What does any of that have to do with the price of tea in China? Politicians on both sides of the aisle are expected to raise money for their party. If you want lucrative committee appointments, you have to buy them. Edited to add a source from the other side of the aisle: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2017/07/21/problems-with-the-committee-tax-in-congress/

It's simply the way the game is played (although in all honesty, my comment is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, as Fetterman -- being a career politician -- undoubtedly knew this long ago).

He probably became depressed after he was told how much money he's expected to raise for the Democratic party.

I am officially homesick now!

My ex-husband and I went there on our first date!

> extortive fees

Reminds me of the way Detroit used to charge (IIRC) $9,000 for a permit to tear down a derelict house.(And thus it became a tradition to set them on fire on Devil's Night. Would you look at that? It burned to the ground ...)

So the $400K fee was only supposed to be $40K as well?

>But what the city also needs to do is ensure we have the capacity and the staff

Translation: "My brother-in-law needs a job."

You will own nothing and be happy!

>$400,000 for a zoning review

Sounds like a shakedown.

Nice to see it without flames shooting up anywhere.

The healthcare and insurance industries give lots of money to Republicans too, you know!

I think the problem was that an ever-increasing number of people were going without health insurance, either because they couldn't afford it or because the cost-benefit analysis didn't seem to work in their favor. Therefore, the government had to step in and subsidize policies in order to preserve the insurance industry's profits. This also solved the problem of hospitals giving too much uncompensated ER care to the poor. Healthcare systems, like insurance companies, donate a lot of money to "our" politicians.

It's a pity this couldn't have been done in a way that would actually extend regular healthcare to the subsidized policyholders, but since that was a secondary concern, no one seems to have paid much attention to it. It really doesn't help a poor person to give them a free insurance policy with an $8,000 deductible; they still won't be able to afford doctor visits, or they'll have to pay for them out-of-pocket, same as they were doing while uninsured. They'll only benefit if they have a catastrophic expense, but then they most likely wouldn't have been paying for that anyway. (As the old saying goes, "Can't get blood out of a turnip.")

> because it shrunk the size of the pool

Which is another way of saying, "It allowed people to buy much less expensive policies that they preferred to the ACA-compliant ones."

The horror!

>Insurance companies were always allowed to sell off exchange plans.

Yes, but before Trump repealed the individual mandate, you would be fined if you didn't buy an ACA-compliant plan. The cost of the fine most likely erased any savings that could be achieved by buying a noncompliant plan.

> all that gets sorted out at year end

Which is terrifying ... never knowing how much you may owe until tax time! :-o

It's great to have insurance .. maybe someday we'll get insurance with co-pays and deductibles low enough that we can actually afford some healthcare.

Luckily I got hurt at work this year as was able to see a doc for the first time in 5 years since it was covered by worker's comp! The doc was cool ... "Anything else you'd care to discuss while you're here?" Oh boy would I ever!

I believe it is still technically illegal, but the Trump administration removed the part of the individual mandate that fines you if you don't have it. So there's no penalty for being out of compliance!

> We can thank SCOTUS and the GOP for this in one

Absolutely! When the individual mandate went away during the Trump administration, my then-boss and his wife were able to purchase an off-marketplace plan that saved them $800 a month. They used some of their savings to give me a raise. :-)

Making me glad to live in a mobile home with NO basement!

Growing up in a suburban tract home with a basement that flooded regularly made me wonder why anyone bothers with those things. Usually they're uncomfortably cold and musty; anything you store down there picks up an odor that's hard to get rid of. WHY GHOD WHY?

I was kinda joking there! But thanks, I learned something from your post.

If only tranquilizer darts weren't just for wild animals ...

Abandoned on my property? I would scrap them. Heh!

It may be again ...

Just realized how lucky I am to have visited all 3!

I was an office worker once, too, mostly in the days before the Internet when all we could do to eff off was play Hearts on our computers, lol.

I feel so sorry for office workers who can get all of their work done in 4 or 5 hours, then have to kill time for the rest of their 8-hour shift, while meanwhile I can barely get my building cleaned in 8.