I'm still confused. I mean, I understand that Obama could give you a million dollars and you'd still hate him, but what exactly is he supposed to do. His party passed a law he supported (by a super-majority). This law has survived a presidential election, senate elections, a supreme court challenge, and more. So why do paying our bills and running our government have to be dependent on reversing said law. This whole thing was such a non-starter, what should he do. He ignored it for the most point because it was so bafflingly stupid. Now people are losing money because 30 tea party guys think they have a mandate to repeal ACA or shut the entire country down.

I mean, if he had said things sternly or deadpanned instead of "whining" would it make you feel better? I mean, just say, "I hate Obama, nothing he does will ever make me happy until he's a republican and agrees with my stances," rather than spew some silliness about his message being whiny.

To be honest, I'm actually happy that Obama and the Senate Democrats are actually standing up for their beliefs instead of caving to the House Republicans. For once, Obama is showing some leadership by saying, no, we won't cave to a bunch of rabble rousers who want to re-legislate bills that already passed in a budget process.

I'd counter with frustration over a huge and complicated bill that has thousands of pages that no one aside from the lobbyists read before it was passed because the Democrats had to pass it through the Senate quickly after they lost the special election in Massachusetts. And the House, then controlled by the Democrats, passed it, but couldn't make any changes because the Senate would have declined.

That's not how something so massive it reinvents government control over our daily lives should be addressed.

I'm not saying the Republicans have the answers here. I'm saying this was forced through our system in the most unpleasant, ridiculous, inane and harmful partisan manner humanly possible. Obama wanted this legislation so badly that he sacrificed House Democratic control in 2010 (red-district Democrats were forced to support it, at great cost). It's basically the only thing he's done in five years, and it's truly terrible legislation.

Now could he and the Republicans sit down tomorrow and craft well-thought-out fixes that actually address problems in the health-care system? Real reform rather than a massive tax increase with very little benefit? Hell no. The Republicans are incapable, just as the Democrats are incapable these days.

But the way this bill was forced through, mistakes and all, greatly added to the partisan mess we have today. And now we have this horrible bill that doesn't address real health care reform and a two-party system where the two parties really hate each other and are willing to shut everything down because the president is banking everything on Obamacare somehow working despite every indication that it will cause chaos starting in January and knows that modification is impossible in this climate.

A real leader would step back and lead. This is more the audacity of hope - hope that this legislation isn't as bad as it appears.

I don't think the bill matters much in the partisan divide. I think political strategy these days is to just oppose everything the other person does. I mean for as horrible as this legislation supposedly is, Republicans were the one's proposing it 20 years ago and they ran a candidate for President last year who actually implemented it into law. So they may say they hate it, but their actions have said otherwise.

Same can be said for Democrats and Guantanamo, Afghanistan, or the NSA spying. Partisans don't care about the actual issue, they just want to position themselves on the other side of it. It's debate club for man-children.

Yes, I'm sure he could just talk them into negotiating by some kind words. How out of touch with this world are you?

This. I consider the Tea Party to be one of the worst developments in American political history. They're a group of narrow-minded zealots with a simpleton's view of politics and all the emotional control of a toddler in the throes of their terrible twos.

And I say that as a pragmatism-oriented moderate (slightly left-leaning overall, in all fairness, but with views on both sides of the aisle, depending on the issue in question) who identifies with neither party.

How does this not describe the entire Republican agenda since Obama took office? Everything has been done to sabotage his Presidency from the start. No attempts to actually help our country. Let's focus on proving he is illegitimate and destroying Obamacare! For the party that is so opposed to abortion, all they've done is try to abort this law by any means possible. I hope they are punished accordingly in the next election.

Do you really think it's a good idea to enshrine a system where the minority party gets to overturn passed legislation if they only threaten enough harm to the country?

Obama has already agreed to GOP funding levels in the CR.

LOL. You mean the supposed tea party that the news outlets paint with a very narrow brush or the actual group of taxpayers that is worried about a 17 trillion dollar debt? Because I would love to hear the sophisticated reasoning behind why not one government program is worth cutting back on from the enlightened.

I hope this farce of reform is stopped by any means necessary...unfortunately I dont see that happening.

