Today we enter day 4 of our national nightmare of innumerate serious people who scream “the math demands it” but won’t admit that (a) 22.3 – 18.3 is not 3, (b) 4 percent of GDP is about $600 billion a year, and (c) the relevant percentage here is percentage increase in revenue (4 is 22% of 18.3) not increase in revenue as a percentage of GDP. Today we learn that, even if Ryan’s numbers don’t add up unless you use Heritage math, even if it makes no effort to contain medical costs, even if it would literally kill tens of thousands of older Americans, we must admit that it is more ambitious than ACA:
Only the ACA is really trying to deliver more efficiency; the Ryan plan simply shifts the responsibility for someone’s health after a given point from government to individuals. Both proposals therefore make some sense to me. But Obama’s is both more humane and less ambitious in its attempt to solve the basic dilemma.
Exactly what about Ryan’s plan makes sense? What?
mclaren
The answer to this is simple. If everyone involved in politics or punditry is so stupid and so unable to do basic arithmetic, we can take advantage of that.
Let’s cut a trillion dollars a year from America’s military spending. This will increase our military budget by 75% and make America stronger!
Let’s change tax rates on the rich to 90%. This will cut tax for the wealthy even more and ignite a vast economic expansion!
Maude
If Ryan’s proposal makes sense to that guy, he’s in deep trouble.
PurpleGirl
It makes a government program into a private one and massages the private sector… It will give more money to the super rich (besides fees to private companies, it gives tax cuts to people and companies). Also it will hurt people. It will hurt working and poor people.
David in NY
Nobody else reads Sullivan. Why do you? Why should I?
Geez.
Sad Iron
I actually threw up in my mouth when I read Sullivan’s post. Basically, he said that our lives are all really black and white movies and that we’re all naive and spoiled–or the shorter version, “look, people have to die of treatable health problems because we’re building freedom bombs and backing Brinks trucks up to AIG.” Oh, and “Little Johnny is going to die.” At what point can we just say that these people are evil? Seriously. Does anybody have the guts to be serious–here’s a starter from a non-pundit (me) that is serious: cut the Pentagon 50%,eliminate the department of homeland security, and then we’ll see what needs cutting beyond that.
Loneoak
I missed part of this story. Can someone explain to me the “22.3 – 18.3 is not 3” comment that keeps popping up?
The Political Nihilist Formerly Known as Kryptik
Green Balloon Juice on Sully, please, just please.
Tom Levenson
Sullivan is done. I really think that this is his macaca moment — and it couldn’t have come for him at a worse time, given that he is trying to demonstrate his wonderfulness in a new location.
He’s done this before and survived, of course — the Bell Curve nonsense was one disaster, and his publishing of Betsy McCaughey’s lying pile of sh*t about the Clinton health care proposals has done lasting harm to the republic.
But this is a simple stupid, as opposed to the “serious people think hard thoughts” framing of his innumerate support of racism and the misery of the aged and the ill in those earlier episodes.
I’m all for keeping on hammering him: he’s got to learn sometime, or go the way of Mickey Kaus on a gentler trajectory. But I do think he’s doing himself real harm with this one.
BGinCHI
I thought Farrah Fawcett was really smart in the 70s.
Maybe it was the poster.
Comrade DougJ
@The Political Nihilist Formerly Known as Kryptik:
Look, we got a Krugman link out of doing this. Why stop now?
Dave L
The thing that is particularly idiotic about the Ryan Plan is its denial of political reality.
So Ryan solves the Medicare funding problem by putting the burden of healthcare expenses on the elderly. Brave! Serious!!
– But, as any number of people have pointed out, who really thinks this will work? Who believes that Congress will do nothing when millions of non-wealthy 75-year olds find themselves unable to obtain basic healthcare?
Nobody, that’s who!!! – Of COURSE Congress will step in and keep the money flowing, unless President Bachman manages to re-introduce property qualifications for voting before that. So even the putative cost savings are a scam — but people like Sullivan give Ryan a pass, and argue that ACA is not as serious an effort to fill the budget hole.
And then get pissy when this is pointed out to them.
Comrade DougJ
@Loneoak:
Sullivan wrote that 22.3 minus 18.3 is only 3 in the post of his I linked to up top.
kdaug
At long last, sir, have you no conception of commonwealth?
Must everything be put to profit?
Must you prey on the weak to benefit the rich?
