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I will never not reblog this when it pops up.
Idiocracy caught in the act.
(via antigovernmentextremist)
The Price Of Free Breast Pumps
The Affordable Care Act — aka Obamacare — requires health insurers to pay for breast pumps. For many insurance plans, the new rule kicked in at the start of this year.
On today’s show, we visit a breast pump boutique that has suddenly become a medical supply superstore. And we look at happens when a device goes from being something people have to pay for out of their own pocket to being free for anyone with insurance.
My wife and I were talking about breast pumps and I remembered this podcast from a few months ago so I figured I’d post it.
Just another reminder that nothing is ever, ever, ever, EVER free.
It’s hard to find a lot of good “Free Market” media outside of social media and youtube but NPR’s Planet Money does a really good job staying neutral and even leaning towards free market principles.
Two other really good economics podcasts are Freakonomics (pretty neutral to free market leaning) and EconTalk (very free market, libertarians and even Anarcho-Capitalist).
NPR: Planet Money - Episode 439: The Mysterious Power Of A Hospital Bill
If you have good health insurance, you’ve probably never even seen a full hospital bill. Count yourself lucky.
For a giant article in this week’s Time, Steve Brill went line by line through a handful of bills from hospitals around the country. On today’s show, he tells us about the crazy thicket of high prices and hard-to-decipher codes that he discovered, and we talk about what it means for the price of health care in America.
This was a great episode of Planet Money where they talk about what is driving up the cost of health care (insurance!) and how we can win the battle against rising administrative costs.
In France, firms with 50 or more employees face far more stringent regulation than those with 49 or fewer. By an amazing coincidence, there are a large number of firms with exactly 49 employees.
The employer insurance mandate Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act — aka Obamacare — kicks in at 50 full-time employees. By an amazing coincidence, many firms have begun shifting employees to part-time status.
Peter Suderman at Reason suspects it also will lead to far more 49-employee companies here in the U.S.And, I suspect, he’s right.
I convinced myself to go to a quarterly meeting
I usually skip these since I write the script and build yhe spreadsheets anf slides.
It’s been years since I’ve attended because it’s redundent info but today we’re discussing Obamacare/PPACA impact on the company.
Should be interesting.
Nobel Prize winning “economist” Paul Krugman spoke at Sixth & I Historic Synagogue in Washington, D.C. last week. During the Q&A session following the lecture, an audience member asked him about the rising national debt.
Earlier in the evening, Krugman had already vocalized his satisfaction at President Obama’s apparent lack of concern over the exploding cumulative deficit. However, in a moment of brutal honesty, the esteemed Princeton professor revealed his long term prognosis. According to the professor,Eventually we do have a problem. That the population is getting older, health care costs are rising…there is this question of how we’re going to pay for the programs. The year 2025, the year 2030, something is going to have to give…. …. We’re going to need more revenue…Surely it will require some sort of middle class taxes as well.. We won’t be able to pay for the kind of government the society will want without some increase in taxes… on the middle class, maybe a value added tax…And we’re also going to have to make decisions about health care, doc pay for health care that has no demonstrated medical benefits . So the snarky version…which I shouldn’t even say because it will get me in trouble is death panels and sales taxes is how we do this.
If they don’t want that shit why would we?!?!?!
Well, they do have the Federal Employee Program, which is essentially the same thing. Not condoning it, just putting into perspective.
If I were the owner of this van, I’d feel dumb as hell. Why? Because there is nothing exempting the President or Congress on page 114, line 22.
I’ve gone through a large portion of the ACA and I’ve certainly read all the exemption sections (did you know the word ‘exemption’ is in the ACA 42 times?).
The words “Obama” “Michelle” and the word “Vice President” aren’t in the document. Congress is in there, 252 times.
There are 1,000 different ways you can make a legitimate argument against the ACA/Obamacare but this is the one you went with? A made up reason that you didn’t even factcheck before you painted it on your van?
Brilliant.
This is why no one takes the naysayers seriously. Because so many of us will regurgitate anything we hear.
Here’s two PDF copies, you guys can check for yourselves:
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-111hr3590enr/pdf/BILLS-111hr3590enr.pdf
and here:
I’m amazed by the fact that so many people don’t realize that we are all going to have to pay for the ACA/Obamacare Health Plan. We aren’t just getting covered, we are being forced to pay for it or face an “opt-out” fine/tax from the IRS.
Hook, line and sinker. People who didn’t read the fine print committed this entire country to this and now we are all going to pay for it.
