American Politics during the Obama Presidency

[QUOTE=Romanee]Rock Harder,

Your plan makes alot of sense. However the Tort Lawyers would hate it. One of the reasons for high medical costs are high malpractice insurance. Also the unneeded and redundant medical tests ordered by doctors to CYA. Talking about the military, Military Doctors are exempt from malpractice claims. Instead of completely tearing apart the US system start small and surgically repair the system. Still if I'am really sick I would rather be treated at the Mayo Clinic or Johns Hopkins than anywhere in the world.[/QUOTE]It's an interesting idea. As you say though, the Tort Lawyers would hate it, so practically that part stands about a 0% chance of making it through a Congress controlled by Democrat lawyers and being signed into law by a Democrat lawyer president.

About Mayo Clinic, there was an interesting article in the New Yorker recently about Medicare expenditures. The Mayo system has among the lowest per patient Medicare expenditures in the U. S. while offering close to the highest level of care. The article contrasted that to McAllen, Texas, where costs are about 2.5 or 3 times Mayo's cost. The reason -- physicians and hospitals in McAllen game the system. They peform procedures that don't need to be performed, order tests that aren't needed, schedule unneeded office visits, etc. Mayo has a more collegial attitude. Cooperation among physicians is encouraged, and they're not compensated based on how many tests they order or how many patients they visit.

Many argue that if government runs national health care the same way it runs Medicare, we're going to end up with higher costs and lower quality of care. I haven't followed this issue closely enough to know, but believe we should be trying to copy institutions like Mayo that provide high quality, lower cost care. Unfortunately, when you get a bunch of U.S. politicians (i. e. Lawyers) designing national health care, I'm afraid it's going to end up more like Medicare in McAllen than Mayo.

The Feres Doctrine, a 1950 Supreme Court ruling, forbids active-duty military personnel and their families from suing the federal government for injuries incidental to their service. In other words, unlike every other U. S. Citizen, people in the military cannot sue the federal government for medical malpractice. One argument - that allowing the lawsuits would disrupt military order and discipline.

Thanks for taking the time to put it together.

Could we really repeat the civil war--reds vs blues? We seem to be doing it on AP. Brothers fighting and name calling.

Thanks for the Republican propaganda chain letter Sid,

[url]http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/pending/oklahoma.asp[/url]

[url]http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/is_oklahoma_as_defiantly_conservative_as_a.html[/url]

Regards,

BM.

Sid expresses his creative sense by posting chain letters again. More good news: hate is alive and well in the USA. Let's set up a public works projects to create jobs: building detention camps where people not liked by any group can build a wall between the USA and Mexico. The world is ending: illegal immigrants.

In a country made up of immigrants: Round up illegals; put them in camps; seperate families: the kids born here are citizens--send their parents back to where they come from. That's the good thing that Christ would want---maybe we should tattoo their foreheads and make them wear gold stars on their clothing. Hate is a patriotic thing! Let's all prey!

Only Oklahoma did not actually do it. The rumors of hate are likely brought to you by the smae good honest people claiming that obama is an illegal immigrant. The only republican to stand up and say stop the lies--john mcCain--a maverick.

State of the Nation: [url]http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/7/26/757458/-The-System-At-Work[/url]

[QUOTE]The GOP goal is to kill healthcare reform outright; their strategists are saying as much. Not to kill single payer or a public option, but to kill the whole notion of reform. The legislators tasked with coming up with alternative plans declared, this last week, that none were needed; Senator Inhofe muses out loud about how much his party might be helped if they can manage to stop reform outright.

I suppose it is worth pondering the how and the why of such things. Do they earnestly believe that there's absolutely nothing that needs to be done about health care in this country? Are they so transparently in the pockets of the lobbyists that they are willing make a bold stand on "everything is fine", when a mere look out the window says it's not?

It's puzzling that such a stance could even be remotely effective. Everybody in America seems to hate their insurance provider, at least everyone who has ever had to use it because they actually got sick. Everybody knows how bad getting actual healthcare has become in this country; everybody has stories of being screwed roundly by their insurance, or not being able to get insurance in the first place, or knows someone else who has had worse experiences.

And yet even in something with such widespread support, all you have to do to foul up the works is (1) invoke partisan pride, so that all the other conservatives or Republicans will simply oppose whatever-it-is out of reflex, and (2) make up a bunch of scary-sounding bullcrap, much of it provided by the insurance companies themselves, and hork it up on television via friendly hosts and anchors. (And again -- transparently. The very same scary-sounding phrases or made-up statistics make it into twenty or fifty or a hundred different political and pundit mouths in a single day, with not even an attempt to disguise the obvious commonality of the source.

Consider it: this is all it takes to possibly stop something that has, what, 80 or 85% of the public behind it. And it's yet another example of how a single industry, spending not all that much money in the grand scheme of things, can very, very easily counter the collective will of the entire population. And how entrenched the notion is, among the majority of politicians, and pundits, and anchors, and political hangers-on, that that's not only fine but the way things should work.

