If I were a GOP candidate I would prefer to talk about everything but Medicare between now and November. And so it has been. But now, since Charlie Bass did us the service of making the issue controversial again, I want to quibble with the analogies that have become popular to explain what exactly Paul Ryan’s plan does.
The Ryan plan, after all, has something in it called Medicare, so it is a touch complicated to say that it ‘ends’ Medicare. The most popular response says that Ryancare steals your bimmer and gives back a crappy Yugo with a bimmer badge taped to the hood. I find that analogy not only inaccurate but also too generous to Republicans. It suggests that Ryancare replaces the current comprehensive coverage program with a stingier comprehensive coverage program, but the actual defined benefit plan in Ryan’s plan is a lot worse than that. It is more accurate to say that Paul Ryan wants to take your bimmer and replace it with a coupon towards buying into a car share program like Zipcar (call it Zoopcar). Will the coupon cover enough of the bill to matter? Who knows. Prices change all the time. You might find a car when you need it. Maybe there is no Zoopcar where you live. Maybe they don’t have the kind of car you need. Have some accidents in your history? Maybe Zoopcar doesn’t feel like selling you a membership. Say that you suddenly need to drive a lot and Zoopcar cuts you off. Too bad. Not the government’s problem.
Oh, and the coupons get smaller every year. Enjoy your Medicare, seniors!
***Update***
A good point in the comments. Zoopcar and Zeepcar and Sipcar and the other two or three car share companies really do not want to do business with the coupon people and the government can’t make them.
***Update 2***
Alsotoo. Set aside for a moment that in real life this would be a really great program (except for the taking away beemers part). For this to work you have to imagine that public (option) transit does not exist, virtually nobody could hope to buy a car retail and that if you need a car and cannot get one then you will die in pain.
Comrade Javamanphil
Moore Award! (faints dead away)
Edit: Apparently asterisks are an internet commenting tradition I was unaware of.
NobodySpecial
Republicans agree: Throw those lazy, nonworking, no tax paying bums off the public dole.
Jennifer
I’d enhance the analogy just a bit more by noting that the companies who operate Zoopcar have already made it clear that they aren’t interested in serving the type of customers who will be using the coupon program.
Villago Delenda Est
@Jennifer:
That is indeed a telling point.
The US health care system, from top to bottom, is an utter mess. The solution is pretty simple…expand the VA system to the entire country and cover everyone, to provide basic health care for all.
This is the failed model that every other developed country on the planet uses, and they spend less than we do. Amazing, that. Why do they spend less? Because they don’t allow this vital service to be a profit center for parasite middlemen. The profit center part is what drives up the costs.
It’s time to stop subsidizing parasites.
schrodinger's cat
The market for health insurance has information asymmetries and either seniors would be priced out or the market would cease to exist. You cannot make a profit on selling insurance to a demographic that is definitely going to need health care and thus need to use the insurance.
scav
@Villago Delenda Est:
One problem is, some see the parastes as the middlemen, others see the parasites as the sick people.
Mino
@schrodinger’s cat: Can you imagine the actuarial tables? It is to laugh.
joes527
@schrodinger’s cat: I think this is the key problem for the Republicans. They can’t acknowledge what insurance is.
By its very nature, insurance is about redistributing wealth from the fortunate to the unfortunate. Characterized this way, it is clearly socialism and should be destroyed.
OTOH, Insurance is a vastly profitable business. A poster child for 1% capitalism. Characterized this way, it should be made into a sacrament.
The fact that the insurance companies are making a fat profit running a system that is in its essence socialism is a reality that the R’s can’t approach, lets their heads asplode.
Yutsano
In New Zealand a refrigerator is considered a necessary household item. So much so that the government of New Zealand provides a voucher of NZ$500 to assist in purchasing one. Guess what you can’t buy new in NZ for less than $500.
Redshift
All the analogies require too much explanation. When you’re explaining, you’re losing.
Republicans voted to gut Medicare.
Short, simple, and absolutely true; not even Politifact would dispute it. If someone in the conversation wants to dispute it, then they have to explain why, and since the only excuse for voting for Ryan is to lie, you can destroy ’em with the truth.
Karen in GA
For a second, I read this as “actual denied benefit plan in Ryan’s plan”.
Linda Featheringill
Ah Jeez. What are you guys doing to me?
For several [grumble, complain] reasons, I’m just now poking my head into the world and you hit me with a dose of reality.
The corporate world probably does think that I’m more trouble than I’m worth. They’ve had this opinion all of my life and why would they change their mind now. If the 1% and the Republicans had the power, they would gleefully throw me into the pool of losers with no health care whatsoever. And if that shortens my life, who cares?
And it all depends on the results of elections? Damnation.
I kinda sympathize with the folks who buy rifles and look for tall buildings to climb up into.
