For Obamacare, winter is coming

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Earlier this week the Washington Post and Daily Kos celebrated a new report that showed rising Obamacare premiums were still 10% lower than than the full premiums in the average employer plan nationally in 2016.
There was only one problem with this report: it wasn't true.

We are left with a paradox. If Exchange enrollees cost as much or more to insure, how can Exchange premiums be lower? The answer is, they aren’t. Exchange premiums are higher than comparable employer-plan premiums. The authors of the Urban study failed to account for the full premiums for Exchange plans.
The study’s authors used the premiums that HealthCare.gov and state-run Exchange web sites quote prospective enrollees. Yet those quotes do not reflect the full premium for Exchange plans.
For example, taxpayers finance a large portion of Exchange-plan premiums through the ACA’s “reinsurance” program. The reinsurance program taxes almost all health plans, including most employer-sponsored plans, and uses the revenue to subsidize Exchange plans. The reinsurance program shifts a large part of the premiums for ObamaCare plans to people in non-ObamaCare plans. A study by the Mercatus Center found that in 2014, “net reinsurance payments paid by government to insurers selling individual market QHPs totaled about 20.4% of gross premiums.” That means that in 2014, the actual cost of Exchange plans—the full premium—was at least 20.4 percent higher than the stated premium. If net reinsurance payments to Exchange plans in 2016 are just 8 percent of gross premiums, the authors of the Urban study would have to adjust Exchange plan premiums upward not by 24 percent, but by 34 percent (1.24 * 1.08 ≈ 1.34).

As you can see in the chart at the top, medical care costs are rising at one of the highest rates in recent decades, and they are accelerating.
But that's not the scary part. The scary part is what happens in January.

Through last weekend, insurers in a dozen states had their rate requests for 2017 finalized. While there are some notable bright spots, such as Rhode Island, which is expected to see a weighted increase in premium prices of just 1% in 2017, residents in the vast majority of the approved states are looking at double-digit percentage increases. As aggregated by ACASignUps.net, four of the first 12 states to finalize their rate requests for 2017 are looking at weighted increases of at least 30%.

21 states have so far finalized 2017 Obamacare premiums, and it's not looking good.
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A 25% hike in premiums won't go over well.
Now granted, a lion's share of those premium hikes won't be seen by much of the public because of federal subsidies, but that only means the taxpayer will be picking up the costs of private health insurance.

This Bloomberg article identified the dramatic rise in Obamacare premiums to the collapse of the co-ops.

As concerns about the survival of the Affordable Care Act’s markets intensify, the role of nonprofit “co-op” health insurers -- meant to broaden choices under the law -- has gained prominence. Most of the original 23 co-ops have failed, dumping more than 800,000 members back onto the ACA markets over the last two years.
Many of those thousands of people were sicker and more expensive than the remaining insurers expected -- and they’re hurting results. With more of the nonprofits on the brink of folding, the situation for the remaining providers looks dire. Anthem Inc., for example, is facing an estimated $300 million in losses on its exchange business for individual plans this year, after turning a profit in 2014 and almost breaking even on the program in 2015, according to the company.
“These co-ops have attracted, we think, disproportionately high health-care utilizers,” Gary Taylor, an analyst with JPMorgan who follows the industry, said in a telephone interview. Their former members “are now enrolled in these for-profit health plans. That’s been a factor driving the deterioration in their profitability.”

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Only seven of the original 23 Obamacare co-ops still exist and most of them won't last much longer.

“Are we in an Obamacare ‘death spiral?’” health insurance consultant Robert Laszewski asked in a Sept. 9 bulletin to clients, where he described the grim scenario. In a death spiral, as options for coverage shrink, insurers attract increasingly sick patients and suffer losses. That forces them to raise rates, driving away healthy, profitable customers. Facing more losses, they raise rates again, causing more healthy people to leave, and so on -- until all that’s left are high premiums and a small pool of the unwell.

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While health insurance premiums get most of the headlines, a bigger problem is largely unnoticed: deductibles.
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For 18 years, the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research and Educational Trust have done an annual survey of employer health benefits. This year it found that deductibles rose 12% in 2016 in the group market and four times faster than premiums increased. For context, 150 million Americans get coverage through their employers. The trend toward higher deductibles is especially pronounced among employers with fewer than 200 workers, where 65% of employees are now in high-deductible plans. The average deductible in these firms is $2,000.
Rising deductibles, coupled with the slow economic recovery from the Great Recession, has depressed utilization of health services and helped to keep premium increases lower than they would otherwise be....
But just as high deductibles help hold down costs, they also can take a big bite from the pocketbooks of consumers. As the chart below illustrates, deductibles are rising almost six times faster than wages. This, more than any other single factor, is why consumers don’t see the bright side of the historic moderation in health costs the country is experiencing.

