President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

There are plenty of middle-aged middle-class (more or less) white people who think the "white establishment" is largely responsible for fucking good old white middle-class us, so guess what: you're goddamn right.

And especially if "the way America is run" gives us an incompetent depraved pervert like Fucko, who is gonna fuck us all to the moon, if we're lucky and he doesn't kill us all.

 

He's been fucking that chicken since Election Night 2012, when the crybaby, lazy mooching minorities and women re-elected Obama so they could get free stuff.

 

Congress does not want to repeal this part of Obamacare. It was badly needed, and it is very popular, as is being able to keep young twenty-something children covered.

Congress wants to repeal all the unpopular stuff, the taxes and fees and the fine for not being a part of the ACA. You know, the part that pays for all the popular programs.

 

Not to mention that the "fine," which is really a tax for which you get a write-off if you have health insurance, is the only thing that makes covering pre-existing conditions possible.

 

Paul Ryan caught all sorts of flak for saying this, but people with the misfortune to have serious medical problems ARE NOT INSURABLE! Such a statement should be about as controversial as saying that white wine is generally served chilled, but nooooooo ...

Adding an individual with a known health problem to a pool of insured, then charging everyone in the pool the same rate is NOT insurance.

No ... you have to have the subsidies as well.

 

“The right wants power taken away from the establishment and they want a profound change in the way America is run.”

This would also seem accurate, certainly based on the presidential election outcome. And it would seem accurate to say the current establishment was primarily white. So everyone is trying to take power from the same folks.

So this phrasing would just be a quaint way to scare some white folks, which isn't exactly unusual.

 

And here we have the reason we will ultimately end up with socialized medicine. (Unless we become cool with folks dying in a ditch, which seems unlikely)

 

It's ridiculous. For some reason, people have come to think that insurance companies are charitable organizations. There is no quicker way to start a bench-clearing brawl at the Whitman household than for Mr. Whitman to tell Mrs. Whitman that it makes sense that private insurance companies cannot cover pre-existing conditions. Usually ends with her telling me that I don't respect her "opinion" on "the economy." (I don't.)

 

Which is why either ultimately we go single payer or start having actual death panels saying "Sorry, but Granny has a broken hip, and statistically there is an 85% chance she won't live another year. The Medical Review Board has decided that further surgery would be a poor allocation of assets."

It isn't like insurance companies don't do this now, more subtly. They make it as big a pain in the ass as they can to get certain sorts of treatments and referrals. The doc I worked for got printouts from BC/BS every month tracking how many of what sorts of referrals he made, the percentage of cheaper generic drugs he prescribed versus brand name meds and newer medicines. "Doctor, you prescribe 8% more brand name drugs than the average in your physician class. This is particularly true in diabetic prescriptions." They generally are not crass enough to remind the doctor that if BCBS does not keep him on their approved list he'll go broke. He gets the message loud and clear to toe the line and not to cost any more money than he has to.

This applies across the board, in what gets done, therapies, the sorts of medical appliances offered, etc. They already squeeze every nickel they can. This is not necessarily wrong in a business sense, but the public needs to understand that it is part of the equation.

The other side of the coin is that none of us can price shop for medical treatment efficiently. Grandmas who crow when they catch green beans on sale for twelve cents a can less than usual agree to treatments costing tens of thousands with no clue what it costs at the next clinic over.

Throw in the tendency to be unwilling to see Granny die, so every possible new drug, therapy, and surgery has to be done, even if it has become obvious that she's just worn out and it is her time. It's the American Way.

 

Oh sure, like single payer obviates that possibility.

 

That doesn't seem unlikely to me at all.

 

I previously posted abut the 500 people in Alaska that consume on average about $110,000 in medical services. I don't think most of them make $110,000 a year. What do we do with these people?