Why do dems continue to lose?

chances are Democrats will win more Senate and House seats in 2018.

especially if TrumpCare proves to be absolute crap and Trump keeps ****ing up

 

Yeah.

The 111th Congress had:
Senate 58 Dems, 42 GOP.
House 258 Dems, 157 GOP

The 115th Congress has:
Senate 48 Dems, 52 GOP
House 194 Dems, 241 GOP

So, from the start of Obama's to the start of Trump's presidency, it appears you folks have lost 10 Senate seats and 64 House seats.

Why do you think that is?

The 2016 election was the first re-election of the Senate gains we enjoyed in the transformative 2010 election, and I have to be real honest with you, it doesn't look like we gave much back.

 

This isn't an answer to the issue. I'm not asking about cost. I'm asking about how many people don't have health insurance.

The issue was that the people would see an increase in their paycheck. If single payer just turns out to be neutral then what does it offer?

You seem to be saying that the health care we receive should be cost based, right? Then exactly what level of care do you think the single payer system should provide? *Will* wee need death panels?

When you socialize medicine the doctors all work for the goverment. Who are you going to pay for a private procedure?

How about because America is *NOT* any other Western Democracy?

How many grandma's does Medicare turn down for a pacemaker?

You are living in the 70's, not today. Here is a graph of the labor force participation rate for those 25 and over with a college degree.





Fewer and fewer college graduates get jobs today. It doesn't appear that the slope of the decrease is slowing much.

 

Are you going to raise the retirement age for the coal miner? For the garbage collector? For those that the physicality of the job wears them out by 65? George Bush had a coherent plan to fix SS. The Marxist Democrats killed it -- and have offered not one single solitary thing as their solution. They were even willing to let SSDI go bankrupt in 2016. Thank Pete the GOP saw fit to fix it!

Medicaid is supposed to be a final safety net for the indigent, disabled, and the sick. Today half of all babies are born under Medicaid. How about we put some restrictions on Medicaid. It was never meant to offer the same level of health care a rich man can afford, but that *is* what the expectation is today! Medicare? Medicare only pays 80% today. In a decade its going bankrupt and will only pay about 50%. It's going to turn out to be self-limiting!

I am simply amazed at the lack of knowledge people have about the Great Recession. The ROOT CAUSE was the Marxist Democrats trying to equalize outcome by giving houses to those who couldn't afford their mortgages. When those mortgages went into default they brought the housing bubble to an abrupt halt. The housing market tanked.

The big banks had been buying up securities from the small banks and lending institutions based on the AAA rating of most of them. Then the big banks took out CDS's with insurance companies like AIG. When the entire housing market collapsed all those securities became toxic. And the insurance companies simply didn't have the reserves to pay off on the insurance policies. That's why when companies like AIG got TARP loans, the big banks paid *their* TARP loans back so quickly and with interest!

Repeal of Glass-Steagall had almost nothing to do with the financial problems. Not a single depositor in any bank had their accounts affected at all. Only investors who already should have known that their money was at risk were affected.

The sad thing? The sad thing that no one is talking about? Obama prevailed on Fannie to start something called the HomeReady program. The 3% down payment can be entirely borrowed money. And the income requirement can be totally met by the borrower by listing out the income of others, not their own. The housing bubble all over again! Go look it up!

The truth is out there all over the internet. You only have to go looking for it. You are confusing cause and effect. The *cause* was the Marxist Democrat housing bubble. The effect was the financial crisis. No cause. No effect!

Once you get above about $125K most people's income is unearned and is not touched by an income tax. You simply won't generate the money you will need with an income tax on the top 5%.

There is *NO* middle ground. The day we started taxing capital gains is the day we started limiting our economic growth. It's like the business tax. Do you think shareholders pay the business tax? HINT: They don't! The business income tax is an EXPENSE. As an expense it gets loaded into the pricing equation just like any expense. So who pays it? THE CONSUMER. The government merely uses business as a mask to tax you even more! It's why the business tax should be totally eliminated. If the government needs more money then they should increase their direct taxes on income. That way the people will actually understand what they are paying.