Asshole.
aimai
I can’t figure out how Ryan’s plan can be called “More Ambitious” in any realistic sense of the words more, or even ambitious, since these would have to refer to an actual plan, which Ryan hasn’t got. If everything in your plan is a lie, including the commas and the bullet points, it is neither ambitious nor unambitious, its just gobbledygook. Ryan’s plan is like saying No taxes on rich people, eat grandma for breakfast, problem solved. That’s not ambitious. That’s just nuts.
aimai
Ronc99
Ryan’s budget is part of the script. His was meant to look bad, so Obama’s will look good. Mission accomplished after you read most posters in here.
Bottom line: Now Obama will offer his budget which will be just a tad less scarier than Ryan’s. And it will be based on the Catfood Commission recommendations what are nothing short of fascism 101.
Obama is not listening to the economists, he is listening to Wall Street’s demands. Shame on him and those that STILL support him!!!
Lurking Canadian
The part where rich people get a massive tax cut. ie: The only important part.
steviez314
Hitler vs. Obama.
Less humane, but more ambitious.
In fact, I sense a new tag: “Less Humane, More Ambitious”.
Bruce S
Hey – at least he’s not calling us “Fifth Columnists” in his incoherence and willful confusion. Nor is he suggesting we use IQ tests to resolve the allegedly “insoluble” social problem he courageously poses. I think there HAS been some significant improvement in his corner – although I’m glad he’s left the Atlantic for Beast. It’s a perfect fit. And I never go there.
aimai
@Dave L:
That doesn’t strike me as politically unrealistic at all. Ryan’s plan assumes a can opener and assumes that they will defund medicare without putting it to a vote. And at that point, if it gets defunded, there will never be the political will to turn the spigot back on no matter how many grandmas die in the streets or, more likely and importantly, in the front living room of their children and grandchildren.
They are explicitly trying to get Obama to agree to this defunding as a condition of having a running government.
aimai
Poopyman
@BGinCHI: It was definitely the poster. Gawd! She was a genius!
"Serious" Superluminar
Ok, that was a magnificently incoherent post, and I think you a John have invented a new form of rickrolling with your Sully links (I fell for it). I’ll leave the last word to the beardy tosser himself though:
piratedan
Its as if the Ryan plan was a term paper submitted by the team quarterback and if you flunk him, then there goes the chance to go to the state playoffs. Our beltway punditry are torn between having the entire town mad at them or doing the proper thing and flunking the student for turning in a poorly researched, plagiarized piece of crap and hoping that the student learns from the educational spanking.
Ash Can
(If this shows up twice in this thread because of FYWP, apologies.)
The notion of shifting responsibility for something from government to individuals is what makes sense to Sullivan. Never mind that it would have disastrous consequences for the American people and for America’s increasingly tenuous standing as a first-world country. It’s a notion that’s in accordance with his libertarian religion, so it automatically makes sense to him. And ultimately, what does he care anyway? He can always go back to the UK if things here go to shit.
Loneoak
@Comrade DougJ:
Ah. Beyond the actual inability to do the elementary maths (Brit joke!) there is the economic illiteracy of thinking that 3 or 4 percent of GDP is not a substantial and sufficient raise in revenue. That would wipe out our projected deficits and start chipping away at the debt, especially if the economy makes a real recovery.
joe from Lowell
Ryan’s plan is more ambitious.
But, then, the collectivization of Ukrainian agriculture was ambitious, too.
Dave C
Is anybody else really amazed by the fact that Sullivan can get through that entire post without including any, ya know, actual facts in his analysis? As long as something makes intuitive sense to him, data is not required to form an opinion on a complex topic. Goddamn, what a wanker.
Sly
Nobody could have predicted that Sullivan would have ended his intellectual quest for “sense” with a thumb-twiddling homily on Original Sin.
RossInDetroit
It’s exactly what the wealthy and the health insurance companies want. Therefore it is perfect.
Next question.
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
Given that ACA has nothing in common with Ryan’s plan what is the “basic dilemma” they are trying to solve? The increase in average life span?
EconWatcher
Tom Levenson:
I think you’re right. I was one of Sullivan’s (qualified) defenders, on this site and elsewhere, until this one. But this one did it for me, and I’m seeing quite a few people saying the same thing.
Being careless, callous, and pigheaded on an issue like this leaves you asking, why have I been paying attention to this guy at all?
"Serious" Superluminar
@Ronc99
You didn’t exactly major in history, did ya?
gnomedad
I’ve been searching for apt metaphors. How about a toddler boldly and courageously demanding all the cookies? Where’s Mom’s plan? Huh?
