This Pearls Before Swine strip fits this thread: Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for August 24, 2018 - GoComics
I’ve already answered your questions, and exposed your illogic. You did call me selfish, even if you didn’t use the exact word, that was clearly your inference. I exposed your illogic. You should man-up and admit you were wrong, and I’d gain more respect for you. Or you can keep pretending that you didn’t do what you clearly did.
Answer my question: What do you mean by the nature of US politics? And how would you change it? Answer it. Stop avoiding it. Answer it.
I don’t mistrust government. But I think many things can be done outside of government. And if you ask me what I mistrust: I mistrust the right-wingers in this country that are in charge of our government, and cyclically will be again.
Your idea of changing the nature of our politics is absolutely hilarious. These people aren’t going to educate themselves on anything about government. They vilify government every chance they get, and they get paid to do so. ANd I don’t want them EVER in charge of 100% of this country’s healthcare.
Many things can be done outside of government, but what you fail to grasp is that many things cannot. Managing access to health care is one of the things that fundamentally cannot. To function effectively it has to be regarded as an essential public service, like social security and national defense. Trying to manage health care coverage as a market-driven enterprise has exactly all the wrong incentives and leads directly to the cascading plethora of problems you have today, and no amount of superficial tweaking is going to fix fundamental structural problems.
And yet, the government is 100% in charge of Medicare, which has survived intact for 53 years. Meanwhile UHC is either government-run or tightly government-regulated in every industrialized nation in the world, and it has survived there, too, in most cases even longer. It has existed in Germany for 135 years, since the time of Bismarck. If there is any hilarity afoot here, it seems the joke is on you.
…it wasn’t “questions.” It was a specific question.
And no you didn’t answer it.
I’ve shown you that 25 million people remained uninsured despite the ACA.
You concede that even with tweaks at the very least 6 million people would not have health insurance.
The people that have to be on gofundme and other crowdfunding platforms will still have to beg.
Because insurance isn’t healthcare.
Youcaring has 350,000 current active campaigns related to healthcare. How do your “smart regulations” go about addressing this problem? What happens to the millions of people that **will **fall through the gaps?
“Man-up.”
LOL.
I don’t need nor desire your respect.
I’ve already answered your questions, and exposed your illogic.
I think Medicare is safe because it’s for old people mostly, who by and large are seen as having earned their keep. It’s a good example, and I’ll admit you have a point. But when we expand it to the entire population, including people that the right thinks “aren’t worthy”, I get worried. They will try to hack it up, I guarantee it, just like they’ve gone after the ACA, and how they’re trying to push bogus work requirements on Medicaid, or drug-tests for Food Stamps.
I don’t think you fully understand how over the cliff the right-wing in America has gone. This isn’t just Trump. It’s their entire policy and money apparatus. I don’t think they can be trusted to keep anything in place or to protect anything, even if a group of bipartisan senators cooked up an awesome’ish single-payer plan. Matter of fact, as I type this, I actually think the Republicans’ next move, should they win in the midterm elections, is to go after SS & medicare. They will use the debt as a reason, even though their last tax cut increased the debt/deficits.
The one thing I can say that worse about America than many places right now is our “conservative” political party. They’ve gone stark-raving mad, and we just shouldn’t try and put something together that they’ll tear to pieces one day. We try and vote them out, and then we put things together that they can’t attack all at once.
It’s not the only reason I don’t want single-payer. There are others that I’ve mentioned. But it’s a very valid reason.
I am also pessimistic. The sheer cost of right-wing malice is staggering. Recall that Clinton and the Democrats solved the deficit problem in the 1990’s and the GOP deliberately threw that away at a cost of trillions. The misadventure in Iraq was a deliberate boondoggle, again with multi-trillion cost. GOP opposition to UHC costs at least half a million human lives per decade. Environmental regulations removed just in the last year will cost tens of thousands more lives. (I hope I don’t receive a warning for political jabs in GD — the above are facts, not opinions.)
The one optimistic straw I grasp at is the sheer horror, incompetence, and blatant corruption of the Trump Administration. Just as the drug-crazed rapist in Clockwork Orange was cured with aversion therapy, so maybe Americans will wake up in the aftermath of Trump and finally understand that Stupidism is not a sound political philosophy. (Alex the Droog does relapse in Clockwork Orange; let this be a warning to America: Move quickly when sanity is restored.)
The trick is to set it up in such a way that enough of the key constituents “own” it, and thus inertia maintains it. If it’s seen by both those who pay for it, and by the medics, as something just for poor people, it will always be under threat. The better off have to feel it’s theirs too, and the medics have to be in charge of the clinical priorities and boundaries, and then it becomes inviolable. If the politicians are confined to coming up with the funding, then the voters/taxpayers know who to blame for its shortcomings.
