Your video, Full Frontal - Medicaid's Last Stand, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Well, the details are out and guess what? It is doom and gloom. Medicaid is going to be gutted. Who benefits from Medicaid?

64% of nursing home residents
39% of American children
60% of American children with disabilities
76% of all poor children in the US.

Meanwhile, tens millions of Americans will lose healthcare coverage. All this so that tax cuts can make the richest people in America even richer.

Are you sure you're a Christian? Last time I checked, Jesus didn't tell you to fuck the poor and make the rich even richer. This bill isn't just "mean" like Trump calls it; it is pure evil. This bill and the Republican party is a disgrace to Jesus and a disgrace to humanity.

@RFlagg

The CBO says medical insurance under Trumpcare will spike about 800% for Trump's core demographic (old, lower income, white people) a few months before the mid terms. He and the Republicans in Congress also want to eviscerate Medicare and Medicaid. How long will their voters stay on that ride?

I suspect in the next three years or so, Republican voters will get a real chance to see what they've been voting for all these years. Tax breaks for the rich, the shaft for everyone else. When cold hard reality hits their personal finances I'm hoping there will be a fundamental shift in American politics.

For that reason alone, Trump may actually end up doing some good for the country.

Big difference

The TEA party wants to follow the Constitution.
All other groups don't.

How do the justice democrats line up with the Constitution?

I checked you link to the JD platform - Some are worthy but still most are Un constitutional BS feel good look nonsense .


Pass a constitutional amendment to put an end to Washington corruption and bring about election reform. --- Never pass FOx watching hen house- only a smaller government helps this and term limits.


Defend free speech and expression.-Left are the oppressors
Ensure universal healthcare as a right. -Un constitutional
Create the new new deal.
Ensure universal education as a right. Un constitutional
Ensure universal healthcare as a right.Un constitutional
Make the minimum wage a living wage and tie it to inflation.Un constitutional
Defend and protect women’s rights. - So we dont cre about men?
Ensure paid vacation time, sick time, family leave, childcare. Un constitutional
Protect Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Un constitutional
Implement comprehensive immigration reform. agreed
Enact police reform. - Agreed arrest criminals
Combat homelessness. - bring back sanatoriums that liberals removed .

@ChaosEngine

lol.i just deleted a massive ramblomatic that broke down the entire history of the ACA.

figured i better just stick to basics.

many of the early protests you saw were partisan diehards who had been riled up by their favorite demagogue.

socalism!!
communism!!

but really the two great things from the ACA,and were provisions obama fought very hard for were:
pre-existing conditions
and while the ACA did not allow negotiating pharmaceutical prices,they DID put a cap on them.

and while the ACA was not perfect,far from it,those two provisions did a lot of good for people who suffered from long term illnesses.

but when anericans are asked pointed questions,without being directed for a specific goal,the majority support a single payer system.even republicans.

because you are right.it is a no-brainer.
americans already pay into a system:medicare/medicaid.
which operates on a 3% overhead.
and if basic,preventative care is offered early in peoples lives,the resulting savings totals into the 100's of billions.

and when presented to the american people like that,the majority are all for it.

*note( in the first three weeks of debating the ACA,the big 3 health insurance companies(blue cross,humana and cigna) spent a whopping 300 BILLION!

by the end it was almost a trillion they had spent to combat the passing of the ACA.

@worm
you do realize that you literally just made @Januari 's point...right?

and i get it...government spending BAD.
government can't do anything blah blah blah...gotcha.

but instead of using the VA as an example of government malfeasance and incompetence,why not use medicare/medicaid?

the VA is run by the DoD and considering that during rumsfelds tenure they lost over a trillion american dollars..POOF..where is that money? nope..can't find it.the pentagon is a mess.

medicare/medicaid is run by the dept of health,which runs on a 3% overhead,has the ability to negotiate with pharmacuticals,and is a system that is already in place AND we all already pay in to.

