Was going to mention the same thing, on my plan as soon as i talk about anything that's been bothering me during my free annual physical i start getting charged extra.

Like great ****ing system we've got here, come in and see the doc so he can take your blood pressure and fondle your balls but dont mention any problems you may be experiencing.

Guys,

Engaging people like Ins0 is worse than a waste of your time.

Not only do you have zero chance of changing his mind, you're legitimizing gaslighting. Boy - really showed him with those population density maps!

For the love of god, just point and laugh. Then spend your time registering new voters, running for something, or doing really anything other than engage sociopathic monsters posing as normal humans.

Ins0 do you a shred of evidence to support your theory other than your own thought experiment conclusions that giving poor rural people better access to healthcare would flood the system beyond repair?

And if the doctor brings up a past problem, am I supposed to plead the fifth? Give them the silent treatment?

I like when they get more money for a separate visit - so have you have to come back for stuff that takes 5 minutes and the nurse could do it any time.

Um... why can't we just do this now?

Oh we only do ear cleanings on Thursday afternoon.

Oh ok, sure.

Lol thank you for capturing that post. Holy ****

I once had them try to run me through so many appointments for something that I just gave up. They wanted me to go primary -> specialist (to prove I had sleep apnea despite already having CPAP and a diagnosis) -> specialist to discuss -> primary to prescribe.

And of course the specialist costs more. I went back and forth with them about just forwarding the past records over and whether they'd take them, and finally I just gave up.

It's absurd, and if we take the profit motive out a lot of that goes away. My provider was also my insurer (Kaiser), which was not an arrangement I liked. They were essentially incentivized to run me through a bunch of appointments as long as those doctors weren't already booked solid, because it doesn't cost them any extra to see me and they get the copay. Meanwhile, the people paying the doctors are incentivized to have them recommend the cheapest treatments, not the best. That was always in the back of my mind.

Great system we've got.

Open secrets says Ted Lieu received $27 from the DCCC in the 2018 cycle. I'm pretty sure he can hire whoever he wants. No doubt DCCC money will affect hiring decisions in some races, but it seems more business as usual than a big problem.


You're exaggerating what is actually happening here. This doesn't apply to individuals, but to political firms, so this wouldn't prevent you from working for a primary challenger and then later working for an incumbent. Also, many incumbents raise their own money and don't rely on DCCC money, so it doesn't even necessarily prevent political firms from doing this.

Anyway, mostly I just didn't understand the outrage - even if you don't like it, this just seemed like one of the normal ways in which incumbents protect their seats. You'd have to completely revamp the system to get rid of that bias.

I just randomly picked a Congressman who most people here know of, in order to set up a hypothetical and make an example.

Maybe, but this is the very sort of thing that the progressive base wants to get out of politics. It's the very sort of thing that cost the Democrats dearly in 2016. So it's very frustrating to see that the party is basically ignoring that message/lesson.

I think I'm coming around to the idea that Americans are just too stupid to make this work.

Young Kyrsten Sinema must think old Kyrsten Sinema is a ****ing tool. Like why ****ing vote no when you can just vote present like everyone else is doing? We all know Manchin is a ****ing idiot, so shrug. Doug Jones, you ain't getting reelected anyways so just give up. Angus King, well I know nothing about him but sounds like he sucks a fat one also.

Just former Green Party activist Kyrsten Sinema voting no. What a total ****ing fraud she turned out to be, huh? I mean, not that we didn't see it coming. She's better than a Republican in that seat, but not by a whole hell of a lot.

And Doug Jones is going to regret how he spent two years trying to win a re-election race that he had no shot at winning, assuming they don't nominate another pedophile.

Also disappointing to me, as an atheist, that what appears to be the first openly atheist Senator is just some centrist lib tool who is trying to politic like its 1996. Figured she'd be at least more open to scientific conclusions of the utter disaster climate change is ramping up to be.

This is correct.

Stupid white people in America are so insulated from the consequences of their hateful ignorance that they have the luxury of voting racism and laughing to Fox News as it all burns down.

The "most bang for the buck" argument isn't all that relevant because healthcare expenditure is primarily supply driven. That is, as more advanced medical treatments become available, we’ll spend more. And since more and more advanced medical treatments will become available, we’ll keep spending a greater share of our income on healthcare.

More complicated than this. After all, a lot of the people voting against it are likely voting against their own best interests. I think a lot of the problem is that health care is (for a lot of people) VERY episodic. Some of this is because the access to primary care is so poor - but a lot of people WITH coverage don't go to their primary unless they get "sick". Also, a pretty good proportion of people still have private insurance, so it's not a personal issue for them and theirs. There's not the gut-level connection with the people without coverage.

In a fumbling way, what I'm trying to get at is that they're insulated from consequences not because of hateful ignorance, but because (thank god) the vast majority of us wander through life, at least until the later stages, without NEEDING significant health care.

MM MD

King is usually really good on climate issues, I’m pretty stunned that he voted no.

Oh, just **** right off with this

Pelosi is good at the mechanics of legislating and ****ing terrible at being a party figurehead

I think she's probably being smart there. Her main electoral priority is not holding onto the safe blue seats where AOC is considered a hero, but holding onto Orange County and the other flips from 2018, where socialism scares the olds and soccer moms. If Nancy Pelosi said AOC is the way of the future for this party, that would be used in ads against all swing seat Democrats.

Exactly. Like for starters, I don't really care what Pelosi says on a national TV show. She has been privately supportive of AOC and AOC obviously likes and respects her.

Secondly, AOC is miles underwater in net favorability on a national level. A Quinnipiac poll in late March showed 23% favorable and 36% unfavorable, with everyone else not having an opinion. Those numbers are reversed among 18-34 year olds - she has her constituency, but she's not appropriate for trying to establish broad-based support.

The DNC are not wrong that going "too far left" is an electoral loser. What they're wrong about is that they think "too far left" means policy, when it moreso means how the policy gets packaged. Bernie and AOC deliver a similar political message, but the manner in which they present it is very different, and Bernie is very popular nationally. So the problem isn't the message, it's the presentation. Bernie tends to deliver a universalist message, while AOC is unavoidably steeped in culture-war stuff, there's no way to avoid that as a young female POC.

So basically I think the Dems are correct that AOC is not an appropriate messenger on a broad national level. She should keep doing what she's doing, which is having a huge, influential online presence and getting young people engaged with politics.

Pelosi has higher unfavourables than AOC and a similar -13 spread

I guess you were fooled by that Harry Enten headline, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez polls like Donald Trump: Poorly, where a few paragraphs down he buries the truth that "...[t]here's also nothing unique about nationally known politicians being unpopular with the general electorate."

It doesn't matter what happens to be popular based on how pollsters choose to word things today in the spring of 2019. The way the world is going to change is most definitely not going to be sitting around waiting for polls to look good. You have to drag them there.

That's the nature of being in her position as a legislator.

I haven't read any headlines. You have to... drag people into liking AOC? Why?

Few politicians have positive favorables nationally but it's not like it's unheard of. Sanders does. Biden, despite the scandals, still does, although it's down from its peak.

It's also the nature of being a fast-rising star whom Fox News has spent a disproportionate amount of time on. You're making it sound like you give Pelosi a pass for the bad favorables but not AOC.

You have to drag/convince/persuade/force, whatever word you want to use, people into supporting left policies. You're cherry picking poll numbers to make a case that "actually, voters do want a center-right Democrat, we cannot go too far left", and that is defeatist and simply not the way anything is ever going to change.