Stupid Republican idea of the day

No, that’s a gross exaggeration at best.

In fact, many psychologists would argue that the memory doesn’t actually record things in that way at all! But I don’t expect Dr. Carson had the most accurate education on neurogenesis, given the era he studied in.

Robespierre did. John Brown did. You just gotta accept that you aren’t gonna live forever, son.

Georgia Republican Pricks pass racial gerrymander to kick Black Voters out of GOP Districts.

I understand the revulsion at the, shall we say, retro reporting style in an article about a speech about equality, but could you explain what precisely the SRIOTD is in the article? From what I can see the FLOTUS gave a FLOTUS speech of the sort that many previous ones have (albeit a rather clunky one, from the quoted bits).

(On a related topic though, ISTR that some right-wingers freaked out at the idea of a First Lady wearing sleeveless dresses. How times change…)

Hell, usually she avoids controversy altogether by giving the exact speech that a previous FLOTUS did. :smiley:

They used to claim that lying under oath was a big deal, too.

Next time he should put his electrodes in a shoulder bag or something so he always has them available to help him remember where he put the rest of his stuff.

We’ve taught our kids that whenever someone says “I’m not a _____, but…” that what the person really means is “I’m a _________ butt.”

“I’m not judgmental, but…” Translation: “I’m a judgmental butt.”
“I’m not a racist, but…” Translation: “I’m a racist butt.”

It’s really helped their critical thinking skills.

Paul Ryan says insurance can’t work if healthy must pay more to subsidize the sick.

In other news, fire insurance can’t work if people with intact houses subsidize people with burned-down houses.

And for completeness, here’s the actual quote.

When Ryan rolls up his sleeves, a poor person gets fisted.

Ha! I love that.

I’m not sure what Ryan meant by “…that we’re just going to make everybody buy our health insurance at the federal government level.” Who is the “our” there? Because I don’t think the ACA forces anyone to buy insurance from the federal government. So I’m not sure what law he’s actually objecting to. Maybe he’s confusing the ACA with that law that included the death panels. Luckily that version didn’t pass. Or exist.

Because we all know that young and healthy people never succumb to catastrophic disease suddenly, or have accidents. Nope, no young and healthy person has EVER been diagnosed with cancer, had an appendix burst, contract a communicable disease or organ failure or injure or accidentally poison themselves in their own home. Disease is 100% predictable. They just keep on being healthy till they get old, yessirree!

Ryan is no dummy. What he was getting at is that it is indeed unfair for young people to pay a lot more than their level of risk so that old people can pay less. Older people have higher incomes, so it makes sense for premiums to increase with age. Obviously in a single payer system you wouldn’t have to worry about this, but the structure of ACA requires that young people be lured into the insurance market. Which isn’t happening. They are balking at the ridiculous prices and staying out.

Do older people have higher incomes? More experienced people do, sure, but is it really that correlated with age? And, either way, wouldn’t that concern be better served if we just focus on income and leave age out of it?

I mean, I get the idea that you need to lure in the most healthy folks. I have no problem with a carrot and stick approach, instead of just the stick approach of levying a tax if you don’t buy in. I just don’t think something that looks like ageism from the outside is a good idea.

Stick with income and health as your criteria, not age.

Edit: I also think you’re doing the same thing some people do with Trump and adding stuff that he didn’t say to make him sound better. The fairness thing isn’t right–what’s not fair is that some people are healthy and others aren’t, through no fault of their own. Having everyone pay to help everyone is perfectly fair. If you don’t care about others as much as yourself, you have no value to society. That depends on people being willing to help others–that’s what makes society better than just living on your own.

Except that’s not how people make decisions, Incentives matter. If a young person judges that he’s better off without insurance, then he’ll go without insurance. If you want young healthy people in the market you have to lure them into the market on their terms. Helping the sick is nice, but the reality is they will buy insurance, they don’t need any prodding. It may not be nice, but it’s how people make decisions. and I hesitate to even call it selfish, given the realities of planning your budget around health care. Middle class families have to make major sacrifices to get covered. If the choice is between the uncertainty of getting sick in the future and the certainty of malnourished kids or living in a shitty neighborhood so you can afford your health insurance, then it might actually be quite rational to not get insured. I think the government and the big thinkers made a big mistake by assuming that insurance must be the first thing every citizen pays for, prioritized over rent and food. That’s what a mandate does, it says, “You WILL buy this, while everything else is optional.” It’s up to people to make those decisions, not government.

But the young adults who come down with disease will still be paid for by the older people? Or do we say 'Fuck 'em, they rolled the dice"? What about the healthy young adults who are starting families? Young adulthood is prime-childbearing years. Ever been to children’s hospital?

Claiming it is unfair to demand young adults to have health coverage is ignorant at best. Young adults and children can get catastrophic and chronic illnesses. And in the days before ACA, you could be denied coverage for having ever had a serious or chronic illness. You would still have to be treated. Meaning the public would have to pay up, instead of insurance companies.

It is kind of a principle of insurance that the more people who participate, the stronger the system is.

And so you need to properly incentivize people to sign up. Since it’s a free country we can’t force people to buy health insurance, so it takes more carrots than sticks.

Note that the quote was older and sicker. Do those with chronic illnesses also have higher incomes than those without? I’m all in favor of an income based system but that seems to be antithetical to the Trump care proposal.

But this debate is far better suited one of the umpteen threads about Trumpcare.

How about death panels? If you don’t have insurance and have an accident/get sick…

Then you have the ER. It’s not as if this problem has been solved by other countries. It’s always about figuring out who you’ll help and who you won’t. In the US we’ll pay millions to extend the life of an elderly person for a few months. In Britain, they use a metric called Quality Adjusted Life Years to decide whether to spend a lot of money on a patient.

Medicare in the US, by contrast is pretty much open ended. We ration our care by whether people enroll in an insurance plan or not.