Josh Marshall has said that the reason for the bizarre disconnect between national media and reality is simply that “Washington is wired for control”, that years of Republican political dominance has made it so that most of the important non-elected players see the world through Republican eyes. It’s certainly true that Official Washington’s perspective is essentially a Republican perspective. But I wonder if part of that both heed the siren’s call of simplistic quasi-philosophical, non-empirical “solutions”.
Bobo’s latest is a good example: Democrats are doomed independents believe that government is doing too much. The other night’s election results were not caused by voters’ dislike of Corzine (which I can tell you is palpable) or Deeds (I know less about this), or even by anything specific that Obama did or even by the fact that the economy is awful, they were caused by regular, middle-class Americans’ elaborate, deeply felt philosophical beliefs. Who knew that the angry, God-fearing, Applebee’s-salad-bar-visiting Joe Sixpacks who populate Bobo’s fantasy world were more school of Athens than school of hard knocks?
I think there’s a fair amount of projection going on here. It’s tough to slog your way through CBO reports, or even Ezra Klein blog posts, and get a feeling for the efficacy of the various health care reform proposals. It was tough to read through Army War College reports on the difficulties of finding a good strategy for the invasion/occupation of Iraq (this is why no conservatives and not many reporters did so). It’s very easy to state that you have a philosophy of free markets and freedom. It’s probably even easier to write a ditty about Mr. Bentham and Mr. Hume that alludes vaguely to such a philosophy without ever stating it explicitly.
Of course, it’s also a lot easier to talk about Reagan and soshulism than it is to craft a serious health care proposal. And this is where Republican interests and media interests intersect most clearly. No one wants to do the dirty work of writing or reading complicated legislation, let alone working out the compromises that allows such legislation to be passed. It’s much more fun to scream “Bear DNA”, “porkulus”, “Chicago-style politics”, “best health care system in the world’, “he’s doing too much”. If you can do this and get re-elected, you’re a politician. If you can do this while ruminating about Hume and Burke, then you’re a very serious person.
SarahLoving
This is what John McCain does for 80% of his tweets.
Must be nice if all you have to do to feel good about yourself and your job is to:
1. Read a line item of something “weird” like:
#8. $2.25 million for University of Hawaii for “coral research”10:27 PM Nov 5th from web
2. Raise your eyebrows, sigh loudly
3. Yell PORK
Derelict
Of course, simply typing whatever the GOP hands you is a major advantage in the world of journalism.
1. It really cuts down your work load.
2. It relieves you form actually thinking.
3. It gets you invited to all sorts of fabulous parties where you’ll never have to meet any of the proles (except the ones serving your drinks and dinner).
4. You never get called for “liberal bias,” and instead win praise and plaudits from your fellows for how fair and balanced and serious your writings are.
Any wonder why Washington is “wired for wankery?”
sparky
may i make a suggestion, DougJ? how about using your talents to bring other less-known sources forward (propublica, say)
than nth generation ruminations on something that ultimately doesn't matter.Just Some Fuckhead
It could be that David Brooks is a committed rightwing idealogical warrior and is going to advance that worldview regardless of actual conditions on the ground.
El Cid
The bosses, owners, and advertisers probably aren’t too crazy about proposals to tax the rich more and regulate industry and finance properly, so it probably doesn’t hurt to have a large range of people espousing things which just accidentally, completely spontaneously, entirely unpredictably, happen to line up with the interests of those who run, own, and financially sustain the medium in which you work.
mantis
It’s probably even easier to write a ditty about Mr. Bentham and Mr. Hume that alludes vaguely to such a philosophy without ever stating it explicitly.
The guys on Lost? What do they have to do with this?
;)
mai naem
They’re too lazy to report. Remember Timmy Russert said he waited for sources to come to him. It’s a lot easier to have people coming to you than you going out and actually use some shoe leather to,you know, actually report.
Stooleo
Hmm let me try
PORKKKKK…
BEAR DNAAAA
Yep, that was easy..
slag
Ding ding ding! We have a winnar!
The longstanding question for me has been: How do we break down this symbiotic relationship? I have no serious answer.
TheHatOnMyCat
Okay, clear this up for me. We know that the government elements inside the beltway live in a different reality from the one we live in out here.
We also know that the national media and its punditocracy also live in that bubble of inside-the-beltway illusions and delusions. We have known this for years. We talk about it all the time.
We can also observe that the voters recently sent what amounts to a new government to Washington, presumably to somewhat shift the alignment of that bubble a little more toward the conceits of the electorate in a variety of (non-homogenous) ways.
So …. what? I mean, really, so what?
The media is a business and operates basically on an approval model. It seeks approval, it is not looking to steer anything. Stir up, but not steer. Politicians are in the business of getting reelected. They are also operating on a dysfunctional approval model.
Rather than focus on the the most dysfunctional apprehensions of reality we can find every day, why not focus on … what the reality actually is? Wouldn’t that be more useful?
Isn’t that what we bitch constantly about? That the media aren’t reflecting reality? So, why not, you know, reflect reality, and ignore the sonsabitches? That is, by the way, what most of the population is trying to do on a regular basis. For good reason.
KG
Don’t the elaborate, deeply felt philosophical beliefs held by most Americans come down to:
1. The economy is good, let the bums have another term;
2. The economy is terrible, throw the bums out.
thomas Levenson
@slag: I’m going for sustained ridicule and disdain from high and low church vantages.
I don’t really know what else to do, except to keep saying that to those people whose sense of self is bound up in seeing themselves and being seen in print as acute thinkers that in fact they are systematically wrong about everything. And then proving it, as best we all can.
Move the intellectual overton window over to where regurgitated stupidity is in fact recognized for what it is. And do the same to the political version of same. Remember those guys and gals calling themselves conservative are anything but. They are radical. Keep that meme going and we have a chance.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
Doug: You just explained Paul Kane’s entire online chat yesterday.
These people deserve every job loss, every failed paper and every bad professional thing that happens to them.
Just Some Fuckhead
@KG:
No, they come down to:
1. Sure Republicans fucked up, but Democrats would have been worse.
BFR
@KG
It’s simpler than that. It’s just my team = good, your team = bad.
I suspect we each have pet issues that we’d turn on but for the most part it’s pure self-identification.
El Cid
By the way, it’s not any easier to spout right wing nostrums than liberal or left wing.
It’s not enough to say that, yes, it’s easy to write some crap about Reagan and [email protected]; but the question is why?
I don’t mean about being correct, either.
If it were simple laziness, then we should expend a random pattern of laziness in the right wing as well as the left wing direction, in the direction of dovishness as well as hawkishness, in the direction of economic left populism as well as pro-upper class anti-taxism and anti-regulationism.
It’s not just laziness. It’s only laziness in one direction which is rewarded. It’s only lies in the service of power which are safe. Truth is no defense when it flies in the face of what your news establishment wants.
Clark
Clearly, you haven’t heard of the <a href=”http://www.24thstate.com/2009/11/document-parties.html” Document Parties, where the Tea Party people are scouring through hundreds, nay, thousands of pages of documents obtained by open records requests. Of course, they are all highly trained and know exactly how each office operates and how to interpret all the documents they’ve gotten their hands on. Also, they are sure to look at Republicans in office, not just targeted Democrats.
Stooleo
OT Uber conservative Virginia Foxx (R-NC) speaks to actual homosexual.
Mark S.
One thing about Porkulus-type complaining: why do they never come up with anything truly outrageous? Unless you hate science, I don’t see why studying bears, coral, or goddamn volcanoes is a waste of time, especially considering that things add up to about 0.000001% of the budget.
Also, a speed train from LA to Las Vegas sounds like a good idea to me.
Clark
Um, close link.
Shell
You’re right about the animosity toward Corzine. The two biggest issues voters were acting on were high property taxes and local corruption. Simply eager to put a Republican in Drumthwacket? Not so much.
Ironically, it was the same impulse that drew people to Obama. Voters said they were voting for ‘change.’
Comrade Dread
It’s also much easier to just take quotes from anonymous officials and publish them as gospel truth without bothering to comment or question the truth of those statements at all.
slag
@thomas Levenson: I like that approach. And it’s one of many that I try to engage in as much as possible. But the conclusion to which I’ve come is that, in this particular profession, being spectacularly wrong appears to be a feature and not a bug. Because the crazier your pronouncements, the more likely they are to spark controversy, the more likely you are to get readers/viewers, the more likely you are to get promoted. And while there is quite a bit variation within the field, I’ve also become completely convinced that the majority of these folks just aren’t that bright. That combination doesn’t bode well for promoting meaningful political discourse. Nonetheless, as I say, I will probably keep trying that approach because I have pugilistic tendencies, and at the very least, it makes me feel a little better.
@sparky does make a good point about making a concerted effort to promote better media sources. Even more fun if we can compare and contrast the approaches to a single story by the different sources. Entertaining and educational.
And speaking of education…at the end of the day, we have an enormous problem in this country. Between our lack of reasonable standards in basic and higher education and our craptastic industrial media complex, we have managed to create a perpetual puerility machine the likes of which should confound all natural law. In a way, it’s an absolute marvel of modern society. I’d be proud of us if I weren’t so ashamed.
