Playing the Role of Spoiler for Four More Years - Conservatives/Republicans ITT

So just disregard every statement I make and try and change the argument. Got some straw coming out your ass.

http://members.shaw.ca/jeanaltemeyer/drbob/TheAuthoritarians.pdf

Not too far in but not too bad a read. Just into the lamentation of the religious right seemingly driving the GOP dialogue

Biden was a bad choice, Palin however, was far worse

(and this is coming from an Alaskan).

She did well in her time as governor (up until getting nominated), but Biden>>Palin as far as VP nominees go

They won didn't they?

I don't know enough about him or past VP's to be able to compare qualifications. I barely paid attention to the 2008 election since I was knee deep in undergrad.

Until that person has to become President

Speaking of VPs. I would love to see any objective analysis ranking VPs. There are plenty that rank President's but I've never seen anything that looks at the VPs.

Yeah the biggest thing the public looks at is "could I stomach this person being President?" Depending on who the actual candidate is, that desire may be more or less prevalent in the actual voter metric for picking their vote.

Ole Danny boy has to be high up there for sure. In the post WWII era, I'm not sure anyone is worse than Spiro Agnew.

This is one of the biggest fears by those on the right. Some on the left who wanted pure Government run health care and to have private insurance banned across the board see this as a way to get that wish by default over time. The problem is the program as its currently written will become a financial nightmare if there is a widespread abandonment of providing insurance by companies and a large portion of the public has to move into the government coffers. There is a lot of unknowns with this scenario as well since the bill isn't designed, theoretically, to be an all for one and one for all, heath care bill.

Another problem with the entire health care bill discussion is there are two main questions in the public: (a) provide universal access and (b) lower costs for everyone. The health care bill that was passed basically does A but really doesn't do much for B even though it was pitched to do both. The key thing and ths question hits at it above is what happens when health care costs continue to rise, what then? Assuming the bill stays constitutional does that mean we will begin to see companies start making the economic decision "we can pay $X in fines which is X% cheaper than providing health care for our employees?"

If you look at public polling on the health care issues, the question of lowering prices always has a higher percentage of support than the providing universal access question.

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2012/03/26/reporters_stop_following_gingrich.html

Not that this is really big news since his campaign has been dead for some time......

I may be dumb here, but what is making employers pay for healthcare now?

Nothing.

Its a benefit that is still more or less cost effective for them to pay for so they can promote themselves as a "better place to work" compared to other companies.

So there is no incentive for them to stop covering it unless health care costs sky rocket (which they've already done and companies are already dropping health insurance).

I don't trust anyone's numbers about this healthcare bill anyways, it's a giant crapshoot to what is going to happen. You can't really calculate the potential savings of preventative care and people not going to the emergency room at the same rate. It's also difficult to calculate the cost of insuring people who have pre-existing conditions.

I think it more rests on do you believe everyone has the right to healthcare vs not.

The article I read about the lady being kicked out of a hospital and sent to jail, because she felt she didn't receive adequate care for her leg pains and proceeding to die isn't a good look for the medical field right now in how it cares for people on Medicaid.

Medicare & Medicaid aren't getting any better as programs since the government continues to not adequately fund those programs and more and more hospitals are having to eat the costs. Quite a few hospitals around the country have already started not accepting patients who don't have other forms of payment (besides Medicare/Medicaid) and the trend isn't reversing itself. One of the budget gimmicks the Dems used in the health care bill to make it appear cheaper was doing nothing to address the Medicare/Medicaid gap. They planned to pass a separate bill for that since it was going to raise the overall costs significantly. To my knowledge, they haven't (and now the GOP in the House) haven't fixed this problem.

My wife has spent some time in the Medicare/Medicaid billing side of thing in both hospitals and clinics and for some things the government only reimburses .30 for every $1. That adds up when you're look at how much can be racked up by some patients.

You're correct though in your point of access. Many, mostly those who are from the left side of the discussion, focus solely on access and that the government should give health insurance to everyone no matter what the costs are in the long run. That argument certainly plays well from the emotional side but it ignores any of the fiscal responsibility. Regardless, neither side is willing to make legitimate moves to actually address the fiscal side of the problem.

People need to stop eating so fucking much and going to the emergency room any time they have a tummy ache, that would do a lot to stem the fucking problems.

Yet we continue to cut funding from schools who subsequently get rid of sports and PE.

Our best long term fix for this problem is to create a healthier country altogether.

