President Trump - Page 129 - Politics version 7.0 -- Two Plus Two Poker Forums

If the AARP is against it, stick a fork in this bill, it's done. Which begs the question: why did the GOP and Trump introduce us to this piece of ****?

Just spitballing here but any chance they are trying to passive-aggressively get at Trump with this? It would be pretty easy for them to put this cluster on trump's lap even though they wrote it. Clearly the republican congress are better at bitching and complaining about policy versus creating it.

I just think the republicans will push this off on Trump AND Obama/Democrats complaining the ACA was so horrible it was impossible to fix.

I agree though the AARP demographic may get no Nielsen love but they are probably the most worrisome block for politicians. They vote at a higher rate sac even turn out for mid-terms.

It is a little frustrating that every media question to the republicans on this is not : "7 plus years. WTF!?" It is pretty clear the modern GOP is good at being obstructionist tools but horrific at developing and implementing actual government policy.

03-08-2017 , 06:23 AM

#3203

markksman

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Quote:

Originally Posted by bahbahmickey

I didn't read the article - just your quote and the bolded is a pretty bad argument. We have seen the effects of government throwing more and more money at college costs to make them more affordable. Why wouldn't reducing government subsidies for health care do the exact opposite of what throwing money at college kids did for college costs?

First of all the two things are nothing alike.

You seem to be implying that by cutting subsidies you would cause healthcare costs to decline. There is an absolute zero percent chance that would happen. Healthcare is its own unique monstrosity and there are not any analogs for it. All cutting subsidies would do is cause more people to be uninsured. That would actually cause healthcare costs to go up.

Sure subsidies to make healthcare insurance something people can afford is not the perfect solution (single payer, single pool is) but it is much better than making health insurance much more expensive for everyone.

03-08-2017 , 08:24 AM

#3204

einbert

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https://twitter.com/michikokakutani/...71585874182144

03-08-2017 , 08:43 AM

#3205

einbert

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https://rewire.news/ablc/2017/03/07/...hcare-instead/

Quote:

On Tuesday, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) helpfully explained that U.S. residents need to get their **** together and decide which they would prefer: iPhones or health care.

“You know what, Americans have choices. And they’ve got to make a choice,” Chaffetz mewled the day after House Republicans unveiled their plan to replace the Affordable Care Act. “And so maybe, rather than getting that new iPhone that they just love and they want to spend hundreds of dollars on, maybe they should invest in their own health care.”

Chaffetz’s statement is predictably heartless. It’s also unoriginal.

His claim—that if people would just make the right choices, they wouldn’t be so ding-dang poor—is part and parcel of the GOP’s long tradition of demonizing low-income members of the public. Republicans have been spouting the same canards for decades, castigating people with low incomes as lazy, moochers, and on the endless hunt for free stuff. And somehow the GOP seems to consistently equate poor with Black.

Remember “welfare queens”?

Back in the 1970s, then-presidential candidate Ronald Reagan first invoked the specter of the “welfare queen.” The “welfare queen” stereotype depicts Black women in particular as slothful, looking to reap the benefit of government handouts by having more and more children—out of wedlock, obviously—and using those children to collect higher benefits.

This stereotype was false in a number of ways; in fact, the woman upon whom that stereotype was based, Linda Taylor, turned out not even to be Black (official records list her as white). However, the “welfare queen” myth resonated nevertheless because it fit neatly into existing lies about Black people. That we are lazy. Moochers. Disinclined to work. Promiscuous. A drain on society. Morally and socially bankrupt. Beyond help.

And Republicans are still playing on those stereotypes to convince even those they’re trying to screw over that conservative politicians are acting in their best interests. They purposefully sow division among low-income folks to try and convince poor white people inclined to such racist thinking that although they may be poor, they’re not really poor—or if they are, they deserve benefits because their poverty isn’t “deserved.” Sure, Johnny White Guy is collecting food stamps and gets his health care through Medicaid, but Johnny is just in a difficult spot. His wife left him and he’s struggling to make child support payments. In fact, he’s a couple months late on his payments, and that’s really troubling him. He doesn’t get to spend as much time with his kids as he would like. He’s just having a really hard time right now, but it’ll pass. He’ll land on his feet again. He just needs public assistance as a temporary solution until he can sort himself out.

Not like Johnny Black Guy. Johnny Black Guy is also struggling to make his child support payments, but is struggling really the right word? It’s not like Johnny Black Guy has any intention of paying his child support. Black father absenteeism is a real problem in this country, you know. Besides, how could a father possibly be involved in his kids’ lives if he has seven different kids by seven women? There’s a real culture problem in the Black community. Marriage has been devalued. Work has been devalued. Black folks just sit on the corner waiting for the check to come. Exactly how is Johnny Black Guy supposed to get a job when he won’t even pull up his pants much less look for a job. There’s no culture of work in the Black community. Paul Ryan as good as said so!