Places like Hong Kong have no capital gains tax and is a growing economy the envy of the world. But not us. All the Marxist Democrats can think of is that they need more and more money to create their Marxist utopia.[/QUOTE]

 

The grandma on medicare will likely never be turned down for a peacemaker; but you also mentioned a knee replacement...

If single payer costs the same out of your check as private insurance, which I argue it would likely not (or at least not rise as fast) considering every other country that does this pays less for healthcare than we do as a percentage of their GDP, it would still be a boon for American people: healthcare won't be tied to your job; which allows for greater mobility for the workforce. The private industry needs to turn a profit; the government needs to break even; thus the likelihood of large overhead costs (as we see in private insurance; compared with public insurance) associated with the private system as opposed to the public - what this means is resources can be used more efficiently; seeing as a larger share of the pie can go towards actual healthcare - and perhaps not every American might not see it immediately, perhaps initially most of those savings will be used to care for those people who never could afford to see a doctor regularly for checkups now will, but that in itself is a public good, as we know regular doctor visits catch and solve problems that could be far more expensive down-the-road.

read this;

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...alth-care-is-so-expensive-insurance-companies

Yes; when you raise the retirement age; it should be for everyone. We can start it with my generation - I'm 31. I'm not looking to take away anything from people that already paid and planned for the current structure; I'm saying we make the change now, for the future, for everyone under say 35. And I anticipate that we will have socialized medicine by the time I'll be collecting anyway; so medicaid will be replaced.

Part of social security's problem is demographics. The baby boomers are retiring and we'll need to make adjustments for that. But I do not favor the privatizing of social security or 'voluntary contributions'. I am not interested in directly linking social security (or voluntary retirement accounts) with the stock market, which was at the heart of the Bush plan.

The hard truth is; we will likely have to cut benefits and raise revenues to cover the boomer generation. Nobody wants to say that because combining those two is universally unpopular.

Like with any major event; there are many interpretations. For sure Fannie & Freddie played a role; but solely blame Liberals in government for housing programs is, by any account, a completely one-sided view of the crises.

read this;

http://www.economist.com/news/schoo...risis-are-still-being-felt-five-years-article

I find it interesting you cite Hong Kong. They've also got socialized medicine. Hong Kong might be the most Free Market space in the world; yet still embrace socialized medicine because of its functionality; because it works. Seems like they've found middle ground between socialism and capitalism that works. Why can't we?

If you want to eliminate the capital gains tax in exchange for socialized medicine; I'd be on board. Sounds like a fair compromise.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nathan-lewis/does-hong-kong-have-the-w_b_299907.html

read this;

 

First off, you carve too much. Context is necessary. I don't mind the line-by-line responses and even the occasional unpacking of sentences; but I do think you would do better not to separate "Perhaps my position is" with the second half of the sentence which entailed my position. But maybe you were just having fun.

I only brought up Obama because your article cited him. And yes, Freedom and Liberty are broad topics; which is why I prefer to argue specificities. I'm not interested in your grandiose musings on freedom; I'm interested in the water coming out of my tap; is it safe? If not; why not? And more specifically, the battle over regulation of our waterways is about interpretation of the law. Perhaps the previous administration's interpretation is not the consensus view; perhaps they had the minority opinion. But the reality it; this administration when walking that back did not do so because it was right, they did so because it was of personal benefit to them via the people that bankrolled them;

Lets call things what they are; this wasn't about what's right for America; this was about what's right for Dow Chemical and the people who depend on them for contributions. Say what you will about Obama's interpretation of the Federal government's role for protecting our waterways; he might've overstepped his bounds. But the reality on the ground for average Americans was that you waterways were without Chlorpyrifos, and now they won't be. You might be sacrificing your freedom to use that chemical; but of course someone in my position would say that's a sacrifice in order to maintain the more essential freedom of having clean, healthy waterways that we, and future generations, can depend on.

And I agree about the framers and their genius, foresight. But I do not handicap myself to their century - and a big part of their genius was leaving us mechanisms and abilities to change with the times. We need to balance tradition and inherent values with the reformist movements and the unforeseen challenges of each successive generation faces. I am not a strict constructionist.

 

Bull ****.

More Bull ****.

Who does?

Duh!

I'm for Apple Pie, Mom, and the American Way. What a pile of platitudinous vaporous horse ****.

