The 2016 Presidential Candidates Thread

I wish I had answers. The Drug Companies have a pretty big stable of Dems & Repubs leaders. Why can't we buy from pharmacies in Canada? Thank both Dems & Repubs. Health Care Industry is huge and they own a bunch of politicians, both sides. The ACA doesn't work nationally because Republicans have done their best to throw obstacles in the way. The best way, "single payer" would shrink the industry.

Gunky said:

Now prior to ACA, when your COBRA coverage which extended your old work insurance expired, you would have had what options? So you have to ask: compared to what?

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I can't speak from every different reality, including yours. I can only speak to mine.

I'm self-employed and for a large majority of my life I've had to pay for my own healthcare. My wife went back to work for a few years and we started using her benefits and continued with her cobra. When I paid my own healthcare it was comparable because it was higher but I got a deduction for the premium. The increase in one year via the ACA is beyond what I thought possible and for way less coverage. I don't know what the result would have been without the ACA....all I know is the sticker shock with it was a biotch and I don't remember hearing it would be when I decided I was all for it.

Bad as it is for you now with ACA, I think it would have been quite a bit worse without it. If you have a previous health issue you would have found the deck stacked against you pretty badly. If you could afford insurance the companies would have gouged you and made you pay more than group policies - because they could. Are you in a repub state that didn't expand Medicare?

His_Highness said:

I don't know what the result would have been without the ACA...

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Just go shopping; without the federal ACA subsidies you would be paying a whole lot more for health insurance. It's not like you have to accept it, you can still buy insurance in the private marketplace. But speaking of sticker shock, I don't think you will like any of your your non-subsidized choices.

Welcome to socialism, american-style !
(edit: where the healthcare corporations get even bigger subsidies than the citizens being cared for)

His_Highness said:

Unfortunately there is a third channel and it's called a Political Action Committee....

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Yes, right.

What can one person do about that? On a street busy at rush hour, in my front yard I can create something to positively influence many more people than I could afford to buy off. I think there are some activist gardeners on fc who would know about the quiet local revolution I am talking about. Bad media no longer holds my attention. Rakes and seeds do. Plowshares are obsolete. Mycelia is the new tool.

Congressional republicans behaving badly: Lamar Smith, dyed in the wool climate change denier, is now engaging in a new version of Lysenkoism from his perch as chairman of the House Science Committee. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...ators-but-their-e-mails-are-still-off-limits/
It's important to talk to people you know about these awful troglodytes and corporate stooges and get them thrown out of office.

@Gunky - @grokit

I'm in Florida and for many years I was paying my own healthcare. I would purchase healthcare though my affiliation with other groups like Small Biz Association. The cost was higher but as I said - the deduction on my taxes off-set the higher premium and I'm comparing it to what corporate employees were getting charged and what coverage was included. The corporate employees were being asked to contribute more of their own money and were not happy when they found out how close we were in both price and value because they expected these corporate benefits were the reward for being an employee and being paid less than the independent contractors. Point is ... I did go shopping and I was good with what was available and at what prices.

I listed the 'facts' with regard to how things worked out for 2016 with me and the ACA. I know it's hearsay to quote the ACA agents I talked to as having said 'the increase in premiums and decrease in the coverage you get for the higher cost is making many people angry'.

My response to 'it would have been worse for me without the ACA' is 'prove it'. I can factually show the result for me and 2016 .... It's impossible to prove I'm better off or worse off because the ACA is already in the mix. What I do know is my cost has jumped 40% for way less coverage AND what I'm quoting is the cost of the insurance NOT how much more I'll be paying out of pocket with these huge deductibles and higher co-pays. I'll revisit when 2016 ends to add in the INCREASE in out of pocket cost to see how close I get to a net cost increase of 50%.

I will call BCBS and UHC to see what the cost would be for me without the ACA but since the ACA is already factored in the bottom line for these companies, I would expect a direct purchase to be higher or the same because the comparison point is the ACA now. Proves nothing other than this is the reality with the ACA in the mix. In order for me to factually know what the difference between purchasing directly and the ACA is .... the ACA would have to have not happened. Everything has an opportunity cost.

