Will the House Funding Bill Ignite a Government Shutdown?

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In summary, the House has approved a bill to temporarily fund the government, but it would strip funding for the Affordable Care Act, leading to a potential government shutdown. This move comes after months of resistance from Republican leaders to use the bill as a means to defund the law. However, the Senate is expected to reject this bill. Some have suggested using the budget from 2000 as a solution, but this has been deemed unrealistic due to changes in the economy and government spending since then. The conversation also touches on the idea of shutting down the government and the potential consequences of such actions.
  • #141
Was there a doubt? That's exactly what the Republican strategist told the Daily Show. I know the Daily Show isn't serious, but she clearly was.
 
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  • #142
BobG said:
Or ... The system should be reformed by a completely different method than the ACA.

For example, pass a law that tests requested by a doctor be performed by an outside agency unaffiliated with the doctor (very similar to the prohibition against a doctor both prescribing and selling a drug to his patients). Doctors that buy new equipment suddenly have a drastic increase in the number of patients that require that test (MRI, for example). And then the doctor simply charges the patient's insurance company for the test and both the patient and the doctor are happy.

That, in itself, probably wouldn't have a drastic impact on overall medical costs, but it is one example where government could focus on reducing health costs instead of just redistributing the current costs.

It's that 'unaffiliated' that's tricky. Some doctors which have a lab in the office take a blood sample, for instance, and send it out to be tested. Would that still be OK? It's got to be a thriving practice for a doctor to be able to afford his own MRI. A lot of these tests are done at a hospital or MRI clinic. Would these be considered 'unaffiliated'? If a doctor sends you to a hospital for tests and the doctor also has privileges at that same hospital, is that 'affiliated'?
 
  • #143
Senate Republicans Are Pressing For A Deal To End The Government Shutdown Along With A Debt Ceiling Hike
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/senate-republicans-pressing-deal-end-043232630.html
Business Insider

Senate Democrats are hopeful that their Republican counterparts in the Senate will work with them to come up with a deal that both ends the ongoing federal government shutdown and raises the nation's debt ceiling in the next few days.

A Senate Democratic leadership aide told Business Insider Thursday night that Senate Republicans have a "very strong desire" to end the shutdown before Oct. 17, which also happens to be the Treasury Department's deadline for raising the debt ceiling.

. . .
 
  • #144
Wait, the government shut down? Quick, someone tell the 80% of the government that is business as usual.
 
  • #145
SteamKing said:
It's that 'unaffiliated' that's tricky. Some doctors which have a lab in the office take a blood sample, for instance, and send it out to be tested. Would that still be OK? It's got to be a thriving practice for a doctor to be able to afford his own MRI. A lot of these tests are done at a hospital or MRI clinic. Would these be considered 'unaffiliated'? If a doctor sends you to a hospital for tests and the doctor also has privileges at that same hospital, is that 'affiliated'?

Unaffiliated is probably not the right word. The key is there should be no financial link between the doctor and the testing agency. There's actually a law already in existence addressing the issue, but it's weak and the medical profession has largely found a way around it with numerous exemptions and loopholes. (I'm never quite sure why lawyers and insurance salesmen are peceived to have low morals, while doctors are perceived to have high morals. I think people probably underestimate the morals of lawyers and insurance salesmen and overestimate the morals of doctors. They probably fall about the same spot on the morals scale.)

Strangely, the ACA didn't really address this issue and now there's a push to address it separately.
 
  • #146
The group of clinics my doctor belongs to bought their own Cat Scan machine and they do CT's for heart and artery blockage at basically no cost since it's so critical, they do not file the scan with your insurance, they just charge a flat $50, even though they could probably charge your insurance up to $1k for the procedure. Despicable! They also have their own MRI machine now and charge half of what it cost for me to go to an outside imaging center.
 
  • #147
Can anyone verify if this is true or not:

Eric Cantor Has Rigged The Rules of the House So That The Government Stays Shut Down

It was revealed recently that Republicans changed House procedural rules to guarantee that the fate of the government re-opening was the sole purview of Majority Leader Eric Cantor. The rule change was done quietly the night of Sept. 30 to guarantee Republicans could keep the government closed regardless a bipartisan majority found a way to re-open the government. According to regular House rules, if there is an impasse on a bill or resolution between the House and Senate, a motion to dispose of any amendment shall be privileged that simply means “any motion from any member should be allowed to proceed to end the gridlock.” However, Republicans changed the rule by adding that “any motion may be offered only by the Majority Leader or his designee” that guaranteed even though the Democratic Senate caved and met House Republican budget demands, only Eric Cantor had the power to stop the shutdown by allowing a vote to end the closure after it began.

