quote Originally posted by Doni Hagan: Your mind reading act is amateurish, dude, and your conclusions pedantic. I'm far too pragmatic to have a "dear leader." I respond to results, not rhetoric. The counter proposals that were presented (quite a few months ago, I may add) were at best akin to placing a band-aid on a cancer. I used the word "viable." Perhaps it bears repeating.

1 - Assuming we never would have done ObamaCare in the first place, we simply could have expanded Medicaid eligibility and it would have been 1/4 the cost of what we've spent so far, even in the long term.
2 - Allow people to deduct a percentage of their insurance premium costs on their federal income taxes.
3 - Allow insurance companies to sell insurance across state lines (free market capitalism) rather than allowing just a few big companies monopolize select areas.
4 - And finally, the ONLY thing that all sides agreed on (a preexisting condition clause), wasn't even done correctly and isn't even valid. So we would pass that too.

Seven Big Lies Obama Told In His State Of The Union Speech
http://www.ijreview.com/201...of-the-union-speech/

quote 1) Income inequality is the worst it’s ever been! Obama sayeth, “[T]oday, after four years of economic growth, corporate profits and stock prices have rarely been higher, and those at the top have never done better. But average wages have barely budged. Inequality has deepened. Upward mobility has stalled. The cold, hard fact is that even in the midst of recovery, too many Americans are working more than ever just to get by; let alone to get ahead.” There’s all sorts of wrong going on here, but here’s one of the bigger ones – “income inequality” was worse in 2000 and in 2007. But if you adjust the rate for the massive taxation the government does and the redistribution of wealth already underway, income equality is the same as it was in 1987. It’s pretty easy to make the case that the only reason Obama pretends it’s a sudden crime that needs to be addressed right now is that Obamacare is such a disaster that needs to be ignored. 2) Raising minimum wage will help families Obama sayeth, “[We] have a bill to fix that by lifting the minimum wage to $10.10… This will help families. It will give businesses customers with more money to spend… So join the rest of the country. Say yes. Give America a raise.” It’s not hard to believe that Obama, who has never run a business, doesn’t understand that artificially forcing a business to pay someone more than their wage is worth will put more people out of the labor market. Making job creation more expensive leads to fewer jobs. 3) His minimum wage hike for federal workers brings immediate relief Obama sayeth, “In the coming weeks, I will issue an executive order requiring federal contractors to pay their federally funded employees a fair wage of at least $10.10 an hour, because if you cook our troops’ meals or wash their dishes, you shouldn’t have to live in poverty.” But most employees of federal contractors earn more than the minimum wage, so this will apply to only about 10% of those, or 200,000 employees. Finally, this wage hike won’t apply until 2015 at the earliest, and even then, only for new contracts, not old ones. 4) How many Americans have gained insurance under Obamacare? Obama sayeth, “More than 9 million Americans have signed up for private health insurance or Medicaid coverage.” But in fact, five million Americans have lost insurance, meaning that this number is not a net gain. In other words, the vast majority already had insurance before Obamacare. As few as 11% might be new enrollments to Obamacare. Finally, the payment system for the federal Obamacare website isn’t completed; who knows how many of these will experience more “glitches.” 5) Obama will cut red tape that’s holding up construction jobs! Obama sayeth, “we’ll need Congress to protect more than 3 million jobs by finishing transportation and waterways bills this summer. But I will act on my own to slash bureaucracy and streamline the permitting process for key projects, so we can get more construction workers on the job as fast as possible.” But what’s actually holding back these projects is lack of money, not red tape. Joshua Schank of the think tank Eno Center for Transportation explains: “The reason most of these projects are delayed is they don’t have enough money. So it’s great that you are expediting the review process, but the review process isn’t the problem. The problem is we don’t have enough money to invest in our infrastructure in the first place.” Perhaps if Obama hadn’t squandered what was supposed to go towards infrastructure in his stimulus bill on green energy boondoggles and other crony capitalist schemes, there might have been more money to fund these projects. Nevertheless, not only hasn’t Obama created “shovel-ready jobs,” he has actually lost 720,000 of them in the Construction field. 6) Your medicare premium went up? You’re making that up! Obama sayeth, “because of this (health care) law, no American can ever again be dropped or denied coverage for a preexisting condition like asthma, back pain or cancer… And we did all this while adding years to Medicare’s finances, keeping Medicare premiums flat, and lowering prescription costs for millions of seniors.” That’s simply not true: Although the basic premium remained the same this year at $104.90, it increased by $5 a month in 2013, up from $99.90 in 2012. Obama’s health care law also raised Medicare premiums for upper-income beneficiaries, and both the president and Republicans have proposed to expand that. On paper, the program’s giant trust fund for inpatient care gained more than a decade of solvency because of cuts to service providers required under the health law. But in practice those savings cannot simultaneously be used to expand coverage for the uninsured and shore up Medicare. 7. Obama’s created 8 million new jobs in the last four years This figure leaves out a lot of lost jobs early in Obama’s presidency and glosses over that this recovery has been the weakest since World War II. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, only a net gain of 2.4 million job have been added on Obama’s watch (this doesn’t account for population growth, leading to the lowest labor participation rate since 1978). You might think Obama might get into trouble for all these lies, but you’d be wrong – he’s a Democrat, remember? The media will barely mention these, or just ignore them all together. And for Americans who are too busy trying to get ahead in this terrible economy, tuning into The State of the Union address allows the president to solidify these misleading talking points in people’s minds.

