DescentBB

what I listed was just premiums. With concierge membership, and some minor out of pockets, health care for my wife and I will exceed $30,000 this year.

And you don't see anything wrong with that? Are you so rich that you've lost touch with what's it's like to live on a retirement income? I don't know what percentage of your income that $30,000 is, but the $7900 a year for me just for the privilege of having insurance is a HUGE chunk out of MY retirement income. That $7900 is far more than my yearly house and car insurance premiums combined. Plus, that outlay is on top off a $6950 deductible and any co-pays I'd have to satisfy first, so I won't get ANY benefits until I've forked over ALL of that money. That's over $14,850 a year I'm throwing directly out the window BEFORE they even begin to pay any of my doctor bills. Jesus! That $14,850 will pay for a hell of a lot of doctoring just by itself. It also doesn't cover dental and vision and those I DO currently use and pay for out of pocket. If I want insurance for that, I'd have to purchase it separately. More blood money out the window. On top of that, I've got state and federal income taxes and state property taxes to satisfy every year and those aren't chump change. There's no way I'm paying that much for the privilege of having health insurance. You can't get blood out of a turnip. Currently, I'm prepared to die if I get some expensive to cure illness and I refuse to end up in a hospital. They'd have to drag me into one kicking and screaming and then they'd have to chain me down to keep me there.

The elite liberals in Washington better get off their high horses and quit defending Obamacare like it's THEE SOLUTION for healthcare, because there are a lot of people in my exact same situation and they are not happy about it AT ALL. Once they get that IRS bill in 2018 for defying the mandate in 2017 that Trump said he wouldn't enforce in his little publicized EO, they're going to get even more pissed off, mark my words and liberals will take the blame for it, not conservatives. That was Trump's plan after all.

★■◆●, I see EVERYTHING wrong with that. That's my entire point. You aren't even seeing the full income from these plans to the insurers. Why we don't all just kick into a sliding scale Medicare tax to cover everyone with at least basic Medicare benefits eludes me. By my reckoning it would average out to maybe $6000 per year taxation on average during your work career, if you did it that way, and everyone is covered cradle to grave. No issues causing financial strain on older or disabled Americans. Yes, I can afford to pay 30K per year, but that was NOT my inference. It was that 30K is what the plans are really costing, without subsidies or tax credits That is obscene. Close to triple what it should cost.

and, the ACA DID achieve it's main, stated goal. It put more Americans in a position to affordably have health insurance. That some subgroups are stuck in an unaffordable state is a mix of 'nothing is perfect' with so many roadblocks put up by the GOP.

I agree the GOP set it up to fail. That's why Obama's promise that I could keep my insurance was a lie. The GOP set that time bomb in the insurance market in the first place, all to eventually turn that promise into a lie so that they could lay the blame for that failure squarely on Obama's shoulders. The Dems were really stupid to let it happen though. It makes them look culpable. Both of the political parties need to quit fighting like a bunch of clueless idiots and start working to fix this mess, especially for subgroups like I'm and the poor, because pretty soon, Trump is going to screw over even the poor as well. The wealthy have it made. They don't give a crap as long as they can buy what they need, which they can. Until a viable solution is found for the whole country, mandating very expensive coverage for people like me is a recipe for disaster that I can't afford. You want a viable risk pool? Congress needs to quit sulking around and bring in Medicare for all, set out to control the costs like they do now for Medicare and fund the damn thing from cradle to grave. Get private insurance out of the mix. All they're in there for is profit. For the time being, get rid of the mandate since it's putting a hardship of those of us who can least afford it and find a solid fix that solves the problem for everyone, NOW, not just the poor. This whole thing is just sick.

http://www.businessinsider.com/manafort ... ess-2017-9


damn, son.

Oh, and slick? This really pisses me off. I've found that Trump can dodge paying for his massive share of those Obamacare taxes and it's all quite legal. Talk about building in a time bomb for failure, right from the onset and he's part of the problem. He's a hypocrite if he doesn't keep his promise and eliminate the mandate. If the rich orange bastard can use his S-Corporation loopholes get away with it, I should be able to get away with it too. Fair is fair. Talk about a massive funding hole that Congress knew full well would be a problem from the ACA's very inception anyway.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... macare-tax

Well, well. It's finally dawned on the Orange Buffoon that he's hated by pretty much anyone who's not related to him, which is most of the country. That explains the recent debt ceiling deal he made with the Dems. So much for any loyalty to his party and base. It also shows me that the Dems are idiots. You never make deals with the devil.

https://www.yahoo.com/amphtml/finance/n ... 00778.html

no, all it shows is that Schumer and Pelosi, despite some younger folks calling for all new blood, are PROS. They figured out how Trump can be manipulated, and did so. I don't think reading a damn thing more than that into it is warranted.

It's not hard to manipulate him. All it takes is a little juicing of his ego and buttering him up, and he'll do whatever you want.