How many GOP candidate rants against Obamacare do you hear these days? You don’t, and for good reason: not only did repeal-and-replace fail, but the public got used to the system. I don’t trust the GOP farther than I can spit, and I’m a dribbler, but the failure to pass the ACHA underscores two important points:
- It’s almost impossible to take away benefits once they’ve been established. The proposal to rescind mandatory pre-existing condition coverage met with such outrage, the GOP had to abandon it. Ditto the provision allowing offspring up to age 26 to remain on their parents’ policy. Repeal without replace was impossible: replacing it in a way that wouldn’t hurt the reelection chances of those in states that benefitted from the ACA such as AZ and AK, proved just as tough.
2)The GOP couldn’t agree on how it wanted to replace Obamacare. Were Medicare expanded, it would prove impossible to replace.
The argument that Medicare expansion shouldn’t be tried because the GOP would simply yank it away is misguided. 59% of Americans favor expanding Medicare coverage, and a whopping 75% favor making Medicare available to anyone who wants it. [cite]It’s not that the political landscape is changing; it’s that familiarity with the ACA bred content.
But it does sound as though there would have to be some tough decisions, requiring careful management of expectations, about cost control and reduction.
Interesting perspective. At another board we were discussing reasons for the GOP being strangely muted in their opposition to the growing support for Medicare for all, strange because, if implemented, it would be a huge blow to the notion of smaller, hands-off government.
Sentiment was mostly split between (1) Republicans do not wish to draw attention to their failures at reforming health care last year and their being on the wrong side of yet another poplular issue and (2) that they were simply unaware of how much support has grown in a fairly short window. I tend to favor No. 2 because I just can’t see the Trump wing of the Republican Party keeping quiet while a giant threat like this grows ever stronger. Or, simpler yet, they feel confident that the government structure is currently rigged enough that a motivated minority can prevent something like this from happening ad infinitum.
Full-on Repeal and Replace died in the Senate. What they’ve since attempted, and they’re having limited success, is soft repeal. They have cut down the enrollment period. They have cut down outreach. They have cut back on funding for navigators. They are approving work-requirments for Medicaid. They have cut off CSR funding. They have repealed the individual mandate. They are also loosening the requirements for short-term plans, which don’t have as much coverage.
All of the above is designed to weaken the ACA, and hope it collapses under its own weight. We are already seeing an uptick in the uninsured rate due to these sabotage actions.
And this is just targeted at a small sliver of the overall population. Imagine what they would attempt if everyone was under a singe-payer plan.
That’s just the point: if everyone were under a single-payer plan, they wouldn’t be able to do it.
And those higher rates? Maybe not for long:
No doubt the GOP will find a way to claim the success of the ACA as their own, but they won’t find it easy to maintain their footing while trying to dismantle it.
Yes, they would be able to do it. Part of the hard-right view in this country is that certain groups don’t deserve government help. They view them as undeserving “takers”. You put single-payer out there, and the Pubs would chip away at it just like they’re trying to do to the ACA. If they couldn’t get rid of it completely, they would attack it stealthily, like they’re doing now. And any single-payer plan that gets through our political system will be a kludge, inefficient, mess of a system, because even the Dems have infighting on this stuff.
Pubs will not just sit back and leave single-payer alone. Not the current Republican party.
Good, because you won’t get it as long as you can’t admit what you know deep down.
Since we talked about pouring money on old people about to die in this thread, I find it useful to inform you of a study that shows this does not happen.
Here is a summary from the MIT press office. One of the interesting items is:
So it turns out that though we do spend a good bit of money (25%) on treating people in the last year of their life, we don’t know who those people are when we treat them.
So much for death panels.
…LOL.
…sorry I missed this.
You were there?
And all you saw was Obama saying “cook me up some healthcare reform”?
They didn’t call it Obamacare for nothing you know.
It was material to the point that I made.
The existence of the world that we live in right now demonstrates completely that you didn’t have Obama’s back. Trump won. The Republicans hold the all the power. That is the responsibility of the people of America, it doesn’t fall on the shoulders of a single person.
Nonsense. It was downright miraculous that they got passed what got passed. It didn’t come down to “skill and guile”. It was about the decision to obstruct.
What is teaing? Is that like peeing, but with tea?
Did I call out “the American Left?”
I called out the people of America. They dropped the ball. I’m holding all of you accountable.
Thank you for your contribution.
Make sure you policy has the Coincidental Death Waiver.
That was answered on post #366.
What is the nature of US politics that you want to change? And how do you want to do it? Answer it. Stop pretending I’m selfish. Stop pretending I won’t answer questions that I’ve already answered. Answer my questions.