For what it’s worth Sullivan makes a fairly clear point here. Sully thinks that Medicare will destroy us all. Paul Ryan has a plan to kill Medicare. Where is the Democrats’ plan to destroy Medicare? They don’t have one. QED.
His other stuff about tax rates read like an afterthought tossed in because so many people keep pestering him about it. It does not matter that Ryan’s plan will add to the deficit rather than reduce it. Stupid riders like repealing the Affordable Care Act, which he opposes, have no impact. He doesn’t care whether Ryan’s budget uses projections pulled out of some Heritage intern’s ass. Until Ryan tosses in the Ugandan gay laws as a rider, you can either (a) convince him that Medicare can be fixed before it devours the economy, or (b) stop beating your head against the wall.
I know my vote.
***Update***
DougJ said basically the same thing a few minutes before I did. So yeah. And sorry.
***Update 2***
I swear to god I am not going to make a new post. But it is important. Sullivan has crystallized his major concern here; read it if you want, but it basically recapitulates what I said. Here is a non-snarky shorter.
* Health care is expensive.
* Health care is getting more expensive.
* Therefore everyone can’t have everything, and the amount that everyone can have will decrease as time goes on.
* Therefore, access will be rationed by either government or by the individual.
* Rationing by the individual is better.
* QED.
The flaw in this argument is so obvious that I simply cannot believe that Sullivan is arguing in good faith. The individual never has a choice about rationing. Never. Whether the government provides my health care or a private insurer provides it, someone else will always decide what treatments I can and cannot have. The only possible way to make medical decisions for myself is to buy every treatment on the open market. Why does nobody do that? Because the individual buyer cannot afford a fucking aspirin. One person has no negotiating power and therefore will get reamed in any system where healthcare conglomerates exist.
Again: throwing them on the open market WILL NOT LET SENIORS MAKE THEIR OWN MEDICAL DECISIONS. It will put them at the mercy of providers that are even more opaque and less efficient than the one they have now. That assumes they will find a policy at all, and many will not if Ryan repeals the ACA. Seniors who cannot find insurance because insurers won’t offer it or only at a ruinous price (which only makes sense from an profit point of view) will not “self ration”. They will get no goddamn care at all, save what they find at the Emergency Room after they sell their possessions and declare bankruptcy.
Sullivan cannot be this stupid. Can he?
GregB
I find this argument to be very unserious. We need to have a more honest, if not bracing debate if we are going to get anywhere./
eemom
look, why don’t y’all just rename this blog We Hang On Andrew Sullivan’s Every Word Juice?
RoonieRoo
That is the best description I’ve read so far on Sully’s blind obsession with defending the Ryan plan.
I’m so glad someone nailed it down. Does this mean we can move on? Please? Pretty please with a cherry on top?
reflectionephemeral
The thing is, taking our Medicare problem seriously doesn’t mean “stop spending federal funds.”
As the CBO explained, “[t]he bulk of that projected increase in health care spending [on Medicare and Medicaid] reflects higher costs per beneficiary rather than an increase in the number of beneficiaries associated with an aging population.”
And as we all know, the level of spending in the US on health care is already, um, atypical. “On a per capita basis also the U.S. spent the highest with a total of $7,290 which is two-and-half times the OECD average.”
The problem with Medicare, then, is a subset of our larger policy problem: we pay more than anyone else in the world for comparable care, and it’s only projected to get worse in the future.
A proposal that says, “in the future, you’re on your own!” isn’t a serious proposal at all– it doesn’t address the underlying policy problem. The CBO’s examination of the Ryan plan found that by 2030, the government payment would cover only about one-third of the typical retiree’s total health care costs.
If we reflect on that for a minute, then we’ll realize that no future Congress will ever implement these proposals.
On the AMT, on the doc fix, on the donut hole, we see Congress work to fix problems for people, not exacerbate them.
And Ryan’s budget, after actually increasing the deficit vs. the current path for ten years, only starts to save money when impossible things start happening somewhere off in the future.
So especially on Medicare– which is a problem with health care costs, not government spending– Ryan’s plan is fundamentally unserious.
mclaren
Sullivan thinks the costs for medicare will continue to skyrocket without limit.
That will only happen if America never does anything to control costs.
At some point in the near future, there’s going to be a massive collision between the 1.45-trillion-dollar-a-year military industrial complex and the 2.2-trillion-dollar-a-year medical industrial complex. They’re both growing far faster than the rate of inflation and together they’re gobbling up essentially the entire U.S. economy.
