US Politics Thread 2016-2020

[Buddahaid]

I can't wait for next week when all the blame for everything falls on Trump.

[ikalugin]

Inb4 he starts a war with China and Japan.

[vienna]

Originally Posted by August

Make no mistake, we're still waiting for that. In spite of it's sales pitch the ACA has not made health care cheaper. Far from it.

Pretty, pretty picture...

...and, as usual, not the whole picture. For one very important thing, insurance premiums have been and are affected by more the just the ACA: rising payouts by insurers for increased pharma costs (a huge portion of insurer costs), rising payouts for rising medical professional fees, rising hospitalization costs, etc. To attribute any increase to the ACA solely is highly deceptive and, well, rather untrue...

...and now the truth, with a health dose of facts: insurance premiums may have gone up, but at a rate lower than the increases before the ACA. In the first six years of the Bush Administration, premiums rose by 72%; in the first six years of the Obama Administration, premiums rose by 28%. Unless you can find some evidence of some sort of action taken by the GOP Congress members (who have made made an art of doing, basically, nothing except gripe about Obama), the only influencing difference is the ACA. the ACA may have not been the sole reason for the slowdown, but it is a major reason. Prices are always going up; by how much is really most important. Here is a FactCheck.Org analysis of the GOP claims about the ACA:

http://www.factcheck.org/2015/02/slo...h-under-obama/

One other thing to consider: given the trends and rate of increases before the "braking effect" of the ACA, what would be the current state of insurance premiums without the ACA? Would it be better or worse than the current state?...



<O>

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by ikalugin

Inb4 he starts a war with China and Japan.

Japan?

Naah, Japan is so 1941.

[Rockstar]

Premiums dramatically on the rise just before the enactment of ACA? Gee imagine that. IMO its like when states instituted their official lotteries. First they outlawed gambling, cracked down even on illegal nickel dime operations and proactively enforced these new rules making it impossible to enjoy such vice. Unless of course you buy a state's official lottery ticket.


at least nobody's forcing me to buy a lottery ticket.

[vienna]

Originally Posted by Oberon

Japan?

Naah, Japan is so 1941.

Well, the GOP conservatives are rather well known for trying to turn back the clock...

...besides, it a safer bet to take on an opponent you know you can beat...



<O>

[August]

Originally Posted by Rockstar

Premiums dramatically on the rise just before the enactment of ACA? Gee imagine that. IMO its like when states instituted their official lotteries. First they outlawed gambling, cracked down even on illegal nickel dime operations and proactively enforced these new rules making it impossible to enjoy such vice. Unless of course you buy a state's official lottery ticket.


at least nobody's forcing me to buy a lottery ticket.

They knew they couldn't sell complete nationalization of the healthcare industry so they created a unbalanced hybrid system that will eventually fail on it's own, but only after it's become so entrenched that it requires something to replace it.

Had the Democrats won last November that replacement would have been a single payer system and the insurance premiums we now pay would have been replaced by taxes.

Now I have no faith in the Trumps or the Republicans ability to fix it either but at least it's architects have been deposed for now.

[mapuc]

Personally I don't think Putin, Trump or other politicians from the West will start a war against other countries in the West/NATO or countries that is or have military agreement with some of these countries.

If there is going to happen it will happen either by mistake(very unlikely)
or a third world country attack another country

Example: Syria attack Israel and are supportet by Iran and other Islamic countries. USA goes in and help Israel. Syria ask Russia for help....

And many more likely scenarios.

I could be wrong as I use to be.

Markus

[Rockstar]

Originally Posted by vienna

Pretty, pretty picture...

...and, as usual, not the whole picture. For one very important thing, insurance premiums have been and are affected by more the just the ACA: rising payouts by insurers for increased pharma costs (a huge portion of insurer costs), rising payouts for rising medical professional fees, rising hospitalization costs, etc. To attribute any increase to the ACA solely is highly deceptive and, well, rather untrue...

