Maher: Mandate is like calling a speeding ticket a driving ticket

[Honeycombe8]

Bill Maher tweet:

Bill Maher?@billmaher

Its not a tax on healthcare its a tax on freeloaders who weren't paying but using; wld be like calling a speeding ticket a driving ticket

[Iggy]

1. But We Already Know

totally clueless clownservatives are OK with freeloading.

they bitch about the cost of government, all while using our infrastructure and services every single
day. these people are worse than stupid

[doc03]

2. Didn't the mandate originate from the Heratage Foundation and

wasn't Mittons the first to adopt the plan? Just sayen

[underpants]

3. Yes and it was a demand of the insurance companies going back to "Hillarycare" in 1983

it was bizarre to hear the Supreme Court discuss not whether an issue was Constitutional but how it would affect one specific industry.

[kenny blankenship]

5. There are no words in the Constitution that can't be twisted into their opposites

when both political parties make that their habitual method of arriving at whatever ends they want and rewarding their big corporate donors.

Turns out it's just a fucking piece of paper after all. With enough time, will and interpretive brazenness it can mean whatever you want.

[underpants]

8. Right you are Kenny

[kenny blankenship]

4. Blaming the disadvantaged and calling them "freeloaders":

the transformation of the Democrats into the Republicans is now complete.

[doc03]

6. Just because someone doesn't want to buy insurance doesn't nessarally mean they

are disadvantaged, maybe they are freeloaders. I worked in a Right to work State and at our work place of about 60 employees we had one employee that wouldn't pay union dues and got all the same benifits. What would you call him? Disadvantage or an f----g freeloader. Isn't there amajor taxcredit for those that can't pay the tax?

[Riley18]

7. I agree with your take on this -

only wanted to add a little - there are "willful" freeloaders/scabs and there are unwitting freeloaders ( people who are unable to pay for healthcare). I hope the tax credit for those people is granted before they have to pay because I don't know how they could pay first and get the tax credit after. People who are living on minimum wage do not have money to spare.

[Honeycombe8]

10. People on minimum wage are not freeloaders. We know who the freeloaders are....

Healthy younger people, for the most part, who go without ins. even when they can afford it, and will turn to their parents to pay their bills, or to the govt, when they need health care.

NOW they can be covered under their parents' policy up to approx age 27.

I don't know how that credit thing will work. I wondered about that, too. How will someone pay for the ins. up front, if they need help paying in the first place?

[Ikonoklast]

11. Don't assume that it is just young people who go without.

What makes someone "voluntarily" uninsured ?

Some scholars say the number of people who cannot afford insurance is overestimated. An Employment Policies Institute study found that 43 percent of the uninsured – about 20 million people - earn more than 2.5 times the federal poverty level, or $55,125 for a family of four. The authors – who include June O'Neill, the GOP-appointed head of the Congressional Budget Office from 1995 to 1999 - write "because most people at that income level are able to get insurance, (they) thus may be classified as 'voluntarily' uninsured."

snip/

A subset of voluntarily uninsured people are young and healthy, who may believe they don't need health coverage or that it's a bad deal because of the low probability that they'll use it. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services estimates that 44 percent of the uninsured are between 18 and 34 years old.

I would assume there is some overlap between these groups.
http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/stories/2009/october/04/npr-voluntarily-uninsured-explainer.aspx

[Honeycombe8]

12. I didn't say it was JUST young people. But those are the stats. As usual, you are wrong on yourfacts

That's who the mandate was intended for because it's the largest group of voluntarily uninsured people WHO CAN AFFORD IT.

It is not the elderly (Medicare), middle aged, or children. It is not the poor (Medicaid) or the employed (most have employer provided ins.). It is mainly YOUNG, HEALTHY PEOPLE who think they are invincible, as we all did when we were young.

[Honeycombe8]

9. The mandate does not apply to the disadvantaged. You might want to get familiar with the ACA

if you're going to argue its points.

The mandate requires people who use the health care system (which is 100% of the population except maybe Christian Scientists, and even some of those do), AND who can afford to buy insurance but don't...it requires them either to buy some sort of minimal coverage OR pay a penalty that is much less than the cost of ins.

Disadvantaged get free care (through expanded Medicaid) and subsidized premiums (the working poor).