Interesting ACA side effect (Page 4)

It sounds for the most part this is what you are saying or implying; From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.

If that is not what you are getting at could you explain the difference. Thanks in advance.

Just to address the 30 hour work week portion.  Even if 100% of employees go to the exchanges they will still limit them to 30 hours because employers have to pay a fine of $2000/year per "full time" employee or provide them healthcare.  So the much easier (and cheaper) path is to just limit all hourly employees to 30 hours and pass 100% of that cost to the taxpayers.

It would be nice if healthcare costs went down as a result of Obamacare, but I find it highly unlikely that will happen simply because the lawmakers chose to ignore healthcare costs (the real problem) and just gave everyone insurance.  What I feel will happen is insurance companies will be forced out of business one after another because the only insurance an individual will be able to afford on the exchange will be the "free" government option.  Then the government option will either cost us taxpayer's a lot more than estimated or they'll have to drastically reduce services to keep the costs down.  Either way is a loser.

If that takes us to the step of having a single payer system that covers everyone so that we can finally separate the issues of employment from those of insurance, then bring it on, sooner rather than later.

The reality is that if it is truly cheaper to have people working part time, then it really doesn't matter whether insurance is tied to hours worked. If an employer could make a profit by having people work more hours, then they will want to have them work more hours. And if they decide it is better to have more employees working shorter hours for the bottom line, then that is what they will do. 

We can have semantic arguments about what constitutes a "right", but the more basic principle at work in the founding of the country is to create "a more perfect union". It's right there in the preamble of the constitution - essentially saying "we know that we are laying down today is not the end result, and that over time we hope that it will be made better". It also explicitly states the goal of "establish Justice". So we can argue the point of whether it is "just" to provide access to health care to all citizens in a country as wealthy as ours.

The preamble also states that one of the goals is to "secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity". If being a free country leads to becoming a wealthy one (which I believe is true), then it follows that amongst those blessings are the ability to provide basic standards of living and medical care. Of course, I suppose if you believe that being rich has nothing to do with being free, I suppose it makes sense to take the opposite POV.

The "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" does not show up in the constitution - it is in the Declaration of Independence. I suppose we could have another amendment to the Bill of Rights securing the right to universal coverage, effectively ending the complaints about coverage not being a "right". But I equally suppose that most on the right, at least on the farther parts of the right, would resist such an amendment strongly. 

I'm not trying to be snarky or insulting, but that is not even close to what a right is.

You DO NOT have the right to a minimal standard of living, you have the right to the OPPORTUNITY of a good standard of living. That OPPORTUNITY is afforded by the Constitution as a contract between you and your government as to what rights you have, and what power the government has over you.

Article 25.

• (1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
• (2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

Article 26.

• (1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.
• (2) Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.
• (3) Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.

That sounds perfectly wonderful, but how exactly do you make it possible? If I have the RIGHT to clothing, then I can just go to a store and take what I want.

If I have the RIGHT to "free" education, then I no longer have to pay for it. We have "public education", but that is not "free". We pay taxes, levies, and bonds for that.

That is certainly one take on the preamble, but the preamble does not specify rights. It is an opening statement and is not "law". It's a commentary.

If you feel healthcare should be a right, then by all means amend the Constitution. That is what the amendment process is for. It's been done before.

I think what most people oppose is backdooring legislation calling something it is not. If we all agreed in a single payer system, so be it. If we agreed it should be guaranteed by the Constitution, so be it. We will have to work out how we are going to pay for it. I have a hard time believing the government can run the service any better.

I do agree that health care should be divorced from employment and should have never been tied to it in the first place. It should be no different than car, home, or life insurance. I should be able to shop for healthcare as a consumer like anything else. And if my employer wants to incentivize me to work for their company and provide for a health care expense account, as was intended when health care was first tied to employment, then so be it... free market and all.

Liberty -

Liberty is the ability of individuals to have agency (control over their own actions). Different conceptions of liberty articulate the relationship of individuals to society in different ways—including some that relate to life under a social contract or to existence in a state of nature, and some that see the active exercise of freedom and rights as essential to liberty. Understanding liberty involves how we imagine the individual's roles and responsibilities in society in relation to concepts of free will and determinism, which involves the larger domain of metaphysics.

