I believe there are only two kinds of people. People who believe in the individual and people who believe in the society. Liberals believe in society's responsibility to the individual, conservatives believe in individual responsibility to society.
Liberals see categories of people. Women, men, asian, old, young, black, white, gay, lesbian, christian, atheist, etc. Liberal ideals have created the concepts of hate crimes and affirmative action. The more disadvantaged you are the more preference you deserve. The penalties for crimes against you depend upon your "protected class" status. Conservatives view murder as murder and rape as rape. The punishment should fit the crime not the protected status of the victim and hiring should be based upon qualifications not preference points for being a paralyzed, blind, retarded, minority female.
You may consider me to be insensitive because I am not sensitive to the liberal defined categories and I know conservatives in every category you can imagine. Conservative homosexual female minorities are more readily accepted by me. My children's school is 3-1 minority to white but I wouldn't move her if I could. I don't see her class as 8 black, 3 hispanic, 1 arab and 3 white, I see an A rated school.
Hardworking people don't want your preference points and political correct sensitivity just as legal immigrants are overwhelmingly opposed to amnesty.
There are only two kinds of people. Those who believe in the the individual and those who believe society owes individuals something based upon their pigeon hole.
Only a racist/sexist would consider a minority female disadvantaged. What's so disadvantageous about being a female and a minority?
Posts: 1495 | Registered: Mar 2009
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posted
Given your post there, would you find it interesting to note that 19th century conservative sociologists were the ones who invented most of the society crippling notions of racial inferiority that we've been trying to overcome for the last century and a half?
The idea that conservatives believe in individuals over society is a load of crap. In fact, I'd argue that as often as not, liberals are arguing for the protection of individuals from society, while conservatives argue that people should sink or swim regardless of the waves society sends their way, or how society unnaturally creates inequalities that affect that sink or swim outcome.
You're just wrong. It's a scary wrong too.
By the way, I live in a suburb just a couple miles north of Detroit. My high school was mostly white, though one of my best friends growing up was black, and we had a small but prominent contingent of black students from neighboring cities. But there is more than one black family living on my block, my classes at Oakland U have a solid percentage of black students that I interact with on a daily basis, and I'd bet you everything I own that you've never worked at a place as diverse as the restaurant I work at. So good luck with the ad homs.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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C'mon guys. Lay off, I don't understand why you're giving Mal such a hard time when he actually has poor neighbours and black neighbours. Probably works with them too.
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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"8 black, 3 hispanic, 1 arab and 3 white, I see an A rated school."
You know the numbers exactly? All this constant harping on your open mindedness really makes me think thou doth protest too much.
And as I've said again, and again, and again, you only like those people if they contradict some stereotype you think they fit into, are actually like you, and thus affirm the superiority of your worldview. It should not edify you to find that you can talk to black people. It should be so normal that you find it pointless to talk about. Yet you talk about it constantly; it is constantly on your mind. I wonder why that is.
quote:
Only a racist/sexist would consider a minority female disadvantaged. What's so disadvantageous about being a female and a minority?
Simply being a minority presents no disadvantage. Being born into institutionalized class division is a disadvantage.
This is simply the part of the equation I have found you incapable of completing: we live in a society with a history. The different peoples of our society have different histories. Those histories, and how they intertwine, continue to effect economic development and education among all Americans. Inasmuch as we are "in it together" in the "melting pot," it's a melting pot because it's composed of different kinds of people- not because everybody is just the same, but because we are all different.
You don't fully comprehend why your viewpoint is so distasteful to others. It's because by promoting the notion that all people born everywhere have equal opportunity to succeed in our society is not only foolish, but helps to promote the notion that minority populations are inferior, whether physiologically or spiritually, to those people who do succeed. So even in your adulation of "the good ones," and your talk about your neighbors who only "appear" to be black but are in fact decent, or your talk about Jamaicans who are racist (which you get a kick out of and like, which should tell you something, and I'm amazed it doesn't) in fact your primary interest is in promoting a conservative viewpoint that says, innevitably, that anyone who is poor simply deserves to be poor, and anybody who is rich and advantaged surely deserves what he has as well. If we all turn out to have equal opportunities in life, you get to feel much less guilty about a) hating black people, and b) getting things that you see other people not getting. You also get to rail against blacks who get jobs you want, and blame the system for ignoring your natural superiority for political reasons. You have done so on this board, totally unconvincingly.
quote:You may consider me to be insensitive because I am not sensitive to the liberal defined categories and I know conservatives in every category you can imagine.
