The president’s welfare program for big pharma masquerading as a social program for the elderly is going to bite Republicans in the ass:
Older voters, a critical component of Republican Congressional victories for more than a decade, could end up being a major vulnerability for the party in this year’s midterm elections, according to strategists in both parties. Paradoxically, one reason is the new Medicare drug benefit, which was intended to cement their loyalty.
Older Voters at the Polls During next week’s Congressional recess, Democrats are set to begin a major new campaign to highlight what Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic leader, describes as “this disastrous Republican Medicare prescription drug plan.”
Just a bad bill since day one, and those who voted for it should get what they deserve.
capelza
My mom is 66…we talked about this whole snafu while she was out here visiting. Disgusted is the appropriate term for how she descibes it. Confusing, wasteful are other words she used.
Stormy70
The only redeeming part of the bill was the HSAs, which are already taking the insurance industry by storm. I love mine. I will no longer be penalized for staying healthy, and I can spend my health dollars the way I see fit. Why should I underwrite the cost of everyone’s gastric bypass surgery, which costs over $40,000 a pop? You want that surgery, then pay for it yourself.
Stormy70
Here’s one article on HSAs here.
Paddy O'Shea
When it comes to running the govt the Bushies have proven themselves to be grossly incompetent. Ideology and political philosophy are one thing, being lousy and corrupt managers of the public trust is quite another. I really don’t think the GOP has quite developed a proper appreciation for what is about to hit them this fall.
The irony here is that those who spent years carefully crafting the conservative revolution then turned around and handed the whole thing off to a bunch of buffoons who couldn’t have cared less.
It will be a long time before they get another chance.
Krista
pssst…you mean “desserts”, right?
Richard 23
Considering how well the plan is working out, “deserts” might be the right word. ;-)
Krista
I could see your point about elective procedures, but what about non-elective procedures? If you needed a quadruple bypass (God forbid) in order to live, and didn’t have enough money in your HSA, or in your bank account or friend and relatives from whom you could borrow, then what? I can see how you wouldn’t want to be penalized for being in good health, but good health can turn bad in an instant. Why should uninsured people be penalized for being in bad health?
Paul Wartenberg
The Republicans could have planned for this medical snafu by calculating the high probability that everyone pissed off by this would be dead from lack of medical care by the time of the midterms… Hmm, nah, that’d be *too* farsighted for these bozos…
Krista
Not to get on a rant, but there are people right now, in the United States, who are dying because they cannot afford chemotherapy. That just seems so incredibly wrong to me, that this should be happening in one of the richest countries in the world. Just because we’re lucky enough to be healthy, or insured, why should we begrudge helping out someone who desperately needs it? Stormy, you gave of yourself to help victims of Katrina, right? That’s marvellous, and you have my kudos. But if every American making over $25K a year had an extra dollar taken off of each paycheck, with that money going towards a health care system where people could apply for funding towards treatments and procedures, would you really miss that dollar?
Richard Bottoms
But if we do that then Stalin wins.
Stormy70
Krista – there is a high deductible insurance plan that goes along with the HSA. You are insured for catastrophic health events. I also have supplemental coverage to go along with it. Being self-employed, this is a wonderful alternative for people like me who don’t want to be bankrupted by a major health event. Right now we are healthy, but that may not be the case forever, so while we are healthy we are socking away tax free money in a Health Savings Account that will reimburse us later on when we need it. I can also tell the Doctor what kind of care I want, and how much I am willing to pay for it. I have been to a Doctor for a toe checkup and he wanted to run tests on my sinuses. Now I can tell him I will only be paying for the event I came in for, and he will not be running costly tests on me.
W.B. Reeves
How true. If only the Stormy’s of the world had been charge when I was a child, I wouldn’t have had to lined up for hours at my local school to have my polio vaccination. I might have gotten a neat set of leg braces like the older brother of a friend of mine instead. As for those too poor to float a HSA, let them die and be done with it and decrease the surplus population.
The Marie Antoinette of the Bozarks strikes again.
Stormy70
Krista – Isn’t Canada having their own problems with so-called free health-care? You have people unwilling to wait 6 weeks for life saving operations coming to the US for immediate care.
I should not have to pay for healthcare for everyone, especially when paying for it yourself may cause you to make better health decisions. Why should I have to pay for other’s crappy health decisions? Why should they have no consequences for their actions?
Nationalized health care is not the answer.
Larry
Stormy,
Lose your job.
Get sick.
Deplete your account.
Get back to us.
Stormy70
If this was the case, then Medicaid wouldn’t have any takers. Give me a break. Every poor person in the US has access to healthcare. Just ask anyone living along the US/Mexican border if you think people are not getting any care because they are too poor to pay for it.
I don’t feel guilty for wanting to pay my own healthcare costs, and not everyone else’s. It is why I am a conservative and not a bleeding heart liberal, who prefers everyone get a free ride on the backs of responsible people.
Single males are the ones who get really hosed in the health insurance industry. When I had a major medical plan, I was losing money because I only go to the doctor once in two years, same for my husband. I was losing my hard-earned money, so this is great for us. I am unapologetic for it, too. I work hard for myself and I give to charity on my own, I don’t need the fracking Democratic party to tell me where my own money needs to go.
I know there will be no Social Security for my generation, so I will have to take care of myself. If you forgive Olympic athletes for their go-it-alone attitudes, then maybe you can forgive my generation for its go alone attitudes. We know better than to rely on our Government for help, because if you earn your own money then you will get nothing.
W.B. Reeves
Absolutely. Furthermore, people with genetic predispositions for particular medical complaints should have practiced due diligence in their choice of parents. We shouldn’t have to pay for the poor judgement of the pre-born. Painful, lingering illness and death are small price to pay for such negligence.
Stormy70
I am self-employed, and I have an insurance plan that kicks in after a high deductible, and pays 100%. Is this difficult to realize? I spent over two years uninsured, so you can climb down from your high horse.
I realize people hate others who actually want no help from their government.
Stormy70
Yes, none of those people are on CHIPS are they or Medicaid. Please, most poor people have access to free or cheap medical care. I know this because my grandmother was disabled and on Medicaid. I have no problem contributing to Medicaid. But I see you like to equate surgeries like Gastric Bypass with genetic disorders. Nicely played.
neil
Just a bad bill since day one, and those who voted for it should get what they deserve.
But they _have_ gotten what they deser.. oh wait, you weren’t talking about massive campaign donations, were you?
W.B. Reeves
Does your insurance cover Psychotherapy? This sounds a tad paranoid.
