This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
Presented without comment:
- advertisements -
Contact Information:
Tips: tips [ at ] zerohedge.com
General: info [ at ] zerohedge.com
Legal: legal [ at ] zerohedge.com
Advertising: ads [ at ] zerohedge.com
Abuse/Complaints: abuse [ at ] zerohedge.com
Suggested Reading:
Make sure to read our "How To [Read/Tip Off] Zero Hedge Without Attracting The Interest Of [Human Resources/The Treasury/Black Helicopters]" Guide
It would be very wise of you to study our disclaimer, our privacy policy and our (non)policy on conflicts / full disclosure. Here's our Cookie Policy.
First, as a matter of inception, we made a fundamental policy judgment that our legal system values hearing matters on their merits and that this policy is greater than the risk that frivolous suits might be made... I don't know what to tell you other than that is our policy... developed over many, many, many years... I also happen to think it is the better policy than turning away meritorious claims whose claimants may be too risk averse to bring them due to the potential costs levied against them.
Second, to help ensure frivolous lawsuits are limited, we have developed rules that punish those who file such lawsuits by, among other things, requiring them to pay the court costs and attorneys fees of their counterparties. Further, we have incorporated rules to sanction attorneys who file these types of lawsuits on behalf of others...
Third, depending on the cause of action, many states DO allow for the victor to collect attorneys fees from the loser post judgment... this is especially prevalent (universal) in breach of contract cases, but not so much in tort cases given the public policy of wanting to hear claims on their merits (if you're in business and have a contract, then you can take the risk of attorneys fees upon you when you contract... not so much when some drunken asshole plows into your car).
Again, the people who clamor for tort reform know not of what they wish.
nm
Your points are largely true, but to give an explanation best suited to sprite's Australian origins, one has to be able to reference the systems of former Commonwealth 'developed' countries where semi-socialized medicine has been prevalent for the past fifty years or so.
Those countries, like Canada and Australia are certainly no less dominated by a cabal of corrupt lawyers and judiciary, you can be sure.
But given that they are resource rich and less further down to road of complete korporate klepocratic pillaging because of the holdover effect of some good aspects of English law, they have a little longer to go before the breakdown of the medical insurance system. It's simply an illusionist's trick, like the real estate bubbles in both countries, that will collapse with much greater rapidity than the slow motion train wreck of the USA. Back in the early part of the last decade, the province of Ontario was absorbing 43 percent of every tax $ into it's medical system: I strongly suspect that would be north of fifty percent now...and rising. And that was before the collapse of the auto industry.
Pick your poison...slow collapse or uncontrolled demolition. Either way, the landlord is gonna say "Pull it!"
as long as well all agree what "pull it" means...
Guns and butter baby...USA the corporate warfare/welfare state.
Speaking as a non-traveling, no passport American I think you've pretty much nailed it down bank guy.
edit: the day when there can be an honest discussion of which segment of our population is in charge(and why) of that banker/lawyer/judge mafia will be the day that maybe it can be turned around...but that day is also known as a cold day in hell.
Obamacare will have everyone begging for single-payer when it gets fully implemented. It was written by the health insurers to maximize the wealth they could steal before their business model implodes.
"Please explain to me why Obama's plan is causing so much anger amongst the majority of Americans. "
Because they're ignorant, lazy sheep, stampeded by FoxNews.
PulpCutter--I have been trying to give you the benefit of the doubt in this debate, but it is getting more difficult to do so with each of your posts. Do you not understand that, in all likelihood, 90% of those who oppose ObamaCare on this website do so without any reference whatsoever to FOX News. Read the posts and think about it. They are about liberty vs. UNLIMITED government. ObamaCare essentially locks in, one and for all, the notion that the Central Govt has any limits. If it remains, then all hope for individual liberty is lost. Will we become a police state like Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union overnight? Of course not. But the tools and troops are in place, and all that is needed is either a slow warm up to the boil or a "good crisis" to get us there. ObamaCare puts into law what Lincoln's War won on the battlefield (but was never fully made law until ObamaCare, though Social Security comes awfully close). This is not about Obama as President, or FOX News or the Tea Party. It is very, very simple. It is about liberty vs. tyranny.
Someone with greater understanding of the details should jump in.
But as a taxpayer and observer of the scene, some immediate points come to mind:
1) The US spends significantly more for its health care (as a percentage of national income) than other countries.
2) This is related to way health care is funded.
3) Big Pharma and the Insurance cartel reportedly wrote the controversial legislation so as to protect their fiefdoms--overall public welfare was not uppermost in anyone's mind.
