Here we go: Palin to endorse Trump

Loading

Allah:

Jim Geraghty wrote this morning that the tea-party era began on Tax Day 2009, the day conservatives protested in cities across the country, but plenty of Palin fans will tell you that it actually began eight months earlier, when Palin flew into Dayton to accept John McCain’s offer to be his VP. That wasn’t a tea-party campaign by any stretch — it was pro-TARP, pro-amnesty, pro-cap-and-trade, and all McCain — but it made Palin a national figure. And she was, unquestionably, the biggest Republican name associated with the tea party for years afterward. Cruz has a passionate cheering section among grassroots conservatives but he’s never been beloved the way Palin was. She was “one of us.” The nerd from Harvard and Princeton never will be, no matter how many “Duck Dynasty” ads he puts out. Only Trump has built a cult of personality on the right during the Obama era as passionate as the one Palin enjoyed from 2009 through 2012. In that sense, today’s endorsement is appropriate. Cruz is the better conservative. Trump is the better populist. Palin’s made her choice.

If the Dayton speech was the beginning of the tea party, today’s speech in Ames is the end. Drop the curtain.

“I’m proud to endorse Donald J. Trump for president,” Ms. Palin said in a statement provided by his campaign…

“I am greatly honored to receive Sarah’s endorsement,” Mr. Trump said in a statement trumpeting Mrs. Palin’s decision. “She is a friend, and a high-quality person whom I have great respect for. I am proud to have her support.”…

Mrs. Palin, who despite her waning visibility within the Republican Party retains a sizable following, provides Mr. Trump with valuable new currency at a moment when he is being attacked over his conservative bona fides by Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, with whom Mr. Trump is neck-and-neck in the Iowa polls.

As Mr. Trump fends off questions about his “New York values” from Mr. Cruz, Mrs. Palin could help vouch for Mr. Trump’s credentials with skeptical conservatives.

Charles Cooke is reminding people on Twitter of this passage from one of his columns written a year ago, five months before Trump announced his candidacy:

For a long while now, Palin has not so much contributed arguments and ideas as she has thrown together a one-woman variety show for a band of traveling fans. One part free verse, one part Dada-laden ressentiment, and one part primal scream therapy, Palin’s appearances seem to be designed less to advance the ball for the Right and more to ensure that her name remains in the news, that her business opportunities are not entirely foreclosed, and that her hand remains strong enough to justify her role as kingmaker without portfolio. Ultimately, she isn’t really trying to change politics; she’s trying to be politics — the system and its complexities be damned. Want to find a figure to which Palin can be reasonably compared? It’s not Ronald Reagan. It’s Donald Trump.

You can hate that the tea party has deteriorated into Trumpism and you can curse Palin for enabling it, but you can’t say she and Cruz are a better match politically than she and Trump are. I agree with this from Ross Douthat:

Read more

0 0 votes
Article Rating
Subscribe
Notify of
76 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

@Pete: Indeed, that is weak. However, I’m sure if he had asked Sarah if he should beat his wife she would have recommended not to, in reference to George’s assertion.

#50:

Thanks for the rational perspective. Bill is so obsessed with blaming EVERYTHING on Obama that even in acquiescence to your #50 comments he could not resist equivocating: “I’m sure if he had asked Sarah if he should beat his wife she would have recommended not to.” The implied certainty Bill expresses doesn’t forgive Palin for his white-trash domestic violence any more than it excuses his mother for blaming Obama for it.

@George Wells: And of course your constant reiteration that Palin is a poor parent, stupid and white trash shows your reasoned analysis. But, then again, you voted for Obama… twice.

@Bill:

Thanks for ignoring the REAL culprit that is driving up our collective costs for health care. I’m sure that mindlessly blaming Obama (and after him, which ever other Democratic politicians you wish to demonize rather than face the problem head-on) helps you sleep as well at night as you evidently do while you read and write responses here at Flopping Aces.

The tragic truth of the matter is that some measures available to doctors and their patients are only affordable to the super-rich, and no combination of taxation, health savings accounts or income redistribution will ever make such procedures affordable to the general population. Yet we are attempting to provide the same heroic care to everyone as a right, and doing so is impossible. At some point, this inconvenient truth will need to be met head on, but at present, neither political party has the stomach to take it on.

