What I want to happen is to elect a Democrat who says, straight out, at their innaguration:
In 20 months, I will imprison every Senator and Representive, without charge, using the powers you morons have granted me. I will veto any bill disallowing this, I will use my magical signing statement power to undo any vetos you override, I will declare you illegal combatants or something and keep you from seeing a court at all, even if you explicitly say you're entitled to one. (What are you going to do if I don't?)
You know where the constitutional amendments are so this doesn't happen again. Or rot in jail. Or resign. Your choice.
Oh, and pass an amendment that just grants you protection, and I'll simply claim you aren't Congressmen or even American citizens. Have fun proving that without access to a court.
So not only should we vote them out of office, we should probably hold some sort of mental health evaluation to see if they are a danger to themselves or others.
They're weak for their reelection bids because they aren't stopping the president. It really is that simple.
For his part, Bush bungled the veto and should have gone into depth about why he was vetoing it instead of letting the Dems define the public face of the issue.
He didn't bungle anything. It's become increasingly obvious that not only does Bush not care what people think about him, he doesn't particularly give a flying fuck about other Republicans and their reelection chances. Why should he, he's a sociopath. The Republican party is no longer useful to him, and, hence, it doesn't matter how damaged it is.
The real question is, as I can see this, why the Republicans can't, and in addition to stupidly not get off the Titanic, they continue to praise both the captain, Bush, and the many many icebergs they crashed into, like Iraq. And something like 1/4th of the Democrats think it's a good idea to climb on board also, to show they won't let the people who already sunk under the water die in vain.
This is one of those true historic stories that wouldn't be good fiction because it makes no fucking sense. Truth is only stranger than fiction because everyone in real life is apparently a complete fucking moron. Bush is the only person whose behavior makes any sense at all, if you assume he's an amoral power-mad lunatic.
The constitution says no such thing. The military is required to operate entirely within the rules spelled out by the Legislature. Without them there wouldn't even be a military.
And it's the job of Congress to provide for national defense, anyway.
Speaking of that, how do you think they're going to react when the media finally starts reporting Bush started his wiretapping program right after taking office, not after 9/11?
Yes, now, vote for every Democrat you see to get rid of the Republicans. But during the primary vote out all the spineless asshat Democrats who continued to enable this Administration.
That includes you, Hillary, the worse 'triangulator' of the bunch, the one who spent all the time 'comprimizing' with the Republicans back in 92 to get a shitty insurance-company-run health care, and then acted surprised when the Republicans refused to vote for it anyway. The one I'm going to have a lot of trouble voting for if she wins the primary, and if someone sane like Bob Dole was running against her, probably wouldn't.
Luckily for her, the Republican are fielding a bunch of Bush v2.0, so the choice is rather easy. (First person to mention Ron Paul get bitchslapped. He's just sane in the single most important way, the way tat all other Republicans are insane, but he's completely insane in other ways.)
In 10 years, I want to see the entire Democratic party replaced. Every single one of these 'triangulators' who didn't stop this war, every one of them who provided cover to Bush, every single damn one of them. I'm putting up with them now to remove this criminal administration, and they are gone as soon as possible.
Is not the purpose of prison at least partially deterrence? Aka, we're threatening criminals with harm in an attempt to change their behavior.
That is, of course, not terrorism. There is a difference between a threat of harm after a legal process and actually causing terror.
However, now take that and apply it to breaking down doors with assault teams. Is it possible that someone would actually be 'scared' of that happening to the point they would stay in line and attempt to keep from offending people?
Let me quickly type '/authority', and, hey, it looks like I not only didn't assert it wasn't, but didn't mention authority at all.
I will repeat: It's interesting how all the 'traditional' roles of the government you libertarians assert are the only good ones happen to be exactly those which protect ownership and resources, and not actual people.
Things like militaries, which protect from invasion by other countries that want our resources...which are privately owned by rich people.
And police protection, of which all property crime is for the protection of rich people and their assets. In fact, many such laws are explicitly based on the value of said property, with more expensive property (aka, property of the richer) being 'worse' to damage.