Etc.
In a largely ethnically homogeneous environment, with a healthy civic attitude, some form of "socialized" health care might make sense. The prospects for such are nonexistent in the US, which is governed by an alien elite that utilizes racial spoils systems (and their gender knock-offs) to rule. The wholly foreseeable corruption in such a system contributes to its bad reputation.
I've thought all along that Obama Care was nothing but taxpayer $$ subsidizing the corporate healthcare insurance and pharma monopolies...or we could call it corporate welfare.
btw I'm betting that the 'conservative' Supremes make a lot of noise and bluster and in the end let it stand.
given this the same club that ruled this "democracy" can not limit corporate donations you have a point. The individual mandate is insane however and nothing more than graft
I am undecided on the corporate giving decision, but I think the most telling ruling that the Supreme Court made in recent memory was Kelo. See, http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/04-108.ZS.html If a "conservative" court can decide that private property means so little, then the same "conservative" court can decide that the power of the Central Government is not limited. Note who wrote the majority opinion. This is conservative?
It's a Con job and we'll not know what's in that bill, ever - the ass reaming willl bleed you out. And asking them to use the vaseline will not help your ass either - this is a royal fuck job.
President Obama plans to increase the cost of health care coverage to active duty and retired military personnel following of the November 2012 election, eventually leading to an increase in cost to them of 345%. The President has authorized those massive charges to military personnel to be deducted from their pay, while giving government union employees a complete pass, with no charges to them for their health care coverage.
"We cannot continue to rely only on our military. … We've got to have a civilian Security Force just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded. We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the National Security objectives we've set.” Senator Barack Obama July 2 2008
You can't leave the dangerous job of rounding up domestic terrorists and libertarian gold bugs to the whims of a volunteer defense force. By late fall of this year I would expect that the assets being currently deployed in Syria, & used so successfully in Libya against the mad dogs opponents of hope n change will be available for redeployment to augment the ranks of DHS counter terrorist special forces.
I just heard a guy on the radio who had been to the protests vs Obamacare at the Capitol say that someone had been taking pictures of them and later informed them that it was going into a database (for Homeland Security?) for identification purposes. Apparently they were all considered potential national security threats.
We have the right to peaceably assemble, but they have the right to detail our every move in their databases.
So much for that Supreme Court decision saying that the constitution had "a penumbra" of a right to privacy implied therein.
Where did you get this? They're already covered (Tricare). We don't have active miliatry and retired military shopping in the open market for healthcare insurance..... I'm just a doctor, but I'm not sure how you'd "increase the cost" of providing healthcare by 345% to an already completely covered market. Is Obama planning on scanning everyone 3 times? CT Tech in Chief?
I don't think most of the debaters here see the nature of the beast. We spend 17% of our GDP delivering healthcare to one another in the most inefficient and wasteful way possible, and currently about half of healthcare financing is via the state or federal government (for those paranoid about a socialist system: we're already there).
What do we get from this massive investment: longevity on par with El Salvador in world rankings and QALY indicators that are really poor (particularly when adjusted for dollars spent). We have 40 million people who have no insurance at all.
Rather like the financial industry, it's a bit broken (although for entirely different reasons). How, as a nation, do we want to try and manage this (or not)? Let the markets decide? Maybe we'll develop some new swaps: three chickens for a pacemaker.
Amusingly, Romneycare in Massachussets has been deemed successful by those attempting to measure it. If you can prevent utilization of high cost resources (emergency services) with preventive care, everyone is happier (treatment for your diabetic leg ulcer early, or your leg in a bucket?)
But let's not let data get in the way of our biases....
The 345% increase sounds like about the right number that is being proposed by the President. His view appears to be that retired military personnel, most of whom entered service with the promise of "free health care for life," are not "paying their fair share." Right now, a family of four pays about $600 per year for TriCare Prime. Next year it is proposed to go to $1200, and in 2014 to $2400, and in 2015 to $4800. It is safe to assume that, if Obama is President, whether the Congress is Republican or Democrat, that number may well go up again in 2016, possibly to $9600. Additionally, within TriCare Prime there are co-pays for health care services provided from outside the network.
No one would argue that $600 per year is not a good deal. But keep in mind, these are people to whom WE promised "free health care for life." And, based on that promise, these people served at least 20 years on active duty, and most of them, over these last 20 years, have seen their share of combat in OUR DEFENSE.
