Forbes: The GOP has been playing us for suckers

[jimmyjazz 45546]

Obviously, there are idiots out there, but the vast majority of those who advocate for "free" healthcare understand that the cost has to be born somehow.  The thing is, what's happening now, and where it's going, is just about as bad as things could get, outside of no healthcare.  There is a massive disconnect that doesn't exist in most countries with socialized medicine.  

I am alive because I take a medication every day or two that keeps me alive.  That medication costs $297 per month (if I take it daily), or $10 if I have the coupon.

Da fuq?  Can anybody REALLY explain that?

[Pods 7526]

31 minutes ago, FondrenRoad said:

Well, that asshole is a basketball player.  He isn't representative of all people.  Everyone has twitter.  And even he understands that "free" is tax and spend, and that doctors aren't going to be volunteers.  So it isn't actually free, especially for a guy making 5 million a year or whatever he makes.

What he and everyone else means is that both costs and payments will flow through taxation.  Many who say "free" even expect there to be a premium of some sort.  Others expect a tax line item like Medicare or SS.

JR Smith is a dumbass, even for a professional athlete. 

[Pig Bellmont 8691]

10 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

I won't pretend to know what anyone is thinking.  But anyone who would call government subsidized healthcare "free," is barely worthy of serious consideration.

 

I am resigned to the fact that government-subsidized/mandated, etc. healthcare is an inevitability if not an absolute necessity.  It's not a comment on that.

Tell me how W and his supporters pitched Medicaid prescription drug expansion for low income seniors. “Free” was bandied about quite a bit dating back to 2000. 

[TwiceHorn 31265]

5 minutes ago, Pig Bellmont said:

Tell me how W and his supporters pitched Medicaid prescription drug expansion for low income seniors. “Free” was bandied about quite a bit dating back to 2000. 

I don't recall specifics of that.  If the term free was used, it was a bad thing, just as it is in this context.

Imagine a poster on this site that advocated for free healthcare.  They would be excoriated for the terminology alone, and rightfully so.

And if the person using the term "free healthcare" or similar knows that it is at best an oversimplification, you can be quite sure that there are numerous readers that do not.

Edited July 3, 2018 by TwiceHorn

[FondrenRoad 4378]

2 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

I don't recall specifics of that.  If the term free was used, it was a bad thing, just as it is in this context.

Imagine a poster on this site that advocated for free healthcare.  They would be excoriated for the terminology alone, and rightfully so.

Well, maybe we should just remove free from the English language. I left a table out at the curb last week with a note that said "free" on it, but it isnt really free. I bought it 3 years ago with money. I'm also losing the depreciated value when I put it out on the curb. Whoever picked it up may have needed to get a taxi to take it home. That's a lot of costs. 

Soup at the soup kitchen isnt free either. I bought those cans and donated them. 

I got HBO free for a month as an addon for my cable package. But I needed to buy a cable package first so that isnt actually free either. 

In reality, free is a relative term. Always has been. It's free healthcare if you dont pay directly for it. That doesnt mean that nobody paid something for your care. It doesnt mean that you didn't pay for it yourself indirectly via taxes either. 

[TwiceHorn 31265]

Just now, FondrenRoad said:

Well, maybe we should just remove free from the English language. I left a table out at the curb last week with a note that said "free" on it, but it isnt really free. I bought it 3 years ago with money. I'm also losing the depreciated value when I put it out on the curb. Whoever picked it up may have needed to get a taxi to take it home. That's a lot of costs. 

Soup at the soup kitchen isnt free either. I bought those cans and donated them. 

I got HBO free for a month as an addon for my cable package. But I needed to buy a cable package first so that isnt actually free either. 

In reality, free is a relative term. Always has been. It's free healthcare if you dont pay directly for it. That doesnt mean that nobody paid something for your care. It doesnt mean that you didn't pay for it yourself indirectly via taxes either. 

Oh for fucks sake.

[TwiceHorn 31265]

18 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

Obviously, there are idiots out there, but the vast majority of those who advocate for "free" healthcare understand that the cost has to be born somehow.  The thing is, what's happening now, and where it's going, is just about as bad as things could get, outside of no healthcare.  There is a massive disconnect that doesn't exist in most countries with socialized medicine.  

I am alive because I take a medication every day or two that keeps me alive.  That medication costs $297 per month (if I take it daily), or $10 if I have the coupon.

Da fuq?  Can anybody REALLY explain that?