Its really a shame how far America has tumbled during our generation...

A lot of programs have been cut back on. The Tea Party isn't worried about the debt though which is why they never push to cut programs that can actually reduce the debt (like the military).

I see you're playing on your Jumping to Conclusions mat.

I've never said that "not one government program is worth cutting back on". Personally, I think there's programs that could be cut back on, first and foremost defense. While it's important to have a strong military, when a single country has over 40% of the world's expenditure on defense, that's a pretty clear indication of an area that could stand to have considerable cuts without losing its position of military dominance.

This nonsensical bit alone discredits the rest of your post. Serious hyperbole going on here.

In one of the CR stunts the GOP sent to the Senate the medical device tax was eliminated, thereby adding to the deficit.

Again which tea party? The one I am familiar with (which existed before Fox News tried to put their face on it) is very anti-policing the world. I also know a lot of people that feel the same way. Of course the Fox News type people are only against intervention because it's Obama's presidency but there is a core group of people who feel the military spending is outragously out of control.

The jumping to conclusions mat huh?


My response was there are two different groups. The tea party you refer to is the one Fox News and CNN jumped on as (depending on which station) either small government heroes or racist religious fanatics. There is also a group of people (who called themselves the tea party well before '08) who want to cut the 17 trillion dollar budget. They are very fiscally conservative including military spending. It's hard to respond to your post when you group the two together. (And from your jump to conclusions comment I assume you would be irratated if one would do that)

No one is talking about the Tea Party you're talking about because it doesn't matter and has no political sway.

Which one of those groups do the majority of the "Tea Party" members of Congress belong to?

SI

That's right. Rand Paul and Mike Lee get zero airtime and have no influence at all on the GOP. Though you are right the GOP was able to ignore Ron Paul for a long time but now the message seems to get a lot of mainstream airtime. Feel free to ignore a significant portion of GOP voters but its pretty dumb to imply they don't have any political sway.

I never said majority at any point. I was talking about the broad brush Izulde was using to address how awful tHE tea party movement is. Ignoring that the original tea party actually had proposals to avoid the government shuting down. (Now whether you agree or not with them is a whole other discussion but they definitely included cutting the military)

Don't tie your political movement to a guy who doesn't understand the basics of the economy and wrote newsletters about how to kill minorities and get away with it. Then it might get taken more seriously.

Is Michelle Bachmann part of your Tea Party?

I don't think Rand Paul is the kind of guy you want to hook your horses to.

LOL. These current members of Congress are doing a fantastic job with the economy. And the newletter that his father was tied to now talked about killing minorities and getting away with it? That's a shocking twist. Untrue but sure sounds good.

No.

EDIT for clarity: She tried to adopt a lot of Ron Paul's positions. But still kept the religious nonsense and war mongering and was clueless on the real freedom message. The media decided she was an easier target though and starting calling her the tea party.

Why not?

Ok, well, she launched and chaired the Tea Party Caucus of which Mike Lee and Rand Paul are members.

It's hard to tell who is part of the panerd-approved-Tea Party and the panderd-disapproved-Tea Party. Is there a scorecard?

Answer the question panerd.

If you want to "hive off" certain people that you feel are "original Tea Party" versus "Fox News Tea Party" then at least define it so that we can have an actual discussion about which one is causing the dysfunction in government.

I think Rand Paul and Mike Lee are extremists, but two extremists are not the problem. Congress has always had an extremist or two on either side (Kucinich? Sanders? Ron Paul?). The problem is the faction that has decided that a government shutdown and continuing to fight a scorched-earth, sore-loser battle at every possible opportunity, even those wholly unrelated, over a LAW that was passed by both houses, signed by the President, and affirmed as constitutional by a right-leaning Supreme Court (of all things) is "governing."

So unless you're going to play some cutesy "well it's split right down the middle 50/50 between "original tea party" and "fox tea party" and therefore you can't assign them any blame at all" how about you join the conversation with the rest of us about the faction that's actually causing the problem and stop playing semantics about an "original tea party" of extremists that are not the real issue.

