The Politico, spewing what is currently the conventional wisdom:
The Obamacare that consumers will finally be able to sign up for next week is a long way from the health plan President Barack Obama first pitched to the nation.
Millions of low-income Americans won’t receive coverage. Many workers at small businesses won’t get a choice of insurance plans right away. Large employers won’t need to provide insurance for another year. Far more states than expected won’t run their own insurance marketplaces. And a growing number of workers won’t get to keep their employer-provided coverage.
Every branch of the federal government played a role in weakening the law over the past three years, the casualty of a divisive legislative fight, a surprise Supreme Court ruling, a complex implementation and an unrelenting political opposition. The result has been a stark gap between the promise of Obamacare and the reality — one that has fueled a deep vein of skepticism about the law as it enters its most critical phase.
Of course there are going to be hiccups. This was a massive piece of legislation. The problem isn’t, though, that the initial legislation had flaws. Every single major piece of legislation has had flaws and unexpected problems. The difference between all those laws and the ACA aka “OBAMACARE” is that we had functional congresses in the past who would work to fix problems. But that can’t happen now, because one branch of our government is completely and irredeemably insane, and want the bill to fail. Problems are a plus to them.
That’s the god damned story. Not that there are some problems in a major piece of legislation that need to be addressed. The story is that the Republicans hate Obama and America so much that they will refuse to work to fix those problems.
Violet
Yep. Exactly.
rikyrah
Because their muthafuckin’ Governors will not expand Medicaid coverage, you idiots.
Violet
But Chuck Todd got invited on the Today Show this morning to discuss how the President is afraid of his wife and how the President lied about quitting smoking. Escaped to the golf course to smoke in his first year because he needed to hide from Michelle.
That’s the real story.
Patrick
So does Politico think it was better before then when insurance companies could reject you for a pre-existing condition?
Politico may want to go back and check both Medicare and SS; neither of those two programs were perfect when they were started.
Tommy
I live in IL about 30 miles from St. Louis. So although I live in IL all my media (radio, TV, large newspapers) comes out of MO. In the Sunday St. Louis Post Dispatch did they some actual journalism. The Post Dispatch I’d call a middle of the road paper. Clearly not liberal but also not the Washington Times.
They had this huge cover story that explained how IL worked to get their exchange up, but in MO (even with a Democratic Governor) it was undermined by the tea party House at every corner.
That there might be problems, but in IL folks would have what people in MO will not. Then outlined a lot of that in a ton of detail. It was painful to read.
BGinCHI
I hate these fucking nihilists.
And Politico is the worst kind of parasite. The pimple on the wrinkled ass of American nihilism.
Even mixed metaphors don’t cover it.
BGinCHI
@Patrick: I hope the Politico reporters have really crappy, really expensive coverage.
I am not feeling charitable.
CanadaGoose
The NIH in the UK and Medicare here in Canada were fought tooth and nail by the reactionaries. In the first province where it was enacted (Saskatchewan) the overwhelming majority of doctors went on strike against it. The government brought doctors in from the US and UK and in three weeks, the doctors folded.
The process of getting health care for everyone is long and sometimes dirty. It will be worse in the US because politics are worse in the US. One thing I’ve learned as an old person is that people give up too damn early in many struggles for rights.
SteveinSC
Fucking political terrorists, doing more damage to this country than all the Taliban combined. Poor, blind, Chris Matthews, rooting around, found an acorn when he described ted cruz as wrapped in a dynamite vest trying to destroy the U.S. Government.
efroh
If anyone is searching for a live link to the VA Lt Gov’s debate here it is
http://www.dailypress.com/news/breaking/dp-live-lt-governor-debate-20130924,0,5535013.htmlstory
raven
@CanadaGoose: I loved the NIH celebration at the opening of the London Olympics.
shelly
Yup, gotta destroy the country in order to save it.
Plus, standing up to the Nazi’s or something……
Elizabelle
And Ted Cruz prattles on.
I hate how he was using the working poor as props — as were other Republican Senators — in describing the hell they face, with two or three jobs they’re trying to schedule around.
Maybe those folks could use healthcare, huh? Or even food stamps, which would just be coddling those pikers.
You would have taken those Republicans for populists, with some of their anti-Obamacare crap.
Davis X. Machina
The real story is the failure to institute single payer.
The real story, failing that, is the lack of a public option.
That will always be the real story.
That will never not be the story.
That is, until Hillary gets us both of them.
Or Howard Dean.
Or someone, anyone, who’s not Obama.
Bill in Section 147
It would have been nice if the basic flaws of every day, every directive, every piece of legislation signed, by the Bush Administration had received even a smidge of the ship given to anything the last 5+ years. But that would have been Bush Derangement Syndrome. I, for one, cannot wait for the eight years Hillary will be in office. You think a blah made them lose their minds?
What this generation of Righties needs is a Bull Conner to set things right.
Chris
“Ted Cruz loved the working man, he loved to watch him work.”
Tommy
@efroh: Watching. Thanks.
Once lived in Alexandria. VA. Then 15+ years in DC, but working in NOVA. I flat out LOVE the state. I get that NOVA is not the same as the Norfolk area or the rest of the state, but my gosh, Jackson is a flat out loon.
