Kind of suprised the mandate survived after the way the oral arguments went. I was never a supporter of the law, but I’m actually kind of glad it was upheld as we’ll now be able to see which side was correct.
Those college kids can now use their parents’ insurance until they are 26!
Ok, but anyway, it seems like the most surprising thing about the ruling is that they did not overturn the individual mandate. Even though I think that part is a bit sketchy, the law overall is better (less harmful?) without chopping that part out.
I’d celebrate too if I was a college kid, student loans have a pretty good chance of being forgiven (at least partially) and now they’ll get healthcare for less than they spend on their Xbox Live account every year.
When Justice Roberts sides with the liberals to create a majority and Justice Kennedy with the conservatives in the minority, there are clearly a bunch of legal issues that are too tricky for me to understand.
You want a quote? Haven’t I written enough already???
This is good for Romney. Had SCOTUS overturned it he wouldn’t get to run on it.
It seems like either way, it’s not bad for Romney. If the law had been overturned, he could call Obama a failure. Now, he can campaign against the law, which >50% of US people do not support.
Not to flame or anything, how do you guys exactly get excited about this stuff? My FB newsfeed is full of college kids celebrating.
This is a WIN for the United States of America, not just President Obama. After nearly three years of Republican obstructionism, cries of socialism on the right, and billions of money poured into stopping Obama’s signature piece of legislation, we can finally breathe a sigh of relief. I have a new found respect for Chief Justice Roberts, for breaking from the conservative side and allowing logic and reason to advance.
While this law is far from perfect, 30 million more Americans will receive coverage, and it will be a good stepping stone to (hopefully) universal/single payer coverage. A great day for the country.
It seems like either way, it’s not bad for Romney. If the law had been overturned, he could call Obama a failure. Now, he can campaign against the law, which >50% of US people do not support.
On the other hand, one of Mitt’s signature achievements as governor of Massachussetts was instituting a popular health care law that looks similar in parts to the ACA.
I am genuinely curious as to how he’ll talk about this one.
On the other hand, one of Mitt’s signature achievements as governor of Massachussetts was instituting a popular health care law that looks similar in parts to the ACA.
I am genuinely curious as to how he’ll talk about this one.
If I were him, I’d immediately start talking about the 1% income tax hike Pres. Obama implemented on millions of middle income Americans.
That’s a big contradiction in Romney’s platform. The excuse that he has given is that state policy and federal policy are not the same thing, which does not seem like a very strong conceptual defense. Most Romney supporters/opposers of Obamacare seem to just ignore this, however. They mostly care about what Romney says he will do with Obamacare, not what Romney has done himself.
While this law is far from perfect, 30 million more Americans will receive coverage, and it will be a good stepping stone to (hopefully) universal/single payer coverage. A great day for the country.
Sigh…
This law will only cause health care expenditures to accellerate at an even faster pace. A college econ student could tell you that adding tens of millions of people to a health care system without expanding the supply of physicians will cause costs to skyrocket. Not to mention the addition of all the pre-existing condition people who are expensive to treat. They’ll raise rates on everybody to cover the additional expenses.
We need to add more training and education spots for med students to get more doctors working. We need to reform malpractice lawsuits.
I’m not exactly a big fan of Romney and it is a bit of a contradiction, but it’s really a stretch to compare a plan implemented in a wealthy state with a population of 6.5 million to the entire USA. Massachusetts doesn’t even have as many people as NYC.
This law will only cause health care expenditures to accellerate at an even faster pace. A college econ student could tell you that adding tens of millions of people to a health care system without expanding the supply of physicians will cause costs to skyrocket. Not to mention the addition of all the pre-existing condition people who are expensive to treat. They’ll raise rates on everybody to cover the additional expenses.
We need to add more training and education spots for med students to get more doctors working. We need to reform malpractice lawsuits.
This will likely reduce the supply of physicians, as many physicians have said it will no longer be worth the cost of maintaining a practice. The wait times for a Medicaid patient today are already 2x - 3x longer than those for a privately-insured patient because so few physicians are willing to accept the Medicaid reimbursement rate.
While this law is far from perfect, 30 million more Americans will receive coverage, and it will be a good stepping stone to (hopefully) universal/single payer coverage. A great day for the country.
Sigh…
This law will only cause health care expenditures to accellerate at an even faster pace. A college econ student could tell you that adding tens of millions of people to a health care system without expanding the supply of physicians will cause costs to skyrocket. Not to mention the addition of all the pre-existing condition people who are expensive to treat. They’ll raise rates on everybody to cover the additional expenses.
