Now Rump wants to withhold funds for MN and CA. My friend has cancer and her state sponsored health care is most likely partially funded with these monies. I guess he just wants people to die. We all know that it is retribution for being blue states. And they did not want a woman in office because we're "too emotional".
Sen. Kim's proposal is - adjective - [awesome, brilliant, why-hasn't-anyone-proposed-this-before].
On an allied note, and I know that this might shock people who think the AMA is perfect, this belief that privatized health care is better is just bullshit. Truly, the dinosaurs at AMA spouting this crap need to get out of the way. For example, when CDC developed the Vaccines for Children program (VFC) the AMA and the pharma industry went ballistic about VFC destroying the prices of vaccines. The poor whiny shits in pharma would never make a profit. Anyhow, using unpublished pricing data prior to, and subsequent to, VFC, an unknown economist at CDC determined that prior to VFC childhood vaccine prices were falling. Post VFC, the "public" price led to a stabilization and then an increase in prices paid to pharma. Why? Right off the bat, VFC started vaccinating about 50-60% of all children in the USA and the vaccinated population of children rose dramatically. Pediatric offices started carrying vaccines for all children. Pharma now had a stable demand for pediatric vaccines and were able to adjust supply because, using the birth rates, they were able to forecast demand. Nothing like a stabilized market to create profit.
I'd say that Sen. Kim's proposal would have very much the same effect. PLUS on average, health care for children is incredible cheap as compared with health care for older adults. This might reduce the costs of Medicare for everyone.
Nearly half the US population spends virtually nothing on healthcare each year and about 5% account for half of all spending, mostly for chronic conditions like diabetes, emphysema, heart disease and cancer. There is more than enough money sloshing around in the private healthcare/health insurance industry to pay for Medicare-for-All for the foreseeable future by redirecting insurance premiums/health plan contributions into a single-payer system.
"It's just awful that parents' poor choices have bad consequences for their children. Children deserve parents who will take care of them. Say, did I ever tell you the story of the Black kid who asked for a brown-bag lunch?"
> ... that unions will lose something they bargained for ...
This, in particular, is the dumbest thing I have heard of. Unions fought for weekends for their workers... and then, when *everyone* got weekends, they celebrated, and figured out the *next* thing they would fight for.
Union movements in New England also created the ground work for public education. So when the GOP goes ape shit over vouchers for private schools they are admitting that there should be an uneducated pool of workers they can exploit to the max. Hmmm, sounds like slave labor to me.
Yeah like blaming kids for when adults abuse them. That man wouldn’t have touched you, Johnny, if you didn’t give off signals of being such a sissy. Or, it’s your own fault, Sally, God is punishing you for the sin in your heart because you shouldn’t have been so lustful when daddy came home. I could just fucking spit.
Do other countries look at the United States like one might view a National Geographic presentation about the discovery of a lost civilization that still worships strange gods and appeases them with child sacrifice, and risks dying out because they’re letting the plague run rampant out of 1) greed and 2) distrust of manmade science? Like do we need to get David Attenborough to narrate a documentary about the rulers of this land called “Magatopia” who lent praise to the Fox-headed deity called Mammon, while the common clay of the earth sought to cast out demons from their children and cure them of disease by feeding them colloidal silver obtained from the Great and Powerful Dr. Oz who spoke to them late at night from the glow box?
I've neglected my annual appointments and am getting them done now. I've also developed a new and debilitating spinal/nerve problem, so it feels like I've pulled both my hamstrings and I can't stand up straight.
So I've been dealing with a lot of medical professionals. That is not a happy group of people.
I go to the clinics owned by my insurance company. I buy my insurance directly from the company, on the individual market though not through the exchanges. My policy is pre-ACA and is in many ways far better than comparable policies available now. My deductible is $10,000, but that's also the Out-Of-Pocket maximum, and I can insure my kids up to age 29. My son now has a city job so he has his own coverage and I've dropped him. I'm stunned my insurer hasn't canceled the plan and forced me into the crap "Bronze" policies they like to sell.