Individualist and classical liberal conceptions of liberty typically consist of the freedom of individuals from outside compulsion or coercion, also known as negative liberty. This conception of liberty, which coincides with the Libertarian point-of-view, suggests that people should, must, and ought to behave according to their own free will, and take responsibility for their actions, while in contrast, Social liberal conceptions of (positive liberty) liberty place an emphasis upon social structure and agency and is therefore directed toward ensuring egalitarianism. In feudal societies, a "liberty" was an area of allodial land where the rights of the ruler or monarch were waived.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty

I guess you could argue you want to have the liberty to force others to do as you see fit for the greater good.

A does not follow B here. You have the right to liberty. But as the expression goes, freedom isn't free. Someone has to do the defending of those rights, and we all pay (in the form of taxes, as you say) those people to do that. 

So it looks like you are saying the "blessings of liberty" are just the presence of liberty - that liberty is the blessing to its own end. I am saying that the "blessings of liberty" includes the fruits that liberty brings about. 

I would also argue that the issues of the individual's "roles and responsibilities in society" include the responsibility to one another - to ensure that the society as a whole provides the same opportunities to all, and not "I got mine, Jack".

Since you are using wikipedia to define your terms, go check out the wikipedia entry on the concept of the social contract. One of the things you will see there is that the the concepts of social contract were prominent in the constitution. Looking at Locke in particular, he was concerned about the people living in fear due to their rights being taken by the strong, and the government's role in defending those rights. Given the times he lived in (from the POV of medical care) and the times WE live in, I do not think it is a stretch to say that people NOW live in fear of loss of livelihood, financial security, etc due to medical problems. That the way we have allowed or caused the system to evolve has made many people in effect slaves to their employers, as "pre-existing conditions" meant that changing jobs led to changing insurance, which meant denial of coverage. Part of the ACA removes that restriction. 

The "free education" came from Universal Human rights"... She said the US is a signer... what exactly do they mean by "free" education? It's a nice flowery declaration, but that is about all at this point.

I do not have the "right" of national defense... The Constitution specifies that "task" to the Congress and the ability to raise money for it. It is a service our government provides.

We can certainly do the same thing with health care. We can task the Congress to provide for it and raise money to support it... that is a service we can "elect" our government to provide.

But it isn't an "individual right" and this is not a game of semantics. I'm sorry if you do not see the difference, it is pretty glaring.

Do you agree that you have an individual right to liberty? And yet, as you say, the task of ensuring that liberty falls to the military, funded by the congress, elected by and theoretically accountable to the people which includes all of us as a group.

A "free" education flows in the same way (and is guaranteed in most of the US as a "free and appropriate public education" or FAPE) . And in the rest of the western world, so does "free" access to healthcare. And it can be a right if it is so written into the bill of rights, since not all rights are individual rights in the way you use the term.

I'm really not sure how to answer that. The Constitution says that is the whole point, and then sets out to secure it. It isn't a individual right specified to me. It is a "state of being" that the Constitution tries to establish through rights I have, and what the government will provide for.

As far as semantics... I'm not trying to play with words and say I can't have universal health care. The Constitution can most certainly be amended to provide for it, or we can just pass legislation to make it so. All perfectly acceptable.

I just get hung up on how people use the term "right". And I can certainly be wrong in my use of it. But the Constitution is just a set of laws. The Bill of Rights establishes my individual rights, and the Republic we live in establishes the power I have as an individual... that the majority can't just trample over my defined rights.

Look at the 2ndA. It says I have the RTBA, for many reasons. To keep the gov. in check, self protection, and to ensure my freedom. The government can't take that right I posses... but it does not give me a gun. It isn't the right to guns and then supplies them for me, it is just a right to have them.

Health care could be the same, I have the right to health care, and the Government can't take my access to it... well OK, but nobody is restricting my right to it right now. And every single person will receive care if they walk into a hospital regardless of ability to pay at the time of care.

