In other nations "freeloaders" are called citizens

[whatchamacallit]

Isn't there a way to support the ACA without adopting the debasing/divisive propaganda of the insurance industry?

[kestrel91316]

1. Why are you asking DUers this? You should be asking the teabaggers and freepers.

[sabrina 1]

2. Because it is being used here, by a few people. We expect it from teabaggers

but not from DUers.

[whatchamacallit]

3. Here

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=884252

[SunsetDreams]

7. Have any more links?

The way I see it is if it's just one person and you are providing a link to their post, maybe it would be better to respond under that post.

[whatchamacallit]

9. Possibly

or it could languish there. I made this call. Thanks for your concern.

[SunsetDreams]

11. Oh I see

It just seems that if you are wondering this about why one person says something, it would have a better chance of getting a response under their post. They have a better chance of seeing your reply in "My Posts". They may or may not see your post here and know that it is them that you are talking about.

[whatchamacallit]

14. Poll_Blind refers to some posts with similar messages below

Also, the poster I linked to does not respond well to constructive criticism, so...

[SunsetDreams]

16. Thanks I didn't see those

I will take a look at them

[Poll_Blind]

18. This "freeloaders" meme has been going on since Hiilary Clinton, under whose candidacy the...

...meme was forged in a Democratic, health care reform context. This may seem new to you, but it's been a divisive issue on DU for about 4+ years now.

See this thread. This goes waaaay back on DU. Total right-wing bullshit and at least I'm not surprised that such a thing would come from the Clinton campaign.

PB

[Poll_Blind]

4. And here too, lots of threads with this sort of talk in them:

HERE

PB

[Poll_Blind]

8. And Nancy Pelosi calls them "freeriders" instead of "freeloaders". Listen to her here:

NPR, from after the ruling. You can also read it in the transcript, it's one of the first things she gets into.

PB

[SunsetDreams]

21. She is not talking about people who can't afford it

PELOSI: What I call this is the free rider provision. Call it what you will, but the fact is that some people who will not, even though they're younger and healthier and have some resources, decide they're invincible and they're not going to pay into a system. So, when they get sick, then they think they can just dip into it and that makes it more expensive for other people. And so, in order to eliminate the free rider piece of this, there's a penalty to be paid if you don't want to participate. Call it what you will. What it does is lower cost for the American people and it's a fair way to go.

[Poll_Blind]

23. None of my friends defrauded the healtcare system, which is what she implies. Have yours?

Seriously, how many people do you know who have flat-out defrauded the healthcare system? How many people do you know who've fucked over all us good people like that quote implies?

Here's the point: If they were really interested in stopping the abuse by those people, they would have done it. This is not about stopping that abuse, it's about letting an entire industry get us on the hook, whether we'd like to or not. And a popular meme driving this is that those who choose not to buy health insurance are somehow fucking over those who are.

PB

[SunsetDreams]

25. No, none of my friends have either

but I think your reading too much into what she said.

[Poll_Blind]

27. "So, when they get sick, then they think they can just dip into it and that makes it more...

...expensive for other people."

SunsetDreams, for all avoidance of doubt on the matter here is a link to our President's speech from a few days ago. If you skip to 3:45 he says "First, when uninsured people who can afford coverage and get sick and show up at the emergency room for care, the rest of us end up paying for their care in the form of higher premiums."

Everyone I ever knew who went to an emergency room for care and didn't have insurance got a big fat motherfucking bill which they had to pay.

It's not like next time we met up they showed me the bill, we rolled it up with some weed and smoked a joint to destroying America.

PB

[SunsetDreams]

32. Thanks for showing me that.

I see that he is basically saying the same thing she did, only giving emergency room as an example.

I still think you are reading too much into it. The people they are talking about are the very people who CAN AFFORD it, but refuse to do so for whatever reason. Then they get very sick and run to the emergency room for help. They relied on the services and even though they had a bill "they had to pay" did not pay the bill because of flat out refusal or the bill is really high and they can't possibly pay it. If they would have been paying premiums all along, that bill would have been significantly reduced. Hospitals, clinics, doctors have to raise costs in those instances to cover for people who will not or cannot pay. That in turn raises insurance rates.

Edit to clarify: I don't mean that is the only reason that insurance companies raise their rates.

[Poll_Blind]

35. The reason why the quote from the President begins with "First, ..." it's because the words which...

...directly precede it are "This " (upholding the mandate) "is important for two reasons."

I'm at a loss as to why you might have the opinion that I'm reading too much into this when, on national television a few days ago, the President said to an audience of at least 50 million people, LIVE, that one of the two main reasons for the individual mandate was because freeloaders were soaking emergency rooms. Repeated by Pelosi on down to other DUers.