I don't consider you insensitive. I consider you profoundly ignorant. You try to demonstrate how egalitarian you are about subjects like race, class, sexuality, but then you reinforce them with these fairweather sociopolitical and racial notions which appear to have been constructed in whole cloth from bizarre notions that have been hallucinated from thin air.
Let's take what was on the last page, for instance: rock and roll is negro music to today's liberals. This makes no sense and will leave most liberals just scratching their heads going 'where the hell did he pull that one from?' — it's hard to follow you when every fourth or fifth statement out of you is so nonsequitorial and obviously oblivious.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Conservatives view murder as murder and rape as rape. The punishment should fit the crime not the protected status of the victim and hiring should be based upon qualifications not preference points for being a paralyzed, blind, retarded, minority female.
1. the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club
2. we also totally went over your practically neurotic issues with minorities getting the jobs you wanted and considered yourself more qualified for, bro.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
Lets be fair. I'll break mine down for you.
quote:I believe there are only two kinds of people.
I believe that there all dichotomies are false dichotomies. There are liberals, moderates, conservatives, social liberals who are fiscal conservatives, fiscal liberals who are social fascists, etc, etc.
Limiting the world into two classes of people, then using that classification system to say that you despise people who a classification system invalidates your arguments.
quote: People who believe in the individual and people who believe in the society. Liberals believe in society's responsibility to the individual, conservatives believe in individual responsibility to society.
Interesting perspective. Yet many fiscal conservatives argue that the individual has NO responsibility to "society". In fact, they say that the individual only has responsibility to themselves. How can the argument that you should cut my taxes so I can save money be described as an individual responsibility to society?
quote:Liberals see categories of people. Women, men, asian, old, young, black, white, gay, lesbian, christian, atheist, etc.
No. Liberals try to move beyond those categories. They want equal opportunities for all based on ability. Yet its entrenched racial conservatives who say, "Women can't do this. Black men are crooks so I won't hire them." What proof do you have that Liberals want to divide people on lines and conservatives just care about ability? IS it the Liberal goal of removing "Don't ask, don't tell" and the Conservative goal of removing all gay service people, unconcerned about their abilities, but because of a label? Or perhaps its the Conservative attempts to stop women from serving aboard submarines despite their abilities to do so?
quote: Liberal ideals have created the concepts of hate crimes and affirmative action. The more disadvantaged you are the more preference you deserve. The penalties for crimes against you depend upon your "protected class" status.
Hmmm. Hate crimes mean that the person responsible is motivated by hatred of a group, not specific individual. It seems to be laws passed to stop biases based on these false categorizations. You only see it as a racist thing because Klan folks get in more trouble for lynching someone than a robber of any race would get for shooting someone in a robbery. Yet in this democracy we seem to think that crimes inspired by hatred are worse than crimes inspired by greed.
quote: Conservatives view murder as murder and rape as rape. The punishment should fit the crime not the protected status of the victim
unless the victim is white and the perpetrator is a minority. Then the punishment has systematically been much worse.
I can go on, but I have real work to do.
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posted
Damn. I always wondered why I couldn't tell the difference between murder and cake. Huh. The more you know...
Posts: 1945 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:just as legal immigrants are overwhelmingly opposed to amnesty.
This is interesting. I've found it to be true among many of the legal immigrants I know; the viewpoint that they respected and followed the laws of the country they were immigrating into, and illegal immigrants hadn't, so they don't deserve equal treatment to legal immigrants.
quote: Only a racist/sexist would consider a minority female disadvantaged. What's so disadvantageous about being a female and a minority?
I don't even understand the logic you're employing in your first sentence. The reason being a female and minority is disadvantageous is because sexism and racism exist. They don't cease to exist just because you declare that *you* don't have any racist or sexist views.
Posts: 241 | Registered: Nov 2009
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quote:just as legal immigrants are overwhelmingly opposed to amnesty.
This is interesting. I've found it to be true among many of the legal immigrants I know; the viewpoint that they respected and followed the laws of the country they were immigrating into, and illegal immigrants hadn't, so they don't deserve equal treatment to legal immigrants.
As someone who has lived as both a legal and illegal immigrant, I can tell it sounds like a whole lot of crap to me.