I googled it and came up with the following:

Senate amendment to H.J. Res. 59- Continuing Appropriations Resolution, 2014

Provides that the House insists on its amendment to the Senate amendment to H.J. Res. 59, the Continuing Appropriations Resolution, 2014, and requests a conference with the Senate thereon.
Section 2 of the rule provides that any motion pursuant to clause 4 of rule XXII relating to H.J. Res. 59 may be offered only by the Majority Leader or his designee.

Looking over the text of H.J.RES.59 -- Continuing Appropriations Resolution, 2014 (Introduced in House - IH), I've decided I can decipher very little of it.

I guess my question is; Is this just left wing nonsense, or did the Republicans really vote to make Cantor "god almighty" regarding the blocking of the appropriations bill?

Seems somewhat fishy, if true.
 
  • #148
Things I hear on the radio:

Congress is less popular than dog poop

:thumbs:
 
  • #149
Evo said:
The group of clinics my doctor belongs to bought their own Cat Scan machine and they do CT's for heart and artery blockage at basically no cost since it's so critical, they do not file the scan with your insurance, they just charge a flat $50, even though they could probably charge your insurance up to $1k for the procedure. Despicable! They also have their own MRI machine now and charge half of what it cost for me to go to an outside imaging center.
On the other hand, my wife and I took our daughter for an MRI. The neurologist was a partner (co-investor) in the facility that operated the MRI, and they charged $800 / MRI. He ordered two, although one should have been sufficient. And that was about 20 years ago. The insurance company thought they should be charging much less. It was also not clear that the MRI would resolve anything about my daughter's condition.

The cost of medical care, a la ACA, certainly is one of the central issues regarding the Federal budget (cost) and what the government should or should not provide for the citizens of the nation.
 
  • #150
OmCheeto said:
Things I hear on the radio:

Congress is less popular than dog poop

:thumbs:
They are also less popular than toenail fungus. And jury duty. And hemorrhoids. And the IRS. And cockroaches. And one's mother in law. But they are still more popular than Miley Cyrus and Anthony Weiner. It will be time for Congress to act when they slip below those two.
 
  • #151
Astronuc said:
On the other hand, my wife and I took our daughter for an MRI. The neurologist was a partner (co-investor) in the facility that operated the MRI, and they charged $800 / MRI. He ordered two, although one should have been sufficient. And that was about 20 years ago. The insurance company thought they should be charging much less. It was also not clear that the MRI would resolve anything about my daughter's condition.
That sounds awfully cheap for an MRI back then, a recent article in the Washington Post says the average cost today of an MRI in the US is $1,080.00, that's cheaper than what my insurance was charged a few years ago. Of course prices vary greatly across the country since there is little to no regulation. IMO.
 
  • #152
OmCheeto said:
Can anyone verify if this is true or not:



I googled it and came up with the following:



Looking over the text of H.J.RES.59 -- Continuing Appropriations Resolution, 2014 (Introduced in House - IH), I've decided I can decipher very little of it.

I guess my question is; Is this just left wing nonsense, or did the Republicans really vote to make Cantor "god almighty" regarding the blocking of the appropriations bill?

Seems somewhat fishy, if true.

There seems to be six different versions? No wonder that they don't get anything done.

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c113:H.J.RES.59:
 
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  • #153
OmCheeto said:
Can anyone verify if this is true or not:

Eric Cantor Has Rigged The Rules of the House So That The Government Stays Shut Down

It was revealed recently that Republicans changed House procedural rules to guarantee that the fate of the government re-opening was the sole purview of Majority Leader Eric Cantor.

I googled it and came up with the following: ...
You didn't look in the right places. HJ Res 59 was the House's version of the continuing resolution. That resolution did not specify how to deal with the inevitable rejection of HJ Res 59 by the Senate. That response was dealt with by a special rule passed by the Rules Committee. The Rules Committee comprises nine Republicans and four Democrats. They voted on a strict party line to change the House's standard rule regarding the disposition of the response from the Senate.

Here's what you want:
http://rules.house.gov/bill/113/hj-res-59-sa-1 (scroll down to "RULE INFORMATION")

Here's the rule: http://rules.house.gov/sites/republicans.rules.house.gov/files/HJRes59SAIIIrule.pdf.


Seems somewhat fishy, if true.
Very.
 
  • #154
This article, based on a study published in JAMA, argues against the idea that doctors prescribe unnecessary tests for self-referral profit motives and/or malpractice lawsuit liability fears. They concentrated on a particular test. They compared the percentage the tests that were unnecessary at Veterans Affairs hospitals with the percentage at public and private hospitals and found 13% in both cases.

http://www.aboutlawsuits.com/unneeded-tests-not-due-lawsuits-48389/

Two of the authors, including the lead author, of the study work for the VA.

