11-18-2018, 12:30 PM
(11-17-2018, 07:15 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: My issue was cost back then and my issue is cost today. My issue wasn't needing it or wanting it for my self at the time. Well, the wants & needs were addressed but the cost wasn't really addressed. I knew that would happen. I knew the the blues would focus on primarily serving themselves, their interests and their political needs because that's blues do when their in power. The blues ain't much different than Bolshevik's, Nazi's, Marxists, Leninist's who proceeded them. The only difference is the country and the American system that's in place that they currently reside in. A country with a strong American right (a strong faith in the American Constitution and the American flag and Americans in general) that no other country on the planet seems to have around at this time.
Before I address the issue of medical cost, let me remind you that this "Blue" political hack repudiates every tyrannical, dictatorial, and despotic order that exist now or ever has. I have excoriated leadership of Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, China, and Russia. My favorite object of political mockery is North Korea, which has somehow melded two of the worst styles of government to have ever existed: Marxism-Leninism and absolute monarchy into something that will have to go into one of the most ludicrous political systems to have ever existed. Poverty of the country is no excuse for someone like Pol Pot, Rafael Trujillo, Idi Amin, Robert Mugabe, Haile Mengistu, or Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier. I see Donald Trump as a horrible leader for reasons other than ideology. He is making mistakes that Ronald Reagan would have called out in a political opponent. He is a crass demagogue in the sense that Juan Peron was (except that Juan Peron really was a soldier instead of a cowardly draft dodger). Trump is so bad that he causes me to adopt rhetoric that I once associated exclusively with right-wing extremists such as "I love my country but dread my government". Donald Trump seems to have thought that the President is simply a CEO who can run things despotically. The Presidency has not been suited to anyone acting as a despot. George Washington established a model for limited power of the Executive to which 42 later Presidents adhered (and only 42 because I do not wish to double-count Cleveland) that Donald Trump has violated.
Now on medical cost: in recent years the economic model from business has gone from a competitive norm to crony capitalism. In competitive capitalism, consumers decide what they want and business owners achieve consumers' desires or fail as businesses. This is not to say that consumers can get stuff for less than cost of manufacture and distribution; profit is the lifeblood of successful businesses. Businesses (except insurance companies and lenders, which are bureaucracies by nature) do what they can to keep costs down at all levels, including executive compensation. A bloated bureaucracy is nothing but burden that only a monopolized, vertically-
integrated firm can tolerate. Prices tend to reflect costs and a necessary, modest profit for shareholders. Service and marketing go together, and so do revenues. That is capitalism at its best.
We have gone toward a different, and not a better model (except for elites) in which Big Business has consolidated industry through mergers and acquisitions. Giant firms take advantage of vertical integration that might produce economies of scale -- but also monopolies and cartels. Competition vanishes, and the model of business becomes the squeezing of customers as much as possible. Profit maximization is the objective. Management becomes increasingly harsh, relying more upon threats (including upon taxing authorities in which those firms have business operations) than upon incentives and inducements. Supply gets constricted, profits soar, and management is paid profusely to treat people badly. Cost to the consumer becomes whatever the business can extract, and as competition disappears, costs soar. Big Business tries to take over the political process, ensuring that politicians beholden to corporate lobbyists win elections at all levels of government. Service becomes menial chores for people barely paid enough to survive.
In recent years the United States has become a nearly absolute plutocracy. As the late oilman H. L. Hunt put it, the Golden Rule is that "He who has the gold makes the rules". Donald Trump is a late phase in transforming America into a nightmare in which a few people own everything and the rest of us have the choice to 'comply or die'. Comply or die? That's how things were under Josef Stalin, and a capitalist version of such is little better.
Quote:Yes, there is a risk of getting really sick or seriously injured or being diagnosed with a debilitating disease and not having insurance with a large enough cap to cover all the medical costs that causes a loss of insurance which makes you no longer able to be insured. I'm aware of that, it almost happened to a friends wife and would have happened to another friend as well. However, the risk of it is relatively small and the number of people it happens to is relatively a small number as well. Well, that can be addressed relatively easy without substantially impacting the cost of insurance and the policy's of everyone else. The government could offer a supplemental or add a special supplemental policy to medicare that costs less than a percent for everyone and pass a law that makes relatively cheap supplemental policies available in the market. Blues always think big and prefer to see or make big changes and tend to support big government related ideas when issue and the solution should/could be addressed with or requires small changes and relatively minor costs or added expenses.
Poverty is a reality in America, and anyone can fall into it even without a personal vice that puts one in poverty. Poverty compels compromises in life far more serious than having a ten-year-old jalopy instead of a new car. People may have to choose between buying insurance for the world's most expensive health-care system or having food on the table, paying the utility bill, or seeking employment that requires some personal investment. The paradox is that someone who finds himself with disabilities to which an enlightened employer could make adjustments has an incentive to take disability payments, Medicaid, and food aid instead of working.
Quote:Hint: This is the reason the liberal Democrats are going to find/ finding themselves being ignored by Heartland Democrats as they tend to business as they should/have to instead of allowing themselves to be corralled or bought off by the Pelosi/Sanders wing. Like I've said, my goal would not be to keep an entire nation together. My goal would be to keep bulk of it together and I'd be willing to let go or part with some of it.
