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Tom Perez B/K/M? This poll is closed. |
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160 | 52.98% |
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NewForumSoftware posted:What makes you so sure healthcare logistics and administration is an "appropriate market" for competition? If one company has a better program for it's chronic condition management nurses that yields better diabetes medication adherence and reduces complications, that's different from "if you don't pay $400,000 for this cancer drug you will die". Like, there's no viable alternative to getting the healthcare you need. There's viable alternatives to who is going to administer the healthcare your taxes have already paid for. And, if people have a problem with having their plan administered by a private insurer, the non-Advantage Medicare plans will still exist. The different plans all cover the same benefits, it's just things like different deductibles. I'm not saying this would continue once Medicare was expanded to everyone, but this is what causes the current Medicare Advantage premiums. If a Medicare Advantage plan had a higher premium than regular Medicare for the same benefits, people would just buy regular Medicare.
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Aug 9, 2017 21:40
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Well here in Atlanta the Democratic Party just lost the black vote.
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Aug 9, 2017 21:46
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Reik posted:Do you have health insurance? Consumers don't bear the same responsibility as employees ("no ethical consumption under capitalism"), with the sole possible exception being situations where the employee isn't paid much and doesn't have many reasonable alternatives. In the case of employees, the person is profiting from the actions of the business, and the more they profit the more unethical their behavior. So a person making six figures working for a harmful industry is far more unethical than someone who either makes less money or has purchased a product from such an industry (assuming it's a product they don't need, since it's obviously absurd to blame people for buying health insurance). So, to refer to your earlier post, buying factory-farmed meat (and arguably any meat, depending on your views) is doing something unethical, but it's many orders of magnitude less unethical than someone making six figures working for a noxious industry. Reik posted:Please point to the post where I said health insurers are not part of the problem. All I've said is health insurers are not driving up healthcare costs, and I've said health insurers have negative impacts on the healthcare market. I think when people refer to driving up healthcare costs, you can reasonably infer they mean "for the consumer." So even if total costs stay the same or decrease, if the insurance company is offloading costs onto the policy-holder that counts as "driving up costs."
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Aug 9, 2017 21:51
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Ytlaya posted:Consumers don't bear the same responsibility as employees ("no ethical consumption under capitalism"), with the sole possible exception being situations where the employee isn't paid much and doesn't have many reasonable alternatives. In the case of employees, the person is profiting from the actions of the business, and the more they profit the more unethical their behavior. So a person making six figures working for a harmful industry is far more unethical than someone who either makes less money or has purchased a product from such an industry (assuming it's a product they don't need, since it's obviously absurd to blame people for buying health insurance). So, to refer to your earlier post, buying factory-farmed meat (and arguably any meat, depending on your views) is doing something unethical, but it's many orders of magnitude less unethical than someone making six figures working for a noxious industry. I disagree. We're all in this together. Ytlaya posted:I think when people refer to driving up healthcare costs, you can reasonably infer they mean "for the consumer." So even if total costs stay the same or decrease, if the insurance company is offloading costs onto the policy-holder that counts as "driving up costs." Costs for the insurer turn in to costs for the consumer the following year through premium adjustments. While costs for some individuals will increase up to a certain point, in aggregate costs for the consumers will go down as well. Insurers focus on aggregate costs more than individual costs. Reik fucked around with this message at 21:56 on Aug 9, 2017 |
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Aug 9, 2017 21:53
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Reik posted:I disagree. We're all in this together. No, it is obviously true that different people have different levels of moral responsibility depending upon the circumstances. I can understand if you feel some personal desire to just say "EVERYONE IS EQUALLY TO BLAME" in order to sleep easier at night, but that is obviously not true. A person who steals $10 from a rich person has committed a less unethical act than a person who steals $100 from a poor person. Context and the amount to which a person profits matters. edit: Like, I even admitted that everyone has some responsibility in my post, but the amount of responsibility can vary wildly. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 21:58 on Aug 9, 2017 |
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Aug 9, 2017 21:56
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Ytlaya posted:No, it is obviously true that different people have different levels of moral responsibility depending upon the circumstances. I can understand if you feel some personal desire to just say "EVERYONE IS EQUALLY TO BLAME" in order to sleep easier at night, but that is obviously not true. A person who steals $10 from a rich person has committed a less unethical act than a person who steals $100 from a poor person. Context and the amount to which a person profits matters. Does someone working within the system, but uses their vote to try and change the system, have more moral responsibility than someone that doesn't work in the system but votes to maintain it? Does where your paycheck comes from really compare to how you vote when it comes to moral responsibility?
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Aug 9, 2017 21:58
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"Sorry" truly does seem to be the hardest word.