So at some point both these out of control parasitic parts of the American economy will have to control their costs, because there isn’t enough money for either one of ’em, let alone both, at their current rate of growth.
Sullivan never contemplates this reality, of course.
Jack
Has anyone asked Sullivan who is going to pay for his anti-HIV medication once he retires, or is he so rich he can pay for them himself?
Then ask him about people who aren’t rich who have HIV.
Or is that rude?
Damn it…
Bruce S
The thing that’s so pathetic and ultimately dishonest about such complaints over the cost of Medicare is that Medicare is more efficient in dealing with spiraling health care costs than private insurers and also puts more money in the pockets of providers as opposed to brokers. This is the direction we need more of if health care inflation as projected isn’t going to eat up an increasingly large percentage of GDP.
These guys are deliberately using microvision and zeroing in on the least of the culprits in forecasting problems of health care costs – but then the right is expert at these hustles. It’s another fraud, like “cutting taxes will increase revenues and reduce government spending.” I had hoped that Sullivan had moved at least a bit beyond this bullshit, but his crush on Ryan proves not. It’s sick. That Sullivan and David Brooks – two of those “thinking liberals favorite conservatives – proves just how dead and buried rational conservatism is. I guess we’ve got Bruce Bartlett still among the handful who have an honest bone left in their body.
It’s not really my problem – other than that finding myself in an argument with disingenuous lunatics and sociopaths is distasteful – but “conservatives” have a real problem. They’re running on delusions and resentment – I have to wonder, is it really so sweet living in the A-hole of the economic elite that one is willing to sell any last vestiges of a soul. Because that’s what they’ve done, almost to a man.
chopper
your grandma’s going to die eventually. your insane neighbor has a plan to smother her with a pillow today. you don’t have a plan to kill your grandma. where’s your plan to kill grandma?
aimai
I enjoyed this post. I don’t read Sullivan myself so I enjoy watching him get the ever living shit kicked out of him on this blog. Plus, you just can’t tell that guy he’s wrong too many times because he’s wrong in absolutely classically villagey ways so by attacking Sullivan you are attacking a whole lot of people.
aimai
PreservedKillick
I’m not sure why anyone is looking at Ryan’s plan as a plan for anything other than doing nothing.
Ryan, and the entire GOP, just got rewarded for doing nothing for a couple of years and actively blocking everything they possibly could.
Ryan’s “plan” is just more of the same. It’s politically toxic, not designed to do anything but jam up the works for as long as possible, and seen that way makes total sense.
So now we will natter on about how horrible his plan is and, meanwhile, the GOP does what they got elected to do.
Nothing.
Again.
Don’t like it America? Don’t vote them in.
FlipYrWhig
My plan is to hit sick people with larger and larger sticks until they stop complaining. It’s basically a version of Ryan’s plan, and we can haggle out the differences in a spirit of Seriousness.
arguingwithsignposts
@FlipYrWhig: Do you have some handy charts and graphs in a slick binded cover?
eemom
Why doesn’t Sully come over here and fight like a man?
Sheeyit, I gotta give Greenwald THAT.
Punchy
I never believed that Balloon Juice would take my farcical “But what does Sully think about (fill in the blank)” comments so seriously.
Unfuckingreal. Anyone realize that Sullivan has a actual blog, and can go to that site to actually read that drivel?
Bulworth
Nowhere. Is that location enough for you?
Just Some Fuckhead
What’s wrong with the current “kill us all” plan?
cleek
my preferred notion is that people like Sully are “lower spending” obsessives.
so, Ryan says “i can save $X if we do A,B and C”. the less-spending obsessives swoon. when people point out that A,B and C suck, the less-spending obsessives reply with “OK, but given that we must save $X, how do you propose that save $X?” “saving $X” is now the most important thing in the world. and anyone who doesn’t want to save $X is simply unserious.
what Ryan has bravely and boldly done is to simply give lower-spending-monomaniacs something to shiny to fixate on.
this is just a broader version of your “QED”.
Bulworth
I have some quibbles with this plan but it does provide some bracing seriousness and move the center down the ball to discuss things.
West of the Cascades
Please excerpt from Sullivan posts from now on – it grieved me to give his site traffic by clicking through to read his twaddle. The part about “Obama started [to discuss containing Medicare costs] but then walked away” was particularly galling, since the ACA included large cuts in future Medicare spending which were met by Seriousness like the Republicans’ “Obamacare will kill grandma!!” meme.
