Wednesday Open Thread [8.19.15]
E. J. Dionne, Jr. provides an astute observation about the Trump phenomenon in a global context: “Trumpism does have its uniquely American characteristics. Not many places would turn a loudmouthed real estate tycoon first into a television celebrity and then into a (temporarily, at least) front-running presidential candidate…a gift to us all from a raucous entrepreneurial culture that does not hold bad taste against someone as long as he is genuinely gifted at self-promotion…Trump is a symptom of a much wider problem in Western democracies. In country after country, traditional, broadly based parties and their politicians face scorn. More voters than usual seem tired of carefully focus-grouped public statements, deftly cultivated public personas and cautiously crafted political platforms that are designed to move just the right number of voters in precisely the right places to cast a half-hearted vote for a person or a party.”
Jonathan Chait: “It is tempting to treat the lack of specifics in the Republican health-care plans as a problem of details to be filled it. But it is not a side problem. It is the entire problem. They will not finance real insurance for the people who have gotten it under Obamacare, nor will they face up to the actual costs they’re willing to impose on people. The party is doctrinally opposed to every available method to make insurance available to people who can’t afford it. They have spent six years promising to come up with an alternative plan, and they haven’t done it, because they can’t.”
Indeed. And it is because they do not believe healthcare is a right. They believe it is a privilege for those who can afford it. If you are poor and sick, then you die. If you are rich and sick, then you don’t. That is the Republican healthcare plan.
Fired HP CEO Carly Fiorina wants to get rid of the minimum wage. Because running the only company she had run into the ground was not enough.
Nate Silver on Hillary’s odds of being the Democratic nominee:
“Personally, I give Clinton about an 85 percent chance of becoming the Democratic nominee. That’s a pinch higher than betting markets, which put her chances at 75 to 80 percent.”
“But wait — wasn’t Clinton ‘inevitable’ in 2008 too? Not to nearly the same extent. Her lead in the polls is considerably larger this time around, her edge in the endorsement race is much greater, and her opponents are weaker than Barack Obama and John Edwards were. If you set a lower threshold for ‘inevitability’ and included Clinton’s 2008 campaign in your equation, you’d probably also need to include winning campaigns like Romney in 2012 and Mondale in 1984, in which case the front-runners would be six-for-seven — an 86 percent success rate, which is about where I’d put Clinton’s chances now.”
“In fact, Gore is the only non-incumbent in the modern era to have swept all 50 states. (Two incumbents, Gerald Ford in 1976 and Jimmy Carter in 1980, also lost some states.) More often, candidates similar to Clinton have lost Iowa or New Hampshire, along with a few other states, before consolidating their support and eventually winning fairly easily.”
The bottom line is that Clinton is about where you should have expected her to be by now if you didn’t buy the earlier hype and figured a Democratic challenger would emerge to take advantage of (a) unhappiness with Clinton and Obama among white progressives in the early states and (b) the desire of many Clinton supporters to “keep her honest” via left-bent pressure. The popularity she brought into the cycle (largely a product of a “honeymoon” period following her service as Secretary of State) was sure to erode. After all, her last name is “Clinton” and most of the media stereotypes about her are too deeply embedded to change.
Washington Post on the fringe GOP ideas that are now their platform: “The ideas once languished at the edge of Republican politics, confined to think tanks and no-hope bills on Capitol Hill. To solve the problem of illegal immigration, truly drastic measures were necessary: Deport the undocumented en masse. Seize the money they try to send home. Deny citizenship to their U.S.-born children.”
“Now, all of those ideas have been embraced by Donald Trump, the front-runner in the Republican presidential race, who has followed up weeks of doomsaying about illegal immigrants with a call for an unprecedented crackdown.”
And those ideas would wreak havoc on society. If not destroy it entirely.
Despite his nativist rhetoric, Mr. Trump may grasp the staggering economic and social havoc that mass deportation would wreak. Hence his offhand comment, on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” that he’d “bring them back rapidly, the good ones.”
According to the Migration Policy Institute, about 87 percent of the United States’ undocumented immigrants — some 10 million people — have no serious criminal record. If those turn out to qualify as Mr. Trump’s “good ones,” what purpose would be served by deporting them only to “bring them back rapidly”?
What Mr. Trump proposes is nothing less than manufacturing a humanitarian upheaval on a scale rivaling the refugee crisis in Syria. Notwithstanding his cavalier rhetoric, there’s no evidence Americans would tolerate such a mass uprooting of people who have planted deep roots in this nation.
