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PoliGAF 2017 |OT1| From Russia with Love

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W

whyamihere

Banned
Man, we have to keep preexisting conditions and fight against high risk pools

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/22/...high-risk-pool.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur

Joanne Fitzgerald was getting divorced and was stressed out. When stomach pain kicked in, she saw a doctor to have it checked out.

That was her mistake.

The doctor diagnosed a mild form of gastritis, an inflammation of the stomach lining, and recommended some over-the-counter medicine. But when the divorce became final, in 2008, she lost health coverage from her husband's employer, and insurer after insurer refused to cover her because of the condition. She was finally offered a policy that excluded coverage for anything related to her gastrointestinal tract.

”I thought I was being smart in going to the doctor and getting checked out," Ms. Fitzgerald, 55, who currently lives in Washington, D.C., said recently. ”Then I tried to go get insurance and everyone denied me."

Her fortunes changed under the Affordable Care Act, the major health law signed by President Barack Obama that required insurers to cover pre-existing medical conditions. She was one of the millions of people who jumped at the opportunity and bought a policy available under the new law.

Now, after President Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress have vowed to repeal and replace the health law, one of the most vexing questions is whether people like Ms. Fitzgerald will be covered.

About 27 percent of people under 65 are thought to have some sort of pre-existing condition that will most likely leave them without individual insurance if the law is repealed, according to a recent study. The guarantee of coverage has already become a rallying cry for people who want to keep the law.

The issue ”is the third rail" for the Republicans, said Michael Turpin, a longtime health industry executive.

Before the law, a fairly typical life event — like a divorce or the loss of a job — and a relatively minor medical condition could upend a person's health coverage options. Stories of sick people unable to get coverage when they needed it most were legion.

Mr. Trump insists he wants to keep the pre-existing requirement for insurers, and other top Republicans say people who want coverage should not be turned away. Details about how they will cover people with existing medical conditions have not yet emerged, but many lawmakers have started pushing an idea — known as high-risk pools — that left many people uncovered or with strict limits to their coverage in the past.

The challenge for lawmakers is this: How do you get insurers to cover people who will definitely need costly medical care — and do so without making insurance too expensive for everyone?
Click to expand...

”There is a better way to fix that problem without giving everybody else all these massive premium increases," the House speaker, Paul D. Ryan, said at a recent televised forum.

Finding a fix is far from simple. Before the law was passed, insurance companies evaluated the health of each person applying for coverage before offering a policy, and priced the plan to reflect the possible cost of care. The companies wanted to minimize the risk of losing money by paying for costly medical care for too many of their customers.

Often, insurers offered no options to people with pre-existing conditions, because they considered the potential costs to be too high. As a result, 35 states had high-risk pools, the program again on the lips of top lawmakers, including Mr. Ryan.

The high-risk programs offered a separate insurance pool for people with potentially expensive medical conditions. The idea is that by separating sick people from the majority of people who are healthy, insurers could offer cheaper rates to the healthy people. Insurers could charge higher prices to those with existing medical conditions, but they would also rely on other sources of funding, including from the government, to cover their costs.
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In many cases, the high-risk pools were overburdened financially, leaving many people without insurance or with tight restrictions on coverage. Insurers refused to cover the individuals who were likely to have the highest expenses, like those who had H.I.V. or serious kidney disease, and the pools lost money.

Many states had to turn applicants away — in some states, only a small percentage of those who applied received coverage — and the insurance was sharply limited to control spending.
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In Washington, over 80 percent of the people referred to the state's high-risk pool never got health insurance, said Mike Kreidler, the state's insurance commissioner. In California, which relied on lawmakers to allocate money as part of the state budget, there was a waiting list, recalled Richard Figueroa, who was a senior administrator for the program.

The pool operated on a first-come-first-served basis, Mr. Figueroa said, without regard to people's income or the severity of their medical condition.

”There were people literally dying on the waiting list," he said.

In addition, most of the states offering coverage had caps on payments for medical care. Washington's annual maximum was $2 million, while California's limit was $75,000 a year. Under the Affordable Care Act, insurance plans cannot have such a limit.

In California, the program dwindled away until it served only 6,300 at the end of 2011.
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Beth Martinez, 40, who has multiple sclerosis, was forced to join Texas' high-risk pool when she and her husband moved to Austin. Only six visits to the doctor were covered, and she found she could not afford the annual M.R.I. recommended to monitor her disease because of her high deductible. At one point, she said, she went four years without an M.R.I.

