Health Care Reform - the morning after

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Re: Health Care Reform - the morning after

Postby justdrew » Thu Apr 01, 2010 6:22 pm

Simulist wrote:
justdrew wrote:more lying republicans. it's all they ever do, lie lie lie... They've lived their lies so long they've damaged their brains if you ask me.


Yes, the Republicans are indeed lying bastards. Good thing the Democrats almost never lie, or someone might be tempted to think both parties are lying sacks of shit.

Okay, one party is a bigger sack of shit — but unless someone just has a deranged craving for sacks full of shit, why bother with either of them?


because it's our country and it's all we've got and revolution isn't an option. Therefore correct what is correctable. Not saying I love much of the crap they do, but it's a night and day difference compared to republicans. Bear in mind they have no choice but to represent the wishes of a deeply propagandized populace that will not be lead by it's politicians, only by clowns on tv and radio, so that's what they have to work with. The electorate is as much a problem as the officials.

Check out this interesting demographic analysis:
"The Democrats Are Doomed," or How A ‘Big Tent’ Can Be Too Big
The main doom here comes from the theory that current age/view breakdown will continue and that as people age their views will change to continue being in conformity to how it's currently skewed. That may not be the case, and indeed had better not be the case...
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Re: Health Care Reform - the morning after

Postby Simulist » Thu Apr 01, 2010 6:38 pm

justdrew wrote:
Simulist wrote:
justdrew wrote:more lying republicans. it's all they ever do, lie lie lie... They've lived their lies so long they've damaged their brains if you ask me.


Yes, the Republicans are indeed lying bastards. Good thing the Democrats almost never lie, or someone might be tempted to think both parties are lying sacks of shit.

Okay, one party is a bigger sack of shit — but unless someone just has a deranged craving for sacks full of shit, why bother with either of them?


because it's our country and it's all we've got and revolution isn't an option.

That is perhaps the most common — and stupid — argument on this ever uttered.

The current system survives only because the brainwashed masses actually believe the twaddle you just wrote, which is reinforced 24/7 by the corporate media — not because it's true, but because it works. For them.

If crap like that were no longer tolerated in political discourse — because, you know, it is crap — the current system would die the natural death it so richly deserves.

No "revolution" necessary.
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Re: Health Care Reform - the morning after

Postby justdrew » Thu Apr 01, 2010 7:14 pm

Simulist wrote:
justdrew wrote:
Simulist wrote:
justdrew wrote:more lying republicans. it's all they ever do, lie lie lie... They've lived their lies so long they've damaged their brains if you ask me.


Yes, the Republicans are indeed lying bastards. Good thing the Democrats almost never lie, or someone might be tempted to think both parties are lying sacks of shit.

Okay, one party is a bigger sack of shit — but unless someone just has a deranged craving for sacks full of shit, why bother with either of them?


because it's our country and it's all we've got and revolution isn't an option.

That is perhaps the most common — and stupid — argument on this ever uttered.

The current system survives only because the brainwashed masses actually believe the twaddle you just wrote, which is reinforced 24/7 by the corporate media — not because it's true, but because it works. For them.

If crap like that were no longer tolerated in political discourse — because, you know, it is crap — the current system would die the natural death it so richly deserves.

No "revolution" necessary.


so what's your plan then? Let's see, the corporate brain-washers... Feed, house, clothe, heal, entertain and entrain, 24 by 7 by 365... and for the most part, who works in these corporations enabling us all to live? "We the People" do. I really don't see how you think this circle, mostly vicious but part virtuous, is going to be replaced by "something else" overnight - it's taken hundreds of years for this current structure to evolve and the masses are very aware they they owe everything to it, they're not about to just drop it. There's lots of good trends developing that move us away from "Borg-America" - Things could yet work out. Distributed sustainable people-owned and operated energy-manufacturing-food systems for example. Everything becomes a hand-made artifact.
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Re: Health Care Reform - the morning after

Postby Simulist » Thu Apr 01, 2010 7:56 pm

justdrew wrote:so what's your plan then?


That's like handing someone an intricately tangled mess of yarn the cat got to, and saying, "So, what's your plan?"

