For whatever reason, I really like it that the front page has both Bern voters and Hills voters.
I wish you all in the comments could remember we are all in this miserable shitshow together.
This post is in: Election 2016
For whatever reason, I really like it that the front page has both Bern voters and Hills voters.
I wish you all in the comments could remember we are all in this miserable shitshow together.
by $8 blue check mistermix| 449 Comments
This post is in: Election 2016
This evening, I’ll be traveling to a polling place somewhere in the Empire State and casting a ballot for Bernie Sanders. I certainly won’t do it with the same level of conviction that I had in 2008 when I voted for Barack Obama — but you only get that a few times in life, if you’re lucky.
I’m not doing it because I think Sanders has run an Obama-quality campaign (he hasn’t, especially lately as the rhetoric has gotten a bit nasty), nor am I doing it because Sanders would be more likely to get his proposals enacted, nor even because I am feeling a Bern of some sort. (The only burn I’m feeling right now comes from sitting on a bike saddle for 45 minutes on the way to work).
I’m doing it for the same reasons a lot of our fellow Democrats are voting for Bernie — I see it as a message to the lazy, sloppy, “centrist” party establishment, of which Debbie Wasserman-Schultz is patient zero. I also see it as part of a continuing effort to keep the Clinton campaign on its toes, because the inclination to phone in a shitty “inevitability” primary campaign is apparently very tempting to Clinton’s campaign advisers. It happened in 2008, and 2016 is just too important for Democrats for that to happen again.
As for the tone of the campaign: Does anyone here really think that whatever awful thing the Sanders campaign has said about Hillary is a hundredth as awful as the stuff that will come out of Trump or Cruz’ mouth this Fall? There’s nothing wrong with the Clinton campaign getting practice responding to the mild critique that Sanders is offering, because it’s going to get a hell of a lot worse later.
Finally, Bernie Bros are the PUMAs of 2016. A few idiots may not vote for Hillary this Fall because of some slight, real or imagined. It won’t be a significant phenomenon. Once the primary is over, everyone nursing butt hurt acquired in the heat of political battle will have had plenty of time to realize just how bad a Trump or Cruz presidency will be. That will be a powerful motivator, especially after Hillary and her team strip the bark off of whichever of those two fuckers prevails at the coming riot in Cleveland.
As I cast my vote today, I’ll be thinking about my next trip there, which will be in November, Dios Mediante. That’s when I’ll be marking my ballot for Hillary Clinton, and I’ll be happy to do it.
by Hillary Rettig| 506 Comments
This post is in: Bernie Sanders 2016
Have been laying low both because of a cold and because who needs the grief? But I wanted to come out and say I’m supporting Bernie in New York and beyond.
It makes no sense at all to bellyache for years about what corrupt disasters DW Schultz and Steve Israel and company are and then criticize someone for taking the logical action that derives from that viewpoint. So smart move on Bernie’s part for doing an end run. This was the Democratic Party that has such a reverence for grassroots democracy that it had to be reminded by Howard Dean in 2005 that, yeah, maybe you do want to have a functional operation in all 50 states.
Re people getting all argumentative and some not knowing the rules…who cares? The alternative – people not giving a fuck – is so much worse. Bitching on young people in particular for not knowing the rules stinks.
I’m so grateful to the young people in particular who are getting more active.
And who get that Black lives matter, Iraqi lives matter, also Honduran, Libyan, and Palestinian.
And who also get the basic point that, absent economic justice, there’s no true feminism. (Or other human rights.)
And you know what the biggest magical pony of all is? Thinking that someone can build a Death Star level fundraising machine, thereby enriching herself and her family to the tune of $110MM, without severely compromising her ideals or “public service.”
And that those compromises won’t hurt real live people.
Go Bernie!
by David Anderson| 19 Comments
This post is in: Anderson On Health Insurance, C.R.E.A.M.
Bob Herman is looking the slow withdrawal from the Exchanges by United Healthcare and makes a very good point about the overall book of business for UHC:
UnitedHealth Group's Q1 profit jumps 14% to $1.6 billion. Given #ACA losses, insurer must've made bank on Medicare, Medicaid, employer. $UNH
— Bob Herman (@MHbherman) April 19, 2016
One of the areas that insurers have been making good money on in the past couple of years has been on Medicaid expansion managed care.
