Off-Topic

i'm not counting regent and liberty as schools for the purpose of this discussion

i don't know how familiar you are with the current faculty but most of the new hires have been heavy law & econ free market types and overall the school leans heavy toward that philosophy

LOL at the law student coming in and trying to drop knowledge. Congratulations on your three semesters of legal education from a school with more softball teams than legal scholars. Now go home and get your shine box.

So your plan for not having everyone pay for his medical care is to have everyone pay for his medical care?

Let his costs be absorbed by the system and spread among the users of those services and simply let folks opt out. If they want to gamble and can't pay, then allow the ER to lock the door. Or, make catastrophic insurance mandatory (that preventative care saves in the long run argument is only viable if people are forced to participate, which they don't).

Oh, and to the poster referring to "rednecks" and spewing other assorted bile - blow me, then take your meds, which I likely paid for, then consider killing yourself, and then be a man, one way or the other.

listen, if you don't recognize that quote, i'm not going to take you seriously. ever.

Hey Kaiser, I hope your father's okay, as someone who's broken two verts and taken that helicopter ride to Shock Trauma, I've been there, luckily without the stroke.

A couple of things, first most people obviously have no clue how the healthcare industry works or the economic basics of insurance.

If some illegal comes into the ER and doesn't pay the hospital doesn't just send the bill off to the Washington for payment in 30 days.

Most of the charitable care is passed along to the consumer in the form of higher healthcare costs and the Feds never touch the bill. The way it affects the Feds and to a lesser extent the states is through the cost they are charged for their services, but the Feds pay what they want anyways.

I can actually see this having a worse affect on the hospitals that rely on reimbursements from medicaid and medicare. let's say the avg cost of generic 'healthcare' goes down (which it won't) and Sierra Vista Medical Center in Arizona has 10 cases of healthcare for illegals that cost the hospital 1000 each but gets the feds to reimburse them at 400. What happens if the avg cost of healthcare goes down to 800? Think the feds are going to reimburse at the same rate? SVMC is just over the border from mexico, think their patients are going to be rolling in there with insurance cards?

Each state has a specific setup for how they handle charitable care given by hospitals and other health providers; much of it is paid for by non profit foundations (most hospitals are still non profits fyi), or pools that hospitals and/or municipalities set up, or at the state level. If it hits the state level, its usually rolled into medicaid which is paid for by the states and federal government. last I saw, of total healthcare expenditures, state and locals were 11% and the feds were 32%, but that 32% is medicare, medicaid, federal employee, VA etc. I would imagine of the total federal expenditures for healthcare, very little of it goes directly to providers due to the uninsured.

For citizens, the non payers break down into two groups, those that can pay and don't or those who can't pay. Those that can pay but don't probably won't buy insurance under Obamacare either. If you're a sole proprietor and have to pay $500 a month for coverage (lol at the 100-150 that was thrown around earlier for any non bare bones policy, my policy when i finish school will be $700 a month for a fairly decent policy) or $1500-$3000 a month for your family to be covered, does 3% of your income up to $750 or whatever the penalty is for non coverage really scare you into buying it now?

Those who can't pay tend to be eligible for some sort of state or federal assistance, either straight insurance or financial assistance/subsidies for insurance. It would seem that instead of hiring a new bureaucrat to track down people who don't follow the new rules under Obamacare, it would make more sense to use the existing bloated bureaucracy to enforce the existing programs and find the people that don't have insurance and figure out how to get them covered because chances are they can be.

Never mind the legal argument for this law, it's just a horrible, horrible law from a public policy and economics perspective. If it was such a great thing for all Americans, why do the major "benefits" kick in after Obama's run for re-election?

I seriously think that it was passed as such a clusterfuck that people would realize what a horrible law it was, but don't want to give away their shiny new entitlements and therefore will be clamoring for single payer.

Anyone want to take bets on from 2015-2020:
the cost of health insurance goes down?
the cost of healthcare goes down (or even the rate of increase slows)?
our taxes go down?
the number of real uninsured gets cut in half?

If you don't think your insurance rates are going to get jacked within the next couple years are insurance companies are forced to take on more people with a number of liabilities without gaining new revenue streams (except for the ten percent tax on tanning) you're out your god damn mind.

LOL. I wish i could find this article about a guy that was really passionate about stuff he didn't understand.

lol, not that you had much to begin with, but there goes any credibility you had.

I weep at the thought of a lawyer who doesn't get the 'shine box' reference. Please put that on your shingle, so that potential clients are forewarned.

I'm certainly in this category, to some extent. I just don't buy the argument "it's not in the constitution" to denounce a federally mandated health care system. The Federal Government exercises plenty of powere over inter/intra state commerce that aren't in the constitution. They hold highway dollars as hostage so states follow their lead with drinking laws. Not many bat an eye at this.

Just the same as I hate seeing the estate tax threshold be 10 million and only taxed at 35%, I realize as a democrat that "hey, we lost, compromise needed to happen, let's move on." D-Bags like Cuccinelli need to realize you lost in 06 and 08 and the democrats jammed a bill down your throat and you should shut up and take it and not make up some crybaby argument. You lost, don't make excuses, move on. Our healthcare system needed improvement, nobody would, something finally passed. move on.

lol. wow.

Also, could you provide other examples of the federal government acting unconstitutionally with respect to interstate commerce? I'm absolutely making no claim to be a legal scholar, or even to have stayed in a Holiday Inn Express last night. However, you keep arguing that the federal government acts outside of constitutional authority all the time, and therefore this isn't any different. There's an obvious difference between a power not being expressly granted/forbidden in the constitution, and whether or not something is unconstitutional.

For the record, I'm not even arguing that the law is unconstitutional. I don't know anywhere near enough to make an educated claim on that. But you keep citing something that doesn't sound true at all, so I'm curious if you can back it up. Despite a few proclamations that "EVERY LEGAL SCHOLAR THINKS THIS LAW IS FINE," we've obviously seen that there's room for debate on this issue. I really hope you don't think that, even if something is unconstitutional, it should be legal as long as it's good for the country, because that's what it sounds like in this thread.

Judge Vinson heard oral arguments on the case in Florida. This is by far the most important of the cases pending. Hudson's decision was "big"....but it was limited because Virginia is going it alone.

The other two....upholding the act....one of the cases had a much narrower claim/focus. This case involves...what 20+ states challenging it?

According to the NY Times....looks like Vinson is pretty skeptical of the bill

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/17/us/politics/17health.html