Are there any studies supporting the idea that conflict of interest is a significant factor in unnecessary testing?
 
  • #155
D H said:
...
Very.

Thank you.

And please don't ever respond with a post to my post which involves the word:

RULE INFORMATION

COMMITTEE ACTION:
REPORTED BY RECORD VOTE of 9-4 on Monday, September 30, 2013.

FLOOR ACTION ON H. RES. 368:
ADOPTED by record vote of 228-199 on Tuesday, October 1, 2013.

MANAGERS: Sessions/Slaughter

1. Provides that the House insists on its amendment tot he SEnate amendment to H.J. Res. 59, the Continuing Appropriations Resolution, 2014, and requests a conference with the Senate thereon.

2. Section 2 of the rule provides that any motion pursuant to clause 4 of rule XXII relating to H.J. Res. 59 may be offered only by the majority Leader or his designee.

as it will only trigger insanity, in my feeble little brain.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji6xXqTuJow​
 
  • #156
OmCheeto said:
I guess my question is; Is this just left wing nonsense, or did the Republicans really vote to make Cantor "god almighty" regarding the blocking of the appropriations bill?

Seems somewhat fishy, if true.

From the UK, I wouldn't pretend to understand the "official" documents. But explanations of the situation if the UK press have often referred to an long standing unwritten rule of business (with somebody's name attached to it - I forget the name, but Cantor doesn't sound right) that a bill can only be introduced into the House if a majority of the majority party supports it. Speaker Boehner has broken this rule several times in the past, and apparently the more fractious members of his party have made it clear his infraction points are getting close to activating the ban gun.
 
  • #157
Shutdown’s Quiet Toll, From Idled Research to Closed Wallets
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/12/us/shutdowns-quiet-toll-from-idled-research-to-closed-wallets.html

. . . .
Many of the half a million federal workers whose paychecks on Friday showed half of what they normally earn fretted about how to juggle bills and put off major purchases.
. . . .
The temporary disruption of furloughed workers’ spending patterns, a skittishness likely to continue even after they go back to work, is capable of measurable damage to the nation’s growth rate, economists said. . . .
 
  • #158
  • #159
Vic Sandler said:
This article, based on a study published in JAMA, argues against the idea that doctors prescribe unnecessary tests for self-referral profit motives and/or malpractice lawsuit liability fears. They concentrated on a particular test. They compared the percentage the tests that were unnecessary at Veterans Affairs hospitals with the percentage at public and private hospitals and found 13% in both cases.

http://www.aboutlawsuits.com/unneeded-tests-not-due-lawsuits-48389/

Two of the authors, including the lead author, of the study work for the VA.

Are there any studies supporting the idea that conflict of interest is a significant factor in unnecessary testing?

More recently it would be doctors receiving money from drug companies. Ironically this is legal up to a point.

Has Your health Professional Received Drug Company Money? The link below has a search feature. The names are listed alphabetically by first name, middle name, then last name, which is a bit weird.

I remembered my primary doc's middle name when I saw it. "Zerwerk"

http://projects.propublica.org/docdollars/

Doctors seem to be churning through more patients in a day to increase income. I saw a neurologist several months ago. He was walking out of the exam room door exactly 10 minutes after he had entered. ( I had been warned of this). I intentionally asked a pertinent question just as he got up to leave. He never answered that question but the next neurologist I saw certainly did.
 
  • #160
edward said:
More recently it would be doctors receiving money from drug companies.
This is interesting, but it doesn't answer my question.

Vic Sandler said:
Are there any studies supporting the idea that conflict of interest is a significant factor in unnecessary testing?
 
  • #161
AlephZero said:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hastert_Rule

The Hastert Rule says that the Speaker will not schedule a floor vote on any bill that does not have majority support within his/her party — even if the majority of the members of the House would vote to pass it.

I wonder if this is why Yeltsin blew up the Russian Parliament that day.

Can we have the queen back? I cast my vote to be a colony again.

 
  • #163
AlephZero said:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hastert_Rule

A couple things about the Hastert Rule

1. It predates Denny Hastert by decades. Maybe centuries. Both parties have used it.
2. In the words of Hector Barbossa, "Thems be more like guidelines". Every speaker in memory has had cases where bills have been voted on and even passed without this condition.
3. It's hardly ever used because the real power the majority party has is control of committees. Each committee has N Republicans and N Democrats, and 1 chairperson from the majority party. Legislation that the majority party doesn't like usually just languishes in committee.
 
