Tag: go die in the streets

Strikers and their families: Go Die in the Streets

one section buried deep within [H.R. 1135] adds a startling new requirement. The bill, if passed, would actually cut off all food stamp benefits to any family where one adult member is engaging in a strike against an employer

No need to talk about this kind of stuff at the national level. Shrill. Just let all those troublemakers and their families starve to death already. Christ, it’s their fault we’re in this mess to begin with. GOP to striking workers and their families: Go die in the streets.

Strikers and their families: Go Die in the Streets

Shared Sacrifice

Just in case you thought the Social Security stinger on this post was unsupported, EJ Dionne provides:

Lori Montgomery reported in The Post last week that a bipartisan group of senators thinks a sensible deficit reduction package would involve lifting the Social Security retirement age to 69 and reforming taxes, purportedly to raise revenue, in a way that would cut the top income tax rate for the wealthy from 35 percent to 29 percent.

Only a body dominated by millionaires could define “shared sacrifice” as telling nurses’ aides and coal miners they have to work until age 69 while sharply cutting tax rates on wealthy people. I see why conservative Republicans like this. I honestly don’t get why Democrats – “the party of the people,” I’ve heard – would come near such an idea.

Absolutely right. I’d only quarrel with the title: “The Tea Party is Winning.” Nope. It is the plutocrats and banksters that invented the Tea Party out of whole cloth to gather useful drones to advance their preferred distraction campaign that are winning. The folks that make up the broader Tea Party itself are losing right along with the rest of us filthy proles. And once they undermine the entire non-military discretionary budget to their own detriment, then they hope to get serious and finally eliminate their own Social Security, after which they will go lie down in the streets to die, free from all unnecessary governmental inconveniences.

Shared Sacrifice

Social Security

The size of that fix [required to keep Social Security fully funded] is significant, but not astonishing. Over the next 75 years, the shortfall will be equal to about 0.7 percent of gross domestic product. How much is 0.7 percent of GDP? To put that in perspective, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities calculates that it’s about as much as George W. Bush’s tax cuts for the rich will cost over the same period. Saying we can afford those cuts – which is the consensus Republican position – but not Social Security’s outlay is nonsensical. Coming up with 0.7 percent of GDP isn’t a crisis. It’s a question of priorities.

And this is precisely how it should be talked about every single time a microphone is turned on. Clear, simple terms that highlight the basic stability of the program, the relative ease of fixing it (as opposed to, say, Medicare), and its critical position as the only thing between catfood and dying in the streets for millions of elderly individuals who have by and large paid into it, fair and square. Oh, but now your deal has to change and you have to keep working at your labors until you’re 70. Just makes perfect sense.

The parallels to Wisconsin are striking: A group and the government enter into a deal. Now the government wants to change the deal ex post facto, and uses a bludgeon of “dread Unions” to paper over the fact that they the government are the one dealing in underhanded fashion. And, of course, the media blissfully reports it from the government perspective. This is why we fail.

But, if a few million folks show up on the doorstep of said government, well, things can change.

Social Security

Defazio Bears Attention

TPM reports:

Rep. Peter Defazio (D-OR) proposes that people be allowed to opt out of the insurance mandate altogether – but if they do, they will not be allowed to free-ride on the new health care system.

Under his plan, a person opting out “must file an ‘affidavit of personal responsibility’ with the state exchange. Such a filing will waive their rights to: 1) Enroll in a health insurance exchange; 2) Enroll in Medicaid if otherwise made eligible; and 3) Discharge health care related debt under Chapter 7 bankruptcy law,” DeFazio wrote in a letter to colleagues Tuesday.

Under his plan, if a person wants back into the system, they’d need to buy insurance on their own, out of pocket, for five years. The idea here, and with other, similar plans, is to moot one of the constitutional complaints about the mandate – that it penalizes “inactivity.”