see,
i am not a fan of obamacare.
i think single payer is the way to go,and the only way to go.
people like to make the comparison of obamacare insurance with car insurance.
forgetting that driving is a privilege...
breathing is not.

so if we take the "profit motive" out of health care.then the majority of people NOT covered would not wait until something dire or life threatening was going down with them to head to the doctor.preventive care has been shown to reduce medical costs dramatically.
see:norway
see:denmark
see:france
see:britain

while i understand many liberals defense of obamacare,i see it only a half measure that can easily be remanded and/or gotten rid of all together.however unlikely that may be.the threat will be enough.

people forget that obamacare was basically written by the heritage foundation in 1992.a right wing think tank and not much was changed (though the pre-existing clause was a positive).

they forget that then Governor mitt romney implemented a similar health care system in massechusetts.which saw steady increases in premiums yearly.

and here is the thing that really eats at me.
it is mandatory.

so here is my prediction:
obamacare is not going anywhere.
while it may be used as apolitical football and health insurance companies will use (and already HAVE used) the threat of leaving due to little or no money (this is a lie) in order to force the government to raise their subsidies.

this is corporate welfare on a scale that over-shadows the bank bailouts of 2007.which at final tally was over 17 trillion.

so obamacare is going nowhere because it is the goose that lays the golden egg,and the gift that keeps on giving.

oh there will threats,and over-politicizing,and wringing of hands,and committee meetings.

but that will be just for show.
we put the fox in charge of the henhouse,and the fox is gonna make damn sure it is going nowhere.

Ohhhh, so you just reassert your point about Democrats never backing down, but Republicans do without any factual basis whatsoever! What a novel losing debate strategy!

Obamacare isn't perfect and needs to be fixed or replaced with something better. Not the Trumpian "something great" if it should be replaced, but something that is well thought out and addresses what Obamacare couldn't accomplish if the entire premise is systemically not going to work.

Did you see what I did there? I *gasp* recognize that sometimes things don't work! OMG! IT'S AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I also didn't say it's a "fucking disaster", because it isn't. If it were that, explain how the uninsured rate has dropped very significantly. It was never going to achieve 100% insurance rate. The only way that happens is with single payer.

Here's how stupid you are. You don't seem to understand that if Obamacare isn't the answer, you're just making single payer universal health care more likely to be enacted. The American people are not going to go back to being denied coverage because of a pre-existing condition. They're just not gonna. Obamacare is the least left policy you could possibly enact that would help control costs and decrease the number of people who are uninsured.

You can scream to the top of your lungs, but Obamacare was enacted to remedy real problems. I'm even sympathetic to the argument that those were real problems, but Obamacare isn't the answer, but if you're going to make that argument, you have to propose something that has historical precedent and rationale to solve those problems. And you simply don't have one.

So again, keep struggling in the quicksand until it swallows you whole, and single payer is enacted.

Your evidence about health insurance premiums is anecdotal, and quite frankly, you don't seem to understand that your numbers and description of what happened to her is absolutely ridiculous. You don't get on medicaid because your insurance premiums go up under Obamacare. You qualify for Medicaid because of a lack of income.

Secondly, the claim is absolutely ridiculous that her premiums went up that much. For data we have available, *unsubsidized* premiums for the lowest cost silver plans for data we have in the Obamacare exchanges was $257 a month for a single person.

http://kff.org/health-reform/issue-brief/analysis-of-2017-premium-changes-and-insurer-participation-in-the-affordable-care-acts-health-insurance-marke
tplaces/

If she qualifies for Medicaid, then surely she could go on a silver plan in the Obamacare exchanges and come out likely paying less. Oh, and, on top of that, she would EASILY qualify for federal subsidies if she qualified for medicaid.

Oh, and btw, without Obamacare, if health care companies decided to raise those premiums just to price gouge, what protection would she have? Not much. Obamacare insures that you can only take in so much that isn't spent on health care.

Your story is completely utterly full of crap on so many levels, it's clear you made it up.