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Aug 9, 2017 22:01
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Reik posted:Does someone working within the system, but uses their vote to try and change the system, have more moral responsibility than someone that doesn't work in the system but votes to maintain it? That's tough to say, though I would lean towards the former being more unethical (though how much the person is paid at their job and how easily they could switch fields also matters). A single vote has a negligible impact on affecting change. The question becomes more difficult if someone actually spent a bunch of time as an activist for the cause in question, though at that point you're almost talking about some sort of bizarre moral indulgence payment. It's not really comparable to the question of whether some jobs are more unethical than others (or being a consumer is more unethical than being an employee in an unethical industry), because "how much is a person materially benefiting from something" can easily be measured and compared. Generally speaking, the most important element here is "how much is a person personally profiting." Most people wouldn't argue that a CEO who gains millions of dollars from the unethical behavior of his firm is worse than a random employee of that firm, even if the CEO couldn't have done anything without the assistance of his/her employees.
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Aug 9, 2017 22:08
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Ytlaya posted:That's tough to say, though I would lean towards the former being more unethical (though how much the person is paid at their job and how easily they could switch fields also matters). A single vote has a negligible impact on affecting change. The question becomes more difficult if someone actually spent a bunch of time as an activist for the cause in question, though at that point you're almost talking about some sort of bizarre moral indulgence payment. I mean, if I were to quit my job today and go to another field, they would just hire someone to replace me. With voting each vote is unique to the person and can't be replaced with someone else's vote. I mean, I'm not going to quit because I don't think what I do is evil, just wondering.
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Aug 9, 2017 22:19
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If personal profit is the margin, then it sounds like companies have a moral obligation to reduce their employees wages to reduce the moral burden on their employees 
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Aug 9, 2017 22:25
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Reik posted:I mean, if I were to quit my job today and go to another field, they would just hire someone to replace me. With voting each vote is unique to the person and can't be replaced with someone else's vote. I had a feeling you'd come up with this argument, but it's a pretty weak one because it could (quite literally) be made in the context of the Holocaust, up to and including stuff like being a guard at a concentration camp. The logic is basically the same - "if not me, then someone else would have done it." I'm not saying you should quit, but part of being an honest person is being willing to say "I'm willing to profit from unethical behavior in order to live a better life." I continue to eat meat despite not checking that closely to see if it's ethically farmed, because at the end of the day I value the extra free time from not closely researching that stuff. The same is basically true for your situation, only magnified dramatically since your'e probably making a considerable amount of money from your actions.
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Aug 9, 2017 22:42
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Ytlaya posted:I had a feeling you'd come up with this argument, but it's a pretty weak one because it could (quite literally) be made in the context of the Holocaust, up to and including stuff like being a guard at a concentration camp. The logic is basically the same - "if not me, then someone else would have done it." I guess the difference is I don't see health insurers as being any more unethical than say, car insurers. Like someone said earlier, you can't blame a crocodile for eating a toddler. If you don't want crocodiles eating toddlers, keep toddlers away from crocodiles, don't kill the crocodiles. If you don't want insurers doing their insurance thing with healthcare, don't let healthcare be a for profit market.
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Aug 9, 2017 22:46
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gohmak posted:Well here in Atlanta the Democratic Party just lost the black vote. Thanks for the additional info
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Aug 9, 2017 22:46
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Reik posted:I guess the difference is I don't see health insurers as being any more unethical than say, car insurers. Like someone said earlier, you can't blame a crocodile for eating a toddler. If you don't want crocodiles eating toddlers, keep toddlers away from crocodiles, don't kill the crocodiles. If you don't want insurers doing their insurance thing with healthcare, don't let healthcare be a for profit market. ...are you serious? This is a really stupid argument, and I usually don't directly call things stupid unless they're really bad. Humans have agency, crocodiles do not. And people have already mentioned the difference between health insurance and other insurance markets. Just to be clear, you would agree that literal Nazis during WW2 were no more or less unethical than anyone else? Your logic directly implies this. And you would also argue that everyone in Nazi Germany shared an equal amount of blame regardless of their role and circumstances (i.e. a poor soldier is just as much to blame as an official who directly profited from invaded territories)? (Note that I agree everyone who participated in Nazi Germany's actions were acting unethically; I'm only discussing how unethical their actions were relative to one another. So this isn't a "the random Wehrmacht soldier wasn't to blame" argument.) edit: Actually, taken to its most extreme conclusion, this logic basically invalidates the existence of individual ethics itself, since it assumes that all humans, by virtue of belonging to some sort of shared community (since nations interact with one another, etc) all just evenly split the guilt of the human race as a whole. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 23:01 on Aug 9, 2017 |
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Aug 9, 2017 22:57
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https://twitter.com/hellofasandwich/status/895123752689614848 https://twitter.com/seanmcelwee/status/895399953517989888
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Aug 9, 2017 23:02
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Ytlaya posted:...are you serious? This is a really stupid argument, and I usually don't directly call things stupid unless they're really bad. I mean, if we're calling things stupid I think comparing a health insurance company to Nazi Germany is itself pretty stupid.