Exactly. No doubt the legions of “go die in the streets” conservatives who are morally wounded by the very concept of the individual mandate are lining up to cosponsor this. Right? Right?

Defazio Bears Attention

Some of my libertarian friends balk at what looks like an individual mandate. But remember, someone has to pay for the health care that must, by law, be provided: Either the individual pays or the taxpayers pay. A free ride on the government is not libertarian.

Mitt Romney (when governor of Massachusetts) saying the sort of thing that makes him unelectable in 2012. Sad but true.
But he gets at the real “fix” for the individual mandate: simply opt out of guaranteed care for some defined period and pay a fine to get back into it with no guarantee against taking yet another hit for any preexisting conditions. In other words: Go die in the streets; we won’t lift a finger. The GOP and their Tea Klan enablers can certainly get behind that, as it’s the basis for their entire worldview. I’m sure they’ll all be rushing to get in on that particular filing deadline…

Those Liberals at the AP

The far-left journalists over at the AP make the hard calls and reports that there is trouble at the mill, everyone:

LONDON — Prime Minister David Cameron yesterday waded into waters in which past British governments have foundered, promising fundamental changes to the country’s expensive and over-stressed public health care system.

I see. Crazy expensive socialist medical care. Only Lord Jesus can Know how much that stuff costs. Or, you can throw your lot in with pointy-headed statisticians and find out that it costs about $2317 per capita for the UK to provide universal, essentially free care to everyone (free as in beer, it is obviously paid for through various taxes and etc…). The US? We pay $5711 per capita. More than twice as much.
Now, of course, that would all change if we look at percent GDP, right? The US is such a giant economy and all. Actually, no. The US spends ~15% of GDP on healthcare, UK: ~8%. So it’s roughly half as expensive, whether considered as a function of the overall economy or strictly in terms of what’s spent per individual. And but so they all get access to healthcare. In the US, well, the GOP assures us that the market will take care of that any minute now.

Now we come to “over-stressed,” which must mean that outcomes are terrible in Britain when compared to the US, which (as we’re told repeatedly) has the finest care anywhere. They must be choking the streets with bodies over there if they spend half as much and then funnel that through some socialistic nightmare of a healthcare bureaucracy. Not so much: turns out they live longer, have lower infant mortality, and, of course, have universal access to free-as-in-beer healthcare 24/7, all without having to use the ER as their primary care physician or being told to just go die in the streets already. In fact, we typically rank in the low end of developed nations, not even within spitting distance of dread France, and always well behind the UK.

So, AP wrong on “expensive,” wrong on “over-stressed.” But they did get the current PM’s name right (though notably not his party affiliation; can’t go around limning the word “conservative” with “fundamental changes” and “foundered,” now can we?). So there’s that.

As if on Cue

Rest assured, gun violence only ever provides reasons to put more guns into circulation and never, ever serves as an argument for stricter regulations or requirements for those who wish to own or carry a gun:

Our model legislation is called the Giffords-Zimmerman Act,“ said Heller. (Giffords staffer Gabriel Zimmerman, 30, was killed on Saturday.) "It would require the Arizona Department of Public Safety to provide firearms training, using firearms confiscated by the state, to members of Congress and people who work for them. Facilities would be made available to them in a way that wouldn’t interfere with the training of police and other safety employees.”

Heller speculated that a response like this could prevent future attacks on members of Congress. “I don’t think having a firearm on her would do Congresswoman Giffords any good,” said Heller. “However, if it was known that members of her staff were well armed, that very well could have dissuaded [the shooter].

Arizona is already one of the easiest states in which to purchase and concealed-carry a gun, no licensing required. That easy availability did nothing whatsoever on Saturday, unless you count getting a gun into the hands of a 22 year old with apparent mental illness. The solution, as always: just make guns more available. That’ll solve it.

Now go die in those equally opportune streets like a well-armed man. Preferably by being shot; just don’t expect healthcare if you haven’t pre-paid or are any shade of brown. That is all.

