OT: COVID-19 thread #3

[dice]

Every day Como came out and had a conference. Every day he scolded his people and closed down his state. People thought he walked on water. Similar thing in California. They still both have the highest cases to date.

that's not the right way of looking at it

what percentage of NY's population is immune to the virus right now (assuming there is such a thing)? a very small percentage. spain just did a study that showed that 5% of their population has antibodies. i doubt the NY's is much higher. so why is NY's case load so low right NOW per capita compared to many other states? it's because they learned the lessons while other states did not. and that's what matters. NY, NJ and cali have some of the most densely populated cities in the country. NYC, LA and san fran are hubs of chinese travel. seattle and chicago are too (miami, another densely populated city, is not). there's a reason why these places got hit hard early. and it ain't poor leadership. it's because the virus was spreading undetected before anybody knew about it. and because we didn't at that point know much about HOW it was transmitted. a plan needs to be formulated before it is implemented

if the state of florida had competent leadership, they would have done everything possible to, at minimum, protect the city of miami. because once it got hold there there was no stopping it

the entire state of illinois was on lockdown for 70 days. desantis had florida on lockdown for 32 days (46 for miami). michigan was on lockdown for 52 days. a florida resident on this site said "so glad i don't live in michigan"

There are systematic issues in this country that make it impossible to beat this thing. If you're someone lower class and lost your job, maybe you get unemployment, maybe you can afford cobra (probably not) maybe you can buy groceries, maybe you can pay rent. Or you're not paying your rent, have no insurance, trying to call unemployment 50 times a day and standing in a 3 mile line for groceries.

The reason these other shutdown countries have worked was the government covered almost all the payroll, they have health care through the government so everyone gets it and they avoided the stress, desperation and eventual need to find some work to do and not go crazy.

mostly agree. it still doesn't explain why the south is getting hit so much harder right now

And as much as I agree with the protests, it's really the wrong time to be out in crowds in the street.

unfortunately, i think that the pandemic was part of the spark. black people in particular were disproportionately at home unable to work, disproportionately in urban areas with little room to roam, disproportionately disadvantaged by society to begin with, growing more mentally unstable by the day. it was like a powder keg. then that awful video came out. and frankly, there was no better time to capture the attention of america, so the media attention further fueled the fire

and the protests have not been shown to have a notable effect on the spread of the virus. fortunately. as evidenced by their prevalence in some of those densely populated northern cities that are doing comparatively well fighting the virus right now. as it turns out, the virus is massively more transmittable indoors. and a lot of the protesters were wearing masks, with many attempting to social distance

So I do think this is an American problem and Biden or como or obama or whoever isn't going to just make the bad man go away and fix it.

i do think it was inevitable that the US would be hit harder. but the federal leadership has been absolutely abysmal. the CDC put out guidelines for reopening states and almost immediately trump began his push for those guidelines to be ignored. that gave political coverage for birther party governors to do just that. they locked down later and opened up sooner. and now we're seeing the results of those decisions

arizona just surpassed NY's peak of per capita infections. astonishing. 60 residents per square mile. NY has 420. and arizona has had the additional benefit of months of preparation time. including additional prevention knowledge. at least florida has the excuse of having the highest pop. density of any non-northeastern state

You need to stop watching CNN and go to the CDC.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/cases-in-us.html

wtf did you link that for? what point are you trying to make?

educate yourself:

https://www.fox10phoenix.com/news/epidemiologist-speaks-out-as-arizona-surpasses-new-yorks-all-time-peak-in-daily-covid-19-cases-per-capita

and is cnn misleading people about the pandemic? if so, prove it or quit defaulting to right wing talking points

Anyone who thinks Como is some kind of Covid whisper is a damn fool.

well, nobody said anything remotely like that, so you can quit making **** up. duck already scolded you for strawman arguments

They have by far and away a disproportionate amount of cases and deaths. And that's not including the fact that Florida and Arizona have a much greater percentage of seniors. You know those that are the majority of deaths.

NYC has 2x the cases and more than 10x the deaths of arizona despite being within a half million of pop.

i was referring to new york state, strawman

NYS has 2x the cases and 5x the deathes of Florida despite having a smaller pop

NYS has nearly 2x the cases and more than 10x the deaths of TX despite having 50% less people.

nobody claimed otherwise, strawman

Como is not the hero here. He's not the poster boy for Covid response.

nobody said he was, strawman. and please learn how to spell a person's name that you reference so often. otherwise you look like a moron

He just gave a better presser.

he kept the residents of his state well-informed on a daily basis. unlike many other governors, and exactly the opposite of the president of the united states, who misleads frequently

In fact, he killed many more seniors because he sent them back to nursing homes.

was he supposed to leave them on the streets after discharge from the hospital? force people to take them into their homes? the hospitals in NYC were overwhelmed, so they could not keep them there indefinitely. they had to treat the next wave

you either totally and incompetently missed the gist of my post or completely ignored it to make your little strawman arguments. once again, RIGHT NOW, after the benefit of months of knowledge, states like florida, texas and especially arizona are blatantly managing the crisis far worse. because there was very little more that NYC or seattle could have done at the beginning of this

get it now?

[dice]

I'm familiar with the ACA's implementation in our market, and it's surprisingly excellent as far as affordability of the plan. The plans, as in all plans in this market, kinda suck. But that's a different issue.

I have used ACA coverage for 3 years now, and I know several people who also get insurance from the exchange. People making $20 an hour are paying $17 a month for coverage. That's less than people here with employer based plans, and the benefits are literally exactly the same. So in regard to affordability, at least in this market, I do not agree. Also, you'd be very surprised at just how much you can make before you're excluded from subsidies. I want to say it was $140,000 for a family of 4.