And airports and air-traffic control systems, operated for free for the air-transport companies. (And that's not talking about all the bailouts.)
And roads, which at least pretend to be taxed based on use, but in reality a tractor trailer damages them, and requires them being very overbuilt, much more than a passenger car using the same amount of gas. (And thus paying the same amount of taxes.)
Oh, and apparently there's an entire system set up to mediate disputes between the rich, or between one rich person and one poor person, called 'civil court'. Our taxes pay for that too.
It sure is a very odd coincidence how all the 'traditional' functions of the government of the government appear to be to protect the rich from the poor or from other rich, until you realize that was the original purpose of the government. Government started as a way to protect for the rich and powerful to operate safely within a set of rules to protect themselves. Starting with the guy at the top, then other nobles, and then landowners in general, and continually moving downward. So the 'oldest' and 'legitimate' functions of the government you prattle on about are simply rewinding the clock to where less people were helped by the government. There's no inherent reason paying for the police to remove trespassers is a function of the government and paying for doctors to make people health isn't, one of them just showed up first because it was more helpful to the rich.
And as 60% of the American people are willing to pay other people's medical expenses even if it raises their own (And it won't.), so we actually have picked an organization that will manage paying for other's medical costs.
Since the HMO is insulated from repercussions, they're more likely to restrict treatment or provide a less effective, cheaper alternative. Now there's less demand for new treatments; now the market behind that specific treatment (ie suppliers, training, etc) is more consistent and predictable; now companies in the food chain extract every last penny they can.
Ah, yes, consistent and predictable markets are tools of the devil. This is why, for example, bread costs over twenty dollars a loaf.
Do you actually believe what you're writing? You're asserting that health insurance isn't true free market because it's 'constant and predictable'? Do you know how idiotic that sounds?
I was referring to federally qualified HMOs; the ones that have less restrictions, as referenced in the wiki article above. The ones that are being essentially subsidized.
Loans and grants 30 years ago is not being 'subsidized'.
This is just silly. If the people didn't matter, then companies would sign with insurance companies that did nothing and charged nothing for it.
Hello? McFly? That is exactly what is happening.
People without benefits are people not paying into the system.
They are paying more into the health care system so the health insurance system can pay less into the health care system.
Are you saying you think the government should pay for everyone's medical care?
Yes.
Just some of it? Why should all Americans be forced to pay for poor people's medical care?
They shouldn't, they should have to pay for all people's medical care.
If you don't like that, maybe the poor should stop paying for police protection, which largely benefits the rich to protect them from the poor.
This should not be the role of the federal government.
It's the role of every other First-world country's government.
If people care enough to sacrifice a certain amount of their income to pay for poor people's ailments, let them donate to an organization that manages that.
If people care enough to have burglars arrested, let them donate to an organization that manages that.
It's interesting how all the 'traditional' roles of the government you libertarians assert are the only good ones happen to be exactly those which protect ownership and resources, and not actual people.
The more the government pays, the more the prices will inflate. Companies raise their prices and the government pays it. Heck, the government's own IP laws help those companies gouge it.
Yeah, that's right, just assert a magical price raise, despite the fact we have a more costly medical system than any other country in the world.
Then doctors and hospitals find ways to encourage patients to use alternative insurance companies that are more fair to doctors and hospitals.
Except that people do not choose their insurance company. People with benefits get it picked for them, healthy people without benefits do not have one, and sick people without benefits cannot get one.
The HMOs stifle that competition, they reinforce the prices and policies of the rest of the market - of the private companies. Get rid of them, make room in the market for competition.
I like how the HMOs magically are somehow not private companies in your universe. And, incidentally, HMOs cost less than normal medical insurance, so getting rid of them, would, um, rather obviously also raise prices.
But, more the point, why don't you explain exactly where free market was meddled with that 'caused' this system in the first place? What you pointed to doesn't have a damn thing to do with cost. It is an additional problem, but lack of being able to be sued can, in no way, raise the price of something, and that much is obvious to everyone.
