CNBC: Record highs across the board for the Dow, S&P 500, and Nasdaq pic.twitter.com/eRKn0qe7Be
— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) March 21, 2024
The Biden administration is canceling about $6 billion in student loan debt for 78,000 public service workers. In total, his administration has canceled student debt for more than 870,000 public service workers. https://t.co/eplIAbBr4J
— Axios (@axios) March 21, 2024
With today's PSLF cancellations, the amount of student debt cancelled by President Biden has risen to $143.6 billion for 3.96 million Americans. https://t.co/fZfyNj6Hp0
— That Well-Adjusted Biden Guy (@What46HasDone) March 21, 2024
Meanwhile, the GOP incorrigibles:
ICYMI the House #Republicans finally released a U.S. budget, countering the #BidenAdministration proposal. The GOP budget:
– cuts $1.5 trillion from Social Security
– raises Medicare costs & cuts caps on pharma fees
– cuts Medicaid, ACA/Obamacare & the Children’s…
MORE pic.twitter.com/xQiDV7ip6N— Laurie Garrett (@Laurie_Garrett) March 21, 2024
2/
…Health Insurance Prog by $4.5 trillion over 10 years
– creates $5.5 trillion in tax cuts for the rich and corporations
– eliminates all clean energy tax incentives
– raises Social Security Retirement age to 69. pic.twitter.com/PcjMYvauCS— Laurie Garrett (@Laurie_Garrett) March 21, 2024
Republicans are doubling down on MAGA extremism, releasing a new plan that would end Social Security as we know it, rip health care away from millions of Americans, and eliminate access to IVF.
They've shown us who they are. Believe them.https://t.co/Lud7HCNVAK
— Katherine Clark (@WhipKClark) March 21, 2024
If Donald Trump receives a second term, he said that cuts to Social Security and Medicare would be on the table.
It’s absolutely shameful. pic.twitter.com/DRNRf3Pi95
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) March 21, 2024
I seem to remember House Republicans booing the President when he (rightly) accused them of wanting to attack Social Security just two weeks ago.
Absolutely no one should be surprised that yesterday nearly 80% of House Republicans put out a plan to cut Social Security benefits. pic.twitter.com/QrgV8hSxTu
— Rep. Brendan Boyle (@CongBoyle) March 21, 2024
Now would be as good a time as any for Biden to explicitly campaign on shoring up social security by increasing the taxable income cap https://t.co/eaeJHktMZv
— Bubba ???? (@jortscity) March 21, 2024
the modern-day Republican bullshit factory simply can't stop churning out the fantasy that the answer to deficits is cutting wasteful programs benefitting lazy poor people, especially those who aren't white https://t.co/J7qz4qdHxA
— John Harwood (@JohnJHarwood) March 21, 2024
Baud
Whoa. Didn’t realize how far Hardwood had fallen from the Village. He’s almost BJ front pager level.
WaterGirl
@Baud: I noticed that, too. Is “Hardwood” a pet name, or a typo?
Baud
@WaterGirl:
It was a typo, but now it’s a pet name.
HinTN
The Preacher of the House “opposes cuts to Social Security and Medicare” but his people put out a budget that proposes exactly that. FSM help us.
Baud
@HinTN:
While all Republicans support gutting programs that help people, the Republican Study Committee is like their Freedom Caucus. They’re willing to say the quiet stuff out loud. In that sense, they don’t represent the caucus.
NotMax
Republicans are more tone deaf than Florence Foster Jenkins.
Ohio Mom
@Baud: Didn’t he lose his fancy job and is freelancing now? He must be old enough for retirement. So for practical reasons, he might as well let her rip.
Baud
@Ohio Mom:
I don’t know. However he got here, kudos to him. Many old folks get better and align with the right.
catclub
@NotMax: Singing is hard. FFJ was probably better than average.
p.a.
House elections tend to be “local” elections (Congress sucks but my guy is fine), but tRump & tRumpublicans are helping Dems make them “national” with these plans & Dobbs, ‘Bama IVF decisions. Can really help Dems.
Kosh III
Once again we see the health care plan by the Regressive(GOP) Party: Get sick and die.
Ken B
@Baud: The RSC has more than 170 members of the GOP House caucus, including the Speaker.
They may be fringe by American political standards, but so is the GOP.
Kay
@HinTN:
He’s playing rhetorical games. The proposal isn’t to “cut” Social Security and Medicare. It’s to increase the retirement age and turn Medicare into a voucher to purchase private insurance.
