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PoliGAF 2013 |OT2| Worth 77% of OT1

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H

hydragonwarrior

Member
TacticalFox88 said:
It saddens me that what we make fun of so easily, is a reality for the vast majority of the right-wing.

Christ. I doubt even with decades of research and study we'll never truly understand conservative cognitive dissonance.
Click to expand...

Dude, you can believe anything to be true if you just believe it hard enough, you hang around those who equally have those views, and you live with the premise that any argument contrary to your belief or fact is biased.

Closed bubble thinking is the greatest ally of the GOP.
 
P

pigeon

Banned
Dax01 said:
Ezra Klein has a huge healthcare piece up today. I'll read it later.
Click to expand...

I enjoyed this piece a lot.

Summary:

* Medicare launched a randomized trial program in 1997 to evaluate new methods of delivering care.
* Most of these new methods failed, but one of them -- Health Quality Partners -- has proven to be a huge success. It doesn't do anything crazy or unheard of, it just sends a nurse to visit any patient with one chronic illness and one hospitalization in the last year, every week, regardless of how they're doing, to answer their questions and concerns, help them handle their day-to-day health needs, and make sure they're not showing any signs of worsening.
* This program has cut Medicare costs for enrolled patients by 22% and hospitalizations by 33%.
* Due to a quirk in the originating bill, HHS has the power to expand or even make permanent any successful program! Theoretically, Sebelius could announce that HQP was the new nationwide Medicare standard for chronically ill patients in perpetuity.
* But instead they're killing it in favor of a NEW set of randomized trial programs authorized by Obamacare, that are intended to move towards pay-for-quality programs, in the hopes that providers will adapt HQP-style policies to improve quality on their own.
* Boo.
 
C

Chichikov

Member
pigeon said:
I enjoyed this piece a lot.

Summary:

* Medicare launched a randomized trial program in 1997 to evaluate new methods of delivering care.
* Most of these new methods failed, but one of them -- Health Quality Partners -- has proven to be a huge success. It doesn't do anything crazy or unheard of, it just sends a nurse to visit any patient with one chronic illness and one hospitalization in the last year, every week, regardless of how they're doing, to answer their questions and concerns, help them handle their day-to-day health needs, and make sure they're not showing any signs of worsening.
* This program has cut Medicare costs for enrolled patients by 22% and hospitalizations by 33%.
* Due to a quirk in the originating bill, HHS has the power to expand or even make permanent any successful program! Theoretically, Sebelius could announce that HQP was the new nationwide Medicare standard for chronically ill patients in perpetuity.
* But instead they're killing it in favor of a NEW set of randomized trial programs authorized by Obamacare, that are intended to move towards pay-for-quality programs, in the hopes that providers will adapt HQP-style policies to improve quality on their own.
* Boo.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the summary (didn't read lol? maybe after the games).
One of the most obvious gaps in the US healthcare is the ability basic care (questions and treatment) cheaply and quickly.
Going to an MD in a hospital (which is how I get most of my care) is a huge overkill for most of the health services I receive. Some healthcare providers are starting to address that gap with nurse hotline and the such, but I feel like we can do better.
Is it all because we're afraid to get sued?

Edit: it's 2013, I should be able to take a picture of my ankle with my phone and have someone tell me if I should go to the ER or if that would be a waste of everyone's time and money, but I guess for that to happen, people need to accept that sometime weird shit happens and you can't go sue someone just because you happened to land on the unlucky side of the probability curve.
 
Z

Zero-Crescent

Member
Dax01 said:
Ezra Klein has a huge healthcare piece up today. I'll read it later.
Click to expand...

They aren't kidding about phone checkups not working. I remember back when I was with Kaiser, they'd try to do the whole diagnosis-over-the-phone thing when I would call to make an appointment. Good thing that I'd make the appointment anyways, since those phone diagnoses were usually wrong, very wrong. For example, when I had cold-like symptoms that were getting worse each day, the phone diagnosis prescribed a cough suppressant, but when I went in for my appointment that day, after a simple examination, the doctor determined that I definitely had a sinus infection and prescribed some antibiotics. The antibiotics knocked out the infection, and I was feeling better within a few days.