So why don't you magical-thinker invisible-handers explain what went wrong here? How is this not the result of the free market?
The middle-men have stepped in to skim off the top of the people who don't need medical care, (For only as long as they don't need it, then they get dropped.) and their skimming has caused everyone else's prices to go up. You'll notice the lack of the word 'regulation' or 'government' or anything except the free market in full, naked glory in that explanation.
It is the greatest free market success-story ever, it has record profits and almost no government regulation whatsoever, and it's killing 18,000 people a year by denying them care. I know that is causing all sort of cognitive dissonance in your Libertarian head, but that's not really my problem.
I like the idea that the way to combat the rising HMO prices is to let people sue them.
That might, to a very very slight extent, keep them from wrongly denying claims, but it wouldn't do a damn thing to lower costs. And in reality, it's easier to just keep denying claims knowing most people can't get together the money to sue.
And that would just stop dirty-trick denials, not ones that follow the rules laid out.
And they are real good at making rules that left them define something as a 'pre-existing condition'. Aka, you didn't mention something that possibly could have hinted that you had the condition, like you had a cough for a week two years ago and now have lung cancer, that obviously is grounds to call it 'pre-existing.
Or the rule that you 'didn't disclose your medical history', that like that a lot. In that you forgot to mention the time you went to the hospital after a car crash and there was nothing wrong with. But you didn't put it down on the forms, and when they discover you are a net loss, they comb through your records and discover it. (Despite the fact they were happy to take your money for years while you were healthy.)
It doesn't matter if liablity is restored to them...a huge amounts of their denials are within their rules, and the ones that aren't...people can't afford to sue for! They just got hit with huge medical bills, and there's an even chance the HMO was within their contractual rights.
And even if it would change the system, it wouldn't do a damn thing to the cost, except possibly raise it. I can't imagine how getting hit with lawsuits for poor service could possibly make a company lower prices. Lawsuits for pricing issues, sure, but not providing purchased services? How is that even plausibly supposed to work? If they have to provide more services, they're going to raise prices.
And, I wasn't referring to the failure of managed care in the first place. I was referring to the rising health care costs. Which is happening due to all insurance, not just HMOs, sucking money out of the medical system. Even uninsured people are affected, because doctors and hospitals have been forced to lower prices so much for insured people they have to gough the uninsured.
Almost Nobel Peace Prizes are for 'PR', or, instead of 'public relations', 'international relations'.
...to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.
You can reduce standing armies to get one. This is what many people think of when they hear 'Peace Prize', but in reality most prizes aren't for this, simply because no one does it.
Alternately, you can get nations to work together, or you can hold and promote peace conferences. The last one is exactly what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is, and it's doing the first thing. Along with Al Gore in the US via Alliance for Climate Protection.
Complaining a Peace Prize money is used for 'PR' is idiotic. It's a 'PR' Peace Prize, which calling it that is about the most inane method of diminishing the importance of his work ever. By that logic Nelson Mandela shouldn't have one...all he did was run around promoting the downfall of apartheid. What a PR flack. (I bet if I actually knew what he did with his money, I'd find he gave it to an organization to 'promote' something or other too.)
I think ending medicare would help health prices decrease. Free markets work - government-subsidized price floors don't.
You are the most goddamn stupid person ever allowed to post on this site.
Rising health costs are almost entirely due to money being sucked out of the system by private insurance companies. And when I say 'almost entirely', I mean '90%'. (The other 10% is due to actual rising costs as medicine advances.)
You can talk your gibberish about the evils of medicare all you want, but you're a total moron if you think the price of health care is due to it.
We actually had sorta that terrorist attack, the DC sniper, which certainly proved it worked. Two guys, one modified car, one rifle, and you can terrorize a place for days. And sharpshooting training is a lot easier to hide than airplane piloting.
If someone did that in, say, five different areas at once, and kept moving around, they could trivially terrorize the entire country. Make sure that none of the know each other so that catching one doesn't stop the others.