PeakVT
/pedant, I know, but I think it’s important to make the distinction.
efroh
@Tommy: Yeah, speaking as a long-time NoVA resident, I’m just horrified (not surprised though) that the GOP nominated him, because there’s a chance he might win if the Dem turnout is low on election day. Cooch is awful enough.
Violet
Noticed that “Republican Party” was an option under Top Stories on Google News. Clicked it out of curiosity. Most of the headlines were not flattering to Republicans. “Republican Party Remains Captainless,”, “Shutdown threat reveals split in Republican Party,” “Republican Party could learn a lot from the Democrats of 1989,” etc.
e.a.f.
CanadaGoose certainly hs it right. there were those who considered a government medical system the end of medicine in Canada. It wasn’t. It was the beginning of adequate medical care for everybody in Canada,regardless of your income.
Doesn’t matter if you have a previously exsisting condition, doesn’t matter if you or your child have to spend a month in hospital, Prior to the Canadian government funded health care system, people died because they didn’t go to doctors sooner, when they didn’t have the money. Parents were terrified if they lost their jobs and with it their medical plans.
Those who fight against a government funded medical system are simply out of touch with reality. You can not have a healthy and progressive country when its children can not obtain decent health care.
Those who are fighting to defund “obamacare”, in many ways are no better than terrorists who go around killing. People die without adequate health care. People die from terrorist actions. Does it really matter how people die? In the end they are dead because of someone else’s godless actions.
rdldot
@Tommy: Where are you? I’m originally from StL and am thinking about moving back. Trying to figure out if moving to the IL side is worth the drive, or just move back to MO. ACA will be a big part of that.
Elizabelle
@e.a.f.:
Ted Cruz was assuring us, just this afternoon, that when Obamacare crashes, it will take down the whole American health care system with it.
The whole health care system.
I do not like that, Sam I am.
Quaker in a Basement
The difference between all those laws and the ACA aka “OBAMACARE” is that we had functional congresses in the past who would work to fix problems. But that can’t happen now, because one branch of our government is completely and irredeemably insane, and want the bill to fail.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But which side is doing a better job of “messaging”?
Jane2
@Elizabelle: There couldn’t be a serious enough public policy question to get in the way of Ted Cruz’s belief in his destiny to be President.
Elizabelle
@rdldot:
How are you even considering Missouri?
JPL
@Elizabelle: Don’t feel bad, I’m a nazi sympathizer according to Cruz.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
Politico = epic fail.
However, Ted/Helen and Mandalay will disagree. The ni-clang lied.
You’re welcome.
Now I shall look over the comments.
Tommy
@efroh: I worked in Tyson Corner. Friends in Falls Church, Reston, and Herndon. Heck a few rich ones in Middleburg. I don’t know who votes for these folks. My friends were not always liberal, but educated and smart. They don’t think the earth was founded 4,000 years ago. They think sex is fun and birth control is something you should do, unless you want to have a child. Global warming is a reality. These are just a few topics that are not up for debate. They might disagree on how to deal with each issue, but the core issue/problem again is not up for a debate. If you think it is they will mock and laugh at you.
? Martin
Had a variation of this argument with my mom. “There’s nothing to stop people from cheating on this!”
“Uh, mom – there’s nothing stopping you from cheating on your taxes other than the exact same threat of committing a felony and doing prison time. If you want the government to hire a hundred thousand people to review this stuff, they could do that and you’d scream about waste. And you know as well as I do that private insurers are scammed all the time because they don’t want to hire the auditors either. So what’s the difference between people cheating you as a policyholder and people cheating you as a taxpayer?”
“Too many people cheat on their taxes”
“Yeah, and if we funded the IRS they’d recover more than it’d cost to hire the auditors, but it still counts as government spending and you say that’s bad, so we throw good money after bad simply to appease your ideological view.”
“I still think it’s going to blow up. The computer systems for the exchanges aren’t working yet.”
“You told me last month that the computer systems at Anthem weren’t working and you couldn’t get claims processed properly. This is not a unique problem to the exchanges.”
“But some states don’t have policies in every county. People will be confused. It will be too hard to compare policies”
“But you already have county by county policies in the private market. How is this any worse? And the exchanges guarantee a certain baseline of coverage which is comparable across the entire country. You can’t even compare two policies sold in the same county on the private market, and even if you did see the policy, there’s no assurance you’ll qualify for it. Isn’t it less confusing to know that you can buy any policy you see?”
“Well…”
There’s just no end to the excuses. People are simply blind to all of the failings of the existing system when discussing this stuff. And my mom is actually really, really smart about this stuff if she can just take the partisan hat off.
Jane2
@CanadaGoose: Exactly…and the proposed Medicare system was pretty kind to insurance companies and doctors. I have no idea what would have happened if the politicians of the day were like wackjob Cruz et all, thinking they could get away with simply not funding a duly passed (and Supreme Court-tested) piece of legislation.
mclaren
I agree with you, by and large, as far as it goes. If the Republicans weren’t going completely batshit insane trying to wreck Obamacare, it could probably be tweaked enough to provide at least a moiety of coverage for some of the currently uninsured.
For you to say, however, “The problem isn’t, though, that the initial legislation had flaws. Every single major piece of legislation has had flaws and unexpected problems,” represents an example of litotes unprecedented in the history of the English language.