A hundred years ago, people who developed diabetes died rather quickly. Once insulin treatment was devised (along with drugs effective in mitigating the side-effects of type-2 diabetes), diabetics were able to live much longer, and they reproduced with almost normal frequency. What was once a mortality-limited disease became one that is now being readily passed on to our off-spring, with the result that diabetes is becoming endemic in the population. This, in turn, drives up our medical costs like a pyramid scheme.

In many other cases, our successes at developing treatments for diseases has had a similar effect of weakening our gene-pool. We are progressively becoming a sicker and sicker species as medical research discovers new and better ways to thwart the self-limiting processes of natural selection. Blame THAT on Obama!

@George Wells:

A hundred years ago, people who developed diabetes died rather quickly. Once insulin treatment was devised (along with drugs effective in mitigating the side-effects of type-2 diabetes), diabetics were able to live much longer, and they reproduced with almost normal frequency. What was once a mortality-limited disease became one that is now being readily passed on to our off-spring, with the result that diabetes is becoming endemic in the population. This, in turn, drives up our medical costs like a pyramid scheme.

And your point is? Or do you think that diseases, like heart disease, should not be treated with the hope that those who suffer will die before they can produce children?

And what about those who suffer from self-inflicted diseases like liver disease from alcohol, lung cancer from smoking or HIV/AIDS which is completely based on behavior? Shall we just let those patients die because their diseases are based on behavior, not genetics?

You continue to be a fruitcake.

@George Wells: I didn’t blame Obama for the high costs, did I? DID I?

What I clearly and accurately pointed out is that Obamacare has been a failure because it was supposed to drive those costs down. Remember? In addition to driving insurance costs up, disrupting the coverage and doctors many had and wanted to keep, Obamacare fails to deliver on his primary selling points.

And, as to endorsements, Sybrina Fulton, Trayvon Martin’s mother, endorses Hillary. Now THERE’S the epitome of motherhood seeing eye to eye with Hillary, huh? Raised a dope-head, thieving son that got himself killed trying to kill someone he thought was white. Then she, along with the rest of the left, joined in on the lying that served to raise racial tensions to a boiling point. You like that one?

@Bill #56:

“I didn’t blame Obama for the high costs, did I? DID I?”

Well congratulations for figuring out that what I’ve been saying about the rising costs of Health Care is correct, and that it has nothing to do with Obama.

Your statement:

“Obamacare has not accomplished its stated goal of reducing the cost of healthcare.”

implies that reducing the cost of health care was THE goal of the ACA, and that’s not correct. If there was a single, predominating purpose of the ACA, it was to bring affordable health care to millions who didn’t already have it. Nobody in their right minds ever said OR believed that the sum and total being spent on health care would go down as the ranks of the insured swelled. So what’s your point now… what are you blaming Obama for NOW? That YOU thought Obama meant that everyone would spend LESS on healthcare because MORE people got it???? What were YOU smoking?

Maybe this’ll soothe your itch a little: Obama and the politicians who peddled the “Affordable Care Act” did indeed aggressively suggest that cost relief would result from economies of scale once insurance marketplaces got up to speed. Let me remind you that many Republican-controlled states refused to set up their own marketplaces, leaving that job to the miserably inefficient Federal Government, reducing the chances that those ACA economies of scale might actually be realized. Let me ALSO remind you that any such economies of scale PALE when compared to the upward pressure on health care costs coming from the aforementioned product evolution. Additionally, insurance companies are now so widely deregulated that there’s no hope that any savings they realize as a result of the ACA will ever get passed along to the consumer. Didn’t I explain this before? Are you just griping because you THOUGHT the politicians meant that there IS such a thing as a free meal?
We were going to cover MORE people and it was going to cost everybody LESS?
On what planet?
Politicians DO have some responsibility to communicate the truth, but YOU also bear some responsibility for having enough sense to know when something that you think is being suggested cannot possibly be true.

