A part of the health care reform bill you may have missed...

Maybe I have a skewed perspective, but how is having a $400k vacation home not making someone wealthy? 

I have one home. It is worth significantly less than $400K, and I consider myself to be reasonably well off. I certainly could not afford to have a second home worth more than twice what my primary residence is worth.

I understand that it is a one-time bump in income. But if you got a windfall of $400k, I think you could afford the taxes since they come out of the money made from selling the house (and presumably not just flipping it to another one). I frankly don't see the problem. It is no different than having to pay the income tax hit on that at the top bracket as well.

There's going to be a lot of carnage when all the tax hikes and costs of this monster hit the street.  There's a reason the majority of hikes don't hit the street until after the 2012 election.

I just saw this yesterday talking about how 75% of the costs of the ACA will fall on the backs of people making less than $120k/yr. 

http://www.humanevents.com/2012/06/30/wsj-chief-economist-75-of-obamacare-costs-will-fall-on-backs-of-those-making-less-than-120k-a-year/

Everybody loves a free lunch when they think somebody else (the rich) is paying for it.

Just to be clear, I'm not in any way against Healthcare Reform.  i think it's a disaster today that was caused by all the government regulation which prevents competition.  So I think using the government to fix the problem that they created is not the wisest approach.

I also agree that there are poor people who do need to be covered and the way they're being covered today by going to the emergency room isn't the most cost effective program that's out there.  There needs to be some sort of safety net.

I don't know what the right answer is, but going from a system that's not a free market system due to government regulations and then trying to overlay a government "insurance" on top of said broken system won't work IMHO.

I support the idea of exchanges and of the ability to buy policies across state lines to begin with.

Untying tax incentives to companies that provide health insurance to their employees would also help.  Increase competition by having hundreds of millions of direct consumers, rather then decreasing them to employers. Greatly increasing competition.

I think the government should be involved in ensuring information on the policies is clear to consumers, and easily comparable.  Similar to what they do for APR's.  Then ensure that insurance companies are providing what is agreed to.

In what way do you see this? I see plenty of competition for insurance companies (whose primary goal is to make money for stockholders, not to insure that people get healthcare). I see people able to obtain healthcare from physicians, naturopaths, chiropractors, and any number of "alternative health" avenues. I see drug companies competing to sell the "latest and best" antidepressants, antipsychotics, and other meds in my own field, not to mention all the pills available for hypertension, diabetes, birth control, and erectile dysfunction.

In what way is the regulation of services preventing competition? Or are you in favor of unregulated healthcare, no agency providing centralized and impartial review of data for drug safety and efficacy, no state regulations determining baseline competence to be licensed to provide services?

Sorry, I was referring to the insurance side of the issue, not the healthcare (hospital/doctor) side.  Health insurance companies are exempt from antitrust regulations so you have essentially monopolies in place and as consumers we have nowhere to go to get better prices.

In some states the government mandates that every insurance program has to cover X, Y and Z so everybody has to pay for the extra.  I know in Nebraska with my business I have to buy maternity care on all my employees even though out of 12 people only 1 is going to possibly in need of this care.  I even asked if it could be removed for the others and was informed that I didn't have a choice.  bam, higher rates

I think there's two major sides to the issue. Cost of Care, and Cost of Insurance

Cost of Care:

I read somewhere that the biggest reason costs are going up so much is that doctors conduct a ton of defensive tests because in order to cover their butts from lawyers.  So my solution is to fix the lawyers wagon by changing it to a loser pays system when it comes to malpractice.  In other words if you sue the doctor/hospital for something and you don't win then you have to cover the legal costs of the hospital defending itself.  This doesn't eliminate the ability for legitimate claims to be litigated, but it would drastically cut down on the frivolous ones.

Cost of Insurance:

Break down the state barriers as trinnas mentioned through either exchanges or just simply deregulating the state and federal laws to allow me in Omaha to buy an insurance plan from Florida if I want.  Supply and Demand will balance itself out and with a huge increase in supply the costs will go down due to more competition.
Also, removing all the mandated coverages.  All insurance must cover X, Y, or Z.  Give people the option to purchase the insurance they want.  If I don't want to cover maternity then I shouldn't have to. 

When is it all too much.  How do you have serious medical innovation when it costs billions of dollars to get anything through the FDA.  I agree that no regulation is bad but I think we have gone too far in putting obstacles in place for drugs and medical care.

x2.  And whatever happened to allowing professional groups to band together (like ASME or ASCE) and offer group policies to their members who might not have insurance via their employers?  Bush talked about doing that his first year in office.  To my knowledge it has not happened yet?

You continue to make that statement and it continues to be wrong. A companies primary objective is to provide a product or service. If it provides a good product or service it will be profitable. Profits are the whole point... but you can't have profits by supplying a crappy product.... the stock holders invested their money into a company they thought had the potential to be profitable. The company took the money and grew the business. If the company tanks the stockholders get soaked and loose their money. Risk and reward.

A health care companies job is to provide health care. If it does that well it will be profitable. But by some wave of a magic wand, your saying that a government bureaucrat is much more capable of providing good health care from a cubicle administering an agency that's paid for by tax money that has no competition.

Actually I agree with gearboy. (cue dramatic music)  There are many examples of companies creating good products that failed because of outside factors (ahead of it's time for example).  No one goes into business to "make a product".  They go into business to "make a product" to then make money.

Now many companies can do both (make a good product, treat their employees well, and make a profit).  But in the end it's all about the $.

With the exception of a few non-profits, everyone is in it for the $.  Period.

Absolutely, it is always about the Benjamins. But you won't make those if you provide crap for a product, you provide crap for compensation to employees, but you hand over a good return to investors.

What the "EVIL" corporation has been turned into is some mindless entity that desires to turn human blood into money for it's shareholders. When risk is removed then corporation can indeed do bad things... those risks were removed from the housing market by the government, and we all know how that story ended. Corporations and Wall Street were demonized... but some how, turning more things over to the very same government that screwed up the market in the first place is the salvation and the return to everything that is good and wholesome. That makes no sense to me at all.

Do you actually think Premiums are going to go down now that this is going into effect?

I think we'll get higher taxes and higher premiums from this.  It's government.  It always works that way...

I don't have a problem with that approach

It's an internet forum, I can have it any way i want. <insert evil laugh>  

I probably didn't do the argument justice but what I was trying to say is the government has "allowed" these monopolies to be created through the regulations they've put in place.  So I'm not necessarily saying they need to use Antitrust to break up monopolies, but more that they should remove the restrictions that allow others to come in and compete.

Which again is more government regulation of the market place. Before people just went to the doctor, HMOs came about by heath insurance being linked to your job. But, of course now the whole thing is messed up and more government regulation is going to fix it.

Health care should be no different than car insurance. I should be able to go to who ever I want. But of course I get those "total compensation" letters every year from my employer showing exactly how much they pay for my health care. I have a hard time believing that it costs $1500 a month to insure me... who never goes to the doctor, or never had a major illness.

All these Managed care, government agencies, ect all add to the cost. If we would just get back to being the consumer and paying for what we need, I don't think it would be as expensive as it is. Then, as you posted earlier, which I sort of agree, there are those that are a burden to society that we are paying for now or later whether we know it/like it or not. If we picked up the cost now instead of later, perhaps people would still be pissed about the "free loaders" but over all it would be less expensive in the long run.

But then...if I'm paying for your health care, and you smoke and are 200 lbs overweight... well something is wrong with that picture.