When the other political party is only interested in scoring political points through fearmongering on an issue, of course you walk away from it – any serious Democratic proposal would be met with “Obama Pelosi Reed death panels kill everyone with white hair aiiieeeee” from the Serious Party on the right. Sullivan is either stupid, blind, or a willing dupe if he doesn’t understand that.
Chyron HR
Nooooo, he thinks it will DESTROY US ALL!
DESTROY US ALL!
DESTROY US ALL!
DESTROY US ALL!
DESTROY US ALL!
DESTROY US ALL!
DESTROY US ALL!
(etc)
Just Some Fuckhead
@aimai: I don’t read Sullivan either because he’s always wrong as he “blogs in real time”. When he finally gets it right and issues his caveats, nuances, corrections and retractions, I don’t need them because I never saw the error in the first place.
Having said that, it’s important for someone to monitor him and slap him around as necessary.
geg6
@Punchy:
Yeah, but he refuses to engage. That’s why it’s important to call him out in a forum we know he (or his intern minions) reads.
Just Some Fuckhead
Sorry.
What’s wrong with the current “destroy us all” plan?
No One of Consequence
lol @chopper
In Soviet Russia, Grandma has plan to kill *you*.
@Sullivan: please quickly fade to obscurity or fall out of all means of communication, so that we might return Mr. Cole, Tunch, et. al back to the subjects of yore…
cleek
@West of the Cascades:
i’ve written plenty of emails to Sully with this exact argument – and i’m sure plenty of other people have, as well. apparently he doesn’t think much of it.
Zifnab
What makes Ryan’s plan so laughable is that he’ll give you a $15k voucher to buy your own drugs, presumably so you can haggle for a better rate and let the free market decide yadda-yadda. But he won’t let Medicare bargain in bulk for medication. Because that would be unfair to the pharmaceuticals industry.
Does that make a lick of sense?
Brachiator
Yeah, that’s pretty much it.
Sullivan and his ilk are hung up on theoretical fears about “big government” and “big government programs.” Somehow the problems that Medicare attempts to address will take care of themselves if only government is “limited.” And if things don’t work out, then, well … something. They never think through the alternative or ever consider the question, “what if your cutbacks don’t work? Then what?”
geg6
@Zifnab:
That’s not to buy drugs. That’s to buy insurance. And pray like hell to the FSM that there’s some sort of drug coverage in the mythical insurance policies for the elderly that he seems to think $15,000 a year will buy.
Zifnab
@geg6: Very well. But it’s still the same general dynamic. The insurance company that you contract with (assuming 65-and-older insurance companies could even exist) would still haggle for drug benefits and care benefits.
With the way Congress has Medicare completely straight-jacketed on prices, this almost doesn’t seem like a bad idea. But it still seems a ridiculously round-about way of implementing a system you’ve repeatedly voted against.
Donald G
Anyone wanna know when America worked? It worked when we had “big government” and “big government programs”.
Thirty years of strangling “big government” has certainly been a big improvement over the FDR through Gerald Ford eras, hasn’t it, conservatives?
Villago Delenda Est
Medicare will not kill us.
Parasitical assholes who profit off the suffering of others are the root cause of the problem.
Eliminate the parasite middlemen of the health “insurance” industry. They have no motivation, at all, to control health care costs. They thrive off of them. They suck the blood of the health care system.
Eliminate the entire “we need more tests, I’ll send this to a lab I own to conduct them” nonsense.
Get physicians out of business, and back to healing. The profit motive needs to be eliminated from the entire health care system. It encourages escalating costs, by rewarding them.
Poopyman
I’m gonna sit this one out.
cleek
@Zifnab:
a straightjacket which Ryan voted for, IIRC.
Villago Delenda Est
@West of the Cascades:
The the blinders of an ideology that is morally, intellectually, and reality bankrupt and stupid would explain all three possibilities.
Gin & Tonic
@geg6: I’m in my 50’s with no health issues, getting two-party health insurance (me and spouse) through a large group plan through my employer. The total cost of the plan (my contribution and the employer subsidy) is about $14,000/yr. A 65-year-old person with even a minor chronic health issue, shopping on his/her own has precisely zero probability of getting anything nearly as good for anywhere close to that price.
aimai
@West of the Cascades:
Also, Obama didn’t “walk away” from his own commission (though he should have!) his own commission was too corrupt and ham handed to even issue its own report. There was nothing to embrace, and nothing to walk away from. I don’t understand why the same media people who hung Al Gore out to dry over where, exactly, he made his phone calls from simply leap right over the fact taht the Commission didn’t officially issue any report or any recommendations because they didn’t produce solid enough work to get the required number of votes.
aimai
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Donald G:
But that period ended with an entire decade of no net growth in equity capital. During the 1970s the stock market flatlined. Do you know how many tears of rage and frustration our Lords of Capital cried over that fact? And it was ALL Liberalisms fault! Why? Because shut up, that’s why!