Obama took single-payer national health care off the table and signed off on a non-reform bill that forces everyone in America buy unaffordable private health insurance whose premiums are guaranteed to rise infinitely forever.
That’s not a “glitch” or “unexpected problems,” that’s the health-care equivalent of forcing a six-year-old girl to marry her rapist.
Oh, and the future of the ACA? That’s clear — we’re seeing it played out in Massachusetts:
Source: “Health costs in Mass. are heading upward: Threaten state’s cap on rate of increase,” The Boston Globe, 4 March 2013.
(Insert screams by commenters that this article proves the opposite of what I’m claiming, which is of course a lie, and the usual shrieks that the article doesn’t say what I claim it says, namely, that Massachusetts health care costs continue to skyrocket out of course despite reform legislation upon which the ACA was modeled — once again, of course, another provable lie. We now pause for the usual insults and personal attacks, since the attackers have no logic or evidence with which to deny my contention that the ACA is not a reform since as Massachusetts shows, it does not control medical costs, yet forces people to buy increasingly unaffordable insurance.)
And of course there’s “Danger ahead? Massachusetts health care costs are rising — fast,” The Washington Post, 9 February 2013.
(We now pause for the usual hysterical lies from frantic Obots to the effect that the sources I cite are ‘crazed far-right extremist blogs’ — yeah, the Washington Post and the Boston Globe, well-known extremist Tea Party organizations — and that the people who have written these articles are far right think tank plants, once again another lie, since Sarah Kliff is a member of Ezra Klein’s staff and she’s tilted toward the left in her articles, if she has any bias at all, while the author of the Boston Globe article is a general assignment reporter without any ideological slant at all. Nice try, Obots! Keep those lies and smears coming, one of these decades you’ll convince someone…)
The future of Obamacare is writ large in Massaschusetts, and it’s bankruptcy, infinitely rising costs, a continual death spiral of reduced services and limitless increases in health insurance premiums. Because of course as Ezra Klein pointed out in a series of article, the problem with American health care isn’t overuse of services or unnecessary procedures, the problem is that the price of American medical procedures is insanely too high and rising fast without limit.
And that’s inevitable. It’s exactly what you’d expect to get with a medical system set up as pure capitalism where everyone can charge whatever the market will bear — medical devicemakers charging $1200 for a $12 disposable plastic surgical clamp, hospitals charging $20 per cotton ball and $15 per aspirin, doctors charging $176 for a routine doctor’s visit (compared to the $30 per visit charged by a general practitioner in Germany or France), $150,515 for a bypass surgery in America compared to $14,117 for the same surgery in Britain, $87,987 for a hip replacement in America compared to $10,927 for the same procedure in France, $52,451 for knee replacement surgery in America compared to $7.827 for the same procedure in Spain.
The ACA won’t fix the problem. The problem is the price of the medical procedures in America, and that’s caused by greed and bribes and sweetheart non-disclosure contracts twixt hospitals and medical devicemakers, bribes by big pharma to doctors (so bad that the JAMA ran an editorial recently begging doctors to stop accepting those bribes), non-competition contracts twixt hospitals and imaging clinics, and on and on and on. Bribery, greed and corruption on an epochal scale. That’s the problem. Not “excessive use of medical service” or “unnecessary operations.”
Take a look at Ezra Klein’s post “21 Graphs that show American health-care prices are ludicrous,” Washington Post, 21 March 2013, if you have any doubt at all what the real problem with American health care is.
Everyone knows that except Cole and the Obots. But by all means, continue to scream insults at me and blow smoke and mirrors as you frantically try to defend the indefensible medical bill of $2450 for a CAT scan in America compared to the bill of $250 for the exactly same CAT scan done with the exact same machine in France. Meanwhile, keep trying to explain why the ACA will control these costs when the ACA contains no cost controls on any of these procedures.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
Nothing else was possible. We can fix it later. Hope and change.
raven
It’s douche bag night, where’s T&H so we can have a quorum?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Violet: Thus proving that conservatives can’t even stand themselves.
Litlebritdifrnt
The fundamental problem here is that people in the US deem that healthcare is a luxury, something nice that you can buy if you have enough money, you know like a BMW. Most of the rest of the world view healthcare as a right, you have a right to be able to see a doctor and not have to give up your groceries for the week. You have a right to be diagnosed with cancer and not go bankrupt due to your treatments, or worst still, be denied those treatments because you do not have the means to pay for them. One of our local assistant district attorneys was diagnosed with breast cancer, the entire community went into overdrive for fundraising for her because despite the fact that she had a good State Employees health plan the co-pays and deductibles were overwhelming that she couldn’t cope. Even with a good health insurance policy we were basically forced to put a pickle jar on the counter to make sure that she could get the care she needed. This is absolutely unacceptable. You shouldn’t have to beg to get the medical treatment you need.
Tommy
@rdldot: St. Clair County. 33 miles from the Arch. Where to live is a hard question. Taxes are higher in IL, but alas housing prices are less. Not sure when you were back here the last time, but we have a metro system that runs into IL. Stupid simple to get around. Driving, well easier on my side. Like the reverse commute. You might have burbs on the MO side that run 70, 80 miles from St. Louis. Here, well not to much.
But it really just depends on where you work.