I'm dismissing all your numbers are being unsubstantiated bullshit. Have premiums gone up? Sure have. Were they going up before Obamacare? Yep! There's a healthy debate about how much Obamacare is contributing to premium increases. Obamacare isn't perfect. I'm happy to discuss rationally what could be done to improve Obamacare, or another plausible alternative. But not with you, since you pull numbers out of your ass that easily are completely debunked.

BTW, FYI, Obamacare was not intended to lower premiums nor to completely eliminate the number of uninsured. It was to control costs in all forms and reduce the amount of uninsured, as well as reform the health care system to eliminate problems like being denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions, people having to declare bankruptcy due to medical bills, etc.

Some of its goals it succeeded in, and some not so much. That's a fair assessment at this point. Medical related bankruptcies have not declined. Being denied coverage due to a pre-existing condition has been eliminated. Premiums have gone up, but we simply don't have enough data to determine if they've slowed or accelerated since Obamacare was implemented. If you go by the immediate years after Obamacare was fully implemented, they slowed.

http://healthaffairs.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/Adler_Exhibit1.png

More recently, they've accelerated. It's important to note that health care costs are not solely determined by premiums alone. It's interesting you cherry picked premiums only to prove costs haven't been controlled because premiums are your best case to make that point. Copays, coinsurance, deductibles, prescription drugs, all those play a role. IE, if the average American pays more in premiums but less everywhere else, it's possible the net average is lower for total costs paid for health care.

These are complex topics that have no room for bringing in rose colored ideologically tinted lenses to force the outcome to be "a fucking disaster", where you'll bring in anecdotal evidence, some of which is completely utterly made up.

Just how far are you willing to make stuff up? Hillary Clinton, according to you, has never in the last 40 years done anything substantially positive.

REALLY?! Look, I understand not necessarily wanting her to be President. OK, fine. But that claim is absolutely ridiculous. Over $2 billion has been raised by the Clinton Foundation, and over 90% of that has gone to charitable work according to independent studies. Before you go down the path of "paid access", blah blah blah, even if that were true, the reality is $1.8 billion went to charitable works around the world through the Clinton Foundation Hillary Clinton helped to create and run.

That's not substantial?!?!

Dude, just stop. The only people who believe that BS are people within your bubble. You're not convincing anyone else who didn't already think Hillary Clinton personally killed Vince Foster. You're just making people like me think you're a complete loon.

Yep great healthcare, My sister went from 500/month to 1500/ month. She ended up on Medicaid. So much for looking out for those with preconditions.

My brothers went from 300 to 520 month. I work for a company which got a set aside from the mandate so I am untouched but my out of pocket went from 1200 to 5800.

Employment at 5% but when counting everyone who stopped looking then we are at 11%

Fucking great improvements.

@bobknight33
"socialism is not american"

i swear sometimes bob i dont know what the fuck you are talking about.

even when people put out,quite correctly i might add,that america has socialism in its economic structure.you respond like they didnt state anything.

it is like you live in this weird bubble and that any information that attempts to enter,that may possibly contradict your own personal understandings.

so when i say that you can have a socialist democracy,i am not just pulling that out of my ass:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_socialism

or that america already has socialist programs,and a majority of them YOU and your children enjoy:
https://mises.org/blog/bernie-sanders-right-us-already-socialist-country
(this is from the von mises institute.not exactly a bastion of liberal/progressive ideology.just in case you wanted to pull that tired and stupid response:well,they are a liberal website blah blah blah)

so if YOU think that socialism is SO bad and harmful and utterly un-american.let us revert to a pure capitalist society shall we?

here are the things that we will be saying goodbye to in your new capitalist america:
1.child labor laws.
thats right...your 8 yr old grandchild can now quit her fucking whining and get to fucking work.hmmmm...nothing like forced labor for the children working 14 hr shifts with no breaks,and 6 days a week.no work on sunday!
because:god.

2.minimum wage.
gone will be a basic minimum wage imposed by federal law.now we shall see the TRUE market place in action! of course,since there is surplus of available workers and there is no minimum.we can exploit the most desperate and vulnerable of our society and pay them 25 cents an hour!
take THAT china!

