Dam8610

You know people on Medicaid receive benefits without paying into the system right now, and that program accounts for about 20% of medical spending in the US today, right? That number won't increase by switching to single payer, and might actually go down because of the tax increase that will be required (even though it would likely net most people more money due to the disappearing health insurance premium). I intentionally picked all of Europe for two reasons: 1) Diffuse the "we're too big" argument and 2) Show that one way to run this is a state by state model (though not my preferred method). If you look at Europe as a whole, it's a continent that has several countries that for modeling purposes could be compared to states in our country. When you think about it like that, it becomes much easier to see how a single payer system could functionally be implemented in the United States. Finally, in our current system, we are trusting private health insurance companies to not operate with a profit motive when the supreme court has outright told them that they are required to maximize shareholder value. That's insane. Further, we're following Einstein's definition of insanity by continuing to do it rather than replace the system with something more reasonable. You may think all the politicians are corrupt, and they may be, but at least the government isn't required to operate with a profit motive, and the people who would be making the decisions regarding how the money is spent would not be politicians.

Let me know when Democrats actually do these things, rather than just saying they're for them. I'm guessing I'll be waiting a long time, since implementing policies like this would take a backbone to stand up to the GOP that I've yet to see out of the Democrats in my lifetime.

Health insurance premiums and companies? Absolutely they make it more difficult to finance and run our healthcare system efficiently. That's one of the many reasons they need to be done away with, at least as the primary funding source for our system. But you just said the current system is broken. What do we do when we get rid of the health insurance companies? SOMETHING will have to replace them. Also, the population of Europe is nearly double that of the United States, and every country in Europe provides free health care to its citizens. So the whole "too big to implement" argument doesn't work. I agree that fraud and waste are huge problems in the current system, which is why transparency and broad enforcement power to regulators would be absolutely necessary in the implementation of a national single payer healthcare system.

I disagree. We have a $710 billion defense budget and a hidden tax of $2 trillion+ known as health insurance premiums that doesn't show up in a government budget, as well as about $1.5 trillion in government insurance spending. By eliminating health insurance and cutting the defense budget by 25%, which would still have us spending more on defense than the next 10 countries combined, we could implement a federal jobs guarantee with a minimum wage of $15/hr, have a completely free healthcare system, and offer free college to all Americans. It's not that hard to implement.

4 WAR catchers also don't cost 2 top 50 prospects and another with ace potential unless they come with 5 or 6 years of control.

The bolded is a fireable offense.

That doesn't mean that a required living wage and free healthcare and education for all wouldn't make people happier here. Also, another thing I've noticed, why doesn't anyone ever complain about the affordability of giving billions of dollars in contracts to defense contractors or billions of dollars in subsidies to big oil?

Good, more to spend when the time/ opportunity is right.

Changed it to reflect the reality that her stated policies often conflicted with answers she gave in debates and other forums.

That's not fair. I don't see any reason he should be denied the right to buy a ticket and take in the game like any of us.

You really forgot the LaRoche drama already?

Probably the Harvard law degree and the Northwestern MBA. Being a lawyer helps with contract negotiations, and having an MBA gives him an extensive analytics background. Everyone knows Hahn is more on the analytical side of things.

He could've gotten double plays after all 4 of the hits. Those are 1 pitch, 2 out plays. Based on the pitch count, he would've had to get a minimum of 3 double plays for it to work. Then you have: 21 outs (18 pitches) 4 Ks (8 pitches) 1 BB (4 pitches) 4 hits (4 pitches) for a total of 34 pitches in 7 innings.

Well clearly they need to develop a better method to determine when an early 20s player is going to have their achilles tendon randomly rupture. This is just poor due diligence on the part of the front office.

Looking at those slashlines, it looks like Delmonico can take a walk and provide similar power, so I'd pick him based on that.

It's about having options. That's the whole point of rebuilding.

If Josh Reddick hadn't worked out for the Astros, they have Kyle Tucker who might be able to come up and provide competent play, or they have more than enough on their farm to trade for a competent corner OF, especially if they're willing to eat some money, which having all that young, cost controlled talent allows them to do.

That's not what I said. Your argument was the part in quotation marks. That suggests that free agency is required to build a competitive team. All I was pointing out is that there are scenarios where you have a competitive team without a free agent acquisition working out.

So if the team needs one player, would you rather they have one route to potentially acquire that player, or three?

And the whole point of this process (go read Balta's posts prior to this tangent and he'll tell you) was to be certain that the organization wasn't relying on free agency to be a competitive team. It's about mitigating the risk of signing a big name free agent by having a farm system that can supplement through callups or trades in case that big contract turns out to be a bust. Why now, suddenly, does everyone want to fire Hahn over his past failings in pro personnel evaluation?

Average starter. I don't consider being on pace to be an average starter "struggling to be average". Maybe you do.

What guys are struggling to be average? Anderson is well on his way to a ~2.5 WAR season with terrible BABIP luck, and Moncada is still on pace for 2 WAR in his age 23 season. Those are pretty much the only regulars on this team that you expect to be on the next contender.

IMO the last 3 drafts have been highly productive in terms of finding talented players. That may not turn into anything at the ML level, but the farm is pretty loaded, and it's not just the trade acquisitions that make it so. Also, again, year 2 vs. year 7. In their year 2, they only had about half of the players I listed, and most of those players' futures were very uncertain.

I understand the trepidation there, but if there's one thing Hahn showed himself to be good at before the rebuild, it was evaluating young talent. Also, the entire scouting department got replaced when the rebuild started, so other than the guys at the very top, the front office essentially was replaced. IMO they've gotten pretty good results thus far.

Bum. DFA.