W.B. Reeves
Whereas you prefer to characterize elective surgery as representative of public health costs. Pot, kettle, black. However, I may have misunderstood you. Are you now saying that you have no objection to being taxed for programs such as Medicaid and Medicare? I thought you didn’t want to subsidize other peoples health care?
Stormy70
Gastric bypass is being pushed as medically necesary by Doctors and insurance is being billed for it. Not quite elective when it drives an employers plan up each year. One company had three in one year, and next year everyone’s premiums went up. So this company implemented a choice of plans for people, one of which was an HSA plan. Now there employees have a choice. Good for everyone.
Stormy70
Have a good day everyone.
W.B. Reeves
Perhaps you didn’t hear me the first time so I’ll repeat.
Are you now saying that you have no objection to being taxed for programs such as Medicaid and Medicare? I thought you didn’t want to subsidize other peoples health care?
Stormy70
Medicaid I have no problem with, but Medicare I have some issues with. It will not be there when I retire, so yes, I am a little bitter about having to contribute to it.
But why should my premiums go up because people at my workplace are getting prescriptions and major surgeries like they were candy, while I am losing money on my premiums since I am healthy? This was the case when I worked for a large company. My money was basically flushed down the health drain. I could have paid out of pocket, and only been out the cost of one month’s premium, as opposed to paying premiums for 8 years. After my employment ended, my Cobra rates went sky high, and I still never used it. This way money I contribute will roll over and be available when I need it later on. I get punished because I am healthy? No thank you.
Stormy70
Really have to leave now, have a great afternoon.
D. Mason
Perhaps they wouldn’t miss it, if they weren’t already giving up 1/3 of their income to taxes then another ~7% on sales taxes, but since they are every dollar counts. Even if they don’t miss the dollar that’s not the point… it’s THEIR dollar, not the governments. Where I come from taking someones money at gunpoint is called theft.
I know extreme left wingers look at the government as some sort of robin hood figure, taking from the rich and giving to the poor. One day they will wake up and see that the government is taking from the poor and giving to the ultra-rich. Who do you think benefits from national health care? Not the people. Ask a few friends who have lived in countries with national health care for a while what they think of it. I have spoken to Canadians and Germans who hate it, they cite the same reasons. Poor care, painfully long waits, they often get the run around(which is terrible when you have an illness and are forced to miss work), not getting the meds they need, the list goes on. Oh and in Germany upwards of 50% of their income goes to taxes…. doesn’t leave much to live on. People can get by without health care a hell of alot easier than they can get by without food.
Oh and just so there is no speculation, I don’t have any health insurance and haven’t had for several years because of my self employed status. I pay for my own glasses, take care of myself and stay generally healthy and if I get very sick one day I guess natural selection can do its work on me.
Pooh
I posit that Stormy doesn’t have even a passing understanding of risk-pooling.
Krista
D.Mason – if that’s your attitude about it, that’s fine. But there are probably many people like you who don’t have insurance, either because they can’t afford it, or because they’re also self-employed. Is it fair to say “oh well, natural selection does its work”, should they be struck with a major illness.
I’m actually living in Canada, and while I think our system has its flaws, at least I know that should I require a life-saving surgery or treatment, I (or my family) will not be bankrupted for it. Having that safety net there provides a lot of peace of mind for me. Even if I don’t wind up ever needing it, at least I know it’s there for others. Your attitude, and Stormy’s attitude, is akin to driving around without insurance, because you think you’re a careful driver. Bad luck can happen to ANYBODY.
The wait times are not for lifesaving operations. If you need something to save your life, you get it. Wait times tend to be for other procedures, like hip replacements, or knee surgeries, or some diagnostic procedures. Like I said, it’s not perfect.
And bad health does not always come from crappy health decisions, you know. A girl I know, who’s a health nut and an avid runner, was just diagnosed with MS. Is that her fault? If a kid is born with a bad heart and needs a heart transplant, is that his fault for being born to parents who weren’t eligible for health insurance? I mean, c’mon! You’re being simplistic, and indicating that everybody who gets sick is to blame for their own illness.
I’m not saying that your taxes should go towards someone’s boob job, or lipo, or any other sort of elective procedure. But in a civilized nation, for people to go without chemo, or heart surgery, because they’re not able to have insurance? I’m sorry…that’s just flat-out wrong.
D. Mason
Krista I do not disagree with what you said, people in a civalised nation should have insurance, I just dont think national health care is a workable answer.
People debate the topic as if there are only two options. Infact there are tons. State run hospitals where people can recieve critical care at little or no cost, could be a good start. It would involve re-arranging the system, maybe attach them to universities? Use them for training purposes, maybe solve some education woes this way? Medical students could finance their education by signing a contract to work a few years in the hospital after graduation. Thats what I call two birds with one stone. I would much rather my tax dollars went to something like that.
StupidityRules
Poor people only count while they still are in their mother’s womb. They should be protected against harm with all means available. As soon as they have popped out, it’s survival of the fittest…
Follow God while in the womb, then Darwin to the tomb.
jaime
Fuck ’em. That’s what they get for being poor. If they wanted to be “healthy” they would have seen fit to pay the several thousand dollar deductable. Duh!
The Christian ethic at work. All the old testament gay hate, none of that Jesus’y shit.
EL
Stormy, are you careful to get all needed preventive care? Research on those using HSAs indicates “that those covered by these new plans, both with and without savings accounts, are more likely than those with comprehensive insurance to avoid or delay needed care.”
From years in the health care system, I can tell you it’s awfully hard to get savings for nothing, and that people will find a way to game the system.
From my perspective, a big part of the problem is our unwillingness to make decisions, as a society, on what we should pay for. Those with good insurance can get anything they think (emphasis on think) they need, those without can’t afford much of anything. Hold off paying for something out of your HSA and you may wind up in the “catastrophic” category.
HSAs are likely to lead to poor “population” decisions. It’s hard enough to get people to have mammograms, colonoscopies, rectal exams, etc. when they’re paid for. How many who aren’t very health savvy will pay for them?
People are extremely opposed to ‘rationing’ health care by common sense and scientific evidence, yet they’re convinced they personally must have a CT scan, MRI, antibiotics for their cold, whatever.
I can confidently predict that certain doctors will do very well giving patients what they want – like antibiotics for a cold – under a “make your own decisions and let the marketplace decide” system.
I could support an HSA type system only for certain categories of health care. Preventive care, care that affects long term health and lifesaving care ought not have that sort of financial block attached.
