The Gaming Den

FrankTrollman wrote:If you don't have an argument that won't just make you and your team look even worse, just don't make an argument.

Well, he could just admit that his team is worse. But... It's Tzor, so he is physically incapable of doing so.

TZOR: that's a cheap shot. A party isn't really defined only by one ideal. The cliques of Dem Dogs, War Hawks, southern conservative dems, all go on through eternity.

the same is for most parties. Everybody isn't going to agree to everything.

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Crissa: I didn't say that Medicare and medicaid didn't support advanced stage diseases or any diseases. The system should work in such a way that even when care is provided, it shows the insane gap between these programs and private insurance in providing quality care.

As someone applying for both programs currently and going through the rigmarole of finding out how to keep the specialists I have on Cobra to Medicare or 'Cade is nuts. I truly support the programs but when there are problems in the system, they need to be fixed.

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PL: The private & public options are tied together though. It is easier to get the two programs in a better defined system rather than to get all the Private sector companies to agree. This isn't about who is the Big Bad Wolf in this equation. It's about the problems that exist within a good idea for government provided care that has unfortunately been implemented wrong.
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Koumei: for Obama to activate a program such as this while possibly or really doable if he wants to show that he has dictatorial tendencies as well. They might be beneficent to a lot of people but he'll basically have to use precedents set down by prior presidents and used horrifically by past presidents. I talk of the Executive order or the Signing statement. Obama already uses both very frequently. But the legality of this is interesting. Executive orders to put out a strong govt care system or Signing statements modifying a bill through the presidential proclamation after signing are both ways that show that Obama while being a good president is also a god-damned hypocrite. He has criticized the past administration of faulty use and he does the same to an extent.

But really this would probably be the easiest way. The only two ways the EO can be abolished is by supermajority vote in Congress (highly unlikely) and criticism of voters would follow for way too long. Easiest but most controversial method.

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violence in the media wrote:

tzor wrote:Don't you just love all those great Democratic filibusters against CIVIL RIGHTS?

So, tzor, why don't you tell us which party modern Southern racists typically associate with?

Both!

After being in Texas for 9 years. Southern Racists are not only white. You have the mexican racist and the Black racist as well. THese three groups are rather divided by racial and socioeconomic lines when it comes to politics. It isn't really cut and dry. By making a statement like you just did, VITM, you basically make as unfounded and retarded a statement as Tzor did.

A_Cynic wrote:PL: The private & public options are tied together though. It is easier to get the two programs in a better defined system rather than to get all the Private sector companies to agree. This isn't about who is the Big Bad Wolf in this equation. It's about the problems that exist within a good idea for government provided care that has unfortunately been implemented wrong.

That in no way addresses my point nor does it in fact make any particular sense.

A_Cynic wrote:the mexican racist and the Black racist as well

Gotta watch out for those Mexican racists and their whole thing where they exploit poor Americans crossing their border with illegal low paying jobs then abuse, scape goat and deport them.

And those black racists with their violent and systemic keeping old whitey down with their beatings and their lynchings and their cross burnings and their bad white district schools and their white slave cotton plantations and their anti white cops and...

... you know who looks like a dick head as crazy as Tzor? The person who suddenly out of nowhere decided to claim that black and mexican racists in the USA are in any way comparable with white racists.

I think he is thinking of prejudice. Racism suggests that you have the power to discriminate.

Phone Lobster, comparing Mexican and Black Racists to "modern" white Racists can be justifiable.

Since that is what we are talking about. I'd argue exploiting mexicans has nothing to do with racism, but deporting them does, it just happens to be two different groups that do those things.

Modern White Racists don't get to do much of anything, any more than Modern Mexican Racists or Black Racists could. They are all pretty much equally marginalized, but the white racists have a little more power, but not noticeably more so, and we are more likely to call them on their shit.

Well, the right wing is arguing that Medicare should not have a system for approving paying for new procedures, retiring old or ineffective ones, and making sure the payments have something to do with the costs.

Currently, Congress must pass any changes to any of these. So yes, new treatments for degenerative diseases don't get approved often. Same with specialists.