For the reasons I stated before, health care costs are out of control, and neither Republicans NOR Democrats have any stomach for correcting the problem. So it’s become nothing more than political hot potato, with each party blaming the other in successive administrations for not correcting what neither is willing to fix. Whoopee! Democrats AND Republicans are now in power. Republicans hold both houses of Congress. So come up with some REAL solutions. (Hint: Repealing the ACA won’t fix the problem.) And until you get the guts to tackle this problem head-on (thus far you haven’t really admitted what the true problems with health care ARE, much less suggest how to correct them) quit trying to pin the entire mess on Obama, because that cowardly ploy isn’t fooling anyone.

Oh, and thanks for adding another racist layer of smoke to this obnoxious convulsion of a conversation. Since you apparently assume that I support HRC, your latest tactic probably makes sense to you… but I don’t. Since BOTH parties have been rushing to eliminate all but the most critically defective candidates for their respective party nominations, at this point I want NONE of the leading contenders to be our next president. Unless something truly unexpected happens in the next nine months, I dread the next four years.

@George Wells: thinly veiled “racist layer of smoke.” It’s who he is,
I ‘ll put down– trailer trash with a son who beats a woman while she blames BHO–With a daughter who despite her plea for no pre-marital sex has 2 kids out of wedlock—How’s that for political correctness—go home Palin and manage your kids—-how can you help Trump with your hate.

@George Wells:

implies that reducing the cost of health care was THE goal of the ACA, and that’s not correct.

Gosh, I just HATE it when you are so right, George.

The administration’s own words:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/economy/reform/deficit-reducing-health-care-reform

And then, along came reality.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/flashback-obama-promised-lower-health-care-insurance-premium#.gp13mPZVb

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2014/07/15/obama-18000-broken-promise.html

If you think costs are high NOW, just wait until 2017
http://www.jsonline.com/news/opinion/obamacare-price-spikes-are-coming–in-2017-b99405157z1-285146511.html
How and why Obamacare is failing
http://www.bookwormroom.com/2015/06/14/out-of-the-mouths-of-babes-obamacare-and-economics/

Obama illegally using IRS tax refunds to pay for Obamacare subsidies
http://legalinsurrection.com/2015/06/obama-admin-accused-of-illegally-using-tax-refund-money-to-fund-obamacare-program/
Premium rates getting ready to rise
http://www.wsj.com/articles/health-insurers-seek-hefty-rate-boosts-1432244042
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/05/how-affordable-is-the-affordable-care-act-118428.html?ml=po

Now, due to the skyrocketing deductibles, underinsured is the problem
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/d4eef9cd0a8a4156806e210bda02a172/democrats-see-skimpy-insurance-next-health-care-issue

I’m surprised you walked right into this; I probably got all this information right here. I don’t think racism caused it.

@Bill #59:

Gee, Bill, you get a B+ for linking, but a D- for reading comprehension.

Yes, Obama promised lower health insurance premiums. Did you think he meant EVERYONE’S? Did you forget that before the ACA, Insurance companies were allowed to exclude huge groups of customers from the pool of the insured who SHARE costs, so that people with pre-existing conditions got lumped together into a class that was penalized with entirely un-affordable premiums?

Because I developed type-2 diabetes at age 50, my $3000/year policy was cancelled, and I was offered a “replacement” policy with a $5000 deductible for $17000 a year. My previous policy was no “Cadillac”, but the counter-offered one was a real stinker. I went 12 years without any insurance, until 2013, when the ACA’s “Pre-existing Condition Insurance Plan” provided me an average insurance policy for approximately $6000 a year. The ACA eventually required the insurance companies to put ALL customers into the same pool of shared cost – the principal function of insurance in the first place – and while this understandably DID raise the costs of some premiums, it also DID make others more affordable. The “quote” you reference is neither correct nor incorrect. It is simply inaccurate by virtue of omission.

Good for you and yours for locating sound-bites that seems to imply magic, but no, there was no magic and there is no magic, and nobody with a lick of sense ever believed otherwise. The ACA insured MORE people, and those additional folks tended to be sicker on average than the ones who had previously been insured, so everybody UNDERSTOOD that this expanded coverage was going to cost MORE than the insurance that was in effect before the law was passed. And you knew that.

