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On April 25 2017 05:52 ChristianS wrote:Show nested quote +On April 25 2017 04:22 Grumbels wrote:On April 25 2017 02:08 ChristianS wrote:On April 24 2017 14:53 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 24 2017 14:47 ChristianS wrote:On April 24 2017 14:28 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 24 2017 14:23 ChristianS wrote:
The electability thing is innately the problem I'm talking about. He says we should have realized because of email server and Benghazi and w/e else that she wasn't actually more electable. Putting aside whether that's even true, it's completely centered around issues peculiar to Hillary. The whole thing boils down to: one of the candidates tried to make the case during the primary that people should vote for her because she'd have a better chance in the general. That's it. Nevermind that every other candidate also tried to make that case because that's what you do in a primary. It's now his whole raison d'etre to remind everyone that she tried to say she was electable, but didn't get elected. Of course now the LL bat signal is up so we can expect another tirade about her delectable electability.
But fair enough, you (@GH, if that wasn't clear) don't bludgeon us with your homebrew meme all day. I think it was about a day ago I was lumping you in with LL, but at the time I was criticizing the practice of strawmanning anybody who talks about Russia, Comey, Wikileaks, etc. as important factors in the election by claiming those people don't think Hillary's campaign also made mistakes (a_flayer in particular was constructing this strawman explicitly). As far as I can tell everyone ITT is at a place of "clearly the Dems made mistakes for the election to get that close, let's try to identify those mistakes and correct them." There's probably some disagreement about what those mistakes are, and it doesn't help when someone who defends some action on the part of the Dems gets caricatured with "lol you just don't get it, you still think it was just Russians and Comey that went wrong."
But okay, if you don't think you're strawmanning people like that I'll point it out when I think it's happening and in the meantime retract the criticism. Thank you. Thoughts on Democrats being 10 points behind Trump in "in touch" with the concerns of most Americans (Do we all appreciate how unbelievably bad this is btw)? Fair to say when comparing the Democrats and Bernie (the most popular politician in the country) that we should probably give more credibility to what Bernie says Americans want/care about than the Democratic party? I don't have many thoughts on it. Not very exciting, I know, but I'm not very familiar with this type of polling and what it's actually a measure of. It seems like both the DNC and the RNC usually have lower approval ratings than specific Republicans or Democrats, which sorta makes sense given that you don't need to sell people on voting for the RNC, you need to sell them on voting for specific Republicans. 28 still seems pretty low, and it's hard to say what people are even basing that on right now. Democrats are doing a Unity Tour snd stuff, but I doubt that messaging even has enough penetration for people to be deciding based on that stuff. I guess a lot of it is probably just residual sentiment from the election? I'm happy to listen to what Bernie thinks Americans want/care about. I won't just take his word as gospel, but I certainly value his opinion. This is better than usual but still pretty bad. PEOPLE DON'T LIKE Democrats period. Okay, once you accept that the American public generally dislikes Democrats more (or close to) Trump, this should be an obvious sign that what Democrats are saying/doing is TERRIBLY unpopular. What's not unpopular though are the things they support that overlap with what Bernie supports. The most basic takeaway is that Democrats need to be more like Bernie, not that Bernie and his supporters need to be more like Hillary/Democrats/Republicans/Trump. We're still waiting for Democrats to recognize that, are you there yet? This thread moves too fast. This all feels a bit condescending, but I'll try to take you at face value. I like Bernie, and agree the Democrats should move their platform and messaging in a populist direction. "Be more like Bernie" feels a tad low resolution for a political strategy though, and I'd be able to have stronger opinions on a per-issue basis. Like, greater emphasis on an economic policy that improves conditions for ghe working class seems clearly like a good idea. I'm not certain if mirroring Bernie 1 to 1 is the best way to do that. It might be, but I'd figure they oughta do focus groups and figure out what tack plays the best. Bernie's rhetoric can get a tad "soak the rich" sometimes, which can be unnecessarily divisive. You might be able to argue for the exact same policies but go for "pay their fair share" type messaging, and pick up more votes. I'd respond in somewhat more detail but I gotta go back to work. The rich are the problem to begin with, any serious solution to the myriad of problems afflicting the USA involves taking control and wealth from rich people by leveraging populist outrage. That is why Bernie talks about the banks, it is because they are the villains and they need to be defeated, for instance by being criminalized and defunded. You can't deal with the financial industry without revealing them as the villains they are, because otherwise it is too easy for them to sabotage any reform. You can think of this as a simplistic and divisive narrative, but if you look at the facts you can see it is true: banks to a large extent are leeches on the economy with vast power whose employees are mostly deeply corrupt sociopaths. This, for instance, is a narrative that I think is easily written off as radical French Revolution extremism and ignored. I think a milder approach wins votes more easily. We're in a funny time right now. A lot of economists that would have been staunchly free market a decade ago now figure it's not a question of if but when we should implement a UBI. That gives the opportunity for a fairly broad support for some economic measures that would have been unthinkable not too long ago. But to do this right, progressives are going to need well-crafted messaging and a good sense of timing.