We have Constitutional methods that allow for changing the Constitution, but, they are difficult so maybe 5/4 Majorities are much easier than the Article V route. Great point, I'll alert Conservatives that as soon as we get done filling the Courts, that Lefties think we should loosen up a little on this whole Originalism thing!

 

Apologies; the banning of that chemical was done in March, overturned for the reasons stated in that article - and it had nothing to do with the Water Rule. I misunderstood the article on my first reading.

 

No sweat. I'm for clean water and I'm against government over-reach. I'm sure that with some careful thought that both can be achieved.

 

Democrats have a simple plan for every problem: more government. And Americans are just smart enough to understand that's a pile of hooey.

 

Senate looks pretty good for the GOP. Only 3 seats are at any real risk for turnover, IN, MO, and ND and all three are Dem seats.

 

I didn't mention knee replacements but Medicare covers 80% of that cost as well.

The overhead in *any* government operated system is *always* higher than in private operations, at least when the private operations operate in an environment of competition. Government simply has no incentive to limit overhead costs. The overhead costs in most insurance companies today is tied to government regulations which require such detailed coding and management of actual healthcare procedures. If government takes over and cuts these regulations then I agree, we might see some savings in overhead costs but the liklihood of that happening is not high.

And, again, most socialized medicine system spend less by rationing care and severely limiting doctors pay. That's why it is so hard to find specialists to take on extreme cases.

This article doesn't address the cost of government regulation at all. My doctor has one nurse tied up most days figuring out how to code things correctly to get proper reimbursement from the insurance companies. And the insurance companies are forced to do this because of government regulations. Get rid of all the regulations and the insurance companies and health care providers will be able to cut significant overhead.

 

You didn't answer my question. What do you do with those people who are worn out at 65 by the physicality of their jobs? You can only lift heavy weights for so long without it affecting your body. I am paying today for the stress I put on my body in the hayfields of Kansas for over a decade so long ago. My wife is an RN who has worked 12 hour shifts on her feet for decades. She is not yet 65 but is suffering problems from the wear and tear of lifting bodies and turning bodies and from walking the floor for hours.

Bush's plan allowed people to either stay in the current SS or move to a plan with higher returns. Those who opted for higher returns could also pass anything remaining on onto their heirs, which would have been *very* good for the poor. That's how you move your children out of poverty. Bush's plan would have worked. SS wouldn't be looking at bankruptcy for a long time.

If you cut benefits, seniors will die. That's what all the Marxist Democrats keep saying about the GOP's health plan. Are you heartless also?

Cutting benefits isn't an answer. Raising the FICA tax is about all that's left. Do you know what the FICA tax will be to fund socialized medicine? Close to 30%. That's going to be a hell of a whack in the paycheck the poor get for part-time jobs!

Did you *actually* read this all the way through? Even this article says the root cause was the housing market.
" Loans were doled out to “subprime” borrowers with poor credit histories who struggled to repay them."
"Starting in 2006, America suffered a nationwide house-price slump."

Do you not know how the housing bubble happened? The CRA was signed by Jimmy Carter. Bill Clinton and Janet Reno threatened banks if they didn't meet a certain quota of sub-prime loans to risky borrowers. Then Clinton prevailed on Franklin Raines at Fannie to remove all loan qualifications. All other lenders either had to do the same or exit the business, most decided to do the same.

The truly sad thing is that Obama prevailed on Fannie to begin doing the same thing all over again in 2012, the HomeReady program with 3% all-borrowed down payments and no income requirements for the borrower. If that program ever takes off we will have another housing bubble built of bad mortgages!

Hong Kong, as the article notes, is a population of extremely healthy people. Partly because they don't have a lot of support for indigent people and partly because they don't allow addictive drugs to create an underclass of addicts. Their medical costs *are* low, not because of socialized medicine but because they have an extremely healthy risk pool!

We don't have the risk pool of Hong Kong. In fact, our insurance pools have higher risk ratings than just about anyplace in the world. Socialized medicine isn't going to change that. In fact, socialized medicine could actually make it worse as people choose to indulge in more risky behaviour because of the "free" health care!

Trading a competitive market of private insurance for socialized medicine just won't work out the way you think. If it could then we wouldn't have half of new born babies being born under Medicaid!