EL
Sorry to tell you this, but many don’t. I would the first to admit I’ve seen people misuse medicaid, but equally I’ve seen many working people who can’t get it, and are offered no, or inadequate employer plans. The system is broken. HSAs will not fix what is broken.
AkaDad
Heatlth Savings Accounts are awesome.
After rent/mortgage, food, clothing, utilities, taxes, auto insurance, and other intangibles, you just use all that “extra” money you have left over for HSA”S.
This will clearly solve all the health care problems…
ppGaz
Wow, a Stormy thread. Haven’t seen one of those in an age.
Let me catch up, I got some Stormy-bashin to do.
But meanwhile ….
… I think that’s PoTD so far.
ppGaz
Ah, no need for me … I see that Stormy is already getting the response she deserves.
Keep up the good work jaime!
ppGaz
Good point. Especially the behavioral health issues, and the probability of a near-term liver transplant ….
Tulkinghorn
Stormy, I used to be a medicaid worker in Florida. I had lots of former libertarians in my public welfare caseload. They were the ones bitching about how much money was going into foreign aid and toward minority children — that this was all their welfare, no one else should be getting it but ‘real’ americans like themselves.
More pointedly, liberals do not ‘hate’ those who actually want no help from their government. They resent those who consider themselves above making an appropriate contribution to the public welfare. When these narcisistic objectivists are successful, they retreat in smug satisfaction from public life. If they are unsuccessful, or sick, or just unfortunate, they are no less smug, just bitter. And demand their share as loudly as any welfare queen.
Pooh
D.Mason
Empirically, there are reasons that this is a bad idea – it leads to overuse of ‘critical’ care resources, where use of ‘normal’ resources would be vastly less expensive. Put more simply, if I know I can get ER care for free, I’m less likely to spend money on preventitive care or to deal with an issue before it becomes ’emergent’. Once it becomes ’emergent’ it’s generally more expensive in terms of medical resources, not to mention the loss attendant to me being ‘laid up’ for longer as a result of a likely more invasive procedure.
Not saying your’s is an egregious idea, merely that in isolation, there are good reasons to believe that it might create as many problems as it solves.
(I’m sorry, I don’t have a cite for the above info, as it comes from research from my senior thesis lo those many years ago, but as of about 1997 that seemed to be the consensus)
tbrosz
Hell hath no fury like a Democratic politician who has had a beloved policy idea pulled out from under them by the opposition (the Democratic plan was at least as expensive).
There is going to be a furious attack on Medicare Part D by the Democrats and their mainstream media pals. Much of it will be based on anecdotal evidence, of course, not numbers, and the mainstream media isn’t the only game in town any more.
The Democrats don’t really have much choice on which issue to run with. They’ve pretty much screwed the pooch on national security and the economy.
Otto Man
Thank God the Republicans don’t play that game. Imagine if Ronald Reagan’s criticism of the welfare state had been based on an apocryphal story about some mythical Chicago welfare queen! Imagine if the Republicans claimed the Great Society had done nothing to help earidcate poverty, when the numbers make it clear it did!
Seriously, I really hope the GOP adopts the line that the Democrats are making all this up. It’ll help remind seniors that the Democrats understand their complaints while the Republicans are calling them liars.
Otto Man
earidcate = eradicate
Pooh
By “they” you mean the party in power right? I feel safer with the U.A.E. in charge of port security, so points for that of course. We’re employing them in national security positions over here so we don’t have to…oh nevermind, it’s too easy sometimes.
Otto Man
I think I understand why Stormy isn’t worried about catastrophic health care costs. She can see into the future and knows she’ll never get sick and never die. I think she’s really Wilford Brimley’s character from “Cocoon.”
Krista
Exactly. It’s a classic case of “F**k you, I got mine.” I figure that most people (with a few exceptions) who have a lot of money, had certain advantages, such as being lucky enough to be born to parents who could afford university. I have no resentment of those people. What I do resent is when they act as though their circumstances had absolutely nothing to do with luck, or with circumstance of birth, and act as though everybody less fortunate than them deserves to be so, and must be lazy or unambitious, and therefore deserves whatever ill fate should happen to befall them.
I’m not religious, but the phrase, “There but for the grace of God go I” should be tattooed onto these people, as a reminder that bad luck can strike like lightning, and can devastate everything you’ve built you’re entire life, and if it’s bad enough, all of the good planning, insurance, and 401Ks in the world won’t help you. It doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t prepare, and buy insurance, and put money in our 401Ks. But it does mean that those who do, should stop being so damned smug about it.
grantime
Health care cost are sometimes not quite what they seem. Just got a statement from insurance company. Dr billed $270 insurance company paid $35. Dr accepted payment. How much would he have gotten under HSA?
D. Mason
Sure my “plan” has flaws because it was 100% concieved on the spot in response to this thread, pardon me for not being completely thorough. Still, with some further thought and debate it could probably become more workable than 99% of the national health care plans and it would be hard for anything to be less sucessful than the system we have now.
One solution to your point could be to attach a general practice center… doctors need that kind of training too. Sure the wait times would be quite long but with universal health benefits everyone gets to wait forever not just the people who don’t have insurance. There is a reasonable solution to every problem, politicians just aren’t interested in it. Afterall, a solution like this wouldn’t be very profitable for the corporations that get them into office. This kind of solution would take the wind out of the sails of the hospitals that charge $50 for a dose of asparin and of the universities who charge $50,000/year for a medical degree.
Private insurance companies and hospitals have also proven that they can’t be trusted to give people honest services for a fair price so there is without a doubt a problem. My point is that governments do everything poorly and wastefully, probably because they’re not accountable and it’s not their money. Look at how much America spends on waging war and the beurocrats can’t even do a halfway decent job of that. Do you really want to trust your medical care to those kinds of bafoons knowing it would be operating on a skeleton budget(it will be)? I don’t, so like many Americans I am stuck in the middle. I don’t sweat not having insurance but I also understand that most people do. Still, I don’t think trading a bad system for another bad system will really help matters.
Until corporations get cut out of the decision making process there will be no solution that truly benefits the people.
EL
This accords 100% with my experience, and I believe I have seen some of the supporting studies. People will always try to game the system to get the most convenient (for them) and cheapest alternative. Many, many people show up in the ER for relatively minor problems, because they can come in on a weekend or evening. It’s why many HMO’s have started after-hours urgent care clinics. If people are going to do it, might as well be set up to keep them out of the ER by making it more convenient to go somewhere else.