The entire health care system is sick. Obamacare is merely on the leading edge of this chronic problem.
2017 is when Obamacare hits the wall. The rest of the health care system is right behind it.

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understand it. Because of that, Big Pharm, for-profit hospitals, MD's, insurance companies are free to raise rates and cut service.

Some of the insurance policies have such high deductibles as to scarcely warrant the name of insurance.

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"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"

Cassiodorus's picture

Everything else is mere catastrophic coverage, something you are obliged to buy in order to avoid the mandate penalty. Maybe you'd get a Platinum Plan if you were chronically ill. Oh and the "services" they promise you? Mostly they're an attempt to get you to buy more services. If you get really sick, go to Mexico.

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"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama

insurance has administrative expenses about eight times higher. The ACA produces much more waste than national health plans of other capitalist countries.

You make a good point about the Bronze plan. According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid the overall costs of the health system under Obamacare are projected to rise to 19.6% of GDP by 2022(this from 17.4%).

It seems clear that this neoliberal national health program is failing the people even though it strengthens the for-profit insurance industry. Other countries have shown that you don't need an insurance industry in the delivery of health care services.

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"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"

gulfgal98's picture

Insurance is simply a middle man who does nothing but skim profits from healthcare. That is the main problem with ACA. It is insurance, not health care.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

way to control costs. That statement was true, but only in the context of already having ruled out Medicare for All, which he had done by telling certain lies about Medicare for All.

During the town meetings, he told us the public option was only a sliver. That was a lie and we know he knew it was a lie because of what he had said about the public option while still campaigning for President in 2008.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

But remembering the public option wars on that site, and the accusations of disloyalty to the President, is making me really angry. I can feel my face heating up.

In retrospect, that little loyalty war was even more disgusting than I thought at the time, given the policy at stake.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

I wonder if Slinkerwink and NYCeve are still over there... It was reading the abuse they took from the same old group day after day after day that made me first start to wonder if DK had become the province of paid DNC trolls. Suddenly policy had become irrelevant. Only personality mattered.

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Twain Disciple

They have some built in max profit. But as the populations ages and millennials are chasing to not join plans and pay the taxes, the members in the pools are higher risk and more expensive. So it is harder to make a profit because all of those low risk buyers didn't materialize. Who would have thought that individuals would actually make a value decision (/snark)?

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Democrats, we tried to warn you. How is that guilt and shame working out?

The great flaw of Obama care, is that while it controls insurance costs to an extent(and yea I get that this is arguable..), It does not have a similar control on the rates charged by hospitals. The health care industry has simply moved the place they extract their profits from health insurance, to hospital networks.

And because medicare and medicaid do have controls on their costs, most of the profit taking burden moves to procedure rates charged private insurance plans.

On the bright side, simply repealing Obamacare is no longer functionally possible, The entire private healthcare industry, end to end would collapse overnight. The 25% rate hike while bad, is being hidden from view by the subsidies, Imagine what they rate hike would be if 38 million people where no longer paying into the insurance risk pools. Actually likely more then that, as rapidly employers all around the Nation would drop coverage all together, then pay the rate that would be asked of them. And this would be even more poinient if the ruubs, actually pass their retard "fairer" tax plan under trump, Their plan would either dump the health care tax deductions or make them worth alot less.

If trump is elected, alot of people may very well lose their health insurance(I am one of them), but after the 2020 election, we will finely get single payer, as we will have todo the right thing, after having exhausted all other options.

We might finely be able to expand social security as well, after the next banking crash that will happen sometime in the next couple of years, Depends on how long the eurocrats can keep their house of cards together. Another crash wiping out another large swath of 401k accounts, will pretty much exhaust the room for further bank scheming.

Let Trump and the ruubs take the blame for the coming crash, and create room for a populist movement from the left for the 2020 election. Certainly sounds better then trying to defend billary in 2018 and 2020 from the right wing populist movement.

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HRC will run in 2020, even if she loses to Trump in 2016.

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I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

Jay Elliott's picture

No way does Hillary run again. If Trump's elected, there will be investigations and prosecutions. I know he is (or was) their friend, and the ruling elite will pressure him not to do it. But it won't be in his hands. There's no way Chaffitz, et al., won't pursue this.

If Clintonland has enough dirt on enough people to block this process, she'll still be way too sick to run. She's too sick now. She's clearly much more ill than she was in the Spring. Her deterioration is accelerating.

They'll either run a placeholder or Chelsea. Hopefully, we'll have made enough inroads in fixing the voting system that a leftist will be able to get through. My money's on Nina Turner. That would be sweet.

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Also much of the network that made her primary "victory" possible, is very transient, all of the right pieces were in place at the right time. Wait for Trump to replace the heads of a pile of agencies, and different people to be elected in places, and the righteous indignation towards democrats in elected seats that helped her will have to face in 2018 and 2020.

