Senate The 2016 General Presidential Election

Hyperbolic success achieved

 

solojones -- apologies, I was short-handing. I'm assuming Cleveland and Mayo Clinics would be part of the group of private / non-profits who would covert either to for-profit or simply stay private and non-profit but not accept single-payer. My anticipation is that the bulk of the non-profits will convert to single-payer acceptance, but not all of them. Public hospitals would obviously not have a choice.

 

99.984% of Americans don't understand what socialism is and therefore can neither describe nor identify it.

Seems a similar proportion of the populism can't define capitalism.

 

Jabba-wocky -- believe it or not, I agree. If I could have one "quick fix" for US healthcare it would be immediate cessation of prescription drug advertisements on TV / online / movies / etc.

Yes, the drug junkets / lobbying may become a thing again but I'm frankly willing to accept that the vast bulk of medical professionals are capable of making medically necessary decisions for their patients without patients needing to see advertising.

 

"The side effects might include, vomiting, constipation, difficulty swallowing, difficulty breathing, difficulty living, heart attack, or even death."
"Do not take on an empty stomach. Do not take on a full stomach. Take on a partially full stomach."
"Do not drink water within an hour of taking it. Do not drink water after one hour of taking it."
"If you've had an erection that lasts longer than seventeen hours, please see a doctor."

Yes, please ban those.

 

Wait, they can ask you health questions? For the two different health insurance plans I've bought off the shelf since Obamacare kicked in, they literally didn't ask any health related questions. I thought they weren't allowed to now.

Again, that used to be the case. But now, as far as I know, everyone in the US can get insurance: whether medicare, a subsidized Obamacare plan, through work, or bought off the shelf.

Some of these plans do involve high deductibles. Usually those don't apply to doctor's visits, though. There's usually just a copay amount (and an annual physical plus a pap smear for women is free). We do need to deal with the high deductible problem.

We thankfully don't have as large of an issue with many uninsured people as we used to. Now we have different issues, with the premiums of those plans skyrocketing for people who make just a little too much to get a subsidy.

I feel we should at least attempt to fix some of the problems with Obamacare first. We may learn things along the way about how we could best get single payer in the US.

Yeah, it's completely nuts. I feel like pharmaceutical ads should be outright banned. The public are not the ones who should be deciding what medicines to take. It's dangerous, not to mention disgusting.

I am often all for some aspects of capitalism: for instance, I do think competition across state and county lines would lower premiums.

However, affordable health care should be a right. Profiting off health care should be heavily curbed. And the excuse of "we need more money for research" should not fly. This is one area that should absolutely be regulated more. These companies shouldn't be able to spend more on ads than on development.

Creating new drugs should be a public service they're providing, not a for profit enterprise. That's how non profit hospitals approach it. But they get charged just as much for meds as anyone else a lot of the time, and then turn around and charge patients absurd prices for tongue depressors to cover the differences.

Gotcha. See, the idea of them becoming for-profit doesn't sit well with me, though.

I'm also still not sure where research money is going to come from if the government effectively takes over hospitals.

Also again, what if most of those hospitals just opt out of joining single-payer? You would wind up with a majority of hospitals in the US unavailable to the single-payer system. In some places, that may well be all or almost all the hospitals. I certainly know public hospitals in the LA area are less common and overstretched as it is. If none of the private hospitals elected to go public, what would we do?

I fear more poor people would wind up waiting even longer in the ER or to see a specialist in that system than already do. My worries aren't just about how long *I* might have to wait. A lot of it really is worrying that if we're not careful, we might make some things worse. We already saw that happen with several aspects of Obamacare.

To be honest, just in my personal experience, private nonprofit hospitals are also usually better run than the public hospitals I've gone to. I kind of fear turning some of those over to the government. I'd almost rather make the insurance side of things government-run than the hospital side of things. I'm concerned about some of the quality institutions and research and top innovative doctors we might lose.

 

Hmm, is that a plan through your job?

 

It would be more likely that if someone is flagged as a smoker they'd either have some exclusions on their policy, or the premium would be more expensive as a result.

It's a risk based insurance policy, so you can work with those things (smoking etc).

 

I don't think the "Competition across state lines" thing is really going to make a very powerful difference.

