[POLITICS] Two Mass Shootings in 15 Hours, and O'Rourke on Trump

[tstorm823]

You got me. That's why I was asking.

Because I do Property and Casualty, Life Health and Accident Insurance Agent in New York state. Basically, I'm all the things. I also took my continuing education course in the beginning of the month.

Do you know why the efficacy of ACA is basically a band-aid on the problem? The Hospitals themselves.

Should we talk about the unnecessary tests that cost 200 billion Annually [https://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/news/unnecessary-medical-tests-treatments-cost-200-billion-annually-cause-harm]? That year after year, we're paying higher medicine costs [https://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-do-americans-pay-more-for-drugs-2019-04-24] than anywhere on this planet? Or how Hospitals are charging Patients for Increased CEO Salaries and for Lobbyists to keep the hospital system just as it is [https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2019/06/26/top-u-s-non-profit-hospitals-ceos-are-racking-up-huge-profits/#31c21aa419df]?

Can we talk about how we have the highest cost of Medical Procedures [https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/how-do-healthcare-prices-and-use-in-the-u-s-compare-to-other-countries/#item-start] but we don't even break the Top Ten of Best Healthcare systems in the world [http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/best-healthcare-in-the-world/]?

But people still get sick. They still need hospitals. But there are literally people who would try to tough it out because they don't think they can get out of the debt that getting treatment will cost them, because Hospital CEOs need those yearly raises!

ACA brought people from uninsured to underinsured. Some help. Which is definitely a step in the right direction. The "Cheaper cost" of AHCA would come from re-allowing pre-existing conditions that could basically have them look through your history with a fine tooth comb and say they don't have to pay your claim because if they have known that you had this condition before, they wouldn't have authorized the policy.

Bad but plentiful choices that can become null and void at the issuer's discretion helps no one.

Get more doctors, put limits on Hospital CEO's and the raises they give themselves, limit what pharmaceutical companies can charge for drugs, any of these things would actually help lower the cost of health care. And thereby, insurance.

This is a very apt statement to close this out on, but you can't ignore the disease and then be upset that the analgesics prescribed to quiet the symptoms isn't grape flavored. You treat the DISEASE, and you don't even need to take the analgesic.

Ok, but my problem isn't that the analgesic isn't grape flavored. It's that insurance is like an analgesic masking the pain of the metastasizing cancer that is rising health costs. And the ACA looked at that cancer and said "what if we gave the country more morphine?" Arguably it's better to hurt less, but if that pain reduction is being used as a replacement for actual treatment, that's just going to exacerbate the problem.

Like, I think we're fundamentally on the same page, medical costs are artificially too high, that's the real problem. But I don't think you're recognizing insurance's complicity in the problem. Admittedly, my knowledge is mostly from the pharmaceutical side, but you have situations where an insurance says "we cover the brand name, get the brand name. The manufacturer will sell a bottle of pills for MSRP $100. They'll sell it to a distributor for $90, who sell it to a pharmacy for $95, who theoretically sells it for $100. The customer pays a $20 copay, the insurance pays the other $80 to the pharmacy, and then the insurance cashes in a $75 dollar rebate with the manufacturer. The insurance ends up paying almost nothing, the manufacturer still got paid a net of $15 for possibly $5 worth of pills, and the customer is led to believe they got 80% off because they were insured. The insurance may not be the ones pocketing the dough, but they're the ones concealing the game. And when CVS is your insurance, your pharmacy, and their own distributor, the opportunity for abuse is unreal.

But regardless of if you take my perspective of blaming the enablers or your perspective of putting responsibility on the actual providers, the ACA doesn't fix the issue. It just enhances that facade that being insured makes the cost go down. But it's only a facade, and we both know it.

If Trump is like Democrats, why does the entirety of the Republican party defend and support him? Why hasn't Moscow Mitch turned on Trump? Why do Republicans keep voting in defense of what Trump wants? Why do Republicans keep praising and supporting him? Are you a Democrat? You are an unashamed Trump supporter. Do you not see how this is all absurd?

Not all Republicans defend and support him, some still hold out because he's a bad person. But that's beside the point. Republicans support Trump by and large because Trump isn't doing what Trump wants. For the most part, he's just signing whatever's put in front of him, and between Republicans controlling both houses and Democrats getting as far from Trump as possible, the things put in front of him have been almost as conservative as possible. It's not because Trump is ideologically Republican, it's because he's working with the people willing to work with him. If the Republicans were the ones following Trump's lead on everything, there'd be 10x as much wall funding right now.

There should not be any unaccompanied minors dying of flu though. You want to excuse the deaths, but there should not be any deaths. If a white kid dies at their elementary school cause they had flu and were neglected, that would be unacceptable. The same is for these torture camps.

The difference between "a white kid at an elementary school" and the children dying at the border is that the elementary school child didn't travel 1500 miles from Guatemala, probably unvaccinated, definitely without medical care along the way, potentially making the whole journey alone. Half of them died of illness they had before arriving, all of them received medical attention in the US except the one that didn't even reach the CBP station. CBP isn't hunting down and torturing people, they are turning themselves in because that is their sanctuary.

Like, people contract illnesses at hospitals, you don't say the hospitals tortured them. People die of illnesses in the custody of doctors, you don't blame the doctors.

ACA is why my family wasn't billed $10,000 when I got a nasty stomach virus. Thanks Obama, genuinely, thanks.

I mean, it's great you didn't have to pay $10,000 cash for probably a lot less money worth of treatment, but you understand that the $10,000 was still paid. Instead of that burden being on your family, it's spread across you and everyone else with the same insurer.

Before I bomb this joint with multiple sound clips, I'm going to ask if you stand by this notion that conservatives do not demonize parts of the population.

Republican politicians do not demonize parts of the population the way Democrats do. Republicans say illegal immigrants overburden our social systems and put downward pressure on wages. Trump says rapists are crossing the border. Republicans say our major cities have problems with crime, Hillary Clinton calls people superpredators. Republicans primarily use rhetoric aimed at the sin rather than the sinner. Don't post Micheal Savage clips. Micheal Savage is a crazy person who thinks lesbians are out to destroy the country and blueberries give you super powers.

This was a conservative-originated plan, but what happened when it was put before the Republicans? They resisted it to the max.

Good, because it sucks. And Mitt Romney is a wiener. I actually haven't checked an R for president since McCain.

The Republicans have zero credibility on healthcare beyond letting those with the means have it and the poorer third of the county not. None of their behaviour for decades supports any notion otherwise.

There are a lot of Rs in here. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_health_care_reform_in_the_United_States#Earliest] Looks a lot like some prominent Republican has been proposing or expanding some kind of national insurance every 20 years or so for the last century. Hell, Bush signed Medicare part D, McCain sponsored a patient bill of rights. You're just substituting support for the ACA for caring about healthcare. Freaking drug price controls are being sponsored right now by Chuck Grassly.

It would be ad consequentiam if you're letting that determine your perception of what is legislatively possible.

It's not about what's legislatively possible. Communism is bad, and I know you're a communist, so it doesn't do me any good to consider how you would fix things.

No, I obviously don't think that sentence contradicts you, because it's a meaninglessly vague sentence you've taken out of context.

You may as well do the same for any sentence which is technically true but so broad as to be meaningless on its own-- "Reptilia covers many different animal species" does not indicate that dogs are reptiles, for instance.

You've just taken the vaguest sentences possible and dragged them out of context, because its convenient.

That's almost exactly my point. You did the opposite. You took a sentence that said "In the 21st century, those who identify as progressive may do so for a variety of reasons: for example..." and decided that those examples not including what I was saying meant that my explanation of progressivism was wrong. It would be like if it said "reptilia covers many species, for example: snakes, lizard, and crocodiles." and you said "see! Turtles aren't reptiles, they weren't in the example list!"

You took a non-exclusive list of examples as a contradiction to me, and ignored the like 18 times that wikipedia article told you exactly what I told you.

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

Ok, but my problem isn't that the analgesic isn't grape flavored. It's that insurance is like an analgesic masking the pain of the metastasizing cancer that is rising health costs. And the ACA looked at that cancer and said "what if we gave the country more morphine?" Arguably it's better to hurt less, but if that pain reduction is being used as a replacement for actual treatment, that's just going to exacerbate the problem.

Like, I think we're fundamentally on the same page, medical costs are artificially too high, that's the real problem. But I don't think you're recognizing insurance's complicity in the problem. Admittedly, my knowledge is mostly from the pharmaceutical side, but you have situations where an insurance says "we cover the brand name, get the brand name. The manufacturer will sell a bottle of pills for MSRP $100. They'll sell it to a distributor for $90, who sell it to a pharmacy for $95, who theoretically sells it for $100. The customer pays a $20 copay, the insurance pays the other $80 to the pharmacy, and then the insurance cashes in a $75 dollar rebate with the manufacturer. The insurance ends up paying almost nothing, the manufacturer still got paid a net of $15 for possibly $5 worth of pills, and the customer is led to believe they got 80% off because they were insured. The insurance may not be the ones pocketing the dough, but they're the ones concealing the game. And when CVS is your insurance, your pharmacy, and their own distributor, the opportunity for abuse is unreal.

But regardless of if you take my perspective of blaming the enablers or your perspective of putting responsibility on the actual providers, the ACA doesn't fix the issue. It just enhances that facade that being insured makes the cost go down. But it's only a facade, and we both know it.

And here we get to the rub.

If Obama actually went towards the Cancer, that would mean he would have to pass limits of the amount hospitals can increase their rates and monitor their spending (like Germany [https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/healthcare-systems-and-services/our-insights/how-germany-is-reining-in-health-care-costs-an-interview-with-franz-knieps] and other nations did. Can German Escapists weigh in with first hand knowledge?), the amount that Big Pharma can charge for their drugs (we seem to be one of the only 'developed [https://www.pharmaceutical-technology.com/features/cost-control-drug-pricing-policies-around-world/]' countries that don't have real regulation... That's right, Trump's 'Shithole [https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0219690]' country has better access to medications than we do...), and put up that free college idea that we can get more doctors and nurses into the work force to lessen the burden our medical staff already feels... He would have been crucified by the sitting Republican Government in a second for being so 'Unamerican' in his ideals. The same sitting government who had to do nothing but "OBAMA SAID IT, SO IT'S ISLAMIC SOCIALIST SATANISM!!11!!!" and be told that they did a job well done by their constituents.

To get rid of the Cancer, that means America has to come to grips that Laissez-Faire Capitalism is inherently destructive. We now have to have an 'acceptable amount of Water Pollution [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/trump-rsquo-s-epa-made-it-easier-for-coal-plants-to-pollute-waterways/]' done by our companies, allowance of lax food safety from our food companies [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jul/02/enforcement-food-drug-safety-regulations-trump] by our government and... Hell, we're all cooking everywhere. Salmon [https://fox43.com/2019/08/17/the-water-is-so-hot-in-alaska-its-killing-large-numbers-of-salmon/] are literally cooking in their waters, dying from this heatwave now.

But Companies can buy lobbyists and PR firms, so pointing out the fact that the world is literally falling apart around us due to climate change and fracking and all problems of the like becomes 'political' instead of "HOLY SHIT, WE ALL SEE THIS, WHAT DO WE DO NOW?!".

I do think we're on the same page for the most part as well. I do think Obamacare was a band-aid. But one sorely needed because the Invisible Hand of the Marketplace doesn't work. Because prices only go up, Companies only try to find ways to screw everyone in the sake of profit, and they buy people to Pied Piper us all to pray at the altar of Businesses that will wreck this planet and not to mention us over the ideal of currency... something that will die out with us as a species, which makes me think the species is more important than the idea it has.

But that's just me. The Invisible Hand of the Marketplace is just as real as Santa Claus. And it's killing us to believe in it.



Sidebar... Hey guys, I'm starting a band called "Islamic Socialist Satanism". It's going to be Ska influenced Industrial-Techno. Anyone want in?

 

[Seanchaidh]

It would be ad consequentiam if you're letting that determine your perception of what is legislatively possible.

It's not about what's legislatively possible. Communism is bad, and I know you're a communist, so it doesn't do me any good to consider how you would fix things.

You literally made a claim about what sort of bipartisan legislation could get accomplished if Democrats were on board.

And democracy is good, actually. Communism means democracy at work. Democracy at work is necessary to achieve democracy in all other facets of politics; otherwise it's just glorified plutocracy.

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

Look, Republicans have had a zillion chances to do something about healthcare over the years, and they've done precisely nothing. They only even talked about it when the Democrats tried to seriously get something done. Then eventually the ACA arrived. This was a conservative-originated plan, but what happened when it was put before the Republicans? They resisted it to the max.

Here's the problem as I see it, encapsulated perfectly by one of today's big news items about Congressional Democrats and 2020 candidates walking back support for M4A in the face of Ethanol and Agribusiness Ass-Kissing Week (AKA the Iowa state fair). Democrats are fundamentally two-faced on the issue; they rely upon Republicans to obstruct so they can talk a big game while not having to do anything, when set to task they prefer to appear to have done something without actually having done anything, and with their backs against the wall with no way out they'll default to the dumbest fucking legislation possible.

Except for the flat-out corrupt fuckers like Booker who are on the take from big pharma, who can be relied upon to fight tooth and nail under the table against any sort of legislation that would have a positive net outcome for the country.

Look at ACA. Congressional Democrats, in an attempt to appease blue dogs, walked to the table with a plan from the goddamn Heritage Foundation. This, despite supermajorities in both chambers of Congress and walking into office with a level of political capital unseen by Democrats since JFK. If there was ever a moment to push the furthest-left policy imaginable, tell the blue dogs to shut the fuck up and fall in line if they want so much as a dime of pork or a callback from the majority leader's office, and negotiate from that position, it was then and both Congressional Democrats and Obama failed to an incomprehensible degree to exploit their negotiating position competently.

That's the problem. This appeasement-based incrementalism is killing the country and its people. You don't triangulate a policy proposal and sit down at the negotiating table with that as the first offer, and expect the opposition to just stay quiet, say "that sounds fair", and sign on. Least of all when you have all the goddamn power. You take your agenda, double down on it, then present that as the first offer, and force the other side to make concessions in other policy areas to mediate the topic at hand.

 

[Shadowstar38]

It mostly 'fucks over' people who don't understand how any of this works. ACA was a transitionary thing anyways, or it was supposed to be. It was meant as a compromise with Republicans, but instead is Exhibit A in why compromise with Republicans was a bad idea.

So basically, it was a botched job to begin with. That makes me want the thing repealed more, not less.

 

[tstorm823]

And here we get to the rub.

If Obama actually went towards the Cancer, that would mean he would have to pass limits of the amount hospitals can increase their rates and monitor their spending (like Germany [https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/healthcare-systems-and-services/our-insights/how-germany-is-reining-in-health-care-costs-an-interview-with-franz-knieps] and other nations did. Can German Escapists weigh in with first hand knowledge?), the amount that Big Pharma can charge for their drugs (we seem to be one of the only 'developed [https://www.pharmaceutical-technology.com/features/cost-control-drug-pricing-policies-around-world/]' countries that don't have real regulation... That's right, Trump's 'Shithole [https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0219690]' country has better access to medications than we do...), and put up that free college idea that we can get more doctors and nurses into the work force to lessen the burden our medical staff already feels... He would have been crucified by the sitting Republican Government in a second for being so 'Unamerican' in his ideals. The same sitting government who had to do nothing but "OBAMA SAID IT, SO IT'S ISLAMIC SOCIALIST SATANISM!!11!!!" and be told that they did a job well done by their constituents.

Once again, actual factual Chuck Grassly is currently proposing medical price controls [https://www.npr.org/2019/08/08/749303262/grassley-pushes-prescription-drug-bill]. Also, there are more than a few VERY Republican friendly ways to lessen burdens on medical staff, in the sense that a lot of minor things are currently being deregulated in places so that medical professionals less than literally an MD can do them. And like, I honestly don't think you'd get much pushback suggesting grants specifically for medical school.

Republicans really aren't against things that are for the greater good, and certainly aren't against laws telling people what not to do. Republicans get upset at regulations put in place by unelected bureaucrats that accomplish nothing of consequence but annoying people with red tape, and republicans get upset and any sort of redistributive program that would potentially take resources from people already contributing to society and give that to people who might squander it. The problem with free college all around isn't that investment into intellectual capital isn't a proper role of government. The problem is that it would be expensive and totally wasted by many, myself strongly included. A program specifically to fund people already qualified for medical school seems perfectly reasonable.

To get rid of the Cancer, that means America has to come to grips that Laissez-Faire Capitalism is inherently destructive. We now have to have an 'acceptable amount of Water Pollution [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/trump-rsquo-s-epa-made-it-easier-for-coal-plants-to-pollute-waterways/]' done by our companies, allowance of lax food safety from our food companies [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jul/02/enforcement-food-drug-safety-regulations-trump] by our government and... Hell, we're all cooking everywhere. Salmon [https://fox43.com/2019/08/17/the-water-is-so-hot-in-alaska-its-killing-large-numbers-of-salmon/] are literally cooking in their waters, dying from this heatwave now.

But Companies can buy lobbyists and PR firms, so pointing out the fact that the world is literally falling apart around us due to climate change and fracking and all problems of the like becomes 'political' instead of "HOLY SHIT, WE ALL SEE THIS, WHAT DO WE DO NOW?!".

I do think we're on the same page for the most part as well. I do think Obamacare was a band-aid. But one sorely needed because the Invisible Hand of the Marketplace doesn't work. Because prices only go up, Companies only try to find ways to screw everyone in the sake of profit, and they buy people to Pied Piper us all to pray at the altar of Businesses that will wreck this planet and not to mention us over the ideal of currency... something that will die out with us as a species, which makes me think the species is more important than the idea it has.

But that's just me. The Invisible Hand of the Marketplace is just as real as Santa Claus. And it's killing us to believe in it.

No, laissez-faire capitalism is not inherently destructive. It isn't really anything at all. It's like saying not having fire fighters is inherently destructive. I agree we should have fire fighters, but it's dishonest to equate lack of action with causing the problem. More importantly, we came to grips with the limitations of pure free markets a century ago, in the progressive movement someone else is claiming doesn't count as progressive because supposedly nobody ever used that word that way, but I digress. The vast majority of the 20th century is marked by this understanding.

But everything has a too far. Frankly, if we never have to take a step back on things, it means we weren't pushing boundaries to begin with. Economic liberalism had America flourish in the early 20th century, but there were problems, just like what you're pointing out. We had the progressive era, followed by decades of increasing action until the economy took a crap in the 70s. That's also a problem, which prompted neoliberalism to become a thing, to try and split the difference.

Nobody wants to roll back successful protections (except libertarians and anarchists), just things that cause market problems of greater consequence than the issues they're meant to solve. And at the same time, there are new problems coming, like climate change, that need to be addressed. So soon enough it will be time for another progressive movement worth the name, rather than some weird alliance of socialists and anti-Christians. If you'd like to blame someone for politicizing climate change, please aim that blame at the people who claim the only solution is the total overthrow of western society they've been trying to accomplish since the French Revolution. And then get me some god-dang nuclear power.

It mostly 'fucks over' people who don't understand how any of this works. ACA was a transitionary thing anyways, or it was supposed to be. It was meant as a compromise with Republicans, but instead is Exhibit A in why compromise with Republicans was a bad idea.

If the ACA was meant as a transition, it could only possibly be in a sense that they were suggesting something so stupid that it'd be easier to get people to buy into totally nationalized healthcare afterward. Jumping straight into the "Republican" style solution rather than the solutions Democrats supposedly wanted actually lends some credibility to the theory that the ACA was styled to fail upward like The Producers. And for what it's worth, I have said on many occasions that I don't think socialized medicine is the best option but it's certainly better than this crap.

 

[Smithnikov_v1legacy]

Don't post Micheal Savage clips. Micheal Savage is a crazy person who thinks lesbians are out to destroy the country and blueberries give you super powers.

But still a conservative, and by your own admission, demonizes part of the population.

Thank you for proving my point, and keep your mitts off the goalposts.

And then get me some god-dang nuclear power.

Quite agreed, but what's the God Emperor doing to help facilitate that?

 

[tstorm823]

But still a conservative, and by your own admission, demonizes part of the population.

Thank you for proving my point, and keep your mitts off the goalposts.

If you want my mitts off the goalposts, at least put them back where they started. With regards to this topic, I have been specifically talking about Democrats and Republicans, and you're repeatedly changing those words when you respond to me.

Conservative and Republican aren't just interchangeable like that.

Quite agreed, but what's the God Emperor doing to help facilitate that?

Not a whole lot. That was actually what I was looking for in Democratic candidates early, hoping someone good would come out the other side that I could actually consider voting for. But the pool of candidates with respect for nuclear isn't looking great. We're down to I think Mayor Pete, Yang, and Corey Booker. None of those three seems very likely to win the primary at the moment, and Corey Booker is from New Jersey, so I'd rather he was just out of the race already.

 

[Saelune]

Heres the thing, how is the other way any better? How? That's what makes any criticism of ACA not make sense, because the other way is worse, unless you are rich. ACA is the option between 'All' and 'Nothing'. And as long as Republicans are part of the government, that's the best we could hope for. Republicans will never support better healthcare, and their whole plan was to sabotage good healthcare and then blame Democrats for the damage Republicans did to it!

It's perfectly reasonable to point out the ACA is at least partly a botch job, especially for those whose bills went up.

Outside those earning a lot (where "affordable" isn't a meaningful concern), making healthcare more affordable really should make healthcare more affordable - for everyone. Making healthcare more affordable for 50% of the population but less affordable for 10% might be an improvement for the country as a whole, but it really has failed some when it ideally shouldn't have.

Botched by Republicans.

 

[Saelune]

It mostly 'fucks over' people who don't understand how any of this works. ACA was a transitionary thing anyways, or it was supposed to be. It was meant as a compromise with Republicans, but instead is Exhibit A in why compromise with Republicans was a bad idea.

So basically, it was a botched job to begin with. That makes me want the thing repealed more, not less.

And replaced with what? I want something better than ACA, but no Republican wants to give better than the ACA.

 

[Saelune]

If Trump is like Democrats, why does the entirety of the Republican party defend and support him? Why hasn't Moscow Mitch turned on Trump? Why do Republicans keep voting in defense of what Trump wants? Why do Republicans keep praising and supporting him? Are you a Democrat? You are an unashamed Trump supporter. Do you not see how this is all absurd?

Not all Republicans defend and support him, some still hold out because he's a bad person. But that's beside the point. Republicans support Trump by and large because Trump isn't doing what Trump wants. For the most part, he's just signing whatever's put in front of him, and between Republicans controlling both houses and Democrats getting as far from Trump as possible, the things put in front of him have been almost as conservative as possible. It's not because Trump is ideologically Republican, it's because he's working with the people willing to work with him. If the Republicans were the ones following Trump's lead on everything, there'd be 10x as much wall funding right now.

There should not be any unaccompanied minors dying of flu though. You want to excuse the deaths, but there should not be any deaths. If a white kid dies at their elementary school cause they had flu and were neglected, that would be unacceptable. The same is for these torture camps.

The difference between "a white kid at an elementary school" and the children dying at the border is that the elementary school child didn't travel 1500 miles from Guatemala, probably unvaccinated, definitely without medical care along the way, potentially making the whole journey alone. Half of them died of illness they had before arriving, all of them received medical attention in the US except the one that didn't even reach the CBP station. CBP isn't hunting down and torturing people, they are turning themselves in because that is their sanctuary.

Like, people contract illnesses at hospitals, you don't say the hospitals tortured them. People die of illnesses in the custody of doctors, you don't blame the doctors.

ACA is why my family wasn't billed $10,000 when I got a nasty stomach virus. Thanks Obama, genuinely, thanks.

I mean, it's great you didn't have to pay $10,000 cash for probably a lot less money worth of treatment, but you understand that the $10,000 was still paid. Instead of that burden being on your family, it's spread across you and everyone else with the same insurer.

If they voted for Trump, they support Trump. If they aren't doing anything to oppose the others, they are supporting him. You wouldn't give this excuse to Democrats.

What is your defense here? That Trump is a puppet? His actions are Republican and thats what matters. Either way, Republicans are ruining this country.

They recieve beds, soap and supervision at hospitals. And if they dont, that hospital is unethical and needs to be fixed. I blame the Doctors if they actively refuse to help the patients.

Good. A weight carried by many is a lighter load. Helping people is a good thing.

 

[Agema]

Look at ACA. Congressional Democrats, in an attempt to appease blue dogs, walked to the table with a plan from the goddamn Heritage Foundation. This, despite supermajorities in both chambers of Congress and walking into office with a level of political capital unseen by Democrats since JFK. If there was ever a moment to push the furthest-left policy imaginable, tell the blue dogs to shut the fuck up and fall in line if they want so much as a dime of pork or a callback from the majority leader's office, and negotiate from that position, it was then and both Congressional Democrats and Obama failed to an incomprehensible degree to exploit their negotiating position competently.

No.

It only takes one politician to break the plan if you need 60 and you've got 60. It's almost guaranteed one politician is going to stick by some contrary ideology, or be lobbied into resistance by corporations, or represent a seat traditionally held by the opposite party and prefer to keep that seat by voting with the opposition on major controversies.

And of course, the Democrats didn't have 60: they had 59. Their supermajority of 60 relied on an independent, and indeed it was that independent who sank them on a more ambitious plan.

Ok, but my problem isn't that the analgesic isn't grape flavored. It's that insurance is like an analgesic masking the pain of the metastasizing cancer that is rising health costs. And the ACA looked at that cancer and said "what if we gave the country more morphine?" Arguably it's better to hurt less, but if that pain reduction is being used as a replacement for actual treatment, that's just going to exacerbate the problem.

Like, I think we're fundamentally on the same page, medical costs are artificially too high, that's the real problem.

Medical costs aren't artificially high, though. They are what you'd expect of a system with a huge number of individual businesses at various levels seeking to maximise profit, as per conventional capitalism. Part of the problem behing that healthcare does not suit conventional capitalist models, because to a large extent it doesn't really exist as a series of free choice decisions.

Secondly, if you mean by "more morphine" allowing more people to be treated when before they were just left to suffer, yes it did. It's very point was to expand coverage. You mean it little reformed how healthcare was delivered in the USA (it has some and in fact has reduced the growth in US healthcare costs).

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

Once again, actual factual Chuck Grassly is currently proposing medical price controls [https://www.npr.org/2019/08/08/749303262/grassley-pushes-prescription-drug-bill]. Also, there are more than a few VERY Republican friendly ways to lessen burdens on medical staff, in the sense that a lot of minor things are currently being deregulated in places so that medical professionals less than literally an MD can do them. And like, I honestly don't think you'd get much pushback suggesting grants specifically for medical school.

Republicans really aren't against things that are for the greater good, and certainly aren't against laws telling people what not to do. Republicans get upset at regulations put in place by unelected bureaucrats that accomplish nothing of consequence but annoying people with red tape, and republicans get upset and any sort of redistributive program that would potentially take resources from people already contributing to society and give that to people who might squander it. The problem with free college all around isn't that investment into intellectual capital isn't a proper role of government. The problem is that it would be expensive and totally wasted by many, myself strongly included. A program specifically to fund people already qualified for medical school seems perfectly reasonable.

The point that is subtly missed here is one that's actually expressed in the opening blurb of your article.

Senate Finance Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, is pushing for a bill to lower prescription drug prices that divides the GOP. But it may be the only way to get a bill to President Trump's desk.

The way this and most political parties operate in the world is that if my opponent is for it, I'm against it. It's something that isn't hidden. Back before the election, the trick of presenting the same policy ideas that were shared by Trump and various Democrats (including Obama) [https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/donald-trump-republicans-democrats-poll_n_55e5fbb8e4b0c818f6196a82] showed that most people, Republican and Democrat alike, resist the personality... not the policy.

I mentioned Obama several times for a reason. The sitting Republican Government (and therefore by extension, their mouthpieces) were against Obama. Do you remember the amount of hit pieces and lies Republican Representatives and their Mouthpieces levied against Obama during the spill? If not, don't worry. I can help out [https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-news-bp-oil-spill-misinformation-clearinghouse#9].

But removed from that, the simple act of resisting Obama yielded so many benefits for Republicans. Look at U.S. Representative Joe Wilson [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Wilson_(American_politician)#%22You_lie!%22_outburst_during_Obama_address] and the famous "YOU LIE!" incident

On September 9, 2009, during a joint address to congress by President Barack Obama which was nationally televised, Joe Wilson shouted "You lie!" Obama was outlining his proposal for reforming health care and said: "There are also those who claim that our reform effort will insure illegal immigrants. This, too, is false?the reforms I'm proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally."

...

Wilson said afterwards that his outburst reflected his view that Obama's bill would have provided government subsidized benefits to illegal immigrants. Several fact-checking organizations wrote that Wilson's views were inaccurate because HR 3200 expressly excludes undocumented aliens from receiving government-subsidized "affordability credits". The non-partisan Congressional Research Service agreed that people would need to be lawfully present in the U.S. in order to be eligible for the credits, but noted that the bill did not bar non-citizens from buying their own health insurance coverage through the health insurance exchange. The Obama administration said that, in the final bill, undocumented immigrants would not be able to participate in the Exchange. Such language was included in the Senate Finance Committee's version of the bill, America's Healthy Future Act.

Following the incident, both Wilson and Democrat Rob Miller, his subsequent 2010 general election opponent, experienced a significant upswing in campaign donations. In the week after Wilson's outburst, Miller raised $1.6 million, about three times his 2008 campaign, while Wilson raised $1.8 million.

Republicans knew they were on shaky ground with Obama from the start because he was willing to play Ball. And that really screwed with their original tactics. So they went full 'Playground Kid With Who Owned Said Ball [https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/08/gop-suspects-economic-sabotage-because-they-did-it-to-obama.html]' on him

After Obama took office, the entire Republican legislative calculus revolved around the premise that Republicans were engaged in zero-sum competition ? anything that helped Obama pass a stimulus bill hurt their party. When Obama expressed openness to their stimulus ideas in a private meeting, Alberta reports, they reacted with panic. "If he governs like that, we?re all fucked," Eric Cantor?s communications director, Brad Dayspring, told his boss.

Alberta reports that Republicans declined to address infrastructure spending in their counterproposal to Obama precisely because they believed House Republicans would support it. "Boehner and Cantor both knew that the one thing that could buy off their members was big spending on roads and bridges," Alberta reports. They declined to include any such spending in their offer, because the goal was not to improve the economic-rescue bill but to block it.

Throughout Obama's presidency, Republicans not only demanded contractionary fiscal and monetary policy but staged a series of dangerous showdowns in order to force Obama to accept it. They managed to succeed in forcing cuts to domestic and military spending as a hostage payment for their threat to default on the national debt, parading the cuts as a trophy. The painful austerity they forced Obama into accepting helped slow the recovery. They likewise denounced the Federal Reserve for keeping interest rates too low, warning of inflation and a debased currency.

Of course, once a Republican had assumed office, they immediately reverted to the deficit-increasing spendthrifts they had been the last time they held office. Their views on monetary policy have followed suit. There was no evolution, no rethinking of premises or grappling with errors. The Republicans simply toggle their objective from full-scale expansion to full-scale contraction every time the White House changes hands. The pattern has held from the Clinton administration (which Republicans spent, like the Obama era, waxing hysterical about deficits) to the Bush administration, the Obama administration, and now the Trump administration.

And now, Republican Representatives are admitting this. We have White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney saying openly that they just didn't want to give Obama any legislative successes. [https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/02/republicans-admit-everything-they-said-about-obamawas-a-lie.html]

WALLACE: You were there, of what the Republicans did to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton on Benghazi, on Fast and Furious. And they got some things done despite the fact that these were aggressive partisan investigations.

MULVANEY: Well, we didn't get very much done. Listen, I'll be the first to admit that when the tea party wave, of which I was one, got here in 2011, the last thing we were interested in was giving President Obama legislative successes.

---

Mitch McConnell boasted that he pressured Republicans to refuse to compromise with any of the Obama administration's priorities in his first two years ("We worked very hard to keep our fingerprints off of these proposals. Because we thought ? correctly, I think ? that the only way the American people would know that a great debate was going on was if the measures were not bipartisan.").

...

That?s one reason why Obama couldn?t make a deficit deal with Republicans: They didn't care about the deficit. Also, as Mulvaney now casually concedes, they didn?t want to give him any accomplishments at all, so even if Obama offered a deal they could live with, they would have opposed it rather than allow him to claim legislative success.

By the way. That last part isn't Hyperbole. As this Administration has been doing everything to add to the deficit [https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/03/11/deficits-do-matter-donald-trump-budget-editorials-debates/3105684002/], something that Republicans of the last administration tried their best to use to pin Obama against the wall. The conversation seems to be non-existent in the mouths of Republican Representatives.

And I know, I know. Playbook rule number 37. If there's a problem, what's the other guy doing about it? The other guy (democrats) in this case are still in a political minority. Most of the things are owned by the Republicans. It's like looking to Australia and going "Yeah, Climate Change is really bad... so why haven't you turned it around yet?!"

Republicans were against Obama, and that's my only point. He couldn't solve anything because he didn't have any backing. Obama was the underdog in his own Government. Obama could have found the DNA of Christ and decided to put Trillions of Dollars into Cloning to bring Him back... and it seems like Republican Representatives at the time would have yelled "OBAMA'S GOING TO BRING JESUS BACK TO CONVERT HIM INTO ISLAM, WE CAN'T LET THAT HAPPEN".

Basically, if the greater good came from Obama... damn sure those Republicans were against it. Again, that's not me. If you don't like my links, you can look it up yourself. That's Republican Representatives saying that.

No, laissez-faire capitalism is not inherently destructive. It isn't really anything at all. It's like saying not having fire fighters is inherently destructive. I agree we should have fire fighters, but it's dishonest to equate lack of action with causing the problem. More importantly, we came to grips with the limitations of pure free markets a century ago, in the progressive movement someone else is claiming doesn't count as progressive because supposedly nobody ever used that word that way, but I digress. The vast majority of the 20th century is marked by this understanding.

But everything has a too far. Frankly, if we never have to take a step back on things, it means we weren't pushing boundaries to begin with. Economic liberalism had America flourish in the early 20th century, but there were problems, just like what you're pointing out. We had the progressive era, followed by decades of increasing action until the economy took a crap in the 70s. That's also a problem, which prompted neoliberalism to become a thing, to try and split the difference.

Nobody wants to roll back successful protections (except libertarians and anarchists), just things that cause market problems of greater consequence than the issues they're meant to solve. And at the same time, there are new problems coming, like climate change, that need to be addressed. So soon enough it will be time for another progressive movement worth the name, rather than some weird alliance of socialists and anti-Christians. If you'd like to blame someone for politicizing climate change, please aim that blame at the people who claim the only solution is the total overthrow of western society they've been trying to accomplish since the French Revolution. And then get me some god-dang nuclear power.

That's not entirely true. Laissez-Faire is definitely something. It's a Dogma. And we all know how truly potent Dogmas can be. "Manifest Destiny" , "Gold, God, and Glory", "Make America Great Again"... people do ugly things when they have galvanizing Dogma to rally to. Something that really pulls on the believed core ideals of their shared society.

And this case, it's a shield. Anything that Government (when it's the Democratic Government) does to reign in Businesses is akin to the evil of socialism. A very threat to the American way of life [https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/02/05/trump_america_will_never_be_a_socialist_country_we_were_born_free_and_we_shall_stay_free.html]... as I said earlier, something that really pulls on the believed core ideals of their shared society.

Meanwhile, that same man will sign over our Parks, our waterways, our ability to make a living wage, our basic utilities like the internet, our Privacy, and more because Businesses's rights and prosperity are more valued than Citizen's rights and prosperity. Remember, it's not Laissez-Faire Government for you and me... Just businesses.

Ok... so, just ignore all of this then? [https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2019/4/26/18512213/climate-change-republicans-conservatives]

But with a few exceptions ? a bipartisan state bill here, a few tax credits there ? Republicans have opposed all substantial climate and clean energy policy for decades. There was a period in the late 2000s when John McCain garnered press for backing a cap-and-trade bill, but it never had many votes in his caucus and never came within a mile of getting a vote on the floor. Then Barack Obama was elected, the right went into full backlash mode, and it?s been an unbroken wall of opposition since.

And I guess these as well? [https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2017/03/how-trump-is-changing-science-environment/]

Even the 1.3 Million acres of land he signed to protect is literally a tenth of the 13.5 Million acres of American Lands and Waters [https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/green/news/2019/03/20/467548/13-5-million-acre-lie/] his administration has spent its time in office stripping protections from.

It feels very much after seeing this info that I'm focusing on the right party here.

HEY! I didn't even mean for that pun!

 

[Agema]

Even the 1.3 Million acres of land he signed to protect is literally a tenth of the 13.5 Million acres of American Lands and Waters [https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/green/news/2019/03/20/467548/13-5-million-acre-lie/] his administration has spent its time in office stripping protections from.

It feels very much after seeing this info that I'm focusing on the right party here.

HEY! I didn't even mean for that pun!

As a digression, I was reading an article on commodification recently: essentially, turning something that wasn't a commodity into one. The government could, for instance, commodify the air: sell the air(space) to someone, who can then bill us for the privilege of breathing it.

I think one of the point the article makes it that commodification often does not improve economic performance in many ways. Sure, you can now dig up lots of national parks for oil and gas and make money off it, but you could make as much money elsewhere instead. At worst, it allows for easy wealth extraction instead of having to improve productivity, in which case the results may be negative long-term. But whoever gets to squat on the mineral rights might make a ton for themselves.

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

No.

It only takes one politician to break the plan if you need 60 and you've got 60. It's almost guaranteed one politician is going to stick by some contrary ideology, or be lobbied into resistance by corporations, or represent a seat traditionally held by the opposite party and prefer to keep that seat by voting with the opposition on major controversies.

And of course, the Democrats didn't have 60: they had 59. Their supermajority of 60 relied on an independent, and indeed it was that independent who sank them on a more ambitious plan.

Yes. The case of Lieberman is exactly the type of thing to which I was alluding. What you're conveniently forgetting, is Reid played the softest of softballs with him, and allowed him to obstruct while delivering concession after concession despite two entire years' worth of manipulation and bad-faith behavior following his little electoral tantrum in '06. Except, Lieberman was an absolute pork fiend and had a creepy obsession with his chairmanship of the Homeland Security committee, which meant he had weaknesses Reid can and damn well should have exploited to legislatively keelhaul him.

 

[Agema]

Yes. The case of Lieberman is exactly the type of thing to which I was alluding. What you're conveniently forgetting, is Reid played the softest of softballs with him, and allowed him to obstruct while delivering concession after concession despite two entire years' worth of manipulation and bad-faith behavior following his little electoral tantrum in '06. Except, Lieberman was an absolute pork fiend and had a creepy obsession with his chairmanship of the Homeland Security committee, which meant he had weaknesses Reid can and damn well should have exploited to legislatively keelhaul him.

That is surely your opinion: and you might be dead wrong.

It's entirely possible that had Reid really gone after Lieberman, Lieberman might have instead sunk any form of healthcare bill. Bearing in mind he retired at the next election, he might have been particularly happy to burn bridges.

 

[Shadowstar38]

It mostly 'fucks over' people who don't understand how any of this works. ACA was a transitionary thing anyways, or it was supposed to be. It was meant as a compromise with Republicans, but instead is Exhibit A in why compromise with Republicans was a bad idea.

So basically, it was a botched job to begin with. That makes me want the thing repealed more, not less.

And replaced with what? I want something better than ACA, but no Republican wants to give better than the ACA.

Just put their nutsack all the way inside the rubix cube and do something similar to Canada or Denmark(only recently came around to thinking this would be a good idea because you fuckers keep making me research shit. Obviously there'd be issues to work out when applying that to the U.S. that I haven;t fully sused out yet). And if they manage to score a majority in the house and senate, just tell the Republicans to sit and spin.

 

[tstorm823]

But removed from that, the simple act of resisting Obama yielded so many benefits for Republicans. Look at U.S. Representative Joe Wilson [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Wilson_(American_politician)#%22You_lie!%22_outburst_during_Obama_address] and the famous "YOU LIE!" incident

Thank you for linking one informative thing in your post. If you read it, you'll seen he apologized promptly. And Obama accepted the apology. And then the House Democrats shoved his face in the dirt anyway.

Do you think heckling the president got him a bump in campaign donations, or do you think Democrats trying to publicly assassinate his character gained him support.

Also, he was right. Obama was lying. Stupid fact checking websites say Wilson was wrong because the subsidies for marketplace healthcare plans explicitly excluded illegal immigrants, but the Healthcare Marketplace itself didn't exclude illegal immigrants (nor should it, for the record) and at that point included the public option, so the bill as written would effectively offer the public option to illegal immigrants.

It's actually a nice display of how subtly graceless Barack Obama is. Someone with grace says "we understand there are concerns that the program would insure illegal immigrants, and I assure you that will not be the case." Someone without grace says "Some people claim that our reform efforts will insure illegal immigrants, this too is false." Basically saying "my opposition doesn't have real concerns, they're just liars."

Republicans knew they were on shaky ground with Obama from the start because he was willing to play Ball. And that really screwed with their original tactics. So they went full 'Playground Kid With Who Owned Said Ball [https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/08/gop-suspects-economic-sabotage-because-they-did-it-to-obama.html]' on him

I honestly can't take this even a little seriously. It's a left wing opinion piece sourced entirely by a book titled "American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump", and establishing its narrative from a hearsay quote by a random staffer who left that role contentiously prior to giving the author that quote and who now spends his time defending people who call the GOP white supremacists [https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/rnc-slams-politico-editor-for-tying-republicans-to-white-supremacy].

But even disregarding any question of the source. Even if we presume that the book American Carnage is excellently reported, this piece drawing from it completely denies the core message of the book: "how a decade of cultural upheaval, populist outrage, and ideological warfare made the GOP vulnerable to a hostile takeover" [https://www.harpercollins.com/9780062896445/american-carnage/]. The writer at nymag read a book about Republican regime changes and internal ideological conflict and then treated different positions at different times as though it's the same people cynically flip-flopping. That's not just logically messy, it flies in the face of the source being used to justify it.

And now, Republican Representatives are admitting this. We have White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney saying openly that they just didn't want to give Obama any legislative successes. [https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/02/republicans-admit-everything-they-said-about-obamawas-a-lie.html]

This again is an anachronism. This interview is from someone who was basically elected in Obama backlash, halfway through Obama's first term, after he had ample opportunity to piss people off (like lying and then calling everyone else liars tends to do). Like, no duh he wasn't going into office to make compromises with Obama, he was elected to oppose Obama. He'd be a sucky representative if he didn't.

