If I could start from scratch, I wouldn't go with Rube Goldberg.
Avedon, email from me to your cix address is bouncing.
I urge you to read this post, and link to the linked stories: http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/o...f-
soldiers.html
Everyone should read about this.
http://www.gazette.com/articles/...idge-
audio.html
http://www.gazette.com/articles/...tp-
gazette.html
Sorry to hear about the dentist!
Dentists chair? You are much braver than I am.
The health care debate is very serious now and it's focused on single payer. I've seen some scripted "letters to the editors" already saying no-gov/commie health care because of abortion related issues. It's clear there will be a lot of noise about this. I'm worried about what has just happened in California. Public services were creamed so keep the uber rich from paying more taxes. This is not good, or accurately reported in the media. The reporting for health care reform is even worse.
I think that Krugman is terrified, accurately and realistically, that the entire thing could slip through fingers and down the drain. This would be very bad in the next ten years, as pointed out by Obama in an excellent speech to the AARP.
Thanks for this post, I enjoyed Ian's article.
Avedon--
You will never hear a Right-Wing Conservative mention (Military and Retiree) Tri-Care For Life, VA Care (which, as a recipient can attest is not as good), Medicare (unless they are talking about "projected shortfalls"), Medicaid, or the FEHB-- the Federal Employee Health Benefit that every Senator and Representative, get for life. Funny that. Only Jon Stewart has been able to breach the topic, and caught-up William Kristol in a MASSIVE case of backspin. The whole situation is simply beyond the pale in terms of discourse. It's shameful, but oh, so vitally American!
Apparently, Americans have surmised that it doesn't accomplish anything to get out on the streets enmasse anymore in America. I wonder where that came from? *ahem* free speech zones
I really feel that we are truly on our own right now. Best to get to know your neighbors.
--mf
Best to get to know your neighbors.
Especially the ones north of the 49th parallel.
Here's hoping no more heavy dentistry, Avedon.
Here's hoping no more heavy dentistry, Avedon.
Sympathies.
You are a bit unfair to Krugman: he supports a strong public option which, indeed, would probably work. Unfortunately, it's not what the Senate is willing to pass. My guess is that we're all Californicated. :-(
I'm curious, Avedon: NHS dentist or private? If the former, how was it? If the latter, why?
I'm on the NHS, myself, and it's generally all right, though it seems to be over so quickly. I have a hard time deciding whether I'm not getting all the treatment I should, or if dentists in the US just so overdo it that we're all used to Rock Hudson/Britney Spears smiles when we could be getting on just fine with Denholm Elliot/Maggie Smith ones.
I suppose I'll find out in 10 or 20 years.
I've added my own post about the earlier links I made above, about our soldiers coming home from Iraq, what they did there, and what it did to them. It's here. I hope it will help give people more clues as to what sending our young to war does, as well as what lies ahead in sending them to Afghanistan, and to any war.
I hope it will help give people more clues as to what sending our young to war does
You know, I've never been to war. I can't claim to know what it does to men who have been. I also don't claim to be the world's greatest historian.
But I know that war is hell, and if, by fucking god, the experience of the entire god-damned 20th century — in which entire generations of young men and tens of millions of innocent civilians were industrially slaughtered — wasn't enough to teach these wilfully ignorant imbeciles what sending young men to war does, then nothing ever will.
My rage runneth over.
You went to the dentist's yesterday? Ouch. Hope you're on the mend.
By the way, I'd just like to thank everyone who helped me yesterday with my crisis. My fiancee and I deeply appreciate the kind and generous gestures.
Seeing Paul Krugman regurgitate conventional wisdom on single payer is really unpleasant. It's like discovering mildew all over my garden.
I suppose we could terminate Medicare and Medicaid since they were incremental improvements to the U.S. health care system, and then go all out for an all-encompassing single-payer program that doesn't have to deal with the legacy of the past. But if we don't have to do that and can get a public plan that can cover those who need health care but can't get it, I agree with Krugman that it's worth having. Doing nothing at all in hopes of getting a better deal later is a political pipe dream as far as I'm concerned.
David, if it were up to me we'd have never passed those programs. If the elderly, with their voting rates, didn't have medicare, then we'd have had universal healthcare 15 years ago, Make no mistake.
The fact that minor reforms delay major ones is something incrementalists never take into account. We can never really know which approach leads to more lives being saved in the long run. Incrementalists assume there way is better, but the reality is it's just more immediate.
Yeah, David W., we single payers just aren't purist enough. We want to extend the legacy of the past by having Medicare for all. The incrementalists want to create new stuff -- for just one example, at least fifty state-run insurance exchanges to certify the new private insurance plans. There's a reason why HR3200 is a thousand pages long and will take four years for even initial implementation. That's too all-encompassing for me. Extend the old Medicare program to the whole population (or start by simply allowing everybody to sign on, or even just covering children the way it covers the over-65s).
David, we've tried salami slicing on healthcare for over 60 years. Medicare was a salami slicing strategy adopted by LBJ because he calculated that he couldn't get healthcare reform. I'm hardly the only person who thinks that likely forestalled a real national healthcare system. We tried salmi slicing in 94, which most people really do forget. HMO's were a salami slicing tactic from the Carter years. They turned out to be a joke. Even the much vaunted Hillarycare was little more than a regulatory structure for HMO's. A good one, but hardly the great leap forward people like to proclaim.