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Aug 9, 2017 23:17
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Ytlaya posted:...are you serious? This is a really stupid argument, and I usually don't directly call things stupid unless they're really bad. Well as I contrue it ethics relates to your relation with your own desire and morals relate to how it affects others. Let's take Himmler for example: one of the most unethical things he did was try to formulate ways to relieve SS soldiers guilt over the terrible atrocities they were regularly commiting. Eg :"Even though you feel that what you're doing might be wrong, know that it must be done for the bigger cause of the Vaterland". This is not unethical just because it's a discoursive instrument that tries to help the comitting of atrocities but because it tried to hide the ethical dimension of it, eg, the guilt a soldier felt when doing it through the very form of an ethical injuction. It was a legit ethical nighmare.
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Aug 9, 2017 23:19
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Reik posted:I mean, if we're calling things stupid I think comparing a health insurance company to Nazi Germany is itself pretty stupid.
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Aug 9, 2017 23:53
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Reik posted:I mean, if we're calling things stupid I think comparing a health insurance company to Nazi Germany is itself pretty stupid. The logic is identical. You've specifically made the arguments "if not me, someone else will do it" and "no one in a given organization/system is more or less ethically responsible than anyone else", and it's absolutely a valid argument for me to apply your same logic to other analogous situations (with Nazi Germany in this case being a good "everyone already accepts this is bad" example).
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Aug 10, 2017 00:04
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pigdog posted:It doesn't quite work like this, because idiots with minor health issues, or hypochondriacs with no issues at all, would waste all of top specialist doctors' time. If it's not an emergency, then first you would go to your family physician, who will take the first look at you, and only if you really have a problem write you a transfer script that will let you see a specialist. You might even need to wait, depending on the urgency of your problem. It's better to just look at what other governments have tried and what the results have been. Guess what? The effect you describe is negligible. In fact for this one you don't even have to look abroad: people on a PPO plan in the US mostly don't behave as you describe.
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Aug 10, 2017 00:08
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Kilroy posted:Actually it does work like this and your hypothetical bullshit thought experiment doesn't actually happen and it doesn't actually collapse the healthcare system like you're so certain it must. Turns out that, much like "if we make companies pay people a living wage then prices will skyrocket", the understanding of human nature at the individual and social level achieved by socially awkward basement dwellers and stemlord libertarians, leaves them ill-equipped to make guesses at what this or that policy will do. I think you're misreading his argument. He's just arguing that it's not true that you can see whatever doctor you want whenever you want, and that you may need to see a GP or something first to refer you (which may or may not include a wait time depending upon severity and how busy the specialist is). For example, you couldn't just head over to some equivalent of the Mayo Clinic and see a renowned specialist just because you want to. He's not arguing that our system is better or that this actually represents a serious problem.
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Aug 10, 2017 00:14
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Call Me Charlie posted:To get back to how the democrats are a waste, how about a DLC revival dressed up in progressive terminology? LOL! They really think they're going to pull this poo poo off again. The only reason running a conservative as a Democrat worked in the 90s was because Clinton was uniquely charismatic and no one was expecting it. Who do these people have these days with that kind of speaking power? Plus, thanks to 8 years of Obama the base is wise to the con now and will NOT respond to doubling down on neoliberal horseshit well. It's just not going to work. gently caress me 2020 is going to be a bloodbath for the Democrats. gohmak posted:Well here in Atlanta the Democratic Party just lost the black vote. Details?
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Aug 10, 2017 01:36
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readingatwork posted:
They're already dead at every level of government; the GOP is only playing for score now.
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Aug 10, 2017 01:42
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The sooner the progressives realize the Democratic Party is dead the sooner they can actually form a party that isn't composed of neoliberal shills and third way centrists hellbent on retuning to a bygone era of essentially being Republicans Lite: Same Great Taste with half the calories. The Dems need to suffer another wave of terrible losses and maybe people might start to realize how poo poo they really are and demand something better.
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Aug 10, 2017 01:43
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Awful lot of support for the border wall among the centrist Dems in the Trump thread.
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Aug 10, 2017 01:44
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I like that it isn't even mentioned they will of course also be right on economic issues as well as social ones.Huge_Midget posted:The sooner the progressives realize the Democratic Party is dead the sooner they can actually form a party that isn't composed of neoliberal shills and third way centrists hellbent on retuning to a bygone era of essentially being Republicans Lite: Same Great Taste with half the calories. The Dems need to suffer another wave of terrible losses and maybe people might start to realize how poo poo they really are and demand something better. Yeah, of course the old rub is that the Republicans will probably at least get some poo poo through and "doubters" will be blamed for it. Also, I fully expect the centrists to hold on to the grips of power even if the Democratic Party turns into a rump regional party. In most other countries, another party would have probably already come along and reduced them to a handful of seats. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 01:49 on Aug 10, 2017 |
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Aug 10, 2017 01:44
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Majorian posted:Awful lot of support for the border wall among the centrist Dems in the Trump thread. Jesus loving Christ. I stopped reading it for a bit because of all the  We're gonna die nonsense but holy hell, they're actually defending the wall.
