Discussion: Republicans Have A New Plot To Gut Medicaid And They Don't Need Congress

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#61

As someone who has had the statistical bad luck to have had two separate life-threatening, completely random, not caused by genes or by anything I or anyone else did, exceedingly rare medical conditions, let me say that anytime you take a significant number or patients out of the healthcare system you are also reducing the number of cases that doctors are seeing. You’re reducing the number of doctors and nurses and facilities delivering care. You’re reducing the pool of knowledge that is drawn on for every patient.

That affects all of us. It doesn’t matter how good your healthcare insurance is if you can’t get treatment in time.

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#62

Exactly. You treat the illness. And you don’t do that by grousing about it. You do it by treating the disease.

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#63

I have a niece and great-nephew with special needs, and they are both on Medicaid. Their parents say it provides excellent care.

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#64

I “liked” your post before you edited it but hoped you’d say more. You delivered! :wink:

#65

See how much simpler her life would be under the GOP plan! I’m mean, I know that not dealing with insurance would save me a crapload of time too. Especially because I’d be dead.

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#66

Using biblical and religious words and phrases too. My god, MLK.

You don’t have to be a believer to use words that appeal to believers, but if at the same time you’re trying to impress your friends by denigrating those believers you’re probably going to fail.

#67

When they pack Trump off to jail, I hope this smirking sadist Tom Price is already in there to greet him!

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#68

Their evil goes so far beyond supporting white supremacists and neo-nazis.

#69

American exceptionalism isn’t supposed to mean exceptionally evil.

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#70

Moot point. They’re hoping all the stress and commotion will just kill grandma off. One less meat bag on Medicaid. It’s by design.

#71

You’re quite right in one sense, which is why I normally refer to “Christianists” rather than “Christians” if and when I refer to them at all. I’ve known a tiny handful of “real” Christians in my entire lifetime. I grew up in the Bible Belt, was immersed in Christianity early on, read the Bible, and absorbed the moral teachings, thinking deeply about them as most really do not, and eventually rejecting many. However, think about it. The very nature of (any) religion involves blind faith, i.e. non-logical thinking; each religion has its particular self-imposed values, fantasies and blind spots. The US being heavily self-ID’d Christians (ists or otherwise) means there are a whole lot of people with mind sets peculiarly vulnerable to particular persuasive tactics. Just one example: Calvinism is a favorite viewpoint of a huge segment of self-ID’d Christians. Calvinism leads directly to the devaluation of and contempt for the poor and sick – who are obviously not good people or they wouldn’t be poor and sick. What a great justification for stripping the safety net, for letting the poor and sick starve/die and keeping all the goodies (that morally rewarding cash) for oneself! Guiltless greed. There are other destructive blind spots in Christianity (and I’m sure other religions as well but Christianity is the one we’re most tied to atm). Some of these other ones involve damaging and sometimes lethal moral judgments of others’ behavior. Religions are by nature dangerous. Frankly about the only “religion” I could ever countenance would be extremely simple: Do to others as you would have them do to you, protect, care for and teach the little ones, and be wise stewards of our earth where we must live, and of the creatures upon it.

#72

I completely disagree. The left is mad as hell and they’re mostly mad at PP and Republicans in Congress. Any Democrat who is too busy playing footsy with his voters that they can’t call out the obvious, can just go ahead and miss me. I want a fighter who’ll fight these assholes to the death. Anyone who is too afraid to get after him will lose because they’ll look weak, they’ll look capitulatory, and they won’t do much to fire up a base that’s frothing at the mouth.

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#73

Sure guys - go right ahead. Take Kentucky and West Virginia off their medical care = be my guests.

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#74

Not to be unduly harsh, but I hope the Red states kick millions off of Medicaid in 2018. Maybe that’ll wake up the voters.

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#75

As someone who lives in one of those red states, whose family members may lose coverage, I agree. It’s time for red state voters to stop voting Republican and quietly expecting Democrats to shield them from the truly bad stuff Republicans want to do. We’ve all got to live (or die) with our choices, and it should happen here more than anywhere else.

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#76

Calvinists really seem to ignore the book of Job (maybe it’s not part of their canon?). It ends in the epitome of “God works in mysterious ways; don’t question his methods” but it also tries to reconcile bad things happening to good people. Historically, it predates the belief in an afterlife and focused on the question of “why do bad things happen to good people?” The prevailing view at the time was that good people were rewarded in this life and bad people were punished in this life. The author clearly realized that that simply could not be true and that often good people suffered while bad people flourished.

I’ve never tried to debate Job with a Calvinist, so I don’t know how they would attempt to reconcile it with their particular brand of fatalism. I guess it helps if you “know” you are one of the righteous. Though I wonder how those struck by cancer or other serious diseases through no fault of their own handle the situation based on the tenets of their beliefs.

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#77

The “illness” in this case is the growing idea that voting is an economic transaction in which individual votes must be earned by displays of emotionally pleasing symbolic acts and associating only with persons the voter approves of rather than a civic duty owed to the nation and to posterity. And it is growing.

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#78

I appreciate your displeasure and I feel the same displeasure but that won’t do a thing to change the situation. If we have to nominate people with star quality, who play rock guitar or good basketball or remind people of Dolly Parton, so be it.

There are people who can combine star quality with the potential for good governance, as we saw in Barack Obama.

#79

In my humble opinion, we tried running against PP in the last election. It didn’t go so well. Personality attacks get the publicity, but we need to expose more than just personality flaws. We need to expose the policy flaws too, specifically, what the results will be if we continue to support the Right’s agenda.

The Left is mad as hell. Wonderful. Are they running for office yet? I have one here in Wisconsin that’s running against Walker. I intend to do all I can for him. I have Tammy Baldwin already sustaining a slander campaign from the Right. I intend to do all I can for her. This is a small, but useful step. Have other Dems in other areas gotten started yet, because time’s a-wastin’.

https://andygronik.com/

#80

I recently read a book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, by Susan Cain, which could have been used to predict the 2016 election outcome in some sense. She talks about the “Extrovert Ideal” which has come to dominate Western culture in the 20th century and the US in particular. It’s basically the idea that celebrity (or personality) “trumps” culture (or character).

Trump, for all his obvious flaws, clearly epitomizes the extrovert ideal and US culture rewards and elevates him for it. With extroversion treated as desirable and introversion as “weak,” extroverts Trump (and Bernie) had a century of built-in advantage in the election over the introvert, wonky Clinton.

26degrees is right that Obama was able to combine the star quality with the wonkiness, but it’s a damn shame that that’s the only way to win an election in my opinion. I think Clinton has amply demonstrated her capabilities as an able administrator and she would have been a solid president, but based on Cain’s research, that’s just not what the US is primed to respond to in this day and age.

As a final note, I think the Democrats are increasingly the party of introverts (i.e. scientists, artists, thinkers) while the Republicans are increasingly the party of extroverts (i.e. builders, doers, speakers), but society currently overvalues the extroverts compared to the introverts in terms of identifying what “strength” is. I don’t have any real solution, but I do recommend the book, as a means to see how we got here from a perspective of personality and character in our country.

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