And he's gone and pissed off Mexico again, but this time it's going to cost America. http://www.latimes.com/world/mexico-ame ... story.html

Trump loved to tout Harley Davidson as a model of American manufacturing, but then he nixed the TPP and never came up with a "supposed" better deal to replace it.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/trump-ta ... 58987.html

So now Trump has yet another broken promise on his record.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... ith-unions

Oh fer cripes sake!

https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-voter- ... 05774.html

Uh, oh.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/18/us/p ... ation.html

can't get too much worse than threatening WW III and then waving your dick at Iran in front of the UN, a body designed to promote peace. I think General Kelly's face showed that fact pretty well.

I'm willing to bet Trump wrote his own speech and at the last minute, switched it from the real one written for him. I sat there thinking, this crap sounds just like a Trump campaign speech, not a speech by a statesman.

https://news.vice.com/story/here-are-so ... john-kelly

my daughter said it sounded like he dropped the crib notes about a minute into the thing.

So much for draining the swamp. I think Trump has added to the foulness of the swamp instead.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/ ... li=BBnbcA1

What's sauce for the goose (is sauce for the gander). Lock them up!

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/25/white-h ... email.html

Apparently, Rex Tillerson thinks Trump is a moron as well, although now he's denying he ever said it. I wonder how long it will be before Tillerson grows a pair, gets tired of having to deal with our loopy petulant child president and decides the job of Sec State is not worth an ulcer?

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white- ... ce-n806451

well, the Trump effect starts to kick in. We LOST 33,000 jobs in September, net. Not a disaster, but the end of a pretty long streak of adding to the net for a few years. So, the graphic attaboy:

I want Pence to pay back our hard earned tax dollars he used to travel to his little "stunt", because it definitely was Trump's idiotic idea. Both of these self-centered bastards can go and protest on their own damn dime and not on the government's dole.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/08/us/p ... colts.html

beat me to it. We paid a quarter million dollars, so the Veep could leave a site loaded with victims who could have used the support, so he could put gasoline on the fast-fizzling NFL protest. At Cheeto Hitler's request. ★■◆● that.

That was only air travel costs.

https://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/347783 ... ity-stunt/

I wonder what the security costs were as well? It could be upwards of a million dollars for everything. What's sad is that this repressive bull★■◆● comes from our 5 time draft dodger of a president.

Indianapolis Star columnist Gregg Doyel wrote:When the top two elected leaders of our democracy decide that political speech—in this case, a silent and non-violent form of political speech—is unacceptable to the point of walking out of the game where it happens, well, that’s chilling. That’s the kind of oppressive nonsense our ancestors were leaving when they crossed the Atlantic Ocean hundreds of years ago.

Wrong!

No, the kind of oppression that they crossed the Atlantic to avoid would have been a very violent reaction to the protests, not a benign reaction, like getting up and leaving.

Which is more along the lines of meeting a protest with a protest.

And how the hell can leaving a game be considered oppression, man that’s one serious low bar right there…

Spidey wrote:Wrong!

No, the kind of oppression that they crossed the Atlantic to avoid would have been a very violent reaction to the protests, not a benign reaction, like getting up and leaving.

Which is more along the lines of meeting a protest with a protest.

And how the hell can leaving a game be considered oppression, man that’s one serious low bar right there…

Since when should our elected leaders be engaging in social protests? Pence and family leaving the game was a downright petty and juvenile stunt. Sure, Pence is free to show his form of protest, it's a free country. But he shouldn't be doing it on our dime, on government time during in the performance of the job we paid him to do. We the taxpayers were essentially paying for his little protest. That's the line that was crossed. Would you be saying the same thing if a Democratic VP did that on the taxpayer's dole? I doubt it. You're forgetting that Pence went there on a government jet (so what if it was on the way) and for the Secret Service to check EVERYONE that went into that stadium for weapons and contraband. Heaven forbid Pence get attacked by some armed nutbag. If I'd been a stadium goer, I'd have been royally pissed at the hassle. All for a few minutes of "protest". What a shame. What I think all those kneeling football players should have done is stood up instead during the Anthem, turn towards Pence en mass with their hands over their hearts, and then flipped the bird at Pence with the other hand.

Keep burying yourself, bud.

Time to brush the dust off the 25th Amendment.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/16/opin ... trump.html

For Spidey to chew on since you got me thinking about how things appear from the other side's viewpoint. Yes, I can look at things in ways other than solidly steadfast liberal would. My question is, has any other president or veep from either party participated some sort of social protest while actively serving in office? So I started looking. Haven't found any instance yet, but maybe I'm not searching with the right terms or maybe it's been ignored until now. But I did run across this and since our president IS Commander in Chief and technically leader of the military, does this apply to him or the veep? I know that during an election, a president can promote candidates that they wish to see elected, but as for actively engaging in or stoking social protests, I don't know.

https://www.thebalance.com/military-fol ... cs-3332818

hope you all like the fact that Cheetolini just removed any barriers to being dumped for pre-existing conditions by your insurance plan.

NOW we get to call it "Trumpcare".