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Yeah, that one is definitely going to leave a permanent mark. |
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Wow...you and I are pretty much in agreement on all of this. I think you summed me up pretty well. If there was a party dedicated to getting a balanced budget amendment to the constitution, 100% federally-funded elections and getting the lobbyist $$ out of politics, ensuring individual liberties (gay marriage, abortion, etc), reasonable social services, and a sensible foreign-policy (added here to refute the cries of "you should be a libertarian" because i'm sorry...isolationism just doesn't work), I would be a reliable voter 100% of the time. Unfortunately there's not, so I'm left saying "Gee I agree with the GOP on this and the Democrats on that, but ultimately I recognize that the GOP's 'fiscal conservatism' dissapears as soon as they get in power, and frankly I am more concerned about their right-wing social agenda then I am about my taxes." |
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Hey, we've found something else you & I have in common. We're on opposite sides of it, but the quoted sentence actually works for both of us ;) |
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haha. too true...too true! |
Interesting that this article was linked up over on Huffington Post given that Rainmaker said this paper is only linked up by conservative websites. The support for the Dem candidate in Massachusetts by pharma and HMO lobbyists tells you all you need to know about the 'reform' that the health care bill brings to the table.
Coakley in trouble? Pharma and HMO lobbyists to the rescue | Washington Examiner |
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Dunno bout everyone else but I've been saying that all along - I think that has been pretty clear to most people that Pharma & HMO love this new "reform" bill because it doesn't go far enough. And I think you're seeing Pharma & HMO come to her rescue because she has said she'll be a "yes" vote for it where Brown has said he'll be a "no" vote (clearly). HOWEVER I don't think a "no" vote is the right thing. Killing the bill is just going to result in another generation having to pass with more and more people going bankrupt and insurance companies taking more and more of our salaries (you want to talk about costs being raised on people, aka "taxes", why do people never look at the cost of health insurance as a "living tax?") before we are finally able to bring things under control. Although I am the first in line to say that this bill as currently constructed is a POS I'm not of the opinion that it's without any good at all, and it will certainly be the first of many steps on the path to real healthcare reform. But I do think it has many aspects of a "giveaway to the insurance industry" and I hope that those can be stripped-out in conference/reconcilliation to give us a better bill. I hope. I don't have my hopes up too high, because some of the giveaways will surely still be in there, but maybe they can get rid of a decent % of them. Pretty sad commentary on our Congress - and yet again why I feel that strict 100% public financing and much stronger regulation of lobbyists is the only way we'd actually have "government for the people" as opposed to "government for the corporations." |
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Outside of you saying that a yes vote is best, I agree with most everything else you've said. |
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I'd almost argue that a "no" vote is best, but I really do fear that if it doesn't pass this time it's going to be "trumpted" by the right in an attempt to show that the majority of the population doesn't want it (when in fact if you look at polls it shows that the majority of people do when it's explained to them, and the vast majority of the opposition to it has been whipped-up by congressmen who are in the pockets of drug&pharma - liberman, etc, or even in some cases by the drug&pharma employees themselves at those tea-parties). And I honestly don't want to think about all the people that would leave uncovered, and for how long. an imperfect solution that can be amended later is better than no solution. |
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link:http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Desperate-Dems-try-to-Palinize-Massachusetts-Senate-race-81198087.html -site:washingtonexaminer.com - Yahoo! Search Results |
No, no, for the love of all that is holy NO! Do not vote 'yes' on a bill just because its something. I have horrible nightmares of TARP flashing back to me when you say it. They never go back and fix it.