And for Stormy – I have some issues with the prevalence of “gastric bypass” (the new procedures aren’t exactly that) but OTOH, there are genuine instances where the surgery is not only life-saving, but actually cheaper for the health care system then leaving that patient to go on to all the complications of morbid obesity.
I’m not defending all the procedures that are done, just pointing out the issues are more complicated than you are presenting them as.
M.A.
Have you noticed that every Karl Rove strategy for increasing the GOP majority has in fact come back to bite them in the ass? Rove has always wanted to expand the GOP’s majority beyond its current 51% or so, and he’s pushed Bush into the following strategies:
– No Child Left Behind – was supposed to make education a GOP issue (which isn’t working and which has pissed off educators)
– Drug bill – was supposed to make seniors GOP loyalists (has pissed off seniors and given Democrats a gift)
– Social security privatization – intended to create a new investor class (couldn’t even get passed; ate up Bush’s time in 2005 and accomplished nothing)
And of course Rove and Ken Mehlman have made some attempts at minority outreach, which is good, even laudable, but hasn’t worked at all (Bush improved a bit among blacks in 2004, but that’s been wiped out by Hurricane Katrina).
Karl Rove came in trying to expand the GOP majority into an unstoppable juggernaut; instead he’s barely managed to hold together the 51% support, and may lose it entirely within a few years. Maybe Rove is really a Democratic plant.
srv
It’s funny how so many of John’s readers tested as libertarian. I wonder where they all went, or if they really believe what they say. That said, most of my “l” friends don’t whine about foreign aid. They whine about all of government.
Look, single (gov’t) payer is coming. Nobody is going to win an election in 10 years without the boomer vote. And this is going to be the issue for boomers for say, the next 40 years or so.
I have a question for all the stormy-bashers. At what point, approximately, are you going to balk at effective tax and health insurance, SS plans? 40% of your income? 45%? 50%? 55%?
Because it’s going to be way more than you are paying now. Many of you will no doubt debate that if gov’t was just more efficient or Pharmo/Health/Insurance welfare was just a little less greedy, it could all work out.
But it isn’t going to. The boomers are going to hit your pocket book like freight train, so be careful what you wish for.
tbrosz
This survey seems to show that while seniors have some hassles with signing up for the plans, they seem to do all right once it’s in place. We’ll see how many are still pissed off in November.
MA:
Considering the barrage leveled at the Republicans over the past few years (never mind the real problems created by Iraq and other issues), holding the Republican majority in 2002 and 2004 and Bush winning the election in 2004, was a frigging miracle. If the Republicans hang onto it in 2006, even by “51 percent,” what would you call that? Failure?
Pooh
D.Mason,
I wasn’t attacking you, I was merely pointing out that focusing on one specific area as the panacea may lead to problems that you don’t see. As far as first proposals go, yours isn’t terrible, it just needs to be fully thought out.
As far as your corporations point, I disagree to an extent – health care organizations have some expertise in this area, it cannot be denied, so they should be part of the conversation. If the solution weighs too heavily towards the consumer, companies will simply stop providing the service, which is good for no one.
GOP4Me
The problem with this theory is that it assumes the party that nominated McGovern, Mondale, Dukakis, Gore, and Kerry has enough intelligence to go into a long-term strategy to destroy the opposing party AFTER allowing it a 15-year run of rising power and acclaim first. My verdict: highly unlikely.
That’s a good question. Personally, I’d answer it at whatever percentage is the lowest decimal point above zero imaginable, maybe .0000-infinite-number-zeroes-1%. I couldn’t care less about old people, they’ve had their fun in life and they had a lifetime to amass their own savings, and if they couldn’t save up enough money in their time to do that why should I have to help them?
I’ve already told my family that if I’m ever old and destitute they should go over their finances and decide for themselves whether or not they want to support me or just get me drunk and take me out into the woods and shoot me, so I’m not a hypocrite in this matter. I’m hoping that a lot of baby boobers have had the same discussion with their loved ones, because as far as I’m concerned private charity should take care of the indigent, not government. I’ll give money to private charities, and if the government didn’t extract so much of my income for Social Security I could invest it and have a lot more money to give to the poor.
I think society would work a lot better if choices about individual rights were left up to the individual. That would strengthen religion, which would strengthen our society as a whole as more of us turned to one another for solace instead of to some big impersonal government entity.
If we stay with Social Security in its current form, we’re going to end up with what John says we’ll end up with in the title to this thread, “Just Deserts.” (Okay, I’m only kidding. I know it was a typo, but I couldn’t resist.)
Krista
Well, it could. It might not be perfect, but it could absolutely work if the government started negotiating better deals with the pharmaceutical companies. Skyrocketing taxes is a common boogeyman that people use to argue against national health care. Our taxes aren’t that bad. I’m sure they’re not THAT much higher than yours. (Any accountants in the audience who can enlighten us?) I certainly don’t feel burdened by my taxes — as long as the money is spent intelligently. It’s when it gets wasted that I get annoyed. And to all you libertarians out there, corporations waste your money too. The products you buy from private corporations are a lot more expensive just because of crap like the CEO’s multi-million dollar bonuses, and the 20 VPs in charge of wiping the major shareholders’ asses. At least with government, there’s a certain level of accountability.
tb
OK, so half-heartedly attempting to butter up the black community with transparently political publicity stunts while simultaneously nullifying their votes, slashing programs effecting them and leaving their corpses to rot in the streets is laudable now? Shamelesss and disgustingly cynical are words that spring more readily to mind.
DougJ
I have a few important questions for everyone:
(1) Has anyone tried the new Gillette Fusion? Do I need to upgrade from the Power Mach 3?
(2) Is Mary Matalin a Democratic plant? She was so bad on Meet the Press today, I have to wonder. And Carville does work in mysterious ways.
Otto Man
Actually, in November they’ll be pissed off about another flaw in the plan, the “donut hole” that provides no coverage at all between $2250 and $5100. For many seniors, they’re going to hit that hole right around late summer and early fall.
DougJ
Most of the male prostitutes in DC are African-American, so Mehlman doesn’t have that much choice. I wouldn’t really call that “minority outreach”.
srv
What makes you think that will happen? This last bills cost is $760 Billion. Sure, we’ll waste that much in Iraq, but it’s only covering a small segment of society right now. Pretty soon this “good” idea is going to get expanded.
Many Euros are paying over 40 & 50%, effectively now. I can live with the status quo, I can’t (or won’t) live with a Euro-model that’s run for the sake of US corporations.