Nope.  Are the coupons easy to come by?  In some cases, the walgreen's prescription "club," forget what it's called, is cheaper than insurance copays.  Or it was, back when I had copays (which actually was before Obamacare and I have no idea if that remains true anymore).

 

Lots of pharma companies have programs where you can get otherwise expensive drugs at a fraction of "retail" simply by alleging an inability to pay.  At least some of them require no sort of proof.

[FondrenRoad 4378]

3 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

Oh for fucks sake.

Exactly. 

[TwiceHorn 31265]

6 minutes ago, FondrenRoad said:

Exactly. 

Goddammit.

[jimmyjazz 45546]

14 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

Nope.  Are the coupons easy to come by? 

The only requirements are under 65, on insurance that pays for Rx, and not on state/Federal programs like Medicare.  It could not be easier to get the coupon.

[TwiceHorn 31265]

1 minute ago, jimmyjazz said:

The only requirements are under 65, on insurance that pays for Rx, and not on state/Federal programs like Medicare.  It could not be easier to get the coupon.

So weird. Does your insurance pay it with a $20 copay?

[jimmyjazz 45546]

8 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

So weird. Does your insurance pay it with a $20 copay?

I pay $10, that's all I know.

[Mojo Hand 4580]

Isn't "free" usually understood in the context of someone else paying for it?   I just got a coupon from the dealer for a free oil change.   The meaning is that it is free to me, but the dealer is paying for the labor and materials.  I can't think of any situation where this isn't the case, unless it's something that was stolen. 

[TwiceHorn 31265]

I think we all know that there is a certain segment of the population for which paying for something or "cost,"  short of reaching into their pocket or wallet for legal tender in exchange for goods/services at the time of delivery, is an  abstraction. Deferred cost or payment, e.g. credit, or payment subsidized or made by another entity might as well not be payment at all to these folks.  It's why a good-sized chunk of the population has out-of-control credit card debt, consumer debt generally, and in many cases, student debt.

 

Certainly seems true of the government a great deal of the time, if not all the time.

 

Whether they may, on some level, understand that someone somewhere is paying for it and that it thus "costs," bandying about terms like "free healthcare" or "free tuition" renders the cost a vanishing abstraction for a decent-sized segment of the population.  I don't like it.  Get off my lawn.

[Bama Chick 28596]

Some of y’all are some pedantic motherfuckers.

[Fozzz 152]

This thread got stupid real quick. 

[troph 24562]

On 7/1/2018 at 5:30 PM, JimmyJames said:

I propose that we completely all eliminate social security payments and Medicare for the next 20 years. That will eliminate all debt. 

Then in 20 years when I turn 65 we reinstate 100 percent all social security payments and Medicare.

Think that’s selfish? Well that’s exactly what the olds are doing right now. When the country is bankrupt they will be dead and will finally have stopped fucking up this country.  And in 20 years the social security and Medicare payments that they spent won’t be around anymore because the government won’t have enough money to pay it.

Quite the legacy baby boomers. 

They earned it and trump is trying to stop socialism you know the true enemy of our country and our children is socialism not the baby boomer's unwillingness to sacrifice for the future and get this shit turned around.

Edited July 5, 2018 by troph

[Pancho 44456]

 

[Washpark 176]

Quote

 

Who lost China? This cry went up in the US after Mao Zedong’s victory in China’s civil war in 1949. It was a strange question. When did the US own China? Strange or not, this cry helped Republicans win power in 1952. It promoted the rise of Joseph McCarthy, whose politics had similarities to those of Donald Trump — above all, in the charge that traitors infest the US government. In the senator’s case, the target was the state department; for Mr Trump, it is the FBI. The question today is: who lost America? And is it lost for good?

Nobody of course owns the US, apart from Americans. Yet, for westerners and many others, the US stood for something so attractive that it seemed to be “ours” — the guarantor not just of its own freedom and prosperity, but that of hundreds of millions of others. My father, a refugee to the UK from pre-second-world-war Austria, had no doubt. The US was the bastion of democracy. It had saved Europe from falling to Nazi or communist dictatorships. As a journalist and documentary film-maker, he knew about its mistakes. But the US was not just any great power. It embodied the causes of democracy, freedom and the rule of law. This made him fiercely pro-American. I inherited this attitude.

    In the postwar world, US policy had four attractive features: it had appealing core values; it was loyal to allies who shared those values; it believed in open and competitive markets; and it underpinned those markets with institutionalised rules. This system was always incomplete and imperfect. But it was a highly original and attractive approach to the business of running the world. For those who believe humanity must transcend its petty differences, these principles were a start.