The bill as it stands is pretty much set to get the government to strongarm people into bullshit plans that will cover nothing and cost plenty. They'll ramp up the demand and then use it as an excuse for multiple rippling waves of further cost increases. When the economy recovers (I'm assuming this because if it don't we'll have more shit going through the fan we can handle anyway) these rules will then be enforced with a massive bureaucracy that will put the vise on working people at all levels to buy shoddy, over-priced insurance. Companies will be smarter than the average bear and slither out of the business in many places, leaving a massive mess of consumers paying retail prices and fighting their coverage providers in lawsuits to get any care. Again, an argument will be made that increasing legal costs necessitate further price increases, and healthcare's death spiral will accelerate. Do not pass an insurance company friendly bill because we need to 'do something'. We are going to pay a hefty price on the backend of TARP (despite them 'paying it back...'). |
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valid points. but i think until we get public campaign finance reform and get lobbyists $$ out of politics we'll never see a bill that actually benefits the people anyways |
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I would just about kill for publicly funded elections but it will never happen as the people who determine how our elections run have the most to lose from making them publicly funded :( SI |
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i would kill for it. the tree of liberty my friend...the tree of liberty. and SportsDino - even if it is a bad bill (which it seems most people understand it to be, at least in its current form) at a minimum it will be providing coverage to a bunch more people and might have some effect on-the-margins as faar as denial of preexisting conditions and such (there are still ways around that i know, but it might help a little). |
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I don't even read Michelle Malkin's website, so if she posted that article, it was nothing more than coincidence. You might as well accuse me of being Arianna Huffington's RSS feed. I post article from her site all the time and post more links from her site than any other site. It's the first site I check every morning. But you wouldn't want to do that because it wouldn't fit into your general notion of lumping people on the left or right and generalizing their stances. It's a very lazy way of debating as it carries no significat discussion points or counter points regarding the topic. |
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That's an awfully rosy picture you paint of the bill in its current form. Whole lot of 'might' and 'at a minimum' assumptions. I disagree with your assessment. |
Eh, the anti-abuse parts are toothless, built that way from the start in a method they already have established a legal attack against.
The expanded coverage will have so many gotchas on it that many people scraping by will have no help at all, but they'll certainly feel the increased prices and decreased service availability. I know I usually rail against subsidies... but I'm not totally opposed to them, I'm just like to view things almost as a mechanism... if you increase the stresses on a system in one place, restrict the supposed release mechanisms to only certain flows, and then provide a big subsidy to a certain group of actors while changing nothing fundamentally about the supply side which is under a general consensus of FUBAR??? To me that screams a massive squeeze (from an economic standpoint) on the least flexible actors (mostly lower middle class and lower class above poverty line in this scenario, which is a massive segment)... who coincidentally are no longer allowed the option to not participate. Cue massive price gouging feedback loop, and sadly, it will be obviously justified that prices increase since they can point to a host of real facts as the causes. Since it seems that prices must rise from common sense, there will be two opposition factions, the whacknuts that think the answer is government style communism of prices on all things healthcare... that won't gain traction at all but will get the populist fervor... or the insurance company apologists that will get some further subsidies and maybe light concessions from corporate to bandaid some people, but keep the systemic crisis charging along to keep a profitable but growing problem. At that point no one will be able to see that it is the market restrictions and subsidies that are amplifying the problem, anymore than they do in the number of locations such problems already exist. Hence, passing this legislation commits us to a bigger problem, in my opinion. Its worst than doing nothing, unless you want to play the democrat/republican headcount game which I've long determined is a farce... a circus for the masses to distract them while they are stealing the bread! Who cares about perceptions of strength of political parties that are both bought out, I think the ladies (and women in Congress) do protest too much. I personally think they didn't script out what would actually happen in their show if a party got 60 votes so they are now hyping up the 'filibuster' to levels that don't even make sense. Clever of them, but bad for the country that we can be so easily gimmicked. If you want to see a bunch of people pushed into the pile of folks who work their ass off to get a marginal increase over the welfare state (for instance my little sister who has her first real job and is literally trying to find out how its different than being below poverty level when her obligations raise almost as much as her cash flow). I don't want life by loophole, people surviving on the mercy of what clauses congress decided to throw into a bill to pretend they are helping someone. Don't give real teeth to laws that hurt people (forced purchase of healthcare... really is that what is bringing down the system, really, where is the math on it... oh wait, don't add up, never mind...)... and then sell a bill on a few scraps it throws to the masses which can disappear almost instantly once you read the fine print. It is sickening. Do better or stay the fuck home, let the government go into paralysis and see if they can hold a filibuster and still get elected. |
if people don't have healthcare then getting sick could kill them though...that's not a situation i want to see happen either.