Yes. Sadly Rand Paul plays the game more than Ron Paul which means he does (foolish in panerd's mind) things like supporting Romney for president and joining that caucus. Though one could say he sure gets a lot more air time due to these choices. However his positions do not including warmongering or killing Muslims like Bachmann.

My point (described in the next post to Ronnie Dobbs) was that many citizens in the "tea party movement" and members of Congress like Rand Paul don't believe in the warmongering that Izlude alluded to in his rant about how dumb they all are.

Right. So I go back to saying the panerd-approved-Tea Party is not the one anyone is talking about because it doesn't matter and has no political sway. You can assume from now on that when people bash the Tea Party there is an implied "but not the ones panerd likes" and save us all this drama.

Just because one group doesn't do something well doesn't mean whatever group you support is automatically right.

It wasn't a newsletter Ron Paul was tied to, it was a newsletter he wrote. Here is just one of the many revelations in it.

This.

I've always heard about the newsletters but never actually read them. If the huge scorn of racism is talking about shooting carjackers I have have misled all these years to how terrible these newsletters were. I guess the PC police assume animal means all blacks and not carjackers who you know are committing a crime. Wow what a damning piece!

EDIT: And the newsletter certainly is fear mongering of the 1000th degree but racist? Black youths in gangs would commit most carjackings. I wouldn't think there would even be a debate on this.

DOUBLE EDIT: Before the PC police descend on this thread... Was the article (whatever it was) really out of line? Absolutely. Enough to be brought up 30 years later all the time? Not what you quoted. I thought the newsletters talked about lynching or something, not shooting carjackers.

FBI — Table 43

Doesn't break out carjacking vs. other types of vehicle theft, and I suppose it's not clear if carjacking is included in vehicle theft or violent crime (my guess is violent crime), but either way, significantly more whites than blacks arrested for both.

We all know that once upon a time there was a tea party group that was exclusively concerned with financial issues. We all also know that group was co-opted by the likes of Bachmann, Palin, and Beck. The latter group is far more numerous than the former group. It's painfully obvious who Izulde was talking about in his post, so I'm not sure why Panerd pretended not to know.

I often fly off the handle and spout off "facts" that don't end up being accurate or at least have giant holes in them. I think I will stick with carjackings being predominantly a black/gang/inner city crime. I am pretty sure I am not wrong on this.

I don't think you are either http://http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/c02.pdf

So despite seeing a table that spells out the percentages of white versus black carjackings, you're going to go with your gut?

Nice find Ronnie. My honest inclination was that panerd was actually right about that too, but I thought I'd do a quick google and see what i could find. Didn't see your link obviously.

Interesting that it's mostly a black-on-black crime though.

It wasn't carjackings but ok. Yes I will stick with my gut.

I think the bit about how you run away, wipe your gun clean, and make sure the gun isn't registered to you would suggest you are doing something illegal. It sure reads like someone teaching you how to kill black kids and getting away with it.

Some more tidbits from the newsletters:

1) Our government created AIDS

2) Israel and the Jews were responsible for the WTC bombing in 1993

3) IRS agents will start showing up at your door with AK-47s

4) 95% of blacks in DC are criminals

5) Employees forced to perform sexual acts on their bosses should just quit and have no legal rights to fight it.

6) Changes to our currency (mainly adding color to it) was a plot to track Americans.

He talks a lot about the impending race wars, says the government will be nuking it's citizens soon, and the new world order is on its way. Of course none of these things happened and they sound like the rantings of a lunatic, but keep hitching your horse to him.

Yeah - just to clarify: even if most carjackings are committed by African Americans that doesn't make what he wrote in the newsletter at all "right."

No doubt. I don't think the carjackers are coming out to the white communities in Texas and raping and killing their children. And there is no better way to describe it then fearmongering to an audience. I was only saying that these newsletters were always brought up as racism in its worst form so I had assumed there was the N word or lynching or something in them. These are quite tame and pretty dumb and silly. I feel sorry for the people who paid to recieve them.

Like I said in an earlier post to DT I won't debate the content as I have no reason to feel like the person is lying but two points...

1) I recall the same fearmongering back in 1995-96 that turned out to not be true most of the time.

