Republicans are starting to give up the game more and more.
Giving up the game in this context means showing your hand before you play it, so "Reveal". Quitting the game would be "abandon".
Let's give Biden the whole hour.
Rats, I was hoping maybe you were saying that it's a sign they're finally losing confidence in their chances of winning the election.
--Patrick
They ARE losing confidence. Why do you think they stopped the stimulus talks to ram through the SC nomination? Why do you think Trump is stuffing letters about how great he is doing into aid boxes? Why do you think all of them keep bringing up the validity of mail in voting? Best case for them they create enough division that the SC gets involved in the election.
The word on the street is that the Republicans, who have access to much better polling data then we do, see this as less of a blue wave and more of a blue tsunami. They are not just going to lose the Presidency, but also the Senate. They want to ram as much as they can through on their agenda and do it in ways the incoming Democrats can't overturn as easily.
This is not a sure thing of course, WE ALL MUST VOTE.
Oh, I know they’re losing confidence. I was just hoping they were being forced to admit it.
—Patrick
That's unfair. Papa Nurgle actually cares about people.
One of my coworkers just told me that he has decided NOT to vote this year, because ”...the country right now is just a big, festering wound, and covering it with a salve right now isn’t going to change the fact that it’s just going to need to be amputated later. I voted third-party last election, and if someone put a gun to my head right now and told me to choose between Trump or Biden, my answer would be, ‘I am coming, Harambe!’”
—Patrick
Papa cares, but them plaguebearers are whining, moaning pieces of shit.
Also, Trump has apparently been cleared to continue spreading COVID.
www.independent.co.uk
Trump's doctors clear him for return to public engagements from Saturday
The all-clear allows the president to get back on the campaign trail 24 days out from the election
www.independent.co.uk
figmentPez
Staff member
So, what kind of Kompromat do you think the KGB has on Trump's doctors?
figmentPez
Staff member
"Is there a single person who believes this?"
I can only assume that, yes, there are Trumpers dumb enough to believe that.
I can only assume that, yes, there are Trumpers dumb enough to believe that.
Most people, even doctors, care more about their job then their oaths. Look what happens with cops too.
The thing about the WH, the entire staff is pretty much picked by the President or his Chief of Staff, which honestly, I think is one if it's big problems. In a normal healthy system the President would pick members of his staff that carry his values but are also specialists in the field that can guide him. Trump does not want anyone to guide him, so he instead hires sycophants that would cremate their living grandmother for just a few minutes to suck his little trump. This goes for everyone, from the cooks he fired so he could buy more McDonalds, to the doctors he hired that are willing to say he is "the healthiest man alive" for that easy paycheck.
When Trump went to Walter Reed last year for his (ALLEGED) stroke, he had all the doctors and staff sign NDA agreements preventing them from ever talking about what happened for fear of legal reprisal. The two doctors that refused to sign the NDA were removed from the team before they ever got close to Trump.
This is one of Americas biggest problems. Everyone, big, small, rich, we care more about our jobs then our ethics, because our ethics don't feed our kids.
And listen, I say this with EXPERIANCE. Long ago I worked for a guy as a phone representative and he asked me to do some side work. What was the side work? Well, he owned some land which he wanted to change from residential to commercial zoning. The neighborhood didn't want it to change, and filed an injunction with the city council. My old boss took it as a challenge and built a structure around the old house that he called a "garage", even though it was obviously a full two story office building. Doing such blocked off his neighbors views and even put one house in perpetual shadow.
My job was to watch Town Hall videos for a few hours and record all the times the neighbors said anything in anger about him, so that he could use it in the upcoming court cases that would finalize his claim. He also recorded community meetings to get more ammo that they were "out to get him" even though most of the time they just begged him to leave. I did what I was told, made the tapes, even though I thought he was wrong, and turned them in, then went back to my normal job. Any time he asked me for help like that again I told him I was busy, but there is still a part of me that wished I had enough balls to call him out for being an asshole.
He ended up getting his zoning change.
We need to put less pressure on the job, the need for one just to survive, or nothing is going to change.
Removing health care from the employers responsibility is the biggest step in this direction. Which is why republicans are so against it. Government provided healthcare means people don’t have to fear dying, or their family dying, because they lost their job.
GasBandit
Staff member
I understand the sentiment, but just imagine, what Trump would have done with it, who he might have put in charge of it, had the government been in charge of healthcare when he came to power.