And they don't even use up guys, unless they're caught. If they're good, they'd only get caught during or right after an assault, and could go out as martyrs fighting with the FBI. Assuming you can get a guy trained, and sneak him and a driver into the country every two months, and it takes roughly that long to catch them, you could keep up a steady rotation.
But it's worth noting that no terrorist group has bothered to do anything like that. And we can't say they haven't thought of it, because they can read newspapers too.
Why? Because they do not want to terrorist us. The entire point of 9/11 was to provoke us into doing something stupid in the middle east, and, thus, it was pointless, as Bush was going to invade Iraq anyway.
In that sense, it's totally wrong to call them 'terrorists'. Terrorists make demands and threaten to attack a country unless those demands are met, and then do so, repeatedly, until the demands are met or they are all dead. That is what 'terrorism' is, attempting to frighten the population into agreeing to the demands.
Instead, after our 'terror' attack, we...attacked them, and got, in retribution...nothing. No demands, no threats, no actions. I don't know what that is, but it's not terrorism.
No, it was a provokation to try to get us to attack the middle east so we'd broaden their support.
You're a moron. The only 'degree of control' you have over most of those things is not being in a place they are likely to happen. No one can stop from getting struck by lighting or earthquake or being in an air-travel accident except by simply not being there in advance.
Which is exactly the same amount of control you have over a terrorist attack.
And I especially like the way you pretend all auto accidents are avoidable by any of the parties. Asswipe.
I don't know about you, but I don't want to live in a country that 'manages my diet.'
So you don't live in the US, then?
Check the labels for 'high fructose corn syrup'. The government subsidies prices so that it's much cheaper than sugar.
And there's at least some evidence that eating all this fructose is one of the many causes of American obesity, as it gets digested different than sucrose from cane sugar.
But I guess it's okay if the government worsens your health to help American farmers, but it damn well not attempt to better your health by taxing companies that just randomly put fat in products to make up for the lack of taste.
It's interesting how strongly the resistance is to this particular, arguably not that meaningful, ruling.
Yeah, this is a stupid thing to object to. By all means, let's let free trade screw up all our actual businesses and whatnot. Let's make sure we can't implement any tariffs to protect businesses and workers, except where we've rigged the rules so we can continue to subsidy giant agrocultural conglomerates so they put farmers out of business everywhere else.
The whole free trade is one completely fucked up mess, and was a bad idea in almost every circumstance. Yes, we don't want random tariffs, either by us or against us, but we need to decide exactly the circumstances of all this. We can work with other countries (We won't do X, they won't do Y.), but we need to do it on a one-to-one basis, with our interests first.
This whole thing is just an example of how beholden to multi-nationals our government has gotten, who want the power to make things where they are cheapest and sell them where they are the most expensive, countries, civil rights, treatments of workers, actually paying taxes, all that be damned. And we do nothing about it.
But heaven forbid we let other compete with us in gambling, which is possibly the most useless industry we have and one that no country can possibly have a competitive advantage over us thanks to geographical quirks or willingness to mistreat workers or anything.
What. The. Fuck. are you talking about? The US is the strongest supporter of the WTO in the world. Are you on drugs or something? 'Free trade' is basically our idea. We even have the agricultural subsidies rigged to help us and Europe at the expense of half the planet.
What happened here is that moronic religious freaks decided that their moral objection to gambling meant they didn't have to follow the non-discrimination rules. No. If a product is legal in the US they cannot ban people in other countries from selling it to Americans. They can regulate it to some extent, about the level they require of domestic products, but they cannot outright ban it.
The only personal reason he's got to throw his hat into the ring is to get the policies he wants enacted, and that only counts if he doesn't think the next president will agree with.
He really just approach the Democratic primary winner to talk about them appointing him to the EPA.
I've actually always thought it might be a good idea for a president to pick his cabinet before election.
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What I want to happen is to elect a Democrat who says, straight out, at their innaguration:
In 20 months, I will imprison every Senator and Representive, without charge, using the powers you morons have granted me. I will veto any bill disallowing this, I will use my magical signing statement power to undo any vetos you override, I will declare you illegal combatants or something and keep you from seeing a court at all, even if you explicitly say you're entitled to one. (What are you going to do if I don't?)