Joel
i thought hume’s big issue was with induction; that is, predicting future results based on past ones. i thought this was a bunch of baloney. that kind of thinking goes back to ancient times and yes, fundamentally, you have to accept causation at some level:
colliding pool balls might not transfer momentum with 100% certainty, but 99.999999999999999999999999999999% will do just fine, thank you very much.
also, david brooks is a tool.
Napoleon
They don’t even type it, just copy and paste it into whatever they are “writing”.
Jack
I would suggest that it’s not just “Republican political dominance.”
It’s ruling class and economic dominance of the Commons. Or, what’s left of the Commons.
Both corporate parties.
It’s not a conspiracy. It’s not a plot, scheme or agenda.
It’s just that people used to getting their way, and with the means to do so at their economic disposal, develop the habits of power.
And acclimate to a worldview which confirms the “rightness” of that power.
DonkeyKong
And so it ends……not with a bang, or a whimper……..just and insipid Brooks column on Realus Americanus!
The Grand Panjandrum
OT: Whoo boy. Not exactly a battle of intellectual equals.
RW_Gadfly
@DougJ: “Of course, it’s also a lot easier to talk about Reagan and soshulism than it is to craft a serious health care proposal.”
****************
Meh.
I coulda said the same thing about the Dems and the broader left during the Social Security reform debate. Remember Mitch McConnell’s blank sheet of paper as he castigated the Democrats for just being obstinate and not helping address the problem?
Well, that’s because the Bush Administration was seeking a type of reform that was a non-starter for many, if not most, Democrats. Their consistent answer was that they’ll sit down at the table as soon as the private savings accounts were off of it. Otherwise, there was nothing to talk about.
And, as it turned out, there was nothing to talk about — as the Republican appetite for radically reforming Social Security on their own wasn’t terribly fierce. They subsequently went on to get routed in the next election.
Considering the kinds of healthcare reform that Obama and the Democrats are seeking to institute, the only misgiving I have about the Republicans becoming the “Party of No” is that they haven’t raised their hands and proudly declared themselves not simply the “Party of No”, but the “Party of Hell No!”
If the Democrats want a serious bipartisan debate about reforming healthcare, they should’ve asked for one.
slag
Also, I meant to point out:
Made of awesome.
ericblair
@El Cid: By the way, it’s not any easier to spout right wing nostrums than liberal or left wing.
It’s because nowadays the people who want to spout right-wing nostrums are far more likely to fall into line, do what they’re told, and become useful idiots to the powerful than the ones who want to spout left-wing nostrums. There aren’t a lot of left wing authoritarians anymore: like the neocons, they saw the radical left dry up and blow away and flipped immediately over to the right wing crazy train.
We don’t have a radical authoritarian left in this county despite all the efforts to make one up out of whole cloth. Since radicals are radical as a behavior trait and are actually pretty fluid regarding what they’re a kook about, most of them just gravitated to right-wing nuttery. So the “left” is mostly moderates who don’t really like to shut up and take orders, and the “right” is a sort of controllable mob spearheaded by irrational nutcases.
cleek
being able to scream “he’s doing too much” while also screaming that he’s a accomplishment-free do-nothing failure and not have anybody laugh in your face is a nice trick, too.
Robert Waldmann
I think you are on to something — powerful populist platonism or something. It does seem odd to link love of abstraction with populism, but, yes, you are right both are excuses enabling one to avoid learning the facts.
Theory, theology, going with your gut are all equally useful excuses for ignorance.
I think a key clue that supports your theory is Gore hatred. He was a know it all, not in the sense that he knew it all, but in the sense that he knew a whole lot more about policy relevant reality than Republicans or journalists. So they hated him.
MikeJ
@sparky:
Knock yourself out. It’s a big interweb out there, nobody is stopping you. Edumacate us.
John S.
Yup, and you would have sounded like an idiot*. Especially since if Bush had gotten his way, we would have been even MORE fucked. Republicans were trying to “fix” a problem that did not exist, whereas the healthcare crisis is very real and in much need of repair.
You have a debate with the opposition you have, not the opposition you wish you had. Especially when your opposition are a bunch of drooling idiots who are incapable of serious thinking and have spent the last week screaming about HOW MANY PAGES! are in the bill.
*That last comment of yours puts you over the top. You sound like an idiot.
cleek
they did. it was called the 2008 election. guess what one of Obama’s biggest themes was?
as for what happened after that, when it came time to do the hard work, the GOP decided it would be better to turn HCR into Obama’s Waterloo than to work at trying to solve the problems with our heath care system.
RW_Gadfly
Sure — but there’s a difference between “doing” something and “accomplishing” something. “Doing” simply indicates action as opposed to inaction. “Accomplishing” implies a tangible benefit as a result of some action.
Two men took the action of running for president last year. Only one of them actually accomplished the goal they both had in doing so. So, it’s obviously not accurate to say that President Obama is “accomplishment-free”. ;)
burnspbesq
I know this is essentially a political blog, and on essentially political blogs the principal subject is politics, but I am so not in the mood today. Somebody give me something – anything! – else. Sports, pets, food, … whatever. I’d even take bad fake Stanley Crouch, expounding mindlessly and at excruciating length about the semiotics of Sun Ra and how it is all linked to Cornel West.
Anything but politics.
/whine
PaulB
They did. The only people who showed up were a couple of members of the Finance Committee, both of whom said that they would vote against the final bill even if it had everything they had asked for (which it pretty much did).
LOL…. As compared to their own carefully-crafted alternative, which saves less money than does the Democratic alternative, and covers almost nobody? Bring it on.
slag
@RW_Gadfly:
Yeah. And then remember when Social Security failed and then all the old people throughout the land were turned out of their homes and forced to eat their pets to stay alive?
Oh wait…it wasn’t Social Security that collapsed but rather the stock market that GW Bush wanted to put all the poor old people’s money into. And to help promote this endeavor, he traveled the country with empty file cabinets patriotically claiming that a US Treasury Bond was worthless.
Ahhh…good times! Thanks for the reminder, Captain Irony.
Citizen_X
@Mark S.:
I think I’ve found the flaw in your question.
I could see the criticisms as legitimate if they were along the lines of, “These studies were not funded through peer review, and so not on their merits. They were funded through political connections. So, they’re not the best use of our federal research dollars.” But you never hear that. Instead, it’s “Bear DNA LOL!” or “studying fruit flies in PARIS, FRANCE hur hur hurrr!” Scientific research is stupid because it sounds goofy.
And did McCain–er, President McCain–really tweet that above? Gee, why would our tropical island state be interested in studying coral reefs? That wouldn’t be of any economic or environmental importance to them ,would it?
Shorter McCain: Fuck you, Hawaii!
RW_Gadfly
@cleek: “they did. it was called the 2008 election. guess what one of Obama’s biggest themes was?”
*******************
But that’s my point exactly.
Why blame Republicans for not taking an active role in healthcare reform? They lost the election and have been treated as, well, as somebody who lost the election.
And that’s fine so far as it goes. It’s a choice that the victorious party has won the right to make — the same choice that GWB made regarding Social Security following the 2004 election.
But you can’t very well exclude somebody from the bargaining table and then bark about how they’re not helping iron things out on the table. Reid etal told Bush that they’d sit down at that table just as soon as their bone of contention was off of it. Bush wouldn’t remove it, and the effort never went anywhere.
DougJ was chastising Republicans or conservatives for simply sniping from the sidelines instead of engaging the debate.
But that’s precisely what happens when a majority party approaches a contentious issue in a manner that is virtually guaranteed to repel the minority party.
MikeJ
Sorry, we’ll try to be less black.
ellaesther
@ burnspbesq: Ooh, ooh, me, pick meee!!
Frank Zappa on The Monkees!
Or, ooh, The Large Hadron Collider being derailed by a bird and a bit of bread! Over at your Boing Boing!
You can see that my personal approach is to go for the absurd, to keep my mind off things.
slag
@RW_Gadfly: In this particular case, you’re missing a part of your argument, and I can understand why you don’t see it. It’s called substance. Putting old people’s money in the stock market would have been, as has been empirically proven to all sentient beings, a huge mistake. I only wish Democrats had done much more to prevent other huge Bush Administration mistakes. More people would be alive right now, if they had. There is a difference between standing on principle and standing on politics. It’s subtle, granted, but not entirely undetectable if you want to see it.
gwangung
Son, it would have really, really, really helped if the Republicans had come up with a plan BEFORE the summer began–that’s when they had every opportunity to do so.
As it is, this is an empty statement that verges on brain death.
gwangung
Sorry, but you’re entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
RW_Gadfly
Well, I’m not really sure what exactly Grassley, Enzi, & Snowe were asking for and what they got. But I don’t think it resembled much of what people like me have been suggesting about healthcare for years.
Moreover, the Baucus bill promised to end even the minimalist HSA that finally made its way into law just a few years ago….which would’ve been enough for me vote against it, too.
