• Welcome to OGBoards 10.0, keep in mind that we will be making LOTS of changes to smooth out the experience here and make it as close as possible functionally to the old software, but feel free to drop suggestions or requests in the Tech Support subforum!

Official 2014 Midterm Election Discussion Thread

Screen_Shot_2014-11-04_at_10.44.53_AM.0.png
 
WFFaithful said:
Screen_Shot_2014-11-04_at_10.44.53_AM.0.png
Click to expand...

That's what happens when you bus people into the polls. I also suspect the inner city polling places are-- much like the inner cities themselves-- a bit of a mess. Chalk up an extra 3-4 minutes having to bark the voting instructions in Espanol or Mandarin.
 
RJKarl said:
Here are two pieces of McCain's plan:
http://www.factcheck.org/2008/10/health-care-spin-2/

"Give a health insurance tax credit of up to $5,000 for couples and families and $2,500 for individuals. Those who choose to buy insurance on their own would be able to use the credit to pay for their health coverage, with payment going directly from the government to the insurance company. Nobody would be required to buy insurance for themselves or their children, and employers large or small would not be required to offer health insurance as a benefit.

Tax the value of employer-provided health benefits. Employees would pay federal income taxes (but not Social Security or Medicare payroll taxes) on the value of those benefits. The tax credit would offset those taxes. Companies would not be taxed."

How many families can find insurance for $5000? How many single people over 40 (there are tens of millions of these) can find insurance for $2500/year?

Here's one answer for families of four -$16,000

http://www.nbcnews.com/health/healt...e-now-costs-16-000-average-family-f6C10960584

What's even worse is under McCain's plan any company provided benefits would fully taxable.

This is infinitely worse than ACA.

Here's some more from the first article:

"Lewin Group study: There are currently 45.7 million Americans without health insurance, according to the Census. The Lewin Group, a private health care consulting group whose studies have been used in the past by both Republicans and Democrats, projected current trends would lead to 48.9 million uninsured Americans by 2010. The study predicted that Obama's plan would reduce that number by 26.6 million, McCain's by 21.1 million. By 2018, when the uninsured would number 59.2 million under current law, Obama's plan would reduce that number by 32.3 million and McCain's would drop it by 21.1 million. It also found that McCain's plan would result in a net cost of $2.05 trillion over 10 years and that Obama's net cost would be $1.17 trillion over the same time period."
Click to expand...

rj, I'll provide a personal example. My company provides excellent health insurance for me and my family; it costs the company about $16k, which I don't pay tax on. So here's how I think it would work:

1. Repeal the tax exemption on this amount, causing me to owe tax of (say) $5k on the $16k of taxable income. I'm in a fairly high tax bracket. In the highest bracket you'd pay $8-9k. I think those in the highest bracket can afford it.
2. Provide the $5k tax credit noted above, which for me washes out the tax cost. As of this moment, I'm no better or worse off. Rich guys are out $3-4k; poor have made money at this point since the taxable income didn't cost them much tax.
3. My employer and I no longer need to purchase my insurance this way for tax reasons. They can instead now pay me $16k, which I will use to buy what I want. If I like my plan through the company, I can stay in it - same cost as before.
4. I will use the $16k to buy health insurance that meets my needs. I will likely consider a higher deductible plan, which allows me to save money if my family is healthy. I may buy a policy that costs $12k - so I'm $4k ahead.
5. The higher deductible encourages me to be smart with my medical expenses, not wasting money on stupid things and going to the emergency room with a cold.
6. Less demand = slower rise (or decline) in costs in the industry. Smarter consumers make better decisions about what they need.

I recall that your objection a few years ago was that you think it's preposterous to expect my company to pay me the $16k that they are saving when I opt out of insurance through them. I think your post above supposes this as well - you seem to think that companies will simply get rid of medical insurance and pocket the proceeds, rather than paying employees the extra, thus leaving the poor employee with just $5k to buy insurance. I disagree with you on this, but I suspect there's a way to enforce some rules here to keep it from being abused during the transition period. FRight now, people make decisions about where to work based on pay and benefits, so that would continue to happen and competitive companies would pay more to their employees. Over the long run, it will be simpler, as you will be able to evaluate two jobs without trying to decipher the health care plan differences.