She and her husband now live in California and are covered through private plans offered through that state's marketplace, which meet all the health law's requirements for pre-existing conditions. Because she can work only part time, she is eligible for federal subsidies, which bring the couple's costs to $70 a month. Ms. Martinez had paid $275 a month in the Texas pool to cover herself, and her husband was uninsured.

She now gets the M.R.I.s she needs under her plan, and her policy even pays for physical therapy, which allows her to put in longer hours at her job as a hairstylist and makeup artist.

That sort of quality coverage, Ms. Martinez said, is a big departure from what she had through the high-risk pool, adding that ”it was definitely some of the worst insurance I had in my life."
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To be fair, one person interviewed liked their high risk pool coverage:

The system worked for Dan Nassimbene and his wife, who had breast cancer but is in remission. They enrolled in Colorado's high-risk pool for three years. She paid about $375 a month for a plan that covered most of her treatments.

In 2014, though, the high-risk pool was closed, and Mr. Nassimbene bought a plan that met the requirements of the Affordable Care Act. The cheapest plan he could buy for himself and his wife cost around $900 a month and came with a family deductible of around $12,000, much higher than it was before. His income was too high for him to receive any government subsidies, which help about 80 percent of people buying such plans.
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O

Officerrob

Banned
Since the election, I took a GIANT step back from political coverage to try and maintain my sanity. This last week I decided to stick my toe back in the water because of the inauguration and...ugh. Off-Topic becoming wall to wall Trump threads isn't helping
 
E

eBay Huckster

Member
Insurers refused to cover the individuals who were likely to have the highest expenses, like those who had H.I.V. or serious kidney disease
Click to expand...

So should I just jump off a bridge now or should I wait until Trump's motorcade's driving under it?
 
B

badrang

Member
Pixieking said:
The destruction isn't on that level, no... But it wasn't just the destruction that hit W, it was the complete lack of empathy and the complete lack of preparedness that really floored him and his administration.

Georgia and Mississippi, man, where Trump won and can do no wrong. Right?
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Didn't stop voters in our district from re-electing palazzo either.... a man that voted against sandy hurricane relief even though the only reason the MS coast even exists today is because of government money.

The voters around here have no self-awareness or empathy apparently. Fuck I hate MS.
 
D

Deleted member 231381

Unconfirmed Member
balladofwindfishes said:
The president picks the cabinet. These votes for the cabinet should be 100% ignored
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The President picks the Cabinet with the advice and consent of the Senate, same as the Supreme Court - it's set out in the Appointments Clause. The idea that Cabinet picks are passively waved through is a norm and and not a statute. It would be entirely within the power of the Senate to block all Cabinet appointments and force constitutional gridlock.

If they aren't affirmed, they can still be appointed because "Cabinet member" is not the constitutional position, "Officer of the United States" is, but without being an Officer they can't personally exercise any powers and the President would have to personally deal with all matters himself, which for a modern country of the scale of the United States with as many issues as it has is functionally impossible. The President of the day would, in all likelihood, probably have to accept Cabinet choices imposed upon him by the Senate, and you would have a de facto parliamentary system.
 
H

hydragonwarrior

Member
cartoon_soldier said:
Trump is doing what he campaigned on for the most part. That's all his voters care about.
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And the best strategy is that he can axe as many programs as he wants, which in turn "saves money" for infrastructure or what not or to afford whatever bullshit healthcare plan he and the GOP comes up with. I'm surprised he's even keeping NASA around, quite frankly.

The easiest way to axe a program is to make the public not care about it at all. Anything scientific is generally on the chopping block because science driven programs can be too damn complicated to explain to the general populace. Much like when Harper was in Canada, I can see any government funded research or programs that are negative towards coal or oil will be closed.
 
K

kess

Member
I'm not sure if people have really woken up yet as to whatever the hell is happening with the EPA right now, but I suspect that when the gears really start turning, the reaction is going to be fierce. The entire scientific community being up his ass for four years is going to be brutal and Trump isn't Reagan.
 
J

JesseEwiak

Member
kess said:
I'm not sure if people have really woken up yet as to whatever the hell is happening with the EPA right now, but I suspect that when the gears really start turning, the reaction is going to be fierce. The entire scientific community being up his ass for four years is going to be brutal and Trump isn't Reagan.
Click to expand...

All your average Trump voter is going to see is an interview on Fox News with a climate denying scientist who previously worked for Exxon, then the Koch Brothers how it's a good thing politics can no longer infect the EPA.
 
