Obamacare to cut work hours by equivalent of 2 million jobs
105 replies, posted
[QUOTE=KorJax;43798525]IIRC the mandate only applies to business that have over 50 full time employees working for them?[/QUOTE]
My mistake, I must have missed that bit.
This is bad, we need hours to get good decent paycheck, as bill cost hundreds and we getting like 50 a week... this is what cause people to go poor and won't move up... Welcome to American, used to be the place to have the dream, now it's a nightmare.
[QUOTE=GunFox;43793904]Okay, lets have socialized medicine instead. Which is what all of the liberals, of which I am one, fucking wanted in the first place. This half assed bullshit is only because conservatives are worthless shitbags incapable of recognizing that socialized medicine IS HOW MEDICINE HAS TO WORK IN A CAPITALIST SOCIETY.[/QUOTE]
While what conservatives and liberals want are on the opposite end of the spectrum here, you can't really blame conservatives or republicans for the failures of this bill. Every single democrat voted for it, and not one republican. On the same token us conservatives can only blame liberals so much because on one side of the coin you have the fact that this isn't at all what liberals wanted, but on the other side you have Nancy Pelosi saying, "We have to pass this bill to know what's in it." all the while the clapping seals cheering Obama on, demanding this bill be passed without knowing at all what's in it.
This isn't an attack on you by any means, but this is what happens when people demand a bill be passed that no one read. Anyone who claims to have sat down and read it is more than likely lying because it's written in legalese and references many other laws and bills- so to fully understand it you have to read those laws as well. It was like 1200 pages at the time and I believe it's close to 20k now. Is anyone really surprised that the government can't run anything efficiently?
While I agree with your assessment for the most part, I just don't feel it's completely fair to blame the failure of this bill on those who opposed it from day one.
I think there is a healthy debate to be had about socialized medicine, but unfortunately so many people get up in arms (Like with the 2nd amendment) and a rational conversation is almost impossible.
I like how people consistently blame the AHC for something thats the fault of the companies being greedy .
[QUOTE=Map in a box;43800232]I like how people consistently blame the AHC for something thats the fault of the companies being greedy .[/QUOTE]
The writers of the bill should have anticipated that though.
I'm a college student who takes max credit hours every semster. So my options are, get a shitty part time job so I can get subsidies to get healthcare that I won't use because I've been living on my own since I was 17 and never went to the doctor, whether I needed stiches or got deathly sick I was always too poor to afford it, I did that shizzle by myself like an IRL rust.
Or I can just pay a fine which is WAY WAY less costly than paying for insurance, so I can keep up my max credit hours and finish college 2 years early just like I've been planning to, get a real job that would have had insurance covered in my employment anyway.
In my opinion if this was to help out the poor I think it is going to have the EXACT opposite effect
[QUOTE=Sgt Doom;43796632]The point is specifically that the US is not the [I]only[/I] place that medical and pharmaceutical research goes on (nor does it hold some imaginary significant majority of it), as he claimed. I am not aiming to attempt to claim that Europe has indisputable market supremacy; just that the wealthiest region in the entire world, with a combined population of over 700 million does not collectively just sit on it's arse and suckle America's research teat because ~free market capitalism~[/QUOTE]
Ah, I get what you're saying. Makes sense.
I wouldn't really write it off as companies being greedy. (Even though they can and often are)
The thing with new drugs that come out is this:
A lot of resources are poured into creating it. The price is steep because the company has to get rewarded for the work it did to create this drug. Not because "fuck the poor only rich should get this drug".
A lot of people say "well these drug companies shouldn't do it to make profit". As good as that would be, no one is wiling to work for free.
If the government took a $400 cancer drug and made it $30, the law of economics says that there would be a massive shortage of the drugs because the company would produce very little of it to reduce their losses simply so they can stay in business.
[QUOTE=GiGaBiTe;43794720]I was telling people this was going to happen when Obongocare was being voted on in Congress. I said businesses small and large were going to cut hours below 30 to avoid having to pay employee health benefits and hurt already low wage workers.
What was the response? "You're an idiot! That won't happen! It's unethical!"
Except it is happening because employers don't want to eat thousands of dollars more a year to have a full time employee with benefits. It's cheaper to have lots of part time staff on the book than it is to have fewer full time employees.
Stay classy Obama, keep pissing on everyone without the courtesy of calling it rain.[/QUOTE]
im sorry but legitimately how is it obama's (or any politician's) fault that employers are too fucking greedy to actually implement the mandate to the actual spirit of the law? abiding by the spirit of the law is an actual fundamental legal principle. you're supposed to do it.
the only "fault" that can be placed on the bill here is that it didn't include a provision that prevented companies from cutting back on hours.