The point is that phone diagnoses fail in two important areas:
1) They expect the patient to be able to accurately describe their symptoms. Most patients are unable to do this, whether they are unable to give sufficient detail about the severity of their symptoms, or they don't connect less-noticeable symptoms to their disease and don't mention them at all.
2) The nurse on the phone, due to the communications medium, is unable to perform the simplest tests/examination procedures. They can't check the patient's breathing, their throat, nose, sinus cavities (capillaries?), eyes, ears, cough, etc. All of these factors are important in ensuring a correct diagnosis, or in determining whether further tests are required.

EDIT: And keep in mind that my story was only for a simple diagnosis. I'd hate to think about how a phone diagnosis would screw up someone with a complex chronic disease, where even the slightest change in symptoms could call for a change in treatment or in the amount/mix of medications.
 
C

ClassyPenguin

Banned
jamesinclair said:
PerryBusinessInTexasOhman.jpeg


Rick Perry loves to talk about how he steals business from California thanks to the difference in regulations.

Rick perry mad at Sacramento Bee for pointing out reality.

Cartoonist response:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/...ical-cartoon-strikes-a-nerve-with-Rick-Perry#

Article about lack of regulations and blast
http://www.propublica.org/article/what-went-wrong-in-west-texas-and-where-were-the-regulators
Click to expand...

I had to get an OSHA card to be able to work a temp job at a refinery and the instructor was all telling us about his experiences in Texas and how their lack of regulations put their workers in danger.
 
A

Aaron Strife

Banned
jamesinclair said:
PerryBusinessInTexasOhman.jpeg


Rick Perry loves to talk about how he steals business from California thanks to the difference in regulations.

Rick perry mad at Sacramento Bee for pointing out reality.

Cartoonist response:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/...ical-cartoon-strikes-a-nerve-with-Rick-Perry#

Article about lack of regulations and blast
http://www.propublica.org/article/what-went-wrong-in-west-texas-and-where-were-the-regulators
Click to expand...
Oh Perry... I hope one of the Castro brothers takes him on.
 
R

Rocket Scientist

Member
Gotchaye said:
This is not going to be an original thought, but the WHC dinner makes me very uncomfortable. What Obama was doing was fine, but the rest was just awful. Conan's funny, but his routine had no teeth. The media bigshot talking at the beginning spoke in some general terms about the importance of transparency and in some very general terms about the role of the media, but there's never any sense that these people understand their interests as being in any way opposed to the administration's. I don't recall a single criticism of the president that had any real force behind it; the most biting thing I remember was a jab at Obama's cabinet's lack of diversity.

Obviously Colbert in 2006 is the gold standard here, but I understand that with very few exceptions nobody there actually wanted serious criticism of the president. So they shouldn't have invited him. If you invite the president to an event, the event becomes about the president. There are tradeoffs between access and integrity in journalism - I get that - but this is exactly the time to cash in on all that chumminess. If you have the sort of access that gets the president to preside over your masturbatory gathering, you use that.
Click to expand...
Definitely agree. Watched the colbert one again after seeing your post and wow, that was amazing. Reaaaaaaally wish I could have been there to see W react afterwards. I wonder if Jon Stewart would be the type of guy to take some good swings at Obama. He has become increasingly and understandably frustrated it would seem.
 
C

Chichikov

Member
Rocket Scientist said:
Definitely agree. Watched the colbert one again after seeing your post and wow, that was amazing. Reaaaaaaally wish I could have been there to see W react afterwards. I wonder if Jon Stewart would be the type of guy to take some good swings at Obama. He has become increasingly and understandably frustrated it would seem.
Click to expand...
The correspondents dinner is a social event, mostly meant to help foster interpersonal relationship between the press and the government, which is an important thing.
I believe as a rule it should mostly be good natured, I'm fine with Colbert as an exception, I think the level of incompetence from the white house at the time where it was warranted, but this is not the place for the press to give the white house its performance review, that would be every other day of the year.
Also Colbert was crazy funny, I'll forgive pretty much everything as long as it is funny.
 
B

B-Dubs

No Scrubs
Chichikov said:
The correspondents dinner is a social event, mostly meant to help foster interpersonal relationship between the press and the government, which is an important thing.
I believe as a rule it should mostly be good natured, I'm fine with Colbert as an exception, I think the level of incompetence from the white house at the time where it was warranted, but this is not the place for the press to give the white house its performance review, that would be every other day of the year.
Also Colbert was crazy funny, I'll forgive pretty much everything as long as it is funny.
Click to expand...