...and now the truth, with a health dose of facts: insurance premiums may have gone up, but at a rate lower than the increases before the ACA. In the first six years of the Bush Administration, premiums rose by 72%; in the first six years of the Obama Administration, premiums rose by 28%. Unless you can find some evidence of some sort of action taken by the GOP Congress members (who have made made an art of doing, basically, nothing except gripe about Obama), the only influencing difference is the ACA. the ACA may have not been the sole reason for the slowdown, but it is a major reason. Prices are always going up; by how much is really most important. Here is a FactCheck.Org analysis of the GOP claims about the ACA:


One other thing to consider: given the trends and rate of increases before the "braking effect" of the ACA, what would be the current state of insurance premiums without the ACA? Would it be better or worse than the current state?...

<O>

Whats the point of using Presidential administrations as bench marks in your arguement? The President in this country has absolutely no authority to increase or decrease health care premiums. This term "braking effect" of the ACA, is that yours or Fact Check? I ask because this idea that the ACA was instrumental in curbing health care costs is contrary to what the Congressional Budget Office attributed the decline in health care spending too. According to their 'facts' it was economic slowdown, not the ACA that brought costs down.

“… very few of the ACA’s provisions had been implemented in any substantial way, making it difficult to attribute much of the slowdown to the effects of specific provisions of that law.”

https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/fi...ACA_Repeal.pdf

Anyway, feel free to check these facts those facts and their facts . And please let us all know when you get the multitude of facts sorted and tell us which facts are the only facts we should listen too.

I mean really you should follow your own advice before you begin chastising anyone with a thought contrary to your facts. In fact I'm willing to bet a good many of the people who take this sort of tripe sophistry as actual reasoning are the same people who neither saw, heard nor read the report. They probably just wait around for the talk show host, blogger, hatchet job factcheck website to tell them what to think and say and how to vote; it must be nice in that little world, not having to use whatever brainpower they might have; they must laugh at all us silly, stupid folk who actually do the "homework" and try to separate out the dross so we might actually find the truth and make informed decisions; Oh, silly us, for thinking democracy and the fate of our nation deserves at least some effort from its citizens...

[Mr Quatro]

Here's a but check ... but Trump is just removing the word Obama from the word ACA.

Affordable health care was never really affordable anyway ... the real problem is hiring 6,000 IRS agents to see if your telling the truth on what level your health care cost should be.

They have double minded thoughts on that level of income tracking

[Buddahaid]

Originally Posted by Rockstar

...at least nobody's forcing me to buy a lottery ticket.

I am. BUY a lottery ticket NOW!

[Platapus]

Originally Posted by Buddahaid

I can't wait for next week when all the blame for everything falls on Trump.

Don't worry, the GOP will be blaming Obama for the next four years

[vienna]

Originally Posted by Rockstar

Whats the point of using Presidential administrations as bench marks in your arguement? ...

So, I guess we can be assured that Trump, the GOP, and all of their 'unbiased media' will not be continually blaming Obama in the coming years for what ever shortcomings or inabilities they have in trying to deal with or correct problems? That I've got to see...

Additionally, I did not make the "bench marks" comparison; the comparison comes from the FactCheck.org site, which I linked in my post as a source of my statement(s), something a very high percentage of those who make some of the most scurrilous posts, on both sides of an issue, here do not, although I have very often made the effort to source their statements and have very often found the source to be, indeed, some partisan "hatchet job" website rather than some verifiable source. Perhaps this is why, in those posts, links or cites are not given...

Originally Posted by Rockstar

...The President in this country has absolutely no authority to increase or decrease health care premiums. This term "braking effect" of the ACA, is that yours or Fact Check? I ask because this idea that the ACA was instrumental in curbing health care costs is contrary to what the Congressional Budget Office attributed the decline in health care spending too. According to their 'facts' it was economic slowdown, not the ACA that brought costs down. ...

Never said the President had or has "authority to increase or decrease health care premiums". But actions taken during their administrations do have effects on things like premiums...

Yes, the "braking effect" term is mine alone; I, unlike many others, do own up to my errors; I had intended to use single quotes ('braking effect') but inadvertently used double quotes; too bad for me there is no 'auto-correct' for punctuation...