Schlemizel
I’d dispute the beemer part of the analogy because I think Medicare is more Chevy Impala than BMW. But I really like the rest of it & will use that when I get a chance.
@Redshift:
Yes, I think thats the starting & ending point to drive home but the ‘politifact defense’ will be tried & then it will be good to have this type of example to draw on.
Mino
@Yutsano: Refrigerators have pretty much a fixed cost. Not so with healthcare.
Zifnab
The beautiful thing about Paul Ryan’s Brand New NotQuiteMedicare is that it changes the program from a government benefit to what looks incredibly similar to a welfare check. It’s the health care equivalent of food stamps or unemployment assistance. And you know who absolutely hates, hates, hates food stamps and unemployment assistance? Republicans!
So even if Ryan gets his wet dream and this incredibly shrinking NotQuiteMedicare bill passes, it will just give Republicans something new to hate on 4 years later. Why, did you know that some foreign-born, ethnic, elderly ex-cons are using your NotQuiteMedicare checks to purchase drugs that could conceivably be used for recreational purposes? Scandal! We need to stop giving out Oxycotin and T-Bone Steaks to those swarthy urban layabouts!
And with the budget totally out of wack now that we’re bombing Iran and paying billionaires with negative tax returns, we’re going to need to make some more cuts. Time to axe a bit more fat off NotQuiteMedicare.
*
what the fick is a bimmer?
Wilson Heath
Krugman’s analogy is unsurprisingly apt: a bridge is very slowly falling into disrepair, though it will still be serviceable for quite a long time. Rather than undergo repairs and plan some future maintenance, Ryan proposes to demolish the bridge and replace it with a series of trampolines by which travelers can traverse the gap. To reassure the travellers, the trampolines will be called a bridge.
handsmile
Crikey, with all this talk about Zipcars, private automobiles and public transit, I could swear this was Duncan’s place. The word count should have been a clue though.
Preznit Rian givs me turkee?
Mino
@Zifnab: And they will surely find, in time, a Democratic president to help them end “welfare” as we know it.
...now I try to be amused
@Mino:
To flog the Zoopcar analogy some more, it can get you across town or maybe across the country, but if you had to go overseas you’d be out of luck.
Mino
@Wilson Heath: Even More Apt than Very Apt. Just think of all the folks that will fall off or break their necks.
schrodinger's cat
In fact if anyone is interested they can look up Akerlof’s seminal paper on information asymmetry, The Market for Lemons. He uses medical insurance for seniors as one of his examples.
Linda Featheringill
@*:
In this context, I believe a bimmer is a BMW. Sometimes called a beemer.
Amir Khalid
@*:
A BMW. Pricey set of German-made wheels.
Paul in KY
@*: A Girman car.
Edit: Linda/Amir, mine was better ;-)
Hob
@*: bimmer
Redshift
@Zifnab: Of course. Republicans are constantly trying to make popular government benefit programs optional so their rich backers can “choose” not to participate, and the politics of the program will change from Third Rail to Welfare.
Paul W.
No offense, but I have no idea what you were comparing Paul Ryan’s “Medicare” to. That analogy pretty much sucked.
Redshift
@Schlemizel: True. And at this point, there’s a perverse logic to using “kill Medicare,” because if Republicans use Politifact to try to dispute it, it generates more publicity for something they’d rather not talk about.
catclub
@NobodySpecial: “: Throw those lazy, nonworking, no tax paying bums off the public dole.”
As long as they are not patriotic (GOP voting) senior citizens.
Villago Delenda Est
Most Americans would settle for a Chevy or a Ford. They don’t need a Bimmer…sure, it’s nice, but one of the drawbacks is you can’t legally drive it fast enough to properly exercise the engine.
Which drives up your maintenance costs.
However, a Chevy or a Ford or the late lamented Plymouth would get you from point A to point B pretty much with the same reliability of the Bimmer.
We just need to get between the points.
Please do not discuss the merits of preventative vs. reactive care. Health “insurance” should concentrate on preventing the need for expensive reactive care. But because of the model it uses, it in fact neglects preventative care for short term profit.
The middlemen are parasites, who actively feed on the vitality of the host. Eliminate them.
schrodinger's cat
Instead of analogies how about, the Republicans want you to die, without quality healthcare, so that the 1% can have more tax cuts.
ETA: Was that shrill enough? Do I get a Moore award?
Omnes Omnibus
I am with Redshift on this one. Republicans voted to gut Medicare. Honest, brutal, and short. Put ’em on that hook and let them try to squirm off.
catclub
How about this for non-analogy analogy:
Imagine an 86 year old stroke victim considering her options for a healthcare insurance company from all the fine print booklets they print of coverage and exclusions.
