World Politics

[Moose McKnuckles]

I had a quick conversation with my health insurance broker today. She said that I should be prepared for at least 150% heath insurance rate increase when it renews in January but that it could be higher. The actuaries are trying to figure out rate adequacy to insure the formerly uninsurable and the no-limit payout mandate.

Is this a great Country or what?

Sweet. I hope they raise your rates through the roof, since you'll be subsidizing me. Thanks, skippy.

Good grief. It's amazing how utterly clueless the right wing foot soldiers actually are. It's the charge of the lightweight brigade.

 

[buckwheat]

Your battle against reality would be admirable if you weren't bringing a pez dispenser to a gun fight.

Post of the century. I'm out. Really! Can't top this one and it's not for lack of trying.

'His battle against reality,' that's really what it is. How do you talk to these people?

I'll buy him a friggin cup of coffee when I see him on the street.

Good Lord! I was listening to nutjob conservative radio. Mark Levin? These people are F&cked up.

 

[rhubroma]

Quote
Fact is, this poorly designed monstrosity will lead to lower-quality care, higher costs, fewer practicing physicians, higher taxes and fewer jobs. Quote

Well, not true, and everyone knows this all too well, even if not willing to confess it. They know that America won't be finished because say this poor woman, for example, will be able to go to the gynocologist with help from the State.

From the precipice of the Unknown, the Old America will be absorbed by the New America and the system will again find its equilibrium.

 

[TRDean]

Quote
From the precipice of the Unknown, the Old America will be absorbed by the New America and the system will again find its equilibrium.

Most positive thing I have seen on this thread in a while!!

 

[patricknd]

What a steaming pile of crap. I'm sure all the physicians will just say 'screw this 200K a year job I'm just gonna go out and get one of those cushy union factory jobs that are availible in surplus everywhere I look, and not have to worry any more'.

a lot of doctors don't take medicaid patients. it doesn't pay well and the paperwork is a nightmare. with a 21% cut in medicare reimbursements, more physicians are dropping it as well. what you'll begin to see is more and more practices that don't take insurance. they are going to take payments up front and let us handle the insurance claims and headaches. it's already happenning that way and it will spread.

 

[Anonymous]

a lot of doctors don't take medicaid patients. it doesn't pay well and the paperwork is a nightmare. with a 21% cut in medicare reimbursements, more physicians are dropping it as well. what you'll begin to see is more and more practices that don't take insurance. they are going to take payments up front and let us handle the insurance claims and headaches. it's already happenning that way and it will spread.

The bill will increase Medicaid reimbursement rates, but I do understand the problem there. It really is tough for a doctor to accept low payment for services, but many are still willing to do that. However, those that do accept Medicaid make up for it on other patients. It is just the way it is, but doing away with Medicaid would cause a nightmare of unimagined proportions.

Sorry, but this bill is a positive step, and all of the effort on the part of Republicans to only look at the negative and stay completely away from the good it does will not change the reality that on balance, this bill is a positive step.

 

[Anonymous]

Sweet. I hope they raise your rates through the roof, since you'll be subsidizing me. Thanks, skippy.

Good grief. It's amazing how utterly clueless the right wing foot soldiers actually are. It's the charge of the lightweight brigade.

Well Moose, why don't you dazzle us with your brand of brilliance?

Ever take economics in school?

 

[Anonymous]

What a steaming pile of crap. I'm sure all the physicians will just say 'screw this 200K a year job I'm just gonna go out and get one of those cushy union factory jobs that are availible in surplus everywhere I look, and not have to worry any more'.

I made the point a couple hundred pages ago that when you need a neurosurgeon I sincerely hope he or she is and has been extremely well compensated.

 

[Anonymous]

George Will's take;

Health care will not be seriously revisited for at least a generation, so the system's costliest defect -- untaxed employer-provided insurance, which entangles a high-inflation commodity, health care, with the wage system -- remains. Obama could not challenge this without adopting measures -- e.g., tax credits for individuals, enabling them to shop for their own insurance -- that empower individuals and therefore conflict with his party's agenda of spreading dependency.

On Sunday, as will happen every day for two decades, another 10,000 baby boomers became eligible for Social Security and Medicare. And Congress moved closer to piling a huge new middle-class entitlement onto the rickety structure of America's Ponzi welfare state. Congress has a one-word response to the demographic deluge and the scores of trillions of dollars of unfunded liabilities: "More."

and

As America's teetering tower of unkeepable promises grows, so does the weight of government, in taxes and mandates that limit investments and discourage job creation. America's dynamism, and hence upward social mobility, will slow, as the economy becomes what the party of government wants it to be -- increasingly dependent on government-created demand.