  • #164
Pythagorean said:
0Jd-iaYLO1A[/youtube][/QUOTE] Re...OTE] Democracy has been suspended? hmmm...
 
  • #165
Welcome to the newest banana republic.
 
  • #166
Palin and Cruz at the World War II memorial. Palin mentions the burycades.

http://www.nbcnews.com/video/nbc-news/53270914/#53270914
 
  • #167
My hippie friend just posted this on Facebook:

https://scontent-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/1378450_10202079558011263_435882656_n.jpg​

I always thought she was just "a hippie".

hmmm...

"the right answer ... for the future"

I think she's been a smarter hippie than me, the whole time.
 
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  • #168
The VA just sent me an email saying that my GI bill payments won't be sent anymore, although they had just sent an email a few days ago saying payments would go out normally. Sounds like more politicking to me, just like the whole death benefits thing.
 
  • #169
Student100 said:
The VA just sent me an email saying that my GI bill payments won't be sent anymore, although they had just sent an email a few days ago saying payments would go out normally. Sounds like more politicking to me, just like the whole death benefits thing.

Until yesterday most agencies were not aware that the T Party had locked in control of the shutdown to one person. VA emails are sent en masse, you are not the only one who received the same email. Don't presume that "politicking" as you call it won't hurt you.
 
  • #170
edward said:
Until yesterday most agencies were not aware that the T Party had locked in control of the shutdown to one person. VA emails are sent en masse, you are not the only one who received the same email. Don't presume that "politicking" as you call it won't hurt you.

I've never assumed it wouldn't hurt me, I just found it odd that they would send out emails several days ago saying "Everything’s good to go till Dec. 1", and now saying that they won't be sending out benefits Nov. 1. It stinks as feigned inability, the same type of silliness as closing national parks or bringing webpages down. It isn't entirely the Tpartys fault, the whole legislative and executive branches are polarized beyond belief.
 
  • #171
Student100 said:
... It stinks ...

As a veteran, I agree, 100%.

ps. What the hell is a "GI bill payment"? Am I entitled to free money or something? Woo Hoo! :-p
 
  • #172
edward said:
Palin and Cruz at the World War II memorial. Palin mentions the burycades.

http://www.nbcnews.com/video/nbc-news/53270914/#53270914

I can't even parse that, in anything but, um... wow. No. Never mind.

Sorry.

That left me speechless.

:redface:
 
  • #173
OmCheeto said:
As a veteran, I agree, 100%.

ps. What the hell is a "GI bill payment"? Am I entitled to free money or something? Woo Hoo! :-p

The whole Chapter 33/Post 9-11 GI bill includes stipends every month for housing/books dependent on ZIP code. Very similar to the BAH you'd get while serving, it's about 2200 a month at my zip code. In addition to that, tuition for in state students at public universities is paid in full. (Not so much at the moment with the shutdown.) However, it only last for a total of three years of training instead of four like the old system (That didn't really pay for much of anything by todays standards), but you can still complete a degree in the time frame since it only counts training months.

I'm guessing you've been out for a while! Did you never use the old GI Chapter 30 I think?
 
  • #174
edward said:
Palin and Cruz at the World War II memorial. Palin mentions the burycades.

http://www.nbcnews.com/video/nbc-news/53270914/#53270914

I believe the term is 'Barrycades'. Change you can believe in!
 
  • #175
Vanadium 50 said:
A couple things about the Hastert Rule

1. It predates Denny Hastert by decades. Maybe centuries. Both parties have used it.
2. In the words of Hector Barbossa, "Thems be more like guidelines". Every speaker in memory has had cases where bills have been voted on and even passed without this condition.
3. It's hardly ever used because the real power the majority party has is control of committees. Each committee has N Republicans and N Democrats, and 1 chairperson from the majority party. Legislation that the majority party doesn't like usually just languishes in committee.

The House committee membership structure is a little more complicated than 'N Republican and N Democrats, and 1 chairman from the majority party.'

Here is the link to the House of Representatives website:
http://www.house.gov/
Go to 'Overview' and click on 'Committees'.

The most powerful committee is the Comm. on Rules. By a House rule adopted in the 1970s, there are 9 members from the majority and 4 members from the minority. It is customary for the chairman of all committees to be a member of the majority party, since they are in charge of organizing the house in each new congress. The memberships of other committees is usually proportional, based on the number of each party as a ratio to the whole. For instance, Armed Services has 62 members, 34 R and 26 D.

Since new rules can be voted in by the House, these setups can and do change over time. Older committees are abolished, new committees are created.
 

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