#the profit motive for american healthcare is fucked up enough to hear about on the news

[habeascorpseus]

im going to commit a felony

#habeas speaks #goodtimeswithscar #discourse #american healthcare #like im incensed right now because every time scar talks about his health on stream he always mentions shit like this #but this literally could Kill Him. #this is an insurance company realizing they apparently dont make a profit off of a person paying them to live anymore #and going 'okay time to go over to their house and kill them.' #like! #the profit motive for american healthcare is fucked up enough to hear about on the news #but this just puts into perspective #how a man can be happy and living his best life as his own insurance company decides his life is not worth not being paid #and are essentially going to murder him in a way thats legally sanctioned #like. someone needs to be fucking Hurt #because people need to start being scared of the desperate again

[hachama]

Second Democratic Debate Analysis, pt. 1

Like last time, I’ve (finally) read the transcripts.  I read the fact-checkers’ analysis.  I have ranked them. 

Also like last time, due to the size of the field, I’ll be splitting my analysis into four groups.  This first one will be the Please Do Not Make Me Vote For Them group: 

Good news!  Due to candidates dropping out, it’s a shorter list!

Biden, Williamson, Delaney, Ryan, and Bullock

Under the break, I’ll be analyzing their debate performance, how effectively they represented themselves on the issues, and how much I hate them, in reverse order of preference. Let’s begin.

17) Bullock

Governor Steve Bullock did not make an appearance in the first set of debates, and now I know why. He is the Shirley Exception made flesh. “Surely no one would actually use our laws to hurt someone.  Surely if someone is really a good person they won’t face terrible abuses.  Surely not…” Stevie, these are things that are currently happening.  These are facts.  

Those who read my analysis of the first debates should know that I do not accept any luke-warm “healthcare choice” arguments, and Steve is full of those, too.

He’s very worried about other candidates campaign promises being unrealistic, and says that it’s important to listen to “real Americans,” as if democratic socialists and the majority of Americans who support universal healthcare aren’t “real” enough for him.

As if that weren’t enough, he also argues in favor of some of the abuses of immigrants, as a deterrent to immigration.

To his credit, he supports treating gun violence as a public health issue, including research by the CDC into causes, which could inform actually useful gun control policies.  He wants to see Citizens United overturned, which is also good.  But not good enough.

16) Ryan

Representative Tim Ryan has the distinction of being one of the candidates I hated entirely in this debate. I agreed with none of his points, and most of my notes contain profanity.  He introduced himself as New and Fresh, playing on his youth (he’s 45. The average age of the democratic candidates is 54.  There are 4 people running who are younger than Tim) without offering much substance.

He opposes decriminalizing the border.  On healthcare he seems to think we can’t make healthcare better for everyone because then unions won’t have anything going for them which is just… He thinks letting businesses “buy in to medicare” is a good idea, and all I can hear is “privatize the social safety net and let companies decide whose grandma actually deserves to have proper care when she breaks her hip.”  

I’m not saying Tim is evil. I’m saying he’s spineless and would let bad things happen because it’s too much work to stop them.

15) Delaney

Representative John Delaney joins Tim Ryan in the dubious category of “I hate you and everything you stand for.”  The only reason he ranks slightly higher than Tim is because someone had to.  Their scores were the same level of shrieking profanity.

John thinks that reminding everyone that he was the youngest CEO in the history of the New York Stock Exchange is a good thing, showing that he has absolutely no idea what democrats are looking for in a candidate.  Surely, we should trust him!  He sold his soul early and has abided by the contract for so long!

He is another candidate decrying “unrealistic” campaign promises.  He reiterated his concern that Medicare for All would underfund the healthcare industry in America, he considers it an “extreme” policy proposal, and called it an “anti-private sector strategy.”  Yes, John, because the private sector’s profit motive has been working so well, let’s all continue dying so that small groups of people can make lots of money off of the price of insulin.  Fuck you.

14) Williamson

Marianne Williamson’s contributions were blessedly brief and infrequent.  She supports public campaign funding, which is great, but she also spent an entire minute on “I have concerns” without once proposing a solution, referred to the American healthcare system as a “sickness care system,” which for me evokes concerns about chemtrails and chemikillz, and her opening statement evoked American Exceptionalism.  

I’m so tired of Marianne Williamson.

13) Biden

Former Vice President, Former Senator Joe Biden was invited to comment on everything.  As a result, I have over a page of notes just for him. The moderators’ bold strategy of checking in with Uncle Joe every time anyone said anything gave him opportunities to say a few things I agreed with, but ultimately was not enough to get him out of my lowest ranked category.

As he said in the last debate, Joe supports rejoining the Paris Climate Accord.  This time, he said we need to “increase” the standard, apparently recognizing that solutions negotiated several years ago will not be sufficient now, and he wants to see an end to fossil fuel subsidies.  These are good things I can agree with.

Joe is concerned by the treatment of immigrants seeking asylum, and the excessive wait times for their cases to be heard and the refugees either released or returned to their country of origin.  His solution is to “flood the zone,” spend more resources to make decisions faster. This guarantees nothing except a reduction in detainees which, while generally positive, is less than half a solution.

The thing Joe said that I liked best was about the treatment of former-inmates after the completion of their prison sentences.  Joe said that former-inmates should have access to public programs and benefits upon release.  This would be a significant change from the current system, which continues to punish people long after their sentence is served.  He also said that drug crimes should result in rehab, not prison.

Joe continued to use his association with Obama as a shield against criticism, which was worn thin before the first debate started.  He evaded questions about Eric Garner, refused to answer questions about Obama-era deportations (with the added bonus of “what I said was said in confidence, you’d share it, but not me”), invoked American Exceptionalism in his opening statement, interrupted Cory Booker at one point, blamed all of our current political and social dysfunction on Trump, and thinks we should renegotiate the Trans Pacific Partnership.  

The cherry on top of this shit sundae?  He said the phrase “I have the only plan that (…)” I haven’t talked about this much, because it’s a little hard to express in text, but I have a very, very negative response to any claim to being the only person who can solve a problem.  It’s bad when Trump does it, it’s bad when Biden does it, it’s an abuser’s tactic.  “I’m the only one who loves you, I’m the only one who can help you, I’m the only one” is always a) a lie, and b) a red flag.

Granted, I was so far behind that some of Biden’s comments formed parallels I might not have seen when he initially said them, but some of the things he said about immigration were symptomatic of the same thought process that gave us that abominable rewrite of Emma Lazarus’s New Colossus.  Biden, when trying to make a point about the strength of America being in our diversity, said that “we’ve been able to cherry pick from the best of every culture,” and followed it up with “anybody that crosses the stage with a PhD, you should get a green card for seven years. We should keep them here.” Not everyone who immigrates to the U.S. is going to have an advanced degree. Not everyone who immigrates to the U.S. is going to be “the best and brightest.”  And that’s a good thing.  There is a limit to the number of doctors and lawyers a society needs. Some immigrants are going to be nurse’s assistants and cab drivers, and we need them here, too.

Even with all of that, the worst of what Joe had to say was about healthcare.  Joe thinks that limiting co-pays to $1000 per person is part of making healthcare accessible to everyone.  He thinks your health insurance premium should be no more than 8.5% of your annual income.  I did some math.  For minimum wage, that’s almost $2500 for insurance, out of pocket, before anyone sees any benefit.  After taxes, that leaves about $10k for a minimum wage worker to live on for a year. At $15/hour, $20k to live on.  These are not reasonable numbers in most of the country.

#second democratic debate #politics #opinions and analysis