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346 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 346 of 346Do we really want Michael K dictating who can and cannot post comments?
"Hedge fund manager" . LOL.
What an ugly, partisan piece of writing. It's not even worthy of comment except to say that the author looks like an uglier version of Matt Demon.
Althouse, do really want Ritmo posting 20 comments on a thread and driving others away?
And people pretend that doctors don't believe in rationing.
What are you, the quota police? And what makes you believe you speak for everyone else? What arrogance.
This is a substantive issue. A party that believes it's in the midst of a political revolution will either get 60 years of undivided rule out of this (if you believe true believers like Achilles) or will crash and burn in a single election cycle on this most unusual, peculiar and quietly incompetent of loudmouth presidents to have ever yakked his way into the office - and we can't talk at length about it? You're like the Republicans who wanted to rush and ram their horrible legislation through without debate or press coverage.
You support an obsessive, lying Twitter addict and can't handle 20 comments on the actual substance of the country's currently incompetent legislative agenda. What a baby you are!
Obamacare is awesome as it is. Absolutely no reason to buy "insurance"under the current awesome system where you can pick it up when you need it. Genius idea. Wish the car and home insurance markets could latch on to this.
Toothless hates freedom of choice.
Well Balls, - celebrate - Obamacare was shoved down our throats on party line vote, and it sucks - but it's here to stay.
You should be happy.
I just think the contrast between the legislative incompetence of a guy who can't get 50 votes together on something he bitched and moaned for eight years about and on behalf of which he made it his relentless goal to torpedo his political opponent's presidency over, and the ambition and scope and achievement of that opponent's legislation - is incredibly striking. Sorry it took me 20 comments to get it out. But it's obviously something that you so-called revolutionaries are quite sensitive and obtuse about.
It deserves extended discussion. Feel free to provide it. Or feel free to just yak about some other irrelevancies instead. Sorry if my analysis is not up to your oh so high-minded, snooty standards. Heaven forbid you hear from one of those enrollees who you think should just die instead.
I think that enrollee will actually vote first, though. How unfortunate for you. Best move on to figuring out what else you should be fighting to deny the American people.
Obamacare is awesome as it is.
No one believes that. But your mind is just simple enough to push this straw man. It's also a false dichotomy fallacy. Things are either perfect or horrible in the mindset of the Republican Grey Poupon crowd. Try being competent and accurate and curious in your characterizations instead. I guess this is why computers have automated investing decisions. There are people too stupid to think about big problems making financial and political decisions big enough to give us what we got in 2008.
Absolutely no reason to buy "insurance"under the current awesome system where you can pick it up when you need it. Genius idea. Wish the car and home insurance markets could latch on to this.
As any fool can point out, insuring access to cars and homes isn't limited by sending those cars and homes to long, rigorous and highly restrictive training programs that they then ask for greater compensation for. But of course, you are not just any ordinary fool. You're an overpaid bonehead.
The GOP are too cowardly to repeal it. They cannot agree on how to tweak it. more government control, more free stuff promised on the backs of tax payers and on and on.
yeah - it's a shit show.
but the D's created the monster.
@Unknown Okay I do my best to ignore your bullshit, but when you tell me I did not earn the right to fly the US flag that's a bit over the top. When and where did you serve?
Now look, the Republicans only had 8 years to come up with a genius substitute plan for the greatest law ever enacted but they decided instead to use that time to fuck around in D.C. and enjoy the good life. It is a fun town to be in sans responsibility I can tell you that much. But no big deal. Premiums will choke those stupid enough to buy insurance and we will be forced into the magical single payer system. Wait times in Canada now in the range of seven months for many important procedures. But what the fuck, free is worth waiting for.
yeah - it's a shit show.
but the D's created the monster.
Keep convincing yourself that any voting majority will see it that way.
Michael - exactly. Americans want "free" - even if it is terrible.
Well, Obamacare must be awesome otherwise our progressive friends would not have been braying about its possible repeal or improvement lo these many months. And our progressive friends are the smartest of all. They don't appear eager to supply fixes to the genius plan but then why would they if it is just fine as it is.
Balls - The Democrats didn't pass the ACA on party line vote?
Do we get to go all Clintonian and lie about reality now?
"When and where did you serve?"
That you once served the nation makes it even worse that now you support the Traitor in Chief. Shame on you.
Progressives who love the ACA should be celebrating. The ACA was passed on D-party line vote, and it's here to stay.
Oh, the voting majority will most certainly know that Obamacare was hatched by Obama, the democrat. Pretty easy to roll that one to even the dumbest progtender.
Unknown - Maddow is on - go get your hate and lies.
Word to the obviously unwise -
Republicans don't get credit for what they refuse to touch, but for what they fix.
Republicans can't fix anything, though. Accept their congressional district boundaries and their campaign funds.
So they will get the blame for what they're refusing to do anything helpful and un-Kochlike about the healthcare issues.
CEOs don't get continued tenure by refusing to improve the things that their predecessors didn't do perfectly.
Healthcare pre-ACA was pretty bad, and it's not gotten a whole lot better. I don't know if it's possible to please everyone. Basically we need better health, individually, and as a whole. We're playing whack a mole, the way many of us live, leading straight towards costly chronic diseases. If we could all learn about health, learn to be healthy, if we all had better, healthier choices, healthcare might be a little easier.
Oh, the voting majority will most certainly know that Obamacare was hatched by Obama, the democrat. Pretty easy to roll that one to even the dumbest progtender.
Especially if he were running. Which he's not.
I guess those misleading tricks work in your industry. But not for real people.
"Well, Obamacare must be awesome otherwise our progressive friends would not have been braying about its possible repeal or improvement lo these many months. And our progressive friends are the smartest of all. They don't appear eager to supply fixes to the genius plan but then why would they if it is just fine as it is."
The fix is to replace Obamneycare with tax-funded national medical care, some form of single-payer. Get rid of the private health insurance companies.
Jesus but there are a ton of fat people who are going to be clogging the arteries of "health" care in the coming years. They won't fit into an imaging machine, they just don't. And the technology doesn't yet exist to take good pictures from two feet away from the old engine room. So even "free" health care won't help those fatties who can't fit in the machines. Literally can not fit.
Robert Cook
Hey, no problem. Couldn't agree more. Wait around for six or seven months before you get your MRI. Free so what the hell. Oh, Robert, don't think you'll stroll across the park to Sloane if you get a bad biopsy. Won't happen. But free somewhere else within the five boroughs.
@Michael:
It's amazing how you can foresee the failings of a program that hasn't even been created yet. You're regular psychic!
Shorter collective D-brain. Because the GOP didn't fix Obamacare - Obamacare is their fault now.
Asking government to do less
now
equals
Republican social engineering.
Requiring people to comply with Democrat laws at the point of a gun
now
equals
doing it for the less fortunate.
Lies are easy when you are a liar.