My email is tommy.young at gmail dot com. Email me if you want and I will send you my phone number and we can chat.
I am not against living on the MO side, but unless you want to actually live in the city of St. Louis (like downtown — which is coming back), I don’t think it makes a lot of sense.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
@raven: There’s hardly a bigger douchebag than you on this site. Stand down, old timer. People are allowed to have varying opinions that don’t line up with yours.
raven
@Tommy: I’d delete that email address while you can. put in AT and DOT
mclaren
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader:
That was what Mao said after he started the mass killings in the Great Leap Forward, wasn’t it…? Or am I think of Goebbels talking about the Final Solution?
raven
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader: Who pulled your chain punk?
mclaren
@raven:
Nothing like Balloon Juice for a reasoned argument. Someone posts a whole slew of detailed price comparisons between medical procedures in America and Europe, links to two different article from respected national newspaper, and what’s the response?
“Douchebag.”
Yes, just what we’ve come to expect from the BJ commentariat…
JPL
@mclaren: in the magic world of pixie fairies he had those choices….
Read Those Angry Days and see all the choices FDR had.. .
? Martin
@mclaren:
Uh huh.
JPL
@raven: no shit!! how’s the pup..
Mike in NC
Conventional (non-FOX News) MSM wisdom holds that Obama is “weakened” and off-message due to IRS and NSA “scandals”, Syria “debacle”, Putin and Snowden “defiance”, blah blah fucking blah. If only he’d installed a tire swing in the Rose Garden for these cretins to line up for back in 2009.
raven
@JPL: He’s ok but still an occasional yelp. The crate I have is a but small for him and I found a bigger one on craiglist so I’m hoping to make him more comfy. He really wants to be out and he’s zonked on the floor right now. I hope the rest does the trick cuz I sure don’t want him to have cervical surgery.
thx
J.Ty
I don’t suppose there’s any way to get the pie filter to work on my iPhone…
Goblue72
Not a bill. A law. ACA is Federal law. They are trying to sabotage the Law of the Land.
themann1086
Wait.
Wait wait wait wait. Wait.
Politico has an article agonizing that the ACA didn’t do enough to expand medical coverage.
Politico.
*deep breath*
SHUT THE FUCK UP.
Just shut your god-damn mouths. No, you mealy-mouthed bothsidesdoit centrist-fetishizing assholes, you do not get to say a single fucking thing about the shortcomings of a law that your stenography, directly and indirectly, weakened. It wasn’t Obama who watered down the legislation to appease House Conservadems (who ended up losing their reelection bids anyway) and pass it through a Senate filled with knee-jerk filibustering cockbites in the GOP and Joe “reflexive hippie puncher” Lieberman. It wasn’t Obama who decided requiring states to expand Medicaid was unconstitutional (because FREEDUMB). And it wasn’t Obama who has failed to adequately inform the public about the facts behind claims made by political actors by lazily relying on a he-said-she-said truth-is-in-between-competing-claims formula.
You know who wrote about these shortcomings 4 years ago? And pushed to get them addressed? And has continued to advocate at every level of government to expand health care access despite media fawning over Tea Party anti-healthcare activists? The Dirty Fucking Hippies. So once again, national media, welcome to the reality-based community of 4 years ago. Sit the fuck down, shut the hell up, and try to fucking pay attention this time.
rdldot
@Elizabelle: Uh. I live in Texas now. Not all that different, politics-wise, than MO. And I was born in MO and that’s where my family is.
mclaren
@Litlebritdifrnt:
That’s certainly part of it. But much the larger part of the problem is that every single goddamned procedure and device in American medicine simply costs far far far far far far far far far too much by comparison with every other developed country in the world.
And there are good solid reasons for that. Reasons that have nothing to do with vague general American “attitudes” toward health care.
Let’s be specific. The AMA artificially restricts enrollment into medical schools to insure a shortage of U.S. doctors, so that American general practice M.D.s make on average $230,000 per year compared to (on average) $80,000 per year in Germany or France.
Source: “The medical cartel: why are M.D. salaries so high?”
That’s not the result of some nebulous “belief” by the general propulation about medical care, it’s a very specific corrupt policy by a giant cartel, the AMA, designed to artificially restrain trade in order to jack up the income of doctors in America.
And there are a million examples like this in America. The drug Lipitor costs $145 per dose compared to $13 per dose in Spain. There’s one reason for that and only one reason — Spain forces Big Pharma to compete, while in America, importation of foreign medications is banned, so Americans have to pay whatever price Big Pharma charges here in the states, regardless how insane the cost.
Just read articles like “The hidden public-private cartel that sets health care prices,” Slate magazine September 2009, and you can see that the broken U.S. health care system has very little to do with “our attitude” as a nation toward medical services and virtually everything to do with greed, corruption, self-dealing, sweetheart contracts, restraint of trade, non-disclosure pricing agreements, and massive thievery on an epochal scale by means of medical cartels and geographic monopolies in America.
Anya
@raven: I don’t think this is worse than usual.
Chyron HR
@? Martin:
If Obama didn’t want people making “metaphors” about him being a rapist, he shouldn’t be so black.
jl
There will be a big push to portray the ACA as complete cataclysm that will kill each and everyone one of us completely as each part, major or minor, of the program is rolled out. The Politico premortem is just an opening salvo for the roll out of the exchanges next week.