This outrage, this crime against humanity, it can never be allowed to happen again. Which means that from now on our economic system must be rigged such that we always have at a bare minimum, either: (A) bubblicious equity and credit markets expanding at a rate that would be the envy of a metastasizing cancer, or (B) a chance to play the ever popular game of Loot the Proles. Having both at the same time would be nice, but our Lords and Masters must have at least one of those options. If we don’t give them at least one, they will burn the country to the ground. Better that than going back to the entropic death-freeze of Capital that was the 1970s.
Poopyman
No, seriously. This is the last I have to say on the subject.
BGK
@Zifnab:
Collective bargaining through Medicare = Teh Soc1alisms
Free-market shopping = Randian rugged individualism
The market cannot fail, it can only be failed. If you don’t achieve awesome savings yourself, you’re doing it wrong. That it more likely leaves one smeared on the pavement is irrelevant.
jibeaux
I think reasonable people can all agree that spending on Medicare, as it is predicted to do in the future, is fairly unsustainable and will need changes of some sort. Okay. But why do conservatives have such difficulty with the following leap: the primary reason for this is the also-unsustainable, ever-increasing costs of medical care? To address Medicare spending without addressing health care spending does nothing but shift the burden off taxpayers and onto the individual. And yes, for conservatives I realize that’s a feature and not a bug, but people simply can’t afford to pay for treatment when costs double every nine years, and they can’t afford insurance to cover the treatment when the costs of that treatment double every nine years. It’s just not a Very Serious Plan unless it gets at what the underlying issue driving the unsustainability of Medicare is.
mclaren
Why is anyone even talking about the deficit?
The Bush tax cuts paid them off. The proof is here, in How the Bush tax cuts will pay down the deficit by 2011.
Jeez. Why you guys are whining about deficits that don’t even exist anymore, I dunno. Liberals. Go figure.
Stillwater
@cleek: a straightjacket which Ryan voted for, IIRC.
From our pov, conservatives have a perverse idea of government ends. One view they cling to without argument is that freedom and government are mutually inconsistent at the conceptual level as well as in reality. For them, there is no government service which actually increases individual freedom and liberty, or increases the overall level of justice in the world. Even the Nightwatchman state is only a necessary evil.
Paul in KY
@Zifnab: It makes sense if you have alot of stock in pharmacutical companies.
Stillwater
@mclaren: And the Iraq war has likewise yielded a surplus from all the oil revenue used to pay for it. Only liberals don’t believe this.
BGK
@Gin & Tonic:
In my case, for a single person’s policy it’s about $10,000. That she had Medicare and federal retiree’s supplemental coverage meant she didn’t lose her house when my father had a debilitating stroke is something for which my mother is still grateful. Then again, she’s a lifelong Democrat and therefore Shrill and Unserious.
If you try to make your charmingly fact-based argument to one of the market-tards, you’ll inevitably get the black-is-white counterargument that premiums are high and plans unavailable precisely because of stifling government regulation. Unleash the power of the market, and a thousand flowers will bloom. Not only will seniors have a choice of plans, but each of them will reward the enrolees with a new Lincoln, the glove compartment of which has a coupon for a free “Moons Over My Hammy” every week for the rest of the bearer’s natural life.
That I have had this argument with the person at my company who administers our health plan gives me a sad. That it’s also the argument which professional grifter Rick Scott and his legislative thugs are using voucherize Medicaid in Florida across the board is terrifying.
The Thin Black Duke
No offense, but I’m sitting shiva for that rotting skinbag of meat, pus and bile labeled “Andrew Sullivan”. From this moment on, he’s dead to me. C’mon, try it. It’s easier than you think.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@jibeaux:
My best guess is that those conservatives who aren’t just mindlessly chanting slogans but rather know something of this problem of which you speak view it as a classic Malthusian crisis. And their answer to any sort of Malthusian crisis hasn’t really changed since it was so memorably lampooned by Charles Dickens: if they must die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population. The rest is euphemisms for polite company and implementation details.