Real people elected DJT not to mention the dumbest motherfucker ever born, GWB. Real people. And it will not exactly be misleading to note the vote count on Obamacare. Even a prog schooled fantasist can figure that one out. Even one who was ten years old when it was passed. In fact that will be an excellent teaching moment for those young progs. Not. One. Republican. Voted. For. Obamacare.
Robert . We have only to look to Canada and the UK. Or the VA . You can do so yourself. No fortune telling involved.Those systems have significant problems. But I can tell you one thing: you ain't getting in Sloane for free.
Trump should not sulk. He should simply remove all of the waivers today and let everyone's get hit all the way today and advise Congress he will not sign any funding for it to subsidize the exchanges. Let it collapse and then start again.
Agreed, cubanbob.
Enforce the law.
No matter how much the GOP sucks, the Democrats are full on corrupt.
Barack Obama trafficked guns to Mexican drug lords, secretly delivered pallets filled with billions in cash to Iran's America/Jew-hating mullahs, left four Americans to die in Benghazi and then lied about it, allowed his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to exchange government favors for hundreds of millions of dollars slushed into the Clinton Foundation, sic'd his IRS on everyday, law-abiding Americans, and used a trillion dollars in "stimulus" funds to pay off his cronies, like those behind a boondoggle called Solyndra.
And all along, over eight terrible years, our media did a whole lot more than just let Obama get away with it. They wholeheartedly colluded. They allowed Obama to persecute them through the Department of Justice and to lie to our face (remember: I just now read about it in the newspaper, the IRS did nothing wrong, you can keep your insurance). And when that wasn't enough, the media mercilessly attacked as racist anyone who criticized the Precious and ginned up nothingburgers like Todd Akin to distract from those four dead Americans. And when even that wasn't enough, they themselves lied and obfuscated, covered up and dissembled, and most of all they set all kinds of precedents that, in a delicious form of irony, are now driving this utterly failed institution to the edge of insanity.
The very same media that shrugged when Hillary Clinton set up a secret server, deleted 33,000 government emails, BleachBit'd whatever remained and then literally took a hammer to the devices — the media that set that precedent now wants us to get all worked up over Trump's tweets?
The very same media that buried Bill Clinton's perjury and his numerous victims of sexual abuse — the media that set those precedents now wants us to consider an Access Hollywood video a disqualifier for the presidency? Now wants us to freak out over an awkward handshake?
The very same media that gushed over Barack Obama's magical ability to "slow-walk the truth" — the media that set that precedent now wants us to impeach Trump over how the details of his son's meeting with a Russian lawyer have been released?
Corrupt hacks gotta hack
Shorter collective D-brain. Because the GOP didn't fix Obamacare - Obamacare is their fault now.
Yes! Instead blame it on the Democrats who weren't even in power in the Congress to legislate the eventual, needed changes to it!
You can't literally be this dumb. It's a miracle you managed to find your way out of your mom's vagina.
"they are so stupid as to think that an industry with a necessarily high-priced, restricted supply cartel known as "medical providers" will conform to "free market" principles? "
Well, there you go. The problem is very likely in that restricted supply of providers.
All that needs to be done is reduce the regulatory and legal requirements that limit this supply.
This is all a matter of government policy you know. Including restricting insurance providers, requiring medical credentials for all sorts of routine medical services, (such as prescriptions for innocuous metformin) making it difficult and expensive to acquire medical credentials, and etc. ad infinitum. The cost of medical care is affected far more by government policies that limit supply and force inflated costs, than who picks up the tab for medical insurance.
Even Spain has 50% more physicians per capita than the US. They, socialistic medical insurance notwithstanding, are far less "regulated" than is the US, and enormously less bureaucratic.
The only problem with de-regulating an increase in supply in order to drive down prices, like Spain and the rest of Europe does, is that the Democrats will scream so hard in protection of their pet lawyers and bureaucracies they will crack the earth and make Yellowstone explode, and then where will we be?
Real people elected DJT not to mention the dumbest motherfucker ever born, GWB. Real people. And it will not exactly be misleading to note the vote count on Obamacare. Even a prog schooled fantasist can figure that one out. Even one who was ten years old when it was passed. In fact that will be an excellent teaching moment for those young progs. Not. One. Republican. Voted. For. Obamacare.
And as a party, they couldn't vote to do anything but keep it in place. And then it became their strategy to do so!
Their slogan will be: Two more years of Republicans keeping Obamacare in place!
You couldn't come up with something this stupid if you tried. No wonder no one trusts or pays you to get anything done. You just get your hands on their money and wiggle your fingers around it maniacally while laughing like a psychiatric ward inmate.
Personally, I think you all would be better off if, as Francisco Franco did, you give the people socialized medicine, but take care to exterminate the socialists first.
"...eventual needed changes..."
...in the legislation Democrats wrote and passed without Republican input.
That makes it a Democrat problem first and a Republican problem at some other time.
The Dems hitched themselves to this genius "insurance" plan. And it has proven to be unfixable unless you are willing to commit political suicide (which was the point, of course). So it really was political genius to pack it with free shit, especially the pre-existing conditions feature. It can't be undone because you can't take away free shit from Americans. But reality can and reality is headed to this plan. It will be fun to watch. Perhaps it will implode with the Dems in control. Quite possible.
1000+ out of elected office Democrats know who was blamed for ObamaInsurance.
That fact has not changed.
It can't be undone because you can't take away free shit from Americans.
And you should know - as an American who's accumulated quite a lot of free shit in your time.
Just think about your fucking country for a change. Or don't. But don't think that sociopathic assholes like yourself will be predicting let alone controlling the agenda or outcome.
That the Dems will obviously do everything they can to make Republicans take the blame for Obamacare's massive failures, even when Republicans didn't make a single change to it, tells anyone with more than two brain cells everything they need to know about who's really to blame.
"Just think about your fucking country for a change. Or don't. But don't think that sociopathic assholes like yourself will be predicting let alone controlling the agenda or outcome."
This is a bit intemperate. Where is all that calm reasoning together, as gentlemen?
“Man matures when he stops believing that politics solves his problems.”
― Nicolás Gómez Dávila, Escolios a un texto implicito: Seleccion
As for the law itself, I am perfectly happy to wait until 2018 for there to be 60+ Republican senators. Anything that could be produced with 52, given the quislings we have among them, will suck. Once we have some buffer to absorb their treason, the product will be much closer to real repeal, tbe only thing that will work.
...in the legislation Democrats wrote and passed without Republican input.
That makes it a Democrat problem first and a Republican problem at some other time.
Time stands still for Birkel, but not for America. Problems change, legislative needs change.
But you could put Birkel in charge of a campaign that seeks to identify someone to blame for the extinction of the dinosaurs. I mean, that is literally how stupid and out of touch he is. A very slim minority of the country is stupid enough to think that doing nothing or going in reverse is preferred to half-measures as preliminaries that should be built upon later, but Birkel's definitely one of them. Because he's never built anything in his life. It's all just about rubbing a magic lamp for him. No hard work, no nothing. Just it's either perfect or why even get to work on it at all. That's his philosophy. And it explains his lot in life.
