Try Not to Laugh at the Latest Folks Losing Their Health Coverage

Sure, schadenfreude can be fun, but let's not forget that the rolling disaster that is the Affordable Care Act is an opportunity to teach a valuable lesson to progressives about the inability of central planners, no matter how smart they are (or just think they are), to truly know enough about the markets to control them. Obamacare cancellations are hitting people that actually matter: the New York elite.

From their very own hometown newspaper, The New York Times:

Many in New York's professional and cultural elite have long supported President Obama's health care plan. But now, to their surprise, thousands of writers, opera singers, music teachers, photographers, doctors, lawyers and others are learning that their health insurance plans are being canceled and they may have to pay more to get comparable coverage, if they can find it.

They are part of an unusual informal health insurance system that has developed in New York in which independent practitioners were able to get lower insurance rates through group plans, typically set up by their professional associations or chambers of commerce. That allowed them to avoid the sky-high rates in New York's individual insurance market, historically among the most expensive in the country.

But under the Affordable Care Act, they will be treated as individuals, responsible for their own insurance policies. For many of them, that is likely to mean they will no longer have access to a wide network of doctors and a range of plans tailored to their needs. And many of them are finding that if they want to keep their premiums from rising, they will have to accept higher deductible and co-pay costs or inferior coverage.

Read the whole piece here and try not to chuckle too hard at the fancy smart people having the exact same problems trying to use the program as the rest of us muggles.

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Comments

[Fist of Etiquette]

Obamacare will eventually consume us all.

[Duke]

Here's a real comment from the NYT article:

It was unfortunate that in promoting the ACA to the nation, President Obama and others talked about it solely in terms of benefiting individuals. "YOU can keep your plan if YOU like it" was not only inaccurate, it was the wrong way to explain the benefit of the law: A healthier society overall, where people who need health care can afford it, the person who might otherwise have been coughing TB at you on the subway is instead under a doctor's care, and medical bankruptcies no longer threaten our families.

Yes, people who can afford to pay more will, in many cases, pay more. But all of us are the richer for it -- even the rich.

See, those of us going broke paying high insurance premiums are ALL richer for it. You have to die to really live, or something.

[Sevo]

So the person who wrote that; can we presume that she will forgo any deductions to pay her 'fair share'?

[LynchPin1477]

It was unfortunate that in promoting the ACA to the nation, President Obama and others talked about it solely in terms of benefiting individuals.

It is unfortunate. If he had been honest the law would never have passed and we wouldn't be in this mess.

coughing TB at you on the subway

Is there really an epidemic of consumption on the NY subway?

But all of us are the richer for it

This person obviously hasn't been forced to pay more for crappier insurance yet.

[PapayaSF]

A doctor here did tell me there's a TB epidemic in San Francisco, due to illegal aliens. I got rather sick and they insisted on a chest X-ray to rule out TB. One pleasant surprise was that the X-ray place was OK with cash: $70.

[wingnutx]

Phoenix has been ground zero in a drug-resistant TB epidemic for over a decade.

We wear HEPA filters on a lot of calls just because of that.

[LarryA]

But all of us are the richer for it

"Money is evil, and the more the government takes from you, the richer you are."

[Marshall Gill]

Mulitplier!

[JW]

MULTIPASS.

[Juice]

and medical bankruptcies no longer threaten our families.

How is this true? Is that part of the law?

[MLN]

Yup, no lifetime limit. You get sick and stay in the hospital for as long as you need to get well, and the insurance company cannot stop payments like they used to. Fact.

[MLN]

My son lives in NY. He couldn't get medical insurance for the longest time. Way too expensive. He could only afford those "catastrophic" plans that don't take care of the little things. With the ACA he is now covered. Thanks Obama for fooling a bunch of people so we could get this thing passed!

[fish_remote]

That scraggly bitch told the poets and the artists that they would get health insurance.

FUFOE

[fish_remote]

Oh you quick bastard! Foiled again!

[Fist of Etiquette]

Always a bridesmade.

[Fist of Etiquette]

(That's the male equivalent of a bridesmaid, you idiot.)

[fish_remote]

Well there have been many brides I would have liked to have "made".

Too slow there as well most...okay ....every time!

