American Legion seems angry.Follow

I was listening to the radio on the way home and they had the Commander for the American Legion on. He said that he and eleven other veteran groups spoke to Rham Emmanuel today (following which Emmanuel spoke to Obama who then relayed back through Emmanuel) and the net result was that the proposal was off the table and Pelosi would be informed that this plan is not to be in the budget for next year.

I'd say that's a step in the right direction.

It's requiring private insurance to cover medical costs which the government is supposed to pay for. Otherwise, it wouldn't save the government 540 million dollars (or whatever).

Supposed to? The fuck?

It's just coordination of benefits. Happens millions of times daily. Let's say I'm married, and I have insurance from my employer, and my wife has insurance as well from her employer, we're both also insured on each other's policy. I need heart surgery. Who pays? That's all this is. The answer, incidentally, isn't that my policy is "supposed to" pay.


Do you think the private health insurance industry will just eat that 540 million dollars? Or do you think they'll pass that one to their consumers? You know they will, and that this will drive up the relative opportunity cost for private health care, which in turn makes government provided care look better in comparison (or potentially the only option).


Can you even conceptualize of how trivial a sum $540M is compared to the total cost of healthcare claims in the US? Are you smoking the meth again? More than $540M is paid out for PET medical insurance claims annually. Insurance companies spend 2.2 TRILLION on claims yearly. With a fucking "T", idiot. So let's see, now. This is *really* your argument? Let's do some math, shall we?

$2,200,000,000,000 - Spending now, everything's find.

$2,200,540,000,000 - Spending with this crippling .03% increase, insurance market collapses, Blue Cross execs throw in the towel, CIGNA clamors for socialized medicine.


Despite the paper thin argument about streamlining things, there is no justifiable reason to do this except to make private health care more expensive. Not just for Vets, but for everybody. The reason the first group chosen was Vets was exactly because it's the one group that the tax payers are pretty much 100% behind funding medical care for. Which allows them to avoid the "Why pay for them anyway" counter argument from the Right.

Let me, once more, point out how ludicrously small change this is. It's less money than insurance companies pay for pens with their names printed on them. I'm not joking.


It was a horrible idea. It backfired on them. Not surprising of course...

It was a minuscule way to raise revenue. It likely "backfired" into resulting in your insurance payments not being pre-tax in two years. The revenue is *absolutely* going to come from somewhere, sport. Enjoy the celebration by buying a maimed Iraq vet a beer, I guess.

Don't be stupid. The American Legion has nothing on the AARP.

The person involved chooses Smash. You pick which policy works best for the condition at hand.

What Obama was saying is that all costs *must* be born by one payer. The choice is removed from the people involved.

And that's a false analogy anyway. It's more like you are awarded a settlement for an injury you incurred, which includes paid medical care for anything relating to that injury for the remainder of your life. Then, sometime later, you get a job and receive health insurance. If the payee of the initial settlement attempted to argue that since you have health insurance, it shouldn't have to pay for costs related to the injury you sustained, we'd all assume he's trying to rip you and your health insurance off.

And we'd be right. But that's *exactly* what Obama was trying to do.



Then why did Obama try to do it?


It's about establishing precedent Smash. Remember? Your guys call themselves "progressives" for a reason. It's about taking one step in the direction you want to go. This is "one step" in the direction of replacing private health insurance with a government provided alternative.

If they had succeeded with this, they'd have established the precedent that anytime someone both qualifies for government care *and* holds private insurance that overlap, the government can force the private insurance to cover whatever it is. It can be applied to a whole range of things within the health care field, which will drive up the costs significantly.

Did you just not pay attention when I said that this is why they choose to use military disability to do this? It's the one segment of the population they might have had the most success with (for a variety of reason).





Of course. Cause the Dems always have to find creative ways to tax people without them realizing they're actually being taxed. I get this. It's why Dems don't run on the "we're going to raise you taxes" platform. They know that what they're going to do (one way or another), but they don't want people to figure it out until it's too late.

And when they attempt to change tax codes on insurance, we'll take a look at that. The point is that they have to try again and we can oppose them again. Are you seriously arguing that I shouldn't oppose things I disagree with purely because the other side will just try something different next time? Really? Did that make sense in your head?