-Crissa

Kaelik wrote:Phone Lobster, comparing Mexican and Black Racists to "modern" white Racists can be justifiable.

Since that is what we are talking about. I'd argue exploiting mexicans has nothing to do with racism, but deporting them does, it just happens to be two different groups that do those things.

Modern White Racists don't get to do much of anything, any more than Modern Mexican Racists or Black Racists could. They are all pretty much equally marginalized, but the white racists have a little more power, but not noticeably more so, and we are more likely to call them on their shit.

Which is why neither major party worried at all about offending the xenophobic contingent in their ba-oh wait.

I could have sworn this thread was supposed to be about Medicare/Medicaid concerns. Personally, I'd like to nominate the forty trillion dollars of unfunded Medicare/Medicaid liabilities, but hey, I guess racism is more flashy.

Gelare wrote:I could have sworn this thread was supposed to be about Medicare/Medicaid concerns. Personally, I'd like to nominate the forty trillion dollars of unfunded Medicare/Medicaid liabilities, but hey, I guess racism is more flashy.

Wait, you're saying that Medicare is going to somehow cover 20 times the total healthcare costs of the United States? The United States has the most expensive healthcare on Earth. It's really not conceivable for it become twenty times as expensive as it currently is.

Or to put it another way: you're claiming that healthcare costs are going to grow to be three times the entire nation's GDP and then Medicare is going to cover all of it.

What the fuck is that shit? You are talking crazy talk.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote:What the fuck is that shit? You are talking crazy talk.

-Username17

Sorry Frank, but you are literally talking crazy talk, in that you seem to have mistaken my discussion on Medicare/Medicaid's total unfunded liabilities for some sort of imaginary annual budget that you totally made up. The actual issue you might want to look at is easy enough to find. Just searching for "medicare unfunded liabilities" gets you this as the first link, which explains that Medicare has made promises to pay future medical costs way, way in excess of the actual tax revenues to be used to pay for it. That article claims a number of thirty trillion dollars, but it also includes only Medicare, and leaves out Medicaid. So, wish us luck paying for that.

That's completely insane though. That's literally all the medical expenses for every man woman and child in the country for twenty years.

You sent me to a 4 year old hack job by the Heritage Foundation. You know, the guys who keep claiming that social security is going to explode any second now? Yeah, their credibility on this issue is nonexistent because they've been making the same claims with essentially the same numbers for as long as I have been alive.

Basically the math they are throwing around is "What if all the retirees have extremely expensive medical conditions and everyone stops working and no one ever dies?!" It's a trivial worst case scenario. It's not possible for every man woman and child in the US to rack up $100,000 in medical bills all at once. That's simply not going to happen. There aren't enough doctors to pay all that money to.

Doom saying by the heritage foundation is sad and pathetic. They've been doing it for decades. They are going to keep doing it. It's not an honest form of argument, it's slight of hand to try to justify taking apart the social safety net and lower taxes. That kind of pseudo-intellectualism has no place in rational discussion. It's people pretending to chicken little for the cruelest of reasons.

Paul Krugman, June 6, 2009 wrote:You should always remember:

1. Don’t believe anything Heritage says.

2. If you find what Heritage is saying plausible, remember rule 1.

-Username17

Frank, you can't just make fun of some think tank and make the mathematically obvious explosion of Medicare costs go away. I can seriously just keep Googling the thing and forwarding you articles until I eventually get to a source that is the actual government and you're forced to shut up and get yourself a real argument. Demographics, technological change, and a total failure for meaningful reform guarantee that Medicare is going to cost a metric fuckton of money. People are getting older, and as you well know, old people cost way more money than young people, plus they're retired so they don't contribute nearly enough into the system to cover what they cost it. And those costs represent money which, lest we forget the original point, we do not have. Remember: those are just the unfunded liabilities, after all the ones we can actually pay for.


EDIT: Bonus article, with interesting numbers such as "The cost per U.S. household of unfunded promises made by federal, state and local government: $516,348" The numbers are really just that ridiculous. Take your pick.

The problem is, they have been making the claim that in ten years, Medicare would explode, or in forty years, social security would explode, for longer than Frank has been alive.

