http://www.dogcanyon.org/2009/.....ck-comedy/
Did I Wake Up in a Black Comedy?

I don’t think anybody does know, now really, do they.

Well, I’m glad for you. But I know dozens of families that I interact with every day who can’t afford either your current insurance or the $1200 for the subsidized premiums. They are going on nothing and praying no one gets sick. I have had several who simply said they’ll file for bankruptcy if they do.

Are you sending children to college? In your financial situation, then $1200 is too much in my area. Are you struggling with an ARM? Then $1200 is too much, if you are.

Don’t think that everyone’s situation is similar to yours, even in the same income bracket. Because I can assure they aren’t.

A family of 3 with income of $30,000 will have to come up with about $1200 a year for their share of the premiums. Please explain to me where this family gets this kind of money

I know this is kind of an old thread, but I just wanted to say that my husband and I had a combined income of $28,156 last year (according to our tax return). We paid $300 a month for our health insurance (through his job). $300 * 12 = $3,600. He’s subsequently lost that insurance.

$1,200 a year would be a HUGE savings for us.

But that was not true a year ago and it’s not true for a lot of my friends. And as someone who donated money to our current president, I wasn’t expecting the end result to be “reforms” that pay for bankers to get billions in bonuses, refuses to raise taxes on the wealthy, while imposing a huge new tax on people who are already struggling.

As I said, I’m a leftist. If I was in Europe, I’d be a committed democratic socialist. And it’s a bit of an eye-opener to watch so many American Democratic moderates and progressives calmly consign their poorer neighbors to privation in pursuit of some better future.

Sacrifice comrades! The bankers need the sweat from your brow to gold plate their iPhones!

Thank FSM for Balloon Juice – it’s the only way for me to stay informed w/o going entirely insane.

This “moral imperative” to pass “HCR” benefits whom, Brien?

But back to your point… if ANY bill proposed will suddenly be a budget buster, regardless of reality, then your “incremental financing” argument doesn’t hold.

But maybe you’re right. Maybe a consequence-free Senate will decide to do the right thing.

I guess I just don’t care about “tactics, strategy, and politics.” If HCR is political suicide in the medium-term, then so be it. If we start worrying about what’s political suicide at the margins, we’re never going to get anything. See the Civil Rights Act. If 3 or 4 Senators hadn’t decided that the moral imperative of the bill was more important than their next election, the bill wouldn’t have had the votes. And yeah, they lost their next elections, and Democrats handed Republicans a political strategy that lasted a generation and got us Nixon and Reagan. But they lso passed the Civil Rights Act, and the Voting Rights Act thereafter.

The link:

http://crooksandliars.com/rj-e.....it-crazy-l

Nate’s analysis is based on fantasy. The math may be correct (and I have no doubt it is), but RJ Eskow pretty effectively skewers the assumptions behind it and the political context Nate is completely missing.

I would never take Nate Silver’s numbers as the gold standard for political or policy questions. About polling, football games, fantasy leagues, post-election voter demographics…yes. Strategy, tactics, and prognostication of the political landscape…no.

He cherry picks a scenario and makes assumptions about the actions of the players in the scenario. The scenario works because of subsidies which I guaran-fucking-tee you will get swallowed up when insurance companies spike rates. And it’ll all be covered and OK by conviently valid cost increases elsewhere in the market. It’s a “best case scenario” being used to further the “anything is better than nothing” when the premise is FALSE.

This shit happens all the time in the educational sector. Increase financial aid and lo-and-behold tuition, fees, textbook prices, etc spike. As someone who works in the sector all I can say is… If you want to contain the cost of a college education stop increasing financial aid.