2) The federal government is even more inept that I originally thought if they can't figure out a way to keep the essential life-saving services going with all of the money they have even with a "shutdown". It's not like there is $0 in the government right now. Once the shutdown ends I would fire the person in charge of the department that killed the cancer kids.

I think fearmongering that any African-American you see in your neighborhood is a carjacker who wants to rape and kill your kids is infinitely more damaging than the N-word or an off color joke about lynching, no? I think it's the exact opposite of tame, dumb and silly.

Well I don't read the Rainmaker quote the same as you do. I don't agree with Ron Paul but it is quite clear he is talking about carjackers and you want to make it into something more. Not much room for discussion if we both read the same thing and come to those exact opposite conclusions.

"It is the hip-hop thing to do among the urban youth who play unsuspecting whites like pianos"

You are just playing dumb at this point.

Well this wouldn't be considered a life saving service, since it's a clinical trial. And they've taken the money they have for trials and continued to fund the existing trials since ending those would ruin all the data. They're just not able to start new trials and had to cancel some of the ones that were planned.

Checkmate.

Why not just say if someone is carjacking you to shoot them in self-defense and leave it at that? Why talk about the unregistered gun, wiping it clean, and fleeing the seen? All things someone who is doing something illegal would do.

It's not that there's no money, it's that in most areas there is no legal authority to spend any of it. Departments aren't allowed to spend without a signed budget.

IMO, all democrats have to do is make the case to the public on why this new Obamacare is worth having and get public support. I would really be interested in a real debate on what positives instituting this new health care plan would provide vs the potential dangers for people with good existing coverage. Instead, we are back to team sports politics where Obama = always right to one side and always wrong to the other.

The case has already been made. It was a significant subject in the first election and the DOMINANT subject in the 2nd, both of which the Democrats won.

Not only that, but the Democrats won the popular vote AT ALL LEVELS (Presidential & Congressional) in the last one, and the Republican majority in the House only survived because of gerrymandered districts. I'd say it's pretty clear to everyone at this point where the American people stand on the ACA.

Please see: election, 2012: results.

If he would just release his birth certificate, then all questions about his eligibility and legitimacy will go away.

This is the big failing. I posted that Kimmel thing yesterday as a lark, but most people like the ACA. They don't like Obamacare.

http://http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-obamacare-20131001,0,4909537.story

At this point, the FUD has become so ingrained, it is nearly impossible to have an honest discussion about 'Obamacare'. Numerous polls have show that provisions, when described as 'Obamacare' score lower approval ratings than the exact same provisions described as 'Affordable Care Act'.

Apparently according to Huffington Post we're only 3 Republicans shy of a Clean CR being able to be passed.

None are from a state south of Virginia. The list includes four from Pennsylvania, four from Virginia, two from New Jersey, two from New York, one from California, and one from Minnesota—but none from states like Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Texas, or Louisiana.

Oh. Well, 6 out of 7 is good enough, I guess! :D

Of course it's going to poll badly. Painting with huge generalities here obviously - so no need for everyone to come out and give their own reason why they hate it, but:

• Liberals dislike it because it's mandating business for the insurance companies, and for a subset of them it reminds them that it's not single-payer (Hey - Rome wasn't built in a day)
• Conservatives dislike it because they view it as a "tax" or a "requirement" and they claim to want the freedom to not have health insurance (don't even get me started on the wisdom of that. The one lesson my parents imparted on me was "ALWAYS HAVE HEALTH INSURANCE!").

disclaimer: I'm a "it's not single-payer!" guy myself. But I'm not sure I'd say I disapprove of the individual mandate in a poll.

I'd disapprove of the individual mandate if I didn't think it was the only way we could require coverage of pre-existing conditions.

Right. So the truth is, Americans love Obamacare, as long as it's not called Obamacare, and as long as it doesn't include a key provision of Obamacare. I just think the headline and the message of that article are extremely disingenuous (and I'm a supporter of it).

On the flip side I wondeer what the crosstabs would look like if you explained to survey-takers that the individual mandate was key to being able to provide the provisions that they like - would more of them express at least "okay" with it then? I'd have to imagine so.

Good luck with that.