You know where the constitutional amendments are so this doesn't happen again. Or rot in jail. Or resign. Your choice.
Oh, and pass an amendment that just grants you protection, and I'll simply claim you aren't Congressmen or even American citizens. Have fun proving that without access to a court.
So not only should we vote them out of office, we should probably hold some sort of mental health evaluation to see if they are a danger to themselves or others.
They're weak for their reelection bids because they aren't stopping the president. It really is that simple.
For his part, Bush bungled the veto and should have gone into depth about why he was vetoing it instead of letting the Dems define the public face of the issue.
He didn't bungle anything. It's become increasingly obvious that not only does Bush not care what people think about him, he doesn't particularly give a flying fuck about other Republicans and their reelection chances. Why should he, he's a sociopath. The Republican party is no longer useful to him, and, hence, it doesn't matter how damaged it is.
The real question is, as I can see this, why the Republicans can't, and in addition to stupidly not get off the Titanic, they continue to praise both the captain, Bush, and the many many icebergs they crashed into, like Iraq. And something like 1/4th of the Democrats think it's a good idea to climb on board also, to show they won't let the people who already sunk under the water die in vain.
This is one of those true historic stories that wouldn't be good fiction because it makes no fucking sense. Truth is only stranger than fiction because everyone in real life is apparently a complete fucking moron. Bush is the only person whose behavior makes any sense at all, if you assume he's an amoral power-mad lunatic.
Why would anyone need to convince 'moderates' of anything? Any actual moderate sees full well what's going on.
Nope. Immunity granted for testimony is a good thing.
Immunity granted with no plans to ever try anyone or no idea how large the lawbreaking is not a good thing.
Assuming what you say is true, the Democrats need to do it and make them snap.
The constitution says no such thing. The military is required to operate entirely within the rules spelled out by the Legislature. Without them there wouldn't even be a military.
And it's the job of Congress to provide for national defense, anyway.
Speaking of that, how do you think they're going to react when the media finally starts reporting Bush started his wiretapping program right after taking office, not after 9/11?
Two words:
Democratic. Primary.
Yes, now, vote for every Democrat you see to get rid of the Republicans. But during the primary vote out all the spineless asshat Democrats who continued to enable this Administration.
That includes you, Hillary, the worse 'triangulator' of the bunch, the one who spent all the time 'comprimizing' with the Republicans back in 92 to get a shitty insurance-company-run health care, and then acted surprised when the Republicans refused to vote for it anyway. The one I'm going to have a lot of trouble voting for if she wins the primary, and if someone sane like Bob Dole was running against her, probably wouldn't.
Luckily for her, the Republican are fielding a bunch of Bush v2.0, so the choice is rather easy. (First person to mention Ron Paul get bitchslapped. He's just sane in the single most important way, the way tat all other Republicans are insane, but he's completely insane in other ways.)
In 10 years, I want to see the entire Democratic party replaced. Every single one of these 'triangulators' who didn't stop this war, every one of them who provided cover to Bush, every single damn one of them. I'm putting up with them now to remove this criminal administration, and they are gone as soon as possible.
We've always been at war with Shi'ites, we've always been allied with Sunnis.
You mean like...FISA?
Is not the purpose of prison at least partially deterrence? Aka, we're threatening criminals with harm in an attempt to change their behavior.
That is, of course, not terrorism. There is a difference between a threat of harm after a legal process and actually causing terror.
However, now take that and apply it to breaking down doors with assault teams. Is it possible that someone would actually be 'scared' of that happening to the point they would stay in line and attempt to keep from offending people?
aThe term itself is implying something was stolen from you. It wasn't. One third party defrauded yet another third party.
And you got stuck with the bill cleaning it up.
Let me quickly type '/authority', and, hey, it looks like I not only didn't assert it wasn't, but didn't mention authority at all.
I will repeat: It's interesting how all the 'traditional' roles of the government you libertarians assert are the only good ones happen to be exactly those which protect ownership and resources, and not actual people.