Cannot take free shit away from Americans. You cannot make them pay for something that has been free. The Dems knew that, they thrive on that, it is the very nature of their project. Free shit from the govt. Who can argue with that?
...tells anyone with more than two brain cells everything they need to know about who's really to blame.
Someone who's not running.
I could keep telling you decerebrated zombies that no one prefers repeal or stasis to improvement. But you will keep refusing to believe it until it bites you in the ass once again, just like 2008 did.
"Time stands still for Birkel, but not for America."
Time stands still for everyone. Nothing here discussed is unique or different.
All our sins are timeless, and all this uproar is entirely about sin.
“The curve of man’s knowledge of himself ascends until the 17th century, declines gradually afterwards, in this century it finally plummets”
― Nicolás Gómez Dávila
One would think that the smarter than us progs would have a solution to the problems plaguing Obamacare but they have not been proffered. I think they might have been hoping that the Republicans would do something stupid and they could do their typical jeering from the sidelines but, alas, the Republicans did not.
Meanwhile illegal border crossings are down 70%. Regulatory headwinds being fanned away. Good times.
"I could keep telling you decerebrated zombies that no one prefers repeal or stasis to improvement."
I like that - "decerebrated" - I was using "acephalic", but that will do quite well.
Tell me, are your hobbies all in this vein? Because it seems a bit stressful to stay in this mode. It also helps to contemplate ones own nature, and understand your own passions.
Buwaya
The Columbian!! Excellent.
No toothy Balls, the Democrats passed the ACA on party line vote. Time stands still for that vote and no amount of Clintonian posturing and lying will change that historical fact.
Democrat improvement to the ACA = kill all insurance companies and hand all healthcare over to the bureaucracy.
"The Columbian!! Excellent."
I have the "Escolios", but I was reminded of this again by guildofcannonballs, who was quoting them the other day. I don't have the rest, and the "Escolios" on paper, and in Spanish. But a great deal of Davila is online, and it is all, of course, Escolios, so he is uniquely quotable. Perfect for copy and paste.
Because it seems a bit stressful to stay in this mode.
No, just aware. Less dismissive of other people and what they go through.
Time stands still for that vote -
Right. Just like people were voted out in 2008 for voting for the Glass Steagall repeal. Or NAFTA.
Just because you live in the past and in partisan fantasyland doesn't mean normal Americans do. They know that failing to do anything constructive about the ACA is worse than whatever they don't like about ACA. They prefer the ACA's provisions to the Republican inability to figure out what they want to do about it, like a deer in the headlights. That's why their 2nd bill preserved more provisions than the 1st, dummy.
Take your head out of your butthole, there are too many Republicans up there. Your country is not with them and their agenda on healthcare. Get out and look around.
"No, just aware. Less dismissive of other people and what they go through."
Then your purpose in life is set for you. You should, perhaps, consider whether you have a vocation. You simply vibrate with compassion, I can tell, you just need to direct it in some productive way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father_Damien
An obviously intelligent, articulate person who is nonetheless miserable, hateful, and unreasonable.
Only to miserable, hateful, unreasonable people. Which is better than being a Republican who kisses the asses of the miserable, the hateful and unreasonable. Especially if they're rich enough.
How's that ACA-repeal tax cut coming along, Full Mooned?
"They know that failing to do anything constructive about the ACA is worse than whatever they don't like about ACA."
This is not logical. It is worse not to fix something versus keeping it in its broken state?
Well, I quibble with your statement, but that is not the substance of this.
That does not matter in politics. Its not about broken or not broken, it is about interests.
Re the discussion on CA real estate. I recently sold 3 homes in the East Bay area that took some fixing up. There was some yard work to do, so I needed a couple of bags of dirt from the Home Depot. Besides the retail price there was an added state tax, county tax, city tax, and... a specific dirt tax of 3.5%! Dirt tax! I swear they would tax the air you breath if they could meter it. One home (San Leandro) needed an extensive plumbing redo. The old pipes were lead. I proposed pex replacement only to find out that LEAD pipes were required as replacement. Copper wasn't acceptable either. I managed to flip all three houses in 5 months after finding out that CA will declare you a resident if they think you have been in state 6 months. And start taxing all income no matter where it comes from. Goodbye CA. Oh yeah, the roads were crap, and the people were mostly idiots, but they were building a lot of low income housing. And just think of all the suicides the multimillion dollar net on the Golden Gate Bridge will prevent.
I guess my point is that CA's wounds are self inflicted. Beautiful state in the north though.
Its not about broken or not broken, it is about interests.
30 million interests, at last count.
Dollars don't vote. People do.
Why do you hate the people so much?
Less dismissive of other people, unless they complain that policies crafted by Democrats - and only Democrats - are hurting new business formation and growth or the budgets of people who live in icky flyover places.
Those people TTR dismissed easily.
Blogger The Toothless Revolutionary said...
"Word to the obviously unwise -
Republicans don't get credit for what they refuse to touch, but for what they fix."
You are making this explicitly partisan. I, the "true believer," am not. I am holding everyone who is responsible for this to account.
I look forward to the Kid Rock senate campaign. We are going to rid the party of shitheads like murkowski and capito. It is going to take a few elections but it has to be done. There are too many people like McCain in DC who don't listen to the voters and listen to the billionaires. I hope he survives and takes this opportunity to retire. Murkowski is a regrettable piece of work.
But what are the democrats doing for anyone? They know Obamacare is failing and they just want to shift blame. 6 years of benefits paid for with 10 years of taxes. Medicaid is going to fail because there just isn't enough money. Hopefully the democrat party starts electing some non-shitheads. I don't see anything being done though. The same people that screwed Bernie are still in charge.
It must be lonely for you.
While I sit here in HR, watching the VP's Newton's Cradle game bounce back and forth like the Sword of Damocles, or somthing.
"Dollars don't vote. People do."
Dollars, usually, vote much better than people. The politicians are correct in this, most of the time.
With some few exceptions, like in the US last November.
30 million people, or 300 million, usually don't have interests, as such, they have emotions.
Some people look at facts and attempt understanding and figure out possible solutions to achieve the greatest good for the greatest number. People usually hate them, and they are poor.
Some other people look at facts and attempt understanding, and sell their idea for making the most money off the problem to people who stand to gain from the scheme. As in 2009-2010. They get rich rewards, and, somehow, credit for making 30 million happy.
The United States is one of the highest taxed developed economies in the world. We are eating the seed corn of previous success and it will not last.
But what we need is a revolution of power away from the centralized state. That is the only answer. And we must concede politicians are an unlikely group to enact those necessary changes.
Proving my point. I don't need a tax cut. Don't need anything at all.
Oh, but you will do your darnedest to do the bidding of folks who feel that is the only important priority in their life and career - the country be damned.