If you must, here's "the plan." Give up on the old ball of yarn — clearly, it's a lost cause — and, if you still need one, go get a new one! (And, for God's sake, stop listening to the people who tell you the old one is worth salvaging. It isn't.)

Until you do, that sweater you wanted to knit is just a pipe dream.

The Democrats and the Republicans are totally tangled together in money — money from the same sources. (That fact alone should tell you everything you need to know.)
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Re: Health Care Reform - the morning after

Postby Nordic » Thu Apr 01, 2010 8:37 pm

Simulist wrote:
justdrew wrote:so what's your plan then?


That's like handing someone an intricately tangled mess of yarn the cat got to, and saying, "So, what's your plan?"

If you must, here's "the plan." Give up on the old ball of yarn — clearly, it's a lost cause — and, if you still need one, go get a new one! (And, for God's sake, stop listening to the people who tell you the old one is worth salvaging. It isn't.)

Until you do, that sweater you wanted to knit is just a pipe dream.

The Democrats and the Republicans are totally tangled together in money — money from the same sources. (That fact alone should tell you everything you need to know.)



Totally agree, the "so what's your plan" people are the same ones who say "well I guess you'd rather have President McCain!" and that kind of nonsense. Lately they say "President Palin" instead.

Or now they'll say "Hope you enjoy President Romney".

Anyone who thinks that there's an actual difference between the two parties simply hasn't been paying attention and/or is a swallower of the bait.

It's like somebody repainted a few rooms in the Titanic and called it progress.
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Re: Health Care Reform - the morning after

Postby justdrew » Thu Apr 01, 2010 8:59 pm

Simulist wrote:
justdrew wrote:so what's your plan then?


That's like handing someone an intricately tangled mess of yarn the cat got to, and saying, "So, what's your plan?"

If you must, here's "the plan." Give up on the old ball of yarn — clearly, it's a lost cause — and, if you still need one, go get a new one! (And, for God's sake, stop listening to the people who tell you the old one is worth salvaging. It isn't.)

Until you do, that sweater you wanted to knit is just a pipe dream.

The Democrats and the Republicans are totally tangled together in money — money from the same sources. (That fact alone should tell you everything you need to know.)


to one extent or another we're ALL tangled in that same money.

it's not just about campaign monies either, the Corps hold a sledgehammer over the entire economy as we've seen the last couple years.

I'm all for eliminating corporate 'personhood'

I'm also in favor of finding a way to prevent corps from spending their profits on anything other than R&D, dividends, reserves. This spending of Corp money for generalized PR (propaganda) has to stop. If the Koch Industries people want to spend money on the bullshit they've been pulling, let them spend their personal money, not what they're doing now, which amounts to getting the sheep to pay for their own castration by raising prices to pay for activities unrelated to providing the service/product.

Entities like Koch Industries, Scaife, Murdock OWN the republican party, lock stock and barrel. The democrats are not so completely owned, and where there are local party machines that are so owned and/or candidates that are, they can be taken out in primaries.

I'd also like to see some reform in other areas, like say, a more proportional Senate, two senators for North Dakota AND California is bullshit.

Anyway, just from a practical standpoint, we've got to work with where things are, trying to be the "hundredth monkey" isn't getting the job done. (and it turns out that ol' saw is BS anyway)

by, "what's the plan" I'm just trying to ask: Are you saying there should be MORE political parties or NO political parties or what? If more, why wouldn't the same kind of 'capture' happen to them too? They're still going to have to form majority/minority coalitions in congress.

anyway, if a viable N-th Party materializes I'll be happy to consider their candidates. Instant run-off voting would be a great reform to push for...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant_run-off_voting
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Re: Health Care Reform - the morning after

Postby Simulist » Thu Apr 01, 2010 9:12 pm

justdrew wrote:by, "what's the plan" I'm just trying to ask: Are you saying there should be MORE political parties or NO political parties or what?

Do you have a reading comprehension problem?

It's crystal clear what I'm saying.
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Re: Health Care Reform - the morning after

Postby Simulist » Thu Apr 01, 2010 9:13 pm

Nordic wrote:It's like somebody repainted a few rooms in the Titanic and called it progress.

