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Elephants and Jackasses...

Discussion in 'Permanent Threads' started by Nettdata, Oct 14, 2016.

  1. Aetius

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    They're literally already raising roads in Miami Beach to prevent them from going under. They can't engineer their way out of a rising sea and stronger storms forever.
     
  2. Crown Royal

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    The principles of detection indicate that you are probably not alone in thinking that.

    I’ve been there. Gaaaaaaaah. You talk about a city that was unfairly glamourized. Everyone seems to be under the impression the whole town looks like Ocean Drive. Once you’re inside Miami it looks more like an open septic with no cover. Now that the cocaine isn’t there like it used to be it has no use.
     
  3. Revengeofthenerds

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    Bernie really has me torn though if it comes down to him or someone similar. I know (hope?) the SCT would put checks on his crazy stuff, but I’m just so diametrically opposed to those viewpoints.

    In unrelated news, the Satanist Church received tax exempt status.
     
  4. walt

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    I can't speak for Biden, but I can tell you what has happened in our school district since they decided to bus kids, of all races, from lower performing schools to better ones. And it hasn't been good.
     
  5. downndirty

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    Biden can win in places where Trump is popular. Sanders can't. Butt-egg can't (gay people, ew). Harris, Booker, Warren, etc. have a very steep hill to climb. Beto has an outsider's chance, simply because there's not much to attack. Literally, aside from being Patagonia's target market in Texas, what has the guy done? I think we already have a president who failed his way upwards, and we don't need another one.

    The GND isn't realistic. The ORIGINAL new deal was only feasible in a very insular world, where a variety of factors ensured a country's production stayed within it's own borders. It's a startlingly similar purpose as reparations, or student loan cancellation, or anything else that amounts to a government handout: attract people to the left by making a very unrealistic promise.

    That said, I think it's safe to say we can all agree that SOMETHING needs to change regarding our energy policies. Solar being illegal in the sunshine state, entire swaths of the population pretending climate change isn't real, because the twin pillars of the economy are oil and cars, and the notion of clean energy as a political division going back to the 1970's (remember when Carter had solar panels on the White House and Reagan took them down?) needs to stop.

    This is part of why this situation is so infuriating: one side of the entire fucking government is essentially putting it's head in the sand, saying "these things are not real, and it's a hoax and a conspiracy and la la la la." The other side is attempting to tackle one of humanity's greatest challenges with the federal fucking government, in all it's lethargy and bureaucracy (and to be fair, trillions of dollars and monumental achievements in science and technology). I think there's a certain fear of admitting that human-caused climate change is real, because...well, the US is the most responsible for contributing to it over the last 100+ years. I can easily envision a world where the US is essentially paying "climate reparations" in aid to countries ravaged by climate change driven disasters, and the larger community of nations holds us responsible for it.

    It's like an addict essentially saying "If I don't admit there's a problem, I don't get held accountable for it." Everyone knows that's bullshit, but it might get you through this next election cycle and onto that next sweet fix of donor dollars.

    I also think the perceived tradeoff between socialism and military spending isn't accurate. We think that war has declined because of the "leviathan" theory: it's not worth all-out war because the US will pick a side and can't be defeated. That...might not be entirely accurate. The wars of my lifetime were driven by economic ideas and religious ideology that are rapidly going extinct. Yes, military spending is outrageous, but it's also a critical economic driver and always has been.

    I don't agree with the notion that it's a zero-sum game: we don't choose to spend on programs to benefit citizens OR the military. It's a simplistic view of the economy. We can have both, and I think it's fair to hold our leadership accountable to deliver both.

    I think if we start with solving the healthcare issue, which is uniquely shitty among developed (or hell, underdeveloped) nations, we will start to see this. One in three bankruptcies is due to medical bills, which is an absurd proposition. I would wager that up to 20% of lawsuits have medical bills behind them, because someone needs to be found at fault to force someone else to pay for the outrageous costs of medical care. I would also wager that the #1 threat to public health for the US population is...the cost of accessing medical care. The #1 threat to the military is....few people are healthy enough to join.

    If that gets resolved, which would put us on par with liberties other countries have enjoyed since the 1940's, we will see dramatic benefits to the economy, national indicators of health and wellbeing, and national character.

