Discussion about hot topics trending today

[Gatefan1976]

The ACA is failing under its own weight. Insurers are fleeing the exchanges 'cause they are losing their proverbial shorts at rates they can charge. There are more than a few areas where there is only one company left in that region to buy exchange insurance from. Might be some places with no one to buy from by now.
No, more $ for that will be good money after bad. Time to cut our losses w/ LSoScare.

No, insurers are fleeing the exchanges because insurance is by it's very nature, risk management. You take away certainty from the market, and they will, and have run. You have trump saying "maybe I'll just let it collapse" and that just gives the insurers more reason to run. the ACA is not perfect, it never has been perfect, not even democrats would say it is perfect, but it was a -start-. Would you invest in a business in the same situation?

So now, I'll tell you what is likely to happen.

The Senate bill hit a wall, and the House bill is in little better shape. They aren't going to pass in their current forms.

Instead of the "hurry up and pass this nonsense" that we also heard from Pelosi in 2009, there will be a period of discussion.
What will emerge will be somewhat more to the center than the current offerings, and while it won't be enough to keep the liberals happy, it won't entirely please the far right, either.

It took hundreds of hours of debate in the house and senate, to get the ACA passed, this continued myth that the ACA was shoved through is nothing more than that, a frigging MYTH. What will pass is something very much resembling what you have now, a few tweeks here or there, but nothing fundamental. The hold out republicans will be essentially bought off, and you know it.

You see, while LSoScare did indeed fall on its face due to its own weight, the prior sorry excuse for a President did have an effect on the position of this country on the issue. It has moved it to the left significantly.

Take the situation as it was, say 10-12 years ago, before anyone heard of lsoscare. A large percentage of working people got their coverage through work, or bought it on their own. It was expensive, but you had to have it. The very poorest qualified for medicaid and got coverage that way, but there were always some in the middle who fell through the cracks and were uninsured. That situation was normal back then. It was the way it was, and people accepted it.

But today, that situation is far less accepted. Maybe you can think of it as the nation being "spoiled" by the early years of lsoscare, before it began to collapse. But in 2017, that state of "normal as it was back then" is not acceptable to many on the right. More than a few Republican Senators want a few things added to the bill, and yes, a few want more stuff stripped out. You will never get everything the hard right wants. But I think more are unhappy with it because it is too stingy in some ways. Remember, it can be politically unhealthy to oppose your party leadership on an issue. There are likely a few that don't like it but are keeping their mouths shut for the time being. These are all Republicans. And they're reluctant to sign off on it because they think it's too little.

Do you know how bad that sounds?
Think of what you are saying, but for a moment, see it from my position, not from a political position, but coming from a country that has universal healthcare -as a right- and our country not imploding. Your pre ACA status quo would be unacceptable to damn near every other first world nation on the planet. Doesn't that say something to you at all?

Over the past 10 years or so, Obama did indeed move the centerpoint of discussion on this topic to the left.
That will be his legacy on health care.

Yes, he tried to bring your healthcare into not even the 21st century, but the last half of the 20th century for your citizens and some Americans think that is a bad thing. Healthcare should not be a partisan issue, it does not affect the left or the right any differently, so why is it one?

[aretood2]

No, I fill shelves at night, I get paid more when the penalty rates kick in as well. I worked 26 hours last week, took home over 700 bucks after tax.
Again, country not collapsing.

I would need more details. In any case, I wouldn't recommend a huge wage hike...

But it always comes down to someone else (the taxpayers) paying their expenses, doesn't it?
Where is your suggestion that has people pay their own way?
When I was starting out, I had to buy an old junker, pay for min. insurance coverage and all the assorted DMV costs. I did that by WALKING to a part time job and saving my $. Why the hell should immigrants, or anyone else for that matter be able to get that paid for them? I had to start out and work my way up, why can't they?

Again, where is your idea that has people pay for their own needs?

That's your argument? You're using a strawman by the way, I never said anything about buying cars. Besides, what kind of argument is that? Don't you realize that these people (Which would include you) would be working and paying taxes and paying the bus fares...But you want to keep spending gas money and driving over pot holes living in a country with a healthcare system that's worse than in some developing countries with an impoverished and uneducated population just because you had it "hard"?

The ACA is failing under its own weight. Insurers are fleeing the exchanges 'cause they are losing their proverbial shorts at rates they can charge. There are more than a few areas where there is only one company left in that region to buy exchange insurance from. Might be some places with no one to buy from by now.
No, more $ for that will be good money after bad. Time to cut our losses w/ LSoScare.

So now, I'll tell you what is likely to happen.

The Senate bill hit a wall, and the House bill is in little better shape. They aren't going to pass in their current forms.

Instead of the "hurry up and pass this nonsense" that we also heard from Pelosi in 2009, there will be a period of discussion.
What will emerge will be somewhat more to the center than the current offerings, and while it won't be enough to keep the liberals happy, it won't entirely please the far right, either.

You see, while LSoScare did indeed fall on its face due to its own weight, the prior sorry excuse for a President did have an effect on the position of this country on the issue. It has moved it to the left significantly.

Take the situation as it was, say 10-12 years ago, before anyone heard of lsoscare. A large percentage of working people got their coverage through work, or bought it on their own. It was expensive, but you had to have it. The very poorest qualified for medicaid and got coverage that way, but there were always some in the middle who fell through the cracks and were uninsured. That situation was normal back then. It was the way it was, and people accepted it.

