Shamelessly borrowed from RNS comes this gem:
Section 501 of ObamaCare makes a non-profit hospital giving charitable care a punishable offense. Short version: people might not buy insurance if they think they can get free care via charity, so Section 501 “discourages” giving free care by fining non-profit hospitals that do so. For-profits face no such penalty.
But, not to worry! via AceOfSpades comes the return volley.
Hospitals, being full of smart people, are now exploring buying insurance for their frequent delinquents, er, regular uninsured customers. Possibly even working ObamaCare exchange insurance that can’t deny care for pre-existing conditions into the regular admitting procedure for uninsured people.
[Later Edit, pulled from my own comment: Don’t forget that the EMTALA requires emergency medical care centers to treat all comers with emergency medical needs, and those in active labor.]
Sure, why not! No possibility of adverse selection there, right? No chance of side-effects or unintended consequences to either of these things, eh wot?
FacePalm.
Folks, we now have front-row seats at the Theater of the Absurd. Gonna need more popcorn.
This is all just getting to be so surreal.
When did we all wake up in this bizarre, Orwellian parody of reality?
November 4th, 2008.
That happened while we were sleeping and dreaming.
We woke up on January 20, 2009.
This is a brilliant move. The hospitals in this country have a real problem with patients abusing the ER. Some people are seen hundreds of times in a single year. If those people are uninsured, they are a serious drain to the hospital. Offering the more egregious of these people free insurance would be a real money maker.
Say it costs $400 a month to insure a person, but he makes 2 trips a month to the ED. If the hospital gets $4,000 for each trip, that is over $90,000 in profit.
It’s “brilliant” in the “make it crash and explode spectacularly” sort of way, yes.
And my twisted mind is seeing ‘Fast and Furious’ parallels.
I’m guessing roughly 90% of the time this whole thing was being debated the mantra was “[X number] of Americans don’t have *healthcare*!” instead of *health insurance*, which was much like the (ahem) lie that 90% of the guns recovered in Mexico were from American gun dealers.
This narrative of course conveniently ignored (or rather swept under the rug) the fact that hospitals are required by law to treat even folks who cannot pay in the Emergency Room. So now we see a part of the enacted legislation that works to make the mantra a reality, much like the efforts of ‘Fast and Furious’ to boost the numbers of guns recovered and traced back to America.
Making the reality conform to the narrative AFTER the fact.
that’s an interesting “truth” (well a lie but to certain people “truth” means the same thing) because I was actually directed by the healthcare.gov officials and state welfare officials to go to a free healthcare clinic in a non-profit hospital in the state of Pennsylvania.
But of course none that matters right? for the “truth” shall set you free if you’re conservative and hate this President.
What’s even better is that the EMTALA requires an emergency room to render aid to save lives and deliver babies. So the FedGov is going to punish a charitable non-profit hospital ER for failing to render aid in accordance to EMTALA (to people like illegal immigrants, who of course have no insurance), yet ALSO punish them for rendering aid to the uninsured, incentivizing them to dump them on the taxpayer subsidized healthcare “insurance” exchanges upon admitance. The Death Spiral of adverse selection just hit TurboFlush Warp-Speed!
Interesting that this hospital hasn’t been punished. I do find that interesting..hmm…
Please note that ObamaCare is not fully implemented yet. The fact is that law is on the books, and it’s hanging over every uninsured person walking in the door.
So Lou; take a step or two back from the political arguments and distinctions, the group identy stuff, and just ask yourself one question. Do you favor liberty or do you favor coercion?
That’s really all we’re talking about- a system of liberty protection verses a system of wholesale coercion, i.e. liberty destruction. Take your pick and choose wisely– You don’t want to be stuck on the wrong side.
I will ALWAYS favor helping people and seeing that people are taken care of. I find it intriguing (okay, not really) that you see people having a good health care system as being coercion despite it being upheld by the SCOTUS.
It’s a shame that your heart is so full of..maybe not hate but perhaps misguided attempt at “helping.” I’m sure you’re a good person but I don’t see that here.
Your problem though is that you don’t just want to help people with YOUR money or YOUR time, you want to use the force of government to coerce money from others to spend in ways that YOU think is desirable, without regard to cost or consequence. In other words, you hate freedom, because other might not make the choices you want them to.
Actually, I do use my time. I find interesting that you know if I work in a soup kitchen or volunteer at a health clinic.
And by your reaction, I can tell that you’d love to see my disabled mother and stepfather on the streets or dead. Thus, showing you are not one to be talked to or reasoned with.
Overgeneralize much? And please learn to read. There is that word “JUST” that I included. It’s important.
As for your parents, if I support them VOLUNTARILY, it is charity. If you with to take my money by force to support them, via government taxation, then it is COMPULSION, not charity. I take care of mine, you take care of yours. Not a perfect system, but far more difficult to abuse.