Look, all I’m saying is that you can’t set out to have a very one-sided effort to craft a major piece of policy and then, later, complain that the side you shut out isn’t offering much other than heckling on the sidelines.
If you want to swing for the fence — as GWB did with SS in 2005, as the Dems are doing with healthcare here — you shouldn’t gripe and whine when you realize that the other team isn’t doing all it can to help you.
FlipYrWhig
But the minority party was primed to be repellent from the start.
drillfork
Shorter DougJ: The Villagers are stupid. Privileged, insulated and fucking stupid.
Spot on…
FlipYrWhig
Um, so you don’t know what they wanted, but you’re sure it wasn’t what _you_ wanted, and thus the Democrats went about it the wrong way, because the right way would have been to please you, which you don’t actually know if they tried or didn’t?
Randy P
@burnspbesq:
OK. Topic is “World Series”, subtopic sports team schizophrenia. I’m a Philly-area denizen but split time between Philly and New York (specifically, the Bronx). Growing up in NY State, I was a childhood fan of the Yankees but now I pretty much lean Phillies if anything.
While traveling back and forth, I felt a lot a like that post-civil war store owner in The Outlaw Josie Wales who had to rapidly assess all incoming customers and decide on the spot whether to whistle “Dixie” or “Battle Hymn of the Republic”.
Discuss.
RW_Gadfly
Helped what?
Fix a broken healthcare system? Or take the big, bold step towards the single-payer healthcare system that the very architect of the “public option” said his plan would be?
If it’s the latter, why would Republicans be at all interested in doing anything to help that happen? Are you seriously suggesting that you’d expect them to?
Now, if it’s the former, then that’s the way the issue should’ve been approached by the Administration and Congressional Democrats. But they made that choice — and, frankly, I don’t blame them for making that choice…they won big in ’08. I’d have made the same choice.
I just don’t understand why anybody would get peeved at Republican intransigence. Hell, they don’t even have the votes to stop it.
georgia pig
@RW_Gadfly: Nonsense, because they still have a duty to their constituents to make the best of the given situation. Health reform was a major issue in 2008, and the voters generally endorsed the framework Obama put forward, which, by its very nature, was going to involve signficant expansion of federal involvement in delivery of healthcare services. The “alternate plan” that Boner put forward simply disavows that framework completely, by offering deregulatory approaches the mirror what McCain campaigned on and lost. There’s nothing wrong with their position per se but, given that the Republicans are are all hot about “fiscal conservatism” (which, BTW, is utter BS), a more constructive alternative might be say “well, we didn’t want to do it that way, but since the public appears to want that, let’s try to do your plan in a way that’s most cost effective and has proper controls to cut down the likelihood of fraud and all the other parade of horribles” they pretend to be concerned about. Instead, they meet on Capitol Hill with the 9/12ers who call Obama Hitler for doing what he promised in his campaign.
Some Gadfly.
slag
On the plus side, one of the Masters of the Universe who helped get us into this economic mess finally showed some introspection. He must not be a Republican.
Ash Can
@RW_Gadfly:
In all seriousness, what good does that do? The Republicans aren’t even making an effort to address any of the problems facing the majority of Americans. The only thing they’re putting any effort into is doing whatever they can to prevent the Democrats from addressing those problems. They’re not just being worthless, they’re being worse than worthless.
Bipartisanship by definition cannot take place because the Republicans themselves are preventing it. If they aren’t going to counter Democratic policy proposals with any actual, substantive proposals of their own, there’s nothing to be bipartisan about. It’s a fool’s errand for Obama or any other Democrat to seek bipartisanship, because the Republicans will guarantee failure in this regard. Obama did in fact ask for bipartisanship, early and often — remember those meetings at the White House? — and the Republicans came away each time vowing that they wouldn’t cooperate with the president. Personally, I think that’s fine; I have no faith in the congressional Republicans given the track record they’ve established over the years, and as far as I’m concerned the less influence they have on public policy the better. I have no problem with Obama making a show of seeking bipartisanship as long as he’s bright enough to know that it’s not actually going to happen with the current crop of congressional Republicans — and I think he is.
TheHatOnMyCat
@MikeJ:
Hmm, a few hundred carefully chosen words spring to mind, and therefore, to my fingertips ….
This is a comment section. People make comments. Making a negative comment about the thread or blog doesn’t obligate any commenter to start his own blog or write a miniseries on a topic.
Commenters go outside the fuzzy boxes pointed to by the top posts all the time. Threads take 90 degree turns. They take 180 degree turns and sometimes 360 degree turns. But nobody is obligated to correct a giant deficit because they pointed out the deficit. That’s bullshit commentin’ in my book. It reminds me of bosses I have had who said things like “Don’t bring me problems, bring me solutions.” Oh yeah? If I HAD the fucking solution I wouldn’t need to talk about the goddam problem, would I? These are bosses who want to cover their eyes, ears and mouths like the monkeys and pretend like they have everything under control. It’s called “denial” and it is very unbecoming.
There’s a lot of bullshit commentin’ done around here. My pet peeve is the “how dare you criticize the bloghosts” variety. Hey, they can ban me (and have) or take down my posts or do whatever they want, I don’t care. I am not here for social interaction, for a popularity contest, for group therapy, or to ruminate about my favorite laxative or car polish or whatever is the current banality du jour.
I like content-based commenting, myself. If somebody has a better argument than mine, then just make it. If they bash my style, then apparently I have won the content debate since they have nothing to counter my wise assertions. Heh.
burnspbesq
@ellaesther:
Thanks, I needed that.
RW_Gadfly
LOL…and you’re taking me to task for avoiding substance?
Slag, if you paid any attention to the SS reforms that bounced around Congress, the accounts were actually only available to people who were *younger* than a certain age. Sen. Graham’s version put that age as 50, as I recall. Rep. Kolbe’s had it lower than that.
Both of them had sliding scales for how much could be put into the account.
So it wasn’t about “putting old people’s money in the stock market”. It was about allowing young people to put up to 2% of their pay into an account that offered various investment options not unlike the TSP that federal employees can put money in.
And one of those choices in TSP is a lifecycle fund that automatically reduces risk as retirement age nears.
burnspbesq
@Randy P:
As a Mets fan married to a Phillies fan, for me the best thing about this year’s World Series is that it’s over.
slippy
@RW_Gadfly: That was all those Town Hall meetings we had during the summer, moron.
As you may recall, the Republican/Teabagger plan for healthcare reform could be summed up by a bunch of Social Security/Medicare recipients screaming stupidly to keep government out of their lives.
It’s one reason why no Republican is taken seriously on this topic anymore. Including yourself. You people had your chance to come to the table and present your input. You couldn’t even meet us halfway because ANY reform is anethema the bought-and-sold whores who comprise the conservative representation in our Congress, so the result is F*CK YOU, you get NOTHING in this discussion and we do it our way. How you like me now, biatch?
sparky
@MikeJ: hmm, linky no work? ok, here it is again, then.
geg6
You know what? I just read this on TPM and it has convinced me that Michelle Bachman and Dick Armey should put on some more awesome teabagger street theater on the Capitol lawn. Like every day. Thnxbai.
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/11/patriot_games_gop_reps_pick_tea_party_rally_over_n.php#more
FlipYrWhig
I don’t know why you keep saying that. The Republicans have not only been holding out against the maximal Democratic position (something like single-payer/Medicare for All), they haven’t even attempted to haggle, or even to concede that the system needs fixing in the first place. It’s not that the Democrats said “Give us 100%” and the Republicans said “No,” it’s that the Democrats said “Give us 55%” and the Republicans still said “No,” not “15%,” not “10%,” just plain bupkes. That’s the behavior of someone who is wasting time rather than negotiating a deal.
I think the Social Security situation _is_ somewhat parallel, but not in a way I think you’ll like: there the argument was that the Democrats held fast to the notion that “there is no crisis.” That’s why they could say “No” instead of haggling. So when the Republicans on health care say “No” instead of haggling, they’re saying that “there is no crisis.” And the problem with that is, there is.
slag
@RW_Gadfly: And the point your going to rest your Social Security argument on is that we’ll never experience another financial collapse that could negate the value of these accounts? That’s your point? Because I want to be clear on this.
Bob L
[email protected]
DougJ was chastising Republicans or conservatives for simply sniping from the sidelines instead of engaging the debate.Nice try; you guys had strong>eight years to deal with a problem that has been a issue since the 90s. Hilary Care ring any bells? That is seventeen plus years of silence from you guys, not just 11 months. The Right is so wedded to the conservative libertarian fantasy of the freemarket solves all problems that you refuse to even consider any evidence that contradicts it.
TheHatOnMyCat
@RW_Gadfly:
It was about sucking funds perceived as being tied to an entitlement into a stream that would pour them into the coffers of the investment world, which is essentially a form of gambling, and is kryptonite to mandatory pension planning.
It was a scam, designed to discredit the pension scheme and rob it for the benefit of the investor class because the money would become part of the investment bubble and give the robber barons more money to play with.