I am not a Dem operative, this is just my opinion. There is no clever technocratic solution to solving healthcare which doesn't also mean to take on the insurance industry, and there is no solution to solving the financial system which doesn't include taking on Wall Street.
Instead of just dismissing this narrative, which you call extreme, but which in actuality is the point of view of the most popular politician in the US, at least tell me what you think of it. Are the banks partners or obstacles in making the financial system better?
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Publicly owned companies, banks and other massive companies are the modern day robber barons. We don’t need to travel back to the French revolution to see US narratives about fighting them. The narrative is the same, “get out of the way of the job creators,” and “don’t regulate us, we will lose our edge and all of you will lose your jobs.”
The difference between then and now is that we didn’t have a great depression. We were smart enough to avoid it and limp our way through. So we don’t have a decade of suffering, unemployment, mass hunger and general sadness to serve as our less as to why we cannot trust these companies. Instead we have two political parties: One that wants to repeat the mistakes all over again and blame government. The other is totally resistant to holding banks accountable because that gets in the way of passing laws and governing.
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On April 25 2017 06:09 biology]major wrote:
I honestly don't get the preexisting condition part of the debate. You either cover for it and then force everyone to buy insurance, or you get rid of that rule and make insurance optional. Doing both removing the individual mandate, and keeping the coverage of preexisting conditions = ???
Yep, we have pointed out the obvious problem with this since the Republicans first mentioned it.
Who knew healthcare could be this difficult...
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On April 25 2017 06:12 Grumbels wrote:Show nested quote +On April 25 2017 05:52 ChristianS wrote:On April 25 2017 04:22 Grumbels wrote:On April 25 2017 02:08 ChristianS wrote:On April 24 2017 14:53 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 24 2017 14:47 ChristianS wrote:On April 24 2017 14:28 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 24 2017 14:23 ChristianS wrote:
The electability thing is innately the problem I'm talking about. He says we should have realized because of email server and Benghazi and w/e else that she wasn't actually more electable. Putting aside whether that's even true, it's completely centered around issues peculiar to Hillary. The whole thing boils down to: one of the candidates tried to make the case during the primary that people should vote for her because she'd have a better chance in the general. That's it. Nevermind that every other candidate also tried to make that case because that's what you do in a primary. It's now his whole raison d'etre to remind everyone that she tried to say she was electable, but didn't get elected. Of course now the LL bat signal is up so we can expect another tirade about her delectable electability.
But fair enough, you (@GH, if that wasn't clear) don't bludgeon us with your homebrew meme all day. I think it was about a day ago I was lumping you in with LL, but at the time I was criticizing the practice of strawmanning anybody who talks about Russia, Comey, Wikileaks, etc. as important factors in the election by claiming those people don't think Hillary's campaign also made mistakes (a_flayer in particular was constructing this strawman explicitly). As far as I can tell everyone ITT is at a place of "clearly the Dems made mistakes for the election to get that close, let's try to identify those mistakes and correct them." There's probably some disagreement about what those mistakes are, and it doesn't help when someone who defends some action on the part of the Dems gets caricatured with "lol you just don't get it, you still think it was just Russians and Comey that went wrong."