If you believe a binary vote between two parties owned by corporate health counts as accountability.
Pooh
Dougie, make the move. The reverse ‘trimmer’ blade is the money…
GOP4Me
That was a low blow even for you, DougJ. I think you owe Mehlman a personal apology.
Is he really gay, anyway, or is that just a liberal talking-point? Well, anyway, even if he is it doesn’t mean he patronizes black gay prostitutes. Liberal homophobia in action.
tzs
My suggestion:
National Health Service for everyone who wants it, everyone else can take care of themselves.
Quid-pro-quo: Everyone starts off on NHS. You pay more in taxes. They get to nag you about your weight, preventive medicine, insist on your getting the tests, etc. ,etc. and so forth. The less preventive medicine you do, the higher a percentage of the cost you have to pay. If you get fed up and want not to pay the extra NHS tax, you get to go off the service at any time.
Ok, now, here’s the catch: if you are OFF the NHS and want to go back ON, you have to have a full physical and show that you are at least as healthy as the average person of your age on NHS.
(My suggestion, which will probably piss off everybody…)
The major problem is a lot of chronic illnesses develop if you don’t take care of yourself…but some develop even if you do. No one has figured out a way of untangling responsibility vs. chance.
tb
Where were you during the SS privatization debate? I didn’t hear too many Republicans crying about the increased taxes we’d have to pay for that piece of shit idea. It’s like you people would rather throw money in the garbage by continuing with the current system than even try to spend it effectively and help people with it.
DougJ
I think he’s really gay. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Even if your job involves getting votes by recommending anti-gay legislation.
I’m surprised the nickname Brokeback Mehlman hasn’t caught on yet.
Krista
DougJ – oh, you cheeky monkey.
GOP4Me
Maybe he just realizes that the basic groundings of American civilization are more important than his personal feelings about his love-life.
A new low, DougJ.
Richard 23
Being a good republican, he probably only patronizes white gay prostitutes. He patronizes blacks, gay and otherwise, in a completely different way.
GOP4Me
Now I know why scs thinks so many people here are DougJ. So many of you sound just like him, it’s amazing.
Bob In Pacifica
GOP4Me: “Maybe he just realizes that the basic groundings of American civilization are more important than his personal feelings about his love-life.”
Hate and fear trumps love. The American Way.
GOP4Me
To the America-hating left, patriotism=hatred. How rich.
srv
I think most Reps didn’t know or care, as they didn’t know what the real cost would be, any more than the prescription benefit. Enron mentality.
Lost the train here, not sure if I’m supposed to be a Dem or Rep now. Personally, I’d give up all my SS benefits anytime if I could just have my half of the contribution back.
It’s back to the question of what is appropriate. I know that for Krista and Tulkinghorn, it’s probably whatever the state decides to divine. And I know that the states primary concern today and in the future will be corporate and not public welfare.
It’s not like the public is being any more responsible. Ask a foreigner who’s visited the US since the 60’s what’s changed the most. I’ll bet they’ll say: “You’re fat”.
This would be very good from a SS and Medcare perspective, as many seem pre-disposed to cull themselves. But alas, medical technology can and will keep them going.
If you really want to solve these problems (70 million baby boomers coming to your paycheck soon), compasionate conservatism and liberalism isn’t going to do it.
jaime
Unless it’s gay people or women who don’t want to hand over their collective uteri (is that correct?) to D.C.
GOP4me…shouldn’t you be in a time machine planning America’s glorious march on Moscow?
tb
Please explain how depriving people of their constitutional rights based on their sexual preference is a “basic grounding of American civilization”.
tb
So you say. What model do you suggest?
srv
Can DougJ project to himself? This might be a whole new category for the DSM-IV.
srv
Ah, well, we don’t have planned political solutions in this country. As a tail-end boomer, I can probably make it work either way. In your case, since you’re a younger guy, your generation is going to have to dig their collective heels in. I’d prefer that, since I think it is fairer.
The boomers outnumber, outearn and outvote you. And they’re going to take whatever they can get. I’m not being flippant or evil about it, it’s just what’s going to happen. They’ve made a royal mess of things, and you and yours will probably have to clean it up. It really is a generational war, except that most of the X, and all of the Y, Z and XL generation are/will be AWOL from the voting booth.
You’re not really ever going to be voting for services that help your generation. You’re just going to have opportunities to vote against services for the boomers (and the corporations that play to their needs).
It’ll be tough. Because it goes against liberalism. But if you don’t stop it, you’ll just be passing the buck to your kids.
In all seriousness, think of the children and not the “greatest generations” spawn. The boomers have, and always will have more money then you. Why should you pay?
tb
How do you figure? Lots of people, including boomers, support national health care. If you’re talking about the alleged SS crisis, I don’t buy it.
Once-ler
This is a huge deal, and it doesn’t seem to be getting much attention. Health care just doesn’t work like normal markets. At the very least, there has to be a lot more price transparency than there is now in order for HSAs to work. There was an opinion piece in the WSJ this Friday saying that prices for medical procedures should be made public, and that patients should be informed of the prices before care is given. This seem right to me. This is required by law when I get my car fixed, surely doctors and hospitals can do it. Of course, this wouldn’t solve all the problems with the health care market. Prices would probably be adjusted to shift profits to things like trauma care, where the patient is in no condition to negotiate prices.
srv
If you’re a boomer, of course you support it. That’s what I said. Why would they not want post-boomers to pay for their medical bills? They’ll be paying for SS also. So if you’re X/Y/Z/XL, who’s paying for you? You too!
And if younger progressive folks support it, as they will, they’ll just have to suck it up. But right now, I don’t think they have a clue as to what the cost will be.
And that still won’t cover it. It’ll still be 10’s of trillions on the debt. Current projected obligations are something like 40+ Trillion? What do you think health care will add?
There isn’t a SS crises. Something 25+ years away isn’t a crises. It’s an actuarial reality. If the median boomer lives longer, collects SS longer, has higher health care bills (this is all going to happen, guaranteed), voodoo math can only take you so long.
It’s hard to think about 2020, or 2030, or 2040. But if you’re 30-something, that’s when your kid will be paying through the teeth for it.
And then you’ll want national dental care.
kenB
pssst…you mean “desserts”, right?
Um, no, not really.
Bob In Pacifica
Stormy, may someone who was turned down for Medicare cough her virulent strain of resistant tuberculosis on you at the grocery store.
DougJ
These liberals who oppose the new drug plan were the same ones who supported Saddam. They think it’s hard to pay for drugs under this new plan — try paying for drugs in Iraq under Saddam. But you never heard the Democrats complain about that.