Yeah, therapists get laughable reimbursement rates. That's why all the good therapists don't take insurance and people bill by themselves (there's typically a gap between what the therapist charges and insurance covers).

This is absolutely true but damn near impossible to do.

We eat shitty meals on the go constantly and we work ridiculous hours. Its one of the big reasons that it is really hard to do a straight comparison of Canada, UK or some of the other European countries that have some form of government run health care because our lifestyles are so much different than theirs. Its also why it works in something like the US Military because everyone is compelled to have a similar "lifestyle."

I was talking to my wife a few months ago and the hospitals she had been talking to in the region were all figuring out what they could do if the government didn't start reimbursing at better levels. None of them want to start rejecting patients on Medicare/Medicaid but their financial situations aren't the best at this point in time.

All in all, I'm really glad I don't work in the health care industry.

I wish the American work week was like the European countries/Canada/etc.

Working less/more recreation goes hand in hand with eating right/exercising.

When I was stationed in Germany and working with the NATO folks a lot more often, they use to laugh at the Americans constantly because we worked constantly and took 1 hour lunches (occasionally 1.5 if you were working out) and didn't take the same type of vacations that our European counterparts take. I always hated that shit and wanted to take 14 coffee breaks a day while taking 2 hour lunches. Oh and if its Friday afternoon forget seeing them do work.

A big chunk of people eat shit, myself included at times, because I have zero time. Ability to work out is also greatly curtailed when super busy.

I'm not saying it'd be cured, or a giant help, but it'd definitely be a benefit.

No doubt. That said, it is hard as fuck to find any time to work out when you go to work at 8, leave at 6, then try to cook dinner before going to bed since it's a lot healthier.

Yeah, spend twenty minutes abroad besides just vacationing and Europeans will laugh at how obsessed Americans are with work.

That said, there's a reason we are king of the mountain.

Not sure it's worth it, but it's true.

Yeah there is a reason for our success. There are some drawbacks as well.

Ok, I rarely post anything political to my personal Facebook page and I typically direct people to my website's Facebook page for all political discussions. However, I've "liked" a bunch of political sites so I can read a variety of opinions as I scan through my Facebook feed. From time to time, I have to respond when I find something that is just so fucking dumb that it makes my head

Case in point:

• Jeannie Prather ‎---has anyone wondered how Romney's gonna comply with Constitutional requirement because his father was born in Mexico, that's a disqualifier nobody's mentioned, to my knowledge---anyone know more?
  16 minutes ago·
  
  
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• 
  
  Bryan Speer ‎@Jeannie - Romney was born in Detroit Michigan and under Section 1 of the 14th Amendment that makes him a US citizen. It doesn't matter where his dad was born.
  6 minutes ago·
  
  
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I'd say it has way more to do with the accessibility of food quickly than portion sizes. Cooking dinner used to be a big fucking part of the day, would take a lot of time, and none of the food would go to waste. If someone missed dinner, you might not eat til breakfast. (This is way before any of our time, except maybe ouduck)

Now there is just constant access to food in no time at all. You want a huge pile of noodles at midnight? You can either buy some for $5 or you can microwave some and both will take less than five minutes, and will probably be cheaper than if you tried to cook them yourself.

I agree with the stigmatizing of fat people. I can't imagine how much more difficult it is for some than others to stay trim, but acting like people shouldn't desire to be healthy and accept their weight problem is a terrible ideal to perpetuate.

Tons of research out there showing quality of work nose dives when working excessive hours to the point of being detrimental. Too lazy to go find it.

My wife runs a bridesmaids dress business and our tailor is Kenyan. Holy shit, it takes an hour and a half of talking with his entire family just to drop off a couple of patterns. I understand getting to know the people you work with, but time is valuable. I don't think other cultures share our "let's get this shit done" mentality and it's a reason we've been at the top for so long.

Oh I don't doubt it at all. I can speak to it first hand when I was working 90+ hour weeks while deployed.

The other thing is the massive decrease in people working jobs that involve physical activity.

Not sure that stigmatizing is the best option, that's worked so well for poor people. Something needs to happen though, probably a ton of small changes that take a long time to happen. Society has been slow to adapt to the current trends in work/life/etc.

Can't disagree with that.

Just saying the downsides to the expected work ethic in this country are pretty huge when we no longer need people to work in factories for 18 hours at a time.

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I laughed at that hard for some reason. Made me think of zombies.