Now imagine her dealing with one of said private companies when they automatically turn down coverage for services her doctor ordered. Hilarity ensues.
Villago Delenda Est
The entire purpose of social programs, like Social Security and Medicare, is to enhance the stability of society to proved the predictablity that allows markets to work properly. People don’t worry about basic survival. They can then, under Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, concentrate on greater things.
This predictability allows wealth to grow for all. The current system allows wealth to grow for a very tiny minority.
When this happens, a new predictable event becomes more and more likely. The very tiny minority being given rides in tumbrels.
Bismarck figured this out nearly a century and a half ago.
Lee Harris
The coupons become a government handout to the insurance industry. Medicare does very well in providing services. The dollar value is greater for the patient and small for administrative services. Overhead costs are low. Ryan’s Plan takes our tax payer dollars and gives them to the insurance companies. The 1% take a profit from tax-payer dollars — our TAXES — BEFORE they ever provide less services than would the current Medicare program.
So-called privatization of government services like Medicare only adds a layer of profit-taking. My tax dollar, rather than being used entirely to bring me services, are now directed into the pockets of for-profit business owners who then take the remainder of those tax dollars to give me services.
The Republic of Stupidity
@Villago Delenda Est:
And the Bismarck sank… so there… so much for European socialism…
The Republic of Stupidity
And therein lies the real attraction of Ryan’s plan to Republicans…
scav
speaking of beemers, first heard this back in the 80s from a guy from Malawi but it must be true as it made the Urban Dictionary. wabenzi. Tribe of those that drive BMWs. Overtones of corrups, upper-class 1%ers.
gaz
@catclub: You said it.
Adding, in this case, an analogy is less effective than describing the actual situation.
I thought this FP post was sort of dumb.
And Tim F., if you are not going to refer to the car as a BMW, you might want to linky terms like Bimmer.
Seriously? does anybody call it a bimmer? I’ve heard beemer, etc.. This blog is the first and last place I’ve heard these cars referred to as Bimmer. Probably a regional term, or something. Make it linky in the future.
Also too, I like your posts, but moreso when you put up some kind of paintings and such.
The human interest end of your posts is what you excel at. Political calculus, and political rhetoric, is maybe not so much your forte.
Just my observation…
Downpuppy
@Villago Delenda Est: Aren’t we all veterans of the War on Terra or Drugs or Tooth Decay or something?
WereBear
@Villago Delenda Est: One of the things I’m learning from tonight’s book club selection is that in such a scenario, “conservatives” are zero sum thinkers. They prefer not growing the pie so everyone’s slice gets bigger; they would rather ditch those others, to get their slice.
Brian R.
@Omnes Omnibus:
Ditto. The truth hurts, no need to exaggerate even a little.
Lee Harris
Analogy? Try this.
I have been depositing money in a Christmas Club account at the bank. I faithfully placed the required amount into my personal Club account every week.
At Christmas, I go to the bank to get my money. I am given nearly all of my saved funds. A portion of that Christmas Club account is handed over to some guy in a $2000 suit that has done nothing to earn it.
The fund that I had set aside to insure that I’d have a great holiday is shared with some nameless suit that I don’t know and probably wouldn’t care about. So, Merry F-ing Christmas Mr. Insurance Company.
The government made me give it to him.
gaz
also too, looks like Redshift already made my point about the analogies.
And he’s spot on. Especially with this one. The analogy here is awkward at best.
Tim F.
@gaz: You might be thinking of Tom.
gaz
@Tim F.: My bad. Serves me right for posting when I first wake up!
I’ll take *myself* out behind the woodshed now.
*hangs head in shame*
eldorado
thanks tim. i think the coupon language is perfect.
Martin
Bottom line, if a free market is what you’re aiming for, then everyone needs to be able to opt-out. If health care companies can’t opt out, then it’s not a free market and never will be, no matter what you try to call it. If consumers can’t opt out (go ahead and refuse to take your kid with pneumonia to the doctor and see how long before CPS shows up at your door to take your kid away) then it’s not a free market either. In either case it’s a captive market, and any captive market without regulatory bodies will destroy the captors. That’s why we have monopoly rules in this country.
We can’t opt out of health care any more than we can opt out of water or air or food. Until conservatives get it through their head that this is and always will be the wrong beach to die on, we’re going to keep having this idiotic debate while other people literally do die on beaches.
Amir Khalid
@scav:
I first saw the word in a slightly different form, kwa-benz. It was in a Rolling Stone piece by PJ O’Rourke, back when he was still funny. O’Rourke said it was Swahili and meant “the people of the Mercedes Benz” — a different make of fancy German car from the BMW. But yeah, it does indeed refer to gubmint bigshots and one-percenters who ride around in them.
srv
@gaz: gaz, you ignorant…
bimmer/beemer is like medicare/medicare
GregB
So, if the GOP wingnuts get an English only bill passed, does that mean that Republicans like Mitt will be fined or jailed for producing ads in Spanish?