[editline]5th February 2014[/editline]
i understand that in some instances companies will literally go under if they do that, but it's still bullshit - you can reduce pay across some higher ranking members and cut back on expenditures (yknow, the pinnacle of thought behind capitalist / conservative ideology) and manage to keep your employees.
[QUOTE=Helix Snake;43800319]The writers of the bill should have anticipated that though.[/QUOTE]
Really, this is my biggest beef. You'd be hard pressed to find [I]anyone[/I] that honestly thought that the majority of companies and business establishments would just go "lolokay" and comply without cutting hours or firing people.
In fact, judging by the report, they [I]did[/I] anticipate this, they just couldn't afford to let that information become publicly known.
So they [I]knew[/I] it was going to be a problem, they didn't (or couldn't because thanks congressional GOP) revise the bill to plan around it, and they either massively underplayed the numbers or outright denied that anything would go wrong. And now its here, and just about everything that could go wrong has gone wrong and you'll have a real hard time finding consistent evidence that it helped [I]anyone[/I] at [I]all.[/I]
Between the website hardly working to begin with, to allegations that the group that wrote it were related to the target card breaches, to the spiking costs of every kind for just about everyone, to the decreased coverage, its like... Jesus Christ, did [I]anything[/I] work correctly? did [I]anything[/I] improve?
[QUOTE=S31-Syntax;43801514]Really, this is my biggest beef. You'd be hard pressed to find [I]anyone[/I] that honestly thought that the majority of companies and business establishments would just go "lolokay" and comply without cutting hours or firing people.
In fact, judging by the report, they [I]did[/I] anticipate this, they just couldn't afford to let that information become publicly known.
So they [I]knew[/I] it was going to be a problem, they didn't (or couldn't because thanks congressional GOP) revise the bill to plan around it, and they either massively underplayed the numbers or outright denied that anything would go wrong. And now its here, and just about everything that could go wrong has gone wrong and you'll have a real hard time finding consistent evidence that it helped [I]anyone[/I] at [I]all.[/I]
Between the website hardly working to begin with, to allegations that the group that wrote it were related to the target card breaches, to the spiking costs of every kind for just about everyone, to the decreased coverage, its like... Jesus Christ, did [I]anything[/I] work correctly? did [I]anything[/I] improve?[/QUOTE]
I'm not a republican, but how exactly is any of this the republican's fault? Everyone defaults to "durr republicans fuck everything up" whenever something goes wrong, but no one ever explains why. It was already mentioned that not a single one of them voted for it and it passed, which means that the democrats could have passed any bill. How then is it the fault of the GOP? Please I'm honestly asking where you are pulling this from. If it's just the standard reply for any bad situation, just admit that, if you have some real reason why a group of people who threw their hands up and didn't make any changes to the bill are at fault for it being a failure, please inform me.
it's like most of you guys go through everything with a fine toothed comb and pick out every bad thing that happens, and set it in the republican pile, and call everything else democratic.
as far as I am concerned, medicine has no room for profit. Individuals should be paid a good wage to provide incentive for research, practice, and advancement of medicine. A middleman at the top raking in billions is not needed, and honestly sets the human race back. That said, this plan was poorly developed, and even more poorly implemented, and now they refuse to abandon it and start again. None of that is the republicans fault. The democrats who designed this system failed, and they need to take responsibility for it and start again, and do it right this time.
This plan not only reduces the incentive for individuals, but creates more middlemen and wider profit margins for them. Hospitals and research firms should not be owned IMHO, they are a public asset that should employ people at a better-than-average wage to provide the incentives.
[QUOTE=BrickInHead;43801370]im sorry but legitimately how is it obama's (or any politician's) fault that employers are too fucking greedy to actually implement the mandate to the actual spirit of the law? abiding by the spirit of the law is an actual fundamental legal principle. you're supposed to do it.
the only "fault" that can be placed on the bill here is that it didn't include a provision that prevented companies from cutting back on hours.
[/QUOTE]
A bill that has to go to that length of engineering to get it to maybe work properly probably is a bad idea to begin with.
Think of a company like an organism, it isn't going to do something that will blatantly hurt itself. You want to give some kind of an incentive. Also forcing someone to do something isn't an incentive.
[QUOTE=Aman;43801630]A bill that has to go to that length of engineering to get it to maybe work properly probably is a bad idea to begin with.