We need to add more training and education spots for med students to get more doctors working. We need to reform malpractice lawsuits.
Can somebody plleeessseee explain to me how hospitals/ docters are expected to accommodate an extra 30 to 45 million people?
The US really needs to reform the path to becoming a doctor. 4 years undergrad + 6 years medical school is far too much school. First of all, only rich kids become doctors, as normal kids cannot afford the cost of medical school and lost income. Even then, the opportunity cost is too great for most people. Most gifted people with neutral ideology will go to finance or consulting and make like a million dollars in the time that it takes to graduate from medical school.
Much of the time that pre-meds spend in undergraduate programs is wasted. Since they need high GPAs for medical school admissions, they take easy classes to boost their grades. Much of the material is already covered in high school. Most of the pre-med students I know also took community college classes during the summer, as these count towards their graduation and they are virtually guaranteed to get As or A+s. Any additional time is spend cramming for MCAT, or doing pseudo community service for application purposes.
I don’t blame the individual students - they are only optimizing their chances to get into medical school. However, the system is messed up. It encourages undergraduate pre-meds to waste years doing meaningless work. The system also discourages most people from even considering medical school. Instead, the norm needs to be a “fast track” program, where you skip traditional undergraduate programs and spend 5 years just becoming a doctor. Most other countries do it this way.
The US really needs to reform the path to becoming a doctor. 4 years undergrad + 6 years medical school is far too much school. First of all, only rich kids become doctors, as normal kids cannot afford the cost of medical school and lost income. Even then, the opportunity cost is too great for most people. Most gifted people with neutral ideology will go to finance or consulting and make like a million dollars in the time that it takes to graduate from medical school.
I don’t agree with this at all, from what I’ve seen medicine gets some of the most gifted, hardworking, and committed students. I don’t mean just the students that work hard, but some of the most naturally gifted ones as well. I don’t think finance or consulting compares. FYI I know a ton of medical students/wannabes (Indian).
Again from what I’ve seen, I think pure sciences get the best talent and the second tier seem to funnel into finance and consulting. (Although many in the second tier do like to think of themselves as exceptionally gifted).
I don’t think the path is that long or that arduous to becoming a doctor. I think going through 4 years of college really separates the ones who want that career from the ones who’re simply interested in the “idea” of being a doctor.
Cities teem with evil and decay, let’s give it a good shake and see what falls out!!
Clearly, you need to be smart and hardworking in the US to get into medical school. However, a higher proportion of smart and hardworking people in other countries aspire to attend medical school compared to the US. In the US, desirability of medical school among the brightest students is clearly lower than in other countries. I applied to universities in the UK in addition to the US. My UK applications were all for medical school. It was the same for almost all students in the top 5% or so of my school (and probably in the country). In the US, it was just not worth it. We would be fools to think that all the best students in the US want to go to medical school. The cost is just too great.
When over 35% of Harvard graduates go work in finance, you know that non-medical fields can have very compelling incentives, to which the best students are not immune.
I don’t think the path is that long or that arduous to becoming a doctor. I think going through 4 years of college really separates the ones who want that career from the ones who’re simply interested in the “idea” of being a doctor.
That doesn’t really mean anything… By the time my friends in medical school graduate, finish their residency, etc. many of my non-doctor peers will be millionaires (or are already millionaires). The non-doctors could definitely have gotten into medical school. However, becoming rich quickly is very compelling. There is no doubt that the high cost and long duration of medical school discourages many people from becoming doctors. In the US, more than most other countries, bright students are drawn away from the medical field and into finance, consulting, tech startups, or other fields.
Spending four years in undergrad figuring out if you want to become a doctor is the only good reason for the 4+6 system. However, the cost of a full undergrad education on top of medical school is still too great. Plus, I doubt that those 4 years really give you a good picture of medical school anyway. The undergraduate experience as a pre-med is not the same as medical school (or so I hear). Pre-meds who drop out are typically disillusioned with the bullshit pre-med preparations. They still have no idea what it is like to attend medical school, or to be a doctor.
Just because more people are covered doesn’t mean more people will get sick. People get sick at similar rates when they are covered and when they are not. The only difference is that soceity as a whole covers the uninsured and rather than the individual.
Uncovered people tend to get medical treatment anyway. If you are going to die, will you refuse to go to the hospital because it is expensive? Also, insurance encourages you to get preventive care, which reduces the chance of (more expensive) emergency treatment later.