[Episiarch]

But under the Affordable Care Act, they will be treated as individuals, responsible for their own insurance policies

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA (this laughter is directed only at those among them who supported Obamacare)

Sure, schadenfreude can be fun

You bet it can!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

When did Obama become Santa Claus? Because the gifts just keep on coming this Xmas.

[Eduard van Haalen]

See, Santa Claus *is* black!

[Tman]

Apparently they are saving the last gift for the new year.

Report: Insurers fear they'll have a net loss in enrollments for the year on December 31

So far, at least 4.8 million Americans have received insurance cancellations notices, but Laszewski predicts that the total Obamacare enrollment will be less than half that number on January 1.

"My guess is that we'll have somewhere around a million and a half people signed up for Obamacare on January 1 in the states and in helathcare.gov," he says. The big question then, he adds, is "why have we gone through this whole dislocation of the American health insurance system if only a million and a half to two million buy health insurance?"

[Sevo]

Got a link for that? I'd love to see it, since last week the number losing insurance was claimed to be something like 3.7M. If the link is current, it looks like that number is subject to further growth.
In CA the number is supposedly ~1m (which a lefty apologist in the Chron this morning claimed is "few"); 'sign-ups' (undefined) are less than 200K.

[Tman]

Sorry Sevo, forgot the link.

http://hotair.com/archives/201.....cember-31/

There are links to the other details in that link.

[Sevo]

Thank you! Gladdens the heart!

[JW]

If you like your president, you can keep him.

Do you hear me? YOU CAN FUCKING KEEP HIM.

[Eduard van Haalen]

It says ny has some of the highest insurance rates. Why is this? I mean, I have my own guess...

[Sevo]

I've been told by some here that NY's insurance regs were so bad, there was a chance O'care was going to reduce the cost for some.
So the answer (surprise!) is gov't fuck-ups.

[Swiss Servator, Alps avast!]

The NY Dept of Insurance is proof that Satan exists and walks among us.

[John Thacker]

Yes, for people who were in the real individual insurance market. OTOH, the NY regulations meant that the thing to do was to wait to sign up for insurance *after* you got sick, since they couldn't turn you down.

These people were all in various informal group-like guild insurance programs designed to keep them out of the NY individual market, beset with regulations that they supported.

The ACA intentionally dissolved these plans in order to get these folks into the individual market.

[MikeP]

From a comment four years ago...

Going to ehealthinsurance.com and trying a 35-year-old male in California, I find a nice $3500 deductible 0% coinsurance plan from Anthem for $108 per month. There are 113 other choices that get you down toward $73 per month but cost you some coinsurance.

Trying the same person in Albany, New York, a grand total of 3 plans show up. The cheapest of them that isn't hospitalization only is $425 per month.

Now if you got the $108 per month California policy for a year and were unlucky enough to spend the whole deductible, it would cost you $4796 for the year. The New York policy, on the other hand, would cost you $5100 for the year even if you never saw a doctor.

I don't know what "affordable" means to you or what state insurance regulations you are trapped under now, but you get the idea. And since the reasons insurance options vary so wildly are almost entirely state insurance commissions and the legislatures that feed them, the answer to your facetious questions about where you can get care is anywhere in the US.

By the way, these are the first two states I tried. You are free to look for cheaper ones.

[Austrian Anarchy]

Someone tell Obama to fix New York insurance with price controls! Wait, I thought BHOcare had price controls already?

[DRM]

The individual market rates in NY were sky-high because the NY state legislature, in its idiocy, required insurers to cover anyone, even with preexisting conditions, without any measures to try to force healthy people into the pool. So you had exactly the adverse selection "death spiral" that will happen to Obamacare if the mandate doesn't manage to push enough people into buying coverage.

[Sevo]

..."So you had exactly the adverse selection "death spiral" that will happen to Obamacare if the mandate doesn't manage to push enough people into buying coverage."

Which means O'care depends on finding a whole lot of people who can't count to ten.

[Juice]

And have money to blow.

[Sevo]

Friday afternoon schadenfreude! And the holidays coming up! And my shopping is done!
Happy holidays to youze!

[MikeP]

It is said that catastrophes are a matter of pure chance, and there were those who would have said that the passengers of the Comet Obamacare were not guilty or responsible for the thing that happened to them.

[Medical Physics Guy]

+1 Non-contradiction

[SusanM]

I tried

[fish_remote]

+1 Friday afternoon video Schadenfreude!