But great job ignoring once again the real causes of the problem. Forget the exploding costs of technological progress in medical research, and the crushing cost of new drugs. Ignore the unaffordable proliferation of pointless heroic procedures. And forget the greed of hospitals more intent on keeping their high-cost diagnostic equipment running 24-7 instead of meeting the needs of their patients, and of doctors more interested in avoiding mal-practice litigation than keeping health care costs contained. Focus instead on some meaningless sequence of words spoken by a politician you despise (as if you EVER trust ANYTHING he says), and blame the whole problem on him instead of making ANY effort to correct the real problems. That’s a prescription for never solving anything. I would expect no less from a bigoted partisan troll. And for the record, “bigoted” does not connote racism. It means that you are blindly obsessed with an opinion that you do not allow to be influenced by the facts. A “bigot” is simply a person with a closed mind.

Let me frame this in a way that you might find more palatable. We CANNOT afford to provide the same health care to all citizens. (Does THAT sound “Liberal?”) There are scads of procedures – some totally frivolous and some life-sustaining – that are so expensive that they should remain beyond the reach of all but the very rich. There are other procedures which are on the average relatively affordable and fairly effective in improving health, and THESE procedures should be available to everyone. And I don’t care HOW effective a $30000 anti-leukemia pill is, we shouldn’t be making them available to folks who can’t pay for them out of their own pockets. There needs to be some rational limit placed on how much we COLLECTIVELY spend on health care, and that means that we need to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of the care that we are paying for, and let the answers we get guide our decisions regarding what we pay for. Such a process is terribly unpopular, but it’s something that, sooner or later, we’re all going to have to face. Call it a “death-squad” if it makes you happy, and use the term to your political advantage, but until you come up with a better plan, you have nothing.

The we screwed this so bad You have to come up with a better plan crap pffft. Analogy My map says we are taking this road, the bridge is out we are careening to our death but I will not alter course til you come up with a better route AND I must like your route better. Want a wet nurse move to a country that will slip you a titty.

@George Wells: Oh, you know, you’re right… I distinctly remember Obama clearly stating that not everyone’s healthcare costs would go down, just a few. No… wait. No he didn’t. He said everyone would see a $2500 a year savings, didn’t he?

Also, I do believe Obama made it clear that except for a very limited few, many that earned a living would see taxes and fees go up due to the effects of Obamacare. Well, wait a second… no…. he said “not one dime” of taxes would be felt by anyone earning less that $250,000 a year. Golly, what happened there?

The ACA insured MORE people, and those additional folks tended to be sicker on average than the ones who had previously been insured, so everybody UNDERSTOOD that this expanded coverage was going to cost MORE than the insurance that was in effect before the law was passed.

Yeah, I seem to remember Obama saying that since there was no mechanism to force healthy, non-insurance users to pay premiums, the costs of insuring only the sickly, insurance-draining demographic would cause costs to necessarily sky-rocket. No, wait… those were some other costs he was going to cause to sky-rocket. He in fact installed a mechanism to wrench premiums from more healthy people than the unhealthy… it just failed miserably because he was too concerned that his hokey-sounding, pie-in-the-sky dream plan would scare too many voters off, so he changed and delayed, as he saw fit, until the entire program began to crumple under its own weight.

And you knew that.

Yeah, I did. YOU didn’t. You believed all that crap. You’re one of Gruber’s guys. But you didn’t care if it succeeded or failed; all you wanted was your shiny little trinket.

@Bill #62:

Still nothing but blame.
You have no idea how to fix anything.
You can’t begin to understand the problem when the only tool you have is blame.
Keep beating that dead horse.

And what will you do when you get a Republican president and the problem doesn’t go away?
When the astronomical cost of drugs continues its upward spiral?
When the cost of expensive, high-tech solutions replaces cheaper old ones?
When the cost of treating our ever-sicker population to ever more expensive and ever less effective heroic procedures buries us in debt?
NOTHING!
You have NOTHING but empty blame!
Keep fooling yourself.
It’s all you’re good for.