Democrats will be good at attacking on it, despite these silly games.
They have been doing it for 50 years :)
Kay
@HinTN:
The Medicare voucher plan my be even better for Democrats than the Social Security cuts. Obama ran against this same Medicare plan in 2012.
John S.
The only true constituents that the GOP has left. Their MAGA voters are simply the useful idiots that elect them to do their masters bidding.
Baud
@Ken B:
My bad. Did they used to be smaller?
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊😊😊
Ten Bears
The s … stuff they come up with can’t be serious. Are they trying to lose?
More effective at mucking things up as a minority …
rikyrah
@John S.:
Yes
Suzanne
Love Biden for this. It should not be financially punishing to work in the public sector. It drives good people away.
Loan forgiveness is not just the right thing to do for students and former students. It is the right thing to do to build and maintain a high-quality public workforce.
Honestly, I don’t even like calling it “loan forgiveness”. That makes it sound like a goddamn handout, or overlooking a transgression. Most people who went to public universities before roughly 1990 got much more taxpayer contribution to their education, and yet we don’t frame that as “forgiving” any kind of wrong committed.
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
kalakal
@NotMax: A bit unfair on FFJ. She was an accomplished pianist until she suffered a bad arm injury, so she took up singing. It’s not just that she wasn’t a very good singer, she was always trying trying to perform the really difficult stuff that would tax a top flight soprano. She wasn’t a good singer but she certainly wasn’t tone deaf
Kay
@Ken B:
The Biden Administration is using “80%” –
rikyrah
@Kay:
Just run on it. This is who they are
trnc
In President Trump’s defense, he did say he’d Drain the Swamp!
Nominated for rotating tag.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
Yabbut:
“The Republican Study Committee, which comprises about 80% of House Republicans…”
That’s a pretty damn overwhelming majority of the caucus. They may not technically represent the caucus, but they’re not the tail wagging the dog, they’re the dog.
HinTN
@Baud: 170 members, including Speaker and his leadership team, saying the quiet part out loud.
Ken B
@Baud: Much smaller, they started out as about a dozen members, I think. But as the party has gone further around the bend, it’s grown.
Edited to fix an auto incorrect.
HinTN
@Kay: Choices, choices!
sdhays
@Baud: Unlike the Freedom Caucus, the Republican Study Committee includes over 80% of the Republican Caucus, including the leadership team. I’m sure they say they don’t “represent the Caucus”, but no one should accept that. The people who aren’t part of it are probably just too lazy to join the extra meetings.
SiubhanDuinne
@NotMax:
She wasn’t tone deaf. She just had poor ear-throat coordination.
:-)
lowtechcyclist
@Kay:
That’s a cut to Social Security for anyone who starts collecting before age 69, IOW the vast majority of retirees. Dems can and will call it a cut, because it is one.
And turning Medicare into a voucher program isn’t something as comparatively benevolent as a cut. It’s a wholesale gutting of the program.
Dear GOP: why do you hate Americans?
Kay
@rikyrah:
It’s just so funny that with all the media-generated hoopla about Trump taking over the GOP and what populist mavericks they all are now, what with the “deep state” and zany anti vaxx positions and former hipsters like Greenwald and Taibbi and Joe Rogan joining the ranks….this budget is the Paul Ryan budget from 2012 – the budget they lost to Obama on. They haven’t changed a thing on the one thing they care about, which is money.
Democrats could run against this in their sleep.
Kay
@lowtechcyclist:
Oh, I agree. The speaker is a slipperly little devil. Democrats can and should call it a cut, because it is.
Baud
@Ken B:
I am behind the times.
sdhays
@Suzanne: We’re forgiving the assholes who jacked up tuition.
kalakal
The GOP is like a car with no brakes or steering, and only one gear. They can only go forward in a straight line. And they’re on a twisty mountain road with hairpin bends.
I used to think that, with the exception of a few true believers, Repubs/Tories were just vicious, greedy, cynical bastards and if there was more money in it they’d be Trotskyists. Now the ratios changed. The sky really is a different colour for many of them
Baud
@Kay:
“Populist” Trump’s biggest victory was a deficit-exploding tax cut for the rich.
TBone
@Baud: always get behind something if you’re not wearing pants.
Shalimar
@Baud: The Republican Study Committee has 171 members. It isn’t really an extreme group like the Freedom Caucus, though their proposals are almost always just as disgusting. It’s the vast majority of Republican House members
or, what many others have already said. must read thread before responding.