    Side note: saying something/someone is "stupid/retarded" doesn't tell us shit. "The GND is retarded". Ok, well if you can't elucidate WHY it's retarded or HOW it's retarded or WHAT about it is retarded, then shut the hot fuck up. It's not contributing to a discussion.
     
  6. walt

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    Exhibit A:

    [​IMG]
     
  7. Aetius

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    If the Republicans hold the Senate, they will block literally everything he tries to do, and even if the Democrats take it back they'll take the edge off a lot of his policies before they deign to pass them.
     
  8. dixiebandit69

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    In regards to healthcare costs: I think a huge factor isn't that people aren't covered, it's that the medical industry IS CHARGING TOO FUCKING MUCH.

    A few months ago, Jungle Julia had to go to the emergency room; she was shitting blood.
    Well, after running a fuckload of tests, the doctor didn't find ANYTHING.
    But they still handed her a bill for over $3K, which if not paid IN FULL within three weeks, would double.

    Seriously, they're just making this shit up.

    Of course, we've been getting all kinds of other bills in the mail too, all of dubious nature.
    How the fuck is this shit legal?
     
  9. Aetius

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    The most insane shit is when you go to a hospital that is in-network for your insurance, and then a doctor who is out-of-network for you insurance drops in for five minutes and suddenly you have a $2000 bill your insurance won't cover. I think some states have started to pass laws that force doctors in a hospital or clinic to operate under that hospital or clinic's insurance agreements, but yeah, that shit sucks.
     
    #10389 Aetius, Apr 27, 2019
    Last edited: Apr 27, 2019
  10. downndirty

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    They charge so much because:
    -they can, what are you going to do....die?
    -they have shit-tons of expenses to cover (one of the major ones is malpractice insurance: see how this circles back on itself?)
    -they try and guess the most you can pay and use a bunch of shitty tactics to get you to pay more

    It's one of the fundamental tenets of American capitalism that's being eroded: everybody pays the same shit. At the supermarket, a can of beans is a can of beans, $.59 bitch.
    Now, online shopping, healthcare and interest rates: you pay what we think you can pay. That shit is explosively prejudiced.

    How far do you think we are away from your social media and a bunch of algorithms determining your insurance premium?
     
  11. Aetius

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    Negative 10 years
     
  12. Revengeofthenerds

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    Look what china is doing with their social credit score. It's some scary shit, that's backfiring in awful and predictable ways.
     
  13. Jimmy James

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    This right here is why it's unconscionable that profit margin has any bearing at all with healthcare. Healthcare should be funded by the people, to ensure their continued good health. There are people out there that literally have to choose between continuing to pay for their medication and keeping their electricity on. No one, especially executives who have never sniffed poverty, should be able to decide if you get to live or die.

    Another big expense is paying for uninsured people. This is what the ACA was supposed to help mitigate. More people getting insured means lower insurance costs for the rest of us since the risk of paying for uninsured people goes down. If everybody was insured, this would make costs more predictable, and probably lower the rate of rate increases since costs can now be better predicted.
     
  14. downndirty

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    I think we can deflate the rhetoric a little here: no fat cat healthcare executive is saying "poor people die, hahahaha". Healthcare is a system of risk, and that risk is best managed by spreading it out among the largest group possible. The systems that do this well are, in my opinion, socialized healthcare, because "everyone who pays taxes" is a pretty big risk pool.

    I have no issue with a business, any business, making a profit. I have significant issues with businesses making a profit off of healthcare and not health outcomes, and our system is very regulated to address those misaligned incentives. It simply doesn't work well, because no amount of regulation is going to correct that.

    You make a great point, except, that's not how access to healthcare (or for that matter, any resource) works. If you just got electricity for the first time, you use the shit out of it. If you get access to healthcare, guess what: you use it! I'm a classic example: when my deductible was $5000/year, I didn't go to the doctor for anything less than emergencies (and I paid a dear price for that negligence). Now that I have better access to healthcare, I go to therapy, I got my bloodwork done for the first time in a decade, I got put on a trial for different asthma medications. Why? Because it didn't cost so much!

    The real concern with socialized healthcare is we currently a very unevenly distributed system, that we'd be adding millions of people to, some for the first time. Imagine your average Wal-Mart Whale Woman now having access to the same healthcare plan as a federal employee (citing this because it's considered to be a fucking good plan). She's going to get lap-belt surgery, her knees and hips re-done, probably back surgery, breast reduction, etc. That's an enormous NEW burden on the system, and there's not a strong argument against it, because from the taxpayer's perspective, we'll end up paying for that shit sooner or later (and it might as well be sooner, in the hopes that she goes back to work and pays some of it back).