I was sceptical, but in my experience the ACA market has been a success as far as providing access is concerned.

yeah, he's totally wrong on this one. to say that "trying to rescue it on it's death bed is stupid" is itself stupid

1) it's not on its death bed. the only reason it's in trouble is because trump has made every attempt to shut it down from the day he stepped into office

2) even if it didn't help middle class families, to use that as an excuse to throw millions of poor families into turmoil is astonishingly selfish

3) it DOES help middle class families. there's a reason why the medical bankruptcy rate has plummeted. and it's because many middle class families no longer are forced to declare bankruptcy because someone in their family got sick. individuals earning less than $50K are eligible for premium reductions. same goes for a family of 3 making less than $85K. that's a whoooooole lot of middle class families paying less for health care than they otherwise would be

4) PRE-EXISTING CONDITIONS. prior to obamacare, insurance companies could refuse to provide insurance or DROP insurance for anyone with a pre-existing condition. even trump and hardcore free market ideologues now at least pretend that that is unacceptable

5) frequent use of ERs fell after the ACA was implemented because more poor people had access to non-emergency medical care. talk to anyone who has had to go the ER w/o insurance if you wanna hear a story about being gouged

6) obama himself did not have the power to "put caps on prescriptions and the most extreme price gouging and have a public option and no mandate." the ACA was not implemented through fiat. it was accomplished through months of painstaking negotiation in congress. obama wanted a public option. he quickly realized that it was not politically feasible. and the structural foundation of its financing is a mandate. without a mandate, healthy people are less incentivized to enroll, which jacks up rates.
everyone is required to have auto insurance too

7) middle class people who are unemployed (myself included) have access to affordable health care and are thus not forced to take some garbage job just to have health care

8) young people can stay on their parents' plans until age 27

9) no more lifetime limits on coverage payments. previously, many people with insurance were covered...until their costs got too high

but the two headline features of obamacare are medicaid expansion and premium subsidies. both have had their desired effects...aside from red state governors purely for political reasons declining the federally paid-for medicaid expansions for their states. which both sabotages their own state's finances and cruelly treats financially disadvantaged residents. all in the name of being able to say that they rejected obamacare

I'm not going through all of this. This was a central point of the election and a good reason Trump won.

the average trump voter doesn't even know what obamacare is, so that's one of the worst arguments i've ever heard...on any subject. racism also was a reason that trump won. does that suggest all the anti-racism laws that have been passed over the years should be permitted to expire?

the average trump voter doesn't even know that obama was born in this country. the average trump voter believed that obamacare would ruin the economy. and introduce "death panels." we live in an idiocracy. the health care debate is just one example of how effective fear-mongering is. notice that immediately after obama was elected and the legislative process for the ACA began, suddenly a significant % of the american people no longer believed that the government should ensure that all americans have coverage:



then after reform was fully implemented, the numbers began to climb again

you don't see me mentioning that support for obamacare is at an all-time high right now as part of my argument, do you? because popular opinion is quite often misguided. but it's quite ironic that only after trump was elected did favorable rates begin to outpace unfavorable:

Obamacare was falling apart way before Trump got here because it was poorly constructed in large part due to the fact it did nothing to control costs.

first of all, false. there were minor cost control measures which resulted in minor flattening of the cost curve in the initial years after enactment. secondly...THAT. WAS. NEVER. THE. POINT. once again, the point of obamacare was to help people with their premiums and expand coverage. mission accomplished. since it didn't sink in the first time:

-medical bankruptcies plummet
-countless lives saved due to having medical coverage, even with pre-existing conditions

https://www.businessinsider.com/obamacare-aca-medicaid-expansion-saves-lives-holdout-states-should-adopt-2019-11

-ER use down
-premium assistance for millions
-no more annual or lifetime limits
-longer stay on parents' plan for young adults
-80% of premium payments must go to actual health care

the birther party and "blue dog" democrats (particularly lieberman) sabotaged the one thing that would have resulted in meaningful cost control: a public option. the solution to that is not to destroy an excellent law that doesn't go nearly far enough. it is to, wait for it...ADD A PUBLIC OPTION TO IT

Everyone in the sector had record profits from Obamacare

irrelevant to your point. more people having health insurance means more people getting health care

and it did not help most people.

it was not designed to help most people, strawman. because most people have employer insurance. jaysus

[TheStig]

that's not the right way of looking at it

what percentage of NY's population is immune to the virus right now (assuming there is such a thing)? a very small percentage. spain just did a study that showed that 5% of their population has antibodies. i doubt the NY's is much higher. so why is NY's case load so low right NOW per capita compared to many other states? it's because they learned the lessons while other states did not. and that's what matters. NY, NJ and cali have some of the most densely populated cities in the country. NYC, LA and san fran are hubs of chinese travel. seattle and chicago are too (miami, another densely populated city, is not). there's a reason why these places got hit hard early. and it ain't poor leadership. it's because the virus was spreading undetected before anybody knew about it. and because we didn't at that point know much about HOW it was transmitted. a plan needs to be formulated before it is implemented

if the state of florida had competent leadership, they would have done everything possible to, at minimum, protect the city of miami. because once it got hold there there was no stopping it

the entire state of illinois was on lockdown for 70 days. desantis had florida on lockdown for 32 days (46 for miami). michigan was on lockdown for 52 days. a florida resident on this site said "so glad i don't live in michigan"


mostly agree. it still doesn't explain why the south is getting hit so much harder right now


unfortunately, i think that the pandemic was part of the spark. black people in particular were disproportionately at home unable to work, disproportionately in urban areas with little room to roam, disproportionately disadvantaged by society to begin with, growing more mentally unstable by the day. it was like a powder keg. then that awful video came out. and frankly, there was no better time to capture the attention of america, so the media attention further fueled the fire

and the protests have not been shown to have a notable effect on the spread of the virus. fortunately. as evidenced by their prevalence in some of those densely populated northern cities that are doing comparatively well fighting the virus right now. as it turns out, the virus is massively more transmittable indoors. and a lot of the protesters were wearing masks, with many attempting to social distance


i do think it was inevitable that the US would be hit harder. but the federal leadership has been absolutely abysmal. the CDC put out guidelines for reopening states and almost immediately trump began his push for those guidelines to be ignored. that gave political coverage for birther party governors to do just that. they locked down later and opened up sooner. and now we're seeing the results of those decisions

arizona just surpassed NY's peak of per capita infections. astonishing. 60 residents per square mile. NY has 420. and arizona has had the additional benefit of months of preparation time. including additional prevention knowledge. at least florida has the excuse of having the highest pop. density of any non-northeastern state

