Archive for March, 2010
Saturday Night Video - Avett Brothers Head Full of Doubt Road Full of Promise 1st time ever
Saturday, March 27th, 2010Space Shuttle Manifest May Grow into 2013?
Saturday, March 27th, 2010Enjoying the perspective that age provides
Friday, March 26th, 2010Athena Coming Back to Launch Pads
Thursday, March 25th, 2010Coffin on Congressman’s Lawn? Reminds me of Organized Labor
Thursday, March 25th, 2010Champion of Commercial Space: Rohrabacher
Thursday, March 25th, 2010Cuccinelli: Friend to single-payer health care?
Thursday, March 25th, 2010It’s always fun to think that the most ridiculous characters — like our own Attorney General Cuccinelli — are actually liberals under deep cover, working hard to destroy the conservative movement from within. This is, after all, a man who warned state colleges and universities that they had no legal right to prohibit discrimination against homosexuals, forcing the conservative but apparently not totally insane conservative governor to actually overrule him and stand up for gay rights.
Now Cuccinelli has filed a lawsuit over the Affordable Care Act signed into law this week. He argues that the law’s requirement that everyone buy health insurance (the “individual mandate”) is unconstitutional. He says the Federal government can’t require people to purchase services because the purchasing (or lack thereof) is not necessarily “interstate commerce.”
Given the conservative bent of the Supreme Court recently I’ve been a little concerned about that. Realistically this shouldn’t be a problem because the consequences of not carrying insurance are tax penalties, not prison time, and the Federal government is allowed to set tax law. But you never know with the Roberts in charge.
Kevin Drum says not to fret, though. Even if the Roberts Court did rule the individual mandate illegal, the rest of the bill would stay in place — including the transparency requirements, coverage requirements, establishment of health exchanges, and so forth. That would be bad, bad news for the health insurance industry:
…[T]he insurance industry will go ballistic. If they’re required to cover all comers, even those with expensive pre-existing conditions, then they have to have a mandate in order to get all the healthy people into the insurance pool too. So they would argue very persuasively that unless Congress figures out a fix, they’ll drive private insurers out of business in short order. Kevin Drum: Health Care and the Supreme Court
Either we’d have to find a way around that or — horrors! — decide that we’re going to have a single-payer system.
The “individual mandate” idea is, after all, the conservative position from back before conservatives attended tea parties. It’s the choice that offers private businesses the largest possible slice of the pie and “makes the pie higher,” so to speak. A lot of us wacky liberals were dissatisfied with health care reform because of that. We don’t want to give the health insurance companies more money, we ant them to go away. And Cuccinelli, perhaps, is helping us with that.
It makes you wonder. Maybe he’s really working for us?
Presidential Space Summit Key to Future
Thursday, March 25th, 2010Lack of Full Funding for Virginia Spaceport Concerns Legislator: $500,000 Lacking
Thursday, March 25th, 2010Springing It
Wednesday, March 24th, 2010China Takes Pride in Space Program But … 4th Spaceport Construction Will be Late
Wednesday, March 24th, 2010Congressional Hearings on Human Spaceflight
Wednesday, March 24th, 2010What is the interstate commerce nexus of the health care reform bill?
Wednesday, March 24th, 2010Mike Gold Talks with The Economist
Wednesday, March 24th, 2010Bolden Appears Before House Committee
Wednesday, March 24th, 2010Driving Miss Daisy’s Prius
Wednesday, March 24th, 2010British Minister of Outer Space Launches UK Space Agency for Innovation in Industry
Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010What the health care plan means for you
Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010So you think the health care plan doesn’t do any good for you because you’re middle class and insured? There are a couple of handy calculators you can look at to see the immediate impact, if any:
The Washington Post’s calculator is pretty straightforward.
The NY Times calculator offers a lot of detail.
The fun game with these is to play around with your situation. What if we had another child? What if I lost my job? What if my employer dropped insurance coverage?
As it stands now, these kinds of changes can be very disruptive. A lot of people worry about losing their job because it means they’ll lose their health care — and if they can’t maintain coverage, their “preexisting conditions” will no longer be covered.
So when you think about how health care reform will effect you, think beyond how it can effect you in your current situation — think about how it could effect you if things turn out differently than you expect.