Trump Thread

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Yes, the entire healthcare industry profits from this and so do you. Insurance makes more treatments available to everyone, which may otherwise not exist since the people having them mostly can't pay for their development. And then it also ensure that doctors get plenty of experience. And it makes everyone safer by providing e.g. vaccination to every citizen instead of just those who can afford it or wouldn't rather spend the money on a new phone.
And then there is mental care, would be weird to ask patients to pay for it themselves or just let them run around, potentially with guns. Especially if they're so affected that they can't possibly work to earn the money for treatment.
Plus you get a lot of indirect benefits by keeping people alive who may have a disability in one area but really shine in another, see Stephen Hawking.
And then of course there is basic human decency, the idea to not just do things because YOU benefit from them, a demand often made by conservatives in general, see also below. Christian values also demand not to think only of yourself.



Yes, health is like a lottery with compulsory participation and not having insurance is like asking to only have the winners pay for the lottery tickets. Republicans like to talk about how society has lost its morals and yet complain about sharing the burden of the unfortunate. The whole chrity model is just bogus because if you want to help everyone and not cherry-pick people (similar to death panels?), you have the same overall cost. Except woth charity even more people wouldn't pay, so the moral people have to pay an even higher price for the same result. Insurance makes immoral people pay a fair share as well.
Consider that even financial markets, the epitome of capitalism, use insurance shemes to guard against catastrophes. Not always successfully, but even the most die-hard capitalists us the idea for themselves.

Not sure I agree with your second paragraph in its entirety, but I am far more a fan of insurance than of a government health service. And you know from previous posts that I am well aware that the current US system is, in some ways, the worst of both archetypal forms, despite some cutting edge capabilities that are amazing (though generally very costly).

[Husar]

Not sure I agree with your second paragraph in its entirety, but I am far more a fan of insurance than of a government health service. And you know from previous posts that I am well aware that the current US system is, in some ways, the worst of both archetypal forms, despite some cutting edge capabilities that are amazing (though generally very costly).

I see compulsory insurance and government healthcare as very similar. Usually the argument is made that the private sector can do it cheaper, but consider that they need the same administration either way and dividing it over several different corporations can lead to overhead such as each of them having a CEO and a board of directors with enormous salaries whereas the government could do with one department head who probably gets paid less. Surely the corporations would save costs by paying the line employees less, but how low wages are good for the country is another topic worthy of discussion.

It is possible to get a decent healthcare system without having the government as a single payer, we happen to have that in Germany. It keeps getting changed though and the whole system seems to be run in some weird government/insurance cooperation. For people who make a lot of money or are self-employed we also have a seperate private insurance industry, which apparently amounts to making one a first-class patient since they pay the doctors more or something like that. However, health insurance is compulsory for most things here and the big standard insurance companies can't just take it away, even if one does not pay repeatedly AFAIK. During employment the payments are deduced before the wage is paid out though, just like income taxes and other things.

The point is, it does not really matter, as long as everyone is covered. The Republican plan is terrible because it does not cover everyone, drives up the cost, benefits the ones who have no problems with healthcare anyway and basically turns the US even more into a class society where the amount of wealth determines the worth of a human life. And it is only made worse by their claims to be the moral party that stands for family values etc. Lies, lies, lies, I say...

[HopAlongBunny]

The budget is a governments statement of priorities.
Trump's priorities are pretty clear: internal surveillance and defense.

If you want a looksee: https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget

[HopAlongBunny]

Looks like a mixed bag for the polls on this:

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features...n-health-care/

A nurse at dialysis had the best comment:

"If I hear one more person say: Appeal Obamacare but don't touch my ACA; I'm gonna scream!"

[Greyblades]

Welp.



First the FISA requests now this, I look forward to seeing the doozy of stretch that'll be needed to sweep this one under the rug.

[Husar]

Cry me a river, noone cared when that Obama fascist regime basically stripped me naked and Trump continues that.
They might as well screw over some citizens to show how wonderful all this surveillance is. Snowden is a hero.
Trump shouldn't whine if he has nothing to hide.

[Husar]

Welp.



First the FISA requests now this, I look forward to seeing the doozy of stretch that'll be needed to sweep this one under the rug.

Heh, now that I happened upon another video, it turns out Trump was wiretapped but your video shows only half the truth because even this Nunes guy said Obama wasn't involved, and thereby sort of contradicted himself. So Trump was wiretapped and his claims about it are still bullhonkey as far as we know so far. What did you say in the other thread about reserving judgment? And while we're at it, the whole terror scare laws were enacted under Bush, Obama's terrible deed was using them more instead of repealing them.



Relevant part starts around 3:22.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

First effort to replace the ACA has been pulled by Speaker Ryan. United opposition from democrats and by ardent conservatives.

[Greyblades]

Saw that coming a mile off.

Heh, now that I happened upon another video, it turns out Trump was wiretapped but your video shows only half the truth because even this Nunes guy said Obama wasn't involved, and thereby sort of contradicted himself. So Trump was wiretapped and his claims about it are still bullhonkey as far as we know so far. What did you say in the other thread about reserving judgment? And while we're at it, the whole terror scare laws were enacted under Bush, Obama's terrible deed was using them more instead of repealing them.



Relevant part starts around 3:22.

I dont remember Nunes saying that, and I think I will stick with the unannotated videos thank you:



The best information is uncitated by the left's breed of talk show spin, spin you sneer at when it comes from the right, ah well.

As to Obama's involvement, this is not the dodge you think it is for it leaves either two possibilities: either Obama knew of it and you are wrong, or Obama wasnt aware and thus the US intelligence community spied upon Trump without the Obama's knowledge and consent.

So either Obama spied on his sucessor or he was incompetent and allowed the Intelligence community to become a loose cannon.

