President Biden: The NEW one and only politics thread

I think much of it depends on whether McCain would have invaded Iraq. McCain was a hawk but the whole Iraq threat was whipped up by the Bush administration after 9/11, even though the bombers were Saudi citizen and Bin Laden was in Afghanistan and later Pakistan. I am not sure a McCain administration would have fallen into the same frenzy.

 

I'm still at a total loss wondering what anyone involved in the trip was trying to accomplish by inviting Trump to Ohio, beyond pwning teh libruls. It's already been established a) DeWine initially refused to ask for help from the feds; and b) safety regulations that might have prevented the whole thing were loosened under the Trump administration. The good folks in Ohio should be thankful that, unlike Trump, Biden is not the vindictive type.

 

The whole Iraq thing always felt like it was about upholding daddy's honor after "he didn't finish the job" by knocking off Saddam during the first Gulf war, which was never the objective.

 

As people pay attention to Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina…

why not use sports to make politics better?

Do it like the NFL draft but, the closer the 2020 presidential vote to 50/50, the higher up that state goes for primaries or a caucus.

So, Georgia, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania. First three states to go.

 

This is an intriguing idea, but these are big expensive states, so potential candidates (all Governors, Senators and most of the House, at least in their own minds) would object. Oddly enough, had this been in effect in 2020, New Hampshire would've been one of the first three.

 

If Gore or McCain had been POTUS on 9/11, maybe it still happens or maybe it doesn't because they actually listened to the intel instead of blowing it off as not possible. If it does, there would still have been a response, but not a forever war that resulted in thousands of lost lives lost abroad and billions funneled to defense contractors here at home.

 

If Gore was president on 9/11, no way the Dems pick up seats in the '02 midterms.

 

Doctors are people too. They often find prescription drugs that work for them and come to rely on them to treat illnesses that they see regularly. Sometimes there are alternative or newer drugs that might work better that they are not familiar with. Sometimes there are other reasons.

Every health insurer has a formulary, an official list of medicines that can be prescribed. In most cases the standard Rx drugs are on all of them, although a given company may prefer the Dr. try Drug A first, then B, C, etc. That's normal enough. Sometimes a new drug comes out which is more effective but it costs more to much more, which is often the case. The formulary still insists that the Dr. prescribe drugs A, B, and C before trying the new drug, because money. This can be frustrating for both patient and Dr., particularly when they have already gone through A and B to get to C, but it's a requirement.

Then the insurer may have other considerations. Perhaps the insurance company or it's corporate owner holds a large stock position in Eli Lilly or another drug company, and the formulary puts their drugs at the top of the list in A in an effort to boost stock dividends. The insurer may have an agreement with a drug company that at the end of the year they receive a 10% rebate of the dollar value of a certain drug prescribed which moves up to drug A or B status as a result. Both of these are more common than you realize.

The Doc I worked for got a printout every month from Blue Cross/Blue Shield. They put in front of him how well he was hitting their preferred percentages, things like how many generic prescriptions versus more expensive name brand, how many times he prescribed specific drugs that they focused on writing fewer of, the percentage of patients referred out for elective surgery versus physical therapy, and many other cost limiting measures that their CPA's had come up with. In this market, BCBS insured probably 70% or so of our patients. If a doctor ignores these parameters long enough or his costs are consistently high enough BC can take them off of the approved provider list. Doctors prefer not to be blocked from 70% of the patient pool so they watch those printouts closely and try to comply. Note that often this means that they don't start out on the new more effective Rx, the doctor has to jump through the A,B,C hoops to get them on it, and even then if he has too many patients started on that med in a month he gets red flags in the printout. This isn't best patient care, but it's the doc's reality.


I would add that in a general sense we didn't like patients who looked stuff up on the internet. You sound sane about it, doing in depth research and seeking different approaches. We'd often get people in who put their real or imagined symptoms into WebMD or something and come into the office convinced that they knew their diagnosis and were howlingly wrong. Or they'd look up their new prescription drug and read the list of side effects and have a fit, refuse to take it. Note that list of possible side effects generally lists everything that has ever happened, even if it it was in one patient out of 400,000 prescriptions, because it was written by lawyers butt covering for the corp. You'd be amazed by what patients can come up with. We frequently were. "You think you have Anthrax? How often do you handle cattle or wild game?"

 

Neokayfabe is a great explanation of today’s MAGAverse.

Opinion | How the W.W.E. Explains What’s Happened to U.S. Politics

 

The horror! The horror!

LOL at the chyron too

 

When I checked on the internet she has one son named Nalen. Nalen goes to Villanova. Does Haley propose to legislate what Catholic universities teach?

 

I didn’t believe in algebra. They still made me do it.