I guess these idiots don’t know how to feel. On the one hand, the poors are moochers so why wouldn’t they sign up for Obamacare in droves? On the other hand, they should be too lazy to sign up. Maybe this guy lives in Texas or some other Obamacare-denialist state, where people can’t sign up because the state refused to expand Medicaid:
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J.D. Rhoades
The replies to that tweet are indicative of the mindset of the wingnut/fuckwit axis (and your Humble Commenter makes an appearance).
OzarkHillbilly
Missouri: “WE’RE #1!!! WE’RE #1!!!” Oh, wait a minute, #5? Well, that’s still better than #2.
humanoid.panda
Richard, this is off topic, and from a lurker, but I hope you can adress the issue I was thinking about recently. Isn’t the loss-ratio aspect of the ACA a form of a “costs plus” arrangement? In other words, if the insurance companies can keep 20 cents of every dollar they are paid, don’t they now have an incentive to steer people to more expensive treatments and/or not clamp down on over-charging providers? After all, 20% of 15 dollars is 3 dollars, but 20% of 20 dollars is 4 dollars..
To some extent, the competetive nature of the exchanges might alleviate this, but most people don’t get their insurance from exchanges…
Am I missing something?
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
Thank you for exposing me to the profundity of some moron named Digital Pimple.
dpm (dread pirate mistermix)
@humanoid.panda: Richard didn’t write this post – so he probably won’t see your comment.
Steeplejack
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader:
And the pot nym calls the kettle nym black. Heh.
Zam
@humanoid.panda: Wouldn’t they only push for more expensive procedures if that would cause higher premiums? I’m not an expert on insurance but doesn’t their profit come from premiums and not payments to hospitals?
NonyNony
Is quoting someone named “digitalPimple(tm)” almost by definition nut-picking? Or something picking anyway?
(The TM is so precious. Unless that’s really a “corporate” account for someone who trademarked digitalPimple – then it’s just disturbing.)
OzarkHillbilly
@humanoid.panda:
I’m confused. Insurance companies aren’t charging the providers of expensive treatments, they are being charged for the expensive treatments.
Napoleon
I love how Marshall is just full on taunting and trolling them. Its the internet equivalent of spiking the football.
Napoleon
@humanoid.panda:
I don’t see it. I could type out a long post I don’t have the time to do but I am going to guess the basic reason why you see it that way is you are connecting the insurance companies expense and income flows in a way they are really not connected in practice.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
So it’s unskewing the numbers, because guts say so, now and forever with the Wingnuts? I love the whole “we want the sekret numbers” thing from that guy.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
@Steeplejack: You think I should change my nym to Just Some Blackhead?
Zam
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Honestly with wingnuts I just assume the numbers he is talking about are the secret death camps or some other made up nonsense.
Fair Economist
@humanoid.panda: Insurance companies have an incentive for patients *in general* to seek more expensive treatments, for the reason you stated. However, they also have an incentive for *their* patients to seek cheaper treatments. If the market is fully competitive, the second incentive is the only one any particular company faces. As companies gain market share, they have more of a reason to game the system and let provider fees rise, and that’s exactly what we’ve seen in uncompetitive markets like North Carolina and Alabama (thanks, Blue Cross!).
amk
If the red staters die off due to ignorance/incompetence/spite, will it turn those states blue?
Patrick
I said it before, and I’ll say it again. People like DP are angry as hell because he doesn’t believe that so many people are signing up for the ACA. Why the HELL wasn’t he angry before the ACA when people didn’t even have the fricking right to sign up for health insurance due to pre-existing conditions? It just boggles the mind that “people” like DP celebrate the right of insurance companies to deny insurance to pre-existing conditions. I put people in ” ” because what type of person acts that way towards your common man?
Jay in Oregon
I’m curious: what “numbers that matter” haven’t been released?
The number of people murdered by Obama’s death panels?
The number of dirty sluts gettin’ their freak on with all of that free birth control?
Poopyman
@amk: It could happen. Apparently there’s now an active push to cause wingnut heads to asplode in OK.
Love the self-awareness not exhibited by the quoted politicians.
Paul in KY
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader: How about ‘Just Some Zithead’?
Patrick
@Jay in Oregon:
I’m assuming the demographics of those people that have enrolled. CNBC, who is hoping ACA will fail, was screaming about it yesterday. On the other hand, these dead-enders are screaming about anything, valid or not, that can make the ACA fail.
scav
Someday My Great Number will come!
Poor dears. They’ve got such a limited repertoire any more.
Napoleon
@Jay in Oregon:
I know some members have Congress and the water carrying heath care experts aligned with them have been throwing a fit that the admin hasn’t released a demographic breakdown which would then prove no-one under 45 has signed up meaning the program is in a demographic death spiral.