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She won't get a second chance.

If she loses, she will never again be allowed to run. The lose in 2016 and resulting damage will be to great, to say nothing of what happens after the FBI director is replaced and Ag at the DoJ is replaced with someone less friendly to her.

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Since Adlai Stevenson lost the second time to Eisenhower, no Democratic nominee loser has gotten a second shot at winning. Humphrey lost in 1968, McGovern lost in 1972, Mondale lost in 1984, Dukakis lost in 1988, Al Gore lost in 2000, and Kerry lost in 2004. If Hillary loses now, even if she wasn't going to be older and more obviously physically unable to hold office, she would not get another shot at running.

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Vowing To Oppose Everything Trump Attempts.

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

since 1988. Smile

George W. Bush was never elected President. Given how he got the Presidency, I'm starting to wonder if he was ever elected governor.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Bollox Ref's picture

will just about be the only thing in the '+' column, with regard to The Legacy.

Well played Sir.

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Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.

Please! The Republicans managed to gut that law. One has to discover within six months of the incident to take advantage of the law. I consider it a total insult to the people who elected that Wall St fraud to office.

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Vowing To Oppose Everything Trump Attempts.

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

the one useful thing the law did. FFS.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

The only credit he can claim for Ledbetter, which was a weak bill anyway, is that he did not veto it. Big whoop.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

But in the interests of accuracy: no, there is something very significant in the plus column--for all its flaws--the Iran agreement. As horrible as he is in foreign policy, Obama is better there than he is domestically. And he's better at foreign policy than either choice that's going to replace him--unless Trump becomes a real firebrand and follows through on withdrawing our troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. (He wants to go after the Islamic State--which is insane--but he doesn't believe in regime change b/c it takes resources away from America and gets us nothing. Or so he says.)

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

All that law did was remove the limitations on how long you can wait to sue your employer over wage discrimination. It's not like it made fair wages the law of the land. Also, if we are being fair, gay rights did advance. But the rest? Pretty thin.

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Democrats, we tried to warn you. How is that guilt and shame working out?

Pricknick's picture

regardless of who's in charge next year.
He fiddled while we burned, knowing full well what was coming. Him and the democratic party had a chance when he took office. They both capitulated to 1% which they belong to.
Passing the blame solves nothing. Remember, incrementalism is the game and both parties play it well.
We need a revolution.

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Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.

National Guard, the militarized state and local police and everyone else in federal, state and local government who carries a gun and military independent contractors have some other thoughts on revolution. In addition to personnel or "assets" or whatever dehumanizing argot the kids are using for human beings these days, they have cameras and mikes everywhere, including mikes capable of being set up outdoors, but picking up conversations being held indoors in places like my home. And where government cameras and mikes are not, there are very likely private cameras that government will access when it wishes.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

Neither the kind where you pick up guns, nor Bernie's "political revolution."

I have a few ideas that could help, but at the end of the day, you still have to worry about the men with guns.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

WoodsDweller's picture

First, state level single payer (on the ballot in Colorado this election). Save the people one state at a time.
Second, public option. One pool for everyone, everyone pays what they can afford. From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs. Hmmm ... catchy phrase ... where have I heard that before? Let the private sector compete in a fair marketplace with the Federal government.
There is no role for private sector insurance in America. Or private sector banking for that matter.
Come on, Democrats, whisper those three little words I long to hear "Nationalize the banks".

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"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Albert Bartlett
"A species that is hurtling toward extinction has no business promoting slow incremental change." -- Caitlin Johnstone

thanatokephaloides's picture

Second, public option. One pool for everyone, everyone pays what they can afford.

Not "option".

Single public, tax-funded healthcare system, no opt-out. The way they do it in civilized countries. Why? Because:

There is no role for private sector insurance in America.

Or anywhere else. It's just that the "else" is learning that fact faster than we are.

Or private sector banking for that matter.
Come on, Democrats, whisper those three little words I long to hear "Nationalize the banks".

Start with the Fed. The Federal Reserve is no more part of the Federal Government than Federal Express or Federal Ammunition is. The Fed is a private entity to which the Federal Government has delegated the task of creating our currency, in clear violation of several clauses of The Constitution of the United States which have never been removed from force in any way.

"The Congress shall have Power.... To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin,
-- article I section 8

No State shall..... coin Money;... make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts;....
-- Article I section 10

(I really love that one because it also prohibits the States from accepting the current money created by the Fed in payment of State Taxes..... oops ......)

Wink

Constitution text source

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"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar

"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

a National Health Service.

I can play Overton games too! (heh)

and you're right about money, but nobody believes us. John Stewart plays with a coin on TV and laughs knowingly and that's all it takes.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

SparkyGump's picture

if it doesn't care for it's most vulnerable citizens; the sick, the injured, the disabled and the elderly?

