Protocol417

This is true. I still feel safer in Europe than in the US, though. And for good reasons. Fewer folks with guns out and about there certainly being one of them.

Same here. That and knowing I can walk into a hospital and not have to mentally tick off what bills I'm going to have to avoid paying over the next several months while I'm sitting in the waiting room

Possibly.

It depends on a lot of factors, but when you file for bankruptcy, your creditor will likely comb through your debt, especially recent debt, and try to exempt themselves from releasing as much of it as possible (read: as the court will allow). If you have a recent unusual uptick in your spending habits, or if the debt is accumulated too closely to when you file for bankruptcy, there is a good chance that the recent debt will NOT be released and you will end up still owing it.

So, if she spent $500 and put it on her credit card, the creditor likely won't bother with that because it's such a "small" amount (especially if it's "necessities" like clothing... they would have a stronger case with something like a TV or computer or other such "toy"), BUT if she puts a huge vacation (several thousand dollars) on there, then yeah, the court might grant the creditors wish for this to be set aside from the bankruptcy proceedings and she'll still need to pay it back.

I guess you could take a look at some European countries and go "we don't want to be like Greece!!!"... but there are many where life is pretty damn sweet right now (for being in the middle of a global recession, at least). And Japan is doing alright, not to mention they didn't precisely lose their national identity once things changed for them systematically.

The "historic tradition of rugged individualism" bit makes me giggle a little. Besides being part myth, part nostalgia, and part mischaracterization of modern times, it reminds me a little too much of people who "long for the days" when "men were really men"

Who wouldn't be happy about a convicted felon not getting a gun? Does that really have to be said? In that case, I'm happy that many people out there are alive, productive, satisfied with their lives, and law abiding (there, that should cover all the bases in the future in case my personal emotions over one individual case ever come into question again).

I don't remember anyone saying that a majority of gun show sales go without background checks. If memory serves, the complaint was simply that a loophole exists that allows a mechanism for people to obtain guns without said background check, and that loophole should be closed. This story doesn't say the loophole doesn't exist, it just says that the guy went to sellers who participate in background checks, one (!) of which turned him in.

Isn't our country about, majority rules but they are not allowed to trample on the rights of minorities???

That's what the courts are for, not the debt ceiling debate.

Congress makes laws based on representative democracy ("majority rules"). If those laws then "trample on the rights of [the minority]" and are challenged, the courts will (edit: hopefully) declare them unconstitutional.

I didn't see you take the time to answer the question about why Obamacare supporters accept the fact the Obama gave waivers to unions and government employees.. If Obamacare is so good, why do you support/accept those waivers....

Batman, this claim has been debunked for ages now.

Anyone (government employee or not) who currently has compliant insurance is ineligible to purchase their policy through the marketplace or receive subsidies.

Regarding Congress and their staff, not only are they not "exempt" from "Obamacare", they're actually kicked out of their current plan and forced to use the exchanges. The problem with this is that they would have had to pay full price for their policies, basically meaning they'd be taking a huge pay cut due to loss of employee benefits. As a solution to this, the government (their employer) will still pay for a portion of their policy (much as many people's employers do). This is the "exemption" people have been complaining about.

Regarding unions, there is a specific reason why they are against Obamacare, and it has to do with leverage. Many unions have spent a massive amount of time and energy negotiating contracts down to the sub-sub-sub-sub bullet point, including health care coverage, and those contracts last for years. The "exemption" regarding them is the "grandfathering in" of their policies (some of which are not compliant)... but only for one year, to give more time for contracts to be negotiated. So basically, they have to throw out all that work and start over, which they're not very happy about.

As a side note, they're also against it because they were denied their request to receive subsidies, which kind of flies in the face of the accusations that Obama is handing out special favors.

Then you have the "exemption" that is the one-year delay for employers with over 50 full-time employees. Who, I'm sure, are huge Obama supporters

(For the record, I don't agree with the delays for either large businesses or unions. They've had 3 years to get their sh*t together. But I hardly see it as some government conspiracy where "friends" come out rosier than "enemies".)