Mitt embraces diversity!
schrodinger's cat
@Amir Khalid: Hey, my mother’s friend who recently retired and was an EPA administrator (an epidemiologist) drove around in one! Is very comfy but I find the styling a bit granma-ish. If I had elebenty munnies, I would buy a BMW, actually be happy with a Mazda convertible, zoom-zoom.
Napoleon
@WereBear:
I think that what ultimately causes conservatives to be conservatives and liberals, liberals is conservatives almost never can conceive of something being anything but zero sum (and very few things are in life) whereas liberals realize most things are negative sum or positive sum.
Martin
@GregB: English only? The rabbi isn’t going to like that. Why does the GOP hate Jews?
gaz
@srv: Actually, I think your post underscores my point that a link would have been a good idea.
“You mean YOU DON’T KNOW? heh” is a good line if you happen to be a hipster I guess.
Not so much if you are an FP blog poster.
Besides, I’m a committed mercedes enthusiast. Ever since the original 8 series “bimmer” was retired.
scav
@Amir Khalid: ahh, good, and I can see my utter lack of interest in distinguishing varieties of wheeled vehicles creeping in. Thanks for clearing that part of it up — I really should do better!
Lee Hartmann
I don’t think saying “this ends Medicare” is at all complicated. This is a lot better, and perfectly correct, than saying “The Republicans are playing word games here, and blah blah blah” – the usual liberal response.
Satanicpanic
Ryan Plan= Medicare Stamps Do old conservative white people want to join the Medicare Stamp program? I would think not.
Amir Khalid
@schrodinger’s cat:
Well, O’Rourke was writing about African government bigshots and fatcats, who did (and do) indeed ride around in shiny new Mercedes Benzes. But not every Merc is a top of the line car. Daimler-Benz also makes classy if somewhat pricey rides for the (upper) middle-class. And some old models in their teens or even twenties still fetch a decent priced on the used-car market just about everywhere.
Yutsano
@schrodinger’s cat:
A BMW is also politely known as a Seattle Civic. Which is why I refused to even look at one.
@Amir Khalid:
Big culture shock when my college choir went to Germany: a Mercedes is about the same as a Buick there. Of course there are the upper level models too. And then there’s a Maybach. :)
Brachiator
@Redshift:
Exactly.
If you cannot quickly and elegantly explain why GOP proposals are the wrong solution, you are wasting your time.
And seniors get sick, need to go to the doctor, have to pay premiums. They get the concept. Does the Ryan plan interfere with, complicate, or make uncertain their ability to get health care, to get to the doctor, to get their medicines?
liberal
@Villago Delenda Est:
Yes and no.
IIRC we spend more on public insurance alone than many other countries spend in total.
While getting rid of insurance companies (ie single payer) is a laudable goal and one that would save a lot of money, the problem of cost explosion isn’t due to insurance companies alone.
gaz
@Amir Khalid: AFAIK, Mercedes is pretty middle of the road in terms of vehicles – at least when looked at globally. Maybe, like the chevy of Europe and Africa. Stateside, we get to see mostly the upper end models, because those are what are worth importing, I suppose. But as far as I’ve heard, a lot of the rest of the world uses them as taxicabs, etc. IIRC..
*correct me if I’m wrong* but stuff like http://www.toytowngermany.com/lofi/index.php/t83409.html seems to confirm my notion.
Not saying they don’t make high-end cars as part of their line up – but (and I don’t know who owns it now) at some point, Daimler was manufacturing Maybachs for awhile (maybe still now) as their car of the uber-wealthy. On a related note, Limbaugh owns like 6 of those, last time I checked.
gaz
@Amir Khalid: I’m pretty sure my previous post was intended for schrodinger, and it looks like you may have already said what I was getting at in any case.
meh. MOAR COFFEE!
scav
@gaz: Fine, but that doesn’t matter custard to how they are/were perceived in Africa where and when the came up with the great tribe of wabenzi. Emile Robert is all la-di-fricking-dah 90$ and above cookware here when I can buy it at Geant in France for 10euros and it’s on the bottom shelf.
schrodinger's cat
@Yutsano: I actually like the Civic. I think Toyota’s cars are more boring especially the Camry. Do you like the Prius? Forget the BMW, I would actually like a Mazda Miata. I think the mini Coopers are cute too.
Suffern ACE
@gaz: Actually, I have problems with the whole Medicare is a BMW. Medicare is a Ford and Ford produces perfectly fine vehicles, thank you very much. When it snows, what would you rather have? One of those BMW’s with their high performance tires that slide all over the place?
