The Blue Board

Ok. I'm going to try this one more time.

ATTENTION ALL PEOPLE AGAINST THE INDIVIDUAL MANDATE:

Anyone who chooses to not have health insurance is irresponsible, lazy, and looking for a handout.

These people use the current system to get free healthcare. The choose to not buy insurance, they get sick, then go to the emergency room and get treated. They then receive a bill they can't and have no desire to pay. These bills don't get paid, the hospitals lose money on these patients.

The hospital in turn raises costs for your MRI, X-ray, etc. and bills your insurance company a higher rate.

Your insurance company then is losing money. To offset this they charge you more money for your insurance.

It costs you more money when these bums that refuse to buy insurance get sick!!!

Now, the individual mandate states that everyone is forced to buy private insurance or pay a fine. This mandate is protecting you and me and everyone else who is responsible enough to protect ourselves and our families with insurance because it keeps people from racking up bills they have no interest in paying.

For the people that cannot afford private insurance, Medicaid will be expanded by just a few million people. There will also be state run exchanges set up in which low income people can get a group rate for insurance. These are state run programs, not federal. They can set them up how they wish.

There will also be rebates available for people under a certain income if they chose to buy private insurance instead of going on Medicaid. These rebates are covered under the cost of the law and will be offset because healthy people that don't get sick are now buying insurance. These rebates will cost the taxpayers less than John non insured Doe's trips to the emergency rooms.

The law also protects customers, like ones with preexisting conditions, students under 26 and everyone else because of something called the 80/20 rule.

The 80/20 rule states that insurance companies must spend 80% of premiums on healthcare and customer related things. Only 20% can be spent on administrative things such as employee salaries.

Any company who does not meet this must send rebates to customers for the difference. Just last month millions of insurance customers got a rebate from their insurance company that in total was in the billions of dollars range.

I don't know how else to explain it better. The individual mandate was a republican idea originally and I would think republicans would be in support because it forces deadbeats to buy insurance so that his mistakes don't affect my and your insurance and money.

I am 21 and work part time

You are forced to buy car insurance if you have a car. Is this really that big of a leap?

Plus I assume you already have it, why do you care? It will likely lower your costs with more people paying into the pool

Are you saying you would rather the private sector be in charge of student loans?

You use your car on public roads to and you have a choice on whether to own one and pay insurance. Did you even read the link from the CBO saying with more data given they doubled the projected cost and said it will probably be more than that?

Even if it's doubled it would cost 2 trillion over 10 years. $200 billion a year. We spend 4x that amount on defense each year.

Besides, if that was something that a Congressman was trying to sneak through Congress, there are a number of other less hotly-contested bills to which it could've been attached.

It's bs no matter who does it. Don't get student loans if you can't pay them back.

99% of student loans are calculated risks. If a person could guarantee that they could pay back their student loan, then why even bother taking it out in the first place? Most students are gambling that they'll be able to find a job post-graduation that will enable them to pay off their loans. Most students, even the ones at Ivy League schools, don't know for sure if they'll be able to pay back their loans - they're just gambling that they'll be able to.

Unfortunately, since the economy has gone downhill, the odds of that gamble paying off have tipped farther and farther away from the students taking out the loans.

But these are people's lives were talking about. You make it sound like their well being is the same as buying a new TV.

I don't disagree that people should pay their debts, but I find it morally reprehensible that an entire generation should be reduced to debt peonage by a system rigged against them.

Practically the only way of having a shot at a great paying job nowadays is to go to college. The vast majority of prospective students cannot afford to pay for college out of pocket due to the skyrocketing tuition costs across the nation. Is it really fair to force prospective students who aren't lucky enough to have rich parents into the Sophie's choice of either setting a low ceiling on their career and earning potential or accruing massive debt?

You want to lower college costs cut these liberal professors salaries in half. I'm sure they wouldn't mind bc it's such a good cause.

That's not at all what drives up the cost of academia. In fact, it's damn near impossible to find faculty jobs in higher education now, and many universities are practically on hiring freezes. Despite this, tuition is still rising, but that extra money certainly doesn't go to professor salaries.