The reason many people are illegal is because they are poor and desperate. They can't wait years to enter the US and may not have the resources or education necessary to find a place to live and a job that will satisfy the immigration people. That has even been hard for me where I live now, and I'm well educated, and do have resources.
So go and ask someone who entered the US legally, and you're probably talking to someone who had at least the luxury of some financial resources, education, etc. Would it surprise you that these people would look down on a despised class of working immigrants with no papers? Do you think they would be proud of that association?
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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posted
Our nation should welcome people with, as you say.."some financial resources, education, etc". It isn't good for our nation to import uneducated poor people. In fact, our laws provide for asylum and contribution.
I disagree with your second statement. They can wait years, in fact they can wait forever. America isn't big enough to take all the needy people around the world who, "just can't wait" to escape their crappy countries. We have an immigration policy for a reason. We could open our borders to all South American immigrants and our population would double or triple in short order yet our nation would collapse under the weight of the uneducated and poor.
With our current unemployment rate, everyone who crosses that border illegally is either taking a job from a citizen or adding to the ranks of the unemployed at the welfare office. Neither is good for our nation or it's citizens.
Posts: 1495 | Registered: Mar 2009
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No, Mal. Look it's not a matter of opinion what happens because of illegal immigration. Immigrants do not "take" jobs from citizens, they do jobs that citizens will not do, at wages that citizens will not accept. They add tremendous value to the American economy in the places where they are found. The idea that they hurt the economy is totally preposterous. They simply don't.
quote: We could open our borders to all South American immigrants and our population would double or triple in short order yet our nation would collapse under the weight of the uneducated and poor.
It would be helpful if you would be willing to stop playing so fast and loose with virtually any piece of actual data you might be even passingly familiar with. South America has a total population of less than 400 million. That means in order to double our population "in short order" 3/4 of the entire south American population would have to move to the US. You find this likely? Even if you include all of Latin America, including Mexico, central America, and South America, you get a little over double our own population. That means in order to "triple" our population, ALL latin American peoples would have to immigrate to the United States.
So stop, for the upteenth time, spewing mindless garbage out of your mouth hole.
posted
Once again Mal you are confronted with your nonsense, and you forget the thread exists. I ought to back and try to collect every post of mine or someone else's that you have pointedly ignored once all your garbage as fallen by the wayside.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:Originally posted by malanthrop: I believe there are only two kinds of people. People who believe in the individual and people who believe in the society. Liberals believe in society's responsibility to the individual, conservatives believe in individual responsibility to society.
Well... I don't think that's true at all. Kind of backwards, really. Liberals believe that society has to take care of individuals, but they believe that individuals only really exist as a part of a greater society. Conservatives (real conservatives) believe in an individual's responsibility to themselves and to other individuals, but they don't see individuals as being responsible to some amorphous thing called "society".
quote:Originally posted by malanthrop: You may consider me to be insensitive because I am not sensitive to the liberal defined categories and I know conservatives in every category you can imagine. Conservative homosexual female minorities are more readily accepted by me.
::raises hand::
quote:Originally posted by malanthrop: There are only two kinds of people. Those who believe in the the individual and those who believe society owes individuals something based upon their pigeon hole.
Or that individuals owe society something based upon the whim of whoever is in office.
quote:Originally posted by malanthrop: Only a racist/sexist would consider a minority female disadvantaged. What's so disadvantageous about being a female and a minority?
In all honesty, you don't see a problem when women get paid less for the same exact work as men?
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: As someone who has lived as both a legal and illegal immigrant, I can tell it sounds like a whole lot of crap to me.
The reason many people are illegal is because they are poor and desperate. They can't wait years to enter the US and may not have the resources or education necessary to find a place to live and a job that will satisfy the immigration people. That has even been hard for me where I live now, and I'm well educated, and do have resources.
So go and ask someone who entered the US legally, and you're probably talking to someone who had at least the luxury of some financial resources, education, etc. Would it surprise you that these people would look down on a despised class of working immigrants with no papers? Do you think they would be proud of that association?
You say that like there's some inherent right to immigrate. And that if you can't do it legally, well, by damn, you're entitled to do it illegally, because who has a right to tell you you can't immigrate.
That's a funny way of thinking.