Think of a company like an organism, it isn't going to do something that will blatantly hurt itself. You want to give some kind of an incentive. Also forcing someone to do something isn't an incentive.[/QUOTE]
The incentive is ultimately that healthcare will be cheaper for everyone, but it's not an instant process. You pay into healthcare when you aren't using it because when you eventually do have to use services provided by the healthcare, the money you have paid into the system evens out the money that you have to pull from the system.
So what happens when people don't pay into the system regularly, but register for benefits when they need them for medical reasons then immediately use them? The money doesn't come out of nowhere!
(Of course this only works when insurance companies aren't completely selfish and greedy, but that's a different story.)
[QUOTE=Pvt. Martin;43791493]He isn't the best, but after 8 years of Bush, and the candidates we had during 2012, Obama is by far the better choice right now.[/QUOTE]
"Well he's not the best husband but he beats me much less than the other guy daddy would have made me marry"
[QUOTE=frozensoda;43801620]I'm not a republican, but how exactly is any of this the republican's fault? Everyone defaults to "durr republicans fuck everything up" whenever something goes wrong, but no one ever explains why. It was already mentioned that not a single one of them voted for it and it passed, which means that the democrats could have passed any bill. How then is it the fault of the GOP? Please I'm honestly asking where you are pulling this from. If it's just the standard reply for any bad situation, just admit that, if you have some real reason why a group of people who threw their hands up and didn't make any changes to the bill are at fault for it being a failure, please inform me.
it's like most of you guys go through everything with a fine toothed comb and pick out every bad thing that happens, and set it in the republican pile, and call everything else democratic.
as far as I am concerned, medicine has no room for profit. Individuals should be paid a good wage to provide incentive for research, practice, and advancement of medicine. A middleman at the top raking in billions is not needed, and honestly sets the human race back. That said, this plan was poorly developed, and even more poorly implemented, and now they refuse to abandon it and start again. None of that is the republicans fault. The democrats who designed this system failed, and they need to take responsibility for it and start again, and do it right this time.[/QUOTE]
I'm closer to right leaning than a lot of people on here, but they sat on their asses with their arms crossed and [I]refused[/I] to even allow a vote unless X changes were made. Is the failure of the ACA entirely their fault? Not at all, its a shared fault. It was poorly designed to begin with but it was distorted heavily by congressional representatives with a second agenda, a good deal of them being GOP.
They [I]all[/I] need to be sacked and revoted. [I]all of them.[/I]
[QUOTE=UziXxX;43800713]I wouldn't really write it off as companies being greedy. (Even though they can and often are)
The thing with new drugs that come out is this:
A lot of resources are poured into creating it. The price is steep because the company has to get rewarded for the work it did to create this drug. Not because "fuck the poor only rich should get this drug".
A lot of people say "well these drug companies shouldn't do it to make profit". As good as that would be, no one is wiling to work for free.
If the government took a $400 cancer drug and made it $30, [B]the law of economics says that there would be a massive shortage of the drugs because the company would produce very little of it to reduce their losses simply so they can stay in business.[/B][/QUOTE]
"Okay let's see - the government took away 90% of the profit, so to make the loss smaller, we'll simply produce [I]even less![/I] What master plan indeed!"
And I love that you write "the law of economics" like there's like one rule in some book somewhere demanding this.
If the government took a $400 cancer drug and made it $30, they'd probably pay for the production anyway. The government can't just say "lol now we're gonna force you to sell your medication at a loss! also please produce 1 billion vials for next week tia", that's completely ridiculous anyway.
[QUOTE=S31-Syntax;43801763]I'm closer to right leaning than a lot of people on here, but they sat on their asses with their arms crossed and [I]refused[/I] to even allow a vote unless X changes were made. Is the failure of the ACA entirely their fault? Not at all, its a shared fault. It was poorly designed to begin with but it was distorted heavily by congressional representatives with a second agenda, a good deal of them being GOP.
They [I]all[/I] need to be sacked and revoted. [I]all of them.[/I][/QUOTE]
I want to see a public buyout of all hospitals to begin with. There are two unfortunate facts that make this not viable however, the first being that the government is unable to run anything without wasting more money than they use, and second is the amount of money that would need to be invested. I would never support a government [I]takeover[/I] of hospitals. The owners were within their rights to spend their capitol to build hospitals for profit, no matter how wrong it may be morally, and because of that they deserve to be compensated for their work when the shift to public healthcare happens. It is really unfortunate that if this happened healthcare costs would probably go [B]up[/B] even though there is no longer a profiteer at the top of the scheme. IT seems our government is simply incapable of being efficient.
[QUOTE=frozensoda;43801854] IT seems our government is simply incapable of being efficient.[/QUOTE]
And privately held companies are efficient, but only at maximizing profits and screwing over consumers.