Interesting

America: a land of liberals, governed by conservatives? | Oliver Burkeman | News | theguardian.com

I don't think you can draw that conclusion. Not liking 1 out of 7 provisions doesn't mean someone would necessarily dislike all 7 provisions put together.

I wasn't trying to draw that conclusion -- I was just summarizing the article's points. The article seems to have brushed aside that part, buried it near the end, said, unfortunately, it's necessary for the other stuff, but that didn't stop them from declaring "Americans love Obamacare."

But this isn't the plan he ran on in the election - it's not even close. It would be like a president running on getting the military out of the middle east and then deciding to pull out of only Abu Dhabi and saying everyone should be excited because that's what they voted him in to do.

Are you mixing up 2012 and 2008? This is most certainly the plan he ran on in the 2012 election.

This.

There's no free lunch.

Yes. There was a whole election, it was on TV and everything, after the ACA was passed and signed.

Really? Because the House Republicans wouldn't pass his "ideal vision" he shouldn't have compromised?

Now we can all argue (and I still will to this day) that he caved too much too fast, but that's a different point.

The bill was signed in 2010 and is nothing like what he promised in 2008. The only thing he's promised since 2008 is that the average family would save $2500 a year on Obamacare - which is not even close to true in the foreseeable future for this version of it.

This current form of Obamacare appears to do little to pair down the actual cost of heath care for most people. In fact, if you have a decent employer-offered plan right now, there are three results for you from this plan:

1. Your premiums will stay roughly the same and your employer will continue coverage (more likely for larger companies).
2. Your employer may decide to drop coverage kick you to the exchanges if it saves them money (more likely for smaller companies). At which point your premiums will go up and you will have lesser overall coverage.
3. Your employer may decide to dodge the system and move you to a part time employee - at which point you lose all your benefits and need to go on an exchange like option 2 (already happening at some fast food/lower income jobs).

So, again, for the 60-70% of families with solid employer-paid health care face only negatives with this plan. And that's not to mention the potential damage this could do to unions who would now be forced to pay for more coverage at a higher rate while private non-union contractors won't face any increase.

I'm honestly fairly shocked that anyone is in favor of this plan. I fail to see more than 5 or 10% of the population who would benefit from this. And, most of them are already on publicly subsidized plans like Access here in Arizona. Some very small business owners (less than 25 employees) may see a slight decrease in their premiums from their current Co-OP to the exchange, but there's no guarantee that they can see their same doc or have similar levels of coverage.

Then don't do anything. I would honestly rather have a more aggressive and well-thought out plan to move people completely off employer-paid health plans. Then, the government could essentially subsidize the individual to go out and get the same plans companies currently do. Just scale the subsidy by income level to where most people pay a similar premium and have the option to join all the companies for a given state (ie, United Healthcare of AZ or Blue Cross Blue shield of AZ). Essentially, the individual is getting the subsidy over the current company they work for.

That would have been a much better first step than this half ass plan that doesn't really help anyone. These exchanges are basically going to end up being more expensive and less coverage than existing company-based coverage. How does that help people?

Except for the examples of where the exchanges are cheaper and provide equivalent levels of coverage.

You are having a massive reading comprehension fail. JPhillips and I are talking about the 2012 election. You are aware that an election happened in 2012, right? And that the 2012 election took place after Obamacare was passed?

As of 2012, 256 million people have health insurance and 45 million do not. 5 million of those have pre-existing conditions that prevent them from gaining non-employer coverage because of cost. 27 million make under 45K and most of those people qualify for lower income plans in most states (like Access) but just don't sign up for them. Another 10 million or so are not citizens and wouldn't really be helped by Obamacare anyway.

So, why not focus on the 5 mil with pre-existing conditions and ensuring the 27 million who make under 45K have a decent option and understand how to sign up? Why do we need to potentially F-up coverage for 20-30 million (12-15%) of the 170 million with coverage to essentially help between 15 and 25 million who need it?

The individual mandate was put in place in 1986. The costs were just messily passed through to you by hospitals. All this did was eliminate that mess and make it more straightforward.

Now you're moving the goalposts. You initially said the problem was that the ACA hasn't been discussed enough. Now you're just anti-ACA.