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Aug 10, 2017 01:51
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Like, not even in a dogwhistle-y way! They're flat-out supporting Donald Trump's "Mexicans are rapists and/or drug dealers!" Wall.
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Aug 10, 2017 01:54
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Majorian posted:Awful lot of support for the border wall among the centrist Dems in the Trump thread. 
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Aug 10, 2017 02:05
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There has got to be a better way to depict that.
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Aug 10, 2017 02:11
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I find it distasteful when horseshoe theory is used to mean "hey, some Bernie Sanders supporters and some Donald Trump supporters both think TPP and war in Syria are bad things". Horseshoe theory means that if there are any issues which split perpendicularly across party lines, they can pick and choose whichever those are and find which ones are shared with certain GOP politicians. It's always the issues more commonly shared between the far left and the GOP that are wrong (by definition), not the ones shared between centrists and the GOP. Horseshoe theory is just an exercise in hiding circular logic behind jargon
galenanorth fucked around with this message at 02:20 on Aug 10, 2017 |
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Aug 10, 2017 02:17
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political ideology exists on a 5-dimensional spectrum of - economics, authoritarianism, pizza toppings, boxers vs. briefs, and the dao
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Aug 10, 2017 02:22
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Reik posted:I mean, I'm not going to quit because I don't think what I do is evil, just wondering. So you still don't get it then. Good to know you're not ignorant, but maliciously evil.
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Aug 10, 2017 02:34
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C. Everett Koop posted:So you still don't get it then. Good to know you're not ignorant, but maliciously evil. Tbf he might still just be ignorant.
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Aug 10, 2017 02:41
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So, DSA it is?
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Aug 10, 2017 02:42
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Huge_Midget posted:The sooner the progressives realize the Democratic Party is dead the sooner they can actually form a party that isn't composed of neoliberal shills and third way centrists hellbent on retuning to a bygone era of essentially being Republicans Lite: Same Great Taste with half the calories. The Dems need to suffer another wave of terrible losses and maybe people might start to realize how poo poo they really are and demand something better. The kicker is, you can't start up a new party overnight (at least one that could compete on a wide multi-state level) and it's literally impossible for a third party to win the presidency. The only way the left is going to gain any sort of power in this country is by hijacking the dems. Progressives need to infiltrate the party ranks. Progressives need to primary fuckhead centrists. Progressives need to be borderline unflexable regarding the things they want to get done. Giving up and leaving the party is exactly what they want you to do. (That said, there's nothing wrong with working with outside organizations that also have an end goal of hijacking the dems like Our Revolution, DSA, Working Families Party, etc)
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Aug 10, 2017 02:45
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Majorian posted:Like, not even in a dogwhistle-y way! They're flat-out supporting Donald Trump's "Mexicans are rapists and/or drug dealers!" Wall. I don't really agree with this characterization, they were saying that conservative Democratic senators from Montana and Utah giving bullshit non-committal vaguely supportive statements on the wall was ok because they have conservative constituencies, which is a debatable point but no one was actually saying the wall itself was in any way good.
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Aug 10, 2017 02:46
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Lightning Knight posted:I don't really agree with this characterization, they were saying that conservative Democratic senators from Montana and Utah giving bullshit non-committal vaguely supportive statements on the wall was ok because they have conservative constituencies, which is a debatable point but no one was actually saying the wall itself was in any way good. Majorian posted:You're literally defending the border wall ITT. Despera posted:Yeah I am. In places it makes sense to have a border wall. I'm betting more than 35% of the country feels that way. Also it was Montana and Washington State. It sounds like Murray may have been joking or being sarcastic, though, so I might have misread her statement.
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Aug 10, 2017 02:49
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I didn't see that, gently caress that guy. But that wasn't most people were saying. I dunno why I thought Utah, I'm silly. Her statement is vague, especially because it's focusing on the budgetary aspect of it and she's the budget lady, so who knows. It seems like a shorter snippet of a longer thing too. Montana dude is just trying to walk the line of what's acceptable though and I mean lol he's from Montana so. Lightning Knight fucked around with this message at 02:55 on Aug 10, 2017 |
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Aug 10, 2017 02:49
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Calibanibal posted:political ideology exists on a 5-dimensional spectrum of - economics, authoritarianism, pizza toppings, boxers vs. briefs, and the dao
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Aug 10, 2017 02:52
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