Category: Health Care

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Unreality Show I’ll Take Door Number i for $100, Alex

October 12th 2018

Who would have thought, three years ago, that we would have a black entertainer meeting with the President in the Oval Office and arguing for the repeal of the 13th amendment?
Trump has achieved the trifecta of crazy: Sarah Palin, Ted Nugent, and now Kanye West. A pity Charlie Manson is dead: he could have visited and argued for lowering the age of consent to six.

This spectacle would have been grotesque and awkward under the best of circumstances, but it occurred almost to the minute that a major hurricane was devastating the Florida panhandle coast, completely leveling one town and inflicting major damage from Florida to North Carolina. Even as the Trump administration was arguing that 4C increase was inevitable, so we all might as well get used to it.

At least this time touring Melania Trump didn’t show up wearing a coat that proclaimed her lack of concern; she was off in Africa, wearing a British RA-style pith helmet, recreating “Call Me Bwimbo”. Oh, wait, that’s Bwana. Second look. No, it’s Bwimbo. The woman has a gift for wearing “Fuck You” as a fashion accessory. After getting some light criticism over that, she flounced off, calling herself the most bullied person in America. Easy solution, babe: file for divorce.

Was it really just 23 months ago that people were saying in hopeful tones that Republicans in Congress could keep Trump in line and blunting his more egregious impulses?

Nah. They saw Trump apparently getting away with the most blatant lies and viciousness, and decided they knew a winning approach when they saw it. Now they’re all lying their heads off. As the election nears, it’s a race to the bottom.

You see campaign ads all over the place swearing up and down that Republicans want to protect Medicare, and that Democrats are goddless commie Muslims who want to allow billions of Mexicans to come in and take over the country. They boast about how Trump saved the economy by maintaining employment and growth trends previously seen over the past six years under Obama, and carefully don’t mention the trillions in new debt for the latest tax giveaways to the rich (including the additional $3 trillion last week that the same Republicans who voted for it last week aren’t mentioning now), or the fact that despite the fact that they are fracking and drilling the living shit out of America and working to turn national parks into oil reserves, the price of gasoline is a dollar fifty above what it was last year.

It got so bad that NY Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote a piece yesterday effectively calling the entire party liars. Such a column would never have seen the light of day a few years ago, but that was before the GOP went mad and abandoned all principle. At least the NY Times belatedly remembered they were a newspaper and what that meant.

Trump had an ‘op-ed’ in the disreputable USA Today that has to be read to be believed. The Washington Post stated that nearly every single sentence included a misstatement or flat-out lie.

In Georgia, the Republican Secretary of State, Brian Kemp, is running for Governor, but as SS he retains the power to purge voter rolls. Which he is doing with a vengeance, some 26,000 names over the past few weeks, over such criteria as whether a middle initial is included on the written name but not in the signature. While African-Americans make up 32% of Georgia’s population (and a somewhat lower proportion of the voting population for obvious reasons) they make up 70% of the voters being purged. Oh, and the SS office isn’t bothering to tell the voters they have been purged. Let it be a surprise on election day. Similar, if less egregious stories abound in other states saddled with Republican rule.

Of course, Trump hates a free press, but isn’t above using the more whorish and lower segments of that press to attack the rest. The National Enquirer has been prostituting itself for him for years now, and Fox News is nothing more than the propaganda arm for the GOP. It’s a shameful thing to see in America, which once was proud of its free and independent press. Now the government has fascist whores pretending to be reporters to spread lies and stifle dissent.

It’s no surprise that news that Saudi Arabia lured a journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, into the Saudi embassy in Istanbul and proceeded to torture, murder and dismember him. It’s widely believed that it was ordered by the vile despot Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who seized power last year with the somewhat clandestine help from the Trump administration (Chief Wastrel Jared Kushner was on hand to oversee the coup and possibly offer friendly advice and hidden funding).

Trump’s reaction to this was muted, partly because he doesn’t mind seeing journalists being killed for doing their job and partly because his business interests are heavily intertwined with bin Salman’s. Even as most of the corporate world pull away from the swinish and vicious Sauds, Trump is going ahead with another arms deal so Saudi Arabia can massacre a few thousand more Yemanis.