Not all states use third party insurers to run their Medicaid programs. Some will use an insurer solely for administrative support and other states run basically their entire program in-house with state employees. However most states will use at least some Medicaid managed care companies to run at least some of their Medicaid program.
These companies get a fixed fee per covered individual per month and are told to cover them. This system works fairly well when the populations are reasonably stable and reasonably predictable. Legacy Medicaid is reasonably stable and reasonably predictable as it covers the very sick, the poor, the working poor pregnant and low income kids. When an insurer is working off of a large enough sample, the conclusions drawn from 2012 data and applied to 2013 data will be close enough.
However there has been a massive discontinuity in the data in the form of Medicaid Expansion. The population being covered by Expansion is healthier than the adult population covered by Legacy Medicaid. But the question in 2014 and 2015 when states were setting their managed care rates was by how much healthier?
No one had a great clue. So quite a few states set their per capita monthly rate fairly high with risk corridors to capture most of the overpayment.
Setting rates high made sense for state Medicaid entities for two reasons.
First, Medicaid expansion in 2014, 2015, 2016 is 100% federal money. Overspending by $30, 40, or $150 million dollars won’t get a Medicaid director hauled in front of her state Senate’s oversight committee. Instead, it pumps money into the state and builds vested constituencies that want to push for continued expansion. Risk corridors would capture most of the over-payment back over the long run and allow for a slow glide path to actuarially fair rates informed by real data.
Secondly, there was significant concern about how much catch-up care would be needed. Twenty eight months into Medicaid expansion, most of the catch-up care probably has worked its way through the system, but a high initial rate was needed to cover the probability of high catch-up care costs.
High rates with partial clawbacks meets clinical needs and it meets political needs of quite a few states with Medicaid Managed Care models. A side-effect of that is companies with significant MCO exposure should be making serious money on Medicaid for the first few years of Expansion.
This post is in: Election 2016, Excellent Links, Open Threads, Proud to Be A Democrat
The other ones didn't have Twitter, but it seems to me 2016 has been a less nasty Dem primary than 1988, 1992, 2004, or 2008.
— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) April 19, 2016
I can attest that it is dramatically less nasty than 2008 https://t.co/5OBWSaLEqQ
— Dan Pfeiffer (@danpfeiffer) April 19, 2016
From the Washington Post, “New York has plenty of values that Ted Cruz wasn’t counting on”:
With the New York primary just days away and the airwaves filled with presidential candidates talking about New York values, two guys were discussing the subject during a coffee break on Wall Street.
“Hey Steve,” one friend called to another. “What’s a New York value?”
“Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness — and Ted Cruz is a complete a–hole,” said Steve Giannantonio, who works in finance. “That’s a New York value.”…
“Where is Ted Cruz from anyway?” said Freddy Aponte, 35, a building super from the Bronx.
“I don’t know, Kansas?” said his co-worker Elijah Moses, 30, from Harlem. “Ohio?”
“Some place with 99 people,” said Jeury Jimenez, 19, a baker from Harlem…
Just down the street, two guys in nice-looking suits were standing outside, not far from where the World Trade Center had once been. They looked like Wall Street bankers, but it turned out that one of them was a lawyer who was a part-time actor, and the other was a writer, director and actor, and they were about to film a car commercial, proving the point that another New York value is not making assumptions about people.
“I think he meant to distinguish New York Jewish elite liberals from the rest of the country,” said David Denowitz, 59, the lawyer, referring to Cruz’s jab. “I took it very badly, because I’m a New York Jewish elite liberal. Well, upper-middle class and educated.”
“New York is really a shining example for the rest of the world — we’re Muslim, Catholic, Jewish, and we all ride the same subway, we all sit at the same lunch counter, and no bombs go off because no one feels the need,” he said, pointing out that the obvious exceptions were the work of outsiders…
Apart from the New York primary (as if that weren’t enough, for us political junkies), what’s on the agenda for the day?
"I'm hoping to do really well tomorrow. I'm hoping to wrap up the Dem nomination," HRC says. "But I'm not taking anything for granted."
— Jennifer Epstein (@jeneps) April 18, 2016
Tuesday Morning Open Thread: Lest We Forget…Post + Comments (209)
This post is in: Open Threads
Figured we could use some cuteness as a counterweight to all the primary snarlies.