Linda Featheringill
I think the Righties should just keep on running against Obamacare. Do it! Do it! Do it!
Signed,
A dedicated leftie
Punchy
I think what he’s celebrating is the right for Big Insure to deny coverage to blahs and the pawhs. It’s a god-awful mix of Cleek’s Law and pure tribalism, with a dash of IGMFU.
dmsilev
@Jay in Oregon:
The numbers that will prove that Obamacare IS DOOMED. Whatever numbers those might be.
Steeplejack
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader:
I think this is a workable compromise.
DTOzone
Republicans are delusional. Completely delusional. And there’s nothing you can do about delusion.
Here in NYC, my Republican neighbors have been complaining that de Blasio didn’t send dump trucks and snow melters to clean the snow after last week’s blizzard like Bloomberg.
Bloomberg didn’t even send plows.
Delusional.
The left just better hope there isn’t enough of them to matter, but there may just be.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@Napoleon:
They’re going to be pretty disappointed about the 3 million under 26’s who are on their parents’ insurance.
Belafon
@GHayduke (formerly lojasmo): In their minds, these people didn’t sign up for insurance, so they don’t count. Never mind the fact that if they hadn’t been able to stay on their parent’s insurance, a good number of them wouldn’t have insurance now.
DTOzone
@GHayduke (formerly lojasmo):
One Republican I know said to me “Keeping kids on their parent’s health insurance will make them lazy and not go out and make something of themselves.”
So don’t kid yourself, they hate that too
Belafon
@DTOzone: Yeah, my manager at work said “I would have been too proud to have stayed on my parent’s insurance.”
Cacti
@DTOzone:
The one consistent feature of GOPers, from the god-botherers, to the country clubbers, is that poverty is a sign of moral deficiency, and you ought to be punished for it.
If you lack the means to purchase health insurance, you are a bad person, full stop.
Elizabelle
@Poopyman:
Who better to go Galt with than Satan? I love it.
OzarkHillbilly
@DTOzone:
Their alternative is to make them poor by getting an unplanned illness.
Elizabelle
@DTOzone:
That is so damn true. The young ‘uns don’t want cars, clothes, education, a place of their own, going out with friends and on dates, marrying and raising a family.
It’s all about cribbing health insurance from your parents. Oh, and moving you and ferrets into their basement. Pajamas optional for ferrets.
Asshat. Has he mentioned his belief to any parents of kids with diabetes, cancer, epilepsy, Crohn’s; even healthy kids who had expensive healthcare needs in their past? Cause I tell you, those kids are wankers.
The things that Republicans “know” are very sad.
scav
@DTOzone: Too proud to work at
Daddy’s Company too? Too proud to milk Daddy’s contacts and cash Daddy’s trust fund checks? Daddy’s inheritance untouched because of virtuous self-lifting pride in individual accomplishment? Ahh, our moral betters.
Citizen_X
@Poopyman: Ah hahahaha haaaa! Great news to start the day!
I actually like that sentiment a whole lot. Not the so much the semi-Randian stuff that follows, though.
Citizen_X
@scav:
Yes, Koch brothers, show us how you embody that one.
Cacti
@scav:
My favorite wingnut welfare anecdote:
Napoleon
@DTOzone:
In one form or another this type of thinking shows up from Rep when it comes to various facets of health care and it just shows how disconnected they are from real life.If they were talking about, say, free cars I would understand what they were saying, but no one in the world thinks “you know, I have this free health care so I am going to get my shoulder set 3 times next month just for the hell of it and quit looking for work”
IowaOldLady
You can see the 2014 themes emerging on both sides. The Dems will go with income inequality and fairness and the Reps will go with Obamacare. Frankly, I couldn’t wish for a better contrast.
We’re still likely to lose seats just because of which seats are open but maybe the Rs will help us out here.
MomSense
@DTOzone:
How does this Republican you know feel about tax breaks for oil companies and other corporations or the subsidies we give to Walmart’s employees? How about tax cuts for the wealthy? I have never understood this attitude that breaks are good incentive for the wealthy but basic services for the poor and middle class are hand outs.
It’s a mixed up world.
Mike in NC
Went to see a local urgent care doctor yesterday for the first time in 2 years due to a nagging sinus infection caused by allergies. The waiting room was packed (about 20 seats) and I had to wait 3 hours to see him. He joked “You must have been on the third busload of patients that pulled up this morning”. (Was closed all last week due to the holiday.) Anyway, I’d never seen so many decrepit people in my life. Several had to move with walkers or canes and at least half were obese, which would probably explain many of their other medical issues. One old guy had a plastic bag filled with about 20 empty prescription bottles. Hey, I blame Obummer.