Baud
Reaganomics is in the ballot. We’ll see if our side can put their votes where their mouths are.
dmsilev
@lowtechcyclist: Once upon a time, the RSC was the group of radicals chafing at the “weak-minded” Republican leadership. They haven’t changed their views, it’s just that the Republican party has steadily moved right so that the majority of the party aligns with the RSC and now there’s the Freedom Caucus types who similarly regard the RSC as squishes.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Yes indeed. Biden has been a Keynesian, but gets no credit for it from the self anointed progressives.
TBone
I’m wondering who else is gonna step up today to help along my T**** Denouement Syndrome. President Biden is doing his part! I have a feeling he’ll have a lot of help.
Kay
@Baud:
Yup. We blow this and they’re going to think they have a mandate to go much beyond Reagan. I think it’s such a shame that people don’t seem to get that Biden’s economic approach is very different, and different in a liberal direction, than anything we have seen since FDR. It really is dismantling Reagan. If he has 4 more years to put more in we could really improve things going forward.
Baud
@Kay:
And they’ll be right.
Baud
@kalakal:
Fixed.
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
It really wasn’t just progressives who criticized Biden. Larry Summers and Jason Furman – two center Right Democrats from the Obama Administration- did a lot of damage because they believe Biden’s (more liberal) economic policy is a repudiation of their work in the Obama Administration – and to a certain extent, it is. They have a much bigger platform than progressives, too. They’re widely covered in mainstream media and normies see them as “responsible centrists”.
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
And that’s just the center Right Democrats who comment on economic policy. Joe Manchin has basically run a successful anti Biden campaign in media from the Right of the Democratic Party for the last 3 years.
Soprano2
I would say singing well is hard, singing is easy. We have one karaoke singer, I love her to death but she has no sense of rhythm at all. She wants to sing everything on the beat all the time. She has a decent voice, but it’s hard to listen to her put the notes in the wrong places with the accompaniment. Her husband is a good singer, he’s 92 and on oxygen (!) but still comes out to sing.
Soprano2
@Kay: Vouchers are such a terrible idea, they’ll want it to stay the same amount but premiums would increase every year. This should be easy for Democrats to run against.
Ksmiami
@Kay: ah yes, we can reprise the “zombie -eyed granny starver” label again…h/t to Charles Pierce
Omnes Omnibus
@Kay: Yes, but criticism of Keynsian policies from center fight figures is to be expected. OTOH, one might expect that moves leftward by Democrats would be welcomed on the left.
Soprano2
I wish the Pell Grant program was as robust now as it was when I went to college in the early ’80’s. I knew kids who got most of their education paid for that way.
RevRick
@Baud:
@Kosh III: We need to understand that whenever Republicans scream about “wasteful spending “, they mean any spending besides that for the military and law enforcement functions. They will grudgingly tolerate other spending as a matter of expediency, but given the opportunity, they will come at it with an ax. They are, after all, the descendants of those who opposed spending on roads and canals back in the early 19th century and believed funding public schools was a colossal waste.
lowtechcyclist
@dmsilev:
The GOP has spent the past 45 years moving to the right. Not at a continual speed, of course, but there’s never once that they’ve tried to move back towards the center during that time, any movement has always been even further to the right.
Occasionally they’ll put some lipstick on the pig, like when Shrubby ran as a “compassionate conservative,” but it’s always just for appearance’s sake, and never affects policy.
SFAW
@lowtechcyclist:
So less than half of Repubs, according to the FTFTFNYT?
Frankensteinbeck
@Baud:
Throwing immigrant children in cages and sending the ICE to terrorize immigrants at courthouses and schools. That’s the ‘populist’ victory his base loves him for.
Melancholy Jaques
@Kay:
Political media will give it four pinocchios just like they did the last time.
And remember when Republicans’ plans were explained to the focus group and the focus group simply refused to believe it?
SFAW
@RevRick:
And they oppose that, when the (military) spending is on pay increases (or back pay) for the grunt-level service members.
Kay
@Soprano2:
It’s not even going to save money. The current Medicare privatization program, Medicare Advantage, is a huge rip off for the government. It costs between 20 and 5% more per beneficiary.
I know you’ll be shocked by this but – it didn’t save money. It cost money. Traditional Medicare is a better deal for the government than Medicare Advantage. Privatization is part of the reason Medicare isn’t solvent.
