Journal smittyoneeach's Journal: I guess I've completed Kübler-Ross, or something 42
I just can't figure out why anyone is upset with President Obama. Elections have consequences. It seemed important to try to oppose the inevitable, leading up to the election.
The rollout of Healthkill.gov has been a dose of serenity for me, though. We are all Ambassador Stevens now. We wanted this. We voted for it. We rejected sanity. Hugs and kisses to fustakrakich, damn_registrars, and Pope Ratzo. You guys won.
The rollout of Healthkill.gov has been a dose of serenity for me, though. We are all Ambassador Stevens now. We wanted this. We voted for it. We rejected sanity. Hugs and kisses to fustakrakich, damn_registrars, and Pope Ratzo. You guys won.
And the latest- Death Panels in Oregon (Score:2)
I don't know how I missed this last August [theinciden...nomist.com], but apparently, under Cover Oregon rules, if you have been given a diagnosis of cancer with less than two years left to live, they can only pay for pallative care, not attempts to cure you.
Re: (Score:1)
Why are you surprised?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I am actually not. The euthanasia law practically guaranteed this.
Re: (Score:1)
This isn't really related to the euthanasia law. Maybe in your mind they represent a similar disrespect for human life, but the policies are essentially unrelated.
Re: (Score:2)
It is philosophically. Due to the Euthanasia law, and the feedback against it, hospice care has taken a big leap forward in Oregon. It's pretty easy to see that hospice is cheaper than the cure in cancer cases; and that 9 grams of poison is even cheaper yet. Thus the link, thus my comment. It all comes down to pennies over people.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Hell the patient could still fork out their own money for additional treatment if they want - this sounds like a market based proposal to me.
Making you pay twice for a service, first as taxes, then out of the rest of your substance, seems a swindle.
But, hey: fairness. Sometimes you're the bus driver; others, you're going thereunder.
Re: (Score:2)
Hell the patient could still fork out their own money for additional treatment if they want - this sounds like a market based proposal to me.
Making you pay twice for a service, first as taxes, then out of the rest of your substance, seems a swindle.
No. This is the same as with any for-profit insurance. If you need a treatment that your insurance policy doesn't cover you have the ability to pay for the treatment out of your own pocket.
But, hey: fairness. Sometimes you're the bus driver; others, you're going thereunder.
Not with the insurance system; you are never the bus driver there, you are always at the whim of the insurance industry.
Re: (Score:2)
No. This is the same as with any for-profit insurance.
Except that it's not at all the same. If I don't like my policy, I can find another one. If I don't like my government, I can try to vote for 1 Representative and 2 Senators who care not fig #1 for me, and who will collude with the rest of the Ruling Class to screw me. So it's not "the same".
you are always at the whim of the insurance industry.
Am I allowed to ask why we've let the market get so baked that we can't Start. Our. Own. Insurance. Company?
A good analysis should be honest about two things:
(a) where we were screwed by the system, and
(b) where our
Re: (Score:2)
you are always at the whim of the insurance industry.
Am I allowed to ask why we've let the market get so baked that we can't Start. Our. Own. Insurance. Company?
You're allowed to ask the question, but you will reject the answer out-of-hand because it doesn't match your worldview. Hence there is no point in you asking it, or me answering it, because you won't want to discuss the answer.
(a) where we were screwed by the system, and
Just look at how many people in Washington are owned by the insurance industry. Actually, that is the easy one. The more difficult task is to find someone in DC who is not owned by the insurance industry.
(b) where our own lack of initiative was a sin of omission.
All the initiative in the world wasn't worth a hill of beans in this system
Re: (Score:2)
This is what I cannot understand about you or fustakrakich: endless poo-flinging, much of it justified; yet, when confronted with people (e.g. Tea Partiers) setting about trying to save the patient, you seem wont to kill the healthy tissue, preserving the tumor.
Re: (Score:2)
setting about trying to save the patient, you seem wont to kill the healthy tissue, preserving the tumor.
It appears that on the topic of health care in particular we are in disagreement on what is the patient and what is the tumor. You are trying to preserve the health care system that we have had for decades. I want to see a new system that is designed to deliver health care instead of being focused on delivering profit. If you see profit as your patient, you are welcomed to make that argument.
This is why I am puzzled with your supposed outrage at the health insurance industry bailout act of 2010. It
Re: (Score:2)
You are trying to preserve the health care system that we have had for decades. I want to see a new system that is designed to deliver health care instead of being focused on delivering profit. If you see profit as your patient, you are welcomed to make that argument.