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Ask homeless people or illegal aliens how tough it is to get seen in an emergency room if they need it. Neither of those groups have any insurance. |
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I've got news for you, Sparky... even if you have healthcare, getting sick can kill you. In fact, none of us get out of this world alive. ;) |
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You're assuming that most doctors will see patients with the new coverage. That doesn't even happen with some people who already have coverage. The reimbursement rates/timeframe will likely increase the number of people general practice doctors refuse to see. There's very little to no incentive to do so. |
As for subsidy design, target direct measurable things with as straightforward an economic incentive mechanism as possible.
If health care costs are the problem, subsidize hospital costs in a way that operating costs or equipment is subsidized at the wholesale cost rather than 3 million people worth of retail pricing. Structure it such that efficient hospitals get to tack on a portion of the subsidy onto whatever profit margin (or offset against losses more likely) they may have, and slant it so continual improvement is rewarded disproportionately (so that wealthy hospitals don't get a huge chunk of subsidy straight to their profit line... more stressed hospitals with greater room to grow can get a faster share of the pie, but only if they stabilize and then make progress... also want to avoid subsidizing a hospital for being stupid, pure-welfare subsidies there is sometimes an incentive to deliberately be lazy since its the easiest way to maintain revenue certainty for effort made). If the supply of doctors is the problem, bust the medical school monopoly for the public good. Subsidize residency costs to a greater extent, maybe go gangbusters and make it profitable for need hospitals to take on more positions (within reason). Make more healthcare free. Flu shots potentially can save us X dollars in emergency room or doctor visits... have the government pay for everyone to get vaccinated for free. Mass produce the shit and who cares if the wealthy save 20 bucks, they probably don't, but I'm sure the working poor with a family of four would eat that up (working poor = you make enough to not qualify for anything, but you still are living paycheck from paycheck even if you have your costs under control). Subsidize emergency room better. Give out free weight watcher subscriptions, whatever! I'm sure for the same trillion dollar pile of money we could come up with a group of projects that would make a noticeable dent in health care quality, availability, and affordability that would actually last into the future. I'd argue taking the massive money we spend now and actually structuring it to promote progress in cost reduction could probably do much of the same. And as I've said before in another thread, if modern health-care is just impossible to pay for... figure out a standard that makes sense. I know this flies against Cover Your Ass principle, but it might be a good thing to cut down the amount of wasteful tests/procedures/paperwork that are involved in the treatment of most common illness. Maybe sponsor smaller specialization hospitals with lower costs since they focus on particular types of work to free up some of the needs of larger general hospitals. So on and so forth... none of it easy, but I think work of that form will get more value out of any dollar spent than these supposedly grand sweeping legislative reforms. |
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yeah...seriously |
Covering more people at the expense of increasing the rate at which people are getting impoverished and in need of help is not a solution to the problem. Covering more people and doing something that significantly affects the economics or reality of the situation... I could get behind that full heartedly.
Go ahead, cover 3, 5, hell 10 million more people with government subsidized care. But don't set it up so that if you are person 10 million and one you are about to see costs go up, quality go down, availability go down, taxes go up, and if you screw up a little bit having to face legal penalties. In fact, take it out of individual perspective... my assumption is that subsidizing 10 million people without any structural change in an economy will create a change in the prices non-subsidized people pay. Its almost economics 101 if you want to break out your supply and demand curves with subsidies added into the mix. But even if we take it further, an admittably supply limited and broken distribution mechanism, and adding 10 million subsidized customers, and forcing everyone else to comply or face legal punishment? How can that not lead to a net increase in prices and arguably profit margins of provider companies? I mean, if you are juggling at maximum capacity, will adding another patient just be handled at economies of scale so you get a marginal profit? Or will you take a marginal loss? In an economy where the latter is the case, a subsidy pushes prices. If the former is true, then maybe 10 million people will end up as a net stimulus to the health care economy. My assumption is the latter... and from there I think this is a mathematically provable disaster, while appearing to be kumbayah public policy for the greater good. If the margins are all negative than its more likely to create more people who need government assistance than anything. Thats the simplest way to put it, and that assumes optimal government management and everything just fitting perfectly into place... not the highly suboptimal clusterfuck we know is really going to happen. |
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The subtlety of the argument that lack of access to healthcare makes one more likely to die from preventable and treatable conditions is clearly lost on some. |
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Fixed. |
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Your inability to work with numbers has already been well-documented in this thread and others. |
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Duly noted. But I'll stick with that 98% of all message boards. :p |
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It's not lost on me... it's just not a winning argument as far as I'm concerned. I think it's hopelessly naive and simplistic... which of course makes it incredibly popular as a liberal argument. :p |
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i'd counter that your counter was far more simplistic :p |
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Kind of like "guns don't kill people, people kill people". AMIRITE? Seriously, though, people who have access to healthcare tend to get sick and die less from preventable and treatable diseases. |
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When in Rome... |
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Unless you're a middle age man and you skip all your checkups (as middle age men are prone to do). :) |
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Thank you, Captain Obvious. What's the next part of your argument? That insured patients who develop a terminal, untreatable disease die just as often as uninsured patients who develop a terminal, untreatable disease? Oh, the failure of the health care system, writ large!!! Anyway, when taken on aggregate, and when referring to actual data you are, once again, wrong: http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content...ct/298/24/2886 |
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Your sarcasm meter just got the blue screen of death. |
The use of :) is great. It means one can make one's point, but then not be required to provide support for said point because one was "just kidding".
Maybe if Sarah Palin had been able to put :) after everything she said we'd all now be celebrating her subtle and sophisticated humor. |
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thanks for picking up the discussion flere - i'm swamped at work and don't have time to refute their shallow counters with actual facts and links today |
That was Palin's mistake. She used ;) when clearly the appropriate closing statement was :).
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I will freely admit to not being able to understand this. Quote:
Serious question (I guess this means I should use the :confused: smiley here)... how big an improvement are we talking about? |
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Why start now? And yes, on this one I'm 55% joking. not sure if there's a proper smiley for that. :jester: perhaps? |
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I'd recommend reading the full text (which isn't really that long), but a good summary of the findings relevant to this can be found at: http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content...886/JOC70139F1 Essentially, people who were uninsured before 65 and had some health issues had their decline in overall health sharply slowed after qualifying for Medicare (and being able to use medical resources). This in a marked contrast to the rate of decline in overall health after 65 for the uninsured without previous medical issues prior to 65. This seems consistent with the Kaiser Family Foundation's conclusion that having insurance could reduce mortality rates for the uninsured by 10-15%. Another author claims, based on past studies and newer census data that an estimate 22,000 people died in 2006 due to a lack of insurance. Then there's this: Hospital reports shows higher death rate for uninsured - Sacramento Business Journal: Quote:
And this: http://www.childrenshospital.org/new...blevel577.html Quote:
So, there's some pretty demonstrable data to back up the relatively common sense conclusion that people with health insurance live longer than people without health insurance. As Cam points out, though, this is not necessarily a "winning argument". So, what would be a winning argument? |
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I got mine, so fuck you? |
Just saw GOP Rep. Shadegg is retiring. Does this men the GOP can see the writing on the wall?