But this has nothing to do with “budgeting”. This is pure ideology. It doesn’t matter at all if it works.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Soprano2: As someone on Medicare, vouchers horrify me. I’d have to shop for coverage on my own with no one controlling what providers can charge. And I’d have so to do that as I age and perhaps become less capable. It’s so much worse , I can hardly explain it
ETA: It’s the opposite of “Medicare for All.” “Medicare for Nobody.”
Another Scott
@Ohio Mom:
Harwood has stuff on ProPublica (like his big interview with Biden a while ago).
He’s still doing the work.
Cheers,
Scott.
Kay
@Melancholy Jaques:
I do remember that. But also remember- Obama won running against this same budget. It’s Paul Ryan all over again. Because they have nothing else.
Omnes Omnibus
China and Russia just vetoed the US sponsored Gaza ceasefire resolution.
Betty
@Baud: I just read that their number now includes all the House GOP leadership so not too easy to dismiss. That’s okay because their agenda is going nowhere.
Soprano2
@Kay: My husband has Medicare Advantage through United Healthcare. I think he picked it way back when he first got Medicare because there was no premium to pay, and his retirement income wasn’t that large. Now as far as I can tell we’re stuck with it. I will say it seems to have good benefits so far.
Frank Wilhoit
@lowtechcyclist: …and every time another one nopes the fcck out of there, that 80% creeps a little higher.
Omnes Omnibus
@Frank Wilhoit: I really think that the Congressional GOP is more than 80% creeps.
RevRick
@Baud: Trump ran as a populist, but his feral instincts told him he had to outsource policy to the Republican Congress, otherwise he’d split the party. He is fundamentally stupid and lazy, but that doesn’t make him any less dangerous.
Kay
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
It’s not just that. Right now the US siloes older people in a special health insurance tranche. Older people are much, much more expensive to cover than younger people so taking them out of the pool benefits every younger person. Now add them back in. Costs JUMP up for younger people because they’re now paying costsharing for 50 million senior citizens. It is BRUTAL to young people.
schrodingers_cat
@Omnes Omnibus: I am sure we will soon hear how Biden is to blame for this development.
RevRick
@SFAW: Exploitation is at the heart of their capitalism.
Kay
@Soprano2:
Right and I don’t blame people for picking it if it works for them. But it costs the government more, and it was sold as doing the opposite. Medicare Advantage is part of why Medicare is insolvent. George W Bush told us it would be cheaper for the government. It wasn’t. It failed at what it was supposed to do.
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
I blame Biden.
RevRick
@lowtechcyclist: The GOP has been moving right since at least the Grant administration.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
Done.
lowtechcyclist
@Omnes Omnibus:
What pisses me off about those fuckheads is that, just like them, I’d spent the previous 20 years or so slamming the Dems for being too damn centrist. But at least when Biden and the Dems in Congress finally started being the party I’d wanted them to be all these years, I fucking noticed.
I can finally say without any equivocation that I am proud to be a Democrat. And it’s been a really good feeling, these past few years, to be able to say that at last. So WTF is with them? Other than just being a bunch of worthless gits, that is.
Kay
@Soprano2:
My husband asked me to do the whole picking for him, so he’s getting trad Medicare.
He’ll be FINE :)
Chief Oshkosh
@Kay: But those center/right Dems have only failures in their resumes (aside from their personal success that derives from making rich people feel better about themselves). None of their economics work especially well, and their politics downright suck
ETA: I know, another post from Mr. Obvious.
gvg
@RevRick: They don’t really like spending on the military or law enforcement though. They do a certain amount for show and TALK like they do, but they leave out parts that hamper the whole. Notice they ALWAYS try to shiv veterans, and like some corporate spending for defense equipment but not defense people. And getting into stupid wars wastes the lives of soldiers, plus ties us up when we really need them. Guns everywhere is not a pro law enforcement position at all. Its a scared cops all the time position.
Frankensteinbeck
I struggle with how much I agree with the ‘the GOP has moved rightward’ claim. The GOP’s policy positions – total abortion bans, making anything queer illegal, removing the safety net and regulatory state, completely removing taxes on the rich, ending all immigration except whites, forcing brown people into the role of second class citizens (or less) – none of that has changed since the 80s. What has happened is they’ve become more open about it and much, much, much less willing to compromise.
EDIT – Oh, and no regulations on white men owning guns.
Kay
@Chief Oshkosh:
Furman went bananas with the child care subsidies and student loan forgiveness. SOCIALISM! I think Larry Summers just firmly believes lower and middle class people need to suffer. You’re like “Larry – we don’t have to fucking DESTROY them in a downturn!” and he says “yes, yes we do or very bad things will happen“.
