Health Care Politics Thread

[dteowner]

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/pub..._events/healthcare/march_2010/health_care_law

Three weeks after Congress passed its new national health care plan, support for repeal of the measure has risen four points to 58%. That includes 50% of U.S. voters who strongly favor repeal.

By my math, that means somewhere in the vicinity of 10% of those "repeal" votes come from Barack supporters. When your own party thinks it's a turd, that might be a pretty good hint that it's a turd.

 

[Thrasher]

Questionable source DTE.. Still I think it is crap because it doesn't do enough right…

Rasmussen Reports

TIME has described Rasmussen Reports as a "conservative-leaning polling group".[10] Democratic Party activists have pointed out that Scott Rasmussen was a paid consultant for the 2004 George W. Bush campaign.[11] According to Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight.com, while there are no apparent records of Scott Rasmussen or Rasmussen Reports making contributions to political candidates and its public election polls are generally regarded as reliable, "some observers have questioned its issue-based polling, which frequently tends to elicit responses that are more conservative than those found on other national surveys."[12].

 

[Rithrandil]

Again, Thrasher, as someone who was touted the staff of the Democratic Caucus as an unbiased and legitimate source, I'm not sure you really are capable of judging objectively.

Edit:

Also -
http://www.slate.com/id/2110860/
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB116360961928023945-NgMgbTwNTEbcTx_C47luM8eH8lM_20071115.html

Seems like they are usually at or near the top in accuracy.

Edit edit:

You should also quote one of the last little lines of the Wikipedia article: Near the end of the 2008 Presidential Election, progressive statistician Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com analyzed the eight national presidential tracking polls. Silver concluded that while none were perfect, "Rasmussen — with its large sample size and high pollster rating — would probably be the one I'd want with me on a desert island."[23]

 

[Thrasher]

The wiki did the judging, not me. There's objective for you. Try looking elsewhere before starting with the silly accusations again.

 

[dteowner]

You really should read your own damn references, Thrasher. From YOUR wiki link:

However, after the election, they concluded that Rasmussen’s polls were among the most accurate in the 2004 presidential election.[22] Near the end of the 2008 Presidential Election, progressive statistician Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com analyzed the eight national presidential tracking polls. Silver concluded that while none were perfect, "Rasmussen -- with its large sample size and high pollster rating -- would probably be the one I'd want with me on a desert island."[23]

Once again, if it doesn't line up with the Gospel According to Thrasher, it's a biased source. What a simple world you live in.

 

[Rithrandil]

Questionable source DTE.. Still I think it is crap because it doesn't do enough right…

Rasmussen Reports

The wiki did the judging, not me. There's objective for you. Try looking elsewhere before starting with the silly accusations again.

Those two quotes do not match. You said it was a questionable source. You didn't even quote key parts of the Wikipedia article or do any digging of your own.

Silly accusations? Again, you said the Democratic congressional staff was an unbiased source. You only question sources that don't line up perfectly with you. I don't recall either dte or I pish-poshing HuffPo even if we disagree with their conclusions.

Again, thrasher, intellectual honesty would be appreciated.

 

[Thrasher]

Rith, where did I say Democratic congressional staff was unbiased?

It seems that the reliability of Rasmussen reports is in question becasue of conflicting judgements on the Wiki. surprise...

 

[Thrasher]

Just about any source is questionable. We need to question the sources rather than accepting them as blind truth. That is all I am saying.

 

[dteowner]

And yet, somehow this whole discussion only comes up when there's a source that disagrees with your viewpoint. Somehow, I haven't heard you question Michael Moore. Somehow, I've never heard you discuss potential bias at Huff-Po. Somehow, Fox News gets a cute nickname but MSNBC doesn't. Glenn Beck is a fraud, but Keith Olbermann is a prophet.

Why might that be? Notice the trend?

@Rith- well crap the bed, boy, outside of wanting to limit the size and scope of federal government, yer damn near communist. (funny thing is that, outside of a few profoundly fascist positions, I probably line up best with the blue dog dems—don't tell PJ, it will totally mess up his world )

 

[Thrasher]

When have I ever quoted Michael Moore, or better yet when has his name came up except when you accuse me of echoing his viewpoints? I have had my viewpoints YEARS b4 he came on stage…

I reserve the right to call out corporate toadies when I see them, just as you have the right to call out any inaccuracies elsewhere…

I'm on a mission to remove the corporate shackles on america and you want to strengthen their evil dominion.

 

[dteowner]

And yet you gleefully trot out "Faux News" regularly without giving MSNBC equal treatment. Why might that be? On the rare occasions when you offer supporting evidence, you've used Huff-Po without any mention of their potential bias. Why might that be?

Intellectual integrity. Try it, you might like it.

 

[Thrasher]

Well I am of the opinion that the bullshit factor is much higher on Faux News based on my intellectual integrity. Where's yours?

 

[magerette]

To get back to the original point—not that I don't enjoy watching you boys have at it, because I always do— I think arguing with Rasmuessen in this case is futile. There's not much upside to the HCR passage—-and Obama's daily approval has hit a higher disapprove than approve (45-48)for the first time over at Gallop, which has been fairly generous regarding his approval ratings:

http://www.gallup.com/poll/113980/Gallup-Daily-Obama-Job-Approval.aspx

Here's the exact same sort of poll (not repeal, but approve/disaprove)on healthcare:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/127025/One-Week-Later-Americans-Divided-Healthcare.aspx showing much the same sentiments.
So while Rasmuessen has a slight house lean to the right—not a dramatic one, usually a point or two—in this case, their numbers don't look particularly suspect. It's a very unpopular bill, and deservedly so from left or right perspective, plus it continues to get tons of misinformation and bad press, so I don't look for feelings about it to be too sunny any time soon.

 

[Thrasher]

Not surprising since it was my first impression that it was a pile of dung with a few diamonds sprinkled throughout. It's a first step. And I think we all can agree that it needs to be fixed?

 

[dteowner]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100423/ap_on_bi_ge/us_health_care_law_costs

Study comes out of Barack's own administration, so we'll get out front of Thrasher's obligatory dismissal of inconvenient truths before he pulls it.

Republicans said the findings validate their concerns about Obama's 10-year, nearly $1 trillion plan to remake the nation's health care system.

As was pointed out in another thread, it's not obstruction if the bill really, truly, is a turd.

 

[magerette]

Well, we've been saying all along it doesn't do anything substantial to reduce costs, though it does increase coverage pretty efficiently. Perhaps the other side can have a shot at helping to figure out how to do that instead of hollering about death panels and pulling the plug on Grandma. It's a shame the bill is so shitty when it could have been a really important step forward, but even a baby step is better than refusing to move.

I don't suppose you get any comfort from this:

The report found that the president's law missed the mark, although not by much. The overhaul will increase national health care spending by $311 billion from 2010-2019, or nine-tenths of 1 percent. To put that in perspective, total health care spending during the decade is estimated to surpass $35 trillion.

For our Congress, that's seriously "reining in spending."

 

[Thrasher]

DTE, that's not news, we already knew that, as Mags said. I've already said that it is a form of corporate welfare for health insurance companies...

 

[dteowner]

http://dailycaller.com/2010/04/28/why-waxman-really-canceled-his-health-care-‘show-trial’/

After planning to embarass the corporations that wrote down billion dollar losses thanks to Obamacare, Waxman is quietly pulling a "my bad". From the horse's mouth:

Waxman, in calling off the investigation into the companies, released a staff memo saying the companies had properly disclosed their new tax burdens to investors.

Worse yet, he finds that a certain resident genius was fully justified to get downright foamy about this turd of a bill and the stinky lies it was dressed in:

Most significantly, documents unearthed by the investigation highlight companies that are considering dumping employees from their current health-care plans in the face of new costs from the health-care law. President Obama repeatedly promised his health-care law would let Americans keep their current insurance if they’re happy with it.

Somebody roll some Joe Wilson.

 

[Thrasher]

Damn. They should have made it illegal to drop people rather than come up with the an arbitrary penalty for doing so.

 

[magerette]

Unfortunately, that's a claim Obama should never have made, though it isn't as false as Daily Caller wants you to believe. FactCheck.org went into it back when he first made it, and I think summarizes it the best:

He also repeated a promise he can’t make to everyone.

Obama: If you like your plan, you can keep your plan. If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.

Sure, that’s true for the most part. The bill doesn’t aim to change employer-sponsored insurance, and those who buy their own insurance can keep those plans through a grandfather clause. But there’s going to be some movement that’s out of the hands of some individual Americans.

The CBO estimated that 8 million to 9 million people who would normally be expected to have insurance through their jobs wouldn’t be offered coverage from their employers. CBO added that firms that dropped coverage would likely be smaller employers that mainly hire low-income workers, who would be eligible to receive subsidies to purchase their own coverage. Other individuals would gain employer-sponsored coverage under the bill. The net change for employer-offered insurance would be a decrease of 4 million people by 2019.

Here's some more of their more current debunking about teh microchips and so forth, just since we're talking about it:
http://www.factcheck.org/2010/04/more-malarkey-about-health-care/

AFA Waxman's beef about the company claims, I've heard a lot of different talking heads try to explain this tax/benefit loss thing; some have said it's due to a mandated change in benefits accounting(loss of accounting loopholes or something), some have said, as the DC does here, that it's passing taxes along in premium costs, thus bringing total costs too high for employers, some have said other stuff, including your own point I believe that the fines are cheaper than providing coverage.

The article seems fairly on board with a rational explanation, afaict, other than not mentioning if , for example, you have BC/BS coverage at work now and your employer dumps it, you should still be able to get comparable BC/BS coverage on the exchanges. That's the theory, anyway.