The mere fact that healthcare CEO's routinely make on excess of $20,000,000.00 a year while delaying and denying healthcare is immoral.

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The real SparkyGump has passed. It was an honor being your human.

strength and, in a real sense, weakens the nation. All greed, all of the time, is a slogan that will leave the USA a broken place.

It wasn't that long ago that the average CEO made 20 times more than the average workers. Now it's over 300 times more than the average worker. That, to me, isn't compensation; that is theft.

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"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"

thanatokephaloides's picture

It is not only immoral and unethical but it saps the country's
strength and, in a real sense, weakens the nation. All greed, all of the time, is a slogan that will leave the USA a broken place.

Regardless of what Gordon Gekko thought, greed is not good! Greed made the list of "The Seven Deadly Sins" for a plethora of valid reasons! And those reasons will kill us as a nation if we don't put a permanent stop to it and fast!

Diablo

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"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar

"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides

Bollox Ref's picture

has accumulated great wealth via the 'Health Care Industry'. As an individual, he's a very personable bloke, but I can never stop thinking that his large house, expensive cars, etc., are the result of the suffering of others.

Health care does not require middlemen. Patient, meet Nurse or Doctor.

Via those contributions to Civilization we call taxes.

(Edited)

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Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.

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"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"

You know what they did with those they deemed expendable. It wasn't healthcare and support of the most vulnerable.

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Vowing To Oppose Everything Trump Attempts.

human life is not to be valued as it once was, simply because it is a human life. After all, if governments actually valued human life, we would not have wars, would we? Yet, we do--and we're chintzy about veterans' benefits, to boot.

For just one thing, overpopulation contributes to global warming. For another, people like Romney and Petey Peterson are tired of using a tiny bit of their respective billions to contribute to the 47% whom they see as leeching off them to one degree or another. And the elderly and disabled are as good a place to start as any. Charles Dickens grokked this all the way back in 1843.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYHmQT_7a2c]

(entire film, if you're interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urdJOySUOzE )

(For the perceptually challenged: Because I value human life, I am sarcastic about those who do not.)

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Shockwave's picture

When Obamacare passed I wrote a diary (you know where);

A Pyrrhic victory in DC (at best) and the looming California battle

Some healthcare legislation will pass in DC in the next few weeks. And Obama will sign it. Commemorative pens will be used. And pictures will be taken in the White House lawn. Obama will give a nicely worded speech. Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi will ham it up.

But this will not be the glorious event it could have been. The progressive base will not rejoice but the insurance companies will, people without health insurance will not celebrate but teabaggers will, healthcare activists will not high five each other but Republican politicians will.

This healthcare victory will be a Pyrrhic one (at best).

Now comes the time when Pyrrhus loses the war. But don't tell the guys on the other site, they can't understand.

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The political revolution continues

(They bill for Oct. in Sept., bless their heart.)
Come Jan 1, I have absolutely no idea how to get coverage until May 1, 2017, when Medicare kicks in. My hope is something cheap with high deductible.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

sojourns's picture

The only way for Obama to have any health care plan waddle it's way through the congress would be up front Capitulation to the right; the representatives for private insurance and big pharma. Anything else would have been a non-starter, and being one of his platform mandates, he had to do something. (I'm not defending him)

After the ACA was passed, the so special tea party loons did nothing but try to repeal it, time and time again. They still are. This is where I think Obama either became lazy or just wussed out. He did nothing to try and tweak it or push the Dems to do just that. No pushback. Just let the chips fall where they may, which has been his modus operandi for the last term from anything from the Middle East to domestic problems. He is far too concerned with practicing his eloquence lessons evident in his speeches; the content of which reminds us that he is here to fuck us over vis a vi his corporate handlers.

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"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones."
John Cage

Bollox Ref's picture

but never speechifies again on said subject/follows through.

He seems completely empty of effort for anything lasting. There's no there, there.

He makes languid look lively.

His presidency has been suffocating.

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Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.

upchuck daily from the latest move of President Clinton or President Trump.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

is neither insane nor an arsonist. He doesn't believe in destroying things just because he can. And he's smart enough that he can look beyond the short-term profit to long-term consequences. He likes to drain the resources of the world up into the hands of the people who put him where he is--the very rich--but he doesn't necessarily abandon all sense and reason in the mad desire to maximize profit as fast as possible, no exceptions.

The dominant attitude among the rich is pretty much an addict's attitude: give it to me now now now more more more nothing must stand in the way. Obama's not like that. Thus his traditional association w/the so-called "smart money."

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

He seems completely empty of effort for anything lasting. There's no there, there.

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Stein too.

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"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"

Jay Elliott's picture

Democrats had the majority. They could have passed single payer. Period.