John Cole
I see his walkback continues. I fully expect that after Obama speaks, he will be posting Roadrunner videos and saying meep, meep, all while insisting that the seriousness of Ryan’s proposal is what caused Obama to speak.
stuckinred
@Ronc99: Thank you Mr Hamsher
wasabi gasp
Sucks to be someone.
kdaug
@Tom Levenson: Yeah, I think you are probably right. The worm turns.
JGabriel
Sully:
Well, it’s true that a desire to destroy America is more broadly ambitious than a desire to fix health care.
DougJ @ Top:
Everything, if you hate the American dream of general upward mobility, and love the idea (and current reality) of America as a static libertarian paradise of wage slaves serving the ultra-wealthy in the top 1% of income and assets.
.
Dave C
@John Cole:
I didn’t see his latest post as being a walkback. More like an intellectual exercise on why axiomatic Burkean truths require modern society to let the poor and the elderly die miserably.
PeakVT
I see the link to Silly Sully is still not in the “Blogs We Monitor And Mock As Needed” section. Which is odd, because he seems to be mocked a whole lot around here.
kdaug
@joe from Lowell: Precisely.
Tom Levenson
@PeakVT: as we do, not as we say, ya know. ;)
kdaug
@PeakVT: No need for a tag, we have posts for that.
And hey – Sully – we know you’re reading. Jump in and represent. You’ll get a fair(ish) hearing here, I promise*.
*I am not the owner of the blog and any promises made by me, expressly or otherwise, are not enforceable under contract of law.
"Serious" Superluminar
Ok i can’t stop reading it, car crash that it is.
well fuck me! If something involves investment and experts, i guess it’s just not worth it! The math does, after all, demand it.
Bob Loblaw
@John Cole:
And 75% of this site’s posters will agree. May our roadrunner President never stop meeping.
RSR
You know who else was inhumane and ambitious?
BarneyG2000
Percent Vs. points is always good for a laugh, but isn’t the real question is whether Ryan’s 18.3% of GDP realistic? I think most economist agree that we need to be at least 19% of GDP.
PS, the predicted revenue to GDP for 2010 is 14.6%.
Dave
Ryan’s proposal makes perfect sense when seen from the viewpoint that its real goal is to transfer wealth from the bottom 95% to the top 5%. It has nothing to do with deficit reduction or health care reform. That all window-dressing bullshit. It’s a wealth transfer, plain and simple, because our Galtian overlords deserve it and we all deserve to beg for the scraps from their table.
Maude
@kdaug:
About the tag, why repeat the obvious.
@John Cole:
I think you have it exactly right.
Not if, but when.
hunter
Y’know, I just realized that somewhere along the line I quite unconsciously stopped reading Sullivan. After reading that post, I know understand why: the man is 1) pretty much amoral, in a glibertarian sort of way, and 2) completely clueless.
I suspect it’s too late for him to learn to challenge his own assumptions (and granted, that’s a non-starter among the pundit class anyway), but until he does, he’s not worth reading.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Bob Loblaw: why do think the sudden bout of Sully concern trolling Obama?
He usta say Obama was a “conservative”.
I think…..its because there are no viable conservative presidential candidates.
Just Some Fuckhead
@mclaren:
I say we cut top tax rates down to 0% and really jump start the economy.
Herbal Infusion Bagger
And the GOP cutting NIH’s budget by $1.6 billion will help get those lazy researchers out seeking private sector funding! Innovation!
Or they’ll fire their postdocs and freeze their lab procurement.
Joe Beese
The Ryan plan has already accomplished its purpose of making the formerly “draconian” Catfood Commission the new “compromise” middle ground.
kdaug
@Maude:
Yurp.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Comrade DougJ: Obviously, you don’t speak freemarket.
Vouchers is always a code word for fuck the poor and farm the middle class.
cleek
@Ronc99:
President Bachmann thanks you in advance for your support.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@JGabriel:
if you spoke freemarket, you would totally unnerstand.
BTD
Balloon Juice at its best.
Keep it up.
ornery curmudgeon
Oh, Sully said something. Thank you for the very important information.
Bob Loblaw
@cleek:
I love how Michele Bachmann got to be the new electoral boogeyman. Sarah Palin is crushed.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@ornery curmudgeon: haven’t you noticed a sea change in Sully’s attitude towards Obama?
Put on your sage hat and speculate as to cause.
cleek
@Bob Loblaw:
i hope so.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Bob Loblaw: not so sure. Palin just renounced birtherism. Birtherism is a ginormous problem for independents, and the GOP elites can’t wean the base off of it.