Yeah, it is.
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Re: Health Care Reform - the morning after

Postby 23 » Thu Apr 01, 2010 10:09 pm

Did someone ask for a plan?

Here's one.

You won't get anywhere without significant electoral reform to first level the playing field.

The one-party-masquerading-as-two won't make that happen. They're the beneficiaries of the current system. Why should they give up their upper hand?

Only a coalition of the politically disenfranchised can make that happen.

http://blogs.browardpalmbeach.com/juice ... t_lead.php
Reform Event: Tea Party, Libertarians, and Greens Get in Bed Together

Cast your mind back to your seventh-grade Civics class, when Mrs. Brown drew that sprawling chart on the blackboard detailing the branches of government. That's when you first found out you had something like a moral duty, as a citizen of this great land of America, to go to the polls and cast your vote. You heard that your vote would be fairly counted. And that, my dears, is the meaning of representative democracy.

But for activists like Delray Beach resident Jayne King, who is cochair of the Palm Beach County Green Party, that old lesson may look like one-part hogwash and two-parts wishful thinking.


That's why King has banded together with some strange bedfellows: She says that the Electoral Reform event she's helping to organize for this Saturday has support from a whole spectrum of political activists.

Sure, members of the Green Party and the ACLU will show up -- you expected that, right? But so, King says, will Tea Party activists, Libertarians, Independents, and even a few Republicans. The common thread is that all agree that major reforms are due in our highly compromised elections system.

People are disenfranchised. Third- and fourth-party candidates are discouraged from running. The public is apathetic about voting. Lobbyists exert undue influence. And our state Legislature is stocked with millionaires who don't represent the will of the common people.

King says that Saturday's event, which will take place from 3:30 to 6 p.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Boca Raton, will host speakers on the subject of electoral disenfranchisement, followed by break-out groups, to come up with a "white paper" organizers will distribute to our elected officials.

The event is the "kickoff," King says, for a series designed to get the public reinterested in its old civics lessons. Saturday's speakers will include Robert Watson, a Lynne University American Studies professor who directs the nonprofit think tank Think Act Lead; Deland-based policy analyst Michael Arth, who is running for governor in 2010 (he actually had a day named after him in Volusia County); and Fred Markham of the Space Coast Progressive Alliance. They all to some degree think our Florida elections system is in the crapper.

In the future, the group will focus on at least ten areas of electoral reform, including increased public financing for elections and instant runoff voting, where voters rank their choices for a given post.

"The system itself needs to be changed," King says. "We want to make it a lot easier for the average person to get on the ballot."
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Re: Health Care Reform - the morning after

Postby Luther Blissett » Fri Mar 10, 2017 2:47 pm

California to weigh single-payer, universal health care plan

SACRAMENTO — In a surprise move made in response to President Donald Trump’s push to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, two California lawmakers Friday introduced legislation to replace private medical insurance with a government health care system covering all 38 million Californians — including its undocumented residents.

“We’ve reached this pivotal moment and I thought to myself: ‘Look, now more than ever is the time to talk about universal health care,’” one of Senate Bill 562’s authors, Sen. Ricardo Lara, D-Bell Gardens, said in an interview Friday.

The Healthy California Act, co-authored by Sen. Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, was submitted just before the deadline for new legislation. It doesn’t yet offer many specifics other than the lawmakers’ intent: to create a so-called single-payer system that would pay for coverage for everyone.

Proponents argue that single-payer systems make health care more affordable and efficient because they eliminate the need for reams of paperwork, but opponents say they raise taxpayer costs and give government too much power.

Medicare, the federally funded health coverage for the elderly, is often held up as a model of what a single-payer system might look like.

The idea has periodically gained traction in the Golden State and elsewhere in the country. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders — who nearly toppled Democrat Hillary Clinton during last year’s presidential primary — widened its popular appeal on the left.

But while other developed nations have achieved universal coverage through single-payer plans, one has yet to get off the ground anywhere in the U.S.

Colorado voters overwhelmingly rejected a similar proposal last fall amid widespread concerns about the cost. Perhaps the best-known effort to create a single-payer plan was in Vermont, but it failed in 2014 after the state couldn’t figure out how to finance it.

The California Nurses Association is backing SB 562, which insurers will no doubt lobby heavily to kill.