@George Wells:

Still nothing but blame.
You have no idea how to fix anything.

Well, obviously you don’t have a goddamn idea how to fix anything either, or else you would not elect idiots that promise the moon and deliver crap. How about this; until a system better than what we had was available, leave the working-just-fine system alone? Is that a concept too f****ng difficult to grasp?

Health care costs were rising. Now, they are rising more rapidly. 30 million were uninsured. 30 million are STILL uninsured; there’ll be more when the exchanges go under. Health care was difficult to access. Now, it’s MORE difficult to access because more doctors are getting out of the work-for-free business.

And all it costs us is $10 trillion dollars. But, hey, we don’t want to assess blame or point fingers, do we? Let’s just take the hit and roll with the flow. Right?

Or else it’s racist.

The system is a wreck… so who IS to blame? Those who said, “I wouldn’t do that, if I were you.” and fought it tooth and nail or those that lied about every aspect of it to get it passed simply for the sake of getting it passed? Obama IS to blame, along with everyone that supported him. The only ones that can be forgiven are those who honestly confront their huge mistake and admit it. That would NOT be you… after all, you got what you wanted.

I sure wish I had known I had a “Cadillac plan” back before it got taxed out from under me… I probably would have felt a little more proud of it.

@Bill #64:

“leave the working-just-fine system alone”

and:

“The system is a wreck”

Gee, Bill, having trouble paying for your “can’t-make-up-your-mind” meds???

It must be incredibly boring having absolutely nothing happening in your head North of a belch.
I’ve listed about a half-dozen enormously important causes for our increasingly unmanageable explosion in health care costs, AND I provided a means of getting those costs back under control, and what has your cry-baby response been? Blame Obama, Blame Hillary, Blame all Democrats, Blame homosexuals, Blame, Blame, Blame! Baby cries to hear itself cry, apparently. Baby is a long way from developing reasoning skills, much less the capacity to solve problems. If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.

Bleeding heart liberals cannot resist their urge to GIVE everything equally to everyone, never mind what it costs, and selfish conservatives can’t break themselves of the habit of insisting on the birth of unwanted children, but then abandon any responsibility for adequately supporting them, thus ensuring both over-population AND a perpetuation of the cycle of poverty. The “liberal” cure? Expand the culture of dependency! Democrats are incapable of fixing the problem, and so are Republicans. What have THEY done? What have THEY suggested? Tort reform is but a needle in the haystack of straws that are breaking our backs. Republicans don’t have the guts to fix this any more than Democrats.

And neither do YOU have any answers. You won’t even admit what the problem is! Why are you still talking?

@George Wells:

I’ve listed about a half-dozen enormously important causes for our increasingly unmanageable explosion in health care costs, AND I provided a means of getting those costs back under control, and what has your cry-baby response been?

In case you are too ignorant to notice, the situation you describe is the RESULT of Obamacare. Yes, health care was expensive and rising… but with Obamacare? The plan that was to remedy that, SAVE money, ensure all AND make access easier? Why, it is rising FASTER. Yay! Success!

Gee, for a conservative that only voted, grudgingly, for Obama to denigrate the institution of marriage, you are sure adamant about defending a proven failure. Why, it’s almost as if you were never the conservative you claimed to be.

I have THE answer: another lying, corrupt, socialistic liberal should NEVER be allowed to occupy the White House ever again.

@Bill #66:
I gave you this:

“Costs are “spiraling upward” because medical and pharmacutical research continues to develop increasingly expensive high-tech diagnostic tools, procedures and boutique drugs that the legal profession bullies insurance companies into paying for. Have you never had a doctor first give you a diagnosis that happened to be right AND THEN order ten thousand dollars worth of CAT scans, NMR’s, PET scans and the like to provide a high-tech corroboration of his good judgment JUST in case he missed something that would give you or your heirs the inside track for a mal-practice win in court? Do you really think it’s SANE to ask the people who pay insurance premiums to foot the million-dollar bill every time a baby pops out at eight ounces instead of eight pounds? Or to pay for obscenely expensive drugs and rounds of radiation in the futile attempt to marginally postpone the death of a patient suffering from a stage-4 metastatic cancer (much less miraculously cure such a patient)? You might THINK that such a cancer patient has a right to abdicate any remaining vestiges of dignity and spend the last months of his or her life having fecal matter roto-rootered by Hospice attendants instead of taking the Hemlock route, or even that such a prolonged bout of suffering is somehow morally superior to a quick and painless finale, but I’m not comfortable making the rest of us pay for your CHOICE.”

and you answered:

“the situation you describe is the RESULT of Obamacare.”