I did read your paragraph and I want to say, again, I have never known of anyone who had (or even could) just go into an emergency room and stiff them for care, much less an epidemic of same, necessitating the enrollment under duress of every American with very few exceptions.

This is an idea cooked up by the health insurance industries.

To wit:
Forbes: Mandate To Buy Coverage: Health Insurance Industry's Idea, Not Obama's
Frontline: Obama's Deal

The Forbes link you can skim, but you really should watch that episode of Frontline. It's free to view online at PBS.

PB

[girl gone mad]

34. If you have resources, the hospital will come after you..

and they will probably collect. In many cases, you'll end up paying above the standard rate an insurance company would bargain for.

The "freeloaders" meme is ridiculous on multiple levels. 1/3 of all uncompensated care is provided to people who have insurance (insurers like to deny claims and leave the customer holding the bill). Uncompensated care is largely covered through Medicare and Medicaid, which most people pay into at some point in their working lives so the assertion that poor people who get care are scamming the system is false in most cases. Maybe they didn't pay enough into the system to fully cover their treatment costs, but liberals have historically supported the idea of helping people, not forcing them to pay more in to the system than they get back in the name of corporate profits.

[SickOfTheOnePct]

5. Free riders is better - just like the unions use

It gets the point across that these are people that could afford to buy insurance but refuse.

[patrice]

29. And Unions are some of the ones best suited to responding constructively to this perceived

problem. I believe people WANT to earn their keep as best they can. Our system is just debasing them and throwing them away. Unions could respond with more constructive programs for those who commit to appropriately establishing their merit.

[SickOfTheOnePct]

30. I agree

And I agree that the vast majority of people want to earn their own keep. As in anything else, there is a miniscule subset of people that just want someone else to take care of them while they go about their lives.

[patrice]

33. Yep. AND some of those are the MOST financially powerful of us all. Others, the least!

[Solly Mack]

6. I don't like that framing either.

Right-wingers call people who need welfare and other social programs such names. (and worse)

Using right-wing framing to point out right-wing hypocrisy never works. It just doesn't register with them. They can't see their own hypocrisy, so why lock yourself into their framing.

[Poll_Blind]

10. If they don't villify the 44 million Americans who don't have insurance as "freeloaders" then...

...how ever can they convince America that those same Americans have the money to purchase insurance plans from corporate entities?

That's really what it comes down to: The right-wing (and we're talking fucking classic Archie Bunker style) meme of freeloaders who need their comeuppance.

PB

[CJCRANE]

12. *The ACA provides freedom and opportunity to all Americans*

That's all the Dems needed to say.

As Lakoff said, frame it in moral terms, (you can explain the details later).

The Repubs use the moral framing but they can't explain their policies coherently. They have the oneliner soundbites but no detail that would stand up to followup questions.

[Poll_Blind]

15. Freedom. Doesn't that imply choice? nt

PB

[CJCRANE]

19. Freedom from the worry of crippling debt...

freedom to start a business, freedom to go for your dream job, freedom to live your life without the Sword of Damocles of health insurance providers denying you or your family coverage due to preexisitng conditions (and all the other provisions that increase coverage).

[SickOfTheOnePct]

22. The threat of crippling debt is not going to go away

It will be reduced, no doubt about it, but the out of pocket maximums aren't going to solve the problem. Unless the ACA completely changes the way insurance works, which I haven't read or heard that it does, the out of pocket maximum will only apply to covered services and treatments. So, if a patient has a treatment not covered by insurance, there will be no out of pocket maximum applied to that treatment.

[Poll_Blind]

24. Try again without the (surprsingly weak) word games. Does "freedom" imply choice? nt

PB

[CJCRANE]

28. Of course it implies choice...

but you can be given something where there is little choice but which increases your future choices in other areas.

If more people get healthcare coverage that increases their choices in terms of jobs that are suitable etc.

[ProSense]

13. I have no

problem with the term "freeloaders" to describe people who avoid paying taxes.

I mean, people who can't afford health care are citizens. People who can afford to choose between insurance or paying a tax, which they can afford, but choose to avoid both, are "freeloaders."

They are no different from someone who avoids paying income taxes. No different from hiding money in the Cayman Islands to avoid U.S. taxes.

[MineralMan]

17. Freeloaders is a very poor term for people to use.

If people are poor, then the society should help them with medical care.

If people can actually afford to pay for their healthcare or insurance to cover it, then they should do that. If they don't they are "free riders."

The whole idea of a mandate, with the protections built in for those who cannot afford either to pay for or insure against health care costs, is what we're talking about. Any system that provides health care for all is going to involve people paying into it, even when they don't need healthcare. A sane system covers those who cannot pay into it, too. Any of us could find ourselves in that position at any time. Stuff happens to people.

"Freeloader" implies that someone is poor because they want to be, and want to be taken care of by the rest of us. That's not what this is about at all.

