Government shutdown time!

[RageBeoulve]

There is no getting away from the will of the people.



Huehuehue

[RageBeoulve]

I read earlier today that the Chinese are reacting, now. They are worried, and they should be.

Btw:

[RageBeoulve]

I don't believe the tea party will win this war. they don't have the votes in the senate, the only house they control is the house.

So, one of two things will happen.

1. the government will shut down
2. or obamacare will be inacted

Harry Reid will gut the provision in it that defunds Obamacare which in turn will make the Budget Null that congress passed, so the Government will shut down.

Or atleast that's how I understand it, I could be wrong.

Obamacare will be enacted regardless of governmental shutdown.  80% of the funds used for Obamacare are mandatory spending not subject to Congressional appropriations.  That's where this fight becomes really stupid, as it literally cannot be won.

i am so turned on by you.

The Affordable Care Act really does it for you?

the idea that so many who currently cannot receive decent health care will undr the ACA is fucking great.

They will go from not receiving decent healthcare, to receiving about the same standards of care and paying more for it. Bonus: Now everybody else has to as well.

[conlang returns]

 

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/10/06
Reasons to Lose Sleep over the Shutdown and Obamacare
by Scott McLarty   

Sure, the government shutdown and Republican demands regarding the Affordable Care Act (ACA) are reprehensible, but let's not delude ourselves about the ACA itself.

It's needlessly complex. It preserves medical treatment as a commodity rather than a right: low-cost policies will provide low-quality insurance. It imposes a direct public subsidy to feed the insurance industry, which helped write the legislation. It isn't universal.

Millions of people who lacked it will now have health insurance, but the coverage they get won't approach the level of health-care access guaranteed to every citizen in every other democratic nation.

Obamacare is a Republican idea. It's based on the individual mandate, an idea introduced by the conservative pro-business Heritage Foundation, promoted by Republican leaders, and enacted in Massachusetts by Gov. Romney. Republicans only began to detest it circa 2009 when President Obama and Democrats made it part of Obamacare.

Conversely, progressives only began to support it when the ACA was introduced. Barack Obama opposed it during his presidential campaign but changed his mind in 2009.

Is it obnoxious to suggest that the dispute over Obamacare was always more about partisan loyalties than substance?

The shutdown will probably end when establishment Republicans convince Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and his fellow Tea Partiers that they've had their fun and now it's time to let adults run the show again. The main GOP objection to Obamacare is the "Obama" part. The legislation's real defects aren't important to the GOP.

GOP Agenda and Obamacare

Republicans are expert at aggravating crises and using instability to ram through their agenda: destroying social programs, privatizing resources and services, deregulating big business, recreating the dismal economic conditions of the Robber Baron Era. (Naomi Klein described this in her book "Shock Doctrine.")

Republicans can usually count on Democratic presidents and congressional leaders (who are subject to the same lobby and campaign-contribution influences as the GOP) to capitulate or compromise, sometimes without a fight, as President Obama did during the summer 2011 budget talks that resulted in sequestration.

They often rely on Dems to pursue GOP agenda without GOP help. President Obama's secretly negotiated Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact, proposed Social Security reductions, and debt-expanding military actions would have been recognized as Republican ten years ago -- as would the ACA.

The ACA became a capitulation from the moment Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), Chair of the Senate Finance Committee, declared single-payer national health care "off the table" during health-care reform panels in 2009. Single-payer advocates were barred from the panels, while insurance and other health-care industry representatives were invited to make sure their own interests were protected in the new legislation. Even the public option was dropped.

The capitulation has serious consequences, a few of which I mentioned above. One consequence was reported in the New York Times on October 2: "A sweeping national effort to extend health coverage to millions of Americans will leave out two-thirds of the poor blacks and single mothers and more than half of the low-wage workers who do not have insurance, the very kinds of people that the program was intended to help.... Because they live in states largely controlled by Republicans that have declined to participate in a vast expansion of Medicaid, the medical insurance program for the poor, they are among the eight million Americans who are impoverished, uninsured and ineligible for help."