P

Pixieking

Banned
JesseEwiak said:
All your average Trump voter is going to see is an interview on Fox News with a climate denying scientist who previously worked for Exxon, then the Koch Brothers how it's a good thing politics can no longer infect the EPA.
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But average Trump voters can go to hell. It's the undecided, indifferent and not entirely ignorant that will be struck by all this. Anyone even vaguely intelligent and not infected by the right-wing polarisation of politics will see how big this is, even if it takes some time to have it dawn on them. "Free Speech" advocates should be the first to be woke.

Not seen anything here about this, by the way:

Israel plans West Bank settlement expansion amid policy shifts in Washington
JERUSALEM — Israel announced a bold plan on Tuesday to construct 2,500 housing units in Jewish settlements in the West Bank, a decision made by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu just two days after he spoke with President Trump.
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About 100 of the possible new units are in Beit El, a West Bank settlement supported by Friedman. The family of Trump's son-in-law and newly appointed White House adviser Jared Kushner has donated to the charities that support Beit El.
Click to expand...
 
K

kess

Member
JesseEwiak said:
All your average Trump voter is going to see is an interview on Fox News with a climate denying scientist who previously worked for Exxon, then the Koch Brothers how it's a good thing politics can no longer infect the EPA.
Click to expand...

I guess time will tell, but the "average Trump voter" has always existed in this country. But our people are smarter and aren't going to willingly give up a century's worth of progress easily when the stakes have risen. Neil deGrasse Tyson and Barack Obama have more cultural cachet than Orange Fraud and ten thousand people upvoting Ben Garrison cartoons.
 
sazzy

sazzy

Member
mvtbMbH.png
 
P

Plinko

Wildcard berths that can't beat teams without a winning record should have homefield advantage
That "profit from protest" bill the GOP in MN proposed is frightening.
 
D

Deleted member 231381

Unconfirmed Member
Crab said:
The President picks the Cabinet with the advice and consent of the Senate, same as the Supreme Court - it's set out in the Appointments Clause. The idea that Cabinet picks are passively waved through is a norm and and not a statute. It would be entirely within the power of the Senate to block all Cabinet appointments and force constitutional gridlock.

If they aren't affirmed, they can still be appointed because "Cabinet member" is not the constitutional position, "Officer of the United States" is, but without being an Officer they can't personally exercise any powers and the President would have to personally deal with all matters himself, which for a modern country of the scale of the United States with as many issues as it has is functionally impossible. The President of the day would, in all likelihood, probably have to accept Cabinet choices imposed upon him by the Senate, and you would have a de facto parliamentary system.
Click to expand...

Also, I don't think this is discussed enough. Given how the conventional constitutional norms governing the US political system are being increasingly abandoned, this is a real and terrifying prospect not enough people are talking about. It seems to me very plausible that if a Democrat president wins in 2020 but fails to retake the senate, they will be unable to appoint a functioning cabinet. The Republicans have already shown willingness to breach this procedure with Garland, it's a small step to the cabinet. This would literally break American politics as we know it, though - the president would be a total captive of the legislature. Taking back senate control is vital to the Democratic movement - as important as, or perhaps even more, than retaking the presidency.
 
P

Plinko

Wildcard berths that can't beat teams without a winning record should have homefield advantage
And Trump officially tweets he is going to investigate voter fraud.

Get ready for false results and huge voter restrictions.
 
D

Diablos

Member
Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump
even, those registered to vote who are dead (and many for a long time). Depending on results, we will strengthen up voting procedures!

Donald J. Trump
27m27 minutes ago
Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump
I will be asking for a major investigation into VOTER FRAUD, including those registered to vote in two states, those who are illegal and....
Click to expand...
jfc
 
UberTag

UberTag

Member
Plinko said:
And Trump officially tweets he is going to investigate voter fraud.

Get ready for false results and huge voter restrictions.
Click to expand...
You can thank the White House press pool for egging Trump on this point yesterday and demanding answers. I mean, I understand they were pressing Spicer to provide evidence for Trump's illegal voters when everyone knows it's an invention from the mind of a delusional egomaniac... but they did kind of set Trump up to pursue severe and egregious (biased against race) voter restrictions without having the need to provide any evidence whatsoever.

The media seems to have this backwards idea that the only thing they can do to keep Trump honest is to catch him making egregious lies. But he's been doing that without restraint since taking office and it clearly doesn't matter. They need to refocus their efforts on calling attention to the damage that these newly introduced policies will do - particularly the muzzling of all scientific/environmental agencies and Trump's protocol of threatening Americans based on what he watches on FOX News.

Donald J. Trump
27m27 minutes ago
Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump
I will be asking for a major investigation into VOTER FRAUD, including those registered to vote in two states, those who are illegal and....

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump
even, those registered to vote who are dead (and many for a long time). Depending on results, we will strengthen up voting procedures!
Click to expand...

Hope he doesn't forget about people's dead pets. Make sure those aren't on the voting record. Sideshow Bob Roberts provided the blueprint on this.
Ensure those evil Dems don't get votes from Mr. and Mrs. Bananas, Humphrey Boa-gart or Snowball I.

1079211.jpg
 
C

Coriolanus

Banned
Crab said:
Also, I don't think this is discussed enough. Given how the conventional constitutional norms governing the US political system are being increasingly abandoned, this is a real and terrifying prospect not enough people are talking about. It seems to me very plausible that if a Democrat president wins in 2020 but fails to retake the senate, they will be unable to appoint a functioning cabinet. The Republicans have already shown willingness to breach this procedure with Garland, it's a small step to the cabinet. This would literally break American politics as we know it, though - the president would be a total captive of the legislature. Taking back senate control is vital to the Democratic movement - as important as, or perhaps even more, than retaking the presidency.
Click to expand...

I'm all for dems launching a preemptive strike if they get the numbers for it, but such cutthroat boldness hardly seems characteristic of the party in recent history.
 
D

Deleted member 231381

Unconfirmed Member
Coriolanus said:
I'm all for dems launching a preemptive strike if they get the numbers for it, but such cutthroat boldness hardly seems characteristic of the party in recent history.
Click to expand...

It'd be a bold move. Like, destroying that norm would have titanic impact - more, even, than slowing Supreme Court appointees. You would consciously be tearing out the heart of modern American politics. I don't know if the Democrats should be willing to do that, without very good reason.

On the other hand, if you suspect the Republicans are going to do it anyway...
 
T

tuxfool

Banned
In their 2016 Democracy Index the Economist Intelligence Unit has downgraded the US from Full Democracy to Flawed Democracy.

Trust in political institutions is an essential component of well-functioning democracies. Yet surveys by Pew, Gallup and other polling agencies have confirmed that public confidence in government has slumped to historic lows in the US. This has had a corrosive effect on the quality of democracy in the US, as reflected in the decline in the US score in the Democracy Index. The US president, Donald Trump, is not to blame for this decline in trust, which predated his election, but he was the beneficiary of it. Popular confidence in political institutions and parties continues to decline in many other developed countries, too.
Click to expand...

fYuVBjf.png
Click to expand...

The full document requires a (free) account:
http://www.eiu.com/public/thankyou_download.aspx?activity=download&campaignid=DemocracyIndex2016

If you're interested in drilling down into the numbers, I'd recommend reading the whole document as it describes their methodology in more detail than I could fit in a post.
 
P

PowerTaxi

Banned
tuxfool said:
In their 2016 Democracy Index the Economist Intelligence Unit has downgraded the US from Full Democracy to Flawed Democracy.





The full document requires a (free) account:
http://www.eiu.com/public/thankyou_download.aspx?activity=download&campaignid=DemocracyIndex2016

If you're interested in drilling down into the numbers, I'd recommend reading the whole document as it describes their methodology in more detail than I could fit in a post.
Click to expand...

Ireland with a full score in Civil Liberties? Huh.
 
D

Dubbedinenglish

Banned
Lmao Carol Costello just pulled the reciepts trap card on Kayleigh bringing in the surprise panelist, the head of the group who made the report she was citing.
 
M

maabus1999

Member
Dubbedinenglish said:
Lmao Carol Costello just pulled the reciepts trap card on Kayleigh bringing in the surprise panelist, the head of the group who made the report she was citing.
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I don't get where she has gotten such a blind loyalty to Trump for everything he does and pretends that what he says is ok since she uses lawyer speak that no one can "disprove" him either (which is wrong). I mean she's been at this from the very beginning.
 
C

Chase17

Member
modernlifeisANDY said:
Is today's press conference (I assume there is one) at 1:30?
Click to expand...
Yeah, I think it's scheduled that Trump will announce "big news" at that time at dhs. Not sure if it will be a press conference though

Fake edit: Of course you could mean a real press conference which in that case I have no idea.
 
F

Frank the Great

Banned
The scariest part about all this horrible Trump news, such as scientists being silenced and reporters getting arrested . . . In a few months it will be the new normal.
 
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