Are you insane?

The items I listed are fundamental flaws in the way health care has evolved as a capitalistic enterprise and the way that disputes arising have been litigated in our country, driving costs higher than they are anywhere else, and they have NOTHING to do with ObamaCare.

I gave you this:

“Bleeding heart liberals cannot resist their urge to GIVE everything equally to everyone, never mind what it costs, and selfish conservatives can’t break themselves of the habit of insisting on the birth of unwanted children, but then abandon any responsibility for adequately supporting them, thus ensuring both over-population AND a perpetuation of the cycle of poverty. The “liberal” cure? Expand the culture of dependency! Democrats are incapable of fixing the problem, and so are Republicans. What have THEY done? What have THEY suggested? Tort reform is but a needle in the haystack of straws that are breaking our backs. Republicans don’t have the guts to fix this any more than Democrats.”

and you answered:

“you are sure adamant about defending a proven failure.”

Again, are you insane?
I am defending NOTHING! I am inditing Republicans and Democrats EQUALLY – they’ve BOTH failed to prevent an unsustainable explosion of health care costs.
Don’t you READ anything I’m writing?

You have no answer.
You KNOW that ObamaCare doesn’t control what pharmaceutical companies charge for their products – anti-regulatory Republicans would never allow that.
You KNOW that ObamaCare doesn’t influence what costly high-tech procedures get developed and which of them hospitals and doctors decide to incorporate into their “standards of practice” – again an anti-regulatory issue.
You KNOW that ObamaCare doesn’t limit or constrain practices that have no realistic chance of delivering benefit to patients – all the Republican scare over the so-called “death-panels” made certain of that.
You KNOW that Republicans have done everything in their power to NOT regulate the Health Industry, and then you feign surprise when that industry jacks up their prices and their profits, and you BLAME it all on Democrats!

You ARE insane!

All ObamaCare does is a handy bit of income redistribution. If you don’t like it, vote against it, and see where that gets you. I don’t personally care, one way or the other.

@George Wells: You can go on and on with your Greg-like defense of but one of Obama’s failures but, in the end, it is still a failure. A documented failure and a failure of liberal making. Tomorrow there will be a new report on a failure of an aspect of Obamacare. The next day, another. The administration itself has had to revise, downward, it’s own assessments in advance of the news the CBO was going to release.

Forgive me if I do not continue to answer each of your rubber-stamped defenses point by point. This I have done, which you obviously have not read. So, continue your campaign to convince yourself of the qualified degrees of failure you are willing to accept and redefine as a “success”. It has failed on every count.

@Bill #68:
Greg’s not here.
You are.
I’m not defending ObamaCare, even though it helped me greatly for three years. THEN I got coverage through my HUSBAND’S employment coverage, thank you very much.

But let me give you a few REAL examples of what the REAL problem with our health care is:
Twenty years ago, the treatment for Type-1 diabetes involved using a common syringe to deliver a measured dose of synthetic human insulin one or more times a day. The drug was effective. Because it had been developed recently (it became commercially available in 1980), it was under patent, and the drug company making it (Lily) could charge a premium for it. Presumably, after the patent wore out, other companies could begin making generic versions and sell them more cheaply. But in the meantime, newer, more novel delivery systems – like insulin pumps and insulin pens – and different types – such as slow- and fast-acting – were developed and patented, and companies stopped MAKING the previously available product, insuring that the treatment of Type-1 diabetes would NEVER become inexpensive. There is no regulation of this industry, nothing to compel companies to continue to provide inexpensive and effective alternatives to the newest gimmick on the block.