No one is defending the distorted market of yore. The conservative argument is that taking the complexity out of the situation (ask your doctor the cost of any specific lab test and note the blank stare) is what's needed to minimize costs.
The empirical example of the British NHS is that government takeover breeds swaths of bureaucrats and retards care delivery. Or, if you like, my wife can go on at length about how creaky the German system is. Summary: Europe is not the example to emulate.
This is why I am puzzled with your supposed outrage at the health insurance industry bailout act of 2010. It improves the sustainability of the current system for generations to come, ensuring that the execs at the HMOs can continue to pull down huge annual bonuses while denying care to their customers. From their perspective it is the greatest present that the government could have ever given them as now all Americans are obligate customers.
If you read Thoma
Re: (Score:2)
You are trying to preserve the health care system that we have had for decades. I want to see a new system that is designed to deliver health care instead of being focused on delivering profit. If you see profit as your patient, you are welcomed to make that argument.
No one is defending the distorted market of yore.
Really? Then why is everyone in such a hurry to repeal the health insurance industry bailout act of 2010 and replace it with nothing at all? This would, of course, bring us right back to where we were (which is less than marginally different from where this lousy bill will take us).
ask your doctor the cost of any specific lab test and note the blank stare
That really isn't a useful metric, for several reasons
Re: (Score:1)
LOL! The Tea party is the phony Filipino faith healer. Pure con job that you have fallen for. But thanks for the props.
Re: previous post
Sometimes you're the bus driver; others, you're going thereunder.
The insurance industry is the bus driver/owner, and the government is the bus. The voters (including, or maybe especially you) are the underpaid mechanic that doesn't know which end of the screwdriver to hit who fall for the con. Thus you want to wreck the bus and give the driver a promotion instead of firing
Re: (Score:2)
Mostly, I surmise, because it's not.
Re: (Score:1)
The 13th Amendment is *THA EVIL*! And it just happens to a be a placebo also, since all you have to do is convict a person of a trivial offense to enslave them. We have more slaves now than we ever did. And that demographic certainly does not match genpop, not even close.
The The Tea Party hates the Constitution [taroscopes.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
"Not with the insurance system; you are never the bus driver there, you are always at the whim of the insurance industry."
You are right. Now ask the critical question, why?
Why do we have a system in this country where people cannot pay for their own health care and are at the mercy of these insurance companies?
Research back to the early 40s and you will find that, under wage controls, employers were forced to find creative ways to compete for labour. Someone came up with the idea of 'free' health insurance
Hey, now (Score:2)
You're not allowed to go muddying the Brawndo with that there "history" stuff.
I voted for Obama? (Score:1)
And you didn't???
Fascinating. I did not know that.
Win? What kind of drugs are you on? (Score:2)
Don't even think of trying to tell me that the democrats somehow "won" when the right shut down the federal government. They are still falling in the polls at only a nominally slower rate than the rest of the conservatives. They haven't had the
Re: (Score:2)
Government is continuing to march further to the right as the "left" (whatever the fuck that means) caves in to demands at nearly every junction.
Something I wrote a few years ago [blogspot.com]:
Seen from the standpoint where the US is a tub, power is water, and Washington, DC is the drain, Ron Paul is quite valuable as a rubber ducky for tracking the drainage.
Don't even think of trying to tell me that the democrats somehow "won" when the right shut down the federal government.
Well, that's what the codpiece media said, for all that statement isn't precisely true in sum or in parts.
They haven't had the initiative to propose a single bill in many years that even vaguely resembles anything that wouldn't have been written by the republicans in any other term.
I'm not really processing what you mean here. Mom has been handing out free stuff for decades, Dad hasn't been bringing in the taxes, and the family finances are a total disaster. You can't cut the freebies, and you're pretty much maxed on taxes (sure, you can raise them, and watch tax dodging go Greek).
Congressional approval is in single digits, and BHO's approval is
Re: (Score:2)
Seen from the standpoint where the US is a tub, power is water, and Washington, DC is the drain, Ron Paul is quite valuable as a rubber ducky for tracking the drainage.
Do you know how plumbing works? When water passes through a drain, it ... drains. The drain does not retain water. In this analogy Washington is passing power away off into a region that they do not influence. This is counter to your previous assertions that Washington is accumulating power.
Furthermore, in this analogy Ron Paul is certainly not a rubber ducky. He is more an automatic valve downstream of the drain, directing power to the place where he wants it.
