The Atheist Communist Caliphate Made Flesh, Spread the Clusterfuck Around Thread

[Oleg]

Not only did I only read the bold sections, but I only read every other word.  It made no sense.

[BH]

Not only did I only read the bold sections, but I only read every other word.  It made no sense.

No offense, Oleg, but this list is the dumbest thing I've read all week.

[Oleg]

Not only did I only read the bold sections, but I only read every other word.  It made no sense.

No offense, Oleg, but this list is the dumbest thing I've read all week.

But, I didn't make a list...

[Quality Start Machine]

Not only did I only read the bold sections, but I only read every other word.  It made no sense.

No offense, Oleg, but this list is the dumbest thing I've read all week.

But, I didn't make a list...

That's how dumb your list was.

[Tank]

Debunking tomorrow's white-hot MikeC copy-and-paste outrage today...

http://allbleedingstops.blogspot.com/2009/07/zombie-lies.html

The one I have seem pop up most recently is the odd lie that the House Tri-Com bill (HR 3200) will "outlaw individual private coverage."

Huh?  I thought that's what the National Insurance Exchange was for?!  Where did that come from?

I remembered that I had seen some crazy rant from Rep Michelle Bachmann (R-Loon) along these lines:

It's over 1,000 pages long. On the 16th page, it says whatever health care you have now, it's going to be gone within five years. So your current health care plan, you're not going to have in five years. What you're going to have is a government plan and a federal bureau is going to decide what you get or if you get anything at all.

And some commenters on Kevin's blog linked to this unsigned opinion piece from Investors.com:

It didn't take long to run into an "uh-oh" moment when reading the House's "health care for all Americans" bill. Right there on Page 16 is a provision making individual private medical insurance illegal.

How odd that they both cite "page 16" in their rants, both of which were published on the same day.  It's almost as if this were somehow coordinated...  Nah.  I must be getting paranoid.

The provision they are referring to, by the way, is this (edited for clarity/brevity, full text at the link):

SEC. 102. PROTECTING THE CHOICE TO KEEP CURRENT COVERAGE.

[ snipped here for even further brevity ]

So what does this mean in the real world?

   1. Individual health insurance policies already in effect may continue but may not be altered.
   2. Employer-sponsored plans have five years to get in compliance with the new regulations.
   3. New individual health insurance policies will only be available through the National Insurance Exchange (NIE).

Remember, the NIE is where the private insurers will be competing against one another as well as against a possible public plan, if it survives.  It is not synonymous with a "government plan," though I hope that consumers will have the choice of a government-sponsored insurance policy.  The new regulations referred to are simply those I've outlined many times before -- community rating, guaranteed issue, and a minimum benefits floor.

The Investors.com piece is by far more blatantly dishonest.  For example, they stated, "those who leave a company to work for themselves [will not] be free to buy individual plans from private carriers."  But this is flatly false, since individual plans will be freely available through the NIE.  They also write, "a public option [...] will be 30% to 40% cheaper than their current premiums because taxpayers will be funding it," which disregards the fact that both the House and Senate bills make it clear that the public plan will be funded through premiums, not from general revenues.  If there is a price advantage to the public plan, it will be due to lower reimbursement to providers, not from taxpayer subsidies.  And the citation of "The nonpartisan Lewin Group estimated in April that 120 million or more Americans could lose their group coverage at work and end up in such a [public] program," ignoring that this estimate was not based on the plan as it currently exists, and the CBO estimated that only about 10 million people would choose the House's "strong" public option.   And as a sort of a coda, the author repeats the simply false claim, "What wasn't known until now is that the bill itself will kill the market for private individual coverage by not letting any new policies be written after the public option becomes law."  It's simply not true.  Private plans will be available, and competitive, through the NIE.  You can't get more dishonest than that.

[Tank]

DPD...

The RAND Corporation, in conjunction with the saucer people, under the supervision of the reverse vampires, has published a study investigating the economic effects of inflationary healthcare costs...

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/122434573/abstract

http://www.randcompare.org/publications/summary/health_care_cost_growth_and_the_economic_performance_of_us_industries

How do increasing health care costs affect the U.S. economy? A RAND study addressed this question by estimating how health care cost growth that exceeds growth in GDP ("excess" cost growth) affected three important economic outcomes: employment, output (measured as revenues), and value added to GDP. The analysis included data from 38 industries over the 19-year period 1987-2005.

...