Yet today the US president appears hostile to core American values of democracy, freedom and the rule of law; he feels no loyalty to allies; he rejects open markets; and he despises international institutions. He believes that might makes right. The Chinese president Xi Jinping and Russian president Vladimir Putin have might. He admires them. German chancellor Angela Merkel and UK prime minister Theresa May are decent women trying to lead democracies. He abuses them.
 

    So why is Mr Trump in power? The answer lies with a political failure that the US might be unable to overcome. Mr Trump’s accession to power is partly an accident, but not only an accident.

The rise of China and the unanticipated impact of globalisation have profoundly affected the US view of itself and its global role. An anxiety that spreads from left to right has replaced the hubristic euphoria of the post-cold-war “unipolar moment”. The US no longer sees itself as so dominant and the world as so friendly. Mr Trump may be an outspoken protectionist. But Hillary Clinton was no defender of liberal trade. Mr Trump’s view that the rest of the world has taken the US for a ride is widely shared. In a country that has succumbed to protectionist ideas, it is not so surprising that the protectionist won. Again, once anxiety over China arrived, a nationalist was a natural choice
 

    Yet something still more important is happening. The striking feature of the US economy is that, despite its unique virtues, it has recently served the majority of its people so ill. The distribution of income is exceptionally unequal. Labour force participation rates of prime-aged adults are exceptionally low. Real median household disposable incomes are the same as they were two decades ago, while mean incomes are much higher. Uniquely, mortality rates of middle-aged white (non-Hispanic) adults have risen since 2000 in the US.

Mr Trump loves to tweet his shock over every high-profile terrorist outrage in Europe. But, in 2016, there were just 5,000 murders in the EU, a rate of one per 100,000 people (including terrorist attacks). There were 17,250 murders in the US, a rate five times greater. Mr Trump might start to worry about that.
 

    The poor state of so many Americans is in part the product of plutocratic politics: a relentless and systematic devotion to the interests of the very rich. As I have argued before, a politics of low taxes, low social spending and high inequality is sustainable in a universal suffrage democracy only with a mixture of propaganda in favour of “trickle down” economics, splitting the less well off on cultural and racial lines, ruthless gerrymandering and outright voter suppression. All this has indeed happened.

These are the politics of “pluto-populism” or of “greed and grievance”. They have been stunningly successful in making Republicans attractive to many in the white working class. The structural biases in voting are also remarkable. In the past three elections for the House of Representatives, it took 20 per cent more voters for the Democrats to win a seat than for the Republicans, on average. Republicans have also won the presidency twice in the last two decades despite losing the popular vote.
 

   Mr Trump is the logical outcome of a politics that serves the interests of the plutocracy. He gives the rich what they desire, while offering the nationalism and protectionism wanted by the Republican base. It is a brilliant (albeit unplanned) combination, embodied in a charismatic personality that offers validation to his most passionate supporters. Will Trump’s protectionism do many in his base any good? No. But, in their eyes, he is a real leader, at last.

Who lost “our” America? The American elite, especially the Republican elite. Mr Trump is the price of tax cuts for billionaires. They sowed the wind; the world is reaping the whirlwind. Should we expect the old America back? Not until someone finds a more politically successful way of meeting the needs and anxieties of ordinary people.

 

 

https://www.ft.com/content/3aea8668-88e2-11e8-bf9e-8771d5404543

 

 

[Chad Fuck 17559]

7 minutes ago, Washpark said:

 

https://www.ft.com/content/3aea8668-88e2-11e8-bf9e-8771d5404543

 

 

That's a good article.  I'm all out of rep today though.

 

[Brisketexan 104561]

44 minutes ago, Washpark said:

Mr Trump is the logical outcome of a politics that serves the interests of the plutocracy. He gives the rich what they desire, while offering the nationalism and protectionism wanted by the Republican base. It is a brilliant (albeit unplanned) combination, embodied in a charismatic personality that offers validation to his most passionate supporters. Will Trump’s protectionism do many in his base any good? No. But, in their eyes, he is a real leader, at last.

Perfect encapsulation.

[Pancho 44456]

 

[Lhorn 4885]

Wait, I thought lefties were commies and righties were Nazis?

[Gil Bang 25897]

Where the hell is Emory?

Waiting for Tahoe to deliver donuts?

[kopp0e 1135]

What's crazy to me is seeing what looks as affluent families that are struggling to the point on near breaking point, in the ratio of debt to income, "barely above water"...