Things like militaries, which protect from invasion by other countries that want our resources...which are privately owned by rich people.
And police protection, of which all property crime is for the protection of rich people and their assets. In fact, many such laws are explicitly based on the value of said property, with more expensive property (aka, property of the richer) being 'worse' to damage.
And airports and air-traffic control systems, operated for free for the air-transport companies. (And that's not talking about all the bailouts.)
And roads, which at least pretend to be taxed based on use, but in reality a tractor trailer damages them, and requires them being very overbuilt, much more than a passenger car using the same amount of gas. (And thus paying the same amount of taxes.)
Oh, and apparently there's an entire system set up to mediate disputes between the rich, or between one rich person and one poor person, called 'civil court'. Our taxes pay for that too.
It sure is a very odd coincidence how all the 'traditional' functions of the government of the government appear to be to protect the rich from the poor or from other rich, until you realize that was the original purpose of the government. Government started as a way to protect for the rich and powerful to operate safely within a set of rules to protect themselves. Starting with the guy at the top, then other nobles, and then landowners in general, and continually moving downward. So the 'oldest' and 'legitimate' functions of the government you prattle on about are simply rewinding the clock to where less people were helped by the government. There's no inherent reason paying for the police to remove trespassers is a function of the government and paying for doctors to make people health isn't, one of them just showed up first because it was more helpful to the rich.
And as 60% of the American people are willing to pay other people's medical expenses even if it raises their own (And it won't.), so we actually have picked an organization that will manage paying for other's medical costs.
It's called the United States Government.
Since the HMO is insulated from repercussions, they're more likely to restrict treatment or provide a less effective, cheaper alternative. Now there's less demand for new treatments; now the market behind that specific treatment (ie suppliers, training, etc) is more consistent and predictable; now companies in the food chain extract every last penny they can.
Ah, yes, consistent and predictable markets are tools of the devil. This is why, for example, bread costs over twenty dollars a loaf.
Do you actually believe what you're writing? You're asserting that health insurance isn't true free market because it's 'constant and predictable'? Do you know how idiotic that sounds?
I was referring to federally qualified HMOs; the ones that have less restrictions, as referenced in the wiki article above. The ones that are being essentially subsidized.
Loans and grants 30 years ago is not being 'subsidized'.
This is just silly. If the people didn't matter, then companies would sign with insurance companies that did nothing and charged nothing for it.
Hello? McFly? That is exactly what is happening.
People without benefits are people not paying into the system.
They are paying more into the health care system so the health insurance system can pay less into the health care system.
Are you saying you think the government should pay for everyone's medical care?
Yes.
Just some of it? Why should all Americans be forced to pay for poor people's medical care?
They shouldn't, they should have to pay for all people's medical care.
If you don't like that, maybe the poor should stop paying for police protection, which largely benefits the rich to protect them from the poor.
This should not be the role of the federal government.
It's the role of every other First-world country's government.
If people care enough to sacrifice a certain amount of their income to pay for poor people's ailments, let them donate to an organization that manages that.
If people care enough to have burglars arrested, let them donate to an organization that manages that.
It's interesting how all the 'traditional' roles of the government you libertarians assert are the only good ones happen to be exactly those which protect ownership and resources, and not actual people.
The more the government pays, the more the prices will inflate. Companies raise their prices and the government pays it. Heck, the government's own IP laws help those companies gouge it.
Yeah, that's right, just assert a magical price raise, despite the fact we have a more costly medical system than any other country in the world.
Then doctors and hospitals find ways to encourage patients to use alternative insurance companies that are more fair to doctors and hospitals.
Except that people do not choose their insurance company. People with benefits get it picked for them, healthy people without benefits do not have one, and sick people without benefits cannot get one.
The HMOs stifle that competition, they reinforce the prices and policies of the rest of the market - of the private companies. Get rid of them, make room in the market for competition.
I like how the HMOs magically are somehow not private companies in your universe. And, incidentally, HMOs cost less than normal medical insurance, so getting rid of them, would, um, rather obviously also raise prices.