Promoting dependency is the Democratic Party's vocation. The party knows that almost all entitlements are forever, and those that are not -- e.g., the lifetime eligibility for welfare, repealed in 1996 -- are not for the middle class. Democrats believe, plausibly, that middle-class entitlements are instantly addictive and, because there is no known detoxification, that class, when facing future choices between trimming entitlements or increasing taxes, will choose the latter. The taxes will disproportionately burden high earners, thereby tightening the noose of society's dependency on government for investments and job creation.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/22/AR2010032201528.html


I'll give the Obama Administration credit for keeping things interesting.

 

[CycloErgoSum]

The phrase 'disproportionately burdens high income earners' is so deeply and bitterly ironic it defies explication.

The only thing disproportionate about high income earners is their high income!

Do all high income earners 'earn' their keep? Everyone knows the highest income earners do the least amount of work.

They don't even bother to defend their privileges - they have aspirational wannabe's do that for them; you know the kind, they're the sorry ones who defend the outrageously rich because they hope to one day be outrageously rich themselves!

As for the Health Bill, to paraphrase that paragon of political virtue, the former secretary of defense and all-round Francis of Assisi dead-ringer, Donald Rumsfeld, the sky is falling, the sky is falling!

C'mon, admit it, you reason you don't think it will work (or that poor people deserve health care) is you don't like it.

Does Sarah Palin make you horny? Do you evacuate your bowels when someone says the bogeyword: S O C I A L I S M ? Are you ambivalent about your flag because its colours are R E D, white and blue? Are you freaked out by your proximity to R U S S I A and C U B A? Are you troubled because your biggest anti C O M M U N I S T crusader was a crossdresser?

You yanks crack me up!

 

[Moose McKnuckles]

Well Moose, why don't you dazzle us with your brand of brilliance?

Ever take economics in school?

I'm not saying I'm brilliant, but I recognize stupid when I see it.

And yes, I did take economics in school. Both undergrad and grad. Which is one reason why I laugh at your comments.

 

[fatandfast]

curious to what the correct economic term is for something you need no matter how much it costs(police,fire,emt,courts,schools) I left health care out because we don't do that yet. Should only high income earners have a street sweeper or trash pick up?

 

[patricknd]

The bill will increase Medicaid reimbursement rates, but I do understand the problem there. It really is tough for a doctor to accept low payment for services, but many are still willing to do that. However, those that do accept Medicaid make up for it on other patients. It is just the way it is, but doing away with Medicaid would cause a nightmare of unimagined proportions.

Sorry, but this bill is a positive step, and all of the effort on the part of Republicans to only look at the negative and stay completely away from the good it does will not change the reality that on balance, this bill is a positive step.

they're raising medicaid to bring it closer to medicare but it's still too far below what insurance companies cover. the sad fact is that one of the reasons i'm alive to write this is because i had very good doctors, and they don't do medicaid.

 

[Moose McKnuckles]

curious to what the correct economic term is for something you need no matter how much it costs(police,fire,emt,courts,schools) I left health care out because we don't do that yet. Should only high income earners have a street sweeper or trash pick up?

Everyone's price inelastic with respect to those goods. No matter what they cost, we have to pay it. No substitutes exist, and if they did, they'd likely cost far more.

History is littered with examples of what happens when income inequality reaches astronomic proportions. You'd think by now, the right wing in this country would have picked up on this, but their sense of history seems to be on par with the WWI generals who didn't pay an iota of attention to the US Civil War.

 

[buckwheat]

The phrase 'disproportionately burdens high income earners' is so deeply and bitterly ironic it defies explication.

The only thing disproportionate about high income earners is their high income!

Do all high income earners 'earn' their keep? Everyone knows the highest income earners do the least amount of work.

They don't even bother to defend their privileges - they have aspirational wannabe's do that for them; you know the kind, they're the sorry ones who defend the outrageously rich because they hope to one day be outrageously rich themselves!

As for the Health Bill, to paraphrase that paragon of political virtue, the former secretary of defense and all-round Francis of Assisi dead-ringer, Donald Rumsfeld, the sky is falling, the sky is falling!

C'mon, admit it, you reason you don't think it will work (or that poor people deserve health care) is you don't like it.

