StrangeSox

Hey remember when Sessions recused himself from the Russia investigation, and has now gotten Trump to fire the guy leading the Russia investigation?

that second paragraph

Holy s***.

GOP Struggles to Explain AHCA’s $880 Billion Medicaid Cuts lol This bill will put the health of millions of Americans at risk and kill thousands of them a year.

 Wisconsin’s Voter-ID Law Suppressed 200,000 Votes in 2016 (Trump Won by 22,748) Voter suppression works very, very well for the GOP.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ May 8, 2017 -> 08:13 AM) Pruitt getting rid of those pesky scientists and replacing them with representatives of the companies that are pushing against pollution laws, so they can make things more safe. So many great things https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/07/us/polit...yp=cur&_r=0 I just have to remind myself sometimes that the Republicans do not hide their policy agenda whatsoever, and that these sorts of actions are what people vote for

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ May 8, 2017 -> 08:12 AM) "Safe" for the species that were alive 50 million years ago. Which certainly didn't include humans. That's also after the events that killed off not only the dinosaurs but also most large creatures all over the earth. Also, keep in mind that brett isn't interested in discussion. He just likes to troll. Yeah, "safe for life" and "good for human civilization" are two very different things. This planet has survived several mass extinctions. That doesn't mean we want to turn to those "safe" times.

27 national monuments may lose protections http://m.sfgate.com/news/politics/article/...ts-11126028.php

Kushner family selling $500k "Golden visas" to wealthy Chinese investors. https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/worl...f287_story.html

QUOTE (JenksIsMyHero @ May 5, 2017 -> 02:33 PM) Why? The assumption is that none of the main insurers will want to offer these insurance plans/coverage. So you have millions of potential customers to be picked up. If you're providing a service that no one else is providing, customers will find you. If there's competition for those customers, all the better. The people who need the extra services offered by the more expensive plans will choose those plans. Younger and healthier people will buy cheaper plans, which means the older and sicker people who need the expensive plans won't be subsidized. The risk pools end up segregating and we get the same fun death spiral. Why do so many more people shop at Walmart instead of retailers with nicer items or healthier food? Because Walmart is cheaper. Price is an extremely powerful motivator. It's not like we're lacking for historical evidence on what we can expect the healthcare market to look like. It'll look much like it did in the early 2000's before the ACA was passed. I still remember seeing a statement from my dad's health insurance in the late 90's or early 00's that detailed exactly how much of the lifetime $1M cap we had used. This was the health plan at a large and successful (at the time) company while the economy was still riding the tech boom. e: also missing is that people who really need the more expensive plans that actually cover treatment for their illnesses might not be able to afford those plans, especially if the estimates put out by several independent groups are even remotely accurate. We're talking several thousand to $10k+ a month for insurance premiums depending on the pre-existing condition. Insuring people from cradle-to-grave is a very expensive thing to do, and it isn't profitable unless you can exclude the more expensive patients or charge very, very high premiums to them.

trump at least recognizes that every other country's health care system is better than ours, too bad he got behind this disastrous bill rather than pushing for any of those types of systems.

QUOTE (JenksIsMyHero @ May 5, 2017 -> 02:23 PM) I'm curious why one of the giant insurers wouldn't go ahead and maintain the plans as they are now as a huge marketing ploy, or market to the unemployed people seeking insurance for same. They'll up the rates, obviously, but at least you'll look like the one good insurance company out there. The new House bill doesn't force insurance companies to remove these protections, it just takes away the mandates. Adverse selection. They'll get undercut on pricing, lose market share, and either have to change or will be driven out.

I think a key difference is death panels were a bunch of fake nonsense whereas tens of millions of people losing their health insurance is the actual result of this bill. Seems like an important distinction to me.

