Donald Trump and US politics

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

What we have now — that is, Obamacare — is a bizarre monster with a free-market visage and a communist heart. It's "insurance," but charging higher premiums for pre-existing conditions is forbidden. Theoretically every citizen can choose where to buy "insurance" from, but they can't choose to not buy it.

Ultimately, the effect of Obamacare is cronyism and corruption. The health "insurance" market in much of the US has since narrowed to a single provider (which everyone is then mandated to buy from, unless they're poor enough for Medicaid). The best description of this system is socialized medicine with a heavy dependence on government subcontracting, because non-government businesses have regional monopolies the government enforces. Obamacare is functionally single-payer (only the monopoly pays the hospital bills), except with really shitty regulatory control so as to make healthcare a Deep State within the bureaucracy, almost fully immune to the voice of the people (and FOIA) but wielding monopolistic power — taxation without representation.

Obamacare is a microcosm of the failure of the modern American Left to remain true to their core principle of populism. They've remained true to their desire to see the State take control of certain economic functions, functions they don't want the free market performing, and I admit that some functions should be state-controlled and not left laissez-faire. However, it is critical that when such monopolies are permitted that they are subject to the will of the people through democracy. It's risky enough to create such monopolistic monsters, but to ignore the importance of transparency and oversight is to spawn an abomination without caring to attach a harness and to let go of the reins. It is in this reckless disregard for populist control that the modern Left reveals itself to be useful idiots for the corporatist cronyism it purports to oppose.

When the leadup to a piece of legislation includes the sound bite "But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what's in it," that's when any principled Leftist should become thoroughly committed to opposing passage until transparency is achieved. But there are barely any principled Leftists anymore, because it's so much easier to just virtue-signal from within your propaganda bubble.

Even without Obamacare—remove it from the equation entirely, hypothetically roll back time if you will—I do not believe insurance is the right vehicle to provide care. It’s sole purpose is to restore one to enmity should [insured crisis] happens, and that is it. Mandatory minimal auto coverage works because it insures other drivers against the liability of you driving; insurance for basic health care is like a perverted line of credit with an extra layer of fat that absorbs all of its potential benefit. Add politics to the mix (Obamacare or any other hypothetical replacement) and you have that perversion, but now it reacts to the whims of the market reacting to the whims of the political climate. All a bit too whimsical for me.

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CanHasPants wrote:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

What we have now — that is, Obamacare — is a bizarre monster with a free-market visage and a communist heart. It's "insurance," but charging higher premiums for pre-existing conditions is forbidden. Theoretically every citizen can choose where to buy "insurance" from, but they can't choose to not buy it.

Ultimately, the effect of Obamacare is cronyism and corruption. The health "insurance" market in much of the US has since narrowed to a single provider (which everyone is then mandated to buy from, unless they're poor enough for Medicaid). The best description of this system is socialized medicine with a heavy dependence on government subcontracting, because non-government businesses have regional monopolies the government enforces. Obamacare is functionally single-payer (only the monopoly pays the hospital bills), except with really shitty regulatory control so as to make healthcare a Deep State within the bureaucracy, almost fully immune to the voice of the people (and FOIA) but wielding monopolistic power — taxation without representation.

Obamacare is a microcosm of the failure of the modern American Left to remain true to their core principle of populism. They've remained true to their desire to see the State take control of certain economic functions, functions they don't want the free market performing, and I admit that some functions should be state-controlled and not left laissez-faire. However, it is critical that when such monopolies are permitted that they are subject to the will of the people through democracy. It's risky enough to create such monopolistic monsters, but to ignore the importance of transparency and oversight is to spawn an abomination without caring to attach a harness and to let go of the reins. It is in this reckless disregard for populist control that the modern Left reveals itself to be useful idiots for the corporatist cronyism it purports to oppose.

When the leadup to a piece of legislation includes the sound bite "But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what's in it," that's when any principled Leftist should become thoroughly committed to opposing passage until transparency is achieved. But there are barely any principled Leftists anymore, because it's so much easier to just virtue-signal from within your propaganda bubble.