Praps Bachman is just a stalking horse.
trollhattan
@kdaug:
I expect…demand incoherence from Sully on matters financial but when he cited and linked McMegan last week in support of his
positionfaceplant the jig was up for me. He “believes” her mewlings either because he’s incapable of ascertaining their worthiness or he’s that arch.At some point it ceases to matter.
Also, too, didn’t he seem dignified screeching his defense of the Ryan thingie at Eliot Spitzer on Maher last Friday? Sometimes it’s best just to shut up.
loretta
Please. Enough with caring what Sullivan – an uninsurable person – thinks about health care costs for the rest of us.
He could not buy health insurance at ANY cost right now. He cannot buy term or permanent life insurance right now. He’s an actuarial outcast. So, if he were to ever lose the group care he has now, he’d be hurtin’ for certain.
So wtf?
joe from Lowell
@Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937:
The long-term fiscal crisis facing Medicare.
The ACA attempts to solve it by getting rid of Medicare Advantage and investing in efforts that reduce medical costs over the long run, so that providing Medicare services will cost less.
The Ryan Plan attempts to solve the fiscal issues with Medicare in the out years by getting rid of Medicare in the out years, and instead giving people who would have been on Medicare a coupon worth much, much less than the cost of what they would have gotten from Medicare.
scav
Random thought. Isn’t it nice that Sullied is already pretty much correctly defined in the dictionary?
Robert Waldmann
Sullivan is ranting as he did yesterday, the day before and the day before that. Therefore I think you meant to type “Today we enter day 3 of our national nightmare of innumerate serious people who scream “the math demands it” but won’t admit that (a) 22.3 – 18.3 is not 3.”
To be even halfway fair (that is 40% fair) to Sullivan, you should use his number system.
I wonder why he is so sure of himself so soon after making a fool of himself. I suspect powerful drugs are involved — and I want that drug (I promise I won’t abuse it — I can handle it — it’s 6:36 pm here and I haven’t drunk a drop yet — and not just because it would make my nicorette taste vile).
gnomedad
@Hermione Granger-Weasley:
But “appreciates” Trump’s efforts because “obviously there is something there that the president doesn’t want people to see on that birth certificate, that he sees going to great lengths to make sure it isn’t shown.”
SARAH Palin believes Barack Obama was born in Hawaii
Mart
Makes perfect sense if you don’t care about the deficit, like to hurt the poor and middle class and want to stuff more money into rich people’s pockets.
loretta
It makes perfect sense if you have absolutely zero stake in the outcome.
Bruce S
The only real question that this brings up IMHO is, “Is it possible to get McArdle to move over to Daily Beast?” I hate seeing her mug at Atlantic when I go read Ta-Nehisi Coates or Fallows.
Just Some Fuckhead
I propose we abolish Medicare and dump the resulting surplus into military spending. Conscript old people, 65 and up, to serve in the military where they will receive free healthcare. As an added bonus, we can ship them all to Afghanistan where they can terrorize our enemies with their scooters while allowing us back home to get in and out of Walmart in record time.
burnspbesq
@kdaug:
I would have said it differently, but that’s essentially correct.
Sullivan’s supposed Sophie’s Choice exists only if a collective decision to devote more resources to health care, and raise taxes to pay for it, is impossible. In my more Pollyanna moments, I tend to think that if the tradeoffs were clearly and truthfully explained to the American people, they would make the moral choice, but there is no reason to think that that will happen any time in any of our lifetimes. Sullivan implicitly assumes that such a conversation is impossible, and proceeds from there. He may be right.
bkny
simply shifts the responsibility for someone’s health after a given point from government to individuals.
see how easy that is … on paper.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@gnomedad: yes, ‘zactly. Palin is setting up a play for independent votes while striving not to alienate her base. Bachman is a birther, right?
A birther can win the nom, but not the general.
Bachman, Trump, and Huck are not serious candidates if they embrace birtherism.
I think Bachman is a stalking horse.
Or she wants a VP slot.
Watch the GOP candidates.
One that weasel words a denial of birtherism is the cadidate the GOP will run.
Zifnab
Nearly five hundred comments in four hours? Man, this blog is jump’n.
Yutsano
@Zifnab: Yep. And it’s a non-profit for JC. I think he r doing it wrong.
kdaug
@burnspbesq: It’s up to us to push.
Turbulence
@loretta: He could not buy health insurance at ANY cost right now.