Iran is a vile theocracy, but it’s only the third worst in the region, behind Israel and Saudi Arabia. Guess which of the three the US condemns solely?

Kavanaugh, perjurer, liar and partisan ratfucker, has already established a new precedent, becoming the first sitting justice in Supreme Court history to be under active investigation for violation of judicial practices and ethics, based on his sworn Senate testimony. He managed this odiferous distinction on just the second day on the court. It will get worse.

Trump is submitting written answers to Meuller’s investigative team, about his only remaining constitutional recourse. His lawyers knew he can’t go a minute without lying, so spoken testimony under oath would be a legal death trap, and this at least gives the lawyers time to write and finesse the answers, in the hope they can make Trump at least technically not liable for perjury. We’ll know soon enough if these lawyers, not the most brilliant legal team over assembled, can come up with anything that won’t result in immediate indictments.

OK, admit it: after all that, Kanye West sounds pretty sane, doesn’t he?

At least harmless, right? Right?

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Fascism Rising – Trump and Kavanaugh aren’t bugs; they’re features

September 23rd, 2018

One of the many sub-plots in Cary Joji Fukunaga’s brilliant Maniac involves the character Jed Milgrim (played by Billy Magnussen) a “colorful douche” who is a scion of a vicious, powerful, wealthy family, and who stands accused of a heinous sexual assault involving urination. It’s nearly impossible not to think of the Trump family while watching this, not only because of the nature of the crime, or the resemblance Magnussen bears to one of the Trump scions, but because of the calm assurance of the family that in order to protect their power, prestige and wealth, it is perfectly reasonable to commit perjury, blackmail and bribe people (including family members), and stand well above the law in pursuit of their own interests. They are used to dismissing people who they have wronged and who want to fight back as greedy little scuttlers, and resent a legal system that doesn’t just let them destroy such rabble.

The haughty, self-assured mien Magnussen wears is one we have seen far too often, not just in this White House (including many of its nominees from the world of wealth and privilege) but in the faces of the broadcasters on the right-wing media, and the people who trot out endless columns of right wing think tanks to assure us that “identity politics” and “takers” are only showing resentment of their betters, and Americans should not believe people who profess to stand for the people when America’s ultra-wealthy stand ready to defend the people from the people.

Congruent with this, I’m presently reading a book by Nancy MacLean, Democracy in Chains – The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America. I’ll have a full review of the book upon completion of reading it,

America has always had a class of aggrieved plutocrats who believe their property rights trump the civil rights of all other Americans. This dates back to John C. Calhoun and his vigorous defense of America’s biggest economic phenomenon prior to the civil war: slavery. MacLean notes that slavery made North Carolina the richest and most powerful state in the union prior to 1860, and created more one percenters in Mississippi than in New York.

The power of this elite was held in check by the Civil War and various economic crashes, culminating in the Crash of ‘29 and the Depression, resulting in the New Deal.

MacLean explains how a libertarian economist of the 1950s, James McGill Buchanan, created a reality in which vast sums of money could be spent organizing the plutocrat class and using propaganda and control of the media to convince Americans that they were incapable of self-governance and should let the natural leaders of society (the “businessmen”) run things.

It was fascism, pure and simple, although that is a word they never, ever acknowledge and attack all who use it. Governance through corporation.

The biggest problem with fascism is the same that one sees with other unaccountable forms of governments, such as theocracies and monarchies: corruption sets in quickly, and the rot spreads until it finally kills its host.

But as long as there is power and money to be accumulated, corruption isn’t seen as a bug—it’s seen as a feature.

The fascists have taken over the GOP, with the nightmarish and Kafkaesque results that we see in the paper every day, of people grimly determined to fight unions, civil libertarian groups, workers in general, women, and any group that can organize, collectivize and perhaps challenge their power.

