Since we’re sharing hospital stories, I spent the last few days helping out a family member at a specialty heart hospital, a place where they do a bunch of heart surgery and cardiac catheterization, and where every room is what they used to call “intensive care”. Luckily, the person I was helping out was the least sick and younger than the rest by about 20 years, on average.
While I was there, they averaged a Code Blue every other day, so it was probably a slow week. Code Blue means the patient’s heart has stopped (or is beating in a way inconsistent with further survival), they’re not breathing, and seemingly every nurse, doctor and tech in the place rush to the room with all kinds of equipment. As far as I know, everyone who coded that week survived. One of the survivors was two doors down. This guy coded shortly after he was brought in by ambulance, and though I’m sure it’s commonplace to the medical personnel reading this, seeing this guy up and walking around the next day, and being discharged a couple of days later, was kind of amazing.
A world where some people can afford the kind of care he got, while others die at home because they hesitate to call an ambulance since they don’t have insurance, is what Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are selling. Obamacare, for all its faults, will mean that a 911 call is not an automatic bankruptcy for the working poor and middle class Americans who can’t afford insurance. That sounds simplistic, but sometimes the truth is simple.
EconWatcher
Here’s something I haven’t seen discussed much: Obama famously pursued a 50-state strategy in 2008. This year, it seems his team is much more focused on winning the swing states and racking up the EVs needed to win, while allowing Romney to rack up massive PV wins in red states.
I would think this makes it much less likely that we retake the House, and presents the risk that we win the election but lose the PV, which would certainly be better than losing the election, but will surely create its own problems. (Yeah, Bush 2000, but IOKIYAR.)
Is the change in strategy because of Citzens United, because it’s just not possible for a Dem to raise enough cash for a 50-state strategy in the post CU environment?
jurassicpork
Mitt Romney & Campbell’s soup: Mm, Mm, Dumb.
the Conster
I love that it will forever be known as Obamacare. Suck on that wingtards.
dmsilev
@EconWatcher: It’s a strategy born from necessity. In 2008, Obama was massively favored to win the election overall, so he and his campaign had the luxury of expanding the map and using the big resource advantage over McCain to contend states like Indiana. Today, it’s a tight race. Obama is ahead, but not by so much that he can afford to spread his effort away from the key states.
ed_finnerty
@EconWatcher
I don’t think the money has made that much difference in the general. It was vital in the primary. Romney has not spent it very wisely and effectively.
Obama is using the strategy he needs to win. It is remarkable, and a testimony to his skill, (not to mention using science instead of marketing to devise a winning strategy and stick to it) that he is able to get re-elected in this economy (this comment will suck if he loses). And as an added bonus, consign the GOP to the scrap heap as a perpetual southern strategy loser.
JasperL
Healthcare is why I’ll vote FOR Obama. He’ll lose my state by 20% or so, but I will vote for him just to recognize the steps we’ve made towards universal care. I volunteer for a charity where it will be a Big Fucking Deal for the employees, who nearly all have pre-existing conditions and are functionally uninsurable, and the clients, most of whom came off the streets with addictions and/or mental illness and are therefore functionally uninsurable. We detox them backstopped by the ER – biggest f’ing waste of resources ever, but that’s our system. Obamacare is a start on changing it for the better.
Paul in KY
Did the handing out candy thing, my Obama/Biden sign proudly waving in the gusts of wind.
Gave out only the best stuff (few kids exclaiming ‘oh boy, Chocolate!’), subtext being ‘if you ride with Obama, the candy be flowing’.
I hope all those with Rmoney signs declined to participate.
Got my parents to give out candy as well. They hadn’t done that since the mid 90s.
