The Democrat Thread

[kapkomet]

And if a conservative was appointed, there would be conservative "policy from the courts." The only difference is that somebody actually said it out loud. It's pretty mind-numbing that conservatives manage to get away with pretending they don't do the exact same thing liberals do. If it wasn't intended to be that way the president wouldn't get to appoint judges/justices.

No, that's not true. But I don't have time to debate this now, so liberals are always right, seeing as how they have total control of the government, they have to be always right.

 

 

 

 

[kapkomet]

Your legendary saying is "It's always different". My response in this case is that it is different, and I can demonstrate why with this graph.

 

 

The reality is...the Filibuster was once a rarely used tool that required the person filibustering to actually stay on the floor of the Senate. Gradually over the years, the rules have changed, and now it is the group that wants to stop the filibuster that actually needs to keep its people on the floor of the Senate; in other words, you can filibuster a bill without filibustering it. This has basically changed the requirement for getting a bill out of the Senate from 50 votes to 60 votes...and in the last Congress, starting in 2007, it was essentially applied to everything that didn't involve naming a post office. It's actually different; the use of it has changed.

Sure - and I don't care because it's not explicit - EXCEPT with judicial nominees. It's VERY explicit then. But again, it's always ok when Democrats do whatever the hell they want and those same actions are motherf***ing evil when the GOP does it.

[StrangeSox]

No, that's not true. But I don't have time to debate this now, so liberals are always right, seeing as how they have total control of the government, they have to be always right.

 

It's always different!

[lostfan]

No, a conservative interpretation (read: a constitutional answer) is the correct answer by default, the goal of a liberal is to distort everything as much as they possibly can since everything they believe is wrong. All of the answers are clearly listed in the Constitution even when they get to the Supreme Court. I get it.

[lostfan]

Sure - and I don't care because it's not explicit - EXCEPT with judicial nominees. It's VERY explicit then. But again, it's always ok when Democrats do whatever the hell they want and those same actions are motherf***ing evil when the GOP does it.

Dude. You're doing it right now.

[kapkomet]

Dude. You're doing it right now.

I don't like the bastardization of the cloture vote. The only way to make it go away is to use it against them because like I said, when they do it, it's "ok".

 

As I said, liberals are ALWAYS "right". That's all.

[lostfan]

brb going to shoot self in face

[Nixon]

Don't forget to turn your webcam on.

[kapkomet]

brb going to shoot self in face

Where's the smilie? We need that beauty in here.

 

[lostfan]

 

That's actually Nixon's.

[kapkomet]

 

That's actually Nixon's.

Woot! I drove the Dems to a suicide in their own thread!

 

Seriously, that smilie is just funny.

 

 

[lostfan]

Yeah I love it. I'm afraid I'm gonna overuse it though.

[Balta1701]

This New Yorker piece on health care costs was an excellent read.

One night, I went to dinner with six McAllen doctors. All were what you would call bread-and-butter physicians: busy, full-time, private-practice doctors who work from seven in the morning to seven at night and sometimes later, their waiting rooms teeming and their desks stacked with medical charts to review.

 

Some were dubious when I told them that McAllen was the country’s most expensive place for health care. I gave them the spending data from Medicare. In 1992, in the McAllen market, the average cost per Medicare enrollee was $4,891, almost exactly the national average. But since then, year after year, McAllen’s health costs have grown faster than any other market in the country, ultimately soaring by more than ten thousand dollars per person.

 

“Maybe the service is better here,” the cardiologist suggested. People can be seen faster and get their tests more readily, he said.

 

Others were skeptical. “I don’t think that explains the costs he’s talking about,” the general surgeon said.

 

“It’s malpractice,” a family physician who had practiced here for thirty-three years said.

 

“McAllen is legal hell,” the cardiologist agreed. Doctors order unnecessary tests just to protect themselves, he said. Everyone thought the lawyers here were worse than elsewhere.

 

That explanation puzzled me. Several years ago, Texas passed a tough malpractice law that capped pain-and-suffering awards at two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Didn’t lawsuits go down?

 

“Practically to zero,” the cardiologist admitted.

 

“Come on,” the general surgeon finally said. “We all know these arguments are bulls***. There is overutilization here, pure and simple.” Doctors, he said, were racking up charges with extra tests, services, and procedures.