MacLean writes, “Is what we are dealing with merely a social movement of the right whose radical ideas must eventually face public scrutiny and rise or fall on their merits? Or is this the story of something quite different, something never before seen in American history? Could it be—and I use these words quite hesitantly and carefully—a fifth-column assault on American democratic governance?…Pushed by relatively small numbers of radical-right billionaires and millionaires who have become profoundly hostile to America’s modern system of government, an apparatus decades in the making, funded by those same billionaires and millionaires, has been working to undermine the normal governance of our democracy. Indeed, one such manifesto calls for a “hostile takeover” of Washington, D.C.”

As you watch this week as the Republicans cling like grim death to the Kavanaugh nomination, hoping to push this vile corporatist down our throats to consolidate their power they way they have with Thomas, and Gorsuch, and you wonder how they can possibly continue to support Trump, reflect on the fact that they are no longer just an American political party: they are a fifth column, enemies to the Constitution and determined to finish a slow coup they have been conducting against America for 40 years.

They know Trump is a bad president. Even without the corruption, the sheer scale of his incompetence and inability to lead would, in a normal party, be enough to impeach him. They see the weirdness and chaos as inconveniences; the fact that Trump is utterly corrupt is what makes him so valuable to them. They know he’s a thief, a crook, a swindler, and possibly a traitor. But so are they, even if they dress it up in self-serving rhetoric, and as for being traitors, they are much closer in spirit to the most corrupt plutocrat of all, Vladimir Putin, then they are to anything readers might recognize as American values. Treason is betrayal against those you owe fealty. By their lights, betraying America is not treason.

Perhaps the saddest element of this is the people they have roped in to support them. The racists. The Evangelicals. The Xenophobes. The growling, disaffected population that feel they deserve a place at the table and the fascists are more than happy to promise them that place.

They’ve always been useful idiots for demagogues. Nothing new there. What is new is what will follow.

Should the fascists win, they will discard these people like used condoms. Not only are their beliefs and impulses bad for business, but they can reorganize and pose a threat to their masters. And they cannot be trusted: they’ve already betrayed America. It would only be a matter of time before they revolt against Trump’s New Order.

And the worst of all is that they would become our allies in a common cause.

If you can vote in November, vote like your life depends on it. It does.

We can avoid having to fight a Fascist Fifth Column again.

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Labor Day – Time for Labor to Rise Up

September 2nd, 2018

It’s Labor Day.

It’s a good time to talk about democratic socialism.

Senator Bernie Sanders, of course, has been a democratic socialist since the 1960s. Back then, he was considered a progressive liberal, slightly to the left of LBJ. He hasn’t moved left: the country has moved drastically to the right.

Despite the best efforts of Democratic centrists and the corporate media, he did astonishingly well in the 2016 primaries, rising from a 3% no-chancer to a 40% existential challenger to the smug and somewhat tepid Hillary Clinton, forcing her to accept a compromise party platform that included fighting for a minimum wage of $15/hour and fighting for universal health care rather than the patchwork Obamacare.

She promptly abandoned both positions after the conventions, and millions of working and poor people stayed home. A small, but very stupid segment of Bernie voters actually voted for Trump. Clinton unexpectedly lost the rust belt states where Bernie ran well and where Trump pushed his false populism the hardest.

The lesson was unmistakable; there was a groundswell of support for leftist, New Deal-type policies. Not a bad compromise $12 an hour like Hillary wanted, but an indexed $15 an hour. Not the weak compromise Obamacare, far better than what America suffered under the old system, but far short of Medicare for all.

Democratic centrists will forget about workers’ rights the day after Labor Day: democratic socialists make it a centerpiece of their platform. Most importantly, they will stand up to the Republican fascists, the thieves, the liars, the authoritarians and the traitors that the captive corporate media keep insisting are “conservatives.”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez beat incumbent House Democratic Rep. Joe Crowley in New York’s 14th Congressional District. An unalloyed leftist, she called for a “political revolution” including higher education for all, gun control measures, an end to private prisons and the abolition of ICE. She won, upsetting Crowley, an eight-term entrenched Democratic centrist who was being groomed for party leader, another Democratic Washington General to the GOP’s Harlem Globetrotters.

People have gotten tired of Democrats who talk a good game about rights and worker rights, but are nothing but ineffectual foils for the out-of-control Republicans. She will win in November, and the media will express surprise. After all, socialists can’t win.