The Ryan plan is offering you what it claims is a BMW, telling you that it will be wonderful in the snow, but will leave you in the ditch the second it rains. A waste of money like that is not same as luxury.
scav
@gaz: In which case, we’ve probably got cascading apologies. Coffee for all!
gaz
@Yutsano: Heh at your seattle civic remark.
Reminds me of a joke I heard once (from a BMW owner!)
Q: What’s the difference between a porcupine and a BMW?
A: A porcupine has the pricks on the *outside*
schrodinger's cat
@Suffern ACE:
I would rather have a 4WD Subaru with snow tires.
gaz
@scav: FWIW, I wasn’t actually trying to make any point about the “wabenzi” or whatever it was.
I was just talking about the mercedes brand. Not it’s implications WRT to the warlord class =)
And yeah – I’ll conceded that if you are the head of a failed state, the mercedes 600 seems to be the car of choice. See Kim Jong Il’s ride, for example. (And yes, I want one, that car is teh awesome!)
srv
@gaz:
It’s yuppies and their hipster offspring who think it’s beemer. Always have. They also don’t think Government is involved with Medicare.
I suppose he could have stuck to beer, but then someone would be asking why he didn’t use PBR.
gaz
@gaz: meh,
s/conceded/concede
s/Kim Jong Il/The Late Kim Jong Il (yay!, i think, unless Dear son is worse)
Satanicpanic
@gaz: I worked as a part time valet a while back and FWIW I thought the difference between every new car that cost more than about $20K was pretty minimal. A nice Benz and a nice Toyota were pretty much the same. The only car I parked that struck me as being at all special was a V12 Jaguar (the seats felt like an old leather couch, sooo nice). But I also used to sell cars (I didn’t last long at THAT job either)and that cured me of any wonder or interest in automobiles real fast.
gaz
@srv: I come from a military family. My father navy, my mother, a school teacher.
Not exactly yippie stock.
And I’ve never listened to more than 3 seconds of the pixies, arcade fire, or whatever the fuck the hipsters are listening to right now.
Was always a beemer to me.
So what the fuck?
gaz
@Satanicpanic: I love the high-end cars because I can get leather seats and all that good stuff for like $3k…
The lovely thing about mercedes is (at least in my experience), is that you can go get an old-ish used model on the cheap.
Seems people with money and desire for whatever “status” a Merc affords them don’t really want the used ones. So they go to folks like me, I guess.
My last mercedes was a 1983 300SD – a beautiful car I picked up in like 2005 or so – I’d still have it, but I have limited parking, and no garage space anymore, so my waste veggie oil conversion project got stalled, and I sold the beast. I drive my camry instead, but I still miss it.
3800lbs – safe as houses, nice everything, $2800 from a guy in salem, or…
heh
dogwood
@Martin:
Republicans have been very successful in convincing people that freedom in theory is the same as freedom in practice. They have also convinced many that the only entity that can restrict your freedom of choice is the government. Which of course is ridiculous. The free market limits choice as often as it enhances it. People in the small town where I grew up would choose to have cell phone access, but the free market says no.
cmorenc
@Zifnab:
That is PRECISELY the implicit idea behind nearly all GOP proposed entitlement “reforms”: to change them a form where they’re broad-based entitlements the public views as either earned or birthrights as citizens, to a form where they are seen as low income-based welfare support. Once this transformation settles well enough into the general public’s perspective, the GOP strategic focus changes to “reforming” this form of welfare to lean it and wean people off of it until only a vestigial rump of a “welfare” program is left that can be slowly starved by incremental budget cuts.
cmorenc
@dogwood:
This was precisely the conservative battle line against TVA and rural electrification during the 1930s and New Deal. Without the TVA program, enormous swaths of the rural south would have been one to several decades slower in having electric power service available to their area.
gaz
@cmorenc: Personally I kinda wish liberals would have lost that fight.
In retrospect, it’d have completely eliminated large swaths of the pajamas media fail brigade.
/snark
Satanicpanic
@gaz: Great minds think alike- I actually considered buying one of those- most likely a 70’s diesel. Tons of room, comfy seats, pretty good mileage and pretty reliable. I already drive like a grandma so I don’t care about how fast they go. Doing the conversion is really easy I hear. I was so close but my wife talked me into buying a used Honda.
The new Benzes are really just like any other car. Like I said, I’m not too big on cars, but old Benzes do have character.
Karounie
I once rented a Miata convertible for week. I live in NYC without a car, but was sent to Palo Alto for a collaboration with a high-tech media company and my NY supervisor insisted that I drive something that would represent us well in their company parking lot (I’m not kidding or exaggerating – this was the 90’s.)
I just couldn’t see myself as BMW person so I asked if a Miata would be an acceptable alternative, and the supervisor signed off.