Even without Obamacare—remove it from the equation entirely, hypothetically roll back time if you will—I do not believe insurance is the right vehicle to provide care. It’s sole purpose is to restore one to enmity should [insured crisis] happens, and that is it. Mandatory minimal auto coverage works because it insures other drivers against the liability of you driving; insurance for basic health care is like a perverted line of credit with an extra layer of fat that absorbs all of its potential benefit. Add politics to the mix (Obamacare or any other hypothetical replacement) and you have that perversion, but now it reacts to the whims of the market reacting to the whims of the political climate. All a bit too whimsical for me.

I won't pretend healthcare was in a good state prior to Obamacare. I do think there were very clear signs that Obamacare would make matters even worse and that those indicators only became clearer as time moved forward, but the indedensibility of Obamacare is separate from an analysis of a proper solution.

Free market systems attempt to harness free market competition, which is a powerful force for delivering a service more efficiently. While the typical case for state control involves industries which we do not want to be efficient, such as kidnapping or theft, another category are those to which price competition cannot apply — for example, when dealing with unconscious customers. Health insurance partially solved this problem by allowing individuals to make price comparisons for services prior to their unconscious moment of need, but it left the problem of uninsured pricing unsolved. The special rates hospitals negotiated with one insurer did not necessarily apply to another insurer, and were certainly not passed on to the uninsured, ensuring a thoroughly ridiculous bill for any unfortunate enough to wake up uninsured in a hospital.

More importantly, the fix of health insurance was predicated upon an adversarial relationship between the hospital and the insurer — that is, that the insurer's interest would be to negotiate the lowest hospital bills possible to keep its own costs low, then pass the savings on to the insured. If insurers are partially (or fully) owned by hospitals or vice versa, a conflict of interest develops wherein the combined hospital/insurer has an interest in making an initial insincere offer to those seeking insurance, as time spent avoiding a sincere agreement works to the hospital's favor — if the customer declines insurance they may be at the hospital's mercy later. A failure of the US government to disentangle these two industries lead to increasingly worse customer conditions

I think the government should provide everyone with a baseline health "insurance" with the following guiding principles:
1. The baseline shouldn't be full coverage so much as government price negotiation on behalf of the unconscious. For those without private insurance to have a reasonable bill for services rendered is okay. What's important here isn't that the patient isn't charged, but that those without private insurance are not charged whatever the hospital whims. In order to make this effective, government must pay a portion of the bill, enough to spur a desire for serious negotiation, but not necessarily the full amount.
2. The context for this subsidy is healthcare delivered to unconscious patients, or those otherwise unable to realistically seek an alternative provider if the price is not to the patient's liking. The subsidy should not apply to routine medical care. Indeed, the subsidy on emergency care should leave enough patient cost remaining to encourage maintenance care to be voluntarily paid out-of-pocket rather than waiting for an emergency to first seek medical attention.
3. Private insurance companies continue to exist but are forbidden by law to become economically entangled with healthcare providers — the relationship must remain adversarial.
4. Because government is itself a health insurance provider, its economic relationship with healthcare providers must also remain adversarial — hospitals and the like must have additional restrictions on them in terms of campaign financing, etc, to ensure they do not "buy" influence in government.

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DurianMcgregor wrote:

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JNF wrote:

Just for fun.

That URL does not imply that the money didn't go towards relief for Haiti though, Just that the majority of it went to non-Haitian organizations. I would expect most international humanitarian organizations to not be based in Haiti, wouldn't you?

And here we go deeper down the rabbit hole...

Which was kind of the whole point of it being a retort to that dim-witted link about 'past presidents raised millions while Trump played golf.' Yeah, they raised millions to pad their own pockets while Trump played golf on his own dime, rather than the taxpayer's. But you won't find CNN covering Obama's joyrides on Air Force One (on the taxpayer's dime) or all of the extravagant vacations he and his family took on the taxpayer's dime, will you? Nope, let's talk about how Trump went and played golf at his privately owned resort and mention something about his 'orange-ness' (passive aggressive, p.c. racial slurs).