But, more the point, why don't you explain exactly where free market was meddled with that 'caused' this system in the first place? What you pointed to doesn't have a damn thing to do with cost. It is an additional problem, but lack of being able to be sued can, in no way, raise the price of something, and that much is obvious to everyone.
So why don't you magical-thinker invisible-handers explain what went wrong here? How is this not the result of the free market?
The middle-men have stepped in to skim off the top of the people who don't need medical care, (For only as long as they don't need it, then they get dropped.) and their skimming has caused everyone else's prices to go up. You'll notice the lack of the word 'regulation' or 'government' or anything except the free market in full, naked glory in that explanation.
It is the greatest free market success-story ever, it has record profits and almost no government regulation whatsoever, and it's killing 18,000 people a year by denying them care. I know that is causing all sort of cognitive dissonance in your Libertarian head, but that's not really my problem.
I like the idea that the way to combat the rising HMO prices is to let people sue them.
That might, to a very very slight extent, keep them from wrongly denying claims, but it wouldn't do a damn thing to lower costs. And in reality, it's easier to just keep denying claims knowing most people can't get together the money to sue.
And that would just stop dirty-trick denials, not ones that follow the rules laid out.
And they are real good at making rules that left them define something as a 'pre-existing condition'. Aka, you didn't mention something that possibly could have hinted that you had the condition, like you had a cough for a week two years ago and now have lung cancer, that obviously is grounds to call it 'pre-existing.
Or the rule that you 'didn't disclose your medical history', that like that a lot. In that you forgot to mention the time you went to the hospital after a car crash and there was nothing wrong with. But you didn't put it down on the forms, and when they discover you are a net loss, they comb through your records and discover it. (Despite the fact they were happy to take your money for years while you were healthy.)
It doesn't matter if liablity is restored to them...a huge amounts of their denials are within their rules, and the ones that aren't...people can't afford to sue for! They just got hit with huge medical bills, and there's an even chance the HMO was within their contractual rights.
And even if it would change the system, it wouldn't do a damn thing to the cost, except possibly raise it. I can't imagine how getting hit with lawsuits for poor service could possibly make a company lower prices. Lawsuits for pricing issues, sure, but not providing purchased services? How is that even plausibly supposed to work? If they have to provide more services, they're going to raise prices.
And, I wasn't referring to the failure of managed care in the first place. I was referring to the rising health care costs. Which is happening due to all insurance, not just HMOs, sucking money out of the medical system. Even uninsured people are affected, because doctors and hospitals have been forced to lower prices so much for insured people they have to gough the uninsured.
Almost Nobel Peace Prizes are for 'PR', or, instead of 'public relations', 'international relations'.
You can reduce standing armies to get one. This is what many people think of when they hear 'Peace Prize', but in reality most prizes aren't for this, simply because no one does it.
Alternately, you can get nations to work together, or you can hold and promote peace conferences. The last one is exactly what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is, and it's doing the first thing. Along with Al Gore in the US via Alliance for Climate Protection.
Complaining a Peace Prize money is used for 'PR' is idiotic. It's a 'PR' Peace Prize, which calling it that is about the most inane method of diminishing the importance of his work ever. By that logic Nelson Mandela shouldn't have one...all he did was run around promoting the downfall of apartheid. What a PR flack. (I bet if I actually knew what he did with his money, I'd find he gave it to an organization to 'promote' something or other too.)
I think ending medicare would help health prices decrease. Free markets work - government-subsidized price floors don't.
You are the most goddamn stupid person ever allowed to post on this site.
Rising health costs are almost entirely due to money being sucked out of the system by private insurance companies. And when I say 'almost entirely', I mean '90%'. (The other 10% is due to actual rising costs as medicine advances.)
You can talk your gibberish about the evils of medicare all you want, but you're a total moron if you think the price of health care is due to it.
We actually had sorta that terrorist attack, the DC sniper, which certainly proved it worked. Two guys, one modified car, one rifle, and you can terrorize a place for days. And sharpshooting training is a lot easier to hide than airplane piloting.