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
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quote:You say that like there's some inherent right to immigrate. And that if you can't do it legally, well, by damn, you're entitled to do it illegally, because who has a right to tell you you can't immigrate.
That's a funny way of thinking.
quote: Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land to land; Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame. "Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: As someone who has lived as both a legal and illegal immigrant, I can tell it sounds like a whole lot of crap to me.
The reason many people are illegal is because they are poor and desperate. They can't wait years to enter the US and may not have the resources or education necessary to find a place to live and a job that will satisfy the immigration people. That has even been hard for me where I live now, and I'm well educated, and do have resources.
So go and ask someone who entered the US legally, and you're probably talking to someone who had at least the luxury of some financial resources, education, etc. Would it surprise you that these people would look down on a despised class of working immigrants with no papers? Do you think they would be proud of that association?
You say that like there's some inherent right to immigrate. And that if you can't do it legally, well, by damn, you're entitled to do it illegally, because who has a right to tell you you can't immigrate.
That's a funny way of thinking.
I do believe there is an inherent right to leave one's home country under the right circumstances.
I also believe that a country like the United States has a responsibility to take in those who feel the need to leave home, be it for political asylum, or for a chance to become educated.
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I find it hard to lose much sleep over illegal immigration anyways. It is not like Europeans asked the native Americans if they could immigrate only a couple hundred years ago, so I was very fine about Chinese immigrating to Canada and the United States even in the days they had to flout the Chinese Head Tax and the Chinese Exclusion Act respectively.
Nowadays, immigration policies are a bit better so the morality of evading immigration law is a bit more grey. But in those days? I would have broken it for sure.
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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quote:Originally posted by Lisa: You say that like there's some inherent right to immigrate. And that if you can't do it legally, well, by damn, you're entitled to do it illegally, because who has a right to tell you you can't immigrate.
That's a funny way of thinking.
You've never immigrated illegal. I know you well enough to know you would chafe at being told there was something you couldn't do, without being giving a decent reason why that was.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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According to my dad, who grew up on a farm, once upon a time there were migrant work visas, and those who wanted to cross the border to work on farms then go back home could do so freely and have enough money to send to their families and live out the rest of the year. PLUS they were protected by law because they were here under the law. We don't have to have extra immigration. Just more open borders for work purposes.
Posts: 3495 | Registered: Feb 2000
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Considering the current state of affairs is a situation that bleeds money into useless enforcement of obtuse laws, while actually *promoting* the abuse of workers who contribute to the American economy through their work and what taxes they pay (mostly sales tax), I'd say that's a plum idea. There are millions of illegals in America already, so whatever your ideology, enforcement of the current scheme is right out. It has never even been convincingly shown that such immigration patterns hurt our economy in the long run. Two centuries of history tell us that it's not likely.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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posted
Fact Check: Premiums would rise under Obamacare EDIT: I think the article is saying the premiums will go up but for most households they will receive tax credits to offset the cost.
posted
DarkKnight, I think the critical bit of information that the headline and your post are missing is that premiums have already been rising. The way it is stated makes it seem like premiums would rise because of the new healthcare reform instead of rising more slowly and leveling off.
Do you see how this is misleading?
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
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The numbers I read indicated that within a few years, without reform they would go up some huge amount, but with reform, they would go up like half that huge number. So, it isn't a question of will they go up, but how much.
Posts: 2223 | Registered: Mar 2008
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Yes, Lisa, but you would say that for Obama-puppy-rescue or Obama-ice-cream-for-orphans, so it's not like your opinion carries much weight.
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From what I understand, we're looking at our current health care system going from broken to explosive collapse some time in next 15 years if drastic steps aren't taken. The way it works now, costs are pooled together, so that, essentially, low risk healthy young people are subsidizing everyone else. However, as we've seen in isolated cases due to the recession, there comes a point where the healthy people who don't use the system that much stop buying insurance or go for catastrophic coverage only. So, in order to cover costs, the insurance premiums shoot up on the more risky people who are left.
Right now, if nothing else changes, people are projecting insurance rates to continue inflating way out of proportion to monetary inflation, which makes it look like at some point along the line, even the healthy who can afford it are going to find not paying for insurance a more cost-effective option. If we don't work something out reasonably soon, the next time this comes up, we'll be less in a health care crisis and more in a post-apocalyptic health care situation.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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I would like to see some reform that give those who can't afford it better health care. My dad (with a heart problem and some back/hip pain) is self employed, working as hard as he can. My mom has some auto immune diseases and is also taking care of my granddad, so she can't go to work. I wish there was something to help them out a little, you know? And if someone had to be hospitalized, it would devastate their economics.
