Bob, no need to explain it.

Government never, in any single instance I can think of, ever saved any money by passing a law. Quite the opposite. In fact, if you look back through American history, about the only time government ever did any good is when it stopped doing something. Usually, something heinous and awful and bad. I've even prepared a few examples.

With the Bill of Rights, the government lost the ability to stop people from speaking out, from assembling freely, from owning guns, from violating homes and papers, from bossing around the states, etc.

After the Civil War, the government stopped telling some people that they were the property of other people. The government didn't free the slaves - it finally recognized that all men are already free.

With the passage of the 19th Amendment, the government finally stopped telling women their votes weren't welcome.

With the Civil Rights movement, the state governments finally lost the ability to tell some people that they couldn't go places other people could already go.