5293

When a non-profit hospital buys an MRI machine or builds a new hospital, it has to pay market rates just like anyone else. A construction company isn’t going to give them a discount just because they are a non-profit.

The same is true of doctors and administrators. If a doctor can make $500K working in a for-profit hospital, then that’s pretty much what the non-profit will have to offer as a salary. The hospital isn’t trying to make people rich, but that’s inevitably what will happen if it wants to provide medical care.

5294

And the thing is, a few decades from now, that machine might be “the” new machine, what everyone uses in other countries too but the US is basically eating the early bill. If we didn’t do that or couldn’t do that, these manufacturers would have to change the way they do business with everyone. They can’t rely on the US to eat the big costs early on anymore.

If and when the US stops eating the costs for name brand drugs, for DME, for the cost of educating providers, there will probably a shift to other countries. They’ll need to pay more. And the other industries involved with change. Maybe we’ll see less incremental changes. I am not going to knock a slow improvements but when the cost is born for decades that no one wants to pay for… maybe we need to slow down.

Yeah see there are lobbyist all over it. I am not going to fault either leading party for these issues. The approach has to holistic though anyone who wants to boil it down to one evil, profit, drugs… health systems… insurance, I think it’s not a genuine look at it, and it won’t work.

5295

Cindy Hyde-Smith on voter suppression: “And then they remind me, that there’s a lot of liberal folks in those other schools who that maybe we don’t want to vote. Maybe we want to make it just a little more difficult. And I think that’s a great idea.”

Just joking, eh?

5296

I think removing profit as a driver in the health care arena is a necessary step, but not sufficient by itself. Corruption, waste, terrible management, etc can all happen at nonprofits just as easily as for-profit organizations. But it’s a necessary step, because maximizing profit is always going to mean that either care quality suffers or prices go through the roof.

When “get government out of health care and put it in the hands of the private sector” is put forward as a solution to health care costs by Republicans (a favorite of Tea Partiers in particular), they’re basically punting on quality (and availability) of care.

5297

Homeless? Just go to school! I hear it’s free. Oh wait, no it isn’t and Meeks is probably violently opposed to the concept.

5298

He also thinks that if you make 70k a year, that you are a millionaire in 20 years.

He doesn’t seem to grasp that living actually costs money. Like, you need to buy food and housing and stuff.

5299

Well, it is a homeless trucker, so there are a lot less monthly expenses. /s Maybe Meeks plans on passing a bill so that homeless truckers are tax exempt.

5300

Yeah, I know truckers. They aren’t millionaires. And that was rarely their only job.
They did alright, but millionaires in 2 decades? Or ever? No fucking way.

5301

5302

This guy screams “future of the Republican party”.

5303

I know more truckers than I would like to know. None of them are millionaires and will never be millionaires either. They also don’t live in their trucks, so yes mortgage, rent… all that jazz. The amount they pay for physicals, health exams and the health issues that can put their CDL in jeopardy is rather large too. It’s a hard life for the long hauls.

5304

Yep same. They live in a decent house, but they aren’t rolling in cash or anything.

It’s akin to an old factory job in a lot of ways.

5305

And the funny thing about that is there’s a newspaper story about how Meeks delivers pizza part time to make ends meet. If he’s figured out how to be a millionaire and knows how easy it is, why hasn’t he done it?

5306

I also wouldn’t bet on trucking being a viable job for another 20 years.

5307

Exactly. And just like the janitors that make the news when they die and leave a few million behind, yes in theory you can spend decades gathering money and becoming “rich” but the reason those articles keep making the news is most people don’t and even can’t do it. They want to live while they are alive.

5308

It’s almost as if a lot of these right wing pundits and representatives come from a position of privelege. Like, college paid for, or free rent from parents…

I went to a private college, and there were scholarship kids and rich kids, and you can probably guess who were the worst. (I got a scholarship)

5309

I know people with this background. They’re usually the ones most adamant that people “pick themselves up by their bootstraps” and use phrases like “If I could get my college degree, why can’t they?”.

I had a good friend that was like that. He became a hardcore libertarian, of course. Totally opposed to the government doing anything but the military. All the while, he went to public schools, got a degree from a state university, drove back and forth on public roads, etc. Was able to live rent-free with the parents for a chunk of college. Very smart guy in a lot of ways, but he had this football field sized blind spot when it came to the opportunities he was born with.

5310

Apologies if this was already posted and I missed it.

5311

It’s fine, I posted it earlier in this thread but it’s worth posting again.

Also it makes it easier since I don’t have to look for it again ;)

5312

Much like Mitt Romney claiming he and his wife put themselves through college. While living in the house his parents bought for them.