But I really don't like the reform I'm seeing. Though there is a lot of hoo and ha about how terrible insurance companies are, this health care reform is not about getting people health care, but about getting them insurance.
Weird. You know, actual costs of medicine has not gone up nearly as much as insurance premiums have.
The opinion of the ones that we actually pay to take care of us is being largely ignored. Medicare doesn't pay primary care doctors enough as it is, and now it is being cut, and Obamacare will make that even worse. It will be nearly impossible to be a practicing primary care physician under Obamacare. They will be forced, for the sake of making a living, to quit.
So... pushing doctors out and adding patients in is going to increase the quality of America's health care? Strange idea, that.
I'd really like to see more accountability from the insurance companies - both health care and malpractice. I think that, and tort reform, are the first steps. THEN we can see what else is appropriate for the government to fix.
And here is a tangent idea: get rid of the idea that corporations have the same rights as human individuals do.
And I'm angry about this "deem and pass" thing being pulled and these private conversations Obama is having with those who oppose. Sorry, but it is really creepy.
Posts: 3495 | Registered: Feb 2000
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quote: It will be nearly impossible to be a practicing primary care physician under Obamacare. They will be forced, for the sake of making a living, to quit.
That sounds like wildly inaccurate fear mongering to me. Where are you getting that from?
quote:And I'm angry about this "deem and pass" thing being pulled and these private conversations Obama is having with those who oppose. Sorry, but it is really creepy.
It's just a method of bundling two bills into one vote and it's nothing new. Its an up or down vote on two bills structured so that it's not possible to pass one bill without passing the other. I don't see why that should be creepy. If a legislator doesn't like either bill they are free to vote no and neither will pass.
Posts: 3275 | Registered: May 2007
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quote:And I'm angry about this "deem and pass" thing being pulled and these private conversations Obama is having with those who oppose. Sorry, but it is really creepy.
It's just a method of bundling two bills into one vote and it's nothing new. Its an up or down vote on two bills structured so that it's not possible to pass one bill without passing the other. I don't see why that should be creepy. If a legislator doesn't like either bill they are free to vote no and neither will pass.
Yes? How many votes are needed to pass it now?
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quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky: Yes, Lisa, but you would say that for Obama-puppy-rescue or Obama-ice-cream-for-orphans, so it's not like your opinion carries much weight.
I beg to differ. If I deem it so, then apparently it is so.
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quote:Yes? How many votes are needed to pass it now?
I'm not sure I understand your question. The number of votes required is the number required to pass any bill.
Posts: 3275 | Registered: May 2007
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quote:And I'm angry about this "deem and pass" thing being pulled and these private conversations Obama is having with those who oppose. Sorry, but it is really creepy.
It's just a method of bundling two bills into one vote and it's nothing new. Its an up or down vote on two bills structured so that it's not possible to pass one bill without passing the other. I don't see why that should be creepy. If a legislator doesn't like either bill they are free to vote no and neither will pass.
Perhaps one silver lining of all this is that the public will become more aware of the messy nature of legislation.
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
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quote:Perhaps one silver lining of all this is that the public will become more aware of the messy nature of legislation.
Most of the critics seem to think that something particularly novel is happening here and there is no actual vote occurring. What's so dismaying is that the people that are calling for a normal up or down vote on the separate bills are the same people who threatened to filibuster any such vote in the past.
It's hard to sympathize with claims about using parliamentary procedures to get something done when it's happening in response to the use of parliamentary procedures to prevent something from being done.
Posts: 3275 | Registered: May 2007
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
quote:Originally posted by Amka: Hey, thanks guys.
I would like to see some reform that give those who can't afford it better health care. My dad (with a heart problem and some back/hip pain) is self employed, working as hard as he can. My mom has some auto immune diseases and is also taking care of my granddad, so she can't go to work. I wish there was something to help them out a little, you know? And if someone had to be hospitalized, it would devastate their economics.
But I really don't like the reform I'm seeing. Though there is a lot of hoo and ha about how terrible insurance companies are, this health care reform is not about getting people health care, but about getting them insurance.