Consider the impact of being in a low tax bracket - my assistant with the same health insurance will have a tax cost of (say)$2,500 but will still get a credit of $5k. She saves money on the taxes alone. The wealthy will end up paying a little more for their health insurance, and the middle class and poor will save a lot.

Finally, the uninsured: $5k won't buy you a great plan, but it will buy catastrophic coverage, and this is a good place to provide a safety net that likely borrows from our current system. You won't get viagra, you won't get every benefit available, but you will get INSURANCE against health problems.

As for the costs listed above - it was entirely based on broad assumptions. I'd be interested in seeing how McCain's plan matches up with the plan that actually was passed. I'm also curious to understand how McCain's plan would cost so much. Perhaps it's the low/middle-class tax break that I illustrated above? If that's the case, I suspect we can overcome that objection since a middle-class tax break is always a political winner.
 
EatLeadCommie said:
That's what happens when you bus people into the polls. I also suspect the inner city polling places are-- much like the inner cities themselves-- a bit of a mess. Chalk up an extra 3-4 minutes having to bark the voting instructions in Espanol or Mandarin.
Click to expand...

Oh ELC, never change.
 
WFFaithful said:
Screen_Shot_2014-11-04_at_10.44.53_AM.0.png
Click to expand...

Well my polling place (Calvary Baptist) was an outlier. I went at 10am. I was fourth in line to get a ballot, took 5 mins. Then I waited in the line for a curtained voting booth for like 30 mins because they only had 5 total. Was told I couldn't just fill it out in a chair.
 
I had to get two people to sign that I filled out my absentee ballot in their presence but that they also did not watch me fill it out. For PA my friend didn't have to do anything like that apparently
 
Deacon923 said:
Judges are not elected to lifetime jobs in NC.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I know that. What I said was that they roatate the alphabetical system every election cycle so that the guy with Aaaa name doesn't keep winning every time because he is first on the ballot every time (thus getting himself a lifetime job).
 
DeacDiggler said:
rj, I'll provide a personal example. My company provides excellent health insurance for me and my family; it costs the company about $16k, which I don't pay tax on. So here's how I think it would work:

1. Repeal the tax exemption on this amount, causing me to owe tax of (say) $5k on the $16k of taxable income. I'm in a fairly high tax bracket. In the highest bracket you'd pay $8-9k. I think those in the highest bracket can afford it.
2. Provide the $5k tax credit noted above, which for me washes out the tax cost. As of this moment, I'm no better or worse off. Rich guys are out $3-4k; poor have made money at this point since the taxable income didn't cost them much tax.
3. My employer and I no longer need to purchase my insurance this way for tax reasons. They can instead now pay me $16k, which I will use to buy what I want. If I like my plan through the company, I can stay in it - same cost as before.
4. I will use the $16k to buy health insurance that meets my needs. I will likely consider a higher deductible plan, which allows me to save money if my family is healthy. I may buy a policy that costs $12k - so I'm $4k ahead.
5. The higher deductible encourages me to be smart with my medical expenses, not wasting money on stupid things and going to the emergency room with a cold.
6. Less demand = slower rise (or decline) in costs in the industry. Smarter consumers make better decisions about what they need.

I recall that your objection a few years ago was that you think it's preposterous to expect my company to pay me the $16k that they are saving when I opt out of insurance through them. I think your post above supposes this as well - you seem to think that companies will simply get rid of medical insurance and pocket the proceeds, rather than paying employees the extra, thus leaving the poor employee with just $5k to buy insurance. I disagree with you on this, but I suspect there's a way to enforce some rules here to keep it from being abused during the transition period. FRight now, people make decisions about where to work based on pay and benefits, so that would continue to happen and competitive companies would pay more to their employees. Over the long run, it will be simpler, as you will be able to evaluate two jobs without trying to decipher the health care plan differences.

Consider the impact of being in a low tax bracket - my assistant with the same health insurance will have a tax cost of (say)$2,500 but will still get a credit of $5k. She saves money on the taxes alone. The wealthy will end up paying a little more for their health insurance, and the middle class and poor will save a lot.