The US is fubar
[QUOTE=GoDong-DK;43801776]"Okay let's see - the government took away 90% of the profit, so to make the loss smaller, we'll simply produce [I]even less![/I] What master plan indeed!"
And I love that you write "the law of economics" like there's like one rule in some book somewhere demanding this.[/QUOTE]
It's not demanding anything. All you need to have is basic understanding of supply and demand curves.
The supply curve on a basic graph is an upward sloping line with P(price) on the Y-axis and Q(quantity) on x-axis. This means as the price increases, the quantity supplied by businesses also increases. Basically companies are willing to sell more at a higher price, and less at a lower price.
Everyone I always have to explain this to always rates me dumb because they're either too stupid to understand basic graphs and slopes, or they've never taken even an entry level econ course in their academic career.
It isn't some "rule in a book" as you've put it. It's just common sense. Here's a picture so you have something to look at instead of rating me dumb and moving on.
[IMG]http://imageshack.com/a/img593/5076/egp.gif[/IMG]
Let me make it even more basic for you:
Let's say you build bicycles. It takes you $100 to build one, so you sell it for $150. If something happened where you suddenly could only sell them for $75, in which senario would you lose more money?
a) Produce 10 bikes, costing you 1000. You sell them for 750. You lost 250.
b) You produce 2 bikes, costing you 200. You sell them for 150. You lost 50.
So I ask you: does producing less still not make any sense?
[QUOTE=UziXxX;43800713]I wouldn't really write it off as companies being greedy. (Even though they can and often are)
The thing with new drugs that come out is this:
A lot of resources are poured into creating it. The price is steep because the company has to get rewarded for the work it did to create this drug. Not because "fuck the poor only rich should get this drug".
A lot of people say "well these drug companies shouldn't do it to make profit". As good as that would be, no one is wiling to work for free.
If the government took a $400 cancer drug and made it $30, the law of economics says that there would be a massive shortage of the drugs because the company would produce very little of it to reduce their losses simply so they can stay in business.[/QUOTE]
Funny thing is that the advertising done by big pharmaceutical companies tends to be roughly twice as much as is spent on R&D, whilst the R&D divisions tend to get fairly substantial government grants from several countries. That's when the pharmaceutical companies aren't too busy messing around with isomers of currently available drugs to extend the patents they have on them, carrying out moderately dodgy trials against placebo instead of current best treatment. Cost of drug development also tends to drop a bit thesedays, as drug companies love to use clinical research organisations, who outsource to cheaper places like China for many tests. I have issues with this, as it should really be a scale of all demographics, but I won't get into that. There's also fasttracking for novel drugs, which cuts a few years off the testing (which is carried on afterwards as postmonitoring anyway) and so on.
Also, you have to remember the increase in orders in the case of nationalised healthcare. That $400 drug would [b]not[/b] be bought by the government for $30, it'd still be dearer than that, but it would also be bought in higher quantities due to the fact that more people who need it would get it, rather than the haves getting it, and the have nots conditions decreasing.
I'm a layman when it comes to pharmacology, but if we can recommend pop science books, I'll recommend a look at Ben Goldacre's books. Simple to read, easy to understand, points out some major flaws in the industry.
[QUOTE=Comrade_Eko;43800687]I'm a college student who takes max credit hours every semster. So my options are, get a shitty part time job so I can get subsidies to get healthcare that I won't use because I've been living on my own since I was 17 and never went to the doctor, whether I needed stiches or got deathly sick I was always too poor to afford it, I did that shizzle by myself like an IRL rust.
Or I can just pay a fine which is WAY WAY less costly than paying for insurance, so I can keep up my max credit hours and finish college 2 years early just like I've been planning to, get a real job that would have had insurance covered in my employment anyway.
In my opinion if this was to help out the poor I think it is going to have the EXACT opposite effect[/QUOTE]
It's fucking dumb that it forces people to get health insurance if they don't want to pay a penalty. Yes it would be good for everyone to have healthcare, but when low-income earners can't afford the health insurance it just doesn't work.
Honestly, I reckon Obamacare should be repealed and replaced with something that does the job properly. Doesn't need to be a fully socialised universal healthcare system like in Europe, they could at least adopt the Australian model which offers both public healthcare (pay a 1.5% levy on taxable income above $350 per week and when you go to the hospital the government will subsidise a significant portion of the costs) and private insurance (private for access to private hospitals with shorter waiting lines and full coverage of hospital fees on the spot by the insurance company).
R&D for actually important drugs is paid for almost entirely by government subsidy.
R&D for pointless bullshit like hair loss and ED products is a huge amount of their personal R&D costs as they're risk free drugs that net a shit ton of profit due to the low R&D to production costs.