Anyone here ever had a pet rabbit? My little brother had one that we named “Cyndy Lop-ear.” It was the 80s.
Open thread!
This post is in: Assholes, Democratic Stupidity
I really did spend much of this campaign pretty neutral- if anything, I thought I was tougher on the Clinton team most of it than the Sanders campaign. I liked the Sanders camps enthusiasm and I like his positions on many things (who doesn’t!), but eventually I decided it just wasn’t realistic and that we would be better off with Clinton. Having said that, we are now to the point that I am just fed up TO HERE (raises good arm over head).
On top of what Anne Laurie mentioned earlier, with all the dipshits whining that as Independents they can’t vote in the closed Democratic primary and how closed primaries are a scourge against democracy, etc., ad nauseum, this (via C&L) is the kind of shit that wants me to put the collective campaign in a box, weight it down, and throw it in the East River:
The Bernie Sanders campaign has sent a letter of complaint to the DNC on the eve of the New York primary about Hillary Clinton’s joint fundraising committee — an FEC approved committee to raise money for the DNC, the Clinton campaign, and downticket races.
The complaint comes just one day after a protest at George and Amal Clooney’s home in California which ended with Bernie Sanders’ supporters throwing one-dollar bills at Hillary Clinton’s motorcade as she left. Clinton was attending a fundraiser for the Hillary Victory Fund, which is her joint fundraising committee.
The Sanders campaign “is particularly concerned that these extremely large-dollar individual contributions have been used by the Hillary Victory Fund to pay for more than $7.8 million in direct mail efforts and over $8.6 million in online advertising.” They further allege that this improperly benefits the Clinton campaign “by generating low-dollar contributions that flow only to HFA [Hillary for America] rather than to the DNC or any of the participating state party committees.” (Full text – PDF)
In a press call earlier today, Clinton’s campaign manager Robby Mook pointed out that the Hillary Victory Fund is structured the same way as the Bernie Victory Fund, with the only difference being that he has chosen not to raise funds for his. They further pointed out that the agreement between downticket candidates, the Clinton campaign, and the DNC is permissible under FEC regulations and that all allocations of expenses are being made in accordance with the rules set forth by the FEC.
A good democrat knows to make sure they are registered and registered for the right party. Even fledgling Democrats who have been registered their entire lives as Republicans and switch over can figure this out:
I had intended to register independent, but when I got there to do it, I had a moment of clarity- there seemed to be no point leaving the Republican party in protest and joining the unwashed masses. If I really was going to protest, it made no sense to not commit to the opposition party. Besides, as a Republican all these years, I never had any problem voting for libertarians, Democrats, etc., I don’t see why being a Democrat will change anything. And, the 2008 election really is the most important election of my lifetime- the basic foundation of our country has been under assault for a while, now, and I want to vote in the Democratic primary as a Democrat, not as someone with no party affiliation. I want to send a message, and as small as this gesture (which should appropriately be interpreted as a middle finger to the GOP and not as a sloppy wet kiss to Nancy Pelosi) is, I want it to mean as much as possible. There is now one less Republican in WV, and one more Democrat.
That guy quoted above is not the sharpest tack and sometimes a little slow on the uptake, and at the time was a full fledged drunk. But somehow that whiskey soaked moran managed to figure shit out.
A good democrat raises money for downticket races. A good democrat doesn’t spend the entire primary creating faux controversies to weaken the party and party structure. A good democrat doesn’t run around tellking half the states they don’t matter or count. A good democrat doesn’t do what the fucking Sanders campaign has done the last couple of months.
It took me a while, but I am now to the point with the Sanders campaign and their bullshit where I was with the Clinton campaign in 2008. So you got that going for you, Berners.
*** Update ***
Predictably, state parties are fucking pissed:
Noteworthy: the Ohio Democratic Party is defending Team Clinton after Team Sanders criticized its $ arrangement pic.twitter.com/Dq0MMnkrMb
— Gabriel Debenedetti (@gdebenedetti) April 18, 2016
Here’s the Virginia Democratic party:
“The Democratic Party of Virginia relies on a strong Democratic National Committee, which is made possible through joint fundraising committees like the Hillary Victory Fund. There’s no path to the White House without Virginia and in order to keep it blue, we rely on strong partnerships to bolster our efforts.”
Seriously, shut the fuck up Bernie.