[Medical Physics Guy]

are in CoNY Times commenters are one sorry lot. They show up all day to say two things: 1) this bad thing happened because Republicans 2) if something bad is Democrat-related they reply "why are focusing on this when you should be focusing on how bad the Republicans are?"

[Austrian Anarchy]

Funny thing is, in New York all the Republicans are Democrats, and in the last two presidential elections they were Democrats too.

[XM]

NYT comment section is in a alternate universe. The LAT and SF Chronicle comment section actually skew to the right a bit.

[Medical Physics Guy]

squirrels added the prefix "are in Co" to that. but this is a sign I should go to bed.

[steve baker]

Better just try not to pee your pants from laughing too hard!

[Sevo]

Hey, they're lucky! The got what they paid for!

[Sudden]

Predictably, the comments I'm seeing read like this:

"Simple solution: Cut out the middleman, Single Payer, aka Medicare for All!

Of course the politicians are on the payroll of the middlemen, aka Private Health Insurers, partaking in the skim."

It's always the fault of the middlemen. Never the Top. Men.

[Sevo]

And watching the government's disastrous attempt to manage medical care only has them asking for more.
I'm told you can get a mule's attention with a 2X4; it seems donkeys aren't that bright.

[Smilin' Joe Fission]

I was told last week that medicare and medicaid are the most efficient government programs out there. Why isn't all US medical insurance handled like that???

This was from an intelligence yet delusional prog Canadian friend of mine.

[Smilin' Joe Fission]

*intelligent

[Rufus J. Firefly]

Smilin' I learned the last people you should consult on American matters are we Canadians.

Our parochialism and smug hard on for welfarism is grating blinding us from critically and objectively assessing American issues, which are far more complex than we care to admit.

Ironically, ALL of our "socialism" ideals were imported from the USA so there's nothing uniquely Canadian to them.

So, in a way, I blame the Americans.

/looks suspiciously at fellow Reasoners.

[Sevo]

RJF,
I've watched an expat MD metamorphosis from a 'professional Canuck' to someone who can't quite seem to get on a plane and head back north.
A good bit of it had to do with her experience with the medical care bizz here and having to deal with the CDN system for an ill relative there. Yes, as an MD she pulled strings and it still worked as well as a trip to the DMV.
Her opinion of O'care would fit in fine right here by now; it started out otherwise.

[Rufus J. Firefly]

Sev,

EVERY SINGLE Canadian I know who has worked in the USA either stays or if they come back because a contract is up desperately try to get back in.

My buddy, an engineer, worked for Bechtel on contract in Connecticut for three years and had to come back. He's been depressed ever since. He's been trying to get back into the USA but so far nothing.

[Rufus J. Firefly]

Another friend of mine - a GC - left 20 years ago and recently became a U.S. citizen. You would have to put a bullet in his head to come back to Quebec. Even Florida on its worse day is better than Quebec on its best he reckons.

Is the grass always greener on the other side? Probably not. It didn't work out for another close friend of mine - a Hot Rod mechanic - in Florida.

All anecdotal but I'm willing to bet most Canadians once they experience the U.S. way, get quite comfortable pretty quickly.

[Entropy Void]

Fuck you, Kanukistaner!

.. as I enjoy a nice G&T in the cool night air on my back porch in FLORIDA

[Rufus J. Firefly]

And fuck you too!

Incidentally, the other friend lives in Jupiter.

[Episiarch]

I know a lot of Canadians, and one thing I have seen is that virtually all of them have the most distorted, totally incorrect ideas about pretty much any political issue going on in the US. The more politically distorted it is in the US, the worse their actual knowledge of it is. I'm sure getting their news from the CBC is part of the problem, but insecure desires to feel smug or superior to Americans really causes them to put their feet in their mouths way too often.

You haven't felt pain until you've tried to have a civil discussion about the Second Amendment with a Canadian (who you like and don't want to insult) whose knowledge of the 2nd and the surrounding issues and history is so woefully terrible that they might as well be retarded, yet they are convinced they know everything there is to know. Protip: it's brutal, and it only ends with "you have so little idea about what you're talking about that this conversation is less than useless" and then sulking.