Yes, it is a mathematical certainty that as you move outside of known data the unknown data flies off the handle. That's true for everything, from oven temperatures to every facet of economics.

The point is, no one has done anything, and it hasn't exploded. Their numbers do not happen because those numbers assume there is no technological advances, no economic expansion, no immigration, no tax changes, nada.

The world doesn't just stop so they can be insular.

-Crissa

I haven't seen their equations, so I don't know in what ways they incorporate technological advances, economic expansion, etc., although I strongly doubt that they're entirely ignored like you claim. What I do know is that the stars seem to be basically aligned. The aging population is a real thing. The baby boomers exist, and if you don't believe me, go to the grocery store and see who's walking by. Rapidly increasing medical costs is also a real thing. So is our bigger-than-ever national debt and it's projected nearly doubling over the next decade. I don't think the country's going to literally explode as a result, because something's gotta give, and it's not going to be the workforce soaking an 80% tax rate, it's going to be people simply refusing to pay for government mandates they can't afford.

In 2008, U.S. health care spending is estimated to have been $2.4 trillion. It is projected to nearly double to $4.4 trillion in 2018.

Medicare, the federal health insurance program for the elderly and the disabled, covers 46 million Americans. Medicare spending totaled $455 billion in 2008.

Medicare expenditures made up 22 percent of all national personal health expenditures in 2007.

...

Yeah, your numbers require an 'infinite future'. Nothing real in those numbers, Gelare.

Most of Medicare is paid for by... the people who use it.

-Crissa

Gelare wrote:I haven't seen their equations, so I don't know in what ways they incorporate technological advances, economic expansion, etc., although I strongly doubt that they're entirely ignored like you claim. What I do know is that the stars seem to be basically aligned. The aging population is a real thing. The baby boomers exist, and if you don't believe me, go to the grocery store and see who's walking by. Rapidly increasing medical costs is also a real thing. So is our bigger-than-ever national debt and it's projected nearly doubling over the next decade. I don't think the country's going to literally explode as a result, because something's gotta give, and it's not going to be the workforce soaking an 80% tax rate, it's going to be people simply refusing to pay for government mandates they can't afford.

Blah blah blah. This isn't global warming here. They don't have a testable model. They just say shit. And they've been making this exact same prediction since the 1970s. Medicare did not collapse in 1985, nor did it collapse in 1995, nor did it collapse in 2005. Neither did Social Security. The only danger to these programs is conservative nutjobs possibly pulling the plug on them.

This is a serious non-concern. The people who are trying to get us to panic about it are the same people who were trying to get me to panic about it when I was 4. Ten years passed, and the apocalypse did not come. They kept making the same claims. Ten more years passed, and the apocalypse did not come. It's simply unreasonable to take the propaganda from the Heritage Foundation seriously. The fact that their bullshit gets reprinted as fact in the Wall Street Journal now that it's owned by Fox News doesn't make their crap any more credible in the reality based community.

Their numbers are not based on realistic scenarios. Our domestic costs definitionally cannot exceed our GDP.

-Username17

MGuy wrote:I think he is thinking of prejudice. Racism suggests that you have the power to discriminate.

Fine, we'll go with the following definition.

Racism - Ideology in which Person(s) fucking hate others and use this gleefully. Compared to Prejudism, racism must come from a position of power.

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Happy? Now for the mexican racist claim of mine, Power can come from not only having rights but also actually being a presentable majority in a particular area. CUltural History and hate also comes as power.

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Black Panthers were racists and so were few of the Negro alliances formed in the early 1900s. I use the word negro there because that is how most of the alliances were named.

According to 2006's texas census - there are 8,298,643 Hispanics/Latinos and this makes a 35.5% percent of the state population.

So I'd say they have power in Texas. not governmentally but when it comes to Scary Racism tactics, it doesn't matter.

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PL: I might look like a dick for stating facts without emotion. White supremacists are crazy fvckers. Mexican/Black racism can also be crazy but not as bad as the KKK. I don't see where I compared them out and out right. But if that was the shown result, let me just say it wasn't the intent.