You need to stop watching CNN and go to the CDC.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/cases-in-us.html

wtf did you link that for? what point are you trying to make?

educate yourself:

https://www.fox10phoenix.com/news/epidemiologist-speaks-out-as-arizona-surpasses-new-yorks-all-time-peak-in-daily-covid-19-cases-per-capita

and is cnn misleading people about the pandemic? if so, prove it or quit defaulting to right wing talking points

Anyone who thinks Como is some kind of Covid whisper is a damn fool.

well, nobody said anything remotely like that, so you can quit making **** up. duck already scolded you for strawman arguments

They have by far and away a disproportionate amount of cases and deaths. And that's not including the fact that Florida and Arizona have a much greater percentage of seniors. You know those that are the majority of deaths.

NYC has 2x the cases and more than 10x the deaths of arizona despite being within a half million of pop.

i was referring to new york state, strawman

NYS has 2x the cases and 5x the deathes of Florida despite having a smaller pop

NYS has nearly 2x the cases and more than 10x the deaths of TX despite having 50% less people.

nobody claimed otherwise, strawman

Como is not the hero here. He's not the poster boy for Covid response.

nobody said he was, strawman. and please learn how to spell a person's name that you reference so often. otherwise you look like a moron

He just gave a better presser.

he kept the residents of his state well-informed on a daily basis. unlike many other governors, and exactly the opposite of the president of the united states, who misleads frequently

In fact, he killed many more seniors because he sent them back to nursing homes.

was he supposed to leave them on the streets after discharge from the hospital? force people to take them into their homes? the hospitals in NYC were overwhelmed, so they could not keep them there indefinitely. they had to treat the next wave

you either totally and incompetently missed the gist of my post or completely ignored it to make your little strawman arguments. once again, RIGHT NOW, after the benefit of months of knowledge, states like florida, texas and especially arizona are blatantly managing the crisis far worse. because there was very little more that NYC or seattle could have done at the beginning of this

get it now?

You're looking at a day. I'm looking at the whole crisis. These things ebb and flow. You're being absolutely ridiculous.

[dice]

You need to stop watching CNN and go to the CDC.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/cases-in-us.html

wtf did you link that for? what point are you trying to make?

educate yourself:

https://www.fox10phoenix.com/news/epidemiologist-speaks-out-as-arizona-surpasses-new-yorks-all-time-peak-in-daily-covid-19-cases-per-capita

and is cnn misleading people about the pandemic? if so, prove it or quit defaulting to right wing talking points

Anyone who thinks Como is some kind of Covid whisper is a damn fool.

well, nobody said anything remotely like that, so you can quit making **** up. duck already scolded you for strawman arguments

They have by far and away a disproportionate amount of cases and deaths. And that's not including the fact that Florida and Arizona have a much greater percentage of seniors. You know those that are the majority of deaths.

NYC has 2x the cases and more than 10x the deaths of arizona despite being within a half million of pop.

i was referring to new york state, strawman

NYS has 2x the cases and 5x the deathes of Florida despite having a smaller pop

NYS has nearly 2x the cases and more than 10x the deaths of TX despite having 50% less people.

nobody claimed otherwise, strawman

Como is not the hero here. He's not the poster boy for Covid response.

nobody said he was, strawman. and please learn how to spell a person's name that you reference so often. otherwise you look like a moron

He just gave a better presser.

he kept the residents of his state well-informed on a daily basis. unlike many other governors, and exactly the opposite of the president of the united states, who misleads frequently

In fact, he killed many more seniors because he sent them back to nursing homes.

was he supposed to leave them on the streets after discharge from the hospital? force people to take them into their homes? the hospitals in NYC were overwhelmed, so they could not keep them there indefinitely. they had to treat the next wave

you either totally and incompetently missed the gist of my post or completely ignored it to make your little strawman arguments. once again, RIGHT NOW, after the benefit of months of knowledge, states like florida, texas and especially arizona are blatantly managing the crisis far worse. because there was very little more that NYC or seattle could have done at the beginning of this

get it now?

You're looking at a day. I'm looking at the whole crisis. These things ebb and flow. You're being absolutely ridiculous.

i'm looking at a day? no, no i'm not. talk about ridiculous. NY did not reach its peak in a single day. arizona did not surpass NY in a single day. it took weeks. and for the last time, what's happening RIGHT NOW is a far, far better indicator of a state's response to the crisis than what happened at the beginning of the crisis, which was largely inevitable. that's just common sense

and no, these things don't "ebb and flow." not with reasonable management. an even more ridiculous suggestion



in ex cusable

[TheStig]

yeah, he's totally wrong on this one. to say that "trying to rescue it on it's death bed is stupid" is itself stupid

1) it's not on its death bed. the only reason it's in trouble is because trump has made every attempt to shut it down from the day he stepped into office

2) even if it didn't help middle class families, to use that as an excuse to throw millions of poor families into turmoil is astonishingly selfish

3) it DOES help middle class families. there's a reason why the medical bankruptcy rate has plummeted. and it's because many middle class families no longer are forced to declare bankruptcy because someone in their family got sick. individuals earning less than $50K are eligible for premium reductions. same goes for a family of 3 making less than $85K. that's a whoooooole lot of middle class families paying less for health care than they otherwise would be

4) PRE-EXISTING CONDITIONS. prior to obamacare, insurance companies could refuse to provide insurance or DROP insurance for anyone with a pre-existing condition. even trump and hardcore free market ideologues now at least pretend that that is unacceptable

5) frequent use of ERs fell after the ACA was implemented because more poor people had access to non-emergency medical care. talk to anyone who has had to go the ER w/o insurance if you wanna hear a story about being gouged

