2016 USA Presidential election thread II: And. Here. We. Go!

[arus2001]

Honestly, I'm going to enjoy the salt regardless of who wins. You better believe the tears will drown out the internet for a few weeks regardless of it being Trump or Hillary that loses.

Already have an old classmate on FB predicting we're going into WWIII with Russia and that Hillary is the most unfit person to run for office ever because emails. Seriously makes me wonder what's gone on the 16-some years I haven't seen him to make him so... dumb.

[Aerin]

So I haven't finished reading this book yet, but here are some notes I have so far for those who are interested. Wall of text, but a lot of stuff talked about.

[Back in 2008] The individual market was in deeper trouble. In fact, it was in danger of drying up completely. In states such as Mary Fowler's* Nevada, where insurers were allowed to reject applicants who had preexisting conditions or charge them high prices, people were increasingly going uninsured. Worse, a few states, like New York, had done what Obama was proposing [in early 2008]: force insurers not to discriminate but without an accompanying mandate that everyone had to buy insurance. As a result, insurers in New York - fearful of the adverse selection dynamic, in which only the sick would buy policies - had jacked up premiums to $15,000 to $25,000 a year for families of four. The prices were so out of reach that the market had dwindled almost to extinction.

*Mary Fowler was a then 62 year old woman living in Henderson, Nevada. She contracted hepatitis C through a contaminated blood transfusion given to her during the birth of her son. Her and her husband were considering a liver transplant, so she was put into a clinical trial testing what was thought to be a miracle drug. It actually worked and by the time she moved to Nevada she had been symptom free for 7 years. But WellPoint, the only insurer she could find selling insurance on the individual market in Nevada, didn't care. She had a "preexisting condition" and was rejected.

[Also in early 2008] Ben Bernanke (chairman of the Federal Reserve Board) proceeded with a litany of the threat posed by healthcare's skyrocketing costs; government spending just for Medicare and Medicaid, he pointed out, would consume half of the entire federal budget by 2050 if changes weren't made, up from an already-ruinous 25 percent in 2008.

... midway through [Jon Kingsdale's] appearance he echoed Orszag's political science lesson about spreading coverage being a lot easier than tackling costs: "I think politically ... which is something you have to think a lot about, that we made the right choice. We went for coverage, frankly, before we went for specific cost containment. Though there is broad agreement on the need for containment, any particular cost containment idea means reducing revenue flow to somebody, and there is always stronger opposition from even a smaller party than there is broad depth of broad support. So I think that's the right order ... So we're now wrestling with cost containment."

The McCain answer to the healthcare crisis wasn't the Romneycare solution created by the Republican opponent he had just vanquished in the primaries. Instead, McCain took half of the original Heritage Foundation solution - not the mandate, but the elimination of the tax exemption given to everyone who got health insurance from an employer. With the billions in extra taxes that this would yield every year McCain promised to provide a $5,000 voucher for every family to buy its own health insurance from the incumbent insurers. Now everyone would have the cost-cutting incentive they lacked when their employers bought them insurance. They would become savvy, hard-bargaining customers in the healthcare marketplace because they would have "skin in the game," as proponents of the plan put it. And with that $5,000 voucher, everyone could go into the market.

To the extent that McCain's plan was understood by voters at all - and that was questionable, given how McCain de-emphasized healthcare on the stump - it was a loser on multiple counts. It portended exactly the kind of mass disruption that people instinctively feared because everyone with a job might lose their insurance. It constituted a tax increase for those Americans for whom the current tax exemption might be worth more than a $5,000 per family voucher. It still put people with preexisting conditions at the mercy of insurance companies. And it put everyone up against the challenge of trying to buy insurance using a voucher that was not likely to cover the full cost.

The politics, recalled [Frank] Luntz (a pollster who had helped New Gingrich fashion the "Contract with America" platform to oppose President Bill Clinton), were "pretty clear." It was about both stopping anything the new president championed and also stopping another big-government program. No one mentioned that Obama was talking about a healthcare plan like the one Romney, and Nixon before him, had espoused.

Among the members of the House who dined with Luntz and Gingrich while the bands played on at the inaugural balls were then-minority leader Eric Cantor and then-budget committee chair Paul Ryan. On the Senate side Mitch McConnell was not there, but several of his top deputies were, including Tennessee's Bob Corker and John Kyl of Arizona, who as minority whip ranked just below McConnell.

To Luntz, the bipartisan approach to healthcare being entertained by some Republicans was just talk - a show destined to have a short run before it got the hook. "We knew some guys like [Chuck] Grassley were talking about working with the Dems," recalled Luntz. "The sense was that we'd let them play along but then come up with the arguments and polling that would get them to drop out."

One potentially devastating cut [in revenue to PhRMA] involved a reform long proposed by Democrats and resisted by Republicans that would allow Medicare to negotiate the prices it paid for prescription drugs. In what had become an enduring monument to the lobbying power of the drug companies, in 2003 Congress had prohibited Medicare, the world's largest drug buyer, from negotiating prices the way insurance companies were allowed to. Instead the government had to pay 106 percent of what the drugmakers reported to them was their "average wholesale price," a straitjacket that cost taxpayers $40 billion a year. PhRMA's highest priority, according to [Billy] Tauzin, was preserving that law, even if it meant giving back some money to the federal government through discounts related to other Medicare and Medicaid payments.

