Predictable. And Asinine.
Remember John Gruber? You know, that Harvard-educated “intellectual” who help the previous gang of naïve and foolish children that somehow conned the American voters into letting them run things in DC last Administration draft that abomination called the Patently Pathetic and Awful Collection of Asininity Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (AKA “ObamaCare”)? That incredibly bad law that our new adult leadership in DC is trying to change before it bankrupts the nation?
Sure you remember him. That’s the same elitist jerk who believes – and stated – that American voters have a “lack of economic understanding”. He’s also the same tool who was caught on video discussing ObamaCare and saying, “The stupidity of the American voter . . . was really critical for the thing to pass.”
Well, he’s running his yap yet again. Now, he’s saying that ObamaCare price increases (presumably the ones that just occurred) are Trump’s fault. And he’s also claiming those increases were a “one time” event that “fixed” ObamaCare.
I’d say YGBSM, but we see these kind of bald-faced lies “creative stories” all the time from the political left.
Um, dipstick . . . the 2017 premium increases were announced about two weeks prior to the 2016 Presidential election. Trump wasn’t POTUS then; the SCoaMF that lent “ObamaCare” it’s nickname was the POTUS when those price increased were determined and announced. And until the early morning of 9 November 2016, few expected Trump to be the next POTUS.
In short, Trump had nothing to do with this mess. This one’s the SCoaMF’s “baby” – warts and all.
Further, the 2017 increases announced in late 2016 were hardly a one-time deal. ObamaCare premiums have been rising in most markets for years. And the system is hardly “fixed” now – it’s so bad off financially that virtually no insurers are making any money from their ObamaCare policies. Instead, they’re losing money in bundles. And they’re still pulling out of state health insurance exchanges.
You know, for a highly educated “eliteist”, the man just doesn’t seem particularly bright. He can’t manage to figure out that the temporal sequence here (price increases announced prior to the election, which Trump was widely expected to lose) kinda rules out Trump having anything whatsoever to do with this year’s ObamaCare price increases. He also can’t seem to grasp that a multi-year pattern of moderate to large annual premium increases virtually nationwide demonstrates rather conclusively that the last such premium increase was hardly a “one time event”. And, finally, he doesn’t seem to realize that insurers opting out of the market in droves because they’re losing money by the ton annually is evidence that the system is broken – badly.
In fact, it certainly seems like he’s an “elitist” educated at a “highly-prestegious liberal university” with delusions of superiority who in reality appears have significant difficulties with both logic and getting his facts straight, and who also can’t accept the fact that they’re far from infallible. In other words: rather than being “superior”, he doesn’t have much of a clue. But he thinks he does.
Sounds familiar. All too familiar.
Category: "Teh Stoopid", Health Care debate
Gee, you’re a lot nicer about this boondoggle that I would be, Hondo.
My cat has better sense than this conceited moron does. But he’s up above it all, like the Cloud People, while the rest of us are just rolling around in the mud and that’s the way he and the rest of his ilk want it.
Yes some things are very predicable like House Republican’s being two faced rat bastards.
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/03/acha-tax-cut/518889/
http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/331867-republicans-can-exempt-themselves-from-obamacare-rollbacks-in-new-legislation
https://mic.com/articles/176357/republicans-who-voted-for-trumpcare-admit-they-didn-t-even-read-the-bill#.uINurcVOw
They had to pass the legislation to see what was in it. That excuse worked for Nancy Pelosi, why is it now important to actually read legislation before actually voting on it? Sometime last year, one of my liberal leaning Facebook friends posted an article complaining that a Republican voted against a proposed law because he did not have time to read it. (Can’t remember the The politician or the law). Somehow, that is a bad thing.
Gruber is, or at least was, one of the “behind the scenes” operators that created ultra-liberal (communist) policy and spoon fed it to the likes of Pelosi and her ilk.
To my knowledge little Jonathan Gruber has never had a real JOB. He has always lived as a parasite, snugged away in the fantasy world called Academia.
He helped construct the Ponzi scheme we are currently using as a National Health Care policy. It was bankrupt at its conception, does nothing to reduced the costs of health care, refuses to address Tort reform, reduces coverage to most Americans, and allows the lowest income people to “opt” out of using it.
I would love to debate this man. I would do anything to strap his ass to a chair beside Pelosi while I do tax returns for real Americans that actually work for a living.
It is amazing that he’s supposedly one of the “enlightened” ones that still has a job at MIT, even after all the bullshit that came about.
Obamacare wasn’t supposed to work, it was conceived to lower Americans into the lobster pot of single-payer healthcare.
Absolutely.
Exactly.
I have already been hearing lots of noise about the answer to all of this is “single-payer” healthcare. The liberal blogs and rags are running rampant with it.
Sparks – see my reply below. Let me know what you think.
Good call.
If regular Americans had to use the VA healthcare system like 6ish million veterans (of the 21+ million veterans) do, they’d never want anyone to even discuss single-payer.
If I hear one more person say, “But countries in Europe use it!” I’m going to drive to their house and stab them in the knee, fly them in my luggage to Europe, drop them off at a hospital and say, “Okay, use your single-payer system and never come back to the US fuckwad.”
Here’s my take on why “single-payer” will never fly in this country.
Of the countries in the world in which a single-payer health insurance system “works,” to the extent that it does, it does so because the cost of health care in those countries is already low. To understand that part, you have to understand why it’s low.
In places like the UK, Canada, Germany, etc., health care costs are low because those same costs are high here in the United States. In essence, our health care rates subsidize low rates in other nations.
For such a thing as a single-payer system to work here, one of two things have to happen:
1. We get our costs down to where their costs are, or
2. We slap an exorbitantly high tax rate on everyone – EVERYONE – and try to pay current care rates.
Neither of those is likely to happen. The first one won’t work because the health care and health insurance industries are extremely powerful, especially in the political arena. For a single-payer system operating out of the government to be successful, those industries would essentially have to disappear. Does anyone with half a brain cell actually believe they will forgo billions upon billions of dollars a year just to make health care actually affordable to people?
The second possibility is unsustainable after year one. Those who can conceivably afford such a high tax rate won’t stick around; they’ll move to some country that isn’t trying to take 90+% of their income. And the rest of us will not be able to pay taxes that high either.
Single-payer is a unicorn, a dream, a myth. It might work elsewhere, to the degree that it does. But it only works there because we pay so much here. It will never happen here, because our economic system will not allow it to happen here.
While your reasoning is sound, that doesn’t mean that the Left won’t try to foist single-payer on the rest of us. You and I can both name broken systems that are still in place.
Jonn … the entertaining part of their foisting it off on us anyway will be watching the entire health-care system implode. The much larger and much worse part will be the number of people who will be adversely affected by that. People like you and me, mostly.
The way they will deploy it: As an “option” to existing plans. With the cost numbers highly rigged. Costs will be predicted very low to ending “waste, fraud, and abuse”, and from ‘preventative care”, and essentially by “cooking the books”. With he tax numbers highly rigged. Based on the above cost-cooking, the initial taxes will be posted so as to seem to “balance”. Reality will be one made-up number (lie) roughly equal to the other made up number (lie). There will of course be a “flexibility” to “adapt to unforeseen events”. Once this is in place, you know, like the original “Obama Care” (or whatever mess the Repubs get conned into trying), then ther will be strong pressure from the recipients and from the knee pad media to “mend it, don’t end it”. The costs will be “unexpectedly” high, thus the inevitable increase in “fair share” payments. Without limit if course, because once health care is effectively “free” the costs will run riot, making the F-35 acquisition look like an exercise in frugality. Of course, no free market firm can effectively compete with “free stuff from the taxpayers” so all those current providers either go broke or get bought out by the designated winners with enough political pull to get declared “essential” and thus soft-nationalized into the gravy-train of subsidies. They cheer not he whole mess because they now have a “guaranteed” pool of “customers” who really cant quit or bitch, as they will effectively be assigned. The death-spiral is a feature to Trqqanzis, not a bug. The more screwed up the system gets, the more the remaining bits of free market get the blame and get expunged. “Profiteeers” and similar dirty words will be used, where “counterrevolutionary” was used elsewhere. There will be just enough of a “free market” system left to provide the rich and political with a safety net of care that would otherwise elude even them. The rest of us will get the full measure of value from “no cost” care – almost nothing – on the way to the inevitable – worse than nothing –… Read more »
You know what the scariest part (to me, anyway) of your implementation scenario is, 11B?
We are all going to end up spending the same out-of-pocket amounts, if not obscenely higher ones, for “coverage” that isn’t going to cover a damn thing.
A prediction: If your scenario happens, the revolt will soon follow.
… or maybe not.
If the worst case scenario happens, it’s more likely people will start going to herbalists and other kinds of non-traditional medicines instead of relying on ever more costly pharmaceuticals.
The asinine increase in an HIV drug from $7.50/unit to over $3,000/unit by the owner of a drug company, and his obnoxious smirking about it on TV, is my reference. And don’t think it won’t happen.
There was also the CEO who raised the price of the Epi-Pen 300%? and who’s Uncle/Family member-something is a sitting US Senator. Schools were also being required to keep a stock of “Epi-Pens” available at school. Yet, the same ‘shot’ of medicine only cost 10 bucks. But Prices suddenly sky-rocketed…..
You are also missing that our drug protocols fund the rest of the worlds R&D, and our high priced meds compensate drug companies lost profits for fixed priced markets in those single payer Countries.
CB … I didn’t miss it. I included it in the overall costs of health care.
But thank you for pointing it out. Perhaps I should have made it a separate item.
Nah. Under the new single-payer system, they believe government will mandate efficient distribution of R&D, based on Science!, and the subsequent elimination of the wasteful “profit” motive will increase efficaincy a hundredfold,and eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse.
You know, like in DOD R&D and acquisitions!
Er…
See -this- time, the -right- people will run it!, We will try harder!
Et-Cetera cubed.
(Our political “betters” will be along shortly to tell us how dumb we are for not understanding that this stuff will work when -they- run it, because something mumble authority “you are idiots/fascists/not-educated-properly”.)
They can certainly try to say I’m not educated properly, but I have a doctoral degree that would disagree with them. Full Disclosure – it’s in Education with a specialty in History. If anybody knows how it’s gonna play out in the end, it’s me and people like me.
Yep, costs are too high.
1- In Germany BWE, it takes six years to become a medical doctor and costs are well under 100K. In the US it takes 11-16 years and costs are well over $500K (on average). Other Euro countries the timeline and costs are similar. Most of this is loaded on the front end so doctors have to charge huge amounts to pay off loans.
2- The US consumer pays more for prescription drugs then any other user on the planet. We are essentially subsidizing the rest of the world for drug research.
3- The abuse of drugs in the US is the highest of any civilized country with a functional medical system. Just removing drug addicts from the medical system would result in a huge amount of excess capacity in the system.
There is no fix available for #3, #2 would require heavy government regulation of one of the most lobby intensive industries and #1 would require a unified effort of thousands of government agencies, colleges and industry leaders to change. So nothing is happening in my life time.
Because Canada’s rationed healthcare system isn’t fucked up enough or nearly large enough.
Let’s nationalize 1/6 of the US economy! What a great fucking idea!
And before Larsie flaps his cocksucker, anyone who has been to northern NH, VT, and NY (as I often am) sees healthcare facilities far larger than the communities they supposedly serve. And funny how so many of them are loaded with cars that have Canadian plates.
We already spend 17% of our GDP on healthcare, that has recently become higher than any other country in the world.
We used to be second behind Sierra Leone, but they’ve made changes apparently and now we are in the lead.
More “free” healthcare that won’t be “free”.
For all the positive stories in Canada’s healthcare system, there are plenty of horror stories there too. Just the same as the VA here, good and bad stories because that’s the system.
