Trump

[snaff]

Yes, they are maybe not too old but too grey. There is some sense to Trump attacking Clinton’s stamina, and being reluctant to discuss his own poor health and lifestyle. The one thing you expect the presidency to require is stamina. It’s four years of being the person who has to deal with everything all the time.

Didn't Bush Junior spend most of his time on holiday? It would be a good thing for a president to take time off. Firstly because whenever politicians do something they usually make things worse, eg. Obamacare, everything ten times worse now, but also because there's too much power with the US president. It shouldn't be a big deal who gets elected, it should just be a boring public service job and we should go back to the days when the president wouldn't get recognised in the street. Both Trump getting tired and bored and Hillary being dead and a CGI puppet run by a foundation means lots of healthy deputisation and devolution of power.

[gravy]

Yes, they are maybe not too old but too grey. There is some sense to Trump attacking Clinton’s stamina, and being reluctant to discuss his own poor health and lifestyle. The one thing you expect the presidency to require is stamina. It’s four years of being the person who has to deal with everything all the time.

Didn't Bush Junior spend most of his time on holiday? It would be a good thing for a president to take time off. Firstly because whenever politicians do something they usually make things worse, eg. Obamacare, everything ten times worse now, but also because there's too much power with the US president. It shouldn't be a big deal who gets elected, it should just be a boring public service job and we should go back to the days when the president wouldn't get recognised in the street. Both Trump getting tired and bored and Hillary being dead and a CGI puppet run by a foundation means lots of healthy deputisation and devolution of power.

Are you sure it's not actually 10.8764 times worst?

[PFVA]

Yes, they are maybe not too old but too grey. There is some sense to Trump attacking Clinton’s stamina, and being reluctant to discuss his own poor health and lifestyle. The one thing you expect the presidency to require is stamina. It’s four years of being the person who has to deal with everything all the time.

Didn't Bush Junior spend most of his time on holiday? It would be a good thing for a president to take time off. Firstly because whenever politicians do something they usually make things worse, eg. Obamacare, everything ten times worse now, but also because there's too much power with the US president. It shouldn't be a big deal who gets elected, it should just be a boring public service job and we should go back to the days when the president wouldn't get recognised in the street. Both Trump getting tired and bored and Hillary being dead and a CGI puppet run by a foundation means lots of healthy deputisation and devolution of power.

Yeah, Bush Jr was often on vacation, lots of people thought he was encouraged to be on it, and it led to the belief that Chenney was running the country, not exactly a good thing. The privatization of the war in Iraq made things a lot worse there than they already were, basically a bad idea on an invasion turned worse by how it was run.

One question: why has Obama care made things 10 times worse? I'm asking seriously, not the election superficial propaganda on both sides but how things are actually being run? Is it worse than it was before and why?

[F-ZeroOne]

Er... what days when most Presidents wouldn't be recognised in the street? With a few exceptions, all the ones I can think of off the top my head were famous even in a world without 24 hour news channels (Washington, Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, Herbert Hoover, Theodore Roosevelt... ).

[snaff]

One question: why has Obama care made things 10 times worse? I'm asking seriously, not the election superficial propaganda on both sides but how things are actually being run? Is it worse than it was before and why?

The plan to lower insurance costs for low income earners and high risk customers by raising costs for middle income earners and low risk customers was flawed in theory and in its implementation.

The insurance companies are mandated to provide poor value for their existing customers and loss-making products to low income ones. If they did what they were told they would go bankrupt. The policy makers were completely unaware that they would simply exit the industry.

eg.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/aetna-to-dr ... 1471311737
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/obamac ... es-n558446
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/15/sunda ... inion&_r=0

Prices rising for everyone else:
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-c ... story.html

Plain crappy implementation that includes disincetives to work, where people have to beg not to get a pay rise:



And of course the major wasted opportunity, not doing anything to really address the problems in the health care industry.

[pogo]

One question: why has Obama care made things 10 times worse? I'm asking seriously, not the election superficial propaganda on both sides but how things are actually being run? Is it worse than it was before and why?

It hasn’t made things worse. It largely succeeded in what it set out to achieve, reducing healthcare costs and getting more people onto insurance.

The US is spending trillions less than expected on health care — and uninsured rates are at an all-time low

2015 was the first year 90 percent of Americans had health insurance. Thanks, Obama.

It’s not perfect; it’s not the single payer system common in the rest of the world, but is still fragmented and insurance based which drives up costs. And coverage is very patchy, in large part as implementation relies on states and some states have refused to cooperate.

Republican criticisms of it are particularly hypocritical, as if anything it is a much more Republican system than Democrat one. It’s based on the the system introduced in Massachusetts by Republican governor Mitt Romney, Romneycare. Republicans want to dismantle it just to deny Obama his signature policy success. They have no serious plans as to what to replace it with. They don’t care that abolishing it will deny millions affordable health insurance, and see prices shoot up for everyone else.