Proponents argue that such plans are not as costly as they appear because new taxes would eliminate the soaring costs of insurance premiums. Boosters also contend that huge savings would come from eliminating the growing mountain of administrative costs — and high profits — of insurance companies.

“Quite frankly, we have to cut out the insurance company waste and duplication,” Lara said.

Anna Johnson, whose school-age daughter has a chronic heart condition, put her feelings about insurers more bluntly:

“Cut them out. They’re not good at it. They cause families like ours headaches. Just cut them out.”

Johnson, of Alameda, said she is deeply worried about the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, given the medical needs and pre-existing conditions of her daughter and others like her. Her only comfort in the wake of Trump’s election, she said, was the thought that state lawmakers would propose a single-payer plan.

But one longtime critic of single-payer plans, who moved to California from Canada in the early 1990s, said the national health care system in her country has led to increasingly long waits to see a doctor — and has driven many Canadians to come to the U.S. for medical treatment.

“It’s been a disaster in countries like Canada,” said Sally Pipes, president and CEO of the conservative Pacific Research Institute, based in San Francisco.

But data this week related to the stunning impact of the 2010 health care law, better known as Obamacare, may help single-payer advocates like Atkins and Lara.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that California’s uninsured rate dropped from 17 percent in 2013 to 7.1 percent in 2016, a record low for the state. The national uninsured rate is at an all-time low of 8.8 percent, down from 14.4 percent in 2013.

“In light of threats to the Affordable Care Act,” Atkins said in a prepared statement, “it’s important that we are looking at all options to continue to expand and maintain access to health care. The Healthy California Act is an essential part of that conversation.”

The senators said in a statement that their vision of the bill will be outlined “in the weeks ahead with the people of California.’’

As a starting point, they cite Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order aimed at beginning the process of dismantling Obamacare. The order states that the federal government should “provide greater flexibility to states and cooperate with them in implementing health care programs.”

Late Thursday night, a spokesman for Gov. Jerry Brown declined to comment on the pending legislation.

One big issue is that the state relies on about $22 billion in federal funding annually to cover private insurance subsidies linked to plans purchased through the state’s health insurance exchange. It also pays for a provision of the law that greatly expanded Medicaid — a health care program for the poor (called Medi-Cal in this state) that is paid for by states and the federal government — to include adults without dependent children. What would happen to those funds is unclear.

But Brown, who decades ago supported switching to a single-payer system, may be able to lean on public opinion for support for a single-payer system.

A Pew Research report last month showed that 60 percent of Americans — up from 51 percent last year — say the government should be responsible for ensuring health care coverage for all Americans, compared with 38 percent who say it should not be the government’s responsibility.

The belief that the government should shoulder that responsibility has particularly spiked among low- and middle-income Republicans, the report said.

Currently, the Pew researchers found, 52 percent of Republicans with family incomes below $30,000 say the federal government has a responsibility to ensure health coverage for all, up from 31 percent last year.

Making the switch to a single-payer system would involve countless moving parts, from negotiating with doctors and hospitals to making major changes in the tax code, said Lawrence Baker, a professor of health research and policy at Stanford.

“While there are certainly ways that single-payer plans can be successful,” Baker said, “there would be lots of things that would have to be worked out.”

Lara is no stranger to health care legislation, especially on behalf of the state’s poor and undocumented.

In 2015, Brown signed into law the senator’s Health4All Kids bill, which allocates almost $280 million in the coming fiscal year to cover health care costs for 185,000 undocumented California children up to age 18.

Last year, Brown also signed a Lara bill that would have allowed undocumented Californians to buy insurance through Covered California, the state’s health insurance exchange, regardless of their immigration status. The legislation would have cost taxpayers little or nothing because the undocumented wouldn’t have been entitled to any government subsidies, and the state filed for a federal waiver under the Affordable Care Act seeking to implement it. But last month, after it was delayed by the Trump administration, Lara withdrew the waiver request.

Anthony Wright, executive director of the nonprofit advocacy group Health Access California, said that his group has supported a number of efforts to put in place a single-payer health care system in California. That included Proposition 186, which voters rejected overwhelmingly in 1994, as well as former state Sen. Sheila Kuehl’s single-payer bills that passed the Legislature in 2006 and 2008 but were vetoed by then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Wright’s group also backed a 2012 push for a single-payer health care system by former state Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco.

While he said he was aware of talk surrounding the new bill, he is waiting to see more details.

“California’s health care system is stronger when everyone is included,” Wright said, “and we first need to fight to make sure Congress doesn’t take California further from that goal.’’
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Re: Health Care Reform - the morning after

Postby 82_28 » Fri Mar 10, 2017 4:27 pm

The "Left Coast" is going whole hog on just about everything in its power. I like it. Time for a new country along with BC called Cascadia. Of course Washington and Oregon would have lop off their eastern sides.
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Re: Health Care Reform - the morning after

Postby DrEvil » Fri Mar 10, 2017 5:12 pm

GATTACA ahead:

New bill would let companies force workers to get genetic tests, share results

Under guise of “voluntary” wellness programs, employees’ genetics could be exposed.
Beth Mole - 3/10/2017, 6:14 PM

It’s hard to imagine a more sensitive type of personal information than your own genetic blueprints. With varying degrees of accuracy, the four-base code can reveal bits of your family’s past, explain some of your current traits and health, and may provide a glimpse into your future with possible conditions and health problems you could face. And that information doesn’t just apply to you but potentially your blood relatives, too.

Most people would likely want to keep the results of genetic tests highly guarded—if they want their genetic code deciphered at all. But, as STAT reports, a new bill that is quietly moving through the House would allow companies to strong-arm their employees into taking genetic tests and then sharing that data with unregulated third parties as well as the employer. Employees that resist could face penalties of thousands of dollars.

In the past, such personal information has been protected by a law called GINA, the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act, which shields people from DNA-based discrimination. But the new bill, HR 1313, gets around this by allowing genetic testing to be part of company wellness programs.

Company wellness programs, which often involve filling out health surveys and undergoing screenings, are pitched as a way to improve employee health and reduce overall health costs. But, research has shown that they have little effect on employee health and may actually end up costing companies. Still, they may survive as a way to push healthcare costs onto employees. As Ars has reported before, companies use financial incentives to get employees to participate in these wellness programs. Under the ACA, these incentives can include all sorts of rewards and compensations. For instance, people who don’t want to participate can pay up to 60 percent more on employer-sponsored insurance premiums. That can easily amount to thousands of dollars each year.

Despite the heavy financial pressure, employee participation is still considered voluntary. Under HR 1313, GINA wouldn’t apply to anything voluntarily collected through wellness programs, and companies would have access to genetic data. That information would be stripped of identifiers, but in small companies, it could be fairly easy to match certain genetic profiles to specific employees.

Moreover, employers tend to hire third parties to collect and manage health data. These companies are not heavily regulated and can review genetic and other health data with identifiers. Some of the companies even sell health information to advertisers, STAT notes.

Civil rights and genetic privacy advocates strongly opposed the bill. In a press release, Nancy Cox, PhD, president of the American Society of Human Genetics said:

“We urge the Committee not to move forward with consideration of this bill. As longtime advocates of genetic privacy, we instead encourage the Committee to pursue ways to foster workplace wellness and employee health without infringing upon the civil rights afforded by [Americans with Disabilities Act] and GINA.”


On Wednesday, the House Education and the Workforce Committee approved HR 1313 along party lines, with 22 Republicans supporting and 17 Democrats opposing the bill.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/03 ... comments=1
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Re: Health Care Reform - the morning after

Postby Iamwhomiam » Fri Mar 10, 2017 10:53 pm

What the hell does 'privacy' mean anymore?
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Re: Health Care Reform - the morning after

Postby DrEvil » Sat Mar 11, 2017 12:18 am

It makes sense if you think of it in terms of newspeak.
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Re: Health Care Reform - the morning after

Postby Iamwhomiam » Thu May 11, 2017 10:50 pm

Hard to believe they hadn't set a time limit for comments. You'll know what I mean if you watch this video of a constituent of Rep. Tom MacArthur giving him a good piece of his mind for sponsoring the new healthcare bill that passed into law.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/video/constituent-loses-temper-rep-tom-macarthur-health-care-47338603
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