Bob In Pacifica
I had an HSA. It sucked.
Bob In Pacifica
kenB, no desserts for you. Just deserts. Like in Iraq. If it wasn’t a pun, it should have been.
CaseyL
Someone please tell me what’s so particularly wonderful about HSAs. When I first heard about them a few years ago, they sounded like a rip-off.
There’s, what, a $2000 limit per year on them?
One, I don’t know too many people who already can’t afford health insurance who can afford to sock away $2000. (Esp. if they’re already trying to contribute to a 401(K) or IRA.) The fact that it’s not taxed seems a minor bagatelle if you ain’t got it in the first place. And that amount, even assuming you could put it aside, will only cover small items – glasses, maybe a few office visits – it comes nowhere near being enough to cover out-patient procedures, much less in-hospital care. (I once spent 36 hours in hospital for a broken arm. The bill was $8000.)
Two, HSAs are, or used to be (this may have changed) “use it or lose it.” So you put aside up to $2000, which you might barely be able to afford, and then you lose some or all of it at the end of the year? FAB!ulous plan. (And where does it go, anyway?)
Finally, anything that employers trip over themselves to offer is something I tend to view with suspicion, anyway. Is that cynical? Maybe. But I’ve worked in the corporate world long enough to know that employers seldom, if ever, introduce new plans – whether salary/bonus plans, pension, profit-sharing, or healthcare – that are better than what’s being replaced. I’m esp. suspicious when the company won’t reveal whether the New!Improved! plans also apply to professionals and top executives, or just to the lower echelons.
tb
Wow, you’d think single-payer health coverage had never been done before! It’s not like this is uncharted territory. I know some european countries have problems with debt, but it doesn’t exactly seem to be hurting them economically.
Sine.Qua.Non
60% of the country is without health insurance or medical care or the means to get medical care much less prescription drugs.
ppGaz
WashingtonMonthly.
Whatever was ailing you today, or however you feel about the prescription drug “benefit”, the American embassy in Iraq thing will make you feel better.
I feel …. bubbly. What a great time to be an American!
Sine.Qua.Non
I get so fucking disgusted with the “Prada Generation”
ppGaz
Well, I hope it’s better than the Schick Quattro, which is a dud. A fifty cent disposable gives a better shave.
As for the new Gilette, I will wait until I get a free one with the morning paper before I try it and rate it. I ain’t payin ten bucks for the thing at Safeway to find out if it’s any good.
Stay tuned.
srv
It is hurting them economically, but they have chosen this course because they have a higher value on life and they have real democracies (anything more than two parties). They also have a population problem.
You seem to have alot of faith in your future republican leaders (they’re not going away, unfortunately). If you trust these guys to have the same values as Euro leaders, you’re going to be disappointed.
CaseyL
Please: somebody try the new Fusion and get back to us!
I about bust a gut laughing at the commercial. “Five blades? Oh, for god’s sake.” (I didn’t know then, but heard later, that there is indeed a 4-blader already out there.) (I should also confess that I mocked 3-bladers when they first came out, and referenced that old SNL fake ad for same… only to find that the 3-bladers really are better. Much better, esp. in terms of not taking huge stripes of skin off my legs when I use ’em.)
I recently heard an NPR story about the Fusion: it has a motor? The NPR guy shaved half his face with the Fusion and half with his usual razor, the brand name of which I don’t remember. Then he had his co-reporter stroke his face; she said the Fusion-side was a little smoother. Not much, though.
srv
Link please? Census Bureau says:
Up to 15.7 percent
Not that I believe anything coming out of the gov’t, BTW. As far as means to get medcare/drugs, well, I really doubt 60%.
So, how much is this going to cost me, and who’s going to pay for it? Could the dems or reps give me a round number? Within a trillion or two would do for me. Otherwise, your plan for the future is like GW’s plan for the post-invasion Iraq. Doomed to fail, spectacularly.
srv
Maybe they could just build a Giza-sized pyramid and make it GW’s presidential library.
Anybody read Fukuyama’s “After Neoconservatism” piece? Andy Sullivan seems to have eaten a little more crow today:
Pb
As usual, The Onion predicted the gillette fusion, like, over a year before it came out. Great stuff.
Pb
srv,
Sully ate a minute amount of crow there, but I think he was spending much more time spitting out hunks of crow amid his weasel words, spinning, and war-hawk blind faith self-justifications.
Er, no. Your mistake wasn’t that you “over-estimate[d] the competence of government”. Your mistake was that you elected a bunch of crooks and fools into government, and then blindly trusted them, and didn’t demand any oversight into or consequences for their ridiculous statements, and monumental screw-ups.
Now you’re starting to get the idea, Sully, except for the fact that they didn’t suddenly become reckless, pig-headed, and incompetent after the Iraq war started–they’ve been like that the whole time.
The Other Steve
D Mason wrote:
How odd. That sounds like the American healthcare system.
Actually I was in England last year and I heard no complaints. I even asked for opinions on it. None, nada, nil.
Similarly with people I’ve met coming from other European countries. They’re just totally amazed that if you get sick here in America without health insurance, you are shit out of luck.
Even my Russian girlfriend is amazed by that, and the medical system is Russia is horrible. It’s the worst of any industrialized nation in the G8.
Now a little factoid… Go look up some stats on life expectancy and then look up how much we pay.
You’ll find that in the G8, the United States spends around 20-30% more per capita on healthcare, and has a life expectancy of about 5-10% less. Except for Russia, which has a life expectancy of about 25% less, but then doesn’t spend squat.
I’m not a fan of single-payer concept. But the Status Quo is a disaster. The HSA crap the Republicans push on us aren’t a solution for cost. They just push cost down from employer to employee. But as far as shopping around for healthcare goes. Please explain to me how you’re going to go shopping around for a good deal when you’ve got a ruptured spleen.
The Other Steve
Well I don’t shave my legs. And my girlfriend swears by here epilady contraption which I think the CIA is using at Gitmo, quite frankly.
But yes, the 3 blades did make it easier to shave without accidentally cutting myself. So I agree. I’m unsure how 5 blades can be much better, considering 3 are great.
Actually really the only problem I do have is that the only time I get a close shave is on a new blade, and those frigging things are expensive. $20 for 12 blades at Target today. No way am I buying 5 blade things for twice the price.
If I wanted a motor, I’d buy an electric razer.