 

The surgeon came to McAllen in the mid-nineties, and since then, he said, “the way to practice medicine has changed completely. Before, it was about how to do a good job. Now it is about ‘How much will you benefit?’ ”

 

Everyone agreed that something fundamental had changed since the days when health-care costs in McAllen were the same as those in El Paso and elsewhere. Yes, they had more technology. “But young doctors don’t think anymore,” the family physician said.

 

The surgeon gave me an example. General surgeons are often asked to see patients with pain from gallstones. If there aren’t any complications—and there usually aren’t—the pain goes away on its own or with pain medication. With instruction on eating a lower-fat diet, most patients experience no further difficulties. But some have recurrent episodes, and need surgery to remove their gallbladder.

 

Seeing a patient who has had uncomplicated, first-time gallstone pain requires some judgment. A surgeon has to provide reassurance (people are often scared and want to go straight to surgery), some education about gallstone disease and diet, perhaps a prescription for pain; in a few weeks, the surgeon might follow up. But increasingly, I was told, McAllen surgeons simply operate. The patient wasn’t going to moderate her diet, they tell themselves. The pain was just going to come back. And by operating they happen to make an extra seven hundred dollars.

 

I gave the doctors around the table a scenario. A forty-year-old woman comes in with chest pain after a fight with her husband. An EKG is normal. The chest pain goes away. She has no family history of heart disease. What did McAllen doctors do fifteen years ago?

 

Send her home, they said. Maybe get a stress test to confirm that there’s no issue, but even that might be overkill.

 

And today? Today, the cardiologist said, she would get a stress test, an echocardiogram, a mobile Holter monitor, and maybe even a cardiac catheterization.

 

“Oh, she’s definitely getting a cath,” the internist said, laughing grimly.

 

To determine whether overuse of medical care was really the problem in McAllen, I turned to Jonathan Skinner, an economist at Dartmouth’s Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, which has three decades of expertise in examining regional patterns in Medicare payment data. I also turned to two private firms—D2Hawkeye, an independent company, and Ingenix, UnitedHealthcare’s data-analysis company—to analyze commercial insurance data for McAllen. The answer was yes. Compared with patients in El Paso and nationwide, patients in McAllen got more of pretty much everything—more diagnostic testing, more hospital treatment, more surgery, more home care.

 

The Medicare payment data provided the most detail. Between 2001 and 2005, critically ill Medicare patients received almost fifty per cent more specialist visits in McAllen than in El Paso, and were two-thirds more likely to see ten or more specialists in a six-month period. In 2005 and 2006, patients in McAllen received twenty per cent more abdominal ultrasounds, thirty per cent more bone-density studies, sixty per cent more stress tests with echocardiography, two hundred per cent more nerve-conduction studies to diagnose carpal-tunnel syndrome, and five hundred and fifty per cent more urine-flow studies to diagnose prostate troubles. They received one-fifth to two-thirds more gallbladder operations, knee replacements, breast biopsies, and bladder scopes. They also received two to three times as many pacemakers, implantable defibrillators, cardiac-bypass operations, carotid endarterectomies, and coronary-artery stents. And Medicare paid for five times as many home-nurse visits. The primary cause of McAllen’s extreme costs was, very simply, the across-the-board overuse of medicine.

[kapkomet]

So instead of "over testing", let's just deny people the care straightaway because it's not medically necessary - as determined by our government. Screw the middle ground, eh, eh? EH?

 

Obviously, government handling everything in our lives is the only answer.

 

I have a question.

 

Why is it that you hear from liberals, like our friend that just got nominated, that it takes hard work and courage to get ahead in life? I mean, shouldn't these people have made it because of medicare (government health care), welfare (government assistance for the "downtrodden"), social security (since those funds provide everything we need in life, just ask our government)... I mean, if all these government programs are so damn wonderful, why don't the people running our country come from that very mold that the Democrat Party wants us to live in?

[Balta1701]

So instead of "over testing", let's just deny people the care straightaway because it's not medically necessary - as determined by our government. Screw the middle ground, eh, eh? EH?

 

Obviously, government handling everything in our lives is the only answer.

 

I have a question.

 

Why is it that you hear from liberals, like our friend that just got nominated, that it takes hard work and courage to get ahead in life? I mean, shouldn't these people have made it because of medicare (government health care), welfare (government assistance for the "downtrodden"), social security (since those funds provide everything we need in life, just ask our government)... I mean, if all these government programs are so damn wonderful, why don't the people running our country come from that very mold that the Democrat Party wants us to live in?

