Just like Senator Obama, Sen Clinton, and Sen Biden in 2006. What's your point exactly?

I wonder how much those nay votes will hurt their re-election chances? Probably not much, but wouldn't be surprised to see one or two lose their seat over it.

You mean the same Sen Reid who voted no in 2006? Why do you all get sucked into these games by these fuckers on both sides? They don't care about you it's all a game to get reelected and it works.

whoa whoa hold your horses here-I was just making a joke, not a political statement. Everybody in the world expected him to vote no.

I wouldn't be surprised to see some Yay votes leave office feet first at this point. And it'd be richly deserved afaic.

Fair enough. But none of these votes are shocks, all playing to their voters.

Yes if anything it will be the yay votes but most likely it will be neither. The 18 nays know exactly what their voters wanted them to do. Just like Sen Obama back in 2006. It's not about the global economy it's a political game over who gets the bigger share of the kickbacks. Looks like two billion is headed to KY. McConnell is the hero right? :)

I guess most people are unclear on the concept of representational government. If 80% of your constituents (for example) want you to consistently vote a certain way on an issue or to fight for what most in your district believes in, that is what is purposed in the Constitution. But I guess they get demonized if they really act like representatives of their people.

I believe this is pretty fair.

You'll note that I'm not particularly critical -- in that respect anyway -- of the D's who voted the way they did today. They did what they were sent to do, and they didn't do anything other than what was expected of them.

The R's on the other hand ... there's nothing that comes close to my feelings for them that would be legal to say nor wise to express publicly.

So, the only moment of drama was post vote, when apparently, someone went nuts.

Jake Sherman ‏@JakeSherman 7m
An official house court stenographer took to the microphone & was screaming about God. She was saying in the hall you can't serve two masters.

Interestingly, Ron Johnson is taking it from the right too.

Kind of fun to watch.

Floor1.101612.WAV by @toddzwillich on SoundCloud - Hear the world’s sounds

audio of the stenographer ranting and raving. Freemasons, etcetera.

Ted Cruz out bright and early welcoming people back to Washington. I feel so comforted :)

Cruz stages photo op outside Capitol greeting visitors after government reopens | The Raw Story

Looks like lesson learned:

Robert Costa ‏@robertcostaNRO 40m
McConnell to NR, looking ahead to Jan and Feb showdown: "A government shutdown is off the table."

Robert Costa ‏@robertcostaNRO 38m
More McConnell on prospect of another shutdown: "We’re not going to do it," says other GOP leaders agree

So, is this the end of the Tea Party's influence over the GOP?

No, it's the calm before the 2014 midterm storm. They're going to try to primary as many "moderate" GOP members as they can.

SI

I look forward to more Democrats being elected.

Hard to do when districts are so gerrymandered as to make safe D and safe R districts. I'd say you end up with more left and more right leaning districts but the left continues to just eat paste so you don't have a lot of really lefty folks in Congress (Bernie Sanders aside, and he's a Senator so districts mean nothing).

SI

Harry Reid probably would have lost in 2010 if he hadn't been going up against a nut like Sharron Angle. Moderates getting primaried by Tea Party candidates can only help the Democrats.

I agree for the senate, all bets are off for the House. I could see many seats in the House going to the tea party - dep on demographics. The senate is always going to be more moderate than the house, though, because of the larger voting block.

I suppose it's true. We saw the same dynamic in 2012 when the Tea Party cost the GOP Dick Lugar's seat. But we also saw Todd Akin give Claire McCaskill back her seat in almost identical circumstances with similarly stupid rape comments. But he wasn't a Tea Party favorite, he was just a moron.

Also, we just used 3 purple states in Nevada, Missouri, and Indiana to make this point. There just aren't that many purple House districts any more.

SI

I sure hope you're right, except there is no try, there is do or do not.

Sending pseudocons to DC is accomplishing nothing worth a damn, and I'm not even a Tea Party guy consistently (i.e. they've backed a low-end nut job or two more than once in these parts).

In other words, a Tea Partier.

{shrug} Call it what you will, I've long been a consistent commenter that hardly anybody knows what the hell that term actually means at this point beyond their own personal definition. I'm not sure that I have a hard & fast definition myself.

Some stuff I'm with 'em on (insofar as things they get associated with), some stuff I think they miss the mark on. All I know at the moment perhaps is that I trust them -- or the people who get labeled as "them" -- more than I trust a generic (R) right now.

What's interesting about Nevada is how the state is split. Southern Nevada is overwhelmingly Democrat, Northern Nevada overwhelmingly Republican. Adds another layer to the whole UNLV/UNR rivalry.

In Europe for the week. Watching RT channel and their analysis on American Exceptionalism.

The woman reporter just needs to give up her citizenship and go live somewhere else.

She does spread it out between GOP and Dems pretty evenly. its like the Fox News version of anti-American.

Well it is RT. It can't be too much of a surprise.