But okay, if you don't think you're strawmanning people like that I'll point it out when I think it's happening and in the meantime retract the criticism. Thank you. Thoughts on Democrats being 10 points behind Trump in "in touch" with the concerns of most Americans (Do we all appreciate how unbelievably bad this is btw)? Fair to say when comparing the Democrats and Bernie (the most popular politician in the country) that we should probably give more credibility to what Bernie says Americans want/care about than the Democratic party? I don't have many thoughts on it. Not very exciting, I know, but I'm not very familiar with this type of polling and what it's actually a measure of. It seems like both the DNC and the RNC usually have lower approval ratings than specific Republicans or Democrats, which sorta makes sense given that you don't need to sell people on voting for the RNC, you need to sell them on voting for specific Republicans. 28 still seems pretty low, and it's hard to say what people are even basing that on right now. Democrats are doing a Unity Tour snd stuff, but I doubt that messaging even has enough penetration for people to be deciding based on that stuff. I guess a lot of it is probably just residual sentiment from the election? I'm happy to listen to what Bernie thinks Americans want/care about. I won't just take his word as gospel, but I certainly value his opinion. This is better than usual but still pretty bad. PEOPLE DON'T LIKE Democrats period. Okay, once you accept that the American public generally dislikes Democrats more (or close to) Trump, this should be an obvious sign that what Democrats are saying/doing is TERRIBLY unpopular. What's not unpopular though are the things they support that overlap with what Bernie supports. The most basic takeaway is that Democrats need to be more like Bernie, not that Bernie and his supporters need to be more like Hillary/Democrats/Republicans/Trump. We're still waiting for Democrats to recognize that, are you there yet? This thread moves too fast. This all feels a bit condescending, but I'll try to take you at face value. I like Bernie, and agree the Democrats should move their platform and messaging in a populist direction. "Be more like Bernie" feels a tad low resolution for a political strategy though, and I'd be able to have stronger opinions on a per-issue basis. Like, greater emphasis on an economic policy that improves conditions for ghe working class seems clearly like a good idea. I'm not certain if mirroring Bernie 1 to 1 is the best way to do that. It might be, but I'd figure they oughta do focus groups and figure out what tack plays the best. Bernie's rhetoric can get a tad "soak the rich" sometimes, which can be unnecessarily divisive. You might be able to argue for the exact same policies but go for "pay their fair share" type messaging, and pick up more votes. I'd respond in somewhat more detail but I gotta go back to work. The rich are the problem to begin with, any serious solution to the myriad of problems afflicting the USA involves taking control and wealth from rich people by leveraging populist outrage. That is why Bernie talks about the banks, it is because they are the villains and they need to be defeated, for instance by being criminalized and defunded. You can't deal with the financial industry without revealing them as the villains they are, because otherwise it is too easy for them to sabotage any reform. You can think of this as a simplistic and divisive narrative, but if you look at the facts you can see it is true: banks to a large extent are leeches on the economy with vast power whose employees are mostly deeply corrupt sociopaths. This, for instance, is a narrative that I think is easily written off as radical French Revolution extremism and ignored. I think a milder approach wins votes more easily. We're in a funny time right now. A lot of economists that would have been staunchly free market a decade ago now figure it's not a question of if but when we should implement a UBI. That gives the opportunity for a fairly broad support for some economic measures that would have been unthinkable not too long ago. But to do this right, progressives are going to need well-crafted messaging and a good sense of timing. I am not a Dem operative, this is just my opinion. There is no clever technocratic solution to solving healthcare which doesn't also mean to take on the insurance industry, and there is no solution to solving the financial system which doesn't include taking on Wall Street. Instead of just dismissing this narrative, which you call extreme, but which in actuality is the point of view of the most popular politician in the US, at least tell me what you think of it. Are the banks partners or obstacles in making the financial system better?
The banks ARE the financial system,they are both a partner and an obstacle I think. Partner because you cant do it without them,and obstacle because they have their vested interests. They have way to much power but taking away that power is impossible I think. There are many problems with the financial system but in the end it still brings in a huge amount of money for the usa.
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We have taken power away from them before and we can do it again. The money they "bring into the economy" doesn't do us shit if we can't tax them and they operate like Wells Fargo or Chase bank, breaking laws and abusing peoples trust. Right now they see goverment as a nuance to be mitigated, rather than the hammer that keeps them in line.
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On April 25 2017 06:09 biology]major wrote:
I honestly don't get the preexisting condition part of the debate. You either cover for it and then force everyone to buy insurance, or you get rid of that rule and make insurance optional. Doing both removing the individual mandate, and keeping the coverage of preexisting conditions = ???
And this is where a lot of people start to realize "wait, just having everyone be insured and everyone has pre-existing covered makes the most sense". Do we have anyone here who argues in favor of pre-ACA pre-existing non-coverage?
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On April 25 2017 07:01 Mohdoo wrote:Show nested quote +On April 25 2017 06:09 biology]major wrote:
I honestly don't get the preexisting condition part of the debate. You either cover for it and then force everyone to buy insurance, or you get rid of that rule and make insurance optional. Doing both removing the individual mandate, and keeping the coverage of preexisting conditions = ??? And this is where a lot of people start to realize "wait, just having everyone be insured and everyone has pre-existing covered makes the most sense". Do we have anyone here who argues in favor of pre-ACA pre-existing non-coverage?