Actually, if he was a Massachusetts resident, he could go online and purchase health insurance on the state run exchange without any problems. Carriers have to accept everyone and they’re not allowed to vary prices except as a function of location, age, and gender.
gnomedad
@Hermione Granger-Weasley:
It’s pseudo-refudiation, sorta-kinda noticing that the talking point is ridiculous without actually telling the crazies who believe it that they’re wrong. And that she admires their courage (since we’ve been using that word) for hammering on it.
the vole
@ John Cole
He’s already starting the Meep Meep walkback posts, actually.
WereBear
We do not need all this parsing and OMG what can he be thinking?
It’s propaganda… it doesn’t have to make any sense at all!
The people who haven’t a clue will see it Discussed Seriously and think that means it’s true.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@gnomedad: yes, but i still think it means she is running. A birther cannot win in the general.
Independents hate them.
Tsulagi
Actually skimmed Ryan’s plan this weekend. Didn’t take long. It’s 74 pages counting the title page, some blank pages and a couple of appendixes.
Obviously its genesis was the 19 page, triple spaced “budget” the Crying Orange Guy trotted out in 2009. You know, the one that could have been even more condensed to a single line: Slash Taxes—>Prosperity.
When laughed at and ridiculed by unserious people their budget didn’t include numbers, Boehner, stifling back tears, huffed they’d deliver the goods the following week. Didn’t happen. A little slow, but two years later apparently here it is.
Two years for no doubt the brightest serious Rs to sprinkle some magical fairy number dust into their original 19-pager and add more words. The thing is a joke. But the black comedy is that likely some of it will be adopted by Dems to appease in the coming debt ceiling and 12 budget fights. It would be the serious thing to do.
Xenos
I am more concerned about Sully using a Cranach painting as an illustration, something never seen before on his website. We must escalate somehow.
Mr. President, we can not allow… a Cranach gap!
Mark S.
I haven’t read all the comments, but my god Sully, there are other countries besides the US and UK. Nobody’s health care system is perfect, but one thing is clear: nearly every industrialized country spends less and has better results than the US. So to make it a false dichotomy between government death panels and market-based death panels is, um, utter bullshit.
rjv
Well, Ryan does PX90 .. so the plan must be good, no?
loretta
@burnspbesq: Not only is it a “moral” choice, but nobody is pointing out that it’s a very smart economic choice to give people cheap/free preventive care.
I know for a fact that seniors will get preventive care if it’s cheap or no-cost. The ACA reforms are giving them no-cost preventive care: colonoscopies, mammograms, prostate cancer screenings, bone density, etc. and they are getting them. Early detection not only saves lives, it saves $$$.
Ryan and his fans fail to point out the lower cost of preventive care over the insanely high cost of treatment.
loretta
@Turbulence: Perhaps he could technically buy some kind of health insurance from a MA exchange (and no place else yet), but it would not be nearly the coverage he gets with the group health he has now either thru his employers or his partner (if his partner works for a progressive company).
It is sad to say, but he may not live long enough to worry about Medicare eligibility, and that’s maybe why he doesn’t care about any of us getting good health care.
Tom Levenson
@Xenos: I’m on it.
nancydarling
Ezra was my go to guy in the wrangling before passage of ACA. Here is his analysis of the ways ACA starts to bend the curve of costs downward.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/the-democrats-have-a-plan-for-controlling-health-care-costs-paul-ryan-doesnt/2011/04/08/AFeF9f1C_blog.html
No one wants to talk about the wasted amount of money we spend on end of life care. My 87 year old mother died of multiple myeloma (bone cancer). Her last 10 months she was in Medicare’s hospice program which then cost $3000 per month. She was with my sister for 6 months and the last 4 months with me and my family. While with me, she had one over-night in the hospital for a diuresis to lower her blood Ca++ and a blood transfusion. She had one more transfusion after that which didn’t improve her situation so that was the last treatment she received except oral pain medication. Her quality of life was pretty good til the last 3 weeks when she started to fall apart. She died very peacefully with my children at her side. OTH, my 96 year old mother-in-law fell in a nursing home and broke her hip. They put her in a hospital and replaced her hip. Fortunately she never woke up from the surgery. I was not part of that decision making process or I would have asked what chance she had of getting through rehab at her age and would keeping her pain free and sedated be a better option since she would need to be sedated and probably kept in restraints if she had made it through surgery. Her 3 days in the hospital cost way more than my mother’s 10 months of hospice. When we took my Mom back to Okla. for burial, I had a hard time explaining to relatives there that yes, we let her die. They thought she should have been in a hospital. However, for three months our house rang with laughter as my children were able to appreciate her sense of humor and her joy in life, such as it was. I had part-time help which was not covered by Medicare, but Mom paid for that. I am still grateful that she died at home with us instead of in a hospital hooked up to tubes and surrounded by strangers.