Hey look everyone! It’s Lou Gagliardi! The person who, about 4 blog posts back, said “all gun owners are murders” and wants all of us forcibly shipped off somewhere!
Hi Lou! Tell us again how we’re all full of hate and lack compassion!
Hi Erin, please if you can show me the unphotoshopped tweets. I find it interesting, but not surprising that you’d trust a man with an agenda instead of your own two eyes.
And of course, you have absolutely no agenda whatsoever, right? Care to link to the original, undeleted, unphotoshopped tweets yourself?
I would gladly do so if they existed. you’re free to follow my tweets and read them for yourself.
I never said I didn’t have an agenda. My agenda is to protect my family and myself from gun violence, after seeing it and having it done to myself on two separate occasions by my own flesh and blood.
But I also don’t misgender, or have “screen captures” without links of proof to back them up.
I also can’t stop you from believing what you wish to believe.
It’s a shame. the more and more I talk to gun owners, the less they seem like the type of people I would want to have drinks with.
Here’s the thing. You want to protect yourself from gun violence by disarming the people who are not the problem. That will neither protect you from those that ARE a problem (guns or not) AND prevent you from taking care of your self. You have a victim mind-set. You are not willing to take responsibility for yourself and your own defense. You demand that I leave myself less able to protect my family and myself so that you can feel better, even though you will NOT be safer. It’s like you are afraid of both disease and vaccination side-effects, so you demand NOBODY get vaccinated in order that you don’t run the risk of catching a disease… just twisted.
As for drinks – I’m a teetotaler, so consuming toxic substances for recreation purposes is right out, your inability to conduct a logical argument aside.
Hahah! That’s so cute, acting like you don’t have an agenda as well. Truth of the matter, sugarcube, is that everyone in life has an agenda.
Or, I could put it bluntly: I trust Linoge because he’s been there for me when I needed him, and welcomed me when I came out to him. You know, the guy who you say is transphobic but made a public statement of support for me when I outed myself back in August.
You, on the other hand, treat me with animosity, call me a murderer because I own a gun for self-defense, and have memory-holed more than a few of your tweets — not to mention the blog post you wrote in response to me.
In other words, you’re demonstrably full of shit.
quick question, though I know the answer already and the reasoning you’ll give, can you link to this blog post that I wrote? I’m at August 2013 and my archives only go back to October 2012..and I haven’t been able to find one mention of your name, Erin. That’s “cute”
Memory holed. You’re going to claim I’m lying, which is fine, because I’m claiming you’re lying about Linoge photoshopping your tweets.
You know the blog I’m talking about, though: it was black, with red banners, and white text. You wrote it in response to my blog post here.
But come now. This is all smokescreen. I’m openly genderqueer, and have provided proof that Linoge isn’t a transphobic bigot. By not acknowledging that, and trying to deflect this conversation into a she said/she said, you’re tactitly admitting you’re wrong and you have no counter for it.
If Joe was transphobic he’d have kicked me off his blog by now. He hasn’t. Therefore you, are wrong in your assertion, but you doesn’t fit your narrative, so you’re going to ignore it in the hopes it won’t go away.
I’m your kryptonite, Lou. I’m living proof that what you say about gun owners is wrong, and you can’t handle that.
I’m a NRA certified pistol instructor. The guy that certified me is a former marine. He’s also a former “Mr Leather of Seattle” (or something like that, I forget the exact title) who married a sort of former lesbian. We were both involved in training a group of Pink Pistols, because “armed gays don’t get bashed.” A cousin of mine just got married in Portland to his partner of 20 years, and I applauded because they were a solid couple. Yeah, a whole lot of hatred, bigotry, and intolerance going on around here. Yeah, sure, you betch’a.
@Rolf I think Wendell’s title was of greater scope. Something like the PNW instead of just Seattle.
And did you do anything for Pink Pistols? I was in Idaho by the time Cease Fear gave way to Pink Pistols.
There is other data to refute claims of me, and other gun owners, having issues with the LGBT community here and here.
A bit, not a lot. One basic pistol class for a dozen or so of them, IIRC. It was the first time they did such a thing, and there was a bit of trepidation all around as to what to expect (more than a little expectation of worst possible stereotyping going around, “Seattle gays meet redneck gun nuts,” but it worked out pretty well. It was about guns and safety and self defense, and all the rest of any possible baggage or political conflict was checked at the door, as it should be.
Oh, wait, there’s the blog post of yours that I was talking about. You don’t say my name, but you link to my blog, and accuse me of defaming you.
Do you have ANY legs left to stand on at this point?
In other words, the incompetent but well meaning government officials told you to do the wrong thing because they didn’t know the law, or were ignorant of its consequences. As usual. The fact they told you to do something has little baring on whether it’s the proper thing to do or not. The law sys what it says. If you want your own truth, you can’t have it; reality doesn’t work that way.
