Okay, it's not music, per se. I lied. In that regard. But, this is the leader (for now)of a national (for now) political party speaking on the topic of health care reform--one of the most important issues of the day. What is said makes it post-worthy. Totally. And by the way Mr. Steele, or, if you prefer, dipshit, the reason people don't have "access" to health care is because of the "cost" of health care. I know I'm not supposed to take the Lord's name in vain, but Jesus H. Christ...
Reflecting on Richard Hauptmann
2 years ago
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9 comments:
Richard:
And this braindead fuck's party has scared the dems into caving in on HCR to the extent that we are getting exactly nothing, despite all of the high fiving going on in D.C. Politicians are fucking scum.
I think, in the end, those polls showing 80+% support for the Government Option will carry the day. But, I know, right? If they had us by the balls the way we have them by the balls, they'd be shoving it so far up our asses that the lump in my throat would be their balls. What a bunch of milquetoast pussies the D's have been on this and so many other issues. I just don't even want to get started.
My favorite part of Steel's riff is that herein he posits that Mr. Obama is trying to fail on purpose so that the American people will feel a greater need for the Federal Government or some such. I believe this to be a flawed premise. If failure at governing equates to success at the polls for the party doing the governing, wouldn't Epic Fail George “Papa Doc” Bush have been named “Dictator for Life” and rightly so?
Speaking of health care and such, one of these days I’ll share with you my thoughts on the whole medical marijuana thingy. But I wouldn’t want your joint to turn into a den of iniquity, Richard. You know, like the way I turned Demo’s joint into a den of iniquity.
Cheers.
Richard, check out this bit by Nate Silver, responding to a recent George Will op-ed:
I’m a big believer in the profit motive in 99 percent of all cases. If the government decided to open a non-profit hamburger stand, I doubt that it would compete successfully against Five Guys. If it tried to open a non-profit airline, I doubt that it could offer the same value as JetBlue. Insert joke about General Motors and/or the Post Office here. The point is, I think the profit motive is generally well worth it in terms of the incentives it creates to cut costs, develop new products, improve customer service, and so forth.
But health insurance is not like those things.
…
Insurance … is a volume business, the main requirements for which are that (1) you have a lot of money pooled together and that (2) you’ve been around for awhile.
CIGNA and Aetna have a lot of money pooled together and they’ve been around for awhile -- but they don’t have as much money, nor have they been around as long, as the federal government. It’s possible, certainly, that the profit motive in the insurance industry has driven more innovation than we’re giving it credit for. But that isn’t my bet, and it isn’t George Will’s: There’s no obvious reason that the government couldn’t provide more for less. And if we are wrong, we would find out soon enough: if the public option can’t deliver more bang for the buck than private insurers, it wouldn’t gain much market share from them, and Will will have nothing to worry about.
What Will’s position reflects instead is ideology: who cares that the federal government could build a better mousetrap? They’re the government and that’s bad. His argument is really no more sophisticated than that. If a libertarian conservative wants to make this argument, more power to them, but they absolutely should not be turning around and suggesting that a public option would raise health care costs. They’re saying, rather, that they’re morally opposed to the cost savings that would ensue.
That Nate Silver's got it going on, unless I'm missing the mark. 538-dot-com nailed the last election. I mean, nailed it. I like his comments and I appreciate you sending them along...
cheers, too!
Yup, I loves me some Nate Silver. And, you’ll no doubt appreciate this: He got his start as a baseball wonk.
That should mean there's an opening for a baseball wonk somewhere. I could do that...
I missed the freaking homer last night (you KNOW the one I mean). I had to attend to my daughter for a couple of minutes in the bottom of the 9th and when I came back they were in commercial so I assumed Det had lost and didn't find out until an hour later what had happened when I went to mlb.com to watch the west coast games. Oh, happy day! Sorry for you, but not much. This is baseball man, and for the next two days the Cubs must go down and they must go down hard. After that they can go back to a 29-way tie for my second-most favorite team. Although I am on a first-name basis with Alan Trammell who is a hell of a guy.
Richard:
Alan Trammel is in the same gang of "Sox Killers" as Paul Molitor and a couple of other guys whose names don't immediately spring to mind. Every time I saw him come to the plate, I wanted to leave the room and not see him hit a double off of Clemens--which would then cause Clemens to hit the next batter and open the floodgates for a six run inning against the Beantown Nine.
But I always liked him.
Richard, you better hie yer ass over to Demo’s place toot-sweet. He’s starting to go all baseball on us over by there, and I figure that’s infringing on yer territory.
Meaning no offense, Demo. Of course.
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