Exactly. That medical school had an emphasis on producing primary healthcare providers. Yes, some went on to become cardiologists, radiologists and brain surgeons, but many became family doctors, general internists and general pediatricians – the primary care specialties.
When I worked there, the school was still led by the founder. He was a crusty old guy who made a lot of money building community hospitals, but he was committed to providing health care to poor people.
He often posed this question to his students: “Would you rather go to the areas with unmet needs, and enjoy the rewards of service to your patients and communities, or would you rather do boob jobs on Park Avenue?”
It’s not about trust. It’s about the numbers of people who’d lose healthcare in their state and whether the state is purple enough to boot them out of office. It’s also about who has aspirations for higher office and when they’re up for reelection. I don’t trust anyone in congress other than Yarmuth and Waters. There’s literally no senator I trust much further than I can throw them. Fuck trust. Focus on the numbers.
Exactly, and the truly hilarious part about him running ads against Heller is that it only stood to help Heller. PP can’t hurt him. He can’t run negative ads that will hurt him, or campaign against him, because he’s so unpopular in the state that it only helps Heller. And Heller isn’t alone. There are other senators, especially those with extremely popular governors, who are equally as immune to arm twisting. But no one tell PP any of that. He still thinks it’s Election Day and he had the biggest landslide since Reagan.
I hope so…but some of them still fear his base. Others actually believe in his special brand of fascism too. There are more of them in the House than the Senate that will still stand by him through thick and thin, but the longer he lashes out in a fit of pique when he doesn’t get his way, the more they’ll see themselves as potential targets, and will use some offensive tactics to counter his attacks, even if that means ignoring him altogether.
Let’s face it, there’s only so much tRump and the GOP will be able to blame the Dems for with regards to this GOP wealth-care bill, since the GOP controls everything. There’s little reason to believe their attacks on Dems will have much traction in this case either, by the time the next election ramps up…so, its all on them to shit or get off the pot. Either way, they’re going to piss off some faction in their party whichever way they vote. Most Republicans around the country however are against this bill, so they might just once, want to take that into consideration.
That’s an interesting proposition. Maybe Trump’s clumsy, blundering attempts at “outreach” can provide a political opening to Senators who see a political advantage in standing up to the White House.
They may cave, but will pay a tremendous price if they do. The people who hate ObamaCare because they are opposed to the government being involved in health care, because it was proposed by a black guy, etc., are down to around 7 percent. The majority of people still critical of ObamaCare think their premiums and deductibles are too high. The Republican plan will make those people more unhappy. It will be very hard on many Americans if the bill passes, but if the Republicans make a suicide pact, we’ll know what to write in the history books about what happened to the Republican party.
Basically insurance companies in the exchanges have proven themselves unable to make money without massive federal subsidies, unless they can filter out all the one-in-a-million, bank busting diagnoses, exclude everyone who’s too sick to work, and charge discriminatory rates against against women, old people, and everyone who might’ve picked up some run of the mill affliction along the way.
Obamacare fell short by trying to preserve this parasitic insurance industry which clearly subtracts value instead of adding. The Rumpublicans’ solution is to give the parasites free reign.
If we ever get back to power, I’d like to correct this imbalance by conditioning participation in the state exchanges with the privatized Medicare and Medicaid business.
The same companies crying about losing money no the exchanges are making a mint on administering privatized government-funded health programs. Make them give up these lucrative business opportunities if they quit the exchange. No more cherry picking
Again, there are three dozen functional national healthcare models in advanced economies that we could expropriate. All deliver better healthcare to all at a cost of at least six percentage points of GDP less. Instead, GOP “policy” is driven by greed and hatred.
How did the Party of Eisenhower become the Party of Trump? How did this Americanist party of what Josh calls “somewheres” come to dominate our three main branches of national government? Thomas Piketty sees the party setting itself for “inevitable social failure” but we’re still sitting by watching an ugly chapter of US history unfold without much explication.
The main question remains: how does a programme which is so clearly pro-rich and anti-social succeed in appealing to a majority of Americans as it did in 1980 and again in 2016? The classical answer is that globalisation and cut-throat competition between countries leads to the reign of each man for himself. But that is not sufficient: we have to add the skill of the Republicans in using nationalist rhetoric, in cultivating a degree of anti-intellectualism and, above all, in dividing the working classes by exacerbating ethnic, cultural and religious divisions.
Take Jeff Flake, already unpopular in Arizona. He can knuckle under to McConnell and make the nine Arizona billionaires happy, and take health care away from 669,912 people in his state, or he can hope it doesn’t come up for a vote. I think there are quite a few in the GOP who don’t want this to come to a vote.
Basically five of these seven Senators are asking to conserve Obamacare exactly as it is. Real profiles in courage, huh? All of them voted against Obamacare of course originally.
The beloved Jim Inhofe on the Republican bill, “I’m not sure what it does. I just know it’s better than Obamacare.” Asked HOW it’s better, gets into elevator.
How much worse could it possibly be after the Russian putsch?