It took weeks to get prior authorization for an MRI on my spine. Another four weeks to get approval for a spinal steroid injection (which didn't work). So now it seems likely I won't get approved for anything until after 1/1/2027, when my plan year renews. Surgery seems likely, and with my OOP the same as my deductible, they'll want me paying the first $10,000 of that.
The doctors and nurses for my annual physical, annual eye exam and now all this spinal nerve bullshit speak openly about how much they hate AI being used for prior authorization. They tell me to contact them through the website via "tele-health," saying they won't submit billing for it as they're supposed to. They're giving me "sample" medications for free. They're playing games with the coding, to escalate the priority of the prior authorizations.
I live in a city that's known for lots of healthcare, and access to it. In rural areas, healthcare is simply gone. Where my mother lives, she can see her regular doctor, but no specialists visit anymore. The hospital is basically an urgent care attached to the nursing home. There's a state of the art cancer center because all the farmers poisoned by ag chemicals are dying of cancer, but for anything else it's a 110-mile, one-way trip to Sioux Falls, SD. Any pregnancy not completely routine is being sent on that trip, which is scary at times in the winter.
This system is collapsing, right in front of us, in real time. And it's about 20% of US GDP. They'll have their "crackup boom," where they rake in the dough right before it all shuts down, and it's looking like that's the point where we are.
This is a no-brainer, but then again so is universal healthcare for everybody, and Americans just can't quite figure it out. They hear some flowery words about capitalism and competition, and then they vote for snake oil salesmen and scam artists.
More likely they hear “socialism” and it activates them like sleeper agents. It all starts with communist healthcare, and then before you know it we’re all having to duck under our desks because the Soviets are going to bomb us to kingdom come.
That's literally what Ronald Reagan was claiming about Medicare in 1964 when he was a paid shill for the AMA. The fact is that healthcare is the prime example of a segment of the economy where market capitalism simply does not work. Nobody goes shopping for who's going to treat their cancer cheapest or what ER to choose when having a heart attack. Healthcare needs to be socialized, and in fact it would cost everyone a lot less to have universal healthcare instead of the truly dumbass employment-based model we have now.
OT: Norfolk Naval Shipyard managers were under investigation for demanding oral sex from female employees and denying raises and promotions to Black Women, in a case that threatened their $8B in federal payments. Then Trump was anointed...
Ta, Robyn. Like you, neither my husband nor I had children. He, however, taught English as a New Language (formerly second language) in Brooklyn NY so he's helped zillions of kids learn not only to read (his specialty) and write, but also acculturated them to their brand new surroundings. Coincidentally, he got a call not long ago from his last principal, then spoke with the man they hope is the new ENL teacher. We both support our tax dollars taking care of kids, all kids. Good public schools and universal health care for the win.
When I was in grade/high school (1953-66) we actually did have healthcare in our schools, at least where I lived. We had full time school nurses. When sick, the nurse would check us out. If we had any symptoms like fever or vomiting, they would immediately send us to a doc. Now, I have no idea who the docs were. But me and my five siblings went through this process multiple times.
Like meals. Which they're doing in Minnesota now, thanks to Gov. Walz (who used to be a teacher, don't forget).
Republicans screamed blue murder about it at the time. Now, election season is in full froth and with the complicity of the media they're screaming about "fraud."
But not a word about serving all kids breakfast and lunch. That's so popular, even Minnesota Republicans aren't stupid enough to mention that anymore.
Yep. Now you have to take your kid out of school to go to the doctor’s office, which means your kid is missing a half day of school and you’re missing a half day of work. Complete madness.
"Everybody warned me not to stick my dick in the meat grinder. But I know how much smarter I am than they are, and I just had to show them. So I stuck my dick in the meat grinder and cranked the dial to full. But I haven't had my dick in the meat grinder nearly as long as other Presidents have, at least not yet."