Obama decided to go with the Heritage plan, which it published way back years ago when it would at least repackage honest conservative research. The GOP could have chaulked that up as a win and cooperated. I’m not sure the plan is stable, and it would have to evolve towards something more regulated, and the GOP could have cooperated on that too, and figured out a way to take a lot of credit.
But the GOP has gone insane, and put all their chips in with the Bill Kristol view that any government program that helps lesser non-rich people will weaken GOP wedge and resentment politics.
I think the ACA will at a minimum keep things from getting worse, and may well make things a whole lot better,. the reactionary loon wing of he GOP (which is almost all there is of it now) will look somewhere between foolishly inexcusably wrong, and genocidal against the US people, and is in a panic. So Cole better get used to reams of this stuff being dumped on the public. They see obstruction as the only way to keep at bay a huge setback for one of their most important and longstanding political tactics.
MikeJ
@rdldot: Missouri has glimmers of sanity. Your vote will probably help more in MO than in TX.
JPL
@mclaren: really… it is politics as usual …. It is unfortunate but that is our system and one President cannot change.. Read Those Angry Days…
The current President is trying to stop us from slipping into Fascism and if you don’t believe put out signs supporting Cruz… There is no magic pixie dust and there never was..
btw..you are an ass..
also, too.. Raven.. was that a better rant..
rdldot
@Tommy: Thanks for the info. I’m just giving it some thought at this point. I’m more or less retired now – haven’t made that mental commitment, but also don’t have a job. I’ll keep your email and contact if I get serious about the idea.
Chyron HR
Remember, Obots, the 111th Congress (full of stalwart liberals like Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman) was on the verge of enacting single payer health care in one fell swoop, but Obama just wouldn’t let them do it.
Tommy
@MikeJ: MO is a strange state. Kansas City to the west and St. Louis to the east pretty Democratic. Columbia (University of MO) in the middle the same. The rest of the state, not so much. Parts of the state are about as poor as you can imagine. Like Appalican poor. The southern part of the state, Ozarks, almost like walking into a third world nation, yet one of the more beautiful places you will find in this nation. Places like Tan-Tar-A (and gated resort) where you can pay thousands a day for a condo, but miles away people don’t have running water.
Schlemizel
Were you trying to be funny when you put Politiwhore and journalism in the same sentence?
bemused
@? Martin:
The sky is falling, the sky is falling.
JPL
@Tommy: IMO, Jennifer Lawrence should have won an Oscar for Winter’s Bone. It was the first time, I truly understood the tribal mentality and I’m pretty old.
jl
Regarding a certain obsessive wing of the BJ commenters, I don’t see the point of endless yelling back and forth about exactly how evil Obama’ s intentions were in getting health reform through. The reform will be the law through the end of Obama’s term, the GOP Congressional leaders are stage managing the GOP loon show to limit the damage to their image.
In case people were not aware, Obama will not be president forever, and unless the GOP wins both houses of Congress and the WH, health care reform will live on after Obama. If people don’t like that reform, why not make constructive suggestions on feasible changes, or at least argue for what kind of post-Obama national leadership would be best to improve the reform?
I personally would prefer things evolve towards either an Australian or Swiss type system. I would prefer either one of those tomorrow. It ain’t going to happen, and the evolution towards one or the other may take a decade. The Australian system is too commie to get support and Swiss system forces fatcats to obey rules and regulations like everyone else in a hybrid public/private system, which is not real capitalism in the eyes of the deluded and duped GOP base.
But when you look at the vast improvements in measures of population health that occurred in both countries after they reform started, I’m sure that the most of the country will want more and better reform and the U.S. will get there.
mclaren
@Goblue72:
It’s worse than that. The Republicans are so insane that they’re willing to crash the U.S. economy and plunge us into a default on our national debt in their frantic effort to stop Obamacare.
See the article “The GOP plot to kill Obamacare: why it continues to drive many Republicans to madness,” The New York News, 15 September 2013.
The reason for the Republican mania about Obamacare is most likely that Republicans realize the U.S. medical-industrial complex is one of the most brutally corrupt and fantastically lucrative financial cartels in the world, and if the Democrats can begin to even slightly change it, this might open the door for liberal reform of brutally corrupt and fantastically lucrative cartels like the American military-industrial complex, the American torture-surveillance complex, the American prison-police-drug-enforcement complex, etc.
Tommy
@rdldot: Well this isn’t the area I’d retire in :)! But my former Congress critter got my area (Belleville, IL) a ton of money. I mean billions and billions and we kind of used it well. I have things most larger cities don’t. The key IMHO is you can buy a new 4-5 bedroom house for $189,000. That is the drawl.
Suffern ACE
Sure, now they pay attention to the state of health care coverage? In the previous 20 years as the coverage we got cost more and more and covered less, and fewer people had coverage through work, and I’m sure politico was all over that.
Litlebritdifrnt
@mclaren:
Which is why most lawyers in the US cannot make a living these days. The market is so saturated that you have lawyers taking care of traffic tickets for $30.00 a pop. Doctors however have a mamnopoly.
JPL
@mclaren: Why do we have the health care system we have? If you spent time studying that, you might realize why it is so hard to change it. Is Social Security the same as the original bill? If not, why is that? How about Medicare? What changes have been made?