Finally, the uninsured: $5k won't buy you a great plan, but it will buy catastrophic coverage, and this is a good place to provide a safety net that likely borrows from our current system. You won't get viagra, you won't get every benefit available, but you will get INSURANCE against health problems.

As for the costs listed above - it was entirely based on broad assumptions. I'd be interested in seeing how McCain's plan matches up with the plan that actually was passed. I'm also curious to understand how McCain's plan would cost so much. Perhaps it's the low/middle-class tax break that I illustrated above? If that's the case, I suspect we can overcome that objection since a middle-class tax break is always a political winner.
Click to expand...

This makes no sense. If you pay $5K in taxes on the $16K, you will only be able to buy a much inferior policy.

Lewin is hardly the only one who has shown the McCain's costs more and provides insurance for millions of fewer people. McCain's is a terrible plan.

In one year with many imbecilic states not participating over 10M have been taken off of being uninsured by ACA. With full participation (especially since the state with by far the most uninisured {TX} not participating), this number would dramatically. In fact, it would as nearly as high in one year as McCain's proposed concept would be in ten years

A major factor you aren't even considering which will be tremendously harmful to tens of millions of Americans who get their insurance through their companies is that you and they will be buying policies as individuals rather than in groups of 50 , 100 , 1000 or tens of thousands. With less risks to spread, your costs per year will be much higher for the same amount of coverage.

What McCain's plan guarantees is that millions of Americans will be paying more for less. It also never addressed things like pre-existing conditions, adult children coverage, closing the doughnut hole, allowing the feds to negotiate prices for care and prescriptions, the elimination of lifetime limits.

Basically McCain's plan was 100% giveaway to the insurance industry and business. It doesn't include the primary cost saving areas to consumer nor any protection to consumers.
 
WFFaithful said:
Screen_Shot_2014-11-04_at_10.44.53_AM.0.png
Click to expand...

I have a tendency not to miss any election, and I have never (in 20 years) been asked to report my wait time. An individual ballot cannot be tied to an individual voter in North Carolina after it has been handed to them, and it certainly isn't typed by the color of the voter's skin (the ballot, not the registration). I'm not sure how one would legally obtain reliable data on this subject, but somehow I suspect that's not what these folks were after. Other than that, totally. Some people need to take a step back from the persecution complex ledge.
 
jhmd2000 said:
I have a tendency not to miss any election, and I have never (in 20 years) been asked to report my wait time. An individual ballot cannot be tied to an individual voter in North Carolina after it has been handed to them, and it certainly isn't typed by the color of the voter's skin (the ballot, not the registration). I'm not sure how one would legally obtain reliable data on this subject, but somehow I suspect that's not what these folks were after. Other than that, totally. Some people need to take a step back from the persecution complex ledge.
Click to expand...

Easy there, chief. It is on the internet, purports to be a "study", is in bar graph form, and contains numbers. Where I come from, that qualifies as #advancedstats #metrics #thegoddamntruth
 
I'm convinced at this point 2&2 could be told there was a 99% chance of dying if you jumped off a cliff and if the guy right before him jumped and survived he would jump anyway based on what he just saw.
 
1. Being able to contextualize information and studies is a critical part of being an intelligent consumer of information
2. Understanding biases and flaws in methodology is an integral portion of number one.
3. Most people who reject "advanced statistics" (of which this study from above certainly is not) I've generally found are the same people who ask questions like "only 1,432 people were polled for this study is there any way we could trust this to tell us anything about the general population? I didn't think so!"
4. Similarly these are the people who rip on polls and surveys for being off by a few points when it's still either a) within the margin of error or b) due to a problem related in number 2 above. Nate Silver addresses this quite well in this article http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-polls-were-skewed-toward-democrats/
5. The number of people who do not do numbers one and two above while making statements close to numbers three and four above generally seem to be older people and skew conservative.
 
TuffaloDeac10 said:
"Source: Cooperative Congressional Election Study

Get the data"
Click to expand...

If you're going to point to a link sarcastically instead of answering my question, shouldn't that link at least work?

I need to get in the business of publishing unreliable data that would be illegal to actually obtain that supports my opinions. Because bar graph.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top