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Originally Posted by AVGWarhawk
Skybird,
Per the Healthcare Act no one can be turned away from insurance coverage for any reason.
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Unfortunately, that is simply not true. If your AGI is below $24,000 per year you are not eligible for Obamacare. In addition, with the introduction of Obamacare (and you can check this at your local hospital) the signs in emergency rooms that said "Health care cannot be denied for financial reasons" have come down. Hospitals can and do refuse to care for uninsured and uninsurable people. Where we had universal healthcare at a reasonable price before Obamacare, we now have people like me paying more for health insurance than I ever paid for any of my various cars or houses. We have others who simply do not qualify because of their low income and are now shut out. Plus we have millions who are just passing on a crippling cost and daring the government to fine them, figuring that the fine will cost them much less than the premiums. Cynically, they know that if the government dares to fine them there will be a political excrementstorm and the politicians will be out of office who dared to make such a ridiculous law. Forcing millions to buy a product they don't need and can't afford is comical. As Ronald Reagan was fond of saying, "In order for government to give something to you, it must first take it from somebody else."
United Health Care, which last year and the year before, lowballed their prices on the exchanges below their costs to administrate in order to build market share, then drastically increased them to profitable levels this year, have found that strategy just generated a lot of angry people who exit to other plans. They have announced that they will be withdrawing from Obamacare in 2017. If they do so look for other major insurers to jump ship and for Obamacare to be in big trouble.
Of course, Obama will be gone, and like a corporate fatcat with a golden parachute, it will no longer be his problem. It will be OUR problem, we who did not want the program to begin with, a program passed through fraud and administrative hocus-pocus because the votes were not there.
What will we do? If universal health care is what we think government (that's us) should provide, we surely don't have it now and the cost is way too high. The young people who were supposed to pony up the money to pay for us old coots haven't ponied up and they won't. Insurance companies are looking queasy and the #1 company is already announcing they're taking to the lifeboats.
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Originally Posted by AVGWarhawk
Background check are done for employment purposes already. Some employers use FB as a tool. So, don't post anything your mom should not see because your employer would not want to see it either. My job required an extensive background check.
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When you say your job required an extensive background check, that means a criminal background check and possibly a credit check. It did not require you to put a keylogger on your computer. It didn't involve their ability to listen to your microphone and watch your webcam any time they chose, while you are singing in the bathroom, what you say if you stub your toe on the end table, a family arguement. They aren't collecting every keystroke, including passwords, and sending the info dump to their company twice a day forever. There is no equivalency between background checks and other monitoring like your house's CLUE report, your credit report or arrest record. A year ago if someone would have told you you had a keylogger on your computer you would download software to eliminate it. Now you're saying it's no problem at all. What changed? I say right is still right. Wrong is still wrong. Reasonable is still reasonable and unreasonable is still unreasonable. What Microsoft does is wrong and unreasonable, conduct preying on the customers they are supposed to serve.
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Originally Posted by AVGWarhawk
I do not know of anyone forcing digital money over actual cash money. In Gog we Trust. All others pay cash.
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In fact most governmental transactions, like corporate fees and income tax refunds, are required to be paid for by digital money electronically transferred. Oftentimes the only payment method accepted is using their website to make payment with a credit or debit card. Some private companies, like car and truck rental companies, also do not permit cash to be used. "Legal for all debts, public and private" now means nothing at all in either public or private spheres.
Legally the practice is illegal but as usual with present and past administrations, they pick and choose which laws they wish to enforce, making arbitrarily chosen actions either quasi-illegal or quasi-legal. We are no longer a nation of laws. We are the nation of arbitrary rule by capricious and corruptable individuals. It was no error when President Obama, upon his election, began his goals with "Under my rein....." The imperial presidency under all recent presidents is just as much a danger to our culture as representation without taxation for more than 50% of citizens. We are running our country like it would be reasonable to allow Ford owners and managers to vote in GM corporate meetings. No stake in the system should mean no vote.
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Originally Posted by AVGWarhawk
Here's an idea....get off-line and go out to enjoy the fresh air. Can not get into to much trouble with this activity.
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Yes, if we all just accept gross invasion of privacy with a smile and just go out and play, no harm will ever result. I'm sure all the articles I've posted were entirely the products of warped imaginations from people who don't go outside and breathe.
Microsoft's behavior is going to get even worse before anything gets better. It will only get better after we, their customers, refuse to buy products whose purpose is marketing and invasion of privacy. When we refuse their EULAs, which tell us exactly how to bend over and when to smile in the graphic and unashamed language of a character from The Godfather.