Jay Bookman at The Atlanta Journal Constitution dives into the CNN poll numbers:
[I]f you were to pick the three candidates who appeal to those Republicans deeply frustrated with their party’s leadership and performance in Washington, who would you choose? I think you would pick Trump, Carson and Cruz. They happen to be the three leading the Fox poll, and together, they pull 47 percent of the total.
Conversely, the three candidates most favored by the party leadership and big-money donors are Bush, Marco Rubio (at 4 percent, down from 13 percent in April) and Scott Walker (6 percent, down from 12 percent in April). Together, the establishment favorites now pull just 19 percent of the GOP primary vote, considerably less than Trump by himself.That, more than the performance of any individual candidate, is the news out of the poll. That’s how deep the disenchantment runs among Republican voters who believe their leaders have grossly over-promised and under-delivered. As I wrote last week, “the realization is sinking in that they are being played, that the base has been promised many many things that the party has no intent or capability of delivering.”
Maybe the GOP leaders should stop lying to their voters? Maybe they should tell them that marriage equality is here to stay forever and nothing will change that, so accept it. Maybe they should tell them that Obamacare is here to stay, that affordable healthcare is a right for all. Maybe they should stop dog whistling. Maybe they should stop the absolutist rhetoric, where every move by a Democratic President is the act of a despotic tyrant.
The only good thing about Trump is that he is very effectively shoving the GOP’s rhetoric up their own ass for the world to see.
@ Delaware Dem: The USA has a single-payer healthcare system & the government can’t run it, they failed…..Medicare & Medicaid!
I am sure there are a lot of poor, elderly and disabled that would disagree with you, anonymous.
The same goes for the VA. Complain all you want, but when it comes to insurance (gov’t or otherwise), having something is better than nothing.
The whole medical system is difficult and bureaucratic. Always has been. Mostly the insurance middle man holding things up refusing to pay or some private medical firm trying to steal
@Sussexanon:
I agree & having something is better than nothing. But, what is now in place is even worse. Dr’s hands are being tied by regulations & restrictions. Their being told this by someone who is not looking in the patient’s eyes, not hearing the patient needs and not knowing the patients history. Their being told do medical care based on statistics or someone in an office mile away. I know the AMA supported the ACA, but only 15% of Dr’s are members of the AMA. The ACA has gotten between the Dr/patient relationship! Unfortunately, patients had to make a choose between; costs, who they wanted as a physician & their quality of care. And that is WRONG!
You are going to have to do better. Your feelings about things are of zero interest to anyone here.
Link to some alternative plan proposed by someone apposed to the ACA, or shut up.
That goes for taxes too. No one is interested in your sincerely held but utterly erroneous beliefs.
If you are a supporter of the Iran nuclear deal, you may be interested to know that Coons is have a town hall type event (or discussion, or whatever) at the JCC, Garden of Eden Road, at 9 am TOMORROW (Thursday). Just found out about it and am passing along the info. It might be good to have some supporters there; otherwise, I fear it will be pretty one-sided.
Jason330, I directed this to Sussex, not you.
So you don’t care about the quality of the healthcare, that we’re going to get due to the ACA?
So, it’s ok, that someone other than your physician, is making a decision on your healthcare?
It’s ok that the physician that your seeing, is more worried about the paperwork or time being spent with you and your well being?
So it’s ok that Dr’s are forced to spend money on an EMR & it has nothing to do with a patients care?
And where did I mention anything about taxes on this thread?
This is a blog, not a private conversation. You, Anonymous, do not get to decide who responds to you.
And you are constantly mentioning taxes, well… your taxes, your health costs, your latest persecution. It’s always all about you.
Pandora: Your right I cannot say who responds & I apologize. My original comment was what Del Dem posted from Jonathan Chait. This is about healthcare for everyone, not about me! So your wrong.
Given your comments, you don’t strike me as someone concerned about everyone.
Anonymous, private insurance companies are denying treatment on a regular basis through their managed care policies. Trust me, they are not looking in the eyes of the people needing treatment either. Medicaid and Medicare certainly have their problems, but, as the mother of a disabled son receiving these benefits I can tell you it has been a godsend. The only people against these benefits are the people who have been lucky enough to not need them, which IMO is a pretty shitty way to be.
Anonymous, we dealt with your kind in 2010 with all the made-up bullshit criticisms of Obamacare that never materialized. Go get some game and come back with links to back up your offal.