We are all Irish to them.
DFS
“Sullivan cannot be this stupid.”
I dunno. Imagine the contortions of cognitive dissonance it takes just to get through the day as a gay Catholic conservative. I reckon the guy can convince himself to believe just about any goddamn thing at this point.
Stillwater
TimF: This post has the potential to surpass even Greenwaldian levels of updates. As you keep decoding Sully-speak it could become the longest post in the history of the bloggerverse!
David Jones
I’ve been reading Sullivan for, like, ten years, and have found myself constantly exasperated by his huge blind spots with regard to the various conservative ideologies he championed in the Reagan-Thatcher era, that he has somehow held onto even though he became an Obama supporter.
His disingenuous and reactionary posturing on the Ryan budget plan has finally pushed me over the edge. His insulting and idiotic use of loaded terms like “the successful” and “the hard left” has also just become too much. I just can’t read this guy anymore. I’d never read this blog before yesterday, when Sullivan linked. But I will now.
fasteddie9318
Maybe I’m being a provincial asshole, but when the British expat douchebag talks about how askeert he is that Medicare will kill us all unless Paul Ryan kills it first, my reaction is that said British expat douchebag ought to feel free to bounce his ass on up out of here anytime he wants, leaving the rest of us to suffer at Medicare’s cruel hands.
geg6
@Zifnab:
Even the number $15,000 is ridiculous and impossible to take seriously. My mother died in 2001, but the year before that, her prescription coverage ran out mid-way through the year and she was battling breast cancer that had spread to her bones and was on chemo. We found out that the cost for her chemo (pill form, not I/V) per month was $2300. Just for the chemo pills. That did not include all the other meds she was on, her doctor visits, all the testing that is required when one is on chemo. Six months of chemo would completely wipe out her coverage under the Ryan plan (and that’s the cost in 2000, not 2011). On her fixed income (a 401k from her former job as a newspaper reporter, SS benefits, and the $200/mo she got from my dad’s pension, which was essentially wiped out when LTV Steel went into bankruptcy), she brought in about $2200/month. Thankfully, my mom’s oncologist was able to provide her with enough samples to get through to the end of the year. But, obviously, samples can’t cover a large percentage of the population when they run out of their insurance coverage.
I believe that many people who will lose Medicare to Ryan’s voucher system are in exactly the same situation my mother was in back then.
And this doesn’t even begin to address the issue of exactly which insurance companies would even be willing to take on a bunch of policies for older people who are, statistically, expensive to insure due to the myriad of health issues that come about simply as a function of age.
befuggled
Yes. Duh.
arguingwithsignposts
He never argues in good faith. EVER.
I wrote this in 2009. It summarizes my feelings about Sully, and I see no need to change my opinion.
Just Some Fuckhead
Sullivan is really saying, without coming out and looking all sociopathic, that he wants to try supply and demand on an inelastic health care market. As people cannot afford medical care and crawl off to die someplace, demand for care goes down and too much supply then causes prices to drop which means more people can now afford to tighten up supply again.. rinse repeat.
I think Sully oughta step up and be the first to test this theory out.
Stillwater
@Stillwater: Adding to that: it seems to me what the believe is that a Hobbesian State of Nature in which no one fucks with them , but there are no constraints on their behavior, is actually the ideal societal arrangement. The role of government, therefore, is merely to prevent other people from violating their rights.
Martin
Maybe ABL can tackle this in a post, but I’ve seen repeated reports that ‘abortion’ is a sticking point in this deal. Never stated, federal abortion spending has been limited due to the Hyde Amendment since 1976. Fed funds can only be used in the case of rape or incest and Planned Parenthood uses other funds to subsidize abortions. Defunding Planned Parenthood is designed to eliminate birth control, not abortion, and the media needs to start saying that. The Fox way of saying this would be that Planned Parenthood is the single entity preventing america from being completely overrun by black and latino gang youth.
arguingwithsignposts
@Stillwater:
I realize this is snark, but there is no way 2 updates could even approach the Greenwaldian heights of updaterytude.
Josh James
Yes. He is.
Stillwater
@Just Some Fuckhead: he wants to try supply and demand on an inelastic health care market.
Maybe the commitment to this principle is what made him emigrate from the UK to our free-market paradise.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Tim F.
The decision-maker here is the economic status of the individual. The rich will get health care, the rest not so much, in proportion to how badly they’ve done economically. The element of individual choice comes in via the choices you make regarding what sort of career to pursue, how much money you made, how much you saved up to pay your own way when it comes to health care. For most people it is effectively a health care system without any insurance at all.