They didn't want to, so they manufactured obstacles so their base would accept it.

He was never a good guy, never on our side. He was a bag man for Chicago FIRE, and Goldman Sachs bankrolled him in 2008.

I donated and volunteered for him in 2008. I understand it's hard to accept just how crooked he and the Democratic Party is. But they are. He conned us.

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gulfgal98's picture

One only has to look at how hard he has been pushing for the TPP to know where Obama really stands.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

and also, while people continued to blame Republicans, Blue Dogs, Max Baucus, Obama's controversy-averse personality, etc.... for the neoliberal, corporate-profit-protection nature of Obamacare and other policies, the secret TPP negotiations were already happening.

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thanatokephaloides's picture

The only way for Obama to have any health care plan waddle it's way through the congress would be up front Capitulation to the right; the representatives for private insurance and big pharma. Anything else would have been a non-starter,

False. He had the power in 2009, if he had had the cojones to use it. Instead, he chose to play "kumbaya" politics with the GOPpers and the Cat-damned conservas, while we Serfs got fucked yet again. A small splash of hardball on Obama's part in 2009 would have been sustainable, would have left the GOPpers and the conservas prostrate and bleeding, and would probably have spared the Democrats the Great Debacle of 2010. But that's not what happened, as you well know.

being one of his platform mandates, he had to do something.

Again, not quite. He chose to go for the cluster healthcare "reform" rather than do what he was elected to do -- veto its sorry ass as soon as it passed his desk. If that meant no ACA, so be it; frankly, I think we all would have been better off if he had postponed healthcare "reform" and instead spent his large reserve of political capital in 2009 getting us all the way out of Iraq, all the way out of Afghanistan, and get Guantanamo Bay all the way closed -- which he also promised us. Instead, we get a big fat "none of the above": the ACA is worse than nothing at all for a surprising number of us; we're still in Iraq and Afghanistan; and Gitmo is still up in rip-roaring function. And we now have a conserva/GOPper House and Senate for all our troubles, too, along with the virtual certainty of a Goldwater Girl in the Oval Office after him.

Diablo

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"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar

"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides

I have to disagree, He could not have passed better, Granted not because we could not have gotten better, but rather because it was the wrong time to try and pass reform. At the point in time, the democrats, and Obama needed to earn a greater level of trust from the American public then they possessed at that point in time. They needed some policy success stories to buy them enough latitude, for a wider health care policy change.

They should have spent the majority of that year pushing jobs bill, after jobs bill, after jobs bills, a bit of time on college financing reform(they did this as part of ACA), they should have hit some election/voting reform, thrown the union's a bone or two.

The whole year should have been spent, passing those sort of things through every last filibuster, and none stop brow beating of the republicans for attempting to block it. And then walking into the 2010 election in a position of holding even or losing very little, The republicans would have lost a ton of seats via redistricting in the following year, and then campaign for health care in 2012, having shown competence in governing, and with wider support.

And this isn't a hindsight 20/20 strategy either, this would have been a good way to test the strength of the opposition. Its like democrat strategists have their heads stuck in their asses.

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Pricknick's picture

but rather because it was the wrong time to try and pass reform.

Was it also the wrong time to prosecute those involved in torture? Was it the wrong time to prosecute those who committed fraud and sent the nation and world into a depression of which we haven't recovered?
It definitely was the wrong time to say "We have to look forward".
To what? More of the same? To what you call "a greater level of trust from the American public"?
Obama was and is a failure. He could have done so much more if he wasn't bought and paid for. He is first in a long line of many to blame for where we are today.

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Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.

Health care reform is a BIG thing, not to be taken lightly, it was 17% of the GDP, is tightly wound around Trillions of dollars of interests, impacts every person in different ways, and unfortunately gets tied down by religion.

They came at the ACA without first understanding the ruub strategy to fight them, all of those deer in the headlights town-hall meetings the Democrats had, that wasn't just a bunch of right wing loons stired up on hate and propaganda, it was a failure of the democrats to form an understanding of the oppositions strategy until it was far far to late.

The democrats didn't even have a full understanding of their capabilities, to what extent people would support them, the healthcare industry didn't fight Obamacare with the intent of stopping it, they fought it with the intent of manipulating the bills provisions, and to control the implementation process after passage. The democrats needed enough support to pass the law without stretching the fight over 9 months.

As for torture clearly Obama didnt have the courage to fix that.

Prosecuting fraud is a waste of time until you fix the laws that created that situation in the first place, you will never get a conviction, It is far to easy to play he said she said, in the current environment of regulation, or in many cases said fraud is actually legal.

The American public has good reasons to have little trust in government, don't misread that however, that means they don't trust the politicians, and persons appointed by those politicians. It does not mean they don't trust the programs and functions of government. A common mistake that is abused by the ruubs.