Hell, try using TRICARE if you aren’t near an installation with their own hospital. TRICARE doesn’t approve a bunch of stuff you can get done on post. They don’t approve a bunch of stuff the VA does. TRICARE is the example health care system they used in the movie “The Rainmaker”. Deny first request, deny second request, deny until they stop asking.
SEA – it’s the same in the PNW, see a lot of cars from BC of people getting their care here instead of Canada.
That’s pretty much anywhere in the Northern US and many Canadian “Snowbirds” postpone medical things until they go on their annual migration to the Southern US.
Another obamacare trigger.
He is a dickhead to be sure, but he is also pretty accurate about the average American not knowing shit about economics..just look at how most Americans manage their personal debt loads and the increase in bankruptcies to determine our general economics knowledge.
Until we actually have a law on Trump’s desk I remain skeptical we have any substantive change. Based on Paul Ryan’s budget negotiating skills I lack confidence that the Republicans are looking to make any real changes.
Agreed VOV. “nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public”. Or the electorate for that matter, “We have to pass the bill in order to know what’s in it”
If you tell ill informed and uninformed people, they are going to get something for free, they’ll go along every time. Never attempting to understand that there is no, are no, never have been and never will be any free lunches.
Well, my lawyer bought me lunch for free once. I was shocked at that. But I think that’s a fairly limited thing….
Hardly free if he discussed a case with you. Gotta keep those billable hours up!
He didn’t bill me for that time. I have to trust him, he’s a lawyer. they don’t lie, right?
I’ve always heard that 95% of Lawyers give the rest a bad name.
You mean “lawer” don’t you?
I have never met a liberal yet, who is willing to personally underwrite health insurance policies that cover pre-existing conditions. I suppose they expect “the rich” to do it…George Soros, David Geffen, et al exempted.
I have never met a Conservative yet who was willing to personally underwrite a Government Bail out for their pre-existing bad business decisions. I suppose they expect the “poor” to do it. You, me and the rest of us who they fucked over.
I keep seeing Jonathan Gruber pop up on the news to discuss the new healthcare bill at length, even on Fox.
For the life of me I can’t understand why they never question him about his involvement in obamacare and why he’s against this when he was so forthright a supporter of that debacle. Or even, “but if the American populace is stupid, like you say, why should this be an issue?”
Another elitist academic scumbag who thinks he’s better than everyone else.
For those that don’t recall, one of his greatest hits….
My birthday is a one-time thing, too; One time each year. And those “one-time” premium increases will also stop when I stop having birthdays.
To those sparkle pony, brain dead liberals out there that just have to screw with the healthcare industry, I say this: Venezuela has Single Payer, and you can’t get an aspirin in their hospitals.
Roger, you can’t get ANYTHING medical now, period. The supply is gone.
I’ve heard they don’t even have toilet paper in their hospitals.
They never intended for this thing to work, as others have said. They saw it as just another vehicle to move toward their goal.
The older among us have seen the incremental move toward single-payer health care. Medicare was a huge step in that direction. Then HMO’s were mandated as a solution to the so-called health care crisis. Then the same people who voted for that came up new and improved regulations to fix those horrid HMOs. The ones they forced on us.
The solution is to quit meddling with it. They want everyone dependent upon them. And they nearly have it. That is their goal.
They created whatever chaos exists with health care. They will not be satisfied until they are the only one who can afford medical treatment.
Dear Jonathan Gruber: Can we talk? You’re a FA. I love how the left is trying to say that Ocare failing is all Trump’s fault. I read both bills and attended to rallies to show my lack of support for the bullshit in that bill. Playgrounds? Student loans? Right. And then, of course you’ve got the law breaker in chief giving waivers to big companies while the small businesses had to go half-time or went out. But the biggest best thing? Good old chest-puffing fucking liberal that you are, you got caught on tape saying what we all knew to be true. The ACA was a sham and unsustainable. So, yeah, get out your dunce cap, boy-o. OWN. THAT. SHIT. Remember, too. There are special places in hell for people like you and your friends.