As for Black women? Forget about it. They’re too busy simultaneously gettin’ ‘borshuns and having too many children—and not marrying the father of those children—to lift themselves out of poverty.

Never mind that a 2013 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report shows that Black fathers are the most involved with their children daily, and that’s fathers who live with their children as well as those who don’t. And never mind that Black women are hella educated and that Republican policies like the Hyde Amendment, which encourages discrimination in the delivery of health-care services by refusing federal funds for abortion, actually sink women into poverty and disproportionately affect people of color. And never mind that there’s no single reason for poverty, and that an inherently unequal and often racist system means that generations are trapped in it regardless of their willingness to work.

But the stereotype persists. Jason Chaffetz’s comments Tuesday morning are simply an extension of it.

Obviously, forgoing the purchase of a several hundred-dollar phone isn’t going to matter when a medical emergency ends up costing thousands of dollars.

It’s blatant stupidity. And Chaffetz surely knows this.

But he probably also knows that as soon as he says the word “phones,” racist people will immediately think about how Obama was giving Black people free phones. He wasn’t, of course—President George W. Bush actually started the program that provides poor people access to phones—but the claim fit neatly into the narrative of Black people as lazy takers and Obama as the Black president handing out free **** to his people. It’s a narrative that is engrained in America’s consciousness: this idea that Black people want free stuff and Obama gave it to them. Free health care. Free birth control. Free phones. You name it.

03-08-2017 , 09:12 AM

#3206

einbert

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https://www.yahoo.com/news/u-rep-cha...171730009.html

Quote:

The Department of Health and Human Services estimates that the Average American spent $10,345 per person on healthcare costs in 2016.

The iPhone 7 models range in cost from $649 for the standard 32 GB model to $969 for the 256GB iPhone 7 Plus model.

For any American who owns at least 11 iPhone 7 devices, Congressman Chaffetz has a plan to help you make sure your full healthcare costs are covered. For everyone else, the Chaffetz iPhone healthcare proposal may come up a bit short, even taking into account monthly phone bills.

03-08-2017 , 09:15 AM

#3207

bahbahmickey

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Quote:

Originally Posted by markksman

All cutting subsidies would do is cause more people to be uninsured. That would actually cause healthcare costs to go up.

Can you expand on why you think health care is so different than almost every other product/service that is controlled by the law of supply and demand?

03-08-2017 , 09:33 AM

#3208

einbert

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Quote:

Originally Posted by bahbahmickey

Can you expand on why you think health care is so different than almost every other product/service that is controlled by the law of supply and demand?

Sure. So making the baseline cost of health insurance higher means more people on the margins are going to go uninsured. Taking away the individual mandate also means more people will go uninsured. Adding the 30% surcharge if you lack "continuous coverage" for 60 days or more (extra 30% premium you have to pay to the insurance co. for 12 months) also means more people will go uninsured until they are so sick that they feel they MUST buy insurance.

Insurance is based on risk pools. The individual mandate was designed to expand risk pools, getting more young and healthy people into the health insurance system. The more you can get these people into the risk pools, the lower everyone's premiums can be. By creating many incentives for people to go uninsured (as in RepubliCare), your risk pools are going to be drastically altered and premiums will go up way more quickly than the cost of living. This in turn causes even more people to go uninsured, causing the risk pools to be altered again, making premiums go up again, and the cycle continues to repeat. This is what's known as the insurance "death spiral" and RepubliCare almost guarantees that the death spiral event will happen.

03-08-2017 , 09:46 AM

#3209

mongidig

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Those who can't afford insurance should consider not buying: Iphones, cigarettes, Air Jordans, booze, drugs, hookers, Starbucks coffee etc.

03-08-2017 , 09:58 AM

#3210

einbert

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03-08-2017 , 10:29 AM

#3211

13ball

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Quote:

Originally Posted by mongidig

Those who can't afford insurance should consider not buying: Iphones, cigarettes, Air Jordans, booze, drugs, hookers, Starbucks coffee etc.

...food, shelter, clothing...

03-08-2017 , 10:32 AM

#3212

leavesofliberty

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Quote:

Originally Posted by mongidig

Those who can't afford insurance should consider not buying: Iphones, cigarettes, Air Jordans, booze, drugs, hookers, Starbucks coffee etc.

While there are some in this category, this isn't the story of everyone who wants government health care.

03-08-2017 , 10:50 AM

#3213

einbert

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https://twitter.com/laurenarankin/st...86686010671104

03-08-2017 , 11:08 AM

#3214

ogallalabob

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Quote:

Originally Posted by goofyballer

See here:

The perjury issue isn't particularly interesting to me since you can go back and forth about intent forever, but it's suuuuuuper dumb to act like Sessions wasn't lying in saying "I did not have communications with the Russians" because of the context of a question he didn't even answer.

The problem with the analogy is that you have to believe that Sessions was intending to convey that in his 20+ years in Washington he never met with anyone from Russia.