TTR could just as easily attack the lefties here. It is not about beliefs at all.
Their beliefs aren't as nonsensical or socially destructive as yours, so I won't.
The rest of your silly personal attacks and speculative nonsense I'll ignore, which is all they deserve.
Dollars, usually, vote much better than people. The politicians are correct in this, most of the time.
Those politicians are wrong, and that's not how the constitution's written.
Go find yourself your favorite currency, build a little Lego voting booth for them, and set them in there.
Then take them out and stroke the little bills while you coo to them and tell them how pretty and precious they are.
A bunch of gollums is what y'all are.
FullMoon said...
"TTR could just as easily attack the lefties here. It is not about beliefs at all. It is about an outlet for TTR's self hate and life-misery."
I understand how he feels. The rot in DC is disgusting and the Republican Party has a lot of shitheads in it. But the voters are slowly taking the party back.
The democrats on the other hand? His party will still be controlled by the people that screwed Bernie. There is no legitimate outlet for someone on the left. And deep down he knows the democrat base is full of people who are stupid and easily led. It looks very bleak for the left unless you truly want to endorse a system where rich urban sophisticates lord over a poor permanent underclass.
CEOs don't get continued tenure by refusing to improve the things that their predecessors didn't do perfectly.
That's bullshit line and the author knows it. CEOs improve things for their stockholders. They are quite often deaf to their employee's wishes. Being deaf to his audience is not Trump's problem. Trump may have a problem with GOPe stakeholders.
Blogger The Toothless Revolutionary said....
"Oh, but you will do your darnedest to do the bidding of folks who feel that is the only important priority in their life and career - the country be damned."
You are the one defending Obamacare.
The democrats on the other hand? His party will still be controlled by the people that screwed Bernie. There is no legitimate outlet for someone on the left.
Hillary was near-perfect example of a "political CEO" out of touch with her "employees." If she were a business executive, she would 100% in it for the shareholders.
We are going to rid the party of shitheads like murkowski...
The foul-mouthed carpetbagger relocating himself from the Northwest to Alaska speaks!
You won't do any of what you write. You have never been involved in politics - even at the most basic and innocuous levels. You have never organized anything that involved other people. You don't really have the personality for it, do you? Let alone the interest.
Of course, you can swear and shoot zingers with the best of them. And I love you for that.
But your predictions reek of someone who is too focused on the things that only matter to him.
"CEOs don't get continued tenure by refusing to improve the things that their predecessors didn't do perfectly."
That's bullshit line and the author knows it. CEOs improve things for their stockholders. They are quite often deaf to their employee's wishes. Being deaf to his audience is not Trump's problem. Trump may have a problem with GOPe stakeholders.
The above comment wins the award for most incoherent response ever given in internet history. It's seriously like he's having a conversation with himself and unaware of it.
Constitutions are pieces of paper that hold totemic power right until some people with sufficient power think the thing has gotten inconvenient.
See Venezuela - yes I know, I know, it's a trite example of all sorts of things, but that's precisely what's happened and is happening.
The "deep state" and it's friends (also trite these days, but it's a fact, a terrible, monumental fact) think the US constitution is inconvenient. They usually win. They have been winning for decades.
You are the one defending Obamacare.
So?
So are Republicans who don't want to lose re-elections in a number of states.
You want to repeal coverage for pre-existing conditions? Good luck with that!
You want to boot young adults under 26 off their parents' plans? Good luck with that!
Republicans, Democrats.... they actually have to win elections.
You, OTOH, apparently you can be a blind ideologue a la Ted Cruz and pretend that that's a popular position to support.
The Ted Cruzes and Rand Paul's have unworkable, ideological, tiny minority positions on healthcare reform.
But apparently they don't know about the power of alternative medicine, which seems to have been your only answer all along.
And I told you why it wouldn't work. But that's ok. You keep believing. Eye surgeries and plastic surgery, right?
I got into an argument with a plastic surgeon just yesterday, actually. It was kind of hilarious.
Predictions? I predicted ObamaInsurance would be a massive tax, massive wealth transfer, massive failure and ongoing political failure for Democrats. I understand that incentives matter and I understand that centralized governments are inherently brittle and inefficient. (Cause? Effect?)
Smaller decentralized government or massive failure? TTR picks massive failure and blame displacement.
Constitutions are pieces of paper that hold totemic power right until some people with sufficient power think the thing has gotten inconvenient.
Ok, so you don't believe in rule of law, then. I think our conversation here is done - as always. Next!
Any non-pomo-nihilists who want to continue this, step right up. Eastern Deepak Chopra types though I'm kind of not interesting in conversing with, though. Everything is nothing is all and one thing and jai guru deva om. Blah blah blah blah blah.
Go meditate instead, bu. Listening to you twist words and realities is like watching the maharishi take on an engineering job. Just not your thing. It's like mixing meatballs and milkshakes. Just too grossly incongruous to get involved with.
I predicted ObamaInsurance would be a massive tax, massive wealth transfer -
And in the wrong direction, too! (By your nonsense standard). To the people instead of upward to the billionaires.
Smaller decentralized -
Decentralize and diminish yourself first. Preferably with a blender.
The above comment wins the award for most incoherent response ever given in internet history. It's seriously like he's having a conversation with himself and unaware of it.
You are too stupid to begin to understand it. You are a partisan hack who merely enjoys beating up people with your rhetorical skill. Michael K. is quite right about you and the damage you do to Althouse's blog. I wish her ill for allowing it.
All of the 10 most popular governors in the country are Republicans, according to a new poll from Morning Consult.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/article162273358.html
Random chance?
Althouse, do really want Ritmo posting 20 comments on a thread and driving others away?
Jesus, man. Don't be a snowflake.
chickelit,
Rhetorical skill is not the same as diarrhea of the mouth and quick typing. Nobody wastes time on TTR except as sport, save buwaya.
Buwaya cares, inexplicably.
Now, go argue with your usual adversaries -
The ones who are not too stupid to know when they're losing.
All of the 10 most popular governors in the country are Republicans, according to a new poll from Morning Consult.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/article162273358.html
Random chance?
When each and every Dem governor has the personality of a Ritmo, who can blame Americans for being repulsed. I bet that she has personally gone after each Governor on that list.
Blogger The Toothless Revolutionary said...
We are going to rid the party of shitheads like murkowski...
"The foul-mouthed carpetbagger relocating himself from the Northwest to Alaska speaks!"
I was actually born in Alaska. Left when I was 5 though.
I find it entertaining that you of all people call me foul mouthed. The people I call shitheads more than deserve it.
The creatures that inhabit DC are certainly better at political organization than me. I admit I have participated only tangentially in the political arena. But I do organize people. Just in the private sector.
You spend a lot of time trying to pigeonhole people you disagree with or people you think you disagree with. It is ridiculous. You know what I want to happen. It is a lot closer to what you want than Obamacare and yet you go along in this ridiculous manner. You are just supporting the people who want the insurance companies in charge by attacking people who would work with you.