Death-spiral Escape Hatch

Paul Starr of the American Prospect provides a way to lose the mandate and but also not destroy the private insurance system:

The law could give people a right to opt out of the mandate if they signed a form agreeing that they could not opt in for the following five years. In other words, instead of paying a fine, they would forgo a potential benefit. For five years they would become ineligible for federal subsidies for health insurance and, if they did buy coverage, no insurer would have to cover a pre-existing condition of theirs.

Fine by me. However, I can state categorically that the GOP will be against this, against the mandate (originally their idea anyway), and thus are implicitly for the destruction of the current insurance-based system and its inevitable replacement with single payer. But let’s not talk about that. Shrill.

Death-spiral Escape Hatch

Poison Pill Revisited

Jonathan Gruber sums up the wages of partial repeal (be it legislative or judicial) of the Affordable Care Act:

Removing the Affordable Care Act’s mandate would eviscerate the law’s coverage gains and greatly raise premiums. And going further by only keeping the market reforms and the small business tax credit would virtually wipe out those coverage gains and cause an enormous premium spike.

Oh, and it would totally destroy the existing insurance company-based system of coverage within a very few years. They’d be the first ones screaming for some replacement for the mandate; they’d have to be, because without it, and in the continued presence of the rest of the reforms, they’d be out of business.

But, by all means, GOP: herald in the era of single payer, finally a true government takeover of healthcare funding in this country by launching relentless attack on the less popular but absolutely critical parts of the package. Said it before, will likely say it again: bad policy is absolute catnip to the GOP and their Tea Klan enablers. They cannot resist it. Forget testing proposed legislation; just see if the GOP/Tea Klan is for it. If so: it is at best a singularly bad and more likely an utterly catastrophic policy.
With that useful razor in hand, it’s easy to see that with a policy outcome as catastrophic (to the insurers) as removing the mandate and but also leaving the popular stuff like the community rating, no lifetime limits, and etc… in there, the GOP and Tea Klan are and will forever be like moths to the flame until such time as they see their particular foolishness accomplished. And before we know it, President Palin will be signing the new American Homeland Patriotic Healthfulness Imbuement and Embiggening Flag Act of 2013, handed to her by a slothful yet resolutely responsive GOP rubber-stamp of a Congress.

Cannot wait.

Poison Pill Revisited

Roadmap to Catfood for Dinner

GREGORY: But then, but where, but where do you make the cuts? I mean, if you’re protecting everything for those, the most potent political groups like seniors who go out and vote, where are you really going to balance the budget?
DEMINT: Well, look at Paul Ryan’s Roadmap to the future. We see a clear path to moving back to a balanced budget over time. Again, the plans are on the table. We don’t have to cut benefits for seniors, and we don’t need to cut Medicare.

As many have noted, the Ryan Roadmap not only cuts benefits for seniors, it eliminates Medicare entirely. DeMint is either utterly misinformed about the content of said “Roadmap”, a blithering idiot, or lying through his teeth. Working out the full slate of combinations possible in the previous sentence is left as an exercise for the student.

What I haven’t seen mentioned elsewhere is that not only are these new and exciting Ryan Medicare Vouchers initially of lower value than the current benefit, their value never increases against inflation or other cost increases. So, barring some later legislative intervention, you’d have less of a benefit each and every year until you finally saw fit to just go die in the streets. Presumably a number of golden years subsisting on catfood and other low-cost comestibles would precede that fine day you scuttle out into the gutter to die, but still. That’s just not an “America’s Future” that I want a roadmap to.
And I’m confident that the vast majority of Americans agree with me on this one; it’s just that we’re not allowed to actually talk about any of this. Ever. Gregory, who never bothers to follow up on anything actually manages to get close for once, but then seemingly panics at witnessing such undiscovered professional realms and gives it the old “we’ll leave it there.” Top notch work as per usual. Look, a shiny penny!