Of course, Obamacare includes a lot of subsidies that are paid for by certain groups of people, but that’s a different matter…
Also, it doesn’t address another important healthcare problem - it’s too expensive to begin with. If the US does not reform doctor supply and malpractice law, we’re stuck paying 18% of GDP on healthcare, despite the manner in which the cost is spread out between insurance companies and taxpayers. 18% will become a bigger number in the future, as US people get older and fatter.
That doesn’t really mean anything… By the time my friends in medical school graduate, finish their residency, etc. many of my non-doctor peers will be millionaires (or are already millionaires). The non-doctors could definitely have gotten into medical school. However, becoming rich quickly is very compelling. There is no doubt that the high cost and long duration of medical school discourages many people from becoming doctors. In the US, more than most other countries, bright students are drawn away from the medical field and into finance, consulting, tech startups, or other fields.
That makes no sense. The goal of everybody who gets into medical school is not to become a millionaire, apparently some are truly interested in the medical career. (why do people even bother with 10 yr MD/PhD programs? Those are far more competitive than MD programs and anything in finance and they won’t be millionaires). Furthermore, by comparing college grads who became “millionaires” 6 years out of college you’re comparing the most successful college grads to a wider body of medical students. Apples to oranges.
Cities teem with evil and decay, let’s give it a good shake and see what falls out!!
Even if people are not solely motivated by money, a big pile of cash is a great incentive. If someone just got into Johns Hopkins Medical School and I offered them $10 million to drop out, I bet they will take it. That’s an extreme example, but it illustrates that the decision to go to medical school is sensitive to opportunity cost.
As for your “apples to oranges” example - since you made it a point to say that the most gifted people go to medical school (or other science fields), I thought it apt to compare these to the most gifted non-medical people, who can usually make a few million dollars by the time they are 30 or so (if they choose to).
If you can’t afford it, then don’t buy it. It certainly will not get any cheaper with the government involved.
Well… it will be cheaper for some people - poor people, people with pre-existing conditions, (some) women, unemployed early to mid 20s people, etc. For you, maybe it will not be cheaper.
Also, some people don’t buy insurance out of stupidity. For these people, maybe choice is not such a good thing…
Even if people are not solely motivated by money, a big pile of cash is a great incentive. If someone just got into Johns Hopkins Medical School and I offered them $10 million to drop out, I bet they will take it. That’s an extreme example, but it illustrates that the decision to go to medical school is sensitive to opportunity cost.
Sure, if you give an (unpaid) guy in the Peace Corps 10M to drop out, he’d take it as well. Does that mean he couldn’t have gotten a well paying job somewhere else? Except in the real world these situations rarely arise.
ohai wrote:
As for your “apples to oranges” example - since you made it a point to say that the most gifted people go to medical school (or other science fields), I thought it apt to compare these to the most gifted non-medical people, who can usually make a few million dollars by the time they are 30 or so.
Well then should we compare the most gifted science students to the broader financial workforce (Most who don’t make millions of dollars) just because you said that the best students go into finance? Could they get into top rate MD or PhD programs? It’s a dumb comparison.
FYI I do know people from your alma mater who are making megabucks out of college in finance. I see nothing that indicates that they as a group would be good enuf for the elite PhD/MD or MD/PhDprograms. Can some of them? Absolutely. As a group in total, yeah right.
Cities teem with evil and decay, let’s give it a good shake and see what falls out!!
And my day was getting off to such a great start…
Time to eat more cheeseburgers!
“I’m a CPA! I got money b***h!”
Studying With
Like ACA Jon Bone?
Formerly ChickenTikka - Member of the Order of the Righteous Rusty Hacksaw
I’m honestly proud of Chief Justice Roberts…..
Kind of suprised the mandate survived after the way the oral arguments went. I was never a supporter of the law, but I’m actually kind of glad it was upheld as we’ll now be able to see which side was correct.
You can fondle the cube, but it will not respond.
Not to flame or anything, how do you guys exactly get excited about this stuff? My FB newsfeed is full of college kids celebrating.
Cities teem with evil and decay, let’s give it a good shake and see what falls out!!
Those college kids can now use their parents’ insurance until they are 26!
Ok, but anyway, it seems like the most surprising thing about the ruling is that they did not overturn the individual mandate. Even though I think that part is a bit sketchy, the law overall is better (less harmful?) without chopping that part out.
“I’m a CPA! I got money b***h!”
I’d celebrate too if I was a college kid, student loans have a pretty good chance of being forgiven (at least partially) and now they’ll get healthcare for less than they spend on their Xbox Live account every year.
You can fondle the cube, but it will not respond.
This is good for Romney. Had SCOTUS overturned it he wouldn’t get to run on it.