Yup. It's supposed to be a one night a year truce where everyone can just hang out.
 
A

andthebeatgoeson

Junior Member
I would suggest those looking for great jokes watch the White House correspondents dinner.

Bams walked in to Hail to the Chief, then it switched up to 'All I Do is Win' by DJ Khaled.
Said he has 99 problems and JayZ is now one.
Said, 'I'm not the strapping young Muslim Socialist that I used to be'. Yup, he said that and I was rolling.
Said that the GOP was trying to reach out to minorities. He said he knew at least one minority they could reach out to. Said he could be their trial run.
Said Sheldon Adelson would have been better offering him $100 million to get him not to run.

And Conan killed it. I recc a watching.
 
C

Carpe Libertatem

Member
Aaron Strife said:
Oh Perry... I hope one of the Castro brothers takes him on.
Click to expand...

Julian has declined to do so (and will be running for another term for Mayor of San Antonio) and I doubt Joaquin is interested (a one-term house member isn't going to win either way). Perry is likely to get a primary challenge and all signs pointing to it being pretty competitive. If Perry comes out of the primary, the Democrats might be able to pick it up if their candidate is good enough. I wouldn't hold my breath, though. Texas isn't quite there yet.
 
C

cartoon_soldier

Member
skinnyrattler said:
I would suggest those looking for great jokes watch the White House correspondents dinner.

Bams walked in to Hail to the Chief, then it switched up to 'All I Do is Win' by DJ Khaled.
Said he has 99 problems and JayZ is now one.
Said, 'I'm not the strapping young Muslim Socialist that I used to be'. Yup, he said that and I was rolling.
Said that the GOP was trying to reach out to minorities. He said he knew at least one minority they could reach out to. Said he could be their trial run.
Said Sheldon Adelson would have been better offering him $100 million to get him not to run.

And Conan killed it. I recc a watching.
Click to expand...

Nothing will top the roast of Donald Trump WHCD
 
A

Aaron Strife

Banned
Carpe Libertatem said:
Julian has declined to do so (and will be running for another term for Mayor of San Antonio) and I doubt Joaquin is interested (a one-term house member isn't going to win either way). Perry is likely to get a primary challenge and all signs pointing to it being pretty competitive. If Perry comes out of the primary, the Democrats might be able to pick it up if their candidate is good enough. I wouldn't hold my breath, though. Texas isn't quite there yet.
Click to expand...
Yeah it's not very likely.

Battleground Texas or other interested parties would be better off targeting elections on a local level anyway, rather than propping up one statewide candidate and hoping he has coattails, as is what Democrats typically do in red states. It isn't like it couldn't happen, Democrats were only 2 seats shy of holding the majority in the state house after the 08 election, though obviously they got demolished in 2010.
 
I

Incognito

Troll
If you got buried under the 54 links Politico had on their frontpage today about the WHCD then you might have missed this gem.

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/04/democrats-debt-crisis-90717.html

....And then there are the other Democrats — the ones who reject the entire premise of the current high-stakes fiscal fight. There’s no short-term deficit problem, they say, and there isn’t even an urgent debt crisis that requires immediate attention. This group could make it even harder for President Barack Obama to strike a grand bargain because they increasingly see no immediate need for either new spending cuts or significantly more revenue, both of which they say could further slow the economy.

These Democrats and their intellectual allies once occupied the political fringes, pushed aside by more moderate members who supported both immediate spending cuts and long-term entitlement reforms along with higher taxes.
But aided by a pile of recent data suggesting the deficit is already shrinking significantly and current spending cuts are slowing the economy, more Democrats such as Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine and Maryland Rep. Chris Van Hollen are coming around to the point of view that fiscal austerity, in all its forms, is more the problem than the solution.
This group got a huge boost this month with the very public demolition of a sacred text of the austerity movement, the 2010 paper by a pair of Harvard professors arguing that once debt exceeds 90 percent of a country’s gross domestic product, it crushes economic growth.
Turns out that’s not what the research really showed. The original findings were skewed by a spreadsheet error, among other mistakes, and it’s helping shift the manner in which even middle-of-the-road Democrats talk about debt and deficits.
“Trying to just land on the debt too quickly would really harm the economy; I’m convinced of that,” Kaine, hardly a wild-eyed liberal, said in an interview. “Jobs and growth should be No. 1. Economic growth is the best anti-deficit strategy.”