We need to get this conversation going.
sixers
Sullivans current rational makes sense if only Obama’s plan was in direct response to Ryans. It isn’t and probably has been sitting around waiting to drop at the right moment. Ryans plan is not a conversation starter. Its the same old repackaged shit and doesn’t add up to boot. Sullivan is now in scramble mode to reclassify it as something its not to avoid looking like he an idiot.
kerFuFFler
@Bob Loblaw:
Sarah who? ;)
tomvox1
ACA is a fucking law, which means it is of course less ambitious than Ryan’s Randian euthanasia wet dream because, you know, it has actually gone through the legislative process and been modified to win a majority of votes by folks who represent constituents all across the USA. Ryan’s insanity, ambitions and all, is a non-starter as broad based legislature…thank God. The fact that Sully is treating these two entities as co-equal is simply deranged.
jacy
@John Cole:
Are you being clever or did you not see where he already did that yesterday?
And if there was a hell, I would undoubtedly be tortured there eternally for linking to his crap.
Dave
@nancydarling: There was a fantastic piece in the New Yorker about eight months ago talking about this very subject, though it was about quality of life more than the money involved. But it came down to the same thing: people lived longer, lived better and cost less in hospice than in the hospital.
aimai
@loretta:
But they actually deny that–the Republicans I mean–because its only a cost saving if you are planning to treat those diseases agressively. If you throw out medicare and medicaid and don’t treat grandpa’s colon cancer you save tons of money! That’s how our ancestors kept medical costs down: they didn’t try to treat all diseases. The Republican party is on board with this “plan” so the idea that we’d save money later by spending it now doesn’t make any sense to them. Save it all round by not diagnosing and then not treating! problem solved.
aimai
chopper
shorter sully:
i am disrespectful to deficits! can you see that i am serious? get out of my way, all of you! this is no place for loafers! join me or die! can you do any less?
for lucky best budget, use Mr. Ryan!
geg6
@Tom Levenson:
I couldn’t agree with you more. And really hope like hell it IS his macaca moment. Which is exactly why John, et al, should keep pounding away at it, relentlessly.
JCJ
@Mark S
Agree completely. US and UK are all he sees. Canada’s system is reportedly good, but the loonies have besmirched it with lies of long waiting times (which also exist in the US for joint replacements and other non-emergent surgeries.) Germany’s system is good. The Netherlands has a good system as well.
@Tom Levenson
A “macaca moment” is a good way to describe it.
Tim Connor
A broken clock makes sense more often than Sullivan. It is right twice a day.
RalfW
Eric Black here in Minnesota just put up an excellent post (“Fantasyland” is in the title) dismantling the “other” category in Ryan’s plan. Other meaning
And the giant, insane truth is all here:
jehrler
@Mark S.:
Amen. Here is what I wrote him:
Ruckus
Exactly what about Ryan’s plan makes sense?
I’m going to have to go with SATSQ.
Not a fucking thing.
It can be explained, it can be discussed to death(pun intended) but there is nothing in this plan that makes sense. The math, what little there is, is wrong. The logic, given that there is none, is faulty. The reality, once again there is none, is that it is a continuing diversion to allow everything to be taken while we argue about who is the better liberal. Will it work? Gwad I hope not. Does it say that as a whole we suck as a society. Sure does. Does it give me hope for the future? Not in the least little bit.
aimai
I’m going to wait until Peggy Noonan has let me know what to think.
aimai
Ruckus
@nancydarling:
I’ve had this experience with both my father(Alzheimer) and my sister(breast cancer). They both were going to die, with my father we knew that for a long time, my sister went into remission twice but couldn’t beat the odds the third time. We got to be with them right up to the end and as things go that was as good as it gets.
And yes there were some people who didn’t understand not doing more. But at some time there is nothing more to do but accept the inevitable.
But that is not and should not be the issue. The issue is could we fix some of these issues and at the same time spend a lot less money? And the answer is yes. Had my sister’s cancer been found soon enough she would have stood a very high chance of being alive. What it would have taken was her having health care, which she could not afford. But once she had the cancer there were programs she could be on that took care of her. And they did a wonderful job. But spending a little up front would have worked wonders for her. And most likely saved a life. And thousands of dollars.
So I blame conservatives for killing my sister with their shallow, self-centered, idiotic, greedy, pious bullshit.
Every one of them.