Weird. You know, actual costs of medicine has not gone up nearly as much as insurance premiums have.
The opinion of the ones that we actually pay to take care of us is being largely ignored. Medicare doesn't pay primary care doctors enough as it is, and now it is being cut, and Obamacare will make that even worse. It will be nearly impossible to be a practicing primary care physician under Obamacare. They will be forced, for the sake of making a living, to quit.
So... pushing doctors out and adding patients in is going to increase the quality of America's health care? Strange idea, that.
I'd really like to see more accountability from the insurance companies - both health care and malpractice. I think that, and tort reform, are the first steps. THEN we can see what else is appropriate for the government to fix.
And here is a tangent idea: get rid of the idea that corporations have the same rights as human individuals do.
And I'm angry about this "deem and pass" thing being pulled and these private conversations Obama is having with those who oppose. Sorry, but it is really creepy.
If you had Universal healthcare like other industrialized nations costs would go down and care would improve. If the government can manage it in Canada and can manage it for the US armed forces then why not for the rest of the public?
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quote: It will be nearly impossible to be a practicing primary care physician under Obamacare. They will be forced, for the sake of making a living, to quit.
That sounds like wildly inaccurate fear mongering to me. Where are you getting that from?
I would also be curious as to the source of that claim. In contrast, my understanding of the situation is that the primary national voices for primary care providers in the US are quite happy with Obama and the proposed legislation.
1. American Academy of Family Physicians:
quote:As part of a final push to enact health care reform legislation, AAFP President Lori Heim, M.D., of Vass, N.C. has issued a Speak Out alert to AAFP members asking them to phone their congressional representative to rally support for the health care reform bill pending in the House of Representatives.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, H.R. 3590, (at the THOMAS Web site, type H.R. 3590 in the search box after selecting "Bill Number") would strengthen the nation's primary care infrastructure and end many of the worst practices by the nation's health insurance industry, according to the alert, but it needs 216 votes to pass in the House. --Health care reform
quote:The Obama administration's fiscal year 2011 budget would provide funding increases for a number of primary care-related programs and, thus, would enable the U.S. health care system to take steps toward offering a high-quality, efficient and accessible health care system, according to AAFP President Lori Heim, M.D., of Vass, N.C. --Budgetary changes
quote:[For context] According to plans, the House Budget Committee will begin action today, approving changes to the Senate healthcare reform bill (H.R. 3590) by way of the budget reconciliation process. These corrections will largely follow the outline put forth by President Obama in late February. --Lexicology
2. American Academy of Pediatrics:
quote:The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), which represents 60,000 pediatricians, pediatric medical subspecialists, and surgical specialists, applauds the United States Senate for its vote to pass its health reform agreement, embodied in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The Academy supports the legislation, and applauds the Senate for its tireless efforts to pass a health reform agreement out of its chamber this year.
While final health reform legislation will be shaped by a conference committee melding the Senate’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the House of Representatives’ Affordable Health Care For America Act (HR 3962), the Senate’s agreement includes several components that take significant steps toward achieving the Academy’s highest priorities for health reform, including a provision that immediately grants all children comprehensive preventive services. ... The Senate’s historic vote was a necessary and important step toward passing comprehensive health reform legislation in 2010. --Dec 2009 Press Release
quote:The American Academy of Pediatrics—a non-profit professional organization of 60,000 primary care pediatricians, pediatric medical subspecialists, and pediatric surgical specialists dedicated to the health, safety and well-being of infants, children, adolescents and young adults—is pleased to stand here today alongside Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and other child health advocates to urge Congress to finish the job on health reform. --March 15, 2009 Press Release
3. American College of Physicians (the leading professional organization for internal medicine):
quote: The American College of Physicians, representing 129,000 internal medicine physicians and medical student members, believes that President Obama’s health insurance reform proposal, released February 22, has many of the key policies needed to make health insurance coverage available to all Americans, to ensure that patients have access to a primary care physician of their choice, and to reform payment and delivery systems to achieve better value. Such policies, we believe, can provide a strong foundation for reaching agreement on a legislative pathway to enact comprehensive health reform without further substantial delay.