6) obama himself did not have the power to "put caps on prescriptions and the most extreme price gouging and have a public option and no mandate." the ACA was not implemented through fiat. it was accomplished through months of painstaking negotiation in congress. obama wanted a public option. he quickly realized that it was not politically feasible. and the structural foundation of its financing is a mandate. without a mandate, healthy people are less incentivized to enroll, which jacks up rates.
everyone is required to have auto insurance too

7) middle class people who are unemployed (myself included) have access to affordable health care and are thus not forced to take some garbage job just to have health care

8) young people can stay on their parents' plans until age 27

9) no more lifetime limits on coverage payments. previously, many people with insurance were covered...until their costs got too high

but the two headline features of obamacare are medicaid expansion and premium subsidies. both have had their desired effects...aside from red state governors purely for political reasons declining the federally paid-for medicaid expansions for their states. which both sabotages their own state's finances and cruelly treats financially disadvantaged residents. all in the name of being able to say that they rejected obamacare

I'm not going through all of this. This was a central point of the election and a good reason Trump won.

the average trump voter doesn't even know what obamacare is, so that's one of the worst arguments i've ever heard...on any subject. racism also was a reason that trump won. does that suggest all the anti-racism laws that have been passed over the years should be permitted to expire?

the average trump voter doesn't even know that obama was born in this country. the average trump voter believed that obamacare would ruin the economy. and introduce "death panels." we live in an idiocracy. the health care debate is just one example of how effective fear-mongering is. notice that immediately after obama was elected and the legislative process for the ACA began, suddenly a significant % of the american people no longer believed that the government should ensure that all americans have coverage:



then after reform was fully implemented, the numbers began to climb again

you don't see me mentioning that support for obamacare is at an all-time high right now as part of my argument, do you? because popular opinion is quite often misguided. but it's quite ironic that only after trump was elected did favorable rates begin to outpace unfavorable:

Obamacare was falling apart way before Trump got here because it was poorly constructed in large part due to the fact it did nothing to control costs.

first of all, false. there were minor cost control measures which resulted in minor flattening of the cost curve in the initial years after enactment. secondly...THAT. WAS. NEVER. THE. POINT. once again, the point of obamacare was to help people with their premiums and expand coverage. mission accomplished. since it didn't sink in the first time:

-medical bankruptcies plummet
-countless lives saved due to having medical coverage, even with pre-existing conditions

https://www.businessinsider.com/obamacare-aca-medicaid-expansion-saves-lives-holdout-states-should-adopt-2019-11

-ER use down
-premium assistance for millions
-no more annual or lifetime limits
-longer stay on parents' plan for young adults
-80% of premium payments must go to actual health care

the birther party and "blue dog" democrats (particularly lieberman) sabotaged the one thing that would have resulted in meaningful cost control: a public option. the solution to that is not to destroy an excellent law that doesn't go nearly far enough. it is to, wait for it...ADD A PUBLIC OPTION TO IT

Everyone in the sector had record profits from Obamacare

irrelevant to your point. more people having health insurance means more people getting health care

and it did not help most people.

it was not designed to help most people, strawman. because most people have employer insurance. jaysus

Yes we all saw the polls that predicted Hilary winning too. Clearly his voters are not captured well in these. And clearly even in your poll it was around 50/50. Half the country didn't like it at the time. So instead of insulting them, you should learn to understand that people have a different view point and not just make condescending comments like everything you don't agree with is a strawman.

It's funny how you always have a boogeyman for all the excuses, liberman, trump, strawman... Maybe the fact is that it didn't help most people and that's why half the people in your own poll viewed it unfavorably. No one said it didn't have any good. But most of that could have been passed as a law.

Here's one that says 69% of people like medicare for all. Seems much more popular than broke ass obamacare that mainly fattened the pockets of the health care system to record profits instead of having spending caps like medicare.

https://thehill.com/hilltv/what-americas-thinking/494602-poll-69-percent-of-voters-support-medicare-for-all

[dice]

I'm not going through all of this. This was a central point of the election and a good reason Trump won.

the average trump voter doesn't even know what obamacare is, so that's one of the worst arguments i've ever heard...on any subject. racism also was a reason that trump won. does that suggest all the anti-racism laws that have been passed over the years should be permitted to expire?

the average trump voter doesn't even know that obama was born in this country. the average trump voter believed that obamacare would ruin the economy. and introduce "death panels." we live in an idiocracy. the health care debate is just one example of how effective fear-mongering is. notice that immediately after obama was elected and the legislative process for the ACA began, suddenly a significant % of the american people no longer believed that the government should ensure that all americans have coverage:



then after reform was fully implemented, the numbers began to climb again

you don't see me mentioning that support for obamacare is at an all-time high right now as part of my argument, do you? because popular opinion is quite often misguided. but it's quite ironic that only after trump was elected did favorable rates begin to outpace unfavorable:

Obamacare was falling apart way before Trump got here because it was poorly constructed in large part due to the fact it did nothing to control costs.

first of all, false. there were minor cost control measures which resulted in minor flattening of the cost curve in the initial years after enactment. secondly...THAT. WAS. NEVER. THE. POINT. once again, the point of obamacare was to help people with their premiums and expand coverage. mission accomplished. since it didn't sink in the first time:

-medical bankruptcies plummet
-countless lives saved due to having medical coverage, even with pre-existing conditions

https://www.businessinsider.com/obamacare-aca-medicaid-expansion-saves-lives-holdout-states-should-adopt-2019-11

-ER use down
-premium assistance for millions
-no more annual or lifetime limits
-longer stay on parents' plan for young adults
-80% of premium payments must go to actual health care

the birther party and "blue dog" democrats (particularly lieberman) sabotaged the one thing that would have resulted in meaningful cost control: a public option. the solution to that is not to destroy an excellent law that doesn't go nearly far enough. it is to, wait for it...ADD A PUBLIC OPTION TO IT

Everyone in the sector had record profits from Obamacare

irrelevant to your point. more people having health insurance means more people getting health care

and it did not help most people.

it was not designed to help most people, strawman. because most people have employer insurance. jaysus

Yes we all saw the polls that predicted Hilary winning too.