This country spends $2.5 trillion dollars on health care every year. $650 million spent over several years to built this nationwide online insurance exchange - state by state no less - is not even a drop in the bucket. We're talking about two and half hundreth of one percent. That's right. The online marketplaces all in cost about 0.025% of what we spend on health care each and every year. Whoopity Doo Dah.

Perhaps I should've said "I can understand the desire to look into the cost" instead, which is closer to what I meant.

That said... I have absolutely no idea what it costs create, implement, and maintain something like this, however, I'm guessing "percentage of annual health care costs" isn't the best way to look at it. If someone tried to charge you $50 to copy your front door key, you probably wouldn't agree to that cost just because it's only 0.025% of the price of your house.

For the very rich, medical care in the US is attractive. The system is built for specialization. But that's like arguing that because a restaurant has glowing reviews for high-end cocktails that this means they'll be the best option for providing a very large group of people with affordable, nutritious meals. People might flock there for the alcohol but that doesn't mean the neighborhood won't go hungry.

The US ranks poorly in doctor saturation (exacerbated by pushing doctors away from primary care toward specialization because that's where the money is), available hospital beds, readmission rates, infant mortality, life expectancy, so on and so forth. For the average person, it's not a good system. Even with insurance, it's ridiculously expensive, and the for-profit system encourages pushing people through as quickly as possible. After living in the US my whole life, I was absolutely shocked how much time the doctor spent with me when I had to visit urgent care in London, and how much care she took to listen to me and make sure I was okay, physically and mentally, before I left. Yet if you believe the hype, it should've been the exact opposite. I should be getting amazing care in the US, and spending four weeks sitting in a waiting room in the UK, if all that was true.

I understand the hesitance over the website price tag. But let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater here. We spend twice as much on healthcare as other countries, so obviously government involvement does not automatically equal more wasteful spending. There is always, no matter who is in office, going to be things that need to be improved, but we can't improve them if the first response is "oh, there is one bullet point that doesn't work as well as it should, therefore the whole thing should be thrown out and we should go back to how we were without any changes".

Oct 2008: "You'll never get elected and pass healthcare."

Nov 2008: "We'll never let you pass healthcare."

Jan 2009: "We're gonna shout you down every time you try to pass healthcare."

July 2009: "We'll fight to the death every attempt you make to pass healthcare."

Dec 2009: "We will destroy you if you even consider passing healthcare."

March 2010: "We can't believe you just passed healthcare."

April 2010: "We are going to overturn healthcare."

Sept 2010: "We are going to repeal healthcare."

Jan 2011: "We are going to destroy healthcare."

Feb 2012: "We're gonna elect a candidate who'll revoke healthcare NOW."

June 2012: "We'll go to the Supreme Court, and they will overturn healthcare."

June 2012: "We can't believe the Supreme Court just upheld healthcare."

Aug 2012: "American people'll never re-elect you-they don't want healthcare."

Oct 2012: "We can't wait to win the election and explode healthcare."

Nov 2012: "We can't believe you got re-elected & we can't repeal healthcare."

Feb 2013: "We're still going to vote to obliterate healthcare."

July 2013: "We're going to vote like 35 more times to erase healthcare."

Sept 2013: "We are going to leverage a government shutdown into defunding, destroying, obliterating, overturning, repealing, dismantling, erasing and ripping apart healthcare."

Oct 2013: "WHY AREN'T YOU NEGOTIATING???"

It's all about Obamacare and we know it.

I didn't think that it being about Obamacare was even in contention by either sides.

I keep seeing all these comments online along the lines of "Obama refuses to negotiate!" For or against Obamacare, that statement just boggles my mind. Negotiations don't normally occur three years after a bill becomes law.

No need to wait if the packet is coming soon.

