Elephants and Jackasses...

Anecdotally, my daughter's surgery, medication (pre- and post- surgery), her three month rehab stay and her subsequent anticipated 17 years of physio, OT and speech therapy have cost me a grand total of $700 so far, and most of that was for hospital parking.

If we had to pay it out of pocket, which we most assuredly would if we lived in the US and had the jobs we have, we'd have gone bankrupt. No question. We'd be in to the tune of over $2M easily.

 

Question. I don't really follow this close enough to know, so I'm curious. Is everyone's premiums and deductibles going up because of Obamacare collapsing or because of the Republicans not passing something new?

I know that two tears ago my premiums and deductible went up a great deal and my employer told us it was because they faced a 8 figure penalty unless they went a different route. How true that is/was, I have no idea, all I know is my cost went way up and so did my out of pocket.

It would be great if we all could have health care, but as Down n Dirty mentioned.....you have assholes that completely abuse anything and everything that ruin it for everyone.

I'm just glad Trump deep sixed the individual mandate so that working people who are overwhelmed by the cost of "Healthcare for everyone" don't get insult added to injury by being fined because they can't afford it. That was the most fucked up thing ever. "Oh? You can't afford insurance? We're going to fine you so we can give insurance to someone who doesn't work."

 

I've been on Obamacare for three years. The first year it was $68 with a couple hundred dollar deductible, $15 copay, and a monthly prescription costing $12. The next year they added dental and vision and the premium went down to $45 with the same copay, no deductible, and the prescription going down to $6. Last year the premium went up to $47 and everything else stayed the same. I'm waiting to hear what they're going to do for next year. It's been literally life-saving for several people I know here. So it's working in at least one place.

 

Well, it would have to be both, right?

The premium hikes were inevitable. Obamacare was never going to work like it was supposed to. As complicated as the bill was, the premise was fairly simple. Guarantee 'affordable' access to healthcare for all citizens. Subsidies and enough healthy people signing on will keep the premiums steady, then add in the individual mandate to plug the gap.

The obvious problem is the bill was written for people with pre-existing conditions in mind. The ACA was designed for them (that's not by any means the whole bill, but it was the primary purpose). No one can be turned down so once the ACA started all these people who couldn't get insurance elsewhere signed up, like planned. This immediately drove the prices up, there was no way around it. It's explained a bit here. This specific issue is the root of the whole problem.

And they're now paying an artificially low rate, so premiums go up and the healthy people don't take the ACA if they have any other option available, usually through an employer, or they decide to risk it and not have insurance at all, paying the penalty instead because it's way cheaper than the premiums.

For all the work that went into the bill, and in a way it is a laudable effort, it's trying to solve a fundamental problem that can't be solved - at least not without drastically increasing the subsidies or going to a public healthcare system. Remember, the major provisions of the bill didn't begin until 2014, quite recently. The insurers initially set the rates. Costs were above the rates because they can't turn anyone down. So the insurers have to raise the premiums, which makes the healthy people who were supposed to keep the premiums steady leave, which means the subsidies are insufficient, so insurers either pull out or raise the rates again. That's why it looked a lot more promising on the initial roll out and still does in some areas. You provide 'affordable coverage' to people who can't afford coverage, and while the authors did all they could to plug the holes they're still bursting open.

I don't think there is a way to fix the ACA. The measures taken in the bill are insufficient to fill the gaps because people are incentivized to buy anywhere else they can. The ACA exchanges are almost always the worst option so the the ACA gets filled with people who have low paying jobs(that don't have quality insurance benefits like better paying jobs) and thus need a subsidy, and people who have pre-existing conditions.

The republican plans just make things worse, as they take out the measures needed to give the bill any chance of success.

Obviously, I'm taking a pessimistic view, but I think the people (who I should note were wrong about the projections at this point) who expect the problems to level out are wrong. Presumably the democrats want to increase the subsidies - it's not like there's another option - but don't want to outright say so as it's admitting the bill was overly optimistic and raises government spending while figuring out where those extra tax dollars are going to come from is impossible while they hold a minority. Schumer and Co keep saying they will work with republicans to 'fix' the ACA while letting the republicans continue to fail with their repeal efforts. To my knowledge there hasn't been any comprehensive plan put forth from the left as to what exactly that 'fix' is supposed to be, so again, I'm just assuming they want to hike the subsidies and know that won't be considered by the right at all.

 

Procedurally we’ve been golden.
Two craniofacial surgeries, a shoulder repair, pregnancy & csection, MRIs, CTs, scopes, xrays, post op care - all covered. It’s the medications that kill me.

Of course we are army so that makes a difference.

 

Im assuming that "The first year it was $68" means per month? That's incredible.

My deductible is $5000 so that I can afford the premium.

 

So many factors are involved in how loud a firearm sounds to a person, that what she said just made her look dumb as hell.

Hell, as it is there are so many random factors involved in how many people died. He could have killed hundreds, or thousands, or none, depending on a thousand things having nothing to do with the sound of the rifle. We can play the "what if" game until the cows come home and it won't matter, because the changing of one factor could have changed everything, never mind that it won't help us prevent this type of scenario from happening again.

A few months ago my wife and I actually talked about going to Route 91 as her push gift. We almost bought tickets, but figured we didn't want to burden our parents with babysitting a young critter.

Needless to say, we will be going next year. Because fuck that guy.

 

How much is a suppressor actually going to muffle the sound of a supersonic rifle round anyway? Not to mention IIRC he was shooting from 400 yards away. With that large of crowd accuracy probably didn't matter but there's a reason military marksman don't use suppressors.

 

I don't understand enough about ballistics to answer how accurate he could be at that range with a 5.56 and 308 round.

As far as the sound goes, I'd think the hotel room itself would be fairly effective at masking the sound, since in the pictures it looked like he had some shooting positions setup back inside the room as opposed to directly at the windows where it'd sound louder to the victims. Also, the sound of the rounds hitting various objects like the concrete, metal, bodies, etc. is going to add to the noise. So any talk of suppressors to me is just politicians using this as an excuse to push their agenda, as there's no real logic behind it.
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Doesn't a suppressor only lower the report by about 5 or so db?

Not to mention that there was about a 10 mph wind at ground level at that time.

 

My first gun was a .308. My father didn't believe in training wheels. I bloodied my nose the first time I shot it and he laughed at me and said "I'll bet you never hold it like that again." He was right.

 

Also, by the time the first rounds hit the crowd, the sound of the shots wouldn’t have been registered until after they made contact. The bullets travel way faster than the sound and given the other environmental factors, the echoes could have been thrown in various directions. So some people would have heard the sound of shots whizzing by with people dropping and less than a second later actually heard the gun shots.

 

He would have had to do something like this, correct?