How's that Obamacare Repeal Working Out For You?

[SuburbanFarmer]

Thanks, GOP. Thanks, Donald.

This Secret Obamacare 'Replacement' Lets Your Boss Invade Your Privacy AND Gut Your Paycheck

President Donald Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan have laid out a three-step process to allegedly "repeal and replace" the misnamed Affordable Care Act (ACA) or "Obamacare." The much-lamented American Health Care Act is step one, regulatory reform is step two, and another piece of legislation would follow as step three. As it turns out, a key measure likely to be included in step three would actually expand a controversial program in Obamacare — subverting employees' genetic privacy rights and enabling employers to gut their paychecks if they don't participate in "workplace wellness" programs.

The "Preserving Employee Wellness Programs Act" (H.R. 1313) would allow companies to force employees to undergo genetic testing or risk paying a penalty of thousands of dollars, and let employers see that genetic health information. This law builds upon Obamacare's expansion of workplace wellness programs while undercutting a 2008 law which protects genetic privacy.

Preserving Employee Wellness Programs Act

H.R. 1313 removes these protections. It would allow employers to financially penalize people who refuse to disclose their information, forcing workers who can’t afford the penalties to compromise their privacy rights. However, this doesn’t just stop at employees; the law would permit employers to require employees to reveal information about their families’ health as well.

It Might Soon Be Legal for Employers to Force You Into a Genetic Test

[K@th]

Thanks, GOP. Thanks, Donald.

This Secret Obamacare 'Replacement' Lets Your Boss Invade Your Privacy AND Gut Your Paycheck

It Might Soon Be Legal for Employers to Force You Into a Genetic Test

The mandate will be gone, but now we'll be live acting Gattaca. Is this what winning looks like?

[Martin Hash]

"Privacy" is a constructed (made up) Right. It's the same one used to allow mentally ill people to obtain guns. Already, Snoden's released documents show Americans have no Privacy Right, really, so just picking & choosing which privacy to enforce is hypocracy.

[SuburbanFarmer]

"Privacy" is a constructed (made up) Right. It's the same one used to allow mentally ill people to obtain guns. Already, Snoden's released documents show Americans have no Privacy Right, really, so just picking & choosing which privacy to enforce is hypocracy.

To be clear, you're fine with abandoning all of your privacy? No problem with me mounting a HashCam in your house, and going through bank records?

[Martin Hash]

Dude, you don't have the power-of-the-State.

My point is that privacy is not a handball of political convenience.

[Martin Hash]

The battle over healthcare is:
Is healthcare a Right or voluntary? (I think it should be a Right.)
If it is a Right then it should be paid for out of the General Fund, not like Medicare which only Working-People pay for, no, like the military & judicial system that taxpayers pay for. Also, if it is a Right then it is de facto socialism so the concept of "most good to the most people" axiom applies. This all boils down to that the 1% should be paying for Medicare, and everyone should get Medicare. Everything else is just rich people trying to get more money to leave to their aristocratic heirs.

[Speaker to Animals]

The whole business of speaking of it in terms of rights is silly. It's something most of us want to provide to people as long as we can afford it. That's not a right. It's a privilege of being an American.

That said.. this is fucking unbelievable. These cuckservatives will be the death of us. We might as well just let Obamacare die and put the uninsured on Medicare. I am not sure how to fund that. Maybe we should double our Medicare taxes to cover the uninsured? I don't really know. But that can't be worse than this.

[atanamis]

The whole business of speaking of it in terms of rights is silly. It's something most of us want to provide to people as long as we can afford it. That's not a right. It's a privilege of being an American.

That said.. this is fucking unbelievable. These cuckservatives will be the death of us. We might as well just let Obamacare die and put the uninsured on Medicare. I am not sure how to fund that. Maybe we should double our Medicare taxes to cover the uninsured? I don't really know. But that can't be worse than this.

+1

The problem with single payer health care is that you put full control over the market into the hands of the government. If your government is responsible, maybe they do a decent job and people get good care. If your government is the US government, well we already HAVE the VA health care system and Medicare, and we've seen how badly they are managed. The US government spends as much per citizen on health care as the UK government does, but while the UK government provides universal health care with that spending in the US we get much less. And the US government doesn't get good value for its money when it spends on health care either.

Some people don't really care about this. So long as things are "fair", they don't care if that means we over-spend and under-perform. You see that same mentality with regard to public schools. And if we complain that many public schools the solution is always a generic "more money" argument, and not anything specific to DO with that money. Social services require careful oversight, since there is no market to turn to if your providers to crap work. A market punishes those whose customers are unhappy or dissatisfied because they go elsewhere, a social service often doesn't depend on results for funding though and can just become a money hole.

I really don't think many people are saying that the poor or unemployed should just die from their lack of health care and be ignored. Claiming that this is the position of one's opposition is rationally dishonest. In the US, we already do mandate that an ER has to take in any emergency case and provide treatment. And while it isn't ideal, we also have bankruptcy for those who find themselves $400k in debt and unable to pay it. For most people, it really isn't a question of whether to help those in need here, but what kind of a model will best do that. A market doesn't mean that those unable to pay are just screwed, it means that people can negotiate what they care about the most and that those who need help can be offered it through independent mechanisms. That's mostly what I'd like to see. I understand the arguments of those who want other things.

[Martin Hash]

Medicare comes out of First Dollar, that's an awful way to pay for anything. It's regressive taxation that simply provides more money for the aristocracy to pass onto their heirs.

[Martin Hash]

The military is full-on socialism, as is the judicial system. They both work effectively though not efficiently, as can healthcare, like in the U.K.

The NHS (U.K. healthcare, of which I was on for a year) got into trouble because it became too inefficient. The VA got into trouble because of perverse incentives that arose when they tried to mix in some Capitalism.