You know it’s real sad. Gillette started out as a good socially conscious company. Mr. Gillette felt that one main difference between a rich man and a poor man, was the rich man could get a decent shave.(At the time you had to go to a barber to get a shave because using a straight edge took skill) So he invented the safety razor, which was all use now to scrap paint off of windows. But back then it was a major invention, and it did revolutionize shaving.
Today, I swear they are only interested in sucking more money out of my pocket.
CaseyL
Other Steve: I’m totally with you on epilady. I’ve never tried it, because the idea of a rotary thingummy that rips out the hair by yanking on it put me off immediately, for some reason :) (Waxing does the same thing, granted; but waxing is fast, and lasts a while. A few moments of pain, and then you don’t have to think about it for 6 weeks.)
And our national healthcare policies, health insurance policies, are just bloody insane. And stupid: chronically sick people can’t work to their full capacity; you’d think Congress would realize that, and realize making healthcare available for all people would be a good investment economically, if nothing else moves them.
tb
The Onion, nothing! Al Jaffee predicted this 30 years ago in Mad magazine. I remember there was a belt of blades that you’re supposed to use bootblack-style, and a ‘contour’ razor that shaves around boils, deep scars, growths etc, and a bunch of other equally ludicrous designs.
tb
.
They haven’t disappointed me yet, but because I have zero expectation of them ever doing anything I approve of. I guess we’ll see how their 1000-year Reich fares this fall, won’t we?
GOP4Me
I would never do anything to stop a woman or a sodomite from controlling their property in any way they see fit, and I’d favor as little gov’t oversight of the human body as possible, too. But unfortunately, pregnant women killing their babies and homosexuals seeking to corrupt the institutions of the body politic DO negatively affect the rest of us. I don’t expect to convince you of this, but that’s my opinion anyway.
If you lend me yours, I am so there. Going back to 1940 with A-10s and M-1 Abrams tanks would make my life so worthwhile. Matter of fact, I’d also stop by 1812 and see to it that Canada was never ever a problem for us, either.
Well, I explained it in detail here. But if you don’t believe me, you might want to have a gander at this website, or this one. If you need more, please get back to me. Time permitting, I’ll elaborate. Unfortunately, time isn’t permitting it right now. I’m still waiting for the keys to that time machine…
I’d agree. I’m no psychologist, and I think it’s difficult to diagnose over the Internet anyway. But the man probably has some mental issues of some sort. I’d probably give money to some kind of charity drive to help him out with those, but I don’t want to pay extra money to have the government give him Ritalin and leave him free to roam around and frighten small children or whatever it is he does when he’s not posting here under his 3 dozen different personalities.
Kathy Cole
Someone upthread thought HSAs were use it or lose it — those are health care reimbursement accounts. HSAs persist from year to year.
Krista
Epilady – not good. Those things are evil. Evil, I say.
Krista
Kathy, doesn’t it depend on your plan? When I used to work for an insurance company, a lot of the plans had HSAs available, and you could carry over unused funds for…2 years, I think. Some people, if healthy, used to put their entire premium allotment towards the HSA instead of towards regular med/dent coverage (this was group benefits that I was dealing with.) Maybe the HSA works very differently in the US, or maybe it just depends on the insurer?
Stormy70
HSAs roll over year to year, FSAs (Flexible Spending Accounts) are use it or lose it. To be clear, an HSA and a low-premium catastrophic health insurance plan are sold together. When I meet my deductible of 2500, my health insurance kicks in, and I can be reimbursed for the 2500 from my HSA. Simple and alot cheaper than a major medical plan that I hardly use right now. My HSA will grow from year to year, similar to a 401K, and will be there for me when my health takes a hit with old age.
Medicare and Social Security will be sucked up by the
SuccubusBaby Boomer generation. Bye Bye benefits. No soup for you. I consider any money I have already contributed to SS flushed down the drain.Stormy70
Oh and I love how people are bashing HSAs without knowing the first thing about them. Telling.
Doug
A couple of thoughts on this long thread. First — the uninsured and healthcare. There really are a lot of folks out there hurting. I know, because I’m hurting them. I’m a collections attorney, and I spend about 1/3 of my time collecting on medical bills. These people are usually in their 40s and 50s and have jobs that don’t provide healthcare. They’re not old enough for Medicare and they’re not poor enough for Medicaid. They typically net $300 to $400 per week. So, after rent, utilities, etc. they don’t have enough to put into an HSA or 401(k) or any of these other tax-break vehicles. Certainly once they get tangled up with me, they don’t have a chance. Typically they’ll have a $2,000 – $4,000 medical bill and, if they have a steady job, I’ll garnish their wages. If they have a bank account with more than $300, I’ll freeze the account and drain it. Often enough if their debt is high enough and their steady job poor enough, they’ll just migrate into the construction trades where they get paid as independent contractors and are harder to garnish. Their chances of work-related injuries increase and chances of ever having any real access to health insurance decreases. So, that’s my little window onto the plight of the uninsured working poor.
As for our current system, I recently came across an article laying out 8 “conservative, good-for-business reasons for a single-payer healthcare system.”:
1. Transaction costs. 25-30% of healthcare dollars are spent paying keyboarders to parse out who owes what; meanwhile insurers randomly and routinely deny payments for legitimate covered services.
2. Employer funding. Why should employers pay for health care? There is no compelling, rational connection between employers and health care justifying putting the burden on employers.
3. The basic idea of insurance. The idea of insurance is to manage risk. The larger your pool, the more manageable the risk. With our current system, insurers can cherry-pick the healthiest and wealthiest, taking their premiums, leaving hospitals (and government) to pick up the tab for the sickest and poorest without much in the way of compensating premiums.
4. Value. “Costs and charges vary widely and nonsensically, with no demonstrable connection to mortality rates or other outcome measures. A single-payer system would at least be a
system, and might be able to get a handle on the wastelands of profligacy hidden in those statistical variations.”
5. Risk cost of receivables. I don’t know what that phrase means, but the explanation makes sense. Trying to recover debts through liens, bankruptcy, and collection agencies is cruel, but more than that, it’s inefficient. Providing for everyone upfront is more cost effective.
6. Service quality. Service quality under our current system stinks. People think that “single payer” will lead to Soviet-style bureaucracy with obscure and arbitrary rules. Guess what? That’s what we have now. Mr. Flower suggests that single payer will lead to greater transparency, real competition, and better service quality.
7. Efficiency. Under the current system, we have people using emergency rooms to treat colds.
8. Patriotism. It’s hard to love a country that makes people choose between food, rent, and fuel oil versus cancer treatement, for example.