The problem is the cost is outrageously overinflated. It wasn't always this way, until under the obfuscation provided by people no longer needing to care how much it costs because they had a job that would pay for it, that insurance companies and healthcare providers started colluding to milk everyone for everything that they were worth.
Maybe the quickest short-term fix is government-run single-payer, but that's going to open up another can of worms when the winds of governmental power change and the wrong people are in charge.
The problem is the cost is outrageously overinflated. It wasn't always this way, until under the obfuscation provided by people no longer needing to care how much it costs because they had a job that would pay for it, that insurance companies and healthcare providers started colluding to milk everyone for everything that they were worth.
Maybe the quickest short-term fix is government-run single-payer, but that's going to open up another can of worms when the winds of governmental power change and the wrong people are in charge.
Then it will need to be structured such that it cannot be denied to any citizen for any reason, which is honestly how it should be in the first place. There's no reason the right to healthcare can't be another one of those things that "...shall not be infringed."
--Patrick
GasBandit
Staff member
As we've learned, there is nothing that cannot be denied if nobody is willing (or able) to hold those in power to account.
Can you imagine how things would have gone if only Trump-approved methods, research, and sources were allowed for COVID treatment? We'd all get the "choice" between Chloro-whatsit, Bleach injections, or the untested Russian Vaccine. So sayeth whatever Betsy DeVos/Ajit Pai level stooge Trump puts at the head of the Department of Health... maybe the demon sperm doctor.
The free market failed in healthcare. There is no way to fix it without the government either providing their option, or the government regulating the hell out of the insurance companies, the providers, the pharmaceutical companies, and cracking down on frivolous lawsuits.
Both options can be manipulated by whatever administration is in power.
Both options can be manipulated by whatever administration is in power.
GasBandit
Staff member
The free market was subverted and circumvented. Collusion is anathema to competition, and competition is what make free market solutions work - and is why collusion is usually made illegal in some way, shape, or form in most capitalist endeavors. That was the second true failing of health care in this country (the first was the WW2 Government freezing wages, which led to the creation of employer-provided "health insurance" as an alternate form of compensation, which is REALLY how we got into this mess in the first place).
I'm not dumb, I can see the writing on the wall that everyone's clamoring for socialized medicine, and it's inevitable at this point - just a question of when. But because I am who I am, I feel it important to point out that putting a single entity in charge of all of it, when it's so essential to your well being, just makes you a slave to whoever runs the government, instead of being a slave to your employer. We're quite potentially just trading one tyrant for another, in the right circumstances - and one much harder and more dangerous to dislodge.
Wouldn’t allowing everyone to use Medicaid if they chose it provide some competition to health insurance companies, ideally causing them to improve their services or lower prices? Instead of forcing everyone to use single payer, or leaving everyone to navigate the current market, people would have a choice. And hopefully that choice would make companies strive to be a better alternative that would attract customers.
Except that a private company representing even a few hundred thousand people can't compete with the negotiating power of the US government, in regards to drug and service pricing. That's the entire reason the US government is forbidden by law from negotiating prescription drug prices for Medicare and Medicaid; if they could, suddenly drug companies lose billions of dollars. Mind you, this is abnormal: most countries with social healthcare programs DO negotiate and they pay pennies on what we pay.
To be frank, the US basically subsidizes drug companies by refusing to let the federal government get involved with drug pricing. This allows drug companies to sell their meds for cents overseas in regions that could never meet US prices but effectively kills US citizens in the process.
I don’t necessarily disagree. I just don’t see any other way this could get better without it. Honestly, we need to change not only the drug pricing and insurance side of things, but also how we treat people.
Here is an interesting take on changing the thought process from treating an illness in a patient, to actually treating the patient.
I haven’t listened to this yet, but I’m hoping it also discusses the stunning (to some) revelation that “healthcare” is not something that should remain dormant until after a patient gets sick, it should also apply to available processes/procedures which postpone/prevent illness(es) in the first place. Even down to such basic things as nutrition, exercise, and environment. Yes, that means some level of your gym membership should be considered as part of healthcare.
—Patrick
It does, and to do that it talks about changing doctors from a fee per visit to a service basically. That way you aren’t incentivizing people to not see the doctor when they should, which reduces more expensive issues later on, and reduces the push for doctors to do more costly procedures either to bring in more money, or because they don’t know their patients well enough to know what they should/shouldn’t need.