Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[Dr. Strangelove]

This is very good news...the House voted to push back against Jeff Sessions' attempt to promote asset forfeiture

https://theintercept.com/2017/09/12/in-surprise-vote-house-passes-amendment-to-restrict-asset-forfeiture/

[iam416]

Huzzah. If Kamala Harris AND Jeff Sessions are both for it has to be entirely right or entirely wrong. In this case, it's obviously the latter.

[SeattleLionsFan]

Lol, iam. We agree on that.

[Wild Hoss]

So Trump is running commercials for himself now?

I'll hand it to the guy; one thing he knows how to do is sell himself. As Hillary discovered, campaigning is basically sales.

[entropy]

..and not being a Clinton.

[iam416]

Yeah, HRC still polls worse than DJT. What a staggeringly bad candidate.

[Wild Hoss]

..and not being a Clinton.

Well, not being the other Clinton at any rate.

Sent from my SM-G900P using Tapatalk

[Jeff Buchanan]

Well, Bernie is on the road again pushing Single Payer Health Care or Medicare for everyone.

There's some interesting polling on that ........ the concept is favored by 55% of those polled ..... until they are told they are going to have to pay for it with increased taxes. The against it raises to 61%.

There's more to this but the bottom line is that conceptually the idea of Medicare for everyone is entirely sellable until people saying yeah or nay understand that there's a pretty steep price tag for it in increased taxes and decreased availability of care.

Another issue is the usual suspects, Big Pharma, Big Hospitals, Big medical equipment manufacturers...... lobbying efforts by this substantial group will insure even a reasonable plan will NEVER make it through Congress.

[AlabamAlum]

[ame]https://youtu.be/eYt0khR_ej0[/ame]

[hack]

Agreed that it'll never make it out of the swamp. This is an idea for after America finally rejects the economic philosophies on which it now leans and in which the benefits accrue to few and not many. But a cost-benefit debate has to be smarter than this. You'd be raising taxes, and if you fail to tax the corporate and wealthy at a just rate and raise enough revenue for this, the leftover burdern to be borne by the rest of the taxpaying citizenry should be smaller than their savings from spending less overall on health care. Decommercializing health care means there's fewer of the various middleman types now in the way.

[froot loops]

One of the polls I read about does mention that polling but it also says they found that the higher taxes argument gets blunted if you talk about taking the insurance companies out of the equation. You will notice he has tailored his speeches to say you might pay more taxes but you won't be dealing with the insurance companies.. Who knows, I think this Obamacare repeal effort has inadvertently moved the Overton window towards something resembling single payer.

The Trump election has shown you really don't need to tether yourself to the reality of facts in policy. I am sure taxes would go up, but Bernie Sanders doesn't necessarily have to acknowledge that. You demagogue the hell of the insurance companies and promise something better. It may be DOA if you get elected but it may help you get elected.

[hack]

1. Taxes on who, precisely?

2. Yes -- you can make shit up and spend 80% of your time pointing fingers, and that's good enough. Current-day reality. May not be the best route to smart policy, but that's what the voters are saying they want.

[froot loops]

I don't think those poll questions go too far into how the taxes are raised.

[iam416]

Taxes on everyone. That's the problem. The prog agenda just can't be paid for by taxing the high achievers.

[Jeff Buchanan]

...... Who knows, I think this Obamacare repeal effort has inadvertently moved the Overton window towards something resembling single payer.......

Precisely ....... If you go back about 15-20y or so, when it became apparent that the Clintons were not going to be able to implement a national HC program, there were a lot of progressives talking incrementalism.

I keep pulling out the Tom Daschel book on HC reform where he speaks specifically about this. The ACA could be seen as that and the political dislike of the ACA, from the right, especially from the far right, has made the political environment more favorable for some kind of significant change.

Could we be seeing another grand bargain emerge between the Trump administration and the Dems, similar to that which occurred on a smaller scale with regard to raising the debt ceiling to pay for Hurricane Harvey and now Irma relief?

What was notable about that whole thing was not the agreement to raise the debt sealing but the complete end-around Trump did to his R controlled Congress and in the process endangering the standing of Speaker Ryan.