So is Jeff Jeans a Democrat now? Or did he get his and then continue on his merry way pulling up the ladder behind him, like the rest of the Republican Party that only gives a shit about something when it personally affects them?
I’m glad Jeans was able to get the life-saving care he needed, and I applaud him standing up to Ryan. But has he engaged in any more introspection about his life choices, and how they might have affected others? He was able to cling to life, but how many others died because he wanted his tax cuts or thought the ACA was a fraudulent waste? How many more will die in the near future because of his life-long support of soulless charlatans like Ryan?
Horray for me, FU ‘principles’. You’re right, why do people have to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes before they evolve and empathy sets in? I can just image what he had to say about his fellow human beings before misfortune knocked on his front door. And I wish, as a country, we had the same sympathy for all the innocent people we slaughter everyday around the world.
Following-up with the GOP activist’s town hall statement:
How many small business owners will have to close-up shop to go work for the globalists if the Ayn Rand cultists / Teabag crowd get their way and kill government-mediated insurance?
Supporting healthcare, democrats are trying to save small business!
Why don’t powerful Democrats begin echoing memes like this over-and-over-and-over the way that the Freedom Caucus members echo their memes? Slogans work, just ask The Donald.
I saw this exchange. After the typical Midwestern bullshit (My aunt lives in Arizona, my family’s from Janesville, go Packers, etc.) Ryan tried to sell Mr. Jeans on his high-risk pools. Tapper sat there like he was doing a Larry King interview while Ryan played on the rubes about his “plan.” Twenty minutes of research showed me that his idea has been tried and failed, and been either debunked or criticized by, get this, the American Enterprise Institute as well as Kaiser, the LA times, the WP, and just about anyone else who has looked into it. If Jeans had had Ryan’s plan available to him, he would not have been standing there last night. And what is this crap about reaching into his pocket and listing premium increases by zip code? Ryan sells snake oil, and can’t stop because the money is too good.
I have never, ever entirely understood why the fuck Democrats were so goddamned reluctant to talk about the relationship between the ability to obtain affordable insurance and entrepreneurship.
How many people were able to dump their cubical job and pursue a business plan they’d been noodling over for years because they could get health insurance on their own? We’ll never know. One would have been enough for a goddamn commercial. But the Democratic consultantocracy seems to be as purblind to things like that as they are generally to the concepts of marketing and PR.
That’s what I mean by enlightened self-interest—an awareness that you share in the common good, that you’re better off even if your own bank account or whatever isn’t affected.
It’s shocking to me that millions of people don’t realize the ACA is a way to get private insurance at a somewhat affordable price, not government single payer and that about half of those who do not get thier health insurance thru the ACA did not realize that about 20 million people who had no insurance at all now have some.
My source was NPR this morning while I was out driving on an errand.
@pshah–“Except I know plenty of people who support policies for the common good.”
Yes.
We are a better nation when we attend to the common good.
We are better informed when we are educated–Hence the need for a strong public education system.
We are more productive when healthy–Hence the need for a strong health care system.
We have better communities when people are willing to set aside their differences to solve problems–Hence the need for compromise in problem solving.
There are, of course, dozens more examples.
Yet, all too often, many Republicans stand in the way of this. It takes something catastrophic, such as getting very sick as in the case cited here, for that to begin to change.
Exactly. It was a powerful, moving exchange and one that Ryan failed miserably. But I remain baffled by these Republicans who are apparently incapable of empathy for the suffering of others until they’re personally affected.
One would think that one or two of them would finally understand that. Personally, I don’t like the idea of living in a country where anyone who has a middle class or upper income has to live in a gated compound to protect themselves from everyone else who is poor and desperate. I don’t feature living in a country where there are people dying in the streets from lack of health care.
It only makes sense to want to live around happy, healthy people who feel good about life - I don’t get how some can live with everything in the middle of people who have nothing - how is that a life?
@tiowally–“Fun Fact: Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini and Cigna CEO David Cordani both saw their total pay surge to $17.3 million in 2015 after earning $15 million and $14.5 million, respectively, in 2014.”
For Mark and David, it seems similar to Chico Escuela (the Latin baseball star portrayed by Garret Morris on SNL), “The ACA been berra berra good to me.”
I think we need to shake up quite a few Ds, too, on the question of healthcare. See the link below, just in. It seems that 13 Ds, inc. Corey Booker, just voted to prevent the importation of cheaper Canadian drugs to the US. Why? Because donors. I’m happy for someone to disabuse me, but it really is shocking. These Democrats ought to be all pilloried and primaried.
Yes and the same was true in Boccaccio’s time - and that’s where Poe stole that story, from Boccaccio. hahahaha
You’re going to make me have to get all into my hopeful mode - the one I was born in - and say I think we are supposed to have evolved our culture a bit since the 1840s or the early Renaissance.
We have made some progress and the social progress we’ve made isn’t going backwards because of policy decisions.