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I try to bring out the facts when I have the time / there's stuff easily at hand / i know my way around the data. But honestly (no offense meant to anyone) it's pretty far down on my list of things "to do" - whether I'm at work or not. Digging up facts to support a discussion on an internet messageboard that will inevitably turn off-topic fairly soon anyways just isn't high on my list of priorities. |
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I did some more digging, to get to the bottom of this "winning argument" thing. According to the CDC there were roughly 30,000 gun-related deaths in 2006. Given that we can assume Cam won't view this as a "winning argument" for gun control, we can understand why he'd not view 22,000 deaths from a lack of insurance as a "winning argument". So, what's the number? Well, given that Cam, in gun control threads, has suggested banning cars because more people die from them than guns, I looked up this. According to the NHTSA, almost 39,000 people died from "motor vehicle traffic crashes" in 2006. So it must be somewhere between 30,000 and 39,000. Let's say 35,000. Thus, if something causes more than 35,000 deaths per year in America, it should be acted upon. Well, I'm glad we've cleared that all up. So, how about that Michelle Obama on Iron Chef, eh? |
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I understand the statistics on basic health things (uninsured far less likely to seek treatment until too late), but I don't get the trauma one. Hospitals have to treat uninsured patients now, so in what way do they fail to receive treatment? Are hospitals providing sub-standard care to uninsured patients? Is it an issue with follow-up visits? |
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Cool. Does that mean I can finally bring shampoo and wear shoes on the plane after disbanding TSA since terrorism is still killing less than lightning strikes? Or does that mean we need to turn off Cobra Commander's weather dominator so lightning strikes can't kill people? SI |
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Another article I read (but can't find the link to now, argh) also speculated that the uninsured weren't going to follow-up appointments (because they couldn't afford them), which contributed to the mortality rate (i.e. dying of complications from the injuries after discharged from the hospital). |
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Do you think it may be that people who choose to purchase insurance are generally making better decisions on average? Basically they are more responsible and make less high risk decisions in life. |
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LOL. I think I've actually suggested that if we're going to ban guns because of 30,000 deaths, then we might as well ban cars (since more people die in car accidents). I guess the same argument could be made about spending a trillion dollars to prevent the deaths of 22,000 individuals, but honestly I haven't really thought much about it in that regard... though now that I'm thinking about it I'm recalling a statistic about the number of deaths due to medical mistakes in this country. According to this study, it's 195,000 a year. hxxp://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/11856.php Now I'm not suggesting that because 195,000 people died every year because of medical mistakes we go back to a system of midwives and witch doctors, but I think it's reasonable to wonder if the increased number of deaths (due to increased patients being served) would be more than the 22,000 people who are dying because of a lack of insurance. Wouldn't it be a kick in the pants if insuring these folks actually led to more deaths? :) |
On a slightly related note, a new Suffolk University poll in MA has Scott Brown up by 4 over Martha Coakley. This is simply stunning. Support for the healthcare plan in MA (according to the poll) is at 36% with disapproval at 51%. (This, btw, in a poll with 15% of the respondents as Republicans)
Poll shocker: Scott Brown surges ahead in Senate race - BostonHerald.com I still can't fathom Brown winning next Tuesday, but I'm curious what the Massachusetts contingent thinks now that the election is less than a week away. |
Nate Silver is calling it a toss-up and I'd trust his analysis over anyone's in the game. It'll be interesting to see what happens. I can see it going both ways. Republicans see the chance to steal a seat here and show up in huge force to put him over the top. On the other hand I could see the recent polls scaring Democrats into taking the election serious and showing up to save the seat.
As a neutral observer, I like seeing close races that get people involved. Hate seats that are just passed down amongst a party. Brown doesn't seem like the prototypical Republican. Has a bit of an independent streak it looks like. His stance on health care seems a tad hypocritical from previous positions, but such is politics. I think he'd be a decent choice although probably couldn't vote for him due to his bigotry toward homosexuals. |
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Was he behind in polling numbers for reelection? Given the current political climate, I doubt it. |
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That portion of the Herald article noting that 60%+ think that Coakley will win is pretty interesting. I'm not sure what the exact party breakdown is, but my guess is that there's some GOP voters in that number who also think the race is Coakley's that may be surprised this morning to find out otherwise. It could easily energize the GOP base to come out as well knowing that the Dem. majority in Massachusetts isn't as solid for this election. Either way, it looks like we're going to see a ton of coverage of this race in the upcoming days. Anyone else notice that Obama hasn't gone to Massachusetts yet to back Coakley? This seems to stand in stark contrast to his statements yesterday that he would back the Democrat candidates in any way necessary next November. There was someone on the local news this morning mentioning that Obama may not want to back Coakley and risk further damage to his coattails (though I'd argue that damage has already been done). |
I think all the MA polls are suspect because nobody has a clear read on who will actually vote. There's another poll out today that has Coakley up by 8. Off year elections are hard enough to predict, but this special election in this environment is going to leave a lot of pollsters with egg on their face.