In Soviet Russia, RT... aw, hell. Fox News? That's selling Russian journalism and even Fox News short. They're more like Coast-to-Coast

SI

Kudos on...ya know...actually providing a reasonable source.

The below is shamelessly taken from another website to point out that this "controversy" is another ginned-up talking point that's been covered already.

This all sounds very ominous until you consider that the naturally high turnover rate associated with the individual market means that it's highly unlikely that individuals would still be enrolled in plans from 2010 in 2014. In fact, the Obama administration publicly admitted this when it issued the regulations in 2010, leading Republicans like Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY) to seize on the story in order to push for repeal of the grandfather regulations. Here is a story in The Hill from Sep. 22, 2010 pointing to this very same 40 to 67 percent range. [...]
The debate was widely covered in the press, so it's unclear what exactly the NBC investigation unit has uncovered.

Isn't the article specifically talking about the INVOLUNTARY loss of insurance plans and the administration's knowledge that that would happen, despite its "if you like your plan, you get to keep your plan" rhetoric? I remember people rolling their eyes at that line even back then. Nobody really believed it, so in that sense it's not a big deal. And isn't kind of the point of the new setup to get people into higher quality plans, and to bring about the net societal gain of getting more people insured, at the expense of more pricey plans for some who had insurance anyway? I think they just felt like they needed a little deceit to get that idea rolling in the beginning.

That's the key part. They never said "Everyone will get to keep their plan". The plans that are kicking people off aren't meeting the minimum requirements of the Act. In most of the cases, the new plans available for the people who are being kicked off are cheaper and provide more coverage with a lower deductible than their existing plans.

But a lot of them aren't cheaper, is the point of the article (and I think a few posters here have gone through something similar). As a policy, there's nothing inherently wrong with that, a few people pay a little more for other people to have coverage in the first place, but the catch phrase, as utilized, was misleading.

I still want to see a case where it's

a) Not cheaper for an equivalent level of care (provided that the equivalent level of care meets the minimum standards)

AND

b) the person doesn't qualify for subsidies to make it cheaper/in-line.

I think a lot of the people who are finding it not-cheaper were in plans that don't meet the new minimum standards/aren't profitable for the insurance companies under the new regulations, so they're being discontinued.

All this hand-wringing over "OMG I MIGHT HAVE TO CHANGE MY DOCTOR!!!!"
I dropped my last doctor at the drop of a hat and switched to a PCP I'd never met before because my old one wouldn't give me a referral to the specialist I wanted to see and the new guy would. Really what's the big deal???

I'm sure that some people might end up paying more, I have no doubt of that. But from the hullabaloo being raised you'd think that was going to happen to everyone, which just flat-out isn't true.

We're still awfully early in the implementation of this new system (if it ever even gets fully implemented). We're going to have a multiple year wait before we see if it actually works.

This article does a good job of spelling out just what is happening with the notices.

This is why Obamacare is canceling some people’s insurance plans

But you've told us for years that it is a disaster.

I like this part


People are upset about losing access to these types of "insurance plans?" For real??

These are (I imagine) the people complaining their new plans are going to "cost more" when the reality is yes, they will cost more up-front, but they will cover a lot more and result in less overall total cost of healthcare and healthier individuals.

And I believe it will be in the end. I've seen nothing from personal experience to minimize my opinion in that regard.

I forget what our age difference is off-hand so I can't completely speculate as to why that might not be as big an issue for you but that's an enormous -- often a #1 -- fear for many people who have had the same PCP for years. In some cases, their entire lives.

In other instances, a change could mean going from a doctor with relatively easy appointments to one that takes weeks to see. Or in some areas it could mean a choice between one of only two doctors/groups in manageable distance which would mean significant travel or being stuck with a doctor that you've had a previous bad experience with. For others it means abandoning a level of trust & familiarity with a doctor who is familiar with your medical history & situation in exchange one that may or may not give the slightest damn about you versus the one that may have kept you alive through some tough situation.

Point being, lots of reasons that people consider that problematic at best, outright traumatic at worst.

I would venture to guess that the above scenario where someone has a multi-year relationship with a particular doctor and can't continue to see them after a change in insurance is quite rare in the group where only 17% purchase the same plan for two years running.

So you can't call it a success for years, but it's okay to call it a disaster before it starts?

I'm 34. I had the same PCP since puberty and dropped him like a hot pan over the course of like 3 days last year, AND got an appointment with a new PCP to get a referral to the specialist I wanted AND got a flu shot from them while I was there (which they suggested), AND got a physical scheduled for 7 months out. AND my new doc emailed me on their secure email system they have to give me the results of my blood test and tell me to take Vitamin D supplements and that everything else was normal. Yeah...I'd say switching docs is no big deal (but then again I freely admit I live in a city that is a worldwide leader in medicine, so my experience may not mirror what somebody living out in the 'sticks has).

