Money IS Speech, Its Official!

because people are sheep and would rather have others do their thinking for them.

How can someone promote free speech when their speech is inherently worthless because it isn't coherent English. Aren't you far-right wingnuts the first ones to ***your britches when some Hispanic immigrant mispronounces a word, yet you can't reliably conjugate simple verbs?

Anyhow, this is the opposite of free speech. Literally. By permitting money to talk, you remove freedom of speech from anyone who can't pay the cover. Which is precisely why contribution limits were put in place. This is stuff you should have learned in freshman year of high school at maximum or, barring that, should be able to logically deduce from premises as a normal-functioning adult.

And if you support that, fine. But don't wrap it up in lies of "freedom." Freedom, as defined by the founding of this nation and the cultural myths we've collectively built, is the freedom of everyone to participate. This necessarily limits the freedoms of the would-be tyrants, oligarchs, and bullies. Guess what: no sane person (except those same despots and aristos and such) would support taking their own limited power and chucking it under the bus for the sake of someone who is successfully self-centered.

We're a democratic republic explicitly to avoid the crap that keeps getting through and because there happens to be a man with a tan and a (D) after his name, that apparently allows people to ignore reason and permit both political parties to trammel their rights by promoting the very death of democracy that was predicted by Machiavelli.

I have AETNA through AAFES. The Cadillac package more or less. Used to be 278 a month for both my wife and I, is now 422.

ER coopay used to be 100 is now 500 and many labs/tests are longer fully covered.

My one free eye exam a year now costs $35.

My $3000 out of pocket max is now $5000.

I'm sure there's plenty more in my plan I've yet to stumble upon.

Middle class people got *** the hardest as usual.

ok I quit....

/throws in the towel

So, tell me, have you been trickled on yet? Was it at least still warm?

Fixed.

No, but it sure gets tax laws passed.

I posted this exact same scenario in the other Obamacare thread. My parents here in California have Aetna. Their monthly fee went up and so did their co-pay.

And just to give people a perspective, Aetna isn't the top tier health insurance in CA- Kaiser is the top tier health insurance followed by Anthem Blue Cross.

Ironically, low-class/poverty level individuals now have access to Kaiser edit: and Anthem Blue Cross for free.

Just by Nik, but I assumed that was his way of saying hello.

Didn't shop around. You said they did but obviously all options were not explored.

My parents are working middle class. They make too much money to qualify for Medi-Cal, they have the Aetna Platinum plan. They could have gone with Aetna Bronze plan which would have been a lower monthly rate, however, my sister suffers from bad allergies and frequents an allergist twice a week so they did the platinum.

They did shop around trust me.

people don't seem to get it yet. the more money you make the more you are going to pay.

Clearly by middle class you mean rich.

The supreme court doesn't have the authority to declare such things.

Do you not realize the problem with "shopping around" when you have pre-existing health problems? If you have a pre-existing condition, many insurance companies will not pay for that portion of your health care. My dad had heart surgery years ago. If he switched insurance companies, his heart doctor visits and meds that he was required to take would not have been covered.

THAT is a problem that people seem to be ignoring. This is why the older generations got hit the hardest by Obamacare. This is even why democrats have been against it in the way it was implemented. As someone who was directly affected by this, it really irks me when people take such a flippant attitude like you.

Obamacare probably IS for the greater good of Americans as a whole, but it certainly did royally screw over people in the process. If I wasn't personally affected, I probably wouldn't care too much, either, unfortunately. But I was. I lost my father last year due to unfortunate changes in policies on both the insurance side and the medical side from hospice. No matter how much of a liberal/democrat I am, I still see flaws with the way Obamacare was implemented.

They do. They said so.

In other news, the big winners here will be the media corporations, posters, and political advisers.

Your statement is ridiculous. Their situation is they have a special need which in turn becomes a special cost. Or did you miss the part of frequents an allergist twice a week?

They're actually a special group that utilizes the services twice a week. Do you go to the hospital twice a week?

What kind of allergy would seeing the allergist twice a week solve anything for?

Edit: not trying to talk bad about it, but it just doesn't make much sense to me, I'm curious.

Allergy shots. She gets two per week. the frequency of shots gets reduced over time.

The allergy shot basically introduces the body to the specific allergen over-time so that the immune system learns to not respond to it.

So they opted to hugely increase their premiums in order to cover what should be a temporary issue? Sounds short-sighted.

I say this as someone who has been told that most environmental allergies can be effectively "cured" these days. If additional information would change my assessment, then provide it that I may revoke my judgment.

Interesting. When I get insurance again I may have to talk to an allergist. That reminds me, I need to start feeding my kid some local honey if we're going to stay in this area.

This. I have known a few people with severe pollen allergies (not just a plugged nose and itchy eyes) that have to start the year off by going to get allergy shots near the springtime every week until it tapers off to about once a month.

Also some people with pets that have allergies have to do this as well. I wouldn't say it's common, but not really all that uncommon either.

It's not temporary because of where they live. Los Angeles County always has high concentration of allergens because of the San Gabriel and Santa Monica Mountains.

I see. Makes my rather tame allergies, even though they are year-round, seem less troublesome by comparison. I have to spend about $50 a year on cetirizine (Zyrtec) and the only way I can invoke a reaction is spending 12+ hours in a dog-owner's house. The wide variety of local pollens that bug me are completely controlled by the OTC meds.

I can vouch for the pet allergy thing. I grew up with cats, but was told at a young age by a doctor that I was very allergic to them. I was confused by this, as I didn't really have a strong allergic reaction. Now that I haven't lived with cats for a long time, however, I can't stay very long in a house that has them without an inhaler and allergy medication.

My sister takes Claritin, Singulair, and some prescription nasal spray to provide some mediocre degree of relief. LoL

Please, do yourself a favor. Skip all the other posts and read this ^. It is all you need to know.

Everything else is a DISTRACTION. Throwing away caps on political donations will allow the rich to drown out the messages of anyone else but those they wish to win. Republican...Democrat...black...white...its all a distraction to keep you watching what the rich want you to watch while they hijack a system of government that was intended to be rule by the people. In order to keep you happy, you still get to vote, BUT you can only vote for who you see more on the TV. Good luck, folks.

I have one friend who is allergic to cats, but is a complete cat lover. She has to get allergy shots year round. When she started out, she had to go at least once a week, now it's every three weeks to a month since she has owned cats for years and has gotten shots the entire time.

I'm slightly allergic to them, myself, but have a few. I only get sneezing fits and itchy if they're all up in my grill wanting me to pet them. I don't do anything but take some diphenhydramine if I'm starting to get symptoms, though. I'm glad I'm not like some people who have severe allergic reactions, worst I get is sneezing fits, itchiness, and sometimes welts where I was itching. Nothing like my throat closing up or anything serious, fortunately.

Well, for what little it's worth (how did this turn into medicine? whateer), I find that loratadine is hugely inferior to cetirizine. It's why the latter costs more, too.

I've read the same thing. I break out in hives from insect bites occasionally.

But I've read that Claritin functions better for more chronic allergies, rather preventing allergy symptoms. Whereas zyrtec is more for treating symptoms that have already manifested.

Pretty much my experience. Also, loratadine doesn't always relieve itching, whereas cetirizine does.

Used to be a pharm tech, and the pharmacist would always recommend cetirizine for people itching, for this reason. They're both anti-histimines, but usually claritin is for chronic, like you said, where you take it daily, and zyrtec you can take if you're having a mild allergic reaction to something for some relief within about 30 minutes.