Before someone counters with “are you saying that the politicians themselves are not robbers who are sitting like Scrooge McDuck and counting their stacks of tax money?” let me say, no, I am not saying that. I am saying that a forced pension plan is a forced pension plan and a risk-based investment scheme is a risk-based investment scheme, and that the two are not interchangeable nor should the monies be made a fungible commodity.
Besides, the whole “reform” scam was a perfect copy of the Cato Institute’s stated scamola designed to weaken, and then disassemble, the Social Security system. Not improve it, get rid of it. That is their goal, and nothing else.
sparky
@RW_Gadfly: shorter: if, then, well, maybe we might have had something that if it had passed exactly as i described it and people used it in just the right way then maybe this one thing would be different, and therefore i have proved that this is exactly the same thing as health care legislation.
oookay.
i gather from your nom that you are in a sense trolling, but really, since you write clearly, something a bit more relevant could be put on the table than a bit of what if misdirection about something that doesn’t exist. unless of course there is no there there.
false equivalency is so 1990s.
The Grand Panjandrum
@burnspbesq:
Here you go. Hope it helps.
Ed Drone
@RW_Gadfly:
But what do you do when the “other team” brings a football and some tennis racquets to the game, then complains when we won’t stop the game to rewrite the rules. Hell, we didn’t even throw them out of the stadium when they showed up in cheer-leader outfits — we gave them time to go suit up, and they refused.
I admit the R’s don’t want to reform health insurance, but they should at least ‘man up’ and admit this (like Rush Limbaugh did when he said he wanted Obama to fail)?
I guess they don’t care what failing would do to the country….
Ed
licensed to kill time
In other news today, “scozzafavaed ” makes it into Urban Dictionary .
RW_Gadfly
Well, if you believe as I do that a lot of public policy “cures” are worse than their respective diseases, then perhaps you can at least understand such a worldview, if not agree with it.
But that’s not even really what’s going on here. I don’t think too many Republicans or conservatives genuinely think that the status quo with healthcare is desirable. But let’s keep in mind how we got to this point.
It wasn’t because government was being aloof and negligent about healthcare. In my opinion, we’ve gotten to where we are because of public policy.
Healthcare costs really didn’t start shooting skyward until after Medicare/Medicaid were created in 1965 and then, later, private sector HMOs were propelled by the HMO Act of 1973. Now, that could just be a cosmic coincidence. But I don’t think it is.
We’ve tried to create the proverbial free lunch — and we’re suffering the consequences for it in the form of hyperinflation. We’ve removed the only genuinely effective governor on prices — the consumer — from the payment equation. Worse, we’ve gone to great length to hide healthcare costs from consumers.
It should come as no surprise, then, that costs have gotten out of control.
Do I want to fix that? Yes, I do. And I’d be happy to join any discussion with anybody who shares that goal. However, if somebody’s goal is single-payer healthcare or anything resembling it, then there’s no point….because we would have conflicting goals.
And I’ll then be left with little choice but to try to do what I can to thwart their effort.
WereBear
What complete and utter bullshit. If I’m lying there with my tibia sticking out, I’m going to cruise the Internet on my cell phone and price my care? Yeah, right!
This isn’t comparing the cost of coffeemakers between Ace Hardware and Wal-Mart.
Now I know you aren’t even trying.
geg6
@RW_Gadfly:
Why are all right wingers either completely stupid and convinced we are, too, or simply disingenuous liars? I don’t get it. They are supposedly so much more Christiany and moral than we are. But they lie and obfuscate continually. It’s a mental illness, I am convinced.
That said, this:
is a lovely example of that obfuscation in action. The two events are exactly the same!! Exactly!!
Well, no. They are not. If you want to call GW’s silly plan to hand the Social Security fund over to Wall Street some sort of brilliant and substantive plan, fine. But it wasn’t, by any standard. As evidenced by the way it went down in flames with all sentient beings with an ounce of self-preservation being opposed. And this is mainly because it was a stupid plan. Stupid in every way. Grandma and Grandpa would be as well off or perhaps even better off taking their life savings and heading off to Vegas and putting it all on 32 black and letting it ride. Even the most stupid and obtuse idiots figured that out. And we won’t even go into the part about how the whole Social Security is going broke thing was not true.
The Congressional Dems, OTOH, put out at least 5 different health care reform bills, invited GOPers to provide input, gave the opposition all summer (politely not mentioning that they had had since 1995 to come up with their own version and pass it) to provide their own plan, went out among the public and debated the bill with actual voters where they faced down hostile crowds of teabaggers, again invited input from the GOP in September, adjusted the bills in various ways to try to attract a single GOP vote, and then finally sent the bills out of committee vastly weakened from their original goals to something only vaguely resembling insurance reform at all. It’s process has been substantive, taken into account all the various stakeholders (insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, doctors, nurses, the AARP, the uninsured, and people who have insurance), has been deemed acceptable by a majority of the American public, and will undergo further revision in reconciliation and final bill debate.
These are not even the beginning of equivalent situations. But feel free to keep wanking on about how they are. But don’t expect anyone to take you seriously when you do.
RW_Gadfly
Again, it really isn’t unlike how the SS debate in 2005 went down. You’d see that if you could set aside your own policy preferences for just a moment.
About the only difference between then and now is that Democrats have bigger majorities in Congress than Republicans did in 2005.
But I think it was clear that, so long as Bush insisted that the reform include private accounts, the Democrats were going to sit it out, whip up public skepticism to the reform, and make Bush and the GOP go it alone.
I don’t think it’s at all true that Republicans “don’t want to reform health insurance.” Go do some research into former Rep. Bill Archer’s efforts at healthcare reform in the late 90s, as one example.
The system Archer was trying to get in place looked a lot like the one in Singapore (which is called “Medisave”) that I favor. You can agree with that or disagree with it — but you can’t say that it’s protecting the status quo.
But, yeah, of course the R’s aren’t going to support any healthcare reform that lurches towards more centralization like this. And I think they have admitted that.
David
I’m not going to ever stop laughing at the idea from the new troll (RW_Gadfly) that the creation of Medicare/Medicaid is what’s driving the cost of health care up. That may be the dumbest thing I’ve heard all week. Even dumber than the moronic nonsense that is “consumer driven health care”. Needing a blood transfusion is nothing like shopping for a TV, and the only appropriate response for an idea that stupid is to point and laugh.
gwangung
Sorry, but you need to do more homework. Correlation is not causation.
Moreover, you need to compare and contrast with international health care costs and plans. That’s highly relevant here. Focussing on just the US is insufficient.
sparky
@The Grand Panjandrum: win.
yeah. i clicked. $%!!!
RW_Gadfly
So urgentcare, then, is representative of all healthcare?
I’d be interested to know what percentage of healthcare dollars are spent on urgent matters like this one. Whatever it is, I imagine it’s relatively small.
Again, go look at Singapore’s system. It doesn’t suffer from hyperinflation or tightly rationed supplies. That seems to me like the kind of healthcare system we should seek to emulate.
(And, BTW, they have universal coverage).
slag
@RW_Gadfly:
More than anything, this statement proves DougJ’s point. Why don’t you just join the other teabaggers on the Hill and shout “Soshulism!” until your face turns red? You carry on with your faith-based freedom fighting and leave the real discussion to the people who actually care.
You draw false conclusions based on contrived evidence in order to promote your cause. You fail to recognize the difference between causation and correlation. You are an anti-empiricist who falls back on your phony “free lunch” arguments when convenient. You’re not interested in solving real problems; you’re interested in living in Free Marketville where the Free Market Fairy will protect you from all evil.
Be free, glibertarian! Be free!
TheHatOnMyCat
@RW_Gadfly:
Really, Mister DougJ Handle #3217?
Social Security, worse than old people without incomes?
Medicare, worse than old people without healthcare insurance?
Medicaid, worse than poor people without access to healthcare?
Public Schools, worse than uneducated masses?
EPA, worse than unbreathable air and undrinkable water?
OSHA, worse than maimed and killed workers?
FDA, worse than hideous medicine and food tragedies?
FAA, worse than unregulated aviation?
DOT, worse than Caveat Emptor transportation systems?
Civil Rights Act, worse than lynchings, segregated schools, and White Only restaurants?
I’m sorry, did you have your own list?
slag
@David: I know. The worst part is that Medicare costs are currently lower than insurance industry costs by far. In spite of the rampant fraud that apparently infects Medicare alone.
dmsilev
@RW_Gadfly: If, as you evidently believe, government should completely and totally keep its hands out of funding healthcare, then riddle me this:
Our current system has substantially less government involvement than just about anywhere in the developed world. If your view was accurate, than we should be further down the “economic freedom” road than Britain or France. And yet….
Why is it that we as a nation pay roughly double per capita compared to the rest of the industrialized world, and yet do worse on measures like average life expectancy?
-dms
Sentient Puddle
@RW_Gadfly:
And if we hop back into the time machine and set the dial for November 6, 2009, we see a Republican proposal for reforming health insurance that hits on a few meaningless talking points and then basically declares that there’s no problem.
Personally, I think the stuff that Republicans are proposing today as opposed to ten years ago is the more relevant stuff, but what do I know?