[Rufus J. Firefly]

Epi, oh I know. Believe you me I know. It's brutal. The sheer magnitude of the arrogance in the face of ignorance frightens me.

Among my friends, I think maybe ONE gets it. The rest, it's all typical nonsense. Shit, Canadians take to using 'Faux News' memes even though we don't get Fox News up here! Very few of us - like yours truly - actively works towards exposing our daily political digestion outside the CBC and Huff.

It helps I hold a degree in History so I kinda get the American angle probably better than some Americans.

Alas, there's a hole in my theory. I have a liberal American pal from Boston and one could swear he's Canadian. Although he feels Quebec to be one backward place. It's weird.

[Cytotoxic]

The CBC is bad but the CRTC and its nest of regulations are a 100x worse. I believe they have succeeded to a significant degree in keeping Canadians dumb and exposed only to a few bland statist sources of info. The good news is that the internet is making this harder and the CBC is being starved of money.

[Cytotoxic]

I'm a Canadian and I think the parochialism and even welfarism are less than they used to be. Trudeapia is dead.

We're economically freer than the states and our entitlement have a WAY more conservative structure, but we're much worse on gun rights and freedom of speech.

[Weygand]

And in the spirit of continental amity, let me say that we Americans are probably a little more out in front with free speech (as mentioned by Mark Steyn) and in the personal armaments but envy your financial freedoms and common sense book approach to entitlements that I daresay we cousins to the south should take a page from.

I think we break the tie with our superior reserves of fap quality women...not that BC doesn't give us a run for our dollars (US)

[GILMORE]

""Smilin' Joe Fission|12.13.13 @ 7:30PM|#

I was told last week that medicare and medicaid are the most efficient government programs out there"

When the definition of "efficient" means, "No one gets anything positive out of it", you really can't argue with the point.

[LarryA]

I was told last week that medicare and medicaid are the most efficient government programs out there.

OTOH, I'm having a hard time coming up with a more efficient non-military government program. TSA, BATFE, DOE, EPA, DOJ, FDA, DEA, Commerce, Labor?

The Canadian may be right.

[optimusratiostultum]

even our military is supremely inefficient we just don't notice because we spend so much on it, but we certainly are not getting the best bang for our buck.

[Dry_Gin_Wet_Farts]

Government mule.

[Bill Dalasio]

And every bastard saying as much should be doomed for the remainder of their (rather limited) days to have to get their medical care courtesy of their local free clinic.

[Gospace]

"Simple solution: Cut out the middleman, Single Payer, aka Medicare for All!"

Someone doesn't understand what a middleman is.

[wadair]

Middleman = middle class = bourgeois

Death to the Bourgeois

/leftistprogressive

[Brian]

Try Not to Laugh at the Latest Folks Losing Their Health Coverage

I try, but it hurts too much.

[Rufus J. Firefly]

I posted this yeasterday on another thread.

I heard an interesting interview on Jay Thomas show with a businessman who owned seven brothels and his employee talk about Obamacare and why he hated it but his employee loved it. The employee, is an independent contractor who was considered, naturally and rationally, as a high-risk individual so insurers stayed away from here plus she had a pre-existing condition.

So she loves Obamacare because she's covered now and she feels her boss has to money through his profits to cover the costs of mandated insurance.

This is where the owner, carefully choosing his words, said that while he was happy for her, what people don't understand is that is scarce and the money he will be forced to drop in insurance will come out of his charity budget.

While she can shrug her shoulders and be the selfish bitch that she wants to be, he made the FREE choice to be a part of the community but that's all in jeopardy now because of government coercion.

Unintended consequences.

[Bill Dalasio]

Well, Rufus, they don't call them whores for nothing.

[Rufus J. Firefly]

What struck me about her spiel was how unmoved she was by what he was saying.

She didn't care about the children.

In the end, they only care about themselves. Ironic given this is supposed to be a law to help everyone.

N'est pas?

[Rufus J. Firefly]

What struck me about her spiel was how unmoved she was by what he was saying.

She didn't care about the children.

In the end, they only care about themselves. Ironic given this is supposed to be a law to help everyone.

N'est pas?

[Sevo]

"In the end, they only care about themselves"

Just like everybody else.
O'care needs The New Soviet Man and that's the reason it will go nowhere.

[Habeas Dorkus]

Ah, the elite nabobs get theirs.
I hope they all fucking die of fucking gonorrhea. Cunts.