But today, that situation is far less accepted. Maybe you can think of it as the nation being "spoiled" by the early years of lsoscare, before it began to collapse. But in 2017, that state of "normal as it was back then" is not acceptable to many on the right. More than a few Republican Senators want a few things added to the bill, and yes, a few want more stuff stripped out. You will never get everything the hard right wants. But I think more are unhappy with it because it is too stingy in some ways. Remember, it can be politically unhealthy to oppose your party leadership on an issue. There are likely a few that don't like it but are keeping their mouths shut for the time being. These are all Republicans. And they're reluctant to sign off on it because they think it's too little.

Over the past 10 years or so, Obama did indeed move the centerpoint of discussion on this topic to the left.
That will be his legacy on health care.

Health insurance is a luxury? We have had millions uninsured, well over the 22 million that we had. We had, before Obamacare, the worst in everything but technology and training when it comes to healthcare when compared to every single developed nation, and some developing nations also have and had us beat. Low life expectancy, high disease rates, no access to medical treatment, you name it. And you are calling people spoiled?

[The Flyattractor]

And a large Chunk of the (now)24 Million who DO NOT have Insurance DO NOT have it because THEY CHOOSE NOT TO! At least until King Obama hit them all with The FINE!!!! How sweet of him.

[Gatefan1976]

I would need more details. In any case, I wouldn't recommend a huge wage hike...

Oh hell no, that would be a disaster. That pay rate has been building over the past 30 years, tied to inflation and such over time. The US certainly could not handle such a massive hike in one hit, no country could.

[Gatefan1976]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...ulow-donations

[garhkal]

And in the meantime, they will do nothing to fund the ACA, so they can say it's collapsing...........

Talk about collapsing, it seems the woes of PR are not just limited to them. Guam, Micronesia and now the US virgin islands are feeling the pain too..

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...explained.html

http://www.aafp.org/news/chapter-of-...ichapters.html

What's the common trend here. TOO MUCH debt, Too much entitlement programs, too much pension pay outs, and not enough income..

[Gatefan1976]

Err, what now?
Did you read the articles?
Too much debt, sure, not enough income, yes. The other two, not so much.

[Womble]

In case anyone needed bad news today:

Cyberattack Hits Ukraine Then Spreads Internationally

Computer systems from Ukraine to the United States were struck on Tuesday in an international cyberattack that was similar to a recent assault that crippled tens of thousands of machines worldwide.

In Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, A.T.M.s stopped working. About 80 miles away, workers were forced to manually monitor radiation at the old Chernobyl nuclear plant when their computers failed. And tech managers at companies around the world — from Maersk, the Danish shipping conglomerate, to Merck, the drug giant in the United States — were scrambling to respond. Even an Australian factory for the chocolate giant Cadbury was affected.

It was unclear who was behind this cyberattack, and the extent of its impact was still hard to gauge Tuesday. It started as an attack on Ukrainian government and business computer systems — an assault that appeared to have been intended to hit the day before a holiday marking the adoption in 1996 of Ukraine’s first Constitution after its break from the Soviet Union. The attack spread from there, causing collateral damage around the world.

The outbreak was the latest and perhaps the most sophisticated in a series of attacks making use of dozens of hacking tools that were stolen from the National Security Agency and leaked online in April by a group called the Shadow Brokers.

[Coco Pops]

In case anyone needed bad news today:

Your link is busted

[The Flyattractor]

That is odd. No wait not really.

[Annoyed]

In case anyone needed bad news today:

And this will keep on happening until companies properly secure their networks, which is unlikely, because doing so would be too inconvenient and expensive.

[Falcon Horus]

I keep trying to tell him that, but he won't listen. It's worse than talking to FH or GF about Israel (No offense FH or GF).

I'm sorry, and none taken.

In case anyone needed bad news today:

I saw it appear, and then I was like... Great!

Also, as Chernobyl came up in the article, my sister mentioned a rather disturbing anecdote from when the reactor exploded. Not that I wasn't aware of it yet, but hearing it said out loud is always too confirming. When the reactor exploded, the Ukraine tried to hide the disaster for as long as was possible. They didn't want to admit anything had happened.
So, when did Belgium realize something was wrong, when workers at Belgo Nuclear couldn't get into their own work area because the radiation that was measured on them coming in the work area (yes, they are checked going in and out of the area) was already too high. So yeah, you can only imagine the level of radiation all of us at the time were really exposed to.

I guess, we should be glad it's only ransomware.

[Ian-S]

I really wish the media wouldn't refer to these breeches as attacks, they're not attacks, someone introduced the program to their own network themselves and it propagated from there because they were too dumb to double check the attachment they were sent out of the blue, this isn't like the movies where some masked crusader sits in a darkened room and magically gains access to a computer hundreds of miles away that doesn't even have an internet connection, in the good old days we'd call this a self inflicted problem, not attack.

But I guess it means the antivirus companies are kept in business just that bit longer.

[The Flyattractor]

Yep. Its all a controversy by the Evil Computer Companies....actually It PROBABLY IS!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Womble]

Your link is busted

Very odd. It's an NYT link, easily searchable by headline but when I put the URL into the Gateworld post, the link turns out busted.