3.public schools.
education? only if your are part of the new american aristocracy! and what child will be going to school for an education? they are too busy working at the plant! pfffft..education.it is over-rated anyways.

4.fire and police.
now why would i spend my hard earned money in taxes, so my neighbor can be protected from fire damage and property damage? pay for your own protection fuckface! oh...you're too busy working 3 jobs,making .25 per hr? and your kids are working too? aww too bad loser.shoulda pulled yourself up by your bootstraps.

5.voting.(yep.you read that right)
i am a hard working american.who pays his taxes and owns property AND a business! and i JUST gave my employees a raise to .27 per hour! i have a RIGHT to vote! why should those non-property owning losers get a vote as well? i am obviously far more important than they are.whats next? women voting? the horror.

6.social security and medicaid.
now why would we waste time and resources providing a safety net for those losers again?how is it MY responsibility that they couldnt plan for their sunset years? i did give them a raise didnt i? fucking crybabies.and so what if they actually PAID into those programs.i feel better creating my own reality by calling those programs "entitlements",because it makes me feel morally superior to them.

7.public libraries.
there is that pesky "education" again.why should i be responsible for someone else family and their access to literature and information?what do you think i live in? a society? with neighbors? communities?this is just more government intrusion upon MY life and MY freedoms!

look man,i know i am being a cheeky shit in this comment,and i am not anti-capitalist..at all.
capitalism has brought great things for society as a whole..BUT..there is a difference between capitalism and unfettered capitalism,and what we have now is NOT capitalism.

it is socialism for the rich:
see: the bank bailout
see: corporate subsidies (welfare)
see:corporate tax breaks (welfare)
see:our current political system which has been totally over-run by corporate money.a corporate coup de'tat.
which we are all fed the bullshit line of how wonderful captialism is,but the only beneficiaries are corporations,wall street and the dept of defense.

the only people that get to engage in capitalism are the poor and middle class,because actually having to compete is for suckers and losers.

"Its been under construction since the 70s with subsequent generations adding to it and its getting bigger every year..." I didn't know that beavers also have a medicare/medicaid program

Not true, at least not the primary reason.

The reason they're high is because pharmaceutical companies can get away with charging high prices and reaping high margins, because of their strong competitive position, margins some 50% higher in the US than the EU.

Source

See page 12 - Pre R&D margins are 65% in the US to 43% in the EU.

A big reason for this is the lack of a universal public option, only Medicare exists for the elderly, Medicaid for the poor. With a universal public option like in most developed countries, the monopsony buying power of the government for a much larger part of the population would force down margins.

No dental insurance (family is lending /giving me the money) but I do have state medicaid(ins). My understanding is that if i get hit by a car im good to go but when it comes to fixing my teeth no such luck.

Or he counted the 6 million people he claims signed up for medicaid in that 9 million number.

@enoch, thanks for your comments. I thought it better to respond directly to your profile than on the video, about which we're no longer discussing directly. Sorry for the length of this reply, but for such a complex topic as this one, a thorough and plainly-stated response is needed.

You wrote: "the REAL question is "what is the purpose of a health care system"? NOT "which market system should we implement for health care"?"

The free market works best for any and all goods and services, regardless of their aim or purpose. Healthcare is no different from any other good or service in this respect.

(And besides, tell me why there's no money in preventative care? Do nutritionists, physical trainers/therapists, psychologists, herbalists, homeopaths, and any other manner of non-allopathic doctors not get paid and make profit in the marketplace? Would not a longer life not lead to a longer-term 'consumer' anyway? And would preventative medicine obliterate the need for all manner of medical treatment, or would there not still remain a need to diagnose, treat, and cure diseases, even in the presence of a robust preventative medical market?)

I realize that my argument is not the "popular" one (and there are certainly many reasons for this, up to and including a lot of disinformation about what constitutes a "free market" health care system). But the way to approach such things is not heuristically, but rationally, as one would approach any other economic issue.