[Ken Shultz]

"The Affordable Care Act is an opportunity to teach a valuable lesson to progressives about the inability of central planners, no matter how smart they are (or just think they are), to truly know enough about the markets to control them."

The only people who think experts can't make superior qualitative choices on other people's behalf are stupid rednecks and homophobic, bible-thumping, Jesus freaks.

Oh, and Sarah Palin thinks she can see Russia from her backyard.

P.S. You're all a bunch of racists.

[HazelMeade]

I've never thought that rampant displays of simple-minded bigotry were a market of intelligence, personally.

Which is pretty much what all progressive do. Constantly.

[Ken Shultz]

The progressives are so thoroughly convinced that "the people" want what they want that they cannot accept it when "the people" do not want what they want.

Just about anytime they're confronted with the possibility that "the people" don't want what they want, they only consider a couple of explanations:

1) The Koch Brothers got to "the people"*.

2) Stupid, homophobic, racist, religious hicks.

We might start to see that break down a little bit once they don't want what they used to want anymore--even so, they'll never accept that "the people" don't want what they want.

They'll turn on the president first--especially once he's out of office. They certainly won't admit that they were wrong about what they wanted for "the people".

[Sevo]

"The General Will
The idea of the general will is at the heart of Rousseau's philosophy. The general will is not the will of the majority. Rather, it is the will of the political organism that he sees as an entity with a life of its own. The general will is an additional will, somehow distinct from and other than any individual will or group of individual wills. The general will is, by some means, endowed with goodness and wisdom surpassing the beneficence and wisdom of any person..."

I'd forgotten this until Pipes "The Russian Revolution" reminded me and I'm gonna wear it out since it is part and parcel of the bleef in Top Men!
More: http://www.quebecoislibre.org/05/050715-16.htm

[Rufus J. Firefly]

Le Quebecois Libre! Nice. Where did you hear about it? The more libertarian sites the better. They fight the good fight.

Here in Quebec nationalists speak of 'will of the people' which really means 'tyranny of the majority.'

[Sevo]

RJF,
Some twit was arguing that Rousseau 'really meant' the will of the people; it was just a misreading of the General Will that justified the Soviet disaster.
A rebuttal linked that site and I've had it bookmarked ever since.

[Bill Dalasio]

"Which is pretty much what all progressive do. Constantly."

Because that's what progressivism is. It's not a political philosophy, but a cultural pose to assure one another of their own superiority.

[Cytotoxic]

Nah that's Liberalism. Progressisivism is about putting the individual in his place.

[Duke]

I see what you did there.

[Irish]

It is always okay to laugh at the New York 'elite.' It's okay because they're gullible morons who look down on the fly over state yokels while time and again proving themselves less capable of rational thought than the people they patronize.

If Paul Krugman loses his insurance over this, I will never frown again.

[Dweebston]

I am beyond absolutely certain that if Paul Krugman ends up paying five times over what he once did for insurance that covers half as much with double the copayments, he would not see fit to mention it.

Not because he's inextricably wedded to Obamacare as such, but because the merest hint of infidelity to the Progressive mindmeld would cost him his job.

[HazelMeade]

I read the whole article and the comment thread. It was such an exquisite pleasure that I had to stop and look away before I died of schadenfreude. Such things need to be sampled in small doses.

[Duke]

You're a better person than me. Most of the comments I read explained that Obamacare's failures were really due to Romney, and that we need a single payor system, and that even if the whole thing is shit, we are still better off for it.

[Sevo]

..."Obamacare's failures were really due to Romney"...

You bet! Why, if Romney hadn't been elected, we would have had Obama! He would have fixed things right up!

[Rufus J. Firefly]

How can it be Romney's fault?

Romneycare was far more practical than Obamacare. And it's now facing major bureaucratic headaches from what I hear.

[HazelMeade]

Sort the comments by highest rated.

[GILMORE]

the most popular ones by pro-Bama types are basically, "THIS IS ALL CAPITALISM'S FAULT!"

e.g = #1 Most Popularoso

"...
We should not BE all looking for health insurance "options".

We should all just pay our share via taxes, and all be covered.

you know... like in EVERY civilised western country.""

ONE RING TO RULE THEM ALL!@!!