A second potential killer was the perennially proposed, and perennially blocked, legislation that would allow consumers to buy drugs from Canada. Because Canada, like all other developed countries, enforced price controls on drugs, this could result in Americans buying the drugmakers' high-margin products at 30 to 50 percents off current prices.

There's a lot more stuff like this if you can believe it. Like that 75% of America's ~5700 hospitals are officially nonprofits. Despite typically having the same operating profit margins as the for-profits.

[Krandor]

I always feel lucky as hell me and the fam are covered by TriCare when I hear about some of the ridiculous deductibles everybody else deals with.

Praise be to TriCare.

I haven't need any "serious" medical care since I got in, but man it is fucking great being able to grab prescriptions or get some dental done and not having to worry about the price.

[Gryffes]

Y'all motherfuckers need some universal health care.

[thetruepandagod]

Y'all motherfuckers need some universal health care.

I won't fall for your trickery you filthy anglo.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/heal...aking-arm.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...ge-Canada.html

[kuronosan]

Because outliers are always admissible as gospel truth.

[Uzor]

I'm sure there's never been any bad things happening in privatized for-profit hospitals in the states. Surely USA is the pinnacle of perfect healthcare.

[kuronosan]

It's just a tired argument. Wait times have nothing to do with the payment system and everything to do with resources.

The hospital bed thing above? It happens here, even with people who are insured.

Also, the UK doesn't exactly have the best doctors itself. In the other article it talks about how a poor guy was criminally left with a crippled arm... Except the reasons they couldn't operate were perfectly legit. The staff dropping the ball and not squeezing him in again isn't their fault.

You all act surprised that sick people - surprise - use hospitals. Limited numbers of beds means limited space. Filled schedules and lack of skilled personnel means appointments get scheduled ahead of time... Months.

And yes, if a patient isn't ready to be operated on because it's a health risk, they'll be rescheduled.

Surprise! Incompetence is everywhere!

[thetruepandagod]

I'm sure there's never been any bad things happening in privatized for-profit hospitals in the states. Surely USA is the pinnacle of perfect healthcare.

Well, it's definitely the pinnacle in many ways.

[Day]

A few vids on the last oversight committee meeting on the rising premium costs of the ACA.

TL;DW none of these motherfuckers use the marketplace. Defendants of ACA in almost full denial of a problem. Congress grills them with probably no results. Interesting still.

Spoiler: show

Bonus, My fave Epipen video, Mulvaney goes off:

[kuronosan]

Ironic, since they just pushed for legislation allowing for exchanges to increase prices.

[thetruepandagod]

IT BEGINS!
http://www.wfaa.com/news/politics/ea...exas/340992867

http://www.iamatexan.com/2016/10/24/...es-to-clinton/

Rigged soros voting machines coming to a voting center near you

[DrClout]

A few vids on the last oversight committee meeting on the rising premium costs of the ACA.

TL;DW none of these motherfuckers use the marketplace. Defendants of ACA in almost full denial of a problem. Congress grills them with probably no results. Interesting still.

Spoiler: show

Bonus, My fave Epipen video, Mulvaney goes off:

Anything ACA interests me personally as I'm in that group in the middle of damned if I do and damned if I don't. The past 2 tax seasons I've been speaking with tax accessors and been working out that it'd cost me less overall to take the tax penalty than the coverage.

Sent from my SM-G925T using Tapatalk

[Minions]

IT BEGINS!
http://www.wfaa.com/news/politics/ea...exas/340992867

http://www.iamatexan.com/2016/10/24/...es-to-clinton/

Rigged soros voting machines coming to a voting center near you

I tested this and it didn't happen to me. I just voted less than an hour ago. (Of course I backed back out and changed to who I actually wanted to vote for before casting my ballot). Wonder what areas are affected, or if someone is just stirring shit up and people are reposting it.

[Krandor]

If you're gonna rig the vote, you wouldn't do it in a way that the person voting would actually notice.

[archibaldcrane]

http://www.wfaa.com/mb/news/politics...exas/340992867

Just remember, Occam's razor for voter complaints about vote switching go

1) Operator error
2) Lying
999) Technical problems with the machine

[archibaldcrane]

All national polls right now have Clinton ahead - Rasmussen, IBD/TIPP, and LA times/USC all have her +1.

[Quicklet]

New Upshot/Siena poll of NC has Clinton up by 7 in NC.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2...lina-poll.html

[kuronosan]

All national polls right now have Clinton ahead - Rasmussen, IBD/TIPP, and LA times/USC all have her +1.

I R happy.

[Anoat]

Still think Trump is gonna win because young people and blacks don't vote in high numbers unless Obama is on the ballot. Meanwhile all the old whiteys will crawl out of their nursing home deathbeds to vote Republican if necessary.