Every now and then you get out of your self imposed troll cave and prove there is a thinking mind behind these reactionary screeds. The Republican Party is going to end up passing a universal catastrophic Medicaid plan at some point during the 7 years left in the Trump presidency. Are you still going to ignore who is working for you and support the people working to keep the insurance companies in charge?
You are too stupid to begin to understand it. You are a partisan hack who merely enjoys beating up people with your rhetorical skill. Michael K. is quite right about you and the damage you do to Althouse's blog. I wish her ill for allowing it.
Hopefully her blog will one day become like yours where she can post about inorganic chemistry and 1980s videos until the only three comments consist of two that are her own.
I am not a partisan hack. I just understand politics. But that requires an understanding of people - which you can't stand. People offend you. You wish they were more inanimate or even inorganic. It's like living things really do make you feel uncomfortable. You relate better to things but wish people could be this sort of Legoland diorama that you imagine them as and could at least feel less aggravated by than the reality of who they are and what they naturally, and occasionally enough - positively, do.
Now go away and spin around in circles or bang your head against the wall or do whatever it is you do.
FullMoon
And here I thought his manic phases were alcohol/drug induced. Thoughts?
When each and every Dem governor has the personality of a Ritmo, who can blame Americans for being repulsed.
An autistic person who can't deal with actual people let alone understand what a "personality" even is.
I find it entertaining that you of all people call me foul mouthed.
Try to see the humor in it. That comment was not very heavy handed actually, but light.
The people I call shitheads more than deserve it.
Maybe so, but rural states can't get Medicaid gutted. They will go down the drain. Their governors know this and that is why Republican senators have bolted from the utopian right-wing socially engineered senate plans.
Blogger The Toothless Revolutionary said...
Now, go argue with your usual adversaries -
"The ones who are not too stupid to know when they're losing."
We are all losing. You make common cause with the people feeding the insurance companies our money. I would prefer you people understood that we are all together in this boat.
Centralized power in DC only serves the wealthy.
You spend a lot of time trying to pigeonhole people you disagree with or people you think you disagree with.
Maybe, but that depends on how simplistic the disagreement is.
Blogger Brookzene said...
Althouse, do really want Ritmo posting 20 comments on a thread and driving others away?
"Jesus, man. Don't be a snowflake."
Agreed.
Once again, the lamestream media gets it wrong. This is a huge win for the repugs because they were able to punt on a "Third-Rail" campaign promise that would have hurt them in the mid-terms. The entire effort to pass a bill was kabuki and given the orgasmic response from the trump apparatchik and mouth foaming from the liberal press, it was a Grand-Slam home run for Dronald. One must admire Trump's talent for duping his base while confounding his enemies.
FullMoon,
As an older person I forget the newer classes of drugs. Damned arthritis. Get off my lawn.
You are just supporting the people who want the insurance companies in charge by attacking people who would work with you.
I don't understand what you mean by this. One way or another, there will always be insurance companies in health care. It will be private companies or government and/or hopefully, ideally - a mix of both. There will never again be fee for service. The costs don't allow for it, the care too complex, it can't and won't ever again be the norm.
I have no preference for the ultimate outcome, but will keep pushing for increased access to the point of complete or near universality, and will do as much as I can to entertain ways to keep the quality and innovation as high as possible, also. Even my arch enemy Michael K. is at least honest enough to admit that this takes A LOT of attention and care - because that is what the French healthcare system - the one ranked best in the world - does.
I think there will be a mix of private and public, basic care and supplemental. Some fancy goofy stuff will be supplemental - aromatherapy, whatever. More lifestyle add-ons, actually. It will not be the same as base, conventional care.
The payments will however ensure that the working poor are not shut out, as they have been. I will not go along with a system that says poor ability to afford should shut you out of a quality system, and neither will most of the people.
We can go into more details, but you've challenged me fairly and reasonably and I feel compelled to respond with specifics stated factually and personally.
"Michael K. is at least honest enough to admit that this takes A LOT of attention and care - because that is what the French healthcare system* - the one ranked best in the world - does."
*The one he too prefers, or at least admits is the best.
Hopefully her blog will one day become like yours where she can post about inorganic chemistry and 1980s videos until the only three comments consist of two that are her own.
Who else recalls Ritmo's incredibly sad blog called "Dichotomies"? Inga was his sole and most steadfast commenter.
"...too complex..."
said every Soviet commissar ever. It is amazing that people trot out the same collectivist stupidity year after year, even after the observed, dramatic and calamitous failure that such collectivism causes.
Lets look at some facts (for a change).
Fact #1: For most people who had healthcare insurance prior to Obamacare, they are now paying more for worse coverage. Certainly that was the case for me, and I got my insurance from the corporate cafeteria plan. Hardcore Democrats tried to tell me that the corporation was merely using Obamacare as cover to be less generous with our healthcare, but that doesn't wash because it happened to everyone I know. You paid more, or got poorer coverage, or sometimes both. People (like Mary Katherine Ham) who had individual coverage prior to Obamacare complain even more loudly.
Fact #2: Whether Trump wants to acknowledge it or not, he and Republicans DO own it. Absolutely.
Fact #3: Based on the numbers I've seen, the bulk of the increase in covered people came about because of Medicaid expansion.
Fact #4: According to studies such as the Kaiser Family Foundation, cost is still the biggest barrier to acquiring health insurance coverage. Yet Obamacare is larded with coverage that not everyone wants or needs (e.g., contraception for post-menopausal women).
Fact #5: Obamacare is a significant drag on employment growth for small firms.
Fact #6: No matter what Trump and the Republicans in the House and Senate do, they're going to get beat up in the press and by Democrat demagogues.
Fact #7: Trump seems to have had no input to the Obamacare replacement, and has done nothing whatsoever to sell his solution to people of the United States.
This leads directly to Fact #8: Trump needs to demonstrate leadership and salesmanship.
So we'll see.
Who else recalls Ritmo's incredibly sad blog called "Dichotomies"? Inga was his sole and most steadfast commenter.
It wasn't up for long, and Palladian visited it, too. Also, it didn't benefit from a group orgy, like yours does - and your posts still suffer from horrible visitation despite Trooper's ability to get hundreds of comments (at least, he did last I visited it before you took the side of a terrorist who harassed me).
But Palladian is/was an open-minded and intellectually honest person. You OTOH are really a bit of a child.
You need to grow up. You even call yourself "chicken LITTLE." You infantilize yourself with your own name.
I am really tired of responding to you. You are not as interesting as you think, and just as much a snowflake as the other commenter I won't name who thinks it's his role in life to control conversations.
Just grow up, C. Little. You're not a bad person, but you get way too enticed by horrible ideas. You find nourishing a certain need for community and the projected neighborliness of an uptight cyber-community. But it is false, chimera. Put away childish things and learn that embracing reality - not just chemical reality but social reality - will free you and enlighten you.
