Healthcare Reform

Dr. Strangelove said:
I hope you're correct. But when I say this is being celebrated in left spaces, I mean it. 

This guy is the professor of Columbia University, and frankly, represents everything that's wrong with the Progressive wing of the party. He is not alone in celebrating this in Left wing spaces, it is currently everywhere. 

This is yet another misinformation tweet used to further inflame populist on the left. Companies agreed to limit Anesthesia and pay for it at the same rates as *MEDICARE*. It's a cost control effort because it's widely known that anesthesiologists vastly over charge. But Anesthesiologist Groups successfully lobbied, used left wing populism by flaming misinformation and now this cost control measure was killed. 

Exactly. It's also why Bernie Sanders is currently cozing up to certain elements of the Trump coalition. He's a populist politician who senses an opportunity. He's also my least favorite politician, if you can't tell. Nobody is more annoying than Bernie Sanders.

All this being said, the reality is that the insurance industry is a low-margin business. UHCs margins are ~6%, their record profits are the result of massive scale and not corporate greed, and that healthcare costs are next to impossible to lower because the population is old and getting older. 
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When I say this is where the populism of the left, right and libertarianism bleed into the same space, I mean it. It's also the only pertinent discussion of the subject. 

If Bernie Sanders is your least favorite politician, go with your heart, but as already pointed out he's been consistent for decades and can back up his claims better than most. The common thread is a century of increasing wealth disparity — with the Reagan administration as an accelerant— and class rhetoric that has proved surprisingly malleable. It's an impressive piece of populist messaging that got hard-working Americans to view billionaires as victims and the Republican Party as their anti-elitist allies. Some of that appears to have worked on you. The Dems deserve plenty of blame, but it's a fallacy that they've catered to the Progressives. If they had, they'd be the populists in the room. They're not. 

The problem with our healthcare system -- one not shared by most other nations -- has been hurting families, businesses, and people on the margins for decades and across political parties, well before the Baby Boomers aged out. You think it's too simple to blame greed. I think it's crazy not to. It's also a fine or non-existent line between the health insurance industry and Big Pharma, and surely you know the Right spaces --- all the way up to top GOP leadership -- have encouraged violent rhetoric against Big Pharma as the profiteers from COVID, along with select billionaires like Bill Gates. Everybody recognizes the health care industry as the powerful elite, and the financially crippled customer as the unnecessary victim. Good people of all persuasions reject murder as revenge. There's a s#!tload we can and should agree on if we want to make this better. If Anthony Fauci was gunned down tomorrow, there would be plenty of discomforting celebration in the Right spaces. And it would also muddle the fact that honest to God American populism has more in common than any partisan wants to allow. 

 
JJ Husker said:
Well he hasn’t been convicted yet but the reasoning in his manifesto seems to strongly indicate he had a problem with the US healthcare system.

He sure isn’t what I expected though. It will be interesting to find out if the system or company really screwed him over personally to push him over the edge or if he was just a crackpot idealist. I guess it really doesn’t matter as he is a murderer either way.
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Trust fund Ivy League douche cosplaying as Antifa terrorist is about to find out after he fucjed around. 
 

Idealist who was against big company capitalists taken down because he visited Starbucks and McDonalds is quite the twist.   

 
Guy Chamberlin said:
You think it's too simple to blame greed. I think it's crazy not to. It's also a fine or non-existent line between the health insurance industry and Big Pharma, and surely you know the Right spaces --- all the way up to top GOP leadership -- have encouraged violent rhetoric against Big Pharma as the profiteers from COVID, along with select billionaires like Bill Gates.
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What’s also crazy is demonizing “Big Pharma” without realizing drug spending amounts to only 9% of overall healthcare expenditures and without mentioning the actual main drivers of healthcare costs.   
 

Reforms can certainly be made within drug costs I agree,  but anyone that says cutting costs in non military discretionary spending is dumb because “it’s so small of a budget that it won’t make a difference” has zero business making “Big Pharma” the focal point of cutting healthcare expenses. If one wants to curb healthcare costs, talk to me first about what drives 65% of the total costs then we can move further down the cost road 

Guy Chamberlin said:
If Anthony Fauci was gunned down tomorrow, there would be plenty of discomforting celebration in the Right spaces.
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Unfortunately I agree that you are correct here 

 
Archy1221 said:
Trust fund Ivy League douche cosplaying as Antifa terrorist is about to find out after he fucjed around. 
 