You want to see a party, any party hold all houses of government for more then 2 years at a time?, that can only be achieved by working on a repore with the public, remember 2009, the ruubs complaining about Obamavision, THAT, DO LOTS AND LOTS OF THAT.

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Between election day 2008 and the time the bill was sent to Baucus, Obamacare was just about cast in stone via negotiations between the Obama white house and the Health Industrial Complex. From there, the only changes Obama would accept would be those that would make the bill better for big health, big pharma and big health insurance.

The left needs to stop telling itself Democrats stumble into stuff because they are fooled, caught unaware, were inept, frightened, etc. We never make those excuses for Republicans, yet we say Democrats are smarter than Republicans. We also have to stop assuming that someone who makes Harvard Law Review and manages to get elected the first black President, is, together with his huge staff, more pure and less insightful than the average message board poster.

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gulfgal98's picture

ACA was a gift to PhRMA and the health insurance industry. One of the first people Obama met with was Billy Tauzin, CEO of PhRMA and cut a deal with the pharmaceutical industry to maintain the high costs of drugs in the US. A former health insurance lobbyist, Liz Fowler, actually wrote the legislation. Prior to working for Max Bauccus where she drafted the bill, Fowler was employed by WellPoint, a health insurance company now known as Anthem. In 2012, she went to work for pharmaceutical giant, Johnson and Johnson.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

Yes it was cast in stone by that point, but it would not have mattered, at that point the issue was to easily exploitable, and those town halls were going to be that way regardless of what was in the bill. The democrats were to weak at that point to be passing legislation of that sort. They need some policy success stories before approaching healthcare regardless of what the bill was to be. They needed to be in a place where the American public was willing to give them the breathing room to work.

Instead they got their asses kicked hard in the following election, and fucked their chances at congress for the next decade. These people only care about winning elections, to see so many of them lose, is clear sign of a massive strategy failure.

The republicans only needed to prevent certain provisions from passing, lowering the medicare age for example, you know the insurance industry supports this right?, Old people are expensive to cover, The insurance industry much perfers a large population of people paying in that more rarely use their services, A population that is larger by nature of the lower cost of the risk pool without 55+ persons trashing the cost curve.

Prevent employer plan opt out provisions, The more people in the marketplace the viable it becomes, the fewer people in the less viable it becomes.

destabilize the hospital industry by withdrawing funds for uncompensated care(aca does this), and preventing replacement policy from being implemented, AKA see what happened with medicaid expansion in red and swing states controlled by ruubs, after the dems strategy failure in 2010, And don't call out the SCOTUS, yea thats a problem, but this is something a dem controlled congress could have created a workaround for(funding 100% instead of 90% the expansion for example would meet the scotus requirement to make expansion mandatory once more).

Attacking other stabilization functions in the law, The republican congress withdrew money from the reinsurance risk pool, effectively destroying insurance companies and COOP's that had a more adverse distribution of patients with illnesses.

Limit state work arounds in blue states by limiting the opt out provisions that would allow state alternatives such as single payer, making them unable to combine money from federal retirement medical insurance medicare tricare, certain cross state private company provided employee insurance plans and other tax money typically given to hospitals and insurance companies, Colorado care is only partly single payer due to this.

The fight over this thing, is much uglier, then you are portraying. Much of this is also why money is behind the dems this round, The ruubs have cost alot of corporations alot of potential profit.

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had promised the Health Industrial Complex before Baucus even got involved. The town meetings were a dog and pony show, to give an illusion that anyone gave a crap about the public perception or understanding of the bill. The only deer in the headlights at those meetings were Mr. And Mrs. Average American.

Americans had given Obama plenty of breathing room. He had over 70% approval in polls for a health care bill. It was the industry that was being placated, not the American public. ACA became law eight months before the midterms, so what happened after midterms has zero to do with what bill got passed.. Not a single Republican voted for ACA, That Obama allowed Susan Collins to make that bill worse without even voting for it herself was a travesty.

Don't call out the SCOTUS? Huh? I didn't because the SCOTUS, like Republicans and midterms, had nothing to do with what bill got passed in March 2010,except for what Democrats allowed Collins to pull. Which bill got passed is all I am talking about. The idea that the provisions of ACA were, as of March 2010, about Democratic fear and weakness is untrue. They were about the Obama White House stonewalling everyone but the industry, including stonewalling the House Progressive Caucus and average Americans.

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It wouldn't matter what the bill was if democrats didn't retain control of congress, a change that large absolutely requires fixes and moderation during implementation.

Obamacare/singlepayer/allpayer/god himself curing people, would not work if the ruubs can prevent corrections, and updates/changes when issues crop up. ALL healthcare laws would have alot of moving parts no matter the system implemented by that law, and ALL of them can be made to fail via purposeful neglect, and selective targeted attacks.