Here's another.
The 9 Biggest #LibLies Obama Told Last Night
http://www.foramerica.org/2...ama-told-last-night/

quote 1. Obama claims that “corporate profits and stock prices have rarely been higher, and those at the top have never done better. But… [u]pward mobility has stalled.” This has been refuted most recently by Harvard Economics Professor Raj Chetty who recently released a paper showing that upward mobility in America hasn’t changed since the 1970’s. This means that in the past 40+ years the chances of moving out of poverty in America have remained unchanged. 2. The President continued beating his ‘war on women’ drum last night, using his often cited statistic about women making only $.77 for every dollar a man makes in America. The problem is this statistic is completely bogus. It isn’t just conservatives who are saying this, even the staunch liberals at Slate say the President’s figures simply don’t add up. After all, it’s just arithmetic. 3. While the President made a big show out of the minimum wage he failed to tell the American people that the minimum wage actually only affects less than 1% of the work force. That’s right, less than 1% of the American workforce earns the federal minimum wage, the rest work at a level above the minimum. While Obama might want to force this issue for political gain, he is lying when he says that this is a huge problem for the American public. 4. Obama claimed “more than 9 million Americans have signed up” for coverage under ObamaCare during his speech last night, a number that has been widely challenged in the aftermath of the speech. Observers have pointed out that almost 5 million Americans have lost coverage because of the mandates in ObamaCare. Others have questioned the number of Medicaid beneficiaries who are newly eligible due to the program’s expansion under the law. Obama’s 9 million figure includes a claim that 3.9 million learned they are eligible for Medicaid, but he admits some of those counted are actually renewals. 5. President Obama claimed to have added 8 million jobs to the U.S. economy last night to loud applause. The problem is, that claim only rings true if you ignore all of the jobs the economy has lost under Obama’s watch. The true number is well less than half of his claim. The President will continue to ignore this truth, however, because it goes to show that the economic recovery under his tenure has been the slowest since World War Two. 6. While Obama took credit for the rising domestic energy production he is lying by omission when he fails to tell the American people this energy boom has occurred in spite of his policies, not because of them. Much of the increase in domestic energy production has happened on private land, and despite the growing number of regulations that the Obama administration has heaped on the industry. 7. The Affordable Care Act, ObamaCare to most, is on its face a lie. While the President painted a rosy picture of his namesake last night, he glossed over the fact that it is not affordable after all. While monthly bills for health insurance have gone down for some (and risen for others), that is only one side of the equation. What Obama isn’t telling the public is that deductibles are going up under ObamaCare, sometimes doubling or even tripling. 8. While carbon emissions are not at the top of ForAmerica’s policy priorities, holding President Obama accountable for his claims is what we are all about. Last night, the President claimed the U.S. “reduced our total carbon pollution more than any other nation on Earth.” The facts show many nations reduced their emissions by a greater percentage than the U.S. has in recent years. 9. On Iran, President Obama told the American people a flat out lie last night. The President said that Iran is now eliminating its stockpile of highly enriched uranium. While evidence exists that the Iranians, under the recent international agreement, have begun oxidizing their highly enriched uranium, a process that makes the uranium unusable. Obama failed to say this process is completely reversible, and thus, Iran has not eliminated their stockpiles at all.

[This message has been edited by avengador1 (edited 01-29-2014).]