You write "see where i am going with this? It's not so easy to answer and impose your model of the "free market" at the same time."

Yes, as a matter of fact, it is. The purpose of the healthcare system is to provide the most advanced medical service and care possible in the most efficient and affordable way possible. Only a free competitive market can do this with the necessary economic calculations in place to support its progress. No matter how you slice it, a socialized approach to healthcare invariably distorts the market (with its IP fees, undue regulations, and a lack of any accurate metrics on both the supply-side and on the demand-side which helps to determine availability, efficacy, and cost).

"you cannot have "for-profit" and "health-care" work in conjunction with any REAL health care."

Sorry, but this is just absurd. What else can I say?

"but if we use your "free market" model against a more "socialized model".which model would better serve the public?"

The free market model.

"if we take your "free market" model,which would be under the auspices of capitalism."

Redundant: "free market under the auspices of free market."

"disease is where the money is at,THAT is where the profit lies,not in preventive medicine."

Only Krugman-style Keynesians would say that illness is more profitable than health (or war more profitable than peace, or that alien invasions and broken windows are good for the economy). They, like you, aren't taking into account the One Lesson in Economics: look at how it affects every group, not just one group; look at the long term effects, not just short term ones. You're just seeing that, in the short-run, health will be less profitable for medical practitioners (or some pharmaceuticals) that are currently working in the treatment of illness. But look at every group outside that small group and at the long run and you can see that health is more profitable than illness overall. The market that profits more from illness will have to adapt, in ways that only the market knows for sure.

Do you realize that the money you put into socialized medicine (Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, etc.) is money you deplete from prevention entrepreneurship?

(As an aside, I wonder, why do so many people assume that the socialized central planners have some kind of special knowledge or wisdom that entrepreneurs do not? And why is there the belief that unlike entrepreneurs, socialist central planners are not selfishly motivated but always act in the interest of the "common good?" Could this be part of the propagandized and indoctrinated fear that's implicit in living in a socialized environment? Why do serfs (and I'm sure that, at some level, people know that's what they are) love the socialist central planners more than they love themselves? Complex questions about self-esteem and captive minds.)

If fewer people get sick, the market will then demand more practitioners to move from treating illness into other areas like prevention, being a prevention doctor or whatever. You're actually making the argument for free market here, not against it. Socialized bureaucratically dictated medicine will not adapt to the changing needs as efficiently or rapidly as a free market can and would. If more people are getting sick, then we'll need more doctors to treat them. If fewer people are getting sick because preventive medicine takes off, then we'll have more of that type of service. If a socialized healthcare is mandated, then we will invariably have a glut of allopathic doctors, with little need for their services (and we then have the kinds of problems we see amongst doctors who are coerced -- by the threat of losing their license -- to take medicaid and then lie on their reports in order to recoup their costs, e.g., see the article linked here.)

Meanwhile, there has been and will remain huge profits to be made in prevention, as the vitamin, supplements, alternative medicine, naturopathy, exercise and many other industries attest to. What are you talking about, that there's no profit in preventing illness? (In a manner of speaking, that's actually my bread and butter!) If you have a way to prevent illness, you will have more than enough people buying from you, people who don't want to get sick. (And other services for the people who do.) Open a gym. Become a naturopath. Teach stress management, meditation, yoga, zumba, whatever! And there are always those who need treatment, who are sick, and the free market will then have an accurate measure of how to allocate the right resources and number of such practitioners. This is something that the central planners (under socialized services) simply cannot possibly do (except, of course, for the omniscient ones that socialists insist exist).

You wrote "cancer,anxiety,obesity,drug addiction.
all are huge profit generators and all could be dealt with so much more productively and successfully with preventive care,diet and exercise and early diagnosis."