    The boomers are facing declining health (funny how decades of shit food, smoking and all that drug use back in the day come back to haunt you), and in terms of medical bankruptcy, they are an outsized sliver of that 1 in 3 stat. So, getting the people "on the bubble": not old enough for Medicaid/Medicare, but in declining health with horrible health outcomes and an average price tag of higher than they'll pay back into the system, higher quality and lower cost care is going to create an enormous buck to pass and an enormous strain on a system already in disfunction.

    It's not a switch that we can flip on, it demands some serious study, thought and planning. Some healthcare providers would legit go out of business, costing millions of dollars and thousands of jobs, if the majority of their revenue came from Medicaid/Medicare. Some, would do just fucking fine if not better. So figuring this out needs to be a part of the national debate, and instead we're....yelling about something Trump tweeted, and pretending that slavery reparations makes sense in 2019.
     
    #10394 downndirty, Apr 29, 2019
    Last edited: Apr 29, 2019
  15. Jimmy James

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    We're going to have to agree to disagree on this one. While I'm not imagining Snidely Whiplash twirling his moustache, I don't have to imagine companies increasing the price of medication 500% for no real reason other than they can. You mentioned this in your previous post.

    See my previous point. I don't agree that the system is regulated enough. However, since I have a huge problem with for-profit corporations making money off the misery of people that either pay or die, it's sort of a moot point for me. In any case, anybody not a sociopath can agree that artificially increasing costs (like fucking Epipens for example) is wrong and should have some kind of law banning it.

    I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here. Are you arguing that the healthcare system is not equipped to handle an influx of people because they'll use it? If so, may I point out that the ACA reduced the number of uninsured people by millions? Last I checked, I can still get a doctor's appointment in less than a couple of weeks, so I'm not sure that fear is well-founded.

    As to your boomer's health costs, it looks to me that you're arguing against low cost, high quality healthcare because this will cost a lot of money. This is why I want a public option. I believe the tax base will be large enough to handle the costs. Younger people simply don't go to doctor unless it's an emergency. With younger people paying into the program and not using it, and older people paying into the program and using it, it seems to me that between being able to negotiate from a much better position with pharmaceutical companies and other healthcare providers, and lowering administration costs, the total cost of a public option would be covered. Oh yeah, with people living longer, they'll pay into the program longer too.

    I'm not terribly worried about the health insurance industry going away overnight either, because Canada has a public option and private insurance can be purchased for services not covered under the public plan. Would there be a net job loss? Probably. Depends on how many of those that lose their jobs don't get hired by the government to run the public health plan.

    What I am more worried about is nothing being done until the poor start lynching rich people.
     
  16. Aetius

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    One question I keep coming back to, because I cannot for the life of me find an answer for it, is why are Republicans so obsessed with delegitimizing our system of government when it is the only thing keeping them in control? Earlier today Mitch McConnell proudly signed a t-shirt mocking the blocking of Merrick Garland, seemingly totally unaware that the only thing that makes him personally powerful is that he is the majority leader in a system that overweights the importance of his state and others like it. Republicans are outnumbered, and it is only the people's acceptance of the legitimacy of a system that gives Republicans control of the Senate and appointments to the judiciary that prevents them from being completely relegated to the sidelines. And yet they persist, at every turn, in trying to undercut the people's faith in that exact system. Without the Senate, McConnell is just a who-the-fuck-cares from a backwoods state that would get steamrolled by the economic and cultural centers on the west coast, in the mid-Atlantic to northeast, in the upper midwest, and in Texas and Florida. Republicans are gleefully setting the house on fire when the Democrats have a bedroom on the first floor right next to the door, and the Republicans sleep in the attic.
     
  17. downndirty

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    My point is that this system is fragile, complex and in a poor state of function at the moment. Much of the debate around this seems very shallow and poorly thought out (see, GND).