Here's my point - I was in favor and still am in favor of the premise behind the ACA. BUT I had some expectations based on the statements made and/or what wasn't said when the ACA was proposed and implemented. What do you think my view of the ACA would have been if I was told I would be looking at a 40% to 50% increase in cost with less coverage?

If your income is low you would have benefited substantially had the repubs in charge of your state government approved medicaid expansion last june. The governor, Rick Scott, has taken a lot of different positions, applied and got a waiver to make it privatized, then went against... Your repub state government is not helping in this regard.

There are still a lot of problems with the ACA. Most of those relate to cost, but there are others as well. Hillary Clinton has promised to work on those and help make the program better. While she would love to, she knows better than to promise "single payer" because that is not up to the President, it is up to Congress, and I think it is fair to say that congress is not playing along at this time. But there is nobody that thinks that health care is fixed, certainly not the democratic candidates, just improved.
Before the ACA I was uninsurable. A blood disorder and a previous bout of cancer made it possible for insurance companies to just say no. That was legal in America. It no longer is, because of the ACA. My particular state offered an "insurance of last resort" that put me in a high risk pool and allowed me to get insurance at ridiculous prices, but I could get it. Many states had no such pool and there was no federal equivalent. The cost was too high, I had to remain uninsured. The cost was, btw, more than you were paying for 2.
If you have or get virulent disease or cancer or need a transplant or any other heroic medical treatment there was a limit on how much the insurance companies had to spend to make you well over your lifetime. Should you ever go over that limit you were on your own, no matter how much you may have previously paid them. That limit no longer exists because of the ACA.
I could go through a dozen or more examples of other ways the ACA has made it possible for people to get insurance who couldn't before, including the millions who have been included in the Medicaid expansion in those states where Republican governments haven't stopped it over nothing but partisan spite. There is even a state out there that has one of the best ACA programs of ANY state, but a new republican governor has promised to kill it, because he can.
I am very sorry, @His_Highness, that you are still having difficulty getting good insurance at a reasonable cost, and I will be the first to agree that it needs to be dramatically improved to cover more people at better prices, but there is NO denying that half a loaf is better than none and the ACA in it's current form has improved millions of lives and probably already saved thousands from untimely or unnecessary deaths.
I hope the next Democratic President can vastly improve the ACA, and I will do everything I can to help. But I garrundamntee you that if we elect a republican to the white house they will do everything they can to destroy the program and replace it with nothing. They have all promised that. And the insurance companies will be back in total charge of your medical care, and whether your life is worth saving. Unless, of course, you are a gazillionaire and can pay for your own heart transplant...

Never one to miss an opportunity, the infamous drag queen weighs in...

November 14, 2015, 10:00 am
Coulter after Paris attacks: 'Trump was elected president tonight'

Ann Coulter took to Twitter on Friday night to respond to the Paris terror attacks, saying that “Donald Trump was elected president tonight.”

The conservative commentator tweeted a series of reactions to the attacks that left more than 120 dead, calling for “no more Muslim immigration.” She also targeted recent U.S. college student protests, as well as American gun and immigration laws and proposals.

Coulter ended her string of Tweets with: “They can wait if they like until next November for the actual balloting, but Donald Trump was elected president tonight.”

If only we could make her leave the stage with Trump when the hook inevitably comes for him.

Ann Coulter literally makes me cringe.

I think she is a phony conservative. If somebody paid me large sums of money to spew outrageous accusations, I'd probably do it, too, and laugh all the way to the bank. Or, she's a "very bad word".

She may be a phony conservative, but she is a real ASSHOLE.

Sorry, couldn't help myself...

macbill said:

I think she is a phony conservative. If somebody paid me large sums of money to spew outrageous accusations, I'd probably do it, too, and laugh all the way to the bank. Or, she's a "very bad word".

