Gary Varvel for June 30, 2012

And it’s one heckuva big tax increase. In fact, it’s a regressive tax increase that hits lower income people the hardest. Cumulatively, it will be the biggest tax increase on the middle class in the history of mankind: 500 billion in increased taxes and another 500 billion in cuts to Medicare. Aren’t you glad your Congressional representatives all got together, colluded, and put together this terrible piece of legislation? Aren’t you glad you voted Obama into office? Won’t you be even gladder when you vote the bums out and vote in representatives that will overturn this atrocity? Vote tea party!

The GOP got all of the changes they insisted on.And now they’re being sore winners. Boo hoo!

Hanmari, for most folks, under a couple hundred bucks a year, at most. Of course, the bill also has no teeth for collecting it, so no biggie. Now actually being able to GET insurance, and saving your life if you get sick, well, I guess that is just a waste in some cases.

The Republicans have proposed the simplest and most effective solution. The most important of these are no denial because of pre-existing conditions, no cap on benefits, and most important of all – allowing insurance companies to compete for business in any state as is presently done with automobile insurance.

Competition lowers prices every time and weeds out the inefficient companies.

The “gas wars” of my youth weren’t about “competition” they were about the “majors” driving the “independents” into bankruptcy, to establish their monopolies. That is EXACTLY the biggest “problem” with ACA, it sets mandatory customers on the hook, to be scooped up for “the majors”, exactly what Republicans, and yes, some Democrats, wanted for their “benefactors” in the insurance industry. Just as “no bargaining” in Medicare Part D is absurd, and COSTLY, so is the avoidance of “single payer” with a degree of regulation to keep costs down.

“Competition reduces prices” is the greatest myth of “capitalism” in America, because monopolies HAVE won out, but there’s not T.R. to bust them this time around.

Medicare for all. The Reeps had years under Bush the Nincompoop to do something and they did NOTHING.

medicare going bankrupt as is 2020 will be replaced by solyent green

I take it from your formulation that you value income over freedom?

Soon, so very soon, we shall see the evil in it. -—————I, for one, am SICK and TIRED of the Government MANDATE that FORCES Americans to have children or PAY A TAX PENALTY!!!Sure, the BREEDERS say that it’s an Exemption for those who have children, but anybody with a SHRED of SENSE would see that it’s a TAX on non-parents.I have NO SYMPATHY for those who use MY tax money to get FREE Health Care for the children that THEY don’t have to pay taxes for.Buy your Health Insurance from the Corporate Masters of Wall Street, or pay a pittance of a tax penalty. Or you could have another kid and get ANOTHER Exemption that would exceed the Maximum Family Penalty. A

Oh, like BUSH/CHENEY protected the economy so well. (rolls eyes)And don’t get me started on the un-Patriot Act.

Your hateful fantasies would be funny if you didn’t sound like a 10 year old schoolyard bully as well.====I’ve been studying the techniques of Rush Limbaugh. Apparently I’m successful.

Lie! The GOP HAD NO IMPUT ON THE BILL! =====Are you suggesting that copying Massachusetts’ RomneyCare, with the Individual Mandate long supported by Newt Gingrich is not “IMPUT” (sic) from the GOP?

As Professor. McGonnigal said on the eve of the dance: “Well. Now you know.”

My premiums for GROUP health insurance, AND the copays, kept going up for all the years under Bush at 8-14% per year. This act had nothing to do with it.

But, for all the morons screaming something is being taken, and you’re being taxed, IF YOU HAVE CURRENT COVERAGE, IT DOESN’T CHANGE, you KEEP what you have!! IF you have insurance already, NO penalty acquires!!

It IS too big a bill in one package, but not nearly as big as the pile of bull piled up by those against providing all people some form of medical care, at LESS COST than the current way of sending everyone to the ER for a sore throat or “common illness”. Opposition is simply moronic. Could the bill have been better? Yes! Were Republicans willing to work to MAKE it better, absolutely NOT! Their argument was for preservation of profit, not health.

Total lies. Not one GOPer voted for Obamacare, nor were they even allowed to submit amendments to be voted on.===Half true. The GOP did not even TRY to submit any amendments, even as they yelled and screamed about how they were being excluded from the discussions.HOWEVERMost of the “distasteful” details of the plan were either originally proposed by GOP members, or were GOP amendments to earlier, failed attempts at health care legislation.For instance, the Individual Mandate was proposed and pushed by Gingrich numerous times between 1993 and 2007. Of course, in the debates against Romney, he denied it 3 times before the cock crowed.And also remember, this is the same GOP section of the Legislature that said their FIRST PRIORITY was to make Obama a one term President. NOT to represent the interests of the People of the USA, but to oppose President Obama.

I read this somewhere, about a people opressed by their government, un-representated, needing a change. It seems appropriate now:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. —That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, —That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government…

“Individual mandate” = Republicans like Chaffee, and well, Gingrich, period.

Here’s a thought to save social security, and Medicare:

1. end all tax deductions after 2 kids, pay MORE for each additional little “blood sucker” who will drain the system for education, health care, and infrastructure requirements to meet “their” needs and demands.

2. Eliminate the “ceiling” on deduction for SS and Medicare, AND START charging Medicare/SS tax on all “capital gains”!

3. If corporations are “persons”, make THEM pay for SS and Medicare too!!!

dtroutma so if corp gets sick it can collect disability your ideas are brilliant LOLWROF as for kids no deductions unless they are 3rd generation USA citizens

Some of you dim-witted libs need to be Obama’s official press spokesman, because his arguments for his own plan are pathetic. In fact, I have yet heard a single Democrat who has expressed a single intelligent notion with regard to Obama’s unconstitutional “health” plan (I call it “unconstitutional” because Obama says that the individual mandate is covered by the commerce clause; however, the majority of the SCOTUS ruled that it wasn’t—hence, his ideas with regard to his plan is UNCONSTITUTIONAL).

Yup, Yohann, the Soup Rim court only knows what they’re doing when the appoint a president, and ignore the case law and Constitution, that worked out great for the folks killed in Iraq and Afghanistan!

He didn’t say it was a tax increase. He said it was a tax. Given the cost of health insurance, it’s still less expensive for a healthy young person who is immune from accidents and unexpected illness to skip buying insurance and pay into the pool at tax time, “just in case.”

Not that I come here for a discussion of facts, mind you.