[rory_20_uk]

I see compulsory insurance and government healthcare as very similar. Usually the argument is made that the private sector can do it cheaper, but consider that they need the same administration either way and dividing it over several different corporations can lead to overhead such as each of them having a CEO and a board of directors with enormous salaries whereas the government could do with one department head who probably gets paid less. Surely the corporations would save costs by paying the line employees less, but how low wages are good for the country is another topic worthy of discussion.

It is possible to get a decent healthcare system without having the government as a single payer, we happen to have that in Germany. It keeps getting changed though and the whole system seems to be run in some weird government/insurance cooperation. For people who make a lot of money or are self-employed we also have a seperate private insurance industry, which apparently amounts to making one a first-class patient since they pay the doctors more or something like that. However, health insurance is compulsory for most things here and the big standard insurance companies can't just take it away, even if one does not pay repeatedly AFAIK. During employment the payments are deduced before the wage is paid out though, just like income taxes and other things.

The point is, it does not really matter, as long as everyone is covered. The Republican plan is terrible because it does not cover everyone, drives up the cost, benefits the ones who have no problems with healthcare anyway and basically turns the US even more into a class society where the amount of wealth determines the worth of a human life. And it is only made worse by their claims to be the moral party that stands for family values etc. Lies, lies, lies, I say...

Germany so often does things... better. And because so much is ingrained other countries can not just copy it - families who care for their workers and most people who do mainly follow the rules as that is the right thing to do and help others as that is also right. Family owned Mittelstand who take the long view, not selling out at the first opportunity.

The UK / USA has a winner-takes-all mentality at all levels from those at the bottom who are out to get whatever they can to those at the top who act in exactly the same way. An all-pervading sense of both envy and entitlement with little concept of duty or responsibility. Unions who don't want to work with employers but would rather have adversarial relationships.

We have a bunch of politicians who are either insane, incompetent or sociopaths. I'm not sure which is worse. You have a leader who in a relatively considered and quiet way does a good, glamorous job.

Yes, I am a Germanophile (my last holiday was to Berlin - and is my choice for my next) and probably things are not as rosy as they seem.

But grafting the mentality of how the German system works onto the UK or USA just wouldn't work until the psyche changes. And of course the irony is that the UK and USA have some of the highest percentages of German ancestors of most countries.

[Husar]

Germany so often does things... better. And because so much is ingrained other countries can not just copy it - families who care for their workers and most people who do mainly follow the rules as that is the right thing to do and help others as that is also right. Family owned Mittelstand who take the long view, not selling out at the first opportunity.

The UK / USA has a winner-takes-all mentality at all levels from those at the bottom who are out to get whatever they can to those at the top who act in exactly the same way. An all-pervading sense of both envy and entitlement with little concept of duty or responsibility. Unions who don't want to work with employers but would rather have adversarial relationships.

We have a bunch of politicians who are either insane, incompetent or sociopaths. I'm not sure which is worse. You have a leader who in a relatively considered and quiet way does a good, glamorous job.

Yes, I am a Germanophile (my last holiday was to Berlin - and is my choice for my next) and probably things are not as rosy as they seem.

But grafting the mentality of how the German system works onto the UK or USA just wouldn't work until the psyche changes. And of course the irony is that the UK and USA have some of the highest percentages of German ancestors of most countries.

Well, I'm trying to do my part for the required cultural changes. I often check out the youtube comments under videos and how some people there defend the private sector economy stuff or even go full anarchy makes me think they just adopt arguments and never think them through. That is probably also an education issue and having more private schools would seem unlikely to fix that. Here we are often a jealous of how schools in the US or Canada are often shown to have the latest technologies, but I'm quite convinced that a good teacher is worth a thousand times more than having a beamer with touch capabilities. We may forget a lot of the information that we learn during our education, but the thought patterns, the correct application of logic and so on, these are things that can last us for a long time. And these are things the teachers need to teach. Given how people often get through school by memorizing what they think the teachers want to hear without really understanding it, it shouldn't be surprising that they might do the same later in life.
And I'd say the same happens in Germany as well, I'm not saying our education system is a lot better.

I wouldn't even say capitalism is bad per se, but its use depends heavily on your goals circumstances and to some degree the type of capitalism you apply. When you have long-term goals,. infrastructure technologies and serious environmental concerns, the kind of capitalism we often see today, you're just maneuvering yourself into a lot of trouble. One could even say the irony of our society is that we have such good healthcare overall that our society became dominated by old people who look for short-term profit as they may not live to see the long-term ones. They're also so drunk on the short-term gains of the past, using a relative abundance of resources, that they refuse to see that this can't go on forever in the future. And they focus entirely on the economic consequences and call everything else a "fake science" (see people saying liberal arts should disappear etc.). And this was a segway to the following article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/17/u...conomists.html
Especially interesting:

For starters, while economists tend to view a job as a straightforward exchange of labor for money, a wide body of sociological research shows how tied up work is with a sense of purpose and identity.

This is another segway to the following German article, which basically argues that another communist revolution is a pipe dream because Neo-liberalism has tied our self-worth to our financial success and therefore we lose all self-esteem if we are not rich and if we are rich we have no desire for revolution. Basically a form of self-enslavement of the poor masses who blame themselves for their lot in life rather than the system that is designed to perpetuate their situation.
As one example for a worrying development it takes the sharing economy, which basically turns communism into a product that corporations can sell us and at the same time removes more ownership from the consumer who has to pay for more and more things every day that his parents used to own after a one-time payment. The ownership of the rich and dependency of the poor and middle classes sold under the disguise of convenience and instant satisfaction. In the long term it commercializes every aspect of life and makes capitalism take over our entire lives.
http://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/n...-ist-1.2110256