By sacrificing universal health care, the new law accommodated Republican disregard for the poor in the 26 states that have rejected Medicaid expansion. The ACA isn't a victory for the millions, maybe tens of millions of Americans for whom insurance and medical costs will remain beyond reach or require a hefty percentage of their income. Or for those who will still face financial ruin over a medical emergency. (For a more detailed critique, see Scott Tucker's interview with Dr. Don McCanne of Physicians for a National Health Program.

These consequences won't be disturbed when the shutdown ends and immediate funding for the ACA prevails. The ACA was designed to be partial solution to the crisis of skyrocketing medical costs that bankrupt working Americans, even those with insurance, and the lack of insurance for millions more.

Useful Idiots

The context of the government shutdown is a dispute within the GOP between traditional types and "kill the government" fundamentalists associated with the Tea Party.

Are we witnessing an implosion of the GOP? We can only hope so, but it's more likely we'll see a return to bipartisan business as usual: two factions of a corporate-money party arguing over the best way to satisfy the country's One-Percenters. (See "The Shutdown Game" by Glen Ford in Black Agenda Report, Oct. 2)

One Percent aren't really interested in shrinking government. They prefer laws and government that more efficiently and generously serve their interests. They want Washington to remove barriers to markets, profits, and consolidation into monopolies and cartels, even when it means destroying the middle class and plunging working Americans into helplessness.

Plutocracy's sole interests are money and power. Ideologies and economic theories are for little people, endowed academic seats, bow-tie wearing newspaper columnists, and other suckers.

To the plutocrat, the Tea Party libertarian is a useful idiot. The plutocrat is grateful that the libertarian supports Walmart as a beacon of free-market competition and prosperity, while Walmart crushes small-business competitors and hires employees at wages that force them to rely on social services.

The plutocrat thanks the libertarian for demanding deregulation of Wall Street derivatives in the name of free movement of capital, while ordering pet politicians to insure derivatives trading with taxpayers' money against multi-billion and multi-trillion dollar losses.

Plutocrats (with some exceptions, like the Koch brothers) transcend party and can live with any law or policy that allows them to boost the bottom line. The health-care debate between Dems and Repubs was rigged from the beginning by the One Percent, which made sure that insurance companies would continue to make a killing whether the ACA was passed or defeated.

What About Medicare For All?

Let's imagine another scenario. A bloc of Democratic Congress members is willing to shut down government rather than vote yea on a budget with funding for another war like the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Good or bad?

What if several Congress members had risked a shutdown in 2009 over the declaration that Medicare For All was "off the table" and that pro-single-payer physicians and consumer advocates would be banned from the health-care reform panels?

These are fantasies. Anti-war and progressive Democrats in Congress are too timid to consider such actions.

In contrast, Tea Partiers in Congress, fueled by the generosity of billionaire plutocrats, have no reservations about how they accomplish their goals.

The only solution for America's dismal health-care delivery system is Medicare For All -- a single-payer plan that guarantees universal care. We'll only win Medicare For All with a movement that goes beyond polite lobbying, with street protest as vigorous as Occupy Wall Street and a concerted effort to replace politicians in office.

The latter requires a voter rebellion and campaigns that are independent of the two corporate-money parties.

It means resisting the predictable claim of Democratic leaders, after the shutdown ends, that the GOP's retreat on the ACA is a victory for everyone who opposes the Tea Party and we shouldn't complicate that victory by demanding Medicare For All.

If we lose sleep during the government shutdown, I hope it's because we're pondering ways to surpass the Tea Party in asserting our own political power.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License
Scott McLarty   

Scott McLarty serves as media coordinator for the Green Party of the United States and for the DC Statehood Green Party. He can be reached at mclarty@greens.org.

[RageBeoulve]

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/10/06
Reasons to Lose Sleep over the Shutdown and Obamacare
by Scott McLarty   

Sure, the government shutdown and Republican demands regarding the Affordable Care Act (ACA) are reprehensible, but let's not delude ourselves about the ACA itself.

