http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-18630837

Might be an interesting discussion. Obamacare sounds nice in theory, but I'm not so sure how effectively it's going to contain the exponentially-rising costs of healthcare and provide quality care to everyone. Either way, healthcare is going to remain a political battlefield for quite some time to come; this ruling merely states that the Constitution gives the federal government authority to impose taxes on people who don't have health insurance (the "individual mandate" component of Obamacare).

trust me...you dont want to hear my thoughts on this.....

I hate this.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/daves4/people-moving-to-canada-because-of-obamacare

hehe; always funny when people threaten to move to countires with much more "socialist" healthcare plans. Though I think at this point there's not many "first world" options that don't have something like that.

It's pretty interesting that the supereme court would call this a tax. I guess it makes sense though, and its understandable why they wouldn't want to call it a tax on the legislation level. (supreme court luckily doesn't have to worry about re-election so they can be a bit more honest)

It's a shame the best we can do for healthcare reform is some equivalent to a Republican plan from the 90's or Mitt Romney's Massachusetts plan, but I suppose it's a step in the right direction at least. (weird how Republicans think it's somehow super progressive and socialist and whatever now though??)

I don't know about the plan as a whole, obviously I think there are better options, but regardless, I can only hope it helps the people who need the help. It's ridiculous how something as important as healthcare for people can be turned into a straight up scam by insurance companies and go unchecked for as long as it has.

Someone please tell me why health care is even an arguable issue.

the bill requires people to purchase health insurance, or suffer a major fine.

fact be it, the majority of middle to lower class society cannot afford even the basic health insurance that is required under this bill,

This does not help make insurance affordable,
in fact,it does the exact opposite, makes it less affordable,

the lower class society will suffer the worst of it,
as its expected to eat into other important things, such as their food budget.

There is no easy answer for this. It involves a lot of context of American politics, involving the past history of helthcare bills (which I am not totally informed about anyway), the state of healthcare now, and the current state of politics in the US. It's a rather unfortunate situation. I guess I could sum it up by being based around fear- some of it real legitimate fears, but many of it just political propaganda, such as "death panels" for old people, or that you could be jailed for not having health insurance.

[citation needed]

The mandate is designed to lower costs. In order to cover things like pre-existing conditions without the outrageous costs that existed before the bill, you need something like this. Otherwise people are just going to buy insurance when they get sick, rather than have insurance for, you know, insurance purposes. If people do that, then the entire insurance model becomes completely unsustainable. It only makes sense to have an individual mandate, not only in order to fund everyone who can now get insurance who otherwise would be left out in the cold, but also because health care isn't really a commodity. No matter who you are, you'll be involved with the health care system at one point. Health is not a luxury like having a car or computers or whatever- it's something we all experience as human beings.

You can check out some articles about it, such as this study where Oregon was unable to fund healthcare for everyone who neeed it so they studied they effects of someone with insurance and without it. There's even a story about a woman who considered getting pregnant just to get covered for her cancer (because pregnant people had higher priority). Here's an article that draws some conclusions based on the similar bill in Massachusetts (sometimes called Romneycare) Here's an angry rant about republicans politicizing healthcare. Here's a man who worked in the Insurance industry telling his story The costs of the healthcare for individuals would be scaled based on how much they can pay

The biggest problem I see is the cost. Big Government has a proven record of underestimating cost increases. Since healthcare costs have been rising much faster than inflation for decades, I fear that the Obamacare plan will wildly underestimate the inevitably rising costs for the Americans newly covered under the Affordable Care Act, as well as existing liabilities like Medicare. The difference between Obamacare and everyday governmental outlays is that a bridge that goes $5 million over budget will just be a dent in a municipality's balance sheet, quickly to be forgotten. If Uncle Sam guesses wrong, we're looking at a difference of trillions of dollars - enough money to cripple the economy for quite a while if this goes wrong.

Also, everyone ought to remember that this is a very complex topic with no easy solution. People on both sides of the political fence would be wise to exercise moderation and become familiar with the pros and cons of each viewpoint. Conservatives should be aware that Obamacare isn't going to beget death panels or plunge America into Marxism. Likewise, liberals need to see past Obama's charisma and understand that Obamacare isn't a perfect solution to America's healthcare problems.

here's a paper on the issue of affordability of healthcare for families by an MIT professor who worked with both Romney and Obama. I haven't gotten the chance to read it all yet, but it's definitely worth posting here.

umm wow yes im sure obama's sweet smiling face is the numero uno incentive for the affordable care act


The cost is a non-issue. Not that it doesn't exist, but that there's obviously going to be some kind of price to pay for playing politics with something so fundamental as healthcare for years and years. It's hardly going to go down in cost as time goes on (and delying it has its own costs) and it's not going to be something that goes away. Once we have something in place, we can work with it, we can adjust it. We can see how it works and where it doesn't, and theoretically adapt. I mean sure we could delay things more, I don't think there will be a "too late" where something couldn't happen, but there will certainly be a "too late" where there goes any chance of having something cost a reasonable amount of money to begin implementing.

I don't think this is the end-all perfect plan, and I don't think anyone does. We're not going to see a perfect plan right off the bat, that's simply not going to happen in this political climate with regards to anything. What we do need to see though, is something.