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Just for the record, I think Coakley will win. But I think it's pretty clear that this will be a telling result as to the political climate change from one year ago no matter who wins. |
I don't think there's any doubt that enthusiasm is on the side of the Republicans, but I don't think you can read too much into any single race. NY-23 didn't forecast this race, so I'm not sure this race forecasts November. At some point the local candidates have to be important factors and Coakley comes off as an uninspiring party hack IMO.
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I think it will be difficult for Obama to campaign here with everything going on in Haiti. That would look worse than not coming, in my opinion.
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I'll believe it when it happens. The Herald is also the righter of the two daily papers (and the smaller). I wonder if the questions in that Suffolk poll break down why people are against the healthcare plan, or if they just lump it all together. You probably have a mix of folks here who go "we already have our own version and this will just cost us more" and "it doesn't go far enough" people. |
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Independent? He voted with Republican leadership 96% of the time. And I think his stance against homosexuals and particularly also votes to hold-the-line or cut education spending will end up hurting him. |
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dude have you watched the news? there was a fucking earthquake that decimated hati! i'd say that's a little more important than this one race. The party sent senior political operatives here...unfortunately that's probably the best they will do. Bill Clinton was supposed to come to town also...not sure if that will happen now. |
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I think the fact that he holds firm to those stances and still has a chance to win a Senate seat in Massachusetts is incredible. If you told someone what you just posted and they were unaware of the poll data, there's no way you would think he would be within 25 points of the Democrat candidate. |
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Is Obama running the cleanup effort? At maximum, that's taking up 15 minutes of his time each day. Let's not be silly here. |
Just went through the marginals of the Suffolk poll. People are so damned inconsistent. Most like the MA healthcare law, but most also think MA can't afford it. Some percentage of people that favor national healthcare also favor Brown.
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Perhaps some of you east coasters (or Mass. residents) can help me out a bit. How, if any, will the Massachusetts health care process be affected by the national law if passed? My guess is that things will change very little in Mass. compared to most states, but that's merely a guess. Hence the reason I'm asking. :) |
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No, but I do think he's spending a decent amount of time trying to get money and coordinating with the people on the ground with how to spend it and how best he can help. SI |
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If our president can't delegate that responsibility out to his staff, we've got far worse problems than we ever imagined. I'm going to give Obama the benefit of the doubt and assume he's a better leader than that. I'm almost sure of it. |
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and yet if he came here you'd be crowing about how he has better things to be doing and should be worrying about them. |
This is one of the more moronic side discussions we've had here. You really think Obama campaigning would be politically expedient for him with what's going on?
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I think the reality is that he realizes it would be politically a disaster and is just upset that somebody in the administration was smart enough to realize that too and make the correct decision, thus depriving him of an easy target. |
Haiti is now a huge matter of national importance for our country's leader? Wow you guys sure drink the stateist kool-aid! You have to be kidding right? I agree with MBBF if Obama spends more than 10 minutes of his own time on this it would be the equivalent of McCain suspending his campaign for the economic downtrun.
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You're absolutely right. It's probably best that he doesn't go up there anyway. He could actually hurt Coakley's chances at this point. |
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:confused: Guess that really shouldn't surprise me...as a libertarian you do seem to have this staunch isolationist standpoint (much like the platform of the party although i'm sure there are differences) and your reaction is probably "oh well it didn't happen to us...let's pull back and defend our borders and let all the people in Hati just fend for themselves." |
I'm only speaking politically, panerd. I agree that Obama is not currently pulling people from the rubble.