Do it for all the molecules they contain.
Big Mike:
If you were President would you spend time trying to show leadership over Republicans? To what end?
Obama let Pelosi and Reid lead because every Democrat fell in line. 1000+ Democrat losses slowed them not at all in their lockstep behavior.
"...too complex..."
said every Soviet commissar ever.
Oh. So now you're anti-complexity.
Well too fucking bad. Life is not as simplistic as you need it to be in order to understand it better and fear it less.
"...too complex..."
said every Soviet commissar ever.
FFS. We're talking about healthcare. Medicine. It's complex because human physiology is complex. You are an obsessive wreck. Stop thinking about Russia. If reshaping your bones and tendons were as simple as a game of Operation then maybe you could reduce it to your ideological fixations. But you can't. I dare you to tell any doctor treating any compound fracture you or a loved one (if you had any loved ones) suffered that he is Soviet in his complexity for how he competently approaches and bills for his fix to the problem.
Seriously, what a wreck you are.
It wasn't sad. Just less passionless than C. Little's whimsical takes on fluorine, electron orbitals and Dire Straits.
And the one comment they get after he puts in his obligatory two-comment selfies.
He doesn't own most of the buildings with his name on it, either.
It wasn't up for long,
Yeah, she told us.
Hey. No need to project onto some innocent woman. If you've been missing a hard dick somewhere in you, just ask. I'll find someone who will oblige. Not my thing, though.
Complexity controlled by top-down, command and control diktat.
Shirley, that will work this next time.
I care because Ritmo is a suffering creature.
There is tremendous pain there, between the lines, usually, but often the true tears and rage emerge. Unlike some of his kind it is not a matter of possession by demons, but a possession, I think, by his own grief. It is that grief, that tragic wound, speaking to us. He tries to tame it to a degree, and he does have s good heart, but there it is, what we get is a man out to punish the world.
Its truly a pity that there is no place for him, no priest, to hear, I suspect, a terrible confession.
What he suffers from I can't say for sure, but I suspect, with reason based on experience, because I have met several like him, that it comes from the lack of, or deficiency in, his father. This can have several effects, or outward manifestations, the less common of which is his. The more common is a pseudo-attachment to an ersatz father, which can create its own problems.
In any case, it is a pity, as he is a clever fellow (not terribly well educated though, likely through indiscipline) and as I said, he has a good heart. Something could be made of him.
Complexity controlled by top-down, command and control diktat.
Nope. Medicine is complex. You started this whole protest movement in response to my saying just that.
So you go to medical school and complain about how they have overcomplicated things to the point of somehow being a Soviet political exercise.
Or just admit that you can't even fucking understand the point. Again, reading is fundamental.
Learn to read, Birkle. If nothing else, it will make your boring manifestoes sound as if they were actually thought-out, rather than lifted from some right-wing think tank's already recycled verbiage.
You're about one step away from getting sued for plagiarism. Were you always this unoriginal?
The Punisher's Brain: The Evolution of Judge and Jury (Cambridge Studies in Economics, Choice, and Society) Hardcover – April 14, 2014, by Morris B. Hoffman.
Current read. Basic biology back to foundations, Darwin’s, “Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals,” into current ethology. Hoffman’s contribution is that he’s a bench judge, come lately to love (and it shows) science. Could take the basics back to Aristotle on emotional desire. Since I can’t Kant, that’s what I do.
One takeaway. Our older blame circuits (down to amygdala) churn out blame much faster than our newer punishment modules (prefrontal cortex) meter out punishment, so blame gets tempered, slowed down, with metered judgment. The evolved net “economics” of our hard-wiring yields tension between punishment and forgiveness, relative to a quotient of the social value of restoring offenders, or kicking them from society. The book is not otherwise an econometrics of choice.
We’re faster to blame: Trump, Obama, hungry-liar health-stealing demons in Tantric Buddhism, witches at Salem. This can be worked, when mature, into healthy skepticism.
Trump here is trumped by biology.
He has no choice to own blame. Population-wise. Not cult followers.
So too Obama.
This is strictly descriptive. Not side-taking.
The hard-wired problem of punishment/forgiveness as relative quotients (cortex stuff) ends up in the age old maxim that one of the greatest proofs is proof by synthesis. Cook a health-care solution, especially one that doesn’t make everyone short-term depressed (at minimum) wading through all the alternatives, getting us biologically stuck in halt-functions of blame.
I’ve slept between the covers (of “Atlas”) with Ayn Rand’s ethical egoism and partied in social-medicine Denmark, and keep coming back to the wee-little problem of reciprocal altruism, hard wired (Robert Trivers), except in psychopaths. To hell if I’m competent to sort all this out. But to the extent that Trump loves praise, I wouldn’t be surprised if he caves to blame, goes social medicine - in some form - beats me which, despite his braggadocio about how Canadians come down here (a wall he doesn’t want to build) for better care, where big pharm “is getting away with murder” (his words).
This is descriptive. Not side-taking.
The hardest of our hard-wiring punishes cheats (torts to property, persons, health) and promise-breakers (contracts).
Including third-party player politicians who take more than they give. And swear and lie.
Sooner or later.
So under no measure can I see how healthcare cannot be cross-correlated to corruption indexes in the negative, and happiness indexes in the positive. The healthcare debate is not a stand-alone, Ã la carte, product transaction. It must be crossed to such larger measures. Truth will out. Cheaters and liars will be punished. Not just blamed. Punished - the stuff that grinds slow.
When blame is the ambient temperature, like now, it’s never good enough. Mature adults who voted for Trump knowing not to take him literally (and these are the mature ones), hoping for a swamp-drain plumber (more blame), and some forward progress, even if by luck, will too have an end to their patience, on a spectrum. Including me.
On the other hand, my cortex is hearing reflex-arc idiot-shouts, “a Democrat, my kingdom for a Democrat!” Multiple meanings intended, because both Trump and the Democrats are crying for a Democrat. I can’t do the Kochs and Tea Party now.
We’re – all of us – up against biology. That’s the fulcrum - where saying you’re not going to own it is the hinge that unhinges.
Back to studying: Australia.
Who was it here who said to study France?
FullMooned says "yawn" and then tells a crude "your mother" joke.
Must be very exciting stuff for a fifteen-year old like him.
10:31 - Deepak Chopra, everybody.
You've heard of pseudoscientists.
Buwaya is a pseudo-sociologist. A pseudo-psychologist.
Makes for good mumbo jumbo as he restores order and balance to the galaxy. Or just quantum consciousness.
Don't mind him. He got lost ushering the Beatles around the Maharishi's complex in 1968, and never really made his way back.
Hurts, don't it.
Not being 15-years old? Not really. It will happen to you someday, too.
30 million without insurance?!! It was to insure the 12 million without that Obamacare was created to fix. What went wrong? Oh, you can buy it later, when you need it. Alas.
Imagination is not required to shut down your time-wasting inanity.