The slightly less popular ones, (but still POPULAR! apparently) are basically =

BWAHA HAHAHAHAHAHA@!AHAHA HAHAHAHAHA!!! EYYYAHHA HAHAHAHAHAHA! ROTFLMFAOAPM OMG TEH AWESOMES!!HAHAHA

[Lord at War]

Hazel-

Remember-

If your schaudenboner lasts longer than 4 hours 14 months, you should contact your physician.

[LynchPin1477]

Now covered as a preexisting condition under Obamacare!

[LilDebbie]

T Scott I was hoping more that a virulent plague sweep through NYC and slaughter every last man, woman, and child because they can no longer afford health insurance.

That would make me smile.

[Ken Shultz]

"The Affordable Care Act is an opportunity to teach a valuable lesson to progressives about the inability of central planners, no matter how smart they are (or just think they are)."

Honestly, with a lot of progressives, they treat people who advocate free markets like they treat birthers, truthers, climate change denialists, and creationists.

They think the fundamentals of economics are about as valid as the fundamentals of aromatherapy and Reiki--that it's basically a collection of excuses the Reagan Administration put together out of hatred for the homeless.

It's hard for us to really grok where the progressives are coming from sometimes, but it strikes me when I'm talking to them about economic fundamentals, sometimes, I might as well be Galileo explaining astronomy to the pope.

[LynchPin1477]

I know some hard core progressives who are totally into Reiki. They are Reiki masters. I still don't know what the hell Reiki is, but I know some have a higher opinion of it than the profit motive.

[Ken Shultz]

It's like having a massage without the practitioner actually touching you.

The practitioner is using the energy field around his or her body to massage the energy field around your body.

The practitioner absorbs all the negative energy and then releases it. You pay for an hour session--but the Reiki person has to spend a lot of time after the session releasing all that bad energy, so it's over in like 40 minutes.

And when you leave, you're as good as new! (Although you may need to come back regularly for tune ups).

Hey if somebody can get people to pay them for that, more power to 'em, but from your friends' perspective, tell them that with J. R. "Bob" Dobbs, at least they get a money back guarantee!

[Ken Shultz]

"It's like having a massage without the practitioner actually touching you."

In some states, I think you need a license to do this for a living!

[SusanM]

Some practitioners do touch - usually through clothes. You're probably thinking of "Therapeutic Touch".

If you have money to spare and don't mind a little hippy-dippy vibe it really is a pretty good experience.

[Sevo]

..."with J. R. "Bob" Dobbs, at least they get a money back guarantee!"

And SLACK! Don't forget slack!

[Ken Shultz]

+1 slack.

[GILMORE]

+2 Stark Fists of Removal

[HazelMeade]

And the people who believe in this shite think they are smarter than us!

I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

[Dweebston]

In fairness, the hardcore skeptics routinely make fun of these people, but also trend toward progressivism. It's the scientism skeptics affect when dealing with psychology or economics.

[Duke]

but it strikes me when I'm talking to them about economic fundamentals, sometimes, I might as well be Galileo explaining astronomy to the pope.

That there is poetry Ken.

[C. S. P. Schofield]

Hell, the Pope was Galileo's friend, and tried hard to shield him from the consequences of his habit of insulting every other intellectual in Europe.

[Duke]

My favorite comment so far:

Jack WeissShrub Oak, NY

Hey Curmudgeon: I am a librarian, with a Master's degree; I work at 2 part-time jobs --without benefits-- and earn less than $40,000 a year. Affordable Healthcare means that I can have affordable health insurance. Any new plan, be it a government sponsored plan, or a new operating system from Microsoft, requires adjustments after introduction.

The sheer meanness and paranoia of the American Right will ultimately destroy itself. The Right's massive hatred of anything associated with Pres. Obama, is racist, self-serving, and borders on treason.

[LynchPin1477]

borders on treason

The British law of treason is entirely statutory and has been so since the Treason Act 1351 (25 Edw. 3 St. 5 c. 2). The Act is written in Norman French, but is more commonly cited in its English translation.
The Treason Act 1351 has since been amended several times, and currently provides for four categories of treasonable offences, namely:

"when a man doth compass or imagine the death of our lord the King, or of our lady his Queen or of their eldest son and heir";
"if a man do violate the King's companion, or the King's eldest daughter unmarried, or the wife of the King's eldest son and heir";[23][24]
"if a man do levy war against our lord the King in his realm, or be adherent to the King's enemies in his realm, giving to them aid and comfort in the realm, or elsewhere"; and
"if a man slea the chancellor, treasurer, or the King's justices of the one bench or the other, justices in eyre, or justices of assise, and all other justices assigned to hear and determine, being in their places, doing their offices".