We remain hopeful that despite strong philosophical disagreements on some issues, members of Congress from both political parties will be able to find common ground on policies sufficient to ensure that all Americans have access to affordable health care. --Feb 2010 Statement of the ACP On President Obama’s Health Insurance Reform Proposal
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quote:Originally posted by Amka: The opinion of the ones that we actually pay to take care of us is being largely ignored. Medicare doesn't pay primary care doctors enough as it is, and now it is being cut, and Obamacare will make that even worse. It will be nearly impossible to be a practicing primary care physician under Obamacare. They will be forced, for the sake of making a living, to quit.
As noted above, I think think the opinion of primary care providers is actually the opposite. The main organizations representing family medicine practitioners, pediatricians, and internists have gone out of their way explicitly to support this legislation. There is still advocacy for fine-tuning the details, but the support is clear. These are not physicians who believe themselves to be in dire risk of losing their jobs -- and believe me, if they were, their professional organizations would not waste time mincing words about their opposition.
posted
I think another consideration for this bill is that should it pass I think that it will follow the same pattern other healthcare based bills have set, in that it will become politically untouchable.
No amount of fiscal conservative appeal could convince seniors to surrender medicare. In Great Britain any attempt to simply privatize the whole health care industry would be met with the other party being shoved into office en mass.
Once the system is in place it is political suicide to remove it. Reform is of course on the table, but I think Republicans realize that if the bill squeaks in, it's there for good. If it settles in, any attempt to shrink it will be met with the obvious shout of, "You're attacking my health!"
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: I think another consideration for this bill is that should it pass I think that it will follow the same pattern other healthcare based bills have set, in that it will become politically untouchable.
No amount of fiscal conservative appeal could convince seniors to surrender medicare. In Great Britain any attempt to simply privatize the whole health care industry would be met with the other party being shoved into office en mass.
Once the system is in place it is political suicide to remove it. Reform is of course on the table, but I think Republicans realize that if the bill squeaks in, it's there for good. If it settles in, any attempt to shrink it will be met with the obvious shout of, "You're attacking my health!"
here's a repost of stuff I've said about that, about a year ago today.
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This brings up another important issue: why is the remaining GOP going all-out against health care reform of any sort? One could point at issues such as special interest and sinecure incentives, but there are two broader patterns at work here.
The first is that the GOP itself knows on a strategic level that were America to adopt UHC, it would be permanent. It would become as politically untouchable as Medicare and Medicaid. — Reagan famously declared that Medicare would be horrible to our old people and would also be the 'death of capitalism,' and the core rhetoric on health care amongst the GOP strategists has altered little. Back then, they insisted that Medicare would be a mistake and that our elderly would loathe it; today the elderly have higher satisfaction with their care than the rest of us do, and Medicare is entirely unassailable. To try to revoke Medicare would be political suicide.
They know that were the country to succesfully enact UHC, the same event would happen again. We would simply become like every other modernized nation, UHC would become unassailable, and it would be a deathly blow to conservatism. The CATO institute, one of those very conservative think tanks/sinecure incentivizers, has admitted as such. Michael Cannon, Director of Health Policy Studies at the CATO Institute and therefore one of the most prominent ideological directors of conservative policy through sinecure incentives, wrote a piece called Blocking Obama's Health Plan Is Key to the GOP's Survival. The idea is that if Obama gets universal health care passed, he will bring "reluctant voters" into the Democratic coalition because the program will become infinitely preferable to the prior situation in America and such a system will inexorably become as untouchable as Medicare/Medicaid, and thus Republicans must at all costs prevent that from happening, because if the program is allowed to pass, Americans will love it despite the fact the GOP told them they won't love it.
In effect, the GOP has to block an infinitely preferable system because they are defined in part as being against that system; if the system is allowed to be enacted in spite of their claims, it will triumph in spite of their claims, and they spend a few decades bleeding out adherents because they are identified solidly as the people who tried to stop a great thing from happening, while trying to catch up to the new normal.
The second reason is because the GOP has become a victim of perverse incentives that they have inflicted on themselves: they thrive on dysfunction, as Thomas Frank describes in How Dysfunction Helps the GOP. In essence, the Republican party says its own mistakes prove government can't work; since they are rewarded by 'vindication' when the government does not work, they have an incentive to ensure that government does not work, so they keep government from working.
quote:'Remember the $400 hammer? How 'bout that $600 toilet seat?" asks a Conservatives for Patients' Rights TV commercial criticizing President Barack Obama's health-care plan. "Seems when Congress gets involved, things just cost more."