“They’re being told this by someone who is not looking in the patient’s eyes, not hearing the patient needs and not knowing the patients history. ”
Yeah, insurance companies NEVER sit in offices miles away and do this. At all. Ever. Nope.
But please do have a conversation with a doctor about the infinite number of restrictions and regulations he/she has to deal because of the multitude of insurance companies he/she tries to get paid from on a daily basis. My doctor waits as long as 6 months to get paid by my insurance company. What kind of business model for the doctor is that?
No it is not “worse” than having nothing. It is what it is. It isn’t perfect to be sure but any chance of improving it is zero due to us commoners having influence in Washington.
There is no perfect healthcare delivery system. But there are cheaper alternatives with better outcomes than what we currently have.
In my anecdotal experience republicans lack empathy for anyone but themselves. I think sociopath is the word. They tend to be so myopically selfish that they work against their own interests to spite someone they resent.
Here you go
http://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/how-to-replace-obamacare
http://www.cnbc.com/2015/01/12/the-great-obamacare-medicaid-bait-n-switch-commentary.html
Anonymous: There’s a reason nobody endorses those plans — they’re bullshit. Even that National Affairs article is bullshit. There is no lack of innovation in single-payer systems. Many new procedures are invented in Europe and imported to the U.S.
There’s a reason every other industrialized country delivers health care just as good as ours for half the price. That reason is called “single payer,” which I doubt you know much of anything about. Look it up.
In civilized countries, health care is a right. Just not in ours.
Geezer, What cracks me up is that you make assumptions. I do know about single payer systems.
“There’s a reason every other industrialized country delivers health care just as good as ours for half the price.That reason is called “single payer,”.”
No, Geezer: It’s because other countries say to the drug companies, “this is what we are going to pay for this drug, if you don’t like it, go somewhere else. The government sets the prices.
There are only 2 true single payer systems; Canada & Taiwan. France, 90% have supplemental health plans, Germany has 150+ “sickness funds”. Look it up!
that bit about the pharma companies…. great point! very socialist. I love it.
Anonymous can’t get out of his own way. But, as long as everyone remembers it’s all about HIM, it makes sense. Guess someone didn’t pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. 😉
Every health care system has unique wrinkles. For example, supplemental insurance in France is so common because the main system does not pay most dental expenses. That insurance costs nothing near what American health insurance does.
Drugs account for less than 13% of America’s health care spending, so you are quite wrong about drug prices making up the entire, or even the majority, of the difference.
You’re not going to get any better from someone whose entire information from health care comes from Fox News.
Geezer: I never said that “drug prices making up the entire, or even the majority, of the difference.”
Drug prices is one portion that they negotiate in other countries!
Pandora: Hope your having a nice day! It’s not about me, it’s about affordable healthcare for everyone & the ACA as it stands is not. It’s a start and a building block!
Here is a great example of another Single-payer system in the US & how well it’s run.
http://americanactionforum.org/research/veterans-health-administration-a-preview-of-single-payer-health-care
Just a tip there, chief. These aren’t ‘questions’ we’re discussing. The answers are known. Just like the gun problem, the rest of the free/democratic world already solved the health care thing. The argument is over. All the fighting makes you look like a fucking fool. We’re not laughing with you… see what I’m saying. You regurgitate internet bullshit we’ve read hundreds of times.
Speaking of which, I nominate Anonymous as our new court jester. This cat is the best… no fucking clue.
Well Dorian the election is a 1 1/2 years away. It’s not over!
Bernie Sanders wants a single payer system.
Hillary will continue to lie.
The Republicans don’t want the ACA.
So, It’s not over. As always, I won’t resort to name calling, Dorian. I’ll be respectful!
Oh, I think the GOP repeal fight against the ACA is over, unless you can show me their replace plan that covers people with preexisting conditions. The main thing the ACA accomplished was getting everyone to agree that people with preexisting conditions deserved affordable health insurance (and that you couldn’t call a crappy, junk plan – that didn’t actually cover illness – health care).
Yes, other governments negotiate lower prices. Now see if you know which party drew up Medicare Part D, which outlaws such negotiations by the American government.
Hear hear dammit! And it’s Friday too
I’m not even talking about the election. I really don’t care about which one of these clowns gets elected. Sanders would be great, but after what Obama could and couldn’t get done my expectation are extremely low.
I’m talking about the issues of gun control and health care. It’s over. Settled. Every other free/democratic/western nations has sorted it out, so sending a link using the VA to “prove” government run health care doesn’t work makes you look like an idiot.
The pretense that there is still an argument about these is dumb.