WereBear
Here’s a health care plan the Republicans will like… everyone gets a free ride to the nearest care facility, where a free procedure is performed: the Wallet Biopsy.
If it is determined that you can’t afford to pay for whatever is wrong with you, you are taken out back and shot like a horse with a broken leg. And that’s free too!
It’s so much more humane that the months or years of suffering, while the house gets repo’d and they can’t afford their pain meds.
Yeah. That’s the plan.
RW_Gadfly
Heh…yeah, but it doesn’t hurt the argument, either.
Like I said, it’s possible that it was just a cosmic coincidence that prices only started heading for the sky after the public sector took a big bite out of the healthcare apple, but I doubt it.
Frankly, I think the HMO Act was the bigger culprit of the two. That’s when we really started hiding costs from consumers by ramping up the use of employer-based health insurance to cover more and more of our healthcare costs.
Point is: we didn’t have a healthcare cost crisis prior to the government getting involved in it so intimately.
geg6
@David:
What? You mean Medicare/Medicaid didn’t increase the cost of health insurance? Really? You don’t say! And I don’t know what you’re talking about when you say that consumers aren’t shopping around for health care. Why just last evening, I was in Walmart and looked and looked and looked for a Pap test and a mammogram, but they must have been out.
/snark
You are right, David. It’s ludicrous. As is almost anything coming out of the mouth of anyone calling him/herself a Republican, a right winger, a Christian, or a libertarian these days.
Leelee for Obama
@TheHatOnMyCat: This was awesome! Well done, Cat!
burnspbesq
@The Grand Panjandrum:
I know, I did say “anything.” But some things are always out of bounds.
TheHatOnMyCat
@Leelee for Obama:
It’s fun being a progressive. We get all the good facts and the best smackdowns!
slag
@RW_Gadfly:
You kind of fail to remember why the government got involved in healthcare in the first place. In the same way you forget why Social Security came about. Why public education. Why…
You have no regard for a social contract. That’s your right. But it’s also your right to go live in Somalia where they don’t have one either. Enjoy your cholera!
RW_Gadfly
Well, I think the life expectancy thing has a lot more to do with lifestyle than healthcare financing paradigms. And that’s more of a cultural thing.
But the reason that we spend so much more than they do is because that’s the poison we’ve chosen in our own quest to realize healthcare not as something we buy, but as something which is a right.
And, as I’ve explained elsewhere in other threads, healthcare can’t be a right….because it doesn’t exist in infinite supply.
The poison that these other countries you’re talking about have chosen, in lieu of the higher prices that we have, is tighter supplies.
IMO, neither is a good option. Don’t cast me as a defender of the status quo simply because I’m a critic of the kinds of reform that are typically favored in these parts.
Chris
Taibbi made a similar point back in his NY Press days, when they did the Wimblehack! thing, which eventually ended up in Spanking the Donkey:
gwangung
Tough. You made the assertion, you back it up.
To be more than clear: I AM asserting that this is a cosmic coincidence. Your job is to assemble enough evidence to knock down my competing hypothesis. I’ve given you hints on how to gather that evidence.
Added hint: citing Singapore supports ME, not you.
Chris
Oops…that last graf was supposed to be part of the block quote.
The Grand Panjandrum
@burnspbesq: I would apologize, but my lack of sincerity would be much too obvious.
As a peace offering Sullivan had a great video for one of his Mental Health Break posts.
ellaesther
@burnspbesq: My pleasure! I not infrequently find myself surfing for wonderful things on the web in order to avoid posting anything about the horror just outside my door, or the rage inside my head…! (Boing Boing is an excellent source, and thank God!)
Sentient Puddle
@RW_Gadfly:
Neither life nor liberty exist in infinite supply either, so clearly those aren’t rights. Might have to exclude the pursuit of happiness too, but that depends on how you quantify it.
Chuck Butcher
@RW_Gadfly:
If you’re going to do that around here, you need to bring actual arguments with you. The other unstated half of your bullshit is the argument that Medicare is no good because its good numbers come from paying too little. You fuckwits think an ability to string words together means nobody listened to all your bullshit and doesn’t see you trying to play both ends to the middle?
I have no idea why anybody is bothering to be nice to you, BoB is as sensible and more interesting in a whacked out way. I’ve spent way too much time and energy countering your lying ways and showing up your game to be fucking amused. I’ve seen your crap succeed because people are too lazy to catch on while you double around on them. This place ain’t that.
Really, faux reasonableness as you lie and double deal is as tired as Glenn Beck’s outfront craziness. Which “moderate” Republican Congressman did you crib that from?
David
The high points of Singapore’s health care system that RW_Gadfly is claiming to approve of:
1. Highly regulated government mandated health savings accounts
2. Government actively regulates prices of health care services
3. Public health care in which the government pays 80% of “basic public health care services”
4. Public health insurance options offered by government
5. Government run hospitals
I’m going to go out on a limb and guess you heard from someone, somewhere that the Singapore health care system used health savings accounts and realized it matched up with one of your GOP talking points.
geg6
@gwangung:
LOL, that was my thought when I read his comment citing Singapore. But it won’t matter. I read this guy a bunch here last week, I believe. And everyone loved how he sounded more intelligent and reasonable than most wingnuts. But I wasn’t fooled and I’m still not. He may be able to put a coherent sentence together, but he’s just as whacko and reality resistant as any Beckian winger. And he’s as prone to the typical winger argumentative tactic of suddenly backing off an assertion by saying, well, he doesn’t really agree but whatever the winger argument is has some salient points to it, but his own beliefs are much, much more nuanced and well-researched. Until you actually look into them. And then it’s Glen Beck crossed with Ayn Rand crossed with Milton Freeman crossed with Dick Cheney, with a little Inquisition and Salem with trials thrown in.
RW_Gadfly
So, in other words, if we didn’t have Social Security exactly and precisely as presently constituted, then we’d have a bunch of poor old people, eh?
Logic much?
A question: how much do you know about the compulsory retirement savings plan that the City of Galveston, TX has instead of Social Security (that’s right…if you work there, you’re entirely exempt from Social Security)?
Their plan not only offers a significantly higher replacement income at retirement (~70% of working income, vs. Social Security’s ~40%), the principal of the annuity (ie, what the employee contributed through their career) goes into their estate and can be passed to their heirs.
Knowing that, why would you think that *only* Social Security-as-we-know-it can ensure income for people in retirement? As it turns out, there are a handful of Americans who are getting a much better deal than Social Security….
…and it’s not on a crash course to the fiscal abyss, to boot.
geg6
@RW_Gadfly:
Um, yes. Because that’s precisely what we fucking had when the whole Social Security thing was invented.
Gawd, you’re stupid. Unless you think we are. In which case, all I have to say is…
Gawd, you’re stupid.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@RW_Gadfly: Did you know that pensions are more efficient investments than 401(k)’s? I bet you can probably tell me why if you think about it long enough.
RW_Gadfly
I know quite a bit about it and I’m not simply claiming to approve of it. I’d endorse it here.
The key is the preservation of moral hazard and giving consumers the incentives not only to live a healthy lifestyle, but to be frugal about their use of healthcare services.
RW_Gadfly
LOL. So I just gave you an actual example of living, breathing American citizens this very day who don’t participate in Social Security — yet enjoy a higher retirement income *and* the benefit of being able to bequeath their accumulated savings to their heirs at death…
….and you still claim that Social-Security-as-we-know-it is the only possible pathway to secure retirement income?
Okey dokey.
Chuck Butcher
@RW_Gadfly:
You say that … having evinced exactly none of it here?
Having read that lovely phrase somewhere you brought it forward to mean exactly what? That someone ought to have skin in the deal? You brought that forward in regard to Health Care? When that is exactly what the consumer of said thing has in the deal?
Polishing your turd, rub, rub, rub-a-dub and it still stinks?
WereBear
Nonsense! The troll is endorsing a career in the civil services!
Thadeus Horne
@ericblair: Your last sentence hit it on the nose, eric.
slag
@RW_Gadfly:
Typical libertarian. Doesn’t even bother to understand humans before trying to claim what incentives direct human behavior. And talks about people seeking healthcare as “consumers”. Couldn’t be more cliche if they tried.
Seriously, if you’re trying to educate us or present your perspective in a way that’s at all persuasive, you’re failing miserably. Maybe you should use your keen incite into what incentivizes us to help form your argument. I’m sure that will help.
David
The employee contribution for Galveston employees is higher than the SS contribution, and SS benifits will be greater than Galvestion’s alternate plan benefits by 2020. Source = GAO. I don’t think too many people here are going to fall for your Heritage foundation crap.
Never, ever believe anything a right winger says. They’re either wrong, lying or both.
slag
And, can I just say, homonyms are kicking my ass today. I hate you, English language!
TheHatOnMyCat
@RW_Gadfly:
Government (local and state) retirement plans are pretty common in the United States. Some are supplemental and some exempt workers from SS altogether. This is not exactly news, and it says nothing about the need for or viability of SS itself. Never has, never will, despite your amateurish spooftroll attempt to imply as much.