Thanks for the gratis condescension, though. Next time see if you can work sheeple in there. |
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Exactly. If it was an earthquake in California, there's no question that DT and Ronnie's assessment would be spot-on. In Haiti, it's an excuse at best to avoid the possible egg on Obama's face. |
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Interesting that you would make a point containing nothing even remotely close to what panerd was saying. We can help Haiti to the utmost of our resources and abilities without the president spending more than 15 minutes a day getting an update on progress. |
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That's all well and good, but at this point Haiti doesn't have a government or a police force in any real sense. By most accounts there is no "nation" as we understand it.
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I'm sure if Obama was here campaigning for Coakley you'd be bitching about how he ought to be spending his time elsewhere doing more important things. Whether that was Hati or something else. You're just upset that he's not so you can't bash him for doing that. It's not a matter of him being "on the ground pulling people out of the rubble." It's a matter of perception - it would be perceived (and be used as such by political opponents) as being "tacky" or "out of touch with the real world" or however else you want to label it, if he went campaigning while there's this massive disaster-relief effort going on what...700 miles from our shores. It would seem very "unpresidential" if you will. |
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So now we're arguing what I would think in situations that aren't happening? I certainly understand your frustration, but your defensiveness is misplaced. Feel free to continue to discuss things that aren't happening. I'm going to discuss what is happening and how it relates to current events. |
As far as the MA Senate race goes, I'm pretty excited to see how it ends up. Even Nate Silver referred to it as a "toss-up" earlier today. Still unsure which way I'll vote, but Coakley botched this terribly. She is not a particularly enthralling candidate in the first place and has acted like the seat is an entitlement. At the very least, it's nice to see the Dems actually have to fight for something up here.
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:lol: that's not what you're doing. you're discussing hypothetical reasons for why he isn't up here campaigning. |
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Really? You think it's hypothetical? If you do, you're far more out of touch with the political climate than most. We'll just agree to disagree. |
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I agree that Coakley was a pretty terrible choice. I would have much much rather seen Capuano, or else somebody else completely. Coakley is a pretty boring candidate overall. She doesn't do a lot to...inspire me. That being said - I can't see voting for someone with Brown's social positions (healthcare, abortion, homosexuals, etc.), and as I've tried to point out to people...if Brown were to somehow manage to win he wouldn't go into the Senate as a "moderate Republican" or anything. In order to get national GOP funding and not be tea-bagged in his next election he'd have to conform to the "standard GOP platform" on all those hot-button issues. So it wouldn't be electing a "moderate Republican" or an "independent-thinking Republican." It'd be much worse than that. |
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lmao. unless you have some sort of actual tangible proof then yes, it is by definition hypothetical. and the "political climate" that you're in touch with is...well i'll just stop there, because I think everyone knows. |
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True, but it is a true Libertarian response. Every major Libertarian scholar I have ever read has done anything but call for isolationism. They call for non-interventionism. (Which I believe was Obama's stance until he became president) They don't believe in policing the world, making alliances that bring you into other people's shit, starting wars that cause more problems than they solve... It is just like the "war" on drugs. The Libertarian answer is anything but legalizing everything so that anyone can inject themselves to the death with bad and evil drugs. They feel like our current policy is a complete waste of money and in reality is just another tax on the poor. I won't call DaddyTorgo lazy in his incorrect generalizations ("oh well it didn't happen to us...let's pull back and defend our borders and let all the people in Hati just fend for themselves.") because I was brought up the same way and told my whole life by teachers, professors, and news outlets how wacky the Libertarians are. If people actually picked up a book and read what they really believe they may have same enlightening that I freely admit I had. We don't have to do the same stupid things over and over just because this country is great and why fix small problems. Why not make it even better? |
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I just think the essay you posted comes from a guy living in a dream world. Defend property rights? How to you propose to do that without a functioning government or police force? Any decisions along those lines aren't a big concern when people don't have food water or shelter. There are bigger problems at the moment than trade policy. |