You leave out a lot of benefits in the ACA.

Families now know their children can be insured to age 26 even if they don't get hired immediately after college.

No more worries about pre-existing conditions. If you lose your job and can't afford or run out of COBRA you can still get a decent policy.

Measures that will tie reimbursements to outcomes rather than number of procedures, which will likely slow the rate of medical inflation.

Hell, medical inflation is already slowing and while the data isn't conclusive, most experts believe the ACA is playing a part.

I also question your assumptions, but we won't know until data starts coming in.

I'm skeptical about a lot of parts of it. Especially the empowering and subsidizing of insurance companies, which seems to represent a huge step AWAY from where some proponents claim the plan is taking us. But the fact that some Republicans are so terrified of it being implemented also seems to be a tell that they think the plan will work pretty well. If they were so sure it was going to be an unpopular disaster, then you'd think they'd want to give it chance, because it's something that the Democratic party can be judged by. Of course, on the other hand, before this phase of the opposition heated up, some Democrats here couldn't distance themselves fast enough from ACA ("this wasn't what we wanted so don't judge us by it"), and if it turned out to be unpopular, it would just be spun as being the Republicans' fault anyway since they "obstructed" (i.e., were more effective politicians), and kept the the Dems from what REALLY wanted.

I think it's true that America is much more liberal than the Congressional representative breakdown would suggest, or than conservative representatives think, and that on the whole, they're more than ready for something like ACA, but is the point of that that Republicans should voluntarily cede more power, or is that Democrats are just really terrible at politics? I wonder if there was a way they could have attempted to tackle the debt issues before the nutjobs did. There had to be common ground at least there. Instead it was just something that had to be fought over, the Dems tried to frame it as a weird, fringe issue that we shouldn't care about it, next thing you know, you have an environment where the tea party abomination could flourish.

And it kind of sucks that even with 10% Congressional approval ratings, people seem to be digging their heels in, rallying around their party more strongly than ever. I guess that's unavoidable, but I kind of preferred the last few months, where Dems were pissed off at the administration over NSA stuff. Even though I personally didn't care about that issue as much as health care, it really felt like the kind of environment that could be conducive to real change and upheaval and backlash in terms of what the parties stand for. I want to see people angry at their own parties, that's the only way to fix Congress. Regular Republicans could reasonably be that kind of angry right now, but it doesn't seem like that's going to happen. (though I guess I'm doing my part, I have voted Republican a good amount, but would never be a party member as long as either the tea party or the religious fundamentalists have so much power, and would certainly not vote for any Republican candidate who either supported or were silently complicit in this shutdown approach - which I think is almost all of them.)

As for this whole thing, I'm just ready for the trillion dollar coin - when can we break that out?

Of those 256 million who currently have coverage, how many have pre-existing conditions that might cause them to enter the pool of non-coverage due to the loss of employment or some other factor that causes them to lose coverage? That is one of the things that is addressed as well that your scenario ignores.

And those numbers aren't static. How many people lose coverage or have pre-existing conditions over a ten or twenty year span?

That election wasn't on Obamacare, it was on the economy. Almost 50% cited the economy in exit polls, with Healthcare around 15% and foreign policy 7-8%.

But, again, no one understands what Obamacare currently is. We were told one thing in 2008, nothing in 2012 and now have a system that does nothing to help a vast majority of the working public.

They did but it was rejected early on as a non-starter in negotiations.

This is one of the things that baffles me as well, as many parts of the ACA have roots that can be traced back to the Nixon/Ford administrations in the 70s, and the Heritage Foundation in the 90s. Large swaths of the bill are things Republicans have been advocating for nearly 40 years.

Does that mean that Dems have been opposing this kind of plan for 40 years? What's different now, if that's the case (Edit: I really don't know the history of it, but if Republicans supported it, and we didn't have it, I imagine there was opposition)?

Democrats had been pushing for a single-payer system. The single-payer vs. mandate battle is what killed HillaryCare back in the 90s. What changed was a willingness to embrace the mandate.

The mandate was originally a GOP idea that demanded participation of all who would in future receive benefits. It was a way of making everyone pay rather than get a free lunch.