I’m still looking for magic fairies and pixie dust myself.. ..
efroh
@Tommy: agreed, the Tea Partiers are definitely a portion of the state’s electorate, but they are not the majority. Problem in VA as in so many other states is that people who oppose the right-wing agenda just don’t show up on off year elections. And so the minority that the Tea Party represents ends up in charge. It’s so frustrating.
jl
@Litlebritdifrnt:
” Doctors however have a mamnopoly. ”
Those damn docs control the breast exam market.
Chris
@mclaren:
Yes.
But also, to put it more succinctly, the reason they’re so manically obsessed with the ACA is the same reason they’re so obsessed with Obama being in the White House: It means they lost.
rdldot
@Tommy: Yeah, I wouldn’t think about that area either, except that’s where my family is, and the idea of moving somewhere I don’t know at all, alone, just doesn’t make much sense to me. Here I have friends – in StL I have family. Trying to predict what the future brings is near impossible, though.
mclaren
@JPL:
You’re talking about the past. I’m talking about the fact that the system is not working right now. It is collapsing. It is falling apart.
You cast yourself as the brave resolute pragmatist, but guess what? Nobody gives a shit how things got the way they are when the real issue is how the hell to keep the system from collapsing. You have got people on the ground right now with full health care insurance who are being bankrupted by the cost of the procedures, even after their deductibles.
That’s not sustainable.
This is not something that can continue indefinitely. In fact, it can’t continue for more than a very few years before the entire American medical-industrial complex breaks down because employers can no longer afford the infinitely rising health insurance premiums and working people can no longer afford to pay ’em.
By talking about anything and everything but the problems right here, on the ground, right now, it sounds as though you are.
At a minimum we could try the following:
[1] Nationalize big pharma and make all drugs available at cost.
[2] Cost controls for medical procedures. Massachusetts is working its way toward ’em, and the rest of the country is going to have to follow suit. You’ll explain “it’s not politically possible,” but you’d be amazed what becomes possible when the hospitals are all going broke and employers can’t afford to pay those infinitely rising health insurance premiums anymore.
[3] Disband the AMA and prosecute its members for illegal restraint of trade. That’s coming. Just wait a few years.
[4] RNs and other health practitioners increasingly taking over many of the jobs formerly done by doctors. That’s already underway.
[5] Robotic surgery. Already underway.
[6] Local health clinics. Inexpensive places to go in between private doctor visits and a hospital stay. The ACA is funding these, and they’re the one bright spot in the ACA legislation. Look for ’em to exponentiate.
Tommy
@efroh: It’s so frustrating is an understatement. I like to tell stories. My mom is 67. A life long Republican. Runs elections in her district. Two points here: (1) My mom would bitch slap ANYBODY that tried to make it harder to vote (for anybody, could care less your party) and (2) More people should vote.
She calls me after most elections in tears more people didn’t vote. Where I live, and she is just across the state from me, we got voting down to kind of an art form. I can vote faster then I can order a Big Mac in the drive-thru.
My mom reads the two local papers. Maybe a little CNN. I recall sending her pics and photos in 2008 and 2012 of polling places in like Ohio and Flordia where people waited in line for hours to vote. She was beside herself. Couldn’t understand. I told her mom I can’t understand either.
Kay
It’ll be a big mess but hopefully people will settle down when it’s in and the world doesn’t end. Regular people, I mean. Politico isn’t about “settle down.”
I get a kick out of how no one has anything to compare it to.
Chuck Todd doesn’t know what Medicare roll-out was like, although Luke Russert probably does :)
Belafon
@mclaren: We’d love to have a reasoned argument, but you keep showing up. (I know, it’s weak.)
What’s the last major piece of legislation passed that got NO votes from the minority party?
JPL
@mclaren: no shit Shakespeare.. How do expect we attain the health care that you want. The first step seems to be getting rid of Citizens United… We don’t live in a land with magic pixie dust.. There are some folk who think let Cruz and Paul take control.. Here is how that plays out, cut taxes, reduce jobs, reduce education, reduce pay.. It takes decades to recover, if ever. Risk your own kids lives, not mine. ass……
Tommy
@rdldot: I moved back here cause of my family. Everyone of them is here. I totally understand. I would think your family has better input then myself, but you have my email. I just promote the IL side cause (1) I live here and (2) It is kind of nice.
Also cost of living. I paid $147,000 for my house. Built in 1976. Five bedrooms. Two car garage. Maybe the best schools in the state. This is the view outside my front door.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/webranding/8183891407/
Oh and I have bus access three blocks from my house. Rail access 3.5 miles from my house (with free parking).
Cacti
Emo prog said “single-payer”.
Drink!
PsiFighter37
Obama is black and is trying to hand out free health care to freeloading minorities.
That’s what the GOP thinks and therefore cannot get there infinitesimal brain matter around, and that’s what the MSM is too polite and/or too stupid to report on why the GOP is pulling these stunts.
Also, too, Ted Cruz can be fucked hard by Rude Pundit’s formerly enslaved Karl Rove’s bitch. That asshole should be kicked in the nuts karate-style and then given the atomic wedgie of all time. That would cause that shit-grinning fuckhead from the not-great state of Tex-ass to drop to his knees and weep like a little bitch.