If someone did that in, say, five different areas at once, and kept moving around, they could trivially terrorize the entire country. Make sure that none of the know each other so that catching one doesn't stop the others.
And they don't even use up guys, unless they're caught. If they're good, they'd only get caught during or right after an assault, and could go out as martyrs fighting with the FBI. Assuming you can get a guy trained, and sneak him and a driver into the country every two months, and it takes roughly that long to catch them, you could keep up a steady rotation.
But it's worth noting that no terrorist group has bothered to do anything like that. And we can't say they haven't thought of it, because they can read newspapers too.
Why? Because they do not want to terrorist us. The entire point of 9/11 was to provoke us into doing something stupid in the middle east, and, thus, it was pointless, as Bush was going to invade Iraq anyway.
In that sense, it's totally wrong to call them 'terrorists'. Terrorists make demands and threaten to attack a country unless those demands are met, and then do so, repeatedly, until the demands are met or they are all dead. That is what 'terrorism' is, attempting to frighten the population into agreeing to the demands.
Instead, after our 'terror' attack, we...attacked them, and got, in retribution...nothing. No demands, no threats, no actions. I don't know what that is, but it's not terrorism.
No, it was a provokation to try to get us to attack the middle east so we'd broaden their support.
You're a moron. The only 'degree of control' you have over most of those things is not being in a place they are likely to happen. No one can stop from getting struck by lighting or earthquake or being in an air-travel accident except by simply not being there in advance.
Which is exactly the same amount of control you have over a terrorist attack.
And I especially like the way you pretend all auto accidents are avoidable by any of the parties. Asswipe.
I don't know about you, but I don't want to live in a country that 'manages my diet.'
So you don't live in the US, then?
Check the labels for 'high fructose corn syrup'. The government subsidies prices so that it's much cheaper than sugar.
And there's at least some evidence that eating all this fructose is one of the many causes of American obesity, as it gets digested different than sucrose from cane sugar.
But I guess it's okay if the government worsens your health to help American farmers, but it damn well not attempt to better your health by taxing companies that just randomly put fat in products to make up for the lack of taste.
It's interesting how strongly the resistance is to this particular, arguably not that meaningful, ruling.
Yeah, this is a stupid thing to object to. By all means, let's let free trade screw up all our actual businesses and whatnot. Let's make sure we can't implement any tariffs to protect businesses and workers, except where we've rigged the rules so we can continue to subsidy giant agrocultural conglomerates so they put farmers out of business everywhere else.
The whole free trade is one completely fucked up mess, and was a bad idea in almost every circumstance. Yes, we don't want random tariffs, either by us or against us, but we need to decide exactly the circumstances of all this. We can work with other countries (We won't do X, they won't do Y.), but we need to do it on a one-to-one basis, with our interests first.
This whole thing is just an example of how beholden to multi-nationals our government has gotten, who want the power to make things where they are cheapest and sell them where they are the most expensive, countries, civil rights, treatments of workers, actually paying taxes, all that be damned. And we do nothing about it.
But heaven forbid we let other compete with us in gambling, which is possibly the most useless industry we have and one that no country can possibly have a competitive advantage over us thanks to geographical quirks or willingness to mistreat workers or anything.
This is completely absurd.
What. The. Fuck. are you talking about? The US is the strongest supporter of the WTO in the world. Are you on drugs or something? 'Free trade' is basically our idea. We even have the agricultural subsidies rigged to help us and Europe at the expense of half the planet.
What happened here is that moronic religious freaks decided that their moral objection to gambling meant they didn't have to follow the non-discrimination rules. No. If a product is legal in the US they cannot ban people in other countries from selling it to Americans. They can regulate it to some extent, about the level they require of domestic products, but they cannot outright ban it.
The only personal reason he's got to throw his hat into the ring is to get the policies he wants enacted, and that only counts if he doesn't think the next president will agree with.
He really just approach the Democratic primary winner to talk about them appointing him to the EPA.
I've actually always thought it might be a good idea for a president to pick his cabinet before election.