Social Security and Medicare

[MrPots]

Originally Posted by ZeroJunk

The middle class got their ass spanked with Obamacare.
.

That spanking is going to seem like fun after the pineapple rape Don is going to do to the middle class.

[donquixote99]

Originally Posted by whell

...and, of course, what would a liberal verbal assault on a Republican politician be without at least one "Hitler reference."

Well, few would deny that Hitler was a fascist...as is Trump.

In 1995, Umberto Eco, the late Italian intellectual giant and novelist most famous for The Name of the Rose, wrote a guide describing the primary features of fascism. As a child, Eco was a loyalist of Mussolini, an experience that made him quick to detect the markers of fascism later in life, when he became a revered public intellectual and political voice. Eco noted that fascism looks different in each incarnation, morphing with time and leadership, as “it would be difficult for [it] to reappear in the same form in different historical circumstances.” It is a movement without “quintessence." Instead, it’s a sort of “fuzzy totalitarianism, a collage of different philosophical and political ideas, a beehive of contradictions,” he wrote.

Eco's famous 14-point list outlines what the author dubbed “Ur-Fascism, or Eternal Fascism”—and it fits hand in glove the political persona created by Donald Trump. Hours after 60 million Americans voted to give the presidency to a dangerously incompetent narcissist whose campaign was based on nativist fear-mongering and racist appeals, British historian Simon Schama lamented that Trump’s newly sealed win would “hearten fascists all over the world.” Sure enough, congratulations poured in from far-right admirers around the world, who recognized Trump as one of their ilk.

Throughout the campaign, comparisons of Trump to fascist leaders have been treated as unserious and even irresponsible. Now, as we watch him assemble a cabinet of frightening far-right nationalists, white supremacists, militarists, and free-marketeers, Eco’s list emerges as a must-read.

read on here: Trump Is an Eerily Perfect Match With a Famous 14-Point Guide to Identify Fascist Leaders

[whell]

Originally Posted by donquixote99

Backup, please.

Please link to data showing that only a 'few' persons, having a health plan before the beginning of the Affordable care Act, had the option to keep said plan.

Honest data. No fake news.

Grandfathered plans are those that existed prior to the implementation of Obamacare. Those where the "if you like your plan you an keep it" plans. Many insurers decided as early on that they would phase these plans out. They weren't required to continue offering them, and it made more economic sense for the carrier to offer a single suite of plans rather than maintaining two platforms: one for grandfathered plans and another for non-grandfathered plans. That was the big news a few years back with individuals receiving cancellation notices on their policies.

For carriers that maintained grandfathered plans, they started to heat up the premiums on them so employers and individuals would choose to move off those plans. Factor in age banded pricing in the individual and small group markets, and the pricing for many of those plans really heated up.

Carriers have continued to phase them out, slowed a bit by some transitional relief provided by HHS, allowing "grandmothered" plans (pnon-ACA compliant plans that some people enrolled in between March 2010 and October 2013) to renew up until October 1, 2016 and remain in force as late as September 30, 2017. There weren't that many folks that hung on to those plans anyway, since it was left up to states whether to allow the grandmothered plans to stick around, and many states decided not to participate in the transitional relief and dumped those plans at the end of 2013.

Once that transitional relief runs out, those plans will be gone. That means that there may still be a handful of grandfathered plans still out there in the individual or group markets. If so, folks are paying through the nose for them, and that - as Finn likes to say - just isn't sustainable.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-me...-plan-keep-it/

http://acasignups.net/16/03/24/how-m...-around-anyway

https://www.verywell.com/things-you-...-plans-3886397

[Oerets]

Little will improve our healthcare system until a comprehensive overhaul of the costs are addressed. Little chance of that happening until the greedy b@sterds suck us dry.

Other countries are able to negotiate rates with positive results, not this country!

Barney

[MrPots]

Originally Posted by Oerets

Little will improve our healthcare system until a comprehensive overhaul of the costs are addressed. Little chance of that happening until the greedy b@sterds suck us dry.

Other countries are able to negotiate rates with positive results, not this country!

Barney

Yup...

[Dondilion]

Originally Posted by donquixote99

Well, few would deny that Hitler was a fascist...as is Trump.



read on here: Trump Is an Eerily Perfect Match With a Famous 14-Point Guide to Identify Fascist Leaders

In the Comment section: Mikekrohde lays down some awesome observations--one of which..."we will to do better than call people names to change this dynamic".

[donquixote99]

Originally Posted by Dondilion

In the Comment section: Mikekrohde lays down some awesome observations--one of which..."we will to do better than call people names to change this dynamic".

Meh. Just a rant that says 'sure trump's full of shit but YOU are full of more shit." Disagree with many of his points. And it's a lot easier to say 'we have to do better' than to make any actual proposals for what 'better' might be.

Guys with his bundle of attitudes will just sit around and throw stones at any ideas for 'better' that come along....

The most 'better' we can hope for right now is it's 'better' if we can limit the damage. That involves understanding how bad the damage can get.

How bad it get was shown in an op-ed in the Trump-owned NY Observer. The writer posits a wide and deep conspiracy behind protests against Trump, Black Lives Matter, and the recount efforts. George Soros is mentioned, and it's suggested that the FBI start investigating everyone in sight. In other words, the FBI becomes, blatantly, the 'political police,' and dissent in criminalized.

This in the paper owned by Ivanka Trump's husband. Red flag.

[Tom Joad]

Originally Posted by Oerets

Little will improve our healthcare system until a comprehensive overhaul of the costs are addressed. Little chance of that happening until the greedy b@sterds suck us dry.

Other countries are able to negotiate rates with positive results, not this country!

Barney

This is true.

Doctors, hospitals, drug companies, medical supply providers, etc. all grossly overcharge for their goods and services. And our bought and paid for Politicians enable them.

[Tom Joad]

http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsro...on-drug-prices

WASHINGTON, Dec. 6 – Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) proposed an amendment Tuesday to lower the cost of prescription drugs by letting Medicare negotiate drug prices and allowing for the importation from other countries of low-cost prescription drugs – both proposals advocated by President-elect Donald Trump.

Republicans blocked the Sanders amendment.

continue

[nailer]

Originally Posted by Tom Joad

http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsro...on-drug-prices



continue

If Trump is the guy you want him to be this is the type of issue he could use to build a working coalition when the new Congress is seated.