Donald Trump and US politics

I can tell you from an insurance person's perspective catastrophic plans are not just for the young and healthy. Before ACA you know what kind of insurance I had? The same kind as all the doctors had, catastrophic. Lower deductibles (much) than the stupid Obamacare plans and you know what? With a deductible of 2-5k if you do go to the hospital you ran through that in less than 12 hrs. Now the policy picks up the rest of the tab no matter how much. I don't need some shit policy with dumb copays every time I go to the doctor.

My doctor before Obamacare had a catastrophic policy for him and his family for years. I've never met any other doctors that did otherwise because it's a waste of money and they know it. Now the doctor is old and guess what kind of medigap plan he has? That's right. Catastrophic. About 2.2k annual deductible and VERY low premium. DUH.

I haven't read the plan they just submitted because it hasn't even gone through committee yet and it's a waste of time to even look at it now. It will go through some iterations and hopefully make insurance plans available across state lines. That was one of the smarter things Trump proposed, btw. There are some states that have really good plans that my clients can't buy. I would like to see the market open. As long as the government stops the shitty companies from merging and leaving only one insurer for everyone.

Shit, this is kinda interesting. 2 minute video where genders are swapped during Trump vs Hillary debate. The professor of course pushes the narrative how the woman will be seen as bitchy and overly assertive and thus would fail with Trump's way of talking, but turns out the audience actually loved it.

Also I like how the video is not listed lol.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yC7-JsR2Fk

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SarahAustin wrote:

the lesser of 2 evils was Hillary. Trump will suck america dry, no money will be left after him and the leninist Bannon are done. Welcome to a bankrupt USA. The american dream is dead.

I find it hilarious people still think this. There are mountains of evidence that Clinton would have been horrible, and really no evidence at all that Trump would be — just fear. Fear isn't evidence.

That said, "better than Clinton" isn't a high bar to clear.

At this point, I feel confident in predicting: Trump will be seen as the best president since Clinton at least, perhaps since Reagan. Again, that's a low bar to clear: Obama and Bush were trash-tier presidents, and Bubba Bill and the Gipper were both thoroughly mediocre and only seemed good in contrast with utter shit. So it shall be with Trump, too; mediocre in absolute terms but good in comparison. He'll implement some mild reforms and make some things better, but he isn't going to drain the swamp or radically reform, or even basically control, the Republican establishment in Congress. The Obamacare replacement is utter shit, and it or something similarly shitty is apparently going to pass, because Trump won't fix everything.

Explain to me again how being assigned to one restroom or another can make "trans students" no longer "safe."

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Budget_player_cadet wrote:

~Re: who hacked whom and proof - the waters just got very muddy, which is probably what the people doing unscrupulous things want. [/quote]

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Budget_player_cadet wrote:

Jason Chaffetz made some rather disgusting remarks with regards to the individual mandate regarding iPhones:

Not sure if you saw it, or didn't recall it, but are/were you just as offended at Obama for making almost identical remarks?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56xE-sogSTM&feature=youtu.be&t=156

Re: cost remarks - Obamacare was already breaking many people's budgets. Unless someone has some secret information they haven't published, the Affordable Care Act didn't do anything to reduce the overall costs of health care. The only thing it did was shift the costs around.

*Supposedly* (and I'm not going to dismiss the theory, as it hasn't been in place long enough to work out) the idea was that if everyone paid and everyone got treated, the overall costs would come down somewhat because of illness prevention.

IMO - there is ZERO reason to be rolling out any kind of change until they figure out overall cost reduction - and I don't mean denial of care or limitations on care as cost control.

The idea of health prevention will help in the long run, but like anything else, people will need incentives. I don't mean whack people over the head with high penalties, but other incentives. Reductions in costs if preventative efforts are being made, for instance, and free health screenings as another.

I do think Trump is absolutely right in allowing cross state/market competition - so long as we don't end up with only 3 or 4 health insurance companies.

This isn't a simple problem, and it will take a well thought out solution. I haven't seen what the latest Trump response is, but the one I saw yesterday - where Trump seem to reference Rand Paul taking a better look at it, suggests Trump really isn't happy with what's been put out either.

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Budget_player_cadet wrote:

I kinda want to talk about the current Republican health care plan ....

... given that there are enough republicans in the senate who consider the bill too conservative and enough who consider it too liberal to sink the bill, and there is very likely not much reconciling those two groups, chances of this actually passing are slim to none,

Smart Democrats would be all over this like a Mirror of Kalandra give away. This is a huge opportunity to constructively find solutions. The democrats could offer enough votes for passage - given that the new law does X Y and Z....
Compromise is the fuel that actually drive progress, not ideology. Congress could actually do some good for a change.

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Budget_player_cadet wrote:

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MrSmiley21 wrote:

The poorest people will be subsidized. Like people with little to no income won't be left hanging.

A comparison of subsidies:

Spoiler

So Trumpcare subsidizes considerably less,

I haven't seen final numbers on the new plan (and I'm not disputing what you've posted on the new plan). The amount actually subsidized under the existing ACA is significantly less than what that image shows. If you ever have to pay complete coverage on your own, vs a subsidy than you can see the actual difference. The ACA is factoring in "group discounts" which isn't honestly a subsidy, and even then the amounts aren't as much as listed.

A large well managed health care plan can be run for about two thirds of what the ACA costs without having to radically change anything at all.

Here's the first clue that the various shenanigans they have as "plans" are not properly thought out:

If they intend for universal coverage and don't deny because of pre-existing conditions, why are there even age brackets in the cost? Are there race brackets or sex brackets? Can people control their age?

We already have a good idea of US demographics. We have a good idea of how those demographics impact current and long term costs. They can even break it down by specific future disease estimated costs.

Better plans are already in place at large companies. Simplifying "paperwork" costs could save 5-10% EASILY (At some facilities, the costs of running the bills through insurance is up to 25% of your health care costs)

There are a lot JCO rules that are in place for very good reasons of patient safety, and some that do nothing but add needless costs.

We need experts providing potential solutions, and THEN have our elected leaders figure out how they can implement the best potential answers.

Anything else is like asking a clown full of cars (some wearing the red GOP nose and some the blue DEM nose) to perform open heart surgery.

The washroom debate is stupid.

Look, it's simple. Urinals are disgusting and barbaric. Ask your dad what they had 50 years ago: it was 1 long trough that everyone peed in. Urinals without privacy barriers are a little better, but still terrible. There's height issues and you need to stand like 2 feet back to not get sprayed, which you can't do if it's crowded unless you don't mind being an exhibitionist (but then you get thrown in jail if a minor appears), so you go right in there real close to the urinal which is unsanitary as fuck.

If people liked urinals we'd have them in our homes. We don't. It's a government/business thing to try to reduce water use. Except with the motion sensors they all flush when people walk by so there goes water savings. And when you walk in a washroom and see that some idiot decided to take a dump in a urinal, and there's poo water overflowing, it's basically terrorism to the poor janitorial staff.

Eliminate all urinals, make all washrooms unisex, improve toilet booth privacy or replace it all with a series of single occupancy rooms with space for baby changing.

It's either that or eliminate the little male and female stick figures and replace them with a penis and a vagina. If you have both or neither you win, and can go wherever you please. Of course, my preference is unisex.

More importantly, we need to go full Singapore on washroom laws. $150 fine for not flushing. Fuck it, death penalty for leaving a mess. Just add accessible cleaning supplies so when people manage to shit on the ceiling they can at least clean it up after.