PF37 +5 Green Flash West Coast IPA
JPL
@PsiFighter37: Ted is having a fake filibuster as we speak. Harry said there would be no votes today so Ted and his buddies are taking the opportunity to talk and talk talk.
rb
@mclaren: That’s not a “glitch” or “unexpected problems,” that’s the health-care equivalent of forcing a six-year-old girl to marry her rapist.
You piece of shit. Why don’t you go ahead and off yourself already.
PsiFighter37
@JPL: The air must stank in the Chamber, because it would smell the same if Ted decided to deposit the same air out of his rectal cavity.
PsiFighter37
@efgoldman: It doesn’t matter who or what he’s filibustering, AS LONG AS HE’S BEING A FUCKING ASSHOLE. That is all the old white people in the middle of Bumblefuck, Iowa care about. Ted Fuckin’ Cruz from the fighting state of Calgary, Alberta(?) is sticking it to the Black Man (TM) in the White House (C-Property of White Peeplz).
Gravenstone
@Davis X. Machina:
Funny, I missed the Congress where those desires were an option just now. Care to get that for us before your dream President facilitates your desires?
Tommy
@PsiFighter37: I wouldn’t say race is at the top of the list, but close. It took a long time for my parents, not far right folks, to get that my brother and I dated women that were not “white.” Harder to come to terms with a gay family member and her partner of 30+ years when they moved in a few doors down.
I don’t know how else to say this, but it took them having interactions with people not let themselves before they “got” it. They got it fast afterwards. But my folks (and I can’t believe this isn’t common) didn’t have interaction with people not like themselves. IMHO interaction with folks that are not just like yourself you learn and again things change.
The Watcher
@Davis X. Machina: Yes, if Hillary had been elected, we would have had Universal, single payer health care! Too bad no one ever put her in charge of health care reform in the past!
Oh, wait….
Memory, how does it work?!?
JPL
Mr. Cruz goes to Washington to orate among empty chairs. Whoops, it’s actually worse cuz he has friends to orate so he can go potty. Frank Capra must be rolling over in his grave.
Baud
@Gravenstone: @The Watcher:
Adjust ye olde snarkometer.
PsiFighter37
@Tommy: I have no doubt. My mom came from the middle of the fucking desert in California and was a hardcore conservative – openly said the only gay person she liked was Elton John, and that was only because he was an amazing musician.
Once we moved back to downstate NY, she became almost a bigger liberal than I am. Honest to god – put a fucking conservative on a plane and fly them around the world, or even to the coasts, and make them spend some time there – and they will becoming a liberal and never come back to the bad guys. The world is so much bigger than these gun-fondling racists in the middle of nowhere think it is.
tybee
@raven:
i laughed. thanks.
jl
@efgoldman:
” Its amazing how fast these rising GOBP TeaHadi superstars, who don’t really know shit about politics, screw themselves. See also Rubio, Marco, (T-Little Havana). ”
I can’t find it now, but read this morning some GOP staffer say that he couldn’t figure out how Cruz can walk down a flight of stairs, since he can’t even see one step ahead.
PsiFighter37
Let me just add that a Republican-leaning colleague of mine at work was acting like it’s Obama’s fault for not de-funding Obamacare to avoid this.
I work in the financial sector, the Republicans there should be a hell of a lot smarter than that.
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
We wouldn’t be having these problems if Obama was a competent dictator.
Tommy
@PsiFighter37: When I found out that gay family member of mine was moving in, literally around the corner from my parents, I didn’t think that would work out well. It worked out perfectly.
One story.
They asked my parents if they could go to church with them. My family literally build said church. I mean built it. My folks were like sure, I mean they are Methodist (pretty liberal church IMHO). Folks mocked my aunt and her partner. It was cruel.
My father told the church to fuck off and our support was ended. You don’t treat our family that way.
I couldn’t believe it when I heard about it …. but really proud!
Betsy
The btichez at Politico are complaining that the law doesn’t do enough? Srsly?
Suffern ACE
@PsiFighter37: foster freiss funded Rick Santorum. And you thought finance guys were politically wise?
Jeremy
When will the morons screaming about Single payer being taken off the table get it ? There were never enough votes for a single payer overhaul, and they had to drop the public option in the Senate because conservative democrats in the senate blocked it.
Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Barack Obama and other democrats knew that a incremental approach was the only way we reform our health care system.
Chris
@PsiFighter37:
Depends on the conservative, I think.
I have two conservative friends from college who studied abroad in Britain. One was from an extremely poor Southern background; discovered that everything she’d heard about socialized medicine and all that was a bunch of shit, received the best health care she’d ever had in her life, came home more than a little pissed off that “they [all the Republicans who’d raised her] lied to me!” and is now a bigger liberal than I am. The other was a preposterously rich East Coaster who, having had all her problems taken care of by mom and dad for her entire life, naturally didn’t notice any difference and hasn’t had her politics change at all.
PsiFighter37
@Chris: And that’s the kind of rich-ass ‘born with a silver spoon up their ass’ kind of conservative who will never know the difference.
Seriously, all these shitheads who think the GOP will come around because of the money – they won’t. They’ve been so goddamn insulated their entire lives that they have no idea what real desperation feels like.