I think we should add the 700,000+ preventable deaths caused by the DOGE cuts to Trumps total. He's responsible for more dead than all the wars on that list combined.
Now Rump wants to withhold funds for MN and CA. My friend has cancer and her state sponsored health care is most likely partially funded with these monies. I guess he just wants people to die. We all know that it is retribution for being blue states. And they did not want a woman in office because we're "too emotional".
Fuck this regime. And fuck cancer.
Sen. Kim's proposal is - adjective - [awesome, brilliant, why-hasn't-anyone-proposed-this-before].
On an allied note, and I know that this might shock people who think the AMA is perfect, this belief that privatized health care is better is just bullshit. Truly, the dinosaurs at AMA spouting this crap need to get out of the way. For example, when CDC developed the Vaccines for Children program (VFC) the AMA and the pharma industry went ballistic about VFC destroying the prices of vaccines. The poor whiny shits in pharma would never make a profit. Anyhow, using unpublished pricing data prior to, and subsequent to, VFC, an unknown economist at CDC determined that prior to VFC childhood vaccine prices were falling. Post VFC, the "public" price led to a stabilization and then an increase in prices paid to pharma. Why? Right off the bat, VFC started vaccinating about 50-60% of all children in the USA and the vaccinated population of children rose dramatically. Pediatric offices started carrying vaccines for all children. Pharma now had a stable demand for pediatric vaccines and were able to adjust supply because, using the birth rates, they were able to forecast demand. Nothing like a stabilized market to create profit.
I'd say that Sen. Kim's proposal would have very much the same effect. PLUS on average, health care for children is incredible cheap as compared with health care for older adults. This might reduce the costs of Medicare for everyone.
Nearly half the US population spends virtually nothing on healthcare each year and about 5% account for half of all spending, mostly for chronic conditions like diabetes, emphysema, heart disease and cancer. There is more than enough money sloshing around in the private healthcare/health insurance industry to pay for Medicare-for-All for the foreseeable future by redirecting insurance premiums/health plan contributions into a single-payer system.
Just another communist Democrat plot to make Muricans dependent on the gubmint.
𝘙𝘦𝘱𝘶𝘣𝘭𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘯𝘴 𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘥𝘢 𝘨𝘦𝘵 𝘰𝘧𝘧 𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘢 𝘰𝘧 𝘢𝘥𝘶𝘭𝘵𝘴 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘣𝘦𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘢𝘧𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘥 𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘵𝘩𝘤𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘴 𝘢 𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘶𝘭𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘬𝘦𝘥 𝘩𝘢𝘳𝘥 𝘦𝘯𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩, 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘪𝘵’𝘴 𝘢 𝘴𝘮𝘪𝘥𝘨𝘦 𝘩𝘢𝘳𝘥𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘰 𝘮𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘢𝘳𝘨𝘶𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘪𝘵 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘥𝘳𝘦𝘯.
Not for them, it isn't:
"It's just awful that parents' poor choices have bad consequences for their children. Children deserve parents who will take care of them. Say, did I ever tell you the story of the Black kid who asked for a brown-bag lunch?"
> ... that unions will lose something they bargained for ...
This, in particular, is the dumbest thing I have heard of. Unions fought for weekends for their workers... and then, when *everyone* got weekends, they celebrated, and figured out the *next* thing they would fight for.
Union movements in New England also created the ground work for public education. So when the GOP goes ape shit over vouchers for private schools they are admitting that there should be an uneducated pool of workers they can exploit to the max. Hmmm, sounds like slave labor to me.
I hope Andy Kim, rocks it gently, rocks it slowly, takes it easy, don't you know, that kids have never been on Medicare before....
"Just die" was good enough for my great-grandpappy, and "Just die" is good enough . . . hey, waitaminute . . .
OT: Meeting the Republican need for more slaves and cannon-fodder...