Joseph Nobles
The GOP of the gaps.
Mike in NC
@IowaOldLady:
Here it seems that the wingnuts have at long last (5 years) given up demanding to see the Kenyan’s birth certificate, but they’re all spun up about what did Hillary know about BENGHAZI!!!!! and when will she come clean?
Belafon
@Elizabelle: Sounds like they’ve read Heinlein’s Job too many times. But they definitely should go ahead with the monument.
And someone should request to build a giant colander there, and they can use the NY councilman who was sworn in with a colander on his head to prove that the FSM is a real religion.
Ash Can
I’m sure Pimple is just another asshole who lost his shit when Obama was elected, then reelected. “He can’t possibly have really won; he had to have cheated. There’s no way this country would elect a ni-CLANG as president, I tell you, nowaynowaynowayWAAAAAAAH!” So they just retreat into their delusion because reality tears them apart. It would be kind of sad if they weren’t harming others in the process.
IowaOldLady
@Mike in NC: Yeah, that looks ahead to the 2016 election. I saw one guy talking about Clinton is terrible because of “what she did in Benghazi.” His audience all murmured agreement. I wanted someone to ask what? What did she do?
OzarkHillbilly
@Cacti: Heh. Love it.
Patrick
@DTOzone:
With this dwarfed logic, we should get rid of Medicare for old white folks. Having Medicare makes them lazy.
So what does your Republican friend say to a 24-year old with a pre-existing condition that will force him/her to go bankrupt to pay for his medical bills? A bankruptcy that we all end up sharing in.
Aimai
@Joseph Nobles: brilliant.
jayboat
@DTOzone:
I hope you’re wrong on that one. A lot of the 27% have been thumping dogma since kindergarten…
very hard to break those old habits and time doesn’t feel like it’s moving quite fast enough with the whole ‘attrition’ thing.
Someguy
You gotta wonder why the WH isn’t trumpeting from the hilltops all the success stories. The number of people now covered by Obamacare is amazing – so many people who weren’t covered before, and the website is fixed. The only real griping is coming from Republican dead enders and the insurance companies – two constituencies that were going to complain no matter what.
The only thing worse than a failure in politics is a raging success that is overly modest. Maybe it’s just a mark of Obama’s character that he’s not bragging about this.
Cacti
@Someguy:
If only that were true.
You’ve still got a bunch of sore-ass emo progs still grousing about how bad it was to pass ideologically impure healthcare reform, a la Michael Moore in the NYT.
bryan
@Elizabelle: There’s more truth to that than you know. I think that Anton LeVey (founder of modern Satanism) said something along the lines of Satanism simply being Ayn Rand’s objectivism dressed up with ritual.
(Now I’ll go look for the cite…)
ETA: here we go- http://www.patheos.com/blogs/pantheon/2011/06/ayn-rand-godmother-of-satanism/
Jeremy
@Someguy: The WH is talking about it. We can’t expect the WH to do all of the work. His so called allies should be stepping up and talking about these things. Too many people on the left sit and complain and expect the president to do all the heavy lifting.
OzarkHillbilly
@Someguy: I heard they’re working on a big success story ad campaign. My guess is they want this to go right.
amk
@Someguy: You should get out more.
Villago Delenda Est
My name is dIgitalPimple(TM, all rights reserved throughout greater GaltGulch), and I am a complete and utter moran.
Thank you.
Patrick
@Jeremy:
Or they pretend to be Obama’s ally when they write a highly negative op-ed in the NYT about the ACA, which is then used by FoxNews.
Villago Delenda Est
@Someguy:
The MSM doesn’t have the time or inclination to cover the WH’s trumpeting of any success stories at all.
ACA success is not part of The Narrative.
Frankensteinbeck
@MomSense:
That’s because you’re dealing just with the surface logic. The underlying theme is hate. Not just bigoted hate, but taking joy in hurting people in general. The average GOP voter doesn’t even like big corporations, but they will defend those corporations’ right to stomp on everyone underneath them to the death. For the last forty years at least, the big corporations have been politically helping them hurt whoever their favorite target is. Liberals – IE, anyone who likes to help people – are against big corporations living the soft life, so hate demands more defense of big corporations. It used to be I Got Mine, Fuck You. Now it’s just Fuck You. They throw in these moralistic slogans because there’s nothing an abuser loves more than blaming the victim.
It’s been horrifying watching American politics devolve into this.
Jeremy
@Patrick: True !
WaterGirl
@Someguy: Hmmm. I’m getting an image of a president. Or a commander. Something about a codpiece. He’s on a big ship of some kind. Wait, I see a banner… can’t quite make it out. Oh, I think I see it now. it says Mission Accomplished.
Perhaps our current president doesn’t want to declare victory too soon?