The "idea that the ACA was instrumental in curbing health care costs is contrary to what the Congressional Budget Office attributed the decline in health care spending too.": the idea the ACA aided in reducing health care cost is not contrary to the CBO reports findings. The report, in several different places, makes it clear the CBO could not adequately or definitively gauge the effect of the ACA on healthcare costs. The CBO report doesn't actually say, and certainly not explicitly, the ACA has no effect on healthcare costs. Therefore, it is neither contrary to the report nor does the report wholly support any claim the ACA, alone, is responsible for the slowdown in healthcare premiums nor does the CBO report support claims the ACA alone is the cause for healthcare issues; it is merely a factor in the equations...

My initial response was a reaction to the posting of a single graphic, with no accompanying link, and this statement:

Originally Posted by August

Make no mistake, we're still waiting for that. In spite of it's sales pitch the ACA has not made health care cheaper. Far from it.

It was this sort of broad, undefined, 'take-it-as-truth' sort of posting that caused me to respond: " In spite of it's sales pitch the ACA has not made health care cheaper. Far from it." [Italics mine, lest somebody take umbrage]...

I searched for, and found, with very little difficulty, the source document and also some other usages of the graphic, which led me to FactCheck.org and this opening statement caught my eye and interest:

Republicans say the average family health insurance premium has increased by $4,154 under President Obama. That’s right — and it’s a much slower rate of growth than under President George W. Bush. In fact, employer-sponsored premiums have been growing at moderate rates for the past few years.


This is a prime example of what we call a “true, but” claim: an assertion that’s technically correct, but changes in meaning or significance once it’s put in context or fully explained.

[Italics mine, again, lest somebody take umbrage]...


You see, when you look up facts, to be really as impartial and informed as possible, you also need to be willing to look at all aspects of an issue, not just find the one 'fact' that supports your issue and call it a day. This was something I learned from participating in competitive debate tournaments, where the debaters had to alternate between 'pro' and 'con' on an issue every other round; you had to know all the facts for each side in order to make an argument each round. There have been many times I wondered about something posted in these forums and have done research to find out what the varying arguments supporting or decrying the issue(s) really are; there have been times when the research results in an accumulation of facts that do, indeed, support the post, even if I may not necessarily agree the outcome, but, facts in context facts are to be acknowledged and respected and I do not respond to those posts in those cases; I leave that to those who may have some emotional attachment with their particular viewpoint. However, when I feel something is being bent, omitted, or glossed over, and research shows that to be the case, I often can not resist the urge to try to give a more rounded view of an issue...

Originally Posted by Rockstar

Anyway, feel free to check these facts those facts and their facts . And please let us all know when you get the multitude of facts sorted and tell us which facts are the only facts we should listen too.

I never tell anyone which facts to listen to since I would never want someone to do so to me. Believe what you will in what you want to believe; I'll just be sitting over here trying to separate the grist from the gibberish. And, as you can see, I do "feel free to check these facts those facts and their facts"; I do so all the time and I enjoy it...

Originally Posted by Rockstar

I mean really you should follow your own advice before you begin chastising anyone with a thought contrary to your facts. In fact I'm willing to bet a good many of the people who take this sort of tripe sophistry as actual reasoning are the same people who neither saw, heard nor read the report. They probably just wait around for the talk show host, blogger, hatchet job factcheck website to tell them what to think and say and how to vote; it must be nice in that little world, not having to use whatever brainpower they might have; they must laugh at all us silly, stupid folk who actually do the "homework" and try to separate out the dross so we might actually find the truth and make informed decisions; Oh, silly us, for thinking democracy and the fate of our nation deserves at least some effort from its citizens...

I don't 'chastise' contrary thought; just sloppy thought presented as fact. And I stand by the statement you misquoted (without double quotes!! ) and still say if an issue is important, an effort to learn as much about it as possible is equally, if not more important...

So, yes, I did actually read the full report, you linked and some addendums, prior to your posting and found, as I have indicated, the report neither affirms nor denies the ACA impact, so I opted to leave out reference to it as the report is non-definitive on the issue. I actually did my homework and, if someone had actually did theirs and also read the full report they would have found likewise...



<O>

[vienna]

Originally Posted by Platapus

Don't worry, the GOP will be blaming Obama for the next four years

Hell, very often, they're still blaming Clinton...


...and Roosevelt...



<O>

[Platapus]

Originally Posted by vienna

Hell, very often, they're still blaming Clinton...


...and Roosevelt...



<O>

Well it is always the other guy's fault, never our guy.