Im very skeptical of pre-existing condition coverage, it just makes everything so inefficient. The main body of people who hold insurance should be healthy, who are insuring against something bad happening. It is IRRESPONSIBLE to not have health insurance. If it is truly out of your capacity to afford, I would rather expand medicaid slightly by changing the income threshold.
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On April 25 2017 07:08 biology]major wrote:Show nested quote +On April 25 2017 07:01 Mohdoo wrote:On April 25 2017 06:09 biology]major wrote:
I honestly don't get the preexisting condition part of the debate. You either cover for it and then force everyone to buy insurance, or you get rid of that rule and make insurance optional. Doing both removing the individual mandate, and keeping the coverage of preexisting conditions = ??? And this is where a lot of people start to realize "wait, just having everyone be insured and everyone has pre-existing covered makes the most sense". Do we have anyone here who argues in favor of pre-ACA pre-existing non-coverage? Im very skeptical of pre-existing condition coverage, it just makes everything so inefficient. The main body of people who hold insurance should be healthy, who are insuring against something bad happening. It is IRRESPONSIBLE to not have health insurance. If it is truly out of your capacity to afford, I would rather expand medicaid slightly by changing the income threshold.
Here's the situation that makes pre-existing essential:
1. Employed at place A, insured through A.
2. Get cancer while employed and insured through A
3. Laid off, lose insurance A, and now have insurance B once you get a new job
4. Cancer is not covered by insurance B because they had it prior to being insured
The issue is that changing insurance companies means you lose coverage for certain illnesses. Even illnesses that are known to resurface. There are a million reasons someone could lose coverage that have nothing to do with being lazy or shitty or anything.
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Let us not forget that pregnancy was a pre-existing condition right up until the ACA became law.
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On April 25 2017 06:09 biology]major wrote:
I honestly don't get the preexisting condition part of the debate. You either cover for it and then force everyone to buy insurance, or you get rid of that rule and make insurance optional. Doing both removing the individual mandate, and keeping the coverage of preexisting conditions = ???
Equals insurance death spirals. Forcing coverage of pre existing conditions while letting healthy people opt out of insurance simply cannot work.
This is also why the high risk pools they are suggesting for states who waive the requirement are bound to fail. The end result either way is the sick and poor being fucked.
It's somehow worse than the pre-ACA insurance situation.
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On April 25 2017 07:10 Mohdoo wrote:Show nested quote +On April 25 2017 07:08 biology]major wrote:On April 25 2017 07:01 Mohdoo wrote:On April 25 2017 06:09 biology]major wrote:
I honestly don't get the preexisting condition part of the debate. You either cover for it and then force everyone to buy insurance, or you get rid of that rule and make insurance optional. Doing both removing the individual mandate, and keeping the coverage of preexisting conditions = ??? And this is where a lot of people start to realize "wait, just having everyone be insured and everyone has pre-existing covered makes the most sense". Do we have anyone here who argues in favor of pre-ACA pre-existing non-coverage? Im very skeptical of pre-existing condition coverage, it just makes everything so inefficient. The main body of people who hold insurance should be healthy, who are insuring against something bad happening. It is IRRESPONSIBLE to not have health insurance. If it is truly out of your capacity to afford, I would rather expand medicaid slightly by changing the income threshold. Here's the situation that makes pre-existing essential: 1. Employed at place A, insured through A. 2. Get cancer while employed and insured through A 3. Laid off, lose insurance A, and now have insurance B once you get a new job 4. Cancer is not covered by insurance B because they had it prior to being insured The issue is that changing insurance companies means you lose coverage for certain illnesses. Even illnesses that are known to resurface. There are a million reasons someone could lose coverage that have nothing to do with being lazy or shitty or anything.
I think thats a fair example, but I would rather regulate those types of "unfair" scenarios, than just completely make the whole point of insurance irrelevant with blanket pre-existing coverage.
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On April 25 2017 07:08 biology]major wrote:Show nested quote +On April 25 2017 07:01 Mohdoo wrote:On April 25 2017 06:09 biology]major wrote:
I honestly don't get the preexisting condition part of the debate. You either cover for it and then force everyone to buy insurance, or you get rid of that rule and make insurance optional. Doing both removing the individual mandate, and keeping the coverage of preexisting conditions = ??? And this is where a lot of people start to realize "wait, just having everyone be insured and everyone has pre-existing covered makes the most sense". Do we have anyone here who argues in favor of pre-ACA pre-existing non-coverage? Im very skeptical of pre-existing condition coverage, it just makes everything so inefficient. The main body of people who hold insurance should be healthy, who are insuring against something bad happening. It is IRRESPONSIBLE to not have health insurance. If it is truly out of your capacity to afford, I would rather expand medicaid slightly by changing the income threshold.