Previously when I asked if that's what the left believed he was saying, the answer was no just during the course of the campaign, that is the relevant time period. Which is also relying on the context of the question. Then your back to:

Quote:

Originally Posted by pokerodox

Sessions thing is a non-issue.

The question was "in the course of" the campaign. That's a quote from Franken's question. In the course of easily means "dealings of", "in relation to", whatever.

It would be nice if Sessions had stopped Franken and said, please clarify, when you say in the course of, do you mean during the time of, or do you mean in the dealings of, because I certainly spoke to them during that time, but not on behalf of the Trump campaign.

If we are down to pointing out how Franken out maneuvered/lawyered Sessions, fine, but now you're just saying Sessions is bad at his job. A non-issue, cuz this one event is not determinative.

Besides Patron is totally wrong, if you take his answer to be gee I am not aware of those activities, I did not have such contacts and I am not commenting on what I would do. It is directly responsive to the question, maybe not how the left wants him to answer and is not just off the wall ramblings. Saying no comment is responsive to the question.

03-08-2017 , 11:26 AM

#3215

juan valdez

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i think the left wing hysteria is affecting peoples better judgement. i'm all for investigation and pursuing leads but the left just seems to be getting way ahead of itself here. slow down, theres not some sort of perjury slam dunk here. far from it. you're at a 9 when you should probably be closer to 5

03-08-2017 , 11:32 AM

#3216

spanktehbadwookie

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Quote:

Originally Posted by bahbahmickey

Can you expand on why you think health care is so different than almost every other product/service that is controlled by the law of supply and demand?

Why do you ask? Is it because you don't know about that already?

03-08-2017 , 11:35 AM

#3217

spanktehbadwookie

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Quote:

Originally Posted by mongidig

Those who can't afford insurance should consider not buying: Iphones, cigarettes, Air Jordans, booze, drugs, hookers, Starbucks coffee etc.

Why would you say that/

03-08-2017 , 11:39 AM

#3218

superslug

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Join Date: Jan 2009 Posts: 701

Quote:

Originally Posted by mongidig

Those who can't afford insurance should consider not buying: Iphones, cigarettes, Air Jordans, booze, drugs, hookers, Starbucks coffee etc.

Come on dude your sounding like Bill O'Reily just now.

03-08-2017 , 11:44 AM

#3219

bahbahmickey

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Quote:

Originally Posted by einbert

Why did you say you would address my question and then immediately go off on a tangent about something else?

My question was why would healthcare react differently than almost every other product and service out there when it comes to supply and demand? Which is to ask, when less people are buying health insurance (this is supply going down) why do you believe the costs will increase?

I am not disagreeing with your tangent by the way. I agree we need young and healthy people to pay (more than "their fair share" as a liberal would say) for part of old and sick peoples health insurance. I also agree that if we don't force (see: fine) the young & healthy to subsidize the old people's healthcare then costs are going to go even higher.

03-08-2017 , 11:56 AM

#3220

bahbahmickey

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Quote:

Originally Posted by spanktehbadwookie

Why do you ask? Is it because you don't know about that already?

No, I think I do understand it. I don't think that poster (and possibly the link he posted) understand. There is an argument to be made, but he didn't even address it in his bolded quote.

03-08-2017 , 12:01 PM

#3221

spanktehbadwookie

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Quote:

Originally Posted by bahbahmickey

No, I think I do understand it. I don't think that poster (and possibly the link he posted) understand. There is an argument to be made, but he didn't even address it in his bolded quote.

So it's like this one neat trick that turns human bodies into products?

03-08-2017 , 12:12 PM

#3222

mongidig

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Join Date: Jan 2004 Posts: 5,268

Quote:

Originally Posted by spanktehbadwookie

Why would you say that/

So they can afford to pay for insurance, thus creating more money for those who really need it.

03-08-2017 , 12:20 PM

#3223

leavesofliberty

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Quote:

Originally Posted by juan valdez

You have to admit though, it's kind've a big error. I'm not buying the *mistake* line here.

03-08-2017 , 12:35 PM

#3224

bahbahmickey

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Quote:

Originally Posted by mongidig

Those who can't afford insurance should consider not buying: Iphones, cigarettes, Air Jordans, booze, drugs, hookers, Starbucks coffee etc.

Quote:

Originally Posted by leavesofliberty

While there are some in this category, this isn't the story of everyone who wants government health care.

I think we all agree we want to help those who really need it, but often times we find others who don't really need it are gaming the system and taking the resources away from those who do. So maybe we can create a system where if someone who is getting their healthcare heavily subsidized is caught 2-3 times with some combination of a list of goods they aren't allowed to have (similar to the one mentioned by mong above) they aren't allowed to receive the subsidy for 3 years (plus a fine?) and those savings will be spread around to others who need it. This could also apply to food stamps, welfare, etc.

Spoiler: