US 2024 Presidential Election

Agema

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I'd be curious what the plan to massively increase the supply of doctors is - it's a lot easier to crank up drug production or imaging equipment production than it is to crank up doctor production, after all.
Not really: the USA just needs to hand lots more foreigners with medical degrees a work permit.

Okay, they'll need to pass USMLE and perhaps other tests, so it would still take a few years. Although even then it doesn't absolutely have to: if really desired, some or all of that could be waived for doctors coming from certain countries where the medical qualifications and practice were deemed of sufficient standard. I severely doubt the average Australian or Swiss medical doctor is significantly inferior to the average American medical doctor.

That's theoretical, of course: it would admittedly be very difficult to do, because US doctors would shit a collective brick. Whilst their objection would undoubtedly be phrased in terms of endangering patient safety, what it would be endangering a great deal more is the artificial scarcity of medical doctors, which helps keep medical salaries (and status) eye-wateringly high.

Of course, the other reason the USA doesn't train anything like enough doctors is simply because it's incredibly expensive to train as a medical doctor, so the state pays for part of it. Except Americans really hate paying taxes, so the government is correspondingly stingy, and this creates a funding bottleneck. Which the USA compensates for by hiring foreign doctors.

You either have to have rationing and extended wait times or you have to massively increase supply if you massively increase the number of people meant to receive things.
The USA has healthcare rationing already: uninsured (i.e. poor) people can go fuck themselves. Granted, for the rich or otherwise well-insured, US healthcare is arguably the best in the world. And yet its overall healthcare outcomes are worse, for much higher cost. In fact, it pays roughly twice as much as many European countries that offer better quality service in terms of the national average. There are many reasons for this (inefficient bureaucracy, worker shortages = high salaries, drug costs, etc.) but some of it is simply inefficiency: in practice, the USA healthcare system actually spends a shit-ton of money on things that offer minimal to zero value benefit - unless you count rich people feeling pampered as a benefit.
 

gorfias

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Appears Kamala has started talking policy, wi
Not really: the USA just needs to hand lots more foreigners with medical degrees a work permit.

Okay, they'll need to pass USMLE and perhaps other tests, so it would still take a few years. Although even then it doesn't absolutely have to: if really desired, some or all of that could be waived for doctors coming from certain countries where the medical qualifications and practice were deemed of sufficient standard. I severely doubt the average Australian or Swiss medical doctor is significantly inferior to the average American medical doctor.

That's theoretical, of course: it would admittedly be very difficult to do, because US doctors would shit a collective brick. Whilst their objection would undoubtedly be phrased in terms of endangering patient safety, what it would be endangering a great deal more is the artificial scarcity of medical doctors, which helps keep medical salaries (and status) eye-wateringly high.

Of course, the other reason the USA doesn't train anything like enough doctors is simply because it's incredibly expensive to train as a medical doctor, so the state pays for part of it. Except Americans really hate paying taxes, so the government is correspondingly stingy, and this creates a funding bottleneck. Which the USA compensates for by hiring foreign doctors.



The USA has healthcare rationing already: uninsured (i.e. poor) people can go fuck themselves. Granted, for the rich or otherwise well-insured, US healthcare is arguably the best in the world. And yet its overall healthcare outcomes are worse, for much higher cost. In fact, it pays roughly twice as much as many European countries that offer better quality service in terms of the national average. There are many reasons for this (inefficient bureaucracy, worker shortages = high salaries, drug costs, etc.) but some of it is simply inefficiency: in practice, the USA healthcare system actually spends a shit-ton of money on things that offer minimal to zero value benefit - unless you count rich people feeling pampered as a benefit.
I've heard stories like this:

" In an effort to reduce a glut of physicians in the United States, the federal government will pay training hospitals hundreds of millions of dollars not to train doctors, The Washington Post reported Sunday. "
 

Agema

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I've heard stories like this:

" In an effort to reduce a glut of physicians in the United States, the federal government will pay training hospitals hundreds of millions of dollars not to train doctors, The Washington Post reported Sunday. "
Bear in mind that medicine has lots of different fields. After initial qualifying, physicians have to specialise, and that speciality training takes years. Thus a cardiologist cannot readily convert into a primary care physician or vice versa - it'll take years. Thus there can be an excess in some fields and a shortage in others, which is important to consider when thinking about a "glut". The basic reality is that the USA brings in huge numbers of doctors from abroad, meaning that overall it does not train enough of its own.

"Paying hospitals... not to train doctors" could be better described as compensating hospitals for the holes in their budgets that would be caused by cutting the training programs they run. Training needs staff and resources - cut the training and thus also the funding, the hospital still has costs from staff and facilities. At least until they can be canned or redeployed (both of which may also cost the hospital substantially, e.g. redundacy packages, renovations, etc.).
 

Chimpzy

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So they gonna drink that or let it stay in their fridge forever? This is beyond weird and just straight up disgusting.
... where are they getting Vance's sperm from? Is he selling it off as merchandise or something?
It's presumably just condensed milk, or lotion, or whatever other viscous white fluid that can pass for sperm. Still weird tho.
 

BrawlMan

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POS Trump is lying again. I may not be a Taylor Swift fan, but don't pull her into this. She ain't voting for Trump.



Go fuck yourself.

 

Agema

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POS Trump is lying again. I may not be a Taylor Swift fan, but don't pull her into this. She ain't voting for Trump.
That might backfire badly if it irritates Swift and she makes her disagreement with these claims public.

I was also interested it saying that Trump seems to have a bit of an obsession with Swift. Firstly, the narcissist in him probably can't help but enviously dwell on her fanbase and social media numbers. Secondly, I can't help but think that a lot of it is sexual fantasy: he's totally imaging himself banging her.
 
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Dirty Hipsters

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So despite how much he loves talking about tariffs Donald Trump apparently doesn't know what a tariff is or how it works.

1724091808383.png

 
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Kwak

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A pertinent comment worthy of copypasta...




Aeroknight_Z

·1 hr. ago·edited 48 min. ago
...
One of the most interesting things about the entire shit show that is the trump saga of American political history is that he brought to the surface much of the ugliness that has always been present but hidden under a few layers.

As a country, it is extremely easy to see who is or isn’t a good person these days. If they support trump or his allies in any way, you automatically know they’re trash and can comfortably remove them from your life because they support:
  • forced births
  • reduced education
  • lower wages
  • lower or no taxes for the rich
  • high taxes on anyone not wealthy
  • less accessible healthcare/childcare/eldercare
  • enforcing a state religion/forcing Christianity on everyone
  • destruction of the governments regulatory agencies so their wealthy friends can abuse the living shit out of the people.
  • closed borders
  • expanded militarization of police
  • expanded use of the death penalty in a system that cares more about just getting a conviction than actually getting the right culprit, while also fighting against the release of prisoners who are later exonerated by new evidence.
Fuck trump
Fuck his followers
Fuck his crony appointees
Fuck voters who “still aren’t sure” who to vote for
Fuck anyone who thinks they’re “middle of the road” and somehow land on supporting these out-and-out evil fascists.
Fuck the mouthpieces who scream about “DEI”, “woke”, or “unrestrained political correctness”
Fuck the conservative right as it exists today. They haven’t stood for fiscal responsibility or careful decision making for as long as I’ve been alive. Their entire game is undoing any sort of limitations on the richest and most powerful scumbags in the country.
Abolish the cruel right
Abolish the ineffective left
Eat the rich who look at their immoral hoards and feel they are owed more.
/EndRant
 
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Dirty Hipsters

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Or the picture could just be fake in general...
From what I've read the pictures are most likely real (or at least aren't AI generated), however it was probably just a couple of the cups getting passed around and people taking pictures with the same cup over and over again, rather than a bunch of people buying or making cups to pose with.

It's likely that someone came to a Trump rally with the cups and pranked attendees into posing with them...but the fact that people didn't feel weird about posing with a cup of fake JD Vance sperm is still pretty fucking weird. Then again, they also wore diapers in support of Trump so it's just another weird thing on the list of weird things.
 

tstorm823

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...they're being weird again.
I'll be honest, this stuff has actually put me off Tim Walz a bit. I was for Walz as the pick, in part just for not being Shapiro, but also for seeming to be an honest man (relative to the rest). Like, if you look at policy, he's probably further from me than most Democrats even, but if he can say he'll do things, get elected, and then actually do them, I'll take it. I'd take an honest socialist over a scheming liberal given the choice.

Kamala is making him look bad. Her inauthenticity is taking him down with her. They're doing bits like this for the camera, and it makes him look bad. People like the Tim Walz that wins congressional cook-offs with his taco tots, and should be put off by comedy sketch Time Walz who doesn't eat spices. It's a little thing, and it's not his fault when she's running the show, but it's a crap show.
 

BrawlMan

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Thaluikhain

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I was also interested it saying that Trump seems to have a bit of an obsession with Swift. Firstly, the narcissist in him probably can't help but enviously dwell on her fanbase and social media numbers. Secondly, I can't help but think that a lot of it is sexual fantasy: he's totally imaging himself banging her.
A number of creepy right wing guys have a weird obsession with her. Usually it's at least partly to slag her off to get attention. Andrew Tate and Kid Rock and Kanye West, for example. The sex thing, yeah, probably.
 
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