I’ve never seen a politician be more condescending and dismissive of a constituent than Grass in these few minutes. Maybe he knew she was a Democrat and thought he didn’t have to act like he cared.
Robin Stone, a resident of Iowa. She is a volunteer who Progress Iowa had worked with in the past, Sinovic told CNN. Additionally, the Iowa Democratic Party listed Stone as the chair of the Delaware County Democratic Party.
Of course it’s better - and cheaper - when leeches work better than MRIs.
Underlying Trump’s attitude is almost certainly the theory that illness is a punishment from God. I am certain that is how Pence sees it. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not necessarily a quid pro quo for personal transgressions - a sick child can be punishment for a parent, a sick wife can be punishment for a husband. Or illness can be a test of the faithful - an all-purpose get-out-of-jail card against charges of hypocrisy. The agnostic version of this attitude is that illness is brought on by depression, or bad thoughts, or bad lifestyle choices. The underlying connection is that the victim is in some way deserving of the disease.
Medical insurance is mitigation, and heath care as a right is an all-out assault on the idea that illness is in some way deserved, whether by act of God or by bringing it on oneself. That is the usually unspoken premise at the heart of the desperate antagonism the GOP has had for Medicare and Medicaid and ACA and, heck, even basic research. Abortion has been twisted and woven into this idea to harden the idea of just deserts.
So how can Trump make these vague promises about cheap, GREAT, universal healthcare? It’s part of his appeal that he promises to deliver the base from their undeserved lot. They are the group that is being tested by God, not the people who are being punished. So, they will be willing to lose their ACA bird in the hand for the promise of Trump’s birds in the bush. It’s pretty much par for the course that they will continue to support him in spite of obvious detriments to themselves and their families. A dollar and a dream.
In fact, insurers would use the fact that you used an acne treatment as a teenager to deny you coverage for cancer when you are 40. Pure f%%king evil.
Republican dilemma: We thought it would hurt THEM, not US. Ruh-roh!
Obamacare is the Republicans healthcare bill. That is Obamacare came from the success Romneycare that came from the Heritage Foundation and Bob Dole’s response to the Clinton healthcare plan of the 1990s.
The real problem for Republicans is because they oppose Government, they actually oppose any healthcare plan that involves Government action. That is what the Heritage Foundation and Bob Dole put forward as an alternative to Clinton’s Healthcare plan was never proposed as a serious plan to provide healthcare but rather for political expedience so Republicans would have something they could claim to be for well opposing all serious healthcare reform. The problem was Mitt Romney screwed them all by actually making what was Republicans cynically claimed to be for, but were really never serious about, work in Massachusetts resulting in Obama taking it nationally where it has also to a great extent worked.
All that said, Republicans do have a healthcare plan but that plan is so unpopular and would be such a disaster for America they only rarely talk about it. The Republican Healthcare plan was only seriously forwarded by George W Bush when he tried to force business to stop providing healthcare to employees through higher taxes and other disincentives. You see the real Republican healthcare plan, in fact Republicans answer to all problems, is the “FREE MARKET”.
That is the real Republican healthcare is to remove all health insurance both provided by employers and the Government to include Medicare and instead have consumers negotiate directly with healthcare providers without any help from the Government. The real Republican healthcare plan would result in the immediate removal from hospital beds and nursing homes hundreds of thousands if not millions Americans and dumped on street corners to die.
Now obviously any real discussion of the real Republican healthcare plan would result in Republicans doing worse in elections. Therefore, for political expediency Republican’s only accidentally talk about their real Healthcare plan, anyone remember the “Chicken lady” who ran against Harry Reid for Senator in Nevada, choosing instead to try and sabotage any healthcare reform thereby pushing the healthcare system at as high a speed as possible straight into a brick wall.
So Republicans plan to get the Republican healthcare plan implemented is to force the collapse of the current healthcare system and stopping Government from doing anything about the disaster leaving individuals with no choice but to negotiate directly with healthcare providers for whatever the healthcare providers will do for whatever the individuals can afford to pay. This is what Republicans call “The Free Market approach” and except for helping billionaires is the Republican answer for everything.
They were OK. But to get a number to talk to a rep you had to use a machine back around to the right of the front door. You wouldn’t see the machine when you walked in. There was no sign about using it. There was a security guard behind and to the left of the front door. After looking around the room and not figuring out what to do I asked them how to see someone and of course they rudely and dismissively shouted something at me.
When I got to a window it was staffed by a young Chinese woman whose second language was English. After I got my answer I told her about my lobby experience and she seemed baffled. I was pretty sure my complaint/suggestion would go nowhere, so I asked to speak to her supervisor and he (older white guy) seemed baffled as well about the issue and my rather obvious suggestion for a solution and complaint about the security guard and made some kind of excuse. It seemed like neither one of them had any idea whatsoever about running a facility from the perspective of the customer.
This experience as well as post offices and a couple other government office experiences I’ve had over the years does, I have to admit, support a Republicanish idea of privatizing and having competition in delivery of services. Most government offices that deal with the public seem to be managed mostly or entirely from the perspective of the institution and not the customer. Many, many post office lobbies for example are grim dumps. I don’t mean old, but not clean, attractive, maintained and user friendly. And of course the reputation of DMV’s is well known (although I’ve been to ones that were OK.)