Except they are, more and more, as a growing revolt against the fascistic policies of the GOP takes root.

More recently, a Democratic Socialist scored a major upset in the Florida primary for governor. The race was seen as a contest between two tepid centrists, and Politifact ( https://www.politifact.com/florida/article/2018/aug/27/fact-checking-florida-primary-candidates-governor/ ) lumped the eventual winner in with the “also runnings,” dismissing him with just once sentence: “Gillum, an African-American who has emphasized his working class roots, has drawn the backing of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders and the progressive wing of the party in a state that Sanders overwhelmingly lost in the 2016 primary.” A week later, Politifact hasn’t even updated that.

Andrew Gillum, of course, won. The corporate media said,“He can’t win, because he’s a socialist.” But he won. And not by a tiny margin.

He is African-American, and that rises the fear of the GOP to a blind racist panic. They look at what Fox News calls “Soros-backed Gillum” and see a potential Obama, only an Obama who isn’t a tepid centrist. Gillum looks as ready to fight for his beliefs as a cat with its back arched. He’s the worst nightmare the GOP could have.

His GOP opponent, Ron DeSantis, immediately unleashed some dog whistles marveling at how articulate Gillum is (He is definitely more articulate than the brain-damaged Trump) and coming up with the singularly oddly-phrased, “We can’t let him monkey this up.” Some neo-Nazis promptly jumped in with a truly vile robo-call that had a purported Gillum speaking in a minstrel voice while jungle noises sounded in the background. DeSantis promptly condemned the tactic, but the tone has been set. This is the party of Trump, a liar, a racist, a tin-horn dictator and a possible traitor, and the rot spreads from the top. And DeSantis describes himself as “A Trumpist, through and through.”

Gillum will win, and the media will be astonished. He’s a commie! He can’t possibly win!

Even the Guardian is playing that game, as they did in the 2016 primaries. Gillum, at most a New Dealer, is “Left wing”. DeSantis, a proud Trumperdoo, is described as “conservative.” Trump is about as conservative as a rabid dog.

The Democratic Socialists of America (dsa.org) describe themselves thusly: “We believe that working people should run both the economy and society democratically to meet human needs, not to make profits for a few.”

I take a similar tack: People should not be existing to support the economy. The economy should exist to support the people.

They support strong unions, good wages, abolition of Citizens United, and Medicare for All. And they will fight for them.

If you share those beliefs, support DSA and other candidates willing to fight for those beliefs. The “Third Way Democrats” had their chance, and showed they aren’t willing to fight. It’s time to move on.

Be wary, however, of frauds, morons and charlatans. The DSA had one candidate this summer who claimed to be a Columbian immigrant. Turned out she was born in America, and while her father was from Columbia, he was naturalized before she was born, which made her memories of being raised in a remote Columbian village rather farcical. Every party gets those: the Dems had John Edwards, the Greens have Jill Stein, and the Republicans…well, the Republicans seem to prefer frauds, morons and charlatans. They are, after all, the party of Trump.

They are a danger, and gravitating to a weak center isn’t going to stop them. If you want to fight these fascists, you have to start right now.

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Trumpcare Savage, Unreasoning, Malevolent

July 20th 2018

One of the elements of Obamacare is something called “risk-adjustment payments” which transferred funds from health insurance companies with a lower percentage of chronically or severely ill patients to companies with a higher percentage of such patients. The program, which involved on average, about $10 billion a year, was designed to keep insurance premiums and profits level among companies. It worked well.

In a compromise with Republicans, the program was designed to be revenue-neutral, to transfer money amongst the insurance companies with no net cost to the taxpayers.

Some smaller insurance companies sued, arguing that that the payment arrangements favored larger insurance companies and made it more difficult for insurance company startups. A Massachusetts federal judge ruled that no such adverse condition existed and bade the program continue.