[Sevo]

BTW, he's a "substitute librarian", meaning he needs to get a job and quit free-loading.
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/jack-weiss/48/41A/A48

[JW]

Facing up to the fact that your choices in life have made you a near total failure, that it's your fault and that you completely overvalue your productive worth to society, is too much for most people to bear.

Better to lash out at boogeymen, blame them for your shortcomings and eagerly await extracting a sloppy and costly revenge from them.

[Sevo]

For a minute, I read "Librarian" as libertarian and thought it was shreek.
And I don't give a crap if he wasted his time and money on a worthless degree; wave that in someones face to see if they'll take it as payment.
Or STFU.

[Rufus J. Firefly]

At the bank where I worked I used to get teased by the big hot shots in sales because I had a degree and was a lowly teller.

One of whom became a buddy of mine. There they were, a bunch of barbarians, earning six figures mostly because they hustled and worked.

[XM]

Notice that the part time librarian doesn't say "Thanks to ACA subsidies, I only pay 100 dollars month in premiums!"

This part time librarian is probably headed to straight to medicaid. I doubt he qualifies for subsidies, or even that he checked out the exchange. But he can't admit that Obama might be wrong, so mentions that he earns less than 40 thou a year to leave an impression that ACA could theoretically help him out.

Deep inside, they know something is off about ACA. They don't benefit from it, and neither are their lefty friends. But they can't lose the ideological battle. So they DESPERATELY seek ACA success stories, explore every angle in which the insurance companies can be blamed, or cling to narratives that pre ACA plans were garbage that exiled those with preexisting conditions.

[RishJoMo]

I think its a pathetic joke, thanks to bought and paid for politicians, the rich corporatations and insurers keep on gettin richer!

http://www.Anon-Go.tk

[Homple]

Alan Turing, call your office.

[amelia]

This detail is pure gold:

"But while those policies, by and large, had been canceled because they did not meet the law's requirements for minimum coverage, many of the New York policies being canceled meet and often exceed the standards, brokers say. The rationale for disqualifying those policies, said Larry Levitt, a health policy expert at the Kaiser Family Foundation, was to prevent associations from selling insurance to healthy members who are needed to keep the new health exchanges financially viable."

Hahahhhaahahaaaa!

[Weygand]

This is as entertaining as when my wife drinks 4 beers gets drunk and horny and passes out and I make her my sex pig, but instead of my wife it's progs and instead of my port extender, it's ObamaKare

[Weygand]

Us and Them

[Reverendcaptain]

My liberal friends thought I was crazy when I told them before the last election that I was OK, with another Obama term so the whole thing could collapse under its own weight and we could get on with it. They couldn't understand that disasters like this were inevitable. Unfortunately they still can't see it. It's strange to watch perfectly intelligent people refuse to accept the truth as it unfolds before them.

[Homple]

I would strike "perfectly intelligent" from the above text.

[Juice]

"I'm for it," she said. "But what is the reality of it?"

I don't know what it is, but I'm for it!

[optimusratiostultum]

screw not laughing at them, these people need to be treated like a puppy that pooped on the carpet.

stick their faces in it and spank them while saying "no, no, no. bad proggy, very bad proggy."

[BigT]

It is not lost on many of the professionals that they are exactly the sort of people ? liberal, concerned with social justice ? who supported the Obama health plan in the first place. Ms. Meinwald, the lawyer, said she was a lifelong Democrat who still supported better health care for all, but had she known what was in store for her, she would have voted for Mitt Romney.

She'll still vote for Hillary. Stupid is as stupid does.

[wagnert in atlanta]

On the subject of schadenfreude, allow me to quote my favorite philosopher:

"HAAhaaa" -- Nelson Muntz

[Alin]

Hey if somebody can get people to pay them for that, more power to 'em, but from your friends' perspective, tell them that with J. R. "Bob" Dobbs, at least they get a money back guarantee!

Alin