It doesn’t take a very sharp pencil or the skills of a professional actuary to figure out that government workers, who operate in merit systems which create job security and stability, who receive consistently moderate and stable salaries, and who tend to stay in their jobs for long periods of time, are good candidates for systems that can run better numbers than the larger, all-encompassing Social Security system. The larger system has to deal with a variety of issues and pressures that do not plague city and county governments, by and large, in terms of employees’ longevity of service and stability of incomes.
A better example of what happens to structured “retirement” plans in real life is the recent fate of 401k accounts for millions of American workers.
If the plight of workers watching their 401k plans go into the toilet doesn’t move you to lachrymosity, then consider the plight of the millions who would have nothing going for them if it were not for Social Security. It’s not unlike the cruelty of being without health insurance now.
Just Some Fuckhead
@TheHatOnMyCat: This.
RW_Gadfly
Sure they do.
In other words, no matter how much happiness you do or don’t pursue, it doesn’t put the slightest limit on how much happiness I’m able to pursue or not pursue.
Or consider it in the form of speech. Is there any quantity of speech that you could employ that would, in any way, encroach on my own right to also speak?
What about religion? Are your religious rights at all limited by Fred Phelps or Jeremiah Wright being loony toons?
That’s the thing. Those concepts are effectively infinite. What somebody else chooses to do with their rights ought have no impact on what anybody else does with theirs. If it does, then we have courts to remedy that.
The reason healthcare can’t be a right is because, no matter how we arrange paying for it, there will necessarily have to be situations where somebody will demand care and be denied it.
That would be the case if we had absolutely no risk-pooling. It would be the case if we had a fully socialized system like the NHS.
You can’t well tell somebody: yes you have a right to healthcare….but, just not this particular service and not this particular time.
cleek
the list of ways in which the government denies speech is as long as this thread. is free speech a right ?
courts couldn’t enforce health care rights ?
Just Some Fuckhead
I’m gonna keep my bad heart until there’s a heart sale down at my local hospital. And I can prolly save a little more with double coupons.
RW_Gadfly
Sigh. First of all, the number of public employee retirement plans that are considered full-on substitutions for SS really doesn’t go terribly far beyond the one that I mentioned. I think it’s true that there are a couple more — but it’s the most well-known and also the one typically used as an example of what would be a sound alternative to (rather than complement to) Social Security.
And, yeah, I think it says quite about Social Security. The contribution levels are precisely the same as SS and, as I said, it not only offers a higher retirement benefit than SS, it also has the added benefit of producing inheritable wealth in addition to simply income.
I can understand why you’d look at that and say that it doesn’t say anything about Social Security. But it pretty obviously does say something.
Thing is: I was simply using the example to respond to somebody who said that the alternative to Social Security is poor old people.
And that’s what you should be taking issue with — because that’s absurd. My point was not to debate SS, but to demonstrate the false choice that poster constructed.
anonevent
@RW_Gadfly: The thing is, not even Obama brought in single payer – though I dare you to cancel Medicare.
You sound a lot better than a lot of trolls here, but you still have that one fundamental flaw that I see in the wingers: you believe everything you know to be correct – fact be damned – and not only do you want to let anything ruin this belief, you refuse to take into account any political reality. And don’t give me the line that neither does Obama; he’s been willing to support a trigger just to get a Republican on board.
tripletee
Sheesh. My hair is getting mussed by all of the glibertarian hand-waving in here.
Olly McPherson
@RW_Gadfly:
More semantic games, and ones that serve as a sad attempt to ignore the fact that your has left our country in ruins.
Seriously. You have to be a spoof or you’d have some shame at pretending you’re engaging in some salon of ideas when your ideology’s prominent “thinkers” would have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the Enlightment.
Olly McPherson
Should be your “side” has left our country in ruins.
The Grand Panjandrum
Deep Thought: I’m just glad I’m white so I don’t have to apologize for all the crazy fucking white people.
SpotWeld
@RW_Gadfly
The main flaw in your “logic” is that you fail
to realize that those examples that SS need no exist is that exmaples would not exist without the assumtion that SS exists to backstop them.
SS is the money you don’t gamble with, meaning everything else is money you can confortably risk.
You’re missing the pine forest becuase of all the evergreen trees you feel the need to point out.
These SS alternatives are offspring of the existing SS program.
Is SS did not exist, that is to say, if it wasn’t created it is not a certainty that some other program would have arisen to fill it’s niche.
SS created the niche and other programs are coming up to AUGMENT it.
Now take a breath, go to the actual goverment website that outlines the program you’re talking about and read over the guidlines about how it knits together with SS
tripletee
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Try holding out until your hospital runs a buy one, get one free organ replacement promotion. Might as well have ’em toss in a new liver while they’ve got you on the table.
RW_Gadfly
Of course it is. And, in fact, there’s a pretty large and well-funded legal society which exists primarily for the purpose of seeing to it that it remains so.
Obviously, there are honest questions about what does or doesn’t constitute an abridgment of that right. If there weren’t such questions, we wouldn’t have much need for courts (on that issue, anyway). But there are, and that’s fine.
The point is: nothing that any of us does in the way of taking advantage of our right to speak, or to worship, or to assemble, or to keep and bear arms has any bearing whatsoever on what anybody else can or can’t do along those same lines.
No matter how you slice it, that’s not possible with a scarce resource — which “healthcare” is. As such, even nations that congratulate themselves that they respect a right to healthcare, don’t actually have such a right.
Not because they’re not sincere or because they haven’t tried hard enough — but because it’s just not possible.
scav
Olly, that may be a feature. O! my kingdom was a swatter of adequate size. I simply no longer have the freeboard to deal with this today. Bring on the bread in the Hadron, the future needs to fight back.
David
I am shocked that the incoherent glibertarian doesn’t appear to have a functional understanding anything approaching the real world here in the United States. I’m leaning more towards troll spoof at this point, the crazy is just too much.
General Winfield Stuck
Otherwise known as “bullshit”
celticdragon
O/T note here…
Widely respected GLBT blogger Pam Spaulding is now calling for the boycott of the DNC following a leaked email revelation in which it was revealed that time and resources were not going to spent battling anti gay marriage forces in Maine.
I spoke with another DNC official today after my piece on the OFA’s fuckups/refusals to help, and that official told me “Some Mainers inadvertently got the email, but it was not sent to our Maine list.” I was also told that this was a “glitch”, and the quote above confirms that. Okay, one might think, a glitch is your system has a few people with the wrong zip codes in them, so they get a blast meant for someone else. Whoops. Fine. That’s not actually what happened. What happened, per Tobias’ e-mail, is the DNC did a large e-mail blast on this, and wanted to make sure Mainers didn’t get that e-mail, for fear that the gays might find out and ask, how come we didn’t get this kind of help?
It’s kind of like being forwarded a party invite the host doesn’t want you to come to, and when you show up, everyone gets silent and it’s a-w-k-w-a-r-d. The party, in this case, was electoral help, and OFA wanted to make sure people didn’t find out it was being grossly insensitive by not extending an invitation to the gays in Maine. Awesome.
[T]he DNC has concerns about getting involved in local ballot initiatives? Why? They did it last year under Howard Dean, when they donated $25,000 to the coalition fighting Prop 8’s repeal of gay marriage. President Jimmy Carter did it in 1978, when he came out against the Briggs Initiative, that would have banned gays and lesbians from being teachers in California. But regardless, why does the DNC (and the White House) have a problem getting involved when a core Democratic constituency is having its civil rights taken away by the far-right base of the Republican party? We were promised that this administration would be our fierce advocate. Now all we get are excuses.
http://www.pamshouseblend.com/diary/13988/
Just Some Fuckhead
@tripletee: But if I take a liver I don’t need, won’t someone else have to do without?? Wait, what am I talking about? The glorious free market will provide for all.
RW_Gadfly
If SS offers any kind of “backstop” for the folks in Galveston’s plan, I’m not aware of it. They certainly don’t pay anything in to SS — that much I do know. I’d have a hard time seeing the SS Trustees believing their program owed any sort of protection to those folks in the event that they felt they needed it.
But they don’t need it and aren’t going to need it. Their program’s in far better condition than SS is.
If anything, SS should be looking to those folks for financial surety. :)
Just Some Fuckhead
@David: Nah, he’s just another rightwinger trying desperately to make the world conform to his idealogy, instead of the other way around.
Chuck Butcher
@anonevent:
It’s the cut and paste version of saying Glenn Beck crap and not sounding like it. If you want to find where he’s pulling this stuff without considering what it exactly means you could pull his catch phrases and search them. It works with those who want to believe it because it doesn’t sound all freaked out and weird.
You will note the double back in his response to CotH, who noted that SS deals with the messiness of the real job market where incomes veer around and jobs evaporate. It won’t be addressed because to doesn’t work in his little scenario – the fall back then is it is your own fault for being in that position.
Mike
So when the doctor says “your labwork shows AFP over 400, we need to do
an MRI to check for liver cancer” you, being frugal about your use of
health care, say “No, let’s do an ultrasound instead, it’s more
economical”?