It's needlessly complex. It preserves medical treatment as a commodity rather than a right: low-cost policies will provide low-quality insurance. It imposes a direct public subsidy to feed the insurance industry, which helped write the legislation. It isn't universal.

Millions of people who lacked it will now have health insurance, but the coverage they get won't approach the level of health-care access guaranteed to every citizen in every other democratic nation.

Obamacare is a Republican idea. It's based on the individual mandate, an idea introduced by the conservative pro-business Heritage Foundation, promoted by Republican leaders, and enacted in Massachusetts by Gov. Romney. Republicans only began to detest it circa 2009 when President Obama and Democrats made it part of Obamacare.

Conversely, progressives only began to support it when the ACA was introduced. Barack Obama opposed it during his presidential campaign but changed his mind in 2009.

Is it obnoxious to suggest that the dispute over Obamacare was always more about partisan loyalties than substance?

The shutdown will probably end when establishment Republicans convince Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and his fellow Tea Partiers that they've had their fun and now it's time to let adults run the show again. The main GOP objection to Obamacare is the "Obama" part. The legislation's real defects aren't important to the GOP.

GOP Agenda and Obamacare

Republicans are expert at aggravating crises and using instability to ram through their agenda: destroying social programs, privatizing resources and services, deregulating big business, recreating the dismal economic conditions of the Robber Baron Era. (Naomi Klein described this in her book "Shock Doctrine.")

Republicans can usually count on Democratic presidents and congressional leaders (who are subject to the same lobby and campaign-contribution influences as the GOP) to capitulate or compromise, sometimes without a fight, as President Obama did during the summer 2011 budget talks that resulted in sequestration.

They often rely on Dems to pursue GOP agenda without GOP help. President Obama's secretly negotiated Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact, proposed Social Security reductions, and debt-expanding military actions would have been recognized as Republican ten years ago -- as would the ACA.

The ACA became a capitulation from the moment Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), Chair of the Senate Finance Committee, declared single-payer national health care "off the table" during health-care reform panels in 2009. Single-payer advocates were barred from the panels, while insurance and other health-care industry representatives were invited to make sure their own interests were protected in the new legislation. Even the public option was dropped.

The capitulation has serious consequences, a few of which I mentioned above. One consequence was reported in the New York Times on October 2: "A sweeping national effort to extend health coverage to millions of Americans will leave out two-thirds of the poor blacks and single mothers and more than half of the low-wage workers who do not have insurance, the very kinds of people that the program was intended to help.... Because they live in states largely controlled by Republicans that have declined to participate in a vast expansion of Medicaid, the medical insurance program for the poor, they are among the eight million Americans who are impoverished, uninsured and ineligible for help."

By sacrificing universal health care, the new law accommodated Republican disregard for the poor in the 26 states that have rejected Medicaid expansion. The ACA isn't a victory for the millions, maybe tens of millions of Americans for whom insurance and medical costs will remain beyond reach or require a hefty percentage of their income. Or for those who will still face financial ruin over a medical emergency. (For a more detailed critique, see Scott Tucker's interview with Dr. Don McCanne of Physicians for a National Health Program.

These consequences won't be disturbed when the shutdown ends and immediate funding for the ACA prevails. The ACA was designed to be partial solution to the crisis of skyrocketing medical costs that bankrupt working Americans, even those with insurance, and the lack of insurance for millions more.

Useful Idiots

The context of the government shutdown is a dispute within the GOP between traditional types and "kill the government" fundamentalists associated with the Tea Party.

Are we witnessing an implosion of the GOP? We can only hope so, but it's more likely we'll see a return to bipartisan business as usual: two factions of a corporate-money party arguing over the best way to satisfy the country's One-Percenters. (See "The Shutdown Game" by Glen Ford in Black Agenda Report, Oct. 2)

One Percent aren't really interested in shrinking government. They prefer laws and government that more efficiently and generously serve their interests. They want Washington to remove barriers to markets, profits, and consolidation into monopolies and cartels, even when it means destroying the middle class and plunging working Americans into helplessness.