Your healthy, you pay your health insurance for years. You get sick, something long term but easily managed. Your insurance pays your pills (or whatever), life goes on.
You switch jobs, you lose your old insurance because of it and now you will never get a new insurance because you have a pre-existing condition.
Life is fair right?
You have a kid, they are born with some easily managed defect that will cost money for the rest of their life. Better drown it in the bathtub before your financially ruined since its impossible to get health insurance.
Life is fair right?
As you say, you want lots of healthy people signed up. That is easily done by mandating that everyone has insurance. If your stating that everyone should have insurance then everyone should have insurance, pre-existing or not. Not just those who don't cost any money.
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On April 25 2017 07:16 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On April 25 2017 07:08 biology]major wrote:On April 25 2017 07:01 Mohdoo wrote:On April 25 2017 06:09 biology]major wrote:
I honestly don't get the preexisting condition part of the debate. You either cover for it and then force everyone to buy insurance, or you get rid of that rule and make insurance optional. Doing both removing the individual mandate, and keeping the coverage of preexisting conditions = ??? And this is where a lot of people start to realize "wait, just having everyone be insured and everyone has pre-existing covered makes the most sense". Do we have anyone here who argues in favor of pre-ACA pre-existing non-coverage? Im very skeptical of pre-existing condition coverage, it just makes everything so inefficient. The main body of people who hold insurance should be healthy, who are insuring against something bad happening. It is IRRESPONSIBLE to not have health insurance. If it is truly out of your capacity to afford, I would rather expand medicaid slightly by changing the income threshold. Your healthy, you pay your health insurance for years. You get sick, something long term but easily managed. Your insurance pays your pills (or whatever), life goes on. You switch jobs, you lose your old insurance because of it and now you will never get a new insurance because you have a pre-existing condition. Life is fair right? You have a kid, they are born with some easily managed defect that will cost money for the rest of their life. Better drown it in the bathtub before your financially ruined since its impossible to get health insurance. Life is fair right? As you say, you want lots of healthy people signed up. That is easily done by mandating that everyone has insurance. If your stating that everyone should have insurance then everyone should have insurance, pre-existing or not. Not just those who don't cost any money.
I think it's fairly easy to develop specific regulations to protect those people. For example the kid would be covered by the parent's insurance. The person who loses his/her job scenario should have limited protection as well.
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It doesn't even have to be getting laid off. Without some regulation in this field, even your bosses deciding to swap from Aetna to Blue Cross Blue Shield or whatever could completely screw you. Not to mention the problem of "what if my plan has annual renewal and just screws me that way?"
Of course, much of this is regulated outside the ACA pre-existing condition stuff. But it ends up making things a wonky twisted warren that can be exploited better by companies than any consumer.
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On April 25 2017 07:20 biology]major wrote:Show nested quote +On April 25 2017 07:16 Gorsameth wrote:On April 25 2017 07:08 biology]major wrote:On April 25 2017 07:01 Mohdoo wrote:On April 25 2017 06:09 biology]major wrote:
I honestly don't get the preexisting condition part of the debate. You either cover for it and then force everyone to buy insurance, or you get rid of that rule and make insurance optional. Doing both removing the individual mandate, and keeping the coverage of preexisting conditions = ??? And this is where a lot of people start to realize "wait, just having everyone be insured and everyone has pre-existing covered makes the most sense". Do we have anyone here who argues in favor of pre-ACA pre-existing non-coverage? Im very skeptical of pre-existing condition coverage, it just makes everything so inefficient. The main body of people who hold insurance should be healthy, who are insuring against something bad happening. It is IRRESPONSIBLE to not have health insurance. If it is truly out of your capacity to afford, I would rather expand medicaid slightly by changing the income threshold. Your healthy, you pay your health insurance for years. You get sick, something long term but easily managed. Your insurance pays your pills (or whatever), life goes on. You switch jobs, you lose your old insurance because of it and now you will never get a new insurance because you have a pre-existing condition. Life is fair right? You have a kid, they are born with some easily managed defect that will cost money for the rest of their life. Better drown it in the bathtub before your financially ruined since its impossible to get health insurance. Life is fair right? As you say, you want lots of healthy people signed up. That is easily done by mandating that everyone has insurance. If your stating that everyone should have insurance then everyone should have insurance, pre-existing or not. Not just those who don't cost any money. I think it's fairly easy to develop specific regulations to protect those people. For example the kid would be covered by the parent's insurance. The person who loses his/her job scenario should have limited protection as well.