The study found that excess growth in health care costs has adverse effects on employment, output and value added to GDP in the U.S., and that these effects are greater for industries where high percentages of workers have employer sponsored insurance. For example, the study estimated that a 10% increase in excess health care costs would reduce employment by about 0.24 percent in an industry such as motor vehicles, where about 80% of workers have ESI, compared with about 0.13% percent drop in the retail trade, where about one-third of workers have ESI. Economy-wide across all the 38 industries, a 10% increase in excess health care costs growth would result in about 120,800 fewer jobs, $28 billion in lost revenues, and about $14 billion in lost value added.

http://www.businessweek.com/blogs/money_politics/archives/2009/07/study_links_ris.html

The rate of growth in U.S. health care costs has outpaced the growth rate in the gross domestic product (GDP) for many years. In 1940, the share of GDP accounted for by health care spending was just 4.5%. By 1990, it had reached 12.2%, and 16% in 2005, when health care spending totaled nearly $2 trillion, or $6,697 per person, far more than any other nation. This year health care spending is on track to equal 18% of GDP.

RAND researchers underscore that their findings do not necessarily mean that rapid growth in health care costs results in large job losses in the overall economy, since losses in industries that cover most of their workers are at least partially offset by gains in those industries that don't insure. Of course, the workers themselves may not find those jobs equivalent.

[RV]

More boring health care stuff...this is a very good thing, right?

A state-appointed panel of experts has endorsed the proposed 'global payment system,' which would make Massachusetts the first state in the nation to end the practice of paying healthcare providers for individual procedures. The proposed system instead attaches a fixed price to the routine healthcare costs incurred by a patient for a given time period, such as a year.

Proponents say it will eliminate unnecessary medical procedures that the current system encourages by paying doctors for each test or treatment they administer. Requiring doctors to treat patients under a set-fee system would give them a financial incentive to not perform unneeded treatments or tests, the panel said.

[MikeC]

Wait wasn't that a copy and paste? Ohh right its only bad if i do it.

Then the next comeback in that sequence is "Tank doesn't have an original thought"

Its like your hypocrites or something.....

[MAD]

Their hypocrites what?

[Oleg]

Their hypocrites what?

You are the lowest form of something...

[Quality Start Machine]

Their hypocrites what?

You are the lowest form of something...

You're little.

[RV]

What this guy said.

The conversation we ought to be having in response to the July 16 incident and its heated aftermath isn't about race, it's about police arrest powers, and the right to criticize armed agents of the government.

This deference to police at the expense of the policed is misplaced. Put a government worker behind a desk and give him the power to regulate, and conservatives will wax at length about public choice theory, bureaucratic pettiness, and the trappings of power. And rightly so. But put a government worker behind a badge, strap a gun to his waist, and give him the power to detain, use force, and kill, and those lessons somehow no longer apply.

What we owe law enforcement is vigilant oversight and accountability, not mindless deference and capitulation. Whether or not Henry Louis Gates was racially profiled last week doesn't change any of that.

[Quality Start Machine]

What this guy said.

The conversation we ought to be having in response to the July 16 incident and its heated aftermath isn't about race, it's about police arrest powers, and the right to criticize armed agents of the government.

This deference to police at the expense of the policed is misplaced. Put a government worker behind a desk and give him the power to regulate, and conservatives will wax at length about public choice theory, bureaucratic pettiness, and the trappings of power. And rightly so. But put a government worker behind a badge, strap a gun to his waist, and give him the power to detain, use force, and kill, and those lessons somehow no longer apply.

What we owe law enforcement is vigilant oversight and accountability, not mindless deference and capitulation. Whether or not Henry Louis Gates was racially profiled last week doesn't change any of that.

[/s]

GIULIANI TIME!!!

[Brownie]

What this guy said.

The conversation we ought to be having in response to the July 16 incident and its heated aftermath isn't about race, it's about police arrest powers, and the right to criticize armed agents of the government.

This deference to police at the expense of the policed is misplaced. Put a government worker behind a desk and give him the power to regulate, and conservatives will wax at length about public choice theory, bureaucratic pettiness, and the trappings of power. And rightly so. But put a government worker behind a badge, strap a gun to his waist, and give him the power to detain, use force, and kill, and those lessons somehow no longer apply.

What we owe law enforcement is vigilant oversight and accountability, not mindless deference and capitulation. Whether or not Henry Louis Gates was racially profiled last week doesn't change any of that.

Yes, what he said.

[Quality Start Machine]

Using the troops to blast the media that keeps you on the front page?

You betcha.