Does Sarah Palin make you horny? Do you evacuate your bowels when someone says the bogeyword: S O C I A L I S M ? Are you ambivalent about your flag because its colours are R E D, white and blue? Are you freaked out by your proximity to R U S S I A and C U B A? Are you troubled because your biggest anti C O M M U N I S T crusader was a crossdresser?

You yanks crack me up!

C'mon, all of us aren't nuts. Nice post. We do have some bright people on here.

I was going to highlight some of what you said, but everything in your post is a body blow.

Be careful or Scott will remind about how he is always working while piling up the posts in here.

Good job and that initial sentence of Will's is so unhinged it defies belief. These people will shamelessly say anything.

 

[buckwheat]

they're raising medicaid to bring it closer to medicare but it's still too far below what insurance companies cover. the sad fact is that one of the reasons i'm alive to write this is because i had very good doctors, and they don't do medicaid.

I'm glad you're alive but I really don't trust your opinion on what makes a good or bad doctor.

Bad doctors "do" Medicaid, Good doctors don't.

Pretty silly.

 

[patricknd]

I'm glad you're alive but I really don't trust your opinion on what makes a good or bad doctor.

Bad doctors "do" Medicaid, Good doctors don't.

Pretty silly.

it's not that bad doctors "do" it and good doctors don't, the fact is that a lot of doctors don't accept medicaid. if you live in a large metropolitan area it's not as big a problem to find good care, but that's not the case for many people.

 

[Anonymous]

I have a simple policy. If someone wants to fight with me then I have no problem fighting; it's good practice. I also don't mind taking things to the gutter. Cash wants to fight with me. He has been at it for a couple months now.

I don't particularly want to fight with you...not at all...but whining stupidity can be commented on...and you certainly do alot of it bud...as for me being an idiot and you throwing my job into it via being a mailman...well, not much to say on that....

 

[Moose McKnuckles]

I don't particularly want to fight with you...not at all...but whining stupidity can be commented on...and you certainly do alot of it bud...as for me being an idiot and you throwing my job into it via being a mailman...well, not much to say on that....

Your argument with BroDeal is interrupting my own argument with Scott SoCal so I would urge you both to cease disturbing our debate of matters critical to the security and well-being of our nation.

Thanks.

Seriously, folks, let's cool off the rhetoric. Nobody wins internet fights.

 

[BroDeal]

I don't particularly want to fight with you...not at all...but whining stupidity can be commented on...and you certainly do alot of it bud...as for me being an idiot and you throwing my job into it via being a mailman...well, not much to say on that....

I am sorry that you think people upset at being discriminated against because of the color of their skin is stupid whining. Complain about it at your next Klan meeting, Francis.

 

[Oncearunner8]

Well then FUCK YOU too then. Your loss, my massive economic gain for have 1.6 billion more people to sell stuff to. Oh and I can speak their language.

and in 15 odd years when the charade of 'Chinese Socialism' is replaced by hungry Capitalism with democratic elections, what will your reaction then be? Probably 'Oh ****. My country is a rotting corpse that has been expolited and left with nothing'

[your pathetic attempt at irony was not lost on me, however, you seem to have leaned nothing from leaving your town, so maybe you shoulda stayed there]

That is cute. Am I supposed to be impressed that you speak their language?

 

[Anonymous]

I am sorry that you think people upset at being discriminated against because of the color of their skin is stupid whining. Complain about at your next Klan meeting, Francis.

I love it...yeah, will tell all the guys at our big AA klan rally here in vermont just that...! your logic is awesome....I hope you find some justice my friend...

 

[Anonymous]

Your argument with BroDeal is interrupting my own argument with Scott SoCal so I would urge you both to cease disturbing our debate of matters critical to the security and well-being of our nation.

Thanks.

Seriously, folks, let's cool off the rhetoric. Nobody wins internet fights.

by all means Moose, let me get outta the way...lol...I know all about socal scott...he's a mean lean right wing machine....

 

[Anonymous]

I am sorry that you think people upset at being discriminated against because of the color of their skin is stupid whining. Complain about at your next Klan meeting, Francis.

Bro...perhaps you could find a dermatologist who might be able to put some darker pigment injections into you...things might get better! just trying to help you out Bro...

 

[BroDeal]

Bro...perhaps you could find a dermatologist who might be able to put some darker pigment injections into you...things might get better! just trying to help you out Bro...

I tried that. My employees were scared by the shotgun.