polls do not make predictions. they are snapshots in time. anyone who was certain she would win because she was up THREE points in the polls heading into the only poll that matters were foolish. trump had a very real chance of winning and he pulled it out

Half the country didn't like it at the time.

irrelevant. because many of those who didn't didn't even know what it was. obama was elected in part to do something meaningful on health care. 60 out of 100 senators (the bare minimum) made it happen. and you can bet your ass that they were listening real hard to their constituents. because job one for almost every congressperson is to get re-elected

So instead of insulting them, you should learn to understand that people have a different view point and not just make condescending comments like everything you don't agree with is a strawman.

anyone who isn't certain that barack obama was born in hawaii richly deserves to be insulted

and disagreement is not what constitutes a strawman argument. what does is trying to bolster your position by shooting down something that nobody actually said. it's a strategy that is flimsy like straw, thus the name. and you've been doing it a lot in this conversation

It's funny how you always have a boogeyman for all the excuses, liberman, trump, strawman...

have you not been paying attention to what trump has been doing to whittle away at the law? that's not some flimsy excuse. it's reality. the administration is currently lobbying the supreme court to eliminate it entirely, which would kick tens of millions of people off of their plans. and it will probably come down again to john roberts, who saved it once before

people who don't know the impact that joe lieberman had on the health care reform process in 2009 are johnny come latelys to the conversation. and there are a whole lot of those amongst bernie sanders supporters. bernie voted for obamacare and proudly claims to have helped write it for a reason: because it was the best that could be done at the time. bernie probably wouldn't have even gotten that as president. he probably would've pulled a ted kennedy, refused to compromise and gotten a bag full of air. well, had ted kennedy accepted nixon's proposal (which was remarkably like obamacare), we'd probably have medicare for all by now. he didn't, and it was the biggest regret of his political life. here's a quite reasonable perspective on the trajectory of american healthcare:

https://prospect.org/blogs/tap/bernie-voted-for-obamacare-medicare-for-all/

and here's a lieberman refresher:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/dec/16/joe-lieberman-barack-obama-us-healthcare

that guy is more bogeyman than anything that comes out of a kid's closet in the middle of the night

Maybe the fact is that it didn't help most people and that's why half the people in your own poll viewed it unfavorably.

1) wasn't designed to help most people
2) put on your glasses and look at the poll again. half do not view it unfavorably. update: 55% favor, 37% oppose. guess that means we have to keep it now, right?



the shifts in opinion have obviously had jack **** to do with the law itself, which is largely the same that it was when obama was in office

No one said it didn't have any good. But most of that could have been passed as a law.

huh?

Here's one that says 69% of people like medicare for all.

until the birther party tells them that bernie sanders is in favor of it. it depends a lot on how the question is posed in the poll. and what you call it. here's one saying that 55% support it (exact same as current support for obamacare):

https://morningconsult.com/2020/04/01/medicare-for-all-coronavirus-pandemic/

supporters like bernie sanders have wisely taken to calling single-payer health care "medicare for all" because the phrase itself polls better! that phenomena has nothing to do with the substance of the policy, which is the same regardless of what you call it. but politicians learned long ago that how something is marketed goes a long way

a strong majority probably would have favored medicare for all in 2008 too. and probably have for decades. hasn't been remotely possible. because not enough legislators have ever been willing to vote for it. because many have financial backing from the healthcare industry. because many know that the whims of the populace can be bent to some degree. and because of a little thing called the filibuster

you say that obamacare should be allowed to die because trump supporters don't like it and we should listen to them. will you still be saying that when they've been convinced that medicare for all is just more socialized medicine? because they WILL be convinced. quite easily. as soon as it starts being called berniecare or warrencare or whatever. there will be a split along party lines just as there was with obamacare, which polls better when you take obama's name off it.

35% of americans don't realize that the ACA and obamacare are the same thing. 39% do not realize that subsidies will go away if the law is repealed (53% of republicans, 21% of democrats

https://www.businessinsider.com/poll-obamacare-affordable-care-act-name-2017-2

i'll say it again: idiocracy

Seems much more popular than broke ass obamacare that mainly fattened the pockets of the health care system to record profits instead of having spending caps like medicare.

"broke ass obamacare"? you're apparently as susceptible to propaganda as the next guy. once again, the only problems that it is having is due to the current powers that be. had hillary been elected, it would be on firm footing. but trump has been trying to whittle away at it from day 1 in office. because who's the president matters. a lot. and yet, millions of people are still getting partly subsidized insurance and millions more are getting free coverage that they weren't getting before. that money's coming from somewhere. and will continue to as long as there's the political will

and obamacare didn't "mainly fatten the pockets of the health care system." that's a far LEFT talking point. from the kinds of people who think that a public option is unacceptable because it doesn't go far enough. obamacare has mainly provided substantial benefits to the american people, (though we need much more). the vested interests in the health care status quo opposed it for a reason. because obamacare threatened the growth of the industry to some degree. you'll notice no spike in growth since 2008. in actuality, growth has flattened a bit. but anyone who says that . only a public option will do that

[GetBuLLish]

the article he posted is NOT a ranking of health care "systems." it is a ranking of health care INNOVATION.

False. Read the site again. It's a ranking of systems, with the unique provisio that the rankings factor in innovation, which most other rankings fail to do.

[dice]

the article he posted is NOT a ranking of health care "systems." it is a ranking of health care INNOVATION.

False. Read the site again. It's a ranking of systems, with the unique provisio that the rankings factor in innovation, which most other rankings fail to do.

fair enough

innovation is already factored in to what matters in a health care system: cost and health results. those end results are all that are needed to pass judgement. would our exorbitant health care costs be lower or even higher w/o the level of innovation that we have? certainly lower. because innovation costs money. would our health results be better or worse w/o innovation? clearly worse. but our results are still relatively bad...because of our awful system of coverage and the resultant cost burden on the american people

we're paying for the innovation and not getting the overall health benefits in return. that's a disaster

unfortunately, the innovation is a byproduct of the funding that comes from profiteering off the health issues of the american people. and our health results indicate that the trade-off is not worthwhile

[drosereturn]

I don't believe Biden would have instituted Medicare for all in response to the pandemic. I do believe he would have opened up the ACA exchanges, however, to make sure people losing their jobs would have access to affordable insurance. Cobra is not affordable insurance. Trump specifically didn't open the exchanges, and the only reason I can deduce for the decision is his distaste for Obama.