Here’s another example:

Back when I had no health insurance (Remember? When the insurance company (Anthem) dropped me for developing diabetes?) at one point I developed a bad case of tennis elbow. I went to an orthopedist, and before the doctor would see me, an assistant explained that I FIRST had to have some x-rays and an NMR scan taken. Understanding that these tests would cost thousands, and that I’d pay full price (not a “negotiated” price) for them, I refused. I was threatened with “The doctor won’t see you without them” and I countered that I’d see an attorney before I’d agree to those terms. After a brief delay, the doctor came in, and I explained that I could afford 50-year old medicine, but not current, and that in this case, that would suffice. After he poked around my sore joint for a moment, he told me to go to a drugstore and buy an ace bandage and wear it until the pain went away… and “get out of my office.” It worked. The point is: Fifty years ago wasn’t the Dark Ages of Medicine. We don’t always need to pay for the latest frills to embellish our treatment. Yet that is what we get every time. Until we develop a process for controlling (regulating) the built-in wastefulness that we’ve selfishly encouraged our healthcare system to bloat itself with, how do you think we’ll get the costs contained?

This $hit doesn’t have anything to do with ObamaCare. It’s been going on for decades, and everybody’s afraid to stop it because NOBODY is willing to receive anything less that the latest and MOST expensive treatment, as if getting sick in the first place was somehow synonymous with winning the Lottery. It isn’t. We ALL have a responsibility to help keep the costs down, and that includes our own.

You go ahead and blame Obama if it makes you feel all warm and fuzzy, but you’re not fixing anything by doing that. You will get what you deserve.

@George Wells: Oh, no… you aren’t defending Obamacare. Not much.

Tell me… what is it in Obamacare that addresses lowering actual health care costs? The Medicaid policy of simply telling doctors, “You charge $50 for that? We’ll give you $10.”? How’s THAT working out?

Perhaps you remember (but you most likely don’t, having ideologically cleansed your mind of unwanted and disturbing facts) how Obama initially attacked doctors for performing unnecessary procedures simply to make a buck? Remember the bogus tonsillectomies and unnecessary amputations? What happened to that train of thought? Well, I’ll tell you… eventually, Obama needed doctors to support Obamacare and they were bowing up at him over his irresponsible accusations. So, he pivoted from them to the onerous, 3% profit-making insurance fiends. For them, he promised a captive audience and reimbursements for their losses until the wonders of Obamacare kicked in. Now, it looks like those wonders were simply lies (surprise) and insurance provider after insurance provider are also bolting from the fold.

One of the Republican proposals that Obama courteously listened to, then rejected, was tort reform. So, you might as well get used to batteries of tests for symptoms because if a misdiagnosis is made, it’s doomsday for the doc.

But, Obama had NOTHING to do with Obamacare, did he, so how could anyone in their right mind blame him? Or those who blindly believe and support him?

Spare me.

@Bill #70:
Thanks for bringing up tort reform. Remember how I’ve brought that up already? Democrats fight tort reform. I’m in favor of it. How’s that add up for you?
Our legal system is definitely part of the problem. Well, you’ve got both houses of congress now – where’s the tort reform legislation? On Obama’s desk yet? Why not? Maybe because Republican lawmakers are just as crooked a bunch of lawyers as Democratic ones are. But if blaming Obama, as if Obama is the SOURCE of legislation, makes you happy, fine. But remember that once you have both houses of Congress AND the White House, tort reform STILL isn’t going to be on the agenda, because Republican lawmakers are just as crooked a bunch of lawyers as Democratic ones are. Then who will you have to blame?

By the way, your “analysis” of what is wrong with health care doesn’t make a bit of sense. ObamaCare doesn’t regulate the health profession or the insurance companies the way you imagine. It sets some guidelines, some of which are good and some of which are not, but it never bothered to really regulate ANY of the REAL causes for the explosion of health costs. Insurance companies are raising rates at will, and pharmaceutical companies are raising their drug prices at will, too, and what does ObamaCare do about it?. You don’t WANT regulation, do you? You don’t HAVE regulation now, so you MUST have what you want. So why are you complaining?

