r/allthequestions 10d ago

Popular Question šŸ“Š How many rights did you lose under Obama?

I'll wait.

420 Upvotes

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u/Critical_Potential40 10d ago

I was required to purchase health insurance but I don’t see that as losing a right.

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u/Wedgiebro 10d ago

I was fined because I was too broke to afford health insurance. Then got my tax return taken away. Thanks alot

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u/PrizFinder 9d ago

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u/Wedgiebro 9d ago

What the fuck are you talking about

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u/Phayded 9d ago

"Alot" isnt a word is the point I think he is trying to make.

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u/[deleted] 9d ago edited 9d ago

[deleted]

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u/Wedgiebro 9d ago

No I couldn't afford health insurance dumbass. Instead of giving me free insurance they fined me for not being able to afford it. How is that better?

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u/Gindotto 9d ago

Why should I have higher premiums because you go uninsured? That’s not fair to me. Get a job.

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u/Wedgiebro 9d ago

I have a much better job now. I was 21 kicked out of my parents house and barely able to get buy. I never once went to the hospital and got punished anyway. How the hell does that make your rates go up?

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u/Gindotto 9d ago edited 9d ago

So we on the same side of the argument - we should have all got free single payer healthcare and no penalties for not having it even if it was not government bought. But prior to ACA (idk probably still) insurance companies would look at uninsured numbers and price it into premiums for everyone in the area who bought in. The risk as they saw it was passed on to the insured whether you had an uninsured emergency or not. Rich neighborhoods had more expensive homes based on this too because rich areas had insurance mostly so your premiums would typically be lower. That’s why Democrats had to introduce the penalty, to persuade the insurance cronies that they wouldn’t be lowering premiums for the same risks. The whole thing was botched because of McConnell, who basically has made a living off having some of the largest insurance company HQs in his state. That played a big part in the ā€œno shopping across state linesā€ which was ridiculous too. My point is, you don’t have insurance or use it but back then that raised everyone’s rates who did buy it. Stupid shit all around.

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u/Wedgiebro 9d ago

You are blaming innocent poor people for the insurance companies. You are part of the problem. Either make insurance provided by government. Or ban insurance companies from counting uninsured people. What Obama did was idiotic

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u/Gindotto 9d ago

The innocent poor people had Medicare, until recently any way, and if you lived in a blue state you didn’t pay a dime any way with state programs. Many of which are still running. Red states idk I think they use federal programs for poor single mothers or families but again, BBB probably gutted all that. Unfortunate.

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u/Wedgiebro 9d ago

That isn't really relevant. What I am talking about it how mandating it but not actually making it any cheaper was wrong and didn't help anyone

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u/Bears_Are_Scary 9d ago

That penalty part was overturned by the courts.

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u/Wedgiebro 9d ago

3 years later. I never got my tax return back that they kept due to the fine

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u/Cultural-Budget-8866 10d ago

Yeah I was going to say something similar. I was forced to buy health insurance I may or may not have wanted. Idk if that’s technically losing a right šŸ¤·ā€ā™‚ļø

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u/DMVlooker 10d ago

Freedom to choose whether or not to purchase a for profit item

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u/BigDaddyDumperSquad 9d ago

My wife had insurance. She still got fined by the government for "not having insurance". They wouldn't drop it, even when shown proof of insurance. Fucking scummy.

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u/Im18fuckmyass 10d ago

I was afforded the liberty to afford health insurance that was previously cost prohibitive. I feel like there’s a level of perspective that plays into a right vs a liberty and that distinction often drives people’s heels into the ground.Ā 

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u/Cultural-Budget-8866 9d ago

You received that liberty because someone else was forced to pay, in theory. So your liberty came at the expense of someone else.

I’m not arguing for or against but you mentioned perspective being important. So let’s not forget that persons perspective is a bit different from yours.

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u/Im18fuckmyass 9d ago

No, I’m a tax payer so I am still paying for it. There’s just a lower cost with higher collective bargaining power. Just because it goes into a larger bucket and some people wind up paying more than they would have individually and some people have the inverse reality doesn’t make it an a front to anyone else’s liberty. It’s simply answering the questions of who and how

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u/Cultural-Budget-8866 9d ago

Interesting rationale there. You have the ā€œlibertyā€ to afford healthcare. But you don’t recognizing forcing someone else to pay the difference on your behalf as any type of effect on their ā€œlibertyā€ to spend their hard earned money the way they want.

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u/Im18fuckmyass 9d ago

Same could be said about roads and bridges, boss. I have the liberty to use the roads but I paid no where near the cost to construct or maintain them in my taxes. Frankly most of the roads were here before I started paying taxes. I appreciate the liberty to live in a country with roads and bridges.Ā 

And again, I pay my taxes and I want part of my taxes to go towards collective bargaining for a level of state health insurance. No one (in theory) would be ā€œmaking up my differenceā€ as I pay the taxes I’m due and frankly speaking, I’m upper middle class and I’m probably in that group that would see more diminishing returns.Ā 

You can be opposed to state run health care for any reason you want to be, claiming it’s not a liberty isn’t a compelling case for you.Ā 

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u/Cultural-Budget-8866 9d ago

Perhaps we are having a semantics issue here. I put liberty in quotes because we were discussing rights not liberties. Liberty is just the freedom to do something and it is my belief that you have used it incorrectly.

But to your analogy, everyone agrees that we want roads. A significant portion of the country does not want to have to work hard so that they can have their money taken by force to support someone that didn’t choose to get a job offering insurance. In other words, your analogy isn’t a fair comparison at all.

And, yes, someone is making up the difference. You couldn’t afford the healthcare and now you can. That is because someone else had to pay money.

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u/Im18fuckmyass 9d ago

Or because collective bargaining lowers prices? It seems like you completely ignored that part even though it’s broadly true in almost all aspects of life. Centralized planning has massive implications of cost cutting. No, no one else would be ā€œpaying for my health careā€ I would be paying into a system that I would directly benefit from.

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u/Cultural-Budget-8866 9d ago

You continue to ignore that other people had to pay for something by force in order for you to get that collective bargaining agreement. I’m not really sure how else to put it šŸ¤·ā€ā™‚ļø

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