Although I'm not surprised that someone dull enough to resort to mother jokes complains about lacking imagination.
@Birkel, there are carrots and there are sticks. Reid, Pelosi, and Obama could rely on the press to sell their shit sandwich. Trump needs to do his own sales job directly to the people, but whatever he sells has to be worth buying.
Blogger The Toothless Revolutionary said...
It's a miracle you managed to find your way out of your mom's vagina.
--
Thanks for dropping in!
I'm Catholic actually, not that it matters.
We Romans have quite a complex mystical side, such as that of Ignatius Loyola (of the "Spiritual Exercises") as well as the Vulcan-rational side of Thomas Aquinas. There is no need for a Catholic to go to India or Japan for inspiration, though I find the Confucians interesting,
In any case, my training in psychology is purely empirical. As an engineering manager for most of my life, I always considered a most important role was to be a teacher, and as the years have piled up, I think thats mostly what I do these days.
So I have taught a great number of young men, nearly all smart, but quite often with problems.
I have seen you, Ritmo, in others.
@Cookie, how about you enlist and serve in the military? Then you could get your healthcare via single payer, meaning the VA. Let us know how that works.
Vermont couldn't make it work; California can't afford it. Is there a point where you learn from other people's mistakes?
My only problem with Michael K is when he acts like an elitist cry-baby, which is more often than he should. He can do better, but you can't. He definitely doesn't need or benefit from an ass-kissing nobody like you. And I'd love to learn about where this "elsewhere" is that I "gleaned" things about him.
Actually, I wouldn't. You've revealed your kiss-up purpose. Enjoy pissing over yourself all the rest of the night. Or maybe cry for your man Michael like he cries for Auntie Anne A.
"Real" intelligence. Too funny.
Easy to spot a Pedro thread.
"Once again, the lamestream media gets it wrong. This is a huge win for the repugs because they were able to punt on a "Third-Rail" campaign promise that would have hurt them in the mid-terms. The entire effort to pass a bill was kabuki and given the orgasmic response from the trump apparatchik and mouth foaming from the liberal press, it was a Grand-Slam home run for Dronald. One must admire Trump's talent for duping his base while confounding his enemies."
I agree with this. What the Republicans need now is an up or down vore on repeal. Nothing more. This will force the vulnerable Red/Trump state Dem Senators to vote against it (since they need every Dem vote plus a couple Rep votes to defeat it), and thus thus put them on record (mostly again) of backing Obamacare. Meanwhile, rates will continue to explode, thanks to the forced negative selection (with only those most in need of insurance staying around). We are looking at maybe another 40% or so in some states for next year. And, then more counties not having any Obamacare carriers, if the Republicans can kill their loss reimbursements. Esp without Obama and his Administration no longer around to illegally spend that money illegally (w/o Congressional appropriation) to prop up the insurance companies for their Obamacare losses. With those vulnerable Trump state Dems on record opposing repeal (by their coerced votes), it is even more likely that they lose next year, and the Reps end up with their 60 votes, making replacement viable.
Normally, I wouldn't expect the Republicans to be able to pull this off. But Trump is in the White House, which means that the MSM (Dem operatives with bylines) won't be able to control the dialog, as they have been able to in the past.
No, I don't like that people may die if Obamacare isn't repealed or Replaced this year (as it blows up). But those deaths cannot rationally be placed on the Republicans. Obamacare was designed by industry insiders working with 25 year old Dem staffers, and enacted without a single Republican vote in either House. They own it, completely and the blood will be on their hands. The Republicans offered them input, but Pelosi and Schumer twisted enough arms that no Dem was able to or was allowed to participate in the repeal or repair of Obamacare this year.
Ritmo wrote: Also, it didn't benefit from a group orgy, like yours does - and your posts still suffer from horrible visitation despite Trooper's ability to get hundreds of comments (at least, he did last I visited it before you took the side of a terrorist who harassed me).
Your strange relationship with Trooper York is fascinating. You've never shown anything but fawning admiration for him. On the other hand, you are on record maliciously attacking my other co-bloggers: Chip Ahoy, Lem, Michael Haz, and Synova. Perhaps not deborah, but you did go after darcy once in a completely mean and unprovoked way.
There must be something genuine and inspiring you find in Trooper and lacking in the others.
You really are a world-class exaggerator, Little. "Fawning admiration?" He's a nice and funny guy. Maybe you could learn from it. Genuine and inspiring? Well, he's definitely more genuine than a whole lot of other people you know. OTOH, I never made his blog a logo. Well done.
I never attacked Synova or Lem after they left Althouse. I actually hadn't attacked them for years before that. But your memory doesn't seem to account for change or time. What a pity; doing so indicates that you recognize people learn things, which might be easier if you were capable of learning things yourself. And Lem got crap a bunch of times for being a drunk, anyway - most notoriously from Sixty Grit. But I guess Grit inspires fear in you whereas I just inspire you to hate me. Strange.
Michael's got his good days and bad days. Wish I could say the same for Ahoy, who only seems to have bad days. Darcy? Again, you're digging back over ten years ago on a tiny number of threads. That had been buried ever since. I don't know what it is about you that creates grudges where none had existed in years. And that's not even what had set you out, anyway - but your abject fury at me over a tiny mistake involving a terroristic non-contributor over there anyway. I guess you prefer to change the subject though, because your protection of that one is indefensible. I shouldn't dwell on it because it's just drama under the bridge anyway and really showcases how bizarre your priorities are.
You take this blog stuff way too seriously, anyway. But good luck with the crazy one and better luck goading me another day.
Whenever one of the knowledgeable commenters respond to you, you back off...
Right. Because I guess I'm supposed to resent knowledge and get defensive in the face of it the way you do.
Little always does this, anyway. YOU WERE MEAN TO SOMEONE I KNEW TWENTY YEARS AGO!
Heal your childhood traumas, little guy.
Big Mike,
Don't forget Tennessee's failed TennCare.
Fact #2: Whether Trump wants to acknowledge it or not, he and Republicans DO own it. Absolutely.
This part needs a rationale, especially the part about Trump. Merely emphatically declaring “absolutely” doesn’t cut it.
Fact #7: Trump seems to have had no input to the Obamacare replacement, and has done nothing whatsoever to sell his solution to people of the United States.
The bill that just failed was in no way Trump’s “solution.” It was in fact a smelly concoction put together by the eGOP leadership in Congress headed by McConnell and Ryan.
As for Trump doing the selling: To sell a shit sandwich you have to lie out of your ass like Barack you-can-keep-your-insurance Obama. What Trump did was keep his participation to cheerleading enthusiastically from the sidelines, professing confidence in Ryan and McConnell all the while, keeping it general and non-specific - as the inept eGOP caucus in Congress rather stupidly painted itself into a corner.
Sure, the eGOP(along with the NeverTrump pundits, the MSM and probably the Democrats) will TRY to blame Trump; it’s predictable that they would because the Democrats cannot be blamed for opposing Republicans – that is their job. Blaming Trump is the only option they have but I believe Trump will easily evade their attempts.