Every step of the way, salami slicing on this issue has failed to achieve the larger goal. All it does is make the constituency for real healthcare reform smaller, leading to ever less ambitious attempts at reform.
soullite, if LBJ with all his vaunted ability to get legislation passed could do no better than create Medicare and Medicaid, I'm inclined to believe that it was the best deal that could be had at the time. I'm not a big fan of forgoing a chance to make some real improvement and take a sucker's bet that we can get more later.
What dismays me is that I'm not hearing "well, this isn't all we want but I'll support this much at least and keep working for single payer". That's my attitude, in no small part because while we don't have single payer currently, thanks to Medicare my father is alive and well, thanks in no small part to LBJ back in 1965.
Time for the Republic itself is running out. Single payer advocates have to take over the Democratic Party fast. We should band together as a bloc of voters and commit to voting for all pro-single payer Democrats and against all Democrats who do not support single payer. That means we should publicly commit ourselves to vote for the corporatist Republican in any general election if the Democrat on the ballot is not a supporter of single payer. At this point Job #1 for center-ists and leftists is to wreck the careers of the office seekers in the Democratic Party who hire themselves out to the corporatists.
And the last thing rank-and-file Democrats, who would commit to this one small step to make America a better place to live, need to listen to is some Democratic ditto-head telling us the savvy political move is to rededicate ourselves to supporting our party's sold-out leadership. Political realism, my ass. "Where do they teach you [ditto-heads] to talk like this?...Sell crazy someplace else, we're all stocked up here."
NomadUK
The best place to teach children the true meaning of war is a graveyard for soldiers.
Oh bother.
We have the best healthcare in the world! There are only 2 problems easily fixed:
1. End the insanity of State Licensure of insurance companies.
2. Reign in the trial lawyers. For pete's sake at least make them pay court costs if they LOSE.
Y'see Tom, we can agree. Take Ivan the Insurance Agent (and Louie the Lawyer) out.
All this Republic Fascist Party scare-talk about an Obama heathcare plan that kills off old folks is pure projection, because that is exactly what the existing system is doing to me right now, and has been for many years.
David, because circumstances matter as much as much as it does leadership. He couldn't get healthcare. Instead of focusing on something he could get, he passed Medicare. Because medicare passed, it gave universal insurance to a group of people that votes. Always. Under every circumstance. Thus, he decreased the constituency for universal healthcare to such a degree as to doom any attempt at universal healthcare.
His mistake wasn't doing too little, it was doing anything at all. Had he not passed medicare, we'd have had universal healthcare because we'd have the AARP on our side and all of their lobbying efforts.
I really don't give a shit what dismays a sellout like you. You look for immediate gratification instead of playing a long game and feeling like shit in the short term. You pass these half measures, not to help people, but to make yourselves feel better. Like you got something accomplished, as if you actually did something that mattered. But the reality is, most of these half-measures do nothing.
Making more regulations in a system as corrupt and subject to regulatory capture as the united states is doing nothing. These regulations will be ignored. What few fines get livied will be paid. And business will keep going exactly the same. So stop pissing in my face and acting like I'm the bad guy here. You're the one who wants to pass a worthless bill.
David, I'm not even sure why I'm talking to you. You'r either a corrupt hack, or a dopey moron. You can keep pretending that the Democratic party is our ally in this, but they are not.
Keep trying to convince the whigs to end slavery if you want to, I'm done.
Tom, what in the world makes you think that "trial lawyers" are the problem with America's healthcare?
Malpractice insurance doesn't go up because of trial lawyers, Tom, it goes up because insurance companies make bad investments and then make it up by gouging their customers. The states that have capped jury awards do not have lower premiums - in most cases they are higher. You just want insurnace companies to have more power to screw everyone and no lawyers to try to stop them. Yeah, that's a great idea.
Sometimes you just sound too stupid to live. The Caliphate is going to take over America and our system would be fine if it weren't for trial lawyers. You live on one fascinating planet, but it isn't this one.
Actually, soullite, the fines don't even get paid. The insurance industry is now so powerful that it simply ignores the courts.
David, because circumstances matter as much as much as it does leadership. He couldn't get healthcare. Instead of focusing on something he could get, he passed Medicare.
Considering the problem of how the elderly could not get health insurance thanks to the fact that it wasn't profitable for the free market to cover them, LBJ saw the need and did something about it. That's leadership and it's made a difference in the quality of life for millions of elderly Americans.
Gee Avedon since you are not a Democrat (D) why would you care about Tort Reform?
But lets get back to the our main point: How is the world going to end?
Global warming? Terrorism? Economic collapse leading to wide scale cannibalism? Heh.
Please fill me in on the details of your depression so we can get you the right medications. If your insurance doesn't cover them I'll be happy to pay out of pocket.
You forget, Tom - I already have comprehensive coverage.
Sometimes I wish society never progressed beyond the point of the barter system in its sipmlest state. Really, it is GREED and only GREED that has got us into this mess. When people stop being GREEDY and start to help one another then this country will turn itself around.
Really, it is GREED and only GREED that has got us into this mess
Well, since the country was founded on greed, it's been a mess since the get-go, and it's going to take an awful lot to turn that around.
I've been wondering if those conservatives who proclaim their love for the U.S. Military consider it a "government program" - you know, one those things that never works because government can't do anything right. If not, then what is it?
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