Also, Biden would have focused on stimulus for the middle and lower classes, instead of the supply minded approach taken by the Trump administration. Trump is fighting any oversite of the distribution of stimulus related funds. Why? Well, because it's coming out that funds are going to people who do not need them, or to his political henchmen. Nunes gets some, McAnamy family gets some, McConnell family gets some, red hat Kanye West gets some, while I know multiple small business owners that needed the help, applied and received nothing.

Biden would not have shrouded the handling of these funds in a shroud of secrecy. I have no doubt corporations would have received bailouts under Biden, but I believe much more of the distributions would have been focused on small business and the middle class. Keeping the drivers of demand solvent is going to go much further in maintaining our economic stability than giving it to those who don't need it.

This is the wrong belief typical Americans make, esp left wing supporters. Biden controls every national media from CNN to washington post and receives way more corporation funds than Trump who is literally gaining majority of the support from the middle class. Yeah Biden is going to spend more on middle class because he is liberal but not to the point it will affect the economy. Trump is doing very well considering most Americans disliked the idea of wearing masks millions would have died anyway even if someone else was president.

In the end, Obama and Biden doesnt really care about Medicare or giving fair coverage like the Asian countries do. Even if they did, they will use it as means to control Americans when every single person is forced to be under coverage. They are looking to put an end to democracy and become this big brother state Bill gates and Elon Musk have already been involved in. Which is why Trump says fake news all the time bc it is fake.

[keobulls]

This probably won't get noticed amongst all the shouting, but do people in your area wear masks right now? I recently traveled to 5 different states and the highest percentage I saw wearing masks in a public place was about 40%. This is even in stores or areas that had signs posted that it was required to enter. Less than half the customers were wearing masks in there and not even every worker was wearing one. What I see on the news and from big cities and democrat-run areas does not seem to track with the rest of the country. Just curious, please don't yell at me.

[TheStig]

This probably won't get noticed amongst all the shouting, but do people in your area wear masks right now? I recently traveled to 5 different states and the highest percentage I saw wearing masks in a public place was about 40%. This is even in stores or areas that had signs posted that it was required to enter. Less than half the customers were wearing masks in there and not even every worker was wearing one. What I see on the news and from big cities and democrat-run areas does not seem to track with the rest of the country. Just curious, please don't yell at me.

In my area, a suburb of Chicago, I've only seen one guy pull down his mask and walk around HD. Other than that, people have been good from what I've seen.

[TheStig]

yeah, he's totally wrong on this one. to say that "trying to rescue it on it's death bed is stupid" is itself stupid

1) it's not on its death bed. the only reason it's in trouble is because trump has made every attempt to shut it down from the day he stepped into office

2) even if it didn't help middle class families, to use that as an excuse to throw millions of poor families into turmoil is astonishingly selfish

3) it DOES help middle class families. there's a reason why the medical bankruptcy rate has plummeted. and it's because many middle class families no longer are forced to declare bankruptcy because someone in their family got sick. individuals earning less than $50K are eligible for premium reductions. same goes for a family of 3 making less than $85K. that's a whoooooole lot of middle class families paying less for health care than they otherwise would be

4) PRE-EXISTING CONDITIONS. prior to obamacare, insurance companies could refuse to provide insurance or DROP insurance for anyone with a pre-existing condition. even trump and hardcore free market ideologues now at least pretend that that is unacceptable

5) frequent use of ERs fell after the ACA was implemented because more poor people had access to non-emergency medical care. talk to anyone who has had to go the ER w/o insurance if you wanna hear a story about being gouged

6) obama himself did not have the power to "put caps on prescriptions and the most extreme price gouging and have a public option and no mandate." the ACA was not implemented through fiat. it was accomplished through months of painstaking negotiation in congress. obama wanted a public option. he quickly realized that it was not politically feasible. and the structural foundation of its financing is a mandate. without a mandate, healthy people are less incentivized to enroll, which jacks up rates.
everyone is required to have auto insurance too

7) middle class people who are unemployed (myself included) have access to affordable health care and are thus not forced to take some garbage job just to have health care

8) young people can stay on their parents' plans until age 27

9) no more lifetime limits on coverage payments. previously, many people with insurance were covered...until their costs got too high

but the two headline features of obamacare are medicaid expansion and premium subsidies. both have had their desired effects...aside from red state governors purely for political reasons declining the federally paid-for medicaid expansions for their states. which both sabotages their own state's finances and cruelly treats financially disadvantaged residents. all in the name of being able to say that they rejected obamacare

I'm not going through all of this. This was a central point of the election and a good reason Trump won.

the average trump voter doesn't even know what obamacare is, so that's one of the worst arguments i've ever heard...on any subject. racism also was a reason that trump won. does that suggest all the anti-racism laws that have been passed over the years should be permitted to expire?

the average trump voter doesn't even know that obama was born in this country. the average trump voter believed that obamacare would ruin the economy. and introduce "death panels." we live in an idiocracy. the health care debate is just one example of how effective fear-mongering is. notice that immediately after obama was elected and the legislative process for the ACA began, suddenly a significant % of the american people no longer believed that the government should ensure that all americans have coverage:



then after reform was fully implemented, the numbers began to climb again

you don't see me mentioning that support for obamacare is at an all-time high right now as part of my argument, do you? because popular opinion is quite often misguided. but it's quite ironic that only after trump was elected did favorable rates begin to outpace unfavorable:

Obamacare was falling apart way before Trump got here because it was poorly constructed in large part due to the fact it did nothing to control costs.

first of all, false. there were minor cost control measures which resulted in minor flattening of the cost curve in the initial years after enactment. secondly...THAT. WAS. NEVER. THE. POINT. once again, the point of obamacare was to help people with their premiums and expand coverage. mission accomplished. since it didn't sink in the first time:

-medical bankruptcies plummet
-countless lives saved due to having medical coverage, even with pre-existing conditions

https://www.businessinsider.com/obamacare-aca-medicaid-expansion-saves-lives-holdout-states-should-adopt-2019-11

-ER use down
-premium assistance for millions
-no more annual or lifetime limits
-longer stay on parents' plan for young adults
-80% of premium payments must go to actual health care

the birther party and "blue dog" democrats (particularly lieberman) sabotaged the one thing that would have resulted in meaningful cost control: a public option. the solution to that is not to destroy an excellent law that doesn't go nearly far enough. it is to, wait for it...ADD A PUBLIC OPTION TO IT

Everyone in the sector had record profits from Obamacare

irrelevant to your point. more people having health insurance means more people getting health care

and it did not help most people.

it was not designed to help most people, strawman. because most people have employer insurance. jaysus

This line of thinking, insults, guilt to vote for blue who no matter who, failing to realize the failings of the Obama era instead of declaring it the golden era, is exactly why Trump won. If you can't realize the key issues but instead keep preaching the greatness of a failed plan that enriched the sector and basically was falling apart, then history is bound to repeat itself. Mainstream democrat polls don't prove anything. And not understanding the progressive or independent mindset but forcing your agenda down their throat is why people are numb. Biden is stuck in yesteryear, pitching obamacare, not legalizing pot, hardly adopting anything from the progressive side.

[dice]

This line of thinking, insults...

it amazes me that one of the biggest problems you seem to have is blatant ignoramuses being insulted. pick better fights

guilt to vote for blue who no matter who

another weird victimization hangup of yours. you are perfectly free to not see the enormous gulf between the impact that a joe biden presidency and a donald trump presidency would have. i mean, for god's sake, trump's handling of a freaking PANDEMIC has been atrocious. you're living through it right now! wake up! not to mention the generational damage done to the judicial system. unbelievable

as a progressive you somehow don't seem to have any concept of how far the nation has backslid over the past 4 years. and it will only get worse if trump is re-elected. which will only happen if myopic left-wingers like yourself in swing states continue not to recognize that 1 step forward is way better than 2 steps back. nope, you've gotta at least 2 steps forward. because 1 step forward is no better than 2 steps backward, right?

here is a graphic depiction of worldwide political parties:



the prominent blue circle is the american democratic party. the prominent red one is the american republican party. joe biden is squarely in line with the democratic party ideologically. the gap between biden and trump is WAY bigger than the gap between biden and bernie. which is why, wait for it...bernie sanders is trying to help joe biden get elected:

Watch on YouTube

bernie sanders knows the score. you refuse to even look at the scoreboard

i supported bernie and continue to. he is a very important voice in politics. and i think that biden is a bad candidate. but i'm not picking up my ball and going home because the significantly preferable choice didn't come out of the democratic primary. the stakes are way too high for that mindset

failing to realize the failings of the Obama era instead of declaring it the golden era

nobody said anything remotely like that, strawman. not a single person. you're delusional

i have personally repeatedly said that i found obama's eight years in office to be a disappointment. but beyond perhaps him not being cynical enough about birther party motives and intent to obstruct (most obstructionist congress in american history), i'm really not sure that he could have done much more. again, i think that very few democratic party presidents would have gotten what he did on healthcare

so stop with your compulsive practice of putting words in other people's mouth when you have absolutely no reason to believe that they feel that way, and indeed often have been directly told quite a different story

i honestly don't even think that you're bothering to absorb the comments that you are responding to

...is exactly why Trump won

that's such a blatantly terrible take. if you don't think that obama would have trounced trump then you're another trump university candidate

If you can't realize the key issues but instead keep preaching the greatness of a failed plan that enriched the sector and basically was falling apart

you continually fail to process information that is given to you on a silver platter

1) nobody said obamacare was great, strawman. this is at least the third time IN THIS VERY CONVERSATION that i've said that it doesn't go nearly far enough. clean out your ears

2) it has accomplished EXACTLY what it set out to do: expand health insurance to many millions more americans and assist many millions more with their expenses. if you think that's "failure", then you don't give a damn about the people that have been helped, including countless lives saved. which would make you a sociopath. something tells me that you wouldn't dare say what you're saying here to someone whose life was saved because they got health insurance for the first time in their lives due to the persistence of barack obama. to his political detriment...and that's another thing you've got ass-backward: you cling to this idea that the democratic party suffered at the polls because obamacare is a bad law. when in reality obama KNEW that by passing the first meaningful health reform in generations that it would cost him politically. because of fearmongering. his chief of staff rahm emanuel advised him to punt on healthcare reform when the going got tough. he pressed on. and lo and behold, it cost the democrats at the polls. yet, the more that people have recognized that obamacare didn't cause the problems that the birthers said it would, and indeed has been beneficial to many, it's popularity has risen

"thank god for the country, he didn't listen to me" - rahm emanuel, on obama pressing forward on healthcare reform in contrast to his advice

3) as already shown to you, the healthcare sector has not seen a long-term benefit from obamacare. it has largely continued on the same increasingly profitable path

4) obamacare was not "falling apart" when obama left office. far from it. and it has held up under constant attempts to undermine it over the past 3.5 years

by the way, it's highly disingenuous of you to try and argue that hillary wouldn't have been much better than trump, then proceeding to bash obamacare because trump has weakened it (which hillary surely would not have done)

Mainstream democrat polls don't prove anything.

wtf are you going on about? what is a "mainstream democrat poll"? are you suggesting that biden's huge lead in the polls right now is due to some liberal bias of polling companies? if so, horse****. exhibit A:

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/fox-news-poll-biden-leads-in-florida-as-trump-lags-among-seniors

i am SO tired of people ignorantly suggesting that polls are not to be believed based on the single data point of donald trump pulled an upset on election day in 2016. and it wasn't some huge upset. once again, he was up THREE points in the national polls going into election day. hillary won the popular vote by TWO points. the national polls were quite accurate, as they almost always are. it just so happens that the key swing state polls were not accurate "predictors." a conglomerate of polling companies studied what went wrong and determined that:

1) they over-represented the likelihood of college grads to vote
2) many trump voters did not reveal their preference prior to the election, whether that being because they were lukewarm on trump and embarrassed to tell a pollster that they supported him, or because they didn't decide until the last minute

13% of voters in WI, FL and PA made their decision in the last week. among such voters, in wisconsin they chose trump by 30 points over hillary. in FL and PA it was a 17 point gap

presumably on that first point the pollsters have made appropriate adjustments to their methodology. but obviously on the second point there are no adjustments to be made. because pollsters are not in the business of getting into the minds of undecided voters

and why do you not mention the countless elections where the polls are proven "correct"? i wonder...