1. If you actually bothered to read the whole article it comes to a very different conclusion than what you're claiming it does.

 

2. What exactly is your solution that prevents health care costs from consuming the entire economy in 20 years? If you're going to respond with any version of a market-based solution, you're advocating the exact same thing...denying people care. Except in that case, it falls overwhelmingly on the poor.

 

3. A lot of us are totally willing to work hard. But you know what? The world still screws an awful lot of people who work hard. You lose your job. You're a kid who gets born in to a family that can't afford to have the kid, or you wind up going to a school that just isn't as good as the one down the road where the rich people live in its property district. You get sick at a young age. Or you do everything right planning for retirement, and then suddenly when you hit age 64, the the stock market collapses and takes out the business that was funding your health care while at the same time taking out a ton of your investments.

 

We call it a safety net. Do people exploit it by jumping off, just to let it catch them? Yes. But if its not there...then when things do bad, when bad things happen to good people...those good people wind up destroyed.

 

And even beyond that...when people are trying to do the right thing...knowing that they have something backing them up is helpful...you don't exactly want to go out and risk working on that bridge if you know there's no net if you screw up. If there's no Social Security, I put virtually no money in the stock market; I keep everything in low risk accounts that are FDIC insured (the bank safety net). If I get a job with health coverage, I can't afford to look for a new job and risk losing that health coverage. Same deal.

[kapkomet]

1. If you actually bothered to read the whole article it comes to a very different conclusion than what you're claiming it does.

 

2. What exactly is your solution that prevents health care costs from consuming the entire economy in 20 years? If you're going to respond with any version of a market-based solution, you're advocating the exact same thing...denying people care. Except in that case, it falls overwhelmingly on the poor.

 

3. A lot of us are totally willing to work hard. But you know what? The world still screws an awful lot of people who work hard. You lose your job. You're a kid who gets born in to a family that can't afford to have the kid, or you wind up going to a school that just isn't as good as the one down the road where the rich people live in its property district. You get sick at a young age. Or you do everything right planning for retirement, and then suddenly when you hit age 64, the the stock market collapses and takes out the business that was funding your health care while at the same time taking out a ton of your investments.

 

We call it a safety net. Do people exploit it by jumping off, just to let it catch them? Yes. But if its not there...then when things do bad, when bad things happen to good people...those good people wind up destroyed.

 

And even beyond that...when people are trying to do the right thing...knowing that they have something backing them up is helpful...you don't exactly want to go out and risk working on that bridge if you know there's no net if you screw up. If there's no Social Security, I put virtually no money in the stock market; I keep everything in low risk accounts that are FDIC insured (the bank safety net). If I get a job with health coverage, I can't afford to look for a new job and risk losing that health coverage. Same deal.

 

1. I did. So what did I miss? I see exactly what they are saying. And I actually agree with it, but you have to have a middle ground. Case in point? I had the SAME issue come up, and my doc sent me home with some pain meds and a different diet. Whaddya know, it worked. Although I did have an extra set of tests to ensure nothing else was messed up. Why is there a problem with that? Maybe, maybe not an issue, depends on your take.

 

2. L.O.S.E.R P.A.Y.S. That would solve 50% of the problem right there. With that said, as has been asked over and over and over and over again on this site, tell me when the hell the government has EVER gotten anything like this right in the lowest cost estimates they give when they say they are going to take over anything? With tort reform, there's a whole lot that can be done. The $250K cap here is bulls***, but that's not the point.

 

3. You don't think I know? You act like I haven't been there (there right now). Guess what? I was smart enough to save. I didn't live beyond my means - I didn't have the government telling me through FHA programs that one Barneys Frank kept propping up until it fell through the s***ter, literally that it was ok to buy twice the house that I could have. You really honestly avoided my question. The very same people who want to create this "redistribution of wealth" scenario as Saul Alinksy and others advocate (now propogated by our president) - the "safety net" doesn't really apply to them - they honestly understand that it takes individual effort to get to where they are - and they are trying to take that away in some cases.

 

As I've said other times - please - just hand me 50% of your paycheck. I need it more then you. Is that a fair statement (I'll answer for you - hell no...) - so what's wrong with my statement (this is a test... )?