Acting like the current system has worked for the last 20 years is ignorance.
[QUOTE=Antdawg;43802669]It's fucking dumb that it forces people to get health insurance if they don't want to pay a penalty. Yes it would be good for everyone to have healthcare, but when low-income earners can't afford the health insurance it just doesn't work.[/QUOTE]
I agree with this wholeheartedly. The penalty for not paying into benefits is essentially saying "you have made the wrong choice." Don't offer a choice if the end result is the same.
[QUOTE=UziXxX;43802533]It's not demanding anything. All you need to have is basic understanding of supply and demand curves.
The supply curve on a basic graph is an upward sloping line with P(price) on the Y-axis and Q(quantity) on x-axis. This means as the price increases, the quantity supplied by businesses also increases. Basically companies are willing to sell more at a higher price, and less at a lower price.
Everyone I always have to explain this to always rates me dumb because they're either too stupid to understand basic graphs and slopes, or they've never taken even an entry level econ course in their academic career.
It isn't some "rule in a book" as you've put it. It's just common sense. Here's a picture so you have something to look at instead of rating me dumb and moving on.
[IMG]http://imageshack.com/a/img593/5076/egp.gif[/IMG]
Let me make it even more basic for you:
Let's say you build bicycles. It takes you $100 to build one, so you sell it for $150. If something happened where you suddenly could only sell them for $75, in which senario would you lose more money?
a) Produce 10 bikes, costing you 1000. You sell them for 750. You lost 250.
b) You produce 2 bikes, costing you 200. You sell them for 150. You lost 50.
So I ask you: does producing less still not make any sense?[/QUOTE]
Have you just not read the thread or anything on drug development ever or?
[QUOTE=1legmidget;43802744]Have you just not read the thread or anything on drug development ever or?[/QUOTE]
my post has nothing to do with drug development
[QUOTE=UziXxX;43802761]my post has nothing to do with drug development[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=UziXxX;43800713]I wouldn't really write it off as companies being greedy. (Even though they can and often are)
The thing with new drugs that come out is this:
[B]A lot of resources are poured into creating it. [I][U]The price is steep because the company has to get rewarded for the work it did to create this drug[/U][/I]. Not because "fuck the poor only rich should get this drug". [/B][/QUOTE]
???
[QUOTE=UziXxX;43802761]my post has nothing to do with drug development[/QUOTE]
don't backpedal, it did and you were wrong
they don't spend their own money and capital on drug R&D.
[QUOTE=1legmidget;43802879]???[/QUOTE]
The post you quoted when I was explaining basic economics has nothing to do with drug development.
[editline]5th February 2014[/editline]
[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;43802890]don't backpedal, it did and you were wrong[/QUOTE]
Actually it didn't. Someone said that companies don't lower production when a price ceiling is implemented. Every econ professor I've had, each of whom have Ph.Ds say otherwise. I don't know, I'm more inclined to believe a Ph.D econ professor than someone on facepunch.
[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;43802890]they don't spend their own money and capital on drug R&D.[/QUOTE]
So drug companies spend $0 on R&D? Every dollar they receive is from government grant? Anyone who believes that drug companies don't spend any of their own money on R&D is daft.
[URL]http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2012/02/10/the-truly-staggering-cost-of-inventing-new-drugs/[/URL]
[QUOTE=UziXxX;43802761]my post has nothing to do with drug development[/QUOTE]
Which is why it does not apply in a healthcare scenario. To reduce a complicated market like the pharmaceutical industry to high school level stuff you'll learn in business studies and economics does not work. It has more nuances than that.
You can afford it, or not, but you need it either way. Demand remains proportional to the number of people with the condition, assuming everyone wants to be treated, and excluding OTC drugs like paracetamol, some NSAIDs, male hair products or whatever.
The NHS and such still make the pharmaceutical companies a profit, and the companies make a very tidy profit. They just have to drive prices charged down because the NHS and other socialised healthcare systems aren't buying on an individual case, they're buying in bulk, and expect cheaper prices due to that.
Factor in the fact that relatively large portions of R&D is largely paid for by governments and such anyway too, and the use of CROs, whilst regulators are eager to pass drugs as quickly as possible if they seem safe and have an effect better than placebo (whilst you can hold back as many trials as you want and better than placebo is a jack shit standard tbh). It's really not costing the companies much to develop compared to what they pull in from other branches selling hair growth creams and such to middle class people. In the ideal socialised healthcare scenario, the company still makes a (admittedly small) profit on each individual drug sold, and demand is filled 100%, rather than the haves getting treated, and the rest being ignored.
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