Don't know if this will happen for you but when we scheduled our medical they asked if we had the police certificate. We didn't have that yet, but we just said it was on its way and they were fine with that.

Also, if you want something straight from the horse's mouth, there is a live chat function at the website Darnell gave you. I had all my questions related to my fiance (who will be moving over on a K-1 visa just before the mandate starts, but won't be starting work until well after) answered at like 7pm on a Saturday night. It was quite handy.

I keep reading about USCIS, but what about the embassy? Will those still be open, or..?

Check your embassy's website. They should have a news portal for things just like this.

I checked mine (London) yesterday and they said all systems go. It wouldn't surprise me if there was a small delay (there's bound to be a little chaos with all the confusion) but it's not being shut down.

I make only a little bit more than the top tier listed and my insurance is nowhere near $90 as an individual, much less a family. It would be lovely to have insurance that cheap! I mean, I still wouldn't be able to really afford to use it, but still...

I maintain my hope that this is a stepping stone to universal health care. Wonder if Americans are warming up to the concept. I don't know if it's just because people have had the ACA to punch around, but it almost seems to me like some are coming around to the possibility that it might be a better option.

Non-profit co-op health insurance... kind of like what they have in Germany?

For the first year it's 95.

It's not refusing to carry- you either carry or you pay 95, both are legal.

Ah, here I found another site on healthcare.gov that spells it out more clearly than the last one I found:

The fee in 2014 is 1% of your yearly income or $95 per person for the year, whichever is higher.

Not as bad as I remembered (I thought it was like 5%).

I just found the chat function (funny, it wasn't showing up on my work computer). They told me that my employer offering spousal coverage doesn't affect his eligibility for the marketplace, and if he doesn't carry insurance, the fine is based on his income alone (it's individual, not family). So it'll be $95 or 1% of his income alone, or whatever the prorated amount is if/when he gets coverage through his employer or buys coverage in the marketplace (when he's able to legally work and we can afford it). Also, being an applicant for adjusting to LPR also qualifies him for the marketplace (so it's not just LPRs).

That's not so bad.

I'm not sure I would agree that our quality of care is very good.

Every time I've been to a doctor here, they've barely stuck around long enough to give me the time of day. They've been very uninterested in hearing any background information to the point of missing, tossing aside, or flat-out dismissing important diagnostic information. I've had doctors tell me my throat was "fine" when it was red and had been swollen for over a month, tell my parents (when I was 15) that I was making up my symptoms (even though I was rolling in pain and throwing up whenever I ate anything)... I won't really go too much into the worst... it involved having to take a stool sample myself with things I had at home because the doctor refused to give me a kit (to his credit, though, when I brought the sample to the 2nd doctor, he was very apologetic and actually sort of horrified over how I was treated).

By contrast, when I was in the UK, my doctor was firm but listened and asked very thorough questions. She even went so far as to stop me when I was rushing through (being used to American docs) and asked me to go back over the past couple of years and tell me anything I thought might be relevant to my complaint. She spent a lot of time with me (for a doctors visit) to make sure I was okay and understood my prescription and what to do when I got back home.

When my So got here it was around Nov. we had planned on getting married in Jan, but a friend reminded me that if we were married by Dec 31, I could claim here for the whole year.

of course not having any reportable income for her and adding a dependent saved me loads.

We were hoping to be married by Nov 23rd either way. Not sure if that'll happen at this point, but I'm pretty sure he'll be here by the end of the year. Our officiant and attendees are on standby ready to jump into action

You don't have to buy insurance. Just pay the 95 dollars and call it a day.

That's another thing I'm not really clear on.

There were two methods on the websites I've seen that list the info: A flat fee, and a percentage-based fee. I'm not sure which applies to us. The flat fee is doable, the percentage-based one is definitely not.

I also don't know how refusing to carry insurance would affect his green card application, if at all.

An increase in household size changes your eligibility for the advanced tax credit.