[StrangeSox]

2. L.O.S.E.R P.A.Y.S. That would solve 50% of the problem right there. With that said, as has been asked over and over and over and over again on this site, tell me when the hell the government has EVER gotten anything like this right in the lowest cost estimates they give when they say they are going to take over anything? With tort reform, there's a whole lot that can be done. The $250K cap here is bulls***, but that's not the point.

 

It'll also make it highly unlikely that anyone would sue a large company even if they have legitimate claims. They can't afford the possibility of paying Merck's $200,000 legal fees for their team of lawyers vs. their $5000 lawyer.

[Balta1701]

2. L.O.S.E.R P.A.Y.S. That would solve 50% of the problem right there. With that said, as has been asked over and over and over and over again on this site, tell me when the hell the government has EVER gotten anything like this right in the lowest cost estimates they give when they say they are going to take over anything? With tort reform, there's a whole lot that can be done. The $250K cap here is bulls***, but that's not the point.

I'm amazed you cited tort reform as a possible solution when the article I posted discussed 2 cities in Texas...one of which has incredibly high medical costs...and Texas has one of the nation's strongest anti-malpractice-suit laws. Texas has had the tort reform you ask for and health care costs have gone through the roof.

[Soxbadger]

Dr's crying about lawyers is one of the biggest scams ever perpetrated on America.

 

At least in Illinois, in order to even file a case for medical malpractice another Dr. needs to certify that the other Dr committed negligence.

 

http://www.mcandl.com/illinois.html

 

Expert Testimony

 

In any medical malpractice case, a plaintiff's attorney must attach to the complaint (or in some circumstances file within 90 days) an affidavit stating that (a) he has consulted with an expert who practiced or taught within the last six years in the same area of medicine that is at issue; (B) the expert is qualified by experience or demonstrated competence in the subject of the case; and © the expert has determined in a written report, after a review of the medical record and other relevant material, that there is a reasonable and meritorious cause for the filing of such action. A copy of the report must be attached, but the identity of the expert may be withheld. 735 Ill. Comp. Stat. Ann. § 5/2-622 (West Supp. 2002) (see note for text as it read prior to an unconstitutional amendment).

 

Try and find another area where you need an affidavit from an expert that there is a "reasonable and meritorious cause" before you can actually file the case.

 

Which is why most medical malpractice cases settle.

 

 

[StrangeSox]

The CBO released a study a few years ago about the costs of malpractice lawsuits and insurance. It's a tiny amount, something like 4 or 5%.

[Balta1701]

This Time Magazine profile of defense secretary Gates made him grow on me a little more.

After a quietly impressive career in government that has spanned more than 30 mostly Republican years, Robert Gates is suddenly seeming almost, well, charismatic. He reeks authority. He is, according to several sources, the most respected voice in National Security Council debates. The President is said to love his unadorned manner. Much of which is attributable to the fact that, in the self-proclaimed twilight of his public career, Gates has emerged as that most exotic of Washington species — the bureaucrat unbound, candid and fearless. He tells members of Congress what he really thinks about their pet programs. He upends Pentagon priorities, demotes the military-industrial hardware pipeline and promotes the immediate needs of the troops on the front line. He fires high-ranking subordinates without muss or controversy — an Air Force secretary and chief of staff who didn't agree with him on the need to end production of the F-22 aircraft; the commandant of Walter Reed Army Medical Center, who presided over disgraceful conditions; even a well-respected general like David McKiernan, a conventional-warfare specialist unsuited for the asymmetrical struggle in Afghanistan. (See pictures of the battle against the Taliban.)

 

When, in a recent conversation, I noted that he seemed gleefully outspoken these days, Gates offered a twinkly smile and said, "What are they going to do, fire me?"

 

In truth, Gates has been bulletproof ever since George W. Bush lured him from Texas A&M University to replace the disastrous Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense. His mission, Gates said, was "to put Iraq in a better place," which is a spectacular understatement. Iraq was falling apart in late 2006, and Gates found the Defense Department in paralytic denial. His nonstop effort to reform the institution — abetted by military rebels who had been cast into the outer darkness by the powers that were — is a great untold story of the war on terrorism.

 

"If you ever get a chance to interview Donald Rumsfeld," a retired four-star general told me in 2005, "ask him two questions and see which one lights up his eyes. Ask him what our force posture should be toward China 10 years from now. And then ask him what tactical changes we should make on the ground in Iraq as a result of the last three months of combat. I'll bet you anything, he gets more excited about China."

[lostfan]

Yeah I posted that in the GOP thread. Yet further proof that Bob Gates is awesome.