So my point is that health care isn't an individual "right" I can posses... in that health care is a service I must be provided. Somebody has to give it to me. I suppose we could amend the Constitution to say I have the right to administer health care to myself, but that would be sort of pointless. So if it is a service someone has to provide to me, then it isn't a individual right.

Even like you said earlier... I have the right to due process. The Judiciary is provided to do that, and we do pay for it. But it does not give me all the legal services I want, it provides for a court house and a judge fro me to petition the government or bring forth a grievance. But in that sense... the judiciary is the "enforcement mechanism" of the Constitution. The Constitution is worthless if there is no judiciary to enforce it, so in that sense it is provided to make it mean something, but it isn't just a service the Congress is tasked with providing.

But I don't mean to be silly and just beat this horse to death because it is really pointless. I have come around a bit to the point that there is more of a need that I used to think since in the end we all pay for it. I do think it needs to be "universal" as in not tied to employment and pre existing conditions. And I am open to the idea of "tasking" Congress to provide for it...it will be expensive, but we can shift priorities. But at the end of the day, it will be just another service provided for by the government like any other.

Whether you are a slave to your employer or a slave to the federal gov., a slave is a slave. 

It looks to me like you are taking liberty, with meaning our Founding Fathers intended for the term "Liberty".

and that everyone who is full time is getting healthcare

Attention all thread posters.  We are taking this thread over.  Do as you're told and no one will be harmed.  It is our intention to endlessly debate the intent of the constitution and the definition of liberty.  Once we have completely filled 2 pages doing so we will release you all unharmed.

Everyone keep cool and just give these thread hijackers what they want.

I agree that the required employer-provided insurance model is a ridiculous invitation for waste and abuse.  I would add, so is spending 20% (now that we're limiting it!) of our healthcare dollars on insurance instead of on care.  Yesterday I heard that there are more than 2 people doing health care billing and coding type work for every 1 doctor.  If true... that's just nuts.  But we appear stuck with this, as long as single-payer is a political non-starter.

So, if we're stuck with the insurance model and enough of us (not all of us here, I understand, but presume enough politically) want low-income individuals to have some access to some level health care, maybe de-coupling insurance from employment and providing a sliding-scale subsidy is the way to go.  This would eventually accomplish the same thing as the ACA without all of the whining from pizza chain owners.  The trouble, of course, is that it would be expensive -- and the "honest" kind of expensive, not the kind of expensive that is currently hidden off the federal balance sheet, in un-reimbursed emergency room visits and the like.

(Note - I've edited out the "rights" part of the quotes above to highlight the policy parts of your discussion.)

oops.  sorry for my policy post then.  I'll just go back quietly to my seat.  (Or, I might leap at you from behind and rip off your head with my metal-spiked high-heeled shoe.  but I'm not telling which.)

To me, I find the ER room visit to be a completely ridiculous problem to have. I see no reason at all why hospitals can't refuse to treat your runny nose in a ER. Those without insurance or doctors use ERs as their DR office. That problem is easily solved without mandating an entire health care overall. Heck, the government could just pay indigent patients fees and neighborhood clinics instead of ER bills at hospitals. That is a problem with many solutions besides the ACA

The fact remains, that many in this country insist on calling it a "right" , and/or want to make it one. We can argue on what needs to be done to fix the problem of health-care, but you will never convince me making it a "right", or going to a single payer system is what is necessary to "fix" it.

I feel the ACA will screw up the current system bad enough that the only "fix" will be single payer. I say the only problem with our system is not insurance companies, it's government involvement. The government is not the solution, it is the problem. There is absolutely ZERO possibility of government run health care "fixing" the problem of increasing HC costs... they will cause increasing HC cost.

I've been saying this since the law was passed.    "We can't get single payer now... but if we blow up the current system then it will be the only option later."

Even the dems can't vote for single-payer with the system in its current condition.  It will cost too many jobs in the private insurance sector, and most likely in health care as well.

Eventually, the industry will be crushed under its own weight and the government will be able to "rush in and save us."   Yay.