From Trump Golf Count

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Cost to Taxpayer: At least $74,899,027

Anyone who believes Trump's doing his bullshit out of pocket is delusional. The Trumpers I've seen who even acknowledge the fact that his constant golfing will cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars (assuming justice continues to evade us and he lasts a full term) tend to handwave it away in some ridiculous fashion. God Emperor can do no wrong, after all. Their cultish thinking is disgusting.

Right. I was apolitical during Obama's presidency and barely heard about any current events. I remember being really pissed off when I eventually heard about the ACA, though. Mandatory insurance is bullshit. I want every American who has a dental or health problem to have access to free healthcare. While the ACA is a bit better than what we had before, it made almost no progress toward a great healthcare system while still not helping the Americans who are worst off financially.

In a capitalistic society where a huge number of people will always be poor due to inherent flaws in the system, having our quality of life determined largely by fluke of birth is disgustingly unfair. The people who most need affordable healthcare, those at the bottom, can't even afford mandatory insurance. These are people who literally die from tooth infections and other ailments wealthier people would get fixed immediately before the problems grew truly dire.

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Untreated cavities were common among the half a million poor, Medicaid-reliant children in Maryland, who included Alyce Driver’s boys. According to a study by the University of Maryland dental school, the pain of untreated cavities made 8% of these children cry – but Deamonte Driver did not complain about his teeth, his mother said. Maybe he felt that it was futile to complain. Or maybe he just took the pain for granted.

That's from an article about a 12-year-old boy who died of complications resulting from a tooth infection. Stories about poor people suffering or dying due to health issues easily fixed by wealthier people are a dime a dozen, though. Our society is fundamentally unfair and unjust. We have two political parties that aren't trying to fix the problem, though. One of them even fights tooth and nail to take us further in the wrong direction.

Just so you know, before the ACA, if you were not on a company health insurance plan, health care in America sucked big time (unless you were rich).

This delightful piece from the New Yorker magazine captures the essence of the Trump presidency:

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WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report) – Calling himself “unbelievably brave,” Donald Trump said on Monday that he is the only President in U.S. history with the courage to stand up to war widows.
“You look at guys like Obama and Clinton and the Bushes, when it came to war widows, they all blinked,” he said. “For years, we weren’t winning at widows.”

In contrast, Trump said, he has made defeating war widows one of his top priorities as President. “Forget about Iran and China and Little Rocket Man,” he said. “This country has been pushed around by war widows for far too long.”

Trump said that Senator John McCain, who has mocked the President’s draft-dodging during Vietnam, has “never shown an ounce of courage when it comes to fighting war widows.”

“McCain can talk about what he did in Vietnam all he wants,” Trump said. “But the guys who have gone toe to toe with a war widow, contradicted her version of events, and refused to back down—we are the true heroes.”

Yes, I know it is satire.

I'm well aware of how terrible things were and how terrible evil Republicans are trying to make them again. The ACA wasn't a big step in the right direction, though. While it's a bit superior for many people, it's still massively flawed and does nothing for those who are most in need.

One big change from the Reagan years was a shift from Health insurance being delivered by non profit companies to for profit ones. Much of the new costs are the growing profits of those companies.

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鬼殺し wrote:

Like I said though, Jennik. If the collective is so vehemently against a socialist idea like free universal healthcare, isn't forced insurance the only other way to ensure people are taken care of when they get sick or injured?

I wish it actually did that. The sad fact is that tens of millions of Americans aren't taken care of when something goes wrong with their health. They won't be without a fundamental change in our healthcare system. Poor people commonly suffer through health problems that wealthy people would immediately have fixed.

It's also not that "the collective" are against it. Support for universal healthcare is fairly high and increasing steadily. This is just one of the areas where the people are not represented by those in office. No Republican would vote for universal healthcare. At least some Democrats would, but we wouldn't know how many until a vote actually happened. It's not something they actively fight for, though. I can't even say that's unreasonable, since what would the point even be when evil Republicans in office universally put the financial interests of the wealthiest Americans over the health and lives of the rest of us?