QUOTE (Iwritecode @ May 5, 2017 -> 11:57 AM) Someone with pre-existing conditions that could possibly die if the new heathcare bill passes. A good example In that case, it's not just the pre-existing conditions, it's also the lifetime caps that will come back. This is what the insurance industry in America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, looked like prior to the ACA being enacted.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ May 4, 2017 -> 04:09 PM) Literally every other civilized country has proven its a successful model. The USA has only proven that privatized for profit healthcare is a failure. Yeah. If you have friends or family in other countries, they'll usually express horror whenever they learn about some detail of our healthcare system. Even of you have pretty good insurance. A Canadian friend recently had a baby. Zero dollars out of pocket. Oh and $10/day daycare starting after their paid maternity and paternity leave ends

QUOTE (raBBit @ May 4, 2017 -> 03:54 PM) This would be funny if it wasn't already a failure. Medicare + most other countries in the world say otherwise though.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ May 4, 2017 -> 03:16 PM) Did they re-use the banner from Bush's war? It's a photoshop but yeah that's the joke. Double joke because they haven't actually accomplished anything yet since this still has to pass the Senate. Oh and the Senate said they're writing their own bill from scratch.

QUOTE (raBBit @ May 4, 2017 -> 03:12 PM) What I suggested isn't in the bill. What if we pooled every American together? Imagine the cost-savings then!

QUOTE (raBBit @ May 4, 2017 -> 03:10 PM) During Obama's administration? This always cracks me up. The insurance companies and Wall Street were raking it in all throughout Obama's administration. Even when they f***ed up after Bush's affirmative action housing plan and Wall Streets financial experiments Obama bailed them out. The 1% got way richer and the middle class shrunk. Now everyone's all up in arms because in theory, Trump is going to make the rich richer. He would be offering a continuation of an administration you have been singing the praises of for almost a decade now. A whole lot of people on the left haven't been happy with many aspects of Obama's administration*. Republicans will make those things worse. That's pretty straight forward. *that was the whole core of Bernie's support in the primaries and the ongoing divide between the left-liberal base and outside leftists and the neoliberal/establishment base of the party

QUOTE (raBBit @ May 4, 2017 -> 03:06 PM) Why don't you offer group insurance plans for groups of people? Why are Walmart's premiums so much less than a smaller company's? Because their massive workforce makes them so lucrative and the insurance giants work their ass off to get that account. If people joined Individual Health Pools they can work insurance companies to the same effect. Could you imagine the type of leverage an AARP based health pool could exert on insurance companies? You force the the insurance companies to work for the people. You don't force the people to pay the government so they can then significantly increase prices once their plan's namesake leaves office. The ACA subsidized the purchase of private insurance on exchanges. It didn't send money to the government to buy government plans. There was a public option in the House bill, but it was killed in the Senate. There was a fee that went to the government to fund the subsidies if you didn't carry insurance so that you didn't kick off a death spiral in the insurance industry by requiring them to cover pre-existing conditions but not requiring anyone to sign up. The ACA had numerous regulations in it that forced insurance companies to work for the people, such as requiring community ratings, insuring basic coverages, insuring that the companies spent at least 80% of their revenues on health care, and eliminated lifetime caps. The AHCA guts those protections and lets insurance companies go back to focusing exclusively on profits above all else. And that's why private insurance is less effective and more expensive than the single-payer programs that many, many countries run. The insurance company's main focus is generating returns for shareholders, not providing for health care. But if you're going to insist on a market-based solution, that's what the ACA was.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ May 4, 2017 -> 03:05 PM) The drug and insurance companies really are going to like this. They will make even more money. What really pissed off republicans is the rich basically funded Obamacare. Now their tax breaks will all good to go, and they will be able to put more money in storage making America great again. Hey, Ivanka's childcare thing is for everyone. Even those making under $30k a year will save themselves $10. Nah, pretty much every major insurer, doctor group, hospital group, and disease research/advocacy group came out strongly against this.

You might want to note that the take away was "far from [perfect]." Premiums were increasing a rapid rate before the ACA was passed. They're going to increase even more under the AHCA, especially if you're older or have pre-existing conditions. Many of the protections, such as removing lifetime caps and requiring that the insurance actually covers routine and important medical care, will be gone. Yeah, the other option is to ditch the for-profit market-driven insurance idea because it doesn't work and do something along the lines of what we already do for everyone over 65 and what every other developed and even most semi-developed countries in the world do: provide health care access for their entire population with better outcomes and at a cheaper cost than what we do here. edit: I guess the other other option is to take the stance that you don't think health care access is a right or something that the government should guarantee or help its citizens obtain, and you don't care if that leaves millions without access to affordable health care.