So you want everyone to have insurance, except those with pre-existing conditions who should be protected by something else that is totally not insurance but still does the same as insurance?.
Again, why are we not just giving everyone insurance anyway to begin with?
Who is paying for this extra protection that is totally not insurance?
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On April 25 2017 05:55 Seuss wrote:
If it passes the House but fails in the Senate Repulicans can claim to have done something and blame its failure on the Democrats. No idea if that's the intent, but it's a likely outcome.
Because the Republicans control the Senate.
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On April 25 2017 07:22 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On April 25 2017 07:20 biology]major wrote:On April 25 2017 07:16 Gorsameth wrote:On April 25 2017 07:08 biology]major wrote:On April 25 2017 07:01 Mohdoo wrote:On April 25 2017 06:09 biology]major wrote:
I honestly don't get the preexisting condition part of the debate. You either cover for it and then force everyone to buy insurance, or you get rid of that rule and make insurance optional. Doing both removing the individual mandate, and keeping the coverage of preexisting conditions = ??? And this is where a lot of people start to realize "wait, just having everyone be insured and everyone has pre-existing covered makes the most sense". Do we have anyone here who argues in favor of pre-ACA pre-existing non-coverage? Im very skeptical of pre-existing condition coverage, it just makes everything so inefficient. The main body of people who hold insurance should be healthy, who are insuring against something bad happening. It is IRRESPONSIBLE to not have health insurance. If it is truly out of your capacity to afford, I would rather expand medicaid slightly by changing the income threshold. Your healthy, you pay your health insurance for years. You get sick, something long term but easily managed. Your insurance pays your pills (or whatever), life goes on. You switch jobs, you lose your old insurance because of it and now you will never get a new insurance because you have a pre-existing condition. Life is fair right? You have a kid, they are born with some easily managed defect that will cost money for the rest of their life. Better drown it in the bathtub before your financially ruined since its impossible to get health insurance. Life is fair right? As you say, you want lots of healthy people signed up. That is easily done by mandating that everyone has insurance. If your stating that everyone should have insurance then everyone should have insurance, pre-existing or not. Not just those who don't cost any money. I think it's fairly easy to develop specific regulations to protect those people. For example the kid would be covered by the parent's insurance. The person who loses his/her job scenario should have limited protection as well. So you want everyone to have insurance, except those with pre-existing conditions who should be protected by something else that is totally not insurance but still does the same as insurance?. Again, why are we not just giving everyone insurance anyway to begin with? Who is paying for this extra protection that is totally not insurance?
I don't want a mandate and I definitely don't know if pre-existing coverage is a good thing. My ideal system would be one where it is optional and affordable, with protections for those who truly can't afford it. Protections also for people in those specific scenarios that you mentioned. States should be able to choose which is better for them, because some states function fine with ACA, while others have gotten destroyed.
What the ACA did by expanding medicaid, and enabling coverage of pre-existing conditions just made the pool of consumers way too sick. Not all insurance companies could handle this shift and the end result is fewer companies which end up controlling too much of the market.
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On April 25 2017 07:31 biology]major wrote:Show nested quote +On April 25 2017 07:22 Gorsameth wrote:On April 25 2017 07:20 biology]major wrote:On April 25 2017 07:16 Gorsameth wrote:On April 25 2017 07:08 biology]major wrote:On April 25 2017 07:01 Mohdoo wrote:On April 25 2017 06:09 biology]major wrote:
I honestly don't get the preexisting condition part of the debate. You either cover for it and then force everyone to buy insurance, or you get rid of that rule and make insurance optional. Doing both removing the individual mandate, and keeping the coverage of preexisting conditions = ??? And this is where a lot of people start to realize "wait, just having everyone be insured and everyone has pre-existing covered makes the most sense". Do we have anyone here who argues in favor of pre-ACA pre-existing non-coverage? Im very skeptical of pre-existing condition coverage, it just makes everything so inefficient. The main body of people who hold insurance should be healthy, who are insuring against something bad happening. It is IRRESPONSIBLE to not have health insurance. If it is truly out of your capacity to afford, I would rather expand medicaid slightly by changing the income threshold. Your healthy, you pay your health insurance for years. You get sick, something long term but easily managed. Your insurance pays your pills (or whatever), life goes on. You switch jobs, you lose your old insurance because of it and now you will never get a new insurance because you have a pre-existing condition. Life is fair right? You have a kid, they are born with some easily managed defect that will cost money for the rest of their life. Better drown it in the bathtub before your financially ruined since its impossible to get health insurance. Life is fair right? As you say, you want lots of healthy people signed up. That is easily done by mandating that everyone has insurance. If your stating that everyone should have insurance then everyone should have insurance, pre-existing or not. Not just those who don't cost any money. I think it's fairly easy to develop specific regulations to protect those people. For example the kid would be covered by the parent's insurance. The person who loses his/her job scenario should have limited protection as well. So you want everyone to have insurance, except those with pre-existing conditions who should be protected by something else that is totally not insurance but still does the same as insurance?. Again, why are we not just giving everyone insurance anyway to begin with? Who is paying for this extra protection that is totally not insurance? I don't want a mandate and I definitely don't know if pre-existing coverage is a good thing. My ideal system would be one where it is optional and affordable, with protections for those who truly can't afford it. Protections also for people in those specific scenarios that you mentioned. States should be able to choose which is better for them, because some states function fine with ACA, while others have gotten destroyed. What the ACA did by expanding medicaid, and enabling coverage of pre-existing conditions just made the pool of consumers way too sick. Not all insurance companies could handle this shift and the end result is fewer companies which end up controlling too much of the market.