Hill Dweller
@Villago Delenda Est:
The MSM has actually been pushing “horror stories”, which fall apart after scrutiny, since the day after the government shutdown ended. It feels coordinated.
Mike in NC
@Someguy:
According to MSNBC yesterday, the problem is that he’s “aloof” (and possibly uppity as well).
Cacti
@Mike in NC:
As if that makes a difference.
Bill Clinton could schmooze with the best of them, and they still impeached him over a BJ.
Elizabelle
@bryan:
Your link is very interesting. Thank you. From it:
Ayn Rand: Godmother of Satanism, from Pantheos blog
Elizabelle
NYTimes breaking news: more wingnut heads to explode:
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
They were running a story on NOR last night talking about the big upsurge in ER visits that happened in the first year of the Medicaid expansion in California and another state. I was pleasantly surprised that they pointed out that all of the statistics point to it being a first-year surge where people who previously were without insurance flood the ER because they don’t know where else to go. The hospitals are then able to refer them to primary care physicians or specialists who can help them, and ER visit numbers start falling again in the 2nd and 3rd years.
So if you hear wingnuts using that talking point, we already know it’s a one-year surge.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
*NPR, obviously. Stupid iPhone.
Gravie
Yes, denial of the facts is the foundation on which all their dreams are built. One of my FB acquaintances assured me, after I kept beating down his lame arguments with facts, that Rush Limbaugh and Rachel Maddow are exactly the same kind of hate-mongers. When I responded that he was full of it, he said (paraphrasing) well, there’s no way of proving it, it just depends on what you believe, a remark so essentially stupid that I immediately deleted it to spare him further embarassment and me further aggro.
Elizabelle
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Did you see this recent NYTimes story on “Oh Noes! ER visits might go up!” About Oregon study of ER use.
NYTimes reader commenters schooled the writer on why working class people might use the ER even with health insurance. Hint: 2-3 jobs, no control over their job schedules (thanks, Wal-Mart computer), hard to get time off, cannot wait 3-4 weeks for the intake interview with a brand new physician.
Readers suggested hospitals set up an acute care provider next to the ER, which can triage newly insured (and everyone) into actual emergency or the doctor will see you at acute care.
And frankly, low income newly insured are still likely to respond differently than middle-income newly insured, who may have cars and appointment calendars, but couldn’t get insured previously due to pre-existing conditions.
It will all work out in the end. Leading to unceasing wingnut screaming.
From the story:
Mnemosyne
@Elizabelle:
That was the other state, Oregon. But apparently Oregon saw the same effect as California with ER visits peaking in the first year and then declining steadily after that. Notice that the study says that they made 40 percent more visits during their first 18 months with coverage, but the study covered more than 18 months.
It’s a scare tactic, IMO.
ETA: Also, too, people seem to forget that a lot of these new Medicaid recipients are inexperienced with the medical system. They don’t have a family doctor, and they don’t know where to go if they get sick, so they go to the ER. Hopefully, as they learn to navigate the system better, they’ll have regular doctors who they can see rather than go to the ER to see whoever’s on duty.
Elizabelle
@Mnemosyne:
Agreed re the scare tactics.
I thought that NYTimes article said as much about journalists covering the ACA as it did about low-income people who won a health insurance lottery.
Health insurance by lottery?
Isn’t that the bigger picture?
Hillary Rettig
@Cacti: self-awareness is not a wingnut strong point.
Hillary Rettig
Conservative person on my twitter feed was complaining about how she lost her insurance due to ACA. I said that that was an honest grievance, but that I hoped her replacement insurance under ACA was good or better. I also said I hope her inconvenience would be offset by the knowledge that millions who didn’t have insurance now have it.
<>
It’s truly all about them.
The Other Bob
@Hillary Rettig:
We give too much ground on this. You could reply should be that her insurance company could have grandfathered her plan, but chose not to. That her old policy was likely junk whether she knows it or not and that she could have realized that her plans was noncompliant had she looked into it in advance.
Most of these people get little sympathy from me.
Little simpathy from me on these folks.
The Other Bob
Many I could use an edit button. Fried that one.
Doofus
@Fair Economist: @Fair Economist: Backwards much? Hospitals have pricing power, so they can and do charge more.
DTOzone
@MomSense:
Trickle down, duh.
Also, just liberal boogeymen.
DTOzone
@Someguy: Y
I work in media. At a local newspaper, but I have friends at major dailies and in cable news.
White House sends out these press releases everyday. Editors hit the delete button. To them, it’s not news.
DTOzone
@jayboat:
When you have low turnout, that 27% quickly becomes 45%-50%.
DTOzone
@Patrick:
Personal responsibility, save money.
I’m not kidding, that’s what he says