Thursday, March 16, 2017

Obamacare II

Just a quick thought for a Friday, but sadly not a good thought. The more I look at the Trumpcare game being played the more I really think our political class is retarded. They mistake ignorance for intelligence, dogma for wisdom, and they keep repeating the exact same steps and expecting different results. Einstein called that insanity. My thoughts.

The GOP: The bill being pushed by Paul Ryan and the boys is the worst kind of dogma. It is a collection of bumperstick thoughts ("buy across state lines!") without any thought put into it, mixed with giveaways to lobbyists. The solutions offered don't even address the issues at hand and where they do somehow overlap, they don't actually work. In fact, "buy across state lines" really has only one benefit, and that is to lead to a single payer monster insurance company.

Trump: Trump is doing exactly what Obama did. He's punted to Congress and he's letting them decide. I am admittedly saddened by this. Up to now, Trump has hired experts and told them to come up with a fix. This time he's letting Congress take the lead, and they have proven themselves incompetent. As with Obama, this is a lost opportunity to make some real repairs to improve the system.

The Right Flank: As usual, the right flank is full of retards jerking themselves off over how pure they are. Talk radio is trying to whip up its audience by making generalized attacks without offering any solution and smothering those attacks in paranoia. This is the same idiotic crap they did which sent their followers off into stupid land and has kept them there.

The Democrats: The Democrats continue to play their game of smearing the GOP for everything rather than trying to work with them to solve some problem. Their mantra is attack, smear, worship inertia. Even when they were in power, their only goal seems to have been to stop anything from being fixed.

The "Moderates": The self-anointed moderates continue to act as the smug morons they are. They oppose everything and support nothing until it is merged and neutered in some random form. It is compromise for the sake of appearing moderate rather than actually doing anything right.

Continued Failure: There are two "industries" in the US that remain in perpetual failure: the healthcare system and the K-12 education system. Both systems are the most heavily regulated and are basically controlled at minute levels by government regulation. Until someone has the nerve to shatter these systems and start them from scratch, they will continue to fail. Sadly, no one has the nerve.

14 comments:

  1. Happy St. Patrick's Day to each and everyone....

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  2. Yep, that pretty much sums it up. There is nothing to defend--much less discuss--about the GOP approach to "fixing" ObamaCare. (But, then, how do you "fix" a pile of garbage?)

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  3. Nothing else I can add either except how disappointing this is, especially in light of the way Trump handled everything else. I know you can never be too jaded when it comes to politics but this really is a wasted opportunity, and if someone like Trump isn't going to take the chance to do the kind of fix that you suggested I don't know who will.

    - Daniel

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  4. Daniel, I don't think anyone will, honestly. Here's the problem:

    1. Change hurts some people and politicians would rather make no one happy than make anyone unhappy, especially when they can blame "the system."

    2. This is one of those things where everyone would benefit in lots of ways, but ways that are hard to quantify: lower taxes, better health, easier access, less medical mistakes, expanded healthcare in places not well served, etc.

    BUT it's easy to quantify how everyone gets hurt. So no one really wants to fix the problem. Here is who loses money if we fix the system:

    Doctors (charge less), billing companies (all but vanish), insurance companies (who lose their whole market), drug companies/equipment companies (products used more carefully), regulating agencies, governments, medical injury lawyers.

    Even consumers now face "risk", i.e. the idea that they may not have coverage (ignore the fact they already face this). And they will need to start thinking ahead -- something they are notoriously bad at doing.

    So in the end, no one wants to make the change.

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  5. tryanmax, Even worse, how do you fix something that gets idealized when people talk about the system you are fixing? You see this all over the media: 1 trillion people will lose their insurance. Yeah, but it's made up that they have it now or that they can use it.

    What if he cuts money for cancer treatments? People will die! Yes, but what if he doesn't?

    The scaremongering is intense.

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  6. Sheriff David Clarke would have to radically improve to work his way up to piece of crap. He let one baby die on his watch (its mother was a criminal, but it wasn't guilty of anything) and mocked a guy for stepping up and defending another baby from a pipe wielding maniac. *Shrugs* But he is a vocal apologist for Trump, so I guess its all good as far as most Republicans are concerned.

    The Democrats and Republican's best allies are each other. Both embrace a lot of despicable people because they mouth the right words.

    http://www.jsonline.com/story/news/investigations/daniel-bice/2017/03/17/bice-sheriff-david-clarke-mocks-mayor-tom-barrett-over-state-fair-beating/99328224/

    A day after being chided by Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett for being largely missing in action, Clarke responded with a rant on his county Facebook page mocking Barrett for the time he was beaten severely while trying to protect a grandmother and her 1-year-old at Wisconsin State Fair Park in 2009.

    “The last time Tom Barrett showed up at a crime scene he got his ass kicked by a drunk, tire-iron-wielding man who beat him within inches of his life," Clarke said in the lengthy post. "The milquetoast mayor trying to play cop foolishly thought he could simply talk the man who beat him senseless into backing down. Bet he won't try that again!"

    http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/terrill-thomas-family-sues-milwaukee-sheriff-clarke-office-article-1.2995233

    Shade Swayzer was brought to the jail in July 2016 while she was more than eight months pregnant. The lawsuit indicates Swayzer was denied proper medical care when she gave birth in the prison cell. The baby died in her mother’s arms hours later.

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  7. I'm not Trump fan, but I just don't see the logic in the court hold on his latest travel ban. The first ban was rushed and nebulous so there was a lot of confusion among not just the public put the people charged with implementing the rule.

    The latest ban is carefully thought out, unambiguous and the people charged with enforcing it have a clear understanding of it. Trump's talk is reason to regard his policies with suspicion, but not reason for courts to strike them down. Either a policy falls within his authority or they don't. Based on my admittedly limited understanding of the relevant laws, this ban is within Trump's authority.

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  8. Anthony, There is no basis. This is just courts looking to make a statement basically, and I expect that it wil eventually be upheld on appeal.

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  9. So Shaquille O'Neal and other basketball players have found us out folks. They've realized that the world is not, in fact, round as we have been telling people... it is flat.

    Crap. We've been made. They're too smart for us!

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  10. BTW, Ancient people knew the earth was round. They figure it out from all the clues, which makes Shaq and the boys dumber than pre-historic man. Nice work, folks.

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  11. Anthony, This is the new thing in NBA ranks apparently and several of them have been taking this position. Shaq's evidence was that he's driven across country and "that sh*t is flat." He also thinks the satellite images of a round earth have been faked.


    On the Executive Order, Alan Dershowitz interestingly said that the court is essentially saying that if Obama had issued it, it would be constitutional, but they aren't going to let Trump do it. I think he's right.

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  12. The Left is all upset that PBS may take a haircut from the gub'mint....Yoiu know, the CEO of PBS makes $690,000.00/year..not bad...I suspect that Downton Abbey and many other programs of theirs would do just fine on the market..oh wait, they already do....

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