First, most of the people hawking this are trying to an end-run around regulation. Obamacare has helped limit this problem by creating a basic minimum benefit package that all plans must have. However, there are still some significant gaps between what is required in different states. There is nothing magic. One factor in cheaper plans is simply that they are less comprehensive. But the other is that these are insurance companies. Rates are based on actuarial risk pools. Where people are relatively healthy, have the sort of socio-economic resources to avoid problems, and have good health literacy, diseases can be treated at lower cost and the insurance rates are concordantly lower. Where they are poor, unfamiliar with principles of healthcare, have a heavy burden of environmental pollution, and unable to manage their chronic conditions, costs are very high. The insurance rates reflect that. Flooding a "cheap" insurance pool with a bunch of sick people would probably just make the prices go up. It's certainly not the panacea that some factions want you to believe.

 

What Wocky said.

 

Back on the subject of the thread (though I find it amazing we've essentially had Wocky, SJ, Ender, and myself all agreeing on something in the last page which certainly may be a first), there's apparently a new poll out specifically of Millennial voters from GenForward that shows that... basically the bulk of them broke for Hillary rather than breaking third-party.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/poll-young-voters-now-coming-hillary-clinton-43023766

60% Hillary
19% Trump
12% Johnson
6% Stein
3% Other/Undecided

So, she's pulled even with President Obama for young people if the numbers hold on Election Day. Also, about deplorables? Yeah...

Maybe heels1785 and his assessment of the Bartlet playbook ("accidental" hot mic) wasn't so far off the mark...

 

This would greatly enhance my NFL viewing experience so I agree.

 

I would ban the NFL too. That would be another great stride for public health.

 

Ban tackling/contact in school sports involving minors and it would kill the NFL eventually. Unfortunately they are well aware of that.

 

*raises hand*

That was me.

I think, if Wikileaks proved anything, it's how deliberate Hillary's decisions are. No way do I believe that "gross generalization" comment wasn't planned in some way.

 

There are only three or four WW superfans here, so if it wasn't me I had a 50/50 shot and whiffed.

Also, the tally of Trump's lawsuit threats:

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features...reatened-to-sue-someone-during-this-campaign/

Oy.

 

Grah. Dp4m, what are you doing?

This thread was finally becoming I had hoped. With the results of the election clear, we could shift our focus to substantive issues and start trying to tackle policy and how it might (vs should) look over the next few years. There were all sorts of beautiful exchanges from wildly divergent viewpoints. We were surprising one another with areas of agreement and disagreement. Unconventional alignments of posters were happening as we learned new things about the world and one another.

Then we regressed to talking about polls and something that Clinton or Trump said about the other. Sigh.

 

So I guess some theaters are going to have election night parties, airing the results to the audience. One thing's for sure, either way the popcorn's going to be a lot saltier.

 

Jabba-wocky -- I do still need to stay on topic every several posts or so, just to keep Pointy G happy. But I'm sure we'll be getting into this both in the US Politics thread and in whatever First Term of President <Winner> thread, which I hope to see you in even if it won't be President Obama. I'm happy to debate anything about how we need single-payer and how to get there and other things.

Also, apparently Hillary's got an ad just for you!



“If Obama’s voting for Hillary, I’m voting for Hillary,”

 

For my last comment on healthcare stuff for now... To clarify, I understand that if you all jump into a cheaper pool, it gets more expensive. (I've worked for my dad at his home/auto/life insurance company... I know more than I wanted to about insurance ). The way I think it should work is that these national insurance companies should have one national pool across state and county lines. You shouldn't really buy a plan in a particular state. The bigger the pool, the more the risk is evenly spread out. So on the whole, premiums would even out better.

Also, I think specifically because Obamacare has mandated basic minimum care that every plan has to abide by, there's even less reason to divide things up by state. Sure, there are state laws that differ on healthcare... But those shouldn't exist. There should be one federal standard.

Well, that's definitely what happens with auto and home insurance as well if course. I am just wondering why those questions have never been asked by the companies I've bought plans from. Maybe they don't want to give me a discount for anything... But it is true that those aren't questions about preexisting conditions, but rather behaviors someone has chosen to engage in. So I guess that is a little different.



By the way, we've now succeeded in talking in depth about the issue of healthcare in the US in one day more than either major candidate has in a debate... That's very sad. I know Hillary would just tell me to go to her website to hear about exactly how she'd fix Obamacare, but I would love to at least hear her talk about it at a rally. Haven't seen that either.

 

Dp4m: I started posting in political threads in the era of George W Bush. I trust I'll survive Hillary Clinton.