And the intellectual shift away from austerity is not just coming from the left.
The conservative American Enterprise Institute issued a paper last week saying Congress has already achieved enough deficit reduction for now. Other organizations not typically associated with free-spending liberalism, including the International Monetary Fund and Goldman Sachs, have cautioned that the austerity movement — which favors rapid reduction of national debt — may be worsening Europe’s economic problems and slowing down the U.S. recovery, as well.
“American fiscal austerity has been moderate and probably, at the current pace of deficit reduction of about $300 billion per year over the next half decade, has proceeded far enough for now,” AEI scholar John Makin wrote last week.
Click to expand...
 
C

Carpe Libertatem

Member
Aaron Strife said:
Yeah it's not very likely.

Battleground Texas or other interested parties would be better off targeting elections on a local level anyway, rather than propping up one statewide candidate and hoping he has coattails, as is what Democrats typically do in red states. It isn't like it couldn't happen, Democrats were only 2 seats shy of holding the majority in the state house after the 08 election, though obviously they got demolished in 2010.
Click to expand...

I think that's likely what Democrats are planning to do with Battleground Texas (and OFA's old national field director is the senior adviser, so the staff is quite good there).

Perry's unpopularity within the state is likely going to be a boon to this effort, too. The Democratic Party just needs to invest in the state (and it looks like they will to some extent). 2016 and 2018 are where the beginnings will be, I think. Maybe even some of the elections in 2014.

We do have another George Bush that could complicate things, though. Bush money (and name) is strong.
 
E

el retorno

Member
Aaron Strife said:
Oh Perry... I hope one of the Castro brothers takes him on.
Click to expand...

my guess is raul, still has some years left in him

Incognito said:
If you got buried under the 54 links Politico had on their frontpage today about the WHCD then you might have missed this gem.

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/04/democrats-debt-crisis-90717.html
Click to expand...

Wow. This is actually something we can hold over the europeans head. We never had austerity (besides the sequester) as much as we're right-wing we've only expanded or kept same most programs through the crisis.
 
A

Aaron Strife

Banned
el retorno said:
Wow. This is actually something we can hold over the europeans head. We never had austerity (besides the sequester) as much as we're right-wing we've only expanded or kept same most programs through the crisis.
Click to expand...
Honestly i'd be ok with the political reality of everything being at sort of a standstill. If say, democrats gained the House in 2014 and wanted to replace the sequester with something else, that'd be fine. But any compromise between Obama and Boehner would invariably be worse than the sequester and I think we should leave it there.

Of course, gotta cut SS/Medicare/Medicaid to look Serious or whatever.
 
H

Hitokage

Setec Astronomer
Let's not kid ourselves. While we did do stimulus at first, we switched to a drawn out gradual austerity of which the sequester is just the latest episode.
 
C

Carpe Libertatem

Member
el retorno said:
How much has the budget shrunk by?
Click to expand...

It hasn't. At least up until the sequester it hadn't (and judging by how quickly Congress acted in regards to the FAA, I am guessing the sequester will be seeing substantial reduction once people start complaining). I guess it might be less if we were to measure it by percentage of GDP, but even then I don't think it has decreased.
 
G

Gotchaye

Member
el retorno said:
How much has the budget shrunk by?
Click to expand...

Krugman had this graph the other day from CBO data:

042713krugman1-blog480.png


This is the ratio of total government (federal, state, and local) spending to nominal potential GDP (an estimate of what GDP would be at full employment). There's substantial budget-cutting there relative to what you'd expect there to be given only automatic stabilizers.

It's important to remember to count state budgets for US spending if you're going to be comparing across countries.

Edit:

Here's just government total expenditures in nominal dollars:
fredgraph.png


It's clearly dipped below trend starting in 2009-2010. I don't see an option to put that in 2013 dollars, but I expect you'd see a decrease there.
 
