Obamacare to increase premiums by 304 percent???

[LogGrad98]

Well... there's this:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/how-much-credit-does-obama-get-for-bin-ladens-reported-death/2011/05/02/AFzQ8jZF_blog.html

Which says this:



Since it's a combination, I'll give credit where credit's due: Not all of the information that was collected by the Bush administration was bad. A lot of the information they retrieved was under dubious circumstances(gitmo, "enhanced interrogation techiniques"), but it wasn't all bad.

But even though it's all they had to go on, it was wrong. As a leader, he still should have owned up and said "Ya know.. I was given some information. It wasn't correct. I'm sorry I took this as far as I did.". He didn't. He won't.

Realistically where credit is due is to the agencies actually with boots on the ground doing the grunt work collecting the intel, not to any "administration", whether Bush or Obama. Those agencies, the people doing the actual work anyway, change very little through regime changes. They have been collecting data and intel on OBL for decades. They chased down thousands of leads, narrowed the options, made the contacts, selected the targets, etc. etc. They have also presented OBL as a target, one they knew they could take out at different times, to different administrations as well, including both Bush Sr. and Clinton. It isn't like they were all sitting around until someone said "hey why don't you guys get off your asses and get the courier that can lead you to OBL". It is a final result of years of painstaking work that lead to the ultimate conclusion. The politicians who happen to be in office get to (try to) take full credit. That is why there was such an uproar from Navy Seals, and other intel operatives, both current and past, due to the short-changing of all of their hard work and the oversimplification of "Obama got OBL". You are absolutely right, we need to give credit where credit is due.

As far as Bush owning up, he actually did for the most part as was posted already. But you are right that no politician is going to fully admit when they really screw up.

 

[LogGrad98]

Insurance has been painfully expensive for a whole now. Unless work provided it, most people simply can not afford it. I lucked out and got a 1k deductible policy for a family of three for $489/month. Then the aca came along and I can get a less expensive plan through the exchange. But in the meantime, my work has started reimbursing for coverage. Now I found out that if your work pays for coverage, you are I eligible for the aca exchanges.

Are you in Utah? No matter how I try to slice it we cannot find a supplemental plan to cover even part of our family through the exchange that is remotely affordable. We tried looking for something to cover just my wife and 1 of my kids, still the cheapest plan sucked and was well over $500 per month. To get anything remotely reasonably priced we could cover just my wife and that was still just under $500 per month. And you are right, I am fully inelligible since I get insurance through my work. We can still get a policy for my wife since she doesn't have a plan through her work, even though she is covered under my plan, but it is too expensive to make it worth it. I haven't yet heard of many plans being better and/or cheaper through the ACA realistically, yours is one of the first I have heard personally. It seems all it is doing is forcing people to buy the insurance they may not have bought before, and we already knew it was not really doing anything about costs.

 

[One Brow]

I have always had a plan through my insurance at work, so I am not that familiar with the private insurance plan market, but from what we were looking at last summer that is very steep. Has it always been near that expensive? And how can people say that at $1000 that is better than either a bare-bones coverage or none at all for some families, when that would mean the difference between eating or not for some families.

Employers have long received tax deductions/benefits from offering health care. Employees often pay less than half the true cost.

If the cost truly makles a difference between eating and not, those families would qualify for subsidies, wouldn't they? Unless they have a large income tied up in conveniences and luxuries, at any rate.