As it happens, I do remember the incident of the $436 hammer, the one that made headlines back in 1984. And while it may "seem" in hazy retrospect as though it showed how "things just cost more" once those silly liberals in Congress get started, what the hammer episode actually illustrated was a very different sort of ripoff. The institution that paid so very much for that hammer was President Ronald Reagan's Pentagon. A private-sector contractor was the party that was pleased to take the Pentagon's money. And it was a liberal Democrat in the House of Representatives, also known as "Congress," who publicized the pricey hardware to the skies.
But so what? Myth is so much more satisfying than history, and with myth the competence of Washington actors from 25 years ago doesn't matter any more. Nor does it matter which arm of the federal colossus did what. Republican or Democrat, White House or Congress, they're all part of a monolithic, undifferentiated "government" that acts according to a money-burning logic all its own.
The myth has been getting a lot of play from conservatives in recent weeks as the debate over health care has heated up. The message, as always, is that government can't do anything right.
Where the conservative mythologists show their hand is when they use their own monumental screw-ups, committed during conservatism's long years in charge of the government, to prove that government in general is a futile proceeding, and that Democratic health-care plans, in particular, can't possibly succeed.
quote:A government that works, some conservatives fear, is dangerous stuff. It gives people ideas. Universal health care isn't just a bad idea for their buddies in the insurance business; it's a gateway drug to broader state involvement in the economy and hence a possible doomsday scenario for conservatism itself. As two fellows of the Ethics and Public Policy Center fretted in the Weekly Standard in May, "health care is the key to public enmeshment in ballooning welfare states, and passage of ObamaCare would deal a heavy blow to the conservative enterprise in American politics."
On the other hand, government fails constantly when conservatives run it because making it work would be, for many of those conservatives, to traduce the very laws of nature. Besides, as we can now see, bungling Katrina recovery or Pentagon procurement pays conservatives huge dividends. It gives them potent ammunition to use when the liberals have returned and are proposing another one of their grand schemes to reform health care.
This is the perverse incentive that is slowly remaking the GOP into the Snafu Party. And in those commercials and those proclamations we should also discern a warning: That even if Democrats manage to set up a solid health-care program, conservatives will do their best, once they have regained power, to drop it down the same chute they did the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Maybe they will appoint a tobacco lobbyist to run the thing. Maybe they will starve it for funds. Or antagonize its work force. And as it collapses they will hand themselves their greatest propaganda victory of all. They will survey the ruins and chide, "You didn't really think government could work, did you?"
The interesting thing about Canada and the US Armed Forces, and other universal health care states I'm aware of, is that there is no private insurance middleman. This health care reform bill doesn't propose something similar. Instead, it wants to make sure everyone is insured. In fact, it mandates that every lawful resident is insured, or they face a fine of $750. Keeping the middle man in there, (by law, no less) with it's overall price markup to access health care (because insurance companies exist to make a profit), is going to drive up costs. Not reduce them.
Mr. Squicky and CT,
Like me, I think most physicians want health care reform. But it is this particular bill that seems to bother them.
A lot of people don't get that opposing this bill isn't the same as opposing health care reform. There are a lot of good ideas in that bill. But there is also a lot of crap.
There are better solutions out there. I say trash this one and start over with some of the other solutions and be completely transparent about it. No more behind closed doors business.
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posted
When polled, primary care physicians are vastly, vastly, vastly in favor of this reform. Can't find the links (still at work) but if anyone can thump down THA POLLZ I would be grateful.
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posted
Amka, on the one hand you have a poll done by a private firm with its own conflict of interest, using an ill-defined and unrepresentative subgroup. This is in contrast to the formal statements of the professional organizations representing that population as a whole.
Do you really think the [former] is more reliable? Paints a more accurate picture? It doesn't, and it should be clear why. If it isn't, I can go into more detail about selection bias, generalizabilty, sample size, biased reporting, and the like. In more general terms, though, this site offers a pretty good critique, including a refutation of the claim that this was a "New England Journal of Medicine" survey. It wasn't. It was a deeply flawed survey by a private group with vested interests.
And -- as I'll point out again -- the findings are in direct opposition to the formal statements of the professional groups representing those physicians. Those professional groups are in direct opposition to dismantling their own profession, obviously.
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(Kind of weird to be debating at the same time, but I can't think of someone I'd more appreciate sharing a discussion with.)
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