Mnemosyne
@Ronc99:
@Joe Beese:
I love how the same people who scoff at any hint of “11-dimensional chess” are the first ones to construct their own elaborate conspiracy theories about how Obama has been doing the bidding of the Republicans all along. I guess it’s the competition from other theories that they don’t like, but the crazy conspiracy thinking itself is A-OK.
Elia Isquire
Ambitious is clearly acting in place of “normatively abhorrent IF you’re not a free-thinking Peretzian contrarian” etc. etc. etc.
nancydarling
@Ruckus: Ruckus, that is exactly my point also. We spend a ridiculous amount on end of life care which often makes the situation worse and yet people like your sister can’t get preventive care or screening. We are making a moral choice when we decide to do all sorts of treatments which might add weeks or months of life with very little quality and deny care to your sister who could have had a longer and productive life. I guess it is easier to talk about once you have been through it but the conversation needs to start. I know nurses who work in long-term facilities. There are patients all over the country who have been in comas for years and their families won’t allow a “Do Not Resuscitate” notice on their charts. I guess medicaid picks up the tab for this. This is also a moral choice, especially when medicaid cuts are on the agenda all over the country. I share your loathing for the right wing zealots who apparently are content with the status quo.
Elia Isquire
@chopper: hahaha yes!
Calouste
@Robert Waldmann:
You’re suggesting Sullivan uses base9? In that case 22.3 – 18.3 would be 3, although halfway would be 44.44%. It would make more sense than any other explanation of Sullivan’s rambles. Except for the most obvious, that he is a selfish, amoral, stupid, lazy, sociopathic asshole.
Erik Vanderhoff
I’ve got it: Sullivan has Asperger’s. It’s the only way he can be so incredibly eloquent and yet so completely innumerate that even I can say he is being functionally retarded.
EDIT: Yes, my tongue is firmly in my cheek. I work with kids with autism and know what real Asperger’s looks like.
Ruckus
@nancydarling:
If they were content with the status quo that wouldn’t be all bad(we got healthcare, it’s on it’s way). They want to
carpet bombnuke the entire assistance section of the government. They see Dr. Strangelove and 1984 as documentaries, not cautionary tales.Ruckus
@Calouste:
When taking a test in which there is more than one proper answer, the following three rules will get you the most correct.
1. Always go for the most obvious answer.
2. Always pick B in multiple choice.
3. Every third true/false is false.
And in this case there is only the obvious answer so that was easy.
HyperIon
@Herbal Infusion Bagger:
nah, just pay ’em less.
Rihilism
Having just awoken from a nap, I did not immediately make the connection between DougJ’s post and the subject of his post.
Here I was all, “gorsh, am I still sleepy, gotta quit taking naps cause I ain’t gonna get to sleep at night, get outa my way kitties, daddy’s tryin’ to get to the computer to check out the innertubes, see what’s happening in the world maybe look at some porn later, yeah, I know you’re fucking hungry fucking 24 hr a day but daddy’s gonna take five fucking minutes to view some political porn prior to feedin’ ya and then back for the real thing, {sits at computer} , you know, I love you very much, but so help me god if you cats don’t leave me alone for five fucking seconds,.. Oh, what’s this, a link, wonder what DougJ’s alinkin’ to…
FUCK! Andrew fucking Sullivan. Fuck diddity fuck fuck fuck. Back page, back page, pack fudge…well, um, er, maybe,… no, no no no, haven’t read the tired old queen for 10 years so I ain’t starting now,…, but some folks at BJ thinks this repressed Tory, this queen without a country, has some redeeming qualities, I know better, but can I close my mind forever???”….{Click}
!!!!!!! At the same time???? At the same fucking time??!!!! At the same time that this man receives extensive and expensive life-sustaining drugs and treatments to combat a chronic disease that would kill him if he didn’t take them he wants us all to be “rational”, be “honest” with the “sick kid” and tell him “we don’t have money for the operation”.
Absofuckinglutely classic! Tells you all you need to know about the man in a single blog post. The lack of self-awareness is breathtaking….
Well sir, Mr. Sullivan, I hope you are reading this, because if we are to begin to process of selecting whose life isn’t worth living, if we are to choose whose life and life’s work do not meet our new and “completely necessary” cost-benefit criteria, well, then, sir, I choose you.
Never, never again will I soil my eyes with the unmitigated garbage that spews from this craven, self-centered, morally bankrupt hypocrite. And if anyone here or elsewhere begins with the old, “Yeah, but, yeah, but, he’s such a good writer, and he changes his mind sometimes, and he has such a unique perspective, and yeah but, yeah but” I will politely and without malice reach through the intertubes and punch them in the neck (figuratively speaking, of course).