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
a person’s right to own property imposes constraints on me all the time. I don’t get to take any car I like. I have to buy it. I have a right to own a gun, though there are constraints on when I can fire it.
I view a person’s right to live to be more important than a person’s right to their next $1 million.
celticdragon
O/T note…
Respected GLBT blogger Pam Spaulding is now calling for a boycott of the DNC following a leaked email and revelations that the DNC deliberately avoided giving time and support to the fight for marriage equality in Maine.
http://www.pamshouseblend.com/diary/13988/
TheHatOnMyCat
@RW_Gadfly:
So, your point is that I was right, that a retirement scheme for workers who have stable, lifetime employment at moderate and stable salaries, with good healthcare insurance and congenial working conditions, can run better numbers than the one-size-fits-all Social Security System can, because the latter has to deal with problems the smaller system doesn’t have. In other words, Like I Said.
If the whole country were like the City of Galveston, and everyone worked for the Great Big Nationwide City of Galveston, we could run their system on a national scale and all be happy.
Alas, the real world looks little like the bubbles created by things like the City of Galveston, or the exemplary Arizona State Retirement System which is supplemental and also has a better return than Social Security for many of the same reasons that Galveston’s can.
Social Security is a baseline, a safety net in place where nothing else is available. For that reason, and for the reason that it has to cover just about everybody, it cannot match the numbers of systems that don’t have to meet its demands.
Beauzeaux
I have to wonder how all those nations in which health care is a right guaranteed to all citizens somehow manage to provide full medical care to any citizen that needs it, when it’s “just not possible” because health care is “a scarce resource.”
Someone really ought to let them know that RW_Gadfly’s theories are smarter than their actual experience.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Mike: Unfortunately, leeches is all you can afford with the money left in your health savings account.
les
Not that we don’t have ample evidence of glibertarian stupidity from RW, but this really tops the sundae. have you actually, as an individual, tried to price shop medical services? And I won’t force you to an emergency–any old services, from routine to non-emergency surgery. You can’t; even if you can get a provider to give you a price, which you mostly can’t, and even if you could figure out all the providers to check with, which in the case of surgery you likely can’t, you still wouldn’t–the numbers you get would be bogus, and higher than a kite. The only “people” who can are insurance company negotiators; and providers won’t give you their prices; likely prevented by contract, although I can’t prove that.
So I pay United Health (which has an effective monopoly in this area–well over 60% of coverage) $12K a year for the privilege of paying providers–not all providers, only approved providers–the UH negotiated prices, which I cannot obtain in advance in most cases. And they let me spend another $6K before they come out of pocket for anything. And they administer the system so badly that in many doctor/medical offices, there are as many administrator/claims services people as medical providers.
You’re an idiot. There’s nothing wrong with the consumer, that getting profit driven insurance out of the system wouldn’t fix. But they’ve got a stranglehold on 10+% of US GDP, and ain’t going away without a fight. Luckily, they have you for an ally.
tripletee
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Exactly. You get a new liver, the hospital and the organ harvesting firm make a tidy profit, and shiftless losers who need new livers but can’t afford them have an incentive to work harder. It’s a win-win all around.
Just Some Fuckhead
Just to be clear, when a rightwinger sez “Health Savings Account”, what they are really saying is “tax cut.” It just sounds fancier and allows them to dodge the charge that they try to solve everything with a tax cut.
RW_Gadfly
My “side” wasn’t the one who intentionally lowered the obstacles to subprime mortgages and concocted the “affordability loans” to make people feel they could afford houses they couldn’t actually afford, arranged at the behest of banks to have quasi-governmental agencies underwrite bundles of these new loans despite their reservations, and then — to top it off — refused to regulate a nascent derivative market that appeared soon after to offer an illusive “hedge” to private-sector bundlers who wanted to get in on the act.
To the extent that my “side” is guilty of anything in that road-to-hell-paved-with-good-intentions, it’s that we didn’t do anything to stop it or otherwise reverse it as time went on.
handy
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Pretty much when a rightwinger opens their mouth generally, their words can be boiled down to “tax cut” and the answer to the implied question for whom is, of course, “the rich.”
RW_Gadfly
Not for me it isn’t. In fact, the tax treatment of these monies is the least of my concern.
The primary benefit of utilizing a savings account to fund most routine health expenditures is that it keeps a sense of moral hazard in place….people have an incentive to use as little of the money as possible.
TheHatOnMyCat
@Just Some Fuckhead:
I would sign up for Health Savings Account if I could figure out how putting $50 a month into a shoebox would then pay for my $150k heart procedure at the end of the year.
Actually, I want to own the racket that collects $50 a month from me and then can write a $150k check a year later. That is some magic lugey, to coin a phrase!
slag
@RW_Gadfly: You said this:
The implication being that Social Security was worse than poor old people. That’s absurd. That’s your problem. Not ours.
RW_Gadfly
TheHatOnMyCat: I would sign up for Health Savings Account if I could figure out how putting $50 a month into a shoebox would then pay for my $150k heart procedure at the end of the year.
Actually, I want to own the racket that collects $50 a month from me and then can write a $150k check a year later. That is some magic lugey, to coin a phrase!
You do realize that a high-deductible insurance policy always accompanies these savings accounts, right? Because it doesn’t sound like you do.
The savings accounts are used to pay for routine expenditures up to the level of the deductible. The insurance kicks in beyond then — until the account is replenished.
Support the concept or oppose it, at least know what it is you’re supporting or opposing.
Mark S.
@Beauzeaux:
If you were following closely,
Mr. DipshitRW Gadfly explained that in those other countries have “tighter supplies.” If you ask nicely, Mr. Gadfly will probably provide some link to aTownhallCato Institute article saying that you have to wait six years for heart surgery in Europe.cleek
RW_Gadfly:
the 2nd Amendment is wondering how it can exist, given that “arms” are also a scarce “resource”.
les
NPR, This American Life: the big pool of money. Find it, listen; information will help you avoid coming off as the useless tool you so obviously are.
tripletee
@RW_Gadfly:
Gliberteria sure sounds like a nice place to live, RWG. No messy reality to deal with.
Olly McPherson
@RW_Gadfly:
You’re right, the Republicans bear no responsibility at all for the recent financial meltdown. Thanks for clearing that up!
Or, rather, thanks for cherry-picking some bullshit to make yourself sound reasonable, which is what you usually do.
RW_Gadfly
Uh….where did I mention Social Security when I said that? Where did I imply it? Is Social Security the only “public policy ‘cure'” there is?
Moreover, why the false choice again? What is it with you guys and a false choice? Either we have Social Security, or we have poor old people? As if that’s the only two possibilities?
Sheesh.
Actually, if you care, I support the general concept of compulsory retirement savings. I just think that our Social Security system is an archaic and poorly-conceived one….as are most defined-benefit plans, public or private.
My making that criticism of it is not the same as saying that I believe we should have no compulsory retirement savings plan.
Just Some Fuckhead
@RW_Gadfly:
lolz, you need to get out more. People are already not utilizing health services because they can’t afford a thirty dollar copay or a couple hundred dollar deductible.
This isn’t actually the behavior you are seeking to modify.
What you are actually seeking is the deaths of a large enough number of people to reduce demand and cause doctors and hospitals to lower prices. This will save YOU money and validate your worldview that the magical free market can work in the health care field.
Just Some Fuckhead
@TheHatOnMyCat:
It won’t. The object is for you to die and incrementally reduce demand for procedures and thereby eventually save the rest of us money. Could you get on with it, then?
TheHatOnMyCat
@RW_Gadfly:
I know what it is, asshole. It’s a gimmick to move some discretionary healthcare dollars from pre tax to post tax on the paystub. Period. Otherwise it is just insurance. And the “Healthcare Savings” plans offered to me have one thing in common over the last 12 years: They suck, compared to the more traditional managed care plans, because they are built for young healthy people who are not in the situation the rest of us are in (bulging prostates, oozing anuses, ringing ears, clogged gall bladders, enlarged hearts, endometriosis, breast lumps, bleeding ulcers, gout, shingles, PAD and all the other joys of surviving 30 years of mostly Republican administrations).
TheHatOnMyCat
@Just Some Fuckhead:
I’m working on it. If I don’t cheat death every day before breakfast, I consider myself a slacker.
les
@TheHatOnMyCat:
Best example yet of the unwanted bodily function update, a routine curse of office life now exported to the intertubes. Gee, thanks.
cleek
@cleek:
WTF?
that was dumb.
Svensker
@Mike:
In fairness to Gadfly, I agree with him to some extent on this issue. Until quite recently we had a $10K deductible on each of us per year on our health insurance, so we were picky about how much stuff cost. I would price out where I got my mammograms — prices in the area ranged from $100 to $250 for the same procedure. When my husband had surgery, we negotiated a price with the anesthesiologist, the surgeon. Because we were responsible for paying for these costs, we tried to contain them, something that mostly disappeared in the general public when HMOs came into being and made costs opaque to the actual consumer.