I get that it might be an issue for some folks, but I think it's being oversold as some traumatic issue when in reality, most people see their PCP on average what...every 18 months (figuring in the "see me in 2 years" vs. "see me every year" people). You see your damn dentist more often, and you don't hear people panicked about that.

No, I said I believe it will be a disaster. I don't think you can definitively say either at this point, no?

Fair enough, I honestly just couldn't remember.


Sounds like maybe you should have made a change sooner ;)


We must know a lot of different folks. I'm an extreme exception, I get that completely. I honestly can't tell you the last time I've been treated by a doctor for any reason. I don't have one here & we're going on 8 years since we moved, I saw one only twice in the decade prior to that in the previous town. But on the whole, I sure know a lot of folks (under 65) who make multiple visits a year, particular with ongoing issues. Even moreso those with children dealing with that doctor/pediatrician. That doesn't say it isn't still "most" just as you said, but it certainly doesn't seem like an inconsequential number simply based on day to day evidence.

Bear in mind that if you have a plan from Insurance Company X through your employer, and then your employer drops coverage, forcing you into the exchange, there's a very high likelihood that Insurance Company X will also be offering a plan there, since it would be market suicide not to do so (unless you're talking about a very small health insurance company).

In such an instance, if your PCP was in-network with your previous plan, due to the way provider networks are constructed, there's a very good likelihood he'll (she'll) be in-network on the Exchange plan.

So while it's a fear, and while in some cases such a change will have to happen, it's probably being overstated.

I'll see if I can do this...

In 2009, I started a BCBS catastrophic plan with a $6,000 out of pocket maximum per year at a little under $100 per month. This plan now costs $161, in major part due to Obamacare requirements that took effect in 2011.

That insurance is insufficient, for reasons I'm unsure about. I've been told I can select another BCBS catastrophic plan that does meet the requirements. It costs $186 per month for 2014, but it carries an $8,500 out of pocket maximum in network, and a $17,000 annual maximum out of network.

A bit of hit in terms of what has value to me, but I could live with it. A slight extension of the middle finger to government for a near-100% increase in five years, plus a higher maximum. But, hey, I get a free physical.

But, for those of us who had insurance and are self-employed, the true fuck-you comes in 2015, when BCBS has been told to dump everyone on an individual plan into the exchange.

My exchange quote is $303 for a bronze plan roughly equivalent to the BCBS plan. And it carries only a $6,350 out-of-pocket maximum in-network. So far, pretty much equal to what I have today at only three times the cost I paid five years ago.

But... there is no out-of-network maximum with the bronze plan. In fact, there is no maximum for gold or silver, either. It simply isn't covered. You must stay in-network. And, the only doctor I've seen this year isn't even in the BCBS network.

So far, according to reports, doctors operating outside of a hospital where their contracts require them to support Obamacare simply aren't going in network. We won't know the score for a few months, but this is a real problem for anyone who wants more than the most basic care.

I don't know what I'm missing, but so far Obamacare seems every bit as bad as it did when the Senate rammed 2,000 pages of lobbyist-written bullshit through a vote without even reading it because it would have been blocked once Scott Brown took his seat in the Senate.

Again, please reform health care. It desperately needs it. But this is bad legislation that makes a serious problem much, much worse.

You are the first self employed person I've heard say anything negative about this. I'm sure there are many others, but this is the first I've heard.

I am self employed with insurance through BCBSNC. I pay $625/mo for rather average coverage. I have a $5000 deductible, a $60 specialist co-pay which actually matters now that I see specialists about 5 times a year. I have a $500 prescription deductible, and $1500 max coverage on prescriptions per year... so I pay the first $500 of prescriptions out of pocket, then once they start covering things, once they've paid $1500 for prescriptions, I'm back to paying full price for everything for the rest of the year.


My plan is grandfathered in, I can keep it if I want with no changes, though I got a notice that the rate is going up to $690/mo next year.


I've applied for coverage under the new system, My new coverage with BCBSNC under Obamacare will be $375/mo, will have a $1000 deductible, a $30 copay for specialists, no prescription deductible and no max coverage for prescriptions. Co-insurances for MRI's and stuff or hospital stays should I ever need them are the same in both plans. The network of doctors I can see is exactly the same.


My story is as anecdotal as Jim's so it shouldn't carry much weight in the overall conversation... but my understanding from talking to a number of friends that work as consultants is that self employed folks who didn't have access to group coverage were being screwed royally and that this is a huge change for the better to level the playing field. Perhaps the High Deductible/Catestrophic plan only folks like Jim are seeing something different, I don't know.

Another caveat for a sample size of 1 here, but this is exactly how its working out for me staying with BCBSNC but switching from a personal plan for self employed folks vs a plan through the exchange. The provider network is the same.

As another self employed person the biggest difference to me is that, should my union insurance lapse again, i actually CAN get coverage. I was denied for 4 years over what turned out to be a misdiagnosis so I was living off of expensive catastrophe only insurance and thankfully I'll never have to go back to that.