The 5 million number is fluid as some people will get hired and others lose their job and face extremely expensive non-employer options. But, Again, come up with a plan that covers the following:

1. 5 million uninsured due to pre-existing conditions (and people who might become uninsured due to pre-existing conditions)
2. The very few people between the ages of 18 and 24 who have families and aren't currently covered (nearly all with families qualify for some form of existing public plan like Access).
3. People who make under $45K and don't have insurance.

That will cost a fraction of this effort and leave all of us with good coverage without the specter of being dropped by our employer coverage. Now, if you want to move to a pure "public" system where no one gets employer coverage and completely change the system - that's a whole different argument and one that I think could be done in the right manner. But this current plan is going to cause a lot of angst for people in small-to-medium sized companies who can now justify dropping coverage because of the existence of these exchanges. And, given my company pays over 60% of my monthly healthcare premium right now, I doubt that me dropping to an exchange is going to end up with me having the same coverage for the same out of pocket cost I have.

Then I completely disagree with the people that rejected that (part aside - I really don't care).

This is another issue that could really hurt lower income people. Some unions may also need to go to similar tactics over time:

US employers slashing worker hours to avoid Obamacare insurance mandate | World news | theguardian.com

In addition, that number of uninsured is only going to grow. My family has qualified for the state health care here for a number of years but are being dropped this year. States are being forced to lower the line at which they accept individuals and families because the system is so expensive. We're certainly not the biggest state but I know here a large percentage of people are no longer eligible for that state plan as of this year. I'm sure this isn't the only state that's finding it can't afford the current system.

Also, the idea is to create a system which begins to push costs down. The costs aren't going to be different day one, but the ACA contains provisions to try to trend downward. It's not a magic bullet and maybe it's not enough, but it's something to address families like mine.

So let's get this straight. If the companies are cutting hours to avoid the mandate, that means they're already not providing health benefits. Otherwise, the mandate wouldn't affect them. So the only way to claim they're paying more for healthcare is if a private plan was cheaper than an ACA exchange plan. And that has been shown not to be the case even before subsidies (which most part time employees would qualify for) are applied.

If I had the choice between 32 hours a week with private health care that won't cover any pre-existing conditions and 28 hours a week with a cheaper exchange plan that will cover pre-existing conditions, then I definitely pick the latter.

I don't think you will be able to push costs down without drastically changing the system. However, I do think that provisions should be made to specifically handle people with coverage issues that are prevalent (pre-existing conditions, low income, ...).

My fear here is a bit of "throwing the baby out with the bath water". While it's clear the ACA will help a certain number of people, it may also have some unintended consequences and hurt many more with insurance or that see their hours cut to fall into compliance.

In the end, I just feel that there is a better way to handle these holes in existing coverage without subjecting everyone with current coverage to this risk.

OK. How would you solve pre-existing condition issues?

Not true. Many companies (like Home Depot) currently offer health insurance options that are more bare bones (ie, higher deductible) for current part time workers in the 25-35 hour range. They have now said they are pulling this and cutting non-full time hours to below 29. So, if you were a part time employee for home depot working 35 hours and getting their low end health car coverage. Now, you will have your hours cut to 29 and have to pay more in the exchange for a new health care plan.

That's great if you have pre-existing conditions - but only around 2-3% of potential workers have those. For the remaining 97%, this sucks. Again, baby with the bath water. Why not just come up with a plan for the current exclusions and leave everyone else with what they have? Maybe someone who was working part time at Home Depot might like to decline their coverage and hop on a public plan because they make less than 45K - great. But don't set up a system to where they are forced to.

This is the point of the government - safety net options. If someone has pre-existing conditions and can't get coverage, have a government subsidized public option they can use. We do that with lower income families (ACCESS in AZ), younger kids and disabled on a state level already. I can't imagine it would be that much harder to come up with a plan that also covers the 2-3% of the population that has pre-existing conditions that prevent them for being covered traditionally.

Coverage of pre-existing conditions (without realistically punitive rates) defies the very use of the word "insurance". It's the equivalent of guaranteeing coverage for the world's worst (or unluckiest) driver.

It might be the single most offensively stupid element of the entire boondoggle afaic.