But a federal judge in New Mexico ruled that the program must be suspended on the curious grounds that the government had not adequately articulated its reasons why the program should be revenue-neutral. Therefore, the program should be suspended so an investigation could be conducted as to why this wasn’t costing the taxpayers anything. (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/07/us/politics/trump-risk-adjustment-payments-obamacare.html)

Given the two conflicting rulings, it’s not hard to guess which the Trump administration decided to side with. Trump had already signaled during the Health Care debate of 2017 his intent to sabotage Obamacare in any way he could.

In July of 2017, Trump tweeted, “If a new HealthCare Bill is not approved quickly, BAILOUTS for Insurance Companies and BAILOUTS for Members of Congress will end very soon!”

He’s been working to fulfill this promise to unnecessarily hurt the American people to spite Obama ever since. And it’s having a dire effect already.

Two weeks ago, I got this in my email from an online friend, a highly-respected journalist who requested I withhold his identity due to harassment from trolls. He had suffered a stroke at the beginning of last year and been working hard to rebuild his life since.

He wrote:

As you no doubt know, about a year and a half ago, I suffered a massive stroke. I am told that most people who have a stroke of the type and severity of the one I had don’t survive it.

But I survived it with most of my mental faculties intact, although at times I have a bit of difficulty focusing and my short term memory is spotty. I have lasting nerve impairment that makes coordination and locomotion difficult. I live with constant fatigue, as well as lack of equilibrium. I am on medical prescriptions that leave me weak and dizzy, on top of the already existing difficulties. I had seizures last fall that required an additional med that puts me in even worse shape.

My doctors (my primary care doctor and the battery of specialists on my case) recommend I don’t even try to work outside the home, which is fine because black men of my age are not high on the priority list for companies to employ. This wasn’t hard to accept. Many days it is necessary for me to remain lying down all day because of the weakness and dizziness. I no longer have regular sleep patterns and often must sleep for large parts of daylight hours.

My expenses are covered by Medicaid, including my health care and prescriptions. By chance, I had enrolled in Obamacare shortly before the stroke, and fortunately, it covered all my hospital expenses, which would have left me in perpetual debt. Without Obamacare and Medicaid I am here to tell about it. My housing is also covered by a state program which utilizes Medicaid funding to help keep me going.

Yesterday I received a letter informing me that to retain my health care it will be necessary for me to start paying them $685 a month.

Today I received a notification informing me that it will now be necessary for me to begin paying $685 monthly to continue living in the home where the state moved me.

I don’t get SNAP any more. My only income is the $750 monthly from Social Security disability.

As far as I can tell, this is all due to Trump and his GOP cronies messing with both Obamacare and Medicaid.

My friend is one of hundreds of thousands of people affected by this cruel and capricious action by the Trump administration, and it will get far worse as the criminals and vicious ideologues of the Republican Party, led by the treasonous Trump, slash away at Obamacare in their drive to keep the American public desperate, frightened, and totally reliant on the supposed largess of the corporations. You have a party that is essentially middle management as envisioned by John Galt, and a malevolent narcissist leading us off a cliff.

One response my friend got to his post was this: “Be warned, ****, I have low empathy.  Your situation as described is very unfortunate; I hope you find a resolution.  It’s fair to point out that you’re not the only person who has faced a similar situation, since Obamacare resulted in many people losing their insurance, forcing them to get new policies with very high premiums and high deductibles.  I can’t hold you personally responsible for their problems, as you can’t (and I’m sure don’t) hold me personally responsible for yours. Even if the government didn’t meddle in the health care system, some people would come up short.”

This is a good example of the utter savagery of Trump and his supporters. “Low empathy” indeed.

My friend isn’t alone, and of course, the number of people affected by Trump’s tearing at the very fabric of society will grow and grow and grow, to the millions, and then tens of millions, and on up.

< The original promise was to “repeal and replace Obamacare with something better.” No Republican anywhere has proposed a replacement. They simply want to go back to the old Ayn Rand system, the wor>st in the developed world.

It’s easy to miss in the clownishness of Trump’s two-hour tryst in the Helsinki Don’t Tell Motel, or the efforts to drive the world economy into a ditch through trade and currency wars, but it is Trump’s vicious, unreasoning and vindictive attacks on health care that are having the most immediate, and horrific, effects.

Reread his words above very carefully. You’re next.

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