It was fun to zip around wind-in-hair and all but I’ve got to say, the way stuff is arranged under the hood of the Miata, there was barely anywhere for me to put my legs, and I’m 5’5″. I don’t see how even an average size man could drive one at all.
Brachiator
@cmorenc: This was precisely the conservative battle line against TVA and rural electrification during the 1930s and New Deal. Without the TVA program, enormous swaths of the rural south would have been one to several decades slower in having electric power service available to their area. Funny thing about the TVA. One of its biggest supporters was Senator George Norris, who started out as an isolationist Republican, but later became an Independent.
JFK wrote about him in Profiles in Courage.
Villago Delenda Est
@WereBear:
Interestingly, the zero sum game is in direct opposition to Adam Smith, who kept harping on how growing the wealth of the Nation, not just a tiny parasite class, is the way to do things. Hence the title of the book.
Smith would unquestionably deplore the zero sum mindset of modern “Republicans”, who claim to be his acolytes.
MonkeyBoy
I’ve always liked the analogy
We have replaced your wife with a drug addict with the same first name and birth date. Can you tell the difference? P.S. Divorce is now illegal
dogwood
@cmorenc:
The Republicans are masters of language as a weapon. Thus, you get the idea of wealthy people and corporations as “job creators.” What creates jobs is demand. The whole 99% thing is good to a point. But there’s still something a bit off about it for me. I don’t want to see the Democrats completely buy into the idea that the 99% are the downtrodden victims of the 1%. I’d like to turn the tables on the Reps. The 99% in fact are the job creators. They produce, buy and sell the vast majority of the goods and services in this country. Republicans win because they flatter their constituencies. They can make a guy running a roofing business in Peoria feel like he is a part of the 1%. I’d like to see the Dems craft a populist rhetoric that flatters as well as outrages.
gaz
@Satanicpanic: FTR, the old mercedes diesels have a good top end. I got that monster to top 120 (late night, on the freeway, driving it home from salem – My version of “kicking the tires”
But yeah – acceleration wise, they stink. 0-60mph in a month and a half. heheheh
Other than the look (I liked the early 80’s S class look better than the late 70’s S class look), my ultimate reason for preferring the 80’s diesel models was the ABSOLUTELY AMAZING 5 cylinder diesel – I believe the 70’s models used the (still good – but with issues) 4 cylinder diesel.
And as far as newer mercedes not having character? I know what you mean – especially when it comes to the CLK line (looks like a E class that was built in N. Korea – chintzy is the word that springs to mind)
OTOH – this:
http://cdn3.worldcarfans.co/2009/7/medium/2869252.jpg
IMO, is a class act.
They have an electric model with nearly identical performance specs vs. the gas model*
*top-end might be lower, but acceleration is in line with it, range is pretty good, and it’s still very much a high-end sports car.
So mercedes can still put them out, IMO – it just depends on the model line, I think. Adding, that if you want something classy and new, you’ll have to spend huge bucks!
jayackroyd
well I got troubles with this. Background material for these comments can be found here and here
1)Please, please, please don’t call it Ryancare or the Ryan plan. This is part of the House GOP budget, passed on party lines. The GOP, not just Ryan, has staked out a commitment to replacing the current Medicare, one payer system with premium support in a privatized insurance system. This is essentially extending the PPACA plan to seniors.
2)Premium support is not “vouchers” or “coupons.” As in 1) above, this is a program to provide tax credits or reimbursement for participation in an exchange of insurance providers who conform to government regulations with respect to the essential health benefits provided by the plans.
3)There are many democrats, Ron Wyden, for instance and arguably, Erskine Bowles who also believe premium support is the way to go. The original idea comes from Henry Aaron and RD Reischauer. The idea is to reduce utilization by increasing the out of pocket cost to seniors enrolled in the system. For instance, one element in Aaron’s and the GOP plan is the elimination of MediGap insurance, so that participants would have to pay copays and deductibles out of pocket. I happen to believe that the President also would like to see a universal implementation of the PPACA, replacing Medicare with a premium support program. But whether you think I am right about that or not (the public record is ambiguous), it is certainly the case that there is substantial Dem support for premium support under Medicare. This is, I believe, why Ryan didn’t call for health care IRAs, or actual vouchers. He was trying to find a compromise way of implementing a program to reduce utilization by seniors–something a block of Dems would agree to.
This policy discussion has been made, IMO, purposely confusing by the participants, because they know full well that there is no popular support for ending Medicare as we know. Yet that is indeed the plan, by the Dole-Daschle centrists who run this country. IMO, of course.
gaz
@jayackroyd: All good points, and thanks for the links. An excellent post!
Madeline
I was thiiiiiiis close to sending my senator, Ronjohnson, a little gift after he voted for Ryan’s plan. Figured I’d rinse out an empty jar of peanut butter and fill it up with leavings from the cat boxes. Still a jar, label still says peanut butter, but the contents…not peanut butter.