Santiago
OT
Sneak peek on Friday’s employment report
http://www.newser.com/article/da297cjo0/us-stock-futures-head-higher-on-positive-jobs-data-market-awaits-full-employment-report.html
Green Lefty
DoleCare as a reason to vote Obama? Hilarious…
beltane
@dmsilev: I also recall that Obama mainly employed the 50-state strategy during the primaries to great effect. During the GE he most certainly did not expend resources in un-winnable states like Oklahoma. Since 2008 attitudes have hardened to the point where the Republican party has become a race-based identity cult to red state whites. These people are going to take their Republicanism to the grave and are, IMO, not open to deprogramming.
cactusjackwallace
It’s important for people to realize that our Health Care system was broken, and while Obamacare won’t fully fix it, it puts it on the way to mending. Absolutely great and will be a big help to lots of people.
Also, Cold War Kids rock. “Hang Me Up to Dry” is a rockin song.
JPL
Next Tuesday it will be difficult for many in NJ and NY to vote. The popular vote could go to Romney because of this reason and I’m positive the MSM will highlight this.
Punchy
This one is easy. The red states are so much more redder, racist, and fucking insane than 2008 that there’s just no point to campaigning in them. His blackety blackness has so freaked out the Redders that they’re completely unreachable. Cant blame Obambi for recognizing the obvious.
IowaOldLady
When I was in Barnes and Noble the other day, an old guy collapsed. The ambulance came; the EMTs asked him what hospital he normally used; and they hauled him away. I thought afterwards that at least they were all sure he had health insurance. If he’d been 30 years younger, he’d have been in a lot worse shape.
Gadsden Flag Burner
Get it right. /wingnut
Foregone Conclusion
It’s unlikely that Obama will lose the popular vote while winning the electoral college. But if he does, then it won’t matter that much. He wouldn’t have any kind of political capital with the Republicans even if he racked up a LBJ-esque score.
Violet
I was sure when I saw the title that this would be another thread about Andrew Sullivan’s bitching about his lack of electrical power.
sparrow
@beltane: This. I had the sad experience of getting a racist “Obama is a lazy, dumb, affirmative action president” forwarded from my mom who lives in Oklahoma. I had always considered her (lovingly) as a bit of a weak intellect, but racist? It hurt very deeply. And as my SO says, these people are trapped in a cult-like group that feeds them information that has little connection to reality, and plays on their fears. It’s tribal, it’s ingrained, as long as there is one lone republican apologist left to say “no! It didn’t happen that way! They lie! It’s the black man’s fault! It’s the liberals fault!”, they will not abandon the cause.
Maude
@Paul in KY:
I went to a pricey candy store on Sunday. None of the chocolate was plain old what I eat. It was $10 a pound garbage. I’m in NJ, I bought salt water taffy.
Around here, parents buy the good stuff.
aimai
There is a huge disconnect between what people “know” about the healthcare system–or, indeed, the welfare system (medicare, medicaid, social security, ssi, TANF, SCHIP etc…) and what is true. Because so much of this impacts people at the State level and under State control they simply have no idea what is available elsewhere, or why–so if you are in an “effective” State where the social safety net is pretty good and you are working class or falling working class you may perceive it as too generous because you just miss the cut off for services you see people poorer than you getting. You have insurance and you believe, as an article of faith, that poor people and minority people call the ambulance for a hangnail, go to the ER as a matter of convenience for things that the primary care docotr they don’t have should be handling.
In a low social services state people often still believe that social services are there for the needy and that the needy are too damned lazy to even get the services they need–thus another strike against them. Because people think we spend a fortune on welfare for the undeserving, just as they think we spend 40 percent of our GDP on foreign aid for lazy foreigners. The facts mean nothing to these people and when they run up against the heartless reality of what “20 percent above poverty” or even 150 percent above poverty means for the actual doling out of aid to people they are shocked and enraged.
aimai
gex
I’ve been going through two months of cancer treatments for my girlfriend. Stage 2a cervical cancer, which requires a TON of treatments. Two inpatient internal radiations, daily external radiation five days a week, and chemo weekly.
Now she will have a preexisting condition from here on out, which is reason enough to support Obama.
But I’ve also had to have her health insurance count as taxable income while my married coworkers get their partner benefits tax free. And Minnesota is trying to pass a marriage amendment.