[HuskyCaucasian]

huh! And I was told pro-abortion and pro-life could never work together....

 

Focus on the Family meets with the White House:

This press release from Focus on the Family is a bit surprising, and very much in line with the White House hopes of finding common ground on issues less polarizing than abortion:

The White Hou

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hip

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from acro

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about how to better

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K

elly Ro

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on the Family

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anctity of Human Life department, wa

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among tho

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The Obama admini

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aid, "and wanted to

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Ro

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aid the White Hou

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appreciation for Focu

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commitment to the i

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One of the thing

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that emerged from the meeting,"

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aid, "wa

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Focu

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”

 

Focu

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on the Family anticipate

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ongoing dialogue with the White Hou

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e on adoption.

[Balta1701]

It's the Dem socialist communist workers of the world unite thread so I'm allowed to post Krugman articles. The Nobel Prize winning economist's column today was on the specter of inflation, which someone in the evil world domination fascist Republican thread was quite frightened of yesterday.

First things first. It’s important to realize that there’s no hint of inflationary pressures in the economy right now. Consumer prices are lower now than they were a year ago, and wage increases have stalled in the face of high unemployment. Deflation, not inflation, is the clear and present danger.

 

So if prices aren’t rising, why the inflation worries? Some claim that the Federal Reserve is printing lots of money, which must be inflationary, while others claim that budget deficits will eventually force the U.S. government to inflate away its debt.

 

The first story is just wrong. The second could be right, but isn’t.

 

Now, it’s true that the Fed has taken unprecedented actions lately. More specifically, it has been buying lots of debt both from the government and from the private sector, and paying for these purchases by crediting banks with extra reserves. And in ordinary times, this would be highly inflationary: banks, flush with reserves, would increase loans, which would drive up demand, which would push up prices.

 

But these aren’t ordinary times. Banks aren’t lending out their extra reserves. They’re just sitting on them — in effect, they’re sending the money right back to the Fed. So the Fed isn’t really printing money after all.

 

Still, don’t such actions have to be inflationary sooner or later? No. The Bank of Japan, faced with economic difficulties not too different from those we face today, purchased debt on a huge scale between 1997 and 2003. What happened to consumer prices? They fell.

 

All in all, much of the current inflation discussion calls to mind what happened during the early years of the Great Depression when many influential people were warning about inflation even as prices plunged. As the British economist Ralph Hawtrey wrote, “Fantastic fears of inflation were expressed. That was to cry, Fire, Fire in Noah’s Flood.” And he went on, “It is after depression and unemployment have subsided that inflation becomes dangerous.”

 

Is there a risk that we’ll have inflation after the economy recovers? That’s the claim of those who look at projections that federal debt may rise to more than 100 percent of G.D.P. and say that America will eventually have to inflate away that debt — that is, drive up prices so that the real value of the debt is reduced.

 

Such things have happened in the past. For example, France ultimately inflated away much of the debt it incurred while fighting World War I.

 

But more modern examples are lacking. Over the past two decades, Belgium, Canada and, of course, Japan have all gone through episodes when debt exceeded 100 percent of G.D.P. And the United States itself emerged from World War II with debt exceeding 120 percent of G.D.P. In none of these cases did governments resort to inflation to resolve their problems.

 

So is there any reason to think that inflation is coming? Some economists have argued for moderate inflation as a deliberate policy, as a way to encourage lending and reduce private debt burdens. I’m sympathetic to these arguments and made a similar case for Japan in the 1990s. But the case for inflation never made headway with Japanese policy makers then, and there’s no sign it’s getting traction with U.S. policy makers now.

 

All of this raises the question: If inflation isn’t a real risk, why all the claims that it is?

 

Well, as you may have noticed, economists sometimes disagree. And big disagreements are especially likely in weird times like the present, when many of the normal rules no longer apply.

 

But it’s hard to escape the sense that the current inflation fear-mongering is partly political, coming largely from economists who had no problem with deficits caused by tax cuts but suddenly became fiscal scolds when the government started spending money to rescue the economy. And their goal seems to be to bully the Obama administration into abandoning those rescue efforts.

[Balta1701]

Governor Sarah Palin has disclosed the undisclosed location Stephen Colbert was taking the Colbert Report to in the Middle East as Iraq. She's also disclosed that one of his undisclosed guests while there will be Governor Sarah Palin.