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aflanigan

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Location: At Sea
Gender: Male

Posted: Nov 30, 2017 - 2:11pm

black321 wrote:

The lives saved is the key bit of this, yet that doesn't erase the fact that a lot of people have been hit hard financially due to ACA. On the other hand, one could argue those impacted financially were skirting their responsibility to maintain coverage...thinking they were healthy now, so why do they need it? Like the uninsured driver who's fine, as long as he doesn't hit anyone.

The impression I get since implementation is that at least some of these alleged "hard hit" people weren't savvy enough to find the most affordable deal available to them (yes, the way things are set up seems unnecessarily complex/byzantine). A good friend who owns his own business complained bitterly about the ACA when it was first passed, but they (he and his wife) have found a deal that is better than what they had prior to ACA.

You're not going to pass tax reform without some being winners and some losers, and the same is probably inevitable for health care reform. A plan that reduces all people's per person average cost per year for coverage might potentially have other downsides (like affecting employment in the health care industry). It seems pretty evident that the people benefiting financially and healthwise from the law are significantly greater in number than the people who are taking a financial hit.

black321

black321 Avatar

Location: An earth without maps
Gender: Male

Posted: Nov 30, 2017 - 8:49am

aflanigan wrote:

Anecdotes are a great way to set policy, right? {#Rolleyes}

Perhaps you should stop to consider that there are at least a couple dozen (probably more) people who are alive today to be able to even tell anecdotes of whatever kind due to obtaining insurance through the ACA (oddly enough, uninsured people who have died already, whose death might have been prevented with access to care provided via insurance, seem unable to tell their stories, so they often are excluded from anecdotal analyses).
And many thousands more have insurance now (and thus access to health care beyond free clinics and the ER) who didn't before. It's easy to take insurance for granted when you have it. Nice not to have to constantly worry about how sick you can let yourself (or your child) get before you are forced to go to the ER and waste hours there just so they can prescribe asthma medicine that you will have trouble paying for.

aflanigan

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Location: At Sea
Gender: Male

Posted: Nov 30, 2017 - 8:28am

sirdroseph wrote:

I have many personal anecdotes of lower income people that did not feel like winners from the ACA, but that's just like real life and stuff.

Anecdotes are a great way to set policy, right? {#Rolleyes}

islander

islander Avatar

Location: Seattle
Gender: Male

Posted: Nov 30, 2017 - 6:26am

miamizsun wrote:

i think there are a lot of people with a similar thought process

we're creatures that have been conditioned to seek complex solutions to complex problems

could there be simplex answers to complex problems?

the affordable care act is what? a thousand pages?

the tax code? thousands of pages?

the compliance costs with these two complex monstrosities is mind boggling

i read where there are twenty five registered lobbyists per rep on the hill

and another twenty five or so per rep that are unregistered?

for the aca i think there were seven or so lobbyists per rep

this type of bribery is the reason that massive amounts political coercion are typically embedded these things

and medicare? the waste and fraud are legendary

the corruption is out of control and it is not sustainable

btw, i'm not holding up gary johnson or libertarianism as a cure all

do i think that principled thought and downsizing dc are reasonable?

or that pointing out bad ideas and the violence or threat of violence used to back them up could help reel this nuttery in?

yes

i don't care who implements good ideas

regards

I think that the complexity is just there to hide the true motives. The conditioning is people believing that they are in (or will soon be in) the privileged class who get all the perks. This is what seniority and tenure and all the other non-merit based pieces of our society are about - "hang on, you'll get your chance at the trough". The reality is that there is plenty to go around, but people are willing to do without for the chance to screw everyone else over. We are sad little monkeys.

kurtster

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Location: drifting
Gender: Male

Posted: Nov 30, 2017 - 6:11am
miamizsun wrote: i don't care who implements good ideas regards

sirdroseph

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Location: Yes
Gender: Male

Posted: Nov 30, 2017 - 6:07am

Â kcar wrote:

Sorry, you're not sure what you're actually trying to say. You want to give the ACA "architects" the benefit of the doubt that they were really perpetuating a political shell game....? "Benefit of doubt" doesn't seem to be the right phrase...