But they won't as long as you have centrally planned (socialized) medicine. The free market forces practitioners to respond to the market's demands. Socialized medicine does not. Entrepreneurs will (as they already have) exploit openings for profit in prevention (without the advantage of regulations which distort the markets) and take the business away from treatment doctors. If anything, doctors prevent preventative medicine from getting more widespread by using government regulations to limit what the preventive practitioners do. In fact, preventive medicine is so profitable that it has many in the medical profession lobbying to curtail it. They are losing much business to alternative/preventive practitioners. They lobby to, for example, prevent herb providers from stating the medical/preventive benefits of their herbs. They even prevent strawberry farmers to tout the health benefits of strawberries! It is the state that is slowing down preventive medicine, not the free market! In Puerto Rico, for example, once the Medical Association lost a bit to prohibit naturopathy, they effectively outlawed acupuncture by successfully getting a law passed that requires all acupuncturists to be medical doctors. Insanity.

If you think there is no profit in preventative care or exercise, think GNC and Richard Simmons, and Pilates, and bodywork, and my own practice of psychotherapy. Many of the successful corporations (I'm thinking of Google and Pixar and SalesForce and Oracle, etc.) see the profit and value in preventative care, which is why they have these "stay healthy" programs for their employees. There's more money in health than illness. No doubt.

Or how about the health food/nutrition business? Or organic farming, or whole foods! The free market could maybe call for fewer oncologists and for more Whole Foods or even better natural food stores. Of course, we don't know the specifics, but that's actually the point. Only the free market knows (and the omniscient socialist central planners) what needs to happen and how.

Imagination! We need to get people to use it more.

You wrote: "but when we consider that the 4th and 5th largest lobbyists are the health insurance industry and the pharmaceutical industry is it any wonder that america has the most fucked up,backwards health care system on the planet."

You're actually making my point here. In a free market, pharmaceutical companies cannot monopolize what "drugs" people can or cannot take, sell or not sell, and cannot prevent natural alternatives from being promoted. Only with state intervention (by way of IP regulations, and so forth) can they do so.

Free market is not corporatism. Free market is not crony capitalism. (More disinformation that needs to be lifted.)

So you're not countering my free market position, you're countering the crony capitalist position. This is a straw man argument, even if in this case you might not have understood my position in the first place. You, like so many others, equate "capitalism" with cronyism or corporatism. Many cannot conceive of a free market that is free from regulation. So folks then argue against their own interests, either for or against "fascist" vs. "socialist" medicine. The free market is, in fact, outside these two positions.

You wrote: "IF we made medicare available to ALL american citizens we would see a shift from latter stage care to a more aggressive preventive care and early diagnosis. the savings in money (and lives) would be staggering."

I won't go into medicare right now (It is a disaster, and so is the current non-free-market insurance industry. See the article linked in my comment above.)

You wrote "this would create a huge paradigm shift here in america and we would see results almost instantly but more so in the coming decades."

I don't want to be a naysayer but, socialism is nothing new. It has been tried (and failed) many times before. The USSR had socialized medicine. So does Cuba (but then you may believe the Michael Moore fairytale about medicine in Cuba). It's probably better to go see in person how Cubans live and how they have no access to the places that Moore visited.

You wrote: "i feel very strongly that health should be a communal effort.a civilized society should take care of each other."

Really, then why try to force me (or anyone) into your idea of "good" medicine? The free market is a communal effort. In fact, it is nothing else (and nothing else is as communal as the free market). Central planning, socialized, top-down decision-making, is not. Never has been. Never will be.

Voluntary interactions is "taking care of each other." Coercion is not. Socialism is coercion. It cannot "work" any other way. A free market is voluntary cooperation.

Economic calculation is necessary to avoid chaos, whatever the purpose of a service. This is economic law. Unless the purpose is to create chaos, you need real prices and efficiency that only the free market can provide.

I hope this helps to clarify (and not confuse) what I wrote on @eric3579's profile.

The Medicaid program has always been socialized. Fraud isn't something unique to Socialism or Socialistic organizations ya know, you have to be vigilant and have independent reviews.

The real shame is that we're the Richest country in the world and our healthcare is fucking terrible in comparison to other poorer countries with socialized medicine.