Your anecdotal evidence of this being a “lie” is superceded by the fact that hospitals have started working on a work around. That makes you an idiot.
The fact that you cannot distinguish between a disagreement with policy from hatred of a person makes you mentally unstable.
I am sure that the President is a nice guy to himself, his family and his friends. It is only everyone else he doesn’t care about about.
Have fun in your fantasy world where you’re a victim and people whose only wish is to be left alone keep ruining you day to day existence. But do remember to stay at the kiddie table with your intellectual equals.
I have a post coming up about the mental issues this guy has. It will go live at 12:00 PM PST.
As much as I take issue with what Lou says and does, can we all agree to call her by female pronouns? Linoge made an honest mistake, and we can see by her blog post that she identifies as female.
A little courtesy will cost us nothing.
Certainly. I was unsure and thought I everything I said was gender neutral. But I see one slipped through before I discovered the preference.
Sorry about that.
I find it cute, given his hostility towards me and mine towards him, that you’d wave it off as a “mistake.”
Though, i will contact him and find out and if it was, I will be a bigger person and apologize and retract my statements.
You find it cute? That’s nice. Even though you and I disagree politically about everything, I stood up for you as a person and asked that people respect your gender identity. I didn’t have to do that, you know. I could have let them continue to call you “he”.
And how do you reply? In a condescending manner. You say it’s cute that I gave the benefit of the doubt to my friend, and then say I’m “waving it off” deliberate rudeness — when it fact, there is demonstrable proof that he isn’t transphobic as you claim.
Also, you’re a goddamn liar. You say you didn’t write a post in response to me, but here it is, right on your own blog.
You want to know why we’re hostile to you? It doesn’t have anything to do with your plumbing. It’s solely because you’re a nasty, lying little piece of trash.
Fine. Olive branch rescinded. Have at him, guys.
*dingdingding*
We have a winner.
I am “transphobic” to the same degree that I am racist – not at all.
My dislike for Lou has absolutely nothing to do with his/her/its gender, whether we are talking genetics or personal perception. I dislike that individual because of its incessant lying, hatred, lying, bigotry, lying, advocacy for the unjust abridgement of basic, Constitutionally-protected human rights, and, oh, did I mention lying?
I simply have no tolerance for liars, and I cannot say as though I will ever apologize for or change that.
That said, unlike Lou, I stand by my words and do not capriciously and arbitrarily delete whole conversations just to play the victim in some grand play for attention. Yes, I referred to Lou as “he” simply because it indicated it wanted to be so referred in the recent past – that was absolutely horrid of me. And, yes, now I am referring to it as “it” simply because I am tired of keeping up with this poor, persecuted victim’s arbitrary gender reassignments, and I am tired of playing its stupid-assed games.
If it wants a big meanie-face to hold up as an example of big meanie-faces, I can do that. Be careful what you ask for, Lou.
It is worth noting that Lou never contacted me on Facebook, email, my blog, or Twitter.
I guess we can chalk that up as another one of its lies.
@Erin and @Linoge,
If you read up on the psychology of liberals you getting angry at them is satisfying to them. It makes them happy. A better way to deal with them is to dismiss them as being irrelevant.
But that said, I would have thought Lou’s more recent comments here were worthy of being tolerated. Encourage her when she says something that makes sense and is factual and correct her when she says something that is irrational or counterfactual.
Knock yourself out, Joe, but I dare say Lou’s habit of deleting contentious comments it makes and then lying about their very existence – as exhibited on the other comment threads – illustrates how pointless “correct her when she says something that is irrational or counterfactual” will be.
I will just stick to pointing and laughing and taking my screen shots; seems to work fairly well.
The more times you can redirect Lou over here to comment, the more non-deleted comments we have to document the mental illness with, so…
While I appreciate the sentiment, there was no mistake. I distinctly remember a conversation Lou had with someone else on Twitter regarding how it found it easier these days to identify as male, and thus was going to do so for the time being.
Of course, that Twitter conversion has since been deleted, much like the post you mention above has been deleted, Erin, but that does not mean neither the conversation nor the post never existed.
It does, however, mean Lou has yet another opportunity to play the persecuted victim, which appears to be the only self-identity it really has.
Unlike Lou’s personal twitter spew and blog posts, comments here will stay here for posterity, future reference, evidence, and perhaps an occasional giggle. No screencaps needed.
exactly which means I can screen capture AND link to this post to show where a gun owner admitted to being misgendering.
“No chance of side-effects or unintended consequences…”
Oh, they’re intended all right.
OK, let me rephrase that as “officially unintended consequences.”
But seriously, I’m not sure if these guys are bright enough to make a system this bad on purpose, or if it’s just lots of random stupidity and cupidity finding its level.