You are aware that the nature of medical costs (especially in the US) means that pretty much NO ONE can afford a pre-existing condition right? (aside from the 1% I guess)
Instead of just the poor who cannot afford insurance your covering all the people with a pre-existing condition who now no longer pay money into the system because they lost their insurance with something akin in Medicaid.
It would actually be more expensive then just mandating insurance to everyone...
You said The main body of people who hold insurance should be healthy, who are insuring against something bad happening. It is IRRESPONSIBLE to not have health insurance. and your against a mandate?? How do you get those stupid 20y olds who think they are invulnerable to pay into health insurance if your not going to mandate it?
And don't say they should know better when we have had multiple people in this thread who think that them putting 10 bucks a month into a savings account is a good enough alternative. (somewhat of a hyperbole but less then you might think).
As for saying the ACA made the pool to sick... Look at the rest of the world. The US is the only first world country who seem to suffer from this problem. Stop pretending your 'special' in a good way and just take a look around at what everyone else is doing.
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United States43964 Posts
There has to be a way to put the majority of healthy people in the same risk pool as the minority of unhealthy or insurance can never work. But people have a fair idea ahead of time whether they're healthy or unhealthy and the healthy don't want to have their risk pooled. Thus there has to be a mandate. No other way.
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On April 25 2017 06:12 Grumbels wrote:Show nested quote +On April 25 2017 05:52 ChristianS wrote:On April 25 2017 04:22 Grumbels wrote:On April 25 2017 02:08 ChristianS wrote:On April 24 2017 14:53 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 24 2017 14:47 ChristianS wrote:On April 24 2017 14:28 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 24 2017 14:23 ChristianS wrote:
The electability thing is innately the problem I'm talking about. He says we should have realized because of email server and Benghazi and w/e else that she wasn't actually more electable. Putting aside whether that's even true, it's completely centered around issues peculiar to Hillary. The whole thing boils down to: one of the candidates tried to make the case during the primary that people should vote for her because she'd have a better chance in the general. That's it. Nevermind that every other candidate also tried to make that case because that's what you do in a primary. It's now his whole raison d'etre to remind everyone that she tried to say she was electable, but didn't get elected. Of course now the LL bat signal is up so we can expect another tirade about her delectable electability.
But fair enough, you (@GH, if that wasn't clear) don't bludgeon us with your homebrew meme all day. I think it was about a day ago I was lumping you in with LL, but at the time I was criticizing the practice of strawmanning anybody who talks about Russia, Comey, Wikileaks, etc. as important factors in the election by claiming those people don't think Hillary's campaign also made mistakes (a_flayer in particular was constructing this strawman explicitly). As far as I can tell everyone ITT is at a place of "clearly the Dems made mistakes for the election to get that close, let's try to identify those mistakes and correct them." There's probably some disagreement about what those mistakes are, and it doesn't help when someone who defends some action on the part of the Dems gets caricatured with "lol you just don't get it, you still think it was just Russians and Comey that went wrong."