Let’s not forget Trump’s 33+ million Twitter followers. I wonder how many readers like myself who are not signed up to Twitter also regularly visit Trump’s Twitter site. We are not counted as followers. Let’s say it’s a mere 10 million. That is a helluva BIG bullhorn.
If Trump can’t be blamed that leaves Ryan, McConnell & co. holding the bag.
If the bill had passed Trump would have a checkmark on his agenda list. It did not pass so it is best for Trump to publicly abandon even his tenuous connection to the Congressional mess – as he is currently doing: “Let Obamacare fail.”
The Congress cannot repeal, cannot replace, cannot even pass a bill that was an amended ObamaCareLite. That leaves the eGOP, Trump’s covert, behind the scenes enemies, in a bad situation.
This is what Scott Adams calls a win-win system.
300 comments with nothing intelligent from Ritmo.
Off to wrok laughing.
"There must be something genuine and inspiring you find in Trooper and lacking in the others."
Drives the vodka bus?
Just a guess.
On to the topic at hand.
The blame can't be laid entirely at Trumps feet. The voting public aren't that stupid anymore. They realize they were duped by the democrats in the first go around. But you are right. Trump has to get in front of this if anything is going to get done.
Trump can hold rallies and ask for candidates from audience to primary the incumbents. His first term can be expeditionary to retake America.
"No, I don't like that people may die if Obamacare isn't repealed or Replaced this year (as it blows up)."
What deaths have been imputed to Obamneycare?
"But those deaths cannot rationally be placed on the Republicans."
No deaths can blamed on anyone until we know what deaths have occurred.
"Obamacare was designed by industry insiders...."
Yes.
"...and enacted without a single Republican vote in either House."
That's because the Republicans were just peeved they didn't get the chance to put a similar or identical bill in place before the Dems got into the White House. What's not to like about it? The party putting the bill into place gets to posture that they have delivered a "solution" to America's health care/health insurance mess, while back-slapping each other and their corporate masters behind the scenes over the huge giveway to the insurance industry they just engineered.
Too many comments to wade through (especially the WWI trench warfare sniping).
But:
For 7 years the R Congress critters have said the really, REALLY DO have a replacement for Obama Care.
But they really, REALLY did NOT.
Oh if we only had a House majority. Oh if we only held a majority in the Senate. Oh if we only controlled the White House. Oh..... crap, does this mean we have to actually DO something..... oh crap.
Spineless bastards.
Primaries all around, sez I.
"We're not going to own it."
Yeah, you will. The media will make certain of that.
Listen to Calvin Coolidge. It is more important to remove existing bad law than to make new law.
@Cook - I wasn't alluding to deaths in the past, but in the very near future. Obamacare is in the process of blowing up right now. Some think that that is a feature, and not a bug, and would push the country to single payer - if its passage hadn't cost the Dems Congress, and maybe the White House. Next year is an election year, and during such, controversial legislation typically doesn't move, which is why the push to pass it this year. My point is that a lot of people cannot afford the up to maybe 40% premium hikes that some states will see next year, and we can expect a bunch more counties, and maybe even states, to end up w/o Exchange insurers. Where are all those people going to get healthcare insurance? Medicaid? Income limited, and pushing people from private insurance to Medicaid probably will end up, cumulatively in a higher death rate, due to its longer waiting times and low quality network (thanks to its abysmal reimbursement rate). In the past, you could buy catastrophic policies, but Obamacare made those illegal. All you have left are policies that cover everything, including much that you don't need, or nothing. And my prediction is that a lot of people are going to be forced into the latter in the next year or so, by the skyrocketing premiums and insurance companies exiting the market.
"Yeah, you will. The media will make certain of that."
Normally yes, but the MSM is undergoing a massive and maybe even accelerating, delegitimization, partly at the hands of Trump, and partly of their own making. I think that he will be able to successfully tie the blowing up of Obamacare to the unwillingness of the Dems to work with the Reps to pass it, and then fix it.
@Big Mike, Grackle and Bruce Hayden Thank you for your rational additions to the latter part of this conversation. I think Trump is going to be able to control the message on "Obamacare" when the time comes. The Senate is going ahead with a vote on the "repeal/replace" bill which I also think is a smart move. As a side note, Bruce, health insurance premiums in MN is going up by an average of over 50% for the second year in a row. MN has set aside $450 million for 2018 to "help" those who can not afford individual insurance. $350 million last year, $450 million this year, pretty soon we'll be talking about real money.
"@Cook - I wasn't alluding to deaths in the past, but in the very near future. Obamacare is in the process of blowing up right now. Some think that that is a feature, and not a bug, and would push the country to single payer - "
Well, let's wait and see if there are deaths as a result of Obamneycare before we start blaming anyone for them.
The notion that Obamneycare was a poison pill intended to fail and force the nation to move to single payer is right wing lunacy.
Before Obamneycare (of which I was not an advocate, as I do think we need some form of single payer coverage) was implemented, there were estimates of tens of thousands of deaths per year in America of people who could not afford or could not qualify for health insurance. If those deaths have been reduced or erased by Obamneycare, that's a plus, and I am doubtful we will return to that level of deaths of uninsured in the immediate future.
So...who is to be blamed for those many annual deaths that actually happened?
@Cook. - sure, let's wait. But if Obamacare saved lives because otherwise uninsured were insured, and could get healthcare as a result, then the opposite should also be true, that the Dems and their Obamacare should be held responsible for any deaths that occur because people couldn't afford the exploding premiums, and can't, any longer, legally acquire catastrophic coverage. You can either pay a thousand or more a month for coverage that you don't need, or go "naked". Of course, the higher those premiums go, the greater the number of healthy people who opt out, forcing up rates even higher, forcing even more of the healthy out of coverage the next year, worsening the risk pool, and driving up premiums even more. Which is why Obamacare was destined for failure from the start (and why your right wing lunatics questioned whether it had been intentionally designed so badly as a poison pill to force us to single payer - surely the Dems driving its enactment couldn't have been so stupid not to have understood about adverse selection and basic economics- but we know that Nancy Pelosi really is that stupid).
Welp - in his place, I'd do the same thing Trump is. Since leftist morons won't do the math, and they think you can swamp a social program with people that have paid nothing into it while taking maximum benefit from it - that kind of stupid SHOULD hurt and I will really enjoy watching them die in pain, to be honest.
Healthcare is a commodity like any other and Ponzi schemes always fail. That is on Obama and the Donks and yes, they WILL own it. Once all the stupid people are either dead or in so much pain that they are willing to be reasonable - then we can come up with a reasonable plan.
I hope the debate continues, I like to laugh at stupid people, and whenever a "liberal" (and by "liberal" I mean of course "tax-happy, coercion-addicted, power-tripping State fellator") says: "Health care is a right," I get the giggles.
Let's make Robert Cook pay for my health care.
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