The dems didn't loose 2010 because Obamacare was obstensabily a bad bill(and don't get me wrong it is, but not in the way you think), they lost due to failure to govern, when the ruubs toke control of the process, so that Mr. touchy feely bipartisonship could be all togethery, he surrendered the game. Obama's politics where great with smaller to the point pieces of legislation, stuff the american public could easily understand, the stimulus act was easily to understand, the financial reform act was easy to understand, jobs bills are easy to understand.

Obamacare was always a mistake, because no matter what the bill was, or how long they fought over it, it was going to cause the Democrats to lose the house that year, and give the ruubs the perfect platform to ruin it.

You over reading a popularity pole, Obama was the hip new shiek is all those numbers prove. Trust and popularity in politics are two completely different things. Young and sexy, and America was still only giving him the valet keys to the national car, 2010 is proof of this. And I want to be very specific on this, I am not referring to trust, as in will he "lie" to you, I am referring to trust as a measure of faith in competence, do you trust him to get the job done.

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Al From, founder of the Democratic Leadership Council, was first in line, then came the founding members of that accursed organization, including Bill Clinton, the first DLC President, Then come all those who followed the pied piper. We are now at least 31 years into that parade.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

you're being unnecessarily cruel to the Pied Piper. Not sure he deserves being compared to the DLC.

He's been made out as a villain over the years, but in fact, the villagers cheated him out of his wages.
And after all, we don't *know* that those children died. They just were never seen again. Maybe they lived out their lives with the Fey.

Smile

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

TheOtherMaven's picture

... in Transylvania there's a tribe
Of alien people that ascribe
The outlandish ways and dress
On which their neighbours lay such stress,
To their fathers and mothers having risen
Out of some subterraneous prison
Into which they were trepanned
Long time ago in a mighty band
Out of Hamelin town in Brunswick land,
But how or why, they don't understand.

I think they would have had to travel a Faerie road to get from central Germany to western Romania, though.

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There is no justice. There can be no peace.

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

Victorian poetry is one of my weaker points.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

thanatokephaloides's picture

Great catch on the Robert Browning passage, TOM!

So, Willy, let me and you be wipers
Of scores out with all men -- especially pipers!
And, whether they pipe us free from rats or from mice,
If we've promised them aught, let us keep our promise!

source

I think they would have had to travel a Faerie road to get from central Germany to western Romania, though.

Either that, or this "road", maybe.....

[video:https://youtu.be/D6t318FgFdc width:480 height:360]

Wink

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"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar

"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

TheOtherMaven's picture

not to the Danube. You would have to go down the Weser, back up the Aller, portage overland to the Elbe and go up it, then up the Vltava (Moldau) as far as possible, and you'd still have another overland portage before you got to the Danube. Most of the time you'd be working against the current, and the Vltava can be pretty wild (the name means "wild water"). Overland - especially via a Faerie trod - would actually be easier.

There's a lot of "you can't get there from here by water" in Europe, due to central mountain ranges etc.

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There is no justice. There can be no peace.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

At the point in time, the democrats, and Obama needed to earn a greater level of trust from the American public then they possessed at that point in time.

When, other than FDR's third term maybe, are you ever going to get more trust than 65% approval rating, near super-majorities in both houses of Congress, and a national organization bearing the President's name with 63 million members, of which, probably, 12 to 15 million were activated and ready to work?

That's 12 to 15 million people who believed in the President who were organized and ready to take political action in support of what he did. Supported by 65% of the population.

How much more trust could America give Obama than that?

As for your policy priorities, I absolutely 100% agree with you on that. But he didn't need to pass the Jobs bill to gain America's trust. America had extended its trust, and was waiting confidently (which hurts to remember) for Obama and the Dems to fix the economy, as FDR had before. (Even if you think WWII was the only thing that fixed the economy, FDR got us into it, very much on purpose).

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

You over reading a popularity pole, Obama was the hip new shiek is all those numbers prove. Trust and popularity in politics are two completely different things. Young and sexy, and America was still only giving him the valet keys to the national car, 2010 is proof of this. And I want to be very specific on this, I am not referring to trust, as in will he "lie" to you, I am referring to trust as a measure of faith in competence, do you trust him to get the job done.

Their where to many immediate problems left aside, after the healthcare debate sucked all the air out of the room, and killed the prospects of any other legislation, even minor legislation. This did not help electoral prospects in 2010, all of these issues, where things that where very in your face to the american public.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

Things started to go bad in the summer during the ACA fight--there was a period where suddenly Obama went very low profile. That was when I noticed people's faith begin to shake.

This is not including the Republicans and the racists who thought he was the Antichrist from the beginning. Of course, none of them trusted him, but they actually don't constitute a large portion of the public.