And not understanding the progressive or independent mindset but forcing your agenda down their throat is why people are numb.

i fully understand the progressive mindset. i am one. a reasonable one. know what reasonable progressives like myself are numb about? those of us who have been paying attention to politics and fighting for change for way longer than bernie sanders has been running for president? it's the many bernie sanders supporters, who are largely intelligent, thoughtful people, completely ignoring the realities of american politics and instead continuing to suggest things like, for example:

1) it is obama's fault that we didn't get better health reform. even though he was the first president in generations to thread the needle and shepherd through major reform. and which bernie sanders likely would not have accomplished, leaving us worse off then we are now

2) that because hillary clinton was not a far left candidate and lost in 2016, surely no democrat can win if they're not far left. ignoring the fact that hillary got millions more votes than her opponent. ignoring the fact that barack obama won two contests by a total of 14.5 million votes. ignoring the fact that bill clinton won two contests by a total of 14 million votes. ignoring the fact that both dukakis and kerry were effectively smeared as "massachusetts liberals." ignoring the reality that more moderate democratic candidates have won the popular vote in 5 of the last 7 elections. and ignoring the reality that far left voters and independent voters are largely not after the same things

a candidate who appeals to independent voters is unlikely to appeal to far left voters. and independent voters are more plentiful in swing states than they are in states where far left voters reside (states that are already locked up). so what is the politically smart move when trying to win the presidency? try to appeal to independents even though that will turn off some progressives

Biden is stuck in yesteryear, pitching obamacare, not legalizing pot, hardly adopting anything from the progressive side.

perhaps you haven't been paying attention, but biden has endorsed a public option. the same public option that bernie sanders was advocating for a decade ago. biden will surely sign off on anything passed by a progressive democratic party controlled senate. just as bernie sanders would have. that's just reality. and biden will compromise to move the ball forward if necessary. unfortunately i don't see him getting that opportunity on health care if he is elected. because nothing major will get out of congress. it would be a minor miracle if a public option gets out of congress during a hypothetical biden presidency. "medicare for all" is a virtual impossibility. so whether biden would have pushed for M4A like bernie surely would have is irrelevant as a matter of practicality

it is truly astonishing that a person can be wrong about so many things in a single paragraph. exhausting

[dice]

no accident that COVID-19 has been spreading like wildfire in certain states:

https://www.pressreader.com/usa/the-arizona-republic

meanwhile, after the texas governor FINALLY mandated masks in the face of skyrocketing case counts (but only in some counties, and not in churches or at polling places), he is getting blowback from certain locales. same governor who prohibited local governments from requiring masks earlier in the pandemic

[Ccwatercraft]

This probably won't get noticed amongst all the shouting, but do people in your area wear masks right now? I recently traveled to 5 different states and the highest percentage I saw wearing masks in a public place was about 40%. This is even in stores or areas that had signs posted that it was required to enter. Less than half the customers were wearing masks in there and not even every worker was wearing one. What I see on the news and from big cities and democrat-run areas does not seem to track with the rest of the country. Just curious, please don't yell at me.

About 85-90% in florida, up and down the west coast this week. I deliberately skipped the east coast in my travel plans, no thanks.

[dice]

american airlines prohibiting people from changing seats to empty rows:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/08/travel/airplanes-social-distancing-coronavirus.html?campaign_id=154&emc=edit_cb_20200710&instance_id=20226&nl=coronavirus-briefing&regi_id=94658923&segment_id=33130&te=1&user_id=7ea4e9d4dbdb5ec9d68d451510e3f47d

meanwhile, trump administration again pushing for emergency authorization of hydroxychloroquine based on a single controversial study. brazil's president says he's taking it, so there's that...

[DuckIII]

We just need to get back to basics and start inhaling Lysol.

[dribble1614]

Cases are surging across certain states in the South primarily due to the stupidity of Americans. The only country where it’s even controversial and somehow political to wear masks and social distance is the same one that had its citizens fighting over toilet paper at the onset of the pandemic. The Black Lives Matter protests definitely played a huge role in the spikes in cases, as anyone with a brain would realize that mass gatherings of thousands and thousands of people chanting, yelling, spitting and screaming like maniacs will spread respiratory droplets and viral particles everywhere. Obama was a total failure of a president and Bernie Sanders is a raging communist lunatic whose supporters are mostly crazy left wing fanatics, and thankfully a nut like him will never be president. Also hilarious lots of people who aren’t actual doctors/have zero medical education and know nothing about COVID-19 spouting off in this thread like they know about the virus.

[rtblues]

Why would someone argue with a brick? Or talk to the wall?
Don't waste your time.

[keobulls]

This probably won't get noticed amongst all the shouting, but do people in your area wear masks right now? I recently traveled to 5 different states and the highest percentage I saw wearing masks in a public place was about 40%. This is even in stores or areas that had signs posted that it was required to enter. Less than half the customers were wearing masks in there and not even every worker was wearing one. What I see on the news and from big cities and democrat-run areas does not seem to track with the rest of the country. Just curious, please don't yell at me.

About 85-90% in florida, up and down the west coast this week. I deliberately skipped the east coast in my travel plans, no thanks.

Yeah, I was not excited about the Blue states I had to go through and being forced to wear a mask, but I guess avoiding the bigger cities eliminates most of that in those states.