Shake your head all you want, sirdroseph, but the ACA was a huge policy win. Is it the best this country can do or an acceptable end-state for healthcare here? No. Welcome to democracy and legislative compromise. You might want to ask Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter and other past presidents about how hard it is to pass this kind of legislation.Â

Mittens was a crybaby about the ACA. He had to twist himself into a knot to speak out against the billâan impressive feat for a man whose own son wasn't sure what he stood for on most policy positions.Â

Â

My reference to Mittens was relevant because he is the original author of the ACA hence the twisting. I have many personal anecdotes of lower income people that did not feel like winners from the ACA, but that's just like real life and stuff.

miamizsun

miamizsun Avatar

Location: (3261.3 Miles SE of RP)
Gender: Male

Posted: Nov 30, 2017 - 5:49am

kcar wrote:

"in spite of it all there are still a lot of people that think...there is a legitimate difference between the two major political parties in the u$a"
We could have a pointless all-day discussion about the differences and commonalities of the Dems and GOP. I'm gonna pass on that time-waster. However, consider that the Democrats passed and implemented the ACA in an attempt to make health care affordable to all. The Republicans are trying to dismantle the ACA in order to pay for tax cuts aimed at the top 1%. That's a pretty big difference between the two parties.

Are both parties partly captured by big money and power elites? Sure. But I have no interest in simplistic assertions that the two parties are one and the same. I went through high school once and have no interest in engaging in a debate pitched to that intellectual level. Or in reading your wistful musings about how much better things would be if only Gary Johnson and the Libertarian party were running the US.
"in spite of it all there are still a lot of people that think that think russia/putin secretly controls the world"
{#Roflol}

When you talk about "a lot of people", are you thinking about junior high school kids? Because I don't know any informed adults who have that opinion.

kcar

Posted: Nov 29, 2017 - 1:08pm

sirdroseph wrote:

However, consider that the Democrats passed and implemented the ACA in an attempt to make health care affordable to all. Attempt? I reckon it might have been that, but I would like to give the architects of this travishamockery (Mitt Romney shout out) the benefit of the doubt that they were really perpetuating a political shell game cause I know they did not really expect the ACA to make health care affordable for all. smh

Sorry, you're not sure what you're actually trying to say. You want to give the ACA "architects" the benefit of the doubt that they were really perpetuating a political shell game....? "Benefit of doubt" doesn't seem to be the right phrase...

Shake your head all you want, sirdroseph, but the ACA was a huge policy win. Is it the best this country can do or an acceptable end-state for healthcare here? No. Welcome to democracy and legislative compromise. You might want to ask Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter and other past presidents about how hard it is to pass this kind of legislation.

Mittens was a crybaby about the ACA. He had to twist himself into a knot to speak out against the bill—an impressive feat for a man whose own son wasn't sure what he stood for on most policy positions.

sirdroseph

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Location: Yes
Gender: Male

Posted: Nov 29, 2017 - 5:23am

However, consider that the Democrats passed and implemented the ACA in an attempt to make health care affordable to all.

Attempt? I reckon it might have been that, but I would like to give the architects of this travishamockery (Mitt Romney shout out) the benefit of the doubt that they were really perpetuating a political shell game cause I know they did not really expect the ACA to make health care affordable for all. smh

kcar

Posted: Nov 28, 2017 - 2:37pm

miamizsun wrote:

i know right?

in spite of it all there are still a lot of people that think russia/putin secretly controls the world and that there is a legitimate difference between the two major political parties in the u$a

"in spite of it all there are still a lot of people that think...there is a legitimate difference between the two major political parties in the u$a"

We could have a pointless all-day discussion about the differences and commonalities of the Dems and GOP. I'm gonna pass on that time-waster. However, consider that the Democrats passed and implemented the ACA in an attempt to make health care affordable to all. The Republicans are trying to dismantle the ACA in order to pay for tax cuts aimed at the top 1%. That's a pretty big difference between the two parties.

Are both parties partly captured by big money and power elites? Sure. But I have no interest in simplistic assertions that the two parties are one and the same. I went through high school once and have no interest in engaging in a debate pitched to that intellectual level. Or in reading your wistful musings about how much better things would be if only Gary Johnson and the Libertarian party were running the US.

"in spite of it all there are still a lot of people that think that think russia/putin secretly controls the world"

{#Roflol}

When you talk about "a lot of people", are you thinking about junior high school kids? Because I don't know any informed adults who have that opinion.

R_P

Posted: Nov 28, 2017 - 1:17pm

Suddenly, I’m a ‘Russian Agent’!

(...) You simply cannot say such undeniably factually correct things on a US news program, but you can say them on RT.
I’m under no illusion that RT is some sainted news organization that doesn’t have a pro-Russian point of view. Of course it does, just as the government-funded BBC has a pro-British perspective. But I also well know (having worked for years as a staff journalist for major US news organizations), that every corporate news outlet in the US has a pro-US point of view, and that particularly where the story involves both US and Russian interests, as in the case of Ukraine and Syria, the whole truth is not being told by any Russian or US news organization. If I can get a bit of the truth out by talking on RT to counter propaganda and untruths in the US media, so much the better. I would hope that American viewers would have the sense to know that if they watch the news on RT, they are getting a pro-Russian perspective and to take what they see and hear with a grain of salt, just as I would hope they would consider American news reports with the same degree of skepticism (that may be optimistic!). (...)

ScottFromWyoming

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Location: Powell
Gender: Male

Posted: Nov 28, 2017 - 6:06am

miamizsun wrote:

Who knew the republic was so vulnerable that our elections could be monkeywrenched by Russian dirty-tricksters spending their office coffee budget on a motley collection of social media ads that would make the authors of Nigerian prince scam emails wince at their clumsiness?

Stopped reading here because it's a Trumpian move to frame a problem in childish terms in order to make it seem insignificant, and anyway, Facebook ads are just one facet of the problem. A bigger issue was the years spent by volunteers or NGOs advancing a non-US agenda in website forums of all shapes and sizes. This is untrackable plus it doesn't have a Twitter/Facebook corporation that we can blame, so it's not very good material for grandstanding.

miamizsun

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Location: (3261.3 Miles SE of RP)
Gender: Male

Posted: Nov 28, 2017 - 4:12am

kcar wrote:

I did not know that Dianne Feinstein is a greater threat to America than Russia is. I did not know that.

{#Roflol}

If the Russians had meddled to help the Democrats in 2016, the GOP would be braying for war and FOX would be handing out AR-15s. The GOP is hardly a friend of the press, btw.

kcar

Posted: Nov 27, 2017 - 10:26pm

miamizsun wrote:

Cynical Politicians Turn #FakeNews Into a Rallying Cry for Censorship

Forget petty Russian meddling in American elections; the greater threat is government messing with our freedom.

Or, more likely, cynical politicians are making much ado about Putin and company's low-rent effort to make themselves look relevant in order to justify government interference in political speech. Just consider Sen. Dianne Feinstein's (D-Calif.) threat to Facebook, Google, and Twitter during Senate hearings over the clumsy Russky meddling: "You created these platforms, and now they're being misused. And you have to be the ones who do something about it—or we will."

Feinstein thinks government should exercise more control over speech? Such a shocker—unless you saw her try to smother encryption in 2016, or heard her insist in 2015 that edgy material like The Anarchist Cookbook "should be removed from the internet" or her similar effort to ban bomb-making instructions in 1997. And then there was her scheme to narrowly define "journalists" to limit legal protections for people reporting news events, and her vote for the COICA billthat would seize domain names from websites accused of piracy…

Feinstein is hardly alone in these efforts at muzzling unwelcome voices—18 other senators joined her on that COICA vote. Alternet's Max Blumenthal points out that "the liberal Democrats in #TechHearings are most outspoken opponents of press freedom & supporters of media censorship," but the latest stab at regulating online political ads draws support from both sides of the aisle (co-sponsor Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) rivals Feinstein in the degree to which he disdainsunfettered speech). So it's business as usual for legislators who apparently see everything as justification for a mass purchase of blue pencils.

I did not know that Dianne Feinstein is a greater threat to America than Russia is. I did not know that.

{#Roflol}

If the Russians had meddled to help the Democrats in 2016, the GOP would be braying for war and FOX would be handing out AR-15s. The GOP is hardly a friend of the press, btw.

ScottFromWyoming

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Location: Powell
Gender: Male

Posted: Nov 27, 2017 - 10:07pm
islander wrote: These are all the people I hated in High School, then again in College, and then every day since. Rich, empowered fuckwads, the whole lot of them aren't worth the sack to drown them in. The most aggravating part of it is that the flimflam artist is a "charity."

islander

islander Avatar

Location: Seattle
Gender: Male

Posted: Nov 27, 2017 - 10:02pm
R_P wrote: A woman approached The Post with dramatic — and false — tale about Roy Moore. She appears to be part of undercover sting operation. These are all the people I hated in High School, then again in College, and then every day since. Rich, empowered fuckwads, the whole lot of them aren't worth the sack to drown them in.

R_P

Posted: Nov 27, 2017 - 8:30pm
A woman approached The Post with dramatic — and false — tale about Roy Moore. She appears to be part of undercover sting operation.

miamizsun

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Location: (3261.3 Miles SE of RP)
Gender: Male

Posted: Nov 7, 2017 - 12:26pm

Cynical Politicians Turn #FakeNews Into a Rallying Cry for Censorship

Forget petty Russian meddling in American elections; the greater threat is government messing with our freedom.

R_P

Posted: Sep 27, 2017 - 12:02pm
Trump’s tweets to become erudite discourses of political philosophy

R_P

Posted: Aug 17, 2017 - 2:28pm
Trump the chump... General Pershing on How to Stop Islamic Terrorists U.S. General John J. Pershing did not effectively discourage Muslim terrorists in the Philippines by killing them and burying and their bodies along with those of pigs A Long-buried War with the Moros

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