Trump has pushed more Americans to the Left as he endorses capitalism at its worst -- a New Feudalism in which elites get everything. If the Soviet order was "we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us", the ideal of the Right is "They work, we don't pretend to pay them, but we get solid output because we crack a real whip"... the old joke about the Soviet system is more humane by default. The Progressive wing of the Democratic Party gained in the 2018 election, and your Party lost much.
Quote:Reds don't cling, reds accept realities and are willing to let go and move on. I keep hearing about the reactionary Reds as I'm watching reactionary Blues going nuts over Trump, going nuts over the Supreme Court judges that he's picked and going nuts over the way he's managing the economy and the way he's changing trade deals and he's sticking to delivering the promises that he made to those who supported him exclusively and clinging to their programs and their mostly government funded economic system.
Until I see otherwise, Reds clung to the personality cult around Donald Trump. The people who prefer superstition to science prefer Trump. The people who think gun rights more precious than 'gay rights' prefer Trump. I can concur that many conservatives such as Steve Schmidt and George Will have decided that Donald Trump is an unmitigated disaster, and that as flawed as welfare-state liberalism is it is far better than the economic jungle and crony capitalism that Trump offers. Yes, conservatism retains considerable relevance as a political backup in the event of liberal failure. As a recent example, liberals used to see crime as the result of poverty instead of the flawed character of offenders. Liberals found out otherwise after conservatives did, but eventually figured that some viciously-amoral people were one-person crime waves. So if one is a community organizer as Barack Obama was, he learns that there are plenty of good people in the nastiest ghettos and that they can tell some outsider like him what people to avoid. Like drug traffickers and perverts.
Of course character matters, but just as much among economic elites and the middle class (I know to sociopaths that I want nothing to deal with -- and they are relatives) as among poor people. A couple of decades ago someone like the late Jack Kemp (very much a conservative) pushed the idea that if one offered incentives to poor people to discover and use talents that they have in honest paid work they would be relieved of poverty. Many accepted that offer, and they are now part of the fast-growing black and Hispanic middle class. The current Movement Conservatives offer little but poverty, profit as the sole objective of the economic order, with even the public sector sold cheaply to profiteering monopolists who get whatever the traffic will bear. Exploitation of economic power makes character irrelevant.
Quote:Now, if the lady who was elected by independent woman who's issues are the same as mine with healthcare ( it's the cost of healthcare stupid) delivers of her promise to them, I might reward her with a couple more years of employment as a Democratic politician. However, if she fails ir allows herself to be drawn in or tied up with the liberal shit. I will support the Republican woman/male with some political experience who has no financial ties to the healthcare industry that will unseat her in 2020. Hint: The guys and gals who voted for Trump stayed home or went deer hunting or went some place else because their guy is in the White House and the liberals are now pretty much contained. However, they'll be back in force to support their guy again in 2020 and they won't be voting liberal because they hate the liberals more than me.
The real sewage is the idea that people exist solely for the enrichment, indulgence, and security of economic elites. Multitudes of voters gave up on Trump after having voted for him -- or decided to vote for liberals after his gross failure as President. New, younger voters came into the electoral process, and they voted heavily against Trump. In 2020 I expect the anti-Trump voters to be back, and I expect the young voters who had never voted in a midterm election before (those voters voted heavily Democratic) to vote in 2020. I expect them to dislike Donald Trump just as much. Note well that voting typically increases in a Presidential election. I can see Democrats winning three Senate seats to offset the net gains of the GOP in 2018 -- and largely undoing the wave of Republican gains in the Senate in 2014. But I get ahead of myself.
Quote:THIS NATIONAL ELECTION WAS PRETTY MUCH MEANINGLESS TO ME. The only race that really mattered to me was the race for attorney general of Minnesota. I had to come back home and vote against the SJW who was running for the seat despite all the accusations and despite a documented history of roughing up girlfriends. I guess if you're a black SWJ, a powerful blue Congressman and a Muslim from Minneapolis to boot, you get a pass on being associated with actually doing that (sewage). Sorry, I have to laugh. However, if I ever run into (Senator Amy Klobuchar), she is going to treated an earful and be treated with no respect but I view her as a (horrible) human being.
This election was important to me as the choice between freedom and fascism. An economic elite that acts as if its gain and power is the duty of us all must be called to account before it starts killing people through hunger, war, and executions.
Senator Klobuchar won re-election by a landslide margin in a state that has been drifting R. She must be doing something right. She has a fine legal mind, which will keep her out of trouble (see also Barack Obama). Our current President holds the rule of law in contempt, and that is much of the trouble with this Presidency. Winning elections as she did suggests her ability to connect to people not core supporters of her Party. Republicans did what they could to stop any Obama agenda after two years, using gridlock for six years, until they got power that they used as if they held a single-Party dictatorship in which anyone not in line with them was irrelevant. We who voted for Obama and against Trump are still here. We have greater numbers because of young adults new to voting who find Trump an anathema who offers us nothing.
I do not want socialism. I want capitalism with a human face. I want full democracy and not government by lobbyists.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.