AWJ
I’m sorry, I stopped at “apostate clergymen supporting Darwin”. From that point, I just couldn’t take a single word seriously. That blog is some kind of joke, right?
zzyzx
What the Libertarians never have understood is that the safety net doesn’t exist for the poor, it exists for the middle class. It’s there so people don’t lose their houses when they lose their job and it takes them a few months to find a new one. It’s there so there aren’t regular food riots. I happen to like not having to worry about someone kidnapping my girlfriend or I out of hope of getting ransom. It’s nice to be able to go to Seattle Center and not walk a gauntlet of desperate sparechangers.
Social programs aren’t about giving money to the less needy, they’re about promoting political and economic stability. We’ve forgotten what things were like before a safety net existed, but read up on the 1930s sometime and see how fascism and communism were considered to be serious alternatives for many people.
Now that that doesn’t seem to be an issue, it’s easy to forget what created the situation. It’s like people who have forgotten how bad polio was who now worry about the very slight chance of getting sick through immunization. When a program is too successful, people forget what it’s there to prevent and assume that the benefits of it were magically created.
Larry
Shaving is all about maintaining lubrication.
Pre-shake mineral oil and a bit of hot water. Splash target area as usual. Closest shave ever.
And if you somehow get nicked, fire up your HSA.
ppGaz
Well stated and absolutely correct.
DougJ
Well, I hope it’s better than the Schick Quattro, which is a dud. A fifty cent disposable gives a better shave.
There’s really no point in buying anything other than Gillette. The Schick razors are dreadful.
I say this in all seriousness: American car companies could learn a lot from Gillette. The Mach 3 must be the best consumer non-electronic consumer product of the past decade.
Pb
I looked into HSA’s a bit more, and found out something interesting–not only do you get an above-the-line deduction for what you put in, but you can invest it as well! Now you’d think that having a cozy little tax shelter for the rich which can double as a give-away to Wall Street would be enough, but apparently it isn’t–apparently we, the taxpayer, should cough up billions more, to make HSAs an even more lucrative tax shelter for the rich, in an irresponsible and unsustainable fashion.
The Other Steve
What do you want to know? I know exactly how they work, and they’re a boondoggle.
Everybody should read Doug’s message above where he quotes from the healthcare news article. I think it highlights the tremendous problems we have with the existing system.
I wrote something on my own blog many months ago where I detailed how rising healthcare costs might be bad for people, but they’re good for the insurance business. Mainly because increased costs passed onto the customer increase revenue and profits.
GOP4Me
No.
RonB
Only because of poor execution and confusion. I’m trying to figure out how this is a welfare program for Big Pharma when we’re just subsidizing the costs of drugs to seniors that they are already on and nothing more. How does this benefit Big Pharm in a way it didn’t before? The demand for senior citizen drugs won’t change. There’s another potential danger to low income folks in that there were previously free drugs available thru Medicaid and now they have to pay for a plan under Part D-which is ameliorated by an application to have the payments waived if need can be proven, but still, the overall effect of this is cost cutting, but at the same time benefit cutting/twisting.
Something I’m missing? Could be. Help me out.
ppGaz
You are partly right; the scheme was invented by insurance companies who actually provide the coverage, not by the pharma companies.
It’s corporate welfare because it created out of whole cloth a new “product” that these assholes can sell, and one which is rigged to be profitable for them as long as enough fish take the bait.
However, BigPharm benefits indirectly. As long as the current dysfucntional model can be propped up, they continue to have a basis for carrying out their scam, which is based entirely on the lie that their huge profits are the only hope for the better pharmaceuticals of the future. They, and the insurance moguls, are the ones who gain the most from the present “care” models in this country …. the one that costs the most and delivers less than the best results. And leaves out somewhere around a quarter of the country.
RonB
PPGaz, I just get the feeling John is chasing down the line of argument that it the whole mechanism itself shouldn’t exist, while not seeming to realize that it does exist and all we are doing is monkeying with it. It isn’t an addition per se, but a revision.
Thank you for pointing out the “new industry” angle.
I would submit to both you and John that under a national health care system, the government could make a deal to buy drugs in bulk and the corporations could reap a tremendous windfall quite easily, and we would receive the advantage of a cheaper product thru the aggregation of tax dollars. The Wal-Mart theory, for the most part. This may be a gross oversimplification, but I would be glad to hear the problems with this on either end. There isn’t the worry of ruining startups in an industry that is concentrated in the hands of an oligopoly.
Barry
tbrosz Says:
“The Democrats don’t really have much choice on which issue to run with. They’ve pretty much screwed the pooch on national security and the economy.”
Over on Keven Drum’s blog, a while back, tbrosz claimed to be an aerospace engineer. What’s horrifying is that that could be true.
Steve
The present system is a boondoggle mostly because of the inability to negotiate cheaper prices. That’s one of the principal goals of a pooled insurance system, after all (the other being risk spreading). If I go to my doctor and say I don’t want to pay more than X for a drug, he’s just going to shrug me off. If an insurance company with thousands of customers won’t pay more than X, the pharmaceutical companies are forced to negotiate. So of course they love dealing with an entity that can’t negotiate.
Under a system where the government becomes the primary provider of insurance in the US, mind you, they actually obtain too much market power – they can set the price as low as they want, and the only recourse the pharmaceutical companies have is to stop making the drug altogether. So it becomes a tricky problem to set prices at the right level to ensure the pharmaceuticals a reasonable profit margin – keeping in mind the only reason anyone engages in expensive R&D is the prospect of windfall profits for the rare drug that pans out.
If you believe that universal health care is a moral imperative, then this simply becomes one of the difficult issues that have to be worked out before you can institute a single-payer system.
W.B. Reeves
Going back to 1940 with A-10s and M-1 Abrams tanks would make my life so worthwhile.
Interesting choice of chronology. In 1940 the only person planning a march on Moscow was Adolph Hitler.
W.B. Reeves
It’s always amusing to see people with a fixation on homosexuality misuse the term sodomite (ie, one who practices sodomy) as though it were a synonym for the same. Amusing because such folks seem unaware that the practice isn’t limited to gay folks. Millions of sexually active heterosexuals engage in practices that fall under the heading of sodomy. By emphasizing their desire to police private sexual expression, not just for homosexuals but for heterosexuals as well, such folks wind up shooting themselves in the foot.
tb
I don’t think these people have much of a sex life to interfere with. I suspect most of them haven’t seen their own penis without the aid of a mirror in decades.