This is pure economic Calvinism applied to health outcomes. The Elect are saved, the rest are Dammed. See also: the Conservative solution to a Malthusian Crisis, per my comment at #47.
chopper
@The Thin Black Duke:
why should i sit low for that moron?
Just Some Fuckhead
Hey, maybe we can get a new rotating tag line for the header: “Andrew Sullivan’s Comment Section”
Silver
It would take an incredibly selfish and evil person to have me cheering for HIV.
And here we are…
Chris
Yes. Yes, he can.
Brachiator
Trick question.
Conservatives, especially libertarians, always believe that they will come out on top, no matter the circumstance. They won’t get sick, or if they do, they will be able to get the care they need. Immediately, and at a price they can pay.
Then, at best, noblesse oblige will allow them to trickle down assistance to those in need. If not, the unlucky bums didn’t deserve any help anyway.
Niques
This.
It is the reason for dismantling Medicare, and the reason for eliminating unions.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
Jesusmaryandjoseph, what a surprise. Sully is a free market boggart.
Tolja so.
kerFuFFler
Sullivan is right that we cannot afford to do everything for everybody with our current system. Currently we spend about $250,000 more per person that what was paid in. This debt burden will only get way worse since families have gotten smaller (older overall population), people live longer, and new expensive treatments keep getting developed. That is why switching over to single payer makes so much sense. We should study what they are doing in other countries that saves so much money and acknowledge the need for some rationing. Hurray for Vermont for trying to establish their own single payer system! But until we can get the country to switch over to a single payer system we should raise taxes (and raise the cap for high earners),study effectiveness of treatments and ration accordingly (go ahead, call this “death panels”!), and perhaps gradually raise the eligibility age (maybe dependent on the nature of work—–physically taxing jobs could keep the lower age).
Meanwhile, Ryan’s plan is disgraceful, costs more, and really makes no sense unless you just want people to suffer. That said, the reason Medicare has been handled so woefully irresponsibly is that the Repubs and Dems have been playing chicken with each other for decades knowing that any reigning in of Medicare would turn off ill informed voters (and most of them are ill informed.)The ignorance of our electorate keeps the politicians from doing the right thing.
Letting the Bush tax breaks expire comes nowhere close to covering the gap between Medicare revenues and expenses.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Stillwater:
Why yes, its called the Invisble Hand of the Market. Or the Wisdom of the Market. Or, my personal favorite, the Forest of the Market.
;)
Lit3Bolt
Sullivan’s doubling down on the Ryan plan while keeping his “but it stimulated debate” Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free Card for any rhetorical or intellectual flips he might have to do to avoid being wrong about so many, many things.
Also, Sullivan is a Villager through and through, and while he pretends to be edgy and independent, his stances are so very conventional and inoffensive, and he always has a new book of someone else’s pictures or e-mails to sell to the gulls who follow him.
les
Of course. The Stupid is mostly in his premises–something bad was done, someone must suffer in consequence, he’s got his so…and thus his arguments are incoherent. I’ve said over and over, long term intense cognitive dissonance ain’t good for rational thought.
BSR
I find the constant assumption that Sullivan is not a dishonest sack of shit to be amusing.
His blatant lies over the bell curve weren’t enough?
His blatant lies when he tried to backtrack and erase his own history with the fifth column incident weren’t enough?
Sullivan makes his money as a troll, taking the contrarian and “sensible” position. He’s a fucking scumbag with no intellectual honesty or consistency to be spoken of. If something confirms his own prejudices he will run with it no matter how ridicules or thin the evidence. In a month he’ll be denying he ever backed Ryan’s budget plan.
Curtis
@arguingwithsignposts:
Good post, that.
Virginia Highlander
@Tim F:
Yes, obviously he can, but I think in this case he may be merely intellectually dishonest.
That is more generous than “stupid”, isn’t it?
catclub
@Just Some Fuckhead: Not fast enough, does not preferentially kill the ghey and the mooslims extra fast and painfully.
Uloborus
Stillwater:
Not to be a one-trick pony, but… yes. Of course. This is almost the definition of the tribalist mindset. If you are not Them you don’t have rights. It’s not that you don’t deserve them. As an example, they have the right to be ad Christian as they feel like. You don’t have a right to not be Christian. That’s not a right. It can’t be. For the Narcissist, reduce Them to a party of one.