When Justice Roberts sides with the liberals to create a majority and Justice Kennedy with the conservatives in the minority, there are clearly a bunch of legal issues that are too tricky for me to understand.
You want a quote? Haven’t I written enough already???
It seems like either way, it’s not bad for Romney. If the law had been overturned, he could call Obama a failure. Now, he can campaign against the law, which >50% of US people do not support.
“I’m a CPA! I got money b***h!”
This is a WIN for the United States of America, not just President Obama. After nearly three years of Republican obstructionism, cries of socialism on the right, and billions of money poured into stopping Obama’s signature piece of legislation, we can finally breathe a sigh of relief. I have a new found respect for Chief Justice Roberts, for breaking from the conservative side and allowing logic and reason to advance.
While this law is far from perfect, 30 million more Americans will receive coverage, and it will be a good stepping stone to (hopefully) universal/single payer coverage. A great day for the country.
On the other hand, one of Mitt’s signature achievements as governor of Massachussetts was instituting a popular health care law that looks similar in parts to the ACA.
I am genuinely curious as to how he’ll talk about this one.
If I were him, I’d immediately start talking about the 1% income tax hike Pres. Obama implemented on millions of middle income Americans.
You can fondle the cube, but it will not respond.
That’s a big contradiction in Romney’s platform. The excuse that he has given is that state policy and federal policy are not the same thing, which does not seem like a very strong conceptual defense. Most Romney supporters/opposers of Obamacare seem to just ignore this, however. They mostly care about what Romney says he will do with Obamacare, not what Romney has done himself.
“I’m a CPA! I got money b***h!”
Sigh…
This law will only cause health care expenditures to accellerate at an even faster pace. A college econ student could tell you that adding tens of millions of people to a health care system without expanding the supply of physicians will cause costs to skyrocket. Not to mention the addition of all the pre-existing condition people who are expensive to treat. They’ll raise rates on everybody to cover the additional expenses.
We need to add more training and education spots for med students to get more doctors working. We need to reform malpractice lawsuits.
I’m not exactly a big fan of Romney and it is a bit of a contradiction, but it’s really a stretch to compare a plan implemented in a wealthy state with a population of 6.5 million to the entire USA. Massachusetts doesn’t even have as many people as NYC.
You can fondle the cube, but it will not respond.
This will likely reduce the supply of physicians, as many physicians have said it will no longer be worth the cost of maintaining a practice. The wait times for a Medicaid patient today are already 2x - 3x longer than those for a privately-insured patient because so few physicians are willing to accept the Medicaid reimbursement rate.
You can fondle the cube, but it will not respond.
Can somebody plleeessseee explain to me how hospitals/ docters are expected to accommodate an extra 30 to 45 million people?
The US really needs to reform the path to becoming a doctor. 4 years undergrad + 6 years medical school is far too much school. First of all, only rich kids become doctors, as normal kids cannot afford the cost of medical school and lost income. Even then, the opportunity cost is too great for most people. Most gifted people with neutral ideology will go to finance or consulting and make like a million dollars in the time that it takes to graduate from medical school.
Much of the time that pre-meds spend in undergraduate programs is wasted. Since they need high GPAs for medical school admissions, they take easy classes to boost their grades. Much of the material is already covered in high school. Most of the pre-med students I know also took community college classes during the summer, as these count towards their graduation and they are virtually guaranteed to get As or A+s. Any additional time is spend cramming for MCAT, or doing pseudo community service for application purposes.
I don’t blame the individual students - they are only optimizing their chances to get into medical school. However, the system is messed up. It encourages undergraduate pre-meds to waste years doing meaningless work. The system also discourages most people from even considering medical school. Instead, the norm needs to be a “fast track” program, where you skip traditional undergraduate programs and spend 5 years just becoming a doctor. Most other countries do it this way.
“I’m a CPA! I got money b***h!”
I don’t agree with this at all, from what I’ve seen medicine gets some of the most gifted, hardworking, and committed students. I don’t mean just the students that work hard, but some of the most naturally gifted ones as well. I don’t think finance or consulting compares. FYI I know a ton of medical students/wannabes (Indian).
Again from what I’ve seen, I think pure sciences get the best talent and the second tier seem to funnel into finance and consulting. (Although many in the second tier do like to think of themselves as exceptionally gifted).
I don’t think the path is that long or that arduous to becoming a doctor. I think going through 4 years of college really separates the ones who want that career from the ones who’re simply interested in the “idea” of being a doctor.
Cities teem with evil and decay, let’s give it a good shake and see what falls out!!