This is a question of breach of promise, as with all that this government does now and will do in the coming years. Do we break our promise to those who defended the nation in time of war? Of course, it is what we as a nation will do anyone we can do it to because we, as a nation, are into panic, shit-on-anyone-and-everyone mode in an effort to prop up the political, social, and financial elite.
If the real estate fiasco hasn't already taught us, contract and property law no longer apply
I think the government intervention is a major cause of the inefficiency and wastefulness in our system.
Our current hodge podge system of employers financing the health care for their workers is an anomaly that came about and evolved & morphed due to government intervention after WWII.
It's no accident that things subsidized by the government no longer respond to market forces in a rational manner. Look at education, the real estate market and health care as prime examples.
It's also no accident that the parts of the healthcare market that are not subsidized, but are exposed to market forces... ie. Lasik surgery, plastic surgery etc. are the ones with the biggest advances and prices that have underperformed the inflation rate, often dropping significantly vs the government subsidized and heavily regulated portion of the market which has price increases far in excess of the overall inflation rate.
When my parents died, I came across my birth certificate from 1956. It was for 2 weeks in the hospital, physician's fees & apparently all costs associated with my birth. The total bill was under $200. 1/3 of the bill was due 30 days prior to the expected birth date, 1/3 at birth and the final 1/3 30 days after the birth.
I realize they didn't have all of the equipment used now, nor, of course, the private rooms with cable TV, but I don't think the care suffered any relative to what would have been the case had the government been running the show at the time.
I don't believe it's a coincidence either, that the wealthy often travel to Asia or other foreign countries to have critical surgeries or other health care. Those are free-market countries, not the government run ones, of course. Those "3rd world" free market countries often have much better health care than our own government subsidized ones, even though we are the consensus "last great super-power" in the eyes of many.
"Rather like the financial industry, it's a bit broken (although for entirely different reasons)."
I'd call it the same reasons, corruption and collusion. Huge corporate entities taking over their industry seeking non-efficient methods that increase their profit, reduce competition, remove regulation needed and implant ones that are not, mandate consumer choice while continually lowering product quality. All of this is possible by an ever lobbied (paid for) government doing what they ask them to do and tell them to do. This not "the markets" causing this phenomenon. This is a broken and criminal system much like our food system, our energy system, our financial system.......
Do you have a link on the plan to increase the cost or bill the active duty service members for healthcare? First I've heard of it but I may be underinformed. I could only find references to increases for retired military premium increase (still modest, ~$460/year/family, although I thought it was $0).
Yes
http://www.freedominfonetwork.org/profiles/blogs/obamacare-and-his-new-s...
man behind the numbers is Joseph R. John, USNA ‘62
Chairman, Combat Veterans For Congress PAC
The link seems to indicate that Obamacare (ACA) is forming an army ... "regular corps and ready reserve corps". What the ACA is referring to is the National Health Service Corps formed in 1972, budgeting (possibly additional) money for it and providing for a ready reserve (apparenty like the inactive reserve of the Army, where people could be called up but don't attend meetings). Nothing about making active duty military paying for health care. I don't doubt the possibility that Obama could twist this into becomming a 'national securty force' or 'private army', but from the actual documents, not just somebody's blog post, it seems a stretch. Probably just easier to use DHS, TSA and VIPR teams, etc.
What is interesting though, is the budgeting of $1.2 billion for the "community health center program" (page 910-911) up to $3.6 billion in 2015 (administered by HHS). The National Health Service Corps (page 541) gets $320 million in 2010 up to $1.15 billion in 2015 (and increase formula beyond 2015). Any congress critter that votes for a continuing resolution of the budget is contribution to the financial destruction of the country.
Thanks, I'll look into it. But now I gotta get ready for work.
Joyful
I have been following it as well and indeed the DOD civilians got off scott free. DOD civilians make a hell of alot more then service people. But then the military does not line politicians pockets so politicians screw the military. Just like cutting VA bennies to wounded veterans, they forget the increase in expeditures comes from duh war. Notice the media alway talks about those killed but those wounded will be in the thousands. Providing the healthcare for them will of course increase the budget.
Not one chang to any benefits to DOD civilians.
GCT -
Since the 1st Gulf War, the goal assigned to each successive cabbalist puppet president has been to incapacitate as many serving members of the US military as possible.
This achieves the dual advantage of both removing effective resistors from the forthcoming showdown, AND burdening the system further with ongoing costs of medical care.
"MISSION ACCOMPLISHED."