I’m 52.
Satanicpanic
@gaz: Heh heh, that’s a nice car, but a bit out of my price range. Electric would be fun just because there’s no transmission to deal with- just hit the accelerator and it speeds up. I like the old Benz too because they’re roomy. What’s funny about the big SUVs and sedans that people are driving now is that they’re huge, but inside they seem kind of cramped. I imagine a lot of the extra room is just going to head space. I’m pretty tall and I don’t get that.
gaz
@Satanicpanic: I hear ya there!. I could practically use my sedan as an RV heh.
And the backseats space was generous. Maybe even more than the front.
I don’t care for SUV’s but benz did it with style (in one case, adding, the ML’s SUCK!!!!)
http://o.aolcdn.com/commerce/images/mercedes_11gclass_angularfront_Regular.jpg
I’d roll in that. But yeah – in general, screw SUV’s unless you need one, which means (in my book) that you have 6 kids and a horse to haul. heh.
srv
@gaz:
So did I, but my dad served in Europe. Army & AF people would look at you strange if you said beemer unless it was an E4 who just blew a couple years savings on a K 100. Perhaps those Navy bases are a little too OC. Frats and Sororities always say beemer.
gaz
@srv: You seem to know far more about frats and sororities than I.
My parents had too many kids, and I was too busy working to go to college. And I was born too late to take advantage of college programs while they were still affordable for people in my situation. Although I ended up taking some courses at a community college, I didn’t bother with a degree.
So I don’t really know what sororities and frats think.
Again, not a yippie. Closer to recovering white trash.
WereBear
Oh, I agree! It explains so much.
jayackroyd
@Madeline:
53 here. A really, really bad age to be.
But it has been ever thus. the baby boom peaked (absent the first year after wwii) in 1958. Richard Easterlin wrote a book called Birth and Fortune, which documents why you really don’t want to be part of a large population cohort.
rea
Too bad. Not the government’s problem.
This hits too close to home for me, as I have been trying to figure out some way to help a family member whose medicaid benefits were just cut off. They sent her a form which she didn’t understand, she asked her caseworker to explain it, and was exactly told (direct quote), “Too bad. Not my problem.” Now she’s cut off for not filling out the form correctly . . .
Phoenician in a time of Romans
@Napoleon:
I think that what ultimately causes conservatives to be conservatives and liberals, liberals is conservatives almost never can conceive of something being anything but zero sum (and very few things are in life) whereas liberals realize most things are negative sum or positive sum.
Possibly because liberals perceive of human welfare as being notational (i.e. you can make things better for everybody) whereas conservatives see it as relational (i.e. you can only make some better off in relation to others).
revrick
The Ryan plan ends Medicare in any rational sense of the word. Period. No matter how generous the coupon might be, it still won’t be of any use whatsoever to those with chronic conditions. My dad had diabetes when he retired and over the last 18 years of his life racked up close to $1 million dollars in bills for hospitalizations, treatments, medications and nursing home care. And his wasn’t a particularly acute case!
So what is the likelihood that he — or anyone like him — would get health insurance that gave him any coverage worth having, at any price? Zip? Nada? No how?
Medicare is Medicare, because it ignores a person’s medical history and provides the money for the needed care.
Ryan’s plan would be the equivalent of shoving my dad out onto the Schuykill Expressway blindfolded with a command to cross to the other side.
Mino
@jayackroyd: I had the notion that best practices and phasing out fee-for-service was the approach Obama’s people were looking at, not using costs to force seniors to self-ration. How on earth would that reduce overall costs–the seniors would just be sicker when they finally presented to the doctor. And unnecessary mortality probably would not make up the difference.
Death Panel Truck
@gaz:
Until today, I’ve never heard anything but “Beemer.” But then, I don’t run with the BMW set. My last two cars have been Chevys. I buy American, goddamnit!
(My ’96 Monte Carlo was assembled in Canada, and my 2006 HHR was made in Mexico ;)
swils
to borrow from the great The Editors of The Poorman (I think), Politifact would rate it true if the USA sent the CIA into Stockholm, killed everyone in the Swedish government, installed Karzai as President, renamed “Sweden” as “Afghanistan,” and declared that the war in “Afghanistan” was an unqualified success because “Afghanistan” is now a stable, democracy! yay fact checkers!
jacksmith
REALITY!!
( http://my.firedoglake.com/iflizwerequeen/2011/05/16/how-about-a-little-truth-about-what-the-majority-want-for-health-care/ )
( Gov. Peter Shumlin: Real Healthcare reform — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yFUbkVCsZ4 )
( Health Care Budget Deficit Calculator — http://www.cepr.net/calculators/hc/hc-calculator.html )
( Briefing: Dean Baker on Boosting the Economy by Saving Healthcare http://t.co/fmVz8nM )
START NOW!