If we default, they’re going to experience it.
Chris
@Jeremy:
I wouldn’t have minded hearing Obama make a strong case for single-payer, simply so that whenever the ACA’s shortcomings came out, he could’ve said “hey, this wasn’t my first choice, remember? It’s what I was able to get through Congress as a start. Now maybe we can talk about building on that?”
Never thought he could’ve actually gotten single-payer through Lieberman’s Congress, though.
different-church-lady
Wait… did someone say “robotic surgery” as a solution to health care costs and expect to be taken seriously?
fuckwit
Feeling philosophical tonight.
The Rethug tantrum over ACA is just like the racist tantrum over Civil Rights in the 60s. People lost their shit. Then they lost. All you gotta do is keep fighting, don’t blink, let them make asses of themselves.
Obama’s got all the cards here. All the Rethugs got is screaming and blather. This ACA is going to take effect next month, regardless of what the Rethugs try and fail to do. It’s too late to stop it, they’re just trying to get Dems and Obama to blink. I don’t see any blinking. The law is the law, has been for years now. Last year Obama won re-election against a toolbag who wanted to repeal Obamacare, and won that mandate to keep the law handily. SCOTUS vindicated it. Insurance companies already implementing it. Even some Rethug govs giving in and implementing it. And voters even in red states are liking it, of course, being told it’s some local program and not Obamacare, but they’re liking it. This game is over.
What you are seeing from the Teabaggers and Ted Cruz is pure showboating. There’s nothing behind it at all.
PsiFighter37
@fuckwit:
Grifters gotta fucking grift. Idiots ain’t gonna pay themselves; they need stupider idiots to pay them.
PsiFighter37
@Suffern ACE: He’s a fucking bumbleshithead from the middle of nowhere. I’m talking about finance people who are on the coasts and know that there are other countries and oceans that exist on this planet.
Gwangung
@mclaren: oh, fuck you bigot. You know as well as anyone else that THE VOTES WRRE NEVER THERE for single payer. Never.
That you keep blaming Obama is a measure of your bigotry and racism.
The prophet Nostradumbass
One thing from way up top. The British government health system is not called the NIH, it is the NHS.
Omnes Omnibus
@The prophet Nostradumbass: I thought it was NIMH (rats, Mrs. Frisby, and all).
Patricia Kayden
@jl: Well said. President Obama did the best with the Congress he had. It was a hard fight to get the ACA passed. I don’t understand the criticisms that ignore the fact that President Obama COULD NOT have gotten single payer legislation passed — even some key Dems were against it. The ACA is not perfect as is but if we get another Dem President in 2016 (hopefully Mrs. Clinton), it can be fixed and improved. I give President Obama credit for getting the ACA passed. It’s a great start.
Betsy
@Tommy: it was all those latin farmers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_Settlement
NCSteve
The thing is, Congress has been such a useless appendage for so long, that it had been more than a generation since anyone in D.C. had even seen a truly major piece of legislation. If you’re a Politico writer, major pieces of legislation are the stuff of mythology, not history. The Social Security Act sprung fully formed and in its present shape from the mind of FDR. The Medicare Act materialized out of nothing from the fertile loins of LBJ who Twisted Arms and Gave the Treatment to members of Congress who were powerless to resist his mighty power. The Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act have been with us since the 19th Century.
These asswipes have no idea how this stuff used to work because they are ahistorical dimwits who believe at the most elemental level that nothing that happened more than three weeks ago is real. They have heard myths and fables of the days of the 1990s from old people which they treat as absolute truth, and echos of more distant and ancient ages, like the 1970s still reverberate, but not one of them knows dick about the political history of their nation, despite being encysted into the nation’s capital and tasked with reporting on the doings of its government.
e.a.f.
The prices listed in one of the above comments are enough to drive anyone to another country for health care. At this rate a lot of money is going into the pockets of private hospital corporations. At some point the insurance companies and the hospital corporations are going to come to loggerheads. Could be interesting.
In Canada, we have “socialized” medicine. Each province administers their own plan, with block funding from the federal government. The provinces pay the rest. Provinces “negotiate” rates with doctors. The doctors in turn are represented by their provincial medical associations to which each of them must belong to be licensed to practice in Canada. All doctors in British Columbia, Canada are paid the same rate for knee replacement surgeries. The hospitals are all owned by the provincial government. (yes there are a few private surgical clinics at which patients may stay no more than 23 hrs.). As a result the government gets a better rate on their supplies. Lots of cost savings everywhere. yes we do have wait lists for some things, but they aren’t that long and emergencies are dealt with as just that, emergencies. People don’t die because they can’t afford the surgery or go bankrupt.
We have found that some hospitals begin to be known for specific specialities. It is much more efficient if several eye specialists practice out of the same hospital in an urban centre and the surgeries are done at that location.
Medicine is not a business to make money. It is a service which should be available to all citizens in a country, with out bankrupting the citizens.. That is not to say doctors, nurses, health care providers in general aren’t entitled to make a good salary in exchange for their work, however, it should not be winning the lottery just because you got to go to university to become a health care professional.
The U.S.A. will not be able to compete in a world economy if vast sums must be paid to private health care corporations or have an unwell population. Children are the future of any country. “For them to devleop into a healthy adult, they need good health care.