newtboy said:

Any follow-up information?
Scary stuff, if the trucks can't stop in time to avoid a highly visible explosion and fire, they clearly couldn't stop in time if traffic stopped. This video should be a part of truck driver training.

heropsycho said:

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, *subsidized* 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.

heropsycho said:

I'm not a liberal, nor a conservative. I'm a pragmatic moderate.

Of course, ANYONE to the left of you is a "shit liberal". There are more of you every day because the electorate is being polarized.

Unfortunately for you, there's WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY more "shit liberals" everyday than people of your "ilk". Also, there's WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY more people who aren't of your ilk than are, and you keep pushing everyone who isn't as irrationally conservative as you away to the Democratic Party.

Remember, people like you caused Trump to get nominated instead of Kasich or Bush, and you might have won with either of them vs Clinton. But no, you're a man of principle! And those principles led you to Donald Trump, the candidate who could never be elected, even with all the political winds from circumstance at his back. Even against the second most disliked major party nominee, only to Trump himself!

I don't expect you to bow down. I expect you to drive yourself crazy as you'll continue to fight the insane fight while you lose election after election, and destroy the Republican Party as you keep it hostage under the threat of primarying any rational members they have left, handing election after election to Democrats until conservatives and the Republican Party become irrelevant and powerless.

That's what you can do. You keep that fight up! Never give up, never surrender! No matter how far you feel yourself sinking in the quicksand, between millennials completely rejecting your ideology, growing populations of minorities who reject you, demographics that show that eventually large electoral vote rich states like Texas will become competitive and will flip and turn blue. Nevermind the GOP has managed to win the popular vote one time in the last six elections, soon to be a seventh. Next time, keep thinking going down this path will work!

But don't you stop fighting! Keep struggling! I expect nothing less! This isn't about this election anymore. It's about wreaking havoc against your own side for decades to come! Nominate Trump in 2020 again! Primary the traitor Paul Ryan!

Mwa ha ha ha ha ha!

MWA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

rich_magnet said:

Paul: Do we have snakesign?
Stilgar: like we have never seen, Muad'ib.

Payback said:

Big difference in informed consent.