Seeing as my girlfriend is unemployed and I am supporting her, if the amendment passes, I’m seriously tempted to let them support her and provide her medical care through social services and MN Care. I’d hate to “disrespect” their views by acting all married and letting my employer treat us as though we are married. I don’t want to impinge on anyone’s religious freedoms.
ETA: This has got to be monstrously expensive.
dmsilev
@Violet: We can but hope that Andrew’s cell phone battery finally has died and he is cut off from the Internet for a while.
Either that, or maybe he’ll get carted off to a FEMA reeducation camp.
lacp
Obama’s victory is assured: my wingnut neighbor collared me on my way to work this a.m. to announce that Romney was going to win because (a)”all the polls” (by which he means what he heard from Rush and Sean and the rest of that sorry crew) show Willard leading, (b) Willard “destroyed” Obama in all 3 debates (even though he admitted he had only seen the 3rd one), and (c) he hasn’t seen any Obama signs (this is Center City Philadelphia; I’ve passed Obama signs within 20 feet of the front door to our building). He’s also convinced that Willard will win PA – I would take this to mean that Obama will carry the commonwealth in a landslide.
Democrat Partisan Asshole
All the whole “debate” over healthcare boils down to the question that no one dares ask directly.
Do we, the plebes, the common folk, have a “right to life” or not?
The upper crust, the 1%, have made their position quite clear. We do not. They want us working to make more money for them, or dead.
Think about that.
NCSteve
In North Carolina, every week of Superior Court civil session begins with a ritual called “calendar call.” Every lawyer for every party that has a motion on the court’s calendar for hearing that week, or everyone who has had a trial scheduled for that week, has to appear in court, tell the judge how long they expect the motion hearing or trial to take or tell the court the matter has been resolved by the parties and can be taken off the calendar. The judge then tells you what day and what time your motion will be heard or your case will be tried.
And amid all the lawyers, there are always the pro se parties clutching this thing they got in the mail that says they had to appear and, invariably the pro se parties think this appearance is the place and time where they can put their whole case before the judge and have the matter resolved once and for all. And, of course, it’s not. It’s just a very inefficient and tedious administrative ritual where nothing substantive happens.
In urban counties, this ritual occurs every week, usually in two or three courtrooms. In rural counties, it can be a bit more sporadically and occurs only before one judge in one courtroom. I’m sure something similar happens in most other state court systems.
And the thing is, for the last several years, no matter where I’ve gone for calender call, be it in a crowded, busy urban courthouse or in a quiet courthouse in a small town, there is always, always, always at least one very sick person there appearing pro se in an action for gigantic unpaid medical bills brought by a healthcare provider. You can usually spot them right off the bat because almost invariably, they are hooked up to a portable oxygen tank carried in a bag or wheeled in on a cart.
You hear the words “medical bankruptcy” but it’s an an abstract term. These people are the reality. Very sick people hauling themselves and their oxygen tanks downtown and struggling through the onerous and sometimes humiliating security sweep at the door. Then they spend between thirty minutes to a couple or three hours sitting on the hard, hard wooden benches of an anxiety-inducing courtroom with a judge and a deputy sheriff and a room full of lawyers matter of factly consulting their calendars and tossing their dry legal gobbledgook back and forth while they wait to take the first step on the road that inevitably ends in a federal bankruptcy court.
These people are why I became so very angry at all the emoprogs and firebaggers and their endless emoting over the “sellout” of the public option (which, in their minds was an entirely different thing than the the actual public option in the initial bills) and “forcing” people to buy “junk policies” from evil for-profit corporations and all the rest of their “principled” ideologically pure tripe.
Obama care won’t end medical bankruptcy entirely, of course. But, assuming we manage to beat the barbarians back from the gate one more time, after 2014, the only people who find themselves being sued over a catastrophically huge medical bill will be the ones who deliberately chose to put themselves in that position because they found the mandate just too tyrannical and odious to endure and chose to pay the tax instead. I’ll still feel bad for them, but there’s a huge difference, both emotionally and morally, between the sympathy due someone who finds himself in a bad situation because he perversely insisted upon making a bad choice and the sympathy one feels for someone who truly is a victim of circumstances.