[SickOfTheOnePct]

20. Agree 100% with everything you said n/t

[ProSense]

31. This is

Freeloaders is a very poor term for people to use.

If people are poor, then the society should help them with medical care.

...conflating terms. "Freeloader" is someone who takes advantage. That is completely separate from someone in need.

Existing law offers Medicaid. The ACA expanded the pool of people who would gain access based on income.

The mandate will ask an individual to pay a tax in lieu of obtaining health insurance. If that person cannot afford it, s/he is exempt. If a person can afford to pay it , but refuses to do so, that's not a person in need, that's a person in defiance.

Low income Americans are not freeloaders, and only a RW hack would try to claim otherwise.

Conflating poor Americans with people who refuse to pay their fair (people in defiance) is a weak argument to use to reject the notion that there are freeloaders.

Like I said, in the big picture, a tax cheat (person in defiance/freeloader) deserves no sympathy. That's a person who takes advantage.

[whatchamacallit]

36. It's interesting that another entity can decide what we can afford

"Affordability" is not as binary as your simplistic answer suggests. There's likely to be a lot of gradation in the spectrum due to individual circumstance, especially just above the poverty demarcation. Depending on the actual fees and costs, there could be many who opt out for reasons other than wanting to buy another yacht.

[ProSense]

39. Problem

"Affordability" is not as binary as your simplistic answer suggests. There's likely to be a lot of gradation in the spectrum due to individual circumstance, especially just above the poverty demarcation. Depending on the actual fees and costs, there could be many who opt out for reasons other than wanting to buy another yacht.

...I made no suggestion that "affordability" was "simplistic."

On one hand, there are people who have hardships. On the other hand, there are those who have their priorities screwed up, which also creates an "individual circumstance" the precludes the ability to afford health insurance.

I mean, I can listen to the arguments of those who claim that it's impossible to live on $250,000 in NYC.

[whatchamacallit]

41. Again

There you go neatly dividing the US population into two camps:

The poor, who can't afford it.
and
everyone else.

The problem with talking points is that they're devoid of nuance.

[ProSense]

42. I did no such thing. n/t

[SickOfTheOnePct]

44. Exactly n/t

[PoliticAverse]

26. Bill Maher is now using 'freeloader'...

"Its not a tax on healthcare its a tax on freeloaders who weren't paying but using; wld be like calling a speeding ticket a driving ticket."

See:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002886517
https://twitter.com/#!/billmaher/

[JDPriestly]

37. In this context, freeloaders are people who don't pay for their own healthcare

and refuse to pay for insurance even though they could afford it.

If you can either pay for your own healthcare or can't afford either to pay for your own healthcare or to pay for insurance, but are willing to accept financial health -- a subsidy -- to pay for insurance, then you are not a freeloader. Then, you are a citizen with a right to healthcare.

It is irresponsible and unfair for people to wait until their is an emergency to suddenly seek healthcare and expect doctors and hospitals to provide it at the cost of those who are paying for their own healthcare of for their own insurance.

If you can't afford healthcare, accept help so that you can.

[whatchamacallit]

38. I suppose seeking health care only when you need it could be viewed as irresponsible

But with 85% of Americans locked in a losing battle to get ahead before the clock runs out, it will be the choice of many. The ACA may fix a problem, but it could complicate or exacerbate others.

[Yavin4]

40. In Those Nations, All Citizens Pay Into Their Healthcare System

Take Europe for example, ALL of their citizens pay taxes on their income and sales. No one is exempt.

[whatchamacallit]

43. Yeah it's all the same

Lol. We all pay taxes. Let me know when they're required to directly pay private corporations.

[Yavin4]

46. The Corp. That Provides Your Electricity Is Private

But, you have no problems paying them for electricity.

[ErikJ]

45. Verbal Ju Jitsu-use THEIR insults against THEM! Drives them crazy.

They call people who get free govt assistance and healthcare freeloaders, so call them freeloaders when they dont want to buy mandated insurance. I think the proper term is free-riders but WTH. Fight back or they will run all over you.

[NYC_SKP]

47. Ya know, if it's directed toward people who HAVE wealth and refuse to pay into the system....

Used against people ABLE but UNWILLING to pay, then it's apt.

Do people think money grows on trees and services should be free?

I cannot believe I have to explain this.

Do you realize that a single payer system would also require people to pay into it???

And if people who could refused that there might be consequences???

[whatchamacallit]

48. Thanks Captain Condescension

While everyone understands goods and services must be purchased, either directly or by way of a tax, not everyone is down with our uniquely american (shit) way of providing "health care". To hear you tell it, there's no difference between single payer and being required to pay grossly inefficient, for-profit corporations, who traditionally make money denying care. "It costs money either way, dude!".

[NYC_SKP]

49. It's a process, it's steps in the right direction. Here...