"The Trump administration has abruptly terminated federal grants for teen pregnancy reduction programs.
New guidance requires future grant recipients to push abstinence as the only tool for teen pregnancy prevention."
https://bsky.app/profile/factpostnews.bsky.social/post/3mrao35odtd2o
So fucking ridiculous.
And it will all be framed in Christofascist indoctrination bullshit.
Yeah like blaming kids for when adults abuse them. That man wouldn’t have touched you, Johnny, if you didn’t give off signals of being such a sissy. Or, it’s your own fault, Sally, God is punishing you for the sin in your heart because you shouldn’t have been so lustful when daddy came home. I could just fucking spit.
you got that right.
Abstinence was good enough for the MEN IN THE EPSTEIN FILES wasn’t it? 🤬
Do other countries look at the United States like one might view a National Geographic presentation about the discovery of a lost civilization that still worships strange gods and appeases them with child sacrifice, and risks dying out because they’re letting the plague run rampant out of 1) greed and 2) distrust of manmade science? Like do we need to get David Attenborough to narrate a documentary about the rulers of this land called “Magatopia” who lent praise to the Fox-headed deity called Mammon, while the common clay of the earth sought to cast out demons from their children and cure them of disease by feeding them colloidal silver obtained from the Great and Powerful Dr. Oz who spoke to them late at night from the glow box?
Comment from a World Cup fan visiting the US:
"This is the nicest third-world country I've been to!"
I've neglected my annual appointments and am getting them done now. I've also developed a new and debilitating spinal/nerve problem, so it feels like I've pulled both my hamstrings and I can't stand up straight.
So I've been dealing with a lot of medical professionals. That is not a happy group of people.
I go to the clinics owned by my insurance company. I buy my insurance directly from the company, on the individual market though not through the exchanges. My policy is pre-ACA and is in many ways far better than comparable policies available now. My deductible is $10,000, but that's also the Out-Of-Pocket maximum, and I can insure my kids up to age 29. My son now has a city job so he has his own coverage and I've dropped him. I'm stunned my insurer hasn't canceled the plan and forced me into the crap "Bronze" policies they like to sell.
It took weeks to get prior authorization for an MRI on my spine. Another four weeks to get approval for a spinal steroid injection (which didn't work). So now it seems likely I won't get approved for anything until after 1/1/2027, when my plan year renews. Surgery seems likely, and with my OOP the same as my deductible, they'll want me paying the first $10,000 of that.
The doctors and nurses for my annual physical, annual eye exam and now all this spinal nerve bullshit speak openly about how much they hate AI being used for prior authorization. They tell me to contact them through the website via "tele-health," saying they won't submit billing for it as they're supposed to. They're giving me "sample" medications for free. They're playing games with the coding, to escalate the priority of the prior authorizations.
I live in a city that's known for lots of healthcare, and access to it. In rural areas, healthcare is simply gone. Where my mother lives, she can see her regular doctor, but no specialists visit anymore. The hospital is basically an urgent care attached to the nursing home. There's a state of the art cancer center because all the farmers poisoned by ag chemicals are dying of cancer, but for anything else it's a 110-mile, one-way trip to Sioux Falls, SD. Any pregnancy not completely routine is being sent on that trip, which is scary at times in the winter.
This system is collapsing, right in front of us, in real time. And it's about 20% of US GDP. They'll have their "crackup boom," where they rake in the dough right before it all shuts down, and it's looking like that's the point where we are.
This is a no-brainer, but then again so is universal healthcare for everybody, and Americans just can't quite figure it out. They hear some flowery words about capitalism and competition, and then they vote for snake oil salesmen and scam artists.
More likely they hear “socialism” and it activates them like sleeper agents. It all starts with communist healthcare, and then before you know it we’re all having to duck under our desks because the Soviets are going to bomb us to kingdom come.