    Companies increasing the cost of medication 500% is likely a result of realizing that their "customers" aren't actually paying for the medication themselves out of pocket. I would wager a significant portion of these astronomical medical prices are a result of the payer being the government or an insurance company in most cases. I'm not arguing it's shitty, or that it shouldn't be addressed, I'm saying that the devil is in the details. Tylenol remains cheap as fuck, but the prescription shit is skyrocketing. The most likely explanation, by my reasoning is that the price increases when the entity paying for it passes that cost along to a host of other people. Does it need to get addressed? Absolutely. Is it as straightforward as greed? I kind of doubt it, based on the whole "a % of buyers at a high price subsidize the % of buyers who pay little or nothing at all" concept. Greed is part of it, because these are private companies and that's their mandate, but it's not a blanket judgement.

    I think our system is well-regulated in parts: the FDA, CDC, etc. generally have their shit together as far as preventing public health crises. However, I think that regulation isn't going to ever fix the misaligned incentives of our system (ie, the fact that a chronic condition is a steady stream of revenue, vs. a cure which is a one-time payout). I also think that regulating the private insurance marketplace in an attempt to do anything other than maximize their profits is inherently doomed to fail. The objective isn't to regulate the insurance marketplace to behave like a socialized one, the objective is to build a better, public option. I'm not lassez-faire about much, but no amount of regulation can turn this into something it's not.

    I think our system is inefficient, it's rife with fraud (look into Medicaid/Medicare fraud in Florida, it's a fucking cottage industry there, to the tune of billions each year), and given that the system allows for real costs to be deferred to someone (anyone) else, there's never been much of an incentive to run things efficiently. We have to be ready for that to change, and given that this is as much as 20% of the jobs in our economy, we simply aren't. So, I'm saying the debate around socialized healthcare is binary, and the reality is far different and more challenging than the discourse currently supports.

    I'm all in favor of socialized healthcare, and the public option seems to be the best choice. However, we are changing the rules of the game that will allow the consequences of millions of people's bad decisions get spread around to folks that never had to give a fuck before. I need socialized healthcare, because I don't want to live in fear of a medical bankruptcy should I get cancer before I turn 65. However, it's not going to unilaterally fix the issues with the healthcare system itself, such as the shortage of doctors and nurses, the uneven distribution of care (you might not have to wait a couple of weeks, but try getting a therapist in DC, or a lung specialist in rural SC). I'm not totally fine with paying an exorbitantly larger tax bill to pay for Me-Maw's 500 lb. hip replacement, or Keith's cancer treatment when she won't stop eating and he won't stop smoking. That is part of the system in Canada (look at their cigarette packaging), the UK (so much of nanny-state-ism), and other countries with socialized healthcare that we are utterly unprepared for.

    I think it will be a net positive for us to leave the "private insurance as primary" world behind, or even a more hybridized model (public insurance pays a certain percentage, private pays some and you pay some). I am also saying there will be consequences: for one, it will stress an already-burdened system. Another, it will cost thousands of jobs. And another, the majority of people with private health insurance like it and will likely fight to keep it.
     
    #10397 downndirty, Apr 29, 2019
    Last edited: Apr 29, 2019
  18. Jimmy James

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    I didn't see anything in the GND about healthcare, but then again, I only got 3.75 hours of sleep last night, so I could be wrong.

    Anyway, to your point about greed. Mylan purchased the rights to EpiPen in 2007 and gradually raised the list price from about $50 per auto-injector to slightly over $600 for a two-pack. The move boosted EpiPen profits to $1.1 billion a year. In step, Mylan CEO Heather Bresch saw her salary soar by millions, reaching nearly $19 million in 2015.

    This article from the New York Times lays out why these price hikes are a crock and why the FDA is partially responsible.

    I don't think anybody here thinks a public option is going to fix every issue with healthcare, but it should fix the big ones, like making people choose between their life and paying their utilities. That is a fear that I think crosses every political ideology line up to a certain income level.

    This is bullshit to me though:
    You do this when you buy car insurance. I remember being told that when you purchase car insurance, you're aren't buying it for you, but for the village idiot when he crashes his rusted Pontiac into you while he's texting a dick pic. When Me-Maw trips over her shag carpeting and goes to the ER, and she doesn't have the ability to pay, we're paying for it with higher premiums. Hospitals are going to get their money from someone and it sure as shit ain't coming from Me-Maw.
     
  19. Aetius

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    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...apture-context-nature-and-substance-of-probe/
     
  20. xrayvision

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