so do you stay away from the stock market? That's all about profits and breaking Gods Laws.
AHCA
- Thread starter 57Brave
- Start date
so do you stay away from the stock market? That's all about profits and breaking Gods Laws.
sturg33
I
Correct me if I'm wrong, but medicaid isn't even cut in this bill. It just increases the spending more slowly than previously planned.
Amazes me that the left will convince themselves that the world will end when we actually plan to spend more than we are currently.
Only a liberal calls this a cut
Amazes me that the left will convince themselves that the world will end when we actually plan to spend more than we are currently.
Only a liberal calls this a cut
Runnin
Well-known member
Reading through most of this thread there is one name glaringly under-mentioned, Mitch McConnell. His is really the only name of any importance in this bill. He is playing the country for fools. His self-imposed deadline for a vote was a farce. He had to know the bill would not pass in that form. They will make it a little bit better, still far worse than ACA, and folks will think the Reps have done something special. I think he's right on schedule for getting what he wants.
57Brave
Well-known member
First off, I take back what I said yesterday
Second off
I just spent 90 minutes ish listening to Koch rail against "Special Interests"
Which is akin to Trump railing against "fake news"
This:
Vice President Mike Pence
has had Koch ties for many years. The Nation reported that in 1991, Pence became president of the Indiana Policy Review Foundation, which is part of the State Policy Network. Koch Enterprises and Koch Industries have been big campaign donors throughout his career.
Rex Tillerson, Secretary of State nominee, is the CEO of Exxon Mobil, a corporation that advises and is a top sponsor of ALEC. He has no experience in the public sector, having worked for Exxon since 1975. The company has acknowledged the issue of climate change, but it’s unclear what his political stance is on most environmental and climate issues.
Rick Perry, Energy Secretary nominee, is on the board of Energy Transfer Partners, which is funding the Dakota Access Pipeline. Energy Transfer Partners has agreements with subsidiaries of Exxon, a member of ALEC. In July 2016, Perry gave a speech at ALEC’s annual meeting.
Mike Pompeo, CIA director nominee, is a longtime ally of Koch Industries. He has business ties with the Koch brothers: they’ve invested in his firm Thayer Aerospace and Sentry International, a company that sells pumping units for oil and gas development, of which he is the president, partnered with Koch Industries through its Brazilian distributor. Pompeo also received campaign contributions from Koch Industries and is involved with Americans for Prosperity, a Tea Party group founded by David Koch.
Scott Pruitt, EPA administrator nominee, is affiliated with the Federalist Society, a nonprofit organization of conservatives and libertarians. The Koch Foundation has funded the society. Koch Industries has contributed to Pruitt’s Attorney General campaigns in Oklahoma, as have many other companies with ties to ALEC. Pruitt is currently suing the EPA, and is a proponent of looser federal regulations on the oil and gas industry and increased drilling on federal lands.
Jeff Sessions, Attorney General nominee, has received campaign contributions from Koch Industries.
Ryan Zinke, Interior Secretary nominee, currently sits on the House Natural Resources Committee. He has opposed land transfer legislation in his state of Montana, but is a proponent of pipelines and the recipient of large oil and gas-linked campaign donations.
Wilbur Ross, Commerce Department Secretary nominee, is a billionaire who has been cited multiple times as a friend of David Koch.
Nikki Haley, United Nations Ambassador nominee, is a former ALEC member and has pushed many of ALEC-sponsored model legislation, including one about voter identification laws and a charter school bill.
Tom Price, Health and Human Services Secretary nominee, led a campaign for representative in Georgia that was partly funded by Koch Industries.
Betsy DeVos, Department of Education head nominee, is a billionaire who has given millions of dollars to Republican candidates and super PACs. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, she has attended many Koch fundraisers and has donated to Americans for Prosperity and other Koch-funded organizations. DeVos has also pushed legislation for the privatization of school systems – which ALEC is a proponent of and has model legislation for.
Myron Ebell, who is leading Trump’s EPA transition team, works for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian think tank that is funded by Exxon and the Kochs and a member of ALEC’s State Policy Network. Ebell is affiliated with the Heartland Institute, which has partnered with ALEC in the past.
Elaine Chao, Transportation Secretary nominee, is affiliated with the Heritage Foundation, which is a member of the State Policy Network.
Doug Domenech, who is leading Trump’s Interior transition team. He was a George W. Bush administration as the deputy chief of staff to the Secretary of Interior who now works at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank partially funded by the Koch brothers and member of the State Policy Network. Domenech has reportedly brought up lawsuits against BLM over public land ownership issues.
Ned Mamula, on the Interior transition team, works for the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. Cato has long pushed for the privatization of public lands. More recently, the institute sent representatives to speak at FLAG (Federal Land Action Group), a Congressional group with the goal of seizing public lands.
Scott Cameron, a member of the Interior transition team, wrote a blog post during Cliven Bundy’s Bunkerville standoff in 2014 that proposed it is time to “fundamentally reconsider land ownership in the West.” He wrote: “Wouldn’t everyone be better off if the Western states were to be given more authority over much of this multiple use real estate?”
Thomas Pyle, who has been leading Trump’s transition team for the Energy Department, is a former Koch Industries and National Petrochemical and Refiners Association lobbyist. He is also the president and founder of the American Energy Alliance, an affiliate of the Institute for Energy Research, which supports free market energy policies.
There are many other transition team staffers involved with Koch-funded ventures and ALEC members. Quite a few work for or have been funded by state, regional, or local conservative think tanks and organizations affiliated with the State Policy Network. For example, Daniel Simmons, who is working for the Energy Department transition team, works for the Institute for Energy Research and previously ran the ALEC task force on energy issues. David Kreutzer, who is working on the EPA transition team, was a senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, and Austin Lipari, on the EPA transition team, was deputy director of the student division at the Federalist Society.
......
Had this list been Clinton Foundation -- the term used would be " corruption "
sturg33
I
Can you address my question regarding whether you think ACA is sustainable, and if so, how?
57Brave
Well-known member
His platitudes are wonderful, hard work, personal responsibility, freedom and of course how anything that requires giving of ones materials or time as "force"
his sense of history crowns Calvin Coolidge as his Presidential role model. Leaving off the part about Coolidge handing Herbert Hoover all the tools to create The Great Depression.
His father who he praises up one side and down the other hated Stalin Soviet ism yet took their money. According to Jane Meyer hated Hitler Germany yet, took their money. In fact it has been a while since I read Meyers piece but if not mistaken the foundation of the Koch fortune was, Nazi monies....
But it was his stance of Special Interests and Capital Cronyism that really impressed me
3 final things.
He seems like so many , to take the popular stance umbrage at Trump the man while turning a blind eye to Trump the President
There is some really cool stuff on Freakonomics.Thank you
Lastly,
I wouldn't piss on him I'd put the fire out,take him home,give him a hug feed him soup then take him for a walk on the other side of the street
his sense of history crowns Calvin Coolidge as his Presidential role model. Leaving off the part about Coolidge handing Herbert Hoover all the tools to create The Great Depression.
His father who he praises up one side and down the other hated Stalin Soviet ism yet took their money. According to Jane Meyer hated Hitler Germany yet, took their money. In fact it has been a while since I read Meyers piece but if not mistaken the foundation of the Koch fortune was, Nazi monies....
But it was his stance of Special Interests and Capital Cronyism that really impressed me
3 final things.
He seems like so many , to take the popular stance umbrage at Trump the man while turning a blind eye to Trump the President
There is some really cool stuff on Freakonomics.Thank you
Lastly,
I wouldn't piss on him I'd put the fire out,take him home,give him a hug feed him soup then take him for a walk on the other side of the street
57Brave
Well-known member
no, the interviewer pointed those people out.
Give Koch credit for allowing the interview to be broadcast
Oklahomahawk
Boras' Client
I guess I should have been more specific about which "God" I was referring to. That's my bad. My God (I can't speak for yours) is perfectly OK with profits, big profits, etc., but he isn't OK with mistreating or using your fellow man whether you're making profits from it or not. If there is no moral angle to business then there is only what is and is not legal and since I recall some libertarian types saying it's OK to get out of paying your taxes if you can do so without getting caught (since taxes are stealing), then it would seem we are down to "the ends justify the means" and if profits are the only thing that matter in business then why not sell meth? Heroin? Human trafficking? We all know the government can make literally anything "legal" if they want to and we all know those things I just mentioned would be (or already are) very profitable. So, why not get involved?
Oklahomahawk
Boras' Client
My favorite Coolidge quote, "the man who builds a factory builds a temple. The man who works there worships there". I guess it's OK to mix church and state if it's profitable and if it keeps the workers in line. Now, let's see, who here has more than once listed Coolidge as his favorite president??? Hmmm, I can't seem to remember.
Runnin
Well-known member
I honestly don't know much about it sturg. I'm on the Japan national health care plan and almost never use it, knock on wood.
How about fixing ACA so it would be (wouldn't this be easier both politically and practically), scaling back the profit motive and/or making everyone sign on?
Can you tell me why it doesn't work when so many countries have systems that do? From a partial outsider's viewpoint, partial because I come from a family with many in the business, I would say that over indulgence in seeking a big profit in most areas of life has created a very unhealthy environment. It's not only health care, but also food and lifestyle. It's not only ACA that is unsustainable, it's looking more like America itself is unsustainable. The question is why?
sturg33
I
Hey - kudos to you for listening. I respect that
Oklahomahawk
Boras' Client
No I don't think the ACA is sustainable. I know you weren't talking to me but here it is anyway. The ACA was a bad plan which resulted from a bunch of crooked politicians on both sides, who were and still are on the take from corporations such as insurance companies, drug companies, etc., who refused to negotiate on anything meaningful because their lords and masters told them not to. Once all the meaningful stuff was taken off the table during the "negotiations" all that was left was the ACA. The only way to make things better would be to either cap costs/prices or:
1.) make drug companies compete with other reputable drug companies, say with Canadian drug companies for example. Wasn't this the first "promise" President Trump bailed on?
2.) make insurance companies compete across state lines
3.) make health care providers be more up front about costs and even make them compete if that's possible in that area.
sturg33
I
The answer is simple. We have spent more money than we have, and have no means to ever make it back.
That's why things have to be cut.
sturg33
I
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Yesterday, U.S. Senator and physician Rand Paul sent a letter to President Trump, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and other Senate leaders laying out four policy improvements he would like to see made to the Better Care Reconciliation Act of 2017.
***
Dear Leader McConnell,
As you work with the committees of jurisdiction and Republican Senators to improve and revise the Better Care Reconciliation Act of 2017, I would like to provide you with some policy priorities that I feel would improve the health care system and insurance markets.
1. Association Health Plans – While I appreciate the inclusion of Small Business Health Plans in the BCRA, I believe improvements could be made to expand upon this provision to allow for greater freedom for individuals and small businesses to pool together for the purpose of obtaining health insurance coverage.
a. The bill currently allows for self-employed individuals to participate in small business health plans. However, I would suggest that the language be changed to allow any individual, including self-employed individuals, to form associations for the purpose of purchasing group health insurance.
b. Furthermore, I would suggest that small business plans or association health plans be allowed to self-insure like other large employer groups are able to do under ERISA. Self-insurance provides significant flexibilities to create innovative plan designs free from many mandates.
c. Finally, I believe we have an opportunity to completely free the group market from unnecessary ACA regulations, and restore HIPAA and ERISA regulation over the entire group market, including for association health plans.
2. Insurance Company Bailouts – For years, conservatives have been concerned with Obamacare’s bailout of the insurance companies through various programs designed to backfill losses the insurers take in the Obamacare exchanges, while they make huge profits in the group markets. In fact, insurance company profits were $8 billion per year in 2008, and have risen to $15 billion in 2015. The BCRA’s payment of Obamacare’s cost-sharing reductions, as well as its stability funds, would provide another $136 billion in funding to pay insurance companies to participate in these markets. I urge you to reconsider this insurance company bailout.
3. Premium Tax Credits – In 2015, Senate Republicans voted to eliminate the Obamacare premium tax credits. Now, the BCRA simply proposes to modify and extend them to new populations. I urge you to reconsider the advanced, refundable nature of this entitlement.
4. Continuous Coverage Requirement – The continuous coverage requirement of the BCRA, which imposes a mandatory 6 month waiting period for individuals with a lapse of 63 days or more in coverage, simply appears to be a Republican version of the individual mandate. This continues the top-down approach that has led to increased premiums and has not changed behavior of the young and healthy who are priced out of the market, and those who game the system to purchase insurance after they become sick. I urge you to remove the mandate and simply allow insurance companies to impose a waiting period.
I hope that this outline aids your understanding of my current position on the Senate health reform bill, and changes that might be made to the language to make good on Republicans’ promise to stop Obamacare and provide true health reform.
###
***
Dear Leader McConnell,
As you work with the committees of jurisdiction and Republican Senators to improve and revise the Better Care Reconciliation Act of 2017, I would like to provide you with some policy priorities that I feel would improve the health care system and insurance markets.
1. Association Health Plans – While I appreciate the inclusion of Small Business Health Plans in the BCRA, I believe improvements could be made to expand upon this provision to allow for greater freedom for individuals and small businesses to pool together for the purpose of obtaining health insurance coverage.
a. The bill currently allows for self-employed individuals to participate in small business health plans. However, I would suggest that the language be changed to allow any individual, including self-employed individuals, to form associations for the purpose of purchasing group health insurance.
b. Furthermore, I would suggest that small business plans or association health plans be allowed to self-insure like other large employer groups are able to do under ERISA. Self-insurance provides significant flexibilities to create innovative plan designs free from many mandates.
c. Finally, I believe we have an opportunity to completely free the group market from unnecessary ACA regulations, and restore HIPAA and ERISA regulation over the entire group market, including for association health plans.
2. Insurance Company Bailouts – For years, conservatives have been concerned with Obamacare’s bailout of the insurance companies through various programs designed to backfill losses the insurers take in the Obamacare exchanges, while they make huge profits in the group markets. In fact, insurance company profits were $8 billion per year in 2008, and have risen to $15 billion in 2015. The BCRA’s payment of Obamacare’s cost-sharing reductions, as well as its stability funds, would provide another $136 billion in funding to pay insurance companies to participate in these markets. I urge you to reconsider this insurance company bailout.
3. Premium Tax Credits – In 2015, Senate Republicans voted to eliminate the Obamacare premium tax credits. Now, the BCRA simply proposes to modify and extend them to new populations. I urge you to reconsider the advanced, refundable nature of this entitlement.
4. Continuous Coverage Requirement – The continuous coverage requirement of the BCRA, which imposes a mandatory 6 month waiting period for individuals with a lapse of 63 days or more in coverage, simply appears to be a Republican version of the individual mandate. This continues the top-down approach that has led to increased premiums and has not changed behavior of the young and healthy who are priced out of the market, and those who game the system to purchase insurance after they become sick. I urge you to remove the mandate and simply allow insurance companies to impose a waiting period.
I hope that this outline aids your understanding of my current position on the Senate health reform bill, and changes that might be made to the language to make good on Republicans’ promise to stop Obamacare and provide true health reform.
###
goldfly
<B>if my thought dreams could be seen</B>
a friend shared this. thought i would post it here:
I Don’t Know How To Explain To You That You Should Care About Other People
Our disagreement is not merely political, but a fundamental divide on what it means to live in a society.
Like many Americans, I’m having politics fatigue. Or, to be more specific, arguing-about-politics fatigue.
I haven’t run out of salient points or evidence for my political perspective, but there is a particular stumbling block I keep running into when trying to reach across the proverbial aisle and have those “difficult conversations” so smugly suggested by think piece after think piece:
I don’t know how to explain to someone why they should care about other people.
Personally, I’m happy to pay an extra 4.3 percent for my fast food burger if it means the person making it for me can afford to feed their own family. If you aren’t willing to fork over an extra 17 cents for a Big Mac, you’re a fundamentally different person than I am.
I’m perfectly content to pay taxes that go toward public schools, even though I’m childless and intend to stay that way, because all children deserve a quality, free education. If this seems unfair or unreasonable to you, we are never going to see eye to eye.
If I have to pay a little more with each paycheck to ensure my fellow Americans can access health care? SIGN ME UP. Poverty should not be a death sentence in the richest country in the world. If you’re okay with thousands of people dying of treatable diseases just so the wealthiest among us can hoard still more wealth, there is a divide between our worldviews that can never be bridged.
I don’t know how to convince someone how to experience the basic human emotion of empathy. I cannot have one more conversation with someone who is content to see millions of people suffer needlessly in exchange for a tax cut that statistically they’ll never see (do you make anywhere close to the median American salary? Less? Congrats, this tax break is not for you).
I cannot have political debates with these people. Our disagreement is not merely political, but a fundamental divide on what it means to live in a society, how to be a good person, and why any of that matters.
There are all kinds of practical, self-serving reasons to raise the minimum wage (fairly compensated workers typically do better work), fund public schools (everyone’s safer when the general public can read and use critical thinking), and make sure every American can access health care (outbreaks of preventable diseases being generally undesirable).
But if making sure your fellow citizens can afford to eat, get an education, and go to the doctor isn’t enough of a reason to fund those things, I have nothing left to say to you.
I can’t debate someone into caring about what happens to their fellow human beings. The fact that such detached cruelty is so normalized in a certain party’s political discourse is at once infuriating and terrifying.
The “I’ve got mine, so screw you,” attitude has been oozing from the American right wing for decades, but this gleeful exuberance in pushing legislation that will immediately hurt the most vulnerable among us is chilling.
Perhaps it was always like this. I’m (relatively) young, so maybe I’m just waking up to this unimaginable callousness. Maybe the emergence of social media has just made this heinous tendency more visible; seeing hundreds of accounts spring to the defense of policies that will almost certainly make their lives more difficult is incredible to behold.
I don’t know if what’s changed ― or indeed, if anything has ― and I don’t have any easy answers. But I do know I’m done trying to convince these hordes of selfish, cruel people to look beyond themselves.
Futility can’t be good for my blood pressure, and the way things are going, I won’t have health insurance for long.
I Don’t Know How To Explain To You That You Should Care About Other People
Our disagreement is not merely political, but a fundamental divide on what it means to live in a society.
Like many Americans, I’m having politics fatigue. Or, to be more specific, arguing-about-politics fatigue.
I haven’t run out of salient points or evidence for my political perspective, but there is a particular stumbling block I keep running into when trying to reach across the proverbial aisle and have those “difficult conversations” so smugly suggested by think piece after think piece:
I don’t know how to explain to someone why they should care about other people.
Personally, I’m happy to pay an extra 4.3 percent for my fast food burger if it means the person making it for me can afford to feed their own family. If you aren’t willing to fork over an extra 17 cents for a Big Mac, you’re a fundamentally different person than I am.
I’m perfectly content to pay taxes that go toward public schools, even though I’m childless and intend to stay that way, because all children deserve a quality, free education. If this seems unfair or unreasonable to you, we are never going to see eye to eye.
If I have to pay a little more with each paycheck to ensure my fellow Americans can access health care? SIGN ME UP. Poverty should not be a death sentence in the richest country in the world. If you’re okay with thousands of people dying of treatable diseases just so the wealthiest among us can hoard still more wealth, there is a divide between our worldviews that can never be bridged.
I don’t know how to convince someone how to experience the basic human emotion of empathy. I cannot have one more conversation with someone who is content to see millions of people suffer needlessly in exchange for a tax cut that statistically they’ll never see (do you make anywhere close to the median American salary? Less? Congrats, this tax break is not for you).
I cannot have political debates with these people. Our disagreement is not merely political, but a fundamental divide on what it means to live in a society, how to be a good person, and why any of that matters.
There are all kinds of practical, self-serving reasons to raise the minimum wage (fairly compensated workers typically do better work), fund public schools (everyone’s safer when the general public can read and use critical thinking), and make sure every American can access health care (outbreaks of preventable diseases being generally undesirable).
But if making sure your fellow citizens can afford to eat, get an education, and go to the doctor isn’t enough of a reason to fund those things, I have nothing left to say to you.
I can’t debate someone into caring about what happens to their fellow human beings. The fact that such detached cruelty is so normalized in a certain party’s political discourse is at once infuriating and terrifying.
The “I’ve got mine, so screw you,” attitude has been oozing from the American right wing for decades, but this gleeful exuberance in pushing legislation that will immediately hurt the most vulnerable among us is chilling.
Perhaps it was always like this. I’m (relatively) young, so maybe I’m just waking up to this unimaginable callousness. Maybe the emergence of social media has just made this heinous tendency more visible; seeing hundreds of accounts spring to the defense of policies that will almost certainly make their lives more difficult is incredible to behold.
I don’t know if what’s changed ― or indeed, if anything has ― and I don’t have any easy answers. But I do know I’m done trying to convince these hordes of selfish, cruel people to look beyond themselves.
Futility can’t be good for my blood pressure, and the way things are going, I won’t have health insurance for long.
57Brave
Well-known member
woman in her late sixties defined these people as "Basket of Deplorable" then was roundly scolded
I have looked for a more fitting word and just can't
......
" Personally, I’m happy to pay an extra 4.3 percent for my fast food burger if it means the person making it for me can afford to feed their own family. If you aren’t willing to fork over an extra 17 cents for a Big Mac, you’re a fundamentally different person than I am. "
Which goes to the heart, how much is enough?
When people complained of increses in health insurance under ACA I always wondered "how much"
Did it force those people to miss meals or forces them to lose their homes or not afford their rent?
17 cents more for a Big Mac
really ?
de·plor·a·ble
dəˈplôrəb(ə)l/
adjective
adjective: deplorable
deserving strong condemnation.
"the deplorable conditions in which most prisoners are held"
synonyms: disgraceful, shameful, dishonorable, unworthy, inexcusable, unpardonable, unforgivable; More
reprehensible, despicable, abominable, contemptible, execrable, heinous, beyond the pale
"your conduct is deplorable"
antonyms: admirable
shockingly bad in quality.
"her spelling was deplorable"
synonyms: lamentable, regrettable, unfortunate, wretched, atrocious, awful, terrible, dreadful, diabolical; sorry, poor, inadequate;
informalappalling, dire, abysmal, woeful, lousy;
formalgrievous
"the garden is in a deplorable state"