A website where you can read every State of the Union address from every president.

http://stateoftheunion.onet...net/texts/index.html

Brad

quote Originally posted by Darth Fiero: About 18 years ago I was working for a GM dealership right out of high school. My employer provided ZERO health insurance coverage to shop employees, so I had none. I was making a little over minimum wage at the time, barely enough for me to afford to buy some tools from a place not unlike Harbor Freight. I began having trouble working (lack of energy and chronic coughing spells) to the point I had to quit because I could not work a full 8 hour shift. I went to my parents' family doctor and was initially misdiagnosed with "congestion" and as prescribed the usual medication for that. A few weeks later, as my symptoms worsened, I returned to the same doctor's office but saw a different M.D.. The different M.D. suspected CANCER and immediately sent me to the hospital for x-rays, cat-scans, and other you-name-it tests. I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer and was immediately put into treatment (about a year of chemo and a month solid of radiation treatments). Again, I had ZERO insurance. Was I ever denied medical treatment by anyone because I didn't have insurance? NO. Existing law prohibits this. By the time it was all over I was faced with about a quarter million dollars in medical bills. I had no way of paying these and, yes, I did receive calls from creditors - some were nasty. But in the end, I filed for hardship (bill forgiveness) with the treatment centers as well as Medicaid coverage and eventually received it. TO THIS DAY I never had to pay a dime for these bills out of my own pocket. Medical bankruptcy is different than regular bankruptcy. As a matter of fact, you can pay very little (I think as little as $1.00 a month in some cases) towards your outstanding medical bills and they (the creditors) cannot come after you. None of these bills ever showed up on my financial record.

Sorry to hear of your illness and hope you are totally recovered with good health.......However it amazes me you have the gall to decry a social healthcare system seeing as you used it.

The conservatorium must have missed it...

[This message has been edited by newf (edited 01-30-2014).]

quote Originally posted by Doni Hagan: I respond to results, not rhetoric. The counter proposals that were presented (quite a few months ago, I may add) were at best akin to placing a band-aid on a cancer. I used the word "viable." Perhaps it bears repeating.

Obamacare is not viable.

With your cancer and band aid analogy, instead of bandages or medication, Obamacare is more like the equivilent of inducing a permanent coma as the answer.

quote Originally posted by Formula88: ...]

I could have listened to them longer than 5:17.

My take: Folks that have never lived in another's shoes, will never understand the issues associated with those shoes.

Thanks for the video, Formula88. Interesting.

quote Jobless Oak Park woman is Obama guest for State of the Union WASHINGTON — An Oak Park woman who became a State of the Union guest after writing President Barack Obama about her expired unemployment benefits found herself in the spotlight during Tuesday night’s address as the president spoke of her financial struggles. The White House, which wants jobless benefits extended, declined to say where Misty DeMars worked before losing her job in May, but her LinkedIn profile listed her former employer as the Adler Planetarium. The planetarium said in May it was cutting 8 percent of its staff.{emphasis added}

http://www.adlerplanetarium.org/jobs/

[This message has been edited by texasfiero (edited 01-30-2014).]

WaPo Fact Checker Rips Obama's State of the Union Falsehoods
http://www.breitbart.com/Bi...nrollment-falsehoods

quote It is a beautiful thing being President Obama. You can pretty much say whatever you want and never be held accountable for it. Sure, a Washington Post fact-checker will dutifully note the brazen falsehoods. The media dutifully reports on most everything. But make Obama pay a political price for not telling the truth in a State of the Union address about the number of jobs created and number of ObamaCare enrollees? Never. Tuesday night, the president told Americans, “The more than eight million new jobs our businesses have created over the past four years.” Nope. [T]he data also show that since the start of his presidency, about 3.2 million jobs have been created — and the number of jobs in the economy still is about 1.2 million lower than when the recession began in December 2007. Obama said: “Today, women make up about half our workforce. But they still make 77 cents for every dollar a man earns. That is wrong, and in 2014, it’s an embarrassment.” Nope. There is clearly a wage gap, but differences in the life choices of men and women — such as women tending to leave the workforce when they have children — make it difficult to make simple comparisons. Obama is using a figure (annual wages, from the Census Bureau) that makes the disparity appear the greatest. The Bureau of Labor Statistics, for instance, shows that the gap is 19 cents when looking at weekly wages. The gap is even smaller when you look at hourly wages — it is 14 cents — but then not every wage earner is paid on an hourly basis, so that statistic excludes salaried workers. And finally, there was Obama's shameless inflation of the ObamaCare enrollment numbers: "More than nine million Americans have signed up for private health insurance or Medicaid coverage.” Nope. Obama carefully does not say these numbers are the result of the Affordable Care Act, but he certainly leaves that impression. But the Medicaid part of this number — 6.3 million from October through December — is very fuzzy and once earned a rating of Three Pinocchios. … The private insurance numbers — about 3 million — are also open to question. The troubled federal exchange counts people as enrolled if an individual has selected a plan, but it does not know if a person enrolled and paid a premium because that part of the system has yet to be built. Obama's falsehoods aren't small things. He is using these falsehoods to manipulate American policy. And he will continue to do so and the media will continue to dutifully report his doing so. But he will never be made to pay a political price.