Virginia Highlander
@BSR: Oops. Beat me to it.
Tim F.
@Niques: Unless you eliminate private insurers like Blue Cross, the long fall is still there but you’ve cut the safety net. Good thinking!
Poopyman
@Martin: A timely link:
Atrios wants you to know
Appropriately titled “Lies and the Lying Liars”.
arguingwithsignposts
BTW, I was just looking closely at my earlier post again, and I want to blockquote Sully’s earlier argument (this was from 2009, remember):
Sully has been Waiting For Ryan for years now. He and BoBo both need to be slapped around repeatedly for their bullshit.
Poopyman
@arguingwithsignposts: He hasn’t been waiting for Ryan. He and Bobo have been preparing the way for Ryan.
The Thin Black Duke
@chopper:
The same reason thousands of people went to Hollywood mogul Harry Cohn’s funeral: to see if it was true.
Stillwater
@Uloborus: But it seems a stretch to attribute a tribalist, punitive mindset to Andrew on this. Is the out-group in this case the poor? Plenty of people who aren’t technically poor suffer from what he’s advocating here. Does his view really reduce to the mere fact that he has insurance, and believes he’ll always be able to afford it, so fuck the other guys? That doesn’t strike me as plausible, tho I admit I could be wrong.
ETA: Arguing’s comment above suggests to me that he accepts the view that government is fundamentally inconsistent with freedom/liberty, the comment I made above.
BH in MA
And this “self-rationing” we’re supposed to do… Based on what knowledge or experience is an average (or even above average) person supposed to make medical decisions? If I can’t afford my medication and decide to cut my dose in half, I may still be doing myself some good or I might be doing myself no good at all. People who go without treatment for chronic conditions end up needing expensive emergency care. During the healthcare debate, one story stuck with me: a woman had to decide between medication for her heart condition and food for her kids. She chose her kids and ended up dying of a heart attack in the emergency room. The bill was $90,000 which is far more than it would have cost to simply give her the medicine she needed for the rest of her life. Now someone is stuck with a 90k bill and the government loses 25 years of income, social security and medicare taxes. Oh, and her family is destroyed.
Yes, we are on an unsustainable path, but articles like Sully’s ignore the fact that there are a bunch of other countries that manage to provide universal healthcare for 25-40% less than what we pay and in many cases manage to get better outcomes. Why can’t we have Germany’s system? Or Switzerland’s? Or The Netherlands’? Why is it that for US that the only solution to the problem is to throw up our hands and say, “well, we can’t afford it so we’re not going to pay – you’re on your own,” while these other countries somehow manage to do what our politicians and pundits say is impossible?
arguingwithsignposts
@Stillwater:
See my comment with sully’s earlier comments above. Yes, it is all about him. He’s a “maker.” we’re all just “takers,” which is why that tory asshole doesn’t have a comment section.
Calouste
He isn’t. He’s a conservative hack, plain and simple.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@arguingwithsignposts: A long euphemism for class warfare, isn’t it?
long ago
Here’s the argument Sully should give:
Health care is expensive.
Health care is getting more expensive.
Therefore, we need to get the best bargains on health care we can.
Therefore, health care costs are going to be bargained for, by either government or by the individual.
Individuals have no power in bargaining with health care giants.
Government has a far stronger hand bargaining.
Therefore, government is our only hope of containing health care costs.
QED.
And, in reference to comments above:
Yes, I am surprised at how easy I am finding it not to visit Sully’s blog right now. I may never go back.
He ought to realize that he is irremediably innumerate, and simply recuse himself from discussing any matter that involves numbers. E.g., today’s weather.
arguingwithsignposts
Just rereading Tim F.’s post title, and thought “My first and only post on the Dread Pirate Sully.” heh.
JAHILL10
THANK YOU for update #2. That is the absolute truth that none of the “serious” people in Washington are willing to face. Why is it better for some insurance company actuary to determine whether or not you get care? Who is he accountable to? No one but his bottom line. THAT is rationing. I’d much rather have the government ration my care with accountability coming every two to four years than some CEO who is only interested in his profit sharing bonus.
kc
Sullivan cannot be this stupid. Can he?
When are y’all gonna learn?
Brachiator
@arguingwithsignposts:
Maybe I’m missing something here. Is Sullivan really a producer of wealth? How about the bank gangsters who generated huge profits from fees and mortgages, who ultimately produced nothing, but who managed to redistribute wealth from homeowners to themselves?