Don't even think of trying to tell me that the democrats somehow "won" when the right shut down the federal government.
Well, that's what the codpiece media said, for all that statement isn't precisely true in sum or in parts.
So is your main argument then that the
Re: (Score:2)
Do you know how plumbing works?
Do you know how analogies work? If you point is to parody a bloody-minded, humorless, academic twit for comic effect, I gotta tell ya: Good one!
it wasn't actually shut down
Clearly, to the extent that Ron Paul is literally a rubber ducky, the government was shut down, so that I, the evil Tea Party mastermind over there on the Ted-Cruz-Is-My-Meat-Puppet Remote Control Panel, could take a couple of weeks off to fanny about*.
vanishingly few people are actually looking exclusively for "freebies"
Do you get out of that ivory tower much [cbsnews.com]? I guess it's no big deal, as long as there is a conservative to blame for
Re: (Score:2)
vanishingly few people are actually looking exclusively for "freebies"
Do you get out of that ivory tower much?
I don't expect you will believe this, but I do read the news regularly. I have read the articles about that event. Apparently you haven't read them very closely, or you would realize that they really don't refute my argument. It was a small number of people that essentially liquidated each grocery section when they found out what was going on. There were plenty of people who were also on EBT or SNAP who did not choose to take advantage of the situation.
I am also aware that the government is almost certainly capable of delivering a more customer-centric health insurance plan than any of the for-profit insurance companies
I suppose you'd offer the Veterans Administration up as evidence. This is fine, as long as you don't ask any actually veterans about the results.
Care to make any more baseless and sweeping gener
Re: (Score:2)
It was a small number of people that essentially liquidated each grocery section when they found out what was going on.
It was human beings carrying out precisely what sinful flesh will do, especially when years of entitlements have blown up whatever moral restraint should've given them a twinge of conscience. The difference between these people and Congress is that Congress does it via legislation, an admittedly genteel approach.
your argument doesn't get you anywhere if you are trying to claim that the market is somehow better than the VA
I'm always going to claim that the free market solution is superior, chiefly because more or less every argument you care to investigate honestly will show such.
The VA itself has significant peculi
Re: (Score:2)
It was a small number of people that essentially liquidated each grocery section when they found out what was going on.
It was human beings carrying out precisely what sinful flesh will do, especially when years of entitlements have blown up whatever moral restraint should've given them a twinge of conscience.
You are not actually delusional to claim that the conservatives are without immoral actions are you? Remember who sells thousand dollars hammers and three hundred dollar toilet seats to the US government? Remember who profited so handily from the war in Iraq and from the environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico? You cannot tell me those people were acting with "moral restraint".
your argument doesn't get you anywhere if you are trying to claim that the market is somehow better than the VA
I'm always going to claim that the free market solution is superior, chiefly because more or less every argument you care to investigate honestly will show such.
Except for the fact that when you compare the American market system to that of any other country in the industrialized wor
Re: (Score:2)
You are not actually delusional to claim that the conservatives are without immoral actions are you?
Only if, conservatives are not "human beings", as I stated.
As for the rest of your comment, President Obama's "If you like your plan, you can keep it" lie is of such a magnitude that I feel comfortable ignoring all of the secondary and tertiary nonsense used to sell his Big Lie. We're just going to have to start at square zero and re-assess everything, given the taint.
Re: (Score:2)
You are not actually delusional to claim that the conservatives are without immoral actions are you?
Only if, conservatives are not "human beings", as I stated.
Does that mean then that your new hypothesis is that conservatives are both 100% moral and human, while you have concluded that everyone else is neither? I guess that would explain a lot of what you have been writing.
As for the rest of your comment, President Obama's "If you like your plan, you can keep it" lie is of such a magnitude that I feel comfortable ignoring all of the secondary and tertiary nonsense used to sell his Big Lie.
Does that mean that this is your new favorite conspiracy theory? Are you going to focus on this instead of your Libyan boogeyman?
We're just going to have to start at square zero and re-assess everything, given the taint.
I'm not aware of anyone who has died from his line. Previous administrations gave us lies that led directly to the death of thousands and no such great witch hu
Re: (Score:2)
Does that mean then that your new hypothesis is that conservatives are both 100% moral and human, while you have concluded that everyone else is neither?
Didn't you tell me you were raised Methodist? Do you remember a thing of Christianity? Do you recall that your formulation flies in the face of First John in particular, and the New Testament in general?
Does that mean that this is your new favorite conspiracy theory?