And there's a whole generation of representatives in congress right now who were similarly elected to oppose Trump. I don't fault those people for opposing Trump, that's why they were elected. They'd be sucky representatives if they didn't. What I fault is long time politicians who have tossed aside their policy promises to jump on the "Trump sucks" train, as well as politicians who lack Mick Mulvaney's honesty displayed above.

Republicans were against Obama, and that's my only point.

And he deserved it. So it makes sense, really.

Anything that Government (when it's the Democratic Government) does to reign in Businesses is akin to the evil of socialism. A very threat to the American way of life [https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/02/05/trump_america_will_never_be_a_socialist_country_we_were_born_free_and_we_shall_stay_free.html]... as I said earlier, something that really pulls on the believed core ideals of their shared society.

I'm sorry to tell you this, but it's not anything done to reign in business that is socialism. There are people 100% calling for socialism. Potentially the majority of the internet forum we are talking on right now like socialism. Do you really think there aren't calls to adopt socialism in America? Where's Saelune at, I need someone to say "socialism is just people helping each other".

If they voted for Trump, they support Trump. If they aren't doing anything to oppose the others, they are supporting him. You wouldn't give this excuse to Democrats.

What is your defense here? That Trump is a puppet? His actions are Republican and thats what matters. Either way, Republicans are ruining this country.

They recieve beds, soap and supervision at hospitals. And if they dont, that hospital is unethical and needs to be fixed. I blame the Doctors if they actively refuse to help the patients.

Good. A weight carried by many is a lighter load. Helping people is a good thing.

First, could you do me a favor and say that socialism is just people helping each other?

Back on track: there are Republicans who didn't vote for Trump and don't support him. Like these [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Republicans_who_opposed_the_2016_Donald_Trump_presidential_campaign].

Trump isn't a puppet, he's just incredibly self-absorbed and wants people to praise him, and is demonstrably willing to follow the lead of others in doing so. More importantly, things are great. Republicans can't be ruining the country if the country isn't being ruined.

Nobody has actively refused to help patients. CBP only holds children as long as it takes to find appropriate care. People on the left oppose any and all facilities that could provide this care. They walk out of work if they find out they're selling the beds you want these children to have. Tell me again who the bad guys are. And again, the children that died were almost entirely released to hospitals when they showed signs of illness.

If everyone has a 10 pound weight, and everyone is helping to carry every weight, everyone is still carrying 10 pounds. When everyone's weight that should be 10 pounds ends up being 100, saying "well, we'll just all share all the loads" isn't a solution.

Medical costs aren't artificially high, though. They are what you'd expect of a system with a huge number of individual businesses at various levels seeking to maximize profit, as per conventional capitalism. Part of the problem behing that healthcare does not suit conventional capitalist models, because to a large extent it doesn't really exist as a series of free choice decisions.

Yes, yes they are. If youthink the pill bottle situation I described above is natural market forces, I don't know what to tell you. A real limit on market forces (as opposed to a fake one like "people need this so we can get away with whatever price we want!") is that all of the theories require all involved parties to be informed, and there is no transparency in healthcare. And little desire for transparency. You've got someone in this thread celebrating that the NHS makes it so they don't even have to think. People get to make choices, some of those choices are expensive.

Secondly, if you mean by "more morphine" allowing more people to be treated when before they were just left to suffer, yes it did.

That was never the situation. Leaving someone to suffer because they lack insurance is not what happens, that's medical malpractice. We are not shy about sticking people unpayable debt for necessary healthcare, and that's not only bad on its own but might encourage people to decide for themselves not to seek healthcare, but leaving people to suffer is not a thing.

 

[Agema]

Yes, yes they are. If youthink the pill bottle situation I described above is natural market forces, I don't know what to tell you. A real limit on market forces (as opposed to a fake one like "people need this so we can get away with whatever price we want!") is that all of the theories require all involved parties to be informed, and there is no transparency in healthcare.

It is market forces. You have people who need a service, and healthcare providers. Insurance just works as insurance does anywhere to bridge the gap between the two, smoothing and collectivising costs because of risk of catastrophic events.

Then there are things like the companies that supply medicines and equipment. Healthcare providers are small and lack leverage so tend to pay high prices. So middlemen step in to buy drugs for multiple small providers, using leverage to get lower drug prices which they take a cut from and still are able to supply drugs cheaper for providers. You can say there should be transparency here, but is there transparency over the deal a carmaker signs to get parts and materials that the end buyer should know? Should you know what your local coffee shop paid to its coffee bean wholesaler? No, in either case. Lack of transparency (to the end user) about what corporations do with each other in their supply chains seems like the norm to me.

Lots of people aren't informed. But the average person who buys stuff doesn't have full information, either, that's why people buy things and regret it later, or wish they'd bought a different option be it cars, blenders, computers. Maybe your doctor sells you a diagnostic test that turns out pretty useless - well your car salesman can sell you A/C or alloy wheels you don't much benefit from either. Again, such is business.

You've got someone in this thread celebrating that the NHS makes it so they don't even have to think. People get to make choices, some of those choices are expensive.

The NHS makes it so you don't have to think about payment. All sorts of other considerations - place of treatment, type of treatment, etc. can be thought about.

 

[Baffle]

You've got someone in this thread celebrating that the NHS makes it so they don't even have to think. People get to make choices, some of those choices are expensive.

Sorry, I meant worry, I don't even have to worry about it. Though nice insinuation that I'm looking to be absolved of responsibility. I mean, obviously I'd rather not be ill; aside from it being unpleasant, I'm self-employed so being unable to work means not getting paid (so I'm actually highly responsible - no employee protections for me). But I don't have to worry about the financial aspects of my medical treatment, because I'll get what I need. And I won't be lumped with a huge bill afterwards (and before you moan about it, I'm an upper-rate tax payer, so yeah, I do pay for it through taxation, I'm not free-riding).

I was reading a book by a US-based healthcare professional (I forget the title but it was something about emergency medicine). Apparently a lot of people who can't get healthcare coverage (or have inadequate coverage) in the US will let their illness get worse and worse until they have to be treated as an emergency, because then they will actually receive treatment (though they still have to pay for it afterwards). Someone with a minor infection will have to wait until they're dying of sepsis to seek treatment. That's indefensible. And not a little crazy.