Here's the thing: you want more than a supermajority in the Senate, a large majority in the House, a landslide victory for the candidate, a 65% approval which, OK, say it means less than I think it does--and a 63-million-person organization bearing the President's name, for God's sakes.

What more do you want? That's not enough trust to be going on with?

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Because he never really tried. He had 60 Senators once. He could have told them either support the public option, or you will face primary challenges by people who will. He didn't. We will never know.

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Democrats, we tried to warn you. How is that guilt and shame working out?

sojourns's picture

while Obama was enjoying his O-bama-rama momentum, he should have struck while the iron was hot, re: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the closing of Gitmo. And yes, he should have rejected the ACA and sent it back with firmer demands. Personally, I think he was too self-conscious about being the first Black president (sort of) to push it, and garner stronger support from the Dems to make that happen. Fear of failure? Fear of trying to explain to the none-too-astute general-public as to why he vetoed the ACA and come across as a liar (which he is) so that it was better play nice with the right? Kumbaya-- that made me chuckle. Did he think he would gain political capital with the right? At the end of the day, he was sucking up to his handlers.

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"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones."
John Cage

should not be glossed over. There was no healthCARE reform...the only reformation was in the health insurance industry. What a scam... 45 million new customers, and a requirement that all Americans laid out big bucks to participate in a for profit extortion game.

It has been estimated that the public spends $10k per year, per person on health insurance, healthcare. And neither candidate has a friggin thing to say about moving our system of financing healthcare away from the private sector insurers, and corporate players in pharma, hospitals, med schools, etc.. The .1% own us when it comes to receiving healthcare

The only meaningful "reform" for the public was that insurance companies could not deny anyone from throwing their money down the rathole.

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as Deplorable Healthcare Insurance. Is it churlish to point out that, whatever the costs, and however they are made up, we still have one of the worst actual healthcare outcome systems in the "advanced" world?

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Orwell: Where's the omelette?

thanatokephaloides's picture

Is it churlish to point out that, whatever the costs, and however they are made up, we still have one of the worst actual healthcare outcome systems in the "advanced" world?

It's never "churlish" to tell the truth....

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"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar

"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides

However, it may well be churlish to point out that Obama squandered a squandered a once in a century (or even less often) opportunity, but I'll do it anyway.

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ACA did reduce costs by 10%, that would still be pathetic.

Reduced costs to whom, btw? Not to the 29 year olds who would not have bought health insurance at all before the mandate. Their cost was zero.

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The only solution to this catastrophic debacle called health insurance is that it has to end. Health insurance has to die, go away, cease to exist. The USA has to achieve parity with the other industrialized nations and take the profit factor out of the delivery of healthcare.

Single payer is the only solution for the 99%. The 1% will be able to afford whatever designer care they choose.

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Hawkfish's picture

Health care costs in this country are going to rise under any system that increases the pool of people getting health care for the simple reason that the people without care tend to be sicker than average. The only way to minimize these costs over the short term is to get rid of the middlemen and their "tax".

In the long term, once everyone is getting health care as a right, we will all be healthier and costs will go down accordingly.

Increasing the pool of front line health care providers by expanding access to medical school would also help control costs in the long term. That would likely require more public medical schools as the private ones have no incentive to increase supply or places.

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We can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed.
- Greta Thunberg

but in 2009 his majority included such paragons of honesty as Joe Lieberman, Diane Feinstein and Max Baucus. It would havve taken a Gandhi or an ML King to get anything through them with moral arguments. The simple fact was that he was the first blacl president - he had to be as moderate, as mainstream, as nonthreatening, as white as humanly possible or the potentially racist American public would have turned on him in a week. (see Trump campaign for proof)
On the other hand… in 2009 I wrote "memo to hospitals, doctors, et aall, We at Greed Inc. know that our relationship has been a little rocky, what with us refusing to pay your bills, forcing you to charge $35 for an aspirin just to recover some of your legitimate expenses. Well ffrom now on all that is about to change. Thanks to the ACA we can only charge our cash cows, er… customers 20% above our expenses. In other words, 120% of whatever you charge us. The more we pay you the more we can charge them. In light of this we proudly announce our new Frequent Biller Program." Though I must admit that I could never have foreseen (sarcasm? no, sarcasm) the health care death spiral. after generations of poverty induced health decisions with the coming of mandatory health insurance people are finally discovering the consequences of a lifetime of deferred maintenance. Thanks to the ACA we are suddenly discovering just how many hypertensive diabetics there are.

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On to Biden since 1973

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

seeing as how Joe Lieberman was his mentor when he was in the Senate--and he personally saved Lieberman's chairmanship for him.

This isn't a case of poor Obama plagued by the corrupt centrists. He likes them.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver