kurtster wrote: 
Paul's $5k tax credit—can that be used to pay for insurance premiums or is that just for HSAs? Frankly, HSAs strike me as a cruel f$%ing joke: they're only good for things like co-pays and deductibles on regular healthcare needs like checkups. They provide no real help for a full-blown medical crisis. 

He wants to do away with the individual mandate and minimum standards for coverage—dumb. The first do-away encourages people to game the system and sign up for care only when they think they're about to need it and the second will bring back plans that don't cover enough medical needs. Without the individual mandate, the risk pool shrinks and loses the desired cohort of young, healthy people who typically don't consume as much healthcare as older, sicker people. 

He wants a two-year window for people with pre-existing conditions to sign up for coverage, and then they can get coverage in the group market. What happens to pre-existers seeking coverage in the individual market after the two-year window? 

Does he impose limits on healthcare premiums? Does he provide extra help for the people who need it—poorer and sicker and older people? How does he propose to drive down or moderate health care costs? 

 

This first GOP offering is bait and switch.   

I don't like this Obamacare light as Rand Paul puts it.  I like Paul's plan as far as I have heard him explain it much better.  

Much better.  It even makes sense.

 steeler wrote: 

That balance sheet would not favor the GOP and Trump. For instance, the latest proposal for ACA reform isn't going to make things better for Americans or the healthcare system. Some Republicans are trying hard to alter the ACA so it conforms with GOP policies. The individual mandate would go—big mistake. The risk pool needs to include young, healthy people who typically pay in premiums than they take out in health care given to them. Without a mandate, those people are not even going to think about getting health insurance. 

Also, according the NY Times, the GOP plan would release larger employers from providing coverage to their employees.  It would freeze the recent Medicaid expansion in 2020. Medicaid money would be given on a per capita cap system, instead  of the current open-ended federal funding and shifting funding burdens onto states. Until recently, the GOP plan didn't prevent wealthier Americans from getting tax credits to pay for premiums. Oh, and if an individual lets his/her coverage lapse, insurers could jack up their premiums by up to 30%. 

Overall, the GOP plan seems to reduce the amount of coverage any plan would provide, reduce the number of people enrolled in a plan (especially the critically needed cohort of young and healthy folks) and reduce the amount of federal funding support for the sick and poor covered by Medicaid and private policy plans. It would also remove the ceiling on private premium costs for the elderly (now limited to 3x the premium cost for a young person), a move which could dramatically raise premiums for older people and cause them to opt-out of the insurance market entirely. While the GOP tax credit schedule would provide more premium-subsidy money to older people, those tax credits do not keep up with the rate increases that private carriers could hit older Americans with.    

It's not clear to me how this proposed plan is supposed to financially stabilize or improve our healthcare system. 

A good Vox.com article on the GOP plan: 

http://www.vox.com/2017/3/6/14829526/american-health-care-act-gop-replacement



A chart summarizing parts of the ACA that the GOP plan would keep, change or discard: 

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/03/06/us/politics/republican-obamacare-replacement.html?_r=0

 steeler wrote: 
A good point. I think of "success" as something that makes America great again. Does it increase worthwhile jobs? Does it improve our standing as an international power? Does it increase our nation's sense of well-being?

Or does it do the opposite or nothing? 

 Steely_D wrote: 
Yes, and let's not conclude that an action is a success because it falls under the umbrella of "promises kept."  The action should be judged on its merits (recognizing that people may disagree on that). For example, the executive order that restricted immigration from the 7 designated nations would not automatically be judged a success because Trump said during his campaign that he was going to institute a ban on Muslims (extreme vetting) and now he is doing it.  Instead of that rote response, we would evaluate the pros and cons of the action itself.  Whether or not it constitutes a "promise kept" or not is largely irrelevant, and certainly would not elevate a bad policy or a badly executed policy into the success range.  

 kurtster wrote: 
I hope you're wrong as well.  I sort of expected it happening to our last President; I'm glad I was my morbid premonitions were wrong about that.

 Steely_D wrote: 
yep, but sticking fingers in the holes he creates has his party running out of extremities rather quickly.

He's making the world safe for weapons manufacturers...

 kurtster wrote: 
That would be horrible. He would become a martyr, of course. False flag accusations everywhere.
Folks who really don't believe in him just need to hold onto the sides of the boat while it's rocking and let this all play out. As he asserted: he's not a politician. Ergo, he has no business in a politician's chair. 

Let's do a balance sheet with success vs failure.
Do not include promises.  

 kurtster wrote: 
Well, I gotta admit, you do surprise sometimes.. I never thought you'd be posting an indirect link to a Noam Chomsky video but you live and learn. 

here's my take on NATO, Russia and indirectly the US.

1. The nation state is becoming increasingly irrelevant as global structures arise, and most of all, global trade and business
2. Ergo, trying to understand modern geopolitics in the language of 19th and early 20th century nation states or imperialism is an anachronism
3. Wars are indeed fought over resources, control of resources and ideas, but this is not necessarily on nationalistic lines
4. Globalism is one such idea that is fundamentally founded on a global flow of resources and open trade
...
5. Putin and other forms of nationalism are an anachronism - a throw back to an earlier time that is long since dead. 

Right, to explain all that;
Chomsky is right when he describes how the eastward expansion of NATO felt like a betrayal or silent invasion.. as this is definitely what it would seem like to the Soviets / ex Soviets. 
However, coming from the other side of the Berlin wall, or more particularly from central Europe I can't help but feel ex Soviet /KGB operatives are not really the best arbiter of the intentions of western governments.

That is not to say that I do not understand where Putin is coming from. I am certain the guy is intensely patriotic. I believe it pained him to the core to see his proud country crumble at the end of the Soviet era and I also believe that he views himself as the strong guy who had to step in to stop the rot. He might be an extension of that long-standing myth that Russia can only be ruled by autocrats.. Seeing that it has never had the chance to evolve into a western style economy I think that myth is kind of dangerous and he is a self-perpetuating realisation of it.

From the other side of the wall, the extension of NATO  was merely a natural extension of globalism.. a necessary evolutionary step, if you will, as the local populations were lured by the consumerism of the west and sought the jobs that would give them the disposable income needed to fund it. It was never seen in the west as a strategic geopolitical move designed to undermine a foreign power just for the sake of geopolitical control and influence. It was rather seen as an opening up of new markets and business opportunities. The next step was a hope that open markets would facilitate the rise of democracy by natural extension (which seems to have failed in the case of Russia and China).

Which is why, to cut a long story short, I completely disagree with both Chomsky and Trump on this (what strange bedfellows). Both posit some sort of evil cabal that is out to grab power for power's sake and obtain world domination, like some imperialist of old. Well, there is no evil cabal, of that I am certain. There are, OTOH, greedy bastards like Trump and Putin who are out to maximise their share of whatever is on the table, which is probably why both think the worst of their imagined enemies - pure projection of their own bad intentions. 

In terms of the future, what there may be is some sort of nefarious, Kafka-esque bureaucratic monster arising that is watching over us all - a big brother as some kind of emergent property of modern government. But that is something new. What shape and form this beast takes and whether it promotes human goals will be the defining issues of the future. But not nationalism and imperialism.. They are quite literally history, and both Putin and Trump are on the wrong side of it.  There is no alternative to continued globalism. Well, ok, there is. Economic collapse. Not a good choice.

 

 kurtster wrote: 
yeah, me too
I'm just tired of all this gutter dwelling 

 Skydog wrote: 
already predicted Trump is most likely to share the same fate as JFK ...   Nearly every time I see him speak publicly since November, I'm just waiting to see his head explode and say here we go again.  Hope I'm wrong.

 Red_Dragon wrote: 
after the election I thought if this guy F's up the CIA will probably take him out, 
maybe this is the first step 

 LowPhreak wrote: 
Let us not forget that there is a message / messenger problem to factor in.  There are too many people who will stop listening based upon the source and read no further.  I admit that I fall into that sometimes as do most all.  But I do force myself to read things I do not agree with.  I do force myself to watch programs that I do not agree with.  And I do listen to unconventional sources.  And on the matters at hand, I compare all of that with what I consider the gold standard on these particular matters, Assange and to a lesser degree, Greenwald.  I take Assange's word over everyone else's, period, until proven otherwise.

So far, Assange has been correct and no one has yet proven him otherwise.

Some interesting reading from Mr Greenwald ...

The New Yorker’s Big Cover Story Reveals Five Uncomfortable Truths About U.S. and Russia

And down the rabbit hole I go ... there was so much confidence by Obama and Clinton that she would win and that any untoward acts against Trump by people within government agencies would never be discovered by the people who were subject to these actions.  Clinton would just sweep it all under the rug as if it never happened upon taking office.  No one who should would never know.  But she lost and other than loyalist bureaucrats, there is no one to do what she intended.  Things are being discovered by the new occupants that were never supposed to be seen if she had won.  Something about best made plans ...

Or I could be totally wrong ...

One note.  I did bring up the thought that Obama was spying on Trump weeks before any of this current stuff broke based upon my own conclusions.  Clicky ...

 kcar wrote: 

"As a rule, misinformed people do not change their minds once they have been presented with facts that challenge their beliefs. But beyond simply not changing their minds when they should, research shows that they are likely to become more attached to their mistaken beliefs."

 Red_Dragon wrote: 
yep.. we've seen an awful lot of that here over the years 

LowPhreak wrote: 
 

 steeler wrote: 
Right, and to which I say - so what? Many private individuals or groups have offered rewards for info leading to arrest/conviction of suspects because they have an interest in seeing the culprits brought to justice, maybe for parochial reasons. There is nothing inherently wrong with that.

 Steely_D wrote: 

"Certainly there are a group of people wanting to see what kind of trolling will get his attention. That's a fun game (except he's the freakin President of the USA and should focus on his job)."

Donnie was a cat in a previous life, which provides some explanation...


 

"...and let things like The Apprentice get dealt with by TMZ."


 
Right now Trumpers is behaving like a slacker, living in his parents' basement.