Our troops are just tools of the elite to use, abuse, and discard at will. Our fascist military empire does not run on compassion, neither for our victims nor the American underclass that volunteers to become the victimizers in exchange for the possibility of improving their social standing.
But overall we idolize and worship our murderous military veterans, the police, and other members of the police state. There is no quicker way to improve your social standing in a fascist military empire than by serving in the military.
And when you get home there's a do nothing well paying job waiting for you at some federal agency. That's a salary you'd never have earned without joining the military, and you know it. So your loyalty is to the police state that has enriched you; thought it may have come at great cost.
tens of thousands. It's almost as if...it's one big lie
Is this Security Force some kind of Gestapo?
Big Brother is looking a(f)t(er) you.
Our Gestapo is the FBI. J. Edgar Hoover himself said that if the FBI ever acted on the information it gleaned through its domestic spying then it would be a gestapo. And they've been using their domestic spy apparatus for law enforcement for many decades now.
Of course the actual hardware is owned by the NSA these days, but we're splitting hairs.
More precisely it can be compared to the private army called Sturm Abteilung (Storm Section or SA for short. SA, formed in 1921, were thugs instructed to disrupt the meetings of political opponents and to protect Hitler from revenge attacks. Ernst Roehm of the Bavarian Army played an important role in recruiting these men, and became the SA's first leader. Generals of the much smaller German Army were afraid that the SA, a force of over 3 million men, would absorb it into its ranks and Roehm would become its overall leader.
Were you to substitute the names Hitler and Roehm with the present day Obama and Rahm, you would achieve a comparable equivalence for the forthcoming structure and it's leadership, particularly in view of the reported propensities of both sets of demented sociopaths for gay bathhouses and er, 'alternative lifestyles.' See www.thepinkswastika.com The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in the Nazi Party by Scott Lively an Kevin Abrams.
The fact that it's followers were largely drawn from the "right," and focussed much hatred onto Jewish Germans is perfect symmetry with the supposedly "left" nature of the current sio-nazi regime, which, when it has finished using them for it's own ends will indeed throw the remaining jewish supporters of it's stealth coup d'etat "under the bus."
The Nazis were not of the "right". The party was the National Socialist Party. Hitler, who was a Germanic nationalist distinguished himself from the communists who were international socialists, dedicated to destroying national boundaries and he perceived Jews as leading that internationalist movement and thus being his enemies. But they were all left wing. Just like Stalin's greatest enemy was Trotsky, another left winger.
Almost all political and intellectual elites have been socialists in one form or another for over 100 years now. But don't expect the sheeple to comprehend that statement.
The acceptable logic goes, "Hitler and fascism are extreme right, while Stalin and communist are extreme left, therefore we must avoid extremes."
Time to do away with notions of right and left wing. There's only one political party in the U.S., the statists - all of whom are socialists (in the sense that they support a big powerful central government) and fascists (in the sense that they support using their big powerful central government to support mega-corporations that privitize profits, especially for them and their familiy).
Yeah this whole linear idea of politics is just not correct.
http://www.bill-wink.com/VOL-1-ISSUE-8_files/image003.jpg
I forgot the poster I got this from or I would give them credit.
nice - with the arrows representing mental health and or corruption
This is true.
Baz Bro: quotation marks are a wonderful thing for adding nuance to a thought....I was kinda hesitant to even make the reference, but this being ZH n all I sorta figured....
oh well.
ps...check out "Freikorps," the word Bavaria, 1919, then read my comment again... it will all make sense. I hope.
Semantics,
Fascism and communism have only one diffferece.
In one ,corporations control the state.
in the other, the state controls the corporations .
For J6P,all else is the same.
@Winston. Not exactly. Fascism is a partner ship of state and corporation with the state in control but also in partnership. The means of production remain privately held but publicly directed.
The Communist controls the means of production and directs its efforts without any private ownership at all. The "workers" are to "own" the means of production so that they enjoy the fruits of their labor thereby eliminating the unfair and exploitative "Surplus Value of Labor".
Certainly you've settled the matter... in your head. The subtlety of social phenomena to mass exploitation should not fuck with your mind clarity. It all makes sense, just keep repeating.
Whoa, there! ... Amerikan performing seals have only been trained to recognise one on the left and one on the right.
For them, two on the left who hate each other (like Stalin and Trotsky), or two on the right who hate each other (like Sunnis and Shia), just doesn't kompute!! Overload ... "Mom, my head hurts. That naughty man is telling lies!"
O vs O
Obama must have won the debate on this one. Can't get more flexible than that... not even with Russians.