Force employees to take DNA tests for bosses? We've got a new law to make that happen, beam House Republicans

NO it isn't but the amendments would pretty much gut the bill. My government is running amok and just saying "no" isn't stopping the stupidity and intrusiveness. I shudder to think where we'll be after a couple of years of this shit since they're just getting started.

Then again, in two years, it's possible that the two big parties' Congressional candidates will be facing independent or 3rd party candidates who might be able to beat them on election day. But, hope of that happening is fleeting.

Re: Stop...

Stop that folksy critter nonsense. Fuckwit Americans voted in these cretins that are lack any conscience. Now truly reap what you sow, eh?

But what about the rest of the world?

Re: LDS Sure it will lower employer costs and promote an healthy workforce...

>For a company, pregnancies are not "a risk". They completely depend on them.

Too imprecise.

Your own employees getting pregnant is a cost risk. What you want is to externalise that cost and have other companies' employees get pregnant.

However, if this is entering your thought process, you are probably either in a business which is failing anyway or you think you are contributing to the business when really you are hastening its downfall by pushing policies that ensure all your employees hate you.

Re: LDS Sure it will lower employer costs and promote an healthy workforce...

Unless you don't quite realize that precisely 100% (one hundred percent, I'm neither rounding this up nor making it up) of those companies' customers exist because, at some point, a woman got pregnant.

Which is perfectly fine - as long as it's some other company's employees that get knocked up.

Re: Kinda misses the point

They still believe in Social Darwinism of course.

Re: @ST Kinda misses the point

> You must be in the UK where the NHS is broken and you have a two tier system.

Wrong. I live in the US.

> You have no clue about health insurance.

Actually, I do, as I live in the US, and I buy health insurance from my employer. Have done so for a bit more than two decades. I have also worked in finance for 10+ years and I have a working understanding of probability and statistics, based on having written code dealing with these subject matters. In a state that has had a statutory mandate prohibiting rescissions, or denial of coverage, based on pre-existing conditions, for two decades before the ACA was even drafted.

So, no, I don't need you or Matt Bryant telling me what I do or do not know.

Prior to the ACA, risk-pool health insurance was too expensive to be affordable. It also carried too many exclusions to be worth anything. That made it equivalent to non-existent.

Prior to the ACA, Medicaid was simply not available to a significant percentage of those who needed it. That made it equivalent to non-existent. The ACA expanded Medicaid making it available to low-income individuals and families.

Prior to the ACA, one could be denied coverage based on any pretext the insurance company would come up with. The insurance company could deny treatments, medical procedures, or tests. Look up the word rescission.

Prior to the ACA, there was a yearly, and lifetime cap, on health coverage payouts, per person.

There are many problem with the current ACA, as passed by Congress. The cost of prescription medicine is one of them. Medicare and Medicaid have a statutory prohibition on negotiating the prices of FDA-approved drugs within US borders.

Which translates to FDA-approved drugs costing 100 more in the US than in Canada, UK, France, Germany, Brazil, Italy, etc. The ACA did not solve this problem, because the ACA, in its current form, is too beholden to the Big Pharma companies.

Stop your clueless parroting of Republican talking points. There's enough of that on TV and in the news already.

Alternatively, why don't you get a job as a health insurance company lobbyist. You seem to have a natural predisposition for it. In this professional capacity, you would find a very receptive audience for your beliefs within a certain segment of current GOP Congresscritters.

Re: @ST Kinda misses the point

Wait, who doesn't know insurance?

ACA was intended to make insurance possible for people who chose to go for it. You can complain about premium increases or making too much money, but honestly what the ACA did was a vast improvement for tens of millions of people. The only real problem was the incentives to get healthy people off the sidelines were too low. The new plan offered by Republicans reduces the subsidies to the poor, increases them to the affluent who don't need them, and and decreases the incentives for healthy people to get in the pool.

And risk pools are awful. Not sure where you're from, but my state had one that featured unpayable premiums and stratospheric levels of subsidy to stay solvent. Those subsidies came from... fees levied against the health plans of the healthy. The latest Trump plan will leave craters in the budgets of any insurance company dumb enough to try running a high risk pool since the proposed supports are laughably below anticipated costs to run such pools.

The ACA attempted to do things better but was only passed after running a gauntlet of hostile legislators intent on sabotaging it rather than dragging it toward some agreed upon middle ground. Replacement is difficult because instead of focusing on finding something that works the new administration's first goal is to not do anything like the current incarnation regardless of its value. That makes it harder than it should be, and for some really pretty partisan reasons.