Plutocracy's sole interests are money and power. Ideologies and economic theories are for little people, endowed academic seats, bow-tie wearing newspaper columnists, and other suckers.

To the plutocrat, the Tea Party libertarian is a useful idiot. The plutocrat is grateful that the libertarian supports Walmart as a beacon of free-market competition and prosperity, while Walmart crushes small-business competitors and hires employees at wages that force them to rely on social services.

The plutocrat thanks the libertarian for demanding deregulation of Wall Street derivatives in the name of free movement of capital, while ordering pet politicians to insure derivatives trading with taxpayers' money against multi-billion and multi-trillion dollar losses.

Plutocrats (with some exceptions, like the Koch brothers) transcend party and can live with any law or policy that allows them to boost the bottom line. The health-care debate between Dems and Repubs was rigged from the beginning by the One Percent, which made sure that insurance companies would continue to make a killing whether the ACA was passed or defeated.

What About Medicare For All?

Let's imagine another scenario. A bloc of Democratic Congress members is willing to shut down government rather than vote yea on a budget with funding for another war like the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Good or bad?

What if several Congress members had risked a shutdown in 2009 over the declaration that Medicare For All was "off the table" and that pro-single-payer physicians and consumer advocates would be banned from the health-care reform panels?

These are fantasies. Anti-war and progressive Democrats in Congress are too timid to consider such actions.

In contrast, Tea Partiers in Congress, fueled by the generosity of billionaire plutocrats, have no reservations about how they accomplish their goals.

The only solution for America's dismal health-care delivery system is Medicare For All -- a single-payer plan that guarantees universal care. We'll only win Medicare For All with a movement that goes beyond polite lobbying, with street protest as vigorous as Occupy Wall Street and a concerted effort to replace politicians in office.

The latter requires a voter rebellion and campaigns that are independent of the two corporate-money parties.

It means resisting the predictable claim of Democratic leaders, after the shutdown ends, that the GOP's retreat on the ACA is a victory for everyone who opposes the Tea Party and we shouldn't complicate that victory by demanding Medicare For All.

If we lose sleep during the government shutdown, I hope it's because we're pondering ways to surpass the Tea Party in asserting our own political power.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License
Scott McLarty   

Scott McLarty serves as media coordinator for the Green Party of the United States and for the DC Statehood Green Party. He can be reached at mclarty@greens.org.

I'd say that's about right.

[sg1008]

Nobody is loosing healthcare, or loosing quality healthcare. That's fucking rumour mongering. A lot more people are receiving it. And decent quality at that. Lives are saved. Life expectancy increased. CHild mortality decreased. Fertility/population will eventually start dropping, poverty will allay itself, and kaBOUEY!

I myself am enjoying the fact that I get to keep my fathers healthcare for a few more years. He has really good healthcare via the school system so this is great. And good to know that I won't have to hurry up and get all checkups in because now when I come of age, I can't still get decent healthcare. A load off my back. I can only imagine for those with chronic illnesses or severe issues. They must be quite ALIVE.

[RageBeoulve]

Nobody is loosing healthcare, or loosing quality healthcare. That's fucking rumour mongering. A lot more people are receiving it. And decent quality at that. Lives are saved. Life expectancy increased. CHild mortality decreased. Fertility/population will eventually start dropping, poverty will allay itself, and kaBOUEY!

I myself am enjoying the fact that I get to keep my fathers healthcare for a few more years. He has really good healthcare via the school system so this is great. And good to know that I won't have to hurry up and get all checkups in because now when I come of age, I can't still get decent healthcare. A load off my back. I can only imagine for those with chronic illnesses or severe issues. They must be quite ALIVE.

I'm afraid it isn't decent quality, Sg. The quality of your healthcare will not improve in the longrun. I would bet money on that.

[Pyraxis]

But will the quality of health care of the uninsured improve? I think that's the question.