Clearly, you need to be smart and hardworking in the US to get into medical school. However, a higher proportion of smart and hardworking people in other countries aspire to attend medical school compared to the US. In the US, desirability of medical school among the brightest students is clearly lower than in other countries. I applied to universities in the UK in addition to the US. My UK applications were all for medical school. It was the same for almost all students in the top 5% or so of my school (and probably in the country). In the US, it was just not worth it. We would be fools to think that all the best students in the US want to go to medical school. The cost is just too great.
When over 35% of Harvard graduates go work in finance, you know that non-medical fields can have very compelling incentives, to which the best students are not immune.
“I’m a CPA! I got money b***h!”
That doesn’t really mean anything… By the time my friends in medical school graduate, finish their residency, etc. many of my non-doctor peers will be millionaires (or are already millionaires). The non-doctors could definitely have gotten into medical school. However, becoming rich quickly is very compelling. There is no doubt that the high cost and long duration of medical school discourages many people from becoming doctors. In the US, more than most other countries, bright students are drawn away from the medical field and into finance, consulting, tech startups, or other fields.
Spending four years in undergrad figuring out if you want to become a doctor is the only good reason for the 4+6 system. However, the cost of a full undergrad education on top of medical school is still too great. Plus, I doubt that those 4 years really give you a good picture of medical school anyway. The undergraduate experience as a pre-med is not the same as medical school (or so I hear). Pre-meds who drop out are typically disillusioned with the bullshit pre-med preparations. They still have no idea what it is like to attend medical school, or to be a doctor.
“I’m a CPA! I got money b***h!”
Just because more people are covered doesn’t mean more people will get sick. People get sick at similar rates when they are covered and when they are not. The only difference is that soceity as a whole covers the uninsured and rather than the individual.
Uncovered people tend to get medical treatment anyway. If you are going to die, will you refuse to go to the hospital because it is expensive? Also, insurance encourages you to get preventive care, which reduces the chance of (more expensive) emergency treatment later.
Of course, Obamacare includes a lot of subsidies that are paid for by certain groups of people, but that’s a different matter…
Also, it doesn’t address another important healthcare problem - it’s too expensive to begin with. If the US does not reform doctor supply and malpractice law, we’re stuck paying 18% of GDP on healthcare, despite the manner in which the cost is spread out between insurance companies and taxpayers. 18% will become a bigger number in the future, as US people get older and fatter.
“I’m a CPA! I got money b***h!”
That makes no sense. The goal of everybody who gets into medical school is not to become a millionaire, apparently some are truly interested in the medical career. (why do people even bother with 10 yr MD/PhD programs? Those are far more competitive than MD programs and anything in finance and they won’t be millionaires). Furthermore, by comparing college grads who became “millionaires” 6 years out of college you’re comparing the most successful college grads to a wider body of medical students. Apples to oranges.
Cities teem with evil and decay, let’s give it a good shake and see what falls out!!
If you can’t afford it, then don’t buy it. It certainly will not get any cheaper with the government involved.
Even if people are not solely motivated by money, a big pile of cash is a great incentive. If someone just got into Johns Hopkins Medical School and I offered them $10 million to drop out, I bet they will take it. That’s an extreme example, but it illustrates that the decision to go to medical school is sensitive to opportunity cost.
As for your “apples to oranges” example - since you made it a point to say that the most gifted people go to medical school (or other science fields), I thought it apt to compare these to the most gifted non-medical people, who can usually make a few million dollars by the time they are 30 or so (if they choose to).
“I’m a CPA! I got money b***h!”
Well… it will be cheaper for some people - poor people, people with pre-existing conditions, (some) women, unemployed early to mid 20s people, etc. For you, maybe it will not be cheaper.
Also, some people don’t buy insurance out of stupidity. For these people, maybe choice is not such a good thing…
“I’m a CPA! I got money b***h!”
Sure, if you give an (unpaid) guy in the Peace Corps 10M to drop out, he’d take it as well. Does that mean he couldn’t have gotten a well paying job somewhere else? Except in the real world these situations rarely arise.
Well then should we compare the most gifted science students to the broader financial workforce (Most who don’t make millions of dollars) just because you said that the best students go into finance? Could they get into top rate MD or PhD programs? It’s a dumb comparison.
FYI I do know people from your alma mater who are making megabucks out of college in finance. I see nothing that indicates that they as a group would be good enuf for the elite PhD/MD or MD/PhDprograms. Can some of them? Absolutely. As a group in total, yeah right.
Cities teem with evil and decay, let’s give it a good shake and see what falls out!!
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