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Yeah, but if we got rid of all the politicians who were in someones pocket who would be left.

@cybrguy - I love the idea that the insurance providers can't deny coverage or make the coverage so pricey that those who need it the most can't afford it. I expected, and was OK with, an increase in cost and a decrease in value. From a business perspective it had to work out that way since the insurer couldn't deny servicing the higher margin customers. Not to mention the cost to the insurer having to develop bi-directional interfaces and maintain them. BTW-I'm well aware that the real cost/overhead is in maintenance not development for these systems. The ACA selling points (larger pools, etc.) were supposed to mitigate some of the increase and I bought into the premise. As they say in the hokey pokey 'That's what it's all about'.

While I was expecting to pay more for less, I don't remember anyone saying it would be anywhere near a 50% increase......... So now that I've done all the homework and 'turned myself around' I would like to see the numbers on a country wide basis. When I say numbers I'm talking about the insured who are better off, the insured who are not better off, the affect on the insurer's and the affect on the government coffers. I also want the numbers in a dry and factual way. Unclouded by the predilections that are used to skew the results.....good luck with that one.

Unfortunately the only way to radically reduce the cost of healthcare in America is to take it away from the profit motivated insurance companies and hospital networks, and I don't see that anytime soon short of a fully democratic House, Senate, and White House and a change to "Government" insurance, or single payer. If people actually voted in their own interests (assuming they are not insurance or hospital execs) that could happen, but they don't, they vote the way that people they trust tell them to vote, and those people have their OWN interests at heart. Those interests are NOT the interests of the American People at large. They are the interests of a small segment of the population that has all the money...

macbill said:

I think she is a phony conservative.

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In many ways Trump is too, but the whole "conservative" ideology seems quite radical these days.

Many governors in the south are saying they will close their doors to Syrian refugees. They may allow only Christian refugees. Folks may need to take a religious test. Some of our presidential candidates agree with that. I liked Obama speech this morning, a bit long winded.

The fear mongoring begins. What happened to the "land of the free and home of the brave"

Bush, with his remark about taking Syrian Christians only, pushed his candidacy still further from success; I suspect he is toast. Rubio and Cruz have also said things that would likely doom them in the general election.

The business about Syrian refugees is pure hysteria. So far it appears only a single Syrian was involved in the French attacks. With our enormous long borders and open system, does anyone seriously believe stopping Syrian refugees from coming is going to prevent just as many (that is, 1) coming in here? Idiotic and self-defeating reaction. Likewise all the blather about the precise language used to describe terrorists and the insistence that our rhetoric implicate Islam is also self-defeating.

Unless Hillary kills a puppy between now and the Election she is most likely the next President IMO.

Not my first choice but definitely a pretty hefty margin above anyone on the other side.

Rubio would probably give her the best run out of any of them.

It's not just the south, but it IS only Republicans...

Every Republican Presidential candidate has said it and many of the Republican Govenors have said they want no Syrian refugees. This may be the biggest and most disgusting example of blaming the victims in American history. And it is EXACTLY what ISIS is hoping for.

Nice goin Republicans. Good to know who gives you YOUR marching orders.

cybrguy said:

And it is EXACTLY what ISIS is hoping for.

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Also the neoconservative death cult: Remember, "You're either with us, or with the terrorists."?

Gonzo said:

Unless Hillary kills a puppy between now and the Election she is most likely the next President IMO.

Not my first choice but definitely a pretty hefty margin above anyone on the other side.

Rubio would probably give her the best run out of any of them.

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There are people on the Republican side publicly beginning to wonder, what if they nominate one of these bozos and then Hillary slips on a banana peel? President Trump? Even President Rubio is not a good feeling.

Gunky said:

There are people on the Republican side publicly beginning to wonder, what if they nominate one of these bozos and then Hillary slips on a banana peel? President Trump? Even President Rubio is not a good feeling.

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This is a big fear of mine. I think the Dems are mistakenly putting all their eggs in one basket. They try their best to discredit Bernie at every turn but that may come back to bite them in the end.