As you all know. Had congress passed a single-payer or government-run robust Public Option CHOICE! available to everyone on day one, our economy and jobs would have taken off like a rocket. And still will. Single-payer would be best. But a government-run robust Public Option CHOICE! that can lead to a single-payer system is the least you can accept. It’s not about competing with for-profit healthcare and for-profit health insurance. It’s about replacing it with Universal Healthcare Assurance. Everyone knows this now.
The message from the midterm elections was clear. The American people want real healthcare reform. They want that individual mandate requiring them to buy private health insurance abolished. And they want a government-run robust public option CHOICE! available to everyone on day one. And they want it now.
They want Drug re-importation, and abolishment, or strong restrictions on patents for biologic and prescription drugs. And government controlled and negotiated drug and medical cost. They want back control of their healthcare system from the Medical Industrial Complex. And they want it NOW!
THE AMERICAN PEOPLE WILL NOT, AND MUST NOT, ALLOW AN INDIVIDUAL MANDATE TO STAND WITHOUT A STRONG GOVERNMENT-RUN PUBLIC OPTION CHOICE! AVAILABLE TO EVERYONE.
For-profit health insurance is extremely unethical, and morally repugnant. It’s as morally repugnant as slavery was. And few if any decent Americans are going to allow them-self to be compelled to support such an unethical and immoral crime against humanity.
This is a matter of National and Global security. There can be NO MORE EXCUSES.
Further, we want that corrupt, undemocratic filibuster abolished. Whats the point of an election if one corrupt member of congress can block the will of the people, and any legislation the majority wants. And do it in secret. Give me a break people.
Also, unemployment healthcare benefits are critically needed. But they should be provided through the Medicare program at cost, less the 65% government premium subsidy provided now to private for profit health insurance.
Congress should stop wasting hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money on private for profit health insurance subsidies. Subsidies that cost the taxpayer 10x as much or more than Medicare does. Private for profit health insurance plans cost more. But provide dangerous and poorer quality patient care.
Republicans: GET RID OF THE INDIVIDUAL MANDATE.
Democrats: ADD A ROBUST GOVERNMENT-RUN PUBLIC OPTION TO HEALTHCARE REFORM.
This is what the American people are shouting at you. Both parties have just enough power now to do what the American people want. GET! IT! DONE! NOW!
If congress does not abolish the individual mandate. And establish a government-run public option CHOICE! before the end of 2011. EVERY! member of congress up for reelection in 2012 will face strong progressive pro public option, and anti-individual mandate replacement candidates.
Strong progressive pro “PUBLIC OPTION” CHOICE! and anti-individual mandate volunteer candidates should begin now. And start the process of replacing any and all members of congress that obstruct, or fail to add a government-run robust PUBLIC OPTION CHOICE! before the end of 2011.
We need two or three very strong progressive volunteer candidates for every member of congress that will be up for reelection in 2012. You should be fully prepared to politically EVISCERATE EVERY INCUMBENT that fails or obstructs “THE PUBLIC OPTION”. And you should be willing to step aside and support the strongest pro “PUBLIC OPTION” candidate if the need arises.
ASSUME CONGRESS WILL FAIL and SELLOUT again. So start preparing now to CUT THEIR POLITICAL THROATS. You can always step aside if they succeed. But only if they succeed. We didn’t have much time to prepare before these past midterm elections. So the American people had to use a political shotgun approach. But by 2012 you will have a scalpel.
Congress could have passed a robust government-run public option during it’s lame duck session. They knew what the American people wanted. They already had several bills on record. And the house had already passed a public option. Departing members could have left with a truly great accomplishment. And the rest of you could have solidified your job before the 2012 elections.
President Obama, you promised the American people a strong public option available to everyone. And the American people overwhelmingly supported you for it. Maybe it just wasn’t possible before. But it is now.
Knock heads. Threaten people. Or do whatever you have to. We will support you. But get us that robust public option CHOICE! available to everyone on day one before the end of 2011. Or We The People Of The United States will make the past midterm election look like a cake walk in 2012. And it will include you.
We still have a healthcare crisis in America. With hundreds of thousands dieing needlessly every year in America. And a for profit medical industrial complex that threatens the security and health of the entire world. They have already attacked the world with H1N1 killing thousands, and injuring millions. And more attacks are planned for profit, and to feed their greed.
Spread the word people.
Progressives, prepare the American peoples scalpels. It’s time to remove some politically diseased tissues.
God Bless You my fellow human beings. I’m proud to be one of you. You did good.
See you on the battle field.
Sincerely
jacksmith – WorkingClass :-)