US Politics Mega-thread - Page 2788

On January 26 2016 08:02 Gorsameth wrote:

Good, here is hoping they don't come off this easy.

DES MOINES, IOWA — After weeks of road-testing the gloomy, death-of-the-American-dream message that his rivals are using, Marco Rubio on Monday brought his more positive, inspirational family story back to the center of his Iowa campaign.

And he used Iowa Republican Sen. Joni Ernst's first stop with him on the 2016 campaign trail to drive that message home.

“She did not grow up in privilege. In fact, her parents didn’t make a lot of money,” Rubio said of Ernst, describing how her parents would wrap her single pair of nice shoes in bags when it rained or snowed so that they wouldn’t be ruined. “She said she was never embarrassed by it because when she got on the bus, the other kids had the same thing, and that’s what she grew up in.”

Rubio told voters about how Ernst's story was similar to his family’s immigration experience and the story of his parents' success in rising from poverty to the middle class.

It was a return to his campaign’s original message. He aimed to convince voters Monday that America needs a new generation of leaders to guide the nation and keep opportunities open to all.

He then pivoted to his parents’ story, striking a far more positive tone than his opponents, whose stump speeches and voter interactions are largely fixated on the perception of a country in decline, economically and militarily.

“We celebrate success in America,” Rubio said before a crowd of a few hundred Iowa voters. “What makes us special is a little girl who grew up with plastic bags [on her] shoes and the son of a bartender and a maid [who] can serve the government at its highest levels.”

And while Rubio’s rivals — in both the conservative and more mainstream lanes of the 2016 contest — are relentlessly attacking one another’s character as well as their policy positions, Rubio didn’t reference a single Republican opponent on Monday. He reserved his criticism for President Barack Obama and Democratic policies.

For many people struggling with opioid use, a key to success in recovery is having support. Some are getting that support from an unlikely place: their health insurer.

Amanda Jean Andrade, who lives west of Boston in a halfway house for addiction recovery, has been drug- and alcohol-free since October. It's the longest she's been off such substances in a decade. She gives a lot of the credit for that to her case manager, Will — who works for her insurance company.

"Having Will is the best thing in the world for me," Andrade says. "Because if I have the slightest issue with anything to do with my insurance that includes, like, prescriptions — even when I had a court issue — I know that I can call him."

Andrade's insurer is CeltiCare Health Plan, one of several health insurance companies in Massachusetts taking aggressive new steps to deal with the growing opioid epidemic. CeltiCare has about 50,000 members in the state, and mostly manages care for patients on Medicaid.

Insurers typically cover some inpatient substance use treatment and detox, says CeltiCare's president and CEO Jay Gonzalez, but those are only short-term solutions. After a patient is discharged, relapse — and readmission — are likely without follow-up support.

That's why CeltiCare assigns social workers to some of the people it insures.

"This is the biggest potential solution to this problem, I think, because at the end of the day we have to find the members who are or could be in trouble, and we need them to be invested in addressing their issues," Gonzalez says.

For CeltiCare, the costs related to the opioid epidemic are huge: Nearly a quarter of its hospital admissions are related to substance use, Gonzalez says. The insurer spent more than 10 percent of its budget last year on Suboxone, a medication to treat addiction to narcotics. That's more than it spent on any other drug.

On January 26 2016 11:35 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
Never mind the fact that states that have legalized Marijuana have seen pain killer deaths, and overdoes drop across the board...



Source

On January 26 2016 11:46 Ghostcom wrote:


You are overly simplifying opioid-related deaths. Legalizing marijuana wouldn't solve it.

On January 26 2016 12:12 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
No but the tax money from legalization would fund prevention programs etc. Would it solve the crisis? No. But would go a long way.

Insurers have no interest in stopping it rather than just cashing in.

On January 26 2016 12:43 IgnE wrote:
What? Are you operating under the assumption that single cigarette black market is pretty huge or something? Or that the taxes from tobacco are insignificant?

Or maybe that taxing anything is dumb?

I really don't get it.

On January 26 2016 12:58 cLutZ wrote:


No, I'm saying that the idea that seeing legalization as a path to tax revenue is a mistake because there is already a huge black market, which will become a grey market if you raise marijuana taxes above just your simple sales taxes + a small %. Washington State is already experiencing suspiciously low tax revenues from their legalization efforts, and just like in NY you will have police raiding people who are selling ostensibly legal products because they don't have a stamp on them.

Edit.
Understand that in states that currently legalize, much of the price is taxes, regulations, and also the very real risk of being raided by the feds. In states without legalization the majority of the cost is associated with the chance of being caught growing it. Marijuana is easier to self-cultivate than either tobacco or making any kind of alcoholic product, its on par with growing your own tomatoes. Legalized marijuana (like fully legalized) means it will be incredibly cheap, or if taxed to being expensive will see gigantic underground transactions (since possession is no longer a crime its easy to undercut the taxed market).

On January 26 2016 13:15 IgnE wrote:
and if you legalized it federally?

On January 26 2016 13:45 Nyxisto wrote:


and how is that worse than collecting 0$ in taxes and locking people up in prison instead of them being stoned, but at least somewhat productive members of society?

On January 26 2016 12:52 The_Templar wrote:

I did not get to watch the Clinton section tonight, what happened?

"Donald Trump is a delusional narcissist and an orange-faced windbag, a speck of dirt is way more qualified to be president".

"I steadfastly said he is not Hitler, Goebbels maybe. But I seriously compared him to Gollum"