That's literally what Ronald Reagan was claiming about Medicare in 1964 when he was a paid shill for the AMA. The fact is that healthcare is the prime example of a segment of the economy where market capitalism simply does not work. Nobody goes shopping for who's going to treat their cancer cheapest or what ER to choose when having a heart attack. Healthcare needs to be socialized, and in fact it would cost everyone a lot less to have universal healthcare instead of the truly dumbass employment-based model we have now.
OT: Norfolk Naval Shipyard managers were under investigation for demanding oral sex from female employees and denying raises and promotions to Black Women, in a case that threatened their $8B in federal payments. Then Trump was anointed...
𝗧𝗿𝘂𝗺𝗽 𝗴𝘂𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗰𝗶𝘃𝗶𝗹 𝗿𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁𝘀 𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗻𝗰𝘆, 𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗳𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝗻𝘃𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗴𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗼 𝗡𝗼𝗿𝗳𝗼𝗹𝗸’𝘀 𝗕𝗔𝗘 𝗦𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺𝘀
https://www.pilotonline.com/2026/07/20/trump-gutted-civil-rights-agency/
And this case is probably just the tip of the iceberg. Makes me nauseous.
Damn!!!!
To put it very mildly.
Can't those lazy kids just get jobs?
Ta, Robyn. Like you, neither my husband nor I had children. He, however, taught English as a New Language (formerly second language) in Brooklyn NY so he's helped zillions of kids learn not only to read (his specialty) and write, but also acculturated them to their brand new surroundings. Coincidentally, he got a call not long ago from his last principal, then spoke with the man they hope is the new ENL teacher. We both support our tax dollars taking care of kids, all kids. Good public schools and universal health care for the win.
In a rational world you’d also just provide health care to kids when they’re at school.
When I was in grade/high school (1953-66) we actually did have healthcare in our schools, at least where I lived. We had full time school nurses. When sick, the nurse would check us out. If we had any symptoms like fever or vomiting, they would immediately send us to a doc. Now, I have no idea who the docs were. But me and my five siblings went through this process multiple times.
GOP solution: Ban schools.
Like meals. Which they're doing in Minnesota now, thanks to Gov. Walz (who used to be a teacher, don't forget).
Republicans screamed blue murder about it at the time. Now, election season is in full froth and with the complicity of the media they're screaming about "fraud."
But not a word about serving all kids breakfast and lunch. That's so popular, even Minnesota Republicans aren't stupid enough to mention that anymore.
In the '60's, we got our vaccinations at school, free dental exams, vision and hearing tests, and always had an RN on the premises.
Yep. Now you have to take your kid out of school to go to the doctor’s office, which means your kid is missing a half day of school and you’re missing a half day of work. Complete madness.
They do that in other countries, nurture the whole child, which includes family and mental health resources.
Robyn's number one qualification? She is not a sociopath.
She likes to watch them though, as evidenced by her Real Housewives viewing mentions.
It's noticeable.
OT: JFC...
"Trump offers sales pitch for his war"
https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3mr6oko74cs26
He's out to beat every one of those stats. Just pisses him off that not enough soldiers are dead on his watch.
It's going to get much, much worse. I predict casualties so high they won't be able to hide it.
The foreign press is already more accurate in its reporting of U.S. casualties and the destruction of military facilities in the ME.
He's pretty pleased with how they are hiding the casualties.
"Everybody warned me not to stick my dick in the meat grinder. But I know how much smarter I am than they are, and I just had to show them. So I stuck my dick in the meat grinder and cranked the dial to full. But I haven't had my dick in the meat grinder nearly as long as other Presidents have, at least not yet."
It's just not that compelling of an argument.
"My death numbers are the best."
I think we should add the 700,000+ preventable deaths caused by the DOGE cuts to Trumps total. He's responsible for more dead than all the wars on that list combined.
Don't forget America's COVID deaths!
One death is too many in this pointless war.
One stubbed toe is too many.
Gotta get those numbers up.
"Half off on President's Day!!"