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Though I am sure I will get blasted with some sort of "too soon" argument here I think we can all agree that a lot of those buildings collapsed and people died due to the intense poverty and poor building structure of the country. The San Francisco earthquake was about the same scale in a city that is just as big if not bigger and 63 people died. Does this make the Haiti victims less tragic? Does this mean we shouldn't give money privately? You know the answer. But the question is where does all the pre-earthquake aid really go? There are plenty of countries that have implemented free markets that have made bigger strides that Haiti. So will we change our future policies on similar countries? Doubtful. I keep hearing that we can save the world! But we then when I ask why Haiti is so poor hear that maybe we can't save the world. Choose one or the other, unfortunately I think the second statement is a lot closer to the truth so why flush all this money down the drain? |
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thanks for not calling me lazy. actually just buried under a mountain of work...i really should leave this thread for the day, but it's a nice...diversion every so often |
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I was a solid Brown vote until the debate. I don't think he came off all that well. I agree that he's not much of a free-thinking Republican and his stance on gay marriage does turn me off (though I see that issue as having less importance in a Congressional race, personally). Right now, I'm between Brown (who is closer to me than Coakley) and Kennedy (who I agree with a lot, but will obviously not win). It's not often I get to have a vote here in MA that will mean much of anything, so I'm new to this. |
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You're arguing two different things. It's fine to talk about economic development, but that's very different from disaster relief. I'm not going to defend the various Haitian dictators, but those discussions don't mean anything when people are struggling to stay alive. btw- It's fascinating that you use an example of effective government regulation to argue for libertarian policies. |
Poor MBBF:
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I wonder, though, how many people choose to purchase insurance vs. have it provided by their employer? I'm going to assume (but I'm happy to be proven wrong) that the vast majority of the insured simply have it provided by their employer and so there's no decision-making involved (realistically). |
wow...i knew the numbers were bad, but i didn't realize they were quite this bad
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And yet Karl Rove thinks Congressional Dems will run up more debt by October than Bush did in all his years?? Puhleeze! |
Obama is coming to the state to back Coakley on Sunday (according to boston.com).
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That's MUCH different than a formal visit. I thought you were politically savvy enough to know that, but perhaps you're not. Quote:
If so, that's an interesting turnabout from their previous stance. |
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Suffolk University. 1/11-13. Likely voters. MoE 4.4%. Martha Coakley 46% Scott Brown 50% Suffolk isn't a fantastic pollster -- they're in the lower half of the pollster rankings at FiveThirtyEight and completely missed the New Jersey governor's race. But since they missed New Jersey by putting the Democrat nine points up a week before he lost, that may be scant comfort. In the end, we come back to the fact that special elections are tough to poll and we just won't know who was right until Tuesday night. |
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Coakley just comes across as arrogant and has made some mistakes that reflect that. The misspelling of Massachusetts in one her ads, the "Kennedy" seat, the stance on Catholic health care workers probably shouldn't work in the ER and her bodyguard/supporter/handler pushing down a reporter. |
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you realize only 50% of those things you cited were directly attributable to her - the "kennedy seat" comments (insofar as she has made them herself), and the stance on catholic healthcare workers (which in reality is just an opinion, nobody's going to legislate that). The other things were entirely out of her control. |
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Well good, because it would be a misleading argument to say we're spending the money solely to prevent the deaths of 22,000 people. Quote:
Well good, because surely that would result in even more deaths. Quote:
This is a simplistic argument. You're drawing a direct-line correlation between the number of people served and the number who die from medical mistakes. Since the 195,000 number (I presume) includes the uninsured, how much does the number go down because the number of uninsured who die from medical mistakes (due to needing treatment for conditions that were preventable) no longer need those procedures? How much less busy are ERs because they no longer have to provide primary care for the uninsured? How many fewer people die because the uninsured are no longer being turfed to the most overworked (i.e. public) hospitals? Further, the argument ignores the many efforts across the country that have both improved care and reduced cost. |
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