Tort reform? Isn’t that just another word for MORE regulation? Or is it more a matter of giving up some of your freedom? Is that your solution? Tell citizens you’re taking away their constitutional right to seek redress when harmed? And how will THAT cut down on the amount of money it takes to save an eight-ounce premie? It WON’T!

One of the reasons Republicans keep losing national elections is that they never offer any REAL solutions to the problems the nation faces. Blaming Democrats isn’t a real fix, and repealing everything that Democrats did isn’t a real fix either. It just takes you back to the greedy capitalist free-for-all that we’d have in the absence of regulation… moral anarchy. Do that – PLEASE! It will kill your precious GOP once and for all, because when everyone sees what a mess THAT makes, YOU’LL get the blame, and then the Democrats will be free to screw EVERYTHING all to Hell. That’s what you get when you refuse to work together to make things better. BOTH parties are guilty. YOU’RE guilty. I’m smart enough to admit that Democrats are part of the problem. You’re stupid enough to believe that they are the WHOLE problem. It would be statistically impossible for you to be right.

@George Wells: At least you’re still not defending Obamacare. Sheesh.

Bill:
The ACA did SOME good things. It put everyone into the same insurance pools regardless of pre-existing health conditions, for example. I’m not sure that voluntary conditions – like drug abuse – shouldn’t be punished economically, but I’m not stupid enough to believe that such penalties would deter the behavior. And it DID “give” better care to millions who cannot afford what they are being GIVEN. However, the politically messed up final product that we got isn’t worth much on the whole, and it has created as many problems as it fixed. I’ve never suggested otherwise. You would prefer to can the whole thing and just go back to exactly what we HAD, which would fix NONE of the fundamental problems we have in out health care system. I would prefer to FIGURE OUT which parts of the ACA are working and keep them, and fixure out how to FIX the parts that DON’T work.

Here’s a quandary:

Tort reform threatens to interfere with an individual’s constitutionally protected rights to seek remedy when harmed. So long as health care is privatized, you can’t take away a person’s right to seek remedy from those private providers. But IF health care was nationalized – run by the government – tort reform wouldn’t be an issue, because you cannot sue the government unless it agrees that you can. And it usually doesn’t agree to that. Socializing health care would reduce that component of cost relating to frivolous litigation and excessive jury awards. Just a thought…

@George Wells: Covering pre-existing conditions is great. However, how do you keep people from waiting until they HAVE a condition before they buy insurance? Well, unless you make the fines, fees and penalties far more painful than this administration has been willing to impose, you can’t and that has had a major impact on the success/failure of Obamacare.

Socializing health care would reduce that component of cost relating to frivolous litigation and excessive jury awards. Just a thought…

Socializing health care would ELIMINATE costs due to litigation because there would be no litigation; you can’t sue the government. So, what would keep health care from becoming the VA? Good intentions? Because that is exactly how the VA got to where it is today; no accountability and no recourse by patients.

@Bill #74:

“unless you make the fines, fees and penalties far more painful than this administration has been willing to impose”

I agree. I suspect that the administration was too afraid of backlash if the penalties were stiff. I also suspect that Republicans would have objected as well, since stiff penalties might actually help the ACA succeed. Remember that there was a lot of resistance to the whole “mandate” portion of the ACA, as if letting the whole thing be voluntary would lead to anything but the quickest failure.

“Socializing health care would ELIMINATE costs due to litigation because there would be no litigation; you can’t sue the government.”

Well, I pretty much said the same thing. It wouldn’t completely stop law suits, because people would continue to challenge every part of the law, just like they are doing now, and defending the law in court costs the tax payers. But that’s splitting hairs both ways.

As far as mimicking the VA, your logic would suggest that the government cannot do ANYTHING right at all, and I’m not willing to concede that. The VA has major structural problems, and so far we’ve failed to fix the lion’s share of them. Doesn’t tell me that we need to get rid of the VA. It tells me that we need to do better. I think we can, you don’t? Where the heck is your faith in the human race?

@George Wells: Well, it has been shown they cannot do health care right, so, there’s that.