But more to the point, as is typically the case, Sullivan substitutes some version of moral philosophy for economics. And so you have “makers” (good) vs “takers” (evil). On the other hand, buyers and sellers are appropriately morally neutral.
Ultimately, I suppose too much time is spent on Sullivan, still it is interesting and easy to note the intellectual shell game he plays to try to rationalize a very primitive, and religious, way of thinking about the world.
arguingwithsignposts
@Brachiator: I noted that when i first posted the excerpt. he’s not a maker in the sense the Randians would accept.
Stillwater
@arguingwithsignposts: Well, wrt Andrew I’ll have to concede the point. I always thought of him more an advocate of conservatism generally than self-interestedly advocating the preservation of class divisions specifically, tho the two are often indistinguishable in terms of policy.
Just Some Fuckhead
@long ago:
Sully thinks they can negotiate for better rates by dying. That’s a pretty powerful bargaining chip, eh?
Stillwater
Just went to Wiki to bone up on my Oakshottian Conservatism, and got a laugh outa this quote:
Chad N Freude
One data point on self-rationing: A year or so ago, my doctor recommended a very expensive test. I called Blue Cross from his office to find out whether they would cover it. I was told that THEY would make a determination as to whether it was medically necessary AFTER they received the bill. I self-rationed my care by choosing not to risk being stuck with a huge bill because my carrier wanted to substitute their medical decision for that of my personal physician.
Villago Delenda Est
@arguingwithsignposts:
Sullivan here is of course referring to those who seek to steal the labor of those who perform actual work, and use it to enrich themselves…by redistributing wealth through the theft of labor. You know, the takers of the managerial and investment classes, who take the wealth of actual people who work and live off that wealth.
I am reading this correctly, am I not?
licensed to kill time
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Heh, indeedy. Vibrant, too.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Stillwater:
and to prefer the Imaginary Old-Growth Forest, even though all the valuable timber has already been made into freemarket tables and chairs.
;)
JoJo
@Jack:
When Sully retires he’ll return to England and get his HIV meds from the National Health.
Brachiator
@arguingwithsignposts:
Hell, I’m not sure he’s a producer in any sense of the term.
While I do read Sully, I don’t usually pay any attention to anything he writes about economics or science. I didn’t really how intellectually bankrupt his writings about budgets and entitlements were.
Zifnab
@cleek:
And that’s what I’m saying. If you’re for the free market, you’re for the free market. You can’t go around in circles saying
@BGK:
This.
@geg6:
It seems like this is one of the easiest and most obvious places to treat health care costs. You just need to look at the case of KV Pharma jacking the price of injections from $10 to $1500 a dose to immediately notice the needlessness of high drug prices.
http://www.ajc.com/health/preemie-birth-preventive-spikes-866617.html
Zifnab
@cleek:
And that’s what I’m saying. If you’re for the free market, you’re for the free market. You can’t go around in circles saying ……
@BGK:
This.
@geg6:
It seems like this is one of the easiest and most obvious places to treat health care costs. You just need to look at the case of KV Pharma jacking the price of injections from $10 to $1500 a dose to immediately notice the needlessness of high drug prices.
Edit: Moderation black hole didn’t like my link.
Uloborus
@Stillwater:
I was referring specifically to your description of the conservative view of ‘rights’. I’m not sure ‘rights’ really is a big issue in this argument. The only significant role I see is a very subtle one similar to what you described above. Because he is healthy and his own health care needs are taken care of, you cannot make an argument that people have a right to health care. That won’t make sense, since it’s not about him.
Really, in this case I’ve been blaming his attitude on two things. First, the ever present conservative attitude that ideals are more important than facts. Second, a Thatcherite belief in ‘tough love’. The welfare state is bad because it’s kind to people and kindness can’t be in someone’s best interest. The best medicine tastes bad. GOP icons who overflow with callousness and hate must be admirable people who have everyone’s best interests at heart. ANY MINUTE NOW the GOP will stop beating up on gays, because baby you know I love you and things will be different.
Villago Delenda Est
Remember, Thatcher is the vile biddy who once said that there is no such thing as society.
When you’re dealing with stupid this profound, there really are few alternatives other than 2nd Amendment remedies.
KS in MA
@Brachiator: I wouldn’t say that his way of thinking about the world is religious. If it were, its salient features would include generosity and compassion toward “the least of these.”
Uplift
Sullivan cannot be this stupid. Can he?
Yes, he can. Stop EVER READING HIM.