[pogo]

Here‘s the Clinton campaign’s remix of the VP debate. Very effectively skewering Pence’s many misleading and dishonest denials, helped by Kaine’s very precise challenges. The problem for the Trump campaign is this is how the debate will be experienced by many voters; they won’t have seen the debate but will experience it instead through snippets and soundbites on news programs and in campaign adverts. Pence’s many denials are particularly easy to refute, and give Trump’s critics yet another way to highlight the indefensible bits of Trump’s campaign.

[PFVA]

Thanks to both, i saved those to read tomorrow (as now i'm already a bit sleepy).

The situation of the health care in the US interest me a lot because i strongly defend the NHSs we have here in Europe.

Note: I noticed the possible 13% increase for California for nxt year but when i was there and i left in Dec 2006 the insurance tates in Cal were already going up 10% a year and for a while.

[Darkflame]

For all its problems, the NHS is the best value healthcare system in the world. Socialized medicine is simply more efficient - by far - then the benefits offered by competition in the field.
Americas terrified of anything socialized however, so it will never come close to the NHS. Still, maybe one day they can stop paying double everyone else is.

[pogo]

I would question whether the NHS is best value in the world; it’s probably impossible to actually measure this. You can measure inputs easily enough but how to measure outputs? Then there’s which exchange rate to use, hardly a trivial calculation with the pound slumping so significantly.

The US though is exceptional. Almost every other developed nation has a “single payer” system, where the government pays for everything for everyone. This can be privatised to a greater or lesser extent, paid for out of general taxation or insurance-like payments. But single payer helps ensure everyone is covered, while driving down costs in many ways.

In the US there’s no single payer, just a patchwork of insurers and providers leaving many gaps in coverage. At the same time the lack of a single payer means there is no central cost control, and costs have gotten out of control for various reasons.

[Darkflame]

Measuring outputs is indeed a problem, and the UK is not the best under most attempts rankings, but does ok;
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Hea ... ms_in_2000 for example).

I used to have a link to a list that showed "curable deceases cured" style rankings. That is, out of conditions that should be survivable what percent survive. I cant find it now, but it also broke down different conditions and what countries dealt with them best. The US was good at brain surgery, for example, but pretty bad at transplants.

So its not that the uk is best at results, but it just seems lower in terms of overheads.
The difference in input cost is significant enough I think to reflect that if there is a problem in a area, that increased spending under a socialized system would probably give a better outcome;
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/uk ... 42833.html
(chart halfway down, unfortunately not enlargeable as someone messed the link up. Note; NZ is also mostly socialized)

Of course, the US system advocates would point out that the US is the "best in the world" at some stuff and the NHS has waiting times which apparently are terrible.

[pogo]

One problem is what you mean by “socialised”. All the best healthcare systems in the world are single payer. All that means is the government pays for everyone’s healthcare. This acts as a guarantee of healthcare, but also drives down costs. Partly it‘s economy of scale. Partly it’s that a government can drive a hard bargain with suppliers of medicines, equipment and services who have no-one else to sell to. Partly it’s as it gives them cover to make hard choices over which treatment to provide, via bodies such as NICE, which determines which new/expensive treatment to fund based on how effective it would be.

But you do not need a monolithic state organisation to provide this. In fact no other country does it the way we do, with a large bureaucracy doing almost everything. The NHS is one of the five largest employers in the world, behind only the two largest armies in the world, Walmart and McDonalds. It is the only British or European organisation in the top ten.

Other countries do it with much more diverse provision, usually with much more private provision but still state funded, and much less centralisation. The UK has been moving towards more private provision for decades, but at a very slow pace. There have also been attempts to delegate more decision making, but this has had little real impact as still far too much is decided centrally. Even now the NHS is far more centralised than any comparable system.

[pogo]

More from the “you could not make this up” department. Trump in 2005 being “extremely lewd”, captured on tape:

Trump recorded having extremely lewd conversation about women in 2005

The NSFW video is embedded in that. Trump has dismissed it as “locker-room banter” but that’s not going to work. He was not some 20 year old football player, not single (he was on his third marriage by then). And the tape is exceptionally crude and unpleasant towards women, touching on Trump’s arrogance, his preference for adultery and sexual assault.

Next debate is Sunday night. This or one of his many other instances of sexism seems bound to come up.

[gravy]

Wow, stream of Republicians very publicly bailing and no actual apology from Trump as yet, just regret for getting caught.

Apparently he's preparing a video statement with an actual 'sorry' in it, we'll see.

It'd be a first, both in the campaign and his career in general.

If this is more than boysy big talk we we could see some actual victims come forward.

[gumboot]

Apparently he's preparing a video statement with an actual 'sorry' in it, we'll see.

What, you mean like "fuck all those sorry losers. I don't need them!"?