(The end of the story is that the hospital offered us a price of $10K for the surgery, which we declined, figuring the insurance company would get a better deal. The hospital then billed the insurance company $20K, which the insurance company negotiated “down” to $18K and paid — $8K more than the original offer we’d got. Think something is screwed up there? )
RW_Gadfly
I didn’t say that either. You’re the one that said it was “my side” that did it. I was just recounting the history of how we got to where we did.
Even if you’re among those who blame financial deregulation (or insufficient regulation) for what happened, the decision not to regulate the Credit Default Swap market (which was only created in about 1999 or so) happened in 2000. And, if you believe Frontline’s source anyway, the people in the room who squashed the request to regulate it were Greenspan, Robert Rubin, and Lawrence Summers.
Personally, I think that the earlier effort to get the GSEs to underwrite various kinds of “affordability loans” — which was specifically designed to lower the barriers to high-risk borrowers — was the most important factor in setting the table for what ultimately befell the housing market.
That’s not to downplay the role of the CDS’ — but I tend to think that the volume of subprime lending in the 2002-2006 period would’ve been just as brisk with or without it. The GSEs were already underwriting those kinds of loans and had been doing so before the CDS even existed.
Anyway, you were the one who blamed it on Republicans. I figured you should at least be corrected.
TheHatOnMyCat
@les:
Yes, but consider the alternative!
RW_Gadfly
@TheHatOnMyCat: “I know what it is, asshole. It’s a gimmick to move some discretionary healthcare dollars from pre tax to post tax on the paystub. Period. Otherwise it is just insurance.”
Then you should write posts that reflect your understanding….instead of wondering how a savings account with $50 can pay for a $150K procedure.
If you’re not ignorant of how they work, then you shouldn’t write things that suggest ignorance of how they work.
toujoursdan
@RW_Gadfly:
I don’t understand the argument that healthcare can’t be a right. Healthcare is considered a right in most advanced countries. The entire population of countries like France, Canada, Sweden, Germany, Taiwan, the UK, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere are covered at far less cost, with equal or better services and treatment options than in the U.S.A. They all use somewhat different models, but they all achieve the same results.
No nation’s system is meant to cover every single procedure so the red herring assertion that there must be “infinite” supply is bogus. Most nation’s systems cover those procedures, tests and treatments that are necessary for life. Optional and cosmetic treatments are borne by the consumer or through an insurance company in “wraparound” plans.
Just Some Fuckhead
Where is Laura with a menstrual flow update when ya need it?
slag
@RW_Gadfly: So you believe in public policy interventions but only those your revisionist historian, anti-empirical mind conjures up? That’s at least an improvement…I guess. Don’t know what that admission does to your broadly constructed “free lunch” argument though. That one was really persuasive.
TheHatOnMyCat
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Careful, or I will start describing my most recent digital prostate exam. One thing I have never figured out, who enjoys it more, my doctor, or me?
Is this an old age thing, should I know the answer?
I’m just asking.
Thadeus Horne
@Chuck Butcher: Well said, Chuck!
Stan
Could it just be that the kewl kidz prefer to stay above it all? It’s easier to cop a ‘tude of ironic detachment and to score the catfights than it is to engage the actual, you know, issues.
David
@RW_Gadfly: The GSE market share dropped as the subrime market was expanding, and that expansion was driven by the private sector. You could not be more wrong about this issue if you tried. You really are exceptionally ill-informed and seem capable of swallowing unlimited amounts of BS, I’m truly starting to worry that you’re one of the people that have been sending money to Nigeria and are now waiting for your million dollar payday.
TheHatOnMyCat
@RW_Gadfly:
Aw come on, Doug. I got you to make another post that I could tee off on like Tiger Woods on a Par 3 hole.
Just Some Fuckhead
@TheHatOnMyCat: You and me both. Since I turned 40, no matter what I go in for, my doc sez “.. and these symptoms could also be indicative of a prostate infection so I want ya to go ahead and lower your..”
WTF? Can I just have a sinus infection without a butt reaming? I think it may be more effective at keeping me away from the doc than health savings accounts could be.
And what’s up with the asking me if it hurts? Yeah, it hurts, you got yer fucking finger up my ass. Is there someone that rolls their ass around in a slow sensual circle and murmurs “no” quietly?
TheHatOnMyCat
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Yes. That would be Brick Oven Bill.
Chuck Butcher
On the Ed Show Tom Tancredo brought up VA and vets to Markos. He opened a door thinking he was playing more bean bag politics. Markos stated that “I am a veteran” and that when my war came around unlike in Vietnam I wasn’t too depressed to go. Tommy walked off…
Chickenhawk pussy called on his deferment … in front of god and everybody – well the 15 of us who watch MSNBC Ed’s Show
Just Some Fuckhead
@David:
If that asshole gets paid off before me, I am going to be some kind of pissed at Mr. David Mark, Auditor of a Bank of the North International, Abuja.
toujoursdan
@les:
You kind of touch on this but I want to make this entirely clear. For most American workers the health insurance carrier is a monopoly.
I work in the Human Resources dept for my company and know that they pay approximately 3/4 of an employee’s healthcare cost. For me this means that I pay approx $250 and they pay the other $750. Our carrier is United Healthcare.
If I don’t like the service or costs of United Healthcare it’s not like I can shop around for another health insurance company with the expectation that my company is going to continue to pick up its part of the tab. Either I use United Healthcare or I buy an individual policy at full cost. Who in their right mind would pick the latter option?
For all the talk I hear from Republicans about “school vouchers” or school choice, they are strangely silent when it comes to workers choice. We have no choice and there is little incentive for health insurance companies to provide good service or lower costs.
Chuck Butcher
@Chuck Butcher:
Moderation hell
Chuck Butcher
@Chuck Butcher:
’cause I’m an idjit
slag
@Svensker: I might suggest you are the exception in this case. Not the rule.
Svensker
@Chuck Butcher:
I LOVE this story.
John S.
I’m definitely not a wingnut, and I do love my HSA, but…
It doesn’t do jack shit for making coverage affordable for the majority of the uninsured. If you’re middle-class with a household income of $100k/yr. it’s a great solution. But for most people, not so much.
slag
@TheHatOnMyCat: They don’t understand that particular technique. Even after multiple iterations. Learning curve fail.
gwangung
As has been said, you’re entitled to your own opinion. You’re not entitled to your own facts.
HyperIon
@toujoursdan wrote:
I hear ya.
At my small company (5 employees) we have Cadillac coverage, much more than I need. But 3 of my co-workers have various health issues that they want covered. So my salary is depressed because health care premiums cost so much. It seems wasteful to me but the guys with bad shoulders and hips (and kids) have prevailed.
Hookers and Cocaine
The media are idiots.
Sports journalism is the only place you find honest reporting and analysis. After the (foolish) predictions of the Lakers making a run at 70+ wins, people in the sports news biz are revisiting their projections. That never happened with the bimbos and retards at CNN. They are still saying the intelligence was bad concerning Saddam’s WMD and terrorism connections, when in fact the intelligence was pretty solid on him either not having them or that there wasn’t any evidence he did.
Those claims were just conspiracy theories and were transparently false to anyone who bothered to read the intelligence. The talking heads just don’t want to admit to being lazy morons.
Ruckus
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Almost a keyboard dude, almost a keyboard
Oh and thanks for the laugh.
General Winfield Stuck
@Just Some Fuckhead:
You dudes haven’t lived till they fish that little wire with a camera on it thru your pecker to look at your plumbing. Just a wonderful experience that words cannot describe.
Chuck Butcher
@General Winfield Stuck:
I stay the hell away from them, if I’m not bleeding real bad. My GP, he’s my GP because he was willing to see me when I came to the office needing some stitches and has seen me a couple other times, thinks I’m crazed because I tried some surgery on my hand to get a splinter – he had to do it, finally. Took a stitch. Nocacaine is pretty cool stuff, even if it takes a shitload to do anything to me.
Chuck Butcher
@Chuck Butcher:
Pretty cool Doc actually. I pay cash, he fixes what’s broke or cut and I stay the hell out of the E-room at 8x the bill. He thought it was pretty funny asking me why I hadn’t made an appointment the last time I saw him – four stitches in my wrist and I was bleeding pretty good.
TheHatOnMyCat
@General Winfield Stuck:
Egads. No way I am letting them do that. Unless the nurse puts it in with her mouth.
SpotWeld
@RW_Gadfly
Here it is in a nutshell:
You don’t know.. you seem to be clinging very strongly to a kite string of narrow examples and telling everyone it’s a rope.
Here’s what you need to do. Go to the gov website of that Galveston’s plan. Read on what it does… what it takes to join, what assumptions are made about returns, and have is really backing it.
And then, in the shuddering silence as you realize you have no idea what it actually is (little hint, see what has to be “too big to fail” for it to work), we’ll not be wondering were you went.
NotNotLarrySabato
That’s OK, Doug, you didn’t miss much. I live in Virginia, I like politics, and I have no idea what Deeds stood for. None. Nobody east of Charlottesville knew the guy, his campaign was a suck-fest, voter turnout was 20+ percentage points lower than ’08 and McDonnell protected his lead very well.
Voila, now you’re an expert.
General Winfield Stuck
Interesting handle