What. Conspiracy. Theory? Isn't it fairly well documented that the Affordable Care Act has been a river of lies, from conception, to legislation, to adjudication, to implementation, to policy cancellations, to blame distribution?
Previous administrations gave us lies that led directly to the death of thousands and no such great witch hunt was initiated by anyone.
So is your argument that, because Congress authorized asinine policies that resu
Re: (Score:2)
Does that mean then that your new hypothesis is that conservatives are both 100% moral and human, while you have concluded that everyone else is neither?
Didn't you tell me you were raised Methodist? Do you remember a thing of Christianity? Do you recall that your formulation flies in the face of First John in particular, and the New Testament in general?
You are treating people who hold alternate ideas of what they want from government as if they are sub-human and dedicated to lying. Don't go throwing mythology into the mix to try to support your partisanship.
What. Conspiracy. Theory? Isn't it fairly well documented that the Affordable Care Act has been a river of lies, from conception, to legislation, to adjudication, to implementation, to policy cancellations, to blame distribution?
The problem here is in the same word where your last conspiracy theory had such major problems. Need a hint? The word is "lie" (or "lies"). When you are accusing someone of lying you are stating that they knew what they were saying to be untrue and said it anyways. That is a very large mountain
Re: (Score:2)
When you are accusing someone of lying you are stating that they knew what they were saying to be untrue and said it anyways.
You can ignore the evidence of systemic lying and claim that they're honest, as far as you can tell.
One is moved to a position of viewing you as either (a) a fool or (b) a collaborator.
I believe nothing whatsoever that this administration states. They are beyond the benefit of the doubt.
Re: (Score:2)
When you are accusing someone of lying you are stating that they knew what they were saying to be untrue and said it anyways.
You can ignore the evidence of systemic lying
I am asking you again, what "evidence" do you have of this "systemic" lying? You keep saying that you know with certainty that they are lying (which indicates you believe them to know themselves to be saying untrue things), but you repeatedly refuse to induce how you know this.
One is moved to a position of viewing you as either (a) a fool or (b) a collaborator.
That is only what someone driven by partisanship would say. I am skeptical of both you and the lawnchair administration. However unlike you I need more than a single consonant from very early in the Latin alphabet to convince mys
Re: (Score:2)
I am asking you again, what "evidence" do you have of this "systemic" lying?
Have you paid a shred of attention to the news [libertynews.com]? Or is your argument that unless the government official vibrated my cochlea via direct sound waves from their own vocal chords, it's not "lying" lying? At least one former federal prosecutor has dropped the f-bomb [nationalreview.com] on the topic.
But I guess you'll just come off with a partisan "Well, that's a conservative President for you" or some such other dodge.
when the president has an (R) after his name you believe everything he says and extends every benefit of doubt to him
Get stuffed. I voted for Perot, because that's what I think of Statists like Bush41. You can H8 on W all day, but
Re: (Score:2)
Have you paid a shred of attention to the news?
That 34 second sound clip doesn't tell anything of value. She was between topics and the conclusion that your right wing blog came to is not clearly supported by what she said. You would need the full interview to actually know what she was talking about but clearly your source doesn't want that to be viewed.
Or is your argument that unless the government official vibrated my cochlea via direct sound waves from their own vocal chords, it's not "lying" lying?
No, the point I have shown several times over now is that you apply a vastly different definition of lying for those who you agree with philosophically than those who you do not. You are willing to
Re: (Score:2)
What kinds of changes do you want to see implemented to see "some actual capitalism"? Every president in decades has rolled back regulations and lowered taxes at the top. What else do you want?
I don't know. I guess I'm looking for some sane interlocutors on /. In precisely what way do you feel the Code of Federal Regulations [wikipedia.org] has been rolled back? Have you seen a photo of the positively tumorous Affordable Care Act legislation/regulations? Taller than me, printed out. And that's even before President L'etat c'est moi starts randomly lubricating it with illegal audibles at the line of scrimmage.
In his defense, it's not improbable that an electorate benighted enough to re-elect him would fail to no
Re: (Score:2)
You're smitty on The Other McCain? Cool.
What do you think of the Team Kimberlin fiasco?
Re: (Score:2)
I don't think much of Kimberlin. He seems exactly the kind of sick thug that supports certain more refined thugs, so keeping him out of play is probably a Good Thing. But, like Snowden, I am ignorant of the play-by-play details.
Re: (Score:2)
Following it there and elsewhere has been my guilty pleasure for a couple of months now. Then I feel bad because this guy is fucking with real people's lives.
Re: (Score:2)