A good article on the sad and pathetic end of l’affaire bedbug:
As is their quadrennial custom, the national news media is proclaiming that the style and actions of Democratic candidates must be vetted and approved by … Republicans.
But Republicans and some Democrats warned that the quip at the CNN-sponsored forum would play poorly among a big swath of voters… [C]onservatives warn that she can come off as condescending and dismissive.
… But Sheinkopf suggested Warren was playing to her liberal studio audience, and he warned that such comments could alienate voters in the South and upper Midwest. “Would she say the same thing at a dinner in Birmingham, Alabama?” he said. “The answer is no.”
The last statement is one that only a moron or someone arguing in bad faith would make: no national Dem is going to win Alabama, so how the line plays there is irrelevant to Warren’s chances. And yet this extraordinary non-sequitur goes unexamined by the reporter.
Furthermore, even though the article is about same-sex marriage, it manages to go on for many paragraphs before pointing out the obvious. Same-sex marriage is quite popular, with more than 60% of Americans approving of it. And the article never mentions the even more important fact that 75% of Democrats approve of it.
The news article’s hypotheses - and this is presented as a news article, not opinion - is that Warren can plausibly be criticized for failing to reach out to same-sex-marriage opponents, even though opposing same-sex marriage is a proven loser both within her party and nationally. In other words, the article takes her to task for not making decisions that would be bad for her politically.
Needless to say, Republicans are never subject to long “news” articles asking why they don’t volunteer to shoot themselves in the foot.
Menzo
1717
“One has to wonder if calling all Mexican immigrants ‘rapists’ will hurt Trump’s chances in California.”
Good job, media!
antlers
1718
There’s a b.s. Project Veritas anti-CNN video. Commendably, mainstream media is ignoring it (hope that continues) and even Fox is only covering it obliquely.
Menzo
1719
I guess Trump’s base never stops to wonder where all these lawsuits are that he threatens. Because nobody else is intimidated by them anymore.
DJT has cowed people most of his life with his army of lawyers. Not so easy to threaten people who have the means to defend themselves or fight back. Hope he follows through on his threats to sue Pelosi and Schiff, but he won’t.
I have gotten great laughs when Trump and the National Inquirer threatened to sue Jeff Bezos and the Washington Post. Good luck intimidating him.
Menzo
1722
Amazing lead burying at thehill.com.
But the article also says
The flip side is that the study finds the plan would provide large savings to American households, who would no longer have to pay premiums or deductibles for their care, resulting in $886 billion in savings for people over 10 years. The plan would also provide insurance to everyone, reducing the number of uninsured from 32.2 million people to zero, the study found.
Tim_N
1723
The numbers in this report looks crazy. The government would need to spend 32 trillion over 10 years to save people 886 billion and give care to 32.2 million extra people?
I haven’t read the report in detail but some initial thoughts from reading parts of it:
- With 155 million Americans with employer-provided healthcare, switching to Medicare for all should lead to a sizable increase in the wages for the majority of Americans. I really doubt that is counted in the 886 billion, as I can’t see anything about this in the report.
- The report mentions that the covered benefits would be: “All medically necessary care, including LTSS, dental, vision, hearing” which all of the other scenarios does not include. Dental is hugely expensive, as can be hearing. So the scenarios are not directly comparable at all.
- If retirement care cost (also insanely expensive) is included in the cost of Medicare for all, is the current money for LTSS listed as a saving? I can’t see this explicitly in the report.
- Even taking away all the extras and just looking at all medically necessary care, an unlisted benefit is that there are many millions of Americans who are underinsured. So not only will the number of uninsured drop to 0, the number of underinsured would drop to 0 as well.
jpinard
1724
Any plan would need to massively reign in the pharmaceutical industry raping this country blind. You could easily knock $10 trillion over the 10 year estimate right there. With assured income, hospitals would not need to overcharge anymore. I call total bull on those numbers. I bet they used the easy, grossly inflated priced hospital bills which also has to cover for-profit outfits and the entire bloated health insurance industry.
Want to look at real numbers? What do Denmark, France, and Norway spend per person on healthcare. Well I take Denmark’s figures, and grossly up-average their costs and it comes to $620 billion per year for our population. That seems very reasonable and is not some stupid $32 trillion figure.
Nio you can’t. The top 10 Pharma companies in the world did 477 billion in sales in 2018, the next ten less than 200 billion and those are world wide sales. American spend $500 per person/year on drugs even counting hospital mark up etc. it is no more than $1,000. Much like Bernie and his ranting about $100 billion in profit, it sounds like a big number but it is only 3% of what we spend on healthcare.
The media needs to start calling the Democrats on this crap.
I’m digging into the report a bit more now, and I feel like the more layers of summary you pierce through the better the numbers look. E.g. the Hill article is referencing Reform 8 from the report, which is the Golden Cadillac plan, and includes full coverage for everyone (25 million uninsured citizens plus 10 million more undocumented humans), dental, hearing, payments at 140% of Medicare rates, etc. etc. The numbers for it are on page 37 of the PDF:
And the summary of the Golden Cadillac plan is that Federal spending increases by 3T, while basically every other cost is zeroed out. E.g. employer spending decreases by 1T, personal spending decreases by 1T, and state spending decreases by 0.3T. Which then gives the (1 year) figure of a 0.8T increase in costs. That’s obviously a very rough figure, and they look at a few other assumptions which could cause it to swing by +/- 0.2T.
I feel like the study also leaves out a number of important factors, like never having to deal with insurance paperwork or medical bankruptcy ever again. Also we could finally get the British to stop looking down their noses at us. Fucking redcoats.
Edit: I mean, you can sneer at $100B per year, but $100B here and $50B there and eventually it starts to add up.
Yeah, but that’s not taking into account how the US has the BEST HEALTHCARE IN THE WO— (checks notes) um, never mind. Good point.
Menzo
1730
That’s big. What will people in hotels not read every morning now?
Seriously. USA Today has been around for almost 40 years, and I’ve never known anyone who had a subscription. And I worked around newspaper people for years. The only time you saw people reading it was in hotels and airports and Dennys.
I guess people can read the online edition, but Seattle had one of its two longtime papers go from print to digital-only, and it’s a shell of its former self.
But what about Highlights Magazine?!?!
Hansey
1734
Seriously, how would I keep up with what Goofus and Gallant are up to???