I get good health insurance through work. It's much better than I got on the NHS when I was living in Scotland. But the folks who are already being treated well are not the ones Obamacare is aimed at.

[RageBeoulve]

But will the quality of health care of the uninsured improve? I think that's the question.

I get good health insurance through work. It's much better than I got on the NHS when I was living in Scotland. But the folks who are already being treated well are not the ones Obamacare is aimed at.

The truth is, the minority of citizens will obtain a higher quality of healthcare because they have none. Even if someone already has mediocre quality healthcare though, they may actually be forced to adhere to lower standards than they had in the first place. And the worst thing is, everyone will be affected.

Its like a virus.

[sg1008]

But will the quality of health care of the uninsured improve? I think that's the question.

I get good health insurance through work. It's much better than I got on the NHS when I was living in Scotland. But the folks who are already being treated well are not the ones Obamacare is aimed at.

Thats in the bill too. Long term it wants to start assessing doctors based on the quality of the care they give, not the number of patients they see- which is a huge relief for both patients and doctors as that is the number 1 complaint and barrier to good healthcare is the quotas doctors are expected to meet without making time to really spend with patients. That doesn't go into effect till later, like 2016 or something. Everything is going in phases. The healthcare bill wasn't thrown together hodgepodge quickity snippety- there were actually a lot of smart people sitting down to do this- people who could rep doctors, nurses, patients, families, fiscal stuff, etc. It has all the hallmarks of something really good, and of course it can be improved upon- everything can be improved upon. But it is fucking awesome.

Who woulda thought that if we take care of one another that it would actually be good for society? /sarcasm

[sg1008]

And it isn't a minority of people. Sure a "minority" in terms of minorities and disadvantaged communities, who actually make up a majority. I know at least half of my city will and is already benefitting- from students who can stay on their parents plan, to women who can get free contraceptive planning, to families who would otherwise watch their children, spouses or whoever die, to families who would otherwise avoid the doctors office until it was a true emergency.

As someone who worked in the hospital for 3 years, and was volutnteering there for 4, I know doctors, nurses, and patients PERSONALLY, and it isn't a bloody minority.

[sg1008]

Lol, there was that AWFUL gap between the initial passing of the bill, and now, when patients were 'inbetween' shitty plans and waiting for the Affordable care act to go in. That cost hospitals- ppl were preparing, and thats why the first day the major part of the act went into effect (8 days ago or so) lines were stretched far and phones were backed up because of the volume of people signing up. Now it will steadily get better, and I am really happy.

The rest who don't need it, don't have to have anything to do with it. They have nothing to complain about. In fact their care should be improving soon enough once the other parts of the bill go into play becuase docs will be able to actually do their job.

The fact that ppl with healthcare are complaining is just ridiculous, selfish, and completely misguided. Nothing is being "forced", thats the politicians trying to make it seem like some socialist agenda that will turn us into nazi germany or whatever conspiracy they are pooping out of their arses.

[odeon]

You should let this thing rest for a while. For a couple of days or so. Calm down.

And talk about it again on the 18th.

[sg1008]

You should let this thing rest for a while. For a couple of days or so. Calm down.

And talk about it again on the 18th.

 

[RageBeoulve]

Lol, there was that AWFUL gap between the initial passing of the bill, and now, when patients were 'inbetween' shitty plans and waiting for the Affordable care act to go in. That cost hospitals- ppl were preparing, and thats why the first day the major part of the act went into effect (8 days ago or so) lines were stretched far and phones were backed up because of the volume of people signing up. Now it will steadily get better, and I am really happy.

The rest who don't need it, don't have to have anything to do with it. They have nothing to complain about. In fact their care should be improving soon enough once the other parts of the bill go into play becuase docs will be able to actually do their job.

The fact that ppl with healthcare are complaining is just ridiculous, selfish, and completely misguided. Nothing is being "forced", thats the politicians trying to make it seem like some socialist agenda that will turn us into nazi germany or whatever conspiracy they are pooping out of their arses.

Explain how its not being forced, fella. I really want to know how you can see this.