Idealist who was against big company capitalists taken down because he visited Starbucks and McDonalds is quite the twist.   
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This is a very good take on the situation. 

 
Apsu said:
You are accusing me of "promoting violence", and such a baseless and vile accusation should be a violation of community standards.
But hey... since I go against the grain of group think, the rules probably don't apply to those who violate them against me.
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I think we’d all be very entertained by you explaining why you think the POS murderer should be pardoned. But please try to do it without playing another victim card.

 
Archy1221 said:
What’s also crazy is demonizing “Big Pharma” without realizing drug spending amounts to only 9% of overall healthcare expenditures and without mentioning the actual main drivers of healthcare costs.   
 

Reforms can certainly be made within drug costs I agree,  but anyone that says cutting costs in non military discretionary spending is dumb because “it’s so small of a budget that it won’t make a difference” has zero business making “Big Pharma” the focal point of cutting healthcare expenses. If one wants to curb healthcare costs, talk to me first about what drives 65% of the total costs then we can move further down the cost road 
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Many culprits, but my understanding is that the makers of medical equipment and medical parts operate outside the normal parameters of supply/demand and economies of scale and are allowed to charge ridiculous (and inconsistent) amounts rarely subjected to price negotiations. As with Big Pharma, if either a private or public entity was willing to use their leverage to negotiate lower prices, the ripple effect would be considerable. The current system operates with the assumption that someone else is paying for everything. 

There was nothing wrong about starting with Big Pharma, but it needs to keep going. 

 
Archy1221 said:
Trust fund Ivy League douche cosplaying as Antifa terrorist is about to find out after he fucjed around. 
 

Idealist who was against big company capitalists taken down because he visited Starbucks and McDonalds is quite the twist.   
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While I truly believe Antifa is a wildly overblown sect of the Far Left, the few who identify as such are most likely playacting middle-class white kids who are willing to risk nothing to promote an anarchist vision they would actually hate to live under. It's always a surprise if they're not living in the Pacific Northwest. 

 
Moved several posts out of here to the Shed - we don't need to glorify violence or personally attack people that post disagreeable content. I appreciate the people who reported the situation to us and thank you for helping to get and keep the thread back on track.

 
Archy1221 said:
I’m in favor of this.   I’d actually be in favor of increasing the SNAP benefits (by taking funds from somewhere that are being misused) to help people pay for the more expensive groceries in the vegetable fresh fruit isles, etc…..

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/gop-governor-calls-on-incoming-trump-officials-to-ban-junk-food-in-food-stamps-make-america-healthy-again
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In theory, I could agree with this.  But, the devil is in the details on how it's implemented.

 
Archy1221 said:
Yes, just like about every bill passed by politicians. 
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The problem with getting something like this passed is the farmers and rural vote.  Do you know how much corn syrup goes into that junk food?  Heck, I know a ton of farmers that REFUSE to ever drink another Bud Light because they advertised they don't use corn syrup.

Yeah...have fun with that.

 
I would be MORE in favor of food stamps being used to purchase booze and cigs. 

For two reasons.

1.  They are awesome (I don't smoke but I used to chew and I loved it and ZYN's are amazing)

2.  Food stamps are already sold to other people.  400 dollars in food stamps sold for 300 dollars cash.  So that those people selling the stamps can buy the actual stuff they want.  That just means they are getting ripped off.  

 
teachercd said:
I would be MORE in favor of food stamps being used to purchase booze and cigs. 

For two reasons.

1.  They are awesome (I don't smoke but I used to chew and I loved it and ZYN's are amazing)

2.  Food stamps are already sold to other people.  400 dollars in food stamps sold for 300 dollars cash.  So that those people selling the stamps can buy the actual stuff they want.  That just means they are getting ripped off.  
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It’s crazy that the government hasn’t figured out a way to make them non-transferable.   Heck I can’t even give my wife one of my free Marriott nights because it isn’t even transferable to her.  Her and my daughter are going to NYC this weekend and I would have had to be there to check in, in order to use them.     Why can’t food stamps work that way? 

 
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