He was afraid to offend the free market gods so he offered up 100 million middle class people as a sacrifice in 2009. It’s superstition more than science.
Betty
@Kay: Exactly. Bush knew it was a gift to insurers, and they have profited. Senator Warren is on the case.
RevRick
@Soprano2: Until you really need it. The private companies make their profits by creating narrow networks, demanding pre-authorizations on referrals, denial of coverage. They depend on customers giving up when their rehab is 60 miles away or when the approved dentist operates on volumes, not quality of service.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: No surprise, but I’m still enraged.
lowtechcyclist
@Kay:
I remember hearing at the time that the ACA eliminated any differential in subsidy between Medicare Part B and Medicare Advantage. Did that not happen? Or was it undone later?
Torrey
I hope the Dems put together some good ads for the normies.
Example: scenario 1–senior presenting Medicare card to get care, followed by scenario 2–staff person explaining to senior that no, no, Medicare doesn’t pay for care anymore; it’s just a hunting license for insurance, and good luck with that.
Example: 60-ish blue-collar type worker doing physical labor talking to friends about how he’s looking forward to retirement, probably next year, and a friend asks if he doesn’t want to wait to avoid the cut to his Social Security. Explanation follows that the Republicans want to raise the retirement age to 69; worker points out that is the same as a cut for those who retire at 65; another friend says that it’s easy for his congressman to keep going until 70: they have cushy desk jobs, long vacations, and staff to do the heavy lifting, but it’s different for people (like the ones in the commercial) who have spent their lives doing hard work (physical labor).
(I’m not an ad-writer, so yeah, these aren’t great, but I’m just spit-balling about the sort of thing that might appeal to the Republicans that I know.)
RevRick
@Kay: GOP economic policy can be boiled down to three things:
1). Reduced taxes on the wealthy;
2). Eliminated regulations on business;
3). Opposed to any redistribution of income downward.
lowtechcyclist
@RevRick:
I’m old enough to remember 1964, so I must disagree. The party largely ran away from Goldwater in 1966 and 1968, and Nixon governed as basically a centrist, aside from committing crimes and stuff.
p.a.
And IIRC MA’s original formulation (the Rethug formulation) was even worse. Dems had to fight to get a MA concept into law that wasn’t just a big wet kiss to insurers.
p.a.
He comes in for his share if criticism here, but no one is better than Atrios at shredding Larry Summers.
Sure Lurkalot
@Soprano2: Voucher amounts that don’t stay on pace with premiums aren’t the main problem of Ryan’s answer to Medicare, it’s throwing more and sicker people to the private for profit health insurance wolves.
Biden should go further and end the Medicare Advantage scam because it’s a similar issue. Entice people into the den of wolves by charging less to start and give nominal additional benefits until and when health issues get complicated and then deny coverage. Use the money saved from the scam to backfill the 20% skin in the game that republicans insisted on with Medicare.
Ken
@Baud: Let me be the
firstthirteenth to inform you that the Republican Study Committee represents 80% of House Republicans.The Thin Black Duke
@lowtechcyclist: Some people would rather be “wrong” than admit that they were wrong. It’s a character defect that unfortunately can be seen on both sides of the political divide.
Jackie
Off topic: Today’s Ken Buck’s last day in office. An empty office:
Buck is also the first and only GQPer to sign not one, but both Discharge Petitions. His name will remain on both until his temporary replacement is elected in June.
Ken
I hope VP Harris is wrong about Trump and Social Security. But only because my real hope is that after Letitia James starts seizing assets and unravelling his mortgages and loans, Trump will end up penniless and depending on that check to get through the month.
evodevo
@Torrey: Sounds good to me…there ought to be enough librul Hollywood types who could put together some really good commercials along those lines…and they would need to be run as often as all those Big Pharma ads for whatever MAB they are pushing this week, so it soaks through the normies’ thick skulls…
Marcopolo
In the annals of water is wet, is anyone surprised that now that the US is supporting a motion for a sustained cease fire in Gaza at the UN that China & Russia vetoed it?
edited to add…this is what happens when you start a comment then get distracted by real life…others beat me to it.
topclimber
@Kay: If only we had Medicare for all–for all ages, for all health care charges. Actually Medicaid for all, but with Medicare in the title because that is not associated with poor and brown folks.
Oh wait. That’s a far left idea! Can’t be admitting that they had it right now, can we?
Leto
The shitheels put this out yesterday:
‘Morally dubious’: 4 House Republicans protest Biden’s IVF expansion for veterans
Just gonna scale that ‘Bama ruling on up to the Federal level so we can all live in their christofascist/talibangical nightmare. And a “fuck you” to veterans just to put the cherry on top.
lowtechcyclist
@topclimber:
Does anyone here have problems with good ideas just because they originated with the far left?
No, our problem is that even when Dems do the things they supposedly have been wanting Dems to do, it’s never good enough, and Dems still have to ‘earn’ their votes.
topclimber
“Does anyone here have problems with good ideas just because they originated with the far left?”
I haven’t kept a log recently, but will get on it.
Or to put it another way–are you kidding me?
lowtechcyclist
@Leto:
The “cruelly discarded” is really the cherry on top there, as if the embryos had awareness and experienced painful feelings of abandonment upon being discarded.
Omnes Omnibus
I just called Mark Pocan’s office again. His staffer again said that she was not authorized to speak about his position on the discharge petition (H.Res 1016) but would pass on anything I wanted to say. I told her that I thought that the funding for Ukraine was vital. I said that I suspected that his hesitation was due to funding for Israel. I said that I could understand his concerns but that the Senate bill provided humanitarian funds for Gaza as well. I said that on balance I thought that this was the best thing we could do right now and he should vote for it. I also said that, id he could not do so, he should be willing to step forward and say so while explaining why. I said I would not agree with such a decision but that I would have more respect for it than I do for his current position.
lowtechcyclist
@topclimber:
C’mon, let’s have just one for-instance. :-)
Jeez, if there’ve been enough of them that you could’ve been keeping a log of them, you ought to be able to remember at least one.
They Call Me Blue
@Kay: And ironically even though it costs more for many people it is *worse* coverage. Like, if you travel at all you could get screwed for being out of network if you need health care away from home. With regular Medicare and a Medi-gap plan, any doctor who takes Medicare is required to accept your Medi-gap plan.
Geminid
@Marcopolo: Ambassador Greenfield called out Russia and China for their vetoes and said they only did it to spite the U.S., which is likely true.
The Security Council cannot prevent a ceasefire though, so now the ball is in Doha, Qatar where CIA Director Burns, his Israeli and Egyptian counterparts, and Qatari Prime Minister Al-Thani are trying to hammer out a hostage/ceasefire deal. Al-Thani serves as interlocutor with Hamas’s civilian leadership.
Layer8Problem
@topclimber: “Oh wait. That’s a far left idea! Can’t be admitting that they had it right now, can we?”
Careful now, you’re gonna cut yourself with that edge.
Soprano2
@RevRick: I guess we’ll find out, so far it’s been pretty good for us. I wish I had known they covered dental several years ago, because I was paying for hubby to have dental when he already had it! I don’t know why he didn’t know about it, perhaps they only added it the past couple of years. Before the past year I didn’t pay that much attention to his Medicare Advantage plan. Now I have to manage all of it.
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
Correct. The problem is often the people, not the policy.
Although people can good faith disagreements about policy.
WereBear
I love clips from right winger finance shows, where they say all these good things with the sourest faces :)
frosty
This turned out to be the final nail in the coffin for Medicare Advantage for us. It took awhile to understand the choices but when we found even the best MA insurer had spotty nationwide coverage, we went with traditional Medicare.
As it turns out we’ve needed urgent care or an ER at least once on our big road trips. Medicare made it easy.
Brachiator
@Baud:
Trickle Down 2.0?
topclimber
@lowtechcyclist: You are right. There is usually some verbiage about why the idea is wrong, sometimes even fairly rendered. But if you think folks here don’t default to denigration of progressive ideas based on distaste for the messenger’s ideology or their lack of enthusiasm for Biden, I don’t know what to say.
On the other hand, if you are right, then maybe moderate liberals will finally judge Medicare for All on the merits, where it wins hands down.
frosty
Our other big problem with MA was that we live in PA and all our providers are in Maryland. I couldn’t get either our main doctors or Highmark Blue Shield to tell me if they were in or out of network. I kept getting referred to the main office or back to the locals. It was easier to say to hell with it and chuck the whole concept.
There’s a very small group of retirees for whom MA is better. The ones who never need care out of state and who don’t end up with problems that aren’t covered.
Citizen Alan
@Baud: There are three factions within the house republican caucus. The freakshow caucus is a bunch of insane white supremacist lunatics who openly want to destroy america. They are about 20% of the GOP. Another 60% make up the bulk of the house republicans, and they don’t particularly want to destroy America, but they are terrified of being primaried by MAGA freaks so they go along with whatever the freak show caucus wants to do because they are gutless cowards. The final 20% consists of “moderate” republicans, who loudly oppose the freakshow caucus and Donald Trump, but who in the end, still go along with whatever the freak show caucus wants to do because, in addition to being gutless cowards, they are also raging hypocrites.
UncleEbeneezer
@lowtechcyclist: Hating the Dem Party is as much a part of their identity as it is for Republicans. It’s reflexive and never stops. Because for many of them, it’s all they have. I’ve run group events where for the sake of unity and focus one of the first ground rules was “No griping about the Dem Party, the 2016/2020 Primary, Bernie was robbed etc.” and watched them participate with discomfort. They lost interest and left the group before the follow up event. They resented the fact that their positions weren’t shared by the majority of the coalition and that we all didn’t immediately adopt their positions and make them de facto leaders. And when the most people responded “I think that’s wrong (or a bad idea)” to one of their suggestions, they would quickly invoke social justice language about how they were being “erased” and nobody would listen to them and this is why Dems suck etc. and then take their ball and go home. No matter how much time you spend hearing them out, it doesn’t matter if you don’t defer to them. I’ve seen the pattern play out countless times and it always ends with them ditching the coalition or “holding their nose” to stay a part of it in some minor way, while endlessly grumbling about how unfairly they’ve been treated. This is why I usually ignore them and try to avoid working with them as much as I can. I had to unfriend/block a guy who was a great activist on Immigration because he’s currently saying people should abandon Biden over something he said about Haitians in the 80’s…while Trump is literally promising to round up Undocumented people on Day 1 and saying they aren’t human. I’ve seen this sort of thing over and over again from DSA Progressive types over the past 7 years. It always ends the same. Whether it’s Dronez, Goldman Sachs, M4All, GreenNewDeal, StudentLoans, Train Derailments, Gaza etc., they are always looking for the next deeply principled reason to abandon the coalition. It’s what they do.
SFAW
@Soprano2:
To semi-echo RevRick, their benefits seem great, but getting them actually to pay for care — especially UnitedHealth — is much harder. My wife works for a hospital, and deals with insurers all the time, and has told me in no uncertain terms that we WILL NOT choose UnitedHealth as our Medicare provider, because they (almost) never pay, and then we’d be stuck footing the bill.
Soprano2
@topclimber: I think pretty much everyone here would support some kind of universal healthcare from the government. The disagreements are over what form it would take. You’d have to add a lot to Medicare to make it good coverage for everyone – for example, all kinds of women’s healthcare that isn’t currently covered under Medicare because people over 65 don’t need it.
Baud
@UncleEbeneezer:
Yikes. That’s hideous.
Citizen Alan
@Kosh III: The moment that I stopped caring about anything jon stewart had to say was when he had that stupid rally about nothing or whatever it was called. And he played a long series of clips showing congressman and senators saying stupid and divisive things. And it was all republicans except for a clip of Alan Grayson saying that the GOP health care plan was “don’t get sick, and it you do get sick, die quickly.” Because even though it was a perfectly true statement, it was “divisive,” which makes the democrats are just as bad as the GOP.
Soprano2
@SFAW: So far I haven’t had a problem with them paying for stuff, but that might change once hubby needs some home care. We’ll see, I guess.
topclimber
@Soprano2: Medicare for all people and all conditions. Except really Medicaid, which has no age limits.
Kay
@They Call Me Blue:
Thanks. I did not know that. We travel a lot. He’s older than I am and I’ve just started trying to figure out what to get him – I’ve always handled health insurance stuff. He has insurance with the State of Ohio now – he has a contract to do election law work for the state and has for 20 years – it’s just a small part of his law practice but it comes with health insurance. He’s retiring in 18 months – I hope I can get him to leave – so we’re figuring all that out. We now have 3 grandchildren so that might tip it for him and get him to retire. We want to spend time with them.
Frankensteinbeck
@topclimber:
I recall from back when Medicare For All was a cry going around that a significant crowd here was saying ‘Not Medicare, Medicaid’. Medicare For All itself was not popular either as a slogan or as a policy, but some form of public option was definitely a favorite. There was much discussion of the political and economic realities in making it happen, including people pointing out that a public option had gotten a vote and just barely failed, and people arguing that a transition would be needed because there would be catastrophic employment losses if a public option replaced health insurance in one immediate swoop.
Still, the fundamental point is that replacing the insurance system with a universal government healthcare system has been overwhelmingly popular on Balloon Juice… always.
Brachiator
@WereBear:
I am with you on this! Especially when their guest experts predict negative economic results only to get slapped in the face with positive numbers when figures are actually released.
evodevo
@Citizen Alan: Yes…this. I abandoned him about that time, and haven’t gotten on board with the new resurrection, either…too much “both sides” just turned me off bigly
UncleEbeneezer
@lowtechcyclist: The far left has ideas that are great in principle but usually need some revision based on political realities. And if you raise commonsense concerns about implementation, possible downsides, how to get it passed etc., they immediately put on their victim hat and claim that any/all pushback is because we are all NeoLiberals, Sheeple, Republicans etc.
Take AbolishThePolice for just one example. Great general concept. I’d love to see a world without police. But as soon as people said “okay, we have some questions about this” and raised important concerns raised from people in the affected community, concerns that people in reform efforts have been struggling with for a century, because it’s a very tricky problem, the Abolish advocates stormed off in a huff and called us all Cops, etc. Same thing with Medicare4All, GreenNewDeal etc. They seem incapable of seeing the difference between “Good concept, but this needs work/revision to be effective and actually get passed into law” and “Fuck you, Leftie!!1!” Good Progressives (who absolutely exist) don’t pull the tantrum-throwing, name-calling bullshit and know how to work well with others and even (gasp ) compromise, but there is a whole wing of Progressives and many spaces (DSA, CodePink etc.) that actively encourage/reward that sort of approach and treat it as a measure of Progressive purity.
UncleEbeneezer
@Baud: The worst part is that not only is his heart in the right place (I really enjoyed working with him) but he’s also incredibly intelligent. But he’s stuck in a outrage/clickbait, echo chamber. I have another friend who is really into FreeAssange. Very smart guy, does good work on local policing issues but don’t get him started about the Clintons, Obama, Biden etc., who are Histories Greatest Monsters. It’s just kind of sad.
EarthWindFire
It works just fine for the companies offering it, and that’s what really matters. #honestRepublican #oxymoron
Baud
@UncleEbeneezer:
I’m done with the “good people but…” I’m going with “not good people despite…”
StringOnAStick
@frosty: I had Medicare Advantage for 6 months, in this state you get 12 months before that decision is permanent and yes it was cheaper in monthly premiums but I could not find a primary care doctor willing to let me become a patient. They all set aside a certain number of Medicare slots and Medicare Advantage slots, and there’s a lot fewer of the latter because the reimbursement to the doctor is lower. I was always planning on going to traditional Medicare, but when the doctor I had went to a concierge practice, I couldn’t afford her $500/month fee to be her patient (!) and with MA I was going told I could get a new patient visit in 9-12 months and in a couple of cases, just plain no, we are not taking any new MA patients, period, no waiting list either. How are you supposed to get your prescriptions written each year in this situation? At a walk in clinic. As it is now, practices don’t have new patient slots for traditional Medicare until the fall of this year. The regional hospital did a media push to get people to understand just what they will not have by being on MA, because they were seeing so many patients who couldn’t afford that 20% out of pocket cost of being on MA when the medical shit hits the fan. But hey, a friend of mine on MA got a crepe maker with the gift certificates she got from doing her wellness exams, so it’s all good, right? Jesus.
Kayla Rudbek
@Kay: Chicago School of Economics is NOT a science, it’s Calvinist theology masquerading as a science
RevRick
@lowtechcyclist: The GOP (and their Whig predecessors) have been anti immigration and advocating sexually conservative policies since the days of the Jackson administration. Post Grant they abandoned the Southern African Americans and became more nakedly anti labor and pro big business.
I would say that the Eisenhower and Nixon administrations were largely GOP acquiescence to the still prevailing New Deal consensus. The Democrats, after all, controlled Congress for most of this time.
dnfree
@Kay:
@Soprano2:
When I went on Medicare in 2012, I went to a Medicare Advantage presentation by the only company serving my area. In response to a question, the presenter said “IF you have known health conditions, and IF you can afford it, you would be better off with standard Medicare and a supplement policy.” Since that applied to me, that’s what I did. No, I don’t have vision or dental insurance or free access to an exercise facility, but I have maximum flexibility in my choice of doctors and facilities for whatever health conditions I acquire.