After 2014, getting sick may mean you’ll owe a provider a really, even harshly, inconvenient amount of money due to the copays and deductibles permitted under the “bronze” policy option. And it may may mean you’ll have to spend time and effort while you’re sick fighting with some officious bureaucratic asshole who works for your insurer over one thing or another. But it won’t mean bankruptcy unless you very deliberately choose to take that risk.
And that, my friends, is a Big Fucking Deal.
RaflW
@gex:
Major caveat: Minnesota Care has an annual benefit cap of $5,000. It’s a basic safety-net for some care, but there was a fairly well publicized case up on the Range of a woman with cancer who blew through her $5,000 annual benefit and was facing $50,000 in cancer treatments – or death. She was dying. It was gruesome.
So. MN Care is great, when compared to most other states that offer nada, zip, zero to lower income individuals who don’t qualify for Medicaid. And it works pretty well for managing things like high blood pressure or diabetes. But acute care or expensive treatments are difficult…
Good luck. We’ll all need it if Obamacare is wiped out.
gex
@RaflW: Good to know. We can just let everyone subsidize it via higher rates then, as there’s no way she can pay it, and very little incentive for me to insure her.
Incentives matter!
Anna in PDX
How weird to read this message today. My partner just had emergency heart surgery yesterday and is in one of these intensive care units right now. I was taking some time to read the blogs before getting ready to spend the day at the hospital. We are very lucky in that we both have gold plated health insurance. He had heart surgery two years ago and a stay of more than a week in the hospital and a charge of $0.00. This should just be normal for everyone like it is in every other developed nation but here.
Linda Featheringill
@sparrow:
Your mom the racist:
You have probably abandoned this thread but . . .
There is a school of thought that if you love someone, you will contribute to their spiritual growth. If you love your mom, tell her how hurt you are to see that kind of shit coming from her. Tell her how disappointed you are. Go all Jewish-mother on her.
She might become defensive but she’ll also have to think about her position. She’ll be required to defend it on moral grounds, which will probably be a new experience for her.
LanceThruster
The GOP is just one big goddamned Death Panel.
Mnemosyne
@RaflW:
So it sounds like gex and her girlfriend would be best off if they wait for her cancer treatments to be over and, if she gets a reasonably clean bill of health, then she could go on MN Care for her follow-ups and re-checks.
Of course, the easiest and less expensive thing for everyone would be to just let them get married so gex’s girlfriend could be covered like anyone else’s ill spouse, but god forbid we should save taxpayers money when there’s adults to lecture about “immorality.”
Yutsano
@Mnemosyne:
Gay folk make them feel all funny inside. So of course they have to be beaten back into the closets by any means necessary. Who gives a fuck about money when precious fee fees are involved?
Paul in KY
@Maude: I’m talking mini hershey bars, nestle’s crunch & the like. I didn’t hand out godivas or truffles or whatever.
That would have broke me ;-)
Wildcat12
My parents never told me until I was 21 that when I was 1 1/4 years old, I code blued twice as an infant. Those 2 times happened roughly within 3 days of each other. Apparently I had a problem with mucus and being able to breathe as an infant.
Crazy to think that I could’ve lived and never knew about it. And it also speaks to my parents financial well-being that it didn’t wreck them as they raised their 2 sons.
Mnemosyne
@Yutsano:
It’s partly those closeted people, but it’s also the people who are not at all tempted to be gay, so taking a moral stand that being gay is wrong makes it easy for them to present themselves as more moral than everyone else. I think Fred Clark calls them the Anti-Kitten Burners — since they’re never temped into that “sin” themselves, it’s very easy for them to condemn it and hold themselves up as superior to those who do.
Think of compulsive gambler William Bennett, who feels completely comfortable lecturing other people about their morals because he never says that gambling is bad, so therefore his vices are A-OK but everyone else’s must be condemned.
SteveinSC
“If living was a thing that money could buy, the rich would live and the poor would die.” That is why I am a Death-Before-Dishonor Democrat. $500 have flown to MoreOn.org because I don’t want any prisoners.