“Yes, kitties, will that be chicken or beef?”…
HyperIon
@JCJ:
I’m recently back from a depressing trip to the land of republican douchebags (aka Florida). At a wedding dinner the guy across from me was ranting about Obamacare. I mentioned a Kevin Drum stat: mean cost for hip replacements in US = $34K, in Switzerland = $6.6K.
His response: But you have to wait!
Yeah, pay almost 6 times as much to have it done RIGHT NOW.
The mind boggles.
nancydarling
@HyperIon: I gimped around for two years on a bad hip waiting for medicare eligibility. I had insurance—high deductible and hospitalization only. I could afford the deducitble, but worried about a complication like staph with a $50,000 bill for antibiotics. It worked out well for me because in that 2 years of waiting, I found a surgeon who used the anterior approach for hip replacement. I flew to California, had the surgery on Friday, went home to my kids place on Sunday, and was on a plane flying home to Arkansas one week later. I drove my 5 speed manual transmission car two weeks post surgery. No rehab except walking. It would be cheaper for Arkansas insurance companies to send patients to California and put them up in a beach hotel near St. John’s in Santa Monica for a week than pay what it costs here in Arkansas. The anterior approach has been used in Europe for decades. But we’ve got the best health care in the world, doncha know?
HyperIon
@nancydarling:
is this the same as minimally invasive?
i saw a UWTV presentation of this procedure last week.
the recovery period matches your account…no cutting big muscles.
nancydarling
I’m not sure if that is the same procedure. I know with mine, there are no muscles detached or cut. My surgeon spent some time (maybe a year) in Switzerland learning that technique as well as the peri-acetabular osteotomy to correct congenital hip dysplasia. My daughter had the PAO on both hips last year. That technique was also developed in Europe. The anterior approach might explain the cost difference between Swiss surgery and the same in the USA since in-hospital and recovery time is so much shorter. I would add that Switzerland has one of the highest costs of living in the world, but they have managed to figure out how to deliver first rate care at a third to a half of what we pay here.
The French are also miles ahead of us in maxilo-facial surgery. I can’t remember the French surgeons name, but he used to spend a month at UCLA every year helping and teaching our surgeons on the real hard cases. He was a real artist. I saw a lot of his surgeries when I was in dental hygiene school at USC. He would take patients with horribly disfiguring birth defects, eyes almost on the sides of their heads, etc. He literally took their faces apart and resculpted them and then put them all back together with incredible results.
I just want to scream when I hear people dis other countries medical care. Yes, we have good surgeons and do a lot of good things, but that goes on in the rest of the world, too, and we can learn from them. A lot of our doctors and surgeons are certainly willing to learn. Thank god for my surgeon.
Crusty Dem
I haven’t been keeping up on the sturm und drang over Sullivan, I imagine someone has asked the obvious question “Where would Ryan’s program leave Andrew Sullivan?” I’m sure Sullivan has always had world-class insurance, but wouldn’t HIV be a bit of a pre-existing condition? Dumping the ACA would put him in a position where he would have to fear getting his insurance cut off, right? And at retirement (duh, bloggers and pundits never need to retire), wouldn’t he have to figure out how to stretch his vouchers to cover his (not cheap) meds?
Is he so delusional that he doesn’t realize that slightly poorer versions of himself would be doomed to die under Ryan’s plan? Wait, wait, don’t tell me, I’ve probably earned a Moore award for even considering such blasphemy.
rikyrah
it makes sense to those who don’t care about killing old people.
it’s a LORD OF THE FLIES MENTALITY.
remember when that man’s house was ALLOWED TO BURN DOWN BECAUSE HE DIDN’T PAY A SEVENTY-FIVE DOLLAR FEE?
remember all the mofos in print and on tv who went around DEFENDING THE FIRE DEPARTMENT STANDING THERE WATCHING HIS HOUSE BURN?
same mentality.
dollared
@joe from Lowell: You win the thread!!!!
Brendan
Good lord, he changed that part of the post.
dollared
I love you all, but you have disappointed me. Not one of you have pointed out that Sully has gone all the way there: Tiny Tim must die.
Ruckus
@nancydarling:
and we can learn from them
Are you kidding? We can barely learn from each other when we are trying, how would you expect us to learn from stuped fureners. Who probably don’t speak the bestest language in the world, merkin.
/snark
Quiddity
@Tom Levenson: Totally agree that for Sullivan “this is his macaca moment”.