It seems increasingly easy to understand why there's an culture of mistress-banging and airport-bathroom-handjob-seeking and prostitute-visiting, among our leaders. They truly believe themselves above normal morality or normal law by virtue of their positions. The same mind that can demand moral perfection in others, when it comes to sex, has absolutely no problem preaching those things to others while doing the exact opposite themselves, because they are different from others. There's no contradiction in their minds: they're powerful, so they're a special case. Arrests can be made by the dozen, in New Jersey, and it seems hardly noteworthy. Rush Limbaugh can be caught with illegal prescriptions, after years of railing against drug users, and it does not so much as put a scratch in his Four Hundred Million Dollar career. Rules exist for others; laws exist for others; morality exists for others; personal power or personal advantage is the only goal worth seeking.

After twenty years of the same fight on the same healthcare issues, one thing is transparently obvious, from the pronouncements of the supposed leaders of the opposition: whether or not anyone in America is truly needing of healthcare, from a practical, economic, moral, ethical, or any other standard simply does not enter the debate. I personally do not expect many of these politicians even have an awareness that other people might have medical needs different from their own, or not have insurance like their own insurance, or not be as connected or as well-off; that requires a level of awareness that few of them can even bother to credibly pretend at. The question among our supposed leaders and brilliant minds is only how can this debate be used to extract personal or career advantage for them. If we kill healthcare reform, who will "win" the politics of killing it? Who will have an easier time being elected, or find themselves on television more often?

There's no moral calculus at all, for people like Kristol, or Inhofe, or Gingrich, or other supposed leaders. None is pretended at: none is cowed to. There's no good or bad, there's no long term vs short term -- nothing. And it's among both Republican and Democrat, and it has become increasingly easy to see which are which. Gingrich can have his affairs, and you can't. Our leaders can visit their whores, but you're a dirty rotten sinner if you do. They can have healthcare, because that's just how things work, pal. You can't -- at least, not if there is personal, political advantage to them in preventing it.

It's not even corruption, because "corruption" implies they know they're doing something wrong. It's a complete amorality. This same group of people, this same party of high-minded No, this same party of constant scandal, constant national security blunders, constant deficits, constant manipulations is going to kill healthcare reform because it helps them get cash or influence; they will happily attempt an impeachment of a president for denying an affair while having and denying affairs by the dozens themselves; they're going to ditch the wife and their duties and fly to Argentina to get laid because it makes them happy, and that's all that matters. If it causes problems later, shed some tears and make it go away. (If you're Sarah Palin, pride of Republicanism, hell -- you don't even have to do your actual job. You can pull a Carrie Prejean, bail on all your duties and just wander off to give speeches to promote yourself, and if anyone has a problem with it it's because they don't understand how great you are.

Republicans are still citing, with pride, how they blocked healthcare reform attempts in the Clinton years, an action which directly led to the runaway healthcare costs between then and now. In the Clinton years, 95 cents of every dollar paid in premiums was paid out again for medical care: now it's plummeted to 80 cents, the rest going to administration and profits. But they're proud of this result, and not defensive at all, because whether it be twenty years ago of twenty minutes ago, the whole debate hinges, for them, on what political advantage can be squeezed out of it at any given moment of time, and not on what effects their actions might actually have.

If it means your mother can't get her medicines, or means you can't see a doctor, or your injured child gets wheeled out of the hospital just as soon as they are stabilized, with absolutely no long term care whatsoever, they don't just not care: it doesn't enter their heads.

That is what is so striking about our governance: it is increasingly devoid of even the pretenses of public good. The notion that we should reform healthcare in this nation because it needs reforming is nearly a comical argument; the only relevant or even commonly debated question is who will gain or lose from a strictly political fight to achieve or block the effort. Regardless of popular opinion it can be absolutely assured that whether or not you believe American citizens deserve a more rational healthcare system is entirely dependent on which party you belong to.[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=Miami Bob]...can build a wall between the USA and Mexico...[/QUOTE]How in the hell could anyone possibly be against securing our country's borders?

[QUOTE=Miami Bob]...separate families: the kids born here are citizens...send their parents back to where they come from...[/QUOTE]Those are "Anchor babies" whose births are deliberately planned to provide their parents an excuse to remain in the USA after entering the country illegally. Don't be fooled! The true blame goes to the parents who deliberately placed their children in this position.

Anyway, there's no need to separate anyone, the anchor babies can go with the illegal parents when they return to their home country.

[QUOTE=Jackson]How in the hell could anyone possibly be against securing our country's borders?

Those are "Anchor babies" whose births are deliberately planned to provide their parents an excuse to remain in the USA after entering the country illegally. Don't be fooled! The true blame goes to the parents who deliberately placed their children in this position.

Anyway, there's no need to separate anyone, the anchor babies can go with the illegal parents when they return to their home country.[/QUOTE]I am all for legal immigration, but why the rant against people who are trying to survive and give their children a better future. Isn't American business and Congress responsible for the current mess. Let's put the blame where it should be.

When the approval ratings for 'W' were worse than this, did you still support him?

[QUOTE=Black Shirt]I am all for legal immigration, but why the rant against people who are trying to survive and give their children a better future. Isn't American business and Congress responsible for the current mess. Let's put the blame where it should be.[/QUOTE]Hi Black Shirt,

1. They can "survive and give their children a better future" in their own country.

2. "American business and Congress" is not responsible for individuals who make a conscience decision to violate our immigration laws that are already on the books.

BTW, IMHO, a foreign guest worker program is the best solution to the entire problem, but it won't happen because of resistance by special interest groups on both sides of the aisle.

Thanks,

Jackson