quote Originally posted by newf: ... However it amazes me you have the gall to decry a social healthcare system seeing as you used it.

He did not, because, it wasn't one. It was private enterprises which forgave the debt. None of the populace was forced to cover his debt. More likely they recovered costs and forgave profit. Perhaps they lost some on costs, perhaps other insurance users made up the loss, or some of it, but it was not a socialist healthcare system. Because everybody didn't have to pay for it.

I confess my ignorance on this topic, but it doesn't make sense to me that the bill just magically disappears and has no effect on anyone. I think that when my facility absorbs those costs that they have to pass them on to stay financially feasable. I don't have proof but it makes sense to me that it is passed on to paying members. Where else could it be passed to? I'n glad that he got taken care of and I don't resent that the insurance carrying bill payers of which I am one paid for it.

[This message has been edited by dratts (edited 01-30-2014).]

quote Originally posted by dratts: I confess my ignorance on this topic, but it doesn't make sense to me that the bill just magically disappears and has no effect on anyone. I think that when my facility absorbs those costs that they have to pass them on to stay financially feasable. I don't have proof but it makes sense to me that it is passed on to paying members. Where else could it be passed to? I'n glad that he got taken care of and I don't resent that the insurance carrying bill payers of which I am one paid for it.

Companies write off bad debt as a loss. It comes off their bottom line. If losses are too great, the company becomes unprofitable, but all companies allow for some amount of bad debt as part of doing business. It does drive the pricing decisions if it has enough impact of profitability.

quote Originally posted by cliffw: He did not, because, it wasn't one. It was private enterprises which forgave the debt. None of the populace was forced to cover his debt. More likely they recovered costs and forgave profit. Perhaps they lost some on costs, perhaps other insurance users made up the loss, or some of it, but it was not a socialist healthcare system. Because everybody didn't have to pay for it.

Hahaha very good.

quote Originally posted by newf: Sorry to hear of your illness and hope you are totally recovered with good health.......However it amazes me you have the gall to decry a social healthcare system seeing as you used it. The conservatorium must have missed it...

The "social healthcare system" I used is nothing like what Obamacare is, and it existed long before Obamacare became law. There were always safety nets in place.

Truth be told, I was denied several times by Medicaid before I finally got SOME assistance from them. It was not nearly enough to cover the entire tab, however. Most of the outstanding bills were forgiven by the treatment centers under their own in-house "hardship" programs.

The problem is none of you libs have any idea how these programs work. Most any government run system is a complete mess. I know because my wife has a practice in the medical field and has to deal with them on a daily basis. There is so much fraud and abuse it isn't funny. The only thing Obamacare is doing now is forcing people to pay big money for a service they may not need. But even if they do need it, it ends up costing them more in the long run because of government involvement vs. what it would have cost them if the gov't wasn't involved at all.

The law that should have been passed instead of the ACA was the proposal the republicans submitted to the democrat controlled congress (at the time) which would have allowed medical insurance companies to sell insurance across state lines. The democrats wouldn't even bring these proposed law changes up for a vote because they really wanted the ACA.

So don't say "viable" proposals weren't offered. They were. It was the "party of the little guy" who denied fixing the existing system we had. Instead, the dems rammed thru their dream legislation that is doing nothing but screwing the little guy.

Again, I ask you dems: how much were you paying for medical before the ACA, and how much are you going to be paying after it finally gets fully implemented?

[This message has been edited by Darth Fiero (edited 01-30-2014).]

Obama wants to create law and action without Congress. Yeah that's what happened to the Roman Empire when edicts were used to bypass the Roman Senate and therefore making the Senate inept. That was the beginning to the end of the Roman Empire.