Ever read stories about stores and restaurants in the former Soviet Union? Same thing, only they were worse with no free market examples of anything around for comparison. When a McDonald’s opened in Moscow people couldn’t believe it. It was like a miracle to them.
On the other hand I’ve worked in many National Park visitor centers, and been to National Forest and Fish and Wildlife visitor centers, and they are almost all pretty good. I’m not sure exactly where the difference is.
Getting back to health care, this is the kind of thing that makes Americans fearful of anything that Republicans call “socialized medicine” even when it isn’t anything like that, and “socialized medicine” meaning the British National Health can be pretty good. I had experience in two cities (SF and DC) with Kaiser Permanente, which is a mini socialized medicine system and in both cases it was OK, and had a lot of advantages over others.
Health care has nothing to do with insurance. Unless of course, it isn’t about anything but making money. Then, insurance.
I’m shocked, I tell you, SHOCKED that the venal GOP isn’t able to see further out than the length of their … whatever. Absolutely SHOCKED. Of course, the Dems TELLING them this would happen was just so much BS because of ‘venom dripping from their lying mouths’ (Lou Dobbs) and the constant noise from FOX.
This is a great example of how everyone benefitted from ACA. It’s not just individual policies on exchanges for a few million. The law strengthened protections in all plans.
No, but many (most?) did. HOWEVER, and this is big, many had caps on lifetime payouts. I know that at one point a little over three years ago my insurance cut a million dollar check to one hospital, but I’m here to talk about it so YAY! (I had major surgery in a different hospital that year, too.) Interestingly, the congenital blood vessel malformation is visible (but wasn’t noticed) in a brain scan I had when my insurance was through a private employer and did have a lifetime cap. I am honestly unsure what would have happened if that time bomb in my brain had gone off under that coverage.
Of course, they sing paeans to the “Free Market” god, but they don’t actually support a “free market.” Largely because it would collapse in on itself if left to its own devices. Plus, they just use it to support the people they want to support, their donors.
Somehow, it always happens to work out that their donors are the “makers” in their Free Market scenarios and deserving of government assistance (tax subsidies, grants, no-bid contracts, etc.), while the “takers” should be left to suffer for being so uncourteous as to be unable to support their campaigns in the $1000+ range.
I can’t help but think of OKC though.
I think if the employer is big enough they can probably get what they want with employee medical insurance. If the employer is as big as the federal government, a bunch of good plans are offered, all similar to what any corporation would offer their employees. (Probably not here, but in general people seem to think that federal employees get some kind of gold plated entirely free Government Insurance and after they work for couple months they get it for life, all of which is entirely wrong.)
The ACA (other than its requirements and incentives for all plans) was about addressing the situation of individuals with no market power who need medical insurance.
And that absurdity is the result not of how the ACA was drafted, but of the court’s rationale in Sibelius.
This issue isn’t about Trump. It is about the impact the repeal is going to have on his “lickspittles” in Congress. Many of them aren’t going to be happy.
IF you have a Democratic congressional rep this might be one of those “constituent services” kind of things that they like to stick their nose in. (If it’s GOP, it would just be ammunition.)
I do have to stick up for the passport offices in LA. The physical facilities were pretty nice, but that may be because they were pretty new. But more to the point the people there were compassionate, efficient, and effective. I can’t say enough about the kindness of the clerks who worked with us and even the security guards who helped us figure out where to go and where to wait between appointments. We weren’t the only stressed out family with multiple issues needing expedited services that day.
This morning I listened to a Hidden Brain podcast and learned that, in the Obama administration at least, they had a White House advisor specifically tasked with using cognitive science principles to make government programs more effective - things like streamlining application processes when the agency already had some of the relevant information, using text reminders at key points to help first time college students navigate the deadlines, that kind of thing.
Hadn’t ever heard about that, although somehow I know of every idiotic lying tweet and statement Trump ever made. From Politico:
Anyway, it’s putting the government alternative plan into the ACA, like what the Obama administration promised to include and then folded.
When I got a new passport a couple years ago I did it all myself at home, even the photo. I still had to print everything and send it in though, so it wasn’t purely online. Another example of doing government stuff online or partly online, just like we do everything else these days.
Of course government (essentially monopoly) services can be good and can be up to the standards of free enterprise services. It takes leadership and effort, and those things don’t usually seem to happen.
I like that. Letting people buy into the government program seems like a good way to both improve the healthcare “system” we have now, get more people goood coverage, and start weaning us off of private insurance.
The one question I have is how would this affect the many people that bounce in and out of Medicaid eligibility? Ensuring continuity of care for those at the bottom end of the income scale would be good. I am also curious how “Medicare X” will handle heath issues specific to younger patients- obstetrics and pediatrics obviously, but also endometriosis and women’s health generally.
It also helps those of us who spend time in two (or more) places. Health plans tend to be restricted geographically, but Medicare is National.