E

el retorno

Member
Gotchaye said:
Krugman had this graph the other day from CBO data:

042713krugman1-blog480.png


This is the ratio of total government (federal, state, and local) spending to nominal potential GDP (an estimate of what GDP would be at full employment). There's substantial budget-cutting there relative to what you'd expect there to be given only automatic stabilizers.

It's important to remember to count state budgets for US spending if you're going to be comparing across countries.

Edit:

Here's just government total expenditures in nominal dollars:
fredgraph.png


It's clearly dipped below trend starting in 2009-2010. I don't see an option to put that in 2013 dollars, but I expect you'd see a decrease there.
Click to expand...

I did forget state and local spending. I guess there has been austerity but we also differ in local financing compared to other countries (we collect our taxes at each level, others s just have top-down transfers)


BTW I think I found my favorite GIF of all time

70yKLSy.gif
 
G

Gotchaye

Member
Playing around with the data tool a little more I half-assed this measure of real total spending, which is nominal spending divided by the CPI.

fredgraph.png
 
empty vessel

empty vessel

Member
Gotchaye said:
Krugman had this graph the other day from CBO data:

042713krugman1-blog480.png


This is the ratio of total government (federal, state, and local) spending to nominal potential GDP (an estimate of what GDP would be at full employment). There's substantial budget-cutting there relative to what you'd expect there to be given only automatic stabilizers.

It's important to remember to count state budgets for US spending if you're going to be comparing across countries...
Click to expand...

Was just about to post this. And what Krugman said about it (with which I agree):

To see what’s going on, you need to do two things. First, you should include state and local; second, you shouldn’t divide by GDP, because a depressed GDP can cause the spending/GDP ratio to rise even if spending falls. So it’s useful to look at the ratio of overall government expenditure to potential GDP — what the economy would be producing if it were at full employment; CBO provides standard estimates of this number. ...

Spending is down to what it was before the recession, and also significantly lower than it was under Reagan. Bear in mind that in the years since the recession began we’ve seen a significant number of boomers reach retirement age, which would ordinarily have led to rising spending, not to mention the effects of rising health care costs. Bear in mind also that the private sector is still deleveraging, which means that government should be spending more to help sustain the economy. So this is actually a picture of very bad policy.
Click to expand...

Our policy is bad, and we are doing austerity, but we haven't (yet) been as bad as Europe. However, the future is ominous with sequestration still ongoing.

el retorno said:
Where can you play with this stuff?
Click to expand...

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/
 
TheLaughingStock

TheLaughingStock

Member
el retorno said:
my guess is raul, still has some years left in him



Wow. This is actually something we can hold over the europeans head. We never had austerity (besides the sequester) as much as we're right-wing we've only expanded or kept same most programs through the crisis.
Click to expand...

The US has had tax increases prior to the sequester.
 
S

Synth_floyd

Banned
Am I the only one who thought Conan's performance was bland and boring? Sounded like a Jay Leno monologue. A total snooze. I guess that's what politicians want to hear though.
 
J

jamesinclair

Banned
Anthony Foxx To Be Named Transportation Secretary

President Barack Obama will name Charlotte, N.C., Mayor Anthony Foxx as his next Secretary of the Department of Transportation, sources familiar with the administration’s planning told The Huffington Post. The decision is expected to come this week.

Foxx, whose profile rose when his city hosted the Democratic National Convention last summer, announced in early April that he would be leaving office at the end of this year. His name had already been floated as a possible pick for transportation secretary, owing to the work he had done on Charlotte's transit system, including streetcar and light-rail projects.

Current Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood planned to leave the post shortly into Obama's second term. But his departure was held up by continuous budget battles, most recently the furloughing of air traffic controllers due to sequestration. Though a deal was struck Friday to reverse those furloughs, the next transportation secretary will still face a host of challenges stemming from budget cuts at the federal and state levels.
Click to expand...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/...-secretary_n_3174904.html?utm_hp_ref=politics
 
J

jamesinclair

Banned
Hitokage said:
Now, he is my mayor and all, but Charlotte is hardly a stellar example of a transportation system.

Not that it's entirely the city's fault though. State DOT has not considered us a priority for years.
Click to expand...

From what I understand, Lynx has been a good success, well above ridership estimates.

And Charlotte was one of the few southern cities to build any form of rail transit in the past couple of decades. Norfolk was the only other one I can think of.
 
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