But okay, if you don't think you're strawmanning people like that I'll point it out when I think it's happening and in the meantime retract the criticism. Thank you. Thoughts on Democrats being 10 points behind Trump in "in touch" with the concerns of most Americans (Do we all appreciate how unbelievably bad this is btw)? Fair to say when comparing the Democrats and Bernie (the most popular politician in the country) that we should probably give more credibility to what Bernie says Americans want/care about than the Democratic party? I don't have many thoughts on it. Not very exciting, I know, but I'm not very familiar with this type of polling and what it's actually a measure of. It seems like both the DNC and the RNC usually have lower approval ratings than specific Republicans or Democrats, which sorta makes sense given that you don't need to sell people on voting for the RNC, you need to sell them on voting for specific Republicans. 28 still seems pretty low, and it's hard to say what people are even basing that on right now. Democrats are doing a Unity Tour snd stuff, but I doubt that messaging even has enough penetration for people to be deciding based on that stuff. I guess a lot of it is probably just residual sentiment from the election? I'm happy to listen to what Bernie thinks Americans want/care about. I won't just take his word as gospel, but I certainly value his opinion. This is better than usual but still pretty bad. PEOPLE DON'T LIKE Democrats period. Okay, once you accept that the American public generally dislikes Democrats more (or close to) Trump, this should be an obvious sign that what Democrats are saying/doing is TERRIBLY unpopular. What's not unpopular though are the things they support that overlap with what Bernie supports. The most basic takeaway is that Democrats need to be more like Bernie, not that Bernie and his supporters need to be more like Hillary/Democrats/Republicans/Trump. We're still waiting for Democrats to recognize that, are you there yet? This thread moves too fast. This all feels a bit condescending, but I'll try to take you at face value. I like Bernie, and agree the Democrats should move their platform and messaging in a populist direction. "Be more like Bernie" feels a tad low resolution for a political strategy though, and I'd be able to have stronger opinions on a per-issue basis. Like, greater emphasis on an economic policy that improves conditions for ghe working class seems clearly like a good idea. I'm not certain if mirroring Bernie 1 to 1 is the best way to do that. It might be, but I'd figure they oughta do focus groups and figure out what tack plays the best. Bernie's rhetoric can get a tad "soak the rich" sometimes, which can be unnecessarily divisive. You might be able to argue for the exact same policies but go for "pay their fair share" type messaging, and pick up more votes. I'd respond in somewhat more detail but I gotta go back to work. The rich are the problem to begin with, any serious solution to the myriad of problems afflicting the USA involves taking control and wealth from rich people by leveraging populist outrage. That is why Bernie talks about the banks, it is because they are the villains and they need to be defeated, for instance by being criminalized and defunded. You can't deal with the financial industry without revealing them as the villains they are, because otherwise it is too easy for them to sabotage any reform. You can think of this as a simplistic and divisive narrative, but if you look at the facts you can see it is true: banks to a large extent are leeches on the economy with vast power whose employees are mostly deeply corrupt sociopaths. This, for instance, is a narrative that I think is easily written off as radical French Revolution extremism and ignored. I think a milder approach wins votes more easily. We're in a funny time right now. A lot of economists that would have been staunchly free market a decade ago now figure it's not a question of if but when we should implement a UBI. That gives the opportunity for a fairly broad support for some economic measures that would have been unthinkable not too long ago. But to do this right, progressives are going to need well-crafted messaging and a good sense of timing. I am not a Dem operative, this is just my opinion. There is no clever technocratic solution to solving healthcare which doesn't also mean to take on the insurance industry, and there is no solution to solving the financial system which doesn't include taking on Wall Street. Instead of just dismissing this narrative, which you call extreme, but which in actuality is the point of view of the most popular politician in the US, at least tell me what you think of it. Are the banks partners or obstacles in making the financial system better?
A quick clarification: I didn't say the narrative is extreme, I said it is easily written off as extreme. It was in the context of a discussion with GH about what would be politically expedient for the Democrats, not on what would be good policy.
As for whether policies designed to save our financial system from the big banks are good policy, I don't really know that much about the financial industry. Maybe there's some really predatory practices going on there and some firm regulation could correct a lot of antisocial behaviors.
I'm suspicious of any narrative with a villain, though. The real world is usually more complex than that. In Wall Street's case it's easy to see the huge bonuses and extravagantly paid CEOs and think that the whole industry is just parasitic, but the financial industry is responsible for allocating our society's resources in whatever way will make us most productive. That's a huge and difficult job, and the economic well-being of the country and the world depends heavily on it being done well. Now those people definitely make mistakes, and we usually wind up paying the price (for instance anyone upside down in their mortgage after the last financial crisis). That certainly justifies the public wanting good oversight and regulation of the industry, but the impulse to crush the whole thing because we're mad it doesn't always turn out how we want it to seems like a rash one.
So to answer your question, both I guess? But someone with a bit more financial expertise like Kwark could probably give you a better answer.
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