There are so many caveats to that, I'm not actually sure if we are eligible (due to immigration status or the existence of my employers coverage) for the markets (employer-based insurance appears not to be eligible for the tax credit). From what I'm reading, the "affordability" rule of 9.5% applies only to the employee's insurance and does not include spouse's coverage, so we might be denied access to the markets simply because my employer makes a policy for spouses available (regardless of how affordable it is). I personally am not eligible for the markets because my premium is juuuuust under the 9.5% mark, but what about my to-be husband?

There is also the small problem that we will be required to have insurance before we'll be able to file our first tax return together (when we'll know if we're eligible for the credit or not).

So to whom do we go to get answers? A lawyer or an accountant?

Everyone is scarce nights (probably weekends, too... I dunno, I'm usually too busy doing fun things to check VJ on the weekends).

Whenever I come home from work and log in to catch up, it seems like this place is a ghost town.

Not happening.

Spoil sport

Still a little nervous about this. The mandate will be kicking into effect after my SO moves here (and we're married) but before he gets his green card. So I'm not sure if he's still eligible for the markets (being kind of between), nor how we will be able to afford it since he'll be unable to work until he gets his work authorization.

I have insurance myself, but adding him to my policy will cost about as much as my monthly rent

It's no longer public.

Yes, not everybody comprehends instructions. I agree.

But sometimes you have to wonder if the information has been read when the website says

See "Contact and Mailing Address" on the right-hand side of the page. And people ask "where do I mail the DS-2001.

"Can I go to the medical the same day as my interview."

"Do I have to attend the medical four days before my interview?"

Embassy page: Please note: The visa interview will not be scheduled until the Immigrant Visa Unit is in receipt of the results of the medical examination.

So, no to the questions because you will never get an interview until the medical results are at the embassy. (Maybe that's down to reading comprehension since you have to make that thought process that there will be no interview unless I go to London prior to have a medical."

Note: We will not accept the short form version of a UK birth certificate. The certificate must list both parents' names "They wouldn't accept my birth certificate because my parents' names weren't on it." (Now that is failure to read carefully.)

And a lot of lore gets tossed around.

"You must call the NVC to find out this or that". No, you don't. It will all get sent in the mail in due time. That's not a real step in the process, but one for the impatient (which is mostly everybody ) And people start thinking it is mandatory in order to get a visa.

"You must take your whole copy of the I-129 petition, and photo albums, and Skype logs to your interview." Nope, not to London. That's why I think it's best to look at what London website says, read every link, read your letter of instruction, then read it all again. I agree there are some odd things that contradict each other on their website. It is challenging.

There's wrong information all over the websites (including the London website and the forms, as you said yourself), so it's only natural that people would question it especially if they're seeing things here that contradict it (like, say, people writing embassy reviews in which they've attended an interview where they're given a conditional approval because the medical results haven't arrived yet).

I get there are a lot of people who keep posting over and over and over again with every single question they have, and that's probably frustrating to you veterans, but if you think that is frustrating, try going on a seven-hour-straight research-a-thon which leaves you feeling like your head is going to explode, and when you ask whatever questions you have or even just say "hey I've never done this before... am I understanding the process correctly?", you're accused of not bothering to read anything

My point is: Go easy on the newbs. Even if they ask what you think are stupid questions. If it's that frustrating to you, just don't respond, let someone else help.

If your spouse has held a job with the same employer for the previous six months at the required income level plus has a firm job offer starting within 3 months of return to the UK I think you are okay to return without separation

Plus there are various ways of making the money up with assets (if they are going to continue in the UK) and / or cash savings (as long as you have held them for six months)

If your return is a long way in the future then you have the chance to plan how to fulfill all the requirements - start saving now!

It's tough if you want to go back quickly for a family emergency though.

Yeah, I vaguely remember that from my research. Those aren